The Cancel Culture thread! WOO!

[emphatic]

I'm pretty sure Jussie Smollett went to jail.

Exactly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... ate-crime/

[BryanM]

That game was way better when it was called Ganja Farmer and you had to defend your farm from the ravenous dog scum of the feds >_<

I had to watch an internet guy drama on twitter, so you get to see a game about a real american hero guy o7

[GaijinPunch]

This one is pretty wild.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu9JGK_yHo

[BulletMagnet]

It's a shame it takes the right sorts of victim (or perpetrator) for everybody to acknowledge the elephant in the room. 3;

In all honesty I doubt I would have even bothered posting it if you and I hadn't already had our back-and-forth by the time I stumbled onto it; lacking that I would have just been the latest person trying to "score a point" in the thread (not that I can claim never to have done just that, of course), but upon reading it I was struck by how it fit perfectly into your particularly specific take on "cancelling", i.e. the fuss was nakedly about something that had little to nothing to do with what was actually at issue. (A followup, though really more of a prequel, has since been posted.)

That being said, it's likely fair to suppose that many of the sources the two of us read when we encounter stories like this tend to emphasize "cancelling" when it's directed at individuals from a particular group or groups, so feel free to make of that what you will.

Squeeky wheel gets the grease.

I can't speak for Sweden, but on this side of the Atlantic I can state with the utmost confidence that the most unceasing and utterly obnoxious squeaking inevitably issues from the "Why can only those people use that word? This is tyranny!" crowd. And it's been that way forever.

[BryanM]

Listening to audio clips of future senator and vice president Herschel Walker is a trip. "Why don't we, uh, get a department that can look at young men that's uh looking at women that're lookin' at their social media? What about doing that? Looking into things like that. And we can stop that, that way."

... is this horseshoe theory? I thought the mancel (that's mandatory celibacy) crowd was limited to guys like Salari. "Horny is not allowed."

... I guess I literally forgot the bible crowd's disgust of the sinful flesh, since they haven't been in my thoughtspace or earspace for like... thirty years now? Kind of a weird overlap of interests there.

[orange808]

We should trade him ASAP.

[GaijinPunch]

He definitely got hit about 18 too many times in the head in his NFL days.

[BIL]

If you're the right [identity], you get the goods. If you're the wrong one, you'll be subject to any and all outrage with no recourse, short of the occasional decades-overdue token pressure valve release.

Squeeky wheel gets the grease.

I'm pretty sure Jussie Smollett went to jail.

Honestly, hand on hard-on, I wasn't even thinking of Juicy there. He and his big buff Adebisi-cosplaying lovers are a bit tawdry for what I was going for.

Then again, on principle - that musty, archaic thing - there's nil distinction between all these cases. England's appeaser penchant for sacrificing their girls and women on the altar of IDPOL. The Burgers' conspiracy of deafening silence around their ghastly rates of black-on-black murder. Some jerkoff actor taking a steaming race-hustler shit on Chicago's battered face. All share an enabler, the average Joe/Jane's not-at-all-unfounded fear of attracting IDPOL zealots' notice.

And so yeah, I guess Juicy must have his day here too. 3; How can he not, after making an apparently lethal, resurgent threat to society's most vulnerable his meal ticket? Should people not unite in disgust at this craven grasper, who'd make a plaything of ongoing atrocity? I'd be head-swimmingly infuriated if someone pulled a stunt like this on my lot. I'd want to arrange a do-over with markedly less restraint shown to the cunt's face, hands and knees, lest he's planning on singing and dancing on the redemption circuit.

(oh Jesus fuck, I can imagine the smugly earnest tales of "struggle" already. >w< tie one on and "struggle" off a footstool, you insufferable little shit! oh crumbs, that's hella poetic, and shit he could put a post-it note on his forehead saying "THIS STILL MAGA COUNTRY," or "EMPIRE SUKKKS," or something similarly chilling! )

Even absent a belief in hordes of MAGA-KKK marauders terrorising urban America, dispassionate analysis remains damning. A rich, velvety cloak of darkness for the perpetrators. A cruel stain on the already-marginalised victims. And exhausted indifference from the observers. Good job, Juicy! Black Lives Matter!

Cowardly, and dangerous, and bereft of all principle or empathy, just like all the other hustlers and appeasers. I am actually not 100% resigned to Juicy skating on appeal. But the damage is done. Not entirely regrettably! Shame it came to this, but nothing improves a gaudy cathedral like a well-aimed brick. And lest we forget - nobody got their head blown off, unlike in Blighty's version of this tale! :O Ha, that's a good one. Everybody forgot. Shot by the wrong sorts. 3;

upon reading it I was struck by how it fit perfectly into your particularly specific take on "cancelling", i.e. the fuss was nakedly about something that had little to nothing to do with what was actually at issue. (A followup, though really more of a prequel, has since been posted.)

Agreed! A neat proof of concept for the damage sufficiently riled mobs of idiots can do to an unlucky target, at this unfortunate nexus of communications technology and ancient foolishness.

[Mischief Maker]

Liberation is a universal struggle or it's nothing.

SCOTUS has indicated now that Roe is overturned, they're going after everything from gay marriage to sodomy laws to contraception. As I said they would.

Canaries in the coal mines, indeed.

[BIL]

If you'd said the overturning of Roe v Wade was the unfortunate tiny yellow harbinger of creeping death, I'd not have said a word. Girls and women need specific legal protections, whether it's from predatory males or the cruelly one-sided burdens and dangers of childbearing.

I sincerely hope you don't start collecting cases like Savita Halappanavar's as a result. Up until now, amongst first-world nations, it's just been Europe and certain of its former colonies I'm regularly compelled to warn pregnant acquaintances away from.

[o.pwuaioc]

Liberation is a universal struggle or it's nothing.

SCOTUS has indicated now that Roe is overturned, they're going after everything from gay marriage to sodomy laws to contraception. As I said they would.

Canaries in the coal mines, indeed.

Maybe we can finally cut off the cancerous side of America, and the two (or more) new nations can just exist in their own little balloons. The progressives will get their own countries, and Y'all Quaeda will get theirs.

[GaijinPunch]

Maybe we can finally cut off the cancerous side of America, and the two (or more) new nations can just exist in their own little balloons. The progressives will get their own countries, and Y'all Quaeda will get theirs.

Someone suggested this on FB and the first reply was "we tried that in the 1860's".

[BryanM]

While I enjoyed the essay "Fuck The South" when I was an edgy teen and not a doomy grandpa (and how can you not, with zingers like "Fighting for the right to keep slaves--yeah, those are states we want to keep."), it's ultimately reconstruction I blame for its failure.

The compromise on the 13th amendment that protects slavery as a state's right up to this day; that was a bad idea.

Letting the assholes at the top who committed treason keep their wealth, power and influence; that was a bad idea.

In forty years, the culture could have been changed completely, if that had been a priority. The northern capitalists (and their company scrip) only cared about not having to compete against chattel slave labor when fighting each other for the treasure hoard waiting for them in the west.

[o.pwuaioc]

Maybe we can finally cut off the cancerous side of America, and the two (or more) new nations can just exist in their own little balloons. The progressives will get their own countries, and Y'all Quaeda will get theirs.

Someone suggested this on FB and the first reply was "we tried that in the 1860's".

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

[orange808]

There's nothing more bloody and pointless than a civil war. You would destroy the world's economy and unleash waves of genocide throughout the United States.

It also wouldn't break out pretty. For instance, Idaho will join the deep south.

I understand the frustration. It can't ever go any further than casual venting on your bar stool. That's apocalypse.

[o.pwuaioc]

There's nothing more bloody and pointless than a civil war. You would destroy the world's economy and unleash waves of genocide throughout the United States.

It also wouldn't break out pretty. For instance, Idaho will join the deep south.

I understand the frustration. It can't ever go any further than casual venting on your bar stool. That's apocalypse.

I don't really mean to call for a civil war, but for a dissolution of a civil union. Why can't we shake hands and part ways like divorcees do?

[GaijinPunch]

I don't really mean to call for a civil war, but for a dissolution of a civil union. Why can't we shake hands and part ways like divorcees do?

Because most divorcees don't do that.

[o.pwuaioc]

I don't really mean to call for a civil war, but for a dissolution of a civil union. Why can't we shake hands and part ways like divorcees do?

Because most divorcees don't do that.

(That's the joke.)

[GaijinPunch]

I don't really mean to call for a civil war, but for a dissolution of a civil union. Why can't we shake hands and part ways like divorcees do?

Because most divorcees don't do that.

(That's the joke.)

lol. gotcha. I mean, it happens sometimes but like 1/10. Probably the chances we have of pulling it off. Most red states would go broke if there was a blue/red even split. Disney land, incest at the beach, and oil only bring in so much.

[o.pwuaioc]

Because most divorcees don't do that.

(That's the joke.)

lol. gotcha. I mean, it happens sometimes but like 1/10. Probably the chances we have of pulling it off. Most red states would go broke if there was a blue/red even split. Disney land, incest at the beach, and oil only bring in so much.

My own divorce was actually fairly painless after the initial acrimony. But yeah, I would say perhaps even less than 10%.

And you just know that Disney would up and leave Florida if it joined a confederacy. Hell, they might still leave if DeSantis keeps dicking them around. (Doubtful, of course, and this comes from someone who was born around those parts, but Disney isn't leaving, and the higher ups will kowtow whatever BS Republicans dream up, despite certain activist segments of their employees.)

NASA would pull out fast though. So many fun memories at Cape Canaveral would be washed away in the sands of Cocoa Beach... I mean, who doesn't want to buy freeze-dried toothpaste food and baby sharks in formaldehyde!?

Lastly, incest on the beach would get much trickier if you couldn't abort the abomination that was born out of a dangerous liaison along the Redneck Riviera.

[BryanM]

The red states wouldn't go bust, they'd just scale back services. Way, way back. Like in the good 'ole days. Hence why many hippies loathe the idea of abandoning the people in them.

Also note the states that pay for the bulk of the federal income tax are because that's where most of the wealthier people live: Cali, New York, Colorado (after the early 2000 tech migration there), Texas. Florida. Etc.

divorcees

Always requires the photo of the judge needing to help them divide their beanie babies.

[BulletMagnet]

Also this.

[kitten]

damn, i have missed a lot of opportunities to be the uncle troon of the forum in this thread in my absence. really, i'd prefer "aunt troon," that other title's a little too self-deprecating, but the joke doesn't land as well if i say 'aunt'. at least it seems nobody took up my job while i was away... and i'll probably go right back to being away after this. my life has been pretty busy between health problems and engaging with different hobbies and just hanging out with friends and doing things with them to the point i'm not playing nearly as many video games and have been left with little to say, on here. physically, i'm actually not doing that badly, but have had to have surgery for a degenerative nerve issue, started doing more exercise to prevent some deterioration, etc. thank god it's nothing affecting my hands and seems to not be getting worse (and likely won't unless i fall into some sort of insanely morbid depression pit, but that would take something as bad as someone close to me dying, which, barring a disaster, seems unlikely any time soon).

mentally, i'm actually doing the best i've been in my adult life. i'm deeply happy to be alive, surrounded by friends who love me, and more fulfilled than i've ever been. however, it took some getting there, so... story time! this entire forum has become something of a fogie chill-out zone and i made some acquaintances on here i haven't kept up with, so i imagine y'all won't mind me dumping some tl;dr-for-most shit in here with a little update in my life. i'll tie it back around to cancel culture somehow, probably. i posted enough in this thread and it's enough of a trash fire that i feel it can probably tank a largely-irrelevant post and keep ticking.

sometime around november of the year before last, i tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, and hoo boy, i have got to tell you all, something fucking terrible happened to my brain lol. maybe i have too many cluster-a symptoms to have been fucking around with psychedelics, in the first place, and this certainly put me to a permanent stop on fucking around with them (aside from this, i had just tried a tab of acid a couple of times). for someone that has always done substances responsibly (a few over-indulgences here and there, but never any problem with dependency, addiction, or anything other than some mind & mood altering self-exploration. never touched hard stuff, never smoked, etc.), this was something that took me out of left field and really fucked with me.

i'm someone who has always had really vibrant and interactive and weird dreams. i dream heavily, i dream often, i love talking about and processing my dreams with friends. there have been points in my life where this has caused problems during times of great stress, as i have c-ptsd from a lifetime of being sexually abused and generally mistreated growing up, but i've never felt dreaming was a burden, even when getting long stretches of nightmares.

in general, i had always found dreams aside from the occasional semi-lucid ones to carry with them a sort of ethereal nature that caused them to fluctuate based on whim and perception. you look at something, you look away, you look back and it's something else. imperceptibly but somehow also drastically, a dream reacts to the one having it. you're a different character as the context changes, you're in a different context as the character you are changes. you're there, you're not there. you're just watching. you've always been integral to the story. these have always been what i understand to be "dream logic," and are shared with everyone i know who dreams and talks about them to certain extents (and differ from dream to dream).

after psilocybin, my dreams started taking on complex structures, however. narratives would begin to play out that would develop on their own and would be called back to later in the dream. olfactory senses began to be stimulated, touching things came with tactile sensation. it felt like i was being taken to other worlds and experiencing profound emotional realizations at traumatic events as one would react to them as though they were actually happening. to certain extents, i'll admit, this was actually kind of neat.

the problem was that on waking up, the dream would extremely rapidly evaporate and i'd wake up shocked and alarmed. i'd sometimes be brought to tears by the perceived horror, mouth loosely agape with contemplative distillation of what had happened and reconciliation with the loss. i'd sometimes spend a time between truly waking in this delusional confusion and odd space between consciousness and unconsciousness, unaware of what was dream and what was reality, almost freakishly disturbed by the active dissipation of substantial experiences i had just been through from my mind.

my partner would often look at me with sorrow in the mornings as i could barely function and it would routinely take me a couple of hours to get up to speed. i was someone who once uncannily shot out of bed with loads of energy and excitement reduced to fearing every morning. certain things throughout the day would trigger flashbacks (much like with my c-ptsd) to dream memories that had been forgotten. even recalling a banal event in the dream like an escalator ride could reduce me to sudden weeping at the overwhelming confusion and suggestion of a greater loss of experience. my dreams weren't nightmares, as many tried to interpret from my phrasing it as "a holocaust of my mind every morning," (laugh if you want, it's a silly and hyperbolic way of saying it, but it was truly awful enough for me to go that far in describing it)... it was waking up that was a nightmare.

i began experiencing auditory and then visual hallucinations when getting tired or waking up. voices would speak to me that i couldn't understand. i'd fall half-asleep and jolt awake seeing a kaleidoscope of insane staticy colors violently moving about and feel associated emotions i couldn't process. it genuinely felt - as rationally as i knew this wasn't what was happening - like something outside my mind was trying to communicate information to me and my mind could not process it.

all of this came as i had finally began to feel as though i'd gotten over a lifetime of depression and had begun to seriously overcome much of my substantial trauma. i try so hard, i do so much to get better, and then this. i hoped it would just go away. it wouldn't. for months, it just fucking wouldn't. i began to despair. i had had a terrible history with psychiatrists prescribing me things that fucked deeply with my mind and ruined many of my teenage years and my early twenties. ssri's ruined me in weird ways and the only thing that had finally made me better as an adult was recreational weed & kratom (kratom owns, y'all, sorry to be "that person you know that shills that fucking weird powder you can get at that one nasty gas station," but it has helped me a lot) usage allowing me to process what i'd been through and accept things.

as i continued to see no reprieve for what i tried to brace may be a permanent problem i have, what may also be degenerative and may cause me to lose my mind, i sucked it in and went to a psychiatrist. she prescribed me an snri - an anti-psychotic. "i'll try anything," i thought to myself. within just a couple of days, this thing tore me the fuck apart. less than a week in, i had a severe schizophrenic episode. i woke my partner up in the middle of the night. i asked her if she was doing something with "them." if she knew what "they" were doing. i kept cradling my head. it hurt. it hurt in a way it had never hurt before. i was confused to an extreme i'd never been confused before. i begged that if she knew what was going on or co-operating with them, she had to stop. they're outside. they're looking in here. they're doing something to me. make it stop. please make it stop. don't let them kill me.

this delusional episode mortified me. i went off the anti-psychotic almost immediately. for the first time in my life, however, i had finally gotten a psychiatrist that listened to me. she didn't push, she was deeply sympathetic to what i'd experienced. she was an older woman and enjoyed talking to me a lot, said the experience was therapeutic for her to talk to a younger person experiencing something similar to her son and that she was dedicated to helping me. she also seemed to enjoy getting to know a trans person who wasn't abrasively distant from her. during therapy sessions, i'd often just talk about her life because aside from these uncontrollable episodes and dreams, i was actually quite mentally healthy. insurance was paying for the visits and she was nice to talk to. we decided to try a mood stabilizer, this time, a class of drug i'd somehow never been recommended before despite a history of mental health problems and bad doctors.

it was helping a little, but the half-life of having done an anti-psychotic was still in my system. i became depressed in a way i hadn't been since i first started medically transitioning a chunk more than a full decade back. i seriously worried about my back, my spine, my nerve issues. i worried with the dreams only barely getting better on this med that nothing else could help them. and, to top it all off, i was experiencing a rapid heart-beat and chest pounding every morning, a new symptom.

as the anti-psychotic began properly wearing off (god damn why does that shit stay in your system so long? how the fuck can doctors just throw these at people? even have the authority to force them to take them if they won't get committed in some circumstances? mental health care is a nightmare, pray you never have to go through it like i did) and i started exiting this haze of the first suicidal depression i'd had in years, we began addressing what was causing the heart problem - it was the mood stabilizer. fuck. this had been doing something about the dreams. was the only thing that did anything to them. i had to go off it.

with careful consideration, i tried another that i was warned at good length (and is the first warning if you search it on the internet) might cause a life-threatening rash (what!?), and braced for that not to work. but it worked... immediate relief, even. i had a good night's sleep for the first time in a year and a half. i was so fucking relieved. no more insane dreams. no more hell waking up. no more fearing going to sleep and my mental state declining before bed. exercise and several doctors visits and a little surgery promised my other problems wouldn't get out of control. i was finally exiting this tunnel that i thought for sure was going to be a dead end with my mind and body slowly falling apart on me.

life's good. i'm in love with it. i'm in love with all my friends, all my hobbies. i've become a lot more spiritual and forgiving and gotten over so much in the last several years. i'm doing quite well despite a couple of spats of severe drama with a couple of people i had trusted who betrayed me - they thankfully sorted out before becoming long-term things and i'm surrounded by people who trust me and who i reciprocate that trust with. my partner thankfully started a new job just before the dream thing started happening, and finally got a career going, so a lot of hardship is off our chests, too.

anyway, that's some of what i've been up to, for the curious. i hope everyone here is doing well. to tie this back around into cancel culture - much of my becoming mentally healthy again was radically divorcing myself from friend and communities heavily invested in purported social justice (which had already muchly happened when i was last posting, and has continued to happen). the neverending grift of creating brand identities built around bad faith engagement and holding everyone responsible to 'the cause' in impossible and numerous, idiosyncratic ways was just a fucking toxic hell for my mental health.

all this goddamn bullshit about holding icons responsible for microaggressions and political faux pas can go fucking suck it. fuck "owning the libs." fuck "sticking it to the chuds." let's all make friends like the old days and instead sling insults at whoever likes the wrong game. this caustic ooze drips down to marginalized communities and makes friends, peers, and neighbors "hold each other responsible." to what, you might ask? why, the commitment we have to doing our individual due dilligence to maintaining and updating the cannibal pit. where would be without the cannibal pit's remarkable justice?

we couldn't be cared for by those above us, and in this deprived state, we (you can interpret whoever i mean by "we," but mostly i'm talking about "my people" despite this being broadly applicable) decided it was the worst of us at fault for the 'good' among us not having their chance to rise to acceptance. everyone's always throwing someone to the wolves, and the places i climbed out of were filled with the mangiest, most hydrophobic varmints one done what ever seened with their own eyes. culture, in general, is a thing of rot. 'cancel culture' is just the latest product of a society that figured out it's easier to make the lower classes kill and hate each other than do anything moral or just. you just gotta toss a celeb at 'em, once in a while, and how they expect that celeb to be treated will become a fight that a bunch of sad losers eat themselves to death over.

anyway, again - hope everyone is well. hope this post doesn't read like i'm hopping on to tell everyone i found god and to go and prostrate themselves before the buddha or jesus or yahweh or whatever. i really miss forums, in general. communicating on the internet has really gone to shit and god bless everyone who still sticks it in here for a bit of camaraderie and recommending quality games to one another.

[it290]

kitten, with all love and respect, I've all too often found myself on the opposite end of the spectrum, where experience with psychedelics and nootropics has found me re-grounding myself in self and reality, whereas exposure to media has too often done the opposite. I had a really traumatic event happen to me in the spring of 2020 where a loved one found herself totally disassociated with reality and experiencing delusions, etc. that ungrounded her and found her in a place that was not helpful for her. I'm just hoping (and thankful) that you are finding yourself not in that situation, but all I can say is do what feels best for you but also listen to your loved ones when they express concern and try and find empathy and perspective in where they're coming from. And don't do things that make you feel bad or fixate on bad thoughts. Just take care of yourself and the people you're close to, and do things that make your heart happy.

[kitten]

but all I can say is do what feels best for you but also listen to your loved ones when they express concern and try and find empathy and perspective in where they're coming from.

deeply confused about what suggests that i have not been doing that? if that's even what you're suggesting? or where i've thrown disrespect to how psychedelics help other people? i have no idea what about my post is getting misunderstood, here, but i can promise you that much of what you're assuming is not intended from what i have been saying. i only had bad experiences with psychs, but that's largely up to my neurochemistry (mind you, i'm still ultimately grateful for what i learned from those experiences, but it would be extremely unwise to repeat those lessons). i still recommend a lot of people give a psychedelic a shot at least once in their life. by no means am i trying to do a takedown on them, they're just strictly not a thing i should fuck with. my (overtly in-depth) personal story is to suggest that if i hadn't made a lot of moves to make my life better before trying shrooms, however, i might not even be here - i lost the die roll on a risk i thought was pretty calculated, but could have easily not been at another point in life.

likewise, i try to express significant empathy toward others in my life. i've forgiven people who have (serially, deliberately, repeatedly) sexually abused me or beaten me (not forgotten, of course) and sympathized with them, and i regularly break bread with people whose politics i strongly disagree with. i have spent large portions of the last several years of my life counseling or offering resources to friends who have been marginalized from communities they thought would help them but wound up making their lives worse. i will forgive a person almost instantly, but you can't forgive a "group" because it doesn't exist - it's not a person, it has no body or mind. i try to divorce people from the imaginary, but you can only do so much to dislodge a person from their belief in politics over people.

my post is meant to suggest that disconnecting from people who express substantial dogma has helped me a lot, as has releasing any dependency i've had on it. i didn't disconnect from close friends or family (in fact, i've grown much, much more closer to many of them in the last several years), i disconnected from superficial friendships with people more obsessed with having a political brand identity than being dedicated to one another. people whose loyalties are to meta politics, who threaten those around them who don't fall in line. it's horrifying to me that we live in a society in which we frequently don't know our neighbor's names but disown those closest to us for how they vote or if they don't vote in a given election.

back in 2016, i was surrounded by people who would say things like "if you didn't vote, block me right now because you're what got trump elected." they would also make dogmatic statements about never engaging with them you engaged with 'problematic' media, if you were friends with someone who was getting called out within 'the community,' etc. this kind of puritanical nonsense began to become much like a purge of both those 'unclean' and of one's own mind.

i still have forgiveness for people without any forgiveness to give others, but i don't have any more time and energy for them. people shouldn't waste time fighting invisible battles, they should love those around them. i think we're probably actually in substantial agreement and there's just a communication breakdown, for whatever reason. as a reminder, i have been a subculture vermin for most of my life - the discarded, the mentally ill, the terminally autistic... these are "my people." i probably love those people more than any other on the planet, but i've watched many of them lose their minds, their sense of selves, and their opportunities for meaningful friendship at the behest they drop themselves in favor of devotion to *gesturing* you know, whatever bullshit.

[kitten]

ran across an example, today, that will help illustrate "where i'm coming from" to maybe help further illustrate "where i'm at." someone linked a funny meme, today. i went to look at the person's profile. almost all of my good friends are trans people who are mostly disconnected from culture. some of them are more disconnected than others, the less disconnected ones grab the funny or worthwhile things from the more connected ones and share it. immediately on looking at the profile of the person who made the meme...



ah. right. someone bragging about being able to cut someone out of their life. an "easy decision." when called on it, they double down with a false equivalence (apologies for being a basic bitch calling out a Logical Fallacy, but like, jesus). then they probably also block the person they quote tweeted.

i see this almost every day i look at shit from trans people. likewise, if i look at people talking about trans people, i see this weird groupthink emerging about our general behaviors and attitudes and how to act around us or why it's necessary to oppose our existence. as this catalyzes, being "pro" or "anti" """"trans"""" (whatever the fuck this actually means to anyone) becomes a dichotomy people have to take a side on. do you see if you can force someone to say "trans rights are human rights" at every conceivable conversation opportunity to make sure they deserve to be alive because otherwise they're a monstrous bigot? or do you want to crush our slightly larger than True Female skulls under a boot to remove the fragments and point out the biological certainty we are not "real women?"

probably, either position here is what i think is safe to call 'fucking insane.' but we see more and more radicalized opinions on an issue that should really just come down how you feel about a person in your life. are you the barrier to accepting them? are they the barrier to accepting you? it's almost always a little bit of both, if you actually know a person. you might feel tempted to say that both sides could both do a little more understanding, but then it acknowledges the idea of 'sides'. you're either pro or anti. what if every single individual on the planet has a unique consideration of every other single individual? what if being wrong and right can't be boiled down to a single opinion on a single issue? what if we all have something to learn from one another? even a radically trans positive person will sometimes be transphobic, even a radically anti-trans person will sometimes say something pro-trans. being pro or anti either of these things is an imaginary placement which culture kind-of sort-of sometimes agrees upon.

a bloke that looks like a bird is probably a thing another person can tolerate. while there are biological realities, they don't necessarily dictate social ones, and one's own neurochemistry is affected by medical alteration - which creates a biological difference. how one chooses to integrate can be 'feminine' and another's insistence to find out if it is 'actually masculine or not' becomes this insane phrenology game. who gives a shit? the idea we react to people with a binary lens is fucking dumb, anyway. likewise, if you're benignly "clocked," it's not the end of the world - if gender identity is an illusion, someone just isn't on the same pretend wavelength as you. the more people care, the more cis people get misgendered in this insane guessing game, which just adds to the comedy/tragedy. and this is only a serious issue because of one's broader strokes understanding of society. i think transphobia is a barrier to understanding other people, sure, but so is the idea that judging a person by their transphobia will reveal their worth as a human. there are transphobes i have considerably more to learn from than other trans people. there are ones who will care for me and assist my life. and maybe somewhere in this action of receiving education, i can reciprocate with the opportunity for them to understand and accept me. in some instances, there's in imbalance in the social exchange (hence many a trans person's rage at the idea it's on them to ever help anyone understand them - they work and maybe gain nothing), but if we're all clinging to sides, we never achieve progress or balance, we just create false flags for friends and enemies.

these kinds of false flags - this variety of bad faith - multiplies and kills communication. a dad goes on facebook and somehow starts losing his mind about whether or not a woman he has talked to has ever had a penis because he hears about a pervert that raped a person their child's age and wants them stopped before they have opportunity to do it again. a child goes on twitter and starts assuming everyone who doesn't think they're a real woman is out to kill them and should be radically silenced before they have the chance to kill. at some point, the dad starts hating a neighbor who put a trans flag out in solidarity, the young trans person starts hating a friend who misgendered them. a dichotomy of these people begins to exist, and the individuality of each is reduced until they are pro/anti that issue. "trans" is just the one i know best. god knows there are a fucking million of these. but trans people do kind of have it rough, and i watch people in my "community" (apologies for the abundance of scare quotes, but it's so often a culturally understood concept is actually an individually understood one with deep idiosyncrancies, and i need a way of alluding to that - that's kind of what the whole post is about. just pretend i'm a metal gear character with a funny agenda) lose their fucking minds and start hating people who would probably engage with them in good faith and be a good, if maybe slightly ignorant, friend.

one of the ways this manifests and coagulates is 'cancel culture.' what you think of macy gray is now a false flag for friend or enemy. that's fucking stupid. maybe her music communicates a meaningful truth and you can accept that along with the idea that she hates trannies. it's not that goddamn hard. a new one of these issues pops up every goddamn day. i have no idea what macy gray said. i have no idea if i agree with her or not. is she even what i'd considered transphobic? does it even matter what i think, as a trans person who may disagree with other trans people? maybe i deserve to be silenced because my transphobia is now 'internalized' and i'm 'as bad as the conservative dad on facebook.'

this shit is stupid. people should stop giving a fuck about those they can't see or touch or hear. but the temptation to weigh in is really significant! the idea of how one should hypothetically react to this becomes a point. and then comes the disagreement and associated distancing and villainizing of people who are taking an opinion on an issue that doesn't matter or only abstractly matters to them. it's fucking insane. global politics forces this hand, thinking about celebrities forces this hand - but these aren't issues you can actually meaningfully participate in. the idea that you can participate in them contributes to the further existence of their rat race. maybe if voting in america could actually do something, it would matter, but your world is the people around you and people's participation in politics is increasingly less local and increasingly less possible of doing anything but making sure the machine keeps being fed a steady supply of fresh corpses. and these kinds of extreme disturbances lead to things like parents abandoning their children, children abandoning their friends, communities abandoning their supporters, etc.

and they get real, real far away from forgiveness and understanding. i see these kinds of tweets almost any time i look at a fellow trans person's twitter, often on the same day. in this instance, within the last 15 goddamn minutes i looked. it's mortifying. i'm sure ordinary fucking people watch this happen to their friends on facebook. this radicalizing over the imaginary threat. it's dumb. it's fucking dumb.

i don't think my politics are 'neutral' or 'non-political,' but i try my god damnedest to have less and less of an opinion on people i don't know and don't talk to. call it "radical anti-radicalizing," i guess. this doesn't mean i'm in the 'middle of the road,' it maybe means i'm off the narrow confines of these stupid fucking maps. and that having less of an opinion on people i don't know very much includes all the people in the rural area i live in in the south. maybe people will hate trannies less and it will do them some good to see i'm just a friendly local. maybe it will do me some good to not be afraid of every goddamn person i look at, and i'm already getting something out of it by just having a little humility and being nice to strangers. people tend to think i'm friendly and positive and stores i regularly visit often have people greet me happily. i've had a guy tell me "other trannies are always like 'reeeee!'" and then become embarrassed as i didn't flinch and just wanted to play a game at the local place i was at with him and a couple friends. i tried posting on 4chan for a few months and was shocked by how many people would thank me, tell me i'm doing 'god's work,' be kind to me, post a bury pink in my threads, whatever. i engaged /pol/ trolls spewing hate in good faith and with real enthusiasm and had them tell me i'd presented the most radically trans positive arguments they'd ever seen and that they appreciated i spoke to them. i engaged a ton of fellow angry trannies spewing hate and had them chill out and thank me, too, before someone wants to assume i only wanted to fight "the enemy" - people hating each other for no goddamn good reason is "my enemy."

you know where i didn't get traction? twitter. lol. where you don't interact with people, you build a brand. and this attitude proliferates on most popular social media. watching the freedom of irc channels become the gated discord servers has been depressing, watching twitter and facebook build walls has been depressing. but either anonymize yourself in good faith (4chan) or be looking another person in the face when you're talking with them (real life), and "both sides" suddenly realize there's a lot more than they're assuming to each other. i love and will forever love talking to people. but i'm through with the idea i can figure out worth based on a single opinion they have maybe formed on people they've never known or spoken to. i like to engage with people in good faith, i like to put in more effort and energy and be more helpful, i like to take everyone seriously and show how willing i am by doing whatever i can. and it makes me pretty fucking happy to see other people happy about this.

when i say i disengaged from communities, i meant i did *gesturing at the rest of the post* this. i didn't disengage from people, i started taking them a lot more seriously, a lot more compassionately. but i think this requires extraordinary vigilance against participation in shit shows and a willingness to talk someone down from getting their game on in one. i don't join groups, i don't form communities, i talk to people. what i love about this forum (and about forums, in general, as a broad concept when compared to other forms of what we now call 'social media') is threads like the side-scrolling action thread, where there's an abundance of good faith participation in mutual interests by people who are enthusiastic about what they love. i'd post more, but my life is more and more busy with more and more people in it.

i think the idea of a thread like this is probably healthy - it's good to laugh at people's radicalization to remind yourself that it's ridiculous. but it is talking about what i think is a more and more prevalent issue of our times: the tendency for a person to disconnect from reality and lose themselves to extremist reaction to a thing that hardly goddamn effects them. and i care a lot about saying a lot about that. even if i'm just dropping in, i sincerely hope that any perspective i give on this is valuable. it's a "real issue" that "really matters" because it stops people from being kind, from being friends. and that fucking sucks.

premature apologies for the ten-thousand words i will write on this issue at the drop of a hat, but i really do think about it very often. how to get my family and friends to disengage from directionless hate and focus more on the people around them is a serious passion of mine. i have thought of this forum as a pretty nice place, and feel maybe my perspective might have something to add to people thinking about this mess, hence my feeling i should give a modicum of effort to relate what i think on here.

[Durandal]

I don't remember the Dodonpachi ending in the Arcade and Saturn versions looking like this.

and they get real, real far away from forgiveness and understanding. i see these kinds of tweets almost any time i look at a fellow trans person's twitter, often on the same day. in this instance, within the last 15 goddamn minutes i looked. it's mortifying. i'm sure ordinary fucking people watch this happen to their friends on facebook. this radicalizing over the imaginary threat. it's dumb. it's fucking dumb.

I'm remembering a certain Twitter thread with ten-thousand likes that I can't find where people found out that Tucker Carlson's mom abandoned him at the age of six because she allegedly hated him, and people thought it was both funny and deserved, even way back then. Only a handful stopped to think whether a world where child neglect isn't treated as a punchline would produce less Tucker Carlsons.

[Mischief Maker]

Context: Jordan Peterson just joined the Daily Wire, so he'd been dropping inflammatory tweets for days before Twitter finally bit.

Now he can capitalize on the ban for free publicity.

The ol' Steven Crowder two-step.

[kitten]

Now he can capitalize on the ban for free publicity.

this is not and has never been about celebrities, it's about how people are terrifyingly alone and have no fucking power to institute change and the otherworldly howling that happens as they watch this loneliness take their lives over and affect who they can and do connect to while they get ushered under umbrellas held by demons. i don't think this loneliness heals by - or that any good comes of - making sure you have the right diss to drop on big names... especially with your continued obsession on the right being the real sensitive baby hypocrites and what constitutes proper leftism. you don't fix people's personal overreaction to tepid scolding by being a tepid scold or obsession with media personalities and popular news via obsessing over those things. the reaction to political powerlessness has to be meta-disengagement and direct empathy, not a forum presence defined by boring snipes on people (who are almost always on 'the right') that everyone already hates for a fucking decade. you're just keeping the addiction to parasocial engagement and authority of these clowns alive, barely changing up the age-old game of making fun of fox news.

durandal's point is salient: public reaction against a monster is to make fun of the monster's conditioning. that's scary and is much like the long-time common and casual characterizing of the south as an inbred hellhole with no one left to save. that vast generalizing gets reduced to individual talking heads and then becomes the kind of foundation for characterizing people on certain sides and how side-pickers gets radicalized. it is understandable that people would defend a monster and that they would become an icon of everyone's prayers that we either bury or lift them with that as a catalyst (for the record, i literally don't know who tucker carlson and steven crowder are, but it's easy to gather from context what makes them popular). we're all watching friends and family do these things, we watch a new issue spring up almost every day. your tedious smarm and seeming belief that if the chuds just grow a thicker skin, take a little of their own medicine, and stop being bigots that the purported non-issue will disappear is needlessly smug at best and you being the alan colmes of this forum at worst.

[BulletMagnet]

political powerlessness

There are arguments to be made in the name of viewing the contemporary American right as more than a singular, amorphous adversary, but attributing its accelerating radicalization to a sense of "powerlessness" rings more than a little hollow, considering the absolutely massive victories it's attained on countless fronts going back decades; taxes and regulations across the board have been utterly decimated, the separation of church and state barely exists anymore, and their leadership can commit pretty much any atrocity in their names without incurring any penalty either via the courts or at the ballot box. And the streak appears set to intensify, with a supermajority on the Supreme Court and midterm elections (all elections, really, since rural conservatives in particular have a baked-in advantage) looking promising. If people on the right aren't happy with how things have turned out in their lives, they really can't blame "oppression" from their opposition for it.

If anyone really wants to look at all of that and still insist that "...but there are still too many pronouns" somehow allows them to continue to play the aggrieved victim, sorry, you're either staggeringly ignorant or taking the proverbial piss, and (especially in the latter case, which is frankly far more common) deserve every bit of mockery you get and then some.