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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6544 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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but when the imbalance is "immature frat dudes with local social clout" and not "literal Hollywood magnate with the ability to nuke ones' career path" I suspect the average onlooker isn't as sympathetic.

This is certainly true from an objective standpoint, but I think women are a lot more attuned to "local status" than global status, and men act accordingly. E.g. when we look at the typical "male cult leader who's banging all his female followers", it's easy for us on the outside to say "lmao, this guy isn't even attractive or high-status, he's just some random schlub, you can just walk away and nothing bad would happen to you." But what the cult leader has done is construct a tiny snowglobe world of which he is king, and this world is what the cult followers live and breathe every day. The idea that there is some broader context in which the cult and its leader are considered low-status is at best just an abstract concept that doesn't register emotionally, much like the abstract knowledge that there are starving children in some random African village.

Oh absolutely, the human brain with its dunbar's number limits is probably not thinking "oh but what if this becomes a national controversy?"

I'm just saying, the relative power imbalance here is pretty slim. If it was some homeless teen runaway that they had pulled in and dosed with drugs, the disparity would be broader and possible noteworthy.

But the combination of the similarity of ages, basically similar social standing, basically similar economic strata... any power differential was mostly in their minds if any.

So despite how the emotional experience might have been intense, an actress turning down Harvey Weinstein and having her career instantly and irrevocably nuked is certainly in a less tenable position than a sorority sister trying to, I dunno, either climb the status ladder or lock down a Frat guy as a partner and being forced to change schools.

Power and status are highly contextual, and I've found general attempts to rate "privilege" don't map well to the full gamut of situations.

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