Thought of the Day
April 22, 2015
You know those clickbait links on the bottom of some dubious “news” website articles, including HuffPo? Usually about the latest celebrity pictures or “hottest NFL wives” or something?
There is a trend for “white celebrity you didn’t know was married to a black spouse!”
Now it’s “…and aren’t their biracial kids kyooooot?”
This feels like interracial fetish porn to me.
Icky.
Discuss.
DrugMonkey 
April 22, 2015 at 11:15 am
My spawn are halfies, and I think they’re pretty darn cute. Fortunately they look more like my spouse than me.
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April 22, 2015 at 12:11 pm
How many more generations until race in the population is so diluted that the under represented minorities are the mono-racial people?
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April 22, 2015 at 12:24 pm
Many, UCProf, many. being around academia (or other geographically mobile professions) may give you a slightly inaccurate view on this. also, if “UC” means Cali, you are in a *much* more diversified area than most of the US.
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April 22, 2015 at 12:40 pm
Interracial porn I see as objectionable/dehumanizing to start with, made more so by the racial aspect. (not that I object to fetishes that other people use to work out their power issues, just that porn in general is complicated)
Awwwing over kyooot kids I see as unobjectionable to start with, and thus not excessively creepy even with a racial factor.
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April 22, 2015 at 12:46 pm
Celebrity fandom is likewise complicated, becca, but it is specifically icky that “Look who Robert DeNiro is married to” is clearly clickbait of some substantial utility to these websites.
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April 22, 2015 at 2:45 pm
I just assumed the ‘Celebs you didn’t know were bisexual’ was just a feature that Gertyz put in her blog as a conquest list or something.
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April 22, 2015 at 2:57 pm
On a related note, mainstream websites such as CNN have fallen to those levels as well. The other day I clicked on a curious link supposedly about sharks and my institution instantly displayed a message saying website blocked due to porn content! WTF CNN?!! I am usually good at spotting (and avoiding) click bait, but I let my guard down because it was CNN and….boom!
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April 22, 2015 at 5:41 pm
“How many more generations until race in the population is so diluted that the under represented minorities are the mono-racial people?”
-Just until I get the eumelanin production enzymes to fit into this damn tiny AAV and plop it into the water supply.
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April 22, 2015 at 7:07 pm
Noncoding Arenay, I don’t defend CNN, but I wouldn’t trust my institution filters. There’s plenty of legitimate websites that my institution blocks. The so-called system to request the filters evaluated is a farse.
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April 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm
@Juan Lopez – could be. However, we normally get a different message saying something on the lines of “content blocked because it is deemed to be unsafe”. When a big glaring red “website blocked” pops up it makes me think it is legit. I should have tested it on my home computer, but it was very low on my priority list so I never got to it. Anyway, let’s hope it was actually a false positive.
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April 22, 2015 at 9:37 pm
People on the mainland have always handled this in an awkward way, and it took me a few years of college to get used to it. In Hawai’i, it is more common for people to be of mixed ethnicity than not. I grew up with most people either being of mixed ethnicities, or if they were not, prepared to explain the circumstances that led their parents to both be from the same place.
That said, this disturbing tendency existed there too. Although “hapa” means “half” literally in Hawaiian, it is typically taken to mean half white and half something else (as short for “hapa haole”). I admit that the implication that the most important “half” one could be was white is yucky and it makes me mourn for the self image of my brown brothers and sisters. But haole-ness there is at least more complicated than it is on the mainland, where it is an unmitigated good. The tendency to see hapa children as “cuter” transcends all locations and I do worry about the (ongoing) sociological implications. I worry about hapa people in my own family.
In the halls of academia, I have noticed recently that these situations are made palatable for general discussion by referring to “F1s” or “hybrid vigor”, even by the scientists of color, and everyone chortles. I mean, hybrid vigor is real! My niece and nephew are hapa and cute as shit! But also, fuck whiteness as a default.
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April 24, 2015 at 5:03 pm
I think there is an algorithm there, where they recommend articles based on your region and what types of other stories you read. So for me, since I don’t really clear my browser history, the trend is towards news articles focusing on the Missile East. I have seen some celebrity stories, which I assume is just random, but never a link to an American biracial couple or whatever. I’m guessing that you see these links because Americans are obsessed with race to an unhealthy degree and you read about it too much.
I mean, we in the Missile East are all pretty racist and sectarian, but I have a friend who’s father is Shia and mother Sunni, and I don’t think he’s satanic. And I’m not going to shoot you right away if I find out you’re from a different sect. Well, at least not before tea and a nice chat; we have a welcoming culture of hospitality.
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