Roley: Week of 2/27/2023

Roley

• I am not a person who knows how to rest. My brain is constantly nagging at me that I should be doing something, and then when I get to bed, it nags at me about the stuff I didn't get to. Still, even with the past couple of weeks I've had to look after the wife and kids, I've worked the full-time job after she came home and worked out how to start the blogging and podcasting again as a creative release, plus the usual house stuff and more. As you might imagine, it's exhausting, yet I have the most significant problem acknowledging my exhaustion. So, here it is: I'm a wreck. I will lessen my load a bit over time, and one of the first things I can do to help myself is to stop duplicating effort. More on that at the end.

• For now, let's navigate to the meat.

• Axios wrote an article entitled America The Single over the weekend, in which they note that the marriage rate has dropped 60 percent in the last 50 years. Also, The Hill has an article over the weekend that states that 60 percent of young men—in their twenties—are single, nearly twice the rate of young women. They then go on to mention the declining pay gap, the fact that more women than men are getting degrees, the fact that 1/5 of Gen Z identify as LGBT, more young women are marrying older men, and that, finally, more and more women don't feel like they have to 'settle' anymore. This is the nightmare scenario if you are a white supremacist, Republican, evangelical, an incel, or all of the above. Honestly, I'm not sure who to point and laugh at the most, but I'm leaning toward the incels because they're the ones that are most likely to have a meltdown over the realization that they will never get what they want unless they do the one thing they refuse to do: Level the fuck up. Sadly, the first part of leveling up is to admit that it's no one else's fault, and the vast majority of them have been led to believe they've done everything right; it's someone else's problem.

• Expanding on the Incel problem for a moment, and I might be wrong on this, but that's never stopped me: It would be easy for me to project the characters of Ducky, Brian Johnson, or any other nerdy guy in the iconic movies of my childhood that didn't get the girl onto them, and they might even believe that they are some variation of those characters. I often wonder if those characters didn't become problematic in the ensuing years, but I've never thought it was intentional. What is intended is the choices these incels have made since. We might be able to assume that Brian Johnson eventually figured out how to make that lamp. We hope that Ducky moved on and found someone else. Unfortunately, the incels don't learn those lessons; they don't evolve and expect others to come to their level, believing themselves near the top of the mountain instead of their actual location in their parents' basement.

• The more significant issue that the other subsets I mentioned—white supremacists, evangelicals, Republicans—they're big mad because, for them, the result is that day in the future when whites are the majority *minority* in this country. If the marriage rate is declining, then the buried lede is that the birth rate is also declining, and I don't know what to tell you about that. You're talking about a culture there that would prefer to keep women stuck in the 1950s with none of the rights they enjoy today. That's not a John Hughes problem that's easily solved. I used to say that time and attrition would resolve this, but people like Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk exist in the world and are younger than I am. Time isn't going to heal this, and I don't know what does. Open to ideas.

• File under" It's not cancel culture if I can still hear your bullshit." Scott Adams, the creator of the once quasi-funny Dilbert comic strip, went on such a racist rant over the weekend that I'll be surprised if he still has a strip by the end of the week. Hundreds of newspapers have dropped him for a video in which he calls for what can only be described as a revival of segregation or White Flight Part 2, praying for Boogaloo. Right now, he's telling people on his Locals that he's exactly where he needs to be, but it's early days. I'm sure it's not about money for him at this point. It will be about him not being able to say whatever the fuck he wants without consequence, which is the part they leave out when they finally get to the whining bit. So I would say stay tuned, but not to worry; he'll do his best to ensure you do.

• I've missed a lot of my beloved soccer this year, so I took the opportunity to watch Chelsea v Tottenham (or, as I heard Marina Sirtis refer to them, "Ol Cock ‘n Balls"), and I have to say Chelsea guts me. This may be the first time in years I've seen them at the middle of the table, and they seemed just fucking demoralized at this point. Thomas Tuchel left, and Roman Abromovich had to sell the team because of the Russian sanctions; this new manager seems like a dope. Here's how bad the group has become: They were beaten by Southampton, which is at the bottom of the table. A team that's most likely going to get relegated. There are calls for this guy to resign, and I do not hate that idea. Chelsea needs to shake off this bad year and get a new manager that fits.

• Related: MLS starts this weekend, and I am in heaven because it's the first of two times this year where PL and MLS are playing simultaneously. Soccer is pretty much year-round, unlike other sports. Of course, MLB is in Spring Training, so I can watch the Mariners play during the day before the Sounders play at night if they're on the West Coast. I got the MLS Ticket from Apple TV, so I'm looking forward to a lot of the Beautiful Game this year.

• A bit more on the pickers of the social media low-hanging fruit I mentioned last week. Folks like MTG, Boebert, Cruz, and the right-wing media personalities either know this or have powerful media teams that do: Being controversial equals engagement. Engagement boosts their posts to more people, which equals more engagement. Engagement is their oxygen. They've learned how to weaponize engagement to keep their posts--to use a soccer term--at the top of the table. What can you do? That's easy. You can either block them or choose not to respond to them directly. I mentioned the screenshot method on Friday, and I think that's a valid method to get it off your chest without directly responding to them and increasing their engagement numbers. I keep hearing about 'the ratio.' if I understand that, it's the ratio of comments to Likes and Retweets. The trouble with that is that it's all engagement. ALL OF IT. The best thing we can do is not reply, retweet, Quote, Tweet, or like these folks.

• Finally, a housekeeping note. Monday's Podcast will not only be public on Patreon, but it's also in the main feed to bring people over to the Patreon page. If you follow me on social media, you may see some clips of this in a few places for the same reason. Tuesday through Friday is still behind the curtain, and that's how we will proceed for the foreseeable future or until I hit upon the key to making fetch happen. Or I hit the lotto. It's one of those; I'm pretty sure.