Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
Ya know, I really don't want to go back and forth forever, but I am just going to say, you're wrong here. You are wrong to tell people to knock it off (that's the mods' job, if you think someone is acting out, report the post) and I am "upset" with you because in my judgment, you're the one in the wrong each time and you need to have the last word, which means you pour unnecessary flames on. I understand you don't see it that way. If you want to ask another mod to weigh in, go for it. But seriously, don't keep getting into these spats with people and taking the attitude you are taking because even if you are convinced you are posting with great righteousness and truth, that is not in fact how it looks from the outside.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
I accept the backhanded compliment, but this is how I have been modding for years, so this is probably as good as it gets.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
Well, that's unfortunate, but since when you're not trying to stick fingers in eyes you seem to write pretty well, I hope you will change your mind.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
the chink virus
You've been warned about this before. Racial slurs are allowed if there is actually a point you're trying to make with them, but just dropping them as edgy emphasis to see how many jammies you can rustle is not.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
Whether or not he mischaracterized you in your opinion, there are less antagonistic ways to engage with someone who you believe has misunderstood you.
This is the second time in as many days I've told you to reduce the heat when you're arguing with someone. A pattern of unnecessary pettiness has an unfortunately predictable trajectory which I hope you will endeavor to alter.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15d ago
You're being antagonistic and obnoxious. Stop it.
Well, 8 reports so far and a very strong consensus that this post was bad. OTOH, writing meta-fiction isn't really against the rules (though in the future, I think aspiring short story writers should just start a new thread) and while arguably this was all very boo-outgroup, it does seem to be making a point, which is well within bounds, even if you took a wordy and elliptical path to get there.
I don't know what to do with you, buddy. I'm dropping a mod note here so people know we have taken note, but I am not rapping you for this post. My opinion is that it's not ... technically against the rules, though I definitely would put a foot down if you keep doing this. You've already been warned several times recently for snark and low-effort mockery. This was at least high-effort mockery. (I think. It doesn't look like AI generation, but I wouldn't stake too much on that.) I've asked you a couple times now to please straighten up and engage respectfully, even with people you think are terrible. This post doesn't add to your infractions per se, but it does add to our overall impression of you as someone who is here to rattle cages. I would prefer you stake out a position as a leftie who can actually debate civilly, as opposed to a leftie who can't restrain his contempt and will eventually end up banned.
Anyway, this is my personal opinion. But if another mod disagrees, I am not going to object if they think this post merits an official warning or a ban.
(FWIW, a couple of people have suggested this is Impassionata. I don't think so - Impassionata burns out like jet fuel, he wouldn't be able to hold it in this long.)
ETA: ninjaed by @naraburns. I agree with him also.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
When the stats are lining up with the anecdotes are lining up with the personal observations, and EVERY SINGLE person on the other side says "No, can't be true, I know a guy that is doing fine" while offering zero verifiable evidence...
It's not "I know a guy," it's "most guys I know are not experiencing this."
Offer me an alternative hypothesis.
Marriage rates have been falling because younger generations don't value marriage as much, and more and more people live in "situationships" without ever getting married. There is certainly an argument to be made (and frequently is made) that this is bad for society and does not promote stable families, but falling marriage rates do not in themselves indicate that "no one is finding a partner." They indicate people are not marrying their partners, and that most people are having many more relationships of shorter duration.
Anyway, here's an extremely recent article from The Economist bemoaning the fact that despite the fact women are now outperforming men in EVERY school subject, but can't seem to keep up in Math, so OBVIOUSLY we need to close that gap.
Okay, so women get unfair perks in the name of ending sexism. We talk about that a lot here. I don't see that having a lot to do with whether or not men can get a date.
That's just objectively true if we restrict our examination to dating apps
Dating apps are hellish, as I said. There probably is something commodifying and unhealthy about treating a potential relationship the same way you treat looking for an appliance on Amazon. If you were proposing we ban dating apps, I'd have qualms about the legality and the implementation, but I'd probably approve in principle. But I have it on good authority it is actually still possible to meet a fellow human being in real life.
What now? Shall we try even harder to give them MORE choice?
Or just let the status quo continue?
You tell me.
I've already told you. Why don't you tell me, in unambiguous language without waffling. Do you want to go full Dread Jim (literally make women property)? Do you want to retvrn to traditional (pre-Enlightenment) Church rules? You've thrown together a lot of correlations to fit your narrative, but you don't seem willing to commit to a solution. If you think women just shouldn't be allowed to choose, say so. If you think fathers should decide who their daughters marry, say so. If you think something vaguer like "Women should be persuaded to be less picky and settle for an 80% guy instead of demanding 100% of what they want" - okay, that probably is not a bad idea. How do you propose getting there? (And would it apply to men also having to settle for women who might not check all their boxes?)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Every word of this is cope.
Shall we go back and forth going "nuh uh"? I think every word of your response is wrong and frankly ridiculous. Peasants were not living in some proto-libertarian utopia. But yes, you can absolutely aspire to peasantry and a cottagecore lifestyle if that is what you are into, and while no one can completely escape the jurisdiction of a state (sorry, other people exist), plenty of people do in fact live off the grid to varying degrees. No, they don't all wind up "dead, destitute, or in prison." You don't hear about many of them because most people don't want to do that, and those who do are mostly mentally ill, pathologically antisocial, or Ted Kazinski types. (Ted didn't wind up the way he did because he just wanted to live in a cabin in the woods.)
I do not believe you would literally prefer to be a medieval peasant, because if you did, you wouldn't be here on the Internet. (No, that doesn't just mean "Of course we have the advantage of technology and comforts," it means you prefer the technological lifestyle.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Everyone knows the real agenda here is that you don't want anyone getting abortion pills period.
Avoid consensus-building phrases like "everyone knows," as well as presuming you know the other person's motives. You are probably correct that @hydroacetylene does not want anyone getting abortion pills, but you need to actually engage with him ("Are you saying...?" or "I think your actual agenda is...") rather than simply asserting it in this antagonistic fashion. This is a pattern you're unfortunately engaging in a lot. I hate to see it, because here you are a leftie on a mostly anti-left forum (you aren't wrong about that, though you are wrong about "far right"), and you are of course being heavily downvoted and reported for having unpopular opinions. The usual failure mode from here is you get more and more frustrated and antagonized by everyone telling you off, and eventually the warnings accumulate and you get banned. I realize this is a hard pattern to break out of, and maybe it's not entirely fair, but I will tell you that rightie posters that start taking the same attitude you do to all comers who argue with them also wind up getting banned because they just can't stay calm and gracious enough while arguing with people whose opinions they clearly do not respect.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Why can't people like me even be given the solace of hopelessness?
Because the hopelessness is a construct of your own making. With very few exceptions, most of romanceless men are not like someone with Down's Syndrome longing for a college education that is literally beyond his potential.
I am not religious, but I kind of sympathize with the Christian idea that despair is not just counterproductive, but sinful. Yes, it's comforting to escape into despair and hopelessness and just say "No matter what I do, it won't work, so no sense in trying." But sometimes things are hard and difficult but still doable, and you would just prefer not to do them.
I doubt there is something deeply awful and abnormal about you. Maybe there is, and if so I'm sorry, but I can't diagnose you personally. But I get that we are given a lot of really bad, if well-meaning advice, like "just be yourself." (I got that one too, and it did me no favors.) That said, when your life is not working out for you, contrary to the fellow I was just arguing with about how grand and free medieval peasants were, no one has ever lived in a period with more freedom to remake, reinvent, and choose our lives than today. That doesn't mean everyone gets to be happy and fulfilled and get everything they want, but every incel-type guy I've ever known has basically had no serious personal defects that would make him literally undatable, just a lot of bitterness and resentment and unwillingness to change or put in the necessary effort. Why do you see so many men who shouldn't "rate" (they are definitely not chads or three-6s) pulling relationships? Are they just blindly lucky? Or do they persevere with some luck and effort - maybe a lot of luck - but mostly persistence?
Hell, there is even the redpill- "Game" apparently works, though I personally dislike the manipulativeness of that entire scene.
I can't tell you not to give up and abandon hope, but I cannot honestly feel sorry for you if you do.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
A peasant from the middle ages is more free than you are in all the ways that actually matter to the individual experience of the world to a degree that is comical.
You cannot be serious. What's comical is your lack of knowledge about the lives of peasants and your idealization of some "free men of the soil" living like Hobbits in Middle Earth.
He pays less taxes,
Peasants paid whatever tax rate their lords set for them, which could range from bearable to crushing.
owns more space,
Peasants did not "own space" - generally they literally owned no land at all, and at best had tenure on it. The dwellings they lived in were tiny by modern standards.
has more social relationships,
Peasants "social relationships" were generally limited to the village they lived and died in. They had no other options and were often not even legally allowed to move to a city with more social relationships available.
works more for himself
Peasants didn't work for themselves, they worked for their lords, and had very little volition in what work they would do. Peasants didn't choose their careers.
doesn't have to spend much of his life in a school
Peasants didn't spend much of their lives in school because school wasn't available to them. Education wasn't available to them.
can't be conscripted into wars
Peasants absolutely could be conscripted into wars.
doesn't need to fill as much paperwork...
Peasants couldn't fill out paperwork because they were illiterate, and thus had no way to even know if any theoretical rights they had were being violated.
the list goes on.
Do go on.
But sure, if you would prefer to be a medieval peasant than a modern man, that route is available to you. There are many places yet even in first world countries where you can disappear, build yourself a cabin, and live alone in the woods.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
I agree with you that the issue is much more complex than "it's all the women's fault", but I also think that any solution demanding that women change anything about their behavior is haram in our society, and that such changes are indeed necessary to solve the problem.
I mostly agree with this. I have been reading hot takes on both sides for a number of years (the redpillers vs. the feminists, the Dread Jims vs. the radfems) and I think the discourse overall is quite poisonous. On the one hand, yes, Women Are Wonderful and how dare men ever criticize any woman's choice ever? OTOH, it's hard not to sympathize with women who become paranoid and fearful of men when you see so many men (including right here on the Motte) who, mask off, believe that women should not have a choice about who will fuck them. Also, I admit there are very few populations I have a harder time sympathizing with than incels.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Low effort comments do not require low-effort rejoinders, especially when they have already been modded.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
I actually endorse this approach 100%, but surely this implies a general rejection of social science?
I don't completely reject social science, but @faceh's constant citing of statistics from sources engineered to affirm his priors does not strike me as rigorous social science. "More people of both sexes are not having sex." "People are marrying later than ever or going unmarried." Okay, I believe that, but there are a lot of other explanations for those things. It is not convincing evidence for the argument that this is because women overall have become completely unreasonable and delusional and 80% of them are getting pumped and dumped by 20% of the guys, and decent normal men can't get any action at all.
Wait what? Why are you glad you're off the market, if your eyes are telling you things are fine?
I don't think things are "fine" exactly - it does seem very difficult to navigate relationships nowadays, but that is largely because of generational differences. (I am in the "kids today" stage of life.) What I see is not that guys simply cannot find a girl, but that relationships between the sexes are more fraught than ever before, and also the whole idea of trying to market yourself online with an app (which is apparently how most people do it nowadays) seems hellish to me.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
You have repeatedly heard from men (I will add myself to that pool) who can tell you from their observed experience that this is not true, that most guys around them don't have insurmountable problems either dating or getting laid, and that those who can't are not perfectly decent, fit guys with good jobs and stable personalities who are being rejected by the entire female population because they are all alpha-widows, but because there is something wrong with these guys.
Frankly, I believe my lying eyes more than I believe a collection of blackpill-curated stats from places like the Institute for Family Studies.
I'm sorry you are having such a struggle, and honestly, the dating landscape does look kind of awful right now (speaking as a guy who was pretty awkward and had a number of other strikes against me in my youth) and I am glad I'm not on the market. But the blackpill is not going to do you any favors. Even if your pessimistic assumptions are true, you ask, "Now what?" Now go out there and get in the game and stop making excuses, that's what. No one is going to hand you pussy or a relationship, and if you have to work harder at it than grandpa, well, every era has its challenges. You probably don't want to deal with the other things grandpa had to deal with.
No, the game is not rigged against you. No, there are not zero acceptable single women in your city. No, the solution is not to contrive reasons why women should not have agency to choose.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Posting a comment that is nothing but some poem ChatGPT came up with is not conversation.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
He thinks the right in America has been taken over by the Moral Majority types who insist on being anti-abortion and pro-single motherhood, and are then bleeding-hearts about paying out taxpayer money to support those single moms and their babies.
As someone who remembers the Moral Majority, they were definitely not "pro-single motherhood." They did make a show of supporting single mothers who made the decision not to abort, but mostly by encouraging them to put the child up for adoption. It was a trope at the time (still seen today, but it was very well known then) that "right-wingers care about babies right up until the moment they are born" because MM types famously wanted to outlaw abortion but do away with welfare, and were very big into shaming women slutty enough to get knocked up outside of marriage. No, this wasn't entirely fair/universally true, but it wasn't entirely untrue either.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
16d ago
Dude, I know you are a Dread Jim fan, and I think he's actually serious about what he says, but do you realize the world he proposes would be a dystopian nightmare, and not just for women? The guys who seem most attracted to Jim are not trad religious types or pro-civilization vitalists, but incels who long for a world where 13-year-old slave girls will have to pleasure them while they're on their couches playing video games. That's not what would actually happen, and the thing Jim misses is that women are always going to have some agency because we are human beings and the natural state of men and women is to, you know, like each other.
Jim is the flip side of the literal man-hating radical feminists promoting political lesbianism- they start with some (perhaps justified) grievances against the opposite sex, and go down a rabbit hole into a worldview full of misery and the destruction of everything it means to be human.
Every time I see that "Make Women Property Again" essay, I get the same vibe I do from KulakRevolt and his absurd, ahistorical rants making up some mindset about the ancients that they definitely did not have. Even in the most misogynistic cultures in the world, most men don't actually hate women as much as Jim does. To the degree that women were "property," you still saw some actual affection and respect for wives, mothers, and daughters, an affection that Jim and his fanboys seem to think is pussy and gay.
It's not good for you, man.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
17d ago
The far-right (which includes most people on this website) views single mothers negatively, while the mainstream conservative view is very different.
This is wrong. The far right (especially the areligious far right) is much more negative about single mothers, but mainstream conservatives have never approved of single motherhood. They just consider it better than abortion.
Mainstream conservatives and the far-right agree that the welfare state serves to subsidize single motherhood, but only the latter thinks it's a bad thing.
This is wrong. Mainstream conservatives also think the welfare state subsidizing single motherhood is a bad thing.
I think in general you have an extremely reductionist view of rightists, such that you cannot actually distinguish between "mainstream conservatives" and "the far right." The fault line there is not how much they disapprove of abortion or single mothers.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
17d ago
But your entire premise is wrong. The "far right" and mainstream conservatives both prefer people not to have premarital sex. (Okay, non-religious rightists only disapprove of women having premarital sex.) I don't think you are actually distinguishing between them, as evidenced by the fact that you label "most people on this website" far right. I realize to leftists, "far right" is anyone who votes Republican, but it's still a nonsense categorization.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
17d ago
The far-right prefers option 1
Can I just register my annoyance with this kind of boo-light? Yes, I am just as annoyed by "radical feminists" and "extreme leftists," which 9 times out of 10 is used to refer to normie feminists and center-libs.
In fact pretty much all religious people (if they follow a religion that makes any pretense of traditionality) would prefer people not have premarital sex. Even liberal denominations in theory advocate against it, though you won't hear a peep of actual condemnation from the pulpit nowadays.
Conservatives generally would prefer people not have premarital sex, but if they do, they would prefer the babies that result not be aborted. I wouldn't say they glamorize single motherhood, but if you want babies not to be aborted, it is both ineffective and cruel to say "You're not allowed to abort, but we will not lift a finger to help you and your child because poverty is what you deserve."
Yeah, okay, it's you again.
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