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I wanted to write about the WPATH leaks: the cancers and the shrinks debating over how many of a 12 year old's "multiple personalities" need to be transsexual before they should give them hormones and surgery.
I wanted to write about a woman I know who just got a $90,000 government grant for her instagram hobby farm, alongside hundreds of other fake businesses like "the Black farmers collective." Taxpayers gave her more money than her business will ever have in revenue to play upper-middle-class status games while the few remaining real farmers around her are going out of business.
I wanted to write about watching my friend once again change all the grocery store tags because prices keep skyrocketing as talking heads insist we're imagining it all and everyone's actually getting super rich.
I wanted to write about my state banning non-"cage free" eggs and claiming it won't increase prices... because they negotiated a kickback deal with the remaining suppliers to eat the cost until after the '24 election, after which they can harvest their monopoly rents and some lobby group can release an official report claiming the price increases were unrelated.
I wanted to write about how my state house just banned natural gas hookups and enabled pressuring companies to drop service to existing customers.
I wanted to write about the people chanting "glory to the martyrs by any means necessary" while insisting nobody could possibly suspect them of supporting Hamas, with every leftist somehow getting an identical memo about how to provide cover for them.
But what's the point? Seriously, why even talk about this just to get gaslit by the people who are celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?
You could spend your entire life writing tens of thousands of words explaining and analyzing this insanity, and all it does it give the perpetrators the satisfaction of gloating about getting away with it.
What are we even doing here? Are we just going to keep doing it forever as the country goes completely insane?
Why? What possible good will it do? Is this whole place just a safety release valve to stop any pressure building up against the overton window slamming left faster than the eye can see?
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good? Can anyone point to an example of it doing any good in the past? Has culture war discussion on the motte ever actually led to anyone solving culture war problems? The closest thing I can come up with are TracingWoodgrain's exposés, which while incredible have hardly moved the needle on public awareness.
Virtually all the energy expended here seems to be vented straight into the void, almost like it's deliberately set up to do so, keeping people arguing in circles until it's too late to do anything about it. And it's been going on for over a decade! When will it stop?
Edit:
I hope this example might get across what I mean. A few weeks ago I wasted time finding out about "multiplicity" (the new social contagion of kids who spend too much time on discord deciding they're all "plural systems" of different personalities). Did a bunch of research, got on a bunch of discords that use the "pluralkit" plugin, found examples of psychologists taking it seriously, started writing a post.
It turned out Gattsuru was already talking about it last year like it was just a normal thing that normies will learn to accept soon.
Yesterday we found out a bunch of WPATH associates all treat it like a legitimate and uncontroversial diagnosis that lots of their "trans kids" mysteriously have. It hardly made a splash in the news. Pretty soon people will be mocking anyone who cares about it.
I realized that any discussion I started on the motte would be pointless. It would just run the same circle of "noticing, denial, minimization, celebration, resigned acceptance" that literally all culture war events go through here.
What good would bringing it to anyone's attention do? Even the most bizarre event that would have been considered unimaginably stupid until the second it happens will just be rationalized away like it's no big deal.
FWIW I do hope you come back after the ban and keep posting here, even though we disagree you clearly have things to say.
On the particular topic of plurals: It's not even a new thing. There have been waves of multiple personality disorder diagnosis before the internet was a thing, and in the resulting controversy a consensus emerged that the diagnosis was actually helping to cause and perpetuate the supposed disorder. here's a very nice article about that.
There's an interesting parallel here to claims I've seen here about how teachers "find" transgenderism in kids, it fits really nicely. However: I think in your discord explorations, most of the kids weren't diagnosed by a psychologist, but "discovered" it themselves on the internet. I think the same thing happens with the trans kids.
I don't think so! I'd read it.
About 10+ years ago when I signed up for tumblr I took the username I have now and boy, oh boy, did I get a lot of messages from people who wanted it badly. They offered to buy it, they threatened me over it. There were many exclamation points. So, I'd agree with the idea that this is just an old thing with a new name.
Though, I do agree that plurals is definitely a thing that has expanded beyond its normal base because of people's fetishism over identity these days. It's like diagnoses from doctors are now invitations to a fandom rather than treated as any actual problem. I feel like every person I meet online under 30 is either furry/bi/trans/nonbinary/plural/etc. because, I suppose, there's power in being something more than just normal. Most just put it in their bios and I wouldn't know if I didn't check them but there are a few, notably ones that are plural that have a lot of performative elements to their identity specialization where they make new discord accounts, change their account name constantly, etc. They're like Anthony Hopkins in Magic when he tries to stop talking as the puppet for five minutes. They have to tell you all about their multiple personalities, it's impossible not to.
It's also interesting to me that unlike whatever fiction on MPD I've seen where they put on a big show, the plurals I've noticed change nothing about their presentation except to deliberately tell you how that personality is different (this one is gay, this one is a girl, etc) but there's no discernible difference to me in the text, it's just the same person telling me a list of biographic details. I suppose back before 'systems' you'd have to perform to get a diagnosis, I somehow doubt you'd have to now if someone is handing out diagnoses for this, and even if they aren't self-diagnosis is good enough, anyway.
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