Here it is, folks, case in fucking point.

Did I ask, at any point, for opinions on how I should be feeling about any of this? I don’t think so.

In all fairness, she was pretty patient with me for a bit, but as I alluded to, I attempted to apply small course corrections when I should have tried a different course entirely. In reality, this was the cumulative effect of multiple different occasions.

See, my dumb ass didn’t think it was an issue with what I was saying, but how I was saying it. So I figured it was just a matter of trying to be more tactful with my suggestions. Obviously, that wasn’t it.

Sure, she could have been more mature and introspective about it, but so could I. So it’s kind of a wash.

I can’t really blame her because of the shit she was going through. There’s a bit more context that I don’t really want to get into on a public forum, but in hindsight her reaction is understandable.

Kinda hard not to blame myself when it was ultimately my fuck up, however. I’m still dealing with that over 4 years later.

Well, kind of the exact opposite of that. I realize that’s meant to be satire, but that kind of attitude is what got me into trouble.

I left out the exact details for brevity and privacy, but it was a situation where there wasn’t a simple answer. I just didn’t have a good grasp of the concept of active listening.

I was trying to engage with what she was saying, because she had previously told me that it seemed like I didn’t care about her problems. But I just wasn’t saying the right things.

In reality, my previous approach had revolved around keeping my mouth shut because then there was no way I could say anything to fuck it up. But then, in large part thanks to my undiagnosed ADHD, I would tune out without realizing it.

So I engaged in the only way I knew how, by trying to rationalize her experiences when I should have been empathizing with them.

Here’s another thing that I was just reminded of in this very thread, lmfao:

Men are expected to accept unsolicited advice at face value when they want to vent, because we’re supposed to be the ones with all the answers, and if a man is complaining about a problem, then he’s obviously just missing the answer.

This actually blew up my last relationship, right at the beginning of the pandemic, when my girlfriend at the time was stressed from being laid off and we weren’t able to see each other due to the isolation orders.

She would try to vent to me about her problems, looking for support in a time of emotional vulnerability, and I, an inexperienced idiot just trying to be helpful, would suggest solutions that I thought she hadn’t considered. If you can’t guess exactly how that went, you’ve almost certainly never been in a serious relationship.

What made it worse is she would then say to stop mansplaining, which made me defensive because I thought she was tacitly accusing me of being intentionally misogynistic when I was honestly just trying to be helpful. At the time, I figured I just needed to adjust my approach a little bit, not completely change course. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work.

It was only in hindsight, some time after she had dumped my dumb ass, and I had blocked and deleted her number, that I was complaining to my friends and getting the exact same kind of thing back that I realized, “oh wow, I get it now, that is actually really fucking annoying and invalidating.”

It was also around this time, while discussing my experiences with friends who have been diagnosed, that I realized that I might have ADHD. So that definitely hadn’t helped.

In the extremely unlikely event you’re reading this, K, I’m sorry. I figured out what I did wrong, just a little too late.

Yes, thank you, I never would have figured that out without your brilliant insight.

Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned probationary period at the start of any conversation, it can take some time before it becomes clear that the other person just isn’t that interested.

Can I still be annoyed at my time and effort being wasted? Or is it just my fault for being a man on a dating app?

Oh yeah, I’ve seen the other side of things through female friends. They generally have the opposite problem as men.

I’d heard about guys doing stupid shit on dating apps like sending unsolicited dick pics or just going straight for sexual stuff and figured it was maybe a “yeah it happens once in a while” kinda thing, because I’d personally never do something like that. But in fact it seems like a large portion of the interactions are just that bad.

So I can understand not putting in a lot of effort initially. Starting with small talk and making sure it’s not a waste of your time. I do the exact same thing.

But even after it feels like I’ve started to establish a rapport with someone, the conversation still can feel incredibly one-sided. It’s like, okay, at this point you’re just kinda being disrespectful. And it happens over and over again.

As a guy who’s trying dating again, there’s something that keeps coming up that kinda bugs me: talking to women who just put in the bare minimum of effort, expect me to carry the conversation and make all the first moves.

I don’t give two shits about traditional gender roles and I’m all about subverting them. However, I think if you’re in the same boat but still wanna call yourself a “passenger princess” and expect the guy to do everything, you’re kind of a hypocrite.

I’m not saying you are. You missed my point entirely.

The biggest threat to your life from climate change is this kind of doomerism making you suicidal. I’ve been down that road myself.

Either get off your ass and do something about it or stop worrying about it. You’re not helping anyone by making yourself sad.

The problem isn’t people owning an extra house for a nest egg. It’s companies owning hundreds of them.

It’s not even summer yet and I’m already contemplating if I can afford to move to New Zealand for half the year.

I feel like a zombie wouldn’t be able to consent. If they can speak intelligently, they’re not a zombie, they’re something else.

As for marriage, I think the contract would be automatically void, “til death do us part” and all that.

He clearly didn’t care much about the reputation of his business, and in fact the only reason we know of him at all is that he saved the complaints he got!

I dunno, we’re just assuming he kept them for the sick pleasure of it. Maybe he was collecting evidence before he lodged a formal complaint with his material supplier?

Do you think Ea-Nasir would be ashamed that people over 3 millennia later are learning about how shitty his copper was, or would he be proud that people still speak his name?

Or, you could spend your whole life dreaming of the day that God judges your enemies for you, instead of listening to your loved ones telling you to move on and find your own happiness, or you know, learning some actual conflict management skills.

It was actually her obsession with the afterlife and the coming of the end times that led to me cutting off contact with my mother in 2014 and me renouncing my faith.

My mom was a devout Christian my whole life, but she went full-on fire-and-brimstone Bible thumper during her divorce from my dad. My dad had cheated on her multiple times and she’d finally had enough of it.

She hated my dad for walking out, but vehemently denied that fact and instead projected her hatred onto God himself. She would always say my dad (and anyone who supported him on his side of the family) would be judged harshly for his actions in the next life. By the way, she said this about basically anyone she didn’t like, including people she disagreed with politically or morally; it might not surprise you to learn that she was quite a bigot as well.

In the last few years I knew her, she started to obsess over the prophecies in Revelations. She’d constantly send me chain emails about how the various conflicts in the middle east were a sign that Jesus Christ was about to return, or a misquoted article about the US government looking into identity microchips was Obama (the Antichrist, obviously) giving his followers the Mark of the Beast. The last time I spoke to her was in 2014 so I never got to ask her what she thought of Trump and his MAGA hats, but I have a strong feeling the irony would have been lost on her; I once had to explain to her that an article she showed me from The Onion was satire and her response was, “they shouldn’t be allowed to say those things.”

She died in 2020, but not from COVID. Two years earlier, she had let a kidney stone get infected which then progressed to full-on sepsis. It responded to the treatment at the time but the infection damaged her heart, which ended up killing her. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t see a doctor because a kidney stone would have hurt like hell, but then I realized she probably felt that it was just God calling her home.

So yes, anecdotally speaking there are religious people out there who are obsessed with the afterlife. I think people are still inherently afraid of death, though, so they’re not exactly in a hurry to die. But for a religious person who’s ready to die, it’s likely nearly all they can think about.

Why do a lot of Indians on Reddit hate themselves?

FTFY.

And the question kind of answers itself, doesn’t it? They’re on Reddit, of course they hate themselves.

That sounds familiar, yeah.

I figured it was to bait people to install the app. Then when sales of the item dropped, they went “welp, guess people don’t want it anymore,” and discontinued it.

About 6-8 years ago, McDonald’s had a line of like, “gourmet” burgers that came with grilled onions on them and big leafs of Romaine lettuce, those things were delicious but they discontinued them after only like, six months. For a while afterward I would order grilled onions on a regular quarter pounder but one day they said they didn’t do that anymore either.

I’m still not over Taco Bell discontinuing the Quesarito. One day when I tried to order it, they told me you could only get it through the app anymore, but I hate installing apps for every little thing so I didn’t bother. I occasionally ordered through the website and was able to get it there but it eventually disappeared altogether.

Then one day I spotted the chipotle ranch grilled chicken burrito on the value menu and I got hooked on those, but that also disappeared recently. The chicken enchilada burrito that replaced it is a banger, though, and surprisingly cheap.

And before anyone calls me a shill, I’ll say I fucking hate how everything else on their menu is now like $6 or more unless you order it as a combo.

IMO, combos shouldn’t be more than 20% cheaper than ordering items a la carte. Like, it shouldn’t be legal to price things that way. It’s just ridiculous that you get ripped off unless you order like, 500 more calories worth of food than you should really be eating in a single meal.

The chicken enchilada combo box is fucking stupid because of how much food comes in it, and the stacker taco is garbage. They stuff that thing with so many stale, rock hard chips that it’s like eating glass.