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missmentelle · 3 years

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Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem.

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial

COVID-19 denial

5G panic

QAnon

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch.

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns.

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food.

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined.

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage - the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there.

Our brains love proportionality.

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event.

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause.

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger.

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying.

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it.

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world.

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan.

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side.

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult).

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life.

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world.

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true.

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew.

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity.

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity.

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.

There is a strong community aspect to these theories.

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas.

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

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fruitless-nonsense · 3 years

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Well… turns out I have a lot of opinions on characters I don’t even think strongly of. Who knew?

No joke, this is probably not as thorough as I like, but this idea came to me and I have so much to say that I don’t know how to structure it. Okay? Let’s talk about Damon Salvatore!

If you read any of my previous posts, you’ve probably gotten a decent idea of how I feel about him from my quick snippy remarks. I genuinely believe he is the worst character in the show. Yes, other characters can be more boring than him. Yes, there are people that can be more infuriating than him. It’s not simply who his character was, it’s how the writers wouldn’t stop messing with him that convinced me he was utter trash. Sit back, cause this could take awhile.

Let’s start with season one and the two brothers. Theory time! I’m strongly of the opinion the writers wanted a love triangle between Elena, Stefan, and Damon from the very beginning. Not that crazy to believe considering this show was born off the heels of Twilight’s grossing fame, not to take credit away from all the other shows at the time which featured a love triangle or two. From fanfics to original stories written by tweens I read when I was thirteen, love triangles were huge back then (in a way they still are fairly popular, but not like back in the day. Now I feel old). So they wanted a love triangle? Sounds cliche enough to be in the vampire diaries, what’s wrong? Well, there’s a bit of an issue with the candidates, or more specifically candidate. You see, Edward was a creep and Jacob was an incel, but you can say they weren’t monsters (well by my standards they were, but by YA standards they were pretty normal). I mean, the movie made a point to say the Cullens didn’t feed from humans, and they’re only seen killing in self defense, meanwhile Jacob is treated like a good person throughout despite everything. My point is, at least at the beginning, the story didn’t want to paint either candidate as irredeemable. Back to tvd season one, Damon tortures Caroline, kills Zack, two random humans, and that one football coach/history teacher, mentally and physically tortured Vicky Donavon before turning her against her will and made it impossible for Stefan to remedy the situation until he ultimately had to kill her to save Elena, and this is all from the first seven episodes.

Now, I used to think at least Damon was a fun villain, but was he really? I mean, yeah he could be funny, got a few chuckles outta me, but besides humor and violence what was his character? For example, in season one we are introduced to Stefan, a supposed “good vampire” who has taken a liking to Elena due to similarities between her and his ex before admiring how much better of a person she is and wanting a true connection with her. We later learn that his experience with his ex Katherine was extremely one-sided as he was compelled to love her to satiate her needs. Even later (still season one), we learn that his only drinking animal blood is because he is a ripper or “blood addict” as I call it cause even one taste of human blood and he’ll go on a rampage. So by seasons end we have a character who was a victim of serious abuse (which is never truly addressed in the show btw) and carries a rare vampire trait that makes not being a murderous psychopath incredibly difficult, yet he still tries to beat the odds and not hurt people. This is a lot to learn about a character in its first season, and it helps us gravitate towards wanting him to succeed. Stefan is what you would call a good character (at least for now). So that was all we got on the first candidate, what about option number two? Well, he’s funny and he likes to kill people, that’s about it. That ripper gene that Stefan’s fighting, Damon’s not someone who gave in to the gene to explain why he’s so murder happy, he doesn’t even have it! There’s nothing making him be a bad person, he just is one! Why? Your guess is as good as mine. The most we get is learning he had real feelings for Katherine and was never compelled to love her as an explanation for why he hates Stefan so much. Wow, two brothers at war over a girl one of them doesn’t even like. You can’t even say it was because Stefan turned him, because Damon says it blank that it’s cause of Katherine in 1x20, so don’t. So Damon kills for no reason, hates Stefan for a stupid reason, and has no personality traits outside of humor, murder, Katherine, and hates Stefan. With all of this on the table, my question is this, how do the writers expect me to pick Damon over Stefan in this love triangle with everything we got in season one? And the writers realized this.

Season two starts this long “arc” asking if Damon can be redeemed, or that’s what the writers wanted. Second theory: the writers realized they couldn’t justify Elena picking Damon over Stefan without ruining her character (lol), so they decided the best way to keep this love triangle idea afloat was to redeem Damon. The theory comes in when they realized they couldn’t completely redeem him because they had written themselves into a corner and being a murdering psycho with quirky one liners was his entire character, therefore redeeming him would take away what made Damon himself and so likable among fans (not me). I’m gonna pull the rug from under ya, remember when I said klaroline was not actually a love story, but was positioned and is still believed to have been one despite this fact? Same applies here. Did Damon ever go through a redemption arc, or did the writers want you to think that he did so they could have their cake and eat it too? Is there any actual story progression that show growth in Damon as a character? Nope. He’s sadder, wouldn’t say that’s him being a better person. In the early seasons, his characterization feels more like a seesaw than an arc. Sometimes he’s chill and helping with a plan, and the next episode he’s biting a chunk out of more innocent bystanders while abusing more women (*cough* *cough* justice for Andie). The longest I can say he was a genuinely decent person was in season six when he was trapped in the prison world with Bonnie (cause she’s the only character that would put up with his bs). Everywhere else, an inconsistent character, and I feel like that was intentional. They wanted to keep Damon how fans liked him while making him seem like a better person. An example is the introduction of Enzo, which I think was a ploy by the writers to make it seem like season five Damon was interacting with a season one Damon to show how far he’s come, but that doesn’t stick at all (mostly because Enzo’s crimes in the show compared to season one Damon’s feel less psychotic and malicious). All in all, to me Damon on his own was a truly boring character and even more boring villain. No motivation and no personality outside his infatuations. Which leads me into the worst plot line of my entire cw experience: Delena.

If you haven’t noticed, I hate this ship with a fiery passion. The only reason I think it’s slightly better than klaroline was at least the writers tried to write a story with them (keyword tried). I said they would have to ruin Elena’s character to have her choose him over Stefan, and I was right! Not only does she cheat with him (2x22 and other scenes from season three), it’s never explained why she likes him in the first place (actually in season six they say it’s cause he gave her Stefan’s gift necklace despite being in love with her, which is so stupid it made me laugh). Furthermore, why does Damon develop feeling for Elena? Supposedly it happens while he’s still obsessing over Katherine, so is that it? The turning point which pushes them together is revealed to all be fabricated by a sirebond. For real, the only reason Elena fell out of love with Stefan is because a bond out of her control made it impossible for Stefan to help her through vampirism and thus she had to lean on Damon for support. I know the show states the bond didn’t create her feelings merely heighten them, but it did isolate her from everyone else she loved and made it so she had no choice but to rely on Damon, and that’s not exactly better than the former. Let me say it louder for the kids that were corrupted. Codependency. Is. Not. Healthy. It’s toxic, and the trope in romance needs to die a horrible death. And the show knows it’s toxic, they bring it up all the time in season five and six thinking that will excuse them to keep going with it. Sorry hun, self awareness does not give you a pass. The worst part is the pacing. I mentioned the sirebond storyline in season four which takes up a huge amount of the season with them debating if her feelings were real before abruptly deciding Elena doesn’t care. Great conclusion, but it gets worse. Season five is pretty thin as far as a story, so what fills the run time is a storyline straight out of fifty shades. Fighting, sex, fighting, sex, breaking up because they aren’t healthy, sex, fighting followed by getting back together followed by more fighting and more sex. I can’t tell you what was gained after everything that transpired in the season. Lastly is season six which took time away from the first interesting villain since season three to give us an amnesia storyline! I’d tell you more, but if you’ve ever seen a movie you could probably explain it exactly. All that time that could’ve been spent in better ways, was given to something I stopped caring about by season fours end.

Honestly, the fact that the show treats this like the greatest love story of all time makes me less angry and more concerned, because the audience who watched this show weren’t adults who understand what love really is, the people who watched this was made up of mostly tweens and teens. I can’t get too mad, this trope is everywhere, girl helps abusive guy be better person while sapping away all her energy in the process was done before and is still being done today. All I ask is that the young adults who remember this show fondly understand how wrong this is. How people like Damon should not be pitied and relationships like Delena should not be celebrated. Ship whatever you want, but please tell me you’re okay. Are you okay? In conclusion, Damon is trash and Delena wasted my time along with being extremely toxic and abusive. Goodnight everybody!

#anti damon salvatore #anti delena #anti tvd and to writers #anti klaroline #damon salvatore #elena gilbert #stefan salvatore #Stefan deserves better #anti the vampire diaries #anti codependency

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cherryistired · 5 years

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i do consider myself a writer but i can’t write a multi-chapter fic for shit. so i’m gonna ramble about this ageswap mp100 au instead of writing it out properly

so first: mob’s life without having met reigen. most of the people he meets in the series stems from one key decision he makes in one episode, as well as the existence of claw, which doesn’t exist yet because touichirou doesn’t exist yet

the decision he makes is to join the body improvement club. because of that, the delinquent kid (who’s name i can’t remember) has a member of the club he can use as bait to get both teru and the other club members to fight, which leads to teru and mob fighting, which puts mob on claw’s radar, which leads to mob and ritsu getting mixed up and ritsu getting abducted, which leads to him and teru rescuing ritsu and the other awakening lab kids. that’s most of the people he meets in the series. the only other people he meets are through spirits and such (which doesn’t exist), and in claw during the 7th division and world domination arcs (which also doesn’t exist). the only exemptions are his brother, dimple (through the LOL cult thing), and the telepathy club. we’ll get to ritsu later, but first

i’m not 100% sure whether or not dimple totally survives his first meeting with shigeo. he probably does because you can’t get rid of him and also he looked p exorcised in the anime but he came back so :shrug emoji:. he’s probably got to be around for the cleanup arc to go right but who knows. maybe he gets bored of shigeo, since mob probably doesn’t use his psychic powers for anything really. he doesn’t seem like the type to use his powers very much, whether or not reigen told him not to. i also kinda wanna swap dimple into being a kid for reasons i’ll get to later

the telepathy club found mob on their own and really wanted him to join. mob probably definitely didn’t, but i’m gonna be nice to mob and say he got socially pressured into joining. in the episode i’m like 90% sure he got called into work the first time they tried to get him to join and he used that as his excuse, but this time he doesn’t have a job so he can’t use that. whether or not he does, though, mob wouldn’t have joined the body improvement club, because that was the result of some advice he got from a (gross nasty p/do incel) spirit about “living your best life” or whatever and I’m genuinely surprised he managed to take that advice and actually put it to good use instead of going “wow, no, you’re gross” like i would have. not sure whether or not to congratulate him on that

either way though he wouldn’t have joined the body improvement club without experience from spirits and such, and as such he wouldn’t have met teru. actually can i talk about teru for a bit? cuz i’m 90% sure that his whole “shadow leader” thing was just so he could get respect and admiration that he wasn’t getting from his absent parents. without claw, though, his parents wouldn’t have left, so he probably did get some support from them (though likely not much, cuz what kinda shitty parents would leave their kid when they’re being targeted by violent people). either way he probably wouldn’t have turned towards delinquency so quickly and would have probably has a slower time building his ego. without having met mob, tho, teru wouldn’t have had anyone seriously challenge the idea that he is the best, and so his ego would have had plenty of time to balloon to an even bigger size than in canon. more on that later

also quick note: shou probably had the same parents as touichirou, as well as similar potential for greatness and stuff. however, being the rebellious kid he is, never really lived up to the expectations placed on him and probably actually did the whole delinquent thing. more on that later as well

now. what about our boy ritsu? well, his powers developed completely independently of whatever was happening with mob at the time, even if he did happen to go to the awakening lab around that time. however, the confrontation he had with mob was because of plot things relating to things that wouldn’t have happened in this timeline (the delinquents were all looking to beat up white t poison, who wouldn’t have existed if mob never met teru), which means that ritsu’s feelings would have had time to mutate well past mere resentment. which means when he finally confronts mob, well... we’ll get to that later

as for the actual happenings: iirc the only arcs that didn’t occur because of s&s or claw were some of the springtime of youth arc (specifically the telepathy club antics), the LOL cult miniarc thing, the school cleanup arc, the various mini-arcs revolving the psycho helmet cult (excluding the divine tree arc), the other telepathy club miniarc, and the ???% arc

oh btw manga spoilers past this point

i’ve already talked about the first three arcs. the little psycho helmet arcs (aka him running for student council president and the few things that happen with the sports day thing) would either go basically unaltered or not at all. leaning towards the latter because i really don’t like the psycho helmet cult and wish they’d go away. actually they probably would! because they wouldn’t have the funding for it if asagiri didn’t make that donation, and he wouldn’t have if mob hadn’t saved minori from mogami. so the psycho helmet cult is canonically gone. the running for student council thing probably still happens because that happened first but whatever he embarrassed himself and gets bullied by some girls. big deal. no satisfying conclusion but it’s whatever

the other telepathy club arc probably wouldn’t have much happen. tome realizes that she’s wasting her youth in a dumb club and quits, leaving the club president-less and with the student council breathing down their neck to boot. since mob never got the chance to meet the shiratori twins, this is where the arc ends. the telepathy club splits up and the body improvement club finally gets their storage closet

but the ???% arc? oh, the ???% arc goes very, VERY differently

tsubomi announces that she’s leaving. without the support structure that he built over the course of canon, mob doesn’t really have anyone to turn to. his club has disbanded, his brother doesn’t talk to him anymore, and he barely sees the people he would have hung out with outside of club (read: tome) because she’s in cram school. he might not even have dimple, or the experiences that lead him to believe he can actually trust his advice. so he decides to confess to her after school one day, but on the day he does it he works himself up and explodes. 100% anxiety or something of similar ilk. of course, he’s doing this at school, so ritsu decides to confront him about his psychic powers now, of all times. things go pear-shaped, and mob ruins his relationship with his brother, his (already non-existent) chance with tsubomi, and what little reputation he had at school (that is, his lack of one. no reputation is actually better than a shit one imo) all at once. because of that, he makes one serious decision that affects his whole life and his arc in the main ageswap au:

fuck. psychic. powers. he’s gonna live like a normal person

#mp100 #cherry rambles #actually you know what i'm gonna post this like this and add more via reblogs #this is rambly as all HELL sorry #i've put way too much thought into this but i'll never do anything with it so :shrug emoji:

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comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog · 5 years

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Eric Cartman

out of character info

Name/Alias: Tots

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 19

Join Our Discord: lmao already in here tho

Timezone: EST

Activity: depends on my mood- but on a good day I can be about an 8

Triggers: n/a

Password: Jwimmy can fwast pass mwy awss uwu

Character that you’re applying for: Eric Cartman

Favourite ships for your character: Eric x getting kicked in the balls really fucking hard

in character info

Full name: Erin Theodore Cartman

Birthday: July 1st

Sexuality, gender, pronouns: bisexual, male, he/him

Age and grade: 17, senior

Appearance: Super BUFF, mega RIPPED, hella HAWT-

Puberty and a lack of hygiene hit Eric Cartman like a baseball bat to a toddler’s teeth. Eric’s skin is greasy and pimply, his brown eyes are beady and swallowed by fat, he constantly smells of fast food and BO, his clothing is usually grimey and stained by food, his hair, while a pleasing auburn shade, is short and greasy. Whatever facial structure he could have had is hidden under double chins and years of bad eating. It’s as round as the rest of him. He has no neck, it’s just a layer of fat flopped over his shoulders.

Eric is short, standing at 5ft 5 inches. Due to a lack of self control he’s morbidly obese. His knees hurt when he walks and anything more physical than a slow pace makes him pour sweat and pant like a dog.

When Eric is attempting to manipulate someone or is dressing up to pull a scheme, he pulls out all the stops with wearing nice clothes and as clean as humanly possible. Otherwise however, he does not give two shits. Afterall, why bother spending time showering when you can use that time to eat more KFC?

Eric’s wardrobe never changed, plain pants and tshirts are still his signature clothing style. In an attempt to make Eric more independant, Liane tried insisting Eric wash his own clothes. Eric instead refused to do so and chooses to continue wearing his dirty clothes until she can’t stand the sight or smell anymore and washes his clothes for him. It’s a recurring, endless cycle.

Despite all this, Eric continues to be under the delusion that he is a complete and utter chick magnet that makes all pussies in a 200 square foot radius wet. He’s convinced that there’s nothing wrong with his appearance and that he’s insanely good looking.

Personality: Eric could have been a good person. He had the potential inside him at one point before his anger and vileness took over.

Now, Eric is complete and utter, irredeemable flaming human garbage. He is racist, abusive, quick to anger and never thinks ahead unless it stands to benefit him. He constantly lies and looks to see how he can make any situation make him better. Eric can and will do anything he possibly can to get his way no matter what.

Eric is wildly self centered and can’t stand the idea of anyone around him not wanting to be at his beck and call. He’s broken in his mother to obeying his every whim and becomes enraged when she tries to put her foot down. He is a master manipulator and does not care one bit about anyone around him whatsoever. Eric truly does not feel empathy for people around him- he is the stereotype of a dangerous sociopath.

Eric thinks nothing of people around him, seeing a person cry and be hurt makes him laugh like nothing else. He is a genuine racist and hates Jews- thinking the absolute worst of them. Because of a lack of romantic and sexual endeavors he could consider successful, Eric’s developed incel and neckbeard like tendencies and ways of thinking, feeling like the world owes him sex and love and that he’s such a ‘nice guy’ that is sooo much better than all these other Chads and deserves to be surrounded by pussy. He doesn’t seem to think that his vile way of thinking and language has anything to do with his lackluster love life.

Perhaps what makes Eric so dangerous is the fact that he can be amazingly charismatic. He genuinely has good leadership skills and can masterfully weave words together when he’s actually thinking about it. He has an amazing knack for seeing a person’s weakness and exploiting it. While Eric may not be book smart, he can read and play people like a fiddle.

Eric does have some insecurities about himself but he’s buried them so deep down inside that he doesn’t realize that they’re there.

History: Eric was born and raised by Liane Cartman, a genuinely sweet single mother despite her drug addiction. She tried her hardest to raise Eric well, but as Eric grew older he became worse and worse.

For the first years of his life, he was simply a whiny and argumentative brat but as time went by he began to learn manipulation skills and started to think less and less of the people around him. His first signs of something being off about him was the way he treated his pets and his own mother. Eventually this bled into how he treated his friends and the people around him. Why Stan, Kenny and Kyle bothered with him is anybody’s guess.

Eric has a criminal record but jail seems to have not made any lasting impact on him whatsoever. He’s simply more careful about getting caught by the law. Don’t forget that Eric got away with murder when he was just ten years old. He has no morals whatsoever.

With Marvel’s continued success, Eric also continued his superhero persona. Although he claimed to be a hero fighting for justice, it’s plainly obvious to anyone with any brain cells that this is just another scheme to try and make money and bolster his own image.

Eric’s impulsivity, manipulative ways and anger issues only continued to grow as time went on. While there’s been few additions to his criminal record, the list of crimes and wrongdoings he’s committed is beyond endless. Eric Cartman doesn’t particularly have any dreams for when high school is over which intensely worries Liane. He seems perfectly content to laze around with his mother at his every beck and call.

Whatever the future holds for Eric Cartman, it’s not going to be good for anyone around him.

Sample paragraph: “Kyle you DIRTY, FILTHY FUCKING JEW!” Cartman shrieked, shoving his phone into his supposed ‘friend’s face. “I KNOW you’re running this piece of shit blog WITHOUT ME.”

The Eavesdropper. A gossip blog run by an anonymous group of people who exposed the citizens of South Park’s deepest secrets. It held power. It held influence.

And Eric was completely, and utterly furious that he wasn’t on it.

“I bet you’re just keeping me out so that you can write all the nasty shit you want about me don’t you!? What else would I expect from a nasty fucking ginger, twink jew like you.” He sneered, pulling the phone away and stuffing it into his pocket. “So here’s how this is going to go down. YOU are going to tell your little gossip friends about how AMAZING and AWESOME Eric Cartman is and THEN you’re going to get me onto the group.”

The ability to be able to spread whatever gossip he wanted about anyone he wanted? Well sure he could do that whenever he wanted but this was a platform. It already had most of the work done for him. “And now, I know what you’re thinking- ‘Why would I ever let Eric join? He’s just so awesome and amazing that I know he’d outshine me in a second’. Well this is why Kyle. If you don’t, I’m going to tell everyone in this school that you are gay for Stan. Yeah. You’re fucking gay for him. I’ll tell everyone. And it’ll make everything super awkward between you and him. Maybe I’ll even fake a few kissy faggy love notes so that shit will never be the same between you two.”

His grin was wide and sickly. That would be a good threat. The embarrassment of it and the potential ruin of Kyle’s friendship with his closest and longest lasting pal was more than enough. Erin licked his lips, they tasted like grease from last night’s dinner. Kyle was below him. He was stupid and just another pawn to Eric.

If he didn’t do this- well, Eric could easily find another way to make him.

Headcanons: Eric may be bi but like, hes still super homophobic. Apparently gay activities are only acceptable if he’s doing it.

Anything else: Eric is going to say and do a lot of genuinely horrible things so warning at you dudes about that.

#Eric Cartman #Admin Samantha #application #submission

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moodsmithmedia · 4 years

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An ‘Atypical’ Piece of Television

Warning! Spoilers for all three seasons of Netflix’s Atypical ahead.

I’m a mixed kid. I don’t mean that I’m bi-racial though. I spent time in both public and private school which is a mix I think is worth reflecting on. I spent half of elementary school at a public school and then the other half of elementary and all of middle school at a private, Catholic school, before returning to the public education system. Before I went to private school I signed up to be in the Boy Scouts and met a young man named Matt. He and I would never become friends, but we’d spend much of the next several years together camping and doing...scouting activities. He’d consistently test the limits of my patience. As it turned out, at that age I didn’t have much patience. They say teenaged girls are mean...boys aren't much different. I suppose we’re just quicker to accept shittiness when it comes from a person with an X and Y chromosome. Matt was a remarkable kid because he was autistic, which made him a fairly difficult person to know. Or at least that’s what I called logic at the time told me. It wasn’t until about 12 years later when a show on Netflix showed me the complexity of the situation I barely understood.

‘Atypical’ is a Netflix Original Series about a high school senior named Sam and how his high functioning autism affects the lives of those around him in profound ways. There are a number of things about this show that stand out. Michael Rapaport turns in a performance I’d have never guessed he was capable of, no disrespect intended. He’s not particularly nuanced, but neither is his character. He’s a simple guy in an exceptionally complicated situation. But some things are simple. Sam is his son and he’s going to have his back no matter what. This is just one example of a multitude of ways that Atypical shows how much heart is at the center of its story.

Just entering its third season, Atypical is far from a perfect show. Or even a particularly well produced one. Jennifer Jason Leigh is profoundly strange in her role as Sam’s mom Elsa. In the third season Sam’s sister, Casey, is revealed to be atypical in her own way as she begins to realize that her sexuality is far more complex than she’d realized. In what I imagine is an effort to reflect the reality of how people actually come to terms with their sexuality that storyline moves slowly. Like...geological timescale slow. And then once it’s clear what’s happening the season briskly wraps up. Sam’s best friend Zahid is a caricature of a caricature. And just when you think they’re going to make him a real boy things get even more ridiculous. Virtually every misgiving though is forgiven because at the center of this story is something genuinely heartwarming.

Atypical portrays Sam in a light that is both pitiable and enviable. I’m happy to live my life without the burden of having emotional outbursts in public. I’m sad for Sam and people like him that this is something he has to deal with. Simultaneously, I deeply envy the ways Sam can be truthful with people. If something is stupid, he says so. If something is wrong, he lets you know. It’s almost as though there’s something wrong with us neurotypicals for behaving in ways that we KNOW are inauthentic. Quick aside, I learned from the show that neurotypical is how you refer to folks who aren’t burdened with autism or some other intellectual disability. The word is neurotypical. Not neuronormal. What even is normal?

The show opens with a bully picking on a young woman and promptly being punched in the face for it. Scene after scene you find characters who are indifferent to the adverse consequences of doing right by the “disadvantaged”. These situations had a pretty profound effect on me because there were situations where I wish someone would’ve had my back. More importantly though, and much more common for me, were situations where I wish I’d had someone’s back. I’ve grown to be much more empathetic than a younger me seemed to have the capacity for, mostly an expression of youth angst and insecurity. Easy to say now that I’m an adult who’s never in as robust a social setting as a high school. The show makes it a point to address insecurity, infidelity, friendship and authenticity through a perspective that I hadn’t experienced in, what feels like a long time: innocence.

Quick aside: I took a break from writing this to go to the grocery to restock my depleted kitchen. I was walking past the butcher section oogling over meat products I mostly don’t eat anymore, but deeply miss. There was a gentleman with a son who was (and I mean nothing untoward when I say this) clearly not neurotypical. At the youngest he was 18. I stepped aside and pulled my cart away so that they could pass by me. The area was a bit congested and I wasn’t in a rush. The father thanked me and walked by first and his son approached me with his hand up to give me a high five. Was he saying thank you? Was he just being nice? Was he doing it to every person he walked by in the store? I don’t know. But look at that. The way the world works these days, before any interaction we subconsciously consider the racial, gender and political identities (among other factors) of the people we come across. This young man was unburdened by the fact that I’m African American, heterosexual, liberal...but felt compelled to connect with me. For all the things we say we value and have learned to value...how can neurotypicals claim to be normal?

In both public and private school I dealt with what we now call bullying through furrowed brows. In private school some of that bullying was delivered by the very people my parent’s tuition money was paying to educate me along with my peers. The remorse and sympathy we feel for the bullied today, while an awesome development in culture, simply wasn’t in stock when I dealt with it. That said, I look back with some resentment, mostly toward myself rather than those who imposed upon me, because I consider myself neurotypical. I should have championed other bullied people. Instead I did something far more cowardly and attempted to replicate my abusers in the hope they’d have me. Shock of the millennium: they didn’t. It took a long time for me to realize how flawed my thinking was, and when I did...I overcompensated for it.

I’ve deserved to have been punched in the face more than I have in my life (once). I was sucker punched at a bar in a college town for sticking up for a friend who was socially awkward. I hated how he was being treated and didn’t want to see him go out like that. Call it karmic retribution for all the times I hadn’t stood up for myself but more importantly for the people who needed it more than I had, like Matt.

When Todd Phillips ‘Joker’ came out earlier this year the backlash was vicious. “It’s an incel instruction manual!” shouted the morons who knew nothing about the minutiae of the film because it hadn’t been released yet. They attempted to boycott, never mind that their ignorance almost certainly helped propel the Warner Bros. film to one of the most historic and profitable runs in the history of cinema. The thing Joker does best that those too closed minded to have seen the film wouldn’t know, is it begs the question: “Do we treat each other in a fashion that encourages evil?” There’s no question that in some instances evil may be a consequence of mental illness or hormonal imbalance of some sort. But sometimes, just the propensity for evil is fertilized by an awful attitude by people who are too self interested to realize the ways they tread on the well being of others. And there’s something necessarily wrong with seeing the intellectually disabled as potential criminals with an excuse for their bad behavior. That young man at the grocery store lead with love in his heart in an interaction with a stranger. And it’s probably far more common than we care to admit that his endearing positivity be rejected on the basis that he’s different. We should all be so lucky to be just a bit atypical.

#atypical #netflix #neurotypical #Joker #Jokermovie #wb #warnerbrothers #identity politics #netflix orignal series

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jillmckenzie1 · 5 years

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We Need to Talk About Kal-El

As a human being, I have the ability to hold two completely contradictory ideas in my noggin at the same time. The first idea is that I love superheroes. They’re part of a genre that’s remarkably malleable, and with a bit of creativity, you can tell virtually any kind of story with them. The second idea is that, if superheroes truly existed, they would be terrifying.

Let’s talk about Batman, for example. In movies, comics, and other media, he’s a relentless crusader. A protector of the innocent. He’s a hero—one of the good guys. One of his defining attributes is that he always knows what he’s doing. But what if he didn’t?

Imagine reports coming out of Denver neighborhoods* of a man dressed as a bat assaulting people. According to eyewitness accounts, the “Bat-Man” seems to be targeting alleged criminals and kicking the absolute crap out of them. What if they aren’t criminals, but simply a poor person or some luckless dude caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? What about their civil rights or due process? What if this vigilante decides that the real criminals are people of color, or Republicans, or those in the LGBT community?

You can see how that would be a problem. Consider how much damage a highly trained, yet “normal” person could do. Now, imagine someone with some serious superpowers and an alarming lack of morality. There’s a great movie to be made about that. Unfortunately, the new film Brightburn doesn’t fully deliver on that berserk concept.

We meet Tori Breyer (Elizabeth Banks) and her husband Kyle (David Denman), residents of the sleepy Kansas town of Brightburn. They desperately want a baby, and the bookshelves groaning with books about fertility tell us their plans aren’t going well. Things change when it arrives.

“It” is an alien spacecraft. Inside is a baby boy, or something that looks an awful lot like a baby boy. In a way, the prayers of Tori and Kyle have been answered. They take the tot in and name him Brandon. For 11 years, the Breyer family is happy. But things change even more for Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) in the days before he turns 12. He discovers he’s strong—far stronger than a boy of his age should be.

He also discovers that something is calling to him in an alien language, something hidden in the basement of the family barn. The message he’s receiving is disturbingly simple: take the world. He just might have the means to do that with a host of emerging powers, including flight, speed, invulnerability, and heat vision.

So how are Tori and Kyle responding to all of this? Like the majority of parents, their blinders are firmly in place when it comes to the actions of their child. When their chickens are mysteriously killed, when Brandon’s unrequited crush Caitlyn (Emmie Hunter) has her hand shattered, and when Brandon starts spouting off about superiority, their blinders may have to come off with a quickness before it’s too late.

Allow me to state the obvious up front: Brightburn is “What if Superboy was forced into a telepod with the kid from The Omen?” As ideas for a movie goes, that’s a pretty good one. Flights and tights are very much a thing right now, and the right kind of deconstruction of the superhero mythos could be perfectly timed and fascinating. For example, the character of Rorschach in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen begins as your standard urban vigilante. We discover that, instead of an upstanding costumed hero, he’s a violent maniac who would feel right at home at an alt-right rally. That characterization tells us that superheroes can become a vehicle for fascism—and disturbingly quickly.

Brightburn wants to do that. It wants to put us into the headspace of what looks an awful lot like a superpowered incel. Too often, however, director David Yarovesky leans into standard horror tropes instead of focusing on psychological examination. Brandon lurks in the shadows wearing a weird-ass mask, then disappears/reappears at just the right moment. People are killed in spectacularly gory ways. Still, I have to give Yarovesky credit, since he only had a $7 million budget to work with, and he made a film with decent pacing and a subtle feeling that the town of Brightburn is in an irrevocable economic decline.

James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy fame produced, and his clout is probably why the script written by his brother Brian Gunn and cousin Mark Gunn was utilized. Their screenplay drove me nuts, because while we have some fairly creative moments of horror and okay-ish character beats, it’s massively overshadowed by their characterization of Brandon. For a story about an evil Superboy to work, we need to get into his head and understand why he’s rejecting goodness. Here, Brandon is called by the spaceship, then he basically goes from zero to serial killer in 0.5 seconds. Why? Is his alien heritage activated somehow? Is he a product of toxic masculinity? Is he simply born “bad” like the eponymous title character in We Need to Talk About Kevin? We never find out, and that problem is fatal.

All is not lost, since we have a mostly okay cast with one incredible standout we’ll get back to. Everyone is pretty decent. I liked David Denman as Kyle, and enjoyed his dawning realization that there was something severely wrong with his son. Speaking of his son, Jackson A. Dunn does fairly good work with a very tough role. Playing a budding psychopath who’s repressing a host of vile emotions isn’t easy for anyone, much less a child actor. Dunn tries his best, and he occasionally succeeds in showing us the black chasm hiding behind his face.

The aforementioned standout in the cast is the outstanding Elizabeth Banks as Tori. It feels like Banks has been around forever and proved she can do essentially anything. Here, she’s playing a mom forced to come to terms with the fact that her beloved boy might be seriously off. Banks realistically plays warmth, humor, concern, unease, and finally nerve-shredding terror. Her performance feels organic, and she’s much better than the material.

Movies like Kick-Ass, Watchmen, and Super have examined how screwed-up long underwear types would likely be. Brightburn wants to do the same thing, but a frustrating script and uneven direction prevents that from happening. David Yarovesky’s direction got my attention, and I think he could make something incredible with a strong script. I can’t completely recommend Brightburn, but if you’re going to come for the supermurder, you should stay for a strong Elizabeth Banks performance.

*In all seriousness, Denver had its own real-life costumed vigilante. You can read more about the Wall Creeper here.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/we-need-to-talk-about-kal-el/

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lindyhunt · 6 years

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How Should We Feel About the Justin Trudeau ‘Groping’ Incident?

The ranks here at FASHION are not filled with men. Shocking, right? But there are one or two (there are actually, literally, two). Naturally, when a question about male/female dynamics arises it’s only fair that one of them stand in for the members of his gender and provide some insight. Our last topic of conversation was about the concept of ‘the redistribution of sex’ as a response to the incel movement, and today we’re wading into the alleged Justin Trudeau ‘groping’ incident. Two of our staffers—from the men’s corner, Greg Hudson, and from the women’s, Pahull Bains—talk it out.

GH: I’m predisposed to like Justin Trudeau because when I was a teenager, for some reason, I started really liking his Old Man. (When Pierre Trudeau died, people would stop me in the halls to offer their condolences as I actually knew the former PM. ) That might be shading my reaction to this ongoing semi-controversy about an 18-year-old allegation that a 28-year-old Justin Trudeau groped a female reporter, but I hope it’s not. That’s why I bring it up with you. We straight white cis dudes need to keep ourselves honest.

In short: this news story bugs me. It actually represents a few of my personal bugaboos (ugh, I hate that word). It frustrates me whenever Canadians want so desperately to be Americans that they cling to, or blow up, stories and issues that seem comparable to what’s happening in American media. This story feels like some reporters desperately wanted one of our leaders to have a Trumpian #MeToo scandal, too. But also, it mostly feels like members of the media wanting a story for a story’s sake. After all, the woman at the centre of this story isn’t clamouring to have this story told (for whatever reason), and the allegations are so vague as to be both meaningless and insidious. So, who is this story for? Because it feels like it’s only for the self-gratification of a handful of journalists. But maybe I’m wrong?

PB: First off, never use the word bugaboo again. But, yes, the story bothers me too but not for the same reasons as you.

I do agree with you that the story seems to have been dredged up for reasons that don’t quite fall into the “speaking truth to power” camp. For one, it was nearly twenty years ago. Not that there should ever be a statute of limitations on these kinds of stories, but it does seem to be an isolated incident—a momentary lapse of judgement.

That said, I’m not saying Justin Trudeau is a bad person. Far from it. His feminism-driven political platform and thoughtful discourse on most issues is proof of that. It seems he did something stupid and regrettable as an inebriated 28-year-old. Fine. But as a far more wise and mature 46-year-old, I would expect better from him. Better than saying, “This lesson that we are learning, and I’ll be blunt about it, often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently and we have to respect that and reflect on that.” Okay, glad you’re reflecting and reevaluating, Justin. But you can’t Aziz Ansari your way out of this. Is it too much to expect him to say that he behaved inappropriately, it was wrong of him, and he has never behaved like that since? Why is that too much to ask?

GH: It’s telling that you mention Aziz because I almost did, too. When the story of his Bad Date came out, it was like the first time the Movement had to deal with nuance, and it seemed to split commentators and activists, often along generational lines. The Aziz thing annoyed me for the same sensationalist reasons this story does, where getting a win against the patriarchy (which is a good thing) becomes more important than intellectual honesty and even justice.

And here is where I get this strange feeling, this creeping temptation to reference The Crucible–which is really just a highbrow (well, as highbrow as a grade 12 English class) way of calling this whole thing a witch hunt. Trump has made that phrase into an authoritarian battle cry against truth. But, in this scenario, it seems appropriate. Why is it too much to ask for Trudeau to say that he behaved inappropriately and that he was wrong? Maybe because it wouldn’t be true.

I would argue, that the idea raised by Trudeau that you mentioned–that a man and a woman can walk away from the same experience with different interpretations, both still accurate–is more valuable to consider than a mea culpa that would likely seem hollow. It seems to be the most accurate way to look at the situation. We don’t even know the details of this accusation. The word that gets used is “grope,” but what does that mean? I mean really, honestly, not asking rhetorically here: when you hear grope, what do you picture? Do we all picture the same thing?

In the absence of specifics, the interpretation that two things can be true seems more helpful than someone just copping to bad behaviour they don’t think they displayed. One encourages men to remember their privilege in a patriarchal society–where what they do can mean different things depending on the people they are interacting with–whereas the other seems to give credence to the tired idea that men should just avoid dealing with women, out of fear of doing something wrong.

PB: It’s surprising how quick you are to say that Trudeau admitting to behaving badly would be a false confession. Let’s clear a couple of things up before getting into that. One, the Ansari thing is actually nothing like the Trudeau thing because the scenarios are completely different. Ansari and his accuser, Grace, were actually on a date, at his apartment, drinking wine, flirting etc. In that situation, it’s completely possible for wires to get crossed and signals to get misconstrued. If you remember, I thought the whole thing got blown out of proportion too, although it did spark some thoughtful conversations—and hopefully internal monologues—about the ways in which a given situation can be interpreted in wildly different ways by the people involved, mostly when they’re projecting their own desires onto their partner or companion, and also because, well, patriarchy.

The Trudeau situation is nothing like that, because, as far as we know, he and the reporter had no prior interactions, so their ‘relationship’ was either a strictly professional one or that of complete strangers (I’m really unclear on whether she was interviewing him at the time, or if they just bumped into each at the festival). Either way, it would be quite a leap for Trudeau to so completely misinterpret her actions and signals. The second thing I want to address is the question you raised about what “groping” or “handling” (the two words used to describe the incident in the 2000 editorial, purportedly written by the reporter herself) could entail. You’re right, there are absolutely no specifics. When I think grope, I think: to grab or pinch someone’s butt, put an arm around someone’s waist, inappropriately touch someone’s breasts or stomach, a hand on one’s thigh. It could be anything, really. But all of these are examples of uninvited contact completely out of place in interactions with either a complete stranger or with someone to whom you’re speaking in a professional capacity.

Now, back to the false confession thing. Since the editorial is vague, and since the reporter in question doesn’t seem to want to make herself known (I don’t blame her at all for wanting to stay out of this), do you think it never happened? Trudeau himself isn’t saying it’s even remotely fabricated. He’s admitting that something happened, but just saying it was interpreted differently by both parties. Also, while we’re on the subject of what he said, apparently his response to the reporter at the time was: “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.” What on earth is that about?!

GH: You’re totally right that the two situations are different. Good call. I like how you put that. And no, I’m not saying Trudeau and the reporter didn’t ever meet or have an interaction, just that I have no sense of what actually happened. And that’s what’s similar between this and the Aziz thing: how we interpret the story depends so much on our own personal experience and bias. Which, I suppose, is also just life…you know?

But so we have terms like grope and handled, which are words that mean different things depending on who is hearing them (for me, grope almost exclusively means cupping/grabbing breasts or butts. I think that might be because grope and cup both have ‘p’s at the end of them?). And the details we’ve got from the secondary sources–the reporter’s editor and publisher at the time–are similarly vague: that it wasn’t criminal or traumatizing but it was…something. If we don’t know anything, then to feel outrage, or to expect any particular behaviour from the participants, is either performative or partisan (or both). And so, in that context, to say that he did something wrong and he hasn’t done it since, feels more insincere than trying to discuss perspective.

If I’m completely, out-of-our-present-context honest, I think that whatever happened was likely a 2 on a touching scale, that was rounded up to a four or a five by a reporter either looking for something to write, or feeling annoyed at a privileged son of a former Prime Minister. And then, because of the moment we’re in, that four or five gets treated like a 6 or a 7 by the media. I imagine the kind of touching that would normally happen between say a server and a customer (which, before you say is creepy, remember goes both ways. I have been touched far more by servers than I have ever, ever touched a customer): so, like a lingering hand on an arm or knee. A kind of uninvited touch that would be considered pretty natural among humans. And I consider his “If I’d have known you were reporting for a national paper…” comment to be a 28-year-old’s tongue in cheek, maybe a bit cocky, dismissal of something he probably didn’t remember doing, and didn’t do intentionally.

But! That’s my own reading based on my own bias, and my own experience. What present-day Trudeau is saying speaks to that. But, I’m probably just defending Trudeau because his dad was cool and cocky to reporters, threw shade at Nixon and twirled ironically after meeting the queen.

PB: We may not know exactly what went down at the Kokanee Festival so many summers ago, but I’m inclined to believe that whatever it was, it was unsettling enough to drive this reporter into her editor’s office to report it and for them to collectively decide to publish this anonymous editorial.

That said, all of this does not mean that Justin Trudeau is suddenly a villain and we’re revoking his membership to the Good Guys Club. He has a pretty good track record of being a feminist and an ally. He messed up a long time ago and he’s trying to figure out how best to extract himself gracefully from it now. I do wish he would own up to the whole thing more fully, but honestly, I’m so ready for it to be buried in the news cycle (and wish it hadn’t been dredged up in the first place). Because however much conservatives and certain media pundits might want to drum up public outrage, let’s just be glad the leader of our country would never say shit like this.

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