The Trolls Among Us - Screwing with Internet users for fun, profit, and to fulfill the ultimate desire of making someone else suffer.
Shorts Crack the Code - Men take another step towards comfortable-clothing equality with women.
Friday, August 1, 2008
For your reading pleasure
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Post-spandex?
One link posted there that caught my attention is http://www.cakelovesyou.com. Apparently it's a clothing company run by three guys also from my high school. And if you liked spandex (or even if you didn't), you'll like some of their pictures.
So you know, small world.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Reality RPGs with women
Over the past couple of weeks, I managed to meet a few girls. Although I don't want to suggest that anything beyond polite conversation was the result, I had an opportunity to think about different approaches one could take to woo one (or more) of them and decide which will be the most effective. Unfortunately, my brain tends to shut down when I'm trying to interact with just about anyone I don't know, especially women. But as an after-the-fact thought experiment, I think I did gather a few insights.
First, there are at least two categories of female-attraction strategies: the first one works with almost any woman, while the second may target certain insecurities, fears, likes, dislikes, or other personal traits. Of course, the first category is preferable because it works more reliably. It has to do with having (or pretending to have, which is essentially the same thing) a certain personality, what Ladder Theory parlance calls the "outlaw biker" type of character. Women are "automatically" attracted to such men because they exhume confidence, physical strength, and originality. Using a slightly different vocabulary, that of the current presidential campaign, they are "mavericks."
The second category of female-attraction strategies target women's less-basic and more varied needs. A woman may seek a man to fulfill a real or imagined need, or to have a teacher, a guide through life. It would seem that "fears" may fall under the first category as well as the second. The way to differentiate, here, is that first-category, more basic fears result from nature ("who will protect my offspring?"), while second-category fears appear during nurturing ("if I'm not married by 30, my mother will disown me"). Younger women who are considered adults (16-20, depending on the circumstances) may have various insecurities they tend to lose as they go through college or other such competitive environment. So it seems that second category strategies are especially effective for women under 21.
As a note, I'd like to point out that strategies within the second category tend to be mutually exclusive, in the sense that the man has to pick a role and stick to it, which means only a certain kind of woman will be affected at any one time. The first category, on the other hand, contains strategies which generally reinforce each other and, of course, appeal to a wide range of women. The two categories can also be used together.
It may be of some value to also categorize how women talk about other women. Clearly, there are the hot ones, who no one talks about except out of jealousy. They've been everywhere and done everything, but it is obvious and not worth pointing out. Then there are those who are known to be "loose" but are probably quite conservative. They just have a reputation for fun. They do enough to spark discussion among their friends but rarely, if ever, do anything outrageous. Then there are those who are neither hot nor "class clowns." They are not hot but also not conservative. They actually have a reputation among the men, having slept with all of them. And, last but not least, are the quiet ones. No one talks about them. They are not cool, although they could be the best homemakers or computer programmers.
Hypothesis
The biggest challenges of my experiment are 1) the window of opportunity for picking and acting out a strategy is tiny, basically minutes to hours. 2) how do I know which strategy will work with which woman?
Young Western women tend to like young Western men, in general. After only a few minutes of meeting someone new they may hug them or let themselves be seen in a bikini on the beach. It's a mystery to me when exactly, after meeting, various activities become "appropriate," and what needs to be done for the red line to move. (This also has to do with the Ladder Theory, but the temporal aspect is largely unknown and needs to be researched). My guess is that, because the woman places a man on the ladder almost immediately, first impressions are critical. But what else is critical? If they don't hold hands on a first date, does that mean certain kinds of touch are off limits for a much longer time than if they did hold hands? What is acceptable? What is a yes-or-no issue, and what can the woman be convinced of? Unfortunately, this topic remains a mystery to me.
To answer #2, I would like to propose that better-looking women are more interested in the same thing, ie, better-looking guys, the physical stuff. For intelligent conversation they can always turn to intellectual whores (also cf. Ladder Theory). This is reinforced by the fact that better-looking women tend to be healthier (either because in a man's eyes healthy=beautiful or because beautiful=healthy. Which causes the other doesn't matter). Hotter women wear less clothing, don't get tired as fast, and are more optimistic. Of course, this is all just empirical evidence.
Given the above, let me state the obvious - less-good looking women tend to fall for category 2. They tend to be smarter, so there is a higher chance for common interests. They tend to be less secure (perhaps because they are not that hot) and have various fears a man can exploit. And I don't mean "exploit" in a negative way; it simply means the fulfillment of a need, the making of a new connection.
Experiment
Now for what the men need to do. Those of us who are simply attractive (obviously, a miniscule minority among the readers of this blog) may simply come up and talk to anyone naturally, without blushing, feeling stupid, mincing words, or thinking too hard about what to say and what not to say. You are a natural. You know what to do with any girl you meet. Congratulations, you made it. I don't even know why you are reading this.
For the rest of us, it helps to think through various stereotypes and analyze a woman as closely as possible before and while meeting her (but beware - Facebook profiles can be very deceptive). Placing a woman into some group will help you later with your category 2 approach. During the meeting, some neutral conversation can lead to conclusions that can suggest strategies. The problem is there is no lie detector. For example, many of us loser men can't tell if a girl is saying something because she is insecure or because she is bored with you ("my mom makes me clean my room every weekend, so I have to be home on Saturday.") Figuring out how to get to the real reasons behind one or another remark is another big unknown and is left as an exercise to the reader.
If it is possible to play a role well, play it. Otherwise, simplify, simplify. A few well-positioned actions are better than a vague, overwhelming "theme". Of course, comparing a role's effectiveness between different women and different circumstances is an imperfect science. But a knowledge of female types and a list of strategies should help avoiding most obvious and some not-so-obvious blunders.
Conclusion
Playing a role and a strategy to meet women is a losing proposition if you are not acting naturally. It helps to position yourself strategically as soon as possible, but the most important thing is an ascending order (polite conversation->teasing->touching). Also, in my limited personal experience, talking only takes you so far. It helps the best in a group, where the woman will think about how the others react to the words the man is saying and how they position him in the group. One-on-one, physical contact is more important.
Lastly, I want to add that this is not at all how women look at relationships. This approach will seem strange and alien to them and to men who are good at picking up women - but only because they do it so naturally they don't have to think about it.
References
Ladder Theory - http://www.laddertheory.com
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
America's Problem: Suburbia
In the Wikipedia article I found this interesting tidbit:
After a referendum held on February 21, 1894, Montclair was reincorporated as a Town, effective February 24, 1894.[6] In the late 1970s, after protesting for years at the inequities built into the formulas, Montclair joined several other communities to qualify for a pool of federal aid allocated only to Townships, that allowed townships to receive as much as double the revenue-sharing aid per capita received by the four other types of New Jersey municipalities — Borough, City, Town or Village.[7][8]
Citation #7 points to a New York Times article from 1977, a year when big cities were on the verge of bankruptcy as its most affluent, and generally white, population left to the suburbs. This coincided with, and surely had some influence on, a surge in crime and a reduction in city services. A popular theory among the group we in 2008 may call "Obama supporters" (students, yuppies, people under 30, city-dwellers) states that the federal government in fact promoted "white flight" and the deterioration of big cities through policies that favored the suburbs over the urban areas and made it easy for wealthier folks to move out of the city.
Favoring townships over the other kinds of municipalities is one example of such a policy. Although I don't have access to the full New York Times article, I can venture a guess that townships are more rural and suburban than boroughs, cities, towns, and villages. They tend to have more commuting professionals or, in very rural settings, large farming enterprises- in other words, people favored by Republicans over both poor minorities and wealthy urbanites. This is the kind of policy that promotes suburban sprawl, increases dependence on the automobile, and generally "Wal-Martizes" America.
When I ran a search for "revenue-sharing aid" I stumbled upon the book Inside Game/Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America. One of its main themes is that elastic cities- those that expand geographically by annexing empty land or adjacent towns- do better economically than inelastic cities. Inelastic cities don't expand, so when people move out of them into the suburbs, the cities lose their taxes. Elastic cities collect taxes from both the rich and the poor by including them in one municipality; inelastic cities get stuck with the poor, while the rich live in their own little worlds.
New York City is a prime example of an inelastic city. Its long-established rich suburbs to the east and north will never give up their independent and parasitic status. New Jersey, across the river, has the largest number of municipalities per square mile in America, because everyone wants to be exclusive. Town mergers would be an obvious and very cost-effective way of reducing the state's financial woes, but who would want the rich and the poor to mix in one town, much less on one street? It's as un-American as it gets.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Paintball
Out of the 22 people who ultimately showed up, only about a quarter were actually the employees of my company. A black dude, the organizer, brought some of his black friends; an Indian guy brought Indian friends; I brought five friends and friends of friends of various backgrounds (if you have to know, two Albanians, a true-blue American, a Russian, and a Pakistani). Needless to say, women were in the minority. We got along well, partly due to a carryover of office formalities and partly due to the anonymity of war. (More on this later). As a team-building exercise (as office-organized activities are invariably called), the game was a success.
At first we went through a setting-up process not unlike that of renting skis on a ski mountain- you get a bunch of gear to put on, and you have a choice of doing a full day or a half day of the activity. Then we got a brief safety orientation and split up into teams. Two high school kids, our referees, led us into the tent near the roped-off areas which were the playing fields. The number one rule was that if you get shot, you are "dead" and out for the round. Games were up to 15 minutes long (ending before the time was up if the goal of the round was reached). We did a total of 7 rounds on 3 different fields, with one round not counting because the refs gave different instructions to the different teams.
In the previous days, I wondered if I would feel guilty about hitting people because I know them, or because they are strangers, or because they are managers, or because they are women, etc. This didn't actually happen on the battlefield, because almost everyone was dressed into identical rented camouflage jumpsuits. The only differentiator was a pair of orange bands on the arms of my team members. (The other team had no bands). In war, anonymity is everything. I just felt animosity towards my enemies, indifference towards members of my team I didn't know, and an urge to help my teammates I did know, although that was canceled out by a certain helplessness overall. Teamwork takes time to develop.
Paintball shows how far modern man is divorced from nature. Crawling on the forest floor feels unnatural; clear, straight lines of sight are expected but usually prove dangerous because your enemy knows about them, too. The forest has to be treated as a three-dimensional space, which even experienced hikers don't always know how to do. Paintball lets you reconnect with this forgotten animal past.
Another thing paintball brings out is the famous "war is hell." Here I am, by choice, in protective gear, shooting what are, by and large, harmless candy shells filled with paint. I paid for it and signed a waiver. The worst feeling I deal with is losing a round, although there is that small chance of twisting an ankle or getting hit up close, which hurts. Now just imagine that you have to do it. You are stuck in a war, and every shot is lethal. Do you want to continue?
When people complain about our overprotective society, in which kids can no longer play unsupervised and trivial deviances are illegal, paintball is a useful outlet. I saw kids as young as 12 sign up to play. Few things can compare with paintball for increasing self-esteem, simply because you realize that you just practiced kicking someone's ass. I recommend paintball to all the nice guys, all the geeks, all those who want to feel cooler just by paying a little cash and shooting some people from a toy gun.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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