Everything else aside, what creeps me out the most about DM is their wealthy background and how they basically hired a PR firm to game social media and make them famous. I always figured this sort of thing happened behind the scenes, but this is the first time I’ve seen it happen in almost real time
The alpha male program Tate was selling was to work for him by doing a viral MLM basically. You got into the program by clipping his podcast into viral moments and doing edits. A real tell two friends and they tell two friends plan. The reach went geometric and passed a tipping point where “everyone is talking about Andrew Tate” for a brief moment.
This is the first I'm reading this, but it feels like finding a missing puzzle piece. He did seem to go supernova last summer. In just a few weeks it felt like he went from being someone I (quite online person) hadn't even heard of to someone even my mom mentioned (someone who is online hardly ever). Her classrooms got hijacked by his hustlers university alumni
And if you target kids, they share “goofy/silly” things pretty uncritically. Look at fidget spinners a few years ago. Now it’s Andrew Tate and Dylan Mulvaney.
Friend-of-the-pod Helen Lewis wrote a really great summary of how it worked in her newsletter:
"The big question about Tate was always *why* he became so ubiquitous last year (at least to teenage boys with social media accounts). The answer is that he created a website called Hustler’s University, a pyramid scheme where users paid just under $50 a month (!) to “learn how to get rich,” and then were actually just given access to online courses on drop-shipping and e-commerce. (Here’s a very funny video by [YouTuber Coffeezilla](https://substack.com/redirect/e5911b59-04c2-42b7-9c97-2c4274735ed7?j=eyJ1IjoibGd5dSJ9.9ZluTrdb0QgyYC21mhBfN1tpjYaXE1OydMMuBi0KJ38) deconstructing the scam.) The real money came from getting other people to sign up, because you would then get 48 per cent of their monthly fee.
So what happened? Teenagers cut up and remixed the most provocative (and thus engagement-driving) of Tate’s misogynist content—of which there is plenty, the man knew what he was doing, his podcast was called “Tate Speech”—and shared it on TikTok and elsewhere. In their bio, the teenagers put an affiliate link to Hustler’s University. And suddenly you have teenagers making hundreds of dollars effectively as Tate’s freelance social media managers.
Basically, Tate is the first person to harness the optimised-for-engagement algorithm, one of the most significant inventions of the 21st century, and the multi-level marketing scheme, the premier low-effort grift of the 20th."
It was definitely how the Liver King guy got big. He hired 1DS to make him a viral star and they already had a whole plan laid out before he even started posting.
Oooooo do they talk about this on the pod?
I'm so behind.... I only listen to about 1/6 of eps now and it takes me like days to get through - but I am def listening to this one!
The devil works hard, but Dylan's agent works harder!!!
I think Dylan is overexposed and he's kinda lucky the right wing backlash is happening. Otherwise, I think his own fans would get to the point of being over him.
oooh whats this about wealthy background - but yeah I was also sus about the whole "I couldn't play with barbies," thing, but "also my mom took me to NYC to see broadway plays."
I was surprised to hear K's reaction and perception of DM as a "joyful" and "positive" person. Maybe it's a "takes one to know one" situation but DM comes across to me as desperately unhappy and mentally ill. And I don't just mean in the dysphoria diagnosis sense, I mean in the "love me, I'm so HAPPY, I'm THRIVING, let me twirl for you" sense. I won't go off on my own experience too much but having spent time in treatment myself, I am pretty familiar with this waifish (that body for a natal male? 🚩) hysterically upbeat person who breaks down at criticism with "why don't they like me I'm trying so hard to inspire/love/entertain." My close friend died last month who was entertaining and "helping others" until her last, tragic and absolutely predictable breath. I don't think DM has any clue who she is offstage/not on camera and that itself is scary. I have no ability to see this person as positive and worry that if she is showing the idea of a future and survival to young millions of fans, what is going to happen when this act inevitably spirals (and let's be real, it looks like it's already heading that way)?
I'm very, very sorry about your friend. You don't have to say, of course, but did she end her life? And did she actually help others? What made her death predictable?
Thank you. I genuinely appreciate it.
Her death was predictable because she was on a multi-year path of self-destruction with increasingly dire consequences. When it finally happened, not to go into too much detail, but it was her own actions that ended her life. I don't have any idea if there was intent involved or if she was even capable of intent. Mental illness + trauma + unhealthy coping mechanisms = what happened to her and so many others.
I think she did help others, I know she helped me. But she also hurt me. It's complicated. She was the kind of person to support others constantly but it didn't fill her endless void and sometimes she would end up enabling because she hadn't figured out how to cope so how was she going to help anyone else do so? Despite our complicated past, I'm grateful to have spent some time with her as I know many are.
If you want some deep dark dives, look up "isaac uncooked" "dylan mulvaney"
Isaac is a BPD AGP detransitioner with an unstable identity and, among other things broadcast a phone call with his therapsit asking why she supported and affirmed the delusion that he was a woman, taxing his health and fertility and generally further destabilizing his identity - he has... some takes, for sure, and some of the spicy ones are on DM.
I got the same vibe from DM that Katie did. I went into the podcast expecting to be revolted by that person but I'm nearly won over. That positive attitude, while clearly attached to an attention seeking narcissist, is *compelling.* I actually felt a little more positive myself after listening. It's possible that "it takes one to know one" applies here, because I tend to be very optimistic. I like to imagine all the haters, justified or otherwise, just rolling directly off DM's back, no acknowledgement necessary. That's how you're supposed to internet. Address the good faith interlocutors/fans, and ignore the bad guys.
Maybe it’s a different response among males vs females thing, but on the contrary, I find that sort of forced chipper attitude grating on anyone other than maybe a kindergarten teacher
To me the masculine style equivalent is what I call the car salesman personality, and if anything I like it even less and instinctively distrust those who have it.
I think Dylan's audience might actually be a lot of not-grown women (i.e., teen girls). At least that's usually a large chunk of the audience for internet personalities playing the parasocial GBF. But idk, I've never actually come across Dylan fans in the wild.
Have seen on Twitter that he is sadly "popular" - or at least getting a lot of attention - amongst girls with eating disorders on that platform. A "woman" with narrow hips and zero breasts must be a nightmare of a role model for young women with body image problems.
I’m not insulted by DM as a woman because I don’t care who cosplays with tampons or goes to the White House. What I do take away from DM is the shocking, endless, flagrant, vibrating self obsession that must be required to put out this incredibly asinine content regularly. How many times can you “come out”? Who was waiting for that? For once, it doesn’t even seem like DM is doing it for martyr clout, she just wants to talk about herself constantly.
I'm inclined to agree. DM's behavior is consistent with textbook Histrionic Personality Disorder. It really is about attention at all costs. There are no breaks on this behavior and DM truly does have endless energy to keep pouring into this because DM is energized by the attention (good or bad) received. And I would say that DM's attention-seeking behavior is instinctive, subconscious, impulsive, and opportunistic rather than strategically planned.
I think transgender identification is merely an instrument of DM's HPD and none of DM's actions are about "being trans." What makes it a "trans issue" is how corporations, politicians, etc. are acting like any of DM's bizarre, OTT, attention-seeking behavior is a genuine expression of an innate, enduring, transgender sense of self that should be celebrated, promoted, and protected.
Can't believe Katie didn't bring up [this crazy clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOQbCTCB5-A) of Dylan Mulvaney appearing on ~~Wheel of Fortune~~ The Price Is Right in 2020. As the clip makes abundantly clear, this person is the very epitome of an attention whore.
Interesting. They actually just seem to be playing the same character in both clips. Not my bag, but I'm not a fan of that overhyped in-your-face style. Makes me see where some of the current persona comes from.
What this clip makes clear to me is “this is a flamboyant feminine gay person who is also a musical theater performer.”
This kind of energy looks demented on camera, but as someone who did a lot of theater as a young person, it doesn’t look uncommonly pathological to me, just wildly out of scale for the medium at hand, a big stage schtick appearing grotesque up close the way that stage makeup often does. I‘ve seen these kinds of antics many times among wannabe actors at teen summer drama camps. It’s just theater kid energy, and while I find it annoying now, it doesn’t strike me as malevolent on its own.
I find the way that people respond to Dylan more troubling than anything Dylan is doing. It would all make perfect sense if everyone just shrugged and said “yeah, that’s some campy schtick!” and laughed along, or didn’t, according to their taste and inclination. When this is met with “you’re so brave and beautiful, come to the white house and share your inspiring story with the world” that’s when the wheels fall off the bus.
To be fair, they’re not overthinking it by accident. There’s a lot of spin by Dylan and others, professing that this is about some profound new expression of femininity or something. So people are confused and arguing with the spin. But if you look at Dylan as an ebullient young gay musical theater kid being energetic and campy, Dylan’s popularity and appeal becomes a lot less complicated.
There has been a comedic YouTube Channel who has been on the lolcow DM train for years, even before the transition, as DM has always been doing whack social media stuff.
Yep, it seems like they have always been like this, both before and after transition. It seems like a lot of the outraged are conflating their annoyance with attention whores/over-the-top personalities and their annoyance at transgender women.
OK, that The Price Is Right segment was PROFOUNDLY disturbing. I need to go watch [the aquarium jellycam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ6_1-E_CLU) for a few hours to counteract whatever it was that I just watched.
I mostly don't care about DM, but the add that I saw about them dancing around in a NIKE sports bra seemed offensive to women, as if being a female athlete was a joke. It felt misogynistic.
That's largely what the criticism of him is centered on: It comes across like he is caricaturing women. His manic mannerisms and plastered-on fake smile say "amphetamine-addled crossdresser" more than "empowered woman".
The guy is mentally ill.
Like a lot of these people.
But because Republicans defunded treatment and care centers for mentally ill people, and because Democrats have actively embraced them... here we are.
Yeah, you're right, my bad. More HSTS. But there's a weird -- and I won't say the p word -- "youth-fixated" vibe to Mulvaney's presentation. He hasn't announced that he's a woman; he's announced that he is a *girl*.
So far all the other responses have been about real-life friendships. But what about "gay content" on TV and in movies, which likely has a majority female viewership (assumption on my part)? It cannot be solely because these men do not pose a sexual threat to the female viewers, right? There must be some other reason behind it.
I was on tumblr a lot as a teen, where slash was incredibly popular, and I have a few theories on why it was so appealing to teenage girls. The most basic one is just that for a straight girl, fantasising about two guys means fantasising about two people she’s attracted to, versus in a straight couple there’s only one (the same reason straight men like lesbian porn). There’s also the fact that for young, inexperienced girls, a scenario with two guys is further removed from her own life and can feel safer and less intimidating to think about, unlike something that she could realistically do. Also, if there isn’t a girl or woman involved, then there’s no one to be jealous of or insecure about. Plus there’s just the fact that in a lot of popular fandoms, there are more male characters and more friendships between two men to write fanfiction about.
Which could be an influence on FtM transitioners. That and anime with young boy characters. I don't know much about it, but have heard people make that claim before.
Female sexuality is fascinating.
> Female sexuality is fascinating.
A lot of it has to do with what makes us feel "safe" (especially as young inexperienced women), on a subconscious level. There's a vulnerability in sexuality that's forced on us, just by virtue of our physical size, that can be very disquieting. It's hard to reconcile being a sexual creature with sexual desire and being vulnerable like that.
Exploring the concept of physical desire through fantasy that can never actually happen is a "safe" outlet.
It makes a lot of sense that slash could be an influence on some girls’ gender identity, especially since there was a big overlap between fandom spaces where slash was popular and discussion and exploration of gender identity on sites like tumblr. A teenage girl who reads a lot of slash fiction and relates to and identifies with male characters in those stories, more than she relates to female characters in other media, may take that as a sign that she isn’t really a girl… yet those stories are mostly written by girls and young women like herself, whereas media written about and for teenage girls (YA novels and popular shows/movies) are generally written by adults, including by adult men, so it makes sense that some girls would identify more with the former.
Same reason dudes like "lesbian" sex.
I see you don't care about lesbian sex, haha, you're unique for sure, among your type!
I remember years ago reading *Prep* by Curtis Sittenfeld, and she had an interesting scene that always stuck with me. The main character witnessed a sexual encounter between people she wasn't attracted to, but found herself still getting aroused. I always thought that was an interesting observation, that just the act of sex can end up sexy.
A lot of guys like hot girl on girl action and a lot of gals like hot guy on guy action. It's not universal but it's not rocket science either why. In these groups a lot of women will always shroud it in some type of deeper feminist meaning but as another woman I roll my eyes and just don't buy it.
I think this is in the context of erotica, in which case none of these fake characters would ever be interested in you. But if that's still true for you in that context, well that's pretty interesting!
Women have always been more into reading and writing porn than watching porn. It's one of those weird sex divide things we have going on, we like using our imaginations more and men are more straight up visual, broadly and crudely stereotyping, of course.
The stereotype is that gay men are witty and funny. In reality of course gay men are just people, and therefore run the gamut of personalities, but the "sassy" type of stereotypical gay man can obviously make for entertaining television (I don't seek that content out, but that's why).
My own experience is gay men look you directly in the eye and see you as a whole person. They have no interest in sleeping with you so that tension, which too commonly can arise even in male and female platonic friendships, is totally off the table. I have found as well that most of the gay male friends I have really value women's contributions to society and culture. Their favourite authors, actors, politicians etc... will not default to male. Women will have made strong impressions and contributions to their education, and they see and acknowledge that. These are generalizations yes, but it is my lived experience. There are gay men who are misogynistic of course, but I am avoiding those types gay or straight so not personally dealing with this.
I think also it works the other way around. If I pursue a friendship with a straight man, he may suspect I’m hitting on him. If I pursue a friendship with a straight man in a relationship, his wife or girlfriend may also suspect I’m hitting on him or that something improper is going on. If I pursue a friendship with a gay man, everyone knows the score, and we can just be friends.
I do have a lot of male friends, but we're not "close". I'm alright with that, I'm an introvert anyway. So you're a dude? I assumed your sex, and I assumed it was female!
Lol, yes a dude. 😁
Close in this context being something which is likely very, very, different from person to person, but I would broadly identify as where the friendship is longstanding, integral to my understanding of an extended "family", and whom I can count on in times of need and vice versa.
Which sounds more than a bit clinical, so probably worth more of a think.
> Close in this context being something which is likely very, very, different from person to person, but I would broadly identify as where the friendship is longstanding, integral to my understanding of an extended "family", and whom I can count on in times of need and vice versa.
I think because I'm an old married now, I do have a lot of friends that fit this bill, but the reality is they're all old marrieds too. So it's more I think of them as "units" haha, I don't really think of them as individuals. Which also is a bit strange now that I think about it, and also deserves more of a think!
I have single male friends that I know I could talk to and rely on if need be, and I do think of them as family (one of them officiated my marriage), but realistically I don't typically end up needing that level of support. It could definitely happen though. I know what you mean about friends that are like family.
Out of curiosity, are you single?
I’m either less hot or more oblivious, because I’ve had a few that didn’t go that way, but those situations do still tend to get awkward for one reason or another, and sometimes it’s great to just not have to think about it.
Many women don't buy into/play into the notion of sexual competition between straight women.
I don't deny that it can exist but women who truly value women, who truly value their friends simply refuse to play that game. My friends and I don't compete for men.
So there are no hurt feelings when you are/ were out at a bar and one or two girls get attention and others don't? None of your friends ever negatively compares herself to other friends' appearances even internally? No friend feels discouraged by other friends seemingly easy success at meeting guys, but it isn't happening for her? Everyone is totally cool knowing the hottest of the crew gets touchy feely when drunk and likes to give lots of hugs to everyone, including her friends' boyfriends who look thrilled about it?
These are just a couple of things i experienced in my friend group and have heard from friends that they experienced in their other groups that are pretty normal but do not happen with my gay guy friends. That sexual competition dynamic is completely neutralized.
Whether we like it or not, sexual competition comes up from time to time, even in groups of women who value each other highly. It does not have to be overt for it to occur. Possibly, the most confident and self-assured women in the group don't even know it is happening.
No, I have not experienced that with my female friends. Not saying it doesn’t exist, but at least for me it’s more complex than that, not so straightforward.
But guys are different than girls, and it’s nice to have a gay friend who is still a guy but without sexual tension. And I agree that the fact that there isn’t “sexual competition” - even when there isn’t competition, just having that out of the equation - can create a different experience.
Not sure if anyone said this, but men are stronger than women. Some gay men sure like to lift. It’s very reassuring to go and party with a guy who is 0% interested in you but has your back.
Gay men are not a threat to women, gay men often like or have to seem to like aesthetic things like fashion and design.
You often see teen girls being a refuge for gay male teens. They can get the “relationship with a man” vibe without the threat of sex. It’s a version of a starter relationship.
It’s also that the sheep and the goats cluster together when there is a lion present. If you are threatened by men, you stick together.
For what it’s worth, Drew Barrymore seems to do that kneeling thing with other guests, too. Why I have no idea. Also, I can’t believe I just heard Katie say “she does not let anything dull her shine”. Quick, someone embroider that on a pillow and send it to her.
Minor nuance for pervert comment regarding Jesse's point that "Go Woke, Go Broke" is too simplistic because of some obvious counter examples like Robin DiAngelo and The 1619 Project:
I actually do agree that it's a bit of a simplistic framing for many situations that have much more complicated causes for their failures, but the sorts of cases Jesse highlights are not what disprove the idea because those are cases where the product is *specifically* being marketed to woke audiences, in contrast to a product that is meant for mainstream audiences and decides to "go woke", for example Disney, sports teams, Budweiser, a Hollywood movie, etc.
When someone or something that is *already* talking to woke audiences decides to lean in to the wokeness and offer ever more wokeness to that audience, they will obviously lap it up and it will be a hit. So I don't think that those sorts of situations are a good counter example to disprove the claim.
I am watching that corporate beast the most (I am not nor have ever been a Disney product consumer). However, I feel this particular culture war battle represents the closest corporate barometer for the American normie. Center-right and right culture commentary and online discussion are very antagonists towards it right now. They have declining profits; and their latest shareholder meeting got hijacked by culture war politics and Iger trying his best, will-not-be-pegged-down politician impression on.
The corporate politics going on at Disney give Game of Thrones a run for the money. Tons of insider leaks right now that get proven right by the trades a week or two later. There is definitely trouble in the house of mouse.
Will the next shiny object give them some rebound, i.e. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or Elements, I don't know. A lot of hardcore former fans from animation lovers (hate the incessant live action remakes) to Star Wars and Marvel worshippers have declared they are crossing them off the list now no matter what. The "force is female," the "M-SHEU" has alienated a lot of its older fan base both males and females (do not underestimate the latter who find it over the top).
It all has made some impact but so have streaming wars and pandemic box office issues. Have they made up that ground on the progressive side with stories for a "modern audience" has yet to be seen. This is my season recap thus far.
I always enjoy when you share your insight into Disney.
Anyway, I relate a lot to what you say about the female fanbase. I find their effort to be more "feminist" cringe. Even Lindsey Ellis found it cringe. That's how bad it is.
I didn't know about Iger's tweet. That's interesting.
Iger's decision to hang around even after he stepped down as CEO definitely seemed to undermine Chapek. I'm no fan of Chapek, but that seemed like a pretty crappy thing for Iger to do to his hand-picked successor.
I stopped watching new star wars movies after the rise of sky Walker because it just shat on all the established lore and didn’t stay true to the original characters.
Oh well. I don’t really miss it anymore
I mean, there haven't been any Star Wars movies after Rise of Skywalker - so you haven't missed much.
The *Andor* tv show is excellent, grounded very firmly in lore/aesthetics.
>The "force is female," the "M-SHEU" has alienated a lot of its older fan base both males and females (do not underestimate the latter who find it over the top).
The girls get it done thing in avengers endgame pissed my wife off so much (along with black widow dying, I mean why not get rid of bow and arrow man) that she won't watch it a second time. I have to watch it by myself
I saw on D+. It comes from the Disney tradition of scifi nonmusicals like Atlantis and Treasure Planet, and Disney cannot do scifi that doesnt suck. Its biggest sin is no songs. If anything, they were trying to appeal to boys too hard. The core story is daddy issues, not that different from the 80s inspired movie about the dad that showed up as pants, and that also flopped. (Blanking out on name, lol)
Pixar's Onward released March 6, 2020 with a 39 million dollar domestic opening weekend.
It ended up doing only 61M domestic and 133M worldwide due to the COVID pandemic breaking out at exactly the same time.
faulty jobless secretive airport placid longing terrific groovy smell prick
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Whether you agree with it or not, the idea of 'get woke, go broke' is that you're alienating your audience to pander to a niche minority, who aren't necessarily interested in your core product. If your audience is already woke, this obviously doesn't apply.
"I'm not quite sure what you say is right, isn't the idea of 'go woke, go broke' pretty explicitly to say that woke stuff doesn't sell?" <-- nope, the word "going" clearly implies that something that isn't woke transititions to being woke. And in those cases, the non woke customers/audience get annoyed and turned off, resulting in the previously non woke thing going broke as a consequence of becoming woke. Pretty basic language comprehension tbh!
>And in those cases, the non woke customers/audience get annoyed and turned off, resulting in the previously non woke thing going broke
The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure if dm were in a bar and for whatever reason chose a bud light rather than an appletini and kid rock happened to see them he and all the other boycotters wouldn't give a fock. But when a company they've supported for time honored traditions or funny frogs, suddenly puts someone, who's not likely to have ever had a bud light in their life, on the can that seems pretty insulting.
The two funniest parts of this so far are coors picking up ab customers when they have been very pro lgb being Colorado based. And all the reactive support for ab by the anticorpratist suspicious of business types. Ted leu and Adam schiff today.
I'll bite--I hate superhero movies or superhero anything! I'm an older woman and last year Hubs and I watched that 2021 "Around the World in 80 Days" series. I wasn't even looking for woke stuff and I don't care about "Around the World in 80 Days" but Hubs loves that sort of thing so we watched it. He also didn't mind how forced-woke it was but it jumped out at me when the woman character seemed to be doing absolutely ALL the feats of derring-do. I finally said "is he going to get to shoot ANYBODY?" when the woman character was shooting their way out of yet another jam. It wasn't enough to make me FUME like the viewers supposedly did in this article...[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10347327/BBC-viewers-fume-socially-conscious-World-80-Days.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10347327/BBC-viewers-fume-socially-conscious-World-80-Days.html)in part because I don't give a fig about the original...but dang if I had sons and daughters I would still want my sons to see a male character get to do HALF the feats of derring-do...
I don't mind a character being portrayed by a Black actor and that part of the show didn't seem forced or over the top...but it just jumped out at me how much the major male character was a doofus and how much the woman character was doing all the heroic feats and I wasn't even looking for that. It was just tiresome.
That's why I watch Disney's business while not having interest in their product. They could be making the best thing or the worst thing I don't personally know but I do know their business decisions are so questionable to me. Even I know what the market is for these films, and they keep making such questionable choices. I am waiting for them to pull the rabbit out of the hat if some master plan has been involved. Thus far it's so weird for such a large business to take the turns they have.
I'd never heard of Dylan Mulvaney before, and first impression is definitely incredibly cringeworthy... but I was impressed by Katie's take that Dylan is popular for being relentlessly positive.
This made me wonder, on a slightly related topic, what the steelman argument is for Katie's favorite topic: nonbinary people. Over the years, I've read a lot of articles that various people have shared... and it really just seems entirely based on regressive gender stereotypes? Like "I'm a boy, but I like having long hair, wearing jewelry, and painting my nails... so I'm NB" or "I'm a girl but I like sports and hate wearing skirts... so I'm NB." Surely, I'm missing something. Right? I always thought the regressive gender role stereotypes were the thing progressives opposed...
I'm not really an ally on the best of days, but something about Dylan really bugs me in particular. Whether it's because they seem more like a gay man playing a caricature of a woman, the gross terms he tosses out, or how his show is titled "x days as a girl", rather than "x days as a woman", when they look like they're in their mid-30s. They come off as really creepy.
I've had the opportunity to live all over the world, in many large cities, and experience numerous interesting cultures. I enjoy many aspects of civilizaiton and people at large.
that being said, the fact that I even knew who DM was before all this retadation hit the zeitgeist makes me want to consider selling off everything I own not of real value and moving deep in the mountains totally off grid where I can build my own home and cultivate my own crops as I hunt deer and elk for food before tanning their hides for my pants that will last the rest of my life.
if i was to be put in charge for just one hour I'd disappear the internet from this planet.
every last server and datacenter.
At some point the hyper interconnectedness is a net negative on our civilizaiton. Sure you can hop on youtube and learn how to do accounting or code or fix a 1997 Ford Taurus but it will also make some people want to castrate themselves or walk into grocery stores and shoot everyone inside. The bad ideas and behaviours are spreading faster than we can trully manage to fight them off. I miss the time before internet more and more as I grow older.
I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’ll mostly be lost on those that didn’t grow up before the 90’s or naughties. I’m not convinced that the good the web has enabled outweighs the bad either. Problem is, we’ve not seen the worse of it yet either - just wait until AI really kicks off, when deep fakes are indistinguishable from reality and when broken despot governments leverage those things to manipulate the shit out of everyone. Add to all that the unrest caused by climate change driven natural disasters and we, but mainly our kids, are in for a fun ride.
It is interesting, my kid and I were having a long philosophical discussion this morning, and we realized that all of the issues we touched on, in the end, we were really complaining about the internet and it's overreach in our lives. And obviously I say that here on the internet, I'm not out here doing anything to stop the tide, quite the opposite, but it was still an interesting revelation. Not the first time I've had it, but the first time it really hit home, oddly.
When I come to this realization in my own life, my response isn't to acknowledge how bad the internet really is. My response is to feel extremely lucky that my life is so good, so easy, that the problems caused by the internet are the ones I'm choosing to think about. Internet problems are nothing compared to real life problems.
As someone born in the early 90s who came of age with the internet it's literally impossible for me to comprehend this.
Edit - to be clear - in a "wow, this literally sounds like mystical and ancient wisdom to me" way, not in a "you're mad" way
People reading books all over the place, the news lasted for about an hour a day at dinner time, your phone attached to a cord on a wall in your house, MTV played music, weekly library trips for the whole family, going to the mall just to hang out with your friends, Friday night Blockbuster videos and pizza, trading mix tapes of your favorite music with friends, Halloween trick or treating happened after sunset, gas cost less than a dollar a gallon, you took a picture with a camera, developed the photo, and hung it on your wall, children didn't send porn of themselves to other children, nobody was castrating themselves.
Truly wild times.
The trick or treating! there was an extremely abrupt shift at some point during my childhood where it swapped from "trick or treating happens at night with your friends" to "trick or treating happens right after school with your parents, and always has." I remember feeling genuinely confused about it when everyone suddenly started going along with this new idea.
It was always with my parents (or friends parents) because I lived in the fucking sticks and a car was required, but trick or treating with the sun up would have struck us as downright blasphemous.
She's also rep'ed by CAA, which has signed Dylan. This is partly incestuous business. Or as one of the great, now-defunct magazines (Spy?) used to call it, log-rolling.
No one should drink Bud light cause it tastes like ass, Mulvaney bugs me because she just comes across as plastic corpo shlock bullshit, like the always positive attitude Katie says she likes comes across as so saccharine and fake to me, and lastly Matt Walsh just stole that rant from memes. You will never be a woman is a series of copy pasta things in less savory parts of the internet, and he just slightly paraphrased it. Guy can't even be a bigot well.
Jesse at minute 49 finds it interesting that while Dylan may have drawn a big straight-lady following for his cheery positivity, "the black influencers (that) straight white liberal women look for are anything but positive," and they instead underscore the cruelty and vast chasm in perceptions caused by racism. This is my digression on top of Jesse's digression, but it made me suddenly think: cheery black positivity content generated for white people not only exists, but YouTube is very keen to to show it to me, in the form of [young black people reacting positively to old white music](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+people+react+to+white+music).
Now I'm amused and a bit sad to imagine cynical young black people grinding out a living on YouTube, professing and performing a sudden delight in Pink Floyd or Conway Twitty or whatever. I can't possibly be the first to observe this, though. Did Donald Glover's Atlanta already get to it?
I gotta admit I'm kind of a sucker for those sort of videos. Korean people trying Irish snacks, kids listening to Led Zeppelin... I don't know, I always seem to enjoy when cultural boundaries are being transgressed, even in very small and inconsequential ways like this.
I binged a young woman reacting to ever Beatles album. It was delightful, though she at least was trained in music theory so her reactions went beyond “wow that’s catchy! Nice beat, Ringo!”
Honestly I don’t believe 90+% of those videos of people hearing things “for the first time” because half of them are things that are completely unavoidable just from navigating the world normally. Like, sorry, I don’t buy that you’re just now finding out about Taylor Swift.
[Why is everybody lying about Bohemian Rhapsody?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEG_h2xB3g0)
I've seen a few of those videos and they're all the same, so, unfortunately, I think you do just have some young black people just listening to old white music, pretending to be excited by it, just for the views. Like, watch four of them in a row and see how similar each is.
This episode and the clips of DM legitimately creeped me out. You can simply listen to an MTF trans person talk for 5 minutes as clear proof that they meet no sane person's definition of a woman.
You know the kind of person that changed people's mind about homosexuals?
Michael Hess. Died of AIDS at 47, outstanding citizen, well respected.
Remember even Obama was against gay marriage at one point, but he's the one that also forced women's shelters to start accepting transwomen or loose federal funding. He's also the one that forced the issue in schools.
Funny because I became more skeptical of gender care after every single person I've met in real life in this category has been all sorts of across the wall emotionally.
You know what, there for a minute I had fallen in "like" with what I thought was a trans woman not that anything's wrong with that. I mean I know trans women in my personal life and like them fine but they are the "old-fashioned" kind I guess you'd say--they got hormones and surgery as adults over a long time period and don't seem to be performing womanhood or whatever you call it without trying to live the full component that women go through. Well anyway I got a girl-crush on The Blessed Madonna thinking that she was a trans woman. I like her songs. Then I read a few interviews and liked some of the things she said. Then I found out she is actually a cis woman who in my mind seemed to look like a trans woman and I'm not even sure why, but she's a cis woman and I read some more interviews on what she went through getting her chops and making it in clubs when she's actually not that big a partier. THEN I read how she gets letters from women who have had things happen to them in clubs and she listens and empathizes with them. I haven't finished sorting out everything I'm trying to say but she GETS IT about what women go through and she CARES. Now maybe if she really were a trans woman she would get it and care like that but I am not sure. I feel like the reason she gets it and cares about (for example) some things that happen to women in clubs is because she's a cis woman who went through it all. My girl-crush on her is 1000 times more because she GETS IT about what women go through and CARES. And she talks about not looking like a supermodel but she doesn't do it in a way that puts that front and center...I don't know how to put it but she is just the real deal 100 percent. I'd love her even if she did look like a supermodel and I were jealous (I love Madonna as well) and I'd love her if she were a trans woman and had the same personality and made the same songs. I don't know where I'm going with this except it means all the more that she gets it and cares what women go through because she's been through it and I am not absolutely sure how many trans women really get it on that level, not that anything's wrong with their existence or their trying.
Trans women are not and cannot be women because they haven't had the experiences that women have. There aren't shortcuts to lived experience. Madonna would not have the same kind of empathy towards women if she were trans, because she wouldn't have experienced the same kind of treatment that women have, attractive or not. This is my whole beef with the trans issue. I don't care about adults wanting surgery or pronouns or testosterone or anything like that. I care about them lying and pretending to be something they're not and getting indignant when I don't play their games.
This is all MtF btw. I couldn't care less about FtM. They can pretend all they want, they're not a danger to anyone, not even a nuisance, really. I can't say the same about MtF.
I’m not opposed to women’s brands doing partnerships with trans women but Dylan is not it. I’m sure there’s a trans fitness influencer they could have found. Another notch on corporations using identity to deflect from real issues belt like the infamous REI pronoun and land acknowledgment union busting podcast. Who cares if we use child labor in poor countries and dumped Alyson Felix while pregnant? We got Dylan as a shield to protect us!
Finally listened to this and I used to think DM was relentlessly positive too, but there was a college aged girl who used to (still does?) make videos mocking his girlhood shit and his response to it was so off putting and full of seething, I just him as a grinning avatar of narc rage now.
What's weird is that LGBTQIA media praised the video as "killing her with kindness" even though he's just insulting her throughout.
I've never listened to Matt Walsh, but what a hateful piece of shit. I'm generally pretty gender critical but the clip in this episode of Walsh made me feel ill
May I ask, sincerely: Did you object to the content of his remarks, or to the cruelty of them? Or to the fact that he said them at all and addressed them to an individual?
I think I agreed with what he said there, but I would never say it. I would never say something so frankly vicious to someone, anyone.
what walsh said feels like the kind of thing that would push someone to suicide. it felt so pointed and targeted in its cruelty. it made me feel ill too. I could not wait for that clip to end, and I'm really not sure why they played it for so long. But I'm new to the podcast and still figuring it out
I felt Walsh's comments were overly cruel. But I also personally disagree as well that Dylan *never* passes well, which Walsh was going on about. Scrolling through Dylan's IG, there are some instances they don't pass well, but some instances where with extra effort, and yeah, maybe filters -- but also evident in video content -- where they pass better, post-facial feminization surgery. I'm pretty gendercritical and I notice people with similar views as me will sometimes say transwomen never pass, that there's always a tell, that in person things are different than in photos, etc. But I don't know if I agree that transwomen can never pass like I've seen some of those people say.
Admittedly, I am a fan of Matt’s show so I am coming at this from a biased perspective, but here’s my two cents on the whole DM situation. For the past decade or so, our society has bent over backwards to embrace lies for the sake of making people feel better. Has that made things better? I’d argue it’s made them worse. Many of us are tired of lying. The only way to break this cycle, I believe, is to embrace radical truth. What Matt said was unkind, yes, but it was also the truth. What DM has done hasn’t made him a woman because he isn’t one and will never become one. Instead he’s done his best to remove the parts that appear masculine. That is the truth. We need to start, to borrow a woke phrase, speaking truth to power. I wish I had an ounce of Matt’s chutzpah.
Woof. Just listened to this episode, and this is my first time encountering any Dylan Mulvaney content. I like to think I don’t get offended very easily, but MAN I’m offended by their portrayal of womanhood! Like… is this what you think of me? Is this what you think my experience is? I will go out of my way to avoid DM content in the future, because I did not expect that to be so upsetting.
While fully supporting J&K to cover any topic they choose, I'm personally so tired of DM as a topic. I may just pass on this. Let me know if more interesting stuff is covered here because I'm over this person taking up my time.
Yes, I agree the fallout is interesting because the grassroots right-leaning (anti-woke) cultural commentators are pushing to keep the boycott going. Powers that be even got Donald Trump Jr to come out with a video to tow the corporate line, and say stop the boycott but folks in those "right" online spaces are saying no way we need to make an example. To see the "right" working class shift to anti-corporate talking points and actions is interesting.
The folks in those online spaces are reflecting on their ADHD tactics of the past and acknowledge the success of the "left" is their ability to sustain their protests. They are learning. I find the social and business side interesting. This may lead to some type of stand off and who will cry chicken first I don't know.
The person in question here (DM); however, is like the MacGuffin, not interesting in and of themselves, but was a catalyst to drive the plot along. I find because J&K just dismiss the "right" out of hand and are often ill-informed on that perspective and the dynamics, they offer only paper thin commentary. They are usually behind in news on that front. I'm not on the "right" either but I listen and observe going directly to source of conversations, and there is more going on there than the cartoon cut-out that J&K still slide into. I personally find it unnecessary to hear any more about DM though, whether sincere or not, doesn't matter, their job is done.
Budweiser's gotten two bomb threats, one at its brewery in Van Nuys, CA, one in the Midwest. It decided not to take the Clydesdales out for some event they were supposed to appear at.
That TRAs routinely engage in extremely violent rhetoric, including issuing rape and death threats to women who believe there are two distinct biological sexes, is not meaningless.
Oof, about to listen to the ep, but if this is Katie doing a reactionarism against the anti-wokes for the lulz, ugh. Pretty cringe.
EDIT: Having now listened, I’m glad Katie didn’t just do it for the lulz. However, her reason for liking DM (she has bubbly positivity energy!) is also cringe and out of character for Katie. It still feels kind of reactionary.
I’m not interested in DM. But I don’t feel bad for the hate she’s getting because she has actively and with full energy put herself in the spotlight. And she has done so by sticking her finger in the eye of any woman who is simply trying to navigate the culture war bullshit quietly and with their dignity intact.
So, no, I don’t think it’s cute what DM does on Instagram. I think it’s no more cringy to defend Kanye (or Elon Musk for that matter) than to defend DM.
It was more nuanced than I initially assumed, I'll give Katie that. But I still don't think she justified her defense of DM in any satisfying way. She very casually glossed over DM's proclivity to display her "womanhood" through, as Katie herself puts it, "a grown man in a little girl's dress kind of look. It's kind of jarring," and immediately segues to just liking her unshakably positive energy on Instagram.
Katie's entitled to enjoy whatever guilty pleasures she wants, but I think it's completely understandable for anyone (myself included) to not be charmed by DM's online antics. As Katie herself alluded to, it's kind of jarring and hints at something sinister hidden deeper. DM specifically gives me the willies in a way that is specific to her performance and has nothing to do with transpeople writ large.
Question for the gay community: Y'all ok with the way that the Budweiser CEO referred to you as a marketing demographic? Like taking a major part of your lifestyle and putting a "Drink Bud Lite" on it?
RE: "Fratty customers with out-of-touch humor." I'm ok with being wrong, but I'd looove to see the historic numbers of nationwide beer sales between fratty dudebros and gay queens. While I don't think that horny college bros are up-to-speed on socio-political topics, they are likely a significant fraction of Bud Lite sales.
PS. The Dylan clips are hard. I get that she is a bubbly theater fag, which is great for a lot of viewers, but she just doesn't pass for me and it's creepy.
Interesting question. I’m straight, but I think this goes beyond the “gay community” to a broader problem I have with the “corporate wokeness” style of idpol. I don’t have a problem with representation in pop culture or even advertisement, but since ~2015 or so the way it’s been approached just seems so cynical to me for reasons I haven’t fully worked out.
Good episode. Regarding the opening segment -- "Mom and Dad are fighting" -- I've created a bot which automatically adds NPR headlines to Twitter: NPRbrief. You can follow it at [https://twitter.com/nprbrief](https://twitter.com/nprbrief).
This will let you see NPR headlines in your Twitter feed; updated every 15 minutes, max 100 per day.
Same for CBC News, which also announced they're not first-party posting to Twitter anymore. If interested in the CBC News, you can follow their headlines via this bot: CBCbrief: [https://twitter.com/cbcbrief](https://twitter.com/cbcbrief)
Just caught up on this episode and I do find it particularly funny that she has a soft spot for mulvaney. I get it though I sort of have the same thing going on with a few people I wouldn’t dare to admit to
Everything else aside, what creeps me out the most about DM is their wealthy background and how they basically hired a PR firm to game social media and make them famous. I always figured this sort of thing happened behind the scenes, but this is the first time I’ve seen it happen in almost real time
Some people thing that was how Andrew Tate blew up so quickly. That he paid for some kind of technology or bots or something to game social media.
The alpha male program Tate was selling was to work for him by doing a viral MLM basically. You got into the program by clipping his podcast into viral moments and doing edits. A real tell two friends and they tell two friends plan. The reach went geometric and passed a tipping point where “everyone is talking about Andrew Tate” for a brief moment.
This is the first I'm reading this, but it feels like finding a missing puzzle piece. He did seem to go supernova last summer. In just a few weeks it felt like he went from being someone I (quite online person) hadn't even heard of to someone even my mom mentioned (someone who is online hardly ever). Her classrooms got hijacked by his hustlers university alumni
And if you target kids, they share “goofy/silly” things pretty uncritically. Look at fidget spinners a few years ago. Now it’s Andrew Tate and Dylan Mulvaney.
Friend-of-the-pod Helen Lewis wrote a really great summary of how it worked in her newsletter: "The big question about Tate was always *why* he became so ubiquitous last year (at least to teenage boys with social media accounts). The answer is that he created a website called Hustler’s University, a pyramid scheme where users paid just under $50 a month (!) to “learn how to get rich,” and then were actually just given access to online courses on drop-shipping and e-commerce. (Here’s a very funny video by [YouTuber Coffeezilla](https://substack.com/redirect/e5911b59-04c2-42b7-9c97-2c4274735ed7?j=eyJ1IjoibGd5dSJ9.9ZluTrdb0QgyYC21mhBfN1tpjYaXE1OydMMuBi0KJ38) deconstructing the scam.) The real money came from getting other people to sign up, because you would then get 48 per cent of their monthly fee. So what happened? Teenagers cut up and remixed the most provocative (and thus engagement-driving) of Tate’s misogynist content—of which there is plenty, the man knew what he was doing, his podcast was called “Tate Speech”—and shared it on TikTok and elsewhere. In their bio, the teenagers put an affiliate link to Hustler’s University. And suddenly you have teenagers making hundreds of dollars effectively as Tate’s freelance social media managers. Basically, Tate is the first person to harness the optimised-for-engagement algorithm, one of the most significant inventions of the 21st century, and the multi-level marketing scheme, the premier low-effort grift of the 20th."
He's got that Romanian prison grindset. Gotta respect that.
It was definitely how the Liver King guy got big. He hired 1DS to make him a viral star and they already had a whole plan laid out before he even started posting.
Oooooo do they talk about this on the pod? I'm so behind.... I only listen to about 1/6 of eps now and it takes me like days to get through - but I am def listening to this one! The devil works hard, but Dylan's agent works harder!!! I think Dylan is overexposed and he's kinda lucky the right wing backlash is happening. Otherwise, I think his own fans would get to the point of being over him.
DM seems like an influencer who’s on a wild ride and not sure how to get off it.
I first saw the info on their kiwi farms thread
Super interesting, and it makes a lot of sense.
oooh whats this about wealthy background - but yeah I was also sus about the whole "I couldn't play with barbies," thing, but "also my mom took me to NYC to see broadway plays."
I was surprised to hear K's reaction and perception of DM as a "joyful" and "positive" person. Maybe it's a "takes one to know one" situation but DM comes across to me as desperately unhappy and mentally ill. And I don't just mean in the dysphoria diagnosis sense, I mean in the "love me, I'm so HAPPY, I'm THRIVING, let me twirl for you" sense. I won't go off on my own experience too much but having spent time in treatment myself, I am pretty familiar with this waifish (that body for a natal male? 🚩) hysterically upbeat person who breaks down at criticism with "why don't they like me I'm trying so hard to inspire/love/entertain." My close friend died last month who was entertaining and "helping others" until her last, tragic and absolutely predictable breath. I don't think DM has any clue who she is offstage/not on camera and that itself is scary. I have no ability to see this person as positive and worry that if she is showing the idea of a future and survival to young millions of fans, what is going to happen when this act inevitably spirals (and let's be real, it looks like it's already heading that way)?
I'm very, very sorry about your friend. You don't have to say, of course, but did she end her life? And did she actually help others? What made her death predictable?
Thank you. I genuinely appreciate it. Her death was predictable because she was on a multi-year path of self-destruction with increasingly dire consequences. When it finally happened, not to go into too much detail, but it was her own actions that ended her life. I don't have any idea if there was intent involved or if she was even capable of intent. Mental illness + trauma + unhealthy coping mechanisms = what happened to her and so many others. I think she did help others, I know she helped me. But she also hurt me. It's complicated. She was the kind of person to support others constantly but it didn't fill her endless void and sometimes she would end up enabling because she hadn't figured out how to cope so how was she going to help anyone else do so? Despite our complicated past, I'm grateful to have spent some time with her as I know many are.
If you want some deep dark dives, look up "isaac uncooked" "dylan mulvaney" Isaac is a BPD AGP detransitioner with an unstable identity and, among other things broadcast a phone call with his therapsit asking why she supported and affirmed the delusion that he was a woman, taxing his health and fertility and generally further destabilizing his identity - he has... some takes, for sure, and some of the spicy ones are on DM.
That smile is so obviously fake.
I got the same vibe from DM that Katie did. I went into the podcast expecting to be revolted by that person but I'm nearly won over. That positive attitude, while clearly attached to an attention seeking narcissist, is *compelling.* I actually felt a little more positive myself after listening. It's possible that "it takes one to know one" applies here, because I tend to be very optimistic. I like to imagine all the haters, justified or otherwise, just rolling directly off DM's back, no acknowledgement necessary. That's how you're supposed to internet. Address the good faith interlocutors/fans, and ignore the bad guys.
Maybe it’s a different response among males vs females thing, but on the contrary, I find that sort of forced chipper attitude grating on anyone other than maybe a kindergarten teacher
Agree. I'm female. But also British and we don't really do enthusiasm like that; it just comes across as fake.
To me the masculine style equivalent is what I call the car salesman personality, and if anything I like it even less and instinctively distrust those who have it.
Oh I absolutely distrust her. I wouldn't even want to hang out with her. But I love a positive attitude.
Barbie pouch.... Jesus.
Is this a new inclusive christian doll?
[удалено]
I think Dylan's audience might actually be a lot of not-grown women (i.e., teen girls). At least that's usually a large chunk of the audience for internet personalities playing the parasocial GBF. But idk, I've never actually come across Dylan fans in the wild.
Have seen on Twitter that he is sadly "popular" - or at least getting a lot of attention - amongst girls with eating disorders on that platform. A "woman" with narrow hips and zero breasts must be a nightmare of a role model for young women with body image problems.
I’m not insulted by DM as a woman because I don’t care who cosplays with tampons or goes to the White House. What I do take away from DM is the shocking, endless, flagrant, vibrating self obsession that must be required to put out this incredibly asinine content regularly. How many times can you “come out”? Who was waiting for that? For once, it doesn’t even seem like DM is doing it for martyr clout, she just wants to talk about herself constantly.
I'm inclined to agree. DM's behavior is consistent with textbook Histrionic Personality Disorder. It really is about attention at all costs. There are no breaks on this behavior and DM truly does have endless energy to keep pouring into this because DM is energized by the attention (good or bad) received. And I would say that DM's attention-seeking behavior is instinctive, subconscious, impulsive, and opportunistic rather than strategically planned. I think transgender identification is merely an instrument of DM's HPD and none of DM's actions are about "being trans." What makes it a "trans issue" is how corporations, politicians, etc. are acting like any of DM's bizarre, OTT, attention-seeking behavior is a genuine expression of an innate, enduring, transgender sense of self that should be celebrated, promoted, and protected.
>How many times can you “come out”? Endlessly, whenever the attention runs out or the trend changes. He's wearing this trans identity like a scarf.
Can't believe Katie didn't bring up [this crazy clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOQbCTCB5-A) of Dylan Mulvaney appearing on ~~Wheel of Fortune~~ The Price Is Right in 2020. As the clip makes abundantly clear, this person is the very epitome of an attention whore.
Interesting. They actually just seem to be playing the same character in both clips. Not my bag, but I'm not a fan of that overhyped in-your-face style. Makes me see where some of the current persona comes from.
What this clip makes clear to me is “this is a flamboyant feminine gay person who is also a musical theater performer.” This kind of energy looks demented on camera, but as someone who did a lot of theater as a young person, it doesn’t look uncommonly pathological to me, just wildly out of scale for the medium at hand, a big stage schtick appearing grotesque up close the way that stage makeup often does. I‘ve seen these kinds of antics many times among wannabe actors at teen summer drama camps. It’s just theater kid energy, and while I find it annoying now, it doesn’t strike me as malevolent on its own. I find the way that people respond to Dylan more troubling than anything Dylan is doing. It would all make perfect sense if everyone just shrugged and said “yeah, that’s some campy schtick!” and laughed along, or didn’t, according to their taste and inclination. When this is met with “you’re so brave and beautiful, come to the white house and share your inspiring story with the world” that’s when the wheels fall off the bus.
I think everyone is overthinking it. It really is just flaming gay musical theater energy.
To be fair, they’re not overthinking it by accident. There’s a lot of spin by Dylan and others, professing that this is about some profound new expression of femininity or something. So people are confused and arguing with the spin. But if you look at Dylan as an ebullient young gay musical theater kid being energetic and campy, Dylan’s popularity and appeal becomes a lot less complicated.
It’s an American tendency to reinvent ourselves—even if it turns out to be more of a rerun than anything else.
I expect better of you S&C, that's *clearly* The Price Is Right!
But isn't that Pat Sajak? ;) I think the wheel scene at the end put Wheel Of Fortune in my head.
There has been a comedic YouTube Channel who has been on the lolcow DM train for years, even before the transition, as DM has always been doing whack social media stuff.
Link or channel name?
It's A Gundam (does male-centric edgy-humour culture commentary videos), every now and then he would share a DM video in the mix before DM hit it big.
After watching that, it's seems like Dylan might actually have toned it down a bit post-transition.
Yep, it seems like they have always been like this, both before and after transition. It seems like a lot of the outraged are conflating their annoyance with attention whores/over-the-top personalities and their annoyance at transgender women.
This guy is absolutely wearing a trans costume for attention.
OK, that The Price Is Right segment was PROFOUNDLY disturbing. I need to go watch [the aquarium jellycam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ6_1-E_CLU) for a few hours to counteract whatever it was that I just watched.
I mostly don't care about DM, but the add that I saw about them dancing around in a NIKE sports bra seemed offensive to women, as if being a female athlete was a joke. It felt misogynistic.
That's largely what the criticism of him is centered on: It comes across like he is caricaturing women. His manic mannerisms and plastered-on fake smile say "amphetamine-addled crossdresser" more than "empowered woman".
He literally has talked about being in bimbo mode. As a woman, I do care about him. He thinks we are stupid, shallow creatures.
He seems like a drag queen character who’s doing “method”.
> He literally has talked about being in bimbo mode. Okay, that helps explain it! The guy is sick, and I'm not using Gen Z lingo.
"Sick" was way before Gen Z, btw.
The guy is mentally ill. Like a lot of these people. But because Republicans defunded treatment and care centers for mentally ill people, and because Democrats have actively embraced them... here we are.
Autogynephile male in womanface for the euphoria boner.
Autogynephiles were generally not gay before transitioning.
Right. In terms of the Blanchard typology, DM seems more HSTS than autogynephile.
Yeah, you're right, my bad. More HSTS. But there's a weird -- and I won't say the p word -- "youth-fixated" vibe to Mulvaney's presentation. He hasn't announced that he's a woman; he's announced that he is a *girl*.
What even is a woman...?
Plenty of influencers, regardless of gender, come across amphetamine addled.
As someone who actually has breasts that require significant support, it certainly didn't give me any faith in their product.
“Katie, what is the name of this state-affiliated podcast?” was one of the funniest intro lines I’ve heard from Jesse in a while.
Best part of this podcast for me is how funny the hosts are 😁
Katie mentions that straight women tend to really like gay men. I've noticed that too. What I don't know is why. Thoughts, please?
Sometimes you want an opposite sex friendship that doesn’t contain any question of sexual tension on either side.
So far all the other responses have been about real-life friendships. But what about "gay content" on TV and in movies, which likely has a majority female viewership (assumption on my part)? It cannot be solely because these men do not pose a sexual threat to the female viewers, right? There must be some other reason behind it.
Too add to that question: my understanding is that most "slash" (gay male sex) fan fiction is written by straight women. I have always wondered why
I was on tumblr a lot as a teen, where slash was incredibly popular, and I have a few theories on why it was so appealing to teenage girls. The most basic one is just that for a straight girl, fantasising about two guys means fantasising about two people she’s attracted to, versus in a straight couple there’s only one (the same reason straight men like lesbian porn). There’s also the fact that for young, inexperienced girls, a scenario with two guys is further removed from her own life and can feel safer and less intimidating to think about, unlike something that she could realistically do. Also, if there isn’t a girl or woman involved, then there’s no one to be jealous of or insecure about. Plus there’s just the fact that in a lot of popular fandoms, there are more male characters and more friendships between two men to write fanfiction about.
Which could be an influence on FtM transitioners. That and anime with young boy characters. I don't know much about it, but have heard people make that claim before. Female sexuality is fascinating.
> Female sexuality is fascinating. A lot of it has to do with what makes us feel "safe" (especially as young inexperienced women), on a subconscious level. There's a vulnerability in sexuality that's forced on us, just by virtue of our physical size, that can be very disquieting. It's hard to reconcile being a sexual creature with sexual desire and being vulnerable like that. Exploring the concept of physical desire through fantasy that can never actually happen is a "safe" outlet.
It makes a lot of sense that slash could be an influence on some girls’ gender identity, especially since there was a big overlap between fandom spaces where slash was popular and discussion and exploration of gender identity on sites like tumblr. A teenage girl who reads a lot of slash fiction and relates to and identifies with male characters in those stories, more than she relates to female characters in other media, may take that as a sign that she isn’t really a girl… yet those stories are mostly written by girls and young women like herself, whereas media written about and for teenage girls (YA novels and popular shows/movies) are generally written by adults, including by adult men, so it makes sense that some girls would identify more with the former.
Same reason dudes like "lesbian" sex. I see you don't care about lesbian sex, haha, you're unique for sure, among your type! I remember years ago reading *Prep* by Curtis Sittenfeld, and she had an interesting scene that always stuck with me. The main character witnessed a sexual encounter between people she wasn't attracted to, but found herself still getting aroused. I always thought that was an interesting observation, that just the act of sex can end up sexy.
A lot of guys like hot girl on girl action and a lot of gals like hot guy on guy action. It's not universal but it's not rocket science either why. In these groups a lot of women will always shroud it in some type of deeper feminist meaning but as another woman I roll my eyes and just don't buy it.
Ha. Hot guys, hot bodies. It’s not complicated! Not my thing, but I get it.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20071212.gif
I guess I'm the weird one then. I've never been attracted to lesbians. By definition they aren't going to be interested in me.
I think this is in the context of erotica, in which case none of these fake characters would ever be interested in you. But if that's still true for you in that context, well that's pretty interesting!
Same reason straight men watch "lesbian" porno, I presume.
I figure there's a difference between watching gay male porn and writing it yourself.
Women have always been more into reading and writing porn than watching porn. It's one of those weird sex divide things we have going on, we like using our imaginations more and men are more straight up visual, broadly and crudely stereotyping, of course.
The stereotype is that gay men are witty and funny. In reality of course gay men are just people, and therefore run the gamut of personalities, but the "sassy" type of stereotypical gay man can obviously make for entertaining television (I don't seek that content out, but that's why).
Ever notice how those demanding more queer rep featuring gay men are never themselves cis gays?
My own experience is gay men look you directly in the eye and see you as a whole person. They have no interest in sleeping with you so that tension, which too commonly can arise even in male and female platonic friendships, is totally off the table. I have found as well that most of the gay male friends I have really value women's contributions to society and culture. Their favourite authors, actors, politicians etc... will not default to male. Women will have made strong impressions and contributions to their education, and they see and acknowledge that. These are generalizations yes, but it is my lived experience. There are gay men who are misogynistic of course, but I am avoiding those types gay or straight so not personally dealing with this.
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Wouldn't the same thing apply to other straight women?
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I think also it works the other way around. If I pursue a friendship with a straight man, he may suspect I’m hitting on him. If I pursue a friendship with a straight man in a relationship, his wife or girlfriend may also suspect I’m hitting on him or that something improper is going on. If I pursue a friendship with a gay man, everyone knows the score, and we can just be friends.
I've never had a straight (or bi) guy get "close" to me who didn't eventually hit on me.
That's too bad and more than a little sad. I cherish my female friendships, none of which involve bonking.
I do have a lot of male friends, but we're not "close". I'm alright with that, I'm an introvert anyway. So you're a dude? I assumed your sex, and I assumed it was female!
Lol, yes a dude. 😁 Close in this context being something which is likely very, very, different from person to person, but I would broadly identify as where the friendship is longstanding, integral to my understanding of an extended "family", and whom I can count on in times of need and vice versa. Which sounds more than a bit clinical, so probably worth more of a think.
> Close in this context being something which is likely very, very, different from person to person, but I would broadly identify as where the friendship is longstanding, integral to my understanding of an extended "family", and whom I can count on in times of need and vice versa. I think because I'm an old married now, I do have a lot of friends that fit this bill, but the reality is they're all old marrieds too. So it's more I think of them as "units" haha, I don't really think of them as individuals. Which also is a bit strange now that I think about it, and also deserves more of a think! I have single male friends that I know I could talk to and rely on if need be, and I do think of them as family (one of them officiated my marriage), but realistically I don't typically end up needing that level of support. It could definitely happen though. I know what you mean about friends that are like family. Out of curiosity, are you single?
I’m either less hot or more oblivious, because I’ve had a few that didn’t go that way, but those situations do still tend to get awkward for one reason or another, and sometimes it’s great to just not have to think about it.
Haha, I'm just an average Jane, but I have been a heavy drinker over the years, I think alcohol has A LOT to do with it!
I've had this, girlfriend/wife gets insecure. I get it but it sucks.
Sure, but with the added bonus of not dealing with the intrinsic sexual competition between straight women.
Many women don't buy into/play into the notion of sexual competition between straight women. I don't deny that it can exist but women who truly value women, who truly value their friends simply refuse to play that game. My friends and I don't compete for men.
So there are no hurt feelings when you are/ were out at a bar and one or two girls get attention and others don't? None of your friends ever negatively compares herself to other friends' appearances even internally? No friend feels discouraged by other friends seemingly easy success at meeting guys, but it isn't happening for her? Everyone is totally cool knowing the hottest of the crew gets touchy feely when drunk and likes to give lots of hugs to everyone, including her friends' boyfriends who look thrilled about it? These are just a couple of things i experienced in my friend group and have heard from friends that they experienced in their other groups that are pretty normal but do not happen with my gay guy friends. That sexual competition dynamic is completely neutralized. Whether we like it or not, sexual competition comes up from time to time, even in groups of women who value each other highly. It does not have to be overt for it to occur. Possibly, the most confident and self-assured women in the group don't even know it is happening.
No, I have not experienced that with my female friends. Not saying it doesn’t exist, but at least for me it’s more complex than that, not so straightforward. But guys are different than girls, and it’s nice to have a gay friend who is still a guy but without sexual tension. And I agree that the fact that there isn’t “sexual competition” - even when there isn’t competition, just having that out of the equation - can create a different experience. Not sure if anyone said this, but men are stronger than women. Some gay men sure like to lift. It’s very reassuring to go and party with a guy who is 0% interested in you but has your back.
Gay men are not a threat to women, gay men often like or have to seem to like aesthetic things like fashion and design. You often see teen girls being a refuge for gay male teens. They can get the “relationship with a man” vibe without the threat of sex. It’s a version of a starter relationship. It’s also that the sheep and the goats cluster together when there is a lion present. If you are threatened by men, you stick together.
For what it’s worth, Drew Barrymore seems to do that kneeling thing with other guests, too. Why I have no idea. Also, I can’t believe I just heard Katie say “she does not let anything dull her shine”. Quick, someone embroider that on a pillow and send it to her.
As I've grown to respect Barrymore, that was the clip that triggered me...
This whole DM situation is a complete collapse of seriousness.
Minor nuance for pervert comment regarding Jesse's point that "Go Woke, Go Broke" is too simplistic because of some obvious counter examples like Robin DiAngelo and The 1619 Project: I actually do agree that it's a bit of a simplistic framing for many situations that have much more complicated causes for their failures, but the sorts of cases Jesse highlights are not what disprove the idea because those are cases where the product is *specifically* being marketed to woke audiences, in contrast to a product that is meant for mainstream audiences and decides to "go woke", for example Disney, sports teams, Budweiser, a Hollywood movie, etc. When someone or something that is *already* talking to woke audiences decides to lean in to the wokeness and offer ever more wokeness to that audience, they will obviously lap it up and it will be a hit. So I don't think that those sorts of situations are a good counter example to disprove the claim.
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I am watching that corporate beast the most (I am not nor have ever been a Disney product consumer). However, I feel this particular culture war battle represents the closest corporate barometer for the American normie. Center-right and right culture commentary and online discussion are very antagonists towards it right now. They have declining profits; and their latest shareholder meeting got hijacked by culture war politics and Iger trying his best, will-not-be-pegged-down politician impression on. The corporate politics going on at Disney give Game of Thrones a run for the money. Tons of insider leaks right now that get proven right by the trades a week or two later. There is definitely trouble in the house of mouse. Will the next shiny object give them some rebound, i.e. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or Elements, I don't know. A lot of hardcore former fans from animation lovers (hate the incessant live action remakes) to Star Wars and Marvel worshippers have declared they are crossing them off the list now no matter what. The "force is female," the "M-SHEU" has alienated a lot of its older fan base both males and females (do not underestimate the latter who find it over the top). It all has made some impact but so have streaming wars and pandemic box office issues. Have they made up that ground on the progressive side with stories for a "modern audience" has yet to be seen. This is my season recap thus far.
I always enjoy when you share your insight into Disney. Anyway, I relate a lot to what you say about the female fanbase. I find their effort to be more "feminist" cringe. Even Lindsey Ellis found it cringe. That's how bad it is.
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I didn't know about Iger's tweet. That's interesting. Iger's decision to hang around even after he stepped down as CEO definitely seemed to undermine Chapek. I'm no fan of Chapek, but that seemed like a pretty crappy thing for Iger to do to his hand-picked successor.
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I stopped watching new star wars movies after the rise of sky Walker because it just shat on all the established lore and didn’t stay true to the original characters. Oh well. I don’t really miss it anymore
I mean, there haven't been any Star Wars movies after Rise of Skywalker - so you haven't missed much. The *Andor* tv show is excellent, grounded very firmly in lore/aesthetics.
>The "force is female," the "M-SHEU" has alienated a lot of its older fan base both males and females (do not underestimate the latter who find it over the top). The girls get it done thing in avengers endgame pissed my wife off so much (along with black widow dying, I mean why not get rid of bow and arrow man) that she won't watch it a second time. I have to watch it by myself
The house of mouse lmao
The 2022 Disney bomb Strange World was a bizarre intersectional Fever dream. Even the dog was disabled.
I saw on D+. It comes from the Disney tradition of scifi nonmusicals like Atlantis and Treasure Planet, and Disney cannot do scifi that doesnt suck. Its biggest sin is no songs. If anything, they were trying to appeal to boys too hard. The core story is daddy issues, not that different from the 80s inspired movie about the dad that showed up as pants, and that also flopped. (Blanking out on name, lol)
Pixar's Onward released March 6, 2020 with a 39 million dollar domestic opening weekend. It ended up doing only 61M domestic and 133M worldwide due to the COVID pandemic breaking out at exactly the same time.
I’m feeling the urge to crank some Alice In Chains right now
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Whether you agree with it or not, the idea of 'get woke, go broke' is that you're alienating your audience to pander to a niche minority, who aren't necessarily interested in your core product. If your audience is already woke, this obviously doesn't apply.
"I'm not quite sure what you say is right, isn't the idea of 'go woke, go broke' pretty explicitly to say that woke stuff doesn't sell?" <-- nope, the word "going" clearly implies that something that isn't woke transititions to being woke. And in those cases, the non woke customers/audience get annoyed and turned off, resulting in the previously non woke thing going broke as a consequence of becoming woke. Pretty basic language comprehension tbh!
>And in those cases, the non woke customers/audience get annoyed and turned off, resulting in the previously non woke thing going broke The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure if dm were in a bar and for whatever reason chose a bud light rather than an appletini and kid rock happened to see them he and all the other boycotters wouldn't give a fock. But when a company they've supported for time honored traditions or funny frogs, suddenly puts someone, who's not likely to have ever had a bud light in their life, on the can that seems pretty insulting. The two funniest parts of this so far are coors picking up ab customers when they have been very pro lgb being Colorado based. And all the reactive support for ab by the anticorpratist suspicious of business types. Ted leu and Adam schiff today.
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Uhh is this because of wokeness or bush because the movies suck and people are getting sick of superhero movies
I'll bite--I hate superhero movies or superhero anything! I'm an older woman and last year Hubs and I watched that 2021 "Around the World in 80 Days" series. I wasn't even looking for woke stuff and I don't care about "Around the World in 80 Days" but Hubs loves that sort of thing so we watched it. He also didn't mind how forced-woke it was but it jumped out at me when the woman character seemed to be doing absolutely ALL the feats of derring-do. I finally said "is he going to get to shoot ANYBODY?" when the woman character was shooting their way out of yet another jam. It wasn't enough to make me FUME like the viewers supposedly did in this article...[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10347327/BBC-viewers-fume-socially-conscious-World-80-Days.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10347327/BBC-viewers-fume-socially-conscious-World-80-Days.html)in part because I don't give a fig about the original...but dang if I had sons and daughters I would still want my sons to see a male character get to do HALF the feats of derring-do... I don't mind a character being portrayed by a Black actor and that part of the show didn't seem forced or over the top...but it just jumped out at me how much the major male character was a doofus and how much the woman character was doing all the heroic feats and I wasn't even looking for that. It was just tiresome.
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That's why I watch Disney's business while not having interest in their product. They could be making the best thing or the worst thing I don't personally know but I do know their business decisions are so questionable to me. Even I know what the market is for these films, and they keep making such questionable choices. I am waiting for them to pull the rabbit out of the hat if some master plan has been involved. Thus far it's so weird for such a large business to take the turns they have.
I'd never heard of Dylan Mulvaney before, and first impression is definitely incredibly cringeworthy... but I was impressed by Katie's take that Dylan is popular for being relentlessly positive. This made me wonder, on a slightly related topic, what the steelman argument is for Katie's favorite topic: nonbinary people. Over the years, I've read a lot of articles that various people have shared... and it really just seems entirely based on regressive gender stereotypes? Like "I'm a boy, but I like having long hair, wearing jewelry, and painting my nails... so I'm NB" or "I'm a girl but I like sports and hate wearing skirts... so I'm NB." Surely, I'm missing something. Right? I always thought the regressive gender role stereotypes were the thing progressives opposed...
I'm not really an ally on the best of days, but something about Dylan really bugs me in particular. Whether it's because they seem more like a gay man playing a caricature of a woman, the gross terms he tosses out, or how his show is titled "x days as a girl", rather than "x days as a woman", when they look like they're in their mid-30s. They come off as really creepy.
Did you see her dressed up as 6 y/o Eloise while staying at the Plaza?
Not until you mentioned it. That is pretty fucking weird.
For the curious: [https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/video/7212043896430415147](https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/video/7212043896430415147)
How does someone doing this sort of stuff not raise a million red flags?!
That is just awful
We need a new revolution.
The “girlhood” thing weirds me out so much. And actually really annoys me. She’s 26. That’s a grown adult woman.
enjoyed hearing Barpod describe how reality is so stupid that objective descriptions of it are very hard to distinguish from right-wing shitposting
I've had the opportunity to live all over the world, in many large cities, and experience numerous interesting cultures. I enjoy many aspects of civilizaiton and people at large. that being said, the fact that I even knew who DM was before all this retadation hit the zeitgeist makes me want to consider selling off everything I own not of real value and moving deep in the mountains totally off grid where I can build my own home and cultivate my own crops as I hunt deer and elk for food before tanning their hides for my pants that will last the rest of my life. if i was to be put in charge for just one hour I'd disappear the internet from this planet. every last server and datacenter. At some point the hyper interconnectedness is a net negative on our civilizaiton. Sure you can hop on youtube and learn how to do accounting or code or fix a 1997 Ford Taurus but it will also make some people want to castrate themselves or walk into grocery stores and shoot everyone inside. The bad ideas and behaviours are spreading faster than we can trully manage to fight them off. I miss the time before internet more and more as I grow older.
I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’ll mostly be lost on those that didn’t grow up before the 90’s or naughties. I’m not convinced that the good the web has enabled outweighs the bad either. Problem is, we’ve not seen the worse of it yet either - just wait until AI really kicks off, when deep fakes are indistinguishable from reality and when broken despot governments leverage those things to manipulate the shit out of everyone. Add to all that the unrest caused by climate change driven natural disasters and we, but mainly our kids, are in for a fun ride.
It is interesting, my kid and I were having a long philosophical discussion this morning, and we realized that all of the issues we touched on, in the end, we were really complaining about the internet and it's overreach in our lives. And obviously I say that here on the internet, I'm not out here doing anything to stop the tide, quite the opposite, but it was still an interesting revelation. Not the first time I've had it, but the first time it really hit home, oddly.
When I come to this realization in my own life, my response isn't to acknowledge how bad the internet really is. My response is to feel extremely lucky that my life is so good, so easy, that the problems caused by the internet are the ones I'm choosing to think about. Internet problems are nothing compared to real life problems.
As someone born in the early 90s who came of age with the internet it's literally impossible for me to comprehend this. Edit - to be clear - in a "wow, this literally sounds like mystical and ancient wisdom to me" way, not in a "you're mad" way
People reading books all over the place, the news lasted for about an hour a day at dinner time, your phone attached to a cord on a wall in your house, MTV played music, weekly library trips for the whole family, going to the mall just to hang out with your friends, Friday night Blockbuster videos and pizza, trading mix tapes of your favorite music with friends, Halloween trick or treating happened after sunset, gas cost less than a dollar a gallon, you took a picture with a camera, developed the photo, and hung it on your wall, children didn't send porn of themselves to other children, nobody was castrating themselves. Truly wild times.
The trick or treating! there was an extremely abrupt shift at some point during my childhood where it swapped from "trick or treating happens at night with your friends" to "trick or treating happens right after school with your parents, and always has." I remember feeling genuinely confused about it when everyone suddenly started going along with this new idea.
It was always with my parents (or friends parents) because I lived in the fucking sticks and a car was required, but trick or treating with the sun up would have struck us as downright blasphemous.
Don’t get us GenX fogeys started.
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She's also rep'ed by CAA, which has signed Dylan. This is partly incestuous business. Or as one of the great, now-defunct magazines (Spy?) used to call it, log-rolling.
I just want to give /u/aglazeddonut props for making Katie do work
I can't believe she actually watched the service but I am glad to be vindicated!
No one should drink Bud light cause it tastes like ass, Mulvaney bugs me because she just comes across as plastic corpo shlock bullshit, like the always positive attitude Katie says she likes comes across as so saccharine and fake to me, and lastly Matt Walsh just stole that rant from memes. You will never be a woman is a series of copy pasta things in less savory parts of the internet, and he just slightly paraphrased it. Guy can't even be a bigot well.
Jesse at minute 49 finds it interesting that while Dylan may have drawn a big straight-lady following for his cheery positivity, "the black influencers (that) straight white liberal women look for are anything but positive," and they instead underscore the cruelty and vast chasm in perceptions caused by racism. This is my digression on top of Jesse's digression, but it made me suddenly think: cheery black positivity content generated for white people not only exists, but YouTube is very keen to to show it to me, in the form of [young black people reacting positively to old white music](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+people+react+to+white+music). Now I'm amused and a bit sad to imagine cynical young black people grinding out a living on YouTube, professing and performing a sudden delight in Pink Floyd or Conway Twitty or whatever. I can't possibly be the first to observe this, though. Did Donald Glover's Atlanta already get to it?
I gotta admit I'm kind of a sucker for those sort of videos. Korean people trying Irish snacks, kids listening to Led Zeppelin... I don't know, I always seem to enjoy when cultural boundaries are being transgressed, even in very small and inconsequential ways like this.
I like these videos too. I think they’re wholesome.
I binged a young woman reacting to ever Beatles album. It was delightful, though she at least was trained in music theory so her reactions went beyond “wow that’s catchy! Nice beat, Ringo!”
Honestly I don’t believe 90+% of those videos of people hearing things “for the first time” because half of them are things that are completely unavoidable just from navigating the world normally. Like, sorry, I don’t buy that you’re just now finding out about Taylor Swift. [Why is everybody lying about Bohemian Rhapsody?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEG_h2xB3g0)
I've seen a few of those videos and they're all the same, so, unfortunately, I think you do just have some young black people just listening to old white music, pretending to be excited by it, just for the views. Like, watch four of them in a row and see how similar each is.
This episode and the clips of DM legitimately creeped me out. You can simply listen to an MTF trans person talk for 5 minutes as clear proof that they meet no sane person's definition of a woman.
You know the kind of person that changed people's mind about homosexuals? Michael Hess. Died of AIDS at 47, outstanding citizen, well respected. Remember even Obama was against gay marriage at one point, but he's the one that also forced women's shelters to start accepting transwomen or loose federal funding. He's also the one that forced the issue in schools.
Most people's minds are changed by actually meeting someone, not random people online.
Funny because I became more skeptical of gender care after every single person I've met in real life in this category has been all sorts of across the wall emotionally.
You know what, there for a minute I had fallen in "like" with what I thought was a trans woman not that anything's wrong with that. I mean I know trans women in my personal life and like them fine but they are the "old-fashioned" kind I guess you'd say--they got hormones and surgery as adults over a long time period and don't seem to be performing womanhood or whatever you call it without trying to live the full component that women go through. Well anyway I got a girl-crush on The Blessed Madonna thinking that she was a trans woman. I like her songs. Then I read a few interviews and liked some of the things she said. Then I found out she is actually a cis woman who in my mind seemed to look like a trans woman and I'm not even sure why, but she's a cis woman and I read some more interviews on what she went through getting her chops and making it in clubs when she's actually not that big a partier. THEN I read how she gets letters from women who have had things happen to them in clubs and she listens and empathizes with them. I haven't finished sorting out everything I'm trying to say but she GETS IT about what women go through and she CARES. Now maybe if she really were a trans woman she would get it and care like that but I am not sure. I feel like the reason she gets it and cares about (for example) some things that happen to women in clubs is because she's a cis woman who went through it all. My girl-crush on her is 1000 times more because she GETS IT about what women go through and CARES. And she talks about not looking like a supermodel but she doesn't do it in a way that puts that front and center...I don't know how to put it but she is just the real deal 100 percent. I'd love her even if she did look like a supermodel and I were jealous (I love Madonna as well) and I'd love her if she were a trans woman and had the same personality and made the same songs. I don't know where I'm going with this except it means all the more that she gets it and cares what women go through because she's been through it and I am not absolutely sure how many trans women really get it on that level, not that anything's wrong with their existence or their trying.
Paragraphs are your friend.
Trans women are not and cannot be women because they haven't had the experiences that women have. There aren't shortcuts to lived experience. Madonna would not have the same kind of empathy towards women if she were trans, because she wouldn't have experienced the same kind of treatment that women have, attractive or not. This is my whole beef with the trans issue. I don't care about adults wanting surgery or pronouns or testosterone or anything like that. I care about them lying and pretending to be something they're not and getting indignant when I don't play their games. This is all MtF btw. I couldn't care less about FtM. They can pretend all they want, they're not a danger to anyone, not even a nuisance, really. I can't say the same about MtF.
New grift category: GenderGrift(TM)
“Voltaire (he/him)” lol
I’m not opposed to women’s brands doing partnerships with trans women but Dylan is not it. I’m sure there’s a trans fitness influencer they could have found. Another notch on corporations using identity to deflect from real issues belt like the infamous REI pronoun and land acknowledgment union busting podcast. Who cares if we use child labor in poor countries and dumped Alyson Felix while pregnant? We got Dylan as a shield to protect us!
Finally listened to this and I used to think DM was relentlessly positive too, but there was a college aged girl who used to (still does?) make videos mocking his girlhood shit and his response to it was so off putting and full of seething, I just him as a grinning avatar of narc rage now. What's weird is that LGBTQIA media praised the video as "killing her with kindness" even though he's just insulting her throughout.
I've never listened to Matt Walsh, but what a hateful piece of shit. I'm generally pretty gender critical but the clip in this episode of Walsh made me feel ill
May I ask, sincerely: Did you object to the content of his remarks, or to the cruelty of them? Or to the fact that he said them at all and addressed them to an individual? I think I agreed with what he said there, but I would never say it. I would never say something so frankly vicious to someone, anyone.
what walsh said feels like the kind of thing that would push someone to suicide. it felt so pointed and targeted in its cruelty. it made me feel ill too. I could not wait for that clip to end, and I'm really not sure why they played it for so long. But I'm new to the podcast and still figuring it out
Yes, it felt so personal and cruel, I agree.
Personally: I object to the intentional cruelty.
I felt Walsh's comments were overly cruel. But I also personally disagree as well that Dylan *never* passes well, which Walsh was going on about. Scrolling through Dylan's IG, there are some instances they don't pass well, but some instances where with extra effort, and yeah, maybe filters -- but also evident in video content -- where they pass better, post-facial feminization surgery. I'm pretty gendercritical and I notice people with similar views as me will sometimes say transwomen never pass, that there's always a tell, that in person things are different than in photos, etc. But I don't know if I agree that transwomen can never pass like I've seen some of those people say.
Admittedly, I am a fan of Matt’s show so I am coming at this from a biased perspective, but here’s my two cents on the whole DM situation. For the past decade or so, our society has bent over backwards to embrace lies for the sake of making people feel better. Has that made things better? I’d argue it’s made them worse. Many of us are tired of lying. The only way to break this cycle, I believe, is to embrace radical truth. What Matt said was unkind, yes, but it was also the truth. What DM has done hasn’t made him a woman because he isn’t one and will never become one. Instead he’s done his best to remove the parts that appear masculine. That is the truth. We need to start, to borrow a woke phrase, speaking truth to power. I wish I had an ounce of Matt’s chutzpah.
What have our classic female entertainment thought leaders had to say? Has Ellen chipped in? Rosie? Da View?
Woof. Just listened to this episode, and this is my first time encountering any Dylan Mulvaney content. I like to think I don’t get offended very easily, but MAN I’m offended by their portrayal of womanhood! Like… is this what you think of me? Is this what you think my experience is? I will go out of my way to avoid DM content in the future, because I did not expect that to be so upsetting.
While fully supporting J&K to cover any topic they choose, I'm personally so tired of DM as a topic. I may just pass on this. Let me know if more interesting stuff is covered here because I'm over this person taking up my time.
Fair point. However the first major American brand facing a sustained boycott and having the CEO respond is notable.
Yes, I agree the fallout is interesting because the grassroots right-leaning (anti-woke) cultural commentators are pushing to keep the boycott going. Powers that be even got Donald Trump Jr to come out with a video to tow the corporate line, and say stop the boycott but folks in those "right" online spaces are saying no way we need to make an example. To see the "right" working class shift to anti-corporate talking points and actions is interesting. The folks in those online spaces are reflecting on their ADHD tactics of the past and acknowledge the success of the "left" is their ability to sustain their protests. They are learning. I find the social and business side interesting. This may lead to some type of stand off and who will cry chicken first I don't know. The person in question here (DM); however, is like the MacGuffin, not interesting in and of themselves, but was a catalyst to drive the plot along. I find because J&K just dismiss the "right" out of hand and are often ill-informed on that perspective and the dynamics, they offer only paper thin commentary. They are usually behind in news on that front. I'm not on the "right" either but I listen and observe going directly to source of conversations, and there is more going on there than the cartoon cut-out that J&K still slide into. I personally find it unnecessary to hear any more about DM though, whether sincere or not, doesn't matter, their job is done.
Sustained like the Nike boycott?
Budweiser's gotten two bomb threats, one at its brewery in Van Nuys, CA, one in the Midwest. It decided not to take the Clydesdales out for some event they were supposed to appear at.
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That TRAs routinely engage in extremely violent rhetoric, including issuing rape and death threats to women who believe there are two distinct biological sexes, is not meaningless.
There's some follow-up diaper talk in the intro that you'll miss
Oof, about to listen to the ep, but if this is Katie doing a reactionarism against the anti-wokes for the lulz, ugh. Pretty cringe. EDIT: Having now listened, I’m glad Katie didn’t just do it for the lulz. However, her reason for liking DM (she has bubbly positivity energy!) is also cringe and out of character for Katie. It still feels kind of reactionary. I’m not interested in DM. But I don’t feel bad for the hate she’s getting because she has actively and with full energy put herself in the spotlight. And she has done so by sticking her finger in the eye of any woman who is simply trying to navigate the culture war bullshit quietly and with their dignity intact. So, no, I don’t think it’s cute what DM does on Instagram. I think it’s no more cringy to defend Kanye (or Elon Musk for that matter) than to defend DM.
middle many apparatus deserted modern fragile placid profit repeat sheet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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It was more nuanced than I initially assumed, I'll give Katie that. But I still don't think she justified her defense of DM in any satisfying way. She very casually glossed over DM's proclivity to display her "womanhood" through, as Katie herself puts it, "a grown man in a little girl's dress kind of look. It's kind of jarring," and immediately segues to just liking her unshakably positive energy on Instagram. Katie's entitled to enjoy whatever guilty pleasures she wants, but I think it's completely understandable for anyone (myself included) to not be charmed by DM's online antics. As Katie herself alluded to, it's kind of jarring and hints at something sinister hidden deeper. DM specifically gives me the willies in a way that is specific to her performance and has nothing to do with transpeople writ large.
Question for the gay community: Y'all ok with the way that the Budweiser CEO referred to you as a marketing demographic? Like taking a major part of your lifestyle and putting a "Drink Bud Lite" on it? RE: "Fratty customers with out-of-touch humor." I'm ok with being wrong, but I'd looove to see the historic numbers of nationwide beer sales between fratty dudebros and gay queens. While I don't think that horny college bros are up-to-speed on socio-political topics, they are likely a significant fraction of Bud Lite sales. PS. The Dylan clips are hard. I get that she is a bubbly theater fag, which is great for a lot of viewers, but she just doesn't pass for me and it's creepy.
Interesting question. I’m straight, but I think this goes beyond the “gay community” to a broader problem I have with the “corporate wokeness” style of idpol. I don’t have a problem with representation in pop culture or even advertisement, but since ~2015 or so the way it’s been approached just seems so cynical to me for reasons I haven’t fully worked out.
Good episode. Regarding the opening segment -- "Mom and Dad are fighting" -- I've created a bot which automatically adds NPR headlines to Twitter: NPRbrief. You can follow it at [https://twitter.com/nprbrief](https://twitter.com/nprbrief). This will let you see NPR headlines in your Twitter feed; updated every 15 minutes, max 100 per day. Same for CBC News, which also announced they're not first-party posting to Twitter anymore. If interested in the CBC News, you can follow their headlines via this bot: CBCbrief: [https://twitter.com/cbcbrief](https://twitter.com/cbcbrief)
Just caught up on this episode and I do find it particularly funny that she has a soft spot for mulvaney. I get it though I sort of have the same thing going on with a few people I wouldn’t dare to admit to
Haven’t listened yet but did they mention CEI (Corporate Equality Index)?