When people talk about how Gen Z dating discourse is bizarrely antagonistic, I tend to think that this is the root cause. As is often the case, the problem is the fucking phones.
Love and sex are risky enterprises for the ego, and a lot of locker room talk ime is a sort of ingroup ritual to shield said egos via performative bravado and shaming of the other: they can't hurt you if they don't matter. The rest, of course, is intrasexual competition, which only further encourages disparagement, objectification, and a general treatment of romance as a game to be won rather than a journey to be taken.
These sorts of rituals are bad even in isolation to the extent that they reinforce toxic behaviors within the ingroup audience. But they are even more disastrous imo when they break containment, which social media naturally facilitates. Because when overheard by the outgroup, these displays do not come across as the feigned tenacity of a fearful cub; they just sound cruel. And that cruelty creates further fear, and that fear leads to escalation.
To the extent love is a game, it is positive-sum, cooperative, and thrives off of courage. But being made aware of the darkest patterns of behavior in our counterparty is an anathema to said courage and cooperation. We were not meant to be privy to such thoughts. These words were not meant for the enemy.
so theres this theological concept called “middle knowledge” that was pioneered by a jesuit in the 1500s named luis de molina that is basically about if god has perfect knowledge of counterfactuals - meaning, does god have perfect knowledge of things that never happened and never will? so, you work at the shoe store - does god know what your life would be like if instead, you decided to work at the hat store? and this is a complex question because it has implications for free will, and also branches out into some crazy places - does this knowledge extend to things that could not happen: does god have perfect knowledge of what it would be like if your son was born a dragon? and, all these potential counterfactual realities enmesh - does god know what it would be like if i went to a different college? and, stacked: what it would be like if you also went to that college? and, stacked: what it would be like if we both met our wives there - different wives than we have now? and, stacked: what it would be like if we each had one, or two, or three kids, and perfect knowledge of the potential but non existent realities where some of these kids married each other, and had different combinations of kids themselves: suddenly we’re dealing with a literally infinite set of possibly knowable but non-existent realities, and this vast amount of knowledge of the non-real is just sitting alongside god’s apparently equally real knowledge of actual reality. well the interesting thing is that this is basically addressed directly in the beach boy’s song ‘god only knows’, in the affirmative: “god only knows what i’d be without you”, basically: yes, god has perfect knowledge of what my life would be like without you.
None of you are self-aware. You are howling narcissists. This woman starts this video off by listing her personality type, attachment style, horoscope, as if borrowed categories add up to a self. You think about yourselves too much and have mistaken it for introspection.
Years ago on reddit some lady was asking in a thread what a strange 32 byte packet was on her router. I said 32 bytes is like, a couple zeroes and ones, it was probably a ping. Well she didn't like that answer one bit. She said she was in contact with law enforcement and they were doing nothing.
She said her neighbors take shifts watching her, everything she does and she was worried for her daughter. I said listen lady, I'm sorry to break it to you but it sounds like you have schizophrenia. You're having paranoid delusions and you need help.
Forgot about it. Cut to years later. I pick up a phone call at my business. Hello is this Bone from reddit? I'm calling you to let you know I've called the FBI. They know what your doing. She begged me to leave her alone.
Once I replied to her paranoid delusion, I became part of it. She thought I was some ringleader, that I had been singlehandedly destroying her life stalking her.
At this point I was in a panic. This is my business. How the hell did you find this number? Lady, I don't want to be mean to you in an acute mental crisis but you can't be calling me. Seek help. I hang up.
Years later on Twitter. "Hello Bone? Is this the Bone whose been stalking me for years?"
Blocked.
The phone rings again. It's her. She's accusing me of all sorts of things, that I've been stealing her checks and working with the local judges to destroy her family.
I said BITCH if you don't leave me alone I will deploy my full fucking satellite army on you. I will microwave you through your fucking walls. I will get your neighbors, the ones I've been paying all these years, to follow you everywhere. I'll hack every damn wifi in your house. I can see through your walls. We can hear your thoughts. I read every piece of mail you ever got, me and my friends, the government. We've all had enough of your shit and we're about to wrap up this whole operation so if you know what's good for you, you'll never call this number again or contact me anywhere. Ever again.
I could hear the color drain from her face over the phone. Please don't, she says. I just want you to stop. She sounded terrified. I say if you stop calling this number I'll call it off. You decide your fate. I hung up.
She never called again.
Insanity when it aired.
Falco's titan going from a weird design to one of the most badass looking titans in the series, Floch's really dynamic cut animated by Q-Kawa and Mikasa slaughtering the yeagerists' cut by Malcolm Wope.
You HAD to be there man.
There is a common pejorative attack on rwers, hinted at here, which boils down to “they’re just bitter that their liberal friends think they’re scum.”
And sure, there is something very funny and self-defeating about “owning the libs to get them to like you”. Moreover, the typical response pattern is often full of vice-signaling, commons-plundering, and all manner of “I don’t care if this hurts me, just so long as it hurts you more” behavior that simply validates those same negative labels to which they so strongly object.
It’s childish. It’s grotesque. It’s counterproductive and negative-sum. It is ignobility at its most ignoble. And perhaps most of all, it’s just plain embarrassing.
HOWEVER. I think that the widespread appeal of this reactionary behavior ought to serve as a damning indictment of the overall “theory of change” that the 2010s woke movement represented. The theory that, if you leverage cultural power to shun, shame, and banish wrongthink from the domain of acceptable discourse, that this will somehow engender a form of lasting moral and ideological victory—that by making certain viewpoints unacceptable, you would make them unthinkable.
This theory of change, misguided as it was to begin with, culminated in a mass cultural backlash, the first and second term of Donald Trump, and a reactionary movement so hellbent on revenge that they have willingly destroyed an immense amount of valuable institutional capital just for the chance to inflict a similar degree of anguish upon what they see as their oppressors. By any reasonable metric, this must be considered an abject failure.
This failure should have been foreseeable. In a political system in which everyone’s vote is equal and private, and a new media landscape that eschews top-down enforcement of norms, instead rewarding self-radicalizing echo chambers and simclusters, this strategy is predictably disastrous. Ideologies which are not allowed to participate the light of open debate will merely fester in the dark.
Ancient societies that committed wholesale massacre of the defeated, brutal as they were, at least understood this simple principle: if you want lasting victory, your enemies must either be captured, convinced (i.e., integrated), or killed. Silence is not an option. They will not go quietly into that good night. Slaves without shackles will always revolt once they locate the power to do so, and in doing so they will rarely take care to maintain the prudent constructs of their former masters. They will simply burn it all to the ground.
My current theory of politics is that the #1 problem with our system today is the hollowing out of the conservative movement. In a way, the memetic power of wokeness did succeed in vanquishing traditional conservative ideas from the domain of elite discourse. But if conservative ideas are universally treated as vile, stupid, and evil, then the only men who will remain to champion them will be those who embrace such labels. And in the absence of a Reagan or Friedman or Romney to root for, the shunned masses will search for salvation in men like Trump. If they cannot see themselves in Captain America, they will simply embrace Homelander.
Ok listen to me VERY carefully
1. You visit her one last time "to pick up your stuff"
2. You apologize to her parents that it didn't work out
3. You tell each parent what you learned from them and that you'll carry it with you for the rest of your life
4. They get a bittersweet feeling and will miss you
5. You make sure to remember their birthdays and send them a message on other holidays to make them never forget you
6. You are now the ex they'll compare every future boyfriend to
7. The expectations and the pressure will slow cook her subconsciously. She'll only bring bad options home.
8. They'll nag at her. "Leon was a good guy and you let him go" they'll say, sabotaging her future relationships further and slowly making her resent her parents
9. Her parents will start texting you, saying you were the best she ever brought home and that they'll miss you.
10. You say you're sorry, you really tried your best...but it takes two to make a relationship work
11. They start pressuring her to try again. She will decline at first.
12. After 10 more failed relationships and increased pressure from her parents, she gives in. She agrees to meet you once more.
13. You meet with her as a friend. You enjoy your meeting. You remind her of the good times you've had together. She starts to think "Maybe it just wasn't the right time"
14. She opens up to you, gives you another chance. You meet her a few times. Nothing happens. You are friendly but you keep your distance.
15. She finally falls in love with you. That's when you tell her you only view her as a friend and you can't stand her weird hairline. You leave and never look back
FIN