The Daily Beast spins the practice of cerebral hygiene by blaming “MAGA trolls” for the exodus of progressives from X to Bluesky. Bluesky is a social media platform designed to be an alternative to centralized platforms like Twitter, initially aiming to create a more open internet. It was initiated by Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, to explore new models for social media that prioritize openness and user agency. The project gained traction in response to criticisms of centralized platforms regarding censorship, algorithmic control, and data privacy. However, what attracts progressives to Bluesky is the opposite of openness; they like its restrictive character and its focus on policing “rightwing” speech.
(As an aside, Threads is a text-based social media platform created by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It’s integrated with Instagram and serves as a competitor to X. Threads allows users to share text updates, images, and videos, and it promotes public conversations using an interface familiar to Instagram users. This essay isn’t about Threads, but I thought if you didn’t know what it was, I would tell you. The Daily Beast needed to make Bluesky appear as if it is soaring; Threads is an easy target.)
Cerebral hygiene is a concept associated with the French sociologist Auguste Comte. It refers to the practice of maintaining intellectual purity by deliberately avoiding the influence of other thinkers’ ideas when developing one’s own theories or analyses. I hijacked the term years ago to describe the ideologue who deliberately avoids watching or reading the opinions of those with whom he thinks he will disagree, fearful that he might learn something and then change his mind on account of it. The problem isn’t the one thing he might learn, but the possibility that this one thing may cause his entire worldview to unravel.
This is a problem in today’s political scene: ideologues avoid engaging with opposing viewpoints out of fear not only of contamination, but of destabilization. Cerebral hygiene is a defensive posture: insulating one’s worldview against challenges that could force a re-evaluation of deeply held beliefs. It’s not about preserving intellectual autonomy (which is a silly idea anyway) but maintaining the coherence of an identity tied to those beliefs. The fear isn’t necessarily learning something new; it’s the domino effect that a single contradiction might trigger, potentially unraveling a carefully constructed ideological framework.
My reframing means to leverage psychological and sociological issues, such as cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. By avoiding dissenting perspectives, individuals protect themselves from the discomfort of confronting evidence that challenges their worldview, which would in turn imperil their identity. Of course, this insulation comes at the cost of genuine understanding, intellectual growth, and meaningful dialogue, all of which are necessary for functional democratic systems, means with which populations might build consensus over the important issues facing the nation. What begins as a strategy for intellectual “purity” can devolve into a form of intellectual stagnation, driven more by fear than by a commitment to truth.
I must clarify something; I do not wish the reader to think that I am accusing liberals of such a practice. The Daily Beast is not really talking about liberals; those leaving X are progressives. Liberalism and progressivism are opposites. (Online progressive rags like The Daily Beast like to confuse their readers and retard political IQs by making opposites synonyms and synonyms opposites.) Liberals believe in free speech and open information systems and the production of knowledge that aligns with reality. Progressives believe in none of those things. There’s too much truth on X, so progressives search for platforms that support their narrow worldview and desire for illusion. They found one in Bluesky.
One of the reasons Republicans won overwhelmingly on November 5 was the proletariat and the entrepreneur waking up to the realization that progressivism is an authoritarian corporatist tendency that stifles independent thought and smothers individual autonomy. Rather than run down rightwing rabbit holes, they listened to what progressives were saying and developed a compelling counterargument to their various and delusional opinions. They listened and heard the so-called left speaking in the language of collectivism and identitarianism and said “fuck that.” X users fleeing to Bluesky are only going to make harder for progressives to recapture lost ground. If they don’t confront the enemy, they will lose even more ground. After all, cerebral hygiene was why they lost so much ground in the first place—that and their ideas are shit.
freedom and reason 