Corona lessons from cholera: miasma theory vindicated over contagionism (mediated vs. person-to-person transmission)

I'm going to start corona-posting some more, but found it necessary to preface it with a look back on the history of modern epidemiology, from the 19th century, whose major concern was recurring pandemics of cholera.

The standard Reddit-tier take is that on one side was the miasma theory, which held that foul outdoor air contaminated by decaying organic matter was to blame for giving people cholera. Boo, hiss. On the other side -- oh hell yeah -- was the germ theory, which was eventually proven correct.

In reality those two theories are completely orthogonal to each other, and one neither discredits nor testifies to the other.

The germ theory is about causative agents, such as bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens -- as opposed to other things that could harm a person, like toxins, allergens, nutritional deficiency, and so on.

The miasma theory was about how a causative agent -- regardless of whatever it happened to be -- circulated throughout a population, spreading disease. Miasma theory relied on a medium (such as contaminated air) to transmit the causative agent from one person to another, indirectly. Its rival, contagion theory, held that transmission was through unmediated contact in close proximity (such as coughing in someone else's face).

To simplify things, we can talk about an "encounter" between a sick person and a healthy person. Miasma theory does not require such an encounter for transmission to occur, whereas contagion theory does. Miasma requires a medium, contagion does not.

We will get into how this changes a formal mathematical model of epidemic dynamics in a later post. But suffice it to say for now that the contagion model is the standard S-I-R model, tracking susceptible, infected, and recovered individuals, who have encounters with each other. Miasma requires a new variable to track, namely the concentration of the contaminant in the medium, as well as descriptions of how infected and susceptible individuals come into contact with that medium (their encounters with each other being irrelevant).

This is the actual substance of the actual debate that raged during an actual pandemic of an actual disease. Only clueless autists would ignore the historical context of the debate when trying to identify what the crux of the matter was, and what was incidental or irrelevant. It was about whether, for cholera in 19th-C. Europe, transmission was mediated or direct. That's all -- every other detail is secondary, tertiary, and further removed from the fundamental disagreement between the contagion vs. miasma camps.

Specifically, there is nothing relevant about air being the medium for the miasma camp -- air is only one of many potential media via which a causative agent could be transmitted indirectly from one person to another. Even if you assumed it was air, it's irrelevant that they thought it was outdoor air -- indoor air is still a medium for transmission. And it's irrelevant that they highlighted air of a foul odor -- neutral or pleasant-smelling air is still a medium for transmission.

And again, the causative agent question is totally independent -- miasma theory does not depend on decaying organic matter / vapors it gave off as the causative agent. That just happened to be the source they believed in. They could have believed in germs or bacteria in particular as the causative agent, and that would not have changed the nature of their disagreement with the contagionists, over whether that agent was transmitted through a medium or directly.

So in evaluating who won the debate, we look at the level where they actually disagreed, rather than consider every aspect of the theory together. The two camps disagreed at a very fundamental level, over direct vs. mediated transmission -- so we ignore any details that pertain to finer levels of specificity.

For example, it would take two miasma theorists to debate over whether it was air or some other medium, whether the air responsible came from outdoors or indoors, whether the air had to be foul or neutral-smelling, etc. That was not the debate, so we ignore those details of the theory in evaluating its performance against its rival, which denied that mediated transmission of any kind was taking place.

As it turns out, the miasma theory was decisively vindicated over the contagion theory. Cholera was transmitted through a contaminated material medium, whereby the initial sick person had no encounter whatsoever with the healthy people he would eventually infect.

At finer levels of specificity, the miasma proponents got the picture wrong. It was contaminated water, not air, that was the medium. And the initial contamination came not from outdoors, but indoors (a sick person's diarrhea, which then entered the sewers). They were right about the contaminated medium smelling foul, though.

But those details were not what they and their rivals were arguing over, so we ignore them in deciding which side won. The contagionists held that cholera was transmitted by a direct process similar to coughing in someone's face, or exchanging bodily fluids during sex. They were dead wrong -- cholera is a canonical example of mediated transmission, where the sick person and healthy person were not in the same room, building, or perhaps even block or neighborhood at the same time.

* * *

The victory of the miasmists doesn't end at the level of pure understanding, though, but continues through to the applied / solutions level. If the contagionists had been correct, then some kind of isolation of a sick person would have had a major effect in breaking the chain of transmission. But if transmission is through a medium, then isolating people from people will not necessarily break transmission at all -- if the medium is left to connect people indirectly.

And sure enough, quarantines and keeping everybody in their own little homes did not stop cholera, since people were connected by a public water supply. Isolated sick people continued to excrete their waste into that water supply, and healthy people continued to come into contact with that water supply through pumps (for drinking, washing, etc.).

Notice that the miasmists were not autists who said, "OK then, just sever the links to the medium". That is the analogy to breaking the chain of transmission in the contagion model. Keep sick people from excreting into the water supply -- how? Tell every sick person, of whom there are legions during a pandemic, to build their own water supply? Or maybe tell the healthy people not to drink or wash from the water supply when an outbreak is taking place -- so what's the point of supplying the water then? And water is a necessity, not a luxury.

These links to the medium cannot be severed, and "isolation" from the contaminated medium was not the solution the miasmists hit on.

Rather, it was sanitation -- i.e., purifying the medium of the contaminants responsible for the disease (whether or not this process cleared out other contaminants, though hopefully it would). Maybe they would remain present in the medium, but either killed or neutralized of their disease-causing power. Maybe they could be removed from the medium altogether, by a filter or something. Maybe the medium could be replenished so quickly with fresh material that the concentration of the contaminant could never reach a high enough level to pose a serious risk to someone who came into contact with it.

In the case of contaminated water, they could at least separate the supplies of water carrying away waste vs. bringing water in for consumption. That seems to sever one of the links -- while the sick are still polluting a medium, the healthy do not consume from that medium, but from a separate source.

However this does not generalize to all media. Air, for example, cannot be channeled into two decoupled paths for bringing-in vs. taking-away. The air you exhale into, is going to be breathed in by someone else. Like water, air is a necessity, so there's no isolation strategy that will work, only sanitation.

Insect-borne diseases behave much like a miasma disease, where transmission is mediated by the insect, which bites a sick host and then bites a healthy target. The source and destination have no encounter, and could be miles away from each other at all times. Isolating one person from another would not stop the spread, only neutralizing the insect, isolating from the insect, etc. Unlike the above miasma diseases, contact with this medium is not a necessity -- you never want to get bitten by them. But then miasma theory never said that the medium was a necessity, only that there was such a medium rather than transmission through encounters between sick and healthy individuals.

And as it happens, the diseases which motivated miasma theory to begin with were all ones with mediated transmission -- bubonic plague (fleas), malaria (Italian for "bad air," mediated by mosquitoes, though), and cholera (water). Air as a contaminated medium is an even greater vindication of the theory, since it gets the medium correct as well -- but that will have to wait until discussion of the SARS-like diseases, and perhaps respiratory diseases more broadly.

The point is, miasma theorists were smart, not stupid -- they could tell their disease of interest wasn't transmitted by encounters between sick and healthy, but the particular medium was hard to discern. Fleas? Mosquitoes? Water? Air? I dunno, some shit like that, though -- we can tell that it does not spread through one person encountering another, and that isolating people does not stop the spread.

Contagion theory does apply to some diseases, although given how much the picture changes when you view air as a potentially contaminated medium, I'm putting all respiratory diseases on hold as examples of the contagion model. Sure, someone could cough in another person's face, but they could just as easily cough into an empty room, where the particles remain suspended as aerosols, and someone else comes in minutes or hours after the sick person has left the room altogether. That's mediated, not an encounter.

The only uncontroversial examples of the contagion model are sexually transmitted diseases -- can't pass those along without a direct-contact encounter between two people. Ditto for ones passed from a pregnant mother to her baby, non-genetically. But these are usually clear in their mode of transmission, so it doesn't take an insightful person to describe them with the contagion model.

It's clearly too late to reclaim the title of "miasma" theory non-ironically, due to the autistic rewriting and mystifying of what took place during the 19th-C. cholera pandemics in Europe. But I think "mediated transmission" is still OK, as long as it's clearly opposed to "contagion" or "person-to-person" models.

Zoomers jealous of Millennials' shut-in childhoods

In a recent viral tweet, a Zoomer girl says she wishes she could live in the era shown by a picture, which appears to be of a gamer girl circa 2000, but which is actually a dedicated LARP-er from the late 2010s. It's not important that the girl in the photo is another Zoomer who wishes she could re-live the late '90s and early 2000s, rather than a girl actually from that era. The point is that Zoomers are increasingly getting jealous of Millennial youth culture.

Millennials began chiming in with memories of how great it was back then, and aren't you Zoomers seething over the horrible childhoods you had to endure later on? The only retorts from non-nostalgic Millennials still focused on the internet as the be-all, end-all for youth culture -- omg, dial-up speeds were so slow back then, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemies!

Another recent viral tweet fondly remembers the same Y2K era for producing detailed guides, complete with ASCII art, for video games at the GameFAQs website. This one topic -- GameFAQs guides -- has been the source of recurring viral tweets for several years now, in fact.

The view from Generation X is, Why are all these people nostalgic for being locked indoors all day long for their entire youth, with only boring stuff like video games to distract themselves with? Didn't they ever roam around outside? Make any friends? Construct their own youth culture? Nope, and they don't care that they were deprived of all these natural human things -- they rejoice in having had no life as young people (and now, as adults).

I'm not even sure that "coping" is the right term here, since that would require them to feel subconscious pain about the form of child abuse known as helicopter parenting. It's more of a Plato's Cave situation, where the shut-in life and virtual activities like video games are all they've ever known, so they cling all the more forcefully to them rather than "touch grass".

I first described this Millennial tendency -- being nostalgic for having no life as kids -- in a post from 2012, when they were just in their 20s. Then in a follow-up post a few years later, I showed that it had only intensified. Now Millennials are roughly in their 30s, and they're still pining for simulated reality consumed in isolation.

It's not merely having a fondness for activities that can only take place in the home, without friends or strangers of any kind. Playing with toys, building pillow forts, learning crafts or handyman jobs around the house, would all have been cocooner-friendly. Millennials' activities were specifically virtual -- watching TV and movies, and especially playing video games, which had become less of a game (a la the original Nintendo) and more of a simulator.

So they didn't get a driver's license until they were 20, but they got to pretend to drive a car in a driving simulator. They didn't flirt, date, or make out until they were seniors in high school or later, but they got to arrange dates and more for their characters in The Sims. They didn't get to run around the woods in feral groups playing war, but they did occasionally get together to play Goldeneye 4-player splitscreen.

And to the limited extent that Millennials did actually get to take part in real life while growing up, their memories of those events have been totally overwhelmed and blocked out by the far more pervasive pattern of staying inside with eyes locked onto a screen and its simulated action.

You simply never hear them reminisce about riding their bikes to the supermarket to get free samples, or hearing a certain song during a birthday party at the roller rink, or playing games at school (kickball, Four Square, etc.), let alone inventing their own playground games (like my generation did in the late '80s and early '90s, with Butt's Up, Kooshball tag, etc.). Nothing about telling urban legends to each other, or singing naughty songs at school ("We marched downstairs and SHOT the principal..."). No memories of trading any kind of physical item around -- collector's cards, action figures, pages torn out from someone's father's Playboy, etc.

You don't even hear them get nostalgic for the IRL activities that did relate to video games, like going to the mall to play DDR, or going to a friend's house to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band, or hosting Mario Party nights at a bar. Those rhythm and party games were the most iconic genre of the late 2000s, yet they are rarely mentioned by the very Millennials who drove their mainstream popularity.

Only X-ers like me remember it like it was yesterday, despite not being into them (or video games at all) at that time. They resonated with my generation's youth -- going outside the home, having a life, being cool -- but clashed with the main tendencies of Millennial youth. So they stuck in my mind, but not in the minds of Millennials.

This whole Millennial vs. Zoomer culture war is just about whose helicopter-parent-ruined childhoods were crappier. Millennials made use of pleasing mechanical and analog devices when escaping into the virtual simulator realm, while Zoomers have had to do so via alienating digital / touchscreen devices. Zoomers are streaming full scenes of porn in HD, while Millennials had to download a 30-second clip in 144p over the course of an evening.

Sorry, but neither of you had a real life as young people, and it still shows. Millennials remain socially awkward and retarded well into their 30s, and Zoomers won't be any different about "adulting," even if they give it a generational re-branding.

The major difference between the two is the alternation between attention-seeking (Greatest Gen, Boomers, Millennials, presumably Gen Alpha) and being laid-back (Lost Gen, Silent Gen, Gen X, Gen Z). Millennials being more drama-queeny than Zoomers could count in their favor, if channeled to the proper ends. But the entertainment industry is dead, and is never coming back. So instead it's reacting avis on social media platforms thinking that it matters whose shut-in childhood was more epically shut-in.

At least Zoomers' laid-back nature only results in fleeting doomer thoughts like, "damn yo, sure wish i coulda played majora's mask on a proper crt, but those tvs are probably all in a landfill somewhere by now..." Sure, it would have sucked less. But Millennials blow up "sucking less" into a Golden Age, when they were already growing up long after The Fall of the cocooning / falling-crime / helicopter parent era (roughly the '90s through today).

If you're not actually cool or savvy, bragging about yourself just makes you annoying. Zoomers aren't very cool or socially skilled either, but they don't brag about sucking-less, and that makes them more chill and relatable.

Boomers were the last attention-seeking generation who actually accomplished and produced things that could prop up their hyped-up view of themselves. Off-putting in a way, but still cool and worthy of giving props to.

Millennial smugness is such a ridiculous joke because in typical attention-seeking fashion, they have no self-awareness, so they don't understand how boring and annoying they are as a generation, yet they behave as though they're owed the same respect (albeit grudging) that their attention-seeking predecessors the Boomers enjoyed.

Everyone else can already see that their generation is a self-appointed emperor wearing no clothes, and it's sad to think they're going to drift through old age still thinking they're the envy of others when no one cares about them at all, as a generation (only as kin, spouses, etc.).

Aimee T. : Preserving frenship, in place of Apu-and-Aspie-ship

Aimee,

I can't stand not being near you, while still being imaginary bf / gf. It started off as two "content creators" interacting with each other online, but after awhile it no longer felt like it was only a meme. Over the summer especially, I really did begin to think of you being there during my IRL activities. Not just as a companion -- as in, "I really wish Aimee were here so I could carry her tiny body around the park in a piggyback."

This is honestly the first time I've ever gone so far into a purely online relationship. I'm quite simply averse to online substituting for IRL. But this is the first time I actually felt tempted to try it out and see what happens. You're that fascinating of a persona, to pique the curiosity of an "online is not real" guy. The 15 years of archives here don't lie: I have never felt such affection for an online persona before.

Friends, acquaintances, collaborators, real-talk buddies -- of course. But nothing like an online gf, however spectre-like.

But that's just the thing -- as the boundaries between online and IRL have begun to blur for me, it's not enough to be digital-dating. I would need to feel your head nestled into my shoulder. Or watch you zip around high on Red Bull and knock into the furniture by accident, tapping with a grin your "Please be patient, I have autism" hat. :)

See, that's what I mean -- you don't really have that hat! It's just a meme, yet somehow more vividly visible than whatever errands I ran today IRL.

We live on opposite sides of the world, and are rooted there by families, childhoods, and the rest of it. There's no way we're actually going to give that all up to give IRL dating a chance.

So, I'd like to go back to how we were beforehand (RETVRN), where I lurk your Twitter feed, sometimes respond to your takes with a post here on the same topic, and perhaps write an infrequent song where you are a muse rather than a would-be gf, and where the audience is your online fandom rather than you alone.

I've already started to do this over the past couple weeks, after sensing a clear "man overboard" point with the "Lady of Red Bull" song. I don't care that it's adapted from what most people (not me) consider a cringey Boomer wedding song. I stand by every one I've written to or about you. I mean that that was the point where I sensed things heading too far for an online-only relationship. I would only be satisfied if we eventually ended up as a couple that could enjoy that kind of song together, falling in love for the first time all over again during a long marriage.

I'm writing this so that you don't mistake my relative silence over those weeks, as a loss of interest in you, loss of respect, loss of affection, or anything like that. That kind of process takes some time to navigate and arrive at the end of, otherwise I would've let you know immediately. Maybe this is familiar terrain for digital-native Millennials? Not for me.

I'm also writing this so that no one else in the audience, yours or mine, gets the wrong idea. Did I lose my feelings, did she act like a bitch, etc.? No, not at all. No drama, no juicy gossip. Simply me not feeling comfortable pushing an online-only relationship that far, with you or anyone else in the future.

But frens can interact with each other purely online, and the distance does not get in the way.

And perhaps it's only fitting poetically for the Girl All the Banned Guys Want to remain unattainable...

--Agnostic

"Z-Gen Degen" (parody of Wheatus, "Teenage Dirtbag")

It took me awhile to think of how to adapt the early 2000s power-pop / pop-punk classic "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus to today's youth culture. Original lyrics here.

At first the setting was IRL, like an alt-dude crushing on a normie girl who toils in his favorite thrift store. But Zoomers are so online that the whole "girl next door" from the pretty, popular crowd would have to be more of a social media star in the normie genres of lifestyle / fitness / vlogging, and the guy would belong to an online sub-culture.

Despite their mostly online existence, they still feel the same kind of pining and crushing that earlier generations of teenagers did. They just express it in a more online kind of way. But as far as I know, there isn't an anthem with the same punch as earlier power-pop classics, set in the online world. So here it is. I'm pretty sure most of them know the tune, as it has found decent revival success on TikTok.

There's no single inspiration for the girl here, more of a composite of various social media types. The Zoomer guy singing is not me, but what I'd imagine my teenage self to be like if youth culture of the late '90s had been entirely online, as it is now.

Pronunciation guide: "limited" as "LIM-i-DID" to match the stress pattern of the original. "Followers" is contracted to "FALL-wers". "AVE-ree-EL" has just 3 syllables, combining popular Zoomer names "Avery" and ones ending in "-elle" or "-ella", plus a hat tip to Avril (also, a match made between a ballet girl and an alt-dude).

* * *

Her name's Averielle
I watch her stream for hours
Click on that bell
My feed's not complete without her
Ballet TikToks
And day in my life vlogs
But she doesn't know my @
And she'll never pause her chat
To shout me out

'Cause I'm just a Z-Gen degen, baby
Yeah I'm just a Z-Gen degen, baby
Jam out to "Black Parade" on Rock Band with me
Huu-uu-uu-uuuu

Her mods are too quick
Enforcing their petty rules
I just said "she thicc"
My fanart is rarely lewd
Account insta-blocked
And privileges locked
But they don't know I'm her stan
And they won't remove the ban
Upon me

'Cause I'm just a Z-Gen degen, baby
Yeah I'm just a Z-Gen degen, baby
Jam out to "Black Parade" on Rock Band with me
Huu-uu-uu-uuuu

Let's go, degen
Oh, be my limited edition
Let's go, degen
Oh, be my limited edition

I'm still not paroled
Just watching her million followers'
Special unfold
When she shares my portrait of her
I double-take
"Guys, feast on that cake!!!"
How did she know my @?
And why is she pausing her chat
To shout me out?

There's karaoke for "Black Parade" a bit later
Sing a duet with me, don't be fraidy
I'm just a Z-Gen degen baby, like you
UwUUUU

Let's go, degen
Oh, be my limited edition
Let's go, degen
Oh, be my limited edition

Gabby Petito: Missing "Missing White Woman Syndrome" Syndrome, in woke era

Partisan polarization from the left half of society over the past 10 years, particularly from the media, entertainment, and academia sectors, has made it impossible for there to be unifying figures in popular awareness.

In the benign category, there have been no more It Girls after Jennifer Lawrence's heyday of the early 2010s. As wokeness accelerated after that point, the culture-making sectors went on an Ayn Randian "strike of the creative class" by refusing to produce another such non-partisan, non-politicized girl for all types of people to admire. There will never be another such unifying positive figure for the rest of our crumbling empire's history.

As a corollary, I doubt the cultural sectors will produce another Manic Pixie Dream Girl for the current restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, even though we are due for one, akin to the late 2000s. But that was before the polarization really set in. Imagine them trying to produce another All-American earthly guardian angel in the mold of Julia Roberts or Anne Hathaway...

Then there is the morbid side of popular figures, such as those who go missing, get kidnapped, or even murdered. Feeling for their plight can unify the audience, who may react as though they were all neighbors of a closely knit community, and are grieving for someone near and dear to them. It's a media creation, of course, but it does serve the same purpose of cultural unification behind a focal figure.

The recent disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito, a popular YouTuber who had been documenting her travels around national parks with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie (the suspected murderer), shows how fragmented the nation has become since the last period of quasi-unity, during the 2000s.

Back then, it seemed like every few months there was a high-profile case of a girl or woman who had gone missing, with foul play suspected, causing a broad spectrum of Americans to bond over their concern for those particular individuals — and by extension, all the ones you don't hear about in the media. Elizabeth Smart, Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, Madeleine McCann, the daughter of Casey Anthony, and so on and so forth.

But as polarization took off during the 2010s, this form of media coverage — and the social psychological phenomenon of unified bonding over their plight — became derided by the culture-makers as "Missing White Woman Syndrome". Suddenly the media had to stop covering such incidents, and the mass of Americans were supposed to stop caring about them and bonding over them. The point was to prevent unification, and accelerate atomization.

It was the proto-woke bloggers who planted the seeds of callous atomization during the 2000s, contemporaneous with the media coverage and social bonding. E.g., Jezebel began their sustained whining about these topics from the mid-2000s onward. But even a slightly more mainstream blog like Slate or Salon only began demanding atomization on this matter in the 2010s. Ditto for more mainstream outlets like the NYT, who put out one item in 2005, but who discussed it primarily during the 2010s.

Seriously, name any such high-profile case from the entire past decade. I tried to, and they all came from the late 2000s. Entries in a list on some specialist webpage do not count, only examples famous enough to have left an imprint on popular awareness.

Gabby Petito will fit this pattern as well — no national unification over discussing the case, its angles, its relevance for the future, or anything like that. Most coverage will be at the meta level, i.e. why you should feel ashamed for trying to talk to others about the case, and the media ought to drop it ASAP. And if you absolutely must take part in a conversation about it, make sure that it's confined to a partisan-approved sub-culture, not across a broad spectrum of the population.

I used to write extensively about the aspects of a rising-crime vs. falling-crime society, from 2009 to 2012, and there was rarely a partisan angle to it — from my side or the readers. There were plenty of liberals and progs who were into that material, especially since I was non-partisan and went to great lengths to debunk the dumbass conservative ideas about what causes crime rates to rise or fall as they did during the last wave.

I stopped making it my focus because I had exhausted most of my ideas, not because I felt pressured to not cover a suddenly verboten topic. But if I had kept at it, I would have surely lost a fair amount of liberal interest, since in the 2010s the only discourse about crime is why crimes against white victims don't matter, and only police brutality against black people matters.

You can't even talk about Jeffrey Dahmer anymore, even though many of that serial killer's victims were black, because he was not a cop and therefore his story DOES NOT COMPUTE in the era of abolishing the police. Also, he was gay, and you can't mention that gays are highly over-represented among serial killers. Homosexuals being "just like us" was one of the most heavily promoted propaganda campaigns of the decade of wokeness.

What did the libtards in the culture industry do, for their part? Their initial complaints were framed as though they were going to start covering non-white victims even more, whether in the interest of journalistic accuracy, or trying to get a majority-white country to bond over concern for non-white victims. But they never bothered trying with that — it was just a blatant rationalization for dismissing coverage of the white victims.

So not only were there no unifying white missing persons victims during the 2010s — the culture-makers refused to cover and promote a single non-white missing persons figure instead. The goal was to prevent unification regardless of who the focal figure was, and to accelerate atomization.

CNN et al. are currently whining about the lack of coverage of non-white victims, even though they control the narrative machine and could start covering black missing girls any time they wanted. Their Ayn Randian strike of refusing to provide nationally unifying coverage has only intensified and solidified over the past decade. They will only cover black victims if it can split the nation apart, as with calls to defund the police in the wake of over-blown footage of police brutality. Even then, they refuse to cover white victims of police brutality, which would serve to unify the nation against excessive force by cops.

How can we tell this relates to partisan polarization, and not merely to a call to end coverage of crime entirely? Well, in case you were asleep during the late 2010s, there was non-stop coverage of crimes and harassment, real or alleged, against white female victims — the Me Too panic.

Why did the media, entertainment, and academia sectors not dismiss Me Too as "Molested White Woman Syndrome"? The round-the-clock coverage, the social bonding among the audience, all of it perfectly mirroring the Missing White Woman Syndrome of the 2000s. Because the victims of the 2000s were All-American or conservative-coded (from Utah, Mississippi, North Dakota; devoted wife / mother; coverage by Deep Southerner Nancy Grace), regardless of whether they were personally conservative, moderate, or liberal. Whereas the victims paraded by Me Too were liberal-coded (from the bicoastal bubble, working in media, entertainment, academia).

Thus, the creatives' Ayn Randian strike was a form of war against their rivals. Eliminate conservative-coded women from being objects of concern and unification, promote only liberal women as such focal figures. As with Ayn Rand, this was not rugged individualism, but a coordinated collectivism anchored within a certain sector of society (the aspiring elites of the culture-making industry). Collective power for Team Us, atomization for the rest of you scum.

Unlike the victims of the 2000s, however, the liberal victims of the 2010s were not very sympathetic. First, they were mostly stories of submitting to the casting couch process, and only a few having been actually raped. And secondly, liberals in the 2010s made it clear they were opposed to being All-American and wanted to blow up the nation. So the movement only unified the liberal half of society, contrary to the national unity produced by the vaguely conservative victims of the 2000s.

The typical Mormon girl of the Bush years did not run around screaming for the blue states to be literally nuked, for the breadbasket states to cut off the blue coastal states from the nation's food supply, or any of the rest of the nakedly eliminationist rhetoric (and occasional action) coming from the libtards during the 2010s and today.

Unify the nation's culture with This One Weird Trick...

To wrap things up, where does Gabby Petito fall within this partisan polarization? Lazy observers may see her Italian surname, and her Long Island, NY home, and conclude that she hails from a progressive Democrat stronghold. But in fact, she's from Suffolk County — the one furthest away from New York City, and which voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, despite voting Democrat fairly reliably before then.

And my pioneering article on the ethnic composition of the anti-woke left makes it clear that Italian-Americans are very much not flaming libtards. Wokeness is about incorporating newly conquered tribes into the imperial elite, and Ellis Islanders are old news in that regard. Only the Ashkenazi Jews managed to climb up into the elite ranks alongside the WASPs. All the others have been left to fend for themselves, as newer immigrant groups have become the elites' target for expanding their sphere of influence by giving them a seat at the elite table.

By now, I think even the lazy morons in the media have intuited that Italian-Americans are more like Staten Island and the Jersey Shore, regardless of where else they may live. So they likely understand that Gabby Petito is Deplorable-coded, probably has a Trump-supporter uncle, bla bla bla, and therefore all the more reason to memory-hole her story, lest the nation unify around an unclean soul.

Australia vs. US: cohesion produces authoritarianism above and mass action below

By far the most authoritarian COVID clampdown is taking place in Australia, whereas in the US almost no such extreme measures are taking place. Not because the American elites would not like to see them happen — but wishing won't make it so. They require national unity at the elite stratum in order to thoroughly lock down the commoners using martial law, and coerce so many of their citizens into getting experimental meds for what is only a bad cold.

Unfortunately for the US elites — but fortunately for its citizens — their cohesion has never been weaker, their politics have never been more polarized along partisan lines, and the society they're nominally in charge of has never been so fragmented. A weak and weakening state cannot enforce its dictates on anyone who isn't already on board with them (libtards, in the case of the COVID hysteria).

This is a drastic reversal from even 20 years ago, when the 9/11 spectacle gave the fairly united elites all the rationale to carry out the PATRIOT Act, launch the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, inaugurate a whole new federal agency (TSA), and with that a slew of broadly unpopular policies (taking off your shoes, etc. at the airport). None of them have gone away domestically — only their defeat by foreigners in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended those aspects of the post-9/11 era.

A strong state leaves a strong, enduring legacy. Just like how Social Security and Medicare, from the highly united and non-partisan New Deal era, are still in place decades later, despite recurring attempts to privatize them.

I covered this topic in earlier posts here and here about the weakness of the US state to implement the COVID dystopia that our elites are dreaming of. In reality, any citizen — whether me, or anyone else — can openly defy all of these policies and face minimal pushback. Walk into a building without a mask on, withhold your labor until the vaxx mandates go away, or whatever else.

It is not organized, and it is not a collective effort. It's simply millions of isolated individuals all doing the same non-compliance and getting away with it because the state and even the private-sector elites are too weak and fragmented to enforce the dystopia.

The elites know this because in the national mandate for federal employees and contractors to get vaxxed, they explicitly exempted the one group that would have defied the mandate — the working-class and minority-heavy Post Office system. All other federal teat-suckers are professional-class libtards who are already fully vaxxed and will eagerly beg for further boosters. When faced with the slightest potential pushback, the federal government refused to issue a threat, because they knew their bluff would get called, and they would have lost face and proven their own weakness.

Ditto for the mandate covering private employers with over 100 employees — that will exempt the most resistant employers, and the most resistant employees, who own or work in a small business (e.g., a restaurant, a landscaping crew, a boat dealership). The Biden admin knew not to pick a fight with the most Republican slice of the economy, lest their bluff get called and prove their impotence.

In contrast to anarchy in the USA — at both the top and bottom levels — the situation in Australia shows far greater unity of purpose and action, also at the top and bottom levels. Their elites are less polarized, less antagonistic toward each other, and are not overseeing a societal disintegration that has no end in sight. So their politicians are fully united in issuing decrees, and their policemen are more united in imposing martial law, neither of which will happen in the crumbling US.

That is as true for their common people, who are pouring into the streets to beat back the elite lockdowns, regardless of whether they tend to vote for the right or left, whether they're white or not, male or female, or any other tribal divisions.

Crucially the working class is taking action, and not those who are poorly-paid professionals like schoolteachers and nurses, who wield little leverage at the societal level, but truckers and construction workers who can literally prevent food from showing up on supermarket shelves. This action is all coordinated and delivered with a collective wallop, whether or not their union gives its official approval. You don't necessarily need a union to coordinate your efforts, if you already have enough cohesion amongst yourselves.

So while it looks more disturbing to see their elites united behind such a pointless and punitive set of policies, there is by the same token all the more hope that everyone else can band together and exert enough collective strength on critical pressure points of the system, to force the elites into backing down from their draconian measures.

Australia is not so different from America during the '90s, when the politicians of both parties were fairly united in de-industrializing the economy, and commoners of both the left and right were united in opposing NAFTA, the WTO, and the like.

But the US is at the core of the American Empire, and has gone on to imperial over-reach the worst, which erodes internal cohesion (from external failures, and domestic bankrupting of the treasury). Australia is still a part of the Anglosphere and a member of Five Eyes, but they are on the periphery, so they don't experience American trends as intensely or as early. Thus their society has not disintegrated as much as ours has over the past 20 years, they retain far more of their cohesion, and that makes both their elites and commoners more collective in their actions.

These distinctions must be kept in mind when trying to make sense of what's going on in different countries. Just because martial law is going on in Australia does not mean it will materialize here — no way, in fact. Equally, American commoners will never unite to protest in the streets or bring supply chains to a standstill like the Australian working class has been doing.

Incidentally, why did Scandinavia escape the COVID craziness first and most successfully? Not only are they cohesive and united, but they're not a core member of the Anglosphere, NATO, the EU, etc. They are not opposed to the American sphere of influence, but they're not vassal states either.

If it's purely culture-war stuff like gay pride parades, they can adopt those at little cost to their material standard-of-living. But taking in zillions of refugees? That crosses the line of pure culture war, and impacts their economy and polity, so they are pulling back from their open-borders stance of 5-10 years ago (most notably in Denmark since the 2019 realignment of the Social Democrats party). Mask mandates, vaxx mandates, scapegoating half of their society for a pandemic, etc., also crosses the line of pure culture war, and would have brought their society to a standstill. So they have abandoned the COVID hysteria and are moving on with life.

"Scandinavia just can't keep getting away with this!" Ah, but they can, since they have never been part of an empire, and retain a normal level of trust and cohesion. Not the super-cohesive levels to enable them to take over the world and become global culture-makers — but also not subject to the hangover effect when that super-cohesion has run out of juice, and everyone starts to turn against each other.

Nicki Minaj anti-mandate tribute (to "Starships")

COVID clampdown critic queen, Nicki Minaj, has been on a tear lately. As tribute to a pop culture mega-star who actually deserves praise for being "stunning and brave," I've adapted the lyrics to her party anthem "Starships" (2012). Just the first half of the song, since I'm in a rush to get it out while still topical.

I've always been a huge fan of this song, having danced to it every weekend in the clubs back when it came out. I didn't know it was by her until recently, as happens with many club bangers that I didn't look up outside of the club.

That must be why the critics were only half-pleased with the album it's from, as it emphasizes dance songs and not just rapping. Music critics are verbal cerebral nerds who are tone-deaf and have two left feet, so they ignore melody and rhythm and focus only on lyrics -- which rapping entirely consists of, to their relief. Anything that reminds them of how intimately connected music and dance are with each other, just makes them stew in resentment. Also, dance music is so carefree and uplifting, and that frustrates the minds of the neurotics and depressives who make up the critic cartel.

They can never join in the reindeer games with the cool crowd, and have to sulk in the corner table of the cafeteria just like they did back in high school. Sad!

Pronunciation guide: a little poetic license in shifting the stress to the second syllable in "mandates" (man-DATES).

* * *

Got freedom of speech, preach, so fuck the mandates
Blame game, we ain't gonna play
Don't blink, on the brink, and hold onto your rights
Bad bitches, don't be Big Pharma-compliant

Drones groan while huddled in their homes
I'm a grown ass hoe, so leave my bod alone
Booster two, three? Not even the tip
COVID's a cold, and I don't give two shits

We're more informed, informed
Than the bluecheck ants
We know the score, score
About their pointless plans
So get in form, form
To fight the Man
We'll settle scores, scores
If they tie our hands

Our lips were meant to smile
Masks off, and free your mind
Vax laws must be defied
Step up and hold the line

Our lips were meant to smile
Masks off, and free your mind
Step up and hold the line
Vax laws?

Defiant as a mothafucka
Defiant as a mothafucka
Defiant as a mothafucka

Today's dance report

I started off with a bit of pogo-ing to Dookie by Green Day, but it was not enough to give me that electric ape energy that I truly craved at the time. So I changed the disc in the player to ESPN's Slam Jams. Oh hell yea. "One Step Beyond," "Dancing With Myself," and "Private Idaho" all got me bouncing and jumping around like a jungle shaman possessed by the gorilla god.

As my skin became saturated with simian sweat, I got down to just my underwear, raw ape style. Much greater freedom of movement, as well. Now that the tropical rainforest season is over, I need to find new ways to burn off water weight, other than long walks outside.

Followed it all with a quick, cool shower at night, something I normally do not find the need to do. I no longer smell like a dang paperback book cover.

And oh how sweet that truly is, my friends. All for now.

(With props to the coffee reports from the OG groyper)

Manic Pixie Dream Girl spotting in the wild (since a dying culture can no longer produce fictional examples)

Shifting gears from the wild-child cohort of 2005-'09 (restless phase), and the sad-girl cohort of 2000-'04 (vulnerable phase), yesterday I was compelled to reflect once again on the free-spirit cohort of 1995-'99 (manic phase), who I covered off-and-on last year during the series on Manic Pixie Dream Girls (who are born during a manic phase, such as the late '90s).

I'd been checking in on pop culture for fictional examples, but cultural production more or less ground to a halt in 2020 and will never resume, as we sink further into national and imperial decline and outright disintegration. So there are very few memorable examples of any kind of character type these days.

The closest I managed to find was girl-gamer Pokimane from Twitch, who I highlighted in a post on Manic Pixie Stream Girls, since so much of current pop culture is being directed toward the live-streaming format (and relying heavily on video games), rather than movies, TV, and the like. I did tune in to her streams during the height of the Among Us craze last year, and thought she met most of the criteria personality-wise, except that she doesn't play a role in relation to some guy who needs coaxing out of his shell, for whom she acts as an earthly nursing guardian angel.

Even when streamers interact with their chat, respond to Q&A, or have guests on their channel, there is no medium-term follow-up where a relationship of any kind develops. At best, they might play group games with a recurring cast of characters, but as in the rest of the entertainment industry these days, 99% of the guys are gay (whether closeted or out). And neither the guys nor girls are professional actors, so their bearding fauxmances are not convincing or entertaining at all.

With no fictional narrative arc, and no organic social relations between straight guys and girls, there is no way for any kind of guy-girl roles to emerge (other than fag-hag and gay bff, if he's out). The entertainers are static, atomized personas or personalities, not characters playing certain roles in relation to others, and changing due to those interactions. At most, their persona gets a re-branding, which is not caused by their relations with others.

Perhaps the newer VTuber format -- where girls stream behind a CGI anime avatar -- will allow for greater fictional narrative arcs and relationships among the characters, but I haven't watched any of that. None of the characters are male, though, so their MPDG role would have to be a bi-curious one, and I don't think they're up for that. (They may be the "I find hot girls hot, too" type of bi-girl, but not one who would get into a relationship with another girl.)

* * *

Update: I set this post aside for a day in order to dip my toe into the VTuber waters, and of the very popular ones, the one with the most MPDG personality is Gawr Gura (the most popular of the entire format, like the Pokimane of VTubers). She's not a sad-girl, not an in-your-face off-the-wall chaos agent, but friendly, caring, and girlishly scatterbrained.

Although she does not interact with a sad sack male character specifically, she pushes her audience (many of whom must be guys who are stuck in a rut) to pick themselves up after failing, have confidence, and do the best they can. A little vulgar humor, to remind them that she's an earthly guardian angel, not a pure pristine one, but nowhere near the pandering-to-coomers level of other popular personas.

Her voice actress was born in the late '90s, confirming my hunch. Also supporting my physical profile of the MPDG type, she's a corporeal rather than cerebral person (good at rhythm games and singing, bad at arithmetic), and a butt girl (her flat chest being a running in-joke).

However, as with real-life streamers, her persona goes through its existence disconnected from others, rather than play a particular role within a social ecosystem of characters. She may belong to a talent roster of VTubers (signed with Hololive English) who occasionally interact with each other, but not often, and not in a narrative fashion. They mainly stream alone and have their own distinct chat / fandom who they interact with.

They wouldn't even have to write the role within a fictional narrative. They could simply throw a bunch of strangers into the same interactive space for awhile, a la MTV's the Real World, and let the relationships develop. One of those roles to emerge just might be a MPDG. But as societal trust plummets off a cliff, people seem unwilling to enter into that kind of environment. When you don't trust anyone else, keep to yourself.

It occurs to me that the "social ecosystem" genre of reality TV -- the Real World, the Surreal Life, Survivor, etc. -- was another victim of the post-2008 destruction of the economy for good, and with it, any trust in institutions, collectives, or collaborative endeavors with strangers. It belonged to the '90s and 2000s, waned during the 2010s, and does not exist anymore. During reality TV's final decade, it shifted entirely to a "desperate aspiring elite" genre for the permanent economic depression -- Shark Tank, American Idol, Chopped, Bar Rescue, etc.

Even the contest-driven reality shows of the 2000s -- the Apprentice, Project Runway, Top Chef, etc. -- focused just as much on the characters and their interactions outside of the contest itself. And the characters were recurring, so that relationships and roles could emerge over the season -- not a whole new bunch with every episode. The 2010s genre was more like a standard game show, a yuppie reboot of The Gong Show, where you didn't feel anything when the contestants were eliminated because you had not invested more than a half-hour in them by the time they were sent home.

* * *

If there are no more major examples forthcoming from the culture industry, you can still spot examples out in the wild, even if it's only a vignette rather than a full narrative.

The other day at the thrift store there was an alt-girl who I assumed was, like the others, a sad-girl of college age. Rich wavy pink hair of bi- bob length, strapless mini-dress in black with a large purple floral pattern (very '90s revival -- only needed some oversized teal brushstrokes), and combat boots (probably Docs). A couple small tattoos on her olive skin. Only off-putting element was the surgical mask. From afar, nothing out of the ordinary for the "I'm outside the ordinary" set.

And yet she did not have the standard alt-girl shape, or the scene girls before them, who were all skinny and large-breasted. She was voluptuous and hourglass-shaped, more of a butt girl. Curious.

Then I heard her talking on her phone, which she was carrying on for the better part of a half-hour. Hardly anyone uses their phone for talking anymore, and it's just a nerdy handheld computer for online opium on-the-go. The rare times that someone is talking, it's a quick business-like exchange -- "Hey babe, do we need more paper towels yet? I'm in the grocery store now..." Conversing out loud with your friends about whatever-at-all is not part of online, and not part of the daily public sphere.

She definitely did not have a sad-girl voice, but warm, bubbly, reassuring, engaging / probing, and youthful without being an affected "i'm baby" pitch. She was following me around most of the time, and few others were there, so it was easy to hear, aside from her speaking a bit louder than normal just to make sure I heard her.

She was mainly playing therapist to her girl friend, while occasionally sharing her own situation in return. More of an informal, back-and-forth, give-and-take, mutual therapy (though she was more naturally made for that role, and her friend was going through a bit more of a rut). It reminded me of how my teenage girl peers used to chat on the phone at length back in the late '90s, or from '80s movies and TV. She felt like a visitor from another planet.

At one point I overheard something about, "Well you know how many kids I'm responsible for..." So she must be a primary school teacher, babysitter, daycare worker, or some other substitute mother. Nursing and maternal, not only toward her peers and friends, but children as well.

When she got to the checkout line, a suburban normie mom in front of her turned around and inquired about her hair dye, because her own daughter had tried dying it pink but it washed right out. The alt-girl naturally adopted a caring, helpful tone and suggested the brand she'd used (Iroiro), as though she were tending to her own child's needs. So empathetic. Not like the annoying and tiresome brand of whip-smart, "I'm the cool / gay aunt" types who would've made a big status-striving display of it.

She was Tumblr's most wholesome ambassador to the normies -- not a Trojan Horse, a la trad-clad Democrat Party functionaries, but someone who looked like she'd just stepped through the screen of an alt TikTok addicted teen.

While she was following me around, she was not nervous like the sad-girls usually are, or eager and homing in like a missile as the wild-child types do. She was just carefree, moving closer, seeing if I ran away, and when I didn't, just settling in close by. Sometimes almost within my personal space, when I was browsing the DVDs and CDs, while she was browsing the books right behind me in a narrow aisle. Not a nervous wreck, not a vampy man-eater. Just being at home with physical closeness, touchy-feely, lovey-dovey.

And she didn't scurry away from my cologne either, like nervous or non-corporeal people might have while standing nearly back-to-back for 5-10 minutes. That day it was 5 sprays of Hugo Boss, Number One, which has a prominent semi-pissy honey note that could unsettle the wimpy. I didn't smell anything on her, but she could be into unusual perfumes herself. At the least, she was totally cool with earthy, funky scents that you don't smell on people anymore.

But what about the most crucial aspect of her background, to check if she could be a certified MPDG -- when was she born? Well, fortunately she steered her conversation toward her age. First she asked her friend how old her boyfriend was, and then said that her own boyfriend was a year or so older than she was, and that he was about 24 or 25. In other words, letting me know she's 23 or 24 -- which places her birth smack dab in the middle of a manic phase (late '90s). Bullseye! I just knew it.

Does letting me know she has a boyfriend disqualify her from the wholesome, charming role of the MPDG? Hardly -- Julia Roberts plays a literal streetwalker in Pretty Woman, and SanDeE* from L.A. Story not only lets the sad-sack male protag know that she's already seeing someone, but shows him the apartment that they both live in, and even points him out when he's hanging out inside the same restaurant as them during their dinner date!

It's not that the MPDG is looking to cuckold her existing boyfriend, or turn them all into some gross polycule, or even neg the protagonist through jealousy into fighting all the harder for her love. She's just a free spirit, wending her way from one of life's many adventures to the next, and making company with whatever interesting characters she happens to meet along the way. If she has two lovers at once, it's purely coincidental, and she will wind up with whoever she winds up with by the end of the narrative (typically, not with the protag).

You can tell when a girl's keeping you at arm's length with the "I have a bf" claim. It's usually curt, with a fake apologetic tone, eager to get you away ASAP. She was just casually mentioning him while getting closer and lingering longer near me. More of a head's-up courtesy so I knew what I'd be getting myself into, if I accepted her invitation.

But not being a sad-sack in need of an earthly guardian angel to lift me up out of my rut, I didn't send her any overt signals in return. Did what I was going to do there already, just not withdrawing when she got close. It felt more like hanging out with one of the cool alternative girls from high school, only as young adults starting to figure out grown-up life together, comparing notes. I never had that experience, since I hardly ever saw my high school peers after graduating.

So, while you may not be able to enjoy examples of the MPDG from a moribund pop culture industry anymore, you can still cross literal paths with them IRL. This is the time -- the restless phase of the excitement cycle -- and there are millions of free-spirited girls born in the late '90s out there somewhere. The only problem is that Zoomers are so online that they might not venture outside the home often, so you'll have to focus on places where they're bound to visit when they do go out, like thrift stores, coffee shops, used media stores, and other browsing and hanging-out places.