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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3929 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 4, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I don't understand the seemingly recent popularity of "tomboy gfs" (bonus meme).

There's a lot of meta-ironic shitposting on 4chan and sometimes reddit about how tomboys are the best because, as far as I can understand the arguments, they're bros that have a pussy. I can kind of see how a bro-gf might have appealed to 14 year old me who thought feelings and femininity were totally gay, dude, and who just wanted to play Halo with my bros while we farted and laughed and punched each other. But I can't imagine any well-adjusted man over age 25 feeling this way unless they're particularly feminine themselves (in which case they would be attracted to "tomboys" for a different set of reasons).

I've been attracted to feminine girls my entire life (yes, even as a 14 year old retard) and have, for as long as I can remember, found their femininity mysterious and alluring. Is there an element to tomboy popularity that I'm missing? Is there an emotionally mature segment of men who are still into tomboys? Or is it all just a forced meme?

Edit: Since this post has caused some confusion, let me clarify -- I'm asking about a narrow definition of tomboy as described in the meme and in threads about "tomboys", not "any woman who isn't 100% feminine in every way." For those who don't want to click on the meme, the "tomboy gf" has the following non-traditional qualities:

  • Thinks makeup is stupid

  • Likes porn

  • Likes video games

  • Rough speech like "I'm gonna kick your ass/suck my dick/fag"

  • Gets mistaken for a boy (presumably due to hairstyle and clothing)

  • Puts you in headlocks/wrestles with yoy

I generally am fond of when a woman is naturally feminine enough that it rejects androgyny.

There are people who are in to the androgyny and there are dudes who are into a girl who looks as good in overalls mucking a barn as she looks in a cocktail dress on the town. Different motivations in each case.

  1. Maybe it's a case of Don't ask fish how to catch them. Men post tomboy gf memes, but aren't really that attracted to those things in real life, they're attracted to femininity even as its very desirability frustrates the piss out of them and makes them wish for something else. Gender reversed women saying they wish they could just marry their bestie.

  2. that said, my actual type is "hot," and even my definition of hot is pretty broad compared to many/most men's. I've dated a good number of women who met many/most of those characteristics. At the end of the day, those traits are orthogonal to the things that really attracted me to those girls (eyes/breasts/ass/lips) and my horny brain is going to work backwards from the physical attraction to "Her short hair really shows off her features, and I can watch her give me head more easily so it's hot" or "those baggy sweatpants just show off how skinny she is, and they're so easy to pull off her.

Would none of the qualities on that list appeal to you in a partner?

I think many men find some stereotypical feminine qualities to be frustrating at times - taking a long time to get ready before going out, excessive or clownlike makeup, lack of interest in masculine hobbies, a lack of willingness to speak straightforwardly (e.g. "I'm fine"), e.t.c. I think the first meme you linked can be partially understood as an expression of that frustration in an arguably humourous way. I think a lot of the appeal of these memes isn't the appeal of a woman who perfectly fits the stereotypical tomboy extreme, but a "the grass is always greener" type of effect. In that sense I think a lot of men really do find the fantasy (if not necessarily the reality) of a tomboy gf attractive. And perhaps I'm misunderstanding the meme, but the line about kids in the bottom right sounds very much like a traditionally motherly, nurturing attitude to me. I think that it is precisely this mixture of traditionally feminine traits and "buddy who plays video games with you and the boys" type character that makes the tomboy gf an attractive character, more so than simply a "bro with a pussy". Someone who can play Halo and laugh and punch your arm but also be feminine when you need her to be. Does that make sense to you?

I can kind of see how a bro-gf might have appealed to 14 year old me

Have you considered that the people making these memes might be teenagers themselves?

Step me through where the emotional immaturity is supposed be happening. My wife is pretty tomboyish, and we have a pretty normal relationship minus the occasionally flipped gender roles. Though I wouldn't overstate the case here, you seem to be implying that tomboys are literally like men, when women have trouble filling these shoes even when they're pumping themselves with testosterone. The benefits are obvious and you even listed some yourself. I'd also add being able to communicate more directly, and not having to mindread and navigate various shittests. What exactly am I supposed to be missing out on?

And since we're pathologizing each other's preferences, from what I'm seeing of tomboy haters it almost feels you don't believe in any positives of traditional gender roles yourself, you just need someone to look down on, and we're fucking things up for you by not playing the same game as you.

My wife is pretty tomboyish, and we have a pretty normal relationship minus the occasionally flipped gender roles.

This is actually how my relationship is, but I wouldn't call my wife a tomboy. Maybe we need more shades of meaning than "wheat field tradwife" and "tomboy."

And since we're pathologizing each other's preferences,

I don't think you're the sort of person I'm talking about in the OP, but thanks I guess.

Oh. This might be worth clarifying, I think other people responding might have misunderstood you as well.

Thanks, done.

What kind of answer do you want to hear? You don't seem very receptive to the idea that it's a legitimate preference.

I guess I don't think it is one, but there are a lot of smart people on here who sometimes are able to help me see things from a different angle so I suppose I was hoping for that. If I could tell you what kind of answer I wanted, if I could steelman this in my head, I probably wouldn't ask here.

If I had to imagine a well-adjusted and over 25 who was into tomboys, I suppose I would imagine a guy with traditionally feminine personality traits who enjoyed taking on traditionally female aspects of a male-female relationship. But I don't think that's what I'm seeing on the internet, instead it just seems like emotional immaturity. Are there mature, feminine men who are into tomboys in any significant number? Or are men who like tomboys a totally different breed? Or something else I haven't imagined?

I’m the opposite, I don’t understand why anyone would find feminine behaviour attractive. Why wouldn’t you much rather have a partner that’s strong, stoic, driven, ambitious, practical, able to provide for both themselves or for you, takes the lead, etc? Versus one that’s submissive, meek, relies on you for emotional and physical reassurance, is more anxious and stressed out, doesn’t have grand ambitions beyond their family, is more interested in people than concepts, and forces the relationship into artificially divided roles based on gender?

Now sure I’m not a straight guy so it’s hard for me to empathise, but I honestly can’t understand why men fall in love with feminine women when I hear them complain so much about how they can’t understand their partner, how they don’t share interests, how they’re [insert stereotype of women here], how they don’t initiate sex, etc. Why not go for an equal life partner who shares your drive, focus and interests, and is just as sexually motivated as you instead?

I agree that men who complain about that stuff are ridiculous. "My female feminine wife acts like such a woman! How could this happen to me? Who could have forseen this?" It's silly.

I imagine it's probably pretty different for gay guys, so my OP probably doesn't apply to them

Yes.

For men who are attracted to femininity, wouldn’t submissiveness, being family-oriented, making the man feel strong by needing his protection, gender roles etc. be the point, not shortcomings?

They’re not those things because they’re women, they’re those things because they’re overly feminine. I’ve met gay men, trans women, even straight men who also fall into those stereotypes, and women who don’t. The point is why you’d want a more masculine partner vs. a feminine one regardless of sex.

There’s obvious upside to a gf who makes no demand on your gender role (provide, protect, listen) while doubling as a friend. It's like two for the price of zero.

Trigger warning: traditional gender roles

But I enjoy providing, protecting, and listening. That's what men by nature want to do. I think men who don't want to do that have something wrong with them, like women who hate children or want to spend their life in an office cubicle instead of marrying . Those men are either abnormal or immature (I believe "manchildren" is the hip term).

I don't want my girlfriend to be my friend, she's not a dude, she's a romantic partner. She fulfills a different need. I have male friends who fill the other role. A tomboy just seems like subpar gf mixed with a subpar buddy.

No accounting for taste, I suppose. Can’t say the idea of paying for her stuff, killing spiders and listening to her day fills me with lust. I could point to intersexual competition for resources to argue that it’s natural, but that would be an ultimately pointless appeal to nature. So I disagree on two levels with ‘provide is by nature what men want to do, therefore they should’.

You extoll maturity in men while supporting the infantilization of women, as one more kid to protect and provide for. She's not a child, she's a romantic partner. She fulfills a different need. Would you rather have sex with your buddy or your kid?

Would you rather have sex with your buddy or your kid?

An adult woman who doesn't pretend to be a man is a kid?

Your ideal feminine woman has infantile traits, like a tomboy has buddy-like traits. If a man’s preference for buddy-like traits in women makes him abnormal, immature and gay because liking his buddies is those things, what does a preference for childlike traits make the other?

But don’t get hang up on that. People get defensive when you attack their preferences. Personally I don’t care if your wife leads you by a leash or calls you daddy. You’re very mature and normal.

Tomboys pretends to be men?

You're arguing in favor of a broad definition of tomboy, while I'm talking about something rather narrow. From the linked meme in the OP:

  • Thinks makeup is stupid

  • Likes porn

  • Likes video games

  • Rough speech like "I'm gonna kick your ass/suck my dick/fag"

  • Gets mistaken for a boy

  • Puts you in headlocks

Sounds like a boy or young man to me.

The porn and headlock thing sounds like a fantasy more than anyone I met in real life, but the rest seem legit. But I wouldn't say any of these means you're pretending to be a man, other than deliberately trying to be mistaken for one.

The porn and headlock thing sounds like a fantasy more than anyone I met in real life

I think this sort of touches on what I find strange about the meme. It's an imaginary version of a tomboy that is basically a bro. Tomboyish girls (that I have known) aren't like that, they're just girls who are a bit more masculine in a few areas, or even just girls who are confident.

But I wouldn't say any of these means you're pretending to be a man

Yeah, that was too broad a statement. That other poster just got under my skin.

More comments

How would someone go about using statistics to determine if the name frequency in a book is too improbable to be by chance? For instance, if there’s a book in which three important characters share the same name which has a frequency of 25%, and then two other important characters share the same name, and all these characters are linked thematically. My intuition is that this is impossible to be chance, but how could you argue this statistically?

So, it turns out the writer strike is on its sixth week now. I completely forgot about it but a news mention reminded me. Did anybody notice anything different? Is there any reason to care about it for a regular person like me (I don't think I watch too much of their product anyway, and I only have netflix sub because I got it for free on a deal from another provider)?

For the most part, movies/TV have a long pipeline (the main exception being talk shows like Last Week Tonight), so you wouldn't expect to see a lot of immediate impact. The previous writer strike lasted 3 months and 8 days and resulted in several TV shows having shorter seasons and some getting cancelled entirely, and I often see it credited with contributing to the rise in reality (i.e. unscripted, so no union writers needed) TV... and that was twice as long without all that huge of an impact. Wikipedia has a vague list of shows "impacted" by the current strike; it currently looks like at least some of those will have delayed or omitted episodes this season.

Species doesn't have a consistent definition, so we run the same risk here we do when we argue over questions like "what is a woman" in some metaphysical sense while neglecting any real object-level concerns. The argument for wolves, domesticated dogs, or coyotes being separate species cannot be made on the basis of infertility, but instead on "reproductive isolation" i.e. they don't commonly interbreed due to their different behavior and habitats.

By this logic, you could perhaps claim that the different human races were different species in the past when they did not intermarry often, but that today we are (with the exception of a few isolated tribes) one species because we form a single gene pool. I don't really know what that gets you though. Certainly the different human populations we mixed with in the distant past (Neanderthals, Denisovans, whatever we end up calling the ones in Africa) were more different from our ancestors than any two modern populations, so those could be more comfortably called distinct species or subspecies.

Ultimately there isn't ever going to be a neat way to divide things up to everyone's satisfaction here, no more than for what gender, the difference between language and dialect, or between a dumb LLM and an intelligent AI is.

I don’t think F_st means what he would like to imply it means. The actual paper is more interested in statistical methods for population samples than in drawing (new) species boundaries. And hey, you can calculate F_st for men vs. women and get anything from 0.2 to 0.5. Different species indeed.

I mean is there even a good definition of species? Certainly coyotes and wolves regularly have grandkids together(and as an interesting demonstration of this one of the major tips offered for coyote hunting is to use a large female dog as bait for exactly that reason), and most wolves in the eastern US have coyote ancestry. They don’t look that different either, and coyotes act a lot like wolves.

Are wolves and coyotes even properly their own species? Certainly they can interbreed with each other. I think that's the real question here, not the farcical notion of whether there are different species of human, which I doubt you are asking in good faith.

Things get complicated quickly of course:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

I suppose we're lucky that with humans it's actually relatively simple, since we either killed off or assimilated all the various other hominid species in prehistory.

Who is Andrew Tate and whose icon is he? How these people reflect on him using multiple women, even if his subscribers become all hypermasculine, multiple women would be still possible only for men near top.

He's a Black pimp. He engages in classic Black pimp activities and tactics. Men who aren't aware of this think seducing, then isolating and beating, low class women into whoring themselves out is a brand new philosophical invention.

Latest "red pill"' icon, former fighter, pimp and now grifter selling information on how to make money, become fit and, of course, get women.

A lot of his audience like him because he's an aspirational figure that emphasizes an internal locus of control rather than victimhood - while also feeding the part of men that likes to see themselves as temporarily embarrassed ubermensch. Or, more charitably, a recognition that no feminist-style solidarity or ideology will change that men have to develop themselves and compete against other men and someone has to fail.

People like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman do offer positive messages and roadmaps, but as relatively stable married men with conventional advice (Peterson especially is vocally against hookup culture) they don't really satisfy young males' natural fantasies of unlimited sexual access and climbing the status hierarchy, perhaps by literally kicking people's asses.

Yes, Tate's worldview is one where a lot of "loser" men will fail but the trick is of course that he's telling you the audience member how to not be that guy.

The logic is that there's no going back to some sort of equitable 1950s distribution of women anyway, the romantic safety net for normal guys is gone and we live in an inegalitarian time, a new sexual Gilded Age. No point complaining about it, it's done. Since you can't just count on finding one normal "modern woman"* easily like your grand-daddy did at the church ball or whatever, all men should be trying to maximize your chances by becoming the Top G(uy).

You're gonna be that top guy, obviously (if you buy his course).

As for his "using" of women - the men he sells to are products of the oppositional, transactional, selfish culture of the gender wars, rap music and hustle culture - it's every man for himself in the market. The logic being that women (well, everyone) are in for themselves and have all sorts of advantages now so why not shouldn't men play their own game? If you don't want to be "used" don't sign a bad contract.

There's probably an added element of vengeance and vicarious pleasure in that feminists are blamed for ruining any old arrangements and trumpeting female freedom and agency, so if things also go wrong for them (as they've gone for the audience) and the tables are turned, well...that's just the game they wanted to play.

Of course, in a highly porn-friendly world, many may simply not give a shit at all about women being "exploited" via a webcam business cause they're already jaded to it happening on an industrial scale. Contractarian logic doesn't lend itself to sympathy here - especially if the charge is of emotional manipulation.

TBH the oddest bit is how he admits to basically preying on male loneliness (basically running a webcam business and leading men on to think they're chatting with the women when they weren't, basically defrauding them) while also sounding notes about how hard a man's life is and never gets called on it by his audience.

But, again, temporarily embarrassed millionaires and all.

* A polite euphemism for everything from "slut" to "naive blank slateist" to "unjustifiably selective harpy"

Just to insert an emetic to the stream of praise Tate seems to be getting from the throwaway account, I would suggest Tate seems to be the 'icon' of disaffected pubescent males, which isn't a new phenomenon. I remember reading The Game years ago and some of Tate's schtick reminds me of Neil Strauss, if Strauss were a sadistic psychopath.

Narcissistic, Machiavellian, sadistic, psychopathic, Tate seems to exhibit all of these traits and revel in the reaction to them, which is again not surprising in the least.

Regarding "multiple women," sure, it's not every day you see a guy manipulating simultaneously numerous women to debase themselves for his own financial gain. I wonder if the folks at Guinness Book keep records of that sort of thing. Reminds me of Charles Manson, though without the guitar or swastika in the forehead. Or luxurious head of hair.

And like Manson in his day, Tate is a tedious reminder of the stupid times we live in. Also like Manson, at times what he says has a ring of truth, but then gets distorted into extremist, paranoiac ranting. Then when backed into a corner that might prove disadvantageous, Tate says things like "It's just me playing a character." Textbook.

He's not unlike Jordan Peterson. Both likely have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Low empathy. Emotionally dysregulated at times. Delusions of grandeur. Paranoid. Both think "they" are out to get them, to silence them. Peterson thinks he's a prophet of sorts and has a politically conservative, Christian-ish agenda. Tate's more of a hedonistic grifter who plays the "top g" character. Both are very theatrical. Very performative. Clownish at times. Not unlike Trump.

And yet, at times, they've delivered far more truthful statements than the vast majority of adults in my life personally.

Would I want to hang out with Tate or have my sister date him? Hell no. But I view him like gore websites. Not particularly healthy to view, but offers a closer depiction of reality than MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News. And even gore videos can have agendas (America bad! Ukraine bad! Russia bad! China bad!). But the bias is out in the open. And you can take what's truthful (human nature) and discard the agendas (political or religious or financial or whatever).

Tate strikes me as mostly destructive-- less of a useful, enlightening iconoclast and more an opportunistic showman whose sole interest is in using people and teaching those same people how to use others. I can't speak to whether Peterson has any, most, or all of the flaws you mention, but at least so far I haven't seen him posing in sunglasses with his shirt off.

I would also argue that gore websites (if I understand correctly what those are, and I am not entirely sure that I do, having successfully avoided that genre) don't pull back the veil of Isis (only the first letter capitalized) any more than does hard-core porn. Does grim reality exist? Sure. People die in violent accidents, and some take it up all orifices at once That doesn't mean this is some sort of truth more meaningful than a story off the broadcast news. (Full disclosure： I don't watch any of the MSM sources you listed, not out of any principled stance but because they're not that accessible here without taking time and trouble. Neither of which I take to seek them out.

I find him difficult to summarize succinctly, but his wikipedia page does a fair job. He's a notable figure in the manosphere. A portion of (conservative?) Millennial and Gen Z males look up to him.

Calls a spade a spade. Speaks about the competitive, hierarchical nature of today's global, capitalistic society as well as the hypergamous nature of women. Doesn't sugarcoat reality like mainstream media. Mainstream media dislikes him for not towing the party line and, worst of all, being popular. Mainstream media tries to discredit him.

He tells the worker drones the truth. Can't have that.

EDIT: More specifically, he's discussed how marriage, divorce, child support, and alimony are rigged against men. How men are disposable cannon fodder, and how the state (and women) don't have men's best interests at heart. How, outside of specific degrees and/or career paths, college is a scam. Things the state doesn't want to be common knowledge among the populace.

EDIT 2: The college bit might've been his brother Tristan. Though Andrew may have spoken about it at some point, I don't know. Also he's not against marriage or divorce or child support or alimony in theory, but he thinks the current laws in the west favor women too strongly. And he's not anti-women, he's just realistic about their nature and biological imperative, which isn't the same as men's.

Mainstream media dislikes him for not towing the party line

I'll mention this is "Toeing the line" as opposed to towing, though I can see how the latter could make sense.

Darn. I think I used to think it was "toeing the line," as in not crossing a red line or a line in the sand, and then erroneously changed it to "towing the line," like carrying the water for [blank]. Thanks for the correction.

Thanks, can you give comment on this?

How these people reflect on him using multiple women, even if his subscribers become all hypermasculine, multiple women would be still possible only for men near top.

If you're referring to his critics, they dislike him "using multiple women" because they either genuinely believe the women are being used, or they cynically think he's exposing women's nature, warts and all, and they want him to stop for some self-serving reason, real or imagined.

If you're referring to his followers, they think that women "want to be used" (or led) and that his success with women proves his thesis about how women are. They respect him for walking the walk.

If Tate has N girlfriends instead of 1, he creates N-1 incels this way. How is he helping low status men?

Who do you guys think blew up the dam?

Russia pros

  • makes the area downriver nearly impassable in the short term, with the counter offensive kicking off kills that front.

  • could make crossing even upriver more difficult with much more mud to cross for a landing? This would allow them to concentrate forces on the donetsk / zaparozhne lines

Russia cons

  • humanitarian disaster and large escalation. Would make western populations more willing to keep writing the blank checks for the MIC

  • could threaten the nuclear plant within their own territory (this seems like a con for anyone in the region, Russian or Ukrainian though)

  • most models show more damage to the left bank of the Dnieper which they control and have fortified after the Kherson withdrawal.

  • cuts off a large supply of water to Crimea

Ukraine pros

  • Escalation, assuming a successful false flag would allow them to push for more western military aide. Ukraine's war is less against Russia and more against the minds of western populations as their continued support with elections upcoming is all that is keeping them afloat.

  • Long term (weeks to months for the banks to dry) easier to cross upriver to regain the nuclear plant.

  • potentially wipe out Russian minefields, troops and fortifications located downstream.

Ukraine cons

  • freezes the entire Kherson front right as the counter offensive seems to be kicking off.

  • damages their own territory, humanitarian disaster, threatens nuclear plant.

Edgecases:

  • God is laughing his ass off, Historic high levels and lack of maintenance due to war lead to failure of the dam on accident right as a major offensive is about to start and major escalations (attacks on civilians in Russian territory etc.) had just begun.

  • Some crazy high quality deep fakes? I guess it could lead to chaos and unbalance things downriver? Throw one side off? Would think they'd have better information sources for either side than twitter posts though.

"Shitty Soviet infrastructure crumbles under questionable operating conditions" has a certain Cold War schadenfreude to it -- I don't really see a major cost/benefit balance to it for either side, so "master plan" theories seem unlikely to pan out either way.

tldr; "Shit's fucked, yo"

On balance it makes more sense for Russia to blow it up. The long-expected counteroffensive means Russian troops are 100% on the defensive and blowing up the dam secures their western flank by creating a literal quagmire. Yes, it fucks up the water supply to Crimea in the long term, but Russian war goals have been shifting to shorter and shorter terms.

Ukraine blowing it up to pin the blame on Russia is still a possibility, but that's too much 4D chess for me. The reservoir is important enough for the cities upstream and on the right bank that blowing it up to "own the libs orcs" doesn't make a lot of sense.

The biggest share of responsibility I can ascribe to Ukraine is that they'd learned about the Russian plans to blow up the dam the moment they would try to cross the river and staged a crossing to trigger the destruction of the dam ahead of the main counteroffensive to split the events in the news cycle and drum up more support.

Most likely Russians wanted to blow it up later, but somebody fucked up and blew it up earlier than expected, and most of the Russian troops weren't informed about the original blow up plans either (this is very common among Russians - they are regularly blowing themselves up on minefields that some other regiment made and forgot to notify the appropriate channels or the central command messed up the updates and the troops in the area didn't get the current maps of the same area. Military communications in Russian army are shit). Some sources - of course, no way to verify it so far - claim they even know who it was that was sent at that night to verify and complete the final rigging before the troops withdraw orderly and then in several days, when Ukrainian forces start to take over, the explosion happens and drowns them. But those people screwed up the job and caused the rigging (which was there since last December) to go off prematurely, when nobody wanted it. Thus also Russians initially claimed there's absolutely nothing happening - because that's what they were told is going to happen at that day, absolutely nothing.

Ukraine blowing it up to pin the blame on Russia is still a possibility, but that's too much 4D chess for me

That'd be unnecessary. Russia has a war crime list that would take a library to contain at this point. Adding one more to the list just for the sake of "making Russia look bad" is completely unnecessary - it already looks as bad as it could in the eyes of those who cares, and in the eyes of those who doesn't they'd parrot whatever lie Russia wheels out anyway (and the lie of course would be "they did it, not us" - it's the obvious move). There's absolutely no possible gain here.

about the Russian plans to blow up the dam the moment they would try to cross the river

There's no single "moment" - the river is big, the front line is long, and troops have been crossing here and there for a while. Likely, the idea was to blow it up when the first defense line of Russians on the left side is overwhelmed (that'd happen in days probably) and they fall back to the second line, and Ukrainians come in to take control, and position themselves perfectly to be flooded and to have a humanitarian catastrophe on their hands slowing down their advance (unlike Russians, Ukrainians can't just say "to hell with the population"). The exact time when it happens would likely be determined somewhere up there, as usually in Russia, and nobody really would know when until the last moment. It didn't work that way - instead, Russians were flooded themselves, and nobody is caring for the population in Russian-controlled flooded areas because Russia is just shooting at anybody who shows up there, because why not. It's a proper mess now.

Military communications in Russian army are shit

Always have been. Reading about Barbarossa was eye-opening. The Germans identified where the border between two armies was, punctured the front line there, penetrating deeply into the rear, there was little to no coordination between the Soviet units on either side, so they had to fall back to hastily reform the frontline a few hundred km in the rear. At least the Soviet command learned their lesson and this never happ... nah, the Germans did it a dozen more times, routing the Soviet forces every time, until their supply lines finally gave out a few km away from Moscow.

Wait, so they got HoI4’d in real time?

Russia or an accident, which could very well have been caused by Russia even if the specific timing wasn't.

There is little to no upside for Ukraine here, while there are significant pros for Russia. The propaganda wins would both be minimal and completely unneeded, as well as significant risk that the operation is discovered; at the same time as it significantly hinders their imminent/current offensive.

The somewhat muted russian media response could indicate that at least the timing was an accident, or that it was a panicked decision.

Okay, I have a more serious question.

How can I help men like me, lonely men in western countries?

I'm really moved and disturbed by stories like this poster... NGL, I got drunk because of that post. it's really frustrating to me that I know a foolproof solution to this problem but because of all the culture issues in the rich/English-speaking countries, I can't just communicate that solution to everyone who needs to hear it. I don't know what to do.

Bitcon-funded {{{censored}}} of Tinder (and similar) owners.

The alternative to fedposting here is not to see how cleverly you can imply fedposting without speaking plainly.

Besides that, this is just a low effort comment that clearly isn't providing any actual useful advice.

If this poster carries on with his set-in attitude he won't find a good one in the third world either.

Well you’re on the right forum to share your thoughts and avoid facing the consequences of any cultural issues so, just summarize this foolproof solution?

Well, the foolproof solution is just "move to another country". The countries I hear men talk about are Colombia, the Philippines and Thailand. Before the war, men talked about Ukraine and Russia, and I'm sure there are other places in Eastern Europe. Probably any country in Latin America, East Asia or Eastern Europe with low violence would be good. Consider timezones, look up visa rules and cost of living, and consider your preferences: Do you like Catholics? (Philippines) Do you like white girls? (E. Europe) As an American, you can pretty much go to any country and they'll let you in, and you'll probably save money over rent in America.

Is it not obvious from his username?

This is kinda an esoteric question, but what do I need to do to be a real human being?

When I say "real human being", you can substitute "good person" or "good Christian" or "first class citizen" or "allowed to exist". I ask this because I'm drunk, with a phone full of girls, and I could get anything I wanted, and yet somehow I feel like people back in America would still treat me the same. So, if a woman needs to use her body to validate my right to exist, what does she need to do? Maybe she needs to say "I love you", or we need to not use a condom, or I need to get her pregnant, or marry her, or something. IDK, anal maybe? Does she have to be white? What would be good enough? Because, when I had sex in the USA, it still wasn't good enough for you people to treat me like a real human being. I was still a problem. My sexuality was still a shock. I thought if I had sex with enough women, if I was validated enough as an actual physical human being, you all would stop being nasty to me. But somehow, even after over 100 sex partners, I still expect to be treated like shit in America. So what gives? What would be good enough? Will I ever be able to return home? Are you all ever going to stop being monsters, not just to me, but to men like me?

Because, when I had sex in the USA, it still wasn't good enough for you people to treat me like a real human being

I'm sorry, could you elaborate on who is this "you people" that your are talking to? I mean, I try to treat everybody as a human being by default, unless I have contradictory evidence, but something I would care the least about is how or whether anybody has sex. I get a feeling you're fighting something in your head here.

what do I need to do to be a real human being?

Well, first, you need to be a Real Hero, too.

So, if a woman needs to use her body to validate my right to exist, what does she need to do? Maybe she needs to say "I love you", or we need to not use a condom, or I need to get her pregnant, or marry her, or something.

I mean, having a real loving and mutually supportive relationship is a very different animal from getting "anything [you] want." And I'd suggest giving that a try in terms of feeling an anchor of meaning in a difficult world.

As a nonwhite, if you are white and you are doing third-worlders, it doesn't count sorry.

Women from places damn near worship whites, and I mean that.

Which country are you in? A white guy who moves to the Philippines and sleeps with a hundred bar girls obviously isn’t going to find that this confers any special kind of status with American women. To be honest, I think promiscuity in general confers only very limited status on men: it’s less about how many people you seduce and more about who. The fat driver who sleeps with a thousand truck-stop hookers will always have less status than the guy who gets one hot Victoria’s Secret model.

What’s “men like you”? Are you fat, short, facially deformed, of a less desirable demographic in some other way?

thank you for unlocking the mystery of this post.

YouTube Kids is a piece of crap. I tried it on my kid's new tablet to avoid setting up a curated library, and it's been grating on my nerves.

YTK has two modes: blacklist, which lets you pick the age range, and whitelist, which lets you pick specific channels you want your kid to watch.

For some inane reason, you can only modify the whitelist from the YTK application, which is not the place I want to do it from, I want to do it from the comfort of my PC. You can't even switch it back on without using the tablet if you switch to the blacklist by mistake. All this makes the whitelist mode practically unusable.

In the blacklist mode YTK can't restrict the language the videos are in. Did you know Peppa Pig has been dubbed into two dozen different languages? And if you block the original episode that your kid has been watching for the last two hours on repeat, YTK will suggest it to him in every other language.

YTK has no convenient interface to learn what your kid's been watching or even what he's watching right now, beyond taking the tablet from him. There's no list of stuff you have blacklisted. There's no way to block whole playlists, which is super important when there are multiple shows on the same channel. You can set up a passcode, but changing anything non-trivial requires you to enter your Google password every. damn. time.

Is there anything else I could use instead without resorting to yt-dlp?

Where is the "wokeness" here? Is showing a same-sex couple inherently woke?

This is why you run your own Plex server. If you don't want to buy all the hardware, you can rent a seedbox that runs Plex. My kids only watch pre-2000 cartoons and movies.

Anyone have any good references on market consolidation? I'm investigating the idea that economies of scale lead to a small percentage of firms controlling large sections of the market. Any literature on this would be appreciated.

This is the dissertation that led to DoJ use of his method to create the guidelines that determine which mergers should be allowed under anti-trust law.

A belated thanks! Added to my to-read list.

Thank you, added that to my TBR

Don't have any specific references to if you, but just wanted to comment that the concept of 'natural monopolies' is closely related to what you are describing.

What's the deal with RFK Jr? Is he meaningfully a 2023 Democrat in any way? Is the voice thing "real" or a psychosomatic weirdo thing?

Incumbent presidents generally don't face a meaningful party challenge, but when they do it's been a Kennedy in the only instance in the last 40 years, so I wouldn't write him off until at least New Hampshire.

Even coming from a place of asking "what's the deal with this guy" and expecting a 101, you-could-have-just-googled-that answer, I am extremely confident in completely writing off his chances of primarying Biden just based on the most basic vibes that lead me to ask this question. Not even the most brain-melted boomer (at least of the subtype that votes in the Democratic primary) is going to meaningfully see this guy as "a Kennedy!"

He would have a better chance in the Republican primary, probably.

I second @2rafa's take. You know how most academics will heavily lean on "just-so" stories to explain social phenomena without recognizing HBD? And then on the other side HBD bloggers heavily rely on studies and data and plots to try to make the strongest case possible? Dutton is the guy who uses HBD to tell just-so stories: usually entertaining, probably some insights and elements of truth, but he's much less rigorous than any other HBD-type blogger I'm aware of.

Dutton is a theologian who moved into evopsych. His work is universally worse than Kierkegaard’s, but I wouldn’t necessarily write it off completely.

The most important thing to remember is that the world will change so much over the next fifty years that attempting to extrapolate population trends to the earth of a century from now is kind of ridiculous. AI, embryo selection, the nature of labor, all these things are going to change things a great deal.

As a guy, he’s a showman, an edgelord and an occasionally odious troll. As a researcher, it’s a mixed bag, but it’s slim pickings in the field given the usual reasons and he has published some interesting analyses, plus (partially) built the platform for many other amateur evopsych researchers, so credit is owed.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Comte's A General View of Positivism. Progress is slow but he has my attention. His Positive Philosophy seems considerably more complicated.

Paper I happen to be reading: Leeson's The Invisible Hook: The Law and Economics of Pirate Tolerance.

I just finished the Southern Reach trilogy, I had seen the movie adaptation of the first novel when it came out on Netflix but the books are really something. Spooky, ominous and mysterious. Anyone else read these?

Finished reading The Corner. It's, uh, interesting. It doesn't exactly leave me with a high opinion of the overall worth of these people.

Still chipping away at The Power Broker. About halfway through!

Economic facts and fallacies by Thomas Sowell.

Reason: Bookclub. I've had tremendous difficulty sticking with books but having to finish it to not make a fool of yourself seems to serve as a good incentive.

Thoughts so far: A bit too strong on the opinions. I agree mostly with what Sowell has to say, but I doubt this book is going to convince anyone of anything, even those on the fence. Should do more than assert "A is B because C". The 'because C' needs to be significantly longer, we disagree on B because of our inferential distance, attempt to bridge it !!

Stalled out on "Democracy in America". Its not that it lacks insight or is badly written, its just...a long winded nineteenth century book, i guess? And it seems like it may suffer from its success, being one of those books whose key points have already passed into the broader culture in some way.

Last year there was a long debate over whether shoplifting in San Francisco and other cities was a fake news malinformation right wing conspiracy theory fever dream, started by a leftrat tumblr blogger. Can someone link me to the motte discussion?

There have been... developments, and it is time to revisit the topic.

What are said developments?

Most of the stores closing down and all the rest putting everything behind glass.

you posted this in the wrong discussion

Perhaps one of these?

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ss4nsf/_/hxpv43f

https://old.reddit.com/suzu45

https://old.reddit.com/swwdt3

Thank you, that was it. It looks so silly in retrospect.

Taiwan may well be looking to earn as many cookie points as possible with their superpower sponsor. Without US help, they're completely finished. Islands without even a semblance of food or energy security cannot win wars with nuclear superpowers.

In related news, China shut down the LGBT center in Beijing: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/chinese-lgbtq-center-closes-down-abruptly-amid-xi-clampdown-1.1920674?

Their departure message used very recognizably Western corporate-style 'art'. Your average Party cadre might well assume they're part of a US soft power operation, may well be right too: https://archive.md/20230515131640/https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/5PZw5t3lqlIECS49wgmF2w

Isn't it the case that many other countries have actually had an acceptance of homosexuality, albeit within some constraints. Is the broader Western stance heavily influenced by Christianity and conflation with sin. It doesn't surprise me that Thailand would celebrate it, though presumably there are different cultural forces, some of which may oppose.

Not everyone's local norms are the same, otherwise we could just call them universal norms. Traditional southeast Asian culture was relatively accepting of gay and "spiritually trans" individuals, usually in a religious context (the stuff the woke left says about "two-spirit" priests in indigenous societies is not in fact completely made up, though they take it way too far in assuming they were exactly like modern trans people). The country in that region least affected culturally by either western colonialism or the expansion of Islam is Thailand, and they also began modernizing early enough to profit first from curious westerners through prostitution and sex tourism.

In the case of Taiwan though it is in fact mostly due to recent western cultural influence. Young people there, who overwhelmingly support independence from China, are influenced by leftist anti-colonialist narratives coming out of the US, which have brought with them a lot of baggage ranging from environmentalist opposition to nuclear power, being anti-military (this position is both more complicated than it seems for contingent historical reasons, but also exactly as dumb as it seems for a group whose very existence threatens war with a superpower), promotion of aboriginal culture and languages, support for LGBT rights, and most recently its own me too movement.

I'm curious about the two spirit as know next to nothing about indigenous American cultures. Taking from Paul Vaseys commentary on the fa'afine and some experience of Samoan culture I would assume other cultures have related versions, ie a way to resolve homosexuality and male feminity as a third way distinct from traditional and actually pretty restrictive gender roles. This is pretty far removed of the born in the wrong body narrative, the body is accepted as what it is. What's the case with two-spirit, I know from tv-history these cultures have ideas around spirit animals, but assume this is in the realm of metaphor/the imaginal. It strikes me that it would be maladaptive for an indigenous culture to sway too much from tangible realities so I'm suspicious how alike these ideas really are to the current ideas, which I put in the realm of luxury gnosticism.

My understanding is that the two-spirit thing was real, but not all that widespread -- and looked more like "camp bitch" than "fabulous magic-person".

Just a category to put guys in who were no good at the manly-man stuff, but (obviously) no good at the 'bearing children' part of being a woman.

Making such people useful and feeling like they have a place to fill is probably pretty adaptive -- but I get the distinct impression that none of this meant that they were treated all that great.

The closest continuing equivalent to the two-spirits today are the Hijras, AFAIK, and they don’t seem to be treated particularly well.

Hijras are cunts who normally make a living by extortion, demanding money as bribes on the pain of making sexually embarrassing comments, groping you or causing a fuss at events. They get treated accordingly.

It seems plausible that two spirits were often the same thing back in the day- certainly nobody who remembers them is still alive.

That would have been my guess about it. I suspect that the cooption of indigenous cultures by the gender ideology lobby is almost entirely sophistry and really a form of neo-colonisation. I suspect what these cultures really teach us are different models of acceptance of gender nonconformity, which we could actually learn from.

I did find some references at one point, but it was awhile ago (around the dawning of WWtrans) and will probably be hard to pick out with search engines these days -- the primary sources for the phenomenon as I recall are pretty contested and heavily weighted towards early European exoticism. Certainly nothing pattern matches to this in the groups I'm familiar with as of the 19th/early 20th centuries.

Why would you assume that “local norms” line up so tightly with what the West thinks of as traditionalist?

Especially when there’s money to be made.

There were forms of homosexuality historically common to many different regions in the world, some of which only saw widespread condemnation during the first wave of globalization (eg. in Japan it happened during the Meiji Restoration, and sodomy was only banned for a single period from 1872-1880). In Thailand Kathoey / ladyboys have a long history. What is common to many of these things is that they were tolerated without having the same status (obviously) as heterosexual relationships / marriage. Homosexuality was at many times tolerated and common in Chinese history.

But when countries that have historically more lax attitudes to homosexuality encounter Western gay rights activism, legal change is often swifter than it was in the West itself, which may have had more residual Abrahamic aversion to gay rights that took longer to reverse.

I don't know whether to believe Vivek or the DeSantis stand about the anti-anti-Semitism bill. I trust you guys. Anyone wanna take a crack at it?

Who’s this Vivec guy?

I wrote about the bill here when SS first brought it up. The bill upgrades several existing crimes by a degree if they are intended to threaten or intimidate. I’d say that makes it a “hate speech law” in the strict sense. I don’t get the impression Vivek is using a strict sense.

The FL law prohibits people from distributing certain kinds of literature. but not others.

Yeah, this would describe a great number of laws, including ones which are (legally) acceptable. “No soliciting” signs come to mind. Littering is already prohibited. The question is whether the state may further punish littering if it comes with a message. Vivek tries to run around this and make it a referendum on whether speech in general is cool.

In summary, Rubin and Vivek are both shouting into a 140-character void for an internet points instead of making coherent arguments. Twitter delenda est.

Who’s this Vivec guy?

A dunmer who's life spiraled out of control.

The bulk of anti-Israel criticism in American politics has been from the hard left since at least the late 1970s. Most Republicans strongly support Israel and even on the hard right there’s a general ambivalence until you reach the Nick Fuentes tier.

So pro-Israel activists found it very easy to approach red state politicians with the argument that criminalizing “antisemitism” based on a definition under which criticism of Israel‘s existence is antisemitic essentially provided a way of weaponizing ‘hate speech’ against the progressive / leftist college activists they dislike. Meanwhile, the left would be hard pressed to vote against a bill that increases charges against those harassing people because of their faith, especially after the Muslim ban etc etc.

The law is extremely tuned specifically to the above college speech concerns. It makes harassing or ‘intimidating’ someone because of their religious beliefs a third degree felony. Who is showing up and harassing or intimidating attendees to a college talk by another Israeli ex-diplomat about why Palestinians are terrorists? It probably isn’t the local college chapter of the Proud Boys or the local Groyper Association. It’s the Socialist Society, the LGBTQIA2S association, the Students for Justice in Palestine club, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Islamic Students’ Association. Conservatives don’t usually picket talks by people they dislike in any case, and where the far-right criticize Jews, it typically has little to do with either Zionism or their religious practice.

Given the above, it seems pretty easily understandable why DeSantis and others signed these laws. Antisemitism isn’t a high status belief on the right, more incidents like the Charlottesville tiki rally are seen as bad for mainstream conservatives in the US, and getting one over on annoying campus progressive activists is a plus and something DeSantis has already committed himself to through many other actions. Is it constitutional? Probably not, I guess, but I’m no legal scholar.

How can I find (without being predatory), the type of women that are in my league? Yes, go outside…but around 80 to 90 percent of the people in my local Wal-Mart are more attractive than I am. And the percentage is even higher for any of the common suggestions…bars, yoga, running groups. They all have jobs, are able to maintain basic hygiene, aren’t 400 pounds, if they’re using stuff like meth or heroin they’re hiding it very well.

Bonus points if there’s a low risk of being killed, maimed, or thrown in jail. Anything I can think of is basically predatory and as such not something I’m comfortable doing.

Like. Given that most people that can hold down a job, have the ability to live independently (1), and keep a roof over their head are out of my league…how do I find someone that’s reasonable, without being a predator. Preferably while staying above ground and out of jail…if you’re sleeping with crackheads that’s gross. Maybe there’s an honorable way to do that, and maybe I’m basically expected to be a combination friends-with-benefits and social worker to someone like that. But how might I make that happen in a more or less ethical way?

Yeah. I know that what I’ve posted sounds gross. It is. Are there OK ways to engage with this grossness, leave her better than I found her, and be a decent man in spite of it? If I’m expected to be celibate for life because short ugly sperg, I get that. I understand that there are no good outcomes for me with respect to dating and relationships. I’m looking for the least-bad option here.

(1): not someone that has the skills to live independently but cannot afford it - like a McDonald’s worker that lives with her mom. That’s fine; if she got promoted to manager or just got $60k/year she could live in an apartment or something without trashing the place. I’m talking more about shit like ‘being mentally ill and removing the toilet from its mountings’. True story - I know a guy that worked with the homeless and said that many of them fucked up their housing and apartments by doing shit like this.

I would like to know if it is possible for me to date the types of women that are in my league, without being predatory. I'm in therapy, working out, practicing becoming more charismatic and getting a bigger social circle. I understand that's not enough: unless and until I either have my own lab at a world class university dedicated to the study of communication, or make six figures purely off being charismatic, AND I look like a physique bodybuilding competitor AND am impeccably dressed AND am morally worthy of someone enduring a visceral disgust to be with me I haven't done nearly enough. For me, this is table stakes.

However, given that almost everyone that has a job and the ability to live independently is out of my league, I don't see how this could lead to romantic success. Yes. The rather unattractive and heavy cashier at WalMart is out of my league because she is able to work a job.

Looking for women that can't hold jobs or live independently seems ethically fraught, no? It seems kind of scummy to trawl homeless shelters and rehabs looking for a date.

I don't necessarily find the women of my 600lb life or something morally or intellectually repulsive. As for physical revulsion... that's a strong word and honestly who cares? I'm ugly and awkward, I can get jacked and everything but at the end of the day you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I don't mind the idea of dating someone that's 600 pounds, or a heroin addict, or something like that. Who cares if it leads to being killed, maimed, or thrown in jail? Women are expected to date their only natural predator. If my ugly ass winds up dead to a crazy woman who stabs me, that's just life and natural selection. Problem is, you're kind of a predator if you hang around outside of psych wards looking for dates, no? I guess I'm looking to find out if there's an ethical way to look for and date women that don't have jobs or the ability to live independently, and are frequently in and out of institutions. That's my league, for the most part.

Man, I'm not telling you again: go out and get drunk.

You will not care about any of this shit, and statistically are highly likely to end up sleeping with people who you claim are out of your league. (ie not 600 pounds and/or addicted to drugs)

If you are not used to getting drunk this may take some practise -- you can do it! Just keep after it; it's way easier than going to the gym!

Report back; do not give me any garbage about "alcohol doesn't agree with me" or other pussy bullcarp.

This is the most time-test mating strategy ever; source: Pompeii graffiti.

Have done that without success.

Hell. No shit, I have a 5'10 neurotypical Indian friend. I'll call him Arrow. He's a medical resident and very good looking. Sleeps with ten women a year off dating apps but never brought anyone home from a bar or club. Goes out twice a month.

The getting drunk is not necessarily to get you laid. (directly)

It's to teach you not to care.

I wouldn't even say that getting drunk is all that great of a way of getting laid -- it makes it harder in some ways, even if the girls you are trying to lay are also drunk.

But you are not getting laid anyways, apparently -- go out and drink a lot. Repeatedly.

I lost 40lbs when I moved to a poor country. Eating their food and I didn't get a car/bike, I assume. And the girls here are just endless. I have two girls i can't get rid of and I get approached by a new girl almost every day. This is after years of having little prospects in America. Seriously, go south.

How far south did you go? Are you talking about Mexico or did you go further south?

How often are you going to start with this same old topic? I still want you to post a picture of yourself.

Not proud of this but I blocked him for a while. I enjoy dating related talk in motte and it is very annoying that he just comes and repeats same nonsense under every comments. Not sure if it is trolling or genuine mental breakdown. Gonna unblock and check back in a month if I remember

Yes, go outside…but around 80 to 90 percent of the people in my local Wal-Mart are more attractive than I am.

The answer remains that the first option is to get good, or at least non-terrible. Exceeding the bar of 20th percentile at Wal-Mart isn't hard and if you've dedicated more time to posting about approaches as a very unattractive person than becoming slightly more attractive, you're doing it wrong.

This is the way.

@SkookumTree, stop agonizing over whether or not you are worthy and focus on being worthy. The rest will sort itself out as a result.

1.) Become worthy

2.) Accept (P) ower / ussy

Simple & difficult, and the only way forward.

Yeah. I might have known maybe three people that are or were up to that standard. Very strong-willed, hardworking, principled people. Two of them fought life-and-death battles for what they believed in, one in combat. 99 percent of people are totally unworthy of someone willingly enduring a deep, biologically-rooted disgust in order to make them happy, or to benefit them. Is there anyone in your life for whom you would willingly enter a relationship with someone who you are not attracted to and who you are deeply disgusted by, and remain faithful to them for life? Is there anyone who you think is in any way deserving of this form of sacrifice?

Brother, have you never met an ugly and/or fat dude who can talk to women because they are funny or charming or rich or smart or have a huge dick or usually some combination of the above?

I’ll add my voice to the chorus and say it’s extremely unlikely your case is as extreme and dramatic as you’re making it out to be, and that extreme self disgust you project is probably doing most of the damage.

It really seems like a self fulfilling prophecy with you.

Once. He is, I shit you not, a neurosurgery resident with enough charisma for a career in politics. He is also 5'4". The other short guys... okay, they're dating morbidly obese women that still have jobs and aren't crackheads, or they're single. About half and half. Fat guys: if they're both funny and taller than average. Or if they met their girlfriends in high school. Same for ugly guys.

As far as autism: hmm. Two I know. One was a military officer from a poor background, the other was a software engineer who supported his non-working girlfriend. She was nice enough, although she had antisocial personality disorder and found autists easier to model. Not exactly applicable here.

  1. Become worthy of the kind of sacrifice that someone would have to make to be with me: become worthy of having someone willingly endure disgust simply to make me happy. I know maybe one or two people who might meet that standard, if anyone does.

  2. Cultivate the virtues necessary to be a good partner, father, husband, nurse, and caretaker. Be the guy who’s got enough slack to live a decent life…and absorb a six hundred pound woman, or deal with a heroin addict, and still be a good community member, friend, and person.

This actually makes a lot of sense. That sounds like ‘be a fit, charismatic, fashionable guy who is extremely hardworking, very diligent, altruistic, prosocial, caring, has a very high tolerance for both frustration and pain, and is well-connected especially with healthcare providers, mental health resources, and local law enforcement’. Those traits would have made the lives of some of my friends a little better. More resources, a little less resentment at their mothers’ failings. Some of them weren’t all that harmful, on the order of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Others were ‘attempted murder’ or ‘failure to provide basic medical care in early adolescence, leading to minor but lifelong problems’. It’s essentially figuring out how to stand between your children and tragedy, because the ambulances are coming and your goal, your fucking job, is to keep them away from your kids as much as is realistic, and when you can’t, provide them with a good role model and good coping skills and resources to deal with it.

Thank you.

One of the primary problems of the modern internet is that it creates such false expectations in relationships and dating. 4chan inceldom proclaiming all women need 7 foot 10 gigachads making minimum twelve figures with their own private island is not indicative of women in general but rather of high-visibility women - THOTs on instagram or onlyfans are the focus of a lot of these communities, and these young women are selling themselves for attention and money. Men focus entirely on the transactional nature of relationships which comes at significant cost.

Of course, it's easier to say this when you're not suffering from the anxiety of finding someone. A lot of finding a relationship of it is backing off of that obsession of 'finding' someone and focusing more on building out your friend group.

  1. Focus less on tearing yourself down and your own self-image and either a) care less about your self-image or b) work on building your self-image up. This doesn't necessarily mean 'more plates more dates' but instead developing hobbies and learning how to reach out to people without the initial expectation of a relationship. This can be at work, finding a friend group, hobby, etc. I found the people who tend to have no problems finding dates are lower neuroticism and more about reaching out to people and being able to talk to them than it is looks and income.

  2. Many young women have the same neuroticism and insecurities as you. At work I befriended a lot of people simply because I was looking to find people who are similarly social as I am, as I moved to a new state wand wanted to find people to hang out with. That alone gives you a lot of attention because you're inviting people to participate in anything with you, bar hopping, eating out, whatever activity is in the area. Being able to reach out as friends or to make introductions will put you at a significant advantage over a lot of these young males who are too neurotic to do so. A big portion of this is not worrying if it ends up with sex initially. It's as easy as saying "Hi, I'm xyz, mind if I join you?". I wouldn't do this at Walmart but at a lunch table or at a bar or a party it works great.

  3. Focus on building your friend group over finding a date. If you don't have many irl friends try to find friends first. Show you can laugh at yourself and take a joke and be willing to try new things and most people are pretty inviting. If you find a good friend group girls will naturally be attracted to a group of people having fun, plus you can ask them to join in as well.

I understand the value of building a big friend group. If anything, I’ll wind up the 40yo virgin with the big friend group, following this strategy. It’s also a potential buffer against a lot of tragedy and other crap: if I do wind up dating anyone, there’s likely to be some kind of fucked-up shit with that. Two Aspies I know started out dating and had girls try to stab them. One blocked the knife; the other very nearly died from blood loss. Honestly, not so bad - we expect women to date their only natural predator. Stabbed guy made a full recovery: the wonders of modern medicine.

As far as the whole crap about 7’10” Gigachad: not really…unless you’re short, 5’4” or less, AND want someone that is both sane and not morbidly obese. If you’re short and jacked, you can get someone that holds a job, isn’t a danger to herself or others, and can do basic hygiene. If you’re on the spectrum…I haven’t seen men on the spectrum date unless they were 6’ tall and/or earned $250k+/year.

I don’t know how it goes if you are exceptionally charismatic or popular; just being the guy who’s got 30 people he can call and ask to hang out ain’t enough. It’s got to be closer to 300.

If your advice is ‘get some self-esteem; stop thinking that you have to settle so damn hard that there is a real risk of being killed, maimed, or thrown in jail’ I understand that - even if it cashes out to lifelong celibacy and a big social circle. Even so, advice on how to find someone who’s in what I believe to be my “league” in an ethical manner is pretty thin. Maybe there isn’t a way for an ugly employed autist to date women in his league without being predatory or at least slimy as hell, at least not in middle-class America. Like. If the morbidly obese single mom working the cashier at WalMart is your match on a very good day, and most of the people in your “league” are either in institutions or in and out of them? That’s hard: how do you date someone that’s in and out of the ER or the psych ward or the local jail or living in a group home without being a goddamn predator? I’m leaning towards “generally speaking, unless you’re similarly fucked up, you don’t”. Sure, it’s legal if they have the capacity to consent, but a lot of predatory shitbaggery is legal.

I also have another long-form comment about how in 21st-century America, Joe Median is a bad deal for Jane Median and it makes an imperial shitload of sense for Jane Median to go for Joe Above-Average. TL;DR dudes be dangerous and risky; best get compensation for that risk, provision and protection ain’t as important/gendered anymore.

If Stephan Hawking can get married twice, you will be able to find some companionship at some point in your life. Learning self-worth is some part of it, the other part is developing a personality which people can find appealing is also incredibly benifitial.

Since it seems a lot of your hang ups are on height; I know of two people in successful marriages who are approximately around your height. Height is only an issue because you allow it to be one.

I have a feeling you've posted a lot in various threads about your dating over the years. I forget, are you still in school?

Just be a +1000SD genius, bro, it's that easy. I find the approach of using Hawking and Dinklage as examples somewhat counterproductive. Those two successful (I'll take your word for it) marriages, how long ago did they start, by the way?

These guys are like freaking Muggsy Bogues.

One since 2017, the other was before COVID so around 2018/19 I think.

Yeah. One year to go.

Muggsy Bogues played in the NBA at 5'3; this means that people my height can play professional basketball.

And unlike professional basketball, your chances of finding a woman with a generally healthy dispositions who likes you is much higher.

I’m confused about what you’re saying. Are you saying that your league is so low you can’t find any women in it you wouldn’t feel predatory trying to date? Might I suggest ozempic, a job, and a shower if that’s the case?

Or are you saying you’re looking for someone minimally functional and not morbidly obese, but poor and not particularly cute? Just import one from Ukraine or Argentina or date single moms off plenty of fish.

I read this in the overall comment feed and immediately knew whom you were replying to.

I’m saying yes, my league is so low that I can’t find any women in it I wouldn’t feel predatory trying to date. As for Ozempic, job, and shower: I’m a grad student, decently fashionable. Far from the unshaven, smelly, fat guy you envision. 5’6” and 160 pounds; while I’m no slouch in the weight room, I could stand to lose 10 to 15 pounds.

If I looked like Danny DeVito and worked as an engineer, and had none of his acting talent, would you say the same? Sure, he could lose weight, but he’s still short and ugly. Imagine who autistic Danny DeVito’s league is, hydroacetylene.

How much is losing your virginity worth to you? A plane ticket?

I had thought you were self describing as 400 lbs with poor hygiene. You don’t actually sound that low, just kind of short(but taller than the average woman! And you can just lie about your height, wear cowboy boots, and date short women- they don’t care very much as long as you’re taller than them) and maybe with bad social skills(have you tried improving them? You can probably find adult social skills classes by dealing with a therapist, yes I know therapy is cringe) and an unfortunate face(is it something different facial hair can fix?).

In reality women care a lot less about what you look like than you’d think. Try dating Asian women or overweight but not landwhale single moms- both less picky than average if you’re white.

If all else fails there’s a lot of single women who really, really want to get out of Ukraine right now.

Dude. I'm okay with morbid obesity as long as she's capable of basic hygiene. Even that is potentially negotiable as long as I can do it ethically. That's basically my league right now bro.

I don’t see what’s so unethical about dating a fat woman three social classes below you?

Sex is illegal in American culture. There's probably someone in Skookum's life that will shame him for trying, whoever he tries to talk to, however he tries to talk to her. You can go anywhere in America and still find the same pattern. Maybe these rules only apply to a certain class of men, but they apply across all English-speaking subcultures.

Fortunately, there are other places for us to live.

Nothing - as long as she is capable of doing basic hygiene. You might have power-differential issues if she’s bedbound and needs her butt wiped.

No one is suggesting you date severely disabled people, mental patients, or women who are in and out of prison. But most fat single moms are not that.

Literally just have no standards on plenty of fish or some other bottom of the barrel dating site. That seem to be what you want to do, so why are you agonizing about it? Make like a kid in an Indonesian sneaker factory and just do it.

Haven't tried plenty of fish.

I don't see any ethical issues at all if she is able to work a job, any job, and live independently. If the fat single mom is working a job at McDonald's, isn't shooting up heroin, and hasn't stabbed anyone or gotten them thrown in jail she is a catch.

Like. My goals/standards are, in this order:

  1. don't be a predator or evil

  2. date someone

  3. stay aboveground and out of hospitals and jails

Those seem reasonable, no? Or is even that fairly modest seeming goal unrealistic?

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Maybe this has been brought up in one of your other dating posts, but have you considered going abroad? I guarantee that you can find better women than who you're talking about here in the Philippines or Thailand, and if you're white, it honestly doesn't matter how ugly you are.

I have, but can’t afford it. So too, why the hell wouldn’t she leave the moment the ink’s dry on the green card? I’m not looking for marriage at the moment.

Like. If we’re just looking at Americans, yeah. Those are my options. How do I engage with them in a way that isn’t predatory and preferably doesn’t leave me killed, maimed, or thrown in jail?

Yes, I’ve tried online dating; 99 percent of the profiles they show me are way out of my league and the other 1 percent is just out of my league. I suspect that ‘functional enough to own a smartphone and use a dating app’ is actually a fairly significant filter.

Shit, knowing what I know now, if I got teleported back to America with $0, I would skip meals and scrimp on every luxury until I saved up enough for a plane ticket to southern Mexico. I'd honestly risk death to escape America if that's what it came to.

Lol. Why Southern?

Southern Mexico is a lot poorer than northern Mexico. It’s also safer and much more indigenous/less white.

If he means Chiapas, specifically, they’re also probably the least feminist women in the western hemisphere.

Depends what you are optimizing for.

If you are optimizing for a situation where the lives of the invaded are the least worse off, then a literal military invasion is obviously worse.

If in your value system, the terminal value is the preservation of your culture ethnic group, then at least some of them remaining even if their lives now suck are better off than them not existing at all in any meaningful sense over a much longer timeframe, even if their lives sucked less summed up.

I don't agree with the second value system. I think it's stupid in more ways than one, and its followers are intellectually dishonest when they handwave at "culture" and "your children" and what not. I would like them more if they just said "we want to remain white, and so what?", without all the rationalization.

It seems to me that the word “spew” is very left-coded in online discourse. “You’re just looking for an excuse to spew your hatred”, “he was spewing his racism and homophobia everywhere”, etc.

This is interesting because, in contrast to an overtly political term like “privilege”, or even a set phrase like “there’s a lot to unpack here”, the word “spew” is a longstanding and perfectly innocuous non-political term from ordinary language. And yet to my ears it has still taken on a political valence. I rarely hear a rightist say something like “and then he started spewing his politically correct nonsense”, if ever.

Can you think of any initially non-political words or patterns of speech that have become right-coded? (Or just more leftist examples - I know there are more besides just “spew” but I’m drawing a blank at the moment).

I have found one of the strongest subtle clues to indicate that someone is a leftist (or mired in leftist ideology) is their use of the rhetorical “right?” to end statements of dubious fact, or just statements which they know are unacceptable to refute, mostly things “we all know, right?”. It’s like a tic where they can’t stop doing it even if they tried.

I don't know about politics specifically but its definitely female coded, as is all consensus building formation of language. Other examples are "we can all agree" at the beginning of a phrase or Uptalk in non-interrogative statements, where the tone of voice is raised as the phrase progresses. Its purpose is coalition building and identifying and preemptively shaming dissent. Listen to women speak to each other, especially younger women. Its not just politics. In men it sounds weak and lacks confidence or like a scam artist/salesman.

Wait, I do this too though?

If it’s any comfort, most people pick up this tic simply by being immersed in leftist academic or professional environments, not necessarily by being a leftist themselves. Compared to some of the other answers in this thread, the rhetorical “right?” is a sort of “hidden indicator,” not necessarily a conscious change of vocabulary.

It might be something I imagined or misunderstood because English isn't my native language and I only got good at it around 2015. But I always get the feeling that the construct of "amid " is almost exclusively used by leftie mainstream media to associate something with a bad slant.

I would expect a right-winger to use "spout" instead of "spew" in that context. Words I think of as left-coded include "problematic," "gaslight," and "decency."

It does seems as though there is a pipeline of new vocabulary from 4chan to online rightists to extremely online people in general and then to the population at large (see "based") and perhaps another one from tumblr to online leftists to online rightists making fun of them to the population at large (see "woke"). Funny enough, both of those words come ultimately from black English, which seems to be the true source of linguistic innovation in America.

"Noticing," of course. And using the general phrase "has anyone noticed...?" to open a topic. Leftists have almost completely switched to speaking in plain assertions.

"There's a lot to unpack here" god I hate that, irrationally so, almost as much as cringe used as an adjective, though cringey is no better.

The word leftist itself is right-coded. You don't hear a lot of left-leaning people use the word (or, I myself don't hear them).

The term indoctrinate seems more right-coded now, particularly when referring to education. Deplorable used ironically as a noun to refer to a person, for obvious reasons.

I’d say staunch ideological leftists call themselves leftists all the time. Average Democrats don’t, but the right calls them that, so that’s the asymmetry you’re witnessing.

The word leftist itself is right-coded. You don't hear a lot of left-leaning people use the word (or, I myself don't hear them).

I think left leaning people usually would say "The left believes X" where as right leaning people would say "Leftists believe X".

I seem to remember a lot of "I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist" during the ascendence of Breadtube.

I have noticed that libertarians tend to use "government" without a preceding article. "Government collects taxes" where most people would say "the government collects taxes" etc. There are of course cases where articles aren't generally used, such as when talking about governance in the abstract. But in this comment from /r/libertarian, for example:

Government has been using the IRS to retaliate since its inception.

I think most would put a "the" at the start of the sentence.

General trend of emphasis you see in corporate comms. Eg. Apple doesn’t say “The iPhone now lets you…” they say “iPhone now lets you…”. They remove the ‘the’.

I recall Pete Buttigieg getting disparaged by the left for using the term "virtue signalling". The left might admit that such a phenomenon exists (I think maybe "performative activism" is the approved phrase this year?) but using right-coded vocabulary for it was taken as evidence that he'd been talking to the other side too much to be a safe candidate.

More broadly, "woke" appears to have been ceded to the right, with the euphemism treadmill there cranked up so fast that no replacement seems to be forthcoming.

Interesting topic given blue/red ethnogenesis. ‘Fake’ seems mostly used by the right. ‘Retarded’ is apolitical in general use but if it’s part of a polemic the person using it is almost certainly right wing. ‘Abuse’ is like that too- leftists rant about creepy or predatory behavior but are usually less Frank.

For not so controversial examples, anyone under 60 pronouncing the wh is almost assuredly a very partisan Republican.

For not so controversial examples, anyone under 60 pronouncing the wh is almost assuredly a very partisan Republican.

What do you mean by this?

Pie tastes better with cool whip

A small number of American English speakers pronounce the first sound in whilst differently from in will. These speakers exhibit the usual partisan variation if they’re social security(actually most of them are old blacks, but whatever), but are universally partisan republicans if they’re younger. The regional epicenter is Oklahoma and northern Texas, but even within white, blue collar Fort Worth dwellers pronouncing whip like it has an h in it is a tell tale of being very conservative.

“Degenerate?”

Maybe it’s past the line of self-awareness, because it’s clearly got an actual political history. The rare occasions of unironic use are definitely right-coded.

“Agenda” is mainstream on the right. As is “activists.” I think it’s pretty rare to see those used in the other direction.

Not sure if I really see “elites” used by the left. “Washington” elites even more so.

Elites is used all the time by the left but I think it’s slowly being replaced by “billionaires”.

“Gross” as in disgusting is another good one used primarily by the left.

For the inverse I think “ugly” is a word that used to be used by both sides but which now is more of a conservative word. “Wicked”, “cursed”, “Satanic” (obviously) and other words with quasi-religious or archaic connotations are used more by the right.

Obviously there are also words like “degenerate” or “bigoted” that are strongly coded to one side and have been for many years.

“Hellscape” is a word both sides like to use to refer to their enemies’ ideal world.

"Screed".

I think that’s another good leftist example, yeah (assuming you meant it as leftist and not rightist).

The reason I asked this question was because this feels like a specifically leftist phenomenon to me - these speech patterns and tics that aren’t inherently political themselves, but still end up getting used repeatedly by leftists. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed any similar words associated with the right, but that could just be my own bias that I can’t see through. The right certainly has many memes like “based” but I don’t think it’s the same thing.

speech patterns and tics

Would you also include vocal fry and upspeak as examples of this?

"Based", "seethe"

Based, Seethe and Cope were co-opted by online leftists though, you see them all the time on Tumblr and Twitter from the usual crowd.

Can you think of any initially non-political words or patterns of speech that have become right-coded?

Cope.

Not a bad example, but I think it falls a little short because it does get used self-consciously as a meme sometimes. Same with “based” and “seethe” (especially “based”, it’s almost entirely a meme). “Spew” only ever gets used unconsciously in the course of ordinary language, never as a meme.

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