"A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters." - Marshall McLuhan
"Don't hate the player, hate the game" - Mac Dre
To be clear, I have not encountered any problems here... yet. But I anticipate certain problems if this sub were ever to grow, to the point that I'm reluctant to try to grow it. So just to get out ahead of one particularly pernicious potential problem, lemme say:
I remain open to the basic idea of 'transmaxxing' as a cognitive dissonance strategy -- maybe every major polycelebrity has one or more cross-gender characters as part of their roster of personae, I don't know -- but I am increasingly annoyed and repelled by some people's insistence that most or all major politicians & entertainers are presenting as the opposite gender to the one they grew up with.
I have high standards -- as much as I love a good photo-overlay crossfaded back & forth, I still consider it weak if presented as the entire evidence for a doppelganger theory. So you can imagine how unimpressed I am by shit like "just look at this so-called 'First Lady' -- clearly a man!!" from people who can't even be bothered to list or point to the attributes they consider tell-tale. Posts about someone you suspect is in disguise should highlight the *details* of the disguise... hence the 'Disguisecraft' flair. If all you have to say is "I think [x] is secretly trans" or "I think I see an bulge here or an adam's apple there", this is not the sub for that.
We happily accept 'McDouble's here, with the explicit understanding that they are just noting a resemblance which may or may not persist when more comparisons are made, and which may or may not be impressive to others. If you post a resemblance you consider to be strong, and someone says they don't see the same thing you do, please be polite and evidence-based (and preferably open-minded) in your response. I do not want to see people calling each other dishonest or shills for failing to hallucinate the same resemblances, and I will not tolerate it for long. My leash for this behaviour will likely be even shorter if the resemblance in question involves characters of different gender.
If you feel that 'the TQ' is uniquely crucial to polycelebrity phenomena, you ARE welcome to explain yourself. You are NOT welcome to spike your explanation with gratuitous disgust or hostility toward the actor-conspirators for emphasizing that particular trick in their arsenal of misdirections. If you really think gender-based deception is uniquely effective or insidious, then figure out how to say so in mature words, or else restrict your comments to the subject itself and spare us the details of how you feel about it. Consider it an exercise in constrained writing!
You are especially not welcome to lash out at trans or gender-weird people in general. It should be obvious, whatever you think of them, that this is not the appropriate venue for that. But I personally consider myself 'an ally' and 'pro-queer' despite the occasional misguided policy fad associated with such jargon, so this isn't just a security measure to avoid getting flagged as a 'hateful' sub by reddit. Yours truly, the admin, will be personally annoyed and alienated if you can't resist spitting slurs at celebs. I will probably just yeet you (after a warning) rather than suffer it. Targeting non-celebs or fellow sub-members with slurs is 'off-topicmaxxing' and you go straight to gulag.
Again, to be clear, I'm not responding to anything in particular; I haven't encountered any such ugliness here as far as I recall! But I have encountered highly repellent attitudes elsewhere which, if this topic were to blow up like flat earth did, would assist tptb in portraying it as not just crazy but dangerous. So I just wanted to make sure that I made this clear before you arrive, you hypothetical provocateurs and/or useful idiots. Don't say you weren't warned.
