Yeah not to mention some of the data for searches for porn coming from states with age age verification checks are using VPN's to other states. (Like 80% of porn hub traffic from Louisiana dropped after the age verification laws, and VPNs went up across the board, as in those users likely were not just showing up as users from other states)

You mean yo say correlation is not causation?! How dare you, sir!? I challenge thee to a bartitsu duel!

Completely rational question if you, like me, also willingly assume rational thought from any member of the general public.

I watch a lot of true crime and you would not believe how many people commit a heinous crime and immediately start building the case against themselves googling shit. The American public is functionally brain damaged.

Where are you going? Some sticky TOR server or something?

They are like REALLY good with computers too. The last one also did this cute hiss when a Tesla would drive past.

Anything that is taboo is attractive.

Easiest way to make kids not interested in something is for their parents to do it. Easiest way to get them interested is for their parents to forbid them from it.

Pot consumption among teens is plummeting, now that it's legalized and teens see it as something that their lame parents like doing, rather than something cool and illegal.

This ties into a bigger issue where almost nothing related to sexuality can ever be healthy or normal to many conservatives.

Sex to these conservatives is inherently deviant and filthy. Making conscious life decisions related to sexuality or sexual identity will never be just a life decision. It will be equivalent to actively engaging in sexual acts.

Being trans to them is actively paedophilic because it exposes children to the concept of sexuality and gender. Sex ed will be paedophilic to them because it does the same. Each person's actions are not the sole thing that defines them, but also their position in society as dictated by "what it has always been". Men have always led households by marrying women and having kids, therefore men that don't are a threat.

Conservatism is quite black or white when it comes to things like identity or introspection. It is an ideology that very frequently wages war on self questioning and exploration in exchange for compliance and conformism. It's why many conservatives hate universities, scientists and partially why they hate immigrants. The entire ideology grows by appealing to people who do not want to be intellectually challenged. It's especially attractive to those that don't want to understand other ways of thinking.

Conservatism as an ideology always exploits the greatest potential weakness of the left wing: naivety, and presents itself as the "responsible" or "reasonable" solution to a reckless and harmful left wing. They frame things like empathy and humanitarianism as weaknesses rather than virtues.

It's why most of the conservative rhetoric revolves around "being taken advantage of" or "being scammed by" this or that group. They love stories about immigrants exploiting the system, cheating or stealing because it proves their worldview that what's foreign and unknown is out to get them. It is an ideology driven by fear.

And the biggest problem is that, unlike progressivism (which also has its ideological vices and weaknesses), conservatism never seeks to help the weak or empower the vulnerable. Instead it seeks to maintain the hierarchy and keep people in their place. In the US that translates to keeping immigrants weak, keeping black people down, keeping women in the kitchen, keeping white men ahead, keeping the US as an imperial power, and keeping its allies subservient.

I mean, I'd say this is the opposite of ironic, it is extremely expected and logically follows from how the conservative brain/worldview works.

Basically it just boils down to 'being horny is a sin, sin is an evil, supernatural force or state of being, that acts with will, or comes from deliberate, intentional agency... thus anything that makes me horny, I must dominate, control, defeat, as an external enemy, and also deny that it makes me feel horny, to avoid looking like I have fallen (in) to sin.'

When you institutionalize the idea of a fundamental, carnal, human desire as supernaturally evil, everything relating to how you interact with or experience that desire becomes a shameful perversion, and then you have to hide that perversion by one means or another, and those means are often conquest, conquest involves 'othering' the enemy.

For all their talk of personal responsibility, their entire worldview is designed, with many layers of artificial constructs, to shield them from critical self-reflection, to channel them away from actually understanding themselves.

How can you possibly be responsible for yourself, if you do not even understand yourself, why you do the things you do?

To them, what is most important is the performance of conformity to a hierarchichal group identity role.

That's their 'gender'.

Not self-expression.

Yeah, I've seen this pointed out before. They say that trans women are men, but they don't treat them like men. They treat them like women.

This reminds me of a friend of mine whose trans daughter attending elementary school had a bully calling her a "boy" and then chasing her around and trying to kiss her. Really, kid? Do you like to kiss boys now? Obviously, sexual harassment isn't cool at any age, and that needs to be dealt with, but it just goes to show that even at that young age deep down they know the difference.

Yay, equality?