Gaming,relationships, stories, and sociology

[Green1]

I have about three more stories. It is really a Debbie downer to tell all this heartbreak and embarrassment stuff. But I do not know. I thought the first one to be a success and no one on that server found out who the "mount for a mount" girl was.

The next one will be a happy tale from my archives.

[Green1]

STORY 5 :Cinderella

Mary worked in a low paying nursing home gig in California. She did not live in one of the "hip" places in California like San Francisco, Los Angeles,  or San Diego though but one of these smaller, lifeless Central Valley towns. Her only relief from the drudgery of the day to day grind was when she turned on her computer and played MMOs. There, she ran into intelligent people. She worked her way up quickly through the ranks becoming a class officer teaching new players how to play rogues. She became exceedingly good at what she did.

There was also another person playing. He lived in the far away land of Sydney, Australia. His reality was different. He owned several businesses and instead of living in a small flat lived in a nice house he owned in the suburbs of Sydney.

Over time, they talked over voice and text. They gamed. They talked and talked for almost a year. One day, he bought a ticket to California to see her. needless to say, they hit it off.

Within a months or so time after the trip, he paid for her a ticket to move to Australia. There was a massive wedding both in game and in real life. The guild leader who lived in Singapore even came to the wedding in person and was the best man.

Unlike some of the other stories, last I heard, she was still in Aussie land. They have been married 6 years and have kids. She never had to work a low paid slave wage labor job ever again.

...and they sit in the living room with side by side new computers connected to big screen TVs, gaming all day together.

[DrazharLn]

/r/theredpill is poisonous, misogynistic garbage.

For those who haven't seen it, it's kind of a philosophy for adversarial sexual relations that treats women as evil people to be played for sex.

I'm not a fan.

[Unorthodox]

I hear these romance stories in both games and Halloween stuff.

Oh, how wonderful to find someone with the same interests, doing the same thing together, etc. 

I can't ever help but wonder what kind of nightmare that must be.  Thank god my wife and I are so different.  I'll never understand the people who want to be together 24-7 doing the same thing, always.  That's like some version of hell, I swear.  22 years together, I believe the secret is that we're apart half the time. 

[Green1]

/r/theredpill is poisonous, misogynistic garbage.

For those who haven't seen it, it's kind of a philosophy for adversarial sexual relations that treats women as evil people to be played for sex.

I'm not a fan.

Agreed.

 I was trying summon the drama llama. Maybe get some horror stories out of BU. But it is beyond my powers to corrupt BU to the dark side.

They also have a "bluepill" that makes fun of it.

The only positive you can get out of it is that there are some very superficial people in the world that do match the red pill's description. Best is just to avoid them. It also makes you aware of dangerous and poisonous people of both genders. So, it is worth a look. They also do promote self improvement, which anyone can benefit from. But your mind would be less poisoned by going to livestrong.org.

If red pill theory was actually correct, only the top 10 percent of really high resource men would hook up and you would have a slave race of "betas and omegas" ie: lesser men as they call them toiling for everyone. It would be like a fundy Mormon apocalypse world with rich men having vast harems and young, poor men being abandoned and tossed on the street like in areas of Arizona and Utah.. Sociological evidence does not support this as 40 percent of folks are married of all economic backgrounds (looking at city-data and census sites). Many marry multiple times throughout life.

[Green1]

I probably should go over where that crap came from for those that do not read a lot of sociology topics.

theredpill is the latest incarnation of a line of pop sociology (mixed in with a healthy dose of men's rights) that traces it's lineage to Nuero Linguistic Programming.

NLP was developed as thearapy tool to be used in a clinical setting by Richard Bandlerand John grinder in the 1970s. they debuted the technique as a successor to the older theory of Transactional Analysis in the book Frogs into Princes The way it works is this. You have a state of mind that affects how receptive or not receptive you are to things. this is called frame. You also have hard wired constructs in your mind concerning habits, rules, etc that are tied into language. By altering the language used, you can change the frame and behavior barring missing constructs (brain damage, mental illnesses, etc).

Towards the 1990s, though, this fell out of use as therapists and neuroscientists discovered more about the chemical workings of the brain and pushed towards more drug therapies.

NLP did not die, however, public motivational speakers like Timothy Robbins adapted it to sell books and lectures. real estate self help writers wrote books to help salesmen sell more product using adapted NLP. But, NLP took a more sinister turn when some opportunistic computer nerd decided maybe NLP could get people laid or at least sell seminars and books.

Neil Strauss' The Game came out. It told the story of a nerdy pick up artist named Mystery who use variations of NLP techniques to convince hot chicks to have sex with them. Over time, this hit the internet by storm. Vast amounts of socially awkward nerds flocked to sites like alt.fast seduction to either just get laid or find a girlfriend. Many books and "field trip" classes were sold to lonely guys looking for quick fixes to relationship woes.

About the same time, the sociology equivalent was being formulated by nerds with too much time on the computer. Ladder Theory was Developed. This is where sociological components were added to this movement for the first time, as previous iterations only focused on what the product salesmen called "game". the way ladder theory works is simple. It is a "social value" system that assigns market value determining who someone will have a relationship with or not. It supposedly explained why some people were friends with the opposite sex but were not having sexual relations with that person. it explained why, in their perception, it seemed like females were going after "bad boys" instead of them.

From there, this evolved further into what the redpill is today. Men who had been through horrible relationships, vicious custody battles, and other relationship misfortunes returned to the scene. The body of theory was supplemented by political Men's Rights. Also combined in there and adding to it was a fitness component.

Hence what you have today. Something that does not even remotely resemble what it originally was, doing something it was never meant to do, that has been proven mostly false for decades.

/history lesson for today

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks. I was totally lost there for a while.
I did read a transactional analysis book as part of a high school course in the 1970s.
I did have a sales career, and I can look back and say, oh, that was NLP, even if that term was never used.
Once upon a time on the internet I did come upon ladder theory. While I didn't like it, I couldn't refute it at the time, and since I was already married, I didn't dwell on it.

So now I get it.

[Unorthodox]

It would be like a fundy Mormon apocalypse world with rich men having vast harems and young, poor men being abandoned and tossed on the street like in areas of Arizona and Utah.

Actually, Mormons, fundamentalist or not, preach egalitarianism.  Difference is the fundy's actively attempt such a society (or at least tell their members they are), where as mainstream mormons recognize it as the perfect society, but believe Jesus will establish such a society when he comes again, since he's the only one who would not corrupt such a thing. 

[Buster's Uncle]

The human capacity to pervert anything is impressive, or Christians wouldn't have killed so many people in the name of the Prince of Peace in the last 2,000 years...

[Green1]

Thanks. I was totally lost there for a while.
I did read a transactional analysis book as part of a high school course in the 1970s.
I did have a sales career, and I can look back and say, oh, that was NLP, even if that term was never used.
Once upon a time on the internet I did come upon ladder theory. While I didn't like it, I couldn't refute it at the time, and since I was already married, I didn't dwell on it.

So now I get it.

Because of lawsuits in the 80s and 90s, Many shied away from using NLP as a term. Also, there was a liability implied with the word "programming". Let's say you went to a therapist or life coach to quit smoking. If you were "programmed", then, just like a buggy computer program, if you did not quit smoking, it was the coaches fault and not yours. But if you used a different word like "conditioning", the blame is back on you.

Ladder Theory had some interesting points. But, I thought it to be short sighted and too simplistic. It over valued resources but did not take into account previous history and  synchronicity. As we travel through time and space, there are only certain windows in which reality can be changed - at least in that way. Let's take my ex-wife (to quote Rodney Dangerfield .. yes, please). Out of all the opportunities I had to meet her, there was only one place and time when her state would have allowed me to meet her. Crossing her as she had 15 minutes to get to work does not count. Crossing paths when she was in a relationship with an ex boyfriend does not count. It had to be at that time. the right time and place.

Now, was it happily ever after. No.

But my daughter thanks me for her existence.

But then again, a two hundred years from now barring some longevity vaccine and we are all dead, no one will care about the specifics or moods or any thing else about relationships of the past. All they will know is who had kids by whom, if someone did something notable, then move on.

Yes, being financially secure and not worried about the landlord knocking t your door with an eviction notice can help. Not so much for the social status, but I guarantee you are in a happier state of mind and more receptive to others if you are not worried about crud like tht Yes, looking good helps somewhat. But the largest factor in all of these stories including my own is that it was the correct time and place. Anything otherwise, nothing would have happened and the entire reality would have been shaped differently.

This even applies  to the stories in this thread. If that person had not bought that particular game and began playing at that particular time, no one would have met.

[Rusty Edge]

One of my favorite sayings is "A lot of life is timing"

It can be a lot easier to get a job or a date when somebody else has just quit or broken up with the employer/ woman. Sometimes people are just in the mood to offer an opportunity to somebody who truly appreciates it.

My wife and I are highly compatible. We think alike. We spend as much time as possible together. Before we met, we took a lot of the same vacations. We may have crossed paths, or come close to it more than once.

But if we'd met when I had my beard or handlebar mustache, she would have disregarded me. To have a chance I'd have to be clean shaven.

Actually, we met online. Not on a dating site, but on the off-topic area of a forum( with lots of juicy drama). We discovered that we had the same opinion about most everything and every one.. On the forum we weren't in dating mode trying to impress anybody, we were just being ourselves. We started to PM every day. We got together when we were in the same time zone, one August, and we clicked.

 I went to visit her on Christmas. By April I had transferred my job to her city, and moved into an apartment. We got engaged that fall and married before Christmas, and we lived happily ever after.

I'd like to tell you more, but I lead a partitioned life. Rusty Edge can be tied to my Real Life. I have another internet identity and presence. It has other facets of my life.

There is a firewall between them. I can't tie them all together. There's lots of  reasons. Potential identity theft. Potential theft of a scarce collection. There's an internet sociopath who'd like to harm me.  Potential antagonism between the aspects of my life- Religion, politics, career, family, lifestyle, charitable causes...   I don't want RL consequences because of a rant or story I have shared elsewhere.

[Green1]

Understood.

I use handles like you for privacy too. I would be more concerned with nosy employers though. They do all sorts of searches nowadays in HR departments. I can see it: you are on a gaming forum, hence you must be a time waster and a bad hire. You are some religion Mr Big Boss views as a cult, you are a bad fit so we need to make things rough on you like write you up for being one minute late kind of stuff.

Crazies I am not worried about and are my specialty. Especially if there was nothing to gain and a meeting was not mutually wanted. Ie: Guild meetup, convention, possible hook up, etc. Even the crazies have jobs. You can not keep one if you are stuck in jail for stalking or assault 900 miles from where you live Not to mention losing an apartment while in jail along with all their stuff. They just talk tough. Then get IP banned by whatever admin. Maybe sock puppet with proxies till that gets old, then disappear.

And the first story dealing with forums. Never heard of a meet up through forums before.

Cool beans.

[Unorthodox]

We think alike. We spend as much time as possible together. Before we met, we took a lot of the same vacations.

Nightmare.  Never understand you kind of people. 

My wife and I are very different.  We appreciate each other's interests, and most importantly support each other's interests, but we don't get involved with each other's things too often. 

Vacations?  I'd have never been one to go to Disneyland/world, that's very much the Boss's type of vacation.  In contrast, she'd have never been one to go off hiking in the woods.  It's good to experience different things. 

Even take house work.  We do things DIFFERENTLY.  I've seen other couples argue over doing something 'right' or 'wrong'.  We don't CARE, as long as it was done. 

Maybe it's just that we're both gemini and appreciate all the diversity more than a standard couple might. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  People are not simple, life is not simple, and different things work for different people.

That's the basis on which I've founded my own love of diversity - people sufficiently different have a lot to teach me, even if their solutions would not work for me.  Still worthy of study.

[Geo]

Weird. For some reason I thought Rusty's post was made by UnO.