I have some really good male friends too. They know a lot of things about me that could be used to destroy me if they wished. But I trust them to not.
And vice-versa.
But you see, what happened is they all got married and so acquired a partner that could serve that role better than I could.
Which has left me with not many options aside from finding a good therapist if I really want to unload. Although my brothers (as in, actual biological brothers) are still very good for commiseration.
There are a lot of blackpilled guys who feel like sharing secrets and being emotionally vulnerable is one of the things that they explicitly can't do with women, because any perceived display of weakness could cause her to lose attraction, even deep into a committed relationship.
Yep. And that's one hell of a tradeoff to make to achieve reproductive success. I'd want to have a partner who I could occasionally vent to with the understanding that I would always get back to work and make shit happen, but had the basic, I dunno, decency, to get that part of their role was to help take the edge off the stress every now and again so I can be the person they need me to be.
(also, from very direct experience, I have much less need to vent about emotions when I'm getting laid on the regular. Almost no issues feel overwhelming when that primal urge is satisfied)
I'd also gently point out that it was safer to do this when divorce laws weren't as lenient.
I'm just saying. Women have almost universally settled upon their conception of what 'looks good' by way of what makes men pay them greater attention. In the west, at least, nobody holds a gun to their head to make them wear tight clothing that emphasizes curves and shows strategic amounts of skin, even when those outfits are less comfortable to wear. But they do wear such outfits.
Pull up photos of women attending music festivals. And I mean, regardless of genre, from (warning: Semi NSFW) Metal to EDM to Country, and see that while the aesthetics are different, women generally converge on outfits that are revealing and eye-catching and tight and emphasize the secondary sexual characteristics. (yes, admittedly this is prone to selection effects).
I don't think they 'feel' the biological basis, but its the rare woman who can ignore their own impulses and dress in a way that is actively repellent to men and feel truly satisfied and healthy about it.
Yes, there's some large amount of culturally-transmitted information about what is 'attractive' in the other sex as well, but we haven't seen so much divergence between humans as you'd expect if it were solely culturally informed.
Anyhow, humans are just responding to impulses and they don't really think a lot about where those impulses come from. If you're hungry, eat, if you're thirsty, drink. If you're horny, put on the standard mating display and see if you get any takers.
But humans also have brains big enough to create elaborate, usually post-hoc justifications for actions they take, and so they can pretend that dressing and acting in a way that effectively short-circuits the other sex's thought processes (b/c horny) and claim its all solely motivated by self-empowerment.
The term 'attractive' itself implies there's at least two entities involved, being compelled to move towards each other by some force or other.
i.e, you can't be 'attractive' unless there's something towards which the attraction is directed, no? So it feels good to be 'attractive,' but you can't judge what is or is not attractive in the vacuum of your own singular mind.
Evolution doesn't provide us the chain of reasoning, we have to infer what logics of fitness and survival brought us here, but the co-evolution of the sexes means almost any behavioral feature of one sex is inherently determined by millennia of interactions with the other, with several feedback loops involved as well.
faceh
3hr ago
I think the main feature male friends can't provide is being the confidant of deep secrets and more purely emotional revelations from the inner reaches of your psyche. Intimacy, as you say.
For that, you want a partner that has some buy-in and is committed to sticking around for the long term and thus has a greater familiarity with your personal foibles and hangups and struggles, and has accepted you 'in spite' of those. i.e. they make you comfortable enough to be open.
So in that case yeah, you'd want somebody who is emotionally mature and a decent communicator, which would be rarer to find among 18-20 year olds.
But it also doesn't take too much experience to just let someone put their head in your lap and talk about their inner world while providing the occasional constructive response or affirmation, and remember enough of the details that they can build on it as you go.
faceh
4hr ago
I've often heard an opinionoid about the idea of older guys dating 18 year olds that goes something like "there's nothing we can talk about after fucking", and while lately it does look like sour grapes/Havel's groceryism when it comes from older guys, there might be something to it.
The honest but misogynistic-sounding answer is "well that's why I have male friends, after all." Indeed, a guy who bags an stunning 18-22 year old will probably immediately text his best buds "BROOOOOOO!" since, you know, that itself is something worth crowing about for many men.
And hell, with most one-night-stands among people similar in age... what are you going to talk about, if the whole intention is not to see one another again?
Anyhow, not to derail, but it does seem best to model most complaints in this vein as intrasexual competition all the way down.
That's what I'm saying.
Eons of generations have gone into each facet of the female psyche. Their biological imperative is, to a large degree, to appeal to men's sexual desires. Even if its not literally about sex, that's where most of this is coming from.
Their own psychology is innately, inextricably entangled with making themselves appealing to the male brain. "Men like me if I'm pretty, therefore being pretty is good, therefore I feel good when I'm pretty."
So trying to rewrite it to seem like "I just like making my mouth look soft and kissable and pumping up my cleavage for prominent display and wearing painted on leggings that emphasize my rump because I feel good when I dress up this way completely independent of how any man might perceive it" is a tad farcical.
No woman puts in that much effort to make herself feel good and then chooses to just lounge around the house rather than going out in hopes of snagging some actual attention. And rightly so.
(and no, I ain't acting like men's fashion doesn't follow similar principles)
faceh
4hr ago
Yeah. Not to get into the weeds of the evolutionary biology of it, but
"The way I dress/makeup is solely to feel good about myself! That it happens to 90% coincide with what makes men lust after me is completely irrelevant, its not about men's desires!" is the purest cope imaginable.
I've now seen it countless times, women who abjectly refuse to leave the house without putting together a cute outfit and doing at least minimal makeup. And when pressed (politely) its usually waved off as a matter of self-confidence or personal preference, and I just want to whisper "from whence does the preference come? Self-confident in whose eyes?"
Going to the gym, going to the store, going to grab takeout Chinese food, can't risk you might be seen in a state that might cause a man to overlook you. Especially if other women might put in 10% more effort than you and win the status game.
faceh
5hr ago
she should be satisfied with her own personhood without having to surgically alter herself in order to please men. The broader point has been a feminist theme for centuries.
Perhaps.
But I've also been listening to rhetoric along the lines of "My body, my choice," "We look pretty for ourselves, not for men", and "my outfit is not an excuse" which all go towards that idea that women can dress up as sexy as they want and make whatever changes they feel like to themselves and are all but immune from judgment for it, for over a decade now.
Hence they can get trashy (in my eyes) tattoos everywhere, as many piercings as they like, they can go with fake boobs, butt, and lips, and all of this is just a celebration of their femininity or whatever.
Its a bit discordant for feminism to actively police its own side for doing things that incidentally appeal to the men in their lives, when there's no evidence that it was the result of coercion but rather her own desires... even if those desires were executed with the male gaze in mind.
faceh
10hr ago
No, I'm agreeing with you.
I'm just realizing that They're trying to create content that can compete in the Tiktok environment.
faceh
22hr ago
Haha we had an interesting discussion on this two years back., so before LLMs were ubiquitous.
The fishing tournament example stuck in my mind enough that I still remember it from time to time as an example of something that's just absurd to be dishonest about, but they do it anyway.
I might broaden it to it just being an epidemic of demolished social norms and declining efficacy of shame as a behavioral deterrent. Being utterly unrepentant and impervious to most social shaming is in fact an adaptive trait in the current social environment.
I hesitate to say a rise in sociopathy, but perhaps now there's a default assumption that all the rules are just there to hobble you and if you choose to follow them whilst everyone else is 'defecting' you're just a sucker, where the only thing that's really 'wrong' is getting caught. Or, perhaps, getting caught isn't the problem, if you can avoid punishment it'll all still be worth it.
Zoomers have been raised in an environment where every aspect of their performance and social status is tracked, by default. Using EVERY SINGLE advantage, licit or illicit, that you can possibly find and implement is presumably seen as necessary to remaining competitive.
My generalized prognosis is that we're in the throes of transitioning to a low trust society
Yeah, it isn't lost on me that this is exactly what happens to virtually ANY product that obtains market dominance, and stops having to care about the original, 'hardcore' fans and thus can try to lower the quality of the product to increase profit margins.
There seem to be a confluence of factors going in:
- The mainstream audience can't really tell a 'good' fight apart from one that is, shall we say, merely 'entertaining.' Hence they watch Jake Paul boxing matches.
- Similarly, they'll back a relatively mediocre (for the elite level) fighter over a technically brilliant, masterful one if the mediocre one has charisma and good PR. Hence (some) people root for Jake Paul.
- If you truly stack a division with talent, then you'd expect parity in skill so there'd rarely ever be a 'breakout' star that people can rally behind. Every champion would lose in short order.
- So there's incentive to optimize for giving one charismatic guy with decent skill just enough of an edge that he can run his division for a while and attain some glory, then lose to the next upstart who will occupy his spot.
- But don't give the guy so much of an edge that he is handily crushing fights so it looks rigged.
- And definitely don't let him get so successful and popular that he can start trying to dictate terms to the league itself.
- Keep the pay high enough to incentivize new talent to jump in, but low enough that they're 'stuck' once they're in.
- Also do try to reward guys who do entertaining stuff in the fights. This is what the BMF belt is about, no?
So you're constantly adjusting the equilibrium of each division to make them look competitive but get someone who can stand out on top, and give your guys reasons to be entertaining and go over the top but still maintain the integrity of the skill involved.
If I'm accurate, you can see how they'd be taking pages from the Professional Wrestling playbook, except they can't outright script storylines and hand-pick a fighter's career, and instead you have to try and wrangle things with a series of incentives and nudges and creative publicity and hopes and prayers.
Long story short, UFC is modern day Gladiatorial combat, without the lions and without the executions. Entertain the proles and plebians enough to get their money. Put on a show. But to maintain the reputation as a legitimate fighting league (and to be clear, I'm not saying they're illegitimate) the sport has to be governed by stringent rules and have reliable rankings and keep things to a certain standard, so they can't go all in on spectacle and entertainment.
So Dana has them partnered with WWE, and buys into stuff like Powerslap or more recently UFC BJJ so the casual viewer can get entertained without having to know the ins and outs of a fairly complex sport.
And maybe the goal now is to just have the UFC as the 'flagship' product but use it mainly to attract in the wider viewership who can then be siphoned to a more controlled, profitable product that they can just mindlessly watch without the investment of a hardcore fan.
Holy cow, I just now realized how Powerslap is directly optimized to be fed to viewers in short-form videos so they can be part of your average normies' slop-scrolling experience.
faceh
2d ago
That right there is the time I think the Husbands should be willing to sacrifice their libido on the altar of fertility.
If she carries your kid for 9 months and is now willing to commit to raising it with you, then you can either abstain for a few more months, or do self help for a while.
But yeah, the addition of kids leads to a lot of biological, economic, and just pure scheduling issues, and the guy's desires probably don't reduce at all, so somebody is likely going to compromise.
faceh
2d ago
Yeah, I'm sort of gesturing at the absurdity that comes with these busybodies trying to enforce rules heavily, when the only way they can really make punishments stick is to literally have the cops show up and arrest them.
That is, if the troublemaker doesn't abide by the busybody's authoritah.
And getting arrested because you wouldn't stop running in the pool area or did too much horseplay is just a bit absurd.
faceh
2d ago
Good on ya for doing some math.
I haven't looked to see if there's any reliable research, I'm just kind of going off the general odds that the more kids you have, the higher chances that at least one of 'em will be a screwup.
faceh
2d ago
So what happens if someone shows up at the pool after a ban?
I'm just curious if there's a big burly guy that prevents these people from coming in, or you just call the cops and trespass them like most establishments.
Or maybe I'm envisioning this wrong and even the troublemakers are wiling to abide by punishment decisions, which doesn't explain why they break the rules so much in the first place.
faceh
2d ago
Yeah. Need to be exhibition rounds in UFC events that are just there to be a spectacle, not everything has to be completely serious.
faceh
2d ago
Seconding this.
And if you have a decent amount of training in some of the disciplines on display, you can actually sort of comprehend what's going on in that tangle of appendages, and understand why landing that particular spinning kick-into-right-cross combo took a lot of skill to unleash, even if it didn't land.
faceh
3d ago
So how DO you punish rulebreakers?
And more to the point, if the rulebreakers just ignore the punishment what's the ultimately sanction/enforcement mechanism?
faceh
3d ago
I think my main point is that Trump, for all his weirdness, apparently has pretty decent genes and can't be a particularly bad parent if his kids are all successful in their own right and are still on good terms with him.
Someone else pointed out Elon's kids as a comparison and, yeah.
faceh
3d ago
That'd be interesting. Recently watched a video that shows that Jiu Jitsu loses utility when you're not on soft/forgiving ground.
If it was 2 v. 2 I'd prefer some kind of tag-team format, since actual two v. twos inevitably turn into 1 v. 2s, which always end badly for the one.
They seem to be in a decent spot right now balancing overall safety for competitors while still allowing some bloodsport, and obviously it is in nobody's interest for competitors to get devastatingly hurt on the regular. It runs counter to their strategy of getting mainstream appeal, but I'd say they could afford to do fewer large events per year and focus more on really stacking the big ones up.
faceh
3d ago
Yeah.
Although I think I'd couch it as "Wait until you're actually committed to each other in truly demonstrable ways, OR wait until marriage."
There was some real idiocy in thinking we could separate out the emotional components of sex from the act itself.
faceh
3d ago
That song is unironically a banger if all you want is a party jam. Should pair well with Ye's recent hit single "Heil Hitler," although the vibes are very different.
Mma is very stale, boring and not worth watching now.
then
As a long time fan, I hope you folks tune in, buy, pirate, watch it at a bar, whatever.
Getting some mixed messages man.
Anyhow, I will be watching it at a bar with a bunch of guy friends, as much an excuse to be social as anything.
Have to agree with the general assessment of UFC logic. At best, I'm ambivalent on Dana White, he's clearly done a lot to get the sport mainstreamed but so many of his basic tactical decisions with regard to the business are hare-brained from my perspective. The commentary on the fights tends to be ass, the officiating has been questionable (a bit better of late?), they won't adopt new gloves to prevent eye pokes, and it is really unclear if they want to market as a brand of semi-family-friendly entertainment (they're on ESPN now, after all) or keep things 'gritty' and amp the bro-ish, violent and unapologetically masculine nature of it. They still have Octagon girls in skimpy outfits, the fighters curse regularly in ring interviews, most of their sponsors are likewise still aimed at the Titties 'n' Beer crowd.
Like, you ask me, the entire point of UFC is to set up the most interesting fights/matchups possible and encourage the top contenders to fight as hard as possible for a win, and generally avoid safe, riskless approaches. Big purses and other monetary incentives are a good method. Bring in the best talent from across the globe and get them to give their best performance.
Yet they sideline or outright oust their most effective, driven fighters half the time. Thinking specifically of Mighty Mouse and Ngannou.
Maybe there is some logic to mitigating the chances of a fighter reaching superstar status, once they're popular and wealthy enough they tend to dictate their own terms on when/if they fight. Like McGregor. If the UFC can keep them on a tighter leash then in theory that means they can arrange and actually deliver good matchups consistently, if the talent is there.
But also the actual fighting is getting to a point where the 'optimal' style is somewhat predetermined. Unless you're a talented kickbox-wrestle-jitsu practitioner, you're going to get stomped by someone who is more well rounded than you, no matter how good you are at your particular niche. Maybe that's how it should be, but its just a fact now that "MMA" is not literally "mixed martial arts" but really it is a style unto itself, it isn't really about pitting different styles against each other anymore.
I wonder if they should start introducing different obstacles to the octagon, or adding in strange conditions. "In round 1 they're covered in cooking grease. In round 2 they'll have an eyepatch over one eye. In round 3, their legs will be tied together with a two foot rope to limit movement and kicks. Round 4, they fight while each gripping a Bandana as hard as they can.
Or just go full Super Smash Bros. and let them opt to have Tasers, baseball bats, and small incendiary devices dropped into the octagon if a fight goes past 3 rounds. Or is that WWE's shtick?
I kid, but if you want to break out of the current local maxima for the current dominant fighting styles, you will have to adjust the parameters somewhere to force new optimizations.
It seems underappreciated that regardless of how much or how little he was actually involved in raising them, every single one of Trump's kids have seemingly turned out well-adjusted (especially controlling for being raised with absurd wealth), irrespective of their birth mother.
Often enough major politicians' or business magnates' children can turn into embarrassing thorns in their side, maybe going to the press with stories of neglect or outright abuse, of being two-faced and dishonest. Or just being badly behaved and unworthy to fill their parents' shoes. (I'm constantly reminded of Tom Hanks' son Chet as a reminder for how far the apple can fall.)
Somehow he got five kids to adulthood (Barron's got a ways to go but just look at the guy) and no major blowouts, four of the five with kids of their own now.
The first couple steps to having any kind of Dynasty is raising your kids right and making sure they go on to expand the brood themselves so you have a diverse portfolio of possible heirs (tongue in cheek). It'd be worth trying to figure out what the Trumpian secret sauce is.
I mean, no accounting fully for taste. Lower back tattoos had their moment, those hair hump things, Jeggings. None of which did anything for me, my thing was pleated skirts. I assume there are guys who did get into mom jeans and might enjoy septum piercings.
Hence my point elsewhere that I rarely see women doing fashion trends that are completely repellent to men as a class, outside of direct political statements.
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