Hello, y’all, I’m back on my bullshit. Dis bitch done return to her vomit. Feel free to feign surprise.
So get a load of These Guys, one of my recurring punchbags, https://lorehaven.com/podcast/190-why-should-we-enjoy-spicy-and-sugary-stories-in-moderation/
TL;DR Lorehaven redefines what the slang “spicy” means so they get to use nifty clickbait word, and thrown in some subconscious shade about “what if criticizing things makes you as bad as pr0n, which is the go-to Worst Possible Thing in our context.” Also too the fallacy of the middle, they can throw in some shade about people who watch Hallmark Channel dreck while also pretending they are the REasonAble OnEs in the CeNTer.
The fallacy of the middle ground has been Burnett’s favorite schtick for awhile, because it’s an idea you can get a lot of mileage out of. You can 1) say nothing new nor real and 2) position yourself as a rational, reasonable authority with zero effort involved. I have been accused of using it myself.
Just keep in mind, children, that a false dichotomy is also a fallacy and no one can win, we can just argue. Good thing I like arguing.
Moderation is a well-established and respectable Stoic philosophy that was grafted onto Christian theology by early Church Fathers so that Calvinist dudebros can look extra academic and authoritative. There is nothing wrong with the idea, despite its frequent deployment in middle-ground fallacies.
Another thing Burnett does a lot is complain about is all these sarcastic young people who can’t say nuthin’ nice about anythin’. He actually does have a point here, though he doesn’t know the words that (semi-)serious people use to discuss it: irony poisoning. When he uses the idea, it just seems part and parcel with the general background radiation of juvenoia inherent to conservatism.
Having come of age in the Edgelord Era (roughly 2005-2015), I feel like I can parse the line between juvenoia and irony poisoning. I bingewatched all those Nostalgia Critic videos. Hell, that’s why this blarg exists in the first place, that I was inspired to make an imitation of the same funny shit in my own fashion. And when YouTube graduated to Lindsay Ellis’s more educated style of video essay, I tried to graduate in the same fashion. (Obligatory nothing new under the sun)
And I think that evolution between AVGN-style videos and Lindsay-style video illustrates the irony poisoning that generally defines edgelord “rape my childhood” bullshit. This isn’t necessarily a slam on AVGN or early Nostalgia Critic, because some of their shit is still funny. But it can easily get lazy, just trying to find a more hyperbolic, rage-gastic metaphor for “this seemingly benign thing begets an irrational emotional response from me.” The joke about “Beauty and the Best is Stockholm syndrome goes brrrrrrt” is only funny the first dozen times. This meta-joke about memes is already dead while I’m making it.
I will toy with ideas all the live-long day, most often while being sarcastic about them, but that doesn’t mean the criticisms are invalid. This is where the concept irony poisoning slams up against the tone-police barrier, which is the age-old method to demand that people just shut up. Is it REALLY about the tone, or is it a defense mechanism from having to engage with the criticism?
And that brings us back to Calvinist dudebros. They absolutely love to frame their critics and their criticisms as being immature. Burnett has a particular beef with things that are sarcastic, flippant, or “spicy,” but it’s not his only punching bag.
I bring this up specifically because bruh, buddy, my dude, you need to deconstruct this. Burnett seems to fall in the same school of thought as Ben Shapiro and Abby Shapiro-Roth: that having children is an adult rite of passage and those who do not have children are shirking their adult duties and are therefore immature.
Now do I really have explain how this is patently false, as well as literally infantilizing and arguably dehumanizing?
Does Burnett explicitly state this? No. It’s just background radiation in articles like this where he promotes his parenting book: https://estephenburnett.lorehaven.com/yes-marriage-and-family-are-still-normative-and-good-gifts-for-todays-church/. Why do we need to have children? Burnett doesn’t really engage with the idea, he just presents the clobber verses and implies it’s a dumb question made by misled haters of obviously good things. There’s another article of his linked in this article that retreads the same point and would provide more fodder in my support, if the link wasn’t broken.
If he was a more intellectual type, he’d pull in ye Ancient Church Fathers(TM) and their natalist bullshit, while still also never examining the natalist bullshit. (Which is a whole-nother essay I am kicking around. Look for that in three years.) For some reason Burnett has avoided the Calvinist-to-Papist pipeline, and I am nail-bitingly curious as to why. Maybe I should also do an info-dump on the Calvinist-to-Papist pipeline (look for that in six years).
So how much am I responsible for that association in Burnett’s subconscious, being that I am a vocal childless harridan as well as a shitty sarcastic keyboard warrior he has engaged with in person? Shruggy emoticon. He still needs to learn how to engage with criticism besides his reflex for well-poisoning and ad hominem. And to signal my virtues of self-awareness and reasonableness, so do we all, I’m just a more evolved and better creature on this higher plane of existence.
Bitch, I am so postmodern I use self-awareness as a crutch to make myself look likeable with self-deprecating jokes! Can’t hurt my feelings by pointing out my absurdities when I do it myself, motherfucker!
So to get back on track, is the problem really about people who watch too much Hallmark bullshit or read sarcastic subreddits? No, because this isn’t really about quantity.
It’s why libs and leftists keep circling back to power dynamics (and the lurking shade of fucking Foucault). Conservatives hate postmodernism because it’s largely about questioning authority. Conservatives do not want their authority, their status quo, their Noble [Judeo-Christian Western] Values(TM) questioned. They want to frame any questioning of this as immature and unserious to discredit it and also position themselves as the Real Adults in the Room.
That’s it, that’s the post. I’m still shitty at outros.
Blarg on the Internet 