Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
No bio...
User ID: 732
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
I managed to snag $66 tickets for me and my buddies to see the Chargers play on Sunday night (the game got flexed to 5:20 PST) at SoFi Stadium. (There are a ton of tickets still available, to the point where the team is apparently all but begging people to purchase them, despite it being a primetime game.) It won’t be my first NFL game - I saw the Chargers play the Titans at the old Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego pretty much right before it got demolished - but it’ll be my first time at a proper modern NFL venue. I’ve heard SoFi is an absolute beauty.
I’m ready to fully pull the plug on my decade-long sojourn as a Jaguars fan, and go all-in on the team of my childhood; the vibes around the Bolts are just too immaculate, while the Jags have revealed themselves to be exactly as rudderless as their worst detractors have always claimed. Having an owner that just doesn’t understand American football on any level opens the organization up to be run by incompetent silver-tongued sycophants like Trent Baalke, long after a competent owner would have fired him. Not that the Chargers ownership has any great record of competence and football sense either, but I have to trust in Harbaugh and Hortiz to steady the ship; certainly they’ve given me no reason to doubt them thus far.
I mean my radicalization has already taken place, and my goal is to try and wrench myself a bit back in the direction of being able to intellectually interface with the normal, left-of-center people in my immediate social scene.
Although many of my specific beliefs and policy positions are very right-wing (for at least some value of what that term means) I’m still dispositionally an effete urban lib-brained aesthete. My natural coalition is other city-dwelling academic types, who want to live in clean and orderly and fairly sterile large cities; I’m not going to reinvent myself as a salt-of-the-earth red-blooded American who Works With His Hands™️.
My current strategy of just keeping my mouth shut about politics and letting people assume I’m a standard-issue lib is only tenable as long as I commit to a sort of detached insincerity; I’d prefer to return to a time when I could just be honest and intimate with close friends, even about controversial subjects. Part of that might be aided by a general “vibe shift” in the culture which will pull those people away from some of their more extreme stances, but I’m not holding my breath for that. In the meantime I want to try and find ways to present my own ideas to people in a way that doesn’t just immediately trigger their enemy detection alarms. Maybe posting on Bluesky, which has an old-school Twitter-style character limit, will help me succinctly defend my views in a way that doesn’t require massive amounts of careful elaboration.
By the way, that person clearly had nothing of value to offer you. She's some brand of mentally unwell (I'd say stupid, but she seems lucid and I don't notice any typos). There may be people worth interacting with on that site, but I think it's a bit cruel to yourself to interact with somebody that you know will waste your time and treat you badly, and giving them the benefit of doubt.
So, yes, it’s very obvious that I have nothing to gain from this person, and that I can run circles around her intellectually. However, that interaction did provide me with an opportunity to occupy the role of “reasonable person reacting with bemused concern at the extreme rhetoric of my interlocutor” - a position which I’m normally on the reverse end of in lib-majority spaces. My hope is that the vibe shift can be helped along by people like me showing up in such spaces, proving we don’t have horns, and making a common-sense case against the more radically stupid positions that the “smart center” might be ready to jettison. Having such an easy and clearly-delusional foil in this scenario was helpful for me!
I'd recommend you don't get too attached to the site (in other words, mentally tag your account as throwaway so that leaving or getting banned won't affect you too badly in the future)
Believe me, anything I post under the “Hoffmeister25” brand is inherently disposable; I’m prepared to have my social media accounts nuked from on high at any time, and Bluesky is certainly no exception.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
I mean, I think a large part of this is simply the need to generate some type of conflict in order for there to be a plot for each episode. A happy family with two normal even-keeled parents assisting their kids with mundane life situations does not make for interesting TV.
As for TV representations of happy and well-functioning families with parents who are invested in their kids’ lives, I think Modern Family is a good example. Yes, the main dad is presented as a bit eccentric and gaffe-prone, but he’s clearly not a Homer Simpson level doofus, and he’s shown over and over to be a great father who makes a positive difference in his children’s lives. His wife teases him and gets mad at him sometimes - which, I think is realistic, and especially so given the sort of slightly-larger-than-life hijinks involved in some episodes - but she also very obviously loves him, and they’re shown to have a thriving sex life and a real love for each other.
I haven’t watched a ton of TV in recent years and can’t confidently comment on what’s going on in the current landscape, but it seems like Tim Allen’s most recent sitcom Last Man Standing also portrayed a happy and functional two-parent family.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
Bands like Godsmack and Papa Roach are mostly just forgotten about.
Both of these bands are still active and relevant; I just purchased tickets to go see Papa Roach in concert in March.
but by the early 2000s you had Linkin Park and Incubus, bands that were obviously milking grunge for whatever it had left.
I don’t see much continuity between grunge and what Linkin Park was doing. Like yes, Chester Bennington was influenced by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and the two later became close friends (Cornell’s suicide is thought to have been the main factor that pushed Bennington to take his own life just two months later), but musically and thematically I think the two genres are quite far apart.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
Oh absolutely, I found it hilarious.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
I don’t think @SteveKirk was claiming, nor even implying, that the specific kid from OP’s story was up to no good. I think the actual point he made is that it would be very dangerous to dismantle law enforcement’s ability to deal effectively with actual cases of child abuse, just because sometimes those powers will be overfitted to apply to benign cases. It’s no different from the general discussion about tradeoffs regarding how much power to give law enforcement and how much risk of overapplication of that power you’re willing to stomach.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
I joined Bluesky yesterday out of curiosity. I haven’t stopped using Twitter, nor am I planning to at this time, but I’ll be posting on Bluesky, whereas I pretty much exclusively lurk on Twitter. Bluesky seems to be trying to optimize for a more amiable, relaxed experience, and hopefully the lack of chuds brigading people’s posts to call them Jewish faggots will contribute to that goal.
I have become acutely aware of my own radicalization as of late, and honestly I think it would be beneficial for me - both socially and intellectually - to reacclimate myself with intelligent libs, and to attempt honest and mutually-open-minded dialogue with them. I can do that here on The Motte, but the extreme selection effects and barriers to entry here mean that I’m not getting a lot of exposure to what actually-existing normie liberals and left-centrists are saying amongst themselves. I’ve already followed some arts- and gaming-related content creators on Bluesky, and my hope is that it will not just turn into a rebirth of pre-Elon Twitter where all of my favorite celebrities churn out 24/7 liberal outrage-posting.
That being said, on my very first day on Bluesky, some random rotund they/them woman apparently found my inaugural post briefly explaining why I voted for Trump, and the following exchange occurred:
Her: “Basically the argument comes down to one factor and one factor only: race. You want all the criminals (code: Black people) to be in jail (legalized slavery per 13A) and illegal immigrants (code: Brown people) to be sent away all while eradicating equity to preserve common sense (code: white people).”
Me: “Genuine question: Do you honestly think I consider this a fair representation of my views? Do you feel like you’re accurately modeling my mind?
Like, if this is what passes for intellectual discourse on Bluesky, I don’t really know what to say.”
Her: “The door is that way -----> Don't let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya on your way out.
I said what I said.”
Me: “Who said I’m leaving? It really does seem like you guys are unable to hack it in the open exchange of ideas, which is why you’ve fled to a place where nobody can argue against you and you get to feel hegemonic again. Pretty cringe, tbh.”
Her: “The idea of having my existence eradicated because I am not a cishet white person does not belong in the public square. There is no discussion about that. Talk is cheap, actions speak louder.”
Me: “You are a parody account, surely. Nobody forced you to reply to me, and I’m certainly under no obligation to flee the “public square” because you’re too fragile to have an adult conversation with another American. Hope you guys learn to toughen up a bit, or you’re in for some more election sadness.”
Her: “Hope you guys learn that we also carry as well. Your vote for Trump in this election meant you are willing to go to war to protect white capitalist patriarchy. See all y'all on the battlefield on January 20.”
So yes, some libs are very obviously planning for Bluesky to be a progressive hugbox where the left gets to regain complete ironclad control of the discourse, including leftists just being able to straight-up fedpost at people, in a way they’d never want RWers to get away with.
That said, I’m going to try and stick it out and see what I can contribute to conversations. If this exhange had happened on Twitter, as soon as she made her comment about “we can carry as well” I would have just made a mean-spirited joke about how I feel bad for the poor schmucks who have to try and carry her. I’m trying to be on my best behavior on Bluesky, though, and to use it as though Twitter had Motte-level expectations of charity and genteel discourse. Basically trying to recreate the vibe of in-person SSC/rationalist meet-ups back when I used to attend them, but with the added wrinkle that at least some moderately important content creators and companies are also there.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
Oh sure, not to mention songs like “A-Hole”, “Cold Shower Tuesdays”, “The Luckiest Loser”, etc. And their more recent stuff is more openly sincere.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
Slipknot’s self-titled debut album is straightforwardly nü-metal, with a ton of rapping and other hip-hop elements such as record-scratching and sampling. I agree that by Iowa they’d already moved significantly away from the genre.
As for calling Linkin Park “just pop”, I think that’s a mischaracterization. Certainly many of their songs are pop, but their first three albums also contain more than enough unclean vocals and crunchy downtuned guitars - look at songs like “By Myself”, “One Step Closer”, and “Given Up”, for example - to qualify as nü-metal. They’re just the band from that scene with the most pop crossover appeal.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18d ago
Moving into the '00s, nu metal gave way to pop punk (decidedly more ironic and emotionally guarded) and mainstream hip-hop (even the comparatively cerebral Kanye West never rapped about his uncle touching his private parts), with only emo music going anywhere near the kind of "icky" subjects discussed by Korn et al – and even then, it's comparatively tame and aesthetic.
I have to disagree massively with the timeline here. Pop-punk became huge concurrently with nu-metal; Green Day’s Dookie and The Offspring’s Smash both came out in 1994, the same year as Korn’s self-titled debut album, and several years before Limp Bizkit and Slipknot got going.
Also, pop-punk was never just an “ironic and emotionally guarded” genre. The Offspring released “Gone Away”, a plaintive song mourning the death of a friend, in 1997. Hell, even Blink-182, maybe the poster boys for juvenile tongue-in-cheek pop-punk, have a song on their breakout album - “Adam’s Song” - about teen suicide. And drawing some distinction between “emo” and “pop-punk” in the 00’s just has no basis in reality. By that time the two genres were inextricably linked, with most of the major practitioners of the genre effortlessly bouncing between ironic detachment and almost cartoonish emotional sincerity and airing of traumas. Sure, you have bands like Bowling For Soup who stayed committed to above-it-all jokiness, but most of the 00’s-era bands in the Warped Tour scene were famous for their songs about how their dads screwed them up emotionally. (Simple Plan, Sum 41, My Chemical Romance, The Used, etc.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
19d ago
I’ve never opened Pride & Prejudice, but I did attempt Sense & Sensibility and my impression was similarly unfavorable. Austen was indeed a keen observer of human psychology, but her elliptical prose style left me cold. (And I say this as someone whose writing style is not exactly a paragon of Hemingway-esque brevity itself.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
25d ago
Plenty of musicians still do covers. Especially in live performances. As just one example, eurodance group Cascada has been releasing singles from their upcoming album Studio 24, which is all covers of classic disco hits. Punk bands still routinely release covers of pop songs. (The Punk Goes Pop series is still going strong, with its 7th installment released in 2017.) Even megastars still perform covers; when I saw Kanye West in concert on the Yeezus tour, he performed a cover of Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like”.
Like, I agree with you that the idea of a bunch of different musical acts all recording different versions of a limited number of standards, written decades ago by professional songwriters, has declined somewhat. I think that’s very different from covers as a whole going out of style.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
Right, so obviously the whole point of eugenics is that it can substantially improve the genetic qualities of a people. And certainly some populations seem to have a higher baseline genetic potential or floor than others. However, that doesn’t mean that any such population is even close to fulfilling its potential at any given time. We can confidently infer that some percentage of the Anglo-Saxon population possessed heritable traits that could later be selected for. However, it’s far from clear to me that the actual culture of the Anglo-Saxons selected positively for those qualities in any meaningful way.
Why this matters so much to me is its direct relevance to the question: “How can we identify which population groups today contain significant untapped genetic potential?” And if we take seriously the proposal that we should try to pinpoint the groups that are the most thumotic - the most capable of coordinated violence, the most fanatically warlike and zealous, the most reproductively fertile - we get… the Houthis? The Taliban and the guys from ISIS? Tren de Aragua? Whoever wins the newest African civil war?
If that’s true… if we need to have our civilization razed to the ground by Venezuelan cartels and goat-fucking Central Asian mountain people in order to allow some civilization 1,000 years in the future to flourish… then I’d much rather the supposedly decadent and past-its-prime society I currently live in to continue shambling on indefinitely.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
You play the game of "oh I love the United States but I disavow the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the Indians, sorry we were sooo barbaric for doing that!"
I absolutely do not say this, and in fact I have said the opposite numerous times on this very website. The society which conquered the Indians was at a significantly higher level of development than the tribes it subjugated. Thats the opposite of barbarism. More importantly though, it would be nonsensical for me to say such a thing anyway, because the Anglo-Saxons didn’t conquer the Indians. The English did! The Anglo-Saxons were a bunch of disunited, barely-literate savages. I note that you did not answer my question about which elements of their society you find impressive.
It took many intervening centuries of savagery before the English were anything like a real Civilization. The Wars of the Roses are every bit as pointlessly brutish and uncivilized as anything we see in war-torn Africa today. The “continuity” between the 6th-century dirt-farming tribespeople whom we call “the Anglo-Saxons” and the British who created the first globe-spanning Empire is so tenuous as to be entirely a matter of academic debate. Duke Wellington is as far away from the Anglo-Saxons as the Anglo-Saxons were from the early Iron Age.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
One was building civilization, the other was trying to undermine it.
What aspects of pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon culture do you find particularly impressive or admirable? They strike me as no better or more civilized than any of the other mystery-meat Germanic tribes who kicked around the ruins of post-Roman Europe for a few hundred years before they figured out how to do Civilization again. The Normans were at least a more refined and literary people given their great level of integration with the continent.
Pirates who harrassed the forces of civilization out of bitterness and desperation owing to their low status.
And the Lombards and Ostrogoths didn’t? I mean, what are we talking about here? The armies of illiterate savages who sacked Rome were actually a civilizing force, but the pirate captains and their crew who harried the Caribbean were anti-civilization? What is the difference between these classes of people, other than the boats?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
Certainly that is the primordial beginning of Rome. The Roman conquest of most of Italy took place several centuries before the blossoming of Rome into a proper empire, though. So yes, one can point to any empire as having its roots in barbarian warlords, if one chooses an arbitrarily long time frame. The Anglo-Saxons who conquered the post-Roman Britons were textbook barbarians, but that doesn’t mean that the refined and mature imperial civilization of Britain was equally barbaric.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
And there's a big difference between pirates and barbarian warlords! With the latter representing an undeniably violent but Civilizing force of nature, and the former actually representing a slave morality, or slave revolt in opposition to Civilization.
I think this difference is absolutely fake. Both are anti-civilization.
Nietzsche also directly compares Merchant Morality to Pirate Morality, calling the former a refinement of the latter:
Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.
This is also nonsense. Mercantile trade is a vital part of actual civilization.
The Nietzchean perspective is- how do we reform Morality to orient Civilization in a eugenic direction? And you seem pretty aligned with that being the operative question of the day.
Ultimately this comes down to the fact that I do not believe that our society had become so rotten and degenerate that we need violent men to conquer and remake it. I believe that the current institutions we have are quite sufficiently well-equipped to accomplish eugenic ends without extreme violence and predation - hallmarks of all barbarian warlords - being necessary at all.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
Man… talk about two screens.
She was likeable
She’s abrasive, transparently insincere, and has had consistent staff turnover issues for her entire political career. What about any of this is “likeable” to you?
She didn't have any major skeletons in her closet.
Willie Brown.
The downsides were that she had a reputation for being indecisive and carried the burden of a stillborn presidential primary campaign in which she said some things she would end up regretting. These aren't huge, though. All candidates have weaknesses, and she had fewer than most.
She has a long and easily-accessible paper trail of taking very extreme positions, all of which she apparently just counted on journalists not to ask her about. She spent the summer of 2020 going on every program she could in order to raise funds for an organization that bailed out violent rioters and looters. This is not difficult to find! The second anyone confronted her about these things, she was, inexplicably, unprepared.
There were no huge gaffes.
When asked on The View - the most friendly and favorable environment imaginable - whether there was anything she would do differently from (massively unpopular incumbent) Joe Biden, she said that “Nothing comes to mind.” How is this not a catastrophic gaffe? It was the easiest softball question in the world and she couldn’t handle it.
She could have done a better job explaining the positions she took in the past and why she repudiated them.
Yeah, this is an extremely bad problem. And of course the reality is that she didn’t actually repudiate them! She genuinely does believe that “equity” should be the central mission of government. She genuinely does want to create a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. During her brief tenure in the Senate, she was the farthest-left senator. Why would I believe for a second that she has changed her mind about these things? Her administration’s record speaks for itself.
I am honestly shocked to hear you say that she was “a good candidate.” Leave aside any herculean effort expended by her campaign team to try and drag her across the finish line. She was a lead balloon. A massive albatross around her party’s neck.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
Kamala Harris was a good candidate who ran a good campaign.
How so? What, specifically was good about her? What actions did she and her campaign managers take that another candidate would not have? What particular qualities does she possess that another candidate would not have, other than being the incumbent VP?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
I don’t have any, because my funeral isn’t for me; it’s for my loved ones. I won’t be around to see it or have any opinion on it! Whatever they feel is cathartic and appropriate, while also well within their financial means, is what they should do.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
26d ago
Goddammit! This is is what I get for posting right before bed. Well, I still want to give Trump credit for this, since I had not seen this proposal previously, and I hope that he sticks with it now that he will be in power to do so.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
27d ago
President-Elect Trump is starting things off with a major bang, announcing his intention to honor the 250th anniversary of America’s independence by sponsoring a new wave of World’s Fairs.
I’ve been very critical of certain aspects of Trump’s first administration, his personality, his leadership style, his viability as a long-term political force, etc. My support for him has always been qualified and half-hearted. So, I have to acknowledge that he’s hitting pretty much exactly the right button to get me genuinely excited and inspired less than one full day into his budding second regime. Just a few months ago I lamented the ways that the Online Right™️ was disappointing and alienating me. I expressed a desire for a new political coalition that would revivify the sort of ideology and political culture which produced the World’s Fairs of the 1890s.
Well, I’m still far from convinced that Trump’s larger coalition is worthy to carry forth that vision; between liberal states openly defying or subverting the vision and purpose of the project on the one hand, and tasteless red-state hobbits serving up mediocre chintzy slop on the other, there are plenty of potential pitfalls facing this project. (It’s also not exactly unlikely that the United States will be embroiled in a serious shooting war by this point, which would render the whole thing fairly moot.) However, I want to give him very sincere and vociferous credit for this idea; between this and the fact that he (or possibly, by that point, his Vice President) will preside over the next Summer Olympics, Trump will have the opportunity to genuinely glorify this country and contribute to a cultural renaissance. Whether or not he makes the most of such an opportunity is anyone’s guess, but there’s no part of me that can even entertain the idea that a Kamala Harris administration would have been a more capable steward of such a momentous occasion.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
27d ago
To be clear, I don’t expect the economy to significantly turn around under Trump. There are other measures by which a country can be great, though, and I do believe that the Trump administration, both through direct action and through not hamstringing private industry, can contribute significantly to increasing America’s greatness along those axes.
Sampling early reactions on Reddit, I’ve seen a wide range of opinions about What Went Wrong For Democrats last night. While I’m encouraged by the amount of “what did you people expect when you decided to call everyone Nazis” scolding, I’m very intrigued by one of the counter-narratives I’ve already seen congealing: Kamala ran too far to the right, alienating and demoralizing millions of committed progressives and black voters, causing them not to vote this time around. She courted and crowed about the support of neocons, made noises about securing the border and getting tough on crime, and progressives turned on her by staying home.
Now, how much of this is just a knee-jerk coping mechanism by people desperately attempting to make sense of what just happened while preserving their egos? I have no idea. I sincerely hope that in the fullness of time, at least some of these people attempt some level of soul-searching, however abortive and ultimately futile, about why they have been so comprehensively rebuked by the American people. Presumably they will have ample time and opportunity to do so while imprisoned in crystals
However, I actually hope that this leads to massive finger-pointing, pouting, lashing out, and crybullying by black Democrats. One of the big stories last night is that, despite a very modest shift toward Trump among black men, Trump[EDIT: Harris] still carried roughly 90% of the black vote. While nearly every other sizeable ethnic group in American shifted heavily toward Trump, blacks - at least, the ones who voted - remained unfailingly loyal to the Democratic Party. My sense is that blacks are going to take this loss extremely personally, and that it will sting them to no end.
I watched CNN’s coverage last night, and while nearly every single on-air analyst was refreshingly clear-eyed about the reasons why Kamala was losing and how this should not be some huge surprise to anyone, Van Jones was a maudlin mess, on the verge of sobbing as he lamented how black women, who “dared to dream that they might make up tomorrow and see one of their own get a turn in power”, were hurting. Well, I hope they are! And I hope that they become very obnoxious about it, hurling invective and accusations at their non-black friends and colleagues. I want them to be so overbearing about this that even the most committed “ally” begins to feel the Fatigue™️. Black women are convinced that the rest of America doesn’t want to see a Strong and Aggrieved Black Woman in charge. I hope that they’re right, and that their behavior becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!
I hope that as racial polarization between various non-black interest groups begins to dissipate, polarization between blacks and everybody else accelerates. And I hope that this alienation leads to a nation-wide reconsideration of delusions about crime, about policing, about affirmative action/DEI/reparations, about “racial justice issues”, and about the profound and long-lasting overreaches of the Civil Rights Revolution. I am in favor of literally any development that could cause the Democratic Party to permanently pivot away from their pandering to the black vote, black issues, black guilt-tripping, etc.
I’m saying all of this, fully aware that it is itself a delirious overreaction. Like probably many of you, I got to sleep very late last night and am still coasting on a political sugar high. I want this to have sweeping, seismic effects on the future of America, and of the Democratic Party. Hell, I want to be able to be happy to vote Democrat again someday! I want the Democrats to offer me even a marginally preferable product, such that I can one day extricate myself from the “multiracial working-class populist coalition” that apparently catapulted Trump to victory last night. If Democrats want me back, somewhere far down the line, I’m going to need to see some hardcore soul-searching alongside tangible results before I can ever consider taking a step back into the fold. In the meantime, I’m daring to believe that over the next four years Trump and his team of consultants genuinely can start Making America Great Again.
To be clear, I don’t have particularly high hopes either! I’m nowhere near as bullish on this supposed “vibe shift” as many people are, and I obviously have no hope of reaching people like my unfortunate-looking interlocutor in that thread. I highly doubt I’m going to be banned, though; I’ve managed to avoid ever catching a ban of any sort here, where the expectations for conduct are substantially higher than those on Bluesky from what I can tell. Bluesky does have a very robust blocking mechanic, though, including large blocklists, so I won’t be surprised to be comprehensively shut out by a large number of accounts. I’m starting small and keeping my ambitions limited.
If these were people I actually knew in real life, I would feel the same way. During those heady years between 2016 and 2020 when the progs were fully activated and on the ascendancy, the sorts of arguments I had on Facebook - and this is long before my views became as extreme as they are now - and the subsequent hemorrhaging of real-life friendships that were important to me, were extremely hurtful and dispiriting.
When it’s just some dumb bull-dyke with a shitty hat and a parody-level bio, though, I come out of it feeling smug and victorious. I’m not on Bluesky to “trigger the libs” or “guzzle liberal tears” or anything like that - I’m hoping to try and cultivate at least a few positive relationships - but I also have zero concern about having weird losers like that woman say powerlessly aggressive things to me.
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