Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Middle America has cities too!

― valorous wokelord (silby)

yes, crushed under the iron boot of rural post-agrarian meth-heads

I was just kidding! nickn and silby are right - the solution is to spread the good things about urbanity (diversity, cultural interchange) inward, not to further hollow out the interior.

the thing you get a lot of in the midwest cities that you don't here on the west coast is decay. democratic values like "diversity" and "cultural interchange" are good but tend to pale next to the decay. as far as i can tell the way things are going you get to be san francisco or you get to be detroit.

It should be pointed out that in Detroit you can afford a house; in San Francisco, nobody can.

hahaha, i wasn't raising san francisco up as a paragon to aspire to

lots of decay in los angeles and to a greater extent outside of it

my general impression is that people in america who live outside the cities hate the cities, and would like to see them destroyed. i feel that if given political power, which tends to be the effect of gerrymandering, these groups will use that power to pursue that end in preference to the betterment of their own lives.

until and unless the rural domination engendered by gerrymandering can be reversed, my best advice to anybody who lives in one of those states remains "get out".

...into the country and vote blue!

People can be manipulated so easily through anger and resentment. I bet those country folks sure wouldn't knowingly vote to degrade the extensive road networks, electrical grid and phone networks they depend on, and which are largely subsidized by the concentrated economic strength of urban areas. It's similar to the republicans doing their damnedest to destroy the postal service, when no corporate delivery service has any interest in serving the most isolated rural customers in their districts.

Well, the main difference between UPS and USPS is that UPS only has to drive to your house when somebody wants to send you something.

USPS has to go to almost every house in America almost every day, whether or not they have to. Even if you don't have incoming junk mail, they are obligated to check if you have outgoing mail.

Another example of the government doing the stuff that no private entity has an incentive to do. Which is exactly why we have a government. That is the main reason I like government: it is there to do the stuff that nobody else wants to do.

wtf

is that true

your post service comes looking for mail

thats insane

american exceptionalism strikes again

Don't get too excited. They don't ring your doorbell and ask; you can just leave outgoing mail in your mailbox and when they put your mail in it, they'll take away anything you've left.

And you have to have correct postage on it, obviously.

us poor fuckers on this side of the atlantic have to schlep to the nearest postbox and/or post office, don't knock it

I advocate schlepping one's mail to the post office with a steady gait, a cheerful mien, and a persevering attitude. Unless otherwise indicated, of course.

You have to put the orange flag up too iirc, so they know it’s not just old mail in your box.

https://goo.gl/images/Wp8quR

that flag is red imo

in the maleness thread all flags are red

You know, it's funny; when you look at someone through yellow-colored glasses, all the red flags just look orange.

dammit now i have "o tannenbaum" stuck in my head

IME relatively few people under 60 or so use their household mailbox for outgoing mail. But still the mail carrier comes. Almost every day. Almost every house. For something like 200 years. It's a work of quiet incremental beauty.

For most USians, 98% of the time you're just getting junk advertising and credit offers and bills. Unless your social circle is made up of stubborn luddites who write a lot of physical letters, your mailbox is mostly useful for few holiday cards and something from yr mom on your birthday. Maybe.

Of course, it would be way more efficient and sensible for everything to switch the the UPS/FedEx model, where the mail carrier comes to your house only when you've received something that you yourself actually want. But that's not the world we inhabit. There's this whole infrastructure in place, and whole industries built around using/exploiting it.

More stories collected by the BBC about living without sex:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44143003

The regularity or arrival of sex is overrated. It’s not like if there’s a dry spell or lack you’re worthless

Too much valued placed on sex imo

It’s kind of important if you want a relationship/family/kids.

Well, yeah

No disagreement there, just saying it’s sad how it makes some people feel shitty

Yes, agree there.

It’s quite an interesting collection of short accounts (male and female) and brings out a near consensus about feelings of shame of having no dating experience.

It sneaks in a sad and guilty lol as well:

There was an instance when a friend of mine kept attempting to put a move on me and in order to keep that separation I, knowing that she was allergic to peanuts, began carrying around Snickers bars and making a great show of snacking on them.

If you think of sex as something much broader than just having an orgasm then I think it's easier to understand why the absence of physical intimacy makes people feel sad in ways that masturbation isn't an adequate substitute for.

Lol xpost to Luna

Also nv otm

Also something that prostitutes won't be a sub for, to address something way upthread.

Also something that prostitutes won't be a sub for, to address something way upthread.

― nickn

this really confused me until i realized you meant "substitute" and not "submissive"

Self-defined 'incels' aren't looking for intimacy, though.

course not but I was talking about the BBC article upthread. got no interest in angry internet dorks of any stripe at the moment tbh.

Self-defined 'incels' aren't looking for intimacy, though.

aren't they, though?

aren't they

Many certainly claim to be. I can understand not believing them, but they do say it.

I'd have thought there would be a spectrum across self-defined 'incels'. In the same way, not all are going to be angry internet dorks.

I think you do need to be an angry internet dork to know what an incel is. If you mean there's plenty of ppl out there miserable over not having intimacy in their lives who aren't that, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I put 'self-defined' in there for a reason.

See I don't even think sex is primarily why they want a hot girlfriend. They want validation of themselves as date-able; they want to not have the virgin unfuckable dork stigma. A hot girlfriend is a status symbol, an arm-trophy. You can get intimacy and sex and companionship from a non-hottie - a fattie or whatever. But you'd be ashamed to introduce her to your parents and you can't show her off to your three friends.

Maybe the term 'incel' covers more than just a single type?

Maybe the term 'incel' covers more than just a single type?

― pomenitul

i can't fathom why anybody who _didn't_ hate women would want to identify as an "incel" given its cultural associations.

OTM. People may have come to those incel boards through different patterns but really what keeps them together as a community is hatred of women and the feeling they're owed something. Taking the term incel to characterize other folks who might be struggling w/ relationship issues in a variety of ways feels distasteful to me - it's accepting the premises of their ideology.

when I've see ppl using the term 'incel' on social media over the last few weeks, a lot of the time it's as a synonym for 'loser male who can't get laid and is unhappy about it' rather than specifically to refer to ppl who adhere to a specific ideology or whatever? to an extent I feel like it doesn't really matter what I 'identify' as, these ppl are still talking about me when they talk about 'incels'

Just because not everyone understands the term and how it's used by adherents doesn't invalidate that the "incel" uh phenomenon? is something that its members CHOOSE to associate with. They self-define and self-select into this group either because they already share the core misogyny or because they gravitate toward it once they learn about it from online communities.

If you don't want to be a member of that community, then you're not one. Don't morosely lump yourself in.

Utter shocker: incels (but who are they?) don't have a semantic monopoly on the word 'incel'.

come on guys, there was no knowledge of the word incel before that dumb reddit community sprung up and while yeah language evolves blah blah blah wanting to challenge their monopoly seems like a singularly weird battle to want to fight

For those who wish to witness the semantic tug of war in action: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel

Date at which the entry was added seems relevant here.