The mid-to-late 80s had a definite dip in average quality.

According to ABC, having a deleted tweet saying what you say yourself is grounds for termination.

The Fizzcourse.

If not for those specific circumstances… could they have ever been legally divorced?

No.

As I’ve explained five times: there are no penalties for things that can’t happen. When the state refused to let people divorce - which they did, at their discretion, by default, for centuries - people just stayed married. It wasn’t a crime, it was not legal.

Divorce wasn’t legal the way marrying a horse isn’t legal. You can have the ceremony. It doesn’t count. Per your chosen definition: it has no formal status derived from law. Moving goalposts is what you’re about to do to pretend I haven’t given you everything you fucking asked for.

You declared “you had a legal right to divorce from the founding of this country.” Rights are the thing where you have to get beaten to exercise them, yeah? Nowadays you have a right to divorce. In the past times, it took some heinous shit to “escape the bonds of marriage.” You had to beg the church, or the state, and they could just say no. They almost always said no.

And there was nothing you could do.

‘My family met the extreme exceptions where it was tolerated, so being otherwise illegal isn’t real.’

Horse: drink.

‘Where do you think the goalposts would be, if not where I’ve consistently planted them?’

‘Nuh uh.’

Fuck off.

It’s an example of how extreme the rule could be, tone-policing troll. It is unequivocal proof you couldn’t just go get a divorce, because the state would almost certainly say, fuck off. Because - in general - by default - it wasn’t fucking legal. It was so restricted that zero women in an entire state were granted one, for thirty years, and you think other states granting more than zero means it was easy sailing.

What the fuck else do you think divorce being illegal would look like? What else could those words mean?

If divorce required a tax stamp, would it suddenly click for you?

But because the writers needed to give you someone to root for

Moreover, because it went from adapting a British sitcom to making an American sitcom. The famous tweet goes something like: “A waiter spills soup on a businessman before a meeting with his boss. In the UK the show’s about the waiter. In the US the show’s about the businessman.”

Same reason Steve Carell went from playing David Brent to playing Brick Tamland. We don’t find a powerful sleazebag as funny as a powerful moron.

Not that there’s much difference these days.

‘Here’s an example of how extremely legally restricted divorce was.’

‘Nuh uh, here’s the same example.’

Fuck off.

There’s a legal framework for when you’re allowed to kill someone. Under narrow circumstances - the state will tolerate it. Otherwise, they sure don’t. The only reason nobody went to jail for an unregistered divorce is that there is no such thing.

And even then, surely some people went to jail for enabling divorce, when a cottage industry popped up to fabricate excuses. Because excuses were required. Otherwise: divorce was not legal. The state would not recognize it. Without a very specific reason, you could not legally get divorced.

As if it’s something you can go out and do and be punished for. No: it simply was not allowed. The state said no.

This is stupid hair-splitting. You did not have a right to shit - you had to beg. Virginia did not grant any woman a divorce for an entire generation.

Evaporative cooling is a bitch. You have some community about the problems with X, and there’s a range of opinions about how bad X is. Anyone mildly affected won’t post much or stick around. People with intense opinions exaggerate. Whether it’s for comedy or rhetoric, ‘X will be the death of us all!’ chases out even more mild users. Now you have a vicious circle of X haters.

If that’s popular enough to form a meaningful audience, you see careers made, serving that conclusion. Shockingly few of them are grifters. They just posted something honestly critical that the haters really enjoyed, and the likeminded engagement made the author’s brain do the happy chemicals, so now they’re the weekly go-to for obsessively complaining about the evils of X. Still naming any actual problems with X, on par with their original independent criticism… but in the new fire-breathing style that makes even half-true non-issues sound like the worst event in recorded history.

The same can happen for positive attitudes, but the result is less circlejerk, and more… cult. Like that DRSyourGME instance. Or Qanon. When sensible people start toward the exits, that doesn’t mean the party’s over.

Rule: No comparing artificial intelligence/machine learning to simple text prediction algorithms.

That’s an overstep. “Spicy autocorrect” is not a joke exclusive to trolls. LLMs genuinely are simpler than they have any right to be, and it’s ridiculous they work anywhere near this well.

Then again, rigidly defining bad behavior is a poor move anyway, when you’re trying to say “don’t be a tedious asshole.” Tedious assholes will gladly slip around whatever specific problems you name, and bait other people into unwitting violations. The general version of this is enforced civility, i.e. “Rule 1: Be nice! >:(”, and that becomes a duck-blind for infuriating liars. Sometimes “fuck off” is a perfectly reasonable response.

Just write “don’t be a tedious asshole.” Hash out what that means amongst the mod team. Do not be afraid to give people a week-long time-out for things you did not pre-emptively wag a finger about. If they mewl ‘but it didn’t say!,’ tell them, it doesn’t have to. I think everyone is happier when they can trust moderators to make a judgement call on who’s being a dick. And so long as the stakes are temporary, don’t be afraid to get it wrong sometimes.

11: first year with testosterone.

23: first year with estrogen.

The US didn’t get no-fault divorce until after the moon landing.

Prior to that:

Divorce was considered to be against the public interest, and civil courts refused to grant a divorce except if one party to the marriage had betrayed the “innocent spouse.” Thus, a spouse suing for divorce in most states had to show a “fault” such as abandonment, cruelty, incurable mental illness, or adultery. If an “innocent” husband and wife wished to separate, or if both were guilty, “neither would be allowed to escape the bonds of marriage.”

Divorce was barred if evidence revealed any hint of complicity between spouses to manufacture grounds for divorce, such as if the suing party engaged in procurement or connivance (contributing to the fault, such as by arranging for adultery), condonation (forgiving the fault either explicitly or by continuing to cohabit after knowing of it), or recrimination (the suing spouse also being guilty).

Boomer tropes exist because divorce was illegal.

You were expected to get married and stay married. You’d have unprotected sex with your high school boyfriend, you’re goddamn right you were gonna keep the baby, and you were going to live together until one of you died. Even if it meant separate beds and not asking why he frequented that bar by the docks.

Blame Catholicism. That’s usually a fair bet.

It screamed out all the angy.

Oh fuck off, buying flimsy excuses. For now! Until the crisis ends! Just the tip!

The answer is NO. The reasons are bullshit. Don’t act surprised when he finds new bullshit.

There’s no sponsor in that video.

… oh god, Youtube’s fucking up the video itself to fuck with adblockers.

And they sound like death.