I’ve been studying and thinking about the intersection of psychology (particularly narcissism) and politics for a few years now. I have reason to believe that this particular psychological phenomenon may actually underpin many or all of the problems/crises that our species currently faces. It is a difficult topic to talk about, however, because the nature of narcissism defies most conventional ideas about human nature and the strategies that we should employ when trying to deal with people.

During recent interactions on the /c/anarchism community of this instance I was (pleasantly) surprised to find other people in the wild who are also interested in this topic and who are reaching some of the same conclusions that I am. That particular community doesn’t seem to be well-suited for this sort of discussion, however. While anarchism is actually a pretty important part of the overall topic (it’s basically the perfect antithesis of the ideology that emerges from narcissism, as well as an important part of the optimal counter-strategy), it is not the entire topic. Additionally, it seems that /c/anarchism is a bit under-moderated compared to what it would need to be to have such discussions? The most relevant post got a lot of bad-faith comments. Many of them questioned the premise of anarchism in the first place, which is both off-topic to the post, and kindof inappropriate for an anarchist community/instance in general.

Anyways, this new community would discuss the role that narcissism plays in the issues that we face in our world on a more societal scale rather than an interpersonal one as would be typical of discussions about narcissism, generally. The discussion will be pulling from multiple fields of study, including psychology, anthropology, neurology, and mathematics. (I am still working on what the name should be…)

I do have some moderation experience already, though it is in the context of a small, private Discord server. Moderating something as open as a Lemmy community will be new for me.

A big part of why I am going to the effort of making this (long) post is that I want to make sure that the admins of this instance are really OK with the topic of this community, and the possible consequences for hosting it. Specifically…

Narcissists really hate when people start recognizing them for what they really are and actively try to counter their manipulation and remove their power. The mere existence of this community will trigger them. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if problems start showing up in the comments of this very post. Depending on how popular this community gets, this could paint a target on slrpnk.net in general. I don’t really know what the exact consequences of this would be, since, to the best of my knowledge, this sort of thing hasn’t really been done before.

The topic is also a somewhat tricky one, as it comes uncomfortably close to some lines that reasonable people tend to draw between what they think of as acceptable/unacceptable behaviors. We’ll arguably be advocating for discrimination against narcissists, and while the term ‘narcissist’ doesn’t currently refer to an individual that would be recognized as having a personality disorder under current diagnostic criteria (the term is currently broader than the relevant criteria), there is ample evidence that it probably should (that is, the criteria should probably be broadened to match the term). That said, we’re talking about a group that is defined by the patterns of abusive behavior that its members express, so the situation here is a little different than it is for, say, sexism, racism, or people suffering from depression or other kinds of mental health issues. Discriminating against people based on mental health issues is usually disallowed by blanket anti-bigotry rules, so I’d like to make sure that the admins understand how the existence of this community might strain the way that their instance rules are currently written if they agree to host it.

Despite these potential issues, this Lemmy instance seems to me to be well suited to host such a space, as I think the practical, prefigurative, anarchist philosophy of slrpnk.net is broadly compatible with the conclusions that I’ve been able to draw from my studies thus far.

Obviously, I’d have to make a new account on this instance in order to create/moderate such a community. That’s fine. It may take me a moment to gather a couple of people to help moderate as well, and it may take a bit to construct a good introduction post. I’ve got plenty of stuff to write about for some initial content, though.

Lastly, assuming you guys are cool with this, are there any tips you can give me on moderating Lemmy communities? Anything I should know coming from a Discord moderation background?

P.S. On the off-chance that someone had seen the previous iteration of this post and is confused: I re-created this post because it didn’t appear to be federating properly. I suspect this has something to do with the recent slrpnk outage. I am hoping that re-posting will fix this. EDIT: This does seem to have worked. I can see the post from the slrpnk instance directly now.