basically.
Welcome to WTFriday, our round-up of the week’s news that will have you questioning how humankind rose to the top of the food chain. Enjoy/weep.
A Community of Brazilian Avril Lavigne Fans Believe the Singer is Dead and Has Been Replaced By a Doppelganger
They really, truly believe this. There are actual blogs and YouTube videos and online communities dedicated to proving the reality that they all know to be true — that the punk-pop princess who gave us the courage to tell all those sk8er bois to Olly the f**k out of our lives is actually no longer alive. According to this crackpot conspiracy theory, after the debut of her first album Let Go, Lavigne succumbed to a depression brought on by fame and family troubles that got the best of her. She was found dead in her house, and because she had too much earning potential to just let be snuffed out so quickly, all involved kept her death hush-hush and found an identical clone to take her place. Subscribers to this theory point to the appearance and disappearance of various moles on her body as irrefutable evidence. I guess Avril Lavigne not really being Avril Lavigne could explain some of her more questionable life choices, like her decision to marry the lead singer of Nickelback. This is some pretty incredulity-inducing sh*t, but it’s honestly harder to wrap my mind around the fact that the entity we collectively call “Avril Lavigne” has a following this dedicated to her. [h/t Paper]
There’s a Group of Straight Men in Canada Who Refuse to Get Involved with Women
They’re members of a movement called Men Going Their Own Way (or MGTOW), and they’ve decided, as their name so subtly suggests, to tell the womenfolk of the world to pack their bags and take a hike. Or rather, they’re the ones doing the packing and the hiking, since they’re deliberately withdrawing from any kind of interaction with women — period. Members of the MGTOW movement cite many of the same grievances with women that many men who are a part of the Men’s Rights Activists Movement (MRA) have, such as: women are wallet-checking gold-diggers, the majority of rape accusations are false and due to women regretting sexual encounters, that women often saddle men with raising children that aren’t really theirs, feminism’s unspoken aim is to subjugate men — the list is long, like the lists of grocery shopping or laundry that these men find themselves having to deal with for the first time in their lives. Where MRAs and MGTOWs differ, however, is their approach to this perceived problem with/of women and feminism; MRAs see the situation as salvageable, and thus try to set up an action-oriented counter-movement to combat the issues they perceive, while MGTOWs think that women are inherently damaged and unable to be “saved,” and so decide to give up on them forever. I think they’ve got the right idea, since I’m sure most women are more than happy to give up on them, too. Bye, fellas; please let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. [h/t Vice]
Candace Cameron Bure Claimed Getting Mean Tweets Is the Same Thing as Being Raped
The View is the gift that just keeps on giving (me migraines). We had Whoopi Goldberg claiming the monopoly on defining racism last year, while also simultaneously belittling the experiences of gays and Latinos. Then there was Kelly Osborne’s inane and poorly-executed jab at Donald Trump a few months ago, which insinuated that all Latinos in the entire country are domestic help and that’s all they’re good for. A few days ago, Candace Cameron Bure joined the ranks of the women who have routinely put their four-inch-heels in their mouths while expressing their brain farts views on Barbara Walter’s most ill-conceived idea to date. Speaking about Lena Dunham’s recent admission that she doesn’t personally tweet anymore because of the “verbal violence” that gets heaped upon her, Cameron Bure said: “I’ve never been more verbally abused in my life than on Twitter… A lot of people don’t agree with me — that’s fine. Don’t agree with me. But you don’t have to verbally abuse me and rape me. That’s what they do to me on Twitter.” You know what other ranks Cameron Bure joined with that statement? The countless people throughout history who have trivialized the seriousness of rape and sexual assault by conflating them with the things that make them mad or the things that they don’t like. To the people who use “rape” to refer to anything other than actual rape: Find a better word for the joy you feel when you ace a test or the devastation you feel when one of your 420K+ Twitter followers says something mean to you. [h/t Jezebel]
That’s it for this edition, folks. Join me next Friday for more SMDH-worthy stories; in the meantime, let’s pray that when humans go extinct and over-sized rats take over the world, they won’t be as stupid.
