UPDATE
A reader sent in this photo of a cat in a stroller that is whisked around town by its owners:
I thought the end of America would be a long, slow decline over generations, but now I think it might happen in a matter of years.
My man about town, Dodgeball Dan, called from an undisclosed location to inform me that there was a young-ish couple walking a cat on a leash. He was so repulsed and simultaneously fascinated that he had to tell me as the action was going down.
DD: Dude, there’s a couple walking a cat on a leash. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Me: Is the guy a herb*?
DD: Oh yeah, total herb. And of course his girlfriend is cute. [To the couple] Hey, does he fetch?
Herb: Only indoors.
DD: He looks a little confused.
Herb: It’s his first time outside.
DD: [Back to me] Wow. Oh man. The herb just picked the cat up like a baby, cradled it, and carried it off. These are the end times for America.
Between this:
and this:
these are indeed the end times for America. It’s not so much the decadence that’s doing us in, it’s the silliness. (Open borders, cats on leashes… it all flows from the same juvenile mindset.)
*herb, noun – a schlumpy, nondescript white guy with no fashion sense, chin, or sexual gravitas, who has managed to hook up with a cute chick. Herbs usually wear satchels to nightclubs and button down collar shirts with the Hanes undershirt 
peaking through at the neck. They love anything khaki and are not embarrassed to be seen wearing fanny packs or sandals. A super herb takes it up a notch with white athletic socks and an extra-large t-shirt to hide his man boobs. They have a walk that can be best described as looking like they are carrying a load in their pants. They will annoy you just by being there. The fact that a herb will have usually managed to score a cute yuppie chick will fill you with violent feelings toward him.
Being the owner of – or owned by – what we’ll just say is a very substantial number of cats, I cannot even imagine trying to walk one on a leash. Cats go where they want to go, not where you want them to go.
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a cat on a leash? man, America needs to start “smacks for stupidity”, pronto.
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Aside from the inherent foolishness of a man owning a cat, the leash actually makes sense. Think about it: Which needs a leash more, a cat or a dog? A dog is trainable, loyal, and eager to please; if you have a properly-trained dog with the right temperament, a leash is essentially unnecessary except as a bit of insurance. Meanwhile, cats are aloof, headstrong, and essentially untrainable; if you want to take one outside with you and prevent it from following its own agenda, a leash is an absolute necessity.
As far as the herbs go, wouldn’t they, by your definition of an alpha male as someone who is attractive to attractive women, be classified as alphas? No matter what you think of their appearance, they’re bedding their cute girlfriends. That’s got to count for something.
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Open borders, cats on leashes
Dude, I think you just became my second-favorite favorite blogger (after Michael Blowhard).
I dig your combination of hedonistic sensibilities and paleocon smarts.
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are you gonna be mad when herbs and cute chicks repopulate the country b/c you’re not passing on your genes?
i would be.
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“The fact that a herb will have usually managed to score a cute yuppie chick will fill you with violent feelings toward him.”
Oh. Is that cause they prolly invested in an Ivy league education instead of Mystery Method seminars?
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#7 T
Don’t give her attention. We’ve done a good job of ignoring her for the past few days, as you could see by the increasingly deranged sniping intended solely to elicit some kind of response and thus give her the attention she craves. If we continue to ignore her, she may eventually give up.
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T.
I finally figured it out. This message board is the only way she can get any kind of attention in her life. It’s the only way to get anyone to pay attention to her. If you ignore her you’ll notice that her comments become more ridicules and insane until someone finally tells her to shut the fuck up. If you do respond early she’ll feel justified to keep leaving insane comments. It’s a no win situation.
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7 and 10
Your efforts are futile. Law of attraction is more powerful than even you. Men love negative attention. In fact they love any attention from women at all. Admit it. You love it.
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i second PA. a taki-con perhaps?
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11 Virgl!!
I am loving all this male attention today. Meow! I love a man who tells me to shut the fuck up.
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5 Reggie is not a cat person. That explains everything. A man who doesn’t like cats, doesn’t like women. He wants to control everything and have a slobbering animal (dog) to do his bidding. So date dogs, Reggie! Also men are not like dogs as some women seem to think. They are not loyal OR easily trained. Men are more like birds. They’re skittish and bite you when they’re scared.
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Men love negative attention.
Rina once nailed it when she told Candy Cane that commenters like herself (and Hope, and Clio) are better liked by guys here because they don’t try to change men’s minds about their fundamental notions. Or somethign along those lines.
Candy Cane nees to realize that constant high-noise-to-data posts full of contrariness are irritating. They don’t project a sexiness like some of the other commenters here do. They’re just annoying.
I’m sure CC is a nice and fun person, but to show it, she needs to take a deep breath and quit aaaaarguing for the sake of arguing.
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16 PA
“she needs to take a deep breath and quit aaaaarguing for the sake of arguing.”
You are right about that. Like any habit of behavior it’s hard to give up.
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Reggie, Virgle, I’m new around here. Thanks for schooling me. Duly noted.
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PA:
Translation: Men don’t like being told they’re wrong.
The people with the largest egos are actually male herbs. In any basic program management course they teach you that in order to get software developers to do things, it’s much easier to convince them that what they’re doing is the right thing as opposed to forcing them to do said thing.
Maybe all that women are like willows bending in the wind stuff has some merit.
There’s an absurd number of female program managers at my work place in proportion to female devs. Perhaps they’re on to something….
Original Article:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/news/0803/gallery.real_stories/11.html
That’s awesome it’s like some stud surfer dude landed a biotech research scientist. Rina maybe you should move to Hawaii…
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hehe
you can’t ever change anyone’s mind, esp. not by pushing them. you can only manipulate… something the ladies are excellent at! and if you can’t, who cares, live life the way you see it. candy, learn!
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Is that cause they prolly invested in an Ivy league education instead of Mystery Method seminars?
Almost no one gets curious about Game until they’re out of college — while in college, males are still hopelessly deluded about how much they can attract females “naturally.” It’s a pretty sorry sight.
So it has nothing to do with where you went to school. In fact, most Ivy Leaguers aren’t the Herb type — this doesn’t really lead to a career in investment banking, publishing / media / journalism, BIGLAW, and so on — though Herbs are more frequent at good schools than in the general population.
It just has to do with a revulsion upon imaging a world increasingly populated by computer programmer geeks, like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
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This post reminds me of an old, very obscure 1960s (minor) hit called “Walking My Cat Named Dog.” Has anyone heard this?
It’s by Norma Tanega and it’s out on YouTube:
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agnostic, what’s a little teasing among friends.
On the serious tip, there were many herbs on the campuses of the Ivy’s I attended. Not all Ivy grads go into IB.
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Agnostic, you’re usually very on point, but I disagree with you – game is big at college, to the point where when it has come up, most to every guy there is familiar with it. The sex columnist briefly touched on game, at my school ( http://cornellsun.com/node/25473 ).
Game arises when you’ve got smart, otherwise successful guys doing poorly with women.
Herb defines the typical engineering student. Khaki cargoes, running shoes, free t-shirt, parka in annoying color, white athletic socks.
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not sure about america, but in Europe game is unheard of. im in college, and most girls ive spoken to HAVE NEVER EVEN BEEN COLD APPROACHED.
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Can I get some clarification on the Hanes t-shirt thing? B/C I’m guilty as charged. But, I definitely prefer the undershirt look to the chest hair-poking-out look, and in DC, in the summer, I’ll be sweating like a whore in church if I’m not wearing an undershirt.
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It just has to do with a revulsion upon imaging a world increasingly populated by computer programmer geeks, like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
The IT geek is a very popular Internet stereotype, but sometimes I wonder how common it is in real life. Very few if any of the IT people I’ve known have been particularly nerdy or geeky.
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“herb” is new to me… but it makes so much sense!!! i loath khakis and tennis shoes. (they probably drive subarus too!)
the following pic is from my own archives
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argh… i guess i can’t do html? i had the perfect pic of a cat in a baby carriage….
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“these are indeed the end times for America”
On the one side it flows from cats being on leashes –
and from the other side from the Enrons / Haliburtons
that are roaming free without any restraints.
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1 Peter
Cats love to be “pulled” on a leash
Scientists:
Centrifical force can turn any leash into a slinglike device
Creationists:
Goliath was felled by a David using a cat sling device
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and from the other side from the Enrons / Haliburtons
that are roaming free without any restraints.
Careful, lest you be labeled a dirty “liberal.” Ewwww liberals and herbs.
P.S. My husband is a liberal IT nerd herb who hates khakis.
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Men walking cats on leashes are a worse sign of end times than a 100 Halliburtons, sorry.
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Hi Hope
I can think –
so you can call me a guy who can think
Usually the labelers of “liberal”
think the least but plot the most
(not you)
When I label it is for people like Gannon.
When I libel it is for people like Gannon.
I sleep with more attractive people
so that makes me half herb?
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#24 TSM
The problem with that (remarkably irritating) article is that the girl has a fundamental misunderstanding of men’s goals vs. women’s goals. She assumes, because she is a woman, that the point of “hooking up” is to please women, either by being good in bed (a “good hook-up”), or by forming a mutually rewarding, long-term relationship (being a “catch”). What she doesn’t understand is that for men, hooking up is a goal in and of itself. It is its own reward.
It doesn’t matter if the men with game whom Cornell girls hook up with aren’t the best in bed or the best long-term catches, because they’ve already given it up. The men have achieved their objective, in other words. The rest of the article is just the usual blather about how you should just be your sweet, sensitive self, and eventually — after a long period of courtship, during which the woman decides whether or not you’re worthy of her “carnal treasure” (a phrase that should require a mandatory punch to the face) — you’ll get the committed girlfriend you’ve always dreamed of. Because that’s what she assumes men are looking for, since that’s what she thinks she is looking for.
But in the meantime, men with game are successfully hooking up — as she herself notes in the opening paragraphs, which describe how women respond sexually to men with game. In essence, she manages the difficult trick of affirming the opposite of what she intended in her article.
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34 T.
Men walking cats hasn’t cost you thousands of dollars in taxes. *and we can kick their asses anytime we want.
You ARE paying to bail out the S&Ls (400 + billion) with your taxes – Bush #1. and now you will have about 4 trillion more in taxes to pay for shit we didn’t want (wars, Enron, giving your taxes paid to the wealthy, etc) – Bush #2.
So don’t give me your defend the catwalker bullshit.
I swear – All people ever do is defend the very people who steal the most from them. Nobody will fight evil anymore.
That’s your endtimes wakeup call T-bone
Still sleeping?
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I’d still rather deal with that than dudes walking cats. Sorry.
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Never, ever listen to women tell you what other women want or what THEY want.
This also includes friendlies like a sister. They simply can’t make a cognitive leap from what they think they want, to what they’ll respond to.
And it works both ways. Women should only ask more successful women for romantic advice. I have an unmarried girl-friend whom I’ve been friends with since high school(not girlfriend; I’m married), who isn’t bad looking, and used to ask me advice on men. Being that I was not interested in her “that way” but I genuinely wanted well for her, I found myself very limited in my ability to give her effective advice. I started telling her to ask her married girlfriends.
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Check out the documentary The King Of Kong. Good example of the herb you speak of.
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Great post today. Love the cultural commentary. That couple walking their cat on a leash made me want to vommit.
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Cats are excellent teachers. They come when they want to. They do their own bidding. Cats and women have a lot in common. Are you listening?
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T.
“I’d still rather deal with that than dudes walking cats. Sorry.”
The people walking pussys around (ie:Enron) are the ones I’m attacking – not the people who walk cats.
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are you a cat or dog person?
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Candy Cane,
Did he pump-and-dump you at some point back in the day and you’re now coming back under a pseudonym to harrass him on his blog? I just can’t understand any other reason why you’d obsess over discrediting a stranger…if you hate his message so badly, why keep coming back?
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I don’t understand why engineers are so often depicted on this site as “herb” types. The engineers I know build bridges and blow things up, etc., and they tend to be large, dominant males with very short hair and stern expressions. To me, “engineer” is almost synonymous with “macho”, for better or for worse. If they’re awkward with women (and many are not), it’s more likely to be because they aren’t good small talkers, not because they’re bland and passive.
Is it because you’re speaking primarily of software engineers and such?
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I agree with Clio on engineers.
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herbs make good husbands
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clio, it’s because guys who are good at math have to be bad with women. Or something.
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herbs make good husbands
Plus, they’re delightful when set on fire and inhaled.
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Reggie what do have against Herbs.
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“this is when a guy wears a button down shirt (with the top button undone) and the white undershirt is showing through at the neck.”
isn’t that how dr. house dresses?
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#52 Chic Noir
Reggie what do have against Herbs.
What do you have against our eyeballs with that profile picture?
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TSM,
You broke one of the cardinal rules of guy-girl relationships. You took advice from a woman on what women want. He has touched on this. There’s also a great scene in the old Dustin Hoffman-Bill Murray comedy “Tootsie” about this.
Never, ever listen to women tell you what other women want or what THEY want. Watch what they do (Roosh said this first). Their mouths say one thing, but their vaginas open for another.
Here is an example sentence from the Cornell sex columnist you cited: “The bottom line is that you don’t have to go too far out of your way or change who you are to impress us. Let’s face it. We wouldn’t be at Cornell if we valued chiseled features and ripped abs over brains and personality.”
Anyone wanna help me pick this apart? The main cognitive dissonance here is that she fails to realize she got into a Ivy college ONLY TO WRITE A TAWDRY SEX COLUMN and therefore is operating in just the Hollywood-driven sphere she then goes on this criticize. When women started going to college in record numbers, the culture of college itself changed. I’m sure Roosh could deconstruct this better.
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Shaved women are evil, bring on the Glorious Natural Pelt!
(I know this has nothing to do with the issue under discussion, but it’s the sort of thing I just have to say every so often)
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are you a cat or dog person?
i prefer dogs for their pickup utility.
Can I get some clarification on the Hanes t-shirt thing?
this is when a guy wears a button down shirt (with the top button undone) and the white undershirt is showing through at the neck. it’s herbly. i suggest either learn to love wearing v-neck undershirt or a wife beater, or wax the upper chest hair if it bothers you. or just display that proud manly thatch with a gold chain and hit on guidettes.
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It just has to do with a revulsion upon imaging a world increasingly populated by computer programmer geeks, like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
That’s really unlikely. They don’t reproduce. Realistically, the Comic Book Guy is a lower form of herb, the standard-issue geek.
Of course, this begs the question: if the herb scored a cute yuppie chick, how did he do it? Either he has game despite his lack of fashion sense, or there’s something you’re not touching on.
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fyi, the herb is not necessarily beta, though they often are. many herbs can be seen taking long romantic walks with decent looking girls, defying all logic and universal laws. my friends and i think the herb has connections, which wouldn’t be unusual. or they just get really lucky and find those few cute chicks in the city jonesing for a bland provider beta.
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@47 alias clio
“The engineers I know…tend to be large, dominant males with very short hair and stern expressions. To me, “engineer” is almost synonymous with “macho”…”
You dear, are in the EXTREME minority with that opinion or you live in statistical bubble. 🙂
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When I see attractive woman with not-so-attractive guys (like most TV sitcoms), I always want to know the back story. How’d she hook up with him? Childhood friends? Same church? Friend blind date? Or maybe the “herb” just LOOKS like a loser. Might be something else going on there that’s not obvious with a passing glance…
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Engineering is a hypermasculine discipline, as such you find the extremes of masculinity overrepresented. This ranges from the superalpha jock type to the supernerd, usually, but not exclusively, asian. Engineers I know have a strange, unfeigned and uncaring attitude to what other people think that draws women too them. Women LOVE guys who exist mostly in their own brain. On a fundamental level engineers REALLY don’t care about women that much, they genuinely prefer… engineering. As such they women like them more.
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guys who prefer and would choose their careers over women are very attractive to girls.
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Would you classify the cat in the stroller as, perhaps, long?
And being an engineer doesn’t make you a (an?) herb. I’m living proof. For one, my shirts are Fruit Of The Loom.
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On on the T-shirt under the button down shirt thing…it’s not THAT bad when done right. When done correctly, it’s actually good. However, I don’t recommend Hanes T shirts. 🙂
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10 rina
“candy, learn!”
With these guys, it hardly matters, but thanks anyway. Being accepted by him and company? No great shakes, sister.
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cuchulainn
Engineers I know have a strange, unfeigned and uncaring attitude to what other people think that draws women too them.
engineering is self-selecting for such people: not only because the work is ideally suited to that disposition, but, much more importantly, because people who do care what others think will inevitably abandon engineering for more lucrative, prestigious, and respected fields.
show me a 30-year-old engineer who gives one flying fuck about others’ opinions, and i’ll show you a business school applicant.
—
Women LOVE guys who exist mostly in their own brain.
only true if those men possess at least one other marker of traditional alphatude, whether that be dominance, confidence, power, or raw good looks.
i sincerely doubt that andrew wiles‘s door has ever been beaten down by females bewitched by his pertinacity.
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Shannon: Baron Cohen said about as much.
H: makes sense, but I always had the impression connected people dressed well, etc. Could be wrong.
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hit on guidettes
Does he hit on guidettes and other prole white women or is he too good for that?
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To me, “engineer” is almost synonymous with “macho”, for better or for worse.
people! let’s consider the obvious: the connotation of ‘engineer’ to any one is a function of the milieu in which (s)he finds him/herself.
i’ve lived in flyover country, in which ‘engineer’ generally refers to a hard-nosed army-corps type who blows up bridges by day and bars by night, and in silicon valley and route 128, where calling engineers herbs would do herbs a grave disservice.
so, all of you are right.
—
ed: The fact that a herb will have usually managed to score a cute yuppie chick will fill you with violent feelings toward him.
violent feelings?
such feelings, which are as beta as it gets, should be anathema to the cool, flippant detachment that you so successfully project. the only man who has an excuse to harbor such feelings is he who runs hot yet lays not.
yes, i understand the art of exaggeration, but it strikes me as betaissimo to feel even the slightest bit irked here.
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When I see attractive woman with not-so-attractive guys (like most TV sitcoms), I always want to know the back story. How’d she hook up with him? Childhood friends? Same church? Friend blind date? Or maybe the “herb” just LOOKS like a loser. Might be something else going on there that’s not obvious with a passing glance…
$$$$$$$$$
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i sincerely doubt that andrew wiles’s door has ever been beaten down by females bewitched by his pertinacity.
Wiles may look like an ultra-nerd, but at least one woman has found him acceptable. From an interview on the Nova television show:
Yes, it was one morning in late May. My wife, Nada, was out with the children and I was sitting at my desk thinking about the last stage of the proof.
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28 Days of Broken Arrows, and 36 Reggie
Who said I listened to a woman? I totally agree with you. Just noting the level of awareness of game at college. Good point Reggie, I hadn’t noticed how she proves herself wrong right at the outset, lol.
39 PA
Why can’t guys offer valuable advice on how to ‘keep’ guys? ‘Game,’ that is, attracting the other sex, is a lot less useful for girls to use on guys, but there are definitely things girls could do or not do to make them more LTR-worthy.
There’s a whole range of things girls can do, mostly unrelated to their appearance, like responding to calls promptly, being more stable, feminine, positive, and less moody. They’re pretty basic, but women are prone to delusion, as evidenced by the difference between what they say and what they actually like.
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OK Reggie, I will change the pic for you.
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only because women’s empathy (and their definition of empathy) is primarily restricted to other women.
Not true. I can remember clearly when I was 4 or 5 years old in pre-school, watching a boy clutching his stomach because he was in pain, and feeling such a swelling of empathy for him. To this day I still remember him. I think that was my first school crush.
I instinctively want to protect, heal and comfort any man or woman who goes through a lot of pain, physical or psychological. Both my parents went into the medical field, so maybe they passed on some kind of doctor gene to me, because I also loved to play doctor when I was young.
True empathy knows no gender or appearances or bounds… I hate seeing animals in pain, and I can’t even bring myself to kill bugs even though I hate them. I have some crazy impulse to want to take all the hurt from the world. These days I play a healer in every video game to act out that desire to take away other people’s pain.
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Ya, I’m getting tired of looking at a stank-ass pair of feet, Chic.
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