The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Australia: Porn Ring Targets Teen Girls

Posted on | August 17, 2016 | 1 Comment

 

This development was probably inevitable:

More than 70 Australian schools are targets for a perverse pornography ring of teen boys and young men secretly swapping and exchanging graphic sexual images of female students and other nonconsenting women.
News.com.au can reveal more than 2000 images have been posted or traded by Australian members since the group began operating in December last year.
Young men use the site to nominate the specific high school or region they are phishing for nude photos from, along with the full names of girls they are “hunting”. Hundreds of individual names have appeared on “wanted” lists, including the names of sisters and entire high school friendship circles.
Once a girl’s name appears on a list, other members of the group then “contribute” by posting identifying information about the intended victim, such as her full name, face, school, home address, and phone number, along with directives like “Go get her boys!”
Any “wins” (a colloquial term referring to nude photos) of the nominated target are then uploaded or offered in exchange for a trade. Some targets are so sought after that “bounties” have been offered for any user who can post a “win”.
In one case, one user offered to trade up to 300 nude images of other victims, in exchange for a single nude photo of the one girl he was currently tracking. Another user said he had been trying to unearth nude images of a particular victim for more than five years. . . .
So far thousands of explicit, nude images of teen girls and young women have been uploaded or traded on the swap-meet site. Some high school girls are pictured performing sexual acts while wearing their school uniform. Other images on the site include graphic close-ups of victim’s genitalia and breasts, and photos of young women engaged in penetrative sexual acts.
The site has been reported numerous times to police for child pornography, but so far they say they are unable to act because the site is hosted overseas. . . .
In total the site mentions 28 high schools in [New South Wales], 18 in Queensland, 15 in Victoria, five in the ACT, two in South Australia and two in Tasmania.

Once every teenager has a cellphone, and every cellphone has a camera, what could we predict kids would do with this technology? When I first started seeing stories like this — nude photos of women posted as “revenge porn” by embittered ex-boyfriends — my reaction was the same as every other adult: “What kind of woman is stupid enough to let her boyfriend take naked pictures of her?” What I failed to understand at the time was that, in fact, many of these women were taking nude photos of themselves and sending these selfies to guys in the mistaken belief that this was “private” activity that nobody would ever know about.

Parents have got to warn their children against this kind of behavior. It’s not just nude photos, either. Too many kids fail to understand that when they are exchanging text messages or sending emails or posting things to online social media, this creates a permanent digital record. You may think you’re having a “private” conversation with your friends but (a) nothing is so private it can’t be hacked, (b) once you send a message, you can’t control what the recipient does with it, and (c) what happens if your supposed “friend” ever becomes unfriendly?

After the second Anthony Weiner scandal broke (“Carlos Danger” sexting with Sydney Leathers), I was driving in the car with my son Jefferson, who was 14 at the time, and I went on a rant: “Never think you can get away with anything like that online! Never send anyone a message that you wouldn’t want to see quoted on the front page of the New York Times!”

This problem is spiraling out of control:

Rampant teen sexting has left politicians and law enforcement authorities around the country struggling to find some kind of legal middle ground between prosecuting students for child porn and letting them off the hook.
Most states consider sexually explicit images of minors to be child pornography, meaning even teenagers who share nude selfies among themselves can, in theory at least, be hit with felony charges that can carry heavy prison sentences and require lifetime registration as a sex offender. . . .
Colorado lawmakers this week delayed a vote on creating a new misdemeanor crime of “misuse of electronic images” by teens.
Colorado’s bill was prompted by a scandal last year at a Canon City high school where more than 100 students were found with explicit images of other teens. The news sent shockwaves through the city of 16,000. Dozens of students were suspended, and the football team forfeited the final game of the season.
Fremont County prosecutors ultimately decided against filing any criminal charges, saying Colorado law doesn’t properly distinguish between adult sexual predators and misbehaving teenagers.
In a similar case last year out Fayetteville, North Carolina, two dating teens who exchanged nude selfies at age 16 were charged as adults with a felony — sexual exploitation of a minor. After an uproar, the charges were reduced to misdemeanors.

What this recent case in Australia shows, however, is that once these images of minors are created, it is difficult to prevent the images from being circulated widely through “peer-to-peer” networks. The basic principle of hacking — “Information wants to be free,” as Stewart Brand said — applies also to nude photos of teenagers. Once any such image is created, keeping it private becomes a permanent problem, and anyone who doesn’t understand this is dangerously ignorant of how technology operates. Law enforcement is playing catch-up with this problem:

“The Australian Federal Police is aware of the existence of a website which encourages users to upload images of a sexual nature. A number of these images allegedly depict nonconsenting and/or underage women,” the statement read.
“The AFP is currently liaising with its domestic and international law enforcement partners and relevant government agencies to evaluate this matter and to determine appropriate courses of action.”
While the power to shut down the site may remain out of the AFP’s hands, it warned those sharing images on the site were doing so within Australia, and they could be prosecuted.
“It is important to note that creating, accessing or distributing child pornography is a serious offence, even if you are a child yourself,” the statement read.
“Child pornography offences have a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment.”
[New South Wales] Police issued a similar statement, reminding users of the site they were in fact breaking the law by sharing explicit photographs, even if they were underage.
“They should be aware they could be arrested and charged and, if convicted, will have a criminal record,” NSW Police said.

Relying on law enforcement to prosecute these crimes after the fact is a poor substitute for preventing these crimes. Parents must warn their kids: NO NUDE SELFIES, EVER, UNDER ANY CONDITION!




 

Category: Australia, Crime

Hate Group @SJPUTK Want Jews to Die

Posted on | August 17, 2016 | Comments Off on Hate Group @SJPUTK Want Jews to Die

 

Muslim students and other anti-Israel activists at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (UTK) have created a “hostile environment” for Jewish students on campus, according to watchdogs, but the university’s administration seems to be blind to the terrorist threat:

Canary Mission, a secretive watchdog group that compiles dossiers on students and academics it accuses of anti-Semitism, claimed in two releases earlier this month that it found dozens of problematic social media posts by current and former members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at UTK.
Some of those posts incited or personally threatened violence, it has claimed.
In response to the administration’s subsequent denials that the campus is infested with rampant anti-Semitism, Canary Mission and Jewish campus groups doubled down, demanding stronger denunciations of the “cesspool” created by the Muslim student groups.
Canary Mission told The Algemeiner Aug. 4 it found a “disturbing trend” of anti-Semitic behavior reflected in social media posts by SJP and MSA members, naming six in particular.
The administration initially responded that the watchdog group, which declines to identify its membership, had overstated campus hostilities toward Jewish students.
It told WATE Aug. 9 that the administration “does not condone” the alleged anti-Semitic statements – seven posts over five years – but believed that the current and former students “were within their constitutional rights to post their personal viewpoints,” and they were not “made on behalf of any of our student organizations.” . . .
Last October, UTK SJP Vice President Fatima Itmaizah switched her Facebook profile picture to a graphic apparently advocating a violent solution to the existence of Jewish people in the Holy Land. . . .
Mohamed Ali, a member of SJP and MSA, tweeted April 7, 2015: “I feel so incredibly irritable right now. No idea why…Just feel like kicking a Zionist tbh [to be honest].” . . .

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) We are two years away from the 70th anniversary of the founding of modern Israel, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe. Two generations later, many young people have been indoctrinated with a left-wing “social justice” worldview which gives credence to the slanderous claim that Arabs and Muslims are victims of oppression under Jewish “apartheid” in Israel. This false belief bears no resemblance to the reality of the situation, and is simply anti-Jewish propaganda that inspires terrorism. The history of this conflict, and of the Middle East generally, suggests that if the advocates of Israel’s destruction were to get what they want — i.e., the death of every Jew in “Palestine” — this would plunge the Arab population of the region into a nightmare existence under a radical Islamic terrorist regime.

Destroying Israel will not solve the problems of Palestinians, but the bloodthirsty prejudice of radical Muslims isn’t about solving problems. Their agenda is not about “peace,” it’s about dead Jews.

Why the hell are fanatical Jew-hating advocates of terrorism being tolerated at the University of Tennessee? Expel them all.

 

Category: Education, Israel, Tennessee, Terrorism

Trump Puts Breitbart News Executive Steve Bannon In Charge of His Campaign

Posted on | August 17, 2016 | 2 Comments

This is exciting news:

Donald Trump, following weeks of gnawing agitation over his advisers’ attempts to temper his style, moved late Tuesday to overhaul his struggling campaign by rebuffing those efforts and elevating two longtime associates who have encouraged his combative populism.
Stephen Bannon, a former banker who runs the influential conservative outlet Breitbart News and is known for his fiercely anti-establishment politics, has been named the Trump campaign’s chief executive. Kellyanne Conway, a veteran Republican pollster who has been close to Trump for years, will assume the role of campaign manager. . . .
Trump issued a statement hours later. “I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win,” he said. “I believe we’re adding some of the best talents in politics, with the experience and expertise needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in November and continue to share my message and vision to Make America Great Again.” . . .
Trump’s stunning decision effectively ended the months-long push by campaign chairman Paul Manafort to moderate Trump’s presentation and pitch for the general election. And it sent a signal, perhaps more clearly than ever, that the real-estate magnate intends to finish this race on his own terms, with friends who share his instincts at his side.
Manafort, a seasoned operative who joined the campaign in March, will remain in his role, but the advisers described his status internally as diminished due to Trump’s unhappiness and restlessness in recent weeks.

(Via Memeorandum.) I’ve known Steve Bannon for about five years, and have been interviewed by him three or four times on his XM Satellite radio show. What does his choice as chief executive of the Trump campaign signify? I can’t say, but would suggest that Bannon’s main task will be to focus on message discipline, and management of the campaign’s difficult relationship with the media.

UPDATE: The campaign, of course, does not wish to say that this shakeup is an admission that the campaign was in trouble. However . . .

 

. . . clearly recent polls have shown Trump falling behind. He led for four days (July 25-28) in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. That lead peaked with Trump at 45.7 to Clinton’s 44.6. As of today, Clinton leads by a full six points, 47.2 to Trump’s 41.2, so that in the past three weeks, there has been a net 7-point swing from Trump to Clinton. Fortunately for Trump, it is still early — most people ignore the election campaign until after Labor Day — and Clinton’s negatives are quite high. The Trump campaign just now began making its first advertising buys in major battleground states, and we shall see what effect a new management team has. Those who thought Trump’s campaign was doomed to defeat may yet be proven wrong.

 

Category: Donald Trump, Election

In The Mailbox: 08.16.16

Posted on | August 16, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: CNN’s Carol Costello is At It Again – Crooked Costello Cuts Off Green Party Candidate Jill Stein For Questioning Clinton’s Competency
Twitchy: Another One Bites The Dust? Brad Thor Lays Down His #NeverTrump Sword
Mark Davis: Our War With Global Jihad Starts With The Language (h/t Loyal Reader Brian E.)
Louder With Crowder: Chris Rock – You Racist, Ignorant Ass


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: There Is No Such Thing As Marital Rape
American Power: Roger Ailes to Advise Trump Before Presidential Debates
American Thinker: It Won’t End Well For Global Elites
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily News
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Secrets Of Nanreath Hall by Alix Rickloff
Da Tech Guy: JD Rucker – Every State Should Adopt The Maine/Nebraska Method Of Assigning Electoral Votes
Dustbury: I’m All About That Baseball
Joe For America: Religion Of Peace Olympian Who Bashed America Gets Her Own Bashing
JustOneMinute: I’m Sure Something Is Happening…
Pamela Geller: UK Terror Imam Anjem Choudary Found Guilty Of Incitement
Power Line: A Cynical Look At The Olympics
Shark Tank: Former DNC Chair Slips, Admits Helping Clinton Against Sanders
Shot In The Dark: More Smoke, also, Blowing Smoke
The Jawa Report: Religion Of Peace Watch – Days Of Contiguous Peace Still Zero
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Golfs While Milwaukee Burns
The Political Hat: Impeachment Goes Full Brazilian
This Ain’t Hell: Sole Female Marine Drops Out Of Infantry Training
Weasel Zippers: Because The Government Doesn’t Waste Enough Money – Feds Holding Summits For Lesbian Farmers
Megan McArdle: Aetna’s Retreat From Obamacare Is More Than It Seems


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Category: Linkagery

More @MGTOW Issues

Posted on | August 15, 2016 | 1 Comment

 

My survey question aimed at “Men Going Their Own Way” (MGTOW) has produced more than 150 comments so far, and I thank everyone who has contributed to the discussion. What inspires my curiosity about this, beyond my research interest in radical feminism, is trying to understand what the dating scene looks like from the perspective of young single guys. Being 56 and married for 27 years, it is difficult for me to know what it’s like out there among singles except that I gather — based on reading what young feminists say — it is generally quite bad. Obviously, if men and women were pairing off and finding happiness together, there would be no feminist movement. Feminism is the organized politics of unhappy women and, no matter how much of their misery is self-inflicted, young women wouldn’t be filling the Internet with angry anti-male rants if the romantic scene had not become completely toxic.

The question occurs to me, “How would I play the game, if I were a young man, under the conditions as they now exist?” Clearly, the rules of the game have changed, but if human nature is immutable — as any conservative must believe — then many factors will remain constant.

What is necessary, it seems to me, is for men to take a strategic view of the game, for each man to analyze his own situation rationally, because I believe one of the great truths is this: Winners win and losers lose.

“Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity,” and the young man has to ask himself (a) what is it I am preparing for? and (b) what does an opportunity look like? The goal of the game — a loving and durable marriage, producing happy and successful children — hasn’t changed. What has changed are the social and economic incentives, and the cultural context within which the game is played.

One shrewd strategy, if you feel that the game is rigged against you, is to start playing by your own rules — “counter-programming,” going against the grain, playing the game differently than you’re “supposed” to play. In other words, if everybody else seems to be following a certain script, and you realize that this script doesn’t actually work (or, at least, it doesn’t work well for you as an individual) then improvise a script of your own, to overcome your disadvantages and win despite the odds against you.

MGTOW is a sort of counter-programming, and one which makes sense in the world of feminist “equality.” The downside risks of romantic involvement have greatly increased for men in recent decades. Today’s young man is wary of marriage because he is at much greater risk of divorce than was his grandfather. Becoming a husband and father makes him vulnerable to abusive and vindictive treatment by the Crazy Ex-Wife From Hell, a notorious type who seems to be quite common nowadays.

However, before a young man can begin to assess this particular risk — dating a woman long enough to assess her character — he must navigate a dangerous obstacle course. Even the mildest flirtation with a woman can expose him to accusations of “harassment,” so no smart man would dare attempt to date a co-worker, and the college dating scene has been rendered impossible by a vehement anti-male sentiment on campus that routinely results in false accusations of rape. In the 21st century, a young man can never safely pursue romance with a girl from school or a female co-worker, because the penalty for a bad breakup with his girlfriend could be catastrophic in such circumstances. Therefore, he must find some way to meet women outside these high-risk situations.

What would a counter-programming romantic strategy look like? This is not for me to prescribe, because each individual’s situation is different. The key point is to abandon the cookie-cutter pattern (which is quite visibly producing so many disasters), to improvise and experiment, to try unorthodox methods and find a way to win.

Let’s hear from a critic of MGTOW philosophy:

For years I was a angry, bitter man. I was angry at how many women picked bad men over good men, how fathers were being mistreated in family courts, how the divorce laws were designed to favor women over men, and the constant lies of feminists being accepted as fact. All this made me give up on women and hate the world. But after a long time, I finally realized that I was falling right into the hands of the people behind this evil agenda. Let me elaborate:
This is no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s a conspiracy fact that there are evil forces in the world that are hellbent on overthrowing marriage and family. If you take a good look at the system we live in — the divorce laws, the media, TV dramas, Hollywood movies, feminism etc — it is all designed to undermine love and commitment, and encourage promiscuity, infidelity, divorce, single motherhood etc. Not only that, but governments and radical feminists are pushing for more laws to be passed to further drive a wedge between men and women. . . .
However, MGTOW is not the answer. The powers that be — the evil people behind this agenda — would like nothing more than for men to give up on relationships. When they see men getting angry at women and giving up on relationships, they sit back and laugh. That’s exactly what they want. They want men to hate women. They want men to go their own way. It’s all part of their evil scheme. The way to hurt these people is to do the opposite of what they want. They cannot tolerate people being happy. One thing these people can’t stand is men and women getting along and being in a happy committed relationship based on love.

You can read the rest. One of the things I like to point out is that there are 3.5 billion women on this planet, and all a guy really needs is one.

MGTOW is a philosophy that makes sense in a scary world where so many women are human IEDs of toxic insanity who are just looking for a male target on whom they can inflict their destructive craziness. As a father, I constantly warn my teenage sons to be careful, and never to go anywhere near a herpes-infected feminist like Emily Depasse, just like I warn my teenage daughter never to become such a pathetic waste.

Too many parents have failed to warn their children about the dangers in this world, as I warned about the deranged freaks on Tumblr:

Let any intelligent adult think back over the developments of the past 15 or 20 years, and then imagine where our society might be in 2030 or 2040, if nothing is done to alter the current cultural trajectory. . . . We are traveling rapidly down a road proverbially paved with good intentions, and trying to fireproof our children is the best any parent can hope to do.

People need to wake the hell up.




 


Category: Sex Trouble

In the Mailbox: 08.15.16

Posted on | August 15, 2016 | Comments Off on In the Mailbox: 08.15.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: #FreeStacy – Twitter’s Trust And Safety Council Is A Secret Star Chamber To Regulate Online Behavior – What Could Go Wrong?
Michelle Malkin: TSA Gropes Grandma But Lets Somali Muslim Leaders See Screening Process?
Twitchy: Comedy Central’s Clearly Racist Audience Tunes Out POTUS Pal Larry Wilmore; Show Cancelled
Monster Hunter Nation: io9 Shoves Its Head (Mostly) Up Its Own @ss


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Disgusting Fat Acceptance Movement
American Power: Pat Condell – Europe’s Leaders Are Importing War
American Thinker: Robin Hood In Reverse – The Clinton Foundation Under Federal Scrutiny
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
BLACKFIVE: Now In Graphic Novel Format – Clinton Cash
Da Tech Guy: Imagine The Media Reaction If Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor Was A Republican
Don Surber: Media Meltdown
Dustbury: Fading Into Silence
Joe For America: #BlackLivesMatter Rioters Target White People In Milwaukee
JustOneMinute: A Waste Of Perfectly Good Irony
Pamela Geller: NY Muslims Blame Donald Trump For Imam Shooting
Power Line: A Message From The Star Tribune
Shark Tank: Joe Redner Hates Political Corruption, And He Can’t Be Bought
Shot In The Dark: Smoke
STUMP: Kentucky Pensions Update – Their Returns Sucked, Too
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Islam, Hate, And You
The Lonely Conservative: History Is The Story Of Life
The Political Hat: Federal Government To Fund Creation Of Catgirls
This Ain’t Hell: Good Guy With A Gun Innocent In Kentucky
Weasel Zippers: Hillary Apparently Unaware Obama Already Deployed Thousands Of Troops To Iraq & Syria To Fight ISIS; Says Ground Forces “Off The Table”
Megan McArdle: Colorado’s Single-Payer Health Plan Would Die A Fiery Death


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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday

Posted on | August 14, 2016 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Not really in the mood to be blogging today, since my day started with getting the news that my Uncle Joe Jaramillo, a decorated Vietnam veteran who served in the Special Forces, died peacefully this morning at the VA hospital in Albuquerque, NM. Still, duty is doing the things you must when you don’t want to, so here we are. Standard disclaimer goes here; today’s appetizer is Jin Se Yeon, who plays Han Sae-Chon in Operation Chromite.

Korean actress Jin Se-Yeon from Esquire Korea’s December 2013 issue.

Ninety Miles from Tyranny leads off this week with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns, followed by Goodstuff with Gillian Anderson and Aly Reisman, because The Truth Is Out There. Animal Magnetism contributes Rule 5 Constitutional Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon, and The Last Tradition chips in with Gina Rodriguez and Carmen Ortega.

EBL’s herd of (occasionally mutant) heifers this week includes Suzy Kendall, Rukmini Callimachi, Marianne Stang Ihlen, Salma Hayek – Making tacos great again!, Gigi Goes To Dubai, Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body, and Kristen Wiig.

A View from the Beach defies the hideous weather of the Mid-Atlantic States to send us Alexis Ren, Just Because, A New Investigation of Clinton.com?, More News from Rio, Pole Vaulting from the Pole’s Perspective, Continuing Rio Coverage, “Lay Down Sally”, Wednesday Master Baiter, Well, If You Insist, Rio Update: Lilly King Gave Her Finger for You, Vegans Against the Environment, Rio Update, First US Olympic Gold Winner Flushes Out Trolls, and Rio Report.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Lucy Lawless, his Vintage Babe is Quentin Dean, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Victoria’s Secret. At Dustbury, it’s Valerie Pecresse and Lupita Nyong’o.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

Message to All Kids: Don’t Be a Weirdo Like Those Loser Freaks on Tumblr

Posted on | August 14, 2016 | 2 Comments

 

Would it be cruel to call attention to “Jakob” the teenage girl who thinks she wants to be a boy? Probably, but “Jakob” is the author of a Tumblr post with more than 100,000 notes entitled, “Message to all parents,” which keeps getting expanded to include all kinds of “messages” that cumulatively amount to the message, “PARENTS ARE TOTALLY STUPID AND DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! WE ARE SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES!”

Just a few pearls of wisdom from “Jakob”:

– Grades are NOT everything. You can get plenty of well paying jobs now without having to go to college.
– Really strict parenting leads to sneaky kids. Trust me.
– Let them be who they want. They can’t change who they are, whether it is sexual orientation, gender identity or anything else. They need someone to support them.
– ^ Never say “you’re too young to know”
– ¼ teenagers deal with a mental illness of some sort (in the U.S). Please make sure they’re okay.
– You can’t MAKE them chose an educational field. . . .
– Self harm is more common than you think amongst teenagers. It’s also not always cutting (or on wrists). Be aware.
– Sex ed. doesn’t teach them anything.
– Tattoos and piercing aren’t “unprofessional” anymore . . .
– School is much harder now than it ever has been before.
– Not everyone on the internet is a predator
– It’s normal to have internet friends now

Hey, “Jakob,” I’ll bet your “Internet friends” are all really encouraging about your “gender identity,” aren’t they? And on the other hand, I’ll bet the actual real-life human beings around you — your parents, the kids at school, etc. — probably think you’re a creepy weirdo, right? Do you ever wonder why there is this disparity between the disapproval you get in real life and the way nearly everybody on Tumblr is “supportive”?

Let me explain: There are 286 million Internet users in the United States, and if only 0.1% of these users have some kind of “gender identity” issue, that’s 286,000 weirdos hanging out online. Because the Internet enables all these weirdos to gravitate to each other, they form a “hive mind” — a cult mentality — where everybody’s “supportive” of weirdness.

This is why, for example, it’s easy for young people to believe that tattoos and facial piercings “aren’t ‘unprofessional’ anymore.” Believe whatever you want to believe, but if you show up in the Human Resources office looking like the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you might belatedly realize you have been led astray by your “Internet friends.”

And no, school is not much harder now than it’s ever been before. Quite the opposite, in fact. Public education has been dumbed down to the point where high school is really just daycare for teenagers, and I rather doubt you’re being required to learn Latin declensions or recite Shakespearean soliloquies from memory. This kind of boo-hoo-hoo woe-is-me millennial teenager self-pity trip is annoying, “Jakob,” and I think I speak for every adult in America when I say we’re all sick and damned tired of it.

Oh, but look at how the “supportive” Tumblr weirdo community of millennial snowflakes chimes in to extend the “Message to all parents”:

Don’t take their phones/computers away from them, as that is severing a link to what could be the only people that understand and care about them . . .
-Don’t say, “You don’t know who you’re talking to,” about their internet friends
-Don’t yell at them ever, especially if they have a fear of loud noises
Don’t react to everything with anger, dissent is not the same as disrespect and being a parent doesn’t mean only your opinion matters . . .

Message for all Tumblr weirdos: Don’t tell me how to raise my kids.

If you’re such g–damned parenting experts, you can have some kids of your own and raise them however the hell you want, but don’t complain when they turn out to be pathetic whiny helpless losers just like you.

It’s very easy for kids to think their parents are unreasonable tyrants, but if you grow up and have kids of your own, you’ll discover that being a good parent requires constant vigilance and a fanatical determination to protect your kids from bad influences, e.g., weirdos on Tumblr.

When I was a teenager, back before Al Gore invented the Internet, teenage losers mainly smoked dope and listened to Pink Floyd albums. This was far more entertaining than a bunch of Tumblr weirdos blabbering about their “gender identity.” It never occurred to us — stoned out of our minds as we usually were — to lecture our parents about how they should raise us. Our main challenge back then was figuring out how to get money to buy more dope and trying not to get caught smoking it.

What teenage dopeheads lacked, circa 1976, was a worldwide interactive communication system whereby all of us could get together to “discourse” about whatever, and form cliques based on mutual interests. What we had was FM rock radio and so-called “underground” newspapers, as the weekly alternative tabloids were then called, but 96 Rock and Creative Loafing (the Atlanta manifestation of these phenomena) weren’t the kind of interactive DIY platforms that a Tumblr blog provides to young weirdos nowadays. Were all of us teenage dopeheads entirely normal back in the day? Of course not. Issues of sexual orientation and “gender identity” are not recent inventions. What has changed is that abnormal kids now can (and do) spend hours a day obsessing over their weirdness in online communities that reinforce their fixations and fetishes.

Home, home of the strange!
Where the weird Tumblrinas are gay!
Where seldom are heard
Heteronormative words,
And the discourse continues all day!

Kids complain that their parents don’t understand this, just like our parents didn’t understand why my buddies and me were down in the basement playing Pink Floyd albums and staring at blacklight posters. Except, of course, our parents did understand enough to know that our behavior was abnormal, so they correctly suspected we were on drugs.

Few things in life are more predictable than this: Bad things will happen when teenagers get together without adult supervision. Parents are entirely correct to reject the assertion that it is now “normal” for kids to have “Internet friends,” for reasons that should be obvious, but which I apparently must explain for the benefit of the stupid:

Why don’t you and your “Internet friend” have any real-life friends?

How many kids are at your high school? Isn’t there even one kid at your school who shares your interests? Isn’t it usually the case that it is the misfit/outcast/weirdo kids who seek out “Internet friends”? Isn’t it also the case that the influence of these “Internet friends” generally tends to reinforce whatever personal problems led to the kid being a misfit/outcast/weirdo in the first place?

Parents are personally invested in their children’s well-being and future happiness, and one of the ways to safeguard our children is to monitor their friendships. “Stop hanging around that hoodlum,” my parents would say, and my hoodlum buddy’s parents said the same to him about me. With the benefit of four decades of hindsight, our parents were correct: We were both up to no good, which was the basis of our friendship.

The “Internet friends” phenomenon not only serves to enable the kind of unsupervised adolescent mischief that so often leads kids into serious trouble, but it also inhibits their development of the social skills and attitudes necessary to real-life happiness. As someone who has been blogging for more than eight years, trust me when I say that staring into a laptop screen all day has produced a noticeable degradation of my own social skills. I am a natural extrovert, but the effects of what might be called Online Isolation Syndrome are apparent to me, and I strongly suspect that spending too much time on the Internet is a significant factor in the psychological disturbances of today’s young weirdos, most of whom are introverts, and thus predisposed to such problems.

Well, I could lecture on this subject all week, but if I could say one thing to teen Tumblrinas, it would be this: STEP AWAY FROM THE ABYSS!

You may not yet be doomed to become a weirdo loser. It may still be possible, if you are strong-minded enough to assess your situation objectively, to re-evaluate your options and change course before disaster overtakes you, as it surely will if you keep going the way you are.

Consider this strange possibility: Maybe your parents are right.

Now that I’m a gray-bearded grandfather, I see the basic wisdom of my own parents’ intolerance of my juvenile rebellion. Sure, at the time, I thought my parents were stupid because they didn’t understand what I was going through. Life for a teenager in the 1970s wasn’t what life was like when they were teenagers in Depression-era rural Alabama. Yet having escaped the pervasive hardship of their youth, my parents knew a thing or two about the kind of habits and attitudes necessary to success in life, and when I started going off that path as a teenager, they did everything in their power to steer me back toward the way of success.

Until I started studying radical feminism, I never thought of “normal” as an achievement, as I have said more than once. Do any of these young weirdos on Tumblr have the strength of mind to think clearly about this?

Is it really “hate” — transphobia or whatever — for parents to become alarmed by their kids’ “gender-non-conforming” (GNC) behavior? Are parents wrong in believing that when their child starts acting out in certain ways (“Jakob” has a pierced lip, shows a preference for black clothing and dark music and blogs a lot about depression and suicide) this weirdness may reflect the influence of “Internet friends”? Read more

Category: Sex Trouble
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