My favorite / least favorite part of any given woke witch burning is when the victim attempts to apologize and everyone aggressively rejects the apology and seems offended at the very attempt. This cycle continues until they are just abjectly groveling for relief that will never come or just Become Brett Weinstein.
I think this aggressive refusal to accept an apology is a good litmus test for whether someone is just being sensitive about some subject (justly or unjustly) and when they are a psycho using performative outrage to garner social power.
I mean cmon what’s the point of clarifying that you bought all your ingredients from Filipino owned businesses if they’re going to try to murder you anyway. (Also, hot take but even if you didn’t source all your ingredients from Filipino owned businesses ppl shouldn’t try to murder you)
The bluesky users are realizing bluesky is dying and gradually going back to X. Expect their brand of crazy to become more common there over the next year.
Dispirited but not surprised by the number of likes received by the suggestion that Israelis should eat the poison. It wasn't a real suggestion but the nastiness was real.
It’s alarming how many people who posture as “virtuous” and “compassionate” refuse to see Israelis as humans. If someone said that about foreigners from any other nationality, I doubt they’d be on board. It’s a shallow facade. These sorts of people might think that they’re more moral than far-right weirdos who rage against people from “shithole countries,” but it’s the same thing in a slightly different package.
That those most vocally “virtuous” and “compassionate” people are in fact some of the most duplicitous, insufferable, hate-filled twats on the planet is a fact we’ve been expected to ignore for over a decade. Glad people are wisely tiring of it even on the internet.
(Not to mention by far the most racist and least-tolerant, in a way baked so deeply into their psyche they don’t even notice it. The irony.)
Unfortunately I suspect the orgasm gap discourse was my fault, because I eventually responded to people bringing up the orgasm gap in response to saying that women actually like sex, with this: https://twitter.com/Etanarachel/status/2058385393305661736
The “cultural appropriation” story references the Ban Mih “scandal”. Feel like it’s important to note how this “scandal” played out. Some student at Oberlin notes a sandwich noted as a “ban mih” sandwich has wrong ingredients is basically not a ban Mih sandwich. The student talks to the newspaper and eventually after some discussion the sandwich is changed. Being Oberlin, there is some very lefty language in the student newspaper but in general my banal summary is correct.
Like a month later the NyPost writes a headline “Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken”. First off, what a time capsule! We sort of forget how much insane discourse there was about “Girls” and Lena Dunham (relevant today with her memoir). But second, it’s only after the Post article that this “scandal” became a “story” and launched a thousand takes including articles in The Atlantic and New York Times that were all a version of “Lefty college kids are way too lefty!” or more succinctly “These kids today!”
The ironic twist is of course given this story is the “big bang” of cultural appropriation, this led to leftists on Twitter actually doing the thing various MSM commentators accused Oberlin students of doing.
There are probably a lot of lessons from this story but one I take is that we underrate how many “controversies” are downstream of more traditional media outlets pushing a political narrative even today (Orange Man famously watched hours of TV not TikTok when he puts out his insane Truth Social posts for example).
But the lefty kids WERE way too lefty and still are. A loud annoying minority of them - which would have been fine if we treated them like the dumb kids they are/were and ignored them, rather than enlightened oracles who should be deferred to. The proper response to excessive media coverage of a dumb lefty thing is to say “yeah that was a dumb lefty thing lol” not dig in and cry oppression/silencing/whatever else and demand everyone else toe the line instead of calling you on your bullshit.
The far right couldn’t exist without the far left. They each give life to the other. Otherwise they’d have remained the domain of the fringe lunatics everyone ignores.
Btw, this from Freddie sticks out like a sore thumb "Myself, I hold left activists to a substantially higher standard than I hold conservative officials seeking political vengeance". You can bemoan the overreach of left wing students at campuses all you want. Students saying wildly dumb stuff has been a thing for a very long time (seriously go look at those 60s protests, Hollywood has really sanitized "The 60s" and left out some pretty nutty movements and yes violence from this time). But making a statement that you hold left activists to a "substantially higher standard" than people who have the literal power to jail you, send you to war and execute you is a big "you have lost the plot" moment from me.
The funny thing is that ube thread most reminds me of what happened when Northern restaurants try to do BBQ and get clowned by Southerners, like the whole Brooklyn BBQ meme.
If you read carefully the story I imbedded, you'll see that the it's sort of the same...but worse. At least Brooklyn BBQ is BBQ if not as good or dare I say "authentic" as southern BBQ (on average). The ban mih sandwich thing is that it wasn't even close to a ban mih sandwich. This would be like if someone made fried dough, dolloped some cold mozzarella and tomatoes on top and called it "authentic" pizza.
Sort of a funny follow up how this non controversy actually led to left wing activists being the parody NyPost made this Oberlin incident out to be. When I was more active on Twitter I saw someone post a picture of a plate of Indian food at a restaurant and complain that it was a "scandal" and "cultural appropriation" for this non Indian restaurant to call this dish Bengali food. I pushed back and said they were being kind of ridiculous. This person than yelled at me for not looking out for the interests of Bengali or something. It became clear this person was not Bengali and I finally broke down and said "I'm Bengali! That looks like Bengali food my family would make. If anything, you're trying culturally appropriate me right now"
Yeah, the overreactions to any use of the word "appropriation" (even when someone is genuinely just saying the discourse is iffy or whatever and not looking to cancel anybody, but to start a discussion) has led to a lot of this stuff being more and more insular and so the people most upset becomg more extreme. I also think the Internet fosters a lot of this - especially the total refusal to accept any apology and to instead scrutinize the apology further. That's something I've seen pretty much exclusively online, and by people who seem to live off starting fights (I remember someone haranguing me for this in an online chat and then when I looked at their history there, they pretty much only posted in order to start fights with people about this stuff).
The ban mih sandwich is cultural appropriation - Vietnamese food on French origin bread! Clearly Vietnamese people owe the French an apology to do better.
If we had controversies about pedantry - the correct of use words - I’d be all for it. The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is the epicenter of literal genocide
How do you feel about Birkenstocks? Personally, I hate how they look, but unfortunately my feet have decided they need them - walking long distances in anything else triggers my plantar fasciitis.
I walk a *lot* (usually 5+ miles a day) and Birks are my absolute favorite. Fortunately for me, I am not a fashion person so they are my default “nice” (ie, non-sneaker) shoes (except in winter, when I switch to Blundstones).
The problem is they are a fashion brand now, and priced accordingly. I think they were not quite so pricey 40 years ago when I first became aware of them, albeit still too pricey for me. I’ve owned the Payless Shoe Source version!
One thing to note is that in my experience, they last forever (and keep getting even more comfortable). I do get the rubber portion of the sole replaced as needed.
I am frugal and do not spend a lot of money on clothes, but shoes are important to me. I fractured my foot a few years ago and learned that there’s a price to pay for wearing very old, falling-apart shoes!
The non-ugly summer shoes that aren't tennis shoes issue is such a struggle! Summer travel wardrobes are the most complicated because of the shoes. It all comes down to the shoes! The combination of cobblestones, foot cleanliness, and blisters is just impossible, unless you open your options up to include ugly shoes. There is no pretty shoe that solves all three. None but the good old tennis shoe. Oh, there are cute flip-flop-type sandals that are fine on cobblestones and don't leave blisters, but your feet are practically making contact with the street.
I do think the ube ice cream guy deserved to be clowned on lightly, but like the issue with the internet is that if a thousand people clown on someone lightly, then it looks like a giant dogpile. And of course, a few people are going to take it way too far
If a European was like “I discovered a new way to cook ground beef- I pound it into a flat circular patty and then grill it” he’d at least get some light mockery
I think the disconnect here is just that he’s using a term of art in the restaurant world (developing a recipe) that means almost the opposite of what it means in common parlance. The “development” in question doesn’t mean coming up with something out of the blue, it means coming up with a repeatable process in a particular kitchen with particular ingredients, usually for a dish that has already existed for a while. You can also develop a chocolate ice cream recipe, it doesn’t mean you thought up the idea for chocolate ice cream, it means you figured out the right proportions of chocolate and cream and sugar to make a good product on your equipment.
I find it interesting that men talk about facial beauty so much but women act like it never matters even though the latter do much more to their face to look beautiful.
Well in this case it’s being used as a way to try and tear down a pretty girl more than it is actual priority. Comes across as a nitpick.
If a woman had a very pretty face but a not conventionally attractive figure, these guys would be way harsher. Bodies still matter more to men (hence the not very kind category of butterface still be coded as overall attractive, if flawed).
I did love this example though because “I’m broad minded, I’d settle for this Objectively Hot Young Woman” is always hilarious to me. As is “I don’t need to be rich, I just want to make more than 150K” and “he doesn’t have to be super tall, anything over 6ft is fine” etc.
Women do say “he doesn’t have to be tall I’ll take 6 feet” all the time and it’s seen as fun and charming ! “Looking for a man in finance, six feet, blue eyes” was literally a TikTok / reel template 🫣
It's a short vs long term dating thing. Facial beauty matters more in long term so depending on how u want to win an argument or advance a narrative, you can focus on one or the other.
I just ate some precooked Fufu from a Cameroonian store that opened in my neighbourhood. If it turns out they poisoned me to punish me for cultural appropriation, I just want to say that I really liked this blog and commenting community.
my favorite walkable sandals are the intentionally blank corner pocket and i get compliments on them all the time! they don’t make that specific model anymore but they do make other ones with the same sole
Blerg, thought we were done with Cultural Appropriation discourse
My favorite / least favorite part of any given woke witch burning is when the victim attempts to apologize and everyone aggressively rejects the apology and seems offended at the very attempt. This cycle continues until they are just abjectly groveling for relief that will never come or just Become Brett Weinstein.
I think this aggressive refusal to accept an apology is a good litmus test for whether someone is just being sensitive about some subject (justly or unjustly) and when they are a psycho using performative outrage to garner social power.
What is why the correct responses to tell people to go fuck themselves whenever they talk about cultural appropriation.
They aren't looking for an apology.They're looking for a witch to burn
Which is appropriating the witch-hunting cultures of various indigenous peoples
I would simply Not Grovel
I mean cmon what’s the point of clarifying that you bought all your ingredients from Filipino owned businesses if they’re going to try to murder you anyway. (Also, hot take but even if you didn’t source all your ingredients from Filipino owned businesses ppl shouldn’t try to murder you)
The bluesky users are realizing bluesky is dying and gradually going back to X. Expect their brand of crazy to become more common there over the next year.
Dispirited but not surprised by the number of likes received by the suggestion that Israelis should eat the poison. It wasn't a real suggestion but the nastiness was real.
It’s alarming how many people who posture as “virtuous” and “compassionate” refuse to see Israelis as humans. If someone said that about foreigners from any other nationality, I doubt they’d be on board. It’s a shallow facade. These sorts of people might think that they’re more moral than far-right weirdos who rage against people from “shithole countries,” but it’s the same thing in a slightly different package.
That those most vocally “virtuous” and “compassionate” people are in fact some of the most duplicitous, insufferable, hate-filled twats on the planet is a fact we’ve been expected to ignore for over a decade. Glad people are wisely tiring of it even on the internet.
(Not to mention by far the most racist and least-tolerant, in a way baked so deeply into their psyche they don’t even notice it. The irony.)
This mindless trendiness of this idiocy is appalling.
My Twitter bubble must be drifting away from CHH's. This week I got the European AC discourse instead of the ube ice cream discourse!
I suspect that Euro vs Yank has something to do with the World Cup (the soccer is called World Cup, right?)
...But I'm American...
(Admittedly with a lot of British Twitter mutuals)
Me too-lol
Unfortunately I suspect the orgasm gap discourse was my fault, because I eventually responded to people bringing up the orgasm gap in response to saying that women actually like sex, with this: https://twitter.com/Etanarachel/status/2058385393305661736
Note the same can apply yo guys. Too many days in a row, or too many times in a day can make it hard to orgasm especially as you age.
But that doesn't mean you still can't have a fun time
Wrote a piece about it if anyone's interested: https://substack.com/home/post/p-199346796
I was rather frustrated reading that thread. People are incapable of nuance.
Twitter/X and Bluesky are case studies in how to create a culture where being completely deranged is rewarded and celebrated.
The “cultural appropriation” story references the Ban Mih “scandal”. Feel like it’s important to note how this “scandal” played out. Some student at Oberlin notes a sandwich noted as a “ban mih” sandwich has wrong ingredients is basically not a ban Mih sandwich. The student talks to the newspaper and eventually after some discussion the sandwich is changed. Being Oberlin, there is some very lefty language in the student newspaper but in general my banal summary is correct.
Like a month later the NyPost writes a headline “Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken”. First off, what a time capsule! We sort of forget how much insane discourse there was about “Girls” and Lena Dunham (relevant today with her memoir). But second, it’s only after the Post article that this “scandal” became a “story” and launched a thousand takes including articles in The Atlantic and New York Times that were all a version of “Lefty college kids are way too lefty!” or more succinctly “These kids today!”
The ironic twist is of course given this story is the “big bang” of cultural appropriation, this led to leftists on Twitter actually doing the thing various MSM commentators accused Oberlin students of doing.
There are probably a lot of lessons from this story but one I take is that we underrate how many “controversies” are downstream of more traditional media outlets pushing a political narrative even today (Orange Man famously watched hours of TV not TikTok when he puts out his insane Truth Social posts for example).
But the lefty kids WERE way too lefty and still are. A loud annoying minority of them - which would have been fine if we treated them like the dumb kids they are/were and ignored them, rather than enlightened oracles who should be deferred to. The proper response to excessive media coverage of a dumb lefty thing is to say “yeah that was a dumb lefty thing lol” not dig in and cry oppression/silencing/whatever else and demand everyone else toe the line instead of calling you on your bullshit.
The far right couldn’t exist without the far left. They each give life to the other. Otherwise they’d have remained the domain of the fringe lunatics everyone ignores.
That’s not how I heard it.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-pose-thought-experiments-about?r=dnp41&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
LOL to Freddie for proving my point. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/11/5/20944138/oberlin-banh-mi-college-campus-diversity
Btw, this from Freddie sticks out like a sore thumb "Myself, I hold left activists to a substantially higher standard than I hold conservative officials seeking political vengeance". You can bemoan the overreach of left wing students at campuses all you want. Students saying wildly dumb stuff has been a thing for a very long time (seriously go look at those 60s protests, Hollywood has really sanitized "The 60s" and left out some pretty nutty movements and yes violence from this time). But making a statement that you hold left activists to a "substantially higher standard" than people who have the literal power to jail you, send you to war and execute you is a big "you have lost the plot" moment from me.
However serious you think campus stuff is on the scale of problems to worry about, your factual accounts of the Sandwich Incident are very different.
They provided a link to a fact-checked article from the time about the incident. I don't know what more you want here.
The funny thing is that ube thread most reminds me of what happened when Northern restaurants try to do BBQ and get clowned by Southerners, like the whole Brooklyn BBQ meme.
If you read carefully the story I imbedded, you'll see that the it's sort of the same...but worse. At least Brooklyn BBQ is BBQ if not as good or dare I say "authentic" as southern BBQ (on average). The ban mih sandwich thing is that it wasn't even close to a ban mih sandwich. This would be like if someone made fried dough, dolloped some cold mozzarella and tomatoes on top and called it "authentic" pizza.
Sort of a funny follow up how this non controversy actually led to left wing activists being the parody NyPost made this Oberlin incident out to be. When I was more active on Twitter I saw someone post a picture of a plate of Indian food at a restaurant and complain that it was a "scandal" and "cultural appropriation" for this non Indian restaurant to call this dish Bengali food. I pushed back and said they were being kind of ridiculous. This person than yelled at me for not looking out for the interests of Bengali or something. It became clear this person was not Bengali and I finally broke down and said "I'm Bengali! That looks like Bengali food my family would make. If anything, you're trying culturally appropriate me right now"
Yeah, the overreactions to any use of the word "appropriation" (even when someone is genuinely just saying the discourse is iffy or whatever and not looking to cancel anybody, but to start a discussion) has led to a lot of this stuff being more and more insular and so the people most upset becomg more extreme. I also think the Internet fosters a lot of this - especially the total refusal to accept any apology and to instead scrutinize the apology further. That's something I've seen pretty much exclusively online, and by people who seem to live off starting fights (I remember someone haranguing me for this in an online chat and then when I looked at their history there, they pretty much only posted in order to start fights with people about this stuff).
The ban mih sandwich is cultural appropriation - Vietnamese food on French origin bread! Clearly Vietnamese people owe the French an apology to do better.
If we had controversies about pedantry - the correct of use words - I’d be all for it. The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is the epicenter of literal genocide
Those students would NOT survive the baffling range of ingredients that Spar in South Africa allows to be called a "poke bowl"
Women will literally look at 10,000 variations of “straps mounted on soles” and form strong aesthetic opinions about every single one of them
How do you feel about Birkenstocks? Personally, I hate how they look, but unfortunately my feet have decided they need them - walking long distances in anything else triggers my plantar fasciitis.
I don’t like them on me, but I don’t judge! They’re very comfortable.
I judge, though! They look terrible! 😂
They’re jolie-laide! Nothing so comfortable and activity-friendly could be truly ugly!
I wish you could teach me to believe that, Linda.
I walk a *lot* (usually 5+ miles a day) and Birks are my absolute favorite. Fortunately for me, I am not a fashion person so they are my default “nice” (ie, non-sneaker) shoes (except in winter, when I switch to Blundstones).
The problem is they are a fashion brand now, and priced accordingly. I think they were not quite so pricey 40 years ago when I first became aware of them, albeit still too pricey for me. I’ve owned the Payless Shoe Source version!
One thing to note is that in my experience, they last forever (and keep getting even more comfortable). I do get the rubber portion of the sole replaced as needed.
I am frugal and do not spend a lot of money on clothes, but shoes are important to me. I fractured my foot a few years ago and learned that there’s a price to pay for wearing very old, falling-apart shoes!
I have coveted Birkenstocks for decades. I love how they look. Have never worn a pair. Assume they’d be comfy bcz the knock-off versions are.
The non-ugly summer shoes that aren't tennis shoes issue is such a struggle! Summer travel wardrobes are the most complicated because of the shoes. It all comes down to the shoes! The combination of cobblestones, foot cleanliness, and blisters is just impossible, unless you open your options up to include ugly shoes. There is no pretty shoe that solves all three. None but the good old tennis shoe. Oh, there are cute flip-flop-type sandals that are fine on cobblestones and don't leave blisters, but your feet are practically making contact with the street.
I do think the ube ice cream guy deserved to be clowned on lightly, but like the issue with the internet is that if a thousand people clown on someone lightly, then it looks like a giant dogpile. And of course, a few people are going to take it way too far
Why?
If a European was like “I discovered a new way to cook ground beef- I pound it into a flat circular patty and then grill it” he’d at least get some light mockery
The tweet is pretty clear if you understand the context. Saying he developed it for work, not invented the idea.
I think the disconnect here is just that he’s using a term of art in the restaurant world (developing a recipe) that means almost the opposite of what it means in common parlance. The “development” in question doesn’t mean coming up with something out of the blue, it means coming up with a repeatable process in a particular kitchen with particular ingredients, usually for a dish that has already existed for a while. You can also develop a chocolate ice cream recipe, it doesn’t mean you thought up the idea for chocolate ice cream, it means you figured out the right proportions of chocolate and cream and sugar to make a good product on your equipment.
It seems like he did understand that this was already a thing though -- why else remark about AAPI heritage month?
I find it interesting that men talk about facial beauty so much but women act like it never matters even though the latter do much more to their face to look beautiful.
Well in this case it’s being used as a way to try and tear down a pretty girl more than it is actual priority. Comes across as a nitpick.
If a woman had a very pretty face but a not conventionally attractive figure, these guys would be way harsher. Bodies still matter more to men (hence the not very kind category of butterface still be coded as overall attractive, if flawed).
I did love this example though because “I’m broad minded, I’d settle for this Objectively Hot Young Woman” is always hilarious to me. As is “I don’t need to be rich, I just want to make more than 150K” and “he doesn’t have to be super tall, anything over 6ft is fine” etc.
Women do say “he doesn’t have to be tall I’ll take 6 feet” all the time and it’s seen as fun and charming ! “Looking for a man in finance, six feet, blue eyes” was literally a TikTok / reel template 🫣
It's a short vs long term dating thing. Facial beauty matters more in long term so depending on how u want to win an argument or advance a narrative, you can focus on one or the other.
That is the weirdest metric
There were some studies on in that were popular in the discourse about 10 years ago.
Sounds very crazy tbh
I just ate some precooked Fufu from a Cameroonian store that opened in my neighbourhood. If it turns out they poisoned me to punish me for cultural appropriation, I just want to say that I really liked this blog and commenting community.
I was a little disappointed because I thought the survey was going to be about our fist date everI
the data partnership with Polymarket was hilarious, great use of that promo
my favorite walkable sandals are the intentionally blank corner pocket and i get compliments on them all the time! they don’t make that specific model anymore but they do make other ones with the same sole
The mass poisoning was a twist I didn’t see coming here