You have to choose A or B. I’m sorry, them’s the rules, no waffling allowed, because we believe in a strict binary decision here.
Jordan Peterson took this simple test, and failed, perhaps because he’s one of those animals that can’t handle the mirror test. When Sports Illustrated announced its annual swimsuit issue with a picture of (A), a woman named Yumi Nu, he declared Sorry. Not beautiful. And now amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.
I guess he is the definitive judge of the swimsuit competition, and thinks beauty is a physical absolute instead of a personal opinion.
Many people on Twitter were jolted into tweeting by the jarringly stupid, nasty mind that would say such a thing, and jumped all over him. So he announced that he was quitting Twitter because everyone was a poopyhead to say such mean things about him.
there's something so distinctively peterson about needlessly calling some random actual woman ugly under the bullshit guise of intellectual concern for the west and authoritarianism, and then whining about how people online are being mean to him pic.twitter.com/bSJkUe6cZ1
— Big Joel (@biggestjoel) May 17, 2022
Wow. I feel like saying “get a thicker skin”, the go-to response people make when they point out the cruelty of the internet, that he should just ignore that which he dislikes, the way I ignore the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Unfortunately, he made a very big deal of his departure.
The staunch proponent of free speech recently bemoaned “self-censorship as a multiplier of cancel culture” and in December called a critic with less than 70 followers a “fool and a coward.” Eventually, however, Peterson faltered under the intensity of the backlash.
He lamented the “endless flood of vicious insults” and opined that Twitter’s structure makes it “intrinsically and dangerously insane.” He also said that he’d recently taken a Twitter break for a few weeks and found it drastically improved his life. (His staff appears to have tweeted from his account in Peterson’s stead.)
So he’s decided to take leave of the platform once again.
“I told my staff to change my password, to keep me from temptation, and am departing,” he tweeted.
Wait. He’s got a staff to handle his Twitter account? And he’s having them change his password instead of deleting his account? That’s an entitled chickenshit move.
He then proceeded to tweet incessantly after making that announcement — I guess he was making a Minnesota good-bye. He may have sort of finally kinda left, though, with his latest and maybe last tweet, smugly announcing that he had 5 million followers on YouTube. It’s a version of I didn’t want to play stickball with you meanies anyway, ’cause I’ve got a Nintendo at home. Nyaa nyaa nyaa.
He’s one of those people who use their follower count as a measure of their worth.
I don’t follow him on Twitter or on YouTube though, so he can just petulantly march away and I won’t care, except to point and laugh at the whiner.
P.S. I won’t leave you hanging. The answer to my little quiz is B, B is not beautiful, using the principles of authoritarian tolerance
, whatever that is.
Gasp! That should be “fewer than 70 followers.” Truly, the West is in decline. And I have to agree, Nintendo beats stickball. But I predict his exit from Twitter will be temporary. People like that just can’t help themselves.
I wouldn’t say “no” to her if she asked.
I got into it briefly on YT with a some JP-fans who insisted that “THEY” are trying to make us accept “fat” and “out of shape” women rather than slim, “healthy” women for… reasons.
Why didn’t he tell “his staff” to “troll people on twitter; I’ll be out playing polo with EricT” or whatever it is the big twitter influencers do?
@ 4
I don’t think that Jordy is any condition–physical or mental–to play tic-tac-toe, much less polo.
Happy birthday, Bertrand Russell.
It has nothing to do with beauty but I suspect Peterson would be outraged by Russel’s ideas, which is a plus. Yes, I am trolling Peterson. With philosophy.
I find it amusing how these people, who claim to be so enamoured with “Western culture”, are apparently so ignorant of it that they clearly have no idea of how the standards of female beauty as depicted in the generally-accepted great works of art of said culture have changed over the last few centuries. No, there’s a univeral objective standard of female beauty, and it just so happens to coincide exactly with the images used in advertising in the last few decades. Sure.
Fucking troglodytes.
The rancor is frozen on his face.
Peterson’s “staff” is probably his daughter.
Peterson should check with Elon before he brags about his 5 million followers. He might not be aware that Elon thinks many (most?) of those are spam accounts. Wonder how many were created by his “staff”?
The person in A has a beaming radiant smile. The person in B looks severely constipated from an all meat diet and has apparently been taking fashion cues from Don Johnson’s character Nash Bridges ca late 90s. Perversely overdressed windbag and isn’t in any position to be pontificating on aesthetics of the human form.
I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll comment with my unfiltered thoughts.
Jordan Peterson is actually a handsome guy (in my opinion) whose face froze trying to imitate actor Jeremy Irons looking “deep in thought.” More recently, though, he looks perpetually hungover. Maybe he’s obsessed with appearance because he gets by on looking the part of “serious professor” rather than having anything significant or even coherent to say.
Yumi Nu is beautiful, though I honestly think she’s cuter in the picture holding the magazine than on the cover itself. Great smile! That’s a weird swimsuit design, seemingly composed of triangular sunshades. She’d look better in a conventional bikini. Peterson doesn’t even know his art history if he thinks Nu’s figure is unaesthetic.
Attraction is a personal matter, and no “authoritarian tolerance” will get everyone to agree with me that Peterson’s problem isn’t his looks. If he’s trying to convince Yumi Nu to adopt his red meat and vodka diet, he should probably give up. She looks way to confident for that kind of nonsense.
And now it’s “self-censorship as a multiplier of cancel culture”? This guy is getting sillier every day.
As for Yumi, she’s quite hot, and a welcome break from all those generic skinny women we normally see in adverts. And she looks much better in the dress than in that godawful swimsuit they put her in. Seriously, whoever designed that thing has about as much catching-up to do as Peterson.
Jordan Peterson seems to be going through a phase most people go through in grade-school, or at worst middle school: insult someone with great pomposity thinking it shows how much more grown-up and worldly you are; get an unexpected backlash from your peers who aren’t as impressed as you thought they surely would be; then slink off in a wave of shame and hope everyone forgets about it ASAP, and — hopefully — admit to yourself that you were wrong and start acting better. It remains to be seen whether JP gets to that last step…I’m not all that hopeful of it.
@6. Precisely
https://www.google.com/amp/s/instalove.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/skinny-shaming/amp/
If Sports Illustrated can so routinely present 350-lb. men as athletes (and really, they can be), I see no reason why this lady can’t be considered a beautiful swimsuit model.
I will never understand why so many men find it necessary to comment on a woman’s appearance like that. Who cares what you think, dude? Just shut the hell up and go find some whacking material you do like.
Ayn Rand was apparently big on this idea; that “reason” should reveal what was and wasn’t “objectively” beautiful. Of course, what objectiviely pleasing just so happened to be her personal tastes in music, art, etc. and anyone who said otherwise was obviously “anti-mind, anti-man, anti-reason!”
Yumi Nu is, in fact, a professional model (so I read): she makes a living from her beauty, so enough people find her beautiful for that to be a success.
It’s not just art history, it’s the Western Canon of literature that Peterson wants to “defend”: in Jane Austen (Persuasion), “thin” is an insult and “plump” is a compliment to your beauty.
I think that Peterson has scurvy from his all-meat diet, and that’s the ill-health.
Akira MacKenzie@15 Yes, and smoking. “It’s very grown up.” as famous objectivist Peppa Pig would say.
Didn’t one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged smoke cigarettes with “the sign of the dollar” on them? She goes into a little revery (in that or Fountainhead) on the symbolism of holding tamed fire. It’s totally rational and nothing to do with nicotine addiction. No sirree!
If Rand had been a heroin addict, I’m sure she could have waxed poetic on the hypodermic needle. It really is a marvel of “Man’s” inventive ability that should be celebrated with regular injections.
At a more abstract level, there is something important that Peterson and most of today’s rightwing get very wrong. Sports Illustrated is not an “authoritarian” publication produced by some Ministry of Feminine Aesthetics who determine and enforce cultural trends.
SI is a for-profit magazine with an annual swimsuit issue that its editors believe caters to popular tastes and sells issues. That’s the “magic of the freaking marketplace” in action. Yumi Nu (who I see is also a singer songwriter) gets paid to appear in photoshoots because people like her photos and will pay to see her.
So if Peterson believes we should be exposed to different media, he could at least identify who’s responsible for the current situation. It is not “wokeness” or “authoritarian tolerance.” It’s a corporation driven by the profit motive. While I don’t believe the market results in optimum outcomes, it is certainly preferable to Jordan Peterson’s dictating who we should find attractive.
As is postulated in our book “omniascendence”, ‘beauty is in the mind of the beholder’ because the eyes often collude with a distorted superficial sense of aesthetics in trying to define what is beautiful. I know many people who may not be considered physically beautiful, but are beautiful in their thoghts and actions. As the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band said in concert in the 1960s, ‘beauty is only skin deep, but ugly comes clear from the bone’
@ 17
Yes, they were made in John Galt’s magical capitalist-sociopath (Whoops! Tautology!) utopia. Rand made the dollar sign a symbol of her “philosophy.” There is nary a picture of Rand post-Atlas-Shrugged when she isn’t wearing a dollar sign broach on her person.
Ah this makes me misty eyed…such a touching tribute to a person known for her compassion:
“Ayn Rand’s body lay next to the symbol she had adopted as her own – a six-foot dollar sign.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/10/nyregion/followers-of-ayn-rand-provide-a-final-tribute.html
Not a fan of the swimsuit, tbch.
I’ve noticed Trump does the same thing-takes cheap shots at women for no good reason.
I think the swimsuit compliments her figure. The shapes work with the body type.
@23
it is just to get attention while it may not be a good reason it is a reason.
I thought of Renoir almost immediately the suit is a little too high style and the cover photo is kind of dull not atypical for SI
or still drunk just all cleaned up. he certainly sounds like it.
PaulBC @18:
Sports Illustrated is not an “authoritarian” publication produced by some Ministry of Feminine Aesthetics who determine and enforce cultural trends. SI is a for-profit magazine…
To libertarians, that means SI is indeed an authoritative publication.
If Rand had been a heroin addict, I’m sure she could have waxed poetic on the hypodermic needle.
She was able to wax poetic on the moral focus and purity of murderer, dismemberer, serial killers. It should have been a career-ender but there was still shock value left.
Peterson is living in a time when his competitors are Wakefield, the Trumps, and Putin; I jist don’t think he’s got it anymore whatever “it” is.
Looks to me like the “most interesting man” ad.
This toad of a man is not qualified to lick her shoe. She makes her living as a model, but the pompous windbag thinks he is entitled to ignore reality in order to insult her and put in a blurb for his imaginary cancel culture.
I also think that bathing suit is some sort of hideous torture device that resulted when an 80s aerobics leotard was crossed with the costumes from Barbarella.
The only alternative left for Prof. Peterson is to open a little bed-n-breakfast on some lonely, lightly-traveled two-lane blacktop heading out of Los Angeles.
I mean, de gustibus non est disputandum, right?
Chacun a son gout?
“no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” I’m sorry, WTF – has Peterson, that leading intellectual, lost his ability to use the English language? And has he also lost any sense that “beauty” is not only in the eye of the beholder but that the “eye” has changed throughout history and across cultures? His ability to reason, never strong, is now at kindergarten level.
He looks like Tom Hanks playing a boring dude.
Re: Dr. Palito @ #31…
Randall Garrett used to translate that as “There is no disputing that Gus is in the east.”
Actually, beauty is a physical absolute — at least according to Max Factor. He even patented his beauty calibrator.
(https://celebritygraveland.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/factor3.jpg)
The only question is whether this is how Peterson got his results. I’m sure you must have used something comparable in comparing your two photos, though it was totally unnecessary.
simplicio,
Nah. What makes you imagine he even applied any sort of method for his personal preference?
Something comparable to something about which you do not know?
Fair enough. Comparatively. :)
Not like your comment, then?
—
As to beauty standards, I’ve heard that some people like “bears”… which perhaps means that Peterson (as depicted in that photo) is liked by those with a predilection to ferrets.
(Sorry, ferrets!)
Obviously Peterson has never visited a museum lol. What would he say about Rubens, for instance? And the model in the swimsuit would be considered anorexic in the ME…they still like a “traditional woman” (as Precious Ramotswe would say)
Yeah, and moreso back when.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
When I read Petersons tweet, frankly I didn’t understand what he meant by that. What on earth is “authoritarian tolerance” and how is it supposed to change one’s tastes?
The mildly deranged penguin suggests the two individuals swap costumes to see if the knucklehead’s claim can survive even a minor test. She suggests Yumi Nu would look nice in knucklehead Peterson’s suit (especially if she is emotionally comfortable wearing it†), whilst Peterson’s knuckleheadedness would be even more glaringly obvious.
† Both the mildly deranged penguin and I agree that one must be both physically and emotionally comfortable with one’s costume / clothing. Looking nice to others is a secondary consideration — which neither requires nor precludes its desirability.
@40
To right-wing scum like Peterson, being anything other than a jacked-up athlete or an anorexic supermodel is unhealthy, ugly, and indictive of laziness and low moral character. According to them, by presenting women like Ms. Nu as “beautiful” the “Post-modernist NeoMarxists” who run the media are attempting to subvert what Peterson thinks is the objective, god-ordained standard of female beauty while the PC thought police in academia and government will force us to like it.
I think we need to see a picture of B in that swimsuit in order to give you a proper answer
John Morales@39 Yup! Those sculptures did cross my mind. I’m not sure where I first saw them, either in an intro to art history course in college, or maybe general reading or documentary viewing. And I’m just a techie. They should be part of general cultural literacy.
Peterson’s a Jungian, right? Shouldn’t ancient depictions of fertility be part of his ancestral memory? Or at least he better have an explanation why not.
@Akira MacKenzie #42
And with “authoritarian tolerance” Peterson refers to those “Postmodernist Neo-Marxists”? Interesting semantics.
I think part of it was Peterson being caught off guard by getting push back from his supporters as well. He’s used to them defending him on everything so he must be feeling betrayed. It’s nice to know there’s a line for that many of them don’t want to see crossed, but I still don’t see how many supporters he still had after the whole Russian induced coma thing.
For the Ayn Rand stuff, I knew a couple of people once who argued that objectively Rush was the best band ever because they were objectivists so they had to be objective on this. Now it could have been tongue in cheek, but they were Ayn Rand loving objectivists and IIRC correctly the guy also didn’t care for age of consent laws.
Tabby: There do seem to be much fewer rabid knee-jerk defenses of JP these days. Maybe it’s because all the JP fanboys have been banned by now. Maybe his fan-base are running out of steam, or maybe he did lose a good bit of support (not to mention energy to whip up same) with the whole weird-health-scares-and-even-weirder-responses-to-same thing. Not all con-artists can keep up their acts going permanently.
Let’s hope this means the end of JP as a relevant pop-culture figure…
If ya gotta objectify women, nothing wrong with a little body positivity, I always say. So half a yay for Sports Illustrated.
In my day she would be called ‘voluptuous‘; “provocative and sexually alluring, esp through shapeliness or fullness: a voluptuous woman“. Today, BBW.
Lordy, this, this is what breaks JP’s fanbois loose? Not enforced monogamy or his lies about trans pronouns, but him having a sad boner about Ms Nu?
rietpluim @40 (and others):
I think that here “authoritatian” means “enforces tolerance of diversity” and “tolerance” means “allowing diversity”.
That was his schtick from the start, how he made his bones so to speak; to paraphrase:
“What, you want to enforce my tolerating people’s preferred pronouns? How authoritarian! I, freedom fighter extraordinaire and maybe martyr, pledge to fight this sort of authoritarian tolerance!”
(Sorry, had to dig up a few exclamation marks from the dump, to do it justice)
The conservatives love to die in the strangest of hills.