Don’t understand and don’t like the term “gaslighting”.
Wasn’t that the term used in the baseball book Ball Four, for when they would hide in a closet to watch another player have sex?
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes, including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs. Instances can range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents occurred, to belittling the victim’s emotions and feelings, to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
A gaslighter will initially lie about simple things, but the volume of misinformation soon grows, and the gaslighter may accuse the victim of lying if he or she questions the narrative. They typically deploy occasional positive reinforcement to confuse the victim, but at the same time, they may attempt to turns others against the victim, even their own friends and family, by telling them that the victim is lying or delusional.
You see this in the DNCMedia when they lay claim to fake news like Russian collusion or saying Trump called Nazi’s good people, but then say anyone who supports QAnon, or claims George Soros’s money is behind a lot the democrat riots, or Biden made the Ukrainians fire the prosecutor going after Hunter as conspiracy theories.
It comes from the story line of the film Gaslight (1944), in which a man psychologically manipulates his wife into believing that she is going insane.