This seems obvious to me! Anyway, I hope Joshua gets a good chuckle out of pulling his readers' legs. A li'l bit of humor can go a long way toward clearing people's minds.
Successful satire requires a tell or some hyperbolic moment that reveals the irony. This is missing that part. It is a glaring omission. Maybe he wrote it so that the family members who love Josh and have concern for him like his for Bob won't succeed in having him committed & deemed incompetent.
It's subtle ... at first I wasn't sure if it was about how others see Josh, or maybe he was meaning a friend way more down rabbit holes, like in the flat earth territory ... when he said Wikipedia as a reliable source, I thought, that's odd and not like Joshua .. Satire? Then, the NY Times about the dangers of doing your own research ... Definitely satire.
Surely undoubtedly satire by this point ~ "My wife has had Long COVID for almost three years now. When I told that to Bob, he started getting into this rant about how it might have been the 5 Pfizer shots she took. I thought he sounded like a complete lunatic, but I just nodded along and changed the subject. The top-notch doctors my wife has seen have all agreed it’s post-viral."
Yes, I kept thinking of the Stepford Wives movie. Except this is like real life for many people stuck in the absurdity of having to work/live/co-exist with leftists.
I doubt Joshua reads these comments, at least he doesn't appear to respond, but it is obvious that he has cocooned himself from what seems to be the reality he, himself, saw and aptly described just a brief period ago.
Bob's response to the situation seems quite rational, to include having a better return on gold and silver in that time than Joshua did in his bonds and equities. But, why should facts interfere with a nice, holier-than-thou post.
Why doesn't Joshua ask Bob for his rationale? If he thinks Bob was/is so smart, maybe Joshua could learn a few things from him.
Or, is that too scary a prospect to consider - Joshua might be wrong, again.
I have been wrong too many times to count, and in some significant ways. That is why, when someone I respect disagrees with my take on something, I ask them how they arrived at their perspective and to share some sources so I can research myself.
Maybe next time his post will be better.
Or, was this just clickbait to get us to comment and boost his ratio/profile?
Josh IS Bob. He has projected himself into the perspective of one of his mind controlled former friends. It is an ironical piece and very insightful. For my part, I have seen formerly reasonable persons, left of center, seemingly become consumed with pride and wrath. I can think of three cases immediately. That is an outcome different from what Josh is treating.
It also serves a dual purpose of possibly generating some empathy for the more captured mind, in the case the one observing Bob. They seem to mean well, they think they are on the side of that which they consider correct and good. They are shocked and repelled by expressed views outside the narrative they are given to adhere to. Sometimes it really does depend on a sort of primal comfort on a mental level. Challenge this sense of comfort and certainly and you may find yourself tarred and feathered, or at very least de-platformed…..
My mind wanders back to the Soviet Union when political dissidents were loaded up in the hospitals in order for some re-indoctrination often involving a chemical lobotomy
Satire .. Josh would not say this seriously - "My wife has had Long COVID for almost three years now. When I told that to Bob, he started getting into this rant about how it might have been the 5 Pfizer shots she took. I thought he sounded like a complete lunatic, but I just nodded along and changed the subject. The top-notch doctors my wife has seen have all agreed it’s post-viral."
Not a test... more of an exercise in (attempted) understanding. While it wasn't my intention, the comments section has turned into a more interesting artifact than the piece itself.
Joshua Stylman: “Not a test... more of an exercise in (attempted) understanding. While it wasn't my intention, the comments section has turned into a more interesting artifact than the piece itself.”
And what is something that these comments indicate? A real-time mass-level malady of dangerous and serious proportions.
People today have such a fragile and tenuous grip on any kind of shared reality that there seems to be little generalized consensus on what anything at all is any more.
The Dark Powers-that-Be have strenuously and generationally worked to sever ourselves from each other and even from our own selves. We have billions of fractured ‘realities’ ... fractured perceptions and fractured people.
We don't trust anything any more. We can't read another person's true intentions any more. We don't even agree upon what individual words mean or convey any more.
There are great dangers in losing a general sense of shared reality. Those Dark Powers worked so hard to shatter shared reality so that They could rebuild it in Their own image reflecting Their own dark and unhuman desires and agendas upon us.
And of course, the greatest danger of all is when one becomes fractured and severed from his or her very own self. You become alien to, and estranged from, your own true self... the self that Divinity intended you to be. The life that you should rightfully have to live out without outside attack and character dissection by Dark Powers with malignent intent.
Without a strong sense of identity and knowing WHO and WHAT one is – and what one believes in – and bringing that into a space of Shared Reality – people become empty lumps of clay flesh and putty to be molded into whatever the oppressive hands of Dark State Power wants to make of them.
We are under such a deep level of and sinister attack that few even realize it. And yet, our lives are being methodically erased through this campaign of self-extingishment without our even noticing it.
We look the same to ourselves in the mirror. And we don't even notice that our thoughts and feelings and our being-inside does not even truly belong to us any more.
Each of your characters captures something truly valuable in each archetype--which is the fascinating thing. I might've said that is difficult to do. But since your writer is someone each of us knows personally and cares about--even as the writer cares about us--it may be less difficult, but the reversal still strikes uncomfortably close. Well done.
Oh my God! How can you NOT f*cking see, that the author of this piece has cleverly placed himself in the story as “Bob!” The guy you agree with!! You are in fact in agreement with the f*cking AUTHOR! You block head!
He's one of the best on Substack .. which is a high bar ... insightful, solid pattern recognition, beautiful soul, not into the tribal pre-scripted division, and surely would not be seriously calling someone crazy for wondering if 5 Pfizer shots had something to do with long COVID.
This is definitely satire ... also as someone else said probably to humanize the ones who think we're crazy ...
There really was not wink….its a fair and balanced piece which is why its so convincing…..lacking any background it does not read as anything but face value, which may be the point
Are you Bob? You're Bob, right? This is a writing exercise to imagine how your blue-pilled former friends regard you, correct? HAHAH! Am I reading into this too much? I feel like this is quasi-fiction.
Thank you for the brilliant spoof of so many people I know! Even my grown children think I've been lost down a huge Rabbit Hole.... When I point out that they now seek out organic food, are being more careful about exposing their kids to wireless tech, and might even agree that our government has been coopted by the Fortune 500, they still think that my logical concern for their children's future is misplaced.
Exactly, that was my impression. Funny to see so much misinterpretation of a semi-fictionalized MSM NPC perspective. Ironically, normies would simply agree with this post.
Gentlepeople, I know Josh well. This is 100% satire. The fact that so many here are shocked! shocked! and that he is being ratioed to the moon surprises me profoundly. I thought Josh's readers would have enough grounding to see through it all. I am sure at some future point Josh will spill the beans. But he has created a straw man and everyone seems to want to follow it. Take Bob and assume it is Josh and you will understand what he is trying to convey. This is how he is treated in his life...and it is sad. But it is what it is.
I really appreciate the opportunity to watch my own process by way of your story.
Seriously!
It's a bit like a carney ride ~ maybe the whirling cups or something like that.
Anyway, thanks.
It's been such a painful last several years in so many ways, I somehow find succor in this inside-out study.
So many friends and loved ones estranged and wondering where the heck the other one 'went'.
All of us, missing one another.
It's poignant, really.
Peace, brother.
Addendum: Reading the comments now, recognizing intense trauma responses. Seems as if 'us & them' is still very much in place. Traumatized people huddling together, seeking solace and shelter. I can find it in me, as well. But I never want to become as entrenched in ideology again as I was pre-covid (as a nice, arrogant, hyper-empathetic, liberal, gay person). I don't want to recreate that entrenchment in my new life. Truly, thanks for this post, Josh. I needed to notice the part of me that said "Oh NO, am I losing Josh, now, too?" from that trauma-informed place inside. Nope, I don't want to be ruled by that anymore.
Dear Joshua Stylman, aka "Bob," writing today so cleverly from the point of view of the fictional NYT-reading friend, this post aptly describes 99% of my pre-covid times friends, how they view the "Bobs" of this world. I have fond memories of the way I used to see such friends. I didn't climb into the cattle car with them, let's put it that way.
This post didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but all the same, it served me as a stark reminder that it's crucial for my own safety and well-being to make the effort to see things from other peoples' points of view. [Insert here Sun Tzu quote.]
“Bob” isn't ever going to be the same. We have all been changed in some way by the eye opening events of the past six years. I could be “Bob”. But I stopped trying to convince anyone who refuses to listen. It's like trying to convince them to change political parties. There's very little one can say that will make a difference. I mourn the times when I thought everyone could be a friend and the world wasn't split by the intentional imposition of starkly opposing reality versions. I no longer feel goodwill towards my colleagues, who all voted to approve mandating the jab and to impose severe financial penalties upon anyone who refused. To this day nobody at work will speak further of it or mention it, even though numerous colleagues and acquaintances did suffer ill health…cardiac problems, rashes, hives, neurological, and pulmonary embolisms…..and 3 cancer deaths, 2 within weeks of each other. Certainly to them, any notion of chalking these up to the jabs is as insane as Bob suggesting that 5 Pfizer shots may just be behind long covid.
Have only been following Joshua since his discussion with Brett Weinstein but have devoured quite a few of his articles since. I was very, very confused reading this at first…actually, still am a bit as I was expecting a ‘big reveal’ at the end, which didn’t come. I think he’s ’taking the piss’, as we say in the UK.
I'm guessing that it is a sociological experiment rather than a literary experiment. As a literary exercise it fails because - as David Foster Wallace critiqued the ubiquitous irony of the postmodern mentality - without social context and explication, the irony gets mistaken for its earnest opposite and ultimately achieves the opposite of its intent.
After the real Josh proves his point to whomever he placated in the offing, he needs to edit it - to include a prestige, or to crank up the hyperbole. When does "Josh" reveal that he'd rather have a dead vaccinated son, than an unvaccinated autistic son? Or something on that order.
If he thinks it's the part where the author outs his wife for having 5 boosters to his readers, when she didn't even want it known at the party, that's not enough hypocrisy, duplicity, or betrayal. It's way too common and cliche a sentiment.
Your patient, fashionably late arrival to the ball must have been a great exercise in self restraint. Glad to hear/see your acknowledgements and after some tense waiting the reveal.
It's satire .. Josh would never criticize someone for wondering if five Pfizer shots contributed to a years-long illness. He left Wokeville with his family during the COVID tyranny ... his other pieces clearly show that he doesn't trust Wikipedia or the NY Times.
I got the satire part, but another commenter suggested an addition layer .. to humanize the people who mean no harm, but are still clinging to the narrative, trying to "help" the Bobs in their life with NY Times articles and Wikipedia entries.
Amazing how many here didn't get what you are doing. It is also sad to try to get in the head of the normies and lost friends who can't seem to figure out reality. Shows that when we want enough people to wake up to get somewhere, we have way too far to go to get there. Job done, CIA.
Good job, though, Joshua. Maybe kill off a few of the subscribers who shouldn't waste our time here.
Bob is not just a random old friend who changed — he serves as a literary and psychological shadow of Stylman’s own former (or more radical) self. The piece becomes a veiled lament for the personal costs of the road Stylman himself walked.....That's my two cents having read Joshua's stuff over the years! Nice job Joshua!
Joshua, I was hugely surprised by your position as I read this article today. Sadly, you lost me on this one.
Think this must be tongue in cheek - Bob is Joshua.
This seems obvious to me! Anyway, I hope Joshua gets a good chuckle out of pulling his readers' legs. A li'l bit of humor can go a long way toward clearing people's minds.
Successful satire requires a tell or some hyperbolic moment that reveals the irony. This is missing that part. It is a glaring omission. Maybe he wrote it so that the family members who love Josh and have concern for him like his for Bob won't succeed in having him committed & deemed incompetent.
It's subtle ... at first I wasn't sure if it was about how others see Josh, or maybe he was meaning a friend way more down rabbit holes, like in the flat earth territory ... when he said Wikipedia as a reliable source, I thought, that's odd and not like Joshua .. Satire? Then, the NY Times about the dangers of doing your own research ... Definitely satire.
Surely undoubtedly satire by this point ~ "My wife has had Long COVID for almost three years now. When I told that to Bob, he started getting into this rant about how it might have been the 5 Pfizer shots she took. I thought he sounded like a complete lunatic, but I just nodded along and changed the subject. The top-notch doctors my wife has seen have all agreed it’s post-viral."
We're all Bob ...
I just realized what it is.
It's not satire.
It's horror.
Horror also incorporates subtle &/or bombastic irony, but successful horror never reveals itself with a wink or with camp.
And it is successfully terrifying.
Hence the strong reactions.
It's downright ptsd-inducing.
Yes, I kept thinking of the Stepford Wives movie. Except this is like real life for many people stuck in the absurdity of having to work/live/co-exist with leftists.
I do hope so, if not, Joshua is lost
Doh if so totally fooled
I was shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!
I doubt Joshua reads these comments, at least he doesn't appear to respond, but it is obvious that he has cocooned himself from what seems to be the reality he, himself, saw and aptly described just a brief period ago.
Bob's response to the situation seems quite rational, to include having a better return on gold and silver in that time than Joshua did in his bonds and equities. But, why should facts interfere with a nice, holier-than-thou post.
Why doesn't Joshua ask Bob for his rationale? If he thinks Bob was/is so smart, maybe Joshua could learn a few things from him.
Or, is that too scary a prospect to consider - Joshua might be wrong, again.
I have been wrong too many times to count, and in some significant ways. That is why, when someone I respect disagrees with my take on something, I ask them how they arrived at their perspective and to share some sources so I can research myself.
Maybe next time his post will be better.
Or, was this just clickbait to get us to comment and boost his ratio/profile?
George. The piece is satire.
Being a fairly new reader here, I was having a hard time determining that. Subtle indeed.
Is it? Oh, I hope so.
Mayhap. Time, or Joshua, will tell.
It definitely doesn't align with how I thought I understood his writing, but then, there's still plenty of the narrative that he still believes.
Only he can tell how satirical this piece was.
Albeit done in a well crafted manner….subtly.
as a sledgehammer...
Steel hand in a velvet glove. Sort of.
Josh IS Bob. He has projected himself into the perspective of one of his mind controlled former friends. It is an ironical piece and very insightful. For my part, I have seen formerly reasonable persons, left of center, seemingly become consumed with pride and wrath. I can think of three cases immediately. That is an outcome different from what Josh is treating.
It also serves a dual purpose of possibly generating some empathy for the more captured mind, in the case the one observing Bob. They seem to mean well, they think they are on the side of that which they consider correct and good. They are shocked and repelled by expressed views outside the narrative they are given to adhere to. Sometimes it really does depend on a sort of primal comfort on a mental level. Challenge this sense of comfort and certainly and you may find yourself tarred and feathered, or at very least de-platformed…..
I hope so Pax! I’ll keep reading and enjoying regardless though!!!! We all should (brave post)
Except that very telling addition about them wanting to see Bob "medicated." That's NOT benign.
It’s a tradition in our species
My mind wanders back to the Soviet Union when political dissidents were loaded up in the hospitals in order for some re-indoctrination often involving a chemical lobotomy
Yeah that was my take on it too. Though a quick mention of moon landing scepticism and Atlantis would have topped it off nicely
Joshua is writing from the vantage point of others who interact with him. He has cast himself as Bob:) Very clever!
Josh reads the comments. Ive had convos with him.
omg - complete thought failure. it is a joke.
It's f*cking parody, you woodhead!!
Satire .. Josh would not say this seriously - "My wife has had Long COVID for almost three years now. When I told that to Bob, he started getting into this rant about how it might have been the 5 Pfizer shots she took. I thought he sounded like a complete lunatic, but I just nodded along and changed the subject. The top-notch doctors my wife has seen have all agreed it’s post-viral."
It’s a test….?
Not a test... more of an exercise in (attempted) understanding. While it wasn't my intention, the comments section has turned into a more interesting artifact than the piece itself.
Joshua Stylman: “Not a test... more of an exercise in (attempted) understanding. While it wasn't my intention, the comments section has turned into a more interesting artifact than the piece itself.”
And what is something that these comments indicate? A real-time mass-level malady of dangerous and serious proportions.
People today have such a fragile and tenuous grip on any kind of shared reality that there seems to be little generalized consensus on what anything at all is any more.
The Dark Powers-that-Be have strenuously and generationally worked to sever ourselves from each other and even from our own selves. We have billions of fractured ‘realities’ ... fractured perceptions and fractured people.
We don't trust anything any more. We can't read another person's true intentions any more. We don't even agree upon what individual words mean or convey any more.
There are great dangers in losing a general sense of shared reality. Those Dark Powers worked so hard to shatter shared reality so that They could rebuild it in Their own image reflecting Their own dark and unhuman desires and agendas upon us.
And of course, the greatest danger of all is when one becomes fractured and severed from his or her very own self. You become alien to, and estranged from, your own true self... the self that Divinity intended you to be. The life that you should rightfully have to live out without outside attack and character dissection by Dark Powers with malignent intent.
Without a strong sense of identity and knowing WHO and WHAT one is – and what one believes in – and bringing that into a space of Shared Reality – people become empty lumps of clay flesh and putty to be molded into whatever the oppressive hands of Dark State Power wants to make of them.
We are under such a deep level of and sinister attack that few even realize it. And yet, our lives are being methodically erased through this campaign of self-extingishment without our even noticing it.
We look the same to ourselves in the mirror. And we don't even notice that our thoughts and feelings and our being-inside does not even truly belong to us any more.
Each of your characters captures something truly valuable in each archetype--which is the fascinating thing. I might've said that is difficult to do. But since your writer is someone each of us knows personally and cares about--even as the writer cares about us--it may be less difficult, but the reversal still strikes uncomfortably close. Well done.
Me too! I know people who are still in the dark but this guy surprised me with his ignorance
If you're not an American, you might not have caught the literary (?) device he used.
Wake up, brother...you're asleep and losing IQ points by the minute.
Bob was right. You are wrong. Unsubscribed.
Oh my God! How can you NOT f*cking see, that the author of this piece has cleverly placed himself in the story as “Bob!” The guy you agree with!! You are in fact in agreement with the f*cking AUTHOR! You block head!
Apologies, Mr. S
I was not describing a testing intentionality to your writing specifically
It did however, function in part as a binary switching device, which revealed a lot about how we are processing media signals in this day and age
🤣
omg - are you for real?
Ditto
I read this waiting for the punchline and was shocked to find there wasn't one. Bob isn't the one who's lost, you are.
Bob is Joshua.
I was about to write "this is a horrific delusional peice of writing. Sounds like bob is half way to the truth, doing well better than most".
But you've summarised the condemnation just fine.
Bob didn't charge.
The whole planet did.
This is called satire 🤣
I'm going to teach you to tie your shoelaces. To puss you off and be a condescending prick . Take a complain up with the manager.
Dood…..take a step back, think about it….
I was thinking that for the whole post but I missed the wink, and don't know this substacker well.
He's one of the best on Substack .. which is a high bar ... insightful, solid pattern recognition, beautiful soul, not into the tribal pre-scripted division, and surely would not be seriously calling someone crazy for wondering if 5 Pfizer shots had something to do with long COVID.
This is definitely satire ... also as someone else said probably to humanize the ones who think we're crazy ...
Your take on Josh & his Substack couldn't be articulated any better.
There really was not wink….its a fair and balanced piece which is why its so convincing…..lacking any background it does not read as anything but face value, which may be the point
Dead wrong...you obviously don't read this Substack.
You completely misinterpreted my paragraph
I agree and I apologize. I encourage you to read Joshua’s Substack from the very beginning…you’ll be enriched, I promise.
A skillful piece. You really got into the mindset of those who never woke up and have no idea. Two thumbs up.
But then, what would be the purpose?
Meh, it isn’t a difficult mindset to get into.
Does Bob have a substack? Asking for a friend...
Best response yet…
Are you Bob? You're Bob, right? This is a writing exercise to imagine how your blue-pilled former friends regard you, correct? HAHAH! Am I reading into this too much? I feel like this is quasi-fiction.
I relate to Bob.
Pretty sure you are correct.
Thank you for the brilliant spoof of so many people I know! Even my grown children think I've been lost down a huge Rabbit Hole.... When I point out that they now seek out organic food, are being more careful about exposing their kids to wireless tech, and might even agree that our government has been coopted by the Fortune 500, they still think that my logical concern for their children's future is misplaced.
Exactly, that was my impression. Funny to see so much misinterpretation of a semi-fictionalized MSM NPC perspective. Ironically, normies would simply agree with this post.
Gentlepeople, I know Josh well. This is 100% satire. The fact that so many here are shocked! shocked! and that he is being ratioed to the moon surprises me profoundly. I thought Josh's readers would have enough grounding to see through it all. I am sure at some future point Josh will spill the beans. But he has created a straw man and everyone seems to want to follow it. Take Bob and assume it is Josh and you will understand what he is trying to convey. This is how he is treated in his life...and it is sad. But it is what it is.
Josh is Artist first! How fun.
(Huuuuge smile)
Many of us are new.
Bob is not lost, he is awake. I agree with everything he knows.
Joshua is living in a bubble.
Joshua has cast himself as Bob in this piece.
And you're living mindlessly...just like a talking sheep. Good luck in life.
Dude.
What a great thought experiment.
I really appreciate the opportunity to watch my own process by way of your story.
Seriously!
It's a bit like a carney ride ~ maybe the whirling cups or something like that.
Anyway, thanks.
It's been such a painful last several years in so many ways, I somehow find succor in this inside-out study.
So many friends and loved ones estranged and wondering where the heck the other one 'went'.
All of us, missing one another.
It's poignant, really.
Peace, brother.
Addendum: Reading the comments now, recognizing intense trauma responses. Seems as if 'us & them' is still very much in place. Traumatized people huddling together, seeking solace and shelter. I can find it in me, as well. But I never want to become as entrenched in ideology again as I was pre-covid (as a nice, arrogant, hyper-empathetic, liberal, gay person). I don't want to recreate that entrenchment in my new life. Truly, thanks for this post, Josh. I needed to notice the part of me that said "Oh NO, am I losing Josh, now, too?" from that trauma-informed place inside. Nope, I don't want to be ruled by that anymore.
Channeling Joseph Conrad: "So call me Bob."
Dear Joshua Stylman, aka "Bob," writing today so cleverly from the point of view of the fictional NYT-reading friend, this post aptly describes 99% of my pre-covid times friends, how they view the "Bobs" of this world. I have fond memories of the way I used to see such friends. I didn't climb into the cattle car with them, let's put it that way.
This post didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but all the same, it served me as a stark reminder that it's crucial for my own safety and well-being to make the effort to see things from other peoples' points of view. [Insert here Sun Tzu quote.]
“Bob” isn't ever going to be the same. We have all been changed in some way by the eye opening events of the past six years. I could be “Bob”. But I stopped trying to convince anyone who refuses to listen. It's like trying to convince them to change political parties. There's very little one can say that will make a difference. I mourn the times when I thought everyone could be a friend and the world wasn't split by the intentional imposition of starkly opposing reality versions. I no longer feel goodwill towards my colleagues, who all voted to approve mandating the jab and to impose severe financial penalties upon anyone who refused. To this day nobody at work will speak further of it or mention it, even though numerous colleagues and acquaintances did suffer ill health…cardiac problems, rashes, hives, neurological, and pulmonary embolisms…..and 3 cancer deaths, 2 within weeks of each other. Certainly to them, any notion of chalking these up to the jabs is as insane as Bob suggesting that 5 Pfizer shots may just be behind long covid.
Cy— I say the same.
In a flurry of mini-strokes…..
I 100% agree with you
This is the most pathetic, foolish, evil thing I’ve read in a long time. You are lost at sea clinging to the detritus of a dead world.
It’s satire Josh is Bob
How northern?
Above Bangor below Houlton
Mid coast here, different world
Very UNsmart, you are.
sarcasm isn't my thing, me retarded & upset my people are sickened and dying from injections.
Understood...I pity all of the victims of this worldwide genocide. Literally no one is unaffected.
Have only been following Joshua since his discussion with Brett Weinstein but have devoured quite a few of his articles since. I was very, very confused reading this at first…actually, still am a bit as I was expecting a ‘big reveal’ at the end, which didn’t come. I think he’s ’taking the piss’, as we say in the UK.
Its just more subtle piss, realistically crafted…
I'm guessing that it is a sociological experiment rather than a literary experiment. As a literary exercise it fails because - as David Foster Wallace critiqued the ubiquitous irony of the postmodern mentality - without social context and explication, the irony gets mistaken for its earnest opposite and ultimately achieves the opposite of its intent.
After the real Josh proves his point to whomever he placated in the offing, he needs to edit it - to include a prestige, or to crank up the hyperbole. When does "Josh" reveal that he'd rather have a dead vaccinated son, than an unvaccinated autistic son? Or something on that order.
If he thinks it's the part where the author outs his wife for having 5 boosters to his readers, when she didn't even want it known at the party, that's not enough hypocrisy, duplicity, or betrayal. It's way too common and cliche a sentiment.
The piece was designed around Poe's Law, not against it. Whether the trade was worthwhile is a reasonable debate.
Your patient, fashionably late arrival to the ball must have been a great exercise in self restraint. Glad to hear/see your acknowledgements and after some tense waiting the reveal.
Me too, I was waiting for the "wink" or punchline and nada
I think we have difficulty with nuance when it comes to this topic. We've been wrong a time or two hundred.
Wow, how fast can I unsub?
Apparently faster than you can engage your critical thinking skills…. For homework go watch Monty Python film.
It's satire .. Josh would never criticize someone for wondering if five Pfizer shots contributed to a years-long illness. He left Wokeville with his family during the COVID tyranny ... his other pieces clearly show that he doesn't trust Wikipedia or the NY Times.
I got the satire part, but another commenter suggested an addition layer .. to humanize the people who mean no harm, but are still clinging to the narrative, trying to "help" the Bobs in their life with NY Times articles and Wikipedia entries.
Joshua has cast himself as Bob in this piece. Quite clever!
Go back to fifth grade and study hard.
Amazing how many here didn't get what you are doing. It is also sad to try to get in the head of the normies and lost friends who can't seem to figure out reality. Shows that when we want enough people to wake up to get somewhere, we have way too far to go to get there. Job done, CIA.
Good job, though, Joshua. Maybe kill off a few of the subscribers who shouldn't waste our time here.
Bob is not just a random old friend who changed — he serves as a literary and psychological shadow of Stylman’s own former (or more radical) self. The piece becomes a veiled lament for the personal costs of the road Stylman himself walked.....That's my two cents having read Joshua's stuff over the years! Nice job Joshua!