You are what you pretend to be

Which makes Scott Adams a pants-shitting, paste-eating, drooling imbecile.

There is a tendency among extremists to use feigned ignorance as a rhetorical device. They're very comfortable telling lies of omission to troll their opposition into engaging them.

Leftist academics were adept at this. They would redefine common words, say something ridiculous in public with those words, and then chastise those who called out their deliberate stupidity, for common words mean something different in academia, and you, in your ignorance, presume the common definition. It was such an effective trolling tactic that the fascists invented a conspiracy theory around their slippery rhetoric, and are now targeting them specifically.

While the fascists have always loved their Big Lies, and their dog whistles, they've really come to embrace the passive-aggressive lie of feigned ignorance. It's the reverse dog whistle - we know what it means, they know we know what it means, everyone knows what it means, and yet they persist in denying it.

They'll keep on denying it, despite it making them look stupid. Performative stupidity is a loyalty signal, like the frat pledge eating the soggy biscuit - it demonstrates who is willing to go all the way. And if that freaks out disgusted onlookers: mission accomplished.

The thing the fascist trolls never quite comprehend is that we don't have to care. No one is obligated to engage with your trolling. No one has to prove your dog whistle, or that you're stupid, or that you're not really that stupid, just evil. You simply stopped mattering to people who matter. Buh-bye.

This is making the rounds on Mastodon: The Case For Shunning.

If only someone had made a social media website to facilitate that.