I’m so confused about what they think this guy did wrong, he’s a military guy (people in the military are really quite young, you enlist at age 18!), he goes to a college campus to meet up with a girl, presumably everyone on the college campus is an adult, even if the girl happens to be 17 because of where her birthday lands that hardly makes him a pedophile. Is this about the idea that college people are essentially permanent children while people who go straight into the workforce become instantly an adult at age 18?
A lot of young people today *truly believe* that there is something deviant and wrong with men in their twenties who would date women that are 18 and 19. I've seen enough social media comments over the last few years from young people who think a man in his late twenties is too old to date someone in their early twenties and that the age gap is "problematic."
I didn't realize how crazy the internet was about this stuff until a couple years ago when Chris Evans (40ish) publicly dated and then married the actress Alba Baptista (26 at the time they went public, I think). Not 16. Not 18. Not 21. Past 25. And yet there were threads all over Reddit talking about it being "predatory" and "grooming" and a power imbalance and... yeah, a hell of a lot more than just "problematic." Even those who admitted it wasn't technically "grooming" still often called it "exploitative" or "weird as hell." For a woman who was 26 years old. When there was pushback to some of them, they started trying to speculate how old she was when they started dating based on various posts and details -- she *might* have been as young as... wait for it... 23! Which obviously made Evans essentially pedophile-adjacent.
And I do understand that age gap relationships aren't for everyone (I personally have no interest in one). And there is admittedly a long history of potential exploitation involving much older men and young women. But it's amazing to me that a 26-year-old female celebrity is apparently denied agency in her ability to choose to date a guy who is 40ish, and something MUST necessarily be "predatory" about it.
So it doesn't surprise me at all that a hoard of college students might view a guy even a few years older as "predatory" if he showed up with interest in an 18-year-old.
That’s crazy. I’m a gay man and was in a relationship with a guy 11 years older than me for six years and got told by a black lipstick wearing feminist that this was a power imbalance and she strongly implied the relationship was problematic. I was an adult when I met him and I always tried to contribute to some extent to everyday expenses, he wasn’t my sugar daddy nor was he treating me like some sort of trophy twink or whatever. Dogmatic people can be so stupid.
But remember when #BelieveWomen feminists all got behind that 22 year old woman (who wasn't a Stanford student) went to Stanford campus to pick up a freshman boy on the swim team? She's a *hero*!
That sounds a bit like my similar experience, where I was a 16 year old boy, had an 18 year old girl suggest we leave a dance together and go back to my place. We get there and she immediately strips naked and pushes me onto the bed. We start some very heavy foreplay, I try to start sex, she says no, we do foreplay for 15 more minutes, I try again, she says nothing.
Sex goes great that night, the next week, so on. We then date for a year and have sex IDK 150 more times and she is super happy the whole time until I break up with her after the first semester of her being 4 hours away at college.
And then 3 years later she is starting a Women's Studies Masters Program and comes back into our social circles telling everyone I raped her. Additionally, I was some abusive Machiavellian genius manipulating poor young innocent her and she just thought she was super happy et cetera. One of her main points of evidence I was abusive was I once tried to convince her to skip a shift at Dairy Queen to go to a movie. That was like exhibit B or something. See I was trying to isolate her from her job!
Exhibit A was I was sometimes whiney if I didn't get what I wanted, a 16 year old...
That was great, lost dozens of friends as basically everyone just split down the line of whether they were better friends with her or me.
If age of consent where you are isn't 16, and you're in a place where they don't have statutes of limitation for these things (a bad idea, but States like NY let people bring "rape" charges 30 years later!) then I wonder if you can press charges for rape...
The Stanford case is odd, and I feel I'm in a tiny minority defending the man who was charged and convicted. There was no rape, she was fully clothed, and there was no evidence of a sexual act. They were rolling around, very drunk, behind a dumpster and she passed out. Also, she wasn't a student, he was a freshman; she has already graduated college. Do you think a man who just graduated college at 22, who returns to a college campus to have sex with freshmen girls would--in any universe--be hailed as a brave hero?
The court allows "victim impact statements" but her's was entirely fictional because -- by her own admission -- she blacked out and didn't rememeber a thing. How then, can they allow a statement from someone who wasn't there, at least mentally?
I have always been extremely tired of the trilemma:
A) Women are fully equal persons capable of being treated like full moral agents.
B) Men and women very commonly get drunk and have sex together. And this has been one of the main strategies of both sexes for getting laid for as long as we have written records.
C) If this happens it is 100% the man's fault and grave crime if the woman later decides she wouldn't have wanted to sober.
And I am not even someone who has had almost any drunk sex because almost all the sex I ever had/have was in a relationship or cheating on someone instead of say one night stands or hookups.
We have our own Chris Evans in the UK, who was a radio DJ in the 90s, and also dated someone significantly younger than him (Billie Piper, a teenage pop star). Maybe it's genetic?
....and as if there isn't any woman at any age--18 to 88--would wouldn't want to date and marry Chris Evans! My guess is that the women (I presume it was 99% women) who called this "predatory" and "grooming" and "problematic" were just jealous that they didn't get to marry their Hollywood heartthrob.
Not only do they find it problematic, they will use words like pedophilia and grooming to describe it. In their minds, the definitive of pedophilia now includes attraction to teenagers and young adults by anyone more than a few years older. Try to remind them what pedophilia actually means and you will get accused of being a pedantic troll and a pedophile yourself.
(I was accused of this, on reddit, and I got permanently banned from the politics sub in short order for simply saying that teenagers are attractive).
God forbid you express that say a 20 year old having sex with a 16 year old, while not laudable or good, is not going to necessarily permanently traumatize the 16 year old involved. I knew a few couples like that, and while I wouldn't say the relationships were generally great or that such an age gap is a "good idea", pretty much all of them seemed fine and ended with everyone involved going their own ways NBD.
People have a really hard time drawing a line between things which are inadvisable and a bad idea, and things which need social ostracism and shaming and possible legal consequences.
Like skateboarding without a helmet is also a super bad idea.
This story also confused the living hell out of me. Even if the girl was pretending to be younger (which she wasn’t), he was meeting her on a college campus ffs!
Yeah when I was 19 year old college freshman (I took a year off) I started dating a 17 year old who was a college sophomore, and she hid her age from me until we were already dating.
When I was a 19 year old sophomore I dated a 22yo grad student. We were together for three years. Even my mother liked him. We're still Facebook friends all these years later. I don't understand the world anymore.
As noted in the podcast, they were trying to recreate a tiktok trend for likes. Right or wrong had nothing to do with it and undoubtedly didn't even cross their minds for a second.
That’s so wild. I met my wife when I was 24 she was 19. I had been operating under the self imposed rule that I was not going to date 18 year olds because it felt weird. Little did I know that when I met my future wife, she was 19 but only by like two months.😂😂. Once everyone is an adult, the rules have changed. People just have to get over that.
What it seemed like to me is that they were already committed to their plan, didn't want to reconsider since it was fun and exciting, and the girl might have lied to them or misremembered lying about her age to the victim. If she told the group, "yeah I told him I was 17," then their insane behavior at least makes sense, logically if not morally or ethically.
The age of consent in MA is 16, so unless she claimed to be 15, it doesn't make sense logically either. Not to mention that a 15 year old on a dating site or college campus is going to set off some red flags, so seems an unlikely scenario. Most plausible scenario is that she lied to her friends and the guy showed up fully expecting to meet a college student.
I've never seen anyone outside of a courtroom actually give a shit about any age of consent other than 18. I seriously doubt these kids even know that the age of consent in MA is anything less than 18. I'm also skeptical that it makes much of a difference consequentially anyway.
As an aside while relistening to this part of the episode, I really think a lot of (young, usually male) people have some form of bloodlust in them they need to satisfy in more or less literal and/or legitimate ways, this being a prime example of that. It might be extreme to say that, but these people are the ones you would have seen cheering at a public hanging or a witch burning.
You enlist at 18 to I think 34 now (after 9/11 the ceiling jumped up, maybe it came back down). Just wanted to fact check in case someone was wondering if its too late for them.
While what those college kids did was incomprehensibly stupid, ugly, and criminal, I have a difficult time feeling bad for the original subjects of To Catch a Predator. These weren’t people being publicly humiliated for what they said online or some abstract thought crime or honest mistake. These were men who showed up to a house (usually with some kind of fruity flavoured alcohol and condoms) with the full intention of having sex with a 12-13 year old child. There are infinite off-ramps one can take to avoid finding themselves in that situation, and no one arrives at that destination by accident.
The show was low culture for sure, and justice should not be done this way in a well-functioning society. But, if anything, I feel bad for the families who had to bear the humiliation of seeing their husband or father on television attempting to be a child molester.
The problem is I'd never trust those very odd people who volunteered with "Perverted Justice" to behave properly. Who knows what they said and did to lure someone into their trap? These operations need to be done professionally by law enforcement, with full logs of everything, and they need to focus on people who initiate sexual conversations with individuals who identify as minors. I have no idea how Perverted Justice works, and if the volunteers can be trusted to act ethically.
There's too much opportunity for there to be weirdos and perverts among the people who would eagarly want to volunteer role-play as 13 year olds and have sexy chats with men.
My understanding was that law enforcement was involved in the Predator stings, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen an episode.
They would show the chat logs on the episodes, which included the actress stating that she was 12/13 years old at the beginning of the conversation, but agreed that these things should be handled by law enforcement and not vigilantes.
They're both capable of good jokes, but it's like they're rushing to post headlines before the ideas have been properly workshopped. Like, the lead headline on The Onion right now is "Trump To Victims’ Families: ‘I’m Doing Everything Possible To Resegregate Flight Schools." There's an inkling of humor in there somewhere, but it's more like an idea for a joke than an actual joke. Too on-the-nose.
Early in their inception they had some jabs at internal church politics that were somewhat universalizable and humorous so they struck a cord for me. That didn't last all that long.
Babylon Bee comes up with good headlines, but often falls flat with the follow-through. Of course, in the social media era, nobody reads the articles...
I thought the Babylon Bee was hilarious when it was making fun of “their side”. They would absolutely nail the sometimes ridiculousness of American Evangelical culture. Then they went political and started attacking the other side. I feel like the same thing happened with The Onion.
I hate to stick up for the sanctity of the Church Of England, but Calvin Robinson was *not* an “Anglican priest” - he was a member of the Anglican Catholic Church, the latest in a long line of ‘churches’ that are something along the lines of Trump University. He’s a priest in the way same way someone who gets a wedding license to officiate their friend’s wedding is a priest.
Meh, like many other better known Anglican denominations, the Anglican Catholic Church is in full communion with some other Anglican churches but not with the Anglican Communion. It's Protestantism, schisms happen. ;-) It's not like the Anglican Communion claims to be the one true Church. The church-polity stakes are a lot lower than they are in, say, Roman Catholicism, and only diehard religion nerds like me care about who's in full communion with whom.
JFC leave it to this new generation of kids in college to think they've caught a predator because a man in his 20s would want to date a woman who is 18! They've lost touch with reality. I hope every last one of those students who attacked the guy is expelled.
This is going to sound "ak-shully-y," (I'm sorry in advance!) but lots of brains work more satisfactorily with nicotine, just as some do with caffeine. Absent tobacco (especially burned tobacco) nicotine is about as dependence-forming (importantly different from addictive) and harmful (not very) as caffeine. Products like Zyn and vaping have helped to decrease rates of smoking, and smoking-related health issues, dramatically.
I finally quit smoking permanently with the first generation vapes that came out - called e-cigs then. I haven’t vaped in forever now either but they definitely saved years on my life. It’s criminal the way vaping for adults has been treated imo.
One of the reasons why Zoomers are disproportionately sexless compared with other generations is because narcissists can now get clout on social media by punishing others for normal sexual behavior.
The wannabe To Catch a Predator story is a good example of this phenomenon.
We need to convince them that two adults that are 2 or more years apart in age having consensual sex is a matter of bodily autonomy, or at least a socially permissible kink.
The whole idea of "spoons" is so dispiriting. I have a chronic illness, and I found the metaphor really helpful to explain to significant others. (the original was about Lupus, BTW). It was more about illustrating how many tasks actually require more effort and thought then most healthy people think.
The issue is, this was a metaphor/website I would give to personal friends, I would never expect to be catered to by society at large (although I appreciate easy accommodations). But as the cliché goes, this is why we can't have nice things.
Yeah. I am sorry for this. I have had someone explain their exhaustion due to a chronic illness this way and I found it helpful. I’m sorry it has become an insult or a signal of “too online” or melodramatic. I think it’s the finite/ countable nouns that makes it more illustrative than just saying I’m out of steam. (side note: as someone who likes grammar I’m fascinated by which nouns are countable and uncountable in different languages… eg money, air, etc)…
Maybe you can start using forks or Pokémon cards or Hershey’s kisses… I hope you get tons of them, whatever you choose!
Thanks! It doesn't really matter to me, I've found it helpful in the past, but currently everyone important to me understands the idea. It's really more for younger people, now they have a really helpful analogy that people will think they're whiny losers for using.
The “spoons” thing is and always was a terrible metaphor. No one gets a supply of spoons, spoons are not used in the execution of tasks, the whole thing was dumb.
Explaining it in terms of money (“Imagine everyone gets a budget of $100 every day, but everything you do costs money. It costs you $5 to get up and make coffee. But my condition adds a $15 surcharge to every action, so making coffee costs me $20. And if I make coffee, I might not be able to afford costs of taking a shower, making breakfast, getting dressed and going outside. By noon, I’m broke, even in debt. Also, most people might earn a little extra by eating, getting exercise, and so on, but because of my surcharge those activities cost me a bit more than the pay me.”) or fuel (“Everyone starts with a full tank of gas. Unfortunately, my condition is like a slow leak/dirty carburetor/etc, it takes me twice as much gas to do the same task as someone without my condition.”) would make sense and would explain it in terms other people could relate to.
But “spoons” is and always was a stupid Tumbler metaphor that made me immediately distrust that the person using it actually had a chronic condition and wasn’t just being fashionably self-diagnosed.
Okay. As someone with a real chronic condition (with the biopsies, surgical scars, and resections to prove it), I found it to be a very helpful metaphor. It got the big picture across, and before it became so well known (and actually, even now, because most people aren't so online) it was an innocuous reference when out and about.
My goal was never to make a perfect analogy, and the "spoons" was good enough. Plus, "I'm out of spoons" is seldom a phrase that would be misunderstood, whereas "I'm low on gas" could easily be met with "that's okay, there's a station on the way".
This is a "code phrase" I would use with my significant other, after having previously explained the metaphor. Not something I would say to a random person on the street.
Aaaargh, I wrote this whole comment out and then I accidentally swiped back and I lost it! 😭 Anyway, what I was going to say was that my problem with spoon theory is that on the internet, people talk as if it applies to everyone, not just the chronically ill, but it really doesn’t. In my own case I eventually realized that a better model is *momentum*: the less I do, the more depressed I get, and the less energy I have. That’s like the opposite of spoons! So thinking about daily activities in terms of carefully conserving spoons was, I suspect, actually harmful to me.
I don’t know how many people run on momentum vs spoons, but among healthy people I wouldn’t be surprised if momentum is pretty common. If that’s true, a lot of very online people who are otherwise young and healthy are treating themselves as if they were sick, and are thereby making themselves less well.
"The issue is, this was a metaphor/website I would give to personal friends, I would never expect to be catered to by society at large (although I appreciate easy accommodations)."
This. I have a different issue, but it's the sort of thing where a metaphor I could explain to family and friends so they would understand what I was going through would be awesome, but I wouldn't expect every single person I encountered to immediately put my needs first for it.
Interesting that you have so much outrage about this topic in particular, as when you first showed up here all you ever posted about was how much you hated (((Zionists))). Now that the right wing is the one dabbling in antisemitism you’ve decided you’re against it then? Well, better late than never.
Hmm. You’re not very bright, are you? Let’s see if we can get you up to speed:
I’m “outraged” by oppression no matter the identity of the oppressor.
That’s why I oppose neo-Nazis AND Zionist apartheid. It’s why I oppose Nazis, Zionists, and Arab terrorists who rape and murder civilians.
Compare and contrast:
You support oppression so long as it’s done by a group with which you identify.
This is why you oppose Nazis but are completely happy with apartheid and war crimes committed by Jews (because a particular patch of desert was promised to them by their imaginary god, obviously).
You are identity politics personified. If you were philosophically consistent, you would be “outraged” by all these things.
I am glad to hear that you oppose Arab terrorists who rape and murder civilians, because I didn’t see any posts from you about that subject out of the many, many posts you made about Zionists after October 7th. Of course, no one is obligated to post about everything they think about, support, or oppose. It was just an observation I had, given your devotion to the subject matter.
Again, with the caveat that no one has to post about everything, I just think it’s fascinating that you’ve now been posting quite a bit about the Elon thing, but I’ve never once seen you critique the overt embrace of Nazism in some parts of the pro-Palestine crowd. Given the fact that you posted so much about your opposition to Nazism and your support of pro-Palestinian ideals, I would think this would bother you greatly.
Here’s one such story from my own country, though a debate about Mai Abdulhadi‘s intention behind her arm movement is not necessary. She followed up her sieg heil by saying, “The final solution is coming your way, the final solution. You know what the final solution is?” to a bunch of Jewish counter protesters:
Do the actions of one (probably mentally ill) Palestinian woman in Montreal have as much impact as the richest man in the world being a trollish ass on an international stage? Probably not. But this story made headlines and I didn’t see anyone from the pro-Palestinian camp, who have been so very vocal over the past year, denounce her. Though many of them, like yourself, are now flocking to denounce Elon. Again, just an observation.
It sure seems like all of this is just using accusations of antisemitism to score points against the other team while, in reality, not actually giving a shit about it. But, as you noted, I’m not very bright, so maybe I’m missing something here.
Nice to know we have two people contributing to toxicity here. Wouldn’t be an internet community without it. And I think the other one has been slacking lately.
Agreed! It was “toxic” of Wild Horses to censure me for referring to something that was mentioned in this podcast episode! You’re quite astute! Gold star!
Ooooh son, I’m your huckleberry. I’ve got your “substantive counter” point right here: you are a virtue signalling hypocrite.
You’re mewling about “opposing oppression” on a device sourced *and* manufactured by child slaves but I haven’t seen you say a MF word about oppression that you are, by the standard *you’re* setting, complicit in and profiting from.
So, until you can square your obnoxious hypocrisy with reality? Maybe you should stop pitching stones from your glass house, kid.
Don't cancel me, but I did throw that up once after winning a round of Secret Hitler. Also did the little finger mustache thing.
Context is key. In the case of Musk I think it was more likely a stiff armed attempt at a wave. Not that he hasn't said antisemitic things before, but I just don't think he thinks enough to be an ideologue. The guy bought Twitter on a lark, and tried to back out until he was forced to go through with it. He brought a sink into the building when he walked in, despite no clarity about what was supposed to "sink in". I don't think he's that clever.
Elon Musk publicly supports far right-wing ideas. That context suggests he was in fact doing a Nazi salute. Because of course he was.
He’s an entitled, born-rich prick who has never faced any consequences for his bad behavior (for example, when he accused a rescue diver in Thailand of being a pedophile). As a right-wing ideologue, why wouldn’t he do the a right-wing ideologue salute?
I think it’s safe to conclude he knew exactly what he was doing when he did that stiff-armed salute. My only hope is he finally gets what he deserves.
He's not doing a Nazi salute because he's not a Nazi.
I mean, you can call him one all day, but he's easy to read and he clearly doesn't consider himself one. The crowd he was waving at considers terms like "fascist" and "Nazi" to be generic insults from the left, not their actual ideology. Nazis salute for the benefit of other Nazis, to signal in-group membership.
Now will MAGAs types start throwing up stiff arms to "trigger the libs" in an initially ironic but quickly post-ironically sincere fascistic signal like the "ok" sign before? Maybe. Or maybe the historical weight for it is too heavy.
Whatever signs we have of encroaching fascism in America, the least of them is to be found in Elon's elbow.
That he’s not a member of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party? Well, no shit. No one is.
Elon Musk is a supporter of *modern* far-right fascistic movements. That’s why he did the famous gesture of a far-right fascistic movement.
The pedantic denialism around this issue is bizarre. What gives? Is it liberal Tesla owners trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance of driving a right-winger’s car? Odd.
No. When I say he's not a Nazi I mean that, by all indications from the man regarding his beliefs, he has no sympathies to the Nazi party, or the neo-Nazi movement, and no fascination with their ideologies as such. I would put that in contrast to Richard Spencer, who would also not call himself a Nazi, but is really obviously a Nazi. Or Kanye West. (Even West I'd say is merely enchanted by the ideology as a side-effect of his bipolar disorder and his own personal biases.)
Elon is a right-wing capitalist, and that's bad enough.
Spent a lot of time on stage in front of adoring fans? “Reaching out” to an enthusiastic crowd can easily look like a seig heil if you don’t spread your fingers and the shot/video is edited maliciously.
I've been seeing social media clips of Elon supporters performing Nazi salutes. So their position is that Elon did it unintentionally, but they do it deliberately to prove Elon did it unintentionally.
This truly matters. I can think of nothing more important. Thank God we continue to talk about it, else we forget its significance. Hopefully we don't focus so hard on it that we don't miss the next Important Thing™ that happens.
This is getting really fucking stupid. Answer me this: why does Elon deny doing a Nazi salute? If he's willing to get up on stage and announce to the world that he's an acolyte of a Austrian painters with funny mustaches, then why doesn't he say: "obviously I'm a Nazi. Didn't you not see me doing the salute?" I mean, you have to admit that arm gestures are a lot more ambiguous than a simple yes or no and if the verbal response is to deny it, then what in the fuck are you going on about?
I don’t even think he has to be a Nazi to have done the salute intentionally. He is a well known internet troll. He has increasingly take his trolling to real life.
It does seem that people are going on about it because so many of Elon’s fans are now throwing up the heil themselves.
I think you misunderstood what A.B. was saying. He's not saying that Elon said that he was a Nazi. He's saying that if Elon really were a Nazi (which he isn't), he would just say he was, instead of doing a salute and then denying it.
I hope we can all come together to shame this behavior.
For the younger people I understand the stupidity but most of them are middle aged or older. I wouldn't trust them with any business decisions personally. They have the worst judgement and least comprehension of social norms, assuming they're not actually Nazis (which I do assume), but dumb enough to think it's OK to perform a Nazi salute as a joke/to make a point, any point, etc.
I have sympathy for rational conservatives having to associate with these idiots.
Candace Owens is accusing the first lady of France of being a man and is launching a meme coin related to this conspiracy. I’ve been obsessed with the Macron family since 2017 and I do lowkey feel like Candace is turning my culture into a costume.
Dear Katie, Bitcoin is a very bad currency to pay your hitmen in. Your every Bitcoin transaction is public, forever. Just FYI.
I think the crypto part is a little unfair to the crypto people. Most of people who get into fartcoin know very well that fartcoin is worthless! But they hope they can buy in on the way up and sell out before it falls, ie they know they are participating in a scam but still hope to make some money in it.
Advocating for racist policies is what makes someone a Nazi. Supporting violent aggressors whose actions result in the torture and deaths of innocents because of their skin color or ethnicity is what makes someone a Nazi. Killing innocents because of their skin color or ethnicity is what makes someone a Nazi.
You're talking about a guy who raised his hand. I detest Elon Musk and Trump but Jesus fucking Christ let's have some perspective.
>It's not ok to be a Nazi just because you are "trolling".
I don't know how to break this to you, but doing a Nazi salute or even 100 Nazi salutes does not "make one a Nazi". That isn't what the word means. And using like that debases it and is why it is now troll fodder. The left has totally debased the seriousness with which a large swath of the population takes the accusation because they are such fucking retarded Tourette sufferers about it.
I think it's pretty eye opening that Jesse didn't think it was a Nazi salute until he found out that the guy was a conservative. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that.
Yes and sometimes that is enough, but ironically, the jew hating right hates the babylon bee because they are too nice to the jews. I hate to defend them, but my guess is Mann did it ironically because of Musk (super dumb) but not because he hates jews. I do not think he does. (though, as always, I don't know what is actually in his heart)
I’m so confused about what they think this guy did wrong, he’s a military guy (people in the military are really quite young, you enlist at age 18!), he goes to a college campus to meet up with a girl, presumably everyone on the college campus is an adult, even if the girl happens to be 17 because of where her birthday lands that hardly makes him a pedophile. Is this about the idea that college people are essentially permanent children while people who go straight into the workforce become instantly an adult at age 18?
A lot of young people today *truly believe* that there is something deviant and wrong with men in their twenties who would date women that are 18 and 19. I've seen enough social media comments over the last few years from young people who think a man in his late twenties is too old to date someone in their early twenties and that the age gap is "problematic."
I didn't realize how crazy the internet was about this stuff until a couple years ago when Chris Evans (40ish) publicly dated and then married the actress Alba Baptista (26 at the time they went public, I think). Not 16. Not 18. Not 21. Past 25. And yet there were threads all over Reddit talking about it being "predatory" and "grooming" and a power imbalance and... yeah, a hell of a lot more than just "problematic." Even those who admitted it wasn't technically "grooming" still often called it "exploitative" or "weird as hell." For a woman who was 26 years old. When there was pushback to some of them, they started trying to speculate how old she was when they started dating based on various posts and details -- she *might* have been as young as... wait for it... 23! Which obviously made Evans essentially pedophile-adjacent.
And I do understand that age gap relationships aren't for everyone (I personally have no interest in one). And there is admittedly a long history of potential exploitation involving much older men and young women. But it's amazing to me that a 26-year-old female celebrity is apparently denied agency in her ability to choose to date a guy who is 40ish, and something MUST necessarily be "predatory" about it.
So it doesn't surprise me at all that a hoard of college students might view a guy even a few years older as "predatory" if he showed up with interest in an 18-year-old.
That’s crazy. I’m a gay man and was in a relationship with a guy 11 years older than me for six years and got told by a black lipstick wearing feminist that this was a power imbalance and she strongly implied the relationship was problematic. I was an adult when I met him and I always tried to contribute to some extent to everyday expenses, he wasn’t my sugar daddy nor was he treating me like some sort of trophy twink or whatever. Dogmatic people can be so stupid.
But remember when #BelieveWomen feminists all got behind that 22 year old woman (who wasn't a Stanford student) went to Stanford campus to pick up a freshman boy on the swim team? She's a *hero*!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner
(I don't believe Channel Miller at all. This IMHO was a miscarriage of justice. See https://helpsaveoursons.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Seven-Big-Lies-in-the-Brock-Turner-Case-Plagarism-at-Stanford-updated-1-30-20.pdf )
That sounds a bit like my similar experience, where I was a 16 year old boy, had an 18 year old girl suggest we leave a dance together and go back to my place. We get there and she immediately strips naked and pushes me onto the bed. We start some very heavy foreplay, I try to start sex, she says no, we do foreplay for 15 more minutes, I try again, she says nothing.
Sex goes great that night, the next week, so on. We then date for a year and have sex IDK 150 more times and she is super happy the whole time until I break up with her after the first semester of her being 4 hours away at college.
And then 3 years later she is starting a Women's Studies Masters Program and comes back into our social circles telling everyone I raped her. Additionally, I was some abusive Machiavellian genius manipulating poor young innocent her and she just thought she was super happy et cetera. One of her main points of evidence I was abusive was I once tried to convince her to skip a shift at Dairy Queen to go to a movie. That was like exhibit B or something. See I was trying to isolate her from her job!
Exhibit A was I was sometimes whiney if I didn't get what I wanted, a 16 year old...
That was great, lost dozens of friends as basically everyone just split down the line of whether they were better friends with her or me.
If age of consent where you are isn't 16, and you're in a place where they don't have statutes of limitation for these things (a bad idea, but States like NY let people bring "rape" charges 30 years later!) then I wonder if you can press charges for rape...
The Stanford case is odd, and I feel I'm in a tiny minority defending the man who was charged and convicted. There was no rape, she was fully clothed, and there was no evidence of a sexual act. They were rolling around, very drunk, behind a dumpster and she passed out. Also, she wasn't a student, he was a freshman; she has already graduated college. Do you think a man who just graduated college at 22, who returns to a college campus to have sex with freshmen girls would--in any universe--be hailed as a brave hero?
The court allows "victim impact statements" but her's was entirely fictional because -- by her own admission -- she blacked out and didn't rememeber a thing. How then, can they allow a statement from someone who wasn't there, at least mentally?
I have always been extremely tired of the trilemma:
A) Women are fully equal persons capable of being treated like full moral agents.
B) Men and women very commonly get drunk and have sex together. And this has been one of the main strategies of both sexes for getting laid for as long as we have written records.
C) If this happens it is 100% the man's fault and grave crime if the woman later decides she wouldn't have wanted to sober.
And I am not even someone who has had almost any drunk sex because almost all the sex I ever had/have was in a relationship or cheating on someone instead of say one night stands or hookups.
We have our own Chris Evans in the UK, who was a radio DJ in the 90s, and also dated someone significantly younger than him (Billie Piper, a teenage pop star). Maybe it's genetic?
....and as if there isn't any woman at any age--18 to 88--would wouldn't want to date and marry Chris Evans! My guess is that the women (I presume it was 99% women) who called this "predatory" and "grooming" and "problematic" were just jealous that they didn't get to marry their Hollywood heartthrob.
Not only do they find it problematic, they will use words like pedophilia and grooming to describe it. In their minds, the definitive of pedophilia now includes attraction to teenagers and young adults by anyone more than a few years older. Try to remind them what pedophilia actually means and you will get accused of being a pedantic troll and a pedophile yourself.
(I was accused of this, on reddit, and I got permanently banned from the politics sub in short order for simply saying that teenagers are attractive).
God forbid you express that say a 20 year old having sex with a 16 year old, while not laudable or good, is not going to necessarily permanently traumatize the 16 year old involved. I knew a few couples like that, and while I wouldn't say the relationships were generally great or that such an age gap is a "good idea", pretty much all of them seemed fine and ended with everyone involved going their own ways NBD.
People have a really hard time drawing a line between things which are inadvisable and a bad idea, and things which need social ostracism and shaming and possible legal consequences.
Like skateboarding without a helmet is also a super bad idea.
This story also confused the living hell out of me. Even if the girl was pretending to be younger (which she wasn’t), he was meeting her on a college campus ffs!
Yeah when I was 19 year old college freshman (I took a year off) I started dating a 17 year old who was a college sophomore, and she hid her age from me until we were already dating.
Oh No! A young man attempted to get laid!
Lol, and he was even like hanging out with her during the day. Truly, the most devious behavior of the young straight man.
When I was a 19 year old sophomore I dated a 22yo grad student. We were together for three years. Even my mother liked him. We're still Facebook friends all these years later. I don't understand the world anymore.
It looks like it was literally as stupid as “there’s an adult trying to sleep with a teenager!!!” (ie a 22 year old and an 18 year old).
I didn't know she was both 18 and even said she was 18 till I heard this.
Madness.
Wild.
The kids are not alright.
As noted in the podcast, they were trying to recreate a tiktok trend for likes. Right or wrong had nothing to do with it and undoubtedly didn't even cross their minds for a second.
That’s so wild. I met my wife when I was 24 she was 19. I had been operating under the self imposed rule that I was not going to date 18 year olds because it felt weird. Little did I know that when I met my future wife, she was 19 but only by like two months.😂😂. Once everyone is an adult, the rules have changed. People just have to get over that.
What it seemed like to me is that they were already committed to their plan, didn't want to reconsider since it was fun and exciting, and the girl might have lied to them or misremembered lying about her age to the victim. If she told the group, "yeah I told him I was 17," then their insane behavior at least makes sense, logically if not morally or ethically.
The age of consent in MA is 16, so unless she claimed to be 15, it doesn't make sense logically either. Not to mention that a 15 year old on a dating site or college campus is going to set off some red flags, so seems an unlikely scenario. Most plausible scenario is that she lied to her friends and the guy showed up fully expecting to meet a college student.
I've never seen anyone outside of a courtroom actually give a shit about any age of consent other than 18. I seriously doubt these kids even know that the age of consent in MA is anything less than 18. I'm also skeptical that it makes much of a difference consequentially anyway.
As an aside while relistening to this part of the episode, I really think a lot of (young, usually male) people have some form of bloodlust in them they need to satisfy in more or less literal and/or legitimate ways, this being a prime example of that. It might be extreme to say that, but these people are the ones you would have seen cheering at a public hanging or a witch burning.
You enlist at 18 to I think 34 now (after 9/11 the ceiling jumped up, maybe it came back down). Just wanted to fact check in case someone was wondering if its too late for them.
While what those college kids did was incomprehensibly stupid, ugly, and criminal, I have a difficult time feeling bad for the original subjects of To Catch a Predator. These weren’t people being publicly humiliated for what they said online or some abstract thought crime or honest mistake. These were men who showed up to a house (usually with some kind of fruity flavoured alcohol and condoms) with the full intention of having sex with a 12-13 year old child. There are infinite off-ramps one can take to avoid finding themselves in that situation, and no one arrives at that destination by accident.
The show was low culture for sure, and justice should not be done this way in a well-functioning society. But, if anything, I feel bad for the families who had to bear the humiliation of seeing their husband or father on television attempting to be a child molester.
The problem is I'd never trust those very odd people who volunteered with "Perverted Justice" to behave properly. Who knows what they said and did to lure someone into their trap? These operations need to be done professionally by law enforcement, with full logs of everything, and they need to focus on people who initiate sexual conversations with individuals who identify as minors. I have no idea how Perverted Justice works, and if the volunteers can be trusted to act ethically.
There's too much opportunity for there to be weirdos and perverts among the people who would eagarly want to volunteer role-play as 13 year olds and have sexy chats with men.
My understanding was that law enforcement was involved in the Predator stings, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen an episode.
They would show the chat logs on the episodes, which included the actress stating that she was 12/13 years old at the beginning of the conversation, but agreed that these things should be handled by law enforcement and not vigilantes.
It's like Dexter but for paedos!
Those kids are all far too stupid to be in college. Post-secondary education has been degraded for decades by over-admission.
This was my exact thought as I listened and I felt a little guilty for thinking it. But I fully agree.
Is it me or is the Babylon Bee not very funny?
I chuckle at some headlines, but I think its success is the direct result of The Onion becoming an unfunny preachfest over the past several years.
I feel like Babylon Bee is graded on a curve like Christian rock is
Credited. BB is popular in part because it's filling a void left by The Onion, and in part because it's genuinely funny in it's own right..
I would say the Onion of 15-20 years ago had like a 40% hit rate, and the BB has like a 15% hit rate, and the current Onion like a 10% hit rate.
The online Onion videos and "Our Dumb Century" hit heights the Babylon Bee almost never reaches.
old onion was genius
They're both capable of good jokes, but it's like they're rushing to post headlines before the ideas have been properly workshopped. Like, the lead headline on The Onion right now is "Trump To Victims’ Families: ‘I’m Doing Everything Possible To Resegregate Flight Schools." There's an inkling of humor in there somewhere, but it's more like an idea for a joke than an actual joke. Too on-the-nose.
The left's insistence that a lack of affirmative action = segregation is both insulting/racist and how you end up with Trump in the first place.
The left's insistence that something equals something is both outrageous and how the right keeps winning and it's why everything is stupid now.
“Our Dumb Century” is still gold. I consult it regularly.
Our stupid century is some of the best comedy ever written.
I think it's as funny as the Onion (the Onion currently, it used to be funnier)
Early in their inception they had some jabs at internal church politics that were somewhat universalizable and humorous so they struck a cord for me. That didn't last all that long.
Babylon Bee comes up with good headlines, but often falls flat with the follow-through. Of course, in the social media era, nobody reads the articles...
It isn’t you.
They're very hit and miss to me. Mostly miss, but occasionally hit.
I thought the Babylon Bee was hilarious when it was making fun of “their side”. They would absolutely nail the sometimes ridiculousness of American Evangelical culture. Then they went political and started attacking the other side. I feel like the same thing happened with The Onion.
Babylon Bee has some pretty good headlines but the article writing is subpar (compared to the older better version of the Onion).
Other thing with the Bee is a good chunk of the humor consists of poking fun at fellow Christians, which obviously will have less universal appeal.
I wouldn’t call you a “big angry bird,” Jesse . . . More like an angry Big Bird.
Or a Larry Bird
As a huge basketball fan and sometimes-player, Jesse ought to love the Larry Bird comparison.
I hate to stick up for the sanctity of the Church Of England, but Calvin Robinson was *not* an “Anglican priest” - he was a member of the Anglican Catholic Church, the latest in a long line of ‘churches’ that are something along the lines of Trump University. He’s a priest in the way same way someone who gets a wedding license to officiate their friend’s wedding is a priest.
Meh, like many other better known Anglican denominations, the Anglican Catholic Church is in full communion with some other Anglican churches but not with the Anglican Communion. It's Protestantism, schisms happen. ;-) It's not like the Anglican Communion claims to be the one true Church. The church-polity stakes are a lot lower than they are in, say, Roman Catholicism, and only diehard religion nerds like me care about who's in full communion with whom.
They do love a schism, those Protestants…
There's a schism within my family as to whether the c in schism is pronounced or not.
JFC leave it to this new generation of kids in college to think they've caught a predator because a man in his 20s would want to date a woman who is 18! They've lost touch with reality. I hope every last one of those students who attacked the guy is expelled.
Are social media and Zyn causing more brain damage than lead?
Yes and I don't even know what Zyn is.
It’s for their nicotine addiction/oral fixation
This is going to sound "ak-shully-y," (I'm sorry in advance!) but lots of brains work more satisfactorily with nicotine, just as some do with caffeine. Absent tobacco (especially burned tobacco) nicotine is about as dependence-forming (importantly different from addictive) and harmful (not very) as caffeine. Products like Zyn and vaping have helped to decrease rates of smoking, and smoking-related health issues, dramatically.
I finally quit smoking permanently with the first generation vapes that came out - called e-cigs then. I haven’t vaped in forever now either but they definitely saved years on my life. It’s criminal the way vaping for adults has been treated imo.
I chewed Copenhagen for over 30 years. Haven't had a dip in a year & a half, couldn't have done it without Zyn 🤷
One of the reasons why Zoomers are disproportionately sexless compared with other generations is because narcissists can now get clout on social media by punishing others for normal sexual behavior.
The wannabe To Catch a Predator story is a good example of this phenomenon.
We need to convince them that two adults that are 2 or more years apart in age having consensual sex is a matter of bodily autonomy, or at least a socially permissible kink.
The whole idea of "spoons" is so dispiriting. I have a chronic illness, and I found the metaphor really helpful to explain to significant others. (the original was about Lupus, BTW). It was more about illustrating how many tasks actually require more effort and thought then most healthy people think.
The issue is, this was a metaphor/website I would give to personal friends, I would never expect to be catered to by society at large (although I appreciate easy accommodations). But as the cliché goes, this is why we can't have nice things.
It was a good metaphor. Influencer culture ruins everything.
Yeah. I am sorry for this. I have had someone explain their exhaustion due to a chronic illness this way and I found it helpful. I’m sorry it has become an insult or a signal of “too online” or melodramatic. I think it’s the finite/ countable nouns that makes it more illustrative than just saying I’m out of steam. (side note: as someone who likes grammar I’m fascinated by which nouns are countable and uncountable in different languages… eg money, air, etc)…
Maybe you can start using forks or Pokémon cards or Hershey’s kisses… I hope you get tons of them, whatever you choose!
Take care!!
Thanks! It doesn't really matter to me, I've found it helpful in the past, but currently everyone important to me understands the idea. It's really more for younger people, now they have a really helpful analogy that people will think they're whiny losers for using.
The “spoons” thing is and always was a terrible metaphor. No one gets a supply of spoons, spoons are not used in the execution of tasks, the whole thing was dumb.
Explaining it in terms of money (“Imagine everyone gets a budget of $100 every day, but everything you do costs money. It costs you $5 to get up and make coffee. But my condition adds a $15 surcharge to every action, so making coffee costs me $20. And if I make coffee, I might not be able to afford costs of taking a shower, making breakfast, getting dressed and going outside. By noon, I’m broke, even in debt. Also, most people might earn a little extra by eating, getting exercise, and so on, but because of my surcharge those activities cost me a bit more than the pay me.”) or fuel (“Everyone starts with a full tank of gas. Unfortunately, my condition is like a slow leak/dirty carburetor/etc, it takes me twice as much gas to do the same task as someone without my condition.”) would make sense and would explain it in terms other people could relate to.
But “spoons” is and always was a stupid Tumbler metaphor that made me immediately distrust that the person using it actually had a chronic condition and wasn’t just being fashionably self-diagnosed.
Okay. As someone with a real chronic condition (with the biopsies, surgical scars, and resections to prove it), I found it to be a very helpful metaphor. It got the big picture across, and before it became so well known (and actually, even now, because most people aren't so online) it was an innocuous reference when out and about.
My goal was never to make a perfect analogy, and the "spoons" was good enough. Plus, "I'm out of spoons" is seldom a phrase that would be misunderstood, whereas "I'm low on gas" could easily be met with "that's okay, there's a station on the way".
If someone told me they were out of spoons, I'd assume they were a lunatic. So it might not be as helpful as you imagine.
This is a "code phrase" I would use with my significant other, after having previously explained the metaphor. Not something I would say to a random person on the street.
Aaaargh, I wrote this whole comment out and then I accidentally swiped back and I lost it! 😭 Anyway, what I was going to say was that my problem with spoon theory is that on the internet, people talk as if it applies to everyone, not just the chronically ill, but it really doesn’t. In my own case I eventually realized that a better model is *momentum*: the less I do, the more depressed I get, and the less energy I have. That’s like the opposite of spoons! So thinking about daily activities in terms of carefully conserving spoons was, I suspect, actually harmful to me.
I don’t know how many people run on momentum vs spoons, but among healthy people I wouldn’t be surprised if momentum is pretty common. If that’s true, a lot of very online people who are otherwise young and healthy are treating themselves as if they were sick, and are thereby making themselves less well.
I think bandwidth is a good one because it also covers mental energy.
"The issue is, this was a metaphor/website I would give to personal friends, I would never expect to be catered to by society at large (although I appreciate easy accommodations)."
This. I have a different issue, but it's the sort of thing where a metaphor I could explain to family and friends so they would understand what I was going through would be awesome, but I wouldn't expect every single person I encountered to immediately put my needs first for it.
Y'all are joking about memecoins as if people participating think they are the same thing as the equity market
It is not
It is social gambling. There may be a few people who don't get this, but not many.
It's a giant poker game across a thousand Discord servers. Chill out.
With pump fun specifically this is the whole point. It’s right there in the name. They missed this.
I’ve lived my entire life without doing a Nazi salute. It is quite a specific movement. The Nazis were really good at making a distinctive brand.
Interesting that you have so much outrage about this topic in particular, as when you first showed up here all you ever posted about was how much you hated (((Zionists))). Now that the right wing is the one dabbling in antisemitism you’ve decided you’re against it then? Well, better late than never.
Hmm. You’re not very bright, are you? Let’s see if we can get you up to speed:
I’m “outraged” by oppression no matter the identity of the oppressor.
That’s why I oppose neo-Nazis AND Zionist apartheid. It’s why I oppose Nazis, Zionists, and Arab terrorists who rape and murder civilians.
Compare and contrast:
You support oppression so long as it’s done by a group with which you identify.
This is why you oppose Nazis but are completely happy with apartheid and war crimes committed by Jews (because a particular patch of desert was promised to them by their imaginary god, obviously).
You are identity politics personified. If you were philosophically consistent, you would be “outraged” by all these things.
I am glad to hear that you oppose Arab terrorists who rape and murder civilians, because I didn’t see any posts from you about that subject out of the many, many posts you made about Zionists after October 7th. Of course, no one is obligated to post about everything they think about, support, or oppose. It was just an observation I had, given your devotion to the subject matter.
Again, with the caveat that no one has to post about everything, I just think it’s fascinating that you’ve now been posting quite a bit about the Elon thing, but I’ve never once seen you critique the overt embrace of Nazism in some parts of the pro-Palestine crowd. Given the fact that you posted so much about your opposition to Nazism and your support of pro-Palestinian ideals, I would think this would bother you greatly.
Here’s one such story from my own country, though a debate about Mai Abdulhadi‘s intention behind her arm movement is not necessary. She followed up her sieg heil by saying, “The final solution is coming your way, the final solution. You know what the final solution is?” to a bunch of Jewish counter protesters:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/second-cup-montreal-franchisee-1.7392084
Do the actions of one (probably mentally ill) Palestinian woman in Montreal have as much impact as the richest man in the world being a trollish ass on an international stage? Probably not. But this story made headlines and I didn’t see anyone from the pro-Palestinian camp, who have been so very vocal over the past year, denounce her. Though many of them, like yourself, are now flocking to denounce Elon. Again, just an observation.
It sure seems like all of this is just using accusations of antisemitism to score points against the other team while, in reality, not actually giving a shit about it. But, as you noted, I’m not very bright, so maybe I’m missing something here.
to be honest, Noah, maybe you should like take a break from the comment section until you’re trying not to be an asshole.
Seems you have confused assholes and my *response* to assholes. Let me demonstrate:
Maybe you should get fucked.
See! This isn’t me *being* an asshole. It’s me *responding* to your asshole comment. I’m actually very nice to people who are not assholes.
Hope this explainer helps.
ps, do you have a substantive counterpoint to “decent people should be outraged by oppression no matter the identity of the oppressor”?
Or is all you have to offer is dishonest tone policing?
is this a bit?
So, no substantive counterpoint? That’s surprising.
It’s almost like because what I said is true!
Decent people *should* oppose oppression no matter the identity of the oppressor.
Thank you for tacitly admitting I’m right and both of you are full of shit.
Have a pleasant afternoon.
Getting fucked.
Again with this topic...?
it’s literally a response to something in THIS episode, you prick. Damn near a direct quote.
You people are so tiring. Jesus Christ get a grip, you creep.
Why are you reacting like this? That's some serious anger issues...
ps, you could just admit you said something dumb. Apologize. Take responsibility.
Instead, you’re avoiding responsibility and blaming others.
Typical.
Correct. Dumbasses make me angry.
The only people not made angry by dumbasses are other dumbasses.
This explains your serene calm.
Dude, take a chill pill.
Get rekt
Nice to know we have two people contributing to toxicity here. Wouldn’t be an internet community without it. And I think the other one has been slacking lately.
Agreed! It was “toxic” of Wild Horses to censure me for referring to something that was mentioned in this podcast episode! You’re quite astute! Gold star!
*He says in this mode toxic tone possible haha.
Different saluter this time.
You and I also have done zero Nazi salutes yet somehow deserve no clout for it
Ooooh son, I’m your huckleberry. I’ve got your “substantive counter” point right here: you are a virtue signalling hypocrite.
You’re mewling about “opposing oppression” on a device sourced *and* manufactured by child slaves but I haven’t seen you say a MF word about oppression that you are, by the standard *you’re* setting, complicit in and profiting from.
So, until you can square your obnoxious hypocrisy with reality? Maybe you should stop pitching stones from your glass house, kid.
They say you are against oppression, yet iPhone.
Libs literally shaking rn.
And?
Don't cancel me, but I did throw that up once after winning a round of Secret Hitler. Also did the little finger mustache thing.
Context is key. In the case of Musk I think it was more likely a stiff armed attempt at a wave. Not that he hasn't said antisemitic things before, but I just don't think he thinks enough to be an ideologue. The guy bought Twitter on a lark, and tried to back out until he was forced to go through with it. He brought a sink into the building when he walked in, despite no clarity about what was supposed to "sink in". I don't think he's that clever.
Elon Musk publicly supports far right-wing ideas. That context suggests he was in fact doing a Nazi salute. Because of course he was.
He’s an entitled, born-rich prick who has never faced any consequences for his bad behavior (for example, when he accused a rescue diver in Thailand of being a pedophile). As a right-wing ideologue, why wouldn’t he do the a right-wing ideologue salute?
I think it’s safe to conclude he knew exactly what he was doing when he did that stiff-armed salute. My only hope is he finally gets what he deserves.
He's not doing a Nazi salute because he's not a Nazi.
I mean, you can call him one all day, but he's easy to read and he clearly doesn't consider himself one. The crowd he was waving at considers terms like "fascist" and "Nazi" to be generic insults from the left, not their actual ideology. Nazis salute for the benefit of other Nazis, to signal in-group membership.
Now will MAGAs types start throwing up stiff arms to "trigger the libs" in an initially ironic but quickly post-ironically sincere fascistic signal like the "ok" sign before? Maybe. Or maybe the historical weight for it is too heavy.
Whatever signs we have of encroaching fascism in America, the least of them is to be found in Elon's elbow.
What do you mean, “he’s not a Nazi”?
That he’s not a member of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party? Well, no shit. No one is.
Elon Musk is a supporter of *modern* far-right fascistic movements. That’s why he did the famous gesture of a far-right fascistic movement.
The pedantic denialism around this issue is bizarre. What gives? Is it liberal Tesla owners trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance of driving a right-winger’s car? Odd.
No. When I say he's not a Nazi I mean that, by all indications from the man regarding his beliefs, he has no sympathies to the Nazi party, or the neo-Nazi movement, and no fascination with their ideologies as such. I would put that in contrast to Richard Spencer, who would also not call himself a Nazi, but is really obviously a Nazi. Or Kanye West. (Even West I'd say is merely enchanted by the ideology as a side-effect of his bipolar disorder and his own personal biases.)
Elon is a right-wing capitalist, and that's bad enough.
You’re really seeing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Spent a lot of time on stage in front of adoring fans? “Reaching out” to an enthusiastic crowd can easily look like a seig heil if you don’t spread your fingers and the shot/video is edited maliciously.
Oh fucking stop. Lol
I've been seeing social media clips of Elon supporters performing Nazi salutes. So their position is that Elon did it unintentionally, but they do it deliberately to prove Elon did it unintentionally.
This truly matters. I can think of nothing more important. Thank God we continue to talk about it, else we forget its significance. Hopefully we don't focus so hard on it that we don't miss the next Important Thing™ that happens.
This is getting really fucking stupid. Answer me this: why does Elon deny doing a Nazi salute? If he's willing to get up on stage and announce to the world that he's an acolyte of a Austrian painters with funny mustaches, then why doesn't he say: "obviously I'm a Nazi. Didn't you not see me doing the salute?" I mean, you have to admit that arm gestures are a lot more ambiguous than a simple yes or no and if the verbal response is to deny it, then what in the fuck are you going on about?
I don’t even think he has to be a Nazi to have done the salute intentionally. He is a well known internet troll. He has increasingly take his trolling to real life.
It does seem that people are going on about it because so many of Elon’s fans are now throwing up the heil themselves.
When did Elon announce to the world that he's an acolyte of [Hitler]? I missed it. Show me.
Everything we don't like is Nazism.
I think you misunderstood what A.B. was saying. He's not saying that Elon said that he was a Nazi. He's saying that if Elon really were a Nazi (which he isn't), he would just say he was, instead of doing a salute and then denying it.
Because he thinks responding in the dumb way he has been is funny. That’s why he does most of the things he does.
Hopefully those videos follow them for the rest of their lives (or various shorter lengths or time depending on how young they are).
I hope we can all come together to shame this behavior.
For the younger people I understand the stupidity but most of them are middle aged or older. I wouldn't trust them with any business decisions personally. They have the worst judgement and least comprehension of social norms, assuming they're not actually Nazis (which I do assume), but dumb enough to think it's OK to perform a Nazi salute as a joke/to make a point, any point, etc.
I have sympathy for rational conservatives having to associate with these idiots.
Yeah, makes total sense.
Candace Owens is accusing the first lady of France of being a man and is launching a meme coin related to this conspiracy. I’ve been obsessed with the Macron family since 2017 and I do lowkey feel like Candace is turning my culture into a costume.
Phryge ? C’est toi ?
Oui… ❤️
Dear Katie, Bitcoin is a very bad currency to pay your hitmen in. Your every Bitcoin transaction is public, forever. Just FYI.
I think the crypto part is a little unfair to the crypto people. Most of people who get into fartcoin know very well that fartcoin is worthless! But they hope they can buy in on the way up and sell out before it falls, ie they know they are participating in a scam but still hope to make some money in it.
"Was he doing a Nazi salute or was he just trolling?"
"Was he being racist or was he just trolling by yelling the n word?"
It's not ok to be a Nazi just because you are "trolling". If this starts happening a lot amongst trump supporters that's bad for society!
Advocating for racist policies is what makes someone a Nazi. Supporting violent aggressors whose actions result in the torture and deaths of innocents because of their skin color or ethnicity is what makes someone a Nazi. Killing innocents because of their skin color or ethnicity is what makes someone a Nazi.
You're talking about a guy who raised his hand. I detest Elon Musk and Trump but Jesus fucking Christ let's have some perspective.
>It's not ok to be a Nazi just because you are "trolling".
I don't know how to break this to you, but doing a Nazi salute or even 100 Nazi salutes does not "make one a Nazi". That isn't what the word means. And using like that debases it and is why it is now troll fodder. The left has totally debased the seriousness with which a large swath of the population takes the accusation because they are such fucking retarded Tourette sufferers about it.
I think it's pretty eye opening that Jesse didn't think it was a Nazi salute until he found out that the guy was a conservative. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that.
Until he found out he was a *conservative culture warrior*
Are conservative culture warriors Nazis?
The ones doing Nazi salutes are it.
Now that's the sort of reasoning a young-earth creationist can love.
Yes and sometimes that is enough, but ironically, the jew hating right hates the babylon bee because they are too nice to the jews. I hate to defend them, but my guess is Mann did it ironically because of Musk (super dumb) but not because he hates jews. I do not think he does. (though, as always, I don't know what is actually in his heart)
"It's not ok to be a Nazi just because you are "trolling".
If you are not advocating for the master race and trying to genocide people, you aren't a Nazi. A troll is not the same thing as a Nazi.