Proceedings of the 2020 Conference of The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas

@NewPopLit "self-mediators—who choose their objects of desire independently, [and] help to direct the crowd’s focus to particular objects of desire w/in the mimetic network, while narcissists act as idols & anchor-points for what would otherwise be res

Mimetic desire ebbs & flows–converges, climaxes, dissipates–as fads, the "current thing", restless obsession with an object, hero, villain, victim, etc. before a new desire emerges or a crisis culminates in destruction (social or literal) of a scapegoa