Friendly reminder that emotional labour means "that thing waiters and retail workers have to do to pretend to be happy in a shit job noone likes" not "being kind to your loved ones."
Yeah thats true but thats still not what the term "emotional labour" is for.
yeah it's an awful and overly simplistic term for the real phenomenon of one-sided relationships, and once again i am asking that we consider how the medium of internet posts overvalues the message that love ought to be entirely effortless and stress-free
Yeah its very damaging especially for young people the way media portrays "good relationships" as being constantly stimulating, always saying the perfect thing, very little in the way of arguments or disagreements, etc. So many young people are confused and feel like shit because they can't come up with some new conversation topic or whatever. It's okay to chill in silence around loved ones, really is very normal
for sure, although in another sense it's kind of how it's always been, except that the internal pressure of the fear of being known and accepted was countered by the external pressure of heteronormative social expectations, so that, even disregarding widespread domestic abuse, people would feel obligated to struggle for love, or at least security.
i think what we need has not yet fully been born.
As western media has secularized, a lot of the tropes we normally would have associated with godly love have become associated with romantic love, which is itself conflated with sexual attraction and platonic love
I believe Arlie Hochschild, who coined the term 'emotional labor', recognized this disparity early on and used the term 'emotional work' as the alternative term. It has historically been true (esp of black women who rarely got to be 'homemakers') that women are expected to provide a disproportionate amount of care, aid, and physical labor at home as well as in the workplace, which is one of the primary topics of Angela Davis's On Women, Race, and Class.
What if I’ve commodified my relationships with my loved ones?
then you are fully Germanized and integrated into the capitalist system.
Here's your complimentary jar of Helmann's, make sure none of your parasitic rats we call "children" take more than their daily lot's worth
And don't even think about feeding your kids' "friends"
I'm sure this has nothing to do with everyone being told to run their life as though they are a brand
Making an online dating profile literally felt like commodifying and marketing myself. I just stopped it felt so gross
Single people are a commodity. When/if a person finds a long term partner on those apps they’re “off the market” and delete the app, so wouldn’t that incentivize the companies to tweak the algorithm towards surface level, meaningless matches that probably won’t work out in the long run?
It is, they just now break up the brands for marketing purposes. I know people who have worked on the marketing for both Tindr and Hinge. They're owned by the same company (Match, along with all the others) and in meetings specifically use each other as messaging differentials. It used to be that dating apps needed to create just enough success stories for them to sell and good matches for it not to seem not-worthwhile for users. Now they've realised they can extend that user-journey by making users jump between apps and brands. I've heard (albiet second hand from people on the marketing side rather than dev) that a decent number of people on the user retention and algorithm side don't just come from social media firms, but increasingly crypto and gambling sites. That probably tells you a lot about how they operate. Then there's the fact that users also vary which aspects of themselves they put forward in their profiles to implicitly best suit the different apps, which also increases the amount of data and grows the personality profile that they have for each user as an added bonus. They actively want you to jump from app to app.
It just felt so formulatic and kinda gross when I tried it once. You post the bio, try to be a bit quirky but not too much, some photos of yourself, some photos of you with others so they know you're not a creep, a photo of you doing something cool and a thirst trap at the end of you look good.
Also I know there's a ton of underage people on there because I knew people in high school lying about their age back when the apps first started and yeah I won't no part in :ancap-good: So many profiles with their age as like 23 but then in the bio it's like "20 not 23"
Making an OD profile reminded me of making a resume in like all the worst ways possible.
Really made me feel like trying to convince someone to date me. Idk but in my mind it shouldn't take convincing, if we have a genuine connection it should happen organically.
Yeah if you have to "convince" someone, it can get one sided real quick and I really don't want to fall into that.
Obviously don't be a slob though and be the best version of yourself and put effort in, but if you're constantly having to prove something, yea no I don't think that's healthy
To me it was always just trying to get a first date and see where it goes from there. I had a bit of luck with those dating apps though, I know it doesn't work for a lot of people. I found that having a little conversation then asking to meet up for a date worked well.
I found it much harder to just walk up to someone at a bar and be like "hey do you want a drink" or whatever, always felt like I was imposing and it was super awkward. Then you have to go through the "convincing" stage anyway, except it's loud as fuck and everyone's drunk
Tbh I blame online dating for making trying to meet people irl seem weird and odd now
haha, i never thought about it but totally. back when i was 19ish was when everybody suddenly had cellphones. at that time it was protocol to ask for the phone number and then, some short time later, ring them up to ask them out on a specific date (smooth, but serious) or just shoot the shit with them on the phone for a bit to see if you click in conversation (chill).
now calling someone on the phone to ask someone out or, worse, for a chat is like criminal pervert territory, unless it's an older relative or a friend far away without internet.
My own mother won't even call me for a direct conversation. Social media has fucked up communication well beyond dating
I think the dating apps are probably way worse for our mental health than tik tok or facebook or any of that. I know they've sent me spiraling.
I wonder if this is different for women. I know several who use Tinder as a self-esteem booster, just opening the app with no intention of pursuing anyone and reveling in the attention.
If you derive your personal self worth by the literal skin-deep appraisal of internet strangers then you are mentally unwell.
That's not a "self-esteem booster" that's you taking a hit of a "virtual drug" because you can't produce your own self-esteem. You literally get high from it and then come crashing back down.
I was trapped in it once.
I can't really say. It's about rejecting the superficial things people might say about you and focusing on the things that are important and are under your realistic control.
Do my friends care for me? Do I care for them? Have I used my existence to make the world better even in any kind of sense? How have I improved myself recently?
I have a friend who keeps track of praise/good outcomes/successes, and revisits them when they're not feeling great. They'd keep track of a good grade or successful project outcome, or positive emails/reviews, that sort of thing.
This is a good question and everyone's answer is different probably. For me, I had the resources and willpower to find a good therapist and I went in with the mentality of "this person is going to help me figure myself out so I can appreciate myself more". Going to therapy is one thing, but going in with the mentality of knowing what you want to get out of it is really the best way to see results. There's something different about having a professional person, who you trust, telling you "actually, it's okay to do X." I personally never would've taken friends or family seriously because I was too in my own head about them telling me what I want to hear, and for some reason paying money for that made my therapists advice more legitimate.
Beyond that, self-esteem has the answer in the name. It should come from you, not other people (with the exception of my therapist, who felt like a trusted second opinion). I basically used my therapist to bootstrap my way into understanding that it was harmful to constantly shit talk myself and self-deprecate. So I started turning things around. I used to think it was cringy to think highly of myself but when I finally gave it a try and said to myself "wow, I just took care of myself!" after I tried exercising for the first time in a decade+, I felt like I could actually believe what I was saying. And things kind of started to snowball from there.
Now one other big caveat was me realizing I was trans (turns out heavy denial leads to self-esteem issues, wow), but again, that's where a good therapist can really do wonders.
I totally agree and that's really saying something because instagram/fb/tiktok are super fucked
Experiencing the shock of the online dating world for the first time a year or so after my divorce was absolutely brutal and soul crushing. ...and I say that as someone who fits the superficial standards of online dating for cis men (over six feet, in great shape, blue eyes, etc).
Like Ian McKellen crying on the set of the Hobbit because of the sets being mostly made up of green screens
Lol who fucking actually does that though what does that even mean
Edit: I see, like social media profiles and stuff. Idk weird
In a society of employees dominated by the marketing mentality, it is inevitable that a personality market should arise. For in the great shift from manual skills to the art of ‘handling’, selling and servicing people, personal or even intimate traits of employees are drawn into the sphere of exchange and become commodities in the labor market… Kindness and friendliness become aspects of personalized service or of public relations of big firms, rationalized to further the sale of something. With anonymous insincerity, the Successful Person thus makes an instrument of his own appearance and personality. (p. 182)
And from the areas of salesmanship proper, the requirements of the personality market have diffused as a style of life. What began as the public and commercial relations of business have become deeply personal: there is a public-relations aspect to private relations of all sorts including even relations with oneself…
The personality market, the most decisive effect and symptom of the great salesroom, underlies the all pervasive distrust and self-alienation so characteristic of metropolitan people. Without common values and mutual trust, the cash nexus that links one man to another in transient contact has been made subtle in a dozen ways, and made to bite deeper into all areas of life and relations. People are required by the salesman ethic and convention to pretend interest in others in order to manipulate them… Men are estranged from one another as each secretly tries to make an instrument of the other, and in time a full circle is made: one makes an instrument of himself and is estranged from it also.”
- ( Mills 1951: 187-8)
Tag urself I'm the sensitive guy who lacks access to adequate mental health care
Is emotionally distant (however not manipulative) isolated guy an option? 😶
Basically everyone I know in real life lives so far away now
Mental Healthcare is nice & can sometimes help you think more clearly about your own personal background & how that contributes to how you think about things; but for the most-part it is mainly a band-aid for the very real material & social inequalities that are completely inextricable to our mode of production. And I say this as someone who has been involved in it as a patient for large portions of my own life. Consequently though, I've also kind of come to the personal conclusion that basically no social ills will ever actually be solved without the abolition of Capitalism as the basic framework of our lives.
This is of course not to say that solving any of those are exactly "less important" than dismantling Capitalism, rather that they are simply mutually requisite goals.
My reasoning for this is heavily bound-up in what Unlearning Economics talks about in this section in his video critiquing "New Optimism" & it's chief media proponent Steven Pinker.
spoiler
:epstein:
I had the same experience, therapy helped me to find ways to function in society as it currently exists, but it stopped feeling useful once I decided that the status quo was the problem.
I remember telling someone that we should abolish all managers in a joking manner and they agreed.
That's how you know it's good folks, for friends or relationships 😎😎😎
Wow, screw what this implies about the dating pool this makes me have hope for humanity in general.
Jokes on her she forgot guys with avoidant personalities who end up in relationships they don't want to be in because they don't know how to say no to people
I know a couple like this. They ended up taking breaks from each other and keep getting back together. The relationship is very one sided feelings wise.
:deeper-sadness:
Kinda how I am. It pains me to say it but my girlfriend is much more into me than I am into her but telling her would break her heart and I worry she'd go back to self harming. Love living with avoidant personality disorder 👌
Hopefully you can figure something out because this does not sound sustainable long term
Yeah I've been trying substance abuse but it's becoming less and less effective. Wish therapy wasn't so hard
Trying to have this not become me. My partner really wants to get married and I just... I don't know what I'm gonna do
Maybe it could have gone another way, but my advice would be you should at least be pretty sure its what you want to do before you go through with it. I just freaking knew I shouldn't be doing it, but I didn't know its ok to rock the boat. The thing that made it more complicated in the long run was she was pregnant a month after we got married.
I'm trying to date a girl who identifies as a socialist but keeps complaining about far left commies.
She was telling me Biden has done all he could do to protect abortion rights and did not appreciate my recommendation they stop giving a shit about civility and lean on their own party members that refuse to play ball. Keep telling myself I can fix her.
Not even a succdem huh.
"I really like you, but you need to break your toxic relationship with these blood-drinking reptiles who don't give a single shit about your existence no matter how much you lie to yourself"
She spends a lot of time on Twitter and I assume has contracted some brain worms from blue checkmarks.
I have contracted all my brainworms for obscure third worldist theory, punk music and 1950s-1990s South African conspiracy theories, I didn't need the internet for that lol.
Wonder how my offline brainworms stack in comparison to the twitter kind.
But seriously spending less time on the cursed :brd: could probably be good for them, and you as well. No idea how'd you accomplish that though, we're all addicted to this stuff.
Hexbear is the only platform I use anymore. Arguing with people on :reddit-logo: was exhausting and triggers my anxiety.
Yeah that's good you're not on Reddit anymore, Reddit is really bad as of late. I'm actually glad I got shadowbanned from all the main :reddit-logo: subs a few months ago, keep up your grass touching journey I'd say.
I had a Vaushite who combed through months of my history looking for things he could take out of context to teach me a lesson I'm guessing about being mean to heckin Vaushirino and would paste it under my comments semi frequently. Assume the same person kept reporting me for threatening violence when I said that when the revolution comes everyone with a K-On pfp gets the wall. Really made me question why I was spending so much of my time there.
:funny-clown-hammer: guy really has made "leftist" :reddit-logo: unbearable as of late apparently.
Good on you for leaving that
K-On is fine, but if you ever see an account that uses one of the characters as their pfp you're about to hear the most racist shit of your life. SoL animes seem to attract a larger than average ratio of nazis, I'm sure there's some pathology going on there for them pining for a normal childhood where they weren't a festering pustule of a person.
That's interesting, I wonder what sort of factors caused it. It's certainly my inclination to think miserable people are going to be more attracted to SoL anime as a genre because they are filled with pseudo-social escapism for people who are socially isolated and hate their environment.
K-On is good but the online accounts with K-On pfps have a reputation. Check out the anime though its cool
I only go on :reddit-logo: to read about tech stuff :so-true: and some sports and hobby stuff. So much better than the general stuff there
I do kinda miss a few of the communities but not having to deal with radlibs online is really pleasant.
Have you tried asking her to take like a week off of Twitter (and you can take a week off of Hexbear if that's visible) and just seeing what happens to the both of you mentally? It might be an interesting experiment.
She had cancer a few years ago and basically has to stay home between the chronic fatigue and the plague still raging through the population, not sure I could ask her to give up something that helps make her days less boring.
Well, I suppose then the least you could do is offer a replacement.
Push her here, she's gonna find out soon or later you spend online time in here
Anarcho-Bidenism, not even once.
Edit: Remember, you can't out-debate someone's environment. Either convince her change her environment (even only temporarily), accept that she's like that, or drop her.
We have a lot in common aside from disagreements on politics, and I'm lonely.
Also, promise to put her in the Gulag with the arts and crafts movie nights
well its better than the last time i met a girl i thought was really cute. met her at a concert through mutual friends, got on really well, then when we went for food after she talked about how much she loved zelensky and how tankies are the worst.
Peanut butter is like the only thing helping me hit my protein and calorie goals and not being very underweight lol
It's actually really high in protein, 26g of protein per 100g of peanut butter. Also really high in fats, over 50g of fat per 100g. The perfect bulking food.
The way these threads always explode into hundreds of posts/upvotes just confirms my suspicions that people use monogamous relationships to cope with alienation. The desperation is always palpable.
Tbh, I didn't start living healthily until I was forced to let go of that mindset. I still seek out relationships, of course, because I want to feel the humanity of others, but if you're always in a rush to get out of being single, you won't have the self awareness, care, and consideration to catch bad tendencies before they become major problems. There's a really obvious tone difference on here between the people who've learned to chill and the people who haven't. Women notice these things and we talk about them.
Well tbh it's exploded into hundreds of comments because I've replied to almost everyone lol
And yes, with all my conversations with friends that are women, and personally myself when observing guys, the number one turn off is desperation. It's almost as if you can smell it in the air when someone is desperate. The lack of self respect is very obvious.
Well tbh it’s exploded into hundreds of comments because I’ve replied to almost everyone lol
No shade, I have seen this happen multiple times in the past 6 months, let alone the past year. Though it gets slightly better each time.
It’s almost as if you can smell it in the air when someone is desperate. The lack of self respect is very obvious.
Yeah, I was considering going full lesbian because of things like that. But hexbear has given me a bit of hope in bisexuality. :gator-bi:
With regards to desperation and lack of self respect, there's a reason why "simping" and "white knighting" (god I really hate those words) are looked down upon online by lots of guys, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. They've figured out that it's generally poor behaviour and a turn off in terms of relationships with women, but express it in some misogynistic way towards the women people are "simping" for, instead of introspection.
Being so anxious to get into a relationship or with someone to the point you neglect yourself is a recipe for disaster for you and the person you're with for sure. I've seen it so many times, and you're always the bad guy if you try intervene and tell someone they're not ready for that yet.
Well let's consider the alternatives. You can:
A. Learn to enjoy one-night stands
B. Redirect your frustration into reactionary anger.
B1. Write a manifesto on the great replacement
C. Become a sex pest.
C1. Attain machiavellian levels of narcissism and fakery
C2. Master pick-up artistry and still have the same success rate as Option A
D. Revel in porn addiction.
E. Give your money to sex workers
F. Hopelessly simp for e-girls and vtubers
G. Get weirdly into nazi femboysThe "just stop wanting a relationship" thing is not a plea for allosexuals to become mendicant volcels. It's about deferment of personal desire for the health of a group dynamic. This deferral is what signals movement away from exchange relationships (the status quo for alienating capitalist relations, in which debts and services are tabulated), into communal relationships in which aid, service, and availability are given freely for the good of the whole. The immediacy and consumptive desire of sexually frustrated incel-adjacent people is really unattractive because it signals anti-sociality. Deferral, on the other hand, signals pro-sociality, which people tend to consider pretty attractive. If you ignore this basic, universal, and anti-capitalist conception of relationships, you are just going to keep spinning your wheels forever.
It's fine. I'm not upset. Just sad because I empathize with you to a degree. I was an unhappy person for a really long time and it took a lot of self-crit to figure my life out.
So, this comment is a week old, and I've been thinking about it for that long, but it's been somewhat difficult to articulate exactly what I think my main disagreement with it is. Now though, I believe that I have something that I can work with.
So, look the problem here is that it doesn't really matter what you think you're asking from "sexually frustrated incel-adjacent guys"; the Capitalist order in general, and our particular moment of the contraction of the futures of most people specifically, already asks the people living under it to defer nearly every possible form of personal expression or enjoyment for the sake of it's own social order. The functionality of that very social order is itself predicated upon & requires pathological self-denial as a matter of course. In essence, they (and I to be frank, I'm pretty sure I've already well-expounded upon my own life situation) will be made to be mendicant ascetics regardless of what your ostensible desire for them to live as is.
Now with that said, you can see here, why I don't really see your values, or way of thinking about the way people ought to relate to one another are actually in meaningful conflict with those of capitalist society.
At the very least, you have to admit that the kind of person you're trying to address here really doesn't have very much to look forward to by working with you, tbh. So it's not that surprising that they usually shut down.
In the end, this all boils down to consent. And what you're not seeing is that your point effectively says "the consent of others is authoritarian." You only care about the situation insofar as you get what you want.
In the end, this all boils down to consent. And what you’re not seeing is that your point effectively says “the consent of others is authoritarian.”
It don't boil down to consent, that can be given, or rescinded at any time. It boils down to standards, and expectations, and people aren't willing to change theirs.
You only care about the situation insofar as you get what you want.
I don't know what other way I'm supposed to care about it, if there's no chance for my situation to improve whether I co-operate or not, tbh.
I think we're arguing two different points. You would like to argue against discrimination, which is fair and valid. Disabled people should be integrated into the greater society and capitalism absolutely supports this disparity in power.
But being disabled doesn't make you inherently ideologically incellish. Agreeing with incels makes you ideologically incellish (and I'm bringing this up because whenever people talk about incels you take it personally). This is the framework I'm arguing against, not against anti-discrimination. To most people incel-type ideologies are a huge red flag that you might not be a good person, and it's an unfortunate reality that I've known several women who've learned to be mistrustful to these types of people due to abuse and sexual assault.
I acknowledge that disabled or neurodivergent people can self-identify as incels due to the conditions of our abusive society, but that doesn't mean this belief system should be supported. I don't think it's healthy to identify with incels or integrate their views about themselves into your self image, regardless whether you fully buy in or not. I don't think it's healthy to conflate being disabled or neurodivergent and being an incel as the same thing, and it can be even more harmful to your mental health in the long term than the status quo alone.
I don’t think it’s healthy to identify with incels or integrate their views about themselves into your self image, regardless whether you fully buy in or not. I don’t think it’s healthy to conflate being disabled or neurodivergent and being an incel as the same thing, and it can be even more harmful to your mental health in the long term than the status quo alone.
spoiler
IDK, I suppose you are right, but I don't know that there's much difference to be made on way or the other, as to what I do, any longer.
Right now, at this point in my life, I don't think that I have any real place in the world no matter who's in charge of it. Five years ago, or so, I was chronically unemployed, nearly 400lbs, and almost never left my room for fear of other people. Listening Bernie in his original presidential campaign made me feel for the first time in my life like something could maybe actually change for the better, that with help from others, I might actually be able to live a life worth living. That wasn't what got me to change myself though, funnily enough, it was watching people fighting for that vision of the world getting the shit kicked out of them trying to fight people who I know from experience seek my demise.
I did work hard to change a lot about myself. I got a factory job that pays reasonably (even if the hours aren't), and when I'm healthy I exercise frequently enough & try to look after myself well enough, that most people I meet seem to take note of it; and I feel like, once my knee heals, tryin to reach 180lbs again is a reasonable goal. None of any of that though has gotten me anywhere to where I feel I have a stable life, nor financial independence; and especially not social connection, inclusion, or (I guess most importantly for me) companionship.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I no longer believe that my lack of any of those things has anything at all to do with my own actions, at least none that I can actually change; but rather is it simply a fact of what I am, that I am, which is it's cause. I know I cannot contribute positively to the world so long as I cannot maintain myself, or build bonds with others, and I cannot actually do either of those things on my own. I don't know what I am supposed to feel, other than resentment, towards people who say they want my condition to improve & want a world in which I can contribute positively, but are utterly unwilling to do anything on their own part to enable that to happen.
.
I guess, if you don't want to read all that, what I'm saying is. It may well be that what you're saying is true. I just don't believe that I've got a future, or that what I do matters anymore.
I was in a similar spot before. Alone/isolated/alienated and getting paid peanuts to do the dirtiest job I'd ever done in my life, and having nothing to look forward to but microwave meals and depression spirals before bed. In an unfortunately bootstrappy chain of events, I had to move to a larger city, and used apps and such to find people who could deal with being around me. In this part of finding your niche (finding people who want to do something despite the pressures of liberalism to do nothing), there's a bit of statistics, unfortunately. If you're in a place with very few people, odds are that the subgroup within that population consisting of people open to being proactive in the way you're talking about is fairly small. I personally couldn't handle small town life and saved every dollar I could for moving expenses. It's not really fair and is even a bit ghoulish to expect people to give up a significant portion of their comfort and immediate health in order to seek out a less alienating environment, but that part is definitely a result of capitalist exploitation.
I am happy that you put in the effort to care for yourself and hope you continue to do so. Despite everything going on externally, you do still have your self, and while that feels like little consolation, you are a thinking being and you seem to have a lot on your mind that would be worth sharing if given the opportunity.
I appreciate the patience & concern which you are showing to me in this conversation, that I know that you don't actually have to. It is genuinely difficult to see a way out of my current living situation, given that I have failed to do so; either by circumstance or by my own... lack of capacities; so many times already. I often really don't know what to do with myself anymore, because I don't seem to be able to do what I need to in order to grow.
I'm not really sure, myself, given I don't really know you. Each person has different things they need and different things they can give. Like I can't tell you to just join a ttrpg group or try out the furry fandom because it's a bit personal. Though it is a bit difficult to form these random agglomerations of people without some shared cultural goal or activity. Even hexbear has something to keep everyone's focus directed. I think my only real advice is that you're not too old to experiment.
Like I can’t tell you to just join a ttrpg group
I'm already runnin one of those rn, actually.
Well, yes, wanting a relationship in the abstract isn't an issue.
The issue is a lot of people raised masc come in to flirting with a sense of "I want a relationship with anyone hot enough who'll have me" and that is a massive turn off. We're not fucking interchangeable, flirt with us because you like us.
Because you think our hair or our music or our clothes or the way we hold ourselves is cool
Don't "want a relationship". Be "ready for a relationship" and "want a relationship with that specific person, over there, who you have preferably talked to casually a couple of times and it went well."
There's also the idea that most relationships start online or while clubbing. They don't, they start by meeting aquaintances at house gatherings or bored at conferences or in hobbies (want to meet leftist lgbt friendly people in a setting which heightens emotions? Join your amateur theatre club)
This feeds into the general idea, you need to find a place with a lot of people unfamiliar enough that you can display interest, but familiar enough that you can regularly talk to them and ask friends to hit you up for info.
I see. Well, that does make things harder for you and I'm really sympathetic to the difficulties that non-alloromantic people have.
But if you find someone really interesting for non romantic reasons, and they are romantically attracted to you, then you can have the experience of a romantic relationship without having to feel deep alloromantic attraction for them.
But there's no shortcut to that, so I think my advice still applies.
There is a minimum baseline I think, not just of material needs , but of positive & trusting human interpersonal connection, that has to be met before anybody can actually "just chill", in the kind of way that you're describing. I think that this is a thing that many people seek to deny, because under present conditions there is no real way to actually provide those things to people who don't have them that doesn't require direct imposition on others. It doesn't make it not true though, is the problem.
At first I was a bit skeptical of the "men should find a healthy community in other men before dating" but I think hexbear is starting to demo that it might actually be possible to form healthy masc friendgroups in the future. The more guys we get out there who think about capitalist alienation rationally, the more cool dudes we'll have irl who can help deprogram their friends from the incel path. I think these sorts of socialized friendgroups is what we're going to need as that "minimum baseline" as traditional structures fail.
At first I was a bit skeptical of the “men should find a healthy community in other men before dating” but I think hexbear is starting to demo that it might actually be possible to form healthy masc friendgroups in the future. The more guys we get out there who think about capitalist alienation rationally, the more cool dudes we’ll have irl who can help deprogram their friends from the incel path.
I don't necessarily disagree, tbh. I just think, and this is part of why I linked the Unlearning Economics video beforehand , that people can get materially locked out of even that, tbh. I for one am kind of exactly an example of that; I'm 30, I grew up in a trailer, I got autism, I live with my ma cause I can't keep a job for more than 6 months (usually I have to leave cause I get injured somehow, like right now my knee is broke), I never been to college, and so on. Point is, I got no real chance to make longstanding IRL friendships with most people, even other guys, cause they talk to me for like 5 minutes & there like "Oh this guy's removed".
And so some may grant me the courtesy of their momentary attention, but this is not a relationship of peers, if you understand me.
And that's something that inevitably gets amplified by both the economic angle, but also the gender inequality angle.
IDK, I hope I'm making sense.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen you articulate all of this and just wanted to say I appreciate you telling us about it. Not to say you haven’t before, but I’ve seen you around for a while and just never gotten this context
Oh, last time you said you were old I thought you were in your 60s or something. I'm pretty sure there are other millenials around here who can relate to some degree.
The discrimination sucks, though. I'm sorry. I've seen that kind of thing firsthand, and have even heard about nonprofits taking advantage of people. We really need to work on being better to differently abled people as a society. And it's stupid when you're a minority and the only place to find any solidarity is on the internet. This sort of thing used to be true for queer people too. It's like you gotta be really deep inside your own head to not see the effect it has on how we organize all of society.
Oh, last time you said you were old I thought you were in your 60s or something.
:chomsky-yes-honey:
The discrimination sucks, though. I’m sorry.
TY.
Material relations def. matter.
While a friend of mine who had during uni a spare room that is nearly as large as my whole flat in which she would regularly host parties, get togethers, etc. while my non flatshare apt. was large enough for 2-3 people max. That lead to a significant comparable reduction in social interaction. Which changed once I got a larger flat to host meetings, too.
So while my experience is different than yours I can anecdotally confirm your point.
Is there however some social, common or communal space that you can more or less easily reach to be involved in routine social interaction? In my experience radio amateurs, hacker spaces, workshops like with tools, and neurodiverse meetups were groups in which autistic people were not uncommon and not seldomly had organizational roles. Oh also my food not bombs has a core team which deliver really good work.
I do feel your want for long lasting connection and friendship though. Most places I experienced that were common shared projects, but not all commonly shared projects lead to that.
Is there however some social, common or communal space that you can more or less easily reach to be involved in routine social interaction?
I live in the rural midwest, so for me the answer is that there is church; and nothing else unless I want to drive for more than an hour out of town, which I can't do on my leg right now, really. And I do not like to go there, because they do not respect me, or share my values.
That def. sounds understandable. It is a hard situation. When I lived in a slightly more rural region than now we had some associations and groups which would drive around to bring events to small (read 1000-2000 pop) places and to fetch people who were not able to commute themselves for other events. However it is was from perfect.
A big part of it is that a healthy masculine relationship needs to include things which are typically gatekept by patriarchal men to only occur in romantic relationships with women. Men in platonic relationships ought to be able meet needs for physical touch, emotional intimacy, etc. It’s easier said than done sometimes, but anti-patriarchal men’s groups have the potential to genuinely subversive to capital for the alienation reasons you stated
people are just looking for relationships to avoid feeling alienated from people
Liberalism.jpg
Forming a Harry Potter club so I can have the quidditch matches of my dreams.
Going online to look for a date is a bit like sticking your hand into a garbage disposal to find a snack.
The name of this trash can is ideology. :zizek-preference:
The most success I've had involved meeting other people through friend groups - in school, at the office, through roommates, etc.
Just randomly fishing for relationships is definitely harder.
But as an introvert the bigger the group the more you will be overshadowed by everyone else to the point were nobody notices you.
Going out to look for a date is like huffing a petri dish of sars-cov-2.
True, but without a large circle of friends, it becomes kinda the best option you have.
No women wll like the loner drinking at the bar in my experience.
The solution is just being fine with being alone.
True, but without a large circle of friends, it becomes kinda the best option you have.
Do what you gotta do, sure. If you're hungry enough, you'll stick your hand in there.
The solution is just being fine with being alone.
I gotta disagree.
ok but forreal if I have to deal with another "sadboy" who puts nothing into the relationship because he just too "sad" I'm gunna lose it and do gay conversion therapy on myself (straight conversion therapy in this case i guess)
As one of the :flag-gay-pride: members™, unfortunately dating one of us is not the way to escape terminally sad people. Honestly I think we're more sad in general. Shit kinda sucks rn for us outside of a few nice places in the world.
Higher highs though I'd say
Yeah a lot of guys are consumed by toxic masculinity so talking about feelings and asking how others are doing is icky, except when they can dump all their issues on their
momgirlfriend because they're socially conditioned not to talk about it to anyone else.
I think hexbear users(pr maybe just me and I'm projecting) are just freakishly earnest. Communists are loathe to hide as they say, and everyone here pursues meaningful and honest connections(for the most part). I know I do worse romantically because rather than try to ease my way closer to someone I just ask them out point blank, and people think this is weird. I know if I was less honest about my intentions I might do better, but i don't want to live like that, trying to befriend someone just to ask them out later. I wouldn't want someone unable to appreciate my honesty in just deciding to act on my feelings quickly rather than playing games.
friendly dates
This can be a problem itself -- when it's not clear if what you're doing is a date or hanging out as friends. If you want to go on a date with someone, I think it helps to use that word when you're asking.
It’s helpful specifically because so many people try to do the friendship-then-romance thing. It sucks to think you’re making a friend and then it turns out they’ve been working up to a romance the whole time when you’re not interested. A lot of the time, they will just break off the relationship altogether
I get to know if we're compatible by dating. Like, that is literally the point of dating is finding out if you are compatible. What's a friendly date? a date is a date, no two ways about it.
its just you and another person doing an activity or hanging out together without any expectation of romantic action. light flirtatious touching and cute eye glances is probably the furthest you would go. they're nice there's no pressure try to "make the move" and you can just vibe with eachother.
now maybe you'd say "that's just being friends" but tbh these days I feel like going out and getting dinner (or something similar) with someone 1-on-1 for a few hours can be pretty emotionally intimate. I don't think I would be comfortable doing that with most of my "normal" friends, as we almost always socialize in groups.
That is just being friends. When someone is really past the stage of acquaintance in good terms into a real friend we hang out one on one frequently. I find it easier to just hang out with one person because I don't have to try to divide my attention or be just as funny and engaging to multiple people. If I just wanna chat with friend A all night, I don't have to worry about excluding friend B this way.
Also, I am not touching someone I'm not explicitly dating but could be. We might be in different age groups, or just different subcultures, but it would be very weird, intrusive behavior to just be touching someone that I might be interested from their point of view.
I know if I was less honest about my intentions I might do better, but i don’t want to live like that, trying to befriend someone just to ask them out later.
IDK, I just have ASD, so I'm not big-brained enough to do that, tbh.
me_irl. I pretty sure it comes from being autistic for me. Even just being a leftist feels like a natural consequence of me being autistic.
I've wondered for years and years whether I'm autistic... This is making me... well, wonder more, lol
People have suggested I'm autistic sometimes, but my legitimately tested and diagnosed friends usually don't. I think a lot of people just want to diagnose everything, pathologize differences in the world rather than accept some people were born rather similarly to them and just think differently. If it doesn't negatively impact your life, who cares? Keep being you no matter why you are that way.
Funnily enough, I'm the opposite - my medically diagnosed autistic friend thinks I am, but my neurotypical friends (and therapist) often dismiss the thought.
The thing is, my issues do negatively impact my life. I don't want to say anything ignorantly offensive, so apologies if I do, but I suppose it matters in my mind because I want to know if it's part of my personality or if it's something I have to create strategies for because I'm on the spectrum, if that makes sense? If it's because I'm autistic, I can read books, I can draw on the experiences of others, I can join support groups, I can take medication... If it's just me being a product of my upbringing, well, shit, I still haven't figured out what to do about that really...
But I know even if I am on the spectrum, that aspect of myself isn't going to go away.
that is interesting. And yeah, if you are actually negatively affected by symptoms of autism, then yeah looking into strategies makes perfect sense, sorry if I was at all dismissive. Even if it was upbringing, I think anyone can overcome anything mental short of a disability given enough time, support, and energy. Not trying to be a "power of positive thinking" or anything, just that mindsets and behaviors can be modified with effort over time.
It might be a result of your autism, but I don't think it's just an autism thing. I have a close friend who's autistic and they think my romantic strategies are weird too. Regardless, the amount of hoops you're expected to jump through are absurd, and I feel for you if subtle social cues don't always register.
The concept of "your wife is your best friend" is, in my opinion, an example of capitalist atomization outsourcing emotional labor to women. The time required to foster good relationships in a community, as well as resources, have been lost, so everyone is nly allowed to be really close and emotionally vulnerable with their spouse. The woman usually has to play the role of surrogate mother, lover, and close friend. This is also why incels exist. Their community has been closed down to one person, and they don't have them. This is not to call out your parents, I just have had this analysis for a while and despise this part of culture.
And yes, I would be deeply uncomfortable with that. Because it's false pretenses. Lying and manipulation are a terrible way to start a relationship. If I want to court someone, I want to court them. It is fundamentally different from just wanting to be friends with them. Yeah I still will appreciate them as a person and if I go on a date or two and we aren't romantically clicking but still make good friends I can be happy with that but just acting like a friend when that's not how I intend to be later is just wrong to me.
Okay I'm the opposite in terms of being upfront but still very earnest so maybe there's a point here
I have absurd abilities to endure embarrassing situations, I basically have no shame and can just say or do anything in a social context. But it's the earnestness that counts
I can take embarrassing and absurd situations as long as they aren't degrading towards myself or groveling, I do have some self respect and a backbone now, no longer a doormat.
Being earnest and genuine is definitely very important though
As a cis man i must say
I will be sending you your bright red oversized t-shirt, blue gym shorts & store-brand sneakers in the mail. However you will be expected to supply your own terrible weird-guy beard.
I await my uniform. I will also be sprucing it up with a fedora and weekly showers along with putting in the bare minimum effort of wipping my ass.
Is true unfortunately. Trying not to be a big baby as I work on myself.
This meme really resonated with me because I've interacted with all these types of guys in real life.
From the porn addicted loners sending 4chan "jokes" on the chat group, the guy that always browsed Reddit in class and had a full on breakdown when being corrected by the professor/teacher, the gym bros that spend all their time on Insta liking photos of women in bikinis that would cheat on their partner at the first opportunity that presents itself, the guys that treat life like a chess game constantly manipulating everyone and want to be the next Elon Musk, and the ones pretending to be friendly to women and up to date on issues effecting women just to get laid.
It really do be like that :jokerfied:
Few things more disgusting than this self-infantilization. You are a full-blown adult, no excuses.
Yes, and I shouldn't be expected to shove away my emotions as a man. I'm fragile, and I know that. My emotions are right there on the surface. To be quite honest, saying this kind of thing as if it is a negative reinforces toxic masculinity.
I think the cis men who are capable of becoming anti-patriarchal will do so largely through the radical acceptance and affirmation of other cis men
Dating sucks for just about everyone because most of those categories are manifestations of people being raised by capitalism or ground down by a collapsing society.
Not really? They could have just as easily made a list that is like idk:
The dating pool for young men is literally
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girls who feel like they need to be in a relationship because they're terrified of being alone
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girls who are way too into astrology, tarot, and other bullshit metaphysics
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girls who are narcissists
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girls with crippling co dependence issues
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girls who claim to be feminist but still want their male partners to conform to strict male gender codes and
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girls who find bisexual men distasteful/ are extremely homophobic (more of them than you think believe me, even girls who seem "woke")
Everyone is being fucked up by capitalism and shit so 🤷♂️
To be fair at least the girls probably won't kill you
Exactly!
My first thought when I read that was that it's pretty true but then well I could just come up with a list of problems about women.
To be fair at least the girls probably won’t kill you
Yeah this is the only big difference imo
“Men are scared women will laugh in their face, women are scared it’s their lives men will take”
:I-was-saying:
i've been on the receiving end of violence from women. i have absolutely been white knuckle terrified of being killed by a woman i was in an intimate relationship with. it's not something one sees coming. one minute you're with someone on a team, the next you're seeing the danger right next to you, trapping you.
spoiler alert: i got away. when i ended things with her soon after, over the phone from 30 miles away, i made it seems like it was generally amicable. i constructed a story of my own emotional unavailability, because it was plausible and i could come across as unhappy. i told our mutual friends it was about some vague incompatibility, because i was not looking to be invalidated or worse when any accusation got back to her. it's been years now and i have surgically removed any social threads connecting us so as to create the perception our estrangement was natural and unintentional.
i never told anyone except a guy i've known for 20+ years who went through something similar more recently and was spiraling about how to process it. i'm grateful he reached out when he did. it sucks because suddenly fearing for your life sucks, but the extra layer of knowing in your bones that many of those close to you would dismiss your experience, explain it away as your misunderstanding, and default to taking the side of your abuser. my heart goes out to anyone who has lived this experience as any gender.
i don't even like the general topic coming up among friends, because it makes me upset when people i am close to can't wrap their mind around the concept, in the abstract, that anyone who has access to a motor vehicle can kill someone. or that anyone of any size can physically hurt and deeply traumatize someone who trusts them with violence or the threat of violence. because that's what trust is: making yourself vulnerable to another.
this phrase can die a thousand deaths. men might be conditioned by patriarchy to pretend women can't hurt or kill men, but fear has a way of continuing to exist underneath self-deception.
this phrase can die a thousand deaths. men might be conditioned by patriarchy to pretend women can’t hurt or kill men, but fear has a way of continuing to exist underneath self-deception.
Seconding this to say that I was once in an abusive relationship with a woman who was physically violent and threatened to call the cops on me for domestic abuse if I tried to break up with her.
This sort of thing is a really clear example of how toxic masculinity also hurts men.
Many, many women are that last one, I was blown away when I would mention this and shit would end immediately. My current girlfriend actually had a negative/confused reaction to me being bi, she went and talked to her about it, who told her to dump me immediately! She did not though.
But yes, by all means I still told every woman I dated that I was bi anyway just because if it's gonna be a problem then we should just end it. Haven't dated in years though so maybe it's gotten better
Many, many women are [biphobic]
:sadness:
she went and talked to her about it
Talked to her what?
girls who claim to be feminist but still want their male partners to conform to strict male gender codes
yeah this is sadly true, there are just as many men like this too.
-
As a bi guy I'd say just a little bit, at least women for the most part aren't consumed by toxic masculinity like the average guy. And won't try kill you or creep on you in the way some incel types do. Haven't encountered any "femcels" yet thankfully.
Though a lot of straight women apparently won't date openly bi guys, which is kinda shit tbh. I've experienced it and it sucks. I'm in the closet for now, so I always ask them their thoughts on LGBT people while they view me as an unassuming straight guy and some of the stuff I've heard is really vile.
So yeah dating right now is uhh yea...
Good points.
I 100% think women have it worse but yeah it's not like there's just a ton of unproblematic women out there to date either. I think for women the stakes are just so much higher for them in terms of safety. Like straight men don't have to worry about a bad date possibly hurting them.
Living in a sick society makes sick unwell people and that's just tough to date in idk
I 100% think women have it worse but yeah it’s not like there’s just a ton of unproblematic women out there to date either. I think for women the stakes are just so much higher for them in terms of safety. Like straight men don’t have to worry about a bad date possibly hurting them.
Yeah this is it for the most part. The safety part is really bad where I live in South Africa for sure.
Ah I see it hasn't changed. Yeah the bi thing absolutely blew my mind. I came out when I had a girlfriend who was also bi, and we had an agreement we could each do gay hookups (as long as we told eachother). When that relationship ended and went back into the dating pool, I would mention to girls that i was bi after a few dates and shit ended so quick so often. They apparently think bi people are sex crazed and will cheat on them immediately. Also I think they're just grossed out by it for some reason.
And then with guys, sometimes they think that you aren't really bi because being bi is fake and you're really just gay but can't admit it or whatever.
Yeah they think you're some serial cheater or sex addict freak, even if you're fully committed to a monogamous relationship and that's all you need and want. Or they think you have cooties or something because you also find men hot.
Not really, ime. All but the first archetype she mentioned are super common among both women and men because capitalism is a fuck
Death to America
I can't be the only one who doesn't get dating apps and stuff right? Like it seems to me that people are trying so hard to force a connection but also not be too interested. I had Tinder for all of two days before I deleted it because it just depressed me
Dating apps are absolutely awful in their current form...but the flipside to it is that they offer the chance to eliminate a lot of confusion from courtship.
The question you kinda need to ask yourself is: aside from dating apps where is an appropriate place to ask someone out romantically?
Work? Absolute non starter.
Out in public? Every woman I know in my personal life hates being asked out in public, even if they're single. A lot of people consider this sexual harassment.
At parties/social events? I guess....depending on the size/group you hang with???
For all it's problems it is refreshing that in a dating app, if you're chatting with another human, you know at least two things:
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They are interested in finding someone to be more than a platonic friend.
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They find you attractive on a first glance.
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if I don't meet a person in person then I'll just die alone. I don't need to experience algorithmically optimized rejection. Ironically I have too much self esteem for that. M'ladies :attlee-fedora:
Yeah I don't use those things anymore, tried it once and totally not for me.
I think I commented about it somewhere in this thread
I read an article in the university newspaper recently and it seems like a significant number of young people are deciding to ditch dating apps for those reasons. So it's not just you or people on this website.
OkCupid wasn't that bad prior to, like, 2008-2009, when they started getting really scummy with the matching algorithm. Met some interesting people on there, including my spouse.
The "main" personality test was at least slightly better than astrology, because it would classify people based on how likely they were to behave like a self-centered ass as one if its dimensions.
But yeah, it went to shit when they had to turn an actual profit.
Are they? Good. I was beginning to fear they had become more commonplace with young people. Dating apps and sites went from something you were ashamed to admit to because it made you a loser to nearly everyone having tried it at least once.
Like it seems to me that people are trying so hard to force a connection but also not be too interested
I get it but it's also cringe and I hate it
