Random Thought of the Day

[Nyctophilia]

People are complaining about Contrapoints not discussing the current fighting in Israel:

why are you always so silent on Palestinian issues .

Absolutely, why is she hiding behind the wall of silence like girl SPEAK

It's actually incredibly dumb to expect someone to weigh in on this who doesn't live in the region and presumably doesn't know anyone who does or even anyone who has had any personal dealings with any of these groups throughout their life history. You're being exposed to propaganda and often misinformation that you have no way of verifying. This has always been true but now it's even worse because of how social media works. People are going to do this anyway because of how people work but demanding commentary is stupid for that reason especially if someone doesn't have any personal connection or knowledge of what's happening.

Like if I hear about Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women this isn't hard for me to believe because I had a family member who lived through the Russian army's previous shenanigans (I don't really think a lot of North Eastern and central Europeans have a high opinion of Russia as a state. Like Polish people especially have the lowest opinion on Russians in the world according to a 2022 poll,) and so I know they have historically been a particularly brutal army (though her ultimate take was that there are good and bad people in every group including that army and I think some helped her out at one point,) I also have 0 respect generally for Putin or similar men. But even then can't verify that 100% but most people don't even have that level of connection to what's happening in most of the world.

There's nothing you can do about it either besides eradicating the concept of the nation state (or at least nations shouldn't have armies - universally obviously,) and greatly restricting/discentivising physical violence in general. Like using socialisation and selective breeding programs. Or less authoritarian - genetic engineering but you encourage people to see violence as disgusting so you figure out what genes are associated with the propensity and then work on eradicating that from the gene pool over time. Like if you're actually serious about ending violence.

Nothing else is really going to cut it.

Poison Ivy gets it:



She doesn't necessarily have the right approach but she's got the spirit.

I love how Harley would sometimes side with Batman because she was never truly evil

Lol oh god. Most of them aren't exactly evil because superhero comics are the reemergence of polytheistic belief systems and that's especially true for the Batman universe. Eg: The Joker doesn't really symbolise evil you could say he's the personification of chaos but that's not quite it it's more like he pokes at people to try and get them to admit they're animals. Also he's the most symbolic batman villain because he has no real backstory he's basically a symbol.

You could also say that The Joker is a trickster figure but I think Harley is more of one than him because most tricksters are morally ambiguous and The Joker never helps Batman. It's hard to say because of how the universe is structured like MCU Loki is a way more obvious trickster but he's very loosely based on the Norse trickster God anyway so that prob helps. Joker chases after Batman because he represents order. He's probably the most obsessed with batman of any of the villains actually. Like Poison Ivy's agenda isn't 'destroy batman' it's 'protect nature from mankind' but like The Joker's is literally predominantly 'make batman crack' lol.

Harley is kind of a hybristophile basically but Joker is completely unwilling to put Harley in front of his agenda (and that's what most hybristophiles want they want all that attention on themselves that's why they often go after prisoners who are locked up in prison) - as everyone points out to her The Riddler, Batman himself lol.... Where as Poison Ivy often isn't so it's a healthier relationship ultimately (I mean it's not saying much though a relationship with a sandwich would be healthier than The Joker lol):

Poison Ivy, surrounded by grass and trees, decides to fist-fight Harley Quinn. They really are best friends.

Lol it's true she wasn't trying hard.

Also lol:



This is funny because she was always supposed to be. That's her secondary thing besides the general misanthropy. I'm sure a lot of women relate to Ivy just like they relate to Loki. That's not ideological and I strongly doubt intentional by the writers in the past (though at this point they must be aware of this,) it's more about personality etc. A lot of women throughout history have had issues with men boiling it down to like 'feminist ideology' is a bit naive actually and delusionally optimistic perhaps. Like you think that wouldn't happen if feminism didn't exist?

Actually you know what a lot of her comments are more like heteropessimism:



Which is just the default state of how a lot of heterosexual people seem to communicate with each other... And have done so for some time. Though obviously Poison Ivy is bisexual.

Also that Candace Owens tweet about Harry Styles in a dress still cracks me up. "There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this"

DO THEY?







Yeah I kind of wanted that jacket the lead singer is wearing at one point lol.



^ I actually really want to see that band live but they never tour outside of Japan I don't think (and def not in Europe.)

The lead singer wears skirts a lot so does the guitarist sometimes. Also the guitarist is always wearing that Iron Maiden shirt lol.



Kind of need to see this band live at some point too:





Uh switch the second option with Alucard (either Alucard.) Or the first option with uh... Howl from Howl's Moving Castle maybe or Kuranosuke Koibuchi (sticking to anime theme.) I started searching long haired characters with glasses lol. I did actually watch some Vampire Knight anime as a teenager but not sure what series and don't remember it now really lol:



She's clearly the anti-weeb lol. It's just missed her entirely.

South Korean metal band:



By the East she means China and how many cool Chinese bands can you name? Exactly.

This track is actually pretty bad lol imo but it's obviously meant to be kind of a joke and if you suppress expression you just get basically nothing:



G-Dragon used to crossdress a bunch:



Also lots of hair dye.





I was actually searching for ever to try and find this music video the blond guy is really androgynous looking:



I don't pay attention to contemporary kpop so this is all super old lol. Also refusing to post BTS lol.

Boybands crack me up universally because they're constructed to have like a guy to appeal to most flavours of women and so you always get that one androgynous guy with the long hair etc (actually sadly the West (tm) has a general aversion to long hair so you rarely see that these days anywhere,) and then the other ones who are also there lol no but BigBang was especially successful back in the day cause they had like cute edgy andro guy and then guy with low voice who was sophisticated, sensitive muscular guy, edgy muscular guy and then the other guy who was like more masculine but young and slim. So ended up ticking most boxes.

I could have just linked one music video but no lol...

But yeah there's like 1 billion+ people in China and I've stumbled on two Chinese music tracks in a decade or so. One was that anti immigrant rap lol.

Also yes Rorschach very emotionally damaged character who is quite misogynistic and he's technically a hero lol. Rorschach and Poison Ivy are two of my favourite characters in comic books lol. Because I think everyone sucks. No that's not quite it lol, I have/had various reasons for that. Also love Deadpool and Loki. Also like Scarlet Witch, Vision, Legion, Dr Strange, Spiderman etc. Paul Dano with long hair, femcel phenotype faceapp Paul Dano Riddler, vending machines, chocolate cake, lemon flavoured/scented things, airplane instruction videos from the 80s. /meme

Why isn't this a real show?

To date, the best interpretation of these two characters I've ever seen. It's a downright tragedy that this hasn't exploded.

It does have a million views but yeah:





Even though Alan Moore would absolutely hate it lol. He hates all film adaptations of his work and also disowned his older works now I think because he thinks the simplistic infantile appeal of comic universes is a precursor to fascism. Which is true (and it's also often the fast food equivalent of film,) but I still like them/fanon.

[Nyctophilia]

Was reading the comments and apparently one of the members of Bigbang (Seungri) is in jail lol. Also this one guy who got rejected from that group during auditions Jang Hyunseung is kind of cute but his music is so boring. Except the song Trouble Maker with Hyuna which I did actually listen to years ago and didn't really think much about him lol.

Like uh he looks cute here:







I don't like a lot of his personas.

No + bad music:



boring music:



This is better from ages ago the song I was talking about:



I mean it's hard to be more attractive then Hyuna tbf lol.

[Nyctophilia]

many people are asking "what does Youtuber Shoe0nhead think of the Israel Palestine conflict?" the question on everyone’s mind. and folks let me tell you as someone with years of experience in war (gamergate) i

I think this is my favourite twitter response to the people demanding responses lol.

Honestly expecting something like this from Briana Wu, minus the sarcasm.

She blocked me a decade ago but that was on some other account that I don't use now lol. I called her a hypocrite and she didn't like that.

[Doseone]

I feel so weak.

[Nyctophilia]

One day I want to have my own piano, a house to play this in, and a wife to dance to it

remove the wife and replace with different girlfriends. Wife is a losing situation on all fronts my friend.

Um are you really going to do 'this sort of thing' here? Surreal.

I like this one better though:



I got distracted while looking for music for my YouTube video lol. This isn't what I'm looking for though.

[Nyctophilia]

Somehow Americans on twitter are making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about themselves...

Colonizer is not the n-word for white people. It?s actually way worse.

It's not just old-fashioned bigotry.

The entire purpose of the word is to cast guilt on an entire race of people, thus justifying actual violence.

It?s only a matter of time before that word will be used to justify attacks against the West and white people.

Just stumbling on tweets related to this discourse all over the place.

Mike Cernovich:

Dear pro life Christians:

When babies die in the womb in Gaza, does that count as an abortion, or is it something else?

It's getting really fucking dumb. And then we have Americans discussing the average IQ in Gaza and others arguing that they are a 'useless people'

Over 30% of marriages in Gaza are between 1st cousins.

The average IQ is 67.9

For context, Forrest Gump?s IQ is 75.

Seeing as how he's a fictional character who doesn't exist not very useful.

So now we're at the "they're subhuman" stage of the genocide propaganda?

That's not what I meant by this.

what did you mean?

Low IQ and generational cousin marriage is associated with mental health, behavior issues like anger, and aggression. The inbreeding is, in part, fueling the problem.

I agree that they are angry because of how they are treated by Israel, but I think this level of intelligence exacerbates the problem by catalyzing events like what happened this weekend.

They are more susceptible to extremism because of the low average IQ.

It's absolutely related to their behavior.

Now explain the aggressive violent actions of all the supposedly 'high IQ' countries throughout history...

Check the demographics on that IQ study sampling. Ages 8-18.

IQ stays relatively the same throughout your life and the average age in Gaza is 18

No it doesn't! My IQ supposedly increased by 25 points between the age of 11 and 28. I think tests must vary a lot too. I'd have to take more tests and irl and get consistent results to really trust the result. The first test I took in school was technically an equivalent to an IQ test (and 100 was still average.) I think they try to obfuscate what certain tests are due to the controversial nature of IQ but they were also using it to decide which students would get into the 'gifted and talented' program at my school. I think 94 is closer to accurate than 119 for me based on my life experiences + academic ability and I feel mentally slow often.

But regardless this has been noted in general anyway:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...es-adolescence

IQ scores can change dramatically in teenage years in parallel with changes to the brain, according to a study that suggests caution in using the 11+ exam for grammar school entrance to predict academic ability.

IQ is thought to be stable across a person's life. Childhood scores are often used to predict education outcome and job prospects as an adult. But the study suggests scores are surprisingly variable.

Robert Sternberg from Oklahoma State University, who studies intelligence but was not in the research team, said: "A testing industry has developed around the notion that IQ is relatively fixed and pretty well set in the early years of life. This study shows in a compelling way that meaningful changes can occur throughout the teenage years."

This is completely false. IQs go off age groups and a lot of people will have incredibly high IQs as a child then have it drop as they age into a new group. I was 138 as a kid, now I'm 121.

Yeah:

Sue Ramsden from University College London recruited 33 pupils aged 12 to 16, from high achievers at 11+ to struggling students referred for assessments. She tested their IQ in 2004, and again three to four years later, and also analysed their brains using magnetic resonance imaging. The average of all scores stayed the same across the years, but individual IQ scores rose or fell by as many as 21 points, a substantial difference ? enough to take a person of "average" intelligence to "gifted" status, or vice versa. "On average it all washes out, but there are fluctuations from individual to individual," said Prof Cathy Price, who led the study.

edit: And someone else posted about someone they knew who had an IQ of 88 who had graduated from university with a chemistry degree and was really good at fixing various electronic things. That's not something someone with an IQ of 88 should be able to do according to 'the rules'

He then got into an argument with a suspended account so I can't see what they were saying to him but his responses were like:

None of what you said is what I said.

Serious question. Are your parents cousins?

I don't believe having a low IQ is a dehumanizing characteristic. I'm just opposed to cousin marriage.

Are your parents cousins?

I understand. I just want you to be honest about it.

I won't judge you.

Are your parents cousins?

It seems a lot like your parents are cousins and you don't want to admit it.

He then posted this poll:



Very productive use of your 200k+ follower platform. I really hate this contingent of slimy elitists.

Really fucked up:

Last year an FBI agent showed up at my house and told me I was under arrest and to come with him.
Except it wasn't the FBI, it was a stalker impersonating the FBI and trying to kidnap me.

I believed him. Out of routine practice (from having other stalkers and watching true crime) I said I wanted to call the police to verify his identity. After this he fled.
When they searched his house later they found a garrote, hunting knife, duct tape, and rope.

They found the garrote and knife included on a shopping list along with the fake badge and jacket, which I read as an indication the weapons were for me.
He bought the garrote shortly after locating my address.
Imo he was probably intending to murder me.

Don't know the motivation for sure, but he had the names and addresses of other sex workers in his house too, so seems like the most likely explanation was anti-sex worker hate. He finally got sentenced. Despite accepting a plea deal for 5 years, the judge gave him 18 months.

So despite believing him, I asked him to verify his identity as a formality. I was planning to take the phone number he gave me and google to see if it was in fact for the FBI, but that?s as far as I?d gotten.

When I came back to the door, he was gone - most likely spooked by my intent to call the police.

My first thought was that it was a prank. Of course, there was some more sinister stuff online. There were threads on forums dedicated to doxing me, posting my own address and addresses of my family members. I'd seen people posting my address, encouraging others to show up and kill me. (People really hate sex workers.)

But I thought actual murder attempts were probably unlikely. My insane stalkers seemed generally incompetent, and base rates of targeted homicide from strangers is pretty low, right?

But in the following months of the (real) FBI investigation, and after a search warrant, I learned:

He'd been silently tracking me for years

This wasn't the first time he'd flown to Texas to visit my house; he had come some months ago to stake out the place.

At which point he'd stolen some jewelry belonging to my sister

When they searched his house they found a garrote, fake license plates, a hunting knife, duct tape, and rope. He?'d ordered the garrote it a week after he discovered my new address.

He'd also made a shopping list where "garrote/clay cutter" and '"knife" was included with things like "FBI badge", ?FBI jacket?, which indicated the weapons were intended for me

They found names and personal information of two other sex workers in his house

Based on these facts, I currently think the most likely explanation for his actions is that he was intending to get me into his car and then strangle me to death.

Because he was also collecting info on other sex workers, my guess is that the motivation for him doing this was that I was a sex worker.

After it happened I delayed in going to the police because I?m a sex worker, and Texas has historically been pretty arrest-y towards people like me.

There are a bunch of these websites and forums. One of them lost their hosting recently after they dox'd and were stalking this one trans twitch streamer who moved to Ireland to get away from stalkers and then they tracked her down there because of some hotel bedsheets. They also use swatting to harass people which they did with that streamer so that can happen too.

Insane story involving swatting:

On April 27, 2020, Mark Herring, a sixty-year-old man from Bethpage, Tennessee, died of a heart attack after police responded to false reports of a woman being killed at Herring's house. The swatting was organized in an attempt to force the man to give up his Twitter handle "@tennessee". Shane Sonderman was sentenced to five years in prison for the swatting, and ordered to pay a $250,000 USD fine. A minor in the United Kingdom was also involved, but he cannot be extradited or identified due to being underage.[46][47]

But of course there are plenty of sites like that still around.

yep. I did eventually call the police but wasted precious time cause I had to go to talk to a lawyer first to ask how much I should be worried about the police arresting me instead

Also that guy got 18 months in prison.

It isn't a porn thing, there's also some women that stalkers seem to be attracted to. The anti-porn justification unlikely the motivation.

People really hate sex workers but they also go after neurodivergent people, eccentric people (she comes across a bit atypical also often posting controversial tweets,) often LGBT+ people.. Anyone mentioned in the list Contrapoints created in this video + more:



Can also attract the attention of people like that by pissing them off in some way directly. Which is why you have to be careful making true crime videos like this guy was doing although it was a very interesting video:



(And yeah again I was confused because the guy who was stalking him was barely mentioned in this I think. He's not one of the main guys he talks about.)

Lol actually I wonder if that David Pokora audio thing inspired that Navy Seals copypasta now:

What the [BEEP] did you just fucking say about me, you little [BEEP]? Ill have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and Ive been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and Im the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the [BEEP] out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that [BEEP] to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. Youre fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and thats just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable [BEEP] off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little clever comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldnt, you didnt, and now youre paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will [BEEP] fury all over you and you will drown in it. Youre fucking dead, kiddo.

Probably not but kinda similar energy.

If I had a stalker get my information through DMCA and something happened I would sue Youtube for damages.

This has to be grounds for a major lawsuit just for letting this happen. Its proof hackers are taking advantage of their twisted rules.

And it's great to know that YouTube is so incompetent with preventing this shit.

[Nyctophilia]

Western musicians are overall less androgynous in appearance now than back then so... It's irritating. I linked to a bunch of examples of current musicians who have at least a somewhat androgynous aesthetic in videos etc but then removed it cause too many videos even then. Though a lot of it's underground because it's hard to get noticed as a musician now in general. Something like Harry Styles in a dress is also pretty banal to me and he's a fairly masculine guy as well, and so it's weird how much outrage it still generates.

Most of the aesthetics now are inspired by metal and hip hop cultures and so it's pretty masculine in a specific kind of way like a masculine androgyny which I suppose is a contradiction in terms. Also inspired by the 90s kind of grunge apathetic vibes and pop punk.

This is what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rkJ3L5Ce80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CCbMxJehpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62fsOE7rZx8

And every other person is half dead lol. I'm going to pretend this is the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPuRXkUWoU

I like these tracks and not really criticising that vibe but it gets a bit much.

Like I like Jay Z (no I don't I just like this track) but do I want everything to be Jay Z? No

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7DAixsKrQ

And yeah it reminds me of the 'Hip Hop as a stumbling block' section of this video starts around 41 minutes into the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP1YI6Wi6gs

But I'm going to extend this to like expression and music in general but there's two issues 1. it's difficult to stumble on new music now 2. there's a kind of singularity with hip hop music or pop music inspired by hip hop and some electronic music too but not a great amount of variety there either. Then you get like the popish stuff that's inspired by metal as well and the hip hop that's inspired by metal and that's hit and miss. I can enjoy some of it like Bones and yes sampling the Lavender Town theme from the Pokemon video game was a legendary choice (I think that track was Suicideboys actually,) but my socks aren't getting blown off here you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVI29BnuZbY

Prob just because I grew up in the 90s and 2000s but you make it even slightly more energetic and it's already an improvement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoRB9BKwRvs

Most of this is like a decade old now though lol. Tbf and this is pretty interesting the production on this track is listed as 'Dylan Brady' perhaps that's a coincidence and there are no tracks on the soundcloud account linked but there is a Dylan Brady who is part of 100 gecs and very famous now lol:



Another interesting thing is that it sounds similar to the opening to Porcupine Tree's track Chimera's Wreck lol:



I'm afraid to be happy and I
Couldn't care less if I was to die
I'm afraid to be happy and I
Couldn't care less if I was to die, whoa

Why does this song now sound like commentary?

But when it comes to music genres for the severely depressed I prefer DSBM/this album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaI2SgT1h0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grBqg4S06f0

But yeah I said this before it sounds like hardcore punk.

It's interesting to see what people can get away with though and the subtle lines. Also how some people move the goalposts over time but I think Quentin Crisp addressed this sort of in a interview in 1970. He talked about how young straight guys were dressing like him but didn't want to be seen as being like him:

"Well the young more or less accept my appearance because it's so very like their own. When it annoys them it's because they feel I am too old to dress in a modern Carnaby Street way and they feel that I've sort of become the oldest teenager in the business and this is true. I see this only of course I'm where I always was. I'm doing and saying the same things that I did and said and wore 40 years ago. My appearance and conversation are like a stopped clock they're right every 12 years. Only nobody bothers to consult them.

The other thing that annoys them is that their appearance can be described as effeminate and they don't want this to happen and when they see me they see just how effeminate it could be thought to be. Just moving it a tiny bit to one side. They have long hair, they have bright clothes, they wear beads. And you still know that they are not homosexual. And even when you don't they think you do. If they've lost their nerve they wear beards. The problem of the young is to my mind always the same. How to conform and rebel at the same time."





There's a certain dreamlike surreal and theatrical quality that mostly stopped existing in music and it's predominantly feminine women who make that kind of music now. At least anything that gets any mainstream success. Like Grimes, Aurora and Florence Welch though they work a kind of androgyny into their image and lyrics etc it's just very subtle. Sometimes they work with others behind the scenes as well but those people will get less focus and aren't part of the image. When I was younger there was Patrick Wolf who was gay and was never very popular really. His music was inspired a lot by Kate Bush.

Amanda Palmer - who is more androgynous and The Dresden Dolls are another example:







^ I like the lyrics to this one like the juxtaposition between the various criminal stuff and looking after the baby lol.

And then I got back in the car I turned the radio and heater on
And sat there with the baby in the back
And they were talking about Syria and climate change and ISIS
And the candidates' positions on Iraq
I feel so useless in this universe
I know I could be doing worse
I'm trying hard to stay at peace inside
I know it's hard to be a parent
But this mess is so gigantic
i wonder if I should have had a child
And as I pulled out of the parking lot I cried
And as I pulled out on the highway I said
right

At least the baby didn't die
At least the baby didn't die
EVERYBODY:
At least the baby didn't die!! right?!
At least the baby didn't die!!
(i may not make it to the passport place on time!)
At least the baby didn't die
(and they might revoke my license for a while!!)
At least the baby didn't die
(and I might get caught for retroactive theft!!)
At least the baby didn't die
(and I might get turned into the DSS!)
But at least the baby didn't die"





Most of the internet really hates her lol (there's quite a laundry list of reasons people have given that I won't go into.) She was one of the first people to be 'cancelled' I think and it got worse after she got married to Neil Gaiman and mainstream news outlets kind of picked up on her (but people had been complaining earlier than that.) I like her music a lot though and have no strong opinions about her really.

So while making this post I thought 'I bet she was inspired by Tori Amos' specifically I was thinking about this song:



And this one:



Now I already knew everyone hates Amanda lol plus there's this video:



but I didn't realise this was another reason lol. But I was curious if she'd ever said anything about Tori and then I fell down quite a rabbit hole on reddit because there was a screenshot of her defending Tori and someone was like 'why do we dislike Amanda again?' And then a bunch of people jumped in with various issues that people have brought up and also 'she's said lots of shitty stuff about Tori.' I think some of the comments were a bit dumb because they seem to think she was jealous because Neil Gaiman was/is friends with her I believe (he created a character based on her for his Sandman comic - Delerium)

I'm now posting this art work because I like it:



And Amanda Palmer was married to him for about a decade or something but I don't think that's related because she wrote this way back in 2005 (and she used to and maybe still blogs so that's another reason I think people hate her a lot she seems very open and also isn't perfect):

And now, I must now delve into the uncomfortable subject of Tori Amos.
She?s been haunting me for years and it?s time the story was told.

My earliest memories of Tori Amos were of not really liking her, in that teenage-fuck-everything way, before I'd really heard much of her music. A friend of my sister, Rich Collins, was way into her and gave me a copy of her "crucify" EP. I didn't really dig it, and I didn?t bother to dig any deeper. As I grew older and starting getting the comparisons, I just shrugged my shoudlers and said, "Not really familiar with it, not really into it." When I was working at Toscanini's, I think I was around 20, Mike Penta insisted that I dig. "You'll love her. I?ll make you a mix." And so he did, and I listened. And I still didn't like it. This time, I more than didn't like it, I REALLY didn?t like it. There was something about the vocal that irked me. But some of her lyrics and melodies were brilliant. Some I couldn?t stand. This was really bugging me. There was one song on the disc "Winter", that I absolutely loved, but I wanted to go into the song with my bare hands and strangle some of the precious-sounding lyrics. I realized back then that the reason this was such a frustrating expereince is that the similarites ? between my songs and hers ? were enough that the differences were painful. The way human beings are terrified of likenesses of human beings that are ?slightly off?. Hearing the piano was like listening to someone speak in my voice, it felt like a violation. I would hear this word choice, this chord choice, this line or phrase and my blodd would just boil?.wrong! wrong! wrong! No mittens and snowflakes! Evil! No butterflies, no goddesses, this is wrong wrong wrong! But the songs that were good rooted and stuck. They were few, but I was fucked. I had to admit that I liked them. After that I sort of forgot about her.

!!!!

Then, recently, I got to the point where I could really afford to get CDs that I might not like. So I bought a bunch of her stuff. I considered this part of my job, research. I would even defend myself at the local record store, embarassed as if I were a guy buying tampons. "Heh heh. These are for my Wife." "Heh heh. This is research for my band. Really." I knew she was coming to town, I got tickets. I decided to delve headfirst and figure this out, and put it to bed if possible. Brian and I had gotten a DVD of hers and watched it several months ago and shut it off halfway through, bored. I had heard that she was a real fireball of a performer, and I was really disappointed by the blandness of it. I also cound't tell if I wanted to like it or wanted to hate it. I couldn't tell if I was jealous or looking for a role model. Some strange combo of all of these things, I think.

We left for tour and I brought a few of her CDs, including her new one, "The Beekeeper", and her new book. It was my project. Brian laughed at my face while he watched me reading. I would grimace, breathe through my teeth and put the book down while making a deep agoinized sound.

"What?"
"AARARRRGGHGGHGg. She?s talking about the goddesses and butterflies again and refferring to a song as 'she'. Am I evil for hating this so much?"

But I was fucked again. Buried in all of the Corn-Mother, Butterfly-worshipping New Age LaLa there was a woman living my lifestyle. Getting in a bus with a bunch of people, writing songs, performing them, learning to cope with the crap-ridden, backstabbing music industry. Learning to cope with assholes like me hating her butterfly-worshipping side. I couldn?t put the book down. So much of she was writing about, between the lines, was directly applicable to my life. I loved it and I couldn?t stand it, just like the music. I listened to her first two records and found songs that I thought were genuinely brilliant. Meanwhile, I listened to the new CD. And I kept wondering?do you want to hate this? Do you want to like it? The answer kept being both (but with the new CD I had no choice, I couldn?t like it even if I?d wanted to. Couldn?t stand it.)

So we went to see her here in Boston the night before last, my band and I, and there I sat. And as I watched her I thought: This performer does not need to care about whether I like her music or not. She has a huge following, people who love her music and stick with her, she's forty, a mother and she's touring. Terrible album or not, Amanda, you?ve got to repsect this woman. Coming home, I finished the last few pages of her book and thought about what had struck me, stuck with me. One thing that she expressly said a few times was how sad she thought it was that female musicians and singers felt the need to compete so fiercly with each other, as if there were only room for so many ? and it was kill or be killed. I wonder if that?s true among those women at the top. I?ve never felt it. But maybe I have, without realizing it. Maybe my younger distaste for the Toris and the Anis of the world was borne of jealousy more than taste. As I?ve gotten older, I find that it all doesn?t matter so much. I can allow myself to love this or that song, this or that album, and leave it at that. Soemtimes it?s easier to love Avril than Tori. Sometimes I wonder what Liz Phair was thinking. Then I think about Bjork and all conflict disappears and I think that the rest of us should just give up and flip burgers.

So as Oprah would say, You Go Tori. I will always continue to buy your records, hoping to find a song I love. And your book made me think, and learn, and consider, and for that, I thank you. There are few of us, and indeed, we best stick together.

Yeah because she's similar but more feminine hahahaha. This is very amusing. Like one of the clips towards the end of this video with Tina and the fairy wings (I thought it was the last clip but it's not and now I'm too lazy to look up the time):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDtKvwQbApQ

Also relates to my previous post where I was talking about the person on twitter who thinks all women should be microdosing testosterone (and moreso perhaps because Louise is trying to get all the girls to chuck the fairy things into the lake,) but that's kind of the next step in hegemonic masculinity. So first you have an ego ideal and then feel embarrassed and try to distance yourself from things that conflict with that (very common,) then because Humans don't view people as individuals people notice people who are similar to them and then feel bad if they deviate from their ego ideal because it might reflect on them categorically but there's also a secondary factor which is that people often have weak ego boundaries and some people feel that other's traits can sort of infect them. This I don't relate to, but it's more of an issue for conservative thinkers I believe. They tend to view things in terms of disease and contagion. Then the final step is trying to get other people to change to match your ego ideal. This is more common when you don't live up to it entirely yourself I think and feel shame about that.

The rest of the blog post is talking about a time the Dresden Dolls performed with Nine Inch Nails on tour and I think the bolded parts are interesting:

The two dates in London with Nine Inch Nails (www.nin.com) were a relief. We were bracing ourselves for an onslaught of hatred just in case, but the audience was incredibly receptive. Nothing was thrown at the stage.

The band and crew of NIN were all very friendly, though you could feel that tension at first, before they all saw us play. I had imagined the whole aggro black-clad NIN crew sitting on their bus over whisky drinks saying

"So what about this gay mime band?"
"Dunno, Trent picked ‘em so they might be good."
"We’ll wait and see if they suck."
"Yeah."

In reality they were these amazingly kind and funny people. At any rate, they seemed to approve and decided to like us.
The band and Mr. Reznor Himself were busy as hell and cordonned off in some secret dressing room the way Famous Bands are, but on the second day we were granted an audeince, and we thanked Mr. Reznor for bringing us out on the road. He told us that he had been sent the CD by a friend, loved it, and that was that. Here we were. I had never seen them play until these shows, and these people fucking throw down. He's one intense motherfucker. From what I read in a recent interview, he's straight and into taking care of himself and his body lately, so when I get up the courage I will invite him to do some power yoga with me. Namaste, Trent.

Also a lot of Steven Wilson's music even recently is more 'dreamlike' although he did sort of move away from that a bit at certain points. (And he doesn't adopt a visual aesthetic, as such. I guess he did in his younger years when he looked like a kind of Victorian ghost but that was way back in the 90s. I mean he uses videos on stage now.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbGkZ31Fmp8

Post rock is kind of more introspective and dream like and more masculine again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6j7mUxGz20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd4dCatk3Eg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eAfUydSnYQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STddRiFmqFI

And this is what they look like just for the context of this post topic:



I can't remember if I made a post before when I was listening to a bunch of post rock music while looking out the window when it was misty lol.... Probably. The weather is far less appealing now. Just rainy for the last few days. But post rock has a misty vibe. Or space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K46OZ3XX5s8

But then you just start heading into the realm of film scores:



Drab Majesty also do a great job of incorporating that kind of liminal apathy and alienation of the current era with goth-adj music and some surreal theatrical aesthetics (and their aesthetic is more androgynous.) I really love this music video





So now that I have a ton of YouTube videos in my new post again lol.

[Nyctophilia]

But there?s always been variety in the mainstream. It mostly sounds the same today, not just within the same genre but across full spectrum. Yes, even rock bands have trap tinged sound and pop. Before you had a clear line with perhaps some off shoot here and there. A Janet album didn?t sound like Alanis, didn't sound like Nirvana, didn't sound like REM, didn't sound like Dr.Dre, didn't sound like Aqua, didn't sound like Oasis, didn't sound like Depeche Mode, didn't sound like Boys 2 Men, didn't sound like Ricky Martin etc etc

It's hard to differentiate from one genre to the next, from style to style, from song to song today.

Obviously not 100% of mainstream music sounds the same, but it's never been more similar.

Agreed. In the 90s, and to a certain extent, the early-mid 00s, there were many different genres that were mainstream. There was literally something for everyone. But something changed once the 2010s dawned. Popular music started becoming more and more homogeneous. It's like how 80s music had a very homogeneous sound. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love 80s music, but I can't deny this fact. The same thing happened in the 2010s, except it became more about pop and rap/hip-hop, and nothing else. As of 2020, nothing has changed unfortunately. I don't have high hopes for the 2020's. It'll probably be more of the same stuff, or possibly something worse. But hey, the decade has just started. Hopefully things do improve in the mainstream. But I doubt it will.

Yeah I know people decided they really loved synths but no lol 80s music was definitely less homogenous like:





















REM making the 90s in the 80s:































I could maybe make this point just using The Cure lol not really but they had some variation in just their own back catalogue.



Um probably don't watch this if you have epilepsy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfm7cOJfOjk

Throbbing Gristle lol tbf this and Alien Sexfiend weren't and aren't exactly mainstream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZAIrbonUcA









^ this was definitely not mainstream lol but shh also tbf they did just say the 80s in their comment at least at first so still (barely) counts.

I could also post stuff from Nirvana's Bleach album haha but I won't.

OK I really need to stop but I could go on a lot lol.

And yeah there's a study that suggests music has become more homogenous over time:

With songs that sound more or less the same, popular music charts are promoting a consistent model of a hit song each year.

Research has shown that the musical diversity of the top 40 charts has decreased exponentially over the past two decades. A study from the New York Times measured 5 features of what makes a song a hit -- loudness, danceability, acousticness, valence and energy -- and compared to charts from 1970 to 2015. The data shows that, as the years progressed, the top singles started to form a surprisingly consistent footprint. From the song lengths to the choice of key, the music sounds the same. The music industry cannot advance until artists move away from this formula and more attention is given to innovative sounds.

Forty percent of the top singles were produced by the same 10 producers from 2010-2014. The Swedish producer Max Martin produced 32 of the top singles of 2010-2017 alone. Other big producers include Dr. Luke and Shellback, with 20 and 18 top singles from 2010- 2017, respectively. The pattern is so consistent that you can now Google ?recipes? for a Max Martin hit song ? or any hit song in general. Follow the pattern and bam: you have your hit single, here?s your Grammy.

[Nyctophilia]

Yeah I know people decided they really loved synths but no lol 80s music was definitely less homogenous like:

^ Sad that Cliff Burton died so young he was very talented. Lol I'm reading a thread where people think he's overrated. They're so fucking picky.

I like Geddy Lee more

Yes definitely but like so? There can only be one lol. Tbh there's lots of very boring bassists out there where you don't even notice their playing in the song but I like the instrument and he's pretty great.

Cliff burton,also known as the man who managed to turn his bass into a guitar

I used to do the reverse lol but that was just incompetence on my part. "Let me just learn to play my favourite part of this song. *realises years later* Oh wait those were technically bass tabs...."

That being said often when listening to Metallica I think about the time when I was like 12 and made a thread saying Metallica sucks on a forum possibly my first forum thread. Certainly the first one I remember making and that did not go over well. 😂 But this was based solely on the single track I'd heard - St. Anger which I guess I didn't like at the time but then later I listened to a bunch of their other songs and changed my mind.



I mean it's not the worst song to ever exist or anything but they have much better songs.

It kind of has a post-grunge fused with metal vibe I guess. I mean it's kind of nu-metal too. I like some nu-metal and just read someone suggest they were trying to be Korn but Korn are more interesting sounding I think:







The thing about the 2000s was that kind of high pitched distorted kind of sounding guitar made a lot of really meh songs sound better (Korn isn't a great example since Jonathan Davis is an interesting vocalist that makes them stand out anyway and they all have a creepy vibe that compliments each other well. Also I don't know how to describe wtf I'm talking about) but thinking of this:



Looking back on it now the only thing I really dig a lot is the guitar and it's nostalgic sound. This isn't creepy like various Korn songs though obviously.

And yeah the Metallica song doesn't really have any of that nuance. It's like bad System of a Down maybe? But even bad System of a Down would have Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian's interesting vocals. The vocals were really a selling point of a lot of nu-metal and alt metal they experimented a lot more with various styles and also introducing rappers on tracks etc. Deftones did the kind of hushed vocals.

Imagine a less eccentric Prison Song:



or Bounce:



I mean this is just my subjective feelings about it but yeah lol.

[Doseone]

The average person has more knowledge about reality than all of the main religious figures. They had no idea about evolution or black holes or neurons. That's why I think we need a new religion. One based on seeking the truth, not one that's based on dogma that was passed down (especially stuff we can't confirm e.g. miracles that happened thousands of years ago).

[Nyctophilia]

"Please daddy. Hey don't swat at me why don't you like it when I call you that? I feel a lot safter when I call you daddy and not to mention a little horny. [...] How come you don't like that name? I like it just fine. Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy. [...] I just don't get it why don't you like it when I call you daddy? Is it too... Cutesy? Too weird? Why do you hate that name so much?"

Yes and I also don't want to feel like I'm having sex (even in my imagination) with a child. (I hate 'mummy' too)

This is hilarious though I'm being lectured by audio porn. 😆

This guy has a really cute voice though so I was listening to a bunch of his audio stuff. He recorded something while high which was funny because he kept giggling. Then he said:

"subby *laughs* I like that word. Far better than sub- I was about to say submarine. What was that word... Submissive!"

Which was pretty adorable.

Then he was talking about how he gives consent to his future sober self to upload this. "So it's OK even though I'm high" haha.

It was weird though because at one point he said something like "I'm wearing my glasses so sorry if you can hear me moving them" which you couldn't and also how would you really hear that? But I like glasses so it's spooky lol.

[Nyctophilia]

A feminist if you can truly call her that, that did her scholarly digging and intellectual work who came to her senses. Maybe because shes got a more masculine temperament she can think use reason, logic and have a amoral compass to dissect philosophical dilemmas. This is rare for a woman to do without bias, unabashed empathy or raw emotion.

This is a comment about Camille Paglia and is in general my favourite contradiction among right wing and reactionary men. It's very entertaining. They want women to be heterosexual masculine men but they also obviously don't.

I see this brought up often in relation to her but it also happens with others too. To some extent with Pearl Davis even though she's even more of a grifter. Peal Davis isn't gynephilic as far as I know but she has struggled with men a lot and is a female volleyball player so pretty athletic. Non-conforming basically.

You can't help it if you're a genuinely masculine person or believe certain things, but it's very comparable to male feminists. You're not going to be sexually successful by doing this even though you can appeal to a lot of people by telling them what they want to hear. It's also often poor 'integration' of gendered traits or whatever. There's an optimal way to be androgynous I think, but most don't/can't manage that (myself included obviously.)

"I feel," says Paglia, with a laugh that sounds just a little bit nervous, "completely outside the arena". She was, she reminds me, with the artist Alison Maddex for 14 years. They had a child (Maddex's child) and they're now "harmonious co-parents" who live two miles apart. "My romantic life," she says "is non-existent. Except," she adds, in the way that maybe only she could add, "that, for the past four years, I've had a kind of cult for a Brazilian superstar." The "superstar" is the singer Daniela Mercury. Paglia went to Brazil to give a lecture and fell in love with the music, and the star. Mercury is happily married, and the relationship is platonic. And, says Paglia, "voyeuristic". Fans post phone footage of their idol on the web, so she can, she says, "follow exactly what she's doing every day".

Before Paglia met Maddex, and before she started stalking Brazilian superstars, she used to get regular applications for the post of her girlfriend. Maddex applied and got it. Is she still getting applications? For a moment, she is actually tongue-tied. "I, er, there's absolutely no one I can remotely imagine being interested in me." What? The woman who has said she sees herself as the heir to Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker can't imagine anyone being "interested" in her? "My problem," she says, "is that I do not get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them."

Well, you can see that that would be a problem. But then Paglia always knew she was "odd". The eldest child of Italian immigrants in upstate New York, she was "five or something" when she saw Ava Gardner in a film, and was "knocked out." As a graduate student at Yale, she was the only person who was openly gay. "I had no sex life," she says, "but I was writing a dissertation on sex." The dissertation turned into Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a 700-page study of Western culture which argued that "civilisation" was all about sex. It was rejected by seven publishers, but when it was finally published, when Paglia was 43, and teaching in the art faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, it made her an international star.

Well, you can see that that would be a problem. But then Paglia always knew she was "odd". The eldest child of Italian immigrants in upstate New York, she was "five or something" when she saw Ava Gardner in a film, and was "knocked out." As a graduate student at Yale, she was the only person who was openly gay. "I had no sex life," she says, "but I was writing a dissertation on sex." The dissertation turned into Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a 700-page study of Western culture which argued that "civilisation" was all about sex. It was rejected by seven publishers, but when it was finally published, when Paglia was 43, and teaching in the art faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, it made her an international star.

Actually feminism was created by masculine women and the biggest activists are also masculine. They're not male identified at least politically that's the significant difference.

I think there are parts of feminism that appeal to people with vulnerable narcissistic traits too. (Like Kurt Cobain and I'm not saying that to insult him I like him and find him a very interesting and in some ways relatable person. Like how he felt like an alien and his contempt for sexist masculine men that came across in his writing is something I see in myself but I think he was more black/white in his thinking.) Note that I'm not saying that it appeals to narcissists but vulnerable narcissists or people with those traits. That parts important and actually a lot of people who vocally reject and criticise feminism in the public sphere seem narcissistic as well - mostly grandiose (Katie Hopkins, Milo Yiannopoulos, Camille Paglia, etc,) but sometimes vulnerable (incels, Jordan Peterson to some extent.) I'm not diagnosing people with specific disorders I'm commenting on their personality traits.

Also I deleted my post where I discovered this info before lol but I'm not at all amused to realise that Pearl is living in my country... There isn't room on this small island for all these annoying people and myself the annoying person for someone else.

Does Katie Hopkins still live here? We can't have both lol. And Piers Morgan is living here again too. America has to take someone.

Interesting Paglia constantly compares women and lesbians specifically to gay men (if you listen to her for more than 5 minutes you'll probably hear her doing this even in some of her most recent video interviews a few years back. She disappeared again around 2019 I think):

I have found few lesbians with whom I can discourse for more than five minutes without hitting some tiresome barrier of resentment or ideology. Again and again over the decades, as I did my time, in frustrated boredom, in lesbian bars, trying with spectacular lack of success to make friends or just converse, I would end up gabbing for hours with some stray gay man. He might have dropped out of school at fourteen, but he had opinions, tastes, energy, wit. Is there something innately different about the gay male brain?

Camille Paglia

Men, gay or straight, can get beauty and lewdness into one image. Women are forever softening, censoring, politicizing."

^ this quote reminded me of the Contrapoints tweet I was looking at earlier. She posted a clip of a longer video that's uploaded to her patreon account:

https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/sta...23854765461816

There's a kind of lazy view of male gaze and female gaze that says the male gaze is when leering, perverted, voyeuristic, hypersexual, focussed on body parts (ew,) and the female gaze is when soft, aesthetic, innocent, chaste, pure, focussed on emotions (good.) The female gaze is when emotions congratulations you've redescribed victorian gender stereotypes.

Lol I haven't seen it described quite that way (but I wouldn't be at all surprised.) The most common description I've seen is basically as a descriptor of a guy who is supposed to be attractive and then it's usually a less masculine and slim guy who is probably androgynous. Like they're using the term to differentiate between the guys straight guys often admire and the ones a certain subset of women sexualise. It is ultimately a niche preference though even then and not even a preference exclusive to women.

As with most things you can't really reduce everything to a binary like this. Also posted this description of the entire video:

Subtangents on objectification; the inherent shame of being seen; the Darcy hand flex; Jeffrey Dahmer; fetishism; objectification as a defense against guilt/shame; becoming yourself though being seen by others; bell hooks; Mulvey; Sartre;

why the "draw me like one of your French girls" scene from Titanic is the perfect feminine narcissist fantasy; straight women who love twinks; Tuca and Bertie; Magic Mike; the assumption that women's sexuality is "not visual";

how different patterns of guilt and shame shape masculine and feminine desire; the assumed heterosexuality of this entire discourse; self-objectification; the allegation that feminine sexuality is inherently narcissistic;

whether feminine exhibitionism is merely pandering to male desire or if it can be the expression of an authentic female desire; Britney Spears' Instagram; WAP; women's ambivalent relationship to sexual gazing; the lesbian gaze;

the apparent tension between "looking respectfully" and desiring women; how over-identification and under-objectification dissolves ego boundaries and leads to bed death; the genderfluid gaze; the role of narcissism in identity formation; AI big tiddy anime gfs.

I feel like a lot of this will potentially irritate me (cause a lot of feminist theory irritates me lol,) and also don't want to pay to subscribe but sort of interested in the bolded. I haven't really seen anyone attempt to articulate what a non-binary gaze would be the focus is always on male and female and given the female gaze often seems to emphasise androgyny in some people's descriptions I found that ironic.

The general 'female sexuality as narcissism' thing that also only really applies to heterosexual women in theory has never been relatable to me. I'm visually attracted to the men I find attractive and I don't enjoy the idea of being desired in itself very much. I spent most of my life being invisible in my own sexual fantasies because I'm also incredibly voyeuristic and I don't think any of these things are exclusive to female sexuality since many of my preferences are shared by women.

Also wondering how Jeffrey Dahmer comes into it lol.

[Doseone]

This song takes me instantly back to 2003.

[Nyctophilia]

@Doseone

I don't think I listened to that one around the time it came out but I remember for a while that song and this other song by Three Days Grace were really popular in YouTube videos (that was before people started monetising stuff and cared about copyright.)

[Doseone]

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@<u><a href="https://anxietyspace.com/forums/member.php?u=8609" target="_blank">Doseone</a></u>
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I don't think I listened to that one around the time it came out but I remember for a while that song and this other song by Three Days Grace were really popular in YouTube videos (that was before people started monetising stuff and cared about copyright.)

Yeah, they were really popular at the time. That music video was always playing on TV. The guitar riff was one of the first ones I learned. I never delved into their music. Those are the only 2 songs from them that I know. I used to only listen to what was on the radio or TV (and some CDs) at the time.

Here's another song that instantly takes me back: