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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?
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.
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".
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.
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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.
Probably Dilaudid, also known in the ER as "I'm allergic to everything except for that one that starts with D."
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