My Soylent Is Shipping!
Just got the notification that my Soylent is on its way. So we’ll be drinking goop for a week any day now.
You’re in for a treat.
Your Goal Should Be To Break Up As Quickly As Possible
The article refers to him as the “Railway Romeo,” but actually this dude who has picked up over 500 women on the subway is more like the “Subway Stalker.”
But the bigger problem is that he is terrible at dating.
Note that the dude has met over 500 women, and is still not in a relationship. That’s because his shtick contains this absolutely terrible advice:
“Always war (sic) a suit and carry a briefcase — it communicates strength and security, even if you live with your mom.”
“Wait 60 hours before contacting her. Most men text/e-mail immediately. Throw her off, make her wait.”
Which, summed up, basically reads:
“Pretend you’re someone you’re not in order to get her phone number.”
The problem is, what you get is… her phone number. And maybe a couple of dates. And then, because you’re working your ass off to appear more successful and wittier than you actually are, they get two dates behind your canned banter, and you’re back to sucking on straps to try to find that next hit.
Yet this is not unique advice in dating. There’s all the gags: “Don’t ever fart!” “Dress up super-nice!” “Clean up your apartment!” “Get your small talk good and polished!” “Stick to noncontroversial topics!”
Yet I, the Tyler Durden of the dating universe, tell you not to do any of that stuff.
The goal of dating is to find out who is compatible with you, as quickly as possible. Obscuring your central personality traits will get you to date the wrong people for longer – possibly up to and including a hideously dysfunctional marriage – but what it will not get you is someone who is actually good for you. And you’ll waste months, years, maybe even decades, with someone who doesn’t actually like you but instead has generated affection for this papier-mache facade you have so carefully constructed.
But that facade is not you.
I say, show up to dates dressed nicely, but nicely for you. If you’re only gonna wear T-shirts to fine dining, well, your date oughtta know that right away. If you don’t brush your teeth on a regular basis, that’s fucking icktacular, but again – better to find a woman who’s okay with halitosis than to chew gum for a few weeks and then slowly have her realize your raw-onion-chomping habit is a dealbreaker. If you’re a strident libertarian, don’t downplay that – it’s gonna come out! Discuss the all-soothing balm of the free market!
And yes. Many dates will be disasters. This is not a failure, but a feature: you have successfully discovered that this person is not for you. Many people will not be for you. You need to get in, and get out.
Which seems insane, but dating is a lot like trying on clothes in the store. You don’t put on a pair of too-tight jeans and go, “Well, if I suck in my gut all the time and ignore the tingling in my legs and try not to look at the unflattering things these jeans do to my ass, maybe this will be the perfect fit!” and then wear the jeans for three days straight, trying not to get lasagna stains on them just in case you need to return them, really trying out these terrible terrible jeans before you walk away.
The reason you don’t do that is because a) this would be a hideously uncomfortable way to live, and b) using this “Let’s drag this out as long as possible” approach would take you about four months of trying on jeans before you found a right pair.
No, man. Dating is about experimentation. Most dates don’t work out! So the solution to a failed date is not to present some artificial front to extend the life of a terrible date, but to find more dates.
The subway stalker has 500 numbers and no solid relationships. That’s because he’s gotten very good at lying to people in order to get them interested in him. But that’s a lot like saying, “This new soda tastes better than Coke!” and you open it up and find a dead turtle in a can. Sure, the advertising got them to open it up, but in the end they’re tossing the turtle.
It seems crazy to go, “CANNED DEAD TURTLE, FREE TO GOOD HOME.” But it’s big fucking world, man. Have you looked at what sells on Craigslist? If you’re honest about your deceased reptile status, it may take longer to sell than a nice refreshing Coke, but by God when you find someone who opens your can they will want the dead turtle that is you.
Be honest about your tortoisy status. Be unafraid to be rejected for who you are. Because in the long run, it’s a lot better to be rejected for you who are than to be accepted as someone you’re not.
(Written on Fet, cross-posted here.)
"Dating People" And "Watching Other People Date" Are Two Separate Skills
“She dates a lot of guys!” they cry. “So why does she freak out whenever I get intimate with someone I like?”
That’s because “dating someone” and “sitting at home while your lover’s out dating” are two entirely separate skillsets, chum.
Both are worth having in any poly relationship. But when you’re dating, you’re the recipient of all the good times. You’re getting romanced, you’re getting smooched, you’re having all the fun new conversations of “Oh, I love Smashing Pumpkins, too!” – and the trick is not to get so carried away with New Guy that you forget to come home when you said you would.
That whole “not getting swept up” is a skill. It’s really tough, remembering that you have existing partners you’ve made commitments to when someone who smells really good is nibbling on your neck. And yet a lot of people have mastered that.
But suppressing the waves of joy is an entirely separate thing from “Sitting at home, watching Netflix, feeling pangs of loneliness as your partner’s off gallivanting.” It is an entirely separate thing from “seeing your partner give his lover that special smile that you thought was only meant for you.”
And some people need to train up to that.
Now, as I’ve mentioned, “compersion” should not be the base value of polyamory. It’s great when you’re all psyched for your partner’s date-times… but for most of us there will inevitably come a day where you’re feeling “bleah” and unattractive, and yet that’s not quite enough reason to say, “Okay, you guys were supposed to go to the U2 concert, but instead you should stay at home.”
So you sit home and suck it up, buttercup. And learn to realize that “I feel jealous” and/or “I feel insecure” is not a valid reason to HULK SMASH all of your partners’ happytimes.
Yet I occasionally see the pattern of “Well, s/he just freaked out when I had a relationship, so I’ll shove them out the door to get their own partner – and that will solve everything!” And what you often get is this rancid stew of “ZOMG now my partner has a new boyfriend and they’re so caught up in NRE that they’re punching all my worst buttons, *and still* they are so possessive of me that I can’t date!”
That’s because, as the header of this little essay says, “dating someone” and “watching your lover date someone happily” are not identical skillsets. If you want to work on your partner’s jealousy issues, then yes, absolutely, do that. But don’t do it by pressuring them to date someone now, now, now, on the assumption that once they get their own they’ll be perfectly okay.
The danger is, sometimes that is what they need. But sometimes, that “get ’em hooked up” puts you into a frantic death-spiral where you’re only good as long as each of you are spinning your own separate relationship-plates, forcing you to pressure the other partner into increasingly bad relationships because fuck it, it doesn’t matter who they’re dating but they have to date *someone* or else I can’t keep sleeping with Luanne.
At some point, most poly folk are going to stay at home to do boring homework while their partners are out watching the fireworks. That’s how life works. And the sooner you can learn to be okay with that, the better.
(Written on FetLife, cross-posted here.)
On Being Very Manly, For A Single Saturday
This Saturday, I got together with my friend Eric to be extremely manly. This was not our ostensible goal, of course – the end result was to make a custom-planned bookcase that would fit into an alcove in his attic. Still, we were hauling out all sorts of power tools and indulging in very focused destruction and resting our hands on our hips as we debated how to approach the next step.
It’s weird for me, being a guy.
I have a lot of hobbies, and most of them aren’t really masculine in the traditional sense. I write, of course, which is a field sadly dominated by men (also see the need for Women Destroy Science Fiction), but alas, “dominated by men” is not the same as “manly.” Writing stories was the sort of thing that got you beaten up in sixth grade. As was having pretty pretty princess fingernail polish. As was playing D&D. As was discussing fine dining.
But operating limb-severing equipment to make something useful with your bare hands? I would have been the envy of every sixth-grade bully. (And those bullies were very concerned that I acted and dressed and looked like A Real Guy, to the point where they’d corner you in the gym and purple nurple you if you weren’t totally heteronormative. They were society’s underaged enforcers, telling me that real men didn’t wear corduroy pants, they wore fuckin’ jeans.)
My woodworking is but one of several hobbies I have, but it is the one where I am most acutely aware of society’s expectations – mainly because I’m fulfilling them, albeit inadvertently. I’ve learned to operate independently of society’s desires, because frankly so many of the things I adore are things that mainstream America considers a little freakish.
But when I power up the circular saw and start cutting shelves, a weird thing happens: my happiness at what I’m doing gets layered with a pride that I can discuss this with just about anyone, and have them laud me for my actions.
When I built my arcade cabinet, guys of all stripes said, “Aww, man, I wish I was that handy.” Because there’s an encoded signal in American society that says, “Men should be handy,” and on some level most dudes feel a little unworthy when they have to call in a repairman. We are the ones expected to fix and build things, and though that’s a bullshit sexist assumption that closets men into roles and denigrates the myriads of other talents that dudes can have yet not get credit for, it is kinda nice to do something and feel that glow of collective approval.
Yet still I had people going, “Oh, you’re, making, uh… an arcade cabinet? Okay.” Once again, I tumbled into the “nerd” role and felt that tiny sadness of confounding people.
But when I make a bookshelf with Eric, I don’t have to apologize for my hobbies for a while. I can slot it into my “small talk” repertoire, the kind of harmless thing that goes over well anywhere. Strangers on the bus think this is an awesome thing. I’m who people think I should be, and having that pivot into alignment with what I naturally do is an intoxicating experience.
For this slim sliver of life, I did not have to answer the question, “Why would you want that?” And oh God is that a glorious freedom.
And I wonder if the “traditionally” manly guys, the ones who go fishing and hunting and watch football and love cars and do all the things that Budweiser ads quietly imply that they should do, are aware of how much society covertly aligns with their loves. I feel strangely buoyed when I quietly walk alongside of societal expectations, but that’s because most of what I do is so at odds with them. Do they feel weighed down when they do something outside of the quote-unquote masculine sphere? Would they even be aware of that pressure, except as some vague discomfort that they’re not supposed to be doing this? Or are those guys so confident in what they do that they have ceased to give a damn altogether?
I don’t know. I don’t walk in those spheres.
But I do know that thanks to having spent the last two Saturdays struggling with a circular saw, there’s a whole breed of guy that I can now carry on conversations with. I can say, “Jesus, because my table saw only has a rip width of 12″ – twelve fuckin’ inches, man! – we had to spend two hours measuring and clamping down a fence to get one perfect cut with the circular saw,” and have them sympathize as we both indulged in a bit of societally-approved tool fetishization.
I can connect with men I had no interfacing point beforehand, and now we can grasp calloused hands for a brief period of time and discuss how somehow, that board cups or bows or blows out and you have to jury-rig a way to fix it. I’m expected to be able to discuss that. And I can.
Then I go back to nerding out on Twitter, and they back off a bit. Dudes shouldn’t be too into Twitter, you know. That social network thing. Being super-into it is a little weird. And I’ll still be here blogging, even though maybe when I bring up my blog on the bus you can see people struggling to find common ground with you, mentioning that they write posts on Facebook sometimes, even though they don’t really, they just don’t get it.
And society will step back just a little bit, as it always has, befuddled by my desires, unsure what to do. Until the next time I build something.
Nobody Should Self-Identify As A "Gamer."
The Escapist just posted their editorial stance on “Gamergate,” which boiled down is essentially this: There’s a difference between “Someone who plays games” and “A gamer.” Gaming’s gone mainstream, and lots of people twiddle about with Candy Crush – but there’s a difference between dispensable games like that and the sort of deep richness that you have to devote to World of Warcraft before you become a Level 70 Warlock.
So The Escapist focuses on stuff that Gamers care about, man. The hard-core segment. The gearheads. And they will be unapologetic about loving Gamer stuff.
Except I’ve read The Escapist on and off for years, and I don’t recall them devoting one fucking word to Scrabble tournaments.
“But Scrabble isn’t hard-core gaming, man!” to which I say, “You clearly don’t fucking know the hard-core Scrabble players.” Watch Word Wars. These fuckers memorize entire dictionaries, spending their days hitchhiking from tournament to tournament, living off the spoils of their gaming – cursing the luck-based segment of this game, trading bad-beats stories, dreaming of the world championships.
What did you do for your World of Warcraft, man? Sit in a room? These guys spent $300 they didn’t have on a trip to New York, hoping like hell they’d win the $10,000 prize so they could not lose money on this week’s tournament. And some of them went home broke. Some of them couch-surfed for months so they could keep chasing their dream.
That’s hardcore gaming.
…oh, wait, that doesn’t have anything to do with videogames. And as it turns out, The Escapist will discuss Scrabble, but only if it’s related to videogames.
See, and the issue with co-opting the Gamer tag, as though playing lots of videogames somehow elevates your goddamned soul to the next level of Bodhisattva, is that people are trying to covertly reduce the world of “gaming” to “videogames only.” If you’re a Gamer, you play lots of videogames. Because, in this myopic fucking world, videogames are really all that exist. We get to covertly erase all the other styles of gaming around, to act as though Gaming only involves the shit we want to play.
…except it’s not even really videogames that exist when we’re discussing who gets to be a Gamer. It’s the right kind of videogames. Depression Quest, some nerdly little text-based thing, isn’t a videogame! It doesn’t have bearded guys stabbing people. No, videogames only really count if they involve hulking dudes slaughtering lots of people in a constant stream of bloodshed, relying on quick reflexes and a smidge of strategy. You can’t be super into the Sims and be a Gamer – if it’s not violent, it’s not counting, man.
…but wait. You not only have to play these games, but play them in a certain way. Because shit, you can’t just pick up Call of Duty with your bros and be a Gamer. You have to play hard-core – no, not hard-core like Scrabble, but hard-core as in “dedicating a certain amount of your time to beating the game in socially-acceptable ways.”
All these hierarchies and narrowed definitions to become a term that encompasses all of gaming.
Look. I get the issues we’re dealing with here, because to be honest, beating Shadows of Mordor involves more skill than getting to a high level on Candy Crush. And if you’re worried about your style of gaming not being catered to, well, shit, I feel you. I’m a huge pen-and-paper RPG fan, and I’ve just spent a decade watching that hobby die. It sucked, not having anything new published – and thank God to Kickstarter for reinvigorating that process! Nobody should have to love a game style and see no one new creating it.
But… Gamer?
That’s the word you’re self-identifying as?
Get the fuck out of here.
The Escapist defensively goes, “Well, look at gearhead culture with cars! That’s the same thing as gaming!” And it isn’t, mainly because they’re calling themselves “gearheads.” They are not walking around accusing each other of stupid goddamned terminology like, “You aren’t a real Driver, man.” They aren’t, in general, trying to wave off the very existence of all the other people who just get in cars and bop around by claiming they’re second-class citizens who don’t deserve to discuss what they like in cars.
But Gamers?
Oh, they fucking are very much waving off the existence of all other game styles.
See, when I discuss Gamergate and why I don’t think it’s about journalistic ethics – especially since, you know, the core “scandal” that kicked off Gamergate was supposedly about a woman sleeping with a guy to get a good review of her game, even though that guy never reviewed her game, and wrote literally half a sentence in his entire career about her game and that was before they started dating – I have people telling me, “Well, you don’t understand Gamergate because you’re not a Gamer!”
And that’s how Gamer gets used. To exclude. To go, “You’re not as deep into this culture as I am, so I am better than you are.” Except, you know, I just purchased the Ps4 after months of anguishing between that and the XBox One, because I have like 25,000 achievement points on the Xbox that I didn’t want to lose (or 35,000 when you count my adjusted True Achievements score), and I made the wrong choice in purchasing the Atari 7800 way back in the day and so I didn’t want to pull the switch too soon, and I’ve been gaming for the better part of thirty years and apparently I just don’t count.
Look, you wanna call yourself something that indicates a distinction, like “Achiever” or something like that, okay, fine. But your very terminology is poisoned. You’re standing in the center of a vast and broad continuum, one that literally spans human history, of all the games that have ever been played, and trying to do a land-grab for that one term so your pathetically myopic vision of How Gaming Works can own everything.
You’re not. You are inherently a subset. There is nothing true about your insistence that you are a Gamer. What you are is a dude who’s decided that these kinds of videogames are the best, and that’s perfectly fine – but you’ve become increasingly strident whenever someone suggests that maybe, just maaaybe, there are other ways to enjoy games and they are just as fulfilling for people. Even equally as valid.
Except you’re so tied up in your self-worth, because videogaming in this style is really all you have to offer, that the concept that someone else might be having fun in a non-approved way challenges you. You don’t see other people having fun; you see other people threatening this teetering pillar of your sad accomplishments, because if they haven’t strived all their lives to beat Dead Space on the hardest level, they’re not as good as you are.
To which I say, fuck your definition.
Though I have often lived the Gamer lifestyle (as witness the many hours I put into beating “Green Grass and High Tides” on Rock Band Expert), I reject the hierarchy you’re offering. I reject this embedded idea that if I can’t game the way that you like to play, then my enjoyment is somehow lessened. I reject this toxic nerd idea that love is somehow measured in obsession.
I realize that magazines make money off of catering to their clients, and the Escapist is no different. The Escapist claims that hey, all games are just as good, but then proceeds to devote a lot of time to the sadness of how it is that this culture cannot last as it is, and talks about how great these Gamers are. And in doing so, they perpetuate the soft idea that hey, This Gaming is the way things should be, just the way that gearheads in car culture are the true worshipers of the flame of fandom, and you should be proud to be here.
No. You should be happy to be here. You should be happy to find fellow people who share this narrow-minded vision of how you view games, and can share your opinions with them. But you shouldn’t be proud, any more than you should be proud to stand next to a guy who also drinks your brand of beer at the bar next to you, because you drinking beer indicates a preference and not a superiority.
Now get off my damn lawn.