Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you're fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we've had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You're creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you're socially rejected because it makes people 'uncomfortable.'
am i a victim of air because I have to breathe it? or a victim of capitalism because i have to work to pay my bills?
there is no getting outside of it. every 'woke' person i've ever met also hates men for sharing their feelings, almost as if they are just virtue signalling...
the only person who a man can ever open up w/o consequence is a therapist, because it's a professional paid relationship.
sucks, but that's how it is. and nobody is interested in changing it.
people fall in love with fictional characters in books and other media, mostly as a product of their imagined interactions with the character.
this isn't any different, it's just a AI version of it. it's still mostly imaginative fantasy at the end of the day, and it's a form of escapism from the real world.
the new yorker had an article about it where a housewife basically had AI boyfriend who was her version of Geralt from the witcher, and was using it to cope with the fact she had a stillbirth from 5 years earlier and her AI Geralt was the only one who 'really understood her' and her struggles with the stillbirth trauma. it's all entirely a fiction in her head, but it's a mechanism for self-soothing, that is relatively harmless compared to her say, doing drugs or divorcing her husband or other methods of coping that might manifest. it was basically fan-fiction with an AI agent helping her co-write.
People choose to be dumb. Just like they choose to be lazy.
no psyop is required. biology doesn't like making an effort if it doesn't have to do so. you can see lots of non-human examples of this as well.
getting human beings outside of their default biological impulses to be lazy and not think... takes years of training and work. hence why so few people are able to achieve it. and you can always default back to it if you don't maintain the effort consistently
It's just the mental version of obesity crisis. It's people choosing the easy and unhealthy option because it's cheaper and readily available, than the far more difficult and more costly option of eating well and exercise.
Yeah. I have become painfully aware of this the past few years. People's obessive use of AI and social media has distorted their real life interactions to be far less substantail than they used to be.
Which is why so many people, even who are very social, are so lonely. We have created a society that does not create substantial connections anymore, and obsesses over trivialities, and endless repeats and broadcasts them as fundamental truths.
I have noticed that online, and in IRL, nobody asks each other questions anymore. What they do, is make accusations. And it's miserable and draining to be constantly accused of stuff. I feel like this shift started around 2021.
Back in 2018 I could meet a stranger and they would be like 'oh where are you from? oh cool, what was it like there, I have not been!'
now it's like 'i bet you are from x, oh you're not? well you SEEM LIKE a person from x. oh you are from y? THAT'S WEIRD. I haven't been there but i bet it's weird because you are weird.' Or they try to tell me that I can't be from y, because they KNOW i am from x. It's so bizarre. Increasingly the strangers I meet basically tell me that they know the TRUTH about me... even as I tell them that what they are saying isn't true.
I basically can't have conversations anymore, at least like I used to. I used to be able to sit there for 20-30m and talk about a single book I read to someone, and they'd ask me all about it and I'd ask them about a book they like. Now they just jump down my throat or lecture me and never ask me any questions, and switch to another topic after like a few minutes and say dismissive stuff about how books are outdated and dumb. Or even if they do like to read, they get all bent out of shape that I don't read the same type of stuff as they do.
Same with movies, same with hobbies, same with my job or my family or other stuff that I used to be able to connect with people over. Used to be a nice back and forth, now it'd dodging bullets and if you don't give the 'right' answer they get angry and dismiss you as a bad person.
And on the flip side... AI gives these people what they want. It just parrots back to them what they want to hear about how wonderful and great they are and how everything they do is amazing and valid and their life is so hard.... which is precisely what another human being is NOT going to give you...
you could also get a job in a related field. not enough people are willing to do this.
or take a job for lower pay. lots of smaller companies and non profits need tech skills, but they can't afford to pay market rate salaries and many graduates won't look at them. my company is one such company. but we provide such a great work environment... most of tech staff have been here for 10-20 years or longer. our entry level salary is only about 70K, compared to a market rate closer to 95K.
except we also offer gold plated healthcare, 10% retirement matching after 1 year, 75% off transit passes, and WFH 4 days a week... but most people only care about the SALARY IS LOW, even if our total comp is higher. plus i guess we're not going to fast track you to making 200-400K a year. our senior programmer makes like 150K.
by definition very few people get those connections and opportunities. how many student research jobs are there compared to majors? like 1 per 50 students?
it took me 100s of applications to find employment anytime i was out of work. dozens of interviews. usually got 2-3 offers all at the same time.
most people need 6-12 months to find a job. it is a long process. even if the economy is booming, it will still take people 3-6 months. when it's really bad, it's years.
because the cost is determined by the insurance company, not the service provider.
different patience get different costs based on their insurance. costs are wildly different depending on the location, the provider, etc. a mri at one hospital can cost your $500, at another a mile away it can be $5000.
there really isn't 'flat pricing' in medical care. pricing is basically negotiated for each patient at the time of the procedure, and often retroactively changed.
it loves cheap gender-based attacks and blaming individual choices for failures of our society at large.
instead of taking about stagnating wages and impossible education/healthcare costs, we just mock young people for being poor. and since young men are poorer than young women, subverting traditional breadwinner gender roles, they get mocked even harder.
on the radio yesterday NPR was mocking people for not going out and spending $50 on two drinks. telling gen z that pre-gaming, nips, etc were all 'cheating' at life, and they should just 'grow up' and fork over their money they don't have to overpriced bars and restaurants because they are 'killing the restaurant industry'.
it's absurd. personally I am doing quite well, I'm in a top 15% income bracket, but all around me society and my peers are constantly acting like anyone who isn't making a top 5% income is a failure of a human being, because if you aren't filthily rich you are clearly lazy and pathetic! I've even had people straight up tell me I shouldn't have been born because my parents were not rich and couldn't pay for my college and give me a downpayment on a house...
and i'm in my 40s. i can't imagine how awful it is to be like 25 and in a mountain of debt and being told by society/friends/family you're a pathetic loser for trying to climb your way out of it by eating cheap food.
didn't you know we're all poor losers who never grow up when we could just get jobs in finance and become Michelin star rated chefs if we 'made an effort'??
but when women do 'girl dinner' it's celebrating their independence or something...
it is. people are too stupid to read instructions.
they also do stupid stuff like think they can 'make it go faster' if they turn up the oven to 500 when it calls for 350, and wonder why their whole house is now filled with smoke.
they also irrational cling to bad habits because it was what their mom did or something.
Which feelings?
Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you're fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we've had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You're creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you're socially rejected because it makes people 'uncomfortable.'