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We are extremely close to shutting down this thread for the same reasons the PUA thread was shut down. While some of the time this thread contains actual discussion with people asking help and people giving nice advice, it often gets derailed by rubbish that should not be here. The moderation team will be trying to steer this thread in a different direction from now on.
Posts of the following nature are banned:
1) ANYTHING regarding PUA. If your post contains the words 'alpha' or 'beta' or anything of that sort please don't hit post.
2) Stupid brags. You can tell us about your nice success stories with someone, but posts such as 'lol 50 Tinder matches' are a no-no.
3) Any misogynistic bullshit, including discussion about rape culture.
4) One night stands and random sex. These are basically brags that invariably devolve into gender role discussions and misogynistic comments.
Last chance, guys. This thread is for dating advice and sharing dating stories. While gender roles, sociocultural norms, and our biological imperative to reproduce are all tangentially related, these subjects are not the main purpose of the thread. Please AVOID these discussions. If you want to discuss them at length, go to PMs or start a blog. If you disagree with someone's ideologies, state that you disagree with them and why they won't work from a dating standpoint and move on. We will not tolerate any lengthy derailments that aren't directly about dating. |
On September 23 2018 12:34 CosmicSpiral wrote:
Please observe rule #1. God knows there's a ton of misinformation being spouted here about people who think they understand the PUA community, but this type of vociferous squabbling is exactly why we don't talk about it in the first place. Regardless of legitimacy the topic is simply too inflammatory to discuss with any inkling of charity.
Take it to PMs.
Obviously will observe.
Is it acceptable to ask about this decision? It's always seemed odd this thread has that banner, even many other threads that seem like they would have much more inflammatory content (i.e. US Politics) don't have a moratorium on posting content. If this is inappropriate, or inappropriate to ask here, let me know and I'll edit it out.
It seems to me the TL position here is that, even if legitimate, you're banning discourse because it's inflammatory, i.e. many readers would get upset and post emotionally. That to me is restricting discourse and speech because some posters won't be able to control their emotions. Wouldn't it make more sense just to ban those posters and allow for a robust discourse? Or is that just a time issue of too few mods/too many threads?
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United States15275 Posts
On September 23 2018 13:06 L_Master wrote:
Is it acceptable to ask about this decision?
DON'T QUESTION YOUR MASTERS
...sure.
On September 23 2018 13:06 L_Master wrote:
It's always seemed odd this thread has that banner, even many other threads that seem like they would have much more inflammatory content (i.e. US Politics) don't have a moratorium on posting content. If this is inappropriate, or inappropriate to ask here, let me know and I'll edit it out.
Frankly the ban is slyly ideological. Pickup had a bad reputation for being misogynistic, uncouth and hermetically sealed. It encourages in-group behavior that encroach upon the other rules. Boards that welcome PUA discussion also cultivate certain fringe beliefs in accordance with the type of people that typically buy into them, e.g. far-right ones. That still exists to a large extent today; a causal glance at Roissy and Roosh's forums makes this starkly obvious. As you can no doubt speculate, TL will never embrace or permit such associative subjects to be freely discussed. It's not prudent to alienate your main demographic.
In the specific case of the Politics thread - which has had its own share of trolling and baiting - the subject lends itself to intermittent purges. "Politics" encompasses so many current topics that the sheer traffic acts as a self-cleansing agent: mudslinging over a subject one day will abruptly cease when new news takes the spotlight. By contrast this thread often got mired for days, even weeks, in internecine quarrels over subjects tangentially related to dating. Sensitivity became a secondary concern when the thread was getting derailed over and over again.
On September 23 2018 13:06 L_Master wrote:
It seems to me the TL position here is that, even if legitimate, you're banning discourse because it's inflammatory, i.e. many readers would get upset and post emotionally. That to me is restricting discourse and speech because some posters won't be able to control their emotions. Wouldn't it make more sense just to ban those posters and allow for a robust discourse? Or is that just a time issue of too few mods/too many threads?
I'm aware the prohibition is not ideal. It is at best a compromise, similar to why this thread exists.
Here's the long explanation:
+ Show Spoiler +In general, policing any PUA talk in a pain in the ass. This is largely due to its nature. It is a controversial topic stemming from a niche domain, expansive enough to address a wide array of topics yet familiar enough to get a visceral reaction from anyone. People get sucked into regardless of how it is brought up, how many people kickstart the original line of thought, and whether the tone is derisive or welcoming. Dating technically falls under its penumbra too, but it's mundane enough to get general input. Maintaining a healthy ecosystem also takes priority. If regular posters get drawn into the fray and earn bans, it de-incentivizes them from participating later on. Threads pretty much live or die on a stable pool of participants. Conversely if newcomers get caught with their pants down and evicted, it becomes a passive version of closing ranks. Neither is desirable for a causal thread. Pragmatically this leans towards a conservative approach to moderation: it's better to make the place fireproof rather than being forced to extinguish many small ones. There's also the issue of subtle trolling. It's easy to spot obnoxious and emotional posters insisting on their position. Recognizing when people spread disinformation about PUA philosophy and the community is much harder; discerning whether that's their intention is even more difficult. As far as I know I'm the only mod who can tackle that, which leads to certain edge cases: - I can trivially expound on why LegalLord is either wrong or misrepresenting positions in his arguments on the previous page. He is grasping at strawman i.e. simplistic theories that were either elaborated upon, absorbed into heuristics with greater descriptive and/or explanatory power, or abandoned. Most of the stuff he's denouncing - "outer game", "ladder theory" - has been slowly leeching out of PUA circles since the early 2000s. At best it's a rude caricature.
- But he is genuinely naive about the state of the pickup community? Is he being reductive because it offends his sensibilities? Or is he deliberately slandering it for reasons unknown? Sure he's not being disruptive on the surface, but this type of studied trolling runs rampant on other forums. Akin to concern trolling, its aim is to poison collective opinion while maintaining such a civil, respectable air that opposing posters won't remonstrate out of fear they would appear to be the bad guy.
- Since I'm the only mod who can make cogent, scrupulous objections, I hold a unique position that can be abused. I might be correct about LegalLord based on a process of justification that only I can spell out; in concert, I can explain this to the other mods as a perfectly rational decision. Will that still remain the case for the next person, the one after, etc. when I have effectively have carte blanche?
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Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
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United States15275 Posts
On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
In this scenario I would either quickly vet her, lightly flirt outside of the venue, or draw her in by being a soft gatekeeper (so to speak). Alternatively, I would treat her normally if maintaining harmony within the activity is more important to me than acting upon any existing attraction.
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On September 23 2018 15:01 CosmicSpiral wrote:Here's the long explanation: + Show Spoiler +In general, policing any PUA talk in a pain in the ass. This is largely due to its nature. It is a controversial topic stemming from a niche domain, expansive enough to address a wide array of topics yet familiar enough to get a visceral reaction from anyone. People get sucked into regardless of how it is brought up, how many people kickstart the original line of thought, and whether the tone is derisive or welcoming. Dating technically falls under its penumbra too, but it's mundane enough to get general input. Maintaining a healthy ecosystem also takes priority. If regular posters get drawn into the fray and earn bans, it de-incentivizes them from participating later on. Threads pretty much live or die on a stable pool of participants. Conversely if newcomers get caught with their pants down and evicted, it becomes a passive version of closing ranks. Neither is desirable for a causal thread. Pragmatically this leans towards a conservative approach to moderation: it's better to make the place fireproof rather than being forced to extinguish many small ones. There's also the issue of subtle trolling. It's easy to spot obnoxious and emotional posters insisting on their position. Recognizing when people spread disinformation about PUA philosophy and the community is much harder; discerning whether that's their intention is even more difficult. As far as I know I'm the only mod who can tackle that, which leads to certain edge cases: - I can trivially expound on why LegalLord is either wrong or misrepresenting positions in his arguments on the previous page. He is grasping at strawman i.e. simplistic theories that were either elaborated upon, absorbed into heuristics with greater descriptive and/or explanatory power, or abandoned. Most of the stuff he's denouncing - "outer game", "ladder theory" - has been slowly leeching out of PUA circles since the early 2000s. At best it's a rude caricature.
- But he is genuinely naive about the state of the pickup community? Is he being reductive because it offends his sensibilities? Or is he deliberately slandering it for reasons unknown? Sure he's not being disruptive on the surface, but this type of studied trolling runs rampant on other forums. Akin to concern trolling, its aim is to poison collective opinion while maintaining such a civil, respectable air that opposing posters won't remonstrate out of fear they would appear to be the bad guy.
- Since I'm the only mod who can make cogent, scrupulous objections, I hold a unique position that can be abused. I might be correct about LegalLord based on a process of justification that only I can spell out; in concert, I can explain this to the other mods as a perfectly rational decision. Will that still remain the case for the next person, the one after, etc. when I have effectively have carte blanche?
I must question the wisdom of writing a post asking a topic to be dropped with a “long explanation” that boils down to a “this guy must either be obtuse or concern trolling” potshot. While I agree that the discussion wasn’t going in a productive direction, starting with that previously warned blog link, this really isn’t a well thought out response to it at all. It’s the old “continue talking about it under the guise of a meta discussion” approach.
Probably best to drop it entirely rather than discuss it out, but I must say that this is notably poor form on your part.
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On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
Treat like everyone else. You might find her attractive, but so do the other 5 guys at the table. Because she is the only girl in a geeky hobby, and male geeks like girls in geeky hobbies. The numbers of women in nerdy hobbies are slowly increasing, but they are still by far the minority. She does not want to deal with 5 dudes hitting on her, she just wants to play boardgames. If you want women to feel comfortable in nerdy hobbies, don't instantly make the moves on them. Because even if you only slightly approach them, she has to deal with the same thing from multiple guys every time she wants to participate in that hobby due to geeky hobby demographics. And she probably isn't there for dating, but for boardgames.
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On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
I think I would just look for girls elsewhere. Or if she shows interest in you go for it. I feel like you can easily find girls elsewhere who are not constantly being hit on by creepy dudes.
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On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
This is a huge problem which I want to expand upon but have no real answer to. Certain women have huge problems nowadays where they can't do anything without being hit on by every, in their words, "slobbering" guy they come across. This only gets worse in nerd culture in which I mostly live in, where for every girl there is at least 20, often very lonely, guys (Me among them). I have seen a ridiculous amount clans, guilds, sometimes whole organisations, and even tight knit friend circles get broken up by internal fighting over what is usually a girl who doesn't even want to have anything to do with it.
This leads me to my current situation where whenever I meet a girl I feel attracted to, I generally don't try to flirt or hit on her because I feel a bit sorry for her not being able to act normal around guys without causing commotions. But that in turn leads me to never flirting with any girl ever which for my personal situation (aka single) is not optimal either. I have been told I often self friend-zone myself due to this.
I genuinely don't know how to strike a balance between actually courting girls and simultaneously not be part of the problem which have haunted most girls their entire lives. (If you don't think or know it's a problem, I urge you to ask any one of your female friends if she is able to go out on town without being hit on by numerous guys, many of which doesn't take no for an answer. And then know it's much much worse in the nerd community..generally speaking of course. I'm not blaming any one of you personally since I don't know you, and I am part of the same culture myself).
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How to handle when she gets annoyed at a small mistake you made and loses herself and starts spurting incoherent stuff?
A girl I met a few days ago got mad at a small thing I made and in one hour of continuous rage she even said "even our music taste is different what will we play when we are on the same car"
In short how do you handle nitroglycerin burning in your hands :D
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On September 23 2018 22:51 mantequilla wrote:
How to handle when she gets annoyed at a small mistake you made and loses herself and starts spurting incoherent stuff?
A girl I met a few days ago got mad at a small thing I made and in one hour of continuous rage she even said "even our music taste is different what will we play when we are on the same car"
In short how do you handle nitroglycerin burning in your hands :D
Going to need some more context here I think. Could mean anything. What small thing did you make? How and where did you meet her? How did your first conversation go? What do you/she mean "same car"? You going on a road trip? Is she a friend of a friend or a random person? Are you the purple shirted eye stabber? Just asking cause that could cause for some annoyance.
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On September 23 2018 21:58 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else? This is a huge problem which I want to expand upon but have no real answer to. Certain women have huge problems nowadays where they can't do anything without being hit on by every, in their words, "slobbering" guy they come across. This only gets worse in nerd culture in which I mostly live in, where for every girl there is at least 20, often very lonely, guys (Me among them). I have seen a ridiculous amount clans, guilds, sometimes whole organisations, and even tight knit friend circles get broken up by internal fighting over what is usually a girl who doesn't even want to have anything to do with it. This leads me to my current situation where whenever I meet a girl I feel attracted to, I generally don't try to flirt or hit on her because I feel a bit sorry for her not being able to act normal around guys without causing commotions. But that in turn leads me to never flirting with any girl ever which for my personal situation (aka single) is not optimal either. I have been told I often self friend-zone myself due to this. I genuinely don't know how to strike a balance between actually courting girls and simultaneously not be part of the problem which have haunted most girls their entire lives. (If you don't think or know it's a problem, I urge you to ask any one of your female friends if she is able to go out on town without being hit on by numerous guys, many of which doesn't take no for an answer. And then know it's much much worse in the nerd community..generally speaking of course. I'm not blaming any one of you personally since I don't know you, and I am part of the same culture myself).
I would recomend "social context" and "calibration" as your guideliness. Sadly, most "nerds" lack the second as that's why they come off as creepy.
Context is quite easy to understand. Cold aproaching woman on a bar or a night club is perfectly acceptable; shen can turn you down and it's no big deal. Cold aproaching a woman while playing a board game with her and 6 other people is def not. Aproaching people you see regularly falls somewhere in between.
Calibration is just the uniqueness of the interaction and how the parties involved feel. Truth is there are no hard lines on this, but essentially if she seems comfortable/open to your aproach you can continue with it and if she looks creeped out you should back down.
With all that said, I think it's just part of life that you will make some woman uncomfortable despite your best intentions and that shouldn't discourage you from aproaching the opposite sex. Ask any guy you know who has had any moderate success with woman and he can tell you many stories of girls turning them down harshly or being totally creeped out. Aproaching =/= creeping lol.
I would also add the time factor. Hitting on someone, even multiple times, is not the same as hitting on them for months/years regularly, stalking, etc, which is super creepy.
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Also, what is the "very small thing".
Assuming your characterization of the situation is indeed correct, and she got mad for no apparent reason, a simple idea would probably be to simply not meet her anymore.
The other possible interpretation is that what you saw as "a small mistake" was not "a small mistake" to her. So try to figure out where that difference in perception originates from. I don't know anything about you, but your description makes me immediately assume that she has some reason to be angry at you, but you simply brush it away. My gut instinct is that you are at least partially at fault, but simply don't want to admit that. But that instinct is obviously not based on any knowledge, and the situation might be totally different.
There are a lot of things that people describe as "a small mistake" which are anything but.
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On September 23 2018 22:51 mantequilla wrote:
How to handle when she gets annoyed at a small mistake you made and loses herself and starts spurting incoherent stuff?
A girl I met a few days ago got mad at a small thing I made and in one hour of continuous rage she even said "even our music taste is different what will we play when we are on the same car"
In short how do you handle nitroglycerin burning in your hands :D
You've only met/been on a date with this girl once or twice and she did this? Can you expand on what actually happened?
Either way, "drama" is tricky. It's not really good behavior, and it's definitely an irrational way to act. The biggest problem to me is that drama usually seems to be a cry for attention rather than specific frustration over a certain issue. In other words, drama isn't usually a case where you left a giant ass mess in the living room and she comes down and complains that you left a bunch of stuff in the living room. In that case, I'd think she was annoyed you left the living room messy.
Drama is usually something like you come back from your day, and then she launches into you for not tucking your shoes away or something. It's usually out of proportion to what the actual issue is, and sometimes not even related. In my experience, it really seems to be a cry for attention more than anything.
Which leaves a difficult question about what to do. Most guys are going to have a hell of a hard time not just arguing back or justifying themselves, but that triggers both argue instincts and obviously gives her attention. You're reinforcing the behavior (she gives drama, you give attention) and will probably increase the amount of drama you get in the future. The problem is that because it's mostly about attention, even calmly explaining why you did what you did or are justified still gives her the attention she is looking for and reinforcing the "I give him drama -> he gives me attention" dynamic going on. I think most guys will struggle to always stay calm anyway, and revert the far more toxic shouting match option.
There doesn't really seem to be a good answer. To be honest, the idea of just saying "I'm not willing to discuss this until we are both calm and relaxed" and then just leaving/removing yourself from the situation is the only thing jumping out at me on the surface as a good option.
I don't have a ton of experience with this, having not received much drama. All I know is this happened with my parents often, and I see it happen with my friends in LTR's frequently. That's usually reserved for longer, more serious relationships; which at least for now if out of my experience. I've been dating a couple people now for about 7 or 8 months and am moving in the LTR direction, but I'm not far enough along to be dealing with much drama.
My gut instinct is that you are at least partially at fault, but simply don't want to admit that. But that instinct is obviously not based on any knowledge, and the situation might be totally different.
I think this is likely, it usually is the case. Rarely is one person totally and completely at fault. But it still raises the question of how to handle the situation. You may have fucked up, but the response is still not an acceptable response. 99% of time yelling, screaming, or crying are not appropriate ways to handle a situation regardless of fault. If my best friend leaves a stack of dirty dishes in the sink and the kitchen messy AF for me to come back to after work/school...he fucked up. He's 100% at fault. That does NOT mean it's remotely appropriate for me to go yelling and screaming at him. There are other ways I can, and should, handle that situation. Yelling at him is not appropriate, adult behavior.
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On September 23 2018 15:18 Dark_Chill wrote:
Also, every time the topic gets brought up, the same discussion happens. Every time.
Question time: I play board games as a hobby. Every now and then I'll go to a place that has greeting nights where you can play board games with a random group of people. I also frequent the board games subreddit. I bring this up because women will bring up a point every now and then that it's difficult to join into these because they always feel like they're being hit on (or worse, creeped on) by dudes. In a scenario like this, or probably any kinda geeky hobby, would you guys still approach someone you find attractive, or just treat her like anyone else?
This is where I would just play it by feel. I would not aggressively hit on her, nor would I do something direct like "Hey you're pretty cute, we should swap numbers" or similar. Probably would just talk to her, generally try and show that you're a fun, non-needy (I imagine this is more important in a context where lots of guys are) guy. If I was sitting next to her I'd probably touch her in a friendly manner (tap on the shoulder type) stuff and pay attention to how she is responding.
If all of this was really positive, and I was pretty convinced she was attracted to me (might take several or many nights) then I would pull her aside at some point, turn up the flirting just a bit, and grab her number. Alternatively, I would try to bring her into my social circle, which would then give you more options to hang out with her and communicate your interest outside of the board game event time.
Put simply, outside of the occasional comment and some light, friendly touching I wouldn't really go after her or try to pick her up, until I was quite confident she had some interest in me.
On September 23 2018 15:38 CosmicSpiral wrote:
His moderation rational
Thanks for the response, it's always nice to know the reasoning for why something is being run a certain way.
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ok, i started to date a belarussian female dj whos constantly on tour to somewhere in asia, how fukt am i? any experienced people here to give me some hints how to adopt?
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On September 24 2018 09:29 lastpuritan wrote:
ok, i started to date a belarussian female dj whos constantly on tour to somewhere in asia, how fukt am i? any experienced people here to give me some hints how to adopt?
I have zero experience here. I'm very curious to read what insight people have.
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On September 24 2018 09:29 lastpuritan wrote:
ok, i started to date a belarussian female dj whos constantly on tour to somewhere in asia, how fukt am i? any experienced people here to give me some hints how to adopt?
Are you guys okay with long-distance relationships? Are you also okay with constantly travelling?
If not... pretty fukt.
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On September 21 2018 01:05 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2018 11:38 iopq wrote:
I'm okay with being friends with a girl who I am sexually attracted to. There's a difference between being in love with someone and merely liking to have sex with a person.
All of my real female friends (not friends of friends) are girls that I've had sex with before and it didn't work out. What do you mean by "didn't work out"?
I didn't love her and didn't want her to get her hopes up. Another one was the opposite, I liked her more than she liked me (and the sex was terrible)
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Unless the dj or you plan of changing job and setle down together AT some point . I Do not see long distance relation ship Working . Could be someone to hang out with while she is not traveling but that IT.
Its just what i would Do .
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On September 24 2018 09:29 lastpuritan wrote:
ok, i started to date a belarussian female dj whos constantly on tour to somewhere in asia, how fukt am i? any experienced people here to give me some hints how to adopt?
How long are you planning on this arrangement. Seems awful if it's for any long period of time. Only way I could imagine doing this is if I was just dead set on wanting to spend much or all of the rest of my life with this person.
Or if you're non-monogamous it wouldn't be as terrible either. But being committed to someone who you never see feels like it would be incredibly frustrating, especially if we are talking months or years at a time without seeing each other.
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EPT
