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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3688 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 7, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Friends I cannot stress this enough: have kids.

People talk about loss of meaning and loss of rigid rites of passage that take you from being a child to being a man.

It's kids. It's always been kids.

Having kids is really hard (I apparently phrased this poorly since people are responding to it as if I am saying the opposite. My point is that you will find that the following things are the things you end of loving, and you will find the idea that these should ever have prevented you from having kids to be childish): your house will constantly be a filthy mess. They will keep you from sleeping, they will make it impossible to go out to dinner or to go to parties, and they make travel really difficult. Any of the dreams of adventure that you had before you had kids will be pushed back by 10 years.

And NONE of that will matter once you have them. You'll find the idea that you ever cared about any of this stuff laughable.

I counter you with a cold dose of Houllebecq!

“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.”

Uh yeah... don't take any of that too seriously, I don't think he does either. Kids are great, keep having them. Just felt like throwing that out there.

I have to counter your quote (but agree with your last sentences!) with the following from Serotonin:

Everything was clear, extremely clear from the beginning, but we didn’t realise. Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible; those ideas were part of the spirit of the age; we didn’t formalise them, we didn’t have the taste to do that; we merely conformed and allowed ourselves to be destroyed by them; and then, for a very long time, to suffer as a result.

God takes care of us; he thinks of us every minute, and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise. Those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away – those illuminations, those ecstasies, inexplicable if we consider our biological nature, our status as simple primates – are extremely clear signs.

This guy sounds utterly insufferable. There is more to life than having sex with "young people" (a term deliberately chosen, I am sure, to mean children to friendly audiences and mature adults to others). Judging by this passage, the only thing he cares about is pedophilic sex.

While Houellebecq is undoubtedly an inveterate and unrepentant coomer with a possible predilection for hebes, I would say he looks on pedophilia with sort of bemusement more than anything. His characters are consumed by their jealousy for the young (which, as @BahRamYou's quote indicates, is specifically high school/college age), and regrets for what could have been in their own youth. And this ends badly for them. Jumping to your conclusion via this one passage is...well, a jump.

It sure sounds like you aren't a friendly audience, yet you take the term to mean children. Does "leaving a party in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen" evoke a child first and foremost in your mind?

It sure sounds like you aren't a friendly audience, yet you take the term to mean children.

Yes but it can be plausibly defended against my interpretation, as you are doing right now. It's not that the double meaning is entirely invisible but that it signals to those who are In the Know while maintaining strategic ambiguity.

Does "leaving a party in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen" evoke a child first and foremost in your mind?

Does "contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work" evoke someone in their 20's first and foremost in your mind? You start paying taxes in France once you're employed--how many early 20's people do you know who have never been employed?

I for one went to a lot more parties in middle school than high school or college. The latter two were the time to get serious about my studies. My "partying days" were more or less between the ages of 12-14, and that's the age I had in mind for what he's describing. It's also the time I was probably most carefree--I was older and able to understand the world more, yet didn't yet have any real responsibilities.

If France has more of a prolonged adolescence then maybe that explains the difference, but "leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies" certainly doesn't sound like my high school experience. I'm lazier and more carefree now than I was then--my software development job is significantly easier than my studies were.

Houllebecq certainly wouldn't exclude 14 year olds at least from the people he describes as having "young bodies."

I think you have had an uncommon experience. Generally high school, college and one's early twenties is the peak of freedom and fucking around. At least, that has been my experience talking to people.

He's French, it's his culture. And also he's right imo.

I hope you are trolling.

When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned

Why don't you have a seat over here, monsieur Houllebecq?

Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell. It is a question of focal adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life. We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open, and soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.

from the context he's pretty clearly talking about young adults, not kids.

soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.

idk sounds like he's talking about kids to me. And the age gap of 90+ years which he mentions is imo more likely to be between a 100 year old and a 10 year old than any older combination.

The excerpt you quoted is from Nabokov's Lolita. To compare it to a longing of a 30-year-old salaryman for 20-year-old carefree student is quite far-fetched and symptomatic of the problem described in BahRamYou's excerpt.

30 year old salary men can pretty readily scoop up a 20 year old nymphette if they get past their own shyness. It may be quite different outside Japan.

Bro, nymphettes hit the wall at 14.

The more you know.

Alright, I assumed it was from the same guy.

From the context of the proclivities of French intellectuals, I wouldn't be so sure.

The quote is from a Russian-American.

The Nabokov quote is, but the Houllebecq quote is not. I was using Humbert Humbert's monologue as a companion to Houllebecq thirsting after illegally young people.

I thought that would be obvious without attribution, but many of you guys haven't read Lolita and it shows.

It's not obvious at all to me that Houllebecq was writing about the illegally young, or how quoting another author demonstrates that, or indeed how it demonstrates anything other than that it is, in fact, possible to write about pedophilia without being a pedophile yourself.

Who's getting jailed for hitting on twenty year olds?

More comments

Houllebecq

This is the second place in the last 5 minutes on two different websites that somebody has talked about Houllebecq. So hot right now.

he's not, like, some obscure writer. he's been a best seller for decades. but yes, he's very quotable on all sorts of hot culture war topics.

Very default quotable figure across a diverse range of scenes including BAPism/RSP/Dimes Square/nrx/silicon valley edgy/le atheism/neocon, it’s not too surprising.

It was on the RSP sub that I saw it lol

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