Know a guy.
This is heartwarming. It sounds inaccurate. I don’t have a truck, but stranger if you live around Portland, I’ll help you move a sofa.
No truck either but a friend needed a hand to move his stuff.
I came, other of his friends came as well.
We moved the furniture, the books and even the gym equipment.
Pizza was offered and shared.
A couple years later, I show up for a job interview. One ofy friend’s friend is my interviewer. He asks technical questions, I answer.
He eventually claims I now my stuff so he stops with the questions and we have a relaxed chat.
I got the job and still work there after all these years.
I can drive my truck down
PIVOT
No matter where you come from , once you can say “I know a guy” you’re an American.
Societies that run on favors are corrupt societies.
Depends on the favors. Moving furniture for others in exchange for a portion of a pizza isn’t a problem.
No not that
A society that operates on an assumption of mutual support is generally just called anarchy.
Favours need to be paid back. This story is about paying it forward.
The Truck guy receives no financial reimbursement for his time, fuel and wear-and-tear, but the helpers are not paying back someone for the help, they are paying forward.
Corruption is where someone is collecting financial gain without a commensurate amount of effort. A contract “Man with a Van” who gets paid to move goods is more able to abuse their role for extortion or corruption than a loose social group of “Bloke with a Ute”.
Thanks for explaining
Societies that run on neighbours, friends, acquaintances, and that guy over there helping each other out in exchange for sharing pizza and beer afterwards are wholesome societies.
I think I didn’t say it how I meant to say it. I meant in a political sense, there’s no law, just who you know.
I think what you originally said makes sense in the strictest sense. Technically, not favors. The payment was pizza.
In Frieren, the main hero would always charge a “fee” even to the poorest people who needed help. Often at the cost of totally worthless items because “now they don’t owe me”. The transaction is complete, no furthur obligation. Even “token” fees are better than ambiguous favors imo. Thats where I usually charge the friend price of a meal for most of my services.
And societies ran on capital with different tiers of classes based solely on the situation a person is BORN into is certainly the more just and appropriate way to organize a society? It definitely couldn’t be one based on mutualism and equity, no sir.
/S
I say “I know a guy” and if said guy were american he’d be in prison lmao
I may not know a guy, but I know a guy who knows a guy
It’s amazing how many different species of Knowaguy there are. I recently was introduced to a friend’s “Bridge Guy” - a dealer in surplus bridges who will cut you a suspiciously good deal if you seem cool. Not the most immediately useful, but like… Could be damned handy to have in my back pocket should the right circumstances arise.
Be careful acquiring bridges from a guy. I’ve heard that can go horribly sweet awry and quickly.
I’ve needed a bridge guy twice in my life.
Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that its happened twice.
You got a guy guy? Nice
It still counts!
I am that guy
Absolute poetry.
It has a deep seeded rhythm indeed
Reads like Burkowski
I am “the guy” at my kids’ schools. I love it. When they need a last minute volunteer for something, they know how to reach me.
Clay pigeon signal hits the night sky
PULL!
The American lower-working class economy is predominantly favor and goodwill-based, yes. Pain in the ass sometimes but also more fun imo. Community is important to keep alive.
This is a wild concept for other cultures. Like, in Germany people will help you move. Your friends that is. Maybe a coworker or neighbour - if you even know any neighbour at all. That is all but a given here as well. But some random guy? Nah…
Oh and you absolutely have to rent a truck. I don’t know a single truck person. There is no such thing as having a truck, unless you nees it for business. Long story short: I just paid a company over >2k to move just one town over
This can absolutely also happen in a place like Germany. Yes, no one really has a truck for personal use (or rather a box truck), but you know a guy who knows a guy that has a truck for his business and doesn’t need it on the weekend, et voila. Maybe it’s not that extreme, but especially for ‘poorer’ working class people, helping out is still essential even in Germany.
When I was in Europe I saw a bunch of houses with trailers they could tow bulk items with their cars. Are those not common in Germany?
Not just American. It’s poor people’s economy everywhere. American working class has more in common with working class in every other nation than American wealth class. The real division in the world is class division, everything else is distraction.
I don’t see what about this that makes it a “working-class” thing? I thought it was common practice to help each other out in exchange for pizzas and beer in any part of society where people have friends? I see it primarily as an excuse to hang out while doing something together.
Whenever you can afford to pay to have a problem of yours solved, it’s often the most convenient way of solving it.
Anyone who makes their living by working, either for salary or hourly rate, is working class. Let’s just be on the same page about that.
A working class person basically survives by converting their time and energy to cash. So paying cash is also paying with your labour, indirectly and often inefficiently. It’s always a matter of “is it worth it”? Hiring movers for moving your entire home may be worth it, just one piece of furniture often isn’t.
A wealth-class person gets their income from what they own. Its “passive” from their point of view, the money just appears as profit or capital gains or whatever. It’s still a limited resource, but often way more available. Any kind of favours you do or ask for at this point is purely for fun/social purposes since hiring someone to move that sofa, or even just buying and having a new one delivered is way more convenient and time-efficient, since your money is not literally your time.
Anyone who makes their living by working, either for salary or hourly rate, is working class. Let’s just be on the same page about that.
Aha! That’s where you got me! I was thinking “working class” in the more classical sense, referring to typical lower-paying jobs. I work for a living, but I’m definitely closer to what is typically considered “middle-class” in the sense that I make enough money that I feel well-off, but not enough that I could buy a new sofa just because moving the old one is too much hassle.
Obligatory “Fuck the wealth-class”. “Passive income through ownership” is a convoluted way of saying “parasitic”.
Congratulations, you’re part of the working class. Your wealth comes from work you do with head and hand. The epstein class want you to think of yourself as middle class, so you’ll feel threatened by the working class. There is no middle class. They take, and we pay. That’s what class is.
I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying here, I still want to comment on
Middle class does not exist
I do think it’s a reasonable term to separate those that actually make a decent salary, are self-employed, own their own company (at which they work) together with others, etc. from the more clearly exploited workers that have far too few rights and are not compensated fairly.
I have no problem with selling my labour for money as long as I’m fairly compensated for it. Historically, the working class has not been.
I have no problem with selling my labour for money as long as I’m fairly compensated for it.
If you are working for a salary, you are never fairly compensated. If you received the value you actually produced, your boss can’t make a profit. Profit is only possible by a exploitation.
The intensity of said exploitation is a spectrum, there is a huge difference between having some savings and disposable income versus barely surviving. I also make a decently comfortable living as a software engineer but I’m still a crippling accident away from losing it all and depending on disability benefits.
Even if life is good for you at your income level, you’re still getting scammed to a (much smaller) extent. And the Epstein class use the money they scam off you, to control society. Money has this mathematical effect where it wants to accumulate in one place. It’s like a kind of economic gravity. Any inequality will magnify itself over time if it isn’t carefully controlled by government.
Social democrats think good enough regulation can preserve that very-slightly-inequal system forever. But I say that kind of setup is inherently unstable. Capitalism will always trend towards inequality over time. Instead of trying to control money and make it go against its nature, we should abolish money. A gift economy would be better.
I have a friend who’s done very well with the AI boom, he works for some startup, has for the past six or seven years. He moved into an apartment like 10 years ago, he was working for a pharma company, just building their servers I’ll say, because I don’t know what the fuck he does. When he moved into the apartment, he hit me up, I rounded up another friend or two, we took care of it.
He bought (had built) a new home about six or seven months ago. He did not call me to help him move. He’s moved beyond that, because to him, he doesn’t want to be involved. You don’t call someone to help you move and then not take part. For him, it’s a no-brainer to just pay to have it done. And that’s fine, and I just kinda wanted to give an example of this divide.
This exactly. There’s an inversion when having money is more convenient than having contacts and doing small favors, and that inversion turns people into lonely cunts.
Incredibly wealthy people also run their society based on favors and unspoken fees. The difference is, one of them could, under unusual but not impossible circumstances, help a friend and a guy move a fridge and share a beer. But nobody who’s not part of the incredible-wealth society can participate in its favors. And we all pay the fees.
Also strongly depends on the community and your perceived level of acceptance within the community.
Anyone who’s ever been viewed as an outsider knows that it is not this simple unless you happen to fit in.
Yeah, small town community always sounds warm and fuzzy until you end up on the outside.
A while back, I knew of a family that moved into a house in the center of a town near where I grew up. A couple and two kids. The town had a big clock with a bell that rang hourly. Even in the dead of night. Right across the street from their house.
The family asked the town if they could silence the chimes between sunset and sunrise so that they and their kids could sleep. The town said no, the chimes are a local tradition.
The family then brought up state noise ordinances that the town’s clock was violating. The town still refused. So they petitioned the state, the state got involved, and made the town silence the clock at night. The locals threw a fit.
The family didn’t last long in their new house after that. But they were at least lucky enough to have the means to pack up and move somewhere else.
The less lucky are stuck. They get to spend the rest of their lives as the local “problem”. A skewed nail to be hammered down. I’ve known enough people where any utterance of their name is met with a cautionary “you shouldn’t associate with them”, even when it’s been so long that no one can tell you why. But it’s often the case that those are the people most worth knowing.
Thank you! So many people elsewhere in this comment section don’t seem to understand this.
And yeah, it could be over something so benign as that, or even more benign. But too many people assume that if someone is being ostracized, then they must have done something to deserve it. That’s not always the case though, especially in puritanical smalltown USA.
Some of these towns, if you’re not being ostracized by most of the people there, then something must be wrong with you, because there are places where you’ll be ostracized for not supporting maga or for believing in climate change or empathy.
This is why I’m saying we shouldn’t romanticize that “smalltown vibe,” because there absolutely is a dark side to it. But people are reacting with such hostility. Clearly they haven’t lived in the kind of area I’m talking about…
That was the ancient economy, before money even existed. You gave stuff to people. Bread, pots, meat, build a cabin. They gave stuff back that you needed, roughtly about the same value, but never exactly the value. Everybody has to be a little in debt to anyone else. If you gave back exactly what it’s worth, it means you don’t want to deal with that person anymore.
Yeah, this is the gift economy. And when the only economy is the gift economy, that’s called communism.
Shh dude, don’t tell the american working class that they are doing communism, because communism is bad, you know.
IIRC, Japan_Nobunaga is a slop account.
Some of the anti-immigrant sentiments smell strongly of a CHUD larping as a Japanese man.
Also extremely racist.
It reads that way, but it’s a cute story 🤷
It’s been a blast to see the death of the internet as fraudsters pollute the world with books they hope to make a quick buck on and which they did not write themselves. Real fun. /s
My friend is a ring leader for these types of guys. He knows like 15 guys with a truck and at least another 30 with arms. He’s able to get a lot of projects done around the neighborhood.
This was surprisingly funny and surprisingly positive for something to do with Americans.
it’s hard to remember that the average person is a human just like yourself
That ending was damn near wholesome. Also I think my favorite part of the whole thing was “the pizza is not negotiable.”
As an american, I think it’s toxic positivity because it ignores all the invisible social rejects who live on the margins of society and don’t have the type of community support that makes this possible.
The OOP happened to luck out and knew some nice people and also happened to be accepted by those people as someone who’s worth helping.
The same Kevin might be a completely different person when he drives through a city and sees a homeless person struggling to move a tent with all his possessions…
Most of us are just regular, friendly people who are glad to help out if needed. There are pockets of shit people who thrive on hate, but that’s true for any country.
They’re pretty godamn loud too
That’s the thing, the most vocal tend to be the worst type of people. Online that gives the impression that a lot of people are bad when in reality I think most people want to be good people.
Agreed, that was actually the point of my comment (at least in my eyes), but I do greatly appreciate you articulating it!
You can really just feel that sentiment in everyday life too, just going about your business, people want to feel helpful. I love that.
It’s part of what made me not understand how powerful propaganda could be when I was younger.
Look for the helpers, and when you see someone say Mr Rogers was a bad thing, immediately set them on fire. Duty is duty.
Would Kevin and Tony offer to move fridge for a black guy though? Bet you can’t say for sure.
Having been someone’s Kevin and/or Tony in this country, they could be green and have antennae. They’re a neighbor, they need a couch moved, and I happen to have nothing to do today. This is the code.
Ignore religion, politics, and hard drugs and this is just normal.
As a Canadian who owns a truck, I think this may just be a North American thing. I am the guy that is referred to when one says “I know a guy”.
In central Europe it’s just like “I know a guy with a trailer” or a hitch and you rent a trailer. Or as a last resort or maybe an urban thing, you hire a moving truck and still call upon your friends to load and unload and pay in beer and pizza/döner.
Americans are a very friendly people, all things considered. The whole smiling at everyone you see, helping out strangers for fun thing is not universal. Thus, this post.
My partner is from America, and visited Australia for two weeks to see Me. We spent two weeks going on dates together, visiting cool places like the museum, the zoo, a local pirate bar, a book shop. My partner says Australians are much friendlier than Americans and we smile more.
There are a lot of ‘good cunts’ in Aussie, for sure.
Its tricky when grumpy or upset but that’s a human thing - often they’re better at expressing it
(Bear in mind, this is all coming from a kiwi male - I’m scared of my feelings or expressing stuff generally)
I could believe it. It’s not that it’s unique to America, or anything. But like I’ve read stories about Dutch people for instance thinking Americans on public transportation were simple, due to all the smiling and the like.
I miss work for trade…
You just took care of a guy and when the time came, he took care of you.
“Today you… Tomorrow me…”
I mean, thats just how it still is in my village. It does not seem to be a particularly endangered way of living and rather the norm in rural areas.
This is the way
You just took care of a guy and when the time came, he took care of you.
This reads like folksy pandering of the highest order.
If you’re ever in my neighborhood and need furniture moved, I will cheerfully prove you wrong for the price of a pizza.
This could have been lifted from a Neal Stephenson book.
God ! Yes !
If the guys that frequently move furniture describe you are “strong for your size”, that is a powerful compliment.
I love positive masculinity.
Non-toxic Masculinity
Absolutely
Except women also have those connections.
The price may be different, like a baby blanket for their neice.
Men doing something negative is readily called toxic masculinity. Men doing something positive however can’t be non-toxic masculinity because women do something similar but different…
Is it really that hard for you to admit that masculinity can be associated with positive things?
All the virtues associated with manhood in the 1970s and 1980s turned into general adulting in the 1990s and aughts.
In 2026, what it is to be a man is asserted by social media personalities like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, the Tate brothers. The conversation on masculinity is dominated by the manosphere on social media and far-right television.
Expressions of manhood are on full display when Josh Hokit disparages Michelle Obama, when Trump intervenes in the world cup to cancel a red card and lift the one game penalty on Folarin Balogun. Or when US Representative Max Miller doubles down on his innocence in a video making common DV gaslighting arguments in the face of credible abuse allegations, on the presumption that his MAGA base won’t care and will still vote for him.
Masculinity in 2026 is demonstrated when you discharge your strength in malice or cruelty or bad taste to show the world you are beyond the reach of consequences, or do not care what consequences occurr.
But sure. I’m AMAB and have been criticized for half a century for being inadequately masculine. I’ve been repeatedly bullied and disregarded because I’m a wuss or a wimp. But I’m still game. I’m still open to an argument:
Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to men that is not also expected of women by our society?
I’m not saying good men don’t exist. To the contrary, there are plenty. But I am saying what makes them good is not a feature of their masculinity, rather it’s a feature of being a functional adult in a (rapidly deteriorating) liberal society.
Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to men that is not also expected of women by our society?
Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to women that is not also expected of men by our society.
Ultimately there are things that men tend to do that are positive and there are things that men tend to do that are negative. This post is an example of the former.
In other words, you’re over-complicating things because a handful of jackasses want to redefine what being a man is, and you declare that because they exist there cannot be anything (left) that is masculine. That makes no sense and is caving to their whims.
That handful of jackasses dominate social media in contrast to their opposition counterparts, and it’s creating a public divide between the sexes, hence the 4B movement and the choose the bear thought experiment.
I don’t know to what degree this factors into the observable trend that zoomers are having less sex and less romance than prior generations at their age. (I’m sure the affordability crisis is a major factor.) But in the US in 2026, our exemplars of masculinity are demonstrating they are entirely transactional and only understand the power of brute force.
And it’s going to be a long, long time before stereotypes of masculinity change for the better.
Feel free to set a counterexample. Plenty of men do. And we need more of them. But when they do, they’re not demonstrating what it is to be a man. They’re demonstrating what it is to be a functional adult in a cooperative society.
I also think society gender roles should be abolished, and that every gender identity (including non-binary ones) should be respected.
You’ll have no disagreement from me that there’s far more profit - and a resulting niche of people capitalizing on that - in teaching kids how to be masculine in a toxic way.
My point is it simply doesn’t follow that all forms of masculinity are toxic any more than all art is AI because AI art is on the massive rise.
I will grant you I’m referring to what popular culture teaches us masculinity looks like. I’m taking my cues from what social media is popular, what US cinema has to say about masculinity. But that’s because it’s also about the expectations of displays of manhood, what we are obligated to do if we’re real men.
There’s also this video (on YouTube) from J. Draper and PBS which asserts that there’s been a masculinity crisis for about as long as there’s been a moral panic about new fads corrupting our kids (id est, always), that there have always been pundits and editorial correspondents saying that men are becoming too effeminate.
One source I haven’t yet been able to tap is what trans men have to say about masculinity, because to them social expression of their gender is super important. But I don’t know any trans men well enough to stop and ask them.
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, you’re right lol. My only sticking point is that your phrasing kind of implies masculinity being characterized by dominance is a more recent development. bell hooks had a whole book breaking this down in 2003, and there were mens rights movements (that develolved into the proto manosphere) in the 70s and 80s who noticed this and tried/failed to redefine masculinity. Early feminist works identified domination and “whatever a.woman isn’t” as defining features from the jump. Nothing you’re saying is new or controversial, and there’s decades of rigorous, scholarly work validating it
In the 1970s and 1980s, there were traits that were positive traits characterized as masculine. Only with time as the workforce got integrated, and as women got more personal autonomy (such as property rights), we noticed women, too, could man up and take responsibility. In fact they had to.
Through my thirties, my model was Captain Jerry Lawson in Wargames, (here on YouTube) an air force missileer who was run through a surprise missile drill, and refused to turn the key and launch a nuclear strike against the USSR. The capacity to hold vast power and not use it (or to use it judiciously and proportionately) was highly prized during the cold war.
See also, The West Wing s01e03, A Proportional Response (also featuring John Spencer!). Bartlett is emotionally caught up when an attack by Syria kills someone he knows personally, and his cabinet has to reign him in.
See also To Kill A Mockingbird, specifically when Atticus Finch has to put down a rabid dog at range with a rifle.
Women are also capable of holding responsibility and not using it, so I still hold the capacity as a virtue, it’s just no longer a man thing.
And then in the Trump era, we’re seeing an awful lot of men who have immense power and clearly should not be trusted with it. Trump’s fire and fury speech regarding the conflict in North Korea was an early portent to the rest of us of his later decisions to misuse US military might.
Indeed, after Trump’s first term, we learned that he had called to use nuclear weapons more than once, and his military cabinet deflected his orders every time.
During his second term, I don’t know if those safeguards are still there, or if he’s still as eager to use the US nuclear arsenal.
Some people just hate men and can barely contain that. They may not even know it themselves.
I don’t hate men, but masculinity is a millstone.
There’s a difference.
Elaborate, because your eagle-eye poetic view just seems like a rewording of misandry.
Men are fine. Masculinity in 2026 as an ideology or a cultural institution is a problem.
Men exist in concerning numbers who submit to the manosphere logic, who follow the far-right influencers I’ve mentioned, who vote R because letting the libs win is effeminate. And curiously, conservative, tradwife-minded women don’t like them much either.
Manhood as expressed in media isn’t much better, with scriptwriters diegetically presuming the alpha male model is a valid theory. (It’s been debunked even for wolves.)
There are plenty of men who do not submit to these notions, and generally they tend to not be concerned about expressing their manhood or being seen as inadequately masculine. They are more concerned about being adult or being functional than being manly.
Men are fine. Masculinity in 2026 as an ideology or a cultural institution is a problem.
Is this more or less stating “Men are fine as long as they aren’t masculine?”
You’re going to have to define what “man” “woman” “masculine” and “feminine” are in your mind then, because that statement doesn’t logic with any of those definitions that I agree with; it’s like saying “water is fine as long as it contains no H2O.”
If you don’t know a Kevin, you definitely know an Ashley. And Ashley knows everyone who has a grandma with a group of retired friends who are itching for something to do.
