wqnm
19d ago
Rich is pretty clearly an extant member of the old school, classic internet atheist-libertarian-contrarians (the two things that seem to get his goat the most are organized religion and new-wave mumbo jumbo). If he didn't vote for Ron Paul back in the day I'll eat my hat.
Like someone else mentioned, I definitely get the sense Mike is more woke-averse than he lets on, but smartly hides it or masks it under more innocuous complaints. He is by far the funniest, and a lot of that comes from being clearly unconcerned with being PC. This is even more clear if you have the Patreon and can see the outtakes. Like you said, I definitely wouldn't go so far as to say he's "right wing" though. Probably close to Rich's libertarian, but softer on religion; lapsed catholic vibes.
Jay is the hardest to read. To me he comes across as a truly centrist/apolitical guy who probably hangs around a lot of lefty artistic types, which rubs off on him, but at the same time is too contrarian to really buy into any of it, on either side. He just wants to watch his violent sex-weirdo movies in peace, and dislikes the scolds on either side that might get in the way of this.
Jack and Josh are pretty standard and openly left/liberal. Usually doesn't get in the way of the comedy though. Usually.
I think the big thing about them, and one of the things that makes them great, is Mike and Jay are the rare online content creators that don't appear to be very-online themselves. They seem genuinely and refreshingly ignorant of a lot of the underlying internet culture war BS, outside of where it intersects with a particular movie they may be interested in. It's rare to find such a genuinely apolitcal space online these days, especially with as long as they've been around. Most have either bought into the "woke" framework, or specifically positioned themselves as being "unwoke" and gotten into the right wing grift. Probably helps that they are older, more Gen-X than millennial.
wqnm
1mo ago
Used to listen to NPR everyday in college. Sad to see where they are today, stooping to essentially the political punditry equivalent of CinemaSins.
Short answer: There is no such thing as too much biological advantage in male sports. There is in female sports, because...
it's unfair to have people who don't have that advantage compete against people who do have it. That's the motivation for having some kind of testosterone limit for women's competitions right?
that's the motivation for the entire existence of separate women's competitions at all.
You're making the mistake of trying to look at men's vs women's sports in the same way. They are fundamentally different things.
Is it fair for other men's swimmers to have to compete against Michael Phelps with all his biological advantages? What about Usain Bolt? Are the advantages Khalif might have due to her biology greater than the advantages others have due to their biology?
The crucial difference is, there is no higher level of competition in which Phelps or Bolt can compete. The best male athletes are also simply the best athletes period (looking at raw physical performance*). They aren't only competing against men, they are de facto competing against the entire human race, without qualifier. Their natural advantage is not just against other men, it's against everybody. This is not the case for Khalif; her advantage is against women, and is in fact the very one that led to the creation of separate women's sports in the first place.
The more accurate way of looking at things probably isn't "Men's sports vs Women's sports", it's "Sports" without any qualifiers for biological advantage (this is where all the men compete, and have always competed), vs "Women's Sports" (which has qualifiers). Phelps is (or was) the fastest swimmer on the planet. Katie Ledecky is the fastest swimmer on the planet that has a specific biological disadvantage. This is why discussion about what exactly constitutes an "unfair biological advantage" is 100% fair game for women's sports, and doesn't make sense for men's sports. If there was a woman swimmer who was faster than Phelps, she would get credit as the fastest swimmer in the world, but this only goes one way; the 8th place male swimmer doesn't get "credit" for beating all the women's times.
As an aside, I'll point out that this qualifier for women-only competition is a GREAT thing for sports. The whole reason we can have stories like Katie in our society, and boys and girls all reaping the same great benefits of sport, is because this biological disadvantage was something uncontroversial that everyone understood straightforwardly.
Also, to be clear, my rant here is less about the specifics of this particular situation (I really couldn't care less about boxing), and more about rebutting your conflation of Phelps/Bolt vs women with high T.
*Caveat, there are probably some forms of physical competition in which women have a natural advantage over men, in which case all of this logic still holds.
wqnm
1mo ago
And of course the related:
"Please RSVP" = Please Respond Please (Though the language jump makes it more forgivable I suppose)
wqnm
1mo ago
Eh, I'd say that's unlikely. The amount of direct sway that the actions and memes of the "online right" have on the "median voter", positive or negative, is practically zero; it's easy for us very-online culture warriors to lose sight of sometimes, but these are two different worlds. To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless. The racist frog people Kamala-posting isn't going to move the needle.
end of the supersizing upselling, and eventually the end of the supersize option.
In name only. Every fast food place that offered one (off the top of my head, I think Burger King had "King" Size, Wendy's had "Biggie" size) simply shifted their size names up one, so what was once the "Supersize" was now just called a "large", the old "large" became "medium", and so on. You'll notice now when you order a meal from McDonalds without specifying size (the posted prices/images/calories are all for medium) they usually ask if you want "Medium or Large"; with the default medium being the old large, this is essentially asking the same thing as "do you want to supersize".
wqnm
5mo ago
Implement massive psy-op campaign where every school shooting is immediately portrayed as a "bombing" instead, via some kind of nonsense Instant Pot firecracker IED or some shit. Media laments how unfortunate it is that these bombs are so easy to make and so much more effective than guns. Eventually the social contagion catches on and some would-be-school-shooters start trying to actually use bombs instead, which are obviously, in fact, completely impotent since teenagers are dumb and making effective explosives is pretty hard.
wqnm
8mo ago
I completely disagree. 'Justification' is an appeal to morality, and I reject the idea that successful efforts are justified, and failures are not. One who robs a bank and gets away unpunished is not morally justified in his theft.
I actually agree with you on disagreeing with myself on this, haha. I realize I phrased that very poorly such that it came off as a kind of "might makes right" appeal, which was not what I was trying to get at. I was more gesturing towards something like "history is written by the winners" and butchered it.
wqnm
8mo ago
It's not some secret history that the cause for secession was primarily sparked by economic grievances regarding taxation and trade, and from there grew into general grievances about British government overreach in the colonies. I'm not here implying there was some hidden primary motivation other than genuine economic and philosophical aversion to British rule, coupled with belief in the greater potential of a new system; like I said, these guys were true believers.
I'm just pushing back on the framing of the Declaration of Independence in particular as some benchmark for the justification of secession because, I guess to put it succinctly, and for lack of better term, it's kind of a puff piece.
wqnm
8mo ago
I guess I'll make the obligatory cynical post pointing out the fact that the Declaration of Independence wasn't really a legal document, but essentially just a very eloquently worded piece of Patriot propaganda, primarily meant to rally stateside on-the-fence loyalists and potential overseas allies over to the cause. It was not, as many now seem to want to interpret it, an actual good-faith attempt to justify their cause to the British government. (Basically an "open letter" to the crown. Most of the grievances were incredibly exaggerated, bordering on fabricated, which the actual British government would have realized; the drafters didn't care, because again, it wasn't actually intended for that audience.) I consider any deeper reading into the underlying philosophy behind the literal word of the Declaration to be peripheral to this fact; for example, I think Jefferson paints the colonies as having been "particularly patient and prudent" on the matter not because he truly believes in some kind of secessionist standard of conduct, but simply because it makes them look like the more reasonable party to outside observers.
They had their cause (independence from Britain) and their practical reasons, and worked the divine moral justifications out backwards from there, as in every cause that becomes a Just Cause (we see this all the time with their bastardized philosophical heirs today, as every issue suddenly becomes a Human Rights issue. Self-evident indeed). Just as the South did; it's not prominent nowadays for obvious reasons, buts there's plenty of equally eloquently written justification for secession by the moral and philosophical heavyweights of the Southern Cause. But they, of course, lost; the only real moral justification to the American Revolution, or secession, or whatever you want to call it, is the fact that they won the military conflict. If they lost, no one would be holding this document up as the benchmark for moral justification of secession.
All that said, I do believe that many of the founding fathers were probably in fact True Believers in some capacity; given how the USA turned out in the end, they were obviously right to believe they could do one better than the British in terms of governing the colonies.
wqnm
9mo ago
I think the simple answer is, it's probably not so rational, precise, and conscious an effort as OP sells it. It's transgression as catharsis, nothing more, nothing less. "Vibes", all the way down. As stated:
edgy Hitler jokes are shibboleths indicating that the speaker doesn’t buy into the predominant lefty internet culture. The speaker signals that he has such little concern for the culture that he considers stifling, censorious, and ridiculous, that he invokes the greatest taboo possible
The response is not at all surprising, it never is, but that's doesn't mean I don't understand the temptation to transgress.
wqnm
9mo ago
Or another way to put it – edgy Hitler jokes are shibboleths indicating that the speaker doesn’t buy into the predominant lefty internet culture. The speaker signals that he has such little concern for the culture that he considers stifling, censorious, and ridiculous, that he invokes the greatest taboo possible. IMO, this is the essence of edgy 4-chan humor.
Well said. I've had arguments along these lines with leftist family members before, about how making Hitler memes online is basically just the disenfranchised-feeling white persons equivalent of BLM rioting. "No one condones looting, but you have to sympathize with people who feel like they don't have other options." Edgelords don't post the n-word because they are racist (well, some maybe), they post it simply because they know it is the worst thing you can possibly say, so saying it is cathartic in a similar way I'd imagine smashing a windshield is.
wqnm
9mo ago
the greatest rides are still the original ones - It's a Small World, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean
Man, different strokes for different folks, but I couldn't disagree more with this. I'll admit I appreciate the charm of the older stuff, and am also saddened by things like the franchise-ification, particularly at once-pure Epcot (Maelstrom being replaced by Frozen ride, The Living Seas becoming Finding Nemo, etc). But the folks at Disney can still engineer up a good ride, and things like Soarin, Avatar, Mission Space, and Toy Story Mania (aka the greatest ride at Disney) kind of blow those dark rides out of the water IMO, which are breathers from the Florida heat primarily, and forms of entertainment secondarily.
If I recall, Pirates of the Caribbean was it's own little culture war arena at one point, wherein they replaced the bride auction with with a girl-boss pirate.
wqnm
11mo ago
Does anyone see red flags or signs of a cult?
I feel like determining "what make's something a cult" is very much in the same realm of the classic "I know it when I see it" porn vibe-check. Personally, the rule of thumb I've picked up on is this: if building a defense, in the minds of it's members, against outside accusations of "being a cult" is baked into the introductory/fundamental teachings, then it's a cult.
Though this place doesn't seem that "off", the fact that the website almost immediately starts talking about its legal bona fides, reassuring readers that it's beliefs are, in fact, "sincere" and "non-dogmatic", is actually a little bit of a red flag to me.
wqnm
11mo ago
To be clear, you did not "ask her on a date". You told her you are interested in going on a date with her, and why, which is a somewhat awkward thing to respond to.
Like others have said, the key here is to just ask her to do something with you. Ideally (and this is the secret sauce) something you would have already been interested in doing, with or without her. "Hey I'm checking out xyz Saturday, want to come with?", etc. You're off on an adventure, it's up to her if she wants to come along for the ride. This framing is much more appealing to women.
Oh nice. FWIW, I actually had a Costanza "Jerk Store" moment soon after posting my comment linked above re Women's Sports, where I realized that I missed the obvious parallels to the Paralympics, and deciding if someone is "disabled enough".
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