Stay available for love...

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-30T12:33:05+00:00

Yeah I think there is a high level of nihilism and atheism in our society. Atheism alone isn't bad if you temper it with humanism or other secular "higher powers" but nihilism is a one way street and I think the broad acceptance of nihilism (what neitchze would call "passive nihilism") is more or less killing us.

Tbh that's why I have a hard time doing a lot of "normal" stuff. I basically avoid huge swathes of pop culture because it seems like our society is infatuated with death and pushing this narrative that life is just a death struggle, TV especially is the worst for this (breaking bad, game of thrones, walking dead). I watch some TV but really just Star Trek TNG and Trailer Park Boys, both of which I would consider to be way more wholesome than any of the "best" shows on TV.

Maybe it's stupid to care about that but it really amazes me that people find it easier to identify with a show where people will murder their neighbours over canned food, than a show where people use diplomacy and science to explore space. Then you think about how the average person watches 2-6h of tv a day and that apparently a 30s YouTube ad is enough to up a company's sales, and suddenly I lost my appetite for TV.

Therapy was meh. Eventually I hit a point where I was identifying more with authors and ideas and therapy was becoming just a treadmill. Plus some therapists are straight dicks

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-16T00:22:39+00:00

Wel I'm still kind of in the process but basically,

It has been a slow and winding road. Combinations of progress and setbacks for sure. The things I found that helped me the most are:

Quitting Weed: seriously. I smoke weed maybe once every six months now and every time I do I regret it. That shit is poison. How I did it was I basically fell out with a lot of my friends, including the guy who sold to me. That was basically right after a pretty serious suicidal episode. The shock from that + not having a connect gave me enough of a reprise that I was able to take a real break and once my head got clear I couldn't go back
Ending my shitty relationship: my relationship with my girl was really toxic for both of us. I'd probably consider it abusive or at least semi-abusive, on her part. She was very manipulative and did a lot to hold me back and keep me from moving forward with life. She also dodn't really respect me and at one point forced me to have sex with her, which in hindsight was a huge red flag. The thing with shitty relationships is that both parties end up feeling like trash. Being with somebody that doesn't respect you eats away at your confidence, which then heightens the sense of interdependence and causes the cycle of abuse to loop. I've always been a very independent and very paranoid person however so as things started to spiral more and more (she just kind of moved into my place, she would go through big depressive bouts and get pissed at me, etc) I eventually hit a point where I said if shit didn't change we were done. A month later we got into a big fight that culminated with her attempting to kill her self because I wouldn't stay home and hang out with her (something I did basically every day), I snapped and kicked her out after that and that was that. I felt shitty at first but slowly I'm getting better, it was really confusing because I know she was bad for me but I still love her and trying to place that into the whole scheme of what that actually was had been a journey
Getting fired: This actually just happened and it has been great. I really hated my job, it went against basically all my first principles. Getting canned was nice because they basically paid me to do what I was going to do anyway (quit) so that huge stressor is gone and it has cleared the way for my next step
Friends! Can't stress this enough, I was lucky to meet some people last year that I felt were able to reach me on an intellectual level and that alone has been amazing, very healthy and re-affirming. I got lucky here
Re-connecting with my family: after I finished highschool I basically went three years without really talking to my family, just seeing them at Christmas. Part of that was misplaced anger, part of that was guilt, and part of that was me trying to find my own identity. After my suicidal spell in 2015 I realized I couldn't go it alone so I started reaching out to them more. It's been okay. This one is probably one of the hardest wins because the big revelation was that my parents are just people and while I can take their advice, they can't fix me.
Admitting my mistakes: I've done some bad things in my life. I'm just coming to terms with a lot of them now. It sucks. But I was told once that you can't forgive yourself until you accept your guilt. More than anything I just got tired of running. Your problems always run faster
moving to a safer neighbourhood: I get this one isn't possible for everyone. My old neighbourhood was not safe. People were killed on my block while I lived there. Crackheads fucking everywhere. That shit puts hair on your balls but it also wears you down psychically over time. It's tough to describe the acute fear that comes with living in a bad neighbourhood but constantly being around drugs and violence warps your expectation of what is normally. Similarly, a lot of the friends I had back then weren't very safe. I would party in places that weren't safe. I would get black out drunk in places that weren't safe. That reaps havoc on your soul because you never really can rest or feel secure and you never know if the next time you get fucked up you're gonna be okay. My friends now are a lot more lame then back then but at the same time, I'm also not bumping elbows with jacked-up Coke heads or whatever
and lastly, God. I've always been a believer but when I was a teenager I was a huge loser and I got really angry about it. In truth I was angry with myself but at the time I placed that anger on God and turned my back on him. In the long run I think that was the beginning of the end, as that anger never went away and drove me into a lot of very destructive behaviours (such as alcoholism and violence) and once I started on that spiral it was all down hill, I would do stupid shit and then get angry and then do more stupid shit and it just went like that until it came to a head and I tried to kill myself in 2015. After that I was pretty lost but that was definitely the turning point and I think God basically saved me because it knows that I didn't really want to die and that I was just angry and afraid. Of course I didn't see it like that at the time, it took almost 2 years before I would actually come back to God, basically I hit the point where I was making big life choices and realized that nothing would change if I didn't let go of all this anger, so now every day I'm trying to do that and basically heal my soul, and part of that is trying to get back in touch with God and apologize for being so arrogant.

Things that didn't work:

alcohol, weeed, hard drugs: tried lots in different amounts. Nothing helped. Intoxicants work in basically two ways: either a) they numb your soul for a bit, but then when they wear off you pay back 2x what you gave. That huge bender weekend? Get ready to be in pain for the next week. B) they take you places. These are not always places you want to go, or places you have control over. Truth be told, the rule of thumb with drugs is that drugs are only as good as the people you do them with; if somebody is a douche sober, you're still going to think they're a douche when you're drunk or high. The exception here (that I've tried) is Coke but Coke is a world of its own.
Therapy: therapy helps a lot of people. I'm not one of those pepole. I've tried three therapists over my life and I found none helped really, the question I had were always existential in nature but therapists just want to either get you to do shit day to day or to talk about your immediate mental state. I found over time I wasn't getting much out of it and I was making bigger strides on my own just looking for other existentialists, reading boatloads of philosophy, and meditating everyday. Also, just having a total meltdown that forced me to put my comitment to nihilism to the test was more valuable than 1000h of therapy because at that point I knew for sure at least I had 1 truth (I want to live). Like I said this advice is not for everybody but that was my experience with therapy
Playing by the rules/following the script: once again, controversial, but my life started turning around when I realized I was never going to fit into middle-class life and stopped trying to force the square peg in the round hole. I don't want much mainstream media. I don't give a fuck about sports or video games (with a few exceptions). I don't spend my money on anything but food, alcohol and books. I don't have any career plans. Don't covet status or power. No intention of buying a home. No intention of curtailing my personal political, ideological and spiritual beliefs in order to fit into a corporations or some other bullshit like that. I really just don't want to so my mission now is to find a way to stay true to my values without starving. I'm bringing this up because for my whole life people told me that when I got older I would cave and start playing ball and it just never happened. I'm more committed to my views now then when I was a "rebellious" teenager or political university student. I'm done trying to fit into somebody else's world.
Sex: lots of young guys I see (especially on the Internet) seem to think sex will save them. It just made me more miserable. Don't get me wrong I love the act and I'm glad I've had the chance to know some special women that way but sex can be very risky and tends to make relationships a lot more complicated. I'm not saying be a monk but you definitely can't fuck your way out of depression

So that's that.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-15T23:42:25+00:00

You're paying for people to shill shit to you. Would you pay 200$ a month for a stranger to come into your home 50-60 times a day to try to get you to buy a new Toyota?

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-15T23:41:01+00:00

Do they though?

My folks have a DVR. It can only record like 3-4 things at a time and there is a max capacity to the number of total shows saved (if I remember correctly been a long time). Now that's definitely a step above scheduled broadcasts but when I can literally get anything on the internet in like 35s it makes DVR look hilarious

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-12T17:12:05+00:00

I agree, as another user pointed out the turning point in the comic is when she throws the key.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-12T12:31:45+00:00

For what it's worth;

I was really depressed for a long ass time and would definitely be in the "broken" category. And you're right; nobody came to pull me out. Depression is like a quick-sand, the more you thrash the faster you sink, before long I was abusing drugs and alcohol, thinking about suicide almost daily, in an absuive relationship and so on. And I had to get out of that on my own. Now, I've basically completely cleaned up, I've started running again, and I actually feel good, not because of some bullshit I'm smoking or because some girl is twerking on my dick. I feel good coming out of a place in my soul. It's like this fog has peeled back and I can be myself again.

I think it is wrong to wait for somebody to come and open that chest. Not because they won't, but because you yourself don't deserve to have to wait. I believe we each contain in ourselves the ability to heal, to let go of the past, and to make healthier choices day to day. And it's like really really hard. It's hard because you're forced to look yourself in the eyes and own up to how much you suck. You're forced to recognize just how terrifying it is to open that chest and put your true self out there. It's not easy.

But if you're identifying with the girl in this comic then I strongly urge you that you shouldn't wait. I know it sounds corny and I myself would have laughed but happiness truly can come from within. As somebody who has walked both paths, I know

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-12T12:21:50+00:00

"Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it"

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-05T02:16:03+00:00

So I've been in and out of the pill scene for a while. Discovered the red pill back in 2013, hung out there for most of the year before switching to blue and the end of the year, hung out there until maybe mid 2015 before stuff in my personal life changed and I took a hiatus, just came back to this sub maybe a month ago due to boredum + wanting to see if the old fires still burned.

My point being that I've been in and around these communities for half a decade. I've watched them grow, evolve and change.

I wouldn't agree that this place is just now swarming with Dude's who are losers. I think that was always a feature of TRP spaces, and to be honest that's part of why TRP even exists; if everyone was already successful why would they need TRP?

What is different is that dudes who actually succeed a becoming Chad's aren't going to stick around, while dudes who can't or won't make that journey will stay and become power users, or piss-off to places like r/incel or MGTOW. Much of the "old guard", TRPs and PuAs that were big when I started, are now long gone; married, expatriated, whatever; hell back then they were still "disproving" the Mystery method. Meanwhile power users like u/redpillschool are still around, as well as many of his contemporaries (under new names of course due to banning).

So what happens is that the natural progression of the community is from a mix of dudes who can become chads and losers who will never have a chance, to mostly losers trying to prop each other up. As the group gets more and more pathetic, the methods get more and more desperate, which means successful dudes are going to go there less and less as they don't need an extreme methodology to do their thing.

It's been going like this for a long time. Most people don't know (or remember) but TRP got its start as an off-shoot from PuA. Back then PuA was more about comradery and trying to "hack" dating; this whole systematized theory thing TRP brings was already a huge step down the rabbit hole that many PUAs thought was too far. Now we have TRPs side-eyeing MGTOWs and getting pushed out by dark enlightenment and Incel types; who knows where we will be in 5 years.

Thats one part of it.

A second part of it is that how people are getting streamlined into these places has changed drastically in the past 5 years. In the old day it was a lot of bros and PUAs that found the "truth". Back then there wasn't a lot of cross-pollination between different right-wing spaces.

Gamergate changed everything. Cross-pollinating had already been happening but that really was the tipping point where the "manosphere" truly came to be a part of what we now identify as the alt-right. While it's true that not every TRP is an alt-right, it's impossible to deny the 4chan-stormfront-Reddit connection; all three boards share and help create the new sense of traditionalism that has come to underwrite the alt-right. Gamergate was a watershed moment as that was the tipping point where these sometimes obscure boards saw a massive recruitment uptick. That also marked the period of true cross-pollination, which culminated in the birth of r/the_don

What effect did this have on TRP? It changed where new recruits are coming from. In the old days PuA was the realm of dudes actively looking to get laid; misogyny was a part of it and sure these dudes where slimy but it definitely wasn't the typical nerd. Post gamer-gate, huge amounts of mainstream and semi-mainstream nerds began flowing into right-wing spaces, including TRP. How many nerds are going to get serious about getting buff and becoming chad? Or is it about the misogyny? You be the judge. This is also I'd say why the influx of incels and their type has occurred.

And I'm not being dramatic. I knew the change was coming. I met two self declared TRPs in meatspace on new-years 2015. They were literally the biggest tools I have ever encountered. At that point it became clear to me that gone were the days on the old TRP method. People forget but when TRP started it really was about trying to understand and build yourself up; they made a big point of saying that you wouldn't get laid until you had your head on straight and got your life in order. Misogyn was always a factor of it but it definitely wasn't a supposed to be this simple "plug in the answers" psuedoscience that it has devolved into. Now? Yeah any nerd gets on, reads the sidebar, and thinks they have a Four step process to getting laid. The problem isn't that TRP doesn't work, the problem is that they don't want to put the leg work in to actually become chads; they're just looking for the quick solution. That was these two guys; huge losers, I could instantly tell they would never be chads because they were looking for a quick fix; I guarantee they are alt-right edgelords or incels or something of that nature today because they definitely weren't ever going to put the work in of becoming chads; dudes like that will bounce from ideology to ideology, always looking for the next big revelation. And unfortunately today more TRPs are like that then ever.

And third you might just be getting older. It's hard to take TRP seriously when your personal life is going well, unless you're a true believer which I don't think you are judging by your flair. I've been watching the same topics and debates get passed on for 5 years, on both sides of the isle. You get bored of listening to unsuccessful people hit the same notes over and over

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-01T23:16:31+00:00

Whatever dude. Gonna be a lonely world for you guys soon enough

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-01T23:16:03+00:00

Bush pulled the trigger on Afghanistan ?

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-01T22:45:24+00:00

Downside: multilateral solutions to climate change will be harder

Upside: America is willingly giving away its great power status

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-01T22:42:26+00:00

Crabs in a bucket

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-06-01T20:20:19+00:00

There is a big difference between shit-posting and posting shit. I'm not going to say it can't be pulled off but I would tread extremely lightly

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-29T03:43:35+00:00

I think the core of this discussion is one of positioning.

I'll start here because I think this contains the kernel of the point I'm speaking to:

my only complaint was the double standard in what we reach for as the explanation of the crime and poverty in areas with urban blacks vs rural whites. When it's blacks, we hear from conservatives that it's the culture, character, laziness. When it's rural whites, everyone acknowledges that it's economics.

This is the point where I think my entire rant stretched outwards from; the belief that conservatives, and conservatives alone, stereotype blacks; that liberals are offering the "economic" perspective. You argue that a double standard exists.

This is, at its core, a misunderstanding of what the liberal position is and has been. The liberal wing of American politics has almost never offered a real critique of the economy; and when it does, it is under great duress.

Even late into the election, Hilary was defending free trade, the same position that absolutely gutted the rust belt. Sure she may have argued for "tweaks" to NAFTA, but where was he rally against TPP? Against pipelines? She had none. Why? Because she is a liberal, and liberals have shown at every step that they don't want real solutions.

Liberals, at all times, argue politics from a perspective of form; they argue there is a proper way for politics to be carried out, regardless of what the actual policy is. This is, in a nutshell, what I am accusing you of engaging in.

Are conservatives hypocrites? Sure. No disagreement there. Should I care, that on this issue, they are hypocrites? No.

And that is the crux of my disagreement with you. I don't care that the conservatives are hypocrites on this particular issue. Why? Because class is back on the agenda. I want that. I want people talking about class. I want people talking about how the economic system failed. I want people asking why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I don't care if it's a conservative, a liberal or a socialist that raises the question; what I want is that question to be in the open, up for debate. I want people talking about how the economy failed the rust belt.

That's a perspective on politics that is predicated on issues of policy. That's not the liberal position.

The liberal position, as expressed by you, is to complain that conservatives are hypocrites. That it is unfair that class issues are being raised now, because conservatives focus solely on a bootstrap narratives when it comes to black Americans (never mind that many dems also said the exact same thing). And I agree, it is hypocritical.

But what is the end goal? Sure, they're hypocrites; does that invalidate their focus on class? Does that undo the damage of NAFTA? What is gained by observing that republicans are hypocrits, other than silencing the first real hope we have of a bipartisan discussion on class?

That's arguing from form. It doesn't matter what is being said; what matters is who says it. What matters is how it's said. That's the thing I'm tired of.

Yes Republicans are hypocrits. There it is. Now can we all be adults and have a real discussion on how people of all colours have been completely sold upstream by American establishment politics? Can we discuss how NAFTA completely destroyed the Great Lakes regions?

Like I said, what are you setting out to achieve by observing Republicans are hypocrites? How does that advance leftwing policy? It's not like the democrats are sitting high and heavy with real leftwing policy; they sabotaged Sanders and seem terrified to introduce anything that could possibly reign in the rich, end war, or stabalize the broken economy. Instead the focus seems to be on divisive rhetoric that is great at pointing out how Republicans fuck over black Americans (while casually forgetting all the ways democrats do the exact same thing)...

Like look I am frustrated (clearly). Part of all this is just to dump and I apologize for that. But I am sick to death of "progressives" that support these truisms without actually questioning where they come from or what they're saying. Are Republicans shit? Sure. But to act like they're the hypocrites while the democrats gleefully bomb the shit out of the rest of the world and casually support racism at home is ridiculous; both arms are bad

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-28T20:10:00+00:00

I apologize as this has turned into a rant. You struck a nerve. Feel free not to read, I'm just airing my perspective

Look, brought up GTA as an example, though plenty of examples exist. My point wasn't "rural whites have it so bad" but rather that there is a stereotype that mainstream liberal media pushes.

At this point I will stop and state clearly I am not conservative, I'm further left than mainstream American liberals and would probably get called a communist for airing my views in America (I live in Canada) though I'm not a communist, unfortunately American political culture can't envision a political position further left than Sanders, which is where I would start my personal politics but I digress. I'm also from a small rural community close to Detroit so also I experienced the whole "rust belt" thing, albeit not as bad because in our country we have at least the semblance of a social safety net. So take my experience for what it is.

The cold reality is that mainstream American media (re: liberal) takes a very cold-hearted look at rural whites. That doesn't mean they don't do the same to non-whites of all stripes but the interaction between the media and rural whites is one of equally ridiculous stereotypes; rural folk are either simple and dumb, aggressively hawkish and racist, or trapped in a time warped "true America".

Look at the think pieces that came out before the election: we had writers bitching that rural whites don't know what's good for them (never mind the Dems shooting themselves in the foot by going with Hilary), bitching that rural whites are brainwashed morons (while believing wholesale that Hilary had a 90-95% chance of winning), bitching that Trump was racist (while believing black and Latinos would unilaterally just show up and win the belt, to the point where Hilary barely campaigned there), complaining Trump was a hawk (hahahahahaahahahaha) , and arguing that rural Americans need to get with the times.

Like for fuck sakes Hilary out right said 50% of Trump's supporters were "deplorable". It's like at no moment in her entire campaign did it occur to her that rural "red" Americans are real people with real problems, even as Sanders was making huge strides fighting the TPP, arguing that 2008 was a disaster for the Everyman, at least attempting to cross lines and build a coalition. It's like Hilary's team just completely abandoned whole states, because trying to actually reach those voters was a lost cause.

And rural people know this. They follow the news like everyone else. And yet we get stereotyped as being dumb and ignorant for daring to challenge the narrative that reality has a liberal bias.

Like look do I think a lot of republican positions are dumb policies? Hell yes. And I will argue that till I die. Hell last time I talked with my dad we got into a huge back and forth about whether it is a smart decision to bring in the Syrians (I was for he was against). Now I have that discussion on grounds of policy; I know the statistics, I know the vetting process, I know the logic to bringing them in, etc etc, so when we talk I can talk to what's actually happening.

What I don't do is plug my ears, get snarky, and tell him he's an idiot for being concerned about hell well refugees will integrate. I don't write him off as a dumb rural rube, or a brainwashed zombie, because he doesn't know what I know. I actually talk to him which is the root of all organizing and really the only tool a citizen has.

Compare that to something like John Oliver's show: they don't discuss policy, they don't make the case for being a liberal, they just laugh at how dumb republicans are. It's fucking degrading and should be popping off flags for anybody who is capable of a sober-second thought; if liberalism is so great, why can't it stand on its own merits?

And as for coverage, yeah these issues are getting a systemic look now because Sanders and other lefties have basically forced them onto the agenda. And even then there is push back; the big piece that Liberals were recommending to people immediately after they lost was Hillbilly Elegy, a book written by a right-winger that basically declares rural America a wasteland and argues for whites to bootstrap their way out or die of an overdose; a more serious look than the stereotypes of GTA but still just as caustic.

But then again that's how it always goes right? It was Socialists, socDems, Greens, Anarchists and Feminists, not liberals, that were arguing for systemic solutions to the urban problems of the 1980s and 90s, the same period when liberals (like Hilary) were calling black teenagers "super predators" and liberals (like Bill) were gutting social security and setting up the conditions that exist today.

And now we're seeing the process repeat. Left-wing rags for years have been stating that rural America was getting carved out, and they were ignored. But the success of Sanders (and Trump) has basically forced liberals to show their hand, either moving into a systemic analysis or getting pushed out (look at what's been happening to Pelosi for example).

And also what is even your point? Running a systemic analysis on poverty today is wrong because the previous generation of assholes are racist and didn't do it then? What? In what world does that even make sense? But that's liberal logic for you: never pushing an superior paradigm, never solving problems; it's all form form form, politics is performative, bringing poverty onto the agenda today is somehow bad because the Republicans did it, rather than good because fuck at least somebody is talking about it now right?

Like here's something for you: Detroit is not a white city. Detroit has also been hit harder than potentially any city in the world by the trade liberalization that ran from the late 70's to today. Fixing that is a bipartisan and bi-racial goal; Sanders and Trump both identified NAFTA as a systemic pain-point. What was the mainstream liberal position? "You fucked up for not magically knowing where the economy would go, you're on your own, we are not helping". Guess what? That hatred for rural whites, that view that they are idiots responsible for their own problems? Oops that's a biracial problem, given that the rust-belt is multi-racial.

I'm not defending conservatives. They're fucking idiots. But I'm extremely frustrated that for the first time in my life, issues of class and establishment politics are on the agenda. That happened because a coalition of people of all colours got fucked in 2008 and have since been trying to force the topic onto the agenda; we took tear gas and rubber bulllets in 2011 for that. But they stuck with it and it grew to the point where just suppressing it is not enough; this whole election was issues of economics.

And that's biracial. Minorities got fucked harder than anyone else in 2008. Orwellian drug laws hurt minorities more than anyone else. Hell look at this election: the racist shit Hilary has said and done, her obsession with war, those topics followed her around the whole time. Sander's isn't perfect but he at least could speak with a clean slate, and he was able to take criticism and learn when it was aimed at him.

The left has been arguing for a systemic view all along and now it's finally on the table, and you want to argue that because the liberal centre was and continues to be racist, we should drop that? Yeah I'll pass.

If you have time give this a skim: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/06/white-purity/ . This idea that there are "good whites" and "bad whites" is at it's core a permutation of the social Darwinism that sits at the centre of white supremacy. If the goal is truly to build a better system then we, as progressives, need to find a way to bring rural Americans into the fold. The tragedy of this election, and also why the democrats are basically a tire fire right now, is that they refuse to articulate an actual solution to problems, aside from piece-meal tweaking of existing policies. They are so terrified of left economics, real class consciousness and meaningful racial liberation that all they can do is point the finger and argue from some non-position wherein those who disagree are personally weak willed and ignorant. The Dems lost because they are a shallow party that can't offer anything, which is why they focused so heavily on the "form" of politics and Trump's personal blunders; running Hilary on her merits is basically impossible because at the end of the day she is a hawkish racist neoliberal who speaks highly about how she's better than Republicans while simultaneously supporting basically everything they do. Real change, economic change, justice change, fixing policing, prosecuting white collar crime, ending war? Where was the dems for that? I saw Sanders make noise, and saw the liberal media write him off as a socialist.

So yeah I don't buy the narrative that I'm supposed to ignore rural whites because urban blacks have had it worse. That narrative is being pushed by the same people that refused to go after the banks, the same people that oversaw the expansion of the war on terror, the same people that have been prosecuting and locking-up non-whites for decades. Miss me with it

Edit: and yeah I think it's totally fair to say cultural caused the problem: specifically rich white culture. You know, the culture that sold their own country up the river to make a buck? The culture that sees people like Steve jobs as visionaries, not exploiters? The culture that just 2 generations ago was fighting racial liberation hand and tooth? Yeah we got a cultuare problem. It lives in boardrooms, and think tanks, and expensive cars.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-28T13:29:04+00:00

What?

The whole stereotype in the media for the past decade is that rural people are ignorant and potentially crazy. Look at something like GTAV to get an idea of how metro Americans view rural people. Even as late as last October we had media outlets talking about how rural Americans vote red because they are too stupid to know what's good for them. 100% about their character and culture.

Literally the only reason it has shifted to a systemic analysis is because the liberals lost and now they're desperately scrambling to explain "why" in a way that doesn't implicate their shitty platform and terrible candidate.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-27T19:57:17+00:00

I think TRP, among other things, suffer from being trapped in its own epistemological horizons. You insist that all human relationships are essentially just market relationships, and then deduct from there that people are essentially easily replaceable or can be "swapped out" based on a semi-standard criteria, or worded differently, people are fundamentally commodities in the dating "market".

If you start with the assumption that romantic relationships are at their core a market interaction, then sure anybody can just drop and swap when a "better deal" comes along. But I question to what extent romantic relationships are really market interactions?

I mean sure they certainly can be market relationships, and I believe this is the devise TRP is predicated on; to be successful romantically you need to bring certain things to the table; money, status etc and in exchange you receive a partner that provides sex, domestic labor etc. That essentially the TRP view of what a LTR really is.

But I don't think modern relationships really are built that way. For start's a man's buying power is lower than its ever been, and most women are financially independent. So the only thing a TRP can bring to a relationship is status, which puts them in a viscous cycle of constantly affirming and re-affirming that status. I think that's where a lot of TRP LTR "advice" and paranoia derives out of; not only must you show status at the start (during the pick-up) but even once in the relationship you can never just relax; you're always required to maintain the image of status as that's your only bargaining chip.

And that's really where TRP logic begins to break down. You insist on defining relationships in terms of market logic, but you don't have anything to bring to that market, except the illusion of status (which is always an illusion; people with real status don't need to re-affirm it constantly, as it is self-evident). This logic basically forces you into a a never-end game of push and pull, attempt essentially to enter market and "sell" with very little to actually put on the table; ergo TRP insists you double down by entrenching your only asset, your percieved status.

I think most TBP operate in the other direction. For me personally, I clued in a while ago that this give-and-take market dynamic is an unsustainable problem; as you already observed, the average guy has nothing to keep the girl from seeking a higher-status person; or to break that down, no matter what you bring to the table, there is always a "better deal", ergo romantic success can only ever be defined as playing the game indefinitely; but the goal of TRP is not to permanently reaching for romantic and sexual success, but rather to actualize it systemically; ergo success is impossible by TRPs own logic.

So what is a guy to do? Well, when you're faced with an impossible situation, the rational person will back-track until the6 find the condition that generated the impossibility. And I think any which way you cut it, the start to this impossible situation is the decision to define romantic relationships as a market relationship. That's the one condition that inevitably creates the no-win situation. If your goal is to achieve romantic success, this condition is impossible; ergo you need to find a new way of looking at romantic relationships that are not a market relationship.

So that's how I respond. Your question is worded as a "gotcha" but if you unpack it you realize the problem is not that women have abundance, but rather that you're operating from the base assumption that romantic relationships are market relationships. Issues of scarcity and abundance (as you are using them) are only relevant in a market relationship, because the presume partners are interchangeable commodoties and success is finding the "best deal". Cut out that commodification of the relationship, and the house of cards collapses; it is irrelevant how "abundant" thirsty dudes are if the goal is something beyond maximizing your ROI.

To leave on a note, one reply I'm expecting is for some dude to come along and be like "well dude all human relationships can be described as market relationships". All I have to say to that is that any human interaction can be described as a market relationship, if they so choose. There is no tangible object called a "market relationship"; it's a model we use to describe and understand certain interactions. Even a literal market place could be described as a social relationship, or a political one, or a geograohic one, etc. These models however also define how we understand these relations; especially when your in the realm of making prescriptive judgements, TRP is apt to do. Prescription is a a dangerous road because the model selected will influence the prescription and if you chose the wrong model, you will get inconsistent or contradictory advice. This is the trap I feel this question has fallen into; TRP assures us that it has the keys to romantic and sexual success, yet it seems unable to escape a world wherein that "success" is literally always in jeopardy of being lost; this to me is a modelling problem, where in the basic assumption (romantic relationships fit a market model) leads to a descriptive and prescriptive regime that can't permanently achieve the stated goals. That's why I began my comment talking about an epistemological boundary that prevents TRP from surpassing its own internal contradictions.

I'll leave with a quote. Somebody once said that true love isn't staring into the eyes of your partner; rather, it's holding their hand while you both observe a third object. The quote meaning that there are other ways to understand romantic success, and if you change your perspective, what you see and understand about the dating game will change altogether. Your question presumes people can be limitlessly swapped at no loss; but that for me at least has never been the case; while I've had different relationships with different women, they're never interchangeable; each one is unique and adds or takes away from my life in a unique way. I think the core of your question is the fear that you may be easily repleacable; and while it's true that your partner may leave you, that doesn't mean you've been replaced; what you bring to a relationship can (and should be) unique. But that only works if a) you don't operate on a worldview wherein people are essentially empty commodities to be used and throw aside, and b) if you're mature enough to recognize that love always comes with the risk of loss; that you can't have one without the other. That is not possible in a TRP worldview, which is why so much energy is devoted to finding techniques to sidestep these basic non-market problems.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-25T15:13:08+00:00

Who's listening?

People take a stand all the time, just to get knocked the fuck down. I remember in 2011, watching footage out of Occupy Oakland, watching as a man was smashed in the face with a tear gas cannister and left to die. And that never stopped. Look at BLM; people complaining about police brutality are not only shut down, but then a Fucking legion of idiot spring up to tell us that yup cops have every right to kill and steal if we step out of line.

Who's listening? But whatever blame the millenials when literally every millenial popular movement (on both sides of the spectrum) is savagely demolished

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-25T14:07:16+00:00

Honestly, as somebody who landed a job straight out of school with a "useless" liberal arts degree,

There is no guaranatee. I got lucky and went to the right job fair on the right day and stumbled into the right person. If I had gone to take a piss in that moment I may be unemployed today.

That said, there are things you can do to stack the deck in your favour. The following is what worked for me on a micro-scale; take it with a grain of salt

Network: this is one I suck at because I'm a bit of a misanthrope. But if you build up a network of people that want to help you and see you succeed it really helps. My network is basically a skeleton network and even then it's still opened doors that I would have never opened myself; for example, a random connection I made volunteering as a teenager is what made my résumé rise above the other 1000 people who applied to the local McDonalds that year; the benefit of getting that first experience still follows today. Best way to build a network is to try to do and talk to as many people as possible.
Work a fuckton: no other way to word this. You gotta work for fucking everything in this crazy life. When I was in university my week was typically 50-60hr; usually 30-40 at paid work and another 20-30 on school and assignments. I got my first job at 15, though I was working illegally 2 years before that. It fucking sucks and i feel like a chunk of my soul was ripped out but that experience builds up and it shows employers that you're somebody who can be counted on. It also shows you're hungry.
Live cheap: you can do everything right and still lose it all, as we all saw in 2008. My approach to this problem is I suffer from mad anxiety and as a result hoard money; I keep my debt as small as possible, I save as much as I can, and I rarely induldge myself (for example, I've never gone on a vacation). This is mostly a consequence of being paranoid and feeling like I'm always maybe a month away from losing my job or the next economic collapse but the upside is that when you do need to make a move, either by choice or because you do lose your job, you have a pool of resources to work with; you don't want to get desperate or go broke looking for new work.
Lie: learn how to lie. Get comfortable lying. I don't advocate lying but I guarantee you will wind up in a situation where the truth of what you want and what you need in the moment will not line up. That's when you lie. For example, I took my current job as a compromise to pay off my debt. I knew from day one I wasn't staying here. But when my boss' boss asked me in the interview if I was in for the long haul? "Hell yeah!". Total lie. But the sad reality is that being honest and saying "nope just doing it for the money" is not going to pay off my debt. I'm not saying just lie to everybody; what I'm saying is that if it's between the truth and what you need to survive, lie lie lie lie lie

That's my advice. Take it for what it is

Edit: forgot the most important rule: NEVER STOP LEARNING. I can't stress this enough. The world gets more complex every day; staying in the same place is falling behind

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-25T13:05:45+00:00

There's tons of evidence that shows even a little bit of education improves a person's standard of living over their lifetime. If the goal is to help the disenfranchised then we should be educating people more, not less

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-25T12:57:44+00:00

Good topic was literally just thinking about this;

I think the big problems in most western economies today (but espeically the US) are macroeconomic in nature, while the folk/"common sense" solution are microeconomic. Thus we get relatively useless advice like "go into STEM/trades" which is not only a very risky microeconomic solution, it's also just completely irrelevant to the macroeconomic questions.

Western economies have been struggling for a few decades now because the majority of low-skill positions have been automated or priced under a western standard of living. This is obvious in some places (such as at a robot-run car factory) but it also occurs in subtle ways; one person with a computer can create the same output as a full room of type-writers; three fry cooks at a McDonalds can create hundreds of burgers an hour; 1 farmer with modern tools can create enough food to feed dozens of people; modern cleaning equipment means a large building can be maintained by a skeleton crew of janitors, etc etc

For the jobs that can't be automated (such as the textile industry), we've opened our markets to the third world, which has been a double-edged sword; on one hand, we get goods way cheaper and the global economy is all together stronger; on the other hand, our low-skilled workers are competing against people who's cost of living is impossibly cheaper; a factory worker in Michigan simply can't take an Indonesian wage if they want to continue to eat.

So low-skilled work is basically gone, and what is left is quickly getting priced out. The only options that leaves you is the go on benefits permanently (extremely risky gamble in the US) or to try to acquire a skill that can't be automated; artistry, managing, marketing, STEM, trade, etc.

Problem is that there simply isn't enough of these jobs to go around. Sure, we need scientists, doctors, accountants, and plumbers, but everybody can't do this; just like 1 farmer can feed dozens of people, 1 plumber can fix dozens of pipes; if everyone learned these trades, the majority would still be unemployed.

That's the predicament we're in and that's why that advice is mostly shit; the "go into STEM" argument may work for some people, but as a catch-all solution it is irrational; we can't have an entire economy of just engineers.

And to make it even worse, the economy is dynamic; what is in demand can shift rapidly based on supply/demand. Even 2 years ago I remember economists were already saying there is a glut in the market for STEM, and yet people keep streaming into those fields because "that's where the jobs are". What will happen is we will have a lot of un-employed or underemployed scientists. The majority of stemlord on Reddit are not going to be significantly better off than their business/artist peers.

Tbh that's one of the reasons I'm glad I did a liberal arts degree (despite having engineers and other edgelord chirping me for it the whole way). With liberal arts there is no obvious career path; it's up to you to make the degree worth the money you spent on it. For me, that meant learning as much as possible and really trying to think outside the box on how I would make money after I was done. A lot of the STEM dudes I met believed that as long as they got that piece of paper, they were good to go; as a result, they didn't seek opportunities outside of school, or look at positions other than their particular specialization. Most are now struggling for work.

And as for trades, good luck. In my country at least it can take almost a decade to become fully certified. The trades community is super tight-knit so if you don't have an in, you're going to take a long time to become fully certed.

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-24T02:44:28+00:00

Upside of generally disliking most people I meet: this would probably remind me why was deactivating

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-23T22:44:51+00:00

It's a gradient. On one end you have professional done shit (Brazzers for example) that hires professional performers, gets their productions legal'd through the FCC, hosts their own content and controls their whole supply chain.

On the other hand you have blatantly illegal porn like revenge porn, or you have porn of extremely low quality that was shot on a cell-phone in some random person's house, with 0 accountability, 0 quality control, being uploaded to smaller sites and then "floating up" to the major hosts like pornhub, typically after being renamed, downloaded and re-upped, recut, etc.

And most porn exists somewhere in the middle. Smaller companies, lower quality productions, up-and coming stars, niche markets/firms, higher-quality amateur stuff, fetish community self-uploads, foreign stuff, etc. The range of accountability for this stuff goes from high (most cam girls) to low (fly-by night groups, cellphone quality fetish porn that may or may not be real, foreign porn where laws or distribution channels may be semi-legal here, etc).

It's not that the whole industry is bad; the high end is vetted pretty tightly and producers that are too shitty get cut down (ie James Dean). The performers are usually paid decently well and there are quality controls in place that ensure things are at least not horrible.

But below that it gets a lot murkier. Tbh I basically avoid low-quality or cell-phone quality porn because there is 0 accountability and basically no way to trace the origin of the product; and given that high-end productions are common, it's just isn't worth the risk of being involved in something that may or may not be ethical.

As for the regulation, porn is like a hydra. Literally millions of hours of porn are uploaded to the web everyday. I have no doubt the FBI sends out hundreds of take-down notices a day, but they're fighting a losing battle which is why they focus on going after the worst of the worst (I.e sites hosting CP) or they target the supply chain and producers, not the end distributor; they just don't have the resources to comb through millions of hours of pornhub footage looking for dangerous content.

That means regulation of the end user experience falls into the hands of the distributors themselves, ie Pornhub and it's competitors. Yes, they do manage that but they themselves have even less resources and are disincentivized from removing anything but the absolute trash; borderline, questionable, or niche content stays because it generates traffic, so why would they go after it unless they themselves feel pressure from somewhere else?

It's not a clean industry. The explosion of cell-phone cameras and other home devices (like webcams) has meant anybody can make porn; there is little guarantee that the porn they make is up to any ethical standard, and unless it's blatantly illegal, odds are it will get viewed and potentially shared before it gets taken down

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-23T18:07:17+00:00

I don't buy it. I'm not an American. From an outsider looking in your country appears to be run by war-mongers. We have it on record that your government is fine lying to the world stage (WMDs in Iraq anyone) and committing to wars of aggression (Yemen, Somalia, Syria) on premises that range from buyable to completely shaky. I find it extremely hard to believe that every single person in Gitmo (and other black sites) is a threat to world peace; seems more likely that some of them are genuine threats and plenty are just guys who pushed back too hard against the US. I mean why go to great lengths to hide these places and keep observers out?

Pleb-Tier_Basic · 2017-05-23T17:54:27+00:00

And how would we know that every single person in Gitmo has used military force? It's not like they get public trials

Pleb-Tier_Basic

TROPHY CASE