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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?

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.

Is this a common opinion? I really don't find her attractive at all. She looks like she could almost be very attractive, but there is something very offputting about her. Has she ever done a poll to see what people think of her? I was genuinely surprised when I learned how much she makes as a prostitute.

She's decently attractive, but I think it's her personality that really puts her on top.

Though perhaps some might disagree, in the least inflammatory manner possible I can only relate that it has mostly been my personal experience that your average woman has the general breadth, depth, and intensity of political, philosophical, intellectual, etc. interests of a bar of soap (whether Aella would be better off this way given recent revelations shall be left to the reader's judgment).

Thus I frequently see even women who are only a little bit more intense or slightly independent about promoting [current thing], who tweet things like "Eat the rich" and "Capitalism is slavery", get fawned over as "smart political chicks" by many men. Women who are in any way politically heterodox experience this pedestalization even more.

And for a girl like Aella, who can quite reasonably be considered to have developed a sufficiently competent corpus of decently original thinking, comparable to many posters on places like this, and who is not fat (and objectively of an above average level of fitness), not a greasy troll-looking creature (and again probably objectively at least a bit aesthetically above average facially even if she's not your personal "type"), and not biologically male? As a stereotypical Italian might say, "Fuhgeddaboudit".

I'm only surprised she hasn't hooked up with Elon Musk yet. (Though this depends on if he'd actually be comfortable with being occasionally depthmogged by a woman or not or if he just wants "smart political chicks" like Grimes to engage in mutual intellectual onanism with.)

Thus I frequently see even women who are only a little bit more intense or slightly independent about promoting [current thing], who tweet things like "Eat the rich" and "Capitalism is slavery", get fawned over as "smart political chicks" by many men. Women who are in any way politically heterodox experience this pedestalization even more.

A less flattering explanation is that there are a lot of male "simps" - for all sorts of women. Jenna Jameson had nothing to say on tracking adderall consumption or geopolitics and she became rich off simps. Far more than most "smarter" (or better read anyway) women.

It's just that more intellectually minded "simps" use their interests to justify their "simping" by appealing to something more flattering; as both a "she's not like other girls" and "I'm not like other guys" thing.

Jenna Jameson had nothing to say on tracking adderall consumption or geopolitics and she became rich off simps

Trivia of a trivia, but is this true? I thought she was a pornstar back in the days when the big money was in producing pictures and video that people bought, rather than having an army of simps on Onlyfans.

Women like her also made money going on dancing tours for men who'd pay to see their favorite porn star - simps imo. So they made money that way.

But before Onlyfans camming was already a thing and lots of women post-Jameson-but-pre-Onlyfans made money off that model. Which tbh is just OF. All Onlyfans did was widen the road and suck in more "normie" women.

Ah, I see.