Had a very believable dream Elon Musk had leveraged wealth and affection of his fellow wealthy to be cast as the Joker in a new Batman movie. In the trailer they’d taken some Joker lines from previous films and cleverly rewritten them as an “inspirational” techbro sales pitch. His Joker costume was weird, kind of a Lego Joker kigurumi. No bueno.
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MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept. As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance. This year I have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea. In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6. Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TEN: BEASTLY
TITLE: UNDER THE BEAST MOON
CHARACTERS: Aramis Spinoza: the Wan Dreamer, Rath Darrow: the Beast
PREMISE: A pallid young dude trips through the forest looking for his lost memories. He’s sure they’re out there, somewhere, and won’t be dissuaded. But the world has turned into a gnarly beasthouse, and everything wants to eat him. A dark stranger appears and tries to get him to give up his quest, retreat to safety, but he refuses, and as they travel love begins.
THE HOOK: Dark Stranger Rath is actually one of the beasts – so powerful that he can devour other beasts for food – and was actually about to eat Aramis when he changed his mind on a whim. Or is it something more? He tries to maintain a human guise, so as not to scare the dude, but he can’t keep that up forever…
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY ELEVEN: MUTATED
TITLE: MUTANT REIGN
CHARACTERS: Jonathan Israel: the Mutant Man, Jonathan Tullio: his Powerless Sidekick
PREMISE: The two Johnnies are buff gay mechanics in a retrofuturist metropolis. Tullio is more of a tinkerer, Israel more of a philosopher. Something gets in the water or whatever, and rats are mutated by evil, heeding the call of some kinda Ratlord. Some of them are the size of small buildings with horns and scales and fangs, not even recognizable as rats. Israel somehow gets mutated by the same evil, but can control it, and uses his powers to fight the monsters. Tullio tries to keep him safe with gizmos and fisticuffs, the things a non-superpowered guy can do.
THE HOOK: What if the mutation takes control, and Johnny Israel becomes a rampaging monster? Will Johnny Tullio have the stuff to do what’s necessary? Probably love wins.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWELVE: HYBRID
TITLE: ROSE GOLD
CHARACTERS: Isadora Kors: a CyberMonster, Stuck Steppy: her Human Lover
PREMISE: Isadora and Steppy are street punks in a world run by evil corporations, so like, this could take place any time in the last several decades lol. Steppy is known as Stuck Steppy because she keeps catching knives in streetfights. Isadora catches the biggest knife of all trying to save Steppy, a machete that ends her life quick.
But corporate medics notice her cells match a certain profile and route her corpse straight to Brycine Prosthetics, where they sustain the life in her tissues long enough to reanimate that bod – with experimental photosynthetic cybernetics. I guess every cyberpunk has its rose thorns, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song.
THE HOOK: Isadora is part plant and part machine and part the lady Steppy loves. She can be rescued from a lab, but without the lab, how long can she live? Drama.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY THIRTEEN: DEMONIC
TITLE: MEN ARE EVIL
CHARACTERS: Linda Goldman: a Lady, Mark Anthony Aguirre: a Man, or Is He a Demon?
PREMISE: Linda and Mark Anthony are trans for trans lovers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco when the world began to melt in 1974. They’re scrounging together the funds to medically transition and Mark Anthony decides it’s time to start doing the testosteroni. The problem? It starts transitioning him into a Demon.
THE HOOK: The horrible transphobic feminists were right – being a man is inherently evil! It’s impossible to change who you are, what nature makes you, and all gender essentialisms are dogmatical troof of the universe. Or maybe they just accidentally scored a bad batch, in their economic desperation. At any rate, Mark Anthony must destroy the world with fire unless his loving lady can cool his jets. Will he have to detrans just to survive? Fuck that noise.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOURTEEN: AND THE REST
All Those That Lost Previous Voting, Lumped Into One…
ARTIFICIAL, CELESTIAL, CURSED, DREAMER, ELDRITCH, GHOULISH, GIGANTIC, INANIMATE, MINUSCULE, NATURAL, OVER-POWERED
TITLE: A HOUSE UNDER HEAVEN
CHARACTERS: Brooke Storm: the New Girl, TallDeer Rayburn: the Philosopher, Dollhouse: a Mansion, and Celeste: the Stars Themselves
PREMISE: Brooke is that clumsy but enchantingly beautiful new girl in town, and the popular kids want her to be theirs, but she is drawn to ghoulish (GHOULISH) trans dude TallDeer Rayburn. TallDeer cracks wise about how everybody is skeletons inside and to the grave we shall all return and stuff, and nobody likes him. They circle each other in weird courtship until the night he reveals – he is Accursed (CURSED) by Philosophy. In an effort to understand what a Man really is, for the purposes of transing his genders, TallDeer’s meditations brought him in contact with Plato’s Realm of Forms – a real place where the ideals of all things exist, and the rest of our reality is its pathetic shadow. This eldritch (ELDRITCH) knowledge makes him dangerous. The more he knows of your soul, the more abstract you could become. It makes sense, trust me.
THE HOOK: TallDeer is like, my philosophy will kill you Brooke. I love you too but it can never be. She’s like, take me you darkly majestic (OVERPOWERED) monster. He takes her to his mansion in the woods, and things start to suck…
Brooke and TallDeer have some bad arguments and it’s like Bella and Beast up in there. Brooke retreats from the middle floors, yea, unto the roof. Up there she falls in love with the depths of the night sky, and it comes to love her back (CELESTIAL, NATURAL). That sky comes to her in dreams (DREAMER) in a human-like form so they can bone down. TallDeer finds out she’s been untrue and is like, no! Banished from rooftops!
Brooke goes to the basement, where she finds a dusty little (MINUSCULE) dollhouse (INANIMATE, ARTIFICIAL) that is a replica of the mansion she’s trapped in. Out of rage at her imprisonment, she knocks it on the floor, and the whole building shakes. It cries out, no, I’m the building you’re in, this is the tiny version of the real me (GIGANTIC). She is sad for him and commits to patching him up. TallDeer is like, you damn well betta! You broke it you bought it.
But then she falls in love with the dollhouse / mansion, who is a swell guy when you get to know him. TallDeer is filled with sorrow and rages until he realizes there’s no keeping that girl from being in love with the world. He uses his eldritch overpowers to embody the sky and the mansion in human bodies named Celeste and Dollhouse respectively, and lets her have her lovers.
In gratitude she forgives TallDeer, and invites him into this Polycule. They lived happily ever after but probably fucked up the fabric of reality somethin’ fierce.
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MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept. As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance. This year I have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea. In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6. Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY SIX: NAUTICAL
TITLE: GOSETTE AND VIVIAN AND ONE MILLION TON OF FISH HEADS IN OIL
CHARACTERS: Vivian Pearl: the Beloved, Gosette Aland: a Shapeshifting Abyssal Monster
PREMISE: Shud ya desira ken hin fra yon, hinna Portinsmuth sonly ine or tuther – men fra woem, blake fra wise, rond fra thin – an most acrux? Folk fra Fesh. Folk are a’ye an I, Fesh are a’yon beests adeep – amorfin and bespeckt wid scale an wesker.
Wellasn’t ye kennit, ine feshmen set hes mine against God, crosst ine fra tuther to be folkwoem, so enamerd he upon harta ine folkwoem true. Shud God despiset, so shud we, an sure we’ll do arpart thet God prevale. Aymen.
THE HOOK: State een base, slubbit and bubbit, form flu een den oot, born von deef and vor deef retorn. But nine, seen I she – Vivian, aland and adeer, perfected een state as still. Soght I state as still, form perfected, and a hand will hold as fingers abone and aflesh fare-firm. Call you I Gosette Aland, or perish aneath the million ton.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY SEVEN: LEGENDARY
TITLE: JEFFREY WOODS, MY BELOVED
CHARACTERS: Jeff the Killer: Reformed Creepypasta, Samantha “Sam” Sapphire: Not Like Other Girls
PREMISE: Legendary juvenile mass murderer Jeff the Killer was finally captured – or did he turn himself in? As a child, he was not able to be executed nor sentenced for life, under the state laws of the moment, and he was released with monitoring upon his twenty-fifth birthday, a changed man. But the scars of his misdeeds remained, so that all could recognize him on sight.
A blind cowboy with a headstrong fiery daughter hired him to be a ranch hand. At first she threatened to tell her dad and get him fired, but she saw the solemn look of remorse in his eyes, and instead committed to teaching that suburb slicker and maniac to do cowboy things – up to and including lovin’.
THE HOOK: How can you do normie stuff when you’ve seen flesh torn asunder, life leaving the eyes of your victims, and delighted in it? Every neck looks like a target, even that of yer darling dear. Jeffrey must learn not only how to live free without doing murders, but how to roll ’em rope, and brand ’em. Rawhide! Also some hetero shit I guess.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY EIGHT: FIERY
TITLE: YOU’RE TO BLAME
CHARACTERS: Ian Astbury: Lead Singer of The Cult, Monica: the Fire Woman
PREMISE: Ian Astbury, lead singer of The Cult, was alone with his lover in front of a crackling fireplace, and she casually quipped about how meaningless his lyrics are. A far-away mysterious look overtook his features, and she asked about it. He recalled and told to her for the first time his reason for writing Fire Woman. It was about his ex-girlfriend of a few fateful nights, Monica – a supernatural being.
THE HOOK: Monica was a djinnah, made of smokeless flame during the creation of the Earth. She was always drawn to people, flirting and having the romance that she could achieve before the sad news came to light – She can’t fuck because she’ll burn your junk off. Fire Woman, you’re to blame.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY NINE: SEASONAL
TITLE: BUNNY NIGHT
CHARACTERS: Suela Gonsalves: a Waitress in Sleazy Dive Bar, Vica Perez Salvatore: her Fellow Waitress, WereBunny
PREMISE: In honor of Easter, the Coyote Ugly-esque dive bar “Mac’s” held a Bunny Night. The waitresses would wear tutus and bunny ears. But little did they know, holding such an event on Sunday offended Resurrection Jesus (as opposed to Baby Jesus, who is more chill), and he sent the Easter Bunny with wrath. That blood-drenched leporine stalked Mac’s invisible at ankle level, looking for a way to sow disaster. He nipped Vica’s skin, and she contracted a curse.
THE HOOK: What a terrible night for a curse. Vica became a giant rabbit woman. Problem is, a frightened herbivore will attack any perceived foe, so it can get away and raid a produce aisle. She slaughtered the sinful bargoers. The survivors teamed up to take her down, but Suela betrayed them to help Vica live. She always had a crush on that girl.
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MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept. As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance. This year I have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea. In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6. Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY ONE: INSECTOID
TITLE: I WAS A TEENAGE LOCUST
CHARACTERS: Knute Burley: the Teenage Locust, Rita Lawson: the Babe, and Joel Simons: the Teenage Kestrel
PREMISE: Joel and Knute are buddies and the most popular guys in school. Joel is low-key jelly of Knute’s slightly superior appeal. When Knute gets mutated by a pesticide accident into a giant Locust, people are at first terrified, but people are won over by the mild-mannered and genial way he goes about his old life, despite deformity, and he becomes even more popular. Rita was once torn between two lovers, but the mutation becomes the clincher.
THE HOOK: The story is passionate because of the intensity of the love triangle. What is it that’s so appealing about Knute as a locust? Pity at his hideous state transforms to fascination. Joel’s jealousy leads him to want what Knute has, and recreate the incident. But he transforms instead into a giant kestrel, a kind of bug-eating falcon, and ruins homecoming. The struggle is surreal.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWO: SHAPESHIFTER
TITLE: I WAS A TEENAGE KESTREL
CHARACTERS: Joel Simons: the Teenage Kestrel, Fernanda Wahl: the Love Interest, General Butch Ulster: the Antagonist
PREMISE: Joel was electrocuted and presumed exploded at the end of I Was a Teenage Locust, but he’d actually flown far away, on wings of despair. He plopped into a village where he resumed human form and tried to forget the past. But he could only suppress his kestrelness in short bursts, leading him to monster out at inopportune times. Fernanda, the spicy redhead all the boys were after, took an interest in his brooding charms and mysterious behavior, which itself transformed shapeshifter style into affection for his birdy alter ego.
THE HOOK: The story is passionate because secret boy has secret power, and girl is o’erwhelmed by the majesty of nature gone wrong. Also an army general decides flying people must be commies and tries to root him out and take him down. Love under the gun.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY THREE: PARASITE
TITLE: THE LEATHER JACKET
CHARACTERS: Corinthia Brandesford: the Protagonist, Theobald Fenimore: the Love Interest, Buer: the Leather Jacket
PREMISE: Corinthia met brooding Heathcliff type Theobald at the wee-kend party of the Umpwutherington Brandesfords’. He never took off his leather jacket, which was a rather hideous affair, worse as time went on. But he was a feet-sweeper-offer. On the other hand, was he wearing the jacket or was the jacket wearing him?
THE HOOK: A demonic jacket has taken over a man’s body. He’s witty and wacky and totally into Corinthia. But Theobald’s exploitation is a necessary aspect of this relationship, which was surely against god’s will.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOUR: SHADOW
TITLE: ENDYMION’S SILHOUETTE
CHARACTERS: Dashiell Stockton: the Creator, Shadow: the Created
PREMISE: Dashiell was part of a circle of naughty gay men, who knew they were accursed by god for being true to themselves, and sought therefore to find what other condemnable things they could get up along the way down. Black magic, in fact. Usually he was just the sex appeal at the ceremony, but one weekend he was left behind while tripping on morphine, and found himself alone in the sorcerer’s chambers when the reverie broke. He did a little unsupervised magic of his own, raising a shadow version of himself. They talked for hours about secrets of the cosmos and sensuous delights. This wasn’t just another version of himself, was it? A demon? A fallen angel? They get it on.
THE HOOK: Is it real or is it selfcest? Forbidden love.
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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FIVE: ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL EXPERIMENTAL
TITLE: SWEETNESS
CHARACTERS: Dr. Delicious: the Man, Sugar: the Natural, and Aspartame: the Artificial
PREMISE: Dr. Delicious lived in an anime world of colorful tiered cityscapes where people in the street were not animated, just drawn mid-motion while crowd patter played in the soundtrack. He used cyber-alchemy to conjure the spirit of Sugar, a girl with auburn hair and amber eyes, a killer with kindness, an elemental of white crystal and overgrown grass blades when there were no humans around. But his boss said no, she is not enough. Bring forth the spirit of Aspartame, hollow and potent, brightly colored and utterly ephemeral.
THE HOOK: Love triangle again. Sugar and Aspartame vie for the affections of the alchemist, embodying their own bizarre qualities, but he is a bad dad(dy dom) and they may sometimes seek affection in each other’s arms. Who will win? (Whoever wins the poll. Day Five’s poll hasn’t closed, but is close between Artificial and Natural monsters, Artificial up by one vote.) Science won. I thought doing a post for the two frontrunners in the poll would be a safe bet, then worst place came from behind for a dark horse victory. Congrats, Experimental.
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Had a conversation today that put me in mind of this post I wrote. Like in that one, this one has to contain ableist language, but hopefully not be seen as an endorsement of such, or an invitation to do that in my comment section. In fact, read that post first, because I don’t wanna repeat the same junk. Long story short, what if the things we rate as cognitive deficits and malfunctions are vastly vastly more commonplace than we assume? What if, as an emotionally stable person without any major risk of delusions, you were in a minority? Can we sane few right the world gone mad? Can we steer this ship of fools unto the safe harbor of sanity?
Nope. There are no cures for most of what can ail a mind, just a life of care and carefulness. Assuming we are even fortunate enough to know how bonkers we are. A lot of people who are walking around assuming they are fairly normal or similar to others, not susceptible to delusions, are one weird day away from joining a cult and giving their lives over to it. One moment away from being told “the truth” on a facebook post and forever thinking something that would make a gullible child look twice.
Atrocity Guide on yewchoob has a video about a cult that includes interviews with an ex-member who got out and is doing well. Nice. But what happened? At a seminar the cult leader gave, he saw a golden light radiating from the man. The deeper he got into it, the more impossible things he bore witness to. And yet, on the other side, he realized those were all hallucinations, provoked through the power of suggestion. Hearing this sensible guy say these things, you have to wonder, could it happen to me?
If it’s never happened to you before, well, probably not. I think some people just have wild imaginations, or are more prone to influence. But who knows? Also, as you age, who is to say how your faculties might change? As an atheistical type, formerly of the fiery brand, I used to imagine we could eliminate magical thinking from the world by getting everybody hip to philosophical materialism. The holes in the logic of religion are trivially easy to point out, to talk under the table.
But nobody is impervious to bullshit, and it’s so pervasive in the world that it deforms the perception of reality on an everyday basis for vast swathes of humanity. They’ll never buy reality because the fantasy everybody around them was taught every day forever just feels more correct, in their hearts. Words to the contrary, they just sound like silly noises. Maybe they don’t have the exact words to argue against you in the moment, but they’re sure somebody smarter in the faith, some preacher would be able to get you to see the light. Because they have the same point of view as I do, at the end of the day. Their truth is so obviously self-evident, it doesn’t need a rationale. You don’t see me doing atheist apologetics much. We all know what’s what, right?
The misguided person I spoke with today, she felt mighty foolish and didn’t know what to do with herself. Not her fault. I got the same conclusion here as I did before, but feel it more today than the last time I wrote it. We need laws against lying. The ACLU will say no, reaching across the aisle to join hands with political propagandists and corporate salesfuckos, but nay.
We can’t prevent all types of exploitation forever, we can’t protect people from themselves perfectly, but if human life and well-being has any value at all, we, as a society must find a way to reduce the harm caused by dishonest persuasion, better than we do now. It’s like how we have laws against murder, knowing full well it will still happen at some point, no matter what we do. But the laws give us a mechanism of enforcement, a disincentive. Right now, in the USA, you’re literally praised for being the biggest con artist. It’s fucked up and I hate it.
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a lil googling shows me this would typically be cosas blasfemias en español, but i gotta be an extrañero in meiner eigener way.
this post will be written in a shorthand that i understand, but you may not. it is for my own reference.
INSPIRY – Jupiter Ascending Blood Meridian Doowutchyalike Dune Heavenly Creatures IDK
________INICIO__________________DUO__________________TRISTE
____pope takes a nap___________who is she?_____________all is readied
_________bailar_______________les miserables________ich will kein engel sein
____josie war n peace__________freedom in exile___________punchin holes
______vatican hustle________directives and expletives_____prelude to starcrash
_____angels deserve___________pinochet’d ches________what god just did to us
_______creperie______________trouble in paradise__________in da cloughb
____voitures des anges___________get broke________________dad killlah
_____celestial bodies___________a crone alone______________rent is theft
______haunted sky____________psychic damage___________you’re nicked
______tower descent____________oubliette’d_____________commies hate you
______sensei sez______________out or in? sleep__________doctor thorazine
______taking over_____________uncounted sheep___________walmart sux
__but what does it mean?_____who let the dogs out?_________da crone fades
______the wall of ice____________alright it’s on___________commies makeup
__the flesh corrupts – la mujer_____rêve d’ange_____________doctor crepes
_____que es verdad?____________escapade_______________cuckoo flew
______sisters sisters___________an epic poem____________back in the vatican
_____________________________ladies’ night____________happy happy joy joy
you can easily enough guess what this is, but nuh sperlers, don’t think about it too hard.
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Did we forget to promote the Podish Sortacast we did on plagiarism this morning? Whoops here it is… Like a joker, this link goes to the start of my poem in the video, not to the beginning of the video, so if you wanna watch us mumble and bumble from the beginning, scroll back. EDIT – maybe that didn’t work. I’m too tired to figure it out. It’s at, like, 56:25.
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You might have recently become aware of Todd in the Shadows as the guy who compiled James Somerton’s lies, whacking him with a steel chair after HBomberguy body slammed him from low earth orbit with the plagiarism exposé. Todd is usually a music reviewer, with popular video series such as Train Wreckords and One Hit Wonderland. My bf told me Todd’s Somerton video was among his most popular, which got me asking about where his other videos ranked. I found out this one never even hit a million views, and was scandalized.
Behold, the best Todd in the Shadows video ever:
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content warnings: ultragore, violence against women
Dreamed I was a South Asian teenager who was the only boy on a co-ed lacrosse team. One of the girls was sick and had to sit out the game, so the others were all pissed off or sad, anticipating a big loss. I was like, what’s the big deal? Play just to play or go home. They disagreed and my subconscious chauvinisms said, “girls are all the same. gotta have it all.”
The dream time skipped to the aftermath of the game. At that point I was no longer the boy – it was third person – and the team’s mothers were presenting them with gifts. They had lost; call ’em prizes for worst place. “Lori I bestow upon you this shovel, that you may dig your own grave.”
When the line got to the boy, he was blood-flecked and all pumped up, like he has just defeated some guys in hand-to-hand combat, and was ready for more. The dream’s camera eye was over mom’s shoulder, as she handed him a machete, like a princess bestowing a sword upon a knight.
“For great victory in battle I bestow upon you the blade of Lord Shiva.” The boy roared in triumph. The camera moved to where we could see mom’s face, and it was a flat plane of glistening bone and bloody meat. The front few inches of her head had been cut off.
I feel like the story implied by the time skip was of a lacrosse match turned into a brutal fight, during which boy’s mom was mutilated. The game was lost but the fight was won by the co-ed losers. Anyway, yikes.
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Gonna use ableist language in this post, obviously, but not as an endorsement, also obviously – I hope. A common belief of misanthropes in all walks of life is that they are the lone sane or intelligent person in a world gone mad or gone stupid. You get that a lot in comments on FtB. Observe my comment policy in the sidebar before you bring that here, please. I just wanted to get out an idea that’s been occurring to me a lot lately. I’ve been running into the cognitive deficits of others pretty often, and the big plagiarism video focused a lot on the question of “why plagiarize?” I feel these things are related.
When I say I’ve been running into the cognitive deficits of others, you might reasonably infer that I think of myself as superior to those people in intellect and worth – that I am being ableist. But I believe you can acknowledge that somebody has a deficit in a non-ableist way, for example, when developing policies to allow the cognitively impaired full access to a good life. It’s what you do with the observation of that fact that matters. Do I think people are less valuable than I am because they would do worse on standardized tests? Worse at math, reading comprehension, elementary logic? No.
Do I think I am the end-all be-all of genius? Fuck no, I feel the limits of my own ability to think every fucking day at my job. It sucks. It sucks worse for the people I deal with, and I feel bad for them. My job is, in part, trying to explain information that makes me feel feeble-minded to people who find that information fully paralyzing.
The picture I’m starting to get, the half-baked thesis I’m dropping here, is that huge swathes of humanity are much less intelligent than society expects them to be. We expect certain basic abilities in modern life – attention span, reading comprehension, math, awareness of cultural concepts and trivia, wit, spelling and grammar, whatever. You might see people being slack about some of these and scoff, say there is no standard, but that’s a facile way of looking at shit. Witness the way people get dogpiled for embarrassing themselves on social media. These expectations are unevenly enforced, but they do exist.
(Quick aside on race and class: I’ve talked to an upper middle class white person who was hatefully resistant to understanding the most basic aspects of the laws and policies they were dealing with, and a user of thick AAVE with multiple children dependent on social benefits -your “welfare mom”- who effortlessly intuited subtleties of the even worse laws and policies they were being subjected to. You can’t judge cognitive ability from how educated a person sounds.)
This situation has not resulted in people rising to those standards, because they fucking can’t. The actual result of those standards is a lot of fakery. People learn how to pretend they’re more capable than they are. Some buy their own act and get overconfident, but most live in terror of being discovered. It’s not always imposter syndrome, because – if I’m right – the average person is genuinely not as cognitively capable as we expect them to be. This is not unlike the way we expect everybody to be more slim and physically adroit than most people are capable of being. We’re all doing our best to not get attacked for our deficits, and if I’m right, huge numbers of people passing as able right now are actually mentally deficient by mainstream standards. They’re suffering for it.
The shittier skeptics will just mock the gullible. The more idealistic skeptics might see this issue and think, well, we’ll just help enlighten them. They’re right that nobody deserves to be gulled, but they’re wrong to think it’s possible for most people to reach a point of skeptical competence that will prevent it. We’d do better to push for laws and social mores that protect people from deception.
If you see somebody struggling with some cognitive task, cut them some slack. You’ve surely struggled with thinking at some point in your own life, or will in the future, should you experience senescence. Don’t call attention to it, just help them get past the situation discreetly and move on. That’s all I have for now. I don’t believe education and outreach is useless, but it could be useful to get a more realistic view of its limitations.
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