The Wolves Outside the Door
How Loneliness and Collective Identity Reshape Power in the Digital Age
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness… has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Few places have been more welcoming to the Collective Strongman than Tumblr. Strident denunciations and ardent declarations of faith are constant. “Do Not Interact” lists serve as walls between good and evil. It’s a space where some go to find affirmation and others come to mock it.
But what if we took a different path? What if we looked at Tumblr’s Collective Strongmen not with adulation or ridicule, but with empathy? What if we sought neither to believe or to scorn but simply to understand?
Let’s take a look at one recent Tumblr exchange.
According to the Otherkin Wiki:
Alterhuman is a term for individuals who have identities that are beyond what is traditionally considered being "human". An alterhuman can identify as non-human, or they can identify as being human in ways alternate to what is societally common. The word "alterhuman" can be used as an umbrella term for various identities.
It would be easy to dismiss arguments about whether a “police dog identity” is racist. But it is more productive to ask what purpose those identities serve.
To be alterhuman is to define oneself as fundamentally different from those around you. These identities emerge alongside a persistent feeling of separation, of not fully fitting into the surrounding world. The label not only describes that alienation; it gives it meaning.
Alterhuman spaces bring together individuals who share similar feelings of difference and isolation. Loneliness and confusion become something that can be understood and shared. Alienation becomes identity, and identity becomes community.
So what else can we learn about Wolfy? From his pinned post we discover:
Wolfy begins by listing their pronouns, followed by their age. They also identify as a “contherian,” which is:
a sub-category of therianthropy, where a therian doesn’t experience mental/mental-related shifts of any kind, but is always in a state of being both their theriotype and human simultaneously (often referred to as a therioside and humanside).
But before they arrive at that identity, Wolfy describes themself through a list of conditions—autism, physical disability, chronic illness, and mental illness. Similar lists of diagnoses appear frequently on Tumblr. Critics often dismiss them as malingering, hypochondria, or attention-seeking.
As I have not seen Wolfy’s medical records, I cannot comment on their health. But I can note that these issues appear to be a cornerstone of their identity. Only after describing them do they tell us they are an artist and author.
Once again, the question is not simply whether these claims are true or false—it is what purpose they serve. Are these lists simply diagnoses, or do they also function as explanations that help the list makers understand why they feel set apart in the world?
That distinction might matter less than we think.
What matters more is what happens when these ideas are brought into a shared space.
At first glance, there’s no obvious connection between identity politics and alterhuman spaces. You might expect communities centered on niche identities, creative works, or shared interests to focus on their own internal concerns.
Yet Tumblr has become widely associated with highly visible and intensely moralized discourse—often to the point of ridicule. Arguments that appear trivial or opaque to outsiders can carry real weight within these communities. So how did a microblogging site become Ground Zero for an audience of Collective Strongmen?
Part of the answer lies in its audience. Tumblr’s audience skews young: 70% of its users are under 35, and nearly 40% are under 24 years of age. These years are often defined by social sorting and the search for belonging. It’s not surprising to see a strong focus on questions of identity and morality, along with a tendency to see these issues in black and white.
Tumblr’s structure encourages rapid interaction, public expression, and constant feedback. Disagreements are visible, responses are immediate, and social standing is shaped in real time. Under these conditions, discussions become intense, and conflicts quickly take on broader moral significance.
Those who prefer quieter environments often migrate elsewhere, leaving behind communities that are more engaged—and more reactive. And when that happens, members tend to adopt increasingly strident stances through social osmosis.
When Tumblr users see posters called out for problematic posts, they learn which topics to avoid. When those call-outs receive likes and reblogs, they learn how to gain approval. In Man For Himself, Erich Fromm noted that “the fear of disapproval and the need for approval seem to be the most powerful and almost exclusive motivation for ethical judgment.”
Did Wolfy challenge “racist” police dog identities out of genuine concern? Or to gain status among his peers? Those motivations are not mutually exclusive. Humans have a knack for both self-sacrifice and self-justification—often at the same time. The line between conviction and performance can be very hard to draw.
Shostakovich, Stalin, and Call-Outs
In 1936, Joseph Stalin attended a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The opera had been widely praised since its premiere two years earlier. Stalin, alas, was not a fan. Shortly after he attended a performance, Pravda denounced the opera as a “muddle instead of music.”
In the Soviet system, such criticism was not merely aesthetic. It was dangerous. Shostakovich recognized his peril and responded accordingly. Withdrawing his more experimental Fourth Symphony, he composed a new, more conservative piece. His 1937 Fifth Symphony premiered as “a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism.” It received an ovation that lasted over thirty minutes.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was banned from Soviet stages for decades. In 1962 Shostakovich was allowed to stage an edited version. The uncensored opera would not be staged in Russia until 2000, 64 years after the Pravda review and nine years after the Soviet Union’s fall. But Shostakovich survived, and so did his career.
Apologies and adaptation do not always work when dealing with a Strongman—individual or collective—but open defiance almost never does. The system rewards those who demonstrate alignment and punishes those who resist it.
We see a similar, if less fraught, pattern in Wolfy’s comments section. Cosmicstrays, a 23-year-old self-described “earthborn theriomythic dog-wolf -> space dog -> human(ized) -> weredog-wolf,” calls them out for racial insensitivity.
cosmicstrays
hi, i appreciate you speaking out but please untag this from the alterhuman bipoc tags as you are not bipoc ! your intended audience is other white alterhumans, not us. to be clear tagging *reblogs* doesn’t fill the tags but *original posts* do
wolfy-is-a-wolf
Hi! I am so sorry, I thought I had removed them earlier. They’re gone now! Thank you for commenting this! I’ll review them again but I believe everything has the appropriate tags now. Have an amazing day/night! ^_^
Cosmicstrays issues the callout. Wolfy responds with an apology that affirms the underlying norms. Both emerge stronger within the system. The accuser reinforces their role as an enforcer of acceptable behavior. The accused demonstrates submission, adaptability, and moral alignment.
Wolfy’s response proves him to be an artist who responds to justified criticism. Had Wolfy chosen to defend themself, the outcome likely would have been different. Defiance risks exclusion. Compliance restores standing.
In exchanges like these, the boundaries of the community are clarified and reinforced. What is acceptable becomes clearer. What is not becomes more dangerous to express. The walls are strengthened—not by force, but by participation.
The Future of the Collective Strongmen
These dynamics are not just found on Tumblr. Similar patterns of accusations, affirmations, and moral enforcement appear across social media, from the largest groups to the smallest niche communities. What was once subcultural behavior has become a general social pattern.
Tumblr has well over 100 million users, most in the Gen Z and Millennial age brackets. Wolfy is not old enough to drink legally, but he’s old enough to vote. His political instincts are already being shaped by the environment he inhabits—and he is far from alone.
At some point, smart politicians will recognize the value of engaging those instincts. The question is not whether these dynamics will influence politics, but who will learn to shape them.
Those who do will speak the Collective Strongman’s language and signal their membership in that group. As they gain trust and status, they will reshape its narratives to support their purposes. They will not reimpose meaning; they will redirect it. They will not declare themselves leaders; they will simply suggest who the group should follow.
Political leaders will come to recognize Collective Strongmen as powerful amplifiers. They function not only as a means of spreading ideas, but as enforcers of the boundaries that define acceptable belief. Those who fall outside those boundaries are not merely opposed—they are excluded.
But the relationship is not one-sided. As leaders shape the group’s narrative, the group, in turn, shapes the leader’s agenda. What begins as influence becomes adaptation. The leader and the group will define together what is said and what cannot be spoken.
Large democracies require coalition-building. Politicians have frequently used vague messaging to appeal to the greatest number and to offend the fewest. They’ve left it up to each voter to decide what their slogans mean.
But Collective Strongmen demand clarity, direction, and moral certainty. They don’t want to interpret the message; they want to be given a role. And so we have seen vague political slogans take on very specific, yet often contradictory meanings.
Donald Trump, the first presidential candidate to make social media a campaign pillar, did this with “Make America Great Again.” To many of Trump’s supporters this meant a return to postwar America and the Reagan boom years. To many detractors, this meant rolling back the Civil Rights era.
Neither interpretation was likely, or even possible. But each group found its reading emotionally plausible. And each group began displaying Collective Strongman behavior.
For the MAGA community, criticism of Trump signaled insufficient faith. For his opponents, any insufficiently critical comment about Trump marked you as a closet MAGA fan. Each side chose moral certainty over ambiguity, and simplicity over complexity.
Over the following decade, this dynamic hardened into something more rigid. Disagreement became a sign of bad faith. Compromise became betrayal. The space for negotiation narrowed, and with it, the ability to act.
What has followed is increasing political paralysis. Each side has grown more certain of its own righteousness and more convinced of the other’s danger. Debate has given way to argument and its outcomes have become increasingly predictable—and futile.
As Hannah Arendt observed, such conditions do not simply produce apathy. They can produce a longing for clarity, order, and resolution. When the system no longer seems capable of acting, the appeal of someone who can act—decisively, unambiguously—becomes difficult to ignore.
Exhaustion and Convergence
Constant outrage is exhausting. It demands increasing energy and ever more strident condemnations. In time, fatigue sets in. People begin to realize that each side is screaming at the other, but nothing is actually being accomplished.
The slogans that once provided meaning begin to lose their force. What once felt urgent begins to feel repetitive. The same arguments return, again and again, with little to show for them.
Some double down. Many others drift into apathy. And in that space between anger and exhaustion, something different takes hold.
Loneliness.
When shared meaning breaks down, individuals begin to feel increasingly isolated. They lose their sense of connection to the communities that once gave them identity. The endless arguments, shifting meanings, and constant moral demands begin to feel intolerable. They look for something they can’t find amidst the shouting—clarity.
When that moment comes, these lonely people begin to look for something, or someone, who will give them meaning. They are no longer interested in arguing. They simply want the arguments to end. And when someone promises to end them, they are ready to listen.
Through manipulation or exhaustion, the Collective Strongman may ultimately be co-opted by individuals. Whether through a politician who learns to harness the system or through disillusioned members seeking something more decisive, the result is not resolution, but a shift toward authority.
The Strongman does not create those conditions. He simply steps into them. Where once the Strongman created systems, the system now creates Strongmen. And in a world where loneliness becomes ordinary, the promise of meaning—no matter its source—becomes difficult to refuse.
Great article. It’s not just loneliness, but alienation as well as delusion created by the artificial digital world, that is often completely disconnected from reality.
Mass mental illness, in the West and especially in the US, is something that needs to be very seriously addressed. It will make the population putt in a strongman’s hands.
This is a very interesting series, and I thank you for it, Kenaz.
What I still hear is how truly terrifying it is to be subject to and/or ruled by gossip.
Historically, gossip has been one of the weapons of the weak. It has also been useful for building communities. (At least this author thinks so...) https://going-medieval.com/2024/06/14/on-gossip/
However, as your series has been showing, gossip can become the preferred weapon of the Strong, too. And in that case, the weak - and the lonely, and the isolated - are meat, and the strong shall eat.