Athazagoraphobia

I often read of people who refer to the fact that people "would do anything for 15 minutes of notoriety", a theory that is now taken as if it were a religious dogma, devoid of any reflection or deepening. It's just that. In reality this way of thinking comes from a phrase of Andy Warhol, who said something different: "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes". So this is the bad interpretation of something that did not mean anything about what is attributed to it.

But the problem is not the origin of this saying.

The problem is that I find this interpretation rather superficial. It starts from the hypothesis that if someone goes from point A to point B, all he wants is to go to point B. So, if everyone is looking for fifteen minutes of notoriety, it is because they are attracted to fame.

This is pretty stupid. If you are on a sinking ship, what you will be doing is going to a lifeboat. But to deduce from it that you have made the lifeboat the maximum desire of your existence is stupid. The truth is that you would have gladly stayed in the comfortable suite of a cruise ship, if it hadn't started to sink.

The 15 minute notoriety theory, in short, is limited to taking into consideration the positive theory: if you go in that direction, it is because you are attracted to it. So everyone would look for the 15 minutes of notoriety because they are attracted by the notoriety.

This thing however is not very aligned with what we observe in reality. In practice, that is, there are some data that clash. First, almost everyone has a private life, and they suffer from being spied on. You can take the person you want. Let's say Valentina Nappi. You can think that being naked and doing all the fancy things that makes is a path to fame. However, if you placed a hidden camera in his hotel, or at his house, you would hardly avoid his complaint. What I am trying to say is that the hypothesis of the search for visibility at all costs clashes with the fact that almost everyone has a limit beyond which the public cannot and must not go.

The second point that clashes with the notoriety theory at all costs as a positive theory is that the search for a positive social value is pursued in a very different emotional state. If you look at the passengers of a cruise ship that have hedonism as the ultimate goal of life, you will find that they strive to be pleasing to everyone. Similarly, Valentina Nappi strives to appear in a way that appeals to those who love her performances. (personally I prefer a rounder body, like Gianna Michaels, but that's not the point). The point is that Valentina Nappi would not step on women and children to gain notoriety. But on the contrary, if he were fleeing from a sinking ship, then the speech would be very different. In that case, in the event that one escapes from something very feared, ethics is completely different: in order to have notoriety, consensus is needed, and the best way is to make oneself acceptable to many. On the contrary, if one escapes from something terrifying, one does not scruple and trample on it.

Now, what I notice is that the behavior that is explained with the "fifteen-minute notoriety research" theory does not resemble the sensual attitude of Valentina Nappi who tries to please the users of her art, but rather resembles the attitude of those who trample others in a desperate attempt to escape from something. The difference is that trying to please everyone is a social attitude, while trampling others while fleeing is an anti-social attitude.

And what I observe among people who "do anything for notoriety" is not social behavior: it is antisocial behavior.

For these reasons, I state my very own hypothesis. That the problem is not for people to do anything to have fifteen minutes of notoriety.

I assume that the problem is that of a desperate escape from invisibility.

If we assume that people are desperately trying to escape invisibility, then we can explain the behavior of the trolls: they annoy others not so much to become famous, but not to be invisible. This theory is consistent with my experience: when you block trolls, or when to write software that does it for you, you are actually telling them "from now on you are invisible". And at that point they will become furious, starting to stalk you, because in fact you have represented the worst nightmare before their eyes. We are talking about people who are trampling the next to reach a boat, and you are there to sink their boat.

In this view, we are not talking about a race for visibility: we are talking about a desperate escape from invisibility.

Contrary to what Andy Warhol thought, modern man is not at all famous for 15 minutes. It is simply invisible. And even if Andy Warhol is right, an invisible individual for the rest of his life but 15 minutes is, to a good degree, almost completely invisible.

The thing that drives people to go to social networks is precisely this: to be invisible. I don't say "anonymous", I say that of being invisible. That of not existing anymore. Because postmodern society erases people with an impressive ease.

Tell a woman to be "old". In theory, nothing changes, because ultimately almost all women know and remember their date of birth. But the terrible offense does not derive from the age in itself: it derives from the fact that you are literally erasing it from the inventory of women. It is old, it means that it is out of the game, be it the game of seduction, or sex, or simply of the man-woman dynamics: that term "old" simply means "you are invisible, men do not see you anymore" . Sbianchettata.

The same is true when a man who is not gay is called gay by women. Many think that there is a certain homophobia behind resentment. But the problem is not this. The problem is that if a woman tells someone she is gay, she is doing the correspondent for a man who calls her "old". At a time when a heterosexual man is labeled as gay, he feels like he is being removed from the list of males. The problem is not that of being gay, the problem is that we are no longer on the list of people who take part in the seductive game, or even in the normal man-woman dynamics, as used in the heterosexual world.

The problem, in both cases: it is not the use of the word or its meaning. Very many "old" or "fat" women feel absolutely right with their bodies and their ages: the problem is that of not being erased from the inventory of women. Same thing for men, who then pay a certain default invisibility: many turn if a beautiful girl enters a room, but none turns around if a handsome man enters. And this produces a sense of default invisibility, which aggravates the situation. In my opinion, this explains why unattractive men, and almost never pretty girls, are almost always lurking among stalkers.

The second problem with this model is that it is an epidemic model: if it is true that nobody wants to be deleted, it is also true that deleting someone else makes people feel visible. The person who erases someone else feels less invisible, since at that moment he is someone else's worst nightmare.

This causes many to join in packs for the sole purpose of overwhelming someone else and "erasing it": when trolls manage to convince someone to cancel the account on a social network, they don't feel "powerful" as some believe. They feel "visible".

My personal experience is that when I wrote MasThino and he started banning people on twitter for me, among my stalkers there was a reaction that I would call "rather alarmed". One thing that banned 5000 accounts in two days was their terror: any number of accounts or anyway their pack was big, would have meant few minutes of work for MasThino. From their point of view, MasThino is the doomsday device, the weapon of judgment. One thing that can whiten an army of trolls, no matter how numerous, in a few minutes is the thing they fear most.

But writing mass digital extermination tools is not the solution. It is true, since I read (also through a third party) the groups of haters that concern me, I enjoyed seeing their ill-concealed desperation when they found themselves on the blocked list. But this personal satisfaction is not the solution to the problem.

Because if the problem is the fear of invisibility, which we could baptize as Athazagoraphobia (indeed, in a short search I just found out that it's called just like that), the problem is not to fight the Athazagoraphobici, neither that of keeping them away.

The first problem is that of not suffering from it.

Years ago I was subjected to a character assassination, which was very useful to me. In the sense that when I decided to become invisible on the internet, I found myself faced with this strange push that told me not to do it. And this led me to wonder where in the spectrum of the Athazagoraphobia I was.

Honestly, in those two years I had fun. I had fun because I experienced that you can do very visible things from invisible. Provided you give up taking the credit. So I participated as a mercenary (ghost writer) at the 2016 Meme War, and saw the things I had written, the people I had invented had become viral. I caused frantic damage to the opposite faction, and I did it invisible. No one will ever come to ask me about the disasters that a character I almost completely invented caused in the world of American universities, in the 2016 campaign.

So as I entered, after writing credible characters (with adequate reference semantics), in the same stalker groups, and I enjoyed watching them die after destabilizing them a little.

Being invisible is nothing to be afraid of. You are like a kind of submarine: the problem of being invisible is just that of having enough powerful weapons. Whoever is on a submarine to be invisible does not matter: on the contrary, it is the thing that makes them feel safe.

This blog has made several social experiments, such as Colza oil as diesel fuel, but no one (not even when there were many more readers today) had the impact of what I did by inventing a character from the American presidential campaign of 2016. Invisibility was one of the best moments of my existence in the modern internet. I took revenge on some of the people who had stalked me, sowing poison about their reputation, invisibly, and many of them didn't even understand what happened to them, and why they fell out of favor so easily. Being invisible is a blessing, if you want to be a killer.

But the interesting thing is that, after thinking about it, the Athazagoraphobia has practically calmed down. It's like when you do Judo: as long as you are afraid of the floor you will never fall well. When you start to find it comfortable, if not sure, then you will fall well, because deep down you love it. You're attracted to it, and you can't wait to be on the ground because you know you're safe.

When Athazagoraphobia left, I clearly reopened the blog. But this is due to the fact that it doesn't make me any fear "to be deleted". It could happen that some group of stalkers can make me shut down. In that case, from that moment I would be invisible, but I would still be on the internet. And I have plenty of time to investigate them, reach out to their contacts, and quietly avenge myself with slow reputation poisoning. And let's be clear, I could only do it as an invisible.

Ultimately, that is, my reflection is that Athazagoraphobia is a phobia that requires us to greatly magnify the fear of some experience that has never really happened before.

Because in reality nobody is really invisible. Those who live in a village often have a great visibility: Carlo the butcher, Augusto the barber, the Giulia who works in the shoe store, etc. You are still visible to your family.

As a result, Athazagoraphobia is the fear of a babau, something that never really happened. Going from 300,000 readers a day to the closing of the blog, for example, was such a heavy reduction in the order of magnitude of my visibility, that it was useful for me to reflect well on this fear.

As a result, you can understand one thing:

• The troll is extremely controllable, not so much by threatening him with cancellation, but by simply overcoming his fear of being invisible.
• As an invisible you are much more powerful in a social sense, especially on the internet, because the place where you come out, the new role, and the power of that role is unpredictable.

The Athazagoraphobia, that is, is the phobia for something that has no reason to be feared. It's like being afraid of money or good health. In reality, there are occasions in which they are useful things.

And the push of the masses to be afraid of being invisible is completely irrational and disproportionate: just like the fear of those who crush on the door to escape from a fire, when they would flow much faster if they evacuated neatly.

But it is the dominant push of social networks. Nobody goes there because he wants to become famous.

Everyone goes there because they are afraid of being invisible.

Source: https://keinpfusch.net/athazagoraphobia/