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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3833 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 19, 2023

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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  1. As long as you we're 50+ 15 years ago, this advice is still useful.

  2. "but when they give their own version of the explanation in their own words it's just incoherent nonsense." True. The sad fact of the matter is that both men and women have such little knowledge of courtship and how mate selection works. This is because it used to be embedded in socially approved rituals (think 1960s and earlier ... asking a girl to the sock hop, what "going for a drive" actually meant, the term "going steady" etc. etc.) When those rituals started to disappear through the 80s and 90s as women grew up with more fundamental autonomy, no new rituals replaced them. Fortunately, the underlying truth became a object of study. What's so interesting about real Social Dynamics / Sexyual strategy is how universal it is to all of human civilization post the emergence of agriculturalism and larg(er) scale pastoralism.

I'm getting out of focus here, so suffice it to say - most people have no idea how or why they've ever gotten laid - male or female (though probably women have a bit more front of mind intuition about this in general). That's the reason why you get bad advice.

Nobody gets to opt out of playing status games. It isn't possible. You can choose to play them well and retain integrity. That's the good news. The bad news is that status game sociopaths exist and will blow those with morals and ethics out of the water for some amount of time before their local society decides to exile them. The point there is to not get jaded and enjoy your own life.

The bad news is that status game sociopaths exist and will blow those with morals and ethics out of the water for some amount of time before their local society decides to exile them.

This relies on there being a local society. My impression is that a significant cause of the modern destruction of dating and friendships is not just the dissolution of rituals, but also the dissolution of local society. If everyone you know is a friend of a friend of a spouse of a cousin, then there are reputational concerns. The good faith actors can vouch for each other and introduce each other to their friends and therefore recognize each other, while the bad faith actors quickly burn through all their social capital and end up as outcasts. If you have forty trustworthy mutual friends who all know each other, then a viable strategy is to only trust people who are vouched for by other people you already trust, and treat any outsiders with suspicion until they jump through a lot of hoops to prove themselves. But if you're in an atomized society where you've moved into a new city 2 years ago and all of your neighbors are people who have also moved here within the past couple years, each from a different place, that's not an option. The strategy to only trust and befriend people who are vouched for is equivalent to having no friends. You have to lower your standards for reputation, which makes it easier for the sociopaths to blend in. And when they are eventually caught they can just move to a different social circle (in a high population area they don't even need to literally move to a new location), and blend in again because people can't afford to ostracize strangers anymore.

But if you're in an atomized society where you've moved into a new city 2 years ago and all of your neighbors are people who have also moved here within the past couple years, each from a different place, that's not an option. The strategy to only trust and befriend people who are vouched for is equivalent to having no friends.

This is accurate if you've made the choice to delegate personal autonomy to the group.

That is the path of most.

Reclaim your autonomy. Determine what you see as fruitful.

most people have no idea how or why they've ever gotten laid - male or female (though probably women have a bit more front of mind intuition about this in general). That's the reason why you get bad advice

This is a golden sentence to internalise. I remember being perplexed at high school why I got decent attention from girls, some friends got a ton of it and others got none at all. Some guys were obviously unfuckable and they seemed to accept this and made no attempt but many did make attempts only to get ignored or scorned or fuck it up quickly if they ever got a chance. Now when I look back it’s all so painfully obvious. I was just a bit more attractive and emotionally stable that early on I got a reputation as the guy who dated a couple of the pretty nice girls. Things just followed. Meanwhile some got the reputation as the guy who threw a tantrum for being rejected or ignored.

If you don’t know what you are doing (or suddenly change significantly in attractiveness etc) it’s practically impossible to change your standing in a group hierarchy.

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