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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35697 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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The first step towards walking in h spiritual path is reducing stimulus substantially. Luke Smith release a good video on this perspective yesterday.

Tangent, but if I ever wanted to make a meme about "religion bad' I would pick Luke Smith, he's gone orthodox and has aged 15 years in the space of 2. It's the kind of rapid aging that I've only ever seen in vegans before. That copypasta about falling for every meme needs to be updated.

Did he age, or is it just the beard?

Don't know the guy, but just looked up the linked channel and yeah, that kind of beard always makes you look really old. And it's also really popular among the orthodox for some reason. I'm even sometimes surprised myself when I shave down how young I still look, and I never let it get that long.

Eastern Christianity has historically been hostile to shaving, eastern Catholics have the beards too(just typically a bit neater/better sculpted). AIUI modern Russian culture isn’t too hot on male grooming either.

There seems to be a relatively heavy emphasis on the "elder spiritual instructor" archetype in Orthodoxy, so I assume a beard is a status symbol.

You can go on his channel and judge yourself, this is his last pre-hiatus video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mVGRAD10cYs.

The "I've been a taliban prisoner for 17 months" beard goes a long way but I think he'd still look aged without it.

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