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It’s because the country has bought into the idea that if you live under a roof and can afford food - you are middle class.
This is due to a systematic effort by the rich to make people believe that having (gasp!) refrigerators makes them ‘not poor’.
To be middle class (as it meant to someone who was in the 50’s - thus ‘as America was great’ per say) you need to make around 130k a year on a single salary today. Then you can afford your bills, car, house, and a yearly vacation while putting your kids through college (that last part… perhaps not these days) and not be in debt up to your eyeballs… like someone in Middle class should be able to.
The sad fact is that most of the people look at the median (average 50K a year for a household) and assume that ‘middle’ salary = middle class - without actually understanding that you can have no Middle class at all and still have a ‘median’ salary.
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“American Pie” is just a new take on “Porky’s”. The issue isn’t ‘media’ - it’s the Internet. These types of ‘ideas’ and crap floated around during High School - it’s just that without a circle-jerk group of angry young men all willing to feed into the ‘beast’ that is your own ego/id and re-enforce all your negative feelings - well you cried in your pillow for a bit and got over it. Because life goes on, and without someone whispering in your ear that all your negative thoughts are justified - there really isn’t any ‘real life’ situations that re-enforce that bullshit.
Cue the internet where anyone with a fetish/freak/thought can find like minded people… and convince themselves that measles and chickenpox are good for you and vaccines are bad - and that women are meant for men’s pleasure, and that white people are supreme, etc.
The slow ‘purge’ of society of some of the worst - and the shun/ostracizing that helped keep these wako’s bottled up in the hopes that generationally things would get better - have been undone because anyone with a couple hundred bucks can run a forum for these idiots.
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20’s sucked. I’m not on the spectrum but probably have a social learning disability (like the spectrum, this stuff was not well diagnosed in the 70’s). It made dating, or trying to, terrifying. I had to be pretty drunk to make a move, which sorta worked at college parties but not something I did on a date. Women got tired of waiting and thought I wasn’t interested. In my late 20’s I tried personals, in the 20 words on pulped trees era. It was Great! I called it dating 101. At least we both knew why we were there. The women I had relationships with still had to more or less tackle me, but at least they knew I was interested, the ground rules precluded “friend-zone” unlike all the other places you might meet someone.
Interestingly, my 19 year old son works on the ‘mutual friend confirmation theory’, he makes no assumptions of a girl’s interest in him, and his last girlfriend was a semester in the “close friend” zone before they got together.
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That’s a major part of incel BBS’s according to the Contrapoints video on the topic and other things I’ve read. In addition to the expected misogynist complaining, they spend a lot of time telling each-other what ugly, unlovable losers they are.
The Internet, for good or bad, is what you describe: an amplifier and feedback mechanism. In the case of callow and sexually frustrated young men without positive male role models (a constant throughout history) it’s been mostly for the worse, transforming too many of them into porn-addled NiceGuys™, too many of those into MRAs or PUAs or incels, and too many of those into violent misogynists and killers
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This is a bad choice to pick for an example. It’s commercial and problematic, and is stuck in a past that is just short of 30 years old.
“So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Ephron and Rob Reiner originally planned an ending where Harry and Sally remained friends, which they felt was the “true ending”; only later did they bow to the expectations of genre.”
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It stems from that same place that most women understand, the sense of entitlement.
Persistence, violence, the presumed sense of ownership…it’s all toxic.
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What’s your point? Are you saying the part of this piece of well known fiction that I used as an example, him being able to keep his attraction in check and being a civil friend, is not possible?
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And one stage unchecked or unaltered can easily lead to another, and then another…
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Yeah, I stopped by Incel Reddits a while back out of curiosity and thought that was a very strange feature. Not sure what to make of it.
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It’s a toxic trope. Hang on long enough, and she’ll give in. Lie to her long enough, and she’ll see the error of her ways. He did lie to her about his true feelings for an unhealthy length of time.
People sometimes win the lottery, but that doesn’t mean it’s generally a good investment.
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Also known as pests, bugaboos, relentless stalkers and guys who most women avoid like the freakin’ plague.
Some women just can’t be ‘worn down’ with persistence, not ever. And some dudes just refuse to accept that reality, which comes right back to entitlement, once again.
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Ad nauseum.
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[also, what’s with those casts? I vaguely recognise one name (Kelly Rutherford), but none of the others in those starring roles. The people in the posters look like escapees from a stock photo shoot.]
ETA: if you think those Hallmark movies are bad…
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I’d be willing to accept media as a source for this - but my history lessons say that it’s cultural - and the media is just a re-enforcement of what we as a society do.
There is no easy change to this, I think the fact that it’s external and learned gives hope that it’s something we can actually eliminate though.
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Ugh; I hate most rom-coms with a fiery passion, but I hate them even more so when they are tied in with the over-commercialized Xmas holidays.
I concur with that assessment; it’s a reflection of our beliefs and mores.
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The assumption that just because he is still attracted that he will ever act on it is what’s flawed in your point. I bet there some spouse of an old friend of yours that you find attractive, but would never make a pass at. I believe this to be a normal adult experience. The minority of people with no self-control give the rest of us a bad name.
Edit: true story, in a group of my friends a woman and her husband got divorced, and several years later she and another man in the group got together, and they’ve been married for 19 years. Do you think he wasn’t attracted to her when she was married and for the several years it took before he actually did something about it?
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This is old-world wisdom. “Just be persistent until she gives you a chance” I’ve heard this many times in many places.
The same era also says women with too short of a skirt are to blame for getting raped.
Really, I’ve only advised a guy friend of mine to be persistent once, and it’s really the wrong word (perseverance, maybe?). That situation was because a gal he was interested in legit seemed interested back, but would blow hot and cold.
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Fixed that for ya.
Humanity has been making up bullshit excuses for our learned bad behavior since time out of mind.
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