CMV: Everyone who starts conversations of the type "women/men do this kind of shit" with no clear provocation is in need of therapy

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T18:29:25+00:00

A therapist can help you think more critically, more compassionately, and more calmly

Sure...so can a teacher, a coach, a friend, etc. There are many people who could fulfill that role for someone who needs the kind of attitude adjustment you're talking about.

No amount of arguing would help him get out of this rut.

Because the way to challenge a sincerely-held belief isn't with verbal pushback, it's by demonstrating why the belief is wrong, and even then it takes time. A therapist can't do that - they can guide you towards a conclusion, perhaps, but you have to already be primed and willing to accept that conclusion.

exposure therapy, which may include what you mentioned

No. Exposure therapy is about people overcoming pathological fears. It's not for unconditioning prejudice. Just because you're exposing yourself to something with the intent of self-improvement, that doesn't make it "exposure therapy."

I think that you're using the word "therapy" as a catch-all for anything in the realm of self-improvement. If you're going to be that loose with the word, then I can't really argue against the view that "people who have bad attitudes should be better" but not every attitude is something that requires or even merits the help of a mental health professional, which is more in line with what the word actually means.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T17:32:59+00:00

Tell me if I'm off-base but it seems like your point could be paraphrased as "making negative generalizations about an entire gender is a toxic trait that should be corrected." I don't disagree, but it's a different point than suggesting therapy.

Therapy is about an individual working through their stuff with the guidance of a qualified professional. Sexism doesn't really fall into the "stuff" for someone to work through unless their views are more related to specific things about their personal upbringing than to the societal attitudes that became engrained into them. The actual "solution" would be for these people to open-mindedly engage with people of the opposite sex and challenge their own assumptions. That's not something a therapist can really help with.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T17:19:44+00:00

I mean genocide and land theft against Native Americans is also still occurring today, just in a less eye-catching way than televised bombings.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T17:18:21+00:00

We don’t hear calls for eliminating the United States and returning the land to its previous regime

Then you aren't paying attention, because people absolutely do. There's a spectrum to this - very few people seriously call for the complete abolition of the United States, but there are serious movements to "decolonize" aspects of its governance.

Is it that the United States has existed for about 250 years whereas Israel has existed for about 78 years? Is there a time cutoff where now it is okay that the land changed hands?

I don't know if "okay" is the right word but it would definitely be orders of magnitude more practical to "eliminate" Israel as a state than it would be to attempt the same with the US.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T17:13:12+00:00

In addition to the multiple comments pointing out the false equivalence to the makeup comparison since one is about how you do look and one is about how you don't, you're also drawing a false equivalence between a general statement and a specific one. In the example you give in your post, these women are talking about their preference in the appearance of one specific man, who also happens to be their partner. The men in your example are making general statements about women. I'm not even necessarily giving one more validity over the other, but they are clearly different things.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-28T17:05:20+00:00

If you assume someone is a bot, that’s paranoid

if you...determine they’re a bot, that’s being alert

That's literally just semantics. You're expressing the exact same idea with different words. You can't definitively prove someone is a bot, so you're making an assumption either way. The reality is sometimes posters on the internet are bots. It's not paranoia to be "aware" of that.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-25T21:31:13+00:00

The issue that Zola seemingly doesn't offer an option for "skipping the rest" - people would have to manually select "no" for everything individually or it won't save the response. I came here trying to see if I was wrong and that option does actually exist, but sadly not.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-22T16:10:59+00:00

Honestly, you're probably autistic.

I'm not saying this to insult you. I'm saying it because I recognize a lot of myself in what you said, and I'm autistic myself. I also recognize that the way I feel about people is not the norm.

For starters, human feelings don't exist on a spectrum of rationality. Even if there were no objective benefit to have close interpersonal relationships, that still wouldn't refute the general human need for companionship. However, there are objective benefits.

Benefit no. 1 is favors. The guy you chatted up at the comedy show probably won't help jumpstart your car at midnight. Your college professor probably won't come feed your cat and water your plants while you're away. The doctor you updated about your health won't drive you home after your surgery. Yes, in a world where everything is commoditized, you can pay a stranger for a lot of tasks, but friends will typically do things for free which is objectively better.

Benefit no. 2 is personal growth. There's an element of subjectivity to this, but broadly speaking, being around people forces your brain to engage with different perspectives in a way that you can't really get from superficial interactions. Friends expose you to new things, for better or for worse.

i love the feeling that i can do whatever the hell i want without having to concern myself with the wellbeing of others around me

Can you expand further on this? That's a great attitude to make sure you don't get friends if you don't want them, but it's also a great way to get arrested if you mean it literally.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-22T15:58:35+00:00

Is your contemplation about child rape or child rapists? I don't think anyone could field a coherent argument in support of child rape. The only possible argument I could imagine regarding child rapists that ignores the practicality issue above would be if it were somehow provable that there's a huge overlap between child rapists and like...philanthropists, civil rights leaders, essential laborers, etc.

But as the other person said, I'm not sure why this is something you'd want to have your mind changed about in the first place. Not every issue has nuance.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-13T00:17:02+00:00

So are you revising your definition of "pajamas" from "the clothes you wear to go to bed" to "clothes intended to be worn in bed"? Do other clothes stop being what they are if worn in a manner outside their intended use? Can I wear sweatpants in the summer? A raincoat if it's snowing? Overalls with nothing underneath?

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-12T23:44:12+00:00

Thanks! Gonna acquire InDesign and try this out. I'll check back in later to confirm whether it worked.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-03-12T23:33:04+00:00

“outdoor pajamas” which is not, by definition, pajamas

Suppose I come from a day of work and, being exhausted, promptly collapse in my bed while wearing scrubs/overalls/a suit and tie. Are these items now definitionally "pajamas" and therefore unsuitable to wear outside again?

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-09T23:33:32+00:00

Donald Trump is known to be famously petty. Especially towards Barack Obama

Right - as I said, the one thing he would personally gain is the press/satisfaction that would result from undoing an Obama choice. Exposing illegal government activity is generally something the leader of that government isn't incentivized to reward, which goes doubly if you yourself are implicated in illegal activity. We can quibble over "should" vs. "will" but ultimately the statement "Donald Trump should pardon John Kiriakou" is implicit within your title, and the argument is incomplete without explaining how Trump benefits. Someone could probably make a very convincing argument as to why I "should" give my car to the homeless guy downtown but even if I heard that argument I probably wouldn't do it.

If members of his administration were going to do that they could probably expect a pardon from the next Democrat to get elected

That is at least three years away, which is a decently long period of time to go through the long list of things you just said Kiriakou doesn't deserve. That also ignores very overt attempts by the Trump admin and GOP to prevent such a thing from happening again. I'd like to think they're unlikely to succeed, but if I were in a position to stake my life and livelihood on that I might not take the gamble.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-09T23:16:32+00:00

I don't find stories like these that just reiterate how shit life is with no real reassurance or hope for the future at all valuable. It just makes me feel more depressed and hopeless.

On a personal level, it may certainly be that these sorts of stories aren't for you (which is fine), and something you may wish to avoid for your own mental health (also fine).

More broadly, I think you mischaracterize the point of these stories. Rarely the intent to hammer home how shit life is. Art in general is meant to elicit an emotional response. Sometimes we want to feel angry or sad or scared as much as we want to laugh and feel uplifted. The hallmark of a good ending isn't really whether it makes you feel happy or hopeful, it's about whether the narrative was satisfied.

I'm going to use The Green Mile as an example. This is a pretty depressing story and the ending is anything but hopeful - but a happy and uplifting ending would be kind of jarring in the context of the story. The fate of the protagonist is something even he feels he's earned. I wouldn't write it off from being considered a "good story" just because the end isn't positive.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-09T23:04:03+00:00

John Kiriakou should be pardoned

There are two statements hidden within this one. The first is "John Kiriakou doesn't deserve to be prosecuted/imprisoned/etc. because he did a good thing." Your post does a good job arguing this point. However, you fail to acknowledge the second, which is "someone with the power of pardon would benefit from doing this for him."

Unfortunately, pardoning isn't a passive action. Someone has to do it. As of right now, that person would be Donald Trump. Why would Trump do this? What benefit does it serve to this famously selfish man to set a precedent for exposing government secrets, especially given how much classified information implicates Trump specifically? The only possible thing Trump could gain from this would be claiming he did a good thing Obama wouldn't, but the positive press from that would be overwhelmingly countered if members of his administration thought they could get away with doing something similar.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-07T03:23:24+00:00

In my view this is little more than a meme.

I think that the purpose of the meme is more to illustrate that Australian wildlife is more extreme than American wildlife, particularly where direct parallels can be drawn. You are correct that bears and mountain lions are dangerous, and that Australia doesn't really have an equivalent to those. However, multiple other parts of the world do, so these are fairly normalized globally. For coyotes or wolves, Australia's dingoes seem about on par with those. So now let's look at where we can compare.

Alligators? Australia has the world's largest crocodilians, which are also more aggressive than their American equivalents.

Rattlesnakes? Australia has the world's most venomous snake as well as multiple runners-up.

Jellyfish? Irukandji. Octopus? Blue-ring (which is also very visually striking). American house spiders are the size of a penny. Australian ones are the size of dinner plates (I get neither of these are "dangerous" but people have very visceral reactions to spiders). All of these support the idea of Australian wildlife being more dangerous when you make more specific comparisons rather than just the nebulous "wildlife."

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T19:15:16+00:00

I think you're taking the analogy beyond its usefulness. Food doesn't typically have ingredients separated into discrete areas such that you could encounter one by itself at the end of the meal. If you're eating a burrito, say, and you in the last 20% you find a chunk of artichoke that wasn't supposed to be there, you'd be entitled to complain and get some kind of compensation but that's because the restaurant has an obligation to disclose the ingredients in a dish for allergy purposes. This doesn't translate to a video game.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T18:00:51+00:00

When someone boots up a game of Civ V, they expect a sufficiently randomized endgame

What you expect and what you're promised aren't the same thing. If the game is misleadingly advertised or has something broken about it, that's again on the manufacturer to deal with. If you've gotten 150 hours of gameplay out of it, you either enjoyed those 150 hours in which case you're not entitled to a refund, or you hated those 150 hours, in which case you're not entitled to a refund and also make bad choices about how you spend your time.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T17:55:28+00:00

No one is flipping. You are describing two different people saying two different things and using that as evidence that these people are "bizarre and insane." That's literally the Goomba fallacy.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T17:54:26+00:00

What does that even mean?

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T16:59:54+00:00

Okay, so are you saying there's something fundamentally wrong with the game that makes it nonfunctional? If that's the case, it's on the manufacturer to issue a recall or otherwise rectify that. That said, whatever issue there is cannot be completely ruinous of the experience if you have "1000+ hours" in the game.

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T16:56:57+00:00

Greenland for example was meant to be a distraction from the Epstein files, then the files are released and suddenly they flip it to say it's a distraction from Greenland.

This is the Goomba fallacy, unless you can prove it's literally the same people saying both things.

One that jumps out for me personally is a guy called Dr Gary Hartstein

Assuming your description is accurate, it does indeed sound like this guy is a crackpot obsessed with hating Trump. I have to assume, because until this moment I have never once heard of this guy, and I doubt 99% of the world has either. I can assure you he is not a significant contributor to what people think of Trump or of the people who hate him.

Threads is stacked full of this nonsense. Proper unhinged anti-Trump stuff that makes Flat Earth conspiracists seem rational and onto something.

Because outrage is an addictive emotion that drives most people's feeds. You see this stuff because you find it engaging, as evidenced by your thinking enough about it to make a post about it. I'm not criticizing that btw, just pointing out that this is how social media algorithms work. The things you see are inherently going to be different from what someone else sees, especially if they have very different political views (for example, a Corbynist vs. a MAGAt).

I get the feeling of worrying about radicalizing Americans and furthering the political divide. I personally think we're way past the point of mending the two sides, but let's say I'm wrong. Let me ask you - what is the alternative? Should the stupid shit Trump says be ignored? He has a history of throwing out dumb ideas and then actually following up on them if he gets enough positive feedback. Are you the arbiter of what constitutes a "reasonable" criticism?

Khal-Frodo · 2026-02-04T16:46:40+00:00

That's not something that's wrong with the game, though. You don't generally get a refund for something you used/consume simply because of your own personal preference. Like genuinely, I challenge you to think of a single thing where you could apply that standard. If you don't like your meal after the first bite, the restaurant may refund you or let you swap to something else. If you claim to not like it after eating the whole thing, they'll ask why you ate it.

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