something_else

Yesterday, I went on a date with a girl who suggested we play a game, and it turned out to be so great that I want to share it Maybe you’ve heard of it before (I found out later that Teal Swan wrote about it), but it was new to me. It’s fun and a good way to make the conversation flirty. There are two stages. I won’t spoil the second stage here—you should come up with your answers and reasons first. You can click the link below to read about it afterward. Three Questions Game The gist of the first stage is to ask these three questions and have the other person give deep reasons for their answers. The questions are: What is your favourite colour? What is your favourite animal? What is your favourite body of water? (e.g., waterfall, bird bath, whirlpool, river, lake) Think of your answers and some deep reasons why you chose each one. Then, read the blog post to see what stage two is. Deep answers go beyond “I like blue because it’s the color of the ocean.” Instead, aim for something like, “I like green because it is energizing, natural, and symbolizes growth and change.” It would be even more fun if you share your answers here before checking out stage two! Mine were: Used to be blue when I was younger because it was soft, comforting, and peaceful, but in recent years I’ve switched to red because it is fierce, passionate, striking, and exciting. A swan, because they are elegant and aesthetic. They can also fiercely defend themselves when necessary. And since they can fly, they have a lot of freedom, often migrating across the world together. A whirlpool, because they are wild, powerful, and exciting. They also evoke feelings of awe, like many large and powerful feats of nature.

I usually agree with your points, but I think this one is being overthought a bit. It very clearly is a pipeline, and it disproportionately affects vulnerable kids. In particular, I think this is where the framing goes off: I don’t think that implication is there at all. What’s actually happening is much simpler. Young boys, often in the 8–16 range, are being pulled into algorithm-driven content loops that progressively normalise these ideas. At that age, their ability to critically evaluate what they’re seeing is limited. It’s not that they have zero agency, but their ability to make an informed choice is heavily constrained. It’s very similar to how young girls are influenced into makeup and beauty standards early on. We don’t describe that as a fully independent “choice” because it clearly isn’t. The same dynamic exists here, just in a different direction. As they get older, I agree more with your point. At some stage, people are responsible for their views and actions. But early exposure matters, and it’s exactly why this content targets younger audiences so aggressively. Not directly, but it plays a role. Isolation reduces social feedback, which makes it harder to develop empathy and calibrate behaviour. That doesn’t excuse anything, but it does increase the risk of someone adopting unhealthy views. Because, in many cases, it’s upstream of the problem. A lot of harm towards women ultimately comes from men who have developed unhealthy views early on. If the goal is to reduce that harm, then creating healthier men isn’t excusing behaviour, it’s addressing the root cause.

Yea, exactly.

People here are being harsh on you. You do not need to completely sacrifice your authentic sensitive self to be attractive to woman. I actually respect how open you are about yourself, it is a very masculine trait to fully express yourself as you are without hiding anything and without giving much of a fuck about what people think. Being sensitive and emotionally aware is a massive asset when combined with other indicators of masculine strength. This BS that no women like sensitive men is an idea you have been programmed with by pickup. Many women like sensitive and emotionally intelligent men (just look at the lead male characters in romcoms, usually they are very emotionally intelligent) but you do also need to be confident, strong, and socially capable on top of that as well. Emotionally aware but shy/awkward dude < Confident asshole < Confident emotionally aware dude But also be selective about the woman you go after as well. The (for lack of a better term) basic girls are more likely to go after the asshole archetypes. Smarter girls with a bit more depth, college educated women etc. will all absolutely love you for being in touch with your emotional side.

Yea, it's pretty insane how good it is at coding. It does still make incredibly stupid decisions sometimes and definitely still needs human direction and oversight. But overall it has completely changed how I work as a software engineer.

Pretty scary. Seems Anthropic are going about it the right way though.

I'm painfully sensitive to weed, to the point where I simply don't understand how people smoke it and go about their normal lives. When I've been out partying on nights out and somebody offers me some, if I have even a tiny draw I will be completely fucked for the rest of the night. Yet some people seem to smoke an entire joint and have a great time. It just makes me go completely non-verbal. It's great as a psychedelic taken on my own at home, but the way I see most people use it does not work for me at all.

The counter-example is that there are some butt-fuck ugly billionaires out there. In fact none of the world's top 10 richest people are particularly good looking. I don't think anybody denies that being good looking helps you a lot in life, but stating that success in life is entirely dependent on how you look is categorically wrong.

Go to South East Asia without much of a plan and just wing it. It's hard to get it wrong. Stay in hostels, and make sure you go to at least Thailand and Vietnam. But every country there is amazing.

Yea, I do get that. It helps if you get into the habit of taking photos of your life a bit more regularly, not just specifically for online dating

I've posted this in a few online dating threads, but if you need a rough template to follow for a solid dating profile here is my advice for building a solid profile:

I don’t think the redpill vs incel distinction really ultimately matters here. That 'redpill' framing seems to come more from the guy in the video than the actual legislation. From what I’ve seen, the law is aimed at content that’s explicitly misogynistic, promotes male superiority, or incites harm towards women, which is a much more reasonable and enforceable target. I also don’t think this is some conspiracy against men from the Brazilian government. There are legitimate concerns about what happens when large numbers of young boys are exposed to and shaped by these kinds of ideas. We’re probably still early in terms of seeing the long-term effects. Even when it doesn’t lead directly to violence, it can still drive more hostility and resentment towards women, which isn’t exactly a desirable outcome. Again, I don't think this is actually what the brazillian govt. did. It seems like their goal was preventing the spread of violent / misogynistic content. Yeah, different orgs use different definitions. I don’t really see it as a big deal though. We already break homicide down into categories when there are clear patterns (gang violence, terrorism, domestic abuse etc), this is just another example of that. From what I can see, the term is mainly used in two ways: women killed by partners or family women killed explicitly because they’re women The second one is obviously a distinct category. The first also makes sense to track, because even if men are killed more overall, women’s risk is much more concentrated in intimate and family contexts (around 50–60% vs ~15% for men).

I'm not 100% sure that's the case, but even assuming that it is, at a bear minimum it fosters hostility between the genders. Especially when consumed by 12 year old boys in school who don't have the critical thinking or life experience to question the content they consume online. It isn't a huge leap to see how that could lead to women being hurt or even killed in extreme cases, especially as this kind of content gets more prevalent. In the context of this video about criminalising redpill, I suspect 'redpill' is being used as an umbrella term for all of the manosphere content including incel / blackpill. Differentiating between all of these terms is hard, the lines are blurry. At a high level they are all in the same vein and produce similar end results. It has an objectively distinct meaning, which is killing of a woman specifically because she is a woman. I think that is a distinction worth making. We do similar things with racially motivated killing (hate crime). Somebody being killed because they are black is something notably distinct from a black person being killed for revenge, money or any of the standard motives for murder.

This is true for lots of things that are fine in moderation. Beyond spreading awareness of that, it's not really clear what else you can do. Banning porn or sugary sweets is extreme and impractical

All valid points, I did mention earlier that I don't think it's healthy when used as a coping mechanism to avoid actually finding a partner or having sex.

You say it isn't healthy, but can you point to anything concretely unhealthy about it?

Just because some people cannot moderate themselves does not make the thing itself bad. Take other addictive things like heroin, cigarettes, sugary sweets, for each of these you can point to concrete health problems that occur as a result of excess consumption. With porn are there really any concrete health issues you can point to? Probably the biggest issues are the ethical implications of funding the porn industry, and causing strain on relationships. The porn industry isn't super ethical, but you can consume amateur porn to bypass that. If your partner isn't happy with you watching porn I can see it causing strain on your relationship, but if they don't care then it's a moot point. Most couples I've met don't really seem to care if their partner watches porn. Aside from that I can't really think of anything else. Maybe causing people to have unrealistic views on sex? But again I don't really think that's universally true. I've found that porn has actually improved my sex life if anything.

I would argue social media addiction is much more prevalent. There are a lot more people spending 4-5+ hours a day scrolling on social media than there are people spending 4-5+ hours per day watching porn. For most people who watch porn it's like 30 mins per day, if that.

This is definitely a fair point. I would argue that cigarettes are worse because they will actually kill you, but I get your point. I mean are any of these things objectively bad in moderation? There isn't really anything inherently wrong with novelty and easy dopamine unless you indulge to excess.

I'm not sure that's universally true. 'coping' usually that means it's being used to cope with some deep emotional issue. Plenty of people just watch porn because they're horny and emotions don't really play into it at all. Yea, that makes sense. It's a nuanced issue with lots of factors playing into it. Demonising it or glorifying it are both incorrect perspectives.

I think you’re over-generalising your own experience here. For some people this is definitely the case, for others it isn’t. It’s a nuanced issue. I have a feeling that the dynamic here often stems from porn use driven by loneliness / FOMO. If you’re using porn to cope with those things instead of actually having sex then that creates a lot of guilt, which takes a massive toll on your body. If there is no dynamic to create the guilt then it’s just not that harmful. Also, if you believe porn is harmful then placebo takes over and you convince yourself it’s hurting you more than it really is.

Hard drugs (heroin, meth) Cigarettes Alcoholism High sugar / ultra processed foods Social media addiction Gambling Social isolation Air pollution Sedentary lifestyle Sleep deprivation culture Late stage capitalism Billionaires Housing crises Poverty in general Chronic stress / hustle culture Shopping addiction Lack of third spaces for socialisation Climate change War I could continue, this is not an exhaustive list

I can think of so many things worse than porn for society that I don’t even know where to start listing them because too many things are coming to mind

This is probably the single best thing I’ve ever done to improve my social skills. Any kind of solo travel is just amazing, but I agree Asia is probably the best place to start with. Possibly the only downside to using solo travel to develop social skills is that you’re often not spending enough time with people to develop super deep friendships. The longest I spent with one group was 3 week, and we’ll likely be lifelong friends, but it’s not the same kind of friendship you can develop with somebody who lives in your country and who you get to know for years. Aside from that it’s amazing for getting over the fear of meeting new people without having to resort to something like pickup

This is the key. I’d add that it really helps to find some neurodivergent extroverts with good people skills. These people will allow you to be sociable but remove a lot of the effort and pressure placed upon you to handle the basic social rules/customs that you may struggle with.