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My mind immediately went to the evolutionary undercurrent of these things. The unicycle can be considered something impractical and suboptimal almost uniformly
by xyzelement 3y ago
My mind immediately went to the evolutionary undercurrent of these things.
The unicycle can be considered something impractical and suboptimal almost uniformly. You can't go fast, you can't carry anything, there's no way to give a friend a ride. It is perhaps equivalent to a person not developing their body in a way that makes them a useful citizen/comrade/etc.
The response from men seems to mainly line up with how we'd react to such a thing in evolutionary context. We instinctively realize that unicycle ridding isn't a value-add to either the rider or society - both are less capable than when a more "appropriate" vehicle is used (we have "standardized" on bikes rather than uni-cyclers or trikes because those are clearly superior across almost all non-circus applications.)
Men react as they do because intrinsically we want society and its members to be stronger - as we shoulder the load of those who aren't. So there's sort of a "hope" that enough of these remarks will encourage the person to get their shit together.
Women are more focused on comfort - so they react the way they would to seeing someone physically weak and less capable than the average person - with kindness and almost a pity. I don't think they are lining up to sleep with him.
Obviously these are not exactly "helpful" reactions to someone riding a unicycle around the park but the underlying drives are still roughly right. A nation of unicycle riders is going to get conquered.
- InCityDreams 3y agoWhat absolute bollocks.
- orf 3y ago> You can't go fast, you can't carry anything. It is perhaps equivalent to a person not developing their body in a way that makes them a useful citizen/comrade/etc This comment is obviously completely braindead, but I did want to jump in and say that I would rather have a unicycling, gun-toting comrade backing me up than one riding a road bike.
- frankus 3y agoI think your comment is a little bit off-target but adjacent to something interesting: Putting a lot of time and effort into learning something difficult, but that isn't directly useful for survival, is a form of status signaling. Hence the stereotype of successful artists and musicians and athletes having countless fawning admirers while considerably fewer people are thought to be throwing themselves at accountants and teachers and farmers. Unicycling is interesting because you could just be going about your day getting from point A to point B, while a hostile audience sees both conspicuous consumption ("I have so much free time that I can learn to unicycle") and conspicuous outrage ("I'm so secure in my status that I can do something nonconformist that maybe also looks kind of silly"), and feels like they have to take you down a notch.