The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
How I can I be less bothered ad hominem attacks by randos online? I recently was pushing back against some seed-oil sophistry on substack (not even advocating for no-meat/veganism like you might assume, there isn't actually good evidence that vegan/vegetarian is better than the mediterranean diet), and some dude told me my profile picture looked like that of a prematurely aged teenager (for reference, here is the picture). I know this is bait because most of the time seed-oil sophists don't have any real arguments, but I couldn't prevent it from really bothering me. I've had similar experiences with non-appearance comments about intelligence, personal character, etc. and they all bother me to some extent. In real life this isn't really an issue because it's faux pas to make these kinds of comments (or at least has been since I graduated high school). Maybe a sign of some underlying insecurities I need to work through, or that I need to get a bit more sleep. Thoughts the motte?
Do you meditate? Personally, it helps me to discard ad hominems as I know they are incorrect. Developing meta-cognition helps you observe yourself getting hurt easier, so you can then move past it faster.
I have tried multiple times to get into the habit, but I have never been consistent or really seen gains or benefits. Something that I've thought about restarting, so maybe this is the time.
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I know it's a separate thing from what you're talking about, but you're a normal looking guy. Maybe a little crazy eyes? ;)
One thing I love about online ad-hominems is that they're just... inaccurate. Someone is stabbing completely blindly. Even here, my most controversial post basically had multiple users calling me a horrible person. It's Riddikulus. I know a lot about myself, and have compiled enough secondary evidence to support both the good and the bad. Just have to own the latter.
You can never eliminate the pain from a knife in the dark, but laughing at the absurdity of it all is a good protection mechanism IMO.
Thanks man for the sanity check. I know I'm fit and I know I don't look like an old man at the ripe age of checks watch 27.
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I think an issue here is that you don't have good picture of who is insulting you. Would you react negatively if some mentally unstable loser or child (which they most likely are) insulted you? No, you'd laugh.
It's very easy to imagine that one's online interlocutors are reasonable adult people but unless you're talking to them in some apolitical hobby community or something they most likely aren't. You're upset because you subconsciously feel like a regular person attacked you for no reason, which is a healthy and normal response to such a thing, but you weren't attacked by a regular person. Most people are online but most people aren't commenting.
Yup I think that's a big part of it! I should know better about spaces like the one I got burned in (alt right biohacking is not exactly an intellectually open environment).
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Psychological pain is like physical pain. You have to use willpower to push past it until it has happened so many times that your psychological nerves are dead and it no longer hurts.
But then you will either appear to be dead inside, or you will just be dead inside.
The way I do it is to think of it sort of like spheres of influence. You currently see the situation as that dude attacked your avatar and you felt hurt, but that's not actually the situation. The actual situation is that you are sitting at your computer or on your phone and you read a comment and the way you interpreted that comment hurt. Yes you interpreted the comment the way it was meant, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that all of it took place within your own head - influenced by others, but unaffected because only you have any impact on your thoughts. And when you read that comment, inside your brain you know that it is bait, and more importantly you know you are right, that's why you argued in the first place. That might change in the future, but right now you know your argument is correct, and the fact he replied with an ad hom is further evidence that you are right. So who cares what that idiot thinks? He doesn't live inside your head, you do. Brush that dirt off your shoulder.
Like training physical pain tolerance it will still hurt, until it doesn't. And it won't work all the time regardless, and if you are betrayed or attacked out of nowhere it can fail. But that method definitely helps even if you aren't planning on becoming dead inside.
I think this is actually the crux of the issue -- I can't speak for @thejdizzler, but the bait that hurts the most is the bait that appeals to areas where you're not certain you're right. Like @Southkraut says, ad hominems have their appeal because they bypass any attempt at actually engaging with the issue substantively. The intent is to make someone doubt their judgment, not by criticizing the judgment itself, but by imposing doubt on their ability to make a judgment at all. If that hits at the right place at the right time, it can hit a sore spot, where someone already doubts their ability to make a judgment or even fears that they've made a dangerously wrongheaded one.
Obviously the solution is to find a firm footing for yourself and place some trust in your own judgment, but that can be very hard, especially when the issue in question is as intense, emotionally charged, and hard to answer as the sorts of questions that are summoned by the culture war. That's why you see so many ad hominems that target people's relationship with the opposite sex -- relationship length and satisfaction is cratering, sexual mores seem to change by the hour, and there's a sense that the bottom has fallen out of all the stable norms that allowed people to understand themselves as good and worthy partners. That moral vaccum enables malicious actors to exploit uncertainty by claiming the 100% guaranteed, certified, free range moral high ground, a kind of moral arbitrage in a market that's not sure what the price is. There are whole twitter threads now where progressive and conservative men shout slurs at each other, both implying that their ideologies are so pathetic that they alone make them repulsive to women. ("Incel!" "Cuck!")
I also get the sense that jdizzler is pretty agreeable, and agreeable people find it very hard to stomach people not liking them for reasons totally outside their control because of their drive for social harmony. There are also a lot of people who don't so much argue as think out loud, and if someone's earnest thinking-out-loud prompts an ad hominem, that can be pretty destabilizing, like kicking someone when they're trying to get up.
Agree with what you said here and with your assessment of me. I am very agreeable, which is why I think I struggle with these kinds of attacks so much. I also tend to doubt many of my beliefs about the world. There are only a few (veganism, various Christian moral virtues) that I'm very sure about, which makes it very easy to poke holes in my armor.
I'm glad it resonated!
If you're the sort of person who wears your heart on your sleeve (as I am), then it can be very easy and tempting to pour yourself out in the environments you find yourself, like the internet. That can be incredibly useful, and powerful, and there have been times when exposing some of my most intense concerns to internet discussion has made my life better. But there have also been many times where it's made it worse.
I always like to remember the parable of Jesus where he says "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." If your treasure is in internet respect, then internet disrespect will be like wounds to the heart. And the more you invest yourself in internet discussions, the more of yourself you share, the more you're putting your treasure there.
While sometimes I enjoy internet discussions and even arguments, I've come to realize they're incredibly limited, and need to be entered into and continued carefully. I've started and chosen not to post more posts than I've ever published, because I realized the post would be fruitless, or lead to unnecessary dispute, or was excessively disagreeable, or simply would expose a vulnerability that shouldn't be exposed to the internet.
I think older nettizens find it easy to create a barrier between the internet and real life, understanding the boundaries appropriate to both. In particular, the old-school attitude of the net (which the motte participates in in some ways) was always that disagreeableness was inevitable and everything was under debate rules.
And under that framework, you shouldn't expose a weakness in your worldview any more than your defense attorney should make an argument for the prosecution. In part this represented the initial population of the internet -- male, educated, systems-oriented, academic. And in part it represents the reality that the internet is simply a cacophony of strangers. I don't know you. You don't know me. We have no relationship, no ties, I could insult you and swear death and devastation on you, and unless I crossed a legal boundary so severely that it got the real police involved, this would have no impact at all on my life outside of the net. I might get banned, but what is a ban? Nothing.
I'm not sure how old you are. I'm fairly young. Young enough that the internet has been real life for about as long as I've been active on it. But old enough to find online dating new-fangled, fr fr. (Did I use that correctly?) I think younger generations are having to re-learn the wisdom that the net is volatile and operates under debate rules. It's an important lesson. And like the law -- anything you say can and will be used against you, and the consequences for the misuse of that power are minimal.
Like everything, the internet is about risk vs reward. That's different for everyone. But hopefully, from the discomfort of seeing just how freely personal attacks flow on the internet, you can help yourself judge where the risk-benefit line stands for you. It obviously varies by context. But my personal view is that the places where discussing important aspects of your worldview, especially ones you're not sure about, has benefit outweighing risk is almost 0. But that's for you to decide. And I wish the best for you in deciding it.
I don’t think this is right. If anything I would say it’s important to expose your weaknesses. Partly as a show of good faith, and partly to find out (or show you know) where they are.
Part of the point of chatting in the Motte is so strangers can tell you, “I get that you believe A -> B -> C” but you can’t actually back up the first half of that”. Doesn’t mean you have to stop believing it, but you should be aware going forward that it’s an axiom not a strong inference or fact.
To put it another way, I think arguing on the motte is meant to be like sparring rather than like battle, and sparring won’t help you improve if you fight in a defensive manner, never over-extend, and refuse to be open.
EDIT: you were talking about the internet not the Motte. There’s one of my vulnerabilities for you - I’m a natural speed reader and I sometimes miss detail. The point is still valid I think but yes, don’t throw pearls before swine.
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That example works for me because I understand the underlying principle then - only you live inside your brain - but it absolutely works, I wouldn't be able to hang out on the motte if it didn't, because despite having no trouble on chans and lolcow farms, opinions on the motte hurt more because they matter to me. And on the motte the labels and attacks that hurt me aren't even meant as attacks it seems, or at any rate are never insulting enough to regular people to merit any mod action.
If an ad hominem feels accurate, step back a little and reassess - @urquan says we see many ad hom attacks based on success with the opposite sex allowing malicious actors to exploit a vaccum, and he's absolutely right, but it's not just pure maliciousness motivating them, it is also deep insecurity. (insult threads blur the line though, not everyone engaged is serious). You don't need to aggressively attack others when you are happy with yourself.
It all circles back to only you live in your head though. You can't be sure your attacker did it out of insecurity, but inside your head that makes as much sense as anything else. If it doesn't, find something else. What good are rationalisations if you can't use them to get out of a funk?
One thing that really upsets me (and I really hope me telling you this doesn't backfire on me, although that is what I expect) is when people use schizo or schizophrenic to mean violently insane or stupid. It used to make me so angry when people did it that I would burn with rage, because it affects me personally. But nothing ever happened if I reported it and me slinging a bunch of insults at the person who said it didn't do much except make people dislike me. But then I remembered I already had the answer, I'd had it for decades, since the days when I would get the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis - the only person who lives inside your head is you. Now when someone uses schizophrenic insultingly, or when one of our wealthier members casually insinuates something despicable about the working class I can respond in good humour.
The fact that you doubt your beliefs is a cool aspect of your personality you should be proud of, and it's probably looking like the biggest stumbling block for this method to work, but as a recovered schizophrenic I doubt my beliefs more than anyone. But beliefs inside your own head, beliefs with no outward facing elements about fleeting interactions with strangers, those you don't need to doubt, because they fundamentally don't matter. That's probably the one good thing about schizophrenia, the way it helps you delineate the difference between internal thoughts and thoughts that interact with reality, and see how your core thoughts remain distinctly internal at all times. But as I said, I have been using this technique for decades, schizophrenia is not a prerequisite.
You can prove it to yourself actually, by engaging in a bit of light trolling. Next time someone throws an ad hominem at you (I can't see the picture you linked or I would try to give you a better example) take what they said and instead of dismissing it amplify it. They say "you look like an incel" you say "and I fuck like one too". They call you a manlet you say "yeah my mum smoked when she was pregnant because she's fucking cool as shit." Or more universally, they say something about your appearance and you reply "yea that's true but my grandma says my dick makes up for it."
The only people you will be insulting will be yourself and your own family, and yet it almost always defuses the situation entirely, because you immediately demonstrate supremacy over your own mind.
I know I'm not very good at explaining myself, so if you have any questions I am happy to answer them. Or if you want to give it a go and someone insults you and you don't know how to handle it shoot me a pm and I can give you a new perspective on it.
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I'd try to remind myself that someone resorting to ad hominem has lost the argument. There's little point in pointing this out to them as it will likely result in more ad hominem, but to neutral parties, the one resorting to insults isn't the one that is credible.
That's not necessarily true. People aren't rational. If the insult is well-done, or the insulted party is disliked from the start, then the insult can have more impact than any argument.
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This is gonna sound like dumb self-help book advice, but I mean it entirely in earnest:
You can't stop it from bothering you. Comments and insults like that carry a certain amount of pain that is unavoidable. You don't actually have that much control over how you react to stimuli on a fundamental level; it would be like asking how you can make it not hurt when a needle stabs you. And no, this isn't a "you can't change how you feel but you can change your reaction to it" either, because that's actually still just trying to cheat yourself out of the original problem; the hope for some people is that if you "change your reaction" enough it'll stop hurting. But there's actually no way out. It'll just always hurt and that's it.
What you can do is change your beliefs about the situation, and stop viewing the pain as a bad thing or as something to be overcome. Because right now you're giving yourself two problems: there's the original pain, and the meta-belief that you're doing something wrong because you haven't found a way to overcome the pain yet. You can ditch the meta-belief and get rid of that problem, leaving you with only the one original problem, which is an improvement.
So the next time someone insults you, you'll still feel bothered. But at least you won't have to make it any worse than it already is.
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Its funny the choices are all cheap AliExpress tier crap. No bad dragon horse cocks, nothing by SquarePegToys. Pure disappointment.
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This is another one of those things I wish I could send a screenshot back in time.
Their recommendations are pretty bad, btw.
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I wish this were more surprising to me. One of the weirdest things about reddit (when I used to frequent that site many times daily) was the seemingly ubiquitous acceptance as completely normal the enjoyment of what was called, to everyone's apparent satisfaction, "butt stuff." Now given that the male prostate has nerve endings and thus stimulation of the perineum can result in arousal, I suppose ramming objects into one's anus is, in the list of degenerate behaviors, probably not the most incomprehensible. But you'd also have girls (on reddit you never know if every single thing is a lie, mind you) discussing how they would wear something called "butt plugs." To say nothing of anal beads (I think "butt beads" would be more catchy). And whatever else those are in the illustrations for that list, which I did not read.
This forum is generally much younger than I am and probably I sound quaint or naïve or similar. I do not understand the pull (or push) of ass play.
Edit: I do not know why I wrote "male prostate" instead of just "prostate."
The pleasure is primarily psychological. The sensation itself doesn't have to be directly pleasurable, so no prostate required.
Why does it give psychological pleasure?
Variously:
A heightened sense of vulnerability and helplessness
Turning yourself into an instrument of someone else’s pleasure
Indulging in a certain sense of “interiority”: “pleasure is an affair for me, it’s complex, secret, hidden, and thereby more scarce and therefore more valuable”
etc etc.
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See /r/slatestarcodex discussion of prostate play. I think it's almost certainly the case that all men can enjoy this significantly, with a little learning curve, but do find the extent of e.g. that post's claims surprising.
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Just stimulation of a different sort, I guess? I don't understand why rimming/being rimmed would be appealing at all outside of dom/sub dynamics but it also appears too often to just be coincidence.
I would expect this to be a preference somewhat affected by porn as well simply because the concept of anal is obvious to basically everyone, but normal enough in porn that it doesn't seem completely absurd. As far as practical matters go it's more difficult, and these things are a more limited version of that. Of course the usual suspects blow that out of proportion and complain that "girls are being asked for anal as soon as the third date", but the whores left the barn on that matter 60 years ago.
There's a reason prostate exams are a meme, and it's an orgasm modifier for when you get bored/want variety (intensity can come from novelty). I don't know what the equivalent is for women, if there is one, due to the inherent lack of that part, though there are probably a few things you could do in that case if you fill both holes (I don't believe reach-arounds are uniquely a male/male thing).
Grip 'em and rip 'em, like you're pull-starting an old lawnmower; I'm told that really gets the motor running [SFW]. In all seriousness, the reason you'd use that is because pushing things in there is actually rather painful, so being able to break that up rather than continually insert an approximation of a cylinder is important mostly while going in. (There's only one Kirk Johnson, you know.) That's also why the plugs are shaped the way they are- it's generally uncomfortable to continually have that part stretched that far, which is why they taper off at the base then flare out again (so you can grab it for extraction).
As far as constantly talking about it... it's Reddit, what do you expect. It's not like 4chan where, while you could always do this, you'll also get 70 replies calling you and everyone else a fag for posting about it.
[cw: probably implied tmi]
In straight porn, it's much more likely to be dom/sub or degradation stuff, especially straight not-pegging stuff, but that sells it a bit short. For the gays, a lot of it's psychological for non-dom/sub reasons, either a way to formalize preparing to top/ready to be topped, or as part of other play to help loosen someone up.
That said, there are some physical bennies, including many that aren't readily achievable in other ways. It's great for getting someone more in the mood before starting to stretch them out, for example. For the rimmer, there are some sensory benefits (if the rimmee is scrupulously clean; there's reason I joke about it being the only good arg for dental dams), but like eating someone out in other forms, it's very much about what you bring to it: if you're really focused on how your partner's reacting it can be a fun time from watching that. For dealing with women, you want to be a lot gentler and a lot more certain that everyone's on the same page, but it's a great option for people who like the sensation of hotdogging but don't like insertion there proper.
There's a lot of prep work involved, and it's definitely not for everyone, but it can be worth it.
It can, but there's some pretty serious practical differences long after any novelty's gotten the chance to wear off. Not all those differences are for the better -- they're a lot less forceful, so to speak, sometimes to the point of being minimally 'productive' -- but the difference in refractory period is measurable.
There are also sex toys that focus on backdoor and clitoral play, as well as some that are intended for the clit, front, and back. All are generally a not-favoured realm for more reputable companies, though, given the risks of cross-contamination.
That's, uh... not the only use case or argument for the design. Pressure on both the prostate and the rim is a significant part of the point (both in and out), and being able to have regular increases and decreases in that pressure can be beneficial. Beads are also built so that they can physical fit in lengths that would otherwise not be practical, even compared to similarly slim semi-rigid toys.
Partly, but also so that they can fit in and stay at a consistent depth, rather than getting pushed out. The flare, conversely, is more important to prevent anything from getting sucked up there.
There are toys designed for large and continuous insertions. Some of that's size queens, but with the right textures and reasonable sizes they can work out for normal butt people -- they're not as good for prostate play, but a lot easier to work with if you're focused more on the actual motion going in and out.
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I have likewise always found it mystifying, but the volume of interest is undeniable.
It’s just shock humour I assume for at least half the talk online
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I'm thinking about getting a motorbike. As far as safety goes how much of the danger is due to the nature of mode of transport itself and how much is due to people being reckless?
Generally the death per passenger mile is about 28x, if you correct for gender demographics the rate drops to 18x. If we assume you'd be driving alone either way correcting for passenger miles brings it to 12x. The average driver in the US loses 0.33 years of life from fatal car accidents, so a reasonable ballpark estimate would be 4 years of life lost swapping that for a motorcycle.
Some other motorcycle fatality stats that are probably partially corrected for with the gender control: 66% had measurable blood alcohol concentration (vs 37% for cars) 36% the driver is not licensed to drive a motorcycle (vs 9% for cars) 47% involve no other vehicle (vs 22% for cars)
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With a motorbike, you are moving at car speeds in places designed for cars with a vehicle that provides absolutely none of the protection afforded by a car. No seat belts, no crumple zones, no mass to offset collisions, no frame to protect you from impacts. Your vehicle has worse visibility to other drivers and much worse stability. It is much worse at handling adverse conditions like rain, snow, bad roads or debris.
A lot of the additional danger is pretty clearly due to the mode of transport, and the additional danger is considerable.
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What put me off of ever wanting to ride a motorbike was a shock video posted on 4chan of a man flying over his handlebars and getting impaled on a wrought iron fence. The fence part wasn’t what put me off. It was the part where his genitals are effortlessly shorn off his body by the seat, as though they were made of naught but modeling clay. They then go undignifiably flopping off into the road. Bear in mind, when they talk about the risk of injury, 15 to 25 percent of those injuries are pelvic.
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Naively it's Approximately 30 times more dangerous than a car. But, of course, that's on a per billion miles basis, so figuring about 20k miles per year traveled, it would average a fatality every 230ish years if you only traveled by motorcycle. Assuming you have a 30 year riding career left, if you did all your traveling by motorcycle you'd have a lifetime ~1/8 chance of dying that way.
Now adjust for how many miles you'll actually travel on it. Then adjust for whatever percentage of accidents you think are attributable to recklessness above what you intend to stick to. So if you're only doing 5k miles a year, it becomes a 1/32 chance, and if you figure half of deaths are recklessness you won't demonstrate, then it's 1/64.
All numbers after the initial chart are from Myers Young Associated Statistical Surveys.
/images/17441980858880908.webp
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Even without a motor, cycling is just much more dangerous per mile than being in car for obvious reasons. Make a mistake in a car at 20 MPH and you're in for an annoying morning. Make the same mistake on a bike and your life is in jeopardy. Worse still, it doesn't even have to be your mistake. One of the best things that ever happened to my future self was getting T-boned by someone that ran a stop sign and hit me when I was driving a small car in my early 20s - real lesson in the fact that you can just be minding your own business and have your life changed by some reckless idiot.
On a moto, you can quite often accelerate out of danger. Not so on a bicycle. On the other hand, I got dinged up quite a bit worse from other traffic (as opposed to a terrain/skills mismatch offroad) on the moto than I ever did on the bicycle, and the motorcycle bug doesn't seem to have stuck with me. Still love them both though.
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I rode a motorbike without owning a car for about 10 years.
Basically if you can control yourself (which is a big 'if' for most riders in their 20's) the largest risk comes from inattentive and reckless drivers in other vehicles. Think of the worst driving you've seen in a car where people don't effectively check mirrors, blind spots, or oncoming traffic. Now crank that up 2x or 3x. That's how often you will see people turning into your path from side roads or changing lanes directly into you. Some people train themselves on only noticing car sized objects or larger in their mirrors.
You need reasonable reflexes (or riding experience) to defensively react quick enough to this sort of behaviour. It's probably the main reason I gave up motorcycle riding.
If you do get a bike, remember to wear All The Gear, All The Time (ATGATT).
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