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This won’t be particularly substantive but hopefully it’s enough to avoid a mod-slap. Apparently a group of women customers accosted staff at a Minneapolis yoga chain and berated them for not having some sort of ICE signage up (presumably a “No ICE allowed” sign, as if ICE agents will be stopping in to do yoga).
Here is an article.
Here is a direct link to the viral TikTok in question
The video’s author is Heather Anderson, 51, essentially the archetype of the wine mom, the core demographic of the latest frenzy. She appears to be an elementary school teacher and host of a podcast Belonging in the Classroom which presents itself with this description:
Of course this dovetails nicely with our discussion of another winemom-cum-podcaster, Jennifer Welch and her open calls for Republican blood. In all seriousness, psychologically speaking, what on Earth is going on with 50 year-old women right now? Have Democrats effectively weaponized Karenism?
The incident reminds me almost exactly of scenes that we saw in 2020, like this similar incident you surely remember of diners being surrounded and screamed at for not raising their fists in solidarity with BLM..
There is much endless discussion of peak woke, but to me it feels almost exactly like we are back in 2020, if not for the historic cold weather of the last few weeks and general time of year, I imagine it would be nearly identical.
Contra a few posters below, this isn’t nutpicking, and I consider that term to be more often an asymmetrical dodge than helpful clear thinking.
Why isn’t this nutpicking? Because it is pretty within the general zeitgeist of what is currently happening. It’s not some outlier story that doesn’t fit or alters the narrative.
Nutpicking would be focusing on the schizophrenic protesting ICE because Zorblog, king of the lizard people is behind it.
We have a coordinated group of activists doing stuff like this, at enough of a scale that it is controlling a large portion of the media and political reaction. This example might have some outlier characteristics, but it doesn’t distort, change, or amplify what’s in the water. And to dismiss it as an anecdote is to attempt to tell people that the clear pattern in front of the can’t be extrapolated from or examined.
We just had a comment about some apparently prominent guys blogpost about how him and his wife are basically spending their winter vacationing through these protests.
In isolation, Pretti is a ‘nut’. Statistically what can we infer from a divorced murse with a gun getting in confrontations with ICE. Good is a ‘nut’, a newly lesbian widow, with children form multiple fathers, who gets involved with blocking ice with her vehicle.
Yes every anecdote has nutty contours, and no nobody here has “statistics” on just how many Karen a Karenchuck can Karen.
But the leap is to then, “you can’t notice what’s happening, who’s doing it, and the effects it’s having” is less than useless. It’s active attempts to disperse conversation from reaching “conclusions”. Some of it is malicious, a lot is “um ackshully autistic im-so-smart contrarianism”, a lot is quokkas gonna quokka.
But this anecdote here is not baseless, not nutpicking, and we’re well past the hour of avoiding noticing social trends and associated demographics by calling it “just a few kids on college campuses” metaphorically or not.
I really don't comprehend how you and @The_Nybbler think the argument is "It's a few kids on college campuses" (well, I do, I think the attack is disingenuous, but that doesn't get us anywhere). No, it's a not a dodge. It's, as for example @Jesweez pointed out above, largely a matter of what you notice more (and what you choose to or want to notice). If you think bitches be crazy, you will see a lot of crazy bitches, and social media will feed you more and more of them. If you think specifically 50-year-old liberal women are losing their minds, you will see lots of 50-year-old liberal women losing their minds. If you think right-wing e-thots are on the rise, you will see lots of right-wing e-thots. I don't think I have to repeat myself about how easy it is to convince yourself that conspiratorial Jews or murderous black cannibals are everywhere.
Show me some "clear thinking" that shows specifically that 50-something women are increasing in both mental instability and liberalness because Minneapolis videos are trending.
Because that's what they're getting told, and I'm getting told, and everyone who posts an example of 'real world effects' is getting told: this is nothing, this is just a few kids on college campuses, this is only an exceptional edge case, nobody is saying that, nobody is doing that, it won't and doesn't affect you at all, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam.
EDIT: Whoops, I forgot the ever-popular "Well nobody I know said/does/thinks that!"
Post example where this does have an effect on 'ordinary life' - get told 'you are engaging in boo outgroup'.
Post second example - get told 'why are you obsessing over this fringe trivial thing?'
Remaining options: continue trying to demonstrate with examples from real life why you think this is a big thing and get routinely slapped down for that, or shut up and go along with the new normal (the preferred outcome for those slapping you down, so they can then say in future 'well nobody is objecting to this so it's fine and okay and widely accepted').
Be stubborn, contrarian, slightly autistic, no social skills whatsoever, probably also slightly mentally deranged, and keep doggedly on with option number one in the full knowledge you'll get called all sorts of names and have all sorts of motives attributed to you. Not claiming superior virtue or higher principles, just being the stubborn, obstinate donkey that won't be drove as ever.
Do you think it can also be the case that people show videos of the kind of people they hate to argue that the kind of people they hate are all like this?
Of course they can, and they do it on both sides.
But I also think there comes a point where the denial of "there is nothing wrong" carries on even when the iceberg has smashed against the bow. "Well we're not underwater yet, it's just a few rooms in the front!"
Okay, so you think that indeed, GenX liberal women are going crazy en mass and I am doing "It's a few kids on college campuses" when I question whether a few viral videos is evidence of this?
See, I'm early Gen X/late Boomer, depending where you draw the generational line, and I feel more Gen X. So I see my cohort around me, and they're not making viral videos, but they sure are way more liberal, more woke if you want to call it that, with very little resistance to what is being imported from America.
I honestly cannot emphasise strongly enough the huge sea change in values and social mores over the past forty years, more particularly in the past twenty years. We've gone from the Magdalene Laundries to advice columns in the mainstream media with agony aunts dealing with questions such as "my friend goes after married men for affairs, I feel I can't handle this anymore" and "my husband is no longer interested in sex, should I divorce him or just have an affair?"
That's the 80s kids (Gen X) growing up, becoming adults, and adopting liberal cosmopolitan values from the outside world as mediated to us via movies, TV, the more socially liberal society of the UK next door, and aspirations to be just like the US where a lot of people emigrated to, then maybe returned during the Celtic Tiger era (which again, in the few dizzying years of 'we're rich! properly rich!' meant people got notions, as we say round here).
So, yeah. I'm here to say "it's only a few viral videos" does not cover the whole ground of what is going on.
I'm about the same age as you. I'm going to say that growing up in a country that had the Magdalene Laundries, you probably have seen a much more massive change than I have. That said, how many GenX women in Ireland are going viral like this?
I certainly see many of my generation going woke (especially women) but I see much greater numbers of Millenials, who are the ones I mostly see going diehard woke (along with Gen-Zers, but I'm still not really sure what to make of them yet). Clinton's and Harris's margins over Trump were very slim with GenX women compared to younger generations.
I am not arguing that wokeism "isn't a thing" or that we aren't seeing more radical polarization. Why do you think I have been so gloomy lately about that very thing? I was being very specific about the sort of nutpicking in the OP, who seems to be trying to make a very broad generalization about, specifically, older women. Do I think people protesting Trump or ICE are "a few kids on college campuses"? No. Do I think a few viral Karens, including Renee Goode et al, are? Statistically, yes.
I think we should be skeptical of "pattern-matching" a handful of tragi-comic figures who happen to look like your most mockable archetypal nemeses to some general demographic trend.
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