Open Thread

Open Thread #316

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42 thoughts on “Open Thread #316

  1. In a recent comment I mentioned that Google seems to be a bit less censorious nowadays, while of course still demonetizing anyone they do not like. As it turns out, there is an anti-trust probe going on, which may explain this. Still, I do not mind that ultra-autists have a little bit more visibility again. Here is a blog I came across just today, of some guy who wrote thousands of pages on cRPGs, because he wants to and not because he has a huge audience:
    https://lilura1.blogspot.com

    1. This could be mistaken for satire. Well, Tinder is reaping what it sowed. They tried to milk men as much as possible, not realizing that unlike with “whales” in a mobile game, you do need a certain number of active members of both sexes to keep a dating app afloat. For $500/month you probably get a sizable discount from a neighborhood whore, and if not, you should still get plenty of pay-for-play action, and probably more than you would even want. One of the most expensive cities for sex in Europe is Amsterdam, and there prices have dropped to below 100 euros for banging any of those “window girls”, which are already the most expensive ones. Only escorts charge more.

    2. My reaction when I saw this was that this is probably sugar dating in disguise. My guess is that the message will make it obvious that a “whale” is messaging her.

    3. The problem, though, is that you have to give $499 to Tinder for the privilege of messaging chicks. Afterwards, you also have to pay the chicks if you are running sugar game. A much better sell would be some kind of a “whore subscription” that allows you to bang as many sluts as you want for $499/mo. but good luck getting this off the ground in the current year.

    4. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. They’re stuck coz they can’t be explicit and offer an explicit sugar dating option. And so they came with this weird frankenstein thing which doesn’t make sense for anyone.

  2. Hi Aaron!

    1. So, I just got back a few days ago from vacation. I went camping to Wyoming. I went to see the wildlife more notably the grizzly bear. I did see one in nature not in captivity. Anyways, while exploring I ran into this woman who happened to be in her early to mid-30s (white). I found it very “odd” that she was exploring by herself. It’s not uncommon to find women who are in their 50s who go camping/hiking solo. In her case, I wasn’t sure what to make of it because you just don’t see women in that age bracket hike/camp solo its quite rare. Unfortunately, I didn’t talk to her. We just cross path. She made strong eye contact and wanted to talk to me, but I was so indifferent towards her. I was taking pictures of a buffalo when I ran into her. Now, would you consider these women to be unstable and not suitable for long-term relationship if they go camping/hiking solo? I’m not sure if its common or uncommon in Europe, but it quite uncommon here for that age bracket. With men its quite different. You do find a subset of men who go camping/hiking solo a lot more than females do.

    2. Aside from Wyoming I also went to Salt Lake City, Utah. While there I went to visit the Mormon church. As I was exploring the church, I bumped into these two Mormons girl who greeted me. They were in their mid-20s, and once again I was so indifferent towards them. Lol. I wasn’t doing this intentional. A few minutes later I started thinking whether those two Mormon girls are in fact good girls (wifey/long-term material) or some reformed slut who found God. I’m not familiar with the Mormon Church. If they happened to be reformed sluts, would they have a hard time pretending to be virgins? And would they also have a hard time pretending to be demure and shy?

    1. 1) I find it exceedingly rare that women do anything alone, not just hiking. If she is out on her own, she puts herself in a great deal of danger, even if her level of physical fitness is well above average for a woman. I would thus even question her decision-making ability. I am not just talking about encounters with wild animals that can prove dangerous. Instead, women seem to assess dangerous situations a lot differently, i.e. they are oblivious to many issues. This can mean leaving a hiking trail to jump off a small cliff because they want to look at something, only to later realize that there is no easy way up anymore. I have seen women struggle severely, and being unable to overcome, even an obstacle that was just three feet high. Even a fallen tree can completely stump them. The biggest issue for many of them is not realizing that a particular hiking trail is unsafe due to changed weather conditions, yet insisting on the opposite because the map on their phone said so.

      2) There are a lot of “reformed sluts” out there. Once you interact with them, they will give hints about their past. It is similar to riding a bike: You cannot pretend not to be able to ride a bike. Similarly, if you have woman in bed who pretends to be basically a virgin, despite a body count that is at least in the high double digits, it will be very clear that she knows how to handle a dick. Just like riding a bike, it is something sexually experienced women do subconsciously. The biggest sluts are able to adapt on the fly, which, again, happens basically automatically. Perhaps martial arts are a good analogy. With some experience, you can quickly adapt to the style of your opponent whereas a beginner will try to do the exact same no matter his opponent’s size, height, or fighting style, with wildly different results.

    2. Aaron, re: 2)

      You can notice it on how comfortable they are with what they do as well. I remember one girl who told me she’d only ever been with one guy, and that only a few times. Said she tried giving head once, but didn’t like it.

      Then she goes down on me, deepthroats me like it’s nothing, and swallows the whole load without question. Yeah, you’re really inexperienced, and haven’t really given head before. Uh-huh. And 1+1=3 as well, I guess.

    3. Did I not write something quite similar? On a related note, there are also women who put on an act of being inexperienced, but it is clear that it is just a game. To some extent, it seems that the vast majority of sexually experienced women do this. It is basically a joke when they say that they “never do this” or that they are “not like those other girls” and when you hear such a sentence you are basically guaranteed to get laid.

  3. So I had a question in the Open Threads last week I think. I was pondering what does it mean if the 35-40 years old are throwing themselves at me. Does it mean I can expect at least a similar (fine with less) interest from the 30 year olds in shape.

    So I had that question answered today. I put on a form-fitting shirt. I can now since I leaned up a bit, I can wear a tight shirt that fits well.

    I ended up overshooting the target. Wasn’t expecting this. It was the 20-25 years old in the mall doing all the staring and hovering. The hotter, the more they stared. The best was in the beaty shop where I get my skincare, there all the 20-somethings look like looks professionals. I mean they look like they’re either escorts or do some work based on their looks, which is why they shop there probably. It was the most hardcore there. I totally wasn’t expecting it.

    For reference, I didn’t even lean down that much, I only dropped down to 20% bodyfat. Meaning it’s now obvious that what I carry on me is muscle, not fat, but still not defined muscle. I was expecting to get these results (from 30 year olds) when I get back to 15% bodyfat and show up in places with lots of status and authority and social proof. I’m getting it from 25 year olds dressed in sweatpants and a nice muscle shirt. Just some random (older) dude shopping around.

  4. I am currently going through the VN Fruit of Grisaia. It is pretty good and it clearly knows its audience. As far as I can tell, there is little to no interactivity. After a few hours of play time, I have yet to encounter a screen that allows me to make a choice. The game supposedly tackles serious psychological issues, yet the premise is bizarre: you are a male student who got put into private school that only has six other students and they all turn out to be kinky in some way or another, with bizarre situations like a girl breaking into your room in your absence to try on clothes, and of course you walk in on her when she is naked. It is not yet clear to me if this game is a parody. Some of the scenes seem to be written in a deliberately awkward way.

    On the side, I like to decompress by playing more action-oriented games while I listen to podcasts or music. This spot is currently taken by the shmup Deathsmiles II X. The arrange mode is really fun. It took me just a few tries to 1CC this game and if I had made a real effort instead of dicking around, I could probably have 1CC’ed it on my first try. This does not tell the whole story as the game has an interesting risk/reward mechanic with a stage-based difficulty system. If you want to clear it, you stick to the default setting but if you want to ramp up your score, at the risk of not making it to the end, you pick one of the two other settings. The graphics are pretty horrible, though, and the music is not much better. Yet, based on the solid gameplay alone, I rate it at 4/5 Chads.

    1. “It is not yet clear to me if this game is a parody. Some of the scenes seem to be written in a deliberately awkward way.”

      – It starts out as a “Slice of Life”.,but gets more serious later on once you find yourself landing into one of the heroines’ routes. You haven’t even run into any choices yet,so you are definitely in for a long ride before you get there.

      Yuuji (the MC) has been accused before of being a “Gary Stu” (male version of “Mary Sue”),but somebody has described him as a PARODY of a Mary Sue/Alpha and I definitely agree with the assessment. I’d link you to the old interesting discussion on reddit about it,but that would be introducing you to spoilers. Hell,I might already be doing you a disservice by talking about this before allowing you to develop your own opinion first,so I’ll stop here for now.

    2. Fruit of Grisaia is too tedious. I have put around six to seven hours into it and there is just not a lot happening. There is not even a good story hook. So far, it it not exactly clear why the MC was put in the position he was in even though there were some allusions now that his female handler has shown up. According to HLTB [1], I am about 1/3 done with the main story but if that is the case then I do not think that the writers did a good job. I am cutting my losses now, though.
      [1] https://howlongtobeat.com/game/13668

    3. I just started another VN, Acting Lessons. The difference in story telling, compared to Fruit of Grisaia, is startling. You know right away who you are, i.e. a retired crypto bro in his early 40s, within minutes you get a gratuitous sex scene in the form of a flashback that features your ex-girlfriend, and then the game sets up the hook of the story: a corner store in which you want to buy something gets robbed, right as you are flirting with the sexy cashier. The MC gets beaten up, put into a coma, and now there is some kind of a bond between him and the cashier.

      Acting Lessons is not perfect. There is a surprising amount of wokeness for a porn game. For instance, the MC’s best friend is a black dude and the thug who stomped on his face was white. I fully expected the doctor to be black too, but he was not. Anyway, I am about one hour into this VN and reasonably curious about how this story is going to unfold.

    4. If you are looking for an adult VN, I warmly recommend Acting Lessons. Granted, the premise is a bit odd: you are retired crypto bro who opens his heart and wallet to some random chick who supposedly saved his life. She is a fledgling actress and knows a lot of sluts. The interactions are, for the most part, quite realistic. Even the good girl turns out to be a slut, though. There is a bit of humor, some of it laugh-out-loud funny, but some shockingly bad. There is one particularly horrible joke that would have made be uninstall the game had it come early on.

      The major weakness of this game is that there is too much going in in terms of story. It would have worked fine just focusing on the relationships. You have the freedom of playing the game in ultra-cuck mode, as a major womanizer, or something in-between. I particularly liked the pivotal event of the story, which consists of a group of two guys and a bunch of sluts spending time at a cabin, with plenty of potential jealousy plots, the women being unsure if they fuck guys just for sport or because they really like them, and lots of boozing. I quite like such stories, capturing the transition from dumb teenager behavior to adulthood. You can even interpret this episode as an allegory to college life. As a minor spoiler, this group of friends scatters afterwards, and for good reasons, as they have to return to the real world afterwards and live with the consequences of their actions.

      The ending is far too dramatic and was also quite superfluous. It almost seems as if the writer wanted to include enough sub-plots to make sure that at least one of them causes an emotional reaction. Given the otherwise very good impression this game left on me, the one or two twists at the end, depending on the story line you chose, did not really bother me. There is also quite a bit of replayability as you cannot unlock all scenes and endings in a single playthrough. I read that there are over 20 distinct endings, but you can probably see most of what this VN has to offer with four playthroughs, and all subsequent ones are very fast as you can auto-skip through scenes you have encountered. There are three main girls and you are only nudged towards one of them. My first route was Giga Chad, i.e. trying to bang absolutely every chick, which led to a really chaotic ending, Giga Cuck, i.e. staying with the first girl you encounter, and semi-player, where you need to pursue another chick for a while because the game does not let you get rid of the first one you meet for a long time. My top waifu is Rena. She would make an excellent character for Dead or Alive.

      Acting Lessons gets 4.5/5 Chads, but only for men of culture. If you find VNs odd, I do not think that this one will change your mind at all.

    5. That’s the issue with Kajitsu/Fruit,and why I hesitate to recommend to all but invested experienced readers in the genre who happen to be in the mood for a LOT of SoL. The common route just drags on WAY too long. You do not get to the serious part of the story until you enter one of the heroines’ story routes. There was a review somewhere that pointed out the issues in deeper detail,but the blog has sadly since gone down. (probably by voluntary decision)

      I personally do not regret my decision finishing this VN as I thoroughly enjoyed it once I actually got to the real meat of the story,but I do not blame you for cutting your losses here. Believe it or not,you would have had a LOT more to go from there. The site you link to is misleading with saying you only need 23 hours to complete this game. Yeah,that is if you SKIP the heroines’ routes,the actual meat of the VN. I would not consider those as “side quests” unless you are playing the VN purely for the humor/SoL (That’d be a strange reason to pick up this VN though) or you only intend to pick ONE of the heroines and skip out everybody else.

      Glad that you seem to have a positive reception of the VN genre in general though.

      If you want more relatively low-investment (not story heavy) recommendations,might I suggest you check out School Days HQ? Of course,given your unique background,you might find it difficult to suspend your disbelief at the story. I would DEFINITELY be interested to hear what you think of it should you give it a go. lol.

      School Days is unique in that it is fully animated. Like you’re literally playing an anime. (I do not recommend you watch the actual anime adaptation though) Very similar to Dragon’s Lair.

    6. Steam is currently running a dedicated shmups sales event, but their definition of the genre is very broad. I was not the biggest fan of Danmaku Unlimited 2. Both Ginga Force and Natsuki Chronicles are on sale as well. They are really solid, but I think there is a clear gap between these two games and genuine genre stand-outs such as Crimzon Clover, which is arguably the best shmup on Steam, and one of the best ones ever made.

  5. I’ve been watching a playthrough of Mortal Kombat 1 (aka 12). The women in these games have gone from hot in MK9, to okay in MK10, to meh in MK11. In MK12 they look like post-menopausal feminists who just smelled a bad fart. If this game is at all moddable, I’d be surprised if there isn’t already a mod to fix this. Here’s hoping AI helps independent creators put a mercy pillow over the converged AAA gaming industry.

    1. Mortal Kombat has gotten absolutely wrecked by the ESG crowd. For twenty years, this game was about sex and violence but we can’t have the former anymore. I am not that well-versed when it comes to fighting games, but MK was right up there when it comes to sexualizing women, er, presenting physically attractive women. I have not watched much footage of MK12 but the little I have seen was quite sobering. Kitana and Sonya Blade were put in this game to titillate the audience, not to make your dick shrink.

    2. I actually watched about an hour of the game movie on youtube before giving up. It’s maybe their best attempt at a single player campaign, but it just did not hold my interest beyond that point.

  6. Aaron,
    In your Open Thread #314 you stated the following
    “From their 20s onwards, any woman who is still single will get increasingly desperate and some of them become quite sexually aggressive. This is a reaction to them getting less and less positive responses from men. Those are the women who will bluntly offer their pussy or casually drop remarks about how much they enjoy sucking dick.”

    Will women become sexually aggressive and casually hook up on the first night with average looking guys (non-Chads), or will they still make average looking guys wait for sex until they can prove they are great financial providers?

    1. Average-looking guys will not get a real shot with those women. They far prefer a Chad over them. Women who battle with their declining looks go aggressively after guys they would have acted coy towards in the past. They do this in order to increase their chances of having sex with them. In essence, they are giving you a shortcut to their pussy whereas younger women often pretend that you first have to win them over in some way, even when they are fully into you already. The young women tell you that they “never do this”, and the older ones advertise their sexual prowess instead.

    2. My impression is they start being direct with chad-lights. Whereas in their 20s they were very direct with chads. When they start panicking at they start throwing themselves at chad lights. Average guys never get attention, ever, not when she’s 60, ever.

    3. @Alek

      Agreed. Not even perpetual fat fucks are aggressive with anything less than a Chad-light.

  7. Guys, is it just me, or if a girl finds you attractive does she not gain a full point on the 1-10 scale? An average girl becomes above average. An above average girl becomes hot and so on. If this is a general truth I consider it a very positive evolutionary trait.

    1. We generally tend to like people who like us. Alek himself has commented about female friends being flattered if you find them fuckable even if they don’t reciprocate it,and may even go as far as to help you get laid.

      I think this is more “interest” than attraction though,Alek has talked about the differences. I’ve certainly had the experience of not really paying much attention to certain chicks (because my mind was laser focused elsewhere)…until I started suspecting that they might like me. (whether that’s realizing it on my own or being told by a classmate.) and then I got the experience of “I didn’t pay attention to her before,but wow…she’s actually really hot!”

    2. I wrote about this phenomenon in one of my books, too, i.e. clearly expressing sexual interest makes you appear more attractive, of course assuming that you meet the minimum threshold. Assume that a girl has two suitors whom she both finds hot. If one of them plays silly PUA games and the other tells her that he finds her hot, the PUA clown becomes irrelevant to her.

    3. This is confirmed by studies and has been known for a long time. If you find out someone likes you, then you like them more.

      Those studies didn’t distinguish attraction vs interest, so my guess is it increases interest. The attraction has to already exist.

    4. Aaron,
      “I wrote about this phenomenon in one of my books…”

      Is there an academic term explaining this phenomenon?

    1. They’re on my to buy list. Though I’ve also been considering a tailor.

      A good fitting shirt can make all the difference. The ROI is huge. I went from 35 year old women checking me out, to 25 year old women checking me out, by just putting a better fitting shirt.

    2. Yeah, I have a couple shirts that are tight around the upper arms and chest/shoulders area. If True Classic are even better, these should look damn good. Especially once I’ve met my fitness goals (probably by December).

    3. 185 pounds with a trim waistline works on me (I’m 6 foot). Last time I weighed myself I was 172, and a have a little excess weight in the midsection. I’ve been in a pretty good groove lately, going to the gym every other day. Weight training + cardio.

    1. It’s also really “blacked out” and features tons of obnoxious hip hop music, and has a trans character.

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