Breath of fresh air ty. I'm a gay millennial and have had similar thoughts comparing gay culture with the looksmaxxing discourse of my younger male straight gen Z friends. The way they talk about other men is so different from how older generations of men talk about each other. In some sense it seems good that these younger men can openly appreciate the beauty of other men without it feeling like a hit to their masculinity, but on the other hand I feel bad for those who are especially beholden by the discourse because its such a reductive way of thinking about beauty. Physical beauty is obviously important, but there is also something to be said for personality and integrity, and all other virtues that can transform how we perceive another person. I think most people can relate to the experience of first perceiving someone as not so attractive based on their physical appearance but then having the initial impression transform into attraction after getting to know their great personality. It seems like the younger generations have become cynical about that.
you were finally onto an interesting post with your observations about satanism and elites and then you bailed on it without establishing any foundation.
My first thought on the conspiracy was that I wasn’t committed to believing that the elites are demon worshippers, but I wouldn’t put it past them. But the more I think of it, it almost feels like people are using demons as a scapegoat to avoid confronting the evils humans can do on their own. Blaming the elites’ misdeeds on demonic possession/manipulation seems to take away a certain amount of moral responsibility for their choices that I’m not sure I’m okay with.
Still, I understand the appeal of demons as a concept. It doesn’t feel good to know what humans are capable of, so this externalization probably has some benefits at least from a mental health perspective.
Jeez guys, save up for a trip to Korea, don't do your own eye surgery, that's the worst thing I've ever read on the default blog and that is saying a lot
I’m a straight woman utterly confounded by the “PSL scale.” Justin Bieber is barely above normie? This has made me really interested in men’s perceptions of other men’s attractiveness
“heterosexual men reproducing the non-reproductive logic of a culture that was never oriented toward reproduction”
Most heterosexual activity today is not oriented towards reproduction. I don’t see this changing for decades:
The slow divorce of sex from reproduction (which as you point out includes the sexual revolution) stems in my view from a fertility cult that was foreign and inappropriate for the United States in the first place.
Central to every religion is a fertility cult. The Protestant religion, with its deeply-seated monogamy, was developed in Northern Europe, in a climate very different from that of most of North America. Most minority religions in the United States, such as Catholicism, Judaism, etc. are also similarly monogamous.
The inability of such a system to provide a satisfying personal and family life for the majority of participants inevitably leads to secularization and a decline in public morals. Neither the religious right, with its adherence to a system inappropriate for local conditions, nor secularists, who have no good system to replace the fertility cult whose limitations they point out, have the ability to form a stable social compact. The result will inevitably be further social decay and political violence.
Ultimately, after the dust settles (that is, several decades of either civil war, foreign invasion, or both), only a theocratic government that includes polygamy as part of its fertility cult can create a stable long-term social compact. The Constitution will be preserved; but religious life will be totalitarian in nature.
It may seem far-fetched. However, humans learn quickly in traumatic and painful circumstances. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti still shock the body politic; soon, they will seem normal, and then, the episode will be seen as a peaceful time before the troubles really began.
After enough cities burn (burn like Dresden or Tokyo, not like the LA riots), more Americans will be sufficiently disillusioned with their cherished political views to embrace what seem like unthinkable alternatives today.
"But I don’t think straight men are borrowing from gay men. I think gay culture got there first because it was already operating on different rules from the mostly reproductively-oriented heterosexual world. Centuries underground, no default script for family formation, no reproductive telos baked into the relationship structure, no real institutional scaffolding until very recently. Gay men — particularly gay men in the United States — were the first men who had to operate as pure individuals on the sexual market, evaluated by other men, optimizing for other men’s standards. The body dysmorphia, the chemical escalation, the frictionless ranking systems: these are what happen when male sexuality encounters itself with no mediating structure."
Bingo! And well stated, thorough, concise, accurate.
There was a Swedish documentary circa 2011, Hjernevask (Brainwash) which was pretty eye opening about everything sex-stereotype oriented. He took the long road to say a lot of the same things. That was where I learned that like, the avg body count for straight men is like 20, straight women 10-15 or something... and gay dudes, in the 100s, and lesbians, in the SINGLE digits. Because outside of the change in reproductive possibilities, all the same dynamics apply (or don't apply) landing on typical in-grown gendered instincts for mating going awry, and reaching odd Schelling points.
"I’m a strong believer that PUA culture is downstream of the Sexual Revolution"
Absolutely. I was a total simp playing the boomer book of dating in my 90s youth: hopeless romantic, goody two shoes, straight and narrow, prove to women I'm safe and a gentleman, and that's what every woman wants! *ahem* NOT, as they used to say. And then I fell into a PUA rabbit hole and after a couple years of trying it out and reading theory, I realized, nope, this whole thing is just the natural reaction to realizing that ideological feminism changed the dating landscape, and these guys are reverse engineering and optimizing for what actually works in the world the Progressives created. Plain and simple Machiavellianism.
“the balls to finally just call someone a big fat retard, no throat-clearing required.”
Millennials were the first generation of Americans to live their entire lives in a society where women were explicitly favored over men. Throughout history, these “opposite day” social conditions are typical of a society about to undergo dynastic change, being either overthrown by internal proletariat (revolution) or external proletariat (foreign invasion), or some combination of both.
Calling someone a “gay Mexican manlet neo-Nazi” takes no courage whatever since it’s just parroting the party line - I.e. it serves the interest of discourse policers, who are usually white females. Calling someone a “fat gay stupid nigger” is far more offensive even though it’s linguistically similar.
If you don’t believe me, try slinging either set of insults on, say, TikTok, and see which gets you strikes on your account. I even got a strike over there for this very tame observation (At this rate I will probably stop using the English language over there in a few years):
“The woman in the video isn’t even human-sized. That kind of obesity shouldn’t be normalized.”
Ridiculous! America needs overlords who can’t speak English, like England after 1066. Civil liberty goes hand in hand with half-breed aristocrats who will simply rape and kill your entire town if you annoy them (which is easy since, you know, they don’t speak English). Not like ICE in Minneapolis; more like leveling the town and turning the survivors into serfs who till your new estate (In Norman England this was called “the harrying of the North” and “the burning of Southwark”). I digress…
I have one other comment about looksmaxxing which I will post momentarily…
“32 people who reportedly died in ICE custody in 2025”
The number is undoubtedly higher. The Phoenix Program of South Vietnam and the White Terror of so many Cold War satellites has finally come home to roost.
“they understand political conflict as spectacle, a movie they can star in without consequences.”
This is the default attitude across most Americans, including those operating America’s foreign policy.
“South Asian men: skin bleaching, colored contacts,”
I don’t think this is accurate. Most South Asians are far too dark for this to have any effect. From what I’ve read, some Indian men LARP as blax to appear more attractive. Also helped with college admissions. Win-win.
I think that's partially right -- but it's more of an ingrained thing than Rosenfield's piece suggests. Like, it's in the fabric of our nation kind of ingrained. I think Good had an awareness of what protest actually was. IDK if my distinction makes sense. Agree it's higher, btw. I've seen horrific shit with my own eyes.
I didn’t read the Rosenfield piece and have been trying to avoid paying too much attention to Minneapolis since it’s truly insignificant compared to what lies ahead. I believe you, though.
To be generous to the people talking about "dark woke" you could say that one of the key features of the woke movement was the way it sort of dialed up a lot of left wing beliefs and attitudes and you can see some of that with the anti ICE crowd. It's a pretty loose association though.
As for the rich occultists, I think you're being too quick to assume what you think is reasonable about a crowd that we are very much not a part of.
Epstein put a lot of time and money into the occult theming of his island, and you see a very similar interest from other child-interested elites like Podesta. I dont know if that means these people think old gods like Baal exist in a literal sense but they seem to identify with these things in a serious way. Even if its not like literalist belief I dont think its pure pagaentry either.
Could be an anti-Christian thing (or perhaps anti-Jewish in Epstein's case, Jews don't worship Baal). You know what you're doing is against society so you identify with historical villains. Sort of like heavy metal Satanism but with actual victims.
No I dont think so, I'll admit I'm going purely on the details from the Podesta emails which did not prove anything directly illegal with him but which were shady to the point where I dont think its overly conspiratorial to take it as indicative of pedophilia.
I brought him up in relation to Epatein because he has such a wide range of art in his collection that is focused on a sado sexual relationship with children. To the point where it becomes unreasonable to say that he does not personally identify with these things.
Yeah I would like to see some reasoning behind your glib assertion that there is no occultism, satanism, Frankism, etc. I was waiting for the “because…” and then somehow started reading about looks instead? Unintentionally par for contemporary American political
discourse.
I mean the alternative explanation to the above is the Epstein crowd was Just Being Jewish.
A number of things. On "Dark Woke" as just a more militant version of wokeness willing to trash-talk MAGA, this is exemplified by the "I've Had It" podcast which has become extremely influential (you've probably seen it, there's a short description in the excellent Commentary Magazine who would probably appreciate your byline in the future https://www.commentary.org/articles/christine-rosen/middle-aged-women-political-influencers). I see it as downstream of the progressives no longer having platform and cancellation soft power and hence adopting MAGA tactics such as spreading known conspiracy theories (it could be argued RussiaGate was a conspiracy theory, except it was done from the position of institutional authority at intelligence agencies and NYTimes). TYT Cenk now claiming to believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Of course Epstein is related to this. Regards to Epstein as Satanic-in the UK Mandelson is the most well-known person who has been taken down by this, long known as "the Dark Lord." Postliberal/ally of integralist Deneen faction Maurice Glasman has basically used Mandelson-Epstein ties to underscore claim liberal globalism (embodied in Mandelson and New Labour) inherently leads to perversion and sin due to worship of money and vice. I'm not a postliberal-there is some truth to the idea materialism and the Enlightenment if taken seriously (I am a materialist) results in mass surveillance and all the possibilities foretold by De Sade and Nietzsche, but as for Satanism as a kitsch yeah I see Satanism stuff in the US context at downscale malls and the like among the lower middle and working class. I do believe there is a faction of Christian America which is larger than we'd like to or would understand to exist which legitimately doesn't understand the provocative and transgressive at all and that was on full display with people reacting to Podesta's artwork during PizzaGate and then the Balenciaga thing in 2022. Of course in Epstein's case he actually was doing exploitative things with underage women. Clavicular really has almost codified the IRL practice of "monster of the week" in terms of individual influencers hoisted up as the main bogeyman by the prestige media, I'm actually pretty surprised he's enough to fire up the old Dimes Square-adjacent/Elena Velez as once more a source of mainstream Page Six publicity. I do wonder how much of looksmaxxing is downstream of Ozempic more than any other factor by leaps and bounds, the proteinification trend (my flatmates heavily into this stuff) is in party due to the ideological/MAGA trend but also redefining fitness post-GLP-1s, I've seen the rise of this as much more significant and more major in publicity than the quiet walk-back of obesity worship
Dugin is spreading the Satanism meme online re Epstein but it's ultimately a negative concept, isn't it? "You get the shadow you deserve," of course in the US it would be the lower and lower-middle classes who outright turn to it in-itself as an inversion of megachurch culture. Even now remaining malls filled with tchotchkes
(ultimately I think the main rise in conspiracy theories in America in the past 10 years — it's not the internet, that's been there for longer — can be attributed to a great extent* to the secularisation of people whose ancestors would have believed in "magical thinking" except they are irreligious so this manifests as equally otherworldly conspiracy theories
*inflation has turbocharged this, inflation always coincides with conspiracy theories (1930s Nazism, 1970s Parallax View/Network/CIA investigations deep politics moment) which makes total sense as it creates psychological unmooring from value, a belief the world is spinning out of control, and easy pathway to the oldest anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about banks and so on
Born into the wrong race? Born in the wrong body? How about those of us who think we just might have been born - "on the wrong planet?" Or am I just 1 of 1? : /
Thinking of Martina while I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martina_Big
Breath of fresh air ty. I'm a gay millennial and have had similar thoughts comparing gay culture with the looksmaxxing discourse of my younger male straight gen Z friends. The way they talk about other men is so different from how older generations of men talk about each other. In some sense it seems good that these younger men can openly appreciate the beauty of other men without it feeling like a hit to their masculinity, but on the other hand I feel bad for those who are especially beholden by the discourse because its such a reductive way of thinking about beauty. Physical beauty is obviously important, but there is also something to be said for personality and integrity, and all other virtues that can transform how we perceive another person. I think most people can relate to the experience of first perceiving someone as not so attractive based on their physical appearance but then having the initial impression transform into attraction after getting to know their great personality. It seems like the younger generations have become cynical about that.
These guys want to live in the Omegaverse.
you were finally onto an interesting post with your observations about satanism and elites and then you bailed on it without establishing any foundation.
It’s the format, these are basically lists of shower thoughts then I turn the ones that work into articles
My first thought on the conspiracy was that I wasn’t committed to believing that the elites are demon worshippers, but I wouldn’t put it past them. But the more I think of it, it almost feels like people are using demons as a scapegoat to avoid confronting the evils humans can do on their own. Blaming the elites’ misdeeds on demonic possession/manipulation seems to take away a certain amount of moral responsibility for their choices that I’m not sure I’m okay with.
Still, I understand the appeal of demons as a concept. It doesn’t feel good to know what humans are capable of, so this externalization probably has some benefits at least from a mental health perspective.
Jeez guys, save up for a trip to Korea, don't do your own eye surgery, that's the worst thing I've ever read on the default blog and that is saying a lot
I’m a straight woman utterly confounded by the “PSL scale.” Justin Bieber is barely above normie? This has made me really interested in men’s perceptions of other men’s attractiveness
“heterosexual men reproducing the non-reproductive logic of a culture that was never oriented toward reproduction”
Most heterosexual activity today is not oriented towards reproduction. I don’t see this changing for decades:
The slow divorce of sex from reproduction (which as you point out includes the sexual revolution) stems in my view from a fertility cult that was foreign and inappropriate for the United States in the first place.
Central to every religion is a fertility cult. The Protestant religion, with its deeply-seated monogamy, was developed in Northern Europe, in a climate very different from that of most of North America. Most minority religions in the United States, such as Catholicism, Judaism, etc. are also similarly monogamous.
The inability of such a system to provide a satisfying personal and family life for the majority of participants inevitably leads to secularization and a decline in public morals. Neither the religious right, with its adherence to a system inappropriate for local conditions, nor secularists, who have no good system to replace the fertility cult whose limitations they point out, have the ability to form a stable social compact. The result will inevitably be further social decay and political violence.
Ultimately, after the dust settles (that is, several decades of either civil war, foreign invasion, or both), only a theocratic government that includes polygamy as part of its fertility cult can create a stable long-term social compact. The Constitution will be preserved; but religious life will be totalitarian in nature.
It may seem far-fetched. However, humans learn quickly in traumatic and painful circumstances. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti still shock the body politic; soon, they will seem normal, and then, the episode will be seen as a peaceful time before the troubles really began.
After enough cities burn (burn like Dresden or Tokyo, not like the LA riots), more Americans will be sufficiently disillusioned with their cherished political views to embrace what seem like unthinkable alternatives today.
Ok I’m done commenting on the article
"But I don’t think straight men are borrowing from gay men. I think gay culture got there first because it was already operating on different rules from the mostly reproductively-oriented heterosexual world. Centuries underground, no default script for family formation, no reproductive telos baked into the relationship structure, no real institutional scaffolding until very recently. Gay men — particularly gay men in the United States — were the first men who had to operate as pure individuals on the sexual market, evaluated by other men, optimizing for other men’s standards. The body dysmorphia, the chemical escalation, the frictionless ranking systems: these are what happen when male sexuality encounters itself with no mediating structure."
Bingo! And well stated, thorough, concise, accurate.
There was a Swedish documentary circa 2011, Hjernevask (Brainwash) which was pretty eye opening about everything sex-stereotype oriented. He took the long road to say a lot of the same things. That was where I learned that like, the avg body count for straight men is like 20, straight women 10-15 or something... and gay dudes, in the 100s, and lesbians, in the SINGLE digits. Because outside of the change in reproductive possibilities, all the same dynamics apply (or don't apply) landing on typical in-grown gendered instincts for mating going awry, and reaching odd Schelling points.
"I’m a strong believer that PUA culture is downstream of the Sexual Revolution"
Absolutely. I was a total simp playing the boomer book of dating in my 90s youth: hopeless romantic, goody two shoes, straight and narrow, prove to women I'm safe and a gentleman, and that's what every woman wants! *ahem* NOT, as they used to say. And then I fell into a PUA rabbit hole and after a couple years of trying it out and reading theory, I realized, nope, this whole thing is just the natural reaction to realizing that ideological feminism changed the dating landscape, and these guys are reverse engineering and optimizing for what actually works in the world the Progressives created. Plain and simple Machiavellianism.
“the balls to finally just call someone a big fat retard, no throat-clearing required.”
Millennials were the first generation of Americans to live their entire lives in a society where women were explicitly favored over men. Throughout history, these “opposite day” social conditions are typical of a society about to undergo dynastic change, being either overthrown by internal proletariat (revolution) or external proletariat (foreign invasion), or some combination of both.
Calling someone a “gay Mexican manlet neo-Nazi” takes no courage whatever since it’s just parroting the party line - I.e. it serves the interest of discourse policers, who are usually white females. Calling someone a “fat gay stupid nigger” is far more offensive even though it’s linguistically similar.
If you don’t believe me, try slinging either set of insults on, say, TikTok, and see which gets you strikes on your account. I even got a strike over there for this very tame observation (At this rate I will probably stop using the English language over there in a few years):
“The woman in the video isn’t even human-sized. That kind of obesity shouldn’t be normalized.”
Ridiculous! America needs overlords who can’t speak English, like England after 1066. Civil liberty goes hand in hand with half-breed aristocrats who will simply rape and kill your entire town if you annoy them (which is easy since, you know, they don’t speak English). Not like ICE in Minneapolis; more like leveling the town and turning the survivors into serfs who till your new estate (In Norman England this was called “the harrying of the North” and “the burning of Southwark”). I digress…
I have one other comment about looksmaxxing which I will post momentarily…
“32 people who reportedly died in ICE custody in 2025”
The number is undoubtedly higher. The Phoenix Program of South Vietnam and the White Terror of so many Cold War satellites has finally come home to roost.
“they understand political conflict as spectacle, a movie they can star in without consequences.”
This is the default attitude across most Americans, including those operating America’s foreign policy.
“South Asian men: skin bleaching, colored contacts,”
I don’t think this is accurate. Most South Asians are far too dark for this to have any effect. From what I’ve read, some Indian men LARP as blax to appear more attractive. Also helped with college admissions. Win-win.
I think that's partially right -- but it's more of an ingrained thing than Rosenfield's piece suggests. Like, it's in the fabric of our nation kind of ingrained. I think Good had an awareness of what protest actually was. IDK if my distinction makes sense. Agree it's higher, btw. I've seen horrific shit with my own eyes.
I didn’t read the Rosenfield piece and have been trying to avoid paying too much attention to Minneapolis since it’s truly insignificant compared to what lies ahead. I believe you, though.
Argh I’m not done writing my comment I’ll post the rest in a new comment. I hit “send” too quickly and then kept re-editing
Ok, waiting with baited breath..
> bated
Mnemonic: breath abates when you hold it. Baited breath means you ate sushi
See? That, you’ll remember
I was baited... into responding!!!
😂
Normies really are like 20 years behind it's crazy
me?
not you, i meant actual normies
To be generous to the people talking about "dark woke" you could say that one of the key features of the woke movement was the way it sort of dialed up a lot of left wing beliefs and attitudes and you can see some of that with the anti ICE crowd. It's a pretty loose association though.
As for the rich occultists, I think you're being too quick to assume what you think is reasonable about a crowd that we are very much not a part of.
Epstein put a lot of time and money into the occult theming of his island, and you see a very similar interest from other child-interested elites like Podesta. I dont know if that means these people think old gods like Baal exist in a literal sense but they seem to identify with these things in a serious way. Even if its not like literalist belief I dont think its pure pagaentry either.
Could be an anti-Christian thing (or perhaps anti-Jewish in Epstein's case, Jews don't worship Baal). You know what you're doing is against society so you identify with historical villains. Sort of like heavy metal Satanism but with actual victims.
They ever prove Podesta did anything wrong?
No I dont think so, I'll admit I'm going purely on the details from the Podesta emails which did not prove anything directly illegal with him but which were shady to the point where I dont think its overly conspiratorial to take it as indicative of pedophilia.
I brought him up in relation to Epatein because he has such a wide range of art in his collection that is focused on a sado sexual relationship with children. To the point where it becomes unreasonable to say that he does not personally identify with these things.
I’m very skeptical, though friend of the Stack Conrad Flynn has sent me some resources so we will see where I land after more research
Yeah I would like to see some reasoning behind your glib assertion that there is no occultism, satanism, Frankism, etc. I was waiting for the “because…” and then somehow started reading about looks instead? Unintentionally par for contemporary American political
discourse.
I mean the alternative explanation to the above is the Epstein crowd was Just Being Jewish.
I use the digest format to collect thoughts then turn the ones with legs into essays
A number of things. On "Dark Woke" as just a more militant version of wokeness willing to trash-talk MAGA, this is exemplified by the "I've Had It" podcast which has become extremely influential (you've probably seen it, there's a short description in the excellent Commentary Magazine who would probably appreciate your byline in the future https://www.commentary.org/articles/christine-rosen/middle-aged-women-political-influencers). I see it as downstream of the progressives no longer having platform and cancellation soft power and hence adopting MAGA tactics such as spreading known conspiracy theories (it could be argued RussiaGate was a conspiracy theory, except it was done from the position of institutional authority at intelligence agencies and NYTimes). TYT Cenk now claiming to believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Of course Epstein is related to this. Regards to Epstein as Satanic-in the UK Mandelson is the most well-known person who has been taken down by this, long known as "the Dark Lord." Postliberal/ally of integralist Deneen faction Maurice Glasman has basically used Mandelson-Epstein ties to underscore claim liberal globalism (embodied in Mandelson and New Labour) inherently leads to perversion and sin due to worship of money and vice. I'm not a postliberal-there is some truth to the idea materialism and the Enlightenment if taken seriously (I am a materialist) results in mass surveillance and all the possibilities foretold by De Sade and Nietzsche, but as for Satanism as a kitsch yeah I see Satanism stuff in the US context at downscale malls and the like among the lower middle and working class. I do believe there is a faction of Christian America which is larger than we'd like to or would understand to exist which legitimately doesn't understand the provocative and transgressive at all and that was on full display with people reacting to Podesta's artwork during PizzaGate and then the Balenciaga thing in 2022. Of course in Epstein's case he actually was doing exploitative things with underage women. Clavicular really has almost codified the IRL practice of "monster of the week" in terms of individual influencers hoisted up as the main bogeyman by the prestige media, I'm actually pretty surprised he's enough to fire up the old Dimes Square-adjacent/Elena Velez as once more a source of mainstream Page Six publicity. I do wonder how much of looksmaxxing is downstream of Ozempic more than any other factor by leaps and bounds, the proteinification trend (my flatmates heavily into this stuff) is in party due to the ideological/MAGA trend but also redefining fitness post-GLP-1s, I've seen the rise of this as much more significant and more major in publicity than the quiet walk-back of obesity worship
Dugin is spreading the Satanism meme online re Epstein but it's ultimately a negative concept, isn't it? "You get the shadow you deserve," of course in the US it would be the lower and lower-middle classes who outright turn to it in-itself as an inversion of megachurch culture. Even now remaining malls filled with tchotchkes
(ultimately I think the main rise in conspiracy theories in America in the past 10 years — it's not the internet, that's been there for longer — can be attributed to a great extent* to the secularisation of people whose ancestors would have believed in "magical thinking" except they are irreligious so this manifests as equally otherworldly conspiracy theories
*inflation has turbocharged this, inflation always coincides with conspiracy theories (1930s Nazism, 1970s Parallax View/Network/CIA investigations deep politics moment) which makes total sense as it creates psychological unmooring from value, a belief the world is spinning out of control, and easy pathway to the oldest anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about banks and so on
Born into the wrong race? Born in the wrong body? How about those of us who think we just might have been born - "on the wrong planet?" Or am I just 1 of 1? : /
autism
Star seeds! Look em up
I stopped reading at razorblade, and still, JFC.
It gets intense!