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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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So, the Guardian has decided to be offended by a volleyball player, gleefully (and from what I can see, technically correctly (the best kind of correct!)) calling him a child rapist in the headlines.

Apparently he had sex with a twelve-year-old when he was 19 (with no additional elements of coercion) and served a year for it in 2016.

That is one icky age difference, and I think that the prison sentence he served might be an appropriate general deterrent. (Personally, I would prefer having (legally void) consensual sex with an adult (to whom I am attracted, see consent) at age 12 to spending a year in the prison at 19, but ymmv.)

However, I also believe in rehabilitation. I see no reason to report on this any more than if he had served a year for insurance fraud in 2016.

Both of the Guardian articles feel less of a hit piece than some other stuff I have read in the past, apart from the headline. (I wish we had some better phrase to refer to the offense than 'child rape', which includes this but also abducting and violently raping kindergardeners.) Of course, that the elected to report on it at all is the most problematic part of it apart from the headlines -- it was eight years ago, which is longer than most doping bans last, and he did a substantial amount of time for it.

I’m rooting for him due to the seethe he triggers in Reddit-types. Of course, if he were instead a black, brown, or Muslim migrant, many of those seething would be turning a blind eye or even defending him.

As a 6’6” white man (and now semi-famous thanks to the Streisand Effect), he’s likely drowning in puss despite his conviction. While the typical playing-life-by-the-rules 75th percentile guy struggles to get a single Tinder match (much less a response after a match), a hypothetical Chaddie Nazi or child rapist receives no shortage of matches and enthusiastic replies (and even chicks messaging first). The well-known female intuition and personality detection at work.

Black-pillers 1, red-pillers 0. Your text game doesn’t suck; your looks/height do. Just as it’s tough to out-run a bad diet, it’s tough to out-text your looks/height. If you’re insufficiently attractive, there’s no combination of printed words that can make a girl attracted to you. And, as the experiments above show, if you’re sufficiently attractive, there can be a wide latitude of printed words that you can get away with.

In the absence of “finance, trust fund, 6'5", blue eyes,” “volleyball, statutory rapist, 6’6”, blue eyes” will do (there’s even a bonus inch!)—unlike if his height starts with a 5. At 6’6”, he’s just at the lower cusp of optimal male height.

A perpetual source of seethe for women is the male preference for younger women, even teenage girls, and a tall handsome athlete going after a 12-year-old reminds them of that. While 12 is almost certainly too extreme, online dating studies show that men view women as monotypically less desirable with increasing age after 18 and that men of most ages prefer 20-year-old women, where 18 and 20 were the respective lower limits. If not for the lower limits, 17 and perhaps 16 could be in play.

Of course, upon seeing such results, women generally cope with this by thinking, “Am I less beautiful than a fresh-faced and tight-bodied 18-year-old? No, it’s men who are wrong and pedophilic.”

Another aspect of this is the modern Western inability to thot-patrol daughters, lest you get accused of being abusive and controlling. At 12 she was already chatting with a least one random boy or man on Facebook and lying to sneak out of the house to meet up with him.

Why do you care so much about what your adolescent daughter does? You don’t own her or her body.

This discussion and the “hyper online right wing guys are weird” being a few post from each other is great comedy.

If this guy didn’t want to be called a rapist for the rest of his life he shouldn’t have had sex with a 12 year old. This isn’t hard folks

Yes, yes, there's always condescending well-poisoning as a classic shaming tactic to attempt shutting down discussions you don't like. I'm unironically glad of the reminder of such a tactic. This isn't a hard tactic, folks.

This isn’t a tactic. Defending a 19 year old raping a pre teen is legitimately very weird behavior.

  • -10

Just because he committed a crime doesn't give us carte blanche to commit the worst argument in the world.

I'm certainly glad to see that a case of a guy actually fucking a 12 year old has brought out such principled precision in the forum that is generally absent when discussing sex ed in schools.

  • -13

I don't think I've ever commented on here about sex ed in schools.

'The forum' isn't a person. You can't act as if it is and then claim hypocrisy when the comments of one user don't apply the same inferred values of a completely different user.

Don't take my comment as criticizing you personally, then.

  • -15

Definitely not weird behavior to give a full throated defense of the terms used to describe a 19 year preying on a 12 year old.

  • -16

You seem to think we care about malicious sneering consensus enforcement fresh from from the latest progGPT firmware update.
If anything that's going to make people here double down on saying things that piss you off and filter the normies, because they are weird and proud of it.

Okay, the queue is just full of your comments. You are consistently picking fights with other users, other mods, and the general concept of things you don’t like. In this particular example, you’re doing so while also speaking for a number of people who may or may be on board.

Take another week off to cool down. Quit trying to rally the troops.

This is just pointless. Why is someone getting banned for doing the exact same thing that a poster did above them but the above poster doesn't even get a warning?

The mod queue being how we decide if someone gets banned is just dumb. I check the user/janitor thing every time I'm here and it's like half of the reported comments (which I assume is how they get there) is because someone disagreed with them and they're using the report as an extra downvote. And it's obvious that is skews in one political direction as well, maybe because they're a smaller portion of the people here or maybe it's just their way because it certainly is on places like reddit. But using that as an excuse is surely just going to end up with people deciding the only way to decide what is acceptable on the site is just mass reporting everything they disagree with.

I still don't understand why the mods here can't ever ban people for the things they do that are bad but instead keep a secret tally of bad things that they don't disclose and then ban them for all those things when they do something less egregious. And almost always in a baited argument where the person doing the baiting does not even get a warning.

More comments

I’m frankly amazed that me calling someone who preyed on a 12 year old a rapist has generated this reaction. He legit is a convicted rapist.

  • -14

The pushback that you’re receiving is likely coming from people who are skeptical and scared regarding a general broadening of the definition of rape. Speaking personally, I’ve been pretty spooked by high-profile reports of women regretting sex the next morning and calling it rape, of drunk men being charged with rape for having sex with equally-drunk women (cf. that one infamous subway poster PSA that goes something like “Joe was drunk. Jane was drunk. Joe and Jane slept together. Joe committed rape.”), et cetera.

I, who respond viscerally and emotionally to these instances of the expansion of the definition of rape (these horror stories teamed up with my natural cowardice to ensure that I did not enjoy my youth while I had the chance), am thus inclined to instantly oppose the usage of the same word “rape” to describe non-central examples of the crime. Your argument that “he legit is a convicted rapist” doesn’t quite resonate with me when Joe from the PSA above is equally a convicted rapist. Others with similar viewpoints as mine would likely feel the same.

I hope that this explains why you might be facing opposition from people who nevertheless think that a nineteen-year-old guy having sex with a twelve-year-old girl is still a very bad thing.

that is generally absent when discussing sex ed in schools.

On the contrary, calling what I believe you are referring to "sex ed in schools" is ALSO the non-central fallacy.

This discussion and the “hyper online right wing guys are weird” being a few post from each other is great comedy.

It's beyond parody. Sloots post reads like something someone taking the piss would write. Supporting a Child Predator to own the Redditors is deranged.

It's beyond parody.

Pot attempting to call a (supposed) kettle...

Millions of people (mostly men) in many countries across the world spend hundreds to thousands of USD each year on tickets, subscriptions, and merchandise to root for laundry or individuals (such as in combat sports), dozens to hundreds of manhours watching games and matches, dozens to hundreds of manhours arguing with people in person or online about their favoured laundry, and occasionally fighting and (perhaps accidentally) killing (or getting killed) by fans of the opposing laundry. Double this for years where there are international events, such as the World Cup, WBC, Summer or Winter Olympics.

It's not uncommon for such popular sportsball individuals or wearers of laundry to be with some degree of disreputation, including rape, even statutory rape, even statutory rape that leads to pregnancy (for better or worse, the Mailman, apparently, did in fact deliver to a 12- or 13-year-old).

I'm spending 0 dollars, 0 manhours watching games/matches (from an entertainment standpoint, I prefer men's indoor to beach volleyball if I had to choose, and have no interest in neither women's indoor nor beach), maybe an hour or two shooting the shit with my Besties on the Motte, just otherwise mostly peacefully rooting from a distance such that the outcome displeases people who, on average, advocate for trends and policies that are net-negative to me, my family, and my future descendants. Sounds pretty ranged.

Just paying the guys in that Kamala ad to read a random selection of themotte.org comments out loud with no alterations would have been much more viscerally repulsive normie-scaring than what they actually did.

Just paying the guys in that Kamala ad to read a random selection of themotte.org comments out loud

No man go the whole hog and pay them to read the Jim's blog comment section.

Dude, I already had to explain to my mom what Fox News meant when they called Kamala a hawk tuah girl. Don't make me explain the pill colors.

With regard to modern dating and relationships, I'd much, much rather explain the main pill colors to my mother (or father, for that matter) than the Hawk Tuah girl or Harris's history.

Thankfully, "dog" is not a color to my knowledge. The main color pills can be explained in a fairly non-graphic way:

Blue-pill: The mainstream opinion that Women are Wonderful, and all you have to do as a man is to be yourself and Be a Decent Person.

Red-pill: Women are not Wonderful, but there are a multitude of ways by which you can turn Women's non-Wonderfulness to your benefit.

Black-pill: Women are not Wonderful, and unless you're already taking advantage of it, you're already and permanently screwed.

Both my parents would already intuitively understand such a three-way split, and would find the Blue-pill view silly.

In contrast, I'd hate to explain the Hawk Tuah meme to my parents; I'd hate to explain Kamala's alleged Casting Couching. Much less the two combined. I recoil and cringe at the thought.

I can't imagine having to explain any of that to my mom. I would never admit to even knowing who Jim or 90% of the internet intellectuals are under any circumstance. I think Destiny and Sam Sedar is as far as I would go in terms of admitting I know who they are.

From the comments on themotte.org (comment quoted in its entirety):

From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":

The nation is the hand of the race, the family is the finger of the nation, the individual is the fingernail. If your vocation is to fight, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while you avoid seeding its’ fallopian tubes and instead mine more minerals and prepare to fight. Otherwise, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while spawning more overlords.

Don’t talk politics with your cow. At best, it confuses it, at worst, it makes it difficult for your cow to chew cud with the other cows, and cows need to be part of a herd.

The level of politics to talk with your cow is, America is good, we are an American family, nice things are good, criminals are bad because they ruin nice things, having nice things is the only valid virtue signal, tasteful religious displays on nice things are great, ugly religious and political displays on ugly things are stupid evil heresy, ignore any advice from the news and entertainment media because it’s a bunch of pedophiles raping each other.

I guess this would be a bad political hit ad because it's not even funny in the "look at the creep" way.

Not strictly related, but that middle part reminds me of the funny Heinlein quote,

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

This one made me laugh.

My daughter is 4. I imagine her twenty years later being disgusted by the betahood of Western whites, somehow avoiding the trap of burning coal, and marrying a based Eastern European, Russian, or Chinese dude and living in those kinds of countries happily ever after.

I guess no one told him that having a daughter is the ultimate cuck.

That phrase underlines one of the weirder points of agreement between feminists and traditionalist conservatives -- that sex with men is disgusting.

Come on, you're not that bad!

Love you too.