Identity-confusion jokes served as synthetic community during pandemic isolation

Evidence

That’s because, amid the extreme isolation and anxiety of early pandemic life, Naomi confusion became one of Left Twitter’s favorite jokes. The internet hive mind not only enjoyed laughing about what outrageous thing Other Naomi had said now but equally delighted in the prospect that I would get at least some of the credit/blame (“Thoughts and prayers to Naomi Klein”). We were a pastime for profoundly bored people addicted to dopamine hits from our machines. It was giving people not pleasure exactly, but something synthetically adjacent to it—a fake communal experience in those lonely and anxious times. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 107

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes why the doubling device carried analytic weight: it was a mass social phenomenon, not private idiosyncrasy.