4 ms·

I am a regular reader of Reddit's "Am I the Asshole" and the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. And that's probably always been true,

I am a regular reader of Reddit's "Am I the Asshole" and the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. And that's probably always been true, but what has changed is the extent to which women now have agency through having decent jobs and not being social pariahs if they're not married and pregnant by 22. The stuff my grandmother put up with just doesn't fly today. So if the content of AITA is any guide, we could solve a lot of these problems just by training the bottom quartile of men in the basics. Hygiene. Being a good roommate. Being a good friend. Being a good economic partner. Etc, etc. There appear to be a lot of guys out there who want to go from having mommy do everything while they play video games to having a bang maid [1] who does the same. It's no wonder they're having a harder and harder time getting any. [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bang%20maid https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bang%20maid

some_random 4y ago
I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this but AITA is about as credible as newspaper advice columns and 4chan greentexts, that is to say not at all.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Rage bait, karma farming and creative writing exercises all rolled into one!
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  i did pretty well in a brief experiment of using chatGPT to write responses to new posts
- wpietri 4y ago
  Oh, sure, a lot of the posts are made up. But a lot of them aren't. And most of the replies grounded in personal experience appear to be sincere, as they tend to come from established accounts with consistent histories, at least when I look. But in some sense, that doesn't matter, because even popular fiction serves as an important mirror for popular concerns. I hear enough verifiable real-world stories of entitled, lazy male partners to know that it's not all fiction. I think the extent to which things get upvoted on AITA is a pretty good indicator of popular concern. And a lot of replies clearly come from people who, whatever the truth of the original post, have lived through similar things.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    There's also 2X which is often quite grueling.
waltbosz 4y ago
> training the bottom quartile of men in the basics .... I always thought schools should teach children "how to date". I went through sex-ed in Delaware public schools in the mid 1990s, and it was all the clinical physical aspects of sex, and the dangers of HIV. There was nothing about intimacy or consent. I did have a separate class in 7th grade called Conflict Resolution. It felt like a low effort attempt to teach basic social skills that should have been a regular part of schooling since kindergarten.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Absolutely! Well into adulthood I came across a book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It is the single most astute thing I have ever read. It's written by somebody who was a therapist for men in court-ordered programs. He spent years listening to their BS and at some point had enough and broke it all down. I truly believe that if everybody spent 2 weeks on the topic at circa 16 years old, the world could be radically different. It wouldn't take that much longer to educate them on other relationships basics. Just the kind of minimum stuff and basic techniques that you see from, say, the Gottman Institute. But I expect that will never happen because there are quite a lot of powerful people who benefit from and/or positively enjoy power differentials and exploitable ignorance. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind here.
Manuel_D 4y ago
But the people experiencing sexual loneliness aren't bad boyfriends and husbands. They can't even get a significant other or spouse. Counterintuitively, being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
- apeace 4y ago
  That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. I'll just say: > being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success Citation needed. That blog post does not provide anything resembling evidence of your claim. For your sake, I hope you're not basing your views on sites like that.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. The post is horribly misguided and confused. Yet despite being so horrible you can't bother to explain what's bad about it? It always amuses me something is evidently so horrible as to warrant this language, but apparently not quite horrible enough to actually explain why. Ultimately, i'm not really looking to make an empirical claim here. Just read this sentence a few times and maybe the contradiction will make sense: > the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. If someone is a boyfriend or a husband, they are by definition not single.
    - apeace 4y ago
      Don't you think the "Am I The Asshole" subreddit is going to have a bit of a selection bias towards describing men who are assholes? You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that. You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false. I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.
throwaway589275 4y ago
Too bad this was flagged, since the OP 1) not only described himself as "a regular reader" of reddit (embarrassing enough), but of a particular reddit where people post made up stories (that he takes at face value), and 2) that he has the physiognomy (google him) of a male feminist undone by sexual assault allegations.

some_random 4y ago

I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this but AITA is about as credible as newspaper advice columns and 4chan greentexts, that is to say not at all.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Rage bait, karma farming and creative writing exercises all rolled into one!
LesZedCB 4y ago
i did pretty well in a brief experiment of using chatGPT to write responses to new posts
wpietri 4y ago
Oh, sure, a lot of the posts are made up. But a lot of them aren't. And most of the replies grounded in personal experience appear to be sincere, as they tend to come from established accounts with consistent histories, at least when I look. But in some sense, that doesn't matter, because even popular fiction serves as an important mirror for popular concerns. I hear enough verifiable real-world stories of entitled, lazy male partners to know that it's not all fiction. I think the extent to which things get upvoted on AITA is a pretty good indicator of popular concern. And a lot of replies clearly come from people who, whatever the truth of the original post, have lived through similar things.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  There's also 2X which is often quite grueling.

waltbosz 4y ago

> training the bottom quartile of men in the basics .... I always thought schools should teach children "how to date". I went through sex-ed in Delaware public schools in the mid 1990s, and it was all the clinical physical aspects of sex, and the dangers of HIV. There was nothing about intimacy or consent. I did have a separate class in 7th grade called Conflict Resolution. It felt like a low effort attempt to teach basic social skills that should have been a regular part of schooling since kindergarten.

wpietri 4y ago
Absolutely! Well into adulthood I came across a book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It is the single most astute thing I have ever read. It's written by somebody who was a therapist for men in court-ordered programs. He spent years listening to their BS and at some point had enough and broke it all down. I truly believe that if everybody spent 2 weeks on the topic at circa 16 years old, the world could be radically different. It wouldn't take that much longer to educate them on other relationships basics. Just the kind of minimum stuff and basic techniques that you see from, say, the Gottman Institute. But I expect that will never happen because there are quite a lot of powerful people who benefit from and/or positively enjoy power differentials and exploitable ignorance. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind here.

Manuel_D 4y ago

But the people experiencing sexual loneliness aren't bad boyfriends and husbands. They can't even get a significant other or spouse. Counterintuitively, being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...

apeace 4y ago
That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. I'll just say: > being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success Citation needed. That blog post does not provide anything resembling evidence of your claim. For your sake, I hope you're not basing your views on sites like that.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. The post is horribly misguided and confused. Yet despite being so horrible you can't bother to explain what's bad about it? It always amuses me something is evidently so horrible as to warrant this language, but apparently not quite horrible enough to actually explain why. Ultimately, i'm not really looking to make an empirical claim here. Just read this sentence a few times and maybe the contradiction will make sense: > the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. If someone is a boyfriend or a husband, they are by definition not single.
  - apeace 4y ago
    Don't you think the "Am I The Asshole" subreddit is going to have a bit of a selection bias towards describing men who are assholes? You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that. You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false. I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.

throwaway589275 4y ago

Too bad this was flagged, since the OP 1) not only described himself as "a regular reader" of reddit (embarrassing enough), but of a particular reddit where people post made up stories (that he takes at face value), and 2) that he has the physiognomy (google him) of a male feminist undone by sexual assault allegations.