Linky Friday #189: Tattooed Introversion
Crime:
Image by My Lil’ Rotten 
[C2] Being a girl.
[C3] Operation Smoke and Mirrors: It didn’t happen if the Chicago Police Department head honchos say it didn’t happened.
[C4] KKKanada.
[C5] For kids, Virtually Life Without Possibility of Parole gets the death penalty.
[C6] A group of Asian-Americans wants to abolish prisons. (The article is an interesting look at the history of Asian-Americans and the prison system.)
[C7] Anarchy in Pennsylvania! In the 1680’s, that is.
Business:
Image by udo geisler
[B2] Well this doesn’t sound good. I wonder how is Madrigal Elektromotoren is doing.
[B3] This explains their attempts to crack down on misbehavior: Salesforce and Disney don’t want the Twitter Trolls.
[B4] Navigating tattoos in the workplace. I’m not a tattoo guy, but people outside particularly open-to-such-things of society where they cannot be covered up baffle my conservative soul.
[B5] Samsung: From bad to worse to video games. I’ve been going back and forth on whether my next phone should be Samsung or LG, but will I have a choice?
[B6] Apple may not lead the self-driving car revolution after all. Getting into the car business seems a bit more difficult than getting into the phone business.
Health:
Image by finchlake2000
[H2] If your life is feeling incomplete, maybe suicide is the answer.
[H3] Tattoos with a cause. I have to get over my anti-tattoo biases, but it sounds really cool.
[H4] The degree to which generic drugs are identical to the name brand may be overstated, which is unfortunate in multiple respects.
[H5] An eight year old on a mission.
Romance:
Image by One From RM
[R2] Sometimes when women allude to having a boyfriend, they’re really just gently blowing you off. These men are OUTRAGED!
[R3] Cohabitation doesn’t seem to filter out bad couplings, and isn’t likely to endure as a marriage, but it does make women feel as good as if they’d gotten married. Scott Stanley takes some issue with that, though.
[R4] Unsurprisingly, I am on Team Separate Bedrooms, when feasible. Spousal benefits come with being married.
[R5] According to The Onion, more Americans are putting off marriage (until ultimatums are issued).
Self:
Image by Perry Wilson
[S2] When is the concept of us a fiction created by Big Data?
[S3] Tania Lombrozo argues that there are no controls in evaluating how events shaped our lives, and so we should beware of the fictitious cause-effect we assign to them.
[S4] Smartphones as “companions to our emotional lives.”
[S5] This does correspond with my own experience. I really do divide my life into where I was living at any particular time (even within Colosse). Even so, I’m tired of moving.
[S6] Jessica Abel explains that if you’re thinking too much about how great something you’re going to do is going to be, you’re not doing the thing that’s supposed to be great.
[S7] Introvert. Asshole. Hero.
C1: Many corporations seem to want to move to a system where you lease rather than own and that the corporation remains the ultimate owner.
C2: This is where having accurate numbers will be useful. We know that there are many men that have no problem doing things that are incredibly rude or actively violent towards women. We also know that there are men that would never do anything like this. Unless we have accurate numbers on how many men fall into each category than trying to solve this problem is going to be impossible. If the perpetrator-victim ratio is close to one to one than all the critics about rape culture and the objectification of women are accurate. If you have a small number of perpetrators and a high number of victims, as some studies suggest, than your dealing with a more traditional criminal problem than a societal problem.
C5: Treating kids who commit crimes as adults was a big mistake.
C6: The links within links about the relationships between Asian-Americans and African-Americans remind me a lot of the relationship between Jews and people of color in general.
C7: An ungovernable tribal region filled with hill people who pride themselves in their martial virtues. A proud people, do not insult their traditional ways.
B1: Saul made this observation before. Working on real problems is hard and takes a lot of time and money before the pay off. Working on making life easier, more convenient, and fun via apps is easier and the pay off comes sooner.
B4: Even though there has been a big de-formalization in business behavior and dress, many types of business like banking or law still require a somber look and tattoos don’t really make that possible.
R1: Word. I’m not exactly an introvert but I’m not a boundary pusher either in conversations unless I know a person, I’m not going to make a somewhat to overtly romantic/sexual remark. That makes flirting a difficult proposition.
R2: The men shouldn’t be outraged and I understand that women are doing this has way to be kind or as a form of protection against a negative reaction but a lot of the frustration that men have with dating might go over easier if women are more direct.
S1: Thought so. Tattoos are in fashion but they are permanent and many young people who have them will grow to regret them at some point.Report
C7,
Lee — for the love of god, please don’t defend beating women and children to death.
(Yeah, those weren’t the Quakers in the Pennsylvania Appalachian hills).Report
I… really don’t think he was doing anything remotely like that.Report
In liberal circles referring to certain parts of the United States as ungovernable tribal regions is a joke. It makes fun of the Republican attitudes towards certain parts of the Muslim world and makes a comparison between segments of our citizenry and the non-Americans they criticize the most.Report
This definitely flew over my head.
My friends make bets on which parts of America will actually become ungovernable in the near future. (yes, that’s partially because “it’s not worth it”)Report
Have you read Mirage by Matt Ruff? It’s a pretty fun read, taking that joke as its premise and devising an alternate history that fleshes out the whole thing.Report
Nope.Report
If you have a small number of perpetrators and a high number of victims, as some studies suggest, than your dealing with a more traditional criminal problem than a societal problem.
…erm, no. If it was a criminal problem, we have laws against it, those people would be in jail.
What you are describing is the choice between *two different* social problems: 1) a very large percentage of men think it’s okay to do that, or 2) a very large percentage of men do not take the problem seriously and disbelieve the women it happens to.
Those are both problems with society, not with ‘crime’.Report
R4: I’m of the “no dating until I have met and approved the person” team.
I’m sympathetic to the “Respect your parents by showing consideration for their preferences” argument. The worry is about finding a limiting principle that stops it at just that. Without a limiting principle, staying in the closet out of respect for parents preferences is also something that might be recommended. An easy way to limit the principle is to say something about the legitimacy of the parent’s preference. But, given current mores or for that matter even the parent’s mores, its unclear that any such preference can be seen as legitimate. Since it is a) seen as a matter of course for the kids to be having sex at that age and b) the parents probably did have sex at that age, any such preference on the part of the parents is a) hypocritical and b) out of step with the general sex positivity that permeates society.Report
I’m roughly in agreement here, Murali. As you may recall, this discussion came up at Hitcoffee and Will and I disagreed slightly on how to approach the issue. I won’t claim to speak for him, but my position is that parents should be open to shared bedrooms for their adult children.
At the same time, I do believe parents have a wide-ranging prerogative to decide what goes on there and formally speaking they have every right to require separate bedrooms.
ETA: the fact that I’m not a parent and have no plans to be one is probably relevant here. If it were my son or daughter, then I might have a very different opinion.Report
R2: Having briefly dipped my toes into the dating world of 2016, I have to say that I am troubled by the indirectness of rejection. I understand it can be awkward and difficult to turn someone away, especially if the guy isn’t a total creepster like in the video. And I recognize that women risk genuine violence or harm in every interaction with a man… or at least need to be on guard for it.
But in my (brief) experience with dating apps, I had a small handful of interactions that ended… strangely. For starters, they all were on an app wherein the woman has to make the first “move”. So I don’t think you could classify my overtures as unsolicited or unwanted in anyway. I’d like a woman’s profile, she’d like mine (or vice versa), and then she would initiate a conversation if she was so inclined. I had no way to initiate and if she didn’t intiaite, the match expired.
I didn’t include in my profile that I am separted, in the process of getting divorced, and have two kids though I always disclosed this within the first or second conversation and always said, “I understand if my situation isn’t what you’re looking for.” One woman opted out then and I totally got it. The others had no problem or saw it as a positive.
Conversations went well, phone numbers were exchanged, and non-commital plans were made. “It’d be great to get a drink sometime.” “Totally!”
Only the drinks never happened. Slowly conversaion abated. I’d usuallt make one or two more attempts and always got something to the effect of, “Oh, I’m busy Saturday but maybe Sunday?” One woman eventually said she liked me but had too much going on in her life to date right now, a decision I fully respected.
But I’m troubled by the two women who kept up with the “Yea, but” routine. I eventually just stopped reaching out and that was that. I was left wondering if I had made them feel uncomfortable, threatened, or “creeped on” because of my repeated (2-3) attempts. But when someone keeps saying “Yea, but” and your limited to text messages on a screen (i.e., no tone, body language, facial expressions, vibe), it’s really hard to know if you’re getting blown off or if the desire is mutual but timing is really the issue.
Now, I expect the response to be “Take the hint!” But… aren’t we, as men, supposed to stop looking for hints and start being more direct? Aren’t misinterpreted “hints” a prime contributor to rape culture? If men need to be better (and, fuck yea, men need to be a whole lot better), is there no responsibility for women to be more direct, at least when the situation allows for it? I ask this genuinely… maybe all the burden falls to men on account of our privilege. It just seems in an ideal world everyone would make their intentions clear. But maybe we’re still too far from that ideal.
Thankfully, I now have a real life lady friend I met in meat world and can settle for actively annoying her and being given eye rolls and shoulder punches in return.Report
It’s really annoying when people play the game of “yes, I can say yes to someone, and then run away and not really do it.”
People deserve to be called out on that, yes.
You deserve to get closure — and, really, ought to have asked for it.
(Framed in a “Did I do something wrong here?” sort of way, it’s not even impolite.)
I’m a blunt sort of person, though, so take my opinions as you will.Report
Kaz,
Dudes pursue. For the most part, women don’t. 99% of every woman who “pursued” me I was not interested in, and I’d venture to say, most guys wouldn’t be interested in them. Desirable women get a LOT of emails and you can’t drag things out, especially if you get a phone number or they will likely be “diverted” to talking to another guy.
If a woman can’t make a date request but offers an alternative, she’s interested enough, or if she gives you feed back like “i’m out of the county for 3 weeks but back x”. But if this goes on too long, she’s stalling and it’s best to walk away.
This brings up a pet peeve of mine. The vast majority of women didn’t say “i’m not interested” after meeting me…they just stopped responding to my texts or some such. They are going to be more passive. That’s why it’s always good to have several “possibles” active at one time. One, it keeps you looking busy, and two, one rejection doesn’t put you back at square one. It is, indeed, a numbers game in some respect.Report
But I think it’s these very mindsets that we are increasingly realizing are problematic.Report
I disagree. That’s the way it is. Is that because people are too scared to say “i’m not interested”? Or just lazy? Or don’t care? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. That’s the reality you exist in. Work within it. I had a few dates with one woman and she admitted she’d just ghost if she was no longer interested. It only took one text not responded to within 48 hours for me to figure out that she’d done that on me.Report
Many women don’t want to be “pursued”.Report
According to whom? If not they should make that clear.Report
Have you been ignoring all conversations related to sexual assault and rape culture?Report
I can’t speak to their prevalence, but I’ve known several women who’ve been comfortable doing the pursuing [1]. I sometimes think I am a real outlier among straight men when it comes to this sort of thing, though.
[1] Some charmingly, some ineptly, and one very creepily.Report
I’ve been asked out by a woman on a couple of occasions to. More I guess if you include the times I asked a woman out and she suggested a date time and place.Report
It’s very simple. “I’m not interested.” Anything past that is unwanted and warrants a punch in the snout–or an arm bar.Report
Except many men don’t take that as a “no”.
“I’m not interested” becomes either “I’m not interested yet, keep convincing me” or “I’m a bitch who hates you, explain why I’m wrong” to a lot of men.
And since they don’t know YOU, why wouldn’t they err on the side of caution and give you a polite rebuff that doesn’t open them up to harassment or abuse?Report
So the liberal new age answer is that men should wait until a woman chooses to speak to use before we can speak to them for fear of being accused of being part of the MRA rape culture?Report
What, is being unable to find a mate some sort of disability or something?Report
….says the person either ignorant of the entire conversation, or deliberately misreading.
Which. Is. It?Report
@notme — I would suggest that, if women tend to find you creepy, then you are probably creepy. If so, then you need to work on your social calibration.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that you’ll go through life and literally never creep someone out. That’s fine. Being “creeped out” is not life threatening. The woman in question will survive. On the other hand, she probably won’t like you.
If you do that once or twice, then so what? One or two women mildly creeped out by you is not a major social problem. Move on. Get gud. Stop being creepy.
If you do it a lot, then many (most?) women won’t like you. If most women don’t like you, they won’t want you around — and can you blame them? They’ll say to their friends, “Don’t invite notme. He’s a creepy-mc-creepoid.”
So it goes.
You might find that, when you arrive at the door of the cool goth club, the bouncer won’t let you in. He’ll say you don’t meet dress code, even as I waltz past in sneakers and shorts, which don’t meet dress code either. The reason: you are creepy and I am not. (Plus I have cool hair.)
It’s your job to figure out how not to be creepy. These are called “social skills,” which is another word for “how to interact with other humans in a pleasant way.”
To answer your question: of course you can talk to women, but only provided you figure out how to do it non-creepily. I cannot give you rules for that, because social interactions are complex and largely happen in the “system one” thinking.
It’s the same reason I cannot give you “rules” on how to ride a bicycle. You either figure out the balance or you fall a lot.
If you wanna ride the bike, you gotta do the hard work of figuring it out. Do the work. Don’t blame women if you suck.
If you’re creepy, that’s not my fault.Report
I’m married and have been so for almost 17 years. But thanks for the advice.Report
@notme — Being married does not prevent you from being creepy. I’ve been creeped on by married men.
You’re the one complaining about talking to women. If you don’t want to talk to women, then you likely won’t be missed. I call that a win-win. If you’re worried about talking to women, then surely you’d want to do it in a non-creepy way, yes?Report
You somehow mistook me for complaining about talking to women. I’ve never had a problem with it. I was just mocking Morat20 and Kazzy’s idea that men should sit back and let women approach us lest they feel pursued.Report
@notme — I don’t see them saying that. Please provide quotes.Report
I didn’t say they “said” that. I said it was their “idea”, which is different. That being it is the impression I got from their posts.Report
@notme — Ah. That’s much like saying it was in your head. Gotcha.
Myself, I suspect neither of them believe in a hard rule that men shouldn’t talk to women. I’ll add, as a woman who was creeped on and touched by random men as recently as last Saturday (combined with a fair amount of street harassment, which seemed more common in LA compared with Boston), I think it’s okay for men to speak to women, but it’s tricky. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to see through cheap come-ons by randoms. They’re tedious and pathetic. But more, when done by a certain class of creeps, they’re downright scary.
Anyway blah. Do as you will. If woman are reading you as an MRA type, well women are pretty clever. Don’t be that guy. If you are that guy, well we got tools to deal with creeps.Report
We didn’t, but notme doesn’t actually read posts or articles. He, at most, skims for keywords and imagines what it must say.Report
You’re being too generous.Report
Because it’s courtesy. If niceness doesn’t work, time to get “assertive”..Report
Courtesy WAS giving you the polite rebuff, or the polite lie, or taking the pre-arranged out.
You darn well know it’s a “no” and they’ve given you an out to spare your feelings.
If you don’t take the out or complain about it, the courtesy problem isn’t on their end.
She said no. As politely as humanely possible. You KNOW it’s a no. Any issues are on your end at that point.Report
“Courtesy WAS giving you the polite rebuff, or the polite lie, or taking the pre-arranged out.”
Nope. The polite lie is a lie. I know plenty of women who can say “no thanks”. If everyone knows the score in that they are blowing you off, there really is no need to lie, so put our big girl undies on and say it.Report
Common courtesy is about 90% polite lies. Polite, meaningless comments like “Nice to see you again” instead of “I can’t even remember your name, so clearly not so nice”..
In any case, the problem you’re ignoring is if they do it your way, they open to the door to a great deal of repetitive abuse. Which is why they make the polite lies in the first place.
I mean do you want them to mind-read guys, so they know which they have to lie to and which they don’t? Or do you not care about the abuse they’re gonna take if they tell the truth to you?
Is you getting a “No” instead of a polite, face-saving (YOUR face-saving, in fact) lie worth them taking untold amounts of crap from other guys?Report
@damon — The problem here is, you’re not the one who has to deal with the douchebags. And trust me, as someone who has walked this world both as a man and as a woman, it’s fucking different as a woman.
Gender sucks, muchly. Being the “sexual target class” sucks — in ways that members of the “sexual pursuit class” often don’t seem to appreciate.
In the end, it doesn’t matter why a woman rejects your advances. She shouldn’t need to explain, but in fact a fair number of men won’t just leave it at that. So we gals have to deal with that, and it happens a lot, again and again, and it’s fucking tedious. So we develop strategies to negotiate this shitshow. And the creeps develop their own strategies.
(Like, there’s this thing where guys these days won’t just ask for your number. Instead, they insist that you text them right there, so they know they got your digits. If you refuse, then you have to deal with a large and potentially violent crybaby. Blah.
I think we should be allowed to incapacitate and castrate such men. What do you think?)
And sure we’d all like to rise above, but I don’t choose which creeps come at me on public transit. I don’t choose how they respond to me. All I get to choose is what weapon I carry.
Short version: creepy men really are a menace. They really are as bad as we say.
Yes. They are. As bad as we say.
They aren’t common, but they tend to be the men most likely to come at us.
What I mean is, most “nice guys” are shy-as-fuck wet noodles who do nothing. Fine. Sit quietly and pine for women. Whatevs. The guys in our face, they ain’t the same flavor.
In other words, even if 1-in-a-100 guys is a pushy douche-pimple, it only takes one to ruin my day. Furthermore, among the guys actually in my face, maybe 1-in-4 is a super-mega creep. That’s a lot bullshit we gotta deal with, and it’s creepy and gross and scary and I DON’T FUCKING DESERVE THIS I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING I JUST WANNA RIDE THE SUBWAY AND BE LEFT ALONE FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!
As I said, I was sexually harassed and touched this last Saturday. The last time before I was sexually assaulted was maybe two months ago. This shit is not uncommon.
And I’m a big ol tranny. Imagine if I was a hottie twenty-something. (My not-quite-g/f is young and hawt. She’s trans, but she passes at a glance. In any case, she deals with a lot of shit that I don’t.)
Anyway, I’ve had guys follow me in cars while shouting things about my butt. (Which, they are correct. I have a great ass. But still, it’s creepy.)
I don’t choose this. I like to mind my own business. Creeps don’t give me a choice.
My point, yeah we’ll lie to creepy men, whatever we need to do to get them to leave us alone so we can get on with our life. Fuck creepy men. Fuck you for defending creepy men.
Kill them with fire.Report
Probably a reasonable fear, at that – women are assaulted, even killed, on a shockingly frequent basis, for simply saying “I’m not interested” in plain language.
So, as frustrating as it may be, I think we’re going to have to maintain a philosophical attitude toward the runaround for a bit, while we work on the whole violent male entitlement thing.Report
Yeah, I could believe that if not for the following:
On some women that I was marginally interested in, I’d conduct an experiment. Since my profile mentioned that I’m a good cook, they would usually ask me what I was making if we were chatting around dinner time. On several occasions, they would make some comment about the food sounding tasty and I’d then invite them over to my house for dinner, in a very casual way, such as, “You’re welcome to come over and have a kebab and couscous—I’ve even got gelato”. One said she’d come over later that week (and did), and one thought long and hard, even asking for my address, before backing off. Note that I wasn’t planning on sleeping with then, and wasn’t even sure I wanted to…we had not yet met. But I wanted to see how they would respond. Also, it usually didn’t result in them severing contact after refusing the invite to my home.
No I don’t have statistically significant data, but it did work and no on an insignificant amount of women vs the total number I met and had dates with. Maybe I don’t come off as “assaulty”. But who in their right mind would come over to some guy’s house that they’ve never met in person before?Report
Well, women are different…. no?Report
Yeah, that’s kinda scary.
“really, you’ve never met the guy, and you’re going to be in arms reach, in a potentially semi-private place, before deciding to enter his private residence?”
Some people are idiots.Report
I know! And these are accomplished successful intelligent women, some who have kids. They have jobs, and are 35-45. I’m mean really!Report
I… kinda hate to say this, but I think they may not think they are rape-worthy?
… that feels really odd to say.Report
There were.Report
Probably a reasonable fear, at that – women are assaulted, even killed, on a shockingly frequent basis, for simply saying “I’m not interested” in plain language.
How frequently? Are there actual statistics on this?Report
Not assaulted, but lots of my female friends have been accosted after trying to nicely turn down a guy and they were almost all scared it could’ve escalated if they weren’t in a public place with lots of people around.
It’s much easier for them to say “I have a boyfriend” than get in the argument on why they won’t give the poor single guy a chance.
It’s even worse in online dating. That’s why girls just don’t respond to messages or just tell guys “I’m not interested” over OKCupid or Tindr – because they’ve all received profanity laced messages in response calling them whores, bitches, or cunts for turning the guy down.Report
If you aren’t Chris-chan, you ought to be able to understand “I have a boyfriend” as code for “Go the fuck away”
This is not a difficult code. It is a strong signal saying “I am not interested.”
People should not complain about strong signals — its the squishy ones that deserve complaininReport
Agreed.Report
The fact that you haven’t been assaulted doesn’t mean that other men aren’t. I know a guy who lost a filling to a rather enthusiastic client of his (he was NOT interested, and that counts as sexual asault).
And this, I might add, was in a professional context.Report
I’ve never seen hard stats. I suppose we could look at the assault statistics, assuming they include gender, and make some guesses. I’m not sure if that would satisfy.
The thing is, it’s not just the actual assaults. It is as much the sense of menace. In other words, even if these situations rarely lead to an actual assault, women are well aware that an assault is only a hair’s breadth away, and the men know the women know, and everyone knows the score.
So then woman is intimidated. And the man enjoys this, so he does it more.
I dunno. I can’t read minds. It’s certainly complicated.
Anyway, it’s happened to me. I’ve been assaulted — not badly, but I’ve had men freak out and put their hands on me and try to corner me and shit. I’ve had other guys say nasty shit to me when I blew them off. A lot of women have. I bet that most attractive women have, many times. It’s common as dirt.
The thing is, I don’t know what would happen if women as a group simply stopped placating aggressive men. Part of me wishes we would, cuz I hate guys like that and I see no reason we should be nice to them. On the other hand, if we reject their menacing behavior — well, when you call someone out, they either back down or step up. What will these men do?
Try to have a sketch of empathy. Imagine you’re a 130 pound woman on the subway. Some big, creepy-looking fuckface sits beside you, gets too close. There are only two other people on the train. They don’t look brave. The man is awful and aggro and you try to ignore him but he won’t leave you alone.
What do you do?
You have zero chance of fighting him. You can’t really outrun him. So what?
These men know exactly what they are doing.Report
Actually, you do have a chance, if you’re good at some forms of combat/martial arts. I know several women, who I have 150 pounds on plus more strength and height, who can choke the hell out of me, dislocate my shoulder, or break a wrist. These women also know how to keep me from using my mass (weight) to keep them down. And these are real women, not muscle bound competitors. Quite attractive too.Report
@damon — I trained at American Top Team under Ricardo Liborio. I also did a fair amount of Muay Thai.
I only made it to blue belt. I’m not a badass or anything. On the other hand, Ricardo Liborio handed me my blue belt. That’s worth something.
My point is, I have a pretty good idea what martial arts training can do and what it cannot do.
Most women do not do serious martial arts training. It’s hard. It hurts. You get bruised. You get bloody noses. Occasionally you break things.
BJJ is hard. It’s hard because causing pain is really easy. But fuck pain. Pain is nothing. You win cuz you ignore pain. You only care about actual chokes and locks. Pain is pain. Injury is injury. They’re different. You take all the pain they dish, including all the bruises and cuts and bleeding and nightmarish exhaustion, cuz winning is winning and losing ain’t.
Getting tough requires getting fucking tough. You probably are not tough. I’m kinda almost tough, but not really. I know plenty of folks who can wreck me.
Anyway, please don’t run your mouth about martial arts. I know more than you do.Report
I’m in Gracie Jujitsu, a 2 stripe white belt. The girls there are tough. One practicing for her Blue Belt test, the other, 3/4 the way. These two girls, who weigh @ 125 pounds each, choked me out consistently. No, I don’t know as much as you do, but these girls ARE tough-I’ve rolled with them, and you’d never know it when in their street clothes.
Yes, it requires getting tough. Folks in class have gotten chipped teeth, sprains, strains, twists, bruises (hell I got them now) And that’s my point, maybe more women OUGHT to take martial arts.Report
@damon — The thing is, I just don’t find it relevant. Most women won’t do that. Even those who do, there are reasonable odds that the angry dudebro coming at her wrestled in high school, or does MMA shit himself. I’m reasonably tough, but tough ain’t magic.
In BJJ I sometimes won, but I often lost.
On Monday I was riding the train through Compton. I noticed something. On that train, no one acted tough. The reasons are obvious. When the stakes are high enough, there is no posturing.
A blue belt in BJJ knows very well how easily she can lose.Report
I’m seeing how somehow this wandered into every woman should take martial arts, because its easier than men not being duchey assgoblins, just being fishing human to one another.
Its kinda a sad place.
I’ll say the reason I want to know why not? So I can fix that stuff. Because feedback is helpful. Its possible thats terrible behavior also. I don’t knowReport
I’d like to see that Halloween costume.
Not sure its PC, though.Report
How would you know it’s a costume though? The guy would be dressed like every other guy.Report
“I’m seeing how somehow this wandered into every woman should take martial arts, because its easier than men not being duchey assgoblins,”
Actually, it’s because guys can be duchy assgoblins that it’s smart for women to have some skills and confidence defending themselves from bigger/stronger types in case things go sideways. At least that’s what I was going for.Report
It’s kind of interesting to think about some of the sexually aggressive but “not assault” gestures that women get and what would happen if they tried them on a man. Stepping in front of a woman who doesn’t want to talk to you in a bar to keep her from leaving will likely rattle the woman, but the most she’ll probably do is keep trying to find a way to get away. Intentionally blocking a man’s path in a bar and not letting him get by is an aggressive maneuver that will sooner or later get you knocked out if you try it on enough men.
When a man does it to a woman, a lot of guys just see it as sort of a pushy come on and no big deal, but if the same guy got flattened for doing it to a man, those same guys would probably say, “Duh. You were asking for it.” Men pick up on the physically aggressive signals that other men send them, but some of them don’t seem to be able to generalize it to others.Report
When a man does it to a woman, a lot of guys just see it as sort of a pushy come on and no big deal, but if the same guy got flattened for doing it to a man,
As I’ve said with these Trump accusations about him forcing his lips on various women, grabbing women, coming into dressing rooms where women are naked to leer at them, etc, I can’t even keep track at this point…a lot of people are using the wrong analogy.
Stop asking men how they would feel if he did it to their wife or sister or mother.
Ask those men how they’d feel if he did it to *them*. If Trump just grabbed *them* and kissed *them*.
Granted, that is probably a bit homophobic, but, hell, I didn’t make conservative men homophobic. Might as well use their homophobia for a good cause.Report
You remember that article that got John Derbyshire fired from National Review?Report
@brandon-berg — I think so, vaguely. How is it relevant?Report
Welcome to my world.Report
Get the right opening questions and you can eliminate 99% of the chicks right off the bat.
Seriously: it’s the 1% you want anyway.
“Do you pull the lever?”
“Assuming simulation theory, where are the three places you’d be most likely to look to see where the algorithm has holes or cracks?”
“How have you resolved the problem of theodicy?”
“When you first heard ‘watch me’, did you take Silento at his word when he told you that you already know who it is?”
Sure, a lot of chicks will dump the conversation.
The ones who don’t? Those are the keepers.Report
The reader should note that this has almost nothing to do with how Jaybird met me, and furthermore there’s only one of those questions that wouldn’t have supremely irritated me, and only two of them that wouldn’t have resulted in me immediately trying to bail on the conversation. Good thing he found his soulmate before texting became a thing… (Telnet had so many more possibilities.)Report
Get the right opening questions and you can eliminate 99% of the chicks right off the bat.
I think you’re underestimating those questions slightly. I’m sure it will reach 100%, easy.Report
R2) is very much linked to C2)
Doesn’t take too many times of saying thanks but not interested politely and the response being increasing pressure to interact and your wishes not being respected to go to the fall back of “sorry I have a boyfriend” because you know they respect that imaginary boyfriend more than they respect you.
That said on online dating, I don’t understand not being direct. I always tried to be. Little risk to me if they were angry at rejection just ignore their subsequent tirades and delete message, and why string someone along that’s cruel, also I have little patience with lots of messaging if I know its not going anywhere. my time is better spent interacting with people I AM interested in.Report
R2) is very much linked to C2)
I would have thought D2.Report
Space awesome lolReport
It takes a special sort of someone to whine about the nicest let down (“Oh, I mean, if I was available, but I’m forced to reject you with no judgement on you whatsoever! Like it literally has nothing to do with you, you know, got a boyfriend!”) possible, one that spares the feelings of the rejectee as much as possible, and turn it into an attack.
Which doesn’t get into, as you noted, the fact that the existence of another guy is apparently a firmer “no” than can come from the lips of any silly girl.Report
I agree, Morat.Report
@anne
Thanks for your comment. I think “I have a boyfriend” is different then “Yes, but…”
“I have a boyfriend” is leveraging a bit of dishonesty to ease a difficult situation. Not ideal but at least clear.
“Oh, I’d love to get a drink with you. Let me get back to you…” is something very different. It is encouraging further contact that might be unwanted. It is a very mixed signal.
I’m not crying sour grapes or claiming any sort of harm done. If a woman isn’t interested in me, I have zero interest in pursuing her. But I think if we are encouraging men to avoid “reading into things” with women than maybe women have to be more direct? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the message. Maybe the idea is, “Never assume consent… but always assume dissent”? I have no idea what it is like to be a woman and dealing with interested male parties so I recognize there are some major blind spots I’m trying to see around.Report
@kazzy I agree “yes but…” is different and probably a lot of the time is game playing, liking the attention but to lazy, self absorbed whatever to follow thru not to BSDI but men do this as well so maybe its just a facet of being human.
However I think some of those response come from the same ?? problematic conditioning??? not sure what to call it. Women are taught all the time be nice, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, etc. either blatantly told that or internalized from the culture around them. I know that I have a hard time asking for what I want and being direct (not all the time I can be direct as hell in the right situation) its like you are not supposed to be selfish, you must defer to making others happy, not make waves.
Having a hard time articulating most of this as it is something that I struggle with personally on where it comes fromReport
That’s a great point, @anne . One I hadn’t considered. I mean, I know women who didn’t speak up within existing relationships because they internalized a mindset that told them they were supposed to remain quiet and stomach all sorts of hurt and harm because that’s what wives/girlfriends do.Report
It comes from Republican congressmen:
“Sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty.”Report
And another couple hundred GOP women throw up their hands and say “I’m out”.Report
@kazzy
I’d say file this under “some people are flakey as hell.”
I went through this recently with a girl on OkCupid. She was all about meeting me and hanging with me, exactly until I suggested a time and place. Then she’d ignore me until after the night in question and then hit me with a “sorry I didn’t see your message.” I gave her a second shot. Same pattern. Then I dropped her.
There is this other woman who I know on Facebook, lives in Central Mass, very pretty, just began hormones. I quite like her. Evidently she is afraid to drive into the city, to meet me at a club. Okay. Fine. I suggested a few alternate ways we could hang out. She dodged them. I tried three times to make something happen. She avoided or flaked each time.
Done. Move on.
Some people are full of shit. Or something. Or whatever. You gain nothing by getting in their face and intimidating them.
Move on. You got you. They’re the ones losing out.Report
“Move on. You got you. They’re the ones losing out.”
ExactlyReport
@veronica-d
Thanks for your perspective.
But to be clear, I wasn’t so much bothered on a personal level but more on a cultural level.
On the one hand, it seems a little contradictory to tell men to ‘Take a hint’ in this scenario but in other scenarios to admonish them for ‘taking hints’ (i.e., date rape and similar forms of sexual assault).
On another hand, I can see reasons why equating those two things is problematic.
I’m more curious in exploring that than in the specifics of my dating foibles. I mean, I’m a frickin’ catch… heck yea it’s those gals’ loss… 😉Report
@kazzy — My point is, I suspect those women weren’t “hinting” so much as being flakey. After all, women are not a perfect feminist monolith. Some are ninnies. Some play head games. It sucks. I wish it never happened, not to me, not to you, not to anyone. But I assure you, it’s nothing like the menace that women face. (Not that you said it was, but that is the broad topic here.)
Anyway, flakes happen. They’re an energy suck. Give them a couple chances, then move on.
It’s sad tho. One of my recent “flakes” is this really pretty gal. We vibed so well on chat. I felt so open with her. But she flaked, then flaked again, then again. Blah.
I’ll add, I suspect many flakes are juggling a few potentials. You’re her Nth choice, so you’re playing the odds that choices 1 … N-1 fall through. Others are probably just bored. They enjoy having some “maybe but probably nots” hanging around, which sounds pleasant enough, I guess, but it’s hardly admirable.
These are crappy behaviors. Don’t accept them. Don’t be a chump.
That said, this has little to do with why we gals play the “I have a boyfriend” game.Report
@veronica-d
I agree it is different than the “boyfriend” card, especially as presented in the video.
I guess what I’m asking is — besides the flakiness and energy suck — should we discourage this as a rejection technique because it muddies the waters? Or am I concern trolling? I guess that is what I’m trying to get at (albeit it very round-about-ly).Report
@kazzy — I’ve never seen anyone encourage it. After all, it’s basically “stringing along.” That said, there isn’t much to do except call it out and reject it, or if you’re not in the mood for confrontation, just step away.
Also keep in mind, however much she flakes, you always have a nice drama-free escape: simply stop trying. The point of the “boyfriend” ploy is it’s one of the few low-drama tools that women have.Report
I don’t think anyone encourages flakes.
People encourage the “I have a boyfriend” card because it gets the point across (“No”) in a way that’s both difficult for men to argue with (not that it stops all of them), does not insult the delicate male ego and lead to abuse and aggression the way a “Sorry, not interested” does, and basically is about the safest (but not entirely safe) option available.
Nobody encourages flakes. But people get cold feet, people find things interesting ‘in theory’ but when it’s time for the rubber to meet the road change their mind.
That’s human nature, and it’s not just women. (One of my gay friends has complained bitterly about how men are the same way. I think it’s just a peril of online dating or meeting. There’s that “real life” hump to get past. Meeting people in person, even just chatting up a stranger in a bar, bypasses that hurdle to a great extent).Report
I myself am a flake, but flake mostly to myself.
I fail to do all sorts of things I’m said to myself I will do. (Things I actually want to do, that is. Not doing things I don’t want to do is just laziness.)
Which is why I have hard and fast rules about not flaking if someone else is included in those plans. Sometimes I even include someone else to make sure I *won’t* flake.Report
Getting ghosted can mess you up a bit the first couple times if you weren’t prepared for it and are used to meatspace rules of social interactions.
After you get your sea legs it becomes a slightly annoying thing that people do largely because they weren’t that invested in the interaction in the first place and you learn to just roll with it.Report
Shouldn’t this have been called Tattoo You?
The business links don’t work. I’ll comment on them anyway.
B1: This has been a complaint about Silicon Valley for the past few years. I think it died down but it was a really big complaint a few years ago when a lot of new app companies were started. The complaint was that a lot of “tech” companies were merely just trying to solve the problems of middle-class to affluent professionals who live in cities. Most Americans still don’t use Uber, Lyft, A B n’B, etc. This includes urban dwellers.
I think the issue says more about who gets into MBA programs than tech itself. Coming up with ways to solve real problems is very hard as we can tell from the Theranos scandal. Coming up with ways to make the lives of affluent young people relatively more comfortable is much easier. It’s easy to create a new dating site/app or an alcohol-delivery service or another business chat service.
B4: I wonder how much of this is based on geography and industry. As far as I can tell, most Bay Area businesses even white collar ones are cool with open tattoos. One of the things I like to do when coming back to New York is play pop anthropologist. There is a wider-variety of dress in New York than SF. You see people out in track suits but you also see a lot of guys take pride and effort in putting on immaculately tailored suits and getting the tie knot perfect. In SF, it seems that going above or below hoddie and jeans is not gone for often. You see more tattoos in SF than NYC still.
One of the things I wonder about is why millennials became so much more inked than previous generations. When I was in college, very few people got tattoos. Now it seems like many 18-22 year olds make tattoos their first major adult purchase. I hear a lot of millennials talk about needing to get new ink.Report
B5 is badly formatted.Report
C1 I don’t want to “lease” something. Should I make payments in perpetuity to brew coffee? No. If I own it, I need to make no payments. Interestingly, this converts very nicely over to gov’t taxation. If I “own” land, mortgage free, but still have to pay property taxes, do I really own the land? Not really.Report
You’d prefer your city streets were rutted mud bogs, and you had to smell the feces pit of your neighbours who can’t afford to pay the nightsoil men this month?
Given that is (yes, I believe it is) the alternative, I’m OK with “not really owning” my property.Report
Funny, but I don’t recall even a vote on the subject…in my memory or in the history books.Report
Related to C1
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/10/how_lexmark_is_redefining_ownership.htmlReport
so is s7 a joke or is just another “imma so introverted lemme tell you about it” thing? (they’re the evangelical vegans of social interaction)Report
[R4] I’m really glad to see you didn’t write that snarky condescending wheeze of a piece.
So to all the traveling lovebirds out there, consider checking your drama and disrespect at the front door this holiday season. It’s the loving and adult thing to do. But if you can’t, please, take it to a Hampton Inn instead.
And addressing your own kin in those tones is loving? Adult? Fercrissakes. No apparent consideration of the notion that it is equally possible for “drama and disrespect” to be coming from a parent – particularly if the “kids these days” geriatric tantrum in the piece is indicative of how they treat their own family.
Any person with genuine respect for their mother and father would never dream of putting their parents in such an uncomfortable position, creating such unnecessary drama, or risk ruining their family’s holiday with selfish and pushy demands
Really? anyone with genuine respect for their parents would never dream of making a request with respect to their accommodation – much less to expect that their parents might hear them out, might swallow their pride a tiny little bit, might exercise the tiniest bit of maturity in the form of thinking rationally even when there is some discomfort?
I would think it deeply disrespectful of one’s parents to assume they’re so childish they can’t calmly and respectfully contemplate such a request.Report
Maybe that gets at what bothers me about the article in question. The article’s general point of view is not without merit, but the way it seems to assume the adult children in question are just being disrespectful is too much.Report
Also from that article:
A certain number, though maybe not a “huge” one, might actually pay for the trip themselves or at least chip in a pretty good amount to have some ownership in what’s going on. I do believe young people (what the article calls “some millennials”) do need to realize the degree to which others are supporting them and need to realize that some of the ways they’re being supported are not always obvious (staying rent-free at a parent’s is a huge benefit for those whose parents don’t require them to pay rent). At the same time, part of being an adult is assuming more and more of the cost of one’s own upkeep. And at least “some” millennials are already doing that. To write it off as simple ingratitude goes overboard.Report
H2: “I had enough money for either a trip to the Caribbean or a really nice suicide. And, you know, a cruise is over in two week, but death you always have.”Report
Death, you complete me.Report
‘I Had Nothing to Do With That!’ Obama Dodges Blame For Skyrocketing Premiums
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/20/nothing-obama-dodges-blame-skyrocketing-premiums/Report
C1 is interesting in how it demonstrates how property rights can be created out of thin air, or vanish in the same way.
Its disconcerting in some ways, but refreshing in others.Report
R1: This is mostly a gripe about vocabulary, but it sound to me like she is introverted. She might be shy, but that is orthogonal to being introverted or extroverted.
I am an introvert. I am not shy. I am a decent public speaker. I happily introduce myself to people I don’t know. I can talk football with total strangers while waiting for the bus. And yes, I can flirt, though I am past the point where that is really age-appropriate but not quite at the point where I can pull off the comical dirty-old-man routine. But being an introvert, I time spent in groups of people other than close family or very close friends is tiring. This is not a bad thing. Running marathons is tiring, but lots of people do it for fun. But few go and run another marathon the next day. If I am in a group, after a few hours I need some time alone to recuperate. Extroverts are the reverse. They find time alone exhausting, and need to be in a group to recharge.
As an introvert, I find the activities in the linked article horrifying: visiting a club that “is always too crowded and it’s hard to leave the dance floor without getting something spilled on you.” I would pay to not go there. Hence my conclusion that the writer is not in fact introverted.Report
Introverted is a very misused term and a lot of people who are just shy or have low energy describe themselves as introverted when they are not. I guess saying that your introverted sounds better though.Report
See also the NY Times piece linked through S7. The author of that conflates introversion with shyness, while the context makes clear that she doesn’t have the excuse of not having read on the topic. The result is incoherence.Report
I don’t think it’s “misuse” of the term as much as its a different use of the term. For some people, introversion really does mean something like shyness whereas for others, following a different (more technical, informed by psychology) definition, it means something like what you and Richard are suggesting.
I take the time to say this for two reasons. One, maybe there is something to the conflating of shyness and “introversion” in the technical (informed by psychology) sense. I’m not quite prepared to waive off a possible correlation.
Two, the phrase “don’t you know x actually means….” probably turns off the people the one who uses the phrase is trying to reach. I see that sometimes with “racism,” where someone believes racism is simply prejudice based on race and another person believes it implies a strong power differential in addition to prejudice and respond to the first person with “don’t you know that racism is actually….” I’m not saying the power differential argument is wrong. I think it’s right. But it’s not going to move the needle as much as saying, for example, “what if we thought about it x way instead of your way?”Report
I am extraverted but shy and prone to anxiety about social settings. It kind of sucks, because I tend to avoid a lot of the activities that would make me feel much better. A lot of the time I like just sitting around in noisy, crowded public settings and doing my own thing.Report
Suggest finding things that are more… regimented.
You go to a baseball game, you’re all going to cheer.
Ditto going to a sports bar.Report
Yeah, these are things I’ve discovered I love relatively late in life. I really enjoy live sporting events even for sports I don’t particularly like (such as hockey). I’ve started spending a rather shocking amount of time and money at sports bars as well.
Boardgames are also great for this.Report
That’s roughly my experience. I’m not shy or afraid of people. It just takes a certain amount of effort to create a comfortable and interesting interaction in person. I like to say that I do human interaction “in software” while some people seem to have it built into their hardware.
I’ve gotten to where I can do a pretty good job of simulating an extroverted people lover when I’m with people who are culturally similar to me, but it’s pretty tiring. If you plop me down where the culture is very different and I have to figure out what’s going on from scratch, it’s exhausting. I’ve learned the social cues and tricks*, but being “on” takes a lot of effort. Even so, most people who meet me at a party assume I’m an extrovert, as long as that party is one of educated American English speakers.
On the other end of the spectrum, somebody like my aunt feeds off of social situations. You could drop her in a gathering of a cryptic religious sect of Martians and within a half hour they’d all be drinking and laughing together even though they appear to have nothing in common.
* I’ve come to the conclusion that this is why I have anxiety about being on the phone, even with friendly people. I think that a chunk of my “people person” simulation software requires that I see your face to have some idea of how the interaction is going. If the face goes away, I start to second guess myself.Report
I think your aunt is my mother-in-law. She will have an affable half-hour chat on the phone with a wrong number.
Let’s see, if your aunt is my mother-in-law that makes you my wife’s cousin. I don’t remember you from the wedding. Should I give you my address? It’s not too late to send a present.Report
I’ve got a pretty similar deal, where the whole social interaction thing is a set of tools I had to build for myself rather than the people who seem to have gotten them as part of the factory specifications.
1 or 2 people is easy enough, 5-25 severely overtax the system and cause it to break down if subjected to it for too long.
Crowds on the other hand, don’t register as individual people so aren’t taxing. And public speaking I have relatively little problem with because I feels like loudly talking to myself in front of human shaped objects rather than interacting with people. Plus performer’s high gives a bit of a buffer.Report
@richard-hershberger
I’m pretty introverted. One of the things I like about dance clubs is I can be out in public, but not really have to talk much. I can just dance. I love dancing. I love the lights and the swirling crowds.
I actually decline to dance with people, at least usually. I like to move my own way. I find it hard to “sync up” with another human. Plus, meeting people is just weird. My brain doesn’t like social stuff.
But dammit I love to dance.Report
H3 is genius. Genius genius genius. I would be so happy if this becomes reality, and useful to me. (A bit weirded out at the idea of a tattoo on my jaw joint – to pick just one example of an odd place that needs the help – but I’m sure I could come up with something delicate and lovely.)Report
[C2] — This is a big part of why Trump will lose. Women are people with complex internal lives, and too many men seem deeply incurious and deeply uncaring about the true nature of those lives. Trump is all of them distilled into one wretched package.
I was sexually assaulted last Saturday in a tiny dive bar one block off Hollywood Blvd, by a man who had just been complaining about how seedy Hollywood was. So, he put his hands on me.
Unlike the women in this story (and the women in [R2]), I’m a former kick boxer and am not shy at all at telling me to go die in a fire. So yeah.
[R1] — The worst part of being a ultra-shy woman is, the people you end up with tend to be those who will blast through your hesitation. However, these tend to be people who themselves have terrible social calibration, inasmuch as those with good calibration will sense your hesitation and back off. So you can get dates, but with really messy people.
Being shy sucks. Don’t be shy.
[R2] — Honestly, I’m kinda okay if these guys get doxxed and utterly shamed publicly. I’d be totally okay if the first google results on their names is this shameful bullshit. In fact, I’d be rather satisfied if this ruined their lives.
This shit is serious. Sadsack men crying boo-fucking-hoo cuz we don’t want them — too bad fuckboy. Go away!
[S7] — After being sexually assaulted last Saturday, I ended up waiting in line outside Bar Sinister in Hollywood. Beside me was a weird, obviously autistic dude, who kept staring at me like I was from outer space — evidently he was unaccustomed to trans women. Anyway, we got to talking and it turns out he believes in vampires, and in fact is at this club hoping to meet a pretty vampire girl who will turn him. He asked if I believed in vampires. I said no. He said I should be super careful here. They’re real, they’re dangerous, he wants to be turned. He seemed quite earnest.
As he entered the club, the bouncer asked if he was there again looking for a vampire girl. He said he was. The bouncer pointed out that the club was full of mirrors. The guy was not dissuaded.
I dunno. I’m a bit introverted, but I like meeting interesting people.
I wonder if he thought I was a vampire. Let’s face it, a tranny vampire would be pretty cool.
Inside, the dancing was pretty great. Gorgeous people are gorgeous.
There was this hawt-af trans gal there, dancing near me. I was too shy to talk to her. She declined to talk to me.
So many chances let slip away. Being shy sucks.Report
S7- I wonder if anybody ever thought about writing a novel about vampires struggling with diseases and viruses transmitted through blood. It seems like unexplored territory.Report
Dan Simmons wrote a short story about this in the early ’90s. Nothing else springs to mind.Report
HBO’s True Blood, which attempted a lot of parallels between its vampire world and the real-world LGBT community, played with this theme a lot.Report
Hate to admit knowing this… In The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice, Dracula has been living as a crippled history professor in Romania for many years as a result of feeding on a person ill with cholera. Cholera is probably a bad choice, since it rarely reaches the bloodstream.Report
Vampire: The Masquerade had a handful of suggestions to DMs about how to run a story where this was the primary theme of the night.Report
I was going more of a comedic scenario with over cautious vampires wondering about safe blood drinking, complete with community health centers and vampire officials waging a public health campaign in the vampire community.Report
Oh, V:TM’s scenarios were a lot worse.
Stuff like “there’s a vampire who is infected with (X) and he’s infecting humans whenever he feeds and the CDC has noticed and PEOPLE ARE GOING TO REALIZE VAMPIRES ARE REAL” kinda story.Report
Have you tried What we do in Shadows?Report
Former Black Panther unimpressed with BLM.Report
If the strategy she described had been effective, BLM wouldn’t exist today because there would be no need for it.Report
I think it was effective, to a degree. Admittedly, my knowledge of the history of the BPM is very limited, so I can’t really speak to why it faltered.Report
They didn’t universally fail, but the “armed self-defense” element did not effectively protect them or the communities that they were trying to defend against police violence. Indeed, police violence was largely their undoing.Report
Again, I may be showing a profound ignorance here, but IIRC the neighborhood patrols were effective. The BPM lost it when they showed up armed on the capitol steps. “Scaring the white folks” is a strategy that has to be done carefully if it is to be effective.Report
So folks walking around carrying weapons like it was nothing, actually freaks people out?
Huh.Report
I know, shocking, especially when those armed people mass upon the steps of the statehouse, on live TV.
Context matters…Report
Well, yes.
Indeed it does.Report
Two sets of ineffectual (or effective only in spurring a backlash) activists looking at each other over a 40-year gap. What they really have in common is a self-regard that can only be cultivated in a jargon-filled activist bubble.Report
That was my thought. The Black Panther Party was not very successful as an organization in achieving its goals. Most of White America was scared of them. BLM has much more sympathy than the Black Panther’s ever did from White America.Report
R1 probably explains why friends have come to me and said “This particular guy fancied you but was afraid to talk to you” (Very, very rarely have I consciously given off “leave me alone, creep” vibes, and that only to a guy I knew had a “history” of being inappropriate). But yeah. My body language stiffens up when I’m afraid of screwing up an interaction, and lots of people read that as “I’m not comfortable around you, go away.”
I probably need to get a t-shirt made up or something that explains.
***
All the tattoo things: I wonder if it breaks down a bit on age lines. I’m an older Gen-xer (born 1969) and I have no tattoos and wouldn’t dream of getting one now (Possible exception: if I had some kind of really serious medical condition first responders would need to know of. One of my students once had a tat on his arm declaring him a Type I Diabetic, and I thought, “Huh, that’s a good idea”).
Also could break down on urban/small town lines, maybe. I grew up in a small town and the only people I knew growing up who had tattoos were men who were Navy veterans. (I guess also some ex-cons had them, but my family didn’t know any). So I associate it with “Older guy who served in WWII or Korea” and still have a little bit of trouble braining their current popularity.
(And I confess: I don’t particularly like ’em. I almost never express that opinion because I know it’s unpopular and people tell me I’m bigoted for holding it. And it’s not a strong thing, it’s just a preference issue. I wouldn’t necessarily turn down a date with a guy who had them, for example, but my preference would be not to see them. And around here, face and neck tattoos are common and are frequently a mark of, shall we say, less-than-ideal lifestyle choices when younger. Neck tattoos, also, just look like they’re really painful to get.
Actually, my anti-tattoo feelings may be because the main person I knew as a kid who had them was loud and kind of crude….)Report
One of B&N’s competitors had a poster with a guy on it. There were two variations, one where the guy had aggressive arm tattoos and a wedding band, and one where the guy had neither. (Same picture, just modified.)
I found it rather interesting that in the rural Mountain West, they had the tattoos and wedding band, and in suburban international south, neither. I wonder what their market research told them for them to make that decision. (Or maybe it was just that one of the posters was more recent, and they decided to add/remove tattoos/ring.)Report
I bet they decided on the basis of some focus-group thing.
I will say tattoos are really common among my students, not all of whom are in their 20s. More often though, it’s small ones – women with a flower on an ankle or a Bible verse (!) running down the inside of a wrist. The fake-tribal armband things were popular a few years ago but you don’t see as many of them any more. Guys may have quotes or small images, crosses are common here. (We are the buckle of the Bible belt).
Of course, I am just seeing the ones on ankles, lower arms, and occasionally shoulders. Who knows what else is there? (I don’t want to, esp. not on my students)
I rarely see anyone with “sleeves” done.
Tattoo parlors were illegal in my state until just a few years ago. When they were legalized was when I started seeing more people with tattoos. (My feeling on the legality of it is that it’s perfectly fine AS LONG AS there are some safeguards in place to avoid spreading disease – like licensing or something. Though I suspect there’s also an element of “buyer needs to be informed” in body-mod stuff).Report
@fillyjonk
Like Levitivus 19:28?Report
Almost all of the staff at the local Tokyo Joe’s franchise (a small chain along the Front Range, Phoenix, and recently Dallas) have tattoos or piercings on display. The woman who took my order last time I was there had a spectacular sleeve — I asked her to turn her arm this way and that so that I could see all of it.Report
I probably feel about tattoos similarly to you. I don’t like them, but I’m not too strongly opposed.Report
C3: Chicago PD is an embarrassing cesspool. If the DOJ hasn’t stepped in by now, I have to wonder why.Report
They announced an investigation about a year ago; I don’t know what, if anything, has come of it since then.Report
Because until about a year ago, the Obama Administration and the Mayor of Chicago were besties.Report
How do you hack a 3D printer? Why bother, hack the design file instead.
If you were wondering how DRM would get introduced into printer geometry data…Report
B1: The link seems to be dead, but I’m going to roll the dice here and guess that the author is another person who doesn’t actually know most of what goes on in Silicon Valley and assumes that because Facebook is a big tech company, they’re all doing what Facebook does. Because I and most of the people I know in the area work for companies that make real stuff–infrastructure, government, business tools, etc.
Yes, there are a lot of little app and social media companies, but with the exception of a few breakout successes, they don’t amount to much. It’s like asking why everything is a Starbucks and nobody makes pharmaceuticals. Yes, Starbucks is big and you see them everywhere, and a lot of people seem to be running little coffee shops. But the question you’re asking makes me wonder a little bit about the sampling method you used to create your world view.
Or it could be an awesome, thoughtful article. I did just review it without reading it.
R2: Lots and lots of people are bad at reading social cues. This is a bummer. At least it’s not an article like, “How to make a girl take her headphones off so you can talk to her…” which takes people who are bad at reading those cues and, instead of teaching them to read them, teaches them how to bulldoze past them.
The anger in that piece reminds me of a great Amy Schumer bit talking about the guys who complain that they were going to get a girl to come home with them but then “the friend” stepped in and ruined the whole thing. The explanation was basically, “Guys, I’ve been that girl. When you started coming over, my friend asked me to be ready to rescue her from you. You never had a chance.”Report
You notice all these rejections are pre-planned, thought out, and generally designed to spare the guy’s feelings as much as possible. “She didn’t respect me, that b*tch of a friend got in the way. Ugh, you know how THEY are” or “Oh, she has a boyfriend, it’s not me at all”.
It’s all variations of “Oh it’s me, not you. Random stranger, it could never be your fault!”.
There’s a reason for that.Report
Even ignoring the whole “random stranger may be insane and dangerous” problem, I think it’s pretty reasonable not to want to litigate why you’re not interested in somebody with that person. If you’ve ever tried to politely push away an aggressive salesman, you know what I’m talking about. Imagine that, but over matters of opinion where the salesman takes it personally.
This is why I give salespeople about 3 seconds to accept a polite rebuff before slamming the door pretty hard these days. They’re basically just exploiting social rules of politeness to do something I’m not interested in doing. When a person asks you a polite question about something, it’s “rude” not to answer unless that question is on the short list of no-no subjects. So they ask questions instead of telling you they want to sell you something. But it’s all a game. To be polite, you come up with reasons why you’re done talking with them. But at some point, you don’t need a reason. You don’t actually have to talk to this person. This isn’t a normal human interaction governed by those social rules. It’s a business interaction that is 100% optional.
I work from home and people ring my doorbell to sell me stuff constantly. Most people I know get really quiet and pretend not to be home because it’s rude not to answer the door. I used to do that too. But now I’ve reached a point where I’ll make eye contact through the window at a salesperson and go back to what I was doing rather than getting up to answer the door. I don’t owe you my time or an explanation.
If I were a pretty woman in a bar, I don’t think guys would have nice things to say about me if I acted like that, and there’s no locked door between us. So I’d probably try the bar equivalent of pretending not to be home or having a friend intervene.Report
Failure to find a sexual partner is now a DISABILITY says World Health Organization
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/723323/Sexual-partner-fertility-disability-World-Health-Organisation-IVFReport
This looks like a weird classification to help people access fertility treatments and adoption and such. This doesn’t to be saying that the poor incels of the world are entitled to intimacy.
That said, loneliness sucks. Personally, I have no problem saying that the “forever alone” times do suffer a kind of disability. They certainly should receive sympathy rather than hatred and condescension.
The truth is, I once spent a decade with zero intimacy, which probably arose from some combination of my neuro-diversity along with my gender shit. But in any case, it was really fucking hard. In fact, I still carry scars from that. They linger. They mess with my capacity for intimacy even today.
Which, I am dating now. I’m sexually active. I can flirt, but only sometimes.
That shit broke me in a lot of ways. I’ve come pretty close to suicide a few times. So…Report
So this means all these MRA guys can now park in the handicapped spots?Report
Only the morally handicapped spots.Report
One of the funnier things about notme posting all these stories about how liberals* are making the world just plain whacky… is that that demonstrate that the world seems to be slowly becoming more and more liberal every day.
* Even though it isn’t always liberals.Report
Being lonely, feeling unloved can be soul crushing. The gender wars have destroyed an important conversation we should be having.Report
Oh… I don’t disagree. My point is just that if you have no shortage of articles showing you that the world is going to hell in a handbasket… maybe that is a distinct sign that it *isn’t*.Report
I demand my free Obama Sexbot!Report
Those of you who know who Steve Dillon is will be saddened to hear of his passing.
He was the best guy to ever work with Garth Ennis.Report
When I saw he had died, I couldn’t believe he was that old.
It turns out he wasn’t. Shit. 🙁Report
So C1 takes on a new relevance, since the recent DDOS attack was according to some sources, done by hijacking internet-connected devices like cameras and printers.
The question is not just who owns our stuff, but who controls it?Report
C4: In the middle of the night in early October, Ku Klux Klan flyers stuffed into Ziploc bags landed on the doorsteps of a few dozen homes in two British Columbia towns.
Don’t they know how bad those things are for the environment?Report
Only PC approved Halloween costumes allowed.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/22/universities-ban-politically-incorrect-halloween-costumes/Report
Two universities are discussed. One is in Canada and the “ban” applies to an off-campus event organized by a student group; the university does not seem to have any official involvement.
The second university issued a statement encouraging students to consider the potential for harm; nothing in the statement constitutes a “warning” as reflected in the article’s description.
But, yea, put those together and you totally get “UNIVERSITIES BAN…!”Report
For the whole flirting thing, the problem is that there are only so many human interaction spaces that excel at making introverts sit next to each other and tell them to start talking to each other.
Extroverts? Man, where *DON’T* extroverts talk to other people? I went to the dealership to have some regularly scheduled maintenance done and I was sitting alone at a table playing my 3DS and a guy walked over and started talking to me. We ended up discussing hunting.
Dude. I was just sitting there by myself, not making eye contact or anything. Seriously.
But where do introverts get squished next to each other in spaces where they’re given some official sanction to talk to other introverts?
I’m thinking school/university and church. I can’t think of anyplace else.Report
Work.Report
I’ve heard a handful of “I dated a co-worker and it turned out okay” stories (including one or two which resulted in marriages that haven’t ended in divorce yet!) but they aren’t the majority of those stories I’ve heard.
Which isn’t me trying to move the goalposts as much as being aware of the whole issues of “what happens if it doesn’t work?”
If you date a classmate and it doesn’t work out, there are plenty of fish in the sea. If you go to a large enough school, it’s not even necessarily the case that you’ll see them except in passing.
Changing churches is something that strikes me as fairly easy to do, but I live in a large anonymous city. Maybe it’s tougher in smaller places but this also strikes me as having a fairly decent number of outs for failure.
Dating a co-worker? That’s one of those things that inspires “you know the first rule of dating co-workers?” speeches.Report
In the giant pool of crazy stories I have about a particularly crazy former employer is this:
The same company that forbade people from smoking even on their own time. That monitored the frequency and duration of restroom breaks. That had a talk with you if you didn’t eat at the company cafeteria… encouraged intraoffice dating.
They actually talked about it during orientation. Both of the lecturers met their partner (one spouse, one fiance) at The Company. In fact, if two employees of the company get married, they’ll cater an engagement party for you (terms and conditions apply).
However, if one of you leaves the company, the other will also be encouraged to leave. Strongly encouraged.
They mean business. When my roommate left the company, I was visited by my boss’s boss’s boss, who suggested that I needed to find new living arrangements.Report
@will-truman
Interestingly most companies go the other way because they don’t want any relationship drama to jam up the workspace.
I’ve had employers that wanted a lot of my time but none with tomes of law on how I can spend my free time. I wonder if the second part is more common in red states.Report
No smokers is becoming a thing in a lot of places (though I think California may have a law against it). They were the first company I ever heard of with that policy, though.Report
In the Bay Area, people seem much more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco based on my observations. This extends across socio-economics.
Not sure about other areas. California is a pretty liberal state with a lot of employee protections. I don’t think we have a lifestyle protection clause or law but employers generally know that they can demand a lot of your time but not what you do on the time that is not theirs. But this is just based on anecdotal observation.
Interestingly NYC still has a lot of smokers. I was just in NYC for a few days a bit surprised about how many people I saw smoking cigs.Report
That had a talk with you if you didn’t eat at the company cafeteria… encouraged intraoffice dating.
Not worth the effort — just consider the joke made.Report
This is really and I mean really and truly creepy. Team spirit is great but encouraging this level of company unity seems more like a cult than a corporation. You should eat with the company, date within the company, and socialize within the company. The company is your life and your life is the company. Let us all be one in commercial unity. Might as well make everybody where matching sweaters. I’d freak at a company like this.Report
Were you working for a cult? Because that sounds like the sort of thing Scientologists do.Report
I know a bunch of marriages that started that way (and one weird case of a couple whom it turned out were already engaged, but had hidden that to avoid ineligibility for the recruiting bonus.) And if it doesn’t work out and it’s a big enough company, you can probably avoid each other afterward.
I also recall a couple where one member kept getting promoted and the other one had to keep changing jobs to avoid their being at opposite ends of the same reporting chain.Report
A lot of my friends live in co-ops, so there is an automatic community thing. One can retreat to their room, when they want, but there will usually be a few people lounging around in the common area, for those times you want company. It seems really nice.
Myself, I wouldn’t want to live that way, but I can see the appeal. I certainly enjoy visiting.
(I went over last night to tutor a friend of mine. Anyhow, once we were all mathed-out, we went out to the common area. I joined a group watching some weird anime. My friend went to the kitchen and made dinner for the house. Mostly I quietly watched the show, not that I could follow much, but between episodes we chatted. Then dinner was ready and we all ate. After that she and I and this other housemate all sat on the couch and talked about life-stuff. It was super cool.)
I’m on a local LGBT chat board, and we organize little get-togethers, which the intention that folks can meet and chat. It isn’t perfect. I’ve gone to a few of these things. Sometimes it’s really nice. Sometimes I get stuck sitting beside some “clique,” who freeze me out. So whatever.
Book club.
Writing group.
Etc.
This isn’t hard.Report
S7 (are introverts a-holes or heroes?) links to a NYT article (noticed by at least Richard Hershberger, but maybe also a few others here) that I find thought-provoking. I find myself making choices that are a-social and “non-civil” (in the sense the author of the article means), and I tend to use my introversion as an excuse (there may be some real anxiety issues and maybe shyness, too), and one reason that excuse “works” is because of the growing acceptance of “introversion” as a personality trait that deserves to be respected and maybe accommodated.Report
Remember the “how to talk to a woman who is wearing headphones” article?
Only half of the revulsion I felt at that story was the whole “sexism and gender and bad things!” feeling. The other half came from the undercurrent of “freaking extroverts talking to introverts. Who do they think they are?”Report
I don’t remember that article, but yeah, that attitude does get to me.Report
I sometimes half-jokingly shake my fist at what I call the “introvert empowerment movement”. As an unabashed extrovert, I sometimes just want to yell at you all to stop being weirdos.
But there are real questions surrounding the issue. We actually did some personalty test stuff at work during our opening meetings. My boss was confirmed as an introvert, something we (herself included) already knew about her. But she is now trying to use this to justify what I think are some just poor management techniques. Like, she won’t respond to people in meeting but then will follow up with long-form, tone-deaf emails. Even if she is right in what she says (which she often is), it frays relationships with the people she supervises. Sometimes I just want to say, “If you can’t deal with people face-to-face, maybe you don’t have what it takes to be a school administrator,” because dealing with people face-to-face is a pretty important part of the job. But is that unfair?Report
I don’t think it’s unfair. I do suspect it’s not all attributable to introversion, or perhaps she’s using her introversion as an excuse. Or, some people just aren’t hardwired to be administrators or leaders in that way.Report
Alsotoo and as you might tell from my comments, I have very mixed feelings about the “introvert empowerment movement” (to the extent that such a “movement” actually exists). Among some of its adherents seems to be a sense of how society should change to accommodate introverts. Maybe it should, to a certain degree, but sometimes the real world is a real world.
There’s also the habit of pointing out successful people who happen to be introverts or cultures that supposedly have greater respect for introversion. I find that kind of annoying because there’s an undercurrent of “introverts are better people than extraverts.” It’s not there explicitly and probably not endorsed by most members of the “movement,” but sometimes they seem to imply as much.
(Feel free to criticize my use of weasel words like “sometimes” and “some.” I have no cite. This is just a general impression I get.)Report
If you see “introverts” as “female” and “extroverts” as “male”, it’s very easy to see why we need feminism.Report
I’m not sure I follow.
(To be sure, I do get that there is a cultural presumption that introversion is a “feminine” trait and extroversion is a “masculine” trait. I just don’t see where you’re going with it.)Report
The cultural assumption that introverts are somehow flawed (as opposed to manifesting another way to be awesome) is something that probably won’t be overcome because of all of the benefits that come, naturally, from being extroverted.
So there needs to be some sort of movement.
That someone else should be in charge of because, seriously, I already did stuff with strangers this week.Report
The “introvert empowerment movement” has similar problems to the “procrastinator empowerment movement” (which I’m going to start writing about any day now.)Report
Not to mention the prevaricator empowerment movement, of which I was totally the international president.Report
Joe? Joe Isuzu?Report
Yes I am!Report
As much as I joke, I don’t *actually* think introverts are flawed. But I do think there are certain roles or professions that are more compatible with introvert personality types and certain roles or professions that are more compatible with extrovert personality types. And part of me feels like thats okay so long as we never say, “You’re an in/extrovert so you simply can’t have this job even if you are actually totally capable of meeting all the expectations.” But part of me wonders if we’re then creating a tiered society. And then I wonder if we’re right in assessing certain roles or professions as better for one group or another or if that is some sort of self-reinforcing feedback loop. Like, maybe an introverted school administrator who is an introvert and handled more conversations via email would actually be more effective if we changed our perception of what a school administrator is. And then my head hurts so I go to the local car dealership to make friends.Report
As much as I joke, I don’t *actually* think introverts are flawed.
I don’t *actually* feel the same way about extroverts… 🙂Report
Oh, I wasn’t really complaining about you as much as complaining about society in general. There is an awful lot of “I find it difficult to believe that this thing that is easy for me is not easy for other people!” out there and the introvert/extrovert thing is one place where it shows up all the time.
As for personalities being tied to particular jobs, there was a while there where big corporations actually did give personality tests to potential hires. Which, I suppose, is a good way to make sweeping generalizations before the fact but I’m not particularly confident that those tests are much more accurate than the “Which Spice Girl are you?” facebook quizzes out there. (“We here at Global Conglomerate pride ourselves on hiring Sportys.”)Report
@jaybird
A few years ago, I had a Graduate Analyst in my team who was a psycology major. That was her opinion of those personality tests.Report
For what it’s worth, I do think that there is a there there. It’s just that I don’t know how to get there from here.
Without useful tests, it’s little more than astrology for smart people.
That said, if you described someone as an INTP, I’d know more or less what you’re talking about.Report
Trump’s found a new theme song: Free Fallin.
• Clinton leads Trump by 20 percentage points among women, 55-35 percent. She’s gained 12 points (and Trump’s lost 16) from mid-October among non-college-educated white women, some of whom initially seemed to rally to Trump after disclosure of the videotape.
• Clinton has doubled her lead to 32 points, 62-30 percent, among college-educated white women, a group that’s particularly critical of his response to questions about his sexual conduct.
Presidential race is over. The only interesting question left is how many GOP CCers he takes down with him.Report
More on introversion.
My definition of being an introvert is different than all these articles. I’ve worked out of my apartment and gone a week without talking to people. I’ve gone on vacations by myself and been really happy walking around on my own. I often entertain recluse fantasies as much as I love my girlfriend and my family.
Yet people talk about dancing alone at crowded clubs and describe themselves as introverts.Report
The snobby, Slate-pitch version of Introversion. “Introversion, your doing it wrong.”Report
It me.
But does this surprise you? How is it different from walking down a city street? The presence of music? But you can be alone in your thoughts while listening to music. The movement of your body? But it’s my brain and my body, together. Other people don’t matter so much. The presence of a crowd? But one can be alone in a crowd. Sure, I must be aware of others, so that I down bump into them. But that is no different from walking down a street.Report