BANNED USER: Repetitive one-note posting about his suicide trip
SkookumTree
No bio...
User ID: 2117
Banned by: @Amadan
SkookumTree
1yr ago
There is value to enforced conformity, especially when people are young. People learn the rules.
Perhaps if they were going to be (openly) trans, they should have had stronger convictions or perhaps been closeted. It's a shitty situation, but life is full of those.
SkookumTree
5mo ago
Jesus. If I survive the Hock and then get a girlfriend, and manosphere types then pile onto the Hock...
Andrew Tate 2.0 in the Alaskan wilderness as a kind of Bear Grylls-esque manosphere grifter is going to be dangerous. That'd get a lot of few young dudes killed. I'd probably be collateral damage as the first jackass to do this, too.
SkookumTree
8mo ago
I have a new proposal.
I think there should be an additional way to get into an elite college. You can still get in because you're an Olympic swimmer, or won an international math competition for high schoolers four years in a row, or because you're the daughter of a sitting U.S. President. But for mere mortals willing to put everything on the line...
I was thinking about an idea for Ivy League admissions reform: the ruling class and those that wind up hanging around them don't have to take much personal risk to get there. In ages past, until a few months into WWI, aristocrats were expected to take personal risk by going to war; many of the sons of aristocrats pulled strings to get sent to the trenches. War is more dangerous now than it was in 1900, and warmongering isn't exactly a good or necessary thing for the United States.
Therefore, I propose Admission of the Hock. Those with SATs over 1300 or ACTs over 27 who are in the top 15 percent of their high school class are eligible for the Hock. In early March, participants are parachuted onto a frozen lake in a boreal forest in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They're allowed anything they can carry on their back except for firearms, maps, and communication devices. No rescue beacons, either. If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.
If you want something - if you truly, honestly believe in something - that means being willing to risk your life for it and to suffer for it. There's very little of that nowadays in America outside of the combat arms. The likes of Harvard and Yale and by extension the American aristocracy would thus be leavened by large numbers of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ascend the class ladder. These people would know suffering and want as they had not in their sheltered childhoods. They would understand the whims of Mother Nature; they would know viscerally for the rest of their lives that the universe will not bend to their will.
We could have special diversity-based scholarships to Hock-prep schools and Hock-prep classes for the determined but poor individuals that we want to have a better chance at the Hock. After all, that Supreme Court decision only applied to college admissions; the Matthew Henson Hock Prep Program can offer scholarships how it likes.
TL;DR If you can do the work at Fancy Elite College and graduate, but you're not a rockstar, you can get dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in winter. Make it out alive and you're in. If you add diversity, maybe there's going to be some organization focused on preparing you for the rigors and trials of the Hock. Or you could simply take your chances; good luck.
The survivors will be very fit, very determined people.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Yeah, some people will grow character because they got picked on, pull themselves together, become more socially adept etc, but others will just break, curl up into a ball in their own isolated corner, and suffer for it for a long time.
Devil's advocate: perhaps the point is to sort the sheep from the goats, and to do so early in life in a way that rarely kills them outright. Then those that can't hack it wind up in roles for those that cannot hack it...
SkookumTree
8mo ago
Yeah. Hell, I don't even mind whatever election fraud bullshit is going on on both sides, as long as there's a kind of...gentleman's agreement to only cheat so much and in certain ways, and it's for the most part kept under the rug so most of the peasants like us think it's mostly legitimate.
"Realistic expectations" means "Become exceptional, or decide where you want the ambulances". It means figuring out how to be OK with either experiencing terrible shit, or watching terrible shit happen - maybe preventable - and being unable to do anything about it. It is a hell of a thing to expect a woman to be OK with winding up with abusive rapists a few times as she learns how to date. It isn't quite as bad (but still bad) to expect guys to be OK watching their partners slowly kill themselves - and that's one of the better outcomes. Imagine coming home to find out that your wife's tried to strangle your nine-year-old son. Do you think that this causes any less despair?
SkookumTree
9mo ago
A question for all of you:
What does it take - what qualities of character - does it take for someone to willingly and freely choose to sacrifice to be with someone? To freely endure visceral, biological disgust just to make someone happy? More importantly: what kind of person, if anyone, is worthy of this kind of sacrifice - whether for a night or a few years or a lifetime?
Have any of you personally known anyone that you believed was worthy of that kind of sacrifice? Do any of you have anyone in your lives that you would sleep with despite being disgusted by simply because they asked it of you as a favor, or because you felt they might benefit from it? If you do: why? I have...hmm. I knew a couple of people like this who I might sleep with, disgust be damned, because I admired their character that much. Honestly, I'd see it as kind of like a combination of acting and a gross, intimate medical procedure that needed to be performed well. Although I'm not any good at the first, I am no stranger to (limited) participation in the second. One of the guys...he's a fat dude who got hit by a drunk driver at 19, wound up crippled and on crutches for life, but is a hell of a dude: a West Virginia redneck son of a union construction foreman and a nurse that made good, went to Harvard, and then returned a decade later to own real estate in his hometown and live off the profits.
SkookumTree
11mo ago
How can I find (without being predatory), the type of women that are in my league? Yes, go outside…but around 80 to 90 percent of the people in my local Wal-Mart are more attractive than I am. And the percentage is even higher for any of the common suggestions…bars, yoga, running groups. They all have jobs, are able to maintain basic hygiene, aren’t 400 pounds, if they’re using stuff like meth or heroin they’re hiding it very well.
Bonus points if there’s a low risk of being killed, maimed, or thrown in jail. Anything I can think of is basically predatory and as such not something I’m comfortable doing.
Like. Given that most people that can hold down a job, have the ability to live independently (1), and keep a roof over their head are out of my league…how do I find someone that’s reasonable, without being a predator. Preferably while staying above ground and out of jail…if you’re sleeping with crackheads that’s gross. Maybe there’s an honorable way to do that, and maybe I’m basically expected to be a combination friends-with-benefits and social worker to someone like that. But how might I make that happen in a more or less ethical way?
Yeah. I know that what I’ve posted sounds gross. It is. Are there OK ways to engage with this grossness, leave her better than I found her, and be a decent man in spite of it? If I’m expected to be celibate for life because short ugly sperg, I get that. I understand that there are no good outcomes for me with respect to dating and relationships. I’m looking for the least-bad option here.
(1): not someone that has the skills to live independently but cannot afford it - like a McDonald’s worker that lives with her mom. That’s fine; if she got promoted to manager or just got $60k/year she could live in an apartment or something without trashing the place. I’m talking more about shit like ‘being mentally ill and removing the toilet from its mountings’. True story - I know a guy that worked with the homeless and said that many of them fucked up their housing and apartments by doing shit like this.
SkookumTree
11mo ago
Scott, from the Fourth Meditation on Creepiness:
But if they deliberately make the mating dance super complicated and then freak out when anyone misses a step and call the guy a creep and a potential rapist and try to ruin his reputation, that's kind of, well, mean?
It is not mean. It IS A FEATURE, not a bug.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
TRIAL by wager of WILDERNESS.
I have been thinking about something: in ages past, men went to war to prove themselves. They still do, today, and the survivors I have seen return more attractive, although they pay an immense price, and that is only counting those that return more or less in one piece. Now, war is more destructive than it once was, and we don't think highly of war in general, for good reason.
Therefore: I have been training for this for the past year or so. I plan to have myself dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in late February, 50 miles from the nearest road or civilization. I'll walk out, and if I make it out alive, I'll have been hardened by my experience. I'll have stared my own death in the goddamn face, braving temperatures of 40 below 0 just to walk out alive.
Do you think that this will make my ugly, autistic ass any more attractive? I've heard it said that you have never lived until you have almost died, and that tough, masculine men are attractive AF. This seems like something that would harden someone...either permanently, as a rock-solid corpse, or permanently, as a wilderness-hardened man.
TL;DR Is dumping myself in the middle of the woods in Alaska in winter gonna make me more attractive, if I survive?
SkookumTree
8mo ago
I happen to believe in this theory:
Garbage IN, garbage OUT.
Consider the type of person who will willingly endure a relationship with someone they are disgusted by in order to lift their family of origin out of poverty. An admirable sacrifice, to be sure - but wouldn't you feel some resentment? BurdensomeCount: I'm assuming you're a straight dude. Imagine if your whole family got, say, AIDS or cancer or something. But there was some rich gay dude who would save 'em if you married the guy. He's ugly as hell and kind of smells bad, to boot. Would you take one for the team/your family? What kind of resentment would you have for him? How would you ultimately feel about the sacrifice - and it is a sacrifice - that you are making?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I mean it is more than just looks. Are you better off being a nurse and caretaker for your partner? What if they're unattractive because they're homeless and addicted to meth or some shit like that? If they're living on the street because they've got florid, untreated schizophrenia? It's not just unfortunate people that are still capable of working jobs and living independently. It's the 500 pound person in the mobility scooter. The paralyzed man with cerebral palsy that says he's going to kill himself because of despair at his homelessness, and winds up in the local psych ward five times a year. The really unattractive people? They're either at home or in institutions of one type or another. They're Fussell's bottom-out-of-sight people.
It's not just looks - many people would be very happy with someone who had a facial deformity but could work a job, any job, and live independently. It's about the goddamn ambulances and other institutions. It's about watching someone die, possibly to avoidable things like addiction, and being powerless to prevent that.
Getting beat up by the ugly stick is a very different kettle of fish to needing a nurse and caretaker. For the gentlemen: they are indeed looking down the barrel of a life of nursing and caretaking if they want partners. And that is the best many will do. For the ladies, it's even worse.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
The child survived, for what it was worth, with no lasting physical injury. They're gainfully employed and have a clean record. Yes, there are ugly people with good hearts. Yes, some people are in and out of institutions through absolutely no fault whatsoever of their own. Do you want a partner who has some kind of terrible autoimmune disease that means that they will never live independently or hold a job? That, too, is tragic; that is no one's fault. Upthread, someone compared it to driving. You might be a terrible driver because you like to get hammered and do 100mph down residential streets. You might also never be a good driver because you had the bad luck to be born blind or epileptic.
Simply being ugly is one thing. Being in and out of some kind of institution or other is quite another. Where do you want the ambulances?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I mean. It might be good or valuable to occasionally roast the living shit out of guys for what are essentially minor awkwardnesses in courtship. It serves as a warning to the ugly, or the unpopular, or the awkward: If you try to have a relationship, you are playing by different rules. It can extend as far as expecting an individual to be celibate for life and never express interest in sex or relationships, if you're disabled. This doesn't just go for guys...women that are very unattractive or disabled get this treatment as well.
Didn't someone take him aside when he was 19 and tell him that he can't do things like other men can? That it was basically understood that he would never have a partner, and that people would be grossed out at him for wanting one?
SkookumTree
6mo ago
LOL - you're talking about the Hock, right? I also think that the Hock is cool as hell; I've written before about using it for college admissions and my reasoning behind why I like the aesthetic of the Hock, even if as a practical matter it is both insane and idiotic. I believe that the Hock provideth, either through victory or death, and that everyone chooses their own Hock - or abstains from Hocking.
If the Hock wouldn't make me any more attractive to women, I'll be honest - I'd be less excited about it, but I'd still think it was cool as hell. It's the culmination of what was basically a years-long thought experiment and a set of personal beliefs about suffering and ordeals building character, especially if voluntarily done.
If some deity came down from the Heavens and told me that no one would ever be interested in me...I'd be sad. I don't know whether I'd go on the Hock or not in that case. Leaning no - but maybe I'd do some kind of lesser Hock in Montana or something, IDK. Hockism as a homebrew philosophy is personally compelling to me.
Ask the ACN discord about the Hock; you'll hear a lot about it.
Besides. "Skookum, the First Hockmaxxer" has a nice ring to it to my ears even if it is also dumb as all hell and unlikely to work. I'd at least be the first fool to try "chucking yourself and some survival gear and food and shit into the Alaskan wilderness in winter and walking out" as a solution to romantic woes, which is at the very least some novel foolishness instead of garden-variety dumb shit. You've said it yourself...that I am likely to wind up in a unique flavor of train wreck.
My post history is partly an experiment log and partly something for posterity, especially if I don't survive the Hock.
Some things can be done as well as others; I know I'm three parts Chris McCandless and one part Don Quixote, but I've heard tales that native Alaskans respected Chris McCandless. I respect the guy: he was starving but functional until he got got by a relatively obscure poison and was fatally weakened by lathyrism. It was the potato seeds that did him in! He had the strength to live and die by the courage of his personal convictions, just like I would if I set out on the Hock.
But in all seriousness your odds are less than 100%. People have died doing this. Is that the point of your hock?
yeschad.jpg; the Hock is basically my homebrew substitute for war with far less potential for moral injury and far less potential to live as a horribly maimed cripple; the Hock provideth through victory or death. Like Everest or even K2: most people that attempt it either come back more or less in one piece, or not at all.
The real Hock is trying to meet women and getting turned down seemingly-endlessly. It's torture
Probably a good deal less torturous than a 100-mile solo ski journey through the Alaskan wilderness in temperatures that may be colder than 40 below zero, staring your own death in the face.
elaborate fantasies
Elaborate fantasies, my left foot. If all goes according to plan, I'll start the Hock at dawn on February 13, 2024. If you do not hear back from me by April 1, I have most likely died in the Alaskan wilderness; I will have left instructions for my next of kin and anyone that would search for or attempt to rescue me to NOT endanger themselves and expend resources by attempting to recover me, dead or alive. These writings are at least partially something that would explain or describe for posterity the thought processes of Skookum, the First Hockmaxxer, if he dies on his most excellent adventure. I know I'm maybe three parts Chris McCandless to one Don Quixote, but hey, what the hell...
Do I need to post proof that I am in possession of a one-way plane ticket to Fairbanks?
I mean, hell: I think that people should freely choose to endure hardship and misery - up to and including death - rather than be awkward. Basically: the ideal man would sincerely prefer, in the absence of any compulsion, to be dead rather than have done his utmost to have become graceful. Something vaguely akin to the Spartans' conception of military honor, basically shaming a guy who was absent under orders from the Battle of Thermopylae into committing suicide-by-Persian, or the Samurai's conception of bushido, applied to social grace and to a lesser extent physical fitness, conscientiousness, and general life skills. And yes - if someone is not doing their utmost, occasionally they may need to follow the fate of Admiral Byng. But only occasionally, and even then I don't like the State participating in it that much. If some awkward guy gets killed for being awkward around a volatile bully and the bully gets a slap on the wrist, however...I think that is a good thing if it happens very rarely.
It is entirely reasonable to expect our young people to prefer being dead to failing to do their utmost to become fit, graceful, productive members of society, and I also think that in this country it is necessary for a lazy person to be killed from time to time to encourage the others. Better yet is that they freely choose to embark on a course of action that will make them graceful or dead. Although - again - I think that this should be very rare indeed; Byng was the only admiral executed by the Brits.
SkookumTree
7mo ago
Do you think that surviving life and death struggle will make me less neurotic and more attractive? I'm seriously training for the Hock, and it's making me look at life a little differently. The idea that I might wind up dead in six months or so certainly makes me evaluate what is important in my life, and the act of training causes me to look at my faults and my strengths in a new light. Perhaps the pale sun of the tundra shines a powerful light indeed on us...
SkookumTree
1yr ago
It might be a basic human need...but is it better to be alone, or to marry and have children...only to find that your wife tried to kill one of them? Or to be with an abusive alcoholic? All of these things suck: are relationships truly the least bad option here?
Who does not work, does not eat. I suppose you could argue that some people are destined to work extremely dangerous jobs out of pure desperation and run very high risks of being killed and maimed, and that's better than nothing.
SkookumTree
6mo ago
perhaps some dreadful diseases meet that standard
Trigeminal neuralgia and cluster headaches, perhaps. Controversially, gender dysphoria. Although you've got to differentiate "attempted suicide" versus "died by suicide" here.
SkookumTree
6mo ago
Is it at least novel, interesting, or cool?
SkookumTree
7mo ago
One of the more difficult paradoxes to resolve is having the pure unadulterated self-confidence to believe that you're a great catch, worthy of getting a high quality woman, and really believing it, and yet also being 'happy' for another guy who ends up with a high quality woman you were eyeing.
A possible resolution: you are fundamentally disgusting but also an exceptional individual, very conscientious and determined and also caring. As such, your exceptional personal qualities mean that you are in theory worthy of a good relationship with a good woman. However, you also understand that ordinary Joes, lacking both disgust and exceptional characteristics, are also worthy and admirable. Also, you feel that your existence and whatever disgust your kids will inherit is partially a burden on the commons, which you repay through hard work and altruism; it is admirable if Joe gets the girl (meaning that she doesn't have to endure disgust) and if you do (because you have managed to through sheer strength of character to inspire someone to endure disgust to make you happy, and because she is willing to endure as you are for the greater good).
SkookumTree
7mo ago
So basically the Hock is a cheat code cooked up by a lonely probably-autistic man looking to trade out the pain of loneliness for that of physical suffering, ideally shared.
On the goths: those fuckers formed strong as hell bonds due to the shared intensity of their experiences - arguments with parents, occasional psych unit stays, running away from home to escape said psych unit stays. The bonds lasted a while after high school but five or so years later they frayed after they got the money for sleeve tattoos and decent therapy and grew apart.
But: does this dumbness have a political slant to it at all? If it does, what quadrant is it in politically?
SkookumTree
7mo ago
Not only that...it's a very nice way to do things. At no point does he recount being seen as transgressive or anything for his actions; nobody called the cops on him or tried to beat him up or anything like that. He's pretty lucky and should run with it.
I spoke to a friend earlier today. She could tell I was on the spectrum but found it hard to describe exactly what made it apparent to her. After talking a while, she said that I always paused before I said something, or before I smiled. It was probably that deliberateness that was a tell. She did make it clear that there was nothing I had done (or failed to do) that was offensive in any way, although I'm reasonably sure that there's proto-offensive shit that doesn't rise to the level of conscious thought and is difficult, but not impossible, to put into words. Ekman and his team might be able to do it.
I also don't think all that many people can put into words the things that I do or say that make people think I'm autistic, or that offend people. If I had to guess, maybe ten percent of psychiatrists or psychologists, and maybe one average person in a few hundred.
I still think that a true UMC gentleman - like aristocracy in ages past - has things that they are fundamentally willing to die over. Like, a lot of duels were fought over things like "honor". I'm well aware that there were plenty of off-ramps in the dueling process that allowed both participants to be satisfied gentlemen. In the case of pistol duels the duelists didn't always shoot straight, and dueling pistols weren't usually that accurate. Even so, quite a few promising young gentlemen met a premature end on the dueling ground.
As a Hockist: perhaps a decent ideal to strive for is better to die than do your utmost to be graceful. It seems fitting and proper for an awkward person to adopt this as an ideal...at least until he is no longer awkward. The Hock is an idiotic and meaningless way to prove that I've got a high level of grit and determination.
I'm also guessing that many of you would think that my view of the 'UMC gentleman' - or the 'petty aristocracy' he described of people with two college educated parents - is out of whack and some fever-dream cross between Japanese bushido and what we think Victorian-era gentlemanly conduct was. And that if pressed, maybe a couple of awkward UMC dudes in a hundred would go on the Hock even if they were guaranteed to not be awkward after.
What's your take?
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