bob dobbs is dead posted:

lead poisoning is poisonous permanent and proven to increase criminality in a dose dependent rate but exogenous

Marx Headroom posted:

someday we're gonna be talking about tails and elf ears the way old people talk about piercings and tattoos

bob dobbs is dead posted:

lead poisoning is poisonous permanent and proven to increase criminality in a dose dependent rate but exogenous

Facebook Aunt posted:

I don't know, man. I once swallowed a whole package of lead fishing weights and I haven't committed crimes since then.

duz posted:

you can already get surgery to have elf ears, they look like poo poo, as to be expected

Facebook Aunt posted:

I don't know, man. I once swallowed a whole package of lead fishing weights and I haven't committed crimes since then.

indigi posted:

I’d crisper my child to have a huge dong

bob dobbs is dead posted:

lead poisoning is poisonous permanent and proven to increase criminality in a dose dependent rate but exogenous

crepeface posted:

i don't like to dismiss poo poo out of hand, but how is it proved? if it's some statistical study that doesn't normalize for poverty or geography ima call bullshit

Jazerus posted:

the link is through impulsivity. the brain damage from lead can impact your self-control and therefore your tendency to do stupid poo poo without thinking. this is not it's just a sadly common result of frontal lobe damage

tokin opposition posted:

Much like your posting

Jazerus posted:

look i can't change the fact that brainmeats are physical objects with physical properties. sometimes people in cspam post as though everybody is a disembodied ghost

Jazerus posted:

the link is through impulsivity. the brain damage from lead can impact your self-control and therefore your tendency to do stupid poo poo without thinking. this is not it's just a sadly common result of frontal lobe damage

Salean posted:

There is a criminality gene and it makes you see a blue star next to your name

Salean posted:

There is a criminality gene and it makes you see a blue star next to your name

crepeface posted:

i don't like to dismiss poo poo out of hand, but how is it proved? if it's some statistical study that doesn't normalize for poverty or geography ima call bullshit

3D Megadoodoo posted:

So it just keeps getting sold and bought for more and more money until... ???

crepeface posted:

https://twitter.com/M_asinMerry/status/1404517922396160007?s=19

can't wait for the invisible hand of the free market to solve this power generation problem

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Yes

https://twitter.com/HousingOpen/status/1404898997324578819?s=19

McCracAttack posted:

https://twitter.com/ThatPersonEddie/status/1404799432235888646?s=20

OH GOOD!

Failed Imagineer posted:

King Kong ain't got poo poo on me! *slips into diabetic coma*

quote:

It is raining ash while we play basketball. On the far side of the house, the boys have a half-court hemmed in by pine trees (plus an adjacent putt-putt course), and while some unseen speaker plays J. Cole and Lil Baby, the boys are trying unsuccessfully to arrange some three-on-three. As we shoot around and warm up, the boys finally summon the courage to ask about my age, and the resulting investigation goes something like this:

baron: How old are you?
me: Guess.
baron: What! Come on, Beanie Barrett. We told you everything about us! What is up, bro?
gio: Twenty-four? Twenty-five? [Gio is a prince.]
baron [Rubbing his chin appraisingly while looking me up and down]: Okay, I see you look younger because of your sense of style—like the glasses and the beanie. I see that. So I’m gonna picture you in like a tux or something. Like a worker’s outfit.

At first, I assume that by “worker’s outfit,” he means the raiment of the proletariat, some sort of rumpled denim jumpsuit in the style of, say, a custodian or a mechanic. But then I realize that his own source of income is so wildly far from your standard nine-to-five that by “worker’s outfit” he simply means a businessman’s suit and tie.

“You’re probably like thirty-six,” he says, the little bastard.

Even though we haven’t started playing yet, all the boys talk prodigious levels of poo poo. “Bud—who’s trying to get dunked on?” (DaeDae). “I’m a daddy on the court. Y’all know what the gently caress is going on with me!” (Baron). “Yo, gently caress that clip. Look how much height I have on you, fam.” (Christopher). I suppose I find it interesting that their Barnumesque hype-manning continues even when there are no cameras rolling. But a few minutes later, after we pick teams, something strange happens. For reasons I cannot identify, most of the boys scatter and disperse, wandering in the direction of the jacuzzi and pool, looking like left fielders distracted by butterflies. Only Baron and I remain on the court. “What happened?” I ask. Shirtless, dribbling at the top of the key, Baron sighs and says, “Honestly, man, this happens all the time. They all have ADHD. They haven’t been in school in like four years, and they haven’t had responsibilities, so their brains are loving mush, bro. . . . It’s just like we pick teams for fun all the time.”

However true that is, and whatever else you might say about the education these kids are receiving, it’s clear that their hedonistic coursework—yacht content, poolside content, White Claw content—doesn’t include the rudiments of critical thinking. Take for just one example the moment during dinner when, as one boy is telling me about his ambitions to become a rock star, Baron looks up from his smartphone and says, apropos of nothing, “Yo, Hitler invented sex dolls.”

The room is overtaken by a gust of silence, while all the boys nod and chew stoically, a mute encouragement to go on. “That’s why they all have blond hair and blue eyes,” he says.

“Wait,” I say. “That can’t be right. Who says?”

“TikTok, man.”

Some frantic googling later that day will reveal that this supposed Nazi initiative—apparently called the Borghild Project, whereby German troops were given collapsible plastic dolls in their infantry backpacks that could be inflated and used (so to speak) in lieu of visiting prostitutes—is a hoax, one that was summarily debunked back in the early 2000s. Obviously, this has regained traction, though, in the unregulated wilderness of TikTok.

Beyond using TikTok as a moneymaking platform, all the guys seemed to regard the app as a social and political godsend. Again and again throughout the weekend, they rhapsodize about TikTok as though it were a conduit for sustained grassroots movements. “When I was younger,” Brandon, who is nineteen, says, “I didn’t have this much perspective on the world. I didn’t get to see everyone’s opinions on things. What was it? Just the news? Facebook? As a kid, I didn’t have a TikTok. I wasn’t an eight-year-old kid with a TikTok seeing what everyone else is seeing. Now everyone feels like they have a voice, and I think that’s what people are afraid of.”

“Wait,” I say. “Who do you think is afraid?”

“The government,” Brandon says.

“You think the government is scared?” I ask.

“Yeah, because on TikTok we have voices,” Brandon says. “We’re a whole nation of voices. That poo poo’s scary.”

Chase, the media liaison and self-described “influencing professor,” agrees. Later that day, he will tell me that “we’ve been kind of lucky to have these outlets across the last few months because we’ve been more exposed to what’s really going on.” For instance, just a few weeks ago, he was at home scrolling through his phone as a ritual of pre-sleep entertainment, at which point he stumbled upon “some kind of documentary” about the apparently rampant levels of Satanism in the U.S. entertainment industry. The documentary offered a detailed exegesis of demonic iconography, which supposedly many directors embed in their TV shows and movies. “It freaked me out, one hundred percent,” Chase says, “because I’ve seen those types of things—those signs and symbols—in these entertainment people’s offices, and so then to see this documentary and to start putting the pieces together, I mean, it’s nuts, man.”

At this point, I nonchalantly inquire as to whether Chase could maybe brandish his smartphone and pull up the video in question, and I’m soon made to view something called “Out of Shadows,” which has been posted on YouTube by an account called—I poo poo you not—Thinqing QAnon. Later, when I ask Chase whether he’s ever heard about the QAnon conspiracy, he says no, but explains that the video must be legit because “it’s gotten deleted multiple times off the internet, which is insane.” Epistemologically, this is where we are as a country: when content gets expurgated because of blatant misinformation, it is taken as a sure sign of that source’s truthfulness.

quote:

Not to sound like an English professor or anything, but as a professor of English, I can’t help thinking of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin suggests that fascistic governments aim to maintain the status quo by providing citizens with the means to express themselves aesthetically without reforming their lives materially. Thus the aforementioned government that Brandon thinks TikTokers have scared shitless actually, as Benjamin writes, “sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses—but on no account granting them rights.”

More to the point, any countercultural voltage these influencers purport to possess gets nullified by the fact that they have clear incentives not to talk about controversial matters, lest they get dropped by their brands.

“I don’t talk about politics at all,” Brandon says. “It’s like there’s always another opinion. It’s always better to be neutral. I feel like everybody avoids politics on social media. Besides that, though, everyone feels like they have a voice.”

ekuNNN posted:

quote:

(Six weeks from now, Chris and Amir will decide that the FTB venture is no longer financially viable, and they will kick the boys out of the house. The boys will scatter across Los Angeles—some will head back home—and Baron will post a TikTok in which he enjoins his followers to “engage” with his posts because he’s trying to afford his own apartment.)

Professor Shark posted:

It was really funny seeing the John Wayne “I own 25 AR15’s, 10 years of dehydrated beans, and a water filtration system and don’t need “Society”” Preppers lasting three weeks before they were marching and saying masks were Communism and closing Denny’s was the first step towards Nazi Germany or something lol

ekuNNN posted:

quote:

“I don’t talk about politics at all,” Brandon says. “It’s like there’s always another opinion. It’s always better to be neutral. I feel like everybody avoids politics on social media. Besides that, though, everyone feels like they have a voice.”