Author Richard Florida is fond of theorizing that communities cross a threshold to prosperity and easy living when members of the diversity creative class — loosely defined by him as gays, women, immigrants, bohemians, and anyone who works in the arts or social media — move in and begin to remake the place in their image.
Oh, rilly?
Think of those technologies that make living day-to-day in a modern secular society fun, timesaving, convenient, entertaining, safe, and… *snicker*… self-actualizing; those things that most distinguish modern societies from more primitive societies and from societies of generations past — appliances, cars (scooters for you side-sitting SWPLs), water treatment, hi-tech medical devices, flat screen TVs, iPods, smartphones, laptops, GPS, digital cameras, wi-fi hot spots, 3G, blogs, Youtube, online shopping, and energy to feed it all.
Who is most responsible for that creative class cornucopia? Non-profit lawyers? Interior decorators? Fashion mavens? Jazz musicians? Art gallery owners? Event planners? PR multitaskers in pencil skirts?
It is to laugh.
Try electrical engineers and computer scientists. You know, incredibly unsexy male nerds.
If tomorrow all the present and future electrical engineers and computer scientists disappeared, after some lag time for the effects to trickle down and the existing devices to decay, Florida’s creative class would find itself in a world of culturally backwards hurt. Those bohemians would suddenly be living their poseur lives for real.
A little perspective folks, on who is doing the real heavy lifting to give you the lifestyle you now can’t live without. And just how precarious is that thin, pale line between materialist abundance and dispiriting drudgery.
More accurate to say that when the people this author thinks are the “creative classes” obtain control of the culture, the society is past its peak and headed for decay, breakup, and collapse.
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Oh, rilly?
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Well put. I am really tempted to post this on news.ycombinator.com.
On unrelated news:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/foragers.html
Excerpt:
“It seems that our distant forager ancestors beat wives but not kids, and weren’t remotely monogamous. They had huge inequalities in status and sex, but low material inequality, due to generous sharing and few durable goods. They had little overt dominance or positions of power, and valued trust and honesty greatly. Justice was personal, with personal violence and suicide rare.”.
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Indeed.
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lozlzlll damn right roissy!!!
the reason why the united states debt is live over 13,000,0000,000,000 13 trillion gazillion is that the universities government and corproations are filled with women who create not ipods itunes cars toasters flat screen tvs (omg klzzlzozoz) ps3 stations xboxes lzozlzlz and wii fits lzozlzllzl i mageting exicted just tlkin about my stahs here lzozlzlz, but women create nothing but debt, war, debauchery, abortion, burueacry, stamping their little feet and yelling HEY YOU OPRESSED ME YOU MOTHER FUCKER AND NEVER LET ME CREATE THE IPOD NOR XBOX BEACUES I HAVE A BLACK HOLE GINA! LOZLZLZ AND NOW MY BLACK HOLE GINA IS GOING TO =SUCK ALL THE WELATH AND PROSPERITY AND FUTURE OUT OF THE UNITED STATES LZOZLZLZLZLZLZOZL
lozllzlzlzl and that’s what they did
THE EXPLOSION of DEBT and NATIONAL DEBT coincided with the women’sz movement as ben beranke and his friends cretaed the womenz movement to enslave men, to get arms of the government–their asscocked (secretly taped iwthout their conthent as the neocns like it best), soulles wives who are more loyal to MTV and their MBA boss than their huband and kids–to get the fembot government agents to spy on tehir husbnds lzozlzlzlzlzl
lozlzl it rmeinds me of teh ancient mariner–water water everywhere and not a drop to drink as its all tainted with salt.
lzozllzl and now we livehere–womenz womenz everyehwere, and lotsa ass to lick, but no soul to hold lxolxllzozlzlllzl as its all tainted with butthex entitlement lzolzl
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“Try electrical engineers and computer scientists. You know, incredibly unsexy male nerds.”
Like this one?http://www.wearesuperfamous.com/wp-content/jonny_ive2.jpg
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Am tempted to have a look online for some sexy Swedish smartphone engineers and cute Japanese flat screen tv ones but I really should do some work.
(this post is not in or against what you said, I’m going to think about it properly later, I just couldn’t resist the excuse to post a pic of Jonny Ive).
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This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed as well among my artsy DC friends who are far more “enlightened” than me because they are taking art classes and french lessons and all these things that make them more cultured. They also scoff at me….the surgeon, when I say I don’t have time for the frivolous bullshit they devote their entire lives to because I’ve got real work to do. Oh well also these people think I should treat their medical problems for free as well…sorry but majoring in art and not being able to keep a job really isn’t conducive to affording modern necessities….i would like to see what would happen when the cultural value shifts even further and there are less engineers and doctors and what not to support the “enlightened” folk. Oh well we’ll see soon enough I’m sure.
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[…] http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/t… […]
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not so fast.
you’re right that this “creative class” could neither come into existence nor survive without the engineers and compuer scientists, but that does not mean that they alone “give you the lifestyle you now can’t live without.”
the soviet union had plenty of scientiests and engineers. in terms of military technology, space exploration, heavy industry, etc. they were as advanced or more so than we were. despite that fact, life for the average soviet citizen was noticeably lacking in all of the lifestyle choices you list.
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Creative? Hardly. Unless, of course, your idea of “creative” revolves around the proliferation of soul-deadening, effeminizing popular culture.
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“I don’t want to blame the hipsters, they’re searching for something authentic.” – Richard Florida.
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Actually, the sexy Jonny Ive is an immigrant in the US. And he looks gay, though isn’t. Steve Jobs is bohemian with his youth of fruitarian (?), calligraphy and LSD?
Apple = creative in design and also has advertising + marketing skills (they even have women helping them)
Palm + lots of PC manufacturing companies = unsexy nerdy guys trying to sell stuff on features
We all know who’s winning culturally and financially.
This isn’t just an Apple or Pixar are special, it could be Nokia versus Ericsson or Sony versus LG a few years back.
Dr M – from my perspective a surgeon is way above art. Your hands are far more precious.
And in the UK at least, science has been far too unsupported for far too long.
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Its just hippie brain disease. But they have cash and like to spend it.
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@Fridolin
“It seems that our distant forager ancestors beat wives”
yet
“personal violence and suicide rare.”
LOL
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Someone has been reading Ayn Rand…
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I’m not sure that Richard Florida’s notion of the “creative class” precludes engineers and computer geeks. What it precludes is non-specialized manual labor, or traditional industrial employment. He points to cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, and even Washington as poles that will draw young talent at the expense of other cities. His argument is really about educated youth who bring ideas for start-ups, new technology, and the attendant social and cultural innovations. He is not dismissing manufacturing as a development model, but rather, arguing that young and enterprising talent will seek to be near each other, and will congregate in a handul of cities. If you are an Ohio boy with a big idea nowadays, you don’t take it to Cleveland…..you go to Raleigh or Boston.
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j r nailed it.
The only place in America where engineers and computer scientists create all those exciting new technologies is Silicon Valley. (And there’s a reason for that.) All the rest of them work in places like Pittsburgh, Research Triangle, the Dallas exurbs and along the Dulles Tollroad. Which are among the most soul-deadening places on the planet.
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in some parts of brooklyn, hipsters now call themselves “faux-hemians”
i don’t know if they thought of it themselves (to be ironic) or chose to embrace someone’s insult (to feel empowered)
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Doesn’t that seem to confuse cause and effect ? Common knowledge would seem to indicate that the prosperity brought forth by technological advancements would only make a bohemian and artsy lifestyle possible in the first place.
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I wish our artist-hipster class professed a paleo/WN aesthetic. At least their philosophy would be sustainable of their lifestyle and values.
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On the other hand, those trendy downtown areas that the creative types gentrify are made safe by mean-as-shit prole cops beating the living crap out the more stylish members of our urban underclass and old greedy real-estate developers who buy old townhomes, put in granite countertops and flip them for 2x the price.
I haven’t read Florida’s books, but I’m pretty sure he leaves that part out.
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What would they eat if not for the throngs of underpaid and undereducated harvesting their goji berries and arugula?
Some think modern convenient society relies on clicking and buzzing. It really relies on Joe farmer and trucker john.
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j r,
Your comment is dumb.
The presence of engineers and scientists and scientists failed to make the Soviet Union materially prosperous because of a ridiculously stupid political and economic system which was unprecedentedly incompetent in failing to translate technological advance into material wealth. The NORMAL result of technological advance has been increased wealth, because even oppressive states, before their modern capability to be totalitarian as well arose, had to allow people to get rich off the technology they developed.
To say the scientists and engineers didn’t do it alone is either a truism (they couldn’t have done it in an anarchy that had no police or legal system) or misleading (although societies that fail to support technological advance are common, if they DO support it then the normal result is material wealth).
And in any case the hipsters and artists are the froth on the beer — nice to have because some people find what they do enjoyable, but not necessary for the development of prosperity.
If you want to give credit to someone other than the scientists, engineers, and inventors, it belongs to those political and military leaders who were able to create a sufficiently stable and educable society that material progress was possible. They had a different and valuable skill set, but the bohemian types are useless for that endeavor too.
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If anything, the fruit of Florida’s work indicates causation between these bohemians moving to a particular downtrodden neighborhood and property values subsequently rising.
Crime ridden neighborhood where women don’t want to live->cheap rents->bohemians/gays move in->crime declines/new bohemian stores open->SWPL’s move in and drive rents up->bohemians/gays move to cheaper neighborhood…
Everything else is a veiled status rant. Robin Hanson offers related commentary here
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Well, technology ain’t the best thing around. We’re all more impressed by ancient philosophy, poetry and arts than from it’s bridges and forged metal. Shakespeare has more prestige than the people that made the ships for British empire.
Also, you can find better food and [popular] music at places apart from technology and modernity.
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John Adams said it best in a 1780 letter to his wife Abigail:
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
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I was discussing this topic with a woman the other day – you could be the top nerd in a company of super nerds, and you’ll get less pussy than a guy who runs a water treatment plant. The guy who runs the water treatment plant will get less pussy than the guy who runs an ad agency or even a McDonald’s or a Starbucks.
Meanwhile, a grotesque Jew like Howard Stern can get infinite pussy.
This is worth serious contemplation.
One thought: when asked about his occupation a nerd should never talk about his job, education, work, etc.
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It’s the soldier, not the reporter who has given us
Freedom of the Press.
It’s the soldier, not the poet, who has given us
Freedom of Speech.
It’s the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the
Freedom to Demonstrate.
It’s the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the
Right to a Fair Trial.
It’s the soldier who salutes the flag, serves under the flag and
whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who gives the protestor the right to burn the flag.
~Father Dennis Edward O’Brien, USMC
lozlzlzzozllzlzzllz
It is the secretive tpaer of butthexer tucker max without the girlths conthent & creater of fiat debt, not the working man slaving away to pay his alimony to fund his wife who got desouled in a hit and rucn neocon college asscocking session and is now asscocking other dudes, nor the soldier bleeding to death on foreign shores in fiat wars, who creates the world’s welath. l.zozlzllzozlzozzlozzllzozlzozzlzlozz lzlzzl
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@Xontrarian
I would imagine Google, Facebook and Apple guys all get a lot more pussy than the guy who runs the water treatment plant.
Unless the water treatment plant guy is like some sexy engineer type who’s also good with his hands. Looking like Jonny Ive from Apple wouldn’t hurt either. If he does, then I’d imagine he’d get more pussy than Martin Sorrell (who is head honcho of WPP which is I think the largest advertising group in the world).
IMHO ‘Nerds’ should talk about their jobs, just not in a ‘nerdy’ way. Women eh 🙂
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Sorry, but this post is bullshit.
I am sure it is quite possible to create I-pods, automobiles and computers with a little creativity, a goodly amount of hemp and a cooperative atmosphere.
Hold on…I need to take another hit…
Ssssppphhhiffff!
What were we talking about?
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I owe you a beer for that one. 20 years of continuous hard work and not one word of appreciation… Isn’t it sad that the evil women-charmer (:P) is the only one that appreciates what people around the world do?
Thank you for that.
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The creative class is important, but not any more so than the tradesman class or the engineering class. They are all equally necessary for a prosperous economy. For instance, it takes a small army of highly disciplined geeks to design the latest HD video cameras…but those cameras would have no reason to be made if not for the artist that buys it and makes a profitable movie with it.
Creative arts and entertainment generates a huge amount of economic activity when taken as a whole.
Neighborhoods tend to see a rise in property values and overall desirability when the creative hipsters with a little money move in – the type who work at ad agencies and PR firms.
That said, I’ve been looking around lately and wondering what all these people with meaningless jobs are going to do when the economy never recovers. If I had a child, they would be learning a trade, not getting some bullshit ethnic studies or liberal arts degrees. The arts only thrive when the basics are well taken care of first.
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I wouldn’t mind these creative types if they were actually creative and talented. Have you been to an art show lately? Or listened to what passes for music amongst them? It’s mostly garbage, and yet they couldn’t be snobbier about it. Where are the Michaelangelos and Beethovens?
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Crime ridden neighborhood where women don’t want to live->cheap rents->bohemians/gays move in->crime declines/new bohemian stores open->SWPL’s move in and drive rents up->bohemians/gays move to cheaper neighborhood…
that is a ‘cycle’, not a system of growth. you are purposefully omitting the displaced “crime-ridden neighborhood” – where does that go? it doesn’t disappear; it moves somewhere cheaper, presumably wherever these SWPL’s are migrating from.
factoring in explosive immigration, high NAM birthrates vs SWPL birthrates, and the conversion of SWPL’s to bohemians, this cycle is unsustainable as described.
unless this whole real estate bubble thing has just been a “veiled status rant”.
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Geeks and nerds need something to do when they aren’t getting laid, drinking heavily/drugs/smoking, clubbing and partying.
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The higher education bubble is about to burst (from a few months to a few years by my estimation), so “learning a trade” will quickly become the thing to do.
If they want “authenticity”, they shall surely have it. 🙂
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In the 1980’s, the engineers and computer people WERE the creative classes. These were the people who made the start-ups of the first Silicon Valley boom (early 1980’s) that gave the valley this name itself. These were the people who started real businesses and made real things.
The tech manufacturing business that did not go to Asia is more geographically dispersed but with a lot of it in Texas. Most of this is optics/photonics and MEMS. Much oif this business is in the “red” states but some of it is in places like upstate New York.
There are still a lot of biotech start-ups in the U.S., which tend to be everywhere. California’s share of technology business has declined dramatically over the past 10 years for obvious reasons.
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Polymath, I agree. Do these people get paid to theorize this crap? I need to move to the US because I’d be great at making shit up. But again, I found out you gotta be brown to immigrate to the US.
Dr M, there’s a reason why I chose not being a neurosurgeon. Sorry, getting paid peanuts to do risky surgery isn’t something I fancy. Especially with the super long egg-rotting education that the medical field requires.
JR, are you trying to make a point? I mean, you didn’t disprove anything that Roissy said, you just rambled a bit. The Soviet Union collapsed because communism is idiotic, not because it had engineers. If it had all the idiots the US is filled with like all those hipsters, it would have went bankrupt in 1921. There’s a reason why those hipsters were beaten up by the state police – you know, to become engineers and do something instead of wasting time.
Lily, just wait until the United States go bankrupt, which is a couple of years away. Then you will see where Apple is heading. And besides, the iPhone isn’t created by marketing people nor Jobs himself.
Dally, you just proved you’re clueless about economics.
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i’m in total agreement, roissy. i honestly think it’s one of the chief cruelties and injustices of the world and the way sexuality really works.
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Roissy’s right on this, but there are many more reasons to be doubtful of the so-called “creative class’s” claims to moral superiority and economic prosperity. This book ( http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276014469&sr=1-1 ), in addition to being a fantastic inquiry into the meaning of real work, is pitch-perfect in its analysis of the bullshit that underlies Florida’s thinking. I can’t recommend it enough.
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“(this post is not in or against what you said, I’m going to think about it properly later, I just couldn’t resist the excuse to post a pic of Jonny Ive)”
there is no doubt about the total accuracy of what roissy said in the post. it’s just a crystal-clear fact. hell they even cannibalize their own INSIDE of the business: ever heard of steve wozniak? he did the actual heavy lifting for apple based on nothing but altruism and a love for his work, and jobs came and usurped him (quite literally, look up the “atari circuit breakers” story where he reamed wozniak out of thousands of dollars) and got to be top dog in a field he didn’t do anything for. the alpha mechanism produces what looks like a kind of very sick feudalism in a lot of ways.
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@kheledale
>ever heard of steve wozniak?<
yup, love wozza.
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haha, i just realized who “Lily” was handing sloppy blowjobs to in the last few posts. jonathon ive is not a ‘nerd’ by any stretch of the imagination. he worked for a tossy design firm in london before being outsourced to the US. he didn’t do a damn thing to make apple computers/devices work and his designs (the fruity half-transparent plastic) dated horribly.
the sore fact (and women everywhere can thank their safe heads that nerds don’t seem to care enough) is that the nerds who do the actual difficult, intricate and brain-bending labor that supports the first world lifestyle do not earn ~$2,000,000 a year, aren’t noted or appreciated categorically in the slightest (think of how long it took to get disney to put his animators on the credits reel for his cartoon shorts) and they sure as shit aren’t attractive to women.
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@ Lily
and you’d find him attractive?
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poly and vanilla,
you guys just read a whole lot into a brief comment about the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions.
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A little perspective folks, on who is doing the real heavy lifting to give you the lifestyle you now can’t live without.
If they had a true perspective, they would not be living the lives that they do.
They revel in a certain kind of superiority to, and ignorance of, those that actually build the bridges.
That is, they usually never think of them in the first place. Rarely live in places where they will regularly cross paths with them (Salons, Fancy Coffee Bars and Boutiques were invented for a reason)and, when they do, prefer to feel superior to them.
If she (or he) was to actually open her eyes to what makes her world turn, she might feel guilty about creating a life so segregated from them.
Ignorance is bliss, sometimes. Other times, it is necessary.
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Along with a shout out to doctors, (AND the nurses who are also essential) , let’s not forget farmers, another unglamorous but absolutely essential class whose hard work keeps those computer engineers busy. We all depend on the guys with manure on their boots.
To echo Backdoor Man — computer programmers and software engineers are part of the creative class, broadly defined. If you look at areas where the nerd density is high, it maps to Florida’s spiel about creative cities — Seattle, San Fran, Boston, Austin.
Not to get all kumbaya on your asses here, but Polymath makes an excellent point about all the elements of society working together — political, educational, military, cultural, agricultural, technical, societal — to make things happen in a healthy way. The Soviet Union also had brilliant actors, writers, poets, painters along with the engineers. But the system fell apart despite the excellence of some of its components — because of a fundamental lack of morality and a corrupt system that poisoned everyone’s life.
And, as much as the frivolity and superficiality of the modern art scene disgusts me, it’s a false dichotomy being set up here — by saying art and science are on different ends of the spectrum reinforces the fragmentation of modern society — a split you can trace back to the industrial revolution and the rising complexity of science. They used to be unified. Da Vinci, but also Goethe, to name the biggies were artist/scientists. Things are too complex in the sciences to achieve that balance now, but science and art come from the same place. Now, some hipster bullshitter is less likely to reach across the chasm than most engineers I know — who are usually deeply into either music or books. Or, in Jobs’ case, calligraphy. Engineers, in general, are more cultivated in more subjects, in my experience, than the trilby bohos.
But some of the commenters are forgetting Roissy’s own counsel about getting hip to the arts as a way to get laid. The reason ad dudes — supposedly — do better is because they know about presentation, about getting into someone else’s head — skills good for dealing with women, and selling stuff, not so good, perhaps, for running the sewers.
And the rest of you guys — get over it. Life isn’t fair. The market place sets salaries here, so yeah, it’s not right that Kobe makes millions while someone who makes a critical contribution to society doesn’t — so what. (Funny that hipsters, who are really just so much flotsam and jetsam attract so much ire when a truly parasitical class, like lawyers, don’t seem to raise nearly the amount of bile but put way more of a drag on innovation and growth than some PBR swilling miscreant in Brooklyn.
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If I remember correctly Florida argues that the engineers and computer programmers, or any other knowledge-type professional ARE part of the creative class.
He uses the bohemian/gays/immigrants as a useful index that correlates with the desirability of a location for creative professionals.
Cities like San Francisco that are open-minded enough to attract a large gay or bohemian artists population tend to attract like minded people.
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@kheledale
Hah hah. ROFL.
Jonny Ive has computer guy/design combination = sexy guy with sexy kit. Admittedly he also has a bit of a bad boy thing going on (because of his Essex accent). I mentioned him in the first place because of Roissy’s post mentioning the Ipod. Remember before the Ipod? Remember what people said? Oh why would I buy that when my MP3/Zune/whatever player has X more GB etc. Fact is Apple pulled together design & marketing & distribution prowess (itunes) in a way that took over the market. None of the bits work without the others, otherwise the ipod would have been just another MP3 player.
But I do agree with you that he isn’t a nerd.
I like Steve Wozniak. He’s obviously a lot older than me if there wasn’t such an age difference, and worked out a bit, I would think him attractive. I wouldn’t mind him talking to me about work, anyway he’s got lots of other interests too.
Agreed that many nerds aren’t getting much female action, but it’s not because of their jobs or them talking about them.
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This reminds me of the Zeet’s post a while back about how all the feminist scream gargling masters degree holders ($100K in student loans, natch) in DC who were working for the non-profit association advocating for federal dog yoga subsidies were now without two nickels to rub together. Oh sure, the aesthetically pleasing life, so important to Florida, is easy to do when your job is being a glorified socialite. Now that the economy is shedding its fluff, where are all your gay party boys at now?
But, thanks to R for dragging through Florida’s stuff, I think he’s overreading the gay as the modern force of revitalization and gentrification. They have more money and aren’t crime adverse, that’s all (chicks aren’t going to move into a high crime neighborhood all alone). All the bohemian fluff that follows live in their English basements (Petworth?).
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“Try electrical engineers and computer scientists. You know, incredibly unsexy male nerds.”
Since they create, these unsexy male nerds are part of the creative class.
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@Polymath
John Adams said it best in a 1780 letter to his wife Abigail:
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
This is where it’s at.
What Florida means is: The Creative Class moves in and created a cultural centre that draws people and money for no reason other than itself (NYC, London, LA, etc.) The culture becomes the draw.
I suspect that Florida is correct.
If the cultural elites were Shakespeare and Bacon and Newton and Thomas Mann, then Roissy wouldn’t have a problem with this thesis.
The problem isn’t Florida’s thesis.
It’s that our cultural elite are intellectually and morally bankrupt.
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Two things: despite the fact that I’m a rock-ribbed capitalist, I’ll point out that the Soviet Union did, in fact, manage to create wealth. It was certainly richer than Czarist Russia, and when you factor in recovering from WWII, the Soviets did pretty well. Trouble is, Communism only managed “pretty well” while the market economy parts of the globe achieved “dick-swellingly awesome” improvements in wealth and technology. The real tragedy of Communism is all the missed opportunities.
Second: the “creative” artsy SWPL types do indeed correlate with towns becoming wealthier and more attractive — but it’s an effect rather than a cause. Town gets nice, attracts boring middle class families who pay taxes and spend money. This makes it rich, which draws the “creatives” like shit draws flies.
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The real tragedy of Communism is all the missed opportunities.
And Holodomor, Lubyanka, Katyn, Gulag, Chernobyl and 100 million dead were not real tragedies of Communism.
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the “holodomor” was a stupid fabrication.
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PA, don’t forget to add North Korea’s unsung famine with 2 million victims, Ethiopia, and Cambodia to the tab.
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The crimes of Communism aren’t tragic. They’re simply awful.
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Millions of dead people are a fabrication? So I guess all that other stuff and I’d also like to add deportation to that list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union
Of course SU had lots of physicists and chemists and engineers and other creative people even after Stalin’s cleansings, but they probably made up less of the population than other countries. Everything was censored, so only art approved by the party was published.
What’s strange is that even after capitalism hit, Russia hasn’t improved much except for Moscow and Petersburg. Few hundred kilometers from Moscow and you feel as if you got to the middle ages with serfs, the feeling of recognition from Gogol’s and Puschkin’s stories was unnerving.
Anyways, if you truly want to know how come Russia is so fucked up, I suggest reading http://www.amazon.com/Russia-As-Transformation-Lose-Society/dp/1591133912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276020093&sr=1-1
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Polymath
More accurate to say that when the people this author thinks are the “creative classes” obtain control of the culture, the society is past its peak and headed for decay, breakup, and collapse.
This is Rome in the late Republican period. Then Octavian won the civil war after Caeser’s assasination and revived the culture so to speak. We will have our Octavian as well as the demise of our Republic.
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no, millions of people did die (although the number is inflated higher and higher every year.) the “holodomor” however was seized on by enterprising ukrainian-americans looking to make mad bank and ingratiate themselves with the US’ natural desire to fracture the SU from the inside. i don’t often comment about the annoying politics of the wealthy ~35+-year-olds who post on roissy’s blog entries, but there’s a fine line between being a “rightist” and a sucker.
it’s a nonsensical, ahistorical (many of the photos are fabricated, from other time periods or completely impossible to source) and ridiculous slur in any case.
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@polymath re j r: absolutely right. the point about USSR and engineers was idiotic – it’s the system that matters most.
@trimegistus: absolutely wrong. communism managed to create wealth only on a mountain of corpses. literally. please inform yourself of this history before posting further on this topic.
@PA – absolutely right.
@kheledale – absolutely wrong. Stalin did, in fact, send his crack secret police to murder and imprison the “kulaks” (a Soviet propaganda word for private land-holding farmers) in Ukraine, impound their grain, and sell it in Western Europe for hard currency. Millions perished in a man-made famine, and fellow-travelers like Walter Duranty of the NYT whitewashed it all for a fee. All recorded history – look it up.
On the topic of the post – Roissy is right to be annoyed by the self-congratulatory smugness of the “creative elite” and their vacuity, but really, society needs a little bit of froth in addition to all the solid producers. (Really, how else would he support his hedonisic lifestyle? In a steel or manufacturing town in the MIdewest? I think not.)
I’d absolutely like to see a lot more recognition for the people who actually invent, make, and transport the things we need for civilization – and a lot less for the froth people. (the “useless third” of society – per Douglas Adams. On the third spaceship. Extra points for those who get this reference.) More balance. But the froth people are self-promoters who control the levers of media and buzz. So naturally they’re going to tell the world they’re more important than everyone else.
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Dr. M
This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed as well among my artsy DC friends who are far more “enlightened” than me because they are taking art classes and french lessons and all these things that make them more cultured. They also scoff at me….the surgeon, when I say I don’t have time for the frivolous bullshit they devote their entire lives to because I’ve got real work to do. Oh well also these people think I should treat their medical problems for free as well…sorry but majoring in art and not being able to keep a job really isn’t conducive to affording modern necessities….i would like to see what would happen when the cultural value shifts even further and there are less engineers and doctors and what not to support the “enlightened” folk. Oh well we’ll see soon enough I’m sure.
Don’t worry. I’ve indulged this stuff, like it, am far more cultured than nearly any SWPL you can show me and I still agree with you 100%. You just did it without all the effort.
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PA
The real tragedy of Communism is all the missed opportunities.
And Holodomor, Lubyanka, Katyn, Gulag, Chernobyl and 100 million dead were not real tragedies of Communism.
Tochno.
@kheledale
the “holodomor” was a stupid fabrication
What do you work for the FSB or are you some kind of pinhead Communist? You are talking utter horseshit and obviously have no direct experience with Communism in practice. You are a dumbshit or a fool.
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I think Florida is talking about gentrification here, in which case he’s absolutely correct, members of the creative class (the hipster menace out here in the bay area) are usually at the vanguard of any movement of upper class people into downtrodden urban neighborhoods. I suspect this is because these lower wage earning college graduates are the first ones priced out of the more posh neighborhoods.
Anyway when you get a critical mass of them, a Starbucks opens followed by a Whole Foods and a Yoga studio, property values increase, the original residents sell into the up market and move to the suburbs where they can have a yard and a white picket fence, then come the engineers and ladies pushing strollers in Yoga pants followed by the childless, high earning, 50 year old couple with 2 dogs. Welcome to SWPL-ville.
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Women appear more intuitive(creative) only because their reasoning skills are even lower than their intuitive skills.
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yeah, i’m not about to shed tears for the kulaks (who were from a completely different time period, by the way.) sorry.
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exactly what point do you think i was making?
sounds like you’ve been to P st in Logan Circle.
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Kheledale
– “Fabrication” my ass. Read “The Harvest Of Sorrow”.
And the Commies managed to set back Russian agriculture production to pre-1870 levels by shooting all the productive farmers.
What is particularly striking is how our society doesn’t really reward a lot of the most brilliant engineers and scientists. In Europe, a lot of senior electronic engineers are only clearing 50-60 K after twenty years in the job, while some bufoon of an Investment banker is on the same after graduation. Economy is too centered on the manipulation of wealth and not on the creation of wealth.
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Spot on Roissy. Remember this goes much further than electrical engineers and computer scientists. Every product requires many stages of design, a production line and manual labour etc. It doesn’t matter if you are Steve jobs at the top or an anonymous factory worker at the bottom, these are the people making shit happen.
I’m afraid i’m going to have to do a GBFM here but without the lolzolz because this isn’t funny at all. Fiat currency is partly to blame. With fiat currency You can make people wealthy who have never done a productive days work in their lives:
Women, Bankers, The media, Wars. None of it could be so successful in todays day and age without Fiat currency. Remember that. From politicians to civil cervants to the media to the bankers. Printing money is basically stealing from the productive and hard working. If there is 2 billion in an economy and the government prints another billion and hands it to me and my family/friends, THEY HAVE MADE US RICH OFF EVERYONE ELSES BACKS, whilst simultaneously devalueing everyone elses money. The money they handed me only has value because of the productivity of that economy and everyone elses hard work actually making and doing important things. They took it from your pockets and put it in mine. I can then go about using my money to collect all the other money in the economy through investment, oppression and crooked dealings like i don’t know BUYING LOADS OF GOLD AND COMMODITIES WITH THAT MONEY, BUYING SHARES AND OWNERSHIP OF PRODUCTIVE COMPANIES OR LOANING THAT MONEY AT INTEREST BACK INTO THE ECONOMY. I have no right to do these things but with government backed money i can go about siezing wealth i have no right to. Iv’e then transferred my fiat wealth into real wealth while all the other guys who didn’t own a 3rd of the GDP and were doing actual work like building, distributing, inventing real wealth are left with nothing but small amounts of the worthless fiat money they have in their pockets + the money i just dumped into the market. Without fiat money many “industries”, branches of the government, welfare state etc simply could not exist. Printing money is an evil form of wealth re-distribution many times more subtle and evil than taxation. People complain when their taxes go up, but many of them don’t realise what printing money does to the economy and the purchasing power of their own wages.
If you are part of the “creative class” or as i would broaden it the “productive class”, you should be outraged that many people in your country can afford all the things you can without producing any real wealth themselves. It is literally making you poorer. Governments think they can keep creating demand and money supply without devalueing money and pushing prices way too high. They forgot that creating supply can create demand. The governments of the western world seem to want to make everyone fight for a percentage slice of the Fiat pie by stagnating or shrinking the productive class and aggregating(very badly/corruptly) their wealth over the whole generally unproductive population, instead of actually creating more wealth and making the pie bigger. Now that many economies aren’t genuinely growing productively, a lot of economic activity is merely people fighting over who gets to control the greatest percentages of fiat wealth lorded over by the corrupt central banks and government officials at the top. Without genuine wealth creation and savings the economy becomes a zero-sum game, the bigger the winners the smaller the losers whereas in an innovative and productive economy structure the biggest winners can only become such big winners by making smaller winners of lots of other people. All this printed money and yet wages generally aren’t increasing, no jobs are being created so where did all the money go? It stayed at the top.
When money was backed by gold money it was scarce for everyone(not just the masses at the bottom), people had to be careful with money, they couldn’t afford to pay people for doing Sweet fuck-all.
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– “It’s that our cultural elite are intellectually and morally bankrupt.”
John Derbyshire at the National Review said it best:
“Popular Culture is Filth”.
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I guess when the whole world was on the gold standard there were no rich bankers, no wars, no yellow journalism and everyone was richer.
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kheledale
yeah, i’m not about to shed tears for the kulaks (who were from a completely different time period, by the way.) sorry.
Obviously someone reads Noam Chomsky and uncritically believes him. It’s definite now, you’re a fool.
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I’ve been to Silicon Valley. Its not that great culturally and its still pretty far from San Francisco. In fact it looks a lot like all those sould deadening suburbs where creative activity occurs elsewhere.
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@J r
Nope. But at least back then people knew and understood much more clearly when and how people were getting screwed and nothing but outright force could enforce or overhaul such corruption. Has there been a revolution in your country lately??
The Fiat system has pacified and made ignorant many of the biggest losers.
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huh? why would i want a revolution?
GBFM once mentioned that currency debasers occupy the same level of hell in Dante’s inferno as sodomites. that should tell you something. there was no fiat system in the 13th century and people still managed to debase currency and inflate prices.
there are many serious arguments to make about the way that independent central banks control the economy and the types of monetary policy the pursue. none of those serious arguments involve tucker max, butthexing or cockas.
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And just for the record i’m not overly pro gold standard. Fiat is here and it’d be helluva hard to get rid of it for a long time. The main problem is the abuses it allows and the supposed “solutions” those in power have come up with for our economies.
Look at the prices of oil, gold and the value of the dollar. The price of Oil has risen to 10 times its price in dollars when The gold standard was first abandoned. It’s value in gold has remained fairly constant, in fact it’s almost the cheapest it’s ever been in hard gold currency.
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The better interpretation is that further advancement of civilization can be measured by how much free time individuals have to pursue more artistic endeavors.
In ancient history, people had free time because slaves did the labor and rulers had other pursuits. The Renaissance occured when again some people had free time from the labor to exist was done by others.
Now, due to much of our labor being done by labor-saving devices, we can pursue the arts. However, the heavy burden of taxation we are currently laboring under forces us to work more just to make ends meet. Thus, we have less time to follow our inspirations.
No, the arts are not the cloth of civilization’s garment. It is the peacocking items that accompany industry’s clothing.
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And by revolution i mean anything as simple as actually holding government officials and central banks to account for their monetary policy, by threat of overrule, impeachment or prosecution. not civil war.
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Gold is just one example of something scarce that can be used for barter, Something that has value because it is in demand. Even plain paper and ink is more valuable than a Fiat dollar, at least it can be used for printing and writing etc which a dollar is not optimum for. As soon as people decide something has no/low value to them it becomes so, the market is already telling us that the dollar is declining, watch that space.
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This applies to the Euro and Pound as well.
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creative class = consumer class.
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“In ancient history, people had free time because slaves did the labor and rulers had other pursuits. ”
Exactly, we need more women in the workforce!!
“The better interpretation is that further advancement of civilization can be measured by how much free time individuals have to pursue more artistic endeavors.”
?The advancement of civilization happens only through geniuses. Genius is causation, everything else is correlation.
The morass that we find ourselves in today is because idiots have had too much time on their hands to pursue more artistic endeavors.
Women had too much time in the kitchen and feminism was born.Idiots in power and equality for all, compassion for all, security for all….
Give idiots too much time and they will create art that stinks even worse than they do.They will create so much art that even reasoning will become an art.
And was there any revolution that happened without the shedding of manly blood except feminism?
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@ Tyrone.
Silicon Valley proper is the suburbs and populated mostly by boring middle aged families and people with H1B visas. A very large number of single, young intellectual workers live in the city (SF) and commute down to the peninsula.
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@primitive:
“Da Vinci, but also Goethe, to name the biggies were artist/scientists.”
Yes on Da Vinci, no on Goethe who thought he was a
scientist but was a complete moron in that area.
Gorbachev:
“The problem isn’t Florida’s thesis.
It’s that our cultural elite are intellectually and morally bankrupt.”
Yes. Indeed.
On kheledale, who is disgustingly wrong,
right up there with the Holocaust deniers/
/excusers/boosters.
About Holodomor: Read Kravchenko!
I Chose Freedom. Out of print, but can be
obtained cheaply second hand from the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/I-Chose-Freedom-V-Kravchenko/dp/B0006DAQEG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276026757&sr=1-1
polymath and maurice are right, as usual.
@naeme nanka
“Women appear more intuitive(creative) only because their
reasoning skills are even lower than their intuitive skills.”
Actually, no. They have a 50% larger corpus callosum, which,
according to one (male) psychiatrist “produces great
intuitive insights, but at a horrible price of confusion”.
(But take heart, men have a better corpus cavernosum).
Thor
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The writing style on this post is off. That, coupled with the content and time of the year tells me that a summer intern is involved.
Who is she?
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“Actually, no. They have a 50% larger corpus callosum, which,
according to one (male) psychiatrist “produces great
intuitive insights, but at a horrible price of confusion”.”
hahaha as if that matters lol
does scientific opinion matter? really? and how does it contradict what I said?
some years ago the justification was that women were more right brained, and that the right brain was the intuitive one,, now they know that a man’s right brain is bigger and men are more right-brained.
http://www.stumblerz.com/who-is-more-intuitive-a-man-or-a-woman/
but does it matter what science in today’s time says?
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To everyone who is over-analyzing this, Roissy’s point is that it is men who work (and by that I mean actually work) in jobs around the country who actually make this country go round. Without them, whether they be farmers, plumbers, electrical engineers, metal workers, computer programmers, etc.., out society would literally fall apart overnight. It may be popular to have a creative job an design the inside of houses, but at the end of the day we can get by without those people. The unsexy schmucks on the other hand are absolutely essential, and always will be.
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Art is like game. With only game you can’t have stability and a “real” relationship, full of faithfulness and honesty. But without game a relationship becomes boring, lacking in fantasy, and the women is unaroused. You need both. Without the engineers and the people who get the details done nothing would happen in the economy, but without creativity and art there would be now fantasy, no spice, no joy d’vivre. I’m not necessarily talking about popular culture here, but whatever kind of art strikes you fantasy.
As many women and men know a long relationship cannot thrive without some kind of commitment and “work”, but it also can’t survive without some kind of “game” or excitement. Both are required. It’s a mistake to say that you could get along without one.
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Like Ballmer, said, it’s DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS who make civilization move onward.
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@ vasafaxa
Very true!
@EmperorTheron
Hysterical.
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“The unsexy schmucks on the other hand are absolutely essential, and always will be.”
Why do you need them if there is nothing more than ornamentation that could be done with us? If there are no frontiers to conquer, no geniuses needed to live into the eternity?
Dumb down things in CS and EC enough and women will beat men there too.
Why would they work? love of pussy, love of their children, they will continually become the underclass.
aaaahhh…Visions of a dystopia are so soothing to the soul.
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The ginas tingle because:
-I know the support/resistance level of the EUR/USD and I when the new Autolux album is coming out.
-I wear a suit/tie to work during the day and after work I am guilty of dressing like that hipster douchebag (on the left) from fridays post and play in a band.
contrast is king.
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I KNOW when the new Autolux album is coming out
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Or, as the ancient Roman said:
“We must study war, so our sons may study engineering, so our grandsons may study poetry.”
Sorry, ladies, but, they didn’t fight or educate the women in those days.
They ruled the known world for centuries, though.
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My ironic beard gained +2 in length thanks to Autolux.
[editor: this might be the comment of the year.]
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“In ancient history, people had free time because slaves did the labor and rulers had other pursuits. The Renaissance occurred when again some people had free time from the labor to exist was done by others.”
Slaves ran on food, which took much work to produce.
I think much or even most of the changes that have made modern society what it is comes from the discovery of fossile fuels, which made it possible for people to have power slaves, like engines.
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This post is why I don’t think it’s fair for the game community (maybe it was this site, maybe a different one, I forget) to stereotype engineers as betas.
Some certainly are, as some engineering careers are like white-collar union shop work where instead of machining a pipe or grinding a bit you are drafting and signing quotidian design documents.
But most of the engineers I know are fundamentally creative types, combining technical excellence with a thrust for invention and a drive to change the world.
But hell, I can’t change society. Bill Gates is something close to a genius – an almost unparalleled visionary, a great executive of his dreams and a ruthless businessman. And how does society see him? Still as Geek Boy. Great.
Few things piss me off more than seeing some chick yakking with an engineer, blowing him off because he’s not cool enough for her, then texting her lawyer/consultant/Congressional staffer booty call on a phone designed and implemented by none of the above.
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Grampa,
Wasn’t the Romans. See my complete citation and direct quote above — that one has been mangled 100 ways all over the Internet but I found the correct version.
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@ BadgerNation
Agreed.
“Bill Gates is something close to a genius – an almost unparalleled visionary, a great executive of his dreams and a ruthless businessman. And how does society see him? Still as Geek Boy”
No doubt PUA types think of him as beta or herb and Larry Ellison in his whoring days (maybe he still does) as some sort of Alpha. ROFL.
“Few things piss me off more than seeing some chick yakking with an engineer, blowing him off because he’s not cool enough for her, then texting her lawyer/consultant/Congressional staffer booty call on a phone designed and implemented by none of the above”
A real woman will give the engineer a makeover 🙂 V subtly over a period of time. No doubt some will think that’s manipulative or shallow but IMO better than blowing him off in the first place. In either case, much more fun for the woman long term and no doubt he can fix stuff too 🙂
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it appears this gbfm fellow fancies himself a vocalist, so here you go.
[editor: hilarious! i really appreciated the attempted speech translation of lolzlzlz. pretty much how it sounds in my head. and i think this settles for once how to pronounce butthex. it’s butt-hex. as in, “that HB’s butt is putting a hex on my boner.]
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2bone said: “Its just hippie brain disease. But they have cash and like to spend it.”
Yup, anybody that wastes time/energy/thought calling themselves the “creative class” has their head up their ass and/or is concerned about themselves and not out creating anything.
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“the soviet union had plenty of scientiests and engineers. in terms of military technology, space exploration, heavy industry, etc. they were as advanced or more so than we were. despite that fact, life for the average soviet citizen was noticeably lacking in all of the lifestyle choices you list.”
I find this claim factually defensible but rhetorically fatuous. While they were technologically equivalent to America, the Soviets never had the sort of front-line technological lifestyle of America. Rather, advantages were conferred on small privileged groups. Advanced medical technology existed but was not for the rank and file. In some places, even crude surgical protocols to stave off infection were impossible.
The Soviet space program was par with the American for most of the moon race; however, it was a small segment of technology pumped for PR value. Much Soviet technology was stolen by espionage from the West, including airplanes reproducing design flaws and computer chips containing original circuit errors.
The best example is Chernobyl; the Soviet nuclear program had a flawed design, but the ultimate factor in the worst meltdown in history was political machinations that put safety behind public relations and bureaucratic ladder-climbing.
Soviet society sucked compared to the West because it had a deformed political structure that disabled conventional paths to prosperity like democratic consensus government and entrepreneurial rewards. Even the Red Army almost suffered a total defeat to Finland (!) due to politics above quality.
Almost all creative output was weak in the USSR; socialist realist art was downright shitty and propaganda to boot. Engineers and research physicians likewise were hamstrung.
They did have some great hockey players though.
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@Grampa
I don’t know that quote but poetry was big in Roman times and I am inclined to believe polymath has researched this. The spelling in his quote years more towards olden English than a translation from Latin.
I’m pretty sure Roman (ladies at least) were well educated. I vaguely remember this from Latin at school. In absence of the right reference materials, I checked wikipedia and “Women were expected to bestow the values and education upon their sons to turn them into citizens that would run Rome with integrity. Thus, to be able to rear her children to succeed in life, an exemplary Roman mother should be well educated herself”.
There’s a lot to learn from the Romans, from example their attitude towards marriage as a joining of fortunes. Some quite uncivilised behaviour too though 🙂
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“A real woman will give the engineer a makeover 🙂 V subtly over a period of time. No doubt some will think that’s manipulative or shallow but IMO better than blowing him off in the first place. In either case, much more fun for the woman long term and no doubt he can fix stuff too 🙂 ”
What is women’s obsession with changing men? Men are not accessories! I know women who start picking out things to change before they’ve even gone on the first date!
And then when a man(gina) assents to the makeover, she resents him as less of a man for caving in. Every time.
An alpha doesn’t get “made over.” His personality and social dominance validate whatever his characteristics are.
When he detects the efforts to change him, he sees two things:
-She doesn’t have the balls to go get a man she really wants (and thus might ditch him when she finds one).
-He’s being played for a beta. I’d rather be rejected straight out than taken on as a fixer upper. She’s with a man she doesn’t really want to be with but is playing for future payoff…it’s like a sympathy fuck, it’s insulting.
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Even the Red Army almost suffered a total defeat to Finland (!) due to politics above quality.
for those of you not in the know, “politics above quality” is a nice euphemism for “ruthless purge in which stalin summarily executed a plurality of his competent military leadership”.
let’s not also forget that, for many of the finns, the winter war was basically a giant biathlon.
why the exclamation point? basically this was just thermopylae, 1940 edition.
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@Badger Nation
Yes I get that, I really do, a lot of women treat men as fixer uppers instead of accepting them as they are. I know exactly where you are coming from.
But we’re talking about engineer types whom aren’t ‘real alphas’ as some would describe them. My post was tongue in cheek. And personally, I’m at an age where I’m not impressed by clothes or what car a man drives (not age driven necessarily but I’ve just matured, character is far more important) and more interested in his character and I’m happy with the guy I love guy in his battered up old t shirt + jeans. Even the fixing stuff was a bit tongue in cheek as I’d rather spend time with him and call someone in to fix stuff around the house whilst he’s at work.
But I do think that it’s better overall (especially for that guy) if a woman thinks a guy is absolutely great and the only thing that’s in the way is how he dresses, it’s better she *subtly* changes the way he dresses rather than just not get involved or LJBF him and bootycalls the lawyer/VC whoever. Doesn’t mean she thinks he’s beta. Just like it doesn’t if a man subtly changes things about a woman like game involves.
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What is really abyssmal about all this – the ass-backwards sexual valuation of productive vs. parasitic men – is that it seems like it could go on indefinitely.
I mean, I don’t see the engineer types ever rising up and saying “you whores and leeches can suck my dick or I’m opting out of the whole mess”. They are too busy worshipping Kobe or Lebron, or investing their meager earnings with some slimeball banker.
Of course, it won’t go on indefinitely, but for other reasons – I’m betting on resource depletion.
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Lily,
Here’s a good generalization:
Women want men to change and are disappointed when they don’t.
Men don’t want women to change and are disappointed when they do.
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@Lily
I do think that it’s better overall (especially for that guy) if a woman thinks a guy is absolutely great and the only thing that’s in the way is how he dresses, it’s better she *subtly* changes the way he dresses rather than just not get involved or LJBF him and bootycalls the lawyer/VC whoever.
Sounds very sensible in theory, but I’ve had disastrous results with this in practice. I think it’s because men, being stubborn creatures, don’t much like being changed, this is another way that men & women are different, women love revamping their image.
Often, women tend to bond more closely to someone who makes them over (provided they don’t get Star is Born syndrome, which is increasingly common). With men, it’s the reverse.
It’ s very hard to be subtle enough. Men quite often don’t pick up cues in this regard unless they are hammered home, which usually causes resentment, who does she think she is etc. etc. If a man takes to a makeover like a duck to water, I’d worry.
Also, don’t underestimate the possibility that upgrading a man may open up a wider range of opportunity to him, beside which the upgrader pales in comparison. Btw I’m not a fan of encouraging a man to let himself go either (so many evil women do this), but I don’t think changing him is the solution.
Plus, sometimes with change, you end up missing the strangest things. I think you either take the guy as you find him, or you leave him.
What is your experience of this in practice? It is I suppose possible that my lack of success may just have been down to my extreme incompetence and a better woman could have upgraded more smoothly.
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Maybe I was thinking more of the Greeks. Seems like the Roman ladies had a lot more freedom than the Greek women, but, their freedoms and power were restricted by law to be very inferior to that of men.
Well, thank Gawd we live in enlightened times, when OUR senators and other politicians wear ill fitting toupees to get the ladies’ admiration and vote.
Sickening, but true, and just one more illustration of why our society is pretty much shot less than 100 years after granting women the right to vote.
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“leave him” btw should read “leave him alone”
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@ Philosopher
That’s a good generalisaton.
Though I sometimes wonder whether men saw women the way they really were in the first place.
Or you could see it as women are more forgiving and see past certain things whilst the man keeps ‘nexting’ till he finds the perfect one (or one he has decided is perfect without really seeing her).
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Lily & Grampa,
The John Adams quote is certainly original with him — in the manuscript are crossouts whereby you can see how he arrived at the final expression of his idea.
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@sdaedalus
>What is your experience of this in practice<
Whenever he wears something nice, pull it of whilst saying how nice it is and naughty things to him..he'll soon learn 🙂 Though as I said these days I don't care much about clothes and just as likely to do it in the old t shirt as the nice shirt so kind of loses its impact LOL.
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>Sounds very sensible in theory, but I’ve had disastrous results with this in practice. I think it’s because men, being stubborn creatures, don’t much like being changed<
I think a lot of guys do want to improve the way they look and dress but they just don't know how to. If they ask you often what you think of stuff it shows they are more open to it (especially if they are 'alpha' types), they need to be comfortable with someone before they are 'vulnerable' to them (yeah it's not vulnerable for a woman to ask someone what they think of their shirt but it is for a man). But you can also subtly do it but it has to be a little bit, bit by bit over time.
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@sdaedalus
I don’t see it as upgrading but helping them be the best they can be.
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@Lily
I don’t see it as upgrading but helping them be the best they can be.
I know, but what if their idea of what is the best they can be differs from yours? Where does it stop? Maybe they are happier just being themselves. Maybe they could find someone who liked them as they were, or, if they couldn’t, let them spot that themselves and make the necessary changes rather than turning them into one’s own personal Ken Doll. I’ve seen this happen so often with women, and the man ends up emasculated. David Beckham would be a good example, he was far sexier before he met Posh Spice, within two years he was wearing a sarong.
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@sdaedalus
“Where does it stop?”
When it’s anywhere near changing who they really are.
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sdaedalus:
Often, women tend to bond more closely to someone who makes them over
oh yeah.
nothing better than taking a good girl and transmogrifying her bit by bit into your personal trashy slut.
there are two essentials here, though, that are widely neglected.
—
one, the key is to transform her incrementally. every time you feel her sliding back into ennui, punctuate her equilibrium again.
it’s really not difficult; i wrote about it here.
do you know any junkies?
women are all junkies — junkies for that extra incremental thrill. that frisson from pushing the envelope just barely far enough to achieve explosive resonance.
stretching her strings — just enough to use her as your instrument.
women die on the inside from ennui, but on the outside from being stretched too far too fast.
you have to gently but firmly, lovingly but authoritatively, find the exact rate at which to push her along the continuum of depravity.
too slow and you’ll lose her.
too fast and you’ll denature the fragile tertiary structures, few as they may be, that make her different from any other bitch.
—
two, the transformation has to be a continuous process.
men, as introspective as they are, tend to project their goal-oriented nature onto women, and make the worst game-related mistake of all — namely, thinking either that (a) the gaming can stop once a certain point is reached, or (b) the gaming can remain static.
news flash:
men are about the destination, but women are about the journey.
men care about where they are; women care about whether they are going somewhere.
men want a position that is just right; women want a velocity that is just right. if a woman’s velocity drops to zero, you will lose her, regardless of her position.
the right velocity can and will sustain a relationship for as long as you want.
—
I think you either take the guy as you find him, or you leave him.
you sound smart, an observation leading inexorably to the conclusion that you must have learned the hard way.
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sdaedalus
moderated. scroll up to 7:32pm sometime soon.
what is this moderation bullshit? this must be new.
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@Lily
But how to determine that point? After a while, they won’t even know who they are themselves. I still maintain the best course of events is to take them as they are & don’t expect or seek change.
I guess another factor is that it might be difficult to maintain attraction to a man, who allowed himself to be influenced so readily.
There’s also the factor that a man influenced easily by one woman, is likely to be equally susceptible to influence by another woman.
I just don’t know about the idea of hoping to change a man in any way, even the most mundane. How many women, even after many years of marriage, have managed to triumph in the Battle of the Toilet Seat: Up or Down? And how many of them would respect the man if he let them win?
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Or if you prefer, Lavatory Seat: Up or Down, I know you Brits hate the word “toilet”, in Ireland we are more US influenced or maybe just more common in this regard.
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We men know women have a better sense of style. At the same time, I don’t want a woman to change me for the sake of change alone, nor do I want her to attempt changing me too fast.
If a woman were to say to me, I want to change your hair style, clothes, etc., I would be offended, even if all need to be changed. WTF do you see in me?
Even worse is when a woman thinks she can redecorate a single man’s home.
If a woman changes something small to make a man better, that’s OK, a good place to start, and gains trust for other changes.
Examples: Woman speaking to man:
“This tie brings out your eye color. Are you meeting with a woman this morning? She’ll enjoy the meeting. I know I would.”
“I like how these trousers fit your ass just so.”
See how this manipulates the man just a little?
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by the way, the above also leads to a conclusion that, while rather obvious, also flies in the face of conventional wisdom and pua wisdom alike.
viz.
the greatest enemy of game is not social incompetence.
the greatest enemy of game is not short or slight stature.
the greatest enemy of game is not lack of wealth.
the greatest enemy of game is not a reclusive or retiring personality.
what is man’s greatest enemy in relationships with women?
complacency.
many men see “having to game women” as a chore, a drudgery.
this is unfortunate, because THE GAMES WILL NEVER STOP.
they form a very literal “thick and thin” of variegated strata which will drown men who don’t constantly tread. this is what women mean when they say “through thick and thin”, whether they realize it or not.
for a restless soul, on the other hand, game is natural.
“game” is but second nature for the man who sees women as yet another part of his environment to manipulate.
the beta sees a woman as an unspoiled tract of nature, resplendent in its beauty.
the player (a category that includes players in long-term monogamous relationships) sees her as an ideal corridor to raze and build the freeway to his own personal satisfaction.
pick a side.
—
remember — with women, EVERYTHING is projection.
every
fucking
little
thing.
pop quiz, assholes:
women are always ostensibly “trying to change men”.
WHAT DOES THIS REALLY MEAN?
hmm.
it means that THEY want YOU to be constantly trying to change THEM.
this is not rocket science.
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@Johnnyfive
Men are about the destination, but women are about the journey.
men care about where they are; women care about whether they are going somewhere.
men want a position that is just right; women want a velocity that is just right. if a woman’s velocity drops to zero, you will lose her, regardless of her position.
the right velocity can and will sustain a relationship for as long as you want.
Thank you for the detail. It sounds like an awful lot of work. I admire your dedication.
Following through the laws of physics though, there must be a point at which the strings snap if the relationship lasts for long enough (particularly with a high-velocity woman). Is this a factor you also take into account in your calibrations?
you sound smart, an observation leading inexorably to the conclusion that you must have learned the hard way.
You bet.
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We men know women have a better sense of style
get out of town with that happy-ass bullshit.
the only reason “women have a better sense of style” is because “style” is a concept that is defined by, for, and around women.
whether said style is used to adorn women’s bodies or to penetrate them, is immaterial — it’s still a female-centered construct.
newsflash: filipinos have a better sense of pinoy culture than non-filipinos.
shocker!
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It sounds like an awful lot of work.
two responses.
one, maybe i’m a hopefully old-fashioned child of the depression, but the only things i’ve ever found remotely satisfying are the fruits of extended labor.
easy come easy go.
two, work ≠ drudgery. see the next post after that one.
—
what confounds and saddens me the most is to know men who will tweak, manipulate, and optimize EVERYTHING in their environment, except one thing.
they plan their walk to work to the minutest detail of when to cross, at which light, just to save that many more seconds on average.
they’re always downloading mods, apps, and other three-letter words to tweak their computers.
etc. etc.
but never once will they think to “hack” the single most important hardware in their lives: women.
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@sdaedalus
hah hah, you’re right we do hate that word.
I was married before and it wasn’t something I was aware of (seat up or down) but somehow it was that we both put both lid and seat down, it was never discussed that I remember. It was the way I preferred but I don’t remember ever discussing it.
I’m not into a living situation with another man so don’t know how I’d handle it again. The Player and I have both spend days staying with each other (though we don’t have sex, not that it matters in the contexts of my postings on here) and he leaves the seat up and it’s not something that I’d choose to see when I walk into a bathroom, but it doesn’t bother me.
“I still maintain the best course of events is to take them as they are & don’t expect or seek change.”
That’s fine. But the conversation was originally about about geeky boys. Is it better for them overall if they get sidelined completely in favour of the lawyer or VC or someone looks at who they really are and over time helps them with their clothes etc. But I still think the key word is *subtly* unless they specifically ask otherwise.
@johnny five
“tweak, manipulate, and optimize EVERYTHING in their environment, except one thing”
Forgive me if Im being touchy, but I really don’t like the word manipulate in regards to other human beings. I got flamed (albeit gently) about helping people improve themselves, you’re talking about ‘manipulating’ so-called goodgirls into being your personal slut?
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“the player (a category that includes players in long-term monogamous relationships) sees her as an ideal corridor to raze and build the freeway to his own personal satisfaction”
Why is it about his own personal satisfaction? It smacks of male entitlement and using people. What about mutual satisfaction?
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If it’s about making her into your slut and your own personal satisfaction what happens when you’ve had enough? Are you leaving her better than you found her?
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Forgive me if Im being touchy, but I really don’t like the word manipulate in regards to other human beings.
i don’t blame you for being touchy.
honesty is a powerful solvent; it dissolves both sugarcoats, like yours as well as the cheap electroplating of spin artists.
the stuff that’s left behind is not pretty, but it’s hard, durable, and luminescent.
all human interaction is manipulation, my dear.
all of it.
unless you use the traditional female definition of “manipulation”, i.e., interactions in which the woman is not the only active agent.
—
you’re talking about ‘manipulating’ so-called goodgirls into being your personal slut?
do you think it’s sad when grade-a kobe beef is used to make lowly hamburgers?
—
Why is it about his own personal satisfaction? It smacks of male entitlement and using people.
smacking does help.
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@Lily
it better for them overall if they get sidelined completely in favour of the lawyer or VC or someone looks at who they really are and over time helps them with their clothes etc.
I think it might be better if it came from someone other than the person they are in a relationship with though, otherwise risks is a mother-son dynamic going on which is the kiss of death. And how can someone else determine who someone really is?
I got flamed (albeit gently) about helping people improve themselves
Not from me. Not intentionally at any rate. I really like your comments. I did exactly the same thing myself, even down to the shirt thing you mention. I think I was probably just flaming myself.
You’re talking about ‘manipulating’ so-called goodgirls into being your personal slut?
Ultimately though, it’s the decision of the goodgirl as to whether or not she wants to be manipulated in this way. Women have choices. We all know when we are being manipulated.
I don’t think that helping people improve themselves is manipulating or taking advantage of them btw. I just don’t think that people are as grateful for it as the helper would expect, this applies to women too (albeit to a lesser extent than men).
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@Lily
Ahem, when I said helping people improve themselves I was talking about the help you outlined rather than Johnnyfive’s personal slut creation thing. I’m really not in a position to say whether or not the latter is an improvement or not. Possibly from the male point of view.
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If it’s about making her into your slut and your own personal satisfaction what happens when you’ve had enough? Are you leaving her better than you found her?
the freeways in nevada are pockmarked with billboards proudly proclaiming 99% payback on slot machines. translation: you come in with a hundred bucks, we give you the thrills you want, you walk out with an average of 99 bucks or less.
the signs tell no lies.
are they leaving me better than they found me?
am i helpless in the face of their clever marketing?
at what age am i responsible for my own damn hundred bucks?
tell me baby girl cause i need to know.
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Yes, women can manipulate people, I know I can and do (not my most admirable qualities but I do sometimes)
But there’s a difference between manipulating and influencing and there’s a difference in a relationship between doing it for your own personal satisfaction and mutual benefit (that both agree on).
With power comes responsibility. I was brought up not to lead men, are you using your skills with responsibility or purely for your own selfish gains?
In regards to nevada, I don’t have that much experience of it but it’s pretty much a decision you can make, they may have clever marketing, but you’ve been exposed to that all your life. It’s nothing like the negative impact caused on a ‘good girl’ with things like hypnosis in a focused and unrelentless manner by someone they trust.
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It’s nothing like the negative impact caused on a ‘good girl’ with things like hypnosis in a focused and unrelentless manner by someone they trust.
negative impacts run in two directions, darling. see here.
news flash: any two populations that have manage to coexist have checks on each other’s power. such checks, and such power, can be used for good or for bad.
they may have clever marketing, but you’ve been exposed to that all your life.
yeah?
i’ve got news for you honey: this role was once fulfilled by a cadre of older female mentors, family and friends alike. you can’t shuck off the guidance of older generations without simultaneously shucking off their wisdom, too. baby, bathwater, etc.
also, the irony of this comment is palpable.
basically every media outlet in the world alerts women to the dangers of bad boys (real bad boys, not pseudo-bad-boy pua’s who would cower in the corner at the slightest hint of actual conflict). these “dangers” are about as secret as the fact that crack is bad for you.
yet there are still crack addicts.
you do the math.
on the other hand, almost NO ONE warns men of the dangers caused by exploitative women. not even their own fathers or families, mostly because said fathers, being fortunate enough to have been born early enough and/or in sheltering communities, weren’t exposed to the full wrath of unrestrained, base womanhood.
oh, and, newsflash:
you live, you learn.
“good” kids learn not to touch hot stoves, because mommy says not to.
curious kids learn not to touch hot stoves, by touching hot stoves.
sdaedalus touched at least one hot stove, and, funny enough, she lives to tell the tale.
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“but never once will they think to “hack” the single most important hardware in their lives: women.”
high five man high five
Just look at the answer chosen here, this guy is gonna fail hard, first love down the drain:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100513051508AAYZrYi
He can’t feel normal at not having lustful thoughts about a girl and he thinks that his friends would laugh him off, social conditioning at its finest.
“Men want sex, women want love.” and so goes the cuckoo.
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@johnny five
cuckolding a man into raising a child which isn’t his biologically and he doesn’t know it is obviously a very evil thing to do.
But it’s irrelevant, evil things happen in the world, it doesn’t give any of us an excuse for our own deeds. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions. And no you being exposed to advertising about Nevada is nowhere near the same. Go back to your post and read it again and think about what your mother would think if she read it knowing it was written by you.
[editor: let me tell you about johnny’s mother…
BLAM!]
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@ sdaedalus
“We all know when we are being manipulated”
Actually I don’t always know, even now 🙂
Johnnyfive makes the point of older women etc, but the only advice I got was stay a virgin till you’re married or be a slut, nothing sensible in between, not much help in today’s world 🙂 I have teenage nieces and I help them as much as I can but I can’t keep up with what’s going on.
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I’ve always found electrical engineers and computer scientists incredibly sexy. Seriously. The technically minded rule the wold, therefore they possess much power. Power=sexy. Now if they could just dig on the creative types the world could rotate itself right into bliss. We could make babies with both left and right brain skills.
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@johnny five,
sdaedalus touched at least one hot stove, and, funny enough, she lives to tell the tale.
Sdaedalus,
You’re screaming into the wind here.
Let’s admit that both men and women are manipulative. The difference is:
– our whole media culture and everything associated with it are wholly female-centric. You only see bumbling men in commercials; women make the buying decisions, so anything using advertising is designed to appeal to women; and increasingly, women have the economic power in all domestic situations.
– Laws have been designed to protect women; but they’ve gone altogether in one direction (divorce laws are truly horrible; American divorce courts are like Star Chambers; Harassment laws presume Male guilt; there are no provisions to prevent false rape accusations; etc.)
– In relationships, men are taught to supplicate. The entire public self-help industry and all counseling services pander to female sensibilities
– And yet, women continue to be attracted to manliness, in its traditional form, thus betraying any men who have “adapted” to the demands of the feminized modern world.
You’re just going to get bitterness and anger from most guys about any issue touching on this. You have to know, it’s not personal; and no matter how reasonable you are, many men who realize what’s happened or the contradictions in what’s expected of them will have knee-jerk reactions (largely negative) to commentary.
You seem fine, able to endure it well; just don’t take it personally. There’s a lot of bitterness out there. And much of it is justified. Nevertheless, it makes more sense to select targets sensibly rather than randomly.
I suspect you’re a more reasonable person to debate issues with than many women. You seem to be more conscious of issues than most.
So forgive many of us for our suspiciously hostile reactions.
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“Now if they could just dig on the creative types the world could rotate itself right into bliss.”
They do dig on creative types, who says they don’t?
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“I’ve always found electrical engineers and computer scientists incredibly sexy. Seriously. The technically minded rule the wold, therefore they possess much power. Power=sexy.”
yeah. okay
The idea that engineers, scientists, and the like are more valuable members of society isn’t true. That they are capable of performing tasks critical to our survival is moot. There are plenty of men out there who can perform engineering tasks, which is why their pay isn’t that high.
Russia had engineers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and scientists, but what was the one type of class America had over Russia? Businessmen (aka traders), the main source of wealth in any culture.
Cultures which favored commerce, such as Athens or Britain, achieve dominance very quickly through sheer wealth. America has dominated trade for so long, that our wealth is great enough to control the world. Successful businessmen become very rich and are rewarded accordingly by his culture (from fame to sex).
I do not buy the idea that we are oppressing our most valuable members whilst praising our least valuable. If any such culture carried this practice, it would be cultural suicide. By definition, such a place cannot exist more than a few generations.
America is not like that; although it would be nice to imagine that the plight of our hard working beta males is because somehow our culture has become so dystopic they are no longer appreciated, the truth is that beta males aren’t valued because they aren’t that valuable and do not produce much wealth compared to the majority of society. As a whole, they produce everything, but individually, they produce almost nothing.
Although women have sex with “bad boys” who are even less valuable than the beta males who have no sex, it still does not matter because few children are produced from bad boys. In olden cultures, bad boy offspring would starve or be neglected. In today’s culture, women make sure to use contraceptives when they want a wild fuck with a bad boy, and any unwanted pregnancies are aborted.
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As an electrical engineer/computer scientist, this post makes me happy 🙂 Cheers!
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Pupu just skimmed through Florida’s paper on bohemia and economic geography
http://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/6%20Bohemia_and_Economic_Geography.pdf
In section 4.3, he discussed the relationship between bohemia and “a particular form of creative activity – that associated with high-tech industry.” The findings suggest “a close association between bohemian clusters and high-tech industry.”
Pupu’s conclusions from that are i) tech nerds are considered to be creative; ii) they may even overlap with the bohemian folks; or at least iii) they tend to cohabit with those bohemian folks in cool cities, or together making a city cool.
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Craiggie
“You’re just going to get bitterness and anger from most guys about any issue touching on this. You have to know, it’s not personal; and no matter how reasonable you are, many men who realize what’s happened or the contradictions in what’s expected of them will have knee-jerk reactions (largely negative) to commentary.”
An ode to GBFM.
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Following through the laws of physics though, there must be a point at which the strings snap if the relationship lasts for long enough (particularly with a high-velocity woman). Is this a factor you also take into account in your calibrations?
naturally.
as they say, things built for speed are usually not built to last.
many men, however — including players who are prolific but who still regard vanilla sex as satisfying (hi roissy!), make the mistake of assuming that such women are “rolling stones”, relentlessly on the make for fresh cock. this is a mistake; these men are mistaking the woman’s high velocity, her quick and precipitous descent to ennui, for a bent toward promiscuity. the reality is that she’d be content to be the marionette to a sole master, but that the paucity of such masters drives her to the carousel — on which she still finds no master, and loses that light from her eyes.
female ennui = male celibacy. both will do almost anything to avert it.
however, the strings are more flexible than many would care to admit. there’s a lot of mileage in even the fastest women.
if you know how to drive them.
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“Russia had engineers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and scientists, but what was the one type of class America had over Russia? Businessmen (aka traders), the main source of wealth in any culture.”
So because Russia lacked businessmen this proves that they’re more important than engineers? Presumably those American businessmen would have little to sell if not for engineers.
“There are plenty of men out there who can perform engineering tasks, which is why their pay isn’t that high.”
There are a lot of lawyers out there who can perform legal tasks, which is why their pay isn’t high. Every profession is tiered into the more/less skilled/educated/renumerated. The better electrical engineers will have an IQ above 125, which is in the top 5 %.
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Nope. Techies and engineers are still dictated to by business men, scenesters etc.. I work in the software industry, I know. Techies follow the creative ideas of their less tech-savvy bosses. It helps if know both though.
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Women are always surprised by the bitterness.
They shouldn’t be.
But men have to understand individual women don’t necessarily understand that the cultural script is unfair.
When men try to rewrite it, they object.
So it’s good to keep everything on a lower boil.
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Engineers are basically proles. Engineers are betas. It sucks, it may be unjust in some universal system, but that is the truth. North Korea has plenty of people with great math skills. So what? Samseau is right, so is Florida. The people responsible for the American creative cornucopia are in fact all the people Chateau laughs at. Engineers on their own would never create “iPods” or “Starbucks” or “Walkmen” or “vibrators” or any of the other frivolous tools of modern man. The Soviet Union is exactly what engineers and computer scientists would create left to their own devices, and did create. This may be the single stupidest post I’ve seen at this site.
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“So because Russia lacked businessmen this proves that they’re more important than engineers? Presumably those American businessmen would have little to sell if not for engineers.”
Engineers are merely following the avenues of wealth created by traders. The same is true of all laborers. Traders (aka businessmen) are the backbone of any capitalist economy.
“There are a lot of lawyers out there who can perform legal tasks, which is why their pay isn’t high. Every profession is tiered into the more/less skilled/educated/renumerated. The better electrical engineers will have an IQ above 125, which is in the top 5 %.”
Yes, and…? Do you realize you are in agreement with me?
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@vanya
The Soviet Union is exactly what engineers and computer scientists would create left to their own devices, and did create. This may be the single stupidest post I’ve seen at this site.
I have to agree with Vanya.
Where I disagree: Our precise cultural elites are intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Our elites are barking. They’ve betrayed our civilization.
These artsies make our civilization. The engineers are just the architects and plumbers. They make civilization possible; but the cultural elites make the civilization itself.
The problem we have is our elites are all delusional and slowly sinking into an intellectually bankrupt morass.
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“Our elites are barking. They’ve betrayed our civilization.”
that’s idiotic crap. artists don’t make culture. they make art. the art only becomes a part of culture after enough consumers have chosen to vote with their money about which art they prefer.
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“North Korea has plenty of people with great math skills. So what? Samseau is right, so is Florida.”
Florida is wrong, because his creative type isn’t specific enough to be right. Florida’s “creative type” includes almost everyone white collar.
Go to the bottom of page 68 and read a little bit. See how broadly he defines the creative class? It includes everything, from lawyers to engineers to porn stars.
http://books.google.com/books?id=4AcGvt3oX6IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rise+of+the+Creative+Class&sig=RfKesQU8g7IIDwjtzPYy_jII-WI#v=onepage&q&f=false
Enjoy that link; it’s some of the finest sophistry around.
He’s a third-rate economist writing third-rate academia, and yet he is a national best seller. Just another feel-good left-wing session of heavy petting.
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The Soviet Union is exactly what engineers and computer scientists would create left to their own devices, and did create.
um. no.
engineers just do what other people tell them to do. they follow orders as religiously and zealously as any soldier.
computer scientists, too.
don’t you know any of either? they have no desire, or sometimes no ability, to control other people — so, instead, they control machines.
the soviet union was simply the result of the bossing around of those engineers by different types of people.
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I see it this way…
-corporations line up all the staff required for a planned outcome.
-each person in the lineup is assigned a particular role (job).
-the said person’s pants are then gently lowered.
-enough lube (money) is then applied according to each persons ass according to their rank and job.
-the corporation then proceeds to fuck each person (employee) up the ass for as long as the person is happy with the amount of lube that is being used.
-the creative class , they either get to have more choice in what type of lube or how much lube is used , or are the ones that are using the lube on others.
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” And just how precarious is that thin, pale line between materialist abundance and dispiriting drudgery.”
Excellent conclusion.
Another exercise for the reader is to leaf through an electrical engineering, math, or physics textbook and try to find discoveries made by non-white men.
Also, don’t forget to pay attention to who designs the sewer, water, and power systems, which is what truly separates us from the third world.
“There are plenty of men out there who can perform engineering tasks, which is why their pay isn’t that high.”
LOL at Samseau’s butt-hurt. Has he looked at the median starting wage for an EE coming out of college? Pretty high compared to the national median with only a bachelor of science requirement.
Everyone wants to be called an “engineer” in their job title nowadays. I wonder why?
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@Craigie
Sdaedalus,
You’re screaming into the wind here.
I think you might be mixing up Lily & myself. My comments on this thread were more or less confined to the side-effects of trying to change a man. I don’t have a major problem with what you say though, but I think you probably meant to say it to Lily.
@johnny five,
sdaedalus touched at least one hot stove, and, funny enough, she lives to tell the tale.
Only one, I’m not sure it even was an alpha stove lol and any manipulation of me was not deliberate (although that isn’t to say the consequences can’t be just as bad, accidental headwreckers, though probably less morally reprehensible, can cause just as much damage) so it is not the same thing as your example at all, you will have to find someone else to use as an example, I’m afraid.
@Lily, irrespective of the morality of psychological manipulation, the reality is it does happen, and it happens because it works. I think it is possible, by learning about these psychological techniques, for women to be aware of when they are being manipulated, if nothing else, at least Johnnyfives has shared this information, and at least this gives them some choice in the matter. We have to deal with how the world is, not how it should be. A lot of men won’t employ these techniques without at least giving the woman the opportunity to decide whether or not the consequences are what she really wants in the long-term but some will.
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Any Keynesians in da hizzouse? You seem to be awfully quiet. I’m not and not intimately familiar with his theory that dominates economies at the moment but shall I advocate for the devil:
– Consumption for the sake of consumption keeps the money circulating, instead of stagnating.
-There seems to have no shortage of inventors, despite their perceived unsexiness.
-There is much money invested in research and development.
—
We are all artists. We should be all artists. Is it a characteristic of the modern times that art becomes a specialised profession and a product rather than an adjective?
How can you not be an artist, if you approach any work you do lovingly with a consciousness of inventiveness and aesthetics, of the beauty of the work itself? The functional and the beautiful should be one and the same, always. How can you not see poetry in the words formed by the letters and words of your genetics? How can you not see the lines of a sculpture formed in your molecule? How can you not see the final portrait formed by the component lines of your HTML code?
How can you not be an artist, if you were once a child? A curious, creative and imaginative child.
How can anyone who enjoys anything in the world not find someway to express it, in creating and recreating it somehow?
There is a reason the greatest artist is Da Vinci, the Renaissance man. All he did, he did artfully.
So you are an artist. That means nothing in and of itself. We are all artists. We should be.
What remains is whether you perform your art well and whether it means anything.
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Hey Lily
Have you spotted the similarity in names between Johnnyfive and Jonny Ive yet?
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Bhetti
I’m trying hard to refrain from defending art as an actual source of job and income. “We are all artists”…no “we” are not. Many here are too analytical in their thinking to live like artists. Claim what you will for the masses but I call bullshit. Loving your job is not being an artist, it’s simply loving your job. How many are actually willing to pay the consequences of living life like that of an artist? Pretty broad brush strokes there.
Sorry, didn’t mean that rudely. I am emplyeed as an artist. At customs and on my passport I am an artist/designer by profession.
I of course get immediately flagged for a drug search due to this.
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“Is it a characteristic of the modern times that art becomes a specialised profession and a product rather than an adjective?”
–no. Some folks can draw, paint, write, sing, arrange, or design naturally, from a young age. It’s been going on for centuries. It is those who cannot do these things that wish to use the term artist as an adjective. It is consumers that make art a product. And lucky for me, they do. Doctors buy from me. Lawyers buy from me. Those who can’t afford to live life like I do buy from me. Their talents lie elsewhere and I admire them for what they can do. But they are not ‘artist’ artists, no matter how much they wish it so.
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anoukange: Misunderstanding. I’m not attacking art as a legitimate source of income, if you can somehow manage it.
I am saying art is not the exclusive province of someone who has it under ‘occupation’ on their passport, nor should it be something that has only the function of pleasing the eye or making a point.
When you say artist — hypothetically, I know not much else about you — I still don’t have much of a firm idea of what you actually do or what you design. There’s slang in Arabic where artiste simply means a flirt (or, ahem, worse) i.e. art of seduction.
The logical, natural and effective state for most of us — and I mean the general population — is combining creativity, functionality and artistry. I don’t understand an artist who knows not a thing of biology, nor the surgeon who doesn’t want to know a word of french. Style without content and content without style. Neither states are ideal but noone can argue that the former is more useful than the latter.
If you only practice skills exclusive to professional art and only art 24/7, then you will be a failure as an artist, no? You know how to present beautifully but you have nothing to present. You are not merely an artist.
Tell me your definition. What constitutes art?
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Correction: noone can argue that content without style is more useful than style without content.
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“Many here are too analytical in their thinking to live like artists.”
Why can’t analytical people live like artists?
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bhetti
How can you not see the final portrait formed by the component lines of your HTML code?
hahaha lolz
this line tells me that you have met exactly zero software engineers in your life.
not only would they fail to see the portrait in your example, but they would look at an actual portrait and just see a collection of brushstrokes.
There seems to have no shortage of inventors, despite their perceived unsexiness
define “shortage”.
is there some baseline against which this is judged? what is a high level of invention?
necessity is the mother of invention. what is a high level of necessity?
this is the problem with artists: they don’t understand that quantitative terms are supposed to be, uh, quantitative. there’s no meaningful way to define a “shortage of inventors”.
there will always be a surplus of people dreaming up fantastical inventions; the difference is that only in the modern world have we risen far enough up maslow’s period to allow them to be realized.
you don’t think cavemen “invented” shit like airplanes, in their mind’s eye? i find it unfathomable that they (esp. caveman children) wouldn’t have, especially given the high level of creativity in primitive religions.
think, woman.
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What an interesting topic!
Especially one those who or what makes one an artist. I do think it has to be concerned with a philosophical nature and curiosity. To want to create, and the one thing that was created should be of importance and meaning, maybe the artist will not be acknowledged the time he/she is alive, or perhaps never, some great ones perhaps never made it to change the history of art, nevertheless could have been a great.
To make exact illustrations of the surrounding, like real life portraits or sculptures, don’t need much philosophical vein, just a fine skilled hand movement, not everyone can, and it is very much concerning mathematical grid systems and proportion studies and perspective dimensions, so, one i guess need a skill that don’t belong to the actual, “art”, but more to a work related task, where you are very good at what you doing.
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“”Members of the creative class — loosely defined by him as gays, women, immigrants, bohemians, and anyone who works in the arts or social media””
Anything accept men, old people and children lol
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The creative class is a microsociety, not everyones invited, but seeing it from the inside, its all about a descent capability to create and the rest is all about “game” meaning, if you can sell yourself, then you will make it to be someone. Don’t get me wrong, a whole lot of people did create amazing stuff, and some that didn’t make it was actually just plainly untalated. But on the whole, the artistic society is also driven on a certain level by stiff lies and politics, if you can fit into the system or “game the system”, you are welcome.
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@Johnny five – powerful ideas, great writing. I believe you were out of the comment game for a while – I’ve read some of your comments from previous years (or at least from a dude with the same handle). Good to be able to read your insights again.
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Must say that this post impresses me.
Note on the Soviet…even those in the engineering and sciences saw a lot of corruption (not unlike the political correctness that has over-run American science faculties). If you did not toe the party line and desires, you were denied the same resources and support as those who did.
Laboratory access, perks in food and use of facilities, prestige were all held hostage to ideals.
In one of the top academic institutions in Novisibursk, PhD’s in all hard sciences were only granted their degree if they excelled in government created courses proving the scientific validity of communism.
Ingenuity can not survive in this environment in the long run.
Do not know if this was the norm (though I suspect it to be). Only going off what the parents of very close friends have told me- most of them from the former Soviet bloc and all at one point doctors, engineers and scientists- both in academia and out of.
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Lily,
“I don’t see it as upgrading but helping them be the best they can be…I got flamed (albeit gently) about helping people improve themselves”
And where do you get the idea that men (or people in general) want to be “improved” by their sex partners? Are you a mother or a girlfriend?
Compulsive “helping” is 70% of the reason “nice guys” are so despised. I had a (male) friend who was obsessed with self-help books. He treated me like a child trying to “improve” me, and he was so irritating and judgmental I stopped talking to him for a year.
Men are warned against “one-itis” in game; the female version of one-itis is the golden vagina syndrome, the idea that because you are the Anne Sullivan of the dating world you are going to be able to take a poorly-dressed schlub or a bad boy and reform him to be a classy, presentable piece of arm candy. It’s almost always a failure, producing mutual resentment. Men are a lot more perceptive than most women seem to think, and the moment a man gets signals that he’s not good enough as he is he begins to look elsewhere.
Johnny Five is right to bring up projection (I sometimes think it’s simpler than he says, women are just trying to upgrade their own status with the cluckers by fixing up their man) but compulsive man-improvers carry a serious sense of inadequacy.
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@Craiggie
Thank you for your comments. I do understand why men men are so hostile towards women.
In regards to johnny five’s posts, these words triggered me
‘good girl, personal trashy slut, manipulate, just enough to use her as your instrument, find the exact rate at which to push her along the continuum of depravity, raze, own personal satisfaction’. I just can’t help feeling disturbed.
sdaedalus
You’re right, it is useful for us to learn this stuff. And yes his name is very similar, do you think he looks like him..?
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even those in the engineering and sciences saw a lot of corruption
As I recall form reading the “Gulag Archpelago,” Solzhenitsyn devoted several pages to lamenting the new Soviet engineers.
He described pre-revolution engineers as brilliant renaissance-man types, and contrasted them with Stalin-era’s party-line parroting dullards.
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Alpha SE-
“Why can’t analytical people live like artists?”
–Some can, and do. But with that said, it comes down to control and how much is applied and how much is not. Analytical folks lean towards exactness and work in fields that have absolute definitions and outcomes. They also tend to like having control. Creativity is often about letting loose the reins of control and exploring what can happen as a result. Creative folks usually hang outside of the established norm and can catch much hell for doing so. Creativity is in a constant state of flux by definition, sometimes being very affected by current sociological climates, sometimes not. A lot of people can be creative but to earn a living from thinking outside of the box (an idea man-designer-inventor, ie; Edison, etc. ) or as a provoker of thought as a painter (Picasso), or someone who adds pure aesthetic beauty or entertainment back into the world is the true definition of a creative class. And I’m not talking abstract art here, much of which is pure crap. There must be true skill for me to count them.
If one’s job deals in absolutes, it is not one of the creative class. The more analytical types seem to love/need structure, control and boundaries set and follow this within living out their lives….so they do not live like that of an artist according to the renaissance definition.
Samseau-
Personally? I value the technically minded because they are my compliment and are across the wheel form me so to speak. I get that society may not hold them in such high esteem, which is a real shame.
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Bhetti-
Gotcha. Agreed. Pulling from as many sources as possible makes one a very full and diverse person. This is good.
“Tell me your definition. What constitutes art?”
Art is the telling of a story and affecting people with that story. Film, sculpture, painting, music, photography, dance, theater, illustration, writing, computer animation, and so on are all mediums for doing this. The story must have a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. The quality of the art is in the application of how well one tells the story. Our host here is a phenomenal writer and a good example of one who had honed his craft well. He is both technically good and wickedly talented. His art is both satisfying and provoking.
Art branches off but is still art when it is presented in design solution terms such as architecture, furniture design, bridge design, invention, etc.
What you write of is the philosophy of the conditions for acts of art. What I speak of is art in more practical definition. Taking that philosophy and applying it and producing an actual product, design solution, or piece of art.
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anoukange –
I don’t think that you do analytical types justice. Analysis is precisely the process by which one understands and removes false, presumed limits. True analytical types seldom get their satisfaction from accepting controls and boundaries without understanding.
I’d say that the distinction is not between analysis and creativity, as the former is a prerequisite for the latter, but the DEPTH of analysis (and therefore the HEIGHT of creativity.) In other words – those of good ol’ Samuel Johnson:
Now, who wants to launch a crusade against Wikipedia? 🙂
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“Author Richard Florida is fond of theorizing that communities cross a threshold to prosperity and easy living when members of the diversity creative class — loosely defined by him as gays, women, immigrants, bohemians, and anyone who works in the arts or social media — move in and begin to remake the place in their image.”
I don’t think anyone has addressed the post-hoc fallacy in Florida’s argument.
It would seem to me that a growing “creative class” community REFLECTS a time of prosperity and easy living, rather than enabling it.
I mean, when society sucks you don’t have a lot of cash to blow on creative products. When things get better and you move into Clarendon or another SWPL ‘hood, the “creative class” comes in with you to sell you their stuff.
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@ BadgerNation
Where do I get the idea? From men. I often have males ask me for help with things, whether it’s in business, friends, husband or romantic interest. Even guys who other men think have it all ask for input on things. Interestingly, it’s always in a one-on-one situation. I’m sure I’m not some special case. I think they just talk about it less openly than women because from a young age it’s ‘be a man’ and they don’t like showing what they perceive as vulnerabilities in front of other men.
I can see where you’re coming from but let’s not take things to extremes. Back to the point, if a woman meets a nerdy engineer at say a smart event but he’s a bit scruffy, is it better that:
1. she doesn’t talk to him at all
2. talks to him and is attracted, then goes off with bootycall lawyer/VC
3. talks to him and is attracted, either goes home with him or swaps numbers and goes home on her own
Obviously a lot of women take things too far (as I think johnny five is taking his manipulation too far) but if women aren’t willing to look past certain things then he’s not getting any action (though of course game would help).
I do agree the ‘gina tingles’ can make a woman look past a lot of stuff. Can even make satchels look cute. sdaedalus, check out this youtube clip and tell me what you think – can start at time point 3.05 for the clip I mean.
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“He described pre-revolution engineers as brilliant renaissance-man types, and contrasted them with Stalin-era’s party-line parroting dullards.”
There are engineers, and there are engineers. Plenty of trained engineers are white-collar shop workers, punching a clock/computer until they can go home and go on with their lives.
But guys like Dean Kamen and Steve Wozniak are more like auteurs – guys who don’t just have technical skill, they have something they want to do with it, and they have enough people skills to get the support they need.
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One could also add the following to the above Johnson quote:
“…and a pater familius to a skirt-chaser.”
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Lily, I get where you are going with this “I’m not talking about taking it to extremes” but I am a bit more cynical than you. It sounds like you are motivated by a desire to show off a man in terms of “look at ME! I took my MAN and made him ALL BETTER!” Why else would you be inspired to change your man’s clothes? You know it’s not reflective of his own sense of style.
The fact is that if what you are saying is true you are on the very left side of the bell-curve when it comes to propensity to “change a man.” A significant portion of American women are hopelessly controlling and perfectionistic, which combined with their projection habits makes almost any man not good enough and necessitating her sartorial wisdom.
There’s also the game of “backdoor value upgrade” going on – an average woman might not be able to get an 8, but she can try to get a 6 and then bootstrap her investment to change him around to be an 8.
As to your multiple choice question, you are acting as if nerdy-boy should feel lucky any woman is attracted to him at all. You’ve actually come right into line with my assertion, that taking a man you are not entirely happy with and plan to fix up later is a form of a sympathy fuck.
American women would be much happier if they stopped the fantasizing and perfectionism. Men are taught they have to give up their childhood dreams at some point; why can’t women learn the same?
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@BadgerNation
I’m English and I do sympathise with you if Sex and the City is representative of how American women think (although I understand that BJs are like sweets in the States so life can’t be that bad lol). I do think a lot of women, both American and English are too fussy though (as are many men).
“As to your multiple choice question, you are acting as if nerdy-boy should feel lucky any woman is attracted to him at all. You’ve actually come right into line with my assertion, that taking a man you are not entirely happy with and plan to fix up later is a form of a sympathy fuck”
From my perspective, it really isn’t that at all.
Just as you think nerdy boys should learn game, I think boys should learn how to dress. It’s part of life skills.
““look at ME! I took my MAN and made him ALL BETTER!” Why else would you be inspired to change your man’s clothes?”
It’s not about me. Do you go through life only doings for your personal benefit? Of course not. I don’t either. It’s kind of nice if you help a guy friend who is an amazing guy but you see being passed over by girls in clubs to help him get more out of life. A lot of nerdy guys just don’t know because they come from a nerdy family, have nerdy friends etc, I know someone who thought that his friend showering every day was girly…
Maybe we should stop with the nerdy, I’m feeling nerdy now, it’s not like they are a different species 🙂
In terms of it happening in a personal relationship, I did it once years ago with an ex and i have to admit that was partly for my own benefit and possibly along the lines of what you say about turning a 6 into an 8, but it certainly wasn’t about oh aren’t I amazing about managing to change him.
Funnily, we are back in touch now 13 years later and we met up a couple of times and he did mention how after he split up with me he had a big sleeping around phase and how it had been made easier by his newfound sartorial skills.
“Men are taught they have to give up their childhood dreams at some point?”
Interesting, isn’t part of PUA that you grade women by numbers and some people see to have the attitude that if they are HB6 or less you shouldn’t even bother?
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@Lily
I think the key thing is whether or not there is an attraction there, if it is there even though the clothes aren’t great, then why bother changing them? Although presentation can certainly fuel the initial spark of attraction I don’t think, once that spark is there, clothes actually make much difference going forward (unless the initial presentation was misleading and didn’t actually reflect the person’s normal style at all, which is a separate issue).
I have a theory that giving a man we are not already attracted to a makeover is not really about increasing attraction at all and more about making someone we are attracted to more the person we feel we should be attracted to [changing him to meet the requirements of the dreaded checklist, or to impress our friends]. But what attracts one party to the other can be lost in the process, what’s the point in taking a risk in this regard?
Plus, I do think it is unfair to people to assume that they would be better if changed. Not everyone aspires to have the same image, you end up with someone who is effectively pretending to be someone they are not.
If, on the other hand, there is no attraction there at all to begin with, then what is being done is trying to manufacture attraction or to imagine being attracted if the person is different, this is hypothetical or imagined rather than actual attraction. I think this is doomed to end in disaster and it is really unfair to the other person.
I hasten to add that what I have objection to is a complete image change. I have on occasion hidden certain particularly dreaded items so that they could not be found and worn, this has been done to me too. But these items were just sartorial abberations (we all have our particular weaknesses of bad taste), if you try to change someone’s style wholesale, this is a different matter.
I do agree the ‘gina tingles’ can make a woman look past a lot of stuff. Can even make satchels look cute.
This is my very point. Don’t take someone you are already attracted to to fit your checklist & your friends’ check list of what he should be, you will lose something in the process. And if you’re not attracted to someone, don’t try to change him so that he becomes attractive, you can’t just create your own bespoke male Galatea.
I checked out the clip. He is a little young for me, but I would definitely have fancied him when I was a teenager. The satchel works well actually, he has that kind of French lycee thing going on. Satchels are fine for guys with that particular type of look. The fundamental problem with satchels worn across the body, as every woman knows, is that they look best on a totally flat chest, they tend to emphasise boobs of either gender and not in a good way.
The first magic trick didn’t quite have the same effect on me as it had on the girl in the clip but he had me at the phone number behind the ear. I think it was really a question of confidence, the guy is quite naturally cute, he does not need a whole lot of work, he just needs to be doing something he’s confident at, he was just as cute at the beginning when talking about his work, he lost that self-consciousness which I think was what was affecting him earlier in the club.
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Dilbert-
“I don’t think that you do analytical types justice. Analysis is precisely the process by which one understands and removes false, presumed limits. True analytical types seldom get their satisfaction from accepting controls and boundaries without understanding.
I’d say that the distinction is not between analysis and creativity, as the former is a prerequisite for the latter, but the DEPTH of analysis”
–fair enough, well said.
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@Badger
I completely agree with the perfectionism point, perfectionism is like an addiction, if you combine this with a naturally bossy tendency on the part of the woman (approx 90% of women imo) then what is left of the man? It starts with clothes, and then spreads into all aspects of life.
Possibly a very confident man might be able to take an approach of amused tolerance, particularly if the woman is younger. Most men end up having to put their foot down at some point in order to retain some sense of identity.
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@Lily, @Badger
The mother/girlfriend thing Badger mentioned is precisely the point. Most men don’t want to feel that they are the child in the relationship. This is why trying to control a man too much usually ends up pushing him away.
As for the men who actually enjoy being treated as the child in the relationship, they usually end up as dumpees rather than dumped (on the basis that the very woman who has turned them into a child now decides she needs a Real Man). Life is very unfair.
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Anouk…you mentioned Edison: I think he provides a good example of someone who was both very creative and fairly analytical. He dealt with *outcomes* that were absolute (the light bulb works or it doesn’t), but in getting to those outcomes, he broke boundaries of the way things had been done or thought of before.
Stravinsky: “You cannot create against a yielding medium. Let me have something finite, definite. My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength.” I think this point is valid across the board as well as in the arts.
Not a nice man, though, Thomas Edison. It’s sad that he’s so much better remembered than his great competitor George Westinghouse, who was almost equally creative and a better human being.
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@sdaedalus
I can see that some women will give into a baser instinct of the mother/child relationship and get too controlling about it. I just don’t see it’s either that much control or take people exactly as they are when you meet them and never changing.
It is possible to help someone get better at things like clothes (especially when they ask you for help) without controlling them or changing who they really are. In a relationship, it can be two people learning and growing over time.
Not just a relationship in a man/woman/marriage kind of way, any relationship.
It’s like game. Learn skills and get confidence without changing who you are inside. Or learn the skills and take it to extremes and it really changes who you are.
By the way if you like crime stuff do watch that episode of criminal minds, i think it’s called pick up 52, it’s online at sidereeltv.
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http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100513051508AAYZrYi
Unfairness is when this guy ends being LJBFed and as a creepy nice guy when he tries to make a move.
love? lol
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SD-
“if you combine this with a naturally bossy tendency on the part of the woman (approx 90% of women imo)”
–nah…too high of a percentage. Alpha males and submissive females work well together because the woman is not bossy and the guy is. I hate being in charge which has worked against me at times, but generally never while with an alpha male. I can do it for short stints if needed, as part of a partnership, but only in that capacity. Strong/masculine alpha females and beta males end up dating because the gal is dominant. She is most likely a lawyer/careerist type and is controlling to some extent if she is bossy. Some of these gals actually hide this about themselves quite well in the beginning, giving off an air of feminine ways –but their true nature always shows itself….eventually. Nurturing and controlling are very different applications and it is a woman’s job to master the difference between the two. One of the key things to look for is how uptight she is.
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@namae nanka
I’m not sure I understand the guy’s problem you keep linking to.
Why can’t he when he’s with his buddies if she comes up in conversation, yeah she’s hot. He doesn’t need to talk to them about all her other qualities.
In the meantime, he should man up a bit and work on his confidence and get the girl (if he wants her). And if I were at school with him and he was my friend, I’d help him sex himself up a bit.
If he ever gets it going with her, then he should have one sort of conversation with her and another one with his buddies. Isn’t this what all guys do? Though if anyone says anything disrespectful about her, he should call them out at least verbally.
There was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the college dude she had sex with, or possibly one of his friends, says something bad about her and Riley punches him. I don’t think Buffy saw that, but if she had been no doubt she’d have taken him home.
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@anoukange
I think beta females can be some of the bossiest females around, bossing their partners and children around because it’s the only control they have in their lives. (not all beta females, some). I see all these women around me who treat their husbands appallingly. But then I realised that a lot of them feel frustrated and trapped. One way out of it would be for the husbands to game them, but another aspect would be if they actually worked out why they felt the way they do and did something about it. Probably best a combination of both.
I’d class myself as alpha female (actually more sigma if that’s allowed for women), but I don’t want to be bossing someone around in a relationship. I cannot think of anything worse.
I liked the captain/first officer analogy I read somewhere recently. It works for me. I wouldn’t want captain/galley slave though..there would be mutiny 🙂 Bedroom games are one thing, life another.
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“I’m not sure I understand the guy’s problem you keep linking to.”
I wrote it there down below. 🙂
“In the meantime, he should man up a bit and work on his confidence and get the girl (if he wants her). ”
But fking isn’t only about confidence.Notice how he says that he isn’t in love with her physical features?
So even if he is confident enough, at the most he gets LJBFed.
“If he ever gets it going with her, then he should have one sort of conversation with her and another one with his buddies. Isn’t this what all guys do?”
Don’t you know what guys do?
“Though if anyone says anything disrespectful about her, he should call them out at least verbally.”
cmon you are better than that, do you get angry if your friends tell you your BF is hot? Do they disrespect him by saying that?
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Bhetti–
I think Michelangelo would get more votes from reasonably knowledgeably people. Picasso would be up there.
Leonardo Da Vinci was perhaps the most influential artist of all time though. What with his explicit work on perspective.
By the way, are you at all familiar with America’s (well Intuitive Surgical’s) Da Vinci tm robotic operating apparatus? Look it up on the net; I think you’ll be intrigued. Microsurgery assist.
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Lily…”I think beta females can be some of the bossiest females around, bossing their partners and children around because it’s the only control they have in their lives”
True except I’d call them alpha personalities who are in a beta role.
Seems to me that the tension between the female desire to submit and the basic HUMAN desire NOT to submit is huge in the lives of women.
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J r
Complete and utter horse plop. They were behind in every since one of those areas save one that you don’t even know enough to mention separately. You know nothing. You claim to know a lot. Your utter wedgery continues on display. Do you ever say anything sensible?
The one area, ignoramus, the Soviets were ahead for a good long time, was in heavy lift rocketry. There they reigned supreme for decades and maybe even still do in some areas. That was a very important area, it’s true, what with ICBM’s. But in that crucial area (but not in heaviest lift) the Americans soon leap out ahead with no fueling time solid rocket fuels, the minutemen missles and improvements, which enabled us to fire our nuclear warhead bearing rockets MUCH more quickly than they could theirs for some time, each armed with MIRVed (multiple re-entry warheads that broke into separate bombs for more efficient and vastly harder to shoot down nuclear warheads).
That’s why when the cold war ended and Russian and Eastern European industry confronted more open competition, it about all crumbled into disuse, to be torn down and rebuilt along German and American lines.
As for military technology, the Soviets almost always stole America’s best weapons designs and built their own modiefied copies from it. This wasn’t entirely true in jet fighters, since they captured the German engineers that build Germany’s and the world’s first jet engines.
What the Russians were really good at was building nearly indestructible low and middle tech weapons, that have much less complex and costly a footprint to operate than American more advanced ones. Ubiquitious examples are the AK-47 semi automatic rifle / short burst machine gun. It constantly pulls and shoots high, but it approaches being impossible to jam it. Similarly the famous RPG-7 rocket grenade laucher. Anti tank and anti personell should rocket tube. That brought down a Blackhawk helicopter on takeoff in Mogadishu, Somalia (but knocking out the tail roter).
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Russians also excelled (and still do) at metallurgy. I think they were doing large-scale titanium fabrication before the US was. Not sure why it was, except that maybe metallurgy is a science which couldn’t be ideologically contaminated and wasn’t really subject to corruption and false reporting.
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@namae nanka
“But fking isn’t only about confidence.Notice how he says that he isn’t in love with her physical features?”
Sure he says that but he leads in with her physical appearance. That’s like guys who say to girls ‘but i’m being nice, why aren’t you having sex with me, i’m being nice’ – well if you’re only being nice to get sex, it’s not actually being nice is it. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He likes a girl not just for how she looks (but she happens to be beautiful & hot) but all her other qualities. He doesn’t know if that’s normal to like girls for that rather than just physical appearance.
I think the guy’s problem is not to do with the girl but how he relates to his peer group. The problem isn’t the male/female interaction it’s the way guys, especially teenage guys are expected to act.
““Though if anyone says anything disrespectful about her, he should call them out at least verbally.” cmon you are better than that, do you get angry if your friends tell you your BF is hot? Do they disrespect him by saying that?”
I’m not talking about someone saying she’s hot as my post clearly shows (as I already said he should say she’s hot in the company of the guys). I’m talking about disrespect, you know the sort of language I’m talking about.
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“hat’s like guys who say to girls ‘but i’m being nice, why aren’t you having sex with me, i’m being nice’ – well if you’re only being nice to get sex, it’s not actually being nice is it.”
Why not? Do you not act nice to get sex? Why the double standard for men?
One guy gives him the best advice that he should wait till he gets turned on by her physically but then he risks getting in the LJBF zone. And as you say the girl might be disgusted that he wants sex now.
“I’m not talking about someone saying she’s hot as my post clearly shows (as I already said he should say she’s hot in the company of the guys). I’m talking about disrespect, you know the sort of language I’m talking about.”
Yeah I got that, let’s try again.
If a gf of yours says that your bf has a nice butt, is that disrespecting him? Or nice chest, or watever you gals find good in a man.
The words might be a little eloquent on the girls’ side but the difference is not because of the crudity of the words from boys. It’s something different, entirely different from mere words.
And that “sort of language” is reserved for hos.(which there are many, though they won’t acknowledge the fact), you don’t talk like that for a girl of a friend.
And do you gals never ever talk about the physical features of a man? Are you catholic lol
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Why don’t boys talk about their girlfriends while their girlfriends talk about “him” all the time?
Just about every girl here has advertised the man she is currently/ has been with. Why is that? A smart answer plz
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@doug1
Similarly the famous RPG-7 rocket grenade laucher. Anti tank and anti personell should rocket tube. That brought down a Blackhawk helicopter on takeoff in Mogadishu, Somalia (but knocking out the tail roter).
The RPG familyof rocket lauchers was also originally a German design copied by the Soviets after WWII. It was their next generation panzerfaust.
I spoke with a Swiss engineer in Kiev a few years back. His company was outsourcing some design work to Ukraine. I asked him about the engineers’ skills. He said they were first rate and simply needed modern tools and management. I think the Soviets had good fundamentals, but their management and economic policies prevented the cream from rising to the top. Soviet general education was very good. I think this was true over most of the Eastern Block.
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D-
Some of these gals actually hide this about themselves quite well in the beginning, giving off an air of feminine ways –but their true nature always shows itself….eventually
This is true, it is very easy to create the superficial appearance of femininity, the key thing to look for is what a woman actually does, not just what she says she’ll do, or that she believes in. It is very easy to hold out the lure of promises but much harder to deliver on them.
I don’t think most men, alphas or betas, like being in a relationship with a woman who is too controlling. I’m not sure that doing so brings the woman lasting happiness either, it is better to live and let live. I agree that alphas are less likely to stay in such relationships, because they have more options.
I think there is a middle ground between being bossy and being submissive. I agree that more men like submissive women than is generally realised, but others can find too much deference boring.
Matters are not helped by the fact that sometimes what men believe they want is not actually what they actually want e.g. they go out with someone on the basis that she is submissive, or indicate that this is what they want from her, and then get bored.
Nurturing and controlling are very different applications and it is a woman’s job to master the difference between the two.
It’s a very difficult thing to master. You should do a post on it.
PS: sometimes submissive women can be controlling too in a passive-aggressive way. Victorian women were absolutely brilliant (or horrible, depending on your pov) at this, they knew how to channel male guilt & protectiveness like no one’s business. This could be hell to live with though.
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“Why don’t boys talk about their girlfriends while their girlfriends talk about “him” all the time?
Just about every girl here has advertised the man she is currently/ has been with. Why is that? A smart answer plz”
a girl gets her status from the guy she’s with. a guy gets his status elsewhere.
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Why don’t boys talk about their girlfriends while their girlfriends talk about “him” all the time?
*Ahem*
I was talking about the Great Hypothetical Male constructed from the myriad particles of my Experience and Observation.
Any similarity to any individual men of my acquaintance is purely coincidental.
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@ namae nanke
Yes girls talk about physical aspects of men but not in the same way. And your example was one of a teenage boy in a teenage environment so the language they could use isn’t just reserved for ‘hos’ as you call them.
“Do you not act nice to get sex? Why the double standard for men?”
No I do not ‘act’ nice to get sex. Assuming, I wanted to ‘get sex’ I could for example act sexily or may dress in a certain way to get sex and certainly no objection on that on the man’s side, no double standards. But you know ‘nice’ is being ‘nice’, think of the meaning of the word. You can’t ‘be nice’ if you were doing that solely for the aim of getting sex. Try being sexy instead (doesn’t mean you can’t be a nice person).
“Why don’t boys talk about their girlfriends while their girlfriends talk about “him” all the time?”
As I said before, the problem in your link wasn’t the boy having trouble getting the girl, it’s to do whether he thinks he’s normal in regards to his peers. The crux of the matter is how males think they should act and how they relate to each other.
In reality, his friends will most likely act ‘all hard’ in front of each other but open up/’be more vulnerable’ with their girlfriends or female friends but the questioner doesn’t realise that. I do think this is becoming better with more intergender friendships from a younger age, I see my teenage nieces and how they and boys their age relate to each other compared to how I did at that age, there’s a big difference.
I do agree that girls do talk about their boyfriends more than boys talk about their girlfriends but girls just talk more. They also bond through sharing personal information whilst boys bond through shared activities (sports, drinking whatever). When I meet up with female friends only, we talk about all sorts of things but we do talk about men to some degree so given we talk more overall, then obviously we’re going to talk more about our boyfriends than boys would talk about their girlfriends.
Personally, I don’t like sharing very personal information about a man as I think it’s disrespectful, but I don’t pass judgement on others who do.
“Just about every girl here has advertised the man she is currently/ has been with. Why is that?Well plenty of the guys have mentioned women too. Though less individual basis than the women do (maybe their numbers are just a lot larger lol). We’re just more inclined to share personal information.
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A girl’s status is far more effected by the guy she’s with, that’s true.
But a guy’s status is also effected somewhat by the woman he’s actually identified with, as opposed to just casually dating for awhile. Even there though, if he can attract a real hottie, especially if she’s not also an obvious airhead bimbo, his status does tend to go up. His alpha credibility is underlined and given more and wider credence. That does bleed over into being seen in an alpha light in work too, in professional, sales and leadership circles, etc. Note that the rainmaker function in lawfirms is a sales one, as is a lot of investment banking. High level expertise sales to be sure.
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“a girl gets her status from the guy she’s with. a guy gets his status elsewhere.”
not merely status, her whole “self” and that answers many of the points raised in this thread.
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““Why don’t boys talk about their girlfriends while their girlfriends talk about “him” all the time?
a girl gets her status from the guy she’s with. a guy gets his status elsewhere.”
There is some element of truth in that but arguably it’s the other way around too. In high school a guy going out with the cheerleader (we don’t have them here though we do always have the most popular/best looking), the banker going out with the model blah bah. He’s going to make sure he takes her out on his arm and mentions it to his friends to get status.
But he won’t talk about her to the extent a woman would talk about the male in her life. I’m not a typical girlie girl, but I imagine I talk more to my friends in quantity about work, my family, politics and all sorts of other things than most guys. So understandably I’m going to talk about men more than a man may talk about women.
I’d imagine females also illustrate things with personal examples, it’s just easier. I’ve noticed politicians in the UK have started doing this more.
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sdaedalus
Possibly a very confident man might be able to take an approach of amused tolerance, particularly if the woman is younger. Most men end up having to put their foot down at some point in order to retain some sense of identity.
nope. you’re making the entirely understandable error of projecting from your experience again.
there are two strong factors working against you here.
one, you’re female, so you’re unconsciously working from the standpoint of a female dealing with an overly controlling male. the plight of such a female is much less fraught, since men’s controlling behavior is generally aimed at preserving the status quo rather than at going somewhere. (exceptions admitted for those rare men who are “controlling” in a psychotically abusive way.) in particular, you don’t have to face the prospect of wondering whether you’re headed toward a rock, a hard place, or both — and likewise wondering whether the woman knows, or even cares, in her singleminded attempt to preserve a nonzero velocity for as long as possible, even if her controlling of you is quite an unsatisfactory simulacrum of the obverse that she so desires.
two, you’re a soi-disant “non-controlling woman”, so you don’t even have the reciprocal experience upon which to draw.
if a young woman is controlling, there are two conclusions.
one, she’s the type who would rather be dead than bored. if she isn’t your project, your continual work-in-progress, then she’ll make you hers.
two, ironically — and this is where most guys, and you, fuck up the most — she wants to be controlled much more intensely than do average women.
if her own devices are turned on her, she’ll fold.
quickly.
orgasmically.
breathlessly.
i love these sorts of bitches for a short-term relationship, because they’ll do anything for one of the few men who are both knowledgeable and poised enough to give them what they want — to put them in their place.
it’s shockingly easy.
and fun!
i can give details if you like.
johnny five principle #1: people’s true priorities are revealed by what they’ll do for free.
note that “free” is extended to include the lack of anticipated future gains, too.
do you think “dominant” women will “dominate” for free?
hell no.
“dominant” wives charge for it, in the form of controlling the man’s finances.
recreational pvc-clad dominatrices also charge, because even for them it’s a chore.
but, sdaedalus, i could regale you with 1001 southern nights, and 1001 more vegas nights, of the stories of the things these women DO do for free.
stories that would make your red hair turn white.
—
on the other hand, this type of woman requires a constant rate of change that would exhaust most truly decent men. heh.
they want to be made whores, toys, a means to an end. they want to go out and make some master proud, a desire intensified by their unconscious disillusionment with previous men (and probably their own fathers) who would be “proud” without making them work sufficiently hard for it.
they will deny any of these statements to your face if you made them explicitly, but they are dissimulating. they’re testing you.
they make the best partners in crime.
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@ namae
“not merely status, her whole “self”.”
Do you really believe that?
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“Yes girls talk about physical aspects of men but not in the same way. ”
Yes madam but what is this way?
“In reality, his friends will most likely act ‘all hard’ in front of each other but open up/’be more vulnerable’ with their girlfriends or female friends but the questioner doesn’t realise that.”
It’s about trust, females get it more easily because men have been demonized.
Male-bonding is not that all-hard stuff.In a group men talk of that which is common to all, it’s an unwritten rule.
“I do think this is becoming better with more intergender friendships from a younger age, I see my teenage nieces and how they and boys their age relate to each other compared to how I did at that age, there’s a big difference.”
You’re sounding like a dreaded feminist here lol
that will just take away the masculine mystique and produce even more confused androgyne characters.
And there are no inter-gender friendships.There never can be.
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“I was talking about the Great Hypothetical Male constructed from the myriad particles of my Experience and Observation.
Any similarity to any individual men of my acquaintance is purely coincidental.”
Nice disclaimer, keep it up.
“Do you really believe that?”
Don’t drop in on men’s conversations, bad manners.
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anouk:
Alpha males and submissive females work well together because the woman is not bossy and the guy is
weak.
truly dominant males do not gravitate toward women who would be labeled in general as “submissive”, for that means these women are not discriminating: they will submit to whomever they’re with, irrespective of whether he deserves it.
truly dominant males earn the submission of a woman who is too feisty and self-directed for lesser males.
personally, i like to take a woman who is a bitch TO everyone else, and make her a bitch FOR me.
my tastes admittedly run to one extreme, but, still, you will not find a queue of alpha males at the door of a woman who is too easily pushed around.
or:
stone walls make surprisingly good doormats.
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It’s over:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15tier.html
No more leading American science for you. None.
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It’s real:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/08tier.html
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““Yes girls talk about physical aspects of men but not in the same way. ”
Yes madam but what is this way?”
As an example, ‘the Player’ has a great body. I particularly like his back and arms, but it’s all perfect. (which is interesting as his body type is not one I’d say I’m attracted to as a general rule but that’s a different topic). I’m not going to say much more than what I just said to any of my friends. Yes some women may go into more detail (cue Sex and the City) but from my experiences, on the whole women don’t.
As an example, male friends have admitted to me they talk about the specifics of women’s genital regions on women they’ve been with. Regardless of who that woman is or whether anyone knows her. Or maybe men may call the woman a whore for having sex with them (I don’t think even women who have sex with the baddest of bad boys is going to insult a person for having sex with them).
“It’s about trust, females get it more easily because men have been demonized”
Well they’re not demonised to each other are they? IMHO the issue is more to do with males being brought up in a way they have to ‘be a man’ and not show feelings etc than because men are demonised.
“Male-bonding is not that all-hard stuff.In a group men talk of that which is common to all, it’s an unwritten rule”
They don’t tend to talk things they may feel make them vulnerable. Maybe in a one-on-one situation with their best friend but rare.
“And there are no inter-gender friendships.There never can be”
I disagree. I’m not saying there may not be instances where there is sexual attraction on either or both sides, but I don’t think it’s true that inter-gender friendships are impossible.
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sdaedalus
Possibly a very confident man might be able to take an approach of amused tolerance, particularly if the woman is younger
Actually I’ve never seen this happen in real life. I may have been working from Regency fiction here.
a female dealing with an overly controlling male. the plight of such a female is much less fraught, since men’s controlling behavior is generally aimed at preserving the status quo rather than at going somewhere. (exceptions admitted for those rare men who are “controlling” in a psychotically abusive way.)
I agree, and you are correct to make the exception for psychotically abusive controllers.
in particular, you don’t have to face the prospect of wondering whether you’re headed toward a rock, a hard place, or both — and likewise wondering whether the woman knows, or even cares, in her singleminded attempt to preserve a nonzero velocity for as long as possible, even if her controlling of you is quite an unsatisfactory simulacrum of the obverse that she so desires.
Although not being a man, I agree I have never experienced this myself, I have seen first-hand the effects on men who have, and heard them talk about it.
two, you’re a soi-disant “non-controlling woman”, so you don’t even have the reciprocal experience upon which to draw
I wouldn’t say that at all. I work exceptionally hard to keep my controlling tendencies in check. Between this and avoiding alphas, life is quite hard work.
if a young woman is controlling, there are two conclusions.
one, she’s the type who would rather be dead than bored. if she isn’t your project, your continual work-in-progress, then she’ll make you hers.
two, ironically — and this is where most guys, and you, fuck up the most — she wants to be controlled much more intensely than do average women.
if her own devices are turned on her, she’ll fold.
quickly.
orgasmically.
breathlessly.
This is correct imo, subject to a qualification re. terminology, I think “super-controlling” would be better, almost all women have a tendency to be controlling to some extent, what you are talking about though is the top 20% in terms of control or so.
they’ll do anything for one of the few men who are both knowledgeable and poised enough to give them what they want — to put them in their place.
it’s shockingly easy.
and fun!
i can give details if you like.
sdaedalus, i could regale you with 1001 southern nights, and 1001 more vegas nights, of the stories of the things these women DO do for free.
Do tell.
stories that would make your red hair turn white
Honesty compels me to admit that I am a towhead not a redhead.
they want to be made whores, toys, a means to an end. they want to go out and make some master proud, a desire intensified by their unconscious disillusionment with previous men (and probably their own fathers) who would be “proud” without making them work sufficiently hard for it.
Sometimes it can be the other way round too, paternal rejection can fuel the need for approval by men? Is this not a more likely explanation?
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@johnny five @ 4.21
I agree with everything you said in that post. I didn’t like the last sentence but hey 😉
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@namae nanka
“Don’t drop in on men’s conversations, bad manners”
Don’t talk to us then?!
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“As an example, male friends have admitted to me they talk about the specifics of women’s genital regions on women they’ve been with.”
Those dirty bastards talking about dirty things.
“Well they’re not demonised to each other are they?”
A man sending off his daughter to college:
Listen dear daughter the golden rule “all boys really want, is to have sex”
The daughter smirks.
“IMHO the issue is more to do with males being brought up in a way they have to ‘be a man’ and not show feelings etc than because men are demonised.”
Your humility is misplaced. And how is talking about tits and asses not showing the great amount of feeling you have for them?
“They don’t tend to talk things they may feel make them vulnerable. Maybe in a one-on-one situation with their best friend but rare.”
Trust, my lady, trust.
This vulnerability is a sweet term, you hit the man’s manhood with it, and even if you don’t you still do.
How do you know what men do in one-on-one situations?
Do you take your man problems to friends?
“Don’t talk to us then?!”
I was thinking of putting up a warning sign that you shouldn’t read that.
you didn’t answer my question, so his reply is yours too?
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@Lily
“And there are no inter-gender friendships.There never can be”
I disagree. I’m not saying there may not be instances where there is sexual attraction on either or both sides, but I don’t think it’s true that inter-gender friendships are impossible.
I have to agree with Lily; inter-gender friendships are very possible. However, I’d go a step further:
It’s also possible to be “Friends”, in the truest sense, and also sleep together occasionally, but not have it become a romantic relationship (for many reasons).
Every circumstance is unique; and it’s entirely possible for people to enjoy an actual friendship and occasionally go to bed. Or more than occasionally, if the circumstances warrant it. Travel together. Between mates. Um, during, if the mates are not long-term. As emotional support. To defeat human loneliness. For comfort. To exercise horniness, in one or both parties. As a favour. For fun. For experimentation, often. Etc.
A lot of people define all sexual relationships as non-friendship relationships, but this is absurd. It denies the huge variety of possible human interrelationships that can exist. Also, friendships morph over time; I have ex-GFs I;m close friends with (but never sleep with), and the opposite.
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“I feel like I’m not normal for thinking like this. Is it normal?”
“All of my friends don’t talk about this stuff when they talk about girls. They talk about their **** and there @sses. I just don’t know if it’s normal that I’m more attracted to this girl for other reasons.”
It isn’t some vulnerability for being in love isn’t being vulnerable.projection.
Talking about feelings makes you vulnerable, now where did we hear this before? projection again.
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Richard Florida is a liberal mangina who sits on a peg while he writes books, but you got “Creative Class” wrong.
Computer scientists, Electrical Engineers, and the like are included in the creative class. It isn’t all bohemians and graphic designers.
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@Herbal Essence
Richard Florida is a liberal mangina who sits on a peg while he writes books, but you got “Creative Class” wrong.
Computer scientists, Electrical Engineers, and the like are included in the creative class. It isn’t all bohemians and graphic designers.
Some engineers and computer scientists. Some are creators; others are just maintenance engineers, much like plumbers.
The philosophers and thinkers and academics and fartsies and actors count, too – along with the entire cultural sector –
But in the past, our cultural elites were, well, not as douchey as they are now.
Our cultural elites more often appear like parasites, milking off the declining teat of industrial development.
At some point, they’ll just run out of milk to drain.
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Gorb, Lily and namae
OF COURSE there can be (non-sexual) intergender friendships, only an idiot would say this can’t happen.
The real question is whether there can be intergender friendships when at least one of the people finds the other one sexually attractive — and shame on anybody whose frame of reference is so limited that they can’t imagine a man and a woman who have nothing sexual between them.
Turning to that real question: intergender friendship can happen when both are otherwise attached, or one is strongly otherwise attached. If neither is attached and they both are attracted to the other, then the friendship will naturally turn sexual and there is no particular problem.
The problematic cases are when neither is attached, one finds the other attractive, but not vice versa. Here there is an asymmetry. If the woman finds the man attractive, and they are compatible as friends, and she is at least okay-looking, her attentions will make her start to look better to him — some kind of relationship will probably ensue, which has a good chance of ending amicably if they are not actually compatible as lovers.
The other way around there is the potential for horrible LJBF frustration, because the man can’t turn off his attraction for the woman and doesn’t understand why she, liking him as a friend, can’t bring herself to give him a chance as a lover. This is indeed a bad situation to be strongly avoided, but it is very far from justifying the statement “intergender friendships don’t work”, several other conditions must be met for that statement to really be relevant.
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Lily,
I don’t get this thing about guys talking to each other about intimacies with their girlfriends. The real question is, when you talk to your friend about intimate details of your relationship, whether your friend keeps it confidential.
That is part of what friends are for; nothing wrong with telling them stuff, it is when it gets widely known that someone has screwed up badly — probably two people have screwed up badly, the friend who betrayed the confidence and the guy who misjudged his friend.
Are you saying there is some essential difference netween what guys say about their girlfriends to their friends, and what girls say about their boyfriends to their friends? If you are, please be clearer about what the difference is.
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@ Dally et al.
Creative arts and entertainment generates a huge amount of economic activity when taken as a whole.
Neighborhoods tend to see a rise in property values and overall desirability when the creative hipsters with a little money move in – the type who work at ad agencies and PR firms…
The ONLY reason such activities are economically viable is the increasing subdivision of labor made possible by the engineering and technical skills needed to refine raw materials into machines.
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@ Dally et al.,
Creative arts and entertainment generates a huge amount of economic activity when taken as a whole.
Neighborhoods tend to see a rise in property values and overall desirability when the creative hipsters with a little money move in – the type who work at ad agencies and PR firms…
The ONLY reason such activities are viable is because of the increasing subdivision of labor due to the engineering and technical skills necessary to refine raw materials into machines. How many bohemian neighborhoods, ad agencies and PR firms do you see in subsistence-level societies?
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Lily,
It sounds like you are not a controlling harpy (thank you), but you are saying things in the way that controlling harpies say them, which is why I react so strongly. So don’t take offense but just understand you are wading into waters frought with danger for modern men.
An occasional piece of advice to dress a man better or improve his presentation isn’t a problem. But what absolutely blows my mind off is when I see girls pull a fixer-upper, then showcase the man as her runway project as they titter about how she “trained” him.
Unfortunately, if most women appreciated men who tried to make them happy, this “training” wouldn’t be a problem, and it would be a positive feedback loop of mutual happiness. Men are more like dogs than women are – we like what we like, fit easily into a brotherhood pack structure and we basically seek to make people happy. But female humans don’t seem to work that way; concerted efforts to “change” men almost always result in collateral feelings of resentment and shortcoming in her (and sometimes in him).
Meanwhile, a man who actively tries to dote and serve his woman’s interests engenders similar feelings of romantic claustrophobia in the woman. There’s a very thin threshold in both cases beyond which the man has been entrapped into betatude and a one-way ticket to the frigid zone. It’s a paradox, easy to understand but beyond the acceptance of many men.
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“I don’t get this thing about guys talking to each other about intimacies with their girlfriends. The real question is, when you talk to your friend about intimate details of your relationship, whether your friend keeps it confidential.”
I’ve noticed this to be a huge problem among young people, stereotypical in-laws, and in fractured marriages – the sharing of details that should remain within the couple. I learned a while back that ating was like Miranda: everything you tell your friends can and will be used to form an opinion against the person you are dating. Worse yet, they will try to injunct YOU against your partner.
“That is part of what friends are for; nothing wrong with telling them stuff, it is when it gets widely known that someone has screwed up badly — probably two people have screwed up badly, the friend who betrayed the confidence and the guy who misjudged his friend.”
If you find your partner is talking the details of your relationship all over town, particularly sex or money, you gotta think about a DTB. A breach of privacy is a broken relationship.
“Are you saying there is some essential difference netween what guys say about their girlfriends to their friends, and what girls say about their boyfriends to their friends? If you are, please be clearer about what the difference is.”
Whenever this topic comes up in magazines/news articles, there is always a depressing tendency to presume that the “female” route of communication is better, and that men are “undersharing.”
Then when men try to talk about their feelings or anxieties in public, they are shushed with exhortations to “be a man.”
Can’t win. Why play?
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The realist you should be outraged that many people in your country can afford all the things you can without producing any real wealth themselves.
like what?
homes.. cell phones.. etc…
Anonymouses Anonymous
The better interpretation is that further advancement of civilization can be measured by how much free time individuals have to pursue more artistic endeavors.
Agreed
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@Anonymous
Excellent point, and that is a prime example of SUPPLY CREATING DEMAND.
Infinite demand for stuff always exists since the dawn of humanity and all it’s needs and desire, SUPPLY is the only thing that creates these things. Most importantly supply, production and innovation is the only thing that can create and free-up TIME. You cannot demand time, it’s already ticking away, you have to supply it more efficiently.
For instance When a few can produce and stockpile lots of food everyone else can focus on creating something else to trade for that food and everything else in the market. You can’t even start working on building complex machines until you are fed, or you starve in the futile process, even though theoretically demand for those machines(and anything helpful/desirable/entertaining) already exists. This is why REAL capitalism involves risk, because one can observe measurements of demand, but they don’t know what the real demand is until they actually invest, produce and sell. Only Then are they at the mercy of the market, competition and demand, many go bankrupt when demand falls or doesn’t materialize, That is the basis of free market allocation of resources. What we witness increasingly is the propping up of failing industries(state sector, banking, motors etc) and bankrupt companies/populations, with cheap money trying to artificially maintain and increase demand in a fundamentally flawed market. This often serves only one real long term function, AND THAT IS TO INCREASE DEBT AND INFLATE THE CURRENCY.
“Creative arts and entertainment generates a huge amount of economic activity when taken as a whole.
Neighborhoods tend to see a rise in property values and overall desirability when the creative hipsters with a little money move in – the type who work at ad agencies and PR firms…”
I think everyone knows by now that the property market in America is a complete fraud, House values are being kept way to high, they should be falling across the board. What you are witnessing is not only the effect of machines and subdivision of labour. IT IS THE OUTSOURCING OF LABOUR. Just because the people who produce food, electricity, machines, clothing, consumer goods etc no longer reside in that neighbourhood does not negate the effect they have in allowing that quality of life. They still exist, Whether it’s in a different part of the country or another country. In many cases it is just an ILLUSION OF WEALTH. Can you please refresh my memory as to the trade deficit and national debt of the American nation? How much money do you owe China, japan and Saudi Arabia?
It’s easy to waste money and wealth when someone else worked hard to create it. These debts will never be paid or paid only through disastrous inflating of currency. Then at best these people will have to consider career changes to real PRODUCTION, and at worst descend to complete subsistance or else face starvation.
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““Are you saying there is some essential difference netween what guys say about their girlfriends to their friends, and what girls say about their boyfriends to their friends? If you are, please be clearer about what the difference is.”
This topic came up because of a link that Namae posted on Yahoo questions/answers. It was a teenage situation. He was using it as an example of how a boy should act and whether the girl would LBJF him, but to my mind the question even wasn’t to do with how the boy approached the girl (and the boy did not mention it) but how he fitted in with his male peers.
Yes, if it’s as that post says, that teenage boy’s personal circle only refers to girls in a ‘tits and ass’ way then I’d imagine that there would be differences in the way those same teenage girls discuss the boys in their school.
I don’t know if there is a fundamental difference between how men talk to each other about their girlfriends and how women talk to each other about their boyfriends. I do think that women would probably discuss the opposite sex more overall because they talk more and also more likely to discuss issues of a more day to day basis (but you do have to be careful not to compromise the main relationship). Perhaps he may have one big heart to heart with his guy friend when he is say getting a divorce (and even then he thinks carefully as he doesn’t want to seem a failure), but this is just my feeling and based on hearsay from men know not based on any concrete proof.
I do know that my male friends tell me that they would are more likely to talk to me about personal matters (or their other female friends, I’m not claiming I’m that special even if my daddy said so lol) over their male friends as they say they feel awkward talking abut feelings with them.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the ““female” route of communication is better, and that men are “undersharing.”” And as I said previously, I do think the ‘be a man’ thing in society has a lot to answer for, and in fact if I have a big issue about a man I want to discuss with someone (as opposed to men just coming up in conversation like work, politics, fashion, latest iphone) then I am more likely to discuss with a man than a woman. Maybe an older woman friend I have but on the whole I’d be more likely to discuss with male friends. But this is obviously personal to me. Though one interesting thing in this sort of conversation but only from my personal experience is that men seem to give other men less leeway than females.
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Badger,
I’m drawing a distinction between what you would tell a close friend because you valued his opinions or advice, and what you would boast about to impress others. The former can be OK even if some of the sharing involves intimate details. That’s part of what (really close) friends are for.
A good rule of thumb is if you are talking to more than one person it is not the right kind of sharing.
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Lily,
Most men have VERY few friends with whom they could share intimate relationship details in a way which involved talking about their own imperfections and vulnerabilities. A lot fewer than most women, I think.
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@Chic Nior
Anything that can be purchased with Fiat currency enforced as legal tender. Gold is one of the most sensitive commodities to Fiat manipulation and can often be used as a window into the future with regard to prices especially those of food and basic goods. However Gold can still be purchased with Legal tender it is merely much more sensitive to market forces, exchange rates and currency debasement. The value of gold has increased by a factor of five over the last decade.
A factory worker making phones takes his 400 dollar a week paycheck to an electronic goods store and wants to buy a nice 400 dollar phone. He touches the exact same phone everyday, indeed he even builds it. A government bureaucrat takes his 800 dollar a week pay check to the same store and buys the same phone. At best the bureaucrats wages were paid through taxation of guys like the factory worker and his bosses, at worst it was paid for by Fiat manipulation. The phone doesn’t exist without the factory worker and yet it costs him a weeks wages to purchase the phone whereas the government worker gets the phone and more for producing nothing.
For an extreme example look at what Robert mugabe did in Zimbabwe. He printed trillions of zimbabwe dollars so his Police and military forces could have massive pay rises, for producing nothing and doing nothing but maintaining his power. The money quickly became worthless, and now his people are starving trying to fish what little gold they can get out of rivers to buy basic survival goods.
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“The value of gold has increased by a factor of five over the last decade.”
To put it correctly, the PRICE OF GOLD IN DOLLARS has risen 5x in the last decade. In relation to OIL and other commodities it has remained pretty much constant.
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the realist – lolzlolzolzolzzoll!
So many people fail to understand what gbfm is talking about.
Your explanations here cover it perfectly.
People, do you now see how fiat money from our fiat masters debauches the currency and butthexes the economy?!?!?
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badger
If you find your partner is talking the details of your relationship all over town, particularly sex or money, you gotta think about a DTB
haha
the implicit premise is that she’d be talking bad details.
i will hand you this one on the money angle, as women’s perception of “satisfactory” floats like a buoy at the top of their current means; hence the necessity of always keeping your means, or at least the appearance thereof, humble.
but sex?
if you fuck a woman’s body right, and especially if you fuck her mind right, the word will spread.
and then, if her circle is sufficiently low-class or “liberated”, her friends’ legs will follow suit.
—
polymath
Are you saying there is some essential difference netween what guys say about their girlfriends to their friends, and what girls say about their boyfriends to their friends?
really dude?
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johnny five-
“truly dominant males do not gravitate toward women who would be labeled in general as “submissive”, for that means these women are not discriminating: they will submit to whomever they’re with, irrespective of whether he deserves it.”
–yeah, I know. I’m not talking doormats here. I’m talking about a girl surrendering to an alpha after the couple has done the dance for some time. He has to prove he’s alpha in his vibe/philosophy/strength/actions.
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j5,
Was a rhetorical question — I know there’s usually a difference, but needed Lily to clarify.
2 things men and women have in common — they both like to talk about their relationships in a way that makes the look good, and they both sometimes need genuine advice/reaction from a friend. What is different is the way they go about this.
When trying to look good: men talk about their GFs in a way that makes their friends think she’s a slut, women talk about their BFs in a way that makes their friends think he’s a jerk, both get emotional satisfaction out of appearing to be on top of the relationship, but they are damaging in different ways.
When seeking honest advice, men will presume or demand confidentiality but then spill their guts. Women will be less guarded about who they speak to but more guarded about what they say.
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“I’m drawing a distinction between what you would tell a close friend because you valued his opinions or advice, and what you would boast about to impress others. The former can be OK even if some of the sharing involves intimate details. That’s part of what (really close) friends are for.”
Trusted advisors, yes. The sisterhood, no.
“Most men have VERY few friends with whom they could share intimate relationship details in a way which involved talking about their own imperfections and vulnerabilities. A lot fewer than most women, I think.”
Since men are indoctrinated into a boiler-room workaholic environment, expected to spend their time working for more money than they can spend, and to spend leisure time with their lady and kids, it is not hard to fathom why many men lack intimate friendships.
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Johnny Five,
We have a difference of opinion as to the purpose of LTRs. When I’m in an LTR, I’m not thinking about banging her friends so I don’t want my personal business sprayed across their social cluckhood.
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my god, badger, you can read these things metaphorically if you want. you needn’t enter every open gate you come across.
the single best way to ensure that your woman isn’t talking shit about you with her girlfriends is to fuck her so thoroughly that she can’t remember any shit to talk.
that is all, my friend.
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@ sdaedalus
I am tempted to put you in the intersection category too, but I would need to hear those stories you promised first, hint. We ladies are all ears.
look sdaedalus, i like you, so i’ll give you whatever vignette falls off my fingers in two cigarettes’ worth of time.
—
1001 vegas nights
act 1, scene 1
she was one of the more strident patrons i’ve seen lately, i thought, watching peripherally as she strode patronizingly up to the bar. she walked with a calculated bearing, bearing three dazzling fruits of her husband’s money: the glittering rock, the well-crafted bosom, and the well-nurtured chip on her shoulder. her designer clothes were carefully tailored to attract lustful attention, and carefully displayed to discourage that same attention from men of lesser means.
she slipped in front of a girl of lesser mien, fixed me with a haughty stare, and declared matter-of-factly that she wanted a cosmo. i ignored this power play and continued to serve the properly queued plebes.
another spark flew from her mouth, burning a hole in my insulating cloak of professionalism. “someone’s full of electricity tonight,” i retorted, spinning the glassware effortlessly in a lazy spiral toward the bar.
her eyes met mine, a wordless challenge to my authority. it was an aggressive gesture, but one that gave me an opening for checkmate in three moves.
1
she began to stare me down, with a palpable disdain born of a lifetime of experience with yes-men, but i reacted with none of the chivalrous deference that she had grown to expect. feeding on the intensity of her glare, i amplified the signal and completed the circuit.
2
her contempt began to dissipate, leaving the fight-or-fight [sic] response so typical in these career women, and to rematerialize in my own eyes. without a word, she had lost the exchange; her own condescension had descended upon her. she shifted uncomfortably as her well-cultivated aura of superiority, so impervious to attacks from without, was compromised from within.
3
i broke out into a broad grin — in part because i had her exactly where i wanted her, but also because i had just realized the unintentional depth of my own analogy: if she were truly conducting lightning, her intimidating electricity existed only at her outermost surface.
i took the drink that i had unblinkingly prepared during our silent skirmish, and placed it lovingly in front of her.
“wanna open a tab?”
she smiled, reached into her purse, pulled out two cards, pressed them together, and handed them to me. one was the requisite credit card; the other was a hotel key.
“wake me up when you get off work.”
—
for now i’ll spare you the raunchier details, but let’s just say that the more she took from her husband, the more she wanted, needed, to give away to a more worthy man.
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@Roissy,
What a totally dumbass post .. stick to “Game” posts buddy ..
Engineering isn’t really that hard .. its mostly rote memorization and rule and procedure following (I have a PhD in engineering from a top school). Engineers don’t create the world .. the economy first creates a structure in which it incentivizes technological innovation .. the economy also has to do a thousand other things like decrease transaction costs, capital costs and so on and on .. The society is quite efficient at rewarding people according to their value .. if you see something that seems to you unfair .. it is probably because you are too naive to see through the complex web ..
The reasons engineer seem to be fare relatively badly in comparison to other men regarding women is precisely because of this bullock reasoning .. they think that they are so much better and that they build the world and such .. the thing is most every joe-schmoe-engineer/coder/techie thinks this .. add to this the fact that they are mostly low T and you have a perceived “injustice” .. whatever that means .. women are a market and they will rank you according to what their own code .. being an engineer or such by itself is not bad .. infact it is quite neutral .. unless the woman is looking for a provider where she gets a slightly higher earning provider .. with the added problem of an “enormous ego” ..
so to summarize .. looking from a woman’s point of view .. all she is getting is a slightly above average earner sub-dominant provider potential .. with a huge ego .. and below average “male attractiveness” qualities .. geez isn’t the decision quite obvious? ..it is a no-go unless you are 35 and have exhausted your options ..
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Lily-
“I think beta females can be some of the bossiest females around, bossing their partners and children around because it’s the only control they have in their lives.”
–I believe they are in a beta position, as Anon said, and are truly a division of an alpha female. There are several types of alpha females with career choice and personality variances. Submission of a natural kind when the most ideal setting is that of the man being older, wiser, more worldly is what I speak of. Submission can come from an alpha female or a beta female or the gammas. Again, as on another thread, the issue of control comes into it some. Females with strong alpha qualities run parallel with females who need to be in control a lot. More mild alpha tendencies can vary as to how and when they appear.
SD-
“This is true, it is very easy to create the superficial appearance of femininity, the key thing to look for is what a woman actually does, not just what she says she’ll do, or that she believes in.”
–yes and no. Sure practically speaking, this holds but there are other ways to see. For instance: if she over analyzes to the point of the extinction of the flow or natural energy of much in life, if she has a cool demure, how she wears a skirt and heels–I have a keen knack of telling if a girl is truly feminine or not by how she does this. If she whips off her skirt and heels as soon as she gets home and complains of their discomfort, she is less likely to be genuinely feminine. Does she wear a chignon as opposed to a ponytail, is she overly practical,…does she obsess over being the equal of men on any platform..? etc. A girl’s actions may be steeped in virtue or other feminine associations, but she may also be a controlling, bossy, she-man with the wiring of an incredibly masculine thinking mind. The key is to look at how she does with the more feminine things in life–not if she can tread water with the male sharks sufficiently.
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johnny five alive-
You be on fire sir. But then again, you already know that.
oh, and the writers of the movie “Cocktail” called–they want their premises back.
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@unlearning genius …
@Roissy,
Engineering isn’t really that hard .. its mostly rote memorization and rule and procedure following (I have a PhD in engineering from a top school). Engineers don’t create the world ..
.. with the added problem of an “enormous ego” ..
I went to school with engineers, and worked with them, and know them. They truly think that engineers are the most important people in the world.
Don’t get me wrong: Engineers are important. So are doctors and lawyers and every other professional.
HOWEVER
The root of advancement is fundamentally not with the pragmatic, “plumbing of society” professionals.
It’s with – the Physicists, the Biologists (of many stripes), the philosophers – from which we get the possibilities of the professions.
The truth is:
The producing classes create a surplus; the surplus is stolen/monopolized by a political/business elite; and among the elite, a creative/thinker class generate new ideas, philosophies, and concepts.
The professionals are the managers/actuators of the ideas generated, at source, by the thinkers.
Unfortunately, the engineers – as the actuators of other peoples’ ideas, building on the shoulders of everyone who has gone before – think that they’re more important than the “impractical” thinkers.
Mathematicians, theoretical physicists, astronomers, experimental chemists, molecular biologists, philosophers and civics thinkers–
These are the people who feed the most back into society. When the surplus grows large enough to feed a large thinking class, freed from the need to worry about supporting themselves, then the managerial class (engineers, lawyers, businesspeople) can get on with the fine art of running society, and the workers (everyone else) gets on with providing for themselves and the upper classes.
This is the model of civilization that has produced, well, everything, in every society from the dawn of time. Literally.
That surplus – and the concentration and redistribution of it – is the heartstone of civilization. This is the reason, fundamentally, why communism can’t work.
It’s not that we’re naturally hierarchical. Which we are.
It’s that to create, we need those thinkers, and they need to be freed from obstruction to think.
The engineers think they’re hot shit. They think they’re the be all and end all; the same goes for doctors and lawyers.
They don’t realize that in the grand scale of things, they just DO things. They APPLY the knowledge that the actual thinkers produce.
The mechanics of society (engineers, doctors, lawyers, social workers, even librarians) just make society go. Okay, so that’s not small, …
But they don’t create society.
* Note: some engineers work in pure fields, too. They cont as thinkers.
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“This is true, it is very easy to create the superficial appearance of SANITY, the key thing to look for is what a woman actually does, not just what she says she’ll do, or that she believes in.”
fixed, so anoukange’s response can be gauged appropriately
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oh, and the writers of the movie “Cocktail” called–they want their premises back.
lolzzllzlolzzllzlolzzllzlolzzllz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok, now that was truly funny.
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Nicely done, canon’s canon.
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Now now Cannon—play nice.
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Whatta dumbass. Ever been to Palo Alto? Mountain View? Boston? Boulder?
Ever been to Norfolk?
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@ sdaedalus
look sdaedalus, i like you, so i’ll give you whatever vignette falls off my fingers in two cigarettes’ worth of time
Thank you. I do appreciate this.
she smiled, reached into her purse, pulled out two cards, pressed them together, and handed them to me. one was the requisite credit card; the other was a hotel key.
“wake me up when you get off work.”
I don’t doubt your ability to achieve the end result detailed (these women are very susceptible to anyone who stands up to them, I suspect that they are bored with domination)
but my only quibble is that this all seems surprisingly quick: introduction to capitulation in record time.
I suspect either (a) the same thing would have happened that night with any alpha male falling within her parameters of preference (this somewhat weakens your triumph) or (b) this was endgame, she had seen you before & been watching you for some time either that evening or earlier (in which case you were the one who was played).
I appreciate I haven’t had the benefit of seeing your hypnotic stare in action though, it may transcend even the limits of my imagination.
but let’s just say that the more she took from her husband, the more she wanted, needed, to give away to a more worthy man
I’ve always wondered – how do guys like you justify knowingly sleeping with another man’s wife, particularly when there are so many other options open to you? Do you never feel guilty about this? I am not being judgmental here, just curious.
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Roissy,
You’re smart on a lot of things, but man, you gotta chill. You seem to have so much hate and venom that it’s eating you from the inside. Chasing after women to fill the void can’t work in the long term, can it?
Also, most of the technology you speak of, the code, the user experience, etc. are all bridges to “content.” That is, art, literature, music. It’d be a very austere and lonely world were it only made of buttons that led nowhere.
And speaking of bohemians, though Marquis de Sade was not, properly speaking, a bohemian, you remind me a lot of him. Except you blog and will most certainly not be remembered after you die.
I actually run a tech startup and so, by your account, am doing something valuable. I’d like to ask, what do you do that is so valuable besides ethereal “consulting” or knowledge work when it comes to teaching about women? What do you actually produce? And who’se to say the production of knowledge isn’t valuable in its own right? PR people create equity by building brands. Just because it isn’t physically present doesn’t mean it lacks value.
So relax and take a deep breath.
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Lily don’t read this.
“And as I said previously, I do think the ‘be a man’ thing in society has a lot to answer for, ”
More feminist cant, now I am not sure if the men talking about the female genitalia you mentioned are genuine bastards or merely enamored of Eve Ensler’s seminal work on the female anatomy.
Lily the correct answer is that women have an intrinsic sense of worth associated with their bodies; you won’t find the same attitude with men. That’s why when men who won’t use some euphemism to describe female anatomy sound so degrading, while the length of a penis or cuteness of a butt discussion from women sounds so sublime.
Oh and of course men fuck while women get fucked so your friends don’t have the same capability as his friends and you are more likely to think that they are joking.
You should know better.Or perhaps you already do.
“I do think that women would probably discuss the opposite sex more overall because they talk more and also more likely to discuss issues of a more day to day basis ”
So talking about the tits and ass of a woman is more disrespectful than talking about what kind of a person she is?
Men are discreet about their women because they think that they are like them, that they would feel hurt if they talked to other men about what their inner feelings and their true self is.(not that T&A are mentioned)
But they don’t realize that a woman’s feelings will always pour forth on someone because she has no self to contain them in. They think that her feelings had been bottled up and now she is showering him with them, but it’s more like a movie show that they have just entered.
That’s why women’s friendships look so deep and yet are so brittle at the same time. That’s why women think themselves as selfless beings while talking of themselves all the time.
That’s why a poor LJBFed sod thinks that she will come around to love him for she can discuss all that butthex and emotional trauma that she has undergone with the douchebag she is so angry at.
He doesn’t understand that for a woman love is inextricably linked with sex and he has no chance at her love.And of course, sex.
“Though one interesting thing in this sort of conversation but only from my personal experience is that men seem to give other men less leeway than females.”
Men give up their trust to women so easily because
1)they have been taught that a woman is more understanding on these matters and men are all about butthex. Nothing can be further from the truth.
2)a woman can slip through a man’s defenses more easily than vice-versa because men don’t have to be on guard sexually.
3)some think that doing so will earn them the love of a woman by showing how sensitive they are. Poor sods, unless they know some game they will be branded as an asexual to be kept in the friend bracket.I hope you haven’t done the same to some beta orbiter.
Lastly, please excuse my bad manners.
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“OF COURSE there can be (non-sexual) intergender friendships, only an idiot would say this can’t happen.”
I like to think of friendships as a relationships between equals.
Friendships for woman and hence equality for them in most part derives from their sexuality.A man who doesn’t show sexual overtures shows sensitive/beta type is then an equal, a woman that isn’t in sexual competition is an equal, a gay man is an equal (unless her bf is a rare bi- man).
For men this equality is distributed. I’d like to think some more but it generally derives from a shared activity that they are equally good at.
I think inter sexual friendships can always be there, for say between a gay man and a woman, but an intergender friendship (to put it crudely, two individuals lying on opposite halfs of a masculinity scale) is very difficult. There will always be some sexual tension; a woman that’s attractive enough can never be my friend, a man who is masculine enough and doesn’t display beta behaviour in her presence can never be thought of as a friend by her, but as a future prospect to be kept in touch with.
“and shame on anybody whose frame of reference is so limited that they can’t imagine a man and a woman who have nothing sexual between them.”
Yeah, I need to go out more.
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@ sdaedalus
I do appreciate this
i should certainly hope so.
but my only quibble is that this all seems surprisingly quick: introduction to capitulation in record time.
what happens in vegas doesn’t happen in peoria.
(in which case you were the one who was played)
some games have two winners.
I’ve always wondered – how do guys like you justify knowingly sleeping with another man’s wife, particularly when there are so many other options open to you? Do you never feel guilty about this? I am not being judgmental here, just curious.
sweetie, i have a code. i have never broken a promise in my life, nor do i see much of a need to tell lies.
however, i don’t see the maintenance or enforcement of others’ promises as my bailiwick.
her vows.
her responsibility.
i don’t believe this is different between the sexes: you make a promise, you keep it.
fin.
but it’s quixotic to expect outside forces to obey inside rules.
my word is bond.
i cast out of my life those whose word, in their dealings with me, is not bond.
i don’t busy myself with edges of which i am not a vertex.
fyi, this woman turned out to be a hotwife whose husband was well aware of her shenanigans and actually facilitated (and sometimes funded and supplied) our subsequent liaisons.
i’ve met enough such women, and their male underlings, that i’m no longer surprised that the most fervent proponents of baleful feminist legislation are men.
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@namae nanka
I do think that you need to get out more 🙂
Yes, some women may have ‘beta orbiters’ around for self-actualisation reasons but it’s similar to how some men validate themselves but the amount of women they can have sex with. It’s not all women and not all male/female friendships. It’s not always smooth sailing in male/female friendships (and it works both ways on LJBF) but no female/female friendship is smooth sailing either.
“the correct answer is that women have an intrinsic sense of worth associated with their bodies; you won’t find the same attitude with men. That’s why when men who won’t use some euphemism to describe female anatomy sound so degrading, while the length of a penis or cuteness of a butt discussion from women sounds so sublime.””
I find it disrespectful if women talk about the lengths of their lovers’ penises. In any case, it’s not something I’m interested in knowing about. I would imagine many men who found out that that their partner had been talking about their penis length with their friends would find it disrespectful so I don’t buy your argument.
@polymath
I just had lunch with a male friend and in passing he dropped in something about his girlfriend, I said something without thinking much about it, and he said oh I hadn’t thought about it like that, thank you I am really glad I mentioned it to you. I couldn’t of course help thinking about our conversation so asked him what about it and what he discusses with different genders. He said the reason that he’d mentioned it to me was partly because I was female but partly because he thought I was nonjudgemental (ROFL). He also said that in his conversations with men about women it’s either ‘she’s hot’ or big issue like ‘im about to get divorced, i need advice’ there was very little in between. He had thought this morning he would mention it to me to see what my perspective was, but more it just fitted into the natural conversation more than it would with a man. He also said that you have to think carefully about what you say to another man because of the vulnerability aspect (perceived or otherwise).
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@johnnyfive
Thank you. That was what I figured. And thanks for the story.
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Namae Nanka,
Lily is right. Classy women do not sit around discussing men’s penis sizes. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with a friend about that topic and I don’t have any interest in talking about it either.
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Only in the dry, barren sexual wasteland that is America.
Skip breakfast and then put a chocolate sundae on your desk. See if you can ignore it. No?
Well, tomorrow, gorge yourself on a whole container of chocolate ice-cream before going to work. I imagine you would find it surprisingly easy to ignore the chocolate sundae no matter how luscious and delicious it really is.
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unlearning genius rambled insanely:
So, skippie, did the ECONOMY for maritime trade exist before or after the invention of boats?
I’m equally sure farmers had to be properly “motivated” to create a more drought resistance seed.
The smith? NO WAY would he create a more efficient furnace without “the bank” telling him he should.
It all really comes down to, if you can imagine it, a Big Boss sitting in his Big Chair, saying “Make It So”.
Without those fearsome, awe-inspiring words, nothing else is possible.
Why, oh why, hasn’t the BP Chairman said those magic words to fix the oil spill?
All he would need to do is say them, and EVERYTHING WOULD BE FIXED!
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@Laura
I’d take it further and say ‘normal’ women?!
I do remember at a dinner once when everyone was quite inebriated and playing an adult version of spin the bottle but with only truths rather than dares, one woman (whom one would assume was ‘classy’) saying so ‘would you rather a good looking man with a small cock or an ugly man with a large cock’ (her exact words), you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. The subject was quickly changed, you know how us women don’t like silences 🙂
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David F-
Yes, Edison was a brilliant asshole as I’ve read –but he broke all the rules and constantly pushed the boundaries of his time. And I dig that. He was an intellectual asshole, which is much more sexy than a meat head asshole. Meat head assholes are a dime a dozen. It doesn’t take talent to be an ass…it takes talent to know when to be an ass.
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Lily,
I was thinking the same thing after I posted, that “normal” would have been a better word. I can’t think of even one woman I know being interested in a conversation about that topic. By the way, I’m enjoying reading your comments.
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That’s why you never raise your hands against a woman, you leave your nuts unguarded.
“I do think that you need to get out more”
Yes mistress, just kick me in the nuts a second time and off I go.
“I find it disrespectful if women talk about the lengths of their lovers’ penises.”
correction, ex-lovers, a woman scorned, someone’s email fiasco comes to mind.
L&L
You classy dames are missing the crux of the issue. Click on my name and enjoy the show.
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@Laura
Thank you, that’s very kind of you to mention it.
@namae nanka
“correction, ex-lovers, a woman scorned, someone’s email fiasco comes to mind”
You’re changing the subject slightly. The conversation was about typical conversations.
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@Namae Nanka
Where’s your blog gone? It was more interesting than the puppet show.
I agree with Lily & Laura that women discussing men’s penis size with other women is not classy. I’m not a huge fan of sharing details of specific men’s performance in bed either. It just seems to be taking advantage of men’s vunerabilities in this regard, it is like hitting below the belt (no pun intended). Also, sex is about more than just size believe it or not, and this business of grading performance takes away all the fun, it just makes it into an exam, what is the point?
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“You’re changing the subject slightly. The conversation was about typical conversations.”
madam did you get the subject in the first place? Why is Eve Ensler’s work still a V-day affair? I asked my questions and answered them myself. We lost the subject long ago; how could we have had one when we don’t even speak the same language.
plz continue the whipping, maybe you will think me attractive too.
sdaedalus
It’s there, I was putting different links in my user handle.
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@Lily —
“That’s like guys who say to girls ‘but i’m being nice, why aren’t you having sex with me, i’m being nice’ – well if you’re only being nice to get sex, it’s not actually being nice is it.”
Personally I am way, way past being sick and tired of this particular canard. It’s a classic swindle for when you have nothing logical to say: switch the subject from objective facts (a guy is acting nice) to your presumptions about motivations (he’s only acting that way to get sex).
Here’s an idea, pry open your mind and see if you can make enough room for it: it is possible that a guy who actually is nice, and genuinely acts nicely for the genuine reason that he is actually nice — however you want to define “nice” and “genuine” — can also be puzzled, disappointed and resentful that his actual, genuine niceness is not getting him anywhere sexually, especially after he’s been told over and over again that women want someone nice. There, can you grasp that? Here it is again in slow motion: it _is_ possible that a guy can both be genuinely nice, ie not just acting that way but because it’s his true nature, _and_ also be legitimately disappointed that being nice doesn’t work to his advantage.
I know this idea doesn’t come easily to women, who must always find a way to blame the man (“he’s not really nice, he’s only acting that way”), even if it means just plain making things up, rather than admit the possibility that a woman might actually be the one who’s screwed up (like saying “I want someone nice” when the truth is otherwise). But try enlarging your mind, just this once; you may find it liberating.
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that’s why this engineer works for a prop shop
@unlearning genius:
most engineers that “can think” will either leave direct tech work behind (through promotion into mgmt), or through entrepreneurship.
the less outgoing ones settle for rote work and therefore taint the profession as being “more socially awkward”
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@Esau
Esau, I don’t need to enlarge my mind thank you, of course the situation you mentioned is possible. Just as the situation that I mentioned is possible. Don’t make assumptions.
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I chose HTML for a specific reason.
HTML is one of the languages that make up websites. The code leads to a final product, which is artistic in nature:
Example. I realise web designers can collaborate with others but they also do not.
Do you follow this reasoning? A good designer ensures the “brush strokes” of his code is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
I was playing devil’s advocate. I know something about the statements is misleading, but outlining it is another story. Practically speaking, no shortage of inventors means that the supply outstrips the demand, a separate issue from the actual necessity we face.
Is the money in research and development going where it should be, or focusing on certain ideas that are not as useful as others to immediately invest in, but have power because they are politically and socially driven by the liberal media?
The managers of cash flow are politicians and businessmen, not engineers.
You think me an artiste, sir?!
On a scale of 1-10, how strongly do you think so? With 1 being zero and ten being Michaelangelo, apparently.
Maslow had a menstrual cycle? I kid, but I only know the terminology relating to hierarchy.
They certainly imagined flying, watching a bird do it with envy in their eyes. I did say this, didn’t I?
Doug: Da Vinci robots are indeed fun, expensive things.
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Lily love is about submission, sex isn’t.
That’s the cause of many broken hearts when boys are actively told not to think of girls as sexual partners but equals and that talking about T&A becomes “disrespectful” and “shameful”.
Then relating the object of his love to the same sex discussion becomes repulsive to him and he would be extra cautious not to give her a reason to think that he ever engages in those kind of bad discussions.
At the same time the girl wants him to give signals of sexual interest; when he doesn’t initially does so, he is LJBFed.
So when she does have sex with a friend of his who used to be the headmaster at T&A discussions, he is outraged. He tries to reason with her that he is a bad guy, to which she then thinks that he is being a creep and jealous that she didn’t have sex with him.
In the same way, if he tries to signal his sexual interest later, she thinks that he was just being nice to get sex.
And hence the ubiquitous response from the ladies: That isn’t being nice now, is it?
Moving on,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09dowd.html?ref=opinion
Why don’t these writers ever think that boys get these ideas from the TV yet think that girls go into depression over thinness or start being slutty because the media portrays them as such.
They don’t express it fully but they implicitly imply that girls don’t really think for themselves, but get their ideas from others.
But at the same time boys, who mature later than girls do, are not lead astray by media but it’s because they are testosterone laden beasts and they generate these thoughts themselves?
These teachings to “young men” can only deter the conscientious boys who are mindful of rules, not those who don’t care. As a result, nice guys then finish last while douchebags finish with the girls. It’s saddening, I weep my manly tears.
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@esau
“I know this idea doesn’t come easily to women, who must always find a way to blame the man (“he’s not really nice, he’s only acting that way”), even if it means just plain making things up, rather than admit the possibility that a woman might actually be the one who’s screwed up (like saying “I want someone nice” when the truth is otherwise). But try enlarging your mind, just this once; you may find it liberating.”
Sure. This is how it works. Devlin explains this quite succinctly. The woman is not actually lying. However, women (and men, although most men are less picky)
do a two-step (at least) process.
The first step is almost automatic/subconscious (especially in women) where the coarse “not a candidate for sex” filter is applied. MOST WOMEN ARE NOT AWARE OF THIS FILTER, IT IS AUTOMATIC, and requires either unusual amounts of introspection or somebody (man or woman, maybe a relative) patiently guiding the woman through the discovery of this process, if she is to become aware of it all.
Only those men who pass the first filter (often a small minority) are even considered for conscious analysis. ONCE AT THIS POINT it MAY be true that some women would like
a man who is “nice”, but “niceness” is a negative in
the first step. It comes down to, more or less:
“I want a super-alpha who dominates any situation,
including me, and then, at the very end, softens up
and is – by choice, NOT because he is trying to suck up
to me – somewhat nice, caring etc etc.
The interview with a supermodel a couple of weeks
ago illustrates this; she indeed gave advice to men
on how to be “nice”, but was of course oblivious to
the elimination round – and a supermodel would
quite necessarily do A LOT of elimination, or she would
have NO TIME to do anything, including supermodelling.
Thor
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Esau,
Great reply.
Thor,
Good elaboration.
Lily,
Don’t use Esau’s condescending tone as an excuse for not confronting his actual point. You admit the situation he describes is “possible” — actually it is not only possible but common (even usual as far as younger women are concerned).
As a woman, perhaps you could either admit that the large subset of women who have this attitude have something wrong with them, or else, if they don’t, say something to help the genuinely nice guy understand why so many women seem to find niceness less *attractive* than its opposite.
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Thor explains this very well.
However:
“MOST WOMEN ARE NOT AWARE OF THIS FILTER, IT IS AUTOMATIC”
I think most women are aware of this filter. In my experience, it’s men who seem baffled by this whether they are the ones involved or not.
“coarse “not a candidate for sex” filter is applied”
I don’t think it is a candidate for sex filter as much as candidate for romantic partner. That is why very few people get through the filter.
Though these days, I suppose the ‘ladders’ would get blurred with the fuck buddy phenomonem.
““niceness” is a negative in
the first step.”
Not necessarily.
It’s just not necessarily the main sales point. Like a Ferrari, obviously you want a car to take you from A to B but it’s not top of mind, you’re blown away by the design and the speed. I think many women expect niceness as a basic. Not sure this is the best analogy but I hope is the best analogy but still.
I wasn’t a big Sex and the City watcher, but i noticed Mr Big being mentioned earlier. I vaguely remember the scene when she met him. She fell for him because he was like super Alpha guy and he was charming and funny and he seemed nice too.
“(like saying “I want someone nice” when the truth is otherwise)”
It really isn’t.
Women do on the whole want nice guys, it’s just that we want a whole load of other stuff too. And if your main sales point is nice, it just isn’t enough.
It’s not just niceness, I want to be with a driven man who has more money that I have (hypergamous whore hah). But if I don’t get together with someone who is driven, it’s because of other factors not because I was lying about what I wanted.
I’d imagine that many guys say they want a nice woman too, but the truth is there are many nice women who don’t get their man because it isn’t enough as main driver. Some very nice girls get treated badly (and/or let themselves get treated badly) as a fallback girl in between the man chasing the women who don’t responding to his advances. But that’s a whole different topic 🙂
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Lily,
You’re still missing the main point.
Forget about all the other things besides niceness that a woman may or may not find attractive in a man. I (and Esau, and Thor) are dealing with a single, very FOCUSED point.
ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, many women (and most young women) are more likely to find niceness LESS attractive than its opposite. In other words, a genuinely nice man will IMPROVE his prospects by being less nice, EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT HIM IS THE SAME.
Either explain that, or disprove it.
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Lily,
Further clarification: we are talking about ATTRACTION here. Don’t try to argue that women really do prefer their man to be nice rather than not-nice. Of course they will once they have already been attracted to him.
Esau and Thor and I are addressing the issue of how a genuinely nice man is to attract women in the first place, and the hard lesson is that being less nice will improve his chances of being found attractive even if nothing else about him changes. That’s what you should explain.
This is still not the same as saying that there is something wrong with the women who respond like this. But I maintain very strongly that, even if it is not a failure or a character flaw to have this kind of attraction pattern, it IS a failure, revealing a deficit of character or intelligence, for a woman to have so little self-awareness that she gives men counterproductive advice in this matter.
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@polymath
You’re right, I reacted to Esau’s tone which made me less inclined to discuss it properly. It’s similar to situations where women say ‘all men are like this’ I don’t get engaged with people who have that attitude. I did, however, talk about the niceness thing a bit more after seeing Thor’s post.
I think women expect niceness as a given. We’re brought up to think that on the whole people are nice. We expect people to be nice to us. When we are little, if a boy is mean to us in the playground and makes us cry, our parents, teachers etc tell them off and tell them to be nice to us. As you get older, you realise it isn’t an inherent character trait, so you actually have to mention it more.
Actually, to use a playground analogy, say you have:
1. boy who’s fun to play with but pushes you over occasionally
2. boy who would never dream of pushing you over but is no fun to play with
3. tough boy who’ll push you over for the sake of it but only plays with you on his terms (let’s say playground bully)
Obviously, most girls would rather have the combination of 1 and 2 but if those are your only options, I’d say most girls would go for 1. You’d rather not get pushed over, but you put up with it because it’s the best overall option. Plus you’re conditioned that if he pushes you over too hard and you get upset it gets dealt with (as above). Sadly, when you’re an adult, the only person who can tell them off is you. And if you’re not careful how you do that, they’re going to go off and play with another girl.
The “you say you don’t like him pushing you over but you always play with him, not me, therefore you must like being pushed over’ whine does not work because the pushing over is not the real crux of the issue.
You might like a bit of 3 as well (ability to protect you from other tough boys) but to get the right mixture is practically impossible. That would be true Alpha 🙂
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1. boy who’s fun to play with but pushes you over occasionally
2. boy who would never dream of pushing you over but is no fun to play with
3. tough boy who’ll push you over for the sake of it but only plays with you on his terms (let’s say playground bully)
I think the key thing is the reason for the pushing over too. Is the pushing to get our attention, because he likes us, but is too cool to show it (this is good) or is it because he really doesn’t like us (this makes me feel bad, anyway). For me, it’s the difference between playfulness and malice.
I appreciate that not everyone is the same, some people Btw a lot of women misread things, engage in wish fulfillment and mistake malice for playfulness because they want to.
A lot’s been said about the rationalization hamster (women, attracted to bad guys because they are bad, will rationalize they are nice to soothe their consciences) and I agree that this is often the case.
However I don’t think it’s invariably the case, wish-fulfillment is an alternative explanation (women find it so difficult to get a good guy who isn’t beta, that they will often get their hopes up an mistakenly characterise a bad guy as good, they will try to put the best possible light on his behaviour so that they can pretend he is the guy they are actually looking for.
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Lily,
You *still* missed the point.
To use your playground analogy, if Norm Nice never pushes Gina Girly over and Bill Badboy occasionally does, AND THEY ARE OTHERWISE EQUALLY FUN TO PLAY WITH, you have to explain why Gina probably likes Bill better than Norm, and what’s wrong with advising Norm to “play as you usually do except push her over occasionally”.
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Apologies for the lack of proofreading in the above comment.
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Norm Nice never pushes Gina Girly over and Bill Badboy occasionally does, AND THEY ARE OTHERWISE EQUALLY FUN TO PLAY WITH, you have to explain why Gina probably likes Bill better than Norm, and what’s wrong with advising Norm to “play as you usually do except push her over occasionally”
The point is that Norm Nice does not understand the rules of courtship, mild sparring is part of this, kids (and animals) tend to spar physically, adult humans (in polite society) verbally. It is a dance within particular boundaries.
For an example of how this works in the animal kingdom:-
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,652097,00.html
Please, MRAs, resist the temptation to use the Spiegel story as an excuse for a lecture on female violence.
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And the whole reason the neg works is that it is the verbal equivalent of pushing a girl over in the playground to get attention.
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@polymath
“ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, many women (and most young women) are more likely to find niceness LESS attractive than its opposite. In other words, a genuinely nice man will IMPROVE his prospects by being less nice, EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT HIM IS THE SAME.”
I am afraid that I just cannot agree with you. It may well be that you are right and your experiences but perhaps some men just think this because they do not want to confront the alternative and it is easier to ‘blame’ women.
Yes in an ideal world NormNice plays as well as Billy but it’s actually quite rare. But you are right that at the ATTRACTION phase, it is better to focus on other attributes not niceness. Women want/expect nice as a given. That’s why there is a bit of an excitement in the bad boy. But to most women just bad enough, e.g. Jonny Ive who has bad boy vibe going on (but you expect him to be nice, i’d be really disappointed if he wasn’t), not someone in Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels ;-)
Oh, it’s not always true that niceness is a turn off at attraction. This is a very personal example but when I met the Player one of the things that attracted me to him was that he was really nice and down-to-earth. But perhaps this is more to do with Roissy’s contrast thing than the niceness as a player persona obviously made me think he would be less nice a person than someone who wasn’t.
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@sdaedalus
“I think the key thing is the reason for the pushing over too. Is the pushing to get our attention, because he likes us, but is too cool to show it (this is good) or is it because he really doesn’t like us (this makes me feel bad, anyway)”
It’s not because he really doesn’t like us because he is the boy we’re playing with (as opposed to boy number 3 who comes over and pushes us over). He just gets carried away sometimes.
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@Lily
No, I don’t think my categorisation is quite the same as yours.
I think it’s too simplistic to say that the one who plays with us most of the time & pushes us over occasionally is better than the one who never plays with us except to push us over.
We all know the guys who are fine most of the time but have a nasty streak, they might play with us most of the time but push us over when they get jealous or threatened by us, they can be more damaging than the ones who are horrible all the time because we blame ourselves for their behavior.
We also know the ones who pretend to ignore us & never play with us but secretly like us & push us over because it is a way of interacting with us while still maintaining plausible deniability, admittedly they are difficult to distinguish from the ones who don’t like us at all, and are just horrible.
(yes, I know. I am a sap)
I still maintain that the key distinction is not whether they play with us when they are not pushing us over but the reason for the pushing over.
Of course working out a man’s reason for doing anything is like searching for a needle in a haystack, virtually impossible, indeed it is a miracle if the man himself knows it, but I still maintain the existence of the above category as a theoretical possibility.
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@namae nanka
” love is about submission, sex isn’t.”
That’s not the impression I get some of the guys on here think. For the woman I mean.
“At the same time the girl wants him to give signals of sexual interest; when he doesn’t initially does so, he is LJBFed. So when she does have sex with a friend of his who used to be the headmaster at T&A discussions, he is outraged. He tries to reason with her that he is a bad guy, to which she then thinks that he is being a creep and jealous that she didn’t have sex with him.”
I know where you’re coming from but the key to this is actually very simple. If you are interested in a woman in a romantic or sexual way, do not when you meet her go into the friend pile. You have to establish attraction and you have to do it early (I don’t mean have sex with her, just make sure you get in the right pile in her head).
And particularly do not become friends with her as a way of having a romantic or sexual relationship with her (unless you are both the types who may go for a FB scenario). Unless you are prepared for it to go either way and be happy with it in either scenario. Otherwise, there is going to be a risk that when you do declare a romantic interest, she is going to think that you only became friends with her with an ulterior motive.
And please don’t think this is just something that befalls men. It befalls women too. With less complications admittedly, but it does.
“But at the same time boys, who mature later than girls do, are not lead astray by media but it’s because they are testosterone laden beasts and they generate these thoughts themselves?”
Certainly many people I know were concerned about the ‘lads mags’ and nowadays by the amount of porn young boys are watching.
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Hey sdaedalus.
Yes I know my example was simplistic but polymath wanted to discuss something very specific so I made it about that, it was really about 1 and 2. I added 3 in an afterthought.
Yeah definitely there is 3 and there are subsections, but I’d stay well away from them. I had enough going on as a kid without having to work out their motivations if they didn’t want to play with me I wasn’t interested.
“We all know the guys who are fine most of the time but have a nasty streak, they might play with us most of the time but push us over when they get jealous or threatened by us, they can be more damaging than the ones who are horrible all the time because we blame ourselves for their behavior”
You have a very good point there 😉
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“That’s not the impression I get some of the guys on here think. For the woman I mean.”
Yes, that’s why women find it easier to reconcile the two.
http://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1246
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Hoo boy, Lily, you are going to get flamed for this:
I know where you’re coming from but the key to this is actually very simple. If you are interested in a woman in a romantic or sexual way, do not when you meet her go into the friend pile. You have to establish attraction and you have to do it early (I don’t mean have sex with her, just make sure you get in the right pile in her head).
This is NOT “very simple”. Men DON’T CHOOSE WHICH FRIGGING “PILE” THEY “GO INTO”, THEY ARE *PUT* INTO A PILE BY A WOMAN WHO DOESN’T HERSELF UNDERSTAND WHY SHE DOES IT.
Men are told all the time “be nice, don’t be a jerk” and now you at last reveal the truth. I was absolutely right that the correct advice to a “nice guy” is BE LESS NICE. Time after time after time you change the question I ask and talk about how other variables might be different, and don’t confront the controlled situation of two men who are equal in all respects except one is nice and the other isn’t, or one man who can choose to be more or less nice while otherwise remaining the same. But you have now made it clear that the answer to the original question is that NICENESS IS ITSELF THE PROBLEM.
SD explained it clearly — there is a game going on in women’s heads, and the boy who knows the “rules of courtship” and engages in “sparring” is going to spark attraction. Her point that the “neg” is the equivalent of pushing a girl down in the playground is right on.
Also, the very idea of a “friend pile” is insulting and infuriating. What drives men crazy is that most women HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE THAT A MAN IN THEIR “FRIEND PILE” IS SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO THEM, OR ELSE THINK THAT HE CAN JUST “TURN IT OFF” AND BE “JUST FRIENDS” WITH THEM WITHOUT FRUSTRATION.
What is especially annoying about your response is that you just accept that, for establishing attraction, men “have to do it early” — that women PERMANENTLY classify men as “just friends” and don’t reconsider.
Now it’s true that a man can improve his future chances with women (though not, alas, with women who have already “friended him”) by recognizing the “rules of courtship”, and the fact that women are like this is a part of female nature that we shouldn’t expect to change, but PLEASE STOP TELLING MEN THAT BEING NICE IS GOING TO DO THEM ANY GOOD.
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And another thing about the “friend pile” — why is it so damn hard for women who actually LIKE a guy as a friend, where the guy is not objectively unattractive, to at least give the guy a chance when he asks her out? Why does the “spark” have to be there at the beginning or else it is assumed it will never be there?
The answer is that women have stupidly accepted the cultural shift that took place over the last few decades, which caused all courtship-related phenomena to be viewed solely through a sexual lens. 50 years ago, everyone understood that ATTRACTION COULD DEVELOP if two people got to know each other IN A CONTEXT WHERE THEY WERE OPEN TO THE POSSIBILITY OF ATTRACTION DEVELOPING. This is why girls and guys got “fixed up” by friends and relatives and WENT ALONG WITH IT.
Nowadays, women imagine that, no matter how inexperienced they are, they are the only one who can judge whether a guy would be a good match for them, which wouldn’t be so bad except that they make this judgement based on immediate emotional reactions, precisely because they are inexperienced, and have no awareness (because their friends act the same way as they do) that sexual attraction can develop even when it is not there initially, ***as long as you are open to the possibility of it developing***.
Another big reason guys can’t get out of the friend zone now is that dating has been replaced by hooking up — my recommendation to “give the guy a chance” only makes sense in a context where going out with someone is not synonymous with sleeping with them.
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My brain is fried but as you mentioned me kindly one final comment before I log out.
I actually think Lily is right & what she says fits in with my earlier comment that you seem to agree with.
Guys (and girls too) do put themselves in the friend pile, they approach as friends rather than playing the courtship game because they feel that they might be out of their league for a head-on approach & decide that a sideways approach is best.
It doesn’t usually work, because people are resistant to change in other people, we tend to pigeon-hole, if you start by putting yourself in the friend pile you will stay there (I suppose it is possible that, if you are a girl, you may rise to friends with benefits but you will be stuck there). The only thing to do in this situation is to break contact for a while so that the pre-determined image of you is gone.
It’s very simple, we are programmed to respond in a particular way to particular things, being nice is what you do to acquire friends. That is not to go to the other extreme and say you have to be nasty to acquire lovers but you do have to play the game the way that it has always been played and the neg is a very important part of that in men. It does not mean that being a nice person is not important either but it is not enough.
Women have equivalent ways of showing interest which may or may not include someting akin to the neg (some men unfortunately are so out of touch they never pick up on this). I actually think women are much more in touch with their instincts than men in this regard.
Have a nice evening everyone.
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I actually think women are much more in touch with their instincts than men in this regard
And by the way before you start using the following to contradict this, most women over the age of about 16 do have a fair idea that a guy is interested if he is spending a lot of time round us. But we are hardly going to call him out on it because of the small but possible chance we might be wrong and look a fool.
The more ethical among us may gently point him in another direction or subtly make clear that he is wasting his time but the fact of the matter is that having a lot of admirers is good for business & also for raising status with other women plus it is often reassuring to have a hypothetical fall-back position.
Although I don’t intentionally do this myself (having had my heart broken so often I would hate to break someone else’s heart) I can understand why some women find it hard to send these guys on their way.
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SD,
Point taken; but men are always willing to reconsider whether a woman they are friends with might be suitable for a romantic relationship, while women are usually not (and, very important, unlike the rules of initial attraction, this is not an immutable part of female nature; women’s attitudes on this used to be different, because they had a concept of courtship that did not involve sleeping with someone almost immediately).
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“Hypothetical fall-back position”? That’s the issue, isn’t it? How hypothetical is it? I can imagine a GBFM rant about this….if the hypothetical situation is only realized years later when you have lost value and have to settle, that’s pretty evil. It had better be a fall-back position that is capable of being realized right away (that is, once you are on the market again, the friended guy should become a possibility for at least a try-out).
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@ Lily,
About my earlier generalisaton: Women want men to change and are disappointed when they don’t. Men don’t want women to change and are disappointed when they do.
“Though I sometimes wonder whether men saw women the way they really were in the first place.”
Are you suggesting women hide their true nature? What is a woman’s true nature anyway?
“Or you could see it as women are more forgiving and see past certain things whilst the man keeps ‘nexting’ till he finds the perfect one (or one he has decided is perfect without really seeing her).”
I agree that women can be more forgiving if the man is desirable by them or other women.
OTOH, plenty of single women have 20-point checklists. How forgiving is that behavior?
One could see it as women wanting to change men, as has been discussed.
Do you really think men keep ‘nexting’ until we find the perfect one?
Perhaps men don’t want to settle down. What percentage of men seriously desire LTR or marriage? What percentage of women seriously desire LTR or marriage? Compare and get back to me.
I’m working on this new generalization. Draft copy, not final version.
Men settle down.
Women settle.
Two sides of the same coin.
Comments?
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@Polymath
Where have I said that oh you know what boys how you should get a woman attracted to you is by approaching her and using niceness as an ‘sales tactic’? I haven’t!
“Time after time after time you change the question I ask and talk about how other variables might be different, and don’t confront the controlled situation of two men who are equal in all respects except one is nice and the other isn’t, or one man who can choose to be more or less nice while otherwise remaining the same.”
It is very hard to comment on this controlled situation of yours because I think it is very rare. I have personally never come across this.
I can give an example of where niceness was an advantage as I did in my personal example above and also a super alpha guy I know where I always mention to people how nice he is, but I cannot think of any direct equivalent people to him. Maybe his brothers but again they are not equal in all other respects.
The reason I always mention how nice he is because he’s super nice (not just regular nice which I’d take as a given and I mean super nice in his character not that he does so-called nice things).
Maybe more with the player guy example I gave above as he’s got friends who are very similar to him and some are better looking, but he is nicer. (or actually maybe he is just normal and they are jerks). But he and I have also have more things in common so again it’s not a like for like comparison.
I can also name plenty of guys whom other men would say it’s because he’s not too nice, but actually it’s actually because of other reasons. But I just can’t do a two men who are equal in all other respects, sorry.
“Also, the very idea of a “friend pile” is insulting and infuriating. Men DON’T CHOOSE WHICH FRIGGING “PILE” THEY “GO INTO”, THEY ARE *PUT* INTO A PILE BY A WOMAN WHO DOESN’T HERSELF UNDERSTAND WHY SHE DOES IT.”
No, of course they don’t choose which pile they go into. They can influence it by their early behaviour but of course they can’t ultimately control it because it’s not their pile to control.
No, this isn’t ‘fair’ but it is the way it is. And it’s just like a woman can’t control whether a man is attracted to her or not. Arguably a woman has less control on this than a man, if we go by a common premise on this blog that for men looking at women, the main thing is looks (and I hope most people agree that for women looking at men they have a variety of factors) and he doesn’t find her physically attractive. Only maybe she doesn’t even get friended. Maybe he just doesn’t even bother speaking to her.
Or some PUA types whose approach is ‘bang’ every girl they can then once they’ve done that sort them into piles of potential LTR, fling, FB only, never see again etc. Does the girl get much choice in how he sees her?
Are these not the same things?
By the way, I don’t think it’s permanent, you can get out of the friends zone. Ok it helps if the woman was attracted to you in the first place (and again at least women have a wider criteria than just looks) but decided to put you into the friends zone for a specific reason but I think you can get out it otherwise.
Lily
P.S. Sorry if my words annoyed you, but I’m just trying to share my perspective (and it is IMHO) with the hope it may help people.
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Lily, you’re misrepresenting what I said in several ways. I don’t have time to respond now, but please reread what I said carefully.
But I’ll just say this now — the situation of a guy trying to decide whether to be more or less nice is not “very rare”, it’s practically universal, and you have said nothing to refute my claim that “be less nice” is good advice for a “nice guy” who wants to attract women.
And the situation of two guys who differ only in degree of niceness is known as a “thought experiment”. We logical types use them to clarify concepts. That it doesn’t occur precisely in real life doesn’t make it any less useful, and here it served is clarificatory purpose.
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@Polymath
In terms of the ‘thought experiment’. To me, if there were two guys who were exactly the same in all regards except one was nice and one was a jerk, personally I would choose the nice one. Some women may choose the jerky one. Not all women are the same. I would assume that the women who say they want a man who is nice would do the same as me. Now if there was some sort of controlled experiment which proved my assumption wrong, fair enough, I’d stand corrected.
Going back to how niceness came up in this conversation, I think if anything my angle was saying young men shouldn’t act nice as your main tactic to get a girl. And definitely don’t act nice if your capacity is a a friend as a tactic to get the girl. It doesn’t matter if you are actually nice or not, it’s not a good tactic. So we are in agreement there.
And I’d give this same advice to a girl.
“Are you suggesting women hide their true nature?”
No I’m not saying that. Maybe some do, maybe they don’t, obviously, I can’t speak for all women.
But I see time and time again men saying for example they want a girl who is like a best friend and a lover yet they pass over this girl in favour of a different type of girl, typically one who is hard for them to get (which gives them plenty of time to project things onto her).
Or they may even go out with a great girl in their twenties who fits this profile, but they are not read to commit, maybe because they want to be established financially first or maybe they want to sow their wild oats. So they split up with this girl, go out with a variety of women. Then they get to a stage in their life where they want to settle down and it’s practically the next girl who comes along and again they project a load of stuff on her.
I’ve been on the other end of this (been that girl) and it’s not actually a great place to be.
“OTOH, plenty of single women have 20-point checklists. How forgiving is that behavior?”
It’s not. IMHO, these women have no right to complain about not finding a man. There are plenty of amazing guys around.
“Do you really think men keep ‘nexting’ until we find the perfect one?”
Some men do and as I said I think some men project that the girl is the perfect one and she isn’t actually and they’ve bypassed ones that were a better fit.
“Perhaps men don’t want to settle down. What percentage of men seriously desire LTR or marriage? What percentage of women seriously desire LTR or marriage? ”
This is a good point and one I raised in the posts about some people on here thinking women past the age of thirty having no options and the thinking that a 33 year old woman automatically had less options than her 23 year old self. As I said in those posts, options for what. If the woman’s aim is marriage, she’s not going to find many 23 year olds or many under 30 year old men who want to marry her (or anyone).
“Men settle down. Women settle.”
Some truth in this. Though settling is a relative term. If it means settling for someone who isn’t the same as your ‘dream man’, it’s not really settling because that dream man was a figment of your imagination and the real life version (if it indeed exists) may not have been that great anyway. And you may find something in real life which was better than any dream you ever had.
“But men are always willing to reconsider whether a woman they are friends with might be suitable for a romantic relationship”
I disagree with this.
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Lily,
To me, if there were two guys who were exactly the same in all regards except one was nice and one was a jerk, personally I would choose the nice one. Some women may choose the jerky one.
If attraction to both was already a given, of course that is true, but irrelevant to my point. The question is whether the nice one would have an advantage in triggering your initial attraction. You only “choose” between men you already find attractive. Canyou honestly say that you would have noticed and been attracted to the nice guy as much as you would have to the jerk?
Maybe if they were both very good-looking; but if they were just okay-looking, I am guessing that the jerk will succeed more simply because he gets noticed more.
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@polymath
Maybe if they were both very good-looking; but if they were just okay-looking, I am guessing that the jerk will succeed more simply because he gets noticed more.
I find calm, assertive authority and casual disinterest works better than actual jerky behaviour; the impression of being interesting, cultured, and attractive but disinterested in the target seems to work better for me.
I can’t really carry hard-core jerk behaviour. The difference is between being a relative of James Bond or a criminal.
The criminal will get some attention, … but the calm self-assurance and centred gravity will will more often. Perhaps not with the same girls.
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“The question is whether the nice one would have an advantage in triggering your initial attraction. You only “choose” between men you already find attractive. Canyou honestly say that you would have noticed and been attracted to the nice guy as much as you would have to the jerk? Maybe if they were both very good-looking; but if they were just okay-looking, I am guessing that the jerk will succeed more simply because he gets noticed more.”
In my case, I can more or less honestly as I have been in that situation once when I met ‘the Player’ (yes I do feel bad describing him as that, it seems like Sex and the City or something, sorry).
Bunch of guys, similar ‘social status’. I’m only talking to them because they are friends of people I’m friends with. Some of this bunch are better looking than him on first impressions, but I end up talking to him most because within a few minutes, he establishes himself as a nice guy and we talk about topic which I won’t mention here as I don’t want too much identifying information which I can’t imagine having had that conversation with other any of the others. It’s safe to say that the rest of them were/are more or less jerks.
But say he walks into a room full of average guys and he’s nice and say I talk to him, probably his advantage there is that he’s got broad horizons, not because he’s nice.
The very sad thing is that lots of guys who are nice (including him) act like jerks because they think it’s what gets the girl. But it isn’t that, it’s everything else, if you have that and niceness is part of your character, you will literally clean up.
Sure you may not attract a certain type of girl who wants to get treated badly but regardless of how I read that bipolar girls are amazing in bed, if what you want to do is attract great ‘regular’ girls, you’ll ‘clean up’. Though you may leave a trail of broken hearts!
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@ Gorbachev
I like it! I’d argue that interest would work better ‘James Bond’s chosen me!’ (though obviously the girl’s obviously have to filter you into James Bond category) and every girls likes to feel special. Best thing IMHO is being interested, but that you have your own life too, so whilst you’d love me in it, you’ll get on with your life regardless and find another me.
But James Bond over Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels type gangster any day of the week.
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This exclusive and persisting sexuality of the female has important physical and psychical consequences. As the sexuality of the male is an adjunct to his life, it is possible for him to keep it in the physiological background, and out of his consciousness. And so a man can lay aside his sexuality and not have to reckon with it. A woman has not her sexuality limited to periods of time, nor to localised organs. And so it happens that a man can know about his sexuality, whilst a woman is unconscious of it and can in all good faith deny it, because she is nothing but sexuality, because she is sexuality itself.
It is impossible for women, because they are only sexual to recognise their sexuality, because recognition of anything requires duality. With man it is not only that he is not merely sexual, but anatomically and physiologically he can “detach” himself from it. That is why he has the power to enter into whatever sexual relations he desires; if he likes he can limit or increase such relations; he can refuse or assent to them. He can play the part of a Don Juan or a monk. He can assume which he will. To put it bluntly, man possesses sexual organs; her sexual organs possess woman.
Otto Weininger Sex and Character
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@naeme nanka
“This exclusive and persisting sexuality of the female has important physical and psychical consequences. As the sexuality of the male is an adjunct to his life, it is possible for him to keep it in the physiological background, and out of his consciousness. And so a man can lay aside his sexuality and not have to reckon with it. A woman has not her sexuality limited to periods of time, nor to localised organs. And so it happens that a man can know about his sexuality, whilst a woman is unconscious of it and can in all good faith deny it, because she is nothing but sexuality, because she is sexuality itself.”
This is rubbish. Maybe it can be salvaged by some clever elaboration. But empirically, the reverse is true. An all-women group in isolation (I am talking about days, weeks, NOT hours) can
function smoothly and the women DO NOT generally
obsess about sex while isolated from men.
(Once no longer isolated, this can of course
change, drastically).
The reverse is generally not true; isolated groups
of men (much more common, think old-style
ships, armies etc) obsess about sex and phantsize
about women etc etc.
What I believe to be true, however, and is NOT
about focusing on sex, is that men in general
have an easier time separating person and
issue. A man can say “I think xxx [man or woman]
is a shit, but this does not change the fact that he/she
is a great singer/artist/inventor/whatever”. Women
seem to have a MUCH harder time making
such distinctions.
Thor
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“This is rubbish. Maybe it can be salvaged by some clever elaboration. ”
His book is free on the net, you can read through the chapter from where I took it.
“”An all-women group in isolation (I am talking about days, weeks, NOT hours) can
function smoothly and the women DO NOT generally
obsess about sex while isolated from men.
(Once no longer isolated, this can of course
change, drastically”
He isn’t speaking about that, he is saying that a woman is unconscious of her own sexuality since there is nothing else in her mind.
Thus she doesn’t realize herself what turns her on or why she can feel sexual towards a man and not towards other.
As polymath said,
“This is NOT “very simple”. Men DON’T CHOOSE WHICH FRIGGING “PILE” THEY “GO INTO”, THEY ARE *PUT* INTO A PILE BY A WOMAN WHO DOESN’T HERSELF UNDERSTAND WHY SHE DOES IT.”
“The reverse is generally not true; isolated groups
of men (much more common, think old-style
ships, armies etc) obsess about sex and phantsize
about women etc etc. ”
Yes.
I have said the same above, the whole discussion started over a boy who was taking advice on yahoo questions since he thought that every one of his friend could only talk of sex and T&A.
On the topic of ships, (I can’t find the quote now)but it was for sailors and it said the same thing, however the important thing that it said next was that when alone they would only talk of their lovers or wives.
Men need trust to talk of such things and would rather like to figure out things on their own; however the current information that they get is BS.
Especially the canard that men want sex, women want love and that women know about love. If they ask advice from women they get the same stupid shit that LJBFs them.
“Women
seem to have a MUCH harder time making
such distinctions. ”
Unless it’s about alpha and beta.
Although they are going for the man rather than the activity but they will rationalize it.
So what Clinton fucked around? He’s still a good president(and my gina tingles for him and I don’t know why).
So even if a man’s singing/art/ etc is shit he’ll still get accolades from women if he is alpha enough.
Women are more bound to follow social rules so they would say what is correct in the social context however it will finally boil down to whether they are attracted to the man sexually or not.
The asshole that women hate so much on the surface will then end up with them in bed, no matter how much they rant about him in company of others.
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[…] – “The True Creative Class“, “Game is 50% Not Putting Foot in […]
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Poly, see the Rum theory, which postulates that women can not hold their conflicting sexual strategies in mind at the same time, and thus will blank out and avoid any confontration with their true sexual nature. They not only don’t like, but are not capable of self knowledge.
Rather than consider it a failure of a woman to be average, consider it an extremely rare exception when they are anything but.
Have you know any non-average women who are also hot and a great lay?
I haven’t. Not even and ESPECIALLY not even the ones who considered themselves self aware.
The Rum theory extrapolated onto the sisterhood as a whole gives the group sexual strategy of denying the appeal of bad boys when training good boys. Women love their beta slaves. They love their diamond rings. They love their little lap dogs.
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To put it another way, Polymath, don’t ever make the mistake of assuming that any woman is on your team.
Unless she is your charge, they are not. And the instant she is no longer your charge, she is not.
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Or to put it another way, women create betas. It is not in their interest to diminish the number of the beta class.
Women love, love, love betas.
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One thing I’ve learned, one thing I’ve painfully learned after smashing my head over and over again against a brick wall, is that it’s futile to try to make the willfully ignorant enlightened.
Obsidian was a stupid idiot who wasted his energy trying to “help” David Alexander.
Educating a woman is the same. Either she gets it quickly, or she never will. Either way, your time is more valuable than their education.
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@xsplat
Educating a woman is the same. Either she gets it quickly, or she never will. Either way, your time is more valuable than their education.
Women have an incentive not to figure it out. The cognitive dissonance allows them to live with themselves. Feminism survives on this, and non-feminists need it to reconcile their nature with their social self-images.
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Oh, by the way, asadness experiment is DA.
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@xsplat
Oh, by the way, asadness experiment is DA.
That would explain why he’s such a self-hating misanthropist with delusions that this makes him somehow philosophically profound. When in fact he’s just a reclusive loner, rejecting society, with no reason to engage anything or attempt to improve his lot. Sniping from the sidelines, so to speak.
He does do a small bit of good sniping, though.
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xsplat,
Lots of the regular female posters here “get it”, and some women who are happily married and “out of the game” get it. I’m not talking about any really complicated or deep level of self-awareness here. I’m talking about the basic lesson that being “nice” is counterproductive when trying to get a woman to be attracted to you — the little girl on the playground likes the badboy who pushes her over once in a while better than she likes the niceguy who never would. I maintain that at least THIS level of awareness ougt to be achievable by most women.
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Thor said:
An example of this would be nice. Oh, and no “male sheriff” or “male mayors” involved either.
I mean it’s nice to say, but off the top of my head, I’m kinda curious when this actually happens.
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ahappinessexperiment is NOT DA, despite certain points of similarity. I am regularly amused at how little some people are able to recognize distinctness and inimitability of writing style. Similarly, greatbooksformen is not Roissy.
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sdaedalus said:
Actually, instantaneous rejection is unpleasant. So they go for rejection by parts.
Women don’t experience this, they experience “pump and dump”.
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Maybe.
The girl in my room now certainly gets it that she prefers bad boys. But when I try to explain it to her that she has a slim chance of attracting and keeping a relationship with a man who makes her sexually aroused, suddenly she stops getting it.
She gets it that bad boys are bad. She gets it that nice boys disgust her and make her only able to pretend interest. No matter how she’d love to actually have sexual interest.
But putting the two together? Nope. Not going to happen. She won’t realize that if she gets one side of the equation, she won’t get the other. She won’t realize the tradeoffs involved, and be able to be realistic in adjusting and therefore attaining her goals.
But yes, some women get it. Some more than others. I think the insight in my comment is that women are not good at getting it, and when there is a conflict between truth and a false belief that furthers their aims, they will choose the false belief.
Also, a lot of fembots who preach to beta’s to remain nice do at a very deep level follow their sisterhoods innate programming. Women truly love, love, love betas. Raises the price of their pussy. Keeps demand high, and supply low, for the vast hoard of moneyed men who lack a natural penis lubricant dispenser.
And women who have yet to be dominated and overcome with sexual emotion by a dominant male whom they love and admire will be even less likely to have self knowledge.
Women who’ve been properly fucked are less likely to preach nice guy shit.
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Yes, obviously GBFM is not Roissy. I’m gobsmacked that the notion was mentioned more than once. Utterly stupid. Anyone who ever intimated the idea should take 20 minutes in the corner in a dunce cap.
DA however was not a person. He was a persona. He may have opted for a less contrived persona to post as anunhappiness experiment. Regardless, they are the same person, even if in different bodies. The same vapors of stinky attitude emanate from both. Even a dog couldn’t smell them apart.
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Should read
and when there is a conflict between truth and a false belief that they will internalize and thus go against their aims, they will choose to either mouth agreement and act in disagreement, or deny the truth.
Nuther words, women are amoral. One way or the other. The more moral they are, the less they can face the truth. Cause they are fucking selfish.
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@xsplat,
And women who have yet to be dominated and overcome with sexual emotion by a dominant male whom they love and admire will be even less likely to have self knowledge.
Women who’ve been properly fucked are less likely to preach nice guy shit.
This is absolutely true. When women have been dominated and felt their bodies rock and roll, and felt this type of love, betas are done for.
It explains why some women follow the alpha cock carousel into their 40’s, and then get bitter when it runs out; but still won’t settle for a “nice guy”.
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why do you guys keep saying the exact same things over and over and over?
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GBFM has less repetition in his comments than you guys
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@xsplat
“don’t ever make the mistake of assuming that any woman is on your team.Unless she is your charge, they are not. And the instant she is no longer your charge, she is not.”
I’m curious on this statement as a reference to the nature of women (assuming this is an example on how women think differently from men). Do you consider yourself on the same team as your exes?
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consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
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CW, or worse, the pump for months or years, then dump, or disappearance.
Pump and dump is seldom an issue for decent girls. Heartbreak is.
I’m not going to go all grass is greener, but I’d kinda rather a guy dog me out sooner than later, if he’s going to.
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Have you not noticed this difference between the sexes? If you are not yet educated, and would like some education, talk to men on this board about sex differences upon breakup.
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@xsplat
I haven’t noticed this difference between the sexes in the area I understood from your comment which is why I asked you. So don’t ask me to talk to the board when I have already asked you 🙂
I don’t consider myself to be on the same team as my exes once we break up. Yes, I’m there for them if they ever need me but we’re not on the same team once the relationship is over.
Obviously there are cases where there are breakups where the woman takes it badly (and hell really has no fury like a woman scorned) but I’m just talking as a general principle.
So again, do you see yourself as on the same team as a woman if you have broken up with her?
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@CommentWhatever
For what it’s worth, I agree with Nicole. What happens is that the guy who gets together with a woman who has put herself into his friend zone regards her as a friend with benefits & will dump her when something better comes along.
She may get a shag, but will end up heartbroken. In a lot of cases, this may be the best she would ever get, but I think there are cases where she might actually have done better by being up-front, sometimes people only value you by the value you place on yourself, and yes, this is true of men too although I agree not to the same extent as women.
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@ CW and Nicole
Agreed with Nicole, I wonder how some women who have been in LTRS with a player type without realising he was one feel like when it’s over (and they may not find that out if he just disappears).
But I do think that women get LJBFd too.
In popular media, the immediate example that comes to mind is Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Willow pines for Xander for years and whilst she’s his best friend and not unattractive he LJBFs her as she’s right in front of him whilst he himself pines for the unattainable Buffy
(no doubt he think he doesn’t get Buffy because he’s to once but it’s because he’s not high status enough for her).
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@sdaedalus
Or just the benefits with just enough romance to keep her on the string..not much friendship in it..
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ahappinessexperiment,
I think we need a 4th post from you complaining about the repetitive nature of other posters.
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“@sdaedalus
Or just the benefits with just enough romance to keep her on the string..not much friendship in it..”
i agree. guys don’t have a friendzone, only girls.
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“I’m not going to go all grass is greener, but I’d kinda rather a guy dog me out sooner than later, if he’s going to.”
it is this thinking that causes girls to intentionally become sluts
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Lilith, fill in the blank.
Hell hath no fury like a _____ scorned.
Yes, my heart and actions always remain loving to those whome I love, and I usually love. Just call me Mr. Love.
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“Yes, my heart and actions always remain loving to those whome I love, and I usually love. Just call me Mr. Love.”
@Mr. Love
dude
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Guys don’t have a friendzone, but they are also capable of being friends after a breakup more than girls are. And if they have a “friend with benefits”, they won’t dump her when a hotter girl comes along unless their relationship with the hotter girl becomes exclusive and potentially long-term. And then they can still be friends with the girl and regard their sexual relationship as something that might or might not be rekindled later.
The only problem is if the girl thinks the FWB relationship is actually an exclusive romantic partnership. But that sort of self-delusion is less likely when she was actually friends with the guy first, since she probably knows his personality pretty well and has probably found it easy to talk their relationship out with him due to their pre-existing familiarity and friendship.
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“ahappinessexperiment,
I think we need a 4th post from you complaining about the repetitive nature of other posters.”
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
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@sdaedalus
Or just the benefits with just enough romance to keep her on the string..not much friendship in it..
Possibly, the net effect is the same, the guy feels no loyalty & the girl ends up being dumped, often for someone the guy then goes and marries (this can make it particularly hurtful).
A lot of married guys also have a long-term girl on the side on these fwb terms.
In some cases, even where the guy is single, the relationship is not even made public (I have no idea why any sane woman would go along with this, but I have known women who do so even against their friends’ pleas).
I had always taken the view that these women were just masochists, but on reading about the male beta thing, maybe they are just making the same mistake due to lack of confidence.
Some guys do have a friendzone btw if the woman falls below their threshold of attractiveness or if they have a more attractive girlfriend, they will let the women do things for them & lean on her emotionally but will not actually have sex with her.
I’m really not sure which is worse.
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Also, some guys may actually refrain from having sex with a woman who is a friend but whom they do not regard as attractive enough for an LTR because they feel it would be using her (this usually occurs with sexually conservative men, your equivalent would be Christians) but have no qualms about leaning on her emotionally, getting her to do things for them etc.
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@xsplat
Well I already alluded to that reference so I don’t need to fill in your blank 🙂
Sure, if someone’s felt hurt and scorned they may react negatively and cease to have loving feelings for someone.
How do you think men who have been hurt by women react to them? Obviously, you’re an exception as Mr Love but wouldn’t the usual PUA type advice be along the lines of Kick the Bitch’s Ass to the Kerb? Rather than yeah they’ve hurt you but you’ve been in a relationship so you should keep loving feelings towards them?
Sure I have loving feelings to exes (in as much as they can be loving, my heart belongs to the one I’m with now) and will be there for them.
So I’m the same as you in that regard to you. Though I wonder if you would tolerate that in your partner and her exes (damned if you do, you’re my bitch goddamit no loving feelings to exes, damned if you don’t oh women don’t have the same sense of loyalty to men).
But no if someone really messed me around or hurt me, I cut them out of my life, lover or friend.
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@Xsplat
I usually love. Just call me Mr. Love.
I had a friend/roomate in college who was a true natural PUA. Unlike the stereotype of the jaded player just looking to score, this guy really loved women. In fact, he fell head over heels in love as often as 2-3 times a week. He’d come home and tell us “this is the one”, and we’d laugh at him but he was dead serious. I’d bet he could pass a polygraph.
Just before graduation he came home and told us he was getting married. We probably shouldn’t have laughed at him in front of his fiancée, but we couldn’t help ourselves after years of him falling in love several times a week, with the resulting harem. Likewise a little discretion probably would have been in order when we established the betting pool on how long before he started nailing other women. But she was surprisingly unfazed.
My (now) wife was the only woman I ever dated (or seen) who didn’t light up in his presence. This was part of what helped seal the deal on marrying her. I knew the only think preventing the others from cheating on me with him was his loyalty as a friend (he never acted on this ability with any girl dating one of his friends).
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“Also, some guys may actually refrain from having sex with a woman who is a friend but whom they do not regard as attractive enough for an LTR because they feel it would be using her (this usually occurs with sexually conservative men, your equivalent would be Christians) but have no qualms about leaning on her emotionally, getting her to do things for them etc.”
There are also some guys who are already getting sex from a lot of girls, but don’t have many girls they trust. They don’t consider the girl as what they are looking at for a LTR regardless of attractiveness (or they are not in a time of their life where they are looking for a LTR, with many men timing is more important than it is for women) but they don’t want to have sex with her because they know it will complicate things if she’s someone they care about.
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Lilith, now that I think about it, you are right. There are no general differences between men and women at all.
In fact, everyone is deep down exactly the same. Groups of people even more so.
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“The only problem is if the girl thinks the FWB relationship is actually an exclusive romantic partnership.”
problem for whom? what kind of guy wants a FWB girl who isn’t exclusive?
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Dalrock
Dalrock, do you remember that snippet from the Hitchhikers Guide series when Ford sits down to meditate in a forest, emanates love, and all the furry animals come up to snuggle? And then he reaches out and hugs the deers neck and breaks it?
Yes, love is a powerful force. You can genuinely have power over others with pheromones and an unfakeable warmth. You can’t fake a smile and you can’t fake loving eyes. You can pull mad wonders with eyes.
You have to be that state. You can melt people with a look.
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@xsplat
I didn’t comment before but I wasn’t sure if you were being sarcastic or genuine 🙂
I do think men and women are very similar deep down, we have more that joins us than divides us.
I was thinking more about male and female reactions to being hurt etc and I think in some ways maybe women give men more leeway, I was brought up to be gracious and it’s hard to reconcile that with not being walked over. I don’t think men realise that you are being gracious sometimes, they think it means you like bad behaviour or have low value on yourself because you accepted it.
Arguably, a man could say ‘be a gentleman’ education is similar, but I’m not convinced it’s on the same level.
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Lilith, you clearly don’t want to see women as being by and large much more vicious and cruel than men are, on breakup.
You clearly avoid clues with as much vigor as you would avoid a rabid rat.
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@xsplat
Some women are in some breakups. Some women really go nuts. Maybe because they had more invested emotionally, maybe not. But obviously, the saying we both quoted has roots somewhere.
And as far as I know, in terms of stats jilted men are more likely to murder their exes (and their lovers) than women are. I may well be wrong but that’s the impression I’ve got.
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Lilith, see what I wrote above.
Some women are. Some aren’t. Who are you kidding with this kind of talk? How old do you think I am? 10? You insult me with your wiggle waggling.
Women in general MORE SO THAN MEN are viscious and cruel on breakup.
Is that such a hard concept for you?
Jeez.
Some are, some aren’t. WTF?!!!! Stop being 10.
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Poly, you were right. The willfully ignorant are painfully annoying, like a cheese grater on the penis.
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@Lily, Xsplat
I agree that women have a particular tendency to demonise the other party following a breakup (even if initiated by them). I think this is because they are self-justifying.
Men tend to be more honest (obviously some men can go nuts too, but probably not aas many).
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@Polymath
I’ve been thinking about this nice thing.
I think we may be talking at cross purposes, i.e. the difference is being a nice person or acting nice (whether you’re actually a nice person or not).
For example, as I said when I met the Player he stood out for being a nice person (but again it may be more to do with Roissy’s contrast theory as I didn’t expect him to be) but it was more to do with topic of conversations (showed he cared about the world, his family etc) rather than ‘acting nice’, i.e whilst he was perfectly gentlemanly it was not like he was constantly complimenting me, fetching me drinks etc. That would not have appealed to me anymore than the opposite would have to him.
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@xsplat
No I’m not 10, lovely.
“Women in general MORE SO THAN MEN are viscious and cruel on breakup.”
Yes, yet again I say we already both alluded to the same literary reference.
I still stand by what I said that if you break up with a woman, you cannot expect her to be on ‘the same team’.
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You said more than that. You said men are the same in attitude and action as women in this matter.
I’m the one who said that if you break up with a woman, you cannot expect her to be on ‘the same team’.
Are you fat or something? Cause you sound fat.
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@ xsplat
“I’m the one who said that if you break up with a woman, you cannot expect her to be on ‘the same team’”
You said it in a way that implied that if you broke up with a woman she wouldn’t be on the same team whilst if a woman broke up with a man he would still be on the same team as her.
I’m still not sure if that is what you meant to say, because I asked you to clarify but you chose not to, instead asking me to get educated and talk to the men on the forum. Which was completely irrelevant as I had already asked you to clarify, after all you are the one who made this comment. I didn’t judge or assume you stated anything specifically, I asked you to clarify. You still haven’t.
“Are you fat or something? Cause you sound fat”
That’s relative, I’m an equivalent of an American size 2 to 4, not that it matters for the purposes of this conversation. You sound like a twat but I didn’t bring it up as I was interested in learning about your perspective.
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“You said it in a way that implied that if you broke up with a woman she wouldn’t be on the same team whilst if a woman broke up with a man he would still be on the same team as her.”
Yes, you read me correctly. That is what I was implying.
And here I was getting the impression that you are thick.
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When I asked you if you were fat, I was asking if you have some reason to be so against reality. Fat girls generally hate reality. You hate reality. Ergo, my question about your fatness.
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@xsplat
Get all the impression you like 🙂
Maybe we have different definitions of what the same team means?
I would not imagine that if I called up any exes and asked them if we were on the same team that they would think we were. We’ve moved on and have separate lives. And I’m on very good terms with my exes (yes there are a couple that I cut out my life, particularly one who neglected to mention he was married with 2 kids although I met his friends and his brother and none of them thought to mention it either but that’s a different topic), but I don’t see or expect any exes to be on the same team as me.
Re fat, I thought fat girls were supposed to have great personalities lol.
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Lily – stop evading.
Are men and women GENERALLY DIFFERENT in this area or not?
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Fat girls are supposed to give better head. From what I’ve heard. I’ve never seen a fat girl naked.
But better personalities? The ones who get laid do. Cause they work for it and want it bad enough to work for it. But most fat girls are socially inept, for lack of practice. And they hate reality, cause reality hates them.
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By the way, Lilith, has anyone ever told you that you are truly unlikeable?
If not, let me be the first.
Bloody psycho. Now I get Polymaths point, and apologize to him for explaining that women are just like that.
You are wayyyy too much like that.
Completely unlikeable.
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@xsplat
IMHO when a relationship is over (either at the point it’s said it’s over or when both parties both reconcile with themselves it is over), on the whole neither a man nor a woman thinks they are batting on the same team anymore.
Are women more likely to have antagonistic feelings towards their partners after a break up than men are? I have never read any pure statistics on this, but my inclination is yes. But that’s not the point you brought up.
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@xsplat
No, nobody has ever told me that I am truly unlikable, or that I am a bloody psycho. So you are indeed the first 🙂
That’s fine, but obviously if you feel like that about me, you won’t want to engage in conversation with me so I won’t anymore.
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@Thor
“What I believe to be true, however, and is NOT
about focusing on sex, is that men in general
have an easier time separating person and
issue. A man can say “I think xxx [man or woman]
is a shit, but this does not change the fact that he/she
is a great singer/artist/inventor/whatever”. Women
seem to have a MUCH harder time making
such distinctions.”
You are right about this. Women have more neural connections between the “emotional” side of the brain, and the more logical one. It is physiological difficult for them to seperate their illicited emotion from objective reality.
A great example is Obama. So many women I know voted for him just because he seemed like such a cool guy, charismatic, hot ect.
What a joke.
It was so obvious from before he was elected that he wouldn’t be the silver bullet everyone was hoping for.
Yet, somehow, looks and charisma were automatically associated with a high level of competence simply because women felt good listening to him.
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[…] As I’ve written before, all that female-oriented yapping, organizing, and paper shuffling means nothing if you don’t have the male-dominated engineers and scientists to produce the products that yappers huddle about to sell. Yes, the U.S. still has a wage gap, one that can be convincingly explained—at least in part—by discrimination. […]
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I assume you can read? (I ask, because you clearly have trouble writing). If you have read Florida’s work, you’ll be aware that he defines the creative class as precisely including engineers, designers of products and services etc.
Oh yes, rilly.
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I can not believe this.
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The guy is on to something, he just draws all the wrong conclusions from it. The creative class starts to sprout up once a society has become so wealthy and successful that it can afford to have useless people. Cro-magnon man bass player just ends up starving.
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as a counter-example the case can be made for the contributions of Alan Turing, considered by many to be the father of modern computing…he was gay…and probably to thank for breaking the Nazi crypto that allowed the allies to win WWII
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Stuff and nonsense. There is no evidence that creativity,
or indeed intelligence (not quite the same thing) is
correlated to sexual orientation or any such.
Another thing is that creative people might be
more inclined to “come out of the closet” as to
their personal habits. Hard to tell.
But most of the useful creativity (not counting
trivia like how to change the cut of a dress or
a suit etc) come from heterosexual men. The
reasons are the simple one that
a) Heterosexual men outnumber homosexual men about 99 to one. (Not counting those that have few choices, such
as prisoners for life).
b) As to men vs. women, there are at least two factors
working here, men in general being more free to do
creative things (traditionally, not now so much), and that
for almost any variable, men show a larger standard
deviation than women, thus more people out on the
thin flange of the Bell Curve (at both ends, but the
low end doesn’t make much of a mark on society).
Thor
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