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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4993 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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This is an image of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner's profile pic on the messaging app Kik. Notice anything?

I know the real story is supposed to be the fact that he was sending sexually explicit texts to women while married, but I can't stop laughing at the picture. It's obviously no coincidence that his hand perfectly covers the giant totenkopf on his chest. This is art.

It is certainly enjoyable to see a Democratic candidate get run through the wringer the way a Republican would, but I must confess that I find his scandals to be endearingly relatable in a way. Prediction market odds for Platner in the general are collapsing, but I think this is less of a reaction to this specific leak and more of a realization that he is the kind of candidate who will have a scandal every other month all the way up to election day, and then a scandal every other year for his entire term if he wins.

EDIT: Additional unverified reports that I cannot vouch for but would be hilarious if true.

Shocker, the dudebro veteran who was liked for basically no reason except the vibes and lack of competition without any meaningful history or vetting turns out to be a piece of shit.

Platner only really works in the sense of normal everyday man vs polished establishment dinosaur, which ironically is empowered a bit by being as shitty as the everyday dudebro stereotype. The Dems aren't at the maga level yet where the bigotry of low expectations is basically default now and low brow behavior like name calling and insults doesn't even get noticed anymore but it's getting increasingly more true. Proof that cancel culture has lost a hold on the country though, things like cheating scandals that would have been major just a few decades ago are minor blips now that only matter in so much as they might signal other worse behavior.

The standards on polite society have fallen and I'm not sure they can ever be brought back.

Im old enough to remember when a vote for George W Bush was supposed to represent a return to normalcy and civility after the endlessly trashy and corrupt behavior of the Clinton administration.

In my opinion @TracingWoodgrains has a lot chutzpah complaining about a lack of civility/norms given the active roll that he and his friends at Blocked and Reported played in dismantling those norms. TWG spent a decade knocking down trees to get at the devil and now that the wind is blowing he finds himself with nowhere to hide. BarnabyCajones, LibsOfTikTok, DataRepublican, and all the other right-coded online commentators he tried to shame, dox, or sic a Twitter-mob on over the years send their regards.

People who are upset by this appear to want the old sociopolitical system, wherein there was a strict division of labor between the people who cranked out images of shit being dumped on the hated outgroup by laughing cartoons of tribal champions, and the actual tribal champions who directly benefited from those images while standing solemnly before a podium in a very expensive suit extruding the blandest possible word-product into an array of very official microphones. If one is going to argue for this previous system, one should argue for it as it actually was, not as it might be imagined to be, particularly in the imagination of the side employing a large majority of the old shit-pouring cartoon experts.

Also, Hideous Hermaphroditical Character, same as it ever was.

I remember Trace running his prank on Libs, what'd he do with DataRepublican or Barnaby?

Barnanby and TWG were kind of the Hector and Achilles of the Atheism wars for while, and a lot of the trans, poly, and EA stuff later. Im not sure if i would characterize it as animosity, but I do recal a few times where i felt that TWG was allowing this to leak into moderation, ie letting his allies off the hook while cracking down on Barnaby and his. The LibsOfTikTok incident you know. the DataRepublican thing was was a "wont someone rid me me of this turbulent priest" type post that got memory holed after it came out that the prime suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk was a gay ex-Mormon who was active on furAfinnity.

Edited to Add: The way I see it "People who are upset by this" as you put it, want plausible deniability, but through both word and deed they have ensured that thier denials will appear implausible regardless of wether they are true.

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