Stranger Things was really not an accurate depiction of the 1980s in that of the adult characters who took the teenaged protagonists and their world seriously such a high proportion would try to help them and not just fuck them
it actually goes beyond elon musk unbanning the guy who posted CSAM not only are blue checks saying that it’s the right thing to do because the guy is definitely “fighting against pedophilia” by circulating CSAM on social media, but they’re also giving each other tips on how to post more CSAM and bypass moderation!
ALT
A weird thing of this whole episode is 2010-web-worker-left-hangover types speaking like, from industry-side experience with user-generated content. Because it’s like
Yes, I think you are definitely on to something here in that QAnon circles are well-exposed to this “CSAM” stuff and in fact hold it central to their subculture not even to jack off to but as sort of a secret guild knowledge that is used to move their passions and justify their self-understanding as the guardians and reformers of social order. And that that is – even if distinct from your stereotypical playground-lurking perv – kind of weird and really does not recommend them.
But, when then you’re like “oh yes these specific images – which we all know but I won’t name – the exact kind of reason why you can’t let allow the enemy-tribe Musk disrupt our regime of control over the public sphere"…
Like, without getting into "equivalency” discourse you have to appreciate that with the strength of your attack you’ve undermined your own position there.
I have for a while said that a major characteristic of the next major cultural shifts will be a move away from post-70s concepts of protecting youth from adult sexuality (and sexual adults) and part of it is they’ve been so deeply incorporated into society that it has been adopted as a core part of the self-understanding of both sides of various fights that at least one is gonna have to make sense of losing
(Whereas last cycle it was something you could transcend divisions to unite around)
Always funny to see someone casting shade on “defending pedophiles” turn around and praise teachers’ unions.
I bet they still think the majority of institutional bureaucratic apparatus in America dedicated to protecting against punishment and advancing the interests of men who had sex with underage children is Catholic!
There are about 37,000 priests and 750,000 male public school teachers in America (and as Barstool reminds, don’t count the female ones out!)
So new post-#MeToo theory of the ‘90s is that as institutions from businesses to the Senate and Presidency of the United States “grappled with sexual harassment” and started reorienting against it and trying to sort practitioners out the NY and LA culture industries held out effectively, relying on tight internal relationships and captive legal and para-legal institutions (“privilege” meant “private law”).
Other norms too – I cannot emphasize enough how in the 90s fucking teenage groupies was accepted and celebrated as definitional of rock stardom – this was where you first saw “new economy” companies generalizing “rockstar” to “elite and valued employee”
This differential sorting left the culture-shaping industries of the time consisting of, and thus the culture guided by, a cohort that was significantly higher in both desire for human exploitation and skill at human manipulation than the rest of society, over and above the dynamics you would normally expect pressing in that direction, and this is critical to understanding '90s culture in retrospect.
And for whoever’s hammering my inbox, no, when I was Hollywood I did work with a management company that had a line in kids/teens but really I didn’t see any dirty stuff
the “dirty, exploitative” gossip I heard was how aspiring stage moms would pay to go to “talent expos” in, like, Hawai’i, where agents would be paid to fly in and sleep with EACH OTHER and have a vacation and AT BEST some of these kids would get a chance to move to LA to try to make money for the agents
for all that there WERE hypersexual 14-year-olds with moms who vicariously enjoyed the attention
and the most earnest stage parents who would bend their morals - I remember an evangelical family who didn’t want their elementary-age angel in stuff that said mild curses, but when Scientologists solicited him for an internal campaign that paid, and I called up saying “you probably aren’t interested but it’s my job to ask?” they were like “welllllll”
The sexualization is probably hardest on girls 14-18 in part because of all the “protective” regulations on young actors, as the result of which they’re part of a set-aside-from-normal life system to accommodate, with all sorts of structures and dynamics and local elites that don’t really interact with anything outside of it, but at that point the parents aren’t a load-bearing part.
But to complicate, actresses that age are selected on being able to (sexily) appear younger, for characters of that age you just cast runty 18-year-olds with a lot less regulatory hassle.
Like not as if without regulation child stars wouldn’t be enmeshed in a parallel world full of scumbags, but point being the existing system was co-opted long ago and is in no way a relief from that.
Also note that this dynamic affects how we think of the maturity of teenagers: if you go off mass media depictions and picture an 18-year-old you’re probably thinking of a 22-26 year old (or older – Luke Perry famously developed a receding hairline while playing a high school heartthrob on the 90s teen nighttime soap Beverly Hills, 90210) and your image of “a fifteen-year-old” is really 18 or 19.
And for whoever’s hammering my inbox, no, when I was Hollywood I did work with a management company that had a line in kids/teens but really I didn’t see any dirty stuff
the “dirty, exploitative” gossip I heard was how aspiring stage moms would pay to go to “talent expos” in, like, Hawai’i, where agents would be paid to fly in and sleep with EACH OTHER and have a vacation and AT BEST some of these kids would get a chance to move to LA to try to make money for the agents
for all that there WERE hypersexual 14-year-olds with moms who vicariously enjoyed the attention
and the most earnest stage parents who would bend their morals - I remember an evangelical family who didn’t want their elementary-age angel in stuff that said mild curses, but when Scientologists solicited him for an internal campaign that paid, and I called up saying “you probably aren’t interested but it’s my job to ask?” they were like “welllllll”
The sexualization is probably hardest on girls 14-18 in part because of all the “protective” regulations on young actors, as the result of which they’re part of a set-aside-from-normal life system to accommodate, with all sorts of structures and dynamics and local elites that don’t really interact with anything outside of it, but at that point the parents aren’t a load-bearing part.
But to complicate, actresses that age are selected on being able to (sexily) appear younger, for characters of that age you just cast runty 18-year-olds with a lot less regulatory hassle.
Like not as if without regulation child stars wouldn’t be enmeshed in a parallel world full of scumbags, but point being the existing system was co-opted long ago and is in no way a relief from that.
ALT
