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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absoluting terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.

What "dating advice" outside of porn movies tells young men to introduce themselves: "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?"

I do recall a section of one of Feynman's books that amounts to this -- I think you need to be in an environment where people might reasonably want to fuck for this to work. (and you need to be ready to accept being shot down in flames ~95% of the time, which this guy probably was not)

Yes. Feynman was hitting on women in bars, not asking women at Caltech if they were up for it.

I originally wrote "asking women scientists at conferences", but then I realized this might not be the worst place for casual hookups, just don't pick someone from the same field, lay it on thick, but with mutual plausible deniability.

There was definitely an era in the 2010s where the default advice was "Let her know your true intentions. You don't want to be friendzoned." I don't tend to see that too much anymore though.

The case here wasn't an introduction. The dude had known the girl and was friendly with her for a long time. He we told by society to be fully open and honest about his intentions with women and when he did this was lambasted for it. Totally predictable and the dude made a mistake believing what society says rather than seeing what society does, but this discrepancy is very much real. I hope he takes this as a learning lesson.

The dude had known the girl and was friendly with her for a long time.

Not the same as being friends. Imagine a casual acquaintance or someone you work with. You get on, you're friendly, but you don't consider yourselves to be friends. Then one day this guy/girl/whomever asks you "Hey, wanna have a casual sexual relationship where we fuck sometimes, no strings attached?"

Maybe you would consider "Oh Horace, flattered as I am, I'm not ready for a relationship" as a response. Or maybe you would think "Where the fuck did that come out of? We're not that kind of intimates!" Possibly you might even feel uncomfortable around them and try to avoid them.

Or maybe you'd go "Sure, I'm up for a knee-trembler in the stationery cupboard, see you in ten!"

Sure, but that's still not the same as an introduction of "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?". I absolutely agree this man broke a ton of unspoken social rules and it's bad, but society as a whole was also telling him (on the face at least) that what he did would be fine and was the right thing to do relative to "try and become friends with her with an ulterior motive".

I hope he takes this as a learning lesson.

Yeah, but I hope he takes the right lesson from it as well. Poor bastard might end up like Scott Aaronson.

Scott Aaronson.

Happily married, if neurotic and insecure?

That only came after the "I seriously considered castrating myself because I was so terrified of causing a girl to accuse me of rape" paranoia the poor divil went through as a teenager.

I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.