I’ve also heard that Trump really likes McDonald’s, and Hitler didn’t even have a McDonald’s—pretty crazy how different they truly are.

I think there does come a point where stupidity and malice are basically the same thing.

I think people just don’t like being told what to do. Like, there are a lot of behaviors you can trace back to someone just being personally aggrieved that they ought to change anything.

That said, if anyone else is reading, the em dash is a clue that you use to diagnose with—you don’t have to stop using it.

Knowing how to be abrasive is a very useful social skill, I think.

I saw a YouTube video from this guy who just liked to yap and tell stories. He was friends with a trans man, though I don’t think he knew at the time. Probably figured it out at some point, but it never changed their relationship. They were just best buds.

Well anyway, this trans man passed away, and the youtuber went to his funeral. The guy’s deadname was all over the memorial display. They’d prettied him up to look more feminine. Even clothed his body in a dress, I think. People gave eulogies about her memory, her significance, her this, her that.

The youtuber (and this was all before he was even on youtube, by the way) finally had his turn to go up and give a eulogy. He went up and said a few words about his friend, and then absolutely laid into these people for their callousness; for barely understanding who this guy, the deceased, even was; for amending his history and mourning only the parts of him they could actually stomach. And then he left. Not much point in staying in the service after that.

Being able to do things like that, though, requires some emotional strength. It’s a skill you have to practice. That youtuber wasn’t the only one there who felt that way, but he was the only one to say anything.

Yeah, they do. You never heard of a crime of opportunity?

Why do you lock your doors at night? You know that anyone who wants to get in can just rake the god damn lock, right? Most people don’t want to get into your house, and the ones who do will be able to enter anyway, so what pathology drives you to waste your time like this?

I found this one.

1. Assume interesting shapes

Hard to understand geometry can inspire curiosity. Intrigue her by adding more complexity to your configuration!

2. Playfully interact with her as different people

Hate to break it to you, guys, but not having a personality isn’t going to impress anyone. What will impress a lot of people is having 7, 8 or 9 different personalities that come and go as the mood changes.

3. Get close!

Close bonds often reflect a close geography, so try to be in the same room she’s in as much as possible. If she wanders into the kitchen for a soda, wander in yourself to wash your hands. If she’s talking to a friend in the hallway, talk to a different friend in the same hallway.

4. Be funny

Comedy can be extrapolated from this base formula:

P = ¬P

Such an expression being true would require the dissolution of all fundamental axioms of logic and reason, and is therefore funny. Try explaining this to her.

5. Be mysterious

Nothing is more sexy than a masked man of mystery. Show her how mysterious you are by playing ominous sounds while describing a job you don’t know you have, and people you don’t remember speaking to!

6. Be

The best way to make yourself available to a woman is to have an existential presence in our natural world.

7. Share the things you have in common

Impress her by ovulating with her!

8. Don’t be afraid to be saucy

Demonstrate your wild side by flopping about or rubbing against nearby objects and furniture.

But don’t get carried away. Being too floppy can be off-putting. Try to match her level of floppiness.

9. Gifts make the heart grow fonder

Gifts are a great way to establish a connection and to show how much you care. Try giving her the gift of self-love, or the depth of pure sadness. You could also teach her to be less co-dependent!

10. Try MDMA!

Ecstacy looks really weird in movies. This could be a great way to experience something new together!

I mean what I said. Working unaided begets strength.

Damn, it’d be crazy if I actually said that.

Why would I?

You would learn quite a lot creating it from scratch.

I don’t always use the calculator.

Do you bench press 100 lbs and then give up on lifting altogether?

I skimmed this, but only because my brain is huge and I already know everything you’re saying, and also I’m busy trying to locate a methane leak in my kitchen. Even so, I think you explained this fine. Don’t worry about it. Rest easy and get yourself calm. :)

Quick! He’s wearing two pairs of pants, what do you do?!

Ah, the Sneeze.

You are welcome :3
It’s long as hell, so I’m glad it wasn’t pointless, haha.

The issue inherent to it is when you have people giving seemingly literal agreement to satirical statements,

I will just take this at face value: what makes this an issue?

I don’t know if my neighbor has double-locked their front door, should I go and check?

this discussion isn’t just about visual shorthand of a comic, it has some amount of real world investment.

Yes, I am aware that jokes are political.

My reading is that this is yet another rearing of the man vs. bear debate. Our eternal prison.

so I can’t tell you in definite terms what a reasonable suspicion is,

I’m not asking for definite terms, I’m suggesting that women have more experience dealing with men and danger and dangerous men than men do. Men do have a lot of opinions about it, though.

If we’re using the example of the hotel room […] If you start getting into hiding, configuring contraptions, barring the door with chairs,

In the comic, she just engages the deadbolt.

It has been some hours since I last looked at this thread, but I imagine that men are not upset she’s being overly cautious, but rather that the comic is suggesting that they—they are taking this personally—are scarier people than women are. They are responding to hurt feelings.

It’s not “wrong” for an imposter to kill a crewmate because that’s how they play.

This analogy is specifically from the perspective of crewmates. It is wrong for crewmates to die, actually, because this brings your team closer to defeat.

I think you might also think that I view the crewmates as women? No. The divide drawn here is between cooperative and uncooperative. Citizen and villain. The presence of imposters makes all crewmates less safe to be around. Unless you have ways of managing risk.

So it would be like green crewmates assuming a red crewmate is an imposter on the basis of them being red,

If the game were programmed such that red crewmates were exclusively the ones chosen to be imposters, regardless of how this might damage the video game’s fun, don’t you think that being near a red crew member would set off some alarm bells? Wouldn’t you think of green crew members as more safe?

I’ve played plenty of RPGs where certain kinds of treasure chest, and certain kinds of treasure chest alone, require a degree of caution because I cannot know if they are mimics.

The issue I think most men have to this isn’t reasonable suspicion or reasonable caution,

What level of suspicion is reasonable?

Granted, I will not pretend that women are somehow above being very superstitious and silly. I’ve seen armored SUVs marketed to suburban house moms that are beyond parody. But still, for a demographic of people who largely do not have to deal with predatory men, being men themselves, how do men know what a reasonable degree of caution looks like?

but relating to a comic about seeing a spam notification about singles in your area and locking your door is ridiculous.

Well, this comic is… comedy. It has to be a little silly for the joke to land.

Locking the door with a common deadbolt has less to do with actually protecting anyone and more to do with being visual shorthand for a comedic sentiment.

I sense the argument coming, so I want to put something out there.

Let’s think about this using the game Among Us for a moment, hm? Forget about the gender war for a second, just think about Among Us.

In Among Us, there are, let’s say, ten people trapped on a space station, but one or two of them are actually aliens pretending to be human. Their job, naturally, is to eat the other humans, in addition to creating enough plausible deniability that they won’t be caught.

Now, some common arguments.

“Not all colorful little human beans are aliens trying to eat you.”
Well, we know that some of them are, and they really don’t want to be noticed. So, how do you avoid being eaten, then? That’s right, a little bit of paranoia. In this environment, a lack of trust becomes a survival skill by necessity.

“The ‘alien’ problem is overblown. In fact, I think they barely exist.”
Well, we know, in this video game, that they do exist. The tic-tac people are not going to survive the game by pretending the aliens aren’t there. In fact, by refusing to accuse any of your friends, you are enabling the aliens to eat more of your people without consequence.

“I agree that aliens are a problem, but why does it have to include me? I’m not one of them.”
Well, in Among Us, it is not possible to know who is or is not an alien on sight alone. You are forced to, by the game itself, demonstrate to other players that you are safe even in cases where you were never dangerous to begin with. Some kind of social etiquette is necessary when our other senses, our eyes for instance, cannot help us.

“Thinking all your friends are aliens trying to eat you is prejudice. It’s kind of like being racist to black people.”
Well, unfortunately, in this video game, we know with certainty there are secret aliens trying to eat people. As with the point above, we’re not going to solve this problem by pretending they don’t exist. Is it a little bit unfair that other players are forced to distrust you? Maybe. But, you just can’t build trust on this space station without somehow pacifying the alien threat that is built into the game. Every player understands this dynamic.

In real life, let’s imagine we have no idea whatsoever how often male aggression presents itself. We don’t know if there are or are not aliens.

We can agree, I would hope, that being an alien would be a bad thing, though, right? So, is it not enough to say “I will not be one of those men, and I will stop other people from being one of those men,” whether or not those men actually exist? At worst, you’ve committed to a fight that will never ask you to do any fighting.

You do not have to buy into the idea that most men are monsters to be an enemy of monstrous men. You do not need to concede that you are a monster to be an enemy of monstrous men.

If you insist on fighting about this, I have one or two ideas about that.

You don’t believe that monstrous men exist at all, so the paranoia is unjustified. Okay. I think that you’re in denial. Talk to some of the women in your life. Ask them about what they’ve dealt with.

You feel insecure and lonely because people naturally distrust you. I get that. That’s hard. Especially in a world where you can barely make friends without a car or money, that’s really tough. To a point I’ve made twice, though, if monstrous men are real, if they really exist, then this unfairness you’re subject to will not go away unless the thing that’s causing it is dealt with. This is a non-negotiable bit of math that you need to come to terms with.

The current predatory system will raise the limit on the 40 work week if they’re allowed to. 60. 80. You might not even get a weekend. Unions fought for your weekend.

AI does not fundamentally change this relationship. It is the same predatory system.