BoxOffice Theory is a boxoffice discussion forum that's famous in the business, with actual boxoffice trackers and Hollywood insiders commenting there occasionally. It's also a site that manages to be even more painfully unfunny than reddit. People can get banned by jannies for the mildest disagreements, even hinting that woke movies are bad can get you in trouble, and people there defend Disney like they personally own shares in the company. There's lots of drama and pettiness going on in there but the site culture and the forum layout makes if difficult and boring to find it.

I wrote a small introduction for context but if you don't care you can skip to the next section

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The Marvels forum thread has been extra smug ever since the movie was announced. Captain Marvel was the proof that annoying internet chuds were just some pathetic obstacles that will soon be crushed by the ever benevolent Hollywood which will result in a film utopia where every possible minority group will find proper representation in unproblematic movies forever. Despite nazi racist incels screaming at Carol Danvers, her movie still made a billion dollars at the boxoffice and Captain Marvel was set to become one of the most important characters in the franchise, and even a potential leader of the new Avengers. And her newest movie will prove that the future is female and that chuds have no power outside of their youtube echochambers. Every disagreement was vehemently attacked, as was every hint that the movie isn't doing well with all the delays and reshoots it was going through (without mentioning the quality of the recent Marvel movies). People there were salivating at the thought of The Marvels making another billion dollars.

But as November approaches and the movie is set to open in theatres soon the proper tracking of this movie began... and it's not going well at all. The excitement for this movie is at an all time low for the franchise and the ticket pre-sales are cry worthy.

It is shocking how terrible TheMarvels presales are at this point. Roughly 25% of AntMan and below TheFlash and IndianaJones. It needs great reviews and promotion from the actors or we are looking at a potential sub-$60m opening.

Worse than the Flash and Indiana Jones As a slight context, the first Captain Marvel movie opened at $153m. Nearly a month ago The Marvels tracked for a $90-100m opening and that was considered disappointing. A few days ago it was tracking for a $70-80m opening and that was basically considered disastrous. Now it might not even make that much.

elemental's OW was absolutely terrible. bold to expect 100M out of a film that is currently at less than two thirds of eternals' tickets sold and going down

Elemental was assumed to be a massive bomb when if first opened and was lucky to have long legs. Marvel movies have notoriously short legs, relaying on the opening week for most of their earnings, there's absolutely no way The Marvels will have the same luck Elementals had, and it's already doing worse

(OW - opening weekend or opening week, depending on the context. Not sure which one is this guy referring to, but it doesn't really matter)

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Now, the jannies have mostly gave up trying to mop the thread so it has gotten quite lively. People are mocking Marvel, start arguments all over the place and argue about random off-topic things. And more importantly, Marvel fans are getting attacked by everyone. (I won't quote full posts every time because the forum residents love their and really technical explanations).

And of its a man declaring this! Maybe perhaps Barbie both focused on a brand women recognised and also on a message they connected with.

MEANWHILE CAPTAIN MARVEL PUNCH HARD.

One of the sexist things in media is the Buffy finale where disgusting man Whedon decides his feminist message is if you punch hard you won't be the victim of domestic abuse. Who could know he was a sexist person?!

This is the type of comments you can expect from the site, and why The Marvels thread descending into chaos is so funny

Barbie isn't an indie, neither is The Marvels. Both are films made and backed by multi billion corporations. The fact that both films were officially tracking around the same long box office range forecast 22 days before it's release is of note. Phenomenons like Barbie and Captain Marvel before can't be predicted that far along. What we can see here is that there is a lot of biases going around. It's hard to explain how one could be ‘excited' for Barbie to open around $70-80m 22 days before it's release and being doom and gloom about The Marvels tracking around the exact same forecasts.

"Why do two films with drastically different budgets in drastically different situations get judged differently? It's just not fair!"

The budgets of these two multi billion backed corporation films aren't that far from each other. Both of them are about very much só corporation toys and made to promote Marvel and Mattel. Never mind the lack of understanding of how box office prediction works, I can't really argue against that it does look incredibly odd to have the positive narrative framing for Barbie opening to the exact same long range box office forecast of $70-80m and the doom and gloom to The Marvels around the same numbers. It's not even about judging films differently, it's just odd.

we could go into it but realistically you will never agree which means I would waste my time so I will instead sit on the sideline and watch the meltdown

I do think that me and Shawn made similar points about how people might be surprised by The Marvels female audience weeks ago, and I do think that unlike the Captain Marvel, there is an world and potential for The Marvels to skew more towards a female audience than that first film. The female Marvel Studios audience is bigger than most people here seem to give credit for.

i think you might want to check out shawn's forecast

I'm well aware. But if The Marvels surpasses expectations, that would be hardly the first time that a forecast of his or the trades themselves prove them differently. Heck, we just need to look at the trades box office forecasts of Barbie at the exact same time frame for that.

I urge you to go look at Barbie's daily pace and then come back and look at this film's

This guy is one of the two Marvel fans who stubbornly defend the franchise in every single discussion.

Female audiences are leading the charge in divesting from superhero films.

: We will see about that soon enough. They certainly aren't leading "the charge" to watch KOTFM though. I do think it's kinda hilarious how people go out of their way to underplay how big of a female audience Marvel Studios does have.

Marvel fans still seethe at Scorsese

When the trailer played before KOTFM, the audience seemed so disinterested. I think the MCU has worn out its welcome.

According postrak the under 25 crowd was only 20% of the audience. So yeah. There isn't going to be much of a overlap between audiences for Marvel and Scorsese.

Speaking of Scorsese, they played the trailer to The Marvel's before Scorsese's latest movie

(KOTFM - Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese's latest movie)

: some long post about Quantumania

Ahh, now we get the revisionist history that Quantumania was always going to do that poorly. Always an excuse for Marvel movies. It can never be that audiences just didn't like the movie.

Just the other day I was thinking where is Zatt Murdock () this thread is so quiet LOL. And the universe delivers. Now the page count is really going to explode.

This guy has a reputation...

long post criticising the way Marvel handled Captain Marvel's character

That's more than 250 words to say how much you dislike Captain Marvel. Impressive.

Nice to see you back on these boards, Zatt. Now I am sure this thread can get 300 page count :)

You know it's truly over when even other autists are dunking on you on sight

: If this bombs, superhero fatigue is real. If this doesn't bombs, superhero fatigue is still real and the reason why KOTFM bombed. Marvel Studios can't win either way.

Poor Disney, they can never win!

I think it's becoming clear that people just didn't love Captain Marvel that much. It got the Avengers bump and now it's coming back down to where it would have fallen if not for the Infinity War/End Game craze.

This would have been controversial less than a month ago.

I think people in general like Captain Marvel far more than Ant-Man or Wasp.

You know, I've been thinking that you sound delusional but didn't want to say anything. This confirms it. Have you ever spoken to anyone who says they like captain marvel more than Scott? I find that really really hard to believe, and it sounds like wishful thinking to me. This girl is exactly the type that marvel is trying to court, and she ranks captain marvel below ant man 1 and 2, and among the worst movies in the franchise (at the time).

And there's no hiding behind the incel woman hater card because she's very much a "queer ally, representation, etc" type person. The character just isn't very popular, and CERTAINLY not more liked than ant man, as pre-sales seem to confirm.

It doesn't even need to be said, the hard data backs me up. Captain Marvel is way more popular than Ant-Man. All the metrics possible when it comes to these characters point to that. Sometimes you just gotta read absurd shit and let it go.

Ok when this movie comes out and makes roughly the same as an ant man movie, we will see how absurd it is. My point isn't that ant man is beloved. It's that Captain Marvel isn't.

They seem to want Captain Marvel to be a stoic Clint Eastwood type character and it doesn't work. At all

Even if she was written to be wisecracking there would be hordes of men who would dislike that as well. Every time a woman does stand up comedy, men complain that they're not funny. I genuinely believe that most men dislike funny women.

: It's quite weird how much it seems like a lot of the most vocal criticism towards women online comes from men that seem to just hate women in general. (...) I mean one of the most understandable criticisms I've seen for prominent women in film is that Gadot was part of the IDF, even some of her online positions or lack of. I can understand why that would warrant criticism, but meanwhile Tom Cruise is the god of cinema and is running Scientology on the side. But it's always something, and don't tell me it's just Brie Larson's Carol Danvers. I've seen a lot of that thrown at Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn too.

True, Cruise is never criticised for his Scientology connections, never!

She wasn't an Eastwood stoic in Endgame or Shang-Chi and clearly isn't in The Marvels either. The closest her character has been to that vibe was in her origin movie, while she was BRAINWASHED. Such a bizarre criticism. Woman being serious = Clint Eastwood, apparently.

Another simp joined the discussion

: I also find extremely weird and funny how the online chatter is now that the ‘MCU is rebooting', ironically like DC is doing and heavily announced, but Marvel never did such thing. It's interesting because one of the online talking points about DC films was that if they were rebooting, what is happening now ‘doesn't really matter'. I could get real money that Marvel Studios will once again blow up the box office coming Secret Wars but it's not rebooting. The MCU true strength is the sense of serialized storytelling, and that won't be going away anytime soon. It just is what it is. If anything, it would be a good day if we could just not carry by ourselves the burden of killing cinema. Maybe Scorsese will find out what Five Night At Freddy's is next week. Hopefully his granddaughter will explain that it isn't really a Marvel property, but a videogame one? Idk.

"Seriously guys, stop bullying Marvel! Bully DC for a change!!"

This is also the third time this guy bitched about Scorsese completely unprompted

In her new book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios Joanna Robinson says that Marvel Studios was completely caught off guard by the negative critical reception to Quantumania. They thought they had a hit on their hands.

LMAO

I wanna say something to you YOU #CaptainMarvel fans. I'm PROUD of you. You're EARTH'S MIGHTIEST FANS. We're together as one. Toxicity will NEVER win. For every negative reply on your positive, hyped post- Block that person and WRITE another beautiful one. We wont stop. Twitter, Instagram. We will post LOVE and show the world how proud we are. NO ONE will ruin our long waited moment. NO ONE. Enjoy every second of it. Let's do this TOGETHER. Deal? IN EVERY POST. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE CAROL CORPS.

: I'm far from being Captain Marvel's biggest fan, I mean, I like her but I'm far more of a Ms. Marvel fan myself. Even named my cat after her. With that said, I gotta say that I find the whole Carol Corps thingy that started with the comics and followed to the films endearing. It's a small club, but I gotta say that this is some of the most hardcore MCU fans out there, the only character I've seen getting a similar vocal fandom like this in the MCU it's Wanda, and I'd argue they might be the bigger crowd. It's just a bunch of young women and lgbtq folk that love the shit out of Captain Marvel. I think that's cute, and a good reason for superhero films to exist.

I wanted to avoid posting twitter links here to avoid confusion but I really need to emphasize just how deranged this guy is

New trailer! In Spanish.

this looks like a Disney Channel movie. No wonder it's tracking badly

Well it has two Disney+ leads

post comparing the new trailer with a Guardian of the Galaxy 3 one

Darn these movies with totally different tones have different trailers?

This is the second Marvel defender I was talking about.

now same guy is comparing it with an Iron Man 2 trailer

Feige stop hiring millennial writers and indie Oscar Bait Directors who can't direct action movies Challenge. Impossible.

There's no way Monica Rambeau actually says "I can see light" in the movie right?

Didn't watch the trailer but it's apparently really bad

Didn't Samuel L. Jackson give this exact same line reading in the trailer for the first Avengers movie? His line reading was different in the film I think but its interesting that they have him saying a cliche line from a 11 year old movie.

They are truly running out of ideas at this point...

Here's the thing. Is this my one of my least anticipated MCU's movies. For sure. But I will most likely be seeing it with my friends and their 7 year old daughter, who loved MS. Marvel and can not wait for this movie. Maybe we can stop being jaded butt adults for like 5 minutes about a silly comic book movie as some coin these things. The amount of people who post multiple times in this thread about how awful this looks and how bad it will flop never ceases to amaze me. I have no interest in most of the horror movies that have released or are coming out and think most of them look like shit to be honest but I do not go in those threads and say it over and over again.

Well, you know what they say-- misery loves company. And seeing as i generally don't take my issues out on other people, seeing highly anticipated big budget movies fail is where I get my kicks. The key is to be deeply unhappy with your life and socially withdrawn.

: This is utterly sad lmao.

Just let people enjoy things!

I don't think there is any possibility for this one to be good. I mean, how? Cameo from No Way Home? Or HK action team of Shang-Chi? Another "good-bye guys" like third Guardians? The last thing Marvel Studios are willing to do at this point is telling a good story or using CGI in right way. The whole multiverse saga is just a mess. No more gimmick this time. And people won't buy it.

: Do you think those are the only reasons those movies got good reviews???

: It's clearly because Marvel pays films critics, what are you talking about

They met each other!

Marvel is not able to touch people's hearts like old days.

: To be clear, you are defining "the old days" as Guardians 3, a movie that released this year.

You can toss out a million excuses and defenses and claim that there is nothing wrong with the modern MCU but the fact is The Marvels is tracking poorly with pre-sales and Marvel movies thrive on pre-sales. There is a problem no matter what the defense squad claims.

: I don't see why you keep acting like The Marvels is the rule and not an exception. Apparently one sub-100 opening out of the last 7 movies is the death of the franchise?

I have never said anything about a death sentence. Never. Not once. I said that the franchise is in trouble. It is in a slump due to inconsistent quality and overexposure. It is not a healthy franchise right now. Please do not ascribe hyperbole to me that I never engaged in.

The soys are like they immediately shit up anything they touch

Disney will allow social media reaction to pre-screens to appear only in the same day the movie hits theatres. This shows that the Mouse knows the movie is shit and wants to keep this hidden for as long as possible. Multiple posters point this out

: God it'll be hysterical of the reviews are not as disastrous as you all are predicting

I have no idea about how much it's going to do on RT score. I am intrigued with Davis saying that there are surprises though. He doesn't usually hype this kind of thing out of nowhere. It's a pointless exercise to try and predict RT film scores, it fluctuates too much unlike videogames MC scores.

Davis works for fandango right? I dunno if hes ever seen a movie that he hasn't liked to put it mildly.

These are the only people still defending The Marvels

some user has behind the scenes knowledge that Disney doesn't have much faith in the movie's quality

our brave capeshit hero decided to call him out by linking to another comment he made in a completely unrelated thread

This is peak BOT. I'm curious, where do you heard about this? Reddit? Twitter? Or are Marvel Studios filming in Goiás, Brazil? It's not lost on me that you kept insinuating that I was ‘attacking' Scorsese on the weekend thread when I was talking about a serious topic. All I'm saying is: what you say about me, take a good look at your own actions. The pettiness is what levels down the discourse here, it's the personal attacks, the insinuations. You don't know how much faith Disney has or has not in this film. You don't have ‘sources', and acting like you do doesn't help anyone. We actually have (had) people that work in the industry, some actually at Marvel Studios around here. Just don't act like you have some sort of privileged info.

I can't believe i'm about to enter in this but let's go.

What the frick whatever i said here have anything to do with the Killers Of The Flower Moon discussion?

I didn't insinuate anything to you, i said what i said very clearly to the person i actually though it was being ironic. I quoted the person and said to him directly that i though he was weaponizing indigenous words to his own benefit, and I'll post the receipts here before you twist this.

If i didn't quote you and said it, it's not about you. But now that you posted a ridiculous rant about something totally unrelated to this thread, I'm starting to question this guilty try of a “gotcha” post that sure shows a lot more about you than about me.

I never personally attacked you, i didn't insinuate anything to you, shockingly not everything that happens on this forum is about you. Frick, even my post that you posted here wasn't quoting you, so why the heck you're acting like it?

And what exactly you're implying here saying where i live? This is supposed to be a threat or a way to shame me? Maybe you didn't noticed but we live in a globalized world, there's something called internet, i don't need to live on US to talk to people that could know about stuff. I said what I've heard, without attacking anyone and not even the movie, i'm not obligating anyone here to believe.

It's kinda funny to read your sermon about pettiness when you're the one that took a relevant discussion from another thread about another movie with things that i said to other person, posted here and get mad about it without anyone ever saying anything to you. Look at yourself, read this pathetic post that you posted here starting a fight and then think about pettiness again.

Eric Mouse ( ) i'm sorry about this post, but i felt personally attacked without doing anything and gave myself the right to answer and defend myself from it. If you have to ban me for this it's ok, but i'm feeling very weird about someone taking some post i did in other unrelated thread addressed to another person and posting here trying to humiliate me publically when i didn't do anything.

Jannies! He's harassing meeee!!

(Also notice how this guy is apologizing for this post, the mop wielders tend to be really trigger happy here)

ZattMurdock has been threadbanned for 24 hours for personal attacks towards other users and making accusations against them. As a message to everybody, while I understand it can be frustrating to see people be negative on a movie you are excited about, please be respectful and courteous. You are allowed to disagree and argue with others, but you don't need to go into any insults or attacks or accusations. We are adults, so I expect people here to behave like adults. Thank you.

The jannies are finally here! And for once they ban the woke Disney shills

And that was the saga of Disney's mightiest defender, RIP (until tomorrow at least)

(threadbanned - not allowed to post in that specific thread, but can post freely everywhere else)

I'm personally praying for Brie Larson because she is going to get killed by the griftubers with their 10 hour video demonizing her.

Nooo, you can't waste days making angry videos about random brave qween actresses, noooo!

what the heck is this movie? Is it for ten year olds? They might as well just put up a sign saying "adults, don't bother"

There's a mini-trailer linked in the comment, go watch it! It's hysterically bad

All Marvel movies are for 10 year olds, mate

The jannie has decided to join the Marvel mockery

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Another proof that shaked the forum was Luiz. Luiz Fernando is a hobbyist boxoffice tracker who is famous for how he tries to spin every possible number in a positive way. He's been accused of being a shill for every single studio out there but the guy is just really optimistic and excitable. And this is what he just posted about the Marvels. TL;DR: it will probably bomb hard.

Even Good Old Luiz has soured on Marvels.

It is so over.

Oh no. Luiz is actually doomposting? I gotta get in on that under John Carter club.

John Carter is the biggest boxoffice failure ever. Recently lots of movies were compared to it, from Elementals (which recovered to a mild underperformance status), Indiana Jones, The Flash and now tentatively The Marvels.

wtf. previews 2 days before. reviews the day before. that john carter club is looking appealing rn.

More users bringing up John Carter

Thanks for the shoutout! If you all want to join the club, now is a great time! Those interested should do so before the movie opens!

This guy predicted the movie will be a disaster for a while and got bullied for it

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This is it! I hope you guys liked a sneak peak into a completely new neurodivergent biome There's a lot more happening in the thread in anyone is curious.

I was going to post this with my skydiving story tomorrow, but I thought I'd get this out the way first instead of making a 10-page post that covers a bunch of unrelated topics. I've also got a manicure appointment for Monday and a trip to the psychiatrist on Tuesday. Maybe I'll wait for Tuesday to cover skydiving, manicure, psychiatrist visits, and gynophobia in one go. But who knows? I was supposed to write a Holly biography months ago but that hasn't happened.

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The Adventures of Pinocchio

I recently read this text and it had an incredible impact on me. I don't know why this is the archetypal book about lying because very little of it actually concerns the deed. Minimal scenes feature the whole nose-growing gimmick from the puppet.

The overwhelming majority of the text is in fact Pinocchio getting lied to and repeatedly swindled. Far more than “don't lie”, the underlying lesson is “don't be exploited”. As the book highlights this is a position you can mostly avoid by living the straight and narrow life, and doing as you're taught.

I related to this book a lot because I feel like I made the same mistakes the puppet did and faced some of the consequences. Since childhood you're told that it's pretty simple what's expected of you - get a respectable degree, get a good job, marry, and start your own family. When you're in your early twenties this sounds like SHIT. You gotta put on a button-down shirt and be a normie professional? Heck no, I'm special, I'm asexual I'm going to be a famous novelist I don't need your outdated boomer crap. You're being heteronormative!

I was swindled a million directions by folks promising me happiness and riches through all these alternate paths. It's false. The first thing I was told was the correct one, and if I had just continued doing that I would not be facing none of the problems I'm tangled in now.

This is not to say that no other life will give you fulfillment. There are good reasons sometimes to not be a normie - you're gay, you're incapable of monogamy, you're horribly disabled, you're a genius whose time is better spent on a project. But the truth is that it is exceptionally rare and unlikely that you will succeed with these paths. Being a boring normie will bring you the most happiness in almost all cases.

I'm witnessing this now with my parents. They're not perfect people, but they did the normie road, and they're feasting on the fruits of their labor. They both retired in their early 60s and they're financially well-endowed. My dad buys sports cars for fun and picks up random hobbies like playing the keyboard. My mom gets to enjoy finally resting after a long life, and she has no financial issues to worry about. They also have each other in old age.

Holy frick I want that life. I want to retire at 60 and have a loving wife to grow old with. I don't want to work until I die, I won't want to rent until I die, I don't want to be poor when I'm old - that is all suffering, intense suffering, but you don't even anticipate it when you're in your 20s because your brain's not fully developed. Well, some people are mature enough to plan out their lives. I'm not one of those people.

Ultimately, Pinocchio is a puppet in multiple ways:

a) Physically - which needs no explanation

b) Socially - he strays from the straight and narrow, and refuses to work, and it results in him being a puppet to those offering him the promise of an idyllic life. If he just worked and earned his own money, he would be no slave to those around him, and there would be nothing they could offer him to control or tempt him.

c) Biologically - he is a slave to his impulses. He is lazy and hedonistic. Being a slave to these drives causes him to avoid work and seek pleasures however troublesome they may be. He becomes a human when these impulses no longer control him. This is the point where we stop being puppets - when the base impulses of our brains no longer manipulate us. If you can get angry and not be driven to violence, you are not a puppet. If you're lazy and you still go to the gym, you are not a puppet. You are a real human - the opposite of an NPC.

So I want to be a good boy, a real boy, a human. How much of me has to die for this to occur? Is it a matter of change, or a case of simply finding the right situations? The truth is that it is probably both. I am in need of social skills, but I also need opportunities to be a human, and they don't exist sitting in front of my computer.

My favorite quotes from The Adventures of Pinocchio

1. You scoundrel of a son! You are not even finished, and you already disobey your father! That's bad, my boy - very bad.

2. Woe to those boys who revolt against their parents, and run away from home. They will never do anything good in this world, and sooner or later they will repent bitterly.

3 I know I have been a very bad boy, and that the talking cricket was right when he said, “Disobedient children never do any good in the world.” I have learnt it at my expense, for I have suffered many misfortunes!

4. My boy, never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day. They are generally crazy swindlers.

5. I have learnt that to earn money honestly, you must know how to do it with the labour of your hands, or with your brains.

6. How many dreadful things have happened to me! And I deserved them, for I am obstinate as a mule and deceitful as Lethe himself. I always wanted my own way, and never listened to those who loved me, and who had a thousand times more sense than I had. But from now I shall lead a different life, and become an obedient boy. I have learnt the lesson that disobedient children never prosper, never gain anything.

7. I wanted to be a good for nothing, and a vagabond. I listened to evil companions, so I have always been unlucky. If only I had been a good boy, like so many others - if I had been willing to study and work, if I had stayed home with my poor father - I would not be here now in this lonely place.

8. He was ashamed to beg. His father had told him several times that only the aged and the crippled have a right to beg. Poor, really poor people in this world - those who really deserve help and pity - are those who , by reason of old age or sickness, are no longer able to earn their living by their own labor. It is everybody else's duty to work; and if they refuse to work, and are hungry, so much worse for them.

9. Remember that every man, rich or poor, must find something to do in this world; everybody must work. Woe to those who lead idle lives! Idleness is a dreadful disease, of which one should be cured immediately in childhood; if not, one never gets over it.

10 Boys who study always make those who don't small by comparison, and we don't like it.

11. “What can I do to deserve to become a man?” “It's very easy; you begin by being a good boy.”

12. Children who love their parents, and help them when they are sick and poor, are worthy of praise and love, even if they are not moels of obedience and good behaviour.

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Being overwhelmed

Life isn't perfect, obviously. You'll do things you're not supposed to do, either by mistake or on purpose. You also can't control random events around you, or the actions of others. Consequently, disappointment is impossible to avoid.

Knowing this rationally is different from experiencing it. There's a deep pain and desire for suicide if someone hoots at me on the road, or if a social interaction doesn't go perfectly at work. The stress is unbearable, and it fills me with intense self-loathing - imagine a bucket of viscous, steaming hate being poured into a vat, and that's what it's like in my head. It feels like my very essence and core are evil, and my continued existence is an act of malevolence.

I deserve to be punished for my badness, my sinister flaws, and my inability to justify my existence. The perfect punishment - cutting. Go deep, do it multiple times, until you can't take it anymore. It hurts so bad but that's the point. Wide, white cuts what I deserve. If you're really filled with emotion you can actually do a nice swipe that doesn't just reach the white meat but also slices into it. You're left with a gaping wound, long and wide. This is pretty much stitches territory, but some improvised first-aid will also work, though you WILL scar for life.

Do it to yourself enough times, and you'll be nothing but dark lines. You run out of space, and you just cut over old scars. It looks psychotic though the act of cutting is done pretty calmly and routinely. You pick a tool, a spot to cut, and what aftercare you'll employ. It's rationally implemented, nothing like a psycho slashing away with wanton abandon. Do it enough times, you'll even have the bandages and antiseptics ready for the aftermath.

In the thick of it, weird psychological shit happens. You can forget you did it at all and wake up with a bloody bed, barely believing what you did to yourself the night prior. It hurts in the morning, but you have no recollection of any pain or anguish, even if you remember the cutting event. I really relate to these lyrics in Stan by Eminem:

>'Cause I don't really got shit else, so that shit helps when I'm depressed

>I even got a tattoo with your name across the chest

>Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds

>It's like adrenaline, the pain is such a sudden rush for me

The impulsiveness, the hunt for the pain I deserve, that desire to continue mutilating myself through facial piercings, it is all captured perfectly in those lines. Being depressed and not knowing what the frick else to do, but the razor blade, it promises relief, and familiarity and comfort.

Can anyone relate to the experience I'm describing? Emotions so all-consuming that slicing yourself is inevitable. It's a choice and not a choice at the same time. At that point, the cut represents everything - that ineffable inner turmoil, every past injustice, all the self-loathing, it's all concentrated in this one cut. It stays white for a few moments, then the blood flows and the excruciating pain hits - what a relief! The pain's not scattered all over my brain, it's just in one place.

My GP referred me to a psychiatrist who'll finally be seeing me next week. I've taken a vow of honesty, so I'll have to admit to drug use if he asks, which I do not want to do at all. I don't want anyone telling me to stop vaping weed because the answer is no, and I'm not arguing about it.

I haven't cut in a few weeks but we all know it's only a matter of time.

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Nofap

It's very embarrassing to admit but I want to push radical honesty as far as I can as frequently as possible. I've been on nofap since 26 December for issues I'm not quite ready to delve into yet. Consequently, the thought of ending my inceldom has become an obsessive topic in my head. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's driven me into a situation where it's at the forefront of my mind and I'm constantly scheming about how to get around this problem.

It feels like having a dirty house - you can never truly relax until you've solved the problem. With fapping, you're temporarily dulled to the truth. You've tricked your brain into thinking your house is clean. If you fap regularly, you can end up forgetting your house was dirty at all. With nofap, there are no more illusions. I need to clean my house (coom) or else I will find no peace.

---

Taking advice

I had previously mentioned my desire to get piercings. A few rdrama users warned me against it. You know what? I'll take your advice for now, I'm not unamenable. I desperately want to, however, and I can't promise that I won't eventually. I want to feel pain and disfigure myself. Well, better explained, I don't want to, but I crave it.

Consequently, my fifth courage challenge is to drive a long distance to an unknown place instead of acquiring my first piercing. This will be necessary to do tomorrow because the closest place that offers skydiving is an hour away, which is an hour and a half of driving for me. This will be the second-furthest I've ever driven. The first time I did long-distance driving was pre car crash so I didn't have a driving fear yet.

The thought alone terrifies me. I keep imagining myself taking a wrong turn and ending up on the wrong side of the road on the freeway, or trying to make a lane change and colliding with an SUV. Nevertheless, I'm just pushing through the fear and forcing myself to do it. The Payton Gendron quote is ingrained into my brain: “I'm doing it.”

This is genuinely the part that is the actual challenge and test of fear, far more than skydiving. I've decided to do the drive completely sober - well, almost completely sober, I'll probably vape some weed that morning as I always do but that doesn't count, it doesn't impair me. But no pills, alcohol, or anything to calm my nerves. I'm raw-dogging it.

I will bring my vape and hit it a few times when I get to the location because I do want to be baked when I skydive.

Also, fun fact: I named my car Asuka Soryu because it is orange lol

In case anyone was wondering, the five acts of courage I've committed myself to are

1. go to nightclub (complete)

2. go skydiving

3. get a manicure

4. join hiking club

5. drive long distance to unknown area

After completing them, I can take the word Coward off my mirror. A lesson from David Goggins.

---

conclusion

Well, going to try and get some sleep tonight so I can be ready for skydive tomorrow. I also just want to forget about work where I don't think I did everything the right way and it's stressing me out that maybe I'm a liability. Lastly, I highly advise working out. It feels very good afterward and I think it's played a big role in preventing nofap relapses - just fill up your time, free time is the enemy. You also feel a little more confident at the end even if you aren't brock lesner.

I feel like I'll regret speaking publicly about nofap but whatever. It is done. This is my truth.

INTRODUCTION- Who is Dan Andrews and why was he important?

Dan Andrews was until a couple of months ago the premier (think governor in burgerstan) of the state of Victoria, the little blue state in Australia's south.

Think of Victoria like New York- what it lacks in relative size it makes up for in population (the second highest of all the states, the capital Melbourne just passed Sydney as the largest city by population) and as a cultural and sporting capital. The Aus Open, Formula One, the most important cricket matches and so on are all held in Melbourne just to give an example.

Anyway, back to Dan. He led the state between 2014 and 2023 (quite a long time for state premiers, they tend to burn out after a term or two), and in that time turned from a no-name technocrat into the most loved and hated figure in Australian politics. I'm going to tell his story chronologically but the drama really starts hitting when the coof hits, so skip to that section if you're strapped for time.

EARLY YEARS- Road slapfights and Lobster Man

Dan got elected in 2014 as a young Labor (centre-left party) leader after the outgoing Liberal government of what's-his-name did approximately frick all. As a sign of what's to come, Dan's first move was to axe the proposed East-West link, which was a proposed road connecting the two sides of Melbourne. The Liberals had on their way out of the door negotiated with the contractor a massive cancel fee to frick with Dan. He essentially decided to barrel on with axing it anyway, and whether you reckon that was a or move shoes what side of politics you're on.

Dan is famously a fan of the Chinx. He signed up Victoria onto the Belt and Road initiative which I didn't even know states could do, and it took the federal government to slap it down for that to go away.

He came up for re-election in 2018, and the state Liberals fronted Matthew Guy as their leader. Matthew Guy is at this point pretty much only known for being photographed having a nice fancy dinner with a mafia don, which pretty much torpedoes the election. Don't worry, Lobster Man will come back later.

One other thing we should note about the early years is his Big Build which starts at around this time. It's essentially just a massive infrastructure project, achieves good results but is also an endless money pit which will also come back up later.

THE COOF- A "dictator" is born

Now, because most of Rdrama is full of rightoid spergs, you probably heard all sorts of things about Australia during the coof. Some things I see posted are just outright untrue, some are true but about NZ not us, but most of the true things come from Victoria, and specifically from the mind of Dan Andrews.

The rules changed a lot around the edges depending on the time and place, but this is the greatest extent of a full lockdown-

• one family member is allowed to go shopping for essentials, once a day

• all people are allowed out to exercise for up to two hours a day, only within 5km of your house.

• Melbourne had a curfew, I think it was 8PM-6AM but idk I'm from regional Vic.

• Melbournians cannot go to regional Vic and the other way around. This was enforced by a police/military checkpoint in a "ring of steel" around Melbourne. This was keyed actually, because it meant I could move freely around most of Victoria and only encounter normal people as opposed to Melbournians ()

• State borders were closed, but that was essentially the case around the country at one time or another. Fun fact, I was holidaying in NSW when that came into affect and I only just got back across the border in time.

• masks mandatory (duh)

• probably a bunch of other shit too that I've forgotten.

This would be the case in various combinations for months at a time.

Now I know this is all sounding very China-y, so I need to make one clarification- most of these rules went completely and utterly unenforced, at least where I lived. I was swept along by the COVID hysteria at first so I went along with it, but by 2021 whichever rules were in place could pretty safely be ignored with no chance to be charged or anything.

Anyway, this is where the idea of Dictator Dan was born. Other states such as NSW's Gladys Berijikian liked to make a big deal about how much lighter their restrictions were, which led to much progressive smugness when she ended up having to do the same thing . This also sparked protests, which frequently got violent- there was a time in I think September of 2021 when the public was just getting sick of it all and protesters were starting to show up in their thousands, but then they decided to take their protest to Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance and treated it pretty badly, so goodwill towards the protestors pretty much vanished overnight. This all spooked Dan and co however, who pretty much dropped all restrictions over the next month or so.

Btw, if you find an Aussie rightoid who hates Dan with a burning passion, all this shit is generally where it comes from. Similarly for Aussie progressives who love the man, and if you look online for five seconds you'll find both in spades (and they'll probably show up in this thread too)

DAN V THE MEDIA- journos are scum

Anyway, this brings us nearing 2022 and the lead up to the beginning of his second re-election bid, because we don't have term limits here. Now the thing is, while the state broadcaster the ABC and the Guardian are progressive and lean towards being pro-Dan, the rest of the media fricking hated him and wanted him to lose the next election.

One of the funnier things they did was apparently his wife hit a cyclist () ten years ago. They found the guy who was hit (who was fine btw) and made that the week's headlines. There was also a guy who had his restaurant shut down over health code violations who claimed Dan planted the evidence to get him shut down without a lot of proof. He then ran against Dan in his own electorate and the chud paper released an internal poll saying him and Dan were neck and neck. Dan ended up winning like 70% of the votes in that seat. Dan also went into hospital for a time in 2021 because he tripped over some steps and the chud news channel (Sky News) ripped into him for initially claiming they were stairs, not steps. I remember watching that program btw, it ended with the host interviewing herself for like ten minutes.

None of this did anything to help btw, he got re-elected with an even bigger majority than before. This may have had something to do with the fact the Liberals were running Matthew Guy against him. Again. That's the mafia guy from earlier. There's so much Victorian Liberals drama I'm skipping over here but it's all a story for another post.

LATER YEARS- culture warrin' and pissing money away

Dan's re-election was based on a big-spending platform. To be fair to him, his mafioso opponent was also running a big-spending platform so it was really a matter of how you wanted your money to be spent. Anyway, all this spending and the lockdowns were starting to bite him in the arse when everyone started to realise the state was in a large amount of debt. To be fair, this isn't really like Greece levels of debt or anything and Australian governments are generally really cautious about debt, but still debt started to become an issue. This led the government to save money by pissing more money away, by cancelling the Commonwealth Games in Victoria. For non-empirecels, the Commonwealth Games is pretty much the Olympics for subjects of the King. It's not very important but it is very expensive, and it also had a high cancellation fee.

Dan also started to play culture warrior from this time. A small group of Nazi r-slurs sieg heiled in front of what I think was a cute and valid protest, to which Dan responded by banning the gesture and comparing the r-slurs to "the worst of the Floridian Republican Party" . Then, a month or so ago he just up and resigned with a solid day's notice and kind of fell off the face of the earth.

Anyway, how's your day? !strayans

1. How to stoically forgive myself after a hanging attempt? 🥺🥺🥺

How to Stoically forgive myself for attempted suicide?

My health problems felt so hopeless that I believed I had no other option but to end my life.

So, I spent four nights trying to hang myself. (Partial suspension with foot/bum/knees always on the ground.)

It didn't work, and now I'm only in greater shame, self-hate, and health anxiety for what I did.

I'm paranoid that I have neck/brain damage. I went to the hospital (they did no scans) and then later got a carotid artery ultrasound from my GP - which came back perfect, yet I'm still in deep fear that the neck pain will never go away and will be a constant reminder of this shameful decision. What makes it worse is that I did this to myself. Suddenly, my other health problems don't feel so bad.

I'd love some help forgiving myself and believing the doctors that I will be okay and the pain will go away.

Since doing this four weeks ago, I'm terrified that this will define the rest of my life. Especially if the pain never goes away.

2. Is my neck okay after hanging attempts? 😰😰😰

Is my neck okay after hanging attempts?

I am deeply ashamed and won't try this again, but I tried to hang myself for several nights. I tried partial suspension hanging - meaning my feet, bum, or knees were always on the ground.

I went to the hospital, and they did no scans and said I was okay.

I also went to my GP who ordered a carotid artery ultrasound and that came back perfect.

Does this mean I escaped any long term neck or brain damage?

Or do I need to get an MRI or other tests?

As all I can think about is that I'll have to suffer the pain of this terrible mistake for life. Which is making life heck.

I'm terrified my neck will never be the same again.

3. Would a neck MRI clear me from hanging injuries? 😱🤔🤔

Male. 42. 85kg. 183cm.

Anxiety and depression.

Valium.

I'm in deep shame and paranoid that I've ruined my neck for life after attempting partial suspension hanging (I always had my feet, bum, or knees on the ground) over several nights. I never passed out.

I went to the hospital, and they did no scans or tests. But my GP did a carotid artery ultrasound, which came back clear.

But since then I still have neck pain (along with other symptoms like ear and swallowing pain) and extreme anxiety, so I'm wondering if a neck MRI is the best test to clear me of everything I'm worried about completely - so I can finally get back to living.

Thank you for your time. I've been living in pure fear and regret since. I'm very sorry.

4. How do you still enjoy life with Peyronie's Disease? 😞😞🍆❌

Since getting this disease I have not been able to enjoy a second of life. Having this disease with all the shame that goes with it has destroyed me. And now that I also have pain, I have no idea if having a life worth living is possible. I know I ask a lot of everybody on here, but I'd love to know how those who manage to still have a life worth living with Peyronie's Disease manage to do so. What are your secrets? As I keep seeing suicide being my best choice to be done with this cruel curse.

5. Psychologist said Peyronie's Disease is so bad that no therapy could help 🤒😮😮‍💨

I'm very much hoping she is wrong.

But as said in the title, my new psychologist said that she thought Peyronie's Disease was simply too devastating of a disease for any type of therapy to help men cope.

It made me feel ever more doomed - and basically confirmed it's all over, with suicide being the only medicine.

6. Best easy-to-understand Stoicism books on Audible? ☺️☺️🎧

I have a lot of Audible credits, so I'm looking to spend them on some great and easy-to-understand Stoicism books. Likely suited to a beginner.

I'm after guided books like How to Think Like a Roman Emperor rather than the straight texts.

As I need all the help I can get trying to understand all this!

7. Why has no cure been found for Peyronie's Disease? 😤😤😡

What makes this curse so darn impossible for medical science to treat? Also, are people currently working on new treatments? Or has the medical community given up all hope?

8. Need help coping with an extremely embarrassing disease 😭😭🏳️‍⚧️✅

Sorry to reach out like this, but my own reading and journaling doesn't seem to be working - so I'd love some advice from you lot on how to use Stoicism to cope with a disease that I feel has completely ruined my life.

It's called Peyronie's Disease, which has left my peepee bent and unusable. It's notoriously difficult to treat. And it's not something you can talk with anybody about.

My thinking problems are that I no longer feel like I'm a man, I feel like my life is completely ruined and is not worth living anymore, I feel that I'll be forever alone, and I worry that this will never be healed - and that I'm cursed for life and broken.

I also keep having thoughts that no man would carry on living with a disease like this.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I'm desperate to find some Stoic relief if that's possible.

9. Does caffeine tablets cause diarrhoea like coffee? 💩💩💩

Struggling with long-term carnivore diarrhoea so cut coffee. Wondering if I can take caffeine tablets, or they cause diarrhoea too?

10. Basic one I'm stuck on. How can I possibly be happy with horrible illnesses? 😞😞😞

I'm new here and have been reading “how to think like a Roman Emperor” as well as watching Einzelgänger on YouTube.

For a bit I thought I was making mild progress.

Perhaps I'm just tired, but today I was bombed by the thought that my chronic illnesses 100% prevent me from being happy, so I'm excluded from the benefits of Stoicism. I was stuck and couldn't seem to find anything that I've read so far to help me out.

However, I'm sure I'm missing something very basic here and I would love some help finding relief and getting back on track.

Thank you!

11. Sticky, dark poops. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (I'm sorry but this is just too many emotions to put in 3 emojis)

I'm 34 days in.

I only pass stools every three days or so, but they are now dark and incredibly sticky/impossible to wipe, requiring a shower.

They are also soft, small little nuggets. Which I guess is better than the diarrhoea it's been since day one?

Wondering if this is okay/normal and I'm fine to keep up this WOE and things will right themselves eventually?

Thanks all.

12. Anyone treat Peyronie's disease with carnivore? 💪💪💪

I know this is a long shot, but I'm wondering if anybody had or has heard of people have any success treating Peyronie's disease with carnivore? As it does sound like the disease is from inflammation.

12 (Extended) Here's a short explanation of the disease:

What is going on? - If you have Peyronies, you have a condition that caused your body to replace normal elastic tissue in your peepee with non-elastic scar tissue called plaque. It has no association with plaque in your arteries or elsewhere in your body. You have Peyronies when your body forms scar tissue in the peepee in places where it is not needed to heal a wound. It replaces normal elastic tissue, often far from any injury, and it can cause deformity, much like putting a piece of Scotch tape on a balloon and then blowing it up. The resulting deformity can be a bend, narrowing or dent, or shortening of the peepee. If you have scar tissue at the site of real damage on the peepee that is NOT Peyronies Disease. That is a normal healing process as long as the scar tissue does not spread over healthy tissue. Be aware that most bends are just natural variations from one peepee to another and are not Peyronies Disease. A peepee is seldom perfectly round and straight any more than noses are all the same shape.

14. Can carnivore help fibrosis conditions? 😞😮☺️

I'm trying to treat Peyronie's Disease, and unfortunately there's VERY little treatment options.

So, I'm hoping going carnivore could be the silver bullet to treat fibrotic conditions like this.

15. Starter stack for treating peyronie's disease 🤣😂😆😄😃😊☺️🙂🤭🤨😒🤔🧐😐😑😕🫤🙁☹️😧😦😮😯😲🫨😵‍💫😵😰😨

I'm going to be proactive and get started on treatment while I wait to see a urologist.

Is there anything I'm missing? I would love your thoughts on my battle plan.

SUPPLEMENTS

CoQ10 – 400mg daily

L-Arginine – 3 grams daily

Acetyl L-Carnitine – 3 grams daily

Taurine – 1.5 grams a day?

K2 and D3 – once a day capsule.

DRUGS

(Also, I'll ask my GP for:)

5mg Cialis.

Pentox.

LIFESTYLE

Carnivore diet (zero carbs)

Daily walks.

No smoking.

No alcohol.

CONSIDERING

I'm now thinking of adding:

Ginkgo Biloba

Silymarin

Bilberry

Propolis

OTHER

I'll wait until I see the urologist before starting any traction/stretching/vacuum therapy.

!r-slurs our god has arrived

carp this'll be good, it's full of incredible retards

Digital Dating Environment

If you have been taken and/or have been touching grass recently, online dating apps are now the way that most people meet their partners. It's essentially taken what used to be a fairly time consuming process of meeting new people through mutual interests, and condensed it into a literal digital meat market. Most apps lie on a spectrum of how much they lean into this. If you're unfamiliar, or are currently dating and out of the loop, the main players are:

• Tinder - The original swipe app. You're shown a photo album, a brief bio (usually a joke), and you can say yes or no by swiping left or right

• Bumble - Bizarre feminist version of Tinder where women have to message first. Usually slightly better quality women, but they have to make the first move in a text and women are useless at this

• OKCupid - The OG dating site, now mostly full of Filipina women looking for green cards

• Hinge - The better dating app IMO. Premium allows for some pretty strict filters (education filter set to college or higher acts almost entirely like a fat filter, it's amazing). No swipe mechanic, you have to read a profile and like something specific about them, with a message attached if you want.

---

OKCupid used to run a pretty great blog back in the day before they got bought out by wokies. They used to run experiments on users and then publish the results. One of the more interesting ones was where they removed the bio of people's profiles at random, and saw what happened to their match rate.

Absolutely fucking nothing

They also tried removing people's pictures and matching them at random to see if they'd connect. On average, people had much longer and deeper conversations (increases in number of messages and average message length). Most women will only message you back if you're much better looking than them, which is kind of unsurprising. You would too if you were getting a lot of attention. When you take that away, and even if you go on a blind date, they're generally pretty happy.

Then they turned the lights back on and showed everyone who they'd been talking to, and more than half of them instantly unmatched the other. The conclusion they drew was that people (as a general population) are exactly as shallow as their dating apps will let them allow.

There also used to be a separate score for looks and personality, which were pretty much an exact match.

---

The whole point of this is to illustrate what turns the gears of online dating: it's photos.

Photos only.

And only the first photo.

As a personal anecdote, this girl I was really into broke up with me and I took a bunch of stupid posey photos to revamp what was a profile full of just average pictures to try and sleep with someone hotter than her. I played with lighting and shot composition. Didn't lose any weight or gain any muscle (5'11" 163lbs for ref, relatively fit) or change my bio at all. I went from one irl date maybe every 3-6 months, to 6 in a week. It's fucking nuts how much of a difference it makes.

---

Redditors and Not Getting Laid

That last section should not come as any kind of surprise and if someone posts that, please tell them to rope.

It is, however, news to redditards. Despite general public opinion, Zoomers and Millenials are having significantly less sex than previous generations and that's a good thing. I am consistently amazed at what people will show as part of their public profiles, especially to people they're trying to sleep with.

Here's some highlights:

• Soy Beard Cuck Redditor

• Weird Gimmick, Unshaven, Fat

• This Guy Respects Women TM

• Awkward Unathletic Ginger with bad hair and no good face shots

• This guy also Respects Women TM

• Average Barista who thinks he's manly

• Lmao

And some women for fun too:

• This Bitch Fat

• Psycho Fat Goth

• More Fat

They also can't fucking text if they ever even get a match:

• Old Meme

• This guy doesn't understand what he did wrong

• This guy thought it would be a good idea to not only send this, but then post it on the internet

You'll hear a lot of shit about women only going for the top 10-20% of men on dating apps. This is the primary reason - most men are shit candidates. They look like this, take bad photos, give creepy ass intros and replies, and then don't get laid, and are completely surprised how this could happen.

What does this mean for drama?

Aside from the fact that most of these people I've shown are dorks, they post feedback threads pretty regularly. Most of them end up being threads about how "Oh your photos are fine, online dating's just hard!". Or they'll tell people that all they need to do is reorder their profiles.

I call on you, hard-working dramanaut, give these people the feedback they actually need. I will find you the first few, and all you need is to give them some helpful life advice. This is your chance to reaaally get creative with it. Here are some bad examples:

Instead of... (Real Reddit Comments!)	Say This:
[It’s your look. Hinge is more of a relationship oriented app. It’s not tinder. Be yourself but just understand that’s probably why you aren’t getting matches.](https://old.reddit.com/r/hingeapp/comments/zdnjkv/im_not_good_with_the_prompts_instead_of_the_about/iz5olco/?sort=controversial)	Bitch, you're fat as fuck. No wonder you aren't getting matches. Lose some weight and try again
[Not sure why your post is getting downvotes, but just wanted to say I think your pictures are pretty good man](https://old.reddit.com/r/hingeapp/comments/zgfwtg/25m_hinge_profile_review/izhphd7/?sort=controversial)	Did you lose a bet, or are you trying to stay a virgin?

You might have heard of xoxohth, aka AutoAdmit, a couple of years ago when it cropped up in the news after a writer for Tucker Carlson was forced to resign after someone doxxed his posts on the site, which included bangers such as replying to a 2 year old thread titled “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?” with the thought provoking answer, "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no." As CNN graciously explains in their article: "The subject line was not censored on the forum."

But what, you may ask, is xoxohth? Well, to get the answer to that, we need to go way, way back, to a week in March of 2004, when, while listening to Green Day on his Motorola Razr and buying tickets to Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, a 19 year old member of the Princeton Review test prep forum named Jared "rachmiel" Cohen, got together with an MIT student, alias Boondocks, and a UPenn Law student named Anthony Ciolli to start https://xoxohth.com, a simple PHP-based forum for law students. Xoxo experienced rapid growth, and quickly became one of the more popular forums for law students on the internet, fueled in part by its pseudo-anonymous posting and lax moderating standards.

Like many online-communities, AutoAdmit over time developed its own vocabulary (some of which can still be found sometimes on current law school forums, such as https://Top-Law-Schools.com). The slang had the added benefit of making xoxo borderline unreadable to someone out of the loop. Fear not, dear reader, for I shall loop you in:

• 180 - A perfect score on the LSAT and used by users much in the same as "based" is today.

• CR - "Credited/Correct Response" - Self explanatory.

• Ding - Being rejected.

• TTT - "Third Tier Potty" - The bottom ranking group law schools on USNWR, which is the definitive ranking of law schools. Means something that is bad.

• WGWAG" - "White Guys with Asian Girls"

• NOWAG - "No One with Asian Guys"

• reptiles - Conservatives

• shitlibs - Liberals

• pumos - after creating an account, you could change your monikor at will, and many users who didn't want a post associated with their other posts would change to it a random collections of punctuation marks (i.e. .,./,./.,/.,/.,/,/.,). Such users were pumos (punctuation marks).

• shitlaw - Any area of law outside of BigLaw (and possibly government).

• Poasting - Participating on the site.

A more complete (but non-exhaustive) list can be found on the EncylopediaDramatica entry on xoxo.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "but these are law students, right? Productive members of society (), who shall soon be respected professionals. These forums must surely be be full of interesting, intellectual discussion, advice on how to get into law school, how to do well, maybe how to find jobs, right?" And in a way it was all those things. But, my dear reader, you mustn't forget that in those days the internet had not yet acquired the feminine touch for which it is so known today. Xoxo was, like anything, a product of its time, as evidenced by a random sampling of some posts between 2004-2006:

• Got a F in class (in which the author gets informed by multiple users that he deserved it, as its "an F", not "a F")

• Rank the Asian Herarchy (consensus seems to be Japan > Korea > China)

• Lehigh University has some hot bitches (which has no comments, as users are too in awe at this sage wisdom to say anything).

But, you see, unlike a peer website such as 4chan, where the fingers behind the screen belong to an unemployed IT admin living in his parents basement, users behind posts such as the below masterpiece are written by a 22 year old, who, more likely than not, will be wearing a suit and making $200,000 within 2 or 3 years:

And so, a strange dynamic was formed, where this anonymous shitposting that could rival even the most debased /pol/ posting was read by a large enough portion of the already tightly knit law community that it lead, for example, to a Harvard Law grad not being able to find a law firm job after becoming a meme on the site because somebody posted about her without her knoweldge. Another strange part of this dynamic is that today, there is a good number of law firm partners, making millions or tens of millions of dollars a year, who started their career 2 decades ago with posts such as Autodinging chicks who've dated/fricked a black...racist? And, also, one must not forget that all of these posts were sandwiched between posts actually related to law school, such as advice on which school to choose and name the best cities to begin a career in.

As xoxo became more popular, it did not go unnoticed by the larger legal community. As one can imagine, such a community is prone to posting and the forum slowly made its way into the Real World™. Articles such as Pestilence, War, Famine, Death…and Unemployment?: An Analysis of the Internet Message Boards' Impact on Law Firm Recruitment, Why are Message Boards So Mean, and Oh My God, You Guys, Lawyers Are Actually Totally Mean! started cropping up all over the place. This marked the beginning of the end for good old xoxo.

Things boiled over in 2007. As taken from wiki (because I'm lazy):

On 12 June 2007, two Yale Law School students filed a lawsuit against Anthony Ciolli and a number of AutoAdmit's anonymous posters, claiming their "character, intelligence, appearance, and sexual lives have been thoroughly trashed by the defendants". Filed in the District Court of Connecticut, the case, Doe v. Ciolli, 307CV00909 CFD, cited violation of privacy, defamation, infliction of undue emotional distress, and copyright infringement against Ciolli and several anonymous posters. The two plaintiffs were represented pro bono by the litigation boutique Keker & Van Nest LLP, David N. Rosen, a Yale Law School professor, and Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in computer and internet law. It was said at the time that while AutoAdmit's reported lack of IP logging might prevent the plaintiffs from learning the defendants' true identities, the case could prove significant within computer and internet law if it came to trial. The plaintiffs subsequently dropped Ciolli's name from the list of defendants, and successfully obtained Doe subpoenas of Internet service providers (ISPs) in hopes of identifying the anonymous defendants. As of August 2008 the attorneys had discovered the names of some, but not all, of the offending posters.

The lawsuit exposed the site to a level of fame it had not previously had, and it became an archetype of the "bad internet," going so far as being mentioned in the same sentence as /b/ by the Newspaper of Record. With the fame came real life consequences for those caught associating with the site and Anthony Ciolli, one of the co-founders gets his job offer rescined and quits the forum.

Still, the forum remained popular. So popular, in fact, that a WSJ article about the law suit started with "For all you AutoAdmit junkies..." And, because this was the in prehistoric times, when we weren't all as civilized as we are now, the forum even had its share of high-profile defenders, who exalted the (now widely understood to be evil) notion of free speech. The Dean of Penn Law, for example, posted a letter on the site stating that, "while debates should be encouraged, 'we all have a moral and professional obligation to engage in that debate in a responsible manner.'" Imagine that.

But still, death comes for us all, and, with time, the infamy and controversy caused students to move away from xoxo to greener pastures. And yet, the site still exists, now full of a few remaining original users, now in their 40s, who mostly posts such things as "Which escort with HUGE TITS should I frick in VEGAS" (not a shitpost btw, reviews of hookers have become a staple on nu-xoxo.) And, after the Tucker fiasco, rachmiel, who still manages the site, randomized all monikers, making reading the site even harder than it already was. On top of this, signing up for the site still requires putting in a law firm or law school username, which no one in their right mind would do. And so, it persists as a zombie version of itself, with a few sad lawyers (or, mostly, ex-lawyers), boomer posting about Trump and giving tips on how to cheat on your wife.

There is much more to say on the topic, and perhaps if this gains traction I will make a Part 2 talking about some of the better posts on the site and some of its more interesting characters. But, for the moment, I had a sudden flash of clarity and realized I have just spent over an hour writing a summary of a 20 year old shitposting forum for https://rDrama.net, and will now go reflect deeply on the choices that have brought me here.

Credit to @Absinthe for the main image.

I decided to take a trip to the Branch Davidian memorial the other day, as you do. I know this isn’t exactly drama, but surely the site has enough amateur historians, rightoids, militiaoids, conspiratards, honeypot-glowies, and all-of-the-aboves to appreciate such a unique slice of small town America.

To clarify, this isn’t an official memorial or museum. The land is privately owned by modern day Davidians, and while a blog I read on the site advertises attractions like an amphitheater and a biblical petting zoo, it seems these are things the Davidians want rather than have. The site mainly consists of scattered plaques with a large space for two horses and two mules to wander. There’s an office that will sell you custom DVDs on the historic events of thirty years ago if you phone ahead, but there was no equivalent to an employee or tour guide. Most of the buildings in the area are private homes, and I get the feeling modern Davidians use the area for family affairs. The chapel pictured above was closed.

The chapel also has a Trump 2024 flag. Didn’t know they made those.

The Mount Carmel center used to stand just beyond where the chapel is now.

Today the swimming pool is all that remains. The space is otherwise empty.

They have this though.

As implied by the donation message on the bottom plaque, the events of 1993 are still in the minds of modern militia groups. The Branch Davidians are seen by many as having taken a stand against an increasingly omnipresent government, with the events of Mount Carmel often cited as the ATF’s first big peepee moment. This has given the Davidians a role in America’s cultural memory that goes beyond their status as a simple denomination.

Even so, The Branch, The Lord Our Righteousness seems to just be a local community now. Though often considered a cult back in the day, the Davidians have actually existed since before David Koresh’s birth, and it would appear they wish to move beyond the infamy of 93. The site doesn’t specifically venerate Koresh in any way. He’s simply mentioned as one of the people who died. (Though the lists of names make it quite obvious he fathered most of the children.)

There is significance to the trees here, as each is dedicated to someone killed in the siege. The blog mentions that there used to be plaques at the base of each one. It also mentions Koresh’s old motorcycle, but that was gone when I visited. I did see what might have been a rusted metal object out by the horses, but it wasn’t close by.

Horsies and mules!

The place was actually popping off for such a small establishment, with a new car coming within minutes to replace any that left. Visitors ranged from boomer groups to a young vaping zoomer couple, so the place probably rakes in more money than you’d give them credit for.

As a final note, the events of Waco those three decades ago are surrounded by conspiracy theories to this very day, and I’d like to add another one. Considering how the city is mired in endless lane closures and pigeon-like flocks of construction workers, I’m convinced the government is slowly dismantling Waco brick by brick. Soon there will be nothing but Baylor University and its pod student housing, and the glowies will insist there never was such a thing as Waco.