THOMPSON, blog.
THOMPSON, blog. - Marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

Slide THOMPSON, blog Play nicely.
  • thompson, blog
  • Reheated
  • X
  • Email
Browsing Category
Anthropology
Anthropology Free-For-All Travel

Deleted Scenes

October 22, 2024 106 Comments

Readers will, I think, recall this eye-widening altercation, shared in the Ephemera of October 11, between a laid-back driver and a rather wound-up cyclist. The latter being a candidate, as Mags put it, for the title of World’s Most Annoying Human Being:

Average cyclist interaction in Utah. pic.twitter.com/od5i6a9dSX

— Dr Manhattva (@Manhattva) October 9, 2024

If you haven’t seen the exchange above, I do recommend watching it, if only as an instructional tale. Or a test of your own self-restraint. In the video, the cyclist, the aptly named Mr Peacock, goes out of his way to generate conflict, repeatedly, then descends into some paranoid fantasy, in which he is somehow both the hero and the victim. His fabulist construals of what is happening are quite remarkable. 

As I said at the time,

Someone should write a paper.  Or beat him with a stick until the demon leaves.

The drama resulted in Mr Peacock, our high-maintenance cyclist, receiving a $160 fine for disorderly conduct, and the driver, Mr Kempton, initially being given a citation for passing too closely, which would have resulted in a $130 fine, based solely on the cyclist’s claims. This was subsequently dropped after reviewing the driver’s dashcam footage, which tells a different story.

Readers will, I suspect, note the almost comical difference in attitude. Mr Chill meets Mr Head-Full-Of-Crazy-Beans. In the video linked above, Mr Kempton, our low-key driver, says that he feels sorry for the cyclist being cited for disorderly conduct, despite his dishonesty and irrational behaviour, and even though at the time Mr Kempton felt in some danger. As one might when confronted by someone belligerent and neurotic, a raving fantasist.

Well, happily, Dicentra has brought us a second video, showing Mr Peacock’s exchange with the police officer. Again, it may offer both instruction and some amusement:

Y’all remember that Park City Karen cyclist that picked on that kid?

Enjoy this cinematic masterpiece. Nature is healing.pic.twitter.com/mj6SxeL4wA

— 𝕏ANDER GEOGRAPHIC | ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ɢʀᴀꜱꜱ🏕️ (@actionxander) October 21, 2024

“Oh, come on, man,” says Mr Peacock. “I was the victim here.”

And as before, almost every breath is a lie.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Pronouns Or Else

She’s Taken It Upon Herself

October 8, 2024 118 Comments

Not a lady, but a they-dy, obviously:

This is what happens when you hire woke. When they tell you who they are, believe them. pic.twitter.com/gk4EGnahps

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 5, 2023

As an employer, the person paying for this privilege, you’d never tire of that.

Previously and entirely unrelated:

Resumes including ‘they/them’ pronouns are more likely to be overlooked, new report finds.

Following which, I added:

If a job application includes imaginary pronouns and claims of themness, I think one could treat it as roughly equivalent to the words I like to shit on the carpet. Signalling, as it does, insufferable pretension or serious mental illness, or some unhappy combination of the two.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the male teacher who required three months of paid medical leave, supposedly due to emotional exhaustion and “severe burnout” on account of the small children in his class being reluctant to lie about the sex of the person teaching them. The honesty of small children – who used the words mister and he – had rendered him unfit for work.

And every employer would walk over hot coals for an employee who demands validation of his psychodrama from other people’s children. And who, when this bold stratagem fails, retires to his fainting couch for months on end.

Update, via the comments:

Behold, another model employee:

Male teacher who thinks he’s a woman says he had a conversation with a student about growing fake bre*sts and is upset that other students haven’t noticed his “additions” yet.

These are the people teaching your kids pic.twitter.com/i5ouCKHQ5S

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2024

Just so we’re clear. He’s a teacher who wants the children he teaches to notice – and comment on – his breasts. Or his approximation of breasts.

And surely that’s what every parent hopes for in a teacher.

Consider this an open thread.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Problematic Civility Psychodrama

Tall Tales

September 28, 2024 113 Comments

Lifted from the comments, a spot of anthropology. In which, a progressive woman seeks irritation, some cause for concern – and, with effort, finds it:

What’s amusing about these displays of woke piety is, I think, the eerie uniformity, the contrivance, the same weird psychology.

Ms Jeffery, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, is not only ostentatiously vexed by an unremarkable expression of politeness and goodwill – such that she feels a need to alert her 134,000 likeminded followers to the imminent Christian Nationalist uprising – but we’re also expected to believe that her account of events is entirely true. That her peculiar disapproval was shared, audibly, by many other passengers, which, frankly, seems unlikely.

Oh, and she’s also revealed in the subsequent thread to be something of a hypocrite, and a repeated user of the same, supposedly offensive term. The latest instance being a mere three days earlier. I’m sure you’re all shocked. Do take a moment to steady yourselves.

As Clam adds in the comments,

They’re so used to bullshitting they don’t even notice how bad they are at it.

It does suggest being accustomed to getting away with it. An expectation of mutual dishonesty, in which no-one pulls at the obvious threads, lest the favour be repaid and their own pronouncements receive an unwelcome scrutiny.

I suppose we could see the dubious story above – in which an innocuous expression of politeness is proof of “creeping Christian nationalism” – as a new spin on the woke eight-year-old phenomenon from 2016, in which countless progressives, including MSNBC “analysts” and editors of leftist magazines – and including Ms Jeffery herself – started tweeting, competitively, about their small children, all aged eight, supposedly saying Oddly Precocious And Terribly Progressive Things:

As I said at the time,

As an eight-year-old, I had strong opinions on bedtime, the evils of Brussels sprouts, and whether Spider-Man’s webbing could actually hold five tonnes; but I don’t recall being overly engaged by, or aware of, the politics of the day.

The phenomenon was seemingly contagious and quite bizarre, a collective fit of transparent fabrication, and soon became a mocking meme. But I think we’re seeing much the same psychology. The same telling of tall tales in order to assert status and to fuel some progressive psychodrama.

For grown adults, our supposed moral betters, this is… odd behaviour.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi quips,

It’s only odd for grown adults who aren’t woke progressives. For woke progressives it’s totally normal behaviour.

The urge to inflate grievances, and indeed to fabricate them, to balance umbrage and chest-puffing on the merest mote, is a progressive credential. Theirs is a hamster-wheel world of competitive indignation. But when you’re very publicly complaining about a flight attendant using the word blessed, as if this one word signalled some impending theocracy – and when you’re using your eight-year-old child as a political ventriloquist’s doll – then we’re in the land of make-believe. And possibly, anti-psychotic medication.

Ms Jeffery seems oblivious to how petty, presumptuous and mean-spirited she sounds. As if complaining about a commonplace word of kindness, a courtesy, and construing it as offensive and vaguely sinister, were what righteous, well-adjusted people do. As if it were something one should boast about, publicly, while waiting for applause.

Ms Jeffery goes on to complain about disrespect – as if she had been violated by someone wishing her well – and she depicts herself as being oppressed by some “dominant culture.” In which flight attendants say nice things to passengers.

Readers are invited to imagine what it must be like to publicly mouth some bizarrely implausible claim, for no discernibly pressing reason, knowing that the bullshit-like properties of your claim, and your own hypocrisy, can easily be discovered, in a matter of seconds, and to mouth it anyway. And then, when challenged, to double down on the implausible and bizarre. Again, it strikes me as an odd compulsion.

Ms Jeffery is now calling those mocking her “so, so, so dumb.”

Continue reading
Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Film Free-For-All History

Radical Farce

September 10, 2024 103 Comments

In the comments following this, on the proposed reality show Zoe Meets The Murgatroyds, Nikw211 replied,

I would dearly love to see (but only with a director such as Vanessa Engle).
Vanessa Engle’s three-part documentary series Lefties, aired in 2006, is still among my favourites. With a mix of archive footage and modern-day interviews, the leftism of the 70s and 80s is captured in all of its staggering glory. For those who haven’t seen the series, it is quite revealing – and often darkly funny.

Among the gems to savour are the endless factional disputes over exactly how capitalism should be toppled, feats of farcical mismanagement, an earnest exposition on “penile imperialism,” and interviews with former self-styled radicals, now sitting by private swimming pools, fretting about fridge ownership, or planning to work on llama farms.

For those with an interest in history, or indeed obliviousness, the three episodes are linked below.

Property is Theft.

The questionable pleasures of communal living. Specifically, a squatted street in Brixton. Contains scenes of waiting for utopia to materialise. And biohazard crockery. Oh, and the primal screaming commune at number 12.

Angry Wimmin.

In which, we’re told that lesbianism is an ideological duty, and that any woman can be a lesbian if she just tries hard enough, is mentored, and embraces the right kind of politics. A claim that has a somewhat self-serving quality, given the people making it.

A Lot of Balls.

The tale of a bewilderingly inept attempt in 1987 to launch a radical left wing tabloid, fuelled by the fever-dreams of Cambridge Marxists. The project was, unsurprisingly, a disaster, with its failure a direct result of ideological pretension. As illustrated by the scene in which, with the paper’s first edition about to go to press, most of the staff is out of the office on a deafness awareness day.

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

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology TV

No, Wait, Hear Me Out

September 8, 2024 100 Comments

Lifted from the comments, an idea for late-night viewing. First, some context is in order, but do let me know what you think.

It began with some rumblings on common progressive attitudes regarding crime and recidivism. Not least a practised unrealism and the failure to acknowledge just how different the mental landscape of the criminal demographic can be:

Those mouthing progressive positions on crime and social disorder very often have limited personal exposure to the creatures they so ostentatiously excuse. They are unlikely to have grown up among them or to have had them living next door. And so, with little formative experience of the type, false assumptions accumulate.

Among which, these.

It’s worth noting that the field of academic criminology, in which unrealism and excuses are pretty much the default, is notoriously left-tilted, here and overseas, with liberals and radical leftists outnumbering conservative colleagues by a ratio of around 30:1.

And it occurs to me that people in high-status professions, including legal professions, are more likely to have internalised high-status opinions, mouthed as a kind of social jewellery. According to which, the creatures treating us as mere prey – suckers from whom things can be taken – are the ones most deserving of our sympathy and indulgence.

Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still.

And so, we have competitively activist legal professionals, such as Mr Clive Stafford Smith, a man who believes that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous victims, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” And who regards anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation as plebeian and unsophisticated, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of justice as, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes.”

Such views passing entirely unchallenged in the inevitable, rather fawning Guardian profile. A profile in which Mr Stafford Smith chides and insults the victims of burglary, and the law-abiding generally, while offering excuses for those who break into strangers’ homes and steal their belongings, and who do this over and over again.

Mr Stafford Smith goes on to boast that he dislikes Conservative voters much more than criminals, and Ms Decca Aitkenhead, his Guardian interviewer, claps along approvingly. As if rhetorically minimising crime and its effects – say, on the elderly who find their homes violated and stripped of any valuables – were somehow a credential, proof of their own elevation. There’s a weirdly demented quality, one that’s not acknowledged as much as it should be.

At which point, I was reminded of the Guardian‘s own Zoe Williams, who scolds those who would rather not live next door to thieving, feral neighbours – say, the kinds of creatures who blast out loud music at 3am, and who hurl pets from upstairs windows:

According to Zoe, we should be “unstigmatising,” which is to say, non-judgmental. A result of which is that empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working-class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working-class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

Presumably Ms Williams’ own neighbours have little in common with, say, the delightful Stuart Murgatroyd, a father of twelve who has never worked and boasts an extensive criminal record, not least for robbing the elderly in graveyards, and whose attempt to challenge an Anti Social Behaviour Order was cut short at the very last minute due to him being arrested for assaulting the mother of his children, herself a convicted getaway driver, on the steps of the courthouse.

And I suspect our infinitely compassionate Ms Williams has yet to experience an all-night, full-on, eleven-hour rave being hosted next door, which would doubtless give her an opportunity to practise that non-judgmental piety.

As I can tell you’re curious, here’s Mr Murgatroyd with three of his twelve children. Everyone in the photo has been subject to Antisocial Behaviour Orders for repeatedly terrorising their neighbours.

Here’s Mr Murgatroyd exchanging views with the mother of his children:

So, with the above in mind, here’s the pitch.

Imagine, if you will, a reality TV show of perhaps a dozen episodes, in which, having been banished from their current council-house digs, the Murgatroyds move in next door to Zoe Williams, our Guardian columnist and champion of the downtrodden – albeit, until now, from a safe distance. Would we be treated to heart-warming chats across the garden fence, and exchanged cups of sugar, while the families’ respective children – Zoe’s are named Thurston and Harper – have jolly times together?

As a real-world test of Zoe’s scrupulously progressive worldview, one shared widely by her peers, it would, I think, make for instructive viewing.

And as svh suggests in the comments, “She deserves no less.”

Update, via the comments:

Picturing the scenario above – Zoe Meets The Murgatroyds – does rather reveal the absurdity of her pretence. But this pretence is far from uncommon among professed egalitarians. It’s a fantasy world, quite laughable in its dishonesty. Unless we’re to believe that Zoe, dear caring Zoe, would be thrilled to have violent morons moving in next door to her.

And yet she and her colleagues tell us that any effort to remove such ‘problem families’ or to inhibit their malevolence – so that their neighbours might have some semblance of a normal life – is “dehumanising,” a “demonization of the poor,” and is merely “trying to shunt people out of society for not being rich enough.” As if the victims of the Murgatroyd family, and any number of others just like them, weren’t people whose resources were also modest. As if the law-abiding targets of their sociopathy weren’t almost always working class.

Again,

A result of which is that empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working-class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working-class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

But such is Zoe’s concern for the common man.

And do note the conspicuous flattening of values, the equalising of victims and victimiser, the quite literal demoralisation.

Apparently, we shouldn’t register any meaningful difference between that nice Mrs Wilson, who doesn’t have much but is always friendly and obliging, and the laughing ferals who trashed her tiny flat, nicked her pension, and pissed all over her carpets and furniture.

And they call this being progressive.

Guardian columnists, and progressives in general, don’t seem particularly interested in the functional working class. Their greatest enthusiasm, and their most ambitious contrivance, seems reserved for the feckless and dysfunctional, the pathologically selfish, the incorrigibly criminal. That’s when we get displays of what amounts to a perverse art form.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that there’s little in-group status to be had in pretending to care about functional people of modest means. Instead, they pretend to care about more exotic demographics. And so, among progressives, we get pretentious compassion for unrepentant and habitual thieves, habitual burglars, habitually criminal drivers. Because needlessly endangering the lives of others is now a basis for excuses, sympathy, and applause.

Oh, and dog thieves and armed muggers. Obviously.

And once you register this pattern, this weird convolution, it does seem to crop up quite a lot.

Continue reading
Reading time: 6 min
Written by: David
Page 5 of 220« First...«4567»102030...Last »

Blog Preservation Fund




Subscribestar Amazon UK
Support this Blog
Donate via QR Code

RECENT POSTS

  • Friday Ephemera (767)
  • And Everything Shall Be Made, Badly, Out Of Wool And Bamboo
  • Aversions
  • Did You Feel A Tingle?
  • Significant, You Say

Recent Comments

  • Hugh on Did You Feel A Tingle? May 10, 01:48
  • scf on And Everything Shall Be Made, Badly, Out Of Wool And Bamboo May 10, 00:25
  • WTP on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 23:59
  • ccscientist on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 23:52
  • pst314 on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 20:37
  • pst314 on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 19:43
  • pst314 on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 19:38
  • Rich Rostrom on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 19:37
  • pst314 on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 19:35
  • David on Friday Ephemera (767) May 9, 19:16

SEARCH

Archives

Archive by year

Interesting Sites

Blogroll

Categories

  • Academia
  • Agonies of the Left
  • AI
  • And Then It Caught Fire
  • Anthropology
  • Architecture
  • Armed Forces
  • Arse-Chafing Tedium
  • Art
  • ASMR
  • Auto-Erotic Radicalism
  • Basking
  • Bees
  • Behold My Massive Breasts
  • Behold My Massive Lobes
  • Beware the Brown Rain
  • Big Hooped Earrings
  • Bionic Lingerie
  • Blogs
  • Books
  • Bra Drama
  • Bra Hygiene
  • Cannabis
  • Classic Sentences
  • Collective Toilet Management
  • Comics
  • Culture
  • Current Affairs
  • Dating Decisions
  • Dental Hygiene's Racial Subtext
  • Department of Irony
  • Dickensian Woes
  • Did You Not See My Earrings?
  • Emotional Support Guinea Pigs
  • Emotional Support Water Bottles
  • Engineering
  • Ephemera
  • Erotic Pottery
  • Farmyard Erotica
  • Feats
  • Feminist Comedy
  • Feminist Dating
  • Feminist Fun Times
  • Feminist Poetry Slam
  • Feminist Pornography
  • Feminist Snow Ploughing
  • Feminist Witchcraft
  • Film
  • Food and Drink
  • Free-For-All
  • Games
  • Gardening's Racial Subtext
  • Gentrification
  • Giant Vaginas
  • Great Hustles of Our Time
  • Greatest Hits
  • Hair
  • His Pretty Nails
  • History
  • Housekeeping
  • Hubris Meets Nemesis
  • Ideas
  • If You Build It
  • Imagination Must Be Punished
  • Inadequate Towels
  • Indignant Replies
  • Interviews
  • Intimate Waxing
  • Juxtapositions
  • Media
  • Mischief
  • Modern Savagery
  • Music
  • Niche Pornography
  • Not Often Seen
  • Oppressive Towels
  • Parenting
  • Policing
  • Political Nipples
  • Politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Pregnancy
  • Presidential Genitals
  • Problematic Acceptance
  • Problematic Baby Bouncing
  • Problematic Bookshelves
  • Problematic Bra Marketing
  • Problematic Checkout Assistants
  • Problematic Civility
  • Problematic Cleaning
  • Problematic Competence
  • Problematic Crosswords
  • Problematic Cycling
  • Problematic Drama
  • Problematic Fairness
  • Problematic Fitness
  • Problematic Furniture
  • Problematic Height
  • Problematic Monkeys
  • Problematic Motion
  • Problematic Neighbourliness
  • Problematic Ownership
  • Problematic Parties
  • Problematic Pasta
  • Problematic Plumbers
  • Problematic Punctuality
  • Problematic Questions
  • Problematic Reproduction
  • Problematic Shoes
  • Problematic Taxidermy
  • Problematic Toilets
  • Problematic Walking
  • Problematic Wedding Photos
  • Pronouns Or Else
  • Psychodrama
  • Radical Bowel Movements
  • Radical Bra Abandonment
  • Radical Ceramics
  • Radical Dirt Relocation
  • Reheated
  • Religion
  • Reversed GIFs
  • Science
  • Shakedowns
  • Some Fraction Of A Sausage
  • Sports
  • Stalking Mishaps
  • Student Narcolepsy
  • Suburban Polygamist Ninjas
  • Suburbia
  • Technology
  • Television
  • The Deep Wisdom of Celebrities
  • The Genitals Of Tomorrow
  • The Gods, They Mock Us
  • The Great Outdoors
  • The Politics of Buttocks
  • The Thrill of Décor
  • The Thrill Of Endless Noise
  • The Thrill of Friction
  • The Thrill of Garbage
  • The Thrill Of Glitter
  • The Thrill of Hand Dryers
  • The Thrill of Medicine
  • The Thrill Of Powdered Cheese
  • The Thrill Of Seating
  • The Thrill Of Shopping
  • The Thrill Of Toes
  • The Thrill Of Unemployment
  • The Thrill of Wind
  • The Thrill Of Woke Retailing
  • The Thrill Of Women's Shoes
  • The Thrill of Yarn
  • The Year That Was
  • Those Lying Bastards
  • Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers
  • Those Poor Darling Burglars
  • Those Poor Darling Carjackers
  • Those Poor Darling Fare Dodgers
  • Those Poor Darling Looters
  • Those Poor Darling Muggers
  • Those Poor Darling Paedophiles
  • Those Poor Darling Sex Offenders
  • Those Poor Darling Shoplifters
  • Those Poor Darling Stabby Types
  • Those Poor Darling Thieves
  • Tomorrow’s Products Today
  • Toys
  • Travel
  • Tree Licking
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
  • Unreturnable Crutches
  • Wigs
  • You Can't Afford My Radical Life

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.