4doorsmorewhores
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User ID: 223
4doorsmorewhores
9mo ago
Sorry for the 100th "Feminism is corrupting the youth" post on this website, but this short article was really something
https://www.elle.com/life-love/a62231356/best-friend-from-polyamory/
Written by a woman to extol the value of female friendship as better than the fickle and emotionally damaging heterosexual relationships to which so many of us are accustomed.
The article begins deftly (or dishonestly, depending on your disposition) with the author drizzling her thoughts and emotions onto the page after discovering her man cheating. Only after this framing of hurt emotions does she reveal that they were in an open relationship.
She reveals that after spending her 20s working in journalism she wanted to move to South America to find herself or achieve inner peace. He wanted to stay in the USA (presumably to avoid becoming a professional hobo, more on that later). As a compromise (?) he suggested they open their relationship. She agrees seemingly without objection, but adds the caveat that they share a don't ask don't tell policy.
The framing doesn't even have the sensible presentation of "I didn't want to be in an open relationship, but I was afraid of losing him and he forced me" or something, she is even convinced by progressive literature.
During my earliest weeks in Mexico, I read self-help books like Sex at Dawn and The Ethical Slut. I recited arguments in my mind about why it made perfect sense for someone you love to enjoy intimacy with others, why lifelong monogamy was an unrealistic societal expectation that bore no resemblance to our biological roots
The author further reveals not raising concerns to her boyfriend, but instead the depths of her anxiety and worry. She begins online stalking him (Obsessing might be more appropriate), checking his social media profiles for any change, and eventually finds him interacting and posting photos with the "other woman" Ari.
There are then some rah-rah girl power moments touched upon:
We discovered we both loved tuna melts and spent an afternoon procuring the fanciest loaf of bread and tinned fish we could find, laughing as we concocted absurdly extravagant sandwiches. We realized we wore the same size clothing and regularly began raiding one another’s closets.
She also has a sit down chat with Ari about her now ex boyfriend
It turned out, her connection with him had been the same as mine: passionate, volatile, unpredictable. When she’d found out how upset I had been upon learning about their relationship, she was devastated (he’d spent the summer insisting to her that I was “totally cool with everything”). They were no longer in touch, and she had no interest in ever seeing him again.
It's not laid out, but you can imagine the dialogue where they spend an afternoon talking about how terrible he was, and the psycic toll he inflicted upon the author. The phrasing “totally cool with everything” is obviously meant to remind a reader of the shitty boyfriend they had that would give half truths and lie about these types of things. However in this situation he is being truthful, as far as he knew they were in a working open relationship. I don't want to paint with too wide a brush, but it's shocking how people allow themselves to become caricatures. As far as I can tell she is fitting the crazy ex girlfriend to a tee. She was upset with their arrangement, didn't tell him about the problems she had, and then would tell anyone who will listen how about how he cheated infront of her or something, and holds him responsible for not reading her mind. From his perspective it's unlikely he did anything wrong (Deciding to open up your relationship could reasonably fit here in and of itself, but it's very likely that he and his entire social circle consider that action acceptable or even laudable), and he's presented as an abuser or liar.
The most obvious irony here is how she wrote an entire article to tell us about how the girl friendship is more meaningful than her old boyfriend and her's, but it's clear to anyone who read it that she had much more thought and feeling for Him than for Her. Even the ending misses the point:
A few years ago, on a trip to Rosarito, my ex-boyfriend texted me to say happy birthday. Ari was next to me when my phone pinged with his unexpected overture. In response, we made silly faces and snapped a selfie, devolving into a fit of giggles when I pressed “send.” I tossed my phone on the nightstand and went outside to join her in the hot tub before I could see his reply. By then, neither of us cared all that much about what he had to say.
This gets at the heart of the point I'm trying to make. The progressive argument here is one where a person enterered into a bad situation entirely of their own choosing, has deluded themselves about how they really feel, and is now lashing out at the closest "Fucking White Male." Even the pictures the editor chose oozes this belief, kitschy 1930s and 1940s domestic life shots that are often used to hint at a rebellious or sinister undertones for the women involved, is entirely contrived. The last sentence has this attempted-catharsis of silencing the man and letting the women speak (Louder for those in the back queen), but in this entire article we don't get anything from his viewpoint except for 1 sentence in scare quotes. The person calling JD Vance weird for being married with kids and a steady job is deeply unhappy, anxious, contradictory, and packed into a 13 person house in San Fransisco while they hop from job to continent to relationship. They believe that this is ideal and empowering, and something the man has done in this situation has created the ills in their life.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
A major university (in Canada) published another one of those studies where they give homeless people money and see if they spend it on crack or job applications. Mostly this was met with admiration and joy by the journalist class. The more right-leaning publication I posted above is more skeptical, pointing out of some of the potential problems with the study:
Unfortunately, putting a thumb on the scale was almost the first thing the researchers did. 732 possible participants in the study were screened. The UBC folk didn’t want their sample to include the long-term homeless, so to be eligible, participants had to have been homeless for less than two years. Also, they rejected severe drug and alcohol abusers and the mentally ill.
...
Note that the researchers didn’t even consider including the tent-dwelling, park-occupying homeless: merely by working with shelters, and with the people who prefer to sleep indoors despite some filth and danger, they were giving themselves an enormous implicit advantage. The study, having kinda announced at the outset that it’s garbage, goes on to describe how 229 people were chosen from the screening sample to provide the experimental group for the study. Alas, of the 229 people who took $7,500 payments, half (114) of them disappeared from view and didn’t complete the series of questionnaires and tests they had supposedly undertaken.
This isn't that interesting, it's just a bad study done in Vancouver, what I found interesting was the writer starts with a brief summary of the replication crisis, to an audience that is presumably not intimately familiar with it:
You ever hear of a guy named Daryl Bem? Bem is a social psychologist from Cornell University, now retired at age 85. In the ‘90s, after a long conventional career as an experimenter, he took up the cause of establishing evidence for human extrasensory precognition, and did some studies that seemed to confirm it exists. This set off a war in psychology as critics descended on Bem to nitpick the flaws in his studies and citations of psychic phenomena. Article content
In the end, the consensus about Bem’s research was mostly not that he used mainstream tools of statistical analytics improperly. He had mostly coloured within long-established scientific lines and followed his training in hypothesis tests — everyone’s training. Article content
Bem is now widely regarded as a weird sort of antihero who inadvertently demonstrated flaws in classic hypothesis testing, and whose late work was ground zero for the current “replication crisis” in psychology. It is not that humans are psychic: it is that you can prove the absurd proposition “humans are psychic” by very lightly abusing the received 20th-century scientific method.
There has been and is lots of discussion here about relaying rationalist concepts or ideas to outsiders or average random people in Mottizen's day-to-day lives. With the rise of culture war divisions, and especially the political rhetoric surrounding the Coronavirus Lockdowns and other policies, I'm wondering what approach if any you use when talking to acquaintances or friends who skew liberal, who broadly are happy to have the inertia of universities or the intelligentsia on their side, that you often reject social science research or findings unless personally having vetted them, without sounding to them like a low-IQ backwater hick redneck science denying flat-earther. I suspect that this is impossible.
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
You think it's true that there is a coordinated effort by millions of gay adults and teachers and community-leaders to manipulate children into acting trans and gay and then have sex with them? Obviously "the meme" could refer to a broad range of stuff - but I think that's the gist of it. That seems very outlandish to me. Do you have any evidence?
4doorsmorewhores
8mo ago
He deserved to have his feral disease ridden animals taken because he is a degenerate pornstar and vain social media publicity seeker. This non story is total brain melting slop.
I'm sure every animal department has stupid policies where they needlessly kill tame housebroken foxes and let feral pitbulls continue to eat toddlers: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/
4doorsmorewhores
9mo ago
People get this causation backwards very frequently. The NFL isn't tricking you into arguing with people online less, or thinking that it's a spectacle, or giving you microplastics. It is downstream from the things people desire to watch and participate in. Consider that the National Lacrosse League has all of the same incentives yet you don't think of it very frequently. Maybe you think "giving viewers and participants something they yearn for" is immoral, but the intuition needs some workshopping, I would suggest focusing on the gambling arguments.
4doorsmorewhores
2mo ago
Celibacy is no marriage, chastity is no sex. Don't worry even Catholics get it wrong a lot (and rise of the incorrect term Incel has furthered that misunderstanding)
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
And do what, specifically?
Repeal Bill C-21. For other specifics the party convention is this weekend. Feel free to follow along: https://cpc23.ca
4doorsmorewhores
9mo ago
Think of the 99% of activities hobbies or media you have no interest in, then consider that they also hire marketing professionals, perhaps even the same ones. The suggestion that everything would be in peace and harmony without evil corporations tricking us into being fat or dumb is so childish and poorly reasoned that I'm disappointed seeing it on our humble website. People like things they are predisposed to enjoying, or which they objectively value. If the national poop-eating league was given 100 billion dollars to market, I struggle to imagine all that advertising and psychology convincing me or you to watch it. On the margin advertising is obviously effective to get people to play, attend games (both forms of participation, shockingly), buy jerseys, and the like, but your argument here is so poorly developed I struggle to engage with it. Accusing me of mistyping while spelling Reebok wrong is also funny enough that I'll point it out.
The second argument is more coherent, that even if 'sports' are naturally popular, the degree to which they are catered to or how they are played is immoral. My simple response is what I've written above, that if someone tried to open a gladiator coliseum nobody would watch it or participate in it. My simpler response is "tackling people isn't nearly as bad as killing them." The meaningful degree to consent to bodily harm is not clear for contact sports, whereas I think about almost all people would think it is clear for We who are about to die.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
🏆🏆🏆
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
How many of us are there?
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
Do you genuinely believe Joe Biden is in a near vegetative state powered only by drugs, and lacking normal cognitive abilities?
4doorsmorewhores
8mo ago
Animals are property.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
How do you know it's performative progressiveness and not the genuine beliefs of the people which act that way? Is there any way to test for this?
4doorsmorewhores
11mo ago
I'm not particularly sympathetic to the MAGA/right coalition, and I agree with many of the systemic and political factors others here have analyzed well. That being said, isn't the most obvious effect which is taking place here the result of left wing progressive politics constant demonizing of white males? It's not like we're a small group of society - we matter and there are a lot of us. Young people are less established in their politics and identity - they had to go somewhere, and cultural/political/media environments have spent most of the time telling them that they are greedy vain loathsome lazy stupid bumbling rapists, despite men and boys falling further and further behind in any number of key factors in that time frame (not to mention skepticism of these progressive claims at face value —that society was mostly fine as-is in the 60s etc and these critiques miss the mark — which I'm sure we're all familiar reading this website).
4doorsmorewhores
9mo ago
These arguments and ideas all stem from a very narrow view of consumer choice and individual psychology. The correct answers all lead back to my original post. People have an appetite for leisure, discretionary spending, risky behaviour, lifestyle purchases. Advertising can sway some of these choices from Coke to Pepsi on the margin, but your suggestion that there is mass trickery going on to induce people to buy something which they are otherwise averse to is an elementary and naive understanding of the power of suggestion and consumer preferences. In short, companies aren't spending all their effort to get you spending money on things which you have deemed less socially valuable, but instead to spend your money on their specific product instead of something else. You should re evaluate whether it's likely that everyone shares your value, moral, and belief system and is being tricked by advertisers to do bad things, or if your mental model of their behaviour is perhaps very flawed instead.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
Yes, genuinely held beliefs probably have some philosophical or moral reasoning that has led to a broadly consistent set, rather than ones which are sharply contradictory or inconsistent.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
A nuclear warhead isn't a big gun, it's a big bomb. Bombs explode roughly equally in every direction. Bullets travel in a forward line. That's their main distinction.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I don't understand the basis of that determination. We have lots of good comments or posts which don't provide context or an argument, but just themselves. Like this jolly little story for example: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/e5odim/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk/
Would it be a problem if I painted a picture (Think like Where's Waldo not Ben Garrison) of my view of some present issue, or a song, if I didn't provide context and explanation for why I think it's interesting to have a picture instead of a comment thread? Where is the dividing line that I can intuit?
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
I just checked his comment history in disbelief, you haven't heard of the majority of: : jimi hendrix, bob marley, neil young, alice in chains, eric clapton, black sabbath, the commodores, cat stevens, nitty gritty dirt band, nick drake, donald fagen, little feat, traffic, the beach boys, cat stevens, yes, beck, the orb, dungen, neutral milk hotel, fleetwood, wilco, pure prairie league, jade warrior, black crowes, hot tuna, bon iver, peter gabriel, blood sweat and tears, james brown, jurassic 5, madlib, bob dylan, sam cooke, grizzly bear?
Not trying to be aggressive, but if someone told me they haven't heard of most of these, (6-12 seems totally normal) I would assume they're under 15 years old or a pop-culture disconnected old person who only listens to beethoven and wagner
4doorsmorewhores
3mo ago
Couldn't you just go in June 2023 or September 2021?
4doorsmorewhores
5mo ago
Does anyone know of any reviews or analyses of Bryan Johnson's food guide/protocol? To me a large amount of this is obviously useful (eating well, sleeping properly, exercising, etc etc) but him also selling $50 packs of blueberries and supplements infowars-style suggests me that some portion of it might be grift. I'd like to see a rating of what's useful and what's more skeptical other than from the author himself.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
By your logic
This is usually a thought-terminating phrase and should probably be avoided here. Arguing that because someone thinks X about Y, they might also think A about B, and since you disagree with A and B, they should reject X and Y has several problems.
- There are lots of other confounding variables (In this case London in the 16th century and Polygamy in Portland) that make the comparison meaningless
- We don't know anyone's beliefs of A and B, so framing the discussion is just your opinion
- People don't reflexively have consistent opinions
- The phrase itself connotes a negative stereotype of an annoying twitter or forum arguer.
- It's easy to dismiss your parable example and is therefore unlikely to be productive (Yes, London would've been a population sink if not for factor η)
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I don't understand what your issue is with this. The goal of the party is to pass a few laws, enact what their voters want, create some jobs, etc. This is what happened under Harper. If "The party will do things their voters want" isn't enough for you then perhaps electoral politics isn't for you. Do you want me to point to some zeitgeist I think will occur that lines up with someone's wonkish substack because a different party won a majority for 4 or 6 years? That is unlikely.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I haven't nor do I intend to read this fanfiction, nor have I played Pathfinder, and I don't know some of the terminology used here beyond a google search ("Isekai"). That said, I have problems. Someone from the Pathfinder universe (especially with spell training like a Paladin) would probably be familiar with food preservation magic since it exists, I also find it very personally offputting to shoehorn into a story about a child (admittedly one who considers herself an adult) about how actually most of the time when people get raped, they didn't actually get raped since nobody had a knife to threaten them. There are probably a dozen examples like this where her being from Pathfinder doesn't actually mesh with the story very well. Again, haven't read it, other than the excerpts here, but if there is nothing interesting between the comparison of her Medieval-ish world or her oath as a Paladin and our modern world, and it's just a generic medieval fish out of water tale, why is she a Paladin at all? Is it an in-joke between the Pathfinder player author? Does it mean anything?
I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice. But god, the writing here is just bad. Maybe if you're a direct person who likes it when characters spew forth punctuated idea after punctuated idea it's the right pace for you, but these paragraphs are a hard read. If you want worlds-colliding or a reflection of modernity fantasy fiction, there is lots of stuff you can find with enjoyable prose. Try /r/fantasy. I don't get the giddy appeal of having the author stand-in character give a "glorious" "refreshing" look at our modern age. I've seen dozens of posts here with better rundowns of how things operate and the problems and virtues with society. This strikes me as midwit-tier.
I just read about a real life version of the "isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" meme. Woman finds out a guy in his 30s dated a girl 13 years younger. She writes a story with their details, except in her story the guy is a creep. And now they're making a movie based on the story.
This is the short story: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person
This is the movie trailer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=J2VukOLSxoY
And this is an essay where the girl in the relationship says the guy was great: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/07/cat-person-kristen-roupenian-viral-story-about-me.html
Alexis, a senior in high school, briefly worked with Charles at a restaurant. She was a hostess and he was a waiter. They liked each other and texted a lot. They slowly started dating. He was the liberal type who wouldn't own a car because it was bad for the environment. He even asked for consent before he kissed her for the first time. She said he was very gentle and caring and they had lots of things in common.
The only downside of the relationship was the fact that she felt people judged her for it, and that she felt she was growing up too fast by being in love with someone so old. They eventually grew apart and broke up when she was a sophomore in college, after dating for 2 years.
A few years later, Kristen Roupenian has an "encounter" with this Charles, after which she finds out that he dated someone much younger than him. She decides to write a story that includes personal details about him and the girl, including their small hometowns, places they worked at, the place they had their first date at, the way the guy dressed and a description of his house. Except in her story the guy is a creep, bad at sex, a liar and manipulator, who becomes abusive when the girl breaks up with him.
The story goes viral during the metoo movement. Alexis and Charles find out and are weirded out. Alexis thinks the author couldn't have known so many details about her life without stalking her online. Charles said he started questioning whether he was really an asshole and would go through old texts to make sure that was not the case.
A few years later, Alexis finds out Charles died. No cause of death is mentioned, other than the fact that it was unexpected. Earlier in the essay she says he was on antidepressants, so suicide is a possibility in my opinion.
Alexis tries to contact Kristen and she responds via email with a half-assed apology in which she says she shouldn't have included some of the details. Alexis writes this essay to tell her side of the story, but it doesn't change much.
And now they are making a movie based on this story.
Also, these are the pictures of the women mentioned in this post. I will let you figure out who's who.
https://imgur.com/2gApE3K
https://imgur.com/l2cfZtd
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