2rafa
2d ago
As for scam courses and money, the modal donation to a streamer is in the $5-$10 range.
Many of these streamers stream 7 days a week all day, that $10 a stream adds up fast, there’s a reason these guys are buying Lamborghinis.
"Looks are the most important thing, more important than everything else." You could say, yeah, everyone knows looks are important, but since you're not currently a looksmaxxer, clearly your preference for looks is weaker than Clav's. And he'd say your preference was wrong.
Most important thing for what? I think a reasonable framing is that looks are very important, especially when seeking a partner (but also generally, the halo effect, etc). That’s just biology. But that doesn’t justify looksmaxxing to the extreme lengths some of these people go to. You can agree that looks are important without devoting thousands of hours to going from an 8 to an 8.5, for example. That is not a simple way to make bone smashing or leg lengthening necessarily rational.
This whole thing is pretty weird to me. Many of the men in the documentary are avowed misogynists, but guys like that were common 20 years ago, 50 years ago, and so on. Are they more common today? No, not really.
What confuses me - on both the ‘incel’ and ‘mainstream liberal’ (not that those are the only two views, but they’re the two most commonly represented in this debate) is that both sides are taking something out of these stories and interactions that isn’t true.
Let me illustrate:
The handsome, outgoing and tall 19 year old ‘Clavicular’ flirts with and hits on the young women outside Miami bars and clubs on camera. He says some outrageous things and also happens to have been an incel / looksmaxxing forum dweller. According to the incels this somehow vindicates a particular strand of contempt for women. But this young man’s misogyny and performative meanness to women isn’t why he gets laid! He gets laid because, presumably, he is tall, handsome and outgoing. A very handsome and charming 6’4 man could just as well be a consummate feminist and do just as well. If the accusation is that women looking to hook up with guys outside clubs in Miami prioritize looks over the politics and social views of the men they hook up with, OK? As the joke about white nationalist men with non-white wives goes, this is not a gender-specific concept.
And does this really mean women in general are particularly shallow? Leaving aside the fact that may of these streamers primarily hookup with OnlyFans content creators (ie sex workers), even the “girl in a tight dress outside a nightclub in Miami at 1am willing to talk on camera to a guy with an entourage of posturing young men” isn’t the ‘average’ woman or even young woman, it’s a very much filtered group. It’s like dating only people you meet at Burning Man and complaining they all smell bad, are polyamorous, and have STDs.
The second issue, the banality of the progressive or mainstream critique of these guys, is just as obvious - the primary victims of these men aren’t young women, who mostly don’t care or have nothing to do with them (unless they have an OnlyFans to advertise) - they’re the young men who donate their hard earned money to them on stream, or who spend thousands of dollars on scam courses or fake ‘trading’ apps where nobody but the house (and the influencer taking a cut of every rube he directs its way) ever makes any money. It’s that short Mexican guy from the documentary who thinks that if he’s only a bit more masculine, more misogynist, more alpha, he can have the life of the tall rich white guy.
2rafa
4d ago
I think it’s broadly known that hardline Chinese nationalists and the far right are censored on Chinese social media. They are a potentially large opposition group to the CCP’s vaguely Marxist post racial broadly liberal future vision of Chinese society. Communism itself is, after all, an imported ideology invented by two foreigners whose statues sit in many major Chinese cities and CCP assembly halls, and in the name of which much classical Chinese art, architecture and civilizational infrastructure, from the elite Chinese court cuisine (reportedly the most complex and elaborate in the world) to forms of media was destroyed or severely damaged as decadent, backward and reactionary just a few decades ago by the very party still in power.
2rafa
4d ago
It’s not for the Iranians, who won’t comment until it’s confirmed (in the hypothetical situation in which it’s true). I always thought the occasional Putin disappearances were in part about seeing who seemed to move suspiciously fast or ask a lot of questions during a leader’s unexplained absence, but Netanyahu doesn’t have close to that power even now after almost as many years in power. In a way, I think @SecureSignals is probably directionally correct. I don’t think it’s about US or even NATO public opinion, though, I think it’s about the Gulf and the Arab world. There are people who can politically withstand going to war in partnership with America, but not with Israel. If Israel fades into the background, the former becomes more likely.
2rafa
4d ago
The disappearance is unusual but I think it’s very hard to hide the death of a world leader for a long period of time, there are too many internal factions who hear word and start posturing. In addition, who can forget the approximately one million times Putin has allegedly died in secret over the last decade according to tabloid rumor. In addition, keeping news of Netanyahu’s death secret wouldn’t serve even his relatively close political allies, since if anything it would rally people to their cause and Israeli morale in this conflict doesn’t depend on Netanyahu’s life at all, they largely believe it’s about life and death for all of them. Lastly, Iran has not successfully killed many senior Israeli officials, while even Soleimani’s assassination alone made successful Israeli targeted killing claims much more believable whether or not the state confirmed someone’s death.
For the record, I think Netanyahu is laying low, trying to avoid saying something provocative because he knows this war will end when Trump decides it does, and concentrating on eliminating Hezbollah in Lebanon as much as possible, which seems like Israel’s primary focus in this war.
And I think Mojtaba is probably alive. The Telegraph suggested he was injured but is alive. He may not be particularly lucid (I doubt he is vegetative), but I suspect he is alive and has at leas a chance of recovering; there were other supreme leader candidates living and a hereditary succession was not uncontroversial.
2rafa
6d ago
Why would the Democrats replace Trump with Vance? They know the latter is more reactionary in practice, has a longer attention span, will avoid some of Trump’s worst policies for the economy (by limiting tariffs and seeking a quick resolution in Iran), is invested in staying in power for a second term, and will replace cabinet ministers chosen because Trump liked them on Fox with seasoned conservative operatives who have spent decades wargaming coming to power. That seems like a bad trade.
2rafa
6d ago
You wouldn’t want to be friends with college law professor Obama because he would be the most annoying “um akshually” midwit at the table. That said, he could read a speech well and had good speechwriters throughout, stuck to the script, and could practice the tone shift needed to speak to both black and white audiences in a plausible and mostly likeable way. The arrogance was and is there under the surface (and seeps through the page in the texts he semi or largely writes himself), but he lacks the overt greasiness of Vance in my opinion.
2rafa
6d ago
It remains to be seen whether the IRGC are actually capable of guerilla warfare. Iran isn’t Yemen or Afghanistan or even Iraq. Iran fell below replacement level tfr 25 years ago. Iran is more developed and educated than those nations. It lacks the strong tribal loyalty upon which the Taliban and Houthis rely. IRGC officers are used to creature comforts, not living in caves.
It is still a very high risk, of course, but it’s not guaranteed that a collapse leads to a Houthi style Shia Islamist insurgency.
Don’t other countries have rules that actually ban police raiding your house at 2am for no reason?
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