Girard Digest 6: Mimetic Rivalry

Individuals who share a desire are united by something so powerful that, as long as they can share their desire, they remain the best of friends. As soon as they cannot, they become the worst of enemies. ... We want others to love what we love, admire what we admire, but as soon as they do, they're our competitors.

– David Cayley, Ideas: The Scapegoat, Ep. 1

The sharing of desires/values is a powerful social bond, which brings people together and gives them a common purpose. But when two people desire the same thing, they run the risk of becoming rivals. As long as their attention is on the object of desire, and that thing is sufficiently far off, or plentiful, or abstract, that they can both desire it without getting in one another's way, their rivalry can be forestalled. It is difficult to continue in this stasis indefinitely, though: either one will lose interest and fall away, or they will begin to compete with each other, if not for the object itself, then to prove that their own desire is the strongest.

Common wisdom has it that a little competition is a good thing: it spurs people to do better, to make more, to put in that little extra effort and achieve what they thought they couldn't. To some extent this is true, but competition is a powerful tonic – a little may be beneficial, but more than that is toxic, and it's easy to get the dose wrong or lose control.

As imitative creatures, we want others to imitate our desires, so we model a desire and say, 'imitate me.' Once someone takes up your call, you become what Girard calls mimetic doubles – they imitate you, you imitate them, and gradually you become more and more alike as you both strive towards the object of your desire. The more your goals align, the closer you become – either more identical, or more precise mirror images, as discussed in chapter 3.

As our desires define our identity, another person moving into the same psychological space feels threatening, and we move to defend our territory. We want them to imitate us, but we want them to stay safely on that side of the imaginary line, and for their desire not to challenge ours. People generally tend to feel that their mimetic rival is more successful at modeling the desire than they are, which prompts a psychological (and indeed sometimes literal) arms race as they one-up the other's intensity of desire. Your mimetic rival is simultaneously your model and the obstacle between you and your desire, who must be overcome.

Eventually the intensity of the rivalry eclipses the desire which brought you together in the first place: your focus is primarily on outdoing the competition, rather than the object of desire in itself.

"" (Watch on YouTube)

This pattern is abundantly clear in fandom. Fandoms coalesce around a shared interest, which is a type of desire, and for a while, a productive and supportive community is formed. But then people start getting competitive about who is the biggest/best fan, and that's when the purity tests and shipping wars start, as fans, or groups of fans (which inevitably splinter into individuals as the rivalry turns inwards), jockey for position as No. 1 and set bars for others, to narrow the competition. 'Imitate me in the love of this thing,' they say, 'but don't get closer to it than me.'

Chapter 7: Deceit, Desire, and the Novel