Super Cereal Expose: Chaos Central
Good morning/afternoon/evening/whatever time it is when you are reading this! In my infinite wisdom and unmatched wisdom, not to mention my incredible wisdom and lack of tautological tendencies, I have seen fit to grace you all with another Super Cereal expose. Yes, please hold your wild applause till the very end.
But who am I talking about? Why, none other than Chaos Central(HavikPrime cough cough...). Now, ChaosControl is an interesting fella. What, scratch that; reverse it. He isn’t, really. Seems to be a liberal, doesn’t like Nazi’s or racism, pretty standard stuff. Very few of his views deviate too far from what I see in mainstream media. That fact is what I found so very interesting.
You see, I tried arguing/debating/discussing (it’s just semantics, really) with him in good faith on multiple different topics in the past. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that he employs some very odd tactics. I have no problem with tactics of persuasion as a general rule, but I do have a problem when you claim you are being open and honest while you are, in my opinion, not being so, all while hurling hurtful homophobic slurs at me. Let’s get started.
Oh, and for the record… unlike him when writing an opinion piece, I’m going to be linking sources and providing screenshots as evidence for my claims about a fellow Minds user.
Exhibit A: Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of manipulation. The goal is to not target your opponent’s argument, but instead make them question their own sanity. It’s kinda like psy ops, as hilariously hyperbolic as that sounds. Here is a Prime example.
How very interesting. He takes issue with how a claim of mine portrays his argument. I pointed this out, but rather than show my comment, let’s look at the original source.
From his piece on Social Media:
Yep, you heard it here first. Mister Mayhem himself thinks that memes are indeed dehumanizing. Which is kind of a stupid belief, in my opinion, but one that can be held genuinely. The issue I take is with denying something that you wrote in your own article, and claiming the reader is misinformed. That’s gaslighting.
Exhibit B: Straw Man, Straw Man... does whatever a straw can
*boos begin to erupt as yet another idiot(me) begins talking about the straw man fallacy*
I’m hearing boos from the audience… crap. I’m losing em! I gotta spice things up!
Ok, listen. When I say straw man, I’m not saying that in the typical boring logical fallacy form, where I talk at length about how someone is misrepresenting my argument. No, I’m talking in a more meta way. A straw man narrative, if you will. Maelstrom released three blogs to a single group, one after another:
Prejudice Is A Mental Disease
How Social Media Can Harm The Mentally Vulnerable
BombIslam: A Case-Study On The Retardation Of A Generation
Now, most people are aware that people uninterested in actually reading a whole blog will just skim the title. So what story do these titles tell, just by themselves?
Well, that prejudice can’t be based in rational thought processes. It is a corruption of the mind that leaves an individual incapacitated to think logically. Then, it states that “Mentally Vulnerable” people can be hurt when allowed to use social media. He even highlights someone he believes fits this bill.
Now, HavikusPrime is rather careful. He doesn’t outright say anywhere that I saw that he wishes BombIslam specifically to be deplatformed, going so far as to suggest that BombIslam supports censorship when convenient. Maybe Bomby does, I don't know because I don't really care to look into it. But he(Mr. H, not Bomberman) does express a similar sentiment in the comments section of his Social Media blog
It’s also worth noting he isn’t fond of anyone on the political right, as he seems to see them as a bunch of sheep
I don't quite follow his vernacular here... either he is suggesting that the right is more focused on party loyalty, or that they become more outraged with actions of party loyalty on the other side. It's an odd use of the word inflamed... Take it as you will, it's a minor point.
This all seems clear to me. It’s only speculation, but I believe he deliberately uses BombIslam as a starting point, but wants to slowly deplatform right wing thought by continually pushing the Overton window to the left. Anything too far to the right is dangerous in his eyes, after all, but what is actually considered far right can be subjective. Once you establish a precedent for censorship based solely on political persuasion, the logical conclusion will be that anyone who disagrees with you could be on the chopping block.
Again, this a minor point, but I recommend reading the actual expose on BombIslam he wrote. It’s a veritable buzzword stew of usual talking points. I can say this without providing much evidence because that is exactly how he characterizes BoomBoom, and I don’t need to give specific examples of what I mean because he didn’t do that for Bobbidy. It’s only fair; in this one particular case, I will treat him exactly the same way he treated Bombad. I don’t know BombIslamistism, I don’t follow him, and it sounds like I probably wouldn’t agree with him. Which is why it would have been doubly useful to include screenshots, quotes, or even just links to the views you are referring to rather than assuming everyone knows him and has already come to the same conclusion, to then spend the blog merely speculating on how BombIslam arrived at his objectively wrong opinions. But I digress...
Now, before you accuse me of airing my grievances with a man in a public spectacle rather than approaching him directly about this, I did. He deleted my comment that included the screenshot regarding censorship of Gab. Which, combined with his forming of a narrative he is doing, brings me to the third issue with Havoc...
Exhibit C: Manipulation of the Narrative with Just A Dash of Cognitive Dissonance
I probably would have let all this slide if it wasn’t for this part. The internet has far too many people to target every single idiot, after all, even if they are behaving dishonestly. But ironically, this is what actually grabbed my attention. His attempts to control what other people see.
This goes very deep, as it influences every part of Havik-san’s argument style. Now, this is a longer story and might seem off topic, but please bear with me.
I posted a link to a video talking about the recent deplatforming of the Killstream, and the forced refund of $26,000 of charity money donated through admittedly edgy superchats. I recommend looking into the story yourself and forming your own opinion, but in short I thought this was bad because the money could only help kids with cancer, while mean words were a dime a dozen online.
But I quickly learned that HavikTheFirst thought different.
He posted a link to one of my own blogs which discussed false accusations, with the subtitle paraphrasing his own blog about prejudice being a mental disease. At the time, and still now, I didn’t really see the point he was trying to make.
So, he asked some clarifying questions, I directed him to the source I had provided, did my best to answer what I could, and he jumped to defend the WSJ as innocent. Which is… odd. Because he has been very vocal in the past about how Kavanaugh should not have been confirmed based on unsubstantiated allegations. (I can provide those screenshots if necessary, but let’s just keep this moving…)
We discuss for a bit, as I always like to get my facts straight. I don’t want to be fake news, after all. But it’s worth noting that he accuses me as not having enough irrefutable proof to convict(never claimed I did…) and continuing to defend the WSJ. Ironically, he unintentionally strengthened my actual stance in gathering more info. Here is the rest of his comment, since it was a long one.
So, naturally, I thanked him for the evidence and further explained my position, since he didn’t seem to quite understand. It’s a long set of comments that don't add much, so I won’t post that screenshot for a reason to be explained shortly. After I roundly dismantled his points against me, he pivoted to saying that organizations don’t accept money from controversial sources as a general practice. I rebutted that point, saying broadly applied it makes for a terrible society ruled by fear of being ostracized. After that, he called me... emo.
Did you read that last line? He’s going to delete his entire argument, and all the evidence provided. Why? Why go through that effort to then just destroy it?
His response was… I don’t really remember, actually. It apparently wasn’t interesting enough for me to get a screenshot of, and he already deleted it. I think it said something about wanting to sow Chaos? Whatever, who really cares. The bottom line is, now, he has a whole argument on one of my pages where you can see only my side, as I deleted nothing. You can even see the comments where I told him I have screenshots and him deleting everything makes him look like an absolute idiot, more so than leaving his broken argument up for other people to see. For those interested in verifying, here is the link for convenience.
I have a theory. He realized he was fundamentally defending the removal of charity funds from kids with cancer based on mean words. He realized his ideas on thought control through memes was far less tangible than an outrage mob doing things like actively deplatforming people with differing political views, and thus creating a culture of intimidation. I don’t know for sure since I'm not a mind reader, but I think he knows exactly what he is doing. He's running and hiding when he believes he is losing the argument.
Exhibit D: The Triggering
I informed him I was going to write an expose on him, and before I thought to take a screenshot of it, he deleted it(not that it matters much... it won't stop me from writing, lol). He also deleted the insult he directed at me… but I was very careful to document the following freakout. Now, I didn’t edit things or do anything sneaky. These were his actual responses to my very nonchalant comments on one of his threads. To start, his comment where he told me to eff off and my stunning and brave responses to him silencing me.
In fairness, I didn’t even initially see the “please go elsewhere”, but even if I did, I don’t really care. I was discussing his blog, and that was the place best suited for the discussion. He could block or delete comments, which he eventually did. But not after being very rude.
Ah, here is a test to his integrity as a self proclaimed big thought thinker and seeker of da troof(I wonder if he knows da wae?). I inform him that deleting conversations can cause the radicalization he claims to fear of the mentally unstable. What is his response?
Yep. He calls me worthless and a fag. As an aside, he uses a technique called “concern trolling”.
Exhibit D.1: Concern Trolling
You see, he asks me disingenuously if I have some kind of reading disability. If you have read this far, you probably understand that I am very much capable of reading and understanding what I read. I even write fiction in my spare time, which is generally well received by many. What is the actual purpose of him asking this? To suggest that I am stupid, of course. But the benefits of this tactic are many.
He virtue signals as a caring and compassionate guy. After all, he doesn’t want to pick on someone with a disability. At the same time, he characterizes me and my arguments as defective. Finally, and potentially most effectively, he both lays the groundwork for dismissing everything I say as the ravings of a mad man while bating me to respond in an emotionally charged way. It’s a multi-layered strategy that can reliably produce results, but whether used intentionally or not, it is not intellectually honest. It is a tactic of trolls, and not representative of the “truth seeking process” that HatchetMcPrime claims I’m ignoring.
Conclusions
You see, I think he’s a troll, but not a normal one. I see him as a partisan troll. He claims to have voted for Trump, that he has a genuine interest in honest discourse, and is willing to listen to opposing views. But he doesn’t want to have discussions, he wants to win discussions. If something paints him in a bad light, he wants to remove it any way he can. He believes he is the one who decides when a discussion should end, but simply refusing to respond or blocking a user makes him look like the dishonest coward he really is.
He posts a lot of left leaning sources in his feed. Which is fine, but he clearly is not unbiased. He tries to claim in a roundabout way that he is, that he only cares about the truth. But from all my interactions with him, I have concluded he is the worst kind of partisan. One that tries to manipulate and subvert; one that pretends to be more centrist than they are, and is more interested in simply winning by any means necessary. Which is probably why he posted a link to Sun Tzu’s art of war when I told him using censorship against white supremacists increases the veracity of their claims of victimization rather than actually defeating their ideas. He says, very bluntly, that he doesn’t care. It’s about winning by any means necessary, as he already knows he is right.
Don’t be like Havik. And if you already are, stop it. Get some help. Actually listen to other people, and don’t try to censor them or manipulate them. After all, we are in a polarized political climate, and the way you reduce that is by finding some semblance of middle ground and realizing your political adversaries might actually have some points. I have not blocked Havik, nor do I plan to. But I also won’t take him as seriously as I did previously after seeing these disturbing trends in his behavior. He does not discuss in good faith, and he has some unfortunate authoritarian tendencies.
Oh, but I really should end this with a joke... uh... HavikPrime!
*runs off stage as people boo, dodging thrown rotten tomatoes*
Sources:
Graveyard of my conversation with James Anthony Hackett… Jimmy: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/905250278124150784
BombIslam expose: https://www.minds.com/HavikPrime/blog/bombislam-a-case-study-on-the-retardation-of-a-generation-905920776621670400
Prejudice: https://www.minds.com/HavikPrime/blog/prejudice-is-a-mental-disease-904458136312455168
Social Media: https://www.minds.com/HavikPrime/blog/how-social-media-canharm-the-mentally-vulnerable-904100592925270016