I hadn't heard of "lobotomy-chic," but I knew the history of lobotomies, so this article wasn't written for me, but it did tip me off to a trend I'm interested to read about:
It’s become a common social media discourse: the memeification of lobotomies; the romanticization of sanitariums. The hashtag #lobotomychic has 9.3 million views on TikTok; a tweet that reads “I wish it was 1952 so my husband could just take me to get a lobotomy” earned more than 26,000 likes. “Back in the day your husband used to pay for your lobotomy, now thanks to *feminism* I have to pay for my own,” says another user to a chorus of more than 11,000 views. Then there’s this love letter to the trend from i-D magazine, which calls it the “duckface of a nihilistic era” and heralds the “dissociative pout” as the new it-girl go-to for selfies. The article unpacks the aesthetics of sullen eyes and swollen lips — all without once mentioning why women who were lobotomized actually had that vacant look in their eyes; why dissociation for them was a constant state of being. Then there are the viral TikTok makeup tutorials on how to get the lobotomy chic look. If you’re an ASMR girlie, maybe you’ll enjoy this “drive-through lobotomy” simulation where a creator in cherry earrings and bright purple eye shadow and a stethoscope around her neck pretends to lobotomize the viewer all while delivering a dreamlike, coddling narration.
The author of the piece, Caroline Reilly, seems to infer that people fooling around in this manner, having their fun, don't understand the background or that people shouldn't play around with an idea that was once about something serious.
Isn't that like taking issue with people who dress up as witches at Halloween?
It's not as if Reilly is trying to stir up alarm about damaging surgery desired by young people today.
"In 'Alexander Technique lesson with Diana Devitt-Dawson,' a woman teaches a law student how to sit down and stand up from a chair without causing excess strain on the body. Devitt-Dawson, the instructor, makes microscopic adjustments to her pupil’s posture and movement, all the while issuing an enigmatic catchphrase: 'Allow the neck to be free.'... Boring as it sounds, this video has become a cult object. It now has 5.6 million views.... Fans, some of whom claim to watch the video nightly, have called it 'the "Citizen Kane" of ASMR videos'... What does it mean to allow the neck to be free? (Is that phrase the 'Rosebud' of the ASMR world?) Precisely what modifications is Devitt-Dawson making to her student’s posture? (As one commenter notes, 'Watched this literally 1,000 times and I still have no idea how to do the Alexander Technique.')"
From Moby's new book, "Then It Fell Apart," the second volume of his memoir. The scene is a party in New York City. It's 2001, after 9/11 (and Moby characterized himself as "traumatized" and not knowing "how to process my sorrow"). Moby describes himself as "well on my way to getting drunk," because he'd had "three glasses of champagne, three glasses of red wine with dinner, a shot of vodka before dessert, and an Armagnac digestif."
“Dale,” I said, once we had ordered drinks, “tell Clarice about ‘knob touch.’”
“First off, you’re beautiful,” he told her.
“She’s a Miss USA runner-up,” I said, proud of my new friend.
“Okay,” Dale continued, “‘knob touch’ is when you take your penis out of your pants at a party and brush it up against someone.”
“Eww,” Clarice said, grimacing.
“And that’s sexy?”
“No, no,” he said seriously, “it’s not sexual, it’s just stupid and funny. You only knob-touch their clothes, and the person you knob-touch can’t know they’ve been knob-touched.”
Clarice turned to me. “Have you done this?”
“No,” I admitted.
The party wasn’t that exciting. It was mainly full of businessmen and real-estate developers, most notably Donald Trump, who was standing a few yards away from us at the bottom of a staircase, talking loudly to some other guests.
“Moby, go knob-touch Donald Trump,” Lee said.
“Really?” I asked. “Should I?”
Donald Trump was a mid-level real-estate developer and tabloid-newspaper staple whose career had recently been resuscitated by a reality-TV show.
“Yeah,” Dale said.
“Yeah,” Clarice said, mischievously.
“Shit,” I said, realizing I now had to knob-touch Donald Trump. I drank a shot of vodka to brace myself, pulled my flaccid penis out of my pants, and casually walked past Trump, trying to brush the edge of his jacket with my penis. Luckily he didn’t seem to notice or even twitch.
I walked back to my friends and ordered another drink. “Did you do it?” Clarice asked. “I think so. I think I knob-touched Donald Trump.”
Is this a sexual assault? Dale says "it’s not sexual, it’s just stupid and funny," but the New York statute criminalizes "forcible touching when such person intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose... forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor's sexual desire...." I'm not an expert on NY criminal law, but I think touching someone to be stupid and funny is not a legitimate purpose, and being free of an intent to gratify your own sexual desire doesn't save you. Moby seems to have had the intent to degrade or abuse Donald Trump, so the requisite intent is there. But I'd say Moby is off the hook because he didn't touch "the sexual or other intimate parts of another person." He used his own sexual part to "to brush the edge of his jacket." Maybe there's another New York statute. I find it hard to believe that "knob-touching" isn't a crime as long as you only touch the other person's non-intimate parts.
Anyway, I thought you should know. Imagine if we found out Donald Trump was knob-touching the hems of garments.
ADDED: Moby's story is unbelievable for a number of reasons. He was obviously drunk, and he had a motive to lie. But another thing is that he puts the story in his "New York City (2001)" chapter, then says Trump's "career had recently been resuscitated by a reality-TV show," but "The Apprentice" didn't debut until 2004.
ALSO: I became aware of this Moby story yesterday when I watched him on Bill Maher. He was there to talk about his book and brought up the "knob-touching"...
... and he did some additional knob-touching-related things during Maher's segment on using ASMR to deal with Trump fatigue. This segment is quite good, and I would recommend it even if it weren't for Moby and his dick, but keep an eye on Moby:
MORE: In the interview with Moby — the first of the 2 Moby videos above — he directly says he was drunk. He also says "These days, my penis is always flaccid." And when Moby asserts that knob-touching is "not sexual," Maher says: "Like Biden. It's not sexual. Not sexual. It's just inappropriate."
MORE ABOUT NY STATUTES: There is also the NY crime of "Sexual abuse in the third degree." That covers "sexual contact without the latter's consent." Here's the definition of "sexual contact" in NY law:
“Sexual contact” means any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either party. It includes the touching of the actor by the victim, as well as the touching of the victim by the actor, whether directly or through clothing, as well as the emission of ejaculate by the actor upon any part of the victim, clothed or unclothed.
Unlike the statute quoted above, this seems to cover using one's penis to touch a non-intimate part of another person. But now you need the intent of "gratifying sexual desire" and there's no mention of the intent of "degrading or abusing." So I don't think this statute works either, even though I'm sure that going around rubbing your naked penis on another person, without their consent, should be a crime.
AND: Why, in the #MeToo era, did Moby think he could freely confess to what looks like a sex crime? I am surprised that NY statutes don't seem to cover his exact behavior, and maybe his publishers ran the manuscript past its lawyers, and that's why this was published. But let's assume it's absolutely not a crime in New York (or that it's too late under the statute of limitations). Why does Moby not fear personal and career destruction over his open confession to amusing himself by brushing his naked penis against another person? Presumably, it's because the other person was Donald Trump, and that just takes the story into an entirely different universe where assaulting someone with your naked penis is pure hilarity.
Dubbed “social eating,” the practice is popular in South Korea... It’s a difficult pastime for people in the U.S. to initially grasp, he acknowledged, but he said it’s gaining traction, along with rising demand for non-gaming content. Disbelief about the growth potential for Twitch, a platform for watching people play video games, has taught him not to discount something he doesn’t personally understand, [said Twitch Chief Executive Officer Emmett Shear].
Here's a video from a couple years ago showing a woman who makes $9,000 setting up a big feast for herself in front of the computer and letting people watch.
It seems to have something to do with comforting people who are out there somewhere eating alone... or who are refraining from eating and substituting eating vicariously.
ADDED: I don't know how related that might be to listening to people eat — for ASMR purposes (Autonomous sensory meridian response) — like this.
... on the last day of fall, on Lake Mendota, in the state park of the Gaylord Nelson, where we hiked across stretches of a thousand shades of brown...
We need more ice and more snow and we settle in for the solstice.
A reader [ADDED: Hazy Dave] sends me this link and says:
As an old Audible Althouse listener, I can understand the appeal of having a friendly well-modulated voice in your ears (though I usually can't get through entire an podcast and I'm too impatient to listen to books, even while driving). But I guess I listen to music for the occasional goose-bumps or “bubbles in your head” experience. Listening to a young blonde whisper in your ear seems like cheating, if not outright pr0n... I may need to try this out with earbuds later, just to see if I get weirded out, or if it just seems funny, or what. "Unsettling" seems like a reasonable starting point, even (very quietly) through tinny office computer speakers.
Wow! I watched some of those ASMR videos, then went back to some Audible Althouse — my 2005-2006 podcast project— they're all here [ADDED: or maybe not.] It really does seem like that ASMR stuff. Truly strange from that perspective!
If... you’re one of the people the video was made for—one of those people who experience Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response—you’ll probably find all six minutes incredibly satisfying, the video equivalent of a really nice, mellow kind of drug that leaves no aftertaste....
ASMR is a tricky feeling to describe, and I can only talk about it secondhand. From what I understand from conversations with ASMRers, it’s a tingle in your brain, a kind of pleasurable headache that can creep down your spine....
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