The point of the original film was the victim of gaslighting was actively being convinced that she was insane, by virtue of challenging her perception of reality (that the lights were dimming.) It was an active, targeted campaign of psychological torture against a specific person.
The term suddenly became popular about, I dunno, seven or eight years ago in the manner such things do these days (“ghosting” suddenly became a thing just before that.) Originally the term was borrowed as a way of describing psychological manipulating in relationships, usually romantic ones. Since then, though, it has come to mean pretty much anything; in a short Google search I found the term used to describe almost any negative behaviour in a relationship, including being too quiet, being too loud, changing the subject, arguing, not arguing, and a dozen other things, which is unfortunate because it ruins the word of value in describing what it actually is.
Expanding the term to describe people arguing over different opinions, or to make the term synonymous with “lying,” is really watering the term down to meaninglessness. Of COURSE people have different viewpoints of reality, or else we wouldn’t have anything to argue about.
But consider the following hypothetical (which I’m sure plays out in real life):
Trump voter: “Trump is the greatest president ever, Trump has done nothing wrong.”
Trump opponent: “Trump is the most corrupt president ever, terrible scandals, 13,000 documented lies, got Americans killed, tried to get Ukraine to investigate Biden, was helped out by Russians,”
Trump voter: “Trump has done nothing wrong.”
Assuming both sides are absolutely sincere in their beliefs, is one getting gaslit here?
“Gaslighting” is not a synonym of “lying” , but deception is a necessary condition of gaslighting - it’s not gaslighting if I don’t perceive the lights are dimming, it’s gaslighting if I know they are dimming and try to convince the victim that they aren’t.
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I was under the impression that gaslighting also tended to involve actually altering the world and then claiming that the altered state was always the case, thus the better to crush the victim’s perception of reality.
Which I suppose would make Trump’s sharpie shenanigans re: hurricanes a form of attempted gaslighting, give or take the fact the Trump is such a bumfuck incompetent that nobody was fooled for even a second. And that his intent wasn’t to damage other people’s sanity, but rather to protect his own damaged sanity.
I think the “perception of reality” part is the one necessary element. It’s when someone tries to convince someone that they can’t trust their own perceptions, either because their senses are too faulty (“you’re too sensitive”) or because they are insufficiently perceptive (“you don’t understand what actually happened”).
It’s not about actually making someone think they’re crazy. That’s a tall order, (although I think that’s the original meaning of the term).
Really, it’s about distorting the frame of discourse to avoid addressing an argument. It’s often done with the types of phrases which Acsenray mentions above: “you’re just being too sensitive,” “you don’t understand what actually happened,” etc.
Fox News does it when they say about Trump: “What are the Democrats so upset about? Presidents have always done that.” It doesn’t have to be a lie, but it often is–or at least is deceptive and dishonest.
[QUOTE=every other poster in this thread]
Not as I understand the term, assuming their beliefs are sincere. Which is not necessarily a safe assumption for everyone.
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Gaslighting involves deceit. Honest debate does not.
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Gaslighting is an attempt to manipulate somebody’s beliefs by giving them information the gaslighter knows is false.
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Gaslighting is, as noting above, involves giving information that is known to be false and pretending it isn’t.
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The point of the original film was the victim of gaslighting was actively being convinced that she was insane, by virtue of challenging her perception of reality (that the lights were dimming.) It was an active, targeted campaign of psychological torture against a specific person.
Board policy would be up to the mods not me and could be brought up on ATMB if you desired. GD is not the forum for that.
I merely describe that while not all lying is gaslighting, all gaslighting involves lying, and the accusation is calling someone a liar. Go from there.
As Rick Jay said, I always thought it was an attempt to manipulate reality in order to convince the victim that they’re nuts. Even if its meaning has broadened, reading this thread convinces me that there is certainly no general agreement on what it actually means.
For example, on Sunday, Putin’s puppet tweeted that it was snowing in DC when the temperature was 52 deg. Is that gaslighting? Did he actually believe it? Did anyone?
I’m not I’m sold on the claim that “gaslighting” has lost its original meaning of deliberate attempts to attack one’s confidence in their understanding of reality, and changed to just mean crappy argument.
Wait, are you gaslighting me?
As I hinted in my own comment about Trump, gaslighting can’t work if the gaslighter has no credibility. Before you can shake somebody’s confidence in reality, they have to believe that you are credible when you talk about reality. (Unless take the approach of covertly altering reality around them, that is.)
Well, if that’s its only meaning, then its frequent usage isn’t justified. I just don’t see people deliberately creating schemes to make other people question their own sanity–except on TV and in movies. It might be something that might happen privately between two individuals in a dysfunctional relationship, but not in public. Certainly not on a message board.
So my assumption is that the term has acquired a secondary meaning.
Arguably, Trump has gaslit the fuck out of all of his base and a number of people on the center-right because they are willing to grant him the requisite amount of credibility.
That is, if it counts when people voluntarily participate in their own gaslighting. I think it does count.
Trump has his base believing that video evidence of him saying something that he denies to have ever said is nothing more than librul propaganda. They are voluntary victims of gaslighting.
I’m probably going overboard overthinking this, but I don’t think the the target has to question their sanity as long as the goal of altering their reality is achieved.
Again, I don’t think that’s a requirement. But Trump seems pretty happy. “Shoot a guy on 5th avenue, etc”. He’s pulled off a mighty gaslighting and he’s pleased about it.