Gaslighting in this sub

Exis007 · 2024-03-26T12:00:50+00:00

So, let me speak from the other side of this experience. I talk to a lot of people using catastrophizing as a logical fallacy. Examples of catastrophizing look like:

One girl turned down my invitation to a date, so I'll be alone forever and no one will ever love me
No woman has ever interacted positively with me in my entire life, including the five to seven all trying to help me right now in this very thread
I am the ugliest person to ever exist on the planet. I know other people think that about themselves and they are okay looking, but I am uniquely unattractive in a new and different way than those people

Is it possible that this is true? Maybe? But if you hang around long enough you'll see the same catastrophic thinking show up again and again. Even people who can look at other people's pictures and say, "No, you're nice looking actually" will still say that they are uniquely hideous. Even if you point out that people are being nice and helpful to them in this thread, that's not enough. If you ask follow-up questions about an incident of cruelty they experienced, you'll probably find that their interpretation of that incident is far more sinister than the way other people would generally interpret that situation. The catastrophizing is so common and follows so many of the same patterns that it's pretty easy to spot it if you're not in the pilled thinking.

Getting people to spot their own catastrophic thinking is important. Gaslighting is a different thing. Gaslighting is where you and I both know that you bought eggs on Tuesday. I know it. You know it. But I want to make you feel crazy, so I throw out the eggs and lie to you to tell you that the eggs were never there, I didn't touch them, and you're crazy if you think you bought eggs. I have to know I am lying to you, be intentionally trying to make you feel nutty by telling you lies about things I know to be true, in order to make you feel bad. In a case where you legitimately forgot to buy eggs and you think I threw them out, I'm not gaslighting you when I say "No, I didn't see any eggs in the fridge and I don't remember you bringing them home". That's not gaslighting, that's just a disagreement about what happened. You insist you bought eggs, I insist I didn't see any, and we have to figure it out between us.

When you're dealing with someone else's catastrophic thinking, you will often have disagreements about reality. I don't think one rejection means you'll be alone forever. It seems like you're having a lot of positive interactions with women right now, in this very thread. Feeling uniquely ugly is a common experience and the things you describe are common for ordinary or even nice-looking men to use to feel ugly when they are not. You ARE attempting to get them to change their view of reality. But it isn't because you know they are right and you're trying to make them crazy, which would be gaslighting. It is because you strongly suspect or see direct evidence of the fact that they are misinterpreting or aggrandizing a human experience and they need to see that pattern to recognize it. And that probably does feel shitty! It probably feels bad for people to say, "Hold up, this explanation of your own experience doesn't hold water". But that's because pilled thinking acts as such a distorted lens of interpretation that sometimes an individual take on their own life is so far off base or catastrophic that they are going to need to address that before they can heal. Until or unless they realize how far afield their own interpretations of situations are, they are going to continue to have social struggles.

waffleznstuff30 · 2024-03-26T12:17:53+00:00

I think because with incel/red pill talking points in regards to women are cognitive distortions. There is no nuance to these view points and beliefs. There is no open for interpretation or understanding. They are I think and feel things are this way so it's reality. It misses a whole lot of things in there.

Women who have sex casually MUST be emotionally damaged. And have a higher body count they ruined their value to us men. Do you not see the distortion there.

Women only want the hottest fittest muscle man! They don't want us average Joes. They only want 20% of men us 80% are what's left and this is why I am lonely.

Feminism made women too independent!!! Women are too masculine! Women are supposed to be submissive!! Only good women are submissive. (Aka I'm scared of someone making me feel small so they need to do everything I say)

Red pill/incels present their own world view and experiences as fact not bothering to go deeper into why they think and feel this way. And instead project their blame on to a whole gender. Instead of looking inward maybe your self esteem issues push would be people away. Maybe putting all your worth and value onto whether or not women want you is a flimsy way to acquire value. Because basing your worth on what other people think is setting you up to fail emotionally since you cannot control how others perceive you.

FellasImSorry · 2024-03-26T11:23:17+00:00

Delusions and distorted views of reality are hallmarks of incels and redpill victims.

watsonyrmind · 2024-03-26T14:35:41+00:00

Since you are asking this, you should really familiarize yourself with what actual facts are, because a lot of the time when these men are recounting these experiences, the horrible parts are ones they have made up or filled in. If you can't recognize when that is the case, you might be just as bad at detecting facts vs fantasy as the person saying it and therefore susceptible to radical rhetoric.

The most common example is a guy will say "a woman glares at me because I'm so hideous." Can you spot the fact and the fantasy in this statement? You should be able to.

99 times out of a hundred, the "because I'm so hideous" part is completely made up, and the "glares at me" part is also usually grossly exaggerated. The man gets asked, "did she tell she is glaring at you because you're hideous?" and he'll say "well no, I didn't ask, but I can tell!" We can't even guess where the reality is with this information. Was she even glaring at him? Did he do something socially inappropriate? Was she glaring at something else accidentally in his direction? It's highly unlikely, like, ridiculously unlikely, a random woman gives a single fuck if basically a stranger is not attractive. This is not a thing people act angrily towards other people about.

The thing is, the person telling the story believes wholeheartedly that the woman was glaring at him because he is hideous. In his mind, that is a fact. If, like the man in this example, you can't read things like this and recognize where fact ends and fantasy begins, you should seriously take some time to understand it better. It makes you extremely vulnerable to manipulation. This kind of cognitive distortion is heavily relied upon to propagate pill rhetoric.

Also when a group of teenagers get thrown out of a gym for being rowdy and aggressive, the issue is not whether someone deserves that behaviour directed at them because they are hideous or whatever else. The OP said himself they were already disruptive BEFORE he made eye contact with them. The situation to anyone who is reading social situations normally is that a bunch of teenagers were being - as teenagers do - rowdy and aggressive and got kicked out of the gym after targeting someone. It's not gaslighting to point that out. It's pretty socially stunted to believe a bunch of teenagers acting out means anything at all about anyone who gets caught in the crossfire, and the person really ought to be told and learn to recognize that.

Time_Astronaut_42 · 2024-03-26T15:12:08+00:00

Invalidating isn't gaslighting. Nobody is following you around or forcing a new reality on you. Rude, maybe...gaslighting? No. Can you provide links to comments doing that? I've been here for years and rarely see that. The mods are great at cleaning that stuff up.

EnemyOfTrust · 2024-03-28T13:43:59+00:00

[permanently deleted]

ParkiiHealerOfWorlds · 2024-03-26T13:03:04+00:00

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Title	Gaslighting in this sub
Author	Candid_Drawer_4856
Upvotes	15
Comments	36
Date	March 26, 2024 10:48 AM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/1bo4v1b/gaslighting_in_this_sub/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/gaslighting-in-this-sub.1513033 https://theredarchive.com/post/1513033

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