Greatest MRA graphic ever!

Wait, is NWO claiming not to live in Texas now? xD

NWO is probably backpedaling because he realized that the list of 50ish male milk machine technicians from Texas isn’t too long and we could probably figure out who he was even if he withheld his magic all-capitals name.

Don’t worry so much, MRAL. Even when you were being an absolute shit to everyone here, most people still wished you well. From this you can conclude that you’re basically a likable person. Things in the real world are not so dire.

Just stop cussing at people all the time!

If you ever want to talk, I’m on Facebook under the same name. Actually, I’m just about everywhere under the same name. I don’t run into a lot of competition from other Shaenons.

MRAL

Reading you coming clean made my day. It takes a lot of guts to admit that, and even more personal strength to break away from the trolling that gave you such validation. I’m not saying it excuses the things you said in the past, but I’m hoping this leads to a better future.

I understand very well the cycle of validation. It…changes people if one lets it. People give a person attention and regard, and they find a part of their beliefs resonate with the party line. This cycle slowly reshapes a person until they are transformed into an image that the party line dictates, since it is optimal for that kind of validation.

Also, I know very well the pains of being lonely. It seems like everyone else is living this life that one wishes they had, everyone else is getting to experience these awesome things while the one left alone seems condemned to a life of solitude. Despite what stereotypes advertise, College isn’t all fun and games (especially when one goes to a campus like mine where the student body is EXTREMELY detached and college culture is practically non-existent). It’s particularly difficult to be left out then because it is a major time of internal transition (one of my friends of old called it her “transitional 20’s”).

As cliche as it is, as the campaign goes, it gets better. I’m not going to throw any presumption of difference of age in there as any sort of catalyst, but I am confident that in some way some how, it will. For example, I thought I was the last person who would ever find someone I could call my partner and/or lover (thanks to deep self-image issues as well as a default pessimistic viewpoint, among other things). However, due to dumb luck (which sadly, is the most important factor), I not only found someone who was willing to be with me, I found someone I could truly resonate with on the deepest levels. Someone whom I deeply love and can say even in my most depressed and self-doubting moments that she loves me too.

I think you deserve some major props, first for being honest enough with yourself to see what you were doing, and second for doing something to change it.

But that’s just what I think.

MRAL,

I just wanna chime in with the folks who think it’s awesome of you to have this amount of self-awareness, and that you realized that the MRM stuff is bullshit and not good for you.
I had some serious issues with women when I was around 15 or 16, and unlike you, I actually meant the disgusting things I thought and said, without recognizing how stupid it was, and how it pretty much made me even lonelier, so I became more bitter. It’s a really bad cycle, and I have a lot of respect for you being able to see it yourself that you are about to be caught in that cycle.

My luck was probably that I didn’t hear about the manosphere until 4 years ago or so, so I didn’t have anyone who encouraged my behaviour.
I can definitely see how it would be tempting to be showered with sympathy, and to just get to blame everyone else, if one has been feeling unloved and unloveable for all those years.
So kudos to you, for not falling for it. I mean it!
It’s a very important step in the right direction.

I haven’t really interacted with you, but judging from what I have seen, your “confession” seems sincere.

So, MRAL, I wish you the best 🙂
I hope things will get better for you!

I’d give you advice about how to have friends, but don’t listen to me, I can count the number of non-Internet friends I have on one hand. 🙂 It sucks. It sucks being sad and lonely and invisible and touch-starved and feeling like everyone around you is with friends all the time and loving their college experiences while you have nothing to show for it but a really good high score on Minesweeper. Particularly when people say that college is the easiest time in your life to make friends. Fuck, if that’s true, I’m doomed to live alone and be eaten by my cats. 🙂
Aren’t you the one who’s got like half a dozen relationships going at once? Or are you talking about the past here?

@MRAL

I just want to add my support for what others have said. It takes guts to be honest, even in a place of relative anonymity. More difficult even than that, of course, is being honest with yourself. People can go their whole lives never being honest with themselves.

I’m reminded of what my fiance has told me about himself when he was younger. He saw his father die of a heart attack when he was 9 years old. For almost 20 years, he alternately blamed himself for his father’s death (the logic of a 9 year old being a very odd thing), depressed, and suicidal. I don’t think I can ever fully comprehend how much he hurt during that time.

But, today he’s 33, has a graduate degree from a top-rated school, and has a job as a digital archivist. Not to mention he has a woman in his life who loves him dearly. By his own account, his life right now is better than it has ever been before.

There’s no guarantees, of course. No one will ever be able to say 100% that your life will turn out well. What I’m saying is that even from the worst places, it CAN turn out well. So long as you’re breathing, the potential is there.

Personally, I can’t stand motivational posters that say that so long as you believe in yourself, things will be okay. That just isn’t true. Things can go wrong, no matter how much you believe in yourself. But how you act, react, and comport yourself in those times is the difference.

I am a full believer in Viktor Frankl’s line: “The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

Best of luck to you, MRAL. I think you’re going to be okay.

MRAL:
I’m not great-looking. My personality isn’t much. Here’s how I met my first girlfriend: I was interested in people, and urban legends, and intellectual conversation, and in 1997 or so I found alt.folklore.urban (don’t bother with it now, Usenet is a wasteland, but there are equivalents; nowadays I’d probably try TVTropes or SDMB, but the specific virtual place is tangential). I hung out, got to know people, developed a more or less positive reputation and in July 1999, when a meetup here in New York was announced, I went. That made me a lot more comfortable at another meetup in December, where one of the attendees was a woman a little younger than me. The meetup was in Washington; she was a Columbia first-year home in Northern Virginia on break. I knew a little about her, and vice-versa, from our interaction on the group, and spending time in person together — in a group — helped us click.

When she got back to New York, I asked her out. We were together almost four years, and it gave me confidence that I could go from single to not-single (that relationship was also directly if not proximately responsible for my meeting my current girlfriend).

So what I would suggest (for a thing, not just casual hookups):
* Tease out how much you want a relationship versus how much you want to be able to say “I’m in a relationship” versus how much you want to be the sort of person who has relationships. Even wanting “a relationship” rather than meeting a person and wanting to be with her isn’t optimal, but it’s better than purely external otivations. If you’re actually happy enough single, it’s moot, but I’ll continue.
* Don’t look for A Girl. Figure out some interests, and pursue those. For anything moderately long-term you’ll want something in common beyond “she’s hot.” Again, for me it was laography 15 years ago, now it would be literary criticism or whatever SDMB is, for you it might be something else. Post, as Orion said, in your blog, and promote it somewhat; it’s a great way for interesting(-to-you) women to get to know you.
* Especially don’t look for someone who meets other people’s standards. Even if you dismiss “don’t look for someone just for the sake of having someone” as “well, easy for him to say,” definitely don’t get into a relationship with someone who doesn’t actually do it for you just because you think she’s what you’re supposed to want. That won’t make anyone happy, even you.
* BU is a terrible place to meet people if you’re at all insecure. You’re in STEM, right? If it’s not too late to transfer, see if they’ll take you across the river. In any case, go to events and mixers and things aimed at your cohort, including “on-campus” such as it is.

I’m not promising you’ll find someone. I can’t, though insofar as you’re not an unredeemable asshole it’s likely to happen eventually. Just, if all that is different from what you’re doing, it can’t be less effective.

MRM/PUA have, I think, a particular appeal to men in their teens/early 20s, bucause while as a model of female behavior it’s almost entirely wrong, as a model of teenage girl behavior it’s only slightly wrong, and superficially right; I suspect most adults who believe it stopped paying attention to what women actually do around that age. If you realize it’s just a phase, that helps.

Also, give serious thought to everything Shaenon said. I was a Nice Guy™ at your age, albeit a relatively benign version. I was positive that women who weren’t responding to my (I thought) clear unspoken cues were cruelly rejecting me. If they weren’t with anyone it especially hurt because they were (in my mind) choosing no one over me. That was all in my head, and realizing that helped a lot.

Is NWO pulling the Working Class Hero routine again? I’d be surprised if he doesn’t ask to see our hands…

jumbofish said:

mral,

“Trolling or not you still are a little shithead because you did all that to hurt people. You won’t be getting sympathy from me…”

x2

I don’t give a flying FUCK why someone says the kind of violent, misogynist, bigoted, hateful bullshit that MRAL said. It’s not like he said it once, or twice, or even 100 times. He’s posted here HUNDREDS of times. Frankly, if he didn’t actually mean any of it, it only makes it worse to me. What a loser asshole, but then we already knew that, didn’t we?

MRAL: I want to second or third or whatever the recommendations to see your doctor. Or a doctor. I have the happyfuntime depression/anxiety combo pack, and what you’re describing sounds an awful lot like what I went through before I got medicated. I call it my ‘worry rat,’ this constant stream of ‘what if’ and horrible thoughts (like a rodent in one of those wheels) that sent me to a really, really bad place. Please, if you don’t think you can talk to your current doc, or you don’t have one, there should be an equivalent to my Community Mental Health in your area that will help you find someone. You don’t have to feel like this.