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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4262 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What do you think about the idea that in order to be morally worthy of a romantic relationship, you need to be willing and able to endure great suffering either for the greater good, or for your tribe, or for no reason at all? Women do this through pregnancy and childbearing, which I have heard legitimately compared to frontline infantry combat in its level of hardship. Therefore, what good is a man, in a relationship, if he is not willing and able to endure a hardship or challenge of similar difficulty? Chad compensates for this by being very good-looking and very determined; there is a good chance he would do well in a war, too. But for us mere mortals? Our existence is legitimized and our desire for romantic relationships stops being completely base, disgusting, and hypocritical when we have proven ourselves worthy through being conscientious, dedicated, and determined enough to suffer greatly for no damn reason - even, perhaps, to die for no good reason. The poets of the First World War, and the soldiers there, died pointlessly but admirably for a few inches of mud; they embodied all that is admirable about masculinity and lost their lives in the mud of Passchendaele and Verdun and the Somme.

Every man, now, needs to choose their own struggle. It's like Fight Club, except you expect and are prepared for - as much as anyone can be prepared for, which may not be much - entering what is essentially Hell on Earth and surviving it. Once you survive, you are now worthy: you have endured, you are willing to endure, therefore you now have business asking someone to endure a deep visceral biological disgust day after day to make you happy, and for the good of the next generation. And you, too, will suffer, or may suffer. Maybe it's a dangerous job, maybe it's your wife shooting you and putting you in the ICU, maybe it's figuring out how to deal with it when your wife becomes a raging alcoholic, maybe you really do get the life of domestic bliss. But probably not - you're not Chad, and as such you do not deserve domestic bliss, much as your wife is very likely to be deeply disgusted with you and chooses this as her least-bad option, making peace with her inability or unwillingness to be Stacy.

  • -16

Well since you asked, I think it's retarded. I also said that in more words the last 5 times you asked.

More effort than this, please.

I can't say I disagree, you have to work very hard and think with all your brains to be this flagrantly stupid.

This is unnecessarily antagonistic, don't do this please.

I don’t disagree with you, but, uh, it seems like responding to single issue posters should come with a bit of leeway when it’s the 5th time.

Gotcha, though I hope it's clear that I meant no malice by it. Poor bastard needs a father figure to give him a hug, or better yet, a hooker.

I'm more exasperated at his Eeyore impersonation than anything else.

We're both in the healthcare field: we both know that human beings can habituate to an awful lot of disgusting shit and deal with it with a smile.

So basically the Hock is an example of unusually refined stupidity. 99.99 percent pure reagent grade dumbass, not like the 80 percent pure stuff a peasant gets drunk on.

My brother in Christ, you invented the "Hock". You have every opportunity to think of something 10% as stupid.

What would you think - as a person and a future psychiatrist - of a man who attempted the Hock and lived to tell the tale? Would you admire his strength and resilience, while condemning his stupidity? Would you find it amusing? The Hock is at least a testament to hard work and...brainpower, even if possibly misguided and foolish.

I believe that the Hock provideth for all who attempt it, either through victory or death.

condemning his stupidity?

Yes. That about sums it up ngl

The idea I got is that /u/SkookumTree wants it to be stupid, because it's noble to do stupid shit or something.

Needless to repeat, I disagree. Doing retarded shit isn't noble, it's retarded. When women do become attracted to a man after he did something retarded, it's in spite of retardation - it's because it was also cool (the "Hock" isn't) or netted him value (the "Hock" doesn't) or was noble-noble not "retarded-noble" (the "Hock" is not).

By the way, /u/SkookumTree, before you show your idea to anyone else, please don't call it some cringy neologism that sounds like one of the worst terms PUAs coined because they thought it's gotta be original and catchy.

When women do become attracted to a man after he did something retarded, it's in spite of retardation

I do wonder. Perhaps the Hock is Jackass meets Into the Wild; however, was Johnny Knoxville more attractive for riding off rooftops in shopping carts? I would think a high-school sophomore might be more attractive to his peers for doing so. A grown adult? Maybe if he makes a bunch of money off of it or becomes notorious. Then again: consider the fate of Eugene, Oregon's Nutsack Man, a man who suffered brain damage in a motorcycle wreck and then spent several years riding his bike around Eugene, yelling "Eugene Transit can suck my sweaty NUTSACK! NUTSAAAAAAAACK!" He certainly gained notoriety, although I have no clue if anyone was attracted to our hero. I heard tell that he had a girlfriend at one point - and this while sleeping rough and screaming NUTSACK at passersby.

Also, the origin of the term "Hock" is simple: Hock participants are chucked or Hocked into the Alaskan wilderness. "Hock" is a slang term that can mean "to throw".

You're also telling me that a solo cross-country journey in temperatures as low as 40 below zero, on skis, with a homemade sled and a bunch of gear, isn't at all cool? Hell, there are other people who did things like this, solo or in groups, in the same terrain...Andrew Skurka isn't cool for his journey? Chris McCandless wasn't noble or heroic for his ultimately futile attempt...and would it have been different had McCandless survived his adventure to return to society? Jon Krakauer was just a dumbass for trying to use a couple of curtain rods from a hardware store to protect himself from crevasses during his 1977 solo climb of the Devil's Thumb?

Perhaps the Hock is polarizing; I will also contend that the Hock produces a change in the character and personality of he who survives. The point isn't to go on the Hock and tell everyone about it; I suspect that if you survived the Hock you wouldn't talk about it much except perhaps with people who had survived similar experiences, and then only at certain times. The point is to alter your character and become Hock hardened.

"Hock" is a slang term that can mean "to throw".

Not sure if this is part of your distilled stupidity strategy, but no it doesn't -- 'hock' is either part of a pig's (or other animal's, but usually a pig's) leg, or the act of spitting up phlegm.

The word you may be reaching for is "huck" -- which can also mean vomit, so maybe you are on the right track -- in that none of these things are attractive to women either.

I've heard "hock" being used in this sense. Apparently at least a few other people have. The Hock spawning a slang etymology debate is an unexpected outcome here...

You keep tossing out "the Hock" with no explanation like it's common cultural knowledge. Yet Google returns nothing.

What is it? Where are you getting it from?

The Hock is my own creation. I believe that the Hock purges the weakness out of people's character through adversity and challenge; a necessary component of the Hock is the risk of death.

"The Hock" is an idea he is enamored with, where young people get dropped into extremely hostile wilderness conditions, relying on their survival skills, persistence and general strength of character to make it back to civilization without freezing to death or otherwise getting themselves killed. He believes that surviving such a challenge will make one more interesting at parties/otherwise increase one's socio-sexual market value. Most of his posts lately seem to revolve around this subject in some way.

Ah, seems pretty novel.

He believes that surviving such a challenge will make one more interesting at parties/otherwise increase one's socio-sexual market value.

In some way, yes. Leaving aside any benefit that comes from surviving life and death struggle, consider what a person who boards the plane to embark on the Hock is like, compared to how he was a year ago:

He is more physically fit, having worked at strength training and aerobic conditioning.

He has carefully considered his selection of outdoor gear and equipment, building his planning and preparation skills.

He has made peace with his own mortality and considered deeply what was meaningful in his life.

So too: the Hock tests. Those who have garbage conscientiousness, or who are physically unfit, or who lack a certain relatively low level of intelligence...do not survive the Hock.

Therefore, I would argue that the median Hock survivor would be more attractive than average...or at least, this would be so if you simply rounded up a bunch of random people and offered a million bucks to those that survived, or just forced them to Hock but gave them time to train.

People who have been revived from an opioid overdose with Narcan have survived a life and death struggle. They too have often made peace with their own mortality. The fact that they survived does not make them more attractive, instead it makes them less attractive. It signals that they do not exercise good judgment and are unable to find a healthier way to cope with the problems in their life.

I feel like surviving the Hock will not have the attractiveness increasing benefits you are predicting. Instead, people will question why you feel the need to engage in such risky behavior with such a minimal payoff. If they deduce that your participation in the Hock was due to your inability to find healthy solutions to the struggles in your life then they may question what crazy thing you will do next time you face a struggle.

Instead of the Hock you would get more benefit from the socially acceptable forms of extreme fitness like: Ironman, CrossFit, triathlons, etc. They have the added benefit of having existing social structures where people can help you train and provide motivation. Technically, they are life and death struggles since people have died while participating in them.

But. If you OD AND THEN GET CLEAN you might have perspective and wisdom and maybe be more attractive. I think it would definitely hold true if heroin dealers only sold to those that had first climbed a mountain or run a marathon in a decent time or something. Have to have done at least one Feat to buy dope. A clean former mountain climber might be okay.

Is the Hock addictive?

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