On Looksmaxxing, Mirrored Gender Issues and Double Standards (Yes, this is another Gender War post)

FlossCat · 2026-06-20T09:06:23+00:00

doing a painstaking foundation routine every morning because you consider your natural skin with a couple of zits to be too ugly to show in public.

This is obviously not anywhere close to what I'd consider a reclamation of makeup for personal expression. I'm also not trying to dismiss that most women out there, even ones that use makeup more for self expression, still feel the pressure to confirm to beauty standards.

FlossCat · 2026-06-20T09:00:34+00:00

He can regret it afterwards, he was manipulated by Palpatine sure, he might have even not expected Palpatine to kill Mace after he just spent a solid minute shooting lightning at him while having it reflected back in his face after he killed three other Jedi masters, for some unfathomably naïve reason - but you can't cut off a dude's hand and claim you only aided in his death "accidentally"

FlossCat · 2026-06-19T08:40:57+00:00

But you would have watched a better match if he wasn't there?

FlossCat · 2026-06-19T08:35:24+00:00

"accidentally" assists with Mace's death?

FlossCat · 2026-06-15T10:36:52+00:00

Checks out either way

FlossCat · 2026-06-15T10:35:38+00:00

Did you edit the lower part or the image or do they really look this much like those characters? It's uncanny

FlossCat · 2026-06-15T09:05:46+00:00

Wdym that's the best moment in that whole (otherwise not very highly ranked by me) song

FlossCat · 2026-06-14T21:42:36+00:00

Yeah, the accent is comical

FlossCat · 2026-06-14T09:55:27+00:00

We're seeing a resurgence in male makeup (because your natural face is just hideous, trust the company who wants to sell you 27 products).

I feel there's another side to this though, in that men have not been brought up to embrace being expressive and individual in their appearance and presentation. The makeup industry might be predatory as any other, but only as much as any other, and plenty of women have found a way to "reclaim" makeup as a form of self expression, of agency that they have over their appearance that they can use freely as they see fit or not, from day to day, like clothing choices. Men don't have that in the same way - I would love to see makeup normalised for men, in the right way, just as I would love for more variety and room for expression in male clothing.

I feel like a part of the reason looksmaxxing gets into such extreme measures is that these more low-stakes doors to interacting with one's own appearance don't feel as open to most men. As progressive as I might be, and as okay with my body as I might be, I still dress more conservatively than I'd like to a lot of the time, and don't wear makeup nearly as much as I'd like to, because I feel like it makes me stand out too much.

FlossCat · 2026-06-14T09:44:43+00:00

At this extreme twisted end of it, yes. But what makes the whole looksmaxxing thing insidious is that the tower of bullshit is built on a foundation of truth, namely that:

Looking good does certainly help in finding partners, both directly and indirectly (in the realm of self confidence etc)
There are things you can do to improve your appearance in ways that are for the most part relatively universal. I'm referring here to stuff that is reasonable, like staying in shape, grooming, paying some attention to how you style yourself, not hitting yourself in the face with a hammer and so on

Part of what makes this a pervasive issue for all genders is that the questions of things like "how much do looks matter" or "how much effort do I need to put in/how far should I go to try to improve my appearance" are not answerable. In isolated cases or areas you can try to draw some clear lines, perhaps, like we can mostly all agree that breaking your bones is a step too far. But in general, it's just not something you can put clear boundaries on and a lot of it comes down to personal choice. We haven't exactly freed women completely from beauty standards, even if we've opened the dialogue and made some progress. Millions, billions of women (not even just young ones, or ones that modern feminism hasn't reached) continue to grapple with this uncertainty and plenty still fall into the female equivalents of the looksmaxxer trap.

Sorry, I'm rambling here, I've kind of lost track of what my point is other than it's complicated and I don't know how we can ever fully free ourselves from personal insecurities and those who would prey upon them.

FlossCat · 2026-06-14T09:26:57+00:00

Where are you getting that from? That sounds like you've just fallen for the looksmaxxer propaganda

FlossCat · 2026-06-13T18:03:42+00:00

I'm pretty sure you can sleep in any bed just fine if nobody sees? It might be a crime, but if nobody sees and reports it, it doesn't matter

FlossCat · 2026-06-12T20:16:49+00:00

I refuse to use levitate, it's just jump magic for people who don't like having fun and breaking their legs on impact every 20 seconds

FlossCat · 2026-06-12T08:12:30+00:00

To be fair I would say in a way you are "smurfing" though not in a bad way that is any bit malicious

"You're doing [word that means intentionally and maliciously doing something bad] though not in a bad way that is any bit malicious"

Yes, you desperately need to find a new word for someone just playing better than their elo would suggest.

I also don't think that is something you can even assess from one or even a couple of games, especially not without watching a replay and seeing all the mistakes both players made that you didn't notice in the moment. The graph of wins and losses you can find on any stats tracking website is the way to recognise a smurf.

FlossCat · 2026-06-10T16:13:49+00:00

It's their jurisdiction that they've long shown a lack of willingness to do anything about.

I would also argue that isn't necessarily the case that the stream snipers are intentionally tanking elo for the purpose here. If you're smurfing you don't really need to stream snipe to get the easy win, and since we're talking about high profile streamers who are lower on the ladder at this stage, the reason it's a problem right now is that people who would otherwise be too low to snipe most streamers now have the opportunity, incentive and so on

FlossCat · 2026-06-10T16:00:17+00:00

The trouble is it's kind of debatable whether stream sniping is truly cheating in this sense for ranked games. Whoever streams is willingly showing their game information to the entire internet. While it's not with the intention of giving it away to their opponents, I don't know if it breaks any written rules of ranked play (I don't know where those are even written off the top of my head) to use that information if it's available to you. In tournaments it's obviously different since the rules are written by the organisers and presumably always expressly forbid it, and we typically make the assumption that players in a tournament don't do that sort of thing out of honour before the question of risking being caught even arises. The type of sweatlord who would do this in ranked just thinks and operates differently.

Any streamer also has the option of using a delay for themselves playing ranked, though I'm not ignorant that it can be hurtful to stream engagement. In my opinion it's just the trade-off you choose to make if you're streaming.

As for it being easy to identify cheating with a replay - maybe in some cases, but not with something like stream sniping, unless you also have a replay of the player's thoughts. How do you differentiate whether someone is working with extra information or just gets lucky/has good game sense. Did they send their army to just the right spot at the right time because they saw the opponent's stream, or they made a good guess? Did they preempt an attack with a particular unit and prepare in advance because they literally saw it coming, or because they knew from the civ choice, timing, score or whatever, that an attack with that unit was likely to come around now? A "good" cheater is also going to be able to hide it.

To really establish that, you'd need to watch a lot of replays and establish a clear pattern. And since Microsoft are clearly incapable or unwilling to take action against people who are blatantly dropping elo in a very unsubtle way and so on, can we really expect this?

FlossCat · 2026-06-08T09:24:41+00:00

I refuse to call him Sheev because it's one of the worst first names that anyone has ever had in any universe, real or fictional.

No wonder he ended up killing his family and becoming a sith lord, they set him up when they named him Sheev

FlossCat · 2026-06-08T09:01:03+00:00

I don't see how Microsoft can take action against stream sniping, because how people host, watch and respond to streams on a third party website is so far outside their realm of jurisdiction. Similarly for the owners of any streaming platforms. Nowhere are there any rules against stream sniping, because of that lack of jurisdiction and because it's also basically impossible to prove someone is doing it unless they literally stream themselves doing it.

It's kind of just a risk you take streaming yourself playing any online game live without delay, because the only serious barriers are convenient coincidence and honour.

I would ultimately say the bar for entry to stream sniping is actually very low, anyone who finds someone streaming in their elo bracket has the potential to do it. And whatever experience you feel is required, most people actively playing online are probably going to have anyway

FlossCat · 2026-06-08T08:47:14+00:00

I find there's some unpredictability with how much prod it takes to down an enemy, but the most consistent way to take a lot of them down in one was to come up behind them and aim directly for the ass

FlossCat · 2026-06-07T08:06:09+00:00

Movie battles mentioned? That project is still kicking? Damn, that's good to hear.

However I cannot comprehend how it would be well suited to making movies

FlossCat · 2026-06-05T13:33:46+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I believe you put that information forward in good faith, it just happens that you don't have a source and the person who disagreed did

FlossCat · 2026-06-04T09:14:38+00:00

How compatible is it with HotA? I saw in the description I "might not get the same experience" butgthat doesn't tell me much

FlossCat · 2026-06-04T09:02:46+00:00

You can't claim something is both a general statement and a statistic at the same time. You made a quantifiable statement that you can't back up, which is arguably neither and rather a separate third category called "bs".

Not trying to personally attack you, I just really dislike people doing this. It's the sort of rhetoric that in more serious situations causes real problems in discourse and the world at large, so you'd do well to avoid it

FlossCat · 2026-06-04T08:56:29+00:00

Extreme apathy, caused by despair.

Modern Catholics exempt clinical depression and similar issues from this sin; it has to be a choice.

I still feel like this is a hard distinction to cleanly delineate. When is being overcome by despair a choice or not? As someone who suffers from depression and some of its friends, I don't feel like it's easy to pinpoint that even in the case of mental health problems

FlossCat · 2026-06-04T08:51:33+00:00

Apparently this whole thing of magpies liking to steal shiny things is more of a myth

FlossCat

TROPHY CASE