Dark Managers Might Do The Most Ridiculous Things To Spread Cynicism

When I was just a teenager, my reactions to those doing something incredibly ridiculous were that they were just extremely stupid; When I just became an adult, my reactions to those behaviors were that they must be very smart people who were up to something remarkably elusive; Nowadays, I can come up with 1 such feasible possibility — They do the most ridiculous thing to their targets to make them more and more cynical, eventually to the point that the latter will spread cynicism for the former. The following will show why this can work:

1. If someone does something slightly ridiculous once a while but it can be corrected to a reasonable extent, then most of those stakeholders will unlikely to be cynical, as justice can be served within a manageable cost.
2. If someone does something slightly ridiculous once a while and it can’t be corrected to a reasonable extent, then most of those stakeholders will still unlikely to become cynical, as the world’s rarely close to ideal and the harm done is still somehow tolerable.
3. If someone does something unbeliveably ridiculous all the time but it can be corrected to a reasonable extent, then most of those stakeholders will at most become more and more cynical very slowly, as justice can still be served eventually, even when the cost’s unacceptably high.
4. If someone does something unbeliveably ridiculous all the time and it can’t be corrected to a reasonable extent, then most of those stakeholders will likely to become cynical rather quickly, as it’ll become more and more probable for them to think that the former can really do whatever they want and the latter can’t really do anything back at all.

In the 4th case, those persistently ridiculous behaviors will foster cognitive dissonance within the minds of those targets. On 1 hand, their urge of wanting to have justice will tend to become stronger and stronger as they suffer more and more painfully from those ridiculous behaviors; On the other hand, their feeling of powerlessness will tend to become stronger and stronger as they become less and less able to do anything back to those ridiculous behaviors. Eventually, the cognitive dissonance will become too strong for them to bear anymore, so they’ll end up with 1 of the following:

1. Experience mental breakdown due to forcing themselves to bear with the cognitive dissonance in which they just can’t bear anymore. The end game is normally either committing suicide or having prolonged psychological support from professional therapist.
2. Do something irreversibly desperate as their last try to have justice served. In rare cases, the justice will indeed the served, even at the cost of their lives, but usually they’ll instead face immediate character assassination.
3. Believe that most people don’t want justice to be served(so they can explain why justice can’t be served even when the ridiculousness was so blatant), allowing them to rationalize with themselves that they can afford not to care about justice either, due to the fact that most of the others are just like that as well.
4. Believe that justice can seldomly be served to begin with, meaning that not having justice is the norm and having one is a miracle. To compensate for the fear of losing control over their lives, they can think that they can live without justice, and those suffering from not having one are just unlucky, meaning that it’s understandable for people to be inherently vulnerable.

Among the aforementioned cases, case 1 and 2 will probably cost the lives of those choosing those paths(as many people still treat psychological therapy at least a bit negatively), so most of the targets will instead choose case 3 and/or 4, as the main desire for them to have justice served is to ensure their survival. However, such choices will incite them to become more and more cynical, as they’ll be inclined to have less and less faith in the society and other people, eventually to the point of complete distrust.

Once they become sufficiently cynical, they’ll be incentivized to spread cynicism. The following explains why and how:

1. Whenever they see someone trying to have justice served, they’ll have a new cognitive dissonance. On 1 hand, they still want to have justice served deep down, so they’ll want to support those actually trying; On the other hand, due to not believing in justice for years or even decades, they’ll be bound to the sunk cost fallacy so they don’t have to admit that they’ve been wrong for so long, before those actually trying have succeeded.
2. The only way to resolve the aforementioned cognitive dissonance is to try to prove that justice can’t be served, meaning that they’ll be motivated to stop those trying to have justice served to maintain their view of facts.
3. Those trying to have justice served will, due to facing so many obstacles from those cynical people, even harder to succeed. In extreme cases, those making ridiculous actions don’t have to do anything on their own, as those cynical people will do everything for them instead.
4. Those trying to have justice served will, after several/dozens of utterly failed attempts, lured into the same cynicism trap as what those already cynical people have previously experienced. Now cynicism will spread by itself, and the vicious loop will be harder to break.

Now, those making obviously ridiculous moves can finally do whatever they want, with the support provided by perpetual cynicism and without the fear of ever being stopped by their targets. Eventually, cynicism, which is deemed by the cynics as an effective and efficient defense mechanism, will ironically exploit them in the ways they fear the most.

Of course, for any group of dark managers forming an advocacy group, they’ll have to be really powerful and excellent in utilizing dark management in order to have a remote chance to be that openly ridiculous(even if those acts are done by seemingly unrelated proxies who are secretly manipulated by them) without ever being able to be stopped. But if they really managed to pull off the trick, they can be in a very, very sweet spot as a group of victors.