If you make a living by having edgy "takes" on controversial subjects, then of course you’re going to face backlash

A response to DeepLeftAnalysis re: Aella

DeepLeftAnalysis recently wrote a defense of Aella, after she locked down her Twitter

Apparently the Tweet which set Aella off was her defense of the OnlyFans model Bonnie Blue, pointing out that Bonnie’s desire to be part of a “two thousand person petting zoo” is supposedly a normal manifestation of female sexuality.

As DeepLeft writes:

Aella’s Tweet exposes a divide between feminists who believe women have the right to be tied up in a box with 2,000 men, and feminists who believe that such a desire is internalized patriarchy which must be exorcized.

Now this might be controversial, but if one part of your ideology thinks that being tied up in a box with two thousand men is #liberating, and the other half of your ideology thinks this is a sign of ultimate subjugation, then it might not be a particularly coherent ideology. But I digress.

DeepLeft downplays the subject, saying:

There are bigger problems to worry about, like the mass poisoning of billions of people; the decline of American diplomacy; and the cognitive decline of the human species.

Setting aside the fact that DeepLeft goes on to write an additional five thousand words on the subject, this sort of argumentation is a classic case of the false dichotomy.

• “Oh you’re complaining there’s a hair in your food? Don’t you know there’s kids starving in Africa?”

• “Oh you got laid off? Don’t you know there are people being deported right now?”

DeepLeft points out that Aella is a unique vector for criticism because she represents a sort of “sexual freedom” that makes people (especially conservatives) incredibly angry. While I don’t doubt this dynamic, this sort of argumentation is weak, and a convenient way to cover up some legitimate criticisms.

(Related to this, I've noticed a sort of rhetorical tactic where people dismiss criticisms against them as having “XYZ derangement syndrome.” You’re not Trump. Nobody is deranged by you.)

Many of the criticisms levelled against Aella seem valid. As DeepLeft himself points out, apparently Aella has two younger sisters who are also in sex work – one of them getting into sex work literally the day she turned eighteen.

DeepLeft argues that the sisters would have most likely gone into the profession even without Aella’s influence, considering they have roughly same home life and genetics. I have no idea what their home life looks like, but I think this severely down plays the “nepotism” involved – if it can be called that.

The same way that Bronny James made it into the NBA, and Brooklyn Beckham became a master photographer/chef/bartender, a contributing factor as to why the younger sister got into sex work is likely because Aella was there to give her “the inside track”.

If nothing else, Aella’s younger sister would have a leg up on the competition (no pun intended) due to the fact that she can ride off of Aella’s clientele (pun intended).

DeepLeft tries to downplay this using a rather baffling line of argumentation, saying that if people really cared about the welfare of under aged people, then they would focus on how many children are being over-prescribed medication, or are otherwise suffering from childhood obesity.

I find this sort of defense somewhat baffling on two fronts:

• First, this is another false dichotomy.

• Second, this downplays the criticisms people have against her opinions on…

Pedophilia and CP

For example, Aella posted this now infamous essay a little while back, where she tried to propose the idea of flooding the Internet with CP in order to save real children from harm.

There’s already many people who have responded to that essay, taking up the #StunningAndBrave position that flooding the Internet with CP is actually bad.

From my perspective, the biggest problem with her argument is the implementation.

By analogy, consider Eliezer Yudkowsky’s arguments against AI. For those who don’t know, Yudkowsky is a high IQ rationalist who thinks that AI is going to kill everyone, and so he thinks the only reasonable solution is to start bombing data centers.

While this might solve the problem of stopping advanced AI, the effects of actually carrying out such bombings would be so devastating that it would be just as bad. Which is to say, if you actually think about the sequence of events that would make such a thing possible, it means we're probably already in an apocalypse.

Meeting of the minds

Similarly, Aella’s implementation of flooding the internet with CP would have so many negative side effects on the general population that it would be worse than any potential “good”. Considering we're already at a point where a person is first exposed to porn around the age of ten, this would very likely create a whole host of new mind warping sexual degeneracies.

As far as the disproportionate amount of hate that Aella receives on Twitter, it’s hard for me to say as I don’t really go on the platform, but I can tell you this…

It didn’t take long for me to find some pretty weird stuff

It seems to me that Aella has a habit of:

1. Posting incendiary hypotheticals

2. Getting negative backlash

3. Justifying herself by using some variation of “Oh I'm just a sexually free person with an enlightened morality.”

Further, it seems that DeepLeft is predisposed to downplay this. As he writes:

Sex work isn’t any more immoral or dirty than being a plumber, lawyer, or an insurance salesperson. She doesn’t deserve any special hatred or ridicule.

Personally I would compare sex work to an MMA fighter, in that you need to have a particular psychology that's a little bit “off” from the general population — and very likely you’ll do uncomfortable things to your body in order to be successful.

Nevertheless, you’ll forgive me if I take DeepLeft’s moral compass with a rather large grain of salt; a few paragraphs later he writes:

Personally, I want more anti-male sexism (feminism) because I am an anti-natalist who wants to engineer a population collapse. I believe women should be more discriminatory against men and die childless.

This isn't to take a dig at his personal beliefs, but rather to point out a common trend with a lot of the leftist/rationalist/Elite Human Capital™ bloggers.

Lately, I've noticed they will go to great lengths to defend killing babies (not fetuses, but actual babies who have been born), as well as defending things like bestiality, and stuff involving underage people — but then they'll turn around and question the moral intuitions of someone who thinks that sleeping around with hundreds of partners is at least a little bit degenerate.

For all that they claim to be part of the high IQ subset, they seem to have a very hard time modeling the intuitions and beliefs of someone who has a different starting value framework as themselves. But I digress.

DeepLeft mentions that Aella receives a lot more criticism on Twitter vs. Substack. I can’t speak to a direct comparison, although I do have the following observation on this platform, which is somewhat instructive:

At the time of writing this, I’m aware of four people who have blocked me

1. The first is Celeste Davis — which, fair enough, I’ve criticized much of her work.

2. The second is the real Casey Anthony — which is baffling to me, because I was just asking her what her favorite song was. I told her that mine was “Hit me baby one more time” by Britney Spears.

3. The third is Gurwinder Bhogal, when I pointed out that he was milking Luigi Mangione (and Brian Thompson’s murder) for content.

4. And the fourth is Richard Hanania, when I replied to one of his notes with this picture:

All of these people have readerships somewhere between six thousand and sixty thousand people. They effectively make a living by giving edgy and heterodox opinions on the Internet — and yet, when I saw how quickly they banned me (literally seconds after I posted) and how innocuous the offense was (no slurs, no spamming, not even really an insult) — I was left with the impression that these folks are incredibly fragile.

As much as they talk about the “free market of ideas” and how all the right-wing chuds are in their little bubble, they seem to want to live in a bubble of their own. They can't seem to handle even the most lighthearted and playful criticisms of their ideas.

Moreover, people like Aella take this process one step farther, because they know that these platforms are another way to market themselves and get clients for their sex work. People like her know that the backlash is built into the marketing strategy.

It's no different than the recent Sabrina Carpenter stuff; despite never having listened to any of her music, I know that she has a new album coming out because of the controversy she's drummed up with the album cover. That controversy is built into the marketing strategy.

Even DeepLeft himself acknowledges at the end of his post:

This [Aella] episode has caused people to pay attention to her, like me, who would otherwise not. In the attention economy, that’s a W.

Which brings me to the motivation behind this post

DeepLeft’s post left me scratching my head. In general I like his content, yet I found pretty much every argument of his to be so weak so as to make me come away with the exact opposite conclusion.

AND YET, I nevertheless agreed with DeepLeft’s overall conclusion: people should say whatever they want on the Internet, so long as they are not repeatedly spamming, using bots, doxxing, or making specific calls to violence.

That being said, if you’re a fully mature person over the age of 25, and you make your living by giving controversial opinions on highly charged subjects, then you can’t suddenly get mad when you receive backlash every so often.

I think the commonality between a person like me and DeepLeft is that we both post things on the internet with the mentality of “here is some shit that’s on my mind, I hope you read it.”

As such, I think he fails to appreciate the degree to which a lot of these larger bloggers (who make a living by being terminally online) post things with the express intent of farming as much engagement as possible.

These terminally online people are fully aware of the dynamics that play out on these platforms. It’s quite hypocritical want to benefit from the dynamics while simultaneously being shielded from the downsides.

And indeed, Aella has benefitted massively. Last time I checked, Aella was literally at the top of the leaderboard on the education category on this website.

“Education”

If she wanted to shield herself from criticism, she could easily do so. All she would have to do is paywall the majority of her content, and move from Twitter to BlueSky.

But that would be less fun, because there would be less right wingers to dunk on, and less people to market to.

Anyways, I’m off to the petting zoo — I heard they installed a new exhibit.

(And remember, anyone who disagrees with me just has Ghostwind Derangement Syndrome™)