It might as well be my own hand on the madman’s lever—and yet, while I grieve for all innocents, my soul is at peace, insofar as it’s ever been at peace about anything.

Psychopath.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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      7 days ago

      Oh no, you must have missed the surprise incelism, let me fix that:

      And as the world learned a decade ago, I was able to date, get married, and have a family, only because I finally rejected what I took to be the socially obligatory attitude for male STEM nerds like me—namely, that my heterosexuality was inherently gross, creepy, and problematic, and that I had a moral obligation never to express romantic interest to women.

            • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
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              7 days ago

              You know who Scott Aaronson reminded me of, back when he first had his incel-ish blogospasm? Tatsuya Ishida. Scott Aa’s blogging echoed, to an extent, the “Sisterhood” phase transition of Sinfest. Both of them stemmed from a man being his own worst enemy. In both cases, my reaction was, “Good grief, bro, take a breath. There is not a mass movement to declare that your penis makes you bad. Whatever you’re reading, you’re seeking it out to hurt yourself because some part of you feels you deserve to be punished.”

              For those who don’t rubberneck at online car crashes, Sinfest was a popular webcomic in the early 2000’s known for raunchy, bawdy, deliberately “edgy” humor delivered with rather technically adept art. It was anti-establishment during the Bush years, with a bit of a “spiritual but not religious” streak. Tatsuya seemed to mellow when Obama rose to prominence; the strip bought hard into the “yes we can” message. And then… whoo wee, things got off the chain. He swerved into “feminism”, of a self-flagellating kind. Then from anti-porn, anti-sex-work-ism, he went TERF, then MAGA, and eventually esoteric pagan neo-Nazi. The art quality decayed apace, first discarding the personality of the brushwork, the settings, the character design… eventually losing its grasp of basic frame-to-frame continuity. A significant fraction of it by now is probably AI slop. Tats’ politics have degenerated into a few hateful ideas in orbit around each other. One Reddit user said, IIRC, “Tats believes that genocide is bad because the Jews are doing it.”

              Mirror images, man. Mirror images.

              • shinigami3@awful.systems
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                7 days ago

                That’s an interesting parallel. Tats endorsed the view though, and now went full anti-semitic. But both are battling their imaginary demons

                (Random comment, but I love how the sinfest subreddit basically became a sneerclub for it)

                • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
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                  The Sinfest subreddit does have some real gems.

                  What’s he doing with the hammer and chisel? According to this comic, you become a Christian by signing a contract that you believe will improve your life (or death, I guess). Several tiny undead Jewish skeletons will then enter through your mouth, and your eyes will become screens that display religious symbols. How will woodworking tools help with any of this?

                  https://www.reddit.com/r/sinfest/comments/1mvcffn/comment/n9plpf5/

              • TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systemsOP
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                Never heard of Ishida, but he sounds like he’s yet another one of those people for whom politics and belief are just “vibes”. There’s no principle, no rational basis, just vibes. I feel like more and more of the world is becoming this way. Or perhaps it always was this way, but the Internet has just made it more evident.

      • TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systemsOP
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        Given how often it shows up in his writings, this incel victim narrative is a linchpin to his personality. He even trots it out in the middle of this genocidal screed – in what on first glance seems to be an irrelevant detour. But it’s really not irrelevant. His self-inflicted psychic damage is painfully real and manifests itself in all sorts of toxic and sociopathic ways, including abject dehumanization of an entire population.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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          There’s a shocking level of scope insensitivity on display. Like, on one hand I think there’s something healthy in recognizing that some people are going to be assholes to you for their own reasons and that you can’t “fix” them. Like, I’m perfectly happy to live and let live with some of the people in my family or former friends for a variety of personal reasons, and like Scott here I found that my mental health and life outcomes improved significantly when I decided to accept this.

          But I don’t even know how to explain that there’s a difference between saying “I don’t talk to people from high school anymore” and “we should depopulate and resettle an urban area the size of Detroit.” Like, this is fundamentally not something that should need to be explained.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        Apparently I’m a fighting-type because I was not prepared for all this psychic damage.

        Also, I’m not sure what the fucking takeaway here is supposed to be. Like… Getting over your own unhealthy fixations about relationships and sexuality is important for actually improving your relationships with people who might want to have sex with you.

      • CinnasVerses@awful.systems
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        7 days ago

        incel

        Some guys had to learn that most sex and dating advice on the Internet should be ignored, but many women have to learn that magazines like Cosmo are not written to help them. I wish we did not live in a world where so much culture tries to hurt so many people in an important area of life, but introverted men are not the only victims.

        Bringing up his individual struggles when two million people are being starved to death, shot, and forced into the desert is gross.