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[–] 206 points 1 year ago (17 children)

I don’t think I can blame Anon. “Should we try it out?” isn’t exactly stirring my passions, either.

Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.

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  • [–] 69 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Bold of you to think anons story is real and straight

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    If by "straight" you mean heterosexual and you're doubting the story is heterosexual, read it again. There are pronouns in there. This is a heterosexual story.

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [+] -9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.

    I think it's more like "oh shit, lots of men are suddenly turning right-wing, and i'm getting afraid of them now, so please anon, protect me. i'm not actually into you, of course (who could be into you?) but at least you're harmless."

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Most women's social circles will not see men make any significant rightward shift in political opinion. Most peoples' political opinions are fairly stable over time, and change slowly. Most people naturally spend time with people with similar political opinions. And if someone finds that they have significantly different political opinions than their peers, they will almost certainly keep it to themselves.

    Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation. The farther right a space is, the fewer women we expect to see there. And to the extent that there is a large rightward shift in men's political positions, it is driven primarily by men who already leaned right. More left-leaning men, if they move right at all, would move right very minimally. The aggregate of minimal moves to the right across the bell curve would be noticeable at a statistical level, but would not be noticeable in most people's actual social lives. Significant moves to the right would only be seen on the right wing side of the bell curve.

    So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP's love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.

    But the alternative conclusion, assuming your hypothesis is correct, is that OP's love interest if more moderate/left wing (most women), but is chronically online and hears about men becoming more right wing.

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  • Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation.

    yeah, that's an interesting observation, which makes you wonder what is cause and what is consequence.

    So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP’s love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.

    Yeah, that's a likely outcome i guess. Girl falls for "strong" men in the past, suddenly realizes they're all right-wing and potentially dangerous, suddenly tries to find a non-dangerous partner, or sth like that.

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  • [–] 100 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Fake: anon has a female friend

    Gay: anon isn't interested in her

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    These stories are even more real and true than the real and true stories on r/aita. OP just forgot the part where the crying bald eagle stood up and clapped at the end

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    This particular fantasy (one day I'll get to reject the women who rejected me first and they'd never be able to handle it as gracefully as I did) seems somewhat common among young men who have trouble connecting with women.

    But the false premise at the center of it is that the man is such a good friend to the woman, and the woman's dating/romantic life hasn't found anyone nearly as understanding or kind or empathetic. And part of that belief is some kind of assumption that life is an RPG where everyone is allotted the same number of points to distribute, and anyone who is maxed on charisma must be less intelligent or empathetic or something.

    Realistically, men who are friends with women tend to do better with dating and relationships than men who aren't close to women. The friends of friends angle is a great pipeline for searching for partners, assuming your personality makes your friends comfortable connecting you with their friends.

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  • [–] 94 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So many red flags...it's a minefield.

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  • [–] 73 points 1 year ago

    Anon got over their crush and got on with their life, nothing wrong with that at all.

    Besides, it sounds like they're about option J here, and it's perfectly okay to not be happy about that.

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  • [+] 91 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago

    "I think you are the only man I can trust, should we try it out?"

    Things that were never said for $2000, Alex

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  • [–] 182 points 1 year ago (40 children)

    "She fucked so many guys"

    Uh...okay?

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  • [–] 164 points 1 year ago (38 children)

    I think they’re trying to say that he doesn’t even feel like her backup, he’s her backup x times removed. Which kinda undercuts his point a bit, but does set the stage for a complete removal of attraction and the very particular manic ending they wrote for their story

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  • [–] 67 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    There's something insulting about being the one she wants to settle down with after a bunch of flings etc.

    When's my turn to have fun?

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [+] -8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)
  • [–] 46 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    What's toxic about wanting better than being the backup option?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Nothing at all, but that last line, "When is my turn to have fun?" Is a bit transactional, like there's an expectation and that's the problematic part.

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  • [+] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago*

    Anon grows and changes in a 5 year span, and his romantic interests change.

    Girls opinion on romance is different in 5 years.

    "I don't want to be the backup."

    Men can grow and change over 5 years. Women? Nah. She just wanted to fuck around and now she's settling.

    This train of thought is some terminally online shit. Then again, complaining that green text is some terminally online shit is insane in its own account.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The toxicity is the weird incel framing around the whole thing. It leans heavily into incel tropes about how women sleep around with physically attractive asshole men when younger and then look for a more stable "nice guy" men when older. The trope is that women will reproduce with asshole gym bro types and then seek relationships with nerds to obtain resources to raise the children they've given birth to. It's the classic cuckhold meme.

    The "backup option" part is the toxic thing. It frames women as farm animals looking for a mate, rather than actual complex human beings with different desires and changing personalities through their whole lives. Aka, just like men. People change, and they want different things at different points in their life.

    It's not that the woman in the story fucked a bunch of guys and then, as a last resort, settled for OP. I mean, just think of how absurd that idea is. It is literally not possible to run out of people to sleep with. They don't think OP is beneath them and have always felt that way, only settling for them now. Why would she need to? There's no shortage of other men out there if she thinks OP is beneath her.

    Rather, people just want different things at different points in their lives. OP didn't tick that box years earlier, but now maybe he does. She wasn't attracted to him then, but she is now. The heart just works that way sometimes. There's no need to add a bunch of incel bullshit to what is easily explainable as the complexities of human emotion.

    The reason this is so toxic is that it's applying this weird bizarre manipulative behavior to the woman in the story - aka parroting incel themes. It accuses her of this deliberate years-long plot, working through a long list of men she finds superior until finally settling for OP. This isn't how human beings actually behave. Instead, she just happened to not be attracted to OP before, but happens to be now. You don't need to go into it any deeper than that. People are complex and their hearts change.

    This "backup option" framing is just really toxic and creepy.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    Why are you being charitable to a greentext poster lmfao. It's like when the skinhead starts saying dogwhistles and someone is like "well maybe he doesn't know it's a dog whistle".

    Idk man, maybe you've not been exposed to enough 4chan.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    sure, let's just assume malice or ill intent whenever possible, and forget about any empathy or sympathy.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    Bro. We are talking about a 4chan greentext poster. What more do you want me to fucking say? Are you joking?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    i'm just tired of internet toxicity tbh. Not as in "Oh no, they laugh about Kirk's assasination", mind you, that shit is actually hillarious, neither i care about anyone's political oriantation as long as they're a decent human being. I'm talking about this unprompted toxic bullshit like "oh, they're using this site, they must be a jerk!". That's literally the same rhetoric that politicians use to create "us vs them" narrative, except they do it on another basis like nationality or whatever.

    Did your day go so wrong that you need to let it all out somehow, but this is the only way you found? Genuinely asking btw

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    btw, just so you know, thanks to some particularily heated instances over here, i've seen people with opinion just like yours but about the fediverse.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Let's not act like 4chan has ever been anything but a infamous shithole that attracts shitheads. It has the worst possible reputation: it doesn't attract good people. Sorry. You sound delightful, tho, all your pettiness and pretentiousness aside.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    so? Is this enough of a reason to spread it further? "Shitheads" aren't exclusive to 4chan, and you're microscopically close to being the live demonstration of this fect.

    I asked you if anything is wrong, because unlike you i don't want to fall into attribution bias and call someone a bad person simply because they behave like a jerk, everyone has bad days. Yet, you insist on keeying your way of thought, which is actually shitty and loathsome.

    I hope you exert this behaviour because you're just a spoiled edgy child, and not because you're so utterly fucked up by life that you actually became this hateful and bitter.

    please don't be like this and take care <3

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I just don't even know what to say to you. Do you understand that you are being the shithead? You're actively insulting me while all I'm pointing out is that incel-adjacent language being used in a notorious incel/extremist breeding ground is highly suspect? Jesus. Reread your post and realize that you are massively projecting onto me.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I just don't even know what to say to you. Do you understand that you are being the shithead?

    Going to chime in here to say you're definitely the shithead here.

    Are you're one of the people that came to the fediverse because your Reddit account was banned?

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  • [+] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I'm not defending anyone. This story being made up is entirely possible. What I'm bothered by, and what i don't want to let slide is the fact that people just assume malice from a person simply because they made a post on a certain website and not the on the other one around. It's a scary tendency that, if extrapolated, makes internet into a place full of tribalism and hostility.

    Also, you gotta explain to me, how the post is an example of toxic masculinity, and exactly what archetype do i defend from your point of view.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    when you put it like this, it does sound fucked up. In the context of the post tho, percieved it more like the anon is telling that she's so uninterested in him that during all the time they known each other, she found a dozen of other sexual / romantic partners, without ever considering him as one, despite knowing he was into her, conciously manupulating him into staying, to keep him as a last resort.

    Surely, it wasn't put in words form in the nicest way possible, and if your interpretation is correct, he's far from a decent human being, but i can't say i have a much better impression about the girl in question either.

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    i mean, of course. But i doubt the girl will step in and tell us her point of view. I'm judging this post purely as a work of fiction at face value, and not like the two of them are real humans I'm aquainted with.

    And yes, i agree that saying what he said is fucked up, but i can't tell, whether he said it out of frustration or because he's a mysoginist.

    I guess i just feel upset whenever i see garbage people, so i assume the better case whenever possible to retain my faith in humanity. Sorry about that.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    Well that was deeper than i expected

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    @Early_To_Risa This situation makes me think of the Meatloaf song "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad". There's an interpretation of the song that the first part of it is about a man who tried to love a woman, yet he was turned down. Later in the song, the man is talking about how the woman has come back to him years later, but he has moved on.

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  • [–] 77 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to date someone years after you had feelings for them. However the body count reference gives me the incel ick.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Anon needs to count their lucky stars and get on with life.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Breaking out Rayo’s number into expanded Knuth’s up-arrow notation by hand would be easier than jumping into this.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (1 child)
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