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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31753 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Extremely frivolous stuff, but there's a fun debate going down over on Aella's twitter about personal hygiene. In short, as a true empiricist, she measures lots of stuff about her daily routine (iirc, using an app called Daylio), and recently revealed her stats for 2023. What is causing a kerfuffle is not the number of days she had sex (63), took Adderall (126), or escorted (6), but the number of times she showered, namely 37 [sic].

Aella insists she doesn't smell (and says she's consulted with others to confirm this), but I think that's a very relative statement; some people seem to have a high baseline tolerance for stank of various kinds, to the point that even strong odours don't register to them as stank, while others like myself are very smell sensitive; at the risk of TMI, my wife was amused that I could tell when our kids in their diaper days had done a pee, because I could always smell it almost immediately even when she had no idea. Back in my online dating days, there were several dates I simply couldn't follow up on because the person I was with had bad personal hygiene. I'm not talking about a mild healthy body odour here, but when you're having sex doggy-style and get hit by bad ass-stench it's an instant boner kill. And I'll be honest, I've had a crush on Aella for ages; she's a very attractive nerdy woman, and as a sexually confident and charismatic female Rationalist, she is a very horny unicorn among horses. But I've got to say, learning that specific factoid about her life had a similar effect on my idle long-distance lust as an F150's tires do on a small rodent (not that she should care, of course - just putting it out there).

That said, I am a bit of ablutomaniac - I shower and/or bathe 2-3 times a day. I don't think it's a hygiene thing per se. I shower when I get up because it helps me feel awake and ready for the day; I often have a shower or bath in the late afternoon/early evening after a workout because it feels great to soak sore muscles; and I sometimes shower just before bed, because I find it really nice to get into a bed with clean, fresh-smelling sheets having just come out of the shower smelling clean and fresh myself. I also routinely use (carefully chosen, subtle) cologne on my body as well as both fabric conditioner and scent booster when washing my clothes.

Anyway, Aella's feed is pretty funny right now, to the point that she's holding polls about showering, and I was curious what folks here think about it. Obviously me and Aella are at different ends of the ablutic spectrum, but what's a healthy normal number of times to shower/bathe per day? How much of it is down to personal preference?

I really do not enjoy the fact that many of my internet watering holes have the propensity for discussing any stray thought this woman has. I have no interest in her or what she has to say yet I am not allowed to be free of her. Would anyone like to STEEL MAN their interest in her? Tell me the most interesting thing she's ever said IYO.

Much of her twitter popularity isn't from le sex, but often-offensive philosophy-style hypothetical tweets/polls.

Her blog also has some decent articles. https://aella.substack.com

It's so weird how ex porn/cam girls go on to try and be intellectual, I don’t care how many philosophical books Sasha Gray read, I’m not taking life advice from a woman who licked cum off a toilet seat.

It's just the classic "woman notices untapped reservoir of male attention" trope as far as I can tell. Any straight male dominated space will sooner or later have this phenomenon happen to it. Women have this warping effect on (straight) male spaces where suddenly everything becomes all about them. Suddenly you have to be careful with what you say, lest the woman flee like a spooked gazelle, which would upset the number of men in the group who are now resolutely pouring all their attention and time on her to try and get some play.

Yes but us Men of Rationality are supposed to see things like this for what they are and keep our minds on higher things. I guess all that was a load of crap, wasn't it?

I'm not sure where it follows. The fact that you can more clearly see what's going on doesn't mean you are free from all human emotions and faults. You still have the same brain, the same hormones and the same sexual drives, you may know better about how it works, but knowing which hormones make you horny doesn't make you any less horny.

I don't know who claimed that, but, big brained men are just as horny and warped by porn as little brained men.

Not everyone lives up to their ideals all the time, this isn't new. It doesn't mean those ideals are a load of crap. For one thing, plenty of people in this community don't give a shit about Aella. For another, even the people who do care about her are probably sincere in their ideals. The conclusion to take away there is "these guys are human and prone to human failings too", not "they are full of crap".

I think it's a pretty low bar. This is on the level simping for a twitch streamer.

What is easy for one is hard for another. One should always strive to be understanding of someone else's weaknesses.

I think it's fair to point out to people obsessed with Aella the ways in which their actions are incongruent with their beliefs. I just don't think it's fair to say that their stated beliefs were therefore a load of crap.

I can accept that. I was too harsh.

I mean, it's not like we're running on completely different hardware. Rationality is just supposed to help you use your existing hardware better, and so there's going to be things like, "when a moderately attractive rationalist chick comes around, she's going to get a lot of straight male attention disproportionate to her actual contributions."

You can tell someone the reason they're acting extra nice around her is because they find the combination of her looks and personality attractive, and they're subconsciously executing subtle mating protocols in their brain, and that might help them check some of the tendency, but it will never entirely eliminate the behavior. For that we'll need gene editing.

She talks about sex and the power dynamics involved in it very openly and mostly honestly from the perspective of a very attractive woman. In a social sphere 90%+ male and rather socially clueless. Where is the mystery?

The problem is there is no mystery!

Would anyone like to STEEL MAN their interest in her?

twirls his hipster moustache I liked Aella before she became a rationalist sex symbol. If you ever trawled subreddits where women post their naked pictures, you'll notice that 90% project a carefully curated purely sexual image, 9% crave validation (either sincerely or not). Aella with her "kidnapped by gnomes" series did neither. You can consider her persona a rehash of the manic pixie dream girl, but with boobs, or a precursor to the whole gamer girl with a cleavage archetype that occupied Twitch.

Aella with her "kidnapped by gnomes" series did neither.

Wait, that's who people are arguing about? Man, that's like, 2012 vintage reddit? Oh god I'm getting so old.

Suddenly this whole conversation makes so much more sense when I think about the sort of woman who would do that on 2012 reddit. Showering less than once a week just fits.

I saw that on Tumblr myself, not Reddit.

And yeah, I don't find Aella all that erotic, but that was a good shitpost.

this whole thread would be better suited in the small questions section. it's not really culture war relevant.

I disagree, primarily because (as mentioned in my comment below) there is a definite HBD angle here. There are also some obvious (at least to me) gender issues implicated in the discussion. I'd probably have approved this discussion for outside the containment thread, but I don't see this as a small question, even if it is not presently an active CW issue.

Same, though happily this is really the only place where I'm really exposed to Aella, beyond when something she says really makes her the 15 minute main character on Twitter. Most of it really all comes off as your basic "whoah, have you considered these social norms could all be... DIFFERENT?" style high school philosophizing.

I mean, it's getting discussion and attention, and Aella seems to be particularly good at it, so I don't know if it's so 'basic'. Clearly she is hitting a note that other people won't or can't.

This sensation peaked for me on the B&R podcast interview when asked if she recognizes how weird her twitter poll questions are. She didn’t say she doesn’t know why her questions are weird, she didn’t assert the questions shouldnt be weird, she denied that she was aware they are weird(Even Jesse uncharacteristically commented on this later, finding this this too much). Smells too much like she’s wearing Spergface and not doing a great job at it.

same. annoying to see it here

Same. She's not even the most interesting Rationalist-adjacent moderately attractive (and homeschooled!) woman, who is probably Lulie, but Lulie doesn't troll or generally seek attention, which is why most people don't know about her.

I hadn't heard of her before, and am looking a bit at Lulie's Twitter and website. Neither seem particularly approachable or interesting at first glance. The parts about something I have some expertise in (teaching and learning art) seem to be presenting very well known information (the sort of thing you get out of any intro to drawing class), with no angle or interesting take on it.

What do you like about her?

What do you like about her?

Nothing much, I just think that what she talks about and thinks is more interesting than what Aella talks about.

What’s interesting about her? Just did a quick read of her latest tweets and it seemed like regular white girl stuff

This one?

https://twitter.com/reasonisfun

If Taking Children Seriously is regular for white girls in your area, then you are in an unusual bubble.

Also, I suspect that less than 1% of Rationalists are Popperians.

She is interested in a lot of dubious psychology, but so are a lot of Rationalists.

That said, I wouldn't say she's particularly interesting, but then again I am more interested in ideas than people, and follow debates/topics/events much moreso than particular people.

I think her schtick is kind of a pre-christian druidic sex priestess. Perhaps druidic is wrong, but I think there were things like that around northern Europe.

Basically she's thrown dreamy sex parties for prominent rationalists.

A lot of the interest about her online is from people with a couple of degrees of separation from that and are intrigued by her.

Basically once she's shown the super nodes an amazing time, nodes farther away fall under her influence.

OK this is the best explanation so far. She's not a natural internet celebrity, she a really good IRL socialite.

If I talk about a hot nerdy girl like her tweets are deeply important, maybe she'll see my comment, want to meet, and have lots of wild sex and fall in love.

It would have worked for George Michael.

How has this worked for you in the past?

The nerdy version of honking your horn at a hot woman on the street.

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