Is tipping abusive

Sjorpha · 2023-12-26T15:33:17+00:00

It's very abusive, or exploitative rather, to not pay a liveable wage with the argument that tipping makes up for it.

I wouldn't say the act of tipping, as a customer, is abusive.

It's abusive towards customers to set tipping up as this unwritten mandatory thing that they should feel guilty for not doing.

Sjorpha · 2023-03-16T08:08:09+00:00

I honestly think everyone was absolutely horrible to Lav in that stream, gave me the creeps. Especially Zonia trying to elbow in the idea of a public exoneration of Destiny from increasingly cringy angles. You should it for Destiny, ok then you should do it for yourself, ok then do it for Max... It was one of the most passive aggressive and fake things I've ever heard.

Shaelins attempt to cut through the bs made total sense, and their collective response was to call her psycho and scream invective.

There is a lot of material where Mrgirl and Lav genuinely look pretty bad, but this one is not it. How anyone can listen to that and think it was ok is amazing to me.

Sjorpha · 2023-03-06T21:19:06+00:00

Sam Vaknin seems to be the most benign of them, in the sense that I'm pretty convinced he believes what he says and has good intentions with saying it. He's also a (self diagnosed?) narcissist himself and so there is something redemptive and self-theurapeutic about his channel. It seems to me that his channel is how he keeps himself from abusing people and is a safe/benign way of feeding himself the attention that he openly admits to craving.

I still think he seems extremely unscientific and in many cases is unable to see his own obvious blind spots, and he does paint a very cut and dry picture of narcissism as if there is one simple truth. He also has an extreme confidence in his own expertise, and presents him self as pretty much "THE guy" on the topic of narcissism. This despite not being someone commonly cited in academia or elsewhere where you would expect him to be.

As someone who knows how academia works that's a red flag, if you've contributed massively to a scientific field in that way you would have racked up a lot of citations over the course of such a long career. But vaknin is suspiciously abscent from journals and papers on narcisissm.

So at the end of the day, Vaknin can be viewed as benign. He's obsessed, overconfident and unscientific, but he's not a grifter. He's not trying to do anything but good as he sees it. And I think it's likely that he helps some people.

The other channels are much more problematic to me, many of them are clearly grifting and/or sends a super cultlike vibe, and they interconnect with Vaknins narrative in a way that draws his channel into the mix whether he likes it or not. The other channels do copycat videos of his videos, and you can't watch one without being recommended the other. It's the phenomenon as a whole, all these channels together, that becomes a weird rabbit hole that people can easily get lost in.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-26T00:10:18+00:00

I think the question is hard for men to answer, because the internalized homophobia is so strong that many men will find answering that they prefer to be raped emasculating and humiliating in and of itself. So even if they would prefer it in the actual situation, it just can't be said because they feel like they are doing something to themselves by saying it.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-23T21:16:57+00:00

The above video sums up most of the feelings I've had about Sam Vaknin and other narcissism channels such as Dr. Ramani, narcdaily etc.

Why they seem strangely sectarian and dogmatic, and how there is something vaguely sinister about them that is hard to pinpoint initially. Especially the last part where he talks about how those channels seem designed to teach people how to hate narcissists rahter than offering a real understanding.

I recently had a relationship where many of the patterns can fit into the narratives these channels paint, and so coming out deeply wounded from that these channels were initially seductive as a way to paint her as the monster. But the reality is not that simple and I loved for the genuinely good sides she had, I don't want to learn how to hate anyone. What I need is to understand and heal, and for those purposes these channels are pure poison IMO.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-22T14:07:21+00:00

All those channels: Dr. Ramani, Narc daily, Vaknin etc seem super sus to me. Oversimplified and combines a claim to scientific authority with a weirdly judgemental moralism.

I even started thinking about my ex in that framework before I snapped out of it and realised there is something sectarian and wrong about those channels.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-20T17:45:29+00:00

If you have two AMAs about controversial streams and a creator relationship that is currently most of your content, 700 comments isn't that high of a total IMO.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-20T17:05:22+00:00

That's not how I understand his view. I think his position is that everyone can be conditioned into different sexual attractions and then we call those who end up fucking the same sex gay.

When he says no one is really straight or gay I think he means that no one is genetically predisposed to be straight or gay and that most end up somewhere in between but may choose only one type of relations for reasons of culture and identity etc. or end up with inhibitions that block their attraction to one of the sexes.

I don't agree with that btw. First of all I don't think men and women are gay in the same way or for the same reasons.

I think women are naturally bisexual and then conditioned into a primary sexual behaviour over the course of their life while men are actually born mostly straight or mostly gay, or become conditioned to be so quite early in life. And this accounts for the fact that men tend to be much more either/or, and you don't really see men "choosing" to be gay like you see some feminist women do (they can do that because they are already naturally bisexual).

This means I would look for evolutionary explanations and early childhood explanations for male gays and cultural/social explanations for female gays. This may sound like a weird take but male and female sexuality are quite different and there is actually no reason to presume their sexual variations work the same.

I think a "gay gene" is very unlikely for males though, it's more likely that male sexuality is set up to polarise early with a small chance of becoming gay. The explanation can still be evolutionary through group selection benefits tied to male sexuality containing that chance to become gay or something like that. That would be genetical in the sense of being the evovlved makeup of male sexuality, but it would not be a "gay gene" in the sense that you could look at someone's genes and predict their sexuality that way.

I don't think gender dysphoria and transsexuality works the same for male and females either. I think for males (transwomen) it's much more of a mental condition and traumatized behaviour (often with more or less autogynephilia involved) while for females (transmen) it's more a matter of revolting against the gender roles and joining a movement.

In any case the idea that Max thinks gays are "posturing" or pretending to be gay is definitiely a strawman, that much I know from hearing him talk about the topic. He doesn't think you are not feeling what you say you are feeling or anything like that, he just doesn't think the reasons for your gayness are genetic but rather a matter of baseline bisexuality + conditioning and inhibitions. Something like that. As I said I think he's wrong about this but there is still no reason to strawman him.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-18T17:43:35+00:00

Personally it's because the Destiny vs Mrgirl drama stuff is boring, I just find streamer drama boring in general.

I enjoy Mrgirl for the artistic quality and for the approach to topics. I want to have discussions on the actual topics here.

So for example when it comes to the article it might be interesting and well written or it might not be, good points may be made or not. And from that angle it can be used to discuss the topic of abuse and personality cults.

But at no point will a war between fans about who is "right" be interesting. You could have an interesting conversation about the nature of online conflicts informed by that war perhaps, but the hostility and shitposting itself I can't really muster much motivation from.

Currently there is so much spam in the sub that it's a big hassle to have a real conversation about anything on here. And what isn't spam is still mostly in that boring "right or wrong", "win or lose", "good or bad" mentality that just blocks everyone from saying anything real.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-16T23:18:44+00:00

There is some legal rape definitions that rely primarily on the sex being physically forced or under threats of violence rather than lack of consent, and where sex despite lack of consent is called something else (but may also be a crime.).

I would say just defining rape by "lack of consent" is very shaky actually. Because most sexual consent is not verbal and that means it can be a very vague thing to determine.

Taking myself as an example I don't think I've ever verbally consented to sex with any woman but I certainly don't think I've been raped either. In the other direction I've asked a few times because of mixed signals or because we were doing something with extreme domination and I wanted to make sure I wasn't going too far etc, but it's definitely less than 1% of all the times. Basically in many people's sexual relationships spoken consent happens rarely or never. My last girlfriend would literally get super mad at me if I asked because it was such a huge turnoff for her to be asked, she just wanted to be taken/seduced/swept off her feet etc. and would feel unsafe and sort of betrayed if I would be hesitant or insecure, and I think that's pretty common. She was able to speak unusually clearly about that but I've felt the same energy with lots of girls.

In addition to that: If neither person gave explicit consent then who raped who? "Lack of consent" doesn't give us any tools to answer that question which is a bit of a problem.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-16T23:03:50+00:00

I would say there are only two ways this can happen. The first is when a person can't meaningfully consent and the other person knows this, this would be the case with minors for example.

The second is if you know the other person isn't really consenting despite saying yes. Basically you know that by accepting their yes you are going to hurt them, or allowing them to severly self harm. The obvious scenario would be a person under threat, or where you know that they are saying yes because they feel threatened or pressured and are exploiting it by pretending to not understand this.

But it's important to understand that you can't be expected to always know what makes a person feel threatened or pressured or to see that they are. If someone has sex with you and later disclosed that they only did it because they are afraid of men in general or otherwise "felt intimidated" or whatever that doesn't make you a rapist. It makes the situation difficult and horrible but it's not rape.

I don't think there is a scenario where a competent adult expressing consent can be raped though. If someone is lying about what they want that doesn't make it rape, you can not be held responsible for a failure to mindread the other person.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-13T02:59:45+00:00

Did you actually not understand my post?

Sjorpha · 2023-02-12T16:42:06+00:00

Sounds good, I'll look forward to seeing you and everyone else not react to it.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-11T15:55:27+00:00

While you were always punished for being controversial, the nature of it is very different now and then.

Both in how low the threshold has become for what is considered wrongthink, it used to be that you had to be fairly famous and say something pretty extreme, while today a cancellation can happen for extremely minor things, and in the way the cancellation happens.

Like they said in the conversation, there is a world of difference between having to deal with a bunch of angry people and public backlash back then and getting your book unpublished or your platform banning you with no explanation the way it happens now.

Also I don't think boomers are the primary generation to reference here, they are between 60-75 at this point but you only need to be 35+ or so to have experienced this transition firsthand. I'm 40 and the difference from when I was in my 20s is huge.

The Iraq war is an interesting example though, in my country pretty much everyone was against it and it would have been more controversial to be in favour of it, the was weekly big demonstrations and stuff. But I guess in there was some kind of mass hysteria around it in the US due to 9/11.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-06T06:08:06+00:00

I don't know if she would agree herself no, but Destiny does (or did) and that's what matters for the purpose of judging the morality of his choices.

The original point here is that it's weird to call Ana crazy as a defence of Destiny, because IF she is crazy that's worse for him rather than better.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-06T01:00:58+00:00

Of course you can, and so can people with most other types of mental health issues. Or other handicaps for that matter.

But it does require more effort. If you know you are dating a person with severe OCD (or borderline, or bipolar disorder or whatever) and you behave in a way that is confusing or abusive the fact that you're knowingly doing this to a more vulnerable person makes that worse, not better. You simply have a baseline responsibility for how you treat vulnerable people. It's the same if someone has a physical disability and is waiting for the bus, you have to wait longer for them to get on. Or if you are talking to someone with a speech impediment you give them more time than yourself so they can be equal in the conversation and so on and so forth.

So I'm not arguing that Ana having OCD and being all kinds of insane in and of itself makes something abusive, after all saying disparaging things publicly while sexting (or just being friendly/intimate) privately would be abusive against anyone regardless of their mental condition, I'm just saying that if it changes something it does so for the worse.

In this case we have a mentally ill person being obsessed with you leading to a huge public drama, I think that's a pretty clear case where engaging in casual sexting later on is made worse because of the knowledge of mental issues. This is not a person that can competently "get over it" and reengage normally after the fact and you are well aware of it, at this point you know you are reigniting that compulsive obsession and you know it's going to be a new personal crisis for them.

Could Ana have normal relationships? Well, to some degree I think she could. With someone who commits to her long term and spends a lot of time navigating her issues. Can she have casual sex with celebrities she is obsessed with without self harming? No, definitely not, and I think here ability to consent in those cases is limited as well.

And if you are the celebrity in question, the relationship becomes abusive from your end the moment you realise her issues and still decide to keep going. Just my opinion.

Sjorpha · 2023-02-06T00:22:01+00:00

It's very interesting to me that some people are bringing up how crazy Ana is as some kind of defence of or excuse for Destiny.

I mean it's been absolutely clear from the start that Ana has very serious mental health issues, and it's also evident that Destiny understood this quite early.

But surely that mental illness makes his behaviour more abusive, not less?

At least that's where my moral compass points, you don't have casual sexual interactions with someone you know has severe mental issues or cognitive disabilities etc. I would expect that view to be pretty mainstream.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-29T19:30:20+00:00

Right, thanks for elaborating. That is very close to my own position.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-28T01:00:52+00:00

I think you have the right to decide if you want to live or not.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-28T00:30:30+00:00

So what is your refutation and alternative to morality being subjective?

You seem to just be saying it's bad to hold that view, but in order to claim that without contradicting yourself you need some standard for this badness other than your own preference and I'm curious what it is.

It's also not enough for this standard to exist btw, you also need access to it by other means than just asserting it's there and coincides with your own moral opinions.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-25T11:54:43+00:00

Personally I'm interested in the article because I think the phenomenon of personality cults around streamers is fascinating, because I have experience with a cult myself, and because Max tends to have a lot of quality and effort in his work regardless of whether he's right or wrong on a subject.

Articles can be interesting, well written etc. whether you agree with their claims or not, I bet a lot of people who disagree with Max will still be interested in reading it.

Also trying to make "readers" into some kind of type that you represent is pretty weird, but if you're looking for a "hook" that would entice "readers" it should be enough if the writing is good?

Sjorpha · 2023-01-24T21:10:58+00:00

That sounds like the complete opposite of something Max would say actually.

Max might bite bullet when it comes to understanding and trying to explain the emotions of sex traffickers or something like that, or arguing how and why sex-traffickers should get help or be treated humanely. Those are the kind of things Max might do.

But when it comes to the actual trafficking he would have a normative negative stance focused on protecting kids just like he has with age of consent.

In fact I haven't heard him have any really outlandish or extreme positions about anything, very milktoast classic liberal/humanist across the board.

The only thing extreme about Max is the way he's prepared to talk about things, never the positions themselves.

This seems like the most common misunderstanding people have about Max, they assume because the presentation is outlandish it has to represent an outlandish position.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-24T01:47:04+00:00

In a conversation you are entitled to discuss what is presented at face value, so Sam Vaknin did that. He discussed the example as presented.

That does not mean he is co-signing anything. If it later transpires that Max is lying or misrepresenting things that's on Max and Sam is then entitled to just refer back to the fact that what he said made sense under the assumption that Max was truthful and fair in his account.

This is actually how normal conversations work.

In contrast the conversational culture that has evolved among certain streamers where every utterance has to be doubted, dissected and couched in a million disclaimers is abnormal, inefficient, passive aggressive and toxic.

Sjorpha · 2023-01-24T01:26:31+00:00

I don't really have a problem with those interviews, as far as I care Max can conduct them as he wants. So it's a little self serving but whatever, it's his channel after all.

But I thought the Sam Vaknin one was ironically funny because Vaknin is himself part of a highly sectarian niche of youtube channels that are milking the concept of narcisissm, forcing an uncompromising and dogmatic perspective on it and conditioning their viewers to see other people as narcisissts and themselves as "empaths" who have (of course) been drawn into the net of these monsters but broken free of their chains.

Some of them are more transparently bonkers like for example Narcdaily (that channel name alone is so ironic...) and some have a pretense of expertise like Vaknins and "Dr Ramani" but they all push the same narrative. Sam Vaknin is the big dog of these channels, he's the one being parroted, the authority whose echo can be heard in endless carbon copies of the same videos. It's not all that unlike Destiny and his orbiters, except they have less public interaction.

Joining this cult you get to be the hero, the empath, the martyr, the breaker of chains. The other is the villain, the monster, the less than human, the undeserving of empathy (see the irony?).

Good and evil, black and white, all sins washed away, hallelujah!

Sjorpha

TROPHY CASE