Colin McGinn

Not earth-shattering (not a mindfuck, one could say***), but as McGinn notes in his conclusion, he's only, after all, trying "to articulate what is implicit in our ordinary concepts." I'm a little surprised internet trolls weren't discussed as a modern counterpart to his Shakespearean examples. I'd enjoy reading a less philosophical expansion of his linguisitic umbrella produced in current times, in order to take into account the new* hub-bub around "fake news," disinformation campaigns, viral content online, and news propaganda.

The bulk of this... essay, really, focuses on the bad mindfuck -- mental manipulation, as the title suggests. Besides the absence of trolling, I did kind of wonder why "manipulation" wasn't good enough a label. I'm also unsure how to reconcile the good mindfuck with the bad, since most of this writing emphasizes mindfucks as manipulative to ill end, potentially capable at worst of steering a victim towards insanity. Oh but also romance and falling in love are a mindfuck**, and movies with shocking twist endings are a mindfuck, and his own introduction to the term mindfuck was a bit of a mindfuck. He pushes the analogy of physical fucking versus rape to set up that kind of symmetry, but it got short shrift.

*not actually
**not untrue, and I'm not even totally sure I'd classify this as a wholly "good" side of mindfucking examples
*** but then again, he stretches the analogy to include seeds of ideas being planted in a fucked-mind, and certainly there's a good bit here that could germinate some more...… (altro)