daguerrean
8mo ago
My interpretation would be that things like LGBT propaganda/feminism/etc are relatively new and so previous generations were not selected for people with resistance or immunity to them. So you have a new virus burning through a population that has zero immunity to it, it's going to wipe out a lot of the population before things stabilize. I have no idea how long it will take for evolution to course correct here, and hopefully it happens before things get really unpleasant, but I don't doubt that it will correct eventually.
Holy shit, it wasn’t So this goes even deeper than I imagined. How many are there?
Edit: Upon reflection the naming of “Suicide Girls” is just too wonderful and appropriate to my post. God smiles on me
[Apologies in advance for bringing up an old story, but I couldn't find any record of discussion of it]
Deep downthread in the election megathread @Folamh3 linked to a wonderful article you might all enjoy, but that's really beside the point. I want to talk about something mentioned within the article, namely a commercial. I'll copy the article's description here:
Jennyfer Hatch, thirty-seven, was euthanized in October 2022, having given up hope of resolving the chronic pain caused by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She told friends that she was “falling through the cracks,” unable to access the state support she needed in order to go on living. Her desperate choice to die was glorified in a glossy TV commercial titled “All Is Beauty,” produced by the Canadian fashion retailer Simons. “Last breaths are sacred,” says Hatch in the commercial, released on the day after her death.
Here is the commercial in question that seems to have been almost entirely scrubbed from Youtube.. This kicked off a series of only vaguely connected thoughts I lack the ability to synthesize, but perhaps you all can put it together more successfully than me.
Burgers?
Of course there's a certain element of "Burgers?" to a commercial about suicide for an upscale department store. But I feel a few other elements of the commercial are curious to me. Take this screenshot from the ad, does this not look like a scene from Midsommar? Why are all the participants women? Why are they all White? This seems to frame the euthanasia as some sort of White feminist religious ritual, possibly connected with nature worship.
Suicide Girls
I'll note that the euthanized woman was described as having Ehlers Danlos. Anyone that has casually explored "SickTok" in the past few years will have surely heard of this condition. While I'm sure it's a real disease in some cases, there is undeniably a trend among young women sharing this concept with each other. I actually first encountered this disease when exploring the twitter of a porn model (so sue me) at least a dozen or more years ago. It struck me at the time as an obviously invented attention-seeking condition that allowed her to post hospital selfies every few weeks and be continually weak and bedridden with no obvious externally visible symptoms.
My second encounter with this disease was my cousin. My cousin is a few years younger than me and fifteen years ago was a sufferer of gluten sensitivity of one form or another (when it was popular for everyone to be suffering from it). About three years ago I heard she was now suffering from Ehlers Danlos.
It strikes me as telling I first encountered this in a porn model as I now consider them to be sort of canaries-in-the-coalmine for female neuroses and social messaging, obviously being more susceptible than most to these things.
Antinatalism, Environmentalism, Suicidality and Leftism
Here I'm just going to wave my hands in the general direction of The Socialist Phenomenon with its lengthy sections relating the running theme of suicide pervading socialist movements (Christian and otherwise) throughout human history. If you ever visit the /r/antinatalism subreddit you'll notice the distinctly leftist and often environmentalist concerns of its posts. In contrast, as pessimistic and addicted-to-doomposting as the far right can be I've never detected a major suicidal or antinatalist current on /pol/ for example. As an aside, see the movie First Reformed, it's horrible.
So what to make of this? I don't know exactly how to piece it together but there is some common through-line that connects feminism, White people, desire to be ill, environmentalism and suicide. Just wanted to hear whatever thoughts this commercial might spark in you all, as I don't really know how to connect the dots myself in a satisfactory way. Apologies if this is not coherent or focused enough for a top-level post.
daguerrean
8mo ago
But burning their credibility to get at Fuentes is worth it for them, I guess?
Come on, no serious credibility is on the line here. When I bullied the autistic kid in high school was I seriously asserting he was homosexual? No, it was fun because it caused him to sperg out.
daguerrean
8mo ago
If the threat of jail time is not enough, she also wrecked whatever goodwill she had by having had an affair with the same man Nick Fuentes was being rumored with, Destiny.
Ecelebs seem to reach a certain level of fame and just become a reality show of incestuous dating, relationships and breakups. Like Sam Hyde after losing his Adult Swim show has since retreated to "Fishtank Live" which as far as I can tell is a literal eceleb reality dating show and he routinely makes videos featuring has-beens like Star Wars Fatty and iDubbbz and attempting to "call out" others like Hasan.
daguerrean
8mo ago
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/10/we-are-repaganizing
Okay, it's really beside the point of the article and only mentioned in passing, but somehow I had never seen that Simons commercial about that woman getting euthanized. The Culture War Thread has probably already discussed this, but holy crap I really want to. I mean aside from the obvious "Burgers?" element the entire vibe of the commercial is just bizarre. It seems to position it as some kind of feminist ritual (everyone congregating on the beach in cultist-looking clothes appears to be women). I mean, does this not look like a scene from Midsommar?
Edit: Interestingly they all appear to be White
daguerrean
8mo ago
they had explainers on how to lie to family members about it. They had people showing up even in tiny communities like this to dress up the propaganda line in rationalist colors and make it go down smoother. They had YouTubers paid to go on rants about how it was all in our imagination and anyway it was just Corporate Greed.
Don't take this the wrong way (I agree with you), I'm not trying to pull a Reddit "source?" move, but I would genuinely love to see links for each of these things.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Forsaking your flesh for Christ - there's at least a real dilemma there. That's at least an interesting problem. But forsaking your flesh for the abstract idea of democracy and the rule of law?
I know that this view (I'm not sure what to call it, post-Rationalist?) has a cadre of supporters on TheMotte as I've seen it numerous times over the years. I imagine because it has a certain meta-contrarian appeal and draws on a yearning of reactionaries that perceive modern western Whites as too domesticated, too deracinated and slavishly devoted to abstract Enlightenment concepts to the point of their own destruction. This view seems to have a kind of admiration for the naked tribalism of American blacks ("He wuz a good boy!") that supersedes any attachment to honesty or justice.
This view is just repellent to me. I'm all for White nationalism and family loyalty and nepotism and blah blah blah, but Hunter Biden is 54 not 18 and Joe Biden is the President not some random guy. If the cops found a teenager's drug stash and his father stepped up and claimed the drugs to be his, taking the fall to protect this son, sure, I could see that as honorable and respectable.
daguerrean
8mo ago
They've got the IQ and self-restraint of like a ten-year old child. I don't really know who it benefits to keep creating people without the skills necessary to live in modern society and then, when they fail to live in modern society, say "Yeah, they deserve to be tortured for that".
It is my impression that the average progressive thinks this same way, just without the IQ obsession. Whether it is nature or nurture, either way it is not the criminal or homeless man's fault, he is simply a victim of his circumstances. This then leads to some bizarre conclusion that we are morally obligated to suffer their depredations as penance for being a functional part of the society that inflicts this life upon them.
Perhaps we don't need to make them suffer, but I don't understand how this doesn't lead to the conclusion that these people should be locked away for life in a minimally-cruel prison, just for the sake of keeping them away from the rest of us.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Trying to justify or qualify that position is a losing proposal. So politicians should make sure not to state on video that they support such positions.
I think there is a strange similarity between "gender transition surgery for illegal alien inmates" and "no abortion even for rape victims" in that these political self-owns stem from attempts at legitimate ideological consistency that most voters simply don't have. If you actually fully accept that abortion is literally murder and no different from taking a newborn and bashing their head in then obviously there should be no exception for rape, it wasn't the baby's fault it was conceived through rape and conception through rape obviously wouldn't justify murder of a born baby. But this position isn't widely popular, even among people that may oppose abortion under some conditions.
Similarly if you fully accept the transgender ideological position that gender-affirming care is life-saving medical treatment then a lot of extremely unpopular things logically follow from that. If you didn't allow your child to be treated for a broken arm or for cancer obviously this would be viewed as child abuse and the state would be able to intervene. Similarly if an inmate gets stabbed or gets cancer we don't just deny them treatment on the grounds that they're inmates or illegals. Kamala's position is really just the ideologically consistent one and in a way it reminds me of Trump's "gaffe" when he said he would punish women that get abortions.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Can anyone think of any notable artworks produced by extremely online and transgressive subcultures like incels (but not limited to them)? Things like Negative XP. Ideally things with some artistic merit and not just meme value (like Elliot Roger's My Twisted World).
daguerrean
8mo ago
I think Chris Roberts (of Starcitizen infamy) got his start exactly this way as a high schooler funnily enough. Not sure if that counts for or against your point though
daguerrean
8mo ago
I predicted a major conflict INVOLVING the US would continue, start, or conclude in that period
A bold prediction to make considering it exhaustively covers literally every possibility
daguerrean
8mo ago
Why does a shorter development cycle mean that game developers in the past were better? I mean yea, I'm not sure any modern game developers could come up with fast inverse square root but I don't really follow the inner workings of modern games so maybe they are doing equally shocking things and I just don't know about it?
I do think there is something to be said for raw numbers of fights. A similar thing happened in baseball where basically every record based on sheer volume has some unbreakable record from 1910 when pitchers pitched complete games every day. This is undoubtedly largely a result of player pay, if your pitcher has a 300 million dollar contract you are going to treat him like a priceless artifact and handle him incredibly gently, you're never really going to want to push him to the absolute breaking point. When contracts were at most a few hundred thousand a year, yea you can ride him like freaking Secretariat until his UCL turns to dust. So I think there is some truth to the idea that the most resilient players today are probably being held back from achieving their true potential out of fear of injury. Nolan Ryan definitively shows that some humans are capable of throwing at modern speeds for a vastly higher volume of games than pitchers today ever approach.
daguerrean
8mo ago
When I read the first sentence I thought you were going an entirely different direction with that. Either way it’s based
daguerrean
8mo ago
Agreed, I think the anger at Aloy is often misidentified, even by the people that are angry themselves. She’s just a 5/10, and there should be a place in media for people that aren’t attractive, there’s really nothing objectionable about her in isolation. The issue is that she’s a product of a movement that doesn’t just seek to establish representation for unattractive women but also seeks to abolish representation of attractive women: see replacing Lara Croft.
daguerrean
8mo ago
1950s suburban nightmare
I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women. I truly don't understand it. Don't Worry Darling, Revolutionary Road, Stepford Wives, Jeanne Dielman. To me it's reminiscent of a corresponding male genre that expresses existential horror at the idea of a boring office job (Fight Club, Office Space, The Matrix).
daguerrean
8mo ago
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
You cannot seriously say that this view is anything like QAnon or Pizzagate. As Ben Garrison was saying, “crank” doesn’t just mean someone that’s wrong.
Someone claiming Israel is committing genocide might be guilty of using an overly expansive definition of genocide for motivated reasons, but there’s nothing crazy about the claim, there’s nothing detached from reality.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Youtube and Facebook and to some extent Instagram are weird that way. Moderation is obviously slightly woke but the commenter base is definitively anti-woke. Places like Reddit, 4chan, X have a more typical convergence of leadership and userbase.
People who seriously identify as left-wing would often dispute this. Many on the left see the Democrats as a right-wing party, and the mainstream media as centrist, liberal, centre-right, or something else other than left.
This is certainly true, but I think when Democrats are talking about this in the context of losing the election they literally believe that the Democrat-aligned media is lacking, not communist-aligned media. I see this all the time on Reddit.
I believe your average non-communist Democrat sees it this way. Republican-aligned media like Fox puts party support above all else. They put no value on truth, morality or fairness and just spew misinformation 24/7, anything to help Republicans. Meanwhile the NYT is primarily concerned with Truth, Justice and Objectivity. If this shakes out to favoring the Democrats that’s just because “reality has a liberal bias” and “it’s not politics just basic human decency”, the NYT only favors the Democrats by this convergence of their values but they would not lie, cheat or steal if it helped the Democrat cause. So the NYT doesn’t count as Democrat aligned in their mind
I’ve seen many Dems on reddit lamenting the whole “when they go low we go high” strategy and wishing they could fight dirty as they perceive Republicans are.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Maybe I get this impression just because I avoid leftist spaces like the plague, but it really does seem like the right is more inundated with obvious, low-quality grifters. I attribute this to the fact that Republicans have become more heavily dependent on the less educated, but also because a lack of established media orgs leads to grifters fulfilling the demand from an underserved market.
daguerrean
8mo ago
I think this is an unfairly low effort dismissal. I don't like all the people above, but they are thoughtful and making more of an effort at fairness than you suggest. Read Ymeskhout's if you haven't and look at things like Trump's post about AI crowds that were included in it. I understand the traditional Motte argument that Trump lies like a used car salesman and Democrats lie like lawyers and there is certainly some truth to that. And I agree that at the moment Democrat lies are more dangerous precisely because they have a veneer of respectability and acceptability by institutions. However, I don't think that changes the fact that Republicans really have become the party of choice for conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality. It is a very particular kind of mindset that is a not insignificant portion of the electorate and it has become increasingly partisan in recent years particularly since Trump and doubly so since COVID.
daguerrean
8mo ago
Maybe Danny Casolaro? I don't have an opinion on his case but it's kind of the 'classic' of this genre imo
daguerrean
8mo ago
I generally believe in consumables theory, that you really can't go wrong with them and they will almost always be used. For the past few years I've often fallen back on a gift box of pastrami and pickles and such from Katz Deli. It is the kind of thing most people would never buy themselves but every man I have given it to greatly enjoyed it.
What makes you think it was an assassination? He was obviously the intended target, but why couldn't he have been killed for typical murder reasons, jealous lover, financial gain etc? I mean we will surely find out in time.
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