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It's odd to me because it seems like such a bad attack. The idea of a young man fucking anything and everything inanimate is not weird. I've heard many comedians or just "funny guys" on podcasts/standup talk about this all the time and they always get laughs. Hell, American Pie's main character fucked a pie and it was simply a joke and I don't recall any big hubub about Jim's character being too weird because he fucked a pie. Though that was a long time ago, I don't remember American Pie showing up as one of those movies that you "forgot" was bad because it fell outside the overton window now. When I saw that Walz used it as an insult I honestly just felt secondhand embarrassment.
The whole "weird" angle of attack seems really bad in general because it doesn't say what they want it to say. If they want to tar Vance for something made up just say he molested someone. If they want to tar republicans for being gross then call them gross, as an insult for anything against the left-leaning the word is already used that way anyway. Weird just doesn't work in my opinion. Comes out somewhere along the lines of calling an old man lame. Yeah, maybe the old man is lame, so what? The word is not insulting enough. Most people probably identify as weird in some way when they're probably not weird at all but since it's not really a pejorative and was in fact celebratory in most cases before this sudden shift. Hell, most of these people probably worship Weird Al and their favorite Radiohead song is Creep, hey there's another better word than weird.
But I feel like the way that the astroturfing is turned up to 11 right now there's a feedback loop going on where it's nearly impossible to tell if a strategy is working or if everyone's just nodding and agreeing with the strategy because, to me, the crux of it all working is getting the majority of people to say that it's working.
That's because the whole cast were losers that we were expected to laugh at.
Okay, the whole cast were not losers. It was an extremely unlikely kaleidoscope of friends that were and I can't believe I actually seemed to remember this offhand: band geek, jock, freak/stoner/beat?, and dudebro. But none of them were the lowest totem pole of their respective tribes and the audience was routinely shown characters more desperate, more sexually obsessed, and pathetic. You were supposed to laugh at Jim when he fucked the pie, but it all came back to understanding the power and desperation of puberty and sexual conquest. That most notable scene is followed by Eugene Levy talking to his son about like he's a human being that's done something that shouldn't be done but not something that he himself doesn't understand the desire to do especially at that age.
In the same vein as every other time I've heard of people making macguyver'd sex toys and, yes, other time's I've heard people talk about fucking couches, it's ridiculous and desperate and they know they're being laughed at by sharing it but at no point have I heard someone say it isn't true to the human experience. It's intrinsic weirdness relies on relating to others about your masturbation habits.
Look at it this way, is a foot fetish weird? I expect everyone has a fetish of some sort but having that isn't the weird part. Telling other people about it notably weird. Making said fetish your only avenue for sexual gratification is weird. Someone being super excited by feet and like licking them or whatever before sex is kinda like "Ah, okay, I see you, now. I know what you like." And not, oh my god this person is a pervert beyond the pale. Whereas if that same person goes onto some onlyfans model's insta feed and posts "show feet." that's really weird, even in the sphere of already being fallen into sexual deviance because of how it reflects other issues that are far weirder than the foot fetish and that is a lack of shame, and a lack of boundaries or to a lesser extent compartmentalization.
In the context of an autobiographical book fucking a couch is on the same level as discussing masturbation candidly but the abstraction of it being "for" something matters. Context always matters and affects what makes something weird or not. Almost all the stories I heard about men fucking inanimate objects were from people who had moved past that stage in their life and were relating how utterly impactful and intractable their libidos were as young men. If they were talking about it while they were still doing it that's an entirely different ball of wax but again I think context matters. In the context of an autobiographical book that I assume includes the pain and awkwardness of growing up it seems perfectly in keeping of something I'd expect of a teenager in the 1990s-2000s based on what I've heard from other people about the same thing.
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Do you actually believe that? It's such a weird thing to say. Doing that for real absolutely has big incel energy. And the movie's pretty neckbeardy even as a movie.
Trolling is bad enough, but this one isn't even an artful troll. If you're going to spend time contributing nothing of value to the conversation, you could at least aim for a little originality.
Banned for a week.
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Believe? I guess. I've heard from many men talking about experiences like this that it seems very normal to do from like 12-16 but not normal to talk about. I suppose it becomes less normal the older you get but I don't know how old Vance is supposed to have been in the fake excerpt. And I suppose it is "incel energy" but I don't think that that is altogether weird. Most men when they're younger are incels. It's really only weird to be an incel if you're like mid 20s and above. I can't really speak to how "neckbeardy" American Pie is but I really think that's a reach, unless we're just calling anything that's lowbrow neckbeardy, now.
(Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what neckbeardy means but to me that codes as autistic and much more concerned with fantasy/sci-fi and in-universe lore being consistent with source material. Though, like incel, neckbeard has never been clear as an insult for anything other than this person believes differently than me and this makes them bad human beings. incel being you are like this but can't have sex and neckbeard basically being you are like this but also ugly and being ugly is a bridge too far. Similar to cuck in that it feels like more of an insult that's trying to make friends with other insulters rather than actually make an accurate insult. Which, I guess, weird falls into now.)
I wonder about your background. Where have you "heard from many men" about having sex with random objects?
(Nah, autistic people aren't neckbeards. Autistic people are precious innocents. Neckbeards are creepy. Vile, dangerous, pathetic, gross, freaks...)
I've heard this from the radio, comedy specials, podcasts, youtube videos, and men posting about it on forums. I used to listen to Loveline every night and it seems to me it's as common or less common than a woman using a vegetable as a makeshift dildo, certainly not beyond the pale.
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To this day, humping my bed remains my preferred masturbation method. But, I already know that I'm an extremely weird individual. Always have been, always will be.
We've ended up in an unusual situation where disaffected libertarians and social conservatives have both been grouped under the same heading of "rightist", simply because that's how the left has chosen to label them, despite the internal divisions between those two camps. It's not a particularly stable coalition. But either way, if the Republican party gets reshaped into the Party of Weird, then I'm more than happy to embrace it.
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Some people on Mongolian basket weaving forums definitely engineer all sorts of, ahem, devices to this end, I've seen literal manuals involving IIRC gloves and water beads? (for better or worse I don't have the exact link on hand) There's a "community" for everything, the old wisdom seems relevant.
Also, this is the second instance of
weirdbreathless, gushing hatred of the outgroup I've seen here in 24 hours (the first one above my comment got deleted?), which reaffirms my belief that the "weird" attacks are indeed landing spectacularly - and not just on the target demographic. The media sure know how to pick 'em, gotta hand it to them.More options
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I find the song and dance where anytime someone criticizes the "weird" meme they themselves get called weird to be very tiresome and toxic.
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The "weird" attack angle works so well precisely because it is something Republicans think of as an attack but that lots of people wouldn't. Lots of leftists, democrats, and others would, as you note, be happy to describe themselves as weird. Not Republicans though. They are the party of The Adults In The Room. The party of Serious People. The Normals. If Republicans had enough self reflection to acknowledge or joke about their own weirdness the attack would lose all of its power. Same thing for the couch meme about Vance.
...would they? Still, in 2024? Rebellion used to be a cardinal virtue of the American left in decades past, but not so much anymore. They've rebranded as the faction of moral propriety. Less free love, more #MeToo.
Is it really "weird" to be gay or trans now? Is that how the left wants to frame it?
At the very least, calling yourself "weird" while also calling your political archenemies "weird" has to incur some serious cognitive dissonance.
Hae you heard of the word "queer"?
But thats a totally different word! At least it is now.
Besides, does anyone self describe as "queer" these days? It seems like an old fashioned word now, that only makes sense as an umbrella term for all non-straight sexualities.
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Those are the pastel people who police transgression, yes?
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This is the Democrats. Or at least their publicly presented image.
It's both, depending on context. Republicans consider themselves the adults in the room in the sense that they think they are the ones willing to do the messy business of doing what needs to be done to keep this country going strong, and being true to traditional morals rather than what they consider to be frivolous and immature lifestyles on the left. Democrats consider themselves the adults in the room because they think Trump is utterly insane, and they think they are the only ones willing to stand up to his brand of insanity and act like grown-ups.
From my point of view neither is really the adults in the room, but that's what they seem to think of themselves at any rate.
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But I'm not sure whose vote your getting with the attack though. Is the game making republicans mad so they lash out? In my mind the undecideds are more likely to be offended by the trend than to internalize that republicans are weird and thus not worth voting for because I don't think weird works as an insult for the outsider looking in. It's just too tepid.
I think a big part of it is provoking a Republican reaction. Since weird is such a low-valence insult, if it even is one, it's unlikely to influence people either way. I think partly it's also cathartic for a lot of Democrats who have thought Republicans are weird for a long time but have felt forced into this framing where they have to treat Republicans like they're normal.
Your alternative theory is that Walz is praising what a maverick and iconoclast Trump is?
"Weird" used to be something we could rely on the (American, at least) left defending, sure. All hail the outlaws, Spielbergs and Kubricks! Keep Austin Weird! We just commemorated the 25th anniversary of "The Weird Al Show" with the release of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"! "Queer" has been reclaimed as a term of pride!
Seeing how many people are eager to throw that attitude away now that the left is on top is a gross, Orwellian, "Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others" betrayal. It's throwing every actually-weird kid out there under the bus just to score a few political points. I used to think that seeing Animal Farm as a universal story made me a big cynical skeptic, unsurprised at how movements will throw away their support for the little people after they get solidly entrenched in power, but I'm still dumbfounded at watching people throw away principles as a way to push their polling lead above 2%.
I hope it's a flash-in-the-pan meme, not true newly-bipartisan support for anti-weirdness. Imagine how much harder it's going to be to dissuade bullying in the future if it becomes clear that so many victims weren't upset because they were righteous, they were just upset because they were envious.
I haven't been this disappointed since I discovered how many fellows on the anti-censoring-Communists left weren't strongly anti-censorship but rather just pro-censorship and pro-Communism.
I've seen this perspective a few times in other places and I'm skeptical. To my perception none of the people needling Republicans by calling them weird are using it in a derogatory way towards other groups often labeled weird (LGBT people, leftists, etc). To me the attack seems tactically deployed at Republicans due to their susceptibility to it as I articulated above. "Weird" is not itself bad, but calling Republicans weird is funny due to their insistence that they aren't. The reaction they have is the point. Not being derogatory to people who are weird in a general way.
Reddit atheists ended up being weirdos par excellence. (Even the Latinx ones.) I hear plenty about "cis gays" too.
Somebody'll manage if it's convenient.
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“They don’t mean it that way they mean it some other way” seems like just another rationalization to me.
Whether it’s something about “historical context” or “power dynamics” or “punching up” seems there’s always a reason X thing that was bad is now ok, actually, once it’s useful.
The same cohort that opposes “fat shaming” will mock Chris Christie. The same cohort that opposes “kink shaming” will mock even a fake story about a horny teenager and a couch. One minute we’re holding hands praising diversity and other life experiences the next we’re mocking the illiterate southern red necks.
It’s too many epicycles for me to follow—isn’t “they don’t mean what they say and will say anything to score a point” much simpler?
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It doesn't work that way. You cannot have your VP candidate call his opponents weird and creepy and engage in a coordinated campaign to label the opponent as weird and expect that to have zero effect on the valence of that word, especially on normies who don't get that you mean "people I don't like are weird which is gross, but actually weird people who are fine," a statement which doesn't even make sense on the face of it. And it definitely lights the entire concept of trying to fight bullying against weird kids on fire because impressionable youth won't hear anything except "weird is bad, the Vice President told me so."
I think you are just an asshole who is willing to burn the commons if it means you get to piss off your outgroup. As they say, the cruelty is point.
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I can see that. I keep thinking about undecideds and middle America I completely forgot that most people simply don't vote and democrats have a bigger base.
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I'm not actually sure this is a strategy that anyone sat down and thought up in the sense that it's something that was determined with a rational calculation, it's just the Id of the American left expressing its deepest-held views against the American right. Tim Walz used the fucking-a-couch meme in his speech because he honestly believes it. He doesn't believe Vance molested someone.
But I shouldn't be throwing stones in glass houses, portions of the right have gone completely bonkers too, the memes are flying faster than I've ever seen before and people I know in real life are getting radicalized in all sorts of wild directions, even people I've long associated with stability and aversion to politics. I saw this phrase on here -- we live in a post-post-Truth world. And this election, wow, that makes it so fanatically clear. Part of me wants to suspect state-sponsored memers, but honestly I think Americans are just crazy enough to delude themselves without anyone else goading them on.
I find it extremely unlikely Walz honestly believes the couch thing. It’s well known that it’s fake, it’s just become a meme.
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I think this is it. The left finds genuine social conservatism weird and concerning in a way they have trouble quite pointing out without sounding like a conspiracy theory(‘handmaid’s tale’ ‘dominionism’). They really do think Mike Pence is creepy for setting strict limits on socializing with women other than his wife. They also know, deep down, that they’d be perfectly comfortable with him giving their teenaged daughter a ride home. The expression thereof is going to be something vague, maybe with some nonsensical and probably made-up ideas. Making up creepy and embarrassing shit is probably a natural human way to express that tension.
Remember, progressives fail the ideological Turing test. They don’t know what social conservatives believe, just that it upsets them on a visceral level.
It's not just social conservatism. Trump is weird, and so is the online right which Vance feels tied to. Hanania is weird, Moldbug is weird, people on this website are weird.
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This is partly its virtue, it's quite dismissive in how non-extreme it is. Up until now Trump and Vance has seemed to many Democrats a terrifying spectre – there'll be mass deportations, women will have their freedoms taken away, people without children will be paraded naked down main street and pelted with diapers. It's felt pretty nasty. By merely calling it weird, they have found a way of sublimating their fear. They are giving 'bemused', and happy to just ignore Trump and Vance.
OP also says the couch fucking thing is particularly humiliating but I don't know if it is. It's pretty tame because it's acknowledged to be factually false (it would be much much harsher tactic if they were actually spreading falsehoods, like birther rhetoric for instance). It's being mean but in a knowingly silly schoolyard kind of way that helps Dems finally start to conquer their fear of Trump.
Me, I don't find it funny at all, but I can see it has a certain power.
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