Could some of this just be the Franklin Effect?
Assholes of that caliber hadn't been invented in Franklin's time.
I'm put on my guard if any stranger, male or female, tries to do something apparently nice for me unprompted. But if they ask me for a favor, then I understand what they get out of the interaction, and feel more comfortable with them.
Alan Sinfield, introduction
Reginald Shepherd is, he says, the person no one wants to know about: a black (African American) gay man with an unappeasable attraction to white men. "I am in love with the image and idea of white manhood, which is everything I am not and want to be." Why is this such a fearful condition? Because of the historic oppression of blacks by whites. Shepherd is under no illusion about the role of power in his attraction: "I think many gay men worship the power that oppresses them; I think too that all sexual relations in our society are about power over another or the submission to the power of another."
"the most unfeminine and androgynous robotic women" he's ever met. "Not a feminine drop of blood courses through their veins,"
You know, there isn't much eros or inequality or gender difference or flirting or uncontrolled hierarchy or sexual frustration...
...in Huxley's Brave New World.
Roosh is right.
The "feminine*" is socially and economically constructed.
And the "masculine"
He sounds so charming it's tough to imagine he had no luck with the Danish ladies.
I feel like the helplessness thing works better with guys who are insecure about their manly qualities, FWIW. There's a guy I work with who will happily and promptly solve problems if I seem helpless enough. If I just ask without the flattery because it's his goddamned job, he's too busy often as not.
I spent 3 or 4 days several years ago hanging around in the Dutch countryside with some idiot loser from Chile, who hit on women everywhere we went in an overbearing, macho way. It was so much fun watching him get shot down and belittled every time, until he started having some success with a 17 year old. He asked a Dutch man in the bar whether he would be taking any legal risks going further. He flatly replied, "No, this is a small village. We don't settle things with the police..." He was too stupid to take the hint, and kept pursuing, until eventually even she told him to get lost. Then I found 5 euros.
I feel like the helplessness thing works better with guys who are insecure about their manly qualities, FWIW.
There probably isn't a better indicator of insecurity than referring to yourself as an "alpha male."
2. Which is why the right to keep and bear assholes doesn't mean the same thing as it did at the time the Constitution was written.
10: Those are ironic when I have them.
I feel like the helplessness thing works better with guys who are insecure about their manly qualities, FWIW. There's a guy I work with who will happily and promptly solve problems if I seem helpless enough. If I just ask without the flattery because it's his goddamned job, he's too busy often as not.
Is the first sentence of this paragraph related to the last two?
A Danish person has no idea what it feels like to not have medical care...
This is what I think the Obamacare fight it about, at least for the people providing the big money against. They have a pretty good idea what will happen when the link between health care coverage and full-time employment is weakened and that it won't help keep wages low.
I never caught on that Gus was gay until I was reading a BB review about the series' portrayal of gay men of color and I was all, "What gay men of color?"
13: This is what I think the Obamacare fight it about, at least for the people providing the big money against.
I'd expand that to almost everything in US politics within living memory.
12: I don't see the connection either, now that you mention it. I do things much more readily when I'm flattered than when somebody reminds me it's my job to do something. The reminding me it's my job would work very well coming from my actual boss, but coming from a coworker, I'd take it as them being on a power trip.
12: First sentence about the PUA, second two to final paragraph of the OP linking helplessness and flattery on the part of the woman to successful flirting.
He probably saw this and got the wrong idea.
There probably isn't a better indicator of insecurity than referring to yourself as an "alpha male."
Gun fetishism.
16: Here are two versions of the same request - "Hey, the equipment is making that rattling noise again. Do you think you can look at it when you've got a minute? I think it might need an oil change [his job]." Second version, "Hey, I know you're really busy [lie], but the equipment is rattling. I don't know what it might be. It seemed fine yesterday. I just don't know how it works; do you think you could help me out? Thanks so much! Sorry for bothering you!" NB, equipment maintenance is the guy's primary job. I think the first is a totally reasonable way to request something, and it's the way the guys get results, but I'm told that I don't get the same result is that I'm not batting my eyes enough. Basically, I am supposed to flirt a bit to get him to to his job.
Pretending I don't know how to do stuff because I don't want to do it, doesn't seem particularly like flirting to me, or even especially gendered. I do it all the time.
I don't bat my eyes, but I don't know if that would work with my thick glasses.
"Not a feminine drop of blood courses through their veins,"
Ah, echoes of an email UNG once sent me. (A guy friend I shared it with remarked how he could tell from reading it how much UNG loved me.) In my heart, I have always been Danish!
I had a co-worker, back before law school, who used to play helpless and flatter me to get me to do boring parts of his job -- things like setting up mail merges in Word for form letters. This didn't work as flirtation at all, if that was the aim; I mostly got the impression that he just didn't want to do his job himself. Attractive guy other than that, though.
The success of the PUA thing is always limited to situations where everyone is trying to act out exaggerated and polarized gender roles. This makes up a large proportion of situations in the US, despite Republican babblings that men only join protest marches, etc. to get laid. And obviously it is not as common in many European countries.
But there must be some milieu in Denmark where women would be impressed by his B.S. Maybe a bar where investment bankers hang out with women who view the benefits they get from the government as piddling compared to the rewards of marrying an investment banker. But wait, he's not actually powerful, he's just pretending!
I once had a very attractive boss who used to wink at me when she wanted me to do something her way instead the way my boss's boss wanted it done. That worked really well for her.
22: Attorneys use that trick with me a lot. Even though I know I'm being tricked I prefer it when they act like I'm doing something totally amazing, instead of making it clear that I'm doing something beneath them.
I guess I'm not going to get this across in writing, then. Last try, then I surrender. My job is not oil changes. I know how to do them and have done them if he's not around. He knows that because I tell him when they're done in case he logs maintenance. It's obviously not true when I ask the second way. His job is to do oil changes. He gets paid (more than me) to keep stuff operational. It is frustrating for me to do his job and frustrating to have to dumb my request down so he'll hop right up and cheerfully perform an oil change knowing that if I asked like a normal person, he'd argue about how it's fine and that rattling is normal, which doesn't happen with the guys who might ask the same thing in the same way. It's not flirting to get him into bed (shiver); it's flirting to get what I want by flattering his manly ability to change pump oil and fix something that confuses the helpless and silly womenfolk. Maybe I'm thinking of flirting differently than the rest of you?
29: I'm pretty sure everybody gets it, and we're just messing with you a little.
I get how that is annoying, though I'm usually on the other side of it with people asking me to get stuff done. I don't see how it is particularly gendered. Flattering other people's abilities is how I work with both the male-dominated IT people and the female-dominated office managers.
ydnew, to be clear, I completely get what you're saying, it makes sense. In 12 I was just asking if you thought this particular maintenance man is insecure about his manly qualities, and that's why you have to ask him to do things in the way that you do. You didn't explicitly say that in 6 (and 17 suggests that's not what you meant), but the construction of the paragraph made me wonder if that was supposed to be the implication.
Or, to ask another way, I guess: do you have anecdotes about the "helplessness thing" working better with guys known to be insecure about their "manly qualities"? That was the part of 6 that I thought was most interesting. It doesn't ring true for me, but I wouldn't necessarily know (I'm not often a woman pretending to be helpless with men in order to get them to do what I want).
29: It was crystal clear to me. This is exactly how things go in the lab I work in, with our lazybones IT support.
28: I do a lot of praise and gratitude at our admins, and I hope it doesn't come off insincere. It's not that they're doing anything I couldn't do just fine for myself, it's that they're actually getting boring and annoying stuff done without making boneheaded mistakes, and that's pretty rare IME, and worth being moderately delighted about.
ydnew, no, you're describing something I've seen often with a certain kind of guy (who happens to be my dean right now, btw -- the female professors who will flirt with him get a lot further than those of us who just talk to him as if he were a reasonable dean who should do his job -- exactly the way we handled the last dean, for instance).
You're probably also running into the whole "No woman's going to tell ME what to do" bit. If you're flirty and helpless, then he's helping you out: being nice to you because you're a sweet little thing. If you just tell him to do it, you're a woman giving him orders. And a certain kind of guy just can't have that.
It doesn't ring true for me for the same reasons it doesn't ring true for Moby, I think: many people like to be flattered and respond well to it. I'm not sure that's closely tied to being insecure about one's gender role.
I'm sure you're very good at taking sincerity.
36: It doesn't have to be one or the other. People in general do respond well to flattery, and it also seems pretty clear that this tendency is modulated a great deal by gender relations.
it also seems pretty clear that this tendency is modulated a great deal by gender relations
This strikes me as a quite different claim than saying it works better "with guys who are insecure about their manly qualities".
"But how will I get a date if people aren't terrified of losing their health care coverage?" is just awesome.
The Tea Party needs to make a PUA based anti-Obamacare commercial immediately.
42:I don't know anything about PUA techniques, but isn't this very weird? Is it part of the PUA techniques to suggest that this could be a long-term serious relationship? Otherwise it would seem to me that women without worries about losing their health care coverage would be more inclined to have a casual hookup.
If any of you were Danish, this would have stayed a sex thread.
30/33: Thanks.
29: Sorry, yes, he's pretty deeply insecure about his masculinity. He was until recently a single dad (not weird or unusual) who has newspaper clippings of the importance of fathers in families and "How to be a good man" type stuff taped up at his desk. Since remarrying, he refers to his wife as the "little lady" and tells stories about how he protected her from $thing or $person. Everything about him screams insecurity about his manliness. And yes, I have quite a few more anecdotes about different people I've worked with, but that one sprang to mind first. To be fair, I don't know precisely who's insecure about their manliness (not a mindreader), but in general it's more how they tell stories about themselves when they chat about non-work. Anyone telling me about how they lifted heavy stuff, used to work construction or roofing, rebuilds cars on weekends, etc. AND will speak differently to guys than to me is usually going to require some helplessness and flirtation on my part if I need stuff done. Not that this always holds true, but I think it's often true. Especially when I try my normal request the first time and get nowhere, which is polite and friendly (even worse if a guy asks for the same thing and gets it.) Anyone who doesn't go out of their way to tell me about their manly hobbies will probably not require the extra pretend helplessness on my part.
Anyone could have told him Miss Olsen wasn't into the macho type.
33, 40: I'm on the other end of this in terms of dealing with faculty. There is a tendency I've found (especially common in junior faculty) for professor to think that because faculty is above staff, a faculty member can give me an instructions and it becomes "my job." However, if you don't have grant money in amounts that could plausibly pay a significant portion of my salary, it isn't my job in any real sense. I'm going to continue to make my priorities according the criteria that are reasonable from my point of view. This basically means "do you have grants or are you likely to have grants in the near future?" After that, it's some combination of how nice you are to me and how pleasant or unpleasant the job is.
48 was supposed to be to 33 and 35, not 33 and 40.
I never flirted via helplessness, but I almost offered up flirting advice when Lurik Keyaki was talking about how to befriend women. My flirting strategy is:
1. act like the other person is fascinating
2. ask them questions until you find that part of them that actually is fascinating, and then chat about that.
and this applies to women or men that I want to warm to me.
There is a certain kind of arrogant person who makes me withdraw hastily, and I will not play that game with them. Let them come to me, and I will be the housecat.
If the situation deems necessary.
What's particularly annoying about the dynamic ydnew is describing is that it requires not just flattery (oh, you do such a great job with x) but also self-deprecation (not that little ole me knows much about that). Many of us, male and female, flatter our co-workers in order to get what we want, and that's a perfectly normal thing to do, but the insecure guy who refuses to recognize a woman's authority requires her to downplay that authority--and that's an entirely more maddening thing. Which I'm very familiar with.
Not exactly related, but the second page of today's NYT article about de Blasio's wife in describing how they fell in love sort of gives me the creeps, although I'm sure their reality had sufficient nuance and this is more weird stuff from the NYT. Still...
[T]here was no confusion: she had zero interest in dating a man, a message that Mr. de Blasio, then a lanky, bearded operative across the building, jauntily ignored.
He flirted with her mercilessly, she said, calling nonstop and trying to steal an unwelcome kiss. "I actually told him, 'Slow this down,' " Ms. McCray said. Her resistance became less diplomatic: "Back off."
But a romance blossomed: Mr. de Blasio, five years her junior, won over her family with an overnight visit that earned him a new moniker: "Brother Bill."
WTF?
Argh, do I have to italicize each individual paragraph? Fine, up through WTF it was the NYT talking.
My mom is extremely self-deprecating, and married at age 21, and on occasion belittles the criteria that she had set for picking a spouse. ("I got so lucky...")
One of the criterion that I find fascinating is "I knew I wanted to be with someone smarter than me, so I wouldn't have to play dumb." This just implies worlds to me: being the smart person in a relationship would not have appealed to her, playing dumb would have been infuriating, and actually being dumb to a smarter person was very appealing.
(She is not dumber than my dad whatsoever, but he's the type that makes up plausible facts when he doesn't have real ones on hand, and she's the type that second-guesses things she actually knows well. The net effect is that they both consider him the smart one.)
he's the type that makes up plausible facts when he doesn't have real ones on hand
My son does that, except he's seven so he has no idea what might be plausible. And he gets angry when I bust out laughing.
Man, it seems so much more annoying to not be able to work with women and see them as normal, competent humans. For the women, god knows, but also for the dudes. Why live in a state of constant, confused and put-upon expectation-violation when you can just, you know, not do that?
But a romance blossomed: Mr. de Blasio, five years her junior, won over her family with an overnight visit that earned him a new moniker: "Brother Bill."
They found out he's black where it counts?
56: but he's the type that makes up plausible facts when he doesn't have real ones on hand, and she's the type that second-guesses things she actually knows well.
I wonder then if it could have worked for them if they'd had internet and smart phones around then.
Danish women struck me as literally the easiest women in the world to pick up. I've never seen so many woman openly looking to score. I was once in a bar in Copenhagen where a woman launched into a big drunken dialogue on how she had just met this guy in the bar, and she was going to take him home and fuck him.
Also, they love it when you talk about how left-wing you are. Natilo would be like Elvis.
59: It may have just been relief that he wasn't a sister. But seriously, isn't that a weird way to write it all?
59: He managed to make the relationship seem incestuous.
I wonder then if it could have worked for them if they'd had internet and smart phones around then.
I think so. My dad has no ego on the line when he gets called out on these things - he'll happily backpedal and try something else out. He just likes the sport of it.
See, 61 used to be the conventional wisdom.
57: Argh. I'm trying to beat that 'just make shit up' trait out of Newt at the moment. And it's rough, because I'm that way inclined myself, so the message I'm really trying to send is "Don't make facts up unless you've got enough knowledge around the missing fact that you can carry it off pretty safely, or people will think you're an ass. And really, disclose what you're doing." (When the kids ask me hard questions these days, my most common answer is "Short answer is I don't actually know. Long answer is [and then I explain how the Federal Reserve works to the best of my ability]."
61: Easiest to pick up unless you are totally committed to a method that involves humiliation and domination? Is that the story?
54: That seemed kind of WTF to me too -- I sort of hope that in the moment, it was one of those "You can't say the right thing to the wrong person or the wrong thing to the right person" interactions, and the story wasn't as boundary-violating and pressuring than it sounds from the way the story is written.
68: I was trying to think of how to say exactly this.
67: have you offered him a subscription to Modern Jackass?
Very conflicted about the link in 54. I'm strongly inclined to like Ms McCray. De Blasio not so much. On the other hand, whatever floats their boat...
72; He's only twelve, and has plenty of time to snap out of it yet. (And has, as noted in my prior comment, effective rolemodels in the home for this style of jackassery.)
74: okay but at least play that This American Life segment for him, because then he will have the words to self-monitor. Also because I think it's funny.
I am a McCray superfan. OMG, she was in the Combahee River Collective! I'm fine with de Blasio compared to his competition. But as with our current president (and not that I get a vote for mayor anyhow) I'd be much more positive about electing the wife.
Needless to say I have a tendency to spout off like a know-it-all, but at some point my mom decided that I never know what I'm talking about, which isn't strictly true, so now when I'm discussing something in her presence she'll turn to the people I'm talking to and say "he made that up." It's pretty annoying!
73: The thing about liking her and disliking him from that story is that (assuming no significant distortion from the NYT, which is obviously unsafe), that's her version of the meet-cute that started off a long-term and apparently successful relationship that she's still in. Which means that whatever the details were, either he wasn't as badly behaved as the story makes him sound, or she likes and approves of bad behavior. If a woman were telling a story like that about the start of a relationship that ended when she realized what a jerk he'd always been, I'd probably think well of her and badly of him. Under these circumstances, though, I think they're either both fine or both a mess.
Argh, do I have to italicize each individual paragraph?
Or replace the linebreaks with <br /><br /> (alternatively <p></p> around the paragraphs but in a single block).
78: I'm assuming it was bad editing, and I really don't like that in a story about her it's all about how his actions created the relationship, not what swayed her mind. I'm not judging their relationship, which seems satisfying and solid for both of them, and don't think this is as bad as last week's Vows column or anything, just a creepy way to write about it that I think might be part of a larger pushy-de Blasio narrative or something.
68: That makes the guy's failure extra-hilarious. It's not like he struck out in a convent.
79: I know, I know, but I don't think about it when I'm actually doing it.
Right, the story would look much better with one more sentence about her actually changing her mind, rather than the total lack of transition between "Back off" and "A romance blossomed."
81: The other thing I find so puzzling is that he wrote a book about striking out. I assumed part of the PUA m.o. was if that you struck out with the ladies, you still had the option of making up a good story.
48 for professor to think that because faculty is above staff, a faculty member can give me an instructions and it becomes "my job."
At all of the new-faculty orientation things I had to attend, they told us over and over again that we should delegate as many things as possible to staff. Arranging travel? Make a staff member do it! Scheduling a time to talk to a student? Make a staff member do it! Your time is valuable, their time isn't! It was kind of awful.
The thing is, all of their examples were things I could do myself much more quickly than I could explain to someone else what I wanted and have them do it. My senior colleague has a three-hour-long running argument/negotiation with an administrative assistant every time a plane ticket is purchased. I go online and buy one myself in under two minutes.
I realize your job isn't analogous to these things, but I wonder if the junior people are taking similar orientation instructions too seriously.
The existence of the book is minor evidence in favor of his other books not being 100% fictional.
81: It makes perfect sense to me, though, if he's working with ritualized American-based dating strategies -- if the underlying principles don't work at all, and he didn't have the flexibility to abandon his techniques and start from scratch, it doesn't matter how easy it would be for someone who wasn't playing by the same rules.
Anybody who listens to a university orientation deserves their own problems.
I've got 99 problems, but listening to a university orientation isn't one of them.
The doctor here who (allegedly) murdered his wife with cyanide raised lots of questions for many people, but for me the strangest part was that a doctor figured out university purchasing well enough to get cyanide delivered to his house in 48 hours.
85: The thing is though, if you've got a good relationship with a competent, helpful admin, they really can do a lot of stuff for you that you could do yourself just fine, and that really is part of their jobs. See my 34: up until we got a new admin, preparing papers for service and filing meant that I did a lot of copying, finding exhibit tabs, stapling, and so on. If our new admin were a screwup, I'd still be doing it, and I'd manage, because it'd be easier to do it right myself than it would be to check and recheck and correct and negotiate every time I wanted it done. Now, I hand her a signed copy of everything and she gets it done, which in theory frees me up to do more actual lawyering, and means that she's awesome. (The fact that the time freed up is consumed by blogcommenting is neither here nor there. In an ideal world, I'd have a work ethic.)
As I said in the other thread, I don't think it's political policy, exactly, or free health care that's shooting this guy's pick up artist style down. It's that there's a strong social norm in Denmark against trying to present yourself as a big shot, and most PUA techniques are basically "exploit social insecurity" by making women insecure about their status, then comforting them, then sleeping with them.I think it's interesting because that norm, in and of itself, may be a kind of necessary predicate to both feminism and a functioning welfare state -- i.e., instead of having lower status making you a "loser," being overly brazen about being higher status makes you a loser.
Another possibility, though, is that Danish women weren't into the PUA because they are super racist. I have a good friend who worked for [giant shipping company] and lived in Copenhagen for a while. He hated it and left after a few years, and basically came to the view that the Danes were just irredeemably prejudiced against him (Anglo looking Hispanic) and his wife (from Mexico); not in an openly hostile way, but in a friendly but "you will never ever ever ever be as good as one of us" way.
It's also possible or likely that the two things to together, and that the same social norms that promote egalitarianism and a strong welfare state within the (relatively small) community make the Danes highly dismissive of outsiders.
There's a "Danish are full of carbs and refined sugars" joke in there, but it's not obvious nor funny.
I don't know about sugar, but the largest employer in all of Denmark is the Carlsberg brewery.
87: I always thought that in-so-far as PUA work at all, it's because you relentlessly focus on the goal of getting laid, and all the gamesmanship meant you didn't have too much emotional investment in failure. It's good to know there are places were being that much of an asshole hurts you.
92.1: The article quotes Roosh as saying pretty much exactly that:
Therefore, when it comes to getting laid, your American attitude and belief system will cockblock the fuck out of you before you even open your mouth. Since basically the entire point of game is showing you're better than the next guy, something that Jante Law specifically forbids, it's no surprise to find that game efforts will not be well received in Denmark, especially if you consider yourself an alpha male. It was amusing how often and how quickly I'd offend every Danish girl without even trying.
I think the reasoning from redistribution is that in the absence of social-safety-net/redistribution, there's going to be a norm that women think of themselves as needing to depend on men, which means they're going to be looking for someone who's 'better' than the next guy. The social democratic society allows the taboo on claiming high status to develop. I don't know that the reasoning is correct, but I can follow it.
94 to "making up plausible facts," unless I happen to be right.
96: I think you can have a taboo on claiming high status without a safety net or redistribution. At least you can if my impression of mid to late 19th century Britain is broadly correct.
Isn't that called "tall poppy syndrome" in the Commonwealth?
It's probably a virtuous cycle -- strong social egalitarianism leads to distributionist politics leads to stronger social egalitarianism -- but there's an interesting question about the extent to which the social norm is necessary for the politics, and also how it deals with outsiders to the egalitarian group.
The Carlsberg brewery has swastika decorations. Plausible fact.
I mean obviously w/r/t Scandinavia and Northern Europe we have commenters here better able to speak to these questions than me.
101: It is plausible. They were pretty common before the 30s.
I know, I know, but I don't think about it when I'm actually doing it.
New hovertext?
104: Very plausible. There's CMU off-campus housing in Shadyside whose stairwells' floors still have a swastika tile pattern. I think it dates from the 1910's.
Dude, I was in a bar in Denmark. That makes me at least 10 times more informed on the subject than Tom Friedman is about anything.
The only way to possibly be more informed would be to drunkenly hit on cab drivers.
Somewhere in NY, I think Riverdale, is a landmark 1920's synagogue with a beautiful mosaic tile floor. Swastikas. They keep the floors covered with rugs.
I think tall poppy syndrome is the normal state of things, and we in the US have undergone extreme social conditioning such that it seems natural and right to respond to "Oh, you think you're better than me?" with "Yes, I am better than you because I make more money."
Oh, come on. Showing off is a natural human thing to do. Resenting showoffs is also natural, but it's not as if the concept of being or admiring a showoff was invented in the US.
During my recent trip to Sweden, I asked about stereotypes of other northern Europeans. I definitely heard a lot of "The Danes are so incredibly fcking racist!"
I found linked article and attitude jarring in part because of something vaguely like 61 - all the printed freaky-hot porn I got my hands on as a young man came from Denmark.
I shouldn't admit this, but purely by comparison with other internet PUAs I've seen (e.g. the utterly odious Roissy) I actually kind of like Roosh. A) he's not racist (it's usually a package, at least on the net) B) he's a believer in social/cultural influence rather than the usual evolutionary biology type -- as in this piece, he is always going on about the effect of cultural differences on sexual mores, rather than positing a universal female nature, and C) he actually walks his talk, quitting his job to travel around the world supporting himself hand-to-mouth writing self-published pickup guides and so far as I can tell being quite honest about his experience (e.g. he is very straightforward about experiencing a ton of rejection from women, and doesn't seem that offended by it). He's crazy sexist of course, like all of them, but he seems like less of toxic brew of self-hatred / women-hatred than some of the others. More entertaining and less depressing, and more honest. In the end he's probably less destructive than Hugo Schwyzer, who left a trail of ex-wives, children, and hospitalized ex-girlfriends behind him.
114: By the same logic, shouldn't the best pickup place in the US be the San Fernando Valley?
96: that comment to me shows how it's hard to separate redistributive institutions from egalitarian culture in general. To the extent that the culture frowns on standing out and is generally egalitarian, the nature of romantic preening will be totally different, and the political / economic system is also more likely to engage in redistribution. If you imposed redistributive institutions on top of American culture it strikes me that people would switch to bragging like crazy about their hobbies.
112. Up to a point, Lady Copper. American exceptionalism lies in the fact that in most places a sort of compromise has been reached whereby the showoffs make a marginal effort to show off through a show of classy spending such that points are gained for ostentation which demonstrates good design sense or at least fashion awareness, and double points for spending on unostentatious but discreetly coded taste, while the resenters make a marginal effort to appreciate the cultural sophistication of the showoffs while at the same time hating their guts. I think this was the case in the United States too until a generation ago, but now it's all about the naked figures in your bank balance, which isn't going to cut much ice in Denmark, even in the company of millionaires.
I believe it's much the same in post-communist China, from what I read. Britta may correct me here.
I thought "J Robot" was a woman!
Wasn't there a commenter named "Jenny Robot" at one point? Did I dream that?
Okay, even in the US, if you walk up to someone and tell them how rich you are, with no attempt to package your showing off as classy/fashionable/whatever, they're mostly going to think you're a jerk. We might be somewhat more accepting of baldfaced monetary showing off than you enlightened topless Europeans, but it really isn't conventional to try to impress people by literally showing them your net worth.
120 -- based on my viewing of "BBC America" whatever that compromise was seems mostly gone in Britain, too. I mean I guess Jeremy Clarkson views driving a Lamborghini as somewhat more vulgar than driving an Aston Martin, but that's not much.
Is Jeremy Clarkson on BBC Regular or just BBC America?
It certainly SEEMS like Jeremy Clarkson is a British person created to appeal exclusively to an American audience, but as far as I know he is also popular in Britain.
It also seems like the entirety of BBC America's programming features Jeremy Clarkson, but they also show a few fictional shows and movies such as "Jurassic Park".
E.g. here is Roosh's advice on picking up 'non-U.S.' women, basically saying that most PUA stuff encourages you to be an asshole and this is actually not necessary to be attractive to women outside of the U.S. (He of course justifies this by saying that U.S. feminism has created women he want to date assholes, I removed a number of obnoxious comments to that effect, but there is a basic recognition that women are not weird alien creatures who are somehow biologically programmed for contempt and mistreatment:
Drop all cockiness and teasing. Absolutely do not bring out these two devices unless the girl is bringing them to the table first... you don't need to bust her balls to win her affections....A lot of foreign girls genuinely just like being in your normal presence even though you're not actively gaming them....Drop all anger....when abroad, anger will lead to a vibe that the girls don't like....It's less about being alpha or beta than being confident. Most foreign girls want a confident nice guy. This means you are more chivalrous and polite. It's okay to smile, it's okay to send emoticons in text messages, and it's okay be yourself as long as you're not needy.... Compliment (and cuddle). In America you are severely punished for complimenting a girl.... It's a different story outside of America. Girls warmly receive compliments because it's part of the "I like you, do you like me?" game that is a natural progression to intimacy....The easiest way to sum up world game is "horny nice guy." You're horny because you approach and escalate, and you're nice because you treat girls well and are not arrogant....If you use American game on a feminine girl with good family roots and a heart of gold, she will think you are strange and crazy. Game as you know it is really a Western invention for use on women who no longer use biology or the pursuit of happiness to select mates. World game is nothing more than being a good man who isn't a pushover.
(You may not want to click through as I did take out some standard misogynist stuff about American women ruined by feminism, etc.)
It certainly SEEMS like Jeremy Clarkson is a British person created to appeal exclusively to an American audience, but as far as I know he is also popular in Britain.
Popular and hated in equal measure. You definitely can't generalise from Clarkson to general social norms, though he does represent (in a cartoonish way) a certain sizeable segment of the population. Also, I don't watch Top Gear, but my understanding is that he doesn't consider any cars vulgar, just manly or unmanly (not necessarily using those words, but definitely that sentiment).
It certainly SEEMS like Jeremy Clarkson is a British person created to appeal exclusively to an American audience, but as far as I know he is also popular in Britain.
He is popular in some quarters, but he's more widely regarded as a jerk, as per 122.
81: It's not like he struck out in a convent.
Feeling better here....
Redistribution is only possible in cultures where envy is a big thing, I'd say, from watching Sweden slide from extremely redistributive to very much less so. And it grows out of small towns/communities where people are surprisingly dependent on each other. But it is balanced with a kind of ferocious individualism. The resulting interactions can be pretty ugly, which is something that generally lefty types tend to gloss over. And anyone outside the circle is sneered at, yes. Swedes think Danes are racist; Danes think Swedes are insufferable prigs, etc.
133: could you expand on that? Is Sweden no longer redistributive? How does the ferocious individualism play out -- envy?
Redistribution is only possible in cultures where envy is a big thing
I don't get this. The envy of the have-nots is so sympathetic that they enact redistributive policies? I would have thought we had plenty of envy in the US, but it's supposed to motivate you to commute further and work in even drearier circumstances.
There's a "Danish are full of carbs and refined sugars" joke in there, but it's not obvious nor funny.
Clearly not, since the Danes are full of butter.
I've heard the Danes are racist too, from my Swedish and Norwegian relatives. I always took it with a grain of salt, since Scandinavians talk shit about each other all the time like that. I do get the sense that Danes have been coasting on their WW2 heroism and haven't felt the need to be as introspective about their failings on the racism & xenophobia front. Between their newish immigration laws and pulling out of Schengen + the Muhammed cartoons (originally Norwegian but republished in Denmark), they've had some notable anti-immigrant/Muslim stuff recently.
Australians are very against "Tall Poppies," yet PUA stuff is very popular there. I would bank that the lack of success of this pick up artist in Denmark on feminism, lack of sexual puritanism, and maybe a bit of racism thrown in. Australia has the egalitarianism stuff in spades, but is like some alternate universe where the feminist movement never happened.
131 -- I know someone who uses what are basically PUA techniques all the time in what I believe to be more or less precisely your milieu (he is, or was, a high end management consultant). I don't know how much of his claimed success is bullshit (cf being a management consultant) also don't know how much of his claimed success is despite, instead of because of, the PUA techniques, which admittedly he's not very hardcore about using.
I don't get why Clarkson keeps getting invited back on QI after all the trouble he caused. Chumminess, I guess.
France: highly redistributive, culture not egalitarian ("liberté, égalité..." notwithstanding)
Yeah. A friend recently went to Paris and through social connections showed up at some millionaires' gathering sponsored by Veblen-good sellers (watches, perfume). I noticed, and told him, that every interaction he described involved someone faux-offhandedly mentioning how rich they were. Though I suppose the nature of that gathering would attract the more vulgar of the rich.
And it grows out of small towns/communities where people are surprisingly dependent on each other.
Really? I thought in Europe unions and their parties were a major driver of the modern welfare state's creation. (Aside from the occasional autocrat like Bismarck.)
I think knecht is entirely wrong about having zero exposure to a milieu where PUA techniques would work, to wit: hotel bars.
No, he's East Coast, and time in upper Midwest. High school friemd. Not Boston though.
Huh, I'd thought that Australia was super feminist for some reason. Germaine Greer?
125: not sure Canada isn't redistributive -- health care, unions much stronger, etc.
There may be two routes through which you can arrive at redistributive institutions. One, the French and English way, is you have a highly unequal society with asshole aristocrats, and the people rise up and demand stuff. Then you have a lot of snobbism and a good pension system. Two, you live huddled at the Arctic circle in miserable but egalitarian villages, and as the society grows you share things without the need for revolution. Less snobbism and good pension system.
127: I think if you're a foreigner, any behavior of your that's off gets ascribed to the fact that you're a foreigner. Roosh must be a gigantic weirdo, which an American woman would notice if he wasn't busy hiding it, while a foreign woman would think maybe he's just being an American.
Possibly the best movie about Americans overseas, certainly one of my all-time favorites.
146: I dunno, the friend of mine who got all into the PUA thing seemed to have the most (of his fairly limited) success in environments/with women who just didn't give a shit.
147: first make it feel bad about itself.
150
No matter how many Russians they kill, the Finns still make terrible pick-up artists.
Finns still make terrible pick-up artists.
Figures. They never say anything.
Nworb wrote a whole book about basically this topic, right? I just bought a copy.
re: Clarkson.
Almost everyone I know who enjoys Top Gear thinks he's a prick. An entertaining prick, but I don't think I know anyone who doesn't think that almost everything he says is rubbish. Even he thinks almost everything he says is rubbish.
at least as measured by cash transfers as a share of income (which, admittedly, is not how you were measuring it).
yeah -- cash transfers miss institutions that keep incomes more egalitarian before transfers, not to mention non-cash benefits.
153: Egalitarianism and trout, yes. Also pike, grayling and some perch, cod and seatrout.
There are some humans to provide background colour.
A Finnish pickup artist is one who lifts women gracefully when they are passed out. "It was so quick, so gentle, that you could still see the imprint of her face in the soup!"
Heebie's substantive point may get addressed later. But basically, egalitarianism requires very strong norms against standing out in any way, and these, in turn, are driven by envy quite as much as a sense of fairness. Parents of small children will note the difficulty of distinguishing these sentiments.
127: Thanks for the link, PGD. I just spent hours there. I have absolutely no interest in getting laid or even being liked, but Ro/oosh still has much to tell me about culture and social systems.
Although I blame liberal capitalism far more than feminism, and from the other side, liberal capitalism far more than sexism/misogyny. "Primitive" social systems of course were hierarchical and patriarchal (and still exist), but liberal capitalism has long devoured them where it is dominant.
Did liberal capitalism (oh, market economy, private property, whatever) create racism? After the gross economic advantages from racism/anti-racism* diminished, why do residual forms remain, or even intensify?
Competitive Status is hard to come by in the neoliberal serfdoms, with no traditions or communities.
*anti-racism/anti-sexism is a mostly a form of commodifying labor power.
No discussion of Scandinavian attitudes to each other [and across Europe in general] can pass without linking:
http://www.exile.ru/transient/151/europeans-chart.html
121: I am a woman, but I'm not sure how that's relevant.
There may be two routes through which you can arrive at redistributive institutions. One, the French and English way
Currently reading, or fucking should be reading, Anthony J Smith National Identity
And he distinguishes from nations formed by aristocrats using folk identities, yes England and France, and nations formed by intellectuals by resort to folk identities (Eastern Europe). Peasants and workers very rarely.
I suspect it pertains, perhaps very indirectly.
Everything is a mix, every nation a snowflake, nuance, blah blah. Smith is very fucking good, one of those books where I have stop myself from cutting and pasting whole chapters to my permanent notes. I gather he has been at it awhile, and has managed a reputation.
145 -- Foreign in-laws can be like that.
127 -- Isn't the American woman who prefers what this guy is selling something of an urban legend? That some guy using PUA techniques manages to score from time to time doesn't tell us that the PUA stuff worked, just that it wasn't enough to overcome whatever the woman in question was working towards.
162: But we established in that other thread that there was a bandaid mishap. Sad!
160:I wish you hadn't told me that. No worries, I will forget quickly.
127: My impression is that the guy "sells" many things, depending on the woman, circumstances, and culture and his immediate goal (which usually is a good fuck). There is not one "game." I disagree with parts of his analysis, or interpret it differently, but accept most of his data as accurate.
Partly because I focused on his travels overseas and into heartland America, and recognize what he says about Europe (early mix of cutthroat capitalism and residual traditionalism) in what I understand about Japan.
Yes, folks, America is all the way fucked up, urban America even more fucked up, and we did not escape the fucked-upness. None of us, especially Ro/osh.
50: That's probably more helpful than you realize. Also helpful: to try not to talk for more than about 20 seconds at a time with women I don't know well. This will give me practice with the norm of "dialogue" that you ladies seem to value so much, rather than the thing I currently do, which is to look panicked when asked a question and deliver an increasingly elaborate monologue while staring at the ceiling, until I can cap it off with a jarringly self-hating one-liner ("if you're still listening, you'd probably be happy to save me the trouble of committing suicide, ha ha! Ha ha. So, um, it would be rude for me to ask what you do for a living, right?"). Seriously, 20 seconds seems like a good social metronome.
In Denmark this would be followed by tracing a declensionist narrative from Kierkegaard to Lars von Trier while leaving my high-collared shirt artfully half-buttoned. I only score with Danish girls on my own terms.
163. I suspect that PUAs are deceiving themselves into believing that their shtick is working where what's actually happening is that their sample is big enough that unlikely odds occasionally come up. I mean, people also win the lottery.
There's another likely urban legend about a guy who stood on the street and staightforwardly propositioned every woman under fifty who passed by. In the story he got laid too. I wonder how his success rate compared to the average PUA.
I will leave with this:
As I was walking the dogs, and remembering how disgusted I am that so many Japanese narratives are about the move from maiden to madonna...
...feminists hate and fight the destructive stereotypes of maiden, whore, madonna but I think focus most vehemently on the whore stereotype. Do they really hate maidens and madonnas? Not so much. These three intersect in critical ways.
I think this is residual Puritanism and patriarchy.
Shulamith and I focus on the madonna.
Although I blame liberal capitalism far more than feminism, and from the other side, liberal capitalism far more than sexism/misogyny. "Primitive" social systems of course were hierarchical and patriarchal (and still exist), but liberal capitalism has long devoured them where it is dominant.
I agree with this. Neoliberal culture is fucked up and it is dominant in the U.S. Relentlessly individualistic, divisive, materialistic, and unhappiness-producing.
As I was walking the dogs, and remembering how disgusted I am that so many Japanese narratives are about the move from maiden to madonna...
That and plastic bags, your neighbors hope.
145: I love that movie. I once got into an argument with a patronizing Spaniard who wanted to argue but the US, but didn't know basic facts. It reminded me of the AFL-CIA argument in that movie.
167, what on earth are they asking you? Dissertation topic? Because if that's the question, I think a monologue followed by self-hatred is a totally normal answer. If it's the weather, probably not.
125 is kinda true but also New Zealand went through a massive neo-liberal revolution in the late 80's and 90's, and so it's a bit more complicated than just not being very economically redistributive while still being egalitarian. There's also a weird set of historical events that are of interest.
"I suspect that PUAs are deceiving themselves into believing that their shtick is working where what's actually happening is that their sample is big enough that unlikely odds occasionally come up. I mean, people also win the lottery."
I doubt that PUA stuff is completely ineffective. You would have to be ok with a high level of rejection though.
AFLCIA plot sounds like the episode where the smoking man was reflecting on his long career of messing with history as we understand it, including making sure the Bills never win the Super Bowl.
173: any question about my life, pretty much (dissertation topic/what are you planning to do after you file are common these days). And of course I'm exaggerating, but not inventing. I've never known how to keep it simple, except by shutting up entirely, which is what I prefer.
Aw, those are awful questions. They deserve whatever response they get. Too bad you can't prescreen people for their small talk abilities and sensitivity towards how much finishing up sucks. I recommend misunderstanding the what you do plan do to question (because it's mostly to make conversation) by answering how you'll be celebrating (sleep for three weeks? presents?).
"I was thinking of going to Denmark." 17 seconds remain, but you can spend then working through a range of facial expressions.
178, 179: I think you have to be like a politician and come up with rote answers to questions.
Except if you're just reciting a script what's the point of talking to people? So, I mostly don't.
That's why it's so, so much better to be the person asking questions. (It's true that then you have to do the work of coming up with questions, but somehow I find this easier than talking about myself.)
Actually, having a personal blog has made it easier to talk about myself. I literally think back to my last few entries and think, "Did I say anything about the kids? About my life? What made a good anecdote?" and then I already have the pacing and word choice all worked out anyway. I sound so polished.
Relentlessly individualistic, divisive, materialistic, and unhappiness-producing.
Hunter-gatherers are supposedly very happy.
I'm going to pretend that everyone found 47 hilarious and not post the better other jokes in a similar vein that have subsequently come to mind.
In Denmark this would be followed by tracing a declensionist narrative from Kierkegaard to Lars von Trier while leaving my high-collared shirt artfully half-buttoned.
Hott.
Heebie is clearly a social savant. I do a lot of asking questions, too, but what do you do when the other person won't play? I occasionally run into the shy or awkward person who simply won't answer in such a way that I can respond back. I usually give up and find an excuse to be elsewhere.
181: I think it's helpful only in instances where the subject makes you miserable. I have a few questions that I just respond with the same answer each time for people I don't know well, because they're not worth taking seriously. (How's the job hunt, when are you two getting married, how's your ill family member? All get a nonresponse.)
I have become insanely boring to myself. I have to quiz people to keep a conversation going because I can't imagine what I would actually say that could hold my own attention, much less anyone else's, for more than a moment.
There's a way to become less boring, you know.
And you never quite know why people are asking about the dissertation. Sometimes I think it's seriously "I was a good student, and I could have gone to grad school but I had better sense than that, so don't think your research is too highfalutin for me to understand." But also, it seems less weird for people to ask that than to ask a lawyer to summarize the last couple of briefs she's written. No one is really to blame for this state of affairs. I just never know quite how much detail to leave out, because people are often really genuinely curious, so I slowly titrate with more details until they suddenly acidify and get that look in their eyes.
(This whole thing was inspired by an ill-advised daycare moms' night out. I'm still traumatized a week later.)
188: That is a sure sign that the toxins are overwhelming your body. Drastic dietary and lifestyle changes will make you garrulous and intensely self-absorbed, like a goddess.
Nobody sane ever asked anybody about their dissertation except that they were on the committee.
192: Will I become able to turn people who challenge me into spiders?
I do not normally get follow-up questions after, "Oh, in what subject?" It's probably better for everybody that way. Yours must be at least sort of interesting. Mommy get-togethers sound like they'd be sort of awful once you finish telling cute kid stories and comparing milestones. At least with a book club you can talk about the book.
Mommy get-togethers sound like they'd be sort of awful once you finish telling cute kid stories and comparing milestones.
It's funny -- I've run into people saying this sort of thing online a fair amount lately. (Oh, probably twice.) And I'm really pretty misanthropic and antisocial. But I never minded chatting with other women in that kind of situation at all. Occasionally, I'd be in a position where I was getting kind of anthropological about it (like, hitting a point in conversation where I had to be tolerant about serious astrology if I wasn't going to be rude), but mostly I had no trouble at all keeping my interlocutors talking happily.
189: Oh, no, although I can see how it came across that way. I didn't mean to imply that LB is boring.
194: halfway through the 90-day cleanse, you will perceive most of them as spiders.
I think the issue with the moms' night was not that OMG women with kids are BORINGZ but that they were perfectly nice, normal, well-adjusted people who work for nonprofits and bond over TV and homeownery stuff, and I have spent a year in an isolation chamber having a massive vocational crisis. My best effort to seem normal was, I think, still pretty off-putting, with waves of status anxiety alternating with awkward efforts to find common ground. The "mom" aspect wasn't a big factor-- it was just like any other bad night of networking-- it's only an issue because you worry that your social faux pas will have repercussions for your innocent child. And on that who knows?
What do you think your child might be guilty of?
195: I was extrapolating based on how miserable I am stuck out in a small group where I have limited interests in common. "Mom of a X-year old" is a good starting point, but I'm imagining getting stuck with a bunch of people where we can't find much else to talk about. This happened to me occasionally in grad school when I'd somehow end up with wives of students rather than students and the group wanted to chat about scrapbooking and how much they missed living near family. I'd feel the same if it was a group of guys that really wanted to talk about stuff where I just couldn't relate. It's the idea of being out with a group for hours where I just can't manage to crack the conversational code. Having only one person or limited duration makes this seem easier. A night out could be five hours in a group of six.
This may be an area where my general misanthropy and alienation from pretty much everyone serves me well. I don't do much better in groups where I should have something in common with the other members than in groups consisting of random people pulled off the street -- make me chat with a bunch of my coworkers and I'm still nervous and bored -- but that means randoms aren't any worse than anyone else.
Lurid keyaki, I wish you lived closer. Self-hating monologues sound like exactly what I want in a conversational partner. The one friend I go out with occasionally and I take turns. Can it help to be the hostess? Sometimes that (or having that mindset, at knitting group for instance) makes things easieer for me to deal with larger group interactions. I guess I was a little guilty of this at the DC dinner, actually.
What do you think your child might be guilty of?
Counterfeit, Failure to Obey a Traffic Control Device, Criminal Mischief, Violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, various venial sins, and possibly regicide.
Seriously, I should do a brevity drill and see if I can respond to comments in one or two (brief) sentences.
202: We could vchat! A friend of mine handled her awkwardness by being an exceedingly gracious hostess, which worked well for her, but was a little distancing.
201: Do you generally not like talking shop, or is it the transitions to personal chitchat that cause friction?
200: a group for hours where I just can't manage to crack the conversational code. Yep, that's hell. But I think my problem is as often conversational style as it is subject matter.
199: You never can be sure, can you?
Oh dear, I am definitely one of those people who asks about dissertations and how your job search is going. But it's because I genuinely want to know, and am sympathetic! I'm also horrible at small talk, and I have to be fairly drunk in order to adopt any conversational style other than Really Serious.
(The Neg: "Is that a Tumi computer bag? They're great quality, but I always found them a little masculine for a woman to carry.")
We are way past this little nugget, but I just wanted to highlight how brilliantly it paints a horrible picture.
(The Neg: "Is that a Tumi computer bag? They're great quality, but I always found them a little masculine for a woman to carry.")
We are way past this little nugget, but I just wanted to highlight how brilliantly it paints a horrible picture.
Just buy her a new bag for Christmas or something.
Ironic lasciviousness is surprisingly hard to get across in a blog comment.
What about deliberate missing the point for a joke?
I thought you were saying 209 missed ironic lasciviousness.
Standpipe's blog tag: anticomedy
I keep getting confused about which one is lurid keyaki versus lourdes kayak.
217: IT WAS NOT MY IDEA. Maybe it helps to think of the "i" in keyaki as a feminine ending?
To recap: after lurking for a year or more, I signed an early comment "lurkey," I believe because I was explaining how turkeys got their name. This pseud persisted until there was a concerted effort to get me to change it, with the clear winning suggestion of "Orgone Boxer." But that would have been, you know, a bit much; so I expanded "lurkey" to "lurid keyaki," after the deciduous Japanese tree Zelkova serrata (because "keyhole" or "keychain" or whatever would have... sucked). A year or two later, my spouse unilaterally decided to start posting under a nearly identical pseud, which confused everyone, including me. Now he's busy and I'm more or less on my own here again. He wishes you all well.
We're actually very similar people, so it's tricky. I'm the neurotic adverb-hugger. He's the one who nailed Yeats.
Maybe it helps to think of the "i" in keyaki as a feminine ending?
Is there any language where it is one? I can't think of one, but I don't have knowledge that detailed of very many languages.
On the small-talk stuff, I've found that a lot of my problems with these conversations stem from the fact that I kind of hate talking about myself. So what tends to happen is that when someone asks me the sort of question people tend to ask in these situations, I answer very tersely and in a way that doesn't invite follow-up discussion. Seeing that tack failing, the other person asks a question about something else, and I respond the same way, and so on. As this progresses the questions tend to start to seem more personal and make me more uncomfortable, so the awkwardness just intensifies.
Obviously one way out of this would be for me to ask the other person questions, but because I don't like answering these sorts of questions I'm also very uncomfortable asking them to others. I tend to forget that most people don't share my weird attitudes toward things.
In the past few years I have at least figured out that this is going on, which enables me to try to overcome it at least some of the time. It's hard, though, because there just seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the way people assume people will react to personal questions and the way I do.
217: I remember because "Lourdes" is woman's name and lourdes is the man who comments. This might not be a helpful mnemonic for others.
131: PUA techniques are generally targeted toward areas where there are large numbers of people (so failure is cheap), and social norms where hooking up is reasonably common. Although the "Artists" themselves rarely make that caveat.
There are exceptions. There are people related to the "Pickup" culture who are all about how to attract a wife you can properly bond with for life. There are people who will specifically write about what "game" is appropriate for small towns where you can burn through your prospects in a day.
168: The null hypothesis is "no better than placebo" for a reason. But on the other hand, I've seen stuff that focuses on, for example, learning to give up quickly if someone seems not interested, and not take offense at that. And there's a lot of talk about picking the right person to approach, figuring out who would almost certainly rather be left alone/have a night out with their friends/etc. and will tell you to buzz off.
I've never actually seriously tried PUA stuff because it just seems exhausting (and because by the time I'd matured enough to take social risks I wasn't buying what they were selling), but I read a little bit about it before I started dating because they were the only ones who even purported to offer very specific advice that applied to the modern world. And I do find it, plus the resulting outrage porn, kind of fascinating. Because they're trying to solve a specific problem with specific solutions and paying attention to what works, and that's actually pretty rare in the world of advice-giving.
||
The maiden 1
1) preferred to "virgin" because it isn't primarily sexualised
2) A common narrative in anime = hero and heroine gather band of fighters, usually gender mixed, fight big bad, suffer and sacrifice, reset and return, survivors pair up and make babies
3) the character arc is maiden to madonna;this maiden is often the romantic subject
4) the common narrative is instanced in LOTR, Frodo and Samwise; Frodo remained maiden, samwise became madonna; the maiden is not gendered
5) maidens are innocent (not necessarily but often sexually; not necessarily ignorant)
6) maidens are idealistic and honorable; honest; empathetic; social; kind; generous;compassionate;loyal;the maiden sacrifices and serves
7) maidens are not necessarily youthful;Eve Arden and Nancy Kulp (Beverly Hillbillies); the classic competent secretary is a maiden;the sidekick is usually a maiden;Tonto, Gabby Hayes and Walter Brennan
maiden 2:the Artemis, agent, ronin, cowboy (Gary Cooper), Miyazaki, the action girl at tvtropes;see also Gender Dynamics Index
at least as common as maiden 1 with more variety but has most of the characteristics in 6 above
Vash (M) of Trigun is maiden2; Hunger Games; Buffy; maiden 2 is usually the romantic object;fights but does not kill humans
....
current anime has warrior girl who transports goods across dangerous desert after apocalyse, alone
in a heavily armed intelligent tank; master with sword; uses gun
dressed in tanktop, khakis, heavy work boots, headband
has a daughter/sister-figure; passive max gentle bishonen suitor; plus tough hard sarcastic political guy suitor;plus meaner and more cynical action-girl lesbian suitor
likes landscape animals and poetry;empathetic even esp
anime is remarkable for its setting, vast sand and oh my the desert sky and stars; Trigun didn't give these stars
but this is, perhaps sadly, a male-directed gaze fantasy, seinen; is she to be tamed and conquered, as in Miyazaki
why not shojo or josei; does the female audience demand a high level of socialization and group activity in order to identify;no loners allowed;Miyazaki does have loners but usually adds romantic interest
|>
Because they're trying to solve a specific problem with specific solutions and paying attention to what works, and that's actually pretty rare in the world of advice-giving.
Problem: Not a dick
Solution: Be a dick
Results: Yes, you're a dick
I hate to ask, but does 227 make sense to anybody else?
does 227 make sense to anybody else?
Read what comes after "Posted by:". That should clear up any doubts.
I'd like to learn about the link between Frodo and Gabby Hayes and action-girl lesbian suitors, because it would bring together so many strands of my life, but I'm confused.
OT: WTF is up with NPR? I have been living under a rock for quite a few years and not really listening to NPR (no car = no car radio = no NPR). Now I'm listening to it online, and it's like a slightly more high-brow CNN, or the radio version of the NY Times. Is this their desperate attempt to appeal to Republicans to avoid the chopping block? Must they appease their corporate wall street benefactors? Where have all the leftists gone?
232: Been that way for a long time now.
LB in 25:
things like setting up mail merges in Word for form letters
I find mail merge quite confusing actually.
229:Did you follow the endless discussion of replevin, all in well-formed grammatical sentences? If you did, means your mind's gone wrong.
What do academics and lawyers do, all day long?
Maybe I'll stick my head in the MRI machine and see if I can find the problem.
I can't reach the switch while my head is in the coil. It's like they designed the thing without considering how you could use it on yourself.
I've been calling them Nice Polite Republicans for years when my wife T. listens to something particularly aggravating on the radio, but I can't take credit for that. I'm not old or interested enough to know when they were as liberal as their reputation would have, if ever.
228
Problem: Not a dick
Solution: Be a dick
Results: Yes, you're a dick
That's seems a bit off. "Problem: not getting laid." Maybe it's because they are being a dick, and so, fair enough, the solution is to be a dick in a slightly different way. But then again, maybe the problem is shyness or bad conversational skills or unrealistic expectations.
the solution is to be a dick in a slightly different way
We usually work on younger people, but I have an opening next Tuesday if you're really interested.
Both Hugo Schwyzer and Hugo Schwyzer's dick tried to be a dick in a different way, and things just got worse.
232: I believe that the trashing of NPR was an achievement of the BushII years.
I blame the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Off topic, but I just noticed that the special drink of the week at the coffee place near where I work is the "Walter White" mocha. This Breaking Bad business is clearly going too far.
I seem to be the only person in the United States who hasn't been following it. Is it really all that?
Off topic, but I just noticed that the special drink of the week at the coffee place near where I work is the "Walter White" mocha.
Does that come with sweetener?
I seem to be the only person in the United States who hasn't been following it. Is it really all that?
I watched one full episode in the 1st season; then three times over the years I would start halfway through an episode. So 1 + 3 x 1/2 maybe. I watched the last half of the finale.
I've caught an hour of Wire and Sopranos here and there and thought they were ok. I watched Mad Men until I quit last year, for cinematography and direction, although I was forcing myself for a couple years.
But I never saw anything in BB that didn't just annoy me. I liked Weeds better, precisely for its silliness.
What I have learned today is that replevin is not a proprietary pain killer.
247: The Wire was the last of the Great Cable Dramas(Tm) that I was fully on board for. I've been pretty far out of the loop for both Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
On the other hand, the folks whose blogs I tend to read have been writing about those shows in such exhaustive detail that I sort-of feel like I've seen them.
nor yet an aphex twin remix
Silliness is unfair.
I liked Weeds because it said that sociopathy is fun fun fun, even when it wrecks your life and you are surrounded by your victims.
When your twelve year old kid murders a drug kingpin's sister with a golf club, and smiles back at you, not feeling a thing...and mom's first thoughts are...that's my boy, and how do I cover...now that's transgressive and funny.
Cranston played such a tormented dyspeptic misanthrope. Fucking Puritan.
I've not seen Weeds, BB, or the Wire, but I'd have to say Weeds is the best because they ran ads with Mary-Louise Parker wearing only an apron.
Maybe the PUA should have read this to help blend in in Denmark.
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There is a source of Diet Coke 5 blocks from my office. I've just discovered a source of Coke Zero just 1 block from my office. I could get regular Coke in my office basement, but I need my artificial sweeteners.
It remains to be seen whether the inferiority of Coke Zero to Diet Coke will outweigh my willingness to walk an extra 4 blocks, each way, to obtain my nectar of sustenance.
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the inferiority of Coke Zero to Diet Coke
That's just wrong.
Anyway, the obvious solution is to get regular Coke in the office basement and get your artificial sweetener fix by adding a couple of packets from the pink, blue, or yellow packets to the regular Coke.
Coke Zero tastes much better than Diet Coke.
Coke Zero tastes so much better than Diet Coke that I'm waiting for Coke -1.
Coke Zero is terrible. It tries too much to be real Coke.
Diet Coke doesn't do that, its comfortable in its own skin. It has a taste that is its own, far superior to its cola brethren.
But I think 256 might be onto something.
Possibly I've found the secret of diabcer or canbetes.
Diet Coke doesn't do that, its comfortable in its own skin. It has a taste that is its own, far superior to its cola brethren.
Have you tried Tab?
I'm on team Coke Zero.
263: does it still exist? It's like you're not secretly a silicon valley billionare at all.
261: practice, practice, practice?
Team Diet Coke, here. Far prefer its clean medicinal taste to the faux Coke.
266: I'm not sure I've ever been to Silicon Valley. I was all over around San Francisco, but the signs were San-this and Santa-that, just like the rest of the state.
Further to 268: Coke Zero falls into the uncanny valley.
268: would you like a nice TaB?
I'm not sure I've actually ever had TaB.
Would you like a nice T@B? (I sure would.)
Even Diet Pepsi is better than Coke Zero. But real Pepsi is not.