Pongalh
1yr ago
Wrt the advertising industry, there was an amusing but brief series with Steve Coogan on Showtime years back, called "Happiness" iirc, that depicted the downside of becoming middle-aged in advertising.
Pongalh
1yr ago
The "lying flat" movement in China would seem to buttress what you're saying.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Some of these reasons sound like just-so stories. When Ron Paul would routinely wear an oversized suit I could say something like, "That's relatable, it's like your cousin Joe who has that one imperfect suit he wears for special occasions!"
But RP went nowhere with most.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Sure, my mom likes her. Boomer Republican, doesn't miss a 49ers game. Not Waspy rich or Jewish or anything like that. My mom works at Home Depot.
Pongalh
1yr ago
From years of reading fact checking sites for my job, this seems true. Snopes liberals fend off right wing accusations implicating and sullying Antifa with incredible regularity. Meanwhile something like smiling Covington kid, Damore and other stores that take off on the right isn't really their beat.
Pongalh
1yr ago
In the popular imagination "grooming" is a conspiratorial right-wing thing, but it's true it's actually quite normative among younger people in general, that theme and accusation.
Colleen Ballinger aka Miranda Sings was accused of that and I'm pretty sure it wasn't coming from the right, who were never paying much attention to her.
Pongalh
1yr ago
The Italian School-loving New Right which seems to have a lot of sway here is quite overt about putting status and cool above any kind of lame moralistic principled considerations. There is only health, wealth, power, consequences, and demographic blocks determined by great men, not corny meditations on the morality of any given act - in war, or backroom political dealings - driven by resentful leveling.
Of course whenever it clashes with the east coast journalistic establishment it's shown up to be quite cringe and uncool. Maybe the tech/coastal crypto-right being so adjacent to edgy and cool - unlike the flyover populists who are distant and hopeless - makes them value it more than even the official culture industry, who take it for granted because they're directly at the center of it.
Pretty convenient that elite realignments are cool and edgy (edgy though really?...VC and non-profit realignments as edgy?) given that's the easiest thing to get behind. Relatedly, inequality soars... inequality is actually cool!
And how about simply being not anti-semitic, not philo-semitic? In fact philo-semitism seems a good way of generating more anti-semitism.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Right. How many wealthier conservative white men who aren't particularly culturally aggrieved - but are economically savvy - have attained that status, indirectly, by advertising (read cultural) trends that do not put the likes of them front and center?
Pongalh
1yr ago
"This is to say there are literally no white men in TV commercials..."
I saw a Liberty Mutual ad 30 minutes ago on tv with two white men appearing to play '70s style cops
Pongalh
1yr ago
Speaks to the leveling instinct even among the right. "They get to do things you can't!"
On the other hand it's the American right, which contains a lot of Jeffersonian liberalism built-in.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I remember the lesser AHAs of the aughts too. Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji. But haven't heard their names in years.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Just waiting for an article of the type, "In Defense of Cynically Referring to Liberal Principles and Then Totally Abandoning Them"
Pongalh
1yr ago
About 10 years ago the economist Stephen Lansburg got in trouble with his progressive students for floating some kind of thought experiment that they found offensive, and I believe it involved rape. An early example of cancel culture in action. They wanted his head.
I remember thinking to myself at the time, "See, this is what distinguishes conservatives from emotional progressives who get triggered by seemingly coldhearted and objective forays into political thought."
That needs reassessment.
Pongalh
1yr ago
You can make $100,000 a year managing a Taco Bell??
And if so, are the dating prospects awful because despite your solid income because you work at Taco Bell? I suppose if you restrict yourself to the people that actually come into your store and buy a chalupa things aren't that bad.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I've heard progressives say that abolishing the Civil Rights Act is absolutely letting back in Jim Crow and full blown racism. They don't believe Constitutional talk of the value of federalism or decentralization and private, voluntary action. No, CRA removal is just an exterminationist aim.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Armstrong and Getty are somethin else. They are so incredibly unknown among any of the right people, but they've been doing their thing for 25 years or so.
I used to listen to them while delivering flowers in Sacramento in the mid-2000s. The effect of aging has not yet affected their voice/delivery. They haven't skipped a beat.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Okay. I've seem quite a few blue checks who don't seem to get any more engagement than if they had never shelled out for that. You can't get lower than zero likes or replies.
But maybe they're just really terrible at getting attention, or agreeing enough with any subculture of Twitter users. Premium gives them no boost.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I actually don't mind the login requirement. Employers snoop. Of course you can still see someone's most popular tweets of all time, without logging in. So if you wrote something controversial but also massive hit, you may be in trouble.
"jealousy is the core of privilege discourse..."
Interesting. This seems at odds with the analysis of someone like Wesley Yang, that privilege discourse is a rhetorical weapon of the strong, a clever and perhaps counterintuitive domination of the weak. The "successor ideology," or the new way the upper class advances itself.
So, a jealous upper class?
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