“I think you are the only man I can trust, should we try it out?”
Things that were never said for $2000, Alex
Interesting intel fanfic.
I usually prefer AMD but I found it interesting too.
You had me until you brought up how many guys she fucked. Grow up anon
But have you considered that anon can’t count past 2 so everything else is countless.
i think this isn’t the main point of this meme. he’s hurt because he wanted to have a sweet teenage romance (or what feels like it) with that girl. that’s not possible anymore.
Teenage romance in your mid 20s?
Well technically OP is now 30 so they’re less of a teenage figuring things out, and sad person.
Yeah but before the 5 years later they would be mid 20s.
some people grow up slowly and make typical teenage experiences in their mid-20s :)
i know that because i’m one of them. :)
my dude we all got our own paths and timing. don’t rush.
I get what you’re saying. But if it’s so irrelevant then why bring it up??
people are allowed free speech
This is the dumbest response to a question I’ve ever received. You deserve a cookie
This is a deflecrion, not an answer. He’s also allowed to say she refuses to wear a T-rex cosrume in bed, but if it’s irrelevant why say it?
okay see that right there is a valid reason
I mean not wearing a T-Rex costume to bed could be a dealbreaker for an intimate relationship. I’d find it more understandable than the number of former partners.
We should pass a law making it legal that whenever someone deflects an argument with a non-sequitur appeal to “free speech” that they be hauled up on top of a giant pyramid and have their beating heart ripped out with an obsidian knife, their life a sacrifice to the great Sun god.
If you have any objections to my batshit insane proposal, you hate free speech and are a traitor to America… and Huītzilōpōchtli.
funny response, i give you that.
edit: but the difference is that yours is inciting violence.
Nice pearls, but you need not clutch them so
It’s pretty clear to me that anon carefully crafted this story, no matter how much of it is actually real, to cast himself in the best possible light and show this woman as evil. It’s telling that in doing so he didn’t even realize that it reflected poorly on him to shame her for having sex with someone who wasn’t him.
Also, he assumes she’d even be happy with him but really he’d struggle to please a woman
You can tell that from an image of some text?
yes
I mean… he took his shot with her 5 years ago, was rejected and then stayed friends while she went through all those other guys to then come back around and try to settle for him. I can see how he’d struggle with that. I’d probably feel like a last resort in that situation too. Also I think this story is rage bait so don’t get to invested.
it’s definitely incel ragebait.
Why?
In many cultures and in many people’s minds - dare I say, most - sex and love are linked. If your starting assumption is that people should only have sex with others that they want to have a long term relationship with, then having a long string of partners indicates a general low level of commitment to any given partner. This would imply, given these cultural assumptions, that this person is not a good bet for a stable, long term relationship. And in cultures where chastity is seen as virtuous, these standards are applied both to men and women (if not entirely equally). A woman who is part of a conservative sect of catholicism, for example, would likely be less interested in a man who was known for sleeping around, rather than a man who has remained a virgin waiting for marriage.
Another perspective is that of fairness and dignity. Suppose OP and OP’s love interest are in middle school PE class, where they play pickup soccer. OP is good at soccer. But every day, OP’s love interest picks the rich kid over OP, because she knows that the rich kid always has their parents buy their team pizza after school. So OP sits on the bench watching the other kids play every day, and never gets pizza. Then suppose on the last day of class, the coach announces that the winning team in today’s soccer match will be guarenteed A’s for the semester. Now OP’s love interest picks OP over the rich kid. I think it would be quite understandable for OP to be put off by this behavior. They would feel like they haven’t been properly valued by their love interest, that they are now being used. I think an argument can be made that OP would be a better paragon of virtue if they let go of these bitter feelings - but at the same time, I think these feelings should be understandable to most people who make an attempt at empathy.
And another perspective, which I think is the strongest argument, is simply that people like what they like and don’t like what they don’t like. Our intrinsic sexual/emotional desires are largely not malleable. It’s time to stop pretending that people’s preferences are some kind of moral barometer. Those on the left have been making this argument for years after all. Gay men, for example, are born gay. No amount of conversion therapy changes this. Trans individuals are trans - if this were something they could change, don’t you think they would skip the social stigma and extensive medical procedures? Why wouldnt they just take the easy route of simply changing their minds, if their minds were something they could easily change? We could apply the same reasoning to, say, foot fetishists. They don’t carry the same stigma as gay or trans people, but there is still a definite stigma. And having a foot fetish entails being turned off by partners with “gross” feet. Life would be easier for them if they didn’t have this fetish. They would avoid the stigma, and their dating pool would be significantly increased - so if they had the choice, why would they not simply stop caring about feet? And we can similarly apply this logic to OP. As we can see from the comments in this thread, there is a stigma attached to caring about the number of partners a partner has had. And if you don’t care about this, you will have a much larger dating pool and life is easier. So if this were something which was easy to change, wouldn’t we expect people to change it?
As long as you’re not being a shitbag: who the fuck cares? Some people don’t like hookups, some do – and it can change depending on circumstances and what phase or like one is at.
Every day I become more convinced a lot of people get stuck at “teenager” when it comes to sex and relationships. It’s not hard: don’t be an asshole, don’t hurt people, and do what makes you happy.
for some people sex and love are always linked
I have had plenty of completely meaningless one night stands and been very happy about having fun, a nice time, feeling flirty, funny, full of lust, having and giving orgasms and enjoying nice company and the physical sensations of sex, to never see them again and be totally OK with that.
I also have deep love, admiration and connection with my partner which is just as special as a virgins first love. Because all love is great.
Can’t say that sex and love ie romantic love must go together but I’m a dude and I personally don’t enjoy the idea of commodified, hedonistic sex that’s often peddled by American/Western culture.
To me (and to each their own) sex is pointless without a deeper connection.
Many women go from unable to climax during sex to easily doing so when a deeper connection and understanding is sought by their partner.
That isn’t to say that “meaningless” sex is bad. If both parties are down for it, by all means, have fun.
But I feel that sex is meant to be a spiritual experience. If I desire someone and they also yearn to share a deeper physical connection with me, they should feel my desire within their very essence of self, through my words and my eyes, before we even touch. Even when we do touch, intercourse would have to wait patiently in favor of foreplay so that my desire, my meaning, could first be communicated with my mind, body and everything else. Love making flows naturally from that state.
I was raised in a Western Christian nation where I grew up confused as two dichotomous, opposite attitudes towards sex seemes to prevail. One was religious shame and guilt towards any type of sexual pleasure. The other was sexual liberation, which felt like an improvement, but it commodified sex and treated it as if its purpose was derived through hedonism.
Ultimately it took reading on Indigineous thought on spirituality and intimacy, writings by Sufi poet Rumi on love and ancient Dharmic (South Asian) thoughts on physical intimacy (which centers heterosexual sex on women’s pleasure, autonomy, and rights in sexual relationships) for me to understand what sex was for me.
I don’t disagree with anything here, and I feel similarly
Sir this is a Wendy’s.
No, this is Patrick
This is some really disgusting co-option of LGBT identities to justify incel logic. Being gay is an intrinsic thing about someone. Judging someone for their number of past partners isn’t. One is innate, the other is cultural. You can instantly tell if you have an attraction to someone just by looking at them. A gay man looking at another man will instantly feel attraction if he’s his type. But number of partners? That’s something you can only learn by talking to someone. And there’s nothing innate about a person with more partners that makes them physically less attractive. Unless they have an STD, their body isn’t changed in any way.
People aren’t born with judgmental incel beliefs about the number of sexual partners other people have. Those are cultural practices, not innate aspects of a person’s physical being, like being gay or trans is. We have no evidence of such judgments existing among wild animals, while we have numerous examples of same-sex attraction in nature.
Are you saying that physical attraction is the only valid type of attraction?
TL;DR
I’m absolutely not reading this novel
Okay. That’s your right.
Anon is valid to feel this way. Without condoning or condemning, I understand.
He got over his crush and got on with his life. There’s nothing evil about that.
I honestly think it’s embarrassing and childish to get upset at somebody and immediately go, “Yeah well you fucked so many men!”
That’s in your head. Seems like you can’t see a reality where the girl is at fault. Misandrist much?
“She fucked so many guys”
Uh…okay?
That’s how you know its full of incel energy.
I think they’re trying to say that he doesn’t even feel like her backup, he’s her backup x times removed. Which kinda undercuts his point a bit, but does set the stage for a complete removal of attraction and the very particular manic ending they wrote for their story
There’s something insulting about being the one she wants to settle down with after a bunch of flings etc.
When’s my turn to have fun?
I hope some day you can reflect on this statement and realise the toxicity behind it.
I think the toxic part is what was added by ilovethebomb. They never asked this and seemed to have genuinely moved on.
What’s toxic about wanting better than being the backup option?
The toxicity is the weird incel framing around the whole thing. It leans heavily into incel tropes about how women sleep around with physically attractive asshole men when younger and then look for a more stable “nice guy” men when older. The trope is that women will reproduce with asshole gym bro types and then seek relationships with nerds to obtain resources to raise the children they’ve given birth to. It’s the classic cuckhold meme.
The “backup option” part is the toxic thing. It frames women as farm animals looking for a mate, rather than actual complex human beings with different desires and changing personalities through their whole lives. Aka, just like men. People change, and they want different things at different points in their life.
It’s not that the woman in the story fucked a bunch of guys and then, as a last resort, settled for OP. I mean, just think of how absurd that idea is. It is literally not possible to run out of people to sleep with. They don’t think OP is beneath them and have always felt that way, only settling for them now. Why would she need to? There’s no shortage of other men out there if she thinks OP is beneath her.
Rather, people just want different things at different points in their lives. OP didn’t tick that box years earlier, but now maybe he does. She wasn’t attracted to him then, but she is now. The heart just works that way sometimes. There’s no need to add a bunch of incel bullshit to what is easily explainable as the complexities of human emotion.
The reason this is so toxic is that it’s applying this weird bizarre manipulative behavior to the woman in the story - aka parroting incel themes. It accuses her of this deliberate years-long plot, working through a long list of men she finds superior until finally settling for OP. This isn’t how human beings actually behave. Instead, she just happened to not be attracted to OP before, but happens to be now. You don’t need to go into it any deeper than that. People are complex and their hearts change.
This “backup option” framing is just really toxic and creepy.
Nothing at all, but that last line, “When is my turn to have fun?” Is a bit transactional, like there’s an expectation and that’s the problematic part.
like there’s an expectation
you can have expectations from relationships. you don’t have to, and not every relationship has them, but it’s perfectly fine to have them, as long as the other person’s fine with that.
From yes. Of no.
Exactly, but also immediately assuming you’d be the “backup” on this and it of course cannot be genuine love.
Anon grows and changes in a 5 year span, and his romantic interests change.
Girls opinion on romance is different in 5 years.
“I don’t want to be the backup.”
Men can grow and change over 5 years. Women? Nah. She just wanted to fuck around and now she’s settling.
This train of thought is some terminally online shit. Then again, complaining that green text is some terminally online shit is insane in its own account.
And that was added by ilovethebomb
Who was stopping you?
They were stopping themselves
It be true, I do stop myself
Nobody wanted to have fun with me.
Then go to a tabletop game shop and have fun on D&D night, or Warhammer! Lots of fun there
Do you feel like you were owed “fun” from other people?
Why are you being charitable to a greentext poster lmfao. It’s like when the skinhead starts saying dogwhistles and someone is like “well maybe he doesn’t know it’s a dog whistle”.
Idk man, maybe you’ve not been exposed to enough 4chan.
sure, let’s just assume malice or ill intent whenever possible, and forget about any empathy or sympathy.
Bro. We are talking about a 4chan greentext poster. What more do you want me to fucking say? Are you joking?
i’m just tired of internet toxicity tbh. Not as in “Oh no, they laugh about Kirk’s assasination”, mind you, that shit is actually hillarious, neither i care about anyone’s political oriantation as long as they’re a decent human being. I’m talking about this unprompted toxic bullshit like “oh, they’re using this site, they must be a jerk!”. That’s literally the same rhetoric that politicians use to create “us vs them” narrative, except they do it on another basis like nationality or whatever.
Did your day go so wrong that you need to let it all out somehow, but this is the only way you found? Genuinely asking btw
Incredibly toxic post btw.
You tired of internet toxicity yet defend the archetype of toxic masculinity with this greentext. Is everyone upvoting this a Tate fan?
I’m not defending anyone. This story being made up is entirely possible. What I’m bothered by, and what i don’t want to let slide is the fact that people just assume malice from a person simply because they made a post on a certain website and not the on the other one around. It’s a scary tendency that, if extrapolated, makes internet into a place full of tribalism and hostility.
Also, you gotta explain to me, how the post is an example of toxic masculinity, and exactly what archetype do i defend from your point of view.
btw, just so you know, thanks to some particularily heated instances over here, i’ve seen people with opinion just like yours but about the fediverse.
Let’s not act like 4chan has ever been anything but a infamous shithole that attracts shitheads. It has the worst possible reputation: it doesn’t attract good people. Sorry. You sound delightful, tho, all your pettiness and pretentiousness aside.
Idk man, maybe you’ve not been exposed to enough 4chan.
Or maybe he has experienced enough 4chan to the point where he realises those hidden meanings.
??? 😭 we just out here defending incel-adjacent language being used on 4chan?
This video I feel explains why
it wasn’t meant to be. don’t be a pussy about it
So… much… to unpack.
Thanks for this reply. Being GenX isn’t the bed of roses some folks believe it is. I find myself reading more physical books these days than I ever before. Kind of just to take it all in at less than a blur. It’s all whipping by at breakneck speed.
Fake: anon has a female friend
Gay: anon isn’t interested in her
These stories are even more real and true than the real and true stories on r/aita. OP just forgot the part where the crying bald eagle stood up and clapped at the end
This particular fantasy (one day I’ll get to reject the women who rejected me first and they’d never be able to handle it as gracefully as I did) seems somewhat common among young men who have trouble connecting with women.
But the false premise at the center of it is that the man is such a good friend to the woman, and the woman’s dating/romantic life hasn’t found anyone nearly as understanding or kind or empathetic. And part of that belief is some kind of assumption that life is an RPG where everyone is allotted the same number of points to distribute, and anyone who is maxed on charisma must be less intelligent or empathetic or something.
Realistically, men who are friends with women tend to do better with dating and relationships than men who aren’t close to women. The friends of friends angle is a great pipeline for searching for partners, assuming your personality makes your friends comfortable connecting you with their friends.
Was anon not also getting laid along the way? This reads like he just followed in waiting. If anon never got laid and followed me around. Then rejected me when i finally said lets give it a try. I’d assume he stayed my friend for this revenge moment.
If he was getting laid as well; Thats pretty shallow.
dunno, the guy talks almost like he’s asexual now, and was so for at least some time. As i get it, it would be weird to ask the girl out again and again if she rejected him the first time, and if anon still had romantic feelings, i think it would’ve been hella frustrating for him to continue after the rejection. I see where you’re coming from tho.
Tbf, if I took a few days to self care after being laughed at and rejected and was accused of being fake because of it, I’d probably stop being her friend as a result, but if I “swallowed my pride and stayed friends” I’d 100% at least think “well at least I’m not romantically interested anymore as a result of her callousness regarding my feelings.” I can handle rejection fine (laughing is not necessary though) but I don’t really want to associate with people who can’t allow me space to be sad for a few days every now and again.
But he very well could be still uhh… sexual I guess is the opposite of asexual? But maybe he lost interest that minute like I would have, or maybe he’s just demi- and doesn’t feel that sort of connection with her but a different kind instead, or maybe in the years since she’s said or done some questionable shit like still supporting JK Rowling and that turned him off lol, or maybe when she rejected him he accepted she didn’t have those feelings and moved on like an adult is supposed to do and she missed her window, or maybe this is a greentext and therefore is fake and gay, who knows lol.
i made my assumptions from the words “besides i want to be single at this point of my life”
That doesn’t mean they’re asexual necessarily, could be that, could just be working on themselves, could be freshly in the program, could be hooking up on the apps or in bars and not want to settle down, could have just broken up with another person and is not looking yet, and of course as always could be fake and gay lol.
yeah, fair point
probably not.
That happened. And then everybody clapped.
I mean it’s greentext. That part is always implied.
Actually this kind of thing happens often enough. The exact words vary, but if people live in low population locations, wait a decade and you’ll be surprised at who gets together.
Ya, I’m coming up on my 40s in a smallish city. This not only seems plausible, I’ve seen it (a less dramatic version anyway) play out a few times.
Turns out, being rejected by someone you’re in love with actually sucks, and that goes double if you were friends with them. Sure you can try and stay friends with them after, but whether that works depends a lot on your state of mind/mental health, the rest of your social circle and the state of your life in general (and on how the rejecter/friend acts, of course). Your average 4chan poster is spectacularly ill-equipped to make it actually work well, even if they somehow aren’t somewhat misogynistic.
At the same time, just keeping it to yourself is probably not a good option either, if you’re not the type who can actually move on after a while (e.g. by crushing on someone else).
Yep.
Something quite similar happened to me in my twenties. We had a pretty close-knit group of friends in university and in the second year one of the girls started to show signs of romantic interest in me. I was oblivious, of course, so my friends had to point it out for me. I was single and quite unexperienced with dating, so I thought “what the hell, why not?” So we ended up dating and I was starting to slowly fall for her.
Then we went to this student party together and we hung out with people as always. I went for a swim in the pool and when I came back, she came to me, looking extremely happy and said that she had just met this amazing guy and wanted to try things out with him. I stood silent for a few seconds and said “OK, it’s cool with me” . She smiled and ran off to her new man.
I got dressed, finished my beer and walked home. It was a long walk, but instead of disappointment and sadness I remember feeling immense relief, as I had just learned what “dodging a bullet” truly meant.
She and the new guy dated for maybe a year, before she lost interest in him - he really was a great guy, right at the start of their relationship he wanted to talk with me and he was genuinely sorry for “stealing my girl”. I assured him that I held no grudge and we became friends after she dumped him.
During their dating she quickly drifted out of our circle of friends by her own choice, so I got to keep things pretty much like they were before. I was always friendly towards her when we met and she did likewise. My friends were surprised that I wasn’t angry at her, but I told them that this was for the best and that I was happy how things had turned out.
Next year I found a wonderful girlfriend and I was happy. Few years later I happened to meet this “ex” of mine in a work-related seminar. When the seminar ended, I walked to the bus stop and saw her standing there. Turned out that we lived along the same bus route. Then she suddenly said “wouldn’t it be nice if you came home with me?” Like, WTF? She knew very well that I had been in a steady relationship for years and she had even met my girlfriend a few times.
She looked at me seductively and said “so, how about it?”. I’d known that she wasn’t stable, but at that moment I realized how truly fucked up she really was. “No, that’s not going to happen now or ever”, I said and walked away.
That was the last time I saw her. Few years ago I heard that she had been married twice or thrice before she was 40, and was single again.
Yeah I super get this. Back at the height of the whole “friend zone” thing I had been hanging out with a friend one on one very regularly and began crushing on her, asked her out at some point, she said she needed to focus on other things. A semester or two later, I asked if that had changed due to different circumstances in her life and she gave me a more direct no. She was pretty integrated into my friend group and my feelings were pretty badly hurt because we had been very close. Friends in that group would go on to ask why I’d never asked her out, under the assumption she was interested, and when I did eventually start dating someone else she tried to “talk me up” to that girl in a way that felt like sabotage to me. It’s hard to balance those feelings while remaining friends with someone. I was definitely at risk for falling down an incel hole around that time. Glad I didn’t
I’m also glad you didn’t fall down the incel hole, because then it’s likely that we wouldn’t have you here with us
I don’t think I can blame Anon. “Should we try it out?” isn’t exactly stirring my passions, either.
Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.
Bold of you to think anons story is real and straight
It’s more fun to play along, and unless I’m missing something, I kept it gender neutral.
Anon is on the internet. No girls there.
Anon had a girl interested in fucking him: fake.
Anon turned down a girl that wanted to fuck him: gay.
If by “straight” you mean heterosexual and you’re doubting the story is heterosexual, read it again. There are pronouns in there. This is a heterosexual story.
NOOOOOOOOO!!! I NEED IT TO FIT IN THE PREDETERMINED BOX I HAVE SETUP FOR THIS GREENTEXT!!! IT HAS TO BE GAY BECAUSE I SAID SOOO!!!
I had no problem taking this innocent heartfelt greentext post at face value, but would you agree, the comments have been aneurysm-inducing.
Maybe. Idk, I mostly read the comments just to get some perspective from other people so I can enrich myself and be a better person.
It does get annoying though when that is interrupted by the fake/gay joke comments tho.
This is a pretty niche community (Lemmy) without a whole lot of variety. If you’re trying to get some other perspectives, there are a lot of better options in real life.
Maybe he enjoys hearing perspectives from basement-dwellingneckbeards & incels 😏
This is a heterosexual story.
Still gay though.
Is this your first green text?
Yep. I’ve run out of ideas, I’ll try settling with a heavy “maybe”. That’ll really make you feel like a potential partner values you.
Under the circumstances, it sounds like “you’re my least terrible option left, so maybe I can settle for you. On a trial basis, of course.” Uh, no thanks.
I think it’s more like “oh shit, lots of men are suddenly turning right-wing, and i’m getting afraid of them now, so please anon, protect me. i’m not actually into you, of course (who could be into you?) but at least you’re harmless.”
Most women’s social circles will not see men make any significant rightward shift in political opinion. Most peoples’ political opinions are fairly stable over time, and change slowly. Most people naturally spend time with people with similar political opinions. And if someone finds that they have significantly different political opinions than their peers, they will almost certainly keep it to themselves.
Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation. The farther right a space is, the fewer women we expect to see there. And to the extent that there is a large rightward shift in men’s political positions, it is driven primarily by men who already leaned right. More left-leaning men, if they move right at all, would move right very minimally. The aggregate of minimal moves to the right across the bell curve would be noticeable at a statistical level, but would not be noticeable in most people’s actual social lives. Significant moves to the right would only be seen on the right wing side of the bell curve.
So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP’s love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.
But the alternative conclusion, assuming your hypothesis is correct, is that OP’s love interest if more moderate/left wing (most women), but is chronically online and hears about men becoming more right wing.
Dating apps mix the social circles pretty significantly so it can also easily be a case of going on dates with randoms and seeing the shift that way.
Right wing political spaces have a negative corrolation with female participation.
yeah, that’s an interesting observation, which makes you wonder what is cause and what is consequence.
So if we accept your hypothesis, then we could also conclude that OP’s love interest is already involved in significanly right-wing spaces.
Yeah, that’s a likely outcome i guess. Girl falls for “strong” men in the past, suddenly realizes they’re all right-wing and potentially dangerous, suddenly tries to find a non-dangerous partner, or sth like that.
Sadly possible, but also a huge insult.
“She fucked too many guys”
Waaaaaahhh oh no my partner is good at sex, oh wow is me.
I’ve never slept with anyone with a single digit body count that wasn’t fucking awful in the sack.
Woe
Ty. Fixed it.
My wife was a huge slut. She’s great at sex. Sex is fun!
It’s definitely dated now, but Robin Williams’ joke about Islamic suicide bombers getting to heaven and being met with 72 virgins was what made me realize that society had it all wrong about promiscuity.
“And now for my talent portion…”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an unfair generalization to say that virgins/less experienced are uniformly bad at sex (some people just ‘get it’), but it’s generally more accurate that practice makes perfect. (Or maybe that those who have more of an aptitude and interest ‘practice’ more… same result, either way.)
Case in point. Sluts are the best.
Forgot to mention that I was a slut in college, too! Woooo
so spacenoodle’s noodle has been in various spaces?
Heh
SpaceNoodle’s noodle has even been inside The Space Needle
Accurate
ow
It’s more like he was her last choice and she outright told him that.
Eh, context. If it’s meant without protection, it’s a very different story. STDs are still a thing.
I said slurry not stupid.
Being one doesn’t exclude the other tho
Anon got over their crush and got on with their life, nothing wrong with that at all.
Besides, it sounds like they’re about option J here, and it’s perfectly okay to not be happy about that.
