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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32909 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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And even create them. Modern therapeutic culture absolutely creates the preconditions for getting a mental illness. We teach through culture that you’re supposed to be happy and healthy and successful and that failure to achieve a life like that is a failure mode of life. And expectations are absurdly high. You have been told to get rich doing a job you love, to find a soul mate, and hobbies you’re passionate about, lots of friends, and be absolutely authentic all the time. Nobody actually has a life like that, or at least not anyone born into the leisure class. And worse, when the failures come and you feel bad, the general message is to focus on that one thing that’s broken. Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it. Create absurdly high expectations, blame the victim for failures, and tell them to focus on their failures and how bad they feel as a failure. If I could do that, I guarantee I can create anxiety and depression.

Incels are doing exactly what the culture has taught them, in a sense. They are supposed to have a wife, or at least date. But, for various reasons it isn’t working. So they focus on it. And they focus on how bad it feels to not only not date, but how bad it feels to feel that bad. If I wanted to create a toxic brew for mental illness, this is how I’d do it.

How would this square with the fact that polygamous societies are less stable due to the issues caused by unhappy, unmarriageable young men?

Are lower-class Somali men steeped in the over-ruminating logic of (bad) Western psychiatry?

Man, that reminds me of an exchange I got into on Discord. I probably should have known better, but for whatever reason this discord about funny youtube videos devolved into everyone talking about their mental illnesses and describing their therapy and self help books.

I said mine was "Shut The Fuck Up" By Dr Denis Leary. Nobody got the joke. People said they'd never heard of it, so I posted the bit. It was a joke. I was making a joke. This being a discord for funny youtube videos and all.

It.... did not go well. One person was especially triggered, accusing me of attacking them and wanting them to die. The mods eventually had to step in and make peace.

I don't understand the neurotic wound picking that seems to have become the predominant culture on nearly every web based community I traverse.

I would assume something like that was an attack, to be quite honest. The alternative interpretation is that you were trying to change the subject to funny youtube videos when people want to wallow (already a faux pas), and just by accident picking the one that looks exactly like an attack on the wallowing people. Unless I knew you to be extremely socially unaware I wouldn't assume such an unlikely scenario.

That might be a more effective response than my go to, which is “uh…y’all having fun in here?”

For some reason the people who want to broadcast their home/romance/gender struggles in #offtopic don’t tend to take that hint.

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