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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Well guys, it turns out we are ruled by satanic pedophiles. While the Epstein saga really cemented this as true, the most convincing thing I saw was some pieces in John Podesta's art collection. The worst stuff is from Kim Noble. You'll know we're undergoing a regime change when these people are rounded up and disposed of. Until that time, nothing has changed.

This is an interesting topic because it is one that can't be discussed with cool heads. Most people completely shut down, others more partial to Alex Jones style talk completely buy in. There's not a lot of fence-sitters when it comes to this question. What are we supposed to do if it becomes undeniable though?

Some in here might make the case that this p_do s_tan stuff including Epstein is a mutual blackmail ring that keeps elites from defecting against each other. I could buy that. But I'm not sure I could buy the case that this state of affairs is better than a less stable one without it.

  • -19

This is just "The Pyramid and the Garden". People aren't good at properly adjusting for the level of cherrypicking and degrees of freedom possible when you have thousands of people scouring a large world for evidence matching their pet theory.

A photoshoot for a fashion company reuses a "legal documents" prop from the shooting of a television drama as "office documents", the same company sells fashion that is vaguely leather-daddy inspired and didn't segregate it from photoshoots with children, and you conclude that "we are ruled by satanic pedophiles". (And they are deliberately embedding evidence about this in fashion photoshoots for some reason.) If you lived in a tribe of a few dozen people and happened to personally notice two coincidences like that about a single person, maybe that would be reason to be suspicious. But you don't, you live in a society of hundreds of millions where thousands of people spend time hunting down and broadcasting stuff like this for your perusal. As a result this doesn't even really tell us about Balenciaga's marketing department, let alone "society". But people's brains don't adjust like that, so give them a few coincidences like this and they'll either come to believe false things or dismiss it out of hand as a conspiracy theory. And then the ones who do the latter are still vulnerable to the same mistakes in reasoning when packaged in ways that don't register as "conspiracy theory", especially ones spread by mainstream media sources.

I said it that way specifically to convey that the nature of a corporation rather than an individual means the key decision likely was an inaction, rather than an action. A search finds the bear bags were accessories made for Balenciaga SS23 Paris Fashion Week.

The Balenciaga SS23 show at Paris Fashion Week was staged in a starkly dystopian setting and challenged the fashion industry’s focus on restrictive categories and boxes, while exploring what it means to be a luxury brand.

Similar to the clothing associated with cyberpunk and with other dark-future settings like Mad Max or The Matrix, it sometimes drew inspiration from leather fetish clothing:

Throughout the collection, muted tones infrequently gave way to shocks of pink, red and yellow to stand out against the background. The cameos of black leather were dramatic and determined, with a long apron dress sporting buckles, zips and large hand-sized grab handles to arouse fetish sensibilities in the aether.

See this outfit - it is obviously fetish-clothing inspired, but it is not sexy and if you saw it in a dystopian science-fiction movie I doubt you would consider it particularly remarkable. But people doing fashion shows in 2022 are too deep in artsy signalling of their sophistication to do something as straightforward as "make costuming for a dark science-fiction movie", so they also contrast with various incongruous elements:

All of the looks became muddier the longer the cast walked in them, almost adding to the intentional deconstruction of ‘the collection’ as a concept. Snake-like, full body-length scarfs in bright colours added a knowing smile to the darker undercurrents, along with fake babies strapped to chests and teddy bear bags highlighting as accessories. In other places, constructions that seemed to integrate giant tote bags into the shoulder will never not be subjects of debate.

So now they have some bear bags meant to ironically contrast with the overall dystopian vibe of the fashion show dressed in miniature leather outfits inspired by science-fiction movies that were inspired by punk/etc. fashions which was in turn inspired by leather fetish outfits. That's not the key action, plenty of movies and fashion shows have done this with zero controversy. The key action is that the people involved didn't ensure there was some sort of memo or note saying "Some elements of the collection were indirectly fetish-outfit inspired, do not include in photoshoots with children." Frankly it wouldn't have occurred to me to do that either.

Then the photographers are handed this collection of nonsense - sunglasses meant to evoke The Matrix, random chains that are supposed to look like Mad Max or cyberpunk, bear bags dressed in leather meant to be among the elements adding an ironic note to the dystopian sci-fi. They are presumably told to create some photos in a more relatable context than a sci-fi fashion walk through a muddy ditch "deconstructing 'the collection' as a concept". I assume they don't actually sell any of those accessories, so this is not so much actually advertising specific items as tying together the high-fashion and consumer-oriented parts of the SS23 Collection on some conceptual marketing level. So they do some photos in a normal-looking house with a kid, and someone suggests the kid hold the bear. The people involved either don't associate the bear-bag's outfits with sex (plenty of people have never seen leather fetish outfits in any context other than maybe news footage of a gay pride parade), don't consider it their job to ask about it, or consider the connection so abstract that it doesn't occur to them it might be controversial.

I already linked The Pyramid and the Garden but I also liked this elaboration from "You Are Still Crying Wolf"

I want you to read those last eight points from the view of an Atlantis believer, and realize that they sound really weaselly. They’re all “Yeah, but that’s probably a coincidence”, and “Look, we don’t know exactly why this thing happened, but it’s probably not Atlantis, so shut up.”

This is the natural pattern you get when challenging a false theory. The theory was built out of random noise and ad hoc misinterpretations, so the refutation will have to be “every one of your multiple superficially plausible points is random noise, or else it’s a misinterpretation for a different reason”.

We started with some sort of artsy but coherent message, the "dystopian sci-fi with ironic contrasting elements" of Balenciaga SS23 Paris Fashion Week. Remove the context of the dystopian sci-fi vibe and it turns into incoprehensible noise, the bears no longer having enough to ironically contrast against. If it happens to combine with a photoshoot with children then suddenly the noise sounds like something specific. This is exactly the sort of thing we would expect from people combing through pictures until the noise fits what they're looking for.

Pizzagate had the same thing, some people from /pol/ looking through Instagram pages and taking note of the suspicious stuff they found. Since this was noticed a month after Kanye West was dropped by Balenciaga that might be what inspired someone to look, though I don't find any mention on 4plebs before it was on Twitter so it probably wasn't posted on /pol/ this time.

they do some photos in a normal-looking house with a kid, and someone suggests the kid hold the bear. The people involved either don't associate the bear-bag's outfits with sex (plenty of people have never seen leather fetish outfits in any context other than maybe news footage of a gay pride parade), don't consider it their job to ask about it, or consider the connection so abstract that it doesn't occur to them it might be controversial.

This does not fit at all with who would be doing a high end fashion photo shoot.