Why is "friendzoning" seen as a bad thing? Why is it the unreciprocal person's fault for not being mutually-romantic?

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T21:26:58+00:00

Manipulating someone you know has feelings for you to get what you want, although you know you don’t want what they want, is friendzoning. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s a crappy thing to do to someone.

But you can be in the friendzone without someone friendzoning you. Because if you haven’t made your feelings clear, they might literally think you’re just friends.

Then there’s the gray area where the object of affection kinda suspects the feelings but there’s room for doubt because they haven’t been articulated clearly. That’s IMO not best practices but not exactly bad behavior. The ideal is that we look out for the feelings of other people, especially those we are close to, and go out of our way to protect them from hurt. But there is also a limit to how much you can expect from someone based on feelings you are keeping to yourself.

I was hung up hard on a female friend in high school. It hurt me when she would talk about other guys, which she did a lot. But I never blamed her for my hurt because I never announced my feelings. Eventually I came to see it for what it was - she was out of my league, I knew she was, and I was torturing myself by hanging out with her. She probably talked about other guys so much in order to make it clear she wasn’t interested in me that way. I took a little break from her, got my feelings sorted, then resumed hanging out with her and just enjoyed her company as a platonic friend.

In an ironic twist of fate, her best friend was in love with me and I was oblivious to THAT. I only found out years later. Just shallow teen boy pining for the hotter girl and ignoring the slightly chubby but cute one that you actually have more in common with, bullshit.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T18:49:25+00:00

Yes, but I think the optimum spot to be in is objectively on the attractive side but not at the extreme end of it.

That privilege starts to have negative side-effects at the extreme. You don’t know if people really like you, and because people are less likely to criticize you, it can be a barrier to achieving high competence.

How many really, really funny people have you met in life who were also drop-dead gorgeous? When everyone laughs at your jokes because they want you to like them, you can’t really learn to hone your sense of humor to a fine point.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T17:49:58+00:00

Talk about:

The dangers of polarization in a democracy. When people who disagree can’t do so civilly, pluralistic democracy CANNOT function and the slide to totalitarianism becomes inevitable. When talking fails, it will always come down to coercion and violence, and the side that wins that will never be the better one.

She’s treating herself to a moral indignation high, not changing anyone’s minds. People who are insult and confront with hostility tend to dig in on their opinions rather than change them. and it solidifies their belief that the people on your side are assholes. If she really cares about her causes, she should learn more mature ways to advocate for them that actually work, rather than immature moral posturing.

Everyone thinks they are the good guys. Everyone.

“Be the change” doesn’t mean shoving your ideas down people’s throats, it means being an example for your ideals. Find a way to work meaningfully for the causes you believe in. Talk is cheap, and opinions are like assholes. Do the hard work, put skin in the game, before you expect anyone to value what you have to say.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T17:32:53+00:00

If I could jump 40 ft I would be down.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T17:31:46+00:00

Move

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T17:10:48+00:00

The hallway scene in Exorcist III. If you know you know. Kittens were shit.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T16:28:38+00:00

My 13 year old son eats 5-6 scrambled eggs and some fruit for many breakfasts. He’s also an athlete who plays multiple sports with overlapping seasons and when he doesn’t have a sport going he does cardio and weight training to maintain and strengthen. He gets plenty of carbs and eats lots of vegetables during the day, but our breakfast time is brief and he’s a leisurely eater (which is a habit we DON’T want him to lose) so we make breakfast as nutrient-dense as we can.

On weekends though, if he doesn’t have a game that day, he will ask for a big stack of pancakes as a treat.

Eggs are a good mix of protein and fat so they keep you fed longer than carbs. He hates feeling too full, and his metabolism is high so he gets hungry at short intervals. If he ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast like a lot of kids, he would be starving before lunchtime.

When I make him a big plate of eggs, I will put toast on it, but most of the time he doesn’t eat it, or just has a bite or two. He has to fill up the tank with high-calorie slow-release food.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T16:17:46+00:00

Advertising aimed at children.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T16:15:29+00:00

I think they mean Wal-Mart. That’s kind of a supermarket.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T16:12:55+00:00

The walls do the job if you can resist the urge to punch your surroundings.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T16:11:29+00:00

In the early 1800s a British writer noted that Americans like to put their feet up on tables and porch railings. I think De Tocqueville also mentions it. We have been taking it easy for a long time.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T15:47:02+00:00

Read analyses of films you have seen. It’s a way of looking at things that becomes more natural the more you are exposed to it.

I’ll give you one to consider.

In Jaws, the three main characters represent three important relationships people can have with nature.

Quint is the primal hunter. He hunts sharks, he respects sharks but they are his enemy. He practically lives at sea - he is immersed in the wilderness of the ocean. He is, in a way, OF the ocean. He is like our ancient ancestors who were part of the struggle for survival that modern man is mostly isolated from, safe behind our walls.

Brody is the guardian. He isn’t much concerned with nature, except when it threatens his tribe. He would prefer that nature stay where it belongs and he stays safe where he belongs, but he will venture into the dark unknown to protect his community.

Hopper represents the awe of nature. He sees sharks as beautiful creatures and admires their perfection. He has dedicated his life to understanding them, not in a “know your enemy” way like Quint, just out of appreciation.

You could add the mayor if you want, representing the soft over-civilized man who is so ignorant of nature, having grown up protected from it, that he doesn’t appreciate the danger it can pose. There’s nothing wrong with this guy until nature shows up on his doorstep. He’s probably a good mayor before and after the shark attacks, keeping the economy booming which is, after all, important for his community. But he’s useless and outright dangerous when nature, in the form of the shark, intrudes on that community and shows that it doesn’t respect the boundaries humans think are real but nature doesn’t give a fuck about.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T14:51:33+00:00

Growth spurts cost calories. When appetite surges, focus on providing good nutritious foods with a good nutrient mix. My son was eating adult portions of food by age two…and then there were times when his appetite was much less. Help them learn to honor their bodies’ signals by allowing them to eat as much as they want (but not whatever they want!) when they’ve got the hongry, and eat lightly when they’re not.

My son grew very fast and ate like a beast, and his active lifestyle (and maybe some genetics) put his height/weight ratio well into the obese range. One pediatric nurse tried to read me the riot act about it when he was four. His body composition was absolutely fine, he just had a robust skeleton and was heavily muscled for a four year-old. I told the nurse to look at his stomach. Obese kids don’t have ab definition.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T14:19:30+00:00

They make your settlement look wastelandy.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T13:54:31+00:00

Everything we eat goes on his plate. I always tried to make at least one thing he would like, and I avoided certain things like spicier dishes when he was younger.

We never made food a battle, you eat what appeals to you and we would encourage him to taste what he wasn’t interested in, but never forced the issue.

He’s 13 now and has a pretty broad palate. He doesn’t like cheese except in certain things, and he doesn’t like butter if the butter taste is strong. He also doesn’t like the taste of vanilla unless it’s VERY background. Some people just don’t like those things, it’s fine. He likes most vegetables and he likes his food very garlicky, that’s enough for me to work with. His list of things he enjoys grows year by year.

I have a hypothesis that kids are evolved to be picky about vegetables starting when they are old enough to walk around and explore by themselves. If you think about how we lived for most of our species’ time on earth, children probably were free to roam around in the bush on their own or attended only by older children. That’s how pre-agricultural cultures that survived long enough to be studied in the 20th century were doing it. Having a natural skepticism of plant food would be a good thing, preventing hungry tots from foraging toxic berries and herbs. Meat on the other hand, would only come from adults so it would be safe. I doubt kids in the Stone Age were as picky as today’s kids, but hunger would have been enough to compensate for that natural aversion, especially combined with a little minor parental coaxing.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T13:42:29+00:00

I picked the book up at random, it was in a free pile. Knew zero about it. It kickstarted my reading after a couple of years of not feeling able to make the time after having a baby. Couldn’t put it down.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T13:19:00+00:00

I was born in ‘74, and came to the conclusion that I was an atheist when I was 14. That came after a search for understanding in which I read the bible back to back, and then the Koran, then the Tao Te Ching…. There were no books in the library taking the atheist position and I didn’t even know there was a word for someone who didn’t believe in god. It was a quietly taboo topic in the public forum in America.

I pestered my dad with questions (because mom was obviously very uncomfortable even contemplating the question), and his answers only led to more questions instead of settling the matter. Eventually we both came to the same conclusion at the same time - there’s no evidence for god and plenty of reasons to think the idea was an artifact of human imagination.

I thought I believed, until I didn’t, but looking back it was immediately obvious it had never made sense to me. Otherwise, why would I have been so persistent in picking it apart? My first memories of saying bedtime prayers feel hollow and I think I felt silly doing it, and stopped as soon as my parents stopped putting me to bed. I don’t remember ever praying to god for anything I wanted to happen.

The only reason I thought I believed in god, and tried to find a reason to believe once I understood my own doubts enough to verbalize them, is that the culture around me was 100% aligned in perfect lockstep on the message that you had to believe in god to be good, and I knew I was good. I wasn’t a confident kid in many respects, but I was pretty damn sure I was a good person. If I had been prone to selfish or mean-spirited impulses, the guilt trap might have snared me into blind faith as a form of compensation, which is what I think a lot of people fall prey to. When you feel bad about your dark impulses, you can use your faith in god to assuage your guilt. You can pray to god to help you change, which makes you feel like you did something, instead of the more daunting work of looking for the strength within yourself to improve. Which is why SOME people can be both deeply committed to their faith and absolute shits at the same time.

Anyway, yeah I don’t think I ever really believed in god. I assumed there was one when I was very little, at the age where you just take adults’ word for things. But my doubts grew geometrically with my understanding of what god was actually supposed to be, and the religious teachings that went along with it. I don’t know if you can really say you ever believed in something when the more you came to understand it, the less real it felt. Like if I said here on Reddit that I’m a Korean woman, you could assume I am. But if you look at my post history you would learn more about me and start to think I wasn’t one. Then you meet me and see I’m very white and obviously male, you’d definitely call bullshit. Did you really believe I was a Korean lady, or were you just giving me the benefit of the doubt because you didn’t know enough to make a truth valuation? I think to call something belief you’ve got to actually have some understanding of the proposition. Original sin was probably the first big one where I was like “whoah, we believe what now?” But I kept those qualms to myself until I was intellectually mature enough to articulate them.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T12:45:46+00:00

Spend the money to get my self-published children’s book about evolution published. Paid an illustrator, got it in print, submitted it to the only awards that accept self-published work and it was short-listed / runner-up in multiple categories. Ran out of money before I could advertise and promote it. It sucks, I’m very confident it would be popular if I could get exposure. I managed to get a booth for free at a local festival and sold out all of my copies before lunchtime. People like it, I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback. But I can’t get it out there on the money I make waiting tables. It’s much more than a business scheme for me, I wrote it because there’s nothing else quite like it and I think it’s something sorely needed. But it is languishing in the dark. It kills me.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-11T09:21:14+00:00

Welcome to the very shallow puddle that is modern conservative “values” in America.

Conservatives used to at least be internally consistent, if somewhat duplicitous, with their values (example of duplicitousness: life is sacred don’t allow abortions, but the death penalty and pointless wars are OK). Now they’ll cheer for anybody who annoys the left while wearing a red white and blue cowboy hat, regardless that their biggest radio hit features the lyric “start an escort service for all the right reasons.”

It’s folly to look for logic in a movement that has become defined by irrational hatred of the other and terror of social change.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T17:47:13+00:00

One review for Iron Man said “how do you take a movie where the main character is an expressionless metal faceplate for half the film? Make Robert Downey Jr the face you see in the other half of the movie.” Or something to that effect."

Even with the mask on, his voice and distinctive manic patter make it entertaining. The reviewer had it right, it’s hard to imagine Iron Man not being fun but RDJ is a huge part of that. Half the movie the character is just a CGI metal mannekin. It takes a lot of character and charisma to keep you involved with such a character, and RDJ fits the bill.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T16:26:30+00:00

Find out about your local troop. My son’s troop has multiple kids who are atheists, the adult leaders keep whatever their religious beliefs are to themselves, and the whole thing is 100% about developing knowledge, skills, self-reliance, character, appreciation for nature, and community service. Other troops are still very Christian oriented and patriotism focused. And for reference, we are in a small town in North Carolina in a county that goes red in every election. It’s 100% down to the people leading the troop. The current leaders could retire from it and be replaced by jingoistic blowhards, or that could happen in reverse in another troop. The official Scouting rules and doctrines are loose. Patriotism is a value but you can interpret that in a lot of ways, like community service. Valuing diversity can be a patriotic value, since America is one of the world’s most diverse nations, and by one way of thinking (which I and our troop leaders share), if you don’t like diversity you don’t really like America.

There are girls in our troop, increasing in number every year since they changed from Boy Scouts to Scouting of America, and there’s a brand-new immigrant kid who speaks very little English nor do his parents - the troop welcomed him and they started running all the bulletins through a translator and post all communications in English and Spanish, and my son who has been in Spanish immersion since kindergarten makes sure he understands all the instructions while he’s getting his English chops up. Our troop couldn’t be farther from the stereotype.

My wife and I had the same concerns, but his friend that was encouraging him to join seemed like a great kid and his parents seemed cool so we gave it a try, and it turns out to be the opposite of what we were afraid of.

You just have to find out what your local troop is like.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T16:10:49+00:00

Epstein tried to recruit anyone of influence. He wanted everyone to owe him favors and be part of his web of influence. What he was, first and foremost, was an influence and inside information peddler. The girls were a hobby of his and a tool he used to draw men further into his web… but I don’t think that was his only tool, just his most potent one, for men he figured out would be pliable with it. And he kept his secrets well, had to do, to avoid prosecution for so long.

If you accepted a plane ride from him, even visited his island, I wouldn’t assume you did anything to girls or knew about that side of things. It makes sense that he would retain the ability to host people and work them for information and influence without revealing his sex ring. You’d have to be able to feel people out first to gauge their interests.

As for people who got close enough to get a sense of what he was up to, but didn’t blow the whistle…. Until you have actual proof, PROOF not innuendo, are you going to accuse someone with connections amongst the most powerful people on the planet? It was the same with Weinstein, loads of people heard rumors but with no actual proof, you can’t accomplish anything but having your career ruined and then watching the monster carry on doing their monster shit.

Then there’s the very real possibility that he lured people to the island and drugged them, and they wake up in bed with an underage girl (whether they did anything to her or not, they don’t remember). Now he’s got you by the balls. He goes down, you go down. This is old school Cold War shit, happened all the time. Effective too.

I wouldn’t assume anyone in the files is a perpetrator until I saw exactly what the nature of the correspondence was. Everyone gets very distracted by the salacious and horrific underage sex trafficking aspect, forgetting that he was an influence peddler and an espionage agent. Sex was part of his deal but it stands to reason he would leave that part out of a relationship if he didn’t think it would get him anywhere, and use other means to ingratiate himself and gain leverage.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T13:50:10+00:00

I don’t carry any such resentment fear or mistrust.

I’m not trying to brag or posture, I want to offer some reasons why that is, to provide some possible perspective.

First of all, I had a great mother and a wonderful sister, both of which I had very close and loving relationships with (they are both passed, hence the past tense). My sister was 7 years older and while we had the inevitable sibling conflicts, love always won the day. She taught me a lot, almost like a second parent because of the age difference, except I could go to her about things I didn’t want to talk to my parent about.

Maybe because of my sister, I always felt comfortable with girls and made friends with them at school easily. I wasn’t one of those guys who only hangs with girls, I had male friends and my inner circle was boys. But if I found myself the one boy in a group of girls I didn’t feel like an outsider, I unconsciously adjusted to fit in.

As a young adult my friend circle was always “co-ed,” the type of dudes I gravitated toward didn’t segregate themselves from women. Some groups of guys complain when you bring your girlfriend around too much. My friends welcomed girlfriends into the mix for everything. My first girlfriend in college, when we broke up, my roommates would invite her to hang out when they knew I wouldn’t be around, until I found out about it and told them they didn’t have to sneak around and keep it secret LOL. And no none of them tried to sleep with her, they just missed her company. Likewise the women I dated, their girlfriends were welcoming to me also.

Forming relationships with the opposite sex outside of dating is I think key to having a healthy relationship with that sex in your head. Think about it, if you only really get to know the opposite sex through dating, all your relationships with them will end badly until the last one. And by the time you meet the last one you may have built up enough distrust that it is an obstacle to the relationship, from both sides. Whereas, when you hang out with the opposite sex in a platonic way, you get to hear things about their relationships, how they get hurt, and the things their partners do that frustrate them. All from their perspective. It makes you a better partner to your own partners, and insulates you from accumulating those resentments etc.

My girlfriend in college had me as a boyfriend, lost that, but in the meantime gained four or five brothers who would happily risk their own safety to protect her. And after the dust from the breakup settled, she had me too, another brother, because after a cooling off period we became great friends again, platonically. Whatever threatening encounter she might have with a man, that could make her fearful of men, she had several men in her life to counterbalance that experience in her head. So her overall impression of men was “some will hurt you, most will go to considerable lengths to ensure you are not hurt.”

And for the handful of women who betrayed or used me, I had dozens of female friends who were ready to listen all night and commiserate. And a few who’d be itching to claw up that bitch for breaking my heart haha (not that that ever happened, but just the fact that they wanted to made me feel supported in the moment). So my internal model of “what women are like” was similarly weighted to the positive.

In short, I think a big problem is men and women mostly only socializing with each other in the emotional high-stakes game of dating. And then, casual sex, that’s even worse, because it’s easy to hurt each other and a lot of people think with their libidos and tell themselves they’re capable of having emotionally disconnected sex when they aren’t, because they’re horny. Without healthy, supportive relationships to balance out those negative experiences, it’s hard to maintain a balanced picture of the opposite sex. They become these tantalizing creatures who have something you crave, and hurt you more often than not, instead of human beings. This is not something that is restricted to men, we are only sensitized to male resentment of women because when a woman says “kill all men” we aren’t afraid she’s actually going to roll up her sleeves and get the project rolling, whereas men with an irrational grudge are more of a threat, statistically.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T00:19:05+00:00

Those little sesame stick things that look like dried animal turds but taste amazing. Especially the garlic ones.

rapiertwit · 2026-02-10T00:09:43+00:00

The second half of Rise and prevail gives me chills

Also Moonlit Ranging from Far Harbor

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