• [email protected]@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think they’re trying to say that he doesn’t even feel like her backup, he’s her backup x times removed. Which kinda undercuts his point a bit, but does set the stage for a complete removal of attraction and the very particular manic ending they wrote for their story

      • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why are you being charitable to a greentext poster lmfao. It’s like when the skinhead starts saying dogwhistles and someone is like “well maybe he doesn’t know it’s a dog whistle”.

        Idk man, maybe you’ve not been exposed to enough 4chan.

        • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          sure, let’s just assume malice or ill intent whenever possible, and forget about any empathy or sympathy.

            • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              i’m just tired of internet toxicity tbh. Not as in “Oh no, they laugh about Kirk’s assasination”, mind you, that shit is actually hillarious, neither i care about anyone’s political oriantation as long as they’re a decent human being. I’m talking about this unprompted toxic bullshit like “oh, they’re using this site, they must be a jerk!”. That’s literally the same rhetoric that politicians use to create “us vs them” narrative, except they do it on another basis like nationality or whatever.

              Did your day go so wrong that you need to let it all out somehow, but this is the only way you found? Genuinely asking btw

                • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m not defending anyone. This story being made up is entirely possible. What I’m bothered by, and what i don’t want to let slide is the fact that people just assume malice from a person simply because they made a post on a certain website and not the on the other one around. It’s a scary tendency that, if extrapolated, makes internet into a place full of tribalism and hostility.

                  Also, you gotta explain to me, how the post is an example of toxic masculinity, and exactly what archetype do i defend from your point of view.

              • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                btw, just so you know, thanks to some particularily heated instances over here, i’ve seen people with opinion just like yours but about the fediverse.

                • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Let’s not act like 4chan has ever been anything but a infamous shithole that attracts shitheads. It has the worst possible reputation: it doesn’t attract good people. Sorry. You sound delightful, tho, all your pettiness and pretentiousness aside.

      • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        There’s something insulting about being the one she wants to settle down with after a bunch of flings etc.

        When’s my turn to have fun?

            • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              The toxicity is the weird incel framing around the whole thing. It leans heavily into incel tropes about how women sleep around with physically attractive asshole men when younger and then look for a more stable “nice guy” men when older. The trope is that women will reproduce with asshole gym bro types and then seek relationships with nerds to obtain resources to raise the children they’ve given birth to. It’s the classic cuckhold meme.

              The “backup option” part is the toxic thing. It frames women as farm animals looking for a mate, rather than actual complex human beings with different desires and changing personalities through their whole lives. Aka, just like men. People change, and they want different things at different points in their life.

              It’s not that the woman in the story fucked a bunch of guys and then, as a last resort, settled for OP. I mean, just think of how absurd that idea is. It is literally not possible to run out of people to sleep with. They don’t think OP is beneath them and have always felt that way, only settling for them now. Why would she need to? There’s no shortage of other men out there if she thinks OP is beneath her.

              Rather, people just want different things at different points in their lives. OP didn’t tick that box years earlier, but now maybe he does. She wasn’t attracted to him then, but she is now. The heart just works that way sometimes. There’s no need to add a bunch of incel bullshit to what is easily explainable as the complexities of human emotion.

              The reason this is so toxic is that it’s applying this weird bizarre manipulative behavior to the woman in the story - aka parroting incel themes. It accuses her of this deliberate years-long plot, working through a long list of men she finds superior until finally settling for OP. This isn’t how human beings actually behave. Instead, she just happened to not be attracted to OP before, but happens to be now. You don’t need to go into it any deeper than that. People are complex and their hearts change.

              This “backup option” framing is just really toxic and creepy.

            • Kushan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              Nothing at all, but that last line, “When is my turn to have fun?” Is a bit transactional, like there’s an expectation and that’s the problematic part.

              • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                like there’s an expectation

                you can have expectations from relationships. you don’t have to, and not every relationship has them, but it’s perfectly fine to have them, as long as the other person’s fine with that.

                • Glide@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Anon grows and changes in a 5 year span, and his romantic interests change.

                  Girls opinion on romance is different in 5 years.

                  “I don’t want to be the backup.”

                  Men can grow and change over 5 years. Women? Nah. She just wanted to fuck around and now she’s settling.

                  This train of thought is some terminally online shit. Then again, complaining that green text is some terminally online shit is insane in its own account.

  • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Anon got over their crush and got on with their life, nothing wrong with that at all.

    Besides, it sounds like they’re about option J here, and it’s perfectly okay to not be happy about that.

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think I can blame Anon. “Should we try it out?” isn’t exactly stirring my passions, either.

    Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.

      • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        If by “straight” you mean heterosexual and you’re doubting the story is heterosexual, read it again. There are pronouns in there. This is a heterosexual story.

        • lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          NOOOOOOOOO!!! I NEED IT TO FIT IN THE PREDETERMINED BOX I HAVE SETUP FOR THIS GREENTEXT!!! IT HAS TO BE GAY BECAUSE I SAID SOOO!!!

          • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            I had no problem taking this innocent heartfelt greentext post at face value, but would you agree, the comments have been aneurysm-inducing.

            • lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              Maybe. Idk, I mostly read the comments just to get some perspective from other people so I can enrich myself and be a better person.

              It does get annoying though when that is interrupted by the fake/gay joke comments tho.

              • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                This is a pretty niche community (Lemmy) without a whole lot of variety. If you’re trying to get some other perspectives, there are a lot of better options in real life.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Anon is on the internet. No girls there.
          Anon had a girl interested in fucking him: fake.
          Anon turned down a girl that wanted to fuck him: gay.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yep. I’ve run out of ideas, I’ll try settling with a heavy “maybe”. That’ll really make you feel like a potential partner values you.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.

      I think it’s more like “oh shit, lots of men are suddenly turning right-wing, and i’m getting afraid of them now, so please anon, protect me. i’m not actually into you, of course (who could be into you?) but at least you’re harmless.”

      • blarghly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Most women’s social circles will not see men make any significant rightward shift in political opinion. Most peoples’ political opinions are fairly stable over time, and change slowly. Most people naturally spend time with people with similar political opinions. And if someone finds that they have significantly different political opinions than their peers, they will almost certainly keep it to themselves.

        Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation. The farther right a space is, the fewer women we expect to see there. And to the extent that there is a large rightward shift in men’s political positions, it is driven primarily by men who already leaned right. More left-leaning men, if they move right at all, would move right very minimally. The aggregate of minimal moves to the right across the bell curve would be noticeable at a statistical level, but would not be noticeable in most people’s actual social lives. Significant moves to the right would only be seen on the right wing side of the bell curve.

        So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP’s love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.

        But the alternative conclusion, assuming your hypothesis is correct, is that OP’s love interest if more moderate/left wing (most women), but is chronically online and hears about men becoming more right wing.

        • thecoffeehobbit@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Dating apps mix the social circles pretty significantly so it can also easily be a case of going on dates with randoms and seeing the shift that way.

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation.

          yeah, that’s an interesting observation, which makes you wonder what is cause and what is consequence.

          So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP’s love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.

          Yeah, that’s a likely outcome i guess. Girl falls for “strong” men in the past, suddenly realizes they’re all right-wing and potentially dangerous, suddenly tries to find a non-dangerous partner, or sth like that.

  • krunklom@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    “She fucked too many guys”

    Waaaaaahhh oh no my partner is good at sex, oh woe is me.

    I’ve never slept with anyone with a single digit body count that wasn’t fucking awful in the sack.

    • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      These stories are even more real and true than the real and true stories on r/aita. OP just forgot the part where the crying bald eagle stood up and clapped at the end

      • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        This particular fantasy (one day I’ll get to reject the women who rejected me first and they’d never be able to handle it as gracefully as I did) seems somewhat common among young men who have trouble connecting with women.

        But the false premise at the center of it is that the man is such a good friend to the woman, and the woman’s dating/romantic life hasn’t found anyone nearly as understanding or kind or empathetic. And part of that belief is some kind of assumption that life is an RPG where everyone is allotted the same number of points to distribute, and anyone who is maxed on charisma must be less intelligent or empathetic or something.

        Realistically, men who are friends with women tend to do better with dating and relationships than men who aren’t close to women. The friends of friends angle is a great pipeline for searching for partners, assuming your personality makes your friends comfortable connecting you with their friends.

  • wowwoweowza@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for this reply. Being GenX isn’t the bed of roses some folks believe it is. I find myself reading more physical books these days than I ever before. Kind of just to take it all in at less than a blur. It’s all whipping by at breakneck speed.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Turns out, being rejected by someone you’re in love with actually sucks, and that goes double if you were friends with them. Sure you can try and stay friends with them after, but whether that works depends a lot on your state of mind/mental health, the rest of your social circle and the state of your life in general (and on how the rejecter/friend acts, of course). Your average 4chan poster is spectacularly ill-equipped to make it actually work well, even if they somehow aren’t somewhat misogynistic.

    At the same time, just keeping it to yourself is probably not a good option either, if you’re not the type who can actually move on after a while (e.g. by crushing on someone else).

    • Lorindól@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yep.

      Something quite similar happened to me in my twenties. We had a pretty close-knit group of friends in university and in the second year one of the girls started to show signs of romantic interest in me. I was oblivious, of course, so my friends had to point it out for me. I was single and quite unexperienced with dating, so I thought “what the hell, why not?” So we ended up dating and I was starting to slowly fall for her.

      Then we went to this student party together and we hung out with people as always. I went for a swim in the pool and when I came back, she came to me, looking extremely happy and said that she had just met this amazing guy and wanted to try things out with him. I stood silent for a few seconds and said “OK, it’s cool with me” . She smiled and ran off to her new man.

      I got dressed, finished my beer and walked home. It was a long walk, but instead of disappointment and sadness I remember feeling immense relief, as I had just learned what “dodging a bullet” truly meant.

      She and the new guy dated for maybe a year, before she lost interest in him - he really was a great guy, right at the start of their relationship he wanted to talk with me and he was genuinely sorry for “stealing my girl”. I assured him that I held no grudge and we became friends after she dumped him.

      During their dating she quickly drifted out of our circle of friends by her own choice, so I got to keep things pretty much like they were before. I was always friendly towards her when we met and she did likewise. My friends were surprised that I wasn’t angry at her, but I told them that this was for the best and that I was happy how things had turned out.

      Next year I found a wonderful girlfriend and I was happy. Few years later I happened to meet this “ex” of mine in a work-related seminar. When the seminar ended, I walked to the bus stop and saw her standing there. Turned out that we lived along the same bus route. Then she suddenly said “wouldn’t it be nice if you came home with me?” Like, WTF? She knew very well that I had been in a steady relationship for years and she had even met my girlfriend a few times.

      She looked at me seductively and said “so, how about it?”. I’d known that she wasn’t stable, but at that moment I realized how truly fucked up she really was. “No, that’s not going to happen now or ever”, I said and walked away.

      That was the last time I saw her. Few years ago I heard that she had been married twice or thrice before she was 40, and was single again.

    • BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I super get this. Back at the height of the whole “friend zone” thing I had been hanging out with a friend one on one very regularly and began crushing on her, asked her out at some point, she said she needed to focus on other things. A semester or two later, I asked if that had changed due to different circumstances in her life and she gave me a more direct no. She was pretty integrated into my friend group and my feelings were pretty badly hurt because we had been very close. Friends in that group would go on to ask why I’d never asked her out, under the assumption she was interested, and when I did eventually start dating someone else she tried to “talk me up” to that girl in a way that felt like sabotage to me. It’s hard to balance those feelings while remaining friends with someone. I was definitely at risk for falling down an incel hole around that time. Glad I didn’t

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Actually this kind of thing happens often enough. The exact words vary, but if people live in low population locations, wait a decade and you’ll be surprised at who gets together.

      • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ya, I’m coming up on my 40s in a smallish city. This not only seems plausible, I’ve seen it (a less dramatic version anyway) play out a few times.

  • IDraw4u@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    “I think you are the only man I can trust, should we try it out?”

    Things that were never said for $2000, Alex