The Buddha, legend has it, spent his younger years living in an opulent palace that was also, in a way, a prison — designed to make sure he never saw the reality of suffering in the real world. But in his late twenties he decided he needed to see the world outside the palace walls.
On his first trip out, he saw an old man, and learned about the phenomenon of aging. On subsequent trips, he saw a sick man, a corpse, and a religious ascetic. He learned that life was fleeting and suffused with suffering. This insight was the spark for the spiritual quest that led to his enlightenment.
One regular commenter on Incels.co seems, like the Buddha, to have discovered the phenomenon of aging, though his discovery hasn’t led to any wisdom.
“Even if I get a teen or early 20s girlsfriend she will age out,” Total Imbecile sadly reported in a recent post:
I dont know how guys cope with this
No matter how pretty your girlfriend is she will eventually grow old, everything is transient …
Each year you turn 1 year older while some girl whos your 10/10 becomes a teen and starts living her prime
And even she will eventually age out of her prime
Its just brutal, I hate the agepill
Total Imbecile, like the Buddha, realizes that life is transient and painful; unlike the Buddha, he uses this insight as an excuse to lament that hot 13-year-olds won’t be hot 13-year-olds forever. Euggghh.
In a followup comment, he told the sad tale of a recent shopping trip:
I was @ my local target today and I noticed this girl who had like blonde hair but it was almost orange
Anyways I realized I wanna marry her but then as she was walking I noticed an old guy walking in the opposite direction and it hit me
Even if I marry her, 50 years from now I will be that old guy and somebody else will be that college girl, my wife will be old and her hair will probably go white, she wont be a college girl forever
I wanted to kill myself right then and there
Don’t worry, dude; with this attitude, even if you somehow magically manage to find a girlfriend, she’s not going to put up with your shit long enough to grow any older.
An incel called Transcended Truecel agreed with Imbecile’s bleak assessment of the world.
Yup, I was once thinking about this. Even if you somehow get a Stacy, every passing year her looks degrade, day by day. Eventually she will become old hag. It was very brutal enlightenment. Destroyed my desire to ascend by a large degree, after realizing this, I no longer care for trying to ascend as it’s not possible and not even worth the effort either. Best to money max and cope
In a followup comment, he added:
Imagine putting all this effort for foid and finally ascending , just for her to expire a few years in . Really unideal
Boo fucking hoo. Like you’e going to age like fine wine?
Seriously, dudes, go read Siddartha or something. Get a little bit of perspective on life.
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@Lainy
You look great!
@ Lainy
I love your little bat logo; you look like an undercover superhero!
A carrot top should have green hair like a Oompa Loompa no ?
Or where the guys in charge of english drunk again ?
@Naglfar
thank you!
@Alan
I feel a little bit like Raven from teen titans
Speaking of complete fucking monsters, this is a real book
@an autistic giraffe
I saw that one when Faye Fahrenheit did a “Bigot Book Review” and shared some choice excerpts. She never seems to have finished the review, but the point stands that the book is exceptionally awful and isn’t alone in terms of its content.
Most of the books I’ve seen about autism by neurotypical people are ignorant at best and openly hateful (like that one) at worst. I have yet to find a book by a neurotypical person about autism that isn’t dehumanizing, reliant heavily on stereotypes, centered around the idea that all autistic people are cishet white males, or all of the above.
@ Naglfar,
This is a good idea; these kids of ideas need to be challenged. The only thing is, if she’s buying these books new, the author of the bigoted book will benefit? I bought a nasty book of this sort on the basis of “know your enemies”, and I regretted it, especially as I started to get those targeted ads in response *shudder*.
This book looks horrifying. I feel so bad for this guy’s poor kids.
The Amazon reviews are overwhelmingly 1-star, and from the content of the reviews, people wish they could give stars in negative numbers.
@Bookworm in hijab
Faye says she bought it used, which would avoid the issue of giving the author money. I would recommend doing the same should you ever need a similar book. It might not prevent the ads from showing up, but it will prevent the author from getting your money. Or you could try to borrow from a library, but that might be difficult depending on how your local library works, and may be impossible during the current pandemic.
The idea of a bigot book review is fairly common, at least in the circles I’m involved in, especially in the last few years I’ve seen plenty of blog posts, articles, and threads from various individuals or groups breaking down hateful books or other media. I’ve considered trying to do some of that to shed light on and break down bigot arguments, but I don’t have the time at present to devote to it.
I don’t usually review products on Amazon, especially if I haven’t bought them, but it does seem like the kind of book that warrants negative stars. And it’s only one such book, there are plenty more with a similar premise and ideas, both about autism and about other neurodivergencies. There’s also a massive intersection of anti-autistic bigotry/ableism with other bigotries like misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia, as well as blatant science denialism (i.e. anti-vaxxers, various stripes of Christian fundamentalists).
@Ohlmann:
There was a time when that wasn’t true? 😉 [“carrot top” just means “orange like a carrot on top” sadly. :D]
@ Naglfar,
I’m a dork. I totally missed that! Yes, solves the problem. Or library, indeed. I’ve occasionally picked up horrible books at thrift shops, for the sole purpose of writing snarky margin notes and then passing them along.
@ bookworm in hijab
Pick up one of those ‘Unsolved True Crime’ books; then make loads of marginal notes along the lines of “Well, they got that wrong” and then put it back.
I feel like a lot of these idiots view women as ornaments to accent themselves rather than as any sort of companion.
I scored some antique ink a few years back from a bottle digger mate of mine. Like all English people my age, I first learned to write with a fountain pen, so using a nib is second nature. Been known to make the odd anachronistic note in old books.
@ Threp
During WW2 the SOE produced a fake pamphlet entitled “Nostradamus predicts the course of the war” with all sorts of prophecies, which were surprisingly accurate (up to the date they produced it) about Germany’s initial successes. However Nostradamus predicted all sorts of upcoming catastrophes.
They then planted it in some antiquarian booksellers in Germany hoping the Ahnenerbewould stumble across it.
Strange chaps, the department of ungentlemanly warfare. All sorts of odd notions. 🙂
Hunh. I have no idea when I first understood the concept of death. It was pretty early, probably helped along by the fact that we moved multiple times when I was young (so I was used to losing people), there were farms nearby, and the number of great-grandparents I knew.
More on topic, I’ve attended 50th anniversary celebrations for my parents and one set of grandparents. (And the other set didn’t have it only because that grandfather died about ten years before they got that far.) One of those great-grandparents had their 50th before I was born, and I know one set of great-aunt/uncle made it that far but we were in a different part of the country at the time. Gee, it’s almost like most people don’t obsess over youthful looks as much as this guy does.
@Lainy:
I can see why you make the Raven reference, yes. Though you have more of a smile in that picture than Raven usually does.
@an autistic giraffe:
Ugh, that’s awful. And the ‘Proceeds Donated to Charities to Help Families With Autism’ just makes it worse, because I can half-imagine the sorts of charities they mean. And note that the charities are for *families* with autism, not *people* with autism… just like a lot of that ilk, they’re more concerned about the parents ‘suffering’ than they are with the actual children. These are exactly the sorts of people who will torture their child to ‘cure’ them, because it’s all about getting back the ‘real’ child that was ‘stolen’ from them. People have been likening these sorts of attitudes to the old stories about Changelings for a while…
@Naglfar, Bookworm in hijab:
Fred Clark’s merciless deconstruction of ‘Left Behind’ set the standard for me for that sort of review; the Slacktivist blog spawned a whole cottage industry of other folks doing similar reviews of related books. Sadly, he’s pretty much stopped doing it now, and hasn’t even been reposting the old stuff as much lately. Though there are only so many ways you can say “This is not how real human beings (as opposed to walking plot devices) would act!”
@Jenora Feuer
Yes, I would imagine a chunk of the proceeds goes to Autism Speaks or the like. A former commenter here put it best, “Autism Speaks is not a charity for autistic people, it is a charity for neurotypical people who have the horrible burden of an autistic person in their lives.” (That may not be exactly what he said, but same general message).
William Shatner has repeatedly gone to bat for them (and shouted down autistic people who tried to explain to him why he shouldn’t), as if we needed another reason to realize he isn’t a very good person.
“Autism Warrior” parents are the worst for exactly that reason. They’re pining for a child that never existed. Their child wasn’t stolen, it is they who refuse to accept that child for what they are. Just like the homophobic or transphobic parents of LGBT children who don’t accept their children.
And they’re impossible to talk sense into, when I try to argue they always say I could never know what it’s like to be the parent of an autistic person, then when I say that I am autistic they either a) get very condescending and rude or b) say I’m “not really” autistic or “not severely autistic” because I’m good at masking and passing for neurotypical. Or they just start screaming incoherently.
@Jenora
Have you seen Adam Lee (Daylight Atheism on Patheos)’s examinations of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead? They were inspired by the Left Behind reviews.
There used to be a blog or maybe tumblr called “Reasoning with vampires” dedicated to exposing and snarking about the misogyny of the Twilight series. I haven’t looked it up in years, though.
I learned everything I know about Twilight from a Livejournal where an ex-Mormon discussed/reviewed the books at length and pointed out all the Mormon influences as she encountered them. A lot of what is objectionable about the books is influenced by Mormon theology and sociology. It’s unfortunate that the series wound up heavily criticized based on nothing more substantive than “young girls like it and young girls are airheads so everything they like sucks” because there are some fantastic reasons to criticize it that have nothing to do with the audience.
@PoM
I never read Twilight but I will never forgive the series for inspiring the creepy, dangerous 50 Shades of Gray. That book has caused real-world abuse to happen in a way that few other erotic novels have.
This might only be of interest to legal geeks; but in summary:
Trump is being sued for defamation for saying that a rape claim is false.
The case was going through the normal state court channels. A deadline was approaching by which time Trump would have to abide by a court order for disclosure. That would include giving a deposition and providing a DNA sample.
However the Department of Justice has taken over the case. Their argument is that, when he made the statement, Trump was acting in an official capacity and therefore the correct defendant is the US itself. Who was that French king who said “I am the state.”?
But anyway, this just looks like a tactic to avoid the trial generally and perhaps damaging revelations prior to the election.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-08/doj-seeks-to-take-over-trump-defense-in-e-jean-carroll-lawsuit
@Naglfar
I got curious and looked it up on LJ – it’s called LDS Sparkledammerung and is from 2008, and for some reason none of the images show up for me anymore, but it’s a nice breath of nostalgia for me.
I don’t think that 50 Shades did anything but dial the abuse in Twilight up to 11 and delete the vampire aspect. Twilight is pretty bad on its own.
And hey, did you know that E L James wrote another book after wringing the 50 Shades series dry? It’s called The Mister and it plagiarizes a totally different property. If you have nothing to do for a while and want to see someone rip apart a bad book, you can look up Jenny Trout’s blow-by-blow of the book.
O/T but I’ve just encountered a terrifyingly awful website. CW to the max for…oh where to even start?! Sexism, homophobia, transphobia, abuse and justifications thereof…if not in this partiular article, then certainly in the site as a whole.
https://biblicalgenderroles.com/2014/05/24/the-scourge-of-feminism/
Ugh. Mammotheers, I only share it because I need brain-bleach after reading it and you’re all very good at that. Any pics of adorable kittens would be greatly appreciated.
Btw, for any Christian mammotheers, I don’t for one single second believe that this is what your faith is about. Every Christian I’ve met would be horrified by this too.