On Return of Kings, the internet’s premier lady-hating garbage site, one of the regular contributors is trying his hand at philosophy again. It’s not going very well.
Max Roscoe, who describes himself as “an aspiring philosopher king,” has decided to take on what he sees as the evils of “modern liberal democracy.”
As he sees it, “the western culture today destroys everything it touches,” creating
weak men, shrill, out of shape, and damaged women, a decrepit culture, and declining values.
His number one complaint? That “western culture” has destroyed Asians. Not through cultural imperialism or anything like that. Roscoe thinks that Asians in Asia are fine. But the Asians he encounters in the west are something else entirely.
Asians are naturally thin, petite, and healthy—IN ASIA. … However, when Asians move to the west and adopt our culture, diet, and lifestyle, they become overweight, slutty, and often mutilate their bodies and experiment with gender fluidity.
That’s right. Western culture is evil because it makes hot Asian babes into genderqueer fatties.
It angers me every time I see a fat Asian, because I know how difficult it is for Asians to work against their biology to become fat.
ROSCOE ANGRY! ROSCOE SMASH!
Don’t worry, western women! Roscoe hates you gals too.
Roscoe makes his case against American women by contrasting a photo of sorority girls from the early 1970s, in which “all are smiling, thin, with long hair, in skirts or dresses with heels,” with a photo of an extremely obese woman wearing a stars-and-stripes bikini, which Roscoe seems to have taken from a YouTube video with the slightly awkward title “BEST FAT People Fail Compilation – Obese People Falling Down Fails.”
To aspiring philosopher-king Roscoe, this is all the evidence he needs to prove “that the quality of women offered today in the West is abysmal.”
Indeed, in Roscoe’s eyes, domestically produced women are made so badly that American men should probably seek out foreign imports.
If you haven’t been abroad within the last year, plan a trip now, if for no other reason than to see what is possible. We do not have to accept the low quality females we are being offered here.
Roscoe does not limit his critique of Western liberal democracy to the Fat Chick Problem. He is also critical of non-fat women who do things to their bodies (and minds) that Roscoe does not approve of.
[I]t angers me when I see a thin, kind, young woman who has pierced and mutilated her body with graffiti and shrapnel, and has taken up the cause for feminism. Without a strong, patriarchal system to guide her, she becomes an enemy of civilization itself.
Apparently Roosh requires all Return of Kings writers to refer to piercings as “shrapnel.”
But there is more wrong with modern Western culture than its tendency to produce fat chicks and tattooed feminists. Roscoe is also angry that:
- Westerners dance like Miley Cyrus and/or “Elaine Benice” [sic] from Seinfeld.
- “American Millennial men” have become “shallow, silly, weak, vapid, directionless, and boring.”
- The “the profit-at-all-costs fascist system” of modern capitalism makes most jobs pretty sucky.
- Young couples no longer litter or make out in public because they’re all “play[ing] on their smartphones.”
Ok, I admit I don’t quite get that last point. So let’s back up and try it again.
Complaining that smartphones have led to a world bereft of “physical and emotional intimacy, save for the actual moment of banging your partner,” Roscoe posts two pictures to show what has apparently gone wrong.
In the first, from 1967, young people make out on park benches in New York’s Tompkins Square Park, surrounded by litter.
In the second photo, meant to represent a “Millennial couple on a typical date, 2016,” a couple sitting on a patch of grass check their phones. No litter is visible. Smartphones bad, litter good!
CHECKMATE FEMINISTS!
I guess it’s kind of hard to work up a powerful critique of Western Liberal Democracy if the cornerstone of your philosophy is NO FAT CHICKS.
@jamesworkshop
Aren’t women the weaker sex according to these stooges? Now women are so deadly all they have to do is have tattoos and piercings to destroy civilization. Can these fools please make up their damn minds and get something remotely close to a coherent, consistent set of principles.
But if it’s consistent, it can be proved false! Only by including inconsistent premises can it be rendered immune to logic.
(of course that makes it invalid, but they’re sciencemasters, so they can science it to make that go away I’m sure)
Cheerful anecdote! My analytics research lab is about 50%-50% male to female, and we are all one big happy family! And the one who’s working on conversational AI with understanding of deep meaning? Kick-ass african woman with a brain made of laser beams. (and alcohol. Probably some alcohol in there).
If general AI is coming, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s going to be feminist. Just ask Tay!
(Also amusing. the following png is what comes up on a google imagesearch for “Everpeach”:
http://ih1.redbubble.net/image.93646255.2788/ap,550×550,16×12,1,transparent,t.png
Appropriate!)
Never thought I’d read that as a post headline! I get it, and that’s fine, but … please confine your urination to places where it doesn’t have to be seen or smelled! Otherwise I’m all for water conservation.
(Not meaning to imply that you’d be so uncouth! Just, uh, other people can be, and I wish they wouldn’t)
(I have a similar dream of owning a positive-eco-impact home. Garden beds and high oxygenation plants instead of sterile grass lawns, apple trees, biological water filtration system, compost chain, haybale walls, recycled materials. I want a hobbit hole :c)
To quote Dustinzeit:
@Sevenofmine
It does come off as egocentric – as if the world quite literally revolves around the person and their sentiments.
There’s definitely a sense of projection as well, given the whole “peacocking” phenomenon with guys – who dress up in fancy clothing with the assumption it’ll attract women. So, of course, they assume everything women do with their appearance is just to attract men. All while not realizing that women, like guys, might just dress a certain way because it’s comfortable for them inbetween dressing up a bit more…which they also do for themselves, more than others.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Yep!
It’s why I take issue when people act as if having tattoos is a sign of defect, than as a completely valid form of expression.
@W.W.T.H.:
They’re fucking shitheads, each and every one of ’em…
… Which is why sumo wrestling hasn’t really taken off in Japan?
Unlike RoK writers, who are shallow, silly, weak, vapid, directionless, boring and terrible human beings.
It angers this piece of shit that people get fat? Oh, the humanity!
The people at Return of Krap are so predictable. Shallow, insecure, racist, and sexist all in one. Charming.
Regarding the whole idea that women don’t ever do anything with their appearance for themselves, and only do it for men…
My roommate basically told me as much once, and when I tried to explain to him that a woman looking sexy in a club might just be doing it because she likes feeling sexy and looking good, and how that is NOT an invitation to play ‘the game’.
… he told me we’d agree to disagree.
He’s a really nice guy, but he decided several years ago to be one of those ‘devil’s advocate’ guys that questions your every statement, whether it requires questioning or not. It’s exhausting, and I don’t know if it’s that attitude or his friends, but for some godawful reason he reads PUA/red pill shit on reddit. I think he started out being ‘ironic’ and then ended up believing some of that garbage.
I mean, I think he’s perfectly good to his girlfriend and he’s not interested in casual sex or picking people up, so I suspect he’s completely harmless. But it is a little annoying that I’m not allowed to talk about anything remotely feminism related when he’s in the house because otherwise I have to spend 2 hours explaining and defending myself.
Like I honestly appreciate having my beliefs questioned, it helps me figure out exactly what I think and know if those beliefs are defensible or not. However, sometimes, in my own goddamn home, I’d just like to be able to voice my disgust with the MRA habit of calling women ‘females’, for instance without having to explain, defend, and give examples.
edit: and another friend of mine just commented on this photo: https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/719239858087182336
With a comment about riding her like a tauntaun … I mean I know he was just trying to be funny but that is so unnecessary.
Sometimes it just hurts that otherwise good guys, people I like, say things without thinking, or just, for some reason or other don’t realize that maybe they should just like, keep that thought to themselves.
So your roommate has silenced you with his sealioning.
I have to disagree that he’s “a really nice guy.” Nice is as nice does, and silencing you is not nice.
@A Space Alpaca:
Ah, the ultimate cop-out for cowards!
Which is why I dislike contrarians – they seem more concerned with just going against the grain than anything else. They don’t give a shit about truth or facts.
Doing things “ironically” is yet another convenient smoke-screen for people to espouse horrible opinions, yet act as if they are not beholden to them…because it’s “ironic”!
Weird how many of those people who do certain things “ironically” end up doing it sincerely down the line anyway…
@Policy of Madness:
Yep! Another disingenuous dickhead who lacks the self-awareness to know they’re disingenuous.
Not all of them of course, but this site certainly likes to showcase the best examples.
I was in Kuala Lumpur a few months ago and I saw this beautiful woman with long bleached blond hair and the most amazing tattoos all over her left leg and on her chest too. She was Malaysian. She was dropped her friends off at the airport. These people know nothing about the countries they fetishize. Apparently being an individual is something they cannot understand. Also Asian cultures they cannot understand because they think it’s all some fucking Bruce Lee film or something…
A Space Alpaca, how do you think your roommate would react if you told him that you won’t be silenced in your own home and that he is the one who needs to keep his opinions to himself? That “agreeing to disagree” means that he stops arguing, so if he really wants to agree to disagree he needs to stfu from now on because that’s what that means?
@PoM
That was one of my earliest lessons in consent. The cat my family had when I was a kid was very particular about when and how she wanted attention, and anytime us kids got bit or scratched our parents always took kitty’s side: “Well, what did you do to provoke her?”
@ThatBear
They often miss that kind of subtle nuance; it’s like the regressive assholes who love Star Trek because of the gadgets, and are amazed when someone points out the blatant progressive elements.
Which isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of crap that pandered to Puppyish sensibilites too, especially literary sci fi. There’s always been a major right-libertarian contingent in sf, and the 70s and 80s were their heyday.
@Policy of Madness:
In my experience, most people who demand that they and the person they’re arguing with should “agree to disagree” is just a way of saying “I cannot possibly defend my indefensible position because then I’d have egg all over my face and look bad, and I’d rather avoid that than taking responsibility for what I stated – because I lack a spine.”
Yeah, darn that liberal democracy and the female citizens it raises that don’t need a “patriarchal system to guide” them. What’s a misogynist to do when women no longer stand to be treated like mentally inferior children.
If only these people would go build and live in their own private compound together where yucky girls can’t come near them and risk infecting them with their liberal, feminist cooties.
Sometimes I do simply “agree to disagree” with certain of my friends, but it’s in the interest of just not riling each other up over something we know we’re not going to change each others’ minds about. However, when you do that, you have to LET. IT. GO. You can’t keep coming back to the same topic and antagonizing each other over it.
I’m just saying that it can be useful for preserving friendships but there are definitely right ways and wrong ways to deploy that particular rhetoric.
That all said, your roommate does NOT sound like “a nice guy”, and neither does Mr. Inappropriate Sex Joke Hurr Hurr. Time & a place for that kind of shit, y’know? Genuinely nice people – men and women – can read a room and know when to stfu.
@Spaaaaaaace Alpaca
I’m going to second (or third or something) the voices of “not actually a nice guy”. Sort of, anyways. He just seems terminally unaware of other peoples’ situations. He may need some help to understand the difference between “contrarian” and “rational”, because “contrarian” is sort of more a synonym for “tiresome windbag”.
I’m not really convinced that irony is a thing! It’s sort of like how a joke is often used to soften an otherwise hurtful or difficult statement. Irony feels the same to me.
I used to have a friend who was “ironically” anti-semetic. Constant jew-bashing jokes, comments about how awesome and stylish the nazis were, gas chamber jokes. It was horrible, and any time we confronted him about it he said he was just joking.
We parted ways abruptly when a pocket knife came out during a heated discussion. I haven’t seen him since.
Thunderf00t (and fellow YT sciencebros): Anita is a scammer, she just wants to get money from stupid feminists! *Sets up a Patreon account and makes 9 zillion filler videos to get money from stupid MRAs*
I know, it’s obvious this is what is happening, and it’s been said already, but this has to be one of the more frustrating example of MRA hypocrisy for me.
@NickNameNick
My parents and I have agreed to disagree when it comes to politics and most economic matters. I enforce this hard. My dad sometimes just can’t help himself and starts to bitch about that damned wasteful government, and when I start to say something he points out that we agreed to disagree and therefore I can’t say anything back.
You’d better believe that I say something back, and it includes some stuff about how he isn’t actually allowed to say his piece and then forbid me from saying mine.
Agreeing to disagree does work, but the meat of it is that neither party talks about the point of disagreement anymore. People like my dad, and it sounds like A Space Alpaca’s roommate, don’t really get that and have to be trained to understand what that phrase means. Said training requires aggression and confrontation, however, which is not necessarily easy for any given person to summon on command, so it isn’t a cure-all.
@calmdown
You see because of their penises they’re allowed to have a free pass on whoever and whatever they dislike. It doesn’t matter that they turned the image of atheists into basically as amoral as all the propoganda from evangelicals, what matters is, well, whatever they feel like at the moment. Which typically if it isn’t lying, it’s nothing else.
@A Space Alpaca
uuuuuuugh. I can’t handle people like this, and adding the MRA BS makes them so much worse. I probably could not be as patient with him as you have. You have every right to be annoyed! Since I have mostly geeky male friends, sometimes “um,actually/citation needed” mansplainer comes into a conversation and I’ll say something like “Did you know that Maya Rudolph’s Mom sang “Loving You?” And then “hmmm” and out comes the smartphone to check Wikipedia to see if I’m right or not. And then “Oh, ok.”(surprise, I know things!) but then they LET IT GO. That drives me crazy and that’s not even close to what you’re dealing with!
@Scildfreja
.
Oh my jeez! Good call! I’m so sorry some of you have such terrible friends and roomates.
@Dreemr:
That’s the problem in my case – they don’t let the subject go, but they’ll still use that phrase whenever someone comes along to call out their bullshit.
They want to complain about something and make as many unsubstantiated claims as they want, but they can’t stand the idea of having to defend those points against anyone who might disagree and may be better informed on the subject.
It’s also incredibly arrogant to assume that a conversation ends because you cried foul and decided to take your ball home, and that others are somehow obligated to respect such.
@Policy of Madness:
I suppose, after so many conversations where it’s been used erroneously, I just don’t have the energy to tolerate it anymore or to try correcting those who use it improperly.
Besides, it doesn’t help some of the subjects are things I couldn’t possible “agree to disagree” upon. When it’s applied to most political issues, where there’s a tangible effect on real people at hand – it just disgusts me because its so dismissive of its importance. Someone tried doing that with me on the subject of online harassment being a valid issue…as if we were just arguing over what flavor of ice cream was better.
Sorry, but no, I can’t “agree to disagree” on that. Ever. I’m going to keep on disagreeing and criticizing those who downplay or white-wash the subject no matter how much they acting diplomatic about it.
@calmdown – it’s an annoying example of enormous hypocrisy, but I prefer to think of it like: they owe their livelihood to Anita Sarkeesian! I just think that would really piss them off on some level.
I mean they must already realize how disingenuous they are being, right?
Thunderf00t always seems a particularly odd example to me. I have never been a fan of his, in particular, but as far as I know he made his mark, such as it is, by mocking and “debating” Creationists. How he went from that down the rabbit hole of not JUST anti-feminism but the very narrow and particular antifeminism that revolves around Anita Sarkeesian is kind of breathtaking to me.
What truly astounds me is, Anita Sarkeesian isn’t even a particularly deep feminist! I think her videos are well-done and do a good job of instructing in Feminism 101, which is exactly what she set out to do. I don’t know why they latched onto her.
Maybe not! I “ironically” watch bad movies. Like silly Lifetime thrillers and really bad straight to DVD/Netflix horror. I don’t even really pretend to watch these ironically much anymore because I’m not all that ashamed. It’s a good way to keep myself entertained while getting to turn my brain off and not think too much. As a worrier and over analyzer, I think watching bad movies and TV is actually a fairly hobby. If I were more concerned about others opinions, I’d be more defensive about it and always insist it’s ironic. I don’t think I’m the only one who needs a little mindless entertainment with cheesy movies either. Or The Room wouldn’t be so widely seen!
@WWTH
Wow. I was looking for a quote to point out how much this applies to me as well, but then I realized I’d have to quote your entire post. I’m so the same, and I love MSt3k and such as well. I think it’s part of being anxious, it feels good to just stop worrying and enjoy things, just for 90 minute or so. 🙂
Maybe it doesn’t fit the exact definition of irony, but I can’t think a better word that means “I know it’s kind of silly but I’m enjoying it for it’s silliness?”
Yeah, I think people get genuine enjoyment out of the silliness of bad movies but they feel guilty about it. So they pretend it’s irony when it’s really not.
For sure, I think %100 irony is pretty rare. I can’t imagine watching an entire bad movie on it’s own just for the sake of irony. I’d have to be getting some real enjoyment out of it at some level. For me it’s also it’s a social thing, since I’ve watched all kinds of bad movies and had a great time if friends were there and we made fun of it together.
I should tell the story about the guy who slept on the couch in the nude all the time, and peed in the fridge crisper drawer while on E. And I couldn’t move or leave or anything cause it was company-owned apartments!
I basically stayed locked in my bedroom the whole time outside of work, and only came out when he wasn’t around.
Ugh. Ugh.
I briefly liked his videos. Then Elevatorgate happened and I realized that he wasn’t reasonable – he was just a predator whose “rationalism” is just force-of-insult. If there’s anything I learned from him, it’s that rationality has to be inwards first, before you can hope to critique anyone else.
I know! It breaks my heart to see how much of a lightning rod she is for these people. She’s just a well-meaning woman who has tried to bring some needed perspective on the video games industry, which is ironically exactly what video game geeks have wanted for years – to be taken seriously!
(Though as has been said before, they don’t want to be taken seriously – they want to be praised)
http://38.media.tumblr.com/8e48b5738c64f22e97fc68f7c2958cd2/tumblr_nkyvmbA7xz1s2wio8o1_250.gif
@calmdown
I have always been frustrated by YouTube. TF has around 500k subscribers, TheAmazingAtheist has around 800k. Lesser antifeminists like ArmouredSkeptic, Aurini, and Sargon have around 20k. Karen Straughen has, like what, 200k. I still cannot fully understand why antifeminism is so popular on YouTube and Reddit and why those particular websites attract so many douchebags.
We know what the facts are, and on the whole scientific literature (from both “hard” and “soft” sciences) really doesn’t support antifeminism. Of course there are nuances in the information, that men’s issues are indeed valid, and there are feminists who are recalcitrant or disingenuous ideologues. That is the nature of politics in all ages and regions of the world.
But what shocks me is how all the antifeminists on YouTube and Reddit seem almost impervious to facts. They can swallow a Thunderf00t video whole and completely endorse it, ignoring TF’s blatant fallacies and pandering, but they throw temper tantrums a feminist like Kristi Winters or Laci Green makes a video with sources to back up their statements. Even Anita Sarkeesian, whose reputation has been poisoned so badly, did well-researched videos. She delivered what she promised. I remember YouTubers like HannibaltheVictor who actually studied archeology and anthropology and he would cite a lot of literature for his videos. Not just articles and stats. Actual literature!
Point is, many of the antifeminists just did not consider the facts at all. They just keep aggressively pushing the same talking points over again. Some are a little smarter and try to use studies and stats though. But from what I’ve seen, antifeminists seem to be abandoning this practice more and more. They seem to almost to be superstitious in some way.
It’s almost like they didn’t drop the central beliefs that support the fundamentalism they claim to be against/backed out from.
@dreemr
Exactly. Anita is not a big feminist icon or pioneering scholar like Judith Butler or Kimberle Crenshaw. All she really does is popularize feminist forms of critical theory by applying it to popular culture. But the rabid antifeminists have made her into some sort of head of the Feminist Illuminati where evil Cultural Marxists hold council in Pandaemonium to plot to send all good gamerbros to Feminist Death Camps.
I think that people who successfully produce 101 level stuff are actually the most threatening to reactionaries. The right wing freaks out about Michael Moore a lot too. He’s good at telling a compelling story, but his documentaries and books are very 101 level progressivism.
It’s the stuff that’s not really detailed and academic, but told well and simply that’s the most likely to snag the fence sitters. So that’s what’s the scariest to these people.
I know, I just cannot get the whole atheism/science = anti-feminist thing! I am not a scientist, but I assume most atheists believe in evolution, (which I guess is maybe where some of the evo-psych BS comes from?) But, according to anti-feminism, most females are evolved to make babies(which are mostly a burden), and to be a burden to men. Under the most general principles of evolution (again, I am not an expert) how could a species(modern humans) realistically survive for so long if %50 of their population was as fucking useless as most MRAs seem to believe? Wouldn’t we have died out eons ago?
@wwth
Their biggest worry is becoming irrelevant like the bigots of yesteryear.
@Three Snakes:
The way many of them yell “ANDREA DWORKIN!” as some kind of “gotcha!” against feminists – as well as treating some rando on a comment section as far more important than they actually are – their knowledge on feminism is absolutely abysmal.
They don’t care to become better informed, because they’d rather have a convenient strawman conceived from their imagination. It’d certainly explain why they do such a poor job actually debating real people who happen to be feminists, whose arguments are far more nuanced than the one-dimensional punching bags they could beat their fists against and then pat themselves on the back for knocking around.
J.J. Abrams?
Damon Lindeloff?
I also agree that there’s no such thing as liking/doing something ironically. A lot of people can’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between liking something and something being good, so I think “I watch it ironically” fills the void of “I get legitimate enjoyment out of this while nevertheless acknowledging its lack of objective quality.”
“Guilty pleasure” is one term to use, but I don’t think that’s accurate – you don’t necessarily feel guilty for liking it – and prefer “frivolous fun,” myself.
It’s really, really obvious that MRAs who call themselves philosophers have never actually studied philosophy. Writing about what you personally think is not philosophy; it’s an essay or a blog posting.
http://i1064.photobucket.com/albums/u375/erica_cross2/12fb9c0f13af4ba5110f41ff5a14369f_zpssnafven3.jpg
(Not true of myself…yet)
@IP @PoM – Sorry for the late reply.
It was a true drive-by posting.
(We were replumbing yesterday o_o )
re: sleepy kitty: She’s a funny cat. We have three and she’s been the generally least friendly (though is a great mouser), with the exception that she’s preternaturally patient with small children.
Until recently, she could take or leave adults. If she came over to you, it was like, “Ohmygawd! [Name] came over to me!…Oh…oh…she wants me to shake the food because it’s not situated correctly in the bowl…”
She’s pushing 12, though, and for the past year or so she’s been a lap slut.
“Oh…you’re sitting? And warm? Yes, that will help my aches nicely.”
If you see me posting a bunch, about half the time it’s because she’s claimed my lap and I don’t want to disturb her by getting up.
Sorry, I drive-by posted a bit myself there!
You guys are right that describing my roommate as a really nice guy at this juncture may be … a stretch.
To be clear though, he doesn’t really bring this stuff up ever, it’s just that sometimes I want to talk about something I read that day or something that got posted here with my man-thing and if my roommate is home, I either don’t feel comfortable bringing it up at all, whether I’m talking to him or not, or he’ll jump in and say something.
I really can’t agree to disagree on the topic of women meaning it when they say no (which was the catalyst to the women always dress sexy for men conversation) but I also don’t feel like hating one of the people I live with so I’ve just kinda shut up about it.
He also isn’t home THAT often, he’s there maybe 3 nights a week on a busy week, pays half the rent and sleeps at his girlfriend’s place so all in all it’s a pretty good deal, he’s just really obnoxious sometimes.
I just have a really hard time accepting that he believes some of these terrible things because we’ve been friends for a decade and I just really expected better from him. The decade of friendship and the fact that we still have a lot of fun gaming together and talking about other things is why I am still calling him a nice guy, whether he deserves it or not.
Inappropriate joke guy… He honestly isn’t a jerk, he’s just a gamer dude in his 30s and probably needs to have someone point out when his comments are inappropriate just because he’s used to people around him not thinking it’s inappropriate. I didn’t feel up to pointing it out yesterday but I do often jump in and ask people not to say things like that, and for the most part, if they give the faintest crap about me, they listen.
@Calmdown:
See? If The Hiddle says it – it must be true! 😀
@ThatBear
Heck, I remember from the original Buck Rogers book (Armageddon: 2419, published in 1928/1929), in their first meeting Buck attempts to be his dashing chivalric self to Wilma Deering, and gets told off by her as she points out that she is a decorated commander in the armed forces and he just put them both in danger with his attempts at ‘helping’.
(Of course, the rather blatant ‘Yellow Peril’ aspects of the book were more than a little problematic.)
@A Space Alpaca,
I really understand that. There is a difference between someone who’s falling down the MRA-hole out of ignorance and a touch of selfishness, and someone who’s steeped in that toxicity, and it’s really hard to condemn someone you know and like and have fun with for it. Nor is it your responsibility to rescue him – we all have a certain amount of effort we can put out into the world, and perhaps he’s at that limit. He gets to be responsible for himself, after all.
I hope that he gets out of the path he’s on, or at the least that he doesn’t go in too deep. Appeal to your shared friendship, if you can; I find that often snaps people out of their mode-two thinking and into mode-one.
I think he’s been spending way too much time with his other friends (which include my ex boyfriend who turned into an egomaniac shortly before we ended things) and he’s been friends with those guys just as long as he’s been friends with me. One of them was a virgin until a couple months ago and I think he was pretty angry about it so that can’t have helped. There’s more of them and he’s more inclined to agree with them, so I don’t think appealing to our history as friends is really going to help.
Fortunately, he’s a long-term relationship sort of guy who’s in what is, as far as I know, a happy relationship with a woman who has a child who is not his. I think all of his nastiness is contained to chats with his ‘bros’ and his thoughts. And to be clear, he’s not an MGTOW type that just hates women, but he does think that PUAs are right, that ‘game’ works and is something that women actively participate in as well (which may be true in some cases). Most of what he thinks is just disparaging to one type of woman, rather than hating all women in general. It’s definitely still problematic, but I don’t for a second think that he mistreats his girlfriend.
I think the biggest problem with PUA is they have *just* enough of a grasp of something true to sucker in people who should really know better, and then some stuff starts to work a bit (Because it turns out that just actually trying to talk to women is a good way of actually starting to meet women) but then when the rest doesn’t work they get told they’re just not doing it hard enough.
Take peacocking for example.
The idea is you take some absurd, utterly ridiculous piece of apparel that you’d really like to wear anyway. And you wear it. And you be confident and happy and glad you’re wearing this thing. (let’s say ridiculous cowboy hat, and I am in no way describing something I like to wear that some of my friends think is silly 😛 )
Then it gets people’s attention. It’s hard to not notice the guy in the giant stupid cowboy hat. But then if he’s still happy and confident and enjoying himself YOU NOTICE THAT, TOO. And you think, “Hey, he’s totally not self-conscious wearing that thing that I’d die of shame to try on in a store.” And that counts for something, because it turns out most people have things they’d like to do and wear but are afraid of getting judged over.
But, no, these dipshits think it means just shoving a giant fuzzy top hat on your head to get attention and then sulking in a corner.
I’m just glad that when that stuff hit the scene I was in a relationship with a woman who wanted to explore like, an open relationship, and the fact that it all utterly fell apart in seconds when there was a woman NOT being exploited, even though these shmucks constantly talked about how a MFF threesome was some kind of holy grail, yet they couldn’t begin to conceive of a scene where one of the women actually WANTED to be there, well, that really helped me see just how much of it was utter bullshit.
P.S., I’m intensely amused by the fact that “dipshits” has been repeatedly autocorrected to “dispirits”. Thanks, iPhone.
Is “guilty pleasure” watching the same as “watching ironically,” though? If you’re watching something because you enjoy it (guiltily or otherwise), that’s not being ironic, that’s just enjoying something. To watch something ironically, wouldn’t you have to actually hate it and get no enjoyment out of it, but watch it anyway?
@katz
Guilty pleasure: “Snooki & JWoww”
Ironic watching: “Libertarian Primary Debate”
One is the best fucking show ever. One is grown people behaving like children.