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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32441 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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If rightwing Twitter could rot your brain, I'd expect Vance to be more affected than Musk.

The drugs aren't helping, but I think the simpler explanation is that Elon has been faking it till he makes it his entire career. Retweeting false information, and coping about Community Notes being gamed isn't actually any different than his MO of making predictions of wild-ass things happening "next year" for years on end, and complaining about the handful of voices calling him out on it a decade later.

Is Vance not pretty heavily rotted from online discourse too? He seems to have gone a deep end in some ways at least.

I saw his interview on Joe Rogan and thought he was someone who could actually be good: a moderating influence on Trump, an adult who can get some things done while being stabilizing in general versus Trump's more insane flips. I really liked his book too, and thought he might have some of the right instincts. I haven't been impressed so far, and his behavior in the Zelensky meeting and in general on social media have been the opposite at least in my perception, it seems to maximize for heat vs light in the real world.

Twitter shitposting seems to be highly contagious in general, with Rubio recently wading in to shout at Poland, which wasn't my idea of diplomacy. Seems like a clown show in general, rather than showing strength as I assume they intend.

I'm really interested in the opinions of others though... what do you all think?

Vance is one of those individuals who’s been rising his entire life. Him miscalculating when faced with a plague of purple people eaters is one thing, but I’d expect him to have calculated reasons for his rhetoric. Those reasons might be better for himself than for the commons, sure, but it doesn’t take twitter brain rot to do that.

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