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Skulldrinker


				

				

				
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joined 2022 November 16 18:09:10 UTC

				

User ID: 1874

Skulldrinker


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 November 16 18:09:10 UTC

					

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User ID: 1874

I've stopped using Hinge and can't bring myself to try again because every time I do, the same thing happens; I get a reasonable number of matches and likes, frankly more Likes than make sense. I'll have a short conversation, ask for a date, get a yes. Then the day of the date, she bails, sometimes with apologies, always without suggesting an alternate date. If I ask for another date, she says yes, next week rolls around and she bails the day of. This cycle continues until I take the hint and stop asking. I do not know how to get this to stop happening. I also don't get why I don't hear this complaint from other people; typically they complain about getting no matches or not hearing back after the first date.

I've considered completely cutting people off after the first flake. I've considered very tepidly expressing my disappointment at being flaked on. I've considered talking beforehand about how often I get flaked on and asking please please please if they don't want to turn up for a date, then just say that instead of saying yes and then flaking, because I find it way more painful than a "no." None of these strike me as good ideas.

And I live in fucking Chicago of all places.

I've listened in IRL on the clique of trannies, non-binaries, and tranny-hags that infested a local bar's drop-in RPG night. A 3-minute sample got them calling some neighbor of theirs a disgusting bigot, and something to do with freeing palestine. Their games are also fuckawful. It drove all the non-terrible players to come on a different night.

Not exactly damning airtight evidence, just funny that I walk in on them right at that point. They...failed to win me over.

Question for those familiar with the Chicago area:

Where are the geeks? Back in Milwaukee, there were several gaming pubs and a hole-in-the-wall LGS that was packed to the gills Saturday nights, with Warhammer players, at least one 4-player EDH game going, and maybe a D&D session in the corner. There were one or two women there, typically someone's SO, but they held their own in Magic, and knew the references.

I go to a much larger store in a "real" city, and it's a godsdamned ghost town. Empty tables on a Saturday evening. It's got a handful of lumpy, poorly-dressed beardless dudes who use "diversity" in every other sentence, but there's no women, and fewer actual black people than the podunk hole-in-the-wall. I feel like the coolest person there (which is not a good sign).

They've gotten their fear of social danger mixed up with their fear of physical danger.

I've spent lots of time around women who actually have been physically assaulted, and they don't pull this "I feel unsafe" crap. They have some idea of what dangerous men actually look and smell like, and don't regard all men they meet as incipient rapists.

My own theory is that women get told constantly to Be Afraid, but don't actually know what it is they're supposed to be afraid of and thus their Danger Sense isn't particularly well-calibrated.

That's because D&D is (was) really a Western dressed up in an anachronistic pseudomidieval setting. And it's settings and monsters owe more to Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than to Lord of the Rings.

Now it's become an alice-in-wonderland tea party for non-binary tiefling warlocks.

My beef with revolutions in particular is that the war stuff is fucking BORING. The mechs the humans use are stupid designs with exposed cockpits, and there's only the one mech unit, and the machine forces consist of squids and a giant drill.

My take will always be that the Watchiwski's ideas were smarter than they themselves were. the Matrix 1 was riding on a lot of heady concepts and stylistic anime stuff (cinematically it owes a lot to Ghost in the Shell), that they couldn't actually execute any further because it was beyond them intellectually.

Then he made TENET, though.

based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures

These statements would be way more compelling with some more detailed examples that would indicate that anyone with some degree of scientific literacy is in the loop. I'm not quite clear on if "Unique Atomic arrangements" are referring to novel chemicals or novel elements or novel isotopes of elements. I'd love examples of what kind of vehicle morphology would prove non-human intelligence. A fucking rough sketch from this guy of what vehicles he's seen isn't even forthcoming. Any of this stuff would massively change human understanding of physics and materials tech, the fields there haven't been real theoretical breakthroughs in in forever.

I'm not quite clear on how joining the Elks or a church, either in chicago, or bumfuck nowhere, gets you any closer to meeting a single biological female. And in bumfuck nowhere, there quite simply are no single women of any age.

I'm actually really happy when #currentyear writes women and minorities as bad people.

I would be happy, but I typically find that the writer themselves or the fictional world around the characters don't notice that they're bad people and just Yass Queen at everything.

How do you get people to turn up? Back when I could bring myself to bother with Hinge, I'd follow all of this, get the date set up, and with a horrific inevitability she'd cancel the day of the date. Then I'd ask to re-schedule, she'd say yes, then bail on the day of the re-scheduled date. Was, rinse, repeat until I get the message and stop talking to her. This happened with 95% reliability on Hinge. The last two times I got tinder dates, I got stood up both times, so I perma-deleted everything I could on there. I no longer have any trust in matches and haven't been able to bring myself to message anyone in months. I just look at the profile, see the inevitable outcome, and skip to the end where I don't go on a date. It's as if asking someone out on Hinge is some sort of disappointment to them "Gee, I really liked this guy I was talking to on this dating app, everything was going so well, I was really into him, until he asked me on a date, ugh, who does that?"

So I dispute 12.

I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:

When am I allowed to mace a hobo?

The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.

But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.

He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."

With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.

After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.

Cut to work.

Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.

Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.

The first thing she says?

"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."

The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."

"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-

"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."

So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.

Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.

Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.

Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner; give away all your shit and give no thought to the morrow, love your neighbor and turn the other cheek are all way more reasonable if worldly things like providing for your family, planning for the future, taking care of yourself, and not being punched on both sides of your face are about to not matter. Early Christians also thought that the apocalypse was right around the corner, until the world kept inconveniently persistently existing and they had to re-think their expectations.

Then the protestant reformation happened and some people started taking literalist readings of the original text, and came to the same conclusion of early Christians; the end of the world is right around the corner. And thus we have that marvelous work of human literature, Left Behind.

IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.

There's not enough density in those cheaper areas to survive as a homeless person. Less traffic to beg at, fewer dumpsters to go through, fewer bikes to steal.

It's not necissarily funded by Disney, these days you can have grassroots astroturfing. There are people who comport their entire lives ideologically and will go to bat for anything they think has progressive values in it, and an overlapping group of people who will go to bat for anything they think toxic incel cis white male haters will hate. Tranny Jannies do it for free, and so do these people.

Circumcision makes sex less pleasant for men. No idea why being uncircumcised would be a problem for women; sounds like they've been watching too much porn.

The being stood up part or the Infinite Rescheduling part? If either only ever happened once to you, then I'm even sadder now than I was before.

it also seems like space and 'moonshots' have long been a darling of the left.

I'm not sure this is the case anymore. They've been pulling the "There are starving trans people of color being hunted by Republicans while the ocean is rising, and you want to spend money on SPACE that could have gone to my non-profit for hunted trans POCs?" card for a while, and demonizing space travel as a way for rich (white) people to escape earth. I don't hear much futurism from them anymore.

Buuuut, I was surrounded by particularly-inconsistent leftists for way too long.

Hard disagree, it's older neurotic urban hypochondriacs of either gender still wearing masks, and a few demented 20something women with goofy hair and pantsuitaloons. That's bluest of the blue.

I know too many women who seek out and stay in relationships with shitty men that already do this stuff to them. For people so afraid of sexual assault and abuse, they're really, really bad at avoiding it.

If she does agree, try to exchange phone numbers and move off the app. Set up the date in the next couple days and then don't text until you are headed out.

This is the point of failure for me. Women say yes to a date, then turn out to apparently have zero availability for a date since they're busy every single day you propose, don't propose their own day, and when you ask them what day works best for them, they say "let me get back to you on that, not sure", and this process continues until I get the hint and go away. Or they say yes, then cancel on the day of. Or they say yes, then abruptly vanish. 95% of the matches that say "yes" do not result in an actual date happening.

Ive always preferred Dwarves as the fantasy-jews, myself.

She got subtly uglied between game 1 and 2. She also ditched all her (masculine) friends and allies from game 1 and replaced them with PoC simps.

And after going through the effort of making a post-racial future with new societies to be the cast of heroes and antagonists (the 1st game bad guys were Carja political extremists being manipulated by an AI) , in the 2nd game they brought in DBZ floating space hwite people to be the villains, complete with a floating crew-cut southern-accent straight white male goon. Everything about 2 just fucking bugged me.

Also, how many spunky oseram wrench-wenches who are way better at engineering than the men but are fighting against patriarchy do you need? I'd say two, three max, because I like wrech wenches. You dont need 8.

So no one is on the app to find dates, then? I don't think you comprehend the level of flaking I've experienced.

but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.

Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."

The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.

Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.