In Part 2 of my conversation with Cy Canterel, we keep digging into how people form identity, belief, and belonging inside the swirl of irony, nihilism, and digital performance that defines so much of contemporary life.
We explore the psychology of online radicalization—what actually pulls people toward fascist aesthetics, what ambivalence can teach us about resistance, and how the very same infrastructures that feed alienation can also host creativity, solidarity, and care.
Also: more on the Graham Platner story as a living case study in fluid online identity: how meaning shifts, how people change, and how communities can choose to interrupt cycles of rage instead of reproducing them.
And an epilogue on taking the 13 year-old to the Toronto Anticapitalist Book Fair in the old Tranzac Club, where I used to hang out more than 30 years ago.
Cy's Substack: Abstract Machines
Chapters
- (00:00:07) - A Dare Wrapped In a Joke Wrapped in a Void
- (00:02:49) - The Psychology of Extremist Identity
- (00:05:30) - Noxious Views in the Online Culture
- (00:08:30) - Can You Change Your Own Mind?
- (00:09:57) - The Narrative of Who Is Graham Platner
- (00:12:53) - Do Narratives Promote or Decrease Ambiguity?
- (00:22:40) - The Problem With The Revolutionary Imagination
- (00:25:16) - Cy Cantarel on Being Nihilistic at 14
- (00:29:43) - Anti-capitalist book fair at the Tranzac Club
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