You might have heard of “quiet quitting”, a movement that encourages young people in the workplace to coast by with a minimum of effort, often to the point of accomplishing nothing besides the occasional appearance of working, collecting the pay they feel they’re entitled to for doing little besides heating a chair.

It’s basically another manifestation of class warfare, which has performed yet another sideways shift in their evolutionary ladder.

I’d have imagined that relatively few people would fall for it, as it’s obvious to me that it’s a scheme to trick gullible people into being downsized or outright fired, making the career world less competitive for those intelligent enough to see through the ruse. But as the movement becomes steadily more pronounced, it’s becoming increasingly evident that many are the people who lack the capacity to see the sham for what it is.

I admit that it’s tempting to just keep my insight to myself, as I’m among the many who would stand to benefit from not sharing my workplace with self-centered, entitled morons. But I understand that even among those bright enough to be in my readership there is a chance of making a decision without thinking it completely through. Kind of like the mom who throws old toys away while thinking her son is growing out of them, not being aware that they are a couple decades away from being worth thousands of dollars.

To understand why quiet quitting has become as pronounced as it is, it’s helpful to understand trolling.

A simple-minded interpretation of trolling is that it’s saying something mean online in order to get a reaction. While saying things that are mean is one thing that a person can do to get a reaction, that one simple act doesn’t encompass the whole of trolling, nor is to get a reaction in every case the extent of the motivation of the one doing the trolling.

Basically, trolling involves influencing a person or people into a course of action. The outcome can be as simple as an angry reaction, or as contrived as an elaborate ruse. In many cases, to take humor in the outcome is the primary motivation of the one doing the trolling. But more involved trolling attempts can be campaignesque, involving multiple targets and with multiple trolls acting in cooperation, bearing a resemblance to a psychological operation.

Suppose that someone who is messed-up in the head wants to damage a government building. They could try defacing the building themselves, but there’s a problem with this: there’s way too much potential for negative consequences for the person who would attempt such a thing. If only there were some way to cause some damage, but eliminate the potential consequences against one’s self.

And there is. And this involves convincing someone else to do it. To this end, many influencers band together in subversive communities in an effort to get other people wound up enough that it would be easy to convince them to do what they want.

In terroristic groups such as Antifa, this dynamic permeates their culture. At a protest, when someone wants a Molotov cocktail to be thrown, they just hand one to someone else. The ones handing them out would be the influencers; they try to get other people to throw the Molotov cocktails because they don’t want to be the ones who get in trouble!

If your typical Antifa foot soldier had nerve, they’d hand the Molotov cocktail back and say, “If this is such a great idea, why aren’t you doing it?” Sadly, Antifa goons aren’t known for their strength of character, or their ability to see their cult for the sham it is.

The idea is to get you to do something, so you’ll be the one to face a judge, not the person who manipulated you.

When you understand this dynamic, you’re in a better position to understand the dynamic behind quiet quitting, and see it as a farce that’s designed to trick gullible people into destroying their careers, to the benefit of the influencers who understand the con and are motivated by the simple pleasure of destroying the lives of their victims.

Having said that, I do recognize that every cult has it’s faithful believers, those who actually do believe in what’s preached from the pulpit, and that these faithful believers can sometimes be found in the upper leadership. An example of this is a mod from the subreddit r/antiwork, who exposed himself as a goofball to the thousands of boomers who still watch Fox News:

Having said all this, I doubt that I’ll have thwarted the influencers’ carefully-laid plans in pointing out as much as I have. After all, if someone is so gullible that they’d think quiet quitting is a good idea, they’d probably look at a post this long and think it’s too much reading. It’s not easy to keep stupid people from doing stupid things.