Is this Munchausen Unhinged mother transing daughter she's convinced is reincarnation of her dead husband

But in this case, the incest is overt, not covert. The woman is saying out loud on social media that her 8 year-old daughter is her deceased husband and that the mother relies on the little girl for the sort of love, care, understanding, connection, support and practical assistance that adults customarily get - or hope to get from other adults who are partners, spouses or romantic love interests - or who are in the other types of roles you mention, or are hired helpers like home health aides, personal assistants and domestic servants.

Emotional incest isn't necessarily covert incest. In fact, the opposite is frequently the case. Emotional incest is often very blatant and public. Many abusers do it out in the open not just where others can - put so others can see. People who engage in emotional incest frequently flaunt these types of inappropriate relationships because they want others to witness and know what they are doing.

Exactly this.

Parentified the child with an overlay of incest.

I never imagined one of those people actually breeding and making up fanfictions about their actual kid...what a nightmare.

I think it feels like social media amplifies it, but sickos always found each other, long before social media existed. PIE and NAMBLA were around before the internet, cults have always found predators to join as well as victims. Throughout history there’s a never ending plethora of extremes that took hold because of how easy it is for predators to find their echo chamber. There are plenty of time periods where it was socially acceptable for predators to demonstrate their violence and depravity publicly.

None of that is new. I think people thought we were living in a more progressive, enlightened, liberated society. I think many people assumed many of the good fights had been won, that we’ve learned and moved forward, and most people will be good within a society that’s progressed this much. So it feels shocking that it’s gone this way. It feels like madness because people assume others think in fairly similar ways to them, they assume others are essentially decent and good because they are essentially decent and good. I think social media amplifies this illusion also. Props up what people want to see, illustrates the imagery people want to buy into. So when the realisation that people are not these good, decent people hits, the crash feels greater.

I think it goes in waves.

People were always this fucked up. But often it’s socially acceptable to call these people out as the outliers who are either stupid (flat earthers), unwell (hearing ‘gods’ voice), dangerous (PIE), or desperate for the attention (abducted by aliens).

But sometimes the Overton window shifts so the status quo is the horror. (Nazi Germany, lobotomies etc).

I watched the lesson the other night. I knew about the third wave experiment vaguely, in the way I knew about the prison experiment or electric shock ones or similar- like I’d heard various bits growing up/seen references in media/read the odd article. But I didn’t know that much. At the end when they were talking about it one person said something like people will always see others as powerful or powerless, and will go to any lengths to be one of the powerful group, betray any value, cross all lines, to do anything to belong to the powerful group and not the powerless one. I think that stands out a lot in the right side of history slant that so many of the TRAs have, the ones who seem like they should be the reasonable ones- women, mothers, teachers, police, doctors, (some) politicians etc. They over ride everything they know to be true, every instinct, everyone that should matter to them, just because they fear being seen as being on the wrong side of history. They chase the need to feel powerful by being part of the right group, because belonging feels powerful, because blind certainty feels powerful.