@The Emerald Archer,
My family's always been good about avoiding political conversations at get-togethers, fortunately.
I read about the disastrous Thanksgivings everyone has where swaths of the family end up not talking to each other due to politics. It sounds awful. I know there are all the same sorts of political disagreements within my own family, but we all simply agree not to discuss these subjects.
So I don't have actual experience to offer here.
That said,
@Mr.Rob's suggestion sounds perfect to me.
One note:
One of my little brother’s friends just graduated college back in the spring in mechanical engineering (I have a civil eng degree so we have some commonality and comparison). I'll call him Juicy. Juicy's been dating this girl from my lil bro’s social circle (the girl he lost his virginity to) and this past summer they bought a house together (both of their names are on the house), he just proposed to her a few days ago…
The girl had a kid when she was a senior in high school, her ex used to smack her around, she is a party girl and not the best looking (chubby), and has multiple non-feminine tattoos, has done hard drugs (I’ve done blow with her before in a group of people at a party…) you get the idea.
She’s a fun girl to party with and talk to, but not girlfriend or wife material by a mile. So not only does Juicy tie himself down with a mortgage right after graduating college, he does it with his girlfriend barely 1 year after dating. She is the only girl he’s ever banged and can failry say she's damaged goods (abusive relationship with her baby daddy, party girl, done hard drugs), is wayyy more experienced than he is sexually and now he just put a ring on her finger…
Other people around us (some of my little brothers friends are my friends too) think he’s doing good in life because he has a good job (engineering), bought a house (society values this as a metric for success) and is in a relationship. But I know this dude is going to be pushed around and will be powerless in this relationship because how could he not? He was a virgin before he banged this girl 1.5 years ago and she’s a party girl, not to mention nuts (abusive ex, had a kid while she was 17/18).
How can I not feel an air of superiority over someone like him? Don't you think those decisions are foolish as fuck?
The way I see it is you and him are on completely different trajectories in his life.
His trajectory looks dumb and tragic, but it is what he wants, has chosen himself, and has decided to pursue.
There are many people who will pursue crappy, poisonous, or self-destructive paths in life.
Here's a thing I have realized: if you let yourself feel superior to them, you have bound yourself to them. You are still allowing this other person to define you, at least in part. "Haha, I am not him", "I am so much better than him", "He could never even imagine what it is to be me."
Like
@Carousel notes, he is a starving man, chomping on rotten fruit, and imagining it a feast.
It looks disgusting to you, and it is, but it isn't worth standing over the starving man saying, "I am so much better than this destitute loser. And look at that idiot, he is down there laughing at me for not being as lucky as he is, not having the feast he does. If only he could see things from my eyes, he'd realize how idiotic he looks."
The better reaction is to look at this guy, sitting down there in the garbage, chomping on that rotten chicken leg with maggots tumbling out of it, ranting at you about how you'd better not come near his chicken leg, because this is HIS chicken leg, and realizing that his choices and ignorance led him there, just like your own choices and ignorance lead you into the problems you encounter in your own life, and continuing on your way.
Don't judge him. Don't let yourself care about what he thinks. Be civil, if you're forced into an interaction; be empathetic, if you must have a longer conversation. But the rest of the time, he is in such a different place from you, it's like trying to understand a suicide bomber or a male-to-female post-op transsexual. You can probably sort of imagine what it's like to be one of these people if you try, but trying to define yourself in contrast to them is just wandering into crazy land. It is best to just think of them usually as people on very different paths from your own.
My point is, I feel like I have the last laugh with people like Juicy here because though he may think he's doing better in life than I am (according to society's metrics - stable job, house, girlfriend, etc) I look at these decisions he's made that I think are very foolish and are bound to hold him back in life. But he only made those decisions because he hasn't unplugged from the Matrix and doesn't have a very good level of consciousness.
Yes, but here's the thing: he is laughing at you, too. That seems pretty clear from his behavior.
He thinks you are a fool and an idiot. In his world, he is doing everything right, and you are the rube.
You are in an objectively better place, of course -- certainly by the standards of everyone on this board, and probably by
most people's standards.
However, all kinds of senses of superiority are just a guy using another guy to stroke his own ego.
"Look at that tool. I'm so much better than that!" Just the brain jacking itself off.
Here's another thing to think about:
- A guy dating a fat, sloppy chick, who thinks he's much better than a guy dating a beautiful chick
- A guy dating a beautiful chick, who thinks he's much better than a guy dating a fat, sloppy chick
- A guy dating a fat, sloppy chick who is at peace and makes no judgment of himself or a guy dating a beautiful chick
- A guy dating a beautiful chick, who is at peace and makes no judgment of himself or a guy dating a fat, sloppy chick
Which two guys are MOST similar?
When I look at that bullet list, I actually think the two guys judging each other are more similar.
And the two guys not judging each other are more similar.
Sure, the judgment-free beautiful-girlfriend guy probably isn't going to go picking up girls with the judgment-free sloppy-girlfriend guy if both guys are single. (or maybe they will! Fat sloppy girlfriend guy can jump on all the grenades -- and love them!) But they're on a psychological level very different from the two guys busy judging each other and comparing themselves against one another.
I generally think, purely for you own mental well-being, it is best to leave aside social comparison as much as possible.
Use other people as benchmarks to know where you are doing well or where you can use improvement.
But try not to let your emotions into the picture, and try not to let yourself start judging too much. Otherwise you end up getting pulled down into the muck with the other people bound by pettiness.
@housecards,
Chase,
What do you think of the prints like the Wall Street Journal? I know that it’s sort of a conservative establishment, especially the op-ed part, which is probably Fox News written by people with ivy-league degrees. And their news reporting has got more sensational since Murdoch’s acquisition and his take on the New York Times. But when it comes to news reporting in the business world (particularly big business, like... corporate America level), the Journal is still the most fair among all, IMO.
I think it is trying to establish itself as a kind of respected conservative counterweight to the
New York Times.
It does a lot of tribal drum-beating, same as the NYT, but tries to mask it in high-minded and objective-sounding language, like the NYT (and unlike, say,
Breitbart or
The Huffington Post).
They do the standard thing where there are whatever media-inflated social issues of the day, and then everyone picks sides, based on 'left' or 'right'.
But the WSJ and the NYT have the same opinions on foreign policy. They both think largely the same things about Syria, Hong Kong, Venezuela.
They both have the same positions on big business. Each occasionally does exposés, typically on things that were about to erupt anyway and they wanted to get out ahead of the story and be the ones on the leading edge, but in general they are both very pro-big business.
It is worth looking at the nature of their attacks on specific big businesses, too. The NYT went hard after Facebook, because Facebook was blamed for not doing enough to stop Donald Trump's rise to the presidency. Google has
far worse privacy violations than Facebook, overall, but the NYT has left them alone because Google came out and had meetings where the executives specifically asked how they can stop a guy like Trump from getting elected again... while on the other side of things, Mark Zuckerberg's attitude was basically "Hey, don't look at me!"
In general though, aside from when they are going after specific companies for specific reasons, both publications are extremely pro-big business.
Both maintain the same line that the economy is doing very well (it isn't. Real wages are down since 1980. And job growth at 200K or under per month, which is what is has been since the recession, is not good. Long-term unemployed is higher than ever, and there has been
zero employment growth whatsoever for American citizens since the year 2000 -- the number of jobs held by Americans has actually deteriorated since 2000).
They're all on the same team, and all serve the same masters.
The news media is entertainment. Different papers pick a side: "I despise the Bad Orange Man! This man is an evil racist hater who is setting back progress!" "I support the Blessed Orange Man! This man is a beneficent savior who is sole bulwark against the collapse of Western civilization!" and then people, depending on their political persuasion, decide to read this or that paper, whichever one makes them feel more intelligent and better aligns with how they line up on social issues.
Meanwhile, they get fed the same exact messages on the most important issues: the world needs American soldiers to help install democracy; no leader is democratically elected unless he supports the American regime; it is okay for multinational companies to do anything they want, because they are not the government; we need as many immigrants as we can, and we should not be screening or limiting these people, because (conservative: we need more workers | liberal: it is morally wrong to exclude anyone, for any reason [except for a few kinds of people liberals despise, who should always be excluded]); religion is sort of irrelevant, because everyone should be happy living the perfect consumerist lifestyle and buying more things from the multinational companies and supporting the economy; the economy is the most important thing, humans exist to serve the economy; the banks are very, very good and we should make sure we support them at every turn, even if that means heavily taxing the lower classes to pay for banking scams; and so on and so forth.
The only thing news media disagree on is irrelevant social issues that cause a lot of outrage.
Meanwhile, they are in complete agreement about all the real levers of power, and present a unified narrative to their readership on these fronts.
Let the public fight about circus sideshows, and keep them blind to the conversations going on in the halls of power.
It is all propaganda.
Also, with a site this big, you probably got a lot of media interest. Any reason why the WSJ is the only MSM you chose to be on? (haven’t seen somewhere else)
Have you seen the
Joker movie that came out this year?
The guy brings Joker on the show, to be a clown they can all laugh at (not with).
I've made this point a few times over the years when folks ask about the media. As any kind of non-mainstream figure, there are generally only three ways the media will use you:
- As the villain: a scary, evil manipulator doing something very, very wrong whom everyone should be outraged at
- As the clown: a goofy, unaware nincompoop who is completely ridiculous and does not realize his own lunacy
- As the boring expert: some guy who sticks pretty close to the conventional narrative but has a few very slightly interesting things to say
These are media templates, which they specifically use to get the best ratings possible.
Usually they will try to get you into either the villain or clown roles. If they can't make those stick, they'll just put you in the boring expert role, but then your appearance won't get much traction and they'll quickly forget about you.
Really, because they want as many clicks or views as possible, if they decide to figure you prominently, they want you as a clown or a villain.
But I don't want to be a clown or a villain. I'm not either of those things in my life. Nobody I meet views me or treats me that way. I do not want to do some hostile show where the people running the show are deliberately setting me up to look that way.
I have heard a lot of things from guys in the seduction space about how they thought they did very well in an interview, then they saw the final MSM cut and it was heavily edited to make them look, dumb, silly, or manipulative.
As soon as you do a media performance like that, you let the media define you, to a huge swath of the population.
It is objectively good for business, from what I hear. Some people see through it and come to your site and figure out the version of you they saw was not the whole truth.
I personally do not want to deal with all the nonsense and controversy though.
To me, the media is just a very hostile place, where the narrative they want to push vs. the message I want to convey are in complete misalignment.
It might be possible for me to go be a media street fighter or something. Go on a bunch of shows, argue that the hosts are looking at things wrong, present stories, statistics, whatnot. I think I'm good enough at debating, seeming reasonable, and knowing exactly what is to risqué to say (so I can choose to not say it) that I could make that work. I have a little hostile filmed debate experience under my belt now, and with a little more I feel like I could probably do it.
That might be fun. But if you're going to do it, it needs to be a full-time schtick.
And right now, my full-time schtick is doing this, not doing a media tour where I battle with the hosts and try to change the media representation of guys who want to learn how to talk to girls.
So... still something I might do someday. If we reach a point where the business doesn't need me for anything else, and I think it'll be worthwhile to do.
Until then though, I go out of my way to turn down most media requests.
Also -- you know, I have seen a lot of things where the journalist expressly promises they will present the guy in a good light. And then they present him in a bad light anyway.
The fact is, they are the publisher. They control how you look in the final cut or the final print. And the journalist doesn't always have final say -- often the editor will push certain changes through.
So I tend to be very conservative about accepting these things.
I have gotten approached for various media appearances over the years. They wanted us on Dr. Phil, pretty obviously in the role of evil manipulators. Then they wanted us on Huffington Post TV, to discuss an article published on their site that their writer had ripped off almost word-for-word from one of mine (they were asking me to come on as an expert to discuss
their article... haha). I had another large publication that wanted to interview me about the "pick up artist lifestyle" (and when I went through the journalist's history, she was clearly a militant feminist, so I knew how that was going to go... either clown or manipulator. Maybe both?).
The media wants people who are greedy for press and willing to throw themselves at the mercy of journalists. "Oh please, yes, give me press; get me in front of your audience! Do whatever you must to me!"
I was a little tempted by it when I was younger, but at this point I don't see how these people can help me.
I am not running for political office. I don't care about notoriety for my own personal self. I am already better known than I would really like to be. I much prefer to be anonymous as I go about my daily life. It's nice to run into people who recognize you and are fans but I much prefer to be the question mark guy. And how much a media appearance would help GC... I'm very doubtful. I don't think we're set up in a good way to monetize any traffic that got us, and I don't think we'd get a substantial amount of extra traffic compared to what we already get.
So there is not a whole lot these people can offer me.
If the portrayal isn't going to be favorable (and it isn't), there's no reason for me to want to do that.
And on their side of things -- if I'm not going to be a manipulator or a clown, there's not a lot of reason to have me come on. They don't want to give me a platform for attacking the narrative... then it just makes THEM look bad, to their audience and media peers.
So it is really just a situation where neither of us benefits by doing what the other wants, and there is not really any mutual common ground between us.
We're just sort of irrelevant to each other, the media and me.
Chase
