site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is that realistic, for someone like me?

What do you mean by "someone like me"? That only makes you sound like you have a neurotic, distorted self-image and are determined to follow this course of action based on how you think it will make you feel. Which okay, it's your life, but it has nothing to do with "get a woman" and I wish you'd drop that part of it. Most women don't care a damn about "I did a really stupid hike that could have killed me", and indeed will be motivated to avoid a guy like that, because if you get into a relationship with him, what is to stop him doing an equally stupid could-kill-him stunt? Then if you're married and have kids, you're left a widow with orphaned children and probably a heap of debt and look, it's all too much hassle. Find a man who won't decide to throw it all up and go hiking in the Arctic in the morning because he thought somebody said something mean at work.

What do you mean by "someone like me"

I mean: dreaming of a career in the NBA would be pretty realistic if I was seven feet tall, the NBA scouts for pretty much anyone seven feet and breathing - but at 5'6" I'd be the second-shortest player in NBA history, after 5'3" Muggsy Bogues. And even for a six-footer who loves basketball, it's more of a pipe dream than anything realistic.

I was asking essentially about whether or not my standards, as I'd described them, were unrealistically high. For what it is worth, based on what I've seen: unattractive people who would like to date need to choose where they want the ambulances. No, not the Hock. The Hock is stupid and pointless, and it may be a kind of prologue for things that will happen later in my life. Let me just say that I personally know two autistic women that knew damn well that they were very vulnerable to predators yet chose to date anyway. They fell prey to said predators. One is happy that she chose to date and the other has some mild regrets and thinks whatever wisdom she got wasn't worth it. If she had it to do over, she'd have been celibate. On the male side of things...let me see. Morbidly obese wives, supermorbidly obese wives, wives that tried to strangle their 10-year-old child, one attempted stabbing by a girlfriend, one successful stabbing by a girlfriend that very nearly killed the guy but he made a full recovery. Attempted stabbing guy's in a healthy relationship with his wife, one of the autistic women had a husband that raped her who she then divorced and then got in an OK relationship with a reasonably functional and well-off civil engineer that smokes pot and cigarettes like a chimney. So there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and if it's an oncoming train it usually doesn't kill you.

As I've said repeatedly here - I do not think that things are any better for unattractive women and they are probably worse. As a man, I'm not privy to as many of the tales of woe from that side of things, but hear other short and/or spergy guys - or their children - sharing stories of the things they or their parents endured. I believe I'll be going through Hell of one form or another. I realized, I think, rather late, possibly too late, that the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?" But you need to and should choose, and that choice, freely and willingly undertaken, is in itself noble.

For what it is worth, I do not think that telling people about the Hock or even people learning that I Hocked and survived is going to do all that much for how attractive I am. In the words of Steve from the Friendly Southern Gossip discord: Sufficiently extreme challenge will just be thought of as stupidity or mildly suicidal. No, any benefit from the Hock will come from freezing the neuroticism or perhaps the hypocrisy off of me and making me accustomed to pain, discomfort, and struggle. That this pain, discomfort, and struggle are considered pointless and idiotic is a feature, not a bug: living What's Eating Gilbert Grape or some other shit is kind of on a par with that. Ask @Southkraut; he warned me in no uncertain terms about how bad an idea it was to marry someone that was digging herself a very early grave with knife and fork - or any other addiction.

I realized, I think, rather late, possibly too late, that the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"

I don't know where you got this idea that every unattractive person who wants to date people will at some point end up in an ambulance as a result, but it's bullshit. To illustrate my point:

  1. Attractive people can be victims of domestic violence. Rihanna. April Hernandez-Castillo. Tina Turner. Robin Givens. Bree Olson. Whitney Houston. Tyra Banks. Denise Richards. Brett Rossi. Oksana Grigorieva. Alice Kim. Kelly LeBrock. Pamela Anderson. There are numerous other examples, but I think I've made my point - none of these women are unattractive, and all have been victims of domestic violence.

  2. Many unattractive people in romantic relationships go their whole lives without needing to call an ambulance for any reason, including domestic violence. This point seems so self-evident that it hardly even needs justifying, but if you must see hard data before considering that you might be simply wrong, Women's Aid Ireland reported about 30,000 contacts with Irish women reporting domestic abuse in 2022. Even allowing that this is a huge undercount of the real number of victims (let's say, of a factor of 3): if 90,000 women are victims of domestic abuse in Ireland every year, there's something like 2 million adult women in Ireland. This suggests that (thankfully!) domestic abuse is something only experienced by a minority of people, between 1.5-4.5% of women in a calendar year. Even the most pessimistic feminist campaigns I've seen suggest that 1 in 4 women will experience it in their lifetime, which obviously means that 3 in 4 won't (and this 1 in 4 figure sometimes includes types of abuse for which no ambulance would be necessary). We're privileged to live in an era in which even the most passionate progressive campaigners must begrudgingly acknowledge that violence is the exception rather than the rule.

Perhaps you're making an inappropriate generalisation from a social circle made up of unusually unlucky people. Perhaps your social circle is actually no more unlucky than average, and you're just fixating on the one or two unusually unlucky people it contains as a means to justify/excuse your self-pity and avoidant tendencies. If you can show me hard evidence that literally every single unattractive person who wants to be in a romantic relationship will at some point be the victim of domestic abuse severe enough to require an ambulance, I would love to see it. You won't show it to me, because we both know it doesn't exist and this is all just part of some weird mind game you're playing with yourself.

Please don't insult my intelligence by backtracking and claiming that "ambulances" can refer to something other than domestic violence. You said 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"' You can be single your whole life, never seek out a relationship with anyone, and still end up in an ambulance from a heart attack caused by your obesity.

Please don't insult my intelligence by backtracking and claiming that "ambulances" can refer to something other than domestic violence. You said 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"

The guy with the 450-pound partner and the woman married to Smokestack our engineering hero aren't facing domestic violence in relationships. The ambulances can be and often are domestic violence, but they can come from plenty of other things as well. Like congestive heart failure from supermorbid obesity. Or good old-fashioned lung cancer from a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit and smoking pot like fucking Snoop Dogg.

Consider the sky high - 80 percent, by some metrics - abuse/victimization rate reported by autistic women. This is still well north of half even if you just look at autistic women with normal IQs.

Like congestive heart failure from supermorbid obesity. Or good old-fashioned lung cancer from a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit and smoking pot like fucking Snoop Dogg.

None of these have anything to do with "being an unattractive person who wants to date". As I explicitly said in the comment you're replying to, literally the sentence after the one you quoted - you can be single your whole life, never even ask anyone out, and develop obesity-related congestive heart failure. Not everyone who is unattractive is obese, however. Likewise, lung cancer can affect anyone: attractive, unattractive, single, married. Most people don't smoke (including most unattractive people). Life expectancy being what it is, most people (whether attractive or not, in relationships or not) will go their whole lives without any major health problems before being hospitalised with heart disease or cancer in their late 70s. Most people will go their whole lives without ever seeing the inside of an ambulance.

So what you're really saying isn't so much 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date is this: "Where do you want the ambulances?"', but rather 'the question facing unattractive people who want to date human beings is this: "Where do you want the ambulances hospitals?"' Congratulations on having finally noticed that everyone dies eventually - attractive, unattractive, married, single, suave, socially awkward, it doesn't matter. Kind of surprised that this realisation is coming as so much of a shock to a literal doctor in training, but whatever. Sorry to say that "everyone will die eventually" isn't as original an insight into the human condition as "every unattractive person who wants to date will eventually end up in an ambulance" - but the former statement has the benefit of not being complete and utter bollocks.

Once again - show me evidence (actual evidence, not the two or three acquaintances of yours you've been fixated on for months) that every unattractive person who wants to date will eventually end up in an ambulance. At the minimum, show me evidence that unattractive people in relationships, or unattractive people who want to be in relationships, are more likely to be obese and/or heavy smokers than unattractive single people. Otherwise I have to say your worldview has literally nothing going for it.

Consider the sky high - 80 percent, by some metrics - abuse/victimization rate reported by autistic women. This is still well north of half even if you just look at autistic women with normal IQs.

"Metrics" which you're conveniently refusing to provide. Also, are you claiming that all autistic women are unattractive? I'll note that Daryl Hannah, for one, was widely considered a sex symbol for two decades.