{"id":1681868,"date":"2022-10-10T13:32:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T17:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1681868"},"modified":"2022-10-10T13:34:38","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T17:34:38","slug":"inside-the-child-psychology-driving-michelle-goldberg-and-other-leftists-to-angry-tears-over-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/inside-the-child-psychology-driving-michelle-goldberg-and-other-leftists-to-angry-tears-over-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside The Child Psychology Driving Michelle Goldberg And Other Leftists To Angry Tears Over Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Finside-the-child-psychology-driving-michelle-goldberg-and-other-leftists-to-angry-tears-over-twitter%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1681868&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Leftists are, as a rule, psychologically simple creatures, animated by easily identified, unsophisticated emotions and thought patterns. That fact explains the reaction seen to <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/10\/05\/how-to-survive-elon-musks-pro-free-speech-twitter-a-guide-for-the-corrupted-national-press\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">potential changes in Twitter<\/a>, the default platform for national political debate.<\/p>\n<p>New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/10\/06\/opinion\/elon-musk-twitter.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an entire piece<\/a> last week explaining her hope that should billionaire Elon Musk prove successful in purchasing Twitter and subsequently dismantling the pro-censorship structure that governs it now, he will effectively render it unusable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a shred of hope \u2026 that if Musk makes Twitter awful enough, users will flee, and it will become less relevant,\u201d said Goldberg. \u201cI\u2019m usually wary of arguments that declining conditions are a catalyst to progress. \u2026 I\u2019m going to make an exception for Twitter, though. The best thing it could do for society would be to implode.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite admitting that she, like other influential figures in the corrupt national media, is a highly engaged user of Twitter \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s useful for my job\u201d \u2014 Goldberg cheered for its demise in the event that new ownership moves the platform in a direction more open and tolerant of views and activity she doesn\u2019t like. \u201cMusk\u2019s politics are shaped by a fondness for trolling and a hatred of wokeness, and he\u2019s likely to make the site a more congenial place for racist demagogues and conspiracy theorists,\u201d she added. \u201cGiven Twitter\u2019s outsize influence on media and politics, this will probably make American public life even more fractious and deranged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are a few different psychological tendencies at play here, but nothing more complex than the standard foul mood a child experiences when he\u2019s been told to share, or the word \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By asserting that Twitter is only valuable and worth existing when the left determines who can say what on the platform, Goldberg is exhibiting what three scholars in 2020 called the \u201csour-grape effect.\u201d Hallgeir Sjastad of the Norwegian School of Economics, Roy Baumeister of the University of Queensland in Australia, and Michael Ent of Towson University <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0022103119305967#!\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described that<\/a> phenomenon as \u201ca systematic tendency to downplay the value of unattainable goals and rewards.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Because Goldberg feels that she and her political allies are hopelessly failing on Twitter \u2014\u00a0namely, in retaining power to censor political dissent or alternative information she opposes \u2014 she maintains that the platform isn\u2019t that good anyway. Musk has never publicly said he would diminish the voices of journalists such as Goldberg, but by removing her preference for censorship of others, she would have her readers convinced that Twitter\u2019s value would be cheapened, if it were ever truly worth something (the place she visits and uses daily).<\/p>\n<p>Goldberg also predicted that a Musk-owned Twitter could attract new users, \u201cbut at the price of repelling others.\u201d By \u201cothers,\u201d she of course means people like her. <\/p>\n<p>Ryan Bailey and Jose Pico, two doctors of family medicine, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK559106\/#:~:text=Avoidance%3A%20Dismissing%20thoughts%20or%20feelings,with%20uncomfortable%20thoughts%20or%20feelings.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">published work<\/a> earlier this year on \u201cprimitive defense mechanisms\u201d in individuals, one of them being avoidance, or \u201ckeeping away from people, places, or situations associated with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings.\u201d True, most people would understandably rather not willfully submerge themselves in unpleasant environments. But we\u2019re not talking about a smelly restaurant or a long road trip with Goldberg. We\u2019re talking about a place where, in a democratic republic, opposing points of view can be considered and confronted. A place where alternative information or even new opinions that challenge the professional consensus can be shared by everyone. Pursuing and grappling with such an environment is an activity formerly known as \u201cjournalism.\u201d Now it\u2019s something the left instinctively opposes on a base psychological level.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, consider how truly angry the thought of loosening its grip on Twitter has driven the Goldbergs, to the point where they use words such as \u201cdestroy.\u201d They never seemed truly happy having their power, but that\u2019s another phenomenon of the mind, something called loss aversion, described by behavior economist Dr. Shahram Heshmat as \u201can expression of fear\u201d related to a tendency by individuals to \u201cfocus [more] on setbacks than progress.\u201d In essence, Goldberg enjoyed enough being on the side of the current pro-censorship Twitter, but she has far more hatred for the idea of that side losing its status. And thus she ended her piece with this: \u201cTwitter can\u2019t be saved. Maybe, if we\u2019re lucky, it can be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>If I can\u2019t have Twitter, no one can.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>All of this is to say the hysterics and drama over Twitter and new ownership aren\u2019t because there\u2019s a legitimate fear of \u201cthe spread of misinformation\u201d or a worry that \u201cultra MAGA Republicans\u201d will take over. It stems from the emotional, child-like mentality of liberals who can\u2019t tolerate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Liberal-Misery-Hateful-Everything-Everyone\/dp\/1637584350\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">coexisting with the other half of the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Liberal-Misery-Hateful-Everything-Everyone\/dp\/1637584350\">Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone<\/a>.&#8221;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leftists are, as a rule, psychologically simple creatures, animated by easily identified, unsophisticated emotions and thought patterns. That fact explains the reaction seen to potential changes in Twitter, the default<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":493,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1681868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/493"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}