Update April 2024: I contacted Ian about the use of the word, and he expressed regret for it. He can’t currently edit his videos due to a copyright dispute, but he’s promised to blur the word or something similar when he can, and in the meantime he’s pinned a comment explaining the issues with the poor word choice. In response, I’ve unlisted this article, and no longer stand by any of the opinions in it. (Except that Gay King was right to tell the Network to piss off)
4 months ago, Innuendo Studios released a video that left a bad taste in My mouth. It’s called The Alt-Right Playbook: Negging and Love-Bombing. The video only has one source, and it’s a poorly written thread by someone on Xitter. There’s a “research” link under the video, but none of the sources there are stated to be for that specific video, they’re all for The Alt-Right Playbook in general. So this video, which has 240,000 views, is based as far as I can tell on one Xitter user’s personal account.
The point of the video is that if a conservative is nice to you, you’re being groomed. According to Ian and this Xitter user, Nazis will go around social media debating leftists, intentionally hurting our feelings to make us pay attention, and then turning around and being nice to recruit us. That’s pretty much the whole point of the video. And I don’t doubt that this happened to that Xitter user. I’m very willing to believe that there are groups of nazis who prey on people like this.
But the video left a bad taste in My mouth, back then. I couldn’t really explain it, and I didn’t talk to anyone about it. Maybe it was the way Ian spoke directly to the viewer and said “If this happens, you are being groomed”. Maybe it awakened My bad memories about the meaning of grooming being applied too broadly. Of people being urged to action over a situation that hit on the triggers of a person who isn’t even the supposed victim.
But I think probably it was the word “Love bombing”. I think it was a dogwhistle effect. I could hear something within the message that most people wouldn’t notice or even be able to perceive. Because when I was googling narcissistic personality disorder, seeking treatment for My own disability, the Google results would come up with resources for victims of “narcissistic abuse” and “love bombing”. There’s a very strong association between the ideas of NPD and love bombing. In fact, NPD was even mentioned by Google when I looked up Love Bombing in the research for this article.
Cleveland Clinic, Google’s top result for love bombing, also says it’s associated with NPD.
And Cosmo has a lot to say about disabled abusers using love bombing:
Let’s ignore the ableism and skip to the first result that doesn’t blame abuse on a disability: Wikipedia has this to say:
Love bombing is an attempt to influence a person by demonstrations of attention and affection. It can be used in different ways and for either positive or negative purposes.
Have you ever gone to a job interview and used a firm handshake and a smile to try to impress the boss and get the job? If so, you’ve used demonstrations of attention and affection to influence someone. The problem with many definitions of love bombing is they’re too broad. They can’t form a clear delineation between what’s normal and what’s abusive. The conventional wisdom is to simply use a person’s mental health to tell the difference. If they have a personality disorder it’s abuse, and if they’re neurotypical it’s normal.
You’re probably starting to get a sense for My problem when I went looking for info on My disabilities. The conventional sources said “Sure, we’ll help You tell the difference between appropriate and inappropriate affection! You have NPD, so any time You’re nice to someone it’s abuse. Thanks for asking!” These kinds of sources made Me start to feel as though being in a relationship or having friends made Me a bad person.
Ultimately what I realised is that the idea of love bombing isn’t actually useful. You can strip out the ableism and try to use it as a tool to tell if your relationships are healthy, tell if your behaviour is appropriate, and it won’t help you. Looking for love bombing will only tell you that a relationship is abusive if you already know it’s abusive. It’s useless.
And that’s the problem I have with Innuendo Studio’s video. It doesn’t help you. The difference between a conservative who’s been persuaded by your arguments, a conservative who considers you a worthy foe, and a conservative trying to groom you can’t be determined by the advice in the video. You just have to use your own judgement, and then you’ll confirmation bias the video as having contributed to your decision.
The only thing the video actually accomplishes is getting you to think of political opponents as willing abusers trying to manipulate you for kicks. It doesn’t tell you how people on the alt-right actually think, it constructs a scary boogeyman. A conspiracy theory of sinister manipulators pretending to be good honest people who genuinely respect you.
And it would have all ended there, with this vague uncomfortable feeling I didn’t tell anyone about because it was too complicated and depressing and vibes-based, if it hadn’t been for the Cornetto Trilogy.
Edgar Wright is the greatest director in the world.
The Cornetto Trilogy is fantastic, and so are Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho. Marvel should never have taken him off Ant Man, that movie is one of the best MCU films and it could have been absolutely amazing.
Ian Danskin is wrong about the Cornetto Trilogy. I found his video really interesting, and his thesis that these characters are manchildren who got to escape growing up thanks to fantasy compelling. I agree with the points in his video. But the reason Ian cares about this debate, as he says in the video, is cause he hates Gay King.
And I don’t think Gay King is a good person. But I think Ian is wrong in his reasons for hating him.
Ian did something disgusting in his new video. He used an ableist slur.
Gary is a man in his 40s. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the delinquent. What’s his problem? Pffffft! What isn’t his problem! Gary is a MANIPULATIVE, NARCISSISTIC, LYING, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, IGNORANT, VIOLENT, THIEVING, SHIT TALKING, UNAPOLOGETIC, ASSHOLE.
Ian Danksin used the name of My disability as an insult, next to a bunch of negative stereotypes people with My disability bear.
4 months ago when the video on love bombing came out, I thought I was projecting. I thought I was reading too much into things to associate hatred against My disability with that video. It was so indirect, so subtle, and such a short video I thought I was being silly. Being a traumatized person seeing My triggers everywhere when I shouldn’t.
But I was wrong to doubt those feelings. Ian does hate people with NPD. Or at least look down on us, and associate us with Gay King, a character he hates.
A lot of people excuse this sort of behaviour by saying “It’s okay for me to insult a character by calling them disabled cause it’s the truth.” I would like to inform anyone who buys this excuse that you do not have to be factually inaccurate in order to use a slur. There are plenty of inoffensive terms like “person with NPD”, which I have used in this article. Ableists are averse to using people-first language because they do not want you to think of the disabled as people. They do not want their language to give away the fact they’re doing something wrong. If you said “people living with NPD are all evil”, it would hit a little different than “narcissists are all evil”. Ableists don’t want you to think about that.
Newton Haven was a town of a few thousand people. By the start of The World’s End, it has a human population of 3, and one of those three is scared for his life. Humanity and The Network are not compatible. Gay King is right about that fact. The Network was beginning to see the futility of its colonisation, and the genocide it would require, well before Gay King rocked into town.
Gay King saved the human species. He was an advocate of the right of an indigenous people (humans) to self-determination. He was an opponent of colonialism. Ian points out that Gay King had no right to make choices for the rest of humanity. But the choice Gay King makes is that the Network has no right to make choices for humanity. The Network isn’t democratic, it isn’t peaceful. Gay King enforces absolutely nothing on all of humanity. He prevents the Network from doing so. And it’s not like he’s the sole factor, a majority of (still living) humans in Newton Haven voted the Network out. And those were the ones they didn’t replace!
Gay King is an asshole. He’s a manchild. He’s abusive to his friends, and his idea of freedom is imposing himself on everyone around him. There is no way Gay King could have participated in a proper society.
Ian is right about so much in this video.
But in The World’s End, Gay King did not doom the human race. And even if its salvation was inevitable, Gay King still has the right to call himself the guy who actually did it. The guy who saved humanity from genocide. Gay King is an anticolonialist who, for all his faults, is consistent. He opposed the Network’s xenocide, and he opposed racist humans’ xenocide.
And regardless of whether Gay King is disabled (it doesn’t matter, he’s a fictional character), Ian is wrong to hate him on the basis of an alleged disability.
I am not happy about the way Innuendo Studios has been going lately.
