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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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You’ve been here long enough, you should be able to come up with 10 NYT headlines that would shut this whole thing down if it ever gained traction.

Has an NYT headline ever shut anything down? In the internet age it's through the goose by the time the NYT reports on it: it's already been spawned on some chan or other, formed a tightly knit subreddit with 10,000 members, been denounced on Twitter, thinkpieced on various Substacks, reacted to by Slate. Only then does the Grey Lady deign to report on the "controversy surrounding" the group.

Having read the Vows section most Sundays for a while, by which I mean that some member of my family reads it and shouts the highlights at me while I read the Book Review, the NYT prints praise heavy portraits of un-woke marriages all the time. Whether it is old-man young-woman, or rich old man met partner at work, or two men who met when one was the other's TA at Brown, or whatever. It's one of the few really trad places left: if you put a ring on her finger, it is fine. Forgives all sins.

If these commitment-phile men exist, and marry these women, and live great lives together, there will be no problem. No backlash.

Tbh it feels… gross? wrong? A very “rejected by his own people” vibe.

That's interesting to me. What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

I've dated girls who immigrated from foreign countries, sticking the ladle right into the barrel isn't really "gross."

That’s because nobody cares about anyone’s individual marriage. Once the late 30s professional middle manager girl bosses start looking to settle down and realize the demographic of men they were hoping to fall back on as a last resort are all getting mail-order brides from the Philippines or something, now it’s a social problem, and subject to the editorial control of the “opinion” or “living” or “politics” section.

What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

Honestly, more than any of these, it’s the accent. I can’t take anyone who doesn’t have a General American or upper-class English accent completely seriously.

Interesting. I've found whenever I fall for a foreigner, the accent starts to become cute, because it's theirs. Really for anyone, although it might not work for truly shitty accents like Australian or New Jersey.