site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18272 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My ex was not the most frugal person.

Racked up student debt paying OUT-OF-STATE TUITION for reasons that read to me as asinine.

But at least it was a decent major. She had a tendency to just assume if you pay a lot for something it must be the best/high quality. Also had a tendency to throw out old things and buy new when something broke. Which, uhhhhh in hindsight was probably a warning sign.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

This winnows out a LOT of the field very early. I was dating a girl the last few months who apparently liked to select fancy restaurants just to see if I'd blink at paying the bill. At least, that's the game as I interpreted it. She would also cook for me so I was curious to see where things went. A few hundred dollars later and I can't even get a text back now.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

Good luck with that. Your best option is to look among new immigrants, preferably from some Asian country, modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.

Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"

The age of bourgeoisie counting every penny is over, the age of aristocracy is back.

modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.

Sadly true. There was some significant reee-ing in the lastest doordash discourse on twitter (which kicked off with some guy saying you shouldn't be eating lunch out every day when you're making 70k in the US) with too many taking the position that taking a lunch to work was living worse than a medieval peasant.

I find the guy's point regarding eating out to be so trivially correct as to be unobjectionable, which proves I'm old and out of touch.

I mean, it is Twitter. Bringing lunch to work is extremely normal in the USA.

too many taking the position that taking a lunch to work was living worse than a medieval peasant.

These people, of course, were overwhelmingly self identifying as left, with bios full of symbols of correct current year, month and day causes.

Black lives matter! Trans women are women! Free Palestine! Cooking your own food is ableist, Doordash is human right!

But America is still land of opportunity, just follow teachings of the great guru Shagbark the Hobo King, and you too can find true frugal wife happy to live in shack and eat roadkill.

True trad Christian one, ofc, the atheist would want to do ..umm... nasty things to the roadkill, see the other current xitterstorm.

Usual example in "no god no morals, atheists owned!" eternal discourse is rape and murder, the xitter apologists recently upped the ante.

But America is still land of opportunity, just follow teachings of the great guru Shagbark the Hobo King, and you too can find true frugal wife happy to live in shack and eat roadkill.

I enjoy occasionally reading something by Shagbark because he is great at doing just what he did in that tweet: starting with a generally good point (many women are attracted to a man who has a vision of some kind and mission in life) and then taking it in a totally insane direction. "You should live where costs are low... so move to wasteland upstate New York, eat roadkill, and get by on $10k per year!" Etc.

I realized a while back that a lot of women were raised in McMansions with parents who basically paid for everything, from cars to clothes to fancy knick knacks, and of course university education, from the time she could walk.

And inherently, they will expect the same from their spouse. But that's impossible for a normal guy in early-adult stages to procure.

By becoming as wealthy as we have, we've now made it so that the general norm of "you, a dirt poor peon, marry another dirt poor peon, and gradually build your life up to a higher standard" a thing of the past.

Women who came up in prosperity would inherently have to accept a (temporary!) standard of living hit to marry a guy in his early-mid twenties, unless his family is massively wealthy. Women are generally wired to never, EVER accept a loss in status and standing and so this thought is probably vomit-inducing.

And there's now ample evidence that women, when given economic/financial advantages, tend to opt against having families/kids.

Again the solution is to economically boost men, or at least, stop the policies that are economically de-boosting them.

I realized a while back that a lot of women were raised in McMansions with parents who basically paid for everything, from cars to clothes to fancy knick knacks, and of course university education, from the time she could walk.

If only such support ended at HS or college. One occasionally meets a girlboss in their 30s who spends every dime on travel and clothing and eating out because her parents are still providing the apartment, car, and maybe even spending money. And she expects the future husband to be able to provide that level of living. Made for some entertaining first dates.

"Oh, I love Paris. I try to visit twice a year. How often do you travel abroad?"

"I've never left the US. My idea of travel is hiking and camping for 10 days without a shower."

Some Noticing from Capital One supports the online wrongthinker hypothesis that young women are racking up debt and/or are getting subsidized by boyfriends/parents so they can have the rightful FUN they deserve.

In one month, the average single American male consumer spends $4,114 or 85.8% of his income before taxes.

The average single female spends $3,862 in one month or 101% of her income before taxes.

Before taxes!

I can only imagine the spending to income ratio would be even higher for young attractive women, all else equal. Like Daniel Tosh remarked, being an ugly chick is like being a man: you’re going to have to work.

From what I’ve seen of a lot of young women, stuff like make-up, nails, new clothes are non-negotiable monthly expenses like food or rent, in addition to other FUN expenses like restaurants, festivals, and traveling.

Please note that this report conforms to terminology used in source data. In most sources, sex and gender terms are not clearly defined and may be used interchangeably. For example, both “male” and “men” may refer to cis-males or male-born consumers.

Tiresome status: It’s all so.

Before taxes!

Putting aside the female numbers (which confirm my biases and thus are obviously correct), how does that even work for the male numbers? 86% before taxes would still seem to be over 100% once taxes are included.

The average effective tax rate for Americans is in the neighborhood of 14-15%. Unmarried men tend to be younger; young people tend to earn less than older people and unmarried men tend to earn less than married men, which means a lower effective tax rate for unmarried men.

It's also possible Capital One is only referring to the income it "sees," which in such a case, I picture would be after withholding but before taxes like capital gains, interest/dividend income, remaining state taxes.

On the one hand its a natural thing. If the parents are doing really well, making sure their kids are comfortable (and, more directly, making sure their beloved Katie never has to do porn or shack up with a drug dealer) is what they would do as an extension of their established role.

The second/third order effect of "Katie now expects to live in a 5000 square foot house and drive a late-model SUV and will reject anyone who can't offer that" is a little harder to see.

The very SECOND I hear that a woman has left the country on vacation more than once (with the exception of Mexico travel, I guess), I pretty much know my chances have dropped to negligible.

I guess maybe this is another thing where my background influences what I've seen, but as far as I can tell I've never been on a date with a woman who had this kind of lifestyle. Especially the "looking for a man to offer that almost seems like looking not only for a provider who can add meaningfully to the dual household income, but looking for a man who can bankroll an entire lifestyle, and I've genuinely never encountered that. Together we can afford these lifestyle choices is familiar to me; marriage after all has financial advantages. But this is the sort of thing that appears deep into a relationship, not up front.

Is this a lower-middle-class/upper-middle-class split thing? Regional? I've tended to date people who come from modest households.

Regional?

It's a good guess. Trying to date in Northern Virginia, I exclusively encountered women like this. And this was back in the mid to late 00's, doesn't even touch the hellscape that is modern day swiping, instagram and yaslighting. Not one single woman I dated (until I met my future wife) seemed to have any concept of the value of the dollar. Even the morbidly obese ones had notions of how luxurious life would be when they "got their second income" which was a terrifying way of referring to a future husband they hadn't even met yet. One woman, on the first date, threw out as an ice breaker that she'd already picked out a $25,000 ring and any man who deserved her would afford it. I called it at one date with her. She called me utterly baffled and crying that I wasn't interested. I dated a woman for under a year that had racked up hundreds of thousands of debt, with the belief that is what you are supposed to do when you are young to have fun, and then you/your husband pays it off when you get old. I never dated anyone (until I met my future wife) that didn't have thousands in credit card debt in their early to mid 20's. It was buttfucking insane. To say nothing of how little any of them brought to the table.

Now, that's not to say I never met sane, well adjusted women. Just never dating. They were always in a long term relationship with a highschool or college sweetheart. Relationships which despite being rocky at times, everyone is kind of a selfish prick in their 20's, were genuine and sincere and sweet and loving. All their friends always tried to pry them apart with stories of how "toxic" so and so was, and how fun dating was. They often left the friend group and it's extreme neurotic dating habits and expectations to save their relationships. I hope it worked out for them.

They're a small subset really, I ran into them occasionally because I work at a financial institution and you can tell they're feeling you out for if you have one of the seven figure roles. But they're greatly outnumbered by yuppies who have their own careers.

There was a kerfuffle on twitter a while back about a Utah dating show and one of the female participants - people immeadiately lept on her appearance(she looked fine), her voice, the choice of men she had available to her(not realizing that the show itself was setup for a blind audition - neither side saw the other). But she had a list of requirements/preferences/specifications about what she was looking in regards to a parter, which includes such things as ski trips, foreign travel, scuba diving across the world, getting her home setup for themed group parties and the like -

And while you had a number of people gushing about how she had such a spate of cool hobbies and whatnot, not one person seemed to follow my train of thought and go 'Wait a minute, she looks to be in her mid-twenties and most of that are obscenely expensive hobbies with a horrendous amount of time investment! Where the holy hell is she getting both the money and the time to do all this at her age!?'

So... There's atleast one?

(Side note: Skiing doesn't count as expensive for Utah. They have alot of ski resorts.)

And while you had a number of people gushing about how she had such a spate of cool hobbies and whatnot, not one person seemed to follow my train of thought and go 'Wait a minute, she looks to be in her mid-twenties and most of that are obscenely expensive hobbies with a horrendous amount of time investment! Where the holy hell is she getting both the money and the time to do all this at her age!?'

If I recall that clip which went viral, every male contestant was thinking that because nobody picked her. All her quirk chungus hobbies read as so obviously high maintenance that every single man on the show noped out. And you know you fucked up when men desperate enough to go on a dating show nope out.

I guess maybe this is another thing where my background influences what I've seen, but as far as I can tell I've never been on a date with a woman who had this kind of lifestyle.

Well-traveled girlboss who has a family subsidizing her lifestyle: I went on first dates with two. I've worked with another two (I'm a government lawyer, so I'm hardly in a high-earning demographic).

I'd have to ask him for exact numbers, but my brother went on first dates with at least 6 women like this. More than one was very blunt up front that saving for a family was a man's job (and she had saved nothing to that point), and being in a relationship meant he would need to make sure she was kept in the lifestyle she wanted. These were not women from wealthy families, but much of their parents' money seemed to be spent subsidizing their (usually only) daughter.

Just like with trust funders, these "soft" trust funders are more numerous than you might expect.

I think there's women like this out there.

I think they are extremely hard to locate if you don't already know them or their families.

The ones who expect foreign travel are hard to locate? Or the ones who don't?

Ones who expect foreign travel.

I mean, you see them on dating apps a lot, but I think they're just harder to pin down dint of being so traveled.

Not really a big point either way. Lots of women advertise their preference for traveling.

Its slightly rarer that one has been actually well traveled in their youth.

Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"

Marie Antoinette was not responsible for the opulence of Versailles, and probably hated it. Her palace at Petit Trianon is the least blinged-out part of the whole complex.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

Seems reasonable. Though, try not to get a new GF that just has a slightly different set of horrible traits! "This time I'm putting my foot down, arson is a hard no." Nobody's perfect, but as long as you're willing to consider "alone" as a viable option, it really does let you be more selective.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

Yeah, most people would (and should). I've made a lot of bad choices.

This is kind of the problem. I'm familiar with the concept of 'tradeoffs' and accept that. If I somehow land a smoking hot redhead with DD's, I can accept she might be a bit profligate in spending, which I will corral as best I can.

But the women are generally lacking so many of the desirable traits I'd look for that there's not much to trade off against!

Reading you guys makes me realize I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic than I would have credited myself as. Romance is something that happens, dammit, not the synthetic end result of a deliberate, cold-blooded process.

I mean, we don't live in the best or the worst of all worlds. There are some genuinely beautiful, selfless relationships out there. But not everyone gets one. My cynicism applies only to me and my future prospects (or lack thereof).

From "Unspeakable Bargains" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Once upon a time there was a man named Simon who was a successful junior trader at a financial firm in New York City, who was heterosexual and liked conventionally pretty women. Simon used to take attractive women out to swanky restaurants, and fancy theatres, and amusement parks on weekends, and buy them jewelry and clothing; and then they would go back to his place and have fun. One day, Simon decided to stop spending money on women.

Immediately after, women decided to stop spending time on him.

Simon was very depressed by this. "So they never liked me to begin with?" he bemoaned, clutching his hands against the lapels of his $4000 business suit. "They were just stringing me along for my money all along?"

"That's admittedly a possibility," said Noelle, a well-known author who wasn't conventionally attractive and could therefore go to expensive restaurants with Simon without sex entering into it. "But considering the sheer weirdness of what you just tried to get away with, we can't even conclude that much. I don't even know how to describe the exact mistake you're making. Why on Earth did you try that in the first place?"

"Numerous movies and TV shows have told me that if girls really like me, they'll like me for myself rather than my money," explained Simon.

"Honestly I sometimes find it a bit hard to really, deeply understand from a first-person perspective what it's like to make that mistake," said Noelle. "Admittedly, I'm privileged, because I attract people by being a famous author, and therefore I identify strongly with the aspect of myself that I market sexually. Like, anyone who only sleeps with me because I'm the famous author Noelle Smith therefore does like me for myself, as I define 'myself'. So it's hard for me to imagine the existential horror of needing to market oneself sexually using only wealth, physical attractiveness, sexual skill, and other characteristics that ultimately fail to distinguish you from millions of other people. But then I know that there's other famous authors who attract people and that doesn't seem to upset me. For that matter, I know that there's centillions upon centillions of perfectly identical Noelles elsewhere in our spatially infinite universe, and that doesn't upset me. I seem to have lost track of the thread of the conversation, where were we again?"

"I was being sad about the fact that all of those girls turned out to only be attracted to me for my money," said Simon. "Honestly, it wouldn't even disturb me all that much, except for the fact that all the movies and TV shows have told me that this is an inferior quality of love, which means that somebody else is doing better than I am."

"Oh right, that," said Noelle. "Yeah, and I was saying we couldn't even conclude that much, though there is a certain prior probability in play. Look, it'd be one thing if you were poor, but honest, and also extremely handsome. But if you're visibly wearing a $4000 suit and still trying to take the girl to eat at McDonalds, that sends another message entirely. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that at least Wendy, of all the women I was dating, said that she liked me for myself and that the restaurants had nothing to do with it!" declared Simon. "I'm genuinely disturbed that she turned out to be lying!"

"Oh, Wendy? Yeah, her I liked," said Noelle. "Simon, I don't think Wendy was lying. I think she was making a deep-seated error about how her own psychology worked, like, she was having trouble interpreting reality in a way that didn't seem horrible to her, so she slipped sideways into a nearby universe instead. Look, Wendy's model-level beautiful, right? She can date in the big leagues. 'Don't marry for money, hang around rich girls and marry for love,' as the saying goes. Wendy's pretty enough that she can afford to hang around with a hundred people in your rough category of socioeconomic status, and pick out one that she likes. She could still have been attracted to you more than other rich guys, because of the fine details of your personality or something. Like, she found it cute the way you snort in the middle of laughing, or whatever the hell it is you think it's acceptable for women to be attracted to."

"Yeah, but it's not okay that Wendy also cared about the money!" said Simon. "That makes her a horrible person, right? Or at least shallow. A woman with real depth to her wouldn't care about my money at all."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall of the restaurant booth they were in. "You know," she said, "even if we concede that this hypothetical quality would earn a woman 2.3 virtue points, which could in itself be debated, my mind is still going: 'But why would somebody that virtuous need to end up dating somebody poor and unattractive? Shouldn't she be able to score a wealthy boyfriend who's attracted to excessively virtuous women?'"

"I'm starting to wonder if I've gone to the wrong friend for consolation here," said Simon.

"Possibly," said Noelle. "I mean, I'm having trouble imagining a universe whose mating market ends up that far out of equilibrium. Like, I can't believe in the implied alternative to mating markets for long enough for me to become emotional about it, or something like that. But even so I feel you're being unfair to Wendy in calling her shallow. If you hang around 20 guys whose personalities attract you, and then you marry the one who takes you to the most expensive restaurants, there's nothing wrong with that. There isn't even anything shallow about that. Deep women can like Kobe beef too. There's nothing wrong with wanting to go to expensive restaurants at the same time as being with someone you like."

"Of course there is," said Simon. "Let's be realistic here, if you like 20 people for themselves, there's going to be some quantitative level at which you like them, and if you pick the wealthiest person from among those, you're going to end up sacrificing 0.3 liking points so you can get 10 wealth points. How is that not shallow? I know, I know, you think everyone just is shallow, and maybe that's true, but it's still sad."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall again. "See," she said, "I don't think of myself as being cold-heartedly cynical when I reject that way of looking at things. I don't think that kind of exchange is bad when it happens alongside everything else in life. I don't think that optimizing your own life and reaching up for things is selfish and bad. I don't think it's wrong for a woman to want jewelry and for that to influence her dating life, so long as that one consideration doesn't take over her life at the expense of everything else. And aren't you the guy who never asks out any woman he doesn't consider to be at least a 9 out of 10?"

"That's not the same at all!" Simon said indignantly. "I can't control who I'm sexually attracted to. It's not like I try to score women on the same scale that everyone else uses, the way that wealth is objective and measurable, and then I only try to score with women who score at the 90th percentile. I just can't control who my brain is attracted to, that's all--there's no choices involved."

"Well," said Noelle, "I have to admit that I'd feel a lot more sympathetic if you said that you were willing to date 6-out-of-10s in exchange for them being okay with you being frugal. As it stands, I can't help but feel like you're trying to be a barista who insists on still getting the $4 but not giving people the coffee. It seems to imply an asymmetry in how your mind sees people--that you see them being 'selfish', but not yourself trying to 'just live a better life' or however you'd put it."

"I didn't think sex was supposed to be this cold-blooded exchange!" said Simon. "And maybe it is, maybe there's no escaping it--but then it's okay for me to be sad about that, right?"

"I'm not sure exactly how to describe what mistake you're making," Noelle said, "but it has something to do with it being really horrible for some reason that something matters, and that thing clearly does matter in the real universe, so you don't want to live in the real universe anymore. And also something to do with you having trouble really taking on somebody else's perspective, maybe because that would force you to acknowledge that the thing is allowed to matter."

"Would it kill you to say that my feelings are valid?" said Simon.

"I'll say it if you pay me $50," said Noelle.

Simon shook his head. "I wonder if the reason we have a taboo against greedy women in the first place is that women like you ruined it for everyone else."

"No, see," said Noelle, "I feel like I'd want $50 in exchange for saying that, and my feelings are valid too."

Or, as Alpha Centauri put it:

"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant."

– CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"

This is why God gave us cats, so you could have a genuine meet-cute with a creature that will love you forever.

Cats? Those shameless, opportunist egomaniacs without a shred of loyalty?

The allergenic ones?

Well, God did not make the world to suit everyone.

Cats? Those shameless, opportunist egomaniacs without a shred of loyalty?

I get that's the meme, but it really doesn't match my experience. In my experience, I drag a feral stray out of somewhere inconvenient, kidnap it, clean it, and then it showers my family with affection for 15 years, like a permanent, low-effort toddler that wants to snuggle and also kills vermin.

The allergenic ones?

This may be more of an issue. My condolences on your condition.

Cats do have loyalty, which is different from bred servility because it's not unconditional.

I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic

My Brother in Christ (said completely without irony), that is who I am on the deepest level.

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

My entire relationship history is me trying my damndest to wrest a romantic happy ending from an increasingly cynical world. Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough. So I become more strategically machievellian with the instrumental intent of finding someone to partner with and then GTFO of the toxic pool.

I've done everything I can in the past three years to maximize by 'social surface area' so I can have that chance encounter with the love of my life.

And unfortunately all this has done, now, is expose me to every single variant of dysfunction you can imagine. I've observed other people's relationships fail for the silliest, most avoidable of reasons, I've seen the very depths of toxic female behavior. I'm still fanning a small, candle-esque flame inside of me that believes a romantic happy ending is possible. But the stats are what the stats are, I won't look away.

If I were able to acquire the necessary power, I would radically restructure the social order enough to allow the sensitive young man to once again be competitive enough in the sexual marketplace that they CAN have their organic, fated encounter with their soulmate and expect the "live happily" to actually last "ever after."

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

happy_padme.jpg: She was fiercely loyal, regularly visited you, steadfastly refrained from partying or entertaining male attention, and you two eventually got married and lived happily ever after, right?

I told this story in another thread. Its even more tragic than you'd think. She broke it off with me and DIED not too long thereafter

To say that was a formative event for my psyche is underselling it.

Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough

Do you think you may be overfitting here? If every time a relationship fails, you make an adaptation that would have ensured it worked, that does not necessarily mean you are becoming overall more desirable to the women that you want. Meanwhile, you are slowly giving up on something you value deeply.

I agree with the overall gist of it; Being the sensitive young man is endlessly disappointing, but that does not imply that meeting cynicism with cynicism of your own is a good solution that increases the odds of landing the relationship you want.

If every time a relationship fails, you make an adaptation that would have ensured it worked, that does not necessarily mean you are becoming overall more desirable to the women that you want. Meanwhile, you are slowly giving up on something you value deeply.

Yes. I am in a constant state of self-evaluation to see if I feel as though I have strayed too far from my 'authentic' self.

And the adaptations I make are not so much to 'ensure' that a failed relationship would have worked. I'm genuinely just trying to maximize the chances that I can encounter and then attract the sort of woman who is more likely to work it out with me. I have to filter aggressively, I have to maximize the space I'm searching but also minimize wasted time by not searching spaces that will turn up false positives. Its a DOOZY of an optimization problem.

And I also have to avoid all the various traps that dating has set for men in this day and age to boot. This sucks. Better men than I have failed. Nonetheless, I have the irrational confidence that I can somehow defy the odds or die trying.

Not to put too fine a point on it: Of all the women I have dated with intent... only one of them has gone on to eventually get a stable, lasting relationship (so far). The rest have crashed and burned in various ways. That one gained a bunch of weight and is perennially single. This one got knocked up and is a single mom. The one over there had a mental health crisis and hasn't surfaced since. And of course my high school sweetheart died.

Conclusion: those would not have been successful relationships regardless of my own contributions. I don't feel smug about this fact, I realized that I was damaged in my own way that led me to not see the issues at the time. As is my way, I did the hard work to try and fix myself as best I can. THE WORLD AS IT STANDS DOES NOT REWARD FIXING YOURSELF.

I'm not perfect, but I can very, VERY safely say by this point that I have my life in better shape and I am in a happier place than any of the women I once considered prospective wives.

Their loss, not mine.

The task is to find a woman with the necessary features that a relationship CAN be successful. The terrible fact is that the current social pressures actively despoils women in a way that makes that less likely. There's far, far fewer such women than we need.

Hence, as part of my campaign, I've declared war on the current status quo.

But its very hard to both fight the social forces that create this hellscape WHILST navigating the hellscape itself searching for a partner, so again I have to optimize where I can.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats