urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
I know of a great many men from older generations, and even in this generation, who are not Chads by that definition yet have had long relationships with women who care for them. I probably couldn’t string along 4 women even if I really, really tried — but I’ve had women ask me out before, I figure if for some sad reason I became single I could find a meaningful relationship within a year or so, and the women I’ve dated have shown every sign of cherishing the relationship. I relate to the feeling of hopelessness and marginalization, but not to the feeling that literally 100% of women are only and exclusively interested in a very small group of men regardless of how poorly they’re treated by them. The reason why “wait until marriage” (or some measure of commitment) works is precisely because many women actually desire that. Not because anyone forced them.
The situation for men is far from great, and the inequality between the haves and the have-nots is quite large, but I’m not convinced it’s so bad that it’s literally impossible.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
Like Corvos, I like how you can use AI as a sounding board and maybe get information that’s useful back. I take it with a grain of salt — I notice details in most responses that don’t match the actual facts — but occasionally I’ve gotten some great “deep cut” information on very specific topics that either was sourced to a link I could verify or started me on a course to verify the claim myself.
I don’t really chat with AI as a person, though I do use very human-like language similar to how I write on the motte. I do know people who’ve explored chatting with AI as a person, giving it a name, telling it about daily details to see what it’ll say. But I don’t relate to AI in that way.
I’d compare using AI for brainstorming to the “active placebo” version of rubber duck debugging: it’s a good excuse to actually write out what you’re thinking, with the possibility of something valuable coming back at you, so you have incentive to be detailed. It’s happened to me more than once that I’ve typed out a technical or personal problem as an AI prompt and figured out the right solution in the process of writing it.
Yeah, I don’t doubt that’s a big part of the concern. But also, that’s the sort of thing that some say as an excuse — “chuh, no, I’m just looking for validation and attention online to make me feel good about myself without actually having to be in a position of connection or vulnerability” is not exactly a great thing to say about yourself, even if it’s true. I can certainly understand safety concerns about meeting strange men, but having those concerns while continuing to swipe and even to mock the people who are trying to connect with you is simply vicious, based on bad-faith.
The real truth about dating apps is that they’re good for window shopping — and people who like impulse purchases — and not much good for much else, though people do get lucky in the same way people used to get lucky at a bar or a club. Or I got lucky at the college atheist org meetup. (Yeah, really. The history of my romantic life has some wild twists and turns around my spiritual convictions, and not a one of my girlfriends didn’t have something to do with religion, either positively or negatively.)
But the purpose of the system is what it does, and not only the purpose but actually the intended function of the swipe-based matching apps is to facilitate hookups, not deep connections.
A big part of the problem for a lot of older guys seems to be that women with a realistic sense of romance and a strong drive to find a real partner tend to choose early, and confidently. The rest are waiting for something exciting to happen, or just trying to “enjoy life as it comes” same as young men do.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
I feel like as I get older I realize more and more why there’s so much suspicion against men among women. That said, it’s bewildering how… lacking in instinct for manipulation a lot of young women are. Or even basic “don’t do something completely insane” instinct. I went on a date with someone once who told me she’d met a man in a park in the middle of the night. You did what?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
At least in my case it's the combination of relatively few matches (about 1 new match a week), plus the lack of response to relatively thought out initially messages (+sometimes follow-ups). What's worse is one of my roommates has loads of success, but he's pretty scummy when it comes to women on dating apps. Leading 3-4 of them along at once pretending that he's going to commit.
And this is a vicious cycle — getting played leads women to leave, or the stories lead them to never download. I met my girlfriend in college, and she told me she’d be scared to use the apps and she’s glad she met me in person.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
All the "virtue-based" banners and signs in teachers' rooms when I was a schoolchild always struck me as very silly. Lots of transforming "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." into an acronym, lots of "At our school, home of the Bears, we are Based, Effective Altruist, Rationalist, Sapient" or "Everyone here C.A.R.E.S." standing of course for "Courteous, Achieving, Responsible, Excellence, at School on time"... I don't know that any of these did anything, but I'm sure there was some sort of state or federal grant money involved in "teaching ethical citizenship and public service" to children, for which these useless banners played a role.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
I mean, I strongly oppose public school teachers being required, or even permitted, really, to hang the Ten Commandments in a classroom. Public schools should not endorse an establishment of religion.
The point of the Satanic Temple stuff is as a protest against religious impositions on public spaces — you say you’re just endorsing good morals, well here’s ours, how do you like it? It’s a good troll, and I think it makes its point.
You also have to separate the Satanic Temple people — who are trolling atheists, from the LeVeyan Satanism people — who are somewhat more trolly atheists who admire Satan as a literary figure (he brought the light of true choice to man!) while not believing in the literal existence of Satan, from the actual, ritual and sacrifices to Satan people. The latter are considered dangerous even among practicing occultists.
The Satanic Temple stuff is just a more edgy version of the Pastafarians trying to wear pasta strainers in their drivers license photos. I think they need to be careful, because yelling “hail Satan” as they like to do sometimes is both upsetting to normies and spiritually stupid, but based on my experiences with the type they’re just edgy atheists and their personalities aren’t much different.
I don’t like any of them, and my view on existing religious references in public spaces is to roll my eyes at people making a big deal of them, but the teachers have a legitimate constitutional complaint that being required to hang religious texts in their classrooms is inappropriate.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8mo ago
My mom found out she was allergic to penicillin as a little girl, when she had anaphylaxis. Fortunately she was ok and it hasn’t affected her life much.
But also yeah, antibiotic side effects can be real. It beats pneumonia, but uncontrollable diarrhea and stomach upset isn’t fun. Took me a while before I was back to normal.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
Does that data take into account fat to muscle ratio?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
Ok, now look up “BNWO.”
I recall you had a post a while ago where you said you’d dated both men and women. Did you develop a preference for men, or how did women fit into this?
something that requires a deep emotional connection to work
Well, I guess all I can say is, join the club. We don’t have fun prizes but there are occasional butterflies in the chest. And you get a stamp on your card when someone says, “you’re sweet but I don’t see this going anywhere.”
I found straight/bi men are generally more understanding when you make it clear that that's not what you're after (if they're manipulative, it's at least a sign of knowing what you want).
Interesting. I’d never considered that being played could actually be preferable to sex-forward behavior, but I can see it. I guess gay men just didn’t even make an effort? Just, “oh, no dick pic, seeya?”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
I had a gay student some years ago (pre-Obergefell) who dated like a mid-20th century Baptist. He didn't want to have a bunch of anonymous group sex, he wanted to find his soulmate and get married. He went to a gay bar once, and the third time someone that night greeted him by grabbing his crotch, he left and swore never to return.
I have some friends in this category. They’re miserable.
I have no idea what the actual ratio of "just the sex, please" men to "approximately the sociosexual desires of a rural church girl" men is, in the gay dating pool.
My understanding is that “I don’t have sex until we’re committed” is incredibly rare among gay men, though not nonexistent. Even very monogamous gay men apparently are very sex-forward. Perhaps this shows how small biological differences can be amplified by culture and market dynamics.
It is mildly funny to me, in a “this is ironic” way, that sending dick pics is the cardinal sin of straight flirting — we even had a longtime user quit the motte because people weren’t sufficiently condemnatory of it — but in gay dating you’re shamed if you don’t send one. There seems to be something in the male nature that just goes, “here’s my penis.”
In truth, women have a much stronger preference for dominance than men have for submissiveness.
The charts you linked are about sex. What people do in the bedroom is often different from their general behavior or personality.
It’s not at all hard to find women who are generally ‘dominant’ or decisive in life, but like to be dominated in bed.
I don’t disagree with your point that ‘servile’ is a bad description for a life partner, but I don’t think that’s the evidence for your argument. I believe you're collapsing men's preference for agreeableness with preference for sexual submission.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
My girlfriend likes true crime — and it comes up even with the most vile, wicked people you can imagine. Lots of gesturing about how serial killers who raped women and or men and then tortured and killed them were that way because dad was an abusive drunk.
The idea that the abusive father and the killer son could have been that way because of their shared genetics and personality characteristics never seems to occur to anyone.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
I had a job once that required keeping clocks in sync between all of the computers in a company. For servers we decided clocks could drift only one millisecond, but for desktops we allowed up to 100ms. This required modifications to Windows because Microsoft only imposed one minute clock discipline at the time (only improving on this policy after 2016, which is probably not early enough for whatever piece of shit the jail installed).
Was there a specific use-case for the highly strict clock synchronization?
Also, thanks for the write-up. Computer timekeeping has always been a personal nemesis (NTP sync errors, RTCs failing, random clock drift, time being an hour off randomly due to strange bugs, Windows and Linux not playing nicely on a dual-boot system even when I beg windows to use UTC, there are so many problems) so it’s interesting to read about how complex it is to keep clocks in sync.
It seems like “romantasy” has become the default genre for young women, it's pretty startling. I also have met people who seem to be basing their conception of what romance should be like on these sorts of books. I know a young lady who's desperate for a man who also reads romantasy, which is particulary bizarre because these are books written with female protagonists from the perspective of women. I'm not sure what she expects her dream man to be getting out of these books.
Maybe that kind of thing has been around for a long time. But I know older women who like romance books, and they were never like that. My mother is an avid reader of romance, and a shipper before shipping was cool (there were, in fact, fan forums that shipped Anakin Skywalker with Padme Amidala, and yes, my mom is still sad he turned into Darth Vader).
But my father is certainly no romance novel protagonist, yet my mom talks about how funny he was when she met him, and how all the girls thought he was cute, and talks lovingly about going on drives in the country with him and listening to music, and says that even when there was tension in the relationship, it didn’t matter — “I loved him.” They’ve been married for 40 years. That’s my parents.
My mom is just a sweet lady, she likes love stories because she loves people, and romance novels are about people connecting with each other and sharing vulnerability.
I worry that maybe the market for romance stories has shifted from, “sweet story about people overcoming adversity for true love” to “escapist experience where you get to imagine yourself being seduced by one of Snow White’s magical creatures.” Also, please do not look up "scenting."
I get the feeling that older generations viewed these stories as an enjoyable narrative with an inspiring message about the sacrifices that lead to love, which could be tempered by the actual lived experience of seeing your mother and father, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, go through the reality of marriage and as such understand that the reality isn’t like books — and yet still worthy.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
Are you an insanely charismatic man in excellent shape, who's impeccably dressed and whose every word and gesture are a near world-class work of performance art? No? Plenty of people have happy relationships - or non-catastrophic relationships - with women with BMIs of 30, 40, 50, even 60.
Huh, this feels like the conclusion of a narrative arc. Never thought we'd hear this message from you, brother. And you're not wrong.
Did you ever find a girlfriend?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
This is the usual way I read the motte.
You do have to be careful, though -- sometimes you can end up with a perfect comment responding to what you thought a discussion was based on a reply to a reply to a reply, and then you realize you spent all that time reverse-engineering what was already stated or dismissed in the discussion.
"What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.
Well, "date" is different from "dick", and the chief complaint from trans women is that men are willing to have sex with them but not be seen in public.
I recall there was a survey (probably not a great one, but whatever) that something like 1/3 of men had had a sexual fantasy about a transgender partner. There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories. So you're correct that the level of sexual interest in trans women is higher than is accounted for in the 3%.
But the fact remains that we're still talking about less than one percent of the population, which already regards men being interested in them as highly suspect precisely because of the gulf between that 33% and the 3%. Statistically, any given man that expresses interest in them is around ten times more likely to be looking for an exotic sexual experience than a relationship, and the majority are uninterested in that -- not least because being transgender implies a certain discomfort with one's genitals, around which the sex fantasies often orbit. The minority that is interested in being an exotic sex fantasy is highly likely to be swamped by offers and choosy the same way cis women are.
But also, "having a sexual experience" is only one of the many reasons a man might desire the companionship of a woman. "Being seen as a man who has been chosen by a woman" is also a huge factor -- and it's one that the hypothetical about AI girlfriends doesn't take into account.
I don't disagree that some men on the margins are exploring alternative sexual experiences with gay men or trans women or whatever, but this just isn't a big enough segment of the population to have much of an effect on what straight people are doing.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
royal
America
Wait, why do I hear musket fire in the distance?
Okay, if your hypothetical came about -- what do you think they'd do? Don't just put us on the spot like that -- it sounds like you have something to say. Say it!
Add to that a growing visibility of trans women in romantic spaces
Last time I checked, only 3% of heterosexual men report that they would date a trans woman. Maybe that's increasing. But even if we granted that huge numbers of men gained a newfound interest in trans women, it simply isn't the case that trans women will form some great competition for cis women. There aren't many of them (what, like half a percentage point?), and most are not interested in heterosexual men, whether because they perceive heterosexual men aren't interested in them, or because they believe they can't build a relationship with them, or because they prefer women. We're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a percent here.
It's possible that some fraction of bisexual men will start dating men at higher rates (see the "I traded women for femboys" meme), but my understanding is that the situation for male-male pairings is that sex is easy to find, but ghosting and avoidant attachment is even more common than among straight men.
Sometimes straight men like to proclaim, "maybe I will go gay!" like a kind of protest, same way that women annoyed with men sometimes start investigating political lesbianism, but same-sex pairings are just different in important ways due to biological and cultural factors. The grass is rarely greener on the other side. Fantasies aren't going to save you, and trans women aren’t your fantasy. They’d be the first people to tell you that.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
I can see that, actually. And the reality is that my own worldview can sound very "F", depending on the context. That said, my general view of the world is that we should be making reasonable decisions based on logic -- and accounting for people's emotions and the real fallout of a decision on people is a part of that. I read "You prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action." as referring to, not taking people's actual feelings as a result of the action into account, but "making a gut decision based on people feel at the current moment rather than actually evaluating whether those feelings will reflect how they experience the fallout of the decision." Other people might read it differently, and that's a big ambiguity!
That's my problem with the T vs F dichotomy -- it's not real. People who are so far in the extreme that an emotional argument from their partner or their child would not persuade them barely exist. And people who are so extreme that they'd rather make a feelings-based argument over what kind of mortgage to get also barely exist. People are both feelers and thinkers. I agree with @Primaprimaprima on this.
I'm not a utilitarian, but I guess I sound like one in this context. But my values on these kinds of questions are shaped by the fact that my feelings and emotions are very flighty and unhelpful a lot of the time: if I made decisions based on how I feel right now I would make horrible, impulsive, and often extremely avoidant decisions! I couldn't function. My life has been a long struggle of using the "heartless robot" to override the useless emotions that can't help me in the moment, to try and develop a path forward that will lead to the best emotional state I can possibly expect and to proper functioning. I have to think in terms of telos, because I need some kind of a star in the East to walk towards in the desert.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
Maybe. But there's an increasing trend of social anxiety making people just not want to go to things at all -- and of course the internet rectangle makes it easy to develop parasocial relationships or social media addictions and spend time on those instead of actual people. The flakiest people I know are the least busy.
For instance, I have a friend who wanted to hang out and I haven't texted him back in 3 days (but to be fair, it took him 4 days to get back to me). And my girlfriend is in the other room and I'm typing this right now. I'm choosing you over snuggling, faceh-less internet person! Something has gone wrong there.
I saw a t-shirt at Target the other day that read, "Canceller of Plans." And I know the rush that comes from cancelling plans. But it's still pathological avoidance.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9mo ago
Oh, you don't feel like saying "Strongly Disagree" to:
Complex and novel ideas excite you more than simple and straightforward ones.
You are not too interested in discussions about various interpretations of creative works.
You prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action.
You actively seek out new experiences and knowledge areas to explore.
Or "Strongly Agree" to:
You usually feel more persuaded by what resonates emotionally with you than by factual arguments.
People’s stories and emotions speak louder to you than numbers or data.
You favor efficiency in decisions, even if it means disregarding some emotional aspects.
You are not easily swayed by emotional arguments.
Congratulations, your personality type has been determined to be mottezan!
I’ve just… never encountered this stuff. Maybe it’s just my religious background or my conservative community or maybe it’s happening under my nose and I don’t know it, but “married woman has an affair with a lothario” just… is not something I’ve ever encountered in my circles. Where are you observing this stuff?
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