domain:web.law.duke.edu
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Low effort comments do not require low-effort rejoinders, especially when they have already been modded.
those who can't are not perfectly decent, fit guys with good jobs and stable personalities who are being rejected by the entire female population because they are all alpha-widows, but because there is something wrong with these guys.
No, the game is not rigged against you.
From how I interpret your post, I assume you're trying to be charitable and not propose or imply that there's something "wrong" with (posters like) faceh so as to leave him with some hope, but I'd much prefer being told there is something wrong with me and that the game is rigged against me in the sense that I'm somehow inherently inept or dysgenic, than be told to
get in the game and stop making excuses
when platitudes of that sort have brought nothing but misery, humiliation, and further demolition of my self-esteem.
If I had Down's Syndrome, but had enough introspection to feel humiliation at my intellectual inability to pursue a serious college education, it would bring me no happiness to hear that I just need to "try harder" when what I'd really need is to be told that some things are beyond my abilities: then at least I'd be given my peer group's permission to come to terms with it. But for some reason, similar platitudes are reflexively dispensed in dating discourse regardless of the aptitudes of the people these platitudes are thrown at: "you are deeply awful and there's something very abnormal about you but also never give up, keep on trying to jump for that bone, you retarded little doggie" is - broadly speaking, referring to dating discourse as a whole - how absurd and cruel these juxtapositions sound to me, even if, in the more rigorous and careful context of your post, you are making a charitable distinction between faceh and the faceless guys you know that "something is wrong with."
Why can't people like me even be given the solace of hopelessness? I'm an aspie, my parents deprived me of peer socialization almost (they were blindsided by the internet, all the worse for me) entirely throughout my youth via isolationist homeschooling, my post high-school experiences were retarded by COVID lockdowns, and all my attempts at friendship crashed and burned because I'm a hollowed out pseudo-sociopathic social imitation machine (I still get to feel terrible about socially "lying" at people, so I wish I'd just been born a real sociopath who didn't care) who's never had a single positive response to "just being myself," so I'm well past the point of having normal relations with the opposite sex, and certainly not relations on the terms I'd have once looked for (not overweight, not a single mother, not a drug addict, not older than me, not prodigal). So at this point I really should give up hope and move on, which I try to do with public stoicism (really just another extension of habitual masking, so no biggie), but then I see all these platitudes thrown my way, and every time I do, for the briefest of moments I get just enough hope to torment myself with.
Hadad
1d ago
Nonsense. It's par for the course for US politicians to support Israel over Palestine, and it's also par for the course for people to say that's a genocide.
Hadad
1d ago
The problem is US leaders consistently failing to identify the real problem or lay out appropriate goals. Bombing can't nation-build. The US needs to utterly abandon its desire to nation build, to spread democracy, etc., etc. It doesn't work. What it can do is keep a non-nuclear power in the stone age with overwhelming violence.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1d ago
- Bring back shotgun marriages. Make impregnation result in an automatic marriage and enforce much stricter rules for divorce in such marriages.
This is part of why I think no-fault divorce was the schwerpunkt of the culture war (or at least the sex and sexuality theatre thereof). If you look at cishajnal cultures before about 1800, shotgun weddings were the first line of defence against bastardy for the lower and middle classes (elite men could afford to support their bastards, and elite women could be kept chaperoned). The incentives created meant that pre-marital sex was common (the fraction of first children born less than 9 months after the wedding gets as high as one in three in some times and places) but it really is pre-marital - you only have sex with someone you are ready, willing and able to marry. But if "we aren't actually in love" is grounds for divorce, then there is no point in a shotgun wedding. The difference between a divorced single mum because the shotgun marriage to the slob was never going to work out and a never-married single mum who wasn't interested in marrying the slob is not one that matters in practice.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
I don't think you'll have any luck finding serious American candidates who advocate for genocide.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
which are all now reasons for any random individual to stay in the current cultural equilibrium
I sort of don't believe you. Game theory is hard in general, and it's extra difficult for complicated cultural games. It's easy to ipse dixit some into existence; it's much harder to actually show with a reasonable model.
If you want to push them and together with them whole of society to other equilibrium, you need to a path from here to there.
I mean, no? Most social engineering projects fail, and many cultural changes have occurred without someone planning out a specific step-by-step path. This sort of demand is basically trying to set up an impossible task, as no one here is going to be able to just apply magic to accomplish intermediate steps, and any proposed intermediate steps will be responded to with, "...then why haven't you already done that?" I'm feeling the FConSCC/Hlynka flowing that you're just working from a completely flawed conceptual framework for the base of a discussion.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Follow up question now that I can see vote breakdowns, which comment are you referring to with the +18 -24? I assume you mean my response to the ICE question that starts with "It's stupid theatrics."?
I am seeing that as net +21 (+30 -9), is there vote fuzzing or something?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I actually endorse this approach 100%, but surely this implies a general rejection of social science?
I don't completely reject social science, but @faceh's constant citing of statistics from sources engineered to affirm his priors does not strike me as rigorous social science. "More people of both sexes are not having sex." "People are marrying later than ever or going unmarried." Okay, I believe that, but there are a lot of other explanations for those things. It is not convincing evidence for the argument that this is because women overall have become completely unreasonable and delusional and 80% of them are getting pumped and dumped by 20% of the guys, and decent normal men can't get any action at all.
Wait what? Why are you glad you're off the market, if your eyes are telling you things are fine?
I don't think things are "fine" exactly - it does seem very difficult to navigate relationships nowadays, but that is largely because of generational differences. (I am in the "kids today" stage of life.) What I see is not that guys simply cannot find a girl, but that relationships between the sexes are more fraught than ever before, and also the whole idea of trying to market yourself online with an app (which is apparently how most people do it nowadays) seems hellish to me.
Hadad
1d ago
That depends entirely on who's making the decisions, I think. I'm going to vote for people who are okay with destroying our enemies.
Fair point on opinion vs debate. I did not consider that support for his comment could be both "I am glad you shared an opinion" or "I agree with your opinion".
Asking for what? Or, what was I asking for?
I tried to caveat my comment with "this is the vibe I get" and not "I am confidently saying I know the demographic of this community"
I did not realize you can see the upvote/downvote breakdown, thanks for that.
I really cannot emphasize how much I don't care about internet points lol. Anyone who complains about their downvotes, or brags about their upvotes should be bullied. This website doesn't even have a karma score (thank god) and I think would be better if it removed votes all together. A forum with threaded comments that can only be sorted by new is the ideal design, in my opinion.
Back when I was active on reddit, I made new accounts a few times a year and one of the main reasons for that was to never get attached to a karma score.
There are problems with your comment that should have been fixed
Always open to feedback
Hadad
1d ago
Yes, Iran and not-Iran have different wants and incentives This is quite typical.
Ditto6687
1d ago
That's a pretty good argument for why Iran should get nukes don't you think?
Owlify
1d ago
Yeah, I can understand that. It's very subjective as people mostly go off of their moral instincts.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Yeah, "approved" in the Milgram Experiment sense.
It wasn't a long time ago that the pro-trans side had total information dominance. Even If a parent had their doubts and wanted to double-check what the doctor said, all they'd find after googling is papers and statements from respected institutions telling you how Gender Affirming Care is The Science™, and you're an ignorant fool for wanting to delay or avoid your child's medicalization. It takes a special kind of contrarian to go with their gut, against every authority figure in vicinity and beyond.
That's a great point, under this framework that doesn't really work, but it did happen.
Smoking has lots of negative externalities to those around you, which make it easier to ban I guess? I probably need another coffee to map this onto pre-marital sex.
I think applying the externality logic to pre-marital sex, pre-marital sex has much less obvious (and by definition, delayed by 9 months) externalities. So it's harder to drum up support by pointing to single mom's who may or may not have had sex out of wedlock, versus the person next to you on the airplane making your lungs miserable.
Might have double-negative'd that, idk
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
True Marxism has never been tried, Comrade!
This is exactly the bit I was riffing on.
I'm firmly in the camp of "both Marxism and Christian ideals have been tried and found lacking". If you think Chesterson is right, but the Marxist fanatics are wrong, I would be curious to see how that gap is bridged.
BahRamYou
1d ago
There's been a suspiciously long pattern of US leaders thinking "we can solve this problem with strategic bombing, no ground invasion necessary." But then it turns out the strategic bombing is actually not that powerful, especially in a country as large and mountainous as Iran. This is a country roughly the size of the entire US west. It seems like they will always, inevitably be able to hide an enrichment facility somewhere. North Korea and Pakistan certainly did.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1d ago
That you view children as a punishment rather than a blessing is why secular liberalism is suffering (or perhaps enjoying) a collapse in fertility.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
have better outcomes on a whole host of relevant metrics to the people yearning for Christianity
Unless you were a powerless woman, or a powerless minority, or a powerless person of slightly the wrong proclivity for various things including but not limited to sexual orientation and opinions on celestial mechanics (at relevant times).
I'd posit that if Christianity was the ideal human ideology that caused maximum flourishing, it wouldn't have declined. Or at least the places where it didn't decline would then be much better places (and presumably out-compete) than places where it did.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
FConSCC/Hlynka flow emissions since 2022
1d ago
I will take your word on the timing of events. But after the genie was out of the bottle many other things changed, too, which are all now reasons for any random individual to stay in the current cultural equilibrium. If you want to push them and together with them whole of society to other equilibrium, you need to a path from here to there. Propaganda at schools for abstinence sounds like a joke which it is when it is an insufficient level of push: teacher lecturing an abstinence sex ed curriculum will appear detached from reality in an environment where everybody expects the current marriage pattern of no marriage at all or it's decades away when you are closer to middle-aged than teenager.
Getting married is something people can plausibly do. It will be easier if there is a push for other changes that make it easier to become and be a young married couple having young married life (including married sex that results in kids).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Frankly, I believe my lying eyes more than I believe a collection of blackpill-curated stats from places like the Institute for Family Studies.
I actually endorse this approach 100%, but surely this implies a general rejection of social science?
I'm sorry you are having such a struggle, and honestly, the dating landscape does look kind of awful right now (speaking as a guy who was pretty awkward and had a number of other strikes against me in my youth) and I am glad I'm not on the market.
Wait what? Why are you glad you're off the market, if your eyes are telling you things are fine?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Again I'm really not whining, I didn't come here expecting it to be a "agrees with me" paradise.
It seems to me like right-leaning ideas are more popular here, which I took a stab at demonstrating. There's also at least enough right-leaning support here to go +15 while espousing violent right-leaning thoughts. If you were at +1, I'd assume ideological balance in the group, if you were at -15, there would clearly more left-leaning voters clicking than right-leaning.
your disapproval genuinely means nothing to me
I expect nothing less! No offense taken :)
I post because I like to hear myself speak, and I like bickering. If I wanted approval for my ideas I'd be on reddit, which I am not. Have a great day!
You yourself got +15 upvotes saying things that I thought were quite uncool, and very right coded.
I know "they were asking for it" is a cliche of an awful thing to say, but I have to point out: you literally were [edit: the top comment literally was] asking for it, and @Hadad was wise enough to remind everyone of that in his first sentence of that comment. The line between a debate and an opinion poll is a bit of a blurry one on a forum, but I think it's clear enough that the distinction matters. If he'd presented those sentiments as if they were supposed to be a persuasive argument, I'd absolutely have downvoted them, but giving an honest (and bookended by caveats!) expression of his sentiments in response to an explicit query for general sentiments was fine. I still couldn't bring myself to upvote it, sorry @Hadad, but half of the point of this place is seeing what people say when they're not being squelched, and avoiding the squelching is important for that.
I'd say your own [the] top comment's vote score (currently +18 -24) would be more clearly deserving of complaint (except that that would go over even more poorly, as "people can't downvote me [us]!" always does). There are problems with your [the] comment that should have been fixed, but I could surely find comments here that had bigger problems but got a pass because they were right-leaning rather than (in context) left-leaning.
There is an important distinction between the current USA and the USA of 1860. Namely, one of these has eleven times the population of the other despite being mostly the same size (yeah, yeah, Alaska, but it's not exactly the breadbasket of the USA). The modern developed world has staggeringly-high, unprecedented population densities, and while some of that is from permanent knowledge gained, a lot more of it is from economic sophistication. A farmer of 1860 can make most of the stuff he needs - not all, but most, and his tools are at least pretty durable and repairable. A farmer of 2025 is using agricultural equipment manufactured in cities from mined minerals and fuelled with petroleum products from oil fields to spread mined/synthesised fertilisers, pesticides, and F1 hybrid seeds whose progeny aren't viable. Most of those things are produced hundreds of kilometres from his farm if not thousands, and many of them are well beyond his capacity to even repair let alone replace, and they make him more efficient.
Civil strife means things hundreds of kilometres away are not available to you anymore because there are enemies between you and them, and they can't get their inputs either. What we've built is a gleaming metropolis of elaborate, carefully-built crystal towers, not an indestructible pyramid. Guess what happens when your food production drops by 80% and you were only a moderate food exporter in percentage terms before this, and you also have difficulty importing food. Then consider what people will do in their desperation, and the resulting lasting damage to culture and society.
I am actually eliding a fair bit of stuff here because, um, some Mottizens want bad things to happen instead of good things.
(The extent of Australia's food surplus is such that with the standard abandonment of grain-fed livestock (which is super-inefficient in terms of food calories) we'd still clearly pull through if the music stopped. This is a special and highly-unusual privilege. The USA, despite being the biggest food exporter in the world in absolute terms, does not have that absurd cushion of safety.)
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