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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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2014-Era Neckbeard Shaming is BACK

"These Guys are Just Weird" is the new ad from pro-Kamala super PAC Won't Pac Down. You really do have to watch it to viscerally understand the impact. I am not gifted enough with words to give it justice. It's not clear if this ad will ever air on tv (seems a bit racy for that), but the internet is where modern elections are won or lost.

As grossly offensive as I find the ad, I cannot deny being impressed. Just a few days ago I pointed out that Democrats need better messaging if they want to persuade voters. This kind of appeal to base instinct is exactly what wins elections. The ethos of "when they go low, we go high," sure sounds good at dinner parties, but it likely cost Dems the 2016 election. In some sense, I truly think they were afraid of the sheer effectiveness of Willie Horton. It took Trump to scare them enough to pull out the stops.

The left accusing the right of being the weird party seems like throwing stones in glass houses. Do they really want to play that game?

Do people really not remember who hired the women's clothing kleptomaniac? Or who brought post-op FTM topless to the White House? Are they banking on the fact that the right will not retaliate because it'd be uncooth to point out just how insane they themselves look to the average person?

Maybe it's my own weird shitposter heritage that speaks this to me, but calling people weird when your coalition it at least partly made up of bioleninists seems like a bad rhetorical move. Neckbeards are so fucking tame and normal compared to how weird people have gotten now.

And this is all especially true if you want to play this for the internet. Maybe decorum will stop the Rs on TV, but Twitter is just going to reply tweet to you with trannyjaks and stills from the Olympics or Eurovision. It's like I'm watching normies go through the meme evolution of the chud/soyjak dyad years too late. And I'm pretty sure the left wing perspective doesn't really win that battle.

I don't think you can just play the "who is weirder" game. As aesthetically revolting as alphabet people can be, it doesn't push the same disgust buttons as, "these are the people want to be inside you," does to young women.

I think you can. Just start reminding young women of all the transgender athletes in women's sports, trannies in women's spas, trannies raping women in women's restrooms, trannies in prisons impregnating fellow female inmates, phalloplasty forearms, etc.

Hello, and welcome back, I guess.

Please remember that really hating a group doesn’t give you license to skip all the rules about decorum and charity.

I looked over the rules just now. Was it my use of the word "tranny?" If so, I'll avoid using it. Not sure what else it could have been.

I looked over the rules just now. Was it my use of the word "tranny?" If so, I'll avoid using it. Not sure what else it could have been.

We don't really ban specific words per se, but we do ban things like weakmanning in order to show how bad a group is. In this particular case, you might respond "oh but I was just explaining a way to play the game under discussion" but... I guess what I want to say is that I might accept that excuse from a good poster with a long history in the sub, but I certainly wouldn't accept that excuse from a user with your posting history.

Frankly, if I were you and I wanted to continue posting on the Motte in good faith, the first thing I'd do is roll a new account without an openly antagonistic username. We are, I think, mostly tolerant of quirky usernames but, yours is a pretty bold declaration against, uh, the whole ethos of this site.