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By fictive agency, I mean believing you chose to do something you were forced to do. You have $5, and are really hungry and need to eat, there are 2 sandwiches on sale, for $4 and $8. “I choose the $4 sandwich…” No you didn’t. Your only real choice was $4 or hunger
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Though the term is broadly useful and we can overload it for other varieties - slacktivism - BIRGing - writing yourself into success stories - Mary Sueing (doubly fictive agency?)
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Superset is rationalizations Sour grapes “Well we learned something” “It’s all about the journey” I can respect clear-eyed acceptance of reduced agency and making the best of it. Lemons from lemonade I admire. At least until it devolves into black-knightism
Monty Python Holy Grail GIF
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Learned helplessness is refusing to see agency you *do* have Fictive agency is pretending you have/had agency where you’re actually helpless
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Hmm, I don’t think so? Fictive agency is often a cope, but learned helplessness is usually a kind of ignorance that may be fixable via a reframe… though sometimes it’s a cope for lacking the courage to exercise an option you do see but want an excuse to not use
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Replying to @vgr
it seems like fictive agency is a part of learned helplessness: face-saving cope
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Yelp reviewing reality isn’t exactly fictive since there’s some real agency in review behaviors, but it seems subjectively inflated to fictive levels. Just like slacktivism. It is slacktivist consumption.
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Noticing how increasing number of people have world views that are effectively evolving Yelp reviews of reality Can’t tell yet if it’s a good or bad life sort of world view twitter.com/vgr/status/137…
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In general metanorm behaviors (the norm of enforcing norms aka everything from good citizenship to karenism) seem to be driven by inflated perceptions of agency. In this case it’s helpful sometimes.
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