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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29362 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Hmm, I dunno. That whole r/antiwork debacle was an excellent case study in the wide gulf between how radical leftists present themselves on the internet vs. how they look and act in meatspace. Whenever you see those compilations of Antifa mugshots, they generally look like weird, off-putting crusty people who smoke too much weed and bathe infrequently.

I think it comes back to the point I made here. As a rule, high-status people (attractive, charming, neurotypical, able to hold down a steady job, high income etc.) are not pursuing radical changes to the society in which they live, as they know full well they don't stand to gain as a result of these changes. The only people who can reliably be assumed to support radically changing society from the ground up are the losers in the current system. Go to any meeting of far-right or far-left people and you will be disproportionately likely to encounter people who are physically unattractive, lacking in social graces, working in unskilled jobs etc..

No question that far-right 4chan posters ranting about da joos aren't getting invited to many cool parties - but neither is Doreen, the founder of /r/antiwork, and no one is more acutely aware of that fact than they are.

part of the reason people look like losers in mugshots is because they are in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and anxious, having just been arrested . It's not like they can take many photos under ideal conditions , relaxed, and then use the best photo.

maybe this would have been true 15 years ago, but many of the people who are being de-platformed , exiled, or excluded are not always losers anymore. I think a fair number of successful, rich leftists in tech, NGOs, politics, law actually do seek radical change at a societal level

part of the reason people look like losers in mugshots is because they are in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and anxious, having just been arrested

I don't mean they look like losers because they're in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and they're anxious. I mean they look like a specific category of loser: over-/under-weight, loads of horrible facial piercings, hair in natty dreadlocks and/or dyed a shade that doesn't exist in nature, face tattoos, bad teeth.

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