I’ve heard total horror stories from exes and friends. First date weirdos and creeps are absolutely a common thing. Never hurts to be safe, especially in such a non-obtrusive way!
I feel like weirdo, creepy, and predator, are three different terms. I kinda like weirdos, the other two not so much. Predators are the worst.
I think the internet and the collecting of anecdotes that everyone probably has (I have some), can sometimes construct a self-selecting criteria that paints the world to sound worse than it is.
I just sometimes worry that online, or in anecdotes we’re using a selection criteria that takes humanity, and make the worst of it stand out to the point nothing is worth doing, no one is worth sparing or dating.
Of course there are unambiguous cases of horrible predators. But here’s to the weirdos and even some of the creeps, may your social skills dramatically improve through the stories you ended up in, and may you never lose your way and become predators.
I think weirdo, basically means we have different standards of behaviour, and/or humour.
Creep, means they wanted to have sex with me and I didn’t want to have sex with them.
Predator, means they’re stalking or pestering me.
So like I guess I just don’t have weirdo “horror” stories (they’d be escalated to creep, horror is creepy or involves predators). But you seem more like you’re willing to mix all the terms into a stew of bad. Understandable.
But nobody likes to talk about them, because they don’t line up with the ‘men are all evil’ narrative.
Women are way more likely to get assaulted by someone already in their life than a random stranger. That stat makes people VERY uncomfortable. Much harder to imagine your uncle or your co-worker will assault you than some random guy on the street…
It means your immediate and extended family, people you live with, people you’ve known and interacted regularly with for 2+ years… people who you have had a consistent relationship with for some time.
And also these aren’t like… ‘polls’, in the derogatory sense of a dubious or poor quality one.
They’re crime stats, and academic reviews of them.
The public image of rape is of the proverbial stranger attacking a woman in an alleyway. While such rapes do occur, most rapes actually happen between people who know each other. A wide body of research finds that 60–80 percent of all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman knows, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and only 20–35 percent by strangers (Barkan, 2012). A woman is thus two to four times more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a stranger.
(This is a bit old, but the citation for Barkan 2012 is a literal Criminology textbook, used to teach Criminology… it keeps getting updated and revised, but I am not able to find the entire text of the most up to date version available freely.)
A first date is a stranger, I guess possibly unless this is a first physical date after a prolonged long-distance relationship.
A boyfriend, husband, or ex… is not a stranger, in the sense of a person you have no substantial relational history with.
…
Also, if we are talking about domestic abuse, violence committed by people in a substantial relationship, toward their partner:
IPV is common. It affects millions of people in the United States each year. Data from CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) indicate:
About 41% of women and 26% of men experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported a related impact.
Over 61 million women and 53 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
(You may note this page was last updated before DOGE did its DEI purge of online US gov data, looks to me like this survived it unaltered, I’ve been using this page as a citation every so often for years when discussions like this pop up.)
So yeah, this is obviously a big problem for women… but more than half as many men have been victims of that first, very serious category of IPV as women, and something like 7/8ths as many men have been psychologically abused as women, by a partner.
When you take into account that genrerally heteronormative machismo dissuades men from reporting psych abuse, and that… many places in the US still don’t consider a woman forcing a man to have sex with them against their will… to even be rape / SA …
…yeah, I mean, the proverbial ‘win’ probably still goes to men for being just overall more likely to do IPV, but the margins of that ‘win’ are way more narrow than most people seem to think.
…
Another factor that is very prevalent to IPV that is rarely emphasized by society:
A whole lot of relationships involving IPV have two guilty parties, both are abusive (like, legally, often criminally), the entire relationship, both parties to it, are toxic.
Wouldn’t that depend on the quality and source of the poll? Like in academia when there’s a publication with a poll (generally called a survey) - they usually publish a methodology section which states how things are being defined/asked.
Methodologies between surveys aren’t universal, so I don’t think it makes sense to speak of “all polls”.
Obviously. The majority of them that I’ve seen group people into friends, acquaintances, strangers, partners, colleagues, and family. First dates are acquaintances.
Nah, if it’s a first meeting surely that’s a stranger. Like those researchers are using a flawed methodology if they’ve assumed everyone tells the truth about themselves online. Clearly a flawed idea. Doesn’t sound very academic to me.
I never had to actually step in for her. She’d just casually mention I was a friend, or introduce me, if things weren’t good. Apparently, that settled things down.
We would occasionally get people who couldn’t take a hint and we’d tossed them out when there were a complaints.
You risk life and limb crossing the street. It is reasonable to take some precautions like looking both ways or waiting on a walk signal. It is not reasonable to assume every driver will swerve into you when they see an opportunity.
Take care to prepare for the worst for your own safety, but don’t assume the worst in others.
Dating platforms are LIFE is crawling with predators
he FTFY
Edit: Just to add “predator” is not only the psycho that will kill/rape a woman. Any men that do not accept a NO, that thinks they are “playing hard to get”, that catcalls a woman in the streets, ta makes an unsolicited comment about their body, that thinks woman are ment to do whatever they want… any of those men are predators.
Any men is a comment away from being a predator. Don’t be this man
What if someone were to say, start intentionally spreading rumors about men by claiming they had seen several women raped in their lives? For the sake of population control. That sounds like it would be very effective if I could find a large enough audience.
Of course it doesn’t feel great to think that people are uncomfortable and threatened just being aware that you are a single man who exists in the same environment, but if that’s how it’s gotta be, how do you successfully communicate that you are not a threat?
Well yeah, obviously, but why would someone give you the opportunity if being around you makes them uncomfortable and threatened? It works the other way around too; I wouldn’t want to spend time with someone if it seems like doing so might be making them feel afraid, in that case I’m just going to stay away from them.
Pressure quite often. Social pressure, psychological pressure. It can be a form of de-escelation out of fear what would happen if you rejected the person. Not entirely the same situation, but that’s the reason I can’t say no that easily to my alcoholic brother’s shenanigans. Imagine what women go through on a daily basis
Makes sense, but there has to be a better way as that sounds awful, like it does not sound like your alcoholic brother is genuinely building trust with you that way.
No he doesn’t. But it’s the easiest way for me to cope and deal with the situation. I don’t have the patience or the mental fortitude to try and convince or convert my family to abstain from alcohol. I’d rather avoid the situation and look out for my own well-being than be exposed to their drinking. I know it’s not the healthiest strategy, but it’s what’s been helping me the past few years
It is regarding population control. We got rid of our natural enemies so now we need to be our own enemy. Even with all those wars it’s not enough. A deadly world war or pandemic (or both combined) would be need.
Or we keep going and ultimately cause the runaway greenhouse effect, killing all life on this planet.
“Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
Isn’t it hilarious that women VASTLY PREFER dating strangers than from within their own social sphere? The phenomenon of "But we’re friends! is a cliche for a reason.
Just because a cliché exist does not mean it’s actually true. People that are complaining about a lot on the Internet are maybe more likely to spend too much time on the Internet in general and by that are more likely to have a lack of social skills in the real world.
To counter that anecdotally: in my social circle a lot couples spawned from a previous social connection and there are only a few that meet through dating apps or where a random hook up in the first place.
Women turn down men they’re not attracted to. This has nothing to do with how long they’ve known each other. There is no such thing as the friend zone, just the you-are-not-attractive zone.
The weird thing I really don’t have a big issue with that. It’s just that the rhetoric just crushes me because it never ends and it fucks my head up and I start to doubt myself.
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I had a friend that used to bring all her first dates to the bar I tended. Just in case.
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Wait… Because so many of them turned out to be predators?.. On the first date? Like it was THAT common?
How many times did you have to step in and stop things?
You’ve only got to be wrong once.
Yeah it’s the whole poison M&Ms thing… Would you keep eating if you knew just one might kill you.
But I guess IRL dating still happens, so we clearly do have a drive to persist and try. Story of humanity I guess.
It’s so irritating. What right do humans have to keep existing? After murdering most of the world and creating a hellscape.
If one is sufficiently motivated, one takes one’s chances.
I’ve heard total horror stories from exes and friends. First date weirdos and creeps are absolutely a common thing. Never hurts to be safe, especially in such a non-obtrusive way!
I feel like weirdo, creepy, and predator, are three different terms. I kinda like weirdos, the other two not so much. Predators are the worst.
I think the internet and the collecting of anecdotes that everyone probably has (I have some), can sometimes construct a self-selecting criteria that paints the world to sound worse than it is.
I just sometimes worry that online, or in anecdotes we’re using a selection criteria that takes humanity, and make the worst of it stand out to the point nothing is worth doing, no one is worth sparing or dating.
Of course there are unambiguous cases of horrible predators. But here’s to the weirdos and even some of the creeps, may your social skills dramatically improve through the stories you ended up in, and may you never lose your way and become predators.
I think it was fairly clear from what I said about “horror stories” that I didn’t mean harmless and fun weird people.
I think weirdo, basically means we have different standards of behaviour, and/or humour.
Creep, means they wanted to have sex with me and I didn’t want to have sex with them.
Predator, means they’re stalking or pestering me.
So like I guess I just don’t have weirdo “horror” stories (they’d be escalated to creep, horror is creepy or involves predators). But you seem more like you’re willing to mix all the terms into a stew of bad. Understandable.
Anyways, thanks for the discussion. 🙏
There’s some guy out there with a religion that says you are basically the devil, and there is nothing you can do about it.
The stats on these things exist.
But nobody likes to talk about them, because they don’t line up with the ‘men are all evil’ narrative.
Women are way more likely to get assaulted by someone already in their life than a random stranger. That stat makes people VERY uncomfortable. Much harder to imagine your uncle or your co-worker will assault you than some random guy on the street…
People you’re on a first date with count as people in your life, not as strangers in those polls, iirc.
No, not generally, no.
It means your immediate and extended family, people you live with, people you’ve known and interacted regularly with for 2+ years… people who you have had a consistent relationship with for some time.
And also these aren’t like… ‘polls’, in the derogatory sense of a dubious or poor quality one.
They’re crime stats, and academic reviews of them.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-socialproblems/chapter/4-4-violence-against-women-rape-and-sexual-assault/
(This is a bit old, but the citation for Barkan 2012 is a literal Criminology textbook, used to teach Criminology… it keeps getting updated and revised, but I am not able to find the entire text of the most up to date version available freely.)
A first date is a stranger, I guess possibly unless this is a first physical date after a prolonged long-distance relationship.
A boyfriend, husband, or ex… is not a stranger, in the sense of a person you have no substantial relational history with.
…
Also, if we are talking about domestic abuse, violence committed by people in a substantial relationship, toward their partner:
https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html
(You may note this page was last updated before DOGE did its DEI purge of online US gov data, looks to me like this survived it unaltered, I’ve been using this page as a citation every so often for years when discussions like this pop up.)
So yeah, this is obviously a big problem for women… but more than half as many men have been victims of that first, very serious category of IPV as women, and something like 7/8ths as many men have been psychologically abused as women, by a partner.
When you take into account that genrerally heteronormative machismo dissuades men from reporting psych abuse, and that… many places in the US still don’t consider a woman forcing a man to have sex with them against their will… to even be rape / SA …
…yeah, I mean, the proverbial ‘win’ probably still goes to men for being just overall more likely to do IPV, but the margins of that ‘win’ are way more narrow than most people seem to think.
…
Another factor that is very prevalent to IPV that is rarely emphasized by society:
A whole lot of relationships involving IPV have two guilty parties, both are abusive (like, legally, often criminally), the entire relationship, both parties to it, are toxic.
That lines up well with all statistics I have read on that topic.
Wouldn’t that depend on the quality and source of the poll? Like in academia when there’s a publication with a poll (generally called a survey) - they usually publish a methodology section which states how things are being defined/asked.
Methodologies between surveys aren’t universal, so I don’t think it makes sense to speak of “all polls”.
Obviously. The majority of them that I’ve seen group people into friends, acquaintances, strangers, partners, colleagues, and family. First dates are acquaintances.
Nah, if it’s a first meeting surely that’s a stranger. Like those researchers are using a flawed methodology if they’ve assumed everyone tells the truth about themselves online. Clearly a flawed idea. Doesn’t sound very academic to me.
Cool
Noticed you left out “partner” there buddy.
That’s usually the #1
Well yeah, but presumably if you have a partner already, you aren’t going on too many dates with strangers.
I guess it depends on the term predator.
I never had to actually step in for her. She’d just casually mention I was a friend, or introduce me, if things weren’t good. Apparently, that settled things down.
We would occasionally get people who couldn’t take a hint and we’d tossed them out when there were a complaints.
Oh that’s good. Good job!
You risk life and limb crossing the street. It is reasonable to take some precautions like looking both ways or waiting on a walk signal. It is not reasonable to assume every driver will swerve into you when they see an opportunity.
Take care to prepare for the worst for your own safety, but don’t assume the worst in others.
Dating platforms areLIFE is crawling with predatorshe FTFY
Edit: Just to add “predator” is not only the psycho that will kill/rape a woman. Any men that do not accept a NO, that thinks they are “playing hard to get”, that catcalls a woman in the streets, ta makes an unsolicited comment about their body, that thinks woman are ment to do whatever they want… any of those men are predators.
Any men is a comment away from being a predator. Don’t be this man
What if someone were to say, start intentionally spreading rumors about men by claiming they had seen several women raped in their lives? For the sake of population control. That sounds like it would be very effective if I could find a large enough audience.
Of course it doesn’t feel great to think that people are uncomfortable and threatened just being aware that you are a single man who exists in the same environment, but if that’s how it’s gotta be, how do you successfully communicate that you are not a threat?
I don’t.
I’m not interested in socializing with discriminating cretins who deal in absolutes and i like my peace of mind.
That’s what a predator would say.
No, seriously, trust is built over time.
Well yeah, obviously, but why would someone give you the opportunity if being around you makes them uncomfortable and threatened? It works the other way around too; I wouldn’t want to spend time with someone if it seems like doing so might be making them feel afraid, in that case I’m just going to stay away from them.
Pressure quite often. Social pressure, psychological pressure. It can be a form of de-escelation out of fear what would happen if you rejected the person. Not entirely the same situation, but that’s the reason I can’t say no that easily to my alcoholic brother’s shenanigans. Imagine what women go through on a daily basis
Makes sense, but there has to be a better way as that sounds awful, like it does not sound like your alcoholic brother is genuinely building trust with you that way.
No he doesn’t. But it’s the easiest way for me to cope and deal with the situation. I don’t have the patience or the mental fortitude to try and convince or convert my family to abstain from alcohol. I’d rather avoid the situation and look out for my own well-being than be exposed to their drinking. I know it’s not the healthiest strategy, but it’s what’s been helping me the past few years
You people know this is a good thing, right? It’s our population problem regulating itself.
Not going fast enough though so war is still necessary.
That’s psychotic. War is never necessary.
It is regarding population control. We got rid of our natural enemies so now we need to be our own enemy. Even with all those wars it’s not enough. A deadly world war or pandemic (or both combined) would be need.
Or we keep going and ultimately cause the runaway greenhouse effect, killing all life on this planet.
“Be patient out there gentlemen”
Naahhh…just give up on finding anyone
Suicide and loneliness seems like the only answer.
With that attitude.
https://youtu.be/4gO7uemm6Yo
Don’t do it…
That’s one thing not worth dying for. Modern humans are meant to be self-sufficient individuals that depend on nothing but the very basics to survive.
What is the point of living so, I think we are getting into the big filter…
You must have your own purpose, completelly independent of others
“Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
Truly a well-chosen nickname.
Yes
So just need to bio-enhance women to be super strong in order to get dates, got it.
All roads lead to dommy mommy
Isn’t it hilarious that women VASTLY PREFER dating strangers than from within their own social sphere? The phenomenon of "But we’re friends! is a cliche for a reason.
Do you have any statistics backing up that claim or is that purely anecdotal/an subjective assumption?
Again, why is friend zoning such a cliche? Because women usually turn down men they’ve already met.
Okay, so the latter.
Just because a cliché exist does not mean it’s actually true. People that are complaining about a lot on the Internet are maybe more likely to spend too much time on the Internet in general and by that are more likely to have a lack of social skills in the real world.
To counter that anecdotally: in my social circle a lot couples spawned from a previous social connection and there are only a few that meet through dating apps or where a random hook up in the first place.
Women turn down men they’re not attracted to. This has nothing to do with how long they’ve known each other. There is no such thing as the friend zone, just the you-are-not-attractive zone.
Maybe they turn down men they already considered and rejected? Strangers are still being considered.
Turning down people isn’t something bad. It’s worse to end up with someone who don’t fit.
Friendzone though is most often just not having guts to say that loud and clear.
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The weird thing I really don’t have a big issue with that. It’s just that the rhetoric just crushes me because it never ends and it fucks my head up and I start to doubt myself.
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