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Anthropology ASMR Free-For-All

Did You Feel A Tingle?

May 5, 2025 40 Comments

For enthusiasts of ASMR videos:

I’m not really into AMSR, but these gorgeous gals make it enjoyable.

If this 𝕩 thing doesn’t work out for me, maybe I’ll jump on this train. pic.twitter.com/ecuAL9wfqF

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) May 5, 2025

Previously: Dear, sweet Chloe wants you to relax.

No refunds. Credit note only.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology The Thrill of Décor

Significant, You Say

May 3, 2025 76 Comments

A man named Silvia, a self-described “multi-talented and eclectic trans artist,” struggles with convention:

At which point, readers may wonder whether the struggle is with something more fundamental – say, adulthood, of which the potential for lifelong commitment – something serious – something much like marriage – is generally considered a feature.

Silvia, we’re told, by Silvia, is “trying her hand in everything from film and video production to interior decoration.” As one might imagine, intersections abound, along with feats of the aesthetic:

Do note the eclecticism, the “air and movement.”

Update, via the comments:

Mr Muldoon notes Sylvia’s dissatisfaction with non-married coupling terms, and offers, among others, main squeeze, easy/steady rider, and paramour.

If something less colourful seems in order, might I suggest my Temporary, my Conditional. My For Now.

Oh, and sH2 adds,

His bio reads “chic cult underground art girlfag.” How serious do we think he’s capable of being?

Answers on a postcard, please.

And so, we have a grown man who dismisses marriage as beneath him, as something “for the conditioned masses,” while bemoaning the inadequacy of common terms for his preferred, supposedly more daring, alternative. As if the connotations of “girlfriend / boyfriend” – connotations of adolescence and immaturity – were somehow random or unjustly imposed.

Says Silvia,

I don’t like the idea of marriage at all.

It’s not made clear which aspects of marriage so offend our enormously radical interior decorator. But if it’s the lifelong monogamous commitment thing, with all of the advantages and obligations that typically go with it – the bourgeois grown-upness, as it were – then I can’t help wondering on what basis he would object to connotations of immaturity and unseriousness.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All

Concurring

April 22, 2025 150 Comments

And in crime-news news:

There’s no way @7NewsAustralia thought they could post this with the comments off and not have anyone say something.

Is this clip farming? pic.twitter.com/ADp8nx9jfV

— What’s News!? (@Whats_Newsss) April 21, 2025

I have to say, I didn’t see that coming. 

Via Rod Dreher.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Pronouns Or Else

How To Invalidate Your Own Vocation

April 20, 2025 71 Comments

Via Muldoon in the comments – and the pages of Psychology Today – the evaporating standards of “affirmative psychotherapy”:

Trans people don’t suffer for being trans – they suffer from how the world treats them…

Mental Health Professionals Can Help…

Validate Their Experiences – Your clients are not exaggerating. Listen without pathologising. Validate without hesitation.

Affirm in Every Interaction – Use the correct name and pronouns like it’s second nature. Audit your forms, website, and policies to make sure they reflect that commitment.

Sharp-eyed readers may have registered the seeming absence of curiosity, of enquiry – say, regarding very common causes of the phenomenon in question. Readers may also wish to ponder the inevitable tensions between affirmation and investigation – and to place bets on which will be dispensed with in favour of the other. In this Yes, You Are Napoleon school of psychotherapy, where the unwell must always be told whatever they want to hear. Possibly before being steered towards irreversible mutilation and lifelong pain.

That gender-affirming care.

Readers may also wish to ponder how a similarly affirming approach might fare with other mental health issues – such as anorexia, with alarmingly cadaverous young women being told, “Yes, dear, you are every bit as fat as you imagine and should definitely continue starving yourself.”

A consequence of all this affirmation and declared solidarity is a hasty jumping to conclusions. A begging of questions. For instance:

Trans people don’t suffer for being trans – they suffer from how the world treats them…

The author of the above, Tess Kilwein – PhD, pronouns “she/they” – would have us believe, and would have her patients believe, that the most pressing and fundamental causes of woe are “bias,” “microaggressions,” and “anti-trans bills” – among which, laws that restrict women’s changing rooms and other intimate spaces to use by actual women, rather than delusional and/or predatory men.

And yet, a person with sexual dysmorphia – someone vehemently alienated from the physical reality of their sex – would presumably still feel that way even if stranded on a desert island. Just as they do now, when alone – say, in the shower or when making tiresome TikTok videos. Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s causing the problem.

This willingness to pretend – and to then applaud oneself as righteous and heroic – is, I’d suggest, a less than ideal tendency for a mental health professional. Someone to whom a person’s wellbeing, or hope of wellbeing, has been entrusted. Likewise, the rush to externalise all causes of misery. While social interaction – knowing that other people are likely to perceive you as you actually are, not as whatever it is you wish you were – may amplify the existing dissonance, such interaction doesn’t cause it. It isn’t the root of the problem.

That’s an, as they say, you thing.

In this supposedly therapeutic context, the words affirmation and validation translate as a willingness to lie. A willingness to indulge obvious bollocks and play along. And so, one might wonder how Dr Kilwein might affirm and validate some of the chaps seen here. Or this merry bedlamite, who violates women’s toilets and pushes his phone camera under the doors of occupied stalls in order to livestream to his admirers, all those affirming fans, the protests of his latest victim.

But, says Dr Kilwein, we must “validate without hesitation.” Because this practised, habitual dishonesty is, she says, “justice” and “courage.” And therefore, a basis for in-group status. At which point, the nakedly partisan activism of such people – and the abandonment of anything approaching detachment and objectivity – even basic curiosity – appears jarringly at odds with any claims of professionalism.

We are, however, assured that Dr Kilwein is a proponent of “bold storytelling.” Which is just what a patient needs when their perceptions of reality are wildly unreliable.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Problematic Toilets

The Importance Of Plumbing

April 9, 2025 68 Comments

A tale of tax, utopia, and human faeces:

“All we ever wanted was to be a part of creating a more beautiful planet.”

The fragrant sentiments above, mouthed by Danish couple Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, concern their creation, in Sweden, of a “forest resort” named Stedsans, one met with much acclaim:

Stedsans, formed of 16 wooden cottages looking out on to nature, attracted praise from influencers and reviewers, who described it as “magical” and “enchanting luxury.”

Dish magazine hailed the project as “Seasonal, sustainable, organic, artisanal, waste-free, foraged.” While readers of EasyJet Traveller magazine were told that the resort is “A new way of living that’s as sustainable as it is delicious.”

For Ms Helbæk and Mr Hansen, the name of the resort, which is Danish for “sense of place,” reflects “which direction we need to go as a society.” The couple, who refer to themselves as “soul-driven entrepreneurs,” shared their vision:

We believe that creating a way of living that respects all forms of life is possible, and we think that connecting with our own inner nature and the natural world surrounding us is a key element in this process. Stedsans is our take on a model for a lifestyle more in sync with the natural rhythms. By visiting us, you support this work, and hopefully you get inspiration for ways to apply our ideas in your own daily life.

All terribly inspiring. Scenes of this idyll can be savoured here.

However,

A few months ago it was discovered that the couple had vanished, leaving multiple animals behind and 158 barrels of human waste,

The output of those sixteen charming cottages, one assumes. I’ll let any passing enthusiasts of arithmetic have fun with that one.

Staff said multiple animals – including ducks – had died as a result of being left outside through the night by the couple, and others were left abandoned after the owners vanished.

Ah yes. “A way of living that respects all forms of life.” Conjured into being by “soul-driven entrepreneurs.”

Local authorities described their actions as “environmental crime.” Daniel Helsing, head of building and environment for the local county, Hylte, told [Swedish newspaper] Dagens Nyheter: “Voilà. Over 150 barrels of human shit.”

According to an investigation by Dagens Nyheter and Politiken, Ms Helbæk and Mr Hansen had left Denmark owing “millions of kroner in debt to Danish tax authorities,” before moving to Sweden, where they accumulated further tax debt of six million SEK.

Sustainability, baby.

They have since started a new hotel business in Guatemala.

You may now resume your humdrum, unenlightened, non-artisanal lives.

Via Samizdata.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.