Today Iâm going to record the story of Mark Keith Robinson, so called because thereâs other people named Mark Robinson, some of whom will hopefully be more noteworthy than this one in the grand scheme of things. Mark was elected to be the lieutenant governor of North Carolina in 2021. Thatâs sort of like being the vice president, but of the state-level government. Then in 2023, he decided to run to be governor of the state in 2024. In November 2023, he lost.
In September 2024, on the 19th, CNN reported they found his account on a pornographic website called Nude Africa from years earlier, where his identity was barely obscured at all. Here were some of the fun messages they spotlighted:
âI came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent covers over it! It just so happened it overlooked the showers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as several girls came in and showeredâ
âI like watching tranny on girl porn! Thatâs fucking hot!â
âIâm a black NAZI!â
He refers to Martin Luther King Jr. as a âfucking commie bastardâ, and called him âworse than a maggotâ, and opposed a memorial to King in Washington, DC in 2011. The following year, Robinson wrote âIâd take Hitler over any of the shit thatâs in Washington right now!â, in reference to that memorial.
he regularly uses the term fag among other slurs
âIâm not in the KKK. They donât let blacks join.â
âSlavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would certainly buy a few.â
The next day, on the 20th, the Washington Post reported that on this pornographic website, Robinson âwrote extensively and in graphic detail about having extramarital sex with his wifeâs sisterâ, and that âthe same email Robinson used on the porn site was registered on Ashley Madison, a website used for extramarital affairsâ.
These revelations were so outrageous and generated so much attention that it led to almost his entire campaign staff quitting, as local news reported a few days later (â... leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign â two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguardâ).
Mark Robinson is no stranger to making controversial statements in public these days, so itâs not shocking that he said such outrageous things online in the past. Letâs review some things that voters already had access to before the CNN reporters finding his porn accounts:
âthis foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwashâ (2023)
in July 2024, he gave an impassioned speech rich with violent language, anger about immigrants, vague references to a class of people within the country who hate America and want to destroy it and control you and take your freedom, the importance of killing your opposition, and references bringing in the cops and the military. (He does mention fighting enemies in the context of World War II, but the only purpose of that comparison is so he can insinuate that violence against an unnamed âdomestic enemyâ is equally justified. Hereâs a transcript of that part if you donât want to search the facebook video.)
[referring to abortion] âIt's about killing the child because you weren't responsible enough to keep your skirt downâ
âIâm going to explain climate change to you. Itâs real simple, here it is: four times a year, the climate changes. ... Itâs that simple. End of less. ... This idiot [referring to Joe Biden] is over here worried about climate change, a science that is, Iâm going to say it plain, junk science. I said it once and Iâm gonna say it again, itâs junk. Itâs godless junk.â (2021)
âThereâs no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.â (2021)
âHomosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in âcelebrating gay pride.ââ (2016, immediately after the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Florida that killed 49 people)
He said the Marvel film Black Panther (2018) was created by Jews and satanic Marxists to âpull the shekels out of your Schvartze pocketsâ (Schvartze is a Yiddish slur for black people; his intended meaning is to imply that Jewish people are just exploiting the black population)
âEverything that god made, from the foul odour of what the cow left behind, to the decaying body of every living creature, to the maggots that eat those dead bodies, to the flies that will fly around what the cow left behind. God made all those things for a purpose. Will somebody please explain to me the purpose of homosexuality?â (2021)
A number of these statements he made during a speech at this church, which was reported on, and the full recording is still online. Some other statements (like his Holocaust denial) were made on his public facebook while in office and are still up. None of this was a secret from or should have been a surprise to votersâuntil the additional comments from that porn website.
This person not only got the party nomination to run to be governor, but it seems like he could have easily won despite what a terrible person he wasâhad it not been for that CNN report and the headlines calling him a âblack Naziâ who watches trans porn and wants to spy on girls in public showers or something. The Republican Party did well in North Carolina that election cycle, so it does make it seem like it was just this wave of controversy shortly before the election that screwed him over. All of his other horrific public statements wouldnât have been enough.Robinson, for his part, denies everything and is now trying to sue CNN for 50 million dollars.
A: This restaurant is good, but itâs expensive.
B: This restaurant is expensive, but itâs good.
Maybe the word âbutâ is biasing usâletâs try that again.
A: This restaurant is good. Itâs also expensive.
B: This restaurant is expensive. Itâs also good.
No, wait, maybe âandâ is bad too?
A: This restaurant is good. This restaurant is expensive.
B: This restaurant is expensive. This restaurant is good.
Regardless of which conjunction you use, including no conjunction at all, if I say (positive thing) and then (negative thing), the result is you interpret the negative thing as being more important, or outweighing the positive thing. Try it with anything else. âThe writing is good, but the movie is slow-pacedâ is a negative review; âthe movie is slow-paced, but the writing is goodâ is a positive review.
Think about this in your writing, and speaking. Itâs why that funny-sounding technique youâve heard of called the âcompliment sandwichâ actually works. If we leave on a bad note, then we leave with a bad impression. If we leave on a good note, then we leave with a good impression. The order of information matters.
A less-obvious implication of this: anticipating counter-examples, or naming them preĂ«mptively, seems to rhetorically nullify them. This is important because the truth of a generalization is difficult to quickly evaluate. Letâs say I make the claim that birds canât fly. A person says âoh really, what about penguins?â Okay, you got me: birds generally canât fly, but there are exceptions, like penguins. They continue: âAnd ostriches. And have you ever heard of kiwis?â
If somebody were listening to our conversation and didnât already know there are thousands of bird species all over the world and the vast majority of them can fly, it might sound like I just made a stupid, wrong point and was quickly refuted.
But if I got out ahead of that by saying âThere are some exceptions, like penguins or kiwis, but birds generally canât flyâ, then suddenly Iâm immune to you pointing out counter-examples. If you said âbut penguins are birds that canât flyâ, I could just say âum, yeah? I just said thatâ or âI already acknowledged there are some exceptionsâ. Rhetorically, I win.
Is what this indicates that pointing out a counter-example only rhetorically âworksâ because by doing so you make it sound like the speaker was unaware of it prior? That or they were trying to obscure it from the audience. By acknowledging it ahead of time, you rob them of both implications. If I already know and acknowledge that penguins canât fly, then obviously penguins not being able to fly must not be able to subtract from the generalization I say afterwards.
But now think about how muddy this could get if the topic wasnât something obvious and based in common knowledge. Do you know what countries produce how many apples? Itâs not difficult info to quickly look up, but unless you happen to work in the produce industry or something, itâs not something most people would just randomly have in their head. So if I said âCanada is one of the leading apple producers, it grows more than almost any other countryâ, that might sound wrong at a glanceâlike, wait, even more than the US? Really? But now imagine if I said: âThough some countries, like the US, produce even more, Canada is still one of the top apple producers in the worldâ. That suddenly sounds a lot more credible. Iâm acknowledging there are exceptions, and Iâm demonstrating some knowledge about the topic, being aware of the exceptions, and baking that into my claim. The number of people who would bother challenging a claim like that on the fly is very smallâeven though itâs still completely wrong. (Canada is something like the 30th country by apple production. France grows about 5x more apples than Canada, and theyâre 9th in the world. The US grows 13x more. China produces over 100x more. If there was some kind of world apple forum, Canada would not be a major player, or even close to one. But who just knows this?)
Now imagine how this could apply to more complex topics that nobody knows anything about and which are difficult to quickly verifyâlike technology, or politics, law, the economy, or war. A person could say âthis countryâs military has been good, outside of a few exceptions where they did bad things.â Are they bullshitting us? They might be.
I recently wrote a post about Canada where I listed 12 reasons I like Canada more than the US, and in one part touched on our political leadership, overall giving Justin Trudeau a positive-sounding review. I note that heâs had some problems and scandals, but acted appropriately in response to investigation and has overall, despite those scandals, been a good guy. What if Iâm bullshitting you, and Trudeau is actually corrupt as hell, and the few scandals I mention are just the tip of the iceberg? I could just be acknowledging some of his faults as a way of implying that Iâm aware of the rare exceptionsâlike somebody saying âmost birds are flightless, even though there are some exceptions, like pigeons and sparrowsâ. How would you know?
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By the way, about âflightless birdâ species: most people only know like four (penguin, emu, ostrich, kiwi), but thereâs technically 60 to 70 species of flightless birdâthough thatâs more than it sounds, because thereâs 18 species of penguins, 5 species of kiwi, and a few different ostriches and emus, meaning the ones you already know about account for a good chunk of it. The rest are even harder to find, only on small islands youâve never heard of and which were discovered more recently in history than the main four. I love the âInaccessible Island railâ, the smallest flightless bird, found on an archipelago called Tristan da Cunha in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Why is that what they named it? Itâs weirdly adorable.
Will never get over the way IrenHorrors draws Greek Mythology Characters
Athena, Aphrodite and Artemis
Nyx and Semele
ErosĂPsyche and OrpheusĂEurydice
Charon, Melinoe and Thanatos
Hades and Persephone
Medusa, Hecate and Eris
Pandora and Lamia
I wish she wouldn't have followed some common modern perpeceptions, such as the shipification of Hades and Persephone or depicting Medusa as a beautiful woman (there's a difference between being terrifying and being unattractive). Otherwise I love her art.
For some time now, I feel like every normal person I know has thought negatively about the trend of tech companies shifting us toward using touchscreens for seemingly everything. Who asked for this? The engineers and designers at the company, thatâs who. They unlocked a new technology and they want to implement it, so they do so everywhere they can and just hope we like it. I donât, and I know a lot of other people donât either, but when thereâs no clear alternative being presented by which to measure our preference, it takes a while for markets to notice. And now thatâs happening with AI. Itâs just being squeezed into everything.
But on the touchscreen front, it seems like companies are starting to listen and roll back.
Yes, companies are starting to put more buttons on things again, or âtactile controlsâ more generally (joysticks, dials, and switches galore). Cars, phones, appliances. Printers? Coffee makers?! Why did we ever think that having as few physical buttons on things as possible was better? Maybe itâs because for a long time, it felt futuristic. It was new. Things used to have buttons, this thing Iâm selling you has no buttons, so clearly Iâm being innovative and youâre going to respond to that.
I think about how in Star Trek, everything was shiny touch-screen panels with weird GUIs (everything was oddly shaped, random colours, lots of circles and rounded edges). They were being imaginative, because that wasnât normal at the time, but the idea was there. But would engineers and pilots and soldiers in the year 2365 really want to launch torpedoes at the enemy ship and then up their shipâs speed by tapping a screen? Come on. Itâs lame!
Itâs also just not as intuitive. A joystick for flying makes you feel the difference between going slow and going fast because youâre physically leaning forward. Thatâs the value of tactile controls, you get a physical sensation to accompany what youâre doing. It just makes the experience way better.
In 2007, when the iPhone came out, I thought it was stupid precisely because I didnât want to use a touchscreen for everything. I have to wipe my finger on a piece of glass to choose what music I want to play? Why not have an up and down button? But this was just the beginning of the general de-buttonization of society. Not everything added a touchscreen, but the things that didnât were still trying to have as few physical controls as possible. It felt like companies thought instead of having 2 buttons, itâd be cooler to have 1 button that does something different depending on whether you press it once or quickly double-tap it or hold it down or something. Fuck that.
If you wanted to send text messages back in the day with a cell phone, the letters were all tied to the associated numbers (a concept that predates cell phones for making custom phone numbers), which meant if you wanted to say âHELLOâ youâd press 4433555555666. Then cell phones got more advanced, because people started texting more frequently, and companies realized using a numpad for texting sucked, so they started redesigning phones to add full qwerty keyboards, and then suddenly, for a brief window in time, we had it made.
I remember having a phone called a Samsung Gloss, which in hindsight looks funny because itâs more square-shaped than the long rectangle we all expect phones to be now. Here, I found a picture of one:
If you just wanted to make calls and then send regular text messages, a phone like this was great and a big upgrade from the simpler numpad dumbphones that came before it. In almost every way that seemed to matter, the iPhone was a weird, expensive, stupid downgrade. What I didnât see was the potential for these things to become extremely modular and for every company in the world to have a fully customizable app in your pocket, unlocking functionality my tactile keyboard couldnât even imagine. So now smartphones are ubiquitous, so much so we donât even really say smartphone most of the time, just phone.
When I signed up for a university class in 2020, on the first day the professor told us to install an app to sign onto the schoolâs attendance registry, and I had to be like, what if I donât have a phone?âbecause at the time, I didnât. There was no contingency plan, because they just assumed literally 100% of people in the room would have phones on them at all times.
It blows my mind that some people sit at home, where their computers are, and use their phones instead. A phone is nothing more than a tiny, worse computer. Its only advantage is that you can pick it up and bring it with you places outside, so if you need access to a computer but youâre at the mall or the beach, you can resort to using your phone instead. Thereâs otherwise nothing else about the experience thatâs an upgrade. Itâs like sleeping at a cheap hotel instead of in your own bedâpeople only do it when their first choice isnât an option.
I donât like having my phone with me everywhere. Itâs like the internet is stalking me, not letting me leave it at home. Itâs like a clingy boyfriend who doesnât let you go anywhere without him. I just want to walk to the store, okay? I donât need my phone with me.
I also donât like using it at home if I can help it. I started using a utility recently that lets me cast my phone onto my computer screen and use it with a mouse like any other program. The one I use is an open-source project called scrcpy, though there are other things that can do this. Itâs so much better than having to pick up the phone with my hands and rub the front of it with my fingers and have to type with this tiny, inferior keyboard thatâs all one flat surface. And you have to, like, slouch your neck down a little, because the screen is down there, in your hands, instead of up here at the display level.
Using a phone robs you of much of the control that you have on a desktop computer. Youâre far more limited in what you can do. I think for some services, thatâs the advantage of getting you to use a phone for things instead. I dislike things that take control away from the end user. Fortunately, this has been getting less bad over time. It used to be even worse. Weâll see where that trend goes.
If you asked me in 2017 to imagine what life in the future will be like, Iâd have said a lot of things, but when it comes to design principles, Iâd say my god, hopefully we eventually move on from putting touchscreens on everything. It doesnât feel futuristic to me. It feels stupid and tacky, and you end up limited in inputs anyway unless they put a keyboard onto the touchscreen, and then using a touchscreen keyboard is obviously terrible.
Do you know what hasnât aged poorly or gotten old, and what I can see enduring into the far future? Mouse and keyboard. And of course it would be, right? We need some way to âpointâ at the thing on screen that we want, but having to literally raise our arm up to the screen and tap is too stupid and your arm gets tired, so having a little thingy on your desk that controls an on-screen pointer is just intuitive and simple and obvious and works perfectly. And then we need some way to make inputs, and having a big array of buttons is super versatile and functional. The mouse and keyboard setup is the wheel of computing. I really donât think weâre going to reinvent it.
The only thing that does feel futuristic to me is voice control. I didnât like it at first, because I donât like computers talking back to me, but really what itâs turned into is a voice-to-text utility that works at least like 90-something percent of the time. It didnât used to work as well as it does now, but itâs got reliable in recent years. If Iâm outside and want to send a text message, Iâll sooner press the button and talk at my phone instead of stopping and trying to use its stupid keyboard.
I hope to eventually get away from having a little touchscreen thingy with me at all times. Star Trek didnât accurately predict how technology would develop, but they did a good job at thinking how real people would actually want to use the technology they have available to them in a healthy way. I donât think most people want little bits of computer in their fucking brain, for example. Nor should âsocial mediaâ as we know it be a thing, probably. Despite being a futuristic show about people roaming the galaxy, Star Trek was very grounded in a sense. They outlawed human genetic engineering because they didnât want humanity to fundamentally lose track of itself. They played instruments made with wood and string, even though I guess there wasnât anything stopping them from telling the computer to play any song they want. They ate food that resembled modern food, even though it might be technologically possible for them to just eat a magical pill that satisfies all their nutritional needs. The point is that the limits of technology need to be balanced with human psychology, and they never lost track of that.
This is why the reported development of âliquid treesâ was so divisive. If you missed it, scientists claimed they could fill a tank with a specific combination of liquids and leave it in an open area. The result would fulfil the same function as trees, but even more efficiently, in some way or another.
Itâs certainly interesting, but do I want to live in a town where our streets donât have trees anymore, and instead thereâs eery buckets of slime in their place? No, holy shit, I couldnât want that any less. The value of trees isnât just being devices that convert CO2 to oxygen. Thereâs a great psychological value to nature beyond that. Which is why nobody wants trees to be replaced with some weird, artificial tree-replacement. If you were going to make artificial trees, the goal should be to make them as tree-like as possible, and even then Iâd ask why youâre even doing this. This robotic, utility-oriented way of viewing society would just make everything depressing.
One of my favourite musicians is M.I.A., a British-born woman from a Tamil family (if you donât know what âTamilâ is, itâs the ethnic group from Sri Lanka, which is that little island off the southern part of India). It kills me to think about how she had a breakdown and went crazy after making all the music I enjoy (referring to her albums from 2005, 2007, and 2010), becoming an insane conspiracy theorist who I wish would fuck off and live the rest of her life quietly now that she has moneyâbut today, letâs ignore all that and think about the cool person she used to be.
Often known as Maya, M.I.A. was born Mathangi Arulpragasam, a Tamil named based on the Hindu goddess Matangi. Though born in London in 1975, her family moved back to Sri Lanka before her first birthday and their experience was affected by the Sri Lankan civil war (1983). Her father, Arular, became a political dissident, her family went into hiding, and she and her siblings moved back to England with her mother Kala in 1986, returning as refugees. Mayaâs first two albums were titled Arular and Kala after her parents.
Her musical style is a wonderfully unique and independent alternative hip-hop, with lyrical content thatâs often all about embracing and celebrating her own experiences of overcoming. Her vibe was fighting for what you want in the world. She reflects on the intersection of different cultures of Western expansion into countries like Sri Lanka (in tracks like Sunshowers), the refugee experience (Fire Fire) to settling down and managing to find security and identity in a new diverse place (tracks like Warriors or World Town). Iâd also like to highlight the track 10 dollar from her first album. If you overhear it casually it may sound cheery, but it has some interesting lyrics you might pick up on that are way more interesting than a song like this had any business being.
Lolita was a man eater
Clocked him like a taxi meter
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China Girl grew up to be a big girl
Had her sights set on a bigger world
Dial-a-bride from Sri Lanka
Found herself a Yorkshire banker
Need a visa? Got with a geezer
Need some money?
Paid him with her knees up
Year later, started to ease up
Got her own way, shouted out, âSee yaâ
In the first place, Maya describes a young girl in Asia whoâs resorted to prostitution with Western tourists. Itâs a scenario that you feel conflicted about of course, because itâs an arrangement of mutual benefit that both parties agree to, but itâs also a scenario she wouldnât participate in if she wasnât impoverished and desperate, so thereâs arguments on both sides about the ethics of the wealthier party participating in this. Hereâs an interesting comparison: what if instead of prostitution, it was a relationship? If a rich person in America dates a poor person in America, could that be unethical in the same way if the poorer person only agrees to date you because youâre rich? I donât know, and thatâs not the point of this post.
The reason I found it so interesting is because Maya puts a positive, empowering spin on something thatâs usually nothing more than a victim narrative. She tells the story of an enterprising young girl who sees opportunity and goes for it, and she not only has sex with a man but marries him and gets him to take her back to England. Then, after building up enough resources and connections that she could manage on her own, she leaves him. Thereâs a thematic reversal, where the person who was being used as a resource (sex object) comes to use the other party as a resource (source of money and property).
The chorus of the song is the girlâs memory of spotting him for the first time, realizing sheâs low on money, and deciding in desperation to try and seduce him after seeing heâs interested. The name of the song, 10 dollars, was her price.
She skipped away to the shop
She found she didnât have enough
She clocked him looking right at her
And sucked on a lollipop
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Yeah, what can I get for 10 dollar?
Anything you want
Yeah, what can I get for 10 dollar?
Everything you want
Now that the election is over, letâs talk about some stuff.
The âdefaultâ in politics is a white guy with a simple name. Thatâs just how it is. John, Rob, Chris, Jack, Steve, something like that. Nothing people will mispronounce, or have to get corrected on the pronunciation of (ugh). The further you stray from this, the more you have to justify yourself in other ways to compensate.
For example, if youâre gay, then you better be the best goddamn gay around. A model gay, the kind of person we couldnât tell is gay at first. In US national politics, the go-to example of that is Pete Buttigieg. He even has a simple-enough first name, Pete, although his stupid surname sure couldâve been better (âboot-a-jedgeâ? Itâs smart that he tries to emphasize his first name with the nickname âMayor Peteâ).
If youâre a black man, you have to be very wholesome and family-oriented. Nothing scary. Be a Christian. Donât cheat on your wife, or have children with multiple women (the day a black man tries to run for office with kids from multiple women, the media will probably call them âbaby mommasâ at every opportunity, everybody will pretend theyâre not being racist, and then suddenly everybody will remember they care about family values again).
Itâs also better if your wife is a black woman. Americans feel more comfortable with a black man if heâs in a same-race relationship. I think black voters like it better too. If you want to sell an interracial relationship to the American public, it should be a white man with a woman whoâs not East Asian. A black or Middle Eastern woman would probably work. Barack Obama got in because he was an exceptional person in almost every other way, as he had to be. He was well-educated, erudite, a great speaker and communicator, he had experience in state politics at the US Senate, and he had a spotless home life, a normal marriage with two kids. His worst quality was probably his name, and they did run that against them, but at least it wasnât something that was easily mispronounced or stupid-sounding. It just sounded like that terrorist guy, which wasnât enough. His first name was unusual, but also relatively simple, and it actually has sort of a cool sound to it, and âBarack Obamaâ rolls off the tongue well.
Being a woman is also a difficult balancing act. There have been female politicians in other countries. A common way of selling it is for her to be tough enough to be taken seriously, but communicate in a soft enough way to not be called a shrill bitch, but without being too sexy or too emotionalâa ruthless grandmother of the nation. Angela Merkel (Germany), Margaret Thatcher (UK), and Indira Gandhi (India) are some examples of this.
If sheâs too attractive, that more likely works against her, because most men wonât take a woman seriously as an authority figure if they also want to fuck her. Theyâll call her hot and say theyâd sleep with her, but itâll be intended as a way of belittling or demeaning her. Thatâs what weâve seen over and over again with politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example. If you ask them, âWhat do you think of (female politician)?â, theyâll answer by talking about her appearance instead of their thoughts about her as a serious politician. There are young women who end up as heads of government in other countries, like Jacinda Ardern, but she would never have been successful in American politics without a totally different approach.
Hillary Clinton, for her part, was a highly competent person who had proved herself many times over in the public view and captured that âtough grandmotherâ energy reasonably well. There are few women in America with as much potential as her to become the first female president. It took a lot of effort to keep her downâespecially lies and conspiracy theories. The right-wing media circus managed to trick enough people into thinking she did something wrong in Benghazi, and then she did something wrong with an email server, and that maybe she was orchestrating a pedophile cult out of a pizzeria? Despite all that, she still got more votes than her opponent and almost got elected, because in many ways she did fit the âwoman politicianâ archetype well.
Kamala Harris
Harris is part Indian, part African-American, part white, so sheâs really only like a quarter black. Does that matter? It shouldnât, but itâs something people had to waste their time talking about this election, because Trump mentioned it and the media repeated it. And that conversation about race doesnât do anything productive. Letâs note how nobody has to waste time talking about a white guyâs race. Nobody cares what country Tim Walzâs parents came from. Is he Irish or something? Is one of his parents from Denmark? I donât know, or care, and I doubt anyone else does either. The point is people donât seem to like this kind of ambiguity. They want answers. If youâre black, then you need to clearly be black and lean into being black consistently and have that be part of your story. If sheâs Indian, then likewise. There are, in fact, people who didnât realize Harris was black until the 2024 race. That was played as evidence of her being inauthentic, like she was changing her backstory, or just claiming to be black despite not having âthe black experienceâ (there were black people who thought this). This kind of bullshit is all just examples of how being a non-white person can be a disadvantage.
Kamala Harris is half Indian, partially white, partially black? Is she like a quarter black? Looking at pictures of her today, I honestly donât know what Iâd have thought her race was if nobody had told me. She just looks very ambiguous. Does that matter? I donât know, but people talked about it, and that conversation about race doesnât do anything productive. Nobody has to waste time talking about a white guyâs race. Nobody cares what country Tim Walzâs parents came from. Is he Irish or something? I donât know. The point is people donât seem to like this kind of ambiguity. If youâre black then you need to clearly be black and lean into being black consistently and have that be part of your story. If sheâs Indian then likewise. There are, in fact, people who didnât realize Harris was black until the 2024 race. That was played as evidence of her being inauthentic, like she was changing her backstory. This is an example of how being a non-white person can be a disadvantage.
I saw a lot of her supporters make a big mistake by insisting on the pronunciation of her name and making that into sort of a big deal. They went around correcting everyone about the inflection: âitâs not Kuh-malla, itâs Komma-luhâ. Terrible. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot. Or maybe in the face. If I could give everybody advice: just say Harris. Itâs the better part of her name, and thereâs no reason not to use it (unlike with Hillary Clinton, where you wanted to say âHillaryâ to clarify you didnât mean her husband). Iâd actually have tried to avoid saying Kamala altogether (any time you could be saying âHarrisâ instead, do so), and when people do say Kamala, let them pronounce it however they want. Who cares?
Unfortunately, Harris does not at all have tough grandma vibes. Maybe sheâs too young, maybe she doesnât talk right. People donât like how she sounds, or how she laughs. Whatâs her experience like? Senator from California, then Vice President. Thatâs reasonable, you say. But right now, California has a bad reputation nationally. Not a bad reputation it deserves, but one that it got because people see news reports about how there are homeless people shitting on the streets in San Francisco. Line-ups of homeless tents! And oh, the crime! Weâve all seen those videos on the internet of people looting stores and nobody stopping them, right? There was a referendum (prop 47 in 2024) to reclassify petty theft at some point and the people of the state voted in favour of it, which didnât work out, which is why now theyâve passed another referendum (prop 36 in 2024) reversing some of that change. So despite California being the wealthiest state with a really high quality of living where people all across the country would be happy to move to if they could afford it, a lot of people across America hear âgovernment of Californiaâ and think bad thoughts. (This would be a hurdle for Gavin Newsom if he tries to break into national politics.)
Before being a Senator, Harris was an Attorney General. What does that even mean? She was in charge of laws being enforced in California? Thatâs bad, because in California they have bad laws and people do bad things and they get away with it because California is bad. So thatâs all just bad. Bad bad bad.
Then she was the Vice President for 4 years. That must be valuable experience, right? Unfortunately, the way a lot of people reason is âif my life is going well, I support the current leadership, and if my life feels like itâs going poorly, then I donât support the current leadershipâ. Is it their fault? Were there things they couldâve done but didnât? Doesnât matter. The reasoning doesnât run that deep. Lots of Americans thought the economy felt bad, so they donât like the current leadership, and Harris is the current leadership, therefore sheâs bad and that political experience amounts to nothing, in fact itâs less than nothing. They wouldâve preferred Harris in an alternate timeline where she was never VP to the Harris in our timeline where she was.
Is the economy actually doing worse? I donât even know. Thereâs a lot of indicators to suggest itâs not, but people will nonetheless say they feel the economy is doing bad. Itâs actually largely psychological, not mathematical. There are various biases and ideas that go into how well people think the economy is doing, and part of it is messaging. If every day you turn on TV and the people on air tell you âthe economy is badâ, then youâre just going to end up feeling like the economy is bad, regardless of your personal experiences with it. A similar thing happens with crime rates.
Then there was that whole âborder czarâ lie that Harrisâs campaign didnât do enough to contradict. And the border is another feels-based topic, where virtually nobody has any idea what the border is like, but somehow everybody ends up feeling like itâs a big problem somehow, and if things are bad, then your current leaders must be to blame. Itâs brilliant.
So experience and personality werenât in her favour. What was? Nothing, really. Everything I know about her cast her in a negative light in the publicâs eye. And that doesnât mean she wouldâve been a bad executive. She probably wouldâve been the best president the US has had in some time. But sheâs a woman, sheâs black or something, she talks weird, she has a weird name that people mispronounce. Thatâs a lot to compensate for. For somebody like her to get in, sheâd have needed to be exceptionally great, and she wasnât.
Joe Biden
Now look at Joe Biden.
Biden was a great candidate on paper and in practiceâwell, before he became President, at least. First of all, heâs a white guy with a simple name. He fits the model. Thereâs nothing to compensate for. His name is Joe. Itâs literally the name that we use to mean a simple everyday guy. Heâs just an ordinary Joe. Joe Sixpack. Joe Shmoe. Then you look at him, and thereâs nothing weird about him at all. Heâs so perfectly fucking normal. Heâs from a working class area, then he worked in government for a long time, and everybody whoâs worked with or around him speaks positively of him, including his opponents. People liked him as VP. Heâs seriously great. The fact heâs had such a difficult time speaking in the last few years is pretty much his only downside. In every respect other than being younger, the move from Joe to Kamala was one of the worst downgrades of all time. Thatâs what I thought, anyway.
Thatâs why Tim Walz served an important purpose, at least for a time, which was distracting everybody from Harris. Tim was like the new Joe: a normal, friendly, white guy with a simple name. Tim. Heâs Tim. He was a high school football coach for Christâs sake. And he had political experience. The vibes were immaculate. Heâs all the things Harris lacked, but which people were too uncomfortable to acknowledge Harris lacked, because people donât usually talk so frankly in the way that Iâm doing here.
Layton was sort of like Bernie Sanders, in that he was an old white guy who came off as principled, authentic, and caring. He was also an effective politician, genuinely trying to expand and grow the party. He was normal, he was a good speaker, he went on the streets and talked with people. He didnât do anything stupid or controversial. Even relatively apolitical people in my life knew about him and had a good impression of him.
Then tragically, he died. The year before the election, in 2010, he had prostate cancer, but he seemed to overcome it. He became the Opposition Leader in May 2011. In July, he announced that he had another, different type of cancer, and then in August he was pronounced dead. We never found out what type of cancer it was, and it doesnât matter. As far as politicians go, this man was beloved.
Today, the NPD is back to being 4th largest in the House of Commons. In the 2015 general, the Liberal Party came back stronger than ever under Justin Trudeauâs leadership, from 36 seats to a majority with 184 seats, and the NPD losing more than half of theirs. And frankly, while they tried for a round with Tom Mulcair in between, for the last 7 years now the NPD party leader has been a man named Jagmeet Singh.
I have no serious, rational issue with Singh. To tell you the truth, I donât know much about him or his policies. I largely just pay attention to the Liberal and Conservative parties, because the NPD has no chance under this guy. Just look at him.
Thereâs a reason I say the default is a white guy with a simple name. Itâs the result of a pre-rational impulse in politics, which is that people expect their leaders to represent them. Not only in policy, but in who they are. Our current and previous PMs, Trudeau and Harper (white guys with simple names), both achieved that. If you put them on stage, Iâd say they were fine representatives of Canada. Singh is not. That doesnât mean itâs impossible for him to be elected to represent us anyway, but it means he has something to compensate for. And he doesnât. There is nothing remarkable about this person to justify the big beard and the turban and the weird religion that most of us have heard of but donât know anything about.
Singh isnât an immigrant. He was born here in Ontario, not that far from me. But his parents were Punjabi immigrants, and he claims to be a Sikh, which is why his appearance is what it is. If he were serious about becoming a leader in national politics, he shouldâve ditched Sikhism, got a normal haircut, and converted to Christianity (or say heâs not religious and avoid the topic). In his current state, nobody is inspired to support himâand letâs be frank, especially not in a climate where people are increasingly against immigration from the very group that he looks like he is representing.
Iâm not even saying Iâd personally be against him. Iâm just very aware of reality, including the biases of the electorate, and I donât like dead-end candidates.
In the United States, Iâm skeptical of their third parties because I think theyâve ended up with motives for running other than actually trying to win. They know they canât and run anyway because of the impact their run will have on the electionâeither trying to spoil the race by âtakingâ votes from the candidate most similar to you, or just using the platform of running for office to expand your brand and personality in other ways. Is this whatâs happened to Singh and the NDP? Do they even want to dominate federally? Are they even trying? Or have they decided itâs worth it to just sit around being the more-left party forever, and thatâs why they tolerate being led by Singh, since they know heâll never win?
In American popular culture, Canada has the identity of being the more polite northern cousin. Canadians play hockey, they like maple syrup, and they say certain words all funny-like. Everything is cold and if you go really far north, people are living in houses made of snow called igloos and walking around on shoes that look like tennis rackets. Or maybe theyâre notâwho knows. Iâve now spent most of my life in the New World, but there was no guarantee that my British family came here of all places. What if instead of moving to British Columbia, my mother had flown to Arizona? Thereâs an alternate timeline where I grew up there instead. How different could life have been?
Canada isnât a nation without its problems. Though we have some of the best cities in the world, the high cost of living driven by housing costs, called by many the modern housing crisis, has hit us harder than nearly anybody else. Weâre also not the most efficient of operations; our government is something of a thrown-together patchwork of agencies held together by duct tape. In an optimistic lens, weâre an embodiment of that old maxim, Do what you can with what you have where you are.
Iâll share a good example of this: to change your name in Canada, you interact not with the federal but the provincial government, and once youâve been granted this right, the government issues you a certificate from the registrar general, essentially just saying âthis person has been authorized to change their name from one thing to anotherâ. Itâs then your responsibility to go around informing everybody else in society this has happened: your bank, your phone company, even other parts of the government itself. If you donât choose to inform somebody of your new name, they have no way of knowing and will continue using your old name for god knows how long. Why is this not a more centralized, streamlined service and process?
In the most orderly states of Northern Europe, and in some of the ânewerâ bureaucracies such as in South America, changing your name is a one-step process, because they have a central naming registry. When you go into a bank, or whatever, you tell them your ID number, they punch that into their computer, and it pops up whatever your current name is in the government system. So as soon as you change it on the government system, your name effectively updates all throughout society, without you having to do anything.
In Canada, it feels like none of our agencies talk to each other, or they do but only sometimes. The job of moving information around between them is often pushed onto us. That creates some interesting opportunities for abuse, by the way. For example, I know a couple who got legally married, but didnât bother telling the government housing agency, because theyâd have been pushed into a different unit if they werenât listed as separate residents. How can you keep your marriage a secret from the government? Itâs the government. Theyâre the ones who give you the marriage license. The trick is marriage licenses are handled by the provincial government, while the housing entity was a municipal department. They donât talk to each other.
The United States has the same problem. The government is sort of a messy patchwork that doesnât always talk to itself. Thatâs why doing taxes in both countries is such a stupid task, though this has been improving in recent years. In some countries, âdoing your taxesâ as we know it practically isnât even a thing, because it doesnât have to be. The US also famously has that issue of lack of coöperation between enforcement entities that donât share jurisdiction, as featured in many a Hollywood movie. In one of my favourites, Thelma & Louise (1991), a major plot detail is they want to drive from Arkansas to Mexico, but they canât drive through Texas, because Louise was wanted for murder in Texasâbut that somehow just isnât a problem so long as she doesnât return there? What? The way the world works is so stupid sometimes.
Part of the reason things arenât as good as they could be in Canada is everyone here is too content feeling like at least they have it better than America. Weâre sort of falling behind and not living up to our potential when it comes to infrastructure and investment, but at least weâre not Mississippi or something, right? Weâve been coasting on our image and on feeling like weâre better than Americans for too long.
Still, with all said and done, I love this country. And Iâm not the sort of person to just automatically love wherever I am simply because itâs where I am. The longer Iâve been alive and the more Iâve learned about Canada and the rest of the world, the more appreciative and thankful Iâve felt to be in this place. And strangely, the only people who ever give me a hard time about it seem to be Americans, especially the more right-wing Americans who, in recent years, have become terribly misinformed about our politics. They act like weâre just a worse version of them, with less money and less freedom and where doctors tell you to kill yourself.
So today, Iâd like to present: 10 reasons Iâm glad to be here instead of the United States and, despite everyoneâs generous offer to take me to a gun range, would very much prefer to remain here. In no particular order:
1. Drug laws
In general our approach to drugs seems less extreme and crazy and stupid. For so many years, my god, that whole âwar on drugsâ nonsense. We legalized cannabis nationwide in 2018, so I can just buy chocolate with marijuana at a store if I want it.
We must do a better job regulating pharmaceuticals, because the few times Iâve had access to an American television channel, itâs like, what the fuck, there were constantly ads for drugs telling me to ask my doctor for their stuff. Thatâs not really a thing here beyond over-the-counter stuff like Pepto-Bismol or something.
2. Healthcare
Access to healthcare has been a huge political issue in the US for what feels like my whole life. Barack Obama was fighting to pass something to help Americans access it 15 years ago, and Bernie Sanders carried on talking about it as a popular issue. People go bankrupt and lose everything to random medical bankruptcy over things that would be completely free for me to get treated for. They apparently even charge you if you call an ambulance and it can cost up to thousands of dollars.
Canada doesnât have as comprehensive a state medical service as some other countries, but thereâs basically a government-run insurance program. Anyone can just get a card with the province, and there you go, itâs kind of like healthcare in the US, except everybody actually has good insurance that covers everything youâd need. It doesnât pay for all your drugs, unless youâre low-income, in which case it does, but you pay out of pocket when you pick things up at the pharmacy. But you get cancer and need surgery or something? Free. Donât even worry about the cost, itâll just be free.
3. Abortion
Not only is abortion fully legal across Canada federally, but nobody cares about it. If you watch a public debate before a general where the party leaders show up to talk about who would make the best Prime Minister, abortion isnât even a topic anyone gets asked about, because itâs just not controversial and nobody is trying to ban it. This has been a really nice benefit over the last decade while listening to people in the US moving to try and ban it, and in some of the country succeeding. Yikes. Not up here.
It took me some way into adulthood before I even realized how many people in the US care about abortion as much as they do. Here the only time Iâd really hear about it was when youâd pass these people on the street in the city, holding up signs on the corner with pictures of fetuses, and then you roll your eyes and walk past them like any other street preacher. It didnât seem like a âseriousâ thing to care about.
4. Guns
If youâre an American who loves guns, then I guess this isnât really a point for us. If you think guns are a problem and you wish your politicians would do more to regulate them, then hey, look at us, we do that! And we have predictably zero school shootings.
A fun fact about me some Americans find unbelievable at first is Iâve never seen a gun. Iâve seen them in movies and televisions, of course, but not in person. I donât know how many Britons or Canadians can say the same, but the point is theyâre not ubiquitous here.
I knew somebody who did a really long road trip, from eastern Canada down to California over a few weeks, and when they came back they testified the biggest âculture shockâ was how after some point, you just start seeing people walking around with guns, for like, no reason.
5. LGBT Acceptance
Canada legalized gay marriage 20 years ago now. The right-wing parties arenât anti-gay. There are elected politicians in the US who get on stage, talk about how homosexuality is disgusting and worthless and we need to protect our childrenâs innocent ears from so much as hearing that it exists, and then they get elected and become part of the government. Not here.
There is opposition to things outside of broad strokes when it comes to trans people. The right-wing party didnât like it when we added trans people to our anti-discrimination legislation in 2016 (Bill C-16). I think every member voted against it (probably just as a united front thing, to be fair, since they couldnât stop the Liberal majority from passing it anyway).
In Alberta, theyâre currently working on some legislation about rules for minors accessing gender-affirming healthcare, but not only is it not that unreasonable (if I recall, they wanted a floor of 15 for access to hormone therapy and 18 for access to surgeries, which seems fine), but when the Alberta Premier (for Americans: a Premier is sort of like a state governor) talked about the issue, she didnât sound angry or fearful. She wasnât trying to make people think a contagion was coming for their kids. The narrative was purely that we should probably have some limits in place to prevent people making decisions they regret while theyâre too young.
In general, Canada remains one of the most LGBT-friendly places in the world, both in terms of legal rights and general public sentiment, and thatâs reflected in government. Weâre not the most friendly, I guess, because of those pesky little Northern European countries like Iceland where everything seems to be perfect somehow, but compared with almost everywhere else, itâs great here.
6. Political culture
You may have read about scandals involving Justin Trudeau, whoâs been our Prime Minister since 2015, but in the grand scheme of things what he was accused of was always rather minor, and more importantly, we actually cared and investigated him. Then, for his part, Trudeau didnât stand in the way of investigations, took questions about the matter publicly, and in one case voluntarily waived attorney-client privilege to allow people around him to speak. For the most part, heâs been an honest and responsible actor.
Itâs not to say we shouldnât care about things like thisâIâm glad we doâbut itâs awfully tempting to console ourselves by comparing our problems with those going on just south of us. Trudeau has been head of government for over 9 years now and that SNC-Lavalin scandal has been the worst case against him. By comparison, the crime and corruption that happens brazenly in the United States and for which nobody seems to be held accountable is overwhelming. Their crime trumps ours and itâs not even close. They make our crime feel petty.
7. System of Government
The longer I live, the more justified I feel being an advocate of parliamentary sovereignty, or parliamentary supremacy. The House of Commons is the main organ of government, the thing that actually wields most power and makes most decisions, and if the House has a disagreement with some other body of government, the House wins. Thatâs a big part of what made Britain great, or so I believe, and Canadaâs done a good job to inherit from this tradition.
In the United States, they call it the House of Representatives. This is probably the most genuine expression of American democracy. For some reason, they keep the executive branch detached from this entirely, and they elect the executive in a strange way for strange reasons that can result in the candidate with fewer votes winning, despite it looking rather like a general election. It also means the executive and the legislature can be diametrically opposed, resulting in the government being barely functional.
Then their supreme court has slowly accrued far too much power, to a point where today it can just cancel out anything the legislature tries to do at any time, and effectively change the law itself at their whim. Tomorrow, their supreme court justices could decide that any random law on the books is actually unconstitutional for whatever reason they can come up with, and like that, itâs gone. In fact, a lot of positive changes throughout American history have been the result of their supreme court making things up and suddenly overruling the legislature. When the US legalized gay marriage in 2015, it wasnât because anybody in society had changed their mind about it beyond a few judges, who decided to âinterpretâ that their constitution, written in 1776, somehow implied a right for gay couples to marry. What the fuck? How is this how anything works?
Their senate is also a mess. Thereâs a senate in Canada, too, but it has far less influence over government than the American senate, which is incredibly powerful in comparison with the upper chamber of other democracies. Itâs intended to be a check on popular rule, based on the Ancient Roman senate (from the Latin for senior), an assembly representing the hereditary aristocracy. In early America, senators werenât elected by popular vote as they are today, but appointed by state legislatures, meaning they would represent the interests of the institutions against populist impulses.
The House of Lords in the UK is similar. Its positions are lifetime appointments and given through inheritance and to church members, but then its power over our legislation has also been diminished greatly over time, chipped away at in the same way as the power of the monarchy has been. The concept in both cases was to say fine, the people may elect their own representatives and make lawsâbut we, the older and more established ruling class, want to maintain some veto power, just in case. And so it was that everything the House of Commons did must also go through the House of Lords, and then be given royal assent (being signed by the monarchâor in Americaâs case, the president). This has over time been reduced to formality: the House of Lords and the monarch will always agree to anything the House of Commons wants. The Lords may at most delay a motion by sending it back for review, but ultimately the legislative assembly of the elected lower house gets whatever it wants.
The presidential race is also fucked by their stupid electoral college, and not simply because itâs something more complicated than popular vote (to be fair, Prime Ministers arenât elected by popular vote either). Itâs because if your stateâs electoral points are definitely going in one direction, any excess votes donât do anything. California contributes 54 electoral votes to the presidential race, for example, and if you win California with 15 million votes, you donât get anything more by winning California with 20 million votes. People who live in California realize this, and many wonât even bother voting as a result, and presidential candidates have little reason to care what people in California think, because that place is a done deal. And so are most states, really. So instead of talking about popular issues that most of the country wants, come election season the national conversation becomes only about the needs and wishes of people who live in swing states, i.e. the ones where the polling numbers are relatively close. Suddenly what pollsters think voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania care about are the most important issues in the country. Itâs all so stupid.
The Canadian system isnât perfect, and maybe on a different day Iâl discuss its shortcomings and the ways it could be improved. But holy shit, at least we donât have the American system.
8. Fewer religious nutjobs
Weâre not an irreligious nation, but I donât know the last time I heard of a Canadian politician getting on stage and talking about how they need to protect Christianity or whatever. Sure, not all American politicians are like that, but the ones who are still have a hand in how things are run. Nobody talks about how Canada is fundamentally a Christian nation and waves a Bible around. How could you even get that impression? Nor is anybody trying to put the 10 commandments on the walls in your kidâs schools or any other nonsense like that.
Itâs not just about passing explicitly religious laws, though. There are people who âhide their power levelsâ when it comes to being religious zealots who pursue positions of authority and it undoubtedly affects their decisions and view of the world. It seems to be a real problem in the US right now, both in the House and on their Supreme Court.
9. Less political violence and extremism
The United States has a militia problem. There are thousands of people across the country with radical political views who are allowed to organize and train in paramilitary organizations, and every so often they test the waters by exerting power to affect the legislative process.
I remember this happening in 2019 in Oregon, a state where this is particularly bad. The state legislature was passing some education spending bills and introducing a carbon tax, and despite the leading party having a majority in both chambers, things were delayed because the senators from the Republican Party refused to attend senate sessions. The state state senate only has 30 members, and the senate rules were you needed 20 present for a quorum, so the 12 Republican members leaving meant the senate couldnât operate. A number of them even left the state entirely. The Oregon governor ordered the state police to find the senators and bring them to the capitol, at which point things got even messier, as Republican senators replied saying they would kill police who try and capture them, and local militias got involved. Twoâcalled the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepersâmade public statements threatening state officials and saying they would start a civil war. A few days later, the senate session was cancelled in response to the state police warning about a militia threat.
This isnât the only time something like this happened. Itâs just the example Iâm choosing to talk about. And cases like it didnât get nearly enough attention nationally. Most people I speak with today donât remember this event at all. Unless theyâre from Oregon, in which case maybe they do, but people have short memories and our standards have fallen so much in the last decade that an event like this, despite its absurdity, just gets overshadowed.
The militia problem has only got worse since then. A year and a half later, there were various militias involved in the attempted coup at the American capitol on January 6. Now Iâm anticipating things getting even worse as the Republican Party, the entity thatâs friendly to these nutjobs, are in power again.
10. No originalism or âfounding fathersâ cult
No, you canât pass that law, because it contradicts our sacred text, written 240 years ago by people not around for us to consult about their meaning and intentions. What would the founders think of this? Why did they give us a second amendment? What do you think James Madison had in mind when he wrote this or that? Good grief.
This is one of the things I hate most about American politics: the attachment to and fixation on their governing document, that is now the oldest in the world of its kind. And itâs an emperor with no clothes, because the country doesnât actually follow its original intent. The federal government today isnât what it was in 1776. And who cares that itâs not? But on so many issues, Americansâ thinking stops as soon as they realize something is unconstitutional. Itâs unconstitutional, therefore itâs bad. Their constitution trumps not only all other law in the land, but all reason and experience. And your allegiance to this constitution is considered most important.
In Britain, Canada, and elsewhere, there is respect for institutions and for the rule of law and our broad traditional precedent, but this is not so rigid, so archaic, and so divorced from modern experience as the American constitution. Iâm so glad that we donât need to engage in debate about what, say, Alex Campbell wouldâve thought about the governmentâs latest tax policies were he alive today. I doubt he should want to be the guiding force for how people 150 years later should govern theirselves. Nor would the American founders desire the way theyâre treated in American life today, for that matter.
Speaking of which, Iâm so glad we donât have âfounding fathersâ. Except we do, sort of: there are people whom in Canada we call the founders of confederation, but they are not venerated and worshipped in the way the American founders are. Itâs just part of a normal historical study, as people in any nation do. We also learn about how early Canadian politics was greatly influenced by Sir John A. Macdonald, for example. By comparison, the American founders appear to occupy the same place in the American psyche as do saints or prophets. Is it because they lacked a monarch whose face they could plaster onto everything instead? Thankfully, monarchy provides a living figureheadâinsofar as monarchs affect policy at all, itâs the latest one that we consult, not the oldest in recorded history.
11. Itâs less hot
Do you consider 8°C/46°F to be cold outside? Then shut up, youâre wrong. Part of why Iâd never want to live in America comes down to the fact most of it is too far south and therefore unreasonably hot. In summer this year, it was going over 41°C/105°F in Texas and California. What the fuck is that? If itâs over 32°C/90°F, Iâm probably not leaving my house until after dark. I already hate summers here in Canada because it gets uncomfortably hot and humid for a few weeks. This year, it felt more like a few months.
On the flipside, fuck anywhere that doesnât get snow. I wouldnât want to go the rest of my life without a proper winter. It blows my mind when I meet immigrants to Canada who tell me this is their first time experiencing it. Like, what? Thatâs like going somewhere they donât have⊠uh, I donât know, some other ubiquitous thing. Imagine meeting somebody and they say theyâve never seen birds before. Any bird. Or trees. Or sand. There are just certain things you take for granted as normal features of the world. Rain. Clouds? For me, snow is part of that. It would feel so wrong to be somewhere it never snows. Those places are wrong and therefore bad.
12. The French
Iâm not French and my family is not of any French origin, but you know what? I love the French. Hating on the French for no particular reason is practically an internet meme, and before that it was a British cultural item. We just hate the French for no reason. Itâs one of the dumbest parts of British culture, because people take it too seriously, it overflows from being a self-aware âsibling rivalryâ kind of neighbourly hate and becomes people seriously, genuinely hating on French people. I simply donât care for it. France is one of the countries that has contributed most to the modern world. They have an incredible history and culture to be proud of. Iâd feel like an idiot trying to deny their qualities and belittle them.
It was Thanksgiving recently in the United States. Canada is one of the only other countries that does Thanksgiving, but ours happens earlierâon the same day as what Americans call Columbus day (the rule is the same, the second Monday of October). This is because the holiday is just a celebration of the harvest, and harvest happens earlier in Canada, because weâre further north, so the season ends earlier here.
Still, it was Americans all talking about how thankful they are for everything a few days ago that had me start thinking about all this.
The US is a great country, too, though. Thank-you for all of your media, culture, economic innovation, and your various military commitments. And while I wouldnât prefer to live there instead of Canada, it is indeed better than most other places on Earth.
In Canada, patriotism and nationalism exist, but it doesnât take the form of claiming weâre #1 and saying weâre the best country in the world. That aspect of American culture comes off as strange to the rest of the world. Itâs more normal to say we love our country because itâs ours. Itâs like why you love your family. Itâs not because thereâs some kind of contest and your family beat every other family in the world and everybody else is below you because your family is the best.
No, you love them because of the relationship that exists between you all. This perspective is nicer because it leaves space to respect other people loving their own countries like you do yours.
Alright. I have to go. Thereâs a moose at my door.
I tend to think of the human psyche as having two distinct parts, the rational part of you that thinks and the emotional part of you that feels. No, itâs not a very original thought, but it can help to clarify some things a great deal. Sometimes you know a thing isnât true, or realize you donât really know if it is or isnât, but you feel that it isâand feelings can be quite immune to reason.
Conflict between belief and emotion is a common feature in the experience of people with anxiety and other mental health issues. A person might feel all their friends secretly hate them and suffer distress because of that, despite knowing better.
I begin by identifying this distinction because Iâm about to let my irrational side take the wheel for a bit to discuss what I feel and fear, which is different from what I seriously assert or believe. Itâs important to keep track of which is which.
Insecurities with men
Throughout the first few decades of my life I absorbed various ideas, themes, and attitudes by listening to the people around me, seeing the decisions they make, and seeing how things are portrayed in popular media. This left me feeling deeply insecure about myself as a person around men, but not around women, which has been a problem for me throughout my adult life.
Hereâs the issue: men are valued for their capabilities and for the things they do. A man is strong, intelligent, capable, a good leader, a builder, he fixes things, he solves problems, he knows what to do if things go wrong, he protects you, heâs ambitious, heâs assertive and driven, he makes, and heâs funny. Then his wife enters the room and he introduces her: âEveryone, this is my beautiful wife.â What does she do? I donât know. Heâs a high-level executive at the company. She looks nice. So much is said without words.
It took me a long time to realize men donât care if youâre smart. They might dislike it if youâre particularly stupid, but typically only if thatâs paired with your being unreasonable. A dumb girl who just listens to you and does what you tell her is fine. But whether youâre anything smarter than average has no value to men. They are mostly agnostic to it. They donât consider it an upside. And some of them will actively dislike it, because if youâre too clever it can make them feel dumb and challenge their relative standing, which must be above yours. We know that men like to be taller than women, just as women like taller men, but so too do they desire being better than women in most other ways. They want women to look up to themâand not only literally. They expect to be better than you at anything, and hate being bested. It would be embarrassing, for example, if your wife knew more than you do about cars, or if she could lift heavier weights than you, or if she were a stronger swimmer, or better at math, etc.
The only areas in which men are comfortable with their wives out-performing them are those designated to be womenâs things, in which they donât consider theirselves competitorsâe.g. raising his children, cooking his dinner, doing the household chores, putting on her applying makeup. And even when it comes to those things, men donât believe women are naturally advantaged at any of them so much as theyâre more practiced, because these are the areas women have been relegated to. A man assumes that if he put his mind to it, he could learn to out-do his wife at any of her own duties. Thatâs why the top chefs in the world are men, right? But he doesnât want to out-do her, so he doesnât. (Because what is he, gay or something? Why would you want to be good at womenâs things?)
What do men want from you, as a woman? Aside from being at least functionally sociable, itâs mostly and immediately for you to be attractive. Then, eventually, itâs for you to give birth. This is why women are forced to care far more about their youth and beauty, for this is the only reliable currency for male affection. If youâre not sexually attractive, youâre basically worthless in their world. Thatâs why generations ago, people would only have same-gender friend groups. A man would have a circle of male friends, then go home to his wife or girlfriend, and vice versa. The only reason they bothered to fraternize with the other was to find the one theyâd have sex with. If thatâs not the category youâre trying to fill, then whatâs the point of you?
No, really. In more than one instance Iâve heard a man say âif not for menâs desire to have sex with them, what would even be the point of women?â Itâs played as a joke, but it also betrays their real feelings, which is that men are better than women at everything except getting them off. The possibility of sexual gratification is the only thing that lures men like this into interacting with women at all. This is why the concept of the friend zone even exists for men to complain about: for them the whole point of interacting with women is sex, ergo a woman with whom sex isnât an option feels like a scam, a rip-off, a waste of their time.
Itâs a completely different story when I interact with women. Suddenly all the non-sexual aspects of myself actually matter and could have value to somebody, because women actually care about my other qualities. Around women I feel like myself; around men I feel unattractive and ergo worthless. And yet it doesnât feel sufficient or satisfying to conclude I donât like interacting with men and give up on them. It frustrates me that this is how things are. It frustrates me that I canât stop feeling this way.
Iâll clarify once more that the rational part of me assumes what Iâm describing canât be true for everybody, even if some men do think and act in the ways I describe. The point is this is whatâs in my mind on an emotional level, even before the interaction begins. Itâs what Iâm afraid of, or what Iâm anticipating, or what Iâm insecure about, whether rational or not. Itâs possible the issue will be overcome after I encounter a man who demonstrates to me he isnât like this, and Iâve just had bad luck to not encounter one yet. Then again, it also might be something I never fully get over.
The madonnaâwhore complex
The madonnaâwhore complex is a term that comes from psychoanalysis. (I occasionally see people say itâs also known as the madonnaâmistress complex, but itâs called the madonnaâwhore complex first and foremost in every reference or resource Iâve ever seen, so that name is the one thatâs most recognizable, even though madonnaâmistress complex would actually be more accurate for what itâs describing.) The word âmadonnaâ has nothing to do with the singer; it comes from the Italian for âmy ladyâ, which for a long time was used as a term for the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. I choose not to capitalize it, because I see no reason to do so. (I donât capitalize âgodâ either.)
The term seems to have come about to explain why some people end up in sexless marriages where they have sexual desire for women, but not for their wives in particular. Itâs not a general truth or tendency, or something that describes all or most men, but a specific pattern that some men fall into. They view women as either saintly madonnas (good, respectable, admirable, sacredâbut not sexualized) or as debased whores (despicable, profane, but sexually attractive and exciting). There are many examples of characters in media who seem to exhibit this tendency, and many writers have consciously written pairs of female characters to match. A male protagonist may find himself given to choose between a beautiful, pure, virtuous woman whoâs sexually boring, and a sinful, wretched woman who excites and arouses him.
Itâs not exactly this concept that interests me, though, so much as the broader notion of women being divvied up in this manner. Earlier, I said that from menâs point of view, women have two main appeals: you get to have sex with them, and eventually you might have children together if you both want to stick around. The two figures, madonna and whore, represent extreme forms of these two different functions, the ideal mother-figure and the person who is the ideal sex-partner.
This is a more general truth, and one of the reasonsâalongside their male upbringing and socialization, i.e. their lack of female socialization (which emphasizes the importance of sexual repression)âthat so many transsexual women lean into being overtly sexual. We know that most men who are looking for âsaintly madonnasâ to settle down and start families with and introduce to their parents are going to look past us, and not only because weâre automatically incapable of having children with them. That leaves us with only one way to feel desirable, which is to provide sexual attentionâand out of desperation, we try to be more competitive in the âsexual marketplaceâ by lowering our prices, i.e. being easier, more open, more accessible, letting you skip the song and dance of courtship that you may have to do for other women. Weâre slutty. Thatâs the stereotype, anywayâand one that many trans women lean into. Itâs like our brand, our reputation, like Tyrion proudly saying âa Lannister always pays his debtsâ.
The fact having a relationship with a trans person is still something if not taboo then at least unorthodox also plays into this, because it means the sort of person willing to engage with us is probably less traditional anyhow and ergo less put off by a woman whoâs more slutty and sexually liberated. In a more traditional setting, men see a woman acting slutty as an indication that sheâs lower-value as a long-term romantic partner, or doesnât have good values or wasnât raised right. This affects womenâs behaviour, because they donât want to be judged negatively and seen as low-value, ergo they avoid that behaviour. Since trans women are excluded from social contexts where people are more traditional, that type of pressure is lessened. The men who are most likely to be judgmental are the ones who wouldnât have wanted anything to do with trans women anyway.
Relationships atypical
I intuitively understand both friendship and sex. For much of my life however, I felt there was something about relationships I must not be getting. It was a while before I felt like I understood them, and that lack of understanding makes participating in them tricky.
Say youâre friends with a person. Good friends, emotionally close and intimate. Then the two of you have sex. Whatâs missing to prevent this from being called a relationship? Is it just the expectation of having sex again sometime? Is it you two livign together? Is it monogamy, or the expectation that youâre not going to fuck anyone else? Is it just a matter of feelings rather than of material commitment? I ran through so many potential answers and none seemed right.
And it seemed like something everyone else just understood automatically, without a fuss and without needing any clarification, as though it was all intuitive to them. I formed a pet theory which said actually, nobody really understands any of this eitherâtheyâre just less bothered by their lack of understanding. Theyâre comfortable taking it as something mysterious and hard to pin down. Weâre all wandering around in the dark and occasionally bumping into things. Iâm just the only person looking for a lightswitch.
I have mostly figured it out by now. Thatâs why I wrote that other post where I listed every little aspect of what goes into a relationship these days, like a space-alien anthropologist, and I donât think I missed anything. The problem is that while I can observe and understand all that, I donât relate to a lot of it. Before a certain point, Iâd met people I felt affection for and thus âlovedâ, but to me it seemed to blur a lot into just being how I felt about close friends. I liked them a lot, I trusted them, Iâve grown attached to them, in some cases I was attracted to them. So do I love them? Sure, I guess. I thought thatâs what love was. And if you asked me to describe love, Iâd have said it basically just means like, but like, deeper, stronger, and more time-tested. Which is also how itâs used colloquially.
(Why did the Ancient Greeks make a bunch of different words for different types of love, but we just call all of them love and have to explain the difference to be sure?)
Even after I did meet people who activated something love-ish in me, it wasnât the same way that others seemed to experience it. First, a person didnât love me back. They only liked me as a friend, not romantically. The spark I felt wasnât there for them. For many people that would have been incredibly painful, so much so it would ruin our friendship and make me divorce myself from them entirely. I wasnât and I didnât. I was perfectly content to just be friends.
Nor did it pain me when that same person went on to form a relationship with somebody else. I didnât feel a twinge of jealousy toward their partner. I actually rather liked them, and there was nothing insincere about it when I wished them all the best together. I still do.
I went through a phase of wondering if this made me aromantic or some other internet-friendly neologism. I do experience love, I thinkâbut it didnât seem to be the same love, the love, that other people went through. So is it love at all? Maybe theyâre experiencing love-1 and Iâm experiencing love-2, and theyâre just fundamentally different things that go by the same name due to our language being limited. But should âaromanticâ mean not experiencing any of the things that we could call love, or should it mean not experiencing the love, whichever one that is?
I also had to stand by as a third-party observer to a number of conflicts now that other people go through, while thinking about how blessed I am to never deal with the same. So often a person fears a friend of theirs is developing feelings for them and responds by cutting them off or becoming very distant because theyâre scared of that person falling in love and it not working out. Thatâs a high cost, sacrificing a lot of friendship, and potential friendship. More frequently, at least in my experience: two friends in some friend-group catch feels for each other and explore a relationship, but it doesnât work out for some reason, and now they canât stand to be around each other. The friend-group thus dissolves or has to split up, and now the two of them are both miserableâall because of their stupid feelings. Iâve never gone through anything like this, and when people I know are going through it, Iâm not a very understanding ear.
This change in experience affects how other people perceive me and my feelings. If I donât feel jealous of you being with somebody else, then do I really even love you? A potential partner expects you to act in certain ways, which includes being a bit possessive of them, and to be wary about certain things happeningâlike them cheating on you, or breaking up with you, because youâll be hurt if these things happen. I donât exhibit the typical behaviours that people are looking for and associate with love, which leads them to think that Iâm just not that into them. So this atypical experience of love leads to actual, non-emotional difficulties.
Separately, Iâm still not sure if I would even desire the standard relationship commitments. Thinking about the three areas of change I wrote out above: I like the emotional and physical changes, but many of the situational changes are questionable. I donât know if I want to have my entire life mixed in with somebody elseâs, in the way of shared property, finances, living together, and the implicit promise to continue doing so indefinitely. I rather enjoy being independent, in the way that I could at any moment choose to uproot myself and go somewhere else. That aspect of a relationship feels to me like being stuck or weighed down. What if I want to move to Scotland next year? Am I going to accept being told that I canât, unless this other person wants to come with me? I wonder if a person whoâs in love in the typical way wouldnât want to go to Scotland unless their beloved accompanies them.
Is everything temporary?
Iâm sure another aspect of the relationship model that gives me some internal difficulty is the expectation of perpetuity. There arenât many things in life that last forever. Not jobs, not places of residenceâwe all start a job expecting weâll someday leave, and move into a new apartment expecting weâll someday move out. Friendships are sometimes lifelong, but nobody expects you to promise they will be, and most friendships end. And really, so do most relationships. Of all the times two people come to consider theirselves boyfriend and girlfriend, very few donât end with the two of them breaking up, sad and disappointed. The âsuccessâ rate (if that means not breaking up) is low. This means when a person asks you out, theyâre asking you to participate in a gamble with a low chance of success. âWant to invest time and energy into each other, to see if I end up being the one for you?â
Despite this being a reality, and one that everybody seems to rationally accept, it remains taboo to acknowledge or talk about it with the person with whom youâre pursuing a relationship. It would not be taken well for you to say, âyou and I are unlikely to work out, but sure, letâs give it a tryâ, nor for you to think of your relationship as temporary. The expectation is that although relationships are temporary most of the time, weâre supposed to act, in each instance, as though this is going to be the one that lasts forever. This might be called âbeing hopefulâ, and if your partner isnât being hopeful and is instead treating your relationship as though itâs one that will end as most do, then you probably wonât want to stick around.
This is a problem for me, who struggles to view anything as long-lasting. This is a broader psychological issue of mine, pertaining not only to relationships. I expect that all people, in fact, are going to be temporary in my life. I feel no security or stability with anybody. Itâs likely something that starts in childhood, where I was moved around practically every year by parents who for some reason could never stay in one place. I was always the new kid. Any friends I made would disappear next year, because my family would move to a different city and I to a different school.
I know thereâs other people who grow up in ever-changing environments, e.g. children of military members or diplomats, or any career like this that involves their parents changing location every so often. In those circumstances, what ideally happens is they have a stable home-life. They donât get to keep their friends at school, but their siblings are always there for them, and their parents are always there for them, and maybe they have other relatives around, like an uncle or grandparent, or even a maid or nanny or friend of the family. Itâs very important for children to have stable, long-term relationships in their life.
The home life I had was largely empty. I had an unusual family, usually living with only one person at a time. I was always taken care of materially, as in there was always a home that had food and running water, nobody was ever mean to me, I never felt unsafe around anybodyâbut we also didnât really connect or talk that much, and there was no emotional intimacy between us. There was nobody I felt comfortable being totally open with, or turning to in a time of need or to consult about my problems for help or advice. When I was sad, I just tried to be alone.
Eventually I was a teenager and by then was already seriously maladjusted when it came to my approach or attitude to other people. I was a rock, totally closed-off to any notion of intimacy with another person. I had no close friends, and I didnât know how to develop a casual friend into something closer. I didnât invest in people. I didnât expect them to invest in me. I was good at being social, but only shallowly. As an adult, this pattern continued. I could make âwork friendsâ and chat with others easily if we shared an environment (coworkers, roommates, classmates), but it never developed into anything deeper, meaning as soon as we stopped sharing space for other reasons (we finish that class, one of us quits, or one of us moves), Iâd never hear from them again. I wasnât a shut-in or anti-social, but I was a fundamentally lonely person because I experienced socialization without intimacy.
An advantage of my upbringing is that I learned no prejudice. For as flawed as my experience was, the adults around me were all good, loving people, and I had limited access to media. I bought CDs and we had some movies like the Lion King on tape, but we didnât have TV and I never went out to see movies or anything. There was no religion or politics, or express disdain for really anybody. I remember being twelve or so, the age when you realize you want to kiss girls, and I thought âyeah, and boys tooââbut then I realized, oh, wait, thatâs not how other people felt. Then I learned the word for what I was feeling is âbeing gayâ, and then later realized âno wait, itâs bisexual, because I like bothâ, and Iâve called myself bisexual ever since. For some people, this kind of self-realization triggers an internal panic, self-rejection, and self-hatred. If I were primed to think that people who felt this way are bad, then Iâd think if I have these feelings too, that means Iâm bad, and then wrestling with my own feelings would become this big ordeal. For me, no. None of that happened.
But I became nervous about telling other people, because, as I learned, some people in society are lame. I read about how some families are so against homosexuality that when they learn their child is gay, they throw them out. There are homeless teenagers who became homeless because theyâre gay and their family rejected them. That terrified me. But my family would be okay with it, right? How could I tell? I tried talking to people I knew, friends or people I had at school. The reaction was negative, even in cases where I didnât expect it to be. Could I trust my own judgment in that matter? I ultimately realized there was no particular advantage to mentioning this to anybody, whereas the downside was potentially very high, so I decided to never tell my family about it. There was no point taking that risk. (Actually, there is great benefit to being open with people in your life. I was just ignorant of this at the time.)
It was even worse when I started to realize I was trans. I didnât know the word âtransâ, but there were various thoughts, feelings, and experiences that led me to start feeling like I wish I was born a girl. I remember being a girl in my dreams. It bothered me all the time that I had to be a male instead. I wouldnât have been able to explain why. At some point while I was a teenager I stumbled onto the word âtranssexualâ and then read about it online and learned about gender dysphoria. I was doing traditionally feminine things, wearing girlsâ clothes, playing with makeup and doing my hair, and then at some point told somebody about how I felt, and again the reaction was very negative. I once again felt like I had something I needed to hide from people for fear of a bad reaction, including my family. After all, if a friend rejects you, oh well, thatâs just a friend, but you canât replace your family if you fuck things up with them. So began a years-long period of bottling everything up. This fed into itself. The less I told people some things, the less I wanted to tell them other things. I became a rock. The longer it went on, the harder it was to break. Iâd practically developed a character: the version of myself they thought they knew.
I started to meaningfully understand and resolve these issues in my late 20s. I started actually having deeper friendshipsâbut part of what made it so difficult is the way all of my experiences culminated in an expectation of everything being short-lived and temporary. If I really thought about it, Iâd have guessed that any person, no matter how much they seemed to like me, was probably not going to end up not associating with me at all in a few years for some reason or another. I had zero overlap in the people I knew when I was 19 and the people I knew when I was 22, and then again between 22 and 25, and again between 25 and 28. The people in my life came and went. So if you met me today, chances are youâd be out of my life within a year or two, at most three or four. Think about how that might affect your behaviour, if you assumed that everybody you ever met was going to be temporary.
I probably have avoidant personality disorder (AvPD). Some points from its Wikipedia entry:
social anxiety and inhibition, fear of intimacy (despite an intense desire for it)
feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, and an overreliance on avoidance of feared stimuli as a maladaptive coping method
sensitivity to negative evaluation and rejection, a belief that one is socially inept or personally unappealing to others
avoids becoming involved with others unless they are certain they will not be rejected, and may also pre-emptively abandon relationships due to fear of a real or imagined risk of being rejected by the other party
This is only touching on my approach to and difficulty with friendship. Think about how fucked this makes me when I try to approach relationships. The very notion of a person wanting to be with me forever? Thereâs a level on which I plainly donât believe it. Whatâs that, you love me? No you donât, shut up. Want to date? Sure, I guessâwhatever that even means. Itâs difficult for me to take it all seriously.
And if youâre not serious, a lot of people can tell. And if they canât tell, part of me then feels bad, guilty. Iâm doing something bad by misleading these poor people, by playing along like weâre on the same page, when really I know weâre not. Youâre looking for a long-term partner? Thatâs great, but it wonât be me, so letâs just move along. I straight-up tell people at this point that I donât believe in relationships, because I feel like itâs unethical to let other people form any expectations about me at all.
The weirdness of dating
In addition to everything else, I donât imagine that Iâm generally very appealing as a person. I donât think Iâm physically attractive, which, as I discussed in the first section, is the main thing people are actually looking for. Maybe part of this is my brain lying to me, but I feel grossed out looking at myself half the time. And when a person tells me they think Iâm attractive in some way, which does happen at times, I find it difficult to believe that. They must just be trying to be nice, either because they feel like Iâm down on myself and thatâs what I need to hear, or because they want to get things from me. Thatâs actually how I interpret almost all compliments, actually. If someone says, like, âThis thing you did was well doneâ, my first thought internally is âtheyâre just being politeâ, and it takes effort to get me to believe otherwise. Maybe itâs a general trust issue mixed in with a self-worth issue. You canât disprove a self-reported emotional state, so I assume people lie about it casually to get the outcome they want.
Iâm also probably not easy to get along with. In a conversation, sure, but in your house? To share a kitchen with me? In some communities Iâm a very polarizing person; people either like me or hate me. Some people really like me, but then some people really hate me. They hate me more than most people ever have to deal with being hated. Thereâs strong emotions in both directions, a wide range of reactions. I usually make bad first impressions. I donât mask my behaviour and people encounter me and donât understand me so they find something I say or do confusing or awkward or off-putting. Then slowly, if they stick around and get to know me, I recover from that first impression and they end up liking me. Thatâs the pattern with almost everyone in my life. But liking me is probably where it tops out. I find it very difficult to take the notion of anybody being âin loveâ with me seriously.
I would also find the notion of it being true somewhat stressful, because effectively what theyâre telling me is that theyâre now at great risk of pain if I donât give them what they want. Itâs like terrorism or something. âNow you have to be with me and never leave me because to do so would inflict great suffering on me.â Imagine if youâre at work and your boss tells you âif you ever leave this job, Iâll cut myselfâ. Oh jeez. I wouldnât want anyone to hurt theirselves on me. I feel bad for humans that fall in love in that way. The typical love affliction sucks. Do yourself a favour, avoid catching it, especially for somebody like me who isnât worth the trouble anyway because Iâm probably not going to give you the kind of emotional connection youâre looking for.
In most circumstances in my life where I talk to another person, I feel rather carefree, compared with other people I know who can find even mundane socialization stressful. Talk to a store employee, talk to somebody at a restaurant, talk to the people waiting in line behind you, talk to random people in the aisles at a market. Who cares? Thereâs not really anything to lose; if you fuck up, the worst case scenario is you both walk away. If youâre talking with somebody and the context is that youâre only even interacting because youâre exploring the prospect of potentially dating each other, everything is different. Now youâre on trial, under examination. Itâs like a job interview. And people can be quick to just give up and move on to the next person. A cloud of anxiety rolls in.
Have you used dating apps? Theyâre only available on mobile. Yuck. Iâm a phone hater. If I really need to use my phone for something, I open it on my computer using a program called scrcpy (squished letters representing âscreen copyâ). If you look at a graph of how couples meet, the percentage representing people who meet on the internetâwhich includes these appsâhas just gone up and up over time, even though theyâre all terrible and nobody likes them and we all complain about them. But if thatâs what everyone else is doing, then we all feel like we have to, too.
One of the earliest apps like this was Grindr, which was focused as a gay male dating app, and it has the best format of all: just an open grid, where anybody can instantly talk to anybody else by default, until you indicate that youâre not interested by blocking them. Then every other app that came after Grindr switched this around and made it so nobody can talk to anybody until both of you have matched each other. So now we have to sit there reading through a feed of people, giving them a binary yes-or-no on whether they should even have the privilege of interacting with us.
For me this feels awful, even somewhat dehumanizing. Itâs like youâre shopping in a catalogue of human beings. And itâs so harsh: within a few seconds, Iâve decided this guy shouldnât even get the opportunity to try talking to me?
Iâve tried going to bars like they do in the 80s movies, but I donât know. I donât get it. Maybe that kind of in-person socialization isnât what it used to be. In my experience so far, almost every person there shows up with friends and theyâre not really interested in people they donât know. Itâs also always too loud.
Part of me thinks the only way to make relationships that makes sense is to pursue them with people you already know and met through non-relationship-oriented means, like making friends with your coworkers and then asking out the one you like the most. Trying to start a relationship from nothing seems odd to me, in theory and in practice. Iâve heard that in some places, thatâs actually what would be more normal.
I wonder if Iâll write an update to this post someday after things have changed for the better.
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