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In reply to the discussion: Art, Music Therapy: Seem To Help With Brain Disorders. Experts Want To Know Why; Anxiety, PTSD, Alz [View all]jfz9580m
(15,755 posts)14. I am an indifferent cartoonist (Caveat/Warning)⚠️
Last edited Mon Aug 18, 2025, 10:32 AM - Edit history (7)
Caveat/Warning: Some of this material may be offensive or unpleasant. It is not anti-psychiatry/anti-science nor hateful. It is satire and anti charlatanry. The point is that using the language of health and wellness charlatans get away with: conflicts of interest (e.g.: tech/defence contracting connected sleazy, lightweight and mediocre fluff is not the best fit for serious mental health sciences), misogyny, encroachment, intrusions on seclusion for no valid reason, harassment and the shilling of worthless crap (which would be harder without such guff). I have also slammed anti-psychiatry and wellness influencers like Laura Delano. I dont like any self-serving charlatans. I try hard to be an honest person and am tired of suffering liars, morons etc. YMMV ;-/.Finally, this is recommended only for someone whose critical thinking skills are advanced enough that they dont make serious decisions about health or anything based on satirical cartoons (involving oblique references) online. I am not a fan of explanations as a rule. This is directed at specific things and you may not get what I mean. Dont take this as relevant to you if you stumble on it. Imo you cant child proof the world-especially at this level(the internet has lots of far worse shit). Shrug. Ill take it down if it is flagged as harmful or offensive. If anyone even reads it. I put it up for my own sake really. It is intended only for well adults.
I focus more on the misogyny than on the sleazy women I came across (not that there was any shortage of such persons) because :1) I dislike the tacky catfight! dynamic that titillates creeps and plays to the lowest common denominator and 2) weight for weight the average sleazy woman gets the message faster than the average creep (who never seems to get it).
(I am an autodidact in creep/sleazebag psycho-sociology!) There are always the corner cases ;-/.
Absurdist Kafkaesque reality. Shrug.
This was a fun exercise I started mid July, going by the time stamps on my images. I posted it on DU July 21, 2025 if not earlier. And I completed the series with the last image I posted yesterday (August 18, 2025). I made the mock thought stream a week or so earlier.
I am very proud of my scrawls though, because I had fun drawing them. A final post wrapping up something I was experimenting with. The text is a bit disjointed, but I have to go work, after a long hiatus for all sorts of hideous and complicated reasons.
I have never suffered from mental illness. If I did, while I wouldnt talk about it, I wouldnt explicitly deny it either. I honestly dont really see any stigma in illness. Another area where I feel out of sync with such hoary chestnuts. But if you arent ill, you arent.
Existential angst perhaps and chronic stress worsened by sexual harassment and intrusions on seclusion. Ruth Cain had a good piece in The Conversation about it.
Usually you end up like this guy or worse if you dont have the slightest intention of pacifying the technolibertarian crew running most places ;-/.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr46npx1e73o
Its hard for anyone to be well these days, but I try.
Dont take life so serious, it aint nohow permanent is me motto I was never big on that sharing/ vulnerability stuff ;-/. I likes me defense mechanisms just fine!
But enough about me

I found some relief in viciously caricaturing the types of men I encountered/lousy tech I was plagued by during a 13 year period from 2012-the present. Thats behind me now.
These are not misandrist or anti-psychiatry ;-/. They are anti-stupidity and anti-corruption though. I liked most of my shrinks even if I didnt agree that I needed much shrinkage (especially unsolicited shrinkage).
Some of these caricatures are a bit broad ;-/.
Anyway I made these as a tribute to all the creeps i met or read about over the years. I suppose they generally mock meninists; a specific type of Yimby; incompetence; contemporary tech; influencers; advertising etc.
Influencing is a particularly bizarre concept-the movie Tusk comes to mind as a cautionary tale ;-/. The walrus body horror one..
How Creeps and Opportunists Affect Free Will:

Parody Paper on Creeps Figures:

Proportionality

Crazy Catlady vs Creeps

Advanced Crazy Catlady vs Creeps

(Explanatory Footnote: Advanced schizophrenia! Not the basic kind! ;-/)
This looks a bit like a creepy man I met in a state office where I had gone for something related to digital id. He picked his nose, which is not depicted to keep things tasteful.
Musical Pervert

This is not Sundar Pichai
Advanced Musical Pervert

Him

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... No, It's a Creep!
20 years ago The Male Creep was considered an endangered species (mostly by male creeps). But by 2025 we can rejoice in the fact that the Creep Population is no longer in decline..

I had originally named this next one The Saint till I remembered that its in the name of a viciously racist book. I changed it to The Martyr and to be inclusive (focused as I usually am on our creeps here in the Global South), I threw in a couple of Nazis.
It ended up looking a bit like a holographer/defence contractor (Lockheed Martin) who sexually harassed me in 2014. My dad is a military vet and disapproves of defence contracting.
The Martyr

The Martyred

I went to school in the US. But I moved back to Podunk, Global South (which I view with an affectionately satirical eye).
Most men I meet irl here are nice-my doctors, the delivery men who come here etc. Podunk, GS has an oblivious charm as long as it doesnt start going the way of SPs Cancelled.
BTS creepy defence contractors, creepy technocrats and corrupt officials are a concern. But hopefully, thats in the past.
Govts classify stuff and have classified projects. For that to work it has to be limited hangout and not about the enrichment of corrupt oligarchs and kleptocrats.
Ill give you an example of how things work in some parts of the Global South I have visited (culture!). A type of industrialist exploits a specific type of bullshit framing (which I think is overused even on any semi-legit left; e.g.: Colonialism and Western Imperialism ) to justify his own encroaching and corrupt ways.
Example: a crass billionaire whose sons wedding cost 170,000 times the average annual salary of a local, talked about colonialism when Zuckerberg wanted to pile on with some sort of icky Internet for poor people scam.
Two professors then wrote a decent enough editorial to the telecom regulatory authorities urging them to stop that and Zuck was bounced out.
Two years later Zuckerberg comes back, but now he is in bed with this creepy billionaire and no one has any problems with it. They are all fine with colonialism as long as they can participate in the colonizing I guess. Anyone who is straightforward loses. Thats just not right.
This really captures it. I call it
Creep Rights are Human Rights!

(I would attribute those first two images if I could find them. The second one especially is really awesome. I downloaded that around 2015 and cant find it anymore).
And its the same in most places. Humans like to exploit humans and of course the planet/non-human life. In US with Trump/Musk etc. The US is pretty much like any corrupt developing country now.
Now take this Indian ecologist Madhav Gadgil who is the rare type of human even I respect.
Gadgil wrote an extensive scientific report urging against exploitation of the Western Ghats, an ecologically sensitive region under immense strain. (IMO due to the effects of overpopulation, overconsumption and overdevelopment). The communist CM of a state called Kerala tossed it aside. The resulting natural disasters caused significant loss of life. So much for man versus nature and the benefits of corrupt overexploitation of natural resources.
I live in another one of the few communist states in the world. Though I am well to the left, I have no illusions about our communist govt unlike people who have never lived in a communist state. Even Nathan Robinson whom I respect has these blinders about China for instance. He had this Indian version of Steven Pinker (Kishore Mahbubani) on recently. Life is getting better! People are living longer!
That Pinker stuff is so blind to the effects of population explosion, deregulation, roiling tensions between some 1000 different microcultures.
I have no illusions about any politicians/industrialists here. They are all okay with destroying the planet for profit.
You gotta have a consistent worldview to withstand corruption and alarming levels of industrial encroachment and deregulation.
There are no good guys when it comes to oligarchs, industrialists, most politicians and those in their pockets. Conspiracy theorists -the natural endpoint of an Idiocracy make it worse.
Scientists and doctors are pretty much the only people I trust (any shills aside). A caveat though -I do not consider behavioral economics (nudge theory, Bschool fluff), what the MIT Media lab does, most AI, the Facebook emotion contagion study, behaviorism etc. science for the most part.
The hard sciences and anything conducted using strict and rigorous scientific methods. Ai seems to allow for a lot of lightweight stuff as well. Yan LeCun is the sole prominent AI researcher I have seen out there who seems completely honest.
I suppose to be fair, one feels a bit resentful. I was shocked to read how much money people like Gino, Ariely etc. made prior to scandals. That stuff is such junk!
In the hard sciences you toil and spin (after a fashion if like me you are half assed) and then die a lonely horrible death..ha ha.
I am working on a research paper trying to tune out endless nuisances to get it right. Science and medicine do take a lot of dedication..I had good mentors, so I was lucky there. My main postdoc mentor especially, though all 3 of my mentors were cool. I had 3 between 2001-2012. Now I mentor meself!
I do have to go work on that ..feel a bit weary at times..Like The Martyr!
This one was a tribute to the specific type of socialist you see in The Jacobin-very Yimby and pro-development (Ben Wray, Freddie DeBoer, Casey Phillips etc.). Ben Wray said that abortion rights are still broadly popular. Good to know man ;-/.

I was just being funny. Theres a bit of artistic license in there. Technically the rape advocates I saw online were Rooshv and Andrew Tate. I hope I am not sued by NaziReputationManagementInc.com
These cartoons skew Global South centric since I am not American and left the United States over a decade ago. So they focus on our creeps here rather than your creeps over there. (It is also why the creep parade doesnt cover anti-vaxxers. Thankfully, that bit of lunacy is less common here than it apparently is in the US. People were pretty good about social distancing, masking and vaccinating during the pandemic. So my creep parade doesnt not focus on that. An unvaccinated creep parade would be the limit.)
The left can totally meme

Tech criticism is a joke. Thats part of what I was mocking. How every tumor of a non-industry launches more reactionary tumors like faux critics and insincere tell-alls-Tristan Harris, Tegmark, Eff, Wynn Williams.
Yasha Levine is the exception not the rule. But he is too honest a journalist to get a job these days.
Lina Khan on the other hand, much like Gadgil, is the rare person even I am enthusiastic about. She got so much accomplished it scared the tech creeps into destroying society.
My first Images of Creep series featured her prominently and even had MTG! Dont remember where I pulled that image from except somewhere online so cant credit it.

(Cant remember where I got the sobriety, Khan and MTG images from. And in fairness this intense obsession by sleuths over 0.3-3.5% fraud in academic research and plagiarism etc seem a bit overdone when Google/Meta/OpenAi etc make a joke of such concepts.)
I see places like those pompous schools with ties to the tech industry/industry broadly- MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard get all tingly about OpenCourseWare, RetractionWatch and Wikipedia etc its so douchey. I can see so easily that it gives them a chance to make life hell for the average struggling scientist while letting the Google/Palantir/Hoover creep types force snoopy and broken AI agents on people. For open science of course. Who can object to that? Puppy murderers thats who.
Democratizing science-one WWE style disgraceful reality show at a time! Jokes aside, another way for opaque and corrupt tech companies to subvert notions like open science, health etc
I am all for good science and within reason even health. I try not to die. That counts I think. But honestly, not in this blatantly bogus way. Its not good for old-fashioned and more honest NIH science of the best kinds. Shrug.
Now to wrap up..someone who unscrambled my brains a little was that Rick Rude Calves guy. The couch joke did some damage and the typical douchebag would have tried to capitalise on that. He was the first person I ever read about online who seemed like an actual non-retiree with a real offline life. He got that going viral is a bad thing not a good thing.
I felt a twinge of recognition when I read about him last year. He is from your Global North Podunk and I am from Podunk, Global South! I suddenly got why, left as I am, I could never quite mesh my worldview with that of the left liberal Americans whom I genuinely like communication gets complicated.
I am trying to acquire some communication skills these days..but its a work in progress..was never very sociable ;-/. Was able to pull it off superficially and now I will be able to again.
I am not wildly original (which is why this is not my day job), so homage to (a mix of tech critics, political writers and comedians): Rex Huppke, Lyta Gold, Cara Smith (mostly Cara Smith), Andrew OHehir, Chauncey DeVega, Herman Wouk, Rick Rudes Calves (a personal role model-a rare anon/non-retiree with an offline existence), Plork Blogspot, Candyboots WW Cards, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, R K Laxman, my beloved childhood authors Lewis Carroll and Richmal Crompton, How Love came to Prof. Guildea, my mom/dad/best friend/ex-husband, an unknown human user or two of Rollo Carpenters Cleverbot, Hatersaurusrex (Reddit), Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, South Park, Nandita Bajaj, Samuel Miller MacDonald, Nathan Robinson, Yasha Levine, Evgenia Kovda, Evgeny Morozow, Nicholas Carr, Tim Wu, John Naughton, Ed Zitron, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Amanda Marcotte, Jill Filipovic.
No Ai-that stuff is nails on chalkboard
Finally, most importantly, all my muses mostly here in Podunk, Global South. I have left out any women (though there were quite a few women I was displeased with) . But I avoid attacks on other women. You see I try to bite down and tolerate most things that stop short of outright creepiness. I have even left out mere jackasses where male.
An exception to that is these assholes who ride their bikes down my street with their silencers off. They were such a source of stress that my dentist said she could see signs of strain in my mouth from grinding my teeth. Thats why I have included them.
Sexual Harassers: All the sexual harassers/creeps I met in Podunk, Global South between 2014 and the present and one sexual harasser from this part of the world I met at a clinic in 2010, while in the US. These cap wearing creeps who used to ruin my morning jog in 2023 when I was still recovering from losing my mom.
Inept Shrinks: Two boorish male shrinks here in Podunk in the Dec of 2012. They are the primary inspirations for the cartoon shrinks. But the worst shrinks were at the hospital at my last place of employment in the US. They even harassed the only shrink I ever went to voluntarily and who was of use. Thankfully, the psychiatrist/therapist they had me see outside were cool, as was the counsellor.
Assorted morons: All the frauds and morons I met between May 2010 and the present. The (unknown) creeps exploiting my street and neighborhood.
I definitely think the local tech companies, defence contractors etc would be wise to stay away from my residence, street etc for all illicit experimentation. Thats what it is-completely non-consensual and illicit. Between 2012 and the present, my doctors or routine oblivious people aside, I never saw anything at all unusual locally that was not outright creepy, completely exploitative and mind numbingly incompetent. This stuff is an embarrassment and reminded of similar garbage I saw elsewhere.
These (indifferent) cartoons wouldnt have been possible without them or the various annoying public figures/hucksters who diligently dedicate their lives to destroying planet earth and human society every day of their lives.
One final anecdote to wrap up this post:
I was trying to improve my memory a few weeks back and also fish in my head to see how I think so a greasy data miner doesnt understand ones mind better than one does..I have seen conspiracy theorists do this, but I was only trying to see any links I make. It was a useful exercise some.
This graphic is lightly edited to give Planned Parenthood a shoutout, but its mostly the original concept stream of a Saturday weeks ago when I was trying to escape the ghastly reality show feel of modern life where real science and medicine are displaced by marketing, junk like AI border security lie detection, emotion AI, behavioral economics, sublimnal messaging, sleuthing by dimwits, nudge theory and other worthless trash that should not exist:

It was somewhat useful, but at one point when I was going over this, my eyes hopelessly scanning from the icon on GOP podcasts to Matt Walsh asking if he is a racist, to MTG, with pompous exhortations from The Atlantic about good taste on the side, it struck me that this must be what hell looks like:

This society is hopeless ;-/. But you are looking at the wrong things! Crispr! Heart transplants! We have shoes now!
Possibly a slightly jaded take ;-/.
Last edit: There was a very funny article in the NYT about ChatGPT induced delusions with the standard issue Stanford Reefer Madness type weighing in. That piece was everything I satirized in this post. Stanford is the gift that keeps on giving. Its such a ridiculous institution. Like Trump, they are beyond parody. Well at least they took down their Womens Bodies and Alcohol piece. That institution is everything I have ever mocked in concentrated form ;-/.

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appalachiablue
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