Nothing says love like threatening to murder anyone close to the object of your affection!

There’s something I despise about her that I can’t name - the vacant stare? The fact that she’s famous for being famous? It’s a real stretch to say she’s critiquing the princess fantasy. She’s exploiting it, literally for all it’s worth, but hard to argue that she’s critical of it. She’s it’s leading proponent.

Kardashian is awful - but the awful part is that she has a fan base. In the same way Limbaugh wouldn’t be a big deal if nobody listened to him - but they do.

“Beware the Beliebers.”

...not previously on my radar as a sign of the end of American Civilization, but in retrospect, quite obviously an unmistakable indicator we’re in the death throes of the American Experiment.  Stick a fork in us, we’re done…

I’m with you on the Beiber thing but fuck if I know where it comes from. I don’t remember anyone in middle school with JTT or N’sync plaster on their binders displaying that much possessive rage and antagonism. Were heads just screwed on a little better in my neighborhood? Were there violent threats towards either Corys’ love interests way back when? Did Elvis fans faint from rage not excitement?

I don’t remember anyone in middle school with JTT or N’sync plaster on their binders displaying that much possessive rage and antagonism. Were heads just screwed on a little better in my neighborhood?

There seems to be a whole little subculture in which sending people death threats is just considered a normal thing to do.

It does seem like it’s more common now. I suspect these folks always existed and this really is a product of the intertubes. In the old days the effort required to actually write a note on paper, seal it in an envelope and put in the mailbox was enough to dissuade a lot of them.

Plus, they were isolated before whereas now they can encourage each other.

Still, it’s weird.

“I don’t remember anyone in middle school with JTT or N’sync plaster on their binders displaying that much possessive rage and antagonism.”

Having visited many of the “I Hate N’Sync/Jar Jar Binks/Titanic” type sites in my youth (I’m not proud of this) I can assure you that yes, they could and did.

Oh King, I think perhaps you should get a humor injection and then reread the post with a more thorough understanding of irony.

Oh, Amanda…you should see the MRA head explosions regarding the Bieber thing. They are fucking OBSESSED with him and hold him up as an example as “Look, women can be pedos too!” (Except when dudes want to fuck teenage girls, MRAs go out of their way to make the distinction that they are, in fact, ephebophiles, which is perfectly normal, and not pedos.) So not only was Bieber raped (statutory, of course, which MRAs think should be legal) and no one cares b/c double standards, but the woman is also a gold-digging bitch!

@kaje: But that was to people actively disparaging what they liked. This is directed towards people the object of their affection like.

In the old days the effort required to actually write a note on paper, seal it in an envelope and put in the mailbox was enough to dissuade a lot of them.

Or that it’s a federal crime. I don’t know if that’s a deterrent but my guess is that it would be if someone actually had to face the consequences.

I remember girls getting angry at rumored girlfriends of groups like NKOTB in middle school. But it would be more of the bitchy talking shit anger. Then they grew up a little. I also remember that we got comprehensive sex education in 7th and 8th grade. By the end of 7th grade that kind of worship and adoration was seen as immature. So maybe there is a connection.

Does California have a Romeo and Juliet law?  If not, if the paternity test proves he’s the father, she should be arrested for statutory rape.

  I agree with everything except point 3. There are always going to be people of both genders and all sexualities and ages who get wrapped up in the culture of celebrity and the cult of a particular celebrity. Sometimes its to fill a desperate loneliness and other times its to make a rather boring life a bit more interesting but some people are very fantasy prone. No amount of sex ed is going to stop this.

In a way Kardashian is the perfect celebrity. She’s famous for being famous, and in a way that totally rules. Her combination of beauty, chutzpah and vapidity makes her a strange kind of hater detection mechanism. Perhaps she’s like the bloom of the “Ophrys Lupercalis” Orchid, a flower that appears to be a female bee and induces male bees to mate with it. Except, in her case, she induces haters to hate.

Sometimes its to fill a desperate loneliness and other times its to make a rather boring life a bit more interesting but some people are very fantasy prone. No amount of sex ed is going to stop this.

I don’t know. The more I think about it the more I think there is a connection. When we were talking about real sex and relationships in class it made the childish fantasies about celebrities seem even more foolish. Even though we were acting like talking about sex was no big deal, it was. Because it feels so adult, you want to shed more of your own childish behaviors, especially behaviors that were reactions to myths, falsehoods and fantasies.

@Comment #14: shakahi on 11/03 at 08:22 PM

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. I never had that kind of experience from sex ed, but I was immature at the time. I can see how it could make you grow up a little.

“Some of it was obvious woo, such as some tea from South Africa”

Green tea is supposed to speed up metabolism, so it might not be woo, although the most persistent advocates of this are “natural health” fanatics. Whether or not the fact comes from South Africa is relevant is more suspect. Anyone have any independent data on the former?

Anecdotally, my weight plummeted after I discovered the green stuff, but then that was also around the time I left secondary school and so stopped eating a massive portion of chips every day for lunch. So uh, hardly reliable.

<blockquote>I don’t remember anyone in middle school with JTT or N’sync plaster on their binders displaying that much possessive rage and antagonism.<blockquote>

I watched Total Request Live every day during middle school.  I went back and forth between ‘Nsync and Backstreet Boys as my favorite, but each day I felt so completely passionate about whichever one I was currently into.  And I would care SO MUCH about who won that particular day.  Ok, I never threatened anyone, but I took my fandom very seriously.

This isn’t some newfangled thing that Kids These Days invented.  People have always cared way too much about pop culture, especially preteens who don’t have much else to be passionate about.

Green tea is supposed to speed up metabolism, so it might not be woo,

Tons of things technically speed up metabolism, including being cold and eating spicy food.  The problem is that the increase is so minuscule that it won’t even add up to a pound of fat over a decade.  I don’t know the specifics of green tea, but I’m sure it’s not enough to make a noticeable difference.

All of these things that claim to speed up metabolism are going in the wrong direction.  What we need are foods that decrease appetite, cravings, and the desire to eat.  People generally eat for a reason.  Whether it’s “real” hunger or some kind of not-real hunger, there’s a desire to eat there.  That’s where we need to focus, because any plan that requires people to remain less than satisfied forever is doomed to fail.

Sometimes its to fill a desperate loneliness and other times its to make a rather boring life a bit more interesting but some people are very fantasy prone. No amount of sex ed is going to stop this.

True, but once they get a real, interesting sex life, the fantasy one will usually take on less prominence. At least one would hope so for the sake of their partners.

The stuff from South Africa was probably Hoodia, it’s suppose to be an appetite suppressant that is allegedly used by the Bushmen when they’re out hunting and can’t take a lunch break when they’re stalking the greater Cape Antelope or whatever:

Several species are grown as garden plants, and one species, Hoodia gordonii, is being investigated for use as an appetite suppressant.[2] However, in 2008 UK-based Unilever PLC, one of the largest packaged-food firms in the world, abandoned plans to use hoodia in a range of diet products. In a document on Unilever’s website entitled “Sustainable Development 2008: An Overview,” signed by Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever states: “During 2008, having invested 20 million [pounds] in R&D, Unilever abandoned plans to use the slimming extract hoodia in a range of diet products. We stopped the project because our clinical studies revealed that products using hoodia would not meet our strict standards of safety and efficacy.”

I also think Mindy Kaling is hilarious, because I don’t think she actually means anything she says. I’ve always admired her and B.J. Novak for being able to write themselves as the most horrendous characters on The Office.

Uh yeah - pickled foods - there are two theories (just reporting, not defending, so don’t attack):

One is that vinegar increases metabolism - vinegar is how many foods are pickled.  Reliable sources say there is no effect. And by that I mean mayoclinic.

The other, to which I’d lend a bit of credibility is that human (some at least) and particularly kids, have a craving for sour - think Warheads and even Lemonheads. Pickled whatever satisfies that craving.  And really, most pickled veggies are pretty low in calories - I mean, it’s a damn cucumber, right? Yes, high in salt, but calories - hardly.

The other argument is that the fermentation which would only be in fermented foods - which most commercial brands today aren’t - is that, like yogurt, it has “live” enzymes and I’m not a chemist - so have at that one. 

Most of this type of info comes from a local, woo-filled health food store, which happens to be the only local source of organic bulk grains and for which I patronize (in multiple ways) them.

Oh, and Oz is touting rooibos - which even Celestial Seasons has - and while it is a nice sweet flavor, IMO, never heard it had any diet properties.  Maybe if you crave sweet it satisfies that so you wouldn’t add sugar or eat other sweet high calorie things? 

Yeah, I thought rooibos was good for you because it satisfies sweet cravings and has all these antioxidants.  Never heard of a weight-loss thing, but I like the taste, so I never really paid that much attention.  In the 19th century, some women drank vinegar to lose weight, but I don’t know how it was supposed to work.  Then again, they also ate tapeworms and used white lead and arsenic as face powder.  Personally, I love pickles, which are crunchy and sour and yet basically calorie-free.  They’re like the perfect snack food (I also love salt & vinegar chips and sour candies of all kinds, so it might just be my taste buds). 

But, yes, American pop culture is unbelievably depressing to me.  We are so screwed.

Also, I loved Kaling’s point that dieting is just something American women “do.”  It’s like we’re all supposed to be watching our weight all the time, and if you say you’re dieting or “watching what you eat,” even if you’re not overweight, no one is surprised (exception: if you are already very skinny).  It’s like a perma-diet, although of course, people mix up what specific diet they are on all the time, possibly just for variety.

I figured it would be a negligible effect (re: the tea), but then I can’t see pickles/muesli being that much more than negligible either.

“All of these things that claim to speed up metabolism are going in the wrong direction.  What we need are foods that decrease appetite, cravings, and the desire to eat. “

Well, there’s plenty of those around too (appesat, etc). The metabolism-speeders will continue to be made and marketed because the idea of a wonder drug or food that eats up calories is very appealing to dieters for several reasons that appetite suppressants lack (the idea that you can still eat whatever being the main one- suppressants may make you less physically hungry, but you’ll still want the taste of the food). It sucks, and we should try to keep the public informed about what actually works, but I think that the desire for an easy way out will lead to some resistance.

I’m with you on the Beiber thing but fuck if I know where it comes from. I don’t remember anyone in middle school with JTT or N’sync plaster on their binders displaying that much possessive rage and antagonism. Were heads just screwed on a little better in my neighborhood? Were there violent threats towards either Corys’ love interests way back when? Did Elvis fans faint from rage not excitement?
This sort of creepy isn’t limited to preteens, by the way.

See also: pretty much everything about “shipping” in fandom. Christ, what a clusterfuck.

  junk science at 19: I actually don’t think there is much of connection between having a real love/sex life and being prone to fantasies. Many people without a love/sex life aren’t really prone to this line of thought and others with a love/sex life still fall pray to it. I think its more about being content and grounded in reality than anything else. Also, even if there was a connection there is no way that you can guarantee that every person has a love/sex life that would prevent this type of fantasy prone behavior.

  Devonian at 26: Yeah this was my point. The Beiber thing just seems to be rather typical of behavior that you get at the extreme part of fandom. Its kind of worse than shipping fights because it involves real people so the tendency for this sort stupidity to cause actual harm is great.

wow, today i learned about the existence of beliebers, the word ephebophile, and kinky bee/orchid porn.

actually, the bee stuff is genuinely awesome (thanks atheist!).

Kit-Kat:  They ate tapeworms?  As a diet aid?  I mean, I’ve jokingly said, when I was losing weight terribly fast due to my thyroid being out of control, that I ate a tapeworm, but I just…what? 

More on this, please.  Inquiring minds want to know!

You’ll never believe the low-down I have on one of the older members of The Jets. You know, “Crush on You”? (looks around) Oh shit, I’m 25 years out of phase!

Devonian, we really need a cultural space for straight women to openly express their appreciation for male homosexuality, the way straight guys are always crowing about lesbians. That way they wouldn’t have to bring real people’s personal lives into it. They could just objectify them in porn instead.

Keshmeshi @ 11, per Wikipedia:

CaliforniaThe age of consent is 18, with a misdemeanor if the minor has 3 or fewer years of difference with the major, and potentially a felony if the major is more than 3 years older. It is worth emphasizing that unlike most other states, the close-in-age rule in California (3 years) do not provide an exception nor provide any defense; it merely lowers the crime to a misdemeanor. Under this law, two minors of the same age could both be prosecuted. Penalties increase if the minor is under 16 and the major is above 21 or if the minor is more than 3 years younger.[44]

^ “CA Penal Code, Section 261.5”. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=261-269 Retri.eved 20 June 2011.

He would have been 16 or 17 and she 19.

speedbudget,
I had not heard it was common for women, but jockeys used to swallow a tape worm egg or two to lose weight.  I read about it during my pre-teen ridiculous level of intrest in horses phase, as even then I was more history of breeding, racing and uses in society/cultural significance books than horse story stuff.

speedbudget, the tapeworm diet was popular in the 1920s:

It wasn’t until the early 20th century that newspaper ads began hawking mail-order pills containing tapeworm heads and a few body segments, touting the worms as the “natural enemies” of overeating. By then, observers had centuries of evidence that some tapeworms produced no symptoms, some an upset stomach and some a drastic loss of appetite—seemingly perfect for shedding pounds. This is exactly why jockeys, notorious for all sorts of off-putting weight-loss schemes, allegedly turned to the pills.

Of course, whether the pills contained the promised worms remains unknown. And some tapeworm species can bring on not just weight loss, but also malnutrition, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anemia and the formation of fluid-filled cysts that can damage organs, block circulation and cause seizures.

The worms (the longest of which can grow to 35 feet) can also put pounds on. When opera singer Maria Callas dropped 66 pounds in two years, her friends reported that her secret, too, was a tapeworm—though her reputed worm is easily the most disputed in history. Some said she consumed tapeworm eggs intentionally; others pointed to her fondness for steak tartare as a likely source of infection.

Still others say that if a tapeworm was linked to Callas’ weight loss, it was losing the tapeworm that helped her shed pounds. Although some tapeworms diminish the urge to eat, or compete with their human hosts for calories, others cause fluid buildup in the abdomen, creating a potbelly—not the desired effect.

Add anal itching and hives to the list of potential symptoms, and it’s no wonder the tapeworm fad died out.

But gut worms may be making a slightly different comeback. Recent studies suggest that a few innocuous roundworms (distant cousins of the tapeworm) in the gut can clear up inflammatory bowel disease. And a Japanese researcher claims that the harmless worms he ingests keep him slim and fight his allergies. He’s confident enough in the therapy that he’s given his wife a dose of worms too.

Also:

http://www.cracked.com/funny-3697-tapeworm-diet/

My office has periodic “potluck” days for birthdays, holidays, or retirements. Every single time, we have to go through The Ritual with at least one person and probably more. What is The Ritual, you ask?

1. “I shouldn’t eat that”
2. “Ooooh, it’s delicious”
3. “I’m being so bad”
4. “I shouldn’t have eaten so much of that”

It’s like Opus Dei, only with desserts.

  Junk science at 31: I thought this was provided by the shonen ai/yaoi community in anime fandom and the slash fic fandom? Granted we might need to provide a space for heterosexual women who are fascinated by male homosexuality but lack fannish cultural tendencies.

Lee, it’s not nearly as mainstream as the straight guy/lesbian thing, which is what I think leads to the echo-chamber magnification of weirdness in those communities. Get it out in the open where everyone expects it as a matter of course. But I guess first we’d have to acknowledge that women feel sexual desire, which would be just a bit too threatening to Nice Guy dogma.

junk science @ 37: 
Lee, it’s not nearly as mainstream as the straight guy/lesbian thing, which is what I think leads to the echo-chamber magnification of weirdness in those communities.

It may not be mainstream, but I don’t think it is that uncommon.  A lot of the women I know, myself included, do have a at least a bit of fascination/curiosity with it, if not outright fantasies.  Of course, almost nobody would admit to it out loud, and especially in mixed company, but it is definitely out there.

junk science, 21:

I also think Mindy Kaling is hilarious, because I don’t think she actually means anything she says.

You mean like Stephen Colbert or like Mitt Romney?

Hershele, I would tag 70-80 percent of Kaling’s public persona as a self-consciously satirical pose.

ks, that’s my point. You feel it, but you don’t talk about it, and you don’t march up to strange guys at parties and demand that they make out for you. This needs correcting.

I’ll have to try that next time I’m at a party.  Just to do my part for the cause, you know. 

I have asked the husband if he’d be willing to give it a go, for me.  Unfortunately, he’s as in to other men as I am other women (not at all), so I won’t be getting *that* for Christmas anytime soon.

Of course, almost nobody would admit to it out loud

Strange, most of the women I’ve dated have admitted to it out loud. Not even, like, one or two. Most.

Pickled foods are responsible for substantial quantities of esophageal and stomach cancer - when Americans stopped eating so much pickled food, rates of those cancers dropped.  They remain high in areas where people pickle a lot - like areas of China.

So I guess that’s one way to lose weight ...

Out loud, as in in public, as part of general conversation for anybody in the group/room to hear?  The way that straight men will go on (and on and on) about how two girls together are totally hot without anybody blinking an eye and not just as part of a private conversation with a few girlfriends or with an intimate partner?

I don’t think talking about fantasies with the person you are currently in a relationship with really counts there.

Yes, the operative word here is “loud.”

Junk Science @ 31/37, the problem with your theory is that anyone who’s deep enough into fandom to be involved in the wank linked by Devonian does have a space to express their fantasies without making it about people’s personal lives. There’s a ridiculous amount of porn written about Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, and clearly no one believes that has anything to do with their personal lives, because in most of it they’re gay pirates in space or whatever. And fandom objectifies the hell out of those men and the characters they play, and attractive men in any kind of genre show. See most of Tumblr for details.

Whatever causes the misogyny and the tinhattery linked to by Devonian, it’s something other than lack of a space for expressing their sexual desires in a way that isn’t about prying into personal lives, because these are people with access to slash fandom.  (I think the tinhattery is just driven by the same self-feeding groupthink process that drives 9/11 Truthers or any other conspiracy theorists, though why it correlates with misogyny I’m not clear.)

Though I agree with you that it would be nice if non-fandom social spaces had better language for expression of female heterosexual desire,  and accepted it more. And perhaps the people linked to there are people who feel the need to morally justify their sexual fantasies to themselves by believing them to be true, or something, so if those fantasies were considered socially acceptable, they might not have gone down such a cultishly irrational and hateful route.

I want Dr. Oz to feed me his pickle…

Sorry everyone, I had to go there.

  Junk science: I think that is because straight women/gay men desires is mainly satisfied through fannish cultures, which aren’t main stream while straight men/lesbians is expressed through the more socially and commercially mainstream media of porn. To get striaght women/gay men desires out we need to find non-fannish outlets for it. Many women probably want to watch two or men having sex with each other but want it to be live-action rather than animated. However, you are also right in noting that there is still a lot of social stygma attached to women’s sexual desires.

  This leads to an interesting question. Lesbian porn aimed at straight men is a very different thing than lesbian porn marketed towards actual lesbians. Would gay male porn aimed at women be the same or very different from gay male porn aimed at gay men? The gay men community in Japan is not very fond of shonen ai/yaoi, so the answer is probably that it would be different.

Maybe one day Amanda could do a post on all the Bieber hate.  He’s not my cup of tea, but he’s as talented as any other 17 year old I can think of.  Is it because he’s effeminate?

Would gay male porn aimed at women be the same or very different from gay male porn aimed at gay men? The gay men community in Japan is not very fond of shonen ai/yaoi, so the answer is probably that it would be different.

On the other hand, I’ve written Drarry, and have very appreciative gay men as readers. I think it has to do with not conforming to the rigid yaoi ‘the tall dominating one is the man and the short submissive one is the woman’ stereotypes. (And, oh, jeebus, the cliched uke saying “NO NO OW OW NO OW NO OW I’M COMING” GAAAAAAAAAAAH) I’m less than thrilled with how slash and yaoi are melding together.

(I’m such a geek…)

  Lyng at 51: The aesthetics of the gay Japanese men seem to lean more towards the masculine side of things than the andrgynous or just looks like a woman with an exceptionally flat chest that exists in yaoi. You are probably right about why Japanese gay men hate shonen ai/yaoi.

  What is Drarry?

Lee: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter.

I’m neither a slasher nor a Harry Potter reader and I knew that ...

I am also amused at the highness of the dudgeon expressed in the media about La Divorce K.  Was there a sentient being alive who thought it would last when they got engaged? I suspect some small part of the outrage is that she filed, not Humphries. How dare she! When he issues a mournful tweet about being stunned and sad and Ithoughtitwasforever :sob:, that neatly casts her as the villain. And we like having a lady-villain, especially if there’s money and sex involved—so golddiggery, no?

We the public can’t ignore that, nuh-uh.

Jonah Lehrer had a post earlier in the week about how ‘dumb’ the tongue is, that so many other ambient information affects how we experience flavor, which came to mind when I got to Amanda’s line “it tastes like discipline.”  It’s neurologically true, that.

About some straight women liking gay man-on-man action: I have some pretty sketchy, anecdotal sort of evidence that lots of *lesbians* might like gay male porn. Anybody know anything about this?

  Hershele: When I was in fandom, I always tended to be on the periphery of it and never got much into fanfiction, cosplay or a lot of other fandom hobbies. Its why I’m not much of a master of fan terms.

  TiminIowa: For the life of me, I can’t figure out what lesbians would get from watching gay men porn. When a het/bi man watches lesbian porn, he gets the pleasure of watching two or more attractive women having sex. When a het/bi woman watches gay male porn, she will enjoy watching two or more handsome men getting it on. There are aesthetic reasons for het/bi people like same-sex porn. I can’t figure out what a person who isn’t physically attracted to men would get from watching two or men having sex.

@Lee: I don’t really get it either. I’ve never cared for woman-on-woman porn, or even that much for lesbian love scenes in “legit” films about lesbians. Don’t get me wrong; I’m delighted that they are available for those who like them it’s not a turn-on. Like I said, the evidence I have is pretty sketchy.

I’ve struggled for years now to not know who the Kardashians are. It seemed from the beginning like it was going to be pretty hopeless, and that’s proved to be the case. I know quite a bit, and this piece told me even more. I enjoyed it though. Somebody mentioned the vacant stare—I saw some or another of the Ks on a shopping channel recently and actually watched for a couple of minutes. They were selling some apparel of some kind that they had apparently designed? Whoever this was, she looked like a junior high kid who hadn’t done her homework and was about to be called on by the teacher and she was terrified and trying to figure out some bullshit to get her through.

The Belieber thing: A friend of mine, an early-middle-aged straight woman, once had a snapshot she had taken of her Huey Lewis spotting somewhere. His wife was there too. She said she wished she’d had a gun to shoot the wife. I mean, she had a thing for Lewis but it was just a joke, I thought a pretty tasteless one. Although the threat against Selena Gomez is kind of eerie since the other Selena (Quintanilla-Perez) was actually shot to death by an obsessed fan. You never know, I guess. Better if they wouldn’t say that stuff.

You should’ve turned on the sound in the gym - the media isn’t trying to fry Little Kim, they want to be in her shadow every minute of the day!

The one thing I know most lesbians will agree they *don’t* like is lesbian porn made for men. I usually have a lot of explaining to do.

I would like to note that I have steadfastly avoided forming an opinion on Justin Bieber. He just is.

Bieber has said something about rape happening “for a reason,” which is enough to make me write him off.

@junk science: he’s a kid.  He’s far more likely to be reflecting what he was told than having any personal beliefs.

I love Kim Kardashian for the same reason I love Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann: they’re all flourescent cancer dyes.  They make the illness impossible to miss.

Eh, he’s 17. If he stops being a douche in ten years, fine. He’s a douche now, and old enough to own it.

Also, Dr. Oz is woo for people who don’t want to dramatically change their diets, stand up for themselves in relation to their families, or exercise enough.

@junk science: he’s a kid.  He’s far more likely to be reflecting what he was told than having any personal beliefs.

Oh sure, because the distinguishing factor between kids and adults is that kids just reflect what they’re told but adults rarely do that.

No, he’s not a tool because he’s young.  He’s a tool because he’s privileged and has never had to examine that privilige.  He’s not that much different than a 60 year-old white man who believes the same things he does.  He’ll be pretty much the same for the rest of his life unless he finds a reason to examine himself.  Meanwhile, plenty of other people his age have their own personal beliefs out of necessity.

I think the tinhattery is just driven by the same self-feeding groupthink process that drives 9/11 Truthers or any other conspiracy theorists

I agree, and I think most of it would be alleviated by getting out of the house more often, which is why it’s important to acknowledge these desires and make them mainstream. That way the tinhats will have their interests validated and won’t have to feed off each other all the time.

There seems to be a whole little subculture in which sending people death threats is just considered a normal thing to do.

It seems to me to be a natural corollary to the trolling or social-smackdown culture; people seem constantly trying to show that they can be better or more or faster than others in their circle.  This would just be another method of it.

Pickled foods are responsible for substantial quantities of esophageal and stomach cancer - when Americans stopped eating so much pickled food, rates of those cancers dropped.  They remain high in areas where people pickle a lot - like areas of China

And Korea.  However, there’s still no idea what the mechanism is, and the rate is minuscule.  Like a handful cases in numbers of millions of pickle-eaters.  There’s no way to know if it is pickled foods or that many pickled foods are stored with metals and chemical washes which may contain heavy metals or other impurities which are unimportant to the pickling process or flavor.  It may just be that it’s cheap, crude, unrefined methods of making pickles which has this impact.

As the saying goes, there need to be more studies:

Conclusion:
 

Our results suggest a potential two-fold increased risk of oesophageal cancer(don’t you love English spellings-ed) associated with the intake of pickled vegetables. However, because the majority of data was from retrospective studies and there was a high heterogeneity in the results, further well-designed prospective studies are warranted

@bananacat, my personal history is one of overcoming blindness from Patriarchy privilege, and I didn’t have any “need” to examine it, other than my desire not to hurt the people around me.  I wasn’t done by 17, so I have a personal sense that even people who are successful are oftentimes not successful by 17.

I see a 60 year old man as very different, if only because he’s had so many life experiences which should have given him pause that he chose to ignore.  Bieber hasn’t, because he’s only had an adult consciousness, what, three years?  Maybe four?

@bananacat, my personal history is one of overcoming blindness from Patriarchy privilege, and I didn’t have any “need” to examine it, other than my desire not to hurt the people around me.  I wasn’t done by 17, so I have a personal sense that even people who are successful are oftentimes not successful by 17.

Well your life isn’t perfectly representative of everyone else.  There are plenty of 17 year-olds out there who are far, far beyond the point where you were at 17, simply because they didn’t have the luxury of waiting so long to understand how the Patriarchy can hurt people.  It’s a privilege in itself that you could cruise through life and take your damn time to overcome your Patriarchy blindness.  Being 17 is no excuse for Bieber or anyone else to be a tool.

Er, I actually caught that Dr. Oz segment and I thought it was one of his better ones. The advice was sensible, though heavily wrapped in woo. I don’t remember all the details but it was stuff like if you don’t like oatmeal (or are tired of it) muesli is a good source of fiber, too so maybe you’d like that better than oatmeal. The pickles were suggested as an alternate salty snack since they’re better than chips or crackers, though he made it sound all mystical by calling them secrets other cultures use to manage their weight or something like that.

My experience was the opposite of Amanda’s, however. I like to have some kind of talk show on when I’m cleaning so I was listening and not watching. Amanda saw them making unhappy faces, I heard them all insisting they liked it and could see themselves choosing to eat it. Their faces probably reveal what they were really thinking, though those unhappy faces seem surprising considering that they were drinking roobios tea and eating meusli.

As for the Bieber fans, I recall in the 80s knowing a group of female classmates who got really upset about Bruce Springstein’s marriage and one of them became a legend within the group for throwing her Born in the USA record on the barbecue as soon as she heard. I don’t understand it that kind of possessiveness has been around for a while, though it has been made worse by internet trolling.

Interesting to see the discussion of straight female fetishes for male/male sexuality, a topic that gets complicated quickly. I’d say things have definitely progressed, hoyay seems almost mainstream, I’ve seen producers joke about the kinds of videos fans make, The jokes I see about slash have gone from “Ew, what kind of freak would be into that?” to jokes that have a bit of awareness about the cliches and indulgences of slash.

One of the things I find interesting about YAOI/BL is how its a genre where you see a clash between male privilege and straight privilege. You’ll find a surprising amount of homophobia among the women who read and create those stories, insisting that there’s nothing gay about the characters they’re just in love with that one guy and the stories would be ruined if the guys were gay. I’ve even encountered one very vocal creator who was a Bush supporter in2004, including all of those voter initiatives to ban marriage equality. You’ll also find gay men eager to mansplain everything that the genre gets wrong about gay men.

That said, both groups are a minority of the entire fandom and, despite the claims a lot of YAOI/BL is pretty gay. “He’s probably straight” is a stand-in for “He probably doesn’t like me” and homophobia is a source for a lot of angst and heartbreak. And just because the genre challenges gender stereotypes, a lot of the stories have the kind of misogynistic elements you’ll find in bad romance novels (bad boy jerks who just need to be understood, “no means yes” sex scenes, an attempt to fit traditional gender roles into the relationship). In the end, though, it’s like anything else lots of crap but some really good stuff.

pepperlad, 75:

My experience was the opposite of Amanda’s, however. I like to have some kind of talk show on when I’m cleaning so I was listening and not watching. Amanda saw them making unhappy faces, I heard them all insisting they liked it and could see themselves choosing to eat it. Their faces probably reveal what they were really thinking, though those unhappy faces seem surprising considering that they were drinking roobios tea and eating meusli.

Objectively speaking, they were drinking rooibos and eating museli, but in context, it was punishment food: it was presented as and intended to be experienced as expiation for the sin of being ... female, I suspect. They were grimacing at least as much because they knew they were supposed to than because of anything about what it tasted like.

I couldn’t begin to address the patriarchy nose-thumbing blah, blah, blah…mostly because I don’t think worthless people who accidentally do something kinda somewhat barely socially positive should be praised while others toil silently to do real good; like say reducing the number of children who starve to death every minute (15) by any bit they (as a regular nobody) can. Frankly, the profit-driven narcissism circus that is the celebrity media makes me sick. I think the only reason I have for even commenting on Kardashia is to lower my own blood pressure a bit.

@ bananacat - you are aware that brain studies now show that frontal lobe development isn’t complete until @ 25 with some individual variation?  So screeching that a 17 y o should be have adult consciousness is sort of pointless.

Phylosopher, that 17 yo tool is a lot less likely to stop being a tool, however old he gets, if people make excuses for him like “he’s only 17! give him a break.”  Being aware that not everyone agrees with you and knowing that making absolutist statements about something you have never even really considered in depth and know nothing about is toolish isn’t beyond the conscious awareness of most 17 yos.