"The Road to Chad/Darfur" is a scam bait from 2005 against a Nigerian 419 (or "advance fee fraud") scammer, who went by "Barrister Koffi Kuku". AFF scammers are those scammers that inform you that you're owed some large sum of money, but you must first pay a solicitor's fee, transfer fee, clearance money, etc.

Unlike modern scam baiters, the man running this ampaign had greater aspirations than just to frick around with them for 30 minutes and make a YouTube video out of it. He donned the persona of Reverend Belcher: an aid worker on the Chad/Sudan border. The Chad/Sudan border has two important characteristics for this story: firstly, there are no banks. Secondly, Chad and Sudan were on the brink of war, due to Chadian rebel groups occupying the border.

Most of the exchange is from May 2006. Reverend Belcher convinces Barrister Koffi Kuku to come to the alleged refugee camp to collect the funds in person, as there are no banks nearby. Koffi Kuku sends the following email:

From koffi kuku Tue May 2 014224 2006

Dear rev,

I am comfortable with you as well and I hope every thing is going to work as schedule. You should expect my associates by next week so you have to give them security as much as you can and do not allow them to go out to the city with much cash unless for good reason.

Belcher promises a UN escort for Kuku's "associates". He also sweetens the deal somewhat, to ensure Kuku follows through:

Rev.

Just to be clear, your associates need to be aware of what they are picking up here. First, there is a locked briefcase. This is where the $145,000.00 is right now. I will also provide them with the key to the briefcase. There are also four boxes, each weighing about 7 kilos. They are not too big. A little bigger than a laptop computer. These boxes are for you to keep. There will also be some other mail that I hope that they can mail for me.

Barrister.

If I may ask, what is the content of the four boxes coming to me and what am I to do with it?

Rev.

Well, I wanted the four boxes to be a surprise but since you are not coming yourself, I guess that it is OK to tell you now. Each box contains an industrial laptop computer from Dell. The Dell corporation has been a huge monetary and material contributor to the people here at the camps. These industrial laptops are truely amazing. You can drop one off of the end of a table and it will work just fine. You could leave it out in the rain all night and it will work just fine. It is impervious to dust and heat. I am using one right now. Dell gave us 25 of these. I am giving you four of them. They are yours to keep and tokens of my appreciation for all of your help.

The Reverend also tries to learn the names of the associates, but is met with silence for a few days. Eventually, he gets a response from a new email address claiming to be one Fredrick Okonji, one of the associates.

Dear rev. Belcher,

My name is FREDRICK N. OKONJI. I and my colleague MR. WILLIAMS were sent by Mr. Kuku to come to Chad to receive the money from you. We will be coming on the 13th May 2006 and will briefly stop at Abuja to enable my colleague to pick up his International Passport from the Immigrations office where it was sent for renewal. This will not take more than 8hours.

We have with us the map which you sent to our boss and your telephone numbers as we hope to locate you with these materials.

You can inform our boss Mr. Kuku if there are any other thing that we need to know.

Thanks,

FREDRICK N. OKONJI

The trip is to take 4 to 5 days. Reverend Belcher informs them that money is not a concern: the associates need only take enough money for a one-way ticket, as he will finance their return journey.

Barrister.

How are you today? Mr. Okonji and Mr. Williams left yesterday to locate you at the camp to receive the money from you. They are in Abuja now.

The journey from Abuja may take them up to 3days to get to you. I hope that they make it in less than that.

Sir, you are expected to take care of their wellfare by showing them the best and secured route to follow since you know the development in that area.

Reverend.

Mr. Kuku,

Don't worry about a thing. I will take real good care of them. This will be a trip they will never forget.

I would still like photos of the two. Please send them today if you can. I need to update the UNHCR.

Unluckily for the scammer's associates, border security are the bigger fish.

I received a sad news from the boys this morning. They said that the boarder immigration officers of both Nigeria and Cameroon collected almost all the money they had in the pretence of giving them visas and yellow cards.

It seems that the associates are not quite as invested now, as they begin to learn the dangers of the area they're approaching. Perhaps they were slightly misled by their "boss"

From Fredrick Okonji Sun May 14 085136 2006

Dear Rev. Belcher,

Our boss has instructed me to write to you. I an sorry to tell you Mr. Williams is sick from all the travel. We need rest. We will come to receive the money from you when Mr. Williams is not sick. We recieved yellow cards from the immigration official here in chad. Our boss has sent us more money to complete our travel to you .I hope to be with you in two days.

I have fear about the security in the area you are in. I spoke to a man that said the area was highly insecured and that I have to be very sure of where I was going. He also informed me that armed robber seized one of the jeeps and held hostage all the occupants in the car.

Thanks,

Fredrick Okonji

The Reverend is sure to inform the boss that he is beginning to lose faith in the associates. But Barrister Kuku confirms that they will complete the task.

You should have confidence in the boys. I took time to select them because of their humility and the fear of God in them. Both of them were graduates of a minor seminary and have been trained to love God and humanity as well. I had to use these boys because of the confidence I have on them. They are God fearing and are well brought up. Their uncle has been my associates for six year and has been an honest person to deal with. They will complete the job. Please be patient with them and understand that it is long way from Lagos to your location.

He receives a response from Fredrick confirming that everything is well and going to plan.

I really would not want to wait or spend a night in this town again. The people here are very hostile and do not have respects for missionaries.

Belcher sends an email to Kuku with this lovely line

I just want to tell you again Mr. Kuku, how much I appreciate all that you are doing for me. In a day and age where I see so much corruption from people, it's nice to see that there are still people out there willing to help others. You are just such a man. I am sure that you will one day be rewarded for all of your life's good works.

The author now introduces a new character: Benjamin Boyd. Boyd explains to Kuku that Belcher has left the camp with the cash to go help a child who was injured in a recent border incident at Al Fashir. He also receives a phone call from UNHCR asking who he (Benjamin Boyd) is, and who "these men are here to see".

Things now begin to turn upside down for the would-be scammers.

From koffi kuku Wed May 17 093530 2006

Rev. Boyd,

I have tried calling the number that you have give me several times with no succes in talking to you. You need to call me urgently. The boys have been instructed how to get to Al Fashir but are afraid the plane will not wait long enough for them and leave them stranded. Please I beg you to call me at once. They are suffering. They had horrible experience following through the road from Njamena all through Abeche and complained to me how the police and other officials harrased and exploited them during their journey to Abeche. Please tell Rev. Belcher not to leave until they arrive where he is. The boys want to take the plane home and not drive back the road they just traveled. Did Rev. Belcher tell you if he had the laptop computers with him to? Please call me now at xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Fredrick is my friends nephew and he is worryed about his well being.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

From Benjamin Boyd Wed May 17 095412 2006

From koffi kuku Wed May 17 122156 2006

Rev. Boyd,

I need you to call me urgently. The boys are going to go where Rev. Belcher is and receieve the money from him and take the plane to Nigeria .They do not want to drive back through the same way. They were requested to pay C 30,000 cifer each to continue to the border. I am worry because Sudan is a war zone. I want to know once they arrive with Rev. Belcher. The boys should be there tomorrow.

Please call me at xxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

From Benjamin Boyd Wed May 17 123618 2006

Dear Mr. Kuku,

I think that your associates have made a good decision. The road to Al Fashir is quiet and peaceful. The trouble that has occurred lately in West Darfur has all been 300 or more kilometers North, close to me.

I will forward this message immediately to Rev. Belcher. I did not know that Rev. Belcher had money for you. Thank you for sharing. Don't worry. Your business is safe with me.

I will continue to try calling you. Hopefully, I will get through one of these times.

Yours in the Lord,

Rev. Benjamin Boyd

The author notes here that, during this time, West Darfur (where Al Fashir is located) is incredibly dangerous. There were ongoing genocides. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/darfur_villages_0802_2004.jpg

"The boys" manage to acquire a car to drive to the final destination. Boyd continues to downplay the situation, making excuses for not being able to call the scammer.

From koffi kuku Thu May 18 112503 2006

Rev. Boyd,

I do not understand why you do not call me. This is not a child game. Please find another phone to use. I have real worry for the safty of the boys. The car doe snot matter. The boys can ise it. I think that someone shouod look for them now.It will ne dark sson.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

From Benjamin Boyd Thu May 18 113226 2006

Dear Mr. Kuku,

I totally understand your concern and I am trying my hardest to contact you by phone. Things do not always work the way you want all the time, especially complicated telecommunications equipment. We're dealing with satellite technology that is a bit out of my control here.

I will talk to some of the people around here about getting someone from Abeche, Farchana or Adre to drive on over and see what the story is. Maybe they just ran out of gas or something.

Yours in the Lord,

Rev. Benjamin Boyd

From Benjamin Boyd Thu May 18 135310 2006

Dear Mr. Kuku,

I just spoke with Rev. Belcher. He is getting a little concerned that maybe the boys are not really on their way, that perhaps they decided to head back to Nigeria. Could this be the case? Have you heard anything from them?

Yours in the Lord,

Rev. Benjamin Boyd

Boyd now hatches a new scheme: the money will be send to Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) with the pilot of the plane that is taking the injured child. Kuku agrees he can meet to collect the money, but is still concerned about his "boys".

From koffi kuku Thu May 18 172446 2006

Rev. Boyd,

I think that I can be there meet the pilot on Saturday. I am more worried about the boys now. I still have not heard anything. Have you?

Mr. Eric from the unhcr is a bastard. He would not agree to send any of his people to look for the boys. Who are you sending to look?

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

From Benjamin Boyd Fri May 19 114615 2006

Dear Mr. Kuku,

I just spoke with Rev. Belcher. Like you, we are both gravely worried about the boys. It's been a couple of days now and there seems to be no trace of them anywhere.

Please do not tell anyone about this but I have an associate who knows of a guy who will do dirty work for the right price. This man has contacts within the Sudan Liberation Army, the people who seem to have the upper hand in Western Darfur right now. With your permission, I would like to contact this man and see what we can do about locating the boys. What do you think?

Yours in the Lord,

Rev. Benjamin Boyd

Using the SLA is apparently a step too far for Kuku. But he's beginning to catch on that something isn't quite right...

From koffi kuku Fri May 19 141205 2006

Rev. Boyd,

I am very surprised to hear you speak of mercinarys like this. How is it that a man of God knows such things and people? I think that the UN is better placed to handle this situation. What do your friends with the UN say is happening?

And if Rev. Belcher has a plane now why didnt he fly to a bank of his own with his money? Why have people come to receive it in person? These are questions that people have been asking me today.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

Some good news! Sort of...

It turns out that the boys were picked up by immigration police, and are being held for trial in August. The officer speaking to Kuku says he can release them early for a fee of $4,000, if he comes to collect them. It also turns out that Okonji is Kuku's own nephew. This was all discovered in a 10-minute phone call between Kuku and Boyd.

It begins to get worse. The $4,000 is now off the table: instead, they want $80,000.

From koffi kuku Sun May 21 093701 2006

Rev. Belcher,

Rev. Boyd says that I need to talk to you for help. The police in Sudan is demanding a $80000 fee for release the boys. The money that you have is for humanitarian purposes. The boys are humanitarian and are in jail because they are God fearing people who love people and humanity. I beg in the name of God that you to send me the money in yout airplane to pay for the boys. Please call me urgently do talk about this in detail.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq)

Kuku finally gets up off his butt

From koffi kuku Tue May 23 061208 2006

Rev. Belcher,

I will leave tomorrow and arrive thusday in the afternoon. I have to fly to Franfurt Germany before flying to Khartoum. I had to sell a car to pay the airline fee. I need you to give me your phone number and address in Khartoum. I want to see you before I go to get the boys from Kober jail. I beg you to have $80000 to give me before I see the boys so I can pay there fees to the police. Please call me at xxxxxxxxxxxx.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

From Kuhm Belcher Tue May 23 073126 2006

Hi Mr. Kuku,

I am happy to hear that you were able to make travel arrangements so quickly. I am truely amazed. Why did you have to sell your car? I thought that you were a millionaire.

...

He drags on with more bait.

Kuku must defend his image

From koffi kuku Tue May 23 082106 2006

Rev. Belcher,

I did not say that I have no money. My bossom friend Mr. Mike Adenuga who is billonaire business man here in Nigeria is asking me to be a managing director to his globacom telecommuination company. While I am preparing for this, I am so busy that I do not have time to do any business here in Nigeria as I am not even sure of the economic stability, so I am financially tight now. That is why I sold my car.

I thank you for meeting with the police offcial. I do not like him but see clear that I have to do what he wants so that is why I hope that you will help me financially when I get there. I do not want you to go with me to the Kober jail as I think that would make the situation more diffuclt for me.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

More rambling and story building. Then this

From koffi kuku Thu May 25 134131 2006

Rev. Boyd,

This situation is become unbearable. I went to Kober prison and was met with hostility. The officials there denied having the boys with them. I was made to feel like a fool.This stress is more than I am able to continue with. If I go back to Nigeria without the boys I am dead. I have asked to speak to someone at the embassy about this. I will go there tomorrow.

Barrister Koffi Kuku (Esq).

On May 26th, the scammer finally figures out that he might've been tricked.

Smart guy, the officials that I talk to say that your church does not exist anywhere and is not at any camp in chad. The police official is the president? I can see now that you are a fraud playing serious games. What do you gain with this? I just want to know why. I have never know anyone like you. You are a unimaginable bastard pig to do this to me. I want you to know that i will spend my life to find you and when I do you and your family will suffer terrible as i have, I promise.

Good by bastard

Insisting on having the final word, Kuhm Belcher sends an emotion-filled final reply.

From Kuhm Belcher Fri May 26 112630 2006

Hi "Mr. Kuku" or is it Achiu (that's your real name, right?),

I don't usually do this, but as long as you've figured this out, I will make an exception in your case.

First off, congrats for finally putting it all together. I was starting to think that you were r-slurred or something. Is it too late to ask for a postcard from Khartoum? Haha, just kidding. Save your money for the trip back. How is Khartoum by the way? I've never been there and I am really curious.

Second, you asked me why I did all this. I'll tell you why. It's mostly because I hate people that try to scam honest, hard working people out of their life savings. I hate, even more, people that are willing to steal from priests and from homeless refugees. That's right fool; I knew you were a scammer from your very first letter you sent last year. Can you believe it? That was 8 months ago. Wow. How time flies by.

I've got to say this though, you were quite the challenge. I get fools like you to travel all the time but it usually takes less than a month. There were times that I almost gave up on you.

How do you suppose Oney is doing? He is one of the monkies that you sent to Farchana, isn't he? Do you think that he is still alive or perhaps he is getting regularly butt-fricked by the barbarian horde in some prison in Darfur? It's a shame that you did not go with him and the other guy. I could have gotten three scammers at one time.

By the way, did you know that you are famous now? That's right Achiu, famous. For the last month or so, I have been sharing every email, every detail with thousands of other people like me that also enjoy messing with stupid little boys like you. We have all gotten a big kick watching this.

You even caused a bit of a stir too. A moral debate continued for days. Some thought that I was a little harsh on you. Personally, I think that you were lucky that it was only me on the other end of the computer or telephone. There are others out there far more talented at this than I am that could have gotten you to Antarctica by now, which, if I were you, is exactly where I would be headed. I cannot imagine that your family back in Lagos is too happy with you at the moment. Maybe when the boys eventually crawl out from whatever rock they are under, your family will let you go back to Lagos.

Well, cocktard, I've said just about all that I wanted to. When you get to Antarctica, be sure to stay bundled up. It gets pretty darn cold there you know. And if you find yourself a bit light on cash, give me call. I'll see if I can Western Union some money to you.

Blessings

Rev. Kuhm Belcher (also not my real name)

Some people argued that this went too far. The author left a page about the ethics. https://www.419eater.com/html/RoadToChadDarfur/opinion.html

So, try to rest easy about all this. I know that I will.

Here's a thread from 2010, where the fun police arrive to decide that no, this is not fun: https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=145935

I don't think the guy accomplished anything good here. Are these baiters actually going to act as a real deterrent to scamming? Is the guy who got baited going to feel any remorse for scamming people because some vigilante screwed with his life? Can the baiter know for sure that these 2 boys had actually ruined anyone's lives beforehand, or would have in the future? Do the boys share equal responsibility with their 'boss' 'Mr. Kiku'?

Here's another thread where people at le epic memes that the author included in the scam bait: https://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174766

You will never be Holly's son.

!biofoids where can we find you? To date. For guys 5/10 or below who can't use Tinder.

In previous posts, I made it quite clear that driving there was the primary challenge. In this case, I realized I'd have to deal with ramps, which terrify me, as well as the freeway which involves driving fast.

Like a little b-word, I missed my first ramp but I think I subconsciously did it on purpose because I was scared, but later on, there was another ramp that I entered. Sweaty hands on the steering wheel, I had to push my car faster than its ever been, at some points reaching higher than 140km/h.

To my surprise, the fear subsided once I realized that on high-speed roads, most people are extremely forgiving, and generally are just trying to get home. I overtook a lot of slow cars, which is something I seldom do. I also saw a car hit the curb, as well as a car. As sinister as it may sound, these things proved to me that I'm not the only one who can get involved in a car accident - it's pretty much unpreventable if you're going to drive.

The only bad thing that happened wasn't my fault. Some inattentive minibus driver throws on his hazards and stops in the middle of the road to pick up his passengers. It was the first time in my life I literally swerved and if I didn't reach fast enough I could have potentially been a mass murderer because it's always your fault if you rear-end someone.

Needless to say, the fear of driving has subsided, and dare I say it, with some good music and a nice view, it can be enjoyable. I recognize how deadly it is, and I don't know if the car accident flashbacks will stop, but driving 3 hours for the full trip and back is something to add to the cookie jar.

==========

Quick notes from Holly!

The cookie jar is a concept from Dave Goggins. Basically, you collect your best moments in life, your achievements, the times you proved to yourself that you're capable of something, and you add them to a mental cookie jar.

Far be it for me to make assumptions but I doubt any of us here are Navy Seals or ultramarathon runners. Still, we have our small achievements. Getting a job, a promotion, having the courage to break up with someone toxic - these are all cookies.

During your hardest moments, pull out the jar, and have a nibble. It'll give you the motivation you need to keep going.

==========

At first, I felt like I could only drive places I was familiar with, and in the morning when there's no traffic. Now I know I can handle the streets like the OG I was born to be. Send me anywhere and anytime and I can get there.

Lastly, truck drivers are based. They'll literally stop on the side of the road to let traffic pass to prevent lines from building up behind them. Support your local truck driver!

The Skydive

I arrived at the skydiving location. All the staff was gregarious, and I tried to match their energy. For example, when one guy asked about myself, I also asked him the same question. There was a secretary named C. And I made sure to call her by her name when we exchanged words.

There is a moment I'm particularly proud of, even though it's minor. So I wasn't the only diver. I was accompanied by a young girl, probably in her twenties. Gorgeous 9/10 white girl with braids.

She stood beside me and our equipment as we waited for the instructor to return. I turned to her and greeted her. She said hi back but she was very shy. I then told her my fricking name. She shared hers. I forgot what it was but it was a Nordic-sounding name beginning with a G. This is the first time in my life I've gotten this far in a casual conversation with a woman.

I could tell that she didn't want to chat so I didn't badger her any longer (I don't think she was pissed, just introverted) so I left her alone after that.

We then got on the plane. What do you think the most interesting thing on the plane was? The gorgeous girl? The equipment? The view of the coast below? Nay, none of this is what sticks in my mind.

What has captured me is the sense of camaraderie I saw between all the workers. I don't think you can call it friendship. A different kind of love develops between people when they're risking their lives together. I'm sure I'd see the same thing in the military. These weren't bros. They were brothers.

Far less interesting but still notable was how it was obvious that the girl was scared of jumping. Doing this was overcoming a fear as I said prior. This didn't really activate my fear response. On the other hand, talking to everyone there, telling her my name, far more terrifying moments for me.

The plane flew higher, ascending like an albatross in the late afternoon. This time, the door was wide open so I could see more of just how high we were. Again, what scared me the most was not following instructions and pissing my instructor off.

When we reached the right altitude, we jumped - and that was it. I hurtled to the ground but I felt nothing. If anything, it was peaceful. I could feel the change in temperate as we descended, then when it felt like we were headed for certain death, he opened the parachute.

Still, the ride wasn't over. He could do loops with the parachute like a rollercoaster. That part I liked. We eventually landed and I was left with the looming thought of “why the frick did I do that?”.

I want a gf.

Being an advice takercel

So many of you have told me to not get a piercing and to slow down with the benzos. Okay, I will. I will only take my medication as instructed and I will not pierce my face for now at least.

Benzos don't kill you automatically. They frick with you if you abuse them, which I have been doing because I got prescribed so darn much. Correct usage can be extremely helpful in ceasing panic attacks, reducing anxiety, and preventing self-harm compulsions. Benzos are medicine. The devil is in the dosage.

Some skydiving advice - wear gloves. it felt like my hands were freezing off!

A toast!

As I was hurtling from the sky, it became obvious that while physical activity is important to prevent fatness, it doesn't challenge me. The things that make me suffer are social. That's the direction I need to go in.

So I'll still join the hiking club, but that's more for cardio. Instead, I want to join the local Toastmasters society near me. I want to master public speaking, control a room with my words, and learn how to have a presence. Toastmasters is the way.

Plot hole in Stan by Eminem

In the last verse, Eminem plays himself and speaks about a news story he saw (obviously about Stan). However, he states the following:

Well this is bullshit. It did say it was to you. the tape mentions him multiple times, even quoting his lyrics.

1. Hey Slim, drank a fifth of Vodka, dare me to drive?

2. I loved you Slim, we could have been together

3. See Slim (screaming) shut up b-word I'm tryna talk

4. Hey Slim, that's my girlfriend screaming in the trunk

Gee, I wonder who the guy with Eminem's name tattooed across his chest was addressing. The only was this makes sense is if the tape was water damaged or something, preventing the contents from being heard.

You're in denial, it was always obvious it was addressed to you.

Conclusion

My only question is what time frame am I looking at? Months? Years? How long does it take a 156cm man trying to improve improve himself to find a gf. If I had some idea, it would give me hope.

I hope you've all had a great week. I know we're all battling our own demons and I want you to know you're not alone. We will suffer together, and we will find the light together.

• why male genital mutilation is just as bad as female genital mutilation

• Christchurch massacre

• Oxford shooting

Why not write this later after the jump

Becuase I might go to another nightclub that Friday. In 2024, I will get a girlfriend. Too high to get more hollys. enjoy yjrdr

Piercing

Can't stop thinking about it. It's a sign Yeah, I'm getting a facial piericng. Maybe my first won't be in a noticeable but we're eventually doing the face. My old Benzos made me calm and talkative. These just zone the frick out of. I feel like a shameless zombie.

If I knew even one girl IRL I'd be hitting her up. I think I'll ask my Loctitian (male) to a bar next week. I've got so many ideas like making massive straws that rich Westermers can enter in Africa sterilized straw and thirsty Africans can just get quenched like help folks reach their destination

Th aimbian in is the fridge. Don't take it, you've had enough. Therapeutic doses are nice! I just get enjoy alternative states of mind where you arn't being Seft-loathing and anxious 247.

Preparations

As I previously mentioned, my skydiving was delayed to this Friday because of the weather. In the lead-up to skydiving, it has occurred to me that I'm not really afraid of it. The thought doesn't give me anxiety, just a bit of excitement actually.

This is notable, as going to a nightclub gave me fear-induced diarrhea. Speaking to women terrifies me more than jumping out of a plane. If given the option to leap from a plane with a parachute or spend an hour talking to a woman, jumping out of a plane is the thought that scares me less.

What the everloving frick is going on here? What explains this? My belief is that there are things more terrifying than death, and most of them are socially related. Things like humiliation, rejection, and scorn. They are more real and easy to encounter than death so they become these massive monsters.

These social dangers also happen to be expertly wielded by women. Being rejected at university doesn't hurt like being rejected by a girl. I don't know why, but that's the way it is. Women hold this intense power to completely crush my sense of self-worth. A rejection from a woman feels like it's infused with moral castigation - as if you earned it because you're a bad person.

Getting a work rejection or something similar? Oh well, it's just a corporation. I've been rejected hundreds of times professionally. Had numerous applications that received the “we regret to inform you…” email and although it sucks, none of it crushed me to my core like getting rejected by S.H.

==========

Quick notes from Holly!

The phobia of women of women is known as gynophobia. It shouldn't be confused with misogyny, which is the hatred of women.

According to mythologist Joseph Campbell, gynophobia makes an appearance in plenty of global mythology. Most notably, in the form of vagina dendata - the toothed vagina. In Primordial Mythology he speaks of the Native American story of the boy living in a house of toothed vaginas: “they had strong teeth with which they had eaten their victims. But this medicine destroyed their teeth entirely.” The medicine made them orgasm, as is explained in the tale.

Of course Sigmund Freud would also have an opinion on gynophobia. Who cares!

==========

So, to sum up, I don't care too much about skydiving. I didn't prepare, and didn't read anything about the experience beforehand or what to expect. I didn't even research the business to see if it has a good track record. They could have ten deaths and I wouldn't know.

I purchased a skydive from the highest point offered which is from 11000 feet. I have no idea how high that is, but it comes with a 40-second freefall. Okay. There were also recording options. You could pay to have the fall recorded go-pro style or you could pay someone to record you from 3rd person, or you could opt for both. I went with the regular go-pro option because I wasn't interested in seeing my face. I just wanted proof that I did the thing.

They wanted payment beforehand, which I did and was grateful for because once again I was “locked-in” to the event and couldn't leave because I paid for it already. Consequently, I have no choice but to either act regardless of fear (of driving), or to lose all my money.

conclusion

I haven't fapped this year. I'm trying to touch grass. I'm working out at andsseing psychiatric help. Miracles happen to the deserving. People who crush the economy have duplicate lives. Killers hit hard and cheat. But, and, but /Jesus and the ultimate prof then maybe life has value there is something to be done here.

Last thing: why are inels considered misogynistic? As though men wo have gf arent? Clearly hating women isn't a turn-off unless you're ugly. Think about how “incel” killings there are to family annihilators and it becomes obvious that incels are no worse in their perceptions than regular men.

Not talking blackpikll/andew tate shit. I mean a normie is not worse to women than incels. Respecting women isn't the silver bullet (still, be kind to women.) they make it out to be.

I'd also like to write a report on the following topics

Christchruch massacre + royal report

Oxform shooter + legal analysis/or same for Orlando shooting

I don't want to be a narcissist wring about my own life essays. Would you read such a lengthy docmiementl Depednding on my mental stat Ill watch te videol and descrbe in full what happened during the events.

Reddit thread popping off, some users are not pleased with constant trainwrecks -

https://old.reddit.com/r/CalebHammer/comments/193bv66/she_tried_to_manipulate_me_financial_audit

Aracely, 22

Aspiring actress and PreMed

Dialogue? Dominated. Questions? Dodged with several irreconcilable answers. The woman is a conversational powerhouse.

I'm not even going to try taking non-chronological notes, I don't think it would be possible to make it coherent.

• How are your grades timestamp

  • They're terrible

  • Actually they're not terrible timestamp

• Why homeless timestamp

• So, [her parents] are trying to take [her] medicine away or..? timestamp

  • "The therapy most people need is cognitive the therapy I need is dialectical"

• So you chose to be homeless? timestamp

  • This leads into the bus story, bus left without her because she took too long in the bathroom and she lost all her stuff

  • Tried to mooch of some guy,

• "I was abandoned by someone I thought I could trust, at a hotel" timestamp

  • She thought she was going to live with some guy, she said she didn't want to have s*x with him (they were in a hotel room he had rented) so he ditched her while she was asleep

  • She moved out to Houston thinking she would be living with this guy?

• What were you doing at that time? timestamp

  • Livestreamed every day on Twitch to less 5 viewers

  • Has/had a dedicated simp sending her food and money on Paypal constantly?

  • Made less than $50 a month through twitch?

• Currently back living with her parents timestamp

• Grocery store story timestamp

  • "They kept putting their hands on me and I had a freakout"

  • "They were like why are you doing this? Come on, lets bring you over here"

  • She got fired for this

  • Actually she was just a shit worker

  • Actually she just stormed out

  • Actually they didn't put her on the schedule

    • She "checked" and "just knew" they weren't going to put her on the schedule again

  • Actually the "vibes in that grocery store were not good after I said something"

  • "I did go back for my check but that's it"

    • Despite how she phrases it this was extremely recently timestamp

  • Actually she called them up and asked for her job back? And they told her to come back for an interview timestamp

• "Have you been job searching" timestamp

  • Yes, but in acting

  • Wants med school as a fall back for when she "retires" from being an actress

  • "I just need to get a masters" timestamp

  • "And with my Bachelor's degree I can go and be a detective"

  • "I looked at all the options already"

• $8'000 in student loans timestamp

  • From attending a different uni prior and dropped out because they told her she needed to have a specific minor and she didn't want to?

• "I had a boyfriend who actually uh killed himself uh and that's kind of why I started looking more into psychiatry" timestamp

• An attempt to hammer a timeline for her future out of her timestamp

  • "I've heard many different numbers" when talking about how many years she will be in school for

• "If I do finish medical school and it's fricking traumatic then I also have acting" timestamp

• Evicted from apartment timestamp

  • Was having too many seizures? Landlords said they had to kick her out instead of breaking the lease? What?

• Doesn't drive because she has seizures?

  • No car

  • Her mother drove her to this

• Credit Card timestamp

  • Bought a vintage lamp from Mississippi

  • Lies about not spending anything any more

• Insane Expenses, keep in mind her income is near zero timestamp

  • Fair bit of eating out

  • Lot of vaping

    • Got ill because of vaping, some lung issue she has to take medication for

    • She still vapes, often.

    • "It's not even nicotine, it's the dispos" timestamp

      • Most functional potheads

    • Pulls out an inhaler

  • Spending some money on a tiktok store?

• She mentions she also has medical debt timestamp

  • Caleb finally presses her a little

  • Doesn't know how much, "how much can a day at a hospital cost?"

  • "I don't really have any parental figures"

• Owns a dog? timestamp

• Asked for a break after high school and her mother said no timestamp

  • Her mother said if she didn't go to college she was getting kicked out?

• "I got invited to do a lot of auditions" timestamp

• Helping promote her friend's music timestamp

  • Her friend is actually earning money?

• You were just earning money two weeks ago where did it go? timestamp

  • Her therapist just charged her for the first time

    • She said the therapist was free earlier in the conversation

  • "I don't know why he charged me"

    • "It was probably a copay"

      • "It was a copay"

  • "I called my bank to ask them why I was getting charged"

  • "I will ask [my therapist] why next time"

I don't know, I feel like I might regret revealing the personal information I'm going to share in this post, but let's go.

There are so many ways to approach life, and two people dealing with the same situations can take wildly varying responses to it. Prison is a good example. Others break down and become hopeless. Some become mentally calloused and emerge stronger and more psychologically stronger.

Sometimes I wonder about events in my own life, and whether I'm viewing them from the correct perspective. Do you relate? Let's take inceldom for example. At times I'm doggedly determined to bring a new life for myself. Other times it feels like I'm just being stupid and that that everything I'm trying will lead to nothing.

But who knows what life will bring? Nobody can predict that kind of thing. Well, I can be certain that suffering is coming my way because that is the nature of life. However, love is not promised. I hope I become someone worthy of life, and find the strength to withstand suffering.

Today's post will cover a bit of psychiatry as well as a discussion on some of the difficulties of escaping inceldom. I always enjoy writing these. If you're the only person reading this, then that's more than enough. It's nice to write and remind myself that my life is real, and there are other people out there.

Bipolar & OCD

After jumping through multiple hoops, I was finally able to see a psychiatrist. My issues were explained, and we had a long conversation. He asked a lot about my sexual life which was uncomfortable because I basically had to explain my inceldom. It's weird how he almost instantly detected I was an incel. First, he asked me about my orientation, which I think he was doubtful about because I'm wearing pink nail polish. Then he asked me “have you ever had a girlfriend?” instead of “do you have a girlfriend?” or “when's the last time you had a girlfriend?”. He just knows.

I was asked to fill out a bunch of questionnaires that asked me a ton of questions about my life, past, and symptoms. After looking at the questionnaire and speaking to me, he concluded that I was bipolar and OCD.

The OCD diagnosis clicked immediately with me, and it explained the nature of my self-harming and its relationship with my endless stream of self-loathing thoughts. I had never considered it, but my self-harm is of an OCD nature, and I'm driven by obsessive thoughts of self-punishment and self-loathing, which leads to impulses I struggle with and fail to control. There is also a ritual to the self-harm event, a list of things I have to do before and after. Like holy frick can I get the hand-washing or “is the oven on” OCD and not the “you must rip yourself to shreds” one? This is the worst form of OCD.

Studies on the topic have been quite revelatory to me:

The second observation was based on our patients' description of their acts of self-harm as compulsive, ritualistic, meticulous, and painless. Lack of pain during self-harm has been associated to depersonalization, hysteria, or a transient analgesic state (Simpson, 1973; Takeuchi et al, 1986; Favazza & Conterio, 1989). Our patients seem to fall into the category of describing their act of self-harm as a transient analgesic state usually followed by pleasure, release of tension, or a feeling of well-being

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fugen-Neziroglu/publication/15305679_Self-mutilation_anorexia_and_dysmenorrhea_in_obsessive_compulsive_disorder/links/5a020f560f7e9b6887472acc/Self-mutilation-anorexia-and-dysmenorrhea-in-obsessive-compulsive-disorder.pdf

I've stated this prior, but please don't self-harm. I know that I'm not the only one here who does this, and we all have our reasons. However, if you have some control over it, exercise it and don't do it. If you must, do it somewhere clothes can cover. You DO NOT want an arm full of cut marks. It will permanently stigmatize you. Regardless of where you self-harm, you're going to have to confront it if you ever get intimate with anyone, so it could easily extend your inceldom and leave you with lifelong body insecurities (and you have a genuine reason to be insecure because you mutilated your body you fricking crazy person).

A few cuts are one thing, especially if you're a girl. Your bf will kiss your scars. When it's clear you're in the triple digits with the cuts, it's a different matter. You look unstable (you are). It's clear it wasn't a “moment of weakness” but a lifelong mental illness that is violent in nature. Any streetsmart person is going to frick off because nothing good comes from folks like us. We sink to rock bottom and we drag you down with us - but of course, there will be folks (especially women) who are naive enough to think they can help or heal us with love.

==========

Quick notes from Holly!

So we all probably have habits and routines in our lives. That's normal. It's also normal to have intrusive thoughts at times, you know, things you think about that you probably don't want to or know are immoral. The common one people talk about is imagining just veering in front of oncoming traffic when driving. Furthermore, we all have things we do repetitively. As has often been said, humans are creatures of habit.

With OCD, all these normal traits are cranked to the max. It has to make you incapable of leading a normal life before it is considered a disorder. While I fortunately don't suffer from routine obsession (though the act of self-harming does follow a ritual), the obsessive thought of harming myself, and what I might do to myself is constant and unending. I know I am a danger to myself, that I am a bad person, and that a cutting is in order. The thought - the compulsion - is obsessive and all-consuming.

There is no escaping it. Submitting to the compulsion brings relief. But it does not end the compulsion. The thoughts will return and once again, I will be driven to the behavior which prevents me from living a normal life, one where I'm not constantly injuring myself.

==========

The bipolar diagnosis, I was not what I was expecting. However, there is a history of both diagnosed and undiagnosed psychosis in my family so I don't question it too much. I also considered my overall personality, and it may lead to atypical manifestations of bipolar that don't precisely match the stereotypes of the mental disorder.

It also shines a light that maybe I was the butthole in some situations. My PhD supervisor was mean to me, but he was also always pissed off at how I was constantly changing my thesis and throwing in a bunch of new ideas that didn't always make sense. I feel like I was kind of going hypomania on him, which makes me understand a little better why I might have pissed him off and made him not like me. It's not easy to work with someone who changes their strategic vision every week. To me, it felt like being creative. To him, it must have been impossible to work with me, especially when I refused to believe I was wrong about anything.

Some interesting research about BD and self-harm:

Previous research has found that individuals with mood disorders engage in self-harm at a higher rate than individuals with other DSM diagnoses (Selby et al., 2012). We found that individuals with bipolar disorder engage in self-harm at higher rates than individuals with a unipolar depressive disorder (52% versus 37%, respectively). This finding expands previous research showing that suicide and suicidal attempts (in addition to self-harm found in this study) are greater in individuals with bipolar disorder compared to unipolar depressive disorders (Rihmer and Kiss, 2002).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679240

I feel like this highlights why I need a friend, not even a girlfriend, but just a friend. Someone who can tell me, “hey man, don't get piercings all over your face, you're going to regret it in a couple of months.” Imagine if I had been treated years earlier. I might have my PhD now.

So I got some antipsychotics and more yummy benzos. Feelig light is weight, it jut's sad I don't have anyone in real to talk about different benzos and the varied types of bliss they bring. The previous stuff mad me calm and function. This one feels far for "disinhibiting" and is already doing a number on my memoy and ability to focus. I brought an embien to my room but I lost it already. Oh well.

Honestly, they prescribe benzos like candy wtf just tell a doctor of any sort you're self-harming and if it's disturbing enough they'll fill your medicine cabinet with this shit. Indubitably, I've got enough to sell on the side at this point. I'm not complaining, the druggie life is based and I'm worthless, but holy shit I wonder how many normies they're turning into repeat customers forever while frying their memory. I wrote my life is worthless on something work-related, and it just got detered. It ws a surreptitious scry for help.

Why skydiving?

What does this have to do with finding a girlfriend?

Directly? Nothing at all. Both these tests of courage won't get me a gf. My hope is that they force me out of my comfort zone so that when I am in situations where I could acquire a gf, I know what to do to fight through the fear and act. I don't want another S.H. situation where I crush for ages and then get heartbroken after months of being in love. If I like a girl, I just want the yes or no immediately so I can move on. That only happens if I speak as soon as possible.

Secondly, these are opportunities to interact with human beings. Sure, these are humans more or less paid to be nice to me, but I think I still do learn some social skills by interacting with people, even if they're at work. Hopefully, these skills will help me speak to men and women (mostly women though).

There is also the matter of filling up my time and spending my money so I don't spend it on vices. This is pivotal to nofap, as having free time is one of the biggest things that can cause me to fail. I also have to deal with the craving to simply buy women's time. I have previously discussed my idea to buy a high-end escort for non-sexual purposes. The truth is that if I ever did something like that, it would inevitably end in s*x.

Maybe not the first time, maybe not the second time, but it would eventually happen. I would pay for s*x. The whole idea was just tiptoeing into prostitution as a solution to loneliness, fooling myself into thinking I tripped and fell into it accidentally. That was the only way it was going to end.

I'm a poorcel, so I can't afford both skydiving and escorting. So by skydiving, I've made escorting impossible. Basically forced myself to do the right thing by making the wrong thing impossible. Also, there's a non-zero chance I'll meet a skydiving cutie lol

This leads me to my next problem.

Where to find women?/

Online doesn't work (I've tried Tinder and other apps, never had a match ever). My only shot is a real-life situation where I can speak to someone and hopefully attract a nice woman with my personality because my looks and height kinda frick me over on first impressions. I have no hope online.

I've joined a hiking club and the first hike is on Saturday. I'm hoping I meet a girl there. I'm doing it for the cardio (I want to remain at the group) but also to

If you go online and look up “how to get a gf”, plenty of sites suggest you try volunteering. Let me explain why this is a meme.

You usually pay to volunteer

You thought that shit was free neighbor lol. You pay to be there most of the time, especially if it concerns animals.

2. It takes place during the day, sometimes for multiple days

Want to volunteer at the animal shelter? First you need to complete a course, which probably takes a whole week or two. You got the chance to take two weeks off work to learn how to clip dog toenails?

3. It's filled with minors and old people

I visited the volunteering websites around me. All the pictures feature either boomers or high school kids. These are the only people with time to do this shit. You're not meeting single 20-something year old women here. I don't know where they are, but they aren't out volunteering lol.

This is amazing. Literal hallucinations. It did leaked too muc drownziness and my inceldim feel amplified because I want to share this warm, loving world here lol. The drowziness is getting fierce fast, but normies get this emotional happiness when they gf I would, it's all's missing. Imagine walking through the mall, holding your girl's hand. I want to experience. Im also going to join Toastermasters - that's public speaking. I know I can write the best speeches and outcompete everyone. I don't if I'll be a good hiker.

My remaining ideas are hence the following:

work on nightclub club game

Mormon church

Attend as many events as possible around me

Hiking club

I'm hoping for the easy road. Just find a cutie at the hiking club on the first week, we get married the following week and this Incel nightmare is finally over. But I know at this point that life doesn't work this way.

Conclusion

In 2024, I will get a gf. Sorry, very confusing. I forget what I'm doing. I lost an ambin pill but that's okay i think just enjoying this is based. Weeed dabing while I listen to Midnight mauraudres by /A Tribe Called Quest RIP 5 foot freak very based benzo. Imagine if my dentist gives me more benzos loli lost my ambien pill but it doesn't matter. Versed did its job.

Greetings Dramastrags1!

Back in 2006 some farmers in Safrica had the galaxy brained idea to invest massively into what would be described in Afrikaans newspapers as Etanol!

Now I was like 13-14 years old approximately when this fricking shitshow went down in the Free State, Northern Cape and Gauteng provinces, so please forgive me if this is likely the least accurate Longpost I have ever posted. I was only a rugrat, and my memory is hazy additionally Google fricking sux donkey balz and is literally getting worse by the year.

Combined with linkrot, and that most best news of the past was on Newspapers, and not web articles, I have to try and piece this together into something resembling truth.

Back in the year 2000, a Boer farmer came back from Burgerland, where he had attended a conference on creating biofuel from agricultural produce, for the sake of combatting Climate Change, and to create a future substitute for the finite coal and liquid dinosaur we use to fuel our cars and electrical generators.

In 2006, Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth was big in the conscience of Safrikans at least (no idea how he was viewed back home), and a lot of people were discussing the necessity of preparing for a post oil/coal world. At that moment in time, a lot of people also feared that the scum in the Arab-Oil countries was too dominant in their monopolistic supply of oil, and had the earth entire's balls in their hands. Regardless of where RSA would find itself in an ideological conflict, it wasn't a nice feeling , considering 99% of RSA both back then and now was generated via burning coal.

Additionally at that moment in time, RSA's trains and railway system was degrading at the speed of light, and lorries were becomming the main form of transport of goods to all inland villages and towns and cities, and would be especially vulnerable to any chainsupply disruption, you know the same way Europe cucked itself when it made itself dependent on Russian gas prior to the Ukraine invasion.

Well the farmer Hannes Haasbroek (surname literally translated as rabbit-pants ) had been raving for 6 years at this point about the benefits of biofuel, especially Ethanol, as the Amerikan conference he had attented the agriculture conference in the United States six years ago, and was inspired by the novel and potentially lucrative idea of distilling maize into bioethanol fuel for vehicles.

The reason being that South Africa was a massive producer and exporter of both White Maize, Sweet Maize, and Yellow Maize, and thus had the already pre-existing agricultural resources and farmlands ready to extract raw materials from, should such a nationalized endeavor ever be undergone by SA.

https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/61085/south-africa-ethanol-boon-or-bust

======(from article)

The fertile fields that appear to stretch unbroken across Free State Province, South Africa's heartland and breadbasket, may well prove the epicentre of an economic revolution as significant as the discovery of gold and diamonds more than 100 years earlier.

The plan is deceptively simple: turn food into fuel.

Bioethanol is an alcohol refined from almost any starch crop humans eat - maize, sugar cane, beetroot, wheat - and is championed by supporters as both an environmental and economic panacea to the world's dependence on fast-disappearing fossil fuels.

Ethanol emits much less carbon dioxide (CO2) gas than regular gasoline, is cheaper to buy and, unlike oil or coal, is a renewable source of energy: simply plant more of it if you run out.

The reigning kings of the global biofuel industry are the United States and Brazil, where millions of tons of sugar - a staple crop in the South American country - are processed into an astonishing 16 billion litres of ethanol annually.

Brazilians are literally driving on sugar. Most of Brazil's service stations offer ethanol at a substantially lower price than traditional gasoline, and the country has replaced about 40 percent of its gasoline consumption by switching to ethanol, a sweet dividend with oil prices hovering around US$70 a barrel.

"Africans have the potential to become the Arabs of the biofuel industry," said Johan Hoffman, chief executive of Ethanol Africa, the company that plans to build eight biofuel factories across South Africa.

"There is a potential to use vast areas of this massive continent for biofuel production, and all that is needed is water and an electricity supply," Hoffman said. "Africa has the potential to provide energy for the world - who is going to supply the growing economies of China and India? We already know there is a finite amount of oil left in the earth, and it is being used in enormous quantities and will soon be gone."

While bioethanol might be the tonic that quenches the world's thirst for energy, it also holds the promise of bettering the lives of thousands of poor, rural Africans by providing farm and factory jobs, and ensuring a steady market for maize, sugar and other commodities.

"The [South African] government wants to create jobs in rural areas and redistribute land from white to black farmers, and bioethanol production could be the solution to both problems," Hoffman said. "Bioethanol will create jobs, not just for the farming industry, but for whole communities, and uplift the poor."

====(end)

However many people were sceptics of this scheme, and many were not convinced that Ethanol could be produced cost effectively to even pay for itself, and thus make Ethanol Biofuel competetive against traditional oil.

====(again from articlr)

"It is well documented - it takes energy to make energy, and the amount of energy it takes to grow and harvest these crops barely produces a surplus return," he said. "While bioethanol production makes some sense with high oil prices, I don't think our government has wrapped its mind around all the consequences, and studies that should be done, haven't been done."

Scientific debate rages around the process and results of transforming food into fuel, with many saying the numbers simply don't add up.

Ethanol distilled from sugar gives a decent energy return, but add up all the energy it takes to grow a field of maize, and the amount you get back is barely more than you put in, critics say. Besides that, biofuel is much less efficient than regular fuel, so even if it is cheaper to buy, it will not move your vehicle nearly as far.

How much maize is needed to move a car, a truck, or a fleet of buses? A hectare of land - 1 sq.km or about the size of two football fields - yields an average of 4 tonnes of maize. Each tonne of maize can be distilled into 420 litres of bioethanol, plus some ancillary products. The two football fields would thus produce about 1,680 litres of ethanol.

According to a report in the Washington Post newspaper, the entire American maize crop would provide enough ethanol fuel to replace only about 12 percent of the country's gasoline requirements.

====(end)

Point being that Ethanol while a decent alternative to regular oil and petrol, was much less efficient, and at that moment in time in 2006, many were not really sure as to how much actual fricking fuel was being produced in terms of liters per hectars.

There were a lot of concern from prospective investors about whether there was actually enough surplus Maize/mielies as men like Hannes Haasbroek claimed would be, so that the production of Ethanol would not interfere with the supply of annual maize which consisted of the staple food supply for rural south africans in the regions of Limpopo, Mapumalanga and the Free state. South Africans ate all of the food domestically, and could not afford to relinquish that food security to produce fuel that wasn't even as effective as dino-liquid.

Safrican economists were FULLY aware that a country would lose tenfold GDP product, and economic tax bases, if it was ever put in the position to be forced to import food to sustain its shortfall, which the economic collapse of Shri Lanka in 2019 displayed.

====(from article)

"The grain required to fill a 25-gallon (about 114 litres) SUV [sports utility vehicle] gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year," said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in a statement. "The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people ... The 55 million tons (about 50 million tonnes) of US corn going into ethanol this year represent nearly one-sixth of the country's grain harvest, but will supply only 3 percent of its automotive fuel."

While some bristle at the idea of the poor and hungry competing with luxury all-terrain vehicles for the world's supply of grain, Ethanol Africa says it will use only yellow maize in its factories, and not the white maize favoured by consumers.

Environmentalists, who have resisted blindly embracing bioethanol as a viable answer to energy supplies, have raised other concerns. Biowatch South Africa, an NGO concerned with food security and promoting organic farming methods, reels at the bioethanol industry's dependence on genetically modified (GM) crops in South Africa

=====(end)

You guys get the idea.

But our raging capitalists went forth and built factories all across the Free State, after all the past 2 decades showcased that Maize/Mielie farmers were amongst the most productive on Erath and have had general surplus for as long as the country had been a democracy, and thus more than enough for Ethanol refineries after the food cut had been taken by tractors the outlooks were positive, prospectors and investors were salivating

https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/G02285.pdf

Strangely enough RSA was already exporting Ethanol, but mostly in the form of byproducts from refinaries or factories, and not for the intention of creating biofuel for vehicles, especially not domestically. The Ethanol produced locally was usually used or generated by local Oil magnates like SASOL

The specifics however is greek to me. What is important, was that this was used as an argument by the new Ethanol Africa factories as supporting their arguments that RSA already had a framework of generating Ethanol, now it just wanted to created 1000 times that amount, and with Maize.

However private companies still needed the backing of the government, in the form of tax breaks, subsidies or allocation/disallocation of levies for biofuel to allow such a fledgling industry to be able to get off its feet, and at that time the ANC was very tepid, and was swinging either way.

Finally however by the end of 2006, the ANC finally gave their go-ahead to enable and support Ethanol production, provided that Maize surplus remained as high as they had been for the past decade, Ethanol companies went full r-slur and proceeded to mega overinvest even with this very lukewarm reception the government had given to Ethanol production.

SHIT HITS THE FAN: EL NINO STRIKES SOUTHERN AFRICA:

So wtf is an El Nino??

It's a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which can significantly influence weather patterns, ocean conditions, and marine fisheries worldwide.

They can and do occur across the whole world. In Southern Africa they tend to cause abnormally dry and extremely hot heatwave

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/05/what-is-el-nino

El Niño is a climate phenomenon that occurs when a vast pool of water in the tropical Ocean becomes abnormally warm. An El Niño is officially declared if the temperature of the eastern tropical Pacific rises 0.5C above the long-term average. The extreme El Niño year of 1997-98 saw a rise of more than 3C.

El Niño is one extreme in a natural cycle, with the opposite extreme called La Niña. The effect of climate change on the cycle is not yet understood, though some scientists think El Niño will become more common.

https://www.citizen.co.za/north-coast-courier/news-headlines/local-news/2015/08/13/understanding-el-nino

"Every two to 10 years the pressure gradient force that raises the easterly trade winds in the Pacific region, weakens, causing the trade winds to relax, sea temperatures to change and ultimately plunging south eastern Africa, Indonesia and parts of Australia and parts of South America into drought.

El Niño (the dry phase of ENSO) normally lasts between 12 and 18 months and is the reason KZN is being held hostage by the current drought.

Under normal conditions, the high pressure cell over the eastern Pacific Ocean (west coast of South America) and the low pressure cell over the western Pacific (Indonesia and east coast of Australia) create great differences in air pressure, creating the easterly trade winds in the Pacific region (wind always blows from a region of high pressure to low pressure)."

You guys can see where this is going

As the incredibly bad luck would have it, RSA would experience a one in 10-15 year event, where we suffered abnormal drought, and in 2007 RSA was under the chokehold of the worst of droughts since democratization.

https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/highlights/2007/05/southern_africa_corn_may07

"The severe drought is one of the worst droughts to hit South Africa's main corn belt since 1992. In addition, South Africa this year will have to import over one million tons of yellow maize when South Africa is typically considered an export granary for the region"

For the 1st time in 20 fricking years, RSA had to IMPORT maize instead of exporting it, as you guys can imagine there sure as shit was not surplus of maize for any hairbrained scheme involving turning the nation's fricking food into some unknown car fuel.

"The El Niño induced drought also drastically reduced grain production for countries that border South Africa's corn belt, such as Lesotho and Swaziland. For example, crop production in both these countries is currently estimated by USDA to be 40 percent less than last year and Swaziland is facing the sixth consecutive year of poor harvests. "

The big issue was that basically all of the neighbouring countries which also farmed maize didn't have surplus as well, all that shit had to go home to feed the local market.

Anyways you guys get the idea, basically it looks like Ethanol might be killed in its cradle and the EThanol-factories are boned

https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/highlights/2007/05/southern_africa_corn_may07

"Ethanol Africa has started construction of South Africa's first corn ethanol distillery at Bothaville, the center of South Africa's corn belt (see Figure 6). The Bothaville distillery plant (Figure 7. will be the first of eight similar plants to be built in South Africa, with one proposed plant at Sasolburg to utilize grain sorghum instead of corn. The other six corn distilleries will be located at Middelburg, Lichtenburg, Bultfontein, Ventersdorp, Frankfort, and Bloemhof (see Figure 6). Construction of the Bothaville plant is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2008, and a large portion of South Africa's emerging farmers on resettled farms will be given contracts to grow and supply yellow corn for the proposed distillery plants."

Yep they screwed

Also see this picture of the unbuilt factory storeroom, THIS FRICKING STOREROOM had remained so since fucnking 2007 lmoa

ETHANOL INDUSTRY BONED:

https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/archive/setback-for-bothaville-ethanol-plant

To make matters worse for out promising capitalists, the ANC gov had already started balking from supporting the Ethanol enterprise and backtracking from their support in 2006. There wasn't any gov subsidies in sight, not with the mass poverty of RSA to gamble on unknown (at the time) biofuel.

So when the El Nino struck in 2007, it was basically the end, many dudes went baNkrupt, and made themselves a laughing stock, because just like Coinbros and shitcoins, a lot of suckers would make themselves annoying in gossip groups by bragging about how they were going to make shitheaps of money cuz Ethanol was a massive industry in places like Brazil.

So when the entire enterprise got in its cradle, these annoying guys would never live it down.

Modern YGO being hard is one of those lasting imprints the franchise left on the wider zeitgeist, along with draw 2 cards and le censored boobays

It's not exactly wrong. IDK if it's much harder than Magic because im not a boomer. But one of the boomerisms used often is ":klanjak: we have black cards now!?"

I'm going to go over the new summoning mechanics implemented over the years and then some actually unintuitive rulings.

New Monster Types

Most of this is set dressings. They aren't harder than the ol' reliable Fusion monsters, with one expection, which i'll get to.

Synchro

To Synchro summon, you just need monsters on the field whose total stars equal that of the Synchro monster, with one of them being a Tuner monster. One Tuner, any number of any monsters. You can see if a monster is Tuner by looking at it's tribes on top of the effect text box. They work like normal monsters in any other context.

To Syncro summon Stardust Dragon(8), you'd use Galaxy Serpent(2), a Level 6 monster, or two Level 3 monsters along with any other combination. It's just addition r-slur

Some of them can specify other materials, restrictions on how few monsters you can use and the like. But these are few and far between. It's also still just addition

XYZ

This is even more generic. To summon a Rank 4 XYZ monster, you need 2 Level 4 monsters. Simple. Do take note, you can't use an XYZ monster as a generic material for another XYZ monster, because they technically have Ranks instead of Levels. Which is mostly an arbitrary distinction and won't come up often.

The complicated thing about XYZ is what happens to their materials. They don't go to the Graveyard like Fusion or Synchro materials. You stack them under the XYZ card you summoned. XYZ monsters have effects that activate by taking out some of those materials and putting them into the Graveyard, but this doesn't activate effects of monsters that pop when they are sent to the Graveyard. Quite unintuitive, but just consider that a card is in the aether if it is under an XYZ card. Most cards can't interact with them, unless they have an effect specifically to do just that. This wasn't always the case, but it was changed several years ago to prevent some unintended interactions.

Links

Links just requires as many monsters on the field as their Link rating. You can see their Link rating on where their DEF stat would be, because Links can't be put on defense position.

When using Link monsters as material for a new Link summon, you can use their rating as how many monsters they count as. So, to Link Summon a Link 3, you can use 3 monsters, or a Link 2 + 1 monster.

They have as many arrows on their art border as their rating. If you have no Link monsters, you need to summon your first one on the Extra Monster Zone, which is the 2 extra Zones added with this mechanic. All subsequent Links must be summoned to a zone which is being pointed to by an existing Link monster.

This isn't complicated in execution, but does raise eyebrows by those who came back to the game. Since zone placements have not mattered much before Links came around. Also makes it hard to play without a mat if you aren't very careful with how you place your cards.

Pendulum

This is the start of complicated mechanics in this write up.

Okay, why do they look so weird? Because they are both monsters and spell cards. But not at the same time. If you summon them, they're monsters. If you play them on the spell & trap zone, they're spells. Only one effect text is in the works at any given time, depending on it's position. Top for spell, bottom for monster.

To Pendulum summon, you need to play 2 of them as spells, on the left-most and right-most zone of the S&T zone. These are called the Pendulum scales. They're numbers under the left and right arrows on the card. These are always the same number.

Once a turn, you can summon as many monsters as you want from your hand, whose levels are between the pendulum scales. If you played SG and TG magicians in your pendulum zone, your scales are 1-8. That means you can summon monsters whose levels are 2 to 7.

Pendulum monsters also don't go to the Graveyard when destroyed. They go on top of the extra deck, face-up. You can summon one of these Pendulum monsters on your extra deck with your pendulum summon. They work like Link monsters, in that they have to either go into an Extra monster zone, or a zone a link arrow points to.

Even though these cards don't go into the GY when destroyed, they mechanically work like do. So if you had Banisher on the field, they would be banished instead of going to the extra deck.

Too much text

I might as well use Pendulums to segway into the most common complaint, cards have too much text.

Endymion here is the face of what was the one good Pendulum deck for years, so it's hardly a misplaced example for the problem.

As I said in the previous segment, at any given point only one of those text boxes is in effect, so you don't have to take it all in one go.

Problem Solving Card Text

PSCT is what Konami came up with to standardize card text and leave less things up to interpretation. Cards made before this have weird phrasing;

Under any condition? sounds foreboding.

But this format has a problem with verbosity.

Look at all the punctuation. Colons signify conditions for the effect, semi colons start chains, commas separate steps of the same effect, stops end an effect.

The original version played in Japan is a bit more readable. They separate different effects by numbered points. Konami America didn't chose to import this part of the game for some reason.

No Keywords

Unlike Magic, YGO doesn't have keywords. It was only a couple of years ago they abbreviated Graveyard to GY. This causes a lot of common effects creating text bloat.

Take Once Per Turn for example. This is a stipulation that is printed on most cards made in the last decade. The most common form, called Hard Once Per Turn, is signified by "You can only use each effect of "Card Name" once per turn". The use of the "Card Name" makes it so you can't use duplicate copies of the card either. But since YGO cards also have long names besides long effects, this contributes to the problem. If they got the point across by just writing HOPT at the end of the card, it would greatly improve readability.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is writing rulings that are already implied.

This is a Gemini card, shown as a tribe on top of the effect box. But the gemini mechanic is still written beneath it. Anything preceding the point in this card text is also in every Gemini card. They can remove that paragraph and nothing of value would be lost. Geminis suck anyway, so

Confusing Mechanics

Targeting vs Non-Targeting

Can Dingirsu "Send 1 card your opponent controls to the GY." Obelisk, who is "Neither player can target this card with card effects."? Yes. The targeting mechanic requires the card to specifically use that term. The window to respond also opens when you target with a targeting effect, but if it doesn't target you can only respond as the effect is activated. On that note;

Destruction vs Non-Destruction

Can Dingirsu "Send 1 card your opponent controls to the GY." Cocytus, who is "Cannot be destroyed by your opponent's card effects."? Same. For an effect to be destruction, it has to say it verbatim. It also skirts by effects that pop when they're destroyed. But Banisher also banishes them, like it does with Pendulum monsters, because they were supposed to go to the GY.

Spell Speed

Spell Speed is a fan term to show which effects can be responded to by an effect. The slowest effects are Normal Spells and Ignition effects.

For example, Lonefire Blossom can "Once per turn: You can Tribute 1 face-up Plant monster; Special Summon 1 Plant monster from your Deck." You can only activate this effect during your Main Phases. It can't respond to your opponent's effects, nor can it be activated during your opponent's turn. Same is true for normal spells like Monster Reborn.

Traps and quick effects are faster, they can respond to the activation of other effects and can be used on your opponent's turn. Quick effects are signified by this logo on spells, and as text on monster effects:

But the fastest cards are Counter Traps, which can only be responded to by other Counter Traps

Inherent Summon

Question, Steelswarm Roach can;

when a Level 5 or higher monster would be Special Summoned: [Text]; negate the Special Summon, and if you do, destroy it.

Then which of these cards would it be able to negate the summon of, Cyber Dragon or Beat Bison?

It's Cyber Dragon. Why? Because it doesn't have a colon or semi-colon. Roach negates Summons, not effects to summon. Cyber Dragon's ability to summon itself from the hand is an effect, but it doesn't activate. It just happens. This is an Inherent Summon, which goes for Extra Deck summons too. Meanwhile, Beat Bison activates an effect that special summons itself. If you wanted to negate the summon of Beat Bison, you'd need an effect that negates monster effects.

Summons don't start chains, but the monster hitting the field does. Think of the summon as the game state immediately preceding it hitting the field.

Summoning Conditions

Sky Fire is a strong monster with a hard summoning condition. But thankfully it has a support card that can summon it from the GY "ignoring its Summoning conditions". Now you can just mill it to the GY and resurrect it for easy access, right?

No, as it turns out. If a card has summoning conditions, it has to be summoned properly first before it can be cheated out with other cards. So, Flattop can revive a Sky Fire that was properly summoned but then sent to the GY, but can't revive a Sky Fire that was sent to the GY from the deck by Foolish Burial.

Fun fact, Sky Fire's groin missles were removed in the TCG because it was too phallic for the American audiences.

Missed Timing

This is a distinction of When and If. If the activation requirement for an effect is written as "If [thing] happens" then it will activate with no problem. But if it is "When [thing] happens" it will miss timing, and won't resolve.

An effect misses timing when it isn't resolved immediately after it's activation. This happens when an effect is chained to the when effect. Chains start resolving from last to first activation, so if a when effect is chained to; it will activate, another effect will activate and resolve, then the when effect will miss timing.

If you Synchro Summoned Whale, which can:

When this card is Synchro Summoned: You can destroy all your opponent's Attack Position monsters.

But your opponent chained a quick effect to it's activation, the effect won't go off.

Negate Activation vs Effect

When an effect is negated, the effect tries to resolve and then fizzles out. But some cards also negate the activation, which makes it so the effect can't even attempt to resolve.

This doesn't come up often, but if a card has a once per turn clause, if its activation was negated, a second copy can be used afterward. But if the effect is negated, you can't activate any more of that card, since the once per turn effect has already attempted to resolve. Even more of an edge case; while cards that can only be "activated" OPT can be reused if their activation was negated, cards that can only be "used" OPT can't. Because you already used them, even though they were negated.

Negating at the point of resolution

This is an amendment to an amendment of the previous point, but this is another form of effect negation. Cards that negate at resolution don't have colons or semicolons in their text, meaning they don't start chains. Unlike other forms of negation, here the card activates like it's going to resolve, then just fizzles.

Normally, negation that is not continuous are applied as a reaction to an effect, forming a chain over the effect that it will negate. With resolution negation, you choose to negate as the effect is going through, like if you are going to negate the chain 1 effect of a chain with 3 steps, you'd wait for the first 2 steps to resolve, then negate the final effect at it's resolution.

Funny interaction with this mechanic, Cerulean Skyfire is one of the only non continuous ways to negate Super Polymerization.

Fin

So yeah. This has been my compilation of 200iq rulings you won't find in your childhood rulebook. Tell me if you have any questions

Y'all prolly heard bout this incident. It's proper for gentiles to remain ignorant, but a friend asked for an explanation so, having already decided to write it up, I'll let you in on the tea.

The Beginning

Orthodox Jews fall into three camps.

1. Modern Orthodox: follow halacha (jewish law) but have jobs, wear modest secular clothing, shake foids' hands (eg. Ben Shapiro)

2. Yeshivish: most have jobs, wear 1950s clothing, usually won't shake with women unless pressured to

3. Chassidish: many don't work, wear 1850s clothing, don't shake

Obviously other differences exist.

Hasidism started as a pietist movement in the 1700s. Chosids all follow a spiritual leader named a Rebbe who holds court and is basically a king or dynast. Bobov hassids follow the Bobover Rebbe, Amshinov chasidim follow the Amshinover, etc. It's an inherited position. Sometimes the old rebbe appoints one son as the heir, sometimes he splits his following between sons (one in New Jersey, one in Israel, etc), sometimes he doesn't say much and there's a leadership dispute.

Sometimes a rebbe dies without a successor and a new one never arises. These are called "dead hasidim"

Chabad-Lubavitch

One of the oldest khasidic dynasties. They get their name from the town of Lyubovichy, in white Ruthenia, where many of the early Rebbes held court.

The 6th - or Frierdiker - Rebbe died without a son.

His son-in-law inherited. Guy you might have seen before.

Menachem Mendel Schneersohn: the Rebbe.

An extremely beloved, interesting, and powerful leader. At 17 he'd already memorized the entire Talmud - thousands of pages of dense and obscure Aramaic - with commentary. The author of hundreds of books, innumerable letters and speeches. He founded thousands of institutions.

During his life the Rebbe had fled from the Soviet Union, the Nazis, France. In New York, he made his court at a building in the neighborhood of Brooklynn - today bougie and expensive, then working-class.

The address? 770 Eastern Parkway. A building so iconic in Judaism it's known simply as 770.

Chabad's Mission

The Rebbe saw that many Jews by the 60s and 70s had only a minimal connection to their religion due to American integration and other negative spiritual factors. Most were far from the fold not on account of a deep seated atheistic conviction but because their parents had integrated, were overcome by their desires, feared antisemitism and wanted to spare their kids, or whatever. They were like infants captured by idolaters in battle - a halachic status which made them unaccountable for their transgressions done in ignorance

Many Orthodox Jews were sad but dismissive of the plight of their misguided brethren, seeing it as a lost cause. Most Orthodox shuls did not do outreach, have special programming, or do anything else for secular Jews.

Not the Rebbe. He sent dozens of his devoted followers to every city in the US and many outside of it, especially places with no Orthodox community.

They wouldn't charge for access to the house of worship (common in most other synagogues) or wait for Jews to come by - instead, the Rebbe's emissaries (shluchim) would go to Jews where they were and bring mitzvos to them. This is called mivtzoyim.

In the process Chabad shliachs had to deal with many novel things like learning English, interacting with scandalously clad women, etc. They did so admirably, remaining true to halacha while tactfully navigating the secular world.

The Rebbe's campaigns led to tens of thousands of Jews and Jewish families returning to Judaism and are seen as an unmitigated success across the Jewish world, inspiring most other denominations and branches to start their own outreach programs, and even forcing secular Jewish movements like reform and conservative to put on fun events lest their congregants desert en masse. Many of the returnees joined Chabad-Lubavitch and became disciples of its chassidus. Even secular and non-observant businessmen donate to it as part of the mitzvah of helping a fellow Jew.

Trouble in Paradise

During the 90s, the Rebbe, already an old man, got sick.

His followers were in great torment. Nobody had inspired this much fervor - nobody could ever fill his shoes. Especially as the Rebbe had no sons or daughters - all klal Israel (the Jewish nation) were his children.

Many chabadniks even believed he was moshiach. Note that this isn't a deity or the "son of" a deity, whatever that means, in Jewish thought:

A king will arise from the House of David, who is learned in Torah and occupied in the observance of commandments as David his ancestor. He will compel all of Israel to walk in the way of the Torah and reinforce the breaches (in its observance). And he will fight the wars of G-d.

One who accomplishes these things is a potential moshiach and deserves to be followed. The actualized moshiach:

Is victorious over the nations around him. And he builds the Temple in his place. And he gathers the dispersed of Israel.

On an infamous day in 1994 - Gimmel (3rd) Tammuz by our calendar - the Rebbe died.

The Chabad community were thrown into disarray. Emotions ran high and within each community, every group, each family of Chabad, people reacted very differently.

Some were sad but accepted it. They would keep the memory and teachings of the Rebbe alive, without central leadership, but fulfilling his mission. Yes, he was worthy of being moshiach, but had died, which according to the majority view, renders one unfit for the status.

Others refused to believe it. The Rebbe was moshiach. Either he had died and would be resurrected or hadn't died at all. Maybe the tomb was empty... They became known as meshichistim (messianics) - the first group, as antis.

An extremely small proportion of the second - mostly women, ignorants, and the insane - went as far as to claim, contrary to all halacha and Jewish thought, that not only was the Rebbe moshiach, he was even, heaven forfend, G-d himself.

History enjoyers will note the parallel to the passing of a certain oily fellow of the 0s

Lubavitch Today

The movement was split. In such an environment christians disaffiliate from each other and muslims wage jihad. We close ranks. All Israel is one nation, one family, and even a big disagreement like this is not enough to cause bloodshed or enmity. (Paul's mistake was bringing in gentiles. Shat the whole thing up)

Chabadniks agreed to maintain their institutions - synagogues, study halls, houses of learning, charities, etc. - by consensus.

Mostly, it worked.

In general, the majority of Chabad adherents are, in public, anti; the most egregious claimants otherwise are technically shunned by the movement. In their own settings, most do affirm that the Rebbe was or is moshiach. There's a push-pull between emphasizing his holiness (+ messi) and not turning off the entire world with crazy claims (+ anti)

The older ones, who actually knew him as a living man, are more likely to be anti. The much larger younger generation - a hasidish movement's demographics are closer to Niger's than anywhere western - lean messianic. Like the wokies of the western world, meshichistim wormed their way into many of Chabad's educational centers to spread their ideology to gullible youth.

The worst mashichistim attend or attended the Chabad yeshiva in Tzfat, in Israel. An institution that was extremely subverted by the aforementioned process. Lubavitchers from the land of Israel tend to be much more messianic than American ones for sociological reasons I don't feel like getting into. Double whammy.

Many of the tzfatis go putting up stickers like these:

Tunnels under 770

770 itself has faced a lot of issues. As the center of the Chabad world, every claimant wanted it, or at least a piece of the pie. This featured acrimonious legal cases and battles, both in the Jewish juridical system and secularly.

After many years, a court gave ownership to a consortium of educators and general representatives of the worldwide movement.

In practice, the synagogue - which every devout chabadnik has been to, prayed at, and loves - is governed or controlled by gabbaim, who are older, respected men. However, many bochurim (unmarried youth) visit and live there or nearby for a year. It's a popular program within the chosidus. Israelis especially get special religious visas just to come and study at 770.

You can see where this is going.

Over time, the number of worshippers, and especially meshichistim, at 770 has built up very high. One factor is the birth rates, which of themselves would mean an increasingly crowded building. More to the point, messianics revere the Rebbe's building more than antis. Also, certain gabboim at 770 encourage meshichism. It brings in donations to the site specifically, instead of the rest of Chabad's institutions. Lastly, tzfaty youngsters who overly revere the Rebbe - many descended from recent returnees to Judaism or from broken family backgrounds - have a huge presence at the site.

Everyone agrees 770 needs expanded, but the planning and permits process to expand a building in New York City, the den of the Democrats, is not fast or easy at the best of times. Imagine with the decentralized state of the Chabad movement today. Many of the meshichistim in particular believe the Rebbe gave them an order to expand the building.

At some point over the past couple of years, some of these bochurim decided enough was enough. They found an abandoned mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) nearby and dug a long butt, big butt tunnel from it to the shul. Furnished with beds, a study hall, etc.

Recently the building commission, fire department or some other fake jobs program found out and got mad. Apparently it's a structural risk to the building

They shut down the lower story and brought in cement mixers. The bochurim responded by rioting and disconnecting the cement mixers

The NYPD came in, evacuating the whole building til further notice and arresting dozens of bochurim.

Now everyone's mad. The elders are realizing the problem with letting meshichism spread so easily and widely among the young. Many think Chabad needs to recentralize or at least establish a committee capable of handling issues. The bochurim are upset their friends got arrested for a righteous cause. Everyone hates that a couple of youngsters are making Chabad and the Jewish people look bad. This is a big deal in Judaism as it leads people to desecrate and disrespect G-d, who is after all G-d of the Jews in particular (and the world in general). The cops, being antisemites. are glad they got to arrest Jews: the only winners in this debacle.

Now you know the whole story. The vids are worth a watch if you wanna see bochurim hit cops with benches

Greetings Dramatards

Last time I was covering the sinking of the Oceanos, where a cowardly captain attempted to flee a sinking ship from the South-Eastern shores of South-Africa, and where heroic gigachad passengers stepped up to the occasion to save their fellows during an extreme storm.

Well I was made aware of a similar situation which had occurred upon the shores of South-Korea, where another cowardly captain and crew literally jumped ship to save themselves at the expense of their charges. This time however, the outcome would be substantially more grim, whereas the Oceanos rescue was a stunning success which resulted in the saving of literally every single passenger with zero fatalities, the sinking of the Sewol Ferry was horrific, resulting in over 300 deaths, most of them school-children as a school trip was booked to an island off of the coast of Korea during that unfortunate day.

The Sewol Ferry sinking is also SUBSTANTIALLY more dramatic and absolutely r-slurred than the sinking of the Oceanos, because of the unbelievably absurd degree of preventability there was involved in the needless loss o life, and the systemic levels of ineptitude shown by literally every single government body/agency and individual involved.

When I first researched this unholy shitshow this weekend, I would binge every single youtube video made by foreign Press regarding the event, and I had thought to myself: hey these are pretty good mini flash-documentaries covering the events of this absurd manmade neglect disaster, (here are some of the 1st documentaries I viewed)

28 minute documentary from the New Yorker:

27 documentary from Coffeehouse:

And on and on, there are like 10 or 12 of these documentaries by youtubers or news organizations which cover various aspects of the disaster, the shitty rescue attemps, and the aftermath:

BUT OOOOOOOOOOOOOH NO. The more I read, the DEEEEEEPER the rabbit hole kept sinking.

Dramatards, the depth of depravity, incompetence and stupidity involved in this disaster is near bottomless, it's lower than shark-shit shade at the bottom of the sea abyss.

Like just one of these 25-50 minute documentaries simply didn't capture the absolute 3rd world response that the Korean coast guard, and all authorities involved had regarding the greatest non-rescue ever in modernity.

So welcome dramastrags and let's go down this never ending hellish rabbithole together

WHAT IS THE SEWOL FERRY:

The Sewol Ferry was a passenger and cargo transport ship which made 3 trips per week from the harbor of Incheon to the Island of Jeju - with each one-way 425 kilometres trip, taking about 13.5 hours to complete.

The Sewol would frequent Teju Island, the largest of South Korea's islands, and a popular tourist destination for Koreans themselves. Teju island has been described as the Hawaii of SK.

https://www.onthegotours.com/blog/2023/08/jeju-island-in-south-korea-a-perfect-group-tour-destination

Teju is that big island directly South of SK. The Sewol would take trips between the island and the western coast of SK, meaning the children onboard would constantly be within range of cellphone service of the mainland. While the 13-14 hour trip is long, the ship is outfitted like a cruise ship. While not nearly as luxurious as the Oceanos, it was still a ship with many amenities and comfort. There were dorm rooms, bunk beds and convenience stores, so for high-schooler standards, this was living the high life.

DATE OF DISASTER: 16 April 2014, Wednesday.

The Ferry would be boarded at approximately 9:pm on 15 April 2014 (at night), but the disaster would not strike until the trip was almost over, and the ferry was near Teju island 12 hours later. The idea was that the the students would sleep during the long boring journey, eat breakfast, and basically arrive at the Island at about 9-11AM.

At the moment of disaster, there had been 476 passengers onboard the Sewol Ferry. Most of those were High-School students, with most of those high-schoolers being from the same school, the reason being that they were on an annual field-trip organized by that school. (Danwon High School in Ansan City)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28519921

It is because there were so many highschool students simultaneously on the same ship booked, that parents were alarmed that many of them were bombarded with abnormal and cryptic messages from their children declaring their love for their parents or shouting their peril at the ship capsizing.

It is this moment which had made the Sewol Ferry sinking especially famous internationally - that parents of these schoolchildren, told them to follow the guidance and instructions of the crew and authorities. The korean words for "Do what they say" would become a famous negative-meme, meaning that instead of a joke a lot of koreans after this disaster would discuss this event, and the implications that korean culture had upon the extreme discipline in which korean youth were expected to obey their parents, their elders and all authority figures. Korean youth would "negative-meme" this phrase of "do as they say" whenever discussion would arrive about whether it was a neccessity to docilly obey authority and elders in all matters of life.

The reason this moment and this negative-meme of "do as they say" has such particular resonance with modern koreans, is that effectively that all those passengers, and especially school students who obeyed the following demented commands of the cowardly Sewol captain would end up drowning; and all those who disobeyed, would end up alive and rescued. This is especially galling considering that a similar event occurred in 13 Feb 2003, when a subway train caught fire, and the moronic and cowardly conductor would order his passengers to stay put, in wait of rescue, when, and you guys guessed it, the conductor himself fled for his life just like the cowardly Sewol Ferry captain would! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire

Even worse still, amongst the found footage of those who drowned, were cellphone footage of students discussing their doubts about the unease they felt in obeying the captain's orders of staying put - and that they verbally expressed their instinctual fear that the similarity to the Daegu subway disaster in which only those who disobeyed demented orders were the one who survived - and yet still was their compulsion to obey seniority that they still were amongst those who drowned.

For the parents, this would be especially traumatizing and they would mention to foreign and local interviews the incredible guilt they felt for telling their children to obey authorities, not realizing that their faith in the crew and gov authorities were misplaced due to the following peerless levels of ineptitude. Haggard looking korean parents would express remorse for not telling their dead children to ignore stupid orders, and flee for the top of the ship, instead of remaining in their cabins as the Captain of the Sewol had ordered all passengers, before the frick himself would GTFO from the ship.

SOME ADDITIONAL DETAILS:

It's important to note that he Sewol Ferry is more cargo ship, than passenger liner. Apparently 75% of profit was made from transporting trucks to Teju island and back, with ferrying passengers as a side-gig effectively. (Don't worry we'll get to this image later )

But the point is that it wasn't just school students on this specific trip, there were other passengers going to Teju island on their own honeymoons or whatever, and a lot of truck drivers whom would get off of the dock at Teju, them come back at the end of their routes to continue transporting supplies. Many of these same truck drivers would aid in saving the weaker children.

FERRY BEGINS LISTING:

(For those of you whom don't know ships, Listing when a vessel takes on water and tilts to one side.)

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korea-ferry-disaster-timeline-of-events-0

At some point at 8:50AM passengers hear a loud BAND reverberating through the ship, and 10 minutes later the ship would begin listing to the left 30 degrees.

Ever heard of the words Ballast-water? Now this is something I never knew about!

Now you'd think that a 30 degrees Listing would mean instant capsizing for a ship, but ships of the scale of the Sewol are built with what are known as ballast tanks. Ballast water is water carried in ships' ballast tanks to improve stability, balance. The idea is to act as counterweight to the motion of a ship, improving its balance!

However, the cargo of the ferry: the trucks and vehicles transported by the Sewol was NOT tied down. Meaning that as the ship began listing, all of these vehicles would be swept in the imbalence and flung to the left side of the ship, thus overwhelming the counterweight of the ballast tanks.

All ships need a low center of gravity, the lower the better, as top heavy ships swing and list from site to side in extreme weather and swells, and are more exposed to tipping and capsizing, the ballast tanks aid this as well.

Well guess WHAT?! The r-slurs of the Sewol crew had not pumped enough ballast water into the inner chambers in order to save time and speed

Thus the center of gravity was at the top of the vessel, and the near empty ballast tanks could not counterweight the listing

Why no ballast or near empty ballast tanks?? So they could load more cars they got rid of the ballast water so that they could make room for the fricking extra cargo

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2995313

So the vicious circle keeps going, the more the listing, the more vehicles keep slamming to the left, listing the ferry beyond salvation.

Thus the crew begin to realize the ships is going to unavoidably capsize.

1ST EMERGENCY CALL BY STUDENT:

When very massive vessels like the Sewol lists or sinks, it isn't always immediately obvious to passengers, in the same way in which excessive airplane turbulence is when the plane is for a certainty going to crash.

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/27/world/asia/ferry-south-korea-teen-remembered

The first emergency call was made by Choi Duk-ha, a Danwon High School student aboard the ferry, who immediately understood the danger, and was suspicious of the ship's intercom continious telling the students and passengers to "stay in their cabins, it was dangerous to venture outside; wait for rescue". The crew of course knew the opposite was true.

HECK BREAKS LOOSE: KOREAN COAST GUARD IS INEPT

At about 9:07AM the Sewol crew finally tells the SK coast gaurd that they are in deep shit, and that the ferry is unstoppably listing. However these clowns call in so many different agencies and authorities, that they cause intense communication chaos.

The SK Coast guard would also lie to the media and SK people, that when they received the mayday from the Sewol, that they were not aware that near 500 people were on board - this specific lie would cause massive fallout later, we'll get to that!

The coast guard tells the Sewol crew, that any passengers must put on life-jackets. The Sewol for some fricking reason tells the coast-gaurd back that their announcement system was broken, which we know in hindsight would be a massive lie as student's cellphones were recovered after their deaths with the repeated anouncement to stay put why on God's green earth they would lie about this is WTF

Just like the Oceanos the crew would have no communication with passengers, to tell them the situation or cause of the listing, only the anouncement was the sole communication the crew would ever do with their passengers!

The coast guard on the radio would say, ok butthole, well if the PA system was broken, fricking go tell your passengers to put on their life jackets, and whoever was on the walkie-talkie that moment was like "eeeehhhhhhh" then he walks around taking a smoke, jerking off to the sunset, walking around for a bit, and came back to the walkie-talkie and said that they had told the passengers to put on their lifejackets, evidence from the recovered cellphones would prove THAT HE DID NOT DO THAT WHYYYYYY He just straight up lied to the coast guard he had taken list of the passengers and personally saw to them - hoooollly smokes it just gets worse and worse from here on out

So at this point, whichever low level drone is at the helm of the coast gaurd communication (is actually the only competent guy in this equation), tells the Sewol captain and crew to unfrick themselves, and prepare quickly, a rescue helicopter is 1 minute away, and another search and rescue boat is like 5 minutes away, get passengers ready for rescue.

And our boi, the 69-year-old Captain Lee Joon-seok, goes full r-slur and replies: "bro that's no enough to save everybody, there's more than those vessel's capacities" you know as if that matters , fricking who cares.

So at this point the passengers are still being told to stay put. As the ferry was sinking, it became clear that it would be inverted. The 1st people to be rescued........was the captain and some of his senior crew. Sounds familiar to the Oceanos???

https://nypost.com/2014/04/17/25-dead-in-south-korea-ferry-disaster-as-captain-remains-cagey

https://abcnews.go.com/International/deeply-ashamed-ferry-captain-abandon-ship/story?id=23357650

Here is a Youtube video of the cowardly cuck fleeing the ship, and being the literal 1st to be rescued from a nearby coast guard boat:

And oh yeah, notice something?! He wore ORDINARY CIVILIAN CLOTHES!! He deliberately disguised himself! i did personally was not aware of this specific one detail prior to researching this shitshow!

I repeat: he deliberately disguised himself as a passenger Once he was rescued, he made zero attempt to help, and basically fricked off. He relayed no information about the cause of sinking or the amount of passengers and their whereabouts on the listing ship. He just straight up fricks off....

https://www.rokdrop.net/2016/03/30/picture-of-the-day-most-hated-man-in-korea-appears-in-court

"f there is something oddly familiar about the news that the erstwhile captain of the ill-fated South Korean ferry—which capsized and sank just a few hundred meters from dry land—botched the evacuation order and jumped ship before his passengers were safe, it's because we've heard about this sort of maritime cowardice before. It happened in 2012, when Italian captain Francesco Schettino rammed his Costa Concordia luxury cruiseliner into the rocks off Giglio island. He, too, was among the first off the ship well in advance of the bulk of the passengers."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-koreas-ferry-disaster-gives-us-a-new-cowardly-captain-to-hate

Captain cuck is currently one of the most hated men in all of SK. When the depths of his depraved conduct and cowardice slowly leaked down the grapevine of news and gossip, the entire SK media would blow up in outrage.

Sewol's captain under fire for fleeing sinking ship:

https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/633440.html

"News that the captain and crew of the Sewol passenger ferry fled the sinking ship early on rather than helping passengers is generating an angry reaction among from family members and the South Korean public.

Of the crew members, only 22-year-old Park Ji-young gave up her life vest to stay with the passengers - at the cost of her own life. One student said of her, “If she hadn't have been there, I don't know what would have happened to me.”

Evidence that surfaced on Apr. 17 indicates the Sewol's chief engineer told several crew members to evacuate, even as the captain was broadcasting a message for passengers to wait until further notice."

LAST MOMENTS FILMED BY DROWNED VICTOMS:

There were several reccorrdings recovered from the dead student's cellphones where they could clearly be heard pronouncing their confusion: why must they put on their Life-Jackets and also stay put in their cabins like the PA announcement system was repeating on auto?

Their confusion, first starts with lite joking, and eventually turns into sober horror, as the realization that the situation with the tilting was becoming a threat to their lives. The most comprehensive evidence was of students on the 3rd floor of the Sewol Ferry.

By the end of this footage, many students start proclaiming that they do not wish to die, and begin messaging their family/parents with messages of asking forgiveness for past fights, and that they love them, ect. It is from these horrifying messages which freaked out the majority of the 250 students from the same high school, to which about 500 parents would organize a trip to Teju Island, to find out what the frick was happening with their children.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/heartbreaking-video-shows-students-as-ferry-sinks-mom-i-love-you-1.1801051

KIDS CONTINUE TO OBEY PA SYSTEM UNTIL THEIR DEATHS:

In spite of their instincts and fear, the schoolchildren would still continue to obey the instructions of their parents to obey their seniors, and most would remain put within the ferry, even as the ship continued its listing and eventual capsizement over the next hour.

CBS NEWS Youtube video showing; teenagers were slow to grasp their dangerous situation; some kids could be heard joking they were in the titanic, and even jovially singing to cope with the pressure:

BBC Youtube video of youngest person saved from ferry; both her parents and brother would drown; SK would ask for any family to come forward and claim her; one distant uncle would luckily come forth:

Additionally in the videos, the school children will remark from the recovered footage, that they smelled something bad, that they smelled something like boiled eggs - they were smelling gas escaping the

The hyper discipline of their children makes them place false hope in their seniors, and fully believe up until their drowning that the authorities know what they are doing, and follow the instructions of their parents.

Oh yeah, and the horror keeps compounding - there were not enough lifejackets, so many students sacrificed theirs for their younger peers, and some truck drivers would give theirs to children.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/22/305830690/as-korean-ferry-sank-some-crew-members-fought-to-save-lives

One passenger, Koo Bon-hee, 36, told the wire service "that there were not enough life jackets for everyone in the area on the third floor where he and others waited. So crew members — two men and two women — didn't wear any so that all the passengers could have one."

SOUTH KOREAN MAINSTEAM MEDIA DECEIT:

SK mainstream media is and was extraordinarily corrupt, and would lie to citizens over many things. Things would come to climax in the Sewol Ferry sinking fiasco, and the absolute shamelessness of SK mainstream media could cause a massive rift between the citizens of SK, and their trust in the gov and news.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-KRTB-5797

Mainstream media had started reporting that all passengers had been rescued from the Ferry as it was still tipping over with 300+ passengers still inside, and had given many of these SK parents whom had received horrifying and cryptic messages from their kids about saying goodbye, and that they were dying, were giving these parents false hope that their kids were safe !

In the following months, as the media circus was dug through by people, and the SK public began to systematically uncover the heaps of lies that the mainstream SK media told everyone, including the parents, questions would be asked as to WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY why would they fricking lies about this? Lie about kids and passengers having been saved from the ferry in those critical 2 hours as the ship was capsizing??

It would come down that President Park was a massive bully and would go to extreme lengths to bully mainstream media outlets in SK who even remotely critisized her administration. So feared was president Park, that many mainstream reporters and producers were basically used to just straight up lying in emergency situations, to make her Administration's response to stuff like this Ferry sinking disaster, as positively as possible, before she even demanded. (We'll come back to this)

Tanwan highschool parents were given a false sense of security.

However, despite this deceit, the parents began immediately noticing discrepancies within the false reporting of everyone being saved from the Sewol. They could not phone or reach their kids, they became aware thatt many other parents had also received cryptic and alarming messages, and soon pooled information between each other on WhatsApp groups and so on.

Additionally, horrifyingly, the parents would notice an anomaly similar as to Kraut citizens during the 2nd World War being fed propaganda about how good the Eastern Front campaign was going, meanwhile the locations of successful battles kept creeping closer to Berlin....

Similarly, these parents would notice that at 1st the reporting kept changing from ALL the passengers had been successfully rescued, then MOST of the passengers, and then.... you get the idea as the media adjusted their bullshit as the failing rescue operation was producing more corpses.

Then later it was reported 150 passengers out of 475, how many passengers have been rescued you frickers??? How the frick is the reported passengers being rescued LOWERING?

PARENTS TRAVEL AS GROUP TO CHINDO ISLAND:

Chindo Island is a tiny island, nearest to the sinking. And from where the rescue operation was being undergone.

Because they can't trust the media, and the parents basically organize a 1000 person trip immediately to the Chindo Island, and book acommodations and hotels, as well as venues for gathering. The PARENTS are organizing all of this, as the coast guard nad rescue authorities are all incompetent bumblefricks.

https://www.fairplanet.org/story/sewol-ferry-tragedy-the-fight-for-the-truth-we-want-to-know-why-our-children-had-to-die

So dramatards hear this shit, the rescue operations heads, and coast guard had brought these giant white boards with lists of names of the rescued written on them. And the giant gymnasium venue which the parents organized as a meeting conference place, quickly turns into chaos as the parents jostle to get to the front and see whose child is fricking safe. But of course these are propaganda names, lied about by the SK media to make the Park Admin look good.

So the parents quickly realize they are being lied to and become enraged. Here is Youtube video of parents lashing out at authorities.

They scream at the gov goons who had callously written these names of survivors on the whiteboards, and ask where the frick their kids were, if they supposedly were saved?

The parents finally become so incensed at the lack of coordination of the coats guard, that they fricking hire their own boats to go to the sunken ferry, they are enraged at the lack of fricks given by the gov officials, whom apparently are just passive about the prospect of hundreds of people currently under threat of drowning.

https://news.sky.com/story/ferry-disaster-parents-hire-own-rescue-boats-10409326

========(from article)

Parents of missing teenagers aboard the stricken ferry off the coast of South Korea have been hiring rescue boats to join the search overnight. Many relatives stared out to sea, huddled in blankets, sobbing, as hopes their loved ones would be found alive faded.

Others expressed their anger, claiming that the rescue operation was botched and choosing instead to go searching themselves.

The father of one missing child could not bear to wait.

Advertisement

He and 10 other parents paid 61,000 won (£35) each to hire a boat to take them to the scene, along with a local reporter and a diver.

"There was no rescue operation going on," he said on his return to Jindo.

"We clearly saw there is none. What they were doing at the time was stopping the oil spill. I'm extremely angry.

"The media says the rescue operation is still going on. It's all a lie. It makes me so furious."

======(end quote)

At this point it's fricking night time, and the parents are going in a frenzy at the authorities not telling them squat, and with the mainstream reporters being useless ad unhelpful. There appears to be no hurry when the ferry is already nearly on its side and its obvious people are trapped with no way of getting out.

Only Newstapa was willing to work with parents and not lie to them or the public, and majority of footage came from them.

THE "RESCUE":

The entire rescue was an ongoing shitshow. And despite media lies, most passengers were not being successfully rescued.

The thing that most angered the SK public, after the disaster, was the sheer ineptitude of the SK authorities during what was dubbed the "Golden hours", the 1st two hours after the Ferry began capsizing, and when it was entirely feasible to save everyone.

In those precious moments the coast guard and Park Admin kept repeating moronic requests of seeing a visual feed of the tilting ferry, instead of giving out deceisive commands for rescue operation. They kept asking moronic questions about whether the situation was serious, to which the helicopters and patrol boats would reply: yes butthole this is serious, the fricking ship is sinking, and on and on they would waste 90 fricking minutes with this r-sluration.

https://apnews.com/article/70fc61f2fecc459cb2220ee859a0849b

Rescue officials then missed a series of opportunities to save most of the people until the ship fully submerged underwater at 11:50 a.m.

The coast guard, which received a distress call from the ferry's crew shortly after the ship began to drift, was required to guard the waters that the Sewol passed through with at least one large patrol vessel.

But on the day of the sinking, the only vessel nearby was a small patrol boat whose nine-member crew was woefully undertrained and lacked basic communication equipment.

The boat did not arrive at the Sewol until 9:30 a.m. Rescue workers then wasted further time with indecisiveness.

SK COASTGUARD IS INDECEISIVE AND USELESS:

By this point at about 09:00AM to 09:30AM there would be like 3 rescue helicopters just circulating around the tilting ship, not being helpful, only like 3 passengers had been saved, and they had climbed upon the deck of the ship all on their own.

The rest of the patrol boats are just standing there drifting, with their peepees in their hands. Because there had been no centralized command given by the Park Administration, and because not central authority had taken first step, all of them are just loitering there being useless frickwits.

All of them are waiting for the park admin to give specific orders, instead of taking deceisive action, and the Park admin in turn is sitting on their thumbs waiting for "video of the incident" before even making a decicion! and worst of all is that Prez Park would be missing AWOL for at least 7 hours, unavailable to give commands, and many gove beaurucrats are to cowardly to take initiative in case something goes wrong, and they shoulder the blame,

so everyone there onsite are waiting for someone else to fricking take initiative, so they they would be the one in charge and thus responsible for any possible negative fallout. So everyone is just fricking standing there like imbeciles, waiting for each other!!!!

Remember the US Navy vessel nearby? USS Bonhomme Richard was nearby and had immediately notified SK coast guard they were available for assistance. The USS Bonhomme Richard is a vast amphibious assault ship, with a crew of over 1800 men. At that time they had a full complement of marines capable of rescue operations.

The ship was a semi-aircraft carrier and carried several helicopters capable of advanced search and rescue operations, SK told them to take a hike - this truly was the most needless loss of life in modernity.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140416192004/http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/04/16/uss-bonhomme-richard-heads-to-capsized-south-korea-ferry.html?comp=700001075741&rank=3

The rescue teams only made token efforts to save any people which had already already come to the surface, or were climbing themselves on top of the deck in their bright orange lifejackets.

To make matters oven more dysfunctional and utterly 3rd world, was that the coast guard vessels, and the helicopters hovering above the ferry were communicating to sepparate entities, some were in contact with the Park Admin, while others deferred to the local cost guard authority, and yet others to the provincial and national coast gaurd authority!

https://time.com/3572092/south-korea-coast-guard-ferry-disaster

https://maritime-executive.com/article/South-Korean-Coast-Guard-Disbanded-2014-05-19

Park has been hit hard by an angry nationwide outcry over the government's response to South Korea's worst civilian maritime disaster in 20 years and the seemingly slow and ineffective rescue operation. Park said the coast guard had not only failed in its search and rescue duty but that, in its current form, it would be unable to prevent another large-scale disaster.

"The coast guard continued to get bigger in size but did not have enough personnel and budget allocated for maritime safety, and training for rescue was very much insufficient," she said.

Basically compared to the Burgerland Coast Guard, the SK CG was a dysfunctional shitheap. They had no central authority, and local and provincial juristictions made many of their patrol boats redundant or badly lead. There was zero coordination between local, provincial and national authorities. Nobody knew what in frick they were doing

MAINLY CIVILIAN BOATS AID IN RESCUE:

To further compound public anger in the wake of this needless catastrophe, would be footage of civilian boats from local fishermen performing fricking better than the coast guard patrol boats and rescue helicopters just idling like fools waiting for orders. These small vessels would daringly and valiantly brave the danger of coming close to an almost capsizing ship, and pick up passengers jumping in the water, or trying to pull of passengers from the rails of the deck.

Once again a glaring similarity between this and the Oceanos, where civilians strived to the occasion to show heroism, while sailors sat with their thumbs up their asses.

ROK AGAIN DECLINES AID FROM JAPANESE COAST GUARD AND US-NAVY VESSLE:

https://japantoday.com/category/national/officials-vague-on-rumor-japanese-support-was-refused-for-s-korean-ferry

When the Sewol ferry was sinking, it would be near instantly mayday'd to all surrounding vessels, including vessels just seeing the slowly capsizing ship. Both the US and Japan would be aware of the disaster unfolding the moment the ferry began tipping, and would offer their aid immediately.

The Republic of Korea would decline, to merely save face, and would lie that the majority of passengers had already been rescued, and that they supposedly were already being rushed to shore....

So here we were in the Golden Hours where practically everyone could have been saved, the coast guard helicopters and patrol boats no nothing, the Park Admin is unavailable, everyone is waiting for everyone to initiate and take responsibility, and the US Navy keeps contacting SK to offer aid, and repeatedly gets told to buzz off.

It is theorized that Prez Park is an immensely arrogant individual, and was to proud to ask burgerland for aid, in the aspect that SK would look weak and incapable of even rescuing their own people, and had to beg for help.

https://www.cherrypoint.marines.mil/News/Article/525496/search-and-rescue-marines-stay-ready-through-constant-training

Burgerland Navy vessels are so well equipped, and marines themselves are required to be strong swimmers, as they are highly specialized aquatic infantry whom must be capable of advanced doctrine like island hopping and beach landings.

https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/3201523/us-navy-rescues-mariners-from-burning-vessel-in-gulf-of-aden

While not as proficient as burger Coast Guard, they still have a strong doctrine of practicing civilian rescue operations at sea.

MEANWHILE!!!

The SK coast guard was at that time ESPECIALLY badly equipped for rescue operations. They effectively existed as glorified patrol boats, to protect the SK coast from Chinx fishermen from depleting their shores. They had little experience in actual recue operations.

Which is why additionally, so many patrol boats didn't take the initiative, most of them were incompetent or untrained in rescue missions, and was fearful their ineptitude would be exposed when they fricked up publically.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317663726_Bureaucratic_Accountability_and_Disaster_Response_Why_Did_the_Korea_Coast_Guard_Fail_in_Its_Rescue_Mission_During_the_Sewol_Ferry_Accident

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/658695.html

COAST GUARD LIES ABOUT NOT KNOWING THAT SEWOL FERRY STILL HAD PASSENGERS INSIDE:

The SK coast guard would try to cover its butt for being so stunningly fricking 3rd world in their "rescue" attempts, that they gave public statements that they believed that all passengers had in fact evacuated, and that they didn't know there were people still inside drowning.

Thus they were not at fault for not ordering an evacuation, or participating in an evacuation measure. But proof of their lies were in the form of the students having called their parents about the sinking ship, and most infamously the emergency 1st call made by Choi Duk-ha about the listing ferry at 8:52AM so everyone knew they were lying through their teeth The kid even gave the exact location of where they were sinking at Chingo island.

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/27/world/asia/ferry-south-korea-teen-remembered

CIVILIAN RESCUE DIVERS AND PARENTS WHO RENTED BOAT ARE SCREWED BY COAST GUARD:

On 16 April 2014 when the parents whom had hired a boat to travel to the capsized ferry, they found confusing and conflicting orders and measures from the moronic coast guards. Some said that civilians could enter the cordon around the Sewol, but the coast guard could not what/??

The coast guard were completely unhelpful to the civilian divers, they would prevent civilians from doing any help. When fishermen tried to break the windows still exposed above the surface live, in the hope of rescuing some of the students, the sk coast guard would stop them, claiming it was too dangerous.

Meanwhile when the ferry had finally capsized, and was hanging upside down, the coastguard would not go down in the 1st day with divers to check up upon any survivors, which further enraged the parents, and fishermen.

WASTE OF OPPORTUNITY:

Now the ferry just like the Oceanos was sinking very very slowly. By 10:00PM (that evening) about 15 hours after the ferry had listed, then capsized, but was semi-drifting with its butt above the waterline.

Sometimes when ships capsize, they capture large airpockets in which crew can survive for hours or days more. There was a statistically and historical likelyhood that many students and other passengers were likely still alive, and capable divers like the men in the Thai Cave incident would have been able to retrieve them. But once again the SK coast guard didn't even make an attempt the entire 1st day.''

The parents would see during the night of the 16th that the coast guard do jackshit the whole night!! Parents would shout at the coast guard from their hired little boat, at 12 oclock midnight to fricking go into the ocean and dive!

COAST GUARD LIES ABOUT DIVING OPERATIONS:

But the SK coast guard didn't want to admit they did not have the competency and experience to do rescue divers, but to save face they could not admit that, they had to shift blame or pretend that another department had to have the responsibility of the incident.

So everyone of these differing departments are just waiting around the capsized ferry, not wanting to expose their incompetency, but also wanting to save face, and we have this absolute r-slur moment of SK coast guards just driving around the ferry not doing anything, meanwhile parents on that hired boat screaming at them to do their effing job.

The mainstream media and coast guard claimed that they were doing diving operations on TV, but the parents could fricking see with their own eyes throughout the night, them doing nothing. The parents would record on their phones the inaction, and send footage to all mainstream networks.

PARENTS THROW WATER BOTTLES AT MINISTER IN ANGER:

All of these mainstream reporters would lie about this farce of no rescue operations being conducted by the coats guard, all because they were under the threat of the Park Admin, they all were too cowardly to literally report the truth, so as to not make her admin look bad.

Because of this the parents would form their own close knit group, on WhatsApp, and would coordinate information to bypass the lies of the Park Admin gov officials, and the coast guard.

https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140417000784

========(FROM ARTICLE)

Prime Minister Chung Hong-won made a visit to a gymnasium in Jindo to console the families of victims of the sunken ferry in the early hours of Thursday, only to be attacked by angry parents.

Parents of the students onboard the Sewol ferry shouted, threw objects, and pulled clothes from the prime minister.

Chung made the visit to the gymnasium in South Jeolla Province, just hours after returning from overseas tours to China and Pakistan. Family and friends of those who went missing in the sinking are waiting in the gymnasium for news of their loved ones.

Chung apologized repeatedly and tried to leave the gymnasium, as tension escalated, but dozens of parents blocked his way and surrounded him.

Some family members threw water bottles and empty cans at the prime minister.

On Wednesday, around 250 parents staged a protest at Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, demanding a list of passengers who had been rescued after conflicting news reports about the survivors.

========(end article)

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/24/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/index.html

=====(from CNN article)

Angry relatives of missing South Korean ferry passengers cursed government and police officials Thursday for failing to do enough to save the lives of their loved ones as hopes dim of finding any survivors.

The relatives berated Fisheries Minister Lee Ju-young and two coast guard officials, accusing them of misleading the public about the operation and of wasting time.

“How can you fool us into believing you were out there trying to save our children?” one mother yelled at the officials.

=====(end article)

The minister had to be escorted out with the aid of police, otherwise the parents were literally trying to rip the guy to pieces with their bare hands.

PREZ PARK ARRIVES:

The parents had reeled in their anger when next the President had visited the gymnasium, in the hope that she would see the corruption and incompetence of her underlings, and would come and help save the day; unfortunately she would also spark the ire of the parents, with another canned response about the gov doing all it can ect ect, when the parents could see with their own eyes the complete absence of effort the gov and coastguard were doing to save their kids!

They would end up shouting her down as well, when her coast guard master chief straight up lied about having as many as 500 divers attended the operation last night to try and save the people still trapped in the ferry, the parents raged as this shameless deceit on public media, as they themselves had spent the previous night trying to shout the idle coast guard patrol vessels into action to no avail!!

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1486407/president-park-geun-hye-faces-angry-parents-south-korean-ferry-victims

ATTEMPTS TO INJECT OXYGEN INTO AIR POCKETS FAILS BADLY:

By the 2nd day of the sinking, it was decided that air needed to be injected into the capsized ferry, in case any survivors were struggling to breave and were still alive

Problem!

The fricking entire SK Navy and coast guard didn't have the cowtools or experience to do such an operation. Once again the very capable US Navy vessel USS Bonhomme Richard offered their aid and expertise, and once again our proud Korean frickwits declined, and lied that they had everything under control

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/16/world/asia/air-pockets-south-korea-survivors/index.html

So they had to bring in private sector diving companies. The companies quickly tender for whom could achieve this, and a company called Undine Marine Industries Co is selected. They bring giant funnels and airpumping machines, but this group is incompetent and proceeds to also frick it up They are not trained for water operations as they claimed, and the air injection proceeds disasterously.

https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140430001220

====(from above article)

Undine Marine Industries Co., the company leading the search for the Sewol's missing, is turning up more controversy than results.

Undine has been leading the search for the Sewol's missing, which now stands at 90, since April 17, the day after the ship sank off the coast of Jindo Island, South Jeolla Province.

Undine, however, has not only taken the center role in the painfully slow search but also in the growing controversies stemming from the tragedy that has so far generated a confirmed death toll of 212.

=====(end quote)

The US Navy with all their mega spy drone shit or whatever they use to spy on their allies, are completely aware of this continious frickup of the Koreans, and offer their specialized aid for A THIRD TIME and SK declines again

Eventually it would be found that no air pockets remained by the time the company

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/south-korea-ferry-disaster/south-korea-ferry-disaster-no-air-pockets-found-doomed-ship-n87326

1ST CORPSES RECOVERED BY CIVILIAN DIVERS:

By the 3rd day the 1st drowned corpses were recovered by civilian divers, doing the job for the coast guard. This body recovery would be a monumental and traumitizing undertaking for the civilian divers. These civilian divers were very valiant in their undertaking, and many would spend 2-3 months away from home and family to aid in bringing home the bodies of kids to their grieving parents.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sewol+ferry+civilian+divers+recover+bodies&rlz=1C1CHBF_enZA1072ZA1072&oq=sewol+ferry+civilian+divers+recover+bodies&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg5MgYIAhBFGDkyBggDEEUYOdIBCTEwODU0ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The recovery took an extremely long time, as the situation was very precarious underwater, and beneath the still hanging capsized ferry. The ferry was disintegrating as walls, and furniture would continiously fall from the upside-down Ferry, a great deal of debris had to be manually removed by hand, before the divers could even enter the darn ship. Hallways were very cramped, and divers could get easily stuck in the mazelike interior of the vast ship.

These divers had to very slowly and incrementally place guiding ropes, lights, and ventilation tubes for air to be pumped down to where they worked for hours and hours underwater to excavate corpses. If these ventilation plastic tubes accidentally knotted or got caught on an obstruction, the divers would choke to death from lack of air supply, it was a perilous undertaking.

https://nypost.com/2014/04/25/divers-recover-bodies-in-freeze-frame-of-panic-at-ferry-site

The bodies found by divers showed many schoolchildren having hugged each other upon death, and had tied themselves into a fish-knot, thus forcing divers to untangle the children, before transporting them through windows, and to the surface.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/7/27/a-divers-pain-living-with-the-ghost-of-sewol-tragedy

Another diver was so traumatized on being forced to carry the bloated dead with his bare hands, that he had developed a phobia on touching the skin of other humans, including even that of his wife and child.

And lastly to compound the grimness of this undertaking, one diver would end his own life.

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/748728

THE SOWEL FERRY COMPANY UNDER INTENSE SCRUITINY AND FIRE :

So with so much anger and grief within the SK public, amplified by the parents whom were front and center of TV wailing about their dead children, anger mounted in SK for the culprits and causes of this catastrophe.

https://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/05/06/2014050600343.html

=====(from article)

The ferry disaster off the southwest coast has put the spotlight on the ways in which Korean society often sacrifices safety and reliability for faster, more immediate gain.

The ferry operator, which blatantly flaunted safety rules for the sake of squeezing a few extra won from the business, is a textbook example. Chonghaejin Marine ignored passenger safety because the revenue from fares was relatively small compared to the money it could make from cargo.

Overloading had become routine. At the time of accident, the ferry carried a whopping 3.7 times its cargo capacity of 978 tons. It was more like a cargo ship that grudgingly permitted a few passengers on board, and then abandoned them to their fate the moment something went wrong.

In order to squeeze more cargo on board, the ferry had discharged the ballast water aimed at providing balance, thereby causing the tragic accident.

The operator also hired Lee Joon-seok, a 69-year-old man well past retirement age, on contract for a monthly pay of W2.7 million, to scrimp on the average pay of W3.06 million for coastal ferry crew. An official with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said, "It must have been hard for Lee to feel any kind of responsibility in such a low-paying job."

And despite the ship's age the operator added more decks to accommodate more passengers, which rendered ferry's center of gravity dangerously high.

========(end article)

COMEDY OF ERRORS:

So to summarize this chain-reaction of r-sluration the ballast tanks have been emptied to make room for extra weight in terms of cargo, so that the company may make more money on the Ferry's circuit.

The crew was sloppy and inept, and didn't tie down ANY of the vehicles of trucks, leaving them vulnerable to being thrown about during and listing. The ballast tanks were also nearly empty, providing no counter weight

The Ship had been modified with passenger compartments, by adding 3 new deck levels, thus raising the ship's center of gravity much higher than its original design intended for, all so that the company may make additional money from passengers, as a side-gig, in addition to transporting goods and vehicles.

But it gets worse, and the r-sluration keeps going and going.

Remember how the ship had begun listing in the 1st place? Well you guys won't believe the reason. You see this specific vessel was known to be unbalanced because of its new higher center of gravity, and crews had been instructed to never turn it more than 5 degrees when steering.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/04/south-korea-ferry-was-routinely-overloaded/8686733

For some reason the incompetent would in fact steer the Sewol more than 15 degrees in turning, causing imbalance, which ignited the keg of events which cascaded into the eventual capsizing. WHYYyyy they did it is believed to be mere incompetence. This specific ship was just that crappy, and could not oversteer.

So the unsecured and untied cargo and trucks all begin sliding to the left, which begins the vicious circle of listing, and the ballast tanks cannot correct it, and slowly the whole ship just ends up sinking. All the hard smashing of vehicles breaks holes and openings into the lower hull, and water begins leaking into the ship.

ALSO https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/sewol-ferry-accident.html

Did u guyz know that ballast water isn't just one singular compartment, they are all separated into sub-compartments, just like subreddits There's multiple tubs in these type of vast ships, usually placed strategically on forward, backward, left and right positions, so that water can be pumped between these sub-sections by pumps located between each sub-compartment, thus allowing the crew some measure of fine tuning the balancing or counter acting rough weather if the ship rolls too much of one particular side, allowing correction.

In a functional ship, with a competent crew, these pumps could be immediately activated , to counterbalance the ship, in just such an event, as the listing which started on 16 April 2014

BUT, the pumps were broken and had remained so for multiple journeys before the fateful capsizing.

NATIONAL GRIEF AND HORROR FOR SOUTH KOREA:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/world/asia/south-korea-sewol-ferry-grief.htm

To compound their incompetence, the whole crew was also cowardly, and were the 1st to be rescued after the Sewol Captain. This inspired rage.

Other footage aired on national SK TV, showed traumatizing footage too hardcore for even WPD.

Here are female students seen on tape throwing chairs at windows to try and break them, coast-guards can be seen SEEING her, and doing frick-all, and remaining stationary.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2616663/Heartbreaking-footage-shows-South-Korean-ferry-passengers-trying-break-windows-reach-rescuers-moments-vanishing-beneath-waves.html

For the South Koreans this singking was a really big deal, it was a capstone event, because on average SK is a very meritocratic high-functioning society. They have little theft, violent crime or dysfunction as we have here in South Africa

If I had read this story having originated from RSA, I would not even have been surprised, but SK public is not used to these spectacular 3rd World levels of corruption, incompetence, and petty stupidity. And the 300 dead upon the Sewol Ferry was the fault of multi-intitutional failure which many koreans were not used to. The gov was inept, the coast guard was inept, the media was inept, the local officials was inept, it was a cascade of r-sluration and systemic failure on every level.

And it would shock the South Koreans to their core, every bit as much as the trauma and grief would affect them as they wept at the death of 300 souls.

BILLIONARE OWNER OF SEWOL FERRY FOUND EPSTEINED

As public anger mounted in the wake of the sinking, everything and everyone connected to the Sewol Ferry became radioactive, and koreans would go hardcore in determining who was responsible for what. The Mysterious billionare owner of the Ferry was on that public stoning list.

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/21/world/asia/south-korea-ferry/index.html

====(from above article)

The Sewol ferry disaster appears to have taken another life – this time of the man whom some blamed for the sinking.

Yoo Byung Eun, the subject of an intense, nationwide manhunt who went missing after the South Korean ferry sank in April, was declared dead, police said Tuesday.

Yoo's body was found decomposing in a plum field by a farmer on June 12. Police used DNA and fingerprints to positively identify him.

Prosecutors believe Yoo, 73, and his sons controlled the shipping company that operated the deadly ferry. The ferry that capsized, killed 294 people aboard, including hundreds of high school students who were on a field trip. More than three months after the incident, divers are still searching for bodies, with 10 people missing.

Yoo, through his representatives, vehemently denied any connection to the Chonghaejin Marine Company in late April. His defenders, including members of his religious group, maintained that Yoo, a businessman and religious figure, was made into a scapegoat for the tragedy.

Much of the blame has fallen on Sewol's operators who were accused of prioritizing profits over safety in an investigator's interim report this month. The report found that Sewol had carried double the amount of cargo allowed and that the heavy load had not been properly secured. They also found that the vessel had been licensed on falsified documents.

Manhunt

For months following the sinking, Yoo defied summons to report to the prosecutor's office for questioning. Yoo was wanted for questioning with an investigation into alleged funds embezzlement, tax evasion and other irregularities that prosecutors say could have contributed to the sinking.

Wanted posters including possible disguises for Yoo popped up. Even South Korea's president, Park Geun-hye weighed in, accusing Yoo's family of “mocking the law and causing public rage.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/sewol-yoo-manhunt

With nearly 8,000 police officers dispatched on the case, the inability to find the septuagenarian became another source of controversy. But the search ended Tuesday when police announced Yoo's death.

The cause of death is still under investigation, said Woo Hyung-Ho, the police chief of Suncheon, the city where Yoo's body had been found. Police could not determine when he had died. The body was decomposed.

=====(end article)

AFTERMATH FOR NATION:

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/18/world/asia/south-korea-coast-guard/index.html

The entire complex of Korean coast guard would be disbanded due to their systemic failure to save lives, with much approval from the angry public. However Prez Park would only do this in a desperate attempt to shift attention away from her and her administration.

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/28/asia/sewol-ferry-captain-jailed-murder/index.html

The Sewol ferry captain would be jailed for murder of 304 passengers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/11/south-korea-ferry-verdict-sewol-captain-sentenced-to-36-years-in-prison

And sentenced to 36 years imprisonment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/world/asia/employees-of-south-korean-ferry-operator-are-arrested.html

4 of the senior crew of the ferry were arrested, and sentenced.

HUNDREDS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS ARRESTED:

"The Sewol disaster raised questions regarding governmental regulation of shipping in South Korea. Shipping is regulated by the Korean Shipping Association, which is also an industry trade group, something experts consider a likely conflict of interest. In addition, government regulators outside the Association frequently move to jobs as part of the association after their government service."

https://associationsnow.com/2014/04/association-officials-arrested-south-korean-ferry-tragedy

Hundreds of these shipping officials, regulators and inspectors would be arrested and imprisoned for taking bribes in overlooking serious safety standards involving the Sewol Ferry.

FERRY CLAIMS LAST VICTIM:

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/21/world/asia/ferry-vice-principal-funeral/index.html

====(from above article)

Kang, who was vice principal at Ansan's Danwon High School, was rescued from the sinking Sewol ferry.

Just two days after the accident, he was found dead after apparently hanging himself using a belt from a tree in the city of Jindo. In a note, he expressed regret he had survived while so many others had died.

Kang's body had been found Friday in one of the small mountains near the Jindo Gymnasium where bereaved families are taking shelter, according to local police. He had gone to Jindo with the school in an effort to support families, said one fellow educator.

“As the one in charge of the safety of the students, he was suffering from guilty feelings,” another teacher had told Korean media. When some familes directed their anger at him, he became “brokenhearted.”

=====(end)

CONSEQUENCES FOR PREZ PARK

President Park faced so much heat for this incident, that koreans would be walking in the streets, protesting and demanding her resignation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-27176844

The Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won, would resign after immense pressure from the parents and the public, due to his mishandling of the Ferry disaster. But the heat would only stop where the buck ended, at prez Park's feet.

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/29/world/asia/south-korea-ferry-sinking/index.html

"The web of blame in the South Korean ferry sinking is getting wider, and now the country's president is accepting some of the heat. President Park Geun-hye apologized to the nation Tuesday over the government's initial response to the Sewol ferry tragedy."

WHERE WAS PARK???

Questions began to arise about Prez Park's absence during the critical 1st 7 hours after the ferry began sinking. The public would speculate where Park was, and why she was unreachable for her underlings to give clear orders to the coast guard and whoever.

https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180329000933

====(from article above)

The '7 hours' mystery

The former President's whereabouts on the day of the Sewol tragedy had been a controversial topic even while she was still in office. In spite of repeated public demands, the presidential office at the time refused to provide a clear explanation of why she had not been briefed in person on the accident for about seven hours, until she showed up at the disaster control center at about 5:15 p.m.

Her staff at the time only insisted she was attending to “official duties” at her residence in Cheong Wa Dae on the morning of the disaster. They did not offer any additional information, despite the families' demands for details on what Park was doing for the seven hours on the day of the ferry's sinking.

=====(end)

People were claiming she was on mega aids drugs, or beset with some mystery orgy ceremony, because she was part of some batshit cult, which I could only try and summarize as the korean equivalent of Scientology??

Anyways point is this was mega controversial in Migookland

FERRY SINKING LEADS TO PREZ PARK'S IMPEACHMENT

Mass protests against president Park would follow in the months after the Sewol Ferry sinking. Prez Park began to rapidly lose popularity and support from her voters and supporters, and her political allies began abandoning her.

Asians are pretty organized and disciplined protestors !!!

These demonstrations would go on for weeks, and according to the organizers themselves, about 1.5 million protestors would walk the streets of Seoul for months!

They are really amazing at protesting! No riots or property damage, looting or abject random violence, go SK!!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/27/former-south-korean-president-park-geun-hye-faces-jail-term-corruption-case

Anyways that's all I got, good night

From an article, pasted below for YOUR convenience

TLDR:

“The National Park Service proposes to rehabilitate Welcome Park to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors,” a January 5 press release from the Park Service says, asking the public for input on the “proposed design for the rehabilitation of Welcome Park.”

The park is located on the site of William Penn's home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia.

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. In a separate and future effort, new exhibit panels will be installed on the south site wall to replace the Penn timeline.

So basically they're removing the a statue and biography of the founder of their city on the site of his house to put more recognition of Native Americans lmao And this guy was a Quaker, who were basically the turbolibs of their day. Staunch pacifists and always at the forefront of antislavery groups and progressive political causes.

on dot lose are not happy

Before any one claims slavery, Penn was a Quaker. The Quakers were against slavery.

It's all white people. All white history. They want it erased and they want us exterminated. They have the means to do it now, and they are beginning the process.

That's right crakkka now step into the gas chamber

Another subthread under the top comment, no idea what they're talking about here. Acquitted for what? Any Penncels want to weigh in?

He also was acquitted under jury nullification

Based quakers. Jury nullification is an important tool telling the judiciary and courts that the laws in place are bullshit.
To avoid the risk of jury nullification, I think Biden, Obama, Pelosi, etc. will have to be jailed and executed without a jury trial

can't stop thinking about big, black...booty!?

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to replace Penn's statue with a bronze sculpture of a massive twerking BIPOC?

ON TO REDDIT

I found a thread in /r/philadelphia to get a fair and balanced opinion, surely the redditors are supporting this full-throatedly?

Pennsylvania had a native population of 10,000 when William Penn arrived. It was virtually uninhabited, except for a few settlements in river valleys. The current site of Center City was not home to any Lenape villages to my awareness. This is the fetishization of a very tiny population. If we're going to acknowledge those who preceded Penn, the Swedes and the Dutch should be on the same footing.

I didn't realize that genocide was fine if the population was deemed small enough.

lol what? they're renovating it. sorry for reminding you we live on genocided land.

This is so funny to me, turns out Philly was NOT founded on the ashes of a thriving native metropolis, but because they kind of generally lived in the area, this guy was a genocidemaxxxer and evil

Insane how quickly it went from Confederate statues in the south, to president statues in New York, to now an anti-slavery religious freedom Quaker in Philadelphia. What's next?

Not that we like the guy but trump literally warned of exactly this

These chuds were upmarseyd! And the first guy has a "rittenhouse" flair. I assume its a suburb or neighborhood in Philadelphia, but it's still funny.

Also, this starts a long fight under a subthread, which I'm too lazy to reproduce here, but here is the link to beginning

I wish cities would simply ADD new statues to underrepresented people rather than tearing every historic statue down.

This really isn't a historic statue. It went up in the 1980s, and it's just a copy of the one up on city hall, which I'm pretty sure you can see from the park.
It has minimal aesthetic, historical, or educational value, and statues in general aren't really a particularly effective tool for public history education (as evidenced by this thread).
Making whats currently a pretty barren and ironically unwelcoming park a more pleasant public space that offers more complex and current onsite historic interpretation is a good move. I don't see how just jamming more statues onto the site would accomplish that - from what I can tell, the current statue is coming down because its footprint is the best spot to provide space for seating, which is currently lacking.

The 1980s were 40 years ago already.
There was a time Trajan's Column was new construction.

There are actually metrics in the historic preservation community for deciding what has preservation value based on age and cultural importance.
Nothing about this statue makes the cut. It's not that old, it's not a rare or uncommon example of something, it's not a unique work. It's a really replaceable object.

Yes, William Penn has absolutely no cultural importance here in Pennsylvania.
And, yes, if you replace things every few decades then they never get old.

One Redditor has already given up this battle and gone onto the next one:

Maybe we should start thinking of a new name for "Pennsylvania."

Hoagieville

Jawnson Town

Yinzers! Go shit up this thread with Western Pennsylvania slang

!chuds another statue being taken down, this time its actually NOT a Confederatecel who had no business being there in the first place

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.

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.

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.

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.

Greetings Dramatards

The Oceanos was a ship which sank off of the coast of South Africa in 4 August 1991, during a night of highly extreme weather. And although the majority of the passengers and crew involved with incident were not South Africans themselves, the story would dominate the SA press in a similar fashion as that of the Titan Sub which imploded last year in 2023, or the sinking of the Costa Concordia from Italy, because of the manner in HOW it came to sink. Because it's a REALLY dramatic story, filled with valor and cowardice both.

FORBODING RENAMING BAD LUCK HISTORY OF THE OCEANOS:

The Oceanos was originally a French built cruise ship, all the way back in 1952. It was part of a series of cruise ships built for navigating the important circlet between France, Madagascar and Mauritius - both being Frog colonies at the time.

As the French company "Messageries Maritimes" running these cruise ships would go bankrupt in 1977, the Oceanos was sold off and bought repeatedly time and again through various owners. Worse yet still, the Oceanos would be renamed a multitude of times, a rechristening happening with each reselling.

The Original name of this French built vessel back in 1952 when it was constructed, was "Jean Laborde". Some of its other names through the 4 decades of its service would be: Mykinai, Ancona, Eastern Princess. With its final and fateful owners naming her the Oceanos - her latest owners were the Greek company Epirotiki We'll come back to these bozos

The Oceanos newly acquired by the Greek cruise Company, would be put to work offering luxury cruises for passengers and tourists around the world. In conjunction with TFC Tours a holiday organizing company, the Oceanos would offer luxury cruise rides between Europe and especially places like Southern and South Africa.

Although 4 decades old, the Oceanos was well suited as a luxury cruise liner, as it possessed a top deck swimming pool, dining room, dozens of large apartments and suites.

THE LUXURY CRUISE BEGINS: 31 July 1991

On the 31st July 1991, the Oceanos began its circuit, and left Cape Town to begin its cruise along the Eastern warm water Coast of South Africa, to Durban and back. Along the way it would stop at South Africa's largest ports, including Port Elizabeth and East London.

On the night of the Oceanos' departure from East London, there it would encounter the worst storm it had ever experienced since its employ by the Greek Company.

A bomb threat had been called in anonymously, likely by ANC cell belligerents on the planned night of the Oceanos' departure from East London, as this was the phase of intense pressure against the NP regime at the time, and South African Apartheid would reach bursting point on local and international stage, until de Klerk gave into the demands of Democratization from international, and ANC bombing cell's pressures.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/08/05/557-saved-as-liner-sinks-off-s-africa/b1e10579-6457-4763-b072-ea77adb7de68

Anyways, why this is relevant to our story, is that basically the Oceanos was delayed by 24 hours to be searched for any threats, and to make up for lost time, the ship was steered into the growing storm with recklessness.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Sinking-of-the-Oceanos-Cruise-Ship

"En route to Durban, the Oceanos cruise ship set out from the port of East London on Saturday, August 3, 1991, into 40-knot winds and nine-meter swells."

As that evening's dinner was being served, passengers could instinctively realize that something was very wrong. "Dinner in the ship's Byzantine Dining Room the night of the storm was fraught with nervous laughter. As the ship lurched through massive swells, passengers struggled to keep the food from sliding off their tables."

Waiters and staff would constantly fall over, and drops full trays of food. Moss and Tracy Hills, a husband and wife musician performers on the cruise dinner stage at that time, was alarmed by these events, as they had performed in previous cruises on the Oceanos, and during stormy weather. But it had never ever been this chaotic and unstable before.

Moss and Tracy Hills will basically be the 2 biggest heroes of the story.

https://www.oceanossinking.com/tracy-hills

https://www.oceanossinking.com/moss-hills

OCEANOS SINKS:

At approximately 9:30 PM that night, a loud reverberating boom could be heard throughout the ship, by the passengers in the dining room, even above the extremely loud noise of the storm and swells. The electricity went off, the lights went out and the ship was plunged into oily darkness

Moss and Tracy Hills would attempt to keep the other passengers calm in their fright and stress by continuing to play music for them. By an hour of later, the nervousness of the crowd grew, as the ship began listing, in addition to the rolls in teh heavy 9meter waves. Something was extremely wrong.

Moss Hill would be joined by the Magician and fellow performer Julian Butler, to go and look for Senior crew, as believe it or not, up until this moment, approximately 10:30 PM, well an hour after the power went off the fricking Greek crew had NOT in any way communicated to the passengers what was going on, tried to calm them, or informed them of the status of the ship. The passengers were metaphorically in the dark about their situation, in addition to literally.

https://www.oceanossinking.com/julian-butler

Moss and Butler upon searching for the Senior crew and captain for explanation, found to their horror that below decks, there was already significant flooding, including at the engine room, which is why the power short circuited. Even more horrifyingly, they quickly discovered that all the senior crew were in the process of packing bags and needs, and donning Life-Jackets, all apparently without any fricking intention at all to inform the oblivious passengers, that the senior crew were in the process of fricking abandoning ship!!!

And although there was no official anouncement by any crew or leadership, it was horrifically obvious the darn ship was going down, albeit slowly through flooding!

The Hills and Butler would discover finally, to their shock, the captain and all the senior crew members of the Oceanos piling into an escape/evacuation boat, just like that.

HEROES:

https://www.oceanossinking.com/robin-boltman

At this moment of horror, the two Hills, Butler, and a 4th entertainer Robin Boltman would basically take the initiative and leadership roles, and evacuate the rest of the panic-stricken passengers all by themselves.

https://www.oceanossinking.com/stories-a

The 2 South Africans, an two Englishmen would rise to this occasion, and basically save the lives of everyone in that Dining Room that night, all in the absence of the ship's own crew.

Moss and Butler would go full Gigachad mode and fricking lower the remaining lifebboats not taken, all by themselves - a very precarious and difficult task, as neither men were sailors, or had any prior experience with working the lifeboats or associated equipment.

Moss would try to stabilize the life boats that swung precariously in the wind, waves and rolling of the ship, by standing with one foot on the railing, and the other on the boat, so that fellow passengers, many of whom were old and incapable of being dexterous, to climb into the dangerously swinging lifeboats! All the while wearing no harness or cable or rope or anything, thus placing himself in danger of falling to his drowning death. He showed extreme valor at that time.

Eventually they ran out of lifeboats. But there were still half of all the passengers onboard of the tilting, listing and sinking ship.

MOSS RADIOS FOR HELP:

After valiantly and selflessly helping their fellow passengers upon the lifeboats, whom they could, our heroes headed towards the bridge to find the captain, but he was not there, or any other Senior staff, as the fricking bridge had been completely abandoned! "One of the entertainers, Moss Hills, went to the bridge for instructions and found it empty; the captain had left the remaining 170 or so passengers and crew to fend for themselves."

As our group of heroes struggled to get the Radio working in their unfamiliarity of the device, it was Moss Hill who eventually managed to obtain a reply from a nearby ship. The conversation would become legendary.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Sinking-of-the-Oceanos-Cruise-Ship

The frustrated speaker would ask Moss for precise coordinates so that they could send aid and rescue, but as not being a Sailor, Moss didn't know where they were, or how to obtain their location. When the unknown sailor at the other end of the radio, being frustrated by this incompetence of his caller, asked for Moss what his rank was, Moss replied that he held no rank, he was merely an entertainer/guitarist!

"What are you doing on the bridge?!" the unknown called asked.

"Well there's no one else here." Moss replied.

"Who is on the bridge with you??"

Our hero Moss replied: "Just my wife, and two magicians."

Eventually the speaker could instruct Moss how to use the bridge equipment, and obtain their location in coordinates, so that the other vessel could pinpoint their location, and bring additional SA coastguard help. Rescue helicopters would be organized by the SA coastal authorities.

At this time the SA coast guard was still mostly controlled by whites, and actually were competent and well equipped to partake in rescue operations.

https://www.sa-transport.co.za/aircraft/articles/puma/puma_sa_330.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9rospatiale_SA_330_Puma

Two small ships in the vicinity were first on the scene, and provided the ship's coordinates to the South African authorities. Rescue helicopters (Pumas) began arriving three hours later, and winched passengers and remaining crew to safety, with Hills continuing in charge of the evacuation.

As many as 13 Pumas played crucial roles in the rescue efforts, winching 225 survivors to safety during bad weather conditions. They were assisted by the lifeboats of the Dutch cargo ship Nedlloyd Mauritius, which had responded to the distress call.

THE GAYREEK CAPTAIN STILL ONBOARD?!

As Moss went all over the ship to ensure nobody was being left behind, he fricking found the captain Avranas still on board, smoking a cigarette next to one of the defunct lifeboats. Apparently the cruise entertainment director Loraine Betts had stopped the cowardly captain just before he hauled butt out of there, pleading for him to stay and help the passengers a few hours before, and nobody had noticed the useless loser just standing there smoking like a frickwit. He huddled like a b-word with a small group of remaining cowardly officers just milling about there

https://www.oceanossinking.com/lorraine-betts

The captain Avranas was thoroughly useless, and didn't help the rescue efforts of Moss and Butler, and only fricking intervened when the SADF rescue helicopters arrived to tow the passengers to safety, where the yellow bellied bastard demanded to be one of the 1st taken off to safety

"So that he could better coordinate rescue efforts from above"

AIRLIFT OPERATION:

This still left about 170 passengers remaining on deck. The rescue operation was extremely arduous and slow, and only 2 passengers could be winched at a time by the Puma rescue helicopters, as there were finite hovering space above the sinking ship. Moss and Tracy Hills would organize the passengers into whom were the most vulnerable, so that they could be airlifted 1st.

To understand just how long this multi hour rescue ordeal was, Tracy and Moss Hills would continue to perform along with Butler and Boltman would try to entertain the people as the ship continued its list and sinking over 12 hours, while on the Oceannos' top deck the SADF rescue helicopters would take long times to harness each and every passenger securely before liftoff.

By the time it was daylight, the ship was listing so precariously, that it was near a 45 degree angle, and many passengers would panic or lose their grip upon the railings and fall within the ocean, yet miraculously each and everyone who fell in the water, was repeatedly rescued by Julian Butler, the magiacian who had remained behind and the Navy Diver Paul Whiley, whom did the lionshare of harnessing passengers upon the deck of the Oceanos as it was listing.

Our group of heroic entertainers were the very last to be rescued and airlifted, and most astonishingly all done just a mere 45 minutes, before the final sinking of the Oceanos which occurred very very swiftly in the final stages of its downfall.

AFTERMATH:

https://web.archive.org/web/20091108202012/https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/08/news/08iht-ship.html

Most miraculously and astonishingly, it was found after the hectic rescue that every single one of the 581 people on board had been saved - there had been ZERO fatalities!!!

SA and global media covered the event for months, similar as to the fiasco of the more recent sinking of the Costa Concordia, the greek captain Avranas received extensive media condemnation as an example of unprofessional behaviour whilst in command, as well as his tremendous cowardice in the face of the heroism of the Hills.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16611371

In 1991-1992 Captain Yiannis Avranas and four of the crew of the Oceanos were found guilty of negligence after the ship sank in 1991, by a Greek board of inquiry, for abandoning ship without broadcasting a mayday, alerting the passengers or properly assisting in their evacuation. Despite the judgement, their behaviour was defended by the then head of Epirotiki Line and Captain Avranas continued to command a vessel until his retirement.

YET still they didn't face any legal repercussions or actual punishment and would retire a fricking captain of smaller greek vessels

CAUSE OF FLOODING:

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Sinking-of-the-Oceanos-Cruise-Ship

Oh yeah remember the beginning of the flood? It was the result of incomplete maintenance - a faulty waste-disposal system in the engine room was still being repaired as the ship left port, and was unfinished! This left a 10cm hole in the supposed watertight bulkhead open. Upon leaving port, a pipe and valve was exposed in the bulkhead.

Astonishingly this was not even the 1st time that this specific negligence had been encountered by Port authorities, and this very specific pipe/valve thing had remained exposed upon numerous voyages of the cruiser leaving port with incomplete maintenance!

Under normal circumstances this opening would be well above the sea-line, but on that fateful night of 4 August 1991, the Oceanos would sail directly into the most extreme swells of its career, and the 9meter tall waves would be high enough to pierce this exposure, and flood the ship enough initially, to snowball its end.

GAYREEK COMPANIY EPIROTIKI HAS HISTORY OF MARITIME MISMANAGEMENT:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090813055937/https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/07/world/owner-of-lost-greek-cruise-ship-has-history-of-maritime-mishaps.html?scp=2&sq=Oceanos+ship&st=cse

It will surprise no one that our Gayreek friends of the cruiser company Epirotiki was just as badly run as their home country of origin. Apparently, the night of 4 August 1991 wasn't the 1st time the lower decks had even been flooded before, and many previous passengers of Oceanos stating: "Several former passengers have come forward to assert that the lower deck of the Oceanos flooded on a previous voyage here, from July 24 to 28, but the ship's owner, Epirotiki Lines, has insisted the ship was seaworthy."

Additionally 3 fricking ships of the same company had sunk over the course of just 3 years lmoa! Man Greece really peaked 3000 years ago lol!

"At a news conference held here today by TFC Tours, the company's cruise director defended the ship's captain and crew, who were accused by passengers of quitting the ship prematurely. The cruise director, Lorraine Betts, acknowledged that some crewmen left the ship without the captain's permission. But she said at least 60 others had stayed to help the passengers into the life rafts." "Hey at least 60 staff stayed on the ship to help u guyzz!"

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Sinking-of-the-Oceanos-Cruise-Ship

Anyways that's all I got, here is pic of the Hills

Movies haven't been doing well lately, to put it mildly, and lots of films that were supposed to have wide appeal failed to bring people at the cinema. The most famous ones being superheroes movies, whose main demographic is young white men. So, imagine the smug cooming if a movie made for black women would not only buck this trend but would also save cinema everywhere, proving once and for all that white men are useless and that diversity films are the way to the future...

The dream came close with The Color Purple, a movie about suffering black women (and faith, but no one on the internet mentions this). It had a great start at the boxoffice, with really high critic and audience scores and a great opening day, so soys all over rejoiced Tbf for the movie, it seemed that it was genuinely liked by it's target audience, older religious black women, and had good sales during Christmas, but as soon as the religious fervour died down and the movie had to rely on the general audience for legs... it started dropping badly to put it mildly.

CP/TCP - The Color Purple

OW - Opening Week/Opening Weekend (mostly probably the later since the movie hasn't been out for a week yet)

OD - Opening Day

Early reactions before the movie was out in the theatres

Reddit

I understand WHY the movie industry keeps recycling old stuff, but I dont have to like it. And I will not be spending money on anything that absolutely does not need a remake. This film in particular does not need a remake.

this isn't a remake.

It's an adaptation of the stage play.

It's not a remake it's just a remake!

This is a lesbian movie

They better NOt brush off the lesbian aspect of the film.

Steven Spielberg chickened out when it came to the lesbian aspect of the book. He admitted it himself.

Apparently the main character of the book finds Jebus due to her lover, but the past movie ignored this and made them friends

Will it keep the lesbian elements from the book? Heard this is based on musical. Did that one have it?

Reddit is absolutely obsessed with this lmao

Why did they remake this? The original is FLAWLESS.

Even with the whole Spielberg brushing off lesbian aspects in his film version?

What about the lesbian s*x chud?

Just what everyone was looking for: A SASSY adaptation.

It's a current year movie about black women after all

This is the first masterpiece of many they plan on trying to shove a remake of down our throats...why is it black folks are always the test subjects for bullshit like this?

Uhhh with all the remakes and reboots that have happened in the past years I'm positive this isnt a race thing😂 black people are not the test subjects if this is one of the few remakes of black films in a sea of remakes of fantasy, horror films, etc.

Yeah, i said remake of a masterpiece

It being a masterpiece has not stopped decades of remakes of other masterpieces. This is no different. And at least it's a musical.

You also said black people being test subjects of remakes which is objectively untrue based on the decades of remakes.

The argument keeps going after this and moves on to what movies are actually masterpieces

BOT

....I guess it's a different enough approach to warrant a remake? I mean, in my opinion, a remake is wholly unnecessary if the point of its conception is to just do the same movie over again with not more than a few differences and that fails to improve on the original in any major way possible (or doesn't even try to). If you can make a different, arguably superior narrative out of the same plot (or even if it's the same movie but done better in every way), then it dodges being pointless and lives up to what remakes should be all about. This being a musical will likely give it a wholly different vibe from the original, which was a bit of a somber/sentimental drama. If it doesn't work... whatever, at least they did a remake that wasn't a stupid idea for once. So, while I'm sure everyone will complain about this being another unwanted remake, let's stop for a moment and think that maybe this one doesn't sound so dumb after all when you consider that it will actually stray away from the original in the way that it tells its story. Both will stand on their own, even if it turns out that the measurement of quality between the two is lopsided. And The Color Purple wasn't even a perfect movie anyway, so there's room for improvement... it's not like this is The Godfather.

4th comment of the thread, a good start

What part of "Film of the Tony winning Musical" did you not read?

C'mon, man. You've legit just made the same (very condescending) post three times. Use the multiquote button or just make the post once.

Movie was just announced and BOT users are already attacking each other over it

Yeah this will be a big hit. Look at that cast and everybody loved the original.

The cast is some literally whos and the black mermaid Oh and Oprah is a producer or something if anyone still cares about her

This is really going to be big. Press tour is going to be crazy.

Same person... this thread has like 7 pages in total and most mildly popular movies go into at least the 20s, so there were already some signs pointing to the future disaster...

A grand opening and a great success!

Reddit

Here's a whole comment section where redditors jerk themselves raw over this movie potentially getting a perfect score

(Again, tbf it did get a really good score, an A. Problem was the movie's niche audience - black women were the only ones who watched on the same day and gave the movie a great score but the general audience who came later was less impressed. Which is also why the movie has both a mixed and a really good reception. It's also why word of mouth isn't going to save it. It would have been a hit on a smaller budget but Hollywood must Hollywood I guess )

Lol only on Reddit would anime be used to explain the lineage of A Color Purple.

Finally Halle Bailey is in a movie that won't let down her talent.

this is her first WB movie but the fact she can sing, write her own music, write music for a film, act, & has gp appeal is something getting more rare and rare nowadays. i'm rooting for her to get a good push in 2024-2026, WB or Disney need to make her huge. she's definitely one of the newer celebrities to deserve it.

Redditors are still simping hard for BLM

It's a niche movie IMO

Just say it's a black movie. My grandma and grandpop and all of their church folks will be taking off their Sunday hats and rushing to the theaters to see this. I'm tired of people using “niche” to diminish the black dollar. We're coming out and we're going to make it a hit. Period.

It's a black movie with a not advertised but significant L plot ...

Opens strong but has no legs after Sunday

What a plausible wet dream for you, for obvious reasons. I would block, but I appreciate you're not hiding your micro aggressions and are at least openly an L and an R.

No, we'll make it a hit you'll see!

It seems whoever was saying the movie was getting mixed reception was lying because it's at 88% right now off 34 reviews. The top critics scores is 95%. And the average score is 7.3/10.

The word on mixed reception starting coming in after the incredibly huge presales so now I'm wondering if that was just the wishful thinking from some people who were being downers.

Sometimes it pays to be patient

White straight middle-class dude from the suburbs here. After all the curveballs that the 2020s have thrown us, I find the history of the blues, jazz, and early rock and roll (which saw a lot of LGBT, poor, handicapped, and/or racial minorities find their voices) to be very inspiring in the face of all the "-isms" of the early 20th century as well as the resurgent racism, classism, and ultranationalism we have today.

As a white man I really love black people, so inspiring and brave!

I'm honestly surprised that All Audience rating is not in the potty since I expected the film to suffer from severe review bombings simply because Halle Bailey is in the film.

People really need to stop overestimating how much internet shit spills over in the real world, this is a bubble and nobody outside of it cares.

Movies don't flop because some internet weirdos are enraged, they flop if their whole audience is disinterested, but it's easier to blame a few annoying neurodivergents than face reality.

Whats wrong with Halle Bailey?

Same old argument about the Black Mermaid, if you're feeling nostalgic go read it

A musical about misery and a lesbian lead, who would thought the public would eat this up?

I've noticed a few users here trying to downplay it for this reason lol.

Can't have a gay musical with a black led cast winning the holidays

Well the public is apparently not eating it up

Watched the original don't need to watch a remake so everyone can suddenly forget what kind of horrible fake person Oprah became and is so hard pass

True, chuds need to remember that Oprah is still cancelled

You know, I think the juxtaposition of the musical numbers against the unrelenting horror of Celie's life was actually a great way to get an audience to experience the dissonance that comes with being a Black woman. Life can be as horrible as it is joyous and often times very close together, occasionally even simultaneously.

Yes! This is well said.

Only black women can feel such deep emotions and recover from them, truly magical creatures

It's very odd to try to figure out how they choose to balance the shocking, raw traumas from the book with the hopeful, upbeat tones….without also including the storyline of exactly how Shug shows Celie a whole new side of life

The movie is about a black woman who gets repeatedly r*ped by her father and then forced to give birth to the resulting children and who later discovers Jeebus and heals. Clearly the movie isn't deep enough if the two main protagonists are just being friends and helping each other get over their trauma or whatever, they MUST lick each other's coochies too

BOT

Holy shit at the reactions frommlast night premiere. This will be big.

Same guy from before, unfortunately tulpa'ing this movie's success into existence is not possible

(there are also critics reactions on the same page and they are all impressed )

Would not be shocked if this outgrosed Aquaman and Wonka based on ticket sells for all 3 movies

It will not in fact outgross Wonka

Sorry I'm a bit out of the loop on this one. What is this movie again and why it seems so popular?

This is what happens when you only pay attention to "geek" movies and geek actors...... Soer of shocked this explanation was necessary.

Kinda shocked that some poster on an international forum doesn't know all the random art slops featuring a minority group that culturally exists only in America, what gives?

it's up to 66 for Metacrtic with 9 reviews , if it's stay around this number , he could be good because Wonka has 66 and he has a 85% on RT so it's be enough for a boost

So this movie beating up Wonka is BOT's cope of choice for some reason. I guess they have some vaguely overlapping audiences since they are both musicals but still, one is a family friendly colorful adventure and the other is about a lesbian r*ped by her father

The way this industry treats Black people, especially Black women, is so terrible. Groomers, cult members, and abusers can go so much farther with less talent and less success if they're male and white.

This is so facts. Like after Empire, she should have been in everything, but her team was like "no" because?????????????????????

This generally happens only if the actor is too difficult to work with

Yeah, she deserves better. Uncle Sam is a little b-word and needs to stop taking 50% of what we make. I remember people were also going after Margot Robbie because she dared to make money from Barbie. People just assumed she kept all that.

Wow, I wonder why rich people are demonized on the internet, like what started it? Also why are taxes on large profits so high, I can't figure it out!

Her issue isn't Uncle Sam or splitting costs with her team, she's done many interviews about this, her main issue is that black actresses don't make the same amount as their white counterparts and despite being an Emmy and Oscar nominee she still has to audition, for example she had to audition and fight for this role in The Color Purple. Most of her white counterparts get offered roles, they dont have to stay on the audition circuit. She also said she had to fight for Danielle and Fantasia's team to ask for a fair amount from the studio.

White actors are all getting roles without even looking for them unlike strong black wahmen who have to go to auditions and shit

You guys are not prepared for the enormous hit that Color Purple will be. I would not be shocked if it got $25 million on Christmas Day.

Oh, sounds interesting...

Too early to say but I expect a post Xmas collapse and Color Purple to mainly exploit that. I don't think Aquaman is going over Black Adam.

Too bad The Color Purple will also collapse after Christmas

Ehhh TCP and Aquaman have two different target audiences. I don't think one will exploit the other

Casuals that would otherwise go to Aquaman by default will go to TCP. I realize those aren't Aquaman's core but so few people care about a superhero movie that's already dead that it will get hurt by ANY competition.

I'm sorry but looking at Aquaman's target audience, I don't expect a bunch of 18-24 year old white guys to choose TCP default over Aquaman 2.

Oh yeah, Color Purple is such a wide pleasing blockbuster, everyone will want to see it

TCP 16M ish. Very low walkups.

Remember the user above that predicted a $25m opening day, now they are talking about $16m

There's no way it does only $16M. Nearly every showing in my area is like 80-90% full with even a few sellouts.

i mean your local area isn't necessarily representative of all of USA and CAN

Reality starts to sink in

Can't wait for people to pretend that this number is bad actually. Totally not gonna be obnoxious and irritating no siree

Too bad that number wasn't higher, it's not like it's making much money now

Okay but even multiple people on this forum have reported similar things regarding this movie. Don't get me wrong, $16M is still a good number, especially for a film of this kind, but I expected closer to $20M, especially after watching walkups help Aquabro and Migration exceed projections.

Those are movies you can actually watch on Christmas tho

Color Purple would still have to have historically bad holiday legs to miss 100. Think it ends somewhere between 120-150.

.... did anyone suggest it wouldn't get to $100 m dom?

A couple people in the tracking thread did this week. But there's been some fairly odd rhetoric about it in that thread that isn't reflective of the general opinion of the boards, for sure.

Those definitely are out of touch. TCP got to be some fanboys superhero movie to have that terrible legs. But it is not, TCP is a freaking Oscar player that opened during award season. That alone can give you some Oscar bump.

If the wolf of Wall Street get 100m with just 9.2m OD, and a freaking C+ cinemascore, TCP should get there with an eyes closed. It is 95% rated by audience which should at least translate to A cinemascore.

Stop predicting numbers in bad faith chud

It's fair to say that a $16 million OD Christmas movie missing $100m dom is unprecedented.

There is 0% chance TCP misses 100M with a 16M+ OD.

Never say never!

the color purple is about to be a WOM storm we haven't seen maybe all year. i went in knowing it would good but fantasia is fricking unreal in this. haven't seen a crowd this engaged in a very long time at the theaters. if OD really is 16, i think this has a shot at around 200+ domestic.

The WOM was good, unfortunately middle aged black women isn't exactly a large demographic

Just to be clear I never said TCP is gonna miss 100, I am just saying it is possible.

I gotta be honest, I don't get why you'd even bring this up before Cinemascore was up.

To be fair, he only mentioned that in this thread after another member said it was impossible TCP wouldn't reach 100M DOM. So, you should complaint to that member for bringing this up before Cinemascore was up.

The quote Charlie specifically made was in response to Clay's reasonable explanation that it was to pre-emptively shut up people who've been weird in the tracking thread, who Charlie proceeded to defend and then say it could miss 100 without any sign of that.

Clay may want to prevent a weird discussion, but he is just opening the door to that discussion by bringing up that topic. Charlie was only answering him with his own analysis.

Honestly, I just don't understand why you tried to call Charlie out for his answer. Maybe you don't like Charlie's analysis that TCP reaching 100M DOM isn't absolutely certain, but he didn't bring the topic out of nowhere on this thread (as Clay bring the topic first).

I explained it about as good as I can that deciding to defend those types of posts in the thread and genuinely try to argue that missing 100 million was doable pre-Cinemascore (Which a bunch of other people called out and agreed was just weird) is odd.

No, only positivity for black woman movie!

TCP Broadway musical reached 1500 performances (original + revival). I don't think you can make that only with a black audience. I think there Is a space to have WOM upon others targets too.

True, broadway musicals are a really good predictor for the general audience and not at all a nice and unironically privileged hobby

If it does follow the same path as The Woman King, then that is still $180,000,000+ in America

TCP's OD being on christmas throws that comp out of wack, though I'm still hoping it can reach that.

Then why bring up The Woman King in the first place? If it follows Dreamgirls, then it still gets to that number.

Not sure what's so hard to get...

I answered the poster by stating that while the best outcome would be for the film to break out to other demos, that's not a guarantee, and Woman King is a recent example of a film with excellent reviews and audience reception that still didn't manage to draw more demos to it

Of course that doesn't mean TCP will go that way, and Dreamgirls is an example of the opposite - all I said was that being excessively skewing to one demo is not necessarily a good thing, because it's possible those other demos just never come throug

And if the same percentage stays consistent for The Color Purple as it did for The Woman King, then it still gets to $180,000,000+. So, what is so hard to get about that?

Ok...let's try this one again. Yes, Woman King did do 10x its OD, but its OD was a regular friday, not christmas day, which boosts business considerably...

Why bring up The Woman King if the conditions are as disparate as you say? That just appears to be daft on your part then

I don't really get if you don't get my point or you're just trying to get some weird gotcha moment on me

This isn't some sort of projection on the legs, merely a statement that there is no guarantee of a film breaking out of its demo into spectacular legs regardless of reviews and reception

TWK had spectacular reviews from both critics and audience with a much-coveted A+ cinemascore, but ended up having rather normal legs

The sudden crash and burn

The movie was a star for a total of one day, immediately after Christmas it started dropping hard. Most posts here are after Color Purple had 2 massive drops, and in less than a week it dropped 80% from it's opening day - an absolutely horrendous performance. Today most movies had a mostly flat performance, even Aquaman dropped only 3% since yesterday, The Color Purple? 15%. Obviously, all good mood turned into crying and coping.

Reddit

I don't understand why so many had big hopes for this. 1, barely seen any promotions on this and 2, it's a very niche musical, it's a musical right? Maybe 150ww, but I also have no clue for how much this genre can make.

Oh, you know exactly why

The African-American story portrayed here doesn't resonate/interest people outside of America

At least some people are reasonable...

"A movie aimed at the adults performs worse when adults at work" - wow, seriously?

Some less so

Everyone went back to work. How much money do you realistically expect it to make on a Tuesday? I imagine more people are waiting until the weekend

This seems to be the chosen cope among redditors

If we lived in a world where films 'need' to be for everyone, we'd only ever have superhero movies.

If you're demographic is that narrow maybe think twice before approving a hundred million budget

Depends on streaming deals, tax credits and other such factors. Each episode of House of the Dragon cost $20mil for a $200mil budget and it's not going to make a single ticket sale.

Big budget films should be criticized but I don't think spending $100mil for a prestige piece is a bad business decision, it just won't be frontloaded with cash.

Ah, this "argument" again. The budget may very well have done more on its own as an investment vehicle or invested in a different film - aka an opportunity cost. I'm not sure how much it'll do on VOD either because it is burning out its demand.

I think it's more than fair to say that this performance is not good.

This is the exact same argument you'll hear about The Woman King, which also flopped, even if /r/boxoffice refuses to admit it even today

This was always going to be a niche film. It's not appropriate for children, honestly I think the subject matter is best for 18+. It's mostly going to appeal to women and probably older women (35+) If anyone is unfamiliar with the story, I would recommend starting with the book. At least read the Wiki plot

This comment speaks volume about Reddit demo. "Older women" cut off point = 35 years old? When I think about "older women" it's 50+, and they're reading airport romance.

hate to break it to you but the classic Hollywood demo cutoff of young vs. old is age 25 (four quadrant system)

Redditor knows nothing about how film business works yet still takes time to write angry messages about various -isms

Honestly this Reddit is a bunch of yt cis het dudes stuck in 1999. I saw a comment speaking about how this movie was gonna flop due to it being “political”

a VERY limited lens and view on the world my friend. Especially when OP said a movie would only appeal to a specific gender when the movie appeals to a mass community rather.

That's why the movie is a blockbuster right?

Exactly, 2nd highest Christmas Day opening ever, it's amazing!

Still not looking good for a clean hit lol

Second moron joins the argument

This doesn't bode well for the conversations about salary that have been surrounding this movie

Lmao don't let BOT hear this

Theaters are prohibitively expensive and this means target demos for this movie probably can't afford to go to a theater. Let's say you want to bring your family of four to see this brilliant film. That would be $100 around.

They can and they did. They just rushed to see it on Christmas. The problem is people outside of the demo doesn't care.

I disagree I think access to movie theaters in underserved areas is a real issue and is a part of why it doesn't have legs https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/african-american-communities-lack-theaters-ava-duvernay-twitter-1201980590

this is a 6 year old article

This movie is flopping because of racist cinema deserts in the hood

White people really don't care to see movies with non white people in it seems

As a non american I really don't care about black culture movies

BOT

Jat was right about Color Purple missing 100 lol. Never should have brought it up!

This thing has a $90m budget, so below 100 would be a disaster. Even if it crosses 100 it would still be bad, since it needs to reach the $200m mark to start making profit. Even if the black audience and their allies will repeat view this movie, without the general and the international audience it doesn't have much chance to break even.

“X movie flopped so why aren't we talking about it as much as Marvels???” is by far the year's most annoying box-office meme. It's even been done with actual hits like Wonka.

It's also the only time people actually still talk about the Marvels.

Capeshitters are eternally seething

(There's even an article about this phenomenon if anyone wants even more reading material: https://episodicmedium.substack.com/p/week-to-week-saying-the-marvels-bombed)

Yikes to TCP. Is it because it's not really a family film and the primary demographic went back to work? The weekend will be the real test.

This movie better have really good legs among the black community otherwise it bombs But what are the chances of black men turning up en masse?

More like The Woman King, b/c it's not breaking out from 25+ Black women, no matter how good it is...here, I was hoping that group would at least drag their families and friends, but that dragging seems limited (the 25 and under males number was a big warning sign that it was mom and grandma without the grandkids)...

Yeah, no young black man will want to see the story of a black woman rebuilding her life after giving birth to fer own brothers no matter what grandma says

2 musicals at once really did split the musical audience down the middle, b/c while Wonka is winning December, it's still not getting close to what some folks hoped for a big breakout.

Color Purple never stood a chance to overtake Wonka. Come on, it's the winter holidays, the most cheerful time of the year for most people, who would ruin their time with their family over yet another trauma porn movie? "Alright guys, we have three movie choices this year: watch an older family classic, watch a funny new movie like Wonka or... an incestuous black lesbian corrective r*pe movie So which one will it be?"

Clearly that Oprah's Favorite Things connection helped really boost the numbers for The Color Purple out the gate. Given how much Broadway adaptations have struggled lately even $80-90M total isn't bad at all for it.

I-it's not a bad performance at all! Even if it's fricking budget is $90m

oprah will tell her fans to buy it on digital/physical and it'll be okay in the long run. but yes, since it likely isn't making more than 150 million its a flop/bomb

Mother of all copes

These numbers may be what gets me to finally quit the boards. It just isn't any fun anymore.

Speak for yourself, seeing every movie collapse has been really entertaining

Really sad about what's going on with TCP, white people aren't showing up for the movie at all even with such a high Cinemascore. Reminds me of The Woman King.

Mayos ruin yet another good thing! Mayocide now

The general audience is even more fragmented than before.

Unironically, casting a black lead was less controversial two decades ago than it is now

Unless it's a superhero (BP, Spider-Verse) or supernatural horror-esque (Get Out), white people don't really show up for "Black" movies. Personally, TCP always seemed so distressing to the point where I didn't want to see it either.

White people will accept black actors in 'neutral genres' like action, superheroes and horror, but will avoid black actors in plots or stories that revolve around black lives and experiences

Unfortunate about The Color Purple's post-Christmas Day results. It's getting the "Black trauma porn" allegations from social media (younger people) and the 1985 version got heat through the years for negative portrayals of Black men in particular. So that tracks with the attendance now being skewed so strongly to older Black women, the group least likely to have an issue with TCP conceptually.

Identity battles sure are less funny now, right?

It's kinda hard for me to believe CP having more male appeal than Woman King

lets not go there

However, it's very sad how a Tony awarded musical based on a popular book can only interest one demographic (older black women). This box office performance will further prove that “black” movies can't have a wide appeal in the box office unless it's superhero or horror. Just sad all around.

Why do they keep bringing up that award like it matters? No one cares what awards musicals get. Also just because the musical got an award doesn't mean the movie is good

the hold is so bad they have to call Obama for helps

: Yes specific markets are unpredicyable and can carry a movie like how China carried Coco and SK Elemental. Moana's gonna flop if they dress her like a nun which is what they do with female superheroes, or if they digitally flatten her like they did with Halle Bailey. There's nothing wrong with sexy and whether it's objectification is in the eye of a beholder. Barbie, Taylor Swift, the Na'vi dress sexy/revealing and their movies were hits. The Marvels dressed like nuns yet even The Nun 2 made more money.

: Jesse what the heck are you talking about

: Hop off the crack bro

Girls have Moana themed bday parties to dress like her. Big reason why Frozen was such a hit is that girls loved to dress like Elsa cause that was so pretty. Nobody wants to dress like The Marvels yet Feige was bragging about discarding CM's sexier costumes in favor of...that thing. Then he multipled that thing whatever it is (potato sack?) by 3 and bombed worse than The Flash. No crack, just common sense. Look around, see how people dress and what they find pretty and put your characters in it. But fair enough, back to BO.

I know you've been here for like years but are you permanently stuck at 14?

You need to move on.

After a suspension, our resident problematic fave is back in full force with all their pent-up anger.

"fave"?

I was about to move some posts around to make a new thread, but before I do that....yeah Valonqar please do not post sexist garbage like this. I truly doubt the world needs women to dress ultra super sexy and have giant chests in order to find success in the movies. And if that is the case, we have a bigger problem in our awful patricarchal society, and it's a pity that you are encouraging this.

Please keep your hand out of your pants, or greater repercussions will come your way. You're an adult, so act like one. I hate that I have to wake up to this utter trash and that I even have to explain that this type of garbage shouldn't be on the forum, but I guess I can't expect too much from some of you. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh well.

Saying hot women attract more viewers is sexist on BOT

Major reason wonder women 1 was a smash hit is cause guys found gal Godot hot as heck in her outfit.

This goes for you too mister. We don't need this stuff on the forum. Period.

I mean people like looking at attractive actors look at Barbie who dress well...Ken and Barbie. People really liked how they looked. If Margot and gosling didn't look so attractive or dress so well i think it wouldn't have been as popular.

I feel like when people think it is weird I post on an online box office forum, this is what they're imagining.

That people watch movie for eye candy ?

There is an important difference between characters looking good and characters being hypersexualized. I'm not sure Hollywood (or some people in this forum) knows the difference.

Alright, about to move this into the Numbers/Data forum. But as a reminder once again to people, when I, or any other mod, ask you to stop something, you stop. No hesitation. No stammers. No ifs. No ands. No buts. No nothing. Please listen to the staff, or else more repercussions head your way. Thank you. :)

Come on guys, take me seriously for once : )

Color Purple can still technically make money, but it will need very good sales over lots of weekends for it. If black women love this movie to the point where they will watch it repeatedly or it starts to gather audience from other demographics it will be relatively fine (considering that movies that actually make money are an exception now). This weekend will be decisive for it. Don't hold your breath tho

Bonus:

If you have delulus still claiming that the Marvels wasn't the flop of the decade because its box office was higher than Oscar bait, you can bet your bottom dollar that Twits will have a field day about TCP.

Fun fact: The Marvel's Wikipedia article is currently protected because someone keep changing "the film became Box Office Bomb" to "the film is a Box Office Disappointment".

Lmao

I decided that I'd done a bit too much chudding today and decided to check on even more r-slurred chuds... only to see Stormfront's dating forum. Let's look at the most recent post:

My sister is dating a black. Any advice?

This is a serious post, so please do not take this as innapropriate. I seriously need help with this. So, for a few months now, my sister has been going out with a black boy. They are both 13. Just from the start, because of the way he acts and talks, I knew something was up. And I was right. One month into their little relationship, I discovered sexual texts that they had been sending each other. It disgusted me, but that is not why I am here today. Yesterday, I found out that they have been touching each other. It just fills me with rage and I don't now what to do. I wish I could call the Klan, but there isn't a klavern In my area. Does anyone have any advice?

This guy wants to call the Klan - this was posted on Christmas in 2023 by the way. Just

Let's see what the """good people""" of stormfront.org have to say:

An easy answer to a serious post:

Disown your sister. She is tainted now and there is no coming back from it.

Have you told her of your disapproval? Have you told her she needs to stick to her own kind?

What about your parents? Are they aware of what is going on? Even if they're okay with the racial thing maybe they wouldn't be okay with her being only 13.

You could show her this thread:

Mudshark Madness! The Consequences of Mudsharking

When I look into the linked thread, I see this...

"From the 'Do-I-Give-A-Flying-Flock?' department: Here's a few photo montages (below) of White women who became involved with blacks and paid the ultimate price for their stupidity. I can't entirely blame them, however, since Jew media constantly brainwashes our race to breed ourselves away - so hypocritical considering how this arrogant race does everything possible under the radar, or even quite openly over in Israel, to limit this kind of thing among themselves.

Hate to get graphic about it, but these foolish White women were stabbed, slashed, shot, strangled, smothered, slugged, stomped, had their faces and heads bashed in by anything convenient, maybe even burned alive by the black animal - gone bonkers about something or other - enough to murder 'Dat White b***h.' When things go really bad, these violently crazy apes might run off and slaughter the woman's White friends, relatives, or any new White boyfriends - should the fool finally come to her senses.

...with a bunch of pictures of what is described.

Disown her

Tell her that once affirmative action for blacks drops in a couple decades her would be jungle latchers shall be unable to compete and take the spots of beautiful, normal, and intelligent Whites on an even playing field.

JUST WAIT 20 MORE YEARS, CHUD.

White girls sexualized at young ages by Negros are a serious problem.

13 is too young to know better. Disown your parents for their negligence.

Your sister is dating at 13? And it's a black boy that she's seeing? Don't disown your sister. Disown your parents.

Chuds are mad at the parents too lol

If she talks like a black, then it might be too late

Just teach her to love their race, point out STD and crime statistics,

Explain to her that your Family Tree goes back thousands of Years and she will Kill it,

Do not allow your Sister to become overweight or have low self-esteem

Stop her from listening to that black Rap by showing her White Music

Do not allow your Sister to be friends with girls who have Negrophilia.

Explain the IQ Difference

I'd disown her. Once he beats her black and blue, knocks her up and then decides to leave her, she may just wake up. But if she is into blacks then, she is too far gone.

If you talk to her or your parents don't use the n word or any other derogatory term such as the one you used in the thread title. Use black.

If you use a derogatory term she may stop listening to you right then and there.

THE KLAN SHOWS UP

Since you are on Stormfront, I presume that you are most likely at least 18-years-of-age. Of course, that means you are your sister's older brother. This is no time to be seeking assistance from the local chapter or klavern of the Ku Klux Klan--and I have the deepest respect for the Klan, and even have friends who are Klansmen. At one time I was a Klansman, so, from personal experience, I know that the Ku Klux Klan is an honorable organization.

As your younger sister's older brother, you must immediately discipline her; you have a fiduciary responsibility to do so. Forcefully--but not harshly and cruelly--order her to stop seeing her 13-year-old negro "paramour" and do not, under any circumstances, allow her to resist your orders. Additionally, I recommend that you seize her cell phone; those darn things are a cancer and cause damage to one's brain--sometimes irreversible damage. In all but the rarest cases, no 13-year-old needs a cell phone. Yes, I know that there are exceptions to the rule, but from what you have articulated in your post, your younger sister is not the "rare exception."

Should your younger sister refuse to obey your commands, it is time to get your parents involved. Obviously, I do not know the very first thing about your parents; however, if they have even a tinge of racial-consciousness and racial pride, they will probably be appalled to learn that their 13-year-old daughter is cavorting with a subhuman negro. Most White parents, while obviously not anywhere near as outspoken as me about the vile worthlessness of all negroes, still secretly harbor disdain and even downright disgust for these barbaric, subhuman, feral simian cannibals.

You must know that in all states in America a 13-year-old is considered a minor under state law; this means that your parents have the legal authority to discipline your younger sister in the harshest manner possible. Being that your younger sister is 13-years-old, she is right at "that age" when she is developing into late adolescence; this should not be mistaken for early adulthood, because early adulthood occurs in one's late teen years or early twenties. I point out that your younger sister is developing into late adolescence because my experiences have proven that young people around 13-year-of-age are oftentimes disciplinary problems, having experienced their first taste of the outside world. They fall victim to the old adage of, "I know more than my parents, teachers, police officers, and other adults in a leadership role."

So, in all likelihood, you are going to be resisted by your younger sister when you attempt to sternly discipline her. Do not drop your guard; should you backpedal even the slightest amount, she will shrewdly spot this as a sign of weakness, and thus resist with even greater force.

If your parents are upstanding, respectable, caring, and concerned adults, I believe strongly that with the teamwork of you and your two parents this problem can be addressed rationally and reasonably, mitigated, and resolved permanently.

One other thing, and this is paramount: we White people have been entrenched in a bitter, harsh, unrepentant racial war for at least the last seven decades. For this reason, it is imperative that you immediately begin educating your younger sister on the importance of respecting, honoring, and loving her White race. She is at a perfect age when she is still too young to have been fully indoctrinated by the constant barrage of hateful anti-White propaganda that is relentlessly spewed from all the organs and outlets of the jew-owned/jew-controlled mainstream media channels of mind-control.

It is far easier to educate a White person about having pride in his/her White race at an early age, when this White person's mind is still free of the poison that is unleashed across America's airwaves and print outlets without cessation, than it is to attempt to deprogram a White person whose thinking has been warped, twisted, and deformed to the point that this White person will no longer listen to reason.

As you--and, if necessary, your parents--coolly and dispassionately discipline your younger sister, use this time advantageously to simultaneously begin educating and instructing her on why it is absolutely imperative to honor, respect, and love her White race. Provide examples of what could, and does, happen to White women who make the critically destructive decision to accept a lowly negro over a respectful and upstanding White man as their significant other. In all too many instances, that critically destructive decision costs the White woman her very life! Do not allow this to happen to your younger sister; for, even though you are hurt and angered by her foolish decision to cavort with a woolly-headed, freak-of-nature negro, she is still your sister and your blood.

No comment. Just read this @Sophia tier post.

Here's the same user's signature btw:

"Give any negro even a scant few minutes and, regardless of what the barbaric jungle savage is attempting, it will fail and fail miserably, thus proving conclusively that IQ is the greatest statistical measure for success and failure ever devised in the vastly superior minds of White people. Since the evidence is overwhelming that the average negro possesses an IQ of only 70 IQ points to 74 IQ points, no amount of government intervention or egalitarianistic efforts at invoking anti-White/pro-negro laws that attempt to legislate 'equality' will ever save the lowly negro species from complete debasement, failure, collapse, and eventual extinction." - composed by Robbinsville on Sunday, November 19, 2023.

National Alliance: The future of your White race depends upon you: [LINK REDACTED]

League of the South: For the Confederacy and her Southern White people: [LINK REDACTED]

White Biocentrism: A community for the racially conscious White warrior: [LINK REDACTED]

Southern White Nationalist Social Group: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/group.php?groupid=8

In honor of Theresa Viglione. Her bravery and heroics will live on in eternal destiny in the race souls of all true White warriors.

In memory of Adam Johnson. Your murder, which was horrifically gruesome, will have not been totally in vain. Someday, for your sake, vengeful retribution will be executed in the "White" way.

In memory of Kathy Ainsworth. The Goddess of Providence will ensure that your heinous murder will be avenged and that her retributive justice will be harsh, brutal, merciless, and unrepentant.

Replies to this:

You are encouraging this boy to go over the authority of the parents. You are also encouraging him to beat the living daylights out of his kid sister, which could be worse than what the black boyfriend would do.

The Klancel responds:

I suggest you re-read my post; in no way, shape, or form did I even intimate that the OP "beat his sister." By "disciplining," I mean talking rationally, instructively, firmly, and orderly to his younger sister. Older siblings are very often able to discipline younger siblings just through talking firmly and orderly.

I also stated--quite clearly, I might add--that the OP AND his parents work as a united team to discipline the young girl. You claim to be an English major, yet you seem to be unable to cogently read people's posts and analyze what is said in those posts. Again--I recommend that you re-read my post, slow down, think, and analyze exactly what I said and how I said it.

Judging from your misinterpretation and outright butchery of my post, it also seems rather obvious that you have not ever had the experience of raising children, or of dealing with younger siblings. Correct?

Yes I did read your post again. It was worse the second time around.

Judging from your misinterpretation and outright butchery of my post, it also seems rather obvious that you have not ever had the experience of raising children, or of dealing with younger siblings. Correct?

Not at all.

OP responds:

I would like to apologize for my lack of information on my first post and also not getting back. I posed this on Christmas and thus I have been busy. Yes, my parents know about both incidents. When they found out about the texts, all they did was ground her for 3 months. I was on the 23rd that I found out the other incident. My parents didn't even tell me about it, I found out on my own. Also to clarify, she was the one who touched him (still doesn't make it any better) but this occurred on school property. My parents discovered that because she and him were talking about it on Pinterest. Also, I am not over 18. I am 16, which makes it more difficult for me. A few months ago I had been in contact with the Ku Klux Klan, and my parents found out about me and my friends trying to start up a Klavern and they took away my phone and other internet access. However, even after my sister jerks her perverted boyfriend in school she has begun to get her phone back and has started talking to him again. I am in a bad spot because I don't know what to do, my parents are brainwashed by liberal agenda. The slightest hope is that I believe that I may be able to teach my dad a bit about WN. Anyways, thank you all for your advice and I will keep you updated. God bless

...this guy tried to start up a Klan chapter lmao

Der Klansman is back at it - some posts quoted earlier seem to be jannied lol

The fact that you intentionally misinterpreted my post--and I know for certain that is what you did--is why I did not bother to respond. My time is much too valuable to waste it on a someone who uses the Stormfront White Nationalist Site as a quasi-Facebook Social Media meeting ground because your life is so utterly pathetic that you must resort to finding Internet "friends" in your make-believe fantasy land of digital delirium.

Do not think for even one millisecond that I do not know about the Thread you started about yourself some time back when you were crying giant crocodile tears over the fact that so many Stormfront members were taking direct aim at you. I find that pretentious and tasteless display of attempting to elicit sympathy from the Stormfront community childish, pathetic, and a form of serious mental disturbance.

If you really want me to respond to your intentionally distorted analysis of my post, be darn careful of what it is you wish, lady. I have absolutely no compunction about tearing you a new backside. However, as I pointed out earlier in this post, my time in the world of White Nationalism is far, far too valuable to spend it lowering myself to debating someone who thrives on drama, self-pity, and puerile antics.

Here is some free advice, lady: for once in your miserable life use even a small bit of the time that you otherwise uselessly squander on the Stormfront White Nationalist Site in a positive manner--one that will help preserve our history, heritage, European culture, and societal mores, along with safeguarding and ensuring the future and eternal destiny of our White race--and the next 10,000 + generations of unborn White children. Heck, I will even give you some ideas to help you get your rump in gear.

Should you need reminding, the Stormfront Site is, first-and-foremost, a White Nationalist Site, the purpose of which is to marshal and mobilize our people into a united front to take the offensive in this bitter, harsh, brutal racial war that we are waging against all our enemies. And make no mistake, lady, we are in a bitter war--a take-no-prisoners war. Have you ever given that even a millisecond's amount of thought? Do you realize the dangers our White race faces? Do you understand that this war is a zero-sum war? One side wins; and one side loses. There are no Geneva Convention-type peace talks. This is a war where we either destroy our enemies or our enemies destroy us. Use some of your time to think about that for a while, instead of sobbing in a corner in your basement, wallowing in self-pity.

But I know you will not make the effort to do a darn thing about the dangerously imperiled and treacherous state in which our White race finds itself, and that is because saving our White race is no more important to you than doing the honorable thing, which is to own up to the fact that the reason so many members on Stormfront feel hostility toward you is your fault, and not theirs.

...and a reply:

Let me get this straight. You're saying that I misinterpreted, intentionally misinterpreted, your statements. Why in the world would I? If I did, then by all means correct me. You just wrote a very long post in which you don't say a single thing to stick up for yourself. All you do is go off on a political tangent to criticize me.

You have a perfect opportunity to explain yourself and you let it go. Sounds to me like you don't have a case.

Your post about what that boy should do with his sister was mean, cruel, heartless, and suggestively violent. That is my honest opinion. Go back and look at what you said, fer krissakes. I'm surprised no one's put you in a straitjacket.

AND ANOTHER BOOMERCHUD LONGPOST, a reply to OP's second post:

It all boils down to this question. Ask your parents if they are fine with the risk of having ugly, nappy haired, lower than your current families own IQ, grandBIPOClets. If they are as open to ghastly mulattoes as to White grandchildren then they are, in a word, decadent race traitors. Sorry to have to tell you this but it is what it is. Some people are hopeless weaklings.

If they are fine with the sin of racial miscegenation, they and your sister are hopeless victims of the Coudenhove-Kalergi, or simply "the Kalgeri Plan". You have my sympathies if this is the case.

Some weak-kneed White milquetoasts afflicted with White Guilt see this surrendering of their own children to crude, primitive, base negroes as atonement for the evils of slavery in the USA. These are our White wimps that we here tend to disown.

When I call it a sin, it is not because I am a bible thumper, far from it. But it is a degradation of the European genome and a sin against your noble ancestors. It negates thousands of years of your klan history in one pregnancy.

If your sister wants s*x at 13 and just can't keep her pants up, then AT LEAST find a White boy to scratch her itch, if a 'BOB' is beneath her. Lots of White boys would gladly settle for a hand-job from a girl at that age and think they'd won the lottery of life. If she gets knocked up, let it be a White baby for your family's sake.

And as a White boy at 13, before the pill was widely used by women and girls, I knew enough to buy condoms in case I got lucky. NO WAY I wanted to be a father at 13. My parents would have wrung my neck. White boys are smarter that way. Today? I don't know. But only White is right.

This is all a byproduct of integration and was destined to happen after events in Little Rock, AR in 1957. You can thank the US gov't too for saving communism during WWII to ultimately unleash negroes upon White society.

Another tip for little sister. Anything X-rated or not posted to the internet is FOREVER. So don't let her video herself performing fellatio on a black dong and posting it for the world to see. When she outgrows Tyrone, her future husband and children would be disturbed to see their Mother knob gobbling a stranger's hardware when they are old enough to cruise for online porn.

Yet more chuds:

Totally agree [emote of two smiling emoji clinking two beer cups together] Any white woman who would date a black needs to be shut out. First thing I ask a woman is if they ever dated a black or would want one and that's the end of any traitor that would

...and Boomerchud no. 2 replies:

A child of 13 even after puberty is no woman. Far from it. More like a cat in heat. And blacks at 13 are more developed than White boys the same age. This is part of a their fast-lifestyle strategy. Orientals are slowest to sexually mature.

I will say again if she insists she wants to play Willie and the Hand Jive, at least find a White boy. No matter what her chances of getting impregnated, whored out, and or beaten are far less than with a negro or other colored boy.

If her parents do not confront her about this they are simply incompetent. Many if not most White parents today are incompetent about racial mixing issues. They simply hope their daughters never bring home a Velcro head and eventually pair up with someone of their own race. Most do. Some do not. You read the latter's obituaries all the time.

Think Nicole "Brown" Simpson for an early but well known example.

So this is what boomer chuddery is like. Seems very r-slurred.

@A rightoid drama

Hi! I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a 156cm black male. I identified as asexual for a large portion of my twenties. I no longer carry that label and have discovered I am attracted to women and want to form romantic and sexual bonds with them.

There are several problems that I face in this endeavor. The biggest is that I am not conventionally attractive, nor do I have a charismatic personality. Hence, even striking up a conversation with a woman can be a difficult task because of the “horn effect”. I also face the issue of being socially inexperienced, and incredibly so. I don't know how to talk to women, and most importantly, I have no idea how to express romantic and sexual interests appropriately.

The idea terrifies me because of the fear of rejection. But it also scares me because I don't want to #metoo a woman and expose her to my horniness if she's not interested. I don't want to be some woman's encounter-with-an-incel story (although I'm pretty sure I am already).

Despite the cards I've been dealt, I don't want to die an Incel. I would like to ascend and become a normie. This has required plenty of internal changes. I've been working out and changing my eating habits. Consequently, I've lost a shitload of weight, but I haven't been able to gain muscles. So I'm still skinny, but at least I can pull up my shirt to reveal a flat, increasingly “cut” stomach, which already puts me ahead of most men.

I'm posting proof for the doubters. This is a stern message to FATTIES. If I can accept that my inceldom is my fault, you must accept that your fatness is your fault. Nothing but dietary changes and consistent exercise is necessary to lose weight. It is not a matter of anything but the discipline to adhere to both. Fatness is looked down upon and rightfully so - it is the product of greediness and ill-discipline. Inceldom is also looked down upon and I accept that.

I've also been addressing my self-harming and attempting to stop the behavior. Ultimately, I need psychiatric care, but my doctor who has promised to find me a psychiatrist hasn't given me the referral I need yet so I've been white-knuckling it despite powerful emotional impulses. Even with these changes, if I ever get intimate with a woman, I will have to explain to her that my legs look like a chef's cutting board and I did it to myself.

I've been turning to acceptable forms of self-harming, including piercings which I'm about to add to my face. I'm planning on getting my first one soon, but I'm also getting braces on the 15th of January so I figure I'll have OPIOD DRUGS after the braces which will be nice to use after getting piercings so I'm deciding to wait for after the braces to get the piercings.

I'm praying I get glorious Tramadols instead of shitty codeine pills for the post-braces pain. If the dentist tries to get me codeine I'm telling them they make me puke and make me depressed (which is true), so he hopefully gets me something else. If he tries to give me fricking paracetamol I'm telling him I'm not accepting that and need something stronger.

There's also the issue of life and reality itself taunting me. I live in an apartment, with my neighboring apartments often rented out as Airbnb's. Consequently, I've been subjected to the cries of pure pleasure from different women from around the country getting their brains fricked out. It's a harsh reminder of the world I'm being excluded from. You won't understand it unless you've experienced it, but it is psychological torture. Genuinely enough to trigger suicidal thoughts if you're an incel.

Ever heard women screaming in porn and thought “darn that's obviously fake!”. No, it's not. Daily, women are getting fricked to the point of involuntarily vocalizing their ecstasy and moaning loudly during orgasms. If you're having silent missionary, just know there's some dude out there that could make your girl's toes curl and have her squeaking like a dog's chew toy as she's peepeeed down for multiple rounds.

I fully, 100% understand how Elliot Rodger felt when he heard his sister have s*x, and I get why it mentally affected him so severely. Being exposed to something like that is no joke, and it's been happening to me multiple times. I've started keeping a record in my diary of the times I've heard my neighbors having s*x, and I already have two entries from this week alone.

So, just so there's no confusion, I do want s*x. I want to insert my male peepee into a receptive female vagina and thrust it repeatedly for the sake of sexual pleasure. However, this doesn't discount the emotional and long-term goals I have to pair-bond with a woman.

Background - Death, Desires, and David Goggins

So there are three main drives right now that I'm using to essentially force myself into this situation:

1. Fear of dying an incel

2. David Goggins

3. Biological imperatives

The first is easy to understand. I am an incel and this is not a position I want to currently be in. It's not just about s*x, it's about loneliness and realizing I'm running out of time if I want the kind of marriage where I can grow with someone and experience the journey of life with them. Don't get me wrong, there's no issue with finding a wife in your 30s as a man, but you've already lived for so long that your single ways are ingrained into you. You'll miss out on experiencing maturation with a life partner.

If I die an incel, I'll also have nobody to talk to about being human and the intricacies of the condition. I'll be stuck explaining all this shit here. No offense, I love interacting and communicating with this community, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life having to turn here whenever I experience significant life events. I'd like to talk to a real female (woman) who cares about me.

The second driving force is David Goggins. I've been reading the book “Can't Hurt Me”. I haven't finished it yet, but it's already motivated me to try and be a better person. One of the things he points out is how harmful lying is, especially lying to myself. To combat this, he suggests pinning the things you want to change on your mirror. If you're fat, write it in the mirror so you're never lying to yourself. You can take it off when the message is a lie and you're not fat anymore.

Currently, I have three main weaknesses that need to change. I believe that overcoming them will improve my life overall, and escaping inceldom is a significant side-effect. Although I believe in honesty, at this point I'm only ready to talk about two of the items I have placed on my mirror. They are:

a) Coward

b) Lazy

Being lazy is also straightforward. For me to take off the label, I'll have to start certmaxing to hopefully improve my CV and life as a whole. The PhD dream is pretty much over for now. Tried applying at different places and basically being told to frick off. I don't think they're interested in dropouts, but to be fair I've also been aiming pretty high and might need to lower my sights when it comes to what universities I'm applying to. But for now, I'm going the certmaxxing route because I want to escape the poorcel life as soon as possible.

After my first cert, I'll consider myself cured of laziness. The one I'm considering first begins in February and lasts ten weeks. I think I can manage to remain disciplined enough to complete it because I've bailed on Khan Academy shit I've paid for. But this is a genuine cert this time from an accredited IRL university.

Lastly, there's cowardice. After telling S.H. about my feelings, I know I'm capable of feeling fear and acting regardless - that is true bravery, the opposite of cowardice. I just need sufficient “meaning” behind the action. So, I've set five fear-based challenges for myself, and if I complete them all, I'll no longer have to call myself a coward. They are: join hiking club, get a manicure, get facial piercing, go skydiving, go to nightclub.

By going to the drum and bass rave, I'll get to scratch the nightclub mission off my list. It cannot be understated how scared I am. Due to my height, there's also the chance of me getting ID'd at the door which is an embarrassing experience. I also have no friends so I'm going alone.

I believe I deserve extra courage points for doing it with no friends to fall back on. How many of you are courageous enough to go to a fricking nightclub all by yourself and there's literally nobody you know there? I'm doing it as a socially r-slurred 5 foot 1 manlet so just try and beat that. I've been having the shits all day which is a sign of high-level nervousness for me.

Okay, so point three is the biological drive. I'm lonely and horny. I need to solve this or else I'll be perpetually unfulfilled and unhappy. It's that simple.

My primary objective in going to the rave isn't to hook up or have s*x (although those are the ideal outcomes). My main goal is to simply talk to people. If I can have a normal interaction with one female stranger, then I'll consider the whole thing a success. Just one normie interaction.

To sum up:

• Bronze - Get to club and enter

• Bronze - Buy soda and cigarettes

• Bronze - Enjoy scene without standing in corner looking at phone the whole time

• Silver - Talk to female successfully

• Silver - Talk to female successfully without disgusting her or being told to frick off

• Gold - Score a date

• Gold - Kiss girl

• Platinum - Get laid

• Secret trophy - Acquire drugs I don't currently have

I just need a fricking silver trophy and I'm done.

Getting to the club

So one of the hurdles I need to overcome is getting to the club. It's not far. Google Maps tells me it's only about three minutes away by vehicle. However, even with this short trip, there are some problems.

Firstly, I'm a scared driver. This is in part because I was in a bad accident this year that totaled my first car. Since then, I've been James May Captain Slow on the road, and I only drive places I'm familiar with - I'm not familiar with the place I'm going and that alone makes me nervous.

Secondly, I'm planning on taking benzos. There is half of me that just wants to do the whole thing sober, the same way I confessed feelings to S.H., but I know if I do, I'll end up standing around nervously, I'll turn to alcohol to calm myself, and my driving will be shittier than ever because I'm a teetotaller. I don't touch alcohol in my regular life. Small amounts frick me up significantly but I WILL drink if I have to go to a nightclub sober. In my opinion, 2-3 beers will frick up my driving more than 2-3 benzos.

Hence, I'm taking benzos instead. I believe I can drive like a normal person if I take just two, which is double the actual therapeutic dosage I've been prescribed. I'll take them just before I leave so that they'll only hit once I've arrived. I'll also pack a few more in my wallet in case I need more, as well as my weed vape.

I've also set a rule for myself - if I take benzos, then THERE WILL BE NO ALCOHOL CONSUMED. I'll just buy a coke to nurse the whole night and a pack of cigarettes so that I'm never stuck doing nothing. Ideally, I should pop nothing more after the first two benzos, but if you're familiar with the drug, you'll know the whole redosing then forgetting then redosing cycle that occurs.

I could call an Uber, but frick that. There are two routes to the club. One is the “hard” route because it involves crossing multiple intersections with two-way traffic. I don't think I should tackle them after a night of benzos so I'll get to the club this way. This will leave my car facing the “easy” route when I need to go home.

I don't have to deal with intersections where I have to stop on the “easy” route, but there is one traffic circle which will be the hardest part of the trip. I hate traffic circles. But I'm hoping by the time I leave, it'll be so late at night that I won't have to negotiate the circle with anyone else. However, it's also a Friday night at the end of the year, so the odds of the roads being entirely empty are low, even past midnight.

I've also read that cigarettes actually dull the Benzo high, so I think I'll smoke a cig or two before I drive home. But a lot of the research is anecdotal evidence from Reddit. If I feel like I'm too fricked I can always just walk home and pick up my car the next morning. The problem with this plan is that benzos don't really allow you to adequately determine how fricked you are so I could be walking like a cripple after 6 benzos and still feel 100% sober.

Driving at night on benzos. Woo!

Preparations

Okay, so I'm writing this a few hours before the event is supposed to begin. I've cleaned my apartment JUST IN CASE I get a platinum trophy although I fully do NOT expect to acquire it unless I have insane beginner's luck.

I also bought my ticket online beforehand. This was done to kind of “lock me in” to the event, making it harder for me to bail out of fear. I already have my entrance ticket. All I need to do is just go.

There are obviously countless guides online on how to pick up girls at raves and clubs but I feel like if I go with a game plan, I'll have this idea in my mind that I need to do or say the right things which ends up making you look inauthentic and it also stresses you out when you're trying to keep all that shit in your mind.

The only vague plan I have is to find a woman who is mad into drugs. Tell her I have weed (joints, edibles, THC drink, a fricking desktop vape for my jar of bud), ambien, benzos, sceletium tortuosum, and DMT at home. You're invited! But of course, this depends on just how druggie the girls are. If I see barefoot white girls with dreadlocks, I'm attempting to share my cigarettes and weed vape with them. Hopefully, they're into me as well because I have shoulder-length dreadlocks and probably do look like a druggie on the surface (I am a druggie).

The last kind of strategy I have in the back of my mind is to stay until closing time when it's anecdotally supposed to be easier to pick up girls. This is apparently when the desperate women are just waiting for someone to take them home. This requires me to stick around until 2 AM which will depend on how comfortable I am at the event. I can imagine a scenario where I leave after an hour if I'm feeling too uneasy.

I don't listen to drum and bass. To be honest, I don't even know what that is. However, the advertisements for the event were psychedelic which clued me in on what kind of crowd to expect. After searching Google for drum and bass, a lot of Reddit folks say it's a drug kind of scene. Might be perfect for me.

As for clothing, I'm just going for jeans, a black shirt, and sneakers. My sneakers are high-tops which should raise me from 156cm to maybe 158cm which is better than nothing. Other than that, no other plans. Just going to show up and take things from there. I can't predict what's going to happen.

Oh yeah, I also withdrew a fat stack of cash. Way more than I'll need lol but I'm just planning for a worse/best-case scenario - what if I get a table, buy expensive bottles, and wait for women to flock to me? The event starts at 6 PM, but I plan on arriving at around 9:30 to 10 PM so that I don't have to deal with navigating an empty venue. As I write this, I have about 4 hours left.

The experience

I'm writing this right after returning so it's still fresh in my mind.

I took two benzos, saved a few more in my wallet and headed off. My driving was completely normal but I was so nervous I literally did a Payton Gendron and took a wrong turn lol. Driving at night is scary but it's also kinda fun because it feels like you're in a horror movie. Anyway, I turn into the nightclub's parking and slotted myself in. It was kinda packed which made me nervous because I'd have to navigate to leave at some point.

But I did it. I fricking did it. I went to a drum and bass rave alone as a 5 foot 1 manlet. I entered the establishment after showing the bouncers my ticket on my phone. They stamped my wrist and I entered. Inside, there was a bar, a dance floor, and a room that I think is a smoking room. I headed to the bar and it wasn't clear how you line up. An older looking girl with pigtails came near me. She was barefoot! I said hi and she greeted me back with a smile. I think we were both confused about the whole lining up at the bar thing. She got served first, and I was served shortly after. It didn't look like they sold cigarettes because I couldn't see any, so I just ordered a Red Bull which I could see. She took one out the fridge and poured it into a glass with a smile. I paid her with a large bank note that was a big tip for her.

I then walked over to the dance floor where I kinda just bobbed my head to the music with the rest of the attendees. The benzos had me calm so I was actually smiling and I was at the back of the dance floor. There were people dancing energetically. One guy had his shirt off and was sweating. Others were going crazy in the laser lunacy. There were also a lot of women and they looked gorgeous. There were unironically druggie white girls with dreadlocks! However, I faced a contender I hadn't anticipated - the white chad with dreadlocks. They were there too!

There were also other guys like me who were clearly there alone but came to just enjoy the music. I could see some social networks. People greeted each other like old friends.

The cutest one of all was a small girl about my height. She was wearing a black outfit and she was dancing like a lunatic on the dance floor. It seemed like she was there alone, but even if I wanted to dance with her, I would never have been able to keep up with based moves. I really like her

I actually enjoyed the music and I liked being on the dance floor with other people just enjoying the music. Everyone was chilled, literally zero aggression from anywhere. Just people around to have fun and enjoy some music. I think there were some drugs. I saw one girl pass another something that suspiciously looked like pills but I can't be sure. I also saw money being exchanged between people on the dancefloor so I assume those were drug transactions. Lastly, there was a very older guy walking around with a weed hat and a fanny pack. It's hard to describe but it's like he was just advertising that he was selling drugs.

There was a bathroom around a wall near the dance floor. I think people went in there to do drugs. I did not go in there. A lot of the time, heterosexual pairs would scurry there. Was s*x going on? I also saw a lot of guys dancing with girls, although it seemed like some were already couples. Overall, I think it's actually relatively easy to hook up with a girl on the dance floor in a night club. However, it requires skills I don't have yet - dancing, rizz, and body language. I cannot stress the last one enough. It's loud so a lot of the interactions are non-verbal. Consequently, a lot of weird things happened and I'm not sure of how to interpret them yet.

I saw a #metoo. An indian man came up behind a black girl and just grabbed her butt with both hands. She turned around and looked annoyed. She then went to the dance floor and kissed a girl.

Also, posting proof for the haters. I fricking left my house and went to a night club !truecels I am trying to ascend.

So, if I had at least 6/10 social skills, I think I could kiss a girl at a night club. People there are actually very open and keen to meet new people, whether it's because they're drunk or on drugs. However, I have 2/10 social skills. So here's the weird things that happened:

1. pigtail girl

The pigtail girl was on the dancefloor dancing a lot. She seemed to have some friends on the dance floor. I was dancing nearby, she turned around, looked at me, then came and danced near me. I didn't know what to do, so I just left her to dance. What was I supposed to do here? !biofoids

2. dreadlocks girl

Holy shit I actually interacted with cute dreadlocks girl multiple times I can't fricking believe it. The first time, I went to the back of the club to sit down for a bit and sip on my red bull while I vaped. The dreadlocks girl came to the same place and smiled at me and said hi. I greeted her back with a smile, then she went in her purse to pull out a cigarette to smoke. She then continued to dance near me but she wasn't facing me.

A little later, she returned and leaned over me while smiling as she grabbed an ashtray near me. She put down her purse and black jacket next to me before finishing her cigarette and returning to the dance floor to dance like a maniac.

I didn't want to be the guy in the meme and just sit in the corner for the whole night so I headed back to the dance floor and chilled at the back. An old guy said something liking the music and I agreed. After a while I returned to the bench at the back. I wanted to take a picture and check the time. Dreadlocks girl returned and sat next to me. She smiled and waved at me before just sitting and relaxing. Should I have spoke to her? Idk. But I didn't. A polite smile is all I can muster at this point. There's also the question - did she wanted to get spoken to? I think for now this is what I interpret from all her action: "I am comfortable enough to sit around you. You also seem trustworthy enough for me to leave my belongings near you. I see you enjoying the event, and I am enjoying it too. That's great!" I don't think I needed to ruin it with rizz or anything like that. I feel like I made the right choice not talking to her but I may be wrong.

At about 11:30 I wanted to leave. I was tired and I felt like I had completed the experiment. Nothing of further note was going to occur. I left and entered my car. At that point, the police arrived. They literally drove past me in the parking lot and stared me dead in the eyes. I saw them park, and they started standing around the club so maybe I left at the right time.

I ended up taking the "hard" way home idk why just felt like it. I felt super chilled on the benzos so I wasn't that scared, I maneuvered through a packed parking lot with cops and then drove home and parked fine. When I got to my bedroom I looked in the mirror and saw that my eyes were as red as devil's peepee from vaping so much in the club. I think I narrowly dodged a DWI tbh, if the cops had felt like fricking with me they may have even found the pills in my wallet.

Conclusion

So that was my time at the Drum and Bass rave. That's one challenge scratched off the "coward" label. I think I will give myself the bronze

• Bronze - Enjoy scene without standing in corner looking at phone the whole time

I interacted with women, (including the dreadlocks cutie!) but I didn't have conversations with them or learn their names, so I don't think I deserve a silver. What do you think?

I feel proud of myself for going so far out of my comfort zone. Would I go to a nightclub again? Maybe, it's honestly not the worst experience, especially if the music is good. I'm happy I was brave enough to go at all. I feel like I accomplished something massive, and I feel ready to take on further challenges. I think I should try talking to women at calmer locations, which might happen when I join the hiking club.

Tune in next time as I try to be normal. I think the next challenge on the list is to get a manicure. Terrifying because it involves shitloads of touching which makes me nervous I don't like being touched so this is going to be exposure therapy. Let's see how that goes.

GUYS GUYS shut up I found the photographer.

He's been a professional photographer for years, well before AI, and he took this photo in early 2022, before AI could even produce in image like this. https://t.co/xmH7k3DCr5 pic.twitter.com/mGL06tUV9L

— hyperbolic deak (@hermitdeak) December 28, 2023

Background

If you haven't already, definitely read the thread by @ProterozoicBussy , "Sandshit's collective brain power comes together to fight against the IDF's  AI photo" as it covers most of the intro information and it's a good read! (This is not a repost this is separate drama involving the same subject!!)

In this thread, we'll be covering about twitter user "hermitdeak" and his quest to prove that it is a real image to stubborn twitter users who are also probably r-slurred to some degree.

Recently, AI Generated artwork has become good enough to where it can be hard to distinguish from real photos.

This is especially prevalent after Bing Chat allowed it's users access to Dalle-3, which is better than pretty much every other one on the market (and for free! ) (I made some badass images of goku smoking cigarettes in the dark )

AI artwork is one of the main enemies of Twitter right now, because it is harder for small artists to charge insane prices for dumb stuff, when now you can get it for free. Things are not looking up for Israel either.

Intro: The Offending Photo

If you already read @ProterozoicBussy 's thread, this section will be re-treading most of it. Feel free to skim this or jump to the next section!

It all started when Israel fan Hillel posted a photo of two IDF soldiers kissing.

: I have no idea who they are or what the back story is, but I love this photo.

To a normal person like us, this may look like any other photo. But to the trained twitter eye, this photo is CLEARLY AI Generated. And we HATE AI

: Any particular reason as to why she has six fingers?

: The extra finger helps her count all the children she's murdered

: She doesn't that extra one you're seeing is just the other side of her pinky finger's knuckle We're so fricked if people think this is AI generated already

: Look at the gun. Simple.

: "I never saw this optic mount in Call of Duty so it isn't real"

Lot's of people smugpost about how they know it's AI and "they can always tell" (sounds like anyone we know? )

: No one shot this photo, it's AI. And bad AI at that.

Hillel was confused. There's no way this could be AI! so he reached out to the photographer for an answer...

: To all those who replied that this pic is AI, you are wrong. Just spoke to the photographer.

That was all the info he offered, so it's kinda his fault he got clowned on.

: Jewish girls are famous for having 6 fingers

Loads of twitterers smugpost about how obvious it is that it's AI:

: Bait used to be believable, this is the most obviously AI-generated image I've seen in my life

Some people dial it back and say maybe it wasn't AI, but an edit of an old photo to change the location

: Turns out it's actually not AI, but instead an absolutely shit Photoshop job.

Obviously he's right. This photographer took an old grainy photo, used photoshop to somehow magically upscale it, change the background, and then slightly modify the poses.

This is the dumbest take I've ever seen in my life. How stupid do you have to be to think that is remotely possible or even worth the effort?? Now I'm the one raging

Our hero: hermitdeak

After a long and brutal day if getting clowned on, it's discovered that the photo was REAL??? But it was so confidently AI??

One Twitter user, Hermitdeak, found the Instagram of the photographer, and the image was posted early 2022, way before AI could get anywhere near as close to real as it is now.

: GUYS GUYS shut up I found the photographer. He's been a professional photographer for years, well before AI, and he took this photo in early 2022, before AI could even produce in image like this.

Frick Israel and free Palestine, but we really didn't need to argue about this for 6 hours

Some people don't believe him though

And this is when we get to the fun part:

Hermitdeak losing his sanity trying to argue with morons

Fight Fight Fight

: It's just a bad photoshop of a different image. The picture was originly taken under a tree, he took them out and put them on a city street and gave her a nonexistant gun to hold

: It's not a nonexistent gun and besides the poses, which aren't even the exact same, there is nothing similar about the 2 pictures when it comes to their outfits and folds of their clothes and whatnot. Occam's Razor, a photographer took a picture

: No gun looks like that. The strap is locked to an iron sight and it has a scope mounted on it crooked. Again, photoshop, clothing folds. Image editing programs have used algorithms to fill in and upscale details like that for years. Unedited photos don't look like this

: Yes IDF's guns do look like this. They use a crane mount to attach optics to their old outdated M4's. As for the sling attached to the carry handle, that's the stupid shit you get when you hand a 19yo a rifle they'll never use during their mandatory 2yr service.

Yeah because if there's one thing that photoshop is good at, it's upscaling images and preserving the details

: Go on, educate the online prostitute on how photo editing works, she's waiting. Whether he upscaled an old photo and got a bunch of artifacts or has identical couples posing for the same exact photo. It's pretty easy to agree that the photographer is a talentless hack

That's right, professional photographers NEVER edit their photos after taking them. That would be FAKE.

: explain this (he links to a now deleted tweet claiming the picture was a photoshop of the under the tree pic (which as I've said is STUPID)

: Photographers reuse the same pose all the time. This is the same guy. The pose isn't even the exact same here. Do you have any idea how incredibly painstaking it would be for that guy to photoshop this picture? And for what?

: : Left is taken from below guy's head level, right taken from above, also the limbs are in different places and flexed at different angles. It's just more likely that it's two different pictures of the same pose rather than the left being an edit of the right. (free Palestine btw)

: People really shocked to discover a professional photographer reuses a pose

Now that the photo is definitively real, Hermitdeak links it to some more people. But they won't listen to his evidence!!

hermitdeaks thread he linked

: Here is the origional. Lies and lies and lies and lies... The stupid FRICKING accusation that it's a DARN photoshop of a CRUSTY IMAGE

: Clearly a different photo r3tard

: Are you blind or just stupid

This gives us hermitdeaks new nemisis... kamipon...

Kamipon is terminally online and won't stop posting. And is also stubborn and won't listen to Mr hermitdeak

: I made a thread and a dozen replies debunking any AI claim about this. You'd have to be willfully ignorant to still think this was AI generated because there's no reason for it even if the technology existed last March. Other photos from the shoot show she just has a wide pinky

Like are these all AI too? And to what end? If you're gonna keep lying to yourself, then yeah I don't care. I'm leading a horse to water

: mans thinks you have to make every image AI, i didnt say the people didnt exist dumbass but she clearly isnt a rare person with 6 fingers. youre dumb if you dont think an AI can be near perfect

they literally have AI turning still images into videos now. its like youre still a year behind the curve of what the actual technology can do

Doing silly ancestry videos with a base photo is JUST as hard as making an image from scratch guys!!

: Mf this was what midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E 2 (not even released in March 2022. were pumping out last year. These are "near perfect?" Also this is my last reply before I go to work, you're helpless

: clearly youre just a dipshit arguing in bad faith. obviously when you let the AI do 100% of the work its going to look worse. but when you edit it, in tandem it will become passable, which is what i meant. you so desperately want to be right on this you argue in bad faith

Kamipon then blocks him...

If you want to see more of Hermitdeak arguing, here's the link to the quote tweets of his debunking thread: https://x.com/hermitdeak/status/1740216922808229896/quotes

Conclusion

That was my post I hoped you likes it

Do YOU think the photo is AI? Do YOU think it's Photoshop? Discuss down below

(And also go read @ProterozoicBussy 's thread if you haven't!!!

/u/subjuggulator:

Apparently a large number of attendees at the convention were drugged? And the convention has a history of being unsafe? Does anyone know why/if it was a targeted thing?

Source people in the comments are saying multiple people were hospitalized because entire water jugs were roofied and that the convention has a history of sweeping sexual assault under the rug.

We at Holiday Matsuri have been made aware of social media postings regarding potential safety issues.

The safety of our community members is paramount and we take concerns very seriously. We have had no reports filed (either to us directly or through our security partners) of unintentional ingestion of consciousness altering substances. We are reaching out to the community to request that anyone who personally experienced this to please contact the Orange County Sheriff's office immediately. Anyone who experienced this may also feel free to reach out to us as we can assist in facilitating reporting to both the Orlando World Center Marriott and the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

Thank you

Team HolMat

/u/reddeadjay:

Basically, reports were coming out from the rave as of Wednesday night (the first night of the convention) that people were showing signs of being roofied (mostly females) , going to the hospital, fainting, etc. People started posting about it all over , asking convention staff via email, groomercord, and IG comments : and via groomercord , convention staff essentially said this was misinformation and to stop spreading it until they had confirmation on anything from Orange County police.

These reports continued through Friday, during which some folks reported seeing a Miles Morales cosplayer slipping something into the public water jugs provided for attendees in the halls.

Holiday Matsuri social media continued to advertise raves and convention events without ever coming out to address PUBLICLY people's concerns and claims.

I've attended the convention four years in a row and have always known it to be a “party con.” It's been a hotspot for issues due to that fact. I can't speak specifically as to how safe or unsafe it is, as I don't drink so I don't attend any of the after-hours parties.

HOWEVER, the big issue a lot of attendees have is the existence of something called “The Game.” From what I've read on social media, it was developed by a group of con-attending predators who take it upon themselves to roofie and have “relations” with girls, and they often target people based on fandoms or characters they're cosplaying.

According to some attendees, Holiday Matsuri staff was emailed about these concerns, and they never addressed anything publicly until after the convention, leaving attendees with a bad taste in their mouths about the organizers. I can't say any of this for certain, I'm just reporting on what I've seen reported online.

Source: I attended, as did like 90% of the friends I have in the community. ( )

/u/praguepride:

oh shit. huge if true. makes a scary amount of sense for male feminists to target conventions. lots of targets and with no personal connection it is easy to get shrugged off as a one night stand

/u/2greenlimes:

Yup. So many unaccompanied minors and unaccompanied barely not minors and so many predators - and so many of these young women are staying in hotels right next to the convention center. Many rely on volunteers to check ID and age, so I knew many 18-21 year olds in the rave. I'm sure they could've (maybe even did) get free drugs I'd they wanted them.

I have so many con creeper stories even in broad daylight. I remember my second or third con (I was in middle school) my mom saw a guy photographing girls up their skirts and just generally photographing young female cosplayers without their permission. I think she called the cops on him but he dipped before they arrived. And honestly? Even without the overt creepers there's so many socially awkward men who just do sexually inappropriate stuff to any cute girl in cosplay - unsolicited drawings, uncomfortable shipping conversations, overly sexual talk about whoever you're cosplaying, wanting to “reinact” scenes with you, etc.

ETA: Also, a lot of the people who run these smaller cons (sans huge industry-sponsored ones like AnimeExpo and Crunchyroll's expo) are volunteers who are usually in no way qualified to run conventions, raves, or general events where kids/teens/adults mix. I've heard of embezzling, unpaid wages, extremely unprofessional behavior towards guests of honor (even at animeexpo), and con runners being creeps themselves. It's hard to say here if the con staff was willfully enabling this or just extremely over their heads.

/u/ilovethissheet:

I had no idea comic conventions have merged with raves now

!anime its fricking over, the raveBIPOCs and normgroids have taken over our animu neckbeard conventions

/u/2greenlimes:

They're less true raves in the sense of EDC and more just after hours dances that people go to with glow sticks and EDM remixes of anime music.

At least that's my understanding of it. Of course there's people there that do the regular rave thing with drugs and alcohol or whatever else, but it's not nearly as prevalent as at a regular rave.

/u/reddeadjay:

Yeah. It was freaky. And now the convention is saying they never received any reports (they had previously made comments about “we've received reports from attendees”) and to call the sheriff's office instead. Sort of… absolving themselves of guilt, when they could've definitely tightened up security and been more protective of their attendees. I've been going to conventions for years and am always super careful about that,

I don't drink or attend parties (I'm boring) which helps

but NOBODY should have to worry about literally being drugged and/or assaulted at a convention. It's incredibly sad.

Factcheck: This claim is both true and false.

/u/Parzivus:

Answer: Adding to the other comments, a lot of this is just rumors that got wildly out of control. The idea that entire water jugs were roofied is nonsense, people would be collapsing by the dozen. I can at least say the ones I drunk out of were safe! But as soon as someone sees someone passed out for any reason (lotta heavy drinking at this con!), the hearsay gets crazy. Notice how many comments are "I heard", "my friend said", "this social media post claims," etc. I don't want to suggest that nothing happened or that people are outright lying, but it wasn't an epidemic as some are suggesting.

Another thing is that a lot of this happens in room parties, which is beyond the control of con organizers. I saw a lot of security and even people from the sheriff's department patrolling around the convention itself, but other that trying to shut down every party at the party con, there's not a lot for them to do.

Source: I was there

/u/subjuggulator:

Gentle pushback: in the past twenty-four hours, I've read at least a dozen reports of people corroborating what happened and/or saying they were waiting to hear back from their doctors. Not just people saying “my friend” or “I heard this”.

Additionally, being drunk and getting roofied have different side effects. I'm not discounting that people freaked out and misreported, but there are literally dozens of people in both the post I linked and another Instagram account that is following the event who have said, firsthand accounts, that they had to go or were taken to the hospital after what happened. Including people claiming—emphasis on claiming—they were either approached by, saw firsthand, or reported to the convention that several con-goers were known members of a group of sexual predators who are targeting cosplayers as part of what they call “The Game”.

(Source of what “The Game” is and where additional reports are coming from.)

HOLY SHIT A KIWIFARMS-ESQUE INSTA PAGE THAT EXPOSES PROBLEMATIX COSPLAYERS?

Well, now this is a Drama nest that Dramanauts and Kiwiggers could investigate for some future posts, but I will start with the best example:

why do they always look the same bros? !nooticers

same vibes

I'm not saying I don't believe your take, but there are also an overwhelming amount of people who are both 1. corroborating the event or 2. taking your stance to the extreme as a way of discrediting or downplaying the events, up to and including the convention itself.

/u/LayliaNgarath:

Honest question: What are the different side effects of being roofied vs being seriously drunk?

!boozers chime in on this?

/u/Orwell83:

Being roofied is going in and out of consciousness while being too tired to move your body then feeling sick for several days.

Greetings Dramatards!

I had wanted to share some stories of afrikaans literature which had little fame outside of its creator language, but which had profound impact upon the afrikaner way of writing for the Boers before my time. If you ask the modern afrikaans zoomer what a Swaap is, they will be completely in the dark, as the national curriculum has been within the complete control and overhaul of the ANC national government for the past 30 years, and part of their deliberate agenda was to strip afrikaners of their desire for nationalism and extreme self-exceptionalism.

It's only understandable, similar as to how the Allies would attempt to deNazify the krauts after victory, or the americans tried to deradicalize the Japs of Emperor-worship in the Pacific Theatre. But like all good-intentioned ideas, the ANC has corrupted this also, and what began a sincere attempt combat inter-generational racism of SA whites, basically turned into a ANC propaganda mechanism, and a complete cultural erasure of all afrikaans related writings, poems, history and scripture.

WHat is ostensibly an attempt to give the previously suppressed black-culture and languages an equal degree of exposure in the education system of south africa, has inevitably turned into an anti-afrikaans campaign to snuff out all afrikaans-schools, all afrikaan-language tertiary education systems, and a supreme and total elimination of all afrikaans/boer history from the face of South African libraries.

I know what I am writing comes across as the deranged ramblings of yet another disgruntled racist white South African having to face up to the very negative consequences of Apartheid, and being averse to havinng to face the very real cruelty of my parents, and the effects that their domination over SA blacks have had over their home languages and culture over time. It is extremely difficult to transcribe my experience of reality of living in SA without sounding like a schizo fool, but I hope the past year of my doing the best within my power to bring nuance and some minimum form of neutrality to describe complicated dramatic events within Soutth Africa, at least buys me some credit of sincerity for dramatards.

It is important to understand that there is no centralized mandate from the ANC national or provincial government about fricking over the afrikaans language or afrikaner people, in terms of pushing out policies to negatively affect them exclusively, but rather that there is a grassroots form of thinking and behaviour of absolute resentment and hatred of black government officials who now find themselves in power, and now that the shoe is on the other foot, wishes to exact petty vengeance upon afrikaners for their role of cruelty, of upholding the Apartheid regime for as long as they had.

And although these pretty mean-spirited and cruel policies are the usual level of ANC incompetence and ineffectiveness, the sheer volume of spite over 30 years have I believe ultimately succeeded in culturally destroying the afrikaans race culturally. I have previously spoken about how the extreme ultra-discipline of the Apartheid era intensity of Afrikaners was of a magnitude similar to the cultural intensity of the Japanese and Germans in their everyday labours and organization, and how the entire population was so culturally self-motivated to bring the welfare of the group above that of the individual, that almost like they were a group of insane supermen, they had to be to dominate 40 million black people, with just a group of 4 millions, whites, 1.5 million of them being english. Any slack or disruption within the NP regime would result in total collapse or even supposedly genocide, which the NP regime believed.

This is not a boat about our supposed greatness, but a reflection on how low be have fallen culturally, and how low the ANC have brought us to our knees in terms of literature assassination. The modern afrikaans zoomer is but a shadow of our forebears, and have no notion about our history which have been completely sandblasted away in a curriculum mandated by a government who hates our guts, and worse, perhaps deservingly hates our guts. The particulars of these stories are themselves worth about 15 longposts to describe in clarity, but today instead I wish to desperately focus on a series of short stories famous in Afrikaans literature and folklore.

Die Swape or the Swapians.

Even if the afrikaans language and race disappears from the face of the earth, I believe that retelling these stupid stories about really stupid fictional people is worth platinum, for one last time.

WHAT IS A "SWAAP":

In common afrikaans language, or at least in old-timey language, a swaap is an idiot, an extremely stupid person. Even people of my grandparent's generation who had never read or retold the Swape stories would use the descriptor or idiom of describing an ESPECIALLY moronic individual in their everyday language, but this has fallen out of favour in modern times, as English with its cultural global media dominance has overwritten itself as the primary language of expression for all SA whites, even the most rural of hicks in Boerland, and thus afrikaans idioms and older descriptors had completely fallen out circulation in modern times.

https://maroelamedia.co.za/afrikaans/idiome-en-uitdrukkings/swaap

The exact history or origin of where the folktales of the Swape (or Swapians or Swabians) came from is not exact. Some believe it to originate from Finland in its earliest incarnation, others believe that the Germans who had mixed themselves with the proto-boers.

In some retellings the Swape/swapians had their fictional nation state located in South-West Germany, in others it bordered Finland.

The chronicles of the misadventures of the idiots of Swaapland would serve as entertainment for many of the earliest Afrikaans Laerskole/Primary-Schools.

PIETER W. GROBELAAR:

In the same way in which the Disney incarnations are the most famous versions of their Grimm's fairytale progenitors, so too has there been various versions of the retellings of Swaaplanders. The most famous in recent modernity are of the writer Pieter Grobelaar, who lived (25 Desember 1930, Bloemfontein –† 19 Januarie 2013, Worcester). He was a South African writer of children's tales, but also wrote some literature for adults.

https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_W._Grobbelaar

I'm completely brainless when it comes to researching from libraries but as far as I can piece together, he wrote at least two Novels which serialized the most famous stories of the mythical fictional Swaaplanders in the form of

Die Swaaplanders (The Swapians/Swabians)

, Die avonture van die Sewe Swape (The adventures of the 7 swapians)

, as well as many short stories published in Afrikaans magazines like the "Huisgenoot" in his lifetime.

https://storiewerf.co.za/2019/07/06/pieter-w-grobbelaar

Here is an even earlier author's book from fricking 1939 you can buy on afrikaans-Amazon

Point is there is no absolute definitive series of short stories by one singular author in the short history of Afrikaans, in the way there was a discrete and finite number of short stories in the Sherlock Holmes universe, as written by Conan Doyle.

Here is some boomers on facebook discussing their favorite childhood Swaap short stories and misadventures

https://web.facebook.com/groups/2550041835/posts/10155262662456836?_rdr

STORT STORY OF THE DAY!!!

There once existed a nation of scholars and engineers and inventors of such prestige and fame, that all their neighbours would call upon them to help solve their national debts and dilemmas, to help construct their national bridges or darns, and aid them in farming effectively. This was the nation of Swaapland.

For many decades this meritocratic nation of peerless intelligence and accomplishment would prosper, and their neighbours would prosper alongside them. But like the mythical garden of Eden, this Utopia would not last. Because their menfolk would so continiously be in demand for their aid in intellectual matters, in their neighbouring countries, the womenfolk would be left to run the country and their collective households in their absence.

This put great strain upon the nation state of Swaapland, as the men of Swaapland would make excursions so continuously outside of their homeland, that internal domestic affairs were beginning to fall apart!

The council of Elders convened as soon as possible, the menfolk and womenfolk sitting on opposite sides of the council chambers, all shouting to be heard. Finally after much deliberation, the elders of Swaapland had come to a solution for this problem where their menfolk were so continuously in demand outside of their borders: They must no longer be wise!!

They must no longer be wisemen to whom their neighbours looked up to, and demanded their aid in running engineering and mathematical affairs! They must become stupid! In this way, there will no longer be demand upon their nation's menfolk, and the swaaplanders could finally manage their own nation state's affairs in peace!

In just 2 generations the plan worked: the swaaplanders would stop teaching their children all their wisdom, and burned down their libraries. Their offspring would become known from the region's most prestigious wisemen, to the greatest collection of illiterate morons the world had ever seen....

The Swape pas beeste op / The swape look after cattle: (translated to English very very very roughly)

There existed a small town within the nation state of Swaapland. Even among the Swapians, they were especially slow, and were known to be very afraid of acting to fast (they firmly believed a hasty dog burned its mouth!) , thus they thought matters through very thoroughly, even if that action took hours.....

One day an old Swaap woman was busy looking after the cattle of the town. In the bush, the old lady was busy having her lunch.

As she was sitting with her meagre daily meal, one of the cows came close to her, chewing with its jaw, up and down rhythmically, in the manner in which cows do.

https://web.facebook.com/watch?v=234123418264062

After this action had gone on for a while, the old lady believed that this pompous abrasive cow was deliberately mimicking her! Mocking her!

She shouted: "What are you standing like that and replicating me you stupid Ape!" she raged.

The cow ignored her rage and rant, completely oblivious to all troubles in the world, still chewing in the manner in which cows do.

"If you do not immediately cease with mocking me, I will hit you!" She raged. The cow remained death to he anger, still chewing and chewing.

The old Swaap lady became so angery that she picked up a large stick and began literally beating the cow to fricking death lmoa. Upon retuning to her home that evening, she stated that the cow had become raving mad in the bush, driving her into madness and violence with its sinful mockery.

In their stupidity the town council concluded that it was the bush and wild driving their domesticated cows into madness and sin and mockery to their owners, they could not bring their cattle herd back out there again!!

But there is a snag, there's very little grass and pasture amongst the village homes. One smartass Swaap exclaims that they've missed to most obvious source of pasture for their cattle - the grass on their roofs!!! That's a genius plan, the rest exclaimed!

We must immediately get a cow above the homes, so that they may graze upon the grass roofs. Everybody thinks this is a wonderful plan.....

Our group of lovable morons go and get the healthiest and biggest cow amongst their herd, and bind a long strong rope around her neck. To get the cow upon the grass-roofed house, a group of the strongest swaap men go to the opposite side of the house with the rope, and begin pulling with all their might to get the cow upon the roof!

The cow is slowly, slowlllllllyyyy raised to the height of the roof, but when her horns were finally higher than that of the house roof, the cow began choking to death, her eye bulging and her tongue lolling for air. When our band of morons saw this, they began to become very excited, and misinterpreted this cow choking to death as her being fancying the grass roof with her lolling tongue; they began to cheer the men pulling on the opposite side of the house, to pull even harder. "Look at how the cow is licking its lips in anticipation of the well-preserved roof-grass! Pull harder! She wants to eat, she just can't reach the grass! Pull harder!"

By the time the cow was pulled atop the grass-roof, she was completely deceased. The band of imbeciles interpreted this cow as being lazy, and would repeat the exercise of cow-lynching two more times before they realize they've killed 3 cows lol.

Eventually, by breaking all of their ropes, the Swapians decide it was a better idea to just let the cows graze on the outskirts of their hovels.

Anyways, that's all I got, GOOD NIGHT.

Aevann plz pin

Holly's knickers

Megachurches raise ambivalent reactions in society. For some, they are a source of faith, hope, and inspiration. I look to folks like Joel Osteen and am impressed at the leadership qualities they possess to command a crowd that large and to do it consistently for years. Regardless of your views on religion, it is undeniable that individuals like Joyce Meyer are cut from a different cloth. They have qualities and abilities that have helped to make them insanely successful.

However, these megachurches are inevitably the source of controversy. Many despise the prosperity gospel promoted by these groups. Others claim that this isn't in the spirit of true Christianity, which does have some Biblical basis.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him

Over the years numerous megachurch pastors have found themselves falling from grace and losing everything they have built. Ted Haggard is a great example, and there are several documentaries you can watch on his tragic downfall. Joel Osteen has faced his troubles, but has managed to come out the other end still highly successful.

Right now, we may be watching a new controversy unfold, this time from Pastor TD Jakes. Who is he, what did he do, and what can we expect of him and his congregation? That's what I hope to explore next.

Who is TD Jakes?

Thomas Dexter Jakes comes from extremely humble beginnings. His parents were entrepreneurs, and while he wasn't poor, he certainly wasn't wealthy either.

At the age of eight Jakes began selling vegetables from his mother's garden. While in high school he cut grass, delivered newspapers, and sold Avon and Amway products.

When his father died, he was struck by grief and he left high school to pursue life as a preacher. He was so poor, he was afraid to get on his knees and pray because his shoes had holes in them. However, it is within religion that he found his calling. So what are his main beliefs?

• He believes in Pentecostalism

• He believes in sexual abstinence before marriage

• He believes in the Trinity

• He believes that God will bless those who believe in him, not just in spirit but financially as well

Perhaps most importantly, he does not believe in homosexuality. Although he said his views are "evolving" he is pretty clear that he does not support it.

>I was SHOCKED to read that this was manipulated in a subsequent article to say I endorsed same s*x marriage! My position on the subject has been steadfast and rooted in scripture. For the record, I do not endorse same s*x marriage but I respect the rights that this country affords those that disagree with me.

https://www.facebook.com/bishopjakes/posts/my-comment-on-huffpo-tv-drifted-into-issues-of-the-supreme-court-ruling-and-chan/10153758229753322

So, he is clear that he stands against bussy.

Diddy do it?

We'll have to take a detour right here to briefly discuss Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Sean Combs. Like TD Jakes, Diddy comes from humble beginnings, but his hunger for success is pretty obvious from his early years. He always wanted to be wealthy and goddammit he did everything in his power to reach the heights he has. He is inarguably one of the most influential figures in hip-hop and Western music as a whole in the last few decades.

In the 80s and 90s, Hip hop was a violent, dangerous business and one had to be mentally and physically tough to succeed. It is for this reason that you'll notice a MASSIVE difference in the nature of modern hip hop artists and those of the "golden era". My favorite example of this is Method Man. Watch his interviews, and you see that genuinely BIPOC style of "cool but dangerous" that pretty much no other race can pull off. Like this interview where he clowns an interviewer. The way he just dominates the interview while still being cool and funny is pure BIPOC swag at its best.

The fact of the matter is NONE of you would be able to handle this situation with this much finesse. There's also this interview where he threatens Wendy Williams (honestly a lolcow who deserves her own post if not her own hole entirely) about what she(?) said about his wife.

But back to Diddy. He is currently the latest to receive a #metoo allegation. They have come from a few sources, with some claiming that he has a history of sexually assaulting women. For the most part, Diddy has been silent on the matter, though he has made a statement defending himself.

Enough is enough! For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth

Like Epstein, Diddy threw a lot of parties, which means that others have been dragged into his allegations.

TD Jakes = Takes Peepee Jakes

So with Diddy allegations flying around, TD Jakes also receives allegations. It has been said that he attended plenty of Diddy's parties. This isn't something his camp denies.

"As a filmmaker, executive producer and one of the pioneers of value-based movies, Bishop Jakes, in his role as CEO of T.D. Jakes Entertainment, paid respect to the former Chairman of Revolt during the celebration of his birthday," Williams said.

"Bishop Jakes was in LA for important business meetings, and we felt that a quick appearance at the former Chairman of Revolt's birthday event was the respectful thing to do since Bishop Jakes' sermons are aired on the Revolt Network," he explained.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/td-jakes-camp-refutes-viral-allegations-as-unequivocally-false.html

The latest allegations against Diddy concern Cassie who has filed lawsuits against the producer.

In a lawsuit that was filed last month, Cassie alleged that she was abused and sexually assaulted while with Diddy, and that the artist and mogul r*ped her in 2018 when she tried to break up with him. The lawsuit was settled less that 24 hours after it went public, although Diddy denied Cassie's accusations. He's also been handed three additional lawsuits, including one from a woman who says she was 17 when she was r*ped by Diddy and two other men in 2003.

https://www.complex.com/music/a/jaelaniturnerwilliams/cassies-songwriter-and-friend-says-singer-couldnt-record

It is now also alleged that Cassie has handed a phone to the feds which has evidence that TD Jakes attended Diddy's parties and he was out for bussy! He slept with male escorts is the claim. He's also getting Michael Jacksoned and is being accused of taking advantage of a young boy whose parents were given hush money.

https://x.com/yungforeverrr/status/1737630728177774723

This has already affected TD Jakes and his brand. The pastor's camp has denied the claims:

"[It's] disheartening to witness the proliferation of numerous deepfake photos and the distortion of words through false, sensationalized misrepresentations, encapsulating purported statements to falsely speculate and attack others, including Bishop Jakes."

https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/747740-t-d-jakes-diddy-rumours-bishop-statement

What to believe?

Well, we have no definitive proof of TD Jakes liking bussy cakes, but it doesn't look good for him. My main source of suspicion comes from the claims of "deepfakes" when there are no photos out yet, which suggests that they know some photos might surface.

He wouldn't be the first pederast pastor, but we should be careful when evaluating wild claims about people. If he's gay, I accept him fully and sympathize with his struggle. If not, I sympathize with him dealing with public attacks that aren't true.

Conclusion

Honestly, the whole thing gives me hope. Both TD Jakes and Diddy came from nothing and managed to amass so much for themselves. And unlike these men, I don't have extreme degeneracies that can destroy me - except for being a druggie, but I'm still functional it's not like I'm snorting coke or shooting heroin. I can still say no to getting high (I always choose yes).

I feel like if I try like a maniac for ONE year and not give a frick about rejection, I can find a gf. Not just a vagina, but a woman I like. I just need to try. I haven't been trying, just getting sad I got no Tinder matches and not talking to women IRL. Honestly, I feel like this is a problem 90% of incels fall into. You come online, end up talking to e-girls, and your lizard brain thinks you're making progress because "of course this terminally online female is going to fly to my country and frick me eventually if I'm nice to her". Stop talking to e-girls (COMPLETELY) and start talking to women IRL.

When I say this, I don't mean to avoid all women online. I've met many genuinely based human beings who just happen to be female on the internet. Folks like:

@MrsFrozenClaus

@universal

@solace

Genuinely some of my favorite people in my life ever. But there are also e-girls you're fricking orbiting and it's wasting your time and mental energy. Cut it out, stop giving them your attention. Like I said, it's preventing your brain from realizing you're not making any real progress toward actual normal pair-bonding with a real woman you can see, touch, and love.

It's time to go places I don't usually go (festivals, nightclubs, maybe even Mormon church) and just TRY talking to real flesh and blood women, even if I have to do it alone and it's guaranteed I'm going to get fricked off at least 70% of the time. I'm definitely not going to be like those dudes you see making videos of themselves hitting on every girl on the street, but I am going to try to see if I can talk to women in appropriate social settings and leave if I sense they're getting creeped out or annoyed.

>If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done

From TD Jakes and Diddy, I also learned that balance is important in everything. If you want good, sometimes you have to do bad. Yin and Yang. I'm not perfect, but I do try to treat women with respect IRL. I'm certainly not going to stop this, but I will be dipping into the dark triad. Here's the thing - if you research dark triad, you'll learn that you don't even need to be a sicko to use it. They're not signs of evil, but behavior patterns that anyone can adopt

The dark triad is a psychological theory of personality, first published by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad

I'm mostly interested in Machiavellianism which involves pragmatism over principles. I've got strong principles concerning women IRL. Despite my shitposting here, I do believe women face unique problems in society and endure shit treatment from men who sexually objectify them. Hence, I absolutely don't want to be another man making my horniness their problem. This is good on one level, but it also leaves me feeling intense guilt and frustration about my normal sexual desires. Like it's something hideous I have to hide.

There's the principle, but the pragmatic part is that I don't want to die an incel. So what's the solution? This is the question I ask myself:

>Some men are perverts. Can you express sexual interest without being a pervert?

To a hardline Machiavellian, the plan of action is simple - i want to coom, I find the easiest route for s*x, there's no need to consider morals". I can't do that. There's a middle ground though - I'm human and horny, surely there are other horny human females. Can we not find shared desires? That's what I mean when I say dipping into the dark triad. Taking the best qualities of the worst values. To be clear, I don't just want s*x - I desire a gf, and eventually a wife and nuclear family. But s*x is definitely part of it.

I have a few big obstacles to overcome

• getting full braces on Jan 15 at age 28

• no experience talking to women romantically

• 156cm ugly manlet

• rekt legs from self-harm

• thinking of getting an eyebrow piercing soon so probably going to have a swollen eye area for a while

But these aren't impossible odds, especially if I let go of the "must be 9/10 white blonde girl" mindset Holly got me stuck in. Classic incel mistake. Almost nobody on Earth has access to literally the most highly desired type of female. Unless you're rich, abnormally handsome, or a male feminist, you're not fricking big tiddy blonde girls. Get over it.

TD Jakes and Diddy - I want like 10% of your success, and I'll use it 100% more wisely.

Chuds and Kanye fans can leave now. You won't like this one. Today I want to briefly discuss Viktor Frankl and his ideas that have helped me redefine my life. I've turned to Freud, Jordan Peterson, Campbell, and Jung, and while they all have something to offer, none have gripped me quite like Frankl. I do warn that I am on benzos right now and it's making my screen vibrate so apologies for any typos and if I slip into nonsense. My eyes are half-closed and I forgot how much I took.

Viktor Frankl - Will you be a moslem or a kapo

As we all know, Frankl was a doctor who found himself thrown into concentration camps during Nazi rule. He lived day to day, not knowing whether he would be sent to the furances the next day, or whether his family was still alive. Throughout his time, he makes many interesting observations about human nature. Most notably, he describes the moslems and the kapos of the prisons. Some men, not due to starvation, but rather the loss of a will to live, would begin to waste away. When such men are noticed, it is obvious they can work no longer so they are sent to the showers.

If you wake up, shave, and look smart, you will be made to work, but you will not be killed. In fact, you may even become a kapo, where you will be in charge of other prisoners. From this position, you can help others escape or give better treatment to the prisoners (though Frankl notes that many of the Kapo were as mean as the Nazis themselves, it should be noted that jews in such positions were responsible for secretly freeing prisoners, and it is estimated that the descendants of these freed jews number in the hundreds of thousands today).

Regardless, the point is clear. Each day we wake up in heck. Will you be a moslem or a Kapo? Will you slump over, give up, and allow weakness to overcome you, or will you shave, and face each day as though you are the best worker possible? Either choice is suffering, but which do you think is better? For some, being a moslem is superior. At least you die soon. For a rare few of us, we are wiling to endure the suffering to one day become a kapo and relieve the suffering of the moslems.

Frankl BTFOs Freud

During Frankl's time, Freud was the definitive voice when it came to mental health and psychology. Frankl basically said - "yeah, all of that's bullshit, throw it away." Frankl has no respect for psychotherapy. His reasons are simple. His main concern with psychotherapy is that it fails to adequately address humankind's drive for meaning. Instead, such impulses are viewed as ‘defense mechanisms'. This tends to lead to cynical conclusions about human nature.

As Frankl argues: “I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my ‘defense mechanisms,' nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my ‘reaction formations.' Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!”. And that's what it ultimately comes to - what meaning have you inscribed in life to make the suffering worth it? Whatever you have dubbed "meaningful", this is what you will live and die for.

I'm sure so many of us reading this have been on the precipice of suicide. You're still here, your attempt failed, so you're clearly giving life a second/third/fourth chance. Why? Why not try to end yourself again? Clearly some sense of meaning has gripped you, at least temporarily. For now, that meaning surpasses the influence suffering has on you. I'd like you to think deeply about what that meaning is in your life. This could be the most important revelation you make to yourself.

Personally, my meaning comes from crafting my imaginary world. I know it has value, and that the people within it deserve a universe made of love. I love the inhabitants of Encante, and I will suffer through the agony of existence to ensure their world is treated with the respect it deserves. Where does your meaning come from?

As evidence for the importance of meaning in life, Frankl points to several studies, including one that surveyed students on what they found important, with results revealing that “16

percent of the students checked ‘making a lot of money'; 78 percent said their first goal was ‘finding a purpose and meaning to my life.'"

Another critique of psychotherapy put forward by Frankl concerns the fact that the theoretical framework is very much focused on the symbolic and theorized psychic processes. Though this may be effective in some cases, Frankl believes that it does have its limitations. Such limits become obvious when dealing with patients suffering from noögenic neuroses, which Frankl describes as neuroses arising from existential frustration.

Though it may cause suffering, Frankl argues that “existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic”. Isn't that liberating to know? There's nothing pathological about questioning your existence or even being frustrated by the very fact of your existence. These are all normal emotions!

Consequently, rather than attempt to cure the condition, it is the job of the therapist to pilot the patient through his existential crisis of growth and development. Frankl argues that noögenic neuroses do not emerge from conflicts between drives and instincts but rather from existential problems. Hence, he proposes that in such cases, “the appropriate and adequate therapy is not psychotherapy in general but rather logotherapy; a therapy, that is, which dares to enter the specifically human dimension”.

Logotherapy? What now? What the frick is that?

Logotherapy

Logotherapy, as defined by Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning, concerns itself with the search for the worthwhileness of life. I agree with Frankl here that this should be the primary mode of tackling mental health. Someone is sad and suicidal. Our first instinct is to say "noooo don't do it." What we should be asking first is "is your life worthwhile? Why or why not?" Oftentimes, people who are depressed will claim their lives are not worthwhile, as their emotional states aren't improving regardless of what they do. Such folks are moslems.

The kapos, they are able to stand up and shave daily because they have found a reason to consider life worthwhile.

logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis insofar as it considers man a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts, or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of id, ego, and superego, or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment.

You're not here to soothe your id, fulfill base desires, or satisfy primitive instincts. Rather, if you're to not self-delete today, it will be because you've found meaning, not because you've escaped suffering (you can't). To understand what is being said, a radical change in your outlook on suffering is necessary.

You will suffer

Here's where most of us fail. We desire something and we believe it will bring us joy. We fail to acquire that thing, so we're plunged into depression and life feels meaningless. This is GOOD. The fact that you're suffering should be used as a rudder, directing you toward that which is truly meaningful. If that meaning does not exist, the suffering is not a rudder, it is a hole in your boat that will sink you to heck.

You're going to suffer, so here are your two options - suffer for meaning, or suffer for nothing. Unlike Freud, Frankl doesn't want to eliminate suffering. Instead, he wants to understand it as another important psychic process that is integral to our development and self-actualization.

the search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. Hence, what man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him

This is the heroic "call to adventure" Joseph Campbell speaks of. Will you stay and suffer in your shitty hometown (die a moslem), or will you seek out meaning, suffering all the way there (and maybe become a kapo/hero)?

The value of suffering

Forget about pleasure and pain. Why do you believe will give you meaning? Is it:

• family

• art

• knowledge

• love

Whatever it is, if it is meaningful, you will endure all manner of suffering to acquire it. As Frankl summarises, “man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life". Though suffering is something that is often instinctually avoided, he argues that “man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning”.

This is a radical view, as it is often the assumption that those things that seem to take meaning away from human life include not only suffering but dying as well. From Frankl's perspective, these could be the very things that imbue life with meaning. This perspective is not a masochistic one, as Frankl is not arguing that suffering is essential to finding meaning. As he summarises: “meaning is available in spite of - nay, even through - suffering”, though if suffering is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause.

Conclusion

It's okay for life to go sideways and for unimaginable suffering to strike. It is in these moments that we either become moslems whose lives were void of meaning to begin with, or we become greater than we ever were. Which direction will your suffering take you?

At least for now, I can hold onto the meaning of my parocosm, and it's enough. What is your justification for suffering? What makes it worth it? What would you endure Auschwitz for? Should be noted that when Frankl was freed his whole family was dead. All he had was his research. The same research that changed the world and helped millions, and I am attempting to relay it to you. Man's Search for Meaning is one of the bestselling books of all time, and I am glad he held steadfast to his meaning in the most dire circumstances.

The self-sabotage of lying

Yes, a financially poor mentally ill truecel is about to give you life advice.

The following discussion concerns lying and why you should never do it, no matter how terrible the consequences initially seem. This is going to be a fairly long post, but I hope by the end of it, you understand my position.

What led to the no lying policy?

There was a very specific experience I witnessed that completely convinced me that lying only serves to worsen your life. I know I tell a lot of these academia stories, so if they're boring please let me know and I'll stop. With that said, here's the event in question:

So I knew an English professor, let's call her Debbie. Overall, she was mostly a good person and I'd really only criticize her for still smoking disgusting cigarettes in current year. Despite not acting like it, she is actually insanely overqualified and intelligent. She has two Masters degrees, one from fricking Cambridge University.

I'm not part of the staff team of course, but I got to know the workplace pretty well just from all the years I wasted there (almost an entire fricking decade - worst mistake of my life to date). One day, during a meeting, Debbie was verbally attacked by a pipsqueak fellow staff member (let's call her Lisa) who is far less qualified and experienced than her. Lisa is highly disagreeable and quite frankly one of the most unpleasant people I have ever met, even on the most superficial level. If I found out she had colon cancer I would give 0 shits (pun intended) because I'm convinced she's a sociopath who would feel nothing for anyone else.

Anyway, back to Debbie. How did she react to the attack? Days later, she's acting like she's best buddies with Lisa!

Seeing this, I noticed that I had lost all respect or even sympathy for Debbie. She was obviously hurt and disrespected by Lisa. There was no reason for there to be any civility between them because Lisa had used many fancy words to essentially tell Debbie to frick off, and publicly so.

Debbie, you know this person has no respect for you, they will attack you publicly, and they fear no retribution. Why are you smiling as though she's your friend? YOU ARE LYING. This behavior isn't arbitrary. Her continued lie to both herself and others attempting to convince them that she's fine was keeping her in an environment where she was destined to be treated the same way yet again one day.

Do you know what the correct response would be? Debbie, you tell Lisa you think she's a disrespectful piece of shit, and if she speaks to you like that again, you're going to leave (or promise violence if she genuinely felt capable of it and was willing to do it). Would that cause conflict? Yes. But it also would have set the HONEST boundaries of the relationship.

There are so many people tolerating toxic relationships and workplaces, being ruled over by a tyrant and the reason it continues is because you can't open your mouth and tell that tyrant to FRICK OFF. So you lie and act like it's okay. Why do you lie?:

• Afraid of losing your job and affecting your finances

• Afraid of damaging a relationship with a boyfriend/parent/loved one

• Terrified of conflict

• Lack of experience (you've lied so much you literally don't know how to be honest with your feelings)

The terrible, terrible consequence of this is that you remain stuck in the same position. If you're lucky, you'll just experience stagnancy. The more realistic scenario is that shit escalates because you've proven yourself to be a good target for malice.

It took me a long time to understand this about life, but in adulthood, people who are being bullied or mistreated often fully deserve it, including me.

Reason? We lied very early on about what we were willing to tolerate, so the treatment only got worse. If we told the truth at the very beginning - “stop that shit I don't like it” - it would have almost certainly stopped.

The nature of bullying is that your target is weaker than you physically/mentally/financially/professionally. When you're mistreated and you don't say anything, you prove yourself to be both mentally and emotionally weak - an irresistible target for a bully. It's like white girls walking alone in India in short skirts - you deserve what's coming, and you brought it on yourself.

This isn't high school. You're not stuck going to the same building every day if you don't want to. And you most certainly have the legal right to fricking deck anyone once they even remotely attempt to intimidate you. An honest punch is more moral than a fake smile. Losing your job in that scenario is noble, but you're a fricking pathetic, scared liar so you don't/can't understand that. Instead, you'll pretend things are fine when they're not.

If you are guilty of this in any capacity, cease this behavior right now. Stop lying to yourself and stop lying to others, regardless of who you're talking to and how much power they have. I promise you that your life will drastically improve if you stop lying. I hope to convince you of this by the end of this article.

What is lying

That image above. YOU JUST KNOW.

There are so many questions that surround the concept of a “lie” that I don't think we even have a universally agreed-upon definition for it just yet, and I'm not arrogant enough to believe I've solved the problem.

The consensus is that a lie is the opposite of the truth. But that definition doesn't help much, because we could have a debate for days over what “truth” is. Nevertheless, when we talk about lying in regular society, we're typically referring to the act of intentionally misrepresenting what you believe to be true.

I would add one detail to this definition. You don't need to mislead another person to lie - lies told to yourself are still lies. Not accepting the nature of reality is a lie to yourself. And it's these lies that are perhaps the most dangerous.

Do definitions matter? Yes, I believe they do in this case. Most of the time, we know we're lying. However, there are cases where people need to be shown the dishonesty within their words or actions. This is the case for several reasons.

1. Firstly, we lie so routinely that we start to not recognize the falsehoods in our words (e.g. I love you, I'm okay).

2. Secondly, it can be difficult to accept that you've lied to yourself because it requires a drastic change in your perception of reality, the one you were trying to run away from (e.g. I cannot afford the car I'm driving, I caused my break-up, I'm an addict).

So not only is lying hard to define, but it can also be hard to determine when we've lied. This is slightly different from something like, say, theft, when we all know exactly what it is and when we've done it intentionally. Why? We'll dive into that in a moment, but there's a little more theoretical groundwork to lay down first.

What kinds of lies are there?

There's a seemingly countless variety of lies we can tell, with some of them being more controversial than others. There are some common types of lies that we face every day. Here are some examples:

1. White lies - these are lies we tell with good intentions. Usually to spare someone's feelings or protect them from a horrible truth. I consider these to be one of the worst kinds of lies because we do them daily without realizing how much we are actually destroying our relationships with each other. We tell these lies, the victim sees through them, and they lose all respect for you. I have no respect for people who tell me “white lies”.

Furthermore, if your life is believed, it prevents people from solving otherwise simple problems. Instead of saying “No Sandra, you're not fat!”, just tell her the truth - “You're a fat frick, it's unhealthy, and it reflects badly on your personality because fat people are rightfully seen as greedy and undisciplined. Your life would improve if you lost weight.” Sandra needs to hear the truth, but you'll lie to her, and she'll never improve.

2. Black lies - These are lies told by BIPOCs. Just kidding. Black lies are those we tell with conscious and deliberate malice or ill intent. Lying to get money, to cheat, to get out of trouble etc. Most people would find these to be the worst kinds of lies, but I disagree. I find them to be the most “honest” kind of lie. The person telling the lie knows they're lying, they know they're being immoral, and they're going ahead with the deed. Unlike the other kinds of lies, there's no confusion or obfuscation of the immorality of the action.

What is the last black lie you have told?

3. Honest lie - This is also known as the “black truth” and it is the kind of lie wielded by experts in dishonesty. I do not mean to be misogynistic, but I've also noticed it is the kind of lie I've pretty much only seen women use. You deceive by telling the truth. It's a complex thing, and it takes good social skills to pull off. An example: you tell me I'm fat (the truth). The next day you tell me I'm fat (the truth). The day after you tell me I'm fat (the truth). You've acknowledged no other part of my humanity, and reduced me to merely a “fat person”. I may be a person that's fat, but it's a lie to convince me I'm solely a “fat person”. I have more value than that.

I'm not fat by the way, just an example. I refuse to be fat. Even as an incel, that's below me.

4. Defamation/Slander - Once again, this is the kind of lie I see used mainly by women. Someone wants your reputation damaged, so they tell a lie about you. The lie usually has some truth to it, but things have been exaggerated, or context has been left out. It doesn't matter so long as it makes you look bad.

5. Lie by omission - This is a controversial one. You lie by not saying something. It's difficult to gauge what a lie by omission is because we all have a right to privacy. However, I believe deep down we all know when we're using the guise of privacy to hide truths that should be revealed. A very common example - you wanna have s*x with your female friend. You don't say it - you just orbit. You understand the dynamics of the situation would be different if you admitted your true intentions but you don't. You haven't told a lie, but you're certainly lying.

6. The big lie - During my lying days, these were the kinds of lies I would tell. Go big or go home. Tell a lie so preposterous that nobody would believe you'd lie about something so massive.

7. The cover-up lie - I'd argue this is probably one of the most common lies. We've all done it. There is almost certainly someone reading this that is in the midst of a cover-up lie in your life right now. Some of you have been keeping up this cover-up for years.

You fricked up, you don't want anyone to know, so you lie. This lie is initially useful, but it almost always results in the “snowball effect”. You need a second lie to bolster the first, then a third, then a fourth, and now you're stuck in a matrix of lies that are bound to be uncovered at some point. It's probably the most stressful kind of lie as well because not only do you have to worry about your lies, but you're also stressing about the initial thing you were trying to cover up.

There are other kinds of lies we could discuss such as exaggerations, half-truths, and malingering (another big one), but with the above, we cover the gamut of lies you'll probably tell and hear daily.

Origins of lying

It is estimated that children learn to lie at around age three when they start to have an improved theory of mind. They understand that you have your own mind, separate from theirs, and that two people can believe different things. It's as if we're all born Jungians believing in collective consciousness, then we're rapidly ripped from that and thrown into solipsism.

Left to their own devices, children will lie without any guilt. This is different from other acts we deem immoral that children often have an ingrained sense of guilt over. An example is unfairness. It's a concept so primitive that toddlers as young as 19 months will express moral outrage at any situation that seems even remotely unfair.

https://healthland.time.com/2012/02/20/even-babies-can-recognize-whats-fair

Dogs, cows, apes - they all understand unfairness and will object to it.

For some reason, lying doesn't follow these rules. To the contrary, lying is a cognitive milestone, and to some degree, you should want your child to have a period of lying, as it demonstrates a developed theory of mind. Lying is an expected part of childhood development.

Here's where the issue arises - from ages 4 to 6, children will do the most lying. They're discovering the world, learning about other humans, and understanding their place in society.

Smart kids will lie the most, and then they'll learn how to do it well, and if they do it convincingly then it will help them avoid trouble and succeed socially. And quite frankly, at that age, it's not really possible to fully understand the perniciousness of lying, especially because telling the truth will almost always land you in a bad position. You broke the window? Why the frick be honest about it? So you can get into trouble? Just say you don't know how it happened and you're spared punishment. If you're a smart child, you can even lay down evidence to make it seem like the dog did it.

It's not entirely obvious to a child at this age why they shouldn't use this effective tool, and if you don't ingrain the idea that lying is wrong during these years, you run the risk of breeding an incorrigible pathological liar. Remember, there's no natural moral repulsion to lying, probably because evolutionarily, lying also serves as a viable mating strategy. You may not form a good long-term relationship with lies, but you can sure as frick lie your way to quick s*x.

So we need to teach children that lying is wrong, which is something even adults have trouble fully explaining or understanding beyond the simple “people don't like it when you lie to them.” This isn't a useful lesson. All you're telling your child is that they need to lie well enough to not get caught.

Adults have a second problem to deal with - they're also big fat liars. Any attentive child will recognize that adults lie frequently, including their own parents. Furthermore, the “wrongness” of lies seems to vary. This isn't like, theft for example. You can teach a child to never steal anything, and your child will probably never see you steal because most adults don't. On the other hand, children are punished by their parents for lying but can see that their parents also lie.

The end result? Most of us grow up believing lying is wrong, but not always wrong. I'm sure you can understand this. Have you ever given a false compliment? I'm sure you never felt any guilt about it at all. You may have even felt good about saying something nice to someone, regardless of how untrue it is.

This is the most interesting thing I find about lying. We consider it to be immoral, yet it seems to illicit little to no feelings of guilt. We ultimately have to teach ourselves to not lie, and figuring out why you shouldn't lie isn't always obvious.

Why do we lie?

I've mostly answered this question already - it's useful, at least in the short term. Here's a brief list of things lying can get you:

• Escape trouble or negative consequences

• Avoid blame

• Convince people we will do something we have no intention of doing

• Appear better than you are

• Make someone feel better

• Avoid confrontation

• Commit fraud and other crimes to net you money

• Harm people you don't like by lying about them

• Lead people to make poor decisions because of incorrect information

It's also worth mentioning that not all lies have these benefits. Some lies are told for no reason other than the satisfaction of knowing you fooled someone. These are cases of “duper's delight” and in this realm, we're usually discussing pathological liars. That deserves its own post, as with this post, I'd like to focus on the fricked up and unnecessary lies otherwise moral folks tell daily.

I write this post as a reformed liar. I was never a pathological liar but I darn well have used lying to help me in life. Estimates suggest that people tell about two lies daily, which is where I would place my prior self. I'll also admit that I felt no guilt lying (and still don't), and while I recognize the wrongness of the lies I've told, they don't weigh on my conscience at all.

A lot of lying was to my father specifically, because he was violent when I was younger, so lying was a form of self-preservation. The consequence of this is that it taught me to lie to all superiors, as though they'll also beat the shit out of me if I upset them. Bad life lesson to learn, and a difficult mindset to grow past.

Here are some of the lies I told:

• I swear I'm not drunk!

• That's okay!

• It doesn't matter.

• I'm not upset.

• I'm sorry.

• I lied to my parents about failing a subject in one semester of my 1st year of university

• I didn't declare all income sources on my tax forms

• I lie to my family about being Christian

• I'm pretty sure I lie to myself about my true levels of bitterness toward women

Do I feel bad about these lies? No, but I believe they all led to worse long-term outcomes than if I had just told the truth.

The Stress of Lying

As I said, lying doesn't trigger a guilt response unless you were raised to have one, or life experiences have taught you this lesson. For most of us, it's pretty easy to lie and we'll forget about it ten seconds later, not feeling bad about it at all. Nevertheless, lying can stress you out.

You have the task of convincing the person of a mistruth which requires acting skills, a good memory, or knowledge you don't have. If you're discovered, you could face consequences and reputational damage, not to mention damaged relationships.

So even if we don't feel guilt, lying is often a stressful experience. Personally, I have anxiety disorder so really whether I'm lying to you or telling the truth, I'm still going to be stressed out by communicating at all. The truth content of my statement doesn't really matter which makes lying all the more easier.

Why you shouldn't lie - harm to others

Wewlad one of my favorite Holly's above.

In the Bible, the devil is referred to as the father of lies, and that deception is his mother tongue. Of all the things the devil could be characterized as - king of murderers, the r*pe ruler - he is instead depicted as a liar.

In the Bible, we witness God kill thousands if not millions. Yet when Satan, the villain of the story, shows up, his strategy is to lie. Worth thinking about, isn't it? The Bible doesn't just rebuke lies - they seem to be deeply tied to the very core of sin itself.

I hate it when people say the serpent didn't lie to Eve (and yes the serpent is Satan, it doesn't need to be explicitly stated, it is contextually obvious). The serpent without a doubt lied. He promised that they would not die if she ate the fruit. Epic troll! God finds out and darns the whole of humanity to death.

“In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” - (Genesis 3:17)

So why this big focus on lying in religion? Because the ancients recognized how lies were enough to destroy nations. The most important words Eve speaks are “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” In short, the lie I was told ruined my life. This is what you do to others when you lie to them. You lead them astray, causing them to draw false conclusions and ultimately not act in the best way.

Why you shouldn't lie - harm to self

Let's say you don't give a shit about others. Why is lying wrong for you? Lying is quite possibly the most destructive thing you can do in your life. It is probably the biggest thing blocking you right now from improving your life. I'll list the four main reasons:

1. It obfuscates situations that are already present but you refuse to acknowledge.

An example - you do OnlyFans but your family is conservative. Your dad would disown you if he knew. Okay, so what the frick is the point of the fake relationship? The truth is that it already ceased to exist the second you posted your first nude.

Your dad has already rejected you. He's just talking to a false illusion of yourself that you've formed. Just tell him the truth, get formally disowned, and you can move on with your life with the facts of reality no longer obfuscated. But that's scary, so we lie.

Now, I gave the OnlyFans example, but how many of us are currently in similar situations? Hiding shit and lying about it because we fear rejection or abandonment? Lying to work colleagues about how much you like them or your job, lying to friends about romantic feelings you hold, lying to parents about your degeneracies. Just rip the fricking band-aid off and tell the truth. It will completely declutter your life of all the shit that doesn't need to be there.

I've spoken at length about my friend S.H. whom I had feelings for but got rejected.

https://rdrama.net/post/224434/i-told-my-friend-i-have

I was heartbroken at first - still am - but god it feels good to finally be past it. I'm so glad I can close that chapter and move on instead of lying to her pretending the friendship was purely platonical. It's over, I lost a friend, but I understand now that I had truly lost that friend long ago when I first developed feelings, and everything after that was just the anguish of continuing a friendship based on a lie.

Yes, it may make me a horny incel that I don't want to talk to her anymore if she doesn't want to frick me, but now I have one less person to worry about, and I can start devising other ways I can use women for s*x. My current ideas:

a) Ask the cute budtender at the weed dispensary on a date

b) Go to the local gay club and pick up a transmale with a vagina

c) Join the Mormon church down the road

d) Join the local hiking club

2. When you lie, you are often avoiding setting necessary boundaries

A homeless man asks you for money. You say you don't have any. You're lying. How about being honest to the man and telling him the truth - “you're half-drunk, I don't trust you, and I doubt you'll use this money for good. You're also making me and everyone you beg from uncomfortable.”

You would be surprised at how many people in such a situation will actually apologize, perhaps even explain why they're down on their luck, and at which point, they would be forced to consider and pursue legitimate ways of making money. Your harsh but true words are probably the wake-up call they need.

Stop saying shit is okay when it's not, or pretending you're fine with things you aren't okay with. Whether it's friends, colleagues, romantic partners, or even your superiors. I promise you they know you're lying and respect you less for it. When they ask you for something ridiculous or treat you unkindly, they do so because they know you're a liar who'll never admit that they've had enough. You're being mistreated - and rightfully so - because of your own lies.

It's hard to do at first, especially if you're someone who hates hurting other people's emotions and is scared to say no. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more respect you have for yourself.

Another real-world example - I'm currently visiting my parents. I chronically lie to my dad because he was violent during my childhood, so lying was a form of self-preservation. This time around, my dad wanted me to do something with him in the afternoon. I didn't want to, so I said so without sugar-coating it. Following this, he's actually been a lot more respectful towards me. He sensed the b-word in me was gone, I was being honest, and people respect that, even if you say shit they don't like.

People will mistreat you until you stop lying and acting like you're okay with it.

Being shy, introverted, scared, and anti-confrontation are all insufficient reasons to not SAY THE WORD “NO”.

If you think you're being underpaid at work, Don't lie and act like it's fine. Bring your proof of your true value and say so. Go to your boss and tell them “I've been working here 6 years, I've got a higher degree than all my peers, yet my salary hasn't changed. Pay me more or I'll leave.” If you're smart about it, you'll actually go to job interviews first, receive a salary offer, then go to your boss and tell them to pay you that amount or you'll frick off.

It goes the other way as well. If you're struggling with your job and its requirements, don't lie and fake competence. Maybe you do need a demotion where you can learn the basics better and, in the long run, become a better worker. Yes, you'll earn less, but you'll avoid the shitstorm that is fricking something serious up because of your incompetence. We all know these people at work. They know they're not qualified for their job, so they need to try every trick in the book to keep the lie up, and it ends up negatively affecting everyone, including you who has to fix their inevitable frick-ups.

3. You will eventually lie to yourself, and you will never know who you truly are.

None of us are perfect. We have twisted, sick desires. We want degenerate shit. And sometimes, we're driven by malice.

Hiding these things from ourselves only makes our Jungian shadow larger, and that shadow will darken everything it touches. This is the reason you need a good friend or, ideally, a good husband/wife who will accept you regardless of what you admit. Someone whom you cannot lie to regardless of how fricked up the truth is.

Yes, a friend can serve this purpose, but nothing replaces a spouse who has already (honestly) vowed to never leave you. A friend will reject you for your truths. A good spouse will only love you more for admitting them.

Are you a porn addict? The answer's obviously yes. If you're hiding it, the habit only gets worse and more obscene.

Here's a challenge - tell the person you love most about precisely what porn you watch and I'm not even kidding

“Hey X, I watch porn for hours at a time and it's been getting increasingly sick. I like seeing squirting and it's progressed to piss porn. I like gangbangs and it turns me on more when women seem like they don't like it.”

Firstly, you'll learn whether your loved one's love is unconditional if they don't abandon you. Secondly, just admitting these things is likely to end it all. The fetishes fester under the shadow of shame.

4. You stop yourself from learning about reality

Telling the truth is hard. Like, one of the hardest things to do in life. But if you prove to yourself that you can tell the truth, it gets easier which prepares you for the bigger truths you'll eventually need to tell.

Another real-world example. It was hard to tell my friend the truth that I liked her romantically. It didn't turn out the way I wanted, but now I know that I am capable of expressing romantic feelings to women. Importantly, I also learned a lesson - DON'T ORBIT FOR YEARS, it'll only suck worse when you're rejected. Now I can act better in the future with a clearer understanding of how reality works.

If I like you, I'm probably going to tell you as soon as I know it now. Reject me or accept me. I know this reality is better than holding it in forever.

Are there exceptions?

Of course, there are no absolutes in life. I fully support lying to the police and committing perjury in court. Lying weakens these systems and prevents them from functioning, which is the ultimate goal. Police should be misled, and in court, regardless of your guilt, your only aim should be to avoid being put in a cage where you may face r*pe and violence.

There are also extreme cases, but these will likely never come up in your life. For example, it's the day of the rope and you're hiding black people in your house. A Proud Boy knocks on your door and asks if there are any neighbors in there. Lie! A life is worth more than a moral code.

CONCLUSION

When you start only telling the truth, you will initially have more conflict in your life. You will lose friends. You will be judged as people disapprove of your actions and the degeneracies you've been hiding.

But when you come out the other end, you'll be a better person with a better life. You will be closer to the things you truly want.

Notice that I haven't said anything about trustworthiness or reputation. I don't give a shit about that. Whether you think I'm a liar or a truth-teller is irrelevant to me. Reputation and trustworthiness are not good reasons to not lie. You can tell the truth and still garner the reputation of a liar if your truths are unliked. A good liar can have a reputation as an honest person.

So, when you're ready, take that vow of honesty, and promise yourself to never lie again. If you don't want to go to lunch with someone upon invitation - tell them you don't enjoy their company. Is someone annoying you at work? Tell them to leave you alone, and that their behavior annoys you. Did you make a mistake, forget to do something, or just make a bad choice? Oh well, just say so. Who cares! Do you have a shameful habit or some kind of degeneracy you engage in behind closed doors? Maybe being honest about it will open the door for a well-needed conversation.

If you got this far, thank you for reading. Wishing you a wonderful festive season!

!effortposters

@MrsFrozenClaus

Hi rdrama!!! A few days ago I made this comment about my mom's shrimp scampi recipe and so I asked her if I could make it over this Christmas season to show you strags unfortunately she got me an extra pound of shrimp to feed the whole family so the proportions are a little skewed, but nevertheless I'll show my process here!!

Starting with the shrimp, I have three pounds of 31/40 count/pound raw shrimp. Cut open the bags, pour them into a pot and let cold water run over them while you do other stuff. The shrimp need to thaw, but if you leave them out in the open air they get pink and grow bacteria and shit

In the above picture is everything for the sauce itself—a half stick of butter, one and a half onions, two garlic cloves, two lemons, parsley, salt and pepper. I ended up needing to add an extra lemon and quarter stick of butter later on because the sauce reduced too much, but these proportions should be fine if you're not r-slurred like me

Start by turning the fire down low and chopping up the butter into slices so it melts easier. Put a few of the slices in just to grease the pot, and while those melt dice the onions. Put the onions in once done and stir periodically.

Now it's time to focus on the garlic. Garlic is really finicky because it's such an intense flavor, so dice it really finely. Additionally, we want the onions to be translucent before we add the garlic—I also tend to add the rest of the butter at this point just to ease its entry. This is all because if garlic burns it will frick your entire dish, so don't let it happen

Now that the garlic is added, time for the lemons! I like to zest into the sauce before squeezing, since it adds extra lemon taste and makes squeezing it easier. After that, chop them in half and squeeze them for every last drop. Don't let the seeds get in of course, they're very bitter.

This is about the time I realized I needed more juice and butter. The sauce should look pretty liquidy at this point and I just didn't have it right. Anyway, all that's left to do is add the parsley, salt, and pepper!

It's beautiful turn it off now so it doesn't burn while you do other things.

Anyway, now for the rice. I like to use a cup of rice for every pound of shrimp, meaning three cups of rice and six cups of water. Rinse the rice beforehand (local chinx pls bestow your wisdom, I seem to half butt this part every time and idk what I'm doing wrong). Then, put it into a pot with the six cups of water, bring it to a boil with the top on and then move it to a simmer burner for 22 minutes. We're not going to just be waiting that whole time though—did you forget about the shrimp??

The shrimp need to be peeled as such, and then cooked in the sauce until they turn pink.

By this time, the rice should certainly be done! Simply add it, stir and mix really well until it's all mixed and the rice has soaked all the sauce up. With that, you have shrimp scampi!

That's all for now

@Gruench @X !effortposters

Amber, 27, Las Angeles CA

For context, her boyfriend volunteered her to come on the show

Career:

• "Webshow host and producer, my show is called 'Healing Amber'"

  • "getting that off the ground and running"

• Making comercials on social media

  • She's advertising payday loans for $200

• Trying to move away from "user generated content" because "It's been feeling too hypercapitalistic" timestamp

• "I'm balancing, trying to participate in a capitalistic society that I really resent because I wanna be able to change this country from the inside out -" timestamp

  • "I mean you can vote like everyone else"

    • [in a new accent I can't place] "No no nooooo that doesn't make a difference"

• Commerical gig work basic details timestamp

  • $300 - $1000 for one ad

  • Doing 3-5 a month

• "I'm trying to get my inner reality to finally reflect on the outside so there was a whole history of some seriously traumatic shit that went down in Las Angeles, and before hand, and I really froze up and stopped participating in life, you could say? And I let others support me and I've put in a little bit of energy here and there to support myself but luckily now that I've done all this inner work and I have been realigning my life - that UGC work, the commercial work, it didn't feel aligned, so I'm doing this easy job like let's say-"

  • "What's the easy job"

    • "like let's say I put in 30 minutes for an AG One Greens commercial where they're like 'Why's your skin so glowy? and I'm like AG One!' you know, that kind of thing. So cool I've just made 300 off of that but why do I not feel fufilled and why am I not taking my time to actually participate more so what I've found feels best right now is helping small businesses. So I'm taking the skills that I used in creating social media ads, you could say, and I'm turning it into my consulting and production company."

• "I wear my expensive clothes and I buy my dog the expensive food and I do all this shit that will make me like, make me feel better when really actually gaining some sovereignty and some independence will make me feel better in the heart and so now I'm also turning, I guess, I'm playing you say two side of the point, I'm doing the work that doesn't feel good to survive, bearly, because there's so much resistance there but now, I am actually just inthe middle of my first pitch deck to a client in order to consult them in social media authenticity"

  • timestamp

• Caleb realizes all of this was evasion about an actual income number

  • timestamp

  • She doesn't know because she avoids looking at her bank accounts

• Doesn't want to do other work

• Living situation timestamp

  • Molding, whole building management company is getting sued?

  • Hasn't had to pay rent?

  • "I've manifested a life at this point where I am taken care of so much by other people"

    • "Manifested a life?"

      • "Subconsciously."

        • "Okay."

          • "Subconsciously my inner aspects and inner children have felt safest when others are supporting us rather than we are supporting ourselves because then it means we're not alone."

            • "Do you see a therapist?"

              • "I see many therapists, coaches, I'm also a coach to a certain extent, so yeah what's annoying is I am hyper-aware"

                • "You're a coach? A spiritual coach?"

                  • "I'm a spiritual healer and holistic health coach"

  • "How do we feel comfortable by any means giving anyone advice on life if you're if you are just failing in the United States" timestamp

  • "What I coach people about is how to find joy and healing in the present moment"

  • "What I do away from my time participating in capitalism has been some intence butt inner work and I just teach that"

• Total income for last month

  • $2'891

  • Has EBT, food stamps

  • Was getting 281 a month, knocked down $100 since she made more this month

• "It's interesting because like you're choosing not to work though" timestamp

  • Transferred from a career tutoring little kids "making a lot of money doing that, like $100 a session but then for some reason more on camera stuff was calling me and I got into the acting the music videos the dancing, all of that LA bullshit"

  • "two summers ago I was grossly sexually harassed at a music video" timestamp

• "Will you hold my hand for a second I need connection" timestamp

• "A lot of [those costs] I think are for supplements that I think are gonna like save me" timestamp

  • Specifically names: Magnesium, Lyposomol and something else I can't make out

• "This is why I believe in Divine Timing, everything is a Divine Appointment, the timing of me being invited on your show could not have been better because the inner work is caught up and now we're ready for the external reality to reflect the internal" timestamp

• [About her dog] "We have a psychic connection and nervous systems are co-regulated so anything th-" timestamp

  • "Okay"

Financials:

• Navy Federal: $502 => $509 timestamp

  • $30 in fee so far this year

  • "That one's negative six dollars, I think, right now"

    • "No we're talking about the checking account, er we're talking about the credit card not the checking account"

      • "oh gross, okay, okay, okay okay"

  • She didn't make a payment on this, credit limit is $500

  • Why didn't you pay it? timestamp

    • "Yeah, okay, this is clearly a disociation issue."

  • "I love to claim responsibility for the way that my life is to a certain extent but systemtically the way that the world is set up to oppress certain groups of people, I feel fricking oppressed as shit"

    • "Why are you oppressed?"

      • "That being a woman in this world and someone who wants to go to court for shit somebody who wants to speak out about the abuses of power in this whole world. Banks are an abuse of power."

        • "Sure, but credit cards, we're talking about credit cards here"

  • "About a thousand dollars of those credit card bills was caused by hmm okay, it was my built but I trusted a man on seeking arangements .com who said that he would give me like 5'000 if we went on a date together"

    • they never went on the date

  • "So to be clear, you think the system is why you're in credit card debt?" timestamp

    • "Yean, I think the system is to blame for it, why a lot of people are in poverty"

  • "These were all a choice but" timestamp

    • Borderline schizobabble about free will because a "professor" at Stanford said there is no free will

    • "It's basically West World, dude" "They cancelled [West World] because West World knew what was up"

• Student Loans: 27'000 timestamp

  • On forbearance because of her income?

    • Actually she's not timestamp

  • Student Loan discussion really starts timestamp

  • interest rates between 3% and 5%

  • She thinks it's around $27'000

  • Went to Syracuse University for Sports Journ*lism

    • "Do you like sports?"

      • "Ummm honestly, no! I got into sports because my dad likes sports"

    • Worked for Fox Sports after college but was making $18 an hour

    • I'll call them today

      • Ummm actually I'll call them tomorrow because I was going to do some 'plant medicine' to get my mind right after talking to you

        • "Does that just mean smoke weed?"

          • "The other 'plant medicine'"

• Babble about how her childhood was chaotic and 'scary discomfort' timestamp

• "Everytime I'm feeling lonely scared or anxious I'll go online and post a story telling my story hoping that it helps somebody else I try to get my partner to take care of me, in the past it was random sugar daddies" timestamp

Card 2: $3984 timestamp

• 2000 above the credit limit

• Lots of fees

• $158 Kap Mentorship timestamp

  • Spirital Healing training

  • Her expenses are fricking insane

  • Big into raki?

• "Actually everywhere in the United STates has a mold issue, and that's something I'm trying to raise awareness of so I can help my own situation" timestamp

• "How are you getting home?" timestamp

  • She is flying from Austin to DC to meet with her "business consultant" to take care of her taxes and budget?

• Weird twitching timestamp

• Took 4 dollars out of her Roth IRA, doesn't know why

• "I had a man buy my motorcycle and eventually I owe him but there's no deadline on that" timestamp

  • 3300 and she's made two payments "of 10 percent"

  • No contract

• Caleb tries to watch her podcast timestamp

  • Oh my God

Yo guys I've been scouring the internet and GOOGLE FRICKING SUX BIG DONKEY BALLZ

holy actual frick, can any of you dramaatrds verify if Google has actually become fricking worse in the past 2 years, like oh my god, it's getting worse and worse and harder and harder to find old ancient articles for longposting

And searching in non english language is a futility to find useful crap, unless you already know primary sources or are plagiarizing wikipedia, good God Google fricking sucks

Like holy actual ungodly fuuck, I was under the dreadful fear that I had forever lost the search i had made a month ago in November about the subjectmatter i was researching, cuz i couldn't fricking find them again

I had to resort using the history search, lucky for me, I dint know u could do that, cuz i desperately wanted to make this specific series of Longposts about the Swape

ANyways, as I've been researching for a longpost about ancient afrikaans literature and folkstales about the famous Swape or Swapians,

and I came across the following document printed 30 years ago in some archive,

Basically a historic archive document printed in 2000, a reprint from 1989, about the usefulness of Old children's magazines from europe and south african whitoids, in terms of their ability to determine the "waardes en gesindhede van die gemeenskap in die bepaalde tyd", or the values and morals of a community and society of the particular timeframe upon which they were printed.

The reason being, because a child's magazines tended to be more earnest and honest about a culture's self worth, as the primary goals of children's magazines were to "inligting oor te dra; oordra van inligting geskied noodwendig vanuit 'n bepaalde lewens- en wereldbeskouing"

Or in other words, historians can more earnestly determine what a society in a particular timeframe deemed most important, as that was what was deemed important enough to teach children so that the community's knowledge could be transferred to the next generation.

Anyways long boring stories shorter (by kaamrev standards), I've found some old cartoons and the oldest afrikaans magazines

Here is the oldest Child's magazine printed in proto-afrikaans, and the oldest child's magazine in south africa, the 1st print, in 1876.

It was called: Ons Klyntji, or as would be spelled in the post national standardization of Afrikaans in 1925, Ons Kleintjie, or "Our Little One"

It involved the spelling of Afrikaans in the interim manner in which dutch was spelled in the 19th century, it is important to note that though the spelling in 1870 was very similar to modern dutch, the pronouciation of afrikaans words in 1870 was already much different, which is why a national standardization was called for in 1925.

and so on

But what REALLY REALLY REALLY made me want to share my findings with you dramatards, is the following cartoon I found from an child's magazine found in the 1920s - 1930s

Holy actual hells and actual fricks lmoa

You guys ever see something so racist, it just slaps you in the face, and wakes you straight up

This comic for afrikaans teenagers was apparently a monthly publishing for a youth magazine, and featured the comedic misadventures of negroe caricatures, in the yank blackface style, which they obviously copied from burgerland in their contemporary view of blacks at the time

Like the big-lipped stereotype is the LEAST racist thing about the comic lol, there were other's but they were so poor quality scanned, I couldn't even see shit

the comic is near incomprehensible even to me, because they are using accent and onomatopoeia of how afrikaans words were stereotypically said by native black peeps (much of which is said in the same manner in the modern day as well), but it's still hard to follow WTF is going on and what the joke is supposed to be

I think the joke is supposed to be as follows:

The two racially-depicted black men is our lovable idiots, and today their antics is to try and scare their friend by painting the one guy's face white to make them think he's a ghost

The plan immediately backfires however, when the painted guy immediately starts to scream that his face is on fire, and he runs in pain.

The final panel reveals that they had used lime instead of white paint to paint his face, with the poor soul dunking his head in a can of water or whatever. Their accents are turbo racist and their words r-slurred.

Don't worry it doesn't get funny even if you understand the context

carp plz pin

Christa, 33, Las Vegas NV

Career:

• Stripper

• "I work at a nice one"

• Average between 10'000 and 12'000 a month

  • Thinks she's at 120k yearly

• Gets VA disability, was in Navy for 6 years

  • 2'000 + Free healthcare

• 1099 contractor timestamp

  • Paid in 2021, hasn't paid 2022, hasn't saved for 2023

  • Thinks she owes about $60'000

    • Might be closer to $40'000

  • Has an accountant, has been "avoiding them"

  • Filed for an extension on this years?

• Summer didn't go so well, $4-$5k, November $13k

• While stationed in California went to school, worked restaurant jobs, started doing 'bottle service' at a club in San Diego, then into modeling, got into a school in Orange county? Was living in a van in Orange County, wanted to do a grad program with the GI program instead of using it for undergrad (age 29). Met some Vegas strippers/prostitutes who suggested stripping, started working for first club?

  • Was studying sociology

  • "The only way to make money with a sociology degree is to become a stripper"

• 6 months stripping, then Covid, then clubs opened up again, she quits school and goes back to stripping

• Says club has a couple 40 year olds and a 50 year old who are still making good money but acknowleges that her career's got a time limit

  • Planning to do this for 5 years max

  • Hates it but likes the money timestamp

• Got a boob job, had them done previously, "one of them fell out of the pocket and was rolling around on my chest like an egg yolk so I had to get that fixed"

• Purchased a property in Arizona an hour outside of Vegas that she plans on turning into an AirBnB or "event space"

  • Getting serious Big Short vibes, timestamp.

  • Doing renovations, paid "a lot" in cash, 9000 on a credit card though

• Trivia about laws detailing many inches a thong can be timestamp

• Can she write off her boobs? (No) timestamp

Financials:

• Card 1 $9032 => $9094:

  • $600 in payments

  • $505 in transactions

  • $150 in interest

  • $10000 credit limit

  • Thinks she pays another 500 to a thousand

  • $1200 total in interest this year and $10 in fees

• Canceled 2 cards that she had used for online shopping, just paying them off

• Loan 1 20'130: timestamp

  • 7% loan

  • $564 minimum payment

  • Past due, she already paid it though, she says

  • Truck loan, had a minivan, got into an accident "wasn't my fault"

  • Buys furniture and flips it?

    • Has also been doing a lot of the house renovations herself?

  • "Perhaps I should have gotten something a little more modest"

    • "I love this truck to death, it's a great truck"

• Boob loan 7'400 timestamp

  • 0% if she pays it off in a year

  • Needs to be paid off by end of next September

  • Original total not mentioned

• Card 2 $26'453 => $27'016 => timestamp

  • 649 in payments

  • 838 in transactions, $399 in interest

  • $27'000 credit limit (she's over it now)

  • Says she paid $3'000 to this after the statement, it's at 24'000 now

  • wtf is on here:

    • $3'000 of plumbing

    • Home Depot purchases

  • $3'000 in interest this year

• Loan 5'859 timestamp

  • 15% interest

  • Took it out because she thought she was gonna buy a mobile home but the deal "fell through" took this out to consolidate debt

  • 726 minimum payment

Property Loan $67'000 => $60'000 timestamp

• Doesn't own other property

• She thinks it's 5% interest, actually it's 10%

  • "Default interest Rate" of 5% and an "Interest Rate" of 5%

    • Total 10%

• $90'000 house, she put some cash down

  • 1 acre, good area

  • half-hour from Grand Canyon, good tourist destination

  • "If the demand's there why was it so cheap?"

    • "because umm.... the area itself, the local population, is pretty poor and umm... you know so a lot of locals weren't able to buy it"

    • Property sat for a year before she purchased?

• Put in a new HVAC, new roof, fixed structural damage, new kitchen, new counter

• $0 ending balance in her checking timestamp

  • Had to take time off from work while recovering boobjob

  • Fair bit of eating out

  • Overdrafted

• Schwab

  • I think this is retirment? Not certain

    • Later mentioned it's an index

  • $15'000

• Retirment from military

  • Was at 27k, down to 21k now

• Invested in "stupid stuff" also, individual stonks timestamp

  • T-Mobile, and energy company and a few weed companies

• Rent timestamp

  • Bought a mobile home with one of the personal loans

  • $20'000

  • $380 a month to park mobile home in the lot

  • Thinks a one bedroom is $1500 monthly, so she's saving even with the loan's interest?