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Friday Fun Thread for June 7, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Friends I cannot stress this enough: have kids.

People talk about loss of meaning and loss of rigid rites of passage that take you from being a child to being a man.

It's kids. It's always been kids.

Having kids is really hard (I apparently phrased this poorly since people are responding to it as if I am saying the opposite. My point is that you will find that the following things are the things you end of loving, and you will find the idea that these should ever have prevented you from having kids to be childish): your house will constantly be a filthy mess. They will keep you from sleeping, they will make it impossible to go out to dinner or to go to parties, and they make travel really difficult. Any of the dreams of adventure that you had before you had kids will be pushed back by 10 years.

And NONE of that will matter once you have them. You'll find the idea that you ever cared about any of this stuff laughable.

Friends I cannot stress this enough: have kids.

People talk about loss of meaning and loss of rigid rites of passage that take you from being a child to being a man.

It's kids. It's always been kids.

Having kids is really hard (I apparently phrased this poorly since people are responding to it as if I am saying the opposite. My point is that you will find that the following things are the things you end of loving, and you will find the idea that these should ever have prevented you from having kids to be childish): your house will constantly be a filthy mess. They will keep you from sleeping, they will make it impossible to go out to dinner or to go to parties, and they make travel really difficult. Any of the dreams of adventure that you had before you had kids will be pushed back by 10 years.

And NONE of that will matter once you have them. You'll find the idea that you ever cared about any of this stuff laughable.

I remember asking my parents why they had created me when I was about 12. They told me something to the effect of 'You'll get it when you're older and have your own children.'
22 years have passed since and absolutely nothing has changed about my perspective. I see a lot of negatives: less free time, less money, interruptions during sleep, horrible noises and messes to clean up. The potential that I might have to spend the rest of my life as the caretaker for a human with brain damage or some other deformity. And so on and on.

And what are the upsides? I might have some positive experiences at some point? Is that it? I've seen a lot of what I would hesitantly call 'pro-natalism' but I haven't seen any real reasoning or logic. Maybe it's just a hormonal thing and that part of me was damaged or never formed because I legitimately don't understand people who want to be parents.

As far as 'Just trust me, it'll be worth it'. My answer is, sorry but no. I have been guided towards bad decisions far too many times already and this one in particular seems especially horrible in terms of possible consequences.

Because you haven’t experienced it, you cannot understand the depth of purpose and meaning that children will give your life. Almost every parent is telling you that you’ll get it when the kids are here, and that it’s impossible to explain in words. They’re all saying that because it’s right.

I used to be really into the party/burning man scene and psychonauts would always explain that they couldn’t explain a DMT trip to me. It was just outside of anything I could understand and I would have to see it for myself.

Kids are like that. I can tell you it’s great, but I can’t really explain why. You have to see it yourself.

I might have some positive experiences at some point? Is that it?

Have you ever felt fulfilled, or full of love, or gratitude, or contentment? Have you ever felt hope, or joy, Would you like to experience that, but way more than you thought could be possible?

It's not just some positive experiences. It's more positive than anything else you're ever going to do, probably, and if you can't see that from outside I don't blame you, but I'm telling you anyway. It's just more. That's the best way I can describe it.

Someone posted this in ACX comments: https://soupofthenight.substack.com/p/normalize-mediocre-parenting

It's a bit of a hot take, but I agree with the central point: you are not a failure if you don't provide your kids with the best possible childhood that kickstarts their adult life. They'll be fine if they go to a desegregated school and a land grant university. They'll be fine if they browse TikTok instead of reading books. They'll be fine if you spend 15 minutes on them every day instead of 2 hours. They'll be fine if you spend less money on them and they get bullied for "being poor".

They'll be fine if they browse TikTok instead of reading books

Agree with most of it except for this. Tech screwed me up real good as an adult, and I grew up around it's more mundane forms. TikTok feels like techno-crack in comparison. Go outside and play with a stick, kid.

I'd agree, and it's unfortunate that the ubiquitous trope is that babies are miserable diarrhea factories and being a parent is about sleep deprivation, thankless labor and cutting your wealth in half.

My main regret is not being able to pull degenerate late nights in the lab anymore (I always hated travel), although I still get the odd weekend here and there. It's significantly harder to focus on my career and I expect to be outcompeted by the DINKs who can grind properly or the FOBs who have no qualms with making their wives do 90% of the childcare.

I counter you with a cold dose of Houllebecq!

“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.”

Uh yeah... don't take any of that too seriously, I don't think he does either. Kids are great, keep having them. Just felt like throwing that out there.

I have to counter your quote (but agree with your last sentences!) with the following from Serotonin:

Everything was clear, extremely clear from the beginning, but we didn’t realise. Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible; those ideas were part of the spirit of the age; we didn’t formalise them, we didn’t have the taste to do that; we merely conformed and allowed ourselves to be destroyed by them; and then, for a very long time, to suffer as a result.

God takes care of us; he thinks of us every minute, and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise. Those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away – those illuminations, those ecstasies, inexplicable if we consider our biological nature, our status as simple primates – are extremely clear signs.

This guy sounds utterly insufferable. There is more to life than having sex with "young people" (a term deliberately chosen, I am sure, to mean children to friendly audiences and mature adults to others). Judging by this passage, the only thing he cares about is pedophilic sex.

While Houellebecq is undoubtedly an inveterate and unrepentant coomer with a possible predilection for hebes, I would say he looks on pedophilia with sort of bemusement more than anything. His characters are consumed by their jealousy for the young (which, as @BahRamYou's quote indicates, is specifically high school/college age), and regrets for what could have been in their own youth. And this ends badly for them. Jumping to your conclusion via this one passage is...well, a jump.

It sure sounds like you aren't a friendly audience, yet you take the term to mean children. Does "leaving a party in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen" evoke a child first and foremost in your mind?

It sure sounds like you aren't a friendly audience, yet you take the term to mean children.

Yes but it can be plausibly defended against my interpretation, as you are doing right now. It's not that the double meaning is entirely invisible but that it signals to those who are In the Know while maintaining strategic ambiguity.

Does "leaving a party in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen" evoke a child first and foremost in your mind?

Does "contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work" evoke someone in their 20's first and foremost in your mind? You start paying taxes in France once you're employed--how many early 20's people do you know who have never been employed?

I for one went to a lot more parties in middle school than high school or college. The latter two were the time to get serious about my studies. My "partying days" were more or less between the ages of 12-14, and that's the age I had in mind for what he's describing. It's also the time I was probably most carefree--I was older and able to understand the world more, yet didn't yet have any real responsibilities.

If France has more of a prolonged adolescence then maybe that explains the difference, but "leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies" certainly doesn't sound like my high school experience. I'm lazier and more carefree now than I was then--my software development job is significantly easier than my studies were.

Houllebecq certainly wouldn't exclude 14 year olds at least from the people he describes as having "young bodies."

I think you have had an uncommon experience. Generally high school, college and one's early twenties is the peak of freedom and fucking around. At least, that has been my experience talking to people.

He's French, it's his culture. And also he's right imo.

I hope you are trolling.

When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned

Why don't you have a seat over here, monsieur Houllebecq?

Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell. It is a question of focal adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf in my life. We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open, and soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.

from the context he's pretty clearly talking about young adults, not kids.

soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.

idk sounds like he's talking about kids to me. And the age gap of 90+ years which he mentions is imo more likely to be between a 100 year old and a 10 year old than any older combination.

The excerpt you quoted is from Nabokov's Lolita. To compare it to a longing of a 30-year-old salaryman for 20-year-old carefree student is quite far-fetched and symptomatic of the problem described in BahRamYou's excerpt.

30 year old salary men can pretty readily scoop up a 20 year old nymphette if they get past their own shyness. It may be quite different outside Japan.

Bro, nymphettes hit the wall at 14.

The more you know.

Alright, I assumed it was from the same guy.

From the context of the proclivities of French intellectuals, I wouldn't be so sure.

The quote is from a Russian-American.

The Nabokov quote is, but the Houllebecq quote is not. I was using Humbert Humbert's monologue as a companion to Houllebecq thirsting after illegally young people.

I thought that would be obvious without attribution, but many of you guys haven't read Lolita and it shows.

It's not obvious at all to me that Houllebecq was writing about the illegally young, or how quoting another author demonstrates that, or indeed how it demonstrates anything other than that it is, in fact, possible to write about pedophilia without being a pedophile yourself.

Who's getting jailed for hitting on twenty year olds?

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Houllebecq

This is the second place in the last 5 minutes on two different websites that somebody has talked about Houllebecq. So hot right now.

he's not, like, some obscure writer. he's been a best seller for decades. but yes, he's very quotable on all sorts of hot culture war topics.

Very default quotable figure across a diverse range of scenes including BAPism/RSP/Dimes Square/nrx/silicon valley edgy/le atheism/neocon, it’s not too surprising.

It was on the RSP sub that I saw it lol

I agree with the have kids part, but I think you might be exaggerating how necessary the negative parts are.

You can keep your house tidy and you can go to parties and to dinner. Travel is trickier of course but manageable. Sleep is very variable between kids. My first made it tricky, but the rest have been good sleepers since early on and part of that is from lessons learned. Set a feeding schedule and stick to it. Don't always go and immediately respond to a crying baby. Teach them basic signs early on so they can tell you "food, hurts, or nappy". Make them tidy up with you when they are done playing with toys.

Raising babies is work, but it can be organized and minimized.

FWIW, some kids are just different. One of mine could probably be diagnosed with ADHD. Sweet and very intelligent, but very impulsive and hyperactive. He/she has a sibling 3 years younger who is far better behaved and has greater self-control. We could probably have a clean house and travel if it weren't for him/her tbh.

I have four kids under the age of 5. Maybe I phrased what I meant wrong.

My general point is that the things people who are afraid of having kids worry about end up being irrelevant once the kids are here.

Sure I agree with you there, 100%. People let a lot of things stop them having kids (finances being a big one) but in my experience you really don't need as much as people think.

You almost never hear very old people regret having children. I think that’s the only evidence needed.

Friends I cannot stress this enough: have kids.

As many as 10-30% of younger generations can't even have sex. Sure they could 'technically' have kids through IVF but the idea itself is sitcom-worthy I think.

Where on earth did you get that figure, presuming you mean they're physically incapable of doing so?

Look at Japanese virginity rates in the 30-40 age group.

they're physically incapable

Well maybe not 'physically incapable' as in, in a zoo setting maybe it could work, but women addicted or merely very well habituated to porn are unlikely to experience orgasm during sex, and men addicted to it are unlikely to maintain erections. Hence, necessity of IVF.

The whole topic is completely dismal, you can find out that relative prevalence of <40 men seeking out medical help with E.D. went up by 3-4x between 2000 and 2015 but of course that of course could only possibly have happened because awareness that Viagra (introduced cca 2000) exists increased and all those men are just insecure and fishing for drugs. That's the go-to explanation.

If you don't talk to 'academic' experts but talk to people involved in treating ED and sex disorders they're going to tell you something completely different though. It makes perfect sense that boys who have been looking at porn since age 12-15 can't possibly suffer any adverse consequences when they get around to having sex by 18-25. Not like adolescence is a formative period of time.

Gotta read this later, this might actually have interesting data.. Hopefully libgen has it.

It seems more likely that a lot of young men are insecure and want to ‘last longer’ (or lower refractory period etc) and so use the drug even though they don’t have ED. Similarly if there was a drug that increased dick size one would expect that many average and above endowed men would still take it just because.

It couldn't possibly be anything different. The increasingly bizarre pornography out there could in no way be connected to this. That Japan, a country with one of the most dysfunctional relationship situations out there has a long tradition of weird pornography is merely coincidental.

Who am I gonna believe? A rich professional involved with finance, or someone involved in treating sex disorders? Of course, the rich person. No one smart would work in a profession interested in helping people, that doesn't pay.

What the hell, dude?

By itself, this post is just bad enough to get a warning. Avoid sarcasm, avoid being an insufferably snide rageposter, avoid personal digs like this.

However, you have a long record of being an unsufferably snide rageposter. (Those links are like half of your record.)

Banned for a week. Get your rage under control or you won't be posting anymore.

E.g. me calling bullshit on the incredible claim that prime ministers would brave possible artillery shelling and go into a half besieged city for a very short meeting by pointing out there are no unambiguous photographs of them actually being there.

They didn't think to even snap some selfies or a short video in Kiev.

Anyway, yeah, I know you've got a thankless job but maybe it'd be reasonable to display an 'upvotes/word count/comments/mod attention' statistic out there so it doesn't look ideologically motivated.

Anyone competent could add that in in a couple of hours. I could probably do it in a couple of days, even though my coding is limited to cheating and tweaking in javascript 'games.'

This one confuses me. His point seems entirely valid. The last line:

Who am I gonna believe? A rich professional involved with finance, or someone involved in treating sex disorders? Of course, the rich person. No one smart would work in a profession interested in helping people, that doesn't pay.

Seems a little like a non-sequitar. Is that the problem? Japan does produce absolutely bizarre pornography, and supposing that there is a link between this and fertility seems completely reasonable.

  1. Japan as a country seems particularly addicted to porn

  2. The porn that Japanese porn users tend to use is particularly detached from things which would (or even could, legally) happen in real life.

  3. This seems like it could have an effect on Japanese sexual mores

  4. Which seems like it could have an effect on fertility

  5. Japan has a notably low fertility rate

This seems absolutely reasonable, and to say it in a silly way seems completely reasonable in the Friday Fun Thread.

Many other countries have lower rates without the weird porn. That kinda nukes this whole theory I think.

As a guy living in Japan, a few points I will make:

  1. However weird Japan porn may appear to you, it's nevertheless prohibited by law from showing genitalia. I know a guy who did time working for an organization (low level yakuza) that distributed depixellated porn. (This was around 2000). That law is odd, but I assure you it holds. That you can type in "uncensored" online and find such available does not change the fact that most of it is, in fact, censored, particularly in shops, etc. and anything geared mainly to a Japanese market. (I am waiting to be proven wrong )

  2. Organized crime generally has its hand in the porn industry. As it does in the massive sex trade here (that dodges the law which declares prostitution illegal in various creative ways.)

  3. The massive sex trade is available and thrives because...people are having sex. Just not with procreation in mind, and not with their wives or husbands. I'd have said "men" are having sex but they're doing it with women, it's just that the women are getting paid. By said men.

  4. There are probably many variables contributing to what you're calling "Japanese sexual mores." Whether porn is the strongest factor, a contributing factor, a result, or unrelated, is a study that would be difficult to design and as far as I know hasn't been made convincingly.

  5. I wouldn't say at all that "Japan as a country is addicted to porn." Certainly no more than, say "America as a country." It's odd to read that actually. What makes you have that impression?

  6. German porn, in my limited experience, is weirder than Japanese porn (though it's true you can find some pretty disturbing Japanese porn.) That's a rabbit hole that I've never really wanted to spelunk.

  7. The point you make about the fertility issue is as far as I know accepted generally as accurate.

Edit: de-mosaic'd is probably the term I was looking for.

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Can mods make it possible for us to request our permanent records? Like a FOIA request.

You can ask. We don't have a policy about it one way or the other, but we're certainly not going to indulge people who want to relitigate past offenses or complain about what's in their record.

You have quite a few warnings and two tempbans, if that's what you want to know.

I don’t think this is banworthy (and to anyone reading I didn’t report it), it was just a little weird.

By itself it wouldn't have been, but as we've pointed out before, when you have a long (and recent) string of comments like this and you won't stop, you start getting less slack.

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I'm assuming he refers to involuntary celibacy which was high for a hot moment but which has now gone down to historic levels.

People say having kids is really hard but i strongly disagree with that. It's pretty easy, your life is just different.

If you're hellbent on travelling and partying then, yes, it's going to be hard, but if you're intending to care for your kids it's pretty easy, especially if your not trying to force them to become something they're not.

I think an issue is that some people don't actually want to have kids and they whine loudly and incessantly, with some other parents jumping on the bandwagon for clout. In my friend group there is one person that's actually had a hard time and a fair bit of that is self inflicted, and none of us were really aiming to have kids. In reality almost every single parent I know (including myself) are very satisfied with being parents.

Don't let the whine brigade fool you into thinking having kids is some kind of herculan endeavour, it's not.

The difficulty is pretty variable.

I'm an introvert who loves alone time, and currently 7 months pregnant with two children under 5. I would go on week long silent retreats if I could. My daughter is extremely hyper, showing signs of ADHD. Trying to rest at home with her is awful. Going on adventures with her is pretty fun. I'm reasonably optimistic that her energy levels will pay off in the end, but times were bad when she was a baby in a little apartment. A teacher friend with similarity energetic children is putting them in a bunch of cheap Parks & Rec day camps, and I think I'm going to have to do something like that in the future.

My brother was very challenging for my mom as well. Some parent/child combinations are just really difficult, for personality and energy level reasons.

How many do you have?

Three so far.

Not that guy, but I have four, and I more or less agree.

Maybe I’m just in a different phase of it then. I said above but I have 4 kids under the age of 5.

One of them is teething and having a sleep regression, and she wakes up at night quite a bit.

We recently all got norovirus from an indoor playground we went to.

We also recently took a trip to Oregon. Travel is’harder with that many kids.

Finding a babysitter for that many kids at that age is difficult.

I don’t know I guess if somebody tells me that having kids wasn’t difficult, I wonder if we just mean different things. Most meaningful things are difficult.

The hardest part of parenting (in a practical, non-poetical sense) is the sleep deprivation. That will get better with time, but with 4 littles under 5 I imagine it is a struggle to get sleep. But just think of how great it will be when they're all old enough to sleep properly!

And having just traveled with a preschooler and a toddler on a 4 hour plane trip, I concur that travel sucks. They want to run around! They certainly don't want to wear their seatbelts.

Having 4 kids in a 5 year time span is pretty hardcore though, you don't have to do it like that.

My oldest is 8 and my youngest was just born, so ours are little more spread out. I think you're probably in the toughest spot right now. It was most difficult when we had 6/3/0 -- needy 1st grader + potty training rebellious toddler + newborn is really hard because they all demand very different things from you (in our case, mental/emotional engagement, constant attention and discipline, and constant hands-on care and supervision, respectively). I used to say that we were worn out, mind body and soul, by the end of every day.

I guess when I say it's not "difficult" I don't mean that it's not demanding, but that it doesn't require a extreme IQ, physical conditioning, net worth, etc. to accomplish. It also benefits from tapping in to our deepest instincts -- I can easily justify skipping the gym or watching trash TV instead of praying or reading a book, but I don't think I'm capable of just ignoring our screaming newborn, or not feeding the older kids, or ignoring my kids for days on end so I can play my favorite PC game or something. I don't always want to do those thinga but there's some primal drive that makes me get off the couch and do them anyway that I (unfortunately) don't have when it comes to doing squats or ab wheel rollouts.

All that said, the lack of sleep, minimal social life, and all around lack of freedom certainly takes a toll. But (as I'm sure is the case with you) I truly cannot imagine anything more meaningful I could be doing with my life.

Hang in there for the next few years. If there's one bit of advice I could offer, it's to get your kids doing chores as early as possible. All of our kids could shower themselves by age 4, and they could wash their younger siblings by age 6. My two elementary school age kids put away all the clean dishes and clean up the living room nearly 100% of the time, and they fold about 80% of the clean laundry, and they automatically do all their after school chores (putting away books, backpacks, etc) and change clothes after coming home from school. After every meal they all clear the table together and wipe it down. Even my 3 year old is doing small chores here and there (mostly "put this thing over there" type stuff). Kids are capable of a lot more than is typically demanded of them these days. In the meantime, I'd spring for a maid service if you can afford it. Sadly our area doesn't have one, but I would have been willing to pay quite a bit for one a few year ago.

When you have 2 kids you can spoil them, but when you reach 4+ it becomes more like captaining a ship and its crew than what is commonly thought of as "parenting." There's just so much work to be done to keep everyone clean, clothed, and fed that two adults simply can't do it all for more than a year or two without totally burning out.

Well at least my experience was that my wife and I loved having kids so much, that we wanted to have more. Thus: 4 under 5.