Seriously. What comes to your mind when you see him dressed in a zoot suit and hat, only to utter his (not-so) Deep Thoughts on kids throwing snowballs and how not being allowed to do so represents the Death of Masculinity?
And no, that isn’t photoshop. Nor is the clip edited to “misrepresent” him, as his trollish fanboys keep insisting it is. It represents him all too accurately, and the Majority Report crew’s analysis is spot on. This man is fucking ridiculous. He’s a pretentious try-hard, and it’s a wonder that anyone takes him seriously. His “theories” are a mishmash of rehashes, misreadings, and old garbage, and they’re such a joke that Pauli’s phrase, “not even wrong”, applies. The world is NOT going to go to hell in a handbasket just because little kids — boys, girls, whatever — can’t throw snowballs in the schoolyard anymore. Personally, I’m glad that kids these days don’t have to go through a gang-snowing, as I did in middle school at the hands of some very female little bullies. It was NOT a character-building experience, it was one that played right into my already shitty self-esteem. And it’s a gross exaggeration to insist that only thugs will get to perpetuate their selfish genes this way, too…and that’s putting it charitably. If only thugs are reproducing, why are there so many non-thugs still left in the world? (And if thugginess = sexiness, why the hell does this effete snotball have kids? Did he wear that suit, complete with spats, on the nights he and the missus made them?)
I do think they missed just one thing, though: the inevitable, unfavorable comparison with Justin Whatsisface, the very generic and mediocre Guy Who Supposedly Brought Sexy Back. At least, that’s who I’m assuming he’s trying to look like, very unconvincingly, with that silly get-up. Kurt Vonnegut was actually wrong about one thing, in Mother Night…we do not always become who we pretend to be! So far, Jordan Fucking Peterson has pretended to be a victim of political persecution AND a badass, and he’s clearly neither. He’s just some no-count guy who whines and drones about things he understands poorly at best, in a voice reminiscent of deflating balloons, while the gullible, the ignorant and the self-righteous finance his bullshit on Patreon to the tune of a very healthy year’s upper-middle-class salary per month. His schlocky book of life advice is a bestseller right now, but I predict it will end up clogging the shelves of used-book stores in a year or so. To the point where, like the Fifty Shades books, no one wants to accept donations of it anymore.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s clinically incapable of cleaning his own damn bedroom, either.