100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
Something something "believe all women."
Unless those women are 250,000 little British girls, I guess.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Thanks. And thanks for doing the survey. Survey's take a little bit of doing.
The takeaways are interesting to me because of the next level of analysis they point to; the context and nature of the events surrounding an infidelity event.
Based on the survey and several different comments in the thread, I think a starting point framework could be as followed:
- Men cheat in in-the-moment opportunities or (often drunken) impulsive and horny decision making.
- Women "cheat" by creating the conditions in their own relationship to push them into the arms of another partner (notice I'm saying partner here because, I think, this holds across hetero/homo/bi).
This mirrors the "porn versus romance novel" framework. Men are captivated by the act itself, while women like the lead up to the act.
I've been thinking about marriage in the west for about 7 years or so. That's when my friend group started to get married, so it makes sense. I wonder how many of these marriages will make it 5, 10, 20+ years. There's already been a few divorces less than 3 years after the wedding. Then, I think about how many of these marriages will turn into dead bedroom, mutual-resentment situations. How many will have to deal with either or both of physical infidelity or emotional infidelity.
The postmodern (and wrong) response to this is the current vibe of polyamory and its various branches. Interestingly enough, the survey demonstrated that that is a more unstable structure than monogamy.
The 'conservative' view of this is "welp, yep, marriage takes work and even couple goes through a rough patch or two." Think of the fat boomer (and, increasingly, millenial) men who like to say "happy wife, happy life", "let me check with the boss" when asked about going to a game / bar / boys night, and makes a lot and makes jokes about spousal murder. In many ways, I hate this "version" of marriage the most. It's a long-term, slow neutering of the modern married man and "battle-axe-ification" of the modern married woman. This is how you get "Karens" and their husbands, which google tells me are one of "Dale", "Darren", "Ken", or "David."
I've written before about how marriage is a miracle that, along with children, sits as the basis for the rest of a functioning, large scale, self-determined society. And I think that we've spent something like 4 or more generations now not only not doing the basic maintenance of marriage as an institution, but actively undermining it.
The results of that are hinted at in the survey -- realtionships, in general and across the board, seem to have more failure modes than success states. To be sure, this has been the case forever, but the entire point of the institution of marriage - along with the stricter courtship habits preceding it - is to give a massive social support to the odds of a marriage working out.
We've traded that for mobile-based-hookups and a silly vibe of "sexual freedom" and "self expression" and now, again according to the survey, the majority of people are having a very bad time, for at least part of their life, with it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
12d ago
I gotta say, selfishly, I like this comment and the responses to it because it confirms my original hypothesis that "Mr. Brightside" is a choose-your-own-adventure about relationship ambiguities, general feels of "hurt" or "pain" etc. and that is why it's such a big song.
I don't think anyone in this thread is right because I also don't believe anyone in this thread is wrong. And that makes me happy. I guess I'm looking on the brightsid---GOD DAMN IT.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
Although I no nothing about the professional music industry, I think "Mr. Brightside" is probably a song that nearly every songwriter and pop(ish) performer has a huge love-hate relationship with.
They "love" it because it's a simple enough song to write and arrange. The detailed Wikipedia entry on it has quotes from The Killers that say as much. The song itself was a "yeah, I guess this one isn't that bad" level of initial excitement. It was certainly not a "we knew this one was special" kind of track.
Some of the lyrics are high-school sad poetry levels of overwrought;
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
I'm just imagining the "cool" 10th grade literature teacher saying "Wow, these are such raw emotions. But, maybe you should spend more time thinking about, you know, word choice and avoid cliches."
Which leads right into why, I think, a lot of artists also "hate" this song -- it shouldn't be such a staple. There's nothing very specific or unique about it. It's a Rorschach test for each and every listener to map their own personal experience to. The experience of infidelity (to some degree) is common to many (most? idk) people. And it has a unique emotional resonance. Until the advent of true maturity and, very often, never, people always think their experience with cheating was the absolute worst. So, a song that makes (almost) everyone who listens to it feel like it's "their" song is bound to be huge.
But, again - why does this very median song (especially the lyrics) just "hit" so well compared to the thousands of other songs about infidelity and the harshness of romance? I think it's genuinely mysterious. And I think that's maddening for people.
To add another, slightly different concept in support, I also think that Mr. Brightside hits a kind of midwit depth of emotionality. To a lot of listeners, Mr. Brightside seems "deep" and doesn't come across as the overproduced love songs of, say, Mariah Carey. But it isn't nuanced. Once we get to the chorus of "[she's touching his] Chest now..." it's damn obvious whats happening and how you (in the person of the singer) should feel. Compare this to a classic like "Casey's Last Ride" by Kris Kristofferson which is a subtle meditation on isolation, loneliness, the remembrance of love or something that felt like love (is the unnamed paramour in the song, perhaps, a prostitute?). That kind of depth is something to genuinely wrestle with. It's ponderous and weight. Mr. Brightside gives you a much cleaner payoff -- "dude, like, this song. Bro, this is exactly what happened when Kayley/Ashleigh/Tara/Madison cheated on me with Chet/Chad/Braden/Glorp." You get to feel the emotional satisfaction of "literally me" paired with the intellectual self-satisfaction of "nobody gets this but me."
I think it's worth comparing Mr. Brightside to it's cousin; "Misery Business" by the band Paramour. This is a song from a female protagonist viewpoint (sung by a female lead, the quirky-alt-chick archetype Hayley Williams. You'll remember her from being the profile photo of literally every girl with a LiveJournal from 2004 - 2012).
The plot arc of the song is something along the lines of;
The female "protagonist" in the song sees a guy friend being mistreated by his existing girlfriend. She, the protagonist, somehow steals the guy and starts dating him. The song is then a kind of victory chant to the other, unnamed, female antagonist.
If Mr. Brightside had a, well, brighter side, it very well might be "Misery Business." And it has a lot of the same features I pointed out before; goofy teenage quality lyrics, personalized "literally me" accessibility, and just enough depth to make it seem authentic and meaningful.
I'm not trying to be critical of either of these songs. I'm just trying to figure out why they are what they are.
They are both far better than "Imagine" by John Lennon.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
I’m a software developer and I deal with that all the time when trying to communicate with non technical people.
And
labels are not the truth and that the words we use daily are more probabilistic than discrete
Pick one.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
Because if you define gay as “person with XY chromosomes attracted to another person with XY chromosomes”, it’s not necessarily wrong, but it might not be useful.
So this is actually a profoundly monstrous argument.
If you take this to its logical extreme, this is literally saying "there are things that are true and there are things that are useful. We should focus on the things that are more useful."
Cue the hyper cut to soviet pogroms, concentration camps, khmer rouge, whatever.
Normies will look at semantic word games like "it depends on how you define that" and "what are you saying when you say you don’t think I’m a woman?" and simply roll their eyes, I get incensed by them because that slipperiness not with the truth but with the relative importance of the truth to utility is how you unlock the gates of Hell.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
I’m generally curious as to why non-trans people get invested in this when it seems easy to ignore
The sexual assault of an underage girl isn't easy for me to ignore.
A romantic partner might commit murder because of the shame of being publically outed as being in a relationship with a trans gender person, and honour killings of trans people by their family members do occur.
You offer a hypothetical counter explanation but I don't think it's good enough when the original poster was bringing in real data. Furthermore, you're up against the fact that domestic partner violence in non-trans relationships is the most common road to murder aside from heterosexual young males who kill each other for money and prestige. It's one of those crazy truths of the world; the person most likely to kill you is probably the last person you kissed (or had sex with). So, you'd have to somehow show that Trans romantic partner violence is somehow a total departure from the history of non-trans romantic partner violence.
If transphobia becomes more widespread and accepted, it seems obvious that violence and discrimination will increase as a result.
There are like three layers of baked in assumptions here. First, the term "transphobia" is especially loaded because earnest and good faith trans skepticism is often lumped into it. Second, the "If" at the beginning isn't really an honest hypothesis style "if", it's a covert assumption of your assertion (i.e. that "transphobia" will become more widespread and accepted). Finally the "it seems obvious" line completes the "mean words turn into lethal actions" fallacious argument. Here's an example you can use: how many Americans, in 1950, had a sincerely held belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? How many hold that same view now? How many are avowed atheists or similar? Has this widespread and accepted belief obviously led to more violence and discrimination against Christians? Now, to be fair and to possibly undermine my own point, there's good evidence that semi-legal and social discrimination against Christians probably has gone up. Still, however, people aren't getting beaten in mobs (in the USA) for wearing a cross around their neck.
being trans can lead to discrimination, being ostracised by your friends and family, and make you more at risk of low level violence and hate crimes.
I think this is common to several mental health ... situations ... where a person's fundamental concept of their own identity doesn't match reality. I'll hang my hat on this analogy; if I go to the doctor and say I'm always sad, even after something good happens to me, he or she will likely say "hey, your subjective experience doesn't quite mesh with reality. We should take a look at that." This is a generalized structure of how a lot of people begin to deal with depression. When a trans person says "my subjective experience / identity doesn't quite mesh with my anatomy" why should the start of that not be something similar to the depression example? Why is the default, as far as I'm aware, to simply assume the subjective trans feeling is the correct starting point and to move towards 'transitioning' to some extent?
While I don't think trans "isn't a thing" as the kids say, I think it's even more of a hyper-minority than it always is. For one, I'd wager something like 50% of MtF's are just gay men who couldn't figure themselves out. Another sizable portion are autistic people who think that Trans-ing will help them "feel normal" when, very sadly, that may simply not be in the cards for them.
If we could have good faith discussions about these ideas, I think that the Trans "issue", such as it is, would absolutely quickly disappear from the culture war. But, instead, you have organizations like WPATH that seem to be actively trying to suppress the truth and instead advance an agenda, as well as various publishers and media outlets that seem to have a strong interest in other people's kids.
Like @Amadan's post below says, most face-to-face encounters with non-activist Trans people aren't fundamentally difficult or fraught to extreme levels. On the surface. But once there's a crossing of that line into the issue territory, they force the various declarations of purity and allegiance. That's not something a person who "just wants to live their life" does. That is the behavior of a person who believes their view of your life is unimpeachable.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
Violent crime committed by Indians in the United States is almost unheard of
Or....conspiracy theory level: 5 out of 10.
Indian violent crime towards other ethnicities is almost unheard of. I believe, however, (and, again, this is an admitted 5/10 conspiracy theory) that there are honor style killings from the sub-continent that get either non-reported to police or disguised as something like the kitchen fires euphemism.
Obviously I can't prove this, but I dont' believe in holes in the ocean. When one group within a population has a bizarre statistical outlier relative to all others, there's either an obvious cause or the numbers are wrong (hence, hole in the ocean).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
Reddit levels of _"nuh-uh!" with nothing to back it up.
The Fall of Minneapolis is an entire documentary, that you can watch for free, about the extensive fuckery around the George Floyd case. While, charitably, there is room to argue about Floyd's cause of death, the idea that any sort of fair process of justice was carried out after the fact is close to laughable at this point. Chauvin being in sentenced to over 20 years is perhaps the most recent and glaring example of a literal political prisoner.
Then you have to layer on the contest of lackdown double-standards from 2020. "Stay home with no exceptions unless you want to murder your whole neighborhood" gave way to "It's not possible to catch COVID at a George Floyd rally" awfully quickly.
The entire George Floyd meta-cycle ought to be studied as one of those particularly shameful mass events in American history. I'd put it up there with, ironically enough, something like the spontaneously lynchings in the South over the first 20 - 30 years of the 20th century.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
28d ago
The article literally quotes another juror who says he was not into it and only went along with it for the photo.
But, the bigger problem is that people consider playing dress-up in the function of jury duty to be permissible.
This isn't an argument about that specific case. I'm using that specific case to argue about the breakdown of contextual professional due to female cultural policing.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
29d ago
Anything with a feedback loop and open competition is going to produce effective organizations.
This is also the problem with government services in general. The IRS /DMV etc. have no competition (by law) and so there's no pressure to perform. Throw in public sector unions (which is a truly wacky concept) and you have all of the incentives to do nothing, avoid all risk, and fall back on process, procedure, and policy.
This is just such a willful sidestepping of the obvious context of the issue. @Sloot's comment was very clearly about Ukrainian women who left when the war started and are now going to bed with EuroBros elsewhere.
Your comment isn't in bad faith, per se, but it's an intellectual dodge. You're better than that.
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