the jeffrey epstein memorial poll and conspiracy-mongering thread

They say sunshine is the best disinfectant. But failing that, bushel baskets of cash do the job pretty well, too.

FBI studies two broken cameras outside cell where Epstein died: source https://t.co/l9Zm9DIKVz pic.twitter.com/dlC9lwFpnp

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 29, 2019

oh hey another insultingly predictable development

huh

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/ghislaine-maxwell?events=175309124&family=editorial&phrase=ghislaine%20maxwell&sort=best#license

Selma Blair's time to shine in the eventual movie imho

thanks to the tipster who sent these pix of Prince Andrew at an Eyes Wide Shut themed party pic.twitter.com/RSWZa6q1rp

— Molly Lambert 🦔 (@mollylambert) August 29, 2019

Maxwell's probably been at some of the same social gatherings as Trump since her dad was alive, no?

THIS IS IN GHISLAINE’S HOUSE pic.twitter.com/xEucMcTtqo

— Molly Lambert 🦔 (@mollylambert) August 30, 2019

Oh come on, now they're exaggerating - who doesn't have an innocent picture of a harem in their house?

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/atmosphere-at-hamish-bowles-ghislaine-maxwell-and-lillian-news-photo/609446606

the way eyes wide shut keeps popping up around this guy and the people connected to him is... intriguing

Eh, this is taking a turn for the Pizzagate - could we stick with the sexual abuse and leave the art criticism?

otfm

I'm as appalled as everyone else that the jeffrey epstein memorial poll and conspiracy-mongering thread might have devolved into frivolous speculation but, wrt Epstein in particular, it seems pretty clear that his weird aesthetic choices reveal something about the kind of persona he wanted to project and the atmosphere he wanted to create for his co-conspirators and victims. Maxwell possibly less so.

citation needed

Even if they used "secret symbols" relating to pedophilia, it's not really all that interesting when you step back from it, because, uh, we already know that they were pedophiles. Like, that's the sinister part, not the use of symbols.

As an aside I just want to thank the dreamlords for not making that thing show up in my dreams last night after I made the mistake of looking closely at it right before bed.

I'm as appalled as everyone else that the jeffrey epstein memorial poll and conspiracy-mongering thread might have devolved into frivolous speculation

lol

Even if they used "secret symbols" relating to pedophilia, it's not really all that interesting when you step back from it, because, uh, we already know that they were pedophiles. Like, that's the sinister part, not the use of symbols.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), 30. august 2019 16:12 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, but it is a bit scary that they seemed to have quite openly advertised that they were, at least, exploiting women. That mail John Brockman send to Evgeny Morozov (https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-intellectual-enabler), there's just no doubt that he's trying to lure Morozov with the promise of sex with prostitutes / models. And that Epstein is a 'perv' seems to be a selling point. They wanted it to seem like they had a nefarious sex cult like on Eyes Wide Shut.

Would the MIT Media Lab, TED Conferences, and Wired have the clout and the intellectual orientation that they have now without the extensive network cultivated by Brockman over decades? I, for one, very much doubt it.

the specific clout these things share is what makes them less-interesting entries in the scientific/intellectual space imo

And that Epstein is a 'perv' seems to be a selling point.

Well it's already out there that he was more or less pimping out girls to associates so yeah. I don't think that was necessarily the attraction for everyone who hung out with him--he was also just rich and connected, and someone could certainly wind up invited to his party either without knowing more about him or just looking the other way (especially an elite person used to traveling in circles where no one really gets in trouble for anything most of the time).

What I'm getting at is, we know there was a pedophilia ring operating. That's bad enough. Focusing on all the "symbols" and stuff just give it this supernatural or horror movie element that (1) it really doesn't need and (2) kind of render the whole thing cartoonish and distract from the much more real and, in some senses, ordinary horror. Which I get, the guy had a fucking temple on his island, but still, unless you actually believe in Satan, it's almost beside the point.

Yeah, I agree, and the other thing is that this cartoonish evil might even be it's own sort of cover up, meant to get Epstein to look weird and kitchy, rather than an exploitive pedophile. But for me then that becomes it's own kind of horror, the forethought that goes into that kind of cover up. But that's not how it's reported.

Honestly without the eccentricity the case would probably fall out of the discourse entirely so I say talk it up

i feel like the whole "this paedophile spent lots of time with some of america's most prominent men including half of the presidents of the last quarter century" is "interesting" enough on its own

Honestly without the eccentricity the case would probably fall out of the discourse entirely so I say talk it up

― Simon H., 30. august 2019 21:48 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah, it got back into the discourse through the work of Julie K Brown, and those articles didn't play up the eccentricity at all.

Maybe, but shit like the temple, that MMA guy interview, and the Eyes Wide Shut connections are keeping it there.

is it insane that I don't care about any of this? Simon and Fred seem to care a lot which is a good indication I shouldn't care about this at all, but I'm not positive

there's only a few hundred (or more) alleged victims and a few former and current heads of state involved so

*furiously tries to formulate take*

Maybe, but shit like the temple, that MMA guy interview, and the Eyes Wide Shut connections are keeping it there.

― Simon H., 30. august 2019 21:57 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've literally only heard about Eyes Wide Shut, and that's because Eazy posted about it. It's not at all what I see people talking about. Unlesss MMA means something else than Mixed Martial Arts?

there's only a few hundred (or more) alleged victims and a few former and current heads of state involved so

― Simon H., Friday, August 30, 2019 1:04 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean the actual crimes are obviously bad but what does it profit me to pay attention to it now instead of reading about it in a book in seven or ten years

He fucked a bunch of kids and the guy who was secretary of Labor until last month gave him a sweetheart deal?

what does it profit me to pay attention to it now instead of reading about it in a book in seven or ten years

idk what to tell you, seems like this would apply to....the vast majority of topics

including the trump presidency

Yeah, is this like from the point of view of getting laid at parties, or..?

I thought we already covered that topic.

(sorry)

idk what to tell you, seems like this would apply to....the vast majority of topics

― Simon H., Friday, August 30, 2019 1:19 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

including the trump presidency

― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, August 30, 2019 1:23 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is how I treat the trump presidency fwiw

I'm in no way the "ahem, you mean ephebophile guy" and think we should be considering any predation on youth equally repulsive but that is in no way the way any of these guys, or a large swath of society, has thought about the exploitation of girls and the larger idea that a lot of people still refuse to grasp is that the commodification of teen girls is inherently wrong

It's the same mindset that means there's no cognitive dissonance between the same people saying "oh, he always had girls around" or "Jeff would hook these guys up with girls" and immediately referring to the same exploited people as "young women" as soon as it's implied something wrong occurred

There's a lie that the perceived sexual attractiveness of these teen children, and the value placed on that attraction by lechs like Epstein, somehow means that they had some sort of power. And the language used around that attraction is always phrased as if the older, exploitative man has lesser agency. It's always "he couldn't help himself" or "I just *had* to grab her" or whatever other disgusting construction exists. And it goes hand-in-hand with language blaming victims, claims that a teen is able to "lead on" an adult or a claim that if they "didn't really want" to be exploited, they'd have gone to authorities, parents, etc. -- and we know how effective that is.

I think pinning the broader problem of the objectification and commodification of girls' sexuality on extremely exploitative and powerful people like Epstein and treating this case as extreme doesn't help. Yes, he was involved in and an enabler for some completely horrible things. At the same time, the surface level of what he was doing (surrounding himself with girls who may have seemed of consenting age, using access to an environment with lots of young women as a perk) sits right on the edge of what a large swath of culture has deemed if not acceptable, within the bounds of normal behavior.

We're to the point where society is getting much better at questioning the inherent power dynamics that can lead to exploitation when it comes to age, workplace reporting, student/instructor relationships, etc. but the exploitation of these things is still too-often shrugged off.

I think, to jim's point, it's "interesting" that he spent time with presidents, but at the same time, these are men who we know exploited their power to assault or coerce women in a completely open (or publicly revealed) way and while the public disapproves, many people are willing to shrug it off as a lesser sin. I don't think any information is going to put Bill Clinton in a room with a fifteen year old he knowingly exploited, but if Epstein's enabling means we end up seeing pictures of a woman he "thought was eighteen" sitting in his lap, I'm going to be disgusted and not at all surprised.

All of this depresses me, but I'm sadly past being shocked. Obviously all the leads stemming from the Epstein case should be run down and offenders should be prosecuted, but I'm worried that for too many people, the concentration is going to be on Epstein as a completely outlier sicko and the line of what's acceptable won't change for most.

idk I won't shit up your thread I'm just agog at all the pepesilvia.jpg that seems to be going on xps

wow mh v otm and much smarter than I can be during business hours

I think the only reason to make the pedophile/ephebophile distinction is in the application of societal change and not moral judgment, because both are fucked up but only one relies on the pervasive idea that there's some notion that for girls there is no real period of adolescence and that there's a near-overnight granting of adult social and sexual agency.

Our society has some very fucked up ideas about who is allowed to have an adolescence and how long that lasts!

thanks silby! I'm still in run-on repetitive sentence mode but I haven't had to expend too much brainpower on work this week and I've only just returned from vacation

I mean the actual crimes are obviously bad but what does it profit me to pay attention to it now instead of reading about it in a book in seven or ten years

the likelihood that he was very un-stealthily murdered in prison, about a year after the sitting president, to whom he was connected, burbled approvingly about a US journalist being sawed to death inside a consulate, bcz said journalist had embarrassed a despot, is a data point worth noting

if you are not waiting seven years to read about the president, shrug

I'm also a regular traveller on the "it's valuable to assess the power violations and motivating pathology between raping small children, trafficking teenagers, and assaulting adult women, as sometimes different" train, good post mh

I have no clue if that’s sarcastic

sic I think mh’s point is that the sexual exploitation of postpubescent girls is basically acceptable in our culture, and that a fixation on the powerful men and the conspiracy involved isn’t actually reckoning with that

My point is that the news is basically a slot machine, suspending the customer in a state of modulated anxiety, dripping out slow poison at a steady clip with just enough exciting moments to keep you plugging in quarters, and I no longer care to engage.

The difference between this thread and threads debating theories about Lost is no teenagers were raped to bring you ABC’s Lost

No sarcasm at all! There are hundreds of horrible aspects about, around & connected to these issues & focusing especially on any one of them sadly lessens reckoning with many others

But I don’t want to derail this thread by bringing more examples in

u see

xxxpost

silby I get it, I stopped reading or listening to news media for about five years out of pure horrified despair during Howard’s second term

turned out this didn’t actually stop the news from happening, unfortunately