How To Spot a NormieCon

It’s the cognitive dissonance

This cropped up in one of Morgoth’s comment threads in which the issue was European authorities beginning to require users of certain “problematic” sites to submit to facial ID in order to use such sites. One of the methods proposed for evading this sort of intrusion was the use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to access them.

One badly confused man (I think) , probably suffering from cognitive dissonance, responded to the VPN strategy with this:

That’s my resolution, this year. However much it saddens to join the paranoic VPN brigade.

Let’s unpack the markers of the NormieCon displayed in those few words.

First, ignore the various shades of meaning involving paranoid, paranoic, and paranoiac. Essentially, they all refers to someone who suffers from paranoia. So what is paranoia?

paranoia

noun

para·​noia ˌpar-ə-ˈnȯi-ə

1

: a psychosis characterized by systematized delusions of persecution or grandeur usually without hallucinations

2

: a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others.

So this fellow thinks that those who used VPNs as a protections against intrusive state, corporate, or criminal actors is irrational. You know, crazy, batshit, coo coo for CoCo Puffs. He doesn’t like these irrational whackjobs. He doesn’t want to join their number. Because he, unlike them, (at least not in his own estimation), is not irrational.

Not at all. He’s just a normal guy being forced into their irrational company by a threat against his privacy from a state actor. But isn’t that exactly why many of those he deems irrational are also using VPNs? To protect themselves against a real, not an irrational, threat?

He simply cannot square that circle, because he’s set himself and his self-image up for a massive dose of cognitive dissonance.

I don’t want to do what these crazy guys are doing because that would mean I’m crazy, but I can’t be crazy because I’m a normal guy, but I’m responding to a real, not an irrational, threat by doing the same crazy thing these crazy guy are doing, yet I can’t be crazy my self-image demands that I perceive myself as normal, not crazy, and…

And round and round he goes, a rat trapped on an endless mental exercise wheel that is exhausting to think about, let alone watch in action.

Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort felt when holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, or when your actions contradict your beliefs, creating an internal inconsistency that people are motivated to resolve. To relieve this tension, individuals often change their behavior, alter their beliefs, justify their actions, or downplay the conflicting information to restore internal harmony. (source: one of Google’s gang of AIs).

As a NormieCon, his self-image required him to characterize anybody acting in ways he does not consider normal to a level-headed conservative, as irrational.

But is it irrational to respond to a real threat with a real and effective strategy to counter it? No, of course it isn’t. But something is still going to have to give. Either he’s going to have to admit that he is being irrational, or that these others are not irrational paranoids. There is no resolution for him otherwise between the two conflicting perceptions.

Of course he got himself into this mess in the first place by trying to virtue-signal his own normality, which is a standard NormiCon defense of self-image: You’re the crazy ones, not me. But that only works so long as you don’t join the crazies yourself.

The bottom line is that his beliefs and perceptions have run smack-dab into a blunt, hard, uncaring rock of reality and come out very much the worse for it.

I imagine he will eventually resolve this for himself by simply ignoring the conflict. So, what do we call someone who believes two conflicting versions of reality at the same time?

We call them crazy.

Or NormieCons.