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Notes -
Sorry for the 100th "Feminism is corrupting the youth" post on this website, but this short article was really something
https://www.elle.com/life-love/a62231356/best-friend-from-polyamory/
Written by a woman to extol the value of female friendship as better than the fickle and emotionally damaging heterosexual relationships to which so many of us are accustomed.
The article begins deftly (or dishonestly, depending on your disposition) with the author drizzling her thoughts and emotions onto the page after discovering her man cheating. Only after this framing of hurt emotions does she reveal that they were in an open relationship.
She reveals that after spending her 20s working in journalism she wanted to move to South America to find herself or achieve inner peace. He wanted to stay in the USA (presumably to avoid becoming a professional hobo, more on that later). As a compromise (?) he suggested they open their relationship. She agrees seemingly without objection, but adds the caveat that they share a don't ask don't tell policy.
The framing doesn't even have the sensible presentation of "I didn't want to be in an open relationship, but I was afraid of losing him and he forced me" or something, she is even convinced by progressive literature.
The author further reveals not raising concerns to her boyfriend, but instead the depths of her anxiety and worry. She begins online stalking him (Obsessing might be more appropriate), checking his social media profiles for any change, and eventually finds him interacting and posting photos with the "other woman" Ari.
There are then some rah-rah girl power moments touched upon:
She also has a sit down chat with Ari about her now ex boyfriend
It's not laid out, but you can imagine the dialogue where they spend an afternoon talking about how terrible he was, and the psycic toll he inflicted upon the author. The phrasing “totally cool with everything” is obviously meant to remind a reader of the shitty boyfriend they had that would give half truths and lie about these types of things. However in this situation he is being truthful, as far as he knew they were in a working open relationship. I don't want to paint with too wide a brush, but it's shocking how people allow themselves to become caricatures. As far as I can tell she is fitting the crazy ex girlfriend to a tee. She was upset with their arrangement, didn't tell him about the problems she had, and then would tell anyone who will listen how about how he cheated infront of her or something, and holds him responsible for not reading her mind. From his perspective it's unlikely he did anything wrong (Deciding to open up your relationship could reasonably fit here in and of itself, but it's very likely that he and his entire social circle consider that action acceptable or even laudable), and he's presented as an abuser or liar.
The most obvious irony here is how she wrote an entire article to tell us about how the girl friendship is more meaningful than her old boyfriend and her's, but it's clear to anyone who read it that she had much more thought and feeling for Him than for Her. Even the ending misses the point:
This gets at the heart of the point I'm trying to make. The progressive argument here is one where a person enterered into a bad situation entirely of their own choosing, has deluded themselves about how they really feel, and is now lashing out at the closest "Fucking White Male." Even the pictures the editor chose oozes this belief, kitschy 1930s and 1940s domestic life shots that are often used to hint at a rebellious or sinister undertones for the women involved, is entirely contrived. The last sentence has this attempted-catharsis of silencing the man and letting the women speak (Louder for those in the back queen), but in this entire article we don't get anything from his viewpoint except for 1 sentence in scare quotes. The person calling JD Vance weird for being married with kids and a steady job is deeply unhappy, anxious, contradictory, and packed into a 13 person house in San Fransisco while they hop from job to continent to relationship. They believe that this is ideal and empowering, and something the man has done in this situation has created the ills in their life.
Nothing wrong with being the 100th post on a subject. On the other hand,
It looks like you read a trashy article and then attached your own impression of the author’s politics. Please don’t leave it at that next time.
I will sound like a broken record, but a low-effort top post (and this isn't one!) should be fine as long as it sparks interesting discussion. Exempli gratia.
There is a genuine conflict of interest here between moderators and users of the forum. It is much easier to mod a forum like The Schism that has very low post volume but makes up for it(?) in post quality. This is what the current policy is pushing us towards and I'd posit it's one of the major reasons the weekly thread comment count is down to what? a thousand?
Bring back the link repository!
Correct—this isn’t a low-effort top post. There was clearly effort put into adding commentary, and I actually think it’s rather well-written.
It is also a pure expression of “look what those people did!”
Effort is not enough. There is a separate failure mode where a low-charity top post sparks uninteresting discussion. On Reddit, this was called a circlejerk. I gave the OP a mild warning in hopes of avoiding our own little slice of hivemind.
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