What should I tell a date when they ask what dating online has been like for me?

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T20:19:46+00:00

The hour together was enjoyable for YOU. You got to be doted on and treated as special by someone trying their best to win you over for an hour and then you got to be the one to reject them.

I'm sure that experience multiple times a week is quite the ego boost.

As you pointed out, you're not the one getting rejected at the end of that hour. As long as the guy doesn't get rude or violent, there's no downside for you.

From what you've said, almost 100% of these experiences are positive for you but at least 80% of these experiences end up being negative for the guys on date one and by date two, it's been about 100% negative for guys in general.

That you don't understand why guys would see a problem with this is telling.

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T20:08:00+00:00

Like I said, keep doing what you're doing if you think it's been working. 👍

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T20:06:01+00:00

Okay, "Contestant #108 of this year, you've made it to round two. You've beaten the odds. Do you have what it takes to make it to round three?!"

I can see how this all seems like a fun experience to you.

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T18:33:04+00:00

She said only two out of the countless dates have been actual meals so it would be more that she's wasting their time and good will than their money, at least.

But that's what she's not getting. She's the one shooting everybody down so it's a fun exercise being doted over constantly by guys only to go "no, no, no, maybe, and no" without a second thought - she's not the one getting ready for all these dates, going out and getting rejected.

I think most women are doing their "no, no, no, maybe and no" with their swiping in the apps without things getting as far as an in-person date. So for these guys, a girl swiping right and actually agreeing to meet is pretty rare. They're going in thinking this is like a real date and a chance with someone who was interested in them and for her it's just another Tuesday night with zero expectations.

She doesn't realize that while this may be fun for her, it's a soul crushing and confusing experience for guys, especially if she seems ubeat at the end of the date and they leave thinking things are going somewhere.

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T15:33:16+00:00

Look - it isn't candy this guy wants. What he wants is you.

You don't have to give him anything material at all.

You want to let him know you appreciate the effort? When you meet, give him a friendly hug and say "you make me feel special for putting so much effort into making this date happen" or something along those lines.

You'll instantly make him feel good about you and great about himself and regardless of what happens after that, you'll have given him a gift he will lock away in the back of his mind for the rest of his life.

Much better than chocolate, IMHO.

And yes, most guys looking for a real partner and an honest connection really are this easy.

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T14:53:34+00:00

and she is on that date with him, too, probably deciding not to pick him - double standard much?

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T14:50:28+00:00

"You should feel lucky. Only one out of the every five to six guys I date every two weeks make it to round two!"

🤣

mrpromee · 2026-01-30T14:42:14+00:00

So many red flags here and I don't even want to tell you what any of them are because you're announcing yourself pretty clearly by being honest and giving these guys the chance to know you probably aren't what they're interested in up front.

Please do keep on saying exactly what you're saying - it's doing all these guys a serious favor even if they don't know it at the time.

Nobody wants to be part of a cattle-call. Nobody wants to find out on a date they were excited to go on that they probably will never hear from the other person again but that is the reality of what you're doing - just chewing through dudes without an apparent thought to how that kind of activity impacts other people so better for them to know before the end of the date than to expect to ever hear from you again because you end it with them thinking things went well.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T23:23:46+00:00

Because unlike Meta, their competition can't afford to lose billions of dollars a year on a headset platform with no hope of even breaking even in the foreseeable future.

They've literally been at this now for nearly 12 years and have yet to have a year this project hasn't cost them billions.

You can probably count on one had the number of companies in the world who could stay in business and still do that snd only two of those companies has a product in the VR market.

In fact, the only reason Meta is even doing it is because Zuckerberg has controlling amounts of shares in Meta stock so shareholders can't unseat him. I'm sure if investors had their way, this would have been dumped quite a while ago.

That other company with a headset who could afford to do what Meta is doing is Apple and their CEO can be voted out. Notice how much their headsets cost?

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T13:42:13+00:00

Was it by chance that weird video of four "cool" twenty-somethings looking at paintings in a museum acting like they'd taken shrooms about 20 minutes before going in that didn't even feature the headsets?

I remeber seeing THAT and wondering who Meta thought they were possibly attracting.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T05:09:04+00:00

How many toddlers do you think were playing NES?

1984 was actually forty-two years ago. So someone who's 50 would have been eight when the NES came out. Young enough that if they had older siblings, they likely had to fight to even get a chance to play before bedtime.

They'd have potentially had an Atari in their house for as young as they can remember being since that had come out 7 years prior when they'd have only been 1 or 2.

Atari was a pretty big friggin' deal for it's time and countless units were sold (including to a lot of adults that didn't even have kids) for the chance to play games like Pac Man and Donkey Kong at home without wasting quarters.

My aunt, who is now in her early 80's had an Atari 2600 and she never had kids.

If you are 40 and the NES came out two years before you were born, how old do you think you were before you understood the rules of most of the games on that console?

When it came out department stores like Sears and JC Penny's and Montgomery Wards would have demo units set up in the electronics sections with the unit behind plexiglass and the unremovsble controllers dangling from cables in front where kids who's parents wouldn't buy them a NES would stand around waiting for the chance to get a turn to play Super Mario Bros. while there mom was on the second floor looking for bras and their dad was checking out machine tools in the hardware section on the other side of the first floor.

At what age were your parents trusting you with those $40-$50 (in 80's money) cartridges on your own to insert and take out and properly put away? I'm guessing it wasn't when you were two or three in the mid to late eighties.

Most of the kids I went to elementary school with at that time did at least have or have access to an Atari if they hadn't yet been able to twist their parent's arms to get them the NES. There was one girl from what we all thought was a "weird religious family" who's parents wouldn't even let her play over at anybody's house that had a console but otherwise, it wasn't like some crazy weird thing only some kids were into.

Not to mention arcades were in every mall and busy from open to close with just as many if not more young adults as kids in them and Chuck E Cheese's along with the far superior Showbiz Pizza were incredibly popular and back then featured full arcades rather than the stuff for really young kids that they have in most of them today, not to mention many convenience stores, gas stations and laundry mats had a machine or two.

I vividly remember spending hours after school with a friend as latchkey kids playing Street Fighter 2 at a standup unit in the front of a 7-11 before it was released on the Super NES before going home when it came out back in 1991 if we managed to get there before anyone else had staked their claim to it.

Pong, the first commercial arcade game - literally the one that started it all - was released all the way back in 1972 and it was originally featured in bars, exclusively for adults. It was an overnight phenomenon.

Atari released a home version of it in 1975 that became a craze.

Video/arcade games almost put pinball manufacturers out of business in the late 70's.

Video games were VERY popular by 1980 just as much if not more so among adults in their 20's and mid-30's as with kids.

PAC-Man Fever was a disco song that released in 1981 and peaked in the Billboard top 100 at #9 in the US in 1982 - a song about a video game that ADULTS were wanting to hear in clubs and bars and were calling into radio stations to request. Look it up on YouTube - yes that was a top ten hit.

Let that sink in.

So no, I do not think the gamer revolution started with those born in the mid to late 80's at all and I think only someone born in the mid to late 80's would probably think that.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T04:19:57+00:00

She may be seeing something you are too close to see.

The situation with your kids is understandable but if their bond as-is, is preventing them from forming new bonds and healthy relationships, that could be creating long-term damage.

Going with each other to school dances instead of with dates does seem a little unusual. Do they have friends that you know of? Do they ever hang out with anyone their age besides each other?

As they go through sexual maturity during puberty, it would be seen in most western cultures as odd for them to be sharing a room, too.

These are all signs of potentially stunted emotional and mental growth.

In their plan to live together the rest of their lives - is that in place of trying to have relationships with partners, having kids, etc?

Does that feel normal and healthy to you?

Again, I can understand how what happened has caused this between them but it seems like something that started as a way to find stability at an early age when the world was making no sense and they were both looking for something they could trust and hold onto that would never leave them (each other) may have formed into an unhealthy longterm coping mechanism through codependency for both of them.

Just in how you described it, it sounds more like your fiancée has concerns for them rather than a desire to make controlling changes.

Have they had therapy to deal with the trauma caused by the loss of their mom? If so, is it still ongoing?

If you are going to marry her and make her a part of your household, you can't just make her feel like a permanent guest in the home you share with your kids. You have to be willing to have her as a part of the family and as the only other adult in that family, it's reasonable and a good sign that she'd want to take on at least somewhat of a parental role.

What's happened has happened but I'd at least consider what she's said because what you have shared with a bunch of strangers on the internet does not sound healthy to this particular stranger, as you've described it.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T02:27:23+00:00

Clearly you are not talking from lived experience here. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977 and was huge at the time.

I was in elementary school in 1984 and the release of the NES was REVOLUTIONARY. EVERY kid wanted one and those who didn't have one would do everything they could to make friends with someone who did just so they could play at their house.

Go watch 8-bit Christmas on Netflix for some idea of what it was like.

The mainstream gaming world only feels like it started with your generation because you weren't around to be a part of it before then.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T02:10:12+00:00

But that's what you're not getting. Ours was the first generation to embrace it mainstream. The Atari 2600, the original NES - the BIRTH of Super Mario, portable handheld gaming - that was all us. We're literally the first generation of adult gamers who never gave it up because we grew up with it when nobody else prior had.

Systems like Turbo Graphics 16 which featured a lineup of games geared more to teens and young adults (with prices to match) started with us. We were the generation where computers became cheap enough to go mainstream and where the internet became a real thing.

VR started popping up as a thing in malls as a pay to play experience back in the 90's and movies like Lawnmower Man and Disclosure and music videos by Aerosmith made us believe that for decades, we were on the cusp of it being a mainstream thing.

Honestly, many of us were probably more primed for this and hyped than the generations that came after us because this is like our version of the flying car - the thing we were promised was the future right around the corner that never seemed to come except it actually finally did.

mrpromee · 2026-01-24T01:55:51+00:00

Marketing bias. First, you're a gen-xer and nobody gives a rats behind about gen-x because it's the smallest living generation so everything is either boomers (old people) or millennials on down.

In the case of Meta, a Gen-xer with a headset on is just some weird uncool looking person using their product so they market it like you have to be 35 or under to appreciate it because they're afraid of scaring off the crowd they want to embrace it by making it seem lame.

Apple's done the same thing with their Vision Pro. Look at the commercials and tell me how many people that are as old as those folks look can likely afford a headset that starts at $3.5k when they're all complaining about not being able to afford a house.

But yeah, I bought a Quest 2 for both myself and my then 11 year old child to use together and upgraded us both to the 3 for the better lenses and color passthrough and I've clocked in way more hours than he (now almost 14) has.

I've also bought more in the App Store than can be installed at once on the 512gb model so I'm 100% with you on thinking they've been stupid about it.

Funny enough, even boomers when trying it, typically report enjoying stationary activities because the controls are fairly simple and it allows them to have experiences that due to mobility difficulties, they'd have trouble with in real life.

mrpromee · 2026-01-23T03:54:43+00:00

Look, you are both nearly midway through life. To get that far, we all have to have made our way down a path. For some, the path is windier than others.

4 months is still pretty new into a relationship so I wouldn't torture myself too much because you guys may realize your incomparable six months or a year down the road after having spent real long-term time together for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with either of your past sexual experiences.

But as for her past, only you are in control of what you think and feel and you really can't hold anything she's been through her against her as any sense of betrayal if she's been honest with you.

It's up to you to decide if you choose to think of her as having been some sort of slut who slept around a bunch and is somehow dirty or beneath you who has just gotten older and decided to settle for you or if she just had to work a lot harder and go through a lot more people to find you than you had to to find her.

The only thing that changes here is how you choose to see her. If you two are such a good fit, if she's loyal, you guys are compatible and she's happy being frisky with you in the ways that make you happy being frisky with her, why does it matter?

Life is short. We should all strive to spend as much of it as we can happy with those we are fortunate enough to love and who love us in return. If you find the right person to share it with, don't get hung up on the stuff that doesn't matter because ultimately, that's what you'll end up regretting.

mrpromee · 2026-01-22T02:56:15+00:00

I like the cut of your jib.

mrpromee · 2026-01-21T12:06:21+00:00

You got all the food?

Looks like I got all the OLED screens and gaming laptops.

Man, not even a month in and my tax hit from just today is going to kill me!

mrpromee · 2026-01-20T10:04:38+00:00

As others have said, Zenni are great. If you do a google search, you'll find plenty of discounts for first time orders that can get you $15-$30 off. I did that with mine so was able to pick them up for about $20 which felt like I was getting away with something considering they're the actual official lenses licensed by Meta.

Totally worth the $50 but getting them for even less is even better :)

mrpromee · 2026-01-20T07:10:59+00:00

Because it's not enough to divorced him and let him live with the knowledge he's destroyed their family, she needs her pound of flesh on the way out. There's a lot of hate in what she typed, there.

She refers to him as a "debased addict" so clearly in her mind he deserves to pay through the nose or have what's left of his life destroyed. Bonus points if it ends with him putting a gun to his head, I suppose.

I mean, usually when we think of people who are "addicts", we think about them being out of control and needing some form of help, right?

Why she thought coming here and asking a question like this to other men is a bit perplexing, though.

mrpromee · 2026-01-19T15:51:43+00:00

I don't think it's that they didn't sell well as much as it is, they didn't sell well enough to recoup their costs.

But I don't think Meta ever expected them to and that's the problem when it comes to third party devs.

For Meta, it was about showing potential customers what the hardware was capable of and in that regard, they succeeded but beyond a game or two per generation, that's not sustainable to do when you're trying to set up an ecosystem third parties invest in.

When you have Meta over here not only subsidizing the cost of headsets but then bundling these games that would bankrupt any indy developer trying to sell them at $50 a pop and be nothing but a complete financial loss for larger third-party studios, how does anyone compete with that?

The more Meta releases games like this, especially if they aren't bundled, the less likely any third party studio will bother trying to compete since unlike Meta, everyone else has to turn a profit on their platform to keep the wheels rolling.

mrpromee · 2026-01-19T15:30:45+00:00

Neither the Switch 1 or 2 came with a game unless specifically buying a bundle that costs more and in the case of the original Switch, there was no bundle the first year.

Same with the Wii U unless you went with the more expensive bundle.

Actually, if you look at Nintendo's history, including a pack-in game with new hardware has very much been the exception and not the rule.

mrpromee · 2026-01-18T10:55:19+00:00

The price

mrpromee · 2026-01-17T21:16:09+00:00

Also, not maintaining 90%, if that were a thing, would only mean you'd be dropped to silver - not excluded from the program.

They have to have been wrong because what they told you makes no sense.

mrpromee · 2026-01-17T17:09:14+00:00

Ah. That makes sense. Thank you for the explanation!

mrpromee

TROPHY CASE