This is what the French looked like at the time. What happened?
We simply grew out of our gay phase.
Have you seen this fat Siegfried and Roy wannabe ?
Us French were truly cool (from a military standpoint) when we started cosplaying as W40K Imperial guard, sending thousands into battle to die a horrible death only armed with a pea shooter and a silly hat.
According to historians, this period the peak of military genius and tactics in the western world.
In the last decade or 2 we went from soft core porn music videos to 14 years old in bikinis on TikTok (right?) And from boxing to UFC to bare knuckle boxing and no gloves muay thai.
From shocking to normal.
Social media and the fact that any child can be sexualized is new, but im' pretty sure there always was Britney Spears or Jenna Ortegas (ie sexualized children in entertainmnent) since entertainment exist.
One could argue UFC is less violent than boxing, at least less damaging (boxers take more hits because of the ten count, in mma if you can't defend yourself it's over).
No glove muay thai is letwei i guess. You could also have said headbutt muay thai it's even more scary
Letwei is an ancient martial art and as such have rules and a social use.
I agree with
IDKFA
when he says we as a species are fascinated by violence. As long as we can control this fascination and design social outlets to "release the pressure", like violent sports, ceremonials like ritualized fights, even direct confrontation albeit under sets of rules, we can live with it. The
Bouc émissaire as conceptualized by René Girard shows this (he goes a bit out there with how much he pushed his theory but the observations on which he bases it are truly great).
I think in our society there's more and more outburst of violence, totally unregulated, where there should not have been, and people more or less accept it. It scares the shit out of me. In France some cop killed an unarmed young guy at a traffic stop. France is not the US, and cops here don't run the risk to be shot at when doing a simple traffic check. Everyone should have been appalled by what the cop did, how much violence he used in an unregulated context. But some people said "it's the kids fault he just had to comply". I find it crazy and dangerous. When people don't mind much unregulated, unritualized violence they tend to revert to their baser instincts. That make them the best consoomers, since you can directly appeal to their vileness, but at what cost ? When i said Zuck burned our collective mind i did not joke, and the fact that he teased a fight with Musk, another very weird dude who should not have as much power as he has) and everyone (me included) was all about it is almost poetic.
To those who made the effort of reading my rant, a parting gift.
Here's Zuck in full thought conqueror mode, surfing the void in search of some of your most personnal tought he could feed upon.
EviLore
for making this thread. It inspired me to download and listen to a BBC In Our Time podcast about Constantine the Great on my bike ride to work.
www.visualcapitalist.com
