aiislove's profile

aiislove 15hr ago

I. On Self Esteem, or How Do You Compare with Your Same Sex Parent?

A year or two ago, I watched a video that I found interesting. It said that one of the main factors of self esteem was how we compare ourselves to our same sex parent. (Which is to say, how a man compares himself to his father, or how a woman compares herself to her mother.) If someone is doing much better than their same sex parent, they are much more likely to have positive self esteem than if they are doing worse than their parent. I have thought about this a lot and I found it really insightful when looking at my own self esteem and that of other people I know in my life.

My father passed away at the end of 2021. He was kind, patient, funny, charming, and the sort of person who others are drawn to and liked to talk with. But he had some demons as well. He always hated his parents to a degree that I could never understand. My grandparents were always kind to me. As a child I once accidentally broke a door to one of their cabinets and I was terrified that my grandpa was going to hurt me because I knew my father hated him so much. But my grandfather simply fixed the cabinet door and forgave me. Why did my father hate his father so much? Well, I don’t think I’ll ever really know entirely since they’re both gone, and you can never really know everything about the people closest to you. But I imagine that my father resented the success of my grandfather compared to his own failings. Crucially, my father was the fifth and the last in his line of 5 generations in our family business. My grandfather sold the family business to a corporation in the 1980s. My father, in his anger, left the business at the time, resentful of my grandfather. I think this seriously affected the self esteem of my father and he spent several years not speaking with my grandparents- I did not see my grandparents for probably 6 or 7 years of my life, until my senior year of high school when they reached out to my mom (my parents divorced when I was young) who took me to see them. My father had other problems as well which affected me negatively.

When he died, I had to come to terms with the reality of who he was. I no longer had to lie to myself about the sort of person who he was, I became free to remember fondly the good parts of him and negatively about the bad. Early in the grieving process, when I finally let myself realize the bad parts of him, I was really annoyed with him, irritated that he couldn’t have been a better person and father to me and my brother. But since then I’ve grown to accept him for who he was and really see it as a blessing in disguise: I can always compare myself to him and see that I’m doing better than he was able to do.

II. France

France is the most beautiful place in the world. I have visited France more than any other country outside of my own (The US.) It is easily the most photogenic place: every time I see pictures I have taken of Mt. St. Michel or the chateaus of the Loire Valley I am shocked at how beautiful they are and that I have been there and that they’re still over there, just being gorgeous, as life marches on around them.

But France is also a strange place. All that beauty, but it’s all in the past. Stray a few streets outside any well preserved medieval village, or stunning baroque or rococo era neighborhood or city center, and suddenly you’re surrounded by some of the ugliest architecture in the world. One of the ugliest places I’ve ever been is a roadside hotel in Brittany. The new build exterior is a series of white and gray and fluorescent yellow rectangles with tiny square windows that barely open. The way this architecture stands in stark relief to the class, elegance, and beauty of the past is glaring.

So what went wrong in France? I put the height of French beauty and elegance around the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Versailles is an incredible monument to the capability of humans. How could Louis XV and Louis XVI compare to this? These were clearly men standing in the shadows of giants. The 19th century was tumultuous for the French, but they still managed to produce beaux-arts (itself mostly reproductions of baroque and Rococo style, but beautiful nonetheless.) The belle époque, and the art nouveau, of the late 1800s up until World War I was the last gasp of greatness of the French civilization. It would be so convenient for me to place the end of French greatness at the end of the Ancient Régime but really, the decline began decades before, and the French people managed some greatness after that.

But post WWI? There were some moments of glamour in the 1980s, but besides that, France today is living in the shadow of itself.

An aside. I briefly dated a very cute French guy in France. We were looking at the city from afar, and he said he wished he could tear down all the new buildings and just leave the old ones. This is probably a bourgeois and classist sort of opinion to have in France, but really I agree with him. Contrast this with someone I dated in Vienna. He was from Dresden, a city I’ve never visited but suffered greatly from WW2 and apparently is filled with rather utilitarian buildings now. We were visiting some beautiful baroque palace in Vienna, walking the gardens and enjoying all the splendor you’d expect from a baroque palace. Then he points at some medieval support wall, and tells me that he prefers the medieval support structure to the elegance of the palace. Uncharitably, this is the sort of opinion you adopt when you are looking for points for intellect. I preferred the French guy.

III. Japan

Growing up, Japan was the land of the future. Sci fi vistas of skyscrapers and neon lights, hyperfast bullet trains, they were already on Playstation 7 when America just got Playstation 2. It’s still like that today, right?

Sadly, no. Japan’s economy and culture exploded during the early 20th century, culminating finally in the bubble economy of the 1980s. The rapid wealth the Japanese amassed in such a short time is unparalleled to this day. For nearly a century, every Japanese generation greatly improved their standard of living from the one before it. Then the bubble burst and the country has faced stagnation since the 90s. The population is extremely old, and you feel it in the streets. Showa era cafes without a single change since the 60s are strangely common. These are charming, in a very surreal way. Crustless egg salad sandwiches eaten with melon soda floats are delicious but go against every food trend and nutritional guideline of the past 30 years at least. Really I’m glad they exist, and it’s very comforting to know that there’s a place in the world where tradition can be kept alive with such thoughtfulness and attention to detail. But there is also something that feels very wrong about these places.

Being in Japan today feels like witnessing the end of a civilization. It feels like it’s going through what France must have been going through a hundred years ago. Tokyo, only a few decades ago the center of East Asian youth culture, feels like a creaking behemoth. Shinjuku Station, one of the scariest places I’ve ever been, is an exercise in absurdity. Five separate train companies run trains through 53 platforms in the heart of a city of over 14 million people. You can imagine how this gets built in the chaos of the 20th century but it’s patently ridiculous with the technology and capabilities of the 21st century. Everything in the country feels like it was an exciting idea in the 20th century. The youthful energy of the Showa era is gone.

IV. Thailand and South Korea

Chiang Mai, a city of 1.2 million in northern Thailand, feels more vibrant and exciting than Tokyo today. They have 4 modern shopping malls with extremely good, extremely affordable food and shopping options, and countless day and night markets with even cheaper food and shopping. People are optimistic about the future and seem proud of their work and way of life. They still have some catching up to do in terms of health and building standards compared to the rich countries of the old world, but it feels like they’ll get there sooner rather than later. It seems like there’s more opportunity and willingness to hustle among the Thai people than the Japanese. And the highly functional economy of Thailand seems to spur innovation at a much higher degree than today’s Japan, Europe, or the US for that matter.

I am not nearly as well read about Korean history as I am about Japanese history. I have spent about 2 months in Seoul. The main difference that strikes me about South Korea compared with Japan is that South Korea seems to have modernized much more recently than Japan has. In Seoul, you will notice that older people above 50 or so are significantly shorter than younger people. It’s apparent that famine and food insecurity is within living memory for the South Koreans. But South Korea feels like the only country that is truly living in the 21st century. The food is plentiful and nutritious. Young people are healthy and attractive. Technology is cutting edge. Spaces are clean and well designed. People speak really good English. Shopping in Tokyo, you feel suffocated by outdated trends and ancient traditions. In Seoul, shopping feels like you’re touching the future. Apparently the population decline is bad and they have North Korea looming as a constant threat but if anything it gives the culture a fighting spirit that other rich countries have lacked since WWII.

V. The USA

France has already experienced decline. Japan is rapidly declining today. Thailand and South Korea are on their way up. Where does that leave the US? To put it shortly, I don’t know.

As an American it’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly the US is at. I am from a rust belt town in the US. The town I am from peaked with oil money in the Victorian era. There are still glamorous mansions and downtown buildings built around the turn of the century, some of them in great shape, others not so much. Different cities in the rust belt have fared differently since the Victorian era- some of them boomed during the 60s, some of them have just declined, and others have recently been having a bit of a resurgence (especially from people leaving bigger neighboring cities. I suspect there’s been a white flight 2.0 since 2020 but I haven’t been able to find stats backing this up.)

But outside of the rust belt, how is America doing? Let’s look from West to East. Hawaii is beautiful. How sustainable is American power projection in Hawaii? I have been there only for a few weeks, but in that short time I gathered that native Hawaiians are broadly hostile to the American government. Downtown Honolulu was surprisingly sketchy to me (especially Chinatown.) I was there in 2022- huge swaths of tourist industries seem to have shut down around the time of Covid. (I suspect a lot of this was also a victim of the identity politics of the late 2010s- white tourists buying native Hawaiian culture isn’t very woke etc.) Besides that, Hawaii is a very expensive place- the cost disease of the American economy can’t be overlooked. I have broadly the same impression of California from my short time in LA as I do of Hawaii- both are beautiful places with great weather but with a possibly unsustainable culture whose most vital energy is in the past.

I spent a lot of time in New York from around 2010 to 2019. It was the closest megacity to where I grew up so it attracted me as a young and ambitious person. But the city begins to wear on you. It’s really degrading to witness so much filth and extremes of human behavior. It is such an outlier that I hesitate to draw any conclusions about the state of America from the city of New York, but I think the rot is broadly the same across all the major Northeastern cities of the US, from Cleveland and Erie to Baltimore and DC. If I had to put a pin on it, I would say that the Northeast is in decline, but seems to attract enough talent, money and innovation to keep things current.

The South is much more pleasant than the North. If you grew up in the North, you are raised to hate southerners and their culture, but basically this is because the north are haughty and arrogant. People in the south are polite and respectful in a way that the north has not been in decades, if ever.

Speaking of respect, this is the central issue of American culture that I am going to try to tease out. Respect has completely been lost in the realm of public life in the northern, eastern and midwestern US. People constantly interrupt each other. We do not listen to each other. People in the north act confused when I respond to the things they are saying rather than giving a short and flippant response. Being in France taught me the value of listening to others and having patience. There were times when I was in France, when I would go from having a strained but polite interaction, to suddenly having the interaction turn very rude. I didn’t understand what I was doing, but I eventually realized that I was cutting them off, talking over them, which is very rude in French society. In turn I realized that this is very rude in every society, we just get used to it in some cultures. The Northeast is the absolute worst in terms of disrespecting other people and once you have been away from it it is shocking and demoralizing to witness again. Extreme displays of behavior from "Karens" may go viral but they're just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ambient level of rude interactions all the time in American culture today.

Circling back to the self esteem point I opened with. There are trends on civilizational scales that we can look at. Fortunes go up, people are excited, they create great things. Fortunes go down, people feel worse about themselves, they create fewer great things. Where does the US fall in this? The vibes are telling me we’re in the decline stage. The boomers in my life are poorer and less married and successful than my grandparents’ generation. My grandparents and great aunts and uncles all drove clean elegant cars and kept tidy homes. The generation of my parents and their siblings are still working well into their 60s, dress slovenly or like people much younger than they actually are, and seem to lack the confidence in themselves to rightfully command the respect that they imagine they deserve from those around them. The baby boom generation seems to be the first generation since the 1930s to be doing worse than their parents. Gen X and Millennials seem to be continuing the trend broadly. I anticipate decades of decline based on this trend alone.

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aiislove 2d ago

30 days seems harsh considering they did bother to look at the poll closely enough to notice a relevant fact and then bring it to light for further discussion. I think it’s a valuable comment broadly and got the point across without padding the post with extraneous words. I understand you’d want to discourage low effort posting on average but 30 days for this specifically seems unwarranted in my opinion

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aiislove 5d ago

Wow, you went through all this media in 40 days? This is more than I've consumed in the past 3 years, haha. Thanks for sharing.

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aiislove 5d ago

Thanks for posting. Fan of fragrances here myself. I can second Philosykos by Diptyque, I actually prefer the solid of this one. A beautiful waxy fig fragrance. You mentioned Secretions Magnifiques- I still get random whiffs of things that remind me of this occasionally, so terrible haha.

I have to shout out the podcast The Perfume Nationalist- strong recommendation if you're interested in fragrance and/or media and culture from a right wing perspective. Especially fond of the earliest episodes but I still listen to his new episodes as well.

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aiislove 5d ago

You’re welcome. It’s surprising to me too that the current models I tried couldn’t complete the task. I use ai almost every day for various tasks and it still surprises me nearly every day but half the time I’m surprised at how good it is at tasks that were impossible a few years or months ago and half the time I’m surprised at how bad it still is at simple tasks. That’s why I’m very skeptical of AGI/ASI happening in the next decade personally

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aiislove 6d ago

Your results are going to depend on two things: What your detailed line chart images look like (including how detailed they are and the resolution) and what ai you use to analyze the images.

I quickly googled "detailed line chart images" and picked a line chart from the results (the second one on this page: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/linechart.asp ) and fed the image to both Gemini and ChatGPT. If the charts you need to analyze are harder to read than this (for example something with many lines in different colors that overlap) ai is going to have a harder time. I don't know what kind of data extraction you're looking to do specifically so the prompt I added with each image was just "Please extract the data from this line chart."

ChatGPT (OpenAI’s GPT-4-turbo model): The initial response was just telling me the labels of the X and Y axis with upper and lower bounds. It then asked I wanted it to digitize the file and extract approximate data points from it and I said yes. It then ran the chart through an edge detection algo and started to run another process on the image but I only have the free version so it said it couldn't complete the task. I then asked it to just do it without the advanced process and it gave me data points but they were completely inaccurate.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview: It gave me a table but it made some strange errors, like giving random amounts of days between dates and some inaccurate data. I would not trust it without checking it closely or re-prompting it with more specific directions after making mistakes.

For fun, I also pulled up the chart with the screen streaming on Gemini 2.0 Flash 001. It correctly read the x and y axis information. I then asked it to give me a weekly approximate value based on the chart and it started out accurate but started giving random numbers after that.

With most AI things, it takes quite a bit of trial and error to find the right model that does what you want it to do.

Since you're asking for an explanation like you're truly stupid I will also explain some things I didn't mention earlier below.

ChatGPT is accessed at ChatGPT.com . I just used the free base model that is default on the site now (OpenAI’s GPT-4-turbo model.) Gemini flash models are accessed at aistudio.google.com and they have a bunch of different models (change under "Run Settings" at the right.) If you want to stream from your webcam or stream your desktop (so the ai is actually looking at your webcam image or your desktop itself) use "Stream" from the menu on the left. Different models have different abilities (Gemini 2.0 Flash is the only one with image generation for example) so just play with them to find one that works best for the task you're doing. There are other chat bots available (I used to use llama at huggingface.co/chat/ but the site isn't loading for me today so idk.)

I know I have ai in my username but I am not a developer or advanced technician at all, I use it mainly for creative/art purposes so I'm interested to hear other people's responses as well. If anyone knows better ais to use for tasks like this I'd like to know.

Let me know if this all makes sense or you want me to explain anything better. Your best bet is just going straight to gemini or chatgpt and feeding it images of your charts and see what works for yourself with trial and error.

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aiislove 10d ago

I think it's interesting that someone could have such uneven results... Do you think you could like, practice and train at the memory and spatial tasks and get better at them over time if you tried? Are you just apathetic to those sorts of tasks compared with verbal skills? Did you excel at, say, english and history classes in school and do worse in other subjects?

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aiislove 10d ago

I think 135 is really good for verbal if English is your second language so I'm impressed personally. I did the same technique with the shape rotation that you described (identify the one plane then the other sticking out part.) I honestly already forget what the CP part of the test was so I can't comment on your questions at the end

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aiislove 12d ago

Anybody down to take an online IQ test? It's not timed but according to the site takes up to 20 minutes to complete.

Feel free to share your scores. I'll go first.

Full Scale: 138

Memory: 136

Verbal: 137

Spatial: 141

I'm not surprised my memory was the lowest of the three, I feel like I've always had a bad memory (and I hate that card game called Memory where you flip over the cards to make pairs.) I always wonder if the synonym thing is really the best way to measure verbal intelligence: I just don't care to memorize obscure words which I feel drags my score down but it just seems like a waste of time to remember words that I never encounter and can simply look up the other 99 percent of the time that I'm not taking an online IQ test. Besides that, if I can imagine that a word means something else, that isn't really valued in this test either, but it would be useful if I was writing poetry or a song or something. (Like if the word is "big" and a syononym option is "ebullient," I know that ebullient doesn't mean big but spiritually, to me, it has the essence of bigness...) But I guess the intelligence to override my imagination is what the test measures. I'd rather be imaginative than book smart though, really. The spatial portion was probably the closest to measuring "imagination" in that you need to imagine the shapes rotated in your mind. I feel like I used to be much faster at this, I found myself rechecking my answers quite a few times (of course the test was untimed so I could do that without penalty.)

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aiislove 4mo ago

Well the problem is that it isn't just cheap plastic crap that's going to get more expensive... All the food you eat in the US relies on Chinese produced knives and forks and cutting boards, the farmers in america harvesting the food rely on Chinese produced shirts and jeans. And so on. When the Chinese inevitably impose counter tariffs the food they used to import from the US will stop being bought disrupting the agriculture industry, the knock on effects will be on everyone not just people you're characterizing as brainless consoomers

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aiislove 4mo ago

Ok, I understand this reasoning behind the tariffs, but I don't understand how that justifies the massive price increases that will inevitably result from them, which won't be just on the price of knockoff legos and polyester dresses but also everything else because everyone will need more money to buy fewer and fewer goods as the supply will shrink, people won't be switching to domestic goods (especially not right away) they will just switch to no goods at all, leading to a decline in the quality of life with inflation at the same time, and I don't think there's enough American patriotism or anti-Chinese sentiment to go around to keep the economy afloat without seeing blood in the streets

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aiislove 4mo ago

Ok but the Chinese are also better workers than Americans, you just ask factories in China to make you stuff and they make you what you want, redoing entire production runs of faulty product is so cheap in China that they can do this without blinking, they work like slaves and don't even mind, the inefficiencies of the US labor force aren't present in East Asia...

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aiislove 4mo ago

What is up with the proposed Trump tariffs? I work in ecommerce and everything comes from China. If it wasn't made in China it was made with parts that came from China. Get on temu or aliexpress. Things are so cheap on those sites that you would have to impose tariffs of like 300% before it would be profitable to produce them in the US instead. And reshoring manufacturing is just going to open the flood gates of immigrants (see: Italian villages filled with Chinese workers shipped in from China who pump out goods that say "Made in Italy.")

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aiislove 5mo ago

I occasionally use an LLM (LLaMA) as a therapist. If I’m feeling upset or have a specific psychological issue I want to get a better perspective on I will just go on there and explain my situation and ask for answers in a style I like (usually just asking them to respond as a therapist or an evo psych perspective or something like that.) When it gives me an answer that is too woke I will just say that the answer sounds ideologically motivated and I’d rather it would tell me the hard truth or a different perspective and 90% of the time it will give me a less annoying answer. I have done real therapy a handful of times in my life and the experiences have ranged from very annoying to somewhat helpful, I don’t like speaking honestly about myself to other people and especially not professional strangers. So I prefer to speak to an ai who can’t judge me and which doesn’t make me feel like I have to judge myself when sharing as well.

I can be creative with the prompting as well which I like, like I can think of whatever character or personality I’d want to get advice from and with a short prompt the ai can mimic whatever perspective I want.

I see it as useful for me, as a grown man who understands how ai and therapy are meant to work broadly, but I don’t think it should replace real therapy for most people (like children or the elderly or normal people who are fine with talking to human beings.)

Tequilamockingbird’s point below about the ai providing validation seems valid though. I could easily prompt the ai to just agree with whatever I’m saying and always tell me I’m right and everyone else is wrong so I try to avoid that failure mode, rather seeking more objective views or explanations of my issues rather than just what would make me feel more right.

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aiislove 5mo ago

Oops, typo.

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aiislove 5mo ago · Edited 5mo ago

Iranian Agents Plotted to Kill Donald Trump, Justice Department Says (non-paywalled link here)

Curious to know what people think of this. My initial cynical reaction was that the plot seems too convenient and that the US government is just trying to drum up support from the right wing young men who would be tasked with fighting a war against Israel in the future. I also am suspicious of why they would release the information about it so soon after it has been found out. I imagine the justice department could just bury the story or not report on it if they don't want people to know about it but it's headline news on WSJ and the NYT right now.

Why would Iran be more interested in killing Trump than Kamala or Biden? Does Iran see Trump as a massive threat? Is Iran just trying to sow chaos in the US?

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aiislove 7mo ago

Based on what you've said, it sounds like you imagine that even in the ideal situation, a long-term gay relationship with partners in stable sex act roles isn't possible, or couldn't continue to be mutually beneficial?

I am sort of agnostic on this point, if I had to tell you exactly what I believe, it is that it is possible to have a long term mutually respectful relationship between two men that is mutually beneficial, but it is very very rare and requires huge amounts of respect and humility from both partners who also understand the true dynamic of the relationship. And that this is not exclusive to homosexuality but really to all long term relationships.

Why is it that you (and apparently your past sexual partners) think someone has to "deserve" particular sex roles?

Because when you are doing sex acts with a partner, as two men, unless you are kissing or 69ing, there is fundamentally an alpha and a beta position. Because you have to, usually subconsciously and even unknowingly between the two of you, work out how the act is going to go, and to violate the order can hurt both of you if you don't understand that it's happening as a violation of the order between you two.

How much of that is just contingent on you and them happening to physically not enjoy being the passive partner?

As I've pointed at before I don't really "not enjoy being the passive partner" (aside from anal sex which I do not enjoy bottoming,) indeed I don't mind being a passive partner orally for either a man who is my top who I respect, or a bottom who I also respect and wants me to blow him.

That seems like a very bold claim; I'd be interested to see you expand more specifically on why you think that is true.

In seventh grade, I went on a trip with other seventh graders. There was this girl, let's call her Brooke. We were all like 13, Brooke was a skinny, hot, popular girl. But she went around all the time complaining about how fat and ugly she was. It drove the rest of us kids all crazy because we all thought she was hot and skinny, and if she was fat and ugly then that made us all obese and hideous. Dating today in the US is like meeting a million men who act like they're Brooke who thinks she's fat and ugly when really they're hot and nice and need to see themselves as hot and nice in order to share their hotness and niceness with the people around them who want to enjoy it as well, and this can't happen when they're stuck feeling badly about themselves. (And before someone accuses me of acting entitled to someone else's hotness or niceness or whatever, I try to practice what I preach and share my good traits with those around me too.) It's so elementary, read The Rainbow Fish if you don't believe me.

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aiislove 7mo ago

This seems to me a somewhat narrow view of gay sex.

These men were seeking a mechanical sort of gratification

On the contrary I think that to imagine sex between two human beings as "mechanical gratification" is the narrow view of sex. I personally don't mind being fingered or having small toys up my butt, I do think they feel good, but at the same time this is essentially a degrading act that you must accept or reject. A finger or object is entering your body, this can be violating, or if you have a respect for your partner it can be a positive experience.

Your last paragraph is interesting to me. In my opinion homosexuality is less egalitarian because when you are both the same thing you are inevitably hierarchically compared. One is bigger, one is smaller. With heterosexuality you have greater balance because you are both looking for something different and can offer your unique strengths to the other in a more naturally equal way.

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aiislove 7mo ago

That was me, I'm back. I would say on the one hand that I don't know how you can read my post and think that the entire point is that it's a one sided stereotypical power dynamic concept when really what I am trying to get at is the need for mutual respect between partners and how that happens. The fact that other gay men don't like to hear anything I have to say and "clap back" at me further illustrates the frustration I feel with gay men, I am not here to sugar coat the experience or present the mainstream homosexual view of love and relationships and sex but rather point out the difficult aspects that underlie the entire situation. Besides that my post isn't really about gay sex at all but rather I am using something I think about all the time that people here aren't as familiar with to make broader points about power and relationships.

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aiislove 7mo ago

Do you have experience with long term relationships?

Not a huge amount but I have been in two longer term relationships. I disagree that the dynamics don't apply in long term relationships, when I think of my own relationships and those of friends, as well as non-romantic relationships, they all seem to fit the power dynamic I've outlined. Even relationships with friends, parents, other family members, and so on. I suspect if you don't see it you're shielding yourself from seeing it, I don't know if I would have believed any of it 10 or 15 years ago but once the pattern emerged I can't unsee it now.

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aiislove 7mo ago

In that case, why am I (and I’d imagine, your average American citizen) not familiar with these terrible slave trades and exploitations of labor while I’m reminded of American black slavery nearly every day? If this was football, and your weak team had a miracle one year and beat the strong team in the next county, I imagine you’d be happier to recount the glories of beating the strong team while ignoring the glories of beating all the weaker teams. Similarly white Americans have had a history of making their enemies out to be strong, portraying the native Americans they conquered as powerful because if they portrayed them as weak it would make them look unchristian and evil and sadistic. My historic understanding of the facts in my other comment may have been incorrect but I think the broad philosophy behind it is sound

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aiislove 7mo ago

I guess, if you're a gay man who sees himself as a beta and imagines a man as "straight acting" then you're imagining a guy who is confident and secure in his masculinity and isn't effeminate. Effeminacy is a whole other thing that would take forever to unpack and it inevitably veers into trans/gender ideology which I just don't want to think about right now, not to mention that effeminacy is not limited to homosexual men really.

So, to try to parse your question, you're asking if the fact that most gay men do not see themselves as alpha that it makes them want straight acting men? Well, yes, because any gay man who is seeking an alpha has degraded himself as a beta on some level, he's not going to be "straight acting" enough to be someone else's alpha, and thus that's the problem, when he's inevitably surrounded by men more beta than he is who he can't provide love to because he doesn't have the love for himself he needs to give away. (It's getting late and I've sort of lost the plot, hopefully this makes sense.)

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aiislove 7mo ago

Err, no I don't think this contradicts it. Basically I think men who see themselves as bottoms need to see themselves as tops to be happy and have healthy relationships with themselves and the people around them.

Sorry the terminology is kind of convoluted. Broadly, alpha = top = active while beta = bottom = passive. I used alpha and beta because it's more relevant to straight people and carries less of a specific meaning than the other two sets of terms which might make people think top/bottom = anal sex only whereas I am trying to describe the relationships more broadly.

I'm glad you found my post interesting, thanks for engaging.

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aiislove 7mo ago

I remember ilforte of all people pushing back on the blacks vs whites argument that I tried putting forward a year or two ago. I don't know how to even respond to it really because in my experience black men are so obviously stronger and more dominant/aggressive than white men that I don't know what kind of evidence I could point to that would change your mind.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1167935/racial-diversity-nfl-players/

The stats are that 53% of NFL players are black while making up 15% of the American public. White men are only 24% of the players. Asians are 0.1% of NFL but 7.3% of the US population. This is all the evidence I need to reassert what anecdotally seems true in my experiences, maybe someone else can chime in.

Besides that I think white men were fine with the enslavement of black men because they perceived black men as physically dominant/superior in some way. They didn't enslave Asians or natives to any significant degree because enslaving someone smaller than you makes you look bad and doesn't jive as well with Christian theology (see David and Goliath, Nietzschean slave morality etc)

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aiislove 7mo ago

No, it's not coercion. Ideally in the situation in your first paragraph, the boy who loses at wrestling is not being forced to pleasure the winner, he is pleasuring the winner because the winner deserves it. I do not want to pleasure a man who would coerce me into having sex, but I would respectfully pleasure him if I felt he deserved it.

In a way sex/rape IS just about power, but between two men you have the chance to respect the power or lack thereof between the two of you.

Presumably most gay men are gay because they enjoy being the receptive partner, leaving a dearth of men who enjoy being the active partner

No no no, well personally I don't find pleasure in being a receptive partner. (Granted, I particularly don't like being an anal bottom because it hurts me physically and feels degrading.) In romantic relationships I've had in the past where I've been the top, the bottom usually isn't that pleased with being a bottom either. He'll go along with it for a while if he really respects the top enough or disrespects himself too much. (This is where the age gap relationships comes into play, most adult men are ready to drop being a bottom in a relationship more quickly than younger men.) Most of my friends I've grown up with who were in long term gay relationships where both partners were in their 20s seem to break up when the bottom gets older and stops wanting to be the bottom.

Besides that, being a top is really more dangerous to the ego than being a bottom. The bottom gets to play a discriminatory role generally, and performing as a top is harder. Porn makes it look really easy but I'd say that topping anally is one of the most difficult things to do in sex- you have to stay hard for a long time, you have to find the hole, you have to do all these things, it's stressful and can be embarrassing. It takes a lot of confidence to feel like you deserve to top another guy. The problem is that today most men never achieve the confidence to top, even in oral sex.

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