Interestingly, I once pointed out that the social function of Sororities is PROBABLY to select for women who can be DISCREET about their promiscuity. quoth me:
Perhaps THAT is what these sororities try to filter for? Discretion? Like can you maintain public appearances and not hurt your sorority's social standing by, say, making your bad behavior obvious and obnoxious, can you conform well enough that nobody would single you out as a 'bad' girl or a goody two-shoes? Well you might be marriage material!
And clearly, Jane Doe in this instance failed that test HARD. Which, yes, you can reframe it thusly:
She was mistreated by those men, who allowed her to have sex with them even though they had no intention of returning any of that favor.
Feminism and the sexual revolution have done away with any sort of 'consequences' for having sex. That was the point!
You bang, and any further connection is completely optional. If you use protection, then you won't have to worry about a pregnancy or STD popping up, and nobody needs to talk about sticky stuff like 'marriage' and 'long term relationship', just keep things fun!
But uh oh that's not quite how human endocrine systems work, and the social systems we've built on top of THAT are still running on that basic hardware: don't make people feel icky, don't besmirch other people's status, don't break too many taboos at once (unless you're high status enough to do so), and people will rank you in their head accordingly.
One year back I had made the point about how schizophrenic our clashing taboos around sex and nudity are now:
Thanks to cell-phone cameras, women can send nudes to any guy they find attractive. This is not a big deal, "it's their body!" But thanks to cell-phone cameras, women are not as prone to whip out their boobs at a party on the off chance it gets posted online. Oh, and of course if you post a woman's nudes online you can often literally be prosecuted for revenge porn. Because sex and nudity are no longer a big deal, you see.
And here you get the worst instantiation of this paradox. The males got to exploit the 'norm' (but not really) that a promiscuous woman is not shameful to get some instant gratification here and the female, despite not doing anything (morally or legally) 'wrong' is still condemned for it, but the social condemnation is not subject to due process and does not care what her 'defense' is ("I'm a strong empowered woman who will not be shamed!") But we still do have one major, universally agreed norm which has legal teeth: Nonconsensual sex is very bad, and those who force themselves on women MUST be ejected from the social sphere. So its not only the ultimate sanction, its the only one that helps a humiliated woman regain social approval. Its literally the only consistent norm we have left, and we even choose to blur the lines around THAT. Wait, we also have strong norms around relations with kids, but I am NOT touching that right now.
And thus...
SOME days I wish I wasn't autistic enough to expect that social norms should be explicitly stated and followed, and that the actual law should at least try to conform to the actual social norms we follow, not just the kind of vaguely stated 'expectations' we have for people's behavior, that we know privately (or maybe not) are impossible for the average person to conform with. It'd be easier to just go with the flow if I didn't notice the contradiction.
But the on others, I look at all the snafus that normies get themselves into by following base instincts while running with the naive assumption that social rules don't matter, even though their own core psychology, at the end of the day, cares ONLY for social rules and maintaining status by not violating them.
Grumble grumble traditional rules are proven safeguards and all that.
And I just thank the lord that I'm just autistic enough to notice those areas where the stated rules conflict with the subtext/unstated rules conflict with the inherent human drives and desires and tactically avoid treading in those areas without sufficient protection. If it takes level 10 status awareness and level 9 charisma to sail those stormy social seas successfully I'd just as soon be a submarine, illegible to most until I CHOOSE to surface.
I'm dead certain that 95% of the time, everyone involved in the Ketamine/cocaine-fueled college gangbang 'gets away' with whatever they're doing. Fine, we just never hear about it after the fact because the players are more discrete or the Frat/Sorority are better at damage control. But I'm also certain that these people live lives much more filled with drama and dysfunction than is strictly necessary, and they'd be much more fulfilled living under the very basic, traditional rules that dominated society up until 5 (historical) minutes ago.
Take it up with the hippies.
faceh
18hr ago
YES! As stated, I've placed bets, although zeroed on more specific races/outcomes.
What are your odds on the midterms swapping control of both House and Senate?
faceh
18hr ago
I have not heard the 'GOP insiders' rumor, personally.
I also don't see Dems acting like they expect such a win.
The problem with citing PolyMarket, Nate Silver, RCP, and polls is they're all functionally drawing from the exact same data, nobody has 'insider' info here.
IF that dataset it tainted, biased, or otherwise missing something, which has happened before then they can't give you a more accurate picture just by aggregating them together.
And we already have some pretty sizeable polling misses in the primaries!
I think its fair to say the error bars are probably larger than you think. Like, after the Ur-example of a polling miss in Trump's 2016 original win, you should keep your salt grains on hand for reading political polls.
faceh
19hr ago
Its unfortunate that I now assume a 50-50 shot of any given agreed upon date either ghosting me or calling off at the last minute... THEN ghosting me. And a 75% shot that they Ghost Afterwards.
Unless its someone I met through friends, so there's social consequences for doing so.
Designing your date ideas so you can salvage the night if she no-shows is... 'fun.'
I point back to the only viable solution being to have a 'roster' just so you can try to swap in another one and not completely waste your time. But that is a horrible incentive that makes the problem worse over time.
And yeah, if I were to Hinge-maxx I could maybe be lucky enough to find that girl who is new to the apps and hasn't been psychically mutilated yet, but that would require me to validate Hinge's business model, which I refuse to do.
faceh
19hr ago
Basically what I'm saying. If the big national races are close, semi-coinflip outcomes should ultimately come down for the GOP in the end. You have to believe in a serious blue wave to expect a flip of the Senate, especially a flip that actually gives them 'control' vs. just a nominal majority.
faceh
19hr ago
Yes.
Very literally yes.
If he didn't think they were within distance, why even bother? At this point, I suspect they view it as a simple matter of goosing turnout.
faceh
19hr ago
Compared to Trump 1 this has been a positively stoic 2 years, with plenty of policy wins racked up.
I simply disagree.
The War is baked in, but as stated, gas prices have actually been on the downward trend, which is the main day-to-day reminder of the war.
I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.
Aside from Gas prices (which are trending down?) and a few bad candidates in races, the GOP is pretty well situated and the base seems motivated!
So I actually have some bets on some Prediction markets that there's a likely stronger Republican showing than expected, especially in Texas. Regardless of how 'bad' Paxton is, its just truly hard to imagine a Dem waltzing to victory there.
Which... we've already seen that the polls can have such a bias. As you're suggesting, if the polls have a bias AND any theoretical electoral fraud machine is crippled, we should honestly expect a narrow Republican victory rather than the certain blowout they allege is brewing.
Trump and Co. sure seem to be acting like they expect a good outcome.
So yeah. I will slightly update my priors on 'electoral fraud is a systemic problem and it impacts national elections' in favor of "true" if the Dems have an underwhelming night.
I AM bought in on the idea that the crushing of funding for various NGOs and similar government agencies that controlled the flow of 100's of millions of dollars with minimal accountability has resulted in the collapse of the overall lefty network of professional activists and organizers, and thus reduced their capability of shifting outcomes in various countries.
The amounts of rampant fraud that has come out in the last couple years is convincing me that there are well-oiled grift machines out there that convert tax dollars into either Mansions, Range Rovers, and Crab legs for some particular class of people, OR converts them into protests, election influence, and propaganda for particular candidates or causes. And STILL DOES, but has to be more judicious with its spending. Nudging a lefty candidate over the line in Bolivia, thus, would be less of a priority than, say, making one of your guys the Mayor of New York or Los Angeles.
And these flows were HIGHLY dependent on the U.S. government acting as a rich but absent-minded benefactor who hears a nice sounding cause or title and keeps writing checks because nobody told them what the money actually went to. Then you've got your George Soros' and Meckenzie Bezos supplementing these efforts, and funds being directed towards keeping those funds flowing, and it becomes a perfect parasitic organism.
So it is completely believable to me that organizations doing the work on the ground and sloshing money around to various causes in-country got dismantled due to lack of funding and these close elections are now slipping back towards the less-well-funded side.
I would want to see the actual money flows traced, however.
faceh
21hr ago
I am absurdly happy to hear that.
From what I can tell if you somehow manage to be one of the first 10 guys she talks to and one of the first 3 or 4 she goes on dates with, you can maybe have a shot at getting her locked down before she either becomes embittered by the process or realizes she can exploit said process. It amounts to luck of the draw to both find a good one AND be one of the first to get her attention. There's no way to strategize intentionally to this end that I can see.
Its this kind of gamification I despise.
faceh
21hr ago
lol, I know a guy who specifically went to China to find a wife. He's also divorced like 4 times so maybe not a great example. But his recounting of it is that she was basically going overboard to be appealing and supplicate his affections... and that as SOON as the airplane they were riding on entered U.S. airspace she swapped to cold semi-indifference and never went back. And, yeah, I can see that. Foreign women knowing precisely how to appeal to American men to get transported over to the grand utopia, and THEN knowing exactly how much they can get away with once they're there.
I have no reason to think Singaporean women would be better, but I think I'd enjoy Singapore more as a country.
The whole other issue with passport bro-ing is that once you've brought them here and they get situated, NOTHING stops them from absorbing the overculture and becoming an even nastier version of the women you were trying to avoid all along.
See @100ProofTollBooth and his insightful point here. You need a community to plug them into that will keep them on the straight and narrow!
faceh
21hr ago
The absolutely untenable problem that men have to contend with is that they can't just "marry a good one" - they then have to plug into a social circle and larger community that is predominantly "good ones."
Yes. It seems also necessary to "unplug" them from the screeching hivemind that will try to spike their anxiety 24/7 and feed her self-sabotaging advice to assuage that anxiety. This can also include her normal circle of friends. I keep hearing accounts that divorces are 'contagious' in social circles, as the first one to pull the trigger on divorce will get a lot of sympathy from the others... and will immediately start trying to sell the other on the idea of divorce so she's not the only one in this embarrassing social situation.
But if it comes out "oh my husband doesn't want me to use social media" that same hivemind will probably label him an abuser and redouble efforts to 'rescue' her from his influence.
You need other women - preferably high social status as possible - to "hold the line" on family and motherhood being the ultimate supreme good for women.
And this is why I fear its a downward spiral of feedback effects. The women who do this have to be HIGH STATUS for other women to follow suit. And 'they' have made 'girlbossing' and 'free spirit' women the pinnacle in the media lens, and shunted motherhood and being a pillar of one's community to second-class status in the majority of womens' minds, so there's no corrective mechanism arising!
You've kind of nailed the point, actually. I'm not saying all the biases 'cancel out' into the ground truth, but if you're following an account with a seeming Israel bias, and an account lacking one, and the one that lacks that bias is calling out/refuting a post by the biased one, and/or you're seeing that ONLY the Israel-biased account is posting about a given event, you can and should probably disbelieve the Israel-biased account unless they corroborate further.
You want a network that values shutting down falsehoods rapidly rather than propagating them. The holy grail is an account that will proactively correct themselves when they make errors.
The type you want to look for (ime) is a curmudgeonly 'autistic' type with deep subject matter knowledge on a given topic. And you should give them extra credence within that topic, and extra doubt on those topics they seem to have a chip on their shoulder about.
High disagreeability is a somewhat double-edged sword, but necessary to counter popular untruths.
There's a lot of Alpha up front in simply muting accounts you encounter often that spout falsehoods/mislead with regularity.
This place is one of the best spots for getting nuance on the news, and I follow a few, like @morlockp, our own TracingWoodgrains, and @hradzka that are willing to voice disagreement with a community, AND accept criticism of their position.
@St_Rev is a HUGE value add follow, the guy is capable of pointing out a misleading narrative or a missing variable from 1000 yards away
I don't think its as mine-fieldy as all that.
There used to be a time when resistance to the attempted assault was a precondition to criminal liability.
It was probably reasonable to revise this requirement for the reasons you point out: physical incapacitation can occur without needing an actual physical confrontation or restraint, drugs or other methods can be used.
BUT: the requirement that the victim resists physically has two handy features:
A) Removes ambiguity as to the attacker's 'knowledge.' If they were fighting back then they can't just say "well she seemed to be okay with it/didn't say no."
B) Creates evidence of the lack of consent in terms of injuries and DNA exchange and, if there happen to be any witnesses, they can hopefully describe what appeared to be a fight vs. voluntary public indecency.
But the mere fact that one becomes incapacitated on drugs or similar is probably not enough to prove consent was lacking. After all, you can consent to going into surgery even though you'll be under general anesthesia the whole time. Someone who is interested in sex with you can say, well in advance, "unless I tell you no directly I'm okay with us hooking up while I'm drunk." (most women will not do this, of course. They WILL hit a point of "teehee I'm going to order another drink even though I'm SOOOOOO drunk now...").
End of the day, even with your proposed high tech solutions, there will always be a 'mind reading' element b/c men are extremely motivated to seek out sexual contact and initiate the encounter whilst women, when their desire is inflamed, are ALSO motivated to seek sexual contact but to never, ever make that overt, or at least to rarely actually initiate it and always maintain some plausible deniability as to whether she wanted it or not right up until the event horizon is crossed.
Incidentally this is why I can't accept full consent-based morality without both a harm requirement and some social guardrails for individuals of 'reduced capacity.'
I've mentioned before about requiring young people to take actual tests that prove their comprehension of the activity they want to engage in (Note we already do this for driver's licenses) and any person who engages in an activity with another who lacks such a license is then strictly liable for any harms that result on that person.
I get increasingly convinced this is the only 'technological' solution that can replace the lost social fabric that might have patched over this problem. If you have a license that clearly states you know the actual consequences of using drugs and alcohol and you're aware of the risks of sexual contact of various types, someone can assume that when you agree to take drugs and do sex, you're legally (if not morally) down to clown and can't/won't come back later blaming them for the consequences/outcomes of the act.
And yes, that includes the reputational/social consequences.
Its been an insane blessing that I have spent the last ~10 years cultivating a deep skepticism filter for information sourced from the mainstream and from the normie social media, WHILE also cultivating high-signal/low noise channels that are reliable individually and trustworthy in the aggregate (i.e. if one of them disproves or refutes a given story this propagates to the others very quickly).
Epistemic hygiene is important, but one can't give in completely to germophobia.
Its not that I offload my own judgment to them so much as it allows me to quickly dismiss false positives: if I can't find some level of consensus that [X] happened as described then I will assume false until given further evidence. And in the age of AI videos that have an express bridge right over the uncanny valley, I'm vastly privileging events I can view with my own two eyes, physical photons bouncing off the actual atoms, or at least can observe the obvious ripple effects of such.
faceh
5d ago
But objectively most hookups are not leading to relationships or marriage.
And I can see why. It would not be DIFFICULT to maintain a roster of booty calls, and the incentive is in favor of doing so because of the aforementioned ghosting behavior. The easy solution to flighty women is to have backups.
But once you have a roster, how to choose one worth settling for?
Once again, the quality of women on offer is not promising. You HAVE to address this shortage.
faceh
5d ago
Read the actual opinions they hold.
faceh
5d ago
It's well that you're willing to dig all these details up but unfortunately the average young guy isn't. He is likely to be indoctrinated by mainstream liberal lipstick feminism, as are his parents
The current crop of Gen Z males is the least feminist of any currently-living generation.
Clavicular, in particular (hey that rhymes!) is a MAJOR public figure in their world. And he has the ability, if he wants, to publicize any particular detail of his case he wants.
faceh
5d ago
Not what I've observed from those particular pairings, but maybe just select for one with taller siblings.
You need to go somewhere where you can be in the top ten percent of men in the room.
COOL. Now which of these rooms are likely to have higher quality single women in then?
My problem is not being that guy, its finding a place where its worth the effort of being that guy.
My repeated experience is that the women are just not up to snuff. I'm not looking for hookups so I'd rather not burn effort in places where the options aren't great.
But they all THINK they deserve to get "that guy."
faceh
5d ago
Don't marry a fillipina or cambodian.
Funny enough I have met a good number of white male-filipina female pairings that seem pretty happy! The women can apparently be fiercely loyal too.
Unfortunately it'll also produce kids that are shorter than average, which might be bad for any future sons.
I might consider Singapore.
I've got an AI agent set up that is specifically designated with helping me both identify good places to go and try and meet women, AND vetting the ones I do find at least a bit.
I am at the point where I am willing to 'cheat' like crazy and pull every string to just get this process over with, but I also have to be realistic about the general odds.
faceh
5d ago
Oh yes, if they're going to an event they'll wear the outfit! But wearing it out day to day where they might meet a random guy? Much rarer in my experience.
I am glad to know that New England is still observing tradition.
faceh
5d ago
I've become a bit more strict about body count because the girl I almost married I met her during her 'hoe phase' (which she was open about) and thus I knew she had some history but was willing to take the shot anyway. She did end up cheating and leaving and to this day remains unmarried, 5 years later. She turns 31 shortly.
Its a signal that one cannot ignore, especially with how women will seek to hide it.
But you have to be flexible on that point. However, society becoming flexible on that point (thanks, sexual revolution!) is a large part of the underlying issue.
I wouldn't mail order but I would go abroad if you're in the anglosphere.
I sort of reject this solution because it exports the problem to that country. where are THEIR males supposed to go?
I mean, if I take a trip for other reasons and happen to find a wife, whatever.
Men need to sample from as many places as possible through pure online dating but other than that you especially need to sample from wherever has the women the most like you politically and intellectually.
Yes, and the political gap between young men and women is the largest its ever been. The women have flown off into la la land and nobody is correcting this trajectory.
Hence, the pool is too small.
Hopefully you will find something soon.
I have no reason to think I will.
However, that is also not a reason to quit.
But understand that I AM OTHERWISE WELL SITUATED. I own a house. I make six figures in a decently high-status job. I am extremely physically fit. I am a martial arts instructor (i.e. I can physically dominate 90% of the male population), I am well liked, I can repair stuff, I'm not bad looking. And I'm six foot two.
There is zero reason I should be struggling.
And if I'm struggling, I can only imagine how bad it is for guys not so well situated. And I think its best to help out their plight too.
What age bracket are you dating by the way? Marriage rates are down but young marriage is especially down so if you are dating under 25 it's clearly a systemic issue.
Basically anything above 21 and still in decent child-bearing shape. If I got my pick I'd aim for 25-27 (I'm most comfortable dealing with women in that bracket) but I have DIRECT EVIDENCE that I can pull 24-year-olds too.
But as to the filtering issue, finding a woman who is GENUINELY serious about getting married and is marriageable is the big one. There's no pressure on women to actually get married, and serious pressure on her to delay until she has her fun/her career is established. I don't think any individual guy can defeat this social pressure without a lot of assistance.
RIGHT?
I feel like when I was younger, if you were part of an "NGO" the implication was that you were privately funded but also worked in tandem with governments to achieve generally important goals. Like the Red Cross, or Amnesty International, the Government recognizes they provide important services that supplement the government's own capabilities and thus endorses but does not fund their operatons. Red Cross, at least still claims to meet this definition closely. This was helpful to make sure there is always excess capacity for emergencies, and possibly to avoid international disputes if 'official' government actors were to get involved in a space.
NOW, its basically tacitly accepted that a private organization can become an arm of the state but because of the label we don't expect it to be held to account by the voters, and also if the owners/operators become fabulously wealthy it doesn't quite register as "abuse of taxpayer funds" because in theory these NGOs can also take private money too.
And because the Constitution doesn't really create any strict rules on how such orgs can interface with the state the rules are made up and the funding can be tucked away in various large omnibus bills where nobody technically has to answer for or justify the spending.
On the flip side, as we've seen, that makes it fairly trivial to de fund them if the current President (with a friendly congress) turns a serious eye on them.
And yeah, I agree its a deliberate equivocation that lets them straddle the "private vs. public" divide without anybody thinking too much about how much that distinction matters.
There's plenty of other examples of grinding down the private/public distinction to a sheer fiction (revolving doors between large corpos and regulatory agencies, defense contracting, whatever Hunter Biden was doing) but the term "NGO" is the one that makes it a blatant mockery on its face.
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