Matt Forney is One Bad-Assed Amygdala Hijacker

Matt Forney writes some brilliant articles on leftists and Narcissists. Of particular note, he is a master of the amygdala hijack of feminists, in written form. I am awed, given that he apparently isn’t a natural like Gary Busey, yet his acquired technique is clearly of that caliber. I was reading his article on Narcissism and feminists here recently. He aggregates several pieces of interesting material in it. First, and most amusingly, he quotes a “leftist” commenter on another site who describes his own behavior as “rabbiting.” Tsk, Tsk. The Dread Ilk is everywhere.

Second, Matt links to a feminist, who read one of his amygdala hijacking articles, and immediately had an amygdala hijack herself. The feminist post is here. (Amusingly, in her description of herself, she specifically says that she likes rabbits.)

After she posts how awful Matt’s article is, she goes back to it and actually reads it (note that we have described how Narcissists and Liberals operate on vague perceptions of broad stroke stimuli, rather than laser focused, concrete, amygdala-driven analysis consisting of careful stimuli flagging and relevance weighing. We see crisp, clear ideas and complex relationships, while they see vague, ephemeral shadows, that trigger overwhelming emotions. They have probably learned to only see vague shadows, because of what happens when they look too closely at reality.)

After the feminist goes back and tries to carefully read Matt’s article again, and actually focus on the ideas in the article, she then returns to her post and adds the following edit:

EDIT: GUYS PLEASE BE CAREFUL READING THIS BECAUSE I THINK I’M STARTING TO GET A BLACKOUT FROM SHEER ANGER AND I’M ONLY ON HIS FIRST “REASON”

EDIT 2: HEY, FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, SINCE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO TAG THIS AS, PLEASE JUST… TRY NOT TO READ THAT OK? HE STARTS TALKING ABOUT STUFF LIKE… DEPRESSION AND SELF-HARM AND HOW THAT…. IS A RESULT OF BEING A CONFIDENT GIRL AND STUFF… AND HOW ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE A SUBSTITUTE FOR “A MAN’S LOVING EMBRACE” AND IT TOOK ME 10 MINUTES TO TYPE THIS BECAUSE I’M DIZZY AND HARDLY BREATHING AND I’M HAVING A BLACKOUT.

That is an amygdala hijack, and it is that overwhelming, uncomfortable physical response which drives a whole host of negative behaviors in our political sphere, from a need to make guns just go away so they can’t be found, to an uncontrollable urge to feed people who disagree with your views into wood chippers and gas ovens. When that sensation is chasing you, there is no limit to what you will do to other people, to evade it. I am increasingly convinced that more evil is wrought by people fleeing that sensation, than all the greed and self-absorption in the world. We need to understand the amygdala hijack, because it is real, it is the source of our problems, and it can even be the solution.

Interestingly, those feminist sites have actually begun to post “trigger warnings” on reposts of manosphere material. Some readers have found that specific ideas (ie themes) trigger their amygdala hijacks, so they have begun to label their posts with “trigger warning tags.” These people who suffer from amygdala triggers actually know that certain themes are so painful to contemplate that they can’t read them, or they will throw-up, have a blackout, hyperventilate, etc.

Talk about a goldmine of tactical intelligence on the leftist cognitive model, and how to create themes which trigger amygdalae. There will be enormous power in the analysis of trigger warnings, as people perfect this art. If you can combine triggering themes with the Gary Busey-esque mechanical stimulation techniques, you will be a leftist amygdala-wrecking machine. Imagine, preparing for a Presidential Debate, with a feminist-compiled list of innocuous themes which perfectly disable liberal feminist brains, to the point that many feminists actaully black out just from hearing these ideas. Now imagine that the Democratic Presidential Nominee opposite you in the debate is Hillary Clinton, who is herself a feminist with exactly that type of cognitive model. That is dog-whistle heaven, and best of all, no observer even has to know you are doing it. Even if she doesn’t black out, in her degraded cognitive state, she will be much more prone to blurt out things like, “What difference does it make?” when you ask about piles of dead American bodies and America’s utterly destroyed economy. When you activate an amygdala, even with a weak hijack, the first thing which happens is cognitive degredation, which is useful in itself – especially in a highly stressful public setting like a debate.

As you read the hijacking article that triggered the feminists, notice how Matt moves quickly, delivering loud, stimulatory, aggressive hijacks like a rapid fire machinegun. Notice how he simplifies associations between criticisms to their basic elements, such as between antidepressant use, and the inability to get a man, and then delivers them with an amygdala-stimulating edge. If you use antidepressants, and you can’t get a man, and both of those concepts are seen as criticisms, then seeing those two things put together critically will trigger the amygdala prior to any conscious thought or analysis in a leftist – especially if the delivery is critical, colorful, and dismissive.

Of course in nature, the negative sensation is designed to drive such women to try being more considerate, and try finding a loving man they can share loyalty with, but instead these women choose to short-circuit the warning by seeking fellow travelers, ensconcing themselves in a bubble of perceptions that there are no good men, and then not reading any articles, or positing any thought about anything which might disrupt that amygdala-assuaging mechanism. (It is kind of a shame, because one can’t help but notice how such girls could find much greater happiness if they would just reach out for psychotherapy to rewire their brains to be less sensitive to criticism.)

Notice also how Matt’s original post unemotionally out-groups his targets, assumes the sale, and reinforces it’s outgrouping theme with simple statements that would easily appeal to an impartial observer. Matt relates a story about how a leftist says they talk to their brother about leftist stuff until the brother is irritated. Leftist reading that thinks, “I talk about politics all the time too, and people get irritated.” Matt then postulates a theme of, ‘Who wants to be around an irritating person? Irritating person must be defective, and the type of person nobody would want to be around, because they are irritating. People like that always end up with no group of friends, because nobody likes them, due to their personal defectiveness.’ It is a brilliant implementation of taking a theme designed to out-group, presenting it simply, masking it as a story, and then presenting it all unemotionally.

I often speak of theme presentation, and there is a reason. Theme presentation allows you to get an idea into the head of a Narcissist or Liberal who would otherwise disregard the idea immediately, without any analysis at all. Milton Erikson, the father of hypnosis, actually specialized in telling stories with themes that mirrored the lives of his patients. He noted that if he told patient X that they shouldn’t cling to their spouse so tightly, the patient would rebel, and reject the idea that they even clung to their spouse. But if he told the patient about a friend whose wife divorced him because he wouldn’t let her hang out with her friends, and added that the friend ended up losing his job, and dying alone and penniless, then the patient would stop clinging to their spouse and adjust their behavior. I suspect his patients had sensitive amygdalae, of the sort that looking too closely at their own lives was cognitively impossible. However, looking at the unimportant lives of outsiders would allow them to unemotionally examine behaviors that they themselves performed, and make changes in how they saw themselves and their behavior.

In essence, by presenting a theme, especially through metaphor or analogy, within a critical piece, Matt is instinctually doing the exact same thing that the greatest master of psychology ever, did all those decades ago, but moderating it to increase the sting. By moderating the degree to which he “themes” his attack, he makes the idea just distant enough from his target that their amygdala lets the idea in, and examines it. However, once inside and examined closely, the idea suddenly links the target with the criticism, and the idea explodes like a little flash bang grenade right inside their head – but by then it is too late. So tell a leftist they are irritating, and nobody would like them, and they will disregard it, probably while laughing like Joe Biden at the ridiculousness of the idea. However, walk them through a story in which they clearly see an irritating person they wouldn’t like, and then show how they are clearly just like that individual in a way even they can’t deny, and you can bypass this defensive mechanism, and shock their brain with the aversive stimuli they are otherwise so effective at ignoring.

The funniest thing is, after he attacks them, Matt’s targets then run off to spread his evil seeds far and wide throughout the internet, out of a compulsive need to find other fellow travelers to tell them that Matt is the evil one, and they are all sane. As you finish his piece, take time to marvel at his understanding of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and false realities, and his even more clever manipulation of it to generate massive blog traffic.

Utterly brilliant.