The regulars at PUAhate.com – we’ve met them before — are a strange and bitter bunch. Most seem to be self-loathing so-called “incels” who blame their lack of romantic and sexual success on their average or below-average looks. Rejecting the basic premise of the pickup artist crowd – that average guys can transform themselves into suave lotharios by mastering manipulative pickup formulas – the PUAhate regulars tend to be true believers in what they somewhat pretentiously call “looks theory,” the odd and obviously untrue notion that women only date men with “male model” looks.
As one PUAhater put it recently:
PUA makes you think that all your problems are because of your personality/behaviour – i.e. things you can control. So when you keep failing, it means that YOU are fucking up and doing things wrong
the reality is that many of us just lost the genetic lottery. we are ugly, the wrong race, the wrong height etc, and that fucked us up. there is NOTHING we can do about it
So, naturally, the PUAhaters spend a lot of their time jealous of tall, good-looking men for their supposed monopoly on the women of the world — whom they also hate.
But the strange thing is that the PUAhaters pretty much hate everyone else as well. They get angry when guys they consider ugly score “hot chicks.” They get angry when guys who are good-looking but not male models get attention from “really hot girls.” And so on, and so on, and so on.
Indeed, many of the regulars seem to walk around in a perpetual state of rage, angry at each and every man who’s managed to pair up with a woman, not to mention the women as well.
One regular recently described his “day from hell” to his comrades:
To start the day I saw a couple where it was an average White guy with an OBESE Asian girl. They were walking around acting like they were trying to prove shit. LMAO. I wanted to kick the guy in the fucking nuts for dating that landwhale. If you’re going to use the racial advantage, at least date a girl who is under 300lbs. Later I go to the gym and see the same tall guys I usually do. Even if I had a good face, how the fuck do you compete with guys who are fucking 6’4”?
Then at the gym there’s this good looking White guy there talking to this Asian dude about how Asian girls are easy and how they approach him. To make things worse after that these fucking frat douchebags come in with their girlfriends to show off . Then to cap off the day a girl I used to know from freshman year walks right past me without even saying anything. I used to fucking live next door to this bitch and now she doesn’t even say anything and acts like a pretentious cunt. She’s an Indian girl dating a White dude lmao. Days like today make you wonder why you even still try in the first place.
Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, most of those posting on PUAhate don’t actually seem to be ugly by anyone’s standards but their own, at least judging from the pictures of themselves they sometimes post to the site, which reveal them to be mostly average-looking guys, with some of the regulars even quite conventionally handsome.
But evidently they would rather believe that they have “lost the genetic lottery” rather than face a more obvious explanation for why the girls don’t like them: because they’re shallow, self-obsessed assholes who hate themselves and hate women and radiate their bitterness from every pore. (And some are even creepier than this, like this pedophile – sorry, ephebophile – who’s angry at me personally because unlike him I don’t chase after 15-year-olds. Link NSFW.)
The PUAhaters often talk about getting surgeries to “correct” their supposed genetic flaws. They would do far better to spend that money on therapy.
Pecunium — fuck, I live right on the um, suburb-New Haven border (I don’t really want to publicize my location that much, and you know already anyways) — I mean, I’m a stone’s throw from non-who neighborhoods, my brother went to tech school and was one of a handful of white kids. I guess I’m more surprised that they just walked out because around here, your stepfather would’ve gotten the third degree. The “you must have criminal ties” seems to override the “fuck those people, I don’t care”. How sad is it that I’m surprised that they weren’t more racist?
As for my school, well, I was the president of the gay-straight alliance — two of the people I was in GSA with are trans* men (and then there’s me who actually managed to look androgynous at 17 *sigh*). We had a fair number of openly non-Christian students, including, unfortunately, a couple very nice Muslims who got shit after 9/11 (note, I say very nice here because I rode the bus with a brother and sister who’re Muslim, he kept to himself, she was a social butterfly…and then 9/11 happened…) Edge of a major city we had all sorts of races and ethnicities. I’m just not used to it being a big deal, the bigots were notable assholes, not the popular kids. Hell, some of the most popular theatre stars were gay.
Liberal New England! So yeah, cops are getting more ass, but general society? Yeah, we’re improving…
Oh yeah, if you have problems with transhumanism it is not the comic for you 😀 but as a teenager I was into that sort of thing, and I still like the idea even if it’s totally impractical and problematic. So it is definitely a ymmv situation.
Like with cell phones in mysteries and noir! (I’m specifically thinking of Pineapple Express here, not sure if it happens in other modern mysteries)
(also my autocorrect apparently knows that Pineapple Express is a proper noun. But not enter the dragon? Or grandmas boy or fear and loathing in Las Vegas or get him to the Greek or the royal tennenbaums or citizen Kane or sour diesel or grand daddy purp… Just Pineapple Express. I have never written Pineapple Express on this phone before now. It’s fine leaving pineapple and express uncapitalused but not when you put them together! It also auto corrected “uncapitalized” to uncapitalused, which I was not aware was a word.
This has been your daily exploration of autocorrect quirks.)
Gillian: My personal rule for judging sci-fi is, “Are the people still people?”*
If I can’t relate to the society that’s portrayed arising from the tech changes, then all the golly-gee-whiz in the world isn’t gonna carry me through the story.
*****
From this point on, it’s a rant. Feel free to skip.
For instance, the graphic novel, Surrogates, on which was based the Bruce Willis movie (which I haven’t seen), was full of fail for me, because while I liked the idea (we develop remote-control robo-bodies), the cultural impact just was too damned implausible.
I had no problem with the notion that almost everyone who had a “surrie” had a ‘work model’ that was a white male (especially if they were a corporate executive)–I’m fully aware of how the patriarchy would make that advantageous. But with the sheer number of them (something like 90% of all people have a surrie), the notion that most folks wouldn’t have two or three (to have that kind of market-penetration, your pricing is going to be somewhere in the range of home computers to cheap cars), and these alternate models are gonna be all over the place. You’d see people walking around looking like the aliens from Avatar, and others looking like the aliens from Alien. You’re going to have models with heavy tattoo/piercing. You’ll get a lot of folks going the trans-racial, trans-gender route, pretty much for fetishistic purposes (this is barely touched on in the graphic novel).
And sure, there’s a reasonable conclusion to that people would be desensitized to violence, but there’s also a lot of probability that they’d be desensitized to danger–I could see someone offering the use of cheap surries for people who wanted to jump off a building, or set themselves on fire, or whatever.
And then, when the police and firefighters and paramedics all go bye-bye because they were septugenarians using surries, there’s virtually no civil unrest–everyone just becomes a bunch of sweeties who care about their neighbors again.
@yoyo
Thank you 😀
@CL
thanks for the more chiropratcer info 🙂 I admit, I have a negative reaction rating towards physical therapists because my sister always talks about hers being bad, and the one I tried for my back was reeeaaaallly condescending and didn’t listen to anything I said about my body >:(
re:chiropracters: I think I actually have met one who did all of that ‘it can cure anything stuff’ Kind of OT-ish, but I was having a hard time remembering b/c I only saw her once 😛 wasn’t going back there again.
@joanimal
*squees* that pic is adorable!
@bigmomma
Nope, I finally saw his comment 🙂 Just had to sleep.
Okay 🙂 You don’t have to if you don’t want to (obviously) but if you do, I await your response 😀
@KathleenB
Sorry to hear about your pain 🙁 Internet hugs if you want. I hope you feel better soon. Sadly I don’t have any tips though.
@howardbann1ster
I snark those too 😉 Though I haven’t seen dr who, so I can’t say for that show.
re: the rest of sci-fi
yeah, I’m pretty bad at science, so um…I kind of didn’t follow that conversation much 😉 doesn’t help that it’s morning and I have a headache
@gillian
Sorry to hear about your bad mood. 🙁 Internet hugs if you want.
@howardbann1ster
O_O that’s a lot of coffee.
….there’s a story in Dresden Codak?
(sorry, the style of it makes my brain hurt–I could never read more than one strip at a time, and rarely managed to enjoy doing it)
Hey, science fiction and webcomics–how about that Spacetrawler?
I cut back to those four cups of coffee.
And now I’ve had to cut down from the six cans of soda I’d follow it up with in the afternoon.
But I have a friend who drinks a whole pot of coffee to start his morning, so I don’t feel like I have a problem.
Whoa man, that Spacetrawler punched me right in the gut with the big twist.
I know, right?
And then character arcs! Every single character arc!
SO MUCH SPOILERS ALL OVER THE PLACE CLIMBING IN YOUR SHIP AND EATING YOUR BRAIN AND BEING CUTE AND GIGGLING AAAAAAAAAA
“But I have a friend who drinks a whole pot of coffee to start his morning, so I don’t feel like I have a problem.”
I’m most of the way through my first French press of the day, there will be another one later…ok, maledict it is…
😀
I don’t know how you guys can handle all that caffeine O_o Most coffee I can have a day is 2, maybe three cups (normally just 1) More for soda. 3-4. Anyways, I thought I drank a lot of caffeine XD Caffeine buddies?
Howard: It started as a bunch of one-offs, of varying styles. Then he latched onto the Kimiko Ross character, who had a few early one-shots of her own, which then grew into the basis of the ongoing plotline, starting with HOB. And it’s not for everyone, but I adore it.
And I just want to add that the women sailor kissing photo is one of my favorites of the last few years–so much power in such a simple image. This is the other:
http://merryshannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lady_Liberty_kissing_Lady_Justice.jpg
@freemage
That’s a totally awesome picture. 🙂
Okay, am I the only person who wished that the artist had taken off Lady Justice’s blindfold? I mean, I know that it’s Justice and all, but I just think I’d like the image even more if she’d dropped her sword, and had her other arm wrapped around Liberty, with her blindfold dangling from her fingers.
Just me most likely… 😉
@gillian
No, not that you mention it, that sounds better 😀
great, now I’m getting the desire to draw some lady justice and lady liberty shipping. What you guys make me do….;)
Argenti: I suspect they weren’t quite as bad as they might have been because it was to be assumed my mother was white. There was also the question of just what the owner of the property (we had a “mother in law” in the back) might have done/said. They, of course, had no way to know he was a different step-father of mine (my mother’s second husband… my life has always seemed normal to me, but others say it’s sort of complicated). I was in Cleveland before I moved to Bell Gardens, and it was always a mixed black/white community/school I was in, so this was sort of strange to me.
Falconer: I learned what a .22 sounds like when I was still in Ohio. I learned to shoot at 5. The real difference is learing the difference between incoming, and outgoing, and the intermediate done of “not coming my way”. I didn’t really get those until I was in the Army. The really strange thing to try to explain is the comforting sound of random gunfire aimed at nothing; or the mental easing of, “outbound M-16, and far away: not my problem” before driftig back to sleep when one is awakened to unexpected gunfire.
I hear you on the “badass at the table” thing. I was always more restrained in starting fights when I was playing D&D than my fellows were. I never really associated it with being more aware of how that sort of thing works (I’d moved to a white flight suburb by my middle teens). The local “toughs” always amused me more than scared me.
re Coffee: I am SO glad I don’t seem to have an addictive personality. When I was machining I might drink 2-3 pots a shift. On the weekends I didn’t really drink any (unless I went out to eat). Then one week I stopped. I didn’t drink any from the time we left Kuwait until I got to Landstuhl (taster’s choice isn’t coffee). These days I can’t really drink anything but turkish/espresso without my guts being chewed up. I do miss the friend of mine with whom I lived from 2005-2008; we’d fire up a couple of pots a day ans shoot the breeze. When he went on dialysis that stopped. Ave atque vale, amicus
Ok, I love both those images. Fuck the really rapey WWII picture (FFS it’s obvious he just grabbed her), those two women should be that famous kiss, not the WWII one. And the Statue of Liberty kissing lady liberty is, well, one of those “why’d no one think of that sooner?” things.
I think the problem I have with the Lady Liberty/Justice photo is that the blindfolded half of the pair is the one being dipped.
WARL WARL WARL
“…others say it’s sort of complicated”
Including me! I’m sure we’ve had that convesation before! That aside, yeah, I can see how them having been already attempting to help a white woman might lessen the racism some. Assuming they didn’t have a fit about racial mixing *bangs head on wall* Maybe I’m just too steeped in the racism from my family.
And yeah, I’d prefer the dippee not be blindfolded, but it still looks more consensual than that (actual photograph) WWII one. But blindfolds don’t automatically trigger “not possibly consented to” in my brain, since people do consent to blindfolds as sexytime play. …I’m over thinking it.
Argenti: It’s worse than that. It was always known he just grabbed her; it was presented as, “spontaneous”. What came out last year is that he was working the crowd; apparently trying to be photographed.
He apparently grabbed/kissed several women, and when the photo was taken he stopped.
Creepy x 10.
@Argenti Absolutely!
@pencuncium
O_O ew. My dislike for this guy keeps growing….
Yeah, when I really looked at that picture, it became obvious his arm is holding her head in place.
Didn’t some genius have the bright idea of getting those two back together for an anniversary reenactment?
@Pecunium: Come to think of it, I don’t play macho jackasses who try to start stuff at the gaming table, but I am blase about the amount of violence my characters are capable of. Just in the last year I’ve played a D&D cleric focused on buffing and blasting rather than healing, and a gangster armed with a Thompson who was seriously considering using it on some dock thugs trying to boost our supplies by intimidation (I decided it wasn’t the right time; in the next scene they came after us with a Maxim on a boat and it was definitely time).
And about assessing gunshots: I’m sure that GIs in WWII got to be experts at discerning what was harassment shelling and when a big barrage was coming. Tell the truth, I’m very glad being able to tell what weapons fire I have to worry about is not in my skill set.
@falconer
O_O… gah.
I can’t really contribute much to this conversation except disgust. 🙁