> "—but if one hundred thousand normies can turn up, to show their support for the rationalist community, why can't you?"
>
-> I said wearily, "Because every time I hear the word _community_, I know I'm being manipulated. If there is such a thing as _the rationalist community_, I'm certainly not a part of it. As it happens, I don't want to spend my life watching _rationalist and effective altruist_ television channels, using _rationalist and effective altruist_ new systems ... or going to _rationalist and effective altruist_ street parades. It's all so ... proprietary. You'd think there was a multinational corporation who had the franchise rights on truth and goodness. And if you don't _market the product_ their way, you're some kind of second-class, inferior, bootleg, unauthorized nerd."
+> I said wearily, "Because every time I hear the word _community_, I know I'm being manipulated. If there is such a thing as _the rationalist community_, I'm certainly not a part of it. As it happens, I don't want to spend my life watching _rationalist and effective altruist_ television channels, using _rationalist and effective altruist_ news systems ... or going to _rationalist and effective altruist_ street parades. It's all so ... proprietary. You'd think there was a multinational corporation who had the franchise rights on truth and goodness. And if you don't _market the product_ their way, you're some kind of second-class, inferior, bootleg, unauthorized nerd."
>
> —"Cocoon" by Greg Egan (paraphrased)[^egan-paraphrasing]