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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12754 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Hot take: Talented nepo babies in Hollywood are vindication of HBD.

Nah, it's dynastic advantage. College-educated parents have college-educated kids, doctor parents have doctor kids, actor parents have actor kids.

A random girl from Missouri might want to become an actress, but she has no idea how to become one. There's this meme that you first move to LA to wait tables and then wait tables until you lose all hope and go back home to Sedalia.

Actor parents know how the industry works. If their child shows any promise, they have director friends, producer friends, they have agents working for them, they know what first roles are good for their kid's acting career and they get dibs on them. By the name Maddyson graduates from Smith-Cotton High School, her spot has already been taken by someone sufficiently good.

Far be it from me to put HBD evidence in the trash, but I take it more as evidence that acting is trivially easy and the only people who can’t do it are crack babies (a set with significant overlap on nepo babies, which is the real reason nepo babies usually can’t - they are unusually disadvantaged on account of their parent’s drug use)

Have you tried it?

I did drama in high school (mostly to avoid having to do painting). It was, indeed, ezpz.

Fair enough. I tried and was awful: wooden, unable to easily imitate tone or behaviour. You may be more talented than you think.

I used to think acting skill was about acting convincingly, but I think it's actually more like being someone people want to watch. I don't think it's trivially easy, or at least it's comparable to something like picking up women at a bar. It's easy if you've got it, really hard if you actually need to get good at it.

Yeah especially with unlimited retakes and the star power PR vehicle behind you.

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