Again, my SO has never shown interest in "ethnical non monogamy". She was actually a lot quicker to pass judgment on the subject when it first entered the public zeitgeist. I came to my conclusions about ethnical non monogamy after meeting people who practiced that IRL and watching their relationships implode. My SO would make it clear that she doesn't approve of that lifestyle and didn't want to make any moves to form direct friendships with them as opposed to simply being in the same social circle.

Are you in a relationship?

My friends have better luck, but it's a constant grind. Also, as far as I can tell, a guy's chance of getting into a relationship is basically a thin proxy for how attractive he is. Meanwhile for women the chances seem to be proxy for a combination of genuine kindness and realistic expectations. Any women with remotely realistic expectations is off the market in six weeks flat.

No my SO is a wonderful woman who is a feminist in the sense that she does not enjoy any form of gender roles. That was extremely common when we first started dating. We are both pretty happy in our relationship.

My frustration comes from watching a lot of my guy friends struggle. Just because I'm not the one being cucked doesn't mean I appreciate seeing it in my social circles or appreciate seeing that behavior being defended.

Again, there's a lot of dialogue about how women need to stick up for other women. The idea that men have to be in it for themselves is ridiculous.

That being said, I would have every right to be bitter if my SO pressured me into an open relationship, and my friend group watched because a small amount of women were very supportive of the idea and nobody wanted to confront them. That's an extremely fucked up position to put anyone in.

Look at this point I know more women with unrealistic relationship expectations than men.

The world has changed a ton in the past twenty years. There's been a lot of discussion about toxicity in regards to male gender roles, and fundamentals changes to what's acceptable for a man to expect in a relationship.

There hasn't really been that discussion in women. While many women have perfectly fair expectations, there are a lot of women who will expect a man to completely reject gendered expectations of them, while having a ton of expectations of a man. It's almost a joke among my single male friends that the more vocal someone is about being a feminist, the more likely they'll expect you to pay for the date.

There's also a subculture of women behaving in ways that would be considered objectively toxic a decade ago, but have been normalized due to the whole oppressor/oppressed culture war narrative. I've seen women bail on long term relationships in ways that are 100 percent because they just want to sleep around. I've seen women push their husband into an "ethically polyamaorous" relationship that always is extremely one sided. I've also seen a lot of women with an "I can do better" mentality that nobody in a relationship would have to put up with.

I'm not saying women are universally awful or anything. I'm just saying I think we need to have the same conversation around how women behave that we had in regards to how men behave.

I feel like I would be more okay with this is snap didn't still have a lot of very real flaws.

Look man I don't know how old you are, but this type of comment is what I'd expect a teenager to write. it's not just that you're acting like a massive asshole; You're using insults and arguments that I'd expect a teenager to come up with. It's the sort of argument that only works if the vast majority of people in the audience are already both deeply in your corner and also immature. Otherwise you'd just come off looking like a massive jackass.

Do you have any experience talking to people outside of an echo chamber? How does that go for you?

This is a serious answer so it's gonna get down voted to hell, but whatever.

There's a huge portion of Americans who are suffering. Their personal lives are kind of awful, they live in communities that are impossible to get ahead and the communities are often that way to due the direct actions of the political establishment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Above all else, these communities don't really feel heard by the liberal establishment. They feel as though their concerns are dismissed by what they see as the powers that be. They feel that their anguish is belittled as a personal failure, and often downright mocked. They also feel as though a lot of entities that fucked them are liberally coded.

To these people, Trump is the guy who makes those people seethes and tells them to fuck off. That endears them to him and offers extreme loyalty. They often dismiss the allegations against him because at some point every single conservative has been implied to be a disgusting person in popular culture.

Ironically I think a lot of Trump's worst actions solidified the support of his base, because of where America has been at since his political ascendency. The US culture war has been raging for a decade now, and both sides have a habit of taking extreme positions while vilifying their opposition. That is naturally going to cause people to get more aggressive, which in turn villifies Trump.

An example I love to use is vaccine skepticism during covid. There were two huge groups of vaccine skeptics in America: rural whites, and black Americans. Both had suffered greatly at the hands of an aloof medical establishment, and both had their suffering ignored. While the Black community's wounds run deeper, the rural white community was fresh off the opioid crisis. They had every reason to be skeptical about big pharma lying to them for profit, because that's literally what happened just a few years prior.

The liberal response to the black community was understanding and outreach. The medical community made a huge effort to reach out to black community members and popular figures in black culture. There was a direct acknowledgement of the medical establishment's bigotry in the past. There was not a culture of shame for people who did not choose to get vaccinated. This was also reflected in news articles and social media posts.

Their response to the rural white community was basically the opposite. The medical establishment's outreach was extremely limited by comparison. The opioid crisis was written off as a failure by the Sacklers as opposed to any systemic issues that the medical establishment needs to address. Vaccine skeptics were repeatedly and aggressively shamed, with open discussion in regards to simply enforcing vaccination via mandates. Basically every MSM article talked about how the vaccine hesitancy was a character flaw. Social media went even farther. Not only did they call conservative vaccine skeptics things like death cultists, but there were forums dedicated to making fun of antivaxxers dying of covid. People would post private Facebook posts of people they knew by two or three degrees of separation, and then liberals would more or less celebrate their demise. You even had the return of the word "sky fairy" on reddit to describe when these people prayed to God.

Trump, for his part, encouraged people to get vaccinated. He stated multiple times at his rallies that vaccines could end covid, and that they were making him look bad by not doing so. He was, at his own rallies, booed so loud he had to stop talking. He quickly changed his tune.

A consistent trend in liberal circles is the belief that they have complete moral and intellectual authority, as well as the belief that this authority gives them the ability to treat people who don't conform like shit. I'm pretty sure I'm voting for Harris, but there are also times where I felt like I should just say home. It's completely fucking insufferable, and ironically has a ton in common with evangelical christian politics that dominated the US in the 1980s. So long as that mentality is there, you'll have people like Trump gaining undeserved support.

You know it's kinda weird that nobody gave a shit when Arnold did this. I guess because Arnold didn't make a brand around being wholesome, except when it comes to the gym?

I keep waiting for this guy to be knocked down a peg and it never really ends up happening. The only time he seemed genuinely embarrassed was when he had to back out of that Zuckerberg fight.