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Notes -
Something I've seen today:
US Navy Used Drag Queen Influencer To Attract A ‘Wide Range’ Of New Troops As Recruitment Plummets
So, admittedly, I do not know much about the recruiting to the Navy (or any other military branch) and as a first generation immigrant, may misunderstand some larger things. But does it really make any sense to anybody else? I mean, sure, there are people that choose to lead this lifestyle, and I personally have no problem with that. But I always thought the intersection between them and the people that go to the military - and also the people that the military actually wants - is if not zero then small enough. And yet, this is what is happening, and I am struggling to make sense of any of it.
As I see it, the military is probably the last place that would be under pressure to go woke - the Left hates it unconditionally and passionately anyway, it is impossible to "cancel" it in any meaningful way, you can not really orchestrate an ideological boycott against the military (they have trillions of dollars, and most businesses would give an arm and a leg to be a military supplier, as I understand... maybe Google can afford to choose, but even they at the end are glad to be friends) and the advancement system does not really depend on the SJWs in any way up to the very top where only the very few get the chance to be anyway.
So, I see only these possible explanations:
Army recruiting is stunningly incompetent and literally has no idea what they are doing and why, they literally are desperate to try absolutely anything, on the tiny chance it may work, because they are completely out of ideas and can not think of anything that would attract the youth to join the military anymore, so they are just running through the options, however bizzarre, because it couldn't be any worse than it already is. Are things really this bad?
It is part of some kind of 4D chess complex strategy that I fail to understand because I am too dumb. Please ELI5 it to me then.
I am stunningly ignorant and there's actually a huge untapped reserve of drag queens that dream about joining the Navy (and the Army, and the Marines) as long as their penchant for womanface performances ceases to be a barrier. This is so significant audience that the need to address it absolutely overrides any negative effects that can be caused by such outreach effort to traditional macho-man audience which has been the traditional target of the military recruting efforts before. Is that the case? Any data I could see that supports it?
Any other explanations?
Burgers?
…A bit off topic but this made me think that second-rate economists, utilitarians and other autistic behavioral scheme enjoyers who can't tell the map from the territory have poisoned the water supply somewhat.
Humans respond to incentives and pursue goals, but humans are not, by and large, maximizers (EY and SBF are I guess), they're behavior- and thought-executors. It may be the case that even generally useful AI agents are hard to build any other way, although some folks try. The rational economic agent is a spook, a simplified model; not in the sense that a real Rational Economic Agent is hairier, biased and makes mistakes when generating rational plans, but in that it's literally a sketch, fundamentally dissimilar from the real issue even if convenient for some analyses. Implicitly thinking that people maximize stuff is almost as boneheaded as imagining that a 130 IQ person has 130 grains of intelligence or something, it's a profound misunderstanding about the ontology on which the debate is premised, its terms are defined and measurements are done.
With that in mind, my answer is boring. People writing this army recruitment strategy (Stonetoss really is a genius) are not maximizing recruitment KPIs. They're not maximizing trans representation in the battlefield either. They're doing what they feel like they should be doing in their life, given their background and norms in their social circle. «It's called being a decent human being», you know? They're not grey-haired generals (but on this note, even Milley is mocked by tradcons, isn't he?) – they're part of the same HR/veryonline/Moldbuggian Cathedral mental blob that controls and molds the lion's share of labor pool for people-oriented jobs. They're what the military thinks is the safest bet in this dire situation of volunteer shortage; they're professionals. And professionals try not to fall behind the times. It's 2k23, so you've got to empower and platform trans women and women of color, what's the problem?
Now, certainly the recruitment may not go all that well (it may go well in the long run too: perhaps trans soldiers will prove much more useful in our transhuman augmented future). But anyway, who knows if an underwhelming harvest is due to aversion to the trans stuff (and even if it were, what are you suggesting they do – commit trans erasure over some KPI bullshit?! They'll walk out and cancel your family if you're unlucky) or just because those simple to a fault cisheteronormative Nebraskan boys already feel like they're doing their part of valor and sacrifice working and paying taxes – instead of flipping out and shooting up some symbol of their hopeless cultural subjugation by the smug coastal Elves who make those ads.
Well, @sodiummuffin said it better.
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