On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 2:12 PM Fallible Anon
fallib...@gmail.com
> <
fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> >
> > On May 3, 2019, at 2:34 PM, Anne B <
anne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 4:32 PM anonymous FI
> > > <
anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> On May 3, 2019, at 7:02 AM, Anne B <
anne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 2:01 PM anonymous FI
> > >>> <
anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> On May 2, 2019, at 7:59 AM, Anne B <
anne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>> I've been trying to figure out why I find pickup culture
> > >>>>> distasteful.
> > >>>>> I think the following is part of it. There could be more, but this
> > >>>>> is
> > >>>>> part of it..
> This is painful. Anon has performed a bait-and-switch on Anne and she
> is too timid to notice or something, so she just accepts it.
>
> Going to re-paste the relevant bits below with comments:
>
> > >>>>> I grew up thinking that I'd get to know a guy before being romantically involved with him. I'd get to know his background and his character and his financial situation first. I'd get to know him in ordinary situations before moving into romantic situations.
> > >>>>> Meeting romantic partners on the street or in a bar or nightclub seems foreign to me. I know that people do it, but I don't expect me or anyone I know to be the kind of person who does it.
> > >>>> That's not a PUA thing, it's normal (both the hugging and the bars/clubs/streets-outside-them). It's interesting and unfair how PUA can be blamed for mainstream culture that people aren't familiar with.
>
> Okay so far Anne is saying that meeting people on the street/at
> bars/at nightclubs —which are big areas of focus on PUA—seems
> unpleasant and foreign to her.
>
> Anon says that this isn't PUA's fault, it's a mainstream cultural norm.
>
> After this I'll refer to meeting people on the street/at bars/at
> nightclubs as "nightclub culture" to save on typing.
>
> > >>>>> I think this post makes me sound like a snob, which is is not something I want to sound like.
> > >>>> You sound old.
> > >>> I felt this way when I was young too.
>
> Here Anne is trying to say her distaste for nightclub culture isn't
> just because she's old. She's saying it's a cultural difference today.
>
> > >> When you were young, it was a different year with different social norms.
>
> Anon says that just because it's a cultural difference today doesn't
> mean it's not rooted in Anne's upbringing, and the norms when she was
> young. Hence his previous statment that she sounds old.
>
> > >>> There are people who are young now who feel this way.
>
> Anne makes an uargued assertion: there are young people today that are
> disdainful of nightclub culture.
>
> It's also an uncontroversial assertion that would take 5 seconds of
> googling to verify, so... shrug. Let's proceed.
>
> > >> That is not the mainstream.
>
> Anon does the same as Anne, with an unargued assertion that could be
> verified by googling: *mainstream* young people today are not
> disdainful of nightclub culture.
>
> Put another way: Anon claims nightclub culture is mainstream today.
I did notice at this point that anonymous (called Anon by Fallible
Anon) did not give any argument for "That is not the mainstream", just
as I had given no argument for "There are people who are young now who
feel this way."
> Is this as uncontroversial as Anon thinks??????
>
> It depends on what we mean by "mainstream." Does that mean 50% of
> people? 100% of people? Something in between?
>
> Right now, Anon is not yet the asshole. Anon's claim might be true.
> Let's continue.
>
> > > I'm not convinced that dating/partying culture is more mainstream now than it was a few decades ago. I'd have to do some research to believe you on that. I don't know if it's important enough to this conversation or to me generally to research it now.
>
> Anne doubts Anon's assertion. Anne thinks nightclub culture was just
> as mainstream a few decades ago as it is now, and yet she was not a
> fan of it even back then when she young.
Yes, this captures what I was trying to say.
> > Over 99% of Americans want to date (or something similar but less formal/structured) at some point in their lives. Have you listened to mainstream radio or watched mainstream TV?
>
> Here's the really bullshit part. We're not talking about whether or
> not people "want to date" at all.. That was not the topic at issue. The
> topic was what I've been calling nightclub culture. It was, again:
>
> > >>>>> I grew up thinking that I'd get to know a guy before being romantically involved with him. I'd get to know his background and his character and his financial situation first. I'd get to know him in ordinary situations before moving into romantic situations.
> > >>>>> Meeting romantic partners on the street or in a bar or nightclub seems foreign to me. I know that people do it, but I don't expect me or anyone I know to be the kind of person who does it.
>
> To which Anon said:
>
> > >>>> That's not a PUA thing, it's normal (both the hugging and the bars/clubs/streets-outside-them). It's interesting and unfair how PUA can be blamed for mainstream culture that people aren't familiar with.
>
> The thing Anne described, *as an alternative lifestyle to nightclubs*,
> was still 100% compatible with *wanting to date:*
>
> > >>>>> I grew up thinking that I'd get to know a guy before being romantically involved with him. I'd get to know his background and his character and his financial situation first. I'd get to know him in ordinary situations before moving into romantic situations.
>
> This is not the statement of someone *opposed to dating*. This is
> someone describing a totally normal *method* of dating. It's just a
> different method from nightclub culture.
>
> So why is Anon mentioning that 99% of people want to date?
>
> Because Anon has changed the goalposts from arguing about how
> mainstream nightclub culture is into arguing about how mainstram
> *dating* is. Dating, in general, as a broad concept.
>
> Anne never (in this email thread) contradicted any claims about the
> popularity of dating as a broad spectrum activity. In practice
> "dating" often means something like "anything two people engage in
> that is intended to in some way at some time lead to romantic/sexual
> encounters."
>
> Anne was always arguing about a specific subset of dating: approaching
> people on the street, in bars, and in nightclubs.
I did not notice here that anonymous was talking about dating in
general whereas I had in mind dating arising from partying and
nightclub situations. I was not thinking clearly enough.
> Does Anon think that all mainstream dating takes these three forms? Is
> Anon's evidence for this that movies and TV show these methods a
> disproportionate amount of the time, or what?
>
> Or is Anon's claim is that this specific type of dating—nightclub
> culture—is more popular now than it was "a few decades ago" ?? I guess
> if 99% of people are doing it, it would be super popular.
>
> But I don't think even Anon thinks 99% of people engage in nightclub
> culture. I think Anon just brought up dating in general as a
> distraction.
>
> So... *is* nightclub culture more popular now than it was a few decades ago?
>
> We could look up poll stats or whatever (which suggest nightclub
> participation is down among the current young generations) but I don't
> have much confidence in them.
>
> But we could also just kinda reason it out.
>
> A few decades ago probably puts us in the late 70s or the late 80s. A
> time before the internet but after the sexual revolution of the 60s.
> Two decades that are especially famous for their respective types of
> popular clubbing and musical scenes.
>
> Today we have dating apps and websites and tons of easy fast
> communication. Nightclubs are less necessary than ever before as a
> vehicle for meeting people. We have apps optimized for people that
> just want to jump to fucking and apps optimized for people that want
> to make friends first.
>
> Given all of that, why would anyone assume that nightclubs are a
> *more* popular way of finding romantic or sexual partners today? That
> seems like a bold assertion that needs some kind of evidence or
> argument or something.
This is the kind of thing I should have been thinking about.
> Instead of pointing any of this out Anne just rolls over and gives up.
> What gives?
>
> Maybe it's because of Anon's shitty close:
>
> > > I understand being out of touch and ignorant, but i don't understand then trying to debate the matter.
>
> This is social posturing. It's trying to intimidate Anne into shutting
> up because she is so outclassed. Which is kind of embarrassing given
> how bad of a final argument immediately preceded it.
>
> It's the kind of thing that makes you seem really confident and badass
> when you're right. But when you say it after performing some really
> basic argumentation bait-and-switch tricks it just makes you look like
> an arrogant cunt.
Yes, I consciously rolled over and gave up. I wrote something that I
hoped would get anonymous to stop replying. I was uncomfortable with
the exchange and didn't want it to go on any further.
It was wrong of me to want to end the thread because I was
uncomfortable. I should have pushed harder to understand more what was
going on. It's good that Fallible Anon brought it up.
I didn't notice that anonymous and I were talking about different
things. Maybe it's because I was uncomfortable with the discussion and
maybe it's because I wasn't reading and thinking carefully enough for
other reasons, or both.
I did notice that the closing comment by anonymous seemed mean:
> > > I understand being out of touch and ignorant, but i don't understand then trying to debate the matter.
This comment seemed like a social comment which normally means "You're
too dumb to be thinking about this stuff. Just admit I'm right and
shut up." Because this is FI and not some other place, I realized that
anonymous might have meant something different by it. But emotionally
I read it in a normal way and I admitted anonymous was right and shut
up.
A more neutral way to write the sentence would be something like: "I
understand being out of touch and ignorant, but it's not reasonable to
try to debate something you're ignorant about." This would have more
the flavor of pointing out to me where I'm not being reasonable,
assuming I would want to know that in order to correct it, rather than
the flavor of saying it's incomprehensible (not understandable) that I
could be unreasonable and therefore not possible to fix.
I didn't think I was debating. I thought I was stating my un-reasoned
gut feelings as a way to try to understand my bias against PUA stuff.
I thought that anonymous was telling me my gut feelings were based on
wrong facts, without explaining where anonymous' correct facts were
coming from, other than that anonymous claims to know more about the
subject than I do.
But maybe I was trying to debate more than I thought I was. Maybe I
was trying to justify my gut feelings even while I was saying they
might be wrong. It's hard for me to tell.