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He was also depicted as the villain in the Robin Hood tales.
Feels about right.
He was also depicted as the villain in the Robin Hood tales.
Feels about right.
So any day now, we can expect a custom porn video where the stars make fun of a meme collector’s folders and then delete them.
I’ve always read that sign this way.
Also misunderstood:
“Do Not Pass” (and “Pass With Caution”)
As a kid, I wondered why my parents would continue driving past those without even flinching.
“Bridge Ices Before Road”
I originally took this “before” spatially, as like “in front of”. So the bridge ices in a very particular spot — just before the bridge ends and your route becomes road again.
Pro tip:
Instead of: “Is this the road to the wizard?”
Ask: “Are you the kind of person who could claim this is the road to the wizard?”
The truth-teller and liar will both give the same answer.
The quality really doesn’t matter.
If they manage to strip any concept of authenticity, ownership or obligation from the entirety of human output and stick it behind a paywall, that’s pretty much the whole ball game.
If we decide later that this is actually a really bullshit deal – that they get everything for free and then sell it back to us – then they’ll surely get some sort of grandfather clause because “Whoops, we already did it!”
First, they sent the missionaries. They built communities, facilities for the common good, and spoke of collaboration and mutual prosperity. They got so many of us to buy into their belief system as a result.
Then, they sent the conquistadors. They took what we had built under their guidance, and claimed we “weren’t using it” and it was rightfully theirs to begin with.
Cuz it itches the part of our brain that looks for status-seeking behavior and labels people as inauthentic.
Being vegetarian places a degree of exclusivity onto your consumer habits, and in the Western capitalist lens, conspicuous consumption has a lot to do with how we communicate our status.
Being vegan stands in direct relationship to vegetarianism as being even more exclusive. This does two things:
Just that in and of itself puts vegans on the receiving end of a whole bunch of cognitive biases.
But wait, there’s more!
Because mass production never lets a social identity go to waste, major brands got on board with explicitly labeling things as vegan, which starts to make it seem like you’re trying to be cool but really just deepthroating the corporate cock to “buy your way to cool”.
And then came the trends of organic/non-GMO, local-first, artisanal, farm-to-table, etc. etc.
At the point where Wal-Mart has their own artisanal farm-to-table cheese brand, it starts to look (to our dumb pattern-matching brains) like vegans are just rubes falling for the most basic version of an obviously fake status-seeking game propped up by cynical brands preying on how desperate you are to look cool.
But wait, there’s even more!
Because, surprise – our brains never actually stop caring about status, even if we think we’re just trying to make rational, objective, moral choices. Picturing yourself as a rebel for being vegan, taking the sneers and the insults in stride because you know it’s the right choice for the planet… is appealing.
And that self-aggrandizing image is inseparable from actually doing the thing, because that’s just how our brains work. Even for the most pure-hearted among us, thinking we’re morally superior – especially in tangible ways that we get to physically play out on a daily basis – is intoxicating.
So the people who are chuckling about the inauthenticity are… kind of right. But this same dynamic exists for literally everything. So when you chuckle at the vegan, but then take a moment to consider which kind of bacon really speaks to who you are as a consumer, you’re playing the same game. It’s just one that far more people are invested into. So if anyone calls it silly, nobody takes that criticism seriously. Not like your organic local-first artisanal acai kale kombutcha.
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Basically my recollection of this episode of You Are Not So Smart: https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/selling-out-andrew-potter
…which I listened to, for the first time, as an attempt at bonding with my then-girlfriend/now-wife’s roommate. We had not gotten along up until then, because she was aggressively vegan and I ate a lot of fast food. But I found out she liked podcasts and I was really enjoying this one and there was a new episode I hadn’t heard yet! She really enjoyed it, until the guest talked about veganism as a form of status-seeking. That didn’t go well. I didn’t mind taking over her half of the lease though.
My Subaru has a similar setup, and there’s a feature for changing the max height of the tailgate. You might wanna see if the same thing exists for you.
Yaknow what does hobble investment and innovation?
It rhymes with “shmonopolies”.
Why are you booing them? They’re right!