By David Futrelle
So over on Tumblr, some people were having a nice little discussion of how amazing it is that our ancient ancestors were able to figure out some rather complicated sciencey things, like the circumference of the earth, without being able to just look them up on Google.
Someone mentioned mammoths, those oft-hunted beasts that not only co-existed with our hairier prehistoric predecessors but managed to survive, at least in some remote areas, for several thousand years after humans first became civilized.
Then someone called Brett Caton showed up. He began innocently enough.
“I find it utterly bizarre that humans saw these megafauna,” he wrote, before linking to a New York Times story about the last known population of mammoths that went extinct. According to one scientific paper quoted in the story, these mammoths, living on isolated Wrangel island in the arctic sea north of eastern Siberia, had “carried so many detrimental mutations [in their genome] that the population had suffered a ‘genomic meltdown.'”
Then Mr. Caton’s comment took a bit of a turn.
“That ‘genomic meltdown’ is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal,” he wrote,
because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries, when the most likely outcome is a population running about – unable to reproduce sexually since the whole “male genocide” bit – with incredibly damaged chromosomes.
Sex exists for a reason, and no, “because it’s fun” is not the answer, sorry. It works better than reproduction otherwise. Which is why every complex species uses it.
Intelligence requires a lot of things to be working correctly, and if you have an all female species that is over the tipping point of idiocy, then there won’t be enough people to maintain the technology to continue to reproduce. And humans will go the way of the Wrangel beasties.
Fortunately, feminists are horribly lazy bastards, so i doubt they’ll continue to get their way, but it does made for a decent plot for a dystopian fiction…
Mr. Caton’s comment raises a number of questions, including:
- Huh?
- What?
- What the hell?
- Does this dude think the Wrangel island mammoths were, like, the world’s first hairy legged feminists?
As it turns out, I’m not the only one with questions. Caton’s post has so far garnered 154,000 “notes” on Tumblr, and comes trailing a long and ever-expanding string of comments from other people as confused as I am. “Whaaaaaaaa???” wrote one. “W-what??” asked another.
Still another added:
I got to that point … and was like “wait What.” And then it just kept going and I was like “is this actually happening? Am I seriously reading this right now??”
It is. You are. Apparently we feminists extincted the mammoth to male genocide you.
“What I mean is that genetic errors tend to only affect the being with them, while memetic errors can affect beings that don’t, so there’s less comparative disadvantage to having memetic errors.”
That’s true of the individual (if I understand you correctly), but is it true of the group? Arguably, genetic errors only affect the organism which is saddled with them, but memetic errors can more easily affect a whole faction or division of people. Does the comparative advantage an individual with a memetic error holds over an individual beset with a memetic error also apply to the group, where the error is that much more widely distributed? If there’s more of a comparative disadvantage to having cystic fibrosis than to having the Spanish Flu, does that make the Spanish Flu less dangerous?
o_o
So, in considering the mammosphere-manosphere connection, and in considering the manosphere from a memetic viewpoint, we can consider the manosphere an isolated population?
Oh dear
That’s possibly quite true! The “incel” variant of the MRA memeplex seems to carry a weaker transmissive payload than the MRA/PUA variants, and also carries an isolating factor to preserve itself. I think they *all* have that sort of a factor to a degree really, but incels specifically seem to have more of it. Enough that the more lethal and/or deleterious memes could develop.
Related to the tendency to spawn violence ideation and behaviour? Hm.
That’s all really interesting. I’m gonna have to have a think. Thank you!
Well, obviously group disadvantages would prompt group selection, say of social mechanisms to counteract errant memes. This could take a crude, simple, and generally unpleasant form (e.g. the Bible as received wisdom, and heresy punishable by death) or a more sophisticated form that allows for changes but vets them heavily (e.g. science textbooks as received wisdom, and peer review as the bar to hurdle to get what’s in the textbooks changed … but also e.g. Lysenkoism as received wisdom, and political review by the Soviet politburo as the bar to hurdle. But note that, in the end, both the Spanish inquisition and the Soviet politburo had relatively brief tenures on this Earth, on the order of a century apiece, while science has been marching on for several of those and counting. Both too much truth-relativism and too rigid truth-guardianship seem to ultimately be maladaptive at group level).
I should review my policy of reading the latest comment first and working backwards. Because I totally misinterpreted “mammosphere”.
Hello.
Well, as Caton the Elder was saying : Delenda est Carthago.
And as Caton the Brett is saying : Delenda sunt cogitatio et scientia.
Have a nice day.
@kupo
You’ve got the rub of it, but I think there’s a couple other crucial details that separate Sandy Hook from Parkland. Sandy Hook took place just two weeks prior to Christmas and about a month after America dodged the Romney bullet–it was the perfect time when people are just winding down to relax and turn their attentions to their own families, which couldn’t really be avoided given the culture and zeitgeist. America had just gone through an exhausting presidential election and the pressures of the holiday season bearing down on us meant that all of us had precious little mental energy left to dedicate to a new and even more exhausting fight.
Parkland taking place on Valentine’s Day after the first year of President Dipshit’s rule meant we had plenty of post-holiday energy to devote to the cause championed by people who were there. It wasn’t just an abstraction from grieving parents holding studio portraits of little kids the same way they would after an amber alert, it was the social-media-savvy teenagers who were actually there to describe in horrific detail the ordeal they had just gone through and broadcast it to millions to retweet and retweet and send directly to Congresspeople.
Secondly, the idea of “crisis actors” was a brand new conspiracy concept in 2012 that we weren’t sure how widespread it would be. This was when Alex Jones was just a bit player and a couple of fringe assholes were going around stealing memorial signs to the Sandy Hook kids. We were ready for it in February of 2018 and with Alex Jones’ fanbase basically being the MAGA-CHUDs, knew exactly how widespread that conspiracy theory would be through the right-wing rank and file. And these kids telling in detail their ordeal was the perfect antidote to “they’re just actors.”
It was telling when the NRA spokesghoul’s only retort to the marches this weekend was “nobody would know who you kids are if your classmates didn’t die!” As if attention is the world’s only sensible ambition. As if this is how they wanted to get famous. As if they wanted any kind of national spotlight to take away from their passions and studies. The NRA knows its losing this fight and losing it hard, because that’s the response of somebody who’s got no answer to the Parkland teens. None.
@WWTH
Not to pick on you, but since you mentioned Riverdale as making political statements; isn’t Riverdale the show that has thrown all kinds of abuse, and now gay conversion therapy, at one of its bisexual characters? Since you actually watch the show, I’m curious as to what you make of that? Personally, I’m trying to withhold judgment until I watch it, but honestly I still can’t help but feel squicked out by it.
@misophistry
You…you beast! *giggle*
@EJ
Awww, bee orchards are really cool. Just one more weird, completely messed up way of having sex in this world. 🙂
I honestly would love to see a manosperian try to work bee orchards into their worldview. And why wouldn’t they? If dudebros think that what happened to the mammoths is applicable to human feeeemales, even after we have the technology to produce babies from “smashing ovaries”*, then why wouldn’t the mating strategies of female plants be applicable to us as well? After all, imperfect flowers are solely feeeeeeeeeeemale, and as we all know, feeeeeeemales are completely the same when it comes to our drive for reproducion, right? So why not? 9_9
(Unless “reproduction” means using already invented technology to make babies, like in the OP. Of course feeeemales wouldn’t be able to technology! I guess we’d all just have to die out. ☹)
@Dvärghundspossen
More recently we’ve been trying to make sperm and egg cells from the stem cells produced from skin and other cells. This would allow infertile people to produce healthy gametes, same sex couples to produce children 100% biologically related to both parents, and quiverfull people to produce children literally until the end of time. So some pretty powerful technology.
https://medium.com/neodotlife/same-sex-reproduction-artificial-gametes-2739206aa4c0
*Smashing pumpkins all female tribute band, anyone?
The red pill is a hell of a drug.