faceh
42m ago
The nasty thing is once someone decides they want a divorce, they can go about trying to create the conditions to justify it (to others) and to make the other party feel it is the only option.
With my own breakup, I realized the meta issue: its not just that someone doesn't want to be with you, but they no longer want to want to be with you. Like, some people have a full
Whereas me, if I was feeling like I was falling out of love or feeling disgust for a partner, that triggers an alarm for me. "I want to make this work, so what can I do to address my own feelings."
Quitting easily is not in my personality makeup, for better or worse.
faceh
4hr ago
Yeah, I've actually got a decent amount of IT experience despite no formal college training in it, funny enough.
It was my 'fallback' career option if Law didn't work out (which was a close thing for a bit).
I think that's still one of the few places where if you're bright and you grew up working with computers and networks and troubleshooting people's electronic devices (a rarer thing among young kids) you can probably get picked up by a small outfit and put to work.
It looks like Geek Squad will still accept applicants sans a college degree, so that's something.
Yeah, I'm just pointing out that there were a LOT of jobs that Boomers could walk into with merely a high school diploma and learn as they go, that NOW are very clearly gated by the degree requirement, OR knowing a guy.
Here's a REALLY interesting bit from Mr. Carl Bernstein's wiki page:
He began his journalism career at the age of 16 when he became a copyboy for The Washington Star and moved "quickly through the ranks". The Star, however, unofficially required a college degree to write for the paper.
At the University of Maryland, College Park, he was a reporter for the school's independent daily, The Diamondback. However, Bernstein was dismissed from the university after the fall 1964 semester for bad grades.
Guy FAILED OUT of college, but had already acquired Journalism experience at the ripe age of 16, so just kept hopping into Journo jobs until he became one of the best known Journos ever.
This sort of story is profoundly radicalizing for a certain class of Millennial and, likely, Gen Zer, who considers failing out of college to be economic doom.
faceh
6hr ago
The FBI director being a fanboy is cringe, but that's all.
I actually forgive him, because he's been a player and a coach, so this wasn't him just throwing himself in for the photo op itself.
faceh
6hr ago
In what field would you be able to go in as a newbie either with or without a degree?
Fields that don't require a degree and where universities purport to teach you how to perform those jobs at a competent level through lengthy instruction.
(Catch-22 in that once college degrees became more common, more fields started 'requiring' them.)
Journalism, Political Science, Marketing, HR, Education, International Relations (LOL), certain art major/Graphic Design areas, arguably Accounting, Criminal Justice (as prep for law enforcement), even Information Technology.
A lot of stuff outside of the STEM/Law fields, basically. Jobs you are absolutely allowed to learn as you go, that aren't blue collar, but still have a long 'grind' period where you're paid poorly and worked doggedly, and most people would LOVE to just hop into the more lucrative, prestigious positions as soon as possible.
It was 'go to college or you'll be flipping burgers'. The "detour" doesn't so much jump you ahead as put you on a different ladder.
I'm saying it was both. The "burger flipping" was the stick, but the carrot, the actual reason you could justify taking on five or six figures in debt is to shortcut the miserable process and prove competence for roles you'd be unable to access otherwise.
I'm NOT claiming that this promise was ever made explicit by the colleges themselves, although their advertising certainly nodded suggestively in that direction.
This one seems to represent a nexus of like a dozen different CW issues at once.
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U.S. vs. Canada (its a repeat of the rivalry from last year, but the stakes still felt higher).
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Men vs. Women.
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Making Trump look good as President/on the world stage.
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Racial issues since its an all white team. Diversity isn't quite our strength.
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Most of the team are basically Chuds, ranging from open support of Trump to at least tacit approval of his administration.
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The above is bursting the fantasy bubble created by that popular book/TV series.
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This leading to some angry screeching from women who became hockey fans recently because they they thought they'd found some heckin' wholesome queer ally pro athletes to lust over.
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Pride in America as a country vis a vis superior athletic performance (seeing the same issue popping up with Alysa Liu).
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An extremely photogenic depiction of non-toxic masculinity. Guy takes a stick to the face, breaks a tooth, is bleeding profusely, but swallows the pain (or some vicodin, not sure), gets back out there to support his team, and wins the whole thing for them.
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From the pure sports perspective, this display has also drawn some favorable comparisons versus the rather abysmal Super Bowl this year, and the ongoing problem with 'tanking' in the NBA. Compare the all-out pell mell effort personified above to current NBA stars lazily collecting million dollar paychecks.
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And of course the wonderful timing, putting this right around the SOTU.
I bet I could spot a few more with some thought.
But the thing I'm loving is that the scolds who are upset about ANY of this are clearly losing completely and utterly.
And let me say again. I don't want to share a country with these people.
If you can't even drop the political labels for a day or two to celebrate along with your countrymen when they succeed in an 'underdog' victory (not quite the Miracle on Ice, but still, this was a GREAT game), then I question whether you're really part of this nation in any real sense. If you remained silent on the matter I can understand. Not everyone has to get swept up in celebration.
If you take a 5 second snippet of video that may or may not even depict an 'offensive' joke to women (that was based on some very biased, inaccurate reporting) and use that to ATTACK AND DEMAND APOLOGIES from your victorious countrymen I think you are genuinely mentally unwell and I would prefer you not have a say in how my nation is governed, insofar as you're clearly not really hoping for the best outcomes for said country.
I'm old enough to remember when Michael Phelps was a megaceleb for his performance in the '08 Olympics. The biggest controversy to erupt there was him caught on camera smoking weed.
Patriotic jingoism was perfectly allowed. There was no gender issues to speak of, and it was only natural for Phelps to accept Obama's invite to the White House. Nobody scored political 'points' off of it (well, it was used in pro-weed propaganda).
If the point of the Olympics is to give countries a way to engage in friendly non-military rivalry and to secure bragging rights while showcasing the highest levels of Athletic performance, then you HAVE to minimize the imposition of your home country's political divisions on the events, and let victorious countries celebrate and even gloat (a bit) and the defeated ones mourn and vow to come back stronger next time.
I'm sick of having to tiptoe around eggshell sensibilities about when you can and can't be 'proud' of your country, especially by the same people who celebrate displays of pride by every country but their own.
I'm sick of hearing a chorus of female screeching that arises whenever there's a story that is mildly upsetting to women even if it is wildly empowering for men. I'm sick of their complaints being taken as facially valid and used to extract concessions from people who have done nothing wrong. And the apparent inability of our political class to tell them to just shut up.
Just. LEAVE.
faceh
6hr ago
This could be the result of any of dozens of factors.
I mean, yes.
But all of those factors can also be boiled down to "women have acquired all the independence and concurrent responsibility they ever wanted, and this has caused them immense psychological distress."
Part of that independence is "now you have free rein to choose any mate you want... provided you can attract them."
And on top of the "paradox of choice" problem, now they realize that every other woman has this option... and is now competing for the same mates. This problem intensifies given that women are already primed to want the things they see other woman wanting.
My impression was that UMC women were rather bothered about this.
The rule that I've realized explains 90% of it: a woman will amplify any signal or story or selective pressure that raises her own status/desirability as a mate.
She will attack any signal or story or selective pressure that raises other womens' status, thereby compromising her own.
See the "body positivity" movement. Even though NO HIGH-STATUS MALE IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET has married an obese woman, they unionized around the idea that they're perfect and beautiful as they are and men selecting based on size/weight had the problem.
But Ozempic has hit and now they're all happily losing weight.
And the outrage over Sydney Sweeney is likewise explained by this. Women who aren't pleasant-looking blonds with massive honkers are threatened when men seemingly declare this the ideal for female appearance.
faceh
7hr ago
I agree with the thrust here, but speaking as a Millennial that also bought into the whole 'go to college or you'll be flipping burgers' shtick, I think the real implication was just a bit more than about having money and a 'cushy' job, but also:
A) Having 'proved' yourself by obtaining a degree (especially if your job was related to your major) was 'supposed' to entitle you to some extra dignity and respect right off the bat.
B) Likewise it was supposed to 'open up doors' to areas you'd otherwise either never be allowed into, or that you'd have to grind for years and years to open otherwise. Not quite a 'VIP access' ticket, but definitely a 'priority boarding' pass, if you will.
In my case, B) was literally true because I had to bypass the "undergrad degree" gate to access the "law degree" gate and then the "bar license" gate.
But what 'we' found was that no, you're basically treated as a lowly intern to start, your pay might be a little better than if you lacked the degree, but it afforded you almost no actual respect and, in all probability, you'd have more respect if you'd been working that job 4 years rather than studying in that time.
(Yes, it makes perfect sense that a 4 year veteran should outrank the new recruit, but that was emphatically not how things were sold)
We also found that the 'doors' were actually opened by knowing the right people, which was a function of going to the right school for meeting those people, and almost completely orthogonal to the degree itself. We tried waving around impressive GPAs and extracurriculars and finding that we were still locked out unless we knew the secret handshakes, or had a ton of money to grease palms with.
So in this sense, think of how college was sold as an almost pure status boost. "You're a smart guy, you could jump into the workplace and eventually find yourself in a prestigious position, well-compensated and respected. But hey, if your SATs are high enough you can take a small detour to acquire a piece of paper that certifies you're a smart guy, and jump ahead to having some extra clout without the long climb from the bottom."
Shades of Elite Overproduction, but more about trying to skip the perceived 'minimum wage, maximum stress' grind that most young people have to overcome.
Its a very tempting deal on its face.
faceh
1d ago
On the one side, the immense increase in anxiety disorders and antidepressant prescriptions among women over 35.
On the other, the fact that married women are, by most reliable recent data, happier than single women across the board.
I'd have to dig deep to find data that pinpointed this exact effect, though.
faceh
2d ago
Just... the reason they see them as threats is that an increasing proportion of older women are unattached.
A married woman might worry about a young floozy stealing her man, but that's simpler to police. Realizing that she has to compete with that same floozy for EVERY SINGLE ELIGIBLE MAN'S attention probably feels like an existential threat by comparison.
faceh
2d ago
Agreed. But to keep that limit there has to be some actual friction in place. We now know exactly where the slippery slope will take us.
This is arguably why dating apps blew up the market in short order. Took away ALL the friction for high value guys looking for one night stands AND removed it all from public view.
faceh
2d ago
I'd echo this, especially 3, 5, and 9, as great advice. However I'm speaking as a guy who got pretty damn close to marriage before things imploded.
4 is where guys will stumble b/c pursuing that wealth can become all-consuming, and at the very least will interfere with actually looking for a woman. Although I gather that once you hit a certain level of success women are more likely to just show up in your life. You've time to make a decent number of dice rolls in your mid-twenties, but you also have to be smart.
So I'd say there's no shame in somewhat lowering your expectations and while you should walk around with dick-swinging swagger being modest enough not to promise the sun, moon, and stars to a woman avoids some problems.
faceh
2d ago
Sam Hyde's advice on this is very good to keep in mind.
faceh
2d ago
I mean, that's ultimately the funny thing.
This implies that a Billionaire male will have a power imbalance with regard to ANY woman he pursues, unless its other Billionaires or particularly prominent female politicians.
But if you thought Billionaires were 'in bed with' the government and cooperating together before, then imagine if they were literally only marrying each other and further isolating their genes from the common man. (I've heard this is approximately how the "gay mafia" of San Francisco came to be).
I guess a good progressive would suggest that the billionaire should intentionally dispossess himself of almost all of his wealth and power and then pursue a partner on a more equitable basis.
Meanwhile One of the best selling books of the current century is about a kinky Billionaire pursuing a lower-middle class female... obsessively. The movie adaptation of said book grossed half a billion dollars.
Women LOVE the power imbalance (where, discreetly, the other party's obsession means she actually holds power over him).
faceh
2d ago
Maybe it's the people who should be willing to punish elites, vastly disproportionately. At least for as long as the elites have names and addresses and can't murder us all with drone swarms.
Yes, but that's another doozy of a coordination problem.
I've sometimes thought about actively attempting to rally disaffected young males who are otherwise prone to wasting their lives on video games and porn and helping them acquire training, purpose, and power, to use towards demanding better treatment for males across the board and, ultimately, to punish the worst malefactors who oversaw the current decline.
Which, yes, looks very much like a paramilitary force if you squint, and so I wouldn't be surprised if I got assassinated before it hit any critical mass.
(Gavin McInnes tried this approach with the Proud Boys, and it really got away from him)
I think that is easily disrupted by, e.g. the Andrew Tate grift, where some guy who can convince men that he knows shortcuts to getting wealth and pussy and wrings all the money and enthusiasm out of them by having them chase superficial goals.
I've given up hope that 'the people' will enforce accountability, sans the rise of some Napoleonic (Trumpian? Messianic?) figure who can represent them and guide them strategically to advance a righteous goal on behalf of the whole.
And I won't ever pretend to be that kind of guy.
Well, there's an inherent inequality in that its really only men who can truly enforce the law (sans that threat of eternal damnation from an all-powerful God), so it would be harder to maintain that sort of equality if men didn't want to be bound by it.
We can refactor the question to be basically "how can we convince men to accept strong limits on their sexual freedom (i.e., stop using their physical prowess to secure sex) when their baser instincts would prefer more of a free-for-all? AND convince them to actively police each other?"
For me, it is easy. I believe that the second, third, and beyond order effects of enforced monogamy are self-evidently worth it: we get to have a civilization with internet, running water, and a functioning air travel system. Eventually space travel.
But a guy who finds himself near the top of the hierarchy, he might be well aware that he could vastly increase the variety of his sexual partners if he defects... and he reasonably believes he has sufficient power to get away with it. And a biological imperative to spread his genes to boot.
Guys at the bottom also have reason to defect, but rarely the capacity.
So refactoring it further: "How can we convince elite males who could improve their own position by defecting (whilst destroying the game for everyone else) to accept limits on their sexual freedom and thus their genetic success when other humans have limited ability to even police them?"
I don't have a good answer to this that isn't "Convince these elite males that there's an even higher power that sees all their actions and declares which actions will be punished. And punished VASTLY dis-proportionally, to boot."
We start to slide back towards my classic Skin in the Game screed. Elites need to suffer for misbehavior too.
Because fewer people are getting married overall. There's probably a core root cause for both these observations. Using marriage as the metric means selecting for the types who are still getting married under current social circumstances.
But other sorts of situations, like Sugar dating are becoming more common, if not 'prominent.'
Two of my personal friends are in 10+ year age gap relationships right now, and I suspect only one of those couples will end up married.
Bill Belichick isn't married. Leonardo DiCaprio isn't married, nor is Tobey Maguire.
So I'd suspect that a behavior that was semi-common for a century or more hasn't actually decreased much.
Happy to review other evidence though.
Once again, the institution of marriage was solving some pernicious coordination problems (women don't want to get pumped and dumped and left preggers, men want to to have sexual access to women who are virgins or as close to it as possible, neither can truly verify the intentions of the other) so for COMPLETELY SECULAR REASONS its very very useful to have "abstinence until marriage" as a strong norm and "'til death do us part'" as an 'enforceable' obligation.
There's a lot of other obligations that we tie up in there that trip people up, to say nothing of the obligations to the children that emerge.
But
A) You can't really construct a piecemeal version of this and expect it to work. and
B) You need some severe punishment for breaching the covenant to really make it stick. Religious folks have fear of their God as a factor, I don't know what we can impose on nonbelievers (short of a death sentence) that will keep them in line, even against their baser instincts.
Any secular punishments we create can likely be circumvented by clever/powerful enough actors.
faceh
2d ago
Right. But the problem with relying solely on social technology is that if a high-status guy doesn't like them, he might break the norms and 'win' due to everyone else deferring to his position, as our monkey brains are wont to do.
I think the threat of eternal damnation is a necessary component we haven't figured out a replacement for.
For Henry VIII even that wasn't enough.
The only compromise position I've hit on that might align incentives is setting it so that 'marriage' is 25 year contract that can't be exited without EXTREME difficulty during that time, but can then be 'extended' if the parties choose at the end of that period.
Logic being that's enough time to raise the kids to adulthood and get them set up well.
Its not very romantic or aspirational though, so it is probably too autistic of a solution.
faceh
2d ago
God Bless.
I see enough 'mismatched' couples appearancewise that I always wonder at what else is cementing their bond. Having it all is wonderful.
faceh
2d ago
I have never hidden the fact that I hate the fruits of the sexual revolution. We are currently in what is my own personal hellscape for all romantic purposes, everything about it is my anti-preference. I don't expect my preferences to be universal, its a 'me' problem. But nobody else appears happy either.
If we could have stopped them somewhere around the norms of, I dunno 1995 I might find it tolerable. But alas there were never any brakes on the train.
And people are rediscovering traditional sexual norms from 'first principles' but we don't have the social cohesion to even attempt to rebuild the system as it existed before. This may or may not be an intentional result of certain groups (I make no specific accusation) intentionally stirring the pot.
This post is an excellent summary of how many, many of the online "pickup artists" have success across a decade or more and bed perhaps hundreds or thousands of women ... and then lose their fucking minds.
There but for the grace of God go I. Thankfully when I was doing my study of pickup artists and red pill ideas, I could reason out that following the rules and ideas to their logical conclusion would lead to that exact outcome.
faceh
2d ago
Thing is, its also utterly unrealistic to expect extreme-high-status men to accept being alone for 40+ years OR marry someone they aren't attracted to.
How do you stop them from using their status to just override any taboos and get what they want?
I do think its a real problem when they cycle through young women and leave them less appealing for the younger guys, of course, so I agree in general.
If nothing else, I think the argument about "different life experiences" falls flat on its face.
The whole point of long term relationships is mutually experiencing life. If you stick it out then your life experiences will inherently equalize. One being substantially more experienced than the other doesn't reduce that factor, as long as they're willingly sharing in experiences going forward.
Now, I'm going to politely inquire, in terms of you and your wife's physical attractiveness, would you rate each of you as close on an 'objective' scale? I'm specifically NOT accusing her of being a gold digger or you of flexing wealth to make up for anything, its just helpful context.
People's subjective preferences override such things anyway.
I feel confident saying its a mix of (2) generally and (2a), specifically intrasexual competition driven by the fact that Millenials are hitting their late 30's 40s, many, MANY of them single (including both those who were never married, and those who got divorced). And they're now facing down the implications of this situation in a way that prior generations never had to.
And now we've got a sizeable surplus of older women who are effectively 'unionizing' to try and preserve their value in the marketplace, and a surplus of older guys who are in their 'prime' (if they took care of themselves physically) and have the wealth to expend on acquiring the things they missed out on in their younger days. No, its not unique to Millenials, but I suspect that the environment they're in is creating pressures previous generations didn't experience at the social level.
On top of the complete demolition of any social/religious guidance around dating, leaving everyone to do things on an ad hoc basis.
Older women would love to prevent older men from getting taken off the market by younger women. Rationally so! They have an uneasy alliance with younger men who would ALSO like to keep older men from competing.
The only way to restrict wealthier older men from 'poaching' young women is either massive doses of social shame (which Celebs, at least, are probably immune to) OR getting them MeToo'd (which is a specific type of social shame that can also carry legal consequences). So some sort of 'moral' framework gets built out around these relationships to attempt to justify the attacks.
I've pointed out that if we don't have a system where EVERYONE (even the King) is Monogamous... then the likely stable alternative is harem-maxxing.
Anyway, here's my prior research into the prevalence of age gape relationships:
https://www.themotte.org/post/120/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/19112?context=8#context
I was actually surprised to find that they were more common (historically and now) than I thought. Husbands being 10+ years older is already about 8% of heterosexual marriages!
And that's not accounting for non-marital ones.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/half-americans-say-they-have-been-10-year-age-gap-relationship
Here's a more recent poll on that point. HALF of Americans say they've been in a 10+ year relationship? I actually find that a bit hard to swallow, but should tell you something nonetheless.
Given the study's design, take it with a whole shaker of salt:
These are the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between June 20-23, 2023. For this survey, a sample of 1,210 adults and oversample of 201 Men that have dated women 10+ years younger than them and 207 Women that have dated men 10+ years older than them, age 18+ from the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii was interviewed online in English.
I do think there's quite a bit to critique Kash on, but if he was on the scene, I'm not gonna bregrudge him a personal chance to bro it up with some hockey players, even if it makes him look (more) unprofessional.
He can't really make my respect for the FBI get any lower.
But then you know, get back to fakkin work.
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