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Screenshot of a Tumblr post by nongunktional:
when i first heard about the male loneliness epidemic i was like oh yeah close camaraderie and bonding between men is often discouraged in favor of competition or, if not discouraged, at least filtered through a lens of individualism that precludes deep connections. and then i learned what people meant by it (men arent getting laid) to which i say skill issue
to all the men out there not getting laid: try less hard to get laid and try more hard to be an enjoyable and relaxing presence
What? The original claim? That pedophiles are bad? Not believing in free will technically nullifies any moral evaluation of the virtues of any group. The only thing that would matter is consequences.
Yes, but the nature of that loneliness is different when it comes to romantic loneliness within the heterosexual sphere. Just look at how many more men are on dating apps vs women.
Lashing out? I think you are inserting something into the conversation that I never defended. Maybe mixing up responses.
I never understood this obsession with anon people “telling on themselves”. Its called setting aside ego and engaging in good faith. We don’t know each other, there is no reason for me to restrict what I say here about myself. I’ll tell you any embarrassing thing about myself because why would I care? There are no stakes other than the discourse. Which you don’t seem like you have a good authentic desire to engage with.
TBH I’m also pretty dead inside so I probably wouldn’t care if we were in person either but still why are you so obsessed with status on a random internet thread?
I think you are potentially projecting additional details here and that by avoiding her I was hurting her feelings or something. She almost certainly had no idea I was avoiding her. I wasn’t making a big show of it.
I had no ill will towards her I just was avoiding an infohazard.
Its completely unsurprising to me that you lack empathy and it was an error of mine in assuming you were maybe capable of it considering your other responses. My mistake I guess.
Its not like I owed her my consistent presence outside of professional necessity which was fortunately rare. Its not some kind of injustice that I dare not be her work friend.
If you don’t believe in free will then what is the point of disputing or chastising any claim? Why would consequences even matter if they are already pre-determined by circumstance or a higher power?
Maybe that’s because women are better at communication and thus are more likely not seek emotional support from friends instead of seeking codependency with a partner.
What is the actual difference between romantic loneliness and loneliness…kinda just sounds like you’re defining it as sex plus codependency.
Eh… Based on our previous conversation you appear to be harboring some unhealthy opinions.
It’s not just embarrassing… It’s admitting to immaturity and an inability to process your emotions, and then treating someone poorly because of it. So what, you didn’t get something you wanted, that’s life. There’s no reason then to lash out at your coworker by avoiding them, just because they had the audacity to be attractive.
Lol, status? What does anything we communicated about have to do with status?
Avoiding a coworker because of the way they look is not only poor work place etiquette, but it’s morally abject. Im sure if a woman made a post about avoiding a guy at work because of his looks you would have a different opinion…
You were avoiding confronting your emotional immaturity.
I have empathy… it’s just for your coworker, who did nothing wrong and was treated differently just because she didn’t reciprocate your feelings.
You don’t have to be her work friend, just don’t treat her differently than everyone else because she’s an attractive woman.
Because suffering, pleasure, and conscious beings are at stake? I’m confused about what you think of the moral implications of not believing in free will actually is. It sounds like you place all meaning on choice/will or something. I don’t do that. I care about people’s happiness and well being, not their will (at least not intrinsically).
“better at” is this some sort of team sports competition? Yeah, some groups of people are better at certain things. Is there a reason you hang on that point in particular? I hear this point a lot and I don’t know if when I hear it they’re saying it as some kind of dunk on men or they’re making some kind of constructive contribution/suggestion without explicitly saying it. So you’ll need to clarify.
I mean, when it comes to sex and relation with romance, its about physical touch, associating physical release with another human being, another person’s pleasure becoming your own. etc.
“Codependency”? If you are entirely cynical perhaps. The term is interdependence. When you romantically bond with someone deeply, you generally become deeply dependent on them and they become dependent on you. And yeah, sex is going to bond you way way stronger to a person.
You’ll need to be a little more specific. I already know I’m mentally unwell.
I did not treat them poorly. They had no idea I was avoiding them. I was polite and professional when I had to interact.
I did not lash out. I was avoiding psychological pain. That’s it. I did not hold anything against them individually. Seeing them made me cripplingly and dysfunctionally sad, but they did not know that. Shit if they had seen how sad they made me they’d probably assume I was being emotionally manipulative. There would be no benefit to them interacting with that, I had no desire to make them feel guilty and I had no desire to feel cripplingly sad if it could be avoided.
I think that’s a pretty mature and reasonable way to handle things. I’m not sure exactly what your alternative would have been.
I think I confronted my emotions and decided the best way to handle them was to avoid making them worse and focus on other things and other people as best as I could. How is that immature?
Yeah I’m aware you’re real sad for them. I promise you they’re almost certainly happier today than I am. I would bet money. And she was never ever even aware of my internal feelings, other than at one point I asked her out and she politely rejected me.
You treat people differently based on their appearance all the time. Everyone does. You are probably just less conscious about it.
And if free will does not exist does your opinion on the matter have any effect on the predetermined outcome?
Most forms of determinism believe that people’s happiness and well being are predetermined and our opinions about their feelings has no effect on how they feel.
I’m wondering if you actually understand the philosophical concept of determinism?
It’s an alternative explanation detailing why there are less women on dating apps.
So sex… Just like the original post claimed. This is about sex.
Again… This all started because the of post claimed people identifying themselves as belonging to “the male loneliness epidemic” was really men complaining about not having sex. That’s what got everbodys panties in a twist, and the deeper we dive into the denial of the claim, the more it seems to be true.
You don’t seem to just want to be more social, you seem to be mostly complaining about women withholding a sexual or romantic relationship from you.
You seem to lack healthy coping skills when you don’t get what you feel you’re entitled too. You seem to reaching out for someone or something to blame for this lack of coping skills. You also seem to adopt an attitude of morose self deprecation as a defense against any form of criticism. Attempting to redirect the criticism by utilizing guilt as a redirection, aka the pity fallacy or sometime pityfishing.
You know you chose to avoid them… You have no idea if they knew or not, I don’t imagine reading social cue is probably a specialty of yours.
You don’t sense that might be problematic? Avoidance is not a healthy coping skill. Neither is being in pain because someone is attractive. There are attractive people everywhere, are you in constant crippling emotional pain? Or did that pain really come from being denied something you secretly feel you are entitled to?
Avoiding emotions is pretty different than confronting them.
Empathy doesn’t equate to pity. Again you are pityfishing.
I don’t really think I do, it would negatively effect my work. Plus, even if I did, there’s a matter of scale. I’m not running away or avoiding people based on their looks.
Just letting you know I’m leaving work from home now meaning I wont have access to this account. If you respond I’ll respond Monday morning.
Despite the seeming hostility and intense disagreement here I don’t hold anything against you. I look forward to reading what you have to say. I genuinely enjoy the discourse.
Same, be safe, have a good weekend.
If you are trying to string me along/troll me, you are doing a good job.
Do you think people who don’t believe in free will shouldn’t express their ideas or beliefs in order to be consistent with a lack of belief in free will?
Pure determinism isn’t my stated belief. I said I don’t believe in free will. You are adding to what I said again, pulling stuff out of thin air.
Here is the core question I have to ask you, given that you seem to believe in free will: What exactly is our will free from?
Random chance doesn’t mean free will either. I don’t believe in some meta-physical super natural aspect of our will either but even if there was, that still wouldn’t mean we have free will either.
Pre-determination isn’t the issue: its the nature of choice and how its a completely meaningless illusion. The main impact on morality it would have is in terms of justice and how society functions, but also it essentially means on a interpersonal level that you forgive yourself and others because no one chooses to be born. No one chooses to be who they are, we don’t choose our parents, our bodies, our brains. We are shunted into existence and expected to perform life and to take responsibility for it, even when we never choose it to begin with.
Do you actually think that’s the reason? I’m pretty sure its because men have to try a lot harder. Meaning if they want to maximize their chances they need to go on dating apps even when they know they’re financially predatory and awful.
Its not only that, but that’s a major component. Yeah.
I never said that I thought I was entitled to that woman. If I thought I was entitled to her I would have kept asking her out or insisting on her dating me.
Here is the thing: I fundamentally disagree with criticism of individuals this way. I think things need to be solved systematically or technologically. Not with psychoanalysis or “pulling ourselves by our boot straps” or whatever. So yeah, when you argue with me and you decide to angle it based on me individually and my individual faults and personal defects and I’m just a bad person, I just fundamentally disagree on the very basis of your engagement with the topic.
I don’t need your pity to know I’m right or wrong about something. I want you to argue against my points. I want you to challenge my ideas. I’m not particularly interested in talking about me other than as example/anecdote for my own arguments (which is why I brought up the personal example). If I have “unhealthy opinions” I want to know specifically what they are and then I can either realize I’m objectively wrong or I can retort with some argument. I don’t care if call me a bad person is my point. You clearly don’t share my moral ideology anyway why would I?
That said, I am an open book: I personally am indeed incredibly depressed (which relates to the self depreciation) but not because of lack of sex. I mean I was depressed in the past because of that when I was still figuring things out maybe but now its because Trump won a second time and that’s kind of permeated and filtered how I see people in general. And I mean, also my life sucks and I legitimately resent having been born but none of that is relevant to the current topic of male loneliness in of itself.
I mean, sure. I couldn’t know for certain. I tried my best to just function at work when I needed to with her. This is an important question: What else could I have materially done? Its not like I could just delete the emotions and just pretend I was fine to chit chat with her at the water cooler or something. If anything I was doing her a favor.
And true, being autistic tends to make me pretty weak at reading people probably on average but I’m probably a bit better than the average autistic person. I’m a very extroverted autistic person. Despite the nihilism and politically induced misanthropy.
Healthy in what way? For me? I don’t think purposefully exposing myself to someone who rejected me who I badly wanted to be with romantically would have been good for me and my heavily obsessive and ruminating autistic brain.
Avoidance was a lesser evil. I have experience enough to know that.
There is not that many people that I am that intensely attracted to everywhere no. There is a difference between very attractive and “I want to die when I see them” level of physical attraction.
That said, its frequent enough that I’ve fallen into a few emotional holes through life, yes. Sometimes its not been avoidable. There are a few stories.
I’m not pityfishing what do I even have to gain from your pity? We will never ever meet. I don’t care about your opinion of me. I am not important. Neither are you. I care that I am correct that men are fucked by romantic loneliness right now and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is not a viable solution.
By bringing up our relatively happiness what I was doing was making a point: She is almost certainly fine. She is not a baby. She is an adult woman who had her own life going on. Me keeping things strictly bare minimum and professional was perfectly reasonable. And if it did hurt her feelings, I’m sorry I guess? What do you want from me?
Are you a psychologist or something?
No, just that their ideas and beliefs should be consistent with their states ideology.
I didn’t say what type of determinism you adhere to, if you read what I said it states “most forms of determinism”.
Lol, that’s a bit of a pedantic tool to evaluate of determinism. However in simple terms free of the concept of predetermination.
I don’t have the ability to choose between different courses of actions, or have the agency to control my own actions to fulfill a personal sense of morality?
Maybe if morality were determined solely by legality, and if we only examined ones own actions on a grand societal scale.
Just because you didn’t choose to be born doesn’t mean you don’t get to choose how to navigate your own life.
Lol, yes you can choose who you are. We are a collage of our own actions and we are able to choose how we react to different scenarios throughout our lives. We may not get to choose who are parents are, but we get to choose what kind of relationship we have with our parents. The same goes with our body, even if born with an innate disability, we choose how we respond and adapt to the disability.
And yet everyone still has the choice to take responsibility or not. Expectations are not an undeniable demand. We even have the choice of deciding if we even want experience life, suicide is often a choice.
Why do men choose to try a lot harder…? It’s not like there vastly more men than women, or that our innate biological imperatives are different.
Lol, so you’ve been making a fuss for nothing?
Then why did she make you so upset? Do you have to avoid every attractive woman you see? There is more to this than “she’s so pretty it hurts”.
Seems like a complex way to avoid any sense of person responsibility… I mean things like talk therapy have years of scientific evidence to support itself as a valid form of treatment. I don’t really think your beliefs align themselves with reality.
“I cannot be judged by my own actions” is kinda a crazy take. I wonder why you have a hard time finding a romantic partner…?
^don’t need your pity to know I’m right or wrong about something. I want you to argue against my points
Your point has shifted goal post so hard that it has nothing to do with the original prompt. We are now in the territory of you not believing in people being held responsible for their own actions…
You already dropped the entire original argument. Which was based on the post claiming it’s not about sex. You’ve already admitted nits mostly about sex.
^personally am indeed incredibly depressed (which relates to the self depreciation) but not because of lack of sex. I mean I was depressed in the past because of that when I was still figuring things out maybe but now its because Trump won a second time and that’s kind of permeated and filtered how I see people in general. And I mean, also my life sucks and I legitimately resent having been born but none of that is relevant to the current topic of male loneliness in of itself.
I mean… Maybe your fundamental beliefs are not condusive to maintaining your mental health. I would highly suggest you choose to talk to a mental health professional about it, which is statistically proven to help.
Your beliefs seem to have painted your mental health into a corner with no room for improvement. At some point everyone needs to take some level of personal responsibility in their lives, and sometimes that personal responsibility comes in the form of accepting you have negative attributes that you need to address in a healthy way.
You don’t have to delete emotions, you process them. Evaluate why you are actually feeling that way, and if that is a reasonable way to to feel in the given circumstances. Why were you upset? Does it make sense to feel upset just because someone is attractive, does that happen to you every time you see someone attractive?
Once you figure out the reason you are feeling those emotions they are easier to manage and control. Emotions don’t just happen to you, they are how you respond to stimuli, meaning you have control over them.
Both my wife and I are autistic, it’s not a valid reason to shirk personal responsibility. In fact, unfortunately it means you have more responsibility to evaluate your own emotions and behavior to make sure you don’t hurt people’s feelings. It’s a lot of work, but it is completely manageable. As an older autistic person I can basically guarantee your coworker noticed your behavior.
Right, and how long have you been ruminating on it since? How long ago was it, and how many potential relationships did it prevent you from building since then? What goes through your brain when you think about approaching a different attractive lady?
If you don’t confront, process, and learn how to heal from harmful complex emotions you will never escape them.
Only because you haven’t learned a better coping skill.
That’s called obsession, and is often one of the bases of the OCD, autism, and ADHD triad that many people have to learn to deal with.
You don’t have to actually care about my pity. I’m guessing it’s a reflexive avoidance behaviour you utilize to most criticism you experience.
I am important not the people I care about, and I hope you are as well.
Fucked by who? It seems the major impediment isn’t something society can really change for you.
Pulling yourself up by the boot straps is an analogy meant to represent something impossible, no one is asking you to do that. I just recommend learning to get back on your feet after being knocked down for whatever reason.
So is it okay to hurt people if the damage is not permanent?
I don’t see how it was an act of responsibility if it wasn’t even really socially acceptable.
What I want from all young people, to take some responsibility and attempt to do the best they can.
I work in healthcare, specifically with a lot of patients who have physical and mental disabilities.