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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3399 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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I’m somewhat familiar with the work of the reactionary blogger Jim and one thing I definitely never expected him to do was to use the Japanese light novel series KonoSuba and its anime adaptation as a talking point. But now it’s here:

In the anime Konosuba, Kazuma and Megumin frequently find themselves alone together and have a lot of physical contact. Kazuma, who is the main male character, is identified in the storyline as seventeen years old and is drawn as slightly younger; Megumin, who is the primary romantic interest, his waifu, his best girl, is drawn inappropriately young, and is identified in the storyline as inappropriately young even for a seventeen-year-old boy, but all the fanservice women, for example Aqua, are drawn as about Sydney Sweeney’s age. They are all drawn as obviously older than Kazuma, and most of them are identified in the storyline as inappropriately mature for a seventeen-year-old boy. All the other girls perform fanservice, and Megumin does not, but only Megumin gets time alone and extensive platonic physical contact with Kazuma. The storyline could be interpreted as the young main male character preparing her for a future marriage, while at the same time being distracted by all those attractive, far older eye-candy women, particularly Aqua.

One aspect he left out is that Aqua basically exists a comic relief character and not as a potential romantic interest (also the notion that she is ‘drawn as about Sydney Sweeney’s age’ is questionable at best) and that the other main female character who can be called a fanservice woman (Darkness) is basically a delusional pervert which rules her out as a love interest as well.

Anyway, that’s not the main reason I’m linking to it here and I also know this subject matter has been done to death here. The reason instead is the reference therein to mainstream accusations about the ‘Peter Pan syndrome’ among single men. I think it’s a fascinating culture war phenomenon and I also think Jim misses the point about it here. It’s not that it’s a pretext for aging and frumpy hags to whine, it’s that it’s based on the assumption that women are innately mature enough for marriage. I’ll quote a 2011 blog post from an Australian Catholic social conservative author who is also critical of the Manosphere:

On the other hand, what alpha Christian male wants to be sloppy sixth's to the modern shrew? The problem for this type of guy is the lack of quality women out there. He wants to get married but the pickings are so slim. Hymowitz thinks that today's average girl is "quality" product, however I think that there is a fair amount of legitimate disagreement as what constitutes quality No matter what her career achievements, a woman who has ridden the carousel and perhaps made a few trips to the abortuary is not quality material from a Christian point of view. A mature and responsible christian male would think such a woman is high risk material for infidelity and divorce and by-pass her. If there were an en masse movement to alpha up, the following would happen. The hedonists would pump and dump while the Christians would become more choosy; the pool of marriageable suitors for women would shrink.

Where Hymowitz errs, is in the assertion that today's woman is in some way more "mature" than the pre-adolescent male upon which she rightly heaps her scorn. She labours under the illusion that the modern woman is some sort of prize that men will aspire to. Hymowitz has framed her argument in such a way that would be laughable to the good men of the past.

Men and women of the past would both agree that men today leave a lot to be desired, but the fall in quality has been most marked amongst women. From the vantage point of the past, the modern woman today is vapid, slutty, superficial, unfeminine and hence extremely poor quality material.

What marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood is the gradual assumption of responsibility, maturity and independence. What separates the child, the adolescent and the adult is the increasing influence of reason over emotion. The mature adult takes his emotions into account but is not ruled by them. Enter the concept of the Rationalisation Hamster. The concept needs to be understood as the cognitive mechanism by which thought is subordinated and aligned to emotion. The function of this "hamster" is to provide a superficially plausible (if not logically consistent) series of thoughts to align and justify whatever action is required by the emotional state. It is effectively the thought process of an immature adolescent.

The "triumph" of modern Feminism has been to culturally and legislatively legitimise this rationalisation hamster. Marriage is no longer seen as a reciprocal relationship amongst two people, but rather a flexible arrangement of convenience based on the emotive state of the parties. The logic of abortion as a woman's rights issue (ignoring the rights of the father) is another example. The furthering of women into fields that they are totally unsuited to, such as the military, police and firefighting services yet another. Feminism has also been able to reframe feminine identity; what previous generations would have thought trampy and flighty, modern feminism has been able to portray as mature.

When Hymnowitz points to the Star Wards nerds, all I can think of is the "mature" female SATC equivalents. I admit that men sitting in mom's basement jerking off to online porn are pretty shallow, but so are the women who spend their lives shopping for bags, clothes whilst riding the carosel waiting for the enabling supplicant whom will provide them with lifestyle to which they are accustomed. People from a less enlightened age would consider a person who endlessly obsesses about their looks, the latest pair of Jimmy Choo's and who Brad is dating now, pretty superficial. It's the pot calling the kettle black.

Anecdote: I was recently at a dinner with a family and their early 20s daughter... the level of bitchiness was off the charts. Bitchiness directed towards her own parents mostly, which was unbecoming. Seemingly every second sentence she spoke was some kind of expression of above-it-allness, disinterest, disdain for explaining some topic further. Very unattractive. Even allowing for the fact that she probably didn't want to be there, that's not at all how you're supposed to behave at dinner even if you don't want to be there.

They aren't making women like they used to. Nor men for that matter.

Women learning more cute anime-girl mannerisms would likely raise fertility and supercharge pair bonding. Probably we need more anime-boy mannerisms too, which means a good deal more fighting and high stakes competition. Women like handsome, confident 'the greatest of all time' characters like Gojo Satoru.

But we do all this social engineering for what? Children? Fertility could drop to zero tomorrow and there would be no true existential consequences. There are many reasons why it'd be bad, people not caring about the future, the intrinsic good aspect of raising children. Many people not falling in love is a bad thing too, obviously. From Jim:

It should not be this way, and it does not have to be this way, for seventy years ago, it was not this way. But this is what we have now. It is horrifying. This has to end, or our race and our species will end.

OK, that's kind of true.

But we won't need new 18-year old human workers in 2044. We hardly need them today, there's a huge oversupply of young people relative to actual demand for labour. Employers are acting like the pickiest hot-girls on dating apps with all the bullshit they're pulling because they simply do not want or need more people. If they actually had a labour shortage, they'd act like it and scrap the 'we interview you 5 different times and make you pass 3 tests' approach. The modern dysfunction in dating markets and the workplace reflects a breakdown in the core assumptions of our civilization, rooted in the technologies we have available and how that affects the social system. The combination of mobile phones, social media, mass automation, deindustrialization, microplastic/chemical pollution would surely be disruptive to whatever we had 70 years ago, just from first principles?

Whatever gross dysfunction going on with our civilization's inability to reproduce or pair up properly doesn't really matter at all, it'll be blown out of the water by AI.

Imagine if we set up anime battle schools to turn out legions of super attractive, cute couples. Men are men again. Women are women. Korea has TFR 5. Even if that was somehow possible, so what? Either AI goes well or it goes badly. Whatever mild or gross dysfunction pales in comparison to being dead or immortal. I think a functional society would do better - but a functional society is also going to get torn to pieces. It's like spaghettification when one gets close to a black hole. How could ASI not disintegrate our society at minimum, when it nukes all the basic assumptions we have about the role of people, labour, economies, even what it means to be human?

Or imagine even that I'm wrong about AI. Even if AI is a nothingburger, there are still way more people than there are jobs for them. There's this gigantic disability/welfare architecture built up for this very purpose, ever expanding layers of education to keep young people out of the labour market, ridiculous regulations requiring employment of useless people that necessitate even more to fix up their mess and still huge oversupply. As time passes, we get more machinery that can do more work in agriculture, manufacturing, more robots and so fewer people are needed. I think the root cause of the dating market dysfunction is driven by technology destabilizing all old equilibriums simultaneously. A mere social fix isn't going to work, it's like building a castle on the sand in an hourglass. And especially Christianity cannot work, since that's the very thing we observed completely failing!

But we won't need new 18-year old human workers in 2044. We hardly need them today, there's a huge oversupply of young people relative to actual demand for labour.

I suspect this undersells how the economy works. The economy in a free-market system is a network effect; more able-bodied workers generates more opportunity, all else being equal. A better demographic pyramid requires less taxation per capita to support a social safety net for the elderly, allowing more reinvestment into other economic opportunities. It also would create different, potentially beneficial governance effects in democracies.

Either AI goes well or it goes badly. Whatever mild or gross dysfunction pales in comparison to being dead or immortal.

It seems quite possible that AI goes fine and that humans are still a valued or even necessary part of the economy. But even if it turns out so "well" that most people do not need to engage in labor, I think it behooves us to figure out how to get romance and childrearing right. In a good AI takeoff scenario, that will quickly (over civilizational time-scales, anyway) become the focus of most human beings, in all likelihood.

And especially Christianity cannot work, since that's the very thing we observed completely failing!

What are you talking about? When practiced, Christianity shows better results in dating markets (and tfr) – this is pretty well known social science. Broadly speaking steady religious practice (not limited to Christianity) correlates well with better life outcomes, at least in the United States.

The economy in a free-market system is a network effect; more able-bodied workers generates more opportunity, all else being equal

Even China can't find enough work for all their young people, they have high youth unemployment despite an enormous pool of well-educated young people and intense capitalist pressure.

If the economy is primarily acting like a network effect, then why don't we see the network effect in action? Why can't Johnny walk in with a firm handshake and get a good job with all these opportunities being made? The US has a pretty free market and a pretty large population. I don't deny that there are some aspects of a network effect, certainly with elite talent there are. But adding merely able-bodied workers is not helping much at all.

This is the mass-immigration school of economic thought. Adding 10 million able bodied Haitians or Hondurans isn't going to make America much richer at all. All the Arabs and Africans going to Europe aren't bolstering the eurozone economies, largely because they don't work. Even if they did, it only impedes automation of low-value labour. Domestic births are naturally better but even then, automation is already chewing through these roles.

In a good AI takeoff scenario, that will quickly (over civilizational time-scales, anyway) become the focus of most human beings, in all likelihood.

I agree but it's a lot easier to handle that later. There will be all the time in the world to fix that up.

When practiced, Christianity shows better results in dating markets

So why isn't it being practiced, then? Church attendence rates fell from 70% in the mid 20th century to 30% today. Even these remaining nominal Christians are mostly not acting like it's 1950 either, they're largely feminists and progressives who show up for a sermon about progressivism from a priest. They don't act like Christians used to act with regards to divorce, marital roles or the things that Jim is calling for.

It's true that small pockets of highly religious-reactionary people are high fertility. But there is no evidence that a technological country can be run this way by usually-isolated population of the highly devout. Why would the Mormons or Amish or Hasidic Jews not immediately act like everyone else when they end up having to run a whole country?

Even if they did, it only impedes automation of low-value labour.

Oh, so that's how mass immigration serves the lower/underclass.

So why isn't it being practiced, then?

Because the State has incorporated most of Christianity's community-building aspects. You don't make the choice to donate your time to the soup kitchen any more; the government simply confiscates your time (through a process known as "income tax") and runs that program itself (at times it will pay religious groups to do this). Same thing with permitting crime, actually- the way Western society donates to the poor is simply by permitting them to walk into any store, take what whatever they require, and the cost of that is redistributed through something called an "insurance premium".

they have high youth unemployment despite an enormous pool of well-educated young people

The education, of course, was mostly just to dissuade young people from dealing with unemployment the traditional way. Education to those who can't use it provides no bonus.

so that's how mass immigration serves the lower/underclass

I think the lower classes would rather have robots doing their jobs than a flood of immigrants rendering them strangers in their home towns, not to mention abusing their daughters. Everything gets automated eventually but there's no need to import populations with wildly different values.

Because the State has incorporated most of Christianity's community-building aspects

Well, if you squint at it, single mothers are now married to the state who provides benefits for their offspring. But this is not really what Christians mean by 'marriage'. The modern state does perform some community aspects but in a totally different way to how they're done under a genuinely Christian society. A mountain of abortion here, euthanasia there, pornography on the left and fornication on the right and directly in front of us a great big Pride Parade... doesn't sound very Christian to me!

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