Best way to do that is to be somewhat muscular.

And even then, guys, really get your fucking expectations and entitlements and just like, take them and shove them all into a duffle bag, squeeze any fragile ego you might have laying around in there too, and just throw that thing down a well and forget about it.

Seriously, if you can just “let go” of all the things you wish you had involving dating and relationships, and just learn to enjoy life and enjoy being around people, you will be a thousand, million times happier than the dudes who spend all their time trying and even succeeding to get laid when they want it.

If what you’re doing is frustrating you and making you unhappy… change. That’s your greatest power, just change. Go somewhere else, change what you want, change who you are and be genuine about it. (When you stop caring, it also has the bonus effect of making you cool, and thus wildly attractive to people who get to know you.)

What does this have to do with ANYTHING. It shows brain damage. You should get your brain checked.

Yep. I’ve had substance abuse problems and severe depression my whole life. I’ve had people telling me I have “genius” intelligence but I can’t do some of the most basic tasks like paying bills and managing finances and making any plans for my future whatsoever.

But I know quantum physics! Lots of use for that shit, right?? I can’t count the number of job interviews where the hiring manager asked me about interactions between quarks and the strong nuclear force.

As an aside my therapist just diagnosed me as autistic, as a middle-aged man that’s a whole basket of cats I don’t know what to do with yet.

I don’t drink or eat a lot of carbs, I am trim and lean. But I still wouldn’t dress like that simply because bare midriff doesn’t look good on men unless you’re fully trying to imitate the 80’s movie aesthetic for laughs.

if i dressed like that, she would probably injure herself laughing.

That’s not a definition of middle class at all.

Christ that’s the point of what I wrote and the point of this post. That’s some reddit-level density my friend.

If you define “middle class” as having a phone and a car and a job, then yes, there are countless middle-class families who get some form of assistance.

Middle-class, working families who live in their fucking car.

And coming soon to a developed nation near you!

As an aside, some people with issues have used the falling birthrates around the world as an excuse to push for far-right, draconian policies regulating people’s bodies like banning birth-control, criminalizing abortions, and lowered age-of-consent laws.

We need to all make it very clear when this shit comes up that the problem has far more to do with economics and infrastructure than any social moral failing. We need better heathcare and safety nets so couples can afford to have a baby. We need lowered housing costs so people aren’t afraid they will have to raise a family in a single-bedroom studio apartment. We need paid time off and parental leave. We need mass-transit so a family with two working parents don’t also have to afford two cars. It’s fucking ASBURD how much American families are getting fleeced.

If our policies and politics actually cared about taking care of our future, they would be making it easier for families to have babies and adjusting the world, not still expecting people to have to work two-jobs for twenty years to save up enough for a downpayment on a shitty house.

My partner’s family from Philippines grew up in a home without appliances like refrigerators, like many, many people in developing countries.

So while now they have every modern convenience, old habits die hard and stomachs seem to adapt to even the most adverse conditions of foodstuffs.

Not mine. I love their cooking but can only eat food that I’ve seen opened or cooked in front of me. They will legitimately leave meat dishes out on the table for two days or more and then simply “reheat” and consider it good to serve. The cabinets are full of things like mayo, cheese dips, opened gravies and open bottles of fruit juice.

I have had some of the very worst food poisoning in my life from inadvertently eating something there like chicken salad that I thought was fresh, but made with hard-boiled eggs that had been sitting on a counter in summer heat for several days that a “friend” brought over so they “wouldn’t waste.”

Of course I’m the only one that gets sick, so I’m the “special one” that everyone now thinks has some terminal illness and treats me like a hospice patient.

I want seats next to nobody. How hard will that be to pull off?

I was raised by hoarders. I was the only one who ever did any cleaning. I was the only one in the house who knew how to operate the washing machines and vacuum cleaner at age 10. I made huge efforts sometimes to keep the place clean and organized, which turned into huge dramas as my parents used the new clean space as a reason to fight and be victims, until they would bring more shit in and leave it piled on top of the old shit.

To this day, if I could live in a blank, white box with nothing else at all, it would be heaven.

No, you don’t.

You miss who you were when everything looked like this.

You were young, you were discovering the internet like a new frontier, every new app you tried or new album you found or new comedy website was like discovering a new country. You could while away hours without responsibility or care or trauma, or at least nearly as much. You were not cynical and jaded yet.

Nostalgia isn’t a longing for when things were simpler, it is a longing for when you were simpler.

It seems so obviously counterproductive that the only thing I can think is that they’re enjoying it, like it’s a kink to get into other people’s sex lives and tell them what they should and should not do.

No, seriously. If you spend time in the conservative, christian communities like where I grew up, you hear these people just spend night and fucking day thinking about “sin” and the ways that nasty, dirty, eeeeevil sinners like to sin and all the details about what manner of sin they partake in… and so on.

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Next thing you’re going to tell us is that we SHOULDN’T become absolutely obsessed with the personal habits and sex lives of other people whom I will never meet nor be involved with in any way! Preposterous!

The best story I ever heard about this was a single dad who had to take his teenage daughter to the doctor because she got an infection from inserting a toothbrush handle or something else that wasn’t sanitary, and instead of giving her ANY kind of scolding or negative judgement, he was very loving and helped her laugh it off, and then he just left on her pillow a $100 gift card to Adam & Eve or some other large, commercial, adult site that lets you buy gift cards.

I don’t think it’s appropriate to even suggest an age here, but I think as a parent you will know when it’s time to have the talk/leave the card.

Kind of like asking if we can stop picking up stones and rocks and using them to beat each other and instead use them to build homes.

This isn’t a new fight. There will always be people who take our tools and abuse them by using them to hurt others. That’s what we’re fighting against, people who use our tools to hurt people instead of doing good. Unfortunately, if we just let people who collect stones and sticks for hurting people be, and not push them out of our village, they will just grow in number and strength so we can’t just block it out, we can’t live and let live around those who would take your life if they grew strong enough.

If it’s tiring and annoying to see people have to always yell at the club-and-rock-wielding thugs and throw rocks back at them, you don’t have to get involved, but don’t decry those who DO have the courage to throw rocks back. If they didn’t do this, the rocks would start hitting you next.

Do you think people become more conservative with age or is it society becoming more progressive and leaving them behind?

I am getting up there in years and seeing this play out over and over.

I think every generation wants to be more progressive than the last, but we tend to carry baggage of fear and insecurity through the generations. Or more specifically, older people tend to gain the political and monetary capital needed to affect policy and shape our societal outlook and attitude. They will always be more conservative than the younger generation who will want more freedoms and personal rights, inherently, and as the ruling class will clash with newer sensibilities, over and over.

What we’re asking here, is the conservatism reflected in our elders and leadership now broadly more harmful or helpful? Are we out of the touch or is it the kids who are wrong?

I think it’s a mix but mostly it’s not our real problem. Our real problem is that no matter what our age, we have greatly misunderstood how our own existence works. Most people have been taught that they have brains designed to exercise logic and reason and that brains are the best thing ever if you use them and make them smart.

No, our brains are not logical tools. We are not a rational species. There was no “age of enlightenment.” It’s all a hoax. Our brains are tools designed to write a story to explain how you feel. And that’s it. It doesn’t even have to make sense. When we all learn how our brains actually work we will collectively make better decisions, have more compassion for each other, and likely sink into even deeper despair as we all start to realize we have no free will.

We should all be learning that we’re all children. Some of us, over time, gain a lot more baggage and issues, but that shit just layers right on top of the “child” parts so we’re all just basically children with complex problems.

The brain doesn’t “prune” itself. The brain you had when you were 12, you have that same damn brain. It doesn’t change. Stuff just gets added to it.

Almost anyone with an irrational political stance betrays their youth.

Political ideology has always captivated the passions of youth, but isn’t successfully implemented or even internalized except by people with age and experience and emotional regulation.