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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32931 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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To take something like Father's Day and twist it into a sick joke just rubs me the wrong way.

I don't know this guy or anything about this entire topic other than what I have just read here, but without knowing how old he is, yeah - that's the kind of edgy contrarian stuff I'd expect. The best retort is not to get upset, it's to reply "Congratulations on the vasectomy! I completely agree that you should not reproduce!" and leave it at that 😁

Church of Satan/Satanic Temple/whatever other splinter group types do evoke 🙄 in me - not because I'm afraid they are teaching little kiddies to worship the Lord of this World, but because they're still stuck in the 50s mindset about shocking the squares. Anton LaVey was a clever grifter and I admire his showmanship in monetising the California weird scene, but come on people: society has moved on and even the squares are out there waving flags for Pride month. You're fighting an enemy that only exists in certain places and mostly in your imagination (even the Bible-basher types are using contraception and getting divorces and multiple remarriages today) and you're no longer on the cutting edge of being daring. This is this year's German Eurovision entry, for pete's sake. If you honestly did believe in and worship Satan, that would be shocking nowadays.

You're fighting an enemy that only exists in certain places and mostly in your imagination

For the people I know personally who are still very edgy atheists (admittedly not Church of Satan stuff) as fully grown adults in the year of our lord 2023, it's because they also happen to exist in those certain places. They all live in very religious areas (one in a heavily Christian part of the US, one in the Middle East and one in South America) and grew up in very religious families. On the internet their views are passé, but in their day to day lives it's still very much counter-cultural.

Basically anything "edgy" is highly context dependent- there's a big difference between burning a Quran in rural Texas, burning a Quran in London and burning a Quran in Saudi Arabia. And the internet removes local contexts, so beyond edgy stuff in all forms inevitably being kind of cringe, you end up with it being especially cringe in places where it isn't counter-cultural. An example in the opposite direction would be the South American atheist finding the "based tradcath converts" cringe beyond all belief, since basically every authority figure around him is Catholic.

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