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DEAR FELLOW MEN: You’re making us all look like emotionally-stunted meatheads over this Lindsay Clancy thing
Tracey's takes are always interesting to me, and I enjoy his writing because I often find myself on either side of his opinions on a case by case basis. This time, I'm somewhat against him.
I don't doubt that plenty of men have had less than respectable takes on this case, but the far-and-away more interesting story surrounding this case is the social media response from women at large.
Tracey seems particularly focused on the first-degree conviction that the state is trying to prove, but that's not so interesting to me. Whether she spends 50 years behind bars or 50 years in a mental institute doesn't make a difference to me, really.
I guess my contribution to this is just the observation that what you think is worth talking about and what you think can be ignored is the essence of culture war. Or, put more simply, the culture war is the debate over our unstated and unexamined assumptions about right and wrong, and its hard for us to even realize this is what we're doing in the moment because we're blinded by the emotional flares of the object-level debate.
Why are we talking about Lindsay Clancy so much?
Obviously, it’s a hot topic in the news, people who normally have heated discussions about The Bachelor are talking about this trial instead. But the motte isn’t one of those groups. Why is this particular social media brain rot such a big deal to the motte? Not criticizing, just noting- we didn’t talk that much about Johnny depp/Amber Heard.
I think it's just another escalation in a set of court-case topics which have been bubbling up to the surface with potential political valence. The Nolan Wells allegations, Luigi Mangione, Tyler Robinson...and people like Ben Crump, Taylor Lorenz and Candace Owens.
I don't even mention those names necessarily negatively; Candace impressed me a while ago when she interviewed Harvey Weinstein, which seemed like an important thing to do regardless of what the facts ultimately are.
But it's becoming clear that this is more than just isolated factions pushing something crazy or at least strange-looking for shock and attention. It's about the collapse of trust turning into potentially dangerous consequences on a wider scale.
Right, we didn’t have Nolan wells discussions. We had lots of Charlie Kirk discussion, because culture wars relevance. We talked about the assassination without letting the Luigi mangione phenomenon have much presence on the forum.
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There is a lot more culture war meat here than random celebrity gossip. Maybe it shouldn't have gotten this much attention, but now that it has, the meta is CW relevant.
This is far closer to a gun control debate following a school shooting than celebrity gossip....
Also, there is a giant memetic threat here, that I wont be surprised if we see sympathy for Clance increase cases like this. I think there is a precursor in SIDs. SIDS may have hidden the causal mechanism of infant deaths so effectively that society learned “babies occasionally inexplicably die” rather than transmitting a more specific warning about dangerous parental practices. While this mostly disappeared in sleeping safety reducing accidental suffocation, I suspect that some amount of infanticide also got 'disappeared' into this statistic.
When SIDs is some 'act of God', nobody internalizes or normalizes the idea that some women(and men) can't handle it and are irresponsible with their babies to the point of homocidal neglect or even outright infanticide. The toaster fucking meme is apt here.
Yeah, one thing that's been heavy on my mind in this case has been the prospect of a NAMBLA-esque fringe radical feminist group emerging over the next few years, seeking to normalize maternal filicide years after birth by extension of much of the abortion logic, and causing a lot of trouble in the process.
I mean, I'm not even thinking that extreme. I just mean creeping incrementalism of abdication of maternal duty being ok.
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Because the crime is heinous. And the support the perpetrator is getting is off the scale.
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