Craigslist hilarity

hilarious thread

Louis, maybe you should stop talking and go and read Jezebel and the Feministing communities for a few weeks.

Can't say I'd really recommend Jezebel, but Feministing is okay.

Jesus, LJ, that guy is clearly a dick. The actual politics of drinks-buying has little do with it, but who would write a massive screed 'warning' people that girls sometimes ask guys to buy them drinks aside from an egotistical wankstain?

maybe you should stop talking and go and read Jezebel and the Feministing communities for a few weeks.

I'm sure I've heard that Jezebel/Feministing are pretty consumerist/libertarian versions of feminism - would those of you who've read them say this is true? Not that this should necessarily stop anyone from reading or enjoying them, mind you, but it's put me off going there (this is a fairly vague memory, too, so feel free to tell me I'm completely wrong).

Pandagon has a lot of good feminist content IMO, and a lot of it from a queer minority perspective, too, since one of the bloggers is a gay black woman and one is a straight white woman.

i don't know about the community side of feministing; some of the front page can be kinda pedantic & semantic imo, and they use 'trigger warnings', which are pretty bullshitty. sometimes i feel weird reading something that offers rolling outrage. has big value in encouraging young feminists though.

i stopped reading that craigslist post when dude was like, i've bought girls drinks in the past but it only led to me getting laid 10% of the time.

would not characterize jezebel as feminist at all tbh; it's been years since i read it though, maybe it's different now

cannot believe any straight single guy anywhere would refuse to buy a cute girl a drink if he's been having decent conversation with her for 20 minutes. unless he's on some fucked up Mystery shit or something

it's not so much a warning as a vent, a publicised diary entry, but yeah point taken he's overstepped - the 'open-minded friend' bit in retrospect was wrong, and he's taking it way too seriously - I admire a good piece of rampant overthinking but yeah

I wrote this earlier

As the guy makes abundantly clear, the girl's RESPONSE to his refusal, coupled with his prior observations of her burning someone off, is what sets in his mind the desire to show up HER shallowness. It's a noble intention. He never claims to have had the last laugh - indeed he says he merely HOPES he had an effect on that girl.

Sure, the bit with the 'chubby' girl is problematic, because it can't NOT be seen as condescending in some way, but is it any more condescending than the phrase "there's someone for everyone"? A phrase I, she and most people with the occasional confidence issue have heard on NUMEROUS occasions? If she'd been happy to NOT have a drink bought for her, she'd have refused, and our man would have looked a bit silly, and wouldn't have written that anecdote. He took the risk that she'd not trust his motives. As it turned out, she was out to have fun and he'd correctly guessed her friends were leaving her alone. I *know* there's a minefield of etiquette as to engaging with someone BECAUSE they look left-out, but I seriously think he did it with noble intentions, and is describing her as 'chubby' because her self-knowledge of being chubby had already defined her insecurity and hesitancy to speak to anyone (not to mention how others might be treating her). It's a fair detail to note, even if he does it insensitively.

Probably the most insensitive detail is how it took an 'open-minded' friend to sleep with that girl. I'll concede that that is off.

Yeah, he wrote it to Craigslist. Yeah, he's an aspie douche for doing so. I kinda admire that.

but even in writing that I turn into the same sort of overanalytical scrawling look-I-have-had-these-thoughts dick he is :D

horseshoe he completely goes on to explain himself and backtrack over that 10% thing in like the next sentence!

hobbes he's clearly NOT on some PUA shiz - just a slightly misguided moral crusade

Feministing is the one I've been linked more and I suspect it's the more widely-accepted site

trigger warnings are so not bullshitty

can I repeat that last sentence - I dated a girl last year for whom trigger warnings were essential - if you've been assaulted in yr life it can have permanent mental consequences and you don't wanna be reading certain things

if i may interject, i would imagine the basic parameters of the story might be true on some basic level but:

a) the girl would actually be that upset* and at some point in the story she morphed from this friendly, funny, smart hipster girl art school student into a girl who tosses around "fatty" and dances with ed hardy frat bros

b) *the caveat being that maybe she would get that upset if the dude overreacted to her request in a manner that isn't fully revealed in this story

c) the overweight girl conveniently shows up in the story like the "magical negro", not existing to prove herself but to prove our hero's worth, even though it must be made clear that she is still on a lesser level than the hero

d) some of the adjectives our hero tosses around are not written from the perspective of a guy who is actually chivalrous

e) an actual chivalrous dude shrugs shit like this off and maybe has a quick laugh about it, but moves on and certainly doesn't write an essay

f) he is definitely protesting too much

omar!

i should clarify from a), her transformation is too convenient and unbelievable. i don't believe this character arc.

^_-

If it isn't a self-important 'hear my wisdom, young men and wenches' warning, why does he state that his friend fell for the exact trap that my post warned against, and that is why he is reposting?

but even in writing that I turn into the same sort of overanalytical scrawling look-I-have-had-these-thoughts dick he is :D

Ha, see, I would consider this critical commentary and thus all is fair game, whereas he is effectively POSTING AN ADVERT to impart this worldly advice.

hobbes he's clearly NOT on some PUA shiz - just a slightly misguided moral crusade

Also, I don't think this is clear - he's negging, he's talking to the 'fat' one, he's singling himself out as someone who does things differently... could totally read this as PUA balls.

Also, omar OTM.

Someone has pointed out, fwiw, that "No, why don't YOU buy ME a drink" would have been the ideal response, and I am inclined to agree

yeah, my thought was that if you're basically accepting some forms of nightclub social standards but you have serious objections to the notion of the man buying the drink (or you're poor, or whatever) then the way to go would be some lolwhaddeverhappenedtoequality quip. Pretty sure that if this dude had acted in any kind of reasonable way (reading it I imagined a pause, a smile drooping into straight-lipped steeliness, a short sharp 'no') he wouldn't have had such a reaction.

I am now feeling exposed as an awful phallocrat by being subscribed to loads of philosophy blogs but only one that ever has anything to do with feminism, and even then only rarely (that one being Infinite Thought).

the description here of his deployment of the "fat girl" in this anecdote is totally ugh

who the hell writes shit like that to craigslist. just had to get it of your chest, nutcase?

e) an actual chivalrous dude shrugs shit like this off and maybe has a quick laugh about it, but moves on and certainly doesn't write an essay

this this a thousand times this

not just "an actual chivalrous dude" but "a guy who has reached a reasonable level of self-confidence in his dealings with the outside world"

"an actual dude who it would be tolerable to spend time with"

omar is very OTM there tbh - I was struck by how 'wrong' the impulse to write an essay was - as I say kinda heroic in its 'I wouldn't do this but fair play O Batman' vibe

it's perfectly possible for people to be both funny smart and cultured arts students and also petulant twats within almost the same breath - hell, I managed it for 3 years as an undergrad

the "magical negro" thing is troubling - I'd have liked her to have been presented as more someone who engaged our hero than someone who was there

he's not actually chivalrous but I dig his thoughts and his youth and his desire to change things

anyway i saw that shit on reddit originally which has a "mens rights" subsection which makes me want to open my eyes with a corkscrew so i figured it was on that tip--"why is there ladies night eh"

g) this guy must project something "off" IRL in this type of scene, i'm guessing, especially if he goes this (subtly) batshit over a drink, and he doesn't know how to relate to women b/c there are a million ways to play that w/o turning into Mr Pink. and if he was into the girl, as he implies, he wouldn't risk it by drawing such a line in the sand.

this account fails to record or acknowledge the role of the writer's body language during the conversation, the disconcerting body language of an angry screed writer.

maybe drinks cost hundreds of dollars in his city

ladies night is really about getting men in the door. did i just blow your mind.

actually about, i should say

mens rights mens rights

(that was a chant)

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6k3c1DEnj1qzt6upo1_250.gif

this isn't remotely like the sexist screed of a 'misandry' accuser - although i do recommend checking that shit out online, it's very enlightening

:/

ew @ a 'men's rights' section ffs

http://www.reddit.com/r/mensrights

wau @ all this.

craigslist essayist is a cheap piece of shit who is lying through his teeth and who needs to man the fuck up if he's going to go to bars and talk to strangers.

there isn't a single person who has posted something along those lines on craigslist who deals with women in a rational, mature, non-misogynist manner imho

there should genuinely be a trigger warning on that turdpile xxp

gah maybe the dude's poisoned towards women but I still think he's got good intentions despite his youth and social disaffection - needs to hang elsewhere IMO

good intentions = trying to get laid while saving 8 bucks

blowin the social conventions wide open is all well and good, but let's be a little more careful in our selections ey.

yeah, LJ, it was not clear from the portion of this i could stomach reading that he had a principled opposition to the custom of men buying women drinks in bars. he was just pissed at this one girl, right?

or making shit up on craigslist because bored

must be depressing to view all social interaction as transactional

the part about how he got the big girl laid deserves some kind of award for bullshit

CAD that's harsh IMO - I can identify with this guy even if I wouldn't do what he did, and I'm pretty sure that while he was interested, he took a moral stance for his own reasons

horseshoe he wasn't in opposition to that custom but this one girl annoyed him and for whatever reason he flipped at her - dude's probably been burned by someone he liked once too often and too young to deal w/ it

um he's saying how he DOESN'T want to view it as transactional tbh

sorry lj i'm reading the part about how spending his time and money on a girl "entitles" him to one of three things

moral what? from what i understand he strategically deploys a category of woman deemed unfuckable by him in this anecdote for...what reason, exactly?

god i just found the part about how the sex would have been bad anyway

it's good to not mind buying drinks for women and it's also good to not mind at all outwardly and not mind too much inwardly if it doesn't pan out for ya

if this guy is smart enough to write a 'coherent' 800 word essay about his adventures not buying this girl a drink hes smart enough to understand why he shouldnt--no sympathy

LJ, if you're uncomfortable with the custom of dudes buying drinks for women in bars, i feel you to a certain extent; dudes buying me things makes me uncomfortable tbh, but i don't think this dude is who you want to align yourself with.