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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31615 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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I'm going to disagree on several points here.

It is typically male.

Female teenagers are edgy in other ways, they'll rebel against trad parents by espousing communism, sexual promiscuity or drug/alcohol abuse, dating outside/below their socioeconomic class, etc.

It’s a typically cosmopolitan feature of following the latest trend.

Trend opposition is just as twitchy and fickle as trend following. Edginess can also express itself as disagreeing with consensus, not just aligning with it.

Many progressives certainly want to appear cool — they follow the latest trends in fashion and music — but does this desire foment any edginess?

Edginess strikes me as fractal, on a small enough scale, you're at the edge of some boundary. In hyper-woke circles, any pushback or criticism of the status quo might be considered edgy.

Are those female teenagers really being edgy against hegemonic currents, or are they simply assenting to what they consume in popular media and music to the dismay of their less powerful parents?

Are they actually doing as much of that as they’re said to? I mean I spend most of my time in a subculture where teenaged rebelliousness looks very different, but my priors are distinctly that boys are more likely to ‘ironically’ use the N word than girls are to carry on forbidden relationships. Even adjusting for the obvious level of commitment entailed in the two decisions it totally seems like boys just feel more need to be edgy.

Republicans got more than 46% of the votes in 2020. Of the Republican vote, more than a third is white evanlegical protestant, and more than 70% belong to a white Christian religious group (PRRI). These populations tend to be geographically segregated: if you're from Cullman, Alabama, where more than 85% of the 40000 or so votes went red, I think it's safe to say a tatooed psychonaut pansexual anarchist hippie is not so much on the edge as levitating above the adjacent gulf, cartoon physics style.

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