It's been discussed before, and recently, what kind of people, with what majors, seem to gravitate most to libertarianism, ancappery, that sort of thing. The focus is often on what path was chosen in education, training, then career.

Considering that the formative years (pre-teens) are massively influential in how the adult turns out, I do dare wonder if something I noticed as a kid might have some influence as well.

Because it's catchy, I'll call it the Cobra Effect.

I know not everyone reading this was a child of the 80s, but bear with me. For those that were, who were the cool characters in GI Joe? Besides Snake Eyes (let's call him the outlier, because he's silent and looks cool and does ninjitsu), chances are I'm going to get a list of Cobra characters.

Bad guys were cool, growing up. They often had cooler outfits, they tried to do remarkable and extraordinary things (even if they were destructive and ridiculous, like blowing up the planet), and they were often, as a key point, far far far more quotable.

I was thinking back to my childhood friends, and how they turned out as adults. The most right-wingy of them all were the ones that didn't just want to be Cobra, they wanted to be the Decepticons. They wanted to be Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

More recently, when my childhood was past me, I did notice something co-morbid with the rise of modern online forums after the turn of the century: oh-so-profound quotables. From who? Villains. Almost all of them, bad guys of numerous stories. What about? Might makes right. Kill or be killed. Why so serious? Wake-up-princess-this-is-the-real-world-and-you're-a-rotting-piece-of-meat, and so on.

Obviously this isn't a hard predictor of adult outlooks on life (I thought Cobra Commander was too hilarious to not love), but I do wonder if the kids who took the "bad guy" messages and speeches from their entertainment and saw it as wisdom wound up being adults who fancied themselves the "real" good guys, because their shows and movies apparently lied to them and they know what's what.

Contrarianism plus entertainment fiction, perhaps, leads to a desire to be comic book or cartoon villains.