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Men, where have you gone? Please come back

nytimes.com

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Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#41

Post by [deleted] »

nchmy wrote: post #36
bell-cot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Obviously there's a huge amount of nuance in approaching another person. OTOH, I certainly know men who simply stay away from women - because "that's the best possible outcome anyway, and the least painful way of reaching it".

Cold approaching someone to ask them out - especially if they hadn't yet AT LEAST exchanged smiles - seems to be the sign of a deluded/misguided person. And even moreso with such an enormous - and generally creepy - age difference. More prudent and effective would be to approach a group, chat with them, and build a rapport. Then see where things go. Even more prudent would be to not be so utterly pathetic and despera…

[deleted]

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#42

Post by labrador »

nchmy wrote: post #35
dinkusmcgrawkus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, didn't you just prove his point and your comment is exactly the same sort of finger wagging, virtue signalling bs that got us here. SHE IS 22, SHE IS AN ADULT! If you think that throughout history, 40 year old men have NOT sought out younger woman to mate with, you're fucking delusional. SHE IS AN ADULT, GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. Your "disgust" over the relationship is no different then having disgust over a…

You seem to be the only one exhibiting disgust here, friend. The main reason for my comment - though there's plenty more - is that a 38yr old and 22 yr old are literally a generation, and hopefully (for the older person's sake) immense life experience and maturity levels, apart. I'm late 30s and couldn't possibly fathom being in a fulfilling relationship with a 22 year old - unless I was only interested in her as an…

You're assuming a cold approach from a stranger. They knew each other and were friendly. He asked, she declined. That should’ve been the end of it. But instead, she chose public shaming, which wasn’t about boundaries, it was about performing victimhood. That kind of social punishment teaches men to disappear, not to grow. What do you think that does to a generation of men already struggling with connection?

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#43

Post by voskresenie »

nchmy wrote: post #34
voskresenie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because she's attractive and has plenty of time to have kids, so he doesn't have to rush into getting married and having children with her. Your question also presupposes that there's some reason that he should prefer or limit himself to women his own age, but there's literally no reason to take that as the default. The real question is, why do you care? What happened to not shaming people for their personal sexual a…

Its sad that can't see why this is utterly bizzare, deluded/no recognition of how reality is, and likely creepy. Moreover, at no point did you consider HER in your comment - do you think a 22yr old wants some 38 year old (of any sort) approaching her? Ps I'm literally a late 30s, contendedly-single man - for personal reasons, not because of "how women are these days". If he was my friend (and someone so pathetic neve…

>Its sad that can't see why this is utterly bizzare, deluded/no recognition of how reality is, and likely creepy.

This is all just a verbose way of saying 'it makes me feel icky'. Verbalize your issue with it, or keep your feelings to yourself. Lots of things make me feel icky, and I'm quite certain you'd call me mean things for many of them. Difference is, I'm not so self-obsessed as to think my personal disgust should matter to anyone other than me.

>Moreover, at no point did you consider HER in your comment - do you think a 22yr old wants some 38 year old (of any sort) approaching her?

She says, 'sorry, not interested', and moves on. It's not a big deal. Walking up to a person and asking them out doesn't require a person's consent, nor is it some terribly traumatic thing. In certain cases, it can be a minor faux pas, eg if her body language indicated she didn't want him to approach her, but it's still not a big deal so long as when she rejects him, he leaves her alone.

I didn't consider her in my comment because we know literally nothing about her other than her age and sex, and there's no reason to assume from those details alone that she wouldn't be open to going on a date with him. I could imagine it being uncomfortable for her, but that's not something anyone can know in advance (you do realize there are plenty of young women who date significantly older guys, right? it's not the norm, but it's also not exactly rare), and there's nothing so outrageous about asking a woman out that a person needs to avoid it in order to cater to the portion of women who would be uncomfortable with it. I am uncomfortable with lots of interactions I have, but that doesn't mean the other party is doing anything wrong. In fact, I've been uncomfortable being asked out before, by people who I believed should realize I wouldn't be interested in them -- but again, that doesn't mean they did anything wrong. This all has the air of nobility taking offense that a commoner would dare to speak to them.

>And then, tried to help him sort his life out.

Respectfully, a single almost-40 y/o man isn't in a position to help anyone sort their life out, particularly not one who gets upset over a grown man asking out a grown woman.

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#44

Post by msgodel »

nchmy wrote: post #37
labrador wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very Gen Z attitude that appears to be common. It's not shared among people of older generations. A 22 year old is an adult that can determine who she wants to date without a bunch of young femininst men rushing to defend her, which is what happened to my son. "May June romances" are a thing throughout history. Only recently have we expanded this to include young men and older women.

[flagged]

Enough people have taken this scorched earth attitude over random things like this that most people have few, if any, friends now so it hardly matters anymore.

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#45

Post by nchmy »

voskresenie wrote: post #43
nchmy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its sad that can't see why this is utterly bizzare, deluded/no recognition of how reality is, and likely creepy. Moreover, at no point did you consider HER in your comment - do you think a 22yr old wants some 38 year old (of any sort) approaching her? Ps I'm literally a late 30s, contendedly-single man - for personal reasons, not because of "how women are these days". If he was my friend (and someone so pathetic neve…

>Its sad that can't see why this is utterly bizzare, deluded/no recognition of how reality is, and likely creepy. This is all just a verbose way of saying 'it makes me feel icky'. Verbalize your issue with it, or keep your feelings to yourself. Lots of things make me feel icky, and I'm quite certain you'd call me mean things for many of them. Difference is, I'm not so self-obsessed as to think my personal disgust sho…

Lol. Good luck to you

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#46

Post by nchmy »

labrador wrote: post #40
nchmy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its sad that can't see why this is utterly bizzare, deluded/no recognition of how reality is, and likely creepy. Moreover, at no point did you consider HER in your comment - do you think a 22yr old wants some 38 year old (of any sort) approaching her? Ps I'm literally a late 30s, contendedly-single man - for personal reasons, not because of "how women are these days". If he was my friend (and someone so pathetic neve…

A lot of single women hoping to start families would be happy to have a tall, gainfully employed and hard working man take an interest in them. Your group has made rules that insure the fade out of the human race through depopulation, like Japan is experiencing. It’s interesting that you’re in your late 30s, because you sound like the same kind of moral enforcer who publicly humiliated my son. Not protective. Perform…

Lol. Good luck to you all

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#47

Post by voskresenie »

inkywatcher wrote: post #8
neuralkoi wrote: post #6

My ChatGPT meter tells me that it *feels* like this was written by AI: Notice the excessive use of the em dash throughout the article combined with the sycophantic contrasts ChatGPT loves to use so much: "It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to simulation — clean, fast and frictionless." A sad state of affairs if the NYT is letting AI-slop through.

The dashes thing is really only a tell for high schoolers and obvious illiterates –writers can and do use them. Next we need to teach GPT about interrobangs.

thank you for saying this. I'm not a writer, just vaguely literate, and I find em-dashes to be extremely useful as a way of approximating conversational speech without a string of comma splices.

Additionally, the observation about AI using dashes really only applies (if it applies at all) to informal text conversation, not published articles. Here's a random NYT article from 2014 that uses 4 em-dashes within the first 3 paragraphs. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/fashion/the-year-of-taylo...

It seems like everyone watched some video essay about how em-dashes are a sure sign of AI, and they're just parroting it without question. The thing that apparently goes over people's heads is that the reason AI tends to use a lot of em-dashes is because the text in their training data uses a lot of em-dashes, and the training data is largely published articles and books, so it's a terrible heuristic for whether a published article or book was written using AI.

The thing that actually is somewhat more telling is that many people will use hyphens instead of dashes, eg on a computer, I typically type '--' instead of an em-dash, partly because my xcompose setup is inconsistent, partly because I write most of my text in editors that use monospaced fonts and the distinction between -, – , and — is extremely subtle in most fixed-width fonts, for obvious reasons. But on macs and many phones, as well as in google docs and similar, by default a hyphen will be autocorrected to an en- or em-dash depending on context, so it's not really a tell that the entire thing was written with AI, just that there was possibly non-human involvement. But also, a lot of people actually just know how to type and use dashes. It's not really that hard.

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#48

Post by voskresenie »

neuralkoi wrote: post #6

My ChatGPT meter tells me that it *feels* like this was written by AI: Notice the excessive use of the em dash throughout the article combined with the sycophantic contrasts ChatGPT loves to use so much: "It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to simulation — clean, fast and frictionless." A sad state of affairs if the NYT is letting AI-slop through.

Let me guess—you watched a tiktok video telling you that em-dashes are a sure sign of AI, and you accepted it without question. Go find a couple NYT articles from 10 years ago and check how many em-dashes they use—the answer might surprise you! (Hint: AI uses a lot of em-dashes because its training data uses a lot of em-dashes. What is its training data?)

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#49

Post by voskresenie »

audunw wrote: post #7
neuralkoi wrote: post #6

My ChatGPT meter tells me that it *feels* like this was written by AI: Notice the excessive use of the em dash throughout the article combined with the sycophantic contrasts ChatGPT loves to use so much: "It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to simulation — clean, fast and frictionless." A sad state of affairs if the NYT is letting AI-slop through.

Yeah cause it’s completely unimaginable that a professional writer would use em dash /s https://www.nightwater.email/em-dash-ai/ I do dread the wave of AI slop coming our way. But honestly what I dread even more is the comments that’s going to second guess every other article and comment, just because they use some character or style that people have decided is a sign of being AI generated. That’s gonna get tedious r…

I'm an amateur composer and it pains me to know that, given my lack of credentials, my work will always be viewed with the suspicion of AI involvement. I version control my scores for this reason, at the very least I can prove that it took me weeks, months, or sometimes years of effort and revisions to compose something, even if I can't prove that each revision wasn't just the output of an AI. It was already bad enough worrying that a melody or sequence I wrote is too similar to some other existing work and judged to be plagiarism, but that pales in comparison to AI suspicions.

Re: Men, where have you gone? Please come back

#50

Post by nchmy »

labrador wrote: post #42
nchmy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be the only one exhibiting disgust here, friend. The main reason for my comment - though there's plenty more - is that a 38yr old and 22 yr old are literally a generation, and hopefully (for the older person's sake) immense life experience and maturity levels, apart. I'm late 30s and couldn't possibly fathom being in a fulfilling relationship with a 22 year old - unless I was only interested in her as an…

You're assuming a cold approach from a stranger. They knew each other and were friendly. He asked, she declined. That should’ve been the end of it. But instead, she chose public shaming, which wasn’t about boundaries, it was about performing victimhood. That kind of social punishment teaches men to disappear, not to grow. What do you think that does to a generation of men already struggling with connection?

I come back to my original comment - why did he have romantic interest in a 22yr old? Theres A LOT of women out there who would be vastly more compatible with him due to being in a similar stage of life.

And, moreover, if he already knew her, he should have been able it intuit a) if she was interested and b) what her character is like - is she the sort to try to actively shame people.

I really hope your son does deep introspection as a result of all of this, rather than blaming her, women, or an entire generation.

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