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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.
To me this seems like the next step in a longer trend. In my news bubble by far the most common headline commentary is about how “bizarre” what Trump or whoever said.
A quick google news search for “bizarre”:
“Pete Buttigieg blasts JD Vance’s ‘strange worldview’ and bizarre GOP agenda”
“WATCH: House Dem makes bizarre claim while dodging question on VP Harris' 'border czar' record”
Maybe the weird thing is slightly different but it seems part of the same trend of “who can even understand those guys. It’s just bizarre.”
I think it’s the inevitable result of not being able to handle the idea of disagreement. If you don’t have political views, you’re just right, then it’s not disagreement, it’s a bizarre rant.
I think this is correct and just another variation of the prevalence of the word "gross" to describe political/ideological beliefs/behaviors that began about 10-15 years ago among the progressive left. Besides just not having enough exposure to these ideas to describe their negative qualities outside of generic disgust-based ones like "gross" or "bizarre" or "weird," there's also the heightened emphasis on immediate, visceral, emotional reaction as the genuine reaction that one ought to be true to, with a denigration of trying to reason through the issues while taking those emotional reaction into account along with logic and evidence (e.g. Ben Shapiro's "facts don't care about your feelings" line has only been a punchline to showing how stupid and short-sighted he and his ilk are for longer than I knew who Ben Shapiro was). The phrase "not a good look" is also used similarly in a lot of similar contexts, and I'd say it's all an extra-political variation of "creepy" to describe any man that someone wants to denigrate but who lacks any characteristics that it is considered okay to publicly call out as a moral failing.
I also wonder if there's been a sort of secular trend of the term "weird" being used for things that are morally reprehensible by the kids these days. But that's just from me noticing a couple of young-ish YouTubers using the term that way to describe things like an adult hitting on a minor or people purposefully polluting wildlife to film themselves cleaning them for YouTube views (I'd describe those as "predatory" and "fraudulent" respectively, but the folks I watched just kept using the term "weird" to describe those things). The way I understand "weird," it's meant to convey that something is abnormal in a negative way, but as more and more kids are raised in environments that emphasize the celebration of things that are seen as abnormal, perhaps they see the term as just negative, possibly in a visceral way.
I’ve also noticed “gross” and even from the time when I would have considered myself on board with a lot of this stuff didn’t understand it.
What’s also striking to me is for years I recall neuroscientists telling us that conservatives are motivated by disgust but liberals are more open minded and don’t have that feeling as strongly. I guess that was all bullshit.
I think that may have been true prior to the recent realignment, likely driven by American women who would otherwise be conservative but are pushed into Wokeness by other aspects of politics. These people are officially left leaning but don't seem to have a strong interest or understanding of policies, seem very disgusted by all kinds of stuff (including male sexuality) and seem to have abandoned many of the values the left was holding onto for awhile (like freedom of expression) and likewise carry many beliefs that we would have associated with the right a few decades ago (banning books, etc.).
I suspect a good chunk of these people would have been conservative but being that is super unpopular in their social circles, and the feminist tint to left leaning politics brings them a lot of benefit.
In my mind the Woke movement is conservative in many ways (at least in reference to recent American politics).
I'd say it's conservative in a much more broad way. One of the earliest, long lasting ways of determining how to treat each other is by categorizing them by immutable, superficially easy to distinguish characteristics, with race being one of the main ones. People have come up with different justifications for this over the millennia, but fundamentally, they're all variations of the same thing, post hoc rationalizations for why [people I like] deserve [good things] and [people I dislike] deserve [bad things]. Wokeness is pretty clearly just another variation of this, where the rationalization is "systemic oppression." It switches the rank ordering here and there, but fundamentally it's just trying its best to repeat old patterns rather than overcome those old patterns and replace them with new, better ones.
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I watch a ton of police bodycam arrest videos, and I can confirm that there is a massive trend of (especially black and Zoomer-aged) individuals using “y’all are weird” as simply a catch-all negative term for someone doing something the speaker doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with. Police arresting you for committing a crime? “Bro, you weird as fuck.” Police taking you to the ground because you resisted arrest? “Y’all so fuckin’ weeeeird, I swear to God!” Seems like it’s totally disconnected from any previous, more specific usage of the word.
Edit: I see that @ChickenOverlord and I are subscribed to some of the same YouTube channels.
We mostly watch Donut Operator, Code Blue Cam, Midwest Safety, and some guy called MrBroken. Got any other channel recommendations?
PoliceActivity for the heavy stuff - fatal officer-involved shootings, etc. - presented without commentary. Bodycam Files, Police Insider, ResistingArrestTV, CrimeCamNow, Blue Watch, Lens Of Law… I watch a shit-ton of bodycam videos.
Thanks for the recommendations!
I have to say, the flood of bodycam footage is one of the only things we can thank the Martyrdom of Saint Floyd for. I just wish videos from places other than FL, WI, and WA were more common, I'm guessing it has to do with public records laws in each state.
CrimeCamNow is all from the Atlanta metro, and Georgia Police Activity is also from the same state. There’s NM Bodycam for stuff out of New Mexico (expect a lot of meth dealers and drunk Mexicans getting got), Arkansas Police Activity and Police Pursuits (featuring the legendary Officer Byrd and the Arkansas State Police’s notoriously extensive use of the PIT maneuver), there’s Ohio Bodycam and Columbus Police Bodycam, there’s Officer Outlook in Minnesota, there’s California Bodycam… I’m subscribed to about 50 different channels from all over the country.
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(I’m not the guy you replied to) My mother cried when they canceled Live PD as we used to watch it every Friday night together. Truthfully that is what radicalized her
I think that's going to happen for a lot of people. For every video of a cop being a corrupt and/or murderous asshole there are hundreds of common criminals being the absolute scum of the earth that absolutely deserved to be shot on sight. Near universal bodycam adoption by American police will basically only increase sympathy for cops.
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My wife and I watch police bodycam videos for entertainment pretty regularly, and one thing we've noticed is the use of the word "weird" as an insult. I've seen it 5 or 6 times in bodycam videos within the last two months, and in pretty much every instance it's being said by a black woman towards the white cops that are arresting her. In some cases the implication has been something along the lines of "It's so weird that you would care about [obvious illegal shit I was doing] enough to arrest me" but generally it's just used as an insult, and usually accompanied by a reference to the cop being white as well.
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