Radio's dead: contempo stations stop playing current music (signs of a Dark Age)

Continuing the series on the new cultural Dark Age that has begun setting in, let's look at pop music.

No, we will not be subjectively evaluating today's music and contrasting it to some Golden Age or another from the past.

Rather, the signs of this Dark Age are objective -- if you were to listen to the radio, you'd have little awareness that pop music has existed in the 2020s.

The source here is the "contemporary hit" format -- the stations that are supposed to play the hot new stuff that everyone's buzzing about, not retro, and not from just one genre. These are the stations that you're supposed to complain about for "only playing new stuff" and not appreciating anything good from the past, just one damned pop hit after the next in an endless flux of fashion.

After not listening to my local contempo hit station for a few months, I wondered what they were up to -- what new songs are all the rage 3 months since I last checked in? There's always the algorithms from the big online platforms to suggest new things, but I'm talking about what's actually catching on, growing, and lasting.

Shockingly, there were hardly any new songs at all. I double-checked their "recently played" list on their website, and it has been like that for days. It's not like I happened to check during a "blast from the past" hour. Saturday night played a few more new songs, but not much. Overall, they're simply not playing new music.

What are they playing instead? Mainly music from the 2010s, across a variety of genres, and emphasizing the late part rather than the early part of the decade. But you're still more likely to hear early 2010s music than 2020s music on the contempo hit station.

Especially when you count by distinct songs, rather than total airtime -- they might play one of Ariana Grande's hits from this year or the last, five times throughout the day. But they'll play five different songs from the early 2010s over the same period. Only a tiny handful of new songs are making it into rotation.

Even worse, hit songs that they were playing last year have disappeared from their playlists. "I Love Me" by Demi Lovato, "Midnight Sky" by Miley Cyrus, "Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa, "Willow" by Taylor Swift, "Monsters" by All Time Low, and dozens of others by mega-stars, have vanished from the airwaves. (And no new acts are taking their place!)

So it's not like the station is unaware of new hit music from the current decade -- they played a fair amount of it last year. Rather, they are deliberately erasing the signature that "the 2020s were here" in the guestbook of the pop cultural record.

I noticed a somewhat similar pattern early last year, where they seemed wary to play new songs from the new decade, and were still relying heavily on 2019 and even '18. However, they did not stretch farther back than those couple years, certainly not back into 2010. Eventually they did play new songs, so perhaps they were just hesitant at first.

But this year, they are not doing that reluctant-at-first bit. They're just not playing new stuff -- and crucially, hardly anything from the last year either.

If it were a matter of relative years -- "current" vs. "last" year -- then their reluctance in 2021 would mean most of their playlist would be from 2020, with only a handful of older years thrown in for variety. But there's not even much from 2020 still being played, including the hits that dominated that own station's airwaves and the charts for all of last year.

Instead, it is a matter of absolute years -- "2020 and 2021" vs. "2019 and before". They were hesitant to play 2020s music last year, and they're even more hesitant to play 2020s music this year. (Maybe 5 songs from each year of the 2020s, played over and over again.)

All of the 2010s music in their rotation is not "last year's music" -- it's from 2 years ago at least, up through 11 years ago. They've decided that it's not worth investing in the current decade -- and presumably any future decades -- to promote its songs, so might as well just play stuff from the last decade.

This is the first time in American culture when material from only a few years earlier has become "retro," as the current material is either not being made, or being distributed, or being demanded by audiences. Imagine in 1981 there being a '70s station, or in 2011 there being a 2000s station.

Not only has this never happened before -- a time period becoming a reified "remember when?" age only a few years after concluding -- but today, this is the newest music available. It would be bad enough if there were a dedicated 2010s decade station in 2021, but far more dire if that were the most recent music being played. And yet here we are.

Contrary to the "singularity" view of these developments, we are not in a climate where new stuff is being created, distributed, and consumed one day -- and then treated as retro and due for a revival the next. There is no "instantaneous nostalgia" or whatever.

Rather, this is a process of exhaustion and breakdown. Creators may not be able to collaborate well enough to make new hit songs. Distributors may not want to promote anything new because they don't trust the creators to give them songs that will sell like hotcakes, or don't trust audiences to gobble them up. And audiences may not trust the creators or the distributors to give them what they're hankering for.

Whatever the variety of forces involved, it all smacks of an unraveling of cooperation, collaboration, trust, and collective investment in a total musical culture. There's not going to be another phenomenon in music, no more scenes, and no more sub-cultures (a topic covered here recently).

At some level, the American people -- or better yet, people living in America -- no longer feel like being bound together by a common culture that is distinctly theirs, and that is so captivating it's eagerly adopted all over the world.

We're at the stage of imperial decline where it's not only the political and economic domains showing signs of exhaustion, but now the culture-makers too can squeeze no more blood from their stone.

And for the same reasons -- plummeting levels of "asabiya," or the potential for a group to pursue concerted collective action, out of a sense that the in-group is special and destined for greatness. When that fades away, it not only means the end of far-flung territories staying integrated into the empire, it means the end of the larger-than-life culture that the empire produced.

Roman culture ended during the Crisis of the Third Century, and American culture has ended in the wake of the catastrophe year of 2020.

Aimee Terese triumphant tribute song: "Spectrum Chick" (David Guetta parody)

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, but what better occasion than the triumphant return of the princess of the anti-woke left to her OG Twitter account, shellshocking the demented hall monitors who kept reporting her respawns?

Why her, you may have asked over the course of these Aimee tribute songs? She just radiates such an all-consuming intensity -- like a Fairuz of shitposting -- that it's impossible not to be possessed by her if you're susceptible to muses. That's equally true for her haters, who can never get her out of their head, lmao.

This one is to the tune of "Sexy Bitch" by David Guetta feat. Akon from 2009 (original lyrics here). I went with the "chick" version of the lyrics, to stay faithful to the original tone, which mixes a complimenting and a playful-negging word ("sexy" and "bitch"). "Spectrum" is a playful neg, so there needs to be a complimenting word to pair with -- "chick" rather than "bitch". She's a bruh-girl and needs her compliments tempered by negs.

Singing it aloud would make it clear, but the prosody in the first line of the chorus goes: ON the SO-cial PLAT-FORMS, with both syllables of that final word receiving stress, and a brief rest in between them.

* * *

Log on to read her
Cuz everyone sayin' "That's the tea" yuh
Unceasing tweeter
I feel deranged and I wanna breed her

They say she red-brown
It's just a cope and I won't retweet 'em
They try to drive her underground
The baddest MENA account around

She's not like other girls on the social platforms
Not leftie millionaires, or a gamer-gone-woke
I'm tryna find the nerve to subscribe this girl
And not put her on a pedestal

The way she prophesyin' in a Tinkerbell tone
Have to stop what I'm scrolling so I can quote her post
I'm tryna find the nerve to subscribe this girl
And not put her on a pedestal

Oooh, girl!

Mmm, you's a spectrum chick
On the spectrum chick
Mmm, you's a spectrum chick

Oooh, girl!

Mmm, you's a spectrum chick
On the spectrum chick
Mmm, you's a spectrum chick

Oooh, girl!

Aimee Terese, back from the dead, for good (mua ha ha...)

A night wind howls over a shallow grave in Twittermoor Cemetery, blowing away the dry pebbly dirt to reveal tortoiseshell eyeglass frames.

Something metallic is glinting in the light of the full moon -- a sugar-free Red Bull can.

Double-H cup tits punch through the earth, grab onto the ground around them, and hoist the rest of a five-foot frame out of its cancel-casket.

Now showing, on mini-screens everywhere...

"Didja think I was gonna take my permaban lyin' down, ya jannie cunts?"

When she burns you online, your balls disappear in real life...

Matt Christman is rambling in a livestream about the dialectics of masturbation in the age of covid lockdowns, when he spies a dreaded username flash across the side of the screen.

"Oh great, that deranged Australian woman has entered the chat," he complains while rolling his eyes, and prepares his lungs for an impromptu diatribe.

Suddenly, a bark-encrusted beam of solid oak breaks through his iPhone, impaling him instantly, while dono-blood pours slowly from his mouth. As his gaze puzzles over the tree trunk plunging into his chest, a sing-song hummingbird voice plays over the TTS:

"It was about time for that guy to... log off."

No poster is safe...

"You know you love to hate-scroll me!"

A Spectre Haunting Left Street, Part 4/20: Aimee Lives

* * *

That's right, she's gotten her original account restored, complete with the iconic Red Bull avatar. God bless her guardian angels in what is otherwise the Hell of Silicon Valley.

We all know she's a sweetie, not a horror movie monster. But it's hilarious how her bugmen nemesis-posters view her as a dire, unstoppable threat like a slasher flick killer who can never be fully put to death.

Not only because it shows how thin-skinned and flimsy-minded they are, but because they're meme-ing her into some larger-than-online-life persona who all the cool kids are going to become fascinated by. Nobody wants to dress up as the victims of a slasher movie -- they want to emulate Jason and Freddie.

Their whole anti-Aimee discourse is rather like Wes Craven's New Nightmare, where merely fabricating a narrative for storytelling purposes actually brings its monster to life, crossing over from the narrative realm into the real-life realm to wreak havoc on its narrative creators.

Who said that "online isn't real"? Heh heh heh...

Bully the maskers outdoors

The tide has been turning over the past month or so in public behavior regarding the failed measures meant to stem the pandemic last year, especially the placebo masks. Now it is time for the early adopters of "no masks indoors" to push further into enemy territory -- and don't worry, it is very poorly defended, as you'll discover. This will keep the momentum building until the mandates are rolled back outright.

It's time to bully the lamewads who insist on wearing masks outdoors. Indoors, people are still torn, and you can't be sure that your target would be a true zealot. But by this point, anyone wearing one outdoors knows what they're perpetuating, and they open themselves up as fair game.

I'd been pondering this escalation for a few days, but today everything fell right into place, and I seized the moment. I was cruising down the main drag with Rick Springfield's greatest hits CD blasting out the windows, as throngs of people were filling the sidewalks on a sunny afternoon. Midway through "I've Done Everything for You," I caught sight of a joyless sourpuss of a woman in middle age, wearing a mask among a mostly face-baring crowd.

I turned down the music, raised my voice, deepened the pitch, and slowly escalated the intonation, like a stern father warning his children of bad consequences if they keep it up:

Take off the mask outdoors, BOOMER

Goddamn what an exhilarating attack, on such a deserving target! I was already on a rush from the sun, the tunes, the crowd, and from already having howled like a wolf at a thicc babe in running shorts only five minutes earlier. I was still going several blocks later, and let out a Ric Flair WOOO! just thinking about it.

These social-polluting hysterical zealots need to be punished for what they've done, but more importantly, everyone else needs to witness it. That way, the behavior will spread from the original role model (such as moi) to multiple waves of imitators. And even for those who don't take it up themselves, they'll know that the public battle has decisively shifted against the mask freaks.

That will help to shatter the conformity effect, even if they only witness one single guy doing it. Only one bullshit-caller was needed to shatter the illusion of the emperor's new clothes, or the "line comparison" experiments from social psychology.

"Wow, this must be the first time I've seen someone go on the offensive to bully the wearers of masks -- things have changed."

Fuckin' A they have, and everyone should understand that, the faster to undo these failed draconian measures.

Reflecting back on it, I don't think I could've improved anything. I picked a stereotypical killjoy Karen, who would get no sympathy from the fun-loving crowd. I didn't stop to bask in the victory, because traffic had to keep moving, but also it doesn't need to be a drawn-out confrontation -- a drive-by is perfectly fine, and gives them no chance to respond.

We're not debating them anymore, since they never responded with facts in the first place, like when you point out that cases soared exponentially throughout last year, despite all the measures imposed on or adopted by us. They do not need to be debated, they need to be bullied and defied.

She and any minority of fellow zealots did not respond by yelling back, naturally since they were caught off-guard because they assumed they would never become the targets of mask-based bullying themselves. Time for a rude awakening, bitches!

The setting was great, with a huge number of spectators witnessing that single event. No point in doing this at a park where you and the zealot are the only ones present.

Also, I've been deliberately telling myself for the past few weeks, "Don't call them a libtard, don't call them a libtard," in order to not drag partisan polarization into it. Especially if you're vastly outnumbered, as anyone in a city will be. Make it about the failed draconian policies per se, and the broader know-nothing technocracy that produced them. Plenty of urbanites, libs / progs / commies, and Democrat voters will be on board if it's not framed in a "Trump supporters vs. the libtards" way.

I mainly call them "lame" or some variation, to brand the failed measures as uncool and unworthy of imitation. But "Boomer" was a better fit for this context, since most people were not Boomers, and young people especially do not want to be associated with out-of-touch killjoy old people. If the local old people were normies and not wearing masks, obviously I wouldn't have used that term. And I don't care that she was a Gen X-er instead of a literal Boomer -- the crowd, and she, understood what I meant, and it cut deeper than using the accurate generational label.

Having new wave and power-pop music blasting out of the windows established that I was cool -- and if anyone could see inside the car, also hot. It's so crucial to frame this as fun-loving normal people against the joyless wannabe dictators, if any of our messages and behaviors are to spread.

Particularly when the spectators are from the post-X generations, as along a main drag. I don't think Zoomers have ever experienced a climate where people hurl insults out of the car window against a seemingly unprovoking but well-deserving target, like playing a verbal game of mailbox baseball. Some Millennials might remember this in a watered-down form from the late 2000s (if emos and preppies called each other faggots as they drove by), but they too could use some reminding.

These tactics will not work in reverse for the other side, since most people in the audience already do not sympathize with the policies. And just hearing a drive-by scolding won't make them more compliant -- it would backfire, if anything. Whereas when we do it against the zealots, it resonates with what most of the audience is already feeling, but is reluctant to admit or act on. It jolts the silent majority out of its slumber.

Something to keep in your bag of tricks for White Boy Summer.

Masks off

About a month ago I started wearing the mask loose so it didn't cover my nose. This was both to breathe more freely but also to start sending the signal to everyone else that the whole mask thing is over.

Then over the past two weeks, I've started to just not wear it at all while indoors -- to breathe even more freely, to de-dehumanize the social environment, and to signal even more unambiguously that we're not going to wear masks anymore.

Those of you who live in the Sun Belt, or in a rural area, may be familiar with this transition already. But if you're in the North, and in a city, this is still in the early adopter stage.

Since the face liberation movement is still inchoate, what follows are some impressions of who's simpatico and who's hostile, after the failure of the mask policy to end or even decelerate the growth of the coronavirus pandemic.

(I might write a separate post about the inability of grassroots individualism to solve collective problems at the top. This post is just about the changing climate right now.)

First, who else is doing it? It's men, ages 25 to 45, high testosterone, not necessarily counter-cultural, and not detectably Republican or Democrat. Yesterday I saw open faces on a 30-something MAGA dad with his daughter, a single Hispanic or Middle Eastern guy with a pony tail, and a punk / alt guy with his gf / wife (who was also not wearing a mask).

Basically, who's the most risk-taking, but also comfortable challenging authority legitimately -- e.g., if the policy does not work, we don't have to follow it anymore. If it were teenagers, that would stem more from a defiant impulse. If it's fully matured men, that's the go-ahead to treat it seriously and not as a bratty backlash.

Who is the most excited to see the mask come off? From my own experience, overwhelmingly girls from teenagers to 30-somethings. They suffer the most from facial coverings, because they have the cutest faces, unlike middle-aged and elderly women. Females are also more social / empathetic than males and need to see, and make, facial expressions in public. And at that age, they're more drawn to signs of risk-taking and bad-boy behavior in guys.

(NB: not "risk-taking" in terms of contracting the disease -- the masks have already proven ineffective at that. I mean in terms of risking someone hectoring them, threatening to kick them out of the store, and so on.)

This goes double when the bad-boy behavior is channeled in a pro-social direction, like getting rid of a failed and burdensome policy that the authorities are refusing to end themselves. Then it's not like stealing a car and going for a joyride, which would only attract a tiny minority of girls.

Fitness babes are pretty anti-mask. Two of the small number of women I've seen with no mask, or pulled down under their chin, were wearing their gym clothes, including the only woman I remember seeing without a mask several months ago when no one was going mask-free. I just so happened to see her again tonight at the thrift store, and in the same section (books), still without a mask.

But by far the most enthusiastic free-the-face girls are the MENA baddies -- no surprise if you read Aimee Terese or Leila Mechoui on Twitter. They will lock eyes for the longest, and get the most visibly horned up, at the sight of a bold decision-maker who's saving or protecting the group. We're providing cover for the rest of them to do likewise, at a cost to ourselves when we get hectored. It's not merely to preen as badasses while the chicks are looking.

One of the only girls I've seen without a mask -- and the only one who was under 30, and who was not potentially following the lead of her bf / husband -- was a MENA baddie with wild wavy hair who came strutting through the TJ Maxx doors with it pulled all the way down under her chin. Not even a pro forma full coverage while initially entering, and then stealthily removing it when there were no prying eyes. Just coming out guns-a-blazin'. She was a teenager, too, albeit accompanied by her mother and so perhaps feeling like someone else had her back if she got hectored.

Tonight at the supermarket "I Love It" came on over the sound system, and I started whistling along and hitting the side of my leg to the beat, when all of a sudden a mocha-licious southern Meddie turned the corner and stopped dead, gawking at me while I was browsing. She was wearing gym shorts and a hoodie in the local college colors, so in her early 20s living off-campus. I should have reciprocated the attention, strutted on over, and taken off her mask for her, unhooking it like a bra, and planted a kiss right on her lips.

However, that would have been a bit too far for social acceptability in a Midwestern supermarket, with lots of people around us. Maybe if no one else were watching...

It's possible that the guys in my vicinity are also excited to see masks coming off, but since 99% of them are not gay, they're not sending a signal back as eagerly as the girl spectators are. They'll keep it to themselves, talk to their friends about it afterward, and then go into a store with no mask themselves in a few days or weeks.

Who, then, are the most hostile? Not other men. Imagine how terminally cucked you would have to be to stop and wag your finger in another man's face about following a proven pointless policy. I'm sure a good amount of them do not approve, but they will never degrade themselves low enough to whine about it to my mask-free face. It's not only the fear that they are risking the start of a physical confrontation, for no tangible benefit to themselves or others. They would just feel like a pathetic little bitch, and that's bad enough.

Even the low-T "I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE" soyboys will just silently stew in resentment IRL, and then bitch about it impotently on the internet afterward.

Instead, the finger-waggers are all women, roughly ages 30 to 50 or 60, nearly exclusively white founding stock, and in particular Germanic. (No surprise for a race addicted to following pointless rules for its own sake, even when there is no tradition or test of time to back it up). Fatter than average, including some who are downright obese. Mostly unattractive -- only one so far looked average, although hard to tell with the mask, and she was one of the most polite anyway.

It's split evenly whether they act confrontationally or politely, although if Midwestern niceness is not a phenomenon where you live, they could be more in-your-face about it.

I'm sure most of them are liberals, but some appeared conservative.

It seems like the same demographic who gets the most heavily propagandized by the media, because they see themselves as the stewards over the health of the nation. Foreigners, Ellis Islanders, kids of recent immigrants -- it's just not their society to dictate the terms over, and they know it. But women of founding stock feel it's their birthright to nag the citizenry into behaving according to the laws.

Don't interpret this as WASPy dominance, though. They're not upper class, but those with degrees from low-ranking colleges. They're strivers eager to prove to those with real wealth and power that they're good little teacher's pets and hall monitors, deserving of a promotion. For every maskless person I hector, can you pwetty pwease cancel $100 of my student loan debt?

So far it's split between workers and fellow customers. Three workers have told me to wear a mask on their own. Another one (and the only African-American) seemed like she might have been indulging a customer who had asked to speak to her manager or something.

As of now, I've been momentarily going along with the workers' requests, to get them off my case, and because I know it's coming from their boss or some irate customer, not them being a loser themselves. After a bit, I'll take the mask off again. But if a fellow customer barks anything at me, I shut them down and blow them off unambiguously, and as nonchalantly as possible, so they don't get the reward of getting a rise out of me.

The best is when they don't even bother arguing against "the masks are just a placebo," and instead go complain to the workers -- who then don't do shit to indulge the hysterical freak, and just let me be. I'm a regular at the places I frequent, and have been for years, so they know I'm good. They also don't want to have to add to their tasks on the job -- now they're supposed to follow me around the store and make sure I never once take off my mask? Bullshit, that's above my pay grade.

The best of all is when those workers are young women, the kind who are the most supportive of the face liberation movement, especially if it's regarding a random hot guy. Why would they possibly care, Karen? -- they're not a fat ugly menopausal psycho like you. I really have a heightened respect for those workers now, having stood up for me. I imagine them singing to themselves, "I'll keep you, my dirty little secret, dirty little secret, who has to know?" xD

Overall, the hostile types are rare, but that is irrelevant. All it takes is one to threaten your ability to free your face indoors. It is nice that there's not an entire army of them swarming at the same time, but they are frequent enough to present an obstacle during every visit to a store.

However, now that the trend is accelerating -- I didn't see anyone else without a mask last week, and this week I'm likely to see several others -- they have nowhere to go with their hectoring. They can already sense that this is the beginning of the end of the policy, and not because the government has lifted the mask mandate -- because people are sick of failed policies, and no one higher up is enforcing them.

Indeed, the whole point of masks was to devolve responsibility down to the individual. If the elites don't want to get involved, that includes enforcement of their own mandates. They would actually have to stick their neck out, put their foot down, threaten a confrontation with their underlings, and so on and so forth.

They would rather abdicate the chain of command altogether and live a degenerate life away from whatever troubles are going on in society. This is not the New Deal era of strong government, when the mayor, governor, or president might send in the police or the military to deal with even non-violent civil disobedience like sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter.

Today's leaders shirk the duties and costs of being a strong leader, and we're going to take advantage of that when they deliver pointless or harmful orders to the common people, unless we come at them specifically (like storming the Capitol building -- but not going mask-free into our local indoor public spaces).

Flirting with strangers resumes in public places

Over the course of late 2019 and 2020, I cataloged the signs of people coming out of their refractory states from the vulnerable phase of the 15-year excitement cycle. Girls catcalling guys, brushing up against guys in public, and so on and so forth -- things which had not happened to me since the summer of 2015, all of a sudden were coming roaring back.

Sometime after the theft of the election -- seems like the Capitol storming or Biden's inauguration -- everyone fled back into their cocoons. Staring down at phones became widespread overnight, when it had all but disappeared during the late 2010s. People swerving 10 feet away from you on the path around a park. Utterly hysterical anxiety, as people tried to figure out what was going to happen in the power vacuum after the coup against Trump and the Reagan-era GOP.

But now that there's a lull in outward signs of political instability (until the next major blow-up), people are starting to lighten up again, and are tentatively coming back out of their shells. The springtime weather certainly helps, especially with the birds-and-the-bees side of the return to social interaction.

The alt girls in particular have been wearing down my defenses, whether by locking eyes with me, following me around, or actually coming up to me and saying, I really like your outfit ^_^. Today I finally felt inspired enough to make the first move in complimenting them.

At one of my regular stops on the thrift store circuit, an adorable alt girl with tawny skin and a quirky purple bob of hair had followed me back into the men's clothing section, where I had been the only person browsing. She started making little moves to stand in the same aisle as me, though at the opposite end, to have plausible deniability in case I ignored her. But like an eager fishie, I took the bait and walked down her way, passing her as I turned around the end of the aisle, then remaining within 5 feet or so of her.

Unlike most alt girls -- and their scene girl ancestors -- this one was a butt girl, standing in a contrapposto while staring up at the t-shirt rack as though pondering a design exhibition (but inwardly focused on luring me closer). I don't even remember what she was wearing on top, all I could see was her buns pushed out to one side, in high-waisted jeans, a grommet belt, and Doc Martens. How could she tell I was a butt guy, and not a boob guy? Maybe she saw that I too was dressed to show off my butt, and figured birds of a feather flock together.

Another pass down the opposite aisle from her, so that she was standing across from me and making eye contact. I noticed she had one or two slits in her eyebrow -- typically a signal of being a lesbian, but given how eagerly she was following me around, maybe the bi girls have adopted it as well.

Then she came back to my aisle, heading right for me. OK, time to give little miss flirty-birdy some spoken validation.

"I like your hair color..."

oh yeahhh?

"Yeah, it's really cool. I used to have that same color, in 8th grade."

(true story -- was not BS-ing just to get on her good side)

yeah, it's... really... funnn.... ^_^

(She must've been so starved for conversation during the pandemic, she was struggling to force the words out of her throat. Awww, it's so cute when girls get speechless.)

I, uh... really, like your shirt! (edgy b&w graphic tee)

"Thanks!"

And that was it -- we went back along our merry ways after our little dance, one step further out of our shells.

When the social mood progresses to further levels of restlessness during this warm-up phase of the cycle, I'll go further and invite her to be thrift store buddies for a little while. Mostly for her to model things, but she could also pick something out for me to try on. I really miss how excited young girls get when they're out clothes shopping and want a random hot guy friend to give them both some unconditional validation as well as some honest feedback. Something they cannot get from a gay BFF -- they want to know if they look hot, and only the attention of a straight guy (preferably one with options) can make that signal palpable.

Speaking of which... there was another alt girl in the next thrift store, who was wearing a dress so sheer you could perfectly see her black bra and bikini-cut underwear. She tried to get my attention a bit, too, passing by me narrowly in the men's jeans aisle, then turning a corner and slowly strutting her ass from side to side, wholly visible under the non-existent dress. This is a clear exit from the vulnerable phase of the cycle, when girls don't want anyone looking at them even partly exposed, and instead resembles the "no pants subway ride," "free the nipple," and other exhibitionistic displays from the last restless and manic phases.

However, I noticed when I first saw her -- like, she's got to be here with her boyfriend or something, otherwise honey-bunny is looking to get catcalled, groped, or slung over someone's shoulder. Well, in a manner of speaking -- she was there with her gay BFF, who was playing the typical eunuch role to his fag-hag friend. Total boner-killer. Minus 10,000 points.

I don't know why girls still don't get it, about not bringing any gay friends out with them when they're trying to get attention from guys. If they wanted to not be approached, then bringing along the gay eunuch makes perfect sense. But when you're dressed half-naked and flexing your buns before a random hot guy? Get him the fuck outta here, Jesus. No eye-contact from me, certainly no verbal compliments or anything further.

Woketards may have made it unsayable in public, but no normal straight guy, especially a hot one looking to flirt with some girls, would ever hang out with gays. It's just not a thing -- no "fag-hag, but a guy". It's already enough to have to befriend or disarm a straight guy friend who you might be out with -- let alone one who will be creepily eying us over even more than you will (they have no filter or shame). It creates such an awkward mood, just... don't.

Final friendly reminder to take off your placebo mask indoors every once in awhile, for awhile, so they can see your face. It gives them a better idea of what you look like, but also makes you more human and approachable -- less faceless. But that's the topic for another post.

Fashion models are butt girls, not boob girls, same as other kinesthetic performers

After looking back on the death of fashion during the 2010s, I couldn't resist going back to watch Project Runway from its late 2000s heyday (on DailyMotion). I began with season 3, whose winner, Jeffrey Sebelia, epitomized the era's edgy rocker chic. So many things about the fashion / style ecosystem stood out, now that there's such a stark contrast to the past 10 years when the industry has disappeared.

Sticking to just one of those topics for now, I was surprised to see how much the fashion models leaned toward the butt girl side of the boobs-vs.-butts spectrum. Back when I watched the show regularly, I would've dismissed the idea because none of them have big round rumps, thick thighs, or anything like that. They're so thin!

However, when it's framed in relative terms, as I've done during my ongoing study of the two types of girls (and the two types of guys who like them), it's obvious. When you are basically flat-chested, even a modest tushy qualifies you as a butt girl. And it's not just their proportions in a static pose, but which region they emphasize more. There again, it's so clear that they're drawing more attention to their buns rather than their bust. The pendulous swing of their hips, the flexing of their (mini) glutes that's visible through the fabric, and the overall emphasis on their lower half while strutting.

I noticed this especially from Clarissa, who was also briefly an NFL cheerleader before moving to New York for modeling. (More on the connection between models and gymnasts, dancers, etc., below.)

If they wanted attention to go to their chest, they would be raising and lowering their torso to make them bounce, or pushing either shoulder forward in alternation to make their boobs swing, or leaning forward toward the viewer to dangle the hypnotic object before their eyes. Instead, their gait is defined by an almost rigid torso, restrained arm movements, and the shoulders moving only during the brief transition between poses. Most of the dynamic motion is going on in the fertility region of the waist, belly, hips, ass, and thighs.

Models are also required to have hourglass waist-to-hip ratios (around 25-35), which reinforces their feminine fertility appeal. This eliminates a tiresome explanation about gay men dominating fashion and imposing a masculine ideal upon women, and thereby also alienating straight guy tastes. If the ideal were masculine, they would have tubular waist-hip ratios, and they wouldn't have such doll-like faces and long hair.

Even the Victoria's Secret angels, whose job does draw more attention to the chest, and who are meant to appeal more overtly to straight guys, only have a B cup size. There's just something about bustiness that does not work well with the role of modeling.

If you've been following my work on the two types of girls, you may have already guessed the answer -- butt girls are more corporeal, boob girls more cerebral. So naturally the former are favored in any role that is concrete, kinesthetic, and visual, while the latter are favored for roles that are abstract, symbolic, and verbal.

I've already demonstrated this pattern with examples from other physical domains, like athletes and dancers being butt girls, though models are not so surprising as a further example because it is a highly kinesthetic activity -- just not one that requires lots of strength, and therefore one that doesn't give them a typical shapely athletic figure, where the relatively greater size of their backside would be evident.

But don't let their tall, lithe profiles fool you -- these girls are not the awkward lanky beanpole type, they're very agile, and have fine-tuned proprioception (an awareness of where all the various parts of their body are, how they're moving with respect to each other over time, what the environment is like, and how to navigate through it). This suits them to physical activities that involve coordination more than sheer strength, but that still makes them kinesthetic people.

Just imagine how quickly they would be cast out if they could not walk to a regular rhythm, could not strut with full strides, could not time transitions between poses, could not hold a pose whose balancing demands were more complex than standing symmetrically, and so on and so forth. Of course they have to be kinesthetically gifted.

Cerebral boob girls have a different sort of feminine physicality, or rather lack thereof -- they're more clumsy and klutzy, and in need of physical protection and guidance, which the masculine role is only too eager to fulfill for them. It's cute and adorable in a childlike way, as though they were still learning how to navigate their environments and occasionally smack right into the kitchen counter. Corporeal butt girls have a more impressive, graceful physicality that shows they are done maturing and are ready to hit their stride, as it were.

These differences do not reduce to the narrow mechanics of some activity involving the lower body more than the upper body. True, you cannot strut in full strides without working your glutes, so butt girls have an advantage in achieving that kind of gait. But they're advantaged in physical activities that draw on the upper body as well -- volleyball, softball, tennis, field hockey, basketball, swimming, etc., all make intense demands on the upper body, yet those girls are all butt girls too.

Without even investigating to confirm it, I already know that archery girls are going to be butt girls, despite the much greater involvement of the upper than the lower body in that sport. That has nothing to do with large breasts getting in the way of the bow (a narrow mechanics explanation) -- rather, it's yet another example of boob girls being less coordinated and athletic. General explanations win over narrow ones.

Incidentally, one of the finalists from season 3 of Project Runway, Laura Bennett, excelled at archery after her fashion career. She, like the other designers, is pretty flat-chested. So it's not only the models, but the designers too, who are more on the butt side of the spectrum, since visualizing and constructing 3-dimensional objects that are going to be moving in various ways on a human form, requires a good kinesthetic intuition.

I'll bet the straight-guy fashion photographers are butt men, not boob men, as well, for the same reasons. Who better to consult than Patrick Demarchelier? Here's an iconic portrait of Cindy Crawford, and the cover to the book of his photography across genres:

Cindy Crawford is a great example of all these things tying together. She has only a B cup chest but an hourglass figure, most of her shoots from the supermodel era focused on her hips-ass-and-thighs, she was part of the athletic / fitness trend, and in the '90s she had her own fashion show on MTV (House of Style), back when the industry was still flourishing.

This framework also explains the major racial / ethnic differences in modeling.

First, the most cerebral and biggest-busted group, Ashkenazi Jews, are all but absent among fashion models, in contrast to their dominance in domains that are informational, or that are physical but focus on boobs (some kinds of porn, pin-up photography, etc.).

Those of African descent are far more common in the modeling world than you would expect if it were solely about finding girls who look hot, considering that African facial features are less attractive, hence why they're not so common in porn, pin-up photography, and other domains that are strictly about hotness. It's not that you can't find Africans with symmetric faces, only that a symmetric Italian face looks better than a symmetric African face.

However, if modeling is more about the kinesthetic performance, then African girls are going to punch far above their weight. They're more athletic in general, and specifically in sports involving the lower body like sprinting. They're also more rhythmically skilled, and a stunning runway walk requires more than just maintaining a regular rhythm -- there are distinct stages along the path, each with their own transitional poses, and when to time them and how long to hold the pauses, is difficult to pull off (see an ordinary person attempting to "do a runway walk"). In season 3 of Project Runway, this rhythmic aspect of the walk is best shown by Camilla, a Ugandan model who mainly worked with Laura.

I haven't started watching America's Next Top Model yet, but did notice from the casting that their coach for runway walking is African-American (in addition to the host Tyra Banks).

I reject the explanation that this is just elite wokeness giving quota jobs to black people for representational purposes, since this trend has been going far earlier than the explosion of wokeness during the 2010s. Also, it only extends to people of African descent -- not other recipients of wokeness' representational crusades, such as heavily Amerindian Hispanics, or any region of East Asia.

But Amerindians and East Asians are not athletically dominant over other groups, and are not stereotypically the best dancers, so it's perfectly explained by the framework that modeling is another kind of kinesthetic performance. If you're not very good at one kind, you're not good at the other kinds either. (It's not about height either: while Amerindians and East Asians are not tall on average, there's no, er, shortage of them in absolute numbers who clear 5'9, especially in gigantic populations like the Han Chinese.)

Within Europeans, there's the fascinating ubiquity of Slavs among fashion models. If wokeness were the explanation for why some groups are over-represented, then there should be zero Slavs -- wokeness is an ideology for the integration of subjects under a single sphere of influence, and for the Anglo empire, that has never included Eastern or Southern Slavs, and only very recently and tenuously the Western Slavs.

In fact, the Eastern Slavs led by Russia have been the mortal enemy of the Anglo empire and NATO. They are generally only over-represented in our culture to denigrate them (even then, they're typically played by Ukrainians, the subset of Eastern Slavs most hostile to Russia and friendly toward the Anglo empire).

Still, does it fit within the framework of corporeal vs. cerebral? Of course -- they also punch above their weight among athletes in general, but including those that are more about coordination and agility than brute strength (although they excel in those as well). Dancing, ballet, figure skating, gymnastics, track & field, and -- sure enough -- fashion modeling.

Just because those girls are slender rather than meaty, doesn't mean they're awkward waifs whose wispy forms will blow away in the wind. That's just an act, like their affected tiny little princess voices, to use their strength in a stealthy manner.

It also contradicts the misconception that Slavs belong to the "skinny and busty" type. They are certainly skinny, but they're the rare type of butt girls who are also skinny instead of thick. They may not have big butts, but they don't have big boobs either -- they're immature in development, overall. Still, they lean more toward the butt side of the spectrum, both in how much they're carrying relatively, and where they draw attention to.

Returning to the supermodel era, where was the focus on Paulina Porizkova's body? Not on her average B-cup chest, but on her round, toned, and big-for-the-'80s buns.

Zooming out, boob orientation seems to have replaced butt orientation with the rise of agriculture, sedentary societies, and civilization. And among Europeans, the Slavs were the last to settle down and civilize. I think the false impression we have of them as cerebral comes from their doom-and-gloom mood, which we associate with depressed intellectuals. But Slavs are less likely to do purely abstract philosophy, and more likely to do philosophy-through-literature or something more concrete and relatable. And again, how could a race of nerds produce so many jocks?

But the origin of boob orientation is getting too far afield, so we'll end here and maybe return to that in a later post.