Year Of The Pig: A 2019 In The Life Of FrothySolutions

25 January 202011 February 2021Metal Rat

It's still Year of the (Earth) Pig for now.

agepill is very depressing

This is why you have to live now, while you have a life.



"Founding Father" or "Milk & Cigarettes 12: Nuttin' for Christmas"

TL;DR:
I fall out of love with video games, and by extension all of my copes, so I withdraw from all my communities and become a Hermit. As the world enters an age of heated sociopolitical discourse that I mostly miss out on.

I would've posted this earlier, but I wanted to make sure you guys didn't spoil The Rise of Skywalker for me. And then holiday shit came up... it's been busy. 'Tis the night of 🎅🤶Christmas Eve 🍪🥛and right now I'm at my parents house. The usual gathering from last Thanksgiving is here, I think I've got a good amount of free time to write now. Not a creature is stirring. In hopes that Saint Nicholas soon will be here. I've got a whole pack of extra chunky Chips Ahoy and a canister of Muscle Milk Pro. I'm on a bulk. Compensating for having lost a lot of weight over the summer & fall.

What's on my list this year? Well, ever since I lost my copes I haven't really wanted any "things" for Christmas. If I was a teenager it'd probably be video game stuff. And as an adult I would just buy it myself. But now there's nothing. Well, maybe something. One thing I wanted to do (and did) recently was save all my Yahoo! Groups stuff. I mentioned in "The Merits of Being Emo, Part 2: Savior of the Broken" that Yahoo! Groups was going away on December 14th. So I've been busy archiving all of that stuff. too. Not just photos and files, but screenshots and usernames and post dates, archiving everything as it was before it went away. Thousands of screenshots. TENS of thousands of photos & files. This, I guess, makes up for all of the picture/source hunting I wanted to do years back. But am I happy that I did it? Well, first off, I didn't get everything. I couldn't. Because some of the old Groups that I was a member of had shut down long before. If anyone was a member of "Slimydick's Fan Club," please get in contact with me. Second, now that I have all that I have, it's like, so what? This is how I've been feeling a lot recently. I'll see someone's avatar and be like "What's that from?" And then they tell me. And then I don't care anymore. I don't know why, maybe pictures/sources don't seem as rare/hard to find as they used to be? And why should I care what some random DeviantArtist draws? There's a million DeviantArtists, am I supposed to want to know them all?

Speaking of porn, over on incels.is Mainländer and I had a little talk about him and his lolicon manga. It reminded me a lot of how I used to talk to that one guy on GameFAQs.

https://incels.is/threads/we-need-a...nce-seinen-manga-written-by-a-man-tbh.164736/

What Mainländer wants is loli stuff written by actual men, I'm guessing because the only people who can make good hetero lolicon are people who actually like hetero lolicon. Heterosexual dudes who are actually attracted to lolis. And I agree. But my frustration is that this should be obvious. I don't know what business he has looking at lolicon created by women. I don't know what business it has existing at all. But it exists, and he reads it. Despite calling for a better class of lolicon. And he can like what he wants, it's just I'm confused and enraged by the idea of loli porn made by women. Because you should only make what you like. If I draw a bunch of fetish art, it's probably because fetish art is my fetish. It would be weird if it wasn't, right? You wouldn't be crazy to think that was weird, would you? Maybe even bad. People who don't have a passion for something shouldn't apply their hand to it. Porn made by people just looking to capitalize on perverts shouldn't be supported. Only porn made by the people who like the content they make. So, these female lolicon mangakas, they do like the work they make, right? But what could they possibly like about stories where adult men get with small girls? Is this the kind of porn they like? Because there's a difference between porn that appeals to men and porn that appeals to women. Yes, there's even a difference between porn that appeals to straight men and porn that appeals to gay women. Quality porn is made to appeal to its creator and the people who are like their creator. That's why auteur yuri is filled with page after page of plain looking lesbians standing dramatically in the snow together or some such boring bullshit. But of course it's not that simple, otherwise I wouldn't be so vexed by it. We have Kodomo no Jikan, one of Mainländer's (and the guy from GameFAQs) favorites. Created by a woman. But the premise is that an adult man must deal with the frequent sexual temptations from 3 small children. On paper it sounds like a dude would have to have made this. From the concept, what sexual appeal could a woman, gay or straight, derive from this? Maybe if the main character was an adult woman then we'd be talkin' but this isn't that! But maybe it's like what Mainländer (and the guy from GameFAQs) says: Kodomo no Jikan is not lolicon. It just happens to be a story about a man attracted to three little girls, and also it's filled with fanservice. To which I say, as I've said more times than I care to recall, HOW IS THAT NOT LOLICON??? God DAMN IT!!! To say this isn't lolicon undermines so much that we do call "lolicon." And takes that designation away from people who want to enjoy it. But then, if it is lolicon, how do I explain the fact that a woman who you wouldn't think would be into this kinda stuff made it?

It all ties back to the hangups that cost me my copes in the first place. And the "A woman made it/approved of it so it's not porn/objectifying" defense for video games and TV shows and stuff. An issue that didn't come up that much in the days of furry porn on Yahoo! Groups. Because you couldn't hold furry men and women to normal sexual expectations. Everyone was degenerate. But it did come up in 2013. Picture this...

Here you are, a literal 40 year old virgin. Are you bothered? No. What's bothering you is The Wonderful 101. What's bothering you is Wonder Pink's depiction in it, and all of the microskirts and pantyshots. All this, from a Nintendo exclusive. Now, you cannot stress this enough: You LIKE microskirts and pantyshots. But what you don't like is Nintendo and PlatinumGames trying to downplay it. Sweep it aside. Distract us from it by retweeting pictures of kids playing it, as if to say "This is a game for kids, if you took anything as 'fanservice' or 'sexual' from this game, you're wrong." And that's why you're harassing Hideki Kamiya on Twitter right now. You've seen quite a few lewds in your time. Obviously more than Kamiya, or anyone else at Platinum, or anyone at Nintendo. if they think there's nothing wrong with The Wonderful 101. Microskirts and pantyshots, especially of this pervasiveness, equals lewd. And if they're arguing that it doesn't, then that means so many other things you enjoy are also not lewd. People give you shit for this. "You sound like Anita Sarkeesian!" It's 2013, so to complain about "male gaze" and "the male fantasy" is still seen as radical nonsense by consumers and journalists alike. But they don't understand. At this point probably only you and MovieBob understand. Probably for the same reasons. If you like ecchi, technically you agree with Sarkeesian. You agree with the "social justice warriors." And you need them to be right. Fanservice lovers and fanservice haters can agree: If something is porn, call it porn. Stop trying to convince people it's something your mom could play, or your kids could play. In doing this you take porn from the people who like it, and foist it on the people who hate it.

There's a lot of this going on. Speaking of franchises with an actiony veneer to distract from the tiddy and microskirts, have you seen what this Studio Trigger has been coming up with lately? But no, they say. You're not supposed to enjoy it sexually. It's a "parody!" You've explained how that excuse doesn't work, but they're tired of hearing you repeat yourself. Japan just announced they're gonna host the 2020 Olympics. And if you see anything in the opening ceremony, or closing ceremony, or any between-event NBC soft culture pieces about the anime of the now, you swear to the Lord God your savior you're kickin' somebody's ass. JP Kellams of Platinum insists people have an unfair bias against Japanese things when it comes to this. You do not. Game of Thrones has also been getting away with this and you're just as rustled. It used to be you weren't that alone in critiques that Thrones was just "glorified porn." But ever since that Red Wedding, no one will hear ill of it. Especially your own family. They love Thrones. "Plenty of shows and movies have nudity and sex scenes" they protest. And yes, you're not saying every nude depiction of the human form is porn. But Thrones crosses the line between "tasteful nudity" and "the kind of thing specific to porn." Where is that line? You'll be honest, you know it when you see it. But what your family's problem is, like a lot of people, is that they don't care to argue where the line is. Because they're distracted by all of the non-porn qualities of the show. It's "necessary to the story" they say. To show just how gritty and serious everything is. No it is not "necessary." Their best argument is that it "serves" the story. Case in point, the movie "Hounddog." In which a 12 year old Dakota Fanning performs in a rape scene. Controversial. Especially for 2007. But it pales in comparison to what Thrones is doing. And why? Because there's only so much you can do with a child actress before it becomes reprehensible, if not illegal. But also? The movie didn't "need" it. The moment and the movie are still as shocking as they need to be, even though we don't get to see Christoph Sanders pound her from behind. And if Hounddog doesn't need it, Thrones doesn't need it. Thrones just happens to "use" it, maybe. And that doesn't absolve a thing from being "glorified porn." It doesn't mean the porn content isn't there, it just means, at best, you can enjoy it from another perspective.

You will die on this hill and be proud to do it: We don't categorize things as "porn" for their lack of literary value. Or lack of irony. Or lack of confident female characters. Or lack of a combo system. We categorize things as "porn" for the presence of sexual content.


In Incel History: The r/incels subreddit was created. But at the time, it was just as dead as r/incel, the one no one remembers.

In Soy History: We lost principled Pope of the cloth, Benedict XVI. Last traditional Pope. His replacement was Pope Francis, a Pope for a modern age in every sense of the word. First Pope with the pontificial name "Francis." First Pope from the Americas. And the first Pope who was like "Fuck all the rules that make Catholicism Catholicism, I guess." Francis is a kind man, but he isn't much for discipline against vice. And with him as Pope, the world had precedent to ease up on certain things. After all, if the Pope doesn't judge, why should we? Also, Steven Universe debuted. "This shit'll never work" I thought like a fool. "A Great Value version of Adventure Time, riding its coattails." I was also still trying to make something happen with Adventure Time fandom. 6 years and a GLAAD Award later, I see that if anything, Steven Universe influenced Adventure Time. Marceline & Princess Bubblegum? "Save it for the fanfics" we said. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just not necessary. But to Steven Universe, people said "No! Necessary!" Maybe not right away though? It took a few episodes to get to the good stuff. Maybe it had more to do with the times. Maybe the times we lived in weren't gay enough yet.

This comic might disagree though. Up through 2012, the term "social justice warrior" was a compliment. But in 2013, it was seen as an insult, even by the people who used to use it as a compliment.



2012 brought us "Gangnam Style." 2013 brought us "What Does the Fox Say?" I think that illustrates how the "Early YouTube" era was over at that point. We're entering the "Millennial Humor" era. Irony is a primary ingredient here. Songs like Gangnam Style and The Fox sound nice, but they either aren't that lyrically deep, or most of the audience doesn't understand the lyrics, whatever they might be about. So part of the joke is the hype surrounding songs like this and the crazy amount of views they rack up. The memes of old weren't funny anymore, it was funnier to laugh at them. Troll Face was no longer funny. Rage Comics were no longer funny. It was funnier now to counter-signal them on r/coaxedintoasnafu. And the leetspeak and randcomecore of the mid-2000s was put to death with "Katy t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m." Similarly, "Doge" and "Dogespeak" became a meme, because not how you're supposed to talk. Shrek became a meme because haha imagine liking Shrek that much. I would even attribute the resurgence in hyper-exaggerated animation channels on YouTube to this. I don't know that it JUST started in 2013, after all MLG videos were around before 2013 and those are pretty ironic. And hyper-exaggerated animations was a Newgrounds thing before it was a YouTube thing. But it was definitely around this time a shift occurred." This time I think was like a bridge between Internet humor types. Joji Miller was probably that bridge. We went from the "Funny but not ironically funny" sketch comedy that Smosh and nigahiga did in their time, to Joji's sketch comedy which was technically sketch comedy, but with that ironic twist. The other ingredient, I think, was the rise of the short-form Internet video. Vines. Which has social media and the mobile device to thank for its spread. Vine (and shortly afterward Instagram) put it to people to make something funny in only a few seconds. That was the primary means of sharing video on the big social media platforms for the young people.

Young people. Not "all" people. Facebook was still in the lead there.



Facebook was still "desktop friendly" I guess you could call it. Vines, these are targeted directly at people with phones & mobile devices who do both their filming and their socializing on these devices. And while Facebook wasn't really as closely associated with mobile devices as Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter, it and the rest of the Internet was changing to the whims of the mobile device. Know why Google is so popular now? Why Chrome is so popular? Why GMail is so popular? Because there are no frills. No big banners and stuff. Which sounds obvious now, but once upon a time Yahoo! was the big name. Because we preferred what Yahoo! offered. Big flashy portals that offered us a smorgasbord of content. Bright, garish web mail with news updates and stuff. Mobile devices don't wanna do that. They don't have the battery or the screen resolution or the data. They want sleek, simple, unencumbered. Like Google. But culture as we know it today hadn't ENTIRELY gotten started by 2013. There are some things that had yet to happen. For instance, in 2013 we still hated Pewdiepie. Or around 2013. I'm not exactly sure of the exact date, but my proof is that he was part of an E3 around this time. He did his facemcam-in-camera Let's Play streamer thing as part of a game's presentation. I wanna say it was Killzone? But maybe I'm thinking of his piece at VGX where he played Dying Light. But it was definitely around this time. He was hated like Logan Paul circa 2017. 2017, not 2018. Not necessarily cruel or irresponsible, but an annoying dumbass. Appealing to the lowest common denominator, making our kids stupid, etc. Like most popular YouTube channels. But because of the whole "irony" thing, it was funny to like him enough to reference him in MLG videos and stuff.

With the end of CW4Kids and the start of Vortexx, I didn't have much to do as far as animoo save for the usual stuff: Try to keep track of where all my shows were moving, and if I couldn't watch it on TV find a torrent. And if I couldn't find a torrent, check Watch Cartoon Online. Also, save pictures you find in the ads on Watch Cartoon Online. Not much to talk about there. 2013 was mostly focused on...

[Gaming]

I didn't know it or think to look into it, but my cable & Internet provider offered me an e-mail address. As in, not one with Hotmail or Yahoo! or Gmail. One under their domain. Which meant I could join a forum I had been thinking about joining for a while now: NeoGAF. I think their policy has since changed, but originally NeoGAF was a comparatively exclusive forum to join. You couldn't sign up with any old Hotmail account, you had to have a unique one. To prevent people from sidestepping bans, I'm guessing. Alamo Drafthouse of video game forums, NeoGAF purported itself to live up to a higher standard of gaming forum. Why? I dunno if anyone remembers this as NeoGAF's reputation isn't the same as it used to be, but NeoGAF was known as the forum that the industry names used. So they're like "Industry people respect our forum enough to join it and talk to our members, so you're gonna take your shoes off when you come in here." If you've been reading these ramblings, you know that industry people are who I wanted to rub elbows with. So I made it official and joined. Making a point to really pimp those video game ideas I had. Remember how I wanted to make video games? My avatar was a logo for the "studio" I wanted to have. But I didn't quite take to NeoGAF like I took to GameFAQs. The Brawl boards and me hit it off immediately. NeoGAF? My threads would fall off the front page with no responses. And I was eventually relegated to posting in other people's threads, not making my own. I guess I didn't have the community clout yet. I don't know if it was because NeoGAF had a different userbase, or if times had changed for video game forums in general and I just hadn't caught up with them.

Speaking of times changing, I was probably too late for joining NeoGAF to matter anyway. Because the industry names I wanted to talk to were much easier to reach on "social media" now. That's where people interacted with celebrities and stuff. When Vine first dropped, know what the main feature about it on the news was? That established its legitimacy as an important thing? Will Sasso was on it.


Will Sasso having a Vine account in 2013 is like Will Smith having a YouTube account in 2018. A big deal, but also soon to set precedent for the norm. At first it's a big deal that celebrities are on the Internet, but then it becomes "Well yeah, Vine/YouTube/Twitter is huge, they should be on it." It was on Twitter that I pressed Kamiya. It was from Twitter that I got Kellams' opinions about Japan. The days of very special "Fight Nights" were long passed now. And I used to wonder why. Why all these important celebrities, who I thought had to be too busy with important celebrity stuff to waste time with trivial Internet distractions, were now wasting time with trivial Internet distractions. Simple answer: The Internet has gotten much bigger, and now that's where most people are. There's actually a resource where you can, allegedly, see how many people use the Internet in the whole world.


Celebrities on the Internet was a big deal in 2003-2006. Let's look at World Internet Usage back then.

1577236752476

Little over a billion people on the Internet back in July 2006. But go back up to that "Most Popular Social Networks" video. By 2013 Facebook alone beats those numbers. Facebook ALONE has more users than there were people on the Internet PERIOD in 2006. Not only had Internet usage gone up, but the "penetration," the percentage of each country's population with Internet usage, has gone up. In 2006, 227,303,680 North Americans used the Internet. That's 68.6% of all North Americans. Today not only has the total number gone up, but the percentage has shot up. Why? It comes back again to the mobile device. People talk about "smartphone addiction" today and the toxicity of social media, that's because the Internet and the "life highlights" of the Instagram influencer are accessible at all times from your phone, just about anywhere. Back when it was just computers, it just wasn't that practical. You were as mobile as a laptop allowed you to be. If you had a laptop. If you had a desktop, you couldn't be on the Internet constantly, so only the nerds were on the Internet constantly. The ones with lots of free time, but either no desire or option to spend it with humans in person. The ones who were able to surpass the comparatively high accessibility barrier. But then phones became more powerful, more affordable. You could just be on the Internet whenever you wanted. But as the Internet becomes more and more for everyone, it gets changed. Changed by the people on it, and changed by the potential it has to reach an audience.

Also in 2013, Edward Snowden happened. And it kicked off a new era of privacy scares. Fear of big corporations, big government, big data, etc. Especially in the online games I played. The idea of using a proxy or a VPN, back in MY DAY this was for people trying to bypass bans. Only cheaters considered doing this. It was like hacking! And buying things with "bitcoin?" Insanity. But by 2013 NordVPN was advertising openly on YouTube, and there were a choice of blockchains and cryptocurrencies, including joke ones like "Dogecoin." The online gaming market was also starting to shift. Traditional MMORPGs used to be big. And in 2013 they were still pretty big, in fact you might argue they were very big. There were still fanservicey ads about saving the queen and whatever back then. Scarlet Blade, one such game, got me in 2013. And TF2 wasn't dead yet either. In fact, it was getting ready to enter partnership with Adult Swim. Things like MMOs and TF2 were still big, but other things, if they hadn't surpassed MMOs and TF2, were starting to rise. You might not know this about Valve, but its developers work on a "Work on what you want" basis. So if Valve has two games, and no one wants to work on one, it dies. That whole "life's blood" issue that killed HeroSmash. Today TF2 isn't as big as it used to be, and I believe things started to turn in 2013. This was the year DOTA 2 came out of beta. A game that Valve put deliberate effort into to making its flagship esport game. TF2 could've been that game, couldn't it? Could it not? I thought it could, but it was DOTA 2 at Gamescom, DOTA 2 at Dreamhack, not TF2. TF2 was still riding high, but I'm pretty sure that was from residuals. MOBAs were fast becoming the hot new thing. People used to talk about the downfall of TF2 stemming from it becoming free to play, but today we know it's because Valve had too many boats in the water than it could keep from sinking.

Speaking of diminishing returns, Nintendo. And the Wii U. And how at E3 they didn't even bother with a real conference. And how at E3 Geoff Keighley grilled Reggie about how the best Nintendo had for their "incredible Nintendo surprise" was Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, and it wouldn't even be out for the holiday season. Some say this is them admitting defeat. That Nintendo has never really been a competitor against Sony or Microsoft, or at least Nintendo was never playing the same game. Nintendo didn't bring the hardware strength or the 3rd party support. And people might like Nintendo despite that, but that just means Nintendo is playing a different "game." They're not trying to win "Most Powerful Console" at E3. They're trying to win the hearts of Mario fans, and people who already like the Nintendo brand. People like me. But, thanks to my hangups, my love was fading fast. Maybe a new Smash game would reignite the fire I felt back in 2007? I was excited for Smash. But... I found myself on the GameFAQs Smash Bros. 4 boards and I just didn't feel that Brawl Era magic. In fact, those of us who were often sat around reminiscing/complaining about how much better/crazier the Brawl Era was. We were probably right though, at least as far as the GameFAQs scene was concerned. Brawl Era was probably peak GameFAQs, if not peak Smash Bros, period. Going by the Poll of the Day metric.


Sometimes GameFAQs re-releases old polls. So you can compare responses from past times. This poll was released in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2018. But look at how many people voted in each.

1577237652175

The latter 2000s, specifically 2008, was the peak. The Brawl Era. And we see as the years wane on, the numbers get smaller and smaller. Because in 2013, and today, the people who would ordinarily be on GameFAQs have spread out and moved on to other sites. Like the r/smashbros subreddit. How big was r/smashbros in 2008?

1577237883065

Functionally nonexistent. But how about in 2013? According to Redditmetrics, it broke 20k subscribed Redditors by late 2013.


And as the number of Poll of the Day participants on GameFAQs steadily declines, the day soon approaches when Reddit surpasses GameFAQs as the more visited Smash Bros hype station. In 2013 GameFAQs has 39,072 Poll of the Day participants. By spring the next year r/smashbros will have beaten those numbers. Inversely, back in 2008 the people who would be on other sites, if they existed, were on GameFAQs. Even in a time when the Smashboards were a thing, GameFAQs was Smash Central. Video Games Central. Smashboards was important as a dedicated Smash resource, but it was more like the sports guy or weatherman to the overall news program that was the Internet video game community, and GameFAQs was the head anchor. Back in 2007-2008, Smashboards was good if you wanted serious study on tiers, for instance. GameFAQs was for everything else. All of the fun stuff. Back in 2007-2008. Not as much in 2013. But I wasn't UNexcited. I kept riding the hype train. Even though I had opposed the idea of an extra handheld version of Smash since 2011. My point about it being lesser stood, by the way. As clumsy as it was to have two Smash games, it was just as clumsy for GameFAQs to have two Smash Bros 4 boards. One for the 3DS, and one for the Wii U. And I wasn't the only one who hated the idea of splitting the community. So like so many Pokémon games before it, people picked a "main" game and a "main" board. Which did they pick? The Wii U one. Because like I said, the handheld version is lesser. An unnecessary cash grab for a thing that needed no further meddling. The live-action Disney remake of its day.

Maybe I could've used this time to get back into Mortal Kombat? Netherrealm Studios had consummated their marriage to WB Games with Injustice: Gods Among Us. Starting an era where Mortal Kombat would be closely associated with DC. In ways more favorably remembered than MK vs. DC Universe. It's official now. I remember the combat looking really good. It was nice to watch, but I just wasn't motivated enough to play it. I was starting to mostly enjoying watching games, instead of playing games. It would've been nice to have the Nintendo Channel right about this time, but it was shut down in 2013, along with a bunch of other Wii stuff, because it was Wii U time. But 2013 was still a good time for Let's Plays and stuff. As well as something I was only just then discovering, video game prank calls. Like the kind ICEnJam makes.




It was less of an ambition and more of an idle fantasy to do this though. I couldn't just play sounds into a phone, the quality wouldn't be good. I needed a rig where I could play game audio files directly over a line. Like I hear them in the videos. But I didn't know how to do that. And that was my justification for not trying. 2013 saw the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I think maybe the most iconic Animal Crossing title to date, because of the introduction of Isabelle. I never heard people talk about Animal Crossing like they did until New Leaf. But according to reports and interviews by Iwata, the point of Animal Crossing was to "broaden the appeal." Everybody wants to "broaden the appeal." Iwata was particularly proud of how young female audiences took to New Leaf and the 3DS as a whole. Why young females? Because Nintendo didn't have very many of those? Allegedly that's true, they didn't, but the real reason this was an important win for Iwata was because he thought girls were the ones always on them damn phones. He was afraid women wouldn't be interested in the 3DS, because of the ever dominant presence of the mobile device.


I didn't play Animal Crossing: New Leaf. So that stuff about it appealing to women must be true, because I'm not a woman. But the war against mobile was on for Nintendo. People had been goading them, "Just go mobile." It made no sense, between the 3DS and the Vita it was clear who was winning. If anyone should go mobile it's Sony. But the taunts remained the same for Nintendo: Go third party. You can't compete with mobile third party. Put your games on PC while you're at it.

Speaking of the war on mobile, this Tweet from 2013 said that by 2014, there would be more mobile devices on the Internet than PCs. So the mobile takeover was showing no signs of slowing down.



Maybe this is why Reddit overtook GameFAQs in 2014? The mobile takeover continued to influence gaming and the Internet and everything else. Picture this...

2014. "Sins of the Father" stirs your heart as you re-listen to the Metal Gear Solid V trailer from last year's E3. After 6 years it's time once again for a main line Metal Gear Solid game. Just as MGS4 came out with Brawl, MGSV will come out with Smash 4. Part of it will, anyway. You're going to be teased with Ground Zeroes, but later you'll get Phantom Pain. And it's making people think: How much are you actually supposed to pay to play one level of a game, really? But you're not worried about that now. You're hyped for a new main MGS game! Why? Because recently you saw this video.



And that video led to another "This Is How You Don't Play" video, and then another, and you learned about a guy named DarksydePhil. A guy so fun to hate, that you wanna actually be there in the stream when he plays MGSV. You wanna be there with the rest of the hatedom, laughing at his misery, there to see the soon-to-be clipped moments as the unfold. Look at him suffer! He thinks the game is bad because he can't manage the controls. Well YOU managed to complete the Metal Gear Solid games, so DarksydePhil is just being a baby. And so you've earned the right to laugh at his whining. Kojima Nation!

It's just... Quiet. You don't wanna sound like a Kojima hater or nothin', but her depiction. Frankly if Kojima hadn't said anything, you probably wouldn't have minded. You get to go on a beach date with Paz in her underwear in Peace Walker and you were able to stifle that. You can convince yourself that Quiet's design maybe isn't exclusively what you'd see in ecchi or something But then it came out that Kojima specified to the character designer that Quiet's design should be "erotic." If he just hadn't said that, any conclusions we drew would've been our fault. But whatever Quiet looks like, the INTENTION itself that he SPECIFIED was "Make it erotic." That's what the design is supposed to be. So he backtracks. "Oh no, mah Eengleesh she's-a no so good, Imma no mean the word 'erotic,' yes?" Clarifying that he meant he wanted to design Quiet so that women would want to cosplay as her. Which didn't help his case. If he doesn't mean "erotic," how does he in his limited English come to that word if what he meant was "Convince women to cosplay as her?" What DID he mean? Bearing in mind that he has absolutely seen women cosplaying as characters from his games. He knows what cosplay is about. So he backtracks again with the famous Tweet, "Once you recognize the secret reason for her exposure, you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds." And because Kojima is a genius, apparently, all was forgiven. You are not entirely satisfied with that answer. But this is still "You don't wanna sound like Anita Sarkeesian" days. And you really wanna enjoy hating on DSP. So you have faith that the explanation will pay off. It just better not be something stupid like "She's a solar panel and she needs to be exposed to the sun to do magic." That might've been fine if Kojima said "Design her so that her skin is exposed." But he said "erotic." And that implies a specific thing that's neither here nor there with regard to being a magic solar panel.

What has the Internet video game playing community become, anyway? It feels like the game has changed, and DSP might be the last Let's Player of his kind that you watch. It used to be that Let's Players played every console and/or PC game that was released. Now it seems people would rather play esoteric indie games you've never heard of. And you don't just mean "Papers, Please" or "The Stanley Parable." You mean games like QWOP and Happy Wheels and Flappy Bird. The last game you saw traditionally Let's Played is Super Mario 3D World. Now it seems, despite games being released, today's Let's Player doesn't bother unless it's super AAA. Big news. Like MGSV. As Geoff Keighley predicted, people were mostly shrugging at Tropical Freeze. Before the turn of the decade, you're pretty sure they would not have shrugged at Tropical Freeze. You suspect it's because Let's Players are trying to diversify, so they don't blend in with "the pile." Stand out. Play games you're not gonna see get played on other channels. Unless that game is really demanded by the audience. Like Tropical Freeze isn't. Voice over gameplay isn't enough anymore. You gotta have a facecam. And you gotta have multiple revenue streams. You're not sure when it happened. You feel like it has something to do with this Patreon thing that's been making news. It's like Kickstarter except you keep paying forever??? Cable is, what, $75 a month? For several channels. Many of which you actually watch. For you to pay a YouTuber's Patreon, you would need to be getting to same value. You're essentially paying for the one channel, a channel that's technically not on all the time. How much should one channel cost? For "TV" that is often only a few minutes long? We laugh at DSP for being money hungry like this, but so many of these up and coming Let's Players are doing it too. It's too bad. You have no interest in being Tobuscus or Markiplier. But that's the face of the Let's Player nowadays. If only you had actually gotten started when you should've.


You might also remember 2014 as the year Elliot Rodger committed his atrocity. And sometimes you might hear people ask "Why didn't he just try Tinder? It's so easy!"


And the answer comes back "Tinder didn't exist back then." Even though technically yes it did, it just it wasn't balls deep into the zeitgeist like it is today. Nor was Rodger himself, or incel culture. r/incels was still essentially dead. But by 2014 things were getting started. "Swipe right" had officially entered the lexicon, as well as "Uber" and "Lyft" and lots of other phone appy words. All for the presence of the almighty mobile device. And Rodger himself had earned a spot on various "Most Disturbing Killers" YouTube listicles. For a while, the most reputation that incels will have is some sort of very small Dark Webbish sect. A very very niche thing. But the ball was rolling. Talk about it a little more later.

[Gaming]

To be painfully honest, my 2014 was consumed by one thing: How I spent my E3, and the ensuing weeks/months after that talking about the stuff at E3. My conscience was already busy with MGSV and Quiet, but then came Nintendo in 2014. There was Palutena and her, let's say "gazey" reveal trailer for Smash Bros, there was Devil's Third being a Wii U exclusive, Bayonetta 2, of course, any one of these games would've been bad enough to get the "it's not meant to be sexual you're misinterpreting it" gaslight. But these were ALL featured in the same Nintendo Treehouse event. Considered worthy of sharing the stage with the "family friendly" Nintendo brand. And it wasn't just me that found that weird. I can't find it, and refuse to go look for it, but during the Bayonetta 2 gameplay demonstration the Platinum Games rep remarked how they had designed some Nintendo-themed outfits for the game, and one of them was a Princess Peach dress, and Platinum was all like "Y'know this is Nintendo and all, do you want us to maybe tone down the sexuality in the costumes?" And Nintendo was like "No, don't do that." And Platinum thought that was weird and surprising. That Nintendo of all companies would allow this. See, it's not just me that finds this weird. But Nintendo insists that there's nothing remarkable about it or any of their E3 2014 showing. It really bothered me. And by this time I had some experience as a NeoGAF poster. So after the id of E3 wore off and the time for measured reflection came, I made a thread raising the touchy subject of "fanservice" in video games. And it was a touchy subject. I can't find it, and refuse to go look for it, but there was a thread on NeoGAF that was dedicated to laughing at "creepy" sexualized content in games. Dead or Alive here, sexy MMORPG ads there. Then somebody brought up Bayonetta and the thread devolved into angry chaos. And someone brought up a point that really rung true to me: People give Bayonetta a pass because her games are good. It's easy to complain about how creepy Xtreme Beach Volleyball is because it's also not a good or fun game franchise. And so cognitive dissonance kicks in. Bayonetta can't be the male fantasy. Even though the game ends with an exhibitionist dance video that serves no purpose other than to give the player something to enjoy sexually. A woman designed her! And the gameplay is technically flawless! So it can't count.

This was basically the defense I was given in the thread I made on NeoGAF. But because it was NeoGAF, it wasn't just players. It was journalists, it was staff at developer studios and localization companies who had a lot to say about how wrong I was about PS Vita lewdware, the industry names I had longed to reach out and touch. People complain about how games are soy and have bent to the SJW whim, but in 2014, in this NeoGAF thread, it was very much not that time yet. "Look past the sexual aspects" they said. "Me and my wife love this game" they said. I couldn't help but feel like maybe I wasn't reaching them. So I kept at the thread. I thought about it on the way to work, and on the way home from work. I couldn't visit NeoGAF at work, it was filtered, but I still wrote notes about what I wanted to say in the thread. "I'm just not explaining myself properly. They should know where I'm coming from. Because they have problems with other games. The sexy MMORPG ads. If they're saying the games at Nintendo Treehouse didn't count, then the sexy MMORPG ads don't count! Therefore if they see a problem with the sexy MMORPG ads, they should be able to see similar in these Nintendo Treehouse games." The thread dragged on, for weeks. And then it just dried up. And to be honest, I was thankful. I came to realize, there was no winning it. And I just wanted to be done. Or at least take some more time to form my arguments. What weren't they getting??? Or maybe I don't get it. If there's one thing I can't stand against, it's the word of the creators/people who own the rights. Platinum says I'm wrong about Bayonetta. Nothing gratuitous or titillating about that dance. And so I just have to accept that. Like I did with other games and shows before. Accept it and move on to something else. It's just, 2014 gave me a lot more than usual to accept and move on from. I can accept and move on from Bayonetta. But I've also got a bone to pick with Nintendo. And Wonderful 101. And Devil's Third. And Kid Icarus. And Fire Emblem. And maybe even a little bit of Hyrule Warriors. And if through all of this Nintendo swears to me that I'm wrong and that there's nothing but family friendliness in their brand? 2014 is too much. Yes, a Smash game is on the way. But you'll never forget 2014's lineup. Every time I boot up my Wii U would mean seeing Bayonetta in WaraWara Plaza because that's a Nintendo title they wanna lead with. I can't deal with that level of bullshit. I can't deal with Nintendo wanting to be Mario on the streets but Bayonetta in the sheets. Can't be both. So... looking at Nintendo and seeing nothing but hypocrisy now, I decided I was done with Nintendo. But it wasn't just Nintendo I was done with. What I needed was a company that would stand up for the values I needed to be represented. That would call a spade a spade, that would call porn when they saw it. But the truth is, the rest of the game industry doesn't really care like I care. I'm not saying Microsoft is on that stage giving us close-ups of Cortana's ass, but whatever modesty they might practice in their games, it's not out of any mission to not be the next Bayonetta. At best, they just don't care. At worst, they'd love to be Bayonetta, she earned a perfect 10 and what few people are buying her games seem to find her so empowering. Because I guess getting naked at the player's command is fine if you're the main character? And it was the hypocritical journalists too. Who have so much to say about how Dead or Alive & Ninja Gaiden are creepy but Bayonetta is not. All are fighting games that have beautiful women in them, it's just one happens to be really really good as far as combo-based fighting gameplay is concerned. And as journalists they should be able to acknowledge both. By all means, don't disregard the gameplay. But if you hate tiddy and booty in your video games, call it out even when it's painful. Like Arthur Gies did.


For his honesty he was marginalized in the industry, and made a laughingstock by the audience. An opinion that haunted him for years later, if it doesn't still haunt him. It's not just Nintendo, it's not just the game companies, it's the game industry as a whole. From the shit-eating grins in corporate management who have the most perfectly inoffensive words to say about their games, to the fucking hypocrite consumers who can't make up their minds over whether or not they want Samus to have heels. When I see Nekkid Teenage Ninja Food Fight, a game that shouldn't even have made it out of Japan, on the front page of GameTrailers, I know that the gaming world has gone very wrong for me. Where once I had the security that things like that would never happen, I have it no longer? And so I gave up video gaming itself as a cope. Gave my hardware and games to my nephew that very Christmas. No playing games, no making games, no dreams of being a Let's Player or a sprite Flash video maker or reviewer or article writer or whatever the hell. No following the news, no watching E3, and absolutely no NeoGAF. I tried to stick around on GameFAQs because Poll of the Day wasn't specifically related to video games, but over time even that started to drift away from me. I talked a lot about video games there, and without that to talk about I had nothing to post about, and therefore no reason to be on the forum. This was also a decisive blow in the "2D vs. 3D" battle. My love of hentai and ecchi and saving/sourcing pictures of it came into sudden question. The porn I'm enjoying, that doujin I'm saving and learning Japanese so I can understand it, is it one of those "Don't treat this like porn treat this like a serious work of art" pieces? Maybe it isn't. But you can never be too sure. One day you're engrossed in Tinkle Bell's "Rondo Duo," next thing you're reading reviews pleading "Please look past the pornographic aspects and enjoy it for whatever else is worth enjoying in this game." Like with video games, you're seeing too much of this going on nowadays. What you need is porn that acts as a deliberate counter signal to the "Treat this like art" porn. Porn that states emphatically "This is porn, do not mistake this for anything else. If you're here for non-porn reasons, you're in the wrong place." But like in the games industry, nobody really cares that much. But [Weebshit] is more than the lewds you save. It's the Saturday morning cartoons you watch. How about those? Is that cope still there? Not by the end of 2014. That new programming block Vortexx didn't last long. The block, and its website, just ground to an abrupt absence. And I was staying far away from Adult Swim's Toonami. I used to be able to watch Digimon Fusion, but that moved to premium cable. This left Saturday mornings on Cartoon Network as my only option. Which was a death slot as it was. I had seen so many shows last one season or half a season and then just be replaced with reruns of Teen Titans Go! The only reliable programming I had was Pokémon, and because it was a Nintendo product I wasn't exactly in love with the partnership. But maybe I don't have to watch cartoons. Was there anything at all to get into? Not on actual TV their wasn't, not yet. And Netflix wouldn't have anything until 2016. I was too early for the "Cord Cutting Renaissance" when all of the quality TV moved to streaming services. It was either Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad.

No video games. No 2D. Not even anything to watch on TV. The most basic, most universal of copes. I could not even watch TV. I had no Internet community to shitpost to, and nothing to shitpost about. And my job? Suddenly my job started to suck a lot more. Nothing changed about my job, just my outlook changed. I didn't have the copes. It was okay that my job sucked because I was gonna do some kind of video game thing with my life. Or make friends with lewd artists and confab with the lewd community or something. I lost that. And without that now I have to ask myself "So what ARE you gonna do with your life? You're 41 going on 42, is this where you should be? If you're not gonna be in some kind of game thing?" I hadn't gotten a raise in all the years I had been there. I was starting to get anxious. I started looking into things like "How long should I work somewhere before I get a raise/promoted?" I figure it'd been 6-7 years here, I should be due some kind of change. Then I read these articles.



6 years is way too long, according to Workopolis and their "millions of resumes." I dunno, I've never used Workopolis, but over 80% of them stay at one job no longer than 4 years. And reading that, I pondered how I would either negotiate a raise/promotion, or get a new job. I tried the former. My manager was adamant, there was nothing for me. He says I'm a freelance/contract hire. So I can't be "promoted" per se. It was the first I had heard of it, I didn't know I was a freelancer. So I started looking for other jobs. But... I couldn't find anything that pays as much as my current job. That will definitely hire me. 2014 was arguably my darkest era.

It was also a dark era for the world. Or at least things were starting to darken. I had cloistered myself from the world, so I wasn't really aware, but a lot of sociopolitical events were taking place that would define the Internet and all of the people on it for years to come. 2014 saw the birth of ISIS. The "Smash Bros. 4" of jihadist terrorism. We were riding high off the death of Bin Laden, we had done it, al-Qaeda was no more and the Middle East was about to become the new Russia. In that we were gonna put McDonalds' everywhere and bring our American capitalist bikini car washes to their culture. But no, none of those things happened. Speaking of Russia and how the Cold War was supposed to be an 80s thing, Vladimir Putin was making himself an international villain again. Sure he'd assassinated a few dissidents, that's not news. What WAS news was how he annexed Crimea. Taking physical territory. Actual global domination moves. Being ignored by intergovernmental organizations used to be a thing we associated with, like, North Korea. Not any of those "civilized" European countries. There's no way anything like that could happen in Europe today. Trayvon Martin had been shot in 2013, and that was bad enough. But 2014 saw the deaths-by-cop of both Eric Garner and Michael Brown. This gave rise to the Ferguson riots, but also Black Lives Matter. The Fappening had repercussions for laws and platform policies about "involuntary porn." Which I always thought was an overreach. Because The Fappening was pictures that were stolen. But because it was so widespread (what were all of those women doing taking nudes anyway, I never took no nudes is that just a really common thing or what), websites started being like "No one can post ANY pictures without express written consent from the subject." And how are you even gonna prove that? You can't. But if you're on Reddit like "He's some pictures I took of my ex-girlfriend" the assumption is she doesn't know they're being posted. But... she consented to having them taken. And before The Fappening you used to be able to do whatever you wanted with someone pictures that you got fair and square. The Fappening was not about pictures that the leakers got fair and square so it shouldn't be used as an example for policy on pictures that were taken fair and square. Speaking of involuntary porn, 2014 saw the beginning of the end for Bill Cosby, by the hand of Hannibal Buress. Doing the Ronan Farrow thing before Ronan Farrow. And? There was Gamergate. A lot of important stuff happened in 2014, but I think Gamergate was really what gave rise to the "Acronym SJWs vs. Alt-White /Pol/ack" narrative that dominates the Internet today. Maybe Gamergate just happened at the time time, maybe it had more to do with it being 2014 and social media giving more voice to the rabble than ever. But this was before r/The_Donald, this was before "Can't Stump The Trump," before the Ellen Pao controversies, it was Gamergate where names like Milo Yiannopoulos gained their notoriety. Which was really something because when I last checked, that "argle bargle male fantasy" culture war that Gamergate was predicated on was nonsense when I was saying it. When Anita Sarkeesian was the main voice associated with it. But just as I hang up my hat, the idea of games needing to appeal more to whammin takes off so much that there's vocal rebuttal to it. Didn't happen when I was doing it. If you were mad about boobs or butts you were pretty quickly shut up. Then along comes Zoe Quinn and suddenly people wanna have less boobs and butts in their video games. I missed it by that much. I really could've used Gamergate.

But i was in hermitage. When, if ever, would I wake up? Maybe I wake up in 2015 or 2016. Talk about that in a bit. As long as I'm at my parents' house I have time to type.
 
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"Founding Father" or "Milk & Cigarettes 13: New Year? Noose Me!"

TL;DR:
After celebrating the death of Satoru Iwata, I realize that something must be wrong with me mentally, so I go see a psychiatrist. She encourages me to achieve my dreams and scratch out a life for myself, I take up cinema as an interest and try out the Hash House Harriers. I stop seeing her some time in 2017, taking her coaching to heart. Then I join r/ForeverAlone, then Minassian drives his van, then I join Incels/Looksmax, then at the start of 2019 I write this journal.

This journal draws to a close. Because the Year draws to a close. It's 🥂New Year's Eve.🎊 I had to stop by Wal-Mart yesterday to pick up some stuff to drink. Non-alcoholic because I'm a pussy baby. At my local Wal-Mart they mix the wines with the non-alcoholic sparkling ciders and grape juices. But you know what else they put over there? Condoms. Because Wal-Mart knows that wine and sex mix.

https://incels.is/threads/went-to-get-some-new-years-eve-stuff-from-wal-mart.167766/

The end of the year. But also? The end of the decade. The 2010s, man. I saw this video a while back that said the 2010s have no feel. That nothing defines them.



And for a while I used to agree with that. But doing this reflecting/past-authoring has made me realize, that's WAY off. The 2010s definitely have a definition. If a "definition" is whatever nostalgia people will try to capitalize on. If 80s nostalgia = Stranger Things, 2010s nostalgia will be dabbing and hoverboards and Fortnite and Pewdiepie and reaction memes and Stan Twitter and Blue Checkmarks of Social Justice. Zoomer stuff.

The upside to this is, each decade has its own feel. 10 years is the cap, after 10 years of things being one way, they usually change somehow. So I'll be glad to see the 2010s go. Arguably the low period of my life so far. So low, I actually went to therapy in the 2010s. Picture this...

2015. You're shitposting on Town of Salem and you've got 5.349 trillion Cookie Clicker cookies in another tab.

1577862547376

It's the best you can find in your long, wandering quest for something to distract you from the exasperation you feel for the world. You don't have much else. When you see it, in the Last Will of one of the Townies:
RIP Satoru Iwata December 6th 1959 – July 11th 2015. You look into it. Indeed he is dead. Bile duct cancer. The industry and community turn out in droves to pay their respects. Your first thought? Good. You're glad he's dead. You'll take his death, somehow, as payment for the localization practices he signed off on as Nintendo CEO. A lot of lewd games not only made it onto Nintendo hardware on his watch, but made it overseas. He refused to accept that these games were lewd, and that lewds are not for the mainstream market. They're for importing from Japan because God help you if you see lewds at Best Buy, where an actual person in America has to process your purchase for you. You choose to see this as him being punished for his refusal to understand this.

But then you think, that's kinda fucked up, isn't it? That you're reveling in someone's death like this? And on top of that inferring some imaginary retribution out of it? Iwata wasn't "killed" for any rule he broke. The cancer gods don't care about your hangups. Something's wrong with you. It's time you got yourself looked at. It's time you saw a psychiatrist.

Speaking of going crazy, if you need more evidence that the 2010s sucked, look at Shia LaBeouf. This was the decade he went crazy. In the 2000s he was funny and exciting. Even when he got out of kiddy show business at Disney he was a joy to behold in the Transformers films. And Surf's Up. And Indiana Jones. And Disturbia. One of the risingest stars of the decade, Hollywood's go-to man when they needed someone boyish and plucky and kinda awkward. Then come the 2010s he decided he was gonna be a serious actor and also a director. I guess to make up for how bad the Transformers movies were. When Nymphomaniac came around, LaBeouf was all too proud to announce how far he was willing to commit to the role. "I'll get naked for real! I have a small dick but I want people to see it! I want people to see a REAL man's dick!!! I'll have real sex! This is gonna be a SERIOUS movie with REAL sex in it! I don't care if I'm dating Karolyn Pho right now, I'll have ACTUAL sex with my co-stars so they can put it IN THE MOVIE!" He cut himself and pulled his tooth in Fury, he stole the idea for Howard Cantour.com from Dan Clowes, and of course there was "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE." Arrogantly I kinda compare myself to LaBeouf. Because we both have small dicks. But also, how he just kinda had this breakdown and threw his old life, around the same time I had a breakdown and threw my old life away. For a while he was seen as a pretentious weirdo. But by 2015, LaBeouf was kinda lovable again thanks to #INTRODUCTIONS and the "Just Do It" meme. And if he can tackle life changes like that and come out on top, why not me?

So I went to therapy. But first lemme talk about what I did before I went to therapy. When I was dealing with post-gamerism on my own. To have all that taken away from you is like getting your arm ripped off. It doesn't just take something from you. It doesn't just leave you with nothing. In taking from you, it gives you something. It gives you pain. And that's what I had after I "gave up" the video game thing. I didn't sit around with nothing to do because I didn't like video games anymore, I acted on the hate I now had for the video game industry and community. I went around e-mailing video game reviewers. Specifically, reviewers that had reviewed both Bayonetta and other less fun games like Dead or Alive. So I could dig up their rants about how Dead or Alive is creepy and voyeuristic, and ask them why they didn't say as much about Bayonetta. Why they weren't honest and brave like Arthur Gies. And I knew the odds of me getting a response were low, I was sending these by e-mail where they would almost certainly sit at the bottom of a stack of more important e-mails. So I went for quantity and contacted as many as I could. Every day I looked for new publications, checked what they had to say about the games of interest, and layed on 'em a wall of text that makes Year of the Pig look like steel slats. Of the many e-mails I sent out, I only got one response back. I forget the name of the publication and I can't be bothered to sign into my old inbox, but the gist of their response was "Yeah you're right, porn + quality writing/gameplay doesn't make it not porn. But porn doesn't usually have quality writing or gameplay. So when it does, we can't help but ignore the lewd aspects." Which is what I thought. People give Bayonetta a pass because her games are good. I guess deep down I wanted to know that I wasn't crazy. So hearing this from this one publication confirmed my bias enough that my rage died down just a little bit. I started to not care about the issue as much. But certain neuroses stayed with me. As a result of me desperately trying to put my triggers out of my mind. To this day I still don't eat strawberries, or anything strawberry flavored. Why? Because I don't like the yuri anime Strawberry Panic. It's not for me, it's for lesbians. So if Strawberry Panic isn't for me, I'm not for Strawberry Panic. I'm moving away from all things strawberry. It's not even an act of deliberate spite anymore. Nowadays I just automatically reject strawberry flavored food products. As a subsconscious reflex. Maybe I should've asked my psychiatrist to fix that.

I wanted to do more than talk about what I didn't like though. I needed to find some things I enjoyed. I mentioned in the last entry how I hoped to find porn made by people who weren't afraid to own up to the fact that what they were making was porn. Who wouldn't try to attract non-porn audiences or ask people to look past the porn to something else. I went looking around for that. My porn savior. By 2015 there was a lot of "amateur porn" out there. By which I mean, 2D porn drawn by amateurs. Stuff that I would've called "fanart" 10 years ago and not wasted my time on. But by 2015 people were making businesses out of this. Thanks to Patreon. I went looking around and found a guy named Fenoxo. He had these text based furry porn browser games that were being passed around in this new age of furrydom. I was all too eager to project a savior onto him. But a few conversations with him and the rest of his fanbase in IRC were enough to turn me off. 2D porn wasn't doing it for me much anymore. So I stuck to what 3D porn I could find. Sadly by 2015, it was drying up. The names I had grown accustomed to? By 2015 they were out of the business. And my sex drive was failing anyway so I kinda dialed it back with porn in general. Now was the time to watch other videos. Videos on YouTube. Which I hadn't really gotten much of a look at outside of the interests I had in the 2000s. Like I said about 2014, I really started to see the state of Let's Plays evolve. "Real games" weren't the focus anymore. It was about indie games and other weird little finds on the Internet. Especially after Five Nights at Freddy's debuted. Only the biggest and AAA-list games could ever hope to break our fascination from games like FNaF or Undertale in the mid-2010s. These indie games I considered a worthy replacement for the old video game interests I had. I didn't play these indie games or have dreams of making my own, I just wasn't as bothered watching FNaF Let's Plays as I would be watching a Fire Emblem Let's Play. Which were rare anyway because it was all about indie games now. I didn't listen to video game prank phone calls anymore, but the videos of ICEnJAM had opened my ears up to the larger world of soundboard pranking, and that became a regular cope of mine, following the pranking careers of "Prank Phone Call YouTube."

Also on YouTube there were a lot more late night TV clips. Uploaded officially, by the shows themselves. There was a changing of the late night guard in 2015. No more Leno, now it's Jimmy Fallon. No more Jon Stewart, now it's Trevor Noah. No more David Letterman, now it's Stephen Colbert. No more Brian Williams, now he's sharing the desk with the pot-smoking MOGAIs of MSNBC. John Oliver had a show. Seth Meyers had a show. And what a time for them to take the stage. Throughout all the Bush years and... most of the Obama years, I don't remember Leno or Conan being as political as things started to get in 2015. And maybe this was a product of the times. In 2005, the idea of a gay couple was controversial enough to get an episode of "Postcards from Buster" pulled from air. In 2015? Not only is there no more "Don't Ask Don't Tell," not only is gay marriage the law of the land, but society needs more. Now arrives Caitlyn Jenner and the topic of transgenderedness enters the discussion. I forget when I saw it, but I remember seeing a clip of Real Time with Bill Maher where Maher was talking to Lewis Black. And to paraphrase from Maher as he racked his head over the whole transgender bathroom thing, "The gay thing, looking back, it was so much simpler, wasn't it? All they wanted to do was get married. Now we have this." It kinda actually flew in the face of gay advocacy. There's an example I think about a lot, this Chemstry.com ad from 2007.


Some dude flips through a porn magazine for a while, and after looking through it he's like "Nope, still gay." Surprise surprise, it was exclusive to NBC. At least for a while. But it echoed one of the central arguments to the whole gay thing: "I am born this way, you cannot change me or convince me otherwise." Because people were like "Okay so you're a gay man, but what if I presented you with a super manly woman?" This commercial was echoing the response that no, you can try what you want, I'll never stop being gay. And in comes the 2010s like "Well actually you're transphobic because I'm signaling as hard as I can for the gender I identify as and you STILL won't have sex with me?" I replaced one frustration with another. Instead of debating whether or not Bayonetta is lewd, I was arguing in the Last Week Tonight comments sections about how if you don't want men in the women's bathroom, you cannot sign off on some "Anyone Can Go Into Whatever Bathroom They Want Bill." Thing about slippery slopes though? All of this came with the formal announcement of the candidacy of Donald Trump. And if you loved open bathrooms, for some reason you also hated Donald Trump. Who uses his power to walk into women's changing rooms. And so I'm like "You hate Donald Trump so much for going in that changing room? If you have things your way, he and I and every other creep will have our desire to walk in on changing women as a protected right!" But unlike with Bayonetta, I wasn't as alone in my frustration with the radical left. Opposition was rising, and opposition was looking popular. I wasn't really paying attention, but there was controversy brewing on Reddit surrounding then-CEO Ellen Pao. Taking the throne in 2015, she made sweeping changes to the culture of Reddit by banning subreddits she deemed "abusive." People railed against this as an infringement on free speech and overreach of liberal SJW virtuemongering. This was 2015, by the way, and r/incels was yet untouched. The benefit of keeping a low profile. But perhaps in 2015 r/incels could've used the allies, because there was still a strong presence of "Just because you disagree with it doesn't mean you should take it down." Then she fired Victoria Taylor, a beloved Reddit staffer. Which seemed pretty ironic considering all the pussyaching Pao made about treating female executives nicely. The site ground to a halt and several subreddits sat out in protest. A cluster of troubles with names like "The Fattening" and "AMAgeddon." The kinds of events that take Reddit from niche website to social hub. Also going on, maybe less so on Reddit but throughout the Internet? Gamergate was still raging. Which would have chilling effects for many people and places, particularly 4chan and its founder Moot. These times we lived in had made 4chan too hostile a place for him. So he resigned as owner of 4chan. Specifically because of Gamergate. 4chan was bought out by Hiroyuki Nishimura, owner and creator of 4chan's inspiration, 2channel. And like with Reddit, there was opposition and critique. Today we talk a lot about how Reddit is cucked and 4chan is cucked, but I think in the mid-2010s things like Gamergate and AMAgeddion were still an even fight. 2015 saw the coining of terms like "nu-male" and "soyboy" when it was okay to call people that without being called some kind of white nationalist. Terms arising out of critique of the new radical left. Times were still hard because the radical left existed, but you weren't part of the radical right if you dared to critique them. Not in 2015.

But politics weren't working for me. Anything else I can occupy my time with? I started to check back on the old haunts. Endless Online. Amazingly enough, there was news in 2015.


It's not up on the Endless Online website anymore, but here's the story: Owner and... let's say "operator" of Endless Online, Vult-r, lost access to the main Endless Online server. Because someone faked his identity and the server host believed the identity thief. Giving said thief access to the server and locking the real Vult-r out. And that's why it hasn't been updated. And he cannot update it, nor is he interested in buying a new server and starting fresh. He and wife(?) Aengie have moved on to Flash game websites as a business. So from then on to this day, Endless Online exists only in fan server form. I gave a few servers a look. I still check in on them now and then. Around Christmas, to see if there's snow in Aeven. I checked on JJ.AM. It was gone. Only it's SFW GIFs section lives on. Gaia Online was still around, I checked in on that from time to time. Like an old keepsake. You want it around... for the sake of keeping it. Not to really use at all, just for the security of knowing it's there.

As you can see I didn't have much. I felt stagnant. And I was still frustrated about my beloved lewds. yadda yadda yadda, I go to therapy.

What becomes clear is, I need some kind of a life. I'm lacking fulfillment. I don't have a normal social life or any friends. Pretty obvious, I didn't need her to tell me that. But what kind of a life do I want? What don't I like about my current life? I don't like that I'm in my 40s and that I have nothing. I was gonna have the video games thing. I really believed in a life based on that. Now I feel like I don't have enough to show for being as old as I am. I'm in my 40s and I have no friends, I haven't had memorable experiences that bond me with friends for life, I haven't had sex... oh there's another thing I did a lot. Read greentexts. About the social successes and failures of people on 4chan. And it was always someone either having a good time at a party, or embarassing themselves at a party. I could've gone to parties in college, if I only knew how. And was liked by people. And got invited to parties. I wanna achieve that /r9k/ dream of going to a party and losing my virginity to a girl I have a crush on. My psychiatrist tells me that there's nothing wrong with that dream and that I should pursue it even now. As well as other things. I need interests to relate to people with. That's a big thing I lacked. I didn't have much that I did for fun. I decided movies could be an interest. I didn't like them enough to write essays or talk about them on YouTube, but cinema was entering a new age of Internet discussion about movies. Between Reddit and Twitter, there were large communities that had real power, where you could go and talk about movies and if you wanted to be part of the discussion, you saw the movies at premiere so you weren't spoiled. Like how Harry Potter books used to be. Except now it's the new Star Wars movies. Speaking of which, Star Wars was big news. Big enough news that it brought back what Twitter calls the "hashflag." You know how on Twitter some hashtags get a little image next to them for a limited time? That's because someone paid money to brand that hashtag. Originally it was a temporary thing for the World Cup, but it was brought back for Star Wars. And now it's a permanent thing. It all felt exciting, and I wanted to be part of it. So I gave movies a shot. Movies are now my thing.

Talking about movies was never as enriching as talking about video games though. My psychiatrist wanted me to make friends through this interest of movies. But all I wanted to do was talk about movies in online communities. I did at least try it her way, I struck up conversations about movies with my co-workers, but it was all so boring. Not as much fun as talking about it on the Internet. And never as much fun as talking about games in the Internet in the 2000s. But I continued to see my psychiatrist into the next year. Picture this...

2016. You're walking past the smartphone retailer in your local university district. Except it's not called a smartphone retailer, now it's called a "Pokémon Center" because Nintendo did the thing they fought tooth and nail and made New Leaf to never do: Nintendo went mobile. And we don't call it "Team Fortress 2" anymore, we call it "Overwatch." And we don't call it "IRC" anymore, we call it "Discord." And we don't call him "Donald Trump" anymore, we call him "President Trump." We listen to slowed down music from the 80s on top of grainy VHS footage and call it "Vaporwave" and we love it because of how aesthetic it is. Filthy Frank and iDubbbz are geniuses. Pewdiepie is a hero. This is entertainment.



Somehow it all snuck up on you.

The Let's Play industry as I remember it died in 2016. It became more of a Twitch thing, and Twitch became more of an Alinity thing. If you wanted to see video games on YouTube, you either waited for something truly AAA, or you waited for someone to clip a Twitch compilation. No, YouTube was now for "dank memes." Seeing how many ways you could remix "We Are Number One" or the Game of War commercial featuring TheLegend27. I learned to love it as I continued my search for stuff to occupy my time. This was just what was on YouTube. A good Top Ten list also got me through the workday too. YouTube is one of the few sites that still isn't blocked at my job. It was in 2016, thanks to the YouTube listicles of horror channels that delve into creepy Dark Webby Internet mysteries, that I learned about r/incels. I didn't join, but as we do with IncelTears today I looked at some of the screenshots people were making fun of and was like "But that one's not problematic."

I started 2016 by deciding to lift. At first I wasn't really consistent with it. And am I really consistent with it today? But I started lifting because I wanted to work on pursuing my dreams like my psychiatrist suggested. I had to look attractive. Or at least younger. If I was gonna have the kind of sex I hoped to have. I had heard a rumor about Rutgers University. That there was rampant degeneracy there, hence they called is "Slutgers." And I knew that was the kind of place I needed to be. If I could go to Degeneracy College and be accepted by the degenerates, and have them pop my cherry, from that I could build some kind of social life. The plan was to go to Rutgers and audit a class. Just to be enrolled and go to the school and interact with classmates. But I had been to college before and went the whole stretch without getting laid. Suppose I do this, and it turns out they're not fucking as hard as their "Slutgers" name alludes. I had to ask around to see if there was any truth to the rumor. And I couldn't just go to Rutgers and ask. Fortunately(?) there was Reddit, which was really exploding in 2016 thanks to it being on the front lines of Internet sociopolitical debate. In this era of Donald Trump running for President. Reddit was the closest thing to a source I could find, they had a subreddit for just about everything. Including Rutgers. I went there, I asked, and they said "No we are not Slutgers." Which sounds like something someone would say about their slutty college if they didn't want the word getting out that it was a degenerate college for sluts and you should definitely not hire students from here. Or something a virgin blissfully unaware of the party scene/Greek life would say. I started to wonder if maybe Reddit was the proper target audience, as it was earning a big reputation with me as a place for nerds. Just about everyone on that subreddit, and every other college subreddit I found, was some kind of Comp Sci major. And we can't all be Comp Sci majors... can we? I needed to know where the cool kids congregated. I didn't know if they even used the Internet, I was still not that educated about things like Instagram or Snapchat. But I had seen pictures of parties from college. So I knew they were happening. But where? And how do I get into them? The question I had been wondering at since my 20s.

My psychiatrist said that there are parties you don't have to go to college for. Just make friends with people in social situations and connect over shared interests. But in 2016 the closest thing to an interest I had was movies. And the Gamergate/Trump Meme Magic Age had left its mark. In 2005 if you questioned if a character was a Mary Sue, it was a fair and necessary discussion to have. In 2015 if you question if a character is a Mary Sue, it's because you don't like the idea of capable female characters. According to websites like... The Mary Sue. And the cinematic universe wars? Well, actually I did kinda like those. Because Marvel had done such good work with their Cinematic Universe, and then the trailer for Batman v Superman dropped, and the thinking was "Oh my God, they're gonna do for Darkseid was Marvel did for Thanos" and naysayers were like "No way, DC is jumping the gun, they haven't been in the game long enough to compete with Marvel" and the cope was on. As we fantasized about what Batman v Superman would be. Also? People were saying the same about Universal's Dark Universe. So I was there to defend that cinematic universe too. It did feel good to be getting in on the ground floor of a new cinematic universe fandom. But still, unlike video games in the 2000s, I didn't know a way to consummate that fandom. Other than watching the movies and talking about them on Reddit. What was I supposed to do? Draw fanart? People did draw fanart, but it was quickly forgotten. Maybe I should've been a YouTube critic. But... I just didn't love the movies enough to talk about them like that. What I also didn't love enough to critique, but would settle for online discussion? Netflix. In 2016 it had Stranger Things and Black Mirror. I had been wanting to watch Black Mirror ever since I heard about "White Christmas." And people were talking about Stranger Things like it was the second coming of Jesus so I had to see that. Was this enough to replace cord TV? I dunno. But then again, was I watching anything on cord TV? I wasn't.

I could've connected with someone over Stranger Things, maybe? But here's the thing: I don't wanna fuck anybody who likes Stranger Things. Or Black Mirror. Or Batman v Superman. I'll talk to you about it on Reddit, or Discord, but as a sexual partner you don't interest me. I explained to my psychiatrist that I need fun in my life. As in, sexually degenerate fun. The people I'm meeting nowadays, they're boring. I wanna party. So in the following year, she suggests I try Hash House Harriers. The worst possible year to try Hash House Harriers. Picture this...

2017. You're glued to this YouTube stream of a giraffe named April, waiting for her to give birth.



Day after day. Looks like nothing's happening today. Alright, what else is on YouTube? Compilations of funny Tweets and Tumblr posts? Bass boosted clips from video games? Bass boosted Vines? Maybe keep streaming while you go on r/DC_Cinematic and save some more face on behalf of all who were talking shit about how great Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad were gonna be. They better hurry up with this Darkseid movie or whatever the plan is.

You know a subreddit I would never post on today? r/AskWomen. Because my post would be immediately deleted. But prior to 2017, as late in the game as 2016, I did post on AskWomen. And I didn't get modded or anything. They were open and receptive of my manhood. That changed in 2017. I think 2017 was the end of the "even fight" and the beginning of the "cuckedness" that we know Reddit and a lot of other places on the Internet for. Why? Because Trump won. Back when he was a joke, if you were to be like "Something something free speech" you could still be respected for saying it. Because you sounded rational. And yeah your views are conservative but that doesn't make you a Trump voter! But then Trump won, and people were like "Oh my God, see what happens when we listen to people with different opinions than ours? No more of this." The cuckedness that Reddit is known for today, I don't think that's a product of the principles it was founded on. I think it came from witnessing the rise of Trump support and Reddit becoming a focal point for people who truly believed in him on r/The_Donald. People were realizing non-liberals exist and are on our forums and subreddits, so best to dig in now because look at what those non-liberals did! It's those non-liberals that create a haven for people like Harvey Weinstein! 2017 was the reaction to all the ills that progressives perceived in the world. White, male evils. I think it was all the political attention Reddit got in 2014-2016 that made it the popular place it is today. For instance, AskReddit vs. Yahoo! Answers. A rivalry that's been going on since the start of the decade with Yahoo! Answers being the old fool of the two. The place where "How is babby formed" comes from. Not a place for intellectuals like Reddit. But that was still very much up for debate. Only by the start of 2017 were we so unanimous that AskReddit had replaced Yahoo! Answers. Answers wasn't just dumber or less useful, it was irrelevant.

1577862023954

And from then on, when anyone ever talked about Yahoo! Answers, it was in the context of it being some ancient forgotten concept that walked to AskReddit could run. 2017 was the year ResetEra spun off from NeoGAF. ResetEra wasn't just a spinoff founded on a principle of "No sexual harassment." It didn't just stand against things. It stood FOR things. And that's the difference. It stood and continues to stand for what it feels the world was lacking, that should've stopped Trump from being elected. When I look at ResetEra, I reflect on the NeoGAF I used to know. The one that I arguably joined late, but was much different than whatever ResetEra is. In 2014 there was no room in the hearts of gamers for Anita Sarkeesian. But one Gamergate later and ResetEra is born. Where I believe Sarkeesian would be welcome. Where her ideas of female developers and a lack of accomodation for women would be considered.

Which brings me to what made 2017 such a bad time to be a Hash House Harrier. The reputation at least, for Hash House Harriers, is that everyone loves drunken sex and impropriety. Which is all bravado anyway and you'd know that if you ever went to a gathering. But as much of a joke for pretend this was, the time for even joking about this had passed in 2017. Female Hash House Harriers, I forget what the name is and fuck them I'm not wasting the effort looking it up, were now voicing complaints about being approached by male Hash House Harriers, whatever those are called, fuck them. And so across the Hash Houses people were told to basically just kinda cool it down. Which is the worst kind of advice to give. Vague advice. Just fuckin' tell me what to not do and say. But then that's the biggest flaw of this #MeToo Era. There is no rubric for what does and doesn't count as harassment because the rights of the accused don't matter. What matters is that people feel comfortable. So if someone is made uncomfortable by you, whatever you did, you're at fault even though you had no way of knowing what that random person's boundaries were. But even if we hadn't been given that instruction, it wasn't as ribald a scene as I was led to believe it was. You meet at a bar, you fill the place up, and you just sit around talking and drinking and sometimes playing games. You could have just as much fun on a random Eventbrite bar crawl. But for this shit I had to ride out of the city to sign up.

It became clear that what I was mostly doing was self-improvement and being social. I didn't need a psychiatrist to help me do those things. So eventually, I cut her off. It was understood, I just didn't have anything more to talk to her about. But I was still lonely. Not sad lonely, but determined to come up with a plan to not be lonely. And I needed a place to talk to people about that. Not a psychiatrist, or at least not that psychiatrist. I could brainstorm ideas about where to meet people with anyone. And so I did. Picture this...

2018. Among the lost souls of r/ForeverAlone is where you call home now. You don't hang out on the DC Cinematic subreddit, you got tired of the bullshit. And you don't hang out on r/DarkUniverse either, it's too sad. To see what few people so dedicated as to still hang around be dealt the harsh truth that all of their own big talk about the future of their new fandom turned out to be empty also. You don't spend much time talking about your own problems, just sympathizing with others in need. Until one day a man name of Alek Minassian commits the unthinkable. And because Reddit currently lives in a "Dont' listen to the people who wanna keep their subreddits they're just extremists who voted for Trump"-ocracy, Forever Alone does damage control and disavows Minassian and those they deem "incels." You've been thinking about this on and off ever since you learned what an incel was. And now you've got the opportunity to voice your thoughts on this.



People didn't really see it my way though. Don't let le Reddit Gold fool you, it's just that people on Forever Alone are really nonconfrontational. You have to wait for them to voice their opinions unprompted, and when they do it's usually "Fuck them incels. It's okay for me to be suicidal because I'm messed up in the head, but it's not okay to write angry things on the Internet no matter how messed up in the head you are." This was too hypocritical for me to ignore. I had to... not just leave, but go where I was needed. If this was the hypocrisy that was prevailing, I needed to fight that hypocrisy and I couldn't fight it on Forever Alone. I had to go to where incels themselves were being confronted: On the incel refuge. Incels.me/is/co. The big goal was to, as an incel, be contacted by the opinion-shaping press and late night talk show pundits, so that I can be one of the voices for incels where a voice is lacking.

I was surprised to see that there was an Off Topic section because I assumed most incels were too mired in the misery of their situation to enjoy hobbies. Then I wasn't surprised to learn it isn't really filled with discussion of hobbies. Because most incels are too mired in the misery of their situation to enjoy hobbies. And that's the way it was for me. Except unlike most incels, I had the agepill to chase my sorrows as well. It wasn't just that I was too incel for today's copes, I was too old. Smash Bros, something I used to love. 2018 saw the news of a new Smash Bros. game. Now, here's a comparison of memes from the Smash 4 Wii U days vs. a comparison of memes from the Smash Ultimate.



By 2018 I've lost all grasp. That bizarre, ironic(?) "dankness" has set in entirely and it's too far along for me to understand at this point. The community, I wouldn't belong. So now I can't go back to Smash. Not like I had been during Smash 4 Wii U (which wasn't much) and definitely not like I had in the Brawl Era. In 2008 it was SigurdHosenfeld being reposted on GameFAQs. Now? It's Diives and his Inkling animations behind a Patreon pay wall. I didn't miss Smash. Not the games, not the community. Especially not with this Bowsette meme taking off. I'd rather stay on Incels.forum. All of my old world has outgrown me now. It's time for new things.

And so I continued to search for them. Until the current year. Picture this...

2019. Since joining the incel community you've seen about half the people you've ever talked to get banned. Not just on Incels.whatever, but on its sister forum, Looksmax. You hope you last at least one more year, as you begin chronicling...

And the rest is in this thread.

So, what did my dad want me to figure out from all this past-authoring? I guess... for as long as I can remember I've been trying to live in a fantasy world. The world of my toys, the world of my waifus, the world of the video games me and my friends were gonna make, anime world, furry world, Smash world, etc. And there was so much that I hoped to do that I just never did. I'd like to say it's because I stopped liking it like with video games, but why didn't I achieve those things before the 2010s, when I started having all the debates about video games and whether or not something is a parody and it doesn't count? I realize now: I am the Knight of Pentacles that my Mother's Day spread revealed so long ago. I'm slow to act. Maybe because I'm lazy. Maybe because I'm soooooo careful I don't wanna make a move until I'm sure. Maybe I lack the resources. Whatever it is, my problem is that I don't "do" things. Not fast enough, and often not at all. This journal was supposed to be full of some kind of journey. I didn't go on a journey this year. I went to South Padre, but I didn't achieve anything. I didn't grow or learn. Well, I learned how to waste a trip to South Padre. My stove! My stove is still broken! I meant to replace it in time for "oven weather" but I was like "Nah, I don't feel like it. It's not 'oven weather' right now, so I won't. Probably not even smart to do it, probably smarter to save my money." I'm full of excuses like that.

But in my defense, I do try things. And it's that experience that informs my choices in the future. I tried things at my psychiatrist's behest. And none of them took. So I think those experiences tell me a little about what I do and don't like, right? So what do I like? I was supposed to uncover what would fulfill me. But see, that's the thing. I didn't lose sight of my dreams, they just became unappealing to me. Maybe if I had achieved them on time I'd be happy with what I had achieved today. But what good does this foray do me now?

I don't have... anything I really enjoy. There's a thing I've learned. I'd like to find a thing to enjoy that leads me to people having fun. That's what I'll try to do tonight. The streets should still be flooded with drunken revelers right now. Everyone should be good and loose. I'll go out tonight, and I'll ask everyone there where they met their friends and what they do with their friends. That way I'll learn how to meet the kinds of people who go to New Year's Eve parties and stuff. The kind that have reason to buy liquor and condoms together. I'll report back with my findings, if I can stay awake when I get back.
 
"Time" or "Pills for the Mind"

TL;DR:
Final entry. I went out to bother the night life and see what it takes to be part of their world. I get a little more than I bargained for by the end of the night.

One year. That was the quota. For this journal's end, it's only fitting that I should post something that might get me banned on incels.is. :feelsbadman:

A year is supposed to be enough to see what someone's life is like in general. What do I see? I see a pattern of inaction. In the last entry I listed a few reasons why it is I'm so slow to actually achieve anything. But I forgot one, the most important one: Time. Time becomes my enemy. I don't have enough of it to do all the things I need to do, it moves too fast, it makes me too old, it makes me too late. This is why I say "It's never over like 'agepill' over." In 2019 I often wondered which was worse, being a manlet or being old. It's a tough call, but I think I'm ready to make it. Being old is clearly worse. A very handsome short guy, I believe, is less limited than a very handsome old guy. Both are limited, but ostensibly we tell short men that they aren't limited or at least shouldn't be limited in a fair and just society. But old guys? We will openly tell them they're too old for certain things. To act their age. We blow ourselves when we hear Keanu Reeves is dating a woman his age because, unlike with short men, we have no qualms about telling old people what we want and don't want them to do. Even if we secretly believe it, we can't rightly tell short men to "act their height" like we tell old men to "act their age." Time is what killed my good old days, the days I should've taken advantage of. Time makes people graduate college before they get invited to a party. Time killed the Brawl Era and changed all of the anime. Time is why I don't understand the young people and their newfangledness. But I don't wanna use that as an excuse, I could just use my time more effectively, couldn't I? Or could have, when I had it? I don't think it's healthy to live in the past, for a number of reasons. So why do I do it? Well, I don't really look at it as "living in the past." I don't look at it as "I should've gone to that party 26 years ago," I look at it as "Why haven't I been to a part yet?" I don't look at it as "Why didn't I lose my virginity in college," I look at it as "Why haven't I lost my virginity yet? In the way that I want to?" It's just the answers to these questions are "It's probably too late." It's not really the past itself I'm trying to re-live, I'm just trying to achieve, in the present, stuff that only could've happened in the past. My psychiatrist believed it wasn't too late to achieve these things, but then again she wasn't helping me to have sex with college students, so she probably misunderstood what I was trying to accomplish. If I only had these experiences, I'd be as mentally healthy as any other man my age. Men my age are always talking about how they don't even wanna party like they used to. I think this is because they did their partying and have outgrown it. I never got a chance to outgrow it.

But what time do I have now? What can I achieve that's worth achieving? Maybe if I just go out and act, with no plan, no wasted time, I might achieve something. So that's what I did last night. I went out to where the nightclubs and bars and stuff were, where the streets were teeming and cops were on every corner to make sure the drunken revelry didn't get out of hand. What I would do is go up to groups of people and ask them how they met each other and what they do for fun. If you meet new people through shared interests, maybe I can copy some of these people's interests. Because I wanna be like these people. The kind of people who get drunk and probably have sex on New Year's Eve. I also brought a notepad so I could take notes. I must've made anywhere between 80-100 approaches last night. I was very polite. I opened with "Are you busy? I'd like to ask you a few questions." I wanted to let people know that if they didn't wanna be asked any boring questions by me, it was cool. And that's a deal people happily took. The vast majority of people were like "Yeah, we're kinda too busy to talk right now." I think I made a miscalculation. That late in the night people were drunk, yes. But not "friendly and excitable" drunk. It was "I wanna snuggle in this secluded booth" drunk. It was late, and people were sleepy. Some people I wanted to talk to, but didn't, because I choked. I'm in a crowded club or bar or restaurant, standing around, looking around, not talking to anyone. It makes me look like I'm trying to snatch someone's purse. And people started looking at me suspiciously. So to relieve tension I just cut my losses and left.

Speaking of looking and acting weird, the question of "How did you guys meet/what do you guys do for fun" is apparently kind of an autistic question. According to one of my early approaches. I went up to this table of women at this nightclub and asked them how they all met. And they turn to me, and one of them asks "Are you being serious?" Now I know I'm in for rough goings. I say "Yes, I'm serious." She explains that they're sorority sisters. That was answer enough, I don't need to know their hobbies. They hang out because they're in the same sorority.

Sometimes they're roommates, like these two women I ran into. Hobbies include drawing, painting, music, and playing board games.

One group of people met through Tinder. They all met through Tinder.

One guy said his hobbies include watching sports, playing sports, and playing video games. He made friends with his roommates through playing sports and video games with him. Sports are an alpha interest. If I had a community that watched, I would play sports. Sports only get you anywhere if you're on some kind of school team or a team that people watch/care about.

I came upon a big table at a restaurant, they said they all were friends, and that their shared interests were cooking food, environmental activism, and sleeping.

I found this guy at a nightclub who looked like he was having fun, and he explained that he got to this point in life by living a life of service, and being someone people respect and look up to. I think he was being funny.

I approached three guys hanging out, and asked how they knew one another. One of them said he met the first guy in high school, and the second guy he's been friends with since he was 6, because they played baseball together.

I approached another table of women and asked them how they knew one another, they explained that they were college students and you meet all sorts of people in college. I explained that I had been to college and met no one. And they said I should interact with people who share my interests, that's what they did and that's how they met. I explained I didn't have any interests. They said that when you're a college student and surrounded by peers, it's easier to find yourself and learn what your interests are.

I ran into these two dudes and one chick, and I asked how they knew one another. The two dudes dated each other's sisters, and the chick is a work friend.

I ran into a table of dudes at another restaurant and they explained they were all either roommates, dormmates, or rock climbing buddies.

I ran into a big bunch of people, and it turns out they were just tourists from Japan in town for the holiday.

Another group of people said they met during summer camp.

I went looking around for house parties to bother, and I walked by a house with this woman standing outside of it. I stood there like a burglar, debating whether to approach her. But she approaches me. She asks "Is that food?" Indicating the bag in my hand. It's not food, it's just my notepad and some energy drinks to keep me awake this late. She thought I was some kind of Uber Eats delivery person. My mother told me that I should learn to cook if I wanna attract the interest of women, because women love food. And I was always like "Not the women I wanna attract. I don't think they care about food." But maybe I was wrong. If that lady had a tail, she would've wagged it. She was really excited at the idea that I might be Uber Eats.

I met an especially eager to help bunch of nightclub security guards though. I asked them what they do for fun that leads them to live the lives they lead. Their recommendations: Have sex with women, take Percocet and Xanax (though they said because I'm probably a beginner, I should start with 5mg of Percocet and 2mg of Xanax), smoke weed (they stress that I should call it "gas"), and get money. I forget how it comes out, but it eventually comes out that I'm a virgin. And they're all "Okay, I respect that." And I'm like "No, that's bad! I don't wanna be a virgin! I wanna be like you and have sex!" So they started giving advice on that. And what it basically came down to, again, is connecting over shared interests. They said go to the library or coffee shop and start making conversation with people who appear to share the same interests as you. Pokémon Go is, allegedly, still relevant. And they make connections over Pokémon Go constantly. They see girls with their phones out playing and then they're all like "Hey I play too can I see your Pokeymoms" and move forward from there. They specify that I should pursue "nerdy shit." Marvel stuff and comic books are really big right now. Pursue things girls like, like Marvel/superhero stuff. Like if you see them wearing a particular shirt from a comic or movie, you can point that shirt out and say "Hey, I like The Flash too, did you see Crisis On Infinite Earths?" Also, girls like music. They named some examples. A$AP Rocky, Playboy Carti, Da Baby, Lana Del Ray, Red Hot Chili Peppers, "house music," and general party music. Connect with them over music, specifically these exact artists and genres. Also? They suggest food. Which is uncanny because earlier in the night I ran into that girl who thought I was Uber Eats. But the main takeaway they wanted to leave me with? Appeal to their interests. It's as simple as that.

But then, my final approach of the night. It was final because after this approach I just didn't feel like making any more. I was tired, I was on my way home anyway, so I just strike up a conversation with the lady at the bus stop with me. What do you like to do, lady? What do you do for fun? I do nothing for fun, maybe if I do what you do for fun I'll experience a more enriching life. She explains that she likes to paint, craft, sell her paints and crafts in her Etsy shop, she spends a lot of time homeschooling her son, and hanging out with her friends. I ask how she met her friends. She says when you're a mom, you usually make friends with the mothers of your kids' friends. What does she do with those friends? They usually go to the park and let their kids play, have lunch together, have dinner together, etc.

And then she asks me a question: "Are you on the spectrum?" A few thoughts go through my head. "Say no. She thinks you're on the spectrum because you're asking autistic questions. Also, you should explain that you're not autistic but you understand why she would think you are because you're asking these questions. No! Instead just ask 'What makes you think that?' Because it might not be the questions. Whatever you do, don't just say 'No I'm not autistic' because she might call your bluff. What makes her think you're autistic??? God damn sorority sisters... why can't I just ask people how they met???" I break. I end up saying "How'd you tell?" She says her husband and son are both "on the spectrum" and so she can recognize the cues. Like my lack of eye contact. MotherFUCKER!!! EYE CONTACT??? I... I was lookin' at her, wasn't I??? I made eye contact! I'm sure of it!!! God DAMN it... I felt perfectly comfortable, I thought I was acting perfectly comfortable, but my autistic-ass brain just don't know when to call it a night. She explains that I don't need to try and be like the "cool kids" and I should bee myself. That's the motto she lives by. She explains that she plays a lot of Cards Against Humanity and Apples To Apples with her friends. It's not the most exciting life, but she's beeing herself and she's happy. She's not one of the cool kids, nor are any of her friends. But she's comfortable. I thank her for the encouraging words. Then she gives me her phone number and Instagram on the back of one of her business cards. She says we can talk again if I want.

And that's the story of how I technically got a woman's number through approach game. But only technically. She's married with a kid. And I'm not interested in playing Cards Against Humanity. She was right, it didn't seem like a very exciting life. Maybe if I had lived a normal young person's life by now I'd love to play some Cards Against Humanity with a bunch of old people. But to hang out with her and her friends represents to me giving up and accepting that I'll never truly be happy. Still, she deserves all the respect in the world for being as considerate of me as she was. As an incel I don't ask the world to have sex with me, I just ask the world to not wish me ill. She's the kind of person I wish everyone was like. Will I call her? If I call her does that mean I have to do stuff with her? If I tell her I'm busy is she gonna get suspicious when I keep telling her I'm busy? Are we gonna have an awkward moment where she tells me it's okay if I just wanna talk and never do anything with her or have an interest in her as a person? What do I do? I don't wanna play Cards Against Humanity. Not unless it leads to someone taking my virginity, and it won't. And I feel like it would be selfish to try and strike up a one-sided friendship with her. I would have to be some kind of friend to her too. And being a friend to her means Cards Against Humanity for the rest of my life. And I need more. I first need the experiences I should've had when I was younger. I'm positive she doesn't have them for me.

I've been pondering if she is the foot I start my 2020 on. But after writing all this out? I don't think she is. Back to the drawing board, maybe. Maybe. She sure was nice to me. Anyway... don't waste your years, Looksmax. And if you're from incels.is, it was nice knowing you. Signing off.
 
Screenshot 20210401 060229 Chrome


I'm glad to see that this post is being precisely updated, props for doing the work @Master @Sergeant


Does anyone knows what happened to @FrothySolutions though?
 
"Time" or "Pills for the Mind"

TL;DR:
Final entry. I went out to bother the night life and see what it takes to be part of their world. I get a little more than I bargained for by the end of the night.

One year. That was the quota. For this journal's end, it's only fitting that I should post something that might get me banned on incels.is. :feelsbadman:

A year is supposed to be enough to see what someone's life is like in general. What do I see? I see a pattern of inaction. In the last entry I listed a few reasons why it is I'm so slow to actually achieve anything. But I forgot one, the most important one: Time. Time becomes my enemy. I don't have enough of it to do all the things I need to do, it moves too fast, it makes me too old, it makes me too late. This is why I say "It's never over like 'agepill' over." In 2019 I often wondered which was worse, being a manlet or being old. It's a tough call, but I think I'm ready to make it. Being old is clearly worse. A very handsome short guy, I believe, is less limited than a very handsome old guy. Both are limited, but ostensibly we tell short men that they aren't limited or at least shouldn't be limited in a fair and just society. But old guys? We will openly tell them they're too old for certain things. To act their age. We blow ourselves when we hear Keanu Reeves is dating a woman his age because, unlike with short men, we have no qualms about telling old people what we want and don't want them to do. Even if we secretly believe it, we can't rightly tell short men to "act their height" like we tell old men to "act their age." Time is what killed my good old days, the days I should've taken advantage of. Time makes people graduate college before they get invited to a party. Time killed the Brawl Era and changed all of the anime. Time is why I don't understand the young people and their newfangledness. But I don't wanna use that as an excuse, I could just use my time more effectively, couldn't I? Or could have, when I had it? I don't think it's healthy to live in the past, for a number of reasons. So why do I do it? Well, I don't really look at it as "living in the past." I don't look at it as "I should've gone to that party 26 years ago," I look at it as "Why haven't I been to a part yet?" I don't look at it as "Why didn't I lose my virginity in college," I look at it as "Why haven't I lost my virginity yet? In the way that I want to?" It's just the answers to these questions are "It's probably too late." It's not really the past itself I'm trying to re-live, I'm just trying to achieve, in the present, stuff that only could've happened in the past. My psychiatrist believed it wasn't too late to achieve these things, but then again she wasn't helping me to have sex with college students, so she probably misunderstood what I was trying to accomplish. If I only had these experiences, I'd be as mentally healthy as any other man my age. Men my age are always talking about how they don't even wanna party like they used to. I think this is because they did their partying and have outgrown it. I never got a chance to outgrow it.

But what time do I have now? What can I achieve that's worth achieving? Maybe if I just go out and act, with no plan, no wasted time, I might achieve something. So that's what I did last night. I went out to where the nightclubs and bars and stuff were, where the streets were teeming and cops were on every corner to make sure the drunken revelry didn't get out of hand. What I would do is go up to groups of people and ask them how they met each other and what they do for fun. If you meet new people through shared interests, maybe I can copy some of these people's interests. Because I wanna be like these people. The kind of people who get drunk and probably have sex on New Year's Eve. I also brought a notepad so I could take notes. I must've made anywhere between 80-100 approaches last night. I was very polite. I opened with "Are you busy? I'd like to ask you a few questions." I wanted to let people know that if they didn't wanna be asked any boring questions by me, it was cool. And that's a deal people happily took. The vast majority of people were like "Yeah, we're kinda too busy to talk right now." I think I made a miscalculation. That late in the night people were drunk, yes. But not "friendly and excitable" drunk. It was "I wanna snuggle in this secluded booth" drunk. It was late, and people were sleepy. Some people I wanted to talk to, but didn't, because I choked. I'm in a crowded club or bar or restaurant, standing around, looking around, not talking to anyone. It makes me look like I'm trying to snatch someone's purse. And people started looking at me suspiciously. So to relieve tension I just cut my losses and left.

Speaking of looking and acting weird, the question of "How did you guys meet/what do you guys do for fun" is apparently kind of an autistic question. According to one of my early approaches. I went up to this table of women at this nightclub and asked them how they all met. And they turn to me, and one of them asks "Are you being serious?" Now I know I'm in for rough goings. I say "Yes, I'm serious." She explains that they're sorority sisters. That was answer enough, I don't need to know their hobbies. They hang out because they're in the same sorority.

Sometimes they're roommates, like these two women I ran into. Hobbies include drawing, painting, music, and playing board games.

One group of people met through Tinder. They all met through Tinder.

One guy said his hobbies include watching sports, playing sports, and playing video games. He made friends with his roommates through playing sports and video games with him. Sports are an alpha interest. If I had a community that watched, I would play sports. Sports only get you anywhere if you're on some kind of school team or a team that people watch/care about.

I came upon a big table at a restaurant, they said they all were friends, and that their shared interests were cooking food, environmental activism, and sleeping.

I found this guy at a nightclub who looked like he was having fun, and he explained that he got to this point in life by living a life of service, and being someone people respect and look up to. I think he was being funny.

I approached three guys hanging out, and asked how they knew one another. One of them said he met the first guy in high school, and the second guy he's been friends with since he was 6, because they played baseball together.

I approached another table of women and asked them how they knew one another, they explained that they were college students and you meet all sorts of people in college. I explained that I had been to college and met no one. And they said I should interact with people who share my interests, that's what they did and that's how they met. I explained I didn't have any interests. They said that when you're a college student and surrounded by peers, it's easier to find yourself and learn what your interests are.

I ran into these two dudes and one chick, and I asked how they knew one another. The two dudes dated each other's sisters, and the chick is a work friend.

I ran into a table of dudes at another restaurant and they explained they were all either roommates, dormmates, or rock climbing buddies.

I ran into a big bunch of people, and it turns out they were just tourists from Japan in town for the holiday.

Another group of people said they met during summer camp.

I went looking around for house parties to bother, and I walked by a house with this woman standing outside of it. I stood there like a burglar, debating whether to approach her. But she approaches me. She asks "Is that food?" Indicating the bag in my hand. It's not food, it's just my notepad and some energy drinks to keep me awake this late. She thought I was some kind of Uber Eats delivery person. My mother told me that I should learn to cook if I wanna attract the interest of women, because women love food. And I was always like "Not the women I wanna attract. I don't think they care about food." But maybe I was wrong. If that lady had a tail, she would've wagged it. She was really excited at the idea that I might be Uber Eats.

I met an especially eager to help bunch of nightclub security guards though. I asked them what they do for fun that leads them to live the lives they lead. Their recommendations: Have sex with women, take Percocet and Xanax (though they said because I'm probably a beginner, I should start with 5mg of Percocet and 2mg of Xanax), smoke weed (they stress that I should call it "gas"), and get money. I forget how it comes out, but it eventually comes out that I'm a virgin. And they're all "Okay, I respect that." And I'm like "No, that's bad! I don't wanna be a virgin! I wanna be like you and have sex!" So they started giving advice on that. And what it basically came down to, again, is connecting over shared interests. They said go to the library or coffee shop and start making conversation with people who appear to share the same interests as you. Pokémon Go is, allegedly, still relevant. And they make connections over Pokémon Go constantly. They see girls with their phones out playing and then they're all like "Hey I play too can I see your Pokeymoms" and move forward from there. They specify that I should pursue "nerdy shit." Marvel stuff and comic books are really big right now. Pursue things girls like, like Marvel/superhero stuff. Like if you see them wearing a particular shirt from a comic or movie, you can point that shirt out and say "Hey, I like The Flash too, did you see Crisis On Infinite Earths?" Also, girls like music. They named some examples. A$AP Rocky, Playboy Carti, Da Baby, Lana Del Ray, Red Hot Chili Peppers, "house music," and general party music. Connect with them over music, specifically these exact artists and genres. Also? They suggest food. Which is uncanny because earlier in the night I ran into that girl who thought I was Uber Eats. But the main takeaway they wanted to leave me with? Appeal to their interests. It's as simple as that.

But then, my final approach of the night. It was final because after this approach I just didn't feel like making any more. I was tired, I was on my way home anyway, so I just strike up a conversation with the lady at the bus stop with me. What do you like to do, lady? What do you do for fun? I do nothing for fun, maybe if I do what you do for fun I'll experience a more enriching life. She explains that she likes to paint, craft, sell her paints and crafts in her Etsy shop, she spends a lot of time homeschooling her son, and hanging out with her friends. I ask how she met her friends. She says when you're a mom, you usually make friends with the mothers of your kids' friends. What does she do with those friends? They usually go to the park and let their kids play, have lunch together, have dinner together, etc.

And then she asks me a question: "Are you on the spectrum?" A few thoughts go through my head. "Say no. She thinks you're on the spectrum because you're asking autistic questions. Also, you should explain that you're not autistic but you understand why she would think you are because you're asking these questions. No! Instead just ask 'What makes you think that?' Because it might not be the questions. Whatever you do, don't just say 'No I'm not autistic' because she might call your bluff. What makes her think you're autistic??? God damn sorority sisters... why can't I just ask people how they met???" I break. I end up saying "How'd you tell?" She says her husband and son are both "on the spectrum" and so she can recognize the cues. Like my lack of eye contact. MotherFUCKER!!! EYE CONTACT??? I... I was lookin' at her, wasn't I??? I made eye contact! I'm sure of it!!! God DAMN it... I felt perfectly comfortable, I thought I was acting perfectly comfortable, but my autistic-ass brain just don't know when to call it a night. She explains that I don't need to try and be like the "cool kids" and I should bee myself. That's the motto she lives by. She explains that she plays a lot of Cards Against Humanity and Apples To Apples with her friends. It's not the most exciting life, but she's beeing herself and she's happy. She's not one of the cool kids, nor are any of her friends. But she's comfortable. I thank her for the encouraging words. Then she gives me her phone number and Instagram on the back of one of her business cards. She says we can talk again if I want.

And that's the story of how I technically got a woman's number through approach game. But only technically. She's married with a kid. And I'm not interested in playing Cards Against Humanity. She was right, it didn't seem like a very exciting life. Maybe if I had lived a normal young person's life by now I'd love to play some Cards Against Humanity with a bunch of old people. But to hang out with her and her friends represents to me giving up and accepting that I'll never truly be happy. Still, she deserves all the respect in the world for being as considerate of me as she was. As an incel I don't ask the world to have sex with me, I just ask the world to not wish me ill. She's the kind of person I wish everyone was like. Will I call her? If I call her does that mean I have to do stuff with her? If I tell her I'm busy is she gonna get suspicious when I keep telling her I'm busy? Are we gonna have an awkward moment where she tells me it's okay if I just wanna talk and never do anything with her or have an interest in her as a person? What do I do? I don't wanna play Cards Against Humanity. Not unless it leads to someone taking my virginity, and it won't. And I feel like it would be selfish to try and strike up a one-sided friendship with her. I would have to be some kind of friend to her too. And being a friend to her means Cards Against Humanity for the rest of my life. And I need more. I first need the experiences I should've had when I was younger. I'm positive she doesn't have them for me.

I've been pondering if she is the foot I start my 2020 on. But after writing all this out? I don't think she is. Back to the drawing board, maybe. Maybe. She sure was nice to me. Anyway... don't waste your years, Looksmax. And if you're from incels.is, it was nice knowing you. Signing off.
Summarize for those not wanting to read all the posts whether you got some prime college pussy
 
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