something_else

It's a really common insecurity for some reason, I used to hate how I looked smiling in photos. I think it's because we're used to seeing ourselves in the mirror not smiling. It sounds weird but if you practice smiling in the mirror occasionally you'll start to feel better about how it looks in photos

Your argument is essentially that you should blame the men instead of the women because they create the demand and I agree with that. Ultimately they are the ones stupid enough to fall for these scams. I don’t agree with you that the majority of these guys know what they’re in for though. On that front I think you’re quite sorely mistaken. The majority of guys buying OF are not doing it in a healthy way. It’s done out of loneliness and desperation the majority of the time. If you’re getting regularly laid you’re not gonna waste money on OF. You also can’t completely absolve responsibility from the girls. It depends on the degree to which they are exploiting guys. Making sexual content online and wanna get paid for it? Maybe you lead a few guys on a bit? Sure, whatever, you do you. But having a team of guys pretending to be you chatting to countless guys just to extract as much money as possible? Yea that’s plainly past some ethical line.

The ethical issue here is that many of them pretend to care about the guys. If they can convince these men that they do care, they'll give them more money. Even worse, a lot of the big OnlyFans accounts have teams of guys pretending to be the OF girl. They chat to men and try to lure them into a parasocial relationship to extract even more money from them. Most of the money making in OF happens through whale contacts, essentially guys who they have identified as the perfect combination of rich and gullible. These guys are lured into spending more and more money. This is why a lot of OF girls will post everything on Reddit/Twitter. You might see that you can get anything you'd want to see from the girl on Reddit/Twitter and think "well what dumbass would buy her OF then?". The answer is guys who are gullible enough to think that if they give her money, she'll actually like them. And the girls know this and target those guys, which is quite exploitative in nature.

Patriotism isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's only bad when it's delusional or extreme, like the patriotism you see from people in the US. In general travelling to and living in new places is a good experience for most people. You don't need to sacrifice your patriotism in order to do that either. You can always visit home occasionally.

What mental illnesses are deemed normal by society?

60-70 percent of men are not mentally ill. You get a distorted idea of statistics like this if you only look at online forums and social media. Out in the real world most men are doing just fine

Like 80-90% of the men I’ve met in my life haven’t gone to either of these extremes and are doing just fine

Homeopathy works better than nothing, because of a placebo. That part is pretty well understood But you wouldn't recommend avoiding the conventional treatment in favour of just using homeopathy?

What in the fuck did I just read

If you try and cure a sore leg with homeopathy it'll work because of the placebo effect. If you try and cure cancer with it, you're going to die.

If you are going to travel a lot I think you should learn to travel light, ideally with a lightweight carry on only backpack. Firstly if you resonate with this, there's a really great ultralight travel product list made by a guy called Jeremy Maluf. There are some fantastic product recommendations in this list: https://jeremymaluf.com/onebag/ I'd also say it's worth buying a good lightweight backpack. Personally, the best all round ultralight backpack I've found is the ULA Dragonfly, it's got an amazing reputation among the Onebag community. It's pricey but it'll last you your whole life, ULA has lifetime warranty. It has basically every feature you'd want in a backpack while weighing very little. https://www.ula-equipment.com/product/ultra-dragonfly/

You can say really dirty things, bordering on disrespect if said outside of a sexual context, and many women will absolutely love it. Just make sure that you cuddle up afterwards and let her know that she is loved, instead of used. The contrast between super dirty/passionate/rough sex and soft/warm cuddling afterwards drives women (and a lot of men for that matter) crazy.

He’s probably played like 20k hours of Geoguesser. It would actually be more surprising if he hadn’t had a few insane guesses like this with that much playtime. Even as a pretty bad player I’ve had some really impressive guesses based on random intuition He also admitted to cherry picking a lot of his impressive short TikTok clips

From what I hear they mostly they use escrow systems which mean that if you don't get what you ordered you can raise a dispute and they won't get their money.

I've had wax build-up three or four times and it's annoying, but the last time I tried this. It kinda worked but it didn't completely clear my ears, so I went to the doctor. When I told her I did this she kinda freaked out and told me that this is really risky to do yourself because if you use too much pressure you can damage or burst your eardrum.

You sound VERY angry mate, over something that’s ultimately pretty inconsequential. Why did this post hurt you so much? You doing OK?

I was bullied relentlessly in school and had essentially zero friends, zero social life and crippling social anxiety until I was 22. I got sick of it, so for around 2 years from 22 to 24 I committed to doing something sociable every single weeknight and pushing myself to go out and partying at weekends. At first solo (which was tough) and then eventually I made a group of friends to go out with and I started to really love it. I'm not judging guys like that at all because I basically was one. But I feel compelled to push other people to take action and become properly sociable because I did and it made my life so much better. I'm not part of any hippy groups at all really, I went to a chess club, a jiu jitsu gym, and some hiking groups and then had some friends who I partied with at weekends. I spent the vast majority of my free time from aged 5 to 21 playing video games. It's probably one of my biggest regrets because it's socially fucked me for the rest of my life. But like I said I've done a good amount of work to try and undo all of that shitty social conditioning as much as possible.

What statistics? Any I can find show an increase in lack of sex among both genders since covid. With younger men being hit maybe 5-15% harder depending on the source. And that imbalance evens out as you look at older age ranges too, which makes sense. There's a difference between having a few friends and having an active social life. Smoking weed in your mates flat with a few friends every weekend doesn't count. Not suggesting that applies to the people you're talking about here, but in general when I've had these discussions with dudes before and they tell me they have an active social life but still can't get laid, that's what it ends up looking like. If you're doing activities where you're in busy mixed gender groups and meeting lots of new people every week, you're going to have opportunities to get laid at least occasionally. Well the cause is kind of simple. It's mainly the fact that we are much less sociable than we used to be overall, especially since covid. Men get hit harder by that than women because the barrier to entry for building a social life from scratch for guys is a bit higher than it is for women. But the solution from the POV of a guy who can't get laid is pretty much the same, you need to become a lot more sociable.

The regular nice guy with no social life isn't getting any. Most of the 'regular nice guys' I've met who have an active social life are getting laid at least sometimes. The idea that 'the regular nice guy is getting nothing' comes from incel subcultures that are composed of guys who are chronically online and rarely leave their house. They conclude that women must not like them because they are 'regular nice guys' but it isn't that. It's because they have no social skills.

If she can’t afford $50 for half a dinner I’d like to know that sooner rather than later lol Also you talk a lot about how one should be open to other perspectives here, but that seems to apply only when that other perspective is yours. When it’s reversed you don’t seem particularly open to anything other than your own opinions. Just something I noticed in this thread. Make of that what you will.

I went backpacking SEA for the past year. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Not entirely. In fact, in many ways it's the opposite. Yes, the model used in the Web UI for Deepseek is heavily censored by the Chinese government, but the open source models they have released have no censoring at all. OpenAI's offerings have probably have more bias in the form of human intervention than Deepseek's open source models.

Look at Leo's post from the start. That covers it pretty well. In the early stages you just want to avoid any awkward discussions over who pays because they kill the mood. So if it's cheap (like a coffee or drinks) then just offer to pay. It's nice and the girl will appreciate it. If she really insists on paying her share (which in my experience a lot of girls do nowadays) then split it. It's really not that hard. IMO going for big expensive meals with girls before you actually know them properly is kind of silly. It can create a lot of tension, expectation and awkwardness. You want first dates to be casual, playful, and cheap to the point where you can just pay without really thinking much of it.

'Acting authentic' is an oxymoron. Generally speaking the most authentic guys do pretty well. But it's a kind of "I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks" authenticity. That's actual authenticity. Also you're massively stereotyping here and vaguely hinting at the fact that you think you're a 'good guy' which is funny given the rest of your posts, lol.

What is his intention then? You honestly think he was intending to do a Roman salute? Even if he was then he is claiming that he is totally unaware of how it's identical to a Nazi salute and in that case he should be removed from his position for being utterly stupid. He's either being racist or utterly stupid but there's no way to spin this as a acceptable behaviour for a (now essentially) world leader unless you're also racist. If you go around asking people in Britain for a f*ggot you'll get your head smashed in. The word you're thinking of is 'fa*' and most young people and plenty of old people won't use that term anymore for this very reason. Again, you would be right if he wasn't currently the top advisor for one of the most powerful world leaders in the world. He has a higher standard of behaviour placed on him because of his position.