urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
23d ago
Pre-Peter-Jackson, sure, knowing the name "Frodo" marked you as an ubergeek, but today they're still top-100-lifetime-gross movies; when The Return of the King came out it was like top 10.
Yeah, she’s been a fan since the 80s! Tolkien has always had a loyal following among college-educated conservative Christians, and my mom was recommended The Hobbit at a Christian college. She does love the Peter Jackson films, but insists that everyone should watch the extended editions.
You're not mixing up 1 and 4, are you? Everybody thought 1 was dull but loved 4.
Nope! The Motion Picture with V-ger was a movie I really enjoyed. It could be slow but the V-ger accumulations over time and the sequence of them flying in to the center of the mysterious spaceship was so epic that it impressed itself on my memory. I also like 4, and as an adult I like it more than 1 because of the character moments (and Spock swearing) despite thinking that it has a weaker overall concept than 1. “What if the voyager probe gained sentience and RETVRNED to Earth?” is just a more interesting premise than “what if whales seek revenge on humanity?”
urquan
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23d ago
I've never actually watched either Stargate or Battlestar!
My parents are boomers, so they watched Star Trek and The Next Generation when they aired, and especially saw the films when they started coming out. Talking to them about movies is an interesting experience: they remember a time when movie theaters were everywhere, and going to see a movie was almost an everyday occurance. My dad talks about how when Star Wars came out in 1977, he saw it several times before it left theaters.
So I grew up on watching Star Wars films with my parents, we'd pull the lounge chair into the center of the living room and I'd curl up with my dad and watch the OT. When the prequels came out, we watched those too, but my favorite was Empire, obviously. When I was a little older we started watching Star Trek too, I remember liking Star Trek 1 and I was surprised when I got older and found out everyone hates it. But I also was obsessed with the Voyager probes as a child, so I guess it hit the spot for me.
Star Trek and Star Wars have always been the most mainstream of the space franchises, so I grew up with them as normal popcorn movies that my parents liked. Now, if you start talking to my mom about Lord of the Rings, that's where you'll start finding the nerdiness.
So part of this is that I grew up on a bit of an older wave of nostalgia, and I don't know what the Xer and Millennial parents of my cohort raised their kids on.
Kindles? iPads
The Kindle Fires (I don't know if they use the term "Kindle" for these anymore) are the cheapest way to get a kid a tablet and they went crazy coming out with various kid-themed versions and cases.
Edit: for instance, here's a $100 tablet advertised for kids and themed to the Avengers.
The strength of the Star Trek female fan base has always been slightly surprising to me: it’s military science fiction! That said, I can see it: it’s military sci-fi, but the military solves problems through the power of empathy and diplomacy, Kirk and Riker (my phone literally autocorrected his name to “Romeo,” which is hilarious) are… present, and most stories in Trek are soft science fiction, using alien societies or time travel to explore social structures and personal relationships. TNG always stood out to me as having a remarkable number of episodes about character romance, particularly for the female characters.
Trek also stands out to me for how it’s very formalized and society (in Starfleet — who knows what people do on Earth) is regimented, and I think that’s a factor in geek culture more broadly. Geeks seem to really like dreaming of societies with clearly-defined rules and chains of commands and even uniforms. I have a theory that geeks, often autistic or hypo-social, find the improvisational and non-explicit social rules of society hard to navigate or understand, and wish things were more explicit and systematic. I think this is what psychologically unites ren faire people who dream of m’ladying their way into a woman’s affections (or a woman who would like to be treated like a courtesan), and Trek fans who dream of color-coded uniforms.
Star Trek has ranks and command structures (but is highly non-rigid in social organization for a quasi-military organization — it’s how a progressive imagines a military should operate), Harry Potter has Hogwarts houses with found families based on character traits ordained by a magical hat. Both are about social institutions that provide the security of structure without the rigidity of oppression, with many stories revolving around how morality and justice override authority. There’s a fundamental liberalism at the heart of nerd interests, but one that absolutely finds the improvised social structures that actually characterize liberal society hard to fathom.
But also after a long period of miss after miss, even my geeky friends aren’t into Star Trek. I know more fans of The Phantom Menace than The Next Generation. I remember when I took IT classes and the instructor was appalled when I was the only one in the class who copped to liking Trek. Nerd culture has changed.
I don’t think it was Scott Bakula’s show that killed it — I’ll come out as actually liking Enterprise, but also I liked Voyager so I have terrible taste in Trek. Was it Abrams? I always used to joke that Abrams ruined Star Trek as a job interview for ruining Star Wars. No one should have let this man near a franchise. (While I hated The Last Jedi, I also generally like Rian Johnson, just not for a main episode in a long-running franchise focused on nostalgia.)
The only person in my cohort I’ve ever known as a Star Trek fan was an autistic, asexual girl who seemed to have picked it as her special interest, reading the novels, playing STO, and of course writing fan fiction. I would have liked to have known her better but she was a hard person to get to know.
urquan
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25d ago
Lol. Those were jokes, not serious statements of analysis. The crocodile penis thing was a riff on a silly joke I myself made -- she works in science, and understands very well that this was not how taxonomy works.
urquan
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26d ago
What's strange is I've known many women who are into Star Wars. It's basically a tentpole franchise, at least before Disney bought it. My mom loves Star Wars -- even was on Star Wars fan forums back in the 2000s. I almost dated a girl back in high school who was really into me; I met her in school, and we flirted (to really date myself) at a Star Wars premiere, which she was really excited to go to. I don't think Disney needed any help making Star Wars appealing to women.
I don't know that it's about wanting to make franchises appeal to women over men, even if Kathleen Kennedy liked implying this. I think Disney just has serious cultural problems with telling stories that men like. Too many creative leaders at the company have spent too long telling stories that women like, that they don't have experience telling stories that men do. This applies to their parks as well: long before lightsabers were the hot Disneyland souvenir, Davy Crockett coonskin hats were the big seller in the 1950s. Walt Disney was a man who loved cowboys-and-indians stories and trains: Disney was a children's brand, not a girls' brand. There are plenty of heterosexual male fans of theme parks, but show me a straight man who likes EPCOT and I will show you a man who is incredibly angry at the Disney company. They took a park about science, technology, and cultural awareness -- a "permanent world's fair", as it was described -- and turned it into a place to get drunk and ride rollercoasters.
Once upon a time, Disneyland was a place about exploring the frontier, riding canoes, riding on a train, riding on a space-age train, there was a show where they simulated going to space on a rocket... the Disneyland of the 1950s and 60s was a respectable place for a little boy to be into. But more and more Disney's parks feel like places for little girls to wear dresses, women to go on a "girls' trip", and gay men to be Disney adults. They've lost touch with what boys are into, and have gotten stuck in a rut of being a "girl's place." I genuinely blame the introduction of the Disney princess dress -- which, surprisingly, dates back only to the late 90s -- as the beginning of Disney as a brand being wildly associated with girls and not boys. (Disney Channel basically being "dumb sitcoms for preteen girls" probably didn't help.)
That said, I don't believe girl-power storylines are the problem with Marvel. I also don't think it's "franchise fatigue." I think the problem with Marvel is that the early MCU films had a kind of grounding in the real world: Iron Man had war on terror connections (and got worse over time), Thor was relatively grounded and intimate for a story about a norse god and at least had the real-world mythology connection, Captain America had the historical fiction angle and the connection to fighting pseudo-Nazis (which they later handwaived away as villains because ???). Avengers feels realistic compared to what comes out of Marvel these days.
Guardians of the Galaxy was wildly successful, but I guess I'm in the minority who didn't like the first film and preferred the second, and especially the third. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the first Guardians, the only time I've ever done that. Marvel seriously overreacted to that success, and took everything in a cosmic, ungrounded, fantastical direction. The early Avengers films earned their cosmic dimensions. The recent films ask viewers to accept a lot of wild and unbelievable stuff without earning it. Time travel! Multiverse! Alligator Loki! Wanda creating an entire fictional town! Apparently Kang (and Loki?) has the ability to CONTROL ALL OF TIME now? Or he did, because Kang is no more.
Really, the problem with Marvel is that they're running into the limits of comic book stories trying to reach general audiences. I don't read a lot of comic books, and generally don't care for superheroes. But I liked Iron Man 1; it didn't feel like a comic book story. It felt grounded and human, and was more like a science fiction film than a comic book movie. The real problem with Marvel is baked in: most of their stories are about fantastical, ungrounded, space events involving mutants and aliens, and this quickly becomes confusing and alienating for general audiences. There's a reason comic books aren't considered hard sci-fi.
There are lots of complaints from comics fans about what they did to MODOK in Ant-Man, but my response is always that MODOK as a concept looks hilarious and stupid, like something a child would design. There was no way to translate this into live-action in a way that general audiences wouldn't find ridiculous. Making it a joke was inevitable.
(And the new Fantastic Four felt genuinely AI-generated to me, all of the effects had a ludicrious quality and the soft, undefined edges I associate with AI video. I don't think they used AI to create it, but dang if they didn't create a great imitation of AI art.)
urquan
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26d ago
I think there is a negative correlation between intelligence and silliness on average.
I disagree, particularly if we’re talking about verbal intelligence. The silliest people I know are highly intelligent, and they love to riff on things in goofy and ridiculous ways, yet surprisingly insightfully. It’s actually not-very-bright people who are most resistant to silly wordplay — they don’t get it!
I remember the first day I went to a gifted education program, which had an IQ cutoff, and the thing that stood out to me was that I finally met people who made silly jokes and found my silly jokes funny.
I think if we sat for IQ tests I would score higher than my girlfriend, but she’s also probably the smartest person I’ve dated and she’s sharp and analytical. Regardless, she’s definitely the silliest. I have a text file where I write down many of the silly things she says because I find them so hilarious. I was going to share these for Friday fun anyway, so here’s some choice selections:
I want to be an RNA so I can just affect you and go with you everywhere. I want to be in your body 100% of the time. It's not enough for me to just be close to you. I need to be enveloped by your cells.
Can you imagine an 18th century taxonomist out in the swamp, trying to measure a crocodile's penis in order to properly classify it?
People need to retain their inalienable right to suck mannequin dick without worrying about it being a dead guy.
(apparently this was a real story)
All children's authors are on the right amount of cocaine. Just the right amount of cocaine to get the right amount of whimsy. Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, CS Lewis are all massive cokeheads. I mean Dr. Seuss just had it dialed in, just the perfect amount.
I found a very interesting documentary for us to watch. It's about fungus.
(It was in fact a good documentary about mycelium.)
urquan
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29d ago
>space elf society starts debating the moral rights of monkes
>the alien women find monke men’s primitive ways irrationally attractive
>space elf company creates human dildos
>alien incels begin claiming that some fraction of space elf women would rather fuck a monke than an ugly space elf
>space elf women start fucking the humans
>space elf males’ sense of unearned status is irrationally compelling to human women
>women start fucking the space elves
>mfw alien interbreeding solves the fertility crisis
urquan
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1mo ago
Well, I suppose you and I are more psychologically different than I thought.
I have to confess, though, that I’m not necessarily surprised — the only guy who ever mirrored my orientation in this way was that one guy from high school. Intriguingly I’ve had more “oh that’s how you see it too?” conversations with trans women than men, and actually more than cis women too — nobody crack an egg over my head. I have often found that people on the margins are those who most understand the precious nature of intimate connection.
Romance for a lot of both men and women seems immensely tied up in external status in a way it never was for me; while I absolutely recognize the norms of male performance in my own romantic success, when it’s come, I am also lucky that the performances that were appealing were abundantly personal to me, showing me at my best, being myself. And that the feeling I can, at times, inspire includes both attraction and companionship.
I believe all the things I do about love as transformation not because of things I read in novels, but because of what I have experienced in love. Every time someone has loved me it has changed me for the better. Not in the sense that “I was trained” or whatever people believe about women in relationships. But in the sense that I became more tender, more empathetic, more open to other people, and in fact more spiritual. I actually believe in God in part because of my experiences with romantic love. C.S. Lewis once called Eros “the thing in the world that most begs for idolatry,” (paraphrase) and I believe it.
But our discussion here and the serendipitous chat with my girlfriend prompted a really good chat with her last night — thanks for that. She made the point that what women dream about “in traditional romances, not the werewolf thing,” she added, is a man who cares about them, talks to them when they’re down, is emotionally available, good dad material. I made the point to her that a lot of men dream about the same thing — a woman who cares about them, accepts their vulnerability, believes in their potential, sweet and loving — good mom material. The great male fear is that a woman will love him only for what he can do, and will resent him and hate him if he ever stops giving interest on their principal. This shows up in complaints about nagging, the alpha/beta dichotomy, sexless marriages, if you find a male complaint about women this is what it resolves to. I don’t want a woman who loves me because I slayed the dragon, I want a woman who gives me the strength to slay him. “Behind every great man…”
If “cishet girl lore” can dream about a man who sees a woman for who she is, for her actual personality and soul and love her for this and not for the size of her tits, well, Cishet male lore also dreams about a woman who sees a man’s capabilities even when he’s down and yet believes in him. Loves him. For who he is, for who he can become. What both sexes truly want beneath the recriminations is very similar: love, affection, and commitment based on who we are in our innermost selves, not what we present to the world. This is the meaning of “intimacy.”
It is only because this is preciously rare that anyone settles for less. And men and women both feel its lack with great yearning. And sometimes, contempt.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Ouch, I guess it is just me in the corner then.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Well, I can’t speak for what most men would want. Maybe it’s just me and… maybe @Primaprimaprima and like a guy I know from school in the corner, but no, I’d want romance content as the main enchilada.
Basically, “guy is going about life, meets woman, forms connection with woman, the two understand each other on a deep level, passion ensues.” When you wrote this: “scenes with the girl being cute and sexy and falling in love with him, the two of them having intimate encounters and emotional conversations”, well I guess I like the last bit the most. I find myself bored in some action movies waiting for the emotional character moments to happen.
I like romance stories because I like romance, I like thinking about romance not as a reward for what’s actually important, but as something that itself forms people into who they are and is one of the keys that makes life meaningful. Not “I became the best version of myself to gain you,” but “I became the best version of myself because I met you.” Romance isn’t about reward but about recognition; seeing yourself in the other. Becoming complete through intimate union.
But I am literally the guy who will be at a party and go, “hey, these video games are fun, but what if we sat in a circle and talked about our feelings?” So if you’re looking to me to find out what “men” are into, god help ya.
Also — immediately after I wrote my first message I went to cuddle with my girlfriend, and she was telling me she’s been reading a romance novel, “but not like those romantasy books, I don’t understand the non-human thing.” Well, I don’t either honey.
urquan
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1mo ago
No, that doesn't leave much for the male reader, but I will say that if you want cute love stories with actual functional couples, there seem to be quite a few that do not feature Chad Thundercock or BDSM.
Well, the main point is that “romance for men” would be about a male protagonist who meets a woman and they have a romance. It’s not just about what the male character is like, but about whose perspective the plot is written from.
Unironically, there’s more romance stories for gay men than there are for straight ones. Presumably this is just a market thing, but I don’t know why it doesn’t even seem to exist. Are there a lot of lesbian romance stories?
I’d probably be a reader of this genre if it actually existed. As it is, occasionally I read fanfiction about male protagonists (probably 80% written by women, but occasionally not bad), and take what I can get from the scraps of media that incidentally have romantic content. Japan has visual novels, but they’re too weird and too Japanese for me, but I liked Katawa Shoujo and some western fan VNs are tolerable.
So you say “men don’t buy romance”, but this is a chicken-egg problem: I can’t buy it if it doesn’t exist.
Once this is rejected, the position of preferring hot and exciting, even if short-term, partnerships to a long-term investment with a lukewarm partner at best, from which the women does not derive any pleasure - seems only obvious.
Well, some fraction of men also would make this choice, and many do. It’s just that fewer have the opportunity.
And really, it feels like the hypothetical is missing the middle ground: the options aren’t “temporary fleshlight” or “permanent sex slave.” That’s already an extreme catastrophization of the options, done presumably for dramatic effect, but also demonstrates a wildly unhealthy view of what relationships with men are like.
The thing that’s missing isn’t women’s desire to be a tradwife, or even traditional family roles. What’s missing from this minority of women is the idea that pair-bonding with men is even possible at all. Most women still love a man, even if they don’t love you or me, personally. The only thing to do with attention-seekers like the X poster is to laugh at their inanity.
urquan
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1mo ago
That was an interesting link. I often wonder about all the variables that are leading young people to date less — of course, “no woman wants to date me” seems to be a plurality answer from men, and I’m well aware of male friends of mine for whom that’s the entire reason they’re single. I have a friend who’s gone from social and engaged to depressed, suicidal, and medicated as his 20s have flown by without a wink of intimacy. Nicest and most prosocial guy you’d ever meet — maybe that’s the problem.
I do wonder sometimes how I’d feel romantically if I hadn’t had some formative positive experiences with dating as a teenager. It certainly wasn’t all roses, but I can trace my own strong drive for intimacy to a before/after with my high school sweetheart. If I hadn’t fallen into a relationship with her… would I be dating now? Would I feel as strongly about dating as I do now?
urquan
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1mo ago
NIH has done a study that shows that any study (like the one above) that assumes kids are even eating the meals is dubious. Some are, some aren't.
Among actual schoolkids, school lunches are considered somewhere between "literally inedible" and "prison food." Occasionally there's a Friday special that the kids consider tasty, but most of the food is significantly lower quality than anything someone would pay for on the open market.
It got worse after Michelle Obama's reforms; suddenly even the white bread that people found edible became nasty whole wheat versions that were much less appetizing. I think if we want to make school lunches more nutritious, the first thing to do would be to stop making them slop and actually make them something a human being would want to eat.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
While I'm sure you're a perfectly smart chap, I'm also sure that neither of your ideas is worth patenting. If you don't actually work in data storage research or linguistics, the chances of your ideas being useful, or unacknowledged by domain experts, are low.
That's not to say they aren't interesting ideas for you to explore, or things that are worth investigating for your own curiosity. But absolutely what's happening here is that Claude is telling you that your idea is the greatest thing ever, which it's doing because your text prompts are incredibly excited and intrigued by these new possibilities: "You have no idea how desperately I want to share the details of both of these."
It's just mirroring that, and glazing you. And Claude won't "push you off of them" because that wouldn't be an appropriate AI response; it's trained to continue your conversation and explore the ideas you want it to explore, not to tell you "you should stop exploring this." Imagine if it did that when you asked it a question!
Hey, Claude, what's the capital of Venezuela?
Claude: Obviously this is a dumb curiosity question, just Google it if you really need to know.
Not a very helpful AI assistant! Now imagine the inverted behavior: "Sure, the capital of Venezuela is Caracas! Let me tell you some fun facts about Caracas..."
And then imagine that behavior amplified by your obvious curiosity and fascination with these ideas you've come up with; of course it's going to tell you they're the best ideas ever!
So, stay curious, stay fascinated, but don't believe an LLM when it tells you you've squared the circle. You almost certainly haven't.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
I guess I just never understood the appeal of catcalling — what do you think is gonna happen, she’s gonna decide that random horny construction worker #25 is so hot he deserves a handjob? It just seems like pointless horniness.
But then again, I also don’t see the appeal of a strip club so maybe there’s a whole psychology of looking but not touching I don’t share.
Which is exactly the issue: many men do want relationships to form through the same process as friendship. Something organic where both people naturally recognize the value of the other person.
Let me rephrase.
What I learned in that phase is that -- like you say -- attraction is something that you need to cross as the "first hurdle."
But my argument would be that men do the same to women: it's just that men are more visual than women, and it's not at all hard to create a vague spark of attraction in a man. I don't think I'm saying anything you don't already know -- if I read your post right, that's what you're arguing.
That said, I absolutely have had relationships form through the same process as friendship. It's just that the friendship began with us both having at least a mild attraction for the other. The friendship served as a soft courtship. But I absolutely believe that every time this was the case, a relationship could have started much sooner. But I liked how it went down; like you, I take no pleasure in the initial stages of dating.
Sometimes this happened because I was in a relationship at the time, but drew the attention of someone else (this has happened exactly once, let me not exaggerate), sometimes it happened because I wasn't sure of whether I felt like dating, sometimes it happened because I was literally an oblivious idiot and I didn't know what I'd done and I spent 4 months of high school thinking my crush didn't like me when she wanted me to grab her and kiss her.
But, on that note: I also 'won' the attraction by being, in some way, performative and high status.
Birds build nests to attract lady birds (insert LBJ joke here), fish build a wonderful habitat to attract lady fish, peacocks look like a color television advertisement to attract lady peacocks (or just put extended editions of The Office on the platform)... it just is the case that, in most sexually dimorphic species, males attract females by demonstrating high status in some way. I don't have any complaints about the reality of it; it is what it is, and none of woman born controls it or chose it. However people would like it to happen, that's how it happens.
But for me, it absolutely happened organically.
I would argue strongly that I'm less attractive than you -- I don't care if I set my height to 6'7", I wouldn't get the kind of attention you're describing on dating apps. That said, short men have a really rough time, and it sucks that you've struggled because of a baseball statistic. While I have maybe once or twice been asked out by a man, I strongly doubt that gay men would consider me a catch. I can't confirm that -- I'm from the bible belt, gay men don't exactly ask out strangers on the street.
But I have a secret weapon.
I love public speaking. I absolutely love it. And when I'm in a meeting, or discussion, about something I find interesting, I can command attention.
Now, be careful what you take from that. I am the world's worst smalltalker. I hate calling people on the phone. I will avoid talking to shopkeepers if I can. I feel anxious just thinking about introducing myself to a new person. Sometimes I'm so lost in thought that I don't hear what people are saying to me, and I'll just respond with whatever I think will move the conversation along. My friends and I once played a party game where we had to imitate a randomly-picked member of our friend group, and someone imitated me by sitting, silently, with his hands clasped in his lap. That's me. When I'm not speaking, you might confuse me for a piece of furniture.
But if you say, "hey, urquan, create a presentation on the economic problems of socialism in the USSR", boy am I already excited. I'm already thinking about all the strange memes and fun analogies I can use to explain Stalin's effort to rapidly industrialize. And I'm thinking about how I might be able to make people chuckle, and remember the presentation despite the dry concept.
When I held an officer position in a club in college, I used that to springboard a few fun lectures on relevant topics I felt like sharing. I don't think most of the other members loved it, but I don't care. I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it.
And do you know when I met my girlfriend? She came to one of these lectures. She came up afterwards, started talking to me, and wouldn't let me out of her sight until she got my number. This is by far the most interested in me a human being has ever been -- male or female. And her own recollection of the event, she told me later, is, "I saw you, and I knew I had to have you in my life." How's that for crossing the attraction barrier!
I'm not Terrance Tao. I'm Rain Man. I have some special abilities that can be quite attractive, to Miss Right, but it's not something I do with intention or structure. It's something that's only mildly under my control. And I have a lot of deficits -- I don't think anyone should be envying my social charm!
There was a motte post a long time ago that replied to people talking about social competition among women; you know, sorority girls, mean girls, female bullying in school, all that kind of stuff. And I loved the comment and have tried to find it many times, without success. It went something like this: "The women I've generally been friends with or dated have been rejects from that culture of competition. And I've seen the scars that competition has made on them."
I thought that was very wise. The women I've dated have universally not been "sorority girl" types. They're not the hot girls out there doing hot girl summer. They've just been average, kind of quirky, intelligent, and warm people. I can't say a bad thing about them. I feel like I found the crown of France in the gutter. "A good wife who can find?"
urquan
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1mo ago
Ok, the weirdest part of the Wikipedia on the British Indian Ocean Territory is that its motto references Lemuria, an extremely outdated scientific theory that has connections to Theosophy.
But my understanding is that the most relevant element of the territorial dispute for people outside of Mauritius is that the territory nominally controls the .io country-code TLD. Geopolitical instability over British soverignty led to the mass exodus from .io domains.
The deal signed between the UK and Mauritius means that Mauritius will take control of the TLD; there was some doubt that it would continue to exist as a valid domain. We're definitely in a bizarre world where internet domain names are the subject of geopolitical disputes. But .su will bury us all.
Apparently the US also has military infrastructure on the islands, and Trump was a fan of the deal?
urquan
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1mo ago
I think trans women would avoid a lot of heartache if they stop being obsessed with dating 110% straight masculine guys and went for the guys that are fine meeting them for a coffee date in broad daylight instead.
Well, the complaint I've heard is that even this doesn't protect you. You might go on a nice set of public dates, but still get played by someone who's using you as an exploratory vessel for bicuriosity and isn't actually interested in a full-on relationship -- or even sex, when things get down to it. "This has been fun, but I've decided this isn't for me/I'm still exploring my sexuality" is a common type of breakup or rejection I've heard complaints about; one acquantance insisted on showing me a screenshot of the breakup text and then, sighing, said "I hate bi men."
That said, most trans women I've known or seen with a partner in public were, or wanted to be, in a relationship with another transgender person. I have no data, so maybe the reality is more complicated.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Say in 1995, Ann's cousin might have set her up with his cute pre-vetted army buddy Jim, or Cathy might have invited her friend Dave to a board game night with one of the single girls from her softball league. Well, cousins, army buddies, softball leagues, personally compatible humans still exist, so what's happening to interfere with those connections now?
Social media and the internet make entertaining yourself without interacting with other people trivial.
And informal clubs, softball leagues, board game nights, trivia nights, social organizations, religious services, all that kind of stuff have been in secular decline for decades in the US. Bowling Alone was written long before the advent of the smartphone.
And people have fewer friends, which means fewer connections, fewer friends-of-friends, and fewer Jims or Cathys to set up:
The decline in the number of close friendships is notable. In the past three decades, statistics reveal a drop in adults who report having ten or more close friends, from 33% in 1990 to just 13% today. More than half of Americans (49%) report having three or fewer close friends, showcasing a demographic shift in friendship dynamics.
Even the government has taken notice. They’re calling it an epidemic!
And many people don’t even feel this very strongly, despite feeling loneliness — parasocial relationships, internet videos, gaming, TikTok, weird Internet forums based on discussing culture war dynamics, all of these things can supply enough entertainment to make many people feel satiated enough to be complacent, with maybe one or two close friends you might see rarely. I can’t deny I’m a part of this, I last met up with friends a couple months ago and have spent most of my time with my family or my girlfriend.
But one thing that the internet can’t successfully fulfill is the unique pleasure of an intimate partner. Friends don’t cuddle you to sleep at night, or make love to you, or kiss you under the stars. Internet porn and fan fiction can maybe satisfy people a bit, but it’s not good enough.
I think this pull gets at guys more than ladies, it’s just my impression from having male and female friends that my single male friends have felt particularly lonely while my single female friends have been content to pursue their careers, or school, or hobbies, while letting romance come when it will.
The stats bear this out. Pew Research states:
Among men, those younger than 30 are by far the most likely to be single: About half of men in this age group (51%) are single, compared with only 27% of those ages 30 to 49 and 50 to 64 and 21% of men 65 and older. Women, by contrast, are by far most likely to be single later in life – roughly half of women ages 65 and older are unpartnered (49%), while those ages 30 to 49 are the least likely to be single (19%). Roughly three-in-ten women ages 18 to 29 (32%) and 50 to 64 (29%) are single.
Keep in mind, of course, that senior women are likely to be widows if they’re single, because men have a shorter life expectancy. But among non-elder people, young men have it rough. The stats are so skewed, though, you do have to wonder if this is where the “are we dating the same guy?” TikToks come from, and if some of those “single” men have a woman in their life who would be quite alarmed to hear that. But I believe that can’t fully explain what’s going on.
So young men are single more often than young women, people have fewer friends and less desire for friends, and intimacy is the big draw to get people to go out and meet other folks.
So, what happens when people hang out at those social organizations you were talking about?
The women who show up, and are single, get SWAMPED. Most people are meeting online nowadays, which has shifted the culture to one where in-person dating often feels quaint or unwanted. And even if these young women would like to make a connection at these events, well, there’s going to be more men than them and that’s overwhelming. That means that they will often find those environments frustrating — they’d like to meet in person, but also be able to enjoy whatever the actual purpose of the social gathering is without having to fend off 4 guys who all want her number. Hence, “GUYS ONLY WANT ONE THING…”
I confess I was that guy — you know, in an organization or club in college, asking out women occasionally if I liked them. I had little success. The one time it worked, well, it’s because she asked me out. And apparently I struck her as attractive when I met her; “I saw you and I knew I had to have you in my life” is her recollection.
So I guess I have a dual narrative: I’ve struggled with loneliness at times, I’ve been single more than I’d like, I have friends who are good, decent people who’ve struggled more than me, but I’ve gotten lucky a few times and sometimes women have seen things in me I didn’t always see in myself. I’m so grateful to my girlfriend — she was very brave, decisive, and persistent, and has always treated me with love and kindness. But I know not everyone has been lucky enough to catch someone’s attention the way I’ve done a few times.
So there are absolutely people who meet in “the old way.” I did. But it’s less common. And the sort of broad social connections that make the kind of matchmaking you’re describing possible have decayed.
It’s unfortunate that a majority are now meeting in situations of initial anonymity (online + bars), which makes it hard for anyone to judge safety and makes performance utterly necessary. I wonder what the percentages look like in 2025.
Every time I look at that chart, it scares me.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Fifth was quieter (though not as dead as the first time) and finally had someone on staff read me the riot act/facts of life.
Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
I have a rough time telling how much of that's bisexual or closeted gay rather than prescriptive when it comes to its heterosexuality or just trans chaser, but it's definitely a thing
I have no clue, either. But my read is that the "I'm a femboy and I fuck better than your girlfriend" is a strikingly common fantasy. Yeah, that line may have been used on me once. My take is that straight men are unbothered.
That said, the "I'll just go gay/date a femboy/date trans women" thing seems to have a little purchase, but only in the way that Trump wanting to buy Greenland is. It's a memetic negotiation tactic, a way of asserting "I have power over you no matter what you do!" I don't think the femboys or the trans women have actually been consulted. (But neither was Greenland.)
But also straight men need to be real careful lest they start assuming that twinky femboys are drama-free sex machines.
... I'm still a bit weirded out by that variation. I dunno if it's just my misreading it entirely, or if it's intended as a statement for people with open relationships to protect their primary partner, or what, but it seems like it's inviting people to bad understandings of what PrEP does.
I also thought it was weird, and commented on it at the time. Apparently this wasn't a CDC thing, it was Montgomery county public health. So in the NIH's backyard, though not with any affiliation.
I thought I had taken pictures of the posters, but I guess I took fewer pictures in Maryland than I thought. I did find Montgomery county's website for the overall HIV public health program, though, which has a similar banner, depicting two men and reading "Do it for HIM". Weirdly, the FAQs page for the program has a man hugging two elderly women with the phrase, "do it for THEM" which is mildly funny but also kind of seems to rebut the interpretation that this is advertising PrEP for protecting your partner. ("Do it for your mom?") Another page has a banner with a lesbian couple reading "Do it for HER" -- is HIV a big issue for lesbians? I remember seeing all of these variations at Metro stations in Maryland.
What's particularly strange is this seems to be the overall campaign for HIV prevention, treatment, and testing, but the banners I recall specifically were advertising PrEP. So maybe this was a situation of a generalized campaign being applied to a specific health intervention in a rather silly way -- "get tested for your wife, get treated for your mom, get PrEP for yourself" I guess seems reasonable, but the way in which all the posters I saw were about prophylaxis in particular just didn't make a lot of sense.
I like your perspective. Particularly this:
Viewed through the lens of purely analytic sexual gamesmanship, both men and women seem like horrible creatures whom no-one would really want to be with other than for a cheap temporary bodily satisfaction, an ego boost, perhaps money... just not for the joy of being with them.
That's what it feels like to read a lot of the more negativistic takes on dating, from both men and women. At some point I just wonder whether they even like the opposite sex in any sense whatsoever. I see so much talking about status and power and affirmation and sex, and almost nothing about a connection where you see yourself in the other and realize you're not so different as you thought, or the physical pleasure of a cuddle, or the joy of making your partner laugh after they had a bad day, or the calm peacefulness of a weekend spent living domestic life with your partner, or what it's like to look into someone's eyes and see them dilate and soften as they look at you. I would cut off my dick and throw it away before I gave up these things.
In particular, a lot of takes from men on the dating scene, even those I see on the motte, sound like they were written by people from a completely different planet from me -- men don't pair bond, men don't talk about their feelings, men are only interested in harem-building, men are only monogamous because women make them, romance is a game that men generate to get sexual access from women. I don't know to what extent this is just posturing, machismo, or a real difference in psychological experience. But those things just... don't describe me.
I guess I never went through a redpill phase. I certainly went through a phase where I realized that you do need to make your romantic intentions known early on with a woman, and trying to build a relationship on top of a friendship just doesn't work. But I only rarely encountered women who were "hooking up with alphas" as I was trying to date them; okay, maybe a couple times, but it was obvious pretty quickly that those ladies were emotionally troubled anyway, and a relationship with them would simply be unstable.
But I've also had women ask me out, women hunt me down or drop notes in my locker or use mutual friends to try and get me to ask her out, when I was back in school. In college I was asked out once, and had a few women who seemed eager for me to ask them out. Not every woman who's been interested in me has been my type -- but most of them were perfectly normal, stable people, and the relationships I've had, though fewer than perhaps I'd like, have been founded in mutual vulnerability and intimacy. I could always share my emotions with my partner, and we looked out for each other and cared for one another. When my relationships have ended, it was either because of a natural falling-apart (moving away, mutual loss of interest) or it was my fault. So the stereotypes of what male-female pairings are like, in TV sitcoms and motte posts and redpill guides isn't my experience of love.
I guess my few interactions with women who seem like the redpill stereotype involved me bouncing off them -- I don't play games, and I don't chase skirts. I don't sit for shit-tests and I don't like coquettishness. My yes is my yes and my no is my no. If women want to create drama for the sake of drama or engage in verbal sparring like a Jane Austin character, well, they're welcome to find this somewhere else. So I suppose my romantic style heavily filters against manipulation, and firmly towards well-adjusted, romantically decisive women. I intend to keep it this way.
My understanding is that it’s most of them, and “all my videos are on my onlyfans!” is a marketing differentiator. You pull the suckers in with a subscription, and then upsell them on individual pieces of content once they’ve built the loyalty of having already given you money. Onlyfans subscribers are a customer base pre-selected and filtered for willingness to give you money to see you naked.
But also the Russians have cornered the market on “free access to archived onlyfans posts from any popular user”, having redistributed the means of reproduction. If you know you know.
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