Identity with a memetic vector in personality tests. Among these three, this is the unifying force.
Indigo Children:
These sorts of vague New Age traits enable the formation of a cheap, superhuman ego. When self perception is filtered through this sort of pseudo-Aquarian imagery, we find a contract with God, written in sand.
The Indigo Child draws poison from a well, their ego is inflated with a comic book version of meaning.
Scientology’s Oxford Capacity Analysis:
(https://www.solarmythology.com/scientology/scientologytest.htm)
As opposed to the empowering nature of the Indigo Child tests, the OCA exists to diagnose and control potential cult converts. By altering Psychoanalytic readings of neuroticism into a scifi demonology, transference is maximized. The analyst is no longer simply a father/god, but a very real God-Man, who exorcizes demons, and bestows brilliant powers onto little old you.
The OCA is a control mechanism.
Buzzfeed:
"Weak egos that are easily formed"
So which is it? Does capitalism, in its advanced stages, need "schizophrenics," or are they the only ones able to resist it?
Neither, Peretti answers. Capitalism needs people to have moments of schizophrenia, where their personal identities are in flux, but it also needs them to be able to recover from those moments with new identities, which can fuel new consumption so as to realize the identities in question. "Capitalism needs schizophrenia, but it also needs egos," he writes. "The contradiction is resolved through the acceleration of the temporal rhythm of late capitalist visual culture. This type of acceleration encourages weak egos that are easily formed, and fade away just as easily."
-Dylan Matthews, https://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains
Buzzfeed, the most modern of the three, as shown, operates by forming egos smaller than the Indigo, but remains a control mechanism within Capitalism. Rather than the Orgasm (however undeserved) of the Indigo, the Buzzfeed ego is just a brief glimpse at pleasure, one followed by another dozen tests. So like the OCA, the individual is kept in a controlled state of dependence on the “one who bestows identity”.
Meme:
As I near the production of my own personality test, I seek to offer a truly liberatory form of “memetic enlightenment”.
One that illustrates neurotic flows, while simultaneously providing a clear methodology to overcome them, without dependence.
I’ll be putting this out within the next month or so, so stay tuned!