Inspired by a few Reddit threads: why is there less sex and nudity in movies and television today than in the past?
I don’t have any raw data to back up the claim that there is less sex and nudity these days, but that’s my sentiment and it’s shared by many others. The best concrete example I can think of is Game of Thrones. The early seasons were (in)famous for the amount of gratuitous nudity; Saturday Night Live did a sketch mocking the “guy has sex while another guy getting a blow job watches him through a peephole while another guy watches him through a peephole” scene. Yet, the final two seasons, when it became this massive international phenomenon that everyone on earth watched, had (IIRC) no nudity at all and very little sex.
The second best concrete example I can think of is Marvel movies. There have been 30ish of them and (IIRC) there are no sex scenes at all, and maybe even no make out scenes (I think there’s one in the first Captain America). Sure, they’re PG-13, but so is 007, and they still have sex scenes.
Compare this to the 80s and 90s when every action-oriented movie ever had sex scenes, if not also completely gratuitous nudity. For instance, in Commando, Arnold Schwarzenegger throws a bad guy through a motel wall, and just happens to reveal a naked lady with giant boobs having sex. Or if there was any romance, it would inevitably result in a sex scene, even a clothes-on PG-13 sex scene. These seem to be nearly dead in the modern day.
So why do modern movies have so little sex and nudity? My guesses:
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Internet porn has lowered the value of movie sex and nudity. In the 1980s, getting porn was expensive and annoying, so getting to see boobs in an action movie was a legitimate draw. These days, everyone has infinite internet porn, so who cares? (Counterpoint – celebrity nudity still has a special appeal over porn nudity, ie. the Fappening, or people going to see No Hard Feelings to see Jennifer Lawrence naked)
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MeToo, combined with the backdrop of Jonathan Haidt’s thesis in Coddling of the American Mind, have made (young) people very squeamish about sex. We are in a new low-tier puritan age where men are terrified of being accused of sexual assault and women are terrified of being sexually assaulted, so sex is now a much heavier subject and gratuitous nudity has lost its appeal
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here seems to be a new stratification in culture where everything is either hardcore sexual or has no sex at all. Everything is porn or innocent. People are either kinky a f or extremely shy around sex. Tv shows either show no nudity or they’re Euphoria with tons of sex and nudity. Movies are either porn or puritan.
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lockbusters are now designed to appeal to overseas audiences more than ever, particularly to China. Non-Western audiences (particularly China) are more sexually conservative than Western audiences, so film studios are reducing sex and nudity. In some cases (like China), literal censors might intervene against a movie if there is too much sexuality. Any other ideas?
Testing123
2mo ago
I have to rant about a particular incredibly stupid plot point in the finale. SPOILERS if anyone cares.
It's revealed that the scientists at the lab are studying a life form in the permafrost and that they are better able to access the life form due to pollution created by the local mine which melts the permafrost. So not only does the lab publish fake reports about the pollution levels to protect the mine, but the lab actually asks the mine to pollute more to help its research along. This pollution causes deaths, birth defects, and other problems in the local town. The lab claims that their research will revolutionize the field of health in some unspecified ways, and that their work will eventually be unfathomably valuable.
Ok, so...
- Permafrost is just frozen ground. You can melt it with any heat source. You don't need special pollution to do it. But ok, let's say that for sci-fi reasons, only the pollution melts the ice the right way.
- The pollution that mines give off is stuff like mercury and industrial chemicals. You don't need to get that stuff just from mine pollution. You can get it on its own without polluting a local town. And if the end product of this research is so valuable, I'm sure the lab can afford to import mercury or whatever.
- Also, it appears that all of the lab's research is conducted right near the physical lab building. So... why don't they just get a bunch of pollution and dump it right near their lab? Why do they need to pollute the whole town?
- Or why not just use machinery to cut away permafrost and ship it to a place where you can safely and cleanly expose it to the pollution? Yeah, that's expensive, but the end product is insanely valuable and surely worth it.
- Ok, fine, let's concede that for sci fi reasons, only the pollution can melt the permafrost the right way, and the permafrost can only be melted by polluting the entire town. The pollution conspiracy is still so fucking stupid. They reiterate that the end result of the research is WORLD CHANGING. I'm sure it's worth bajilions of dollars. So if it's that valuable, just tell people what you're working on and what it's worth. Then your corporate overlords can build a giant fracking-style concrete basin to contain the pollution, or even pay off the few thousand local townspeople, or use some other big engineering solution. Surely anything is better than risking jail time, massive lawsuits, and the closure of the entire project by knowingly killing and poisoning thousands of people.
God, I know Hollywood hates corporations, but why does it think they are so stupid?
Testing123
29d ago
I recently watched the Paraguay episode of Parts Unknown, and he said that he was (IIRC) 57, and that he was already the longest living male member of his family in many generations.
Testing123
1mo ago
IMO, Javier Bardem "passes," but now that he mentions it, it is weird that there are no obviously Middle Eastern cast members. The Fremen are all either black, Mediterranean, or mixed race (like Zendaya).
Testing123
15d ago
I'm not sure how to get a group of specialists, but as a backup, go on Reddit or Twitter some other forum and post a bounty for whomever gives you the best advice.
Testing123
4mo ago
The Persecution of the Internet Historian
Internet Historian is a popular YouTuber whose best content is retelling interesting, fairly obscure stories with janky animation and luscious voice over. He’s an excellent storyteller and the videos are insanely easy to watch.
Left wing breadtuber Hbomberguy recently released an almost 4 hour video about plagiarism on YouTube. One of the subjects of the video was Internet Historian, and I think Hbomberguy credibly shows that IH was in the wrong. For his most watched video, Man in Hole, IH heavily copied the story and format of a Mental Floss article, as well as directly quoting entire paragraphs. IIRC, IH did cite the Mental Floss article in the original video, but it would be fairer to say that the entire video was an animated telling of the original article, and IH should have described it as such.
Furthermore, after Man in Hole was DMCAed, IH seemingly purposefully concealed what he had done, made excuses, and never fully acknowledged the extent to which he plagiarized, even after reuploading the video with heavy edits.
I think IH did a bad thing by committing plagiarism. Then he did another bad thing by trying to cover it up. I don’t think his life should be destroyed, but I think he deserves some score for this and my opinion of him has been lowered.
But if you ask some very online leftist people what’s wrong with IH, they won’t say plagiarism, they will say he is a literal Nazi - https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18dotzf/internet_historian_is_a_nazi/
That thread is by far the most popular ever on that subreddit, and lists evidence that IH is a Nazi. I’d summarize the evidence as “IH has a 4-chany sense of humor, has made some edgy jokes, and follows mainstream conservatives on Twitter.”
What I find most interesting about this affair is how difficult to convey to the breadtubey online leftists how vapid and dumb I think this evidence is. I think that’s because there’s actually a lot of cultural complexity here tied into some big gaps in moral intuition.
For instance, many of the evidence points are that IH has made jokes in his videos about Nazis and the KKK. In one video, he put 14/88 in the background, in another he uses a KKK caricature, and he has also sarcastically listed his birthday as 4/20 (Hitler’s birthday, though this might also just be a weed lmao thing). To the OP and most of the commenters, this is strong evidence that IH is a literal Nazi. Even if they acknowledge that these are edgy jokes, they can’t comprehend why someone would make light of something so awful unless they were secretly sympathetic to it. Or they just say that IH is straight up “dogwhistling” to align himself with all the Nazis watching his videos.
These arguments strike me as so divorced from reality that it’s difficult to bridge the gap. These jokes are not actually making light of Hitler, Nazis, and the KKK. They are making light of online lefties being pathologically obsessed with speech. Referencing Hitler isn’t funny; what’s funny is watching online lefties think that referencing Hitler indicates a deep seated hatred of Judaism and a real desire to exterminate non-whites. It’s the overreaction that’s funny. Or another way to put it – edgy Hitler jokes are shibboleths indicating that the speaker doesn’t buy into the predominant lefty internet culture. The speaker signals that he has such little concern for the culture that he considers stifling, censorious, and ridiculous, that he invokes the greatest taboo possible. IMO, this is the essence of edgy 4-chan humor.
Is this an accurate take? Or am I being too nice to IH?
Testing123
7mo ago
House M.D. as a time capsule.
House was on the air from 2004-2012. I watched it when it came out and then almost never since. Now I'm rewatching it (or rebinging it) and House has turned out to be an amusing time capsule of some culture war drift over the past decade. I get that House (the show and Character) was supposed to be kind of edgy, and an anti-hero, and straddle the line between likable and unlikeable, but I still think there were a lot of plotlines and Gregory House behavior that wouldn't fly in a modern tv show. For instance:
- House finds out that Dr. Wilson (his best friend) has an asexual female patient with an asexual husband. House says that asexuality isn't real because it doesn't make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. House bets Wilson $100 he can prove that the patient's asexuality is the result of a medical disorder. House eventually finds that the patient's husband has a tumor near his pituitary gland which crushes his libido, and that the patient has been lying about her asexuality since they met because she's in love with him.
- There's an episode where House and his team ogle and drool over a 15 year old model. In the same episode, House discovers that the girl has some rare disease where she actually has testicles in her body, at which point House insists on calling the patient "he" even though the patient hates it.
- House is casually racist towards Foreman (a black doctor that works under him) constantly. House never actually drops the N-bomb but he threatens to do so. It's clear that House isn't actually racist but he still says racist things to get under Foreman's skin. Even still, I don't think a modern tv protagonist could get away with this.
- Likewise, House sexually harasses Cuddy (his female boss) constantly. He makes lewd comments toward her and behind her back with colleagues. In one episode, House has a team of doctors competing with each other for job openings, and House tells them to try to steal Cuddy's panties as a game.
- There's a scene where Wilson gossips to House about a guy in the hospital dating a transwoman. House calls her a "tranny."
- There's an episode where House treats a dwarf, and House mocks the dwarf and her mother for being dwarfs (typical short people jokes).
- There's a character named "Thirteen" who is revealed to be bisexual. House and his colleagues act like this is a stunningly salacious detail at a level of like... if she was a hardcore swinger. Today, I don't think anyone would be surprised that someone of Thirteen's demographics - a highly-educated, white, early 30s, liberal female - was bisexual.
- Especially weird one: there's an episode where Dr. Chase (one of House's employees) goes to a party and ends up taking two girls home for a threesome. The next day, Chase's Facebook account is hacked and the hacker posts nude photos of Chase taken the night before with photoshop to make his penis look smaller. Chase runs around trying to figure out who the hacker is and eventually discovers it's the sister of one of the girls from the threesome. Chase confronts her, and she basically calls him a man whore and says he should stop having so much casual sex. Chase feels embarrassed and agrees with her, and then instead of calling the cops on her for posting revenge porn and hacking and maybe defamation, he asks her on a date. Note that the narrative of the episode frames this as a good outcome and a moment of growth for Chase (rather than a further extension of his man whoreness).
- On the opposite end of "House is too edgy for modern tv" is the way the show deals with religion. There are maybe a dozen episodes were House gets a religious patient and House mercilessly mocks them. When the show came out in the mid-2000s, this was probably par for the course amidst the online religion v. atheist wars, but watching it today, House comes off as a hilariously 2edgy4 me high school atheist.
Testing123
2mo ago
The game works best in unexpected moments of chaos. Like, you and the squad will be running to the next objective when suddenly an enemy horde side swipes you out of nowhere, so you start sprinting away with lazers flying over head, and you dive into cover, and you start fumbling with stratagems to get an eagle cluster out there but the fucking arrows are weird, and then a robot gets around your cover and you have to switch back to your weapons and you start shooting wildly and then your idiot friend died and he's calling for a reinforce but fuck fuck fuck youre barely surviving. Stuff like that.
Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe:
A clearly very socially awkward nerdy literal virgin (despite being 21 years old) guy thinks a cute girl in his study group is flirting with him. He takes her aside privately after a study session and asks her… does she want to be his FWB (friends with benefits)? He reasons that he wants to have fun like many young men and isn’t looking for a relationship right now.
The girl is shocked and taken aback. She turns him down flat and appears uncomfortable. He feels uncomfortable too and apologizes to her and leaves.
Over the next few weeks, she doesn’t say anything to him at study sessions. He tries to make contact again, not to proposition her, but just to resume their friendly acquaintanceship. She tells him directly that she doesn’t want to speak to him. He is hurt but understands and leaves her be. Soon enough, he learns that she has told her friends and extended social circle what happened, and he is widely reviled as a creep. He feels hurt and violated. He laments that he has lost a friend, and now feels like he’s being lambasted for an innocent error, and he wishes the whole thing would just end and go away.
My take on OP is sympathetic. He comes off as extremely awkward and clearly isn’t well versed in the endless myriad of opaque and seemingly contradictory rules of modern dating. He wanted an FWB, and he didn’t understand that the socially acceptable way to get one is to ask a girl out on a date (usually through Tinder), then hook up with her, then either stay as vague as possible for as long as possible about your intentions while continuing to periodically fuck, or to sort of half way shrug after a fuck session and say, “yeah, I’m just really not looking for anything serious right now.” OP genuinely thought he was being upfront and honest with another person, and assumed that he was proposing something mutually beneficial.
Yes, it’s not a good idea to outright proposition a girl to be an FWB in a library. It’s awkward and weird and I can see how it made her feel uncomfortable. But all signs point to OP making an innocent error. He didn’t know any better. When he became aware of his mistake, he immediately apologized, gave the offended party space, and only later attempted to reestablish contact in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He made an innocent mistake and responded in the best possible way.
And Reddit’s response to OP is… calling him a massive piece of shit in every conceivable way.
What I find interesting about the overwhelming criticisms of OP is that they split in two completely opposite directions, but seemingly from the same critics.
On the one hand, OP is relentlessly slut shamed. He is accused of treating this woman like a “flesh light,” of feeling “entitled” to sex, of creepily trying to fuck an acquaintance, of pursuing sex with a girl instead of trying to date thine lady like a proper Victorian gentleman.
On the other hand, OP is relentlessly virgin shamed. He’s an incel, a fool, a creepy moron. He’s daring to try to have casual sex when he hasn’t even lost his virginity because he is SUCH A MASSIVE FUCKING LOSER. OP doesn’t understand that casual sex is only for chads who have fucked a bunch of girls, FWBs are an unlockable perk, not a privilege of the sexually unworthy.
Fortunately, there is a minority of Reddit commenters backing OP up, but it is a small minority. Meanwhile, many more posters are saying that OP is well on the way to becoming an incel or Andrew Tate fan, and unfortunately, they’re right, just not in the way they think they are.
I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.
Testing123
4mo ago
So I am willing to bet that even today Catholics and protestants know that it was mostly political strife. As were the other major Christian schisms and fights. If you look it is very often some inter elite fight.
I can maybe believe that the elites were primarily motivated by real politik, but masses and mobs really did murder each other on the streets throughout the era. I find it hard to believe that their true motives were stuff like decreasing regional tax-kickups to the Holy Roman Emperor.
Testing123
5mo ago
And she gets the kiss too - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ijuzvl8tv8k Later in the episode, the other doctors make fun of Chase (the adult male doctor who did the kissing) but the episode's narrative frames it as a good thing.
Red Letter Media just did a review of Guardians of the Galaxy 3. In their usual tangent at the beginning of the video, Mike read off an online article of the 34 biggest movies coming out this year. Of the 34, 28 are sequels/remakes/reimaginings of existing properties. Of the remaining 6, 3 are based on real-life people (ex. Oppenheimer). That leaves three major movies in all of 2023 based entirely on original ideas, and all three are made by big, established filmmakers with lots of studio clout. This is a trend people have been recognizing for at least the last 5 years, if not the last decade.
EDIT - the RLM guys actually got a few of these wrong and the numbers are even worse than they thought. At least one of the 6 supposedly original films are based on a book (Scorcese's next project) and another is based on a true story (Taika Waititi's next film).
My question is -
Is there any historical precedence for this? Has there been a time and place where popular culture so heavily converged on recycling products that the flow of new products was stymied.
I don't want to be too doomer about this. There are still new, original, interesting movies being made, but they have been shuttled off to low-budget indie and streaming avenues. These days, if a movie is big enough to get a wide release, it is almost certainly not original. It's hard to imagine a new Star Wars (the original) or anything like it coming out today - a big, bold, truly original vision with a budget.
(Alternatively, maybe most of the cinematic creativity is flowing into television where for a variety of technical and cost reasons, interesting stuff can still be made on a big budget (ie. HBO).
Testing123
5mo ago
I watched both documentaries, and IMO the vast majority of the cult members were unattractive, a few were exceptionally so (I'd rate at 2/10s). The only two attractive girls were redhead sisters, both of whom were very targeted by the cult probably for exactly that reason, with one ending up as CEO and the other as a poster child for relationship success.
Testing123
4mo ago
Can you elaborate your thoughts on the Internet Historian? I though the Hbomber video convincingly demonstrated that he committed plagiarism, albeit not as badly as the other subjects in the video.
Testing123
10mo ago
I very randomly watched A Time to Kill, a now mostly forgotten film that had some super-hot takes on the culture war back when it came out in 1996. Overall, I liked it a lot and thought it threw out some genuinely interesting moral considerations, but I also found the tone and message... wonky.
The premise - In the Deep South of Alabama (presumably in 1996), two drunk red neck good old boys who liberally say "nigger" and have a Confederate flag on their truck are trawling around town harassing random people. On a whim, they kidnap, rape, torture, and try to murder a 10 year old black girl. She survives, but is left with lots of injuries, including being unable to ever have children.
The rednecks are quickly arrested and everyone in town hopes they'll receive swift justice, but some people aren't so sure they will. Alabama is still considered deeply racist, and apparently a similar case a few years ago saw different perpetrators escape punishment. So the father (Samuel L. Jackson) takes matters into his own hands. While the two suspects are being marched through the local court house on the way to their trial, the father guns them down with an assault rifle, and accidentally wounds a police officer in the process.
The rest of the movie is a courtroom drama where a white lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) defends the father while the local DA (Kevin Spacey) tries to charge him with double first-degree murder. Meanwhile, the brother of one of the suspects tries to get the literal KKK to terrorize the lawyer to sabotage the defense. He's told that there is no KKK in town, but through some contacts, the brother finds the nearest Grand Wizard who then commands the brother to set up a local chapter. Throughout the trial, the KKK launches various terrorist attacks on the town and amasses 100+ members to march through the streets, and gets into violent encounters with pro-father protesters.
To get to the most interesting culture war-y part, I need to SPOIL the plot, so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens in a 25 year old movie.
The Defense mostly fucks up in the trial and it looks like the father is going to be convicted. The biggest problem for the Defense is that the jury is all white and presumed to be racist/unsympathetic. In one scene, the jurors are shown talking about the trial (illegally) the night before its conclusion, and all 12 jurors admit that they will vote guilty (one of whom even refers to the defendant as a "nigger").
Cut to the climactic closing statements of the trial. The DA gives a rousing speech about how he feels sorry for the father given what his daughter went through, but the law is the law, and you can't just murder two men in cold blood because they wronged you. Then McConaughey gives his closing statement: he recounts in gruesome detail every step of the 10 year old girl's kidnapping, torture, and rape, and concludes with... "now imagine if she was white."
The Defense wins the trial. The father is cleared of all charges and goes free. The film's narrative portrays this as an unambiguously good thing.
There's a lot to unpack here, but a few prompts:
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Was 1996 Alabama really THAT racist? Would the random average white person in Alabama at that time be considered racist enough by default that they would automatically side against any black defendant? Were there enough real, true, hardcore racists that the KKK could field 100+ protesters at a big racial trial?
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How differently, if at all, would such a trial be perceived today?
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What is a proper punishment for the father, if any? If I had to give a verdict, I'd say he should be found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which is an extremely short sentence for a double murder and maiming of a cop, but warranted given the context. I most certainly wouldn't be comfortable with finding him not guilty, not if we want to have a functional society.
Non-culture war addendum - the movie has an insane amount of contemporary and future movie stars. There's Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Kurtwood Smith, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper, Charles Dutton, and I'm proud of myself for spotting Octavia Spencer as a literal extra.
Testing123
1yr ago
Gillian Flynn was attacked for sexism for writing "Gone Girl," where the antagonist is evil in a distinctly feminine manner, and Flynn, an old school feminist, argued that true equality means being able to portray both men and women as complex evil psychopaths.
Anyone have unusual advice for salvaging bad skin?
I have had terrible, borderline life-destroying bad skin since high school. I've fought it for over a decade with every treatment option under the sun (including copious amounts of SPF to block out the sun), and it's still awful, albeit in a more "beat up, scarred, leathery" way now than a "covered in pimples way" it used to be.
I think I'm totally fucked and just have to accept that. But might as well ask if anyone has any unusual or hail mary methods for improving skin texture/quality, fighting acne, reducing scarring, reducing redness, etc.
Just for the hell of it, here is a list of skin treatments I currently or have formerly used:
Niacinamide
Retinoids (Accutane and Tretinoin)
Azelaic Acid
Urea repair
Vitamin C (topical and oral)
SPF (million sunscreen variants, applied every day, applied every two hours outside)
Snail Mucin Power Essence
Oral collagen supplements
Fish oil supplements
Vitamin D supplements
Daily cleansers
Hyaluronic Acid
Ferulic Acid
Toothpaste (actually a pretty good short term pimple reducer)
Glycolic Acid (exfoliator)
Korean facial masks
Slugging (putting a layer of vaseline or a similar substance on at night to trap in moisture)
Eliminating hot showers
Silk pillowcases
Claritin (to reduce general inflamation)
Rhofade (weird, controversial short-term treatment for redness that restricts blood flow to the face)
Ivermectin (fight skin mites associated with rosacea)
No sugar consumption
No dairy consumption
Black head removal tape
Botox
Dysport (similar to Botox)
Microneedling
Radiofrequency microneedling
Fraxel non-ablative laser
And I'm sure there's a whole bunch of random smaller treatments from when I was young that I forgot
I have become something of an amateur expert on this shit, feel to ask anything if you're curious.
Testing123
5mo ago
Seriously. Go to the Philippines or Thailand or almost anywhere somewhat touristy in Central America, and this guy is guaranteed to get a decent looking girl. He can even try Eastern Europe if he’s willing to deal with a higher rate of rejection.
Testing123
1yr ago
Pornhub released its annual "Year in Review" - https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2022-year-in-review
Some observations:
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The big one... transgenderism had a major bump this year. It's now the 7th most popular category worldwide, and number 1 in Brazil. Perhaps even more surprisingly, "“FTM” (female to male) searches were 8 times more popular than “MTF” (male to female)." Big caveat - the discrepancy might be due to search terms since "trans" and "shemale" default to "MTF."
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Asian search terms have an insane dominance. Among the top 6 most searched terms are "Asian," "Japanese," "Pinay," and "hentai" (if that counts).
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For the SOME LARGE NUMBER of years in a row, hentai is one of the top search terms. Is the 4chan meme that 2d girls better than 3d true?
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The search terms by age group is kind of hilarious. Zoomers love virtual reality, cosplay, and hentai (unreality/escape from reality). Millennials love Asians, tattoos on girls, feet, and transgenders. Gen X is just as degenerate, only the boomers like good old honest red blooded smut like handjobs, "babe," and small tits.
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One big caveat over the entire "Year in Review" is that Pornhub banned unverified amateur content a few years ago, so niche searches are probably marginalized.
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The other even bigger caveat is that there is definitely stat manipulation at play. "Teen" is mysteriously absent from the entire page, even though it has to be among the most common searches. Same for "step-sister," "rape," and probably a few other taboo subjects.
Testing123
1yr ago
I agree that relationships have an anti-inductive component (even a significant one), but:
You ask why it's considered cold and demeaning to want something from someone without making an offer in exchange and I reply that the answer is in the question.
The answer is... sex. The girl gets sex in exchange for sex. I think most people, or at least most men, see that as a fair trade as long as both parties are attracted to one another.
The obvious, but often unstated retort is that men and women value sex differently. Both enjoy it on a physical level, but women tend to attach more emotional significance to the act, while men generally take a more casual approach and seem to desire the purely physical aspect more.
Ok, that's fine. It is what it is. But to wrap back around to one of the overriding aspects of my original post and many of the comments... why is the female perspective on sex not only seen as the default, but the male perspective on sex is seen as immoral, at least to the Reddit crowd? Isn't that what happened to the OP? He made a (very clumsy) sexual offer based on the male perspective of sex, but the girl had the female perspective, and shamed him for his error.
Traditional Judeo-Christian morality had an answer to this discrepancy. But I don't think modern sexual mores do. The sensible approach to me is for people to be aware of both the male and female perspectives on sex, and to exercise empathy in negotiations over sex. The Redditor perspective (which I think you are sympathetic to based on what you're saying, feel free to correct me) is that the female perspective should be privileged, and the male perspective should be punished, even if it's touted innocently and ignorantly.
Testing123
5mo ago
I keep seeing this take in discussions, and I just don't get it.
Yes, the killer messes up in the beginning and he makes a few mistakes throughout the film (shooting the nails into the guy, getting caught in the Florida house, snagging the janitor's key). But the killer ultimately succeeds in everything. He kills everyone he wants to kill. He doesn't die or get caught or get grievously injured. And he repeatedly shows cold blooded efficiency, like when he killed Tilda Swinton or the Florida guy. Based on his wealth and reputation, he has probably successfully pulled off dozens of assassinations in the past.
So the killer is not a try-hard buffoon. He really is an expert assassin, but as he admits in the opening monologue, he isn't a genius, so he makes some mistakes along the way.
As for the ending, I think the textual read is that assassinating a billionaire would bring too much police attention and risk, so better just to threaten the guy. I'm guessing there is also some sort of subtext about the billionaire boss surviving while his contractor/employees all died, hence the killer monologuing that he's now part of the masses being exploited by the few, rather than vice versa.
At the risk of sounding like a giga-autist, why does this standard seem to only apply to sex? If OP asked the girl to be a regular tennis partner, no one would accuse him of treating her like a "wall to bounce a ball off of." If he asked her to play video games with him, no one would accuse him of treating her like an "ally NPC."
I don't get why if a guy wants to have sex with a girl but doesn't want a relationship, it's taken to be demeaning and cold, while engaging in any other activity without some sort of grander emotional engagement is fine. Yes, I understand that sex and relationships are traditionally paired, but I also assumed that all but the most trad among us have moved on from that strict coupling in every possible circumstance, especially for college students who are still trying to figure out their dating and sex lives.
Testing123
8mo ago
I bought Disco Elysium in 2019, immediately loved it, thought it was the funniest game I've ever played with fantastic writing. After about eight hours, the second area opened up, and I hit a wall. I was very fatigued by all the tangents and inner monologuing and not super interesting politicking, and so I got bored and stopped.
Two weeks ago, I gave DE another shot, and the exact same thing happened. I played slightly longer, but yet again hit a point where it was all too much and felt like a chore.
Is it worth me pushing through? Or should I just read a summary online?
Testing123
3mo ago
Sometimes I forget that the presidents of other countries (outside America) can't just order troops to go wherever for whatever reason.
I think that (monogamous) couples have an obligation to maintain their attractiveness, within reason***. When you entered the relationship, you gave up the ability to have sex with anyone else on the pretense that that you will get your sexual satisfaction from your partner, and part of that satisfaction comes from their physical attractiveness. If they choose to erode their attractiveness, they are hurting you and violating their relationship obligations. IMO, like sexual fidelity, this should be made explicit at the start of relationships, but should otherwise be considered implicit unless the obligation is explicitly waved,
***"Within reason" = within the ordinary bounds of aging, illness, and unexpected events. Obviously people are not going to be as hot at 50 as at 25, and obviously we can't completely control the course of our aging.
Which is to say that I think you should consider yourself in the moral right here. You have a moral right to be dismayed by your wife's fading attractiveness. This doesn't make your wife a horrible person or anything, but you shouldn't feel bad for wanting to nudge her back in your preferred direction.
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