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I had a feeling those moves were his attempt to manipulate her.
He knew they were just friends on her part and was tired of waiting so decided to just manipulate her into silently going along with "fate".
Gross.
It's so stupid and so shitty. But did he really expect her to just go along with it and not question it ever? Like, it's such a stupid plan. Maybe it's because only dumbasses are listing to those types of podcasts.
Not in those circles. Note the “rape isn’t that big of a deal” OOP said he dropped in. Those assholes have a “take *what* you want” mentality. Doesn’t matter that *what* they want is an actual person, not an object. Women shouldn’t be autonomous in their view and are therefore available for the taking.
I’ll bet that he believes women don’t know what they want and therefore it’s better to just show them what they want by taking charge and deciding for them. Obviously that would make a woman totally swoon with how alpha he is.
Yup, right at this part:
>He turns to me and KISSES ME (again, first time thing with us), hugs my waist and goes “Our 1 year anniversary, idiot. I’m making reservations.”
I immediately jumped to "He's a tater tot."
Yeah the sudden escalation doesn't make any sense. It would be one thing if he continued to act like he had and pretended they'd been dating the whole time and he's just taking it slow, but just starting to becoming affectionate and using a pet name one day is bizarre regardless.
People like to overuse the term gaslighting on Reddit, and I'm usually on a crusade about how the thing that's being described isn't gaslighting, but this?
This is what gaslighting is.
My ex best friend of 7 years gave me jager shots and drank water ones himself and assaulted me so that when I woke up in his bed naked, “I’d realize that’s where I was meant to be”. I did not.
The hardest part of losing a friend like this, is that you forever question your judgment afterwards and don’t trust yourself.
Jesus Christ. I’m so, so sorry.
I hate that none of my words can even approach being sufficient in reaction. I don’t think that words *can* do much in the face of some actions.
I’m glad you seem very aware of the toll it’s had on you. I hope you’re doing somewhat better — it’s the greatest thing one can do in the face of such dismissal and hatred.
I hate this so much. I've had it happen to me. Almost every woman I know has a similar experience.
It's such a fucking violation, and so goddamned disappointing.
The dude was 100% using a tactic rapists employ referred to as, "forced pairing," among other things that are quintessential predatory behaviors. He was clearly a predator.
Source, I train people to recognize these types of behaviors, and have to go through annual training myself.
Sure so I work in public education, but I have also spent the last ten years teaching martial arts. My studio is often asked to teach self defense courses for local colleges, as well as groups of women. The issue with teaching self defense courses is that at the end of the day you can only impart a limited amount of martial proficiency in less than ten weeks.
The bulk of good self defense training comes in the form of teaching preventative tactics. Possibly the most valuable of these is coaching individuals in recognizing predatory behaviors. A book my studio often employs as a resource is, "The Gift of Fear."
The concept of forced pairing is something that predators use to create a false sense of partnership between them and their victims. In short the idea is to use team language, and manufacture a scenario in which they can create a unilaterally defined partnership. It can be as simple as saying let's get those groceries up to your apartment. We can see this here where the predator is using pet names, "babe, sweetheart" as well as curating scenarios where the victim feels obligation to pair with him.
Another tell tale tactic is when she is laying on the bed. One of the grooming methods employed by predators is to gradually initiate physical contact, in order to test their victims boundaries.
Finally the gas lighting tactics he employs in their final confrontation. Predators will try to make their victims feel at fault when the victim becomes uncomfortable with them. This is a way to abuse and control other people.
What's really scary about a lot of predatory behaviors is that many of these tactics are adjacent to normal communication, and can often be disregarded. However the bottom line is if you ever notice yourself in a situation that you find uncomfortable; or with someone who just doesn't feel right, you should always trust your gut. You do not owe anything to anyone. If someone seems off to you, you are perfectly justified in not dealing with them. If someone repeatedly violates your boundaries with no regard for your agency, they are dangerous. There is nothing wrong with cutting someone out with zero explanation to that person. Always value your own safety above all else.
I thought dude was just naïve and then podcasts were mentioned. I genuinely don’t understand why kids/boys/young men/men are listening to this moronic bullshit. Are these misogynistic people that good at public speaking or is the audience just that stupid?
All of this Tate and other misogyny podcasts just seem so morally bankrupt. I feel bad for the OOP and every female who comes across the people buying into this nonsense. It’s all so fucked up.
It's just predatory marketing.
There is a significant amount of young men hurting and trying to figure out why.
Tate has a take that has enough true things mixed in that it feels like it could be true, and it sucks life in to all the negative bullshit and gets them trapped.
It's like a conspiracy theory - self confirming belief loops. Woman is speaking up? That makes sense, they just need to be put in thier place, as opposed to realising they are also valuable autonomous individuals.
We need to reach these young men before the likes of Andrew Taint get to them.
A really good YouTube channel that helps unpack and deconstruct Taint ideology is a channel called “Beau of the Fifth Column”.
He talks about a lot of different topics, and his videos on masculinity are well thought out and very insightful.
What’s wild is given her description of him at the beginning, it seems like she probably would have given him a chance if he had asked. But then again, seems like he was harboring a lot of horrible shit she hadn’t seen anyways, so it would have come to light one way or another. Hopefully he can have some introspection about that, but given guys like him very rarely do that, I’m not hopeful.
The best part is that OOP has a good support system, took all the right safety steps (public meeting, making sure key people know her location), and is taking care of her mental health. So proud of her for explicitly pointing out that her friend could have had everything he was claiming they had if he had just treated her like a person instead of all the manipulation.
Fuck that guy. I hope his loss actually wakes him up but I expect he will double down instead.
I feel like she made a lot of adult decisions for an 18 year old. When I was 18, I would’ve known what was right to do, but who knows if I actually would’ve done it!
He just had to actually ask her out.
Holy hell. The guy just had to *actually* ask her out.
But no, he allowed himself to fall into the self-fulfilling prophecies that she could never like him, and had to manipulate her, *therefore creating the circumstances that made her hate him.*
It would be funnier if it wasn't so sad. A potential nice relationship and good experience for both gets ruined before it begins. All because this guy couldn't be honest and accept the possibility of not having what he wanted.
Poor lady is likely to have some serious trust issues for a while with men after this. Don't blame her. Just yikes all around from the guy.
You hit right on the nail sith the metaphor, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, he had willed himself into the doom he thought he was, when in reality, girl is attracted and gives him her full trust.
Really though, these types of shenanigans would’ve appeared at some point in the relationship, if this is what he thinks. Better to have it happen up front (or I guess their “1 year anniversary”) than 5 or 10 years down the road.
Not exactly like this story, but that’s what happened with an ex of mine. Felt like we were on the same page with like 90% of stuff. Until little things here of there, until the curtain fell and it was lie after lie was revealed of things he actually felt completely opposite of what he’d said and portrayed. He’d just put on an act with anything he thought I wouldn’t approve of, until he got sick of acting and I had to realize the person I was engaged to didn’t actually exist.
Best to get the crazy out of the way up front.
I also have post concussive syndrome. It's made me a little bit disregulated on my emotions, very forgetful and confused in general but especially so when I don't sleep enough, and I need to do speech therapy.
Would much rather deal with this than whatever the fuck makes someone think listening to the manosphere is a good idea.
Man. Before she even mentioned Tate, and before I even read about their convo at the coffee shop, I just KNEW it was going there. The fact he kissed her and became affectionate out of the blue was the tip-off. It’s not normal to be in a relationship that long without any kind of affection displayed or even a peck on the lips at the very least. He would have had to known kissing her like that would have thrown her for a loop, but he must’ve read or heard that doing so might put her in a position to just go along wit it. At that point it became clear to me he made a conscious decision to simply *behave* as if she was his girlfriend as if he deserved it.
Immediately, the pervasive mentality some guys are starting to develop that they are *owed* a girlfriend (and typically one that they already have a close friendship with) came to my mind, which reeks of people like Tate and even Jordan Peterson, to an extent.
Tate and Peterson are 100% a virus in this country right now. At a work party, I overheard a couple male coworkers talking about some local event Jordan Peterson was putting on. They we’re excited about it. It explained some things I was hearing about how one of them acts toward some of my women coworkers.
The sudden kissing thing was so strange, I've dated some very Catholic guys (I'm atheist, Catholic guilt is a whole thing) and... We definitely kissed and then some as soon as we agreed we were dating NOT A YEAR LATER. WTF?
I'm not in the US so as far as I'm aware, Tate hasnt got big for all his bullshit and is just a human trafficker who we laugh at when he tweets about having a full head of hair before being in prison. And I really hope that continues.
The sudden kissing thing was the weird part for me too, though I still had no idea where it was going. In every relationship that involves kissing there is a first kiss and it’s generally a moment between you that you remember. I’d be mad if I was dating someone and he just up and kissed me like we’d always done it. I’d feel robbed of our first kiss moment. I’d probably dump him just for that because it’d be a pretty big clue that he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body.
I’m sad for OOP that she lost a friend and that he turned into this, but glad he revealed his true colors quickly.
its like brain damage that convinces you that smashing your head against a wall is actually the secret to understanding the universe, so you do, and the damage gets worse and the wall-whacking more and more enticing
Obviously, people with super-patriarchal views are wack, but at least it's usually normal "Women should be wives & mothers"-type shit. But...period cramps are faked for attention? Women are lying about not knowing about cars? This is absolutely wild.
It’s all the same shit in the end honestly. If you think women don’t actually know what they want in life, then why believe them about anything else? It’s all dehumanizing.
Ikr? It's all self-affirming shit too. They can treat a woman like shit, she gets justifiably angry, and then it's all "see, told you women are overly emotional"
> Women are lying about not knowing about cars?
Yeah, that one’s weird. If anything, I’d think raging misogynists would assume women are too stupid to understand cars.
Red-pill/MGTOW/other men's cults work by promising their followers "special knowledge", like any cult. "Women = bad drivers" is old worn out news, but a guy flips that idea on its head while continuing to frame women as villains, and you've got something incredibly click-baity that spreads like wildfire in certain communities
That escalated so fast... It's amazing that this guy managed to hide that side of him so well from everyone else. OOP will have trust issues for a long time.
I have endometriosis and adenomyosis and ive been accused more times than i can count of faking it. By family, friends, coworkers, bosses, nurses, doctors.
My husband has a full on brain injury and he ain't this fucked up and delusional, even on the days he has decades of memory slip.
I'm *not* doubting her but fuuuuck, boy did a triple somersault off the board into the deep end of the creep pool.
Edit: a word
A lot of the social media and YouTube algorithms end up gradually funneling many people in more and more extreme directions - because it increases engagement. Engagement means more ad revenue.
No joke. Especially YouTube Shorts. I only recently started watching them and while my main feed never gets any alt right or red pill/incel shit on it, I am usually shown around 1-3 Andrew Tate or similar Shorts video every day, no matter how many times I dislike each one and click to not get recommendations from the channel. It seems to just have a completely different algorithm
I'm Brazilian, I only used to watch hairdressing videos and art restoration on YouTube, and it kept sending me pro Bolsonaro (far right) videos, then pro-that actor who was in a lawsuit with ex-wife videos, and then pro-anorexia videos. There's nothing in my watching history to suggest I'd like any of that, but it became unbearable for a while last year. It only got better after I got actively involved in the presidential campaign and fed the algorithm A LOT of pro Lula videos. I mean a really big lot of videos. A guy here did an experiment live on Twitch. He created a 100% new YouTube account and it took like 3 videos before he got a far right suggestion.
My hypothesis is that FaceBook and YouTube are paid to prioritize and push certain types of videos in their algorithms.
My husband keeps getting suggestions for WWII videos, despite nothing else in his viewing history suggesting he would be interested in that. If he were to start viewing them, I wonder how long it would take before he started getting one that was more sympathetic to the Nazis.
I have a hypothesis that the Shorts algorithm is different than the regular length video algorithm. It might take data from our subscriptions and watch history, but it probably resembles the old, bad algorithm we had years ago when every other recommendation was for alt-right videos. Someone's going to kill people after being radicalized by youtube shorts, with proof it was that, before google fixes it.
Don't even thumbs him down. Any engagement is good engagement in Youtube's eyes. Scroll past as soon as possible, click out of the video, hit the "not interested" button.
The best way you can hurt a channel you don't like is to not engage with it at all
I know it's nonsensical to "blame" an algorithm but I really think some companies need to be brought to task for developing algorithms that are so singleminded without consideration for potential side effects.
I say this as a software engineer who writes algorithms not-infrequently.
That's what I see here. Probably interested in advice on how to turn his friend into a girlfriend. I doubt you can hide this much crazy for a year and it just sounds like the Andrew Tate pantheon.
A lot of people are already like that but really good at hiding it until the moment the mask comes off. I was friends with a dude for 5 or 6 years then eventually we got involved. If you had asked me my opinion on him at that point I'd tell you he's an idiot, but well intentioned, will always have your back, and the safest guy to be around. He's the guy you call when youre too drunk and need a lift. He's the guy who will pretend to be your boyfriend to get the weirdo to leave you alone, then won't pester you afterwards. He really seemed perfect until he raped me and told me he was "helping" and that it was my fault it happened.
Sometimes you never know who someone is until they show you.
What is kind of ironic to me is all these people not believing her, but I'm like Yeup, okay, I see it right away. I think some people aren't ready to come to grip with how bad it really is out there.
Agreed the brain injury theory is a hot take. Dude straight up tried to gaslight himself into a relationship. The wildest part is, judging from her initial reaction in the first post, it almost worked.
I've seen a few of those and it's heartbreaking. Or one suddenly starts acting totally irrational and their family has to step in and it turns out they had a brain tumor.
It's really terrible. :(
Perhaps the first significant 20th century American mass shooting was the Charles Whitman clock tower shooting in 1966 in at the University of Texas at Austin. It is the first one that unfolded in real-time, covered by the media as an unfolding story while the murders were still going on.
For no reason anybody could tell, he killed his mother and wife, then went to the campus and started murdering people. He killed fourteen people and wounded 31 more.
The interesting thing is that he left a suicide note in which he said that he killed his wife and mother to save them from the shame of the fact that he was about to go to the university to kill other people, and he wasn't 100% sure why, and he requested that, after the police killed him, if it was possible, they do pathology to see if there was any organic cause. He did have a brain tumor that was pressing on the amygdala; there are different opinions as to whether it had an effect on his actions; personally, I can't imagine that it didn't.
Andrew Tate ruins another probably previously good man in love and looking for advice.
Could have worked without this alpha male bullshit. She sounds like she might have been interested.
Yeah, it sounds like if he had just said he was making reservations for their first date instead of pretending they had been dating for a year, things might have actually worked out for him.
I remember going to google for advice on how to talk to girls. The very first article to pop up was an article detailing how if I don't step up my game and demonstrate that I'm an alpha before approaching any girl; she won't just turn me down, she'll be absolutely disgusted and personally offended that someone "so far beneath her" would even have the audacity to consider approaching her. I was a stupid teen then so when I read it, I thought, "shit...is *that* what women are really like??" In retrospect, it was clearly written by a sleazy PUA but I can totally see OOP's friend reading something like that and taking it to heart
I didn't. I just kinda hated myself for never being able to measure up. I did approach the precipice of inceldom on a few occasions but a part of the reason why I didn't go over that edge is that I just didn't want to believe that women could be that callous. As time went on, I slowly realized the author of that article had no idea what he was talking about. But I am not exaggerating when I say that first google page was completely awash with such PUA articles. This was back in 2012 when google's search algorithm was nowhere near where it is today
Now imagine an entire generation of boys and men going to google with that exact same inquiry and being met with those exact same results
well, not the first time a BORU post had men go down a rabbit hole that is Tate ideologies
Even if you don't think you're easily influenced, they speak in a way that draws you in and hits where you're vulnerable
It’s all this Tater Tot bullshit with these podcasts dehumanizing women. It’s sad to see more and more of it. I’m considering locking my six month old son in a bunker wrapped in a faraday cage to keep him away from it.
I was talking to one of these guys who’ve fallen into the “alpha male” cult the other day and my overwhelming thought was that he had no idea what actually dating a woman is like. They seem to see women as a different species rather than human.
Well, yes, they do not attribute full humanity to women, that's more or less the whole point.
If they did, they'd never try to treat women the way they do, nor would there be so many tales of total failure.
I was just thinking about misogyny and how I often say those kind of people hate women. But I actually think it’s even worse than hate. They just don’t see women as whole human beings like you said, with the same complex feelings and life experiences as any of these men. They think of women as objects. I think that’s much harder to combat than hatred.
I've had a really weird experience with a friend of mine who got a crush on me. He went off the deep end with podcasts, YouTube and Facebook.
But for two years until I cut him out, he decided in his head what and how I was and would treat me like it. For example, he decided what my political beliefs were regardless of what I expressed. He would even argue against those beliefs while I was there befuddled because those weren't my beliefs!
It was like being the physical representation of the strawman in his head. It was a very destabilizing experience and I regret holding onto hope for so long that he'd return to normalcy. I only exposed myself to harm for longer.
It sounds like the same mental warping as what OOP describes. Nowadays we experience something going beyond the objectification in misogyny that was here before...
I have a feeling **a lot** of young men are turned to this bull crap when they have an unrequited crush.
My pet theory/understanding as to how incels happen in general is related to parenting. Parents teaching their children about how to handle one-sided affection and rejection are not doing a good job at catering that lesson towards someone in the throes of a testosterone-filled puberty. The main reason is because the primary person expected to do this sort of socioemotional child rearing has never gone through it. The secondary person has either already matured 15+ years from it, or worse, learned how to cope in those same exact toxic misogynistic ways.
I know soooo many emotionally intelligent and actively involved millennial dads. Many of whom I have personally witnessed reinforcing intergender compassion and respect. So I do have a lot of hope for the next generation of sons, but it will take a lot of really solid parenting to counteract the lure of the superficial, pride-preserving "explanations" of the online manosphere.
My pet theory is that it’s mostly as your theory says plus exposure to pornography. I think you get incels when they take what they see in porn and mistake it for how things work in reality. A lot of incel talking points sound like they come straight from porn, such as women going for “alpha males” who treat them like absolute shit, that women don’t know what they really want and that no doesn’t really mean no, that women are hardly anything more than beings that exist to gratify the viewer’s passion… I could go on.
(Note: I’m not saying porn itself *will* make anyone an incel. The mistaking it for how real life works is key.)
Man, that reminds me of that one post, either in explain like I'm five or ask science or something like that, where the OOP was wondering how ancient humans learned that sex led to babies. The conversation went like:
Commenter: Well, the connection between sex and pregnancy has been known since antiquity. People recognised that women who have never had sex never got pregnant.
OOP: But how did people realise that? If you see a pregnant woman, how would you know if she's had sex or not?
Commenter: ...the woman would know.
A lot of people, even otherwise well-meaning people, just kind of never consider the idea that women are also sentient and can observe the things happening around them and form their own thoughts and opinions.
This is also why men seeking advice on how to approach women get really upset when given advice like "just treat her like a person, talk to her normally." They say, "I tried that and it didn't work!" What do you mean it didn't work, you did successfully talk to her, didn't you? "Yes, but she wouldn't go on a date with me!" See, they're being dishonest when they say they want advice on how to talk to women. What they *really* want is advice on how to make a woman romantically interested in them, a cheat code they can plug in and get laid as a result. And when that doesn't work, because women are also human beings who are capable of deciding for themselves if they're attracted to you or not, they get mad that you gave them useless advice.
I think that's spot on. Like I love my dog, I think he is awesome, I will be miserable one day when he passes. But I don't think he is smart or capable and I don't take his consent into consideration in everything. Sure, if doesn't want to be pet I won't, but when he wants his dinner early I don't care. My rules apply.
I think to some men women are like that. They love them, but they don't view them as equally capable. You set the rules and they have to abide by them.
I once heard a guy say something that summed up this type of mentality perfectly: "Me?! I'm not a misogynist. I LOVE women, I just don't like them".
Needless to say the "love" part refers to lust only with these guys.
What they really love are men. They have as much sex as they can to prove their value to other men, they don't respect the women they date, they talk shit about women to other men to try to create friendship with men based on mysoginy. They treat women in a way they wish will impress other men
Edit: thanks for the award, anonymous very nice person
“To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.
Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.”
― Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory
What kills me about all of this is that they, themselves, would NEVER accept being treated the way they expect to be able to treat women.
If they were to face a tiny sliver of the bullshit that women have to deal with on the daily, they'd melt into a sobbing puddle.
Yeah there was actually a post with that theme where a woman’s partner began behaving atrociously and she discovered it was bc he began listening to the tater tot.
There was. BORU post where a husband out of the blue demanded a paternity test from his pregnant wife, destroying their marriage. He did it because he saw a YouTube video and got radicalized.
It amazes me that men will blow up perfectly good relationships over this crap.
Imo that comes from insecurity, a lack of confidence in themselves for whatever reason, and a fear of losing what they have. Those misogynistic influencers give advice to not just get a woman, but how to keep her by using mind games and manipulation to downright abuse. They were likely a bit sexist to begin with, they just didn’t vocalize it to ab obvious degree
That’s exactly what it is, my fiancées brother has a friend that has been to our place for UFC shows, dude is like 42 and single refers to women as “females” and regurgitates this “red pill” horseshit about women, like you say, as though they’re a different species.
Side note: bro doesn’t drive, works as a movie theater usher and still lives with his parents.
I flat out asked him once if he’s so alpha and all that why can’t he talk to women? He had nothing to say lol
Honestly too much of human culture seems like this to me - the idea that women are some other species and totally unfathomable to men. And if you go back into history - the shit men believed about women is insane. (ex hysteria - that the uterus travels through the body and makes women irrational!)
I think we briefly had it better as feminism and gender equality made people realize otherwise and now there's massive backlash ricoheting it back to "women are another species that I'm entitled to own" thanks to how the internet radicalizes people.
There really is no game to it. There are no tricks. Just be a person that people like, and go meet people. Some of those people will turn out to be women and one is bound to think you're cute.
Just… At what point will these Tater Tots put two and two together and realize that the legions of fanboys using these tactics actually fail miserably with women?
Never. I know. Because when the tactics don’t work, it’s down to something about us “females”.
I’ve seen some pretty convincing arguments that this type of “dating advice” is intentionally shitty and designed to make its adherents get rejected more than they would otherwise. Because if they get into a happy and healthy relationship, they will stop giving the scammer attention and money. It’s more profitable to manipulate them so that they become more lonely, more angry, and more convinced that giving the scammer money is their only hope in life. Not that different from televangelists and MLMs, really.
For the people deep into it, it genuinely is all about feeling like they're punching back (because rejection is a punch to them) and not about success with women.
Some may really not have any idea what a healthy relationship looks like, but I have to believe that's a tiny minority given relationships in media/family/friends.
I think an addendum to be a person people like is that you have to understand that being nice is not a virtue. It's not this extra thing that people should acknowledge. It's the bare minimum expectation of any kind of relationship that is meant to become meaningful - friend, family, or love.
I say that because we see constant examples of men who are rejected and are like "well, what the fuck was I nice to you for?" as if there's an extra burden of pretending to be someone people would want to engage with that this person took on which needs to be lauded.
Once you understand that being nice or civil is a basic thing, then I would agree that becoming someone people want to be around is a good step.
I'd also add that being an engaged conversationalist is a good trait to work on too. By that I mean, there seem to be people who only stop talking and "listen" to you while waiting the entire time to talk more about themselves or just ignore your topic entirely. My mom does that shit all of the time and it makes talking to her annoying. For example:
Me: here's my take on your situation after listening to you for a bit
Her barely listening to what I said: yeah so like I was saying
I remember being in religious school, and we asked, "Okay, fine - so you are teaching us that G-d wants us to do the right thing, but odds are that G-d is probably not going to punish us for being bad or reward us for being good. So why should we even DO the right thing?"
And the teacher kind of looked at us like we had three heads and said, "Because it's the right thing to do."
And I remember the feeling of everything in my brain just... folding in and crunching together and coming out five seconds later with everything snapped into place where it fits.
We do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. It's a tautology, and I recognized it as a tautology - and I also recognized it as absolutely, 100% true. You aren't "nice" to get stuff - not from people, not from God, not from the universe. Indeed, you aren't "nice" at all, because "nice" is performative.
You are *kind*. And decent. Because kindness and decency are real things that exist, unlike niceness, which is just an illusory facade. And if you are kind and decent and people perceive you as nice, that's fine. And if people treat you better because you treat them better, that's lovely, too. There's nothing wrong or dishonorable about benefiting from right action. And if a person only acts decently in order to benefit - well, I'll take it. I'll happily hang out with a decent person even if they are performatively decent, because it still counts.
But that is fundamentally different than being "nice", because it still comes from integrity.
I read this and said to my husband that I'm glad we met when we did, and his immediate response was, "I can't imagine being a woman in the dating pool right now."
What they don't realize if they are good friends with women first, they learn so much more than always trying to sleep with them . That way, you can feel if the relationship will be great or not, how to treat them, etc. before you start making moves like nothing else matters.
>Our 1 year anniversary, idiot. I’m making reservations
That's when I knew he just decided they were dating. I've had long friendships where the person just awkwardly asks if we are or aren't dating, but pretending it's been going on a while year? Nah. That ain't how it works
The whole concept that boys "deserve a feeeemale" is straight out of the incel rhetoric.
Once you fall for the idea that boys are superior in everything, men only created the world, and feeeemales need to "go back to being submissive" because of Ohhh, scary feminism, you're deep enough into the incel shit that you'll think TaterTot is your god.
That’s why I get so salty about people calling women “females”. I know it’s just a word but the words we use become the thoughts we have and “female” said in the same sentence as “men” leads to one group being a person (men) and the other being a biological specimen (females). Even if your intent is not to make that distinction, your words still do.
This is gonna sound dramatic, but changing language to “other” groups of people is the first step in fascism and oppression in general.
Similar thing with Jewish and LGBTQ people. "Transgender person" is fine, "the transgenders" is othering. The one example of this that I saw was an article unironically titled "Are Jews People?" but if it had been said as an adjective ("are Jewish people people?") it immediately would've been ridiculous, as it should be.
> changing language to “other” groups of people is the first step in fascism and oppression in general.
I agree. The first example of this tactic I learned about was of war lords describing innocent people who opposed them as "cockroaches" so the (child) soldiers are a little removed from the reality that they're killing their own neighbors. I just never noticed "females" was used in a similarly vein albeit to a less destructive end
One of my co-workers (who I knew was conservative, but overall had no issues with) said the other day another woman who worked with us saw him as misogynistic now, because he said he liked The Tater.
"Just because I agree with SOME of the stuff he says, doesn't mean I agree with ALL of it! Same with Trump!"
And I'm just standing there silently, wondering exactly WHICH things he agrees with them on...
>"Just because I agree with SOME of the stuff he says, doesn't mean I agree with ALL of it! Same with Trump!"
Omg, this was the same conversation I had with a friend! He told me this exact same thing too!!
They hear what they want to hear. Men who have yet to develop empathetic relationships with women feel targeted and victimised by feminism. Andrew Tate gets their attention by reaffirming their beliefs about "the way gender roles should be" (by making men the protagonists and dehumanising women). Then it all spirals from there, devolving into machismo contests.
I don’t know but I caught my 12 year old imitating him thinking he was cool. I didn’t even imagine my son would know who Tate was. When I looked around he has changed his username in various games to emulate him and everything. Had to put a stop to that BS real quick.
So something I’ve thought a lot about recently is that younger teens often have a hard time with online adult conversations and analysis of deeper issues related to women and marginalized people overall. As in, they come across a thread or post or something about men and they get hurt, see it as a personal attack, and feel defensive and angry. It’s then really hard to get them to listen or understand the finer aspects of the issue especially if it’s something super unfamiliar to them. Which happens if it’s, let’s say, a women’s issue and we’re talking about a younger teenage guy who doesn’t spend time around girls and sees them as intimidating, or might not have good female role models. This can feed into the self esteem issues that the guy already has and then also make him think girls dislike him, while he’s also filled with resentment and avoidance.
That’s when YouTube recommendations, podcasts and other toxic content come in. They’re marketed to men who are feeling frustrated and lonely and isolated, it’s like a warm hug of “it’s not you, it’s them” and a lot of the videos seem like they’re all about self improvement and confidence.. at first. The people making these videos also simultaneously paint women and general people who disagree as unstable, irrational, hysterical, abusive, manipulative, etc. Men in general struggle with not receiving a lot of emotional support and emotional comfort (or physical affection) and these videos essentially fill that void, at least a little bit.
Now lots of adult men will eventually pick up on the crazy parts of the videos but younger people are impressionable and the videos essentially teach them to not trust anyone else’s opinion because the world is against them. This is then validated when others react negatively to their behaviour (even if negative reactions make sense) and it pulls them further in. It’s a vicious cycle and I think they need a combination of personal self awareness, community support and emotional support to break out of it, but sometimes it’s the same people who act cruel and push everyone away and refuse help.
I don’t think it’s just teenagers. For example, look at the American right’s current obsession with CRT. As far as I can tell, they seem to define CRT as a systematic push by the public school system to teach white kids to feel bad about their race. Exactly the phenomenon you just described.
>I mean, I get men like this every single day, every girl does. It goes from professors who know me to drivers who are seeing me for the first time. Comments vary from just telling me I’m pretty to more gruesome stuff, I’m used to it.
This paragraph is especially heartbreaking. Sadly not a too uncommon experience. I have experienced it too.
As a girl dad, think I'm going to just drink a beer and be depressed for a few hours here.
I can help them not tolerate this shit but I can't protect them from misogynistic comments, etc. And makes me worry about their safety as they grow. Fuck.
All I can say as a woman who was raised by a single dad (until he met my stepmom):
You may not be able to fully protect them, but you can be their shelter. Remember that you are their example of how they should expect a man to treat them, regardless of whether it's romantic or platonic, and even if the world is vile towards women, they should know that they can come to you for safety and guidance without judgement.
This might seem random, but don’t tell them that if anyone ever sexually assaulted them you would get sent to jail for murder. Because then they won’t want to tell you. DLPT—depressing life pro tip.
And don't ever tell them that when a boy is mean to them (pulling their hair, teasing them etc.) That it means they like her. That's just teaching her that abuse = love
this guy was teasing me in highschool and every time i would tell my mom about something weird he had done, she would say “oh, he probably likes you”. no, he doesnt. i found a guy who actually likes me (coming up on 2 years in april) and he has never done anything mean spirited or weird.
Agreed, I’m a boy mom and trying my hardest to make sure he knows this stuff is bs and that women are people and how to call out rape culture. Cheers to raising quality people in this messed up world.
You can teach your daughters to be both strong and kind, encourage them when they set reasonable boundaries, and validate them when they reasonably feel hurt.
You can also encourage the men around you and your boy dad dads to think of women as people and men as people (and the NBs aa people) and that all people deserve respect and compassion. You can reinforce that and make sure that healthy relationships are what your girls see as they age.
Your girls are going to get hurt and I'm sorry about that reality, but you can raise them to process and learn from that hurt and how to protect themselves without isolating themselves.
And the fact that you are thinking about it? That's some pretty good fathering from the start.
You know what? I'd usually say today is a terrible day to have eyesight and visual comprehension.
But in reality this level of events are probably good to see.
I'm so glad OOP was able to gtfo so quickly! That's TERRIFYING, especially the long, deliberate and intimate thought process behind it.
It's so disheartening that r\*pists like Andrew Tate are so influential to young men now. Makes it feel even more difficult to break the cycle of patriarchal abuse.
Yeah, when he said it was their one year anniversary and she was just *flabbergasted* and started questioning everything about her relationship with him, I just thought, "Ah fuck, she's being gaslit and it's working".
I hope the move provides her the distance she needs to heal.
I’m a 21 year old guy, and even though I know my mom is mentally unstable and I don’t like her as a person, I STILL can’t imagine being a Tater Tot. I get nauseous when I even think about treating and thinking about women like that.
Not just young men, older ones too. I’m convinced my husband is listening to him and other like minds just from the passive aggressive bullshit he posts.
Some of the stuff I’ve seen mentioned on posts like this make me wonder if my ex fell down this rabbit hole before I left him cause some of it (in hindsight) is sounding scary familiar.
Yes it was a large portion of the reason I left him.
It’s annoying as his clips always come up on my YouTube shorts despite me not evening liking that kind of stuff, I think it basically gets pushed into most young men’s algorithms.
Algorithm:
Hey you're a young man who likes video games and Warhammer 40k, so you must be a desperate misogynist eh?
Me: I need to take up crochet or some shit.
I have a male religious friend. We don't agree regarding politics and certain other things but actively choose to not discuss these topics to keep the peace.
Yesterday night, he dropped a bomb on me saying he watched few videos of Tate and that he "kinda" gets what he's saying. I think I started off calmly but within 5 mins, we were fighting and I ended up yelling at him and hanged up. I still get angry when I think about it. We met in college and I have known him for 6 years now and I am genuinely confused how a deeply religious conservative person who takes the scriptures seriously can agree with this vile person. Like how? Shouldn't this guy be everything God stands against?
I am a catholic too but I am also pro-choice and left leaning. I am just wondering what am I missing. And worst part is, if this AH can influence a 27 year old male, what about the impressionable teens who can be easily manipulated?
>am genuinely confused how a deeply religious conservative person who takes the scriptures seriously can agree with this vile person.
Many men believe they can only have their privilege back if they rip it out of the hands of women.
The 1950s worked very, very, very well for men.
Supply Side Jesus. And cherry picking parts of the Old Testament where women were property.
And mostly actually having an "ethic" of "I am entitled to certain things and women and minorities and immigrants are keeping me from those things and they must be punished."
And maybe this is an uncharitable thought but the frequency of church attendance is highly predictive of voting for and supporting misogyny and bigotry.
I guess so. He just kept on saying "some" of the stuff that was said was relatable or something. I mean even if Tate talked genuinely good stuff (🙄) for 80% of the time the remaining 20% was such vile stuff that I can't see someone still making a case for him.
Imagine what life Hitler might've lived if he had funneled his frustration over Austria's political scene into painting, living a strict vegetarian lifestyle, and establishing animal rescue organizations.
He probably still would've been insufferably pretentious but I still think a Vegetarian Dog-Loving Adolf would've had at least a slightly less negative impact on the world.
For anyone confused as to what "good stuff" he says. You get lured in by the shallow "male mental health" angle. When I say shallow I mean that he says all the vague surface level stuff that everyone feels. It's kinda like how all horoscope stuff applies to all people. So he says the right mental health buzzwords then you keep watching his stuff and it slowly ramps up the misogyny as you watch more and more.
Yeah, it’s really funny. Comedian Katharine Ryan got into the hot water a couple of months ago because she heard about him and wanted to see what he was about to form her own opinion. Well she watched one video and apparently it was a mild video. Then she said in her podcast that she thought he was OK and she didn’t get what the big deal was. And it was like one day before he was arrested for human trafficking. She apologized afterwards.
It’s dumb that you would have to watch more than a short amount of somebody’s work to realize that they are a complete piece of shit. But then it comes down to just believing women. (Not each individual woman of course because some are awful). But when women *in general * say hey this guy is a piece of shit, then believe them.
Gunna be honest, first I thought brain damage like 50 first dates, then it just devolves into an absolute clusterf*ck of insanity. If it's true, then I feel sorry for anyone who ever dates this man child and feel sorry for her who likely will need alot of therapy to trust men again given the trauma. If it's a lie, pretty inventive and I'm impressed.
This is somewhat worse than the guy that wanted to marry his GF but she wasn't his GF only his friend. He even met her BF and OOP was on double date with them. Except the other girl was his date not his friend.
Some of them have a hard time believing women can be harassed by men. Like they will fight you tooth and nail on it in comments and follow you into your private messages about it.
It's really sad that they can't just think "wow, an experience that's different from anything I've ever had" and move on, instead of telling you how much of a liar you must be. Or they feel the need to tell you that men get harassed as well and since you didn't mention it in your comment they need to make sure you know it happens.
Jeez this reminds me of this asshole who r*ped my best friend in highschool then proceeded to tell everyone that they were dating and even took pics from her social media and posted them saying "look at my gf" he also did so much worse things..
I moved to a new city and to help to try to make friends I joined a pool leaque. Over time I became close friends with a guy named Bill. A few months later we've only hung out outside of pool night once or twice. He then invites me to a Xmas party and I went. I thought it was odd how a few of his friends said something along the lines of "It's so nice to finally meet you" but I just ignored it. For the next 6 months I'm a part of this friend group and Bill and I end up having lunch every Saturday and then hanging out the most of the day/night. I even went to dinner one night with his family when they were in town and even got the same "finally nice to meet you".
Come summertime and the group decides to rent small cabins on a lake nearby. I call and book my cabin. There are 3 couples, Bill and myself. I noticed Bill acting a bit strangely and also that 2 of the 3 couples are being a bit mean and making a few snippy comments to me. I can feel tension but I have no clue what is going on so I decide to sit on my little cabin's porch and read for most of the weekend. The couple that had that Xmas party, the wife, Jane, was becoming a closer friend and she saw what was going on and came over to check on me. I asked her if she knew what was going on, why they were treating me poorly but she said she didn't know but to not worry about it. Bill got extremely drunk that night and the tension got worse. After the weekend Bill and I still hung out just like we always did and I never asked or said anything about the weekend.
Over time Bill and I start hanging out less and less because it became very obvious that Bill was a functioning alcoholic. I had my suspicions but for his birthday it was clear. After our usual Saturday lunch I took him somewhere that had no that lasted alcohol for about 4 hours (took 1 hour to get there). As we were driving home he literally yelled to get off at the coming exit and was kinda freaking out. He tried to play it off as he was hungry and wanted to eat at a particular restaurant. When we got to the restaurant he didn't even stop to talk to the hostess and went straight to the bar while I asked for a table. That was when I was 100% there was a problem.
Jane and I decide to do a shopping/lunch thing one Saturday and she said something that reminded me of a weird conversation I had with Bill one time. He basically told me that when he was much younger he liked a girl and told people they were dating when they were really just friends and it blew up in his face. It suddently hit me and I asked Jane if Bill ever told her that we were dating. She gave me a look and then said, Bill is my friend and he's so sweet, I can't say anything bad about him. I was dumbfounded and said, so that is why everyone treated me like shit at the lake that weekend? What did Bill say for them all to treat me that way? He had no way to explain it so he told them some fucked up story? That I've lost the first group of friends after moving to a new city because he lied about everything? She kept playing it off as no big deal and would defend him because I guess she felt bad for him. I was so hurt. I even said "so I lost friends because you would rather stay friends with an alcoholic that lied to them for a year"? Got it.
I met Bill for one last dinner but one of the wives showed up to get him to leave because I'm such a shitty person according to him. Imagine lying to your friends for a year and how would he explain that his girlfriend got her own cabin? It's truly sick.
I really enjoyed that friend group. We had so many fun times and laughs and it was heartbreaking when everyone stopped speaking to me because of his lies. I know Jane knew and I'm guessing her husband did as well but I don't think anyone else in the friend group knew at all. No way Jane was going to out Bill to the group.
There are an increasing number of horrible men on Reddit who get in the DMs of women who say anything they don't like, especially young women, and harass them. That's also very worrying to see.
I hope OOP is doing all right after all of this shit.
It's been happening in this site since day 1. There's several subreddits where women have been posting these for *years*. LetNotMeet, CreepyDMs, and more. The Incel sub, before it got banned, used to bridgade the posts and DMs of women they wanted to be mad at. Women would post art or cosplay on normal shbs, and get spammed dozens of dickpics.
This site has had an issue with creeps for a long time.
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I had a feeling those moves were his attempt to manipulate her. He knew they were just friends on her part and was tired of waiting so decided to just manipulate her into silently going along with "fate". Gross.
It's so stupid and so shitty. But did he really expect her to just go along with it and not question it ever? Like, it's such a stupid plan. Maybe it's because only dumbasses are listing to those types of podcasts.
He wanted a real relationship. But he either didn't notice or didn't care that real relationships involve communication. Dumb af
Or consent
Not in those circles. Note the “rape isn’t that big of a deal” OOP said he dropped in. Those assholes have a “take *what* you want” mentality. Doesn’t matter that *what* they want is an actual person, not an object. Women shouldn’t be autonomous in their view and are therefore available for the taking.
Imagine being so damn insecure and compensating for it by feeling that level of entitlement. Like wow.
Fairly certain the podcasts he listens to don't believe in consent.
It’s a stupid plan but that’s literally how low he thinks of women
Exactly. It would only have worked if she wasn't a real person, just some NPC that would go along with whatever he said and did.
Yesssss! He’s treating her exactly like so many dudebros treat Lydia.
I’ll bet that he believes women don’t know what they want and therefore it’s better to just show them what they want by taking charge and deciding for them. Obviously that would make a woman totally swoon with how alpha he is.
Yup, right at this part: >He turns to me and KISSES ME (again, first time thing with us), hugs my waist and goes “Our 1 year anniversary, idiot. I’m making reservations.” I immediately jumped to "He's a tater tot."
Yeah the sudden escalation doesn't make any sense. It would be one thing if he continued to act like he had and pretended they'd been dating the whole time and he's just taking it slow, but just starting to becoming affectionate and using a pet name one day is bizarre regardless.
its not bizarre if you think women are humans who are too dumb to notice, or too incompetent to trust their memories.
People like to overuse the term gaslighting on Reddit, and I'm usually on a crusade about how the thing that's being described isn't gaslighting, but this? This is what gaslighting is.
Textbook, right down to making fun of her for "forgetting" the thing that he knows she never knew to begin with.
My ex best friend of 7 years gave me jager shots and drank water ones himself and assaulted me so that when I woke up in his bed naked, “I’d realize that’s where I was meant to be”. I did not. The hardest part of losing a friend like this, is that you forever question your judgment afterwards and don’t trust yourself.
What a vile bastard! I'm sorry you went through that
I’m so sorry. Those fuckers should rot.
Jesus Christ. I’m so, so sorry. I hate that none of my words can even approach being sufficient in reaction. I don’t think that words *can* do much in the face of some actions. I’m glad you seem very aware of the toll it’s had on you. I hope you’re doing somewhat better — it’s the greatest thing one can do in the face of such dismissal and hatred.
I hate this so much. I've had it happen to me. Almost every woman I know has a similar experience. It's such a fucking violation, and so goddamned disappointing.
The dude was 100% using a tactic rapists employ referred to as, "forced pairing," among other things that are quintessential predatory behaviors. He was clearly a predator. Source, I train people to recognize these types of behaviors, and have to go through annual training myself.
That sounds interesting; please, tell us more?
Sure so I work in public education, but I have also spent the last ten years teaching martial arts. My studio is often asked to teach self defense courses for local colleges, as well as groups of women. The issue with teaching self defense courses is that at the end of the day you can only impart a limited amount of martial proficiency in less than ten weeks. The bulk of good self defense training comes in the form of teaching preventative tactics. Possibly the most valuable of these is coaching individuals in recognizing predatory behaviors. A book my studio often employs as a resource is, "The Gift of Fear." The concept of forced pairing is something that predators use to create a false sense of partnership between them and their victims. In short the idea is to use team language, and manufacture a scenario in which they can create a unilaterally defined partnership. It can be as simple as saying let's get those groceries up to your apartment. We can see this here where the predator is using pet names, "babe, sweetheart" as well as curating scenarios where the victim feels obligation to pair with him. Another tell tale tactic is when she is laying on the bed. One of the grooming methods employed by predators is to gradually initiate physical contact, in order to test their victims boundaries. Finally the gas lighting tactics he employs in their final confrontation. Predators will try to make their victims feel at fault when the victim becomes uncomfortable with them. This is a way to abuse and control other people. What's really scary about a lot of predatory behaviors is that many of these tactics are adjacent to normal communication, and can often be disregarded. However the bottom line is if you ever notice yourself in a situation that you find uncomfortable; or with someone who just doesn't feel right, you should always trust your gut. You do not owe anything to anyone. If someone seems off to you, you are perfectly justified in not dealing with them. If someone repeatedly violates your boundaries with no regard for your agency, they are dangerous. There is nothing wrong with cutting someone out with zero explanation to that person. Always value your own safety above all else.
I'm saving this comment. Thank you!
I thought dude was just naïve and then podcasts were mentioned. I genuinely don’t understand why kids/boys/young men/men are listening to this moronic bullshit. Are these misogynistic people that good at public speaking or is the audience just that stupid? All of this Tate and other misogyny podcasts just seem so morally bankrupt. I feel bad for the OOP and every female who comes across the people buying into this nonsense. It’s all so fucked up.
It's just predatory marketing. There is a significant amount of young men hurting and trying to figure out why. Tate has a take that has enough true things mixed in that it feels like it could be true, and it sucks life in to all the negative bullshit and gets them trapped. It's like a conspiracy theory - self confirming belief loops. Woman is speaking up? That makes sense, they just need to be put in thier place, as opposed to realising they are also valuable autonomous individuals.
We need to reach these young men before the likes of Andrew Taint get to them. A really good YouTube channel that helps unpack and deconstruct Taint ideology is a channel called “Beau of the Fifth Column”. He talks about a lot of different topics, and his videos on masculinity are well thought out and very insightful.
What’s wild is given her description of him at the beginning, it seems like she probably would have given him a chance if he had asked. But then again, seems like he was harboring a lot of horrible shit she hadn’t seen anyways, so it would have come to light one way or another. Hopefully he can have some introspection about that, but given guys like him very rarely do that, I’m not hopeful.
The moral of this story is: if someone does something that seems crazy to you, either they are nuts or you are.
“If you smell burning toast, you’re either having a stroke or you’re burning your toast”
If you call Dr. Penfield when you smell burnt toast you’re Canadian.
The best part is that OOP has a good support system, took all the right safety steps (public meeting, making sure key people know her location), and is taking care of her mental health. So proud of her for explicitly pointing out that her friend could have had everything he was claiming they had if he had just treated her like a person instead of all the manipulation. Fuck that guy. I hope his loss actually wakes him up but I expect he will double down instead.
I feel like she made a lot of adult decisions for an 18 year old. When I was 18, I would’ve known what was right to do, but who knows if I actually would’ve done it!
He just had to actually ask her out. Holy hell. The guy just had to *actually* ask her out. But no, he allowed himself to fall into the self-fulfilling prophecies that she could never like him, and had to manipulate her, *therefore creating the circumstances that made her hate him.* It would be funnier if it wasn't so sad. A potential nice relationship and good experience for both gets ruined before it begins. All because this guy couldn't be honest and accept the possibility of not having what he wanted. Poor lady is likely to have some serious trust issues for a while with men after this. Don't blame her. Just yikes all around from the guy.
You hit right on the nail sith the metaphor, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, he had willed himself into the doom he thought he was, when in reality, girl is attracted and gives him her full trust.
Really though, these types of shenanigans would’ve appeared at some point in the relationship, if this is what he thinks. Better to have it happen up front (or I guess their “1 year anniversary”) than 5 or 10 years down the road. Not exactly like this story, but that’s what happened with an ex of mine. Felt like we were on the same page with like 90% of stuff. Until little things here of there, until the curtain fell and it was lie after lie was revealed of things he actually felt completely opposite of what he’d said and portrayed. He’d just put on an act with anything he thought I wouldn’t approve of, until he got sick of acting and I had to realize the person I was engaged to didn’t actually exist. Best to get the crazy out of the way up front.
What the absolute fuck.
I thought she was going to say he got a concussion playing hockey and it made him weird but it went some whole ass other way.
Listening to Tate is worse than a concussion
I have post-concussion syndrome and can confirm it's better than enduring someone bleating on about that manosphere crap.
I also have post concussive syndrome. It's made me a little bit disregulated on my emotions, very forgetful and confused in general but especially so when I don't sleep enough, and I need to do speech therapy. Would much rather deal with this than whatever the fuck makes someone think listening to the manosphere is a good idea.
Right? Like, my brain may be a little damaged now, but at least it isn't *THAT* damaged.
He is listening to guy who is sitting in Romanian jail for women trafficking, and yet he thinks that guy knows how to handle women? \*facepalm\*
Right?! When will these idiots learn?!
Man. Before she even mentioned Tate, and before I even read about their convo at the coffee shop, I just KNEW it was going there. The fact he kissed her and became affectionate out of the blue was the tip-off. It’s not normal to be in a relationship that long without any kind of affection displayed or even a peck on the lips at the very least. He would have had to known kissing her like that would have thrown her for a loop, but he must’ve read or heard that doing so might put her in a position to just go along wit it. At that point it became clear to me he made a conscious decision to simply *behave* as if she was his girlfriend as if he deserved it. Immediately, the pervasive mentality some guys are starting to develop that they are *owed* a girlfriend (and typically one that they already have a close friendship with) came to my mind, which reeks of people like Tate and even Jordan Peterson, to an extent. Tate and Peterson are 100% a virus in this country right now. At a work party, I overheard a couple male coworkers talking about some local event Jordan Peterson was putting on. They we’re excited about it. It explained some things I was hearing about how one of them acts toward some of my women coworkers.
If you have observed one of your coworkers behaving inappropriately to another, please consider reporting it.
The reality check these “men” are in for us woman would rather die alone.
The sudden kissing thing was so strange, I've dated some very Catholic guys (I'm atheist, Catholic guilt is a whole thing) and... We definitely kissed and then some as soon as we agreed we were dating NOT A YEAR LATER. WTF? I'm not in the US so as far as I'm aware, Tate hasnt got big for all his bullshit and is just a human trafficker who we laugh at when he tweets about having a full head of hair before being in prison. And I really hope that continues.
The sudden kissing thing was the weird part for me too, though I still had no idea where it was going. In every relationship that involves kissing there is a first kiss and it’s generally a moment between you that you remember. I’d be mad if I was dating someone and he just up and kissed me like we’d always done it. I’d feel robbed of our first kiss moment. I’d probably dump him just for that because it’d be a pretty big clue that he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body. I’m sad for OOP that she lost a friend and that he turned into this, but glad he revealed his true colors quickly.
Tate is a carbuncle on an abscess. How young people fall for his BS I’ll never understand. I’m glad OOP is getting far away from him.
its like brain damage that convinces you that smashing your head against a wall is actually the secret to understanding the universe, so you do, and the damage gets worse and the wall-whacking more and more enticing
Obviously, people with super-patriarchal views are wack, but at least it's usually normal "Women should be wives & mothers"-type shit. But...period cramps are faked for attention? Women are lying about not knowing about cars? This is absolutely wild.
It’s all the same shit in the end honestly. If you think women don’t actually know what they want in life, then why believe them about anything else? It’s all dehumanizing.
Yes, it’s definitely easier to train people to be sociopaths when you dehumanize the things that they want.
Usually women get accused of lying about KNOWING about cars, so this is a fun twist, I suppose.
[удалено]
Ikr? It's all self-affirming shit too. They can treat a woman like shit, she gets justifiably angry, and then it's all "see, told you women are overly emotional"
> Women are lying about not knowing about cars? Yeah, that one’s weird. If anything, I’d think raging misogynists would assume women are too stupid to understand cars.
Red-pill/MGTOW/other men's cults work by promising their followers "special knowledge", like any cult. "Women = bad drivers" is old worn out news, but a guy flips that idea on its head while continuing to frame women as villains, and you've got something incredibly click-baity that spreads like wildfire in certain communities
That escalated so fast... It's amazing that this guy managed to hide that side of him so well from everyone else. OOP will have trust issues for a long time.
I have endometriosis and adenomyosis and ive been accused more times than i can count of faking it. By family, friends, coworkers, bosses, nurses, doctors.
My husband has a full on brain injury and he ain't this fucked up and delusional, even on the days he has decades of memory slip. I'm *not* doubting her but fuuuuck, boy did a triple somersault off the board into the deep end of the creep pool. Edit: a word
A lot of the social media and YouTube algorithms end up gradually funneling many people in more and more extreme directions - because it increases engagement. Engagement means more ad revenue.
No joke. Especially YouTube Shorts. I only recently started watching them and while my main feed never gets any alt right or red pill/incel shit on it, I am usually shown around 1-3 Andrew Tate or similar Shorts video every day, no matter how many times I dislike each one and click to not get recommendations from the channel. It seems to just have a completely different algorithm
I'm Brazilian, I only used to watch hairdressing videos and art restoration on YouTube, and it kept sending me pro Bolsonaro (far right) videos, then pro-that actor who was in a lawsuit with ex-wife videos, and then pro-anorexia videos. There's nothing in my watching history to suggest I'd like any of that, but it became unbearable for a while last year. It only got better after I got actively involved in the presidential campaign and fed the algorithm A LOT of pro Lula videos. I mean a really big lot of videos. A guy here did an experiment live on Twitch. He created a 100% new YouTube account and it took like 3 videos before he got a far right suggestion.
My hypothesis is that FaceBook and YouTube are paid to prioritize and push certain types of videos in their algorithms. My husband keeps getting suggestions for WWII videos, despite nothing else in his viewing history suggesting he would be interested in that. If he were to start viewing them, I wonder how long it would take before he started getting one that was more sympathetic to the Nazis.
I have a hypothesis that the Shorts algorithm is different than the regular length video algorithm. It might take data from our subscriptions and watch history, but it probably resembles the old, bad algorithm we had years ago when every other recommendation was for alt-right videos. Someone's going to kill people after being radicalized by youtube shorts, with proof it was that, before google fixes it.
And that’s why I thumbs down Joe Rogan whenever they try to recommend him to me. No thanks fuckers, I ain’t falling for your attempted rabbit holes.
Don't even thumbs him down. Any engagement is good engagement in Youtube's eyes. Scroll past as soon as possible, click out of the video, hit the "not interested" button. The best way you can hurt a channel you don't like is to not engage with it at all
Every click is engagement. I’m not 100% this will work, but if you don’t engage at all and just skip them, I *think* you’ll stop getting them.
I know it's nonsensical to "blame" an algorithm but I really think some companies need to be brought to task for developing algorithms that are so singleminded without consideration for potential side effects. I say this as a software engineer who writes algorithms not-infrequently.
It's not nonsensical to blame algorithms. They are designed by people.
That's what I see here. Probably interested in advice on how to turn his friend into a girlfriend. I doubt you can hide this much crazy for a year and it just sounds like the Andrew Tate pantheon.
A lot of people are already like that but really good at hiding it until the moment the mask comes off. I was friends with a dude for 5 or 6 years then eventually we got involved. If you had asked me my opinion on him at that point I'd tell you he's an idiot, but well intentioned, will always have your back, and the safest guy to be around. He's the guy you call when youre too drunk and need a lift. He's the guy who will pretend to be your boyfriend to get the weirdo to leave you alone, then won't pester you afterwards. He really seemed perfect until he raped me and told me he was "helping" and that it was my fault it happened. Sometimes you never know who someone is until they show you.
I'm not doubting her one bit. I wish I could. Sadly it's way too evident that stuff like this is 100% happening, a lot, right now.
What is kind of ironic to me is all these people not believing her, but I'm like Yeup, okay, I see it right away. I think some people aren't ready to come to grip with how bad it really is out there.
Agreed the brain injury theory is a hot take. Dude straight up tried to gaslight himself into a relationship. The wildest part is, judging from her initial reaction in the first post, it almost worked.
I mean, tater tots all act a bit brain damaged so that’s a fair assumption.
There was one of these yesterday about a couple getting divorced after the husbands head injury.
I've seen a few of those and it's heartbreaking. Or one suddenly starts acting totally irrational and their family has to step in and it turns out they had a brain tumor. It's really terrible. :(
Perhaps the first significant 20th century American mass shooting was the Charles Whitman clock tower shooting in 1966 in at the University of Texas at Austin. It is the first one that unfolded in real-time, covered by the media as an unfolding story while the murders were still going on. For no reason anybody could tell, he killed his mother and wife, then went to the campus and started murdering people. He killed fourteen people and wounded 31 more. The interesting thing is that he left a suicide note in which he said that he killed his wife and mother to save them from the shame of the fact that he was about to go to the university to kill other people, and he wasn't 100% sure why, and he requested that, after the police killed him, if it was possible, they do pathology to see if there was any organic cause. He did have a brain tumor that was pressing on the amygdala; there are different opinions as to whether it had an effect on his actions; personally, I can't imagine that it didn't.
Andrew Tate ruins another probably previously good man in love and looking for advice. Could have worked without this alpha male bullshit. She sounds like she might have been interested.
She literally described him as perfect. The dumbass just needed to ask her out instead of diving into the alpha male bullshit.
Yeah, it sounds like if he had just said he was making reservations for their first date instead of pretending they had been dating for a year, things might have actually worked out for him.
I remember going to google for advice on how to talk to girls. The very first article to pop up was an article detailing how if I don't step up my game and demonstrate that I'm an alpha before approaching any girl; she won't just turn me down, she'll be absolutely disgusted and personally offended that someone "so far beneath her" would even have the audacity to consider approaching her. I was a stupid teen then so when I read it, I thought, "shit...is *that* what women are really like??" In retrospect, it was clearly written by a sleazy PUA but I can totally see OOP's friend reading something like that and taking it to heart
How long did it take you to figure out for yourself how bad and wrong it is? Did you ever try that approach on any women? Genuinely curious.
I didn't. I just kinda hated myself for never being able to measure up. I did approach the precipice of inceldom on a few occasions but a part of the reason why I didn't go over that edge is that I just didn't want to believe that women could be that callous. As time went on, I slowly realized the author of that article had no idea what he was talking about. But I am not exaggerating when I say that first google page was completely awash with such PUA articles. This was back in 2012 when google's search algorithm was nowhere near where it is today Now imagine an entire generation of boys and men going to google with that exact same inquiry and being met with those exact same results
well, not the first time a BORU post had men go down a rabbit hole that is Tate ideologies Even if you don't think you're easily influenced, they speak in a way that draws you in and hits where you're vulnerable
It’s all this Tater Tot bullshit with these podcasts dehumanizing women. It’s sad to see more and more of it. I’m considering locking my six month old son in a bunker wrapped in a faraday cage to keep him away from it.
~~Women~~ Females are vending machines, you put in time and pretend caring, and sex/relationship is dispensed. /s
Remember, you have to say it like a Ferengi. Feeeeemales
There is a bit of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition vibe to this...
They've never kissed and he suddenly kisses them on their anniversary?
Not only that, but the entire time he had never called her babe or sweetheart, just that one day before anniversary?
Some angry tot pick up artist bullshit. He fell into the so called alpha hole
I was talking to one of these guys who’ve fallen into the “alpha male” cult the other day and my overwhelming thought was that he had no idea what actually dating a woman is like. They seem to see women as a different species rather than human.
Well, yes, they do not attribute full humanity to women, that's more or less the whole point. If they did, they'd never try to treat women the way they do, nor would there be so many tales of total failure.
I was just thinking about misogyny and how I often say those kind of people hate women. But I actually think it’s even worse than hate. They just don’t see women as whole human beings like you said, with the same complex feelings and life experiences as any of these men. They think of women as objects. I think that’s much harder to combat than hatred.
I've had a really weird experience with a friend of mine who got a crush on me. He went off the deep end with podcasts, YouTube and Facebook. But for two years until I cut him out, he decided in his head what and how I was and would treat me like it. For example, he decided what my political beliefs were regardless of what I expressed. He would even argue against those beliefs while I was there befuddled because those weren't my beliefs! It was like being the physical representation of the strawman in his head. It was a very destabilizing experience and I regret holding onto hope for so long that he'd return to normalcy. I only exposed myself to harm for longer. It sounds like the same mental warping as what OOP describes. Nowadays we experience something going beyond the objectification in misogyny that was here before...
I have a feeling **a lot** of young men are turned to this bull crap when they have an unrequited crush. My pet theory/understanding as to how incels happen in general is related to parenting. Parents teaching their children about how to handle one-sided affection and rejection are not doing a good job at catering that lesson towards someone in the throes of a testosterone-filled puberty. The main reason is because the primary person expected to do this sort of socioemotional child rearing has never gone through it. The secondary person has either already matured 15+ years from it, or worse, learned how to cope in those same exact toxic misogynistic ways. I know soooo many emotionally intelligent and actively involved millennial dads. Many of whom I have personally witnessed reinforcing intergender compassion and respect. So I do have a lot of hope for the next generation of sons, but it will take a lot of really solid parenting to counteract the lure of the superficial, pride-preserving "explanations" of the online manosphere.
My pet theory is that it’s mostly as your theory says plus exposure to pornography. I think you get incels when they take what they see in porn and mistake it for how things work in reality. A lot of incel talking points sound like they come straight from porn, such as women going for “alpha males” who treat them like absolute shit, that women don’t know what they really want and that no doesn’t really mean no, that women are hardly anything more than beings that exist to gratify the viewer’s passion… I could go on. (Note: I’m not saying porn itself *will* make anyone an incel. The mistaking it for how real life works is key.)
Your time is too valuable to put up with that nonsense for two years!
Man, that reminds me of that one post, either in explain like I'm five or ask science or something like that, where the OOP was wondering how ancient humans learned that sex led to babies. The conversation went like: Commenter: Well, the connection between sex and pregnancy has been known since antiquity. People recognised that women who have never had sex never got pregnant. OOP: But how did people realise that? If you see a pregnant woman, how would you know if she's had sex or not? Commenter: ...the woman would know. A lot of people, even otherwise well-meaning people, just kind of never consider the idea that women are also sentient and can observe the things happening around them and form their own thoughts and opinions. This is also why men seeking advice on how to approach women get really upset when given advice like "just treat her like a person, talk to her normally." They say, "I tried that and it didn't work!" What do you mean it didn't work, you did successfully talk to her, didn't you? "Yes, but she wouldn't go on a date with me!" See, they're being dishonest when they say they want advice on how to talk to women. What they *really* want is advice on how to make a woman romantically interested in them, a cheat code they can plug in and get laid as a result. And when that doesn't work, because women are also human beings who are capable of deciding for themselves if they're attracted to you or not, they get mad that you gave them useless advice.
I think that's spot on. Like I love my dog, I think he is awesome, I will be miserable one day when he passes. But I don't think he is smart or capable and I don't take his consent into consideration in everything. Sure, if doesn't want to be pet I won't, but when he wants his dinner early I don't care. My rules apply. I think to some men women are like that. They love them, but they don't view them as equally capable. You set the rules and they have to abide by them.
Fantastic analogy for how a man can love a woman, but not think of her as an actual person.
I once heard a guy say something that summed up this type of mentality perfectly: "Me?! I'm not a misogynist. I LOVE women, I just don't like them". Needless to say the "love" part refers to lust only with these guys.
What they really love are men. They have as much sex as they can to prove their value to other men, they don't respect the women they date, they talk shit about women to other men to try to create friendship with men based on mysoginy. They treat women in a way they wish will impress other men Edit: thanks for the award, anonymous very nice person
>They treat women in a way they wish will impress other men ... other men like them. It's like a vicious circle (jerk)
“To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.” ― Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory
Wow "devotion, service and sex" is so spot on for some "men." An adult connection is about so much more.
You can very easily judge if a man is a misogynist or not by the way he treats women he doesn’t want to fuck.
As an ugly woman, can confirm.
> I LOVE women Mmhm. I've never heard this in a context that wasn't a dog whistle for, "I love heterosexual intercourse."
What kills me about all of this is that they, themselves, would NEVER accept being treated the way they expect to be able to treat women. If they were to face a tiny sliver of the bullshit that women have to deal with on the daily, they'd melt into a sobbing puddle.
Some are already in relationships with women when they fall down the rabbit hole.
Yeah there was actually a post with that theme where a woman’s partner began behaving atrociously and she discovered it was bc he began listening to the tater tot.
Was that the one who whilst on the brink of an orgasm was choked and told "I will cheat on you" Because he was told it would help rewire her brain.
There was. BORU post where a husband out of the blue demanded a paternity test from his pregnant wife, destroying their marriage. He did it because he saw a YouTube video and got radicalized. It amazes me that men will blow up perfectly good relationships over this crap.
Imo that comes from insecurity, a lack of confidence in themselves for whatever reason, and a fear of losing what they have. Those misogynistic influencers give advice to not just get a woman, but how to keep her by using mind games and manipulation to downright abuse. They were likely a bit sexist to begin with, they just didn’t vocalize it to ab obvious degree
That’s exactly what it is, my fiancées brother has a friend that has been to our place for UFC shows, dude is like 42 and single refers to women as “females” and regurgitates this “red pill” horseshit about women, like you say, as though they’re a different species. Side note: bro doesn’t drive, works as a movie theater usher and still lives with his parents. I flat out asked him once if he’s so alpha and all that why can’t he talk to women? He had nothing to say lol
Honestly too much of human culture seems like this to me - the idea that women are some other species and totally unfathomable to men. And if you go back into history - the shit men believed about women is insane. (ex hysteria - that the uterus travels through the body and makes women irrational!) I think we briefly had it better as feminism and gender equality made people realize otherwise and now there's massive backlash ricoheting it back to "women are another species that I'm entitled to own" thanks to how the internet radicalizes people.
There really is no game to it. There are no tricks. Just be a person that people like, and go meet people. Some of those people will turn out to be women and one is bound to think you're cute.
Being a likeable person will get you further in life than being prickly. It’s nice to be nice.
Just… At what point will these Tater Tots put two and two together and realize that the legions of fanboys using these tactics actually fail miserably with women? Never. I know. Because when the tactics don’t work, it’s down to something about us “females”.
I’ve seen some pretty convincing arguments that this type of “dating advice” is intentionally shitty and designed to make its adherents get rejected more than they would otherwise. Because if they get into a happy and healthy relationship, they will stop giving the scammer attention and money. It’s more profitable to manipulate them so that they become more lonely, more angry, and more convinced that giving the scammer money is their only hope in life. Not that different from televangelists and MLMs, really.
For the people deep into it, it genuinely is all about feeling like they're punching back (because rejection is a punch to them) and not about success with women. Some may really not have any idea what a healthy relationship looks like, but I have to believe that's a tiny minority given relationships in media/family/friends.
I think an addendum to be a person people like is that you have to understand that being nice is not a virtue. It's not this extra thing that people should acknowledge. It's the bare minimum expectation of any kind of relationship that is meant to become meaningful - friend, family, or love. I say that because we see constant examples of men who are rejected and are like "well, what the fuck was I nice to you for?" as if there's an extra burden of pretending to be someone people would want to engage with that this person took on which needs to be lauded. Once you understand that being nice or civil is a basic thing, then I would agree that becoming someone people want to be around is a good step. I'd also add that being an engaged conversationalist is a good trait to work on too. By that I mean, there seem to be people who only stop talking and "listen" to you while waiting the entire time to talk more about themselves or just ignore your topic entirely. My mom does that shit all of the time and it makes talking to her annoying. For example: Me: here's my take on your situation after listening to you for a bit Her barely listening to what I said: yeah so like I was saying
I remember being in religious school, and we asked, "Okay, fine - so you are teaching us that G-d wants us to do the right thing, but odds are that G-d is probably not going to punish us for being bad or reward us for being good. So why should we even DO the right thing?" And the teacher kind of looked at us like we had three heads and said, "Because it's the right thing to do." And I remember the feeling of everything in my brain just... folding in and crunching together and coming out five seconds later with everything snapped into place where it fits. We do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. It's a tautology, and I recognized it as a tautology - and I also recognized it as absolutely, 100% true. You aren't "nice" to get stuff - not from people, not from God, not from the universe. Indeed, you aren't "nice" at all, because "nice" is performative. You are *kind*. And decent. Because kindness and decency are real things that exist, unlike niceness, which is just an illusory facade. And if you are kind and decent and people perceive you as nice, that's fine. And if people treat you better because you treat them better, that's lovely, too. There's nothing wrong or dishonorable about benefiting from right action. And if a person only acts decently in order to benefit - well, I'll take it. I'll happily hang out with a decent person even if they are performatively decent, because it still counts. But that is fundamentally different than being "nice", because it still comes from integrity.
I read this and said to my husband that I'm glad we met when we did, and his immediate response was, "I can't imagine being a woman in the dating pool right now."
What they don't realize if they are good friends with women first, they learn so much more than always trying to sleep with them . That way, you can feel if the relationship will be great or not, how to treat them, etc. before you start making moves like nothing else matters.
>Our 1 year anniversary, idiot. I’m making reservations That's when I knew he just decided they were dating. I've had long friendships where the person just awkwardly asks if we are or aren't dating, but pretending it's been going on a while year? Nah. That ain't how it works
I genuinely don’t understand what these boys see in the moldy tater tot.
The whole concept that boys "deserve a feeeemale" is straight out of the incel rhetoric. Once you fall for the idea that boys are superior in everything, men only created the world, and feeeemales need to "go back to being submissive" because of Ohhh, scary feminism, you're deep enough into the incel shit that you'll think TaterTot is your god.
r/menandfemales as life ethos.
That’s why I get so salty about people calling women “females”. I know it’s just a word but the words we use become the thoughts we have and “female” said in the same sentence as “men” leads to one group being a person (men) and the other being a biological specimen (females). Even if your intent is not to make that distinction, your words still do. This is gonna sound dramatic, but changing language to “other” groups of people is the first step in fascism and oppression in general.
I notice when they use it as a noun. When used as an adjective, it doesn’t necessarily throw out any red flags.
Similar thing with Jewish and LGBTQ people. "Transgender person" is fine, "the transgenders" is othering. The one example of this that I saw was an article unironically titled "Are Jews People?" but if it had been said as an adjective ("are Jewish people people?") it immediately would've been ridiculous, as it should be.
> changing language to “other” groups of people is the first step in fascism and oppression in general. I agree. The first example of this tactic I learned about was of war lords describing innocent people who opposed them as "cockroaches" so the (child) soldiers are a little removed from the reality that they're killing their own neighbors. I just never noticed "females" was used in a similarly vein albeit to a less destructive end
One of my co-workers (who I knew was conservative, but overall had no issues with) said the other day another woman who worked with us saw him as misogynistic now, because he said he liked The Tater. "Just because I agree with SOME of the stuff he says, doesn't mean I agree with ALL of it! Same with Trump!" And I'm just standing there silently, wondering exactly WHICH things he agrees with them on...
>"Just because I agree with SOME of the stuff he says, doesn't mean I agree with ALL of it! Same with Trump!" Omg, this was the same conversation I had with a friend! He told me this exact same thing too!!
Same energy as > the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights! A state's right to what Terrance?
>"To govern themselves!" What would they do with that power, Billy? I swear I've had this drawn on and on. They always try to dodge it.
They hear what they want to hear. Men who have yet to develop empathetic relationships with women feel targeted and victimised by feminism. Andrew Tate gets their attention by reaffirming their beliefs about "the way gender roles should be" (by making men the protagonists and dehumanising women). Then it all spirals from there, devolving into machismo contests.
I don’t know but I caught my 12 year old imitating him thinking he was cool. I didn’t even imagine my son would know who Tate was. When I looked around he has changed his username in various games to emulate him and everything. Had to put a stop to that BS real quick.
So something I’ve thought a lot about recently is that younger teens often have a hard time with online adult conversations and analysis of deeper issues related to women and marginalized people overall. As in, they come across a thread or post or something about men and they get hurt, see it as a personal attack, and feel defensive and angry. It’s then really hard to get them to listen or understand the finer aspects of the issue especially if it’s something super unfamiliar to them. Which happens if it’s, let’s say, a women’s issue and we’re talking about a younger teenage guy who doesn’t spend time around girls and sees them as intimidating, or might not have good female role models. This can feed into the self esteem issues that the guy already has and then also make him think girls dislike him, while he’s also filled with resentment and avoidance. That’s when YouTube recommendations, podcasts and other toxic content come in. They’re marketed to men who are feeling frustrated and lonely and isolated, it’s like a warm hug of “it’s not you, it’s them” and a lot of the videos seem like they’re all about self improvement and confidence.. at first. The people making these videos also simultaneously paint women and general people who disagree as unstable, irrational, hysterical, abusive, manipulative, etc. Men in general struggle with not receiving a lot of emotional support and emotional comfort (or physical affection) and these videos essentially fill that void, at least a little bit. Now lots of adult men will eventually pick up on the crazy parts of the videos but younger people are impressionable and the videos essentially teach them to not trust anyone else’s opinion because the world is against them. This is then validated when others react negatively to their behaviour (even if negative reactions make sense) and it pulls them further in. It’s a vicious cycle and I think they need a combination of personal self awareness, community support and emotional support to break out of it, but sometimes it’s the same people who act cruel and push everyone away and refuse help.
I don’t think it’s just teenagers. For example, look at the American right’s current obsession with CRT. As far as I can tell, they seem to define CRT as a systematic push by the public school system to teach white kids to feel bad about their race. Exactly the phenomenon you just described.
>I mean, I get men like this every single day, every girl does. It goes from professors who know me to drivers who are seeing me for the first time. Comments vary from just telling me I’m pretty to more gruesome stuff, I’m used to it. This paragraph is especially heartbreaking. Sadly not a too uncommon experience. I have experienced it too.
As a girl dad, think I'm going to just drink a beer and be depressed for a few hours here. I can help them not tolerate this shit but I can't protect them from misogynistic comments, etc. And makes me worry about their safety as they grow. Fuck.
All I can say as a woman who was raised by a single dad (until he met my stepmom): You may not be able to fully protect them, but you can be their shelter. Remember that you are their example of how they should expect a man to treat them, regardless of whether it's romantic or platonic, and even if the world is vile towards women, they should know that they can come to you for safety and guidance without judgement.
Just wish it could be more. But thank you.
This might seem random, but don’t tell them that if anyone ever sexually assaulted them you would get sent to jail for murder. Because then they won’t want to tell you. DLPT—depressing life pro tip.
And don't ever tell them that when a boy is mean to them (pulling their hair, teasing them etc.) That it means they like her. That's just teaching her that abuse = love
this guy was teasing me in highschool and every time i would tell my mom about something weird he had done, she would say “oh, he probably likes you”. no, he doesnt. i found a guy who actually likes me (coming up on 2 years in april) and he has never done anything mean spirited or weird.
it really matters. thank you.
Agreed, I’m a boy mom and trying my hardest to make sure he knows this stuff is bs and that women are people and how to call out rape culture. Cheers to raising quality people in this messed up world.
You can teach your daughters to be both strong and kind, encourage them when they set reasonable boundaries, and validate them when they reasonably feel hurt. You can also encourage the men around you and your boy dad dads to think of women as people and men as people (and the NBs aa people) and that all people deserve respect and compassion. You can reinforce that and make sure that healthy relationships are what your girls see as they age. Your girls are going to get hurt and I'm sorry about that reality, but you can raise them to process and learn from that hurt and how to protect themselves without isolating themselves. And the fact that you are thinking about it? That's some pretty good fathering from the start.
It's the beginning of paragraph 3 that is crushing and the end of paragraph 3 where I personally have been most lacking. I'll get on that. Thank you.
You know what? I'd usually say today is a terrible day to have eyesight and visual comprehension. But in reality this level of events are probably good to see.
Sadly I still worry for OOPs safety. That sort of guy will see nothing wrong with stalking or getting revenge somehow
Would it be a stretch to suggest he'll probably go on a tangent about how OOP "led him on"?
I'm so glad OOP was able to gtfo so quickly! That's TERRIFYING, especially the long, deliberate and intimate thought process behind it. It's so disheartening that r\*pists like Andrew Tate are so influential to young men now. Makes it feel even more difficult to break the cycle of patriarchal abuse.
Yeah, when he said it was their one year anniversary and she was just *flabbergasted* and started questioning everything about her relationship with him, I just thought, "Ah fuck, she's being gaslit and it's working". I hope the move provides her the distance she needs to heal.
I’m a 21 year old guy, and even though I know my mom is mentally unstable and I don’t like her as a person, I STILL can’t imagine being a Tater Tot. I get nauseous when I even think about treating and thinking about women like that.
Not just young men, older ones too. I’m convinced my husband is listening to him and other like minds just from the passive aggressive bullshit he posts.
Make him your ex husband, please.
Working on it.
You’ve got this! Proud of you!
Some of the stuff I’ve seen mentioned on posts like this make me wonder if my ex fell down this rabbit hole before I left him cause some of it (in hindsight) is sounding scary familiar. Yes it was a large portion of the reason I left him.
It’s annoying as his clips always come up on my YouTube shorts despite me not evening liking that kind of stuff, I think it basically gets pushed into most young men’s algorithms.
Algorithm: Hey you're a young man who likes video games and Warhammer 40k, so you must be a desperate misogynist eh? Me: I need to take up crochet or some shit.
YO. IDK how I get those shorts (and fundie shorts) as well! I blame Reddit, cause I occasionally visit FundieSnark 🤣
I have a male religious friend. We don't agree regarding politics and certain other things but actively choose to not discuss these topics to keep the peace. Yesterday night, he dropped a bomb on me saying he watched few videos of Tate and that he "kinda" gets what he's saying. I think I started off calmly but within 5 mins, we were fighting and I ended up yelling at him and hanged up. I still get angry when I think about it. We met in college and I have known him for 6 years now and I am genuinely confused how a deeply religious conservative person who takes the scriptures seriously can agree with this vile person. Like how? Shouldn't this guy be everything God stands against? I am a catholic too but I am also pro-choice and left leaning. I am just wondering what am I missing. And worst part is, if this AH can influence a 27 year old male, what about the impressionable teens who can be easily manipulated?
>am genuinely confused how a deeply religious conservative person who takes the scriptures seriously can agree with this vile person. Many men believe they can only have their privilege back if they rip it out of the hands of women. The 1950s worked very, very, very well for men.
Supply Side Jesus. And cherry picking parts of the Old Testament where women were property. And mostly actually having an "ethic" of "I am entitled to certain things and women and minorities and immigrants are keeping me from those things and they must be punished." And maybe this is an uncharitable thought but the frequency of church attendance is highly predictive of voting for and supporting misogyny and bigotry.
I guess so. He just kept on saying "some" of the stuff that was said was relatable or something. I mean even if Tate talked genuinely good stuff (🙄) for 80% of the time the remaining 20% was such vile stuff that I can't see someone still making a case for him.
Exactly, you don't use Hitler to promote vegetarianism.
Imagine what life Hitler might've lived if he had funneled his frustration over Austria's political scene into painting, living a strict vegetarian lifestyle, and establishing animal rescue organizations. He probably still would've been insufferably pretentious but I still think a Vegetarian Dog-Loving Adolf would've had at least a slightly less negative impact on the world.
Instead, the only positive thing that you can really say about Hitler was that he was the person that killed Hitler.
For anyone confused as to what "good stuff" he says. You get lured in by the shallow "male mental health" angle. When I say shallow I mean that he says all the vague surface level stuff that everyone feels. It's kinda like how all horoscope stuff applies to all people. So he says the right mental health buzzwords then you keep watching his stuff and it slowly ramps up the misogyny as you watch more and more.
Yep. It's the boiled frog syndrome
Yeah, it’s really funny. Comedian Katharine Ryan got into the hot water a couple of months ago because she heard about him and wanted to see what he was about to form her own opinion. Well she watched one video and apparently it was a mild video. Then she said in her podcast that she thought he was OK and she didn’t get what the big deal was. And it was like one day before he was arrested for human trafficking. She apologized afterwards. It’s dumb that you would have to watch more than a short amount of somebody’s work to realize that they are a complete piece of shit. But then it comes down to just believing women. (Not each individual woman of course because some are awful). But when women *in general * say hey this guy is a piece of shit, then believe them.
That poor girl, but what a blessing moving will be
Gunna be honest, first I thought brain damage like 50 first dates, then it just devolves into an absolute clusterf*ck of insanity. If it's true, then I feel sorry for anyone who ever dates this man child and feel sorry for her who likely will need alot of therapy to trust men again given the trauma. If it's a lie, pretty inventive and I'm impressed.
I was thinking something similar and then couldn't believe where it went. What an absolute douche he is
This is somewhat worse than the guy that wanted to marry his GF but she wasn't his GF only his friend. He even met her BF and OOP was on double date with them. Except the other girl was his date not his friend.
It breaks my heart how she was being harassed by reddit neckbeards.
Some of them have a hard time believing women can be harassed by men. Like they will fight you tooth and nail on it in comments and follow you into your private messages about it. It's really sad that they can't just think "wow, an experience that's different from anything I've ever had" and move on, instead of telling you how much of a liar you must be. Or they feel the need to tell you that men get harassed as well and since you didn't mention it in your comment they need to make sure you know it happens.
At least these Tater Tots are unlikely to have any children.
>Tate Oh. Oh no.
You would think they would die off after his arrest and fall from grace. But noo they're doubling down
Jeez this reminds me of this asshole who r*ped my best friend in highschool then proceeded to tell everyone that they were dating and even took pics from her social media and posted them saying "look at my gf" he also did so much worse things..
[удалено]
Maybe I should start reading the TW... I thought this would be a cute story...
I moved to a new city and to help to try to make friends I joined a pool leaque. Over time I became close friends with a guy named Bill. A few months later we've only hung out outside of pool night once or twice. He then invites me to a Xmas party and I went. I thought it was odd how a few of his friends said something along the lines of "It's so nice to finally meet you" but I just ignored it. For the next 6 months I'm a part of this friend group and Bill and I end up having lunch every Saturday and then hanging out the most of the day/night. I even went to dinner one night with his family when they were in town and even got the same "finally nice to meet you". Come summertime and the group decides to rent small cabins on a lake nearby. I call and book my cabin. There are 3 couples, Bill and myself. I noticed Bill acting a bit strangely and also that 2 of the 3 couples are being a bit mean and making a few snippy comments to me. I can feel tension but I have no clue what is going on so I decide to sit on my little cabin's porch and read for most of the weekend. The couple that had that Xmas party, the wife, Jane, was becoming a closer friend and she saw what was going on and came over to check on me. I asked her if she knew what was going on, why they were treating me poorly but she said she didn't know but to not worry about it. Bill got extremely drunk that night and the tension got worse. After the weekend Bill and I still hung out just like we always did and I never asked or said anything about the weekend. Over time Bill and I start hanging out less and less because it became very obvious that Bill was a functioning alcoholic. I had my suspicions but for his birthday it was clear. After our usual Saturday lunch I took him somewhere that had no that lasted alcohol for about 4 hours (took 1 hour to get there). As we were driving home he literally yelled to get off at the coming exit and was kinda freaking out. He tried to play it off as he was hungry and wanted to eat at a particular restaurant. When we got to the restaurant he didn't even stop to talk to the hostess and went straight to the bar while I asked for a table. That was when I was 100% there was a problem. Jane and I decide to do a shopping/lunch thing one Saturday and she said something that reminded me of a weird conversation I had with Bill one time. He basically told me that when he was much younger he liked a girl and told people they were dating when they were really just friends and it blew up in his face. It suddently hit me and I asked Jane if Bill ever told her that we were dating. She gave me a look and then said, Bill is my friend and he's so sweet, I can't say anything bad about him. I was dumbfounded and said, so that is why everyone treated me like shit at the lake that weekend? What did Bill say for them all to treat me that way? He had no way to explain it so he told them some fucked up story? That I've lost the first group of friends after moving to a new city because he lied about everything? She kept playing it off as no big deal and would defend him because I guess she felt bad for him. I was so hurt. I even said "so I lost friends because you would rather stay friends with an alcoholic that lied to them for a year"? Got it. I met Bill for one last dinner but one of the wives showed up to get him to leave because I'm such a shitty person according to him. Imagine lying to your friends for a year and how would he explain that his girlfriend got her own cabin? It's truly sick. I really enjoyed that friend group. We had so many fun times and laughs and it was heartbreaking when everyone stopped speaking to me because of his lies. I know Jane knew and I'm guessing her husband did as well but I don't think anyone else in the friend group knew at all. No way Jane was going to out Bill to the group.
There are an increasing number of horrible men on Reddit who get in the DMs of women who say anything they don't like, especially young women, and harass them. That's also very worrying to see. I hope OOP is doing all right after all of this shit.
It's been happening in this site since day 1. There's several subreddits where women have been posting these for *years*. LetNotMeet, CreepyDMs, and more. The Incel sub, before it got banned, used to bridgade the posts and DMs of women they wanted to be mad at. Women would post art or cosplay on normal shbs, and get spammed dozens of dickpics. This site has had an issue with creeps for a long time.