There was likely a time when “incel” just meant “involuntarily celibate,” without all of the baggage, but then two things happened together.

First, a significant number of “incels,” most notably on 4chan, fell into a specific set of essentially misogynistic coping behaviors - primarily blaming the supposed hypocrisy and shallowness of women for their own problems.

And second, a significant number of smugly self-righteous bigots saw an opportunity to hurl self-affirming hatred at an undifferentiated mass of people without suffering the backlash they’d get if it was directed at a group that essentially enjoys protected status, and leaped at the opportunity.

So now the popular conception is that all involuntarily celibate men are “incels,” with all that that implies - that they’re not just involuntarily celibate, but shallow, hateful, misogynistic losers and assholes.

It could potentially help if involuntarily celibate men who don’t share the misogyny of the “incels” had their own label, but honestly I don’t think it would make much of a difference in the long run, because there are now enough asshole bigots reveling in their hatred of “incels” that they’d refuse to let anyone get away. Just like all other more traditional bigots, they’d cling to their self-affirming conception that the mere fact that an individual is of a specific race gender sexual orientation relationship status means that they’re necessarily foul and loathsome, so their hatred of them is justified.

True, and I indeed should have said “reflex” instead.

Seriously, WHAT is THE DEAL with conservative disinformationists scattering ALL-CAPS WORDS throughout EVERYTHING they WRITE?

My THEORY is that it’s MEANT as a SUBSTITUTE for LOGIC and REASON - that in LIEU of saying things that are ACTUALLY logical, reasonable or true, they JUST say things really LOUDLY.

It MUST be TRUE because it’s so EMPHATIC, right?

And it PROBABLY triggers a PAVLOVIAN response in the DUNDERHEADS who READ it. “LOOK at all the CAPS! This is MY kind of TRUTHINESS!”

It’s just… WEIRD. And sort of PATHETIC.

I have no more right to interfere in someone else’s life than they have to interfere in mine.

Avoid people who don’t share that view.

Of course he is.

It’s really a very simple calculus - any deal is going to include a timeline for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and if Netanyahu signs off on a deal that includes a withdrawal from Gaza, the hard right assholes are going to turn on him. And if the hard right assholes turn on him, he’s not going to be able to hold onto the office. And if he doesn’t hold onto the office, he’s likely going to jail, because he’s not just a psychopathic piece of shit, but a grotesquely corrupt psychopathic piece of shit.

And that’s really the whole deal right there - tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of people are dying and millions of people are displaced all so that one grotesquely corrupt psychopathic piece of shit can evade justice.

People are almost more susceptible to simpler charts with race and IQ than they are to the really complicated stuff

Ironically enough, that’s because they’re stupid.

It amuses the hell out of me every time the conservatives whine about their brazen disinformation getting censored, since whenenver and wherever they get an opportunity (including, especially ironically, Facebook), they reveal themselves to be the most cowardly censorious people on the planet.

Everywhere, without exception, where conservatives have control, anything that even hints at undermining their comforting delusions is instantly censored.

But if anybody dares to censor anything they might want to say, including overt and deliberate lies, they wail and cry like the spoiled children they are.

I guarantee that the explanation for this would become very obvious if one were to simply, as the cliche has it, “follow the money.”

So the unspoken bit about RFK Jr. is that he’s a tweaker, right?

I mean, the details are all in the context of politically entitled progeny, but the underlying vibe I get from the stories about him is very reminiscent of the tweakers I’ve known over the years.

Israel is a rogue state.

Who said anything about striving to be different?

That’s at least as cringey as striving to be the same, and generally even more so.

Strongly agreed.

I’m reminded of the scene in Groundhog Day in which they have that one day that just unfolds naturally and is so wonderful, and then the next time through, the Bill Murray character tries to duplicate it, and it’s just awful and cringey.

Lemmy, given the chance, will (continue to) develop its own norms and memes and traditions, and be that much better for it. Just trying to duplicate Reddit here is not only doomed to failure, but cringey.

“Doubts grow?”

Why would they even need to “grow?” This is just June and July all over again, with the only difference being that Hamas isn’t buying any of it this time around.

The Biden administration isn’t trying to negotiate anything. It’s just trying to strike a pose to dodge the entirely deserved condemnation it’s getting for enabling a genocide while continuing to enable a genocide.

“I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!"

I don’t think it’s with her popularity that the creepy old serial sex abuser is preoccupied…

As intended. The wealthy few don’t buy Supreme Court justices for no reason.

The decisions aren’t just about undermining climate policies - they’re more broadly about eliminating any impediments to the wealthy and empowered few raping and pillaging to their hearts’ content, entirely free of any threat of consequences. But that’s ncessarily largely about climate, since that’s one of the most notable areas in which the wealthy few are causing significant direct and measurable harm and thus are most eager to avoid the consequences they so richly deserve.

Should they be? Yes.

Will they be? No.

It really doesn’t matter what should happen, because the simple fact of the matter is that the fossil fuel companies own enough corrupt politicians to successfully avoid the wholly deserved consequences for their overtly malicious acts.

And a billionaire singer who’s already such a common target for AI deepfakes that she’s quite likely the one person on the planet most ready, willing and able to sue someone’s ass off over them.

Wow - that was quite possibly the dumbest thing he’s done yet.

Reminder that Trump doesn’t live in reality.

He lives in a fantasy world in which he’s the rightful center of the universe, and his entire conception of truth and falsehood and right and wrong is based on how well or how poorly things or ideas or people fit into that worldview.

Of course it does.

The broad point of Project 2025 is to eliminate anything and everything that provides any measurable benefit to the common people and/or in any way impedes the wealthy and the corporations doing absolutely whatever they want to do, no matter how much harm it might cause to people. That’s the exact reason that so much of it focuses on eliminating or at least neutering government agencies - the goal is to make it so that corporations and the wealthy few face no constraints and no consequences - so that they have free rein to rob and pillage and rape and destroy.

And it’s not only the playbook Trimp will follow, but the reason that billionaires like Musk and Thiel are backing Trump. They aren’t really backing Trump per se - they’re backing Project 2025.