Oh

Oh no

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.

Holy sheeps, I'm not the only one?! I know I need to get my butt off Windows, but oh my lordie, the slowness of typing feedback gets so bad on Word or Mail that it literally sometimes refuses to graphically acknowledge an entire short word, leaving the screen void of the word I know I just typed, until I backspace one measly letter and the word (minus the letter) finally shows up.

It is absolutely, unironically infuriating.

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?

Don't forget the rectum bleacher! You've gotta whiten up all your pearly bits when grooming personally with these here personal grooming products! From teeth whiteners to skin toners, nipple brighteners and our ever-popular melanin relaxers, they're all conveniently listed in this one incredibly inconvenient list! No matter which parts of your body, which orifices, which end of your digestive tract you reeeally want to whiten up: Lighten Up, We've Got You (Un)Covered!®

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.

Man, this is fucking rich, telling someone to hang with a better crowd, a crowd you couldn't possibly know about, all the while insinuating they are trash and literally bringing them down.

Take a hard look at yourself, bud, and figure out which trash really needs to be taken out here.

They're talking about how religions like Christianity make sex a "shameful" act that should never be enjoyed outside of anything but institutional marriage, even though it's completely natural to desire consensual sex for myriad reasons.

The fact that humans can recognize the biological motivations of sexuality and its various purposes (pleasure, connection, procreation) doesn't make sex stupid, silly, or somehow undignified. Religious institutions try hard to make anything sexual a sin in order to shame adherents into not having sex because "only God can grant you that joy and only within marriage, anything else sends you straight to hell."

Fun fact! If the talking pump has buttons (usually four on each side of the screen), press all of them from the top down right when it starts yammering at you, and one or more of these magical button presses should shut its trap!

I, too, hate being audibly ad-blasted at the gas station.