Sunday, January 24, 2010

Meme Discussion: Bubble Boys?

Contrary to their typical rhetoric, many altie "detox" ideas and toxin scares seem to run on the idea that the human body isn't able to heal itself. This, of course, means that you need to buy all their books, supplements, etcetera, so that you can do the right ritual to purify your body, instead of leaving it up to useless vestigial organs like the liver and kidneys, which serve no discernible function.

I'm thinking about using the term "bubble boys and girls" to describe those sorts.

The first argument I can think of against the use is that it can be considered insensitive to those people who have genuine problems with their immune system and need to remain in sterilized environments. The reason I propose the term is that many of the alties I am referring to, if they took their policy about risk to its logical end, would need to isolate themselves from the environment: They worry about trace amounts of mercury compounds, but rarely see anything wrong with eating fish. They worry about 1 in 1,000,000 risks of vaccination, but not about the deadly diseases they're made to prevent. They worry about unspecified, unknown risks of anything remotely new (even after it's been safety tested for years or even decades), but accept old, well-known risks of everyday behavior without batting an eye.

It's not a perfect fit, but I think it should be emphasized that many alties would indeed need to completely isolate themselves from the world to meet their arbitrarily high standards, hence it'd be appropriate to exaggerate just how fragile they think humans are, and the ridiculous extremes they'd require if they applied their risk aversion uniformly. Of course, I don't mean to use the label as literal truth, but as a semi-comedic exaggeration to hurl at them in hopes that it will wake them from their intellectual torpor, even if only for a moment.

Any thoughts?

7 comments:

Random said...

How about "Glass Jaws"? Or "Achillies"?

Or how about "Paper Dolls"?

I'll have to give this some thought.

Random
Prince of Montreal

Dunc said...

But those bubbles are made of evil plastics! ;)

MWchase said...

Call them "organo-bubblies", maybe? It's rather far from the derivation by that point, but I think it conveys attitude, if nothing else.

Dark Jaguar said...

Then again, you have to consider that many alties tend to believe the body's capacity to heal itself verges on Wolverine levels, unless we doubt it by shoving any standard medicine in there.

Bronze Dog said...

That's what they say, but not what they mean.

MWchase said...

We can regenerate from our brain stem, so long as it's soaked in natural stuff, like [insert any horrific disease or parasite here. Really, there are quite a few options]?

Maybe that would only work if it were water imparted with healing energies. (Why don't those raise the temperature of anything, come to that? And if they do, can this psychic energy transference technique be weaponized by pumping cells so full of healing energy that their enzymes deactivate?)

Random said...

I got it! "Lois Lanes"

Get it?

Man of Steel, woman of kleenex.

OK, fine it sucks, I don't see YOU coming up with better!

Random
Prince of Montreal