Many Such Takes: JD Vance's Roman Towelboys, "I'm Sick," Canceling Cancel Culture, Raw Milk , and More

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free.

Welcome to Many Such Takes! I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter discourse so you don’t have to. If you see yourself featured here and you don’t like it, simply send me a Substack message and I will happily remove, no matter who you are or what you said. Right now I generally abide by censoring usernames if the person’s ideology is something I consider dangerous, or if the person is a small or small-ish account who said something controversial and who has the potential to be overrun with too many negative comments if not kept anonymous. Generally, I do not censor large accounts or accounts who said things that I don’t think will open them up to undue criticism. This week…

JD Vance’s Roman Towelboys

Well, in case you missed it because you were too busy hate-watching Gen Z Boss and a Mini: Trump picked his VP, otherwise known as JD Liar Liar“Vance on Fire” (Trump, if you’re reading this, I would love to be your nickname consultant- you really borked it with ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ and I think I could help.)

Many on Twitter suspected that by picking Vance on Fire, Trump was pandering to the Thiel-hive of terminally online rightoids. And whether it was intentional or not, it was a bit true. Because not only is JD Vance somewhat groyper-approved, he’s actually…oomfies with them:

Mr. “Hitler Rape Groyper” wasn’t the only one. Apparently JD Vance was Twitter mutuals (follows and followed by) many of these weirdos, which prompted this tweet that I cannot stop thinking about:

But it goes beyond LoliHitlerGroyper34. Vance also followed…whatever this is:

For those of you lucky enough not to understand this (I hate that I do) there’s this bizarre type of person on Twitter who fantasizes about having sex with attractive young women while pretending that they are actually ancient Roman teenage towel boys. I should clarify that this is unrelated to the term “Mid Castiza of the Day” which implies the account is dedicated to a daily Spanish-Amerindian woman of average attractiveness. Perhaps it started that way, but it eventually went full Towelboy.

Look, I’m not going to police people’s follows. I follow plenty of people with weird or even “bad” views because they occasionally post something interesting. Or even just…because. I don’t know, I’m not that selective. But also, I’m not running for Vice President. Anyway, arguably following a covid-conscious, pro-Palestine, body-positive socialist account would be more damaging for Vance given his electoral base.

Love You Forever

Have you ever read Love You Forever? Regardless of whether you think it’s a good book or not, you have to admit it’s incredibly sad. My cousins and I once dared each other to read it out loud in a bookstore without crying. We were in our teens. Ultimately, all three of us sobbed uncontrollably. A mom on Twitter noticed how inordinately sad the book was, and posted about it:

This set off discourse about the book itself, notably the fact that a few Twitter accounts thought it was creepy, especially because it included the boy’s elderly mother sneaking into his room at night to hold him while he, at that point a grown man, was sleeping. Others disagreed that this was creepy, and said that this was purposefully hyperbolic because it’s a children’s book.

Some folks were offended at the Love You Forever slander because its origin story is touching and (unsurprisingly) heartbreaking: the author’s wife experienced several pregnancy losses and the book was meant to cope with that loss.

So, creepy or not creepy, we can agree this book will make everyone cry. Right??

I’m Sick

What a week for Joe Robinette Biden. First, he declares that only a “medical condition diagnosed by a doctor” could push him from the race. Within a day of that statement, he was diagnosed with covid (which I find a bit suspect, given that he was spotted prancing about without a mask and planned to meet with Netanyahu despite the diagnosis.) Anyway, it was all just a bit too on the nose.

Then whoever is behind Biden’s Twitter account decided it was best to riff off this news with this:

People said this was a terrible use of Twitter for fundraising, but I disagree, if only because all publicity is good publicity and the “I’m sick” tweet earned Joe Biden…a lot of publicity:

Even Andrew Tate joined in:

Canceling Cancel Culture

If you’ve somehow been lucky enough not to encounter “Libs of TikTok” on Twitter: congratulations. I have a feeling anyone subscribing to this extremely online newsletter, however, knows exactly who she is. But just in case: she’s a far-right account who has been featured on Fox News for exposing “libs” (originally on, you guessed it, TikTok.) Her usual MO is using her massive platform to generate harassment and even firing, or “cancellation,” if I dare say so myself, against various liberals and leftists, typically LGBTQ teachers.

But this week, even her followers decided she went too far when she decided to cancel a random Home Depot employee who made a joke on Facebook about Trump’s assassination attempt.

Look, I don’t like Trump (although I did love him on Wendy Williams!) but I still wouldn’t joke about wishing him dead or anything. Poor taste, and seems like it’s asking for the FBI to show up at my house. But not everyone is super online or aware of the risks, and some people are okay with making kind of tasteless jokes. This woman probably didn’t expect that one of the most gigantic right wing accounts would put her on blast and ultimately get her fired from her job:

Given that the right has nominally been against “cancel culture” for a while now, many folks (even on the right) condemned Libs of TikTok for engaging in this behavior. It would have been nice for them to notice this pattern back when she was doing this to gay teachers, but glad some of them at least called it out now.

This discourse got me thinking about how disdainful we feel, as a society, about “cancellations” in 2024, especially directed at relatively powerless people. Cancel culture is real, it’s just not unique to the left, and it probably reached its zenith in 2020 or so. Since then, more and more people have noticed how counterproductive it is, and how the effects of it are much more serious for those with the least power. Of course, some on the right believed that cancelling and harassing the cashier was fine, because leftists would have gladly done it to her if she had posted something right-wing. This interaction sums up the discussion pretty well:

Raw Milk Weirdness

If you’ve spent any time on right wing Twitter, you’ll know that their wellness regimen revolves around three substances: beef tallow, raw meat, and raw milk. Raw milk is an especially contentious topic, probably because it’s the only substance of the three that is actually banned due to concerns about listeria and other pathogens. Inevitably, if you criticize raw milk, the raw milk stans will come out of nowhere and start yelling at you. And that’s exactly what happened to this woman, who commented on raw milk safety (or lack thereof) after a salmonella outbreak caused by raw milk hit the news:

What we saw was a showdown between The Science and The Food Poisoning:

Best Tweets of the Week

• This assertion (not satirical, I’m afraid) that wearing perfume around Palestinian people is psychological torture:

• Mom, pick me up, Catholic Twitter is fighting again:

• The “infant screening” of Longlegs:

• This sentiment we can all relate to:

• This absolutely horrifying slab of wood with naked pasta strewn about:

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