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Comment by mikelyons | Hacker News Reader

Its stressful for me because I'm running out of youth and I'm never going to find a mate :( The women just aren't attracted to a guy like me, or aren't interested in starting a family so much as poly-amory, drugs, revealing festival costumes, junk media, sex work, alcohol, or anything other than using their youth and looks for hedonism.

Edit: Obviously touchy, people actually have thoughts like this, how do we lovingly and selflessly address this and actually turn someone around rather than shaming them? (or is shame how we do it?)

Edit: How might you communicate about the thoughts that are going on in the head of suicidal tech workers, without everyone assuming that you are the person who is suffering that level of consciousness? maybe a disclaimer was all people would have needed to understand that?

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I’m going to be bluntly honest with you. Your comment is a huge red flag. It sounds like you’ve fallen into the red pill/MRA trap where you are blaming women for not having a relationship.

Your description is not accurate, and sounds like a toxic approach where you are viewing women with a combative perception.

I’d suggest considering what areas of your life you can improve on for you, and maybe addressing the areas that are putting you into such a negative head space.

I hope you find your way to being happy.

Not saying it's healthy but these emotions are all tied into why we work and why we survive.

I am happy but these are thoughts I've had in the past.

Suggestion for ya. Cut out the social media, and... porn. It shifts your mindset in a very negative way, very gradually.

I can understand your perspective, and warranted frustration. Much of my childhood, I was raised to believe certain truths, only to be slapped in the face by a different reality later in life.

@McAtNite mentioned the "red pill/MRA" trap. It's common, to people seeing things that go against what they were raised to believe is 'right' or 'wrong', to become angered by that.

Try going to a festival. As a software engineer, I went to Sasquatch Festival in 2017 for the first time, and it was life-changing. I went again to the last one in 2018, and again, life-changing. Incredible music, amazing people, and no "deadlines", or deployment statuses BS. Just people celebrating what it means to be alive.

The judgmental side of you will fade over time and you'll come out of it a stronger person.

This is fantastic advice.

It sounds like you're looking for potential matches in the wrong places. If you're looking on Tinder you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people just want to hook up. You might have better like if you spend time with more socially conservative groups. Churches often have social gatherings where you might have better luck finding someone closer to what you seem to be looking for.

This is sound advice but I can also see that it seems unlikely for someone with radical spiritual views.

What seems unlikely for someone with radical spiritual views?

Joining a church to meet a romantic partner.

Counterpoint: evidence of the behaviors you mention is way over-represented on the internet relative to its frequency in real life.

Absolutely agree

The women... aren't interested in starting a family so much as poly-amory, drugs, revealing festival costumes, junk media, sex work, alcohol

Yeah, it can't be you, it must be them.

Back to the topic. This is what I hate about the tech profession: how it perceives women. It is not healthy.

I don't think you can extrapolate the whole tech profession from one man's unhealthy outlook.

Why we work and why we mate are all part of our survival, and that's what generates these thoughts.

If I don't explain thoughts I've had and transcended in the past, that are tied to work and survival, what use is the conversation, am I shamed for sharing another aspect? or is it just too loosely related in your view.

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

But I will say this: stop blaming women for your shortcomings.

Yes this is excellent advice

You should definitely find a new employer if your current environment is reflective of the comment that you were responding to. I can't even imagine working somewhere like that.

Imagine going from the professional setting to the setting where you have to attract a mate.

We're on a thread about a suicide prevention campaign, but people still don't have the sobriety required to handle the thoughts that drive it.

Every cup has a saucer, mate. You'll find someone.

I love this.

I seriously can't think of a single woman I've ever met who sounds like that. What situation are you in where that's normal?

It's not incredibly uncommon! I'm not saying it's normal or healthy, or even that this is my belief, these are just thoughts that I've had.

Apologies for not disclaiming

Edit: Tinder would be an example, depending on your location. Or instagram

Glad you noted this. I also came here to add that I also can't think of a single woman in my social circle (most of my friends are women) nor in my partner's that meets the earlier characterization.

It's OK to think wrong things. We all think a lot of wrong things.

It's important, because our brains are very good at rationalizing and filtering, to be skeptical of the voice that interjects those dark thoughts--to look for evidence that it's wrong rather than evidence that it's right.

Edit: addressing your edit. It's also important to reflect on how (and why) our experiential sample differs from a random sample. Apps, much like physical places, strongly filter who shows up. Just like you're statistically likely to meet different kinds of people at a library, supermarket, dog park, beach, state park, piano bar, orchestra, art gallery, or hackathon.

How do you turn someone around from this thinking though to realize that they can attract what they want?

Ooof. Man. Not any stripe of psych or therapist, but I'm not sure you can. I've never found directly trying to change someone's mind all that productive.

I think the big precondition is some combination of curiosity+humility. If they don't already have it, I wouldn't worry about much other than trying to create it. At first I wanted to compare this to opening a door that someone else has to walk through, but I guess what you really want is to teach them how to see doors.

I'm not really into street epistemology, but I read Peter Boghossian's book on the topic a few years back; IIRC he frames this in terms of creating moments of "doxastic openness" where people are willing to re-evaluate what they know. I'm probably torturing the text a little, but I think it roughly boils down to using the Socratic method to help people find things they think they know but don't.

It's a way of unsettling the equilibria or feedback loops they're in.

A thought that may help...

A bit over a decade ago I had a spell of depression that I sought counseling for, and for a few weeks at one point I crossed a little line into "suicidal ideation", and it was a very unnerving experience. My brain saw opportunities for death everywhere I went. I was morbidly amused with its ideas. I (thankfully) never felt any real impulse to take action on those thoughts, but the unnerving part was how rational it (and I) actually felt. I'll avoid details, but my mind was hard at work on very pragmatic details--solving a problem like any other.

I realized my thinking was working fine--but my perception was all askew--and it sort of snowballed into part of my worldview. I grew to find it more fruitful to see other people as roughly rational with varying degrees of disordered perception, and to imagine that we would probably make very similar decisions and think similar thoughts if our input streams were swapped. (FWIW: I'm not calling this an accurate model of reality, just a fruitful one.) I wasn't really aware of it at first, but it's turned out to be an empathy-cultivating framework. It leads me to imagine the preconditions that might cause me to think/behave as someone I'm finding surprising.

What? I can't tell if this is a joke, but what does that have to do with your job?

Why work? Why live? Why do anything at all?

I work because I love the problems I solve, I find them interesting. When I get tired of this, I'll start another career. I've got a few that I can't wait to try and I'm not sure which I'll do next?

I enjoy living, trying, learning, seeing, hearing. I love to go to live music shows, eat good food, travel, meeting people and learning what they know. I'm a little socially awkward but I do enjoy talking to people about whatever they are experts in. I love to build things, I'm not artistic, but I enjoy art. I like to be alone, and camp and swim and read. There's so many things I love to do in life I'll never get to them all.

So for the most part, I get up as early as I can bear, and I do as much as I can for as long as I can. I find very few things through out my day to be un-enjoyable.

My first attempts at having a partner were so focused on having a partner, that it was difficult for me or them to see through that. I had some unhappy kinda forced relationships. At somepoint, I relized that no one else can make me happy, and looking for that in someone else is a waste of time and a turn off. Instead, I make myself happy, I've found what I love to do and who I love to be. I'm fatter, worse in bed and have less hair, but I'm more attractive because I love myself, and I love life. That's something people want to be around.

So, when you're done feeling sorry for yourself, take some time to be the best you, be someone you love, learn how to make yourself happy without having to seek out your happiness from someone else. You partner doesn't want another chore. Life is just as hard for your partner as it is for you.

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