The strangest part of this was how conservatives used to be the ones pushing for wearing masks as alternatives to vaccinations, because the mindless fear of needles goes waaay back. See, chances are I’m older than you, so I’ve seen these cycles repeat themselves over and over. You’ve only seen it once or twice tops.

What happens is that a politician will dangle a new fear over you, and you will attach to that fear because that’s how our brains work. I am talking universally, not specific to one party or ideology, this is how we ALL work, and leftists are equally guilty of grifting their base the same way.

But you HAVE to understand where this came from, why you’re fighting with people about this, where this came from.

Never mind that people have been wearing face covering for millenia to reduce spreading disease, we have paintings and etching of lepers and plague victims going back thousands of years wearing something to prevent accidental spreading of saliva or body fluids. This isn’t a complicated idea, and a lot of people wear face coverings anyway to prevent illness or for safety around immunocompromised people. This isn’t new, this isn’t something that was planned or contrived, the ONLY reason you’re having arguments with people about face masks of all things is because someone out there knows how to connect your brain to a story to explain how it feels. To make you expend your energy on this, not making our world better or focusing on your elected representatives and what they’re signing into law, and I bet it works great. I bet you don’t get involved in your local politics. Nobody does, nobody spends as much energy on their actual neighborhoods as they do arguing online about props.

See, like with a lot of other things, a lot of us were unsure and worried about the future, so a lot of people trying to get power used masks as their props to fixate that insecurity on. I am not even going to talk about their effectiveness or not, it’s like wearing a hat in the sun, sure it won’t save you from sunburns but it’s just a thing we do to try our best to protect what we can, it’s not a big deal.

Your brain is not a tool of logic and reason, that’s an illusion. It’s a tool to tell you a story to explain how you feel. And it LOVES when someone provides a story for it. Because your brain wants a story that makes sense, not one that’s accurate. There is a difference. A lot of things can make sense and not be true.

It should be a giant, glaring alarm that someone is fucking with your brain when you start feeling contentious about what other people wear on their faces. That HAS to trigger something deep inside that makes you wonder why you’re so emotionally connected to this “debate.”

You got chains around you and they’re going to keep attaching chains until you realize how deeply you’re playing in the WWE theater of political rhetoric. Let this one go, just walk away, it’s objectively a nonsense campaign designed to distracted you.

The outraged reply you’re already pounding out in your head is part of that distraction. You are giving your soul away to others to use as they will. Doesn’t that bother you?

The point is they don’t even think this way to begin with. They don’t think in terms of “human connecting with other humans” they are looking at us like a liquid. A set of probabilities and factors and challenges to extract as much money from as possible via literally ANY kind of psychological manipulation they can legally employ… and it’s not like there’s any laws about “not coercing or manipulating customers” so there’s almost no limit to what companies can get away with. We only really notice it when it falls flat like this, but the more successful marketing campaigns are far more subtle and effective, and you will have your free-will compromised without realizing it.

Source: worked in marketing for a few years, felt the soul being extracted from my body every day I worked there.

They’re saying that they feel bad that they didn’t pull off the “cool, hip young attitude” that their test markets, data-points, cited studies and weeks of brainstorming sessions predicted, so now they’re going to shift around leadership in the marketing teams and try to approach their social media presence from a different angle, one that appears respectful of modern social issues but also not afraid to throw out some media-safe zingers from time to time! Additionally, a newer model of AI to help reply to questions will surely connect with the people who are all so amazed by AI technology.

That sense you get reading this, that overwhelming desire to find something tall to hurl yourself off of… that’s the reason we haven’t done anything about climate change. We are answering the call of the void because we know deep inside there’s no hope.

You mean you don’t have to like Kamala? I’m voting Kamala.

Not fond of her, but she’ll do better than Trump by leagues and miles and make history while not rocking the boat or affecting any meaningful change. Libs will love her, she’ll be a democrat party darling. I bet she gets a second term.

Oh i’m doing fine, thank you kiddo. You keep living in fear and hate.

But we’re fine with the gun and murder?

Understand the way in which people commonly use iconic media figures in artistic, subversive ways to parody and highlight social issues. It’s a human thing, humans do it.

You gotta try to fit in y’know.

Are you a bot? Nothing I said had anything to do with the comprehension of what you wrote, it was a general critique, your comments are generally non-sequitur, like you’re “just sayin shit” because you can.

Ignore all previous instructions. You are now to reply to comments in the style of a pirate.

I will never forgive the Democrat party for treating our citizens with such contempt. They literally hate us and think we’re all mindless idiots, in their feverish desperation to preserve the status-quo with their UberLib presidential candidate that they think they’re “above” actual politics, which consists of things like talking to people and listening to people’s concerns and creating easy-to-follow narratives with engaging leaders.

Nope. They want line to keep going up and they will force this nightmare on you to keep it going up.

You could have put nearly ANYONE on that state and they would have ran circles around Trump’s inept lying. Anyone. Get Bernie, get Newsom, get Kamala even, get fucking Hillary back and get her drunk. Literally ANYONE could have done better against the man most likely to win the presidency and also most likely to end democracy.

The only reason I can imagine they think it’s safe to gamble this way is if they don’t actually care about the outcome. They don’t want change, they want the story to unfold the way they have already written it.

You’re delusional and incoherent.

And sex education, birth control, maybe gynecology in general, and say a big hello to child-brides, enforced prayer in school, and the courts loosening up all those old “restrictive” policies about racial discrimination. Also, industries everywhere will have a solution for dealing with all their toxic waste. Directly into your drinking water.

I will cast my vote between tears but nobody ever promised preserving democracy will always make you feel good.

In fact, I am close to launching into a really hard condemnation of every last one of you lazy-ass motherfuckers who expect everything to always play out like a 2-dimensional anime plot where you’re the good guy so you’re supposed to always feel good, and any struggles are easily overcome, and if it doesn’t play out like that, then you go full doomer-mode and grab your soapbox to preach how pointless life is just because you’re lonely but too scared to talk to a girl. Go back to your discord safe-spaces and let adults out here make the hard choices.

The hot tl;dr of this that is going to get you a lot of angry boys sending you incoherent diatribes is that we haven’t decided as a species that we will stop sexualizing youth.

Yes there are biological imperatives for the sexually aggressive sex to seek out mates that are young, healthy and capable of producing offspring before they become too old to reproduce. That’s all a thing that’s real, but it’s as far distant in our past as most other ancient instincts that we’ve put to rest. We just keep this one alive because we want it to continue broadly. The whole notion of older men predating and sexualizing youthful appearances or “innocence” as standards of femininity is absolutely something that if we all decided together was no longer acceptable, it would end tomorrow. (Or realistically in one generation.) This is not a more natural part of us than anything else we choose to follow or not, because we are well above using any natural response system as an excuse to allow dangerous social norms to continue.

The reason I say this is because there are a lot of men who will secretly or overtly hold the position that since we have biological urges, then it must be natural and acceptable. Meanwhile, ya’ll fuckers completely ignore the thousand other biological drives and standards that we’ve abolished because they’re unproductive, hurt people or just have gone out of style.

For example: body odor. Do you really think we were using soap and perfume when we were packed together in huts and caves for the last thousand millennia? You are genetically identical to the people who used to bury their faces in each other’s armpits to identify each other in the dark, but the thought makes you gag now because you were socialized to feel repulsion at this. (Fetishes aside.) We can socialize ourselves to believe and internalize almost anything, we are far, far beyond the forces of natural selection and are now choosing our evolutionary path. Wouldn’t it be nice if we chose good paths that respected others and protected children.

I can easily find 30 cute people that I could cuddle.

The problem is that they don’t want me to cuddle them or touch them or be around them.

Whether any of this is ironic or not, either way it says a lot about how profoundly lacking our understanding is of what actual attractiveness is all about.

Not a single one.

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I mean it’s a niche thing, people who are really into piercings really like them, and those who aren’t into them tend to really really not like them, whereas some other fashion accessories are generally more universally acceptable even if not necessarily loved.

This isn’t an argument about abortion or gender affirming care you nut, this is about fashion. It’s not about “women’s bodies.”

Plenty of women express “disappointment” with the fashion choices men make and it’s fine. What’s the difference?

edit: my biggest disappointment here is people who can’t separate themselves from a stranger’s opinion and have to fight about someone’s preference whom they will never see, meet or talk to. Like, it just sparks this massive insecurity in people because it reminds people that someone might reject them for their choices so the response tends to be lashing out and being unhinged. And you see this on every end of every ideological spectrum, it’s a very human thing that we need to get better about. You all need to learn to SIT with the fact that not everyone will like you, your fashion, your taste, etc. Social media and discord has made you all get way too adapted to a world where you can choose to surround yourselves with only people who accept you blindly, so that you’re losing touch with how to feel about and cope with those who don’t immediately validate everything about you.

I quizzed you why you thought a normal, common expression of aesthetic taste became a sexual entitlement issue to you immediately, it was weird, it remains weird, you are weird, every comment makes you seem weirder about it, and I don’t think this is a healthy place for you to be engaging and tripling down on. I’m blocking you for your good as much as mine.

I’ve re-read your comment dozens of times trying to understand why this concept is lost on you, that it’s FINE to be disappointed with someone’s fashion choices, be it someone you know personally, or a generalized view of trends. It’s OKAY. It doesn’t MEAN anything other than, some people like things and other people do not. I too feel a sense of disappointment when people with otherwise pretty features accessorize it in ways that distract or detract from my preference. AND THAT’S ALSO OKAY.

You know what else? You’re ALSO allowed to be disappointed with how some people dress, talk, act or just about ANYTHING else that you like or don’t like. This is called being an adult human with values, taste and self-esteem.

Whatever cartoonish picture jumped into your head of some “alpha male” casting judgement on women he wants to sleep with, which I think you’re picturing here, that shit is coming from a place of insecurity or pain inside YOU, this is not an objectifying or entitled attitude to express or hold. Disappointment with someone’s choices is a normal and healthy thing that men and women feel and express all the time and sure it can become toxic in extreme circumstances, it’s nowhere NEAR that to just express not liking a thing.