To be fair, this kind of kinetics-as-pevention works.

I use this strategy to prevent eating too many snacks – I do not keep them at home. I can’t have them if they are not here. If 90% of the time I would “choose” not to have chips, not-having-them stops me the other 10%

I think the difference is the perceived energy barrier if one wanted to fool around on their partner if they a bi vs het.

A bi guy could, hypothetically, find a guy on grindr pretty much on a whim if he wanted to. This is a much lower barrier than straight guys face unless they seek a sex worker. If you are a woman in the early stages of dating someone, where you don’t know yet how much you can trust a guy, if a guy tells you he is bi that can come off as a higher cheating risk than a straight guy.

Straight guys dating a bi-girl don’t have a similar perceived risk increase. Early in the relationship, guys may not even see the potential of a bi-girl hooking up with a girl as ‘cheating’, vs a bonus for his enjoyment. But also - finding a new girl to date is considered harder than finding an interested guy. So the ‘cheating’ risk doesn’t feel that much higher for guys dating a bi-girl compared to a straight girl; he may feel like he is still mostly competing against other guys.

Is this fair or even realistic? No, this is based on perceived stereotypes rather than the behaviors and character of individuals.

But this plays out at a stage of dating where people don’t know each other well yet and are relying on heuristics.

Oh no. Ohhhh no.

It’s simply what consequences are dished out for.

This is mob rule government. If you are part of the ‘gang’, and are loyal to the gang, you can get away with murder. Or raping children.

Everyone else is under the bootheel though.

That is why they are trying to ban the facts you just shared.

Nothing but pro-White Nationalism propaganda allowed

I disagree that ‘comfort’ was a cause. That line of thinking comes from the same puritanical austerity narrative that has been used to tell the working class that our circumstances are due to poor character rather than because we were talked out of demanding more.

It’s victim-blamey, but like all victim-blaming narratives it has the virtue of restoring a sense of control, a sense of “this is the thing that I can decide to do that would have prevented this.”

…which isn’t to say that I don’t think we can’t identify things that could have stopped this. But I don’t think a vague assertion that people here are more distracted or ‘comfortable’ than elsewhere helps. Also - a lot of people are not comfortable. But they may deal with that by at least enjoying the distractions or not staring into the sun of things they don’t think they can change.

Ultimately, we ended up here through corrupt systems. The Trumpers were right to want to ‘drain the swamp’, they are just so blinded by antimosity that they fell for a grifter because he promised to hurt people.

All the pillars of democracy have been under attack since Reagan - high quality journalism and education to maintain an informed voter base, a voter base with enough time to research issues, and political campaign laws to keep government working in the public’s interest.

Occupy Wall Street tried to sound the alarm, but journalism was already too corrupt and the movement was successfully sold to the public as ‘annoying college kids demanding free things’.

So now we have a significant chunk of the voter base that doesn’t know what habeas corpus is, or anything about how our checks and balances are supposed to look, and thinks what makes this country “a free country” is that we blow shit up with fireworks on July 4th - and doesn’t see why authoritarianism would be so bad.

And the rest of us who are looking on aghast are honestly afraid of our police, of Trumpers openly talking about lynching us (and yes - they have more guns than us. Most liberals still refuse to consider becoming armed), and of losing everything and dying in a prison cell run by a for-profit corp.

This is a stage-4 cancer diagnosis on a social scale, and people are still figuring out if we want chemo or to try to ride this out as long as we can.

On top of that, while conservative social media spaces are full of people threatening violence, all of the platforms are coming down hard on any space that discusses anything more provocative than holding a sign in a nonn-threatening manner in a way that abides any police order given.

There is no place to organize, and no one is proposing or organizing any serious strategy. Seriously – I’ve gone to local meetings, and all any activist org or politician will say is “organize with your neighbors (organize what?) and try to do mutual aid”.

That is not a meaningful response to an organization like the Heritage Foundation.

Most of the people here live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford a $500 emergency.

So the risk of even just getting arrested, and held in custody for a week, would be enough to ruin one’s life.

That puts a damper on protesting, until you or your family are directly impacted. It also inhibits willingness to strike.

And it also explains why so many protesters are of retirement age – they don’t have a job to lose if they miss work unexpectedly for a few days.

In a lot of ways, we were already conquered.

It’s basically the same thing that scammers do - they know they have a terrible approach, but that’s fine because they are only looking for the easy marks who are too oblivious to sense anything is wrong.

This CEO is preventing anyone with self preservation or a sense of actual industry norms from applying, increasing the proportion of aps from the gullible.

The horror of parasocial distance collapse

I’m aro/ace and not dating, but my circle of friends is progressive and most have become poly over the last 5 years.

So I’m acquainted with probably +25 poly guys, most of whom skew progressive (but there are a few who lean more libertarian in there too, and a couple anarchists), and am good enough friends with probably 5 progressive poly guys to have a good sense what they have learned, how they treat their partners, and what their partners find appealing.

To be fair, to me polyamory looks like an insane amount of effort for the payoff - bc I am not interested in even one relationship let alone the intense effort of managing multiple. But from what I have seen, successfully being poly means learning a ton about boundaries, communication, and maintaining respect because all parties constantly have to manage jealousy and limited attention each of their partners. If you don’t respect one partner - poof!! – that relationship is over. And your other partners will likely hear about it, in detail, from both sides and litigate it bc they have a stake both in you and in being someone with you. It is a ton of drama.

But it also seems to be a crucible for learning how to negotiating needs and figuring out how to talk about it openly with each other to build connection - and that process both requires and builds respect for your partners.

Like I said, the guys I know who have stuck with it and learned the necessary people skills now have the problem of having too much interest. Including one friend who had terrible luck dating before and who I worried was on the verge of becoming an incel. Then he dated one of my first friends who was poly, and she kind of taught him in no uncertain terms how this works. Between that and his next poly girlfriend, I watched him become someone who is deeply considerate of his partners and is also confident about his boundaries and what he can offer. He’s got like 4 relationships going on, 2 of which are long term.

And again - the biggest change I saw in him was that he stopped seeing the women he wanted to date as games to win or challenges to overcome, and stopped carrying the frustration and shame that comes with the ‘failure’ to ‘score’. He still looks at women with clear desire, but that desire doesn’t make him feel like he has to be manipulative or play games.

I don’t know how to explain it except that he has a respect for the women he courts that most single guys do not. Maybe it’s that he has less to fear from rejection, so he doesn’t have to mentally dehumanize women as a coping mechanism. And this is a feature I see in most poly men, and have seen emerge in men as they fall into poly.

Actually - I’m going to ponder the ‘able to respect women more bc they have less to fear from rejection’ idea more, personally.

That alone may be a big part of their appeal, because a lot of the threat that women have to navigate when being courted is how to safely disengage if a promising flirtation turns sour. There is a lot more enthusiasm to explore or move fast when you are free to say no without fear of a possibly violent meltdown.

And poly guys aren’t going to meltdown. They are ok with a no, they are emotionally braced for that and have been through worse feelings already. And they have other relationships to fall back on.

Pardon, but it smacks of weird defensiveness that you feel the need to bring up that serial killers often have intimate partners as some kind of counterpoint to the fact that men who figure out how to respect women’s boundaries are highly sought as partners.

Serial killers likely find partners by being manipulative and playing mind games - ie, being psychopaths.

Clearly the evidence that men who respect women have major success fostering reliable and enjoyable relationships with them is somehow highly threatening to a lot of guys.

Something has to immediately be said that instead says “but not respecting women also works.” Followed by crude red pill thinking - “And aren’t all women dumb bc some seem to like danger? And also, women are superficial, so pretend to like a puppy bc that works a lot.”

I know media has taught men that masculinity is basically defined by being able to disrespect women and think of them as winnable objects but –

Mentally healthy women aren’t falling for that shit. And you guys hate the baggage that the traumatized ones have who are insecure enough fall for that crap.

You could give up the machismo to try… respect and growing into someone who could be happy?

Meanwhile, all the progressive poly guys I know who have figured out how to deeply respect women have more partners than they really have time for. And quite a few of them are not “good looking” by any conventional standard (though some are).

The simplist answer is that this guy could buy some high-coverage foundation and a make-up sponge. He could change his appearance in other ways too if he likes - get a wig, fake nose, etc.

I want to discuss the first statement in your last reply - about “lumping all single men together”.

That is just how quantification of anything works. If we were talking about unemployment, or number of people with blue cars, or days with rain - if there is an increase, you mark on the sum increase over the previous baseline, and discuss potential reasons for the new influx.

If you think you are part of the previous baseline - guys who would have been single in past generations, then the discussion doesn’t apply to you. Even if no one goes through and specifically excludes you. Because the influx is what is being discussed - not the baseline.

But I don’t think you are actually upset at being lumped in with the influx. I think you are upset because the guys in the influx are being rediculed and you desperately want to find a reason to both be mad about that and to say those criticisms don’t apply to you.

You say you don’t want to be assumed to be a PoS bc you don’t have a gf.

If you really are not trying to date, I don’t think you run the risk of that.

The criticism in the top post is directed at guys who are obsessed with their dating status - but see it as a game they are losing, and women as objects to be manipulated into what they want.

If you are trying to date but see women as hostile opponents to be ‘managed’, you are going to act like a PoS.

What determines your PoS status isn’t your dating status - it’s whether you see and treat women as fully equal people with the same expectations to dignity and respect as your guy friends, or if you see women as alien beings on an opposing team - targets to potentially be manipulated to get what you long for, or targets of resentment for withholding or being inaccessable for what you long for.

If you are truly single and don’t have any resentments towards women about it, you are unlikely to come off as a PoS.

But honestly, that isnt how your comments are coming off

Another way to put it is that our culture is creating a lot of men who no one wants to be around. Who either don’t see themselves as needing to be likable or who see being likable as something that goes completely against their identity – something that is ‘impossible’ for them that they refuse to work on.

A lot of this may be tied to ideas of masculinity that see social awareness, empathy and cooperation as feminine traits since ‘tough guys’ in media can get ‘respect’ and attention despite eschewing all of those traits.

If you feel particularly lacking in those traits, it can feel very reassuring to tell yourself you can’t work on those things and it’s unfair to be judged or suffer consequences for deficiencies in them - because there is no escaping the sense of vulnerability one feels when trying to build up something one is weak in.

So we end up with a lot of guys who are sullen about being miserable and being miserable to be around.

These guys have a lot of hard work ahead of them. The first big hurdle is accepting that they have to be responsible for becoming people that others like being around - and getting over their safety blanket idea that they ‘can’t’ so they shouldn’t bother.

I think this is still a skills issue, the question is “what skill?”

You have a passionate interest. What you don’t know how to do is talk about it in a way that shares why it is so fascinating to you. That can be worked on. It’ll take practice, including more times where you flop, but you can try to watch how people with other niche interests pull people in and create intrigue and excitement.

Trying to learn this skill for your passion will help you do it more generally; it will make you a more interesting person that people enjoy connecting to.

If you are male and lonely but it is because of social anxiety, why do you feel attacked by this? You have a different, external reason for being lonely than the broad swath of the criticism.

Why do you feel attacked by this if it is advocating for circumstances (men improving their interelational dynamics to build deeper friendships) that would likely improve your opportunities to comfortably challenge your social anxiety?

If you feel attacked, is it because your attitude is the problem being criticized? That rather than seeing your social anxiety as your burden to overcome, you instead see it as a reason that society owes you access to the company of women you find attractive - that at the heart of it, you feel aggreived that women don’t have to pick you?

My problem with these people is that voting 3rd party or not voting doesn’t help Gaza. It is not a plan.

Harris said she was pro-Israel, but she would have given a damn what the liberal base thinks and the liberal base wants the deaths to stop. Harris could have been influenced by the left. That would have been a plausible strategy worth pursuing

Trump doesn’t give a shit what anyone who hasn’t bribed him and loves raping others thinks. There is no way for the left to influence anything now. If Trump can, he will make money putting all of us into camps.

The left not only tears itself apart but is also allergic to effective planning. It’s some weird kink where they want to be absolutely powerless while screaming about all the things others must do.

Most people that oppose Trump also follow an ethical code that abohrs violence.

The talking points among people I know here include constantly referencing a study that indicates non-violent opposition is more frequently effective than violent opposition. I suspect that study is a little simplistic, but may have its point.

The problem is, a lot of liberals think that showing up for a 14 June style protest (with permits and police escort) is the full extent of ‘non-violent’ resistance.

It’s taking them a minute to catch on that more, much more, will be needed.

The next step has to be introducing other non-violent tactics - ones that are far less pleasant than bringing a sign to a giant street party on a Saturday afternoon.

Tactics that might involve being arrested (despite not attacking anyone), losing income or your job (work strike), or ending up in a detention facility.

No one wants to do this. This is like getting a cancer diagnosis and not wanting chemo, not wanting to count your expected remaining life in months instead of decades.

Most people will do what most people do - ‘see how it goes’. Until they can’t anymore.

This is the denial and bargaining stage of a fascism diagnosis.

This matches every account I’ve heard from friends in Seattle that have worked for the HQ.

I think we may be (re)-discovering the appeal of monotheistic religions, and why they hew patriarchal.

On average, men desperately need more mental health resources. But, on average, they are not comfortable building that with other men, and it often isn’t appropriate or effective to lean on their female significant other (if a straight man).

So - enter the primary description of ‘God’. Can listen any time but will always forgive, is super masculine but won’t emasculate you, and has never told another soul what you are thinking.

AI is always available and is unlikely to emasculate anyone, but that third item… Well, we’ll see where this goes.