Outlaw83
4mo ago
Eh, this whole talk of 80% of men being sexually invisible is incel/PUA bullshit. Again, if you look at actual studies of this stuff, yeah, the top 20% are having a lot more sex, but it's with each other. Which hey, be jealous, but this hasn't really changed since the 60's when the Pill was invented. This idea of some random guy with a six-pack swiping right and banging a a homely girl with a low body count who'd be married to a normal nerdy guy if only society was framed differently, doesn't exist, except in very anecdotal evidence. 80% of people continue to have, I think, less than five partners lifetime and that's both sexes (so in that sense, 80% is invisible, but it's 80% of women too), and if we look at the kind of bad data set of the GSS, the percentage on younger people having sex is back to even between the genders after a few weird years probably caused in part by #MeToo backlash, younger single women being more COVID-averse, and frankly, probably some not great data.
I think what's happened in the middle is what has happened with both genders - there's easy access to entertainment that's better than dealing with a bad match. On the male side, why waste a night going out, buying women drinks, to end up with a girl who will be a dead fish in bed who you're not overly attracted too, than who will still either ghost you or be clingy, when you can play Baldur's Gate for 6 hours, then masturbate to high quality OnlyFans/amateur HD porn of any kink you have. On the female side, why waste going out, getting hit on by a bunch of weirdo and douchey guys, maybe end up going home with somebody who won't try for an orgasm or will only not last that long, and then either be really weirdo clingy or stalker-ish afterwards, when you can just watch six hours of Real Housewives, then pull up some Amazon Kindle smut and get off with a really high-quality sex toy?
As far as the CW goes, Second-tier network that was full of dramas full of pretty people - it was the home of Gossip Girl, Riverdale, all of the DC Comics superhero shows, Supernatural. If you were insanely good-looking but mediocre as an actor, it's where you ended up until recently when many of those shows ended due to a change in ownership. As another example, look at Hallmark Christmas movies - all very pretty people, many of whom are objectivally better looking than many celebrities were in the 70's and 80's, because they all do yoga, don't eat steak five times a week, don't smoke, et al, but they also aren't giant stars, the same way a relatively untalented, but very pretty person like say, Farrah Fawcett was in the 70's.
Outlaw83
5mo ago
It hasn't panned out for Western Europe, because they're a bunch of weirdos who think being French or German is determined by whether your ancestors were peasants dying for some Lord who wasn't even from that area 1,000 years ago. Throw in bad housing policy, and you have a situation where even fairly well-meaning multi-generation Turks in Germany don't feel German, let alone other Muslims with more touchy backgrounds with the West.
OTOH, if you come to America, have some kids, start a business, learn English (even if it's broken), and don't wall yourself in some ethnic enclave after your first or second generation, even many Trump voters will be happy to have you as neighbors. It is funny how so many people who despise birthright citizenship don't realize the moderating influence it has.
Yes, yes, yes, I know 3rd or 4th generation college educated immigrants are all SJW's who complain about America all the time. Well...what's more American than that?
Outlaw83
5mo ago
Shows bad the pre-Sexual Revolution society was to many people they'd put up with the weirdos.
But, do you think Led Zeppelin, Rick Springfield, and the dozens of other popular mainstream artists, actors, and such who engaged in what were the time, consensual relationships with teenage girls should have their records banned, and so forth, like you want to do with these intellectuals? Like, Robert Plant being a bit of scumbag doesn't make him a worse singer and many of these intellectuals have good arguments despite their preference for young teenage girls.
Outlaw83
7mo ago
The difference is, in the US, for a long time, you didn't need your ID in most places, and calls for ID's only came when a certain group of people began voting in far higher numbers.
Now, personally, I'd be fine w/ voter ID, as long as it was a national ID, given out for free, sent out as an update to your SS card.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
"Notice that these discussions were not serious intellectual inquiries about the past, they were more of light topics when you shot out random questions."
This is the basic issue - for women and frankly, many minorities, the past before, let's say, 1980 is not a light topic. Like, yes, even as a left-wing dude, I have thoughts about going back to random time x, because there's entertaining possibilities or thoughts about changing the past, even though, rationally, I know I'd be dead of a disease or whatever fairly soon. But, it's still a nice fantasy.
OTOH, for 99% of women, even well-off educated women, what's the thing they can fantasize about doing in 1740's France, Sweden during the Viking Era, or the height of the Roman Empire?
Women couldn't get credit without their husband or father co-signing until the 70's. It's not shocking that they have no great fantasies, outside of a bodice ripper or two, about going back to the time x.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I think your average guy who isn't getting laid isn't because he has a negative attitude.
OTOH, yes, I think people on this website, specifically, and other sites like it, aren't getting laid because of their negative attitude. The same way say, somebody who spends hours upon hours on /r/antiwork probably isn't going to do great in their career
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Yup, this is the thing. Would it be even worse for your friend if he was overweight, etc. Absolutely. But, I think, unfortunately, too many people actually believe an SNL skit is actually real life. Also, the secret is that a lot of people are coded as 'assholes' because they're good-looking, charismatic, and dress well (for their subculture/etc.).
Yes, there are the typical a-hole guys in a club, or horny drunk guys late night at a bar, but they're nowhere as successful as people think they are. OTOH, yes, they are more successful than somebody who basically spends all their time either in male-dominated spaces or by themselves.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, ironically, in most super blue districts you're talking about, they actually shifted a couple of points to the right (from like 95-5 to 92-8) because of the shift in the non-college educated minority vote.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, yes, I agree, and I think every Justice on the Court, even the ones I think are terrible and are making the country worse are well-qualified in that they know the law, etc. Like, I think Clarence Thomas has done irreparable harm, but I'm also sure he's smart enough to figure out arguments to get what he wants in an opinion.
If you go through the arguments and opinions of every single Justice in history, they all make mistakes or get caught up in a bad argument, because they're not robots.
if anything, due to the bias toward judges w/ elite credentials, the Supreme Court today has far more well-qualified people than when it was explicitly a place for political favors, whether it was former Congressman who were never judges, or anything else. It wasn't until the Nixon era the idea that the Supreme Court was a place for elite legal minds to put down judgement was even something thought of by many people at all, considering even Eisenhower named Earl Warren to the Court, basically to get his support at the RNC in 1952.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
This has been ironically why Biden's been a good coalition leader - is that he's always been in the center of the party. Party's now up for a big crime bill - sure, he cares more about the Violence Against Women Act and a gun control bill, but if sending money to local cops passes those as an omnibus, so be it. If people want a lot of spending, he can be for that too.
That means he can work well enough w/ an AOC or a Joe Manchin, and get along with everybody within the coalition, frankly, a lot better than an Obama or a Hillary would've. Because he has reasonable principles, but he's not a super ideologue on the specifics.
That's in part why his response of, "at least three," and then basically making fun of the person asking the gender question from some random troll on the campaign trail was actually the best one, because it comes the closest to the average American's view. "I don't care, it's probably at least three from what my kids tell me, and you're weird for thinking about it so much, buddy."
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The problem is the right has been completely unable to actually create a right-wing alternate to the NYT because there is no audience for that among the Right - it's all DailyWire/Brietbart pushing out the sensational stuff or the day or it's money-losing magazines being propped up by rich donors. There is the WSJ, but it seems unwilling to move beyond its place focusing on business news.
The actual problem is 90% of what the NYT is reliably truthful, even to an ardent right-winger.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
You have to realize to a segment of online people, "Blue Tribe" means being opposed to anything Trump or anything adjacent anti-woke people do. At this point, Mike Pence is 'Blue Tribe' is some because of his actions on 1/6.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
As an actual group, SBF and his partner gave $32 million to Dem's and $24 million to the GOP. This idea he was some Democrat-only donor simply isn't true.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
That's also why the crime dog didn't really hunt in the midterms - in actual urban areas, yes crime rose, but it's not 1989 out there. It's closer to the apocalyptic year of...1997. Which I thought there was nostalgia among the non-woke since it was the decade racism was killed before SJWs reignited it, so if it was such a great time, why are VC's on Twitter freaking out about it being as violent as it was when it was the time they have nostalgia for?
Outlaw83
23d ago
I mean, I think it's fine to have open discussion, but not everywhere has to be an open discussion. If you have a forum with lots of women, minorities, LGBT people, or whatever, and don't want to deal with people asking about IQ, Jew's, or the 2020 election.
Now, sure, actual prominent people should know right-wing arguments and be able to push back against them (Mayor Pete is actually really good at this), but I don't really care if the forum x that happens to have a politics section doesn't want a long argument about whether the Civil Rights Act was good or not. The other reality is most arguments in reality are both people with actually bad arguments with incorrect information - which is fine, mostly, because an argument on Facebook or your cousin's BBQ is not the end of the world.
Again, I'm fair about this - if some pro-life Facebook group doesn't want pro-choice people arguing in the comments, that's A-OK.
I'd also point out when you see people make better arguments than you can on topics, and nothing shifts, there's no reason to further argue. So, when the people with the 93 annotated links and actual statements from various court decisions can't push away somebody from various ideas about 2020, what am I going to do?
Outlaw83
23d ago
I don't think it's always duplicitous, but I think anybody who seriously thinks the reason why this place is more right-leaning is some belief that in a free and open debate with nobody limiting it, the right-leaning argument wins is kind of lying to themselves, when in reality, the way the right wins these supposedly open spaces is saying enough things that trigger basically the fight or flight part of people's minds.
I'm a nearing middle-aged white guy, so the silly to frankly, terrible things said in this forum brush off my back, but a lot of the current left are basically and I say this in descriptive way, The Other - single women, minorities, immigrants, non-straight people, etc. So yeah, I can see why many people if in a community where what they think is open racism/sexism/bigotry against them is accepted, they say bye, and leave that community. Some people will hang around and still fight, but the reality is, most black people in 1960's America didn't have to argue about whether they deserved to use the same bathrooms as white people, and likely would've left any group arguing that. Obviously, not zero, but most people aren't argumentative weirdos like we are.
So yeah, the general tilt of any community will eventually become more of that, one way or the other. Also, in many cases (this isn't true here), there's a silent majority that's not as extreme, but also are effected by the community. YT comments section are kind of a perfect example - in a lot of cases, they're utterly rancid, no matter the topic, even when a creator doesn't want that. Because somebody whose basic belief about a YT video is, "that was all right," isn't going to post.
Outlaw83
23d ago
So, the thing about self-described user belief is most people, right, left, centrist, libertarian, reactionary, whatever are sometimes quite self-deluded about their own positions, and relative position within the wider world.
Like, I'm a left-wing social democrat with what would be described as pretty SJW/woke/whatever views on most social issues - but I'm well aware my combination of wanting mandatory union votes for all employers over 10 non-family employees yearly plus abortion 'til birth puts me to the left of 95-96% of the population. Unfortunately, too many of my leftie friends have outsized views on what people support.
Another is salience.
A thing some people try to do, and I'll charitably say for non-prominent people is they're unaware they're doing this, is there are a lot of people who'll describe their views as centrist or liberal, and when defending themselves, go over the various issues they're center-left on, but the only time they mention those issues is when they're defending themselves against attacks they're not a right-winger.
For prominent people, that's how, as a left-wing social democrat who doesn't mind reading opposing views, is how I figure a "the left is going too far" person's griftiness. For example, Matt Yglesias is cranky about some things and thinks the non-profit complex in DC and nationwide is hurting various causes, etc. but also regularly talks about how the GOP wants to ban abortion nationwide and cut Social Security & Medicare.
OTOH, there are various other pundits who anytime a left-leaning person (especially a liberal coded MSNBC-type) criticizes them, goes into the whole, "now, I'm the true leftist because I call for x, y, and z", but then they never talk about x, y, and z again, and go back to complaining about kids on campus or whatever." Honestly, I prefer the reactionaries and right-wingers here who are honest about their beliefs, as opposed to the pundit lying about what they truly care about.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
I generally prefer my TV shows to have shades of grey in them (BSG, GoT, The Expanse come to mind).
Most people, especially the older people still watching network TV, don't. That's why shows like Bluebloods, FBI, 9 different CSI and NCIS's are all on the air and more popular than 99% of shows that get Emmy's.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
Lots of fairly educated middle-class women in comfortable air-conditioned suburbia with nothing to do, meant there was far more time to start reading Betty Friedan (or becoming her in the first place), because your house is comfortable, you have less housework to do, and there's no danger of ending up with six kids.
I think though, this is somewhat overrated - like OK, you hate modern feminism, fine. But, even the vast majority of tradcath mothers with six children in rural Iowa would find the America of say, 1970 insanely sexist. So, I'd say the conditions were ripe, especially in a society with the founding myth of equality America has.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
From the outside, that was maybe more true under this place's prior home, but I think there are far more just out and out right-wingers or more accurately, people who have become more right-wing over time. Sure, there are some Grey Tribe or whatever people still here, but many of the comments here, policy-wise, when American politics come up, are just a more erudite version of the comments under any National Review or Federalist article.
Outlaw83
3mo ago
The actual reality is that 95% of "COVID voters" that existed in any large numbers were type B, and that's one of many reasons DeSantis died on liftoff - people don't want to think about COVID. That's why the Loudon County School Board went back Democratic and Moms for Liberty types have been largely failures outside already bright red areas. If the Virginia Governor race had been in March of 2022 instead of Novemeber of 2021, Youngkin probably loses, and he's basically the only real right-leaning victory that ran on COVID stuff, when it came to school closures and the like. The temporary allyship they had with center-left to center-right parents upset over school closures ended when the schools basically all reopened by fall of 2021, and life was back to normal for the vast majority of people, outside of the 5% of always maskers and 5% of people who think being forced to make sacrifices for other people you disagree with is the same as a concentration camp.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
No, like JD Vance & Josh Hawley have ideas, too. They're dumb ones, but they do.
But, folks like Tuberville, MTG, Boebert, and the rest of the newly arriving Trumpian Senators and Representatives just don't. Like, at the top of each party, the knowlesge level is similar, bu even the most down the line hacky Democratic politician could tell you a decent amount about their pet policy, whether it's ya' know, health care or child care or taxes or whatever.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
I mean, if there's a secret amount of people who's #1 view is cut immigration, then just like w/ UKIP, an anti-immigration party should be able to run and effect politics the same way UKIP got moderate globalist David Cameron to OK a Brexit referendum.
The UK is a different animal than the US when it comes to minor parties.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
No, the youth vote even among young white males in 2022 was still D+4 Democratic. Obviously, that's not as good as the D+31 young white women have, but it's better than any other white male demographic. Even among young Latino's males, 57% went for the Democratic candidate, despite talk of Latino's going away from the Democrat's. In addition, as also noted in that data, that narrowness among young white males is driven by rural youth voters, who went 64-33 for the GOP, as opposed to 66-31 for suburban and 67-28 for urban voters.
I'm not saying it's a fait accompoli, but there's no actual evidence that ya' know, manosphere Youtubers, alt-right Twitter, 4chan, or anything is actually moving young males to the right by any large degree. It's a combo of already conservative guys going even further right, and basically, teenage kids being idiots and going 'norrmie' once they actually get laid or have to actually get a job and interact with different people.
https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/part-1-The-Social-Costs-of-Being-Jewish-and-Supporting-Israel-on-Campus-What-a-Before-After-Survey-Can-Tell-Us.pdf
Interesting polling shows weirdly, conservatives are most likely to think Israeli civilians are valid Hamas targets, conservative students are more likely to avoid Jews because of Israel, conservatives are less likely to see anti-semitism as a problem in American society. Now, there's some interesting stuff about how Jewish students feel on campus, but the idea it's progressives are the leading edge of general Jewish hatred.
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