Unpopular parenting take

Thursday 6/5/25

No intelligent person has ever said, "We vibed" or "I'm a whole vibe."

No intelligent person has ever said "finna" or "Ima."

No intelligent person has ever used the term "hot take" favorably or said "He has good takes." The "take," in this context, is the opposite of the thought process.

I have seen people posting their fiction for critiques online. It is almost impossible to replicate how bad this fiction is. If I had a character in a story trying to write a story and they were as terrible at it as can be and I wanted to give an example of that, I would struggle--and there's nothing else that does not come easily to me with writing--to create an example as bad as what I see in these stories. It borders on the unbelievable. The only reason it is not unbelievable is because there it is. And it's all the same, from person to person. In this instance I'm talking about fantasy writing.

Then some of these people will honestly say things like, "I may get rich with it or not, but I think it has a lot of financial potential."

Look how insane people are:

Unpopular parenting take: My children are not allowed to date until they’re ready to get married. NO teen dating, period.

Sowing the seeds of maximum dysfunction and mental illness and wasted lives and endless therapy sessions that solve nothing, because it's not like those people know anything, let alone about the particulars and depths of the human condition. People are really paying them for venting and meds.

Here's another one, and you can see the likes of this thousands of times a day, without trying to, because there it is, again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Ubiquitous. Because this is what we are.

The algorithm didn’t shadowban you. You just stopped saying anything worth saving.Teach something. Say something bold. Make someone think.That’s how growth works.

Here's the bio:

🤠 Speaker, Coach, Social Media Agency Owner: enfluence Marketing Studio 🪩 Podcast Host: Call Her Creator 🏆 15 yrs experience | Celebs + Brands

Is that not yet another perfect depiction of the soullessness of our world? The depiction is made perfect by the volume. That's millions of such people right there. Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? All the same. Equally as stupid and shallow.

Here's another bio:

The Transformation Catalyst. Facilitating breakthroughs for clients who want to express their highest self in life. IST Practitioner

Same person posts a photo of a beach--deep--and above it writes:

Reclaiming Vitality: A Healing Journey Through Chronic Fatigue and Burnout. Finalist in the Eric Hoffer awards. Top 10 percent of entries this year. Available on Amazon. See link tree in my bio.

Of course she's going to have that link tree.

On subreddits I see people discussing publishing. "How it really works" with publishers, editors, agents.

It is impossible to be less correct than every single last one of these people are. I'm being literal. There is no exaggeration there. They are each of them as far away from the truth as anyone can be.

And yet, they speak with such utter confidence and certainty. There is no way to measure how far they are from the truth. If you were trying to come up with statements furthest from the truth, you couldn't do better than these people do. All you could do is hope to match them.

All of the truths about publishing are in these pages. They are nowhere else. But I'm not even talking that level of truth. I'm talking about the much more basic stuff. Someone will get a form rejection for something that wasn't read--and there was no point in reading it either--and hundreds of people will say that this means they were very close, that it's obviously a work with a high commercial ceiling, it just wasn't right for that person because they don't have enough experience with that kind of writing.

Then one of these people will say something like this to that first person:

You need to write him a nice thank-you letter.

Dear Agent, Thank you for your rejection letter as of (date) but I'm afraid it does not measure up to our standards here at SomedaySoonBigImportantWriter Inc. However, I am keeping it on file since it is the first rejection letter I have received, therefore historical, and once I have reached a certain level of sales, I will be contacting you again. For lunch, perhaps, so we can discuss events up to this point, grandchildren, and such. And I will buy.

Insane. Completely insane.

You now have millions of people also doing this, and pumping their crap into the works. And it's overload. How could anyone ever find anything that's actually any good? So then it's just the system of incestuous evil. The hook-ups, the cronyism, and all of that bad writing.

Nothing is published--NOTHING--so that it will be read. It's published for other reasons. One of those reasons is so that the system can continue to exist. Those lives can still be led by the people in it. And they can be the evil people they are. The petty people they are. The entitled people they are. They need not have ability, intelligence, a vision, morals. They can be criminals. They can rape. Sexually harass. Plagiarize. Steal. Mistreat. Abuse. Quid pro quo--use it like a verb--as though there was no other earthly way to get anything done, be published, get the deal, receive the award. Punish. Without impunity or interference. Without exposure. Risk. Because no one cares, and the only people in their world are just like them and doing the same thing.

The books could be blank. It wouldn't change anything save that it would be a bit more awkward to justify the book existing as product. Having words on the page is just a formality. It makes the operation look more legitimate. But there's no expectation that the words will be read, they're not read, and there's no reason for them to be read. No one is putting out books thinking, "Many people will want to read this for these reasons." Note how I said "read," not "own." People will want to own an. Amanda Gorman book so that they can say that they do and display it when their rich, also white friends visit. But no one wants to read it, and no one will, and there is nothing in that book that justifies the expenditure of so much as five seconds of anyone's time. Amanda Gorman, Junot Diaz, George Saunders. Six of one, half a dozen of another.

Similarly: That site wants your click. They don't care if you read the article. The article is a placeholder. It's a formality, too. The endgame for them isn't that article being read, and you thinking about it, talking about it, etc. The publisher couldn't care less if you read it. Or what it says or its quality. They want your click. Your information is harvested. That information is used to sell people things they don't need or even want, but which they think they do, because it gives them a tiny bit of excitement--Dopamine-style--in their drab life in which they have no interests, no original thoughts, no passion, and are fundamentally indistinguishable from everyone else. Like when the box comes from Amazon. They perk up a bit. This is akin to being in prison and being allowed five minutes outside in the yard. Except, people are willingly imprisoning themselves and fortifying and further fortifying this prison system by the day. Eventually, there will be no jobs, the cities will fall apart, slums will be rampant, and everyone will be a slave--with nothing to do about it, because they're not smart enough or strong enough or capable enough--to billionaire overlords. People who could spend their lives shoveling their money into a furnace and never come close to not having more than anyone could ever spend. This isn't about reading, man. This isn't about reading at all. And there isn't anyone else out there who has anything worth reading. You think anyone else could do any of this? Live like this, fight like this, work like this, create like this? Having spent every second of their lives developing the ability with which they were born? Against everything and everyone? You tell me when you find that other person. If you are any good at writing, everything you do will be an upstream battle. Everything will be against the current. Until things change. But who is going to change them? Anyone else want to join in with me and try? I'm the only real shot. The last line of defense and the first line of offense. If you are any good at writing, you won't be supported, you won't be helped, you won't be rewarded for being good at it, you won't be nominated, listed, anything. And the better you are, the greater the current that you need to move upstream against will be. Let's say someone was born with a lot of talent. You think they're going to live their life like that? You think they have that strength? What is it that you do that you can do alone? Now to that add people working against you. Not so much as a favorable word--ever. You gonna get up and try harder tomorrow? Next year? Fifteen years later after having done that every day? Twenty years? Thirty years? As many years as it takes, with no guarantee that it will ever change and won't keep getting harder? That other person does not exist.

No intelligent person has ever said "GOAT," as in so and so is the GOAT, or any version thereof ("He was literally GOATED").

No intelligent person has ever said--and I should add "or written" with all of this--"It gave me the ick."

If a person says or writes any of these things, they have proven themselves to be a moron.

But: It's never too late. You are free to un-moron yourself. We can get smarter each day if we want to.

Do I seem like someone who is tired? Or do I seem like someone who is always having at it and has lots of energy?

And yet, I am plainly someone who cuts no corners. I try to do everything I do the best that I can. I know it's not the best. Save with what I am actually writing. When that work is done, it will be the best writing there could possibly be. I need to get better and try harder. But whenever I do something, I don't do it half-assed.

People do everything half-assed. Why do they do this? To save themselves the outlay of effort that will make them, what, tired? But it does not work that way. When I go up and down the Monument, and do it right, do it hard, I do not become more tired than if I hadn't gone up and done the Monument or had done it in some corner-cutting fashion. Like, say, turning around early. Rather, the converse happens. I have more energy. A spring.

No intelligent person describes themselves as a queen or says that they are looking for their king.

Here is a social media post from a 325 pound man middle aged man with poor hygiene who loves Iron Maiden but nonetheless can't spell their name correctly and takes photos of himself chugging beer:

Maybe I'll cut my finger nails today.

That got four likes. Those four likes are more likes than I've ever gotten for anything I've ever posted on social media in my life. That could have been fiction in Harper's, or an op-ed in the LA Times, or a mention of having gone such and such years without a drink, anything about the stairs, something sports-related, Beatles-related, etc., or when I got a clean bill of health for my heart after having ended up in the ER multiple times.

And this from the same person performed twice as well:

I like to keep it gender neutral by just calling everyone "fuckface".

Same person, an even more popular one:

The gummy just kicked in. Nice.

And more popular still:

I wish I had candy.

Why is all of this how it is? You know why. The more we think of someone, the smarter they are, the less like the average person they are, the stronger we perceive them to be, the more legitimate they strike us as, the more they are shunned, feared, envied, avoided, and held back, if we can help it.

That is a truth of our society. There is no impetus whatsoever to be anything good. And anything great? Being great is the worst thing you can be. That's how we've made our world. That's how people have made the world for their children and their children's children, and so forth.