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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.
Well that was an uncomfortable watch.
I don't remember ever seeing an ad where the text and subtext were in such violent conflict. The text is all about them being anti-sex prudes while the subtext is they're sweaty rapey tentacle hentai obsessed freaks. Like we get them saying oral is sinful while making gross slurping noises. Is a woman supposed to watch that and think "Man I wish these dudes would try to get me to suck their dicks"? It makes me think "Send all the perverts and deviants to prison".
What puzzles me is that as soon as men like this identify as women, they become a protected class that can do no wrong and have only the purest motives.
“But but but it’s not gross men like that who transition,” says the intuition of trans rights activists.
The only thing which can resolve warring noncentral fallacy accusations is statistics, and I don’t think anyone will be satisfied by the stats on “actually a gross man”/“actually a pure and innocent woman cruelly given androgens by the wrong genes and forced to age up past puberty by a patriarchal and binary system”.
It's really hard for me to believe that is their intuition. It's too contrary to human nature. I suspect it's that their morality demands they ignore their intuition. Their intuition is bigoted and transphobic, and denying it is necessary to be a good person.
Interesting thought: they use their gut reaction as a signal that bigoted people would be offended by it, a form of transference to resolve the cognitive dissonance.
Perhaps even a delusion where they think it’s not their feeling they’re feeling, but the psychic vibrations of people they assume are bigots.
Dave Sim’s Cerebus warned me that some people honestly believe they can read others’ minds (feelings/intentions, not thoughts/concepts), but until now, I didn’t have a model of the delusion’s mechanism.
I'm a bit hazy on Cerebus, but I seem to recall he had a bit of a brain-break during Church & State II. Where, like, not many of the remaining 200 issues were actually worth reading.
Gorgeous scenery, though.
It does sorta go off the rails because he went off his rocker, and meanders while he parodies genres, but the arc prior to 200 is a solid run and 200-250 are fantastic, some of his most memorable. The third- and second-to-last phone books are heartbreaking. The final one is 60% text, but worth it for the self-reflective nature of Dave losing it once more vs Cerebus losing it. The final issue is stupendous.
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