Quick follow-up to the Mulvaney post

Maybe this time the title won't open a box without sorting through all of its contents

A couple of remarks about the Dylan Mulvaney post from this morning, the comments to which I have not yet read but can predict with low confidence or even higher. These have been prompted more by a re-reading of the post than by any feedback.

One: I minimized, perhaps even elided, the true psychosocial and cultural reach and impact of the Mulvaney phenomenon. While I think his overall presence is more benign than that of Will/Lia Thomas, and certainly less pernicious than the nasty creatures calling themselves Alejandra Caraballo and Charlotte Clymer, he’s not doing any of this in a vacuum and it’s happening at a time when the notion of womanhood itself is being intensely, if factitiously, challenged. In other words, “It’s just a guy in a dress” is more airy an attitude than I meant to convey; I assumed my records of unvarnished statements in this area would be sufficient to offset this perception, but anyway, I think this was sloppy.

And two: As more than one reader has pointed out directly, with others likely to follow, an organized boycott of a major company isn’t tantamount to “cancel culture,” and in the case of the Bud Light saga there are multiple clear distinctions. One is that consumers are taking aim at a product rather than a person; even if Mulvaney is the source of the unrest, the company is ultimately the target. Mulvaney will go on making exorbitant amounts of money on TikTok (reportedly up to $80,000 per video) and from other companies.

There’s a difference between organizing against a corporation, or just passively eschewing its products after something nettlesome happens, and, say, getting peeved at criticism of yourself on a blog and then writing to the editor of a publication the blogger writes for to get him punished.

The latter is what the cowardly little bag of frazzled resentment and shaky thinking named Erin Strout did when she contacted Podium Runner editor Jonathan Beverly in the fall of 2020. Because Beverly—whom I started working with around the turn of the century, had already become as much as a yes-man as almost everyone else in the running industry, he not only told me I couldn’t write for Podium Runner (which was soon discontinued anyway) but opined that what I was doing was a bad idea in general.

Kicking me off the unofficial roster of shitty freelancers didn’t sting much, but I was pissed off that he had the nerve to suggest that resisting the incursion of Wokism was a wrong move. He may even be stupid enough to still believe this, but fuck him anyway. He made his choice to side with a shrill retard, and he had his reasons.

And in some ways, I see a systematic refusal by writers and editors to answer legitimate questions from readers as part of “cancel culture,” because it’s all part of the same chickenshit philosophy: Break rules, be a disruptor, act like a complete faggot in every way, and then ignore those who bristle. I’m now making sure everyone who has in my mind made a serious mistake but refuses to entertain my input pays a price in terms of basic embarrassment. Almost no one in the running world is well-known outside of it, and if I write about someone multiple times, it’s likely one or more of these posts will float toward the top of the Google search results on their name.

I tend to forget how much vanity-Googling my targets engage in and therefore how much this bothers them. From now on, I’m going to use this formerly unconscious strategy to portray as many deserving people as the losers they are. What’s funny is that none of this would have happened if any of these pussies had been willing to address my questions, accusations, static, what have you.

In contrast, my use of “virtue signaling” is dead on. Using an automatic rifle to shoot up a bunch of beer cans is, on its own, the epitome of a tempest in a teapot. Not only does it accomplish nothing on its own, it’s not even good target practice, as using a handgun would be. But none of the angriest anti-Wokish people want to see a series of plink-PFFF! Plink-PFFF! when they can see a noisy explosions of foam instead. I can understand why people did this; it’s basically a meme with visual and sound effects. But by itself it did nothing.

Finally, I didn’t mention this, but Mulvaney, as far as I know, still has a deal with Nike. How many people who criticize Nike actually refuse to buy their products? I don't, and I know others who have refused for years to support them. But within the joggersphere, I’ve seen nothing but hypocrisy, exemplified by shit like this:

So there it is—this controversy is not really an example of “cancel culture” and the campaign is not as benign a move by Anheuser-Busch as a I have suggested, given that the pushback against the madness hasn’t proven sufficient yet to stop its momentum. We* need to stop tolerating even “harmless” attacks on reality itself, and it’s encouraging to see signs that this is happening and can make a difference.

One more thing: I am going to “unlock” yesterday’s post in a day or two so that everyone can read the personal anecdote after the paywall break. Non-paying subscribers (Substack calls these people “sign-ups) may get an e-mail when this happens; I haven’t played with any of these features yet, so I don’t know for sure. But either way I’ll make a note of the change.