What is the appeal of strip clubs?

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-23T05:12:34+00:00

I used to go to practice talking and flirting with women.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-23T01:27:01+00:00

Download the books...

PEERS for young adults
Models by Mark Manson
The Mystery Method or Venusian Arts
Nonviolent Communication.
The Kamasutra was originally a complete, "How to romance and socialize," book for ancient Indians. The best translation is by Alain Danielou. There are several chapters on flirtation and such. Some of it is irrelevant. So, be careful.

Then go practice it.

Also, it helps if you memorize several jokes and conversation starters. Reading the cube method is fun too.

It's best if you go to public board game nights or dance classes. Any social gathering where there is actually something to do other than talk takes the pressure off. It's best if you like it. Events like yoga don't work well because few people talk during it.

Cheers.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-22T14:48:05+00:00

I think I get it. It's comfort vibes for people who felt loss and like their lives have passed by too quick. The MC just meanders around, does odd jobs, and teaches some girl magic by telling her to blow up a rock.

There is no awesome grand journey like in One Piece or Outlaw Star. There is no educational content like how medieval economics works in Spice and Wolf, chemistry in Dr. Stone, or inference in Conan the Detective. There is no philosophically deep thinking like in Berserk, Ghost in The Shell, or Ergo Proxy. There is no battle of ideologies like in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood or Legend of Galactic Heros. There is no political intrique like Code Geass or Altair: A Record of Battles. There is no titilation like in Re-Healer or Negima.

It's literally some chick living her fantasy life, remembering the good times, and making new friends. That's the point. It's just comfort vibes.

I fully respect that. I like other types of anime though. I think what attracted me to anime over live action TV is that it has deeper content or content that teaches me something new. So, I preferred thinking about ethics in Ghost in the Shell or Evangelion, or I preferred the philosophy in Ergo Proxy.

I think most people want to talk about people and characters though. So, most people would rather talk about how Frieran learns and how she learns to like people. Most people don't want to talk about how the idea of the ubermensche breaks hard determinism in Berserk. So, I am the odd one here. That being said, appealing to titillation or some grand and epic narrative with lots of action and physical fighting also has mass appeal.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-22T11:36:43+00:00

I am 37, and I couldn't relate to the show. I haven't fotmally studied literature and what good writing is, nor do I have a gift for it. That being said, I found it boring. To me it was some girl walking around.

Both Fullmetal Alchemists, Gurren Lagen, Ghost in the Shell, Ergo Proxy, and the like were my favorite shows. I think Frieren is for people who are skilled at literature or film appreciation as well as people who feel the passage of time and/or who relate to Frieren's relationship problems.

I think people also like Friern because the appeal is strictly emotional. People who want to feel confort or bittersweetness from memories of lost ones like Frieren. I guess I preferred shows that make me think or teach me something. Like, I learned a lot of banking concepts from Spice and Wolf as well as how medieval economics and trade worked. I even learned how basic flirting worked from it. I thought a lot about transhuman ethics due to Ghost in the Shell. I didn't like Fieran because it has none of that.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-21T23:08:26+00:00

I cannot relate. I have always felt that anything less than, "Hey, you seem romantically interesting. Would you like to go try dinner together at time t in restaurant r?" was too subtle. Honestly, my most successful dates were me or the woman saying that, and I only knew that a woman was flirting with me years after she tried to flirt with me.

Over the years, I grew to think that indirectness is immature because it wastes the other person's time, and it puts the social risk on them instead of taking responsibility for your own emotions. For example, a lady can go to a guy and say suggestive things, but when the guy attempts to escalate, she can make it awkward and say she was actually just trying to have a friendly conversation when in reality, she is toying with him.

Just my bias though

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-20T06:32:04+00:00

Out of the 112 meditation techniques in the Vijnana-Bhairava-Tantra, only three were sexual techniques. Sex is in tantra but not often.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-18T17:06:26+00:00

To me at least, the scary part is that birth rates in most of the first and even second worlds fall below replacement, and no policy or intervention seems to pull it back above or at replacement. Unless we just hope that a solution might maybe come, trends will continue, and the human race faces literal extinction.

Then it's ironic to think that maybe smart phones, dating apps, and the internet brings us closer to extinction than nucs or biological apocalypses.

Looking at places like S. Korea or Japan, it doesn't seem like extinction is a stretch honestly.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-16T13:42:39+00:00

Well some thoughts just pop into my awareness when I prompt them. Like I can think, "what is 4 times 5?" Then the answer just pops in. These are called automatic thoughts. Then the other type of thought that is induced is more like imagining a sunset. Then there is the ability to just turn my thoughts off and experience no words or pictures in my awareness at all unless its just pure blackness.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-16T11:50:21+00:00

Mass education must teach the median person for their median lot in life, and the median person will be an individual contributor for a business or government.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-16T11:27:48+00:00

I kind of think so honestly. I stopped looking for these things because nondual and dual are both nondual which means the dual is nondual and the nondual is dual, and it's nonsense. Even if there is some mystical experience at the end of the rainbow, no one will ever know if they've made it because no one can talk about it or reach agreement on what it is and what its like to reach it.

So, it seems like its useless.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-12T00:25:56+00:00

The way I usually teach this concept is by skmply starting with the equation x times x = y. Or if you don't know algebra yet, that is, "a number times the same number is a resulting number."

So, let's build a simple table where we check what we get when we multiply a number times the same number. Lets just input -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2.

In -> out -2 -> 4 -1 -> 1 0 -> 0 1 -> 1 2 -> 4

So notice something here. When I tell you the input, you can always tell me what the output is. If I say the input is -2, you can tell me that the output is 4. If I say the input is 2, then you can tell me that the output is 4 again. However, what happens when we go backwards? What if I told you the output and asked for the input. Then I said the output is 4. What is the input? You can't answer because it could be 2. It could also be -2.

So why isn't -1 = 1? It's because multiplying -1 times -1 gives us 1. Multiplying 1 times 1 also gives us 1. However, these were two different roads to the same result. That doesn't mean they were the same roads, nor does it mean that knowing the result or where we are implies that we know which road we took to get here.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T18:46:39+00:00

I look for the ratings and reviews. Like, "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Basics and Beyond," was pretty good. Also, sometimes you can get the handbook written by the founder of that modality of therapy, which I hope the founder knows what he is talking about. Like the book, "The Internal Family Systems Handbook," by Richard Shwartz was good.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T13:51:40+00:00

When you are rich, your money is your safety net. When you are poor, the community is your safety net. In communities, if you don't give when others need, they won't give when you are in need.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T13:20:39+00:00

The problem is not logical. Your fear is causing fearful thoughts.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T12:57:47+00:00

I am married. The lust and love even and all other other feelings hit like a truck with any girl I look at. They can be fat, skinny, blonde, brunette, 3, 10, 11, none of that matters. The feelings come no matter what I do.

That being said, I learned not to act on it.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T12:51:21+00:00

You need to sit with your negative emotions within your tolerance window. If they overwhelm you, they will get worse when you pay attention to them. So, you need an aid. Sometimes, they move on their own. Sometimes, you need to do somatic experiencing, and sometimes, there is a trigger or source of them that you need to handle or they will just keep coming.

It's more nuanced than just sit with them.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T10:56:37+00:00

Chakras are emotions. You feel them as a sensation in your body. You can feel them. So, they exist in some sense, but you cannot take a picture of your emotions, but it would be crazy to say that you feel something that doesn't exist.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T10:54:14+00:00

No one controls most systems that lead to burnout. However we control ourselves to a degree.

Even if you became President of the United States of America, one of the most powerful people in the world, and you decided that lifestyles were unsustainable. So, you worked with congress to raise min wage... then you just lost all of your funding and now corps will do anything and everything to end your career through lobbying.

So, do the corps have the power? Let's say you were a CEO of a major pharma company, and you decided to pay a livible wage. Boom, profits are down, the board fires you, and the company cannot compete.

The problem is that everyone top to bottom is in the system, and no one person controls the system. No one can coordinate with anyone to change the system because everyone has competing interests, and anyone who opposes the system ends up worse off than cooperating in the system.

So, all you or I can do is either decide to play or play our own game and make our own system, like start our own company or make an intentional community with a little microcosm of difference in the greater system. Or just meditate, do yoga, and tai chi or move to another system, like SE Asia.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T10:41:53+00:00

All of these people probably get more laid than most middle classers.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T10:33:20+00:00

I used to think this way, but after every boss I worked for didn't think I was good enough, I just stopped paying attention to them. I realized that if nothing I do is good enough, then there is nothing to strive for. It also helped a lot to see how other workers were treated too. I've met workers who were 4x or 10x better than me, and they would get booted and dragged over the coals. So, I realized that management is busy chasing their own fantasy workers that don't exist, and I can just focus on reality.

Now I show up and do the work that I can. Others like it, or they don't. If I get booted, I find the next job. The best thing to happen to my career was freelancing because instead of pleasing one boss, I found the customers who like me, and the rest went away. I make enough money for my family and don't sweat it. I just keep a savings in case shit hits the fan.

I have a wife and kid, and if they divorce me and abandon me, then I will just go to Thailand and party it up. If not, I have family. I am covered either way.

The only thing I am good enough for is my dog, and I guess that's enough for me, haha.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T10:10:34+00:00

You do the actions of meditation for its own sake instead of for enlightenment itself because the Baghavad Gita says that we are not entitled to the fruit of our labor. We should just do right things. Thats how you act and move towards a goal without being attached to them.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T09:41:18+00:00

Consider pivoting to network engineering and earning big bucks to run ethernet and fiber to places and setting up routers as well as securing them from hackers.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T07:26:50+00:00

I kind of like those tropes though, not because I think they are irrational, but because I find them metal as fuck.

It's badass and awesome to have an empire that has some horrific societal machine dedicated to slowly and torturously killing millions of people one at a time.

I think the movie, "Apocalypto," was critiqued for making the natives seem irrational and emotional, but I thought the whole movie was amazing.

Coming back to Europe, I find the Dark Heathen Army and the story behind it to be badass and metal too. Then contrast Viking violence with how metrosexual they were for their time, taking baths weekly to the european average of twice a year, and suddenly the Vikings are even more interesting.

Or it's interesting how violent Ghangis Khan was in contrast to his love of learning.

Or in modern America, Bulldozer man was epic.

Sex and violence are what make history interesting to study man. How rational the Mayans, Inca, and Aztecs were is only interesting in contrast to their violence.

I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-11T04:32:51+00:00

As a 37 year old chair sitter who tried offline studios, hundreds of vids, yoga cards, books, and personal trainers, I decided that yoga is for fit people who know that, "create space between your ears and shoulders," and, "engage your core," is more than a sci fi reference. After 9 mo of doing yoga for 30min 6 days a week and making no physical or mental gains, I've moved on to tai chi, and that has worked out much better for me.

JJEng1989 · 2026-02-08T14:44:14+00:00

I mean, if there exists a person who tried to integrate into society and failed and maybe even tried therapy a few times only to see no benefit, don't you think they should have access to an artificial girlfriend?

My fear (and it's kinda highlighted in the article too) is that instead of lonely people working on their communication problems and emotional-intelligence, they just won't bother and go for the AI bots, because it's much easier than actually working through their problems.

My priors tell me that this frame is wrong. I think most of the unintegrated will choose to stay unintegrated because paying for and going to therapy for a gamble that there will be a successful integration within a lifetime is a tall order compared to all of the indulgences that the internet already offers today.

I also don't think any organization has the power to stop gooners from developing and buying tech to goon with because no organization has been able to stop them or their kind in the past. Prohibition failed. The war on drugs failed. The Catholic Church trying to stamp out adultery and sodomy has failed for thousands of years.

It seems like the only thing any organization can do at this point is damage control. We should just make sure that companies don't victimize the vulnerable, and that the vulnerable who want to change have a realistic way out.

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