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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30042 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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I can assure you that if you successfully complete the Hock and then get a girlfriend it will have nothing to do with the Hock itself. I don't know how to tell you this without hurting you deeply, but most women don't give a shit about stuff like this. I'm an advanced skier. I've not only skied some of the gnarliest in-bounds terrain in North America, but I felt completely comfortable while dropping in even when I hadn't seen it before. I couldn't tell you the last time I stared down a line trying to get myself psyched up to do it. I don't generally mention this to women I'm trying to date. Hell, I was out with a girl last weekend and while the subject of skiing came up, I only mentioned it because she asked me about my hobbies. I left it at "skiing" and didn't elaborate. And I was hoping more that she skied as well because I have a great group of ski buddies and we have a lot of fun in the winter and it would be nice to include her in something like that. If I had brought up all the gnarly shit in a desperate attempt to prove what a badass I am, at best she would have ignored it, and at worst it would have made me look like a self-aggrandizing asshole.

You're also forgetting that if it even were something that impressed women, you still have to get the date in the first place. Unless you're going out a lot already you better solve this problem before you do anything. What are you going to do, approach women at bars and tell them apropos of nothing that you went on a survivorman expedition and by the way, do you want to go out with me? Also, keep in mind that even if this does work, unless she's already well-versed in outdoor survival it's not going to make much difference what you actually do. Any girl who doesn't ski isn't going to be impressed when I tell her I ski the Pali face at A-Basin because to her that's completely meaningless. To her, even an intermediate run would look like instant death. The only girl who I could see that being a positive to is one who skis about as well as I do and is excited to have someone to share those experiences with. In other words, any girl who is going to be impressed by the Hock will probably be equally impressed by a guy who's been winter camping a couple times, unless she's also into that sort of thing.

We've tried man. He's in too deep now, he's made fliers and everything. Now he either has to do it or pretend to do it and never return to the motte after March of next year. In which case I'm making a documentary about my search for skookum... and possibly justice? (I'm trying to work in a true crime angle so I can sell it to Netflix.)

Look, SkookumTree has staked his whole reputation on this. If he doesn't do it, he will never be able to show his face around here again; anytime he tried to wade into the culture war thread, he would be dismissed with "isn't there a Hock you should be doing?" The mods can stop us from posting it, but nobody can stop us from thinking it. Skookum would become the laughingstock of the entire forum. What's he supposed to do, delete his account?

Better to die with dignity.

Eh, people are dumb, and the only way they ever get less dumb is by recognizing and correcting the dumbness they've previously committed to. Why hassle someone for desisting stupidity?

I thought it was sarcasm. A would-be alaskan lumberjack does not choose physical death over online ribbing.

Also reminds of the ‘jews/liberals condemning muslim immigration’ current thing and all the right-wingers who can’t take the W.

He made fliers? I missed that one. Please point me at them.

Truly A Motte Original.

I linked it in the other comment, but here it is again.

Pardon me, I must've missed it. Thanks for the spoonfeeding!

And ah, points for effort. I still don't quite think he'll go through with it, but I suppose this nudges my priors.

If you do this, PM me, I want to be involved.

Will do! But who will make the documentary about searching for us when we go missing searching for skookum?

David Zellner.

IIRC, he believes that his expedition will change him to such a degree that his newly-acquired badassness will shine through without needing explicit introduction.

Idk why you guys find that so necessarily implausible? Self confidence is a thing.

I'd say if being on track to become a doctor hasn't given him self confidence in the realm of dating women - where being a doctor is an outsized factor in success - then I think it's probably foolish to expect surviving in the Alaskan wilderness to do it. It's certainly possible, and in the general case, going through some difficult experience and surviving it through one's own wits and resourcefulness is going to help to build confidence. And it's also possible that he has a certain type of mindset such that accomplishing all that is required to become almost a doctor with the expectation of actually becoming one in the near future - no easy feat that a very small proportion of the population even have the capacity to do, much less actually carry it out - doesn't help his self confidence while surviving the Alaskan wilderness does (admittedly, this is arguably an even more difficult feat). To me, it also seems to be a rather extreme next step and taking on far more risk than is worth the reward, but it seems that the extremeness is the point, so what do I know, I guess.

I for one doubt that that Skookum will succeed in generating that kind of self-confidence by walking over an Alaskan mountain. I think he has mental issues that seem unlikely to be resolved by such actions, and I also suspect that he simply won't go through with it in the end.

And I don't mean to be offensive, I have nothing against him as such, but from what he's written so far he seems to be sometimes lucid and sometimes straight-up delusional, apparently depending entirely on the topic. I think our man has a problem, and I don't think it's a lack of self-confidence, and I don't think the solution is skiing up a mountain.

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