Very long and nuanced take incoming (involving Kegan stages etc.):
I’ve met a lot of ppl in the slutcloud. Many are extremely wholesome. They do not mean harm. You can even see that directly in Aella’s tweet, and I don’t think it’s helpful to the discourse to erase this.
Practically speaking though, the visibility of the CNC kink in the local Bay Area rationalist community has caused problems for me and ppl I know: men acting aggressively by default, both men and women sharing in private that they feel FOMO, they feel they don’t fit in, they feel low status bc they don’t have this kink and can’t fake it without great harm to themselves. The incentives of the local environment do create this.
Likewise, the scene normalizes sex work. When you meet so many sex workers, and they are smart and funny and cool, it gives you the sense that this is no big deal. That it might even be an option for you that beats your boring job. (I imagine it *could* have a similar effect on the male side; something like “might beat trying to get a gf,” though I don't know this first-hand.) Personally, the proximity to sex workers has manifested for me as some internal pressure to be prettier or care about my looks more, though I consider this a more minor point.
The big problem is, if you don’t have a CNC kink, pretending that you do *will* cause you great harm. And the unemotional relationship that many women in the slutcloud have with sex is totally valid (!) but rare. Most women *do* become emotionally attached through sex, such that having a lot of casual sex or doing sex work *would* cause them great harm.
I don’t like how every time Aella posts, she is swarmed by ppl degrading her. I don’t like that she has been in actual real danger bc ppl want to wipe her off the internet. As a person with empathy, this is obviously Bad. Non-traditional ppl should get to exist peacefully.
And. Most of the world doesn’t work like the rationalist community or TPOT. We have autistic norms: decoupling, pedantry, ultra precision about what is True. We are ultra individualized. This is very Kegan 4-patterned of us: let’s all find out what is true for ourselves. Maybe CNC is fine for *me*?! Fuck around and find out.
The non-autistic world, though, largely transmits their wisdom through vibes. This is very Kegan 3-patterned: there is a legible, generalize-y morality meant to catch most of the common cases where ppl fall into danger. This is transmitted by positive and negative sentiment, with hopes it will be internalized, causing ppl to “watch themselves.” This system is cognitively, metabolically, waaaay cheaper and more efficient to install population-wide than the method of convincing a highly independent-minded person to avoid something dangerous that they haven’t yet experienced for themselves. This might even be a reason autists are so vulnerable to cults: due to the communication barrier, they missed the OG cultural vibes that were meant to protect them from unproven or risky stuff.
In "vibes world," the general public is far *less* equipped than Bay Area rationalists to hold their own values in the face of cultural messaging. And since human beings are wired to love sex and find it wildly interesting to hear about, there are forces that naturally want to spread this stuff. So there is real vulnerability there.
And so: all the hate Aella gets is an immune system doing its job. Trying to protect the general public from experiencing what the Bay Area rationalist community has already been infected with. (To be dramatic about it, sorry.) In the grand scheme, this opposition is directionally good and right, even though it causes suffering locally to very sweet ppl who mean well.
If I had to propose a solution to all this, it might be something like: decouple the ppl involved from the meme.
The ppl involved are doing what’s natural for Very Online ppl and/or business owners to do: they are trying to increase their audience reach, their influence, their opportunities. They are also doing something natural for humans to do: campaigning for less shame about the things ppl have shamed them about. These are their incentives and they make sense. However, as fame and normalization efforts increase, either the immune system will get stronger (e.g more hate, more violence against Aella) or it will fail (e.g. CNC and sex work become normal and/or high status everywhere - spreading harm to ppl unsuited to this).
The problem here is not the ppl, it is the fame. Make CNC content that is only found online by ppl searching for it, and you get a) kinky ppl finding The Others, b) kinky ppl releasing shame. As long as it isn’t broadcast to normies, the immune system is not activated.
The problem with this plan is that it burdens kinky ppl and sex workers to do something that might feel like hiding, and that will lose them work. It’s insanely hard for human beings to do this kind of decoupling when it comes to something as intimate as their own self-esteem or self-expression. And we all know the quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
So anyway. I imagine these gears will keep on turning, and that makes sense, I understand it, it’s okay. Maybe the forces will even keep each other in perfect balance forever, so nothing needs to be “done.” Who knows.
I will just wrap by saying that *we*, the Bay Area folk and Twitter autists, are the Kegan 4-patterned side, and that is a responsibility of sorts. Meaning: if anyone has the power of awareness and ability to change something, it’s us.
@zakjama8@bndmnrd@Score90_ Puyol was the Pepe of barcelona, who happened to be fortunate enough to be born in the right part of Iberia. He's worse than saliba in every single way aside from muh passion. I wish you were required to get a license to post footy takes like the one you need for a tv
@warrupc@jskmap1284@joelgrus Translation from [goy] to [english]: "I'd have no problem with the bank bending me over if the exec was a credentialed chad"
@TonyPajama@WokeDudeBro Chuds are easily pleased and distracted. If there were no brown people in videogames and every woman below a C cup was forced to get breast augmentation, they would be content, no, elated to be shafted by their boss. They cannot conceptualize any further
@redrummarts Clearly an incarnation of Budai. His reserved tone will shift to one of joly after he sheds the shackles of showbiz and wanders the Americas offering wisdom to those who seek it
@1_2spaces Both the fans and the referee relate to and live vicariously through the less physically imposing players. Also the reason messi is beloved despite sharing the same underlying sociopathic tendencies as CR7
@Mahbadmayne@kataraesque That complex existed in India and China long before western influence. The upper classes didn't tan as the lower classes would've from their fieldwork