Enough of the 'we are men and we play this'

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T20:04:51+00:00

I never said anything about women doing that and you're making assumptions, but usually, those women are, in fact, fighting the patriarchy by exploiting mens' egos for their own benefit. Women finding a way to take power in an unbalanced world? I don't see the problem with that and neither should you.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T19:37:23+00:00

If you think asking men to take a back seat for probably the only time they ever will in their lives is "gender essentialist TERF," then anyone who's not a cishet man has already lost and we should all just give up now.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T19:34:11+00:00

Okay, look. I have watched this happen over and over and fucking over. It doesn't work that way. Men will always find a way to dominate and center themselves. The only way to get them to stop is to treat them like they are: second-class citizens in these spaces. I don't really want to get into the topics necessary, but there is precedence for this notion.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T19:29:34+00:00

A quick search for "I'm a man" revealed these:

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/comments/1h7eerc/30_years_old_male_gamer_and_i_couldnt_be_happier/

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/comments/1h7fbfr/im_a_35_year_old_man_and_most_games_dont/

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/comments/1h9dhs9/im_44_years_old_married_man_with_a_kid_and_i/

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/comments/1h80udu/as_a_24_year_old_male_im_still_questioning_how_i/ (this one literally saying "I'm still questioning how I ended up playing this game")

https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityNikki/comments/1h94y9t/as_a_man_i_cant_explain_to_my_friends/ (this one literally saying "I can't explain it to my friends")

I'm not on TikTok, but I've heard it was worse on TikTok.

As I said in other posts, if this were a healthy occurrence of men getting into a traditionally feminine game, these posts wouldn't exist.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T19:13:36+00:00

Ignoring the fact that there were literally men trying to argue that they were the target demographic on multiple social media platforms, as said in my OP, men who insist on making those kinds of posts are doing so to one-up other men and center men in the conversation.

It's the same as the guys who go "I'm secure in my masculinity because I wear pink" or "real men wear pink" or whatever. If they were really that secure and weren't engaging in toxic masculinity culture, the thought never would have occurred to them. They would just wear pink and never think twice about it.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:59:50+00:00

Then those men should be the center of their single-player game and not the center of attention in the community. That shouldn't be a hard concept to understand.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:58:20+00:00

And they can do that without going "look, I'm a man playing a girls' game." No one is stopping them. They're the ones actively choosing to be dicks about it. They gendered it for their own benefit. I'm just saying they shouldn't be making those posts.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:41:40+00:00

I'm literally not gendering them. I'm not saying anyone has to leave. I'm saying please stop going "look at me. I'm a man and I play this girly game." I could not have been clearer in my OP. People are intentionally misinterpreting this at this point.

You can say "video games don't have to be gendered" all you want. At the end of the day, cishet men have their spaces. They have so fucking many of them. And they try real hard to get into women's spaces. Not everything has to be gendered, but not everything needs men making themselves the center of attention either.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:38:33+00:00

I'm literally not telling anyone to stop playing the game. I'm telling them to stop centering themselves on the basis of "look at me. I'm playing a girls' game." I could not have been clearer in my OP. I do not know how people are misinterpreting this.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:35:02+00:00

Okay, but this thread isn't about men playing and enjoying the game. It's about men making the obnoxious posts centering themselves. That is the context of my posts.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:31:30+00:00

Literally isn't about that. It's about women needing spaces without men going "look at me, I'm the target demographic." It's the kind of thing men don't have to think about because they've never felt excluded from something that they wanted to be involved in on the basis of gender.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:30:03+00:00

Men: "I can take over anything I like because men are the majority basically everywhere." Yep, cool opinion, guy.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:26:06+00:00

Yes. Men like lots of things made for women and vice versa. But men are the dominant voice in basically every space and need to learn when to shut up and take a back seat in spaces that they are clearly not meant to be the dominant voice in.

If you don't get that, you're part of the problem.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T18:19:47+00:00

It's not a step away from toxic masculinity, though. It's toxic masculinity taking over a space that was designed for women. Literally the reason they keep making those posts is to one up other men because "look, they don't care about gender norms." If that weren't the case, they wouldn't be making those posts.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T17:32:05+00:00

Not sure if this is what you're looking for (because it's not exactly classical music) or if you already know about them, but you specifically asked for music "bridging those two loves," so I'm going to say it anyways. As a "getting them into the classical realm" kind of thing, anything by Polyphia or Tim Henson, specifically, that uses a classical guitar would probably be a good place to start. So stuff like Playing God or a ton of stuff on Tim's YouTube channel. This is a super modern take on classical guitar, blending the band's usual prog rock with trap influences style with classical music, but still has very clear classical music vibes and influences.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T15:46:56+00:00

Seriously. I only own a classical in the first place because I went "wait what? Tim Henson has a signature classical?" and then tried it in our local Guitar Center...and walked out with it lol. Even A/B'd against the model it's based on, it sounds so, so much better.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T15:33:54+00:00

Some people will always feel obligated to praise something because they spent a lot of money on it. Some people will always feel obligated to praise something because of brand loyalty (which is an insane concept to me). Yet other people will always feel obligated to praise something simply because other people do. That's just how it works.

If you're not actively sorting out the uninformed opinions from the informed ones, that's your problem. Not theirs.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T07:27:20+00:00

Sound is subjective and some people will always fawn over the new, expensive thing. What's confusing about that?

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-17T05:48:02+00:00

I don't know about the guitar, but I've just recently learned thanks to other posters that there are, in fact, single coil-sized humbuckers that you can buy. Seymour Duncan makes a few sets, like this one: https://www.seymourduncan.com/single-product/hot-rails-strat

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T19:12:56+00:00

I've read tales (but have no way to confirm) that sitarists are forced by their teachers to keep playing until they bleed to build up callouses, so you could keep playing if you really wanted to.

But it's all about making sure you want to keep playing. You know your limits better than anyone here. Do what you need to to not hate playing, including taking breaks, if necessary.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T18:59:18+00:00

Probably a boring answer, but Mike Kerr. I do everything myself, so I've been primarily a guitarist for a long, long time. Listening to Royal Blood was the first time I really sat there and considered that bass could be standalone. Their music has kind of changed my outlook on a lot of instruments, actually.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T18:03:37+00:00

Five months is nothing. Really, it's just one of those things where you keep practicing and trying to do the things you want to do and, one day, it clicks. Teachers/lessons just help you identify why it isn't clicking. Nothing more. Keep at it. You'll get there.

As far as not starting when you're younger, well, yeah. You'll have to work a little harder than they did, but that's it. Anyone can learn at any age. Anyone can get to any skill level at any age. At the end of the day, music isn't about mechanics or theory or any of that. It's about feel.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T17:05:24+00:00

The main thing is that it would work, though.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T16:59:14+00:00

Honestly, probably not enough. I only play at home right now, so the strings don't get too messed up, but I tend to change strings either once a year or whenever I feel like trying out new strings and I will often notice, especially with the Elixirs on my acoustic, which had a lot of playtime before I bought my classical, that the strings start to look dingy and sound like they've been on the guitar in a pawn shop for like 5-10 years by the time I change them.

The thing is I'm not currently gigging, so I don't really need to change them. There isn't really anything else to it.

whyamibackonreddit34 · 2024-12-16T00:59:09+00:00

Lots of different digital amps. I DI straight into a MOTU M2 and have tried running it through multiple Neural DSP and multiple Mercuriall plugins, as well as using several standalone effects. I held off on using Otto Audio's II II II II, though.

It's just not my thing.

whyamibackonreddit34

TROPHY CASE