You could just as easily paste this link into any discussion about 4chan or Tucker Carlson, except we know how stochastic terrorism works.

You’re welcome 🫡

The “guy” would be Shein.

Another neat way to frame the debate, to reach for the obvious example, is over swastikas. Of course, having a picture of a swastika tattooed on your arm isn’t harming anyone, so why should we as a society have any distaste for it?

To answer “we shouldn’t” is to cede ground to nazis. We do not, actually, have to tolerate their symbols.

The 4chan-nazi pipeline—yes, I’m still talking about pedophiles—if you’re not aware, is a strategy by which people are drenched in ironic, nazi iconography, which results in them being more permissive of that kind of thing, and thus makes them much, much easier to be groomed by king-master klansman, or whatever they call themselves.

Being too permissive of something is socially harmful.

I agree, pedophiles are often villainized way too much. I would like them not to be so afraid of being found out that they never get therapy. If they’re good people, I assume they want to be better as much as I want them to, even if it’s difficult. None of this means we need to sell dolls to them.

Think about it this way: I watch pornography all the time. I am not any less likely to fuck a woman. How is the doll supposed to satiate them?

I realize that I sound very condescending right now, but I’m sincerely asking: this idea that a legal outlet is actually more helpful to them, where does this come from? Does it even make sense?

Whether you mean to or not, I think that you are ceding ground to people who want pedophilia to be more popular. They do exist: middle America loves child marriage. This is why I’m not engaging with the personal freedom angle; it’s not really relevant.

Also, requiring child dolls to have some dimension by which they are clearly identifiable as adults is an effective ban on child dolls—it’s the same thing.

I think there may be some social issues with a for-profit company being financially incentivized to promote and sell pedophilia to people.

How would you rather deal with this? A boycott? Do you have money in child sex doll manufacturing that you can withhold?

So he can think of it as a child in his head.

That’s not really what this is about. You’re trying to assess this on a personal freedom level when what we’re talking about is a guy with a megaphone.

I live in the US. This American apathy and resentment of political power, this vaguely libertarian vote-with-your-wallet thing, is specifically what I’m criticizing. It’s a kind of political advocacy that abstains from the reigns of power. It’s also, like, a step above changing their profile picture.

I’m aware that everything is broken. But, it was less broken in the past. It’ll be more broken in the future. I look around, though, and I see so little interest in reclaiming the power we’ve lost. Nobody wants to hold the reigns. Zohran does. He’s trying something.

I worry that a lot of Americans, if not most of them, desperately want politics to go back to being something they don’t have to think about; which isn’t good—that’s not a good thing. You don’t win a game of chess by skipping your turn every time it comes up.

Okay, I’m trying not to be needlessly irate because I’m not yelling at you so much as I am lamenting the current state of political advocacy.

My problem is that you are confused. If we have enough people to do this:

If enough people are willing to say “no, I don’t want to see that show enough” then there is the possibility of change.

Then we have enough people to enact regulations. These aren’t different strategies, it’s the same strategy. You need coordinated public willpower either way. You need something tangible to actually direct the currents of the ocean.

People, today, broadly, don’t seem to believe that they can wield the government to their advantage at all. They don’t even see it as an option. They don’t have any ambition.

I’m not saying that you should spend money on a morally bankrupt company. I am saying that this won’t accomplish anything. It isn’t a solution. Certainly not if you don’t believe the regulations option is even possible.

I still have hope, you know. But, it’s dependent on people remembering the union, bar-brawl fistfights their grandpa used to get into.

I’m saying that people like boycotts more than they like actually doing anything. I think it’s a power fantasy, personally.

That said, I don’t expect anything to happen in the next 10 or 15 years given who’s currently in charge, so may as well.

the only way to defeat them is by not giving them money

Is this what it’s like to grow up on tiktok? Nobody has any ambition. It’s all just bootstrapping and personal responsibility.

I was going through my saved comments again, and I want you to know that I very much appreciate you for writing this up. :)

There is an element of people wanting their fast food and being displeased that civil rights took multiple decades to build.

That said, it isn’t just their fault. The Democrats, generally, do not know how to be exciting. As much as people say they’re not interested, it’s not entirely true; there is a spark that has yet to be ignited.

I don’t mean to be mean, but you need to talk to more people.

A lot of people in America simply do not believe they can change anything. Either because they don’t know how, they’ve never shown up to a town hall, or because the only politics they hear about are from states and federal buildings they’ll never live or work in, or because the only politics they hear about outside of Trump being a dipshit is some 2% thing that will do something which might lead to something else maybe, or because South Park taught them that caring about anything is cringe and, actually, the smartest people spend all day making fun of anyone with an idea.

I mean, let me ask another question: how the fuck do you lose interest in unions? And yet, the US lost interest a looong time ago.

Knowing how to be abrasive is a very useful social skill, I think.

I saw a YouTube video from this guy who just liked to yap and tell stories. He was friends with a trans man, though I don’t think he knew at the time. Probably figured it out at some point, but it never changed their relationship. They were just best buds.

Well anyway, this trans man passed away, and the youtuber went to his funeral. The guy’s deadname was all over the memorial display. They’d prettied him up to look more feminine. Even clothed his body in a dress, I think. People gave eulogies about her memory, her significance, her this, her that.

The youtuber (and this was all before he was even on youtube, by the way) finally had his turn to go up and give a eulogy. He went up and said a few words about his friend, and then absolutely laid into these people for their callousness; for barely understanding who this guy, the deceased, even was; for amending his history and mourning only the parts of him they could actually stomach. And then he left. Not much point in staying in the service after that.

Being able to do things like that, though, requires some emotional strength. It’s a skill you have to practice. That youtuber wasn’t the only one there who felt that way, but he was the only one to say anything.

Yeah, they do. You never heard of a crime of opportunity?

Why do you lock your doors at night? You know that anyone who wants to get in can just rake the god damn lock, right? Most people don’t want to get into your house, and the ones who do will be able to enter anyway, so what pathology drives you to waste your time like this?

Okay, well, I’m waiting for those steps to be carried out then. We can’t really talk about her extreme viability until they have.

I’m going to skip over the Kamala stuff because you say this later:

An extended campaign would only reveal Kamala as just another weak-ass establishment Dem.

Which I agree with. This is the reason she was not a strong candidate.

Was she the best we could have done under the circumstances? Well, we didn’t get a primary, so who knows. The past is the past, I suppose.

I am worried that you are drinking the koolaid a little bit. Kamala did lose. Nobody cares about policy. AOC’s proposals should be violent retribution against the leeches sucking the life out of the USA. Trump is successful, in part, because he pretends to be anti-establishment. The DNC’s official position is to never criticize any prominent figure they’ve ever had.

I agree that AOC can energize people. What I’m asking is if she has the dominant aura necessary to crack the whip.

I ask, partly because having the will to mobilize our system into actually doing something is a prerequisite now to being successful, and partly because this ping-ponging between the Dems and the Republicans will burn the country down. We need like a new cultural revolution. It should be as offensive to be a Republican now as it was to be a Nazi in the 1940s. American individualism and apathy must be crushed under heel. Anything less than this is basically a slow death. A pyrrhic victory as we lose global significance.

Didn’t she back down from Nancy Pelosi over the Isreal dome stuff?

The fire I’m talking about needs to burn away the establishment rot in the Democrat party. It cannot be afraid to criticize Merrick Garland for failing to prosecute Trump because it might make the party look bad.

The party has a reputation for doing nothing. This fire cannot promise nothing; people will see through it right away.

I don’t remember the content of the speech, but I do remember that during the last national convention, AOC did rouse the crowd better than pretty much anyone else there. I’m not saying she can’t be the one. I am saying there’s got to be a hell of a lot more than a Fighting Oligarchy tour that fails to really accomplish anything.

We’ve still got a lot of time, too. Nobody knew Mamdani 5 months ago. But yeah, I agree.

I’m not saying that Americans won’t think “oh, a third? really?” but you have to remember that Kamala fucking sucked. She was a pacifier the Biden administration threw at us to shut us up about him stepping down, and she knew she was, and if she cared at all, she lacked the strength to step out of line or say anything about it. Nobody believed she would meaningfully change their lives—that’s ultimately why she lost.

She lost to the fascist head of the new project 2025, and in her closing speech said something about the stars in the night sky and went on vacation. Pointing out that she’s a woman before pointing out that she and the rest of her democrat cohorts do not have any beliefs is absurd.

Candidates can still signal their intentions in other ways. It doesn’t have to be out loud per se.

The main concern I have—and if she’s going to give it a shot, give it a shot, I say—is that she won’t have the fire or aura necessary in her rhetoric to capture the anger the of the American left. I would love to be proven wrong, though. I’d certainly trust her more than that fuckin snake Gavin Newsom.

You are reading waay to much into that title, man. Their claim is it doesn’t make people more misogynistic. There are still tons of reasons to care about how media conducts itself.

Or do you imagine it’s just a neutral thing that the whites-only crowd would make it impossible to be a black actor again?

so…we should be more concerned about teachers and students hurting some kids’ feelings

No?

But it remains that the social dynamics at play make a lot of young conservatives ripe for grooming.

It’s kinda like being a socially awkward teen, and later becoming an Incel (capital I), and later believing that feminism is ripping society apart at its seams—there are pipelines that move people from childhood to adulthood. And sometimes these pipes stem from really simple things, like that modern city design and culture have made people really, really lonely.