Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 275
- 2
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Indeed, stated vs revealed preferences often betray a massive discrepancy. Nevertheless these women actually talk to other women, and pretending to at least listen to them is a bare minimum for social interactions.
Truthfully, he, like many anglicized NRIs, suffer from a bias that you yourself betrayed in your earlier statements, which is a strong preference to date outside proximate cultural companions. Even if the girls meet physical descriptors ("fair and lovely"), many indian men are, I find, terrified of the idea that the girl they date may end up like their mother.
(side note: the one major and exceedingly hilarious exception to this observed trend is the NRI communities in Jersey City, who are so far removed from the generic ABCD culture of vague parental agreeableness/overbearing and liking Indian food that other NA NRIs from Flushing to Virginia find the Jersey NRIs incomprehensible.
And before that sparks any interest in yourself, their social experience distance from generic ABCD experiences does not make them less insufferable. Just... just trust me on this one.)
Anyways, it is this specific issue of social experience distance awareness that I find most incomprehensible to the Aunty community, and thus the nice genteel/exhausted pattygoing indian girls who have finally given in are still approaching Indian matchmaking from a totally different perspective. The specific dynamic at play is interpreted differently by the four relevant parties (Fe/Male Prospect (FP/MP) and Matchmaker Fe/Male (MF/MM ) - Ignore the extremely unfortunate acronym - whereby the FP and MP are both viewed by the MF/MM as 'returning to the fold' which includes obeying the unspoken social structures of the NRI experience. By contrast, even if the FP/MP are kissless handholdless Good Indians they have been acculturated in the west, not fully versed in the expectations and more importantly obligations of the NRI cultural sphere. The gormless women have no idea what to expect to begin with (except for 'generic unvocalizable disappointment') but the exhausted partygoers will judge MP with even more harshness than the FM would because their prior expectations still exist even in this new context they ostensibly consented to participating in.
tldr hope that your obligations only require contact with a gormless girl, cause down the other path lies pain.
I'd rather not sleep on the town mattress, even if I'm not particularly judgemental. Just had things breakdown with a med student who turns out to have an unfortunate habit of getting frisky when she's drunk, and not necessarily with me.
I appreciate the insight from one so wise in the ways of matrimony, may one of the one lakh and change gods and goddesses we have bless you for your advice.
And frankly, you're putting me off the whole thing. Well, not entirely, but I was never too keen to head down the arranged marriage route, and now I'll actively avoid it. Well, even more actively than I'm doing now. There's always the Import Unspoiled Girl From The Old Country route (🤢).
No mommy issues here, even if I prefer older women for their emotional maturity. I'd be tickled pink if one of them was like my mom! In non-Freudian ways, she's a sweetheart ❤️.
And where's your mom in all this? Surely she must be pulling her weight, or is everything being left on your capable shoulders?
Import an indian girl from the old country once you get your green card. Get that 1m dowry and a downpayment on a Loudon County white picket fence. Chances are she'll be moderately westernized herself past the point of gormless insufferability. Don't trust the aunties, deep down they're hoping any match they find for you is a proxy for their own daughter.
As for the attempts of the aunty network, it has all been failures. The girls have ranged from fully-passing halfies to 8/10 modern elites to tradwife factory template to the leavings of ultrachad, and all have rejected the match. My boy has flamed out with literally every girl in the last 15 years, except for one I accidentally introduced to him. Hence, by dint weight of historical track, I have been tasked with this sacred mandate.
Well, if my luck keeps working out, I might end up in the US doing yet another residency, and I think that green card fetches a higher sum lol. But that's just optimistic daydreaming for now.
Jesus Christ how old is your brother? 15 years? I regret my offer on rizz lessons, he's probably going to be a senior consultant and not in the mood for lectures from an uppity junior.
I mean, you could upgrade? get dowry 1, divorce, rebrand yourself for dowry 2. give back the initial capital, but keep any reinvested profits.
No, he's reached the stage where he can attempt on a new crop of sisters and juniors. He just has negative game, so uppity juniors likely get confused as to whats going on with him.
Mein gott. For a girl you certainly don't like seeing your nominal faction treated well.
I'm not quite at a stage in my life where I think this is a good idea, though I'm modestly confident you're joking. Or maybe you're just pissed off on behalf of your brother.
I still wouldn't call him entirely past help, but you know him better than I do. I just feel bad for the dude.
I'm not a woman, I just was assigned as the matchmaking aunty because the women failed. To be best girl one must be a man.
The big unspoken issue is the fact that he only looks indian, and he fails at presenting as such to the indian community of aunties, hence the failures within the opaque (but, frankly, not incomprehensible) Indian matchmaking dynamics. Yet at the same time he is, if judging as a white man, terribly normie, besotted with the self consciousness of a man who, like many of us here, is/was plagued by self consciousness and a small degree of 'optimization' paralysis in pursuing strategies to make oneself more competent at attracting the other sex. Difficult to help a man who wargames any date he's on to Inevitable Failure and then acts that way throughout a date.
My apologies for misgendering you, though I think that's an acceptable error if you go on calling yourself one of the matchmaking aunties for so long lol.
Have you tried getting him drunk? Well, at least mildly tipsy, so he's not so in his own head dying of anxiety?
Drunk indians go 'baseline personality x10 (i.e. more gregarious or more anxious)' and then just pass out. There is no clearing the clouds.
Re the misgendering, you can blame it on a long history of being aunty killer, and that translates into being part of the Trusted Circle once time went on. Fun as it is to drink with the uncles and reminisce about rambunctious youthful escapades, I can at least learn something about how to make deep fried cheese samosas from the aunties in the kitchen. And as a man I can still drink shitloads of whisky even in there, so its the best of both worlds.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link