MR. OBVIOUS on X - "Zoomers lured a 22-year-old man on a date with an 18-year-old woman then beat him with baseball bats and said he was a "predator" (for meeting an adult???) I hope he presses charges. Zoomers are so incredibly dumb its unreal."
Matt Walsh on X - "Approximately 100 percent of the people who say an 18 year old isn’t old enough to consent to dating a 22 year old will also tell you that a 13 year old girl is old enough to consent to a “gender affirming” double mastectomy"
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "i’ve seen so much discourse online AND irl talking about how age gaps like 16/18, 17/19, 18/22, 21/25, and 24/29 are “predatory”. i remember on instagram someone called a man born in 1993 a “pdf file” for marrying a woman born in 1999- this was in 2023 so both were grown adults over 21. i do agree it’s “weird” for someone 24+ to talk to an 18 year old, but it’s ultimately the adults decision, none of my business. it’s only an issue when they start talking before the person is an adult (imo). i have a friend who stopped talking to me because i replied with a laughing emoji when she sent me a video on tiktok saying that a 25-29 year old who talks to someone 21-23 is a weirdo. these examples probably sound extreme but it’s really what people think in my circle- not just online. yalls thoughts? please don’t let this convo devolve into insults and arguments. i want genuine discussion on how this came about. it seems like people 18-24 are greatly infantilized."
"I think this is as much a terminally online phenomenon as an age-based one. The people I see on Reddit making the loudest "everyone's a pedophile" accusations tend to be:
Women in their late 20s or older who, from my boredom-induced profile-reading, seem to be single (and often own cats?),
Lonely young men who blame marginally older (like, 22+) guys for "taking" their college classmates,
Populists who want to believe that every wealthy or influential person is a pederast,
Conspiracy types who subconsciously want there to be a global pedophilic cabal because it brings excitement and purpose to their lives (I'm not a NEET; I'm an independent researcher), and
Twitter types who lob "pedo" insults at the other side.
None of these people seem to be doing very well."
"I have an entire theory that the first batch of terminally online millennials took these discussions to Tumblr and Twitter with mostly good intentions. They also left out a lot of context in these discussions because they assumed they only had adult readers who would be reading with that context intact. But they didn’t realize that the youngest millennials and then the Zoomers were reading it with no context or adult perspective. So for example, a lot of millennial women would be writing and talking about the creepy adult men who used to hang out around high schools instead of going to college and how they always seemed to be linked to the teen pregnancies in the high school. And they understood that this was a very specific subset of young men and not at all representative of the whole, so they didn’t bother pointing this out. But the younger readers did not understand that, and they took it as a generalized gospel truth about age gaps being bad."
"There's a distinct tendency to universalize things with younger folks, which creates very black & white thinking. I think that teens, especially, always kinda thought that their worldview was the best worldview because of a lack of world experience. But with social media this extends beyond a single friend group, etc., and everyone falls into line with the influencers who are, to be fair, financially motivated to create drama and excitement via self-righteous anger. But the context-less nature of Gen Z is disturbing to me. Everything is surface level, and going deeper is seen as "cringe". The idea that you can't easily separate the world into "good" and "bad" makes their heads explode a little. It is why our politics, on both sides, are becoming so toxic and anger-fueled. There is a complete lack of theory of mind, which makes sense when you disregard motivations, contexts, etc., as being too much work and/or that caring about things in a non-anger way is too cringe."
""Women in their late 20s or older who, from my boredom-induced profile-reading, seem to be single (and often own cats?)" You're not profile reading, this is a fact. There's like twice the amount of dog owners than cat owners in basically the whole world. I have never clicked on a cat post never mind commented or upvoted it. Anytime I randomlly scroll the main page I see "I draw your cat", "look at my cat" posts, without failure. Dogs? Much less. Statistically, dog owners clearly spend more time outside, and this just reinforces it."
"I think you're onto something. Dogs demand social interaction and have to go outside. It takes work to be a minimally competent dog owner. I think the people who own dogs tend to be relatively "normal." Cats don't demand that interaction or exercise. Of course, millions of cat owners are perfectly social, normal, friendly people. But I don't see as many reclusive people getting a dog."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "If you've ever read TwoXChromosomes, there's a common belief among posters there that men who prefer adult women with shaved pubic areas must actually be closet pedos. I've never seen any of them arguing the same of men who are fine with women with small breasts, for some reason though."
"I mean, I almost mentioned that subreddit. It's like a club of women who haven't gotten over their high-school resentments from 2004."
"At some point during the election, I realized that getting richly irritated by subreddits like that was helping offset my dread about the threat of a Trump presidency. It didn't make me happier about it. It just sort of provided a bookend, as in: "Trump is horrible, but at least he'll also wind up the most insufferable people online." Unfortunately, I think that very mentality helped him get elected. "Yeah, he's bad, but I can't stand the libs." I had a colleague years ago who, I'm sure, would post on that subreddit if she knew about it. I was her Facebook friend, and almost everyone she interacted with was some sort of Millennial wannabe grievance influencer. The woman who tried to make a brand out of being injured by her mother's narcissism (ironic). The "you can be fat; you should be fat" disinformants. They loved the word "trauma." At some point, it was like that scene in Airplane! where the woman has a panic attack and everyone lines up to smack her or worse. At some point, you just wanted to get these people in a room, slap them with a salmon, and shout, "Sack up!""
"I have, both on reddit and in real life. I once dated a very petite woman, and more than once got comments implying that I only liked her 'because she looked like a child'. We dropped a few friendships because of that inappropriate commentary."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "Gosh I miss when that stuff was pretty much contained in Tumblr. The site changing hands was a watershed moment as everyone there came here to Reddit (mostly) and brought their insane bubble-developed ideas with them. Which coincided with a period in which that particular kind of outlook on life was rather hive-minded and where there was often huge social/professional penalty for even questioning if, say, seeing everything as oppressed/oppressor was actually a good thing. It is what has fueled this "anti-woke" backlash, too. People, and especially a lot of young men, grew up being told they were evil and awful and the root of everything bad. Of course they're gonna turn around and basically do the same thing when they wrested back some power: They were hunted down and socially assassinated, so the anti-woke crowd is just turning the tables with the same exact playbook. At some point we're gonna have to realize that we're all in this together. I hope that happens before conflict with China/Russia heats up too much further."
"Don’t leave out Twitter. Twitter became the new Tumblr, but actually got noticed by journalists, professors, and politicians. And we’re all worse for it."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "There's a distinct tendency to universalize things with younger folks, which creates very black & white thinking. I think that teens, especially, always kinda thought that their worldview was the best worldview because of a lack of world experience. But with social media this extends beyond a single friend group, etc., and everyone falls into line with the influencers who are, to be fair, financially motivated to create drama and excitement via self-righteous anger. But the context-less nature of Gen Z is disturbing to me. Everything is surface level, and going deeper is seen as "cringe". The idea that you can't easily separate the world into "good" and "bad" makes their heads explode a little. It is why our politics, on both sides, are becoming so toxic and anger-fueled. There is a complete lack of theory of mind, which makes sense when you disregard motivations, contexts, etc., as being too much work and/or that caring about things in a non-anger way is too cringe."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "'Very little real world experience with an artificially inflated understanding of now relationships actually play out in the real world.'
'This explains 99% of internet outrage culture, honestly.'"
"The internet in general talks about subjects in a sort of abstract way that rarely matches reality."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "Its just more infantilization. On one hand there is a big push for under 18 to vote, engage in premarital sex (with people their age) and do all sorts of things, dress proactively, have piercings, there are all sorts of underage thirst social media stars... Yet the second you treat an 18 year old with respect and seriously date them like a real adult, it's the worst abuse ever!"
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "It sort of reminds me of the iatrogenic effects of therapy for young people or getting exposed to concepts they lack the full tools of understanding and how it causes harm."
"Nah it happens to adults too, reminds me of how I went to visit my spouse at work and said "hey, lovebug" and gave them a kiss on the cheek. Apparently a coworker (who was in her 40s) pulled my spouse aside after I left and said "You know your husband is lovebombing you and this is abuse, right?" My spouse said "How is it lovebombing if this is how he treats me 24/7 and doesn't insult me, belittle me, or disrespect me? He's just affectionate." People are fucking insane and think the smallest things are abuse."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "For years there's been a big push online for "kill pedophiles!" Its everywhere, on car stickers, shirts, etc. People want an excuse to commit violence & since pedophilia is universally considered monstrous people flock to calling for violence against pedos. People (especially Americans) fantasize about hurting others. We all know someone who's talked about how they can't wait for someone to rob their home so they can shoot them. So now we have these vigilantes catfishing strangers because they wanna hurt them. They don't actually care about helping victims or teaching young people about consent or respecting boundaries. They just wanna feel strong by making someone else bleed 100% certainly that in a few years everyone involved in this is gonna claim the victim was a pedophile & portray themselves as heroes."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "I feel like that's what the vast majority of these " predator hunter" types are, people who are looking to hurt other people but are looking for a socially excusable way to do it. That way if they get any pushback they can say " oh so you support pedophiles now?""
I like how people were claiming that claiming you wanted to "kill pedophiles" was "a dog whistle for the LGBTQIA community". They're really outing themselves
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - ""What the hell does a 30 year old have in common with a 20 year old?"
Yeah people who say dumb things like that have obviously never been to literally any sports event in real life lol. Like look at the crowd, you'll see fans of all ages and backgrounds in the stands!"
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "I see this asked often "What the hell does a 30 year old have in common with a 20 year old?" Like idk....we can both like hiking, cooking, watching the same shows, going on raves, dancing, politics.....pretty much anything really. Is there some difference in life experience? Ofcourse! Will every age gap relationship work out? Obviously not. But to say there can be NOTHING in common is so ridiculous. I am 29, my partner is 26, but we hang out with people of ages 21/22 all the way to 35."
"Two straight guys so purely platonic, but one of the best work buddy friendships I've ever seen was between a 50-something guy and a fresh out of high school 18 year old summer hire. Totally different generations, totally different life stages, but they had so many overlapping interests and their personalities meshed so well, that they always had stuff to talk about. I never got the idea that any sort of age gap means you must have nothing in common. It frankly strikes me as people that have no personality or interests of their own, and are just sponges for whatever their peer groups were into growing up, and never manage to branch out past that stage."
"Heck, I'm 46 and like videogames, anime, sci-fi/fantasy books and movies. Just like people 10, 20, and even 30 years younger. Heck, I've played Fortnite and Minecraft with my daughter and her friends and one of them is like 6. Which I think is a bit young for Fortnite but oh well. But there's something people 40 years apart can have in common. And then I'll go talk to their parents about 90s music and stuff."
"It's also weird that its taken as gospel that relationships only work if the participants have a lot in common. I'm currently dating someone that I don't actually have a lot in common with, and part of the appeal of it is that we're both learning and doing a lot of things we wouldn't be doing if left to our own devices."
"I'm not in an age gap relationship, but my best friend is 20 years older than me and we have been friends for over 20 years now. I don't think that our friendship would have lasted if we had nothing in common..."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - ""I was 16 when I met my husband, who was 20 at the time. We both went to school, both had a job next to that, we both went to concerts, festivals and listened to the same music, we went to the same bars (legal drinking age was 16 over here) and we both lived with our parents. Our friend groups were very much alike, with ages ranging from 16-24. That was considered ‘the same age group’. We had everything incommon."
"Don't worry, the Reddit white knights are on their way to tell you that you were groomed, manipulated and gaslighted into your relationship and you're secretly miserable in your marriage to your pedo husband"
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "Plus the entire world is framed as oppressed/oppressor. You must be one of the two. There is no middle ground."
"I think this is a big part of it. Generations before Gen Z did not grow up assuming mal intent or inherent inequity in every single interaction."
why is gen z so sensitive to small age gap relationships? : r/GenZ - "This. I think this is the main culprit. I've seen people on reddit make arguments about how "large" age gaps are bad because the older person has more experience, more money and a more stable life generally. Essentially they are saying that one has more power than the other. Then they assume that this imbalance of "power" will automatically lead to a conscious or unconscious oppression of the less "powerful" one. It really is a self report on their own personality. They can't concieve that the older one could use their "power" to "lift up" the younger one. They think everyone is a manipulative psycho like them"
"There's also an attachment to being in the "oppressed" class, which translates to a MASSIVE Peter Pan complex, where you get people in their early 20s still claiming to be "minors" at heart because they can't accept that young people are supposed to grow up, and every "oppressive, creepy" adult was once a minor themselves. Being a minor doesn't map onto other forms of oppression like race or gender, because it's both universal and temporary. They don't want to accept that."
"every single relationship has a "power imbalance". There's almost always one partner who makes more money. There's one partner who is more popular/extroverted. There's one partner who is physically stronger. There's one partner who is more intelligent (sometimes by a lot). The list goes on and on. Human beings are not of equal ability to other human beings. Unless you're going to great lengths to date someone exactly your age in your income bracket etc, there's going to be some kind of power imbalance. That's normal"
"Wait... which one has the power? If, let's say, a young woman can seduce a powerful, rich, attractive, older man isn't the young woman the one with the power? Wars have been fought over young women: "The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta.""
Meme - "Anyone have that oil painting of the nun with the absolutely massive tits and it's painted in like a semi-classical style. please help I can't google "painting of nun with huge tits" be it's going to show me a lot of pictures that are not the one I'm looking for. I swear it looks something like this"
"I FOUND IT. It's "Delicate scene" by Paul Laurenzi"
"FAT TITS NUN
Jeremy Boreing on X - "In which Joy Reid - who reportedly makes over $3M a year - claims Ben Shapiro is funded by an oligarch when, in fact, the company he helped create generated well over $200M last year in advertising and subscription revenue (plus a few razor sales!). Joy Reid lives in such a bubble she doesn't know there is an actual audience for conservative ideas, and she is so economically illiterate she doesn't know how value is created. Daily Wire creates value, and we're always working to create more. Still, if there are any oligarchs out there who would like to fund us, I can only say we may not be very good, but we're real expensive..."
Alice on X - "LSATs punish precisely the sort of person who is most exasperating to argue with on Twitter."
Rob Henderson on X - "Affirmative action exists for men in college admissions. If you talk to university administrators, they’ll admit that they often give male applicants a boost in admissions because there just aren’t enough men applying to college. Take a male and a female applicant with the same grades, test scores, and qualifications—universities are more likely to pick the guy. This is because their internal data show that when campuses drop below 40% male, women are less likely to apply. Colleges aren’t just about getting an education or earning a degree. For a lot of students, they’re also a social scene—a dating service. People don’t just go to college to study; they go to meet people, date, and enjoy the social experience. Without a somewhat balanced gender ratio, colleges become less appealing to women."
In this case, affirmative action helps the parties being discriminated against too
Kyle Mann on X - "Zoomers rushing to download a Chinese state media app called "The Little Red Book" to show they're not gonna fall for state propaganda is something even we at @TheBabylonBee couldn't have come up with"
Meme - "The 4 horsemen of "No Clear Motive' *Islamic headgear, Islamic long shirt, Islamic facial hair, knife*"
Meme - Sam Biddle @samfbiddle: "Thank you to the U.S. Air Force for adhering to the Freedom of Information Act and producing this document about its social media surveillance practices *everything redacted*"
AG on X - "Follow along for a minute because this is actually hilarious. After Shapiro pointed out that the right shouldn’t associate with or promote a degenerate like Andrew Tate, Tate has responded by insisting Ben Shapiro is also a “pornographer” and immoral because the owner of OnlyFans, Leonid Radvinsky, has allegedly donated to AIPAC. The amounts he’s using are clearly made up but whatever. Except @benshapiro has nothing to do with AIPAC other than being Jewish and pro-Israel. But more hilarious, do you know who has been paid millions directly by Leonid Radvinsky’s companies from 2017-2024? Tristan Tate."
Lee Fang on X - "Mehdi Hasan gets literally every election prediction comically wrong, on racial voting trends, on Trump and Gaza, on his claim that economic anxiety has no impact on GOP drift. Literally every call. But the prep school-Oxford accent is enough to win over U.S. subscribers."
Judge reassigned after texting 'My First Ankle Monitor' gag to another judge - "A Cook County judge elected in 2024 to her first six-year term has been reassigned after circulating an image of a fake toy called “My First Ankle Monitor” that included a rendering of a Black toddler wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. “My husband’s idea of Christmas humor,” Judge Caroline Glennon-Goodman wrote in a text that she allegedly circulated to another member of the judiciary by mistake... Glennon-Goodman was the second most lenient of the pretrial division’s nine judges when considering detention petitions"
Meme - Roman Helmet Guy: "American women on RedNote already triggering a gender war in China"
"After seeing foreign girls, I'm no longer interested in domestic ones. (Translated)"
Meme - 陳彥翰 Yen-han Chen 🌻 @Chen_YenHan: "Red Note user from Jiangsu: “why do you get both weekend days off and not have to work overtime?”"
"You can consider forming a union and, if necessary, go on strike to protest."
What is RedNote? This TikTok alternate isn't what you expect - "TikTok refugees have already noted harsh restrictions on RedNote that have resulted in their content being removed or their accounts being suspended, including for mentioning LGBTQ+ identities or for women, wearing a slightly low-cut top. One TikTok user returned to the platform to share that she had been banned from RedNote after posting a selfie with "a tiny bit of cleavage," and a separate video mentioning "trans plight." A Black user asked for help online after her selfie was removed — all for wearing a shirt in the same tone as her skin."
Daniel on X - "Okay it turns out the Little Red Book app run by the Chinese Communist Party is NOT a sex positive space for bipoc queer folx ☹️"
Meme - ">be me, 28, suicidal
>too pussy to kill myself
>find out you can hire an assassin on the dark web
>get onion browser
>find assassin website
>assassin costs upwards of 500 bucks
>pay assassin 1500 to kill me
>"this is a very special hit for you. i want you to kill me. I will do anything to get killed by another person"
>1 week passes
>get email
>from the assassin website
>"we're very sorry to hear about the situation you're going through. this website is actually a sting operation run by the fbi to catch losers who place hits on people etc etc"
>they refund my money and give me suicide help resources
now what, /b/tards?"
Meme - "Secret Story"
"Bonjour ce serait pour participer a l'emission" *Musulman*
"Bonjour, c'est un recrutement pour Secret Story pas pour daesh ."
"Pourquoi tu dit ca?"
Crémieux on X - "To Taleb, claims are true if he likes them, and untrue if he dislikes them. That is all. There is nothing deeper to his understanding of the world. Every nonsensical explanation for his beliefs that he comes up with is just dressing up that fact."
Meme - Stuart Buck @stuartbuck1: "In early 2020, he blocked me and called me an "idiot" merely for linking to a paper showing that hydroxychloroquine didn't cure Covid:"
Joe Shipman @joe_shipman: "1/2 This is another travesty of an article.
1) the effectiveness of HCQ and CQ so far has been when given early, in low doses, along with azithromycin.
2) Therefore, we now see writeups of many studies in which it is given late, and/or without azithromycin, and/or in high doses."
Stuart Buck @stuartbuck1: "Still not effective: *link*"
Joe Shipman @joe_shipman: "**I already stated clearly** that the claim of interest is that is effective at PREVENTING pneumonias when given early. This is yet another study that fails to show effectiveness when given late, to patients who already HAVE the pneumonia! Are you an idiot or a shill?"
Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb: "He's an idiot, Joe. Block idiots."
Thread by @L0m3z on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Still can’t believe there was like a 10 year period where Malcolm Gladwell was a dominant cultural figure. There was an entire ruling ethos that all individual and social problems could--and very soon would--be resolved with This One Weird Trick. A lot of woke was simply disappointment/backlash at the the fact that The One Weird Trick wasn't actually solving anything. Woke provided an out by reducing social problems to opaque, miasmatic, non-falsifiable social "disease". For example, once Obama Era/Michelle Rhee/Waiting for Superman Era One Weird Tricks failed to make any meaningful dent in education outcomes, woke became a kind of moralistic/rhetorical clearinghouse to launder all of their failures"
i/o on X - "I remember reading something by Gladwell in the New Yorker a long time ago in which he offered this explanation for why an area with 1% of the world's population has produced 97% of the fastest marathoners in history: "They try harder.""
