Many Such Takes: First Date Flowers, Ugly Gingerbread, Sleeping with 100 Men, Sydney Sweeney

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

warning that this edition of Many Such Takes may include sexual subject matter that some readers may find upsetting.

Welcome to Many Such Takes! For those unfamiliar, this is a free weekly segment (I also do lots of other stuff!) For Many Such Takes, I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter (and now BlueSky) 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. For previous issues of Many Such Takes, see this tab on my main page. Many Such Takes will always be free, so please become a free or paid subscriber to see more every Sunday!

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First Date Flowers

Earlier this week, a dapper young man took to Twitter to let everyone know he was about to go on his first date ever, and he was bringing flowers. Yes, king!

His wholesome, simple post earned him the encouragement of Twitter users across the spectrum, from notorious lib Menswear Guy, to conservative influencer Mikayla, to…whatever Richard Hanania is.

While he was overall praised by Twitter users (and one person called him a “Teddy Bear Matt Damon” which I think was a very accurate depiction of his looks) some people were split on whether flowers on a first date is a good idea or not.

Presenting, the two genders:

So, is it too much? I wanna say no, and I would have gone nuts if my husband had given me flowers on a first date, but I’ve definitely seen women across social media get creeped out by grand romantic gestures too early in courtship, flowers included. My guess is (boring answer) it depends on the woman. But Twitter was split. I’d say about 60% of people thought the flowers were sweet, and then about 40% thought it was a risky move. You can’t please everyone!

But anyway, there’s a happy ending. Not only did the date apparently go well, but the flowers guy seems to have a great mindset on life in general. Again: go off, king!

Ugly Gingerbread

This week, a tweet showed up which was a collective gut-punch to those of us who feel bad for inanimate objects (apparently I’m not the only one!) Twitter user “fartpog” saw this uncanny stuffed gingerbread beanie baby at the store, initially found it repulsive, and then decided they felt so bad about it that they bought him. (Yes, the gingebread has he/him pronouns- for what it’s worth I agree, Ugly Gingerbread appears to be a boy.)

Sorry, I shouldn’t even be calling it—I mean him—Ugly Gingerbread. His name is Cookie. Oh my God, I’m crying. I can’t take it.

The two of them fell more and more in love:

We have Cookie fan art now!

Some users pointed out that Cookie appears to have a…uhh, well, a pussy in bio:

Is it crazy that I’m considering buying Cookie now? Will he just make me too sad? Will his gingerpussy be too sexy to display in my house? I’m conflicted!! But if you’re curious, you can buy him here. Apparently, Cookie is the brand-given name, so this Twitter user loses points for creativity.

Sleeping with 100 Men

(Warning! Some of this discussion may be triggering re: sexual assault)

This discourse has been rolling around for a while, but OnlyFans star Lily Phillips recently (purportedly) had sex with 100 men in twenty-four hours, and recent a documentary launched about it. I started watching the documentary, but couldn’t finish, mostly because for some reason it bleeped out every sexual word, including the word “sex,” so I could barely understand what was going on. But one particular clip from the documentary seems to have caused immense strife on Twitter, where Philipps, who looks extremely disheveled, describes the experience as intense and something she wouldn’t recommend. Naturally, many people were surprised to see that she plans to go ahead with a 1,000 man stunt next.

Naturally, Twitter went berserk. I’m a little careful to write about this topic because I know almost nothing about sex work, I’ve never even had a three-way kiss let along a gangbang, and despite being fairly boring and vanilla myself, I don’t want to assume that anyone behaving hypersexually is inherently not consenting or unwell (see: the intense controversy over Aella’s famous birthday orgy.)

And in fact, an article went viral for asserting that the men participating in the 100-men train were to blame, with one Twitter user comparing them to the men who raped an unconscious Gisele Pelicot.

I really don’t know where I stand on this issue, but the Twitter discourse was essentially:

• This is gross and/or bad (vast majority agrees)

• Who is at fault?

  • Some blame Lily Phillips (especially male Twitter users, although some women too)

  • Some blame Lily’s team, especially since they purportedly went ahead without screening for STIs (mostly women)

  • Some blame the men involved (almost entirely women)

  • Some blame white feminism because if she were a woman of color nobody would be concerned about her (mostly women)

Anyway, I don’t even know what to say, but I feel like there’s at least somewhat of a chance that the 100-guy train wasn’t actually real? And surely the 1,000-guy train is physically impossible, right? Right??

To sum it all up:

Sydney Sweeney

I almost didn’t even want to write about this because it’s just such obvious Twitter slop, but I feel like I have to, because this is Many Such Takes. Anyway, paparazzi photos of actress Sydney Sweeney went viral after a notorious red pill click-up-artist posted them while accusing her (and a women) of catfishing:

The overwhelming response to his post was negative, although I appreciate his candor here, as a fellow poaster:

Another account, who self-describes as an incel, upped the ante to assert that Sydney’s behavior was actually a crime:

Now, you might be confused about what they’re even talking about because she obviously looks fine. Unfortunately, I do know what they’re talking about, which is that they think she looks too chunky and/or boxy compared to what she looks like on the red carpet. NOT SAYING I AGREE! Just saying I’ve spent way too much time on Return of Kings during my embarrassing red pill pick me phase to not understand them. Anyway, the original poster also confirmed he thinks she actually looks fine:

Anyway, rest assured that the men on the Sydney-bashing side probably don’t even believe what they’re saying anyway, and they were ridiculed by men and women alike all over Twitter for never knowing the touch of a woman’s body. Realistically though, they’re doing this for Twitter monetization and everyone is better off ignoring it.

However, I think this person is actually serious, and apparently thinks that grotesque bodies such as Sydney Sweeney’s need to be fixed by…*checks notes* RFK Jr?

Other Happenings/Funny Tweets

• An (apparently very good) thespian analysis of Wicked was posted by…Ben Shapiro? Okay!

• This totally sane reaction to a woman asking people what they’re doing on a Tuesday:

In case you missed it…

I covered the discourse this week about the “emotional labor” of Christmas in a deep dive, with my own proposed solution. Take a read!