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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   19994 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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If you've been on twitter in or around the tpot space the last few days, you may have seen Aella blowing up and deciding to go private. I won't recount the whole story, but it is in screenshots in the link earlier.

Suffice to say, apparently she searched her name and saw a ton of vitriolic attacks and discussions around her online presence. She claims that the worst part is the "overwhelming hate with nobody defending me. People are ashamed publicly to support me, they don't want to be called a simp or cringe."

Long story short she basically said that she is heartbroken, is "so sad the world is shaped this way," and decided to quit twitter and go locked for the foreseeable future.

For some quick background, aella is a prostitute. She is extremely successful, and has built up a huge presence on twitter as well as a cult following in rational spheres. She does data science work as well, and claims to be autistic. She is polyamorous and openly promotes and campaigns for that lifestyle, as well as doing drugs. Some of her stunts include things like tattooing her name on the body of men who have sex with her, having orgies while sharing details of who got to get in, etc.

A few darker claims are that she pushed her two younger sisters into sex work (one of them, by her own admission on twitter, was doing camgirl jobs before she turned 18.) She has also said some... problematic things that are edging around support for pedophilia, although she's canny enough not to come right out and say it.

Now as I'm sure many people here agree with, I don't exactly agree with aella's views or lifestyle. That being said I am still torn, the world is a cruel place. At the same time, aella has probably caused harm to a lot of others with her lifestyle and especially her approach to promoting it online.

This equivocation points to an actual underlying tension/confusion I have around liberal expression. On the one hang I think polyamory, sex work, and some of the.... encouragement aella has around minors watching point &c is quite bad, and should not be allowed to happen in the public square. I think a certain amount of shaming is absolutely good and necessary.

However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.

I'm wondering, I suppose, whether there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society? Can we somehow shame people without turning into monsters ourselves, in order to protect our children and especially young girls from (imo) degenerate and overall unhealthy lifestyles?

I generally like Aella and her whole schtick, and have nothing but disdain for trad larpers reaching for 18th century vocabulary to describe her activities, so I was quite sad that she faced this treatment. (Not saying this as a simp either – I generally don't find white women attractive, and Aella is no exception)

Aella is profoundly not a "normal" person, in terms of her mental constituition, and her upbringing didn't help matters either. She's a misfit through and through, and even if the trads somehow brought back the medieval morality, she would likely not be able to live as a reputable woman (that era had prostitutes too, by the way, no one is ever getting rid of "degeneracy", despite whatever the puritans might think). Trying to force individuals like her to live according to your values is bad and cruel, although I would agree that there may be a need for a soft limit on advertising potentially dangerous alternative lifestyles as desirable. However, this limit should probably take some form other than 80 IQ groypers raising hell in replies, or self-appointed RW hall monitors (profoundly abnormal male nerds, who have at some point decided to LARP as a 1950s religious family man to save the White Race and Western Civilization, hoping that some day the act will become their nature) taking potshots in quote tweets.

However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.

I generally try to avoid both porn stars and the anti-porn crowd online, because I always have the feeling that a lot of the more aggressive and verbose anti-porn people haven't earned the right to be so angry and so cruel. Which I think is what you're picking up on. Your modal anti-porn crusader on twitter or rat-adjacent spaces doesn't feel, to me, like someone who has lived a traditional morality. They feel like gooners, porn addicts, who out of some sense of sadism or some inferiority complex related to their own inability to stop themselves from masturbating.

If my Great Uncle Charlie wanted to criticize Aella, he would have every right to, but, well, he wouldn't because he would never have any idea who she was. He lived a pious life, and that included managing his media consumption to include only appropriate material. If he had come into contact with Aella, he would have recognized who she was and withdrawn immediately.

The people who bring up Aella constantly in order to abuse her, along with various other e-thots and porn stars, are not withdrawing. They aren't avoiding worldliness. They are the consooooomers of the content produced by e-thots, while also desiring that the e-thots be unhappy.

This is an experience I seem to run into all the time on the internet, the guy who messages me about some porn star who is hosting an enormous gangbang or made a million dollar severing her hymen on live or something, with a long screed about how degenerate this is. And my reaction is always kinda, hey dude I wouldn't even know about it if you hadn't messaged me, why do you even know who she is?

The best thing to do if you don't like Aella's values and think she should have less influence, is to ignore her.

Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.

Alas, I've fallen into the trap here.

You know the word scandal in the Greek refers to a part of a trap for animals. That's why the skandalon or stumbling block is referred to so much in the Bible.

A younger version of me might say, 'tits or gtfo'. I know better now.

Oh, how I know.

The whole premise of that particular idiosyncratic statement is that once the woman shows her tits, it is a fundamental humiliation: that she acknowledges she has nothing to contribute to the conversation but the aesthetic value of her body. If she feels objectified, good. That is the point.

Once that Rubicon is crossed, there is no going back. There is only the diminishing value of rapidly vanishing youth. Once the tits are shown, they cannot be unshown. You will never be taken seriously again, because to do so would be unfair to the literally countless other women who must compete for men's intellect without the benefit of gratitious nudity.

Aella is a woman of loose morals, literally (and with the intent of accuracy) one of negotiable affection. Her intellect shall always have qualifications because there is no end to men desperate for a crumb of pussy to validate her every musing and whim.

You can't make a ho a housewife. She cashed in respectability to ride the cock carousel. If she really cared about the opinions of others, she wouldn't have fucked thousands of men to begin with. She feels shame because she should feel shame. She gave up something meaningful for nororiety, fleeting and ephemeral. And that's really the end of the story. Hos mad. Hos sad. Life goes on.

There was a reason for "tits or gtfo", it was to counteract the kind of poster who went into a community or a group and went, "look at me, I'm a GIRL, pay attention, I have dignified your little group with my presence". In the anonymous context of imageboard fora we called them ethots. Now Aella isn't exactly like that, but there is a similiar mechanic happening on twitter, where those who are women and feel insecure about the number of dudes they can catch or men who are seething angry at her ease of getting the horizonal tango. There's also the aspect of the more sex-negative or kneejerk anti-libertine crowd gaining foothold online, (the various BASED takes and one liners)

I feel really bad for her. She produces some genuinely novel insights into the workings of sex and relationships that I doubt academia could ever do. You have to have a thick skin to post on the internet, and that's doubly true for women who 1) tend to get attacks that are far more personal and nasty, and 2) tend to have higher neuroticism scores than men, so the attacks wound more deeply.

Freud is practically synonymous with BS these days, but repetition compulsion is deeply real. My prior assumption for anyone who had a horribly traumatic childhood and is now cruising on a "but I made a sudden dramatic escape and now things are so much better" trajectory with no extensive therapy/ monastic meditation step in between, is that either they will shortly get restless and blow everything up themselves, or that they will shortly find they're experiencing similar levels of abuse in their new context, having unconsciously gravitated toward familiar dynamics of exploitation.

Aella's dad beat her up, denigrated and aggressively dominated her; by some online accounts somebody raped her as a child. Then she escaped and, surprise! found a profession where smart men could aggressively dominate and rape her, but supposedly on her terms; then in time she found that once again, the men denigrating her were doing so less and less on her terms. If she flees again, I really worry about the next set of partners she winds up with, and I'd worry about escalating drug use. I worry about Lindsay Lohan's new dude and ostensibly new situation.

Memory-wipe technology for selected childhood baggage really would be an amazing development, such a shame we'll get the totalitarian Matrix brainwash version instead.

And I thought The Motte could only by riled up this much by transwomen.

I don't know how much of her reaction is performative and how much is true. A woman doing some tactical hornyposting to draw attention to her otherwise nerdy accomplishments is a tried-and-true method (hi Alinestra!), but Aella did it the wrong way around. And if you do it the other way around, the best outcome to hope for is to become known as "better known for her previous work". This requires a clean break, though, but she doubled-down instead.

Is she really so socially oblivious that she didn't recognize that? I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, partly because this costs me nothing and partly because she comes from a crazy family and craziness is heritable.

Is it even remotely possible that she did not already know her reputation? She is pretty literally an attention whore, in addition to the normal kind, and this is more of the same. She talks extensively about the efficacy of advertising herself, on her substack.

High decouplers vs low decouplers.

"I might have attracted you with spicy stories and explicit pictures, but can we now set my public image aside and discuss my latest serious article?" vs "opinion is invalid: author is a stinky skank".

No. I'm a high decoupler - I do in fact value some of her writing, including on dating. And presumably she is too. But, I still know her reputation, and I don't even have twitter. Surely she does too.

This can't be overstated. Have a look at the questions she asks on Manifold. Almost all of them are about herself or about sex. Every time I hear about her it's one of those. It's so tiresome.

She definitely already knew in an abstract sense. But there's a big difference between knowing about it in an abstract sense, and seeing a parade of strangers recite how much they hate a person and think she's a vile piece of trash. This is doubly true if it seems like nobody is defending her, like it's somehow a consensus that she's vile trash.

She had that one story about having a breakdown as a child because too many people were looking at her.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’d grown up pretty and ’got over’ the shyness by becoming an exhibitionist and basking in the positive male attention. Discovering later on that a majority of that attention (beyond what she could see in direct interactions and on her cams) was actually negative might be quite difficult to bear.

‘This is the moment of testing. The moment your hearts are weighed against the Phoenix’s feather. Are you not curious at the outcome?’

‘Not remotely. I know my worth, and I know my crimes. This court holds no jurisdiction over me.’ Fabius straightened, trying to slow his heart rate. His muscles strained against unknown pressures. It was as if he stood at the bottom of a vast ocean, and the weight of thousands of fathoms pressed down on him.

‘Its jurisdiction extends far beyond your ability to conceive, alchemist. You have committed crimes of such monstrous elegance that even the gods themselves grow uneasy. Look – see – they sit in judgement of you.’ A too-long finger drifted upwards, and Fabius followed the gesture. He looked up, and something looked down.

It was not a face, for a face was a thing of limits and angles, and what he saw had neither. It stretched as far as his eyes could see, as if it were one with the whole of the sky and the firmament above. Things that might have been eyes, or distant moons or vast constellations of stars, looked down at him, and a gash in the atmosphere twisted like a lover’s smile. It studied him from an impossible distance, and he felt the sharp edge of its gaze cut through him, layer by layer. There was pain, in that gaze, and pleasure as well. Agony and ecstasy, inextricable and inseparable.

With great effort, he tore his gaze away. ‘There is nothing there,’ he snarled, his teeth cracking against each other. His hearts stuttered, suddenly losing their rhythm. He pounded at his chest, as internal defibrillators sent a charge of electricity shrieking through him. The chirurgeon flooded his system with tranquillisers, and he tapped shakily at his vambrace. A secondary solution of mild stimulants joined the tranquillisers, stabilising him. He ignored the urge to look up. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. ‘There is nothing there,’ he said again, tasting blood. ‘There are no gods. Only cold stars and the void.’

The pressure increased. Something whispered, deep within him. It scratched at the walls of his mind, trying to catch his attention. He ignored it. ‘No gods,’ he repeated. ‘Random confluence of celestial phenomena. Interdimensional disasters, echoing outwards through our perceptions. I think, therefore I am. They do not, so they are not.’ He met the Quaestor’s bland gaze unflinchingly. ‘Gods are for the weak. I am not weak.’

The Quaestor nodded expectantly. ‘No.’

/u/Amadan is entirely correct and in fact doesnt go far enough. The controversy is part of the game, and so is you thinking about how You Can Save Her. There is no form of attention you can pay to this that makes things better, except possibly in minecraft.

look into the face of a god

deny its existance

Just how based can one man get?

Thanks for sharing that snippet. I did not realize Warhammer books were packing heat.

Curious why you shared it though, maybe I need a coffee but I'm not getting the connection.

Warhammer books were packing heat

Generally, they're not particularly memorable 4 hour reads. But the first 2 Fabius Bile books (Promogenitor, Clonelord) are solid. Maybe Eisenhorn? The Infinite and the Divine! Fehervari's Requiem Infernal has some of the best prose in the past 100 years (mixed with vague, wordy evocativity) and sits with you for weeks after; his others are good too.

Because I think the Aella brand reasonably analogous to a demonette. Chaos creatures are created and strengthened by human thoughts and feelings in their domain, and try to induce more of those through their actions. They are analogously weakened by refusing to notice or believe in them, which is how Fabiuss superhuman boneheadedness allowed him to survive a direct encounter with Slaanesh here.

It looks like we need to call in the Ordo Hereticus to prevent a spread of the Chaos infesfation. The Emperor protects.

"You have sullied your hands with filthy parchments of heresy, guardsman. How do you plead?"

Where is this from?

Warhammer.

I believe it's from Fabius Bile, Clonelord.

Perhaps it's Pollyannaish

You called it, right there. Not to say I don't sympathize. I've been called--online at least--a Pollyanna, a goody two shoes, and, once, a Candide. So it goes.

But this eventuality of "Aella's" should surprise exactly no one. The internet is the very definition of the mob. What's more surprising to me than that she unwisely pulled back the veil of Isis is her Captain Renault-like "shocked, shocked" reaction, which would seem performative if it weren't so pathetic. This was always going to happen and unless she does some serious scouring this isn't the end of it and it's only going to get worse.

I'm prone to quoting movies but that John Huston line comes to mind: "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Unfortunately for this young woman it's far easier for a politician or building to last the requisite number of years. Easier for geiko I imagine, in that they are not technically prostitutes and do not base their charm in physical attributes alone (or even primarily), and create an exclusivity that the gangbanging harlot courtesan of many admirers doesn't.

That said, I'm with you in that I don't wish her ill. At the same time it's difficult not to feel some schadenfreude when I've long wished she would just stop her bullshit. Human nature suggests a doubledown and reversion to activism rather than the self reflection and life change I might prefer (but then I'm a judgmental Pollyanna).

Anyway what's for breakfast?

Oh no. Viral dog piles are usually disproportionate and unfun. As someone who gleans some of her output, my impression is that she engages in a significant degree of bait, provocation, and an outrage schtick. She is part curious investigator of taboo, and I can be entertained by that part of her output, but she's also part persona of Taboo Teehee. She may be a kind, considerate individual, but she's also an advocate -- maybe even rebel -- and that's a big red target.

Aella is not an accidental microcelebrity. She built herself a brand, then propagated her brand and services in social networks saturated with nerds. I do want to issue a friendly reminder for the think of the children rat adjacent nerds: as young women have agency, so do nerds following the allure of smarty pants rationalist escort JAQ lady.

Most of us don't wield a social media platform to grow an audience for great profit. We don't have the same incentives to draw attention. She does not always carefully hedge her ideas with preventative measures and considerations, because that is less virality. That's not extraordinary behavior on Twitter, but it does make disagreeable outrage part of her brand. Scott Alexander may enter a half-dozen qualifications to demonstrate whole-minded fairness in order to avoid outrage-- all for a statement that carries a tenth of the controversy. Aella's long-form content might be best described as a salacious gonzo journalism.

I've seen her deploy Gee whiz, guys, what's wrong? I'm autistic, sorry. Just asking questions ;) enough times where I try to avoid her when internet surfing. That kind of defense implies she is blindsided by an unexpected response, but this conflicts with my impression. She has demonstrated above average intelligence and emotional competence on more than a few occasions. I can't dispute the autism claim, but she seems socially aware and capable, if a little vain-- women, amirite? For myself, the reputational cost for shitposting means I get tired of the schtick and pay less attention. Others have decided the cost will be extra mean comments. I think that's bad, but given the medium it's a normal, expected amount of bad.

A curious investigator of taboo who shows us a glimpse into the psyche of sex workers, or the systems of OnlyFans, might also be controversial. I really doubt they would generate as much seething contempt as a certified shitposter. There are plenty of traditional and internet sex workers on X, aren't there? I've seen her hedge some, go through the well it's not for everyone motions, but that carries less weight when bracketed by many other instances of designed engagement. If one enjoys playing with fire and pushing boundaries, then they better find satisfaction when boundaries push back.

Aella is maybe a victim of her own success, but probably not. Criticism of her positions, advocacy, and behavior was never going to come in the form of 2000 word LessWrong posts. Surely she learned this already. If people believe they're going to run her off I believe they are mistaken. Maybe she'll return baptized and born again. Now that would make for interesting gossip.

Maybe she'll return baptized and born again.

I've been unironically praying for that – except that I presume, given her childhood faith, she is already baptized.

I have two reasons in particular to wish her well. One is that, like most, I know people who have made the normie-tier mistakes of which she has made the epic-tier versions, and I pray for their repentance. The other is that when she is talking about her (sometimes very difficult) evangelical childhood, she makes an honest effort to be fair as she understands fairness.

If she repented of her sin, then reconciled to her father such that they forgave one another, I think that would justify making the world endure a little cringeposting for a while. I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying from time to time.

I can't dispute the autism claim, but she seems socially aware and capable, if a little vain-- women, amirite?

Does she? Do you really think asking uncomfortable questions on your first date shows social awareness? This kind of asocial behavior is either performative edgelordism (edgeladysm?) or actual obliviousness (you can imagine a male nerd enumerating various "mandatory" requirements for his potential girlfriend, multiplying their prevalences and ending up with four potential soulmates in the whole country. Same energy).

Well, if I had to bet, my money would be on performative edgelordism, too.

This kind of asocial behavior is either performative edgelordism (edgeladysm?)

Yeah, that's around where I land. A soft impression. The linked essay isn't even the basis for that impression, which is older than that, but it was the last piece of hers I read. I have no will to dig for evidence on this topic.

"At social events, I keep lowkey evaluating lots of men I have faint brushes with. I notice signs of coolness - competence or bravery or something - and any time a whiff of it floats by I follow it to chat with them at parties. But my body does not like them. One man talks about his failures in a tone that implies he's uncomfortable with himself, like somewhere deep down a part of him believes he's a bad person, and it seems that many of his bids for social approval are attempts to be reassured that he is in fact okay."

She can't write "I like confident men," because that defeats large portions of the essay. There's nothing autistic about that. Most women judge confidence and, intentionally or not, use it as one gauge of attractiveness. In this case to explain a lack of attraction.

"I would have felt safer if he seemed at home among awkward questions."

She chooses to push the envelope with "awkward" or inappropriate behavior in the context of a date. As she relays to us, it's not a failure to consider or model the emotive state of others. On the contrary, she knows it is uncomfortable. Plenty of non-autistic women enjoy their little tests. Maybe autistic women do this as well. I'm no an expert in autism, autistic women, or Aella.

Autists may act cruelly or too directly in their quest to make sense of the world, but it's little things like that I picked up that suggest different explanations. She doesn't cite any of this as a reason for autism which might be unfair. Even if that is the case, logic bot behavior is probably more common among her audience.

She's like transgender people. If you embrace her because she pisses off the pro-lifers and tradLARPers, you should ask yourself "would I want my daughter emulating her?" And even if you don't have any "moral" objections, know that she's not getting what she wants out of romantic life. People see her as sexually high-status because they're projecting male standards of sexual success.(having a bunch of opposite-sex groupies) But she's written a post about being 33-years-old and struggling to find a husband:

https://aella.substack.com/p/the-difficulty-in-dating-good-men

I found it funny how, despite her very unusual views and history, she wound up in the same place as many normie high-earning careergals, struggling to find a man who earns at least as much as she does:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GpLudIca4AEQP_0?format=png&name=900x900

This isn't to say she's a bad person or should be mocked or bullied, just that you should take her opinions on sex and romance with a grain of salt.

Aesthetically, I can't summon much disgust for her. "Women are being seduced into prostitution by a female rationalist self-identified nerd and sex researcher" is not going to be a major social problem anytime soon. The "trad" stuff, that's the disease of the heart.

I honestly have to doubt at least one of the anecdotes in that first linked article, because c'mon: she's a professional escort and she doesn't recognise what is going on?

Guy sharing a ride with her back from a party. "Oh he's interested in me". Yep, that tracks. "He doesn't want to get to know me deeply? I can't see myself dating him!" No duh. He wasn't looking for the possibility of a relationship, he just wanted to find out "can we bang?"

The next guy wasn’t a date, he ended up in a uber in hour-long SF traffic with me ride sharing back from a party. I suspect he might be interested in me, because of the way he moves his hands and eyes and the quickness of his laughter. So I Investigate.

...There is no locus of hot itching curiosity shining from behind his eyes, or at least not one that I can find here in this uber. I realize he’s not deeply trying to understand me. He's unattuned. I find my body does not trust him. I think I want a relationship where we can sink in together, touch souls or something. I imagine if I tried to date him, it'd be a lot of work to get him to understand me, like I'd have to force feed him myself. I'd rather have someone who's hungry.

Girl. You met at a party and are just sharing a ride home. He's interested in "have I a chance to score with this chick?" for a one night stand, not "perchance could this fair damsel be The One who will be my blushing bride and mother to fair children?" If I can figure this out, a professional $4k/hour escort should be able to, as well!

(I have the feeling that yes, they did hook up for a casual night of sex, but she's leaving that part of the story out).

As for "why am I in my early thirties and not married yet?" well the clues are there, which maybe she's wilfully ignoring them or honestly can't see them:

I live in SF and in the cultures willing to invite me to their parties, it’s normal to casually overhear someone referring to their boyfriend and their husband in the same sentence. Every other person I meet is poly, and I know many decades-long married-with-kids poly relationships. When someone asks me “what do you do” and I say “sex work”, they say “cool my girlfriend’s a sex worker, you two should talk.” In my world, this is normal.

Yeah. But what she's not noticing is that the husband comes first, then the boyfriend when they open things up. Or the sex worker is the girlfriend, not the wife or primary partner. She will always be the bridesmaid, never the bride, when it comes to the "married with kids poly relationships" where someone will be happy to have her as a girlfriend or partner but not as "hey everyone we're getting married in the morning!"

And then maybe once in a while, I find someone who does seem whole, mostly, who has all their nerve endings pointed in my direction. But usually then they're already married with kids, or they're monogamous, or they're very sexually submissive, or they're poor in a way I’m not financially prepared to support in a world where I want children.

Again, note: already married with kids, or monogamous. Those kinds of guys are not looking for her kind of girl.

How could anyone be surprised by that outcome? What man looking for a wife wants a woman who was a prostitute and doesn’t have remorse for doing it? Like how does he come to trust her to not have sex with random men when he’s not watching her?

I found it funny how, despite her very unusual views and history, she wound up in the same place as many normie high-earning careergals, struggling to find a man who earns at least as much as she does:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GpLudIca4AEQP_0?format=png&name=900x900

Equally funny how she phrases it as "they're poor in a way I'm not financially prepared to support in a world where I want children," but when pressed, clarifies her requirements as "I would like him to have at least equal money to me".

Aella is rich; she could easily afford to support a kept man or a house husband if she wanted, as countless men have done for their wives and mistresses throughout history. This isn't about her needing a partner who can provide for her and their children. This is about her getting the ick from any man makes less money than her.

This is about hypergamy.

Aella is rich; she could easily afford to support a kept man or a house husband if she wanted, as countless men have done for their wives and mistresses throughout history.

It's not like the reverse is unknown; "huge tracts of land" isn't just a euphemism for boobies.

It's pretty rare that male golddiggers were kept men, though. Usually dashing young military officers marrying much older widows and the like.

I'm fairly sure there were some dissolute losers living large on their wives wealth, even if that wasn't the usual case.

https://aella.substack.com/p/the-difficulty-in-dating-good-men

Another stream of consciousness essay from a town bike describing (probably without meaning to) how all men just blur together and cease being distinct human beings you could bond with anymore after being run through enough? You don't say?!

It's fascinating reading something like that, where the front half is just a pastiche of the ways men are objects to her, scarcely individualized. Then the back half comes up with about a dozen potential reasons she can't seem to bond with anyone... except the correct one. Alas.

Edit: You know what, let me elaborate. I knew a guy who knew a guy who used to be hooked on heroin. The guy I knew was too, but he was telling me about another junkie he met in NA. One addict to another he told him, being slightly older and along his path of recovery, that nothing he did in life ever felt as good as being on heroin. Not meeting the love of his life, not getting married, not even the birth of his first child. They all felt good, sure. But man... nothing topped heroin. Luckily for him, support groups like NA exist to keep him from succumbing to that eternal lure. I know their failure rates are high, but I like to think, like the guy I know and still see regularly, he's chugging along on the relatively straight and narrow.

Aella has spent the better part of her life smashing her moral compass with a blunt rock in a petty act of rebellion. The single piece of human machinery that gives us feedback when we are moving along a proper path of human fulfillment. And now she's complaining that nothing feels right when she attempts to return to the path, so she gives up. Maybe there is money to be made in a "Narcissistic Internet Whores Anonymous".

that nothing he did in life ever felt as good as being on heroin. Not meeting the love of his life, not getting married, not even the birth of his first child. They all felt good, sure. But man... nothing topped heroin

I can believe it, I've been on the good stuff painkillers after a short stint in the ER. Words fail to describe the profound sense of peace and joy washing over you. Not even sex is that good.

Individual experiences must vary a lot here, I took painkillers and found it wasn't much better than being drunk.

They do seem to vary. My friend was given painkillers in hospital and had exactly the same 'all the time, when nice things happen, I think to myself that heroin was nicer' reaction that was reported above; others have said otherwise. It would be pretty neat if we could find a genetic basis for this and know who it was safe to give painkillers to.

Not just painkillers, I'm not exactly sure if it was morphine or heroin or what they use these days, but it was liquid/blood line administered and I haven't felt anything else like it. The normal painkillers you get otc in pill form don't compare either.

Aesthetically, I can't summon much disgust for her. "Women are being seduced into prostitution by a female rationalist self-identified nerd and sex researcher" is not going to be a major social problem anytime soon. The "trad" stuff, that's the disease of the heart.

What do you mean by the "trad" stuff exactly?

Also sidenote, are you Christian? Just curious.

I'm an atheist.

By "trad" I mean the anti-abortion and religious stuff. It just plain fails to do what its adherents say it will do and then poisons said adherents' minds so that they don't care about results. Tell them that all that Catholicism and abortion banning in Poland gave it among the lowest fertility rates in the European Union and they just get mad at you because you're The Enemy. People get seduced by the promises it makes "believe this is moral, it will give you X" until they accept that it's moral so they don't listen to the people who tell them they're not getting X, they just enter a circlejerk of calling things "based," "degenerate," blah blah blah.

Tell them that all that Catholicism and abortion banning in Poland gave it among the lowest fertility rates in the European Union and they just get mad at you because you're The Enemy

I recognize it is tangential snipe, bu the category of lowest fertility rates in the European Union in 2023 includes assortment of countries: Greece (90% Greek Orthodoxy), Poland and Lithuania (>70% Catholic), Spain (18% "practicing Catholic" / 38% non-religion = 15% atheist + 12% "no religion" + 11% agnostic), Italy (75% Catholic, 15% no religion), and Finland (60% nominally Lutheran, 33% believe in God). Nearly all of rest of the EU is also <1.5.

Poland disproves the notion that Polish-style Catholicism is the answer to low fertility. The other countries in the same club disprove the notion low fertility is easily explained with simple causal relationship with overall religious make-up of the country (yet in most of countries, it is often the most religious demographic subgroups that have highest fertility).

Catholics may have other arguments for the benefits of Catholicism than national fertility statistics, however.

So I read the free preview of Nate’s guest post on Aella’s Substack. If you can believe it, I think that she and the people close to her are confused as to why people respond to her with disgust. Maybe she isn’t stinky. Maybe she isn’t riddled with STDs. Maybe she adheres to the highest standards of Bayesian data hygiene. None of that had anything to do with the why the Sankey diagram went viral.

I feel really bad for the five. Imagine getting past the automated filter, then the manual filter, contacting Aella, acing the interview, obtaining a ticket, and passing the STD test, all to accidentally come in a fluffer.

From what I remember, some of the fluffers were absolute smoke shows. The one I remember was way hotter than Aella.

https://imgur.com/a/QMsEBrK (meme not a fluffer)

Pics or it didn't happen

Her article on the gangbang has links to some of the fluffers twitter/fetlife profiles.

Also re-reading the article, one of the fluffers fucked ~30 dudes herself lmfao

What the hell is a "fluffler"?

The backup singers of the gangbang

A woman in the background who keeps the man erect until it's his turn to perform with the star, usually through oral sex.

Lol. The only reason anyone knows that basic bitch's name is because she's a naked whore who preys on quokkas. If she were anon, she'd be Substacker #4000. Aella is an object lesson, because she doesn't have the self-awareness to do better. The woman literally pre-plans to have people pin her down and force her to continue with her birthday gangbang while she's - per her own description - screaming in horror. This is probably not someone who should have been left free to run her own life. But if we're going to permit people to make terrible, self-destructive, delusional decisions and also to proselytize them, then we have an obligation to counter that advocacy with scathing rebukes. And, because a large portion of the population is actually not that smart (half are below average!), then we also need to acid-treat those memes into a more easily digestible format (this is what conservatism is, generally speaking).

All of which is to say that the discomfort from being shamed is literally the entire point. If Aella having a crying breakdown because people called her a dumb, dirty whore saves 5 other girls from trying that life path, then from a utilitarian perspective the bullying is an objectively good behavior. If being less mean about it means only 2 girls are swayed, then being kind was the evil option.

And if she doesn't care for that framing, then I would encourage her to consider the entire world of philosophy besides dipshit utilitarianism - probably with some sort of suicide watch on standby.

For some quick background, aella is a prostitute.

She is a victim of abuse and molestation who very publicly demonstrates all of the ways she fails to cope with her childhood, while tempting other girls into the same path and normalizing the really disturbing coping mechanisms she's employing.

She does data science work as well

She does half-assed twitter polls. That is not data science. I don't know of anything she's done that could accurately be described as data science.

Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way.

Maybe if she would demonstrate any shame at all, then the shaming would be gentler. This is not the first time, and it will not be the last, because she refuses to change her behavior.

whether there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society? Can we somehow shame people without turning into monsters ourselves

That's exactly what's happening here. There's nothing monstrous about what's happening to her. As far as I can tell, she's richly earned all of the attention she gets, positive and negative both.

She does half-assed twitter polls. That is not data science. I don't know of anything she's done that could accurately be described as data science.

But she posts fancy looking diagrams, so that totally makes it data science, right? /s

She does half-assed twitter polls. That is not data science. I don't know of anything she's done that could accurately be described as data science

Thank you! Spot on. The confounders and limitations in her data collection are obvious.

I'm shocked by how many people on TheMotte seem to have such a visceral disgust reaction to Aella.

For my part, I'm disgusted that so many people seem to think it's okay to cyberbully celebrities. Punching is OK as long as you're punching up? That's the logic of someone who just wants an excuse to punch people. The knowledge that thousands of people who barely know anything about you have decided to hate you as a social activity is damaging to the human mind. It's cruel to do that to someone. I also think it's unhealthy to participate in an internet hate mob. It makes people petty and frivolous.

All around it's a negative for everyone involved. If I find out that someone has wrapped their identity around performatively hating someone they've never met, it lowers my opinion of them. That holds true whether the target is Elon, Aella, or Adolf Hitler. There is just no good reason to invest your emotions in someone you have never met and will never meet.

For my part, I'm disgusted that so many people seem to think it's okay to cyberbully celebrities

Saying mean things about someone online is not cyberbullying, especially when she specifically searched her name to see all the mean things people said. Also, her entire business is attention, so negative attention is just a part of the bargain she made. I have no sympathy for someone who literally courts attention receiving negative attention.

We should "cyberbully" celebrities more. They got into the business for attention. Well, you don't get to pick and choose what kind you get.

A celebrity has made themself an avatar, a role model for all their fans and haters. They are an object to be adored and criticized. Society learns and enforces norms by how celebrities are treated. You put your body and soul out to the world to be judged. So you shall be. Ever wonder why women are so much more interested in celebrity culture than men? Because women have always been the primary enforcers of morality.

Can't handle it? Pick another career. Go work a shitty office job like the rest of us.

Even this arrangement is unfair to the audience, because the celebrity gets to set the frame. See Taylor Swift annihilating her business rivals via social media to negotiate a better price on her master recordings. Her legion of haters are but a drop in the ocean for a celebrity with the wisdom to ignore it. They can't affect her.

What they can do, however, is affect the "discourse." They can inform and influence their friends and wider society about what the right and wrong things to do are. These are real stakes. While nerdy men will sit around and debate fruitlessly about the intricacies and nuances of books written by dead perverts, the people rebuking celebrities are out doing real, applied philosophy.

You're right from an individual's utility-maximizing perspective this makes no sense. It's irrational. It's wasted energy. So is voting. So are all manner of good deeds that will never be repaid in kind.

I don't hate her. Whenever I see people paying attention to her I just feel vaguely exasperated, as I find her whole schtick kind of tiresome. I am disgusted by people who don't bathe frequently (unless they have a really good excuse, like profound mental illness or paraplegia or something) and I think that's an entirely appropriate response.

For my part, I'm disgusted that so many people seem to think it's okay to cyberbully celebrities.

Talking shit about people is not "cyberbullying".

The knowledge that thousands of people who barely know anything about you have decided to hate you as a social activity is damaging to the human mind. It's cruel to do that to someone.

No one has any right to be liked, or even not hated. You have no moral right to control what other people think about you or what opinions they express of you.

Talking shit about people is not "cyberbullying".

In your opinion, what is the difference between talking shit about people and cyberbullying?

It's a bunch of people getting together and harassing an outsider as a form of entertainment and group bonding activity, and they're doing it over the internet. Sounds like cyberbullying to me.

It's a bunch of people getting together and harassing an outsider

If we were sending Aella nasty DMs, doxxing her, sending her death and rape threats, generating AI porn of her, circulating her nudes without her consent etc., you might have a point.

Someone saying "you know, I think so-and-so is something of an intellectual lightweight" on a forum is not "harassment". If you're so thin-skinned that you can't tolerate politely worded criticism like that, I don't think you have any business being a figure in the public eye (however broadly defined).

  • Harassment = disparaging the target to his face, or intentionally disparaging the target in an area where he is likely to hear the disparagement

  • "Talking shit" = disparaging the target without regard to whether he will see the discussion

As the 4chan comic goes: If you enter a thread about stuff you do not like, and now you are mad, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Who is harassing anyone? If people are on some public forum talking about how Aella is a degenerate whore or whatever, and she reads that, it's not harassement.

How should society treat a prostitute who encourages other women to become prostitutes? She's a predator. She is preying on the minds of other young women, as well as on the minds of young men.

There are countless stories from every culture in the history of the human species that portrays people like her as some form of demon that should be cast out of society at best. People aren't being as nice to her as she wants, and she wants to continue preying on them. Even this sob story about how she claims to be surprised that people don't like her is yet another attempt at hijacking the attention of people by violating sexual norms.

Yes she is a human being and I don't want her to suffer, but she should feel a nearly infinite amount of shame for the harm she has done to the people around her. I hope she figures this our and starts working to repair it.

No human being is irredeemable, and this includes her; part of that redemption is an acknowledgment that what she has been doing has been harming society. I truly hope she can figure this out, and once she does society will welcome her with open arms.

I don’t get why being a prostitute is a bad thing.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.

I can only assume there’s some sort of deep psychic/symbolic trauma associated with the making explicit of a contractual obligation that is usually left implicit.

Are you claiming that in a normal, healthy, average relationship man does 100% of childrearing and woman is there to provide sex?

Or are you claiming that in a normal, healthy, average relationship there are no children?

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex.

where and when it is supposedly the situation?

AFAIK it was never ever in no location considered the way you claim

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex.

That is not healthy or average relationship and it is not normal.

Even in the most radically transactional view of relationship this claim is simply wrong.

For start, relations where woman contributes solely sex in exchange of stuff are in fact simply prostitution.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.

The problem with prostitution is not the selling sex for resources; as you correctly note, wives have been doing the same thing for all of civilized history.

The problem with prostitutes is that provide sexual access to numerous men at the same time, thus spreading diseases, creating children of unknown paternity, and destroying their own ability to pair bond.

These are all problems even if she does it for free; hence why "slut" is as much of an insult as "whore".

Prostitution as a spot(often quite literally, in the sense of a geographically contained thing. Ancient law codes were big into defining where the red light district could be) in society probably isn't horrible; it's the spreading out from this little niche that tends to be the problem.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.

That kind of transactional relationship sounds like the opposite of normal and healthy. A healthy relationship should be based around mutual love and desire; what you described sounds like being a sugar daddy, not a partner.

Plus it’s not like women need a man’s resources to have a successful life nowadays.

That kind of transactional relationship sounds like the opposite of normal and healthy.

How many accounts — real or fictional — about relationships and marriage have you read that were written prior to the 19th century? Or from a non-Western culture (like any where arranged marriages were common). Marriage being treated to a great extent like a sort of financial/institutional merger involving two families, or a sort of "mutual physical/financial support" arrangement first, with "mutual love and desire" being a secondary factor — indeed, as something a couple deliberately builds over time — seems to be the more "normal" attitude across the history of settled human societies, with the 20th century West "all you need is love" attitudes being rather the outlier.

Edit: see also OracleOutlook's longer comment below.

financial/institutional merger involving two families

yes, and it is still quite distinct from "men trade resources and services for sex"

It's so strange to me that people's view of a normal relationship are so skewed here. It's like they turn off all their rational thinking capabilities when posting opinions about relationships on the motte.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, a single man and a single woman partner together to provide each other with resources that would be difficult for the other to get. They do this because they have a shared vision of the future, a shared project to raise the next generation.

The historical norm was for a woman to be spinning cotton, wool, or flax from sunup to sundown to make enough thread to weave enough cloth to sew into enough garments for herself, her husband, and her children. There was a gendered world - every civilization had their own norms, but they all had norms surrounding what tasks belong to women (tasks that can be done by weaker people with the tendency to get pregnant and have babies/toddlers hanging off them.) For example, in a European village a man paid taxes by giving his lord crops, while women owed their taxes in eggs.

Men needed women's labor. Women needed men's labor.

There was a weird period in the 19th-20th century where machines took over a lot of the labor that women could do, while there was much less automation of male labor. Then in the later 20th century, the women's labor that wasn't automatable went overseas to cheaper labor. This lead to more "Homemakers" outside the upper class.

But now, the majority of the time, both men and women work outside the home. Both men and women need to labor productively to keep themselves in comfort. We are reverting back to the historical norm (except for the "women taking jobs they can do while minding their own children" part. We'd probably need to repeal the CRA and some license regulations before we could get there.)

I agree with you that my initial formulation was an oversimplification, although I don't think any of this has much bearing on what makes prostitution in particular morally problematic. You could reasonably argue that prostitution is inferior to a long-term committed exclusive relationship based on certain metrics; but as I pointed out in my reply to KMC, many other heterosexual relationships would be judged inferior on the same metrics. Being single would also be judged inferior on the same metrics. But no one thinks that being single, or having a series of different monogamous partners, is morally blameworthy in the same way that prostitution is.

Prostitution dumps the sex market, which is also one of the reasons women hate sluts/whores the most.

But no one thinks that being single, or having a series of different monogamous partners, is morally blameworthy in the same way that prostitution is.

Yes they do. Lots of criticisms of serial monogamy to be had and it's actually a historical outlier that the modern west doesn't publicly worry about the plight of men not being interested in marriage.

I can only assume there’s some sort of deep psychic/symbolic trauma associated with the making explicit of a contractual obligation that is usually left implicit. engaging in that trade with many different men with different hormonal/biomarkers that disrupts pair-bonding

Plus the consequences of faking emotions on a consistent basis. Practice makes permanent.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, that exchange is mutually exclusive, for the purpose of procreation, acknowledged by the family and community of both people, and lifelong. Not sure why you didn't notice those pieces of the puzzle.

that exchange is mutually exclusive, for the purpose of procreation, acknowledged by the family and community of both people, and lifelong.

But people (non-prostitute people) break all of these conditions all the time.

People date without getting permission, they have sex without procreating, they break up, they date new people. That's a very common course for a relationship to take in 2025, and no one thinks that's as bad as prostitution.

There are trads who disapprove of this sort of arrangement of course, but even they don't compare it with prostitution afaik.

Those things are all bad in the same way that prostitution is, just less so. I'd add to the list: giving resources without even getting sex (simping), consumption of pornography, and divorce are all degenerate forms of relationships that in the ideal would be marriage.

In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes.

That is not just how it goes.

Do you believe that human emotions exist?

That is not just how it goes.

It's pretty close to how it goes.

Do you believe that human emotions exist?

I should certainly think so! I'd wager I'm at least 2-sigma above the mean in terms of the intensity and variety of emotions I experience on a daily basis.

2 sigma above the mean in terms of the intensity and variety of emotions I experience

Given that you cannot imagine the love that a man and woman would have for one another in a relationship, I doubt this.

Given that you cannot imagine the love that a man and woman would have for one another in a relationship

A couple things:

One, I'm not sure what I said that gave you this impression. Presumably you thought my description of the typical relationship as "an exchange of resources for sex" somehow precluded the presence of love in such a relationship. But I never said that.

Two, I'm not sure how my conception of love is relevant to the task of determining what critics of prostitution find morally blameworthy about prostitution. Maybe your claim is that a prostitution transaction is devoid of love, and is thereby deficient. Ok, that may very well be true. But deficiency is not the same as blameworthiness. I don't see why the loveless prostitute should be a "predator" and a "demon" simply because she is loveless. She's not stopping you from falling in love with whoever you please! Lots of people are deficient in all sorts of things. The man who drives an old beat up car is using a deficient mode of transportation in comparison to the man who drives a new sports car, but there's nothing morally blameworthy about driving an old car. Not everyone has to own everything and experience everything, and that's ok!

Furthermore, I find the assertion that the prostitute is necessarily loveless to be rather presumptuous. I see no reason why there couldn't be someone she loves; perhaps even her clients.

I really want to explore your claim about feeling more emotions than other people, but also imagining a romantic relationship as purely transactional.

Can you expand on this?

It's pretty close to how it goes.

No, it is not.

As I have experienced it, marriage is almost a perfect inversion of my thankfully-secondhand understanding of prostitution. My relationship to my wife is not commodified, it is not compartmentalized, it impacts every decision I make each day in a significant way. In the sense that engaging a Prostitute is a discrete choice, my marriage is much less of a choice and much more of a consequence, an effect rather than a cause, leaning far more on path-dependence in a way that would be incoherent if applied to prostitution. You are attempting to fit something into a discrete box whose main feature is its inability to be discretely boxed, and then you are claiming that since everything outside the discrete box isn't inside the box, it can be safely ignored.

A concrete example: if we define "haggling" as "negotiation to maximize one's own benefit at the expense of one's opposite", then haggling's role in prostitution is straightforward and practical. And yet, in a proper marriage, there is no way to productively haggle, because your opposite's interest is your own interest. Most married men will grok the maxim "happy wife, happy life"; I am not aware of an equivalent formulation for prostitutes.

Shame should be for those you love, and for when you can feel pride about them in equal or greater measure.

I think it works well as a tribal adaptation, for when someone else's actions can reflect on you personally, or when you realize that your own actions have caused a great decrease in social standing among you and your closest people.

The weaponization of shame against your out group just leads to your out group being inoculated against all shame. It is unlikely to stop their behavior long term.

I see shame as the most powerful tool in the social toolbox. It needs to be used sensibly, and using it too much and too trivially is going to make it harder to use it for the things it needs to be used for.

The modern West is in bad shape precisely because it no longer uses shame. No job? Fine. Do lots of drugs? Can’t read or speak in complete sentences? Rob people, break property? Even lower level stuff like going out in public looking deranged/half-naked/just-rolled-out-of-bed? We no longer think a person should feel ashamed of themselves for doing that. As a result, we have wide swaths of society that no longer bother with anything but the bare minimum, and some even expect to be rewarded for that. Like, Yes, you got off drugs and applied for a job at Wendy’s. It’s an improvement, sure, but it doesn’t mean much.

I see shame as the most powerful tool in the social toolbox. It needs to be used sensibly, and using it too much and too trivially is going to make it harder to use it for the things it needs to be used for.

This basic idea is one of the major breaking points between the ancient Cynics and the ancient Stoics.

The Cynics were famous for their shamelessness, which they achieved through rigorous exercises designed to desensitize themselves to shame.

Zeno of Citium was a student of Crates, the third scholarch of the Cynics, and he was assigned the task of carrying a pot full of lentil soup through the pottery district of Athens. Lentils were an incredibly low class food, and carrying them out in the open was basically admitting you were gutter trash. Zeno, who had been a wealthy merchant before a shipwreck stranded him in Athens, kept trying to hide the lentils under his cloak and be as inconspicuous as possible with them. Crates realized what his student was doing, and broke the vessel Zeno was carrying the lentils in, causing lentils to dribble all over Zeno's legs, and embarrassing him enough that he fled the pottery district, with his teacher calling after him, "Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you."

Zeno was constitutionally incapable of cultivating the extreme shamelessness that Cynicism demanded, so he founded a less severe philosophical school that found a balance between the extremes of Cynicism, and the irrational and unvirtuous masses: Stoicism. In many ways it was still quite demanding, and had its own exercises designed to instill excellent character and healthy emotional responses in its adherents, but in a way that was a lot more attractive and achievable by a wide variety of people.

I agree with you Maiq, that shame is an important social tool, but I also wholeheartedly believe that cultivating a resistance to shame is important as well. Having a strong enough moral character to go against the crowd or the people in charge is important. It's the kind of strength that let Socrates refuse to obey an unlawful and immoral order while serving in the army during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. It's the strength that let Helvidius Priscus speak truth to power to the Emperor Vespasian, for which he was sentenced to death - a sentence he submitted to with equanimity.

I think this is a weird aspect of how the idea of freedom of speech has developed in the West. Nowadays we view it as a right that governments are obligated to protect, a limit on state power. But for the Greeks and Romans, the virtue of parrhesia (=frankness of speech) was something that a person of excellent character did because it was the right thing to do in spite of the risk of consequences to themselves. In a way, I think the thing missing from all sides of the cancel culture debate are the Helvidius Priscus-es. Where are the sages of strong moral character on the Left or Right, who rather than whining about the injustice of their cancellation, simply nod and say, "You will do your part, and I will do mine: it is your part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear: yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow."

I think it is more of a symptom of the breakdown of communities. Shame works pretty well for someone within your congregation.

Someone with no attachments to others? No family, no religious community, no coworkers, etc. it's gonna bounce right off them.

I mean I agree with that, but also that, as a culture we’ve kinda given up on even the idea of certain behavior being shameful or holding ourselves to a decent standard. In the case of Aelia this would include not being a prostitute, and certainly not promoting it online. But even in other areas, it’s like all of our ideas about how one ought to behave are seen through the idea of “it doesn’t bother me, therefore it’s fine,” almost to the point that pointing out these obvious deviations from desired behaviors are not to be noticed let alone remarked upon and only a scold would think of telling the person to stop making these bad decisions even if they are horrible for them, people around them, or society at large. And 8 think this is ultimately the cause of a lot of social rot.

I don’t think we can ever get back to small communities or whatever, but I think especially for public figures, calling out bad behavior is generally useful in maintaining some decency in society.

Of course we'd give up on that idea.

For that idea to propagate successfully it needs to confer some kind of tangible benefit. In an atomized society where people can pick and choose their communities at will, why would you feel shameful or hold yourself to any standard whatsoever?

If you were shamed you used to be ostracized from your community. Nowadays, what's the point?

The weaponization of shame against your out group just leads to your out group being inoculated against all shame.

Long ago, a commenter discussing the Culture War claimed that Red Tribe needed to build a "independent status economy". The term stuck with me ever since, and is basically what you're describing here.

I think they just nominated Trump as king and kind of based all social standing on his level of approval. Which works as a quick way to build an alternative system, but maybe is not the best long term solution.

The red tribe isn't a super-coherent group, it's a loose coalition of groups that feel mistreated by the blue tribe(which seems like it is a group). Your Cajun and your UAW worker have barely more in common than either of them do with a NYC girlboss. Hence it can't have a single status hierarchy.

Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way.

I just don't think this is how shame works. If what you're doing deserves to be treated with dignity and without antagonism, you should not be shamed! In fact, it will probably be very difficult to shame you if you actually know that you're conducting yourself in a dignified fashion and feel strongly that the people who suggest otherwise are in the wrong. I don't think it's plausible to accurately convey that people should not wish to turn out like Aella without flatly saying that she is an unshowered prostitute and thus should not be treated as a serious person.

If what you're doing deserves to be treated with dignity and without antagonism, you should not be shamed! In fact, it will probably be very difficult to shame you if you actually know that you're conducting yourself in a dignified fashion and feel strongly that the people who suggest otherwise are in the wrong.

I doubt this very much. Someone immigrating from a country where women are expected to bare their breasts in public would be readily shamed walking around downtown NYC. Conversely, I've met women in the Peace Corps who ended up in countries where they were shamed for wearing shirts and went with the flow, despite their discomfort. A hedge fund manager would be shamed mercilessly were he transplanted to a trailer park in a suit with a briefcase full of whatever they put in their briefcases, and a trailer park bro would be shamed for driving his ATV around Martha's vineyard. Self-righteousness won't get you very far if you're literally being ostracized by every person you meet.

That's the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. You can still sweep the steps of your trailer, and be content that you've brought a bit of cleanliness and order to the world, even if the neighbors scoff. You don't actually have to be a pretentious, stuck-up dick about it,

from "how and why to be ladylike (for women with autism)":

when you’re sexually attractive to a man you’re talking to, it hijacks some of his attention, and it’s not easy for him to wrest it back. ... the thing is he won’t really mind when he feels like you might be having sex, but if it ever becomes clear that that’s definitely not happening, then frequently the tool he will use to wrest some of his hijacked attention back from you, is feeling negative feelings about you. another aspect is that he might feel that he could never hijack attention in the same way, that he could look good but what you are doing to him is something he’s incapable of–so the easiest, most available go-to negative is resentment, which is very poisonous. people don’t like feeling manipulated unreciprocally without payoff.

and that is very similar to the dynamic I see going on with Aella and the ex-rat diaspora here, and other places. I see a burning, seething resentment far in excess of what she's actually said or done. For this particular stunt, I think Amadan is probably right and it's at least half an act, but nevertheless, I think people should try and cool their emotions about her. - just chill? Live and let live.

As someone on twitter said: (can't be bothered to go find it) "Aella is what first-principles thinking actually looks like". That's what is so great about her. If that lead her to heroic quantities of LSD, a high body count, and an unorthodox bathing schedule.. well, so be it. She has honest to god genuine curiosity. Yes, often wrapped in attention-bait trolling, but curiosity nonetheless. I don't follow her, but I'm always pleased when some article or tweet of hers comes down the feed challenging a taboo that no one else will touch. Agree with her or not, one Aella is more valuable than a thousand haters shouting "boo! whore!"

Are you suggesting that the only reason people find Aella annoying is because they find her sexually desirable but know that they will never get this, they will never get this?

First off, textbook Bulverism. Second: I can't speak for everyone here, but I'm not attracted to people who smell bad, and even if she showered every day, she's not my type.

"If a man appears to dislike you, the only possible explanation is that he's mad because he knows he'll never get to fuck you" strikes me as both as a transparent cope and far more "objectifying" towards women than most comments I've made which have resulted in this accusation being hurled at me. Sometimes straight men just find you annoying for the same reasons they'd find another man annoying.

Also while her rates are high, isn't her fan club by and large very high income? They could afford her if they wanted.

when you’re sexually attractive to a man you’re talking to, it hijacks some of his attention, and it’s not easy for him to wrest it back. ... the thing is he won’t really mind when he feels like you might be having sex, but if it ever becomes clear that that’s definitely not happening, then frequently the tool he will use to wrest some of his hijacked attention back from you, is feeling negative feelings about you. another aspect is that he might feel that he could never hijack attention in the same way, that he could look good but what you are doing to him is something he’s incapable of–so the easiest, most available go-to negative is resentment, which is very poisonous. people don’t like feeling manipulated unreciprocally without payoff.

This reads like a woman projecting the mild shame she feels at her own sexuality ("hijacked attention") onto men.

Her analysis seems reasonable to me. We had a poster a little while ago who wished it was socially acceptable to join a monastery because he was tired of being jerked around (unintentionally) by pretty girls who would never have anything to do with him.

To me, it seems like a perfectly reasonable description of one possible thought process of an onlooker.

If we evaluate everything from a position of intellectual titillation then yeah, bring it on. But that's not what anyone does. So why should someone like this get a pass? There are plenty of people who think a single person shouting 'boo whore' is more valuable than a thousand Aellas.

This is just spiritualizing Slick’s antisociality. (Surely we can deadname an influential rationalist court prostitute when her name has so much metaphorical import?). Traditionally, there are two kinds of women that men have nothing but respect and reverence toward: committed virgins and faithful mothers. No normal man feels resentment to these women. There’s a reason Koreans worship K-Pop idols only when they know they aren’t having sex, and then lash out when they do have sex. Virgins and mothers are entirely outside the sociosexual competition. A women having sex but not with you is usually the thing that breeds resentment in men. But Slick’s lifestyle of having sex with everyone is inviolable to any resentment based on envy. No same man envies the man paying for a prostitute. She is just gross.

I think people should try and cool their emotions about her. - just chill? Live and let live.

Well, who gets to let their impulses run wild? I enjoy the story of Saint Joan of Arc beating the prostitutes out of her military camp. This fills me with a pleasure that is both more abiding and more prosocial than Slick’s. Why not let the righteous “live and let live”? Who gets to live without stress and vexation, the righteous or the degenerate? Okay, “it’s illegal to do that”, we can imagine a world where it’s not, but in any case we can at least rebuke her. And rebuking her is to chill, because it satisfies the righteous person’s sense of morality.

She has honest to god genuine curiosity

Generally people stop being praised for curiosity by their teen years. This is an example of the perverse hijacking of attention that Slick is able to accomplish. She is treated online like someone who is not actually an adult with moral reasoning, but someone who deserves constant coddling.

Generally people stop being praised for curiosity by their teen years.

You say that like it's a prescriptive standard and therefore anyone praised for curiosity is being treated like a child. I happen to think curiosity remains valuable beyond teen years, and more than than, since in many people it remains in short supply it should be encouraged.

Surely we can deadname an influential rationalist court prostitute when her name has so much metaphorical import?

I don't care about "deadnaming." But unless she actually changed her name to Aella, I prefer the social norm that avoids casual and unnecessary doxxing.

Yeah. I was going to say, negative feelings are less likely to arise when an attractive woman won't sleep with you because she is flat out waiting for marriage.

It's when she is clearly having sex with other dudes but for some reason rejecting it with you when the feelings of inadequacy and the male sexual competition drive speak the loudest.

A woman who opts partially out of the sexual marketplace, and dresses and behaves accordingly, is still going to stir feelings in men, but easier to rein those feelings in when its just known that NOBODY is getting the prize, so rejection isn't specific to you.

I’m not sure this is true - nuns have been the subject of male desire for ever, as have Catholic girls and lesbians. And simultaneously the subject of mild resentment - general rejection is still rejection.

Rejection is rejection. No two ways about it.

But "unfair" rejection, when you can look over and see the guy next to you got accepted though he appears equally or maybe less qualified, is what triggers the envy and resentment.

Its not nearly limited to romantic pursuits either. Job interviews, team sports, elections.

I dunno, I think men find it more tolerable to compete for the hand of the 'fair maiden' who is making everyone play the game to win her affections, than to have to face the reality that the maiden isn't so fair after all and they were burning efforts trying to get her to pay heed, meanwhile she's banging Sir Lancelot on the side and was never actually considering his proposal.

Catholic schoolgirls are probably a teen fetish as much as anything else, and lesbians are a threesome fantasy, right?

Nuns maybe, but it seems far less widespread than the other two.

I think the darker fantasy in both cases, which you see less often now for political reasons, is they’ll give it up for me.

E.g. James Bond and Pussy Galore. The old, anti-gay attitude is, ‘I’ll show you a real man’. Even the threesome fantasy is not about being used as a temporary novelty by a couple who are devoted to each other but not to you, but requires they be at least somewhat interested in the male partner.

The nun fetish is more about the taboo transgression than any sort of resentment about unavailability. If they were just random women who pledged in a non-spiritual manner not to have sex, there wouldn't be the same type of fetish about it. Like the incest stuff that's taken over the world for some reason.

Like the incest stuff that's taken over the world for some reason.

It costs nothing for the actors to say the word "step-X", so they do. Easy to dub out, too. (I think its prevalence far outstrips those who actually have this fetish for that reason.)

As someone on twitter said: (can't be bothered to go find it) "Aella is what first-principles thinking actually looks like". That's what is so great about her. If that lead her to heroic quantities of LSD, a high body count, and an unorthodox bathing schedule.. well, so be it. She has honest to god genuine curiosity

Eh, she is curious I agree. She has that particular blindness of rationalists though, where they ignore almost all of human history and throw out all religion, myths, and pre-modern society as full of complete idiots. I can't really respect a thinker who makes such a huge blunder personally. Though I used to be there myself.

However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.

I agree with this paragraph broadly, but I also see people jumping from this to claiming that Aella has been "bullied" or that people have been "cruel" to her. From what I can tell from the original link to the tweet in your post, she had to actually search her name in order to find these acts of shaming. If these tweets weren't directed at her or perhaps her immediate peers, I don't see how these could be acts of bullying or cruelty. It is perhaps uncouth, even shameful, to speak ill of someone else in a public forum, but it is neither bullying nor cruel. It's only when it's persistent and directed at the target in an unavoidable or difficult-to-avoid way that it can cross that line.

As far as I can tell from reading the post and the tweet, she's just upset that strangers are speaking ill of her and there aren't enough other strangers defending her in response. This seems like entirely a problem she invented for herself by deciding to place boundaries on things that strangers on the internet talk about with each other concerning her. The "I consent!/I consent!/I don't!" meme comes to mind.

I'd probably try to thread a needle to avoid cruelty without avoiding discouragement. Rather than insulting her directly, mostly ignore her, and have a laugh at people who take her seriously (and especially at those who take her literally).

I don't see much reason to disbelieve that she was abused for much of her early life, for different definitions of abuse, but I do think that's pretty good reason to think that her attitudes towards a lot of different things are going to be... not particularly useful to normal people or to producing a functioning culture.

Edit:

Some of her stunts include things like tattooing her name on the body of men who have sex with her

Tattooing a name has a long history in low-class cultures, that's not that bad though somewhat out of place for Bay Areans rather than dock workers. Wasn't it tattooing the "recreational body count" on the 100th guy? Much weirder.

The Motte is in fact the first rat-adjacent space in which I have noticed how much seething hatred she seems to inspire in certain quarters. It seems... hard to determine why it's so extreme, but at the same time totally unsurprising that it is there? After all, she has consciously and openly built her social status by entering a community of nerds starved for female attention and selectively dangling hers before them, making a show of being simultaneously promiscuous and picky to come across as the stereotypical "slut who will sleep with everyone but you" to almost everyone simultaneously, with echoes of the circle crusher trope as well. On top of that, her audience includes a large number on the alt-right~trad larper spectrum (see this very forum), whose role compels them to reach for the KJV vocabulary when facing people in her line of work, as well as redpillers who seem to take particular offense at the "rational camgirling" of her oeuvre that is essentially gender-flipped redpill advice (under the men extract sex = women extract resources homomorphism), and few people enjoy having the UNO reverse card pulled on them.

For the record, though, I've actually always enjoyed her posts, and would be sad if there are no more. I always kind of assumed she knew what she was doing and was just okay with the rock-bottom agreeableness lifestyle, so did anything actually change (The ranks of the white knight guard thinned too much? The haters became more numerous or determined than before?) or should I read this as her having somehow managed to remain in denial about the reaction until now?

It sounds like the internet stuff started leaking out into her real life a bit too much, and that triggered an existential crisis.

The endless "Though experiment: what if a scenario where pedo stuff is not actually harmful, or is at least the least harmful option?" assuredly plays a large part.

Ah. Well, apart from the obvious dimension that it is edgy sacred-values trolling, in her case it really doesn't sound so much like particular sympathy for pedos as like a sex worker's spin on the usual lesswronger affectation of "I am still resentful about my childhood and think everyone like me should have been allowed to fast-forward to my adult life as a kid"? The standard version is everyone from Pope Scott I to >half of this forum arguing for abolition of mandatory schooling.

I don't think I noticed that, somehow. What sort of "pedo stuff" are we talking about, on the spectrum from toddler rape to the American "that bikini pic? She was 17 years and 364 days old, you monster"?

Well, in addition to what's been mentioned, some of the notable ones include this, this and this.

/images/17497538068451805.webp

Nicholas Decker is a piece of work.

Who is this person? I've never heard of them before.

This is where I first heard about them (?).

Decker is the one who said it was good to murder the Tsar's small children because their genetics and education might have made them better than average, right?

Really drives home how no one ever considers themselves the villain.

I don't know if he/they/whatever said that.

No, that was a twitter commie. Decker is an ancap who throws out spicy takes.

Huh. Now I need to track that other guy down and see if they had a similar pattern of flags or something.

Let me preface that I haven't opened twitter in nearly 2 years and have no clue who Aella is. My moot just shares drama updates on discord and he thinks this was due to the fact that she appeals to the low value males, which pisses off radfems. But I don't understand the thought process behind openly tweeting sus pedo bait like this just weeks after the FBI came down on several members of the 764 group, some of whom were on twitter.

I would put these in the "edgy sacred values trolling" (see below) and/or "America" category, which for me makes sense given that I'm currently (back) in a country where the age of consent is 14.

Yes, individually these and the below examples are edgy sacred values trolling, but the thing is the pattern.

The one I saw mentioned (and I have no idea if this is true) was "An elderly woman will be tortured to death unless you have sex with a six year old. So, what are you going to do? Explain your reasoning and moral valences for your answer" (that's not the exact wording but the essence was 'would you/would you not rape a six year old to save an old woman from a horrible death?')

The only way that works is if the six year old consents to the sex, and how the hell is a six year old child going to consent to sex with an adult in any meaningful way? But if she thinks "yes a six year old can consent" due to "I was six when an adult had sex with me, and it makes me feel less like a victim to pretend I consented" then that makes some kind of sense.

This doesn't sound like "pedo stuff" so much as the usual exercise of pissing off normies by asking them to trade off sacred values (the concept has been floating around the LWsphere for a long time, I thought there was a canonical SSC citation but couldn't find it). I think parsing "so is A or B more sacred, in a contrived scenario where you have to choose between them" as "I want you to profane against both A and B" is just part of what sacredness feels like from the inside.

(Probably in fact here B is just considered more sacred, so it just loses in the same way "kidneys for money" invites the "you are an evil cannibal turbocapitalist" attack)

An elderly woman will be tortured to death unless you...

Can I say that for all human-constructed trolley problems, I categorically place the moral blame for all outcomes on the constructor, not the one holding the switch? I get it they're unavoidable in some cases from natural causes, but this case is really just negotiating with terrorists.

I understand the catharsis in cheating to win the Kobayashi Maru challenge but it really is the cop out answer. Oh, so you're guarded and cynical and don't want to discuss sacred values? That's fine, you can use this maneuver to get out of it when it's an inappropriate time to have the discussion but are you genuinely just committed to never exploring which of your values plays master to the others? Too afraid of judgement for making a call?

Fighting the hypothetical is small talk, it's a dodge. It exchanges a kind of low grade cleverness to avoid substance.

I know which of my values are the masters. I have no interest in performing a puppet show for some stranger's amusement. I'm perfectly fine with blitzing through the online survey trolley problems to be told at the end "well you are consistent at least, you horrible monster" because I know the purpose of such surveys is to persuade me around to their way of holding sacred values, and I don't care if I'm thought of as a horrible monster by a bunch that I consider evil idiots.

Yes, the valid answer here is "Imprison or murder or otherwise incapacitate whoever setup this. Or at least attempt to do so".

Not going along their insanity. And note that promises that they will not do both anyway seem to be not trustworthy.

yeah, my position on the fat man problem is "shove the guy who created this problem in the first place onto the track".

Possibly relevant link: AI Child Porn Will Probably Save Real Children

Child porn is created when people get paid to make child porn. The rarer you make it, the more they get paid. The best way to protect children is to kill the economic demand. Flood the market with AI generated, freely accessible stuff that's created with zero harm to kids.

This is by far my most controversial tweet, for reasons that are now obvious to me but were not at the time I tweeted it.

People somehow have interpreted this as me supporting child sexual assault, which is confusing to me but makes more sense if I model people as being LLMs that get triggered if you say too many negatively-flavored keywords too close together.

This is your brain on utilitarianism.

Sometimes it just doesn't matter what the cost/benefit tradeoff is, it's still wrong.

This is your brain on deontology. Sometimes it is better if fewer people suffer with less intensity.

Well, with that one, I concur with the argument. Fight me?

She's probably right but damn if that isn't the most autistic thing ever. It is not new that people will treat anything short of maximal condemnation of child porn as being pro-child abuse. I don't think that it should be that way, because it's better for said abused children if we can rationally discuss ways to better disincentivize what's happening to them. But for better or for worse that's how people are, they can handle zero rational discussion on this topic and I would say she should've known that.

The problem is that if you normalise certain activities through porn, they will eventually bleed through into the mainstream (e.g. for a recent example, heterosexual anal sex now being part of the expected sexual repertoire after formerly being something only or mostly found in porn; see here for 2014 'pressured into having anal sex' followed by 2018 'nah it's normal and fine' from the same magazine).

So normalising child porn may not lead to "nobody will ever have real life sex with kids", the same way that we still have rape and sexual assault even though there is access to porn. There's arguments tat availability of porn leads to less rape, but not no rape.

But for better or for worse that's how people are, they can handle zero rational discussion on this topic

Okay, but guys who have no other sexual outlets than watching porn still want real life sexual encounters and even relationships. A paedophile (or should I use the preferred euphemism of 'Minor Attracted Person'?) may still desire a real sexual relationship with a child, even if 'as realistic as real' AI-generated child porn is available. And if the acceptance of using that AI porn means that over time, it wears down any resistance about "I can't have this in reality, that's wrong or society disapproves"? What then?

Yes, I realise I'm going for worst-case scenarios, but I am pessimist enough to think we should plan for worst-case scenarios. Making AI child porn legal, then finding out that "holy crap, this only inflames the desires of those using it, conditions them to think of it as normal, and then they try it in real life*, how were we to know?" would be the worst of all possible worlds.

*Presumably the AI-generated porn would have happy, laughing, fully-consenting six year olds engaging in these acts with adults, which my ignorant self can't help but think would condition the user to imagine that real six year olds would consent and be happy doing it. Unless you're producing stuff for the people who want and need 'no, I want crying and screaming and begging to stop' fantasy material, which may be a step too far for society until some brave pioneer breaks the taboo of producing 'you won't believe it's not real three year old rape!' stuff.

EDIT: Before anyone gets on to me, yes I agree that fake three year old rape porn is much better than the real thing. Best of all is to put out the eyes of watchers of said porn with sporks, but if we have to have it, then fake three year olds instead.

I don't think you have to normalize it if you make it legal. There's no need to put "literal toddlers" next to "teens", "mature" and "shemales" up on PornHub.

Just like in some countries addicts can get injected with heroin at government-run clinics, the same approach can be used there: pedophiles can visit government-run clinics, where a soundproof room with a PC securely connected to a government-run AI CSAM server is theirs for X minutes a week.

If it's legal, it will become normalised. If it's legal to have AI-generated porn, and it's legal to make, distribute, and consume AI generated child porn, then by what rules or laws do you tell AI Pornhub "sure, fake me up some incest porn with barely-legal sixteen year old hot blonde twins but never oh never six year olds"?

Gay marriage is the ur-example here: we went pretty damn quick from "gay marriage will not affect you in the slightest, if you don't like gay marriage then don't get gay married" to "well now everyone surely agrees that gay marriage is moral and normal and only horrible monster bigots could ever have objected to it".

Porn is about selling what society considers taboo/shameful to those willing to pay for it. Blue clubs and stag movies were early versions, as were the jokes about barbers and "something for the weekend" as they would sell condoms on the side. Oral sex is shocking and depraved? Even prostitutes won't do it (as in the case of the Marquis de Sade where an early trial had a prostitute testify that he wanted her to perform certain unnatural acts)? Well we'll show it in porn because it's the shocking spicy act people want to see and then over time that leaks into the mainstream so that now blowjobs are now just another normal act people do.

AI kiddie porn is the most taboo? Even the AI-generated stuff? You don't want to go to the government centre to access it? Never fear, for the right money we'll sell it to you so you can consume it at home. And then it goes onto the mainstream porn sites. Because after all, it's legal and even the government is providing it for the MAPs at their centres!

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"shemales" up on PornHub.

PornHub got with the program, the category is called "trans" now.

Though I don't think transwomen are particularly happy about it either way.

Uh, did she really believe harlots are going to be well liked or have a good reputation in the public sphere?

Given the number of women I've seen intrude into forums on reddit when men get asked about if body count matters and instantly accuse them of being 'insecure' or proclaiming that it does not, no matter how many men say otherwise... maybe?

Most promiscuous women seem to draw a hard line between themselves and actual sex workers, even if broader society often doesn’t.

Like, nobody sees Anna-Nicole Smith, (briefly)successful though she might be, in a positive light- including women who sleep around and show their tits to strange men for free.

The negative stereotype of whores may not revolve about their promiscuity, but it is still there.

She says later on that:

I'm a meme, hating on me is cool and fueled by disgust response and sexism. You can gain points in your local tribe by saying I'm stinky....

etc.

Then she goes basically says later (can't find it now) that though she knows she's breaking taboos, she thought being kind and honest and data driven would be enough to break the stigma and have people treat her with respect, basically. And to be fair to her she does seem to be doing that stuff. (Idk about nice but I don't follow her that closely.)

So sounds like she sort of assumed she could be a prostitute and people would still like her if her other virtues were good enough. Sadly she has found out the hard way that this is not the case.

Then she goes basically says later (can't find it now) that though she knows she's breaking taboos, she thought being kind and honest and data driven would be enough to break the stigma and have people treat her with respect, basically. And to be fair to her she does seem to be doing that stuff.

Idk if this is actually a thing, but I'm recognizing a pattern here (lol). There seems to be a group of people that I've noticed, broadly on the left, that apparently think that saying something I find completely reprehensible in a nicer way, it would make me agree with it more. Like if they asked me nicely enough to rape my daughter, that I'd somehow be convinced (purposefully hyperbolic example). Outside of Aella, the whole SAM (Speaking with American Men) initiative is indicative of this line of thinking. SAM seems to be focused on how to "market" Democrat's ideas to men instead of finding ideas that men actually want. I don't know if this is just me or if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just recognizing too many patterns. To me, it's back asswards, but what the hell do I know.

The right used to feel this way too, didn’t they? Until wokeness got really going.

There was the attitude of, “look, I’m being very polite and reasonable as I make my argument for why Thatcher was right / why it makes me uncomfortable that my home town is being taken over by foreigners. Can’t we just have a civilised conversation about this?”

I suppose that’s not quite the same, as there isn’t the presumption of agreement.

I think the pro-Capitalism and pro-liberal-democracy portions are more prone to thinking that their positions are obviously correct and that if someone doesn’t agree with them then it must be because they didn’t understand the arguments.

I suppose that’s not quite the same, as there isn’t the presumption of agreement.

That's the real difference for me too. There's less of this "voting against your interest" messaging on the right. It seems that if you disagree with the left, in their eyes, you're either stupid or evil.

Outside of Aella, the whole SAM (Speaking with American Men) initiative is indicative of this line of thinking. SAM seems to be focused on how to "market" Democrat's ideas to men instead of finding ideas that men actually want. I don't know if this is just me or if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just recognizing too many patterns.

It's not just you; I did a post on my Tumblr last week noting it as one of the three recurring elements in discussions about SAM. It's also part of my teacher/classroom analogy, specifically, the 'well, if some of the kids aren't absorbing the lesson, it's because the teacher isn't presenting in properly — she just needs to figure out those kids' particular "learning style" and tailor her instruction accordingly' part. (I'm also reminded a bit of a couple of people I've known who unironically endorsed Orwellian "duckspeak" — though not by that term, of course — as the ideal of human communication.)

tumblr in anno domini 2025

But yeah you completely articulated some of my feelings on this subject. Great writeups.

For what it's worth I have also noticed this pattern. There seems to be this presumption that disagreement must stem from misunderstandings or poor messaging rather than sincere values differences.

Im not suggesting that we liquidate the undesirables im saying that we should seriously consider the positive effects of mass euthanasia on overall quality of life.

There seems to be this presumption that disagreement must stem from misunderstandings or poor messaging rather than sincere values differences.

Or even worse, it's because you're stupid or evil (or both).

you can't possibly believe that illegal immigration is bad for the country so you must actually be a secret racist trying to get rid of brown people

Do you have more background info? I am surprised how negative here the reaction is too. I will come out as saying that while I didnt follow her I often found her insightful to read (whithout necessarily agreeing).

This isn't really a "rationalist" forum in the old sense, and there is much tension between the rationalists that treat her as beyond reproach and the exiles around here. Not unlike how Scott's shine has faded for many people here, and that's how we end up two or three forums removed. I think both Aella and Scott have wildly overrated beliefs in the value of their surveys, for example.

She's a master baiter who hit her limit regarding the consequences of her baiting, who promotes a lifestyle that would be an unmitigated disaster for the vast majority of people, and either doesn't seem to accept the consequences of that lifestyle or puts on a façade of not understanding the consequences as part of her baiting-persona. She tries to toe an impossible line. Too many people take Joe Rogan seriously, but my perception is that Joe doesn't take himself seriously, and that's an important difference.

I think the contrast in reaction to Nicholas Decker was mentioned as one of the last straws for her, and that makes sense. The truly consistent people continued to consider him a hateable idiot even after the stunt photo, and did not switch to calling him "based."

Is this the same Nicholas Decker who wrote the "when to kill Trump" essay or whatever?

Among other "utilitarian caricature" positions, yes

Yep, also he defended zoophilia.

I look forward to his polyamorous wedding with Aella after a tearful, twitter-gangbang based reconciliation. Just like in the movies!

That doesn't sound like any movie I watched.

Link is empty. What was the stunt photo?

https://archive.is/z7dIw

Context

Nah I mean she didn't provide much evidence afaik, she just said she searched her name and was looking through the reams of vitriol with nobody defending her and that's what hurt her the most.

Why are you surprised how negative the reaction is? She is a prostitute, and this is a (sadly) mostly conservative forum now.

No. Shame is a useful social tool, but it is not a precisely controlled spigot. Invariably some people will judge more harshly an activity that is judged to be problematic than you had planned.

Hate the sin, not the sinner, is a nice idea but we can see from history how it works out. Some number of people will hate the sin and the sinner and will act upon it in ways you do not like. We've seen it in Christianity and we've seen it with cancel culture.

That doesn't mean shame should not be used. Just be aware it is not a precise instrument. Some people who do the the shamed activity or are the shamed type, will likely suffer harm.

If you think x is bad then be prepared that some looney at some stage will murder a hooker or something and justify it through the same rationale you used to shame it. You may consider yourself slightly responsible. You may be right. As long as that is the cost you are willing to confront head on of your ideology then thats all you can really do. Social norms have to be enforced. Shame is a powerful tool in service to that objective. As with every tool evaluate the cost/benefit trade off before you use it.

The first thing I learned about Aella is that she only takes two showers a month (1 shower for every ~9 bowel movements). I have an instinctive revulsion towards people who smell bad, but nothing I've learned about her since has persuaded me she has anything interesting or insightful to offer, quite apart from her presumably foul body odour. I'm convinced that the exalted social status she seemed to enjoy in nerdy circles for the last few years, she only achieved by surrounding herself with men for whom talking to a woman who was even mid in attractiveness (hell, talking to a woman without a penis) was a tremendous novelty, and shamelessly appealing to their nerdy interests (funnel charts of gangbang outcomes, ugh). All of these white knights suddenly rushing to her defense feels extremely Zoe Quinn-coded to me, and for much the same reasons.

In summary, bitch you stink. I'm willing to live and let live up to a certain point (I don't really care that she's a sex worker, or polyamorous, or a habitual drug user), but I'm not going to pretend that hygiene and grooming are optional, or a "Western patriarchical construct" or whatever. People who refuse to bathe frequently or ignore normal standards of hygiene and grooming should feel ashamed of themselves.

You will be pleased to know that I haven’t experimented with it but I’m open to believing that modern people wash far too much.

Depending on their genes, many people don’t actually seem to produce much body odour and most animals don’t AFAIK smell foul if they aren’t washed daily.

The historical standard was regular dry wipe-downs with a linen cloth and baths maybe once a month; the theories I’ve heard that our oil glands are in constant overdrive from all the hot water seem plausible to me, although that doesn’t mean they’re true.

My personal experience of working at a building which hosted multiple nerd conventions makes me slow to privilege the idea that modern humans bathe too much.

Hmm, fair point. Though I doubt those people have a good diet and other routines for maintaining personal health, which might cause them to smell worse than they would otherwise.

Halitosis is also a problem for some people.

I have to say I find it hard to understand why you care so much. Even if she does smell bad (which neither of us can know one way or the other, as we will never see her in person), what's it to you (as you will never experience the bad smell)? If her hygiene practices don't inflict any actual cost upon you, I don't see why it matters one way or the other to you.

Why do you care about what he cares about? So what if somebody has a chat about poor body hygiene of somebody else - what is it to you? Do you often go around snooping on conversations you are not interested in, so you can deliver some petty sermons about the fact, that you do not like their conversations and that they should talk about something else?

I think you might be confused as to the purpose of a discussion board.

It's almost never about the personal impact of the transgression on the transgressor themselves; it's about modeling and justifying the behavior to people for whom it would very much be harmful (i.e. the mass of the hoi polloi).

If the only thing I know about someone is that they refuse to bathe frequently, my opinion of them will be lowered significantly. Among other things, it's tremendously inconsiderate behaviour. It may well be the case that Aella is a genuinely intelligent and perceptive person in spite of being smelly and dirty: I'm just saying that, after reading a substantial chunk of her writing, I haven't seen any evidence that that's the case. I don't understand why so many people are falling over themselves to sing the praises of someone who ultimately just seems like a mid, pretentious sex worker who smells bad.

I'm wondering, I suppose, whether there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society?

Yes. No different from prisons: early, consistent enforcement to establish a deterrent against escalating degeneracy/crime past the point of no return.

In my opinion, the attacks on her are warranted and she deserves even harsher social ostracization. Any pressure that a person can legally apply against her is justified. She is a force for evil in the world. The harm she causes the country is worse than the harm of a murderer.

  • She promotes a lifestyle that is highly anti-natal, and she pushes it against a high-iq people population (rationalists) who should be having more children. These high-iq people almost always have a cognitive vulnerability of poor intuition regarding social consequences.

  • She promotes a lifestyle that damages wellbeing. Polyamory is not conducive to longterm wellbeing.

  • She pollutes discourse by turning everything into sex and fetishes. All e-whores really need to be excluded from online discourse.

  • Her public ideas are intuitively disgusting to normal people, and disgust is an objectively painful sensation, meaning every day she issues forth more and more pain in the world.

I do not like the idea that someone can push a horrific way of life and we have to accept this because they are “nice”. It doesn’t matter how nice you are if you’re telling people to eat lead paint chips. She is evil because the consequences of what she promotes is evil. And loudly calling that out is the whole point of shame. Shame is just the feeling of being negatively evaluated by peers. Aella needs to be continually negatively-evaluated until she stops promoting an ugly lifestyle to our economically valuable cognitively-vulnerable population.

Essentially you're saying we should shame because she's an effective promoter of her ideas through her niceness?

she pushes [her ideas] against a high-iq people population (rationalists) who should be having more children

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer to have a child of two rationalists over another member of the permanent underclass. But to speak in plain language: These cucks are self-selecting out of the gene pool, and that's a good thing. Anyone stupid enough to participate in Polyamory is unfit to be a parent.

Essentially you're saying we should shame because she's an effective promoter of her ideas through her niceness?

Artistic merit used to be considered an aggravating factor under 19th Century censorship law for precisely this reason.

(I don’t necessarily endorse this position but I think it’s an interesting and relatable historical fact.)

From my limited experience with her online presence, she effectively promotes her lifestyle with sex and buzzwords. If she were 50 years old, no one would latch onto her ideology. She is using the inherent weakness of men to manipulate them into a poor way of life, when influencing women to her life with the attention she receives. The reason she should be shamed (ie pointedly negatively evaluated) is that the end result of her lifestyle is a worse world. It’s bad for the people who fall for it and society at large. We don’t want a society where %s of high IQ tech guys have a TFR of 0.25. We don’t want online discourse increasingly sex-obsessed. We want pair-bonds and commitment and emotional stability which children absorb at a young age.

These cucks are self-selecting out of the gene pool

An optimal society is one where the high IQ protects the midwit with his intellect and the midwit protects the high IQ with his intuition. Everyone deserves greater wellbeing, even Aella when she deletes her account. Yet this is a case where even the high IQ can forecast the bad second-order consequences of her lifestyle. Just trivial familiarization with the hedonic treadmill will explain why “get everyone increasingly sensitive to sexual pleasure and talking about sex and seeking more of its pleasure” is bad. It would be better to run a pro-smoking account. Giving up polyamory isn’t even giving up pleasure but just stopping a downward spiral of increased sexualization. (And she can do whatever she wants in private, right; it’s the promotion that’s bad, it’s not about policing her own private failings which everyone has — it’s about not increasing it in the future generations)

I broadly agree with you, with the caveat that I think there's a little more room for charity/empathy/forgiveness for people who are being harmful by accident rather than on purpose.

A murderer knows that what they are doing is wrong. They know that they are going to inflict a huge harm on others (both the direct victim and everyone who knows them), and they do it anyway. They are evil and they know this and they do it anyway because they are angry/selfish and care more about themselves than others. It's an issue of bad morality.

Aella believes that she is doing good. She has a distorted view of society/psychology in a way that makes her think that her lifestyle will make the average person more happy instead of less happy. She does what she does partly in order to make herself more popular and justify her lifestyle, but in part because she genuinely thinks it will make the world better. Now, likely some of this is cognitive dissonance: maybe somewhere deep down inside she knows its wrong but doesn't care, but I think the majority of the issue is a question of bad objectivity.

Now, from a consequentialist perspective Aella is probably worse and so, if necessary and in isolation, we would be willing to inflict a higher cost in order to stop her. But the norms of "have harsher punishments for people who hurt others on purpose than those who do it by accident" is useful in general, as is "have harsher punishments for people who hurt others in unambiguous ways than those who hurt others in ambiguous and indirect ways". This makes it easier for people to know what to expect and adjust their behavior ahead of time (decreasing the rates of bad behavior) instead of doing it anyway and then getting punished randomly and unexpectedly afterwards. It also decreases the ability of people to apply punishments to good behaviors by making convoluted arguments about indirect harms. It also gives more opportunities for forgiveness and redemption. There's a non-negligible chance that at some point Aella will observe more of the effects of her actions, realize her mistake, and then change and start genuinely helping people and undo the damage she's caused. Because her underlying motivation: wanting to help people, doesn't need to change, she just needs to reconcile it with the desire to be popular and slutty and realize they're opposed instead of synergistic. I suppose murderers can also change and become better people too, but it's a different kind of change and it's impossible to undo the harm they've already caused.

This is entirely consistent with the principle of "shame Aella and jail murderers" rather than the other way around. But the shame on Aella should be tempered by education and a hope that she herself learns from her mistakes instead of just having the shamers by maximally cruel to make her suffer and hate them and reject what they say.

If she repents and changes her ways, I will forgive her.

Of course, this is meaningless. I am nobody. In the world of online microcelebrity culture, there is no institution that can make her this promise. Before the Internet, there were things like religious leaders that could meaningfully make this promise. Even the irreligious would usually have their censure limited to a well-defined social group with de facto leaders who could grant clemency. That's all gone now.

With the tools we have, there's only really two good options. Ignore her, or make an example out of her.

She promotes a lifestyle that is highly anti-natal, and she pushes it against a high-iq people population (rationalists) who should be having more children. These high-iq people almost always have a cognitive vulnerability of poor intuition regarding social consequences.

Yeah well said. I'm not a consequentialist, but you can make an extremely strong argument on those grounds that she is massively impacting the wealth of society via her lifestyle and what she promotes.

I do not like the idea that someone can push a horrific way of life and we have to accept this because they are “nice”. It doesn’t matter how nice you are if you’re telling people to eat lead paint chips. She is evil because the consequences of what she promotes is evil.

Yeah, reminds me of Chesterton's whole thing about the virtues gone wild:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

I'm not sure I have a lot to say here. I disapprove of Aella's life choices. I think she made poor decisions, particularly from a moral perspective. But I also very much disapprove of bullying and online cruelty, and she's no doubt entirely correct that a lot of cowardly troglodytes lashed out at her. I can hold all these positions at the same time. Aella made bad choices, but she should not have been bullied over them. I hope that getting off the internet is good for her.

I don't know, it just seems like a pretty straightforward situation to me. I don't approve of immoral means being used, even in the service of goals I might ultimately agree with. Promiscuity is bad, but internet hate is also bad. They are all bad at once.

For what it's worth I was aware of Aella only secondhand, by way of rationalists occasionally mentioning or citing her. I have no particular strong opinion of her. I think she conducted her sexual life badly, but then I think that about an awful lot of people. I think that about Scott Alexander himself. It's all much the same error. None of it licenses other people to attack them in this disorganised way.

To be kind to the cruel is to be cruel to the kind. Watching Aella's reputation go down in flames is what prevents young girls from wanting to follow in her footsteps.

Either being a whore is high status, or it is low status. If high status, good and proper to encourage your daughters to embrace that career. And if low status... this. This is what low status looks like.

So before you feel pity for Aella, remember the alternative.

I feel bad about it, too. But it has to be done.

I'm inclined to think of Romans 3 and Romans 12.

3:8:

And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), "Let us do evil so that good may come"? Their condemnation is deserved!

And 12:17-21:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I can sense that some criticism of Aella, or this defense of public shaming, is going to come from a perspective informed by Christian morality. So I feel it is worth the reminder that this sort of consequentialism is directly and explicitly condemned.

I disapprove of Aella's behaviour. But the command is clear: do not do evil that good may come, and do not repay evil for evil.

Yeah this is where a lot of my tension comes from. (As you can see from my flair I'm Christian.)

That being said, I also like Chesterton's quote about virtues gone mad:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Basically we can't be compassionate at the expense of truth and other virtues like chastity. There's a limit to how compassionate we can be while still being "good".

As you can see from my flair I'm Christian.

Off topic but... why would one take that away from you flair? I suspect that very few people here can read Greek, so most probably have no idea what it means. I definitely don't, anyways.

It would probably be more clear in Latin letters - it reads Kyrie, poieson me organon tes agapes sou.

It means, well, exactly what he said, but you can probably recognise words like organon (instrument, tool) and agape (love). One resonance that you get in Greek that carries over well into English is that organon can mean any kind of tool, for any purpose, but also suggests a musical instrument (and thus is the source of English 'organ'), so it brings to mind playing God's love as if it is music.

Ahaha ok maybe it's too mysterious. It translates to "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy love."

What, specifically, is the evil being done here? Criticizing her? Not praising her loudly enough?

She objects specifically to bullying and cruelty.

I, from the outside, do not object to people disapproving of her sexual behaviour, nor stating that disapproval. I myself just did both of those. I don't think people should obsess over her, stalk her, regularly post vicious comments about her, and so on. Just disapprove, ignore, and get on with life.

She objects specifically to bullying and cruelty.

Can you give an example of either? I haven't seen anything that I would consider crossing into bullying or cruelty territory.

I don't think people should obsess over her, stalk her,

No one is stalking her, she had to google her name herself to even come across the content that upset her. Obsessing over someone probably isn't healthy, but it's not bullying or cruelty either.

regularly post vicious comments about her. Just disapprove, ignore, and get on with life.

Why? It's completely normal to comment on the public behavior of very public people, and there's nothing "viscious" about that, even if the comments are negative.

If she wants people to keep their disapproval private, she can keep her behavior private.

I do wonder how the average iron age scholar would react to "Pointing out that actions have consequences is evil".

Confused further by the fact that the pointing out essentially IS the consequence here. This is a very similar line of reasoning to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".

Odd how this argument seems like an annoying aphorism exactly until you (royal) pick it up and throw it at somebody else

Confused further by the fact that the pointing out essentially IS the consequence here.

Strong disagree. Like, I get that people believe everything is a social construct and thus all consequences are socially imposed. Or that what matters is not having done the thing, but people finding out you did the thing. But I'm not a blank slatist, I think certain behaviors actually do damage the human animal mentally, emotionally and physically beyond "social constructs", and I think someone looking for a mother of their children should have a right to know that a woman is a proud e-prostitute.

It almost gives me hope yet that no poor schmuck has ruined his life with her in the gravest fashion possible.

see i was commenting on the object level bawwing from aella, not the underlying causes that people are seeing elsewhere. On the object level, from the tweets, shes sad that people are being mean, not that she cant find a husband or is sad that shes a whore or whatever.

I don't follow Aella. In fact I usually mute anything I see about her. E-girls thrive on attention, and the only correct course of action is to block/ignore.

But what I have seen is that a large part of what set this off was her complaining that she wants to get married and have kids, and no partner she wants to do that with returns the sentiment. She may have also broken up with her long time partner cuck because he didn't want kids with her? So she was mourning the situation that she would never have these milestones in life she wanted.

And then what I saw was people, IMHO rightly, pointing out that if she wanted those things, a life of being a filthy whore in public was mutually exclusive to them. This was a self inflicted wound. And especially zeroing in on her entitlement to a "high quality male" (not her words, but reading between the lines), despite being a literal prostitute that doesn't shower. Like what did she think her value was? The post I saw were blunt about this. Perhaps excessive. But examples must be made lest others fall into the same trap. Consider the sort of man you want, and act accordingly. It's at least known among some men this is what must be done to attract the correct sort of woman. Women just seem to have entitlement.

In fact I usually mute anything I see about her.

Had her account muted a long time but finally muted her name since so much leaks through if you follow other TPOT folk. The muted word list is getting long.

But... There's no way that Aella would actually have trouble finding a partner who wants kids who is okay with her lifestyle. Not some captain of industry, but also not some random meth addict on the street either. There are plenty of total simps in tech with a solid paycheck who'd be thrilled to go for her, and she knows that.

This is all a marketing gimmick. Come save the poor whore with a heart of gold and a mind of platinum!

Aella has talked about her troubles finding a man who is up to her standards before:

Aella: its v annoying that i seem to be searching for a romantic partner who's at least a little bit more powerful than i am

Geoffrey Miller: It's OK to be hypergamous.

Aella: yeah, it's just annoying. it dramatically reduces mate options. like 99% of guys i casually meet are less powerful than me

Aella: if i go to specific events that are selected for ppl doin cool stuff, then it feels closer to a normal mating market, but those events are pretty rare

It's not that she doesn't want to settle down, it's that, because of the way female hypergamy works, her own level of money, success, and status has drastically shrunk the pool of partners she considers acceptable.

(This, incidentally, is why even the most milquetoast brands of feminism are so misguided; women don't want men who are equal to them, they want men who are older and richer and taller and more powerful than them. By making women equal to men, all you are doing is making men undesirable husbands to women.)

Note that Aella is 33; she is past the age where she could reasonably expect to find a husband, even if she were not a notorious whore. If she still wants children, at this point her best bet is to become a single mother; in a couple of years, even that will be out of reach.

There's no way that Aella would actually have trouble finding a partner who wants kids who is okay with her lifestyle.

The problem, so far as I've gathered, is "the guys I like enough to want something more than a casual sexual relationship don't want to marry me and have kids, and I don't like enough the guys who do want to marry me and have kids to want something more than a casual sexual relationship with them."

She also demands a husband who is okay with her non-monogamous lifestyle. Most men can easily ignore past whoring. It’s current whoring they can’t abide. Makes for awkward breakfasts.

But usually then they're already married with kids, or they're monogamous, or they're very sexually submissive, or they're poor in a way I’m not financially prepared to support in a world where I want children.

She made millions from OF/prostitution, she has 122,000 substack readers, how many golden spoons could her children possibly need?

I wish women would stop framing their greed/hypergamy as just safeguarding the interests of children. It's about as subtle as the man who claims to like big tits because his future children’s nutrition is always on his mind.

The problem, so far as I've gathered, is "the guys I like enough to want something more than a casual sexual relationship don't want to marry me and have kids

So, in other words, every woman ever (or, at least, every woman since the sexual revolution).

There are plenty of total simps in tech with a solid paycheck who'd be thrilled to go for her, and she knows that.

But simps are gross. Very few women who think anything of themselves (and Aella thinks a lot of herself) is willing to stoop and settle for a simp.

This is all a marketing gimmick. Come save the poor whore with a heart of gold and a mind of platinum!

I can't discount it. This could all be part of her hustle. Like I said, I try to ignore her.

I don't want to get into doing psychology over the Internet on a person I don't know, but yeah. I think she's in the poly bubble, so she imagines it is possible to find a guy, marry him, have kids, and still maintain the sex worker/poly life. Some poly people do handle marriage and parenting while having multiple partners, so she must think it possible for her.

But the kinds of guy she is attracted to, given what she's revealed of her childhood, are not going to be the kinds of guy who want to settle down and marry her (this is where the doing psychology over the Internet part comes in). She plainly has very conflicted views about her father, who seems in the small extract she provided to have been a sadistic piece of shit, and I think she has elsewhere indicated she was sexually abused as a child. Since she seems to have escaped into sex work as a reaction to her upbringing, I think she has put all her eggs into the basket of "I'm hot, I'm sexual, I'm promiscuous and that's okay, suck it repressive ultra-Christian upbringing that punished me for everything, I'm doing all the stuff you said would send me to Hell and I'm loving it!"

So having to face "sexual abuse as a child" and "sex work is low status, nobody wants to marry the whore they've been banging on the side" would crack her psyche right open, and she's already too vulnerable. Hence why (I am speculating hard here) if she seems to be endorsing "porn and exposure to sex aren't bad for minors, what is a minor anyway?" it's to do with reconciling how she was abused as a child: unless she can embrace it as "no, it was all fine!", then that brings back the child's guilt of "I must be a bad person, that is why this is happening to me". And to admit "I am a bad person" then brings back "so my parents were right and I'm wrong and what they did was okay" and that is very much not so. The tension of the contradictions is threatening to snap her mental state apart, so she has to balance it all very carefully.

So, yeah. She's pinned her new identity on "you can be sexy, promiscuous, and desired and loved", and found out the hard way that the "loved" part is not in fact part of the package. 'There's women you have fun with, and women you marry, and they're not the same' is an old truth but still relevant. EDIT: I think the data science work and her being involved in rationalist circles is an admission on her part, not recognised as such, that she does want to be admired for more than her waist-hip ratio, that she wants to be seen as intelligent and having worth apart from her sexuality. But she's sort of trapped right now: if she steps back from the sex work, then what is her unique selling point that sets her apart from "all the other kinda smart, kinda nerdy, kinda mathy rationalist-types"? She's shackled by her brand as "Aella, the sexy rationalist girl".

I vehemently disapprove of her lifestyle and views, but I do think she's mentally vulnerable and calling people names isn't polite. Now, that does bring us to "but is calling her a prostitute calling her names or is it naming the truth of her situation?" and I think her supporters would say the former, while "she's doing sex work to make a living, that's prostitution" is the latter.

Was she sexually abused? I'm not very familiar with her story. But I thought it was more non-sexual beatings and things like that, at its worst. That's obviously terrible, but I'm not sure it would have the same psychic impact on views of sexuality as being the victim of sexual assault as a child. Does someone more familiar with her story know enough to indicate this?

Link

My grandpa got a case of the molesties when I was a kid, and I am horrified that people's objection to this is that it was sexual and not that he was forcing me to do something I didn't want to do. Eight-year-olds don't want to French kiss their grandpas! They don't want to get sticks shoved up their noses or wake up at 7 AM either. If we children had our agency respected, none of that stuff would have happened.

This is in the context of discussing school as an imposition on autonomy, so it should not be assumed that the molestation occurred at age eight.

I can't give you a direct source, but I did read something where the assertion was made by someone else. And maybe it seems this is the relevant tweet?

Without the context, it's hard to say if she's saying she was molested at age fourteen, or if it happened when she was younger.

Sounds like a Christian should have reached out to her and told her that she is loved - explained forgiveness, sanctification, and water that does not leave you thirsty. Instead, she got a mob calling her names.

Aella grew up very Christian, albeit under the thumb of mentally ill calvinists. I'm doubting it would have helped.

Whenever I see this argument, I just helplessly gesture in the general direction of Joshua Graham from Fallout: New Vegas, how much the character is beloved in the community despite being extremely religious, before throwing my hands in the air and giving up, knowing I'll never be able to communicate the entire point without a multi-paragraph effort post.

To try and summarize the matter, actual redemption always comes with a cost. If you're not willing to pay the cost, you're not actually redeemed. You're just doing such to excuse your own guilt. Aella seems to just want things delivered to her on a platter, and is complaining her decisions have lead her to this point without any reflection.

You can't force redemption on someone who doesn't want to pay the price.

There's a difference between "very religious, sticks to his values despite being at odds with the society around him" and "beat me until I bled all in the name of 'our loving God demands this'".

Anyway, Calvinism of any stripe, more especially hyper-Calvinism, is going to be gloomy and depressing enough to turn anyone off the faith. "You are going to Hell even if it's not your fault because at the creation of the Universe God decided He would withhold saving faith from you, so there's nothing you can do even if you think you really believe"?

(More complicated than "He decided" since it's "God foresaw you would be damned, and since He is omniscient, what He knows must come true else He would not be omniscient, so that is incompatible with free will and hence you are damned").

Lately I've been thinking of the argument made in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F9xYqQDTHnk

God's love remains, even when we are at our worst. Basically, Christianity is a relationship with Jesus. Jesus looks at us, loves us, first. Being loved comes first, then repentance is the response to that.

Repentance is important, but it's not first. First is being loved by Jesus and us, His body on Earth.

I think it would be harder for Aella, and for others who came out of abusive situations, since they can legitimately argue "I heard all about the love of God and Jesus from people rock-solid convinced they had the truth and believed it, and they were worse than any sinner I ever met afterwards, because who beats a child eleven times in a row for not being sufficiently obedient? This is how that love worked out in practice, catch me falling for the same trap twice".

Unless she had a genuine conversion experience in a different context, and that has to be left up to the will of God.

It doesn't help to just continue abuse because, "well, she's already been abused before so now it's on her to repent." Which is what it comes across as when all I said is that Christians should love her instead of verbally abuse her and people are objecting to that.

This is just a philosophical argument that allows people to come to the recognition that, despite having done bad things in the past, they do not have to do bad things in the future.

But they have to stop wanting to do bad things.

I'm not saying appealing to the idea of Jesus's love as all-forgiving is wrong, mind you. I'm just pointing out it's not a magical panacea where you mumble words and all of a sudden everything is fixed.

I didn't say that anywhere. I'm saying, love comes first, then repentance. Repentance is necessary. But it doesn't happen first.

Les Miserables is on the mind, consider Jean Valjean and his moment of repentance. After a life of getting kicked around, he steals the Bishop's valuables. And in response, the Bishop loves him, saves him from going to Prison again, gives him more than he stole. And that is the moment that Jean Valjean actually feels sorry for his actions. Once he experiences true love.

You can say, that's just a story. But there is a reason why it rings true. The world is full of bitter people who will stay bitter forever unless someone breaks their shell with love.

Will it always work? No. But does it work? In my experience, yes.

To try and summarize the matter, actual redemption always comes with a cost

Not true in the slightest. Redemption is about turning your heart towards God, and He lets the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike. He does not require payment, he's not a debtor that we owe. He is a healer.

To quote scripture, 'Go forth, and sin no more.'

You equate 'cost' as if it's something to be paid to God. No. It's something you pay to yourself.

If you prefer a secular version, you can't force someone into therapy when they don't want to heal.

The cost is turning your heart towards God. You cannot be redeemed and an unrepentant whore. God does not redeem the unrepentant.

At a minimum, redemption requires that you admit you were wrong, that you stop doing bad things, and that you work to fix the evils you have done. Aella has done none of this.

I don't know if that would work. By her account, she was raised by parents in a small, niche, hyper-Calvinist denomination who believed very strongly in "spare the rod and spoil the child", so all the Good News is tainted for her with "my parents literally beat me bloody for normal childhood mistakes then said this was the will of God".

Ah well, Saint Mary of Egypt, pray for her!

"I'm doing all the stuff you said would send me to Hell and I'm loving it!"

Yep. Pretty common for sin to feel good in the moment. That's the whole "trick" of it.

  1. She plainly has very conflicted views about her father, who seems in the small extract she provided to have been a sadistic piece of shit.

  2. So having to face "sexual abuse as a child"

Childhood trauma does not entitle you to a lifetime of unlimited compassion from others.

I've been seeing this meme more and more across wide swaths of social media - and from all corners. People are starting to point backwards to "childhood trauma" (ill-defined, subjective, and often shrouded in mystery) as the root of all their problems. This is neo-Freudianism but, somehow, with less rigor and logic.

The entire process of adolescence and early adulthood is the process of recognizing that when bad things happen to you, you have some level of control in how you react to them. Yes, there are some things that are incredibly and objectively traumatic. They will take time to heal, but you have the tools and capability to fuel that healing process if you developed emotional maturity.

When people fail to do this, they not only become unreliable, they become socially dangerous. Most of the men in prison right now had a childhood of neglect and abuse to at least some degree. They are repeating the patterns they were exposed to. Sadly, many of them lack the IQ to even sort their emotions into reasonable buckets, let alone manage them constructively. Should we extend our inexhaustible supply of compassion there way, let them out, and hug them until they've changed? Alarmingly, about half of the voting population would YesChad.jpeg this idea.

This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.

Returning to Aella, and the sexy-rationalist-e-girl archetype, perhaps you had some level of childhood trauma. Let's assume this trauma was real and not cultivated by a very online life that invites all of us to make emotional mountains of molehills. You're (self-proclaimed) like, really, really smart or whatever. Perhaps you ought to take the time to sort through your own emotional baggage and then move beyond it. In her tweets, she is literally calling for internet friends and strangers to defend her honor to other (mostly) internet strangers. This is an obvious sign of emotional immaturity. She is outsourcing emotional regulation to other people through the odd mode of chivalrous honor codes.

(Side note: I bet Scott does it)

Childhood trauma does not entitle you to a lifetime of unlimited compassion from others.

It....kinda should though?

We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS at this point but even if you aren't about that line of thinking it is still true that childhood abuse ruins your life outcomes. We have some knowledge of things like the impact on your brain chemistry and psychological development, we can point to incredibly poor outcomes and paucity of truly effective treatment.

People just don't get better without a lot of good genetics, supportive nursing and lucky life events the majority of the time.

Doesn't mean you have to accept or interpersonally tolerate them, but you should have empathy and compassion.

It is in all likelihood not her fault and her brain is fundamentally broken and society does not have the tools to force her to do what is required to get better.

We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS

Citation needed.

it is still true that childhood abuse ruins your life outcomes.

Citation needed. Also, there's literally a cottage industry in within hollywood that does nothing besides making films about people who overcame their childhood to do amazing things.

We have some knowledge of things like the impact on your brain chemistry and psychological development

Citation needed.

We can point to incredibly poor outcomes and paucity of truly effective treatment.

Citatio--nevermind.

Let's say you come back with bulletproof evidence for all of your claims. Think through the implications. How do we as a society ever hold anyone accountable for anything? What "counts" as trauma? Who decides? How do you account for individual variation in the ability to cope with negative emotions?

The whole point of our legal system is that it is based on the premise that there is the law and only the law. Your personal circumstances have little to do with how you are judged against the law*. "Your honor, I had a really hard childhood. I think you should take that into account during this armed robbery trial." That would be pants-on-head insane because it would mean every single law and every single interaction with it would be an inherently subjective exercise. There would, in effect, be no laws. No laws, no society ... you get the picture.

Compassion and empathy do not outrank truth.

By implication, you're also preemptively condemning literal children to a life of low expectations and patronization. "Damn kid, your mom was a crackhead and dad beat you? Well, don't feel bad about being semi-homeless for a while, it isn't your fault." Or, in this specific Aella case, "Sure, sure, honey, you're a multi-millionaire with a massive online following, but you go right ahead and have a public meltdown." Why not encourage them to rise to their potential? Why not deliver the much, much better message of "despite what has happened in your past, you can create a good life and be a valued, pro-social member of whatever community you choose**"

Pairing all of this with your initial dubious claims we have yet another example of the satanic nature of current therapy. It's the embodiment and fulfillment of the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations. It takes otherwise healthy people who may need some encouragement and turns them into fragile, dependent slaves to the cult of "self-care", "triggers", "boundaries", etc. Many are literally permanently drugged and then reminded that such drugging is "necessary" to keep them ..... stable? I'll take volatile but responsible and competent over "stable", flaccid and burdensome.

  • Caveat around edge cases here. Self-defense, other in extremis circumstances.
  • Except if that contradictions biology.

You can have some empathy for her(it does seem like her childhood was pretty bad) without approving of any of her decisions, or even refraining from judging her choices.

oh yeah you can say she's a fucking moron and I dont want my daughter doing that ....and at the same time, her life made her that way and you can feel bad for her.

We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS

Sorry, I can't choose to not judge Aella as a nasty hoe even though she had a rough childhood because I lack the free will to choose otherwise.

Yeah fair, being judgmental IS probably more determined by your life history and cultural context, however thinking she is a nasty hoe (I mean, I do too...the shower thing? Eesh) is not incompatible with having empathy for her and awareness of the life history that likely brought her to the set of beliefs you find odious.

We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS at this point

I stopped reading at this point. Thinking that free will is a solved debate makes me not take any of your other arguments seriously.

That's highly antagonistic given literally the next words of that sentence.

Ahh. As I said, I stopped reading ahaha. Yeah perhaps it is antagonistic.

I do have a lot of sympathy for child abuse, but as the person says you can't have infinite compassion. Infinite compassion for anything will ruin you.

More comments

Side note: I bet Scott does it

Does what?

Posts a thoughtful essay on defending Aella while also discussing the many sided argument about her public persona, her personal history, and how we should think about judgement in the twitter sphere.

Or some fucking bullshit like that.

Sounds on brand alright.

This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.

I agree with most of your arguments, but I have to jump in with #notalltherapy here. I have been helped quite a bit by therapeutic modalities, even though it took me years to find ones that worked with good practitioners.

Unfortunately, like with most fields, good therapists are few and far between. In general I'd estimate 90%+ of therapists out there provide negligible effects, or actively make their clients worse off. And indeed, much of the issues are the "cult of ego" stuff as you point out.

That being said, the truly good therapy that's out there can be life changing. Especially if it's focused on somatic practice and "emotional armoring" in the Reichan sense.

Very much agree on trauma not being an excuse to hurt others, though.

I have been helped quite a bit by therapeutic modalities, even though it took me years to find ones that worked with good practitioners.

Your choice of words alone in that sentence suggests a verbal IQ (if not general IQ) in the top 5% (and I'm probably underestimating). You're posting on a niche forum that hyper-indexes on good argumentation. The most liked posts on here routinely surpass 500 - 1000 words.

Therapy didn't help you, you helped you. I know, that's an outlandish claim to make. I don't know your whole story. How could I be so presumptuous blah blah blah. But this is yet another part of therapy culture I find so contemptuous. For the success stories out there - like yours - I believe 99% of them are just that person improving their life. The therapist was in no way necessary. But the therapist then takes the credit. And invites well-intentioned and genuinely praiseworthy people - such as yourself - to proclaim the advantages of therapy. At best, at the absolute best, you could maybe view a therapist as a coach in the sports sense. They help you stay disciplined, offer nurturing advice, whatever. But who went out and did the thing? You did.

Where therapy isn't a satantic self-religion, it's a grift. Where it isn't a gift, it's non-sexual emotional prostitution. Where it isn't even that (in the academy) it's a rent seeking non-scientific field that shits out pop self-help books backed by "TeH scIencE" and propagated over social media. Evil turtles, all the way down.

Semi-related tangent: Can't find the article / essay, but I remember a ACX style post about how most alcoholics who aren't a) extremely low agency (i.e. retardation levels of IQ) and b) past the point of the dangerous chemical addiction wherein cessation can be fatal, will self-resolve their alcohol consumption to manageable levels over the course of their life. Alcoholics Anonymous is more or less a placebo. I'd love to find that article again as I have enough people in my personal orbit who essentially have been functioning alcoholics for several years at a time, become completely sober for several years, and then resolved to totally responsible occasionally social drinkers after about a decade mixture of the preceding two phases.

Therapy didn't help you, you helped you. I know, that's an outlandish claim to make. I don't know your whole story. How could I be so presumptuous blah blah blah. But this is yet another part of therapy culture I find so contemptuous. For the success stories out there - like yours - I believe 99% of them are just that person improving their life.

Ahaha I appreciate it. I honestly can't give therapy too much credit - Jesus Christ saved my life more than anything. That being said, going to therapy and learning especially about somatic modalities (paying attention to what you feel in your body, your emotions etc) is a big part of what led me to Christ. So perhaps I can say He can work through these tools.

I actually agree with the emotional prostitution part. Ironically I wasn't able to get a ton out of therapy until I did a bunch of research on my own, learned to sort of discern who is actually wise and who is full of shit, and then pick from there. If you aren't able to do that discernment yeah, you're kind of screwed sadly.

Or, more relevantly, most people in therapy don’t need to be there, and doing therapy on a healthy person can’t help, might hurt.

Perhaps you ought to take the time to sort through your own emotional baggage and then move beyond it.

I don't know if she's capable of that, though. Again, doing untrained psychoanalysis over the Internet, but by all accounts her method of dealing with her traumatic upbringing was "do a shit load of LSD and permanently fry my brain" which is not really helpful. And if she does have to face it all and acknowledge that she does bear responsibility for her choices, plus confront her past, I do think she's liable to crack right open and maybe not be fixable.

I hope she gets help. I don't know if she wants it or if anyone in her life is in a position to tell her to do so (the main fault of the nice rationalist EA people is that they are too damn nice and so fearful of appearing judgemental or telling people how to live their lives or seeming to be unaccepting that they will hum and haw and tie themselves into knots while literal rapists are taking advantage of the culture to get away with being abusive and manipulative). I don't think anyone in her circles feels capable of telling her "this is not a good choice" or that she would listen to anyone who did tell her that.

I don't know if she's capable of that, though. Again, doing untrained psychoanalysis over the Internet, but by all accounts her method of dealing with her traumatic upbringing was "do a shit load of LSD and permanently fry my brain" which is not really helpful.

If she's compounded her trauma through years of maladaptive behaviors, then the question has to be asked: to what extent is she culpable for her own behavior? If that answer is "below the level of generally agreed upon adult responsibility" then we're talking about involuntary psychiatric commitment.

But we're not talking about that because she's obviously a high agency, capable individual. That's my whole point - she's making these choices on her own. And, thus, my compassion is effectively zero because I know she can change but she chooses not to.

Like what did she think her value was?

I mean yeah, I think perhaps the cruel part here is that she was showered with money, attention, fame, and general encouragement because her shctick lined up with progressives stated values. But when it comes to actually living out those values, most people seem to pull back.

She could easily find a rationalist eligible bachelor to have kids with in her stated lifestyle. She’d just have to settle for ‘eligible’ rather than ‘attractive’(in the broad sense, rather than just a synonym for handsome).

I mean yeah, I think perhaps the cruel part here is that she was showered with money, attention, fame, and general encouragement because her shctick lined up with progressives stated values.

She was/is not showered with money, attention, fame and general encouragement exactly due to that but moreso for offering the direct possibility or at least a fantasy of sex with an attractive yet intelligent woman for the stereotypically sexless and nerdy rationalist community. It's not progressives in general who are obsessed with Aella (most would of course not even know of her and a large amount of her statements are offensive to progressives as well), it's this one particular group and its subgroups.

I think there's perhaps a lot of truth to what you think. Giving praise and encouragement to behaviors that feel good but are long-run self-defeating is actually cruelty, not niceness.

I'm reminded of the cliche of fat/ugly women yas queen'd by her friends and being confused why no high value men want to settle down with her. Or what I'd guess is the counterpart of nice guys being praised for being meek and submissive and being confused why he gets no 1st or 2nd dates. I don't know how often either happens, but I'm pretty sure they're cliches for good reason.

Recently, in video games there have been a number of high profile failures by major AAA studios that spent the better part of decade making games that either failed spectacularly (e.g. Concord) or just did mid in sales, nowhere near enough given the dev costs (e.g. Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Dragon Age: The Veilguard), and one common talking point I saw was that these devs probably got nothing but affirmations as they were developing these disasters that appealed to themselves and almost no one in the target audience. And as a result, many of these devs face layoffs and even closure. We don't know if the narrative of internal echo chambers of affirmations is actually correct, but if it is, then these affirmations weren't nice, they weren't kind, they were cruel, for encouraging the devs to create games that would end up dooming their jobs or their studios or both.

Perhaps there are cruel ways to discourage the type of lifestyle that Aella practices. Perhaps most ways of discouragement are cruel. But that doesn't make the encouragement of such any less cruel.

I’m amazed at the level of discourse this event generated. Women getting their feelings hurt truly is a world-level event apparently, requiring all the pundits to weigh in, with most defending miladys honour. I find it all pretty funny! What unique intellectual accomplishment has she made? Had an orgy and wrote about it? Wrote some surveys?

Have you seen a bunch of discourse? I only heard about it offline from a friend. Any notable examples of people weighing in?

Richard Hanania and Yassine Meskhout were two I saw.

Yet more evidence in favor of my approach to automatically dismiss the writings of any people I see regularly mentioned here but not in general newspapers.

Yassine is a cool guy, I like most of his articles.

I learned about it from tweet by Yudkowsky, his defense got pretty bizzare at some point. I think he said that he sniffed Aella and she does not stink or something like that. Bunch of other people also tweeted some platitudes about how Aella is amazing, or how bad it is that she has to go through all this when she was molested as a child etc.

I think he said that he sniffed Aella and she does not stink or something like that.

From Big Yud, she has never done a single bad thing that he's heard of (while defining away "bad," of course, in a few replies), and yes, he sniffed her with consent (including that Ashkenazim may be particularly sensitive to BO) and she was fine.

I think he said that he sniffed Aella and she does not stink or something like that.

Bro, you're not helping

Agreed. I bet that any famous personality has ton of haters no matter what side they are on be it Destiny or Joe Rogan or Hasan Piker or Tim Pool. Some of these people read out loud their hate male for fun from time to time, or they just describe what is happening - e.g. Tim Pool is swatted every couple of weeks and hate is through the roof. I don't think it is good, but it is part of what is going on. Why should it be different for women.

hate male

Laughed at the typo.

No.

To some extent, when dealing with the topic of whoring, we must embrace the monstrous, one way or another. Here are our options:

  • Tell the kids that whores are disrespectable they will ruin their lives if they whore themselves out, be it for money or attention, because they will be considered at least damaged goods if not somewhat subhuman by most people anywhere and ever. Also tell men with low sexual market value to shut up and stop complaining, they're not getting any and that's final. The shaming is ubiquitous and relentless.
  • Tell the kids that whores may fulfill an important function, that their work is valuable and necessary to keep low-status men satisfied, but god damn if you become one you'll be disinherited and booted out of the house because whoring is still disrespectable and it's the lesser humanoids who should do it, not real people! The shaming is somewhat more limited, but still strictly in effect.
  • Tell the kids that everything is permitted, you can do no wrong, fuck anything that moves, there are no consequences. They subsequently ruin their lives and cannot comprehend how this cruel world does not support them in their brave life choices. You don't shame, but others will do it for you, because not everyone lives in the anti-shame bubble.
  • Tell the kids to do their whoring in style and with discretion, pragmatically and as befits mid- to high-status people. Do it by disguising it as serial monogamy, or "dating", or just do it in private and make sure none of it ever becomes public knowledge. Or just do it in the classic form of medium- to long-term monogamy, they wouldn't be the first trophy wives. You don't shame for the behavior itself, but for a lack of adroitness in engaging in it.
  • You somehow brainwash / reeducate / social engineer all of humanity so they buy into the sexual liberation meme and fuck without a care. Abolish all categories of infames. Restructure the world so that nobody can ever do shamefully wrong because everything is right. Shame on you if you actually believe this to be viable.
  • Abolish the deeply-ingrained, natural and timeless practice of shaming people and instead skip right ahead to capital punishment and damnatio memoriae, for whore as well as client. Nuke the entire institution from orbit. There is no shame when the would-be shamed party ceases to exist.
  • Do it like most western societies do it at present, by mostly just looking the other way and pretending not to see anything. There is no shame when...hey, wait, why are you plastering your whoring all over social media!?

I'm sorry. I can't take the topic entirely seriously when it leads with one of the the least deserving examples possible. Aella, an ostensibly intelligent woman who decided to build her entire name and reputation on doing things that humanity at large considers shameful is surprised when large parts of humanity would rather shame her than praise her.

whores are disrespectable and they will ruin their lives if they whore themselves out, be it for money or attention, because they will be considered at least damaged goods if not somewhat subhuman by most people anywhere and ever

Source? Maybe I'm just in a bubble, but I can't imagine that public opinion of prostitutes is that low.

I also can't imagine "somewhat subhuman", but everybody is in a bubble on these things. The percent of Americans who say that "sex between an unmarried man and woman" (not specifically prostitution! just sex!) is "morally acceptable" is at an all-time high ... of only 76%. If that also seems surprisingly low to you, then you're probably in a liberal bubble (93%) rather than in a conservative one (57%), and you might also be in a younger bubble (I'm seeing conflicting polls for the 1970s, but they're in the 30%-45% range). I'd bet polling results for the moral acceptability of prostitution would be lower: support for decriminalizing prostitution is still only around 50%, and presumably that includes people who still think it should be shameful but just don't think shameful things should all be illegal.

And as for "damaged goods" ... to go back to OP's example, Aella has been publicly looking for "someone to get happily married to" while aware of the issues there for about 5 years now, still fruitlessly. IMHO the phrase "damaged goods" is going too far, but "typically incompatible with marriage-minded men" might be fair, right? She's helped other married men break their wedding vows "over and over, with small variations on the amount of years and the guilt they brought with it", and though she makes a sympathetic case for them, making that case strengthens the conclusion that wedding vows just aren't her thing. It's understandably hard to find someone who will swear "for better or worse" if they fear "for better or else" in return.

That's not necessarily the end of the world. It sounds like she's made a lot of friends and a lot of money, and obviously she doesn't have trouble finding sex (or presumably short-term relationships) either. She could probably be happy with all that. And if she can't ... well, too many of her critics seem to be cruel or stupid or both (yes, I am aware of the irony here), whereas she seems to be a smart person who at least tries to be kind, so hopefully if it turns out that her decisions really needed to be criticized, she'll eventually get around to joining in on the criticism.

And as for "damaged goods" ... to go back to OP's example, Aella has been publicly looking for "someone to get happily married to" while aware of the issues there for about 5 years now, still fruitlessly.

Aella's Twitter is private. Archive link.

It's understandably hard to find someone who will swear "for better or worse" if they fear "for better or else" in return.

At some point, it just seems strange that you'd even want a marriage after developing such a firm opposition to lifelong vows, based on experience with many failed marriages. Why not just have a succession of long-term relationships? Isn't that what your worldview would suggest is the healthy model for relationships? Her post quite evidently states her belief that there is no real continuity of obligation between the past and the present:

But the exclusivity choice was made by their past self, decades ago- a different person, to a different woman, and I can’t help but wonder if they would make that same choice if they knew what they were getting into.

Under those conditions, why get married at all? It's a commitment to a person who -- by her own statement -- disappears, ceases to exist, over time. That's a worldview where marriage doesn't even make sense as an option.

The problem with marriage is increasingly people seem to be treating it as a time-limited commitment: "we'll be together until we decide we don't like it any more, and then divorce." But our legal system is set up based on the older model where marriage is supposed to be truly life-long, and the two really are supposed to have a joint legal identity in a way that makes everything each partner does common property. So, we end up with bitter divorces, vengeful custody disputes, alimony battles.

Not everyone agrees that marriages are made by God to join two together into one flesh -- but without controversy, marriages are made by the state to join two together into one mass of property. The resulting dissolution can only be described as a form of twin-separation surgery, which always leaves damage. What therefore the state has joined together, let not man put asunder.

It really is no wonder to me why so many millennial-and-younger couples are cohabiting, without marrying. They're not in a social and mental context where holding to marriage as a true indissoluble commitment is thinkable, but marriage as it exists on the books imposes costs and consquences that revolve around that kind of commitment.

I may be in a bubble but New Zealand's lax sex worker laws reflect a noticeably different mentality. Many high end escorts here work high powered corporate jobs while offering intimacy services occasionally. Only to those blue blooded enough to afford their rates obviously. The mentality here is more that "sex workers' humanity is unquestionable but not that of the men who seek them". Re marriage, I find it hard to sympathise right there because we're literally living in a time where men's standards are at an all time low as more and more are being phased out of the dating pool. At least one of those nerds starved for female attention would be willing to put a ring on her. So it's all about expectations, no?

Then her escort work should have clued her in to the possibility of getting married while continuing to be a sex worker. Those men didn't ask her "hey, you're young and hot and willing to have sex with me, how about I divorce my wife and marry you instead?" The men didn't want to break up their existing relationships, they just wanted/needed sex and this was how they solved the problem: visiting prostitutes. Marriage was a whole other and separate world, as was romantic love.

I mean, can you name any former porn stars who have gone on to become high-status, influential people?

Generally once you've got that reputation indelibly tied to your identity, it becomes impossible for a certain 'higher class' of person to take you seriously.

I mean, can you name any former porn stars who have gone on to become high-status, influential people?

Well, depending on how you define "porn star" (and how much credence you give to Procopius), Empress Theodora immediately comes to mind.

Porn stars? No.

Prostitutes? Surely, many "Models" who marry influential men can become influential themselves. The actresses who fucked Weinstein now enjoy high status and influence.

Sasha Grey? Chloe Cherry?

Sasha Grey

What usually follows her name is, "better known for her previous career in adult entertainment".

Fair point. Still, how many actors can honestly say they've played the lead in a Soderbergh movie? It can't be in the triple digits.

Extremely depends on what you consider high status, Ilona Staller was famously elected to the Italian parliament off the top of my head.

I mean, I agree in general that active and former prostitutes are generally lower status, but I don't think looking for high status outliers is a good way to show that, since the vast majority of people are not high status or influential by any useful definition of the phrase.

Honestly, former prostitutes have better odds of becoming influential just by virtue of being closer to centers of power. It is not like most nurses or childcare workers have any power or influence either even those are much more respectable professions.

Honestly, former prostitutes have better odds of becoming influential just by virtue of being closer to centers of power.

Ah, you mean like the young women in these paintings by James Tissot?

The Evening of 1878 and the more openly stated later version in The Reception (also known as The Political Lady and The Woman of Ambition) of 1885?

In both paintings we have attractive young women on the arms of much older men, clearly neither their fathers nor husbands, and equally clearly using this as an entrance into society above their original place on the ladder. I read earlier analysis of the dress in "The Political Lady" as being several years out of date, thus demonstrating that the young woman is not keeping up with the latest fashions and hence obviously not natively part of the high society circle, a point developed in this article:

Russell Ash states:

“To modern viewers the woman’s dress is a sumptuous creation, but Tissot’s contemporaries criticized it for being outmoded, La Vie Parisienne declaring, ‘She can’t aspire to being described as elegant, wearing one of those pink dresses that you wish would finish but never do, of antiqued cut, without any bustle but with a pointed black girdle like those worn twenty years ago.’”

Indeed, some of the choices Tissot made in depicting the garment in L’Ambitieuse were not in style at the time; by 1883-85 when it was painted, large, protruding bustles had become the fashion, and frothy, light garments like this one had been left behind several years before.

In the latter painting, look at the expressions of the other men - they're sizing her up and whispering about how she's plainly the new young mistress of the older man, perhaps speculating if they can get access to her as well. They don't seem to be respecting her and whatever influence she may gain as mistress of the older man will fade away once he dumps her or she ages out of being able to attract a sugar daddy.

I don't think looking for high status outliers is a good way to show that, since the vast majority of people are not high status or influential by any useful definition of the phrase.

Honestly, former prostitutes have better odds of becoming influential just by virtue of being closer to centers of power.

I feel like the outliers in this line of work who really are closer to centers of power are probably so rare that it doesn't change the median or mean all that much. Like any other entertainment industry job, my guess is that 99.999% are nobodies without any greater access to centers of power than a laywoman (pun not intended).

There's a pretty big difference between these three claims:

  • Active prostitutes are considered low-status (@toakraka, I guess)

  • Active and former prostitutes are considered low-status permanently and indelibly (@faceh)

  • Active and former prostitutes are considered so extremely low-status, permanently and indelibly, that they can be said to have "ruined their lives" (@southkraut)

All three are true. A former prostitute/stripper/camgirl would be seen as unmarriageable by the vast majority of Americans, to say nothing or the population in general. Trophy wives are not viewed kindly, either.

I would rephrase my position as "Active and former prostitutes are locked out of high-status permanently and indelibly."

I can imagine a known prostitute 'correcting course' and making real contrition for her past and receiving real forgiveness and being accepted into a community and given a position of some respect if she makes significant contributions from there.

But I have a hard time imagining someone saying "Oh yeah, I live in [town], the one that just elected a reformed streetwalker as mayor, and I'm proud of it!"

Christina Buttons? I think it's doable, but not under the "out and proud" model.

I dunno, maybe it's me who's in a bubble, but this attitude has been pretty universal as far as I observed. Tthough it's usually implied rather than stated outright; especially since the entire topic is usually avoided.

It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her.

I see no problem with doing it with each of these groups (prostitutes, openly slutty people, celebrities, twitteroids, stark-raving-mad twitter haters). Though probably better to avoid doing anything more than minimal amount of it. And even that may be spend more productive on other things. But promoting or celebrating either is definitely terrible.

there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society?

Yes. You cannot legislate everything. If you need detailed law and call police because someone took all the cookies at family event then things went really wrong. The same for someone proud about being a prostitute and promoting it. Or spending time mostly on performative prostitute hating. Or doing business on either.

Meh, I've seen support and defense of her, probably here. She's just being a drama queen. (Worst I've called her is a dirty whore, and someone who brags about not showering, sells sex for money, and associates with the sort of people who like wordplay is kinda asking for that)

Yeah.

Remember we're talking about a multi-millionaire who runs in extremely wealthy tech circles, and has hundreds of people who would run to her defense and aid at a moment's notice.

Unnecessary cruelty for cruelty's sake is bad, but my sympathy is limited in the same way it is for any wealthy celebrity who seeks the limelight.

Remember we're talking about a multi-millionaire

Is she, though? Traditionally the life of the Grande Horizontale has been one of getting a lot of money but also spending a lot of money, and your career lifespan is shorter than that of a professional sportsman. Once your value drops, and clients lose interest in you, the money dries up and then it's the route of blackmail* or tell-all memoirs (see Stormy Daniels touting her affair with Trump all over the talk shows for a modern example), unless you manage to hook a wealthy protector who will take care of you long-term or even, somehow, a husband.

So unless she is very canny about saving and investing whatever money she makes, she may well be in want of a husband to support her in later life.

*"In 1824, one liaison came back to haunt him, when Wellington received a letter from a publisher, John Joseph Stockdale, offering to refrain from issuing an edition of the rather racy memoirs of one of his mistresses, Harriette Wilson, in exchange for money. It is said that the Duke promptly returned the letter, after scrawling across it, "Publish and be damned". However, Hibbert notes in his biography that the letter can be found among the Duke's papers, with nothing written on it. It is certain that Wellington did reply, and the tone of a further letter from the publisher, quoted by Longford, suggests that he had refused in the strongest language to submit to blackmail."

She outright claims to be the highest paid escort in the world or similar. Allegedly $4k an hour, and was a top .1% or whatever Onlyfans performer, allegedly pulling six figs per month (which tracks with other top ranking accounts on that site).

There's probably at least one year where she net 1 million or more on her tax return.

And she's surrounded by high IQ techy/rationalist people. She can get plenty of advice and guidance on wise use of funds.

And, if I may add, if she's not leveraging her San Francisco connections to do some wanton insider trading on tech stocks and startups, she's an abject idiot, which I do not think she is.

That said, she's also claimed she thinks AGI is going to kill us all in the next 10 years, and thus she's not doing as much 'retirement' saving or other long-term planning, so burning piles of money on the altar of hedonism is possible.

She outright claims to be the highest paid escort in the world or similar.

Yeah, I wonder. But even the high-rolling courtesans of the past lived extravagant lifestyles (as that was all part of the branding to attract clients) and burned through money. She may or may not have access to good investment advice, for her own sake I hope she does, because being fifty and trying to sell your sagging bosom for paid views is not an appealing future. (Though who knows, there are niche fetishes for everyone and maybe there will be enough custom for sagging bosom pics?)

You know, I was saving this for Friday Fun but it almost fits better here...

If you came of age and discovered internet porn in the early 00's, ideepthroat dot com was legendary. It was this couple, one part a bottle blonde woman with a handsome face and giant fake tits, and the other a dopey sounding guy packing some above average heat. The hook was that this lady had no gag reflex what so ever, and he could literally fuck her face without her gagging or crying or anything. To this day, if blowjobs are your thing, best in class.

Eventually the site shut down, but the clips lived on. They were early 00's quality, but if Citizen Kane can be a masterpiece despite the technology of the time, so are those blowjobs. I heard rumors from time to time, she became a realtor after she quit cam girling. Or that her and her husband had kids and hung it up. Or that they split. No clue if any of it was true.

Well, a couple years ago she decided to return on pornhub. It's gross. Really gross. She's in her late 40's or early 50's now? The giant rock hard fake tits are pretty much the only part not succumbing to the ravages of time. She was shoving comically oversized dildos up her prolapsed asshole. I used to think there was nothing sadder than a washed up rock star who's arthritic spasms on stage make you wish they'd joined the 27 club. But it turns out an old camgirl, first of her breed, trying to recapture some of that young and sexy magic is even sadder. Makes me wonder if in another 20 years or 40 years we'll see these old camgirls auctioning off the chance to be their partner in a snuff film, to die as they lived.

Makes me wonder if in another 20 years or 40 years we'll see these old camgirls auctioning off the chance to be their partner in a snuff film, to die as they lived.

This is so hilariously dark that I hope we see this in some sort of Futurama/Hitchhiker's Guide-esque scifi comedy.

Also, I'm reminded of when I was a teenager running across some photo book at Newbury Comics called "Suicide Girls" which, IIRC, was just softcore porn of women generally in goth makeup and style, but which I mistakenly initially thought featured women who had immediately committed suicide right after. I guess our society hasn't quite reached that level of degeneracy yet.

Yeah, you'd assume that she's smart enough to have thought of that. She'll age out of the profession (at least, the high-paid tiers) eventually, so just make sure you're socking enough away to live off when that happens.

But if she's being honest that she didn't foresee the massive 'backlash' from the positions she openly supports it doesn't speak well of her foresight.

Like, her best-case scenario is she can buy some land in a rural part of the country with really nice views, raise some animals, and maybe find a guy willing to retire out there FAR from the public eye and thus well-insulated from all the cruelty, so she can live out a peaceful life with her accumulated wealth.

It is really unclear to me what impact she intends to have on the world, otherwise.

It doesn’t take that much to live if you have your house paid off. Even in the Bay Area she almost certainly could retire.

It seems pretty easy to me to say that the cruelty is bad and then just... leave it there? There's no need to go any further or give it any more thought than that.

That's my primary reason for mostly ignoring the whole thing, I don't want people to be cruel, but I don't feel any need to step in to defend the 'victim.'

She's got plenty of support and resources, I won't go around yelling at people to be nicer, on her behalf.

On top of that, some of the cruelty is not for its own sake, but from people who genuinely think she is a negative impact on the world. I haven't seen much honest discussion of that side of things, although @Southkraut has opened the question in this thread in a way that I find insightful.

Unnecessary cruelty for cruelty's sake is bad, but my sympathy is limited in the same way it is for any wealthy celebrity who seeks the limelight.

Yeah as I said in the OP, I am more concerned with the cruelty on the part of those indulging than actually worried about consequences for her actions. I don't have a ton of sympathy for her but I do worry for people who viciously mock her. It's not good for the soul.

Look, I don't hate her or think she should be insulted, abused, dragged, etc. I dislike dogpiles and sadism and gleeful cruelty.

That said, her entire schtick is stirring up controversy, posting provocative things as "thought experiments," and bragging about her gangbangs. That she suddenly discovered that people say mean things about her on the Internet and it hurts her feelings that more people aren't defending her is really hard for me to find credible. She's either having some kind of mental breakdown or this is as performative as most of the things she does.

That said, her entire schtick is stirring up controversy, posting provocative things as "thought experiments," and bragging about her gangbangs.

I truly love this sentence. The first 75% of it is kind of ho-hum internet drama and then it hits that hard left turn to close it out.

And it's 10,000% accurate. Aella is a twitter clickbait troll. But she's "attractive" (sincere personal opinion: she is not). Okay, there are other attractive twitter spammers. Hmmm, how do differentiate? Rationalist community! Pretty good, but I need that x-factor, that pizzazz!

Oh, i'll just fuck a bunch of people and talk about it all the damn time.

What I've seen of her face, I think she is pretty. Not startlingly beautiful, but attractive enough? I have to give her that: she's not ugly and she isn't totally plastic. She's in her early 30s now so starting the waning years of sex worker (at a high level) earnings.

I'm going to stake a plot in the currently undervalued quadrant of "she is not attractive, and her presence is a net positive for the ratsphere". Her data posts are up there with the old okcupid blog in terms of interesting information nobody else dares to collate, and, well, perhaps it's my first-year 4channer programming showing through but I ultimately still feel that that which can be destroyed by trolling should be.

it hurts her feelings that more people aren't defending her is really hard for me to find credible

I find that easier to believe. Even if we think that she's engaging in cynical performative "oh I'm so hurt I'm going away", it's probably a bit of a shock to find that she's not as beloved as she expected, or that her supporters are not in fact willing to come out in public and defend her. If her simps (dreadful term but it's useful here) are not indeed willing to associate themselves publicly with her, then that's indicative of a threat to her income stream: they may say the right things but they do not, in fact, respect her and when push comes to shove, they may well be pragmatic about "do I send this hundred bucks to Aella or do I spend it on something else" and spend it elsewhere.

For a test of mindless devotion, this is coming back with uncomfortable data that the mindless devotion stream is lower than she predicted and it's likely to dry up altogether.

That said, her entire schtick is stirring up controversy, posting provocative things as "thought experiments," and bragging about her gangbangs.

Yeah that's a fair point. She's profiting off of the controversy so complaining about it is a little rich.

Idk maybe I'm not cynical enough but it seems genuine to me? Then again some people do seem to think she's a sort of master manipulator. I suppose it's possible!

This comment annoyed me enough to actually make an account -- as I feel a lot of personal sympathy (feeling utterly scammed by parents/school/society in a large way) and the topics of many of the polls read as sincere to me and with tons of topics where the 'controversy' or 'provocative' strikes me with a lot of confusion why the topic is controversial at all, which has made me significantly frustrated when "stirring up controversy" is the framing that some opponent would like to paint me as, when several times in my life I've said things that are just my honest thoughts with no intent to be controversial at all and I'm tired of it.

This gives me a temptation to think "these people are going to call me this anyway, when should I really not care", and with Aella's having an audience and doing this for years maybe playing into that 'role' became tempting. Negativity bias + being poor at taking feedback seems general amongst influencer-people too. So I personally find that credible.

(I do find Aella's glorfifying sex work / crypto promotion stuff strange myself -- but not even the haters are talking about the crypto promotion stuff)

If I understand you correctly, you think:

Her posts are not provocative, just sincere curious inquiries.

She does noy stir up controversy, she's just interested in non mainstream things

People unfairly accuse her of being controversial. You can relate to this.

Close?

Yes -- many of the inquiries I am surprised are treated as taboo as they are, many social 'norms' and rules are nonsensical and often weaponized already, "asking questions" is pushback and not malicious.

Well I can't know for sure how much controversy could be intentional, something that makes her less credible about this is she's done this for an audience for so long, and she 'should' know there are some others who react horribly to her. (In her shoes, I would not be able to consistently predict which topics would offend people though -- just that it would happen and for her has already happened for years.) It seems more resonant to me that she just does have the same disgust reaction / have the awareness of the "normal person" optics -- so yes, I think she is more sincere than others here seem to think.

The idea that my honest thoughts and positions could be labeled as 'provocative' (which they have before) is subjective to the reader, and I am often more frustrated by it than it has ever helped. In my life I have personally kept silent most of the time, which converts it into silent frustration and feelings of alienation about other people, instead of turning it into 'part of my brand' like Aella.

After observing for years, its my conclusion that literally everything she does, from the weird polls to the bemoaning her inability to find a husband (who would tolerate her onlyfans), to the gangbangs is just her way of selling her services, targeting a very particular niche: grown up tech nerds who find themselves suddenly very wealthy.

If you engage with her in ANY way, you are entering her sales funnel.

This wouldn't be so bad except she likewise bends all attention around any issue or event to be about her. Even this action has made it so people aren't discussing whether her critics are right, now its all about her disappearance from the public eye.

My prediction is she makes a very ostentatious return to social media inside a month, probably setting up some big event she will promote, and then continues on as usual.

My prediction is she makes a very ostentatious return to social media inside a month, probably setting up some big event she will promote, and then continues on as usual.

Isn't she big into vibecamp that's about to happen? Would be a weird time to disappear right before that if that's her goal, just playing devil's advocate.

One of her boyfriends mentioned on her substack that she had a few bad experiences at in person events. Maybe she's skipping Vibecamp since she doesn't want to have to deal with being a microcelebrity at the moment, even if that's the sort of event where people would tend to be neutral to positive on her.

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