Open Thread

Open Thread #48

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78 thoughts on “Open Thread #48

    1. My favorite cultural critic, Andre Wang Lin, gave Joker a 10/10, so I’m interested. I don’t like going to the cinema anymore, so I’ll wait until I can watch it elsewhere. Initially, I was very skeptical of this movie as it sounded as if the goal was to bash white, unsuccessful men. Yet, from the looks of it, there is a bit more to it.

    2. @Sleazy
      >>I was very skeptical of this movie as it sounded as if the goal was to bash white, unsuccessful men. Yet, from the looks of it, there is a bit more to it.>>

      It wasn’t the movie’s goal to bash white unsuccessful men, it was the leftist media who jumped onto the bash-train. In the movie the white unsuccessful man is portrayed as victim of circumstances. Leftist “liberal” media doesn’t like it when white men are portrayed as victims.

    3. It’s an Artwork-Movie. Definitely worth to see it at Cinema. The pictures and the Soundtrack… very virtuous.

    4. This comment ended up in my spam folder, as did another one of yours. Sorry about that.

  1. I have a question for you guys. If you were going to choose a European country for an extended vacation, based purely on the women, which one would you choose? Would it vary depending on whether you were looking for casual sex or a long term partner?

    1. For casual sex, I’d go to Berlin. While the local German women may not be the best, the city is full of party tourists, particularly during the summer. For a long-term partner, you’d probably be better off in the more conservative Eastern European countries such as Poland. This is just an educated guess, though. However, I’ve heard of quite a few guys who went to Eastern Europe to party, and many of the women they met were very eager to keep seeing them, presumably because they thought that this would be a way out of their second-world country.

    2. @Overdrive

      Eastern Poland, near the Belarus and Ukraine Borders: Lublin, Białystok, Rzeszów…. You’ll find very natural, very feminine women there!

      West Polish Girls are somewhat westernized and spoiled. The Eastern Ones in the “smaller” cities are superb!

  2. Why is porn so strange nowadays? I made a pornhub account so I could save videos and put solo girl vids and striptease as my favourite categories. When I clicked on recommended videos afterwards it was all incest porn, interracial sex glorification, cuckolding/hotwifing, fat chicks and gangbangs.

    This was on a fresh account with no watched videos and a browser with multiple tracker blockers, so it was nothing to with anything I’d looked at.

    It honestly put me off looking at any porn at all because I don’t even want to see the thumbnails of that degeneracy. What the fuck is going on? Don’t guys like normal sex any more? BDSM is more vanilla than this shit.

    1. It’s due to how algorithms work, not due to what people like.

      I think a minority of guys is into that shit, but there’s a reason why it’s on the top. I first figured this out when I wondered why a website listing “top 100 pornstars”.

      I would look at the top chicks… and like number one would be some uggo with massive naturals (like those tits that hang to the floor), then number two would be some six with a huge ass.

      And then it hit me.

      The reason why they’re on the top is because fetishes always end up on the top. And the reason fetishes end up on the top is simple.

      – Let’s say you have a 1000 hot pornstars
      – And you have 2 chicks specializing in the “tits hanging down to the floor” fetish

      – The million guys who are into “hot chicks” are spread out across the 1000 hotties (their votes/views are).

      – The 2000 guys who are into the “boobs hanging down to the floor” fetish are all giving their love to that one chick. Which is why she gets more views (and algorithm ranks her higher) than all those hotties.

    2. Same with the fetish that appeared on top for you. There’s like 10,000 non-fetish scenes released in a year. And like 100 fetish ones.

      The normal people’s votes/views get spread across 10,000 scenes (or the top 1000)… The weird cuckold guy’s votes views are spread across 10 scenes, with 2 of them getting most of the love. So it’s why those 2 cuckold scenes get many more views than a normal non-fetish scenes.

      But algorithm sees “x has more views than y, so people must be into x”.

    3. Wow, that is very insightful. It could also help explain another weird phenomenon on OkCupid. According to the booklet “Mathematics of Love”, regression formula for predicting number of messages received looks something like this:
      M = 0.4a1 – 0.5a2 – 0.1a4 + 0.9 a5 + some other stuff
      where a1 = number of 1/5 ratings etc…

      Obviously this is some kind of statistical artifact and it just might have something to do with messages being dispersed between many different 4s and concentrated between lower number of 5s.

    4. Alek, there were way too many incest videos for it to be a niche. And they seemed to be starring the top “actresses”.

      And I don’t get why so much of it is ao degrading. Like I don’t have a problem with interracial porn. If the girl is hot I don’t care what race the guy is. I’m fromba diverse background myself. But most interracial porn seems to either be some weird shit about how black guys are better at sex or some racist shit implying it’s degrading for the woman to have sex with a black guy.

      Actually I think a lot of porn is more about degradstion than what is actually sexy. Would explain all the gangbang vids.

    1. I’ve come across this subreddit before, but I have the impression that there is a lot of LARPing and trolling going on. Your post is a good example as it seems as if it was written by a guy, i.e. in a clear, consistent, and very methodological manner. Women surely act like that post describes it, but they would still describe their behavior with a thick layer of b.s. and comical justifications. Another tell is that the post uses typical male lingo. Do you think there are a lot of women on forums where terms like “looksmatch” are commonly used? For typical female reasoning, go to /r/askwomen. A particularly nice example of b.s. female reasoning I came across recently is the first comment under the article, “Women Say They Want a Guy With a Sense of Humor. They Don’t” by Gilbert Gottfried. He talks about how dishonest women are when they say that they like a guy with humor because he, a comedian, never got any groupies etc. Then, the first commenter writes the biggest pile of b.s. I’ve seen in a while:

      “being funny” is not the same thing as “having a sense of humor,” in my opinion. Yes I’ve gone for funny guys in the past but the laugh a minute definitely wears thin after awhile and isn’t sexy in of itself. What *is* sexy? Having a sense of humor – having an appreciation for wit, a sense of self irony or whimsy, an easy laugh, finding things funny and sharing that – that’s sexy. The ability to crack a joke is nice, in moderation, but not essential.

      You can see her hamster spinning so hard that it is almost killing itself. A tall guy with a great body is sexy and anything he says will make women laugh. You’d never realize that if you believed what women say.

    1. Quilette article is one of the best thing i have read that sums up everything very good leaving no space for sjw or feminists for pointless arguments because everything is covered

    2. It’s a really good article. Someone else posted it on here a couple of weeks back (maybe you posted it before Frank?), i had it bookmarked, and just finished reading it yesterday.

      It is one of those “ultimate” type of articles for sure you wanna keep bookmarked.

    3. If you read the comments section there is a woman trying to confutate the authors points by saying that this happen because men dont know how to take good pictures while women know very well how to do it and so is why they have it easier in tinder, stating that men and women have equal opportunity in online dating.

      How delusional you need to be for still negating the evidence after the author have been so detailed about his points

    4. @Alek

      >>maybe you posted it before Frank?<<
      Nope, but maybe I found it here? Not sure. It was in my bookmarks.

  3. I’m gonna read the good one followed by the delusional one lol

    I got a question Aaron and just start of with what you said about if the guy is tall, ripped, good looking and makes jokes then the woman will laugh – yeah cool. Even if she doesn’t laugh or frowns even – attraction is probably the reason for that as well.

    I don’t think the sense of humor was a totally silly observation though although I can see it get blown out of proportion. 2 guys, one of whom is bit taller, buffer and better looking I can say can be ‘outcompeted’ by someone who has lots more confidence, wit and a sense of humor in that he can induce good feelings in that woman.

    Now it depends how big that GAP is between the established external factors and these inner factors.

    Another angle is the popularity thing. Not the Tom Cruise example lol, but like in High School, sometimes it’s really popularity. It’s clear the principles you mention in Minimal Game etc. are major factors and should be worked on first. But there is this something, an extreme extension of which is a movie star or a singer where literally some other quality seems to shine, like maximizes or makes ‘shine’ the level you are at.

    Status, whatever you wanna call it does have an impact with some guys if they can work it to their advantage. It’s obviously not money, but this ‘thing’ in some situations ends up with women actually finding, fuck finding, at that time she would rather sleep with guy ‘7/10’ rather than ‘8/10’

    What is this shit and what’s the dance between it and Minimal Game factors when it comes to women ?

    1. You’re alluding to “that one guy” who featured in basically all marketing materials of the old PUA crowd, i.e. the claim that there are guys out there who, due to their personality, are able to make up for whatever they are lacking in looks, status, and money, and consistently get girls out of their league. There is no guy who consistently gets girls despite not having much to offer. However, it is possible that you have two guys of a comparable level where one may get the girl instead of the other. This can be explained simply by personal preference. Think of how blue-pilled cucks talk about some plain Janes. To you, the women may look similarly nondescript, but they see “something” in her, maybe her freckles or her red hair. Sure, if you are into that particular feature, a 7 may be an 8 to you. However, a 7 will never be an 8 to more than an insignificant number of guys because looks are, overall, a pretty objective measure.

    2. “looks are, overall, a pretty objective measure.”

      Aaron, wasn’t there some study showing that overal the variety of what’s considered “good looks” is broader for women than it is for men?
      i.e. Men view more different types of women beautiful than the other way around?
      (at least face-wise. Body-wise I’d say that “slim+petite” is the combo we mostly go for. I’m excluding the youth factor here.)
      This would be pretty much in line with genetic variety of our male ancestestors being lower than our female ancestors.
      What I’m saging is that women are pickier.

    3. I think men are simply willing to settle for less as I would find it hard to believe that a guy who is a solid 8 but who cannot get a ‘look-matched’ woman and instead picks a 7 views her as his personal 10, or some such nonsense.

  4. Aaron i wanted to write this in the other blog because is a different topic but there you dont have open threads, so:

    Whats your opinion about the “rich mentality” books out there? I am referring to, as example, robert kyosaki rich dad, donald trump books, napoleon hill, millionare next door, 7 habits high successful people… you get the idea about whats kind of books i am talking about.

    I am curious to know your opinion since you always gave me the impression to be the kind of guy who rely mostly if not completly to his employee income

    1. You’re talking about get-rich-quick schemes. It’s nonsense. Kyosaki are downright frauds who shamelessly makes up things, by the way. In terms of expected value, you are infinitely better off picking a decent career and build wealth consistently.

    2. Out of all the wealthy people I know, not a single one had read any of these books or recommends reading them; however, what they have in common is that they are engrossed in details of their work and don’t have time for woowoo. Some of them may occasionally go to a conference of this type but it is mostly in order to network with famous entrepreneurs who were invited as speakers.

    3. I had a look at google to cheeck about kyosaki. Seem that there are suspects that he actually have made up a lot of stuff about his life story. I read rich dad and cashflow. Richdad was kind of ok, he could have used only 50 pages to explain his points instead of 200. Cashflow i just couldnt bring me to finish because he just kept saying the same stuff again and again (could have used only 10-15 pages for that book).

      Still the concepts he explain seem fair to me: get passive income, invest money, have money work for you (ie be an enteprneur instead of an employee), build a sustem, money management…

      Also, you didnt tell me about trump? Do you have read any of our god emperor books? He explain similar things

    4. As far as I know, Trump hasn’t written the books that bear his name. In the end, he’s just a hustler, trying to make extra money off his fame. Also, any kind of self-help manual on how to get rich by Trump would be ludicrous as his family is very wealthy. His father was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t want to downplay Donald Trump’s success, but you probably agree that he had an excellent starting position.

  5. Dear Aaron

    Can you comment this video?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODWJZEtBlu0

    Here is my comment: These people are genuine, and more honest than what happens on your average date.
    It’s very touching.
    It’s not based on looks – but on human connection.

    Advice for men: look in the mirror, then choose a woman who is on your level as far as looks are concerned.

    Average men want to date hot girls.

    They like them because of their physical attractiveness – then they are shocked when the girls rate also them according to their physical attractiveness and reject them.

    How about, if you are an average guy, you go for an average girl with a “nice personality”.

    Then she will also appreciate you for your “nice personality”.

    Win-win.

    Average men want to date hot young women. They resort to PUA when they are deluded. They call themselves Black Pilled – when they accept the truth.

    Attractive people will date attractive people.

    PUA average guys have a sense of entitlement when they think they should be able to shag attractive young women.

    1. I’ll have a look later. However, I can already tell you that your assumptions about dating are wrong. Women attribute a nice personality to men they find attractive. Similarly, believing that unattractive women have a pleasant personality is a ludicrous proposition. It is a false dichotomy, by the way. I have found that more attractive women have more pleasant personalities while unattractive women tend to be bitter.

    2. The problem is, as anyone with experience will tell you the same Aaron told you… hotter girls are nicer.

      I’ve honestly never even so much as touched a non-hot-chick, coz they’re too much work. Busting through all her insecurities, bitterness and shit-tests is just not worth it.

      I’d rather have a nice flirtation with 30 hotties and only get one, then endure the bitterness of 10 “plain janes” in order to get one.

    3. Now, to be fair, you can get the same niceness from non-hotties. All it takes is being charming/charismatic.

      – If I force myself to stretch my face into a clownish hyper-grin and force a “warm tonality”, those sixes are nice to me

      – But this is not natural to me, and a ton of work. Oddly, hotties do not require me to have an ear-to-ear grin in order to treat me like a human being. Hotties are just as nice to me when I have my natural deadpan emotionless face.

      – If I force myself to stretch my face into a clownish hyper-grin and force a “warm tonality”, those sixes are nice to me

      You know who else they’re nice to? Chads.

      – I’m not a chad, so sixes ain’t fucking nice to me.
      – But hotties are nice to me, despite not being a chad

    4. I’d rather have a nice flirtation with 30 hotties and only get one, then endure the bitterness of 10 “plain janes” in order to get one.

      And yes, I’m pulling those numbers outta my ass. But my point is I wouldn’t bother with a non-hottie even if the “conversion rate” was 100 times higher than with sevens and eights.

      The amount of work and effort it takes (unless you’re naturally charming or a chad) is just mind-boggling.

  6. I forgot to mention: the video I posted – is related to the topic of incels.

    We have a supermarket mentality.

    We see women as commodities at the supermarket – we think we are entitled to have a hot young woman.

    Just like we can buy any merchandise on the shelf at the supermarket – we think that we can have any hot woman as long as we pay the right price.

    What I am criticizing here is the attitude of incels. I’m not a chad. I’ve had periods of inceldom in my life.

    Incels complain – and I’ve been watching Incel TV on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV3oX6B8Uq8VMh_L5zStVfg

    they complain that hot women judge them on their looks only.

    Maybe.. maybe hot women want to sleep with hot guys. Is that too much to ask?

    You don’t want to sleep with an ugly woman, do you?

    Incels feel entitled to having hot women.

    The point of the video is — if you look in the mirror and just date someone that looks like you, you could have a meaningful relationship based on human connection.

    Incels should not feel entitled. They should not punch above their weight – and they would not be incels anymore.

    Incels feel entitled to bang good looking women – so they remain incels.

    They would not be incels if they banged women who look like them. If you are a manlet with disgusting moves – find an ugly fat woman. She will bang you and have your kids.

    Ok, I get it, Pick Up Artistry works to a certain extent.

    In monogamous traditional societies, where 95% of people are married – you would not have a chance to bang a Stacy.

    Stacy would marry Chad when she is 18-20 years old and she would be off the market.
    Most hot women would be off the market by the age of 24, either marrying rich guys or hot guys.

    AlekNovy – I get it you are a great PUA with good game. More power to you. I wish you great success in banging as many sluts as you can.

    The video was about incels.

    1. You must be a woman. The well-documented issue is that women consider the bottom 80% of guys unattractive. The entitlement mentality is off-the-charts. At most, they get a quick pump-and-dump with Chad, but this leads them to believing that this is their baseline, not realizing that men put women in two categories, i.e. those that are only good for a quick fuck, and potential long-term interests. I discussed this issue in my recent post, How men and women view one-night stands.

      What we see is that women seem to make less and less of an effort (look at obesity rates!) while men who are seriously looking hit the gym and try to make more money. Plenty of guys drop out of the dating market after they have achieved great success in both areas because the quality of the women they can get without paying just isn’t worth sacrificing your life for.

    2. The chances that you’re not a woman “Mr. Greg” I’d estimate stand at about 0.00%.

      You really suck at logic, and most of your response is a complete non-sequitor to us demolishing your shitty opposed-to-reality claims.

    3. We see women as commodities at the supermarket – we think we are entitled to have a hot young woman.

      IRRELEVANT to your claims. Whether “we toxic men” look at women as objects to pick off of a shelf or not, doesn’t change the falsehood of your claims that less attractive women are nice and easier to get with.

      Just like we can buy any merchandise on the shelf at the supermarket – we think that we can have any hot woman as long as we pay the right price.

      IRRELEVANT. That some insane PUAs believe you can get any girl if you hit the right switches (as if paying the right price in a supermarket), doesn’t change the idiocy of your claims that non-hotties are nicer and easier to get… or that your dating life would be easier if only you went for less attractive girls.

    4. What I am criticizing here is the attitude of incels. I’m not a chad. I’ve had periods of inceldom in my life.

      That line is completely true for me.

      And you know when I had the periods most similar to an incel-like existence? When I spent big celibate periods getting harshly rejected and depressed over being treated like shit by less attractive girls who treated me as subhuman. These plain janes would treat me like shit and find every fault with me, and then fuck chad within 2 minutes in the nearest bathroom.

      I have never in my life been treated like shit by a hottie. Ever.

    5. they complain that hot women judge them on their looks only.

      Maybe.. maybe hot women want to sleep with hot guys. Is that too much to ask?

      You don’t want to sleep with an ugly woman, do you?

      IRRELEVANT to your claims.

      YOUR CLAIM: If someone lowers their standards, they won’t face as much difficulty and be able to get a nice girl who wants to bang him without all those difficulties and dealing with chad competition.

      So some* incels have this crazy belief that hot girls shouldn’t prefer hot guys… Ok and? Yes it’s bullshit of them to say this. But it’s also bullshit of you to claim that if they merely went for a non-hot girl they wouldn’t face the same issues.

      When you go for an average chick (unless you’re charismatic) the issues actually MULTIPLY. The issue that incels become bitter because of a lifetime of experience where chicks treat chads a lot more nicely than non-chads. Chad can do no wrong and is a holy being, whereas as non-chads are treated as “subhuman”.

      What I’ve found is that the hotter a chick is, the less she kisses chad ass. If she’s hot enough, she treats him like an equal (not like the holy being that average chicks treat him as).

      Yes, she prefers fucking chads just like the average chick. HOWEVER the difference in how she TREATS average guys vs chads is much smaller.

      You’ll see average girls almost act offended that an average guy dared ask them out, and then 2 minutes later offer their asshole to chad in the bathroom as they kiss his ass and treat him like a holy being.

      The more attractive girls will merely prefer a chad, but will generally be just as nice to chads and non-chads.

    6. Incels should not feel entitled. They should not punch above their weight – and they would not be incels anymore.

      Incels feel entitled to bang good looking women – so they remain incels.

      They would not be incels if they banged women who look like them. If you are a manlet with disgusting moves – find an ugly fat woman. She will bang you and have your kids.

      And this is how we know you’re a woman (or a gay man, or a man who’s never flirted with an ugly fat woman in his life).

      If you had even 1 experience attempting this, you’d know how ludicrous this statement is.

    7. Plain Janes vs Hotties (and where I went wrong with my comments)

      For clarity and because some people define these differently, I think i should have used the terms attractive (not “hot”) and unattractive (not “plain”). I would switch them out in my comments if I could.

      For example…

      I have never in my life been treated like shit by a hottie. Ever.

      I just realized that some people will define a desperate six in heels and tight clothes as a “hottie”. And yes, those tend to treat you like shit. I often forget most guys are fooled by that.

      When I say hottie, i mean genuinely attractive females (sevens, eights etc) that are above average in looks because of their genetics, not because their clothes are tighter than average or their makeup stronger than average.

      – So yes, a plain six will generally be nicer than a six in tight clothes and tons of makeup.
      – All else equal however, an eight is much nicer than a six

  7. Hey guys,

    I’m thinking about working with a psychotherapist and I wanted to see if anyone here has any experience with that. I’m wondering if it’s worth the $ investment and also what to look for a in a therapist.

    My primary reason for working with a shrink is because I developed psychosomatic symptoms. In psychosomatic conditions a person experiences real physical symptoms like pain, fatigue, and countless other symptoms are possible. And yet there is no detectable medical pathology. In short accumulation of psychological distress can cause severe physical symptoms.

    I’ve worked with a psychotherapist before and made significant progress during that time. Primarily we focused on emotional distress rooted in childhood experiences: parents’ divorce, conflict between different sides of the family and me being in middle of it as a child. As well as personality traits like excessive perfectionism, excessive conscientiousness.

    The lady I worked with was in her seventies. I certainly felt some relief during the time I worked with her. But it was expensive and now that I’m thinking about working with a therapist again, I’m wondering whether I would have made the same progress on my own through journaling, meditation, self-reflection and other methods.

    I’m also wondering if this time I should trying working with a male psychotherapist. I know that fit between client and therapist is the most important factor. The lady I worked with before was a good fit, but when it came the sorts of things we discuss here, she couldn’t really appreciate my point of view. I am not sure she realizes just how much the world has changed.

    So I’m looking for some guidance on whether you think psychotherapy is more helpful than working on things on your own and on selecting a suitable therapist. Also whether working with someone over skype is equally effective as working with someone face to face.

    Any thoughts, advice appreciated.

    1. I’ve already have some experience with this and I am thinking about returning to it.

      There is a chance I have some mild kind of depression or some different shit as I often feel fatigue, I am rarely happy and have low self-esteem. My father also has depression and it seems I inherited it from him.

      I was going to some psychotherapist for some time a few years ago, but I’ve stopped this after a few visits, because I came to the conclusion I don’t need it. So it’s hard for me to form any opinion about it.

      But there are tons and tons of positive reviews plus on top of that researcher says good things about it, so it’s hard for me to believe all of it is a placebo.

      Here you can read about ‘cognitive behavioral therapy’ (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/). I am not accustomed to read such papers so maybe someone will point me it is a bullshit paper.
      At the end it is written:
      “Despite these weaknesses in some areas, it is clear that the evidence-base of CBT is enormous. Given the high cost-effectiveness of the intervention, it is surprising that many countries, including many developed nations, have not yet adopted CBT as the first-line intervention for mental disorders. ”

      Coming to your question:
      “Also whether working with someone over skype is equally effective as working with someone face to face.”

      For me ‘face to face’ and it’s not even close and don’t know why anyone would want different.

      I also would go for a guy rather than a woman, simply because men are better at whatever job there exists.

      It can happen that you will be happy with the very first guy, but if the doctor will seem like he is not interested or is not listening then skip him immediately for the next one until you will find the one that suits you. Drop any whining doctor.

      My colleague who is psychiatrist said that most psychiatrists are awful, they are in the field just for the money. In fact few specialties in Medicine are as profitable as psychiatry. They pushed many new medsicines on the market which are less effective than the one created 30 years ago!

    2. Don’t confuse psychiatry with psychology. The former is about pumping you full of drugs to temporarily solve your problems and saddling you with new ones due to side effects and the addiction risk of standard medications in that field.

    3. I’ve worked with a psychotherapist when I was in my early 20s. I found it very helpful, but it depends a lot on the person on the other chair. At worst, you’ll get a blue-pilled cuck or a harpy with feminist tendencies who will tell you that your expectations are the problem, or some simp who will only let you talk and occasionally ask you, “How does that make you feel, GMoney?”

      To tout my horn a bit here, I’ve had a few clients who have ditched their psychotherapists and they got more out my consultation sessions. Of course, I’m not a psychotherapist, but I have quite some experience in setting people straight.

    4. I don’t have first hand experience but I’d say you can profit from psychotherapy the most if you find a therapist who is smarter than you. Best bet would be to check out local faculty of psychology and see if there is a professor of clinical psychology who also does psychotherapy as a side-business or can recommend a colleague who has experience in treating the problem in question. I have an acquaintance whose family member was at brink of suicide due to certain psychological issue and the psychotherapist, who happens to be an university professor, handled the issue masterfully and helped him set his life on track.

      Also, if therapist’s orientation is anything other than CBT, I’d consider it as a red flag.

    5. Try to find someone who does ISTDP.
      Ideally he/she still goes to do the work groups with Habib Davanloo in Canada on multiple occasions during the year.

      Here an excerpt from wikipedia. It’s exactly what I “went through” from mid 2016 until end of 2018.

      “Let’s take a look at what’s happening here. You have come on your own free will, because you are experiencing a problem which causes you pain. We have set out to get to the root of your difficulties, but every time we attempt to move toward it, you put up this massive wall. The wall keeps me out, and it keeps you from knowing your own true feelings. If you keep me out, you keep me useless. Is that what you want? Because, as you see, you are certainly capable of keeping me useless to you. My first question is, why would you want me to be useless? You see, the consequences of this would be that I would be unable to help you. I’d like to, but the nature of this work is that I can’t help everyone. Sometimes I fail. However, can you afford to fail? How much longer do you want to carry this burden? ”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_short-term_dynamic_psychotherapy

      Good luck. You can do it.

    6. As someone who has had problems with depression, social anxiety and psychosomatic ailments: I found CBT and ACT quite useful to “learn” how to organizing my life and solving problems. There are some good ONLINE-CBT-courses, which – according to science – can be quite helpful and are way cheaper than real human therapists. Many health insurances will pay for those courses.

      What I really can recommend is: autogenic training, progressive muscle relaxation according to Jacobsen, and meditation. Helped me tremendously with my psychosomatic ailments, social anxiety and depression.

      Don’t dismiss psychotropic medications! I don’t like that they are being prescribed like candy those days, but in some cases they might be helpful, especially when it concerns trauma and post traumatic stress disorders. But also when it comes to Social Anxiety and (strong!) depression.

      >>>I’m also wondering if this time I should trying working with a male psychotherapist…. <<<

      I've been asking that myself! Well, most psychotherapists are SJWs, white knights, and do-gooders, so even male therapists may tell you about how males are all bad and women the holy grail. :=D ^^

    7. @ Michal
      >>They pushed many new medsicines on the market which are less effective than the one created 30 years ago!<<
      Indeed! Think of TCAs vs SSRI.

      Pozdrowienia!

    8. Thank you all for commenting and sharing your experiences. I’ll keep everything you’ve said in mind.

      @Neutral

      Funny you should mention ISTPD. The therapist that I worked with in the past trained with Davanloo.

    9. “The therapist that I worked with in the past trained with Davanloo.”

      And, how did that go?

    10. @Neutral

      I think it went well. I definitely experience some psychological relief, but I stopped going because my physical symptoms did not resolve and that was my primary focus.

      In retrospect I feel I stopped prematurely.

    11. It’s more or less how you describe. My therapist helped me realized that I have very strong feelings about my parents divorce and other family conflicts. I went emotionally numb to protect myself from those feelings and to be able to move forward in life, but eventually it caught up with me.

      So in short, she helped me get in touch with my feelings. Funny, just a few years ago I would have dismissed this kind of getting in touch with your feelings talk, but now it seems so obvious that feelings can be repressed and to continue to exert their influence “from below.”

  8. I do a little update from my side as I’ve asked before about ‘System design’ (one open thread earlier), because this was a topic of my second round of interview.

    During the first part of the interview I had live coding session which constituted of implementing algorithm: ‘Reverse Polish Notation’.

    The second part of the interview was ‘System Design’ . Given some ‘Web portal’ I had to design a system, which saves ‘clicks’ to the URL, so some statistics can be shown to the Reporter.

    I’ve thought I did quite good, but they didn’t give me an offer. In feedback they’ve written:
    “In programming part unfortunately you’ve focused more on procedural programming and it would be nice to see more object-oriented programming – very often such solutions are more easier to maintenance. You were programming more in academic than pragmatic style. We want to recommend you to try applying once more after some time, we see in you potential blabla” .

    Guys were young and seems quite skilled, but at the same time seemed bit brainwashed with this OOP cult.

    They were waiting for OOP solution to simple algorithm problem.

    Nevertheless I got already an offer and still have some interviews, so this doesn’t matter much.

    1. The claim that OOP solutions are easier to maintain would require some substantial evidence. Quite frankly, it is comical to make that claim. Even current best practices have moved on to dropping inheritance and instead focus on composition, and for that, a functional programming language is a much better fit. For a quick laugh, search for the “enterprise edition” of “Hello, world!” or FizzBuzz. This was a meme a few years ago in programmer circles where people tried to come up with convoluted OOP solutions to very straightforward problems. Anybody who has ever touched an enterprise code base has likely seen worse, though.

    1. Du hast mich! Lol German is such a brutal sounding language for rock and metal.

      I’ll have to check out Laibach.

  9. The biggest entitled self-centered princesses and Cinderellas are italian and spanish women. During my stay there I witnessed so many unbearable “Divas”. They have this fucked-up attitude that a man has to buy them a big house and a nice sports-car and accept all their shortcomings and pay a 100.000€ wedding party… jesus christ, I never experienced that much self-righteous entitlement and explicit arrogance.

    If they at least would bring something to the table, but Spanish chicks are nearly as obese as German chicks and the divorce rates @ Spain are higher than in Germany, despite being a catholic country.

    1. Old but gold article. It is always interesting how in the comments a lot of people try to dismantle the author points with poor logic or insult.

      The pictures guys use being the problem is a major point those people use. For them guys should use these master pieces of photography pictures to get some matches while women with their duck faces selfies in the bathroom are good enough to have hundrends of likes.

      The most delusional comment is the one where this person say ” its the personality that is seen trough the pictures that makes you unattractive”
      Aaron have just made a post about it that explain very well how it work really

  10. I was in Stockholm and Gothenborg four years ago, apparently it turned into real shitholes by now due to a sharp increase in gang-related crimes. Even car manufactur Volvo contemplates moving his headquarters to another country:

    “Wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen:
    Laut seinem Vorstands-Chef Hakan Samuelsson erwägt der schwedische Autobauer Volvo, seine Unternehmens-Zentrale aus Göteborg ins Ausland zu verlagern. In einem Interview mit der schwedischen Zeitung „SvD Näringsliv“ sagte der Manager, dass es angesichts der zunehmenden Gewalt immer schwieriger werde, neue Mitarbeiter für die Zentrale zu rekrutieren.”
    https://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2019/07/12/zu-viel-verbrechen-volvo-erwaegt-zentrale-ins-ausland-zu-verlagern/?cookietime=1573125645

    1. This was reported internationally. I saw it on mainstream news portals but also on alternative news sites like Zerohedge. The reputation of Sweden has dropped about as badly as the performance of their pupils on PISA and TIMMS. Not all indicators for Sweden are pointing downwards, though. Rapes, shooting, and bombings are way up. There are now bombs exploding even in the supposedly safest cities, like in cental Lund, which is a quaint medieval university town.

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