For some reason, young people are just not that interested in doing stuff organized by people much older than them, or in hobbies that require them to follow a set schedule
I've seen a bit of this. Millenials could be flakey but generally apologetic if they miss something they said they'd go to.
Gen Z just goes radio silent.
I am not sure people necessarily perceive the value in developing hosting skills, and those who do, might be disappointed with how hard it can be to get people to commit.
YES.
For whatever reason (especially for the young) they want to maintain optionality all the way up to the last minute.
If I were a less disciplined (and stubborn) person I'd have given up hosting anyone but immediate friends like a year ago.
And hell, the reason I'm willing to host is to make it cheap enough that younger folks don't have to worry about coming out and running up a tab!
I'm never completely sure if my competition are events hosted by others or literally just watching streaming shows at home and Doordash.
"Alexa, describe my personal romantic hellscape, be sure to tailor it to demand the exact opposite of my personal preferences as the price for entrance."
The main issue is the lack of places for young people to organically meet and pair up.
Interesting that this isn't just a problem in the U.S. For some reason I assumed that the social scene for 20 and 30 somethings was still somewhat hopping in Europe. They seem to brag about walkable communities and friendlier social norms. At least parts of it.
I have bent over backwards to try and host spaces for people to hang out casually and meet without much expectations but also clearance to flirt, and somehow I virtually NEVER (like, once or twice in the past year?) get invited to spaces hosted by other people.
So maybe a combination of fewer 'third spaces,' (or the third spaces being too costly for young folk!) people not having spaces large enough to host others, AND a generalized decline in 'hosting' as a skill people develop at all?
faceh
23hr ago
I think we disagree on which steps are both necessary and sufficient.
However I do think that punishing employers is necessary both from a practical and "upholding rule of law" perspective.
is more than most Americans would stomach.
For better or worse (almost certainly worse) I think Americans are learning just how much they can stomach and how sharp but limited application of violence actually gets things done.
I think Americans have gotten less stomach for lawlessness and even basic property destruction after living through Covid times.
This isn't to say they're going to side with the government, but I see a general preference for order rather than chaos, and that can justify violent action.
(contingent on how long most Americans can actually pay attention to anything or really have an awareness of the situation outside their local area)
faceh
23hr ago
I mean, the 'root cause' is mostly that social and economic conditions suck in other countries in both absolute terms and relative to the U.S..
In the purely materialist interpretation, its the same reason wind moves along a gradient from areas of high pressure to low pressure.
"Fixing" the root cause in that case would imply raising economic standards in those other countries (has been tried). Lowering economic standards in the U.S., or, maybe, just sprinkling enough excess U.S. wealth around that its marginally more attractive to stay put than to immigrate.
Or, if we don't find those methods feasible, imposing enough barriers that the flow is actually slowed down to a manageable extent.
And given how border crossings have slowed to a trickle with Trump in office, I'd say the barriers don't even have to be that imposing.
Anyway, lets say we do put a few CEOs in jail and this convinces other CEOs to avoid hiring illegals, which has a noticeable effect on, e.g. self-deportations.
What happens when the next Democratic president pardons them all, and then re-establishes the same status quo which allows them to hire illegals with relatively little concern for enforcement?
How do you get immigration restriction locked in at the political level?
I humbly suggest you gotta do more than merely slapping the employers around.
faceh
1d ago
I mean, any large agri-business, large construction company (which adds another layer, they work through contractors), restaurant chains etc.
That's the flip side. A lot of the employers are small businesses themselves, so there'll be a lot of them, and thus enforcement efforts are going to be a bit more involved to catch any significant number of them.
This is something you'd really want to solve on the systems level, similar to the demand for voter ID in elections.
In theory it should be. Yet no one does this. Why?
This is a full-on guess from my side.
At the top level, its not great optics. And from the corruption angle, some don't want their donors arrested.
On the practical, ground level where the prosecutions happen:
How do you prove that a CEO was knowingly complicit in the hiring process, was directing people to hire illegals, basically fully aware that the company relied on this to function?
A number of middle manager types would probably take the fall for the guys in charge in most cases.
Its a trickier prospect than proving that someone was de facto here without permission, and thus can be summarily removed.
It's absolutely true that if we could magically teleport every last illegal out of the country, it would wreck a lot of the economy.
I think "correction" is really the term to use. That is, there's clearly a ton of 'distortions' in the economy that will be removed if immigration laws are aggressively enforced.
I have pointed out how they actively compete with working class/poor citizens for housing, and use up healthcare and similar public services, and of course if there's increased crime/decreased public cohesion, that is mostly borne by the poor and middle class as well. Over the long term I think it creates Brazilification..
I think that the benefits and costs are very unequally distributed and we get effects like cheap food on one hand but far more expensive housing, car insurance, and medical care on the other. Distortions in economic distribution due to the presence of an underclass for whom the 'normal' rules are not applied.
Teleporting them all away would, I'd wager, remove a lot of the benefits... which were disproportionately enjoyed by the elite classes... but also would remove the costs that were broadly imposed on the middle/lower classes.
So yes, there might be some 'wreckage.' I would be willing to accept the bet that the pain is mostly endured by the upper class and thus the vast majority of the populace would suffer minimally, especially after the things get reshuffled over the course of months or years.
faceh
1d ago
My abject guess:
On the top level its an optics thing.
On the rubber-meets-the-road level, good luck proving that a CEO or anyone in C-Suite was "knowingly" approving hiring of illegals, especially if the immigrants in question were able to produce sketchy but minimally sufficient papers to prove legitimacy.
Sure there's probably some who put it in an e-mail that you can uncover, but these are the guys who can afford quality legal representation.
faceh
1d ago
I'd guess the reason we can't currently do both is the sheer amount of enforcement resources that are tied up in dealing with the active interference from protestors and state officials.
In theory, it should be simple enough to identify the largest employers with large numbers of illegals on the payrolls, throw the book at one or two of the CEOs, and let incentives take their course.
faceh
1d ago
I'm committing to finishing up my first read of Wildbow's Worm, and I am up to the point where Taylor becomes Weaver.
[Spoilers]
Okay, I think I hit my limit of disbelief on "actually, insect control is OP" writing. You have one of the most overall indestructible Capes, who is also a tactical genius w/photographic memory on top of it, and she's somehow not able to defend against "insects jammed into your mouth" attack.
A tactic that Taylor has used ample times anyway.
I accept the premise that getting foreign matter lodged in her lungs (or drowning) would be a killing stroke, I accept that Alexandria was trying to goad this precise reaction from her... but its both hard to believe that Alexandria wouldn't think of "close your mouth and nose" as a defense, or that standard-issue bugs would actually be able to force themselves down her airway.
I was barely hanging on as Taylor is using bugs to dial telephones and manipulate the wiring in the walls to get doors opened, but "I stuffed her lungs full of roaches and spiders" was seemingly a different level entirely.
It works for the plot, and I'll keep reading, but that was the first time I groaned at Taylor being able to punch far above her nominal weight class through creative insect usage. It didn't even have the 'rule of cool' justification like when she's in a drawn out fight.
[/Spoilers]
Still beats most mainstream stories that are out these days.
faceh
1d ago
Let’s round up the illegal immigrants (kindly) AND prosecute the employers that employ them (kindly).
And if the state in which the persons in question reside not only refuse cooperation, but actively interfere, can we also go after the officials who are thwarting any enforcement at all?
Can we also arrest them?
I just want to know where the limits of 'accountability' stop and why it should extent to employers but not state actors.
Side question, is there ever, in the history of EVER, been a game designed explicitly around trying to teach a player some "prosocial" (as defined by the developer) lesson, that has resulted in a meaningful uptick in that prosocial behavior?
To ask the question is basically to answer it.
But that actually makes the point that there is no UPSIDE to making such a game, it won't achieve the intended result, but significant possible downside if you accidentally give players something to rally around for mockery.
This reads as nonserious when we JUST had a reveal and discussion of billions with a "B" worth of dollars being fraudulently appropriated for essentially fake businesses run by various immigrant groups, with one standout being the Somalis.
Largely in blue states.
Targeting employers would ignore this particular flow of tax dollars into dubiously legal immigrant communities who have seemingly separated themselves from 'legitimate' society and operate insular networks with outsized political influence.
That seems like a pressing matter that can't be ignored.
So you see, I will amend my beliefs and correct errors.
Ayyyy. Glad to see it.
we've talked before about your expectations of women and how you feel society puts too much responsibility on men and not enough on women.
I would amend that to be that society heaps responsibility on men and hampers their ability to fulfill it. This is what the individual 'bootstraps' dialogue hits on. "Its nobody else's responsibility to help you." But whose responsibility is it when they're actively interfering with you? Young men can't be to blame for EVERYTHING wrong with society... but if they try and blame anybody else that just invites further criticism.
not enough on women.
But I always get angry responses for not blaming women enough.
This would be a touchy point. Responsibility/Authority and blame are two sides of the same coin in my book. You CAN'T blame someone for something they weren't responsible for.
If women want to accept more responsibility (and the rewards that come with it) they also have to accept blame if they screw up.
But there's clearly a tendency to avoid blaming women for various outcomes, and treat them like they are not responsible for their actions.
And I only see two ways to resolve this:
Either many women as less responsible for their actions than the average men... but then we really need to adopt legal and social standards that recognize this (like with children).
Or, women are indeed responsible for their actions... and thus they should be held to the same standards as men. I'm just a girl is not a defense, then.
And 'held to the same standards as men' means holding them at least partially accountable for the collapse in gender relations/marriage rates/fertility.
I don't see how we can both say women are fully agentic and responsible for their own actions... but also blameless when those actions have predictable negative consequences.
But saying women aren't fully agentic and responsible for their own actions is... not very nice, is it?
but one way to reliably annoy me is to call me a liar. I believe what I say I believe.
Having explained your position more; I retract any implication that you're lying. I see why you would conclude what you did.
And I sincerely did not want to offend, and I see how you would have taken offense. I apologize if I goaded too much. I'm now certain you're not an intentional troll, which seemed like a possibility for a bit.
faceh
4d ago
You post surveys and magazine articles that reinforce your opinion.
See, you seem to think I search out these studies specifically because I already formed a belief.
You can look back through years of posts and you might notice my opinion is the result of finding dozens upon dozens of various surveys, studies, anecdotes and data that all pointed to where I'm at now.
The data is the reason I developed this particular opinion.
And I will develop it further if you, or anyone else, can give me some reason to reach a different conclusion.
It DOES reinforce my opinion when I tell people who disagree with me that I am willing to look at their data and change my mind and they don't provide any.
It STRONGLY SUGGESTS that you are forming your opinion from... what, exactly? What feels better to believe? I have a few hypotheses.
But the longer you go without providing any data in response, the more I conclude that contradictory data does not exist.
Because I've looked.
when you stop confidently declaring that people don't really believe the things they say because you disagree with them.
That seems to be the standard you're applying. I'm game to play along.
I think you don't believe that I'm disappointed with the 'injustices' allegedly heaped upon me or that I have some deep-seated bias against women, because I can assure you I have never said any words to that effect, and I've often said the opposite.
I've never claimed that the world owes me, or that something I'm entitled to has been taken, or that I blame the opposite sex for my misery. Also, I'm not miserable. If I felt that way... I'D SAY IT.
I understand if it seems frustrating, but you're in one of the few places on the public internet where one is expected to stand by their beliefs as stated rather than hop back and forth between your true beliefs and the beliefs that are easy to defend.
I'm stating exactly what I think, why I think it, and inviting the attacks on it. I can even lay out pretty specific terms for what would change my mind on this issue.
We could try that chicken/egg argument. (Which phenomena came first? Would guys turn to drugs, gambling and video games if they believed they could land a wife by not doing those things?) I'll stipulate that there's a feedback loop. I will not stipulate that if men were to quit drugs, gambling, and video games that women would find them attractive by default.
Once again we have that data I just posted. Non-college-educated women tend to have 'reasonable' standards. But there are more college-educated women than before, so on average women's standards have risen.
There are also more college educated men now than there were before. If we think men have gotten worse, then that's suggesting that college education doesn't make you a better partner.
And if you make that argument, then explain why women getting college degrees makes them want better partners.
So no, I'd say, in the education department, men have generally gotten better on average.
And the blaring piece of evidence where obese women won't settle for obese men.
I think that's the obvious asymmetry. Both genders have (on average) gotten less physically appealing. Only one isn't willing to adjust their own standards to this fact.
faceh
5d ago
Well, there are caveats.
Likewise, sports gambling and gambling ads were banned for a long time. Tobacco ads were banned in living memory b/c of health implications.
Me, I think it would be simple enough to just mandate that every social media site that hits above a certain userbase size must open-source their algorithm.
To a degree this is similar to mandating 'Nutrition Facts' on food. People are consuming content from a source that is completely opaque about how that content is selected and curated.
Hard to see a 1A concern there.
faceh
5d ago
Ding ding ding.
You also have to obscure your motivations... which makes you behave even sketchier!
"Oh no, I just REALLY like discussing early 20th century Gothic literature with this lovely group of 30-something ladies. It has NAUGHT to do with the two hotties sitting over there in the corner wearing the black lipgloss, my thoughts are as pure as the driven snow."
Because as you say, if they dislike the attention, then they have the option of saying "don't invade womens' spaces just to date them, you have to respect their boundaries!" and exiling you without fanfare.
Doesn't matter is some subset of the women absolutely would accept your advances.
That said, I find it painful to dive into activities where the sole motive is trying to partner up. If the activity isn't enjoyable by itself, then I'd just rather not participate.
Your "data" is not meaningful
I don't think you're the one who determines that, actually.
You could convince me otherwise, but that would require laying down some kind of groundwork.
But what you like to believe is things that reinforce your sense of injustice inflicted upon you by the world. You construct just-so stories that reinforce a particular narrative, you take surveys as "data" and you dismiss any other model of human behavior because it doesn't fit your priors.
This is so wildly incorrect about my mode of thinking I can't even take offense to it, its like you threw a rock at my head but it flew off into the thicket of trees about 100 feet to my right and scared a Bobcat.
I genuinely have no sense of 'injustice inflicted upon me by the world.' Its just people, treating other people in ways they might not want to be treated in return, if anything.
Its rather interesting, however, that you think my data about large scale social trends leads me to wrong conclusions...
But you think your assessment of the inner workings of another person's mind is going to be spot on based on limited interactions.
Genuinely, explain your epistemic philosophy that lets you make confident conclusions about individual psychology whilst ALSO denouncing data-based analysis of trends. I want to hear it.
My personal thesis is that its the algorithms, not explicitly the phones (obviously the phones are a prerequisite).
Early Facebook was fine. It was a chronological feed consisting solely of what your friends posted.
Early online dating was also fine. You could navigate and search out people you thought were compatible, message them directly.
The rise of curation via opaque algos is when we saw things shift towards optimizing attention, ad dollars, and ragebait and brainrot. And in dating they removed the ability to filter directly and just gameified it and blew up the 'organic' nature of the environment entirely.
This is reaching an apotheosis now with gambling integrated in everything we do.
Twitter/X just open-sourced their algorithm, and I've been seeing people pointing out some of the direct factors in there that would lead to 'toxic' feedback loops and demolition of organic communities.
Have to assume its the same on every other site, too.
faceh
5d ago
The huge irony is that my boss is a woman, and my workplace overall is slanted towards female employees. But since she's an utterly remorseless businesswoman who grinds it out in the trenches alongside her employees, she is EASILY the most meritocratic employer I've ever worked for.
I don't rock the boat politically (thanks to having an outlet here, I suppose), I put in the work and bring in the cash, I keep my personal life separate enough that it rarely bleeds over.
My friends in White Collar corporate jobs seem to be navigating byzantine labyrinths where the goals are ever-shifting, the ability to progress uncertain, and the actual rules for personal conduct are opaque in places. Loyalty doesn't exist, of course. Thankful to have avoided that for most of my life.
faceh
5d ago
If the data were based solely on matchmaker reports sure.
But its in the survey data. More women are college educated these days. College educated women are VASTLY more picky.
Its literally women saying it themselves that they can't find partners who meet their expectations.
When the data, the anecdotes, the personal observations and the testimony from 'experts' end up all pointing at the same direction, I am just inclined to Occam's Razor that they're probably pretty accurate.
Been reading some insistent advice on twitter that you can meet women out at dance classes or in book clubs.
I've tried the dance classes, and the gender ratio tends to be skewed towards males... and the women tend to bring their own partners.
So you've got a small pool of available women with a circling school of dudes trying to elbow in. I can see why that'd be daunting for single women, and potentially drive some of them away.
The book club... that's asking for quite a bit of commitment for something that has very small odds of working out, and has some small chance of backfiring.
And even if those were two viable options, its still an indictment that we've so severely narrowed the acceptable arenas to meeting others outside the apps.
faceh
5d ago
Almost as convincing as your old OKCupid survey.
Still waiting on data to contradict it.
Have you seen the extremely comprehensive data from tinder that shows basically the exact same thing?
Here's a youtube video based on that data if that's more appealing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3pvkgUc9Zbc?si=Tktvaz4PBg-Vsr5K
Your personal disappointment over my lying eyes, obviously we will both trust our respective sources.
You can keep saying this, but I sincerely suspect you don't actually believe it.
I just like to believe true things.
faceh
5d ago
I just do not believe that all of it should be blamed on women wanting an unrealistic fantasy.
Can we blame the social forces/media that women are susceptible to for inculcating those unrealistic fantasies?
Maybe regulate those factors a bit?
That's an excellent point, since I definitely learned some marketing skills from Runescape just as a matter of course.
And it only took ONE person convincing me to "Come to Wildy and I'll drop runes" to grok "oh, people will exploit your trust mercilessly when there's no consequences."
That one does have the rep as the sole 'non-toxic' MMO in existence. At least with any popularity.
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