Making a New Type of Guy
To Get Mad At
We’ve seen how Making a New Type of Guy can engineer compliance. We’ve also seen algorithmic feeds naturally favor engagement-inducing incidental rage-bait over nuance.
But what if I told you that you don’t even need algorithms to have an excuse to get mad? If I told you you can craft your villains from scratch? That you can just Make Up a New Type of Guy to Get Mad At?
Perhaps you’re unconvinced. “Why would I want to do that!?” But Being Mad is full of perks! It’s validating—if we’re on opposite sides and you’re bad, then I must be good. It allows you to righteously dismiss an entire group of people without having to engage with what they have to say, and it allows you to project bad qualities onto this out-group so that you never—ever—have to confront yourself.
“How do I start?” “What’s a good Type of Guy to Get Mad At for someone just getting into it?” Don’t fret. Thankfully, others have paved the road before us. Let’s examine three recent Types of Guy To Get Mad At so you can get some inspiration.
Types of Guys to Get Mad At
“Jhanabros”
Since we ended the last post on a note about “enjoying the sunshine”, I thought it appropriate to address the Jhanas and, of course, “Jhanabros”.
Jhanas are states of deep meditative absorption. Basically, the same way our minds can recurse on negative emotions—like when fear of fear turns into panic—they can recurse on positive ones—like when pleasure of pleasure turns into Jhana 1.
Negative states looping on themselves, positive states looping on themselves
A proper hagiography of the popularisation of Jhanas is beyond the scope of this essay but I believe they started getting popular on Twitter with Nick Cammaratta incessantly tweeting about them at the same time as Jhourney sprang up selling a course for people to achieve them in a week. Jhourney’s tagline—“bliss of demand”—is some of what I was gesturing at yesterday when I suggested getting acquainted with the sun before attempting to stare into the void.
Anyways, Jhanas got big on Twitter. Soon enough, so did the term “Jhanabros.”
Now, “Jhanabros” doesn’t really refer to anything coherent. There are just people interested in Jhanas. But it sounds like it refers to something and that whatever it refers to isn’t great. Would you want to be a “jhanabro”? Of course not. Better to not explore it further: disparagement through neologism. And, just in case you’re tempted to dismiss this as Twitter inside baseball, here’s a 2024 article from The Atlantic. Notice anything?
“Jhanabros” follows the recent trend of appending ‘-bros’ to coin a disparaging neologism. It works as a template for mass-producing villains: fill in any subculture and just press enter. Financebros. Cryptobros. Gymbros. Podcastbros. Techbros.
However, given that I’m writing this in Berkeley, California, I’ll skip -bro discourse and jump straight to the “Doomers”.
(Someone should do a proper history of the use of the suffix -bro as a slur)
“Doomers”
”Doomer” originally refers to the meme above. First posted to 4chan September 16th, 2018, you can see searches for it spike then. More recently the term has been reappropriated to refer to “AI Doomers”—people concerned about existential risks from artificial intelligence. You can see searches spike again recently.
The same way “Jhanabros” is used to dismiss people interested in jhanas, “Doomers” to dismiss those worried about AI risk. “Shut up, Doomer” shuts down discussion, no arguments need be addressed. The label does all the work.
Interest in “Doomer” over time. Notice the spike in 2018—when the meme was posted to 4chan—and more recently, when it started being hurled against AI people.
But “Doomers” aren’t the only ones getting told to shut up.
“Karen”
“Karen”
“Karen” is pejorative slang for a middle-aged, middle-class white woman perceived as entitled and demanding, often asking to “speak to the manager.”
The term became hyper-popular around 2020. Notably it came to fill a niche in the culture: lots of people want to be dismissive of women and tell them to shut up but, until then, this was generally frowned upon.
Coining “Karen” suddenly made it ok.—I told you Making up a Type of Guy to Get Mad At comes with a lot of perks!
You might be saying: “Uh, first of all, ‘Karen’ isn’t a Type of ‘Guy.’ Second of all, “Jhanabro” and/or “Doomer” and/or “Karen” aren’t ‘Made Up’; they’re accurate descriptions of how some people actually are!”
Fair enough. Let’s address that next.
Upcoming: Naming, Renaming, and Inventing