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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Plenty of bad behavior happens among the Silicon Valley elite. And although journalists attempt to make hay of it occasionally (ew gross why is that nerd having orgies with recent high school graduates), most people shrug and look the other way.

Plenty of bad behavior happens among the Silicon Valley elite.

As much as I find the statement itself reprehensible, I think there's a kernel of truth in an infamous quote from a former president:

And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

High status lets people (almost exclusively men, in this case) get away with a lot, in part because people are willing to put up with more to be with someone high status: Christian Grey's romance plays don't work for anyone who isn't a hot, young billionaire. The quid pro quo is implicit, and rarely spoken about, although I seem to recall a few blow-ups in recent memory where it seemed part of the drama involved (by deceit or misreading) mistakes about how high-status one party was.

And nobody really complains because it's hard to declare that behavior with "groupies" (for lack of a better word) is categorically non-consensual.

And nobody really complains because it's hard to declare that behavior with "groupies" (for lack of a better word) is categorically non-consensual.

I think that one is more because "consent" (which in reality means "the prostitute gets paid for her work", which is why women who work this way push so hard for "non-consentual" to mean "I regret it because I sold at a price that was too low/the jian john could have afforded more, and State power should be used to fix my mistake") can't actually cover the cases where it's the women who are trying to put a notch in the bedpost as an end in itself (there's no real exchange of goods going on there, it's nothing but risk for the woman biologically speaking, and it devalues her product [so to speak/for those that care]- 'having fucked a rock star' must be a serious intrinsic reward, and when we consider the average groupie is more likely to try to impress female peers rather than older men at that age, it very much is).

It's hard for a lot of people to deal with that because it's (correctly?) assumed to be a malfunction; grown women seducing boys is another one (for the same reason that it runs counter to biology).

It is odd. I had a classmate (in the honors college no less) that was very open and bragged a lot about have fucked Fred Durst of all people (this was 2003 mind you). She was bragging about this mostly to men as far as I could tell. It was very off-putting and it was hard to take her (and the honors program) seriously after that.

She was bragging about this mostly to men as far as I could tell.

So basically, like any man would do if he got laid at 13?
I dunno, I have a hard time complaining about either of those, outside of those who don't ever get over the fact that happened (more difficult for younger people due to both youth and a lack of general opportunity for the sex they want); liberation is good, but sex is still protected/internal or private.