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like i get that young adults are hardwired to question “this is how the world works” received wisdom from the grownups who think their collective experiences have settled everything once and for all, but if you thought evo psych race-science bullshit was kind of like gnosticism, that’s on you

I have quite a few of these people in my extended orbit (not by choice). They live in a fog of unresolved ideologies. Nothing they believe is consistent with any other thing. They just like feeling like they're edgy and counter-culture without ever thinking about power.

Gawd! Translation: She was had. Damn ignorant sickos! These MAGA women’s actions caused massive death and destruction. And this “intellectual” nonsense mea culpa? Again: Gawd!

I'm one of the older generation and I'd say the wisdom I'd impart is that all absolutes asserted in a political context are at best wrong and more likely duplicitous. And I realise the above is an assertion which you need to be cautious of.

There is a missing word, 'who' between 'adults' and 'are' in the second line that breaks the sentence but the critique is a direct response to the quoted passage. This might just be one of those conversations you gotta look a word or two up for.

Listen, this isn't a newspaper and all the writers here don't have to write for a 5th-grade reading comprehension level. Find a friend or trusted adult to help you understand it instead of publicly humiliating yourself by demanding to be spoonfed at a lower reading level.

I think it helps to realize they're choosing to do what feels good or safe, what quells their fears. The rest is just post-hoc reasoning to justify their choice in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Having a tribe that permits it all makes it easy.

maybe—but what are their fears? what well-off, well-educated white person like this ‘feels unsafe’ in a way that buying into racism, sexism, etc. would quell? it feels more like the other way around, to me: “i want to give in to my worst impulses and this tribe actually *cheers* me doing so”

Everything from "will my parents approve of me" to "will I ever afford a house" to "politics seems scary/broken" to "is WW3 coming" to "where can I get a job," .... The youngs feel like the world doesn't make sense, and human minds look for ways to cope, to make sense.

Some people just think they can throw a word around to make their shitty behavior seem like some sort of intellectual exercise. Fucking "frisson" too. "I wasn't racist for the white picket fences, man. I just did it for the kicks!"

I was once explaining the history of racism in America to my then-5-year-old in terms she could understand. She said, “Boy I’m glad all that is over and we learned better!” And I had to take my baby by the hands and say “Oh my love. It will never be over. They just got better at hiding it.”

I try to put myself back in my early to mid 20s shoes when I was a more selfish person and surely didn't see the danger in some stupid stuff here or there -- but I still can't commiserate with these people, as even in my misguided youth I had a soul and knew right from wrong

i was a libertarian in my late teens because i thought we wasted too much money on shit we didn't need to waste it on. i got older and realized the things we wasted the most money on were wars.

Wars are a big one but more generally government contractors. I worked for the federal government for 5 years and honestly the amount of useless crap that the government pays contractors for is utterly absurd.

This. I also realized that my naïve and ethically nuanced version of libertarian thinking was NOT shared by virtually anybody else who called themselves a libertarian. They just wanted to be free to be racist, to not pay taxes, and to have legal weed.

i can buy “i as a woman bought what the right were selling, but now i see it’s a cage much more restrictive than the one i thought wokescolds put me in.” “groypers were cool 2022, but not now” is like, what

1000% this. like, i came of age in peak south park times, i know you can get a rush out of edgy stuff when suddenly there are no parents to police you. but like, it shouldn’t take a good person long to realize *why* some words and ideas have sharp edges, and who they cut when used

My son is 20 - and, granted, we live in the UK - but at Christmas he commented, “I didn't want to be political but it turns out it’s impossible to have a conscience and NOT be.” He votes Green Party, which is the antithesis of the British MAGA, Reform.

my parents grew up in the 60s and idolized hippies -- we talked about politics at the dinner table when I was like 10 lol I also think it should be impossible to have a conscience and not be ... which means you've done a great job there

anytime I see a writer use the word "firebrand" to describe these hateful little 4chan trolling shits I nope right out

If being epistemologically broke is a thrill, that’s a skill issue. People don’t shun those things because they’re forbidden secrets to hidden power. It’s all dumb bullshit cooked up by intellectually lazy grifters. Want a real thrill? Try being right for once, figuring something out frfr.

Honestly that is the key to all this, the source of all of our problems: everyone is 12. Even the flabby, saggy, balding Boomers & Gen Xrs: psychologically they're all 12. They're immature, self-centered, lazy, lack impulse control & are utterly ignorant of the world all while thinking they're cool.

When I was 12 I was afraid of the violent chaos of boys who spat slurs at girls, and the bot-like girls who policed each other’s looks, and the teachers who didn’t care as long as they were unchallenged and “our” sports teams won. I don’t understand how it’s edgy to align with that.

This is damning, shows she believed in nothing except being a contrarian for its own sake with a self conscious cult-like mindset about the whole thing. How can someone say this and not be embarrassed. Is this supposed to make us feel sympathetic?

It's reeeeaaaaaally hard to accept that she was being racist "for the lulz". She might have seen how ugly it could get and decided she didn't like that, but how does one get a ticket for that trip without paying?

Never has the Billy Bragg epiteth "You're a dedicated follower of fascism", AND the Kinks song it references "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", both explained so much so compactly :/

Leopards and faces. She sounds like a real tedious asshole. She wanted to believe in forbidden things like racism and sexism! She didn't think that would come with consequences like being devalued based on her sex!

There's a whole class of people to whom politics is just a game they play because they're bored. They are protected from the outcomes of that game by wealth and privilege. Many of them are the thought leaders and pundits everyone's reading.

"The frisson of transgression" is a pretentious way of saying, "it's a sick little thrill to be a nazi, as a treat, y'know?" And to toss in Gnosticism as some kind of oblique reference to Rosenberg's Weltanschauung doesn't impress the people who catch it, it just means you're a pretentious nazi.

It would be less destructive if she got her “frisson of transgression” by running red lights on the daily, because at least then the insurance companies or the cops would give a damn after she killed someone in a collision, if not before.

"I didn't want to be a race traitor, but I was pretty okay with being a traitor against my fellow women, until it became clear I wasn't going to be treated like a special exception to the misogyny." 🙄

The “I was attracted to the right because they said bad and dumb things not considered fit for polite society” is bad enough but phrasing it as “the frisson of transgression” honestly might be worse

"Bruh, don't drag the Gnostics in the mud like this. You're just a bigot." (Granted, conspiracy theories invariably trend toward a Gnostic understanding of the universe. Just replacing the Demiurge with an amorphous "Deep State" or whatever, that may or may not be backed by Satan.)

Yeah. …I agree with everyone’s objections to “frisson of transgression,” but I feel like we can also look askance at the article author’s phrase “had begun to engage more explicitly with forbidden subjects.” Which I feel like is a too-gentle way of saying “was being more overtly racist and sexist.”

The irony is that they don't actually want that. Because in such a world, the transgressive power of the slur has been lost, as either it's targets are no longer harmed by the slur or, they're unable to express offense towards it. Which robs the speaker of the reason to say it in the first place

there is also something to how these seem to be people without a strong sense of self, who latch on to racism and crankery to make themselves feel superior despite having done nothing to justify the size of their own egos

Reminds me of the old LBJ quote about convincing the lowest white people that they're better than the highest black people and they'd let you rob them blind. Losers want to feel big and they don't care what it costs them to feel it.

Yep. With a smattering of 'House's tenet that being horrible to other people is simply more 'honest' and a sign of superior intellect. Also South Park style conservatism where helping others and caring about anything is just SO cringe.

Moreover, I think their complaint is about being criticized for using slurs. It’s the entitlement of “I want to be an awful person and have girls like me too."

There's nothing wrong with feeling a certain attraction to the idea of being able to make your own bread and live a "traditional" lifestyle, if that's what you want. There IS something wrong with thinking we should disenfranchise huge swaths of the population to force them to do it with you.

I heard this shit practically verbatim from assholes ten years ago when they were forced to grow up and I flatly told them "Go apologize to the people you actually hurt, I don't care that being an asshole blew up in your face."

I never buy this argument. I believe that’s likely what these people tell themselves they were doing, but it’s fiction. Being racist is the most mainstream thing you can do and it always has been. Unless they were raised on some far left commune, they did not ever think the left was the status quo.

Yes. She's still going to turn out to vote for fascists with fascist policies, same as these fuckers always do the second they're done shedding their crocodile tears. Every fucking time, y'all come out and say, oh, this one is different, but they aren't.

i simply don’t believe these people, sorry. they’re bigots, they still enjoy the bigotry and violence toward others, but now that it’s coming for them they’re jumping ship. the stories of regret and remorse are just self-justifying horseshit

“Well I was drawn in by the fact that they were racist, homophobic, xenophobic and ableist. I never thought they would be misogynist (ok I would have been fine if they were generally misogynist but I don’t like that the misogyny is directed at ME)”

And they were warned this would happen. The psychological rewards of "transgression" are apparently the new heroin. Whoever this is, she sounds like an addict admitting the drug's attraction but bemoaning her destroyed life.

So some online bigots made you feel cool and now it turns out they’ve always hated you. Only, the left will never make you feel cool and that’s why you’ll keep voting Republican even though they will always fucking hate you.

the gnostics, famously, loved having bodies and would have attached a lot of importance to material things like evolution and race science, which were concepts they were totally familiar with

I fully believe that's what pulled her in and many others. And that's gross. There's nothing new-- and therefore, nothing transgressive or exciting-- about hatred As common as dirt, and as impressive

Not just people with a need to be Right and valuing certainty over all, it's the ones who performatively demand their certainty be considered in the face of established reality without debate, so they can believe themselves More Right than everyone else. Fuck them in particular. All the way off.

Oh, you want a sexy forbidden idea? Like tearing down society and replacing it with anarcho-communism? Ohhhhh, no you want the kind of "sexy" "forbidden" ideas that make you popular with internet bullies and billionaire cretins, I see

That's so deeply pompous. It's hilarious and OH SO 20 something. Sure Miss Thing. Sure you were. And now you're surprised that they're misygunists? Were you somehow not paying attention to what they were actually saying 24x7? Are these people utter morons? Yes. Yes they are.

In my 20s I could clearly see the devil’s bargain being crafted by the GOP & evangelicals; I then left the GOP. To be fair I was working for a Christian media organization at the time so it was hard to miss. But IMO anyone could see it if they were paying attention.

It really annoys me that this article is describing nativism, race science, and gender essentialism as "forbidden subjects" like they're taboo and not just fucking bullshit.

See now, I'm abrasive, like to things other than from the pack, and on occasion like to annoy the pack. Ideally I would live as far from another human as possible. BUT I WOULD LIKE THE SMARTEST, BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD TO RUN MY GOD DAMN GOVERNMENT!!

This is what all young Republicans think like. It’s wild. They specifically love the word transgression. It was the natural evolution after thinking they were actually victims. They’ve somehow gaslit themselves into thinking they are “the other.”

If she wants to experience the "frission of transgression" she should instead try: - playing a hated class/character in a team shooter like Jeff or Bastion - teaching children about swear words - pegging her man - wearing one of those ahoage shirts in public - openly being a furry

you absolutely do, especially in this context (people who fancy themselves intellectual who think they can engage with reactionary and shocking pseudo-scientific biogtry as a treat). there are entire urban elite liberal arts circles radicalizing themselves this way