Ad on tv, an ethnically fresh mix of women “I’m on the pill!”
But twist the 4th is A GUY
“It’s not birth control”, they then announce
It’s Truvada for PrEP.
(prophylactic anti-HIV, to kill transmission opportunities before they set in)
after that the ad continues for a while explaining the concept and acknowledging side effects, and the women do make a rotation but after the twist they aren’t clear leads
Anonymous asked: u think that bc you have a specific narrow male persp. every guy of note whose been #M2'd has been: awkward/old/fat/ugly, or otherwise a guy who could believably score higher caliber women by dint of natural attractiveness. as economic precariousness increases, its at base a revolt against having to fuck for economic opportunity
Well yeah I’ve got a heterosexual male perspective, so obvs. I’m dealing with the shit it throws up from that angle
Like of the common “why aren’t I, a dork, getting the poontang I’m entitled to”, a lot of the “manosphere”, “red pill”, “ladder theory” responses were like “flighty women only go for high status”
And as reductive and insulting as that was it at least suggested a solution, like “become high status” – work to earn a lofty position, by leveraging your true awesomeness, and hold it, and women will authentically find it appealing; it was the slow life trajectory alternative to flash in a pan pretty boys
And it was believable because high status men - celebrities, the rich - did seem to reliably have appealing mates, more than you’d expect without
But if you looked at the manosphere/redpill/etc. praxis, a lot of it - “game”, “kino”, - was fundamentally about developing the habitus of deciding what was happening by yourself and then using charisma and social power to put over an understanding of it as proper after the fact, working often enough if you tried it on every girl you meet, letting them bear externalities
(and I kind of experienced this direct that month I took Lexapro and walked around totally disinhibited grabbing ass in bars and getting slapped a few times but also laid a lot more than I’d expect)
And from the sound of the MeToo stuff this is a lot of how the “celebrity” bonus actually worked for high status nebbishy men, with a lot of “social power” and a regular rotation of pretty young women as the denominator
And for a while I’d been like “well I’m not a young stud OR a pushy manipulator, but I can work towards my dream of abundant sex with perky supplicants by being deservedly respected” and seeing how much of (3) was really (2) in disguise is a disillusioning letdown, man
that’s the first one of these lower-upper-class “gift a car (lease) for Christmas” ads I’ve seen to specifically figure a man as the grateful recipient
and the theme is how he was a car guy growing up and eagerly woke up on Christmas morning to peek into the alley to see if his parents got him his dream car only to be repeatedly disappointed
and now he’s a dutiful grown-up househusband who’s too jaded to even look by now but this is the year his lifelong dream comes true
the commercial dutifully ignores his wife (or husband! or husband!)’s role in all this as taking the place of his parents ruling over him and dispensing treats at whim
was already thinking about how rap was displacing rock as the base of pop
when I took an Uber out for the night and the witchy woman driver had on a mainstream-rowdy rap station on
I could tell from the way the station promo was these three figures, the wild man/the calm man/the woman bickering
but then in a live bit that went uncomfortably long the wild man apologized to the woman about something that went down on instagram live and said it was just how he was, this is all he has and when someone goes for that he puts up the wall and he should do better to be calm and listen in the future and he puts up the wall but he’s sorry and she accepted it on-air so that’s canon
—
in the Uber on the way back was country
and I first heard Charlie Fairey/The Lacs’ “Backroads Life”
And I was like how wonderful, “hick-hop” country music that melds musical themes and narrative themes and the actual course of backwoods America into this tale of interracial bonding over gangsta poaching
but then I heard Aaron Lewis’ “Grandaddy’s Gun”, and I was like what this sounds like a 2006 parody of ‘Merican signifiers and wtf
not least cause it’s weirdly passive/aggressive and the protagonist is trying to bare his teeth like well I come from people who used guns
then was Moonshine Bandits’ “Moonshine on Me” which was like country crossed with Papa Roach again?
for a second I parsed this Facebook link as the possibility that the Senate Minority Leader was offering college football reform as a bid for southern and midwest non-elite whites in the midterm election
and for a half second I laughed and then remembered the President of the United States made this counteroffer over Twitter today:
