Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X

Xatolos@reddthat.com to Technology@lemmy.world – 535 points –
Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X
arstechnica.com
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Does this mean in certain US states that you will have to provide ID in order to view X content?

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1146933317/louisiana-new-porn-law-government-id-restriction-privacy

Made me check for my home state of Utah. But looks like they require a "substantial portion" or 1/3 of content on a site to be porn. source Looks like we all need to get busy posting tits to twitter for the good of the children.

How long would it take to make it have above that threshold?

If Twitch's little experiment is anything to go by, it already is.

As someone in Utah as well, who exactly measures that? Can I get their job?

This appears to have only 30% porn, thus it's okay...

So you're saying all PornHub has to do is add a large non-fiction eBook library or something?

I don't think their enough books in existence to balance out that much porn.

Save every page as a RAW image file. Then take an 8k video of each page of the book on paper, slowly enough to read them. Problem solved.

Nice try but you’re not tricking me that easily into using Twitter!

Probably no, unless it turns out to have more porn than non-porn. Which could definitely happen!

(And with a site name like X, probably should happen.)

Can't wait for three days from now, when they roll that back in a panic.

Good luck peeling all copies of my balls off their chin of a website by then!

"What do you mean Coca-Cola doesn't want their ads next to a video of three men fisting each other?"

Coke would pay them and supply 2 liter coke bottles if they thought it would would be more profitable than damaging to their image.

Honestly, all the respectable advertisers left anyway so they have nothing to lose

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As much as X can get bent The eradication of human sexuality from mass media culture is a clear sign of intense rot at the heart of our civilization. How can such a fundamental element of thr human experience can be so conspicuously absent for almost all art and media. A clear sign of the omnipresent censure and purge of dissenting opinion in our supposedly "free" society.

How can such a fundamental element of thr human experience can be so conspicuously absent for almost all art and media.

What are you talking about? Heaps of movies have sex scenes. Heaps of songs are about sex. There are heaps of books and other stories about sex. The internet is packed with sex stuff of all kinds. Advertisements in the street are obvious implicitly or explicitly about sex. So how can you say that sex is 'conspicuously absent from almost all art and media'? Are you looking?

Allowing explicit porn on twitter doesn't make it ground-breaking in any way. It just changes the tone and target audience of the site, such that you will now see porn inserted into basically any conversation or topic.

I should have clarified, freely available mainstream media and art. I don't watch ads so I can't say for sure, I don't consider advertising to be part of art and media, more like a form of pollution on top.

From what I've senn tge most you might get are suggestive allusions to sex. It's just not treated as the everyday part of life that it is.

By comparison, it is entirely overshadowed by violence and gore.

Every new game that is released with a character dressed in even a slightly sexually suggestive way results in a rabid meltdown from braindead Twitter users. Payment processors like PayPal are forbidding the use of their services for NSFW content due to pressure from fundamentalist christian organizations like Exodus Cry, under the guise of "child safety"

Religion is the word you're looking for.

I mean they did have religions in greece and rome, yet it's full of nude art

Yea but Greco-Roman paganism didn’t treat women as owned property of men like the Abrahamic faiths do. It’s not necessarily religion in total, it’s that the current dominant religions are extremely controlling and more about self-oppression for eventual reward than guidelines for a good life like most pagan sects

Greco-Roman paganism didn’t treat women as owned property of men like the Abrahamic faiths do

Yes they fucking did lmao. Greek women had absolutely no rights

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So maybe just an old tradition that hasn't died out yet ? A sharp edged piece of societal flotsam that we're still dealing with ?

Is muskrat religious?

His only religion appears to be financial technofeudalism. I guess the religious fundamentalists aren't lucrative enough for him to enforce their commandments.

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Yeah, I'll always give credit where credit is due, and no matter how much I detest Musk, this is a legitimately good move and I fully endorse it.

On the other hand it means no more browsing X at work. NSFW is aptly named.

Another arbitrary imposition.

it’s not arbitrary… there’s this whole thing with sexual harassment and a hostile workplace that makes porn a bad idea for a large diverse team….

some reactions definitely go too far but it’s not arbitrary

You make a good point, it"s definitly part of the outline of that social wound.

Some people are so fragile and the topic that they consider mere exposure as an attack or harrasement.

And whoever is most fragile seems to the decider for everyone, of what is forbidden.

Really a powerful position to be in ...

i don’t really see being too fragile as a powerful position….
it has definitely been abused by people pretending to be fragile… but the amount of very hostile, sexually aggressive people at many workplaces has made it this way, not the fragile people.
work is a place people are dependent on to make money to survive, with people they have to see every day.
a good friend of mine was a manager and very mildly cussed at a worker when they made a mistake… not even at her but just cussed as he was walking off….
she went to h.r., said it was because he hated lesbians (he doesn’t, has a lesbian aunt and several lesbian friends).
they fired him after ten years of being a good worker, working overtime or filling in whenever asked… never being late….
just fired him over one person saying one thing.
everyone else backed him up, but they didn’t care.
….
unions are pretty good, btw.

anecdotes aren't data. even if this is true, which i don't believe it is to be honest, it pales in comparison to the innumerable discriminatory practices towards women and all sorts of minorities. also even in your own friend's probably distorted version of the events he's in the wrong.

my point is sometimes it does get abused…. but it’s in place for good reasons

and the fact that you think you know whether my friend was in the wrong or not means that you’re not worth talking to

anything can sometimes get abused. that's what abuse is; it's different from use.

what do you mean i think i know your friend is in the wrong? i said he is in the wrong even if you take him at his word. that's not me thinking it; it's him admitting it.

you’re just boring concern troll trying to argue with everyone… i see your comment history.
every single comment is some condescending argumentative bullshit….

i’ll be blocking you and moving on to actual conversation

you don't even know what the word you use mean. what concern trolling?

wow my comments are argumentative‽ it's almost like I reply to a comment i disagree with and argue against it, maybe I should post more comments that say "this" instead so you can feel more in good company.

let me guess, you're not a woman.

The fact that someone's gender makes a difference is part of that "social wound" they mentioned.

of course it makes a difference. that's how power dynamics work. i think it's very rich to complain about people being fragile while demonstrating peak fragility that you can't just show porn to people who don't consent to it.

Where did I advocate for open porn in the workplace? My only point was that it's a sign of societal issues that there would be a gender based difference in how people see the issue. That's not anti-woman, it's just pointing out broader issues.

i didn't say you were doing it. i was talking about the comment you referenced. seemed obvious.

Some workplaces do allow showing tits at work, but It's not arbitrary. It's imposed by societies norms.

Aren't society's norms arbitrary? There are certainly societies where showing tits is normal.

I know what you are saying but usually "arbitrary" is at the individual level, not at societal level.

E.g. laws being arbitrarily enforced but you'd never describe the law itself as arbitrary.

Your point is well illustrated with the Joseon trend in Korea in the late 1800's. But that was more societal than individual.

While you’re not wrong, there’s a time and place for everything

The eradication of human sexuality from mass media culture is a clear sign of intense rot at the heart of our civilization

In what way though? We see all kinds of sexual and suggestive displays everywhere in media because “sex sells”. I guess you and the people up voting you don’t use Instagram, which is essentially what Twitter is now trying to emulate via this rule change.

How can such a fundamental element of thr human experience can be so conspicuously absent for almost all art and media.

But it’s not? Every visual form of art has some kind of sexualized content. Go literally anywhere (online or off) and it’s there. The reason why the more overt and pornographic content is behind NSFW is because it’s titillating. Experiencing prolonged bouts of arousal is mentally exhausting and often leads to depression or worsens it, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10813043/#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20a%20higher%20and%20hyperstable,3%2C7%2C8%5D.

It’s why looking at porn all day is not mentally relaxing, necessarily. Some people also find overt sexual displays distracting as all they want to do is focus without being stimulated into another direction. That said, there are plenty of video games, movies, art forms, music experiences which explore human sexuality. They’re fun because it’s stimulation at a time when you’re in the frame of mind for it.

I feel a lot of times when people talk about “something is like this” what they’re really saying “my experiences show that something is like this”, and that to me just indicates they need to broaden their experiences.

We’re missing sex positivity in modern US society with respect to women’s reproductive rights and acceptance of different sexual orientations or gender identities. We’re not missing sex or sexualized content.

As a foreigner, this is more of a US (maybe England?) thing in my perception (together with some Muslim and East cultures). The US was always a bit strange with sexuality themes.

yup especially in the usa. Violence and blood is okay but god forbid if u see coochie or cock.

Remember the nipple that ruined a household name celebrity's career? Despite the cover being removed having more to do with the actions of another celebrity whose career wasn't ruined rather than her, adding a layer of misogyny to what was already puritan stupidity?

Even if kids saw it, so what? I can't see any harm resulting from telling a child of any age that women have breasts for feeding babies, that it is done through the nipple, and that women without babies still have breasts and nipples because the body prepares for maybe having a baby later. And men have nipples because that part of the body doesn't get different until puberty. And that it can be rude to ask or talk to someone about theirs, and it is very rude (and illegal) to touch them without permission.

exactly its bizzare how the usa has tabooed breasts so hard especially in non sexual settings like a women having to cover herself or go in the bathroom to breast feed. Yes boobies are fantastic and erotic but at the same time not that a big deal and people should be able at the very least tolerate their barren presence.

Eradication? If anything, streaming services turn the sex dial to 11 for a while now. It's as if they won't greenlight a new show unless it has a certain amount of sex and nudity scenes.

I'm not really including paywalled media in this. I'm not subscribed so I really don't see any of what you mention. What I'm seeing in my browser windows is almost completely sterile. The only place I see sex, is places that are ONLY about sex. There is no meaningful mixing.

Yeah which creates a division where all sane and sensible visions of sexuality are forbidden leaving only more extreme depictions from porn focused sites which race to extremes.

I think it's an unhealthy approach, we need sensible and loving eroticism to serve as a good example otherwise all we have is the absurdity of porn - I'm no prude and not al all against fetish porn or whatever as long as it's consensual and safe but objectification and extremism don't make healthy relationships or happy lives (not say they can't be part of a great relationship but they dont work as the basis for it)

Yes, you get, tge few depictions tgat remain are either empty allusions to sex or grotesque, farcicsl refetences.the real thing is absent. It ends at, largely inaccessible movies almost only about love and then nothing and then parody like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_qj8cSk38o&t=210 And we know the people who excised that middle portion and I don't understand why we let them get away with it.

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Time to drop a ton of photoshops of Musk with a diseased micropenis until he changes his mind about this. Maybe shops of Zuckerberg and Musk heads onto gay porn stars so it looks like Mark is dominating Elon's asshole in the literal sense rather than just the figurative sense.

"And just like that the perfect use case for AI finally emerged."

.......is THIS what we're doing for gay pride month? I mean, I'm not against it, I just want to know the plan so I'm not caught off guard.

It’s one thing we’re doing. We’re also making pride look like an early 20th century labor parade. We’ve got a busy month ahead of us

Or… you could just… you know… stop using it.

Oh, I don't, lol. That was more of a prediction than me saying that I'd be doing it. I never made a Twitter account. It already seemed shitty to me even before musk utterly destroyed it.

I think to get under his skin the most having musk be a sub to someone like zuck or hillary clinton or maybe some of the guys he asked for funds to help buy twitter

I wonder if him having a train run on him by a bunch of union guys would bug him the most

So he is that desperate already? His user numbers must be close to the ground to try this in the US.

Adult content has always been defacto allowed on Twitter AFAIK. That's why the headline uses the word "explicitly". They're just making it dejure allowed.

X has been toying with the idea of fully embracing adult content and has even planned a feature for adult creators that could position X as an OnlyFans rival. That plan was delayed, Platformer reported in 2022, after red-teaming flagged a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the launch: "Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale."

Non-consensual porn had also been a serious problem for PornHub, eventually they just nuked all unverified accounts.

Hmm, maybe that's the plan for X too. It's been going in that pay-to-play direction for a while now.

Am I missing something here? I thought X/Twitter always allowed NSFW content.

It had no specific rules for it or against it. It was just a secret rule that you could upload on it. Now it's official ig.

If X becomes XXX does he gain more power? The more times his favorite letter appears, the stronger his dipshittery becomes!

TIL Grimes wasn't explicitly allowed to have butts, breasts and genitals before.

edit: oh... not his ex. just call it Twitter ffs.

It's Twitter. It will always be twitter. It should never be called anything else. Put x.com in your browser and see what happens to the address bar. It's twitter.

they recently changed the address i think, finally. but i don't care, it's still a dumb and nondescript name (i mean, it's literally the shorthand for 'unknown') replacing probably the tech brand most integrated into languages around the world.

The edit makes this seem unintentional, but this was the funniest thing I've read in a long time

if you look closely you can see that the comment wasn't really edited; it's part of the joke. I'm glad it made you laugh.

so he fucked up the whole platform so he has to raise money with porn? not suprised to be honest

Wait they took off the porn? There's like always been porn on Twitter. I'm confused.

I suspect it'd go tumbling down hard and fast like tumblr. There's a considerable amount of porn and hentai artists that seem to live exclusively off xitter

It's probably so he can say that it's too hard to tell nude children from adults.

Well see, children are the ones that are still children. You can tell which is which by the way that it is.

That’s pretty neat? What a weird place to use a neature walk meme, but here we are.

I heard he said the same thing when they asked him why he was hanging with Epstein

always been. Twiiter is much more like Xvideos than people know

I've literally never seen or heard of porn being on Twitter/X. This is news to me.

I literally have an account there dedicated to porn. Have had it for years. I stopped using Twitter after the muskocalypse, except I still check my porn account every once in a while.

You have to actively go looking for porn there, but once you do it's a neverending rabbit hole. Especially if you're into some niche/fetish stuff. There's some unique stuff to be found there...

There is tons of porn on twitter since a long time. They somehow managed to keep it away from "normal" twitter. That is why it worked. That has been eroding for a couple of month now with the "invasion of the porn-bots". If they don't manage to continue to separate the porn-twitter from the non-porn twitter I don't think that will end well for them.

I've never used Twitter, but my partner does and regularly comments on the quantity and quality of porn there. It's my understanding that another popular social media app banned porn a few years ago and all of the porn moved to Twitter.

From Tumblr, I'd bet?

Yes that's it! I couldn't think of the name. I'm so detached from social media.

Every video I've ever tried to watch on Twitter took ages to buffer, and then looked like something from RealPlayer for the duration of it.

At least porn sites actually manage video streaming successfully.

Cunt talks just like trump and other right wingers.

"We do it best. By far. No one can compare to us. We do it better than anyone."

Which is always a lie.

It also exploits repetition bias, which I'm sure is 100% intentionally coached into these fucks

If you thought the bots were obnoxious now....

In 2019 I replied to a funny video on twitter.

I replied "Oh man, this kills me."

Instantly banned, no warning, no explaination. Just.....banned.

At least thats why I think they banned me. I have no idea. Instead of telling me why, I had to google likely reasons for an autoban, and found thats a common reason. Its the only thing I can think of.

That being said, I wasn't threating murder, or suicide. I was saying "this video is funny" in different words.

So I don't find the bots obnoxious now. I never see them!

So since Deviantart, Imgur, and Tumblr died by banning porn, he's hoping X will come back to life!?!?

No thanks, the fediverse is better at it, with way less nazis and tankies, those that are here are in their own containment zones.

Twitter is way better for certain topics. I haven't been able to find the quantity or quality of OSINT stuff almost anywhere else at the level that Twitter has it.

If you want to know what's happening on the ground day to day in Ukraine or Middle East, there's no better place (edit: I lied. Telegram is pretty good, I forgot when I was writing this)

Like there are people who geolocate pictures to determine GPS coordinates and then get satellite scans to determine the effects of missile strikes or what have you

Foe example remember the Iran missile/drone salvo? There was an Israeli response to it? Claimed they blew up some Iranian radar for an air defense system with a missile?

Satellite images showed that was a lie. The damage on the ground implied only a small explosion that looks like other drone explosions. I only knew about it because I was on Twitter following specific people.

There's a lot of shit you have to tread through, lots of bots and spam and crazies and propaganda accounts and what have you

But if you look around there's a lot of gems

X is.. dead? That's news to me.

As of 2023, there are approximately 556 million active monthly users on X. As of April 2024, X receives around 6.1 billion visits per month.Apr 25, 2024

What... reality do you live in?

How many bots.

Probably very hard to know given that Musk had to buy the company to find out.

Well now he owns it so should be easy for him to publish that.

But then those who carry musky water for him probably wouldn't be able to do so.

I could be wrong, but I thought Elon had a campaign to eliminate bots from X? Not sure if that ever took place though or if it's in the process of.

Cool.

But until you call tell me how many bots, your claim isn't evidence that it's actually as active as you imply it to be - at least by humans.

No one knows. Apparently all the bigots on X are the bots.

That's the best that has been done /shrug

Plus, who really gives a fk about X if you're not even using X? I don't know why the hardon for the community size of X.

I think it's more a twitterix is dying thing, as user count was declining last time I checked.

Glad I got to see this comment before the Lemmy hivemind downvoted you to oblivion for posting data that contradicts their world view!

That scans, last time I looked around on there it was almost exclusively dicks.

Must be your algorithm. It's almost always filled with OF bots.

I don't engage with it so I'm only getting whatever the default is :)

My school releases the buses and notifies people on Twitter. If not for that I wouldn't be there at all

I am there every now and then to check valorant eSports news. Wish more people switched to mastadon.

Fluff PR piece to get more people talking about Musk's shitty platform.

Reeks of desperation to bring back the porn after how literally every other mainstream platform has walked away from it.

I can't wait for the stories to come out showing ads for companies next to CSAM that hasn't been taken down in a month.

Now it only lacks the blackjack.

If Twitter introduced blackjack it would be the worst blackjack game ever - automatic shufflers, 1:1 BJ pays, no DAS, no RSA, no surrender, $1 ante per hand, and $50 minimum bet.

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Just don't call anyone 'cis'. That's a crime punishable by ~~death ~~ account deletion.

Cis is just a Latin prefix that means "on the same side of", and is the opposite of trans, which means "on the other side of".

I.e. your gender identity is the same as what you were assigned at birth, therefore cis.

Another prefix that would fit well, as it means "the same as/equal/alike" would be homo.

Perhaps we should indulge Elon's wishes and instead use the term homogender or homo, for short. I'm sure he'd love that.

I like the way you think! I'm cisgender but would totally accept homogender. Plus, homogender homosapien has a nice ring to it.

I honestly think the only way the word cis would be allowed on twitter is if some moron decided to weaponize it and start calling trans folks cisphobic or something. Then act like it's some sort of brilliant "gotcha" moment because these people are not only genuinely stupid but also hellbent on embodying all the worst parts of humanity.

Only then would the butthole licker of trolls known as Elon Musk accept term.

I'm still sad that we didn't use 'Ultra', which means 'beyond' or 'on the far side of'. Huge missed opportunity to be called Ultragender instead.

Wow, a lotta people not aware of porn being a thing already on twitter

So... let's start uploading lots of gay/trans porn and swe how long it takes before the policy changes!

What's with trans porn? And why are men so into it, yet hate gay porn?

Sexuality is a spectrum.

Also, I only speak for myself, but I'm a man and I'm not into trans or gay porn (or lesbian porn), but I'm glad such porn exists for people who are.

I'm not against it, It just strikes me that most straight men I know are into this, that's all.

Most straight men you know? Have you taken a survey of their porn habits or something?

Because hormones are a hell of a drug. I’m only into women, but that includes trans women. What’s unattractive to me about men is the effects of testosterone, not the penis

Hypothesis:

  • trans male on male - kind of like girl w/ penis w/ male
  • trans male on female - kinda like straight or lesbian, depending on perspective
  • trans female on male - kinda like straight
  • trans female on female - kinda like lesbian

But IDK, it's really not my thing, so I can't speak to that.

Just don't criticize fascists and religious nut jobs. That's OBSCENE! /s

Hey now, you're allowed to call any blue-haired middle aged liberal democrat you want a fascist. And by all means, insist anyone who believes in climate change is a religious nut job. Elon won't stop you.

E.M. tries to find every straw to boost X user base. Let's hope he does not find more of the straw in his head.

I had to read E.M. twice because at first my brain translated it as Entitled Mother (which doesn't seem too far off)

I'm just here to say the thumbnail for this article is great.

Now I just want to make an account t to post AI generated dicks every hour.

Musk was clearly frustrated that X is only a third as sexy as any porn site. So he’s trying to compensate.

Class, sophistication, and above all a sense of the dignity of the written word are all things that make Twi- I mean “X” - the foremost social media app on the Interwebs.

Now show us your naughty bits. Barely legal teens to the left.

Awesome... Driving Twitter into the ground even faster.

Guess hes desperate enough to try anything to keep subs

Well this makes sense. elon musk wants to be able to show his face on twitter/x. And he couldn't do that before, because elon musk is an ass. I'll say it again to really drive the point home.

elon musk is an ass.

elon musk is an ass.

elon musk is an ass.

I just wish Lemmy were popular enough that this would get back to him. People trashing elon musk (is an ass......sorry, it's habbit now) in a place that he can't buy because there's no singular owner. On a platform that would relentlessly boo him harder than that time he was onstage with dave chapelle.

I PROMISE you guys, whenever the republicans are done with this trump experiment, we're getting desantos vs musk in the republican primaries. Both have an ego that wouldn't let them be VP.

The only good news is that they both can't win. There CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!......shitbag.

elon cant run for pres anyway, he wasnt born in the US.

??????

Where was he born? I'm unclear if this is some joke I don't get.

He was born in South Africa, his family ran emerald mines there which is where all his money came from

I knew it was family wealth. I didn't know the source. I assumed it was partially built on exploitation. I didn't know it was fully built on it.

So, I don't use Twitter. But as I can tell, here are some of the the sources of friction:

  • The rebranding to X threw out brand value.

  • Policy shifts didn't make some people -- who wanted the other policies, which I understand to generally be more-content-restrictive -- happy.

  • Twitter laid off a bunch of expensive human moderators who were censoring content.

So, speaking personally, I'm pretty hard in favor of speech being permissive. I don't want someone preventing me from seeing someone's speech. I want to make those decisions myself.

However, there are people who don't agree; they'd prefer to have their environment have content moderation.

What the changes did was basically force people into a more-permissive environment, which some did not like.

With the benefit of hindsight, what I think Twitter should have done is the following:

  • Keep Twitter active.

  • Start charging for or otherwise monetizing Twitter sufficiently to cover human moderator costs.

  • Start up X.com. Provide a seamless migration path to X.

  • Gateway all Twitter content to X.com. Don't do the reverse (or maybe do so on a limited basis, like having particularly popular content flow back, but filtered or human-curated). Maybe have some mechanism for Twitter users to request that X feeds be gatewayed back to Twitter.

That solves a number of problems:

  • People who want a place that have censored content have that option. The default is for the environment to remain the same.

  • People who don't want heavy moderation can have that, and aren't having to pay for someone else's moderation.

  • If a country wants to ban X (like, most of the regulatory yelling I hear about X seems to be coming from the EU) they can do that. People in the EU can still use Twitter.

  • It'd even be possible to make other content-filtering variants attached to X, because I guarantee that some countries have different ideas of what they think should be permitted in public discourse.

  • The brand value doesn't go away; I've seen many people point out that Twitter is a very-recognizable brand.

I suggested that something vaguely similar might be a good idea, back when the EU started passing some of their content restrictions. Didn't involve the X.com stuff, though; that came later.

Like, the problem here is basically that there are different social norms and regulatory regimes around the world. Trying to create one global identical set of policies is invariably going to make some users and some countries annoyed. But...that's not really necessary to have at least some level of global intercommunication.

See, the problem is that this all would have required retaining all those expensive engineers that were either terminated or bailed the second he got hands on the platform.

Sure, you'd have to not lay em off, but only the people who are actually making use of their services are paying for them. So users get the "censored" or "non-censored" option.

You make good, considered suggestions. But even if Musk would read them, he's not the sort of person to make considered, rational, moves.