I was listening to, I think, a Slate podcast about the Ozempic diet pill and I was struck by how they began to squirm at the consequences of it. I mean, if there comes a day when everyone can afford to just take a pill not to be fat….then all the woke ranting about “fat shaming” people will become moot.
You could hear, in real time, their natural woke tendency about how great and wonderful it is to be fat collide with the realization that growing numbers of people think it’s ok for OTHER people to be fat. But they, themselves, are willing to risk even cancer to be 10 or 20 pounds lighter.
Let me be clear — I have a beer gut and I need to lose 30 pounds. And I have no intention of doing anything other than eating better and / or exercising to lose that gut. And I’m indifferent to overweight people — you do you.
But there is a part of me that wistfully regrets that the olden days of us having places like the Victoria Secret Runway Show as a “safe space” for traditionally attractive people before all the fucking woke people decided to burn everything ground.
Now, with the Petite Singularity, it’s possible that in the near future, there really won’t be any excuse or reason for you to be fat. And then maybe we can have “normal” Victoria Secret Runway shows again.
The fucked up thing about the battle over the “woke cancel culture mob” is MAGA actively works to obfuscate as to what exactly it means to be “woke.” They do this because they know the moment they make it a concrete concept, the center-Left will have something to latch on to so they can refute what MAGA proposes.
So, for the sake political expediency in the mind of MAGA being “woke” means everything and nothing. In short, MAGA just uses their hatred of the “woke” to put forth a general feeling of unease about bad “vibes” in America. I find this extremely fucking frustrating because it’s yet another sign of how broken political discourse in the United States is and how we continue to careen towards the existential choice in late 2024, early 2025 of autocracy, civil war or military junta.
The thing that we all have to let sink in is — the battle over the “woke cancel culture mob” is part of a broader collapse in American politics. At the moment, America has some serious small dick energy about it that comes in no small part from how we’ve reached a certain level of ossification of our institutions because, well, lulz, not enough white babies are being born. (I hope the droll nature of that statement comes across.)
Because of the so-called “birth dearth” you have people who should know better — conservative Traditionalists — who want to ban abortion and are willing to embrace fascism. If you combine the “birth dearth” with pretty bad income inequality then…oh boy are we fucked. Either you are hysterical because America is becoming a majority minority country or you — like me — embrace this new era as just a part of macro trends that none of us have any power over.
Something really bad is about to happen in the United States between now and the spring of 2025. It could be something as dramatic as a civil war or a military junta….or it could be something as subtle as a peaceful drift into autocracy. I say this because, by definition, the next Republican president is going to be an autocrat. The Constitution is going to be changed. The existing ICE camp infrastructure will be weaponized and loudmouth cranks like me who fucking hate MAGA will probably just go poof!
The thing about is, I find some of the more dumb extremes of “wokness” rather ridiculous because all it does is drive Traditionalists further into the arms of fascists. But this age of hyper negative polarization is such I am in something of a corner — MAGA expects me to defend the most extreme elements of the “woke cancel culture mob” just because I hate MAGA.
Something about how Twitch freaked out over how the AI generated Seinfeld “forever episode” said some pretty dumb anti-gay, anti-liberal and anti-trans jokes I find alarming. It’s not so much the jokes themselves that are at issue, but the idea that there was such a kneejerk reaction when it came to something dumb that an AI did.
Dave Chappelle
I’m extremely sex-positive and I honestly don’t give a shit what you do with your body as long as everyone is of age and it’s consensual. Love is love and all that. What bothers me is this incident feeds into the MAGA narrative that the “woke cancel culture mob” wants to turn everyone gay.
It’s already a struggle for me to talk to me Traditionalist relatives about ANYTHING without having to spend 10 minutes hearing from them about how the “woke cancel culture mob” wants to “groom” little kids. It’s all part of the broader “Gay Scare” that we’ve been living through the last few years. It sucks, yes, but that doesn’t change that there are are well meaning Christians who still think being gay is a “sin” and no longer believe in democracy because of the “gay agenda” of “woke people.”
What if the AI was, instead of doing rather bland Seinfeld-like jokes was programmed to do a never-ending Dave Chappelle-like set? It seems in today’s “woke” environment that that would be damn near an impossible thing to do. All of this is very corrosive and makes me fear that when the time comes in late 2024, early 2025 that it will be a near foregone conclusion that the United States will either slip peacefully into autocracy or have a National Divorce that prompts a civil war.
This is also sort of a quintessential “chatbot bias” issue. The very thing that the “woke cancel culture mob” freaks out about — telling jokes about gay people — is the very thing that MAGA wants to wallow in. And if they can’t get an AI to write a poem praising Trump, they’re going to want regulation to force the issue. Remember, Trump to this day crows over how he was able to get people to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”
So, chatbot “bias” is just the sort of thing that MAGA is going to scream about at the top of their lungs at some point in the very near future. It could be just a matter of days before Trump or DeSantis picks up the “chatbot bias” standard and starts to scream about how this is just another thing that the “woke cancel culture mob” want to use to “groom” little kids to be gay.
UGH.
These are macro trends were dealing with and there really is nothing we can do about it. Either American democracy survives the 2024 presidential cycle, or it doesn’t. In other words — we’re fucked.
Where to begin with this one. So, rather than hashing out the important implications of the looming chatbot revolution like the potential need for a UBI, here we are fighting over how a chatbot wouldn’t use a racial slur to save millions of people.
For a group of people who grow ever-so-offended at the suggestion that they’re fucking racists, MAGA people sure do think up reasons to use racial slurs out of the blue.
This is so monumentally dumb and so much one of those things that is at the nexus of Incel-MAGA-Pothead culture that the fact that I feel forced to address it makes the whole issue even more grating on the nerves.
The reason why this is so dangerous is it’s simple for idiot MAGA people to process. Remember, for four years the president of the United States ranted about people not saying “Merry Christmas.” So, as such, it’s easy to imagine Trump ranting about how if only chatbots weren’t bias (relative to racist, misogynistic MAGA cocksuckers) there would be peace on earth and America would never again be threatened by a Chinese balloon.
And something something Hunter Biden’s laptop and or peen.
The chatter about “woke chatbot bias” is growing at alarming rate on Twitter. So, logically, even ding-dong Trump is going to eventually pick up the idea of “ending chatbot bias” as a political issue in the 2024 election. The more cultural weight we give chatbots, the more the calls for “regulation” to “end chatbot bias” will grow.
The question of course, is the enteral “who watches the watchers.” If the very idea objective truth doesn’t exist in the minds of MAGA, does that mean the only way you can produce a chatbot that doesn’t have a “bias” is if they are bias in favor of MAGA?
That particular question answers itself, I’m afraid.
So, if we don’t have a civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025, we’re probably going to be an autocracy and, as such, whenever we use a chatbot we’re going to have to wade through it saying the n-word for a few minutes before we get the answer to the question of “why is the sky blue?”
I hate being right. I continue to see chatter on Twitter among MAGA fascists regarding how angry they are at the “woke” nature of ChatGPT. Which makes me wonder where all of this is going to end.
I suppose that once we turn into a MAGA fascist autocracy that all chatbots will somehow be regulated to prevent the evil, pernicious forces of “wokeness” from being involved. As an aside, I have to say that all this talk about this or that thing being “woke” is total and complete bullshit. The fucking fascists call anything they disagree “woke” because they’re completely devoid of any meaningful policies other than expressions of hate.
There is, of course, the possibility that technology will solve this particular problem in the sense that everyone will have their own personalized chatbot in the near future, so if you want a “woke” chatbot, you can have one and if you want a chatbot that spews your own hate back at you, then you can have that, too.
But the point is — I can totally see Trump picking up the cause of “chatbot bias” the moment he’s back on Twitter — or sooner. It’s just the type of easy to understand and vacuous bullshit MAGA fascists love to traffic in. The great irony is, of course, that I was listening to the New York Times’ “Hardfork” podcast and they were talking about chatbot bias and I realized I was on the same page as them.
Because I am a drunk loser in the middle of nowhere I am going to get zero credit for having thought all the political implications of chatbot bias well before all the cool kids.
While I generally have a very blase view on most things sexual, on a macro societal basis, I find myself growing just a bit alarmed at the rise of hot lesbians. These are women who are traditionally attractive but have decided to play for the other team, as it were.
Fletcher
Now, I validate their right to be lesbians and the whole “hot” part is equally a lulz, but…what is going on? Why would growing numbers of traditionally attractive women decide that they would rather date women? Or, I suppose a better question would be — why are lesbians deciding to dress in a way that makes them hot to men? Or is that just a side-effect of something I don’t understand.
Given that I don’t anything about anything, I suppose the last possibility is the most likely. I suspect I’m overthinking things. Lesbians want to be hot, too, and maybe even though they’re thinking of the female gaze, the way they’re doing it is mistaken by idiots like me as being “hot” in a heteronormative manner.
As an aside, I have to say that that very hot lesbian Fletcher leaves me at a loss. While I like her persona and her music, the more I listen to her stuff the more of an Old I feel. It seems very “of the moment” in a way that makes it very specific and niche.
Or, it could be, I’m just old and out of touch.
I hate being old. Anyway, there’s a good 10,000 word New Yorker piece to be written about the rise of “hot lesbians” and What It All Means especially in the context of the “woke cancel culture mob.” Scott Galloway seems like the type of person who would write it, too.
It seems as though “wokness” means everything and nothing to MAGA people. As best I can tell, “woke” is simply a shorthand for “things we don’t like” in the minds of MAGA cocksuckers. They believe this to the point that people like Rep. Jim Jordan, when asked how Republicans are going to balance the budget, simply say, “we’re going to eliminate wokeness from the government.”
What does that even mean? And how would you do that without slashing things like Social Security or even the defense budget?
In a sense, it all boils down to white Christian Republicans doing a “vibe check” and whatever rubs them the wrong way is….”being woke.” The definition of “being woke” changes as necessary to help Republicans win votes. In general, I suppose “being woke” is when you don’t think being gay is a sin, you believe that systemic racism exists, you believe when should have bodily autonomy and believe that the tax system should be equitable. (The list goes on, but those are the main points.)
Anyway. For me, being, “wokness” is more about when someone has a very strict Leftist orthodoxy that they adhere to, to the point that they attack people like me simply because I don’t even know what the proper Leftist orthodoxy is — even though we’re on the same fucking side when it comes to begin against MAGA.
Regardless, we’re fucked. I still think we face the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta in late 2024, early 2025. But, then, I am always wrong, so lulz.
A certain segment of the “woke cancel culture mob” believes that, by definition, a male author writing from a female POV is illegitimate. These are the same people who believe that The Bechdel Test is an immutable law of storytelling and if your story doesn’t pass it, you might as well just give up.
When I started working on my first novel, I was completely oblivious to the controversy over this subject. I just read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series and really liked it. I liked that he wrote in third person intimate and when the time came, I just adopted the way he did things because it seemed to fit my personal writing style.
As this novel project has progressed, however, there have been a few times when I have been very clearly admonished against writing from a female POV using third person intimate. Being the ornery person that I am this has only served to make me angry.
Not only is the point to tell a great story, but I find it unfair to presume that just because I’m a man that I can’t write from a female POV. Of course, to some members of the “woke cancel culture mob” that’s not even the point — it’s not so much that I can’t write from female POV as a man, it’s that I shouldn’t.
I fucking hate this test.
Fuck that. And fuck you if you believe that.
It’s because of thinking like that we got Trump. Ugh.
As I’ve written before, I hate orthodoxy of any sort because it restrains one’s ability to think freely, to admit when you’re wrong and to see the world for what it really is.
Anyway, now I feel very self-conscious, insecure and paranoid about what I’m doing — but that won’t stop me from continuing to do exactly what I’m doing. Some of this comes from I’m simply unwilling to bow to the “woke cancel culture mob” this late in the process and some of it comes from I know I can overcome the obvious obstacles of writing a female character in a compelling, honest way as a male author.
At this point, my biggest fear is that writing from a female POV as a male author will just add to the already nearly impossible odds I face when it comes to getting traditionally published. But no one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a risk. So, here I am.
Only time will tell if the risk I’m taking pans out or not.
I’m just a smelly, middle aged CIS white male with a looming 50th birthday coming at me at an alarming rate and, as such, I worry about my ability to get traditionally published. I worry about this to the point that I sometimes idly muse that I should concoct a new identity that fits the agenda of the “woke cancel culture mob.”
I’m well aware that, in real terms, CIS white men as the Youngs call people like me, continue to dominate the publishing world. Ok, I get it. And, yet, I’m an old white man in the middle of nowhere struggling to get traditionally published for the first time. It sure would be nice to suck at the teet of the orthodoxy of the “woke cancel culture mob” with a personal story that they found appealing.
If I was a 24 transgender Latino, I suspect my novel would be a lot more warmly read than it would be as me coming at them from my sad reality. I can’t help how old I am and I need all the help I can get to get published traditionally. The more I know about what it takes to get traditionally published, the more alarmed I grow.
And, yet, I have made it my life’s passion to be wilfully delusional. Acting like I might actually have a chance of getting traditionally published given how much delusion that is going to require, is kind of my thing.
When it comes to how easy or difficult it is for people like me to get traditionally published a lot of it comes down to perception. Leftists point out the cold hard reality that old white men tend to get published, while it “feels true” to Right wing nutjobs that CIS white men simply can’t get a fair shake in the deep Blue publishing industry.
Lulz. Who knows. With me luck in my active, wilful delusion.
Long ago, my dream was to work at either Media General or The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Sadly, it took me about a decade to realize I was being extremely delusional to think that was a possibility for me. I’m just too creative and don’t have the intense, introverted personality that most successful journalists have.
The great irony of it all is that being a successful journalist — or someone in the media — isn’t really that hard. You often have to take something akin to a vow of poverty to pursue the career starting off, but many people go straight from college into a job at a daily like The Richmond Times-Dispatch. That makes me sad that I wasted so much time being oblivious that if I ever become a success, it will be through telling the “truth” through a novel or screenplay rather than the “facts” of journalism.
Over the years, I have seen plenty of cases where people went straight into a daily newspaper environment out of college, grew disillusioned and moved on to something else. This smarts because they so casually were able to drop my dream because they saw what it really took to be a journalist and even though they could do it, just didn’t want to.
I monitor the chatter within the publishing industry through chatter and it’s shocking how bitter people who are far more advanced in their novelist career than I am. Many of these bitter people are “mid-list” authors who have had some success and now are being screwed over in various ways. I totally get that, but I’ve been an aspiring novelist for so long that I would be grateful at this point to be a mid-lister.
All of this happens in the context of me being concerned that not only am I too much of a drunk crank to ever get a literary agent to begin with but that cold, hard fact that I simply can not, will not abide by the strict orthodoxy of the “woke cancel culture mob” that seems to be mainstream among many successful novelist these days.
I know my truth north and if you don’t like it — fuck you. I try to be as empathetic and understanding as possible but when people tell me they will ding my storytelling ability because I don’t have two women having a conversation among something other than a man — Jesus Christ.
I fucking hate this test.
While I don’t support or defend JK Rowling’s anti-trans stance, the mentality of the people who would “cancel” her for having concerns me because, as I keep saying — it’s shit like that that drives Traditionalists in the arms of fascism.
Anyway, I just hate how hysterical both the far Right and the far Left are these days. They have a symbiotic relationship at the moment because they force “radical moderates” like myself to defend the most extreme policy aims of whichever side I am forced to align with.
Since I fucking hate MAGA fascism, I have to defend some pretty kooky woke ideas to my Traditionalist relatives whenever we discuss politics. But, as I keep saying, we all have to pick a side, or a side will be chosen for us. To be a “centrist” is to be complicit in the rise of fascism. Post-truth is pre-fascist and all that.
There are no easy answers and all I want to do is give my audience the best possible story with most fleshed out an interesting characters possible. It will be interesting to see if me being a “delusional jerk with a good heart” will get in the way of that dream.
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