Gawr Gura memorial song: "In the Real World" by the Little Vir-maid

The virtual shark-girl streamer who took the world by storm officially graduates today. I have a whole backlog of tribute songs I'll be posting here. This "in memoriam" song is set to the tune of "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid (lyrics, music).

As I said with Mumei's memorial song, Millennials and especially Zoomers' native habitat is online, so IRL is this strange exotic territory that they're alternately fascinated and frightened by. Growing up, maturing, leaving the nest -- these all have to do with finding their place in meatspace, and navigating relations with the perplexing creatures called "other people" (as opposed to, "other accounts").

In Goob's case, she got pulled out into IRL without intending to. Fandom taboos aside, it's pretty clear that she became a mommy -- like the time she came back and while casually chatting with Ame, asked out of nowhere if she had ever lactated, totally matter of factly, as if to compare notes with her own experience.

Details like that are important, not as gossip about e-celebs, but to make it clear that she has a perfectly respectable and noble reason for having largely left behind her turboposting memelord career for the past couple years. And to emphasize that IRL still has a powerful attractive pull, yes even on terminally online, algo-poisoned Zoomer brains.

And that's what this memorial song is about -- her feeling restless after living and doing so much online, and wanting to escape out into a normie IRL existence (notwithstanding the occasional visit / reunion). For the veterans of irony-poisoned toxic content wars, IRL normie life is not "settling" or "retiring" -- it's liberating and rejuvenating! ^_^

(Atypical stress patterns: CARE-ee-oh-KEY, ee-MOTES, meat-STAN, tar-ZAN. And "nendie" is short for Nendoroid. Also, do Millennials and Zoomers realize that "cut the cord" is an allusion to cutting the umbilical cord? That's where the phrase came from relating to devices that we have become dependent on -- if it were literal, you wouldn't cut that kind of cord, but simply unplug it.)

* * *

Look at these subs, all at tier 3
Breaking the 'net during karaoke
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who sets trendy things?

Custom emotes, membership gold
How many fan-arts can one hard drive hold?
Lurking around /here/ you'd think
"She's the trending thing"

I've got ad rev and anime nendies
Several spots 'top the meme leaderboard
A million followers? I've got twenty
But fresh air, can't be streamed -- cut the cord

I wanna be, in the greenest yard
I wanna breathe, all the flowers they're planting
Grilling their ribs with that -- what do ya call it?
Oh, mesquite

Clicking your keys, you don't bond too hard
Hands are required for shaking, planting
Climbing your way through a -- what's that word again?
Tree

Out where they talk
And call you by "hon"
Out where they're face to face, one on one
Shooting the breeze
Wish I could be
In the real world

Trade all my clips, to trade some quips
Not just spam "poggers"
Pay 'em top rate, to elongate
My attention span
Bet in Meatstan, Jane finds Tarzan
Bet they don't shadowban mom bloggers
Online women, sick of simpin'
Won't trust the plan

I'm ready to grow where the green grass grows
Ask 'em my questions and get some answers
What are tires and why do they -- what's the word?
Turn
New routes to learn
It'd be such a buff
Forevermore live outdoors, off the cuff

Off the PC
Climb out the screen
To the real world

Memorial song, "IRL-mei" by Moomlan

Now that Hololive's owl-girl Mumei has left the nest, here's one last tribute song to memorialize her, in case she's still lurking (she does like to watch, y'know...).

Set to the tune of "Reflection" from Mulan (lyrics, music). Her fandom uses "-mei" to refer to various personas of hers, like "lolimei" for when she talks about her school days. So IRL-mei is who she is in real life.

I really had a think about this, which way should it be framed? -- her online persona is the real, primary one, and her IRL persona is a disguise? Or the other way around?

For Gen X-ers and earlier, our IRL selves are the real thing, and we adopt masks or disguises online.

For Millennials and Zoomers, though, they live and grew up so online, that's their primary unmediated self -- strange as it may seem, given that it is technologically mediated. But in the sense of not disguised -- not very much anyway. And their IRL persona is the more heavily guarded, disguised, not so recognizable version of their true online self.

Moom, in her role as a paranoid schizo conspiracy theory Disney princess, always kept her online persona heavily guarded from her family and friends. And although she shared lots of personal details with her audience, she still kept her IRL life at some distance. Leading two lives, or trying to live in two worlds at the same time.

But I think her online persona was/is the real one -- whether as Nanashi Mumei from Hololive-English Council, or in her earlier online existence(s), she used her cyber-persona to confide in people, vent, open up, express herself, and in general be her true self. Her IRL persona, as she shared many times with us, was mostly a blurry cloud to those around her, a ghost in a black hoodie (or something like that), as one of her schoolmates described it to her.

So I wrote this from the perspective of her online persona being the deep-down true one, and her IRL persona being a secondary, shadowy projection of it.

Recently she mentioned that she's going to open up to her family about what her vtuber persona and experience were, to some degree anyway. That's the story of character growth and maturity for raised-online Millennials and Zoomers -- being able to discuss your username, avatar, posting history, content archive, and so on. That's the *real* you, and you don't just share it with any ol' group of people from IRL!

It took getting such a fascinated welcoming reception from online audiences, to convince Moom that she really is talented, lovable, and... interesting! She would never want us to call her "cool". ^_^

We're glad we could play a role in giving you the confidence necessary to Just Be Yourself (TM) with those close to you IRL, you sweet schizo songbird, you. ^_^

* * *

Look at me
I could never last out in normie life
Or sail normie waters
Can it be
I was meant to spark fan-art?
Now I see
If I talked to them through my live2D
Their view of me would press restart

Who is that owl on screen
Singing proud in worldwide streams?

Why is IRL-mei someone I won't post?

Somehow I cannot priv
The girl who lives in my archive

When will IRL-mei share
Who I am online?

When will IRL-mei share
Who I am online?

The truce in the battle of the sexes during peaks of social harmony, 1940s and 1990s, halfway between peaks of social chaos circa 1920, 1970, and 2020

A topic I've been exploring lately relates to the 50-year cycle that Peter Turchin uncovered in social chaos and civil breakdown in American history, with eruptions circa 1970, 1920, 1870, missing one in 1820, and 1770. On that basis he predicted another eruption circa 2020 -- boy, was he right on the money.

He does mention the opposite values of these chaotic eruptions -- low-points for civil breakdown, or in other words, peaks of social harmony. The Era of Good Feelings in the 1820s was halfway between the breakdowns of the 1770s and 1870s. The Gay Nineties were halfway between the breakdowns of the 1870s and circa 1920.

It's misleadingly called the WWII era, since it began well before the war did (certainly before America's involvement in it), but the '30s and first half of the '40s, even the late '20s, were another such period. Woody Allen dubbed the period Radio Days. Also the period in which A Christmas Story is set. Or the contempo setting of It's a Wonderful Life. Whatever we call it, it was halfway between the breakdowns of circa 1920 and 1970.

Well, we just went through another breakdown circa 2020, which leaves the halfway point between it and the previous one before that, 1970, circa 1995. And really, harmony had been on the upswing by the late '70s, lasting throughout the '80s, and peaking in the first half of the '90s.

Chaos, breakdown, disorder, riots, etc. -- far more attention-grabbing for historians. The phases of greater harmony, stability, order, and calm, tend to go unnoticed.

Because this cycle pertains to such a foundational aspect of society -- order vs. disorder -- it affects so many domains of societal life. Riots vs. calmness is an obvious one. I'm interested in surveying how broadly this cycle touches our lives.

A perennial topic of discourse is the battle of the sexes, which has reached a fever pitch in the last 5, 10, 15 years. I think we're past the worst part of it, but it's still raging.

And before focusing on the harmonious phase, it does help to start with the chaotic phase, since its symptoms are so much more intense and easy to discern.

During the most recent chaotic phase, circa the late '90s through the early 2020s, and exploding during the woketard 2010s, there are too many symptoms to list briefly. #MeToo, Slutwalk, toxic masculinity, incels, gay BFFs / fag hags, fujoshi fanfic (girl imagining herself as a male in a homoerotic male-male fantasy), redpill, Game / pickup artists, porn based on degradation or humiliation (for either sex), and on and on down the line. Guys and girls could not have inhabited more separate, and more mutually hostile social environments.

In terms of waves of feminism, this is associated with the Fourth Wave.

During the previous eruption of chaos in the late '60s and early '70s, there was the Second Wave of feminism. Mostly focused on abortion, but also women's liberation in general, free love, bra-burning, equal pay for equal work, divorce, and the birth of what's called radical feminism i.e. the bitter man-hating abolish all gender roles type. That included the SCUM Manifesto, i.e. the Society for Cutting Up Men, by the whackjob who shot Andy Warhol, Valerie Solanas -- this was before feminazis sanctified gay men as their protective cockblocking eunuchs against the forces of toxic heterosexual masculinity.

During the previous eruption of chaos before that, was the breakdown of the late 1910s and early '20s. That coincided with the First Wave of feminism, specifically the Suffragette movement. Along with the chaotic social mood generally, this movement of feminism had been growing since the turn of the 20th century, it just hit its peak circa 1920 (when the US granted women the right to vote).

You may have noticed a skipped-over wave of feminism -- the Third Wave. That term applies to the '90s and the early 2000s, during a period of relative social calm rather than upheaval, as opposed to the other three waves coinciding with civil breakdowns.

Well, Third Wave feminism doesn't really exist, and feminists admit it -- its hallmark was its lack of cohesion politically, and lack of coherence conceptually. It's more of a placeholder term for "whatever feminists were up to in the '90s". And it's premised upon women of the '80s and '90s having won so many things during the previous two waves, so what was left for the '90s?

One of the major books of the Third Wave, Susan Faludi's Backlash ('91), is more about the past than the present -- the backlash against the Second Wave after the peak of social chaos had been reached, by the late '70s and throughout the '80s and into the early '90s.

The other major book, which *was* more about the present than a backlash against the previous wave, was The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (also '91). Like the Third Wave in general, its premise is how many material, legal, and other gains have already been won due to the First and Second Waves. Now with women seemingly having it all, they find themselves searching for that last little bit of perfection that cannot be allocated to them by laws or corporate policies -- beauty, namely cosmetic surgery, fashion victimhood, eating disorders, and the like. The idea was, let's try to liberate ourselves from that self-imposed / mass-mediated oppression, and focus more on our worth as people who are not paragons of beauty.

OK, if that's feminism, then there was a Third Wave of it in the '90s. But it's not a movement, not political, and not seeking to up-end society like the other three waves did. Crucially, it was not man-hating or man-blaming or seeking a redress of grievances from the offending male sex. All feminists are at least somewhat man-hating and man-blaming, but the Third Wavers were pretty tame and calm, relative to the radicals of the Second and Fourth waves on either side of them.

The most you could point to in the '90s was in its second half, after the peak of social harmony had been reached, and the pendulum began to swing once again toward chaos and breakdown -- but had only just begun to shift. These developments were the embryonic forms of Fourth Wave feminism that would rear their ugly heads for real during the woketard 2010s.

Things like The Vagina Monologues ('96) and the associated V-Day ('98) which warped Valentine's Day into a day of raising awareness about violence against women, and even the whole Girl Power phenomenon ("chicks before dicks", to counter "bros before hoes"), associated with the Spice Girls and their Millennial audience.

Also the rise of gay BFFs, gay eunuchs, fag hags, and fujoshi fanfic -- Will & Grace, Sex and the City, and by the early 2000s, the first gay kiss in primetime in an episode of Dawson's Creek (2000), and in the music video for "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera (2002), and the bitter emo girl + messy gay BFF duo in Mean Girls (2004).

Suddenly, boys and girls were beginning to split apart, although this rift would not reach its yawning maximum until circa 2020. But it was quite a gear-shift or phase-change compared to the first half of the '90s, the '80s, and the late '70s.

So, one of the hallmarks of that harmonious phase was the relative absence of a feminist movement, especially of the man-hating and man-blaming and man-lobbying type that we usually require for something to be a true feminist movement.

The last time there was such a relative absence of feminism was the second half of the '20s (after women's suffrage was fait accompli, as well as discredited by their lobbying for the 18th Amendment to ban alcohol, which got repealed by the 21st Amendment in '33), all of the '30s, and at least the first half of the '40s.

You know the WWII era was barren of feminism when all they can point to, desperately, is the Rosie the Riveter ad campaign, or the fact that women joined the military as WACs and WAVES in their cute wool nurse's capes, to support the men in the war effort, in their typical female capacity. This was not man-hating, man-blaming, or man-lobbying for societal upheaval. So women could join the emergency war effort -- big deal, that's not radical at all, and tellingly it was not won by protests, violence, or other forms of coordinated confrontation against the power structure.

Much like the second half of the '90s, the second half of the '40s saw the very embryonic forms that would eventually become Second Wave feminism, like the 1949 publication of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, followed some time later in '63 by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

I will go into greater detail on other cultural correlates of these harmonious phases, when the battle of the sexes ground to a halt. But for now, just to get the ball rolling, this brief overview of the timeline of various waves of feminism should give you the overall picture.

I promise those details will be more exciting and relatable than the history of feminism! But we have to start somewhere uncontroversial, like organized man-hating, man-blaming, and man-lobbying. And of course, the pair movement of womanizing, woman-hating, woman-blaming, and woman-hectoring. But the male version is not an organized or academic affair, so it doesn't leave as rich of a paper trail as the female version.

And in any case, females are the choosy sex in human beings, so generally speaking, what they say goes, regarding how close or distant the sexes will be with each other. The fine-detailed surveys will also focus more on how women change or cycle over time, although I will note how men change or cycle over time in the same ways.

Unstolen election mega-thread

Just re-posting two initial comments here for now to get the ball rolling, will add to it in the comments as usual.

* * *

Why didn't Dems steal it this time? Well, Dems were promising to steal it -- the state election boards in battleground states, the media, and Obama himself on the campaign trail.

Why didn't they this time? Perhaps the election steal of 2020 was part of the broader civic breakdown of 2014-2020 -- most of which was marked by political violence, hostile rhetoric, etc. Stealing an election is not physical violence, or even heated rhetoric, but it is hyper-competitive, antagonistic, anti-social, etc.

It was also part of the broader hostile crusade by woketards, like censoring and deplatforming everyone during the 2014-2020 abyss. That's also hostile, anti-social, war-like, etc., but not physically violent.

This is part of the Peter Turchin 50-year cycle in civic breakdown, whose last peak was the late '60s and early '70s, then the late 1910s and early '20s, late 1860s and early '70s, a missing explosion circa the late 1810s and early '20s (which was instead the Era of Good Feelings), and another burst around the Revolutionary War of circa 1770.

It's a kind of energy that builds up, and then dissipates, over a cycle lasting 50 years, or 25 years in either direction.

By 2024, it was already clear that the violent symptoms of this pattern had abated -- BLM and Antifa did not burn down half the country in '24, there were no roving executions of cops caught on camera like in the mid-late 2010s, Democrats didn't roam around assassinating Trump supporters for no reason and getting off with no bail, etc. Although there were 2 assassination attempts on Trump himself -- the violence hasn't gone to 0, but it's only 5% of what it was during the 2014-2020 abyss.

Libtards didn't even hold marches when the Supreme Court over-turned their sacred cow of Roe v. Wade in '22. There will be no pussy hat marches when Trump is re-inaugurated.

Twitter allowed itself to be bought out and taken over by Musk, which would not have been allowed in 2014-2020, and they submitted to the new orders about no more crazy censorship and ban waves.

So, the failure or unwillingness of Dems to carry out the steal this time must be part of that general dissipation of policitized zeal from its 2014-2020 peak (abyss). There will be no Russiagate, #MeToo, Resistance, etc. bullshit like there was during Trump's first term, during the peak of politicized zealotry.

I thought since stealing an election wasn't violent or confrontational, they'd still do it -- especially since that's what they were promising for the past few months, right up through most of election night, with Philadelphia halting their vote count early in the evening, waiting for the rest of the state to return their numbers, anticipating a steal. Who am I to second-guess the same message, from the same top-level figures, that was followed up on by a successful insane steal in the very last election?

The energy level declining across all dimensions -- violence, censorship, stealing elections -- is also bipartisan. There was WAY less zeal on the Trump side this cycle, compared to 2015-'16, and even 2020. No one is sincerely posting God-Emperor memes anymore, no one is champing at the bit to lay the first bricks in that Big Beeyooteeful Wall, which never got built the last time. And there's just been far less trolling and teabagging this time than in 2016, and certainly 2020 when it got stolen, preventing the teabagging.

Politicized zeal overall in American society has fallen off of its 2014-2020 explosive peak, and will reach a minimum circa 2045, which will be as non-partisan as the mid-1990s were 50 years earlier. Then the next explosion will happen in the 2060s and early '70s, and the cycle will keep on repeating...

* * *

Also a quick dunk on tech determinist dum-dums, who blamed / credited the explosive zeitgeist of 2014-2020 on newfangled tech (social media, smartphones, "meme magic," online in general).

Well, Americans are even more online than they were in 2016, yet the zealotry has fallen off a cliff after 2020, and will continue plummeting toward a minimum in 2045 -- all while Americans continue to be as online, or even more online, than they were in the 2014-2020 period.

That's the cross-temporal proof. Then there's the cross-sectional proof -- Japanese people have become more and more online since they first adopted the internet. Yet they have experienced no such explosion of politicized zealotry -- whether leading to violence, censorship, heated rhetoric, stolen elections, or whatever else.

All technologies are mere tools, indifferent to how they're used, and impotent to shape, channel, or nudge human societal systems or individual behavior. Rather, the dynamics of society and individual psychology lead to some people using some tech for some purpose in some state of affairs, and some others to use some other tech (or even the same tech) for some other purpose when they're in some other state of affairs.

Americans didn't need social media or the internet or online anonymity to carry out an equally explosive bout of zealotry in the late 1960s and early '70s, or the late 1910s and early '20s, or the Civil War or the Revolution -- or the civic breakdown of the 60s AD during the Roman Empire, most of whom weren't even literate, let alone employing a communicative medium other than speech sounds coming out of the mouth.

When the cycle enters a crazy zealous phase, they use whatever means / media they have at their disposal, and when the cycle leaves the crazy zealous phase, they either use different media that have no stain of the zealous-associated media, or they use the same ol' media for a different purpose.

Technologies are utterly indifferent to how they're used, and they have no deterministic or even probabilistic influence stemming from inherently from themselves, toward human behavior, at any scale (person, group, society, etc.).

Aaron Bushnell: assessment, and online reactions (TikTok Zoomer carelords vs. Twitter Millennial ironycels)

First an assessment of the US Air Forceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in DC, to protest his being called to duty to support Israel's war against the Palestinians in Gaza. But mainly, a look at the polar opposite worlds of Twitter vs. TikTok, in light of their reactions to the seismic event.

The main questions being spun by the take-havers are what should we categorize this event as (mere suicide, expression of mental illness, martyrdom, sacrifice, etc.), and what effect will it have?

We can rule out mere suicide since nobody who simply wants to end their life lights themselves on fire in a public space and announces it and performs it as a political spectacle. Most mere suicides occur so inconspicuously that they may not be detected by acquaintances of the deceased for days or weeks, and are known only to the general public through amassing them all into national-level statistics, unaware of any single individual who committed suicide and/or their motives.

Nitpicking the reasons why mere suicides never choose self-immolation is irrelevant -- it is simply an objective truth that 0% of mere suicides use this method, which means we do no lump it into that category when engaging the pattern recognition lobes of our brains (which is only a branding exercise for most take-havers, they are highly ideological and retarded).

Why do some insist it's mere suicide, a call for mental health help, etc.? Probably projection from their own depressive mindset, their impotence in political activism, etc. Surely if I'm a depressive failure, everyone else is too. Sure thing, buddy.

But analyzing take-havers' motivations is not interesting. The main point is that they're objectively wrong when downplaying the severity and gravity of the event.

Both libtards and conservatards downplay it. Sometimes for the same reasons -- projecting their own depressive symptoms onto others. Sometimes for opposing partisan reasons -- libtards wanting to prevent a further fracturing of the Democrat coalition, since they are deeply divided over Israel vs. Palestine, and conservatards wanting to prevent a loss of faith in their own efficacy, after getting upstaged by a leftist against US intervention in the Mideast, something that their media hero Tucker Carlson is usually a champion of, in favor of focusing on America's domestic crises instead.

So, it's just like Bushnell described it himself -- an extreme form of protest, destined to become a spectacle.

That raises the next question -- what will come of it? It has already become a spectacle, there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. People may not talk about it every day for the next 100 years, but the effect will last in their minds.

Just like it only took one spectacle on election night 2020 -- the Great Ballot Count Stoppage -- to irreparably damage the legitimacy and authority of the national government, whether or not the masses keep grumbling about it every day for the next 100 years. The effect remained in their minds, and therefore in their behavior -- when ordered and threatened to take an experimental drug over a potential bad flu, those who were inclined not to do so, refused. They defied federal orders because they are illegitimate after having occupied the office only after the Great Ballot Count Stoppage. Why obey those who stole their way into the White House?

Why do take-havers mistakenly believe it'll all blow over, just cuz it'll no longer be the top trending hashtag on Twitter within a few weeks or months? Again, not interesting, but for the sake of completeness -- because they're projecting their own obsessive fixation on ThE DiScOUrSe onto everyone else. Since their own attention is in constant flux according to what's trending in the media, so must everyone else's be.

But 99% of the country doesn't fixate on discourse, and is not mentally unwell enough to be take junkies, and will not flush out last week's events just cuz this week has new events. The typical normie Republican voter still remembers the Great Ballot Count Stoppage, and treats the federal government as illegitimate to this day -- regardless of a zillion other events having flushed it out of the media over the years, including right-wing media.

Parents will never forget the insane torture that was foisted on their children through the school system during the Covid hysteria. Their eagerness to move on and get back to normal does not mean that they've memory-holed those events, just cuz their Facebook feed no longer has message after message about the topic. The next time they are asked to comply with systematic insanity against their children, they are going to say HELL NO, and the power-tripping administrators and teachers union have had to back off.

How many people forgot about 9/11 after a few weeks or months? It took at least 5 years to no longer be in the foreground of daily conversation, and it's still remembered and influencing our behavior to this day, over 20 years later. People react to actual events in the real world -- not to the topics du jour of the media. If the real-world importance was big, they will file that away as worth remembering, while irrelevant events will get flushed out of their memory. Only obsessive discourse junkies fixate on the topics du jour, and forget the milestones of last month, year, and decade.

The impact will not be the same everywhere, of course. It will cause shockwaves inside of the American military, the Democrat party, and the actively pro-Palestinian / anti-Israeli governments and militaries of the Middle East -- Yemen under the Houthis, Iran, and Hezbollah and allied Shia of Southern Lebanon, not to mention within Palestine itself (but then they have a self-interest in fighting against Israel, whereas the others need a higher purpose and inspiration to join the fight against Israel).

Given how unstable Egypt has become, a spectacle like this could set off a positive feedback loop there as well, whether it spawns a wave of self-immolation protests, or rouses the Egyptian people to topple their bought-off government (since the Camp David Accords of the late 1970s), or inspires a coup within the military that results in active warfare against Israel (breaking the Camp David Accords).

The ability of Israel to lash out at the Palestinians with no consequences, was predicated on converting the Arab-Israeli wars into a domestic Israel-Palestine conflict. Before the Camp David Accords, Israel was at war with the broad Middle East (which would've also included Iran if they'd had an Islamic government, rather than the US-allied Shah). Israel got bitchslapped out of Egypt's territory by an American Republican president in the good ol' 1950s (Suez Crisis), then won a resounding victory in the '67 war, but was quickly quagmired to a stalemate during the '73 war.

Only with the US buying off Egypt and Israel together -- the major militaries involved -- could there have been a slow winding-down of the Arab-Israeli configuration of the wars, shrinking it into a narrow domestic conflict between Israel and Palestine.

When Egypt's elite can no longer refrain from intervening on behalf of Palestine, and therefore against Israel, that whole reprieve from regional war is over. Egypt has never been more unstable in that matter, so it's only a question of how soon, not whether it will happen at all. And these public spectacles of martyrdom are just the sort of thing that could accelerate the timeline within Egypt.

And it will not merely go back to the Arab-Israeli configuration of the mid-20th century -- this time a more powerful Iran will join the anti-Israeli side, and it's not out of the question that the other regional power-player, Turkey, could side against Israel (probably not heavily, though). Not to mention global powers like Russia (militarily) and China (economically), likely the Saudis and perhaps Pakistan if Israel keeps pissing everyone else off. The Saudi-Iranian alliance is already a massive change since the last time, and weighs against Israel's survival as a Zionist state.

Thus, the downplayers are also projecting their own irrelevance in this conflict. They are not members of the military, so they think no one else is in the military either -- and won't take this much more seriously than civilian bystanders will. Those who are not Democrats, assume no one else is a Democrat either -- and so, no Democrats would listen to Bushnell, since Democrats don't listen to Republicans (projecting being a Republican onto everyone else).

Some are not Americans, projecting that onto actual Americans, who will of course take this more seriously than those in countries that are not party to the Israel-Palestine conflict. And most of the downplayers are not from Yemen, Palestine, Egypt, Southern Lebanon, or Iran -- and project their own "big whoop" attitude onto the masses and elites, civilians and soldiers, of those places that are heavily involved in the conflict, assuming no positive feedback loop will get activated over there because of an act in America.

* * *

It's ironic, cuz during the Trump years including the BLM / Antifa riots of 2020, the right-wing take-havers explained that right-wing protests would not change anything, that protests only work for leftists, because leftists are in power, and protests are really an internal form of bargaining within the liberal / leftist / Establishment system, akin to a bratty child throwing a tantrum at their parents.

In other words, there could be a million Trump voters marauding through the streets, and they would get shut down instantly and overwhelmingly, for being anti-Establishment, whereas BLM and Antifa are approved and sponsored by the Establishment, so their marauding would be forgiven and maybe even their demands met. Hell, the January 6th protesters got far worse treatment, and they didn't even burn down bookstores, police offices, or murder bystanders like BLM / Antifa did.

So then, by their own admission, Bushnell's act will succeed -- he's a leftist, not a right-winger, he's in the military and thus able to petition the military, and he's an American petitioning the American government. In none of these domains was he "politically homeless" and doomed to impotence at best and cruel persecution at worst.

Unlike BLM and Antifa, though, his refusal to take anyone else out with him will make him more sympathetic to neutral / independent types, as well as right-wingers themselves.

Although it's a minor tendency, some woketards of the BLM / Antifa persuasion did try to lessen his status by saying he was an evil white military man, so don't praise him or copycat him or anything like that.

But it's not 2014-2020 anymore, so the peak of politicized violence is over (zero protests or riots after Roe v. Wade got repealed). Most on the left did not amplify woketard voices in this instance.

If anything, this event will catalyze a shift away from BLM / Antifa organizing and violence -- none of which required sacrifice from the participants, they got away with everything and were never in any danger. They were not suicide bombers, nor self-immolaters -- they were just paramilitaries of the Democrat party running riot throughout the turf they controlled. They destroyed other people's stuff, not their own. They took others' lives, not having to risk their own in the process.

There's nothing inspirational about that kind of protest, except to those consumed by seething bitter revenge fantasies. But politicized anger has run its course and is getting exhausted, not replenished, after 2020. So, few to recruit to a would-be re-run of the 2014-2020 riots, driven by vindictiveness rather than martyrdom.

The starkest sign that Bushnell's act does not belong to the same category as BLM / Antifa actions is that no one in power is parroting him, lionizing him, etc. Unlike the top-level politicians and CEOs wearing black arm-bands, taking a knee / raising a fist, plastering the relevant slogans and logos on their social media, and so on and so forth. One is confronting the powerful, the other is in cahoots with the powerful. Anyone eliding this crucial distinction is just a propagandist for the Establishment, regardless of their branding.

There's also been a huge, rapid change in the generations within the relevant age group -- 25 year-olds today, like Bushnell, are Zoomers, not Millennials. For the record, 99% of woketards, BLM rioters, and Antifa paramilitaries were Millennials, with a small Gen X vanguard in leadership, and no Zoomers (who were too busy doing high school homework during 2014-2020, to go burn down a police station or summarily execute a MAGA hat-wearer, or even launch fake rape accusations during the #MeToo hysteria).

* * *

That leads into what I thought would be a major topic of this post, but looks like will be more of a reflection in an epilogue after all. And that's the unbridgeable chasm between the two main social media sites -- Twitter and TikTok (Reddit being parasitic off of Twitter, not the other way around, and like its Twitter host, being reflexively hostile to TikTok per se, as existential nemeses).

All of the depressive, projecting, ironypoisoned, coping downplaying comes from Twitter. I was really shocked after checking TikTok, but there is nothing like that there, from either political faction. It's more sincere, serious, resisting the ironic detachment from the Twitter-verse -- confessional, emotional, staring directly into the camera, and connecting honestly with the viewer one-on-one, heart to heart.

There was a big crowd within Tumblr that was like that, and they have migrated to TikTok, or they were too young to be on Tumblr but the would-be carelord Tumblr youths of today choose TikTok to begin with, since Tumblr's dead. The insane woketard SJW types migrated to Twitter (and somewhat to Reddit).

I realize that the Twittertards project Twitter-dom onto TikTok, and assume that everyone there is an insane ranting SJW with blue hair, which has opened up a lucrative (cash or clicks) market for rage-baiting Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok, who provide the Twitter users what they want to see from TikTok -- i.e., the minority of unhinged SJWs who are speaking their crazy Twitter-esque threads out loud rather than writing them in text format.

But just scroll through the videos within the #AaronBushnell hashtag on TikTok, and hardly anyone looks counter / sub-cultural, none are ranting at the top of their lungs, they aren't demonizing white people, saying Bushnell should not be honored cuz he was white / male / in the military, or whatever Satanic imagery the Twittertards want to be shown via Libs of TikTok. No irony poisoning in their messaging (from any side), no glib dismissive tone of voice, no smugness, no Daily Show snark and caricatured facial expressions of superiority, no cynicism -- it's just the polar opposite world from Twitter.

Mainly this is generational -- TikTok is largely Zoomers, while Twitter has always been and still is mostly Millennials (and some Gen X-ers). Bushnell himself was a Zoomer, as is the right-wing public risk-taker Kyle Rittenhouse. Millennials are too selfish and entitled to sacrifice, they've always been that way, and they'll never change. Exploring why is not relevant now, the point is descriptively, that's how they are.

Libtards trying to downplay Kyle Rittenhouse's defense of public spaces during the 2020 riots was also largely projection of their own cowardliness and selfishness, based on generational differences. Who's this high-school pipsqueak trying to defend a public space at grave risk to himself? You're just supposed to burn it down when the elites grant you immunity, like a good little Millennial brown-noser and seething revenge-fantasy-masturbator.

Branding Zoomers as nihilistic doomers is, once again, just projection by cynical Millennials who have been defeated by the world and given up.

Zoomers certainly do not hold a rosy view of their future, but that does not lead them to passivity, cynicism, and irony-coated depression. If anything, they are pissed at the certain shitstorm that the future holds for them, and they're inclined to take bigger risks to make life livable -- they have nothing to lose, unlike Millennials who grew up in relative harmony and material paradise and upward mobility (until they had to leave home).

Call it idealism, zealotry, whatever -- they are far less inclined than Millennials to just take the shit sandwich the world is handing them, and obediently gulp it down. Millennials had much to lose, and Zoomers little -- how much worse could life actually get by slapping the sandwich out of society's hand and taking a big risk to get something good to eat?

Millennials learned not to bite the hand that feeds, since that hand fed them plenty. Zoomers grew up being fed by a stingy hand, and now owe no obedience.

And no, that's not their literal parents' hand feeding them -- Zoomers' parents fed and clothed them all right. But society writ large did not. Claiming that Zoomer risk-takers are just "mad at dad" is, once again, pure projection from Millennials who were overly indulged by their wealthiest generation in world history Boomer parents, imagining that the only reason a young person would lash out at the system is cuz mom & dad didn't give them enough money to hang out at the mall on the weekend.

Zoomers bringing back slang that intensifies emotion, not minimize it a la Millennials

During Mumei's "learning slang" stream last night, it struck me that one of the Millennials' key phrases -- "we did a thing" -- is another example of their annoying trend for emotional minimization.

Like, Gen X would say something is "totally fucking awesome" -- they intensified it with "totally," "to the max," "so," "for sure," etc.

Millennials would say something is "kind of amazing" -- they took away from the impact of "amazing" by saying it was only "kind of" amazing. They really meant full-on amazing, but their gay habit of minimizing all emotion prevents them from saying amazing or totally amazing or totally fucking amazing. They have to minimize it with kind of.

It wasn't until Mumei pointed out the contexts that the "we did a thing" phrase appears in, that it clicked into place for me. It's usually a really big deal -- a completely different hairstyle or hair color, getting engaged or married, etc.

They're trying to minimize the emotional impact of saying "We got married!!!" by turning a momentous event into merely "a thing" of no description or import. Of course, they mean it's a big deal, but their gay Millennial brains can't express emotion, so the biggest events of their whole lives become "a thing".

Have Millennial moms sunk to the low of posting their post-partum selfies, with the newborn in their arms, captioned, "so this morning i did a thing"?

They also preface the sentence with "so" as though it's a casual NBD situation, minimizing it further. (Gen-X "so" is an intensifying adjective or adverb, not an interjection -- "that new song is SO awesome!" or "I am SO gonna kick that guy's ass!")

And this relates to their lame and played-out trend of never using capital letters or punctuation or emojis -- doing so would indicate emotional tone of some sort within the words per se, as well as at a meta level, the writer cared enough to use capitalization and punctuation for the audience. It's mumblecore orthography.

"i couldnt possibly feel or care any less" is the message. So you're just an empty-inside depressive dork? Woah, mind blown, here's another trophy for your everybody-gets-a-trophy generation.

Good ol' Zoomers have started to give me hope about being neo-X-ers instead of Millennials 2.0. She pointed out that in the phrase "sending me", the speaker will often add on another bit like "sending me into orbit" -- that's an intensifier, not a minimizer! It's just like a bona fide Gen X example from the '80s that she discussed -- "gag me", which also could be followed by an intensifier like "gag me with a spoon".

Or, in the Gen X teen movie classic Heathers, "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw".

Mooms mentioned seeing Mean Girls several times (re: "fetch"), and that movie was inspired by Heathers. I had to pass this info along back in 2006 to my Millennial tutorees who were obsessed with Mean Girls but hadn't even heard of Heathers. Now I'm passing it on to Zoomers.

I think as neo-X-ers, Zoomers would resonate better with Heathers than Millennials did. The Zoomer girls from Hololive should do a watchalong! Gura, Mumei, Kronii, and Bae. Or at least watch it off-stream and gab about it together... or should I say, bump gums? Hehe.

The bottom-up war on Thanksgiving (libtard foot soldiers, not top-down war by academia / media)

Why do libtards go out of their way to ruin Thanksgiving? Second time within just 5 years.

Part of their greater moralistic crusade to destroy family bonds, destroy American traditions, and destroy holidays as a whole -- as something sacrosanct, protected from everyday bullshit.

I don't mean ideological crap that they post online about how the Pilgrims were problematic or whatever, I mean in their IRL face-to-face interactions with their own flesh and blood on a supposedly holy holiday here.

The former is top-down by the elites in academia, media, and entertainment. I'm talking about the bottom-up process by -- usually not elites, but aspiring elites, strivers, etc. And they may well be outside of academia / media / entertainment, but they take their marching orders from those sectors' elites, as foot soldiers in the crusade.

Well, they may end up destroying family bonds, but not in the way they think -- they're just going to get written off, excluded, and ostracized by those who do value family sanctity over petty moralistic bullshit.

Because contrary to their wish-casting, normal people don't actually have to tolerate them, host them, or even interact with them on these holidays anymore. No amount of pressure from Harvard, MSNBC, or Disney is going to enforce the foot soldiers being hosted by their families, at the grassroots level all over America. They only control what happens in their top-down world (what makes the news, what's taken as true history, etc.). Instead, the foot soldiers are weeding themselves out of the kin-pool.

Technically, it's zealots who fall under this description, since the non-zealous Democrats aren't weeding themselves out, and there are a handful of psycho Republicans who antagonize their families to the breaking point / ostracization. But right here, right now, zealots are way more libtard than conservatard, at least 80-20. Republicans, conservatives, Trump supporters, etc., are more jaded and cynical about politics, whereas Democrats, liberals, and Trump haters are driven by idealistic fervor.

Finally, in typical fashion, the ones trying to destroy the family bonds are always those who have received the most from the family and given the least, and go out of their way to signal their ingratitude. Normally this is tolerated because they're parasites who happen to share a high percentage of their genes with you -- but it's gotten so bad, that I don't see these types being tolerated any longer. Not in my case, that's for sure. They're not going to suck anything more out, while giving nothing back -- and waging war on the family at the same time!

My advice to those with a libtard crusader in your family (and there only needs to be one to ruin it for the whole group), get your anger out in the short-term, and then just write them off indefinitely. Tell them you aren't going to talk to them, host them, or give them anything (money, gifts, services / favors, literally anything).

I was hoping this would've died down after the psycho fever pitch of the late 2010s and 2020, but the fact that it's still going on in 2022 means these ones are probably not correctable by mundane means. Pray for them if you want, but you aren't going to change them -- they underwent a radicalization during the second half of the 2010s and 2020, and their transformation cannot be reversed.

If it was just an edgy middle-schooler posting a raised fist in the summer of 2020, I'd ignore that and wait and see what happens throughout this decade. But if they're a Millennial who imprinted on the war for wokeness, not as a youthful rebellion that may fade away, but as though it were a mature responsibility of theirs -- like a fiery 30-something preacher -- I don't see that wearing off. They weren't young, impulsive, and impressionistic -- they were in their late 20s and 30s!

To close on something more upbeat, please consider yourself lucky, and appreciate your situation, if you belong to the fortunate families that are primarily Silents, Gen X-ers, and Zoomers -- rather than Boomers and Millennials (and post-Zoomers, who are too young to be anything yet). You really don't know how good you have it, even if you were also subjected to the divorce epidemic or other family-destroying trends.

That was not unique to Silents and X-er children, but Boomers and X-er / Millennial children, too. But on top of that dysfunctional family force, the Boomer / Millennial families have a far higher concentration of zealots corroding the family for moral crusader reasons.

Sadly (to not close on something so upbeat after all), this is another huge blow to IRL and another huge boost to online / virtual interactions. You can micro-curate your social network online, excluding these persistent toxic influences that plague IRL spheres like the family. But it is what it is, you can only adapt -- by excluding the toxic ones from IRL family occasions, and depending more on normal people online (yes, they're out there, even if they put on an edgy persona).

Are Millennials / Zoomers nostalgic for GameStop, as Gen X is for Blockbuster?

I'm going to re-post a lengthy comment of mine into a standalone post, since it is a bit far from the original topic, though still of general interest. See the comments beginning here for the background -- talking about the availability, or not, of classic video games in the online-only era, when physical media no longer exists, more or less.

Part of my broader interest in contemporary archaeology, like collections of beer and soda containers left behind in hang-out spaces in the woods around suburbia, back when young people used to go there for fun (mainly in the '70s and '80s). Or carvings in sidewalk cement, or carvings on trees, and the like. Physical, tangible traces and remains of an earlier "vibe" or zeitgeist -- not just intangible memories and stories.

Corporeal (as opposed to cerebral) people of any generation could be interested in this stuff, so here it goes.

* * *

Are Millennials and Zoomers nostalgic for GameStop now? I would be. I know there was the meme stock thing, but I mean actual nostalgia for the store, the way they get misty-eyed about GameFAQs walkthroughs.

I stopped playing most new video games after the '90s, but still hit up GameStop in the 2000s to get those compilations of old games for the PS2 or GameCube -- the only reason I bought those consoles. (Used and cheap, both the games and consoles.)

Only contempo games I bought (used, cheap) were for the GBA and DS, which was still keeping 2D alive over 3D, and the drawing / illustration style alive over the photographic / cinematographic style.

I picked up the Game Boy Player adapter for the GameCube, allowing the GBA cartridges to play on a TV (without emulation of the GBA or the games -- same tech used for the GBP as the GBA). In the bargain bin for probably $5, with the disc, case, manual, everything. Now goes for well over $100, and sadly something I had to sell during a major move.

And just milling around the store, browsing, being around other people, maybe chit-chatting with the workers.

Similar to how Gen X will always wax nostalgic for the heyday of the video rental store. And like that staple of the community, the video game store had its small chains or mom & pop stores, like Play N Trade, not only the mega-corpo of GameStop.

It was obligatory to hate on GameStop if you were a gamer in the 2000s, and I imagine into the 2010s. Now looking back on it, have gamers changed their minds? Its business model sucked, they ripped you off if you sold them anything, they always tried to push pre-orders, bla bla bla -- but still, it was a staple of the community, a cultural hang-out space for like-minded people, nothing online or digital about it, but physical and tangible and *social*.

Once upon a time, it was also obligatory to hate on GameStop and others for slapping those price stickers on the games and consoles, requiring meticulous removal. Nowadays, do Millennials and Zoomers get nostalgic for those physical traces of a bygone social-cultural era?

Like having VHS tapes that were originally from a public library, or a Blockbuster, or mom & pop video store. I have several like that, and the different types of cases, or the labels indicating who used to own it, do give them an extra level of nostalgia.

If Gen X-ers can get nostalgic for Blockbuster Video, Millennials and Zoomers can sure as hell get nostalgic for GameStop.

Grunge vocal harmonies: Alice in Chains as the final egalitarian all-American sound

To stay on the topic of grunge for a bit, let's return to the economic context of vocal harmonies in popular music, as detailed in previous posts and comments (here, here, and here). Namely, they are an aesthetic expression of an egalitarian economic zeitgeist, rather than a hyper-competitive zeitgeist. The reason is simple: if you want to stand out from the others in a group, that's easier when the climate favors me-first behavior, whereas one that favors collective well-being will corral a would-be lead into sharing status with the other members.

This economic climate, and its aesthetic expression, lasted from roughly 1920 to 1980, the so-called Great Compression, when inequality was steadily falling, and norms were collectivist (no matter if that was under Stalin, FDR, or Franco).

However, just because 1980 marked the start of the neoliberal, individualist Reagan era, doesn't mean the egalitarian ethic disappeared everywhere overnight, nor that vocal harmonies totally and instantly vanished either. The best-known example in pop is Wilson Phillips from the early '90s, well into the Reagan / Bush era.

But just a few years later, during the Clinton years, and even more of-the-'90s in their style, came one of the most popular grunge bands, Alice in Chains. Unlike other bands of their scene, and of modern rock as a whole, their songs made heavy use of harmonizing vocals between lead singer Layne Staley and the lead guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell (and perhaps one of them overdubbed, to make three voices).

The multiple voices and the intricacies of the harmonizing come through better with a mellow acoustic arrangement, without loud angry distorted electric guitars. Here is "Down in a Hole" from their MTV Unplugged performance of 1996 (originally released in '92):



As far as I'm aware, they were the last major group to rely so consistently on vocal harmonies, especially involving two different people -- that's the whole point of the egalitarian climate. Overdubbing your own voice, to make two or more of your own lines, is perfectly compatible with a me-first norm. Sharing the spotlight with another person is only possible when there's a stronger social pressure to do so.

There's also a geographic angle here, which is that grunge was not only from the West -- where American ethnogenesis has always been most intense, during its westward frontier expansion -- it was mostly not from California (aside from SoCal band Stone Temple Pilots). It was from the Pacific Northwest, which no one had heard much of before.

Most of the other harmonizing bands like the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and their kids Wilson Phillips, were from California. Earlier girl groups were from the Midwest (Andrews Sisters, McGuire Sisters, and the Chordettes). Only the Everly Brothers (Tennessee) and Simon & Garfunkel (New York) were from back East.

So, the Next Big Thing in music hailing from the cultural center of the nation, out West, was hardly new -- but not this specific region of the West. Why not California, where the record studios are mostly located as well? By this point, neoliberal yuppie-ism was starting to thoroughly infect California -- and yuppies don't want to share credit and fame.

But there was still a pocket of the informal, egalitarian, "Hey man, we're all Americans here" spirit up in the Northwest. That was one of the few regions to vote against Bush in the landslide 1988 election -- not California, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Vermont, all of which voted Republican (for the last time). Rather, Oregon and Washington, the Lutheran Triangle of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, and West Virginia alone in Appalachia.

Jerry Cantrell thinks of himself as half Yankee and half Redneck. In fact, during that same Unplugged concert, he led a brief impromptu rendition of the Hee Haw staple "Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me". Part of the broader trend of multiculturalism in the '90s, including across various white cultures -- in this case, the rural / country / hillbilly culture. No different from every sub-culture wearing bib overalls in the '90s. That's probably also the root of the grunge / post-grunge vowel growl -- including a nod to the Southern drawl, while still making it a new distinctive out-West sound.

Several decades later, the whole Pacific Northwest has been yuppie-fied, led by the tech sector. But back then, it was not like that at all. It had a few large booming cities like most other states, not towers of ill-gotten wealth and inequality, which only began in earnest with the Dot-Com Bubble, slightly after the heyday of grunge.

That whole scene was also one of the last times when working-class people could become cultural stars, whereas now it's mainly the children of investment bankers who dominate the entertainment industry. Back then, ordinary people with enough talent could create their own music -- they only needed the studios to record it, and promote / distribute it.

Now, with the whole process being more of a committee-managed machine, the performers are more a series of slots that individuals can be plugged into -- or unplugged from, when they lose favor with the machine. So someone's daughter doesn't need to have a whole band behind her -- she'll collaborate with other pro songwriters, lyricists, and sessions musicians. And when the machine is through with her, that's it, she's on her own and fades into obscurity.

Taking on the system, however, requires a huge amount of social cohesion -- the same small group of outsiders, the band, need to stick together and work out their problems in order to maintain the integrity and bargaining power of their collective unit, rather than be split up and fending for themselves as they fight for individual slots within the machine. No team spirit, no team behavior -- and they get crushed by the collective power of the culture cartel.

As economic norms have shifted even further into me-first yuppie-ism (however rebranded for Millennials and Zoomers -- "get that bag"), and as a cocooning rather than outgoing mood took over the social sphere during the '90s and after, bands disappeared. Everyone became a solo artist and free agent, plugged into and dependent upon the machine.

But back in the '90s, this disappearance was just beginning, so although it was noticeable, it was not total. There were still plenty of highly popular rock bands, and rap *groups*.

By now, though, if you want to be in a band, you won't be creating your own music, but playing covers. Participating in your own band is about more than finding the right number of individuals with musical talent -- they have to collaborate, get along socially, work out problems, etc., on an ongoing basis. That was already a tall order back in the good ol' days, when fights and creative differences were standard -- but typically got resolved, at least enough to make another album (and the loser of those fights didn't automatically take their ball and go home alone).

Today's young people have imprinted on a climate of hyper-competitive economic norms, and helicopter parent-induced cocooning away from their peers during their critical developmental years (which is why they're still socially anxious in their 20s).

It is time to start accepting that American ethnogenesis is complete, and very little new will be created going forward. However, that just means we're going to switch from expecting new stuff all the time, to performing the classics and standards of our culture. And that's not bad, it's just the next natural phase of the cycle. Nobody who goes to church these days is composing their own music -- they're performing what was created by other people, during an earlier era of ongoing ethnogenesis and cultural dynamism, hundreds of years ago.

On the bright side for today's young people, and all future generations, they have an infinite treasure trove to choose from, in order to showcase their talent for playing music in a group, and harmonizing their vocals -- from the Chordettes, to the Bee Gees, to Alice in Chains.

"Weird" aesthetics over the decades: From unifying youth rebellion against authority, to anti-social warring against peers, as imperial collapse sets in

Although I like the '90s the least among decades I'm familiar with, they were still formative for me, and they're currently undergoing a revival (along with y2k), so I might as well chime in on some of the key features of that decade, and how they're different or similar to today's.

This recent reflection was sparked by Mumei singing "Basket Case" during her recent karaoke stream, instead of the 2000s emo era Green Day songs that are more popular nowadays. (Unless Zoomers get back into the '90s for real, and not just in clothing styles?)

Green Day has had one of the saddest trajectories of any musical group, regarding their role in the overall zeitgeist -- from purely (counter-)cultural actors back in the apathetic '90s, to the stirrings of the red state / blue state culture wars of the W. Bush 2000s, to full blown politicized witch-hunting of the woke 2010s and 2020.

Punk proved itself to be the most authoritarian-loving genre, with not only Green Day but the Offspring, the Dead Milkmen, Rage Against (now, For) the Machine, and worst of all the Dead Kennedys outright fangirling on Twitter with the CIA's anti-Trump electoral pointman McMullin. The common theme was that the half-or-more of the country that doesn't support your political program -- bailing out Wall Street, waging war against Cold War boogeymen, and mandating worthless vaccines for a bad flu -- are literal Nazis who must be concentration-camped in order to preserve freedom.

The only punk to pass this test with flying colors is Avril Lavigne, who never once posted anything political during the crucible of 2020 and after -- BLM, Antifa, boo Trump, vaccines, masks, etc. The princess of much-derided "mall punk" aced the test of anti-authoritarianism, while the critical darlings all failed pathetically. Score another W for all things mall-related.

As punk and "alt" culture in general became more authoritarian, its symbols went fully mainstream, to the point where you can walk into any drugstore and pick up hair dye in rainbow colors, Millennials are obligated to have tattoos, and marijuana is sold openly in every strip center around the country.

* * *

But enough about the recent past, which is all still fairly fresh in everyone's minds. The point here is to contrast how different the non-polarized '90s were. Hardly anyone had weird hair colors, tattoos and piercings other than in the ears were hard to find, and there were "3 strikes and you're out" laws about drugs and related crimes.

Now, someone who wasn't there might think that the relative normie-ness of the '90s meant that the alt culture was ignored, shunned, or suppressed by the majority of young people. But in fact they were fully accepted, even elevated at times. Just because you were a preppie or jock didn't mean you didn't have alt friends, didn't listen to gangsta rap or grunge, and never smoked a joint. Youth culture had its diverse sub-cultures, but they were all aware of each other and more or less friendly toward each other -- in their common struggle against The Man, The Powers That Be, The System, etc.

And far from that anti-authority sentiment being a vague vibe, it was explicit. White suburban alterna kids used to openly shout, "What smells like bacon?!" when the police were nearby. Preps didn't want to get hassled by The Man for smoking pot, joyriding, or whatever other mischief they were getting into. And being anti-police goes back even further among African-Americans. All this came together in the scene from Airheads -- where a metal band hijacks a radio station in order to play their demo tape for exposure -- in which the metalheads begin chanting, ROD-NEY KING! ROD-NEY KING! in order to get the crowd to swarm the bumbling cops.

This anti-authority attitude was not limited to local police, while praising the feds as witch-hunters against political enemies, as has become the norm over the past 5 years. Black leaders openly began talking about the role of the FBI in the MLK assassination, and the CIA for introducing crack into the ghettos. It was also the heyday for what the Deep State would brand as "conspiracy theories" among white people, too -- blaming the CIA for the JFK assassination (famously in the blockbuster Oliver Stone movie), the X-Files, the origins of Alex Jones, and so on and so forth.

* * *

To outwardly express these shared interests against authority, they adopted core elements of each other's aesthetics and style. Alterna kids flirted with dreadlocks (Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes, Dexter Holland of the Offspring), wore baggy jeans (including from Afrocentric brands like Cross Colors), and even if they were anti-sports, still sought out Charlotte Hornets gear by Starter. The preppy girls wore Doc Martens shoes. All white people adopted some degree of black slang.

The gangsta rap kids had as many drawers of plaid flannel as the grunge kids, and were bigger consumers of Tommy Hilfiger and Polo than even the preps. The '90s were the heyday of both the wigger and the... bleppy? Blunge? They weren't "Oreos" -- those were black kids trying to act WASP-y and yuppie in general, not just adopt the plaid flannels or Polo logo shirts from white kids.

The two counter-cultural camps -- alternative and gansta rap -- shared the pot leaf as a symbol (on hats, shirts, scrawled onto their textbook covers, etc., even if they never smoked a joint in their lives). In fact, they bought their counter-cultural clothing from the same store in the mall -- Spencer's.

Although I've never done any drugs, that didn't stop me from buying and occasionally wearing a black hat with a white skull in front, which had a vivid green pot leaf on its forehead. You couldn't buy that stuff at Abercrombie, Marshall's, or Walmart -- you had to go to Spencer's. That was before white counter-culture split off from black counter-culture and re-camped in the Hot Topic store, during the 2000s.

But back in the '90s, multiculturalism was the rule -- not only across races, but within white sub-cultures, like alterna and preppy, or alterna and country. The lineup for Woodstock '99 was heavy on the alterna sub-cultures within whites, but it also had George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars, James Brown, DMX, and Ice Cube. Not to mention multiple bands in the popular black-white fusion genre of rap-metal. Along with Willie Nelson, Creed, Sheryl Crow, and the Dave Matthews Band for normie / conservative-coded white audiences.

The shared interests against authority, and their cultural expression, came together in the censorship of music -- mainly by putting the sales-killing "Parental Advisory" label on the album cover. That effort was spearheaded by the non-partisan PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) back in the '80s, but continued into the '90s. And whereas the leader of the crusade, Democrat Tipper Gore, had earlier been the wife of a Senator, she was now the Second Lady.

There were also local measures across the nation to suppress counter-cultural symbols in public schools -- the pot leaf, the Charles Manson t-shirt popularized by Guns N' Roses frontman Axel Rose, piercings other than in the ear, and wild hair colors. But I'll cover those in a separate post, looking back on my own experience as a purple-haired 8th-grader in '95.

For now, suffice it to say that the role of those symbols was to unify the youth culture against the grown-up authorities. They were unifiers because they were already shared across a broad range of youth sub-cultures, and because the authorities were targeting their expression no matter who was displaying them. So it really was youth rebellion vs. power-tripping authorities.

This anti-censorship attitude meant to unify all of youth culture against the overbearing authorities, while still being non-partisan and indeed remarking on the political apathy of young people, was best expressed in the grunge anthem "Pretend We're Dead" by L7 from '92. (In the woke era, you'd have to add "all-female band", but that wasn't a rare thing before wokeness killed off the spirit of cooperation, including among women themselves.)

I didn't hear it at the time, but the jangly tambourine adds a nice Sixties counter-cultural touch, without being hamfisted or "boo Nixon" about it. Probably absorbed through the non-political Paisley Underground scene of the '80s, in their native SoCal area, which bore fuller fruit with fellow '90s icons Mazzy Star.

* * *

After over 200 years of rising, our empire's social cohesion (asabiya) had already hit a state of plateau by the 1980s and '90s, although it had not yet started its shallow decline, as it did during the blue state / red state culture wars of the 2000s, let alone the complete and total meltdown by the woke nadir of 2014-'20.

In the cultural domain of society, this breakdown manifested in the creative crowd -- whether the actual creators, their funders, their distributors / platformers, or the diehard consumers, or the commentators -- severing bonds with everyone who was not 100% identical to themselves. Obviously that unglued the whites from all non-white groups, since the creative crowd is overwhelmingly white. But it's not a racial thing, and pointing to 2000s emo and Hot Topic as a "whites-only" space is retardedly missing the bigger picture -- the creative crowd was severing itself from all other white cultures, like the preppies and normies and country fans.

Indeed, this dissolving of social bonds is so intense that even the alternative sub-cultures keep fragmenting into smaller groups, even though 100% of them are on the Democrat / liberal side of the political divide. They can't help but corrode the cohesion that would otherwise hold them together into a semi-big tent.

And as the creative crowd have abandoned their fight against overbearing authority, and turned on their fellow citizens instead, the overt and Deep State at the highest levels have come out in favor of them, and they in favor of it. Neither the FBI nor the local school principal will suppress a woketard student from sporting green hair, a lip piercing, pot leaf on their hat, etc.

Both the woketards and the authorities have discovered a common interest -- suppressing the unruly rabble during a crisis of legitimacy for the central authorities and elites in general, especially after the 2008 depression from which we have never recovered. The woketards because they feel they're superior to normies, who must be humiliated for their heretical culture. And the Deep State as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy against a would-be organized populace.

The central theme of anarchy has been re-branded for this new alliance, exemplified by the Black Bloc of the early 2000s anti-globalization movement being re-worked into a woketard paramilitary of the Deep State, now branded as Antifa. Whereas before it meant anti-authoritarian, now it means dissolving all social-cultural bonds for the woketards (to purify the culture of heresy), and preventing higher-level organization among the rabble in the eyes of the central state's security apparatus. Chaos, confusion, every man for himself, pure and total social breakdown -- not the put-upon banding together against The Powers That Be. In the new configuration, organization and teamwork = fascism, hence if you're anti-fascist, you're committed to dissolving every social unit in society.

And yes, that includes their own political team's units -- not the bizarre notion from right-wingers that the Dems or libtards or the Deep State have a well-oiled machine dominating a fractured GOP / conservatard enemy. The Democrats could not even produce enough cohesion to nominate Biden and Harris legitimately in 2020 -- the party leaders shut down the primary when it was clear nobody wanted Biden and would stay mired in a Bernie vs. not-Bernie civil war through the convention, like their 2016 convention on steroids (when Bernie representatives were boo-ing their "fellow" Dems from the convention floor!).

Every institution in the American Empire is coming apart at the seams, even the libtard ones. Hollywood can't make new movies, TV series, or music anymore. The video game industry can't do anything more than what they did 10 years ago, as Minecraft and GTA V are the most popular "new" games. The premier streaming platform, Twitch, is currently melting down from within. The general public does not believe the media, nor "peer-reviewed research" from the universities. The finance sector is collapsing again, with double-digit inflation on top of the problems of 2008.

Sure, there's an oasis here or there in every institution, but the overall trend is one of anti-social greed rotting them out from the inside, until they ultimately collapse. This is the opposite world of the Mid-20th Century, when people trusted the news & "studies," when the military could still win a world war, the FBI could coup a sitting president from the shadows with no one the wiser, when cultural production was still flourishing, when our manufacturing was first in the world, and when we didn't have rolling finance collapses with double-digit inflation and 0% interest rates and infinite money-printing.

*That* was the world of well-oiled machines -- here and now, we are in unrestrained breakdown and chaos, on all sides at once.

* * *

Contrary to clueless right-wingers who say that the creative crowd were always this bad, or always had this goal in mind, or are only now taking the mask off, this is in fact a 180-degree corruption of who they were in the '90s. And they themselves are openly embarrassed and ashamed of who they were back then, confessing their sins, promising to atone and "do better", and in all other ways disowning their previous selves. That's the opposite of celebrating their '90s selves as the tip of the spear, Trojan Horse, initial seed, Patient Zero, cuckoo's egg, long march through the institutions, or whatever other dum-dum metaphors the right-wing cultural commentators use to describe it.

Nor can we lazily say that they're the same as who they were back then because "the '90s led to the 2010s" -- sure, and so did the '50s, and the 1770s. We've gone through various phases of having little cohesion, rising, plateau-ing, then declining, yet to reach a new minimum. As far as cultural cohesion goes, the '90s were in a qualitatively different phase of this multi-century cycle. It was the multicultural consolidation of all our empire's earlier conquests, as well as unifying the sub-cultures within the imperial natives. The End of History -- no further left to go, unless history turns out to be non-linear...

Anyone likening the multicultural Nineties to the woke 2010s is from outer space -- they're totally out-of-touch with America, at least, and might as well be foreigners.

Next up: my 8th-grade battle for purple hair -- waged not against my normie peers (or even my parents), but against the literal authorities of the school. And other episodes involving my friends wearing the Charles Manson shirt, etc. I'll also elaborate on some other themes that I didn't get to chance to here, like individual vs. collective identity.

Millennials and Zoomers won't believe it, but that's because only Gen X and Boomers remember the reality of the '90s. Millennials and Zoomers retroactively insert way too much of the their own formative years in the 2000s and 2010s, back into the '90s or '80s, when it was not only absent, but often the polar opposite of the environment they imprinted on.

IRL in the '90s (new series overview)

Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the '80s revival was raging, a large part of my writing was focused on that trend, but putting a lot of separate pieces together into a more coherent sweeping vision of what was going on.

That led to my discovery of the link between crime rates and an outgoing social mood, and vice versa, falling crime and a cocooning social mood. I elaborated this over several rise-and-fall time periods, from those of the 20th century, as well as much earlier rising-crime eras (late 1300s / early 1400s, late 1500s / early 1600s, and late 1700s / early 1800s).

Use the sidebar to navigate through my posts from late 2009 through 2012 or so. Or leave a comment asking about a specific topic, and I'll try to remember if I covered it. Or use google to search this blog on your own.

I was never a huge fan of the '90s, either at the time, during the '80s revival when a handful of people tried to include the '90s as well, or even now when the Zoomers are trying to launch a '90s / y2k revival. However, the '80s have been revived to death by now, and I've written everything I can about that period. So I might as well focus my attention on the '90s — both to recreate the zeitgeist, and to understand the dynamics behind what made it the way it was.

During the work on the crime-and-cocooning cycle, I was already talking a lot about the '90s, as an example of a falling-crime / cocooning environment. But that was always on a downer side of things, counterposed to the exciting '80s just before. And putting down the '90s was a way to take part in the '80s revival of 10-15 years ago — and now the only revival going on is for the '90s and y2k, so I can contribute to another nostalgia wave, by playing up the '90s (while still be honest).

And by now, I've also discovered the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, as well as the 30-year cycle, whereby each 15-year cycle alternates between a high-energy version and a low-energy version. Along with the crime-and-cocooning cycle, that will help to explain the '90s pretty well.

I will be focusing more on IRL, daily life, and social contexts. It's not going to be a nostalgia trip of mass-mediated pop culture. To the extent that movies, TV, video games, etc. show up, they will be as part of a vignette about how people related to each other. The focus will be more on the video rental store than what movies people checked out. I'll do some posting about the aesthetics themselves, but only if they're largely forgotten (including by today's revivalists) and would really jolt your memories back to that time (such as the wacky colors and patterns on bed linens).

The perspective is from a very late Gen X-er, which is necessary because Millennials were helicopter-parented from infancy and don't remember much of IRL, due to being insulated in a mass-media / pop culture bubble, which their paranoid parents rationalized as being better than letting them roam around outside and potentially interact with Bad Influences unsupervised. But Gen X was still free of helicopter parents, and continued living as latchkey kids, throughout the '90s.

As always, I reject technological determinism and won't be blaming / crediting the internet for anything in the '90s. In fact, one over-arching theme will be how little of a role the 'net played back then. Life didn't get sucked into the terminally online mode of tech until social media took over during the 2010s. The 2000s and Web 2.0 were a transition between the offline and online eras, so I might also cover the early 2000s along with the '90s.

Nor will I be covering political or economic dynamics — this is a strictly social and cultural zeitgeist approach. The most I can say is that, in Peter Turchin's "fathers-and-sons" model of civil unrest / rioting / etc., the '90s were a calm valley — in between the turbulent peaks circa 1970 and 2020. It was one of the least politicized periods ever, and anyone who did try to politicize things was immediately shut down by everyone else as a politically correct whiner and killjoy.

The "end of history" added to that sense of de-politicization. The only empire to rival America, Russia, had begun imploding, and there were no other empires that had even begun to expand, let alone reach maturity. It had nothing to do with capitalism, communism, or any of that superficial stuff. It was strictly about imperial rivalry, and we were suddenly the last empire left standing — and we had not yet had our knees wobbled by the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the never-ending 2008 Depression.

This was not as strong of an effect on our zeitgeist as the domestic political cycle (minimum of civil unrest), because the international picture only strongly affects us if it's close to home, and the Russian sphere of influence has always been distant. But it was one of those minor factors that I probably won't write about any further.

To recapitulate the forces at work, the '90s saw:

- Falling crime rates (peaked in '92).

- Cocooning social mood.

- Low-energy excitement cycle (1990-2004, unlike the high-energy cycles of 1975-'89 and 2005-'19).

- A restless phase ('90-'94) and a manic phase ('95-'99) in the excitement cycle (and a vulnerable phase in 2000-'04). The '90s proper did not have a downer / emo phase, although y2k did.

At the most general big-picture level, I would capture the essence of the '90s as the most boring decade ever. But others would interpret it in a glass-half-full way as the most cozy or low-key or just-straight-vibin' decade ever. When I try to think of how I felt at various times, the recurring impression is of a lull, a void, a vacant non-space that is hard to go back to through your own recollection (unless you remember everything, like me), and the nostalgia feels like taking a trip to nowhere.

How do you vividly evoke the world of the Decade From Nowhere? I'm sure this will be far less engrossing and memory-awakening than my exploration of the '80s, but then that seems to be the appeal for the '90s revivalists — that it was not a sensory overload, social overload, political / economic overload, or even technological overload.

In fact, to get more immersed in that mood, I'm writing this series on my y2k set-up, whose defining feature is the beige / light gray color palette. The PC tower, the CRT monitor, the mechanical keyboard, the rollerball mouse, the speakers, and the disk case. It is absolutely mind-boggling to me how this blandest of computer rigs has been all the rage for the past several years. What's so fascinating about beige?

But that's just it — people have grown tired from over-exposure to the super-sleek black or pure blinding-white colors, the very high-contrast RGB streamer lights, and the rest of the aesthetics from the high-energy cycle of 2005-'19. They want to take things down a notch, to the beige computer, forest-green Subaru, Gregorian chant, baggy sweatshirt Nineties.

Exactly as the literal '90s people were reacting, after the intense cycle of 1975-'89 — time to take things down a notch for a little while. From bright pastels, synth, and gay, to heavy earth tones, Unplugged, and lesbian.

Let's end with one of the most iconic songs of the '90s, which ought to resonate all the more strongly in the current climate of nostalgia for a less corrupted time.

No mass action over Roe, ending decade of woke psychosis (until the 2060s)

The most remarkable aspect of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is the absence of violence, property destruction, rioting, etc. This is the first clear sign that the wave of collective violence of the late 2010s has not only peaked -- in 2020, hard to top that year -- but has entered the fizzling-out phase of the cycle.

That's right -- there is 50-year cycle in mass political violence.

* * *

But first, a necessary overview of how impoverished the online information ecosystem has become after the switch from blogs to social media and podcasts. If you only consumed media, including podcasts, you never heard about the 50-year cycle during all their coverage and takemeistering in reaction to the escalating riots of roughly 2014 onward.

Plenty of content-creators in media / podcasts had read something about it, perhaps, but they can't give contemporary competitors in the takemeister economy credit, without demoting their own status in their petty zero-sum world. And they would get called out for blatantly stealing the idea if they didn't give any credit whatsoever. So they just have to ignore it. This is why they can and do cite dead people -- they're not locked in a zero-sum competition with dead people, or even retired people.

Bloggers acted the opposite way during the blogosphere heyday of the 2000s and early 2010s. We were happy to clue others into some exciting new idea we came across -- and provided a link, a citation, a name, a something, to connect our readers to someone else's ideas. It was not zero-sum, we were all working together toward the same grand project.

And it worked well while the blogosphere was mostly Gen X in its creative and consuming sides, with some hobbyist Boomers to round things out. Once the Millennials started to make up more of the online creators and audiences, though, they ditched blogs in favor of social media and podcasts.

However, unlike their striver ancestors, the Boomers, they weren't doing this as a hobby by people who already had it made in the shade. Nope, the Millennials are way worse off than their Boomer parents, and they have always viewed any form of media labor -- including shitposting on social media, or spitballing takes and reactions on a podcast -- as a career that they ought to be paid a real salary for. At least shitloads of clout online, at most a six-figure or more annual income. "These takes don't write themselves" (yes they do).

So the Gen X blogger was more of a gallery curator, when it came to someone else's stuff -- here's an array of things I find interesting, with an ID tag on each item to give proper credit, and if you like the kinds of things I find and gather in this one place, stop by regularly, the collection on display is never the same. And crucially, if you like some specific item, follow its ID tag to items by that same creator that are outside of my current exhibition.

The Millennial takemeister is more of a pawn-shop operator -- he, or his finders / fencers, collects an array of things in one place, but the browsing audience has no idea where it comes from. This makes it somewhat like the museum exhibit, but without any ID tags, it's impossible for the audience to follow a trail from an item they're currently looking at, to other items by the same creator. I don't mean the original manufacturer -- who may be out of business, who may not have stamped a logo onto their products, etc. -- I mean the source of where this specific item came from.

For the audience, no trails lead outside of the pawn-shop itself. Those sources are highly protected, confidential, etc. Otherwise the customer could cut out the middle-man. The takemeister is not merely a gatekeeper, deciding what goes in vs. what stays out of the collection -- he's *the* connection. You want more? You gotta keep going back to only that shop, since they won't tell you who their suppliers are.

So maybe they're more like drug-dealers for take-junkies, whereas the bloggers were more like the taste-testing / free samples stands for an audience that is a little hungry and curious about different options, but not looking for a fix and a pusher.

* * *

At any rate, Peter Turchin discovered this 50-year cycle in the late 2000s, wrote articles for a popular audience a decade ago (such as this one), and wrote an entire book in 2016 (Ages of Discord). I've been writing about it here for a decade, always trying to get Turchin's name to stick in the reader's memory.

Since this was all very topical during the Trump 2016 campaign year, everyone was familiar with it among the political takes crowd on Twitter and elsewhere, from the edgy NEET shitposters to the wealthy centrist think-tankers.

By 2016, mass political violence was only beginning, so it felt like more of a prediction -- that there would be a SHTF situation around 2020. And right as that happened, everyone pretended not to know Turchin's name, the 50-year cycle, the title of that one book, etc. Someone other than me was proven right, oh no!

Worse, the media-ites rely mostly on emotional appeals to keep their audience hooked and craving stronger doses of The Stuff. So they projected the trend of 2015-2020 indefinitely out into the future.

I knew that was wrong from the outset -- the point of a cycle is that it waxes and wanes, because there are negative feedback loops in the system, not just positive ones that push in the same direction forever. I figured things would lighten up by 2024 and after, based on the previous waves that Turchin documented -- lots of rioting during the second half of the '60s, the very early '70s, and then quickly petering out to nothing for the rest of the '70s. Lots of agitation around WWI, peaking in the race riots of 1919-'20, and quickly fading out during the '20s. And so on.

But it looks like mass violence is wrapping up a couple years earlier than that.

Imagine if the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade in 2016, the year of mass assaults on Trump rally-goers. Or in 2017, the year of millions pouring into the streets for the Women's March, and the smaller but hotter Charlottesville showdown. Or as late as 2020, the year Democrat mobs burned down multiple major cities to intimidate voters into showing up to the polls.

And yet, in 2022? Absolutely nothing. A handful of professional activists are not a mass action. No mobs, no protests, no property destruction, no violence, no anything. Crucially -- no counter-mobs, counter-protests, or counter-violence, like there had been a few years earlier. No street battles.

There is no other explanation than that the tank has run out of gas. This is the precise dire outcome that the millions of pink pussyhat wearers were apocalyptically warning about back in 2017. Their side has been given free rein to loot, burn down, murder, whatever. They were encouraged by an activist campaign, Jane's Revenge, to stage a night of rage (or whatever it was supposed to be called) on the day that Roe was officially overturned. A week later, and it's still crickets. It's not an obscure issue that only affects a few people, they should be able to mass-recruit like before.

If anything, there ought to be more of them out in the street than when it was only a hypothetical, and they ought to be wreaking more havoc than when they were just concerned but still had Roe v. Wade in place.

People are simply tired of the practice of mass violence and chaos at this point, even if they agree "in theory". This is no different from the exhaustion of would-be Weathermen and Black Panthers by the mid-'70s. Or would-be race-rioters by the mid-1920s. Or would be Civil Warriors by the mid-1870s. Enough already.

* * *

The slow build-up of mass actions, followed by a fairly quick drop-off, and then a period where it seems impossible to spark another wave, suggests some kind of excitable system model. Akin to exercising, sex / orgasm, eating to satiety, drinking / hangover, and so on. Apparently starting right now, and going through the rest of the decade, we're going to be in an activism hangover, having binged / overdosed on it during the second half of the 2010s and the first couple years of the 2020s.

This will face a clean test in 2024, the next presidential election year. If the late 2010s and 2020 were only just the beginning, then '24 is going to literally blow up the entire country. If would-be mob members are exhausted and can't get it up after so many I'M GONNA LOOOOOOT episodes in the recent past, then '24 will be tamer than '20.

I predict '24 will be like 1976 and 1924 -- pretty uneventful compared to the peak of mass violence just a few years before (1968 and '72, 1916 and '20). We already had two consecutive election years with mass violence -- 2016 and '20 -- and that means people will be too tired to do any more in '24.

Now, this is only for the phenomenon of mass violence, civil unrest, etc. Polarization is going to keep going on for awhile, since the partisan reaction to overturning Roe v. Wade is exactly what you'd expect for a still polarized, and more-and-more polarizing country. It just won't be expressed in mob violence.

Nor does this have to do with the fragmenting of the American empire, something that is going to continue for decades and centuries.

I'm strictly talking about huge crowds of people fucking shit up in public. Or, for that matter, the battle of words on TV, online, etc. Neither side is as fiery about this as they would've been just 2 years ago, let alone 5. Imagine Trump's first year he ends Roe v. Wade -- the endless dunking and victory laps the right would be running online. Now, they're both reacting in the expected directions, but to a far smaller magnitude.

At some point, the hangover will wear off, we'll be back to a baseline level of inclination toward mob violence. And then it'll start to rise again, if Turchin's model continues to be correct, in the mid-2060s, peaking around 2070, and then going into another hangover all over again.

As a final, lesser prediction, I don't think there's going to be any Black Lives Matter crap among Democrats in '24 either, in contrast to 2016 and '20. It would be like signs about "Remember Watergate" or "US out of 'Nam" in 1976. Sorry, those signs belong to '68 and '72, by '76 nobody could keep it going any longer. It was over for radicals then, and it's more or less already over for radicals again (until the lead-up to 2070).

Today's public booba flashing report, and the return of outgoing / rising-crime times (Feral Girl Summer)

Tonight I received further confirmation that the outgoing, wild, rising-crime climate is indeed back in full swing, after having been in a cocooning / falling-crime phase from roughly 1990 to 2020. Now it's back to the climate of 1960 to 1990, starting at the beginning of course, not the climax of that wave.

As I was driving through the city, traffic was slow -- after 10pm on Saturday night, on the main avenue for nightlife. Coming down the other lane, there's someone on top of a car -- no, hold on, as it pulls closer, it's a young babe hoisting her crop-top all the way up to her collarbone, jumbo jugs just a-jumblin', up and down, up and down, above her smooth slender tummy, beating against her ribcage like a primate pounding its chest.

She's standing straight up through the sun-roof, big hair waving off to either side of her face.

And she's not looking down at any of the pedestrians, but staring coolly ahead, like a fighter advancing toward some ring further down the street, eyes narrowed to intimidate her opponent. The audience is cheering on their hero from the stands within the arena of the main drag, all whipped up for this Saturday-night showdown.

Only there is no scheduled main event, no street festival, no outdoor concert, no occasion of any kind that would encourage this kind of spectacle. She is doing it because she just felt like it, and couldn't contain herself. She came out to hype up the crowd for the return of public exhibitionism -- not to thirst-trap or horny-post IRL, but simply to feed the do-what-you-feel zeitgeist.

She was lowering the inhibitions of the crowd by leading by example: if she can do that, then surely anything just shy of that is OK as well for us to do, if we're not as adventurous as she is. Before long, it will become totally normalized, in a way that would've seemed to come from some alternate dimension just five years ago, during the depths of the #MeToo hysteria -- "Yep, there goes another booba-bouncer who's standing through the roof, it must be Saturday night..."

I have not seen anything like that in my life. Maybe if I'd gone to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or whatever, but not just coming down the main street of a flyover city, with no external reason for debauchery. And even the flashers at Mardi Gras are only doing it momentarily, directed at specific individuals, to get those beads -- not leaving them exposed indefinitely, to the crowd in general, slamming repeatedly against their body, for nothing at all in exchange.

Nor was it a case of a sloppy drunk whose top was falling down, which she was too dazed to fix. She held her balance standing up in a moving car, deliberately lifting her top -- purely for exhibitionism.

Also unlike garden-variety exhibitionism, neither she nor anyone else was taking pictures or recording video for uploading to a social media platform. I'm sure that as a Zoomer she was inspired by the "Feral Girl Summer" trend on TikTok, but she clearly could not post what she was doing to any online platform (too salacious for social media, not sexual enough for porn sites). This is a purely IRL phenomenon.

Wild times are coming back, people.

* * *

If you started reading this blog anytime after 2012, you might not have read my extensive, in-depth series on the outgoing / rising-crime vs. cocooning / falling-crime cycle. I began that in late 2009, and made it the main theme through 2012, with occasional posts after that.

I predicted, from the timing of past cycles, that cocooning and falling-crime would last through about 2017, and rise after that. Off by only a year or so, as I distinctly remember all the public catcalling toward me by young babes in their cars in late 2019 (wrote a few posts on that at the time). And the soaring crime rates as of 2020 speak for themselves.

This is more than just the shifting of phases within the 15-year excitement cycle, from vulnerable to restless, as of 2020. The last restless phase, 2005-'09, did not feature this level of public exhibitionism, even remotely.

I covered pretty much every social and cultural topic, high and low, big and small, in the context of the crime-and-cocooning cycle. And sure enough, public exhibitionism and nudity was one such topic.

Here is the first one, on the disappearance of flashing and streaking.

Next one on the cohort effect, where nudism in cocooning times was only being kept alive by increasingly older people, who were young when it was in. That's the crucial difference for tonight's spectacle -- no way was she over 25, let alone a Boomer of 65 who had done some flashing and streaking back in the '70s.

Follow-up on the increasingly gray-haired clientele of swingers' clubs. Give current trends a decade or so, and it'll be 20- and 30-somethings again.

Lastly, not about exhibitionism per se, but public nudity, where showering naked in public (such as after gym class in schools) disappeared quickly.

There's all kinds of related topics I covered back then -- just navigate through the archives by year on the sidebar at the right, pick any month at random, and skim through the post titles. If you can think of it, I've already written about it, over a decade ago. :)

Butts vs. boobs, thicc vs. skinny, douching and shaving down there vs. going au naturel -- you name it, I covered it. I covered all sorts of non-sexual topics, too, but in case this post piqued your curiosity.

Incidentally, it's also relevant that tonight's girl was skinny and flashing her boobs -- not a thicc PAWG twerking her bare buns. Outgoing / rising-crime climates focus more on boobs than butts, and idealize skinny rather than thicc girls (this is reflected in actual body shapes as well, not just what is considered attractive).

It's bittersweet for an assman like moi, since I enjoy the outgoing climate better. However, judging from the last rising-crime period, there were still fairly thicc butt-girls through the first decade of the wave, i.e. the '60s. But their numbers were declining, and by the '70s, '80s, and early '90s, the voluptuous va-va-voom women of the falling-crime Midcentury were nowhere to be found.

We hate to see them go, but love to watch them leave...