Not the person you replied to, but you make a great point. There’s most certainly ulterior motives for joining forces. However, I would prefer to work alongside and run against (in future elections, may the voters work to keep them in existence) a relatively honorable opponent using this tactic as a means try to keep their seat, rather than their turning farther right, emboldening and embodying every trait of a traitorous enemy.

I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but this seems so off-the-charts guaranteed to backfire on him. What even mild Swiftie isn’t going to figure out (or hasn’t already) just how fake this endorsement is? Of any celeb to fake, Taylor seems like a such a flamingly dumb choice in terms of the fandom’s social media engagement.

With all these increasingly stupid moves… Is he really that detached and senile, or is there more behind his [team’s] style of psycho-political warfare going on?

I don’t think I’ve seen it pondered anywhere on social media, so I must ask: Does it not seem like Trump is purposely trying to throw the election at this point? If that’s the case, I fear the heightened degree of nefarious intent for whatever guaranteed political unrest we will face in November. I don’t think this is baseless conspiratorial thinking on my part, unfortunately.

Or … Or … Maybe his patently obvious mental decline has eroded away just enough of his super-sized ego to let in juuust enough reality for him to consciously recognize that he is going to die soon whether he likes it or not, and now he doesn’t give a shit-a-minute if he wins anymore. Can you imagine?

[Ah yes, a solid B+ troll, using the “are you all right” trope to get a rise out of me. The following would be my “rise.”]

Oh for cripes sake, can you not see I was leaning into your trolling mindset with my first bit?!! Keep fuckin moving the goalpost, y’all are good at that.

[Yes, I clearly suspended my disbelief in trying to see what exactly is legitimate under all of what you’ve said so far. It’s a fascinating occupation you’ve taken on, Professional Troll of Dubious Intent (PTODI), but if even if you actually don’t harbor these shitty thoughts against people, you are literally, actually right this moment making the entire platform of discourse shittier. I guess I should step outside my human brain and understand that some purported humans just want to watch the world burn. Sigh… Fuckin PTODIs.]

Aaaaand now I wonder if you (and your friend) are experiencing a wicked case of DID. Please consult your totally real psychologist on that for more info on how to reign in your diverging personalities. (Wouldn’t wanna have to get your lawyer involved, you know, like if your online troll personality state starts wreaking legal havoc in real life. Who would be to blame? You?! Or you?!!?!)

Serious question. And making the forgiving assumption your “friend” wasn’t just a cover story. This troll business you opened up here, do you you actually believe and stand behind what you profess?

It took me all of 90 seconds to read through your comment history and confirm you are in some kind of pain, the kind that breeds misplaced anger at the lack of stability in your own identity.

You did, however, ponder one valuable bit of insight at the end of your recent AITA post (15 days ago) regarding your wife quitting her job and her not listening to you. Please follow your instinct here. Please do be open to your wife about going your separate ways.

Real talk, she will be better off without you. You act as if she’s holding you back, all the while it sounds like she’s been holding you up. It seems you are the one holding both of you back, and projecting this financial and identity instability onto others is illustrative of your own issues.

You don’t seem like a legitimate troll. You seem like you’re fighting for your own identity and you’re projecting your frustrations by asserting other people are deluded in knowing who they are and somehow insane for wanting a modicum of human respect. Yet I think you and many, many others like you, are those truly struggling.

I think you are currently showing a lack of respect to others because, deep down, you don’t respect yourself. And that is not okay. Needing and seeking help and direction from others, including mental health professionals, is not a blue-haired liberal thing, it’s a human thing. Please consider it.

Ahem… Loosh dentshursh.

I’ve never heard of this guy before, so I had to research. Wikipedia entry for his early life: “Pool was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a firefighter and his mother sold cars. Pool attended a Catholic school until completing the fifth grade and left school at the age of 14.”

Whelp. That explains a lot. I have yet to hear him speak or read any quotes on wiki or elsewhere. Though I can predict a certain cadence of speech and lack of even the tiniest depth of understanding of whatever he’s talking about.

So which do we think came first? Private school or the dumb?

Just chiming in to say I think you’re right in that these types of thought experiments pop into people’s heads pretty regularly, albeit with way less “trying to justify a creepy sex fantasy” intent like the public poll post seems to have.

Though I have to question why it was public in the first place. I don’t know who the poster is or if it’s their real name, but what if it’s less “projection” and more “morbid curiosity” in seeing just how many people would answer yes to this heinous question? There is some merit in gauging reactions to this from a social psychology point of view (even if this is an non-scientific example).

Follow-up thought. Without morbid thought experiments, how do people create horror stories and gritty crime dramas like L&O:SVU when a story has no particular real life basis? I’m not sure it’s wholly possible in a fictional novel or show. There’s a reason people eat crime dramas up; it’s fascinating and horrifying to see how far a real and fictionalized human will go in various circumstances.

In a way, it’s a manifestation of the “call of the void” situation, where an intrusive thought (what if I jump off this bridge right now? what happens if I yank the steering wheel driving 50mph? spook a herd of grazing horses? slap grandpa upside the head? while out hunting??) so I think its purpose is more to keep you aware of harzards in whatever the situation may be. Avoidance through sudden acknowledgement of the risk.

Again, I don’t recognize this person or know any background, but maybe they posed the question as a wacky means of self-preservation on a broader level? As if the poller thought, “How many of my viewers would prostitute out their child if given the most forgiving, financially advantageous, and seemingly consensual circumstances?” to figure out how worried they should be about a certain percentage of their friends, neighbors, and/or followers. Avoidance through asking weird questions publicly.

Edit: Holy ship I managed to write a whole novel on my thought experiment about thought experiments ahh^ahh.

Yup, I sure do! (Does this help me figure out what I am?!?)

Waaait… I am on Adderall for ADHD but also enjoy an herby comedown at the end of the day. So what does that make me? A filthy centrist?! What is this dichotomous drug-fueled political identity crisis I’m experiencing!!!

^/s

This hit me pretty hard for some reason. A person sure forgets how easily they dehumanize people in the public eye, until another person so poignantly humanizes them again. Thank you, this was a really nice comment to read.

Nobody seems to like you here, Mister Bias Bot…

I must admit, I am a bit high right now, but I tittered heartily at your lighthearted turnabout, and then my mind, well, now it’s blown, because I now must ask… Does any particular ethnicity or racial identity have a statistically significantly higher birth rate than any and all other identity groups simply because, and with all other factors controlled for, they find themselves and people like them just so irresistibly sexy that they can’t help but have the sexy sex with each other, and because they are both so damn sexy they can’t even right now, and “we’re having sex can’t you see” and ask you to come back later to ask your weird sex questions???

Any particular one? … Anyone?

When you said “check for [spy] bugs,” I first thought you meant literal insecty bugs, and that made plenty of rational sense to me, because who wouldn’t come back with even more potent insecticide to douse those couches, maybe some Super-Potent Fabric-Penetrable Bug Annihilator, one formulated for Previously Penetrated Couches, in order to kill the very particular kinds of creepy crawly bugs that JD seems like he carries around on his creepy crawly body.

You know, I’ve been thinking … There’s gotta be another layer of complexity in all that projection vectored through his hating on “childless cat ladies” nonsense, other than the obvious “I’m scared of happily independent women” business.

Fleas. I’m thinking he has fleas. JD Vance has fleas. You know, because something, something, cats.

Bed bugs would also make sense. Him fucking furniture and all. Bed bugs are, after all, the herpes of the craft couch-coitus world.

I think maybe it’s both? Too harsh of sentences (in some cases or jurisdictions) might contribute to a general police mindset which “conflates” the legal repercussions of rape with murder. This leads to or reinforces victim-shaming questions like, “do you really want to ruin their life over this?”

The rule of law and law enforcement need to strike a better balance in both directions I think.

And not to mention tough for their UNDERAGE CHILDREN!!!

^/s

Soooo, I kind of got déjà vu reading this article because … Six days ago I “foresaw” the relevance of “weird.” Comment thread here (I think) or just check out post my post history.

The author brings up a ton of specific points I called out, including using similar words like “flip” the script and referencing how “basket of deplorables” was too directed. Were we all thinking sbout “weird” in this context six days ago already? If not… I am weirded out, y’all.

Your style of sarcasm is so well done, nobody realizes the /s is implied. A+++ seller, would buy vote AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!

I get where you’re coming from, and you make a point with “deplorable” being meme-ified into some twisted identity thing. But I also think the collective “basket of deplorables” doesn’t apply here. Harris isn’t calling Trump supporters weird; she’s calling just him weird.

This does a few things: it keeps the focus on Trump, allowing supporters to distance themselves from the statement. The lack of attachment to any particular action, statements, belief, etc. lets a person think about it “nakedly.” Why is he weird?

Yes, we both know why, but this flips the script from the last 10 years from “here are various reasons why Trump is horrifying and could also be considered weird” to “Trump is weird, I’ll let you chew on that.”

It’s all in the delivery. Stating what he is without explaining why.

I think it’s worth returning a bit of agency to people in general to assess how they feel about that statement and come to their own conclusions. Edit: Especially because many of these people have attached themselves to Trump because they feel they have no agency otherwise. Could this be a means to cracking through the brainwashed masses? Something akin to, “wait, why am I idolizing this guy again?” Wishful thinking, yes, but being"plain weird" is such a broadly sweeping generalization that something should organically pop up in trump supporters’ brains, without our prompting.

The following was initially part of a reply to another person:

Maybe the simple, gentle, “everyday” language here is truly the point? There are so many things to attack about Trump, so many legitimate concerns for his fascist, racist, sexist, ad nauseum behaviors. We’ve heard it all before. But simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters while obviously delivering a shock to Trump’s vanity.

It’s not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it’s harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.

Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with.

It’s uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird and how you should deal with it. It prickles something very basic in the human psyche. So I think they’re on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.