I ran across this remarkable painting, titled “The Irritating Gentleman,” on Sheltered and Safe From Sorrow, a blog devoted to Victorian mourning rituals and other creepiness from that period. The gentleman in question seems to be a Victorian era Pickup Artist in action. He’s even peacocking, Mystery style, with that bow tie and stupid hat and even a non-ironic handlebar moustache. Probably the only thing keeping him from wearing aviator goggles is the fact that airplanes haven’t yet been invented.
What makes it all the worse is that the PUA’s target is clearly in mourning. As the blogger behind rawr I’m a tumblr notes:
She’s wearing all black in 1874. Black gloves, hat, cloak, and dress. In public. The whole nine yards. That’s not a fashion choice or a gothic thing. Back then when people wore all black like that, they were in mourning for someone who died. No one did mourning like the Victorians, that shit was an art form to them.
Someone in her family has died—she could even be a young widow. No one’s accompanying her either. With the carpet bag? She’s traveling alone while still in deep mourning. Look at the closeup. She’s got tears in her eyes. She is upset, devastated in a way that one is only when someone has died. And the guy’s still bothering her, like her problems are flippant bullshit and she needs to just smile or pay attention to him because ladies are supposed to be pleasing for men no matter what shit they’re going through. That’s not a look of “what an ass.” That’s a look of devastation that even in her pain, she’s expected to give people like him focus. She’s not mad. She’s hurt. And to add insult to injury? Everyone would be able to tell. It was a clear sign and still is in ways that someone is mourning, to dress in black crepe like that. He would know why she’s wearing all black, and he’s still demanding her attention.
What an insufferable dick.
Yep.
Oh, and inability to realise what a fuckwit you are isn’t limited to dealings on the internet. I have no doubt you’re just as stupid, pretentious and laughable in person … if you actually have any interactions with people face-to-face, that is.
I was really hoping your rants were the complaints of a teenager/young adult who just didn’t know much about society outside your little bubble of existence (there’s a sociology term here, someone help me out)
Um…did you miss where the painting is ~150 years old, long before TV and movies existed?
Nope, to mock misogyny, though it does say something if that inherently gets a rise out of you.
Also, do you get that there are plenty of commenters here who are either cis men, or non-cis women, or genderqueer, or some other contradiction to “men everywhere”?
Blockquote success! Whatever I’ve done to appease the god of the blockquotes, I’d like to do it again, and spread it around to the rest of y’all.
Note how he took issue with my hoping he was barely above the æ of majority, but not with the suggestion that he completely disagrees that the concept should exist.
This will probably be regretted, it I have to ask. ABNOY, at what age then should sex between a teen (child?!) and adult (say 21+) be legal?
Because, see, I’m just fine with two teenagers having sexytimes (use condoms!) and a 17~19 couple seems fine enough. But what’re your thoughts on, say, 14? 12? With each other but no younger or older? Or just a free for all since teens are more mature than ever?
Everyone else…he’s older than me apparently…I’m not sure if I’m amused or frightened.
He’s like Owly minus the ranting about sluts but with a manga/anime/comics obsession instead.
Somewhere, some investors in tinfoil production are making a fortune.
“Somewhere, some investors in tinfoil production are making a fortune.”
Lol, my father insists on saving the stuff to turn in at the scrapyard as metal. Could sell it to ABNOY and NWO instead! (One of these days I’m going to calculate whether he’s even making money, or burning too much on gas to make up for the absurdly small amount he gets back)
You could run your own internet business! Tinfoil hats for those who’ve taken the red pill!
Could do your traditional twisted top, the childhood traditional hat or boat style, shaped pirate hats…
I doubt the true “I am wearing tin on my head” level of tin-hatter would dare order anything online though. Their hat could be implanted with a tracking device!
Perhaps run an ad in the local paper (badly designed, of course) with a “send $5 and a stamped self-addressed envelope to PO Box … ” message.
Eh, I’m in good old liberal New England, thankfully I doubt the local papers cater to many wingnuts. (Not even my fathe reads the classifieds)
@Kittehs
I can’t help but think of this, possibly the only crazy classified ad to have a film made about it.
Mullet dude’s not in the original ad but he’s become a memetic part of it and vastly improves it.
In addition to the obvious, weapons + time travel = doing it wrong (welcome to why I love the Doctor, because “no weapons! Scan me!”)
“I have no doubt you’re just as stupid, pretentious and laughable in person … if you actually have any interactions with people face-to-face, that is.”
Are you saying that your online and offline personas are one and the same? Tch tch, how uncreative of you. There’s the public professional face (what the Japanese call tatamae) and there’s the private personal face (what the Japanese call honnae) . Most people I know — and I do know my fair share — in real life think I’m so boring that all I ever do is work at the office and sleep at home in my free time. I’ve been told that I’m one of those “middle management” types who fade in the background and blend with the wallpaper, just another nameless and faceless worker drone. Only the really independently wealthy can get away with being this avant garde opinionated in real life, which to my eternal regret, I’m not 🙁
“at what age then should sex between a teen (child?!) and adult (say 21+) be legal?”
As your own American jurisprudence has it, I would say best bet would be present era “community standards”, with discretionary allowances on a case-to-case basis, since people are individuals after all. It’s all relative from place to place, you know?
“Um…did you miss where the painting is ~150 years old, long before TV and movies existed?”
Human nature has remained largely constant more or less ever since the beginning of our species and will remain so for the most part until the end of our species when we either become extinct or evolve en masse into something else. But in any case, 150 years — what, just merely half a dozen generations or so — is practically nothing in terms of basic changes in human nature.
Ye gods, is that the worse. mullet. ever?
It’d be in the running, though I’ve yet to see a mullet that wasn’t awful. Long hair, ur doin it rong.
Otaku tantrum! It’s so cute when he tries for snarky and just can’t pull it off.
“Enough guys in Japan and elsewhere love dakimakura enough that it’s become a thriving industry in it’s own right”
That doesn’t mean that the Japanese people as a whole like it though. NEETs have become a trend too, and they’re loathed by the majority of the Japanese population. The NEET lifestyle (and dakimakuras, which are a part of it) is unhealthy for society and anti-social.
This isn’t saying I have contempt for NEETs. Far from it. But we shouldn’t treat it as a good thing because the love pillow industry is thriving.
“Liberals tend to infantilize adolescents out of overprotectiveness.”
This is because adolescence is such an important time for development, and it often results in rebellion, both toward society and their parents, which can lead to unhealthy behavior. When I look back at my teenage years I feel like I was really stupid back then.
“Are you telling me that you people actually do care that much about what complete and total random strangers on the internet think of you?”
You’re not a complete and total random stranger, you’re Abnoy.
“I’ve been told that I’m one of those “middle management” types who fade in the background and blend with the wallpaper”
I know that feel.
“Human nature has remained largely constant more or less ever since the beginning of our species and will remain so for the most part until the end of our species when we either become extinct or evolve en masse into something else.”
Completely incorrect. If you went back in time, you would be shocked at just how different everyone was. We’re constantly evolving, along with everything else on this planet. Evolution isn’t just a series of steps that living things take, it’s a slow, very gradual process. Even since the invention of the internet, human minds have changed dramatically.
*gnaws quietly on own hand*
Oh you like the evolve en masse too huh?
Abnoy, evolution doesn’t work that way. There are genetic mutations in probably every human on the planet. Most of those mutations are insignificant, some are lethal and very rarely you get a beneficial mutation. The problem is that you won’t likely see the mutation unless the environment is significantly (and probably adversely altered). What’s more is that those beneficial mutations happen in random people who are a very tiny proportion of the population. In order to fix the mutated trait or strengthen it enough people without the trait have to die to make the beneficial mutations part of the dominant gene pool.
It has happened in the cases of infectious disease where small populations have gained partial or full immunity to certain illnesses. The most recently discovered I believe is a small group of people in Africa. They appear to have developed a partial immunity to the effects of malaria. These people didn’t evolve en mass.
I think this guy has been watching too much B5, the episode where an entire planet of people was on the cusp of an evolutionary breakthrough when the soul stealing species came and trapped them part way through the transformation.
Abnoy needs to watch the series “the Day the World Changed” to get some sense of how much human thinking can change and how rapidly.
Abnoy, people in the western world don’t think like they did twenty years ago. We certainly don’t think like our grandparents did when they were twenty. And the changes over the past 150 years makes Victorian perspectives and nuances difficult to grasp. The further back you go, the more difficult it becomes to truly understand how our ancestors really experienced the world.
Anyone watch the Rome series? I really like how they opened the show with the moving carvings and paintings. The creators of the show explain why they did that, and it had to do with the Roman concepts around, erg what’s the word…numinae?
LIEFELDIAN.
HETEROSEXUAL.
YOU ARE NOT MAKING A GOOD CASE, ABNOY.
http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings
Don’t hurt yourself, folks. When your eyes start bleeding, stop reading.
Slight derail, Pillow, but I HATE this trope! It seems like the most ardent transhumanists/Humans-Reaching-The-Next-Stage-of-Evolution-Fans are usually mediocre folk, generally pale, male and middle-class, who can’t wait for the day that they evolve into higher beings that don’t have to share this grubby, handled planet with the rest of us, and don’t have to listen to us whine, like the unevolved plebians we are, about boring things like equality and responsibility.
I might be slightly biased, because my college ex-boyfriend had a habit of rolling his eyes and going “Humans!” in a tone of contempt whenever something awful happened on the news, like a school shooting. Usually, the “Humans!” committing the disgusting act were usually a lot like him – well-off! privileged! entitled to everything he wanted to have! frustrated and bitter that the world had not handed him MORE things, on a silver platter, without him having to do any work! – and presumably he couldn’t face this truth. The “Humans!” deserving this disgust were hardly ever the schoolchildren. Also, things he didn’t like about himself were inherent engineering flaws within humanity – he couldn’t be blamed for his lack of interest in adventurous activities; it was a problem with his flawed monkey body. Bad habits of his, like procrastination and inability to complete things that he’d started, were also annoying quirks of all human nature, and it was apparently unreasonable to expect him to evolve past those – despite the fact that all around him, plenty of human people were achieving goals and meeting deadlines. The best part was when he, a sort of engineer/physicist type, tried to convince me that “It’s not a ME problem, it’s a UNIVERSAL HUMAN PROBLEM THAT WAS HARDWIRED INTO MY BIOLOGY” … while I was studying evolutionary biology. I loved him at the time, I deeply did, but that shit was pretty toxic.
It’s just easier for this kind of personality to blame or dismiss their entire species rather than to admit their own privilege or fix their own problems. I think that’s why they fix on evopsch-biotruthiness so fiercely; it really is easier than staring into the abyss.
/ end rant
I would heartily recommend this series to anyone, as well as the Connections series by the same guy.
People like you mean well but you are just too optimistic. We are only human after all. And just because you can triumph over yourself doesn’t mean everyone else can. There are always winners and losers after all. As a line from Wolf`s Rain goes ”I think there are those who will see Paradise and there are those who will not see Paradise.”
That’s like mistaking Gandalf’s staff for a walking stick.
Well, now I feel better, because I do this, but I own my flaws.