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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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@Lewis2 suggested you had to be active in the Elks or a church before attempting to move. Which, like I said, isn't too likely for the latter and has pretty much probability zero for the former. If you're in Blue and don't like the way Blue is going, well, tough shit buddy; you can't retreat to Red because Red don't want you. If you don't count your ancestors among those who founded the town, you're an untrusted newcomer, not fit to date the local women. "Stick to your own kind", they say.

As I said, coming in as a card-carrying member of whatever organization you prefer is a shortcut. You can still get many of the same benefits by joining up once you move to a new location, but it’ll take longer since you’ll have to prove yourself; you won’t come in pre-vetted, as it were.

You can still get many of the same benefits by joining up once you move to a new location, but it’ll take longer since you’ll have to prove yourself; you won’t come in pre-vetted, as it were.

Sure, a little longer; your children's children might be grudgingly accepted... except you won't have them.

To an extent conservative Red tribers would not be conservative Red tribers if they welcomed people unlike themselves with open arms no? Just as coastal Blue tribers wouldn't be them if they weren't more welcoming to the other. Having said that, having been a Brit moving to a Red American town, I found as long as I signaled the right way (went to Church, didn't mention i was an atheist, etc.), that while I was not regarded as local, no one treated me particularly badly. It was a little while before I was able to embed myself in the social fabric (particularly because I didn't work locally), but I was still invited to bbqs and functions out of politeness if nothing else, and within 6 months or so, I was much more embedded socially, so I don't think it is massively difficult. Just like with any society, you need to make an effort to fit in, if you want the locals to actually take to you.

having been a Brit moving to a Red American town

This is an unfair advantage in two ways:

  • As a Brit (or any other European or Asian immigrant), you are coming from a neutral position rather than the default hostility that would have faced OOP as a Blue Triber (even a Blue Tribe heretic).
  • A great many foreigners suspect that the British are still the master-race that invented the modern world and built the British Empire and have the Right Stuff in reserve somewhere in case it is needed. If you can plausibly LARP being a British traditional elite (RP accent, classical British style etc.) then you can play that to your advantage.

2 isn’t really true so much as British accents are just high status in America. Since Hart-Cellar the only British immigrants are highly skilled professionals and celebrities, and Brits are very overrepresented among Hollywood stars, popstars and TV presenters. This is mostly true without regard to class - people with a strong Geordie or Scouse accent might have to moderate it, but most Americans can barely distinguish between a posh / RP accent and, say, the way David Beckham speaks. Nuances of class are mostly something only Anglophiles or Americans who have lived in Britain would know about.

You can join the elks or a church in NYC or Chicago or whatever, and people who want to live a flyover lifestyle but are obliged by circumstances to live in those places do exactly that.

I'm not quite clear on how joining the Elks or a church, either in chicago, or bumfuck nowhere, gets you any closer to meeting a single biological female. And in bumfuck nowhere, there quite simply are no single women of any age.

Well, there's senior citizens.

But there essentially aren't prime-age single women anywhere, or at least there weren't a decade ago.

It helps get you integrated into the local community much more quickly and proves you have a certain baseline level of compatibility with the people you’re trying to live with. Once you’ve established your bona fides, you’re more likely to be introduced to single biological females (though definitely don’t call them that) by their friends and relatives with whom you’ve built up a solid relationship, to say nothing of meeting women at church, trivia nights, etc., yourself.

Even with all that, I’m not going to pretend it’s easy; dating anywhere these days isn’t exactly easy once you’re past your college years. But it’s also not impossible.

In bumfuck nowhere, few women are single, but many are available -- there is a knack to picking up the signalling there; not sure it's different in the city or not.

But he didn't want the available women, he wanted the 'quality' women.

The women who are quality (and have at least some self-awareness of the fact), but are stuck going out with some jackass because they live in buttfuck nowhere and that's all they could find -- are often available. It can be hard to tell though.

It sounds like the author under discussion is himself something of a jackass, so it probably wouldn't work for him -- but lots of stable relationships form this way in small towns.

I think that is the point we're all trying to make - if you're a jackass, then it doesn't matter if you're a local jackass or a blow-in big city jackass, you're going to find it hard to meet women who want to date you for a permanent relationship. The local jackass has an advantage merely from being local, but it's not much of a choice for the women stuck with "there's no better option".

If you come in and make the effort to integrate, at the bare minimum don't go around with a visible air of superiority, you'll do better. As people get to know you and see that you're not going to fly off like the summer visitors, that you're here for longer than that, and that you want to join in with local life, then you start to fit in better.

Yes, you may marry a local girl and twenty years on still be 'the new guy', but you can find a niche for yourself. If, however, you insist on being a jackass, well - the locals got their own, they don't need to import new ones.

If there are issues in Chicago, it isn't the bumfuck-ed-ness that is the problem.

You don't understand how interacting with a larger social group introduces you to more potential "single biological females"? Even in flyover cities and towns, women exist...and some of them are single, or better off with you than the other guy. You just go...meet people. I say this as another member of the, "last New Atheist, being a stubborn prickly contrarian against smug sanctimony and moral panic regardless of the mask it wears." tribe.

A lovely turn of phrase by the way, I'm going to use that in the future if that is ok with you. Have you tried going out drinking?

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