why would i be in a relationship if it took work? work takes work. relationships are supposed to be enjoyable and fun, like hobby.

again, you sound like you have internalized way too much self-help therapy stuff. ordinry folks don’t approach life that way.

i have relationships, but i would not classify any of them as ‘work’. when they become ‘work’ it means it’s time to stop interacting with that person.

yep.

Your take here is the nihilistic doomer take.

Life isn’t a choice between two extremes. Most folks lives are not incel, nor are they ‘true friendship’ they are in the middle, living ordinary boring life, rather than one of the hyperbolic choices you have presented here. Nor do people sit around ‘maintaining’ relationships, they just… have them or don’t.

You def spend way too much time reading self help crap online, chasing some platonic ideal of relationships in your head, and thinking the only alternative to that is being an incel or something?

Life is way more boring than any of that dude. Most relationships are 100% built on convenience or a sense of social obligation. People stop being friends when they feel it is inconvenient or there is no sense of obligation to sustain things anymore. And that’s fine. There is no ‘true eternal friendship’ anymore than there is ‘true love’. It’s a idealized fantasy, just like incel beliefs.

IME it’s always the people who loudly grandstand about this stuff who are guilty of it. Everyone who denounces cheating is horrible and awful and etc, ends up being a cheater, etc.

it’s not necessarily consequence free. i knew a couple of ladies who got fucked by their false rape accusations. it does happen.

however, the consequences are typically rare and only bite them in the ass after multiple accusations or escalations that involve the legal system.

further there are edge cases where people delusion convince themselves of abuse/rape after the fact because it gives them a ‘get out of jail free’ card in their own heads of the shame/guilt they feel. and on the flip side, i have had newer partners try to convince me my old partners were abusers as a way to elevate their own status with me, etc.

people do all sorts of crazy/toxic stuff when it comes to sex and relationships, that is rarely discussed because it makes folks uncomfortable. lots of crazy manipulative stuff that goes on in relationships and sex is normalized or excused.

what the fuck are you on about with this shitty meme.

it makes people feel powerful to take absolutist stances like this.

and weak people love to feel powerful. you typically won’t see such stances coming from productive happy people

because many folks are incredibly sexist. and they think their sexism is ‘good’. because women are always victims in their minds, and if a man is ever a victim, well he deserved it because of ‘systematic oppression’.

just ignore them.

and further, those who haven’t dealt with manipulative women, or false rape accusations, love to pretend they don’t exist. because it would break their fantasy world where all women are angelic and men are demonic. instead of men and women both being people capable of shitty things.

super common.

most everyone will come down on the woman’s side too. regardless of whether or not she was at fault.

it’s just how life is as a man. you can’t change things, you just have to deal with it. men are only valued what we provide to others, and we are discarded the second we no longer provide it.

the only happiness/solace you can really find is living for yourself, on your own terms, and not worrying about social approval from other people. if it comes, cool. but way too many of us spend our lives seeking it out and becoming miserable by doing so, or having it all disappear over ordinary life events we had no control over.

BTW i will give you one counter example. When my girlfriend of 5 years left me in my late 20s, her family came down on my side. They called me an apologized for their daughters behavior and how they had no raised her this way, and we chatted a bit about how she had changed the past 2 years into a very unhappy person. She continued to socialize with me, but she continued to spiral into deeper misery so I just parted ways entirely. Her family and I had bonded pretty well, but she had refused to bond with my family out of a weird pride.

my dog jumping into a bush and donking herself on a street pole while doing so. total cartoon moment.

what is garlic toast? like garlic bread?

what? when was a hamburger ever 7 bucks?

i remember going to Chili’s in the 1998 and it was still like $10-12.

depending on where you are, tax and tip can be up to 40% yeah.

in USA taxes are by state, and some cities/towns have local taxes on restaurant meals. Where I like it’s a 1% local tax and a 6% state tax, and that is relatively low.

Most restaurants expend 20% minimum tip, but really expect 25-30%, so where i live yeah, 37% extra on the price is standard.

what is higher order thinking?

do you mean academic specialization?

renters are second class citizens in the USA, for sure.

not owning a home is considered a failure, like not going to college, or not being rich.

yes, almost everyday. would not be here if otherwise.

i have also had many of these threads removed by mods, or end up in harassment/insults from other users who didn’t like the content of the discussion being discussed. lots of people want to derail or silence productive discussion because it makes them uncomfortable or doesn’t support their preexisting biases. especially about social or political problems.

the problem is certain users just HATE anyone who says anything they disagree with, and need to paint everyone who doesn’t agree with them as irredeemably evil. I’ve seen people write fan-fictions about me personally, based on a few comments I’ve made. and further, they are OUTRAGED that anyone upvotes my comments or anyone agrees with them, and usually start reporting such comments to get me banned from that community. and these folks… are convinced they aren’t the problem. It’s me and my views that are the problem, and been to be silenced, rather than discussed.

I like discussion and asking questions and interactions… a lot of folks in life in general are incredibly threatened and hostile to this type of socialization. but it’s cool when folks also share that mentality and share their insights and experiences or thoughtful speculations.

I have a Garmin Forerunner. I have had it for 3 years, but I only really unlocked it’s usefulness when I got a power meter and a heart rate strap. It’s amazingly useful for training and it is almost always right about my energy levels and other metrics. I am getting older and it’s important to not over-train and fatigue myself which I would totally do w/o my garmin and I still occasionally do even when it’s telling me to take it easy or rest.

I also use the maps a ton when in the woods, as well as the weather.

I have used the coaching feature but it’s not really for me, I’d rather do my own training plan.

You really have to invest in the features and learn about them. My first year of use I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing with it or what anything meant on it and a lot of metrics and programs were not useful to me since w/o the data senors it was very broad estimates of my energy outputs. My max HR was set wrong for 1.5 years before I figured it out.

Bingo. He’s not the tall brown/blonde well-built masculine jaw type of ‘leader’ people expect, that looks like every other CEO. There is a distinct phenotype that the public expects from such people. Elon is far more ‘normal’ in this regard.

people pretend otherwise, but most folks are highly judgemental of physical appearances and slot you into ‘who you are’ based on your facial shape, hair color, skin pigment, etc. His lack of classic masculinity in body and face is a huge part of it too.

people have very clear expectations about what certain jobs/roles are supposed to look like, and get upset when people don’t ‘fit’ the expectations. a lot of ‘professional’ life is defined by ‘looking the part’ and Mark Z does not ‘look the part’ of a CEO, or even your typical programmer nerd these days. He looks like a stereotypical ‘ginger’, if he was an actor and played comedy roles as a ‘ginger’ people would love him for it.

i used to love volunteering.

but then the ragebait addicts just kept turning our volunteer work into ‘we have to fight the bad people and only help the good people’ and wanted us to like turn peopel away based on skin color/sex at the door… and saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.

same. my optimistic comes from contextualizing things… which almost nobody does anymore and the media purposefully does not.

i also remember a time when not everyone thought their life was a personal tragedy of epic proportions or who personalized every world event as some deep personal trauma. life doesn’t have to be this way… folks just choose to live it this way.