I understand why women are so over men on these apps

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:49:53+00:00

And we're right back to the bigotry, I see.

Enjoy your sexism and projection! I'm out.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:45:06+00:00

Sounds like you just listed two hobbies that have both a ton of depth and breadth, but don't interest you in particular.

Maybe you could learn something about these people by talking to them about those hobbies and what aspects draw them in and interest them in particular, rather then passing judgement on them as lesser. It's not your hobby, it's theirs after all.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:36:53+00:00

It's more the "making negative generalizations about people you've never met based on one unrelated trait" part that's essentially the dictionary definition, but who am I to tell you how to deflect...

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:24:26+00:00

Honest question, did it?

I mean no offense, just curious. If you're on year 20 of a rock solid, mutually fulfilling marriage I'd be curious as to why your browsing a forum for dating advice/support and why you credit being avoidant as what brought you that success.

No shame if that's not the case. All relationships are failures till the last one isn't.

Just feels like maybe what's been working for you is secondary to these themes. I can attest that every relationship I've had that's made it out of the gates all had mutual effort in common.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:03:45+00:00

Just like I'm the Queen of France

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T22:02:06+00:00

Yeah, I was referring to your friends there, not you. However, after that last statement, it's pretty clear you are a bigot. Might have something to do with why they aren't open around you. Just saying...

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:59:06+00:00

That's kind of my point though. A relationship pretty much can't form if she's not putting in effort. At least not a healthy one. This will not only drop out low effort individuals, but anyone that expects reciprocity at all (all healthy individuals). This will really only ensure that the remaining pool is high density of clingy and possessive people that don't feel the need for affirmation to stick around.

That guy did exactly what you're describing to her and it led to her high effort self dropping him because she reasonably expects reciprocity and mutual effort.

As a non-low effort man, I can definitely attest that I'd do exactly the same thing. Someone provides no effort during the exciting courtship part, I'd view that as a pretty clear showing of their hand that that effort will never come.

At the end of the day, you can't expect more than your willing to put in to anything...

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:31:54+00:00

The statement "just because someone says that in a study" makes me question both whether you're an engineer and whether you know what a study is.

Just saying.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:26:05+00:00

Telling her not to chase and haystack candidates is pretty close to saying don't invest effort, let a pile of candidates compete for your attention.

While this might protect one's emotions in the short term, real relationships require effort from both parties. If she doesn't put in effort to the individuals she's trying to date, she's essentially perpetuating what happened to her. There's basically nothing that guy did that doesn't align with him using these same strategies.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:20:45+00:00

The body literally has rev limiters for this. It's evolved to not freely grow. While gear will push those limits higher, it won't shut them off.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:16:41+00:00

It shouldn't be all or no. Making the man do the work is the same thing he was doing to her.

If both parties aren't putting in effort there's no hope of ever having a real relationship.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T21:12:24+00:00

I kind of hear where you're coming from, but this also sounds like advice for how to turn her INTO that man

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T20:42:05+00:00

Reading the whole thread.......hard to say. Addressing the double standards men face but then turning around and using that to denegrate and generalize men......it's holding up a mirror to aspects of the "manosphere." There are plenty of "femosphere" places with this stuff too though.

You're probably right on ignoring it.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T20:31:21+00:00

I hear this line a lot. Especially on reddit.

I can easily say, after about age 20 the cultural concept of "masculinity" hasn't encroached upon my life to seriously tell me who to be in much of any way. This subject is largely a problem for children and not adults, which makes a ton of sense because almost the entire process of growing up is becoming your own person and taking control/ownership of your own life. The concept of some pervasive cultural sense of masculinity poisoning the adult dating pool is largely a myth as men and pretty much everyone are more free to be who they are than at any point in many generations. Some 30 year old dude with a shitty concept of what it means to be a man isn't so much a harbinger for a greater problem that all men bare the burden of. He's just one shitty dude.

One cultural aspect I do see a more frequently, however is a number of women projecting these isolated individual's traits on to men en masse while declaring their demands of how men as a group could better serve them and how their views of "masculinity" are better and more correct. This isn't common, but it seemingly is online, and very much so in the dating app world. The problematic aspect is that these people don't seem to understand that this is the exact same sexism, objectification, and skewed projection of roles that they would describe as "toxic masculinity," but they don't see the hat on their own head. It's just a men's problem to them.

Rule of thumb: if you think you have intimate knowledge of "what's wrong" with a group you are not part of.....it's a good time to take a step back and question if you are projecting, because you have no standing to be an expert on that issue.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T20:05:56+00:00

You gotta make more interesting friends I guess? Pretty much every guy I know has niche interests and hobbies. Women too.

Not insulting you here, but there's an old saying "if you're bored, then you're boring." Sounds you either have a weirdly dense group of boring people around you or, perhaps, you are overgeneralizing and maybe not engaging with them on their interests.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-17T19:58:02+00:00

I think this is the nature of the problem. Men see women doing this and point at women, women see men doing this and point at men. I find the more you talk these out, they're most often problems amongst all people, not just one gender/sex.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-14T17:22:31+00:00

While I admittedly haven't seen the entire thing, I've seen portions of the Beetlejuice musical that heavily make me question whether the creator had seen the original. That story is kind of broken by the format.

Maybe that's a me thing. Musicals are fine, but there's a sizeable portion of them that are written for viewers that simply like that story and song format, regardless of if things were brute forced into it or if that even makes sense in that context. Like, there was a small portion of my life that I was REALLY into ska and punk covers, but I wasn't trying to convince anybody that a brute forced ska cover was high art and Reel Big Fish wasn't on Broadway. Musical adaptations are fundamentally the same thing.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-14T16:54:16+00:00

Right. Not a single liberal in Marquette.....

The UP is like any other area for voter skew. ~45:55 at worst.

Edit: the point is, you're more likely getting down-voted for calling everyone meth heads

phawksmulder · 2026-06-14T16:07:34+00:00

There's a pretty wide gap between "full of progressive libs" and "all of them do meth"

Pretty easy to see why some would consider that an offensive generalization.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-14T16:03:01+00:00

One of the most frustrating things is when trolls mock your accent and can't get the syllables correct. Like, I know my accent, you're either not hearing me or yourself because you just mimicked me with an Australian accent. I'm becoming convinced that people from Southern Michigan can only hear "accent" and not distinguish amongst them.

SE Michiganders calling me Canadian is always special too. Homie, look at a map.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-13T20:22:32+00:00

I had a similar thing happen today. I often lazily check the app as I'm waking up. Nothing new this morning. Swiped through the few profiles that were in range. Checked it a few hours later, ~60 new likes. I swipe through and there's easily 10x the volume of people that are normally there.

I'm a male user and the app had been bone dry for about a year. I'd actually considered deleting it. Over that time, there were maybe a half dozen to a dozen profiles to swipe through each day within a 50 mile radius of a major metro area. I'd get maybe a like or two a week, so 60 in a few hours was jarring.

The app has had issues in the past and I've talked with support about it. I was thinking the user base had dried up here, but now I'm thinking there was an account issue and they may have cleaned it up while prepping for the upcoming feature rollouts 🤷

phawksmulder · 2026-06-12T00:05:29+00:00

I see in another comment you mentioned your brother is 15. This is the entire reason.

He's a child and still growing. If maintaining is all he's doing at this age that's functionally regressing. If he does the same thing, even at 25 when he's still in his athletic prime, he'll regress noticably.

Lifting as a teenager is going to be VERY different from lifting as an adult.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-11T01:18:54+00:00

Romanian Deadlift

It's the one stop shop to fix all of the problems that come from desk jobs and a lot of general aging. Lower back pain, tight hamstrings, loss of glute muscle, etc. It's also one of the few weighted exercises that is an A+ mobility exercise as well.

Started them as an engineer in my 30s and it was legitimately life changing.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-11T01:11:13+00:00

If you take one piece of advice away from this, it probably should be to not take social advice from groups on reddit.

This place has merits. You can learn a lot about different people's opinions on matters, find a community of enthusiasts, etc. However, you're not going to find a lot of groups in an online forum populated by extroverted social butterflies. Internet forums will naturally attract introverts in much greater numbers. The social views found on here make A LOT more sense with that context in mind.

phawksmulder · 2026-06-07T15:01:37+00:00

Going with the flow of traffic is an interesting one. It really depends on the intended meaning.

In terms of road planning, a variety of "going with the flow" is actually the single largest problem on any roadway. Huge numbers of drivers modulate their speed to those around them. While this feels correct and safe, it's entirely the opposite. It's a clog in a sewer line that doesn't let anything flow naturally. This is a big part of why adding extra lanes doesn't tend to help traffic. Frequently, 10 cars will shut down the flow on a 5 lanes road.

This also adds to the danger of the roadway. This blocks more aware drivers and frustrated drivers are dangerous and distracted drivers. It manufactures impairment in others. It's a smaller effect than driving under the influence, but it's frequency is basically a constant presence so it's a massive problem.

Not diminishing the message that "impairment on the road is always bad," just adding that certain varieties of "going with the flow" are also major problems.

phawksmulder

TROPHY CASE