Bartender_Venator
No bio...
User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
15hr ago
To be fair, this guy is Swedish. The sense I get from my Swedish friends is that nobody is allowed to complain about anything in Sweden (except maybe bad fika), and if you do, you are ipso facto some kind of bitter, deformed outcast, a defiler of the Jantelagen. The big old Swedish companies are also culturally fairly old-fashioned in the sense of focusing on their business, I'm sure there are many places you can hide from this stuff, and if you think that it's only a problem when you personally see it that's basically luck of the draw in your coworkers.
Bartender_Venator
16hr ago
Did you stay at hostels?
I did in Western Europe, got decent hotels for the same budget in other places. Never really socialized in them, which in retrospect was a mistake, lots of folks who all want to meet people. I would recommend getting single rooms in hostels and socializing in the lounge/bar, because the group rooms are too likely to fuck up your sleep. I'm not really a hostel guy at this point, but hostel bars are still great places to go - in fact, in the last city I lived in in the US, I'd sometimes go to the local hostel's bar to meet people - particularly in a country where the local English isn't great
Any recs for which places to visit first?
Countries which like Americans make socializing much easier. Eastern Europe (Russia/Serbia aside), Central Asia, parts of the Middle East and Latin America. Just nod and agree/ask questions if they start talking about weird political stuff, Kunley Druqkpa's interviews on twitter are a great example of how to do that. If you find yourself in smaller countries coming out of bad times, people are often really excited to see Westerners visiting and showing genuine interest in their culture/history. My most recent trip was Albania, and as soon as I sat down to watch some football an older gent started talking to me and was clearly very happy I'd chosen to come see the place.
This will vary person by person, but after 3-4 weeks of travel I tend to get quite tired and my mood dips a lot. If you're going to do longer trips, make sure that you get a restful period around that time. Get some books, spend a couple days with nothing to do but what you feel like doing at that moment, even if it's sitting in a cafe or on a balcony chilling.
For when you're in a place and looking where to go, I always swore by wikitravel's recommendations, but nowadays ChatGPT is very good to both prepare walking itineraries to see historical/cultural sites and to get lists of places with whatever social vibe you're looking for (I usually say hipster spots and places in the nice areas where locals hang out). Tell it to search for sources in the local language as well as English.
Dating apps really really depend on the culture of the place you're visiting, basically how conservative and pious it is on the one hand, and how much you need to look out for hookers/scammers on the other. Bring your street smarts, but even if you don't intend to date in a place checking the apps can give you an interesting sense of how young people there present themselves.
I really can't emphasize enough how helpful it is to become at least a slight soccer fan if you can. It's the world's sport, every country outside the US and in any big US city you'll have a bunch of soccer fans from a bunch of clubs getting together every weekend. I grew up in London but didn't really start following it until I started traveling and realized that wherever I go in the world there will always be Arsenal fans.
Try not to dress too much like a tourist. Dark, clean clothes, no graphic t-shirts, shorts only when necessary. The /mfa starter pack vibe is more than enough, you just don't want to look like the stereotypical American tourist who doesn't give a shit about the country he's visiting except taking pictures. Also expect some ribbing for being American, 99% of the time this is either a) a friendly introduction and minor male shit-test to see if you're chill and can be funny back or b) has some political aspect to it that can make the guy into an instant friend if you agree with him that some war was a bad thing or whatever.
fighting the initial resistance of my brain trying to protect myself from 'danger'
This sounds crazy, but I did a meditation retreat recently, and their recommendation to learn to get past the 'shock reflex' is to step into a cold shower, feel the shock, and then try to breathe normally, wait under it to acclimatize and feel the water on your skin as just water rather than as shock and danger. I found it quite helpful with some of the meditation stuff that hits that brain impulse to instantly react rather than relax.
Bartender_Venator
18hr ago
So I can go into more detail, but solo travel did more than anything else to turn me from awkward autist into social butterfly chad than anything. The key is to think of it as a skill, to do it with intent and thoughtfully consider your practice of it (and not to get too bummed when something doesn't work out, it's often random and, if not, a learning experience - at the time, I leaned on the Stoic maxim that every situation is in its own way an opportunity to practice virtue). Learning to be a good, confident conversationalist is like learning to become good and confident at a sport or an instrument. Same with bravery and a desire for adventure.
Bartender_Venator
20hr ago
Consider asking your doc for something short-term to treat them.
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
Travel will do a ton for you. Solo travel teaches you self-reliance and confidence, and having friends to meet makes dropping into a new city much less daunting. In distant countries with a culture barrier, it's easier to find the mindset of "I'm never going to see these people again, the cultural gap hides any weirdness I might have, and we already have a natural topic of conversation." If you drink, go to a bar where you can meet locals, ask them about their country, answer their questions about the US, two pints of beer is generally the sweet spot for social anxiety (do not under any circumstances attempt to go shot for shot with a Slav, Scandi, or Korean). If a local team's playing on the TV, cheer for them. The next level to this is consciously applying your hustle and autism powers to getting socially comfortable, so if you can, think about what introductions, jokes, stories, etc. end up working in those interactions and build your confidence that way.
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
Historically, high-status women would have been forced to take on relatively little burden in raising their own children. The suburban nuclear family didn't produce the great men of the 19th Century, the aristocratic/bourgeois household and the governesses/boarding school did. If it weren't for Baumol's cost disease and other factors raising the cost/lowering the desirability of that option, we'd have a very simple solution: CEO-lady pops out plenty of kids and they get raised by the staff.
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
I'll be honest, man, I have a low opinion of self-professed "centrists", precisely because many of them are never happy unless they have some hiveblob they can preen against. I appreciate you not doing that. My advice to onlookers - you want to make this place better, and truer to its mission, find the small cracks, the points of true difference between the people here, and crack into them with an open mind.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
In my experience, the French pronunciation is reserved for specifically artistic contexts. You pay homage to the King of France, you pay 'ommage to Jean-Luc Godard.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
Study rhetoric! Preferably with a Classical flavour to it, though of the moderns I recommend Leo Strauss, HL Mencken, and Keith Johnstone's Impro. As Rousseau said, "man is the chief instrument of man", and rhetoric is how one accesses that instrument. Not entirely unlike wavedashing life, honestly.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
I address the argument that Watson is a kook, and that he's icky weird ew, in my demand for an argument from Count - Watson being icky weird ew is not actually inherently evident from those statements, but something you need to argue for and defend, that's the entire spirit of this place. I don't believe that the rules on speaking plainly and consensus-building are meant to say that you should throw out rough sketches of an argument, where it's impossible to distinguish between motte and bailey, and then expect commenters to paint out the rest of it for you. There is no good argument with to be had, so I declined the half-written invitation.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
So, previously, in response to justawoman, I wrote that there's a distinct stage in the decline of forums where their dynamic becomes increasingly dominated by people coming in to argue with "the forum", which they see as an amorphous outgroup blob. The paradigmatic example to me is all the incels (not in the lib sense, actual incels) going to 4chan's /fit/ to argue with /fit/izens about how self-improvement is impossible and nobody will ever get laid except Chad. It may be true that, in certain respects - perhaps on particular issues, perhaps in response to particular arguments, or perhaps, perhaps often, in response to obviously bad posts which cloak themselves in those issues and arguments - themotte can summon a hornet's nest. This is bad. It is bad to poke the hornet's nest, bad to summon the hornets, bad to be a hornet. If you do this, you are degrading the space and the community. Even though many people come here and see what they want to see, themotte is not a monolithic rightoid hiveblob, but to troll it as if it is a monolithic rightoid hiveblob is to summon that hiveblob out of the future as an entirely natural defense mechanism. If you like this dynamic in a community, I invite you to move on, and instead visit the beautiful imageboard of /pol/, where anyone can play 128D dramatard chess with whatever outgroupblob they choose to envision.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
Do any of those quotes show James Watson faux-innocently asking questions in order to get someone else to argue for socially unacceptable positions? I don't seem to see one.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
Thank you, Dean, I appreciate your thoroughness. It's a surprising pleasure to have a post analyzed and explicated like this.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
I appreciate your thanks, though having slept on it I do feel like trolling back at him and to some extent backseat modding wasn't the ideal good-citizen-of-themotte response to give BC. But whomst among us is the perfect mottizen?
Bartender_Venator
12d ago
I think you would very much like to believe that's how people see you here, and I can see how you might have read that into my sarcasm. I just think you spend too much time on arrdrama, enjoy shit-stirring for the sake of it (possibly picking your views based on that, I can't say, but would be many such cases), and lower the tone of this otherwise pleasantly autismal establishment.
No, I don't think you're a leftoid baiting - mate, I wouldn't have chosen to make that post if I didn't know your posting well.
Plus, mentioning Franklin would be poor baitcraft. You'd get written off as a leftoid and not get nearly as much attention as doing the former rightoid schtick.
This is a well-crafted piece, let's break it down:
- OP begins with praise of James Watson, that's good ethos, builds rapport.
- Then there's a little narrative of how he once believed the simple rightoid account of Watson's cancellation, but then [Adam Curtis voice] something strange happened.
- He links to a long list of quotes on a liberal blog. Now, this is very clever, in that the full list has plenty of quotes many people here will either chuckle at and consider understandable, or outright agree with. Much heat to be generated just from commenters digging in and litigating the quotes.
- The selected quotes are well-chosen on that criterion, but also to get the attention of particular niches - the manlets, the redpillers, the Peaters. The last one will get at least two mottizens arguing with over exactly which lines it crosses.
- Now, what you leave out of your writing is as important as what you put in. And see this spot here, where OP deftly leaves out an argument. Now, he could explain his reasoning, why he reevaluated his views on Watson's "respectability", but that would narrow the scope of the comments and keep him defending himself in them. But, as everyone knows, those statements are bad, and I'm sure you all agree that anyone making them must be crazy, that's just consensus.
- Very clever twist next to replace the argument: OP draws a parallel with mystical kookery of exactly the type that mottizens of rationalist heritage particularly hate. Now, the false equivalency is obvious, there are all kinds of differences you can draw between an HBD guy saying grouchy, inflammatory things about women and minorities, exaggerating theories within regular biology, or making spicy jokes, and a quantum consciousness homeopathy yoga guy, so the weakness of the analogy is particularly great for getting those comments heated up.
- The parting shot, the cherry on top, is to end by asserting that Watson's views are even worse for "modern civil society". Again, no argument, but none needed, and the use of "modern civil society" calls deftly back to the rightoid-to-enlightenment narrative from the start of the post.
I'll leave it to the gallery to decide if OP simply has natural talent at this, or is a trained and well-polished master baiter, but, from me, kudos.
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
True, but I suspect geniuses consumed by self-hatred also aren't going to be agonizing too much about whether their work crosses lines in dealing with others. To think of Kafka, he doesn't air his dirty laundry like Knausgaard does, but there's a hell of a lot of his life and the lives of others in his work. But even among the self-haters, I'm sure, there's a counterexample for everything (that's why these questions about art don't have bright-line answers, only ironic heuristics).
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
There is no objective standard of greatness, I know that won't suffice for mottizen autism, but I'm right, and this standard is both more serious and more useful than any attempt to pin down art like a dead beetle.
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
To put it seriously, as a writer who deals with this question in my own work: if you're a great artist you can do whatever you want, your work is beyond good and evil. If you're not, write like you took a Hippocratic Oath. If you have to ask the question you're not great.
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
Yes, Aristotle talks about this. So does TLP, in his own way. Time, commitment, action, none of these are black boxes. They're habits, and the question of getting to them is a practical one of habit-formation, not just willing yourself into doing something.
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
Despite the framing of the comment, where I share Thomas's objection, I don't believe for a moment that this story caused his suicide or meaningfully contributed to it. If it did, someone would bring receipts, if only for the scandal-click value. It really smells like a classic j*urnalist sensationalism-by-implication play.
Bartender_Venator
14d ago
Are memoirs ever ok? How many details does one need to change before one can write a novel? Is bitching about your wife on TheMotte ok because it's all under pseudonyms? What if she reads what a mottizen said about her and kills herself out of shame? What about twitter under a pseudonym? What about a blog under a real name? If Kulak writes a little tweetstorm about some "feminist bitch" he had to deal with, and she reads it and recognizes that it was her, is he in the wrong? What about the "blankfaces" that scott aaronson decried? Or is it the ideological agenda that makes the crime? What details is one obligated to change to conceal identity, and which are immoral to change because one is no longer telling the real story?
The Knausgaard Rule: if you're a great artist they let you do it. Grab 'em by the memoir.
If you're a hack writing discourseslop to go viral, fuck you, learn to have an imagination.
(For reference, Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote a six-volume autobiography, definitely the best book titled "My Struggle" ever written and indisputably one of the very greatest literary works of the century so far. It was extremely candid about his family, with the first volume describing cleaning out the house of his dead alcoholic hoarder father. His uncle hated this and has been very open about that. One of his exes said "it was as if he said: Now I'm going to punch you in the face. I know it's going to hurt, and I will drive you to the hospital afterwards. But I'm going to do it anyway." But Knausgaard gets to do that, because he's a great artist. She doesn't.)
Hostels will have lockers for your valuables, but if you're in a shared room you'll have 4am drunks, snorers, and no private space to take time in. Having a little private space is a big deal when you travel. Hostels' social events generally aren't limited to guests, but you may have to buy tickets, and their bars are usually open. Just don't try to go pints with Irish or Aussies or shots with Slavs.
If you're in a decently-sized city you can start now. For basics: there are two types of teams, privately-owned clubs that play during the season, and national teams that basically only matter during the World Cup and its qualifiers. Exception is if you're in a country when their team is playing, or an area with a big diaspora (once made a great Turkish mate I still talk to by watching a Turkey game in Germany). The English Premier League is the most popular in the world, followed by Spain, but mostly just Real Madrid/Barcelona. Picking a good Premier League team (Arsenal obviously the best pick, but there are inferior options out there) will give you fans to meet in the US, Europe, and Africa. Picking one of the big Spanish teams will give you fans to meet in Latin America and the US. All the big teams will have websites or social media pages where you can find their local fans in a given city big enough to host a fan group.
Yeah, hope the shower thing brings some luck, just suggesting it as a possibility.
More options
Context Copy link