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She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

nautil.us

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Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#161

Post by jameshart »

aninhumer wrote: post #142
pdabbadabba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I wasn't outraged before, but I have to admit that I may be feeling a touch of outrage now. The "mangling" of speech to be politically correct and the "muffling" of open and honest communications that some of us are asking for is just this: changing "score something 'out of your league'" to, e.g., "meet someone 'out of your league.'" I'm not sure why people see this as so hard to swallow. There may be someone "…

I strongly agree with this criticism of the language (I winced reading it), but I also agree that the way it was criticised here was unnecessarily inflammatory. There are many people who are not sympathetic to calls for PC language, and including accusations of "insane chauvinism" isn't going to make them any more palatable.

And that's the important issue, after all. We need to make sure that people who enjoy sexist language feel welcome in the technology industry and on forums like this, because otherwise we would so rarely get to hear their perspective.

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#162

Post by tajen »

rtl49 wrote: post #21

I've read a few comments deriding the complexity of this analysis. However, I think it is worth identifying it as a fact that, noticed or not, there is something of a power struggle in the early stages of the human courtship ritual. Here, this issue is that of availability. Given that it is sometimes difficult to gauge the desirability of a prospective partner, one metric is how eager they seem to be. If the other re…

OMG this is stressing me out so much. I coped with the dating game by dating men and becoming allergic to women's unreasonable expectations [1]. I was reasonably cute ("9.5/10" according to girls at uni), liked sports and programmer job, but I'm ending up unsatisfied in life. Part of it is not encountering enough girls, the other part is not knowing what to do to meet more, third part was succeeding to improve things but then being dumped abroad while still in culture shock in a not-nice-at-all break-up. Part 4 is, not recovering from that break-up, trust issues with girls, and we're 10 years later, still a wreak, while virtually quite rich from my stock options, and startup founder.

I used to go out of my way to be generous, give back to the society and be nice to people. I don't know why, I secretely hoped to get support in case of a major event. But no-one counted/counts that break-up as relevant, and the social fabric wasn't here to hug me when I needed it. Now I vote for individualism and I'm in life for money. I'm voting so far-right, I feel like Hitler.

Life isn't nice for losers, and I've lost the game. Starting as a programmer doesn't help. In 2006 when it was a mostly-male environment. Through 2012 when only women were promoted around me. Didn't help.

Has anyone here been so low? Given up so much of their values because of insatisfaction? but succeeded to improve his character later in life? Needless to say, I don't like who I am now.

[1] To be clear, I still believe in equality and I'm the (only) one trying to bring Lego and science to my goddaughter.

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#163

Post by rtl49 »

alias240 wrote: post #106
rtl49 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, this is not true. Initiating contact is not only acceptable, but quite often preferred. Generally this approach is just protecting your self-esteem.

No, it's a sign of respect. In these days of Tinder, girls are used to guys hitting on them all the time. By not contacting them, you are actually sending a message.

It's quite possible to communicate romantic interest in a way that wouldn't make the other person uncomfortable or suggest disrespect.

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#164

Post by lighttower »

jameshart wrote: post #160
lighttower wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't suspect users here have conscious ulterior motives. I think that ____ (insert one of { media, communists, political elites, liberals, aliens, etc}) have conditioned knee-jerk language-policing. This has the side-effect of taking the current thread off topic while muting substantive discourse in this and future posts. The dictionary attack has been practiced in media for a long time. Watch a famous 50s news an…

Wow. You've gone from accusing people of faking outrage, to accusing people of executing a CNN-style 'dictionary attack'(?), to suggesting an alien communist liberal conspiracy... ... and you think that OTHER people are taking the thread off-topic and muting substantive discourse?

Do you really not see the humor in political elites & aliens? Or are you just providing the readership with a textbook example of becoming outraged by deliberately interpreting things wrongly?

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#165

Post by pmarreck »

jameshart wrote: post #83
pmarreck wrote: post #75

So TL;DR: Uncertain reply-time-window dynamics enabled by the era of asynchronous/deferred indirect communication (aka "texting"/"emailing") create a situation where the psychological principles of the Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement ) kick in, which, as it turns out, is the most addicting, thus creating the most drama. I get that about right? ;) Word to the wise (s…

"score something"? Really?

Poor choice of wording.

I'm 43. While this is no excuse, I suppose, I grew up in a time that was not as ridiculously P.C. as it is now. I find myself increasingly surrounded by this sort of sensitivity to any (even joking) conventionally-male analogies used when dating. I'm also a US Veteran and a member of a fraternity, two bastions of male-centrist worldview.

But also, just to be clear... Disgust is a non-argument. :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#166

Post by pmarreck »

jameshart wrote: post #136
sliverstorm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Something" doesn't necessarily refer to a woman. Could refer to a relationship, ala: I want something that will make my heart race, something that feels real

I've never heard anyone describe a relationship as being 'out of their league'.

This is an extremely common expression, I thought. Google seems to indicate similarly with 847,000 results for the exact expression "out of (my OR your OR their) league".

So, not sure under what rock you've been. ;)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22out+of+(my+OR+your+OR+the...

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#167

Post by pmarreck »

herbig wrote: post #87
pmarreck wrote: post #75

So TL;DR: Uncertain reply-time-window dynamics enabled by the era of asynchronous/deferred indirect communication (aka "texting"/"emailing") create a situation where the psychological principles of the Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement ) kick in, which, as it turns out, is the most addicting, thus creating the most drama. I get that about right? ;) Word to the wise (s…

The chauvinism in this comment is insane. Women aren't points on a scoreboard and dating dynamics aren't meant to be a power struggle.

> Women aren't points on a scoreboard

Ideally, no. But men often use sports analogies when discussing getting a woman to actually date them, which is a quite difficult goal. I apologize for any offense.

> dating dynamics aren't meant to be a power struggle

Here you lost me. If you don't think there's often a power struggle in the early stages of dating, I don't know what reality you're living, because it's not mine.

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#168

Post by pmarreck »

lighttower wrote: post #110
herbig wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chauvinism in this comment is insane. Women aren't points on a scoreboard and dating dynamics aren't meant to be a power struggle.

> The chauvinism in this comment is insane. Women aren't points on a scoreboard This commenter, the type that is OUTRAGED by speech that hasn't been mangled to be politically correct, is responsible for muffling open and honest communication among people. Specific to this example, there is nothing wrong with the OP's use of scoring - the outraged expressed by the commenter above is basically trolling for a response b…

It seems that any discussion of specific genders brings this out of some people.

The problem is, there IS a double standard, as evidenced in many places, including this OKCupid blog post that was replied to me: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...

That said, generalizing correlations of ANYTHING to gender and then trying to ACT on that, is, generally, a bad idea (just as it is to correlate with race or ethnicity or age or pretty much any other physical attribute).

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#169

Post by aninhumer »

jameshart wrote: post #161
aninhumer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree with this criticism of the language (I winced reading it), but I also agree that the way it was criticised here was unnecessarily inflammatory. There are many people who are not sympathetic to calls for PC language, and including accusations of "insane chauvinism" isn't going to make them any more palatable.

And that's the important issue, after all. We need to make sure that people who enjoy sexist language feel welcome in the technology industry and on forums like this, because otherwise we would so rarely get to hear their perspective.

That depends, do you want to feel smug and righteous, or do you actually want to convince people that what they're doing is harmful?

Being right is not a substitute for being persuasive.

Re: She’ll Text Me, She’ll Text Me Not

#170

Post by pmarreck »

jmilloy wrote: post #118
herbig wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chauvinism in this comment is insane. Women aren't points on a scoreboard and dating dynamics aren't meant to be a power struggle.

Then again, you used the term "insane" inappropriately. To a certain extent, you have to accept some slang during discussion. And, in addition to the fact that power is a core concept in sociology, what dating dynamics are "meant to be" (whatever that means) doesn't really matter.

No, the scary thing here is that s/he does NOT have to accept ANY slang during discussion AND can declare my entire comment invalid (while using public shame) based on what was (to him/her) a poor choice of wording (which, perhaps it was, but disgust is not an argument)
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