Learned helplessness: why your new abuser wants you to remain a permanent victim

I don’t get personal on this blog, but this one hits close to home.

Your parents hit you.  Maybe they called it “spanking.”  Your dad essentially forced you into a house-wife or else mindset.  Your mom punished you by making you wear your sister’s clothing.  You recently decided you are a feminist and against “the patriarchy” or perhaps “fundamentalism.”  Your husband wouldn’t let you do stuff.  Your wife never has sex with you.  Your boss is just fucking stupid and mean.

You are… owed something.

Don’t worry.  We have an app for that.  We also have a book club, a bunch of blogs, enabling therapists, some promotional t-shirts, a nicely sexist Tumblr, and even an awareness month.  We have a brand.

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I get it.  Really, I do.  It’s so awesomely convenient to blame white heterosexual men, or Democrats, or your parents, or minorities and reverse discrimination, for why you aren’t as rich as you thought you’d be as a teen.  You have panic attacks.  You take medication because you have A Problem.

Take a pill.  “Will this heal me?”  Nope, but the point is to feel nothing, not to feel at peace.  There’s a reason a cure to cancer will never exist.

Why do painful physical therapy when a Vicodin martini works every time?  What they never tell you is that soon your alcohol or Facebook status will HAVE to work every time.  Last week’s “likes” just aren’t enough; gotta have a few more.  Addiction via brain chemistry–it’s all on Wikipedia.  It’s also a basic tenant of many long-term corporate strategy plans.

I’ll speak to web entities alone (to say nothing of pharmaceutical or alcohol companies):

Gawker Media, Salon.com, Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, Return of Kings, Breitbart, Free Jinger… all these things exist because of MASSIVE markets for them.  A ton of disillusioned victims narcissists who aren’t going to take it anymore.  But they also fiercely resist healing or embracing positive self improvement.  Imagine a stadium full of people jerking each other off.  It’s both disgusting yet oddly familiar, right?  FYI: one of Reddit’s most common unique terms is “circle jerk.”

It’s disheartening.  Stuff like, say, “feminism” used to mean things like equal rights, or equal treatment under the law.  Now it’s a work–it’s a gimmick to get you to buy things, to click things, and to give marketing data away for free.  Outrage porn costs money to make, you damn well better buy it.  I mean, who seriously thinks sites like Feministing are helping women?  Or that the NFL sincerely cares about breast cancer?

“You son of a bitch, this is all victim-blaming!”  Sort of, in a weird long-term space-time continuum way.

The victim is future you.  It’s your possibilities and potential success tomorrow.  That person is the victim.  That person is being robbed; that person is truly owed something.

You are abusing your future self.

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You cannot change what your husband/wife/dad/mom/boss/government did.  Ever heard the term “learned helplessness?”  It’s awesome.  I got it from Tommy Lee. (Yep, the incredibly intuitive drummer for Motley Crue.  Never saw that coming.)  I’m not saying you have to become a Buddhist or whatever.  “Kick-start my heart!” as Tommy’s friends sang.

All this dumb horseshit you’re doing, the bigoted Tumblr posts you create, it’s not going to help.  You’re medicating.  You’ve stopped believing you can recover.  Learned helplessness.

You’ll figure this out eventually.  When you are your future self, you’ll stop blaming others and focus on improving yourself.  You’ll stop the resistance to positive change.  Maybe you’ll even stop drinking.

Wait, did I say drinking?  I meant re-Tweeting things like: “Boys are stupid! Throw rocks at them!”  You aren’t being empowered by clicking on fucktard stuff.  You’re just providing marketing data to a big corporation, that is (not surprisingly) run by the rich white sex-negative men you claim to hate.  Bonus points if you used your new iPhone do it.

Let’s try something different:  instead of buying a ribbon that indicates you’re “aware” of child abuse, why don’t you adopt a kid and save his/her life?  Or at least pay for a young person to escape those circumstances.  “But will people still click ‘like’ on my status update?”  Sigh.  Exactly.

“Fuck you, I have to have my pills to even begin to deal with my past.”  Look, this isn’t about pills or drinking or Facebook likes.  This is about what you have done today to stop abusing yourself and perpetuating the actual abuse done to you in the past.  Have you taken even one step to stop your addiction to abuse?

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If you still don’t get this post’s title, no worries: My point is that the system wants you to remain a perma-victim because you fit a marvelously valuable demo that way.  You’re, you know, marketable.  #EndAbuseButRemainVictims  #TheMatrixHasYouNeo

“You sound insanely bitter in this post, dude.  You’re so angry.”  I am, because this post is about me.  I told you this one was personal.

Mixed metaphors: you were victimized; now we need to sell you a lot of stuff

Yes, I know this post is too short, but this money quote from The Last Psychiatrist is worth your spending another 10 seconds avoiding your job today.  I know it purports to be about post postmodern “feminism,” but it’s really about selling things.

Sites like Jezebel and Feministing are much, much worse than pornography, every article they write sets women back a week, do the math, they do such a disservice to women because they take their narcissism and repackage it as gender issues, and you’re locked into it…. My point isn’t that women don’t have legitimate gripes with the system, or that there isn’t sexism still around, my point is that most of what you think is “feminism” is really a work, a gimmick, a marketing scheme. It is straight up consumerism, repackaged as a gender issue.

Exactly.  And the only reason to dupe women is because (at this point in time) they are the nation’s most reliable and free-spending consumer group.  To sum up:  rich white men are still in control and they just sharpened their marketing pitch.  Remember Playboy’s Hugh Hefner and his vociferous support of feminist causes?  You know that wasn’t to benefit women as a gender, right?

The “Free the Nipple” campaign and other gender inequality horseshit exists mainly to keep women down

Back to posting, now with 100% more tits.

My favorite part about supporting the Patriarchy is that there isn’t one–the main group of people oppressing women are older/fatter/uglier women.

Several of the more fashionable gender inequality “awareness” group-thinks include the “Free the Nipple” (NSFW) campaign to normalize women going topless, anti-female circumcision (i.e., gential mutilation, clits and labia minora cut off, etc.), and anti-slut shaming.

You can tell the trend here, and you’re right–I 100% support most women going topless, I love female genitals, and I have never met a slut I didn’t appreciate.  As Louis CK says, if you can suck a dick, I respect that.

If only more men agreed with me, am I right?  “My boyfriend would love that, but he’s a pig and I’m not showing my tits to the world.”  You mean you don’t HAVE to?  Duh, you’ve got other things going for you, including a boyfriend who lets you call him a pig.  What about the girls that want a boyfriend but can’t seem to keep one, i.e., they keep getting surprised that a guy will semi-happily fuck them somewhat regularly but not commit to them?

Those women WANT to bring the heavy armaments to the fight to compete with you, upper-middle class white girl who rocks yoga pants, but they just can’t compete.  Oh, they’ll give a blow job on the first date just like you, but only because they are playing penis lottery and gambling that maybe this guy will commit.  You give first date blow jobs for the attention.

(In fact, noted slut photographer “Kirill” exists for that kind of attention whore.  You remember Kirill (NSFW), the guy who took the famous photo of a girl getting champagne poured on her face and tits–the semi-ironic facial cum shot?  He’s got thousands of attention whore pics.  Goddamn it, guys, women’s liberation is AWESOME.)

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Not-so-competitive women need to get their advertising/availability in order and visible, but they don’t have yoga-pants girl’s, uh, assets.  They can’t just whip their tits out for the boys in public and they aren’t the competitive caliber to fit into heels and a little skirt with a thong.  They aren’t clever enough to time their slutty behavior with their drinking.  They might just be kind of weirdly fat.

But they still have a Disney princess inside thanks to the Matrix.  So, how to compete against better women (the ones evolution wants to breed)?

Rules.  Control.  “Awareness” campaigns.

Did you know at one point magazines told women that getting circumcised would make them sexier? Yeah, I know magazine editors are mostly gay men or awkward, older women.  Wait, does that actually explain it without having to explain it?

Seems like this doesn’t need to be pointed out, but female genital mutilation is perpetuated by a culture’s women.  It’s essentially a rite of passage in some societies.  No heterosexual man in his right mind would ever vote to cut off a woman’s shortcut to third base.  The clitoris is the super highway to happy land for a penis.

More and more I get the feeling that the default setting for humanity is this:  feudalism (some aristocrats and many peasants), with a few alpha males fucking most of the women, with undesirable women as domestic fungible labor and beta males as economic fungible labor.  I mean, there’s a reason slavery has been a thing for almost all of human history, right?  I’m not saying any of this is “right” or good or a reason to stop believing in God.  I think we just hate the responsibility associated with long-term democracy.

Back to nipples and awareness.  Nipples are amazing–that’s probably why most anti-boob laws state that you can’t have your female nipples uncovered, but lots of side-boob is totally fine.  You can’t look away from a great nipple.  It makes sense, then, that those with poorly competitive nipples want to de-awesome all the perky nipples.  If you can’t compete, change the rules of the game.

Thus our latest group-think awareness campaigns.  Make it okay to just throw your tits out there, ladies, or be a slut openly/awkwardly, etc.  You play to win the game.

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Here’s the problem:  there is always someone worse at life than you.  If you make it okay to change the rules to make it easier for yourself, then what is to stop the older/fatter women from doing the same to you?  I know, I know, it’s tough being caught between primordial sexual anarchy and puritan sexual control.

Self improvement is hard, but it’s better for you than being able to show your tits at Target.  Being a slut for the man you love is wonderful for you both, but the difficulty is being the kind of woman who would attract and capture the best kind of man you’d gladly be a slut for.

Most people are just fine setting it to neutral and coasting toward death.  We’ve got a lot of awareness campaigns for that. #FreeTheNipple

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Extra-awful bonus post script email from an actual woman to Kirill:

I know this will probably fall on deaf ears, but if for some reason you find it in your heart to remove the photos of me topless on your website I would be forever grateful.  I just started dating a guy and he’s really amazing and I would hate to lose him if he found out about my less than clean past.

I know it is my fault that I drank too much that night and willingly showed you my breasts, but if you can do me this one favor, I’d love you forever.  Next time I run into you, I’ll do anything you want.  I’ll choke on your dick in the bathroom (as long as there are no photos).  Yes.

This new guy means this much to me that I’m willing to defile myself one last time to never have him find out about the photos you have of me.

The saddest part is that her boyfriend likely won’t care about her sexual past as long as she defiles herself with him only from here on out.  He won’t care about the tricks you turned in the past as long as you give him your best tricks now and forever.  It’s terrible, but most slutty girls make themselves puritans when they snag a man because they don’t want to lose his good graces.  Enjoy continuing to be a slut, but limit it to your man only.  He’ll love it (almost) no matter what you did, I promise.

The most epic white knight story of all time ends exactly how you’d think: shame, porn, and the talk show circuit

Bring a bucket in case of nausea.  Maybe pour yourself a Vicodin martini.

On this blog, I virtually never speak of myself because who I am does not matter.  I also never post anything short ala Instapundit.  (Professor Reynolds’ style is fine, it’s just not for me.)  But sweet mother of God, I had to follow up my narcissism take on Miriam Weeks, the Duke porn starlet, by picking some quotes from the Daily Mail’s additional reporting on the horrific state of American narcissism.  Thanks to  Aaron Clarey, aka Captain Capitalism, for reading British tabs, or for whoever sent it to him.  Yes, I realize this is the Daily Mail, but Ms. Weeks’ response to it is much less believable.

Let the dumpster fire begin:

Devout Catholic, father of three, U.S. Army doctor Kevin Weeks recently returned from duty in Afghanistan to discover that his eldest daughter Miriam is getting choked, spat on, and hate-fucked by several guys several days a week.

Miriam’s Catholic father Kevin and mother Harcharan, have been ‘floored’ by their daughter’s decision to turn to porn to fund her $50,000-plus-a-year education at the prestigious Duke University.

Amanda Minor, the mother-in-law of Miriam’s brother Paul, told MailOnline: ‘This is a tragedy in the family.  The father is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met. He is just back from Afghanistan; he served his country, how awesome is that?

‘He’s so proud of his daughter; there’s no way they could have known this was going on. It’s terrible. But they would never abandon their daughter. This is a nightmare what the family are going through.’

Last week, Miriam had claimed in interviews that her parents had only themselves to blame for her decision.

Identified only by her porn name Belle Knox, she said that she was forced into making X-rated films because her parents suddenly cut off their financial support.

The Weeks family has paid an absolute fuckton to private-school Miriam and her two siblings.  There doesn’t appear to be a lot of clarity regarding the college situation, but suffice to say Duke University tuition is probably the most rapey thing about all this.

All the children, including Miriam, attended Gonzaga Prep School in Spokane, a Jesuit school known for its high academic and sporting achievements. Tuition is about $11,000 a year.

It was well worth the outlay. Miriam was a straight A ‘genius’ student. She was given the ‘Spokane Scholar’ in Foreign Languages during her final school year, 2012-13.

I realize I give Gen X (and the last few Baby Boomer) parents a hard time about buying into the system and completing the institutionalization of narcissism in America but Jesus Christ.  I’m really trying to not get sucked into the Matrix about this story; it’s sincerely too impossible to not be true.  Her attorney “blames” her porn career on her family not supporting her.  Funny, I could have sworn Miriam blamed Duke for being “too fucking expensive.”  Suffice it to say, Dr. Kevin Weeks might be the most innocently white knight dad of all time.  How insanely did he put his princess on a pedestal?  Again, I hate to blame the parents, but where the fuck does a teenager like Miriam Weeks come from??

I have no more words.  Often in these deconstructions I look for what most are missing; maybe apply a different frame to the picture.  But this is narcissism on crack—there’s no nuance or layers or any need for critical thinking.  I’m very seriously giving the Biggest Narcissist Award to Miriam’s brother’s mother in law, who appeared to be the only major source for the Daily Mail story.  To complete the picture (and blog title), here is Ms. Weeks on Piers Morgan’s CNN show:

There are only three reasons your wife/GF ever leaves you, Robin Thicke, so don’t go deaf/blind to the signals

C’mon now, who do you think all those P.T. Barnum ads about low testosterone are for?

One of my favorite music videos of all time (after the White Stripes’ Lego version of “Fell in Love with a Girl”) is Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”  And yes, I mean the version where the three girls are 99% naked.  That last 1% of coverage might not be much, but it makes all the difference.  In fact, that’s enough of an excuse to watch it again.  (Sadly, embedding does not work.)

You may have heard that Thicke’s wife, Paula Patton (pictured with him, above) planned to divorce him because of his wicked ways with women.  If anything, “Blurred Lines” at the surface seems like a pretty risque video for a married guy to do.  I know you won’t believe me, but Paula and Robin’s separation has nothing to do with blazing hot genetic impossibility Emily Ratajkowski.  (But seriously, just type in “Emily” to Google, which will helpfully and immediately offer Ms. Ratajkowski as your first item.)

Yes, Robin Thicke’s wife approved of his heavy PG-13 video, perky tits and all.  In fact, it’s not crazy to think that Paula Patton was right there on set—she’s an actress herself (currently appearing in the film “adaptation” of World of Warcraft, for some reason).  The “Blurred Lines” video was produced more than a year ago, in fact—and their possibly pending divorce came up only a few weeks ago.  What happened between now and then?  Your hint is that what happened was the most-tweeted event in history.

That foam finger was scarred for life.

“I don’t get it, Miley wore more clothes at the VMAs than Emily did in the music video.”  Right, that’s how a heterosexual male would look at it.  There’s no question that millions of people saw both the “Blurred Lines” music video and the VMAs, so it’s not like Ms. Patton was embarrassed by tons of people seeing her husband mack another woman.

If anything, women crowd-source the value of their men.  Another girl or two flirts with your man?  You may get jealous, but it’s also a confirmation that you chose a good product.  How does your man handle it?  Does he turn into a beta supplicator?  Does he rush to ensure you of his pure motives?  Or is he cocky and funny toward the other women?  A woman will be happiest if her man accurately values himself in regard to women and the world—especially if he accurately values both her and the other women, and remains loyal to her.

Paula Patton is beautiful and likely quite aware of all this (though she probably will not be able to explain it).  Something was okay with Robin Thicke’s adventures with the topless models that was not okay with Miley Cyrus.  And there is the heart of their potential divorce.

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From a man, a woman desires three things:

1. The best sperm she can obtain without threatening the next two items, below.
2. The best and most consistent provision she can reasonably obtain.
3. Relatively increased social status (i.e., relative to other women).

In the case of Paula Patton, can you tell which of the three was threatened?  Of course, it was #3: social status.  Emily Ratajkowski is a sweet-natured self-content super model, while Miley Cyrus is the slutty dumbass offspring of white trash parents.  The “Blurred Lines” music video was a fairly sophisticated and humorous ode to the control women exert over sexuality while Miley Cyrus is a dumpster fire.  By cavorting through a doofy dance number in front of millions, Robin Thicke quite publicly displayed lower status.

It was bad enough that Paula said she wanted to leave him.  That’s pretty horrifically bad.  Mr. Thicke has been in beta comfort mode for a while now, very publicly asking to return to her good graces.  He performs songs written about her, and has returned to being a classy R&B star—partying with Mr. Classy himself, Leonardo DiCaprio, instead of someone like Ke$ha or Miley Cyrus.

Ms. Patton’s ire has subsided.  No divorce was initiated; she didn’t even consult a lawyer.

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Of course you likely now understand that low-testosterone ads are aimed at women.  While it’s much more healthy to control and increase testosterone naturally, the low-testosterone ad taps deeply into one of the three reasons a woman will upend her universe and leave her man.  Men, don’t make hormone replacement therapy your first solution.  Lift weights, eat meat, do something competitive, and above all, fuck your woman senseless.

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UPDATED 4/3/2015:  Apparently Robin’s beta comfort efforts did not have his intended effect.  As of a couple of weeks ago, Paula insisted via TMZ that their divorce is a “done deal.”  Robin’s showing emotional weakness in the face of his stupidity with Miley did not work.  Pushing emotional romance and attempting to negotiate desire, in the middle of a woman’s visceral/biological disgust for you, will never work.

Duke porn starlet stands for nothing, maintains the status quo for each of her audiences; Internet just says LOL

(Let’s just get this out of the way now so you can clear your head.  You can find Miriam Weeks’ porn on number of sites, so just google it if you need to.  I’m fond of xhamster.com.)

It’s true, the news of Duke porn starlet Miriam Weeks (aka Belle Knox, aka Lauren, aka Aurora) is no longer a breaking revelation.  It never was, of course; if you went to college and never met a sex worker, then you are lying about an experience that probably ended up way more embarrassing than you planned on.

No videos or pictures in this post, but not because Miriam Weeks and/or Belle Knox does not make decent porn.  She does, although her early work was pretty rough—not in the production values sense, but in the choking and slapping sense.  I’m all about some pretty rough sex (as are most women), but violence that leaves marks is legal evidence, dumbass.

In case you missed it or are a good person, here is the gist:  a few weeks ago, a nice 18-year-old Jewish girl (majoring in sociology and women’s studies, because obviously) at Duke University was “outed” as a freshly-minted porn actress.

As noted, her early work is viciously cringe-worthy, and for some reason derpy college students looked unkindly on her film debut.  Not necessarily in the “we’re better than that slut” shaming or the “holy shit bro, I’d tap dat ass!” sort of stuff, but more like how the internet reacts to anyone taking him/herself too seriously:  the internet said LOLOLOL.

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The rest of the Matrix said exactly what it was supposed to:

Miriam Weeks / Belle Knox herself:

“The threat I pose to the patriarchy is enormous. That a woman could be intelligent, educated and CHOOSE to be a sex worker is almost unfathomable… To the anti-pornography feminists out there: … Consider that when you demean women for participating in sex work, you are demeaning THEM, and consequently, YOU become the problem.”

Jesus.  Just… Jesus.  If this is her threatening “the Patriarchy,” then I’d hate to see her pandering to it. 

On the other hand, Miriam, you should be grateful to feminism—it’s enabled the Patriarchy to have WAY more fun than it ever did before and gave you this opportunity.  I’m not sure if it’s patriarchy or feminism that is slapping your face with one hand and forcing you to deep-throat with the other.

Eric Owens, Daily Caller education editor:

The sex-worker student doesn’t want her real name revealed — or even her adorably slutty porn name revealed — despite the fact that she has now done at least two interviews, written a monologue about herself and been invited to speak in various Duke classes on the topic of sex work.

It took me one second to find all the information about Miriam/Belle that exists, including her real name and the fact that her dad is a doctor who is not doing badly for himself.  Mr. Owens continues, cheekily quoting the Duke Chronicle’s calculation of her yearly earnings on a fairly doable schedule of sex acts.  It’s somewhat disappointing—even a skinny, long-haired girl who’s down for degradation might only hit around $84k per year (unless you constantly do double penetration, which is more dangerous and disease-prone).  Even James Deen tops out around $240k annually.

Zak Stone, occasional Playboy contributor and hilarious white knight, was one of several writers who posted incredibly one-sided missives championing everything about Ms. Weeks:

PLAYBOY: You wrote that one of the main reasons you did porn was to pay for school and not be saddled with large student loans once you graduated. Would you be doing porn if Duke were free?

KNOX: No. If Duke had given me the proper financial resources, I wouldn’t have done porn. They have nobody to blame for the scandal but themselves.

PLAYBOY: Is that what this is really about for you—the skyrocketing cost of higher education in America?

KNOX: Absolutely. My story is a testament to how fucking expensive school is.

This was seriously written in a serious tone in a generally serious magazine (well, on a related website).  It was Duke’s fault that an already upper-middle-class white girl pursuing a sociology/women’s studies degree can’t go to school for free.

I mean… for god’s sake, you guys do realize that Hugh Hefner was a huge force behind pushing feminism in decades past?  You know why he wanted all that sexual liberation, right?

Obviously:  it’s because of how fucking expensive school is.

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Sunshine Mary, who is a good person, kindly wrote:  “Listen to this girl speak; she is very, very young and very, very broken. She needs help and prayer, not bullying.”  It’s true—a little over a year ago, and Miriam’s porn would have been illegal to make, distribute, or consume.

Additional comments on the religious side of the aisle:  Ms. Weeks is the world’s most insane rationalizer, she fears righteous judgment, bitches be crazy, etc.  All a round-about way to say that Miriam Weeks is a godawful narcissist raised by parents who belong to the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists in the History of the World.

I know, I know, there I go blaming parents again.  But did you end up reading that entire xoJane piece she wrote?  Never have I read a more singular and desperate cry for personal validation.  Honey, your parents loved you enough to arrange a life in which  you could get into Duke University!  You are in the top 1% of white women.

But she even attempts to shame feminists into validating her life choice: the empowerment of pornography.  I mean, holy shit, were the study abroad opportunities all full?  You couldn’t join the Student Senate like the rest of the Gen Y narcissists?  You seriously had no other options to do something empowering?

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To be serious, the only real lie that Miriam Weeks is living is that porn is a means to an end, i.e., paying for a college degree.  Maybe for a few people.  For her, porn is the end; her college career is a means toward porn.

“Mom, the Smith family made Billy a genetically perfect child, and I’m really mad I’m not like him.”

Because the Matrix has you, Bloomberg News let you know that soon you may be able to buy that expensive new life accessory you’ve always wanted:  a genetically modified designer baby.

“You’re altering the genome of an unborn child, someone who can’t make a judgment about whether they want to be genetically modified,” Krimsky said by telephone. “What will be next, once you allow this?”

What will be next?  Lots of generational angst, because now you can even more awesomely blame failure on your parents.

In years past, we tittered and gasped because Heather had two mommies; now, Heather has two mommies and a daddy and no chance of cancer or diabetes ever.  Maybe Heather will also do well at violin, her SATs, and get into a great college.  “Let’s look at the pricing for this baby-making grocery list, I think there’s an app for that.  Oh look honey, great financing is available!”

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and assume that a custom, guaranteed-disease free baby is not going to be cheap.  “Hey, this isn’t Elysium you son of a bitch!  Poor people deserve to have healthy babies, too!”

Whoa there, who told you that you weren’t in Elysium?  “Well, I think I saw it on TV or something.”  Sounds like a snake in the grass.  “Whatever, ObamaCare better cover this!”  Yep, I’m sure that’s the intent.

Of course that’s the first responder’s thought—everything’s gonna go all Gattaca on us, you can’t play God, “My kids deserve the best!” etc., all the mental masturbation you can handle.  Trouble is, if you read Bloomberg’s story’ beyond the god-awful headline (I know, I know, headlines aren’t written by reporters), you realize it’s not about Gattaca-level baby engineering at all.  It’s about slight changes to mitochondrial DNA (duh, not the genes that might affect athletic ability, intelligence, or eye color) to reduce risk of a mitochondrial disease.

You don’t know anyone with a mitochondrial disease, and if you did, only about 15% of such diseases can be affected by mitochondrial DNA.  Which is great, because I’m tired of typing “mitochondrial.”  So no rich people engineering designer babies, perfect little life accessories?  Silly mainstream media; all this panic sounds similar to how they report on diet soda, doesn’t it?

However, ethicists (but mainly the internet comments) are in an uproar, I guess.  Rich people can make better and better children, even clearer class divisions, who knows what genetic monsters wait a few generations down the road.  I sense some awesome lawsuits ahead.  Of course, the comments under this story are all about how “the gays” will be the ones having better children and be able to make them gay genetically, illegal aliens dun took ur jerbs, we need to free America from the psycho Christian right-wingers, etc.  Wow, Jesus, even on Bloomberg?  Seriously: you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

So the story is serving its purpose—people are reading the headline, skipping the hard biology and genetics, and immediately reverting back to the soundbites assigned by the Matrix.  Everything is working correctly: all defenses against change remain rooted in place.  When the response to a stimulus from the media is to immediately use it to to anti-identify yourself (“Goddamn it, I hate this, it’s not me at all!”) no matter your political orientation, then you know you’re being played.  You don’t read propaganda because someone’s trying to con you, you read it because you need it to defend yourself against critical thinking.

“No way buddy, I see right through the mainstream media and I hate it, it’s not me at all.”  Yep.  Exactly.  Have you ever thought the mainstream media thinks precisely the same thing about you?  I mean, you do realize that if God and Rush Limbaugh and the Huffington Post didn’t exist, someone would absolutely have invented them?

Today, the “American Dream” means clinging fiercely to your role as a battery in the Matrix

This is what happens when people are mad as hell and utterly determined to continue taking it.

Before continuing to a piece from Peggy Noonan from last summer in the Wall Street Journal, let’s define what we mean by the metaphor “the Matrix.”  No doubt we could fill the comments section with minutia and hair splitting, but I’m talking a very high-level definition.  Some talk about red pill vs. blue pill thinking and actions; I might mention buying hard into “the system,” such Leif Erikson buying into Being a Nice Boy, or Hannah Horvath’s parents buying into Narcissism as Helicopter Parenting.

Those are each mere tactics, i.e., methods to reach a desired destination.  Leif wants comfortable lazy bear life with sex on demand, Hannah’s parents want a life accessory they can #humblebrag to their friends about.  Buying into a system means: pull the lever and get a cookie.  But what state do we seek to attain?  Here’s a hint:  what do you do with a cookie?

You consume it.  Let’s skip to the thesis:  the Matrix is consumption as a state of being.  The Matrix = consumption.

But here’s where we understand only half of it, because when you consume (you are in the Matrix) then the Matrix is also in you.  Yeah, kind of a co-dependence I guess, except while you may care deeply and individually for all the life-giving the Matrix seems to have for you, the Matrix does not care about you so much as it cares about Everyone.  We all need the Matrix to live, and so we all need Everyone to shut the fuck up and keep on producing/consuming.  Thus the new American Dream!

Go back to sleep, Neo.

Incidentally, unless you’re firing up some child pornography or pirating a song, Google, Apple and the NSA don’t give half of one shit about what you do online.  Google doesn’t care about what you do as much as it cares about what Everyone does.  Capitalism in a Big Data age.

“Dude, I’m 100% Occupy Wall Street and I’m against these goddamn capitalists and bankers and bailouts!”  I can totally tell you are, because you typed that on the iPhone your parents still pay for, using a cellular network built by filthy capitalists and bankers.  I won’t bother mentioning the Chinese peasants who built your iPhone for you.

I know Neo sees the Matrix as slimy people-batteries in pods, but I look at the Matrix like this (also the tagline for this blog):

Oar-rowing slaves in a Roman galley.  “We keep you alive to serve this ship.  So row well, and live.”  If you are unfamiliar with the novel and film Ben-Hur, it follows a Jewish prince just during the times of Christ who was unjustly accused and then condemned to live the remainder of life his as a galley slave.  He subsides on the life/sustenance provided by his jailors and in turn helps power their ship.  If you think life for you/Neo in that other version of the Matrix is any better, then sweet mother of Jesus will the red pill hurt your stomach when it goes down.

(Eventually Judah Ben-Hur happens to save the life of the centurion in the film, and the centurion recognizes him as a strong/worthy man, frees him, and adopts him as a son.)

That’s all nice, but where does the American Dream, Peggy Noonan, and the Matrix as consumerism come into this?

Obvious first point we left out for a reason so far:  the American Dream used to mean self improvement, doing better and making more money than the previous generation.  Greater success upon greater success.  Parents working toward an even better life for their kids.  Instead, today, we have an ultra-consumerist Dumbest Generation of Narcissists in the History of the World that will soon finish raising the much-maligned Generation Y, the Millennials.

Making a better life for their children became children as life accessories, i.e., something I do for just for me.  Their kids are discovering what less fortunate people (middle/lower class, many non-whites, basically everyone except for upper-middle class white liberals) have been mucking around in for years now (back to Peggy Noonan):

“I am sick and tired of giving bailouts to the folks at the top and handouts to the folks at the bottom. I’m going to fire people [politicians] until my life gets better.”

That is as succinct a summation as I’ve seen of how the American middle class has been thinking the past few years: The guys at the top and the bottom are taken care of while I get squeezed.

(Here’s the link to Peggy Noonan’s piece, but it’s behind the subscriber wall.  It’s actually mostly about how Obama still somehow managed to convince the middle-class guy from the quote above that, hey, at least Obama wasn’t as rich as that bastard Romney!  “Yeah, screw him!  And he’s Mormon and stuff!”  If you don’t think that many people voted with that in mind, then I’m not sure how you found this blog.)

Yep, the middle-class guy’s sentiment is indeed frustrating, and I feel you, brother.  But there our agreement ends, because I think this system exists because we need it to exist—it’s the Matrix.  The Matrix needs rich people and Everyone to consume and be consumed.  Saving money is only for people who already spend a lot as it is, e.g., rich people.  The Matrix demands complete obedience toward everyone consuming as much as possible, otherwise there will be riots in the streets.  Don’t believe me?  Remember what happened in Greece when the government started limiting the Greek equivalent of Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)?

You see the problem already.  We absolutely want as much consumption as possible, but not everyone is willing to work (have viable employment) toward that end.  What’s the ultimate answer (at least to keep people from rioting)?  We just mentioned them in the previous paragraph–Social Security, SSI, SSDI, WIC, food stamps, TANF, years of unemployment income… it’s a long list, folks.  If you won’t/can’t work, at least take this so you can consume at some level.  In environments where there are no poor people or non-white people, like say Cambridge, Mass., nice white upper-middle class liberals call this “universal income.”

I call it today’s American Dream.

“WTF, you are such mean creep, would you rather those people starve and just go without the basics until they die??”  No, jackass, I don’t want to change a goddamn thing—I don’t want my leisurely Starbucks run marred by poor people rioting.

But rather than feed them to the Matrix, why can’t we permit them to hope for something better?  Instead, we keep them alive to serve this ship.  So row well, and live.  “Hey, wait, are you implying I’m the Romans in this analogy, and I’m keeping the poor slaves there powering my lifestyle?”

I am definitely implying that, and if we all want to be feudal lords (rich, or at least not work hard or make difficult life changes) then we will need to use up a lot of peasants.  Thank God for all those Chinese workers, am I right?

NPR and CBS drink diet soda, get fat, kill their own brain cells.

That video uses the same sleight of hand that other media outlets used about a different study, below.  My headline:  Diet soda doesn’t work, fat people hardest hit!

NPR headline:  Diet Soda: Fewer Calories In The Glass May Mean More On The Plate.

CBS headline:  Diet soda drinkers end up consuming more calories: Study.

Terrible.  Damn you, Big Soda.

*

Because the Matrix has you, it created another disingenuous public health study precisely for the misinterpretation of the mainstream media.  Aside from those other scary stories about how diet soda in general is the same as embalming fluid (So I’ll look this young forever? Awesome!), you’d think the copy editor would catch this type of dogshit reporting before you step in it.

Here’s the template: drink your Coke Zero only if you want to get fatter.

Stories and studies like this make me insane.  Like a Buzzfeed health-food listicle, these types of articles are made so you can scroll through a slideshow of fat people, i.e., it’s for you to feel better about yourself because you aren’t as fat as they are.  Go ahead and get back to those snack crackers, at least you aren’t eating Doritos!

That’s the problem with relative comparisons—they hide the absolute starting point from you and make it hard to think critically.  What is necessary and sufficient for increased and sustained weight gain?  Deep into the NPR story they at least tell you the trendy angle about how diet soda (damn you, Big Soda) confuses your poor brain and makes it think it got a rush of sugar energy when really all your body got was nothing.  Thus your brain thinks you need to eat more.

I love Coke Zero and I’ve never felt anything like that.  But the absolutely necessary and sufficient next step is, you know… actually eating more.   Since NPR and CBS want to click-bait you with dogshit and not science, they leave that part out of the first few paragraphs.  Wait just a second, let’s at least look at the original study:

Overweight and obese adults drink more diet beverages than healthy-weight adults and consume significantly more solid-food calories and a comparable total calories than overweight and obese adults who drink [sugar-sweetened beverages].

I might be confused, but it sure sounds like they said fat people eat more calories than healthy people, and diet soda might help maintain the status quo.  The whole point of diet soda for a fat person is keep things the way they are (i.e., fat).  The poor obese guy reading NPR and CBS about diet soda isn’t going to spring up and make deep life changes, he’s just going to get frustrated about how his imagined self improvement isn’t working.  Diet soda doesn’t have anything to do with it changing his health for better or worse because he’s already obese.  It’s neither necessary nor sufficient.  Eating more is.

C’mon now, this is the same thing as saying Wal*Mart scooter users have a high correlation to diabetes and unhealthy weight gain.  Do they really, now?  Maybe we should dump some heavy regulations on Big Scooter for all the harm they are doing.

Seriously, which came first, the fatness or the diet soda?  Thankfully, NPR and CBS eventually admit deep into each story that diet soda is not making anyone fat—it’s the calorie consumption.  That makes for a really boring and straight-forward headline, though:  Diet soda does not really affect anything.  Sigh.  Click-baited again.

How to know it’s definitely not even close to being love, episode 3

This will be the worst one.

Start by watching this decent video about a supplicating beta male and an outcome independent alpha male.  If you can forgive yourself for using those trite terms.

I realize the response to this is somewhat bifurcated.  Some people rarely see the alpha kind of guy, or if they do, he’s much less suave/funny and more a rude narcissist.  Some people don’t see the supplicating beta male very often, and the men they do see are of even lower status than our plucky button-down boy in the video above.  I mean, at least that doofus was out in a bar talking to girls.

*

Here is the kind of guy I suspect you’ve seen a lot of.  His story is so thoroughly what I’d expect… couldn’t have made it up better myself.  Let’s peek at the unhappy family:

Someone is hiding her wedding ring, and someone else is displaying his.  Oh, wait, I get it.

“They don’t look unhappy at all, dude!”  I know, right?  It’s actually only the woman, Jenny Erikson, who is unhappy.  For some reason, she dumped her husband Leif and is in the process of divorcing him.  In fact, she planned to do it secretly and then spring a bunch of paperwork on him late on a Friday.  Yep, just like in “Office Space.”

Don’t get me wrong, men divorce women viciously at times, too.  Cheats on wife, takes mistress to Europe, moves out later and takes the money.  Wife doesn’t know what to do.  You know the cliche.  But yeah, 100% not the case here.  Let’s walk through this rancid dumpster fire step by step, much of it in Jenny’s own words.

Leif was my best friend in the entire world. He knew everything about me. He was my shoulder to cry on when I went on bad dates… But we were just friends.

Doh, friend-zoned.  But he kept orbiting her, hanging around, just a hopeful lil’ puppy.  Remember at this point the invisible alpha males (who otherwise do not come into this story) are dating/fucking Jenny, who keeps getting surprised that a guy will semi-happily fuck her but not marry her.  (The inverse is just as shocking for men.)  Anyway, at one point they watched a movie and it got much worse:

When it ended, he leaned over and kissed me. I hit him. And then I said three words that changed everything.  “Do it again.”

So he did. And we kissed. For a while. And then, this man that I loved more than life itself, but only in a platonic fashion just the hour before, asked me to marry him.

FUCK ME IN THE EAR… the sweet mother of God took a shit in someone’s breakfast.  A few minutes of making out, and Jenny agrees to marry Leif.  Slam, bang, thank you, ma’am.

Don’t forget when she hit or slapped him when he (after years of beta orbiting) made his move.  That was the last time Jenny was honest with Leif or herself for the next 10 years.  Maybe I’m crazy and in the tiny minority, but I’ve never, ever had an experience like that with any girl.  Not a single customer complaint.

I am guessing that Leif did not have the same reaction as Jenny.  I bet he was ecstatic, smitten forever, his cock as hard as it’s ever been.  It’s not love, bro, it’s beta supplication.  The wedding day:

Seven months later I… looked down to my groom. He looked like he was going to have a hernia of happiness. And the only thought that ran through my brain at that second was, “Where the FUCK are my car keys? There’s still time!”

In grad school we called this “cognitive dissonance.”  She did not want to marry (much less have sex with) this guy but implied social pressure shoved her over the finish line.  Two kids (they are adorable) and ten years later, Jenny plots to divorce him shock-and-awe style.  In a crazy bit of luck, Leif got word beforehand, and Jenny was annoyed the surprise was spoiled:

So there you go. My Pastor had actually told my husband, based on a fourth-hand rumor, without talking to me first, that I was planning on leaving him. That. Just. Happened.

“I filed for divorce last week,” I told him flatly. “I was planning on telling you this Friday.”

The insane part is that, about 10 months before, she wrote yet another blog post of love for Leif and celebrated their 10th anniversary.  So, to the otherwise uninitiated, what unholy horseshit happened between divorce and anniversary?

Don’t know.  Jenny said she has her reasons.  My instinct says she ran into one or more guys that (finally) tingled her vagina after years of slow-dripping uninterested drudgery sex on Leif, the poor dumb bastard.  “She can’t control who she’s attracted to, man!”  Right, but she could have totally controlled who she married.  “The romantic feelings don’t always last, come on.”  Wrong, they were simply one-sided the whole time.

Here’s the way a normal relationship works: girls fucks boy pretty much whenever and however he wants.

“Dude, my wife/GF just isn’t as in to sex as I am.  She doesn’t like the kinks and weird stuff.”  Again, she just doesn’t like all that with you.  I sincerely don’t mean to be cruel, and I’m not blaming Jenny for doing what she should have done 10 years ago.  Jenny’s bad actions started with not hitting Leif again and kicking him out.

Leif’s bad actions are an encyclopedia of supplicating beta male behavior:

1. Acted like an emotional tampon for an undetermined amount of time.  Leif is the male equivalent of a poorly-skilled booty call.
2. Showed impossible over-eager beta/puppy love by asking Jenny to marry him after a few kisses.  LOL.
3. An equally impossible list of beta/comfort social skills and zero alpha skills.  I have no words.
4. Consistent servant/follower behavior, to the point where he dutifully does her housework, lets her blog as a “job,” drives her drunken self around.  I again have no words.

*

Folks, don’t read this wrong.  No one says doing sweet/loving things for your wife/GF is bad.  Doing all that for a woman who is not so in love with you that she is your own sincere porn star… is a waste.  It will only make her despise your weak beta self more and more.  The best time to rub her feet?  After you’ve smacked her ass, fucked her senseless, and finished that post-coital sandwich she made you.

Believe me, she will be utterly, completely, incorrigibly  in love with you.  Hold on there, feminists, read this next sentence:  The first step, as always, is to be the kind of person who can enjoy with her all the stuff I listed three sentences ago. That kind of cool, intuitive, collected, fit, funny, dominant alpha male who occasionally hints at a soft heart and makes good money.  Be that guy.

“I dunno man, I’m sort of nerdy and I hate working out and taking math classes.  I’m not much of a ‘dominant’ personality.”  Then stop blaming women for not having sex with you or even knowing you exist.  The problem isn’t women, the problem is you.

*

Again, I’m not blaming Jenny for doing what a normal hypergamy-infused vagina does.  I’m not blaming Leif too much, either—he bought hard into the system of Being a Nice Boy, and expected the promised rewards.  Even now he is pouring on the beta/nice to Jenny, thinking that if he tries hard enough, nothing will change.

And that is exactly what he wants to defend against:  needed life change.  He resists it to his core.  I’m not saying it’s wrong that he has an adorable family or that they should have divorced regardless, but Jesus Christ does this guy resist growing as a person.

It’s definitely not even close to being love; it’s beta supplication.

(Additional thoughts from another blogger here.)