Ex-istential Crisis

After our last high school catch up, some people expressed interest in inviting YN, so I looked him up on Facebook and added him as a friend so that I could invite him to the catch-up group. A couple of weeks later, he messages me and starts making some small talk. Nothing huge, though he did ask for my phone number. I was a little iffy about it at the time, but I figured I'd probably give it to him for our next high school catch-up anyway, so it couldn't hurt.

A week later, he makes more small talk, asking about work. Then 5 days later:

YN
Anna I came across a business opportunity
It is something that I am doing on the side as an extra source of income
I know this sounds random, but I know you are a very talented person, can I get your opinion on this, and it will be an opportunity to catch up with you too

Me
Sure, just a warning though. I'm not very business minded, so I can't say how much I can contribute. Don't want you to waste your time.

YN
That's cool, I would appreciate your view regardless
When is a good time I can see you this evening?

Me
This evening isn't very good for me. Already have plans. But if you're in/near the cbd on Tuesday, I can meet you after work.

YN
Super
I finish work around 6pm
Do you mind if it's late?

Me
No, that's fine.

I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly, as I agreed so easily. At this stage, I was mostly curious. But then I realised, he hasn't seen me in 10 years. I don't put my employment information on Facebook, and I only told him that I am currently working and studying Java, so he could probably guess that I'm a programmer, but I might just be doing something else and studying Java in my spare time. So I tried to get more information. My other thought was that he had worked out that I was a programmer, and wanted me to build a website for his new business. Because all programmers are the same, right? And they're all willing to do it for free for friends and family, because it's what they love doing, more than anything else in the world.

Me
Can you give me any background so that I can do some research before we meet up?

YN
Yes, my business is based on the essential services industry
Energy and telecommunications

Me
And what is it that you are trying to do?

YN
I market these services to my friends and family

Me
I know this sounds harsh, but are you just meeting up with me to sell me something?

YN
No that's ok,  it's not harsh as I'm not selling
Just your view on an idea that I wanted you to see
I know that you have many questions running through your mind
It's ok,
I wanted to see you personally as my business is very visual

He said he wasn't selling anything, but he still wanted my view - only he still doesn't know what it is I even do for a living, or what my skillset even is - other than running and eating KFC, which is most of my Facebook feed at the moment. At this point, I was pretty convinced that maybe he had taken the break up harder than I thought, and had 10 years of resentment built up. Maybe he wanted to lure me into a dark alley and stab me in the heart or something overly dramatic like that. Because to be perfectly honest, if he wasn't selling anything, and he was being super vague about this "business opportunity", I couldn't really think of why he'd want to meet me.

I also asked Sharon if he had approached her, as I figured if he was selling something, he'd probably try to hit up as many people as possible, before word got out. She said he hadn't contacted her.

Pretty much everyone was telling me it would be a waste of time to meet up with him. I even had it saved in my calendar as an event called "STUPID WASTE OF TIME MEETING WITH YN". Unfortunately, a part of me felt like I owed it to him, for what we had once upon a time, so I didn't cancel.

However, I tried to get more info before the meet-up:

Me
I've thought about this a bit more. What exactly do you want me to do? Offer advice? I'm confused as to what my role is.

YN
It's all good Anna, let's make it a surprise for you
Don't need to do anything until you see it actually
Just think of our plan to take over the world... Did you forget?

Me
No, I did not forget. But taking over the world is not a goal for me anymore. I've seen how hard it is to manage a group of 5 people. I can't even imagine trying to run a whole world.

YN
I understand..

Me
To be perfectly honest, I don't really want to waste my time.  I can't imagine what exists that you would need my advice on. Especially as you have no idea what my area of expertise even is!

YN
It's Ok
Do you have 30 minutes tommorrow?
Trust me if it is a waste of time for you.. You could only lose 30minutes of your time and I thought it would be an opportunity to catch up..

Me
ok
where and when do you want to meet up? (followed by meetup details)

 That taking over the world thing was a pretty low blow. It was a promise we made to each other at the end of high school. He was going to study nanotechnology and build robots, and I was going to write the software to run them. I was actually pretty surprised that he remembered. But it was at that point that I realised he was going to try and appeal to my emotions, and as hard as I try to distance myself from them, I do tend to let my heart govern my head far too often.

So I dragged in some last minute reinforcements, in the form of Uni Paul, which turned out for the best, since about 10 minutes before we were due to meet up, YN messaged me to say that he was bringing someone, too. The fact that he had organised for someone else to come meant that I was now 100% on guard. I don't think he had ever intended to just catch-up with me, though I couldn't say anything, since I had also violated the catch-up agreement by inviting someone else. I tried to think up a cover story for why Uni Paul would be with me, but in the end, it didn't matter, as they didn't ask.

Introductions were made, and the four of us sat down at a table in the food court (I'm not entirely stupid, I did make sure to meet YN in a public, crowded place, just in case he did try to stab me. Plus, it was close to the train station, so I would have an easy escape route). Actually, before that, he brought up the taking over the world thing again. I think he was trying to build a sense of closeness, but all it really did was put me even more on guard.

Not long after sitting down, his friend (I forgot his name, so I'm just going to call him Sam) started making some small talk, while YN pulled out these flyers. One side had a picture of Celebrity Apprentice on it. At this point, all thoughts that he was about to murder me left my mind, and I was looking for some hidden cameras, as I figured he and Sam were on some challenge set by Celebrity Apprentice (I don't watch much reality TV, so I really don't know what that show involves - though in hindsight, it's called Celebrity Apprentice, and I don't think YN is all that famous....).

Uni Paul and I flip over the flyer and it has a bunch of boxes with different pictures. Sam begins to ask if we are familiar with network marketing. I don't know if Uni Paul caught on, but I figured we would go the Smart Cop, Dumb Cop route, so whenever I was asked if I knew something, I said no. And Uni Paul said yes. I don't know if this is actually a tactic, but I've done it before with salespeople, and they always seem to focus their slimy tactics on the Dumb Cop. Given that I invited Paul to stop me from doing anything stupid, I thought it would be a good idea to try and direct their tricks on me, so he would keep a clear mind. Not that I didn't think he would keep one anyway, but just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, he starts to talk about network marketing, and Uni Paul brings up multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes. He is very quick to establish that this isn't a pyramid scheme. He goes on to say how he hates the idea of working for someone else, and how he has to ask his boss for permission to take time off to stay with his kid. More appealing to emotion rubbish. I happen to like my boss, so this has no effect on me.

Sam explains that this business is about direct selling of various services, like phone, internet, electricity. Naive me still believed at this point that YN was asking for advice on whether he should take a job in this company. Then Sam got on to the part about commission, and taking a percentage of every bill that one of your customers pays. So instead of it going to some CEO somewhere that it hates, your family can rest easy knowing that part of their bill payments are going into your pocket! Hooray! Pretty much most of what I heard coming out of Sam's mouth was, "Pyramid, pyramid, pyramid, pyramid, I know I said it's not a pyramid, but it is a pyramid." He kept referring to YN selling things and bringing people in, and at that point, I realised he had partaken (?) in the Kool-Aid.

YN did say that he wasn't selling anything, and technically he was correct. Sam was doing all of the selling, but I was still furious. Here's how I saw the situation:

1. He thinks I'm stupid enough to get sucked into this kind of scheme.
2. He clearly doesn't value my friendship, as he's trying to suck me into this scheme.
3. Despite the fact that I clearly said I didn't want to have my time wasted, he still pushed me to go, and though technically correct in the sense that he didn't sell me anything, it's really pushing it.
4. Despite our history, he doesn't value my time, and just sees me as a source of extra money.

I guess they realised at around box 8 (of 10 boxes) that we weren't really interested in giving them any money. Though they weren't entirely ready to give up. Sam challenged us to check out YN's lifestyle at the end of the year to see how well he was doing. To be honest, if this works out for him, then that's good for him, but given how little he seems to hold me in regard, I'm not going to go out of my way to help him. I am definitely not going to introduce him to what I see as potential victims.

Plus, the Sam dude also mentioned that he had just chucked $100,000 into a failed venture, so I really don't trust his judgement on how viable this "business opportunity" is. Here it is, if you're interested, and here are a bunch of sites saying it's a scam:

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/acn-a-pyramid-scheme-or-oppurtunity

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/228738

http://ethanvanderbuilt.com/2014/04/29/acn-scam-yes-opinion/

After I got home, I sent YN another message on FB:

I didn't want to say this to you in front of your friend, but I'm pretty pissed off that you used "catching up" as an excuse to try and sell me something - especially as I already asked if you were selling me something

He called me, but I missed it, so he sent a message:

Anna when can I call you.? I think you have misinterpreted what I showed you.. How did I try and sell you something. ?

Yes, I know technically there was nothing sold, and I called him back and tried to explain how it was a pyramid scheme (though according to the ACCC, it's not legally a pyramid scheme, i.e. it is legal, but it's still dodgy). He kept insisting that he wasn't selling me anything, and for some reason, Sam was still with him (WTF, if taking part in this means having to live with your mentor, then I'm glad I gave it a pass). He put Sam back on the phone. I said I didn't want to speak to him (Sam), and before passing it back to YN, Sam explained that I didn't understand what a pyramid scheme was, and that he felt sorry for me. So when YN got back on the line, I asked him to remove my number from his phone.

That last part was pretty tough. I can't believe that I used to care for this person. And I also can't believe that someone who used to care for me is now so willing to exploit me for money. I can't believe that I wanted so badly for this to be something not related to using me for something. I can't believe that everyone around me was saying not to do it, and I did it anyway.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Possibly if Uni Paul hadn't been there, I might have fallen for it. That's probably why he tried to call me again later. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

At least I kept my side of the bargain, I'm currently writing software. I don't know exactly what he's doing, but I don't think pyramid schemes and building robots go together.

In Defense of an Ancient

Last night/this morning, I went to my very first pubstomp, for The International 4 (which is the biggest tournament in Dota 2, and the total prize pool ended up being $10.9 million USD. A pubstomp is where a bunch of people get together at a pub to watch Dota 2 matches. It's a cool play on words, where a pub, in Dota is a public game with people you don't know (as opposed to an inhouse, which is where you have organised teams who play each other). A "pub stomp" is when the random match up is very one sided, so one side "stomps" the other. Also, pub stomp heroes are heroes who are generally stronger only in pub matches where teams tend to lack the required co-ordination to deal with them.

I'll start with the happy stuff, and also, people say there are too many words and not enough images in my posts. I got Enigma and Death Prophet plushies:

The first thing I thought about the pubstomp was that it made no sense to be holding this event in your typical pub-like atmosphere. All around me I could hear conversations, most of them revolving around the games over the past couple of weeks (they were playing highlights of the matches leading up to the grand final while waiting for the main event to start). However, a lot of the conversations sounded a bit like this:

Person 1: Those sunstrikes have been really on the mark this game
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I SAID, THOSE SUNSTRIKES HAVE BEEN REALLY ON THE MARK THIS GAME!
Person 2: Yeah, and that fast ghostwalk to dodge that gank was amazing.
Person 1: What?
Person 2: I SAID, THAT FAST GHOSTWALK TO DODGE THAT GANK WAS AMAZING!

It wasn't even like the pub purposely played loud music. The organisers hired a DJ specifically for the event, and the music was very loud doof-doof music. Which I don't understand, because nobody was dancing. It just seemed like the music was just making it more difficult for people to talk to each other.

The only people I knew there were friends who had volunteered to help run the event, so I didn't really have anyone to talk to. I tried talking to someone, but my attempt at making a new friend failed miserably.

Me: So, which team do you want to win?
Person: Ummm, I haven't actually watched any games. I don't even know who's playing.
Me: (Didn't really know what to say in response. I wanted to ask, "So why are you even here?", but that seemed rude. I then thought I could ask, "Do you play Dota?", but that also seemed rude, and if he answered that he didn't, well, that would be even more awkward. I thought I could ask if he was waiting for his friends, but the reason I picked him to talk to was because it seemed like he was also alone at the event, so I didn't want to rub it in. Then I thought I could use my usual small talk tricks, and ask him about his life, but I realised he was probably 18. Well, I didn't even think he looked 18, if he was trying to buy alcohol, I'd have carded him, but given that the event was 18+, I assumed he was 18. I'm 28. I didn't want to give him the impression that I was hitting on him, and I didn't want to give me the impression that I was trying to befriend someone 10 years younger than me in a bordering on creepy way.

At this point, about a minute had elapsed since he replied, and I still hadn't thought of a good response. So I turned back to the screen, and avoided eye contact with him. We both sat there in silence watching the replays. And that's what I get for talking to strangers!)

During the night, they had a raffle. Each person was given a ticket (though you could buy more if you wanted to), and there was a box for each team competing in the grand final. If that team won a match (the grand final is a best-of-5), they would draw that round's prizes from that team's box. There were a few people behind me who were ridiculously obnoxious. Every time a raffle ticket was drawn, they'd complain loudly that the number selected wasn't theirs. And when someone didn't claim their prize instantly, presumably because they had multiple tickets to check, they started yelling at the MC to draw another ticket for the prize, even though the MC kept saying that they should get at least 10 seconds to come up and collect. When someone finally did make it through to the front, they'd boo them.

Seeing was it was a best-of-5, obviously, the raffle draw would be a bit one-sided, so after all the major prizes were drawn (mouses, keyboards,  headsets), the organisers decided to draw some tickets from the losing team's box for some of the minor prizes (T-shirts, thongs (of shoe variety)). Obnoxious group started complaining loudly again, and they were also complaining that the competition was rigged as some people had 10+ tickets. One of the females in the group then started making kissing sounds and saying how she'd really love a prize. Is that a thing? Does it even work? (It didn't work in this case.)

I sat there silently listening to them yell and scream, and I realised that these people are the "get hype!" kind of people. These are the people who bring up the energy of events, yelling and screaming for their team to win, starting Mexican waves, cheering loudly whenever something good happens. They create that atmosphere that makes people drink lots and have fun.

It was at this point I had a sleep-deprived revelation - I'm really too old for this kind of stuff now. I had this urge to tell the obnoxious group that back in my day, people were grateful for what they got, and didn't make people feel bad for their good fortune. I wanted to tell the DJ to turn down that horrible music so I could eavesdrop on the conversations around me. I wanted to be somewhere where I wouldn't be afraid that someone was going to jump out and tell me the guy I was talking to was underage and I'd just been busted by a sting operation. I suddenly wanted to call everyone a whippersnapper and there may have been a compulsion to get them off my non-existent lawn. I'm pretty sure that I'm perfectly suited to being a grumpy old person.

Double X

This post came up in my Facebook feed today:

I felt really compelled to point out that it was Jean-Luc Picard in the image, not Charles Xavier, though both are portrayed by Patrick Stewart, so the confusion is understandable. I guess that's the same as calling Daniel Radcliffe Harry Potter, or Arnold Schwarzenegger the Terminator, since they're very well known for those roles. Note that she didn't tag anyone when she said Charles, so it's unlikely that she's referring to a friend of hers called Charles who is also bad at maths.

I was a bit reluctant to say anything, because it seemed really mean to make fun of someone in a public place like Facebook. Plus, I don't know this person well enough to be able to judge whether she'd take it badly or not. I couldn't think of a nice yet funny way of phrasing it without sounding like a bitch. I asked MrMan5.5 whether it would be mean to point it out, and he said no, but I think he was trolling because he wanted me to say something and start a flame war. Since we are both friends with this person, I told him that he could post it instead, to which he replied that it would not be OK for him to post it, as it would look like girl-bashing (as the OP is female), but it would be OK for me to post it, as I'm also female.

To that point, I completely disagree. There seems to be even harsher scrutiny towards females criticising other females. The general response seems to be, "You're a girl, too, you're supposed to support me against this world which oppresses women!" or some kind of rubbish like that. I do not agree that you should side with someone, just because you share some kind of minority characteristic with them, in order to support them. If you believe they are wrong, then you should say so. The only exception to this rule is when the other person happens to be your significant other, and not doing so would result in you sleeping on the couch. Oh, another exception is if the person is family and they are going to make your life hell. OK, the exception is, you shouldn't need to side with them, unless not doing so would result in severe repercussions towards yourself.

Anyway, for that reason, I decided that it would also be bad for me to post on her wall, as I imagine she'd see it as the start of some cat-fight over who is the bigger nerd. I consulted with the only person I know who is an expert on both X-Men and Star Trek, and who would also reply relatively quickly, and his response was to reply with the Picard facepalm meme to see if she got it. An alternative to that was to post this image:

As funny as I thought it would be, again, I was hesitant as this would also fall into I'm-a-bigger-nerd-than-you cat-fight territory. Note: I don't think I'm a bigger nerd, I didn't even know he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard until I looked it up in IMDB - I just knew it was Star Trek and not X-Men. So in that sense, I'm also a fail nerd.

Still, it felt wrong not to say anything at all, as she would continue life thinking that it was Charles Xavier in that picture, and perhaps someone who was not as nice as I am (hahahaha) would make fun of her for it. So I decided to privately message her to let her know.

Was it a joke? I don't know. But at least now I shall rest in peace knowing that she knows the difference between Charles Xavier and Jean-Luc Picard. I avoided a cat-fight, and am now taking the opportunity to explanabrag about it in my blog.

Kiss 'Em and Toss 'Em Back

It's funny how not long after deciding that I don't need everyone to like me and that I am allowed to let certain friendships fade, I find I am very quickly building up a list of people I no longer need in my life. Today's star (who will be called Andromeda) is one who I've come to realise isn't as fun as he appears on the surface. Among his many irritating traits, we had a discussion over respect for relationships, which is what finally pushed him from barely tolerable to not someone I need in my life.

Imagine you meet someone that you really enjoy spending time with. You find yourself looking forward to seeing them, and you always seem to have a lighter feeling in your heart after being with them. You finally realise, "Hey, I'm actually attracted to this person." So you work up the courage to finally make a move, and just before you're about to meet up with this person and ask them out, you bump into a mutual friend who drops a bombshell - this person you're so attracted to is already in a relationship. You don't know this other person, which explains why you didn't know about the relationship. What do you do?

I've always been of the thought that you chalk it up to bad timing - perhaps if you had met them earlier in life, something could have happened, but you didn't. So it's time to write stupid poetry, mope around in bed for a bit, listen to crappy love songs, and eventually get over them. They may one day be single, but you probably shouldn't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. You stay friends if you can bare it, otherwise, you slowly fade away, and go and meet new people.

Andromeda has a different view. He thinks that you should just go for it anyway. Look at it this way, either this person is in a serious relationship, and turns you down, or their relationship isn't that serious and this person now considers you a potential candidate for replacement. You either cut your losses and stop wasting time pursuing something that'll never be, or you end up getting this person that is so amazing. As for the partner, who cares? You don't owe them anything, and if this person was willing to leave in the first place, then you were really doing them both a favour as the relationship can't have been going so well anyway.

Putting it that way, Andromeda's point actually makes sense. If you think that everyone is just out to find their perfect match, and that if you meet someone you happen to get along with better than your current partner, it's probably worth it to give it a shot, otherwise you'll regret every time the two of you get into an argument. Still, it just doesn't sit with me very well. I hate the thought that even once you're in a relationship, you constantly have to compete to stay on top, rather than spend your energy enjoying the relationship.

I also think that people should have respect for other people's relationships. A bit like this scene from Scrubs, where JD realises women with wedding rings are invisible to him, guys in relationships mostly drop off my radar. There was the exception of Daniel, but given the way that I thought he was flirting, I feel like that was a special circumstance. Char also calls married men "safe", I guess because she knows nothing will ever come out of it and so she can just be herself. I like to believe that if I respect the relationships around me, my own will be respected in return, and I won't have to constantly worry that someone is trying to steal MrMan5.5 away from me.

The last point against it I have is the greener pastures effect. This one is a bit more from the point of view of the person in the relationship, rather than the one who is encroaching on the relationship. You may think that this person that you suddenly "click" with is really great, and it seems like they're better for you than your current partner, but how much have you really had the chance to get to know them? I'm sure things with your current partner started off really great as well, and you had that awesome feeling whenever you saw them. Then the honeymoon period ended and normalcy hit. Yet your relationship still managed to hold together. Do you think that will happen with this new person once the novelty effect wears off?

I wrote a long time ago about RH - someone who I had feelings for who got engaged and is now married. I ended up seeing him at PAX last year - though he did not see me as he was one of the panelists. I can't remember when the last time I spoke to him was, but it finally burst the bubble for me. We were talking about how I once stopped by his house with the promise of receiving pizza (I was so easy to bribe in my uni days), and sex was on the agenda, but in the end, I turned back, because I didn't want things to become awkward between me and his brother, who I was very close to at the time. He said that he was totally OK with not telling his brother, and if I hadn't turned back, he would have bought me everything I could possibly have wanted.

I just felt so insulted by that last comment. We were both really into World of Warcraft, I had spoken to him many times about programming related things, I don't know what I had done to give him the impression that I was the kind of girl who is interested in getting presents all the time, but if that's what he thought of me, then maybe he didn't know me so well after all (yes, there's that female neckbeard leaking out again!).

Up until that point, he could do no wrong in my eyes. So much about him was perfect to me, except the part of him being married (which didn't happen until long after we had stopped speaking). I think a lot of that was due to the fact that our friendship never went past the honeymoon stage. We spoke every night, but he would go to work, and I'd go to uni, and we'd both have our WoW raids (on opposite factions, so it wasn't even like we could talk to each other in game). It wasn't like we were in each other's faces all the time, so the absence made the time we spent together all the more precious. We never fought because we had nothing to fight about - and because we hadn't ever met in person, we still had that semi-anonymous Internet intimacy between us. We did dual each other for photos (I think in the end, I was 9-1, but I got a photo eventually!), and  I guess we both found each other non-repulsive enough to still be attracted to each other.

Being with MrMan5.5 for this long has made me proud that I stayed around during some of the tougher times. It wasn't always as easy as it is now, and even now, sometimes we have problems with each other. But if I had ditched him for the first guy to ask me out when I was in a relationship, then... I'd be with Cheka. The guy who befriended MrMan5.5, and who MrMan5.5 supported even after he started behaving inappropriately, and then the guy who tried to steal MrMan5.5's girlfriend.

Hanging Out

As part of my New Year's resolution, I've gotten to know two really awesome people. Both of them are also female gamers, and it sounds a bit silly, but talking to them, a lot of the time I find myself saying, "Me, too!" I really enjoy hanging out with them. One of them, Ally, was telling us about her own experiences with being, "one of the guys".

She really liked this guy (GG), they spent a lot of time together recording podcasts, watching TV shows, and playing board games. She thought that maybe he was spending more time with her than with anyone else, but it was hard to tell as they often spent time with other people, and he is really friendly in general. Eventually, she figured that he wasn't interested in her, but she still thought he was a great guy, so she tried to set him up with one of her friends. It didn't go so well, as her friend wasn't really interested in him, not being nearly as geeky as she is. So she tried again with another friend (who also happens to work at the same company as her) who happens to be a hot, Eastern European programmer (who also happens to be a huge geek).

The second matchmaking attempt was more successful. Her programmer friend got along really well with him, and the three of them started organising events together. Ally still had feelings for this guy, and even though she knew he was interested in someone else, she didn't want to pass up the opportunity to spend time with him, even if it was just as a friend. How often do you find a friend who is interested in all the same things you are, and takes good care of you?

A few weeks later, Ally was hanging out with the co-workers of Hot Eastern European Programmer when one of them mentions that HEEP went out on a date with someone she met online over the weekend. Ally was a bit confused, and she asked wasn't HEEP going out with GG? None of them even knew who GG was, HEEP had never mentioned him. So Ally went back to GG and asked if he and HEEP broke up. Now GG was really confused. As far as he was concerned, he and Ally had been dating for the past few months. He said that he never asked his female friends to just "hang out", and so he thought all the times that they hung out together were dates. However, from Ally's point of view, hanging out was just that... hanging out.

The two of them had a conversation where they made it official to each other that they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

The entire situation stemmed from a misunderstanding. He pretty much never spent time around other females, and so he thought he was being clear of his intentions when he asked her to join him on various activities. Though, seeing as they were both pretty geeky, the activities he came up with were not the traditional date activities (dinner, movies, coffee). I guess that led to her not considering those outings "dates", and made her unclear of their status. However, since she's fairly shy and modest, she didn't want to ask him whether he was interested in her in a romantic way, because she didn't even think he would be interested in a girl like her.

When your friendship group's gender ratio happens to be heavily skewed towards the same gender that you are attracted to, I think this can be a common occurrence. I would have no problem seeing a movie, or going out to dinner just 1-on-1 with a male friend, and wouldn't consider it a date at all unless they specifically said so. Probably because I've done it so many times and it hasn't been a date. Dante and I used to meet up for coffee regularly, but neither of us had romantic intentions.

Ally's story reminded me of RT. In my first year of uni, we spent a lot of time together. Mostly painting models or playing Warhammer 40k. We'd meet up after class to play board games. He asked me to see Shaolin Soccer with him, but I had an optometrist appointment a couple of hours before it, so I said I'd meet him at the cinema, instead of his house, which was fairly close to mine. However, my appointment was delayed by 3 hours, and he didn't have a mobile phone, so I couldn't even tell him that I was going to be late (I tried calling his home, but there was no answer). I showed up to the cinema 2 hours late, and he was still there waiting, so we went to see the movie. He even came to my house on New Year's Eve as I mentioned I would be home alone as I was working that night and my parents had gone out to the family gathering, and we spent the night playing Tiberian Sun.

At the time, I was 100% sure that there was nothing between us. There were girls on his running team that he spoke about a lot, and also this girl that we both went to primary school with who was my best friend at the time, and who he was completely in love with during our school years. After hearing Ally's story, I think I'm only 95% sure now. Thinking back, it seems like he went further than your typical friend would go, but I don't know if that's because he had romantic intentions, or because he's just a really nice guy.

Is one of the reasons the feeling of being friendzoned comes about? You think that you are making all the right moves, but you never do anything overt due to fear of scaring off the other person. You feel like you are on the boarder of being in a relationship, but never actually confirm it. Or is that just really deluded?

Not Like Those Other Girls

When I first started uni, a lot of the people around me (friends, family) kept saying how nice it was to be doing engineering, because there were so many males compared to females (they didn't know about my secret boyfriend at the time, so I think they were trying to hint that maybe it was time for me to find someone). I kept trying to insist that the male to female ratio wasn't the reason I wanted to study engineering, but in the end, I gave up. I guess it was lucky to be surrounded by guys when I did end up breaking up with my boyfriend.

Over the course of my uni (and gaming) career, I got to know a lot of guys, mostly of the geeky persuasion, and I also got to hear a wishlist of features that many wished their girlfriends had: like to play games, like sci-fi, like fantasy, like paper and pen roleplaying games, like wargames, like eating junk food, etc. In the deepest times of loneliness, I often wondered, if they wanted those things, and I had those things, why did they never want me? I was pretty much a niche product for that market, but I had so few buyers. What was wrong with me?

A few days ago, I came across this comment in response to the question, "What is the female equivalent of a neckbeard?":

–]jurymast 3556 points 4 days ago

The female equivalent of a neckbeard is a Not-Like-Those-Other-Girls girl. Yeah, you're a female, but you're not like... you know, those other girls. Other girls are stupid and vapid, and only care about boys and shopping. Other girls only watch Sex and the City, and their favorite activities are gossiping and stabbing each other in the back. Other girls are sluts who wear tacky clothes and too much make-up and have no self-respect.

You're not like that. You watch anime (subs only, of course) and play video games. You don't read Twilight or any of those shitty paranormal romance novels. You read comic books and ASoIaF (which you liked before the show, tyvm). You'd rather fling yourself off an overpass than wear something girly or pink. All your friends are guys, and they know you're one of them; you're one of the cool girls. You're smarter than all those ditzy popular girls, and that makes you better than them. You're a unique and special snowflake amongst a sea of clonebot OtherGirls, and maybe, just maybe, one day some cute nerdy guy will see you for the catch you are, and be the Derp to your Derpina.

As soon as I read that, I thought, "Wow, that's me." (except the part about reading ASoIaF before the show, I'm one of the late adopters). Tangent: I never knew being "one of the guys" was a thing until I was dating RB. He added me into a group conversation with a friend of his from high school, and that friend ended up adding me as a contact. He messaged me saying, "Don't worry, I'll never hit on you, you're just one of the guys to me." I think that was the first time I had knowingly been friendzoned.

I'm a female neckbeard. Ignoring all that "m'lady" and fedora rubbish often associated with neckbeards, the part that makes me worried is how neckbeards often act courteously towards women, and feel that that alone is enough to make them feel entitled to reciprocal romantic feelings from those women. Then get upset when those feelings never manifest. I think I was the same - I thought I had all the qualities that they seemed to want, and so I should have been entitled to male attention.

What some of the other comments in that thread touched on were how these female neckbeards often unkempt, had no hygiene, had a misguided notion of how physically attractive they are - but they thought that as long as they had those Not-Like-Those-Other-Girls qualities, it would be enough. I can definitely associate with that. I remember thinking that surely it would be better to stay up and fit in another game of Dota rather than go to bed early in order to have enough time to do hair and make-up in the morning. Now I think it's more important to be more balanced. I'm not so delusional as to think that appearance isn't important anymore.

I've also realised that they're not mutually exclusive. Just because I want to be good at gaming doesn't mean that I shouldn't take care of myself. I do feel better now that I've been taking better care of myself physically. And I don't know if it's the virus talking, but lying in bed, I realised I really need a new wardrobe. I think I should be dressing my age, or at least more mature - especially as I can wear casual at work every day now, but not everyone in the office is doing it, so I tend to look a bit out of place. My boss introduced me to someone that I might some day want to work for, but I was dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a hoodie. He was wearing a suit. I don't think I gave off a very good impression.

My new self-improvement goal is to push myself into wearing something outside my comfort zone. Here is the plan:

Month-1: Buy new clothes.

Month-2: Once new clothes have been acquired, find a friend who is willing to hold on to my old clothes. This is so I don't relapse into wearing my old clothes.

Months 2-5: Continue wearing new clothes

After 5 months, I want to see if I feel comfortable enough in the new clothes. I met a new friend who is willing to go through this whole thing with me. We are even going to learn to wear heels together! I feel really excited about my new project. :D Hopefully this will be an end to NeckbeardFodder.

Planetary Alignment

Someone posted on Reddit about how she found out her boyfriend regularly searches for a friend of hers on Facebook, and it turned out it was because he likes to masturbate to photos of her friend. A lot of the replies basically said that it was a pretty normal thing.

• what if you know them?

  9:04 PM
• how can you look at them normally?

  9:04 PM
• pretty damn easily

  9:04 PM
• ok this may be a shocker

  9:04 PM
• but I've jerked to most females I know

  9:04 PM
• and almost every guy is the same

  9:05 PM
• • for me it's a 1 or a 0

    9:11 PM
  • and if it's spank bank stuff

    9:11 PM
  • maybe 90% of people are 1

    9:11 PM

I'm told that sometimes, if you have someone on the mind, the only way to get them off your mind is to use them in that way. It just seems really odd to me. I don't know if I'm just picky, but for someone to be in my spank bank, they have to pass a really rigorous test!

Be attractive to me

I think this one is a bit of a given, as you are fantasizing about them in a sexual way, and if you don't find them attractive, well, then you'd better hope you don't develop RSI.

Cannot be in a relationship with one of my friends, or have been in one in the past

This one is more to do with the girl code, and I would feel really guilty picturing someone's partner in a sexual way, even more so masturbating to them. Interestingly, if someone who I may have thought about in the past starts to date one of my friends, then they just fade off my radar. 

Must be intellectually stimulating

This one is probably a bit weird, because it's not like there is imaginary cuddling after the imaginary sex, but I just can't imagine sex with someone who I'm not able to talk to. For instance, there's a guy I met a few months ago, who is definitely physically attractive to me (except for the fact that he has a tattoo on one arm, but not the other, so he's asymmetrical (why would you ruin perfection like that?!)), but even if I try as hard as I can, I just can't imagine him in a sexual way. We only have one mutual friend (a male), and so I'm pretty sure he hasn't dated anyone I know. I think the reason why is because the only thing he has ever said to me was, "You were a poker dealer? That's cool." Although looking at his Facebook page, it turns out that he also worked at the same casino, so maybe we do have more to talk about with each other than I thought. And he's a pretty big nerd. Hmmm, brb...

Can't be someone I hate

Another self-explanatory one. Although I find it strange that some guys I have asked said that they could have sex with someone they hated. Personally, I feel like sexy time is happy time, and it shouldn't be interrupted by angry thoughts caused by someone you hate. Oddly, I think I could have sex with someone who hated me. Maybe that's part of my people pleaser personality, and that maybe if I slept with them, they might like me more?

There are very few guys that I know that I haven't already slept with who I fantasize about. The main reason is, these are people that I see, and I find it very hard to look them in the eyes knowing that I pictured them naked with my mouth around their cock not too long ago. For me, it doesn't just end after orgasm. There is that guilty memory of what I just did which lingers after it's over. If I end up seeing that person not long afterwards, then I feel a compulsion to apologise, but can't bring myself to do it because it would admit that I had used them as a sexual object, which seems like a horrible thing to do.

It's hard for me to just ignore the fact that the person is my friend. I feel like I am violating them by using them without their consent like that. I think I could probably do it if I had their consent, but then that brings the problem of getting that consent in the first place. "Hi, I find you attractive, and you are not currently dating, nor have not dated, a friend of mine. Plus, I also think you are intellectually stimulating and I don't hate you. However, I am in a serious relationship, and I'd never actually have sex with you, but are you OK with the idea that at some point in the future, I would like to masturbate to you?" Yeah... I can't imagine anyone wouldn't find that creepy, much less than agree to it.

Overall, I find it so much easier to just go online, find a picture or video that some random you'll never meet has uploaded and get your rocks off without having to ever worry about any rules or post-orgasm awkwardness.

Motive and Opportunity

An acquaintance was telling me about how she doesn't play in Magic: the Gathering tournaments anymore. She said that she hates it that the guys who play in those tournaments spend so much time staring at her boobs that she constantly has to tell them, "My face is up here". She also said that she doesn't get much respect, and that a lot of the players will ignore what she says or tell her that she's wrong, just because she's a girl - even though she does know the rules. I had never experienced anything like that myself, but ever pre-release I went to was with my cousin, and so I had the benefit of being able to hang around him.

During the Easter/Anzac break, I played in the Journey into Nyx pre-release. This was the first MtG event that I had attended since the Fifth Dawn pre-release (June 2004), that wasn't something with only friends. Stupid as this sounds, but based on what the acquaintance said, I was keeping an eye out for the notorious boob stare. I've always wanted to have a "My face is up here" moment, as it seems like a quintessential part of being a female. I had a close call once, but it turned out to be nothing. Unfortunately for me, I did not manage to catch anybody staring at my boobs. Part of that might have been because I went with my cousin, a gay guy, an engaged guy, and an ex, but there were still two people that I played against that I hadn't met before, so it wasn't like I only played with people I knew!

The first guy was super serious about the game. We had three pretty close games (bo3), and I ended up losing 1-2 in the end, but he was definitely way more interested in my cards than in my chest. There was never really an opportunity in either of those games for tricky rules, as they were both fairly straightforward, so I can't really judge him on the respect for me aspect as we barely talked about anything other than the games we were playing. The second guy seemed very much like the stereotypical socially-awkward nerd. He was very shy, and mumbled his words a lot. Still, I did not manage to catch him in the act. As far as respect goes, I think we both respected each other. I pointed out a mistake that he made, and he pointed out a constellation trigger that I had missed - although both times, it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game, so it wasn't a big thing. (Side note: even though we were playing against each other, tournament rules state that both players have an obligation to point out something their opponent has missed, e.g. if a Zombie creature enters the game, and one player has a Zombie creature enters trigger, but they don't realise. Obviously, it's impossible to enforce, because it might just have been that both players missed it, you can't just accuse the opposing player of not pointing out something. So it's just considered good manners.)

My other two games were against my cousin and the gay work friend, so I wasn't really trying to catch them out.

It just makes me think that sometimes someone does something, and the motive that you attribute to that action may not be the same as the reason for their action. For instance, imagine you are walking to get lunch, and someone crashes into you and nearly knocks you over, what is your first thought? I find that if I'm having a good or neutral day, my first thought is that it was an accident and they probably tripped. If I'm having a bad day, my mind immediately thinks that they were in a rush and just rude and inconsiderate, not looking where they are going or caring who they knock over along the way. It's funny how the same action can have different motives attributed to it depending on how you are feeling.

So back to the boob staring, I think that sometimes people staring while thinking, and it's unfair to just naturally assume that they are staring at your boobs. Unless it is making you uncomfortable, if it's just a quick glance or you're not entirely sure, isn't it safer to err on the side of caution and not just assume they are doing a boob stare? The reason I say this, is because it feeds into the second point my acquaintance made - about the lack of respect because she's a girl. How does she really know that's the case based on such short one-time encounters? What if they are not treating her with respect because she has lost their respect?

Let's look at 4 boob staring related scenarios:

1 - The guy was staring at her boobs and she tells them to stop.

2 - The guy was not staring at her boobs (but doing something else) and she tells them to stop.

3 - The guy was staring at her boobs and she doesn't say anything.

4 - The guy was not staring at her boobs (but doing something else) and she doesn't say anything.

In situation 1, the guy will feel reprimanded, but probably be slightly annoyed at being called out on it.

In situation 2, the guy will feel really annoyed, because he was just accused of doing something that he wasn't, and even if he were to deny it, nobody would believe him.

In situation 3, the guy will get away scot free.

In situation 4, nothing happens and the game continues as normal.

To me, it seems like situation 1 and 2 are the worst, 2 especially, and the both arise from telling him to stop staring. 3 is bad for her, as he is getting away with staring. But from a respect point of view, i.e. his respect, I'm pretty sure in both situations 1 and 2, any respect he had for her will have been lost. Well, at least in situation 1, he will be thinking negatively towards her.

I do think it's unfair that in order to be respected, or at least somewhat liked means that you have to ignore people staring at your boobs, but I think that it's something that's incredibly hard to prove. If you go in pre-disposed to think that there will be perverted boob staring people, then your motive attribution is going to hit a lot more false positives and you are going to end up pissing off more people. Then you are less likely to enjoy yourself at these events, and probably go in next time with an even more negative perception and it'll just be a positive feedback loop until you quit altogether. Which is also really unfair, if you can't do something that you enjoy because you feel ostracised from the community. 

My approach has always been, if I respect them enough to treat me just like any other player, and try not to go in with any pre-dispositions, then hopefully they will respect me enough to do so, and we can all just continue with playing the game. Or am I just setting feminism back another fifty or so years? :(

Glass Slipper

I'm guessing the super-couple is a pretty staple thing in most high schools - that couple that seems so good together, and you know that they're going to get married, buy a house and have kids together. For me, it was Huey and Jamie. They would hang out a lot together after school and on weekends, I was told that they spent hours on the phone together, and while there was some drama every now and again, they were really stable. The first few years after we left high school, things sounded like they were going really well.

The wonders of Facebook mean that I get to find out whether they did have that happily ever after, and the answer is no. A post came up in my feed with her saying she is so happy to be with this other guy, and that's when I realised they had broken up. It was so shattering to me. This was Huey and Jamie of the "Huey & Jamie 4 eva". It seemed like nothing was going to break them apart. Hollywood lied to me. The girl gets the guy, but can she keep him for ever and ever? When he puts the glass slipper on her foot and tells her she's the one, does he really mean "the one.... for now"?

I'm a really neurotic person. The kind of person who worries about leaving the stove on, and if I did any ironing, I'd probably fret over the iron being on, too. One of the things that I constantly worry about is MrMan5.5's safety. Maybe he got hit by a car, mugged, or fell down into a hole with no phone reception, and nobody around to hear him. Then I get hit with this panicked feeling of what I'd do without him, and my brain just shuts down. Does not want to process. (I should probably see someone about this....)

In light of all the break-ups I see around me, and the fact that my co-workers fairly regularly complain about their wives, I can't help but wonder how long until MrMan5.5 sees the light and moves on. I was trying to help one of my friends get over his break-up, and said that sometimes people change, and they no longer have the feelings they had previously. He asked what the point was, if the person that you emotionally invest yourself in can just up and leave? I think maybe I waffled on about taking risks, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and that kind of rubbish, but I'm actually starting to think he has a point. I want to be the person that MrMan5.5 stays with for the rest of his life, but the person that he is now isn't the same person that he will be in 5 years.

Julian says that women get away with a lot, and that men are usually willing to put up with a lot of crap in order to have stable sex. I also know that it does become a problem for a lot of couples later in their marriage, as the wife usually loses the desire for sex. I have seen it in myself. I have a theory that sex was a kind of procrastination for me. When I was a uni student, I thought about it a lot, probably because I had a lot of spare time, and a lot of things that I wanted to put off doing. Contrast to now, where I feel like I have very little spare time, due to work, and the list of things I want/need to do during that spare time is fairly long. I'm usually thinking about work, what I want to eat (this actually takes up a huge amount of my mental capacity - I spend a lot of time thinking about food), exercise, Dota 2, what I plan to do during the rest of the week. There is very little room in my mind for sex these days, which has the unfortunate side-effect of me just not feeling like it.

Char says this is really bad, and that I need to work on it, which I am. I don't know how she does it, as she is also working full time, yet still has a healthy libido. I'm making a conscious effort to think about it more, but I assume that as life goes on, and you introduce kids, and more and more difficult work, it'll slowly die out. Is this why some couples find that their sex life dies after marriage? When I was at uni, I was so sure that I wasn't going to be one of those wives who gets into bed, turns the light off, and passes out, but now I'm not so sure.

A woman made a post on a forum asking why she wasn't able to attract men with a certain salary range, and one man who claimed to be in that salary range basically said that she was a bad investment as his assets would increase in value, and hers (looks) would decrease. If the only thing she was contributing was an attractive face and body, and the sex that goes with it, then it would only make sense to rent and not buy, as you can just trade in for a newer model every few years. Not that MrMan5.5 is in it for my body and face, but thinking about my assets (my wonderful wit and ability to check for danger in a first aid situation), those will also naturally dry up as I get older, too. I guess unlike the "brainless beauty" stereotype, I am also in a profession that is capable of making money well after I get saggy boobs, but to be honest, it's not particularly one I relish in, and so I don't know how long it's viable for me to chalk that up as an "asset".

Rationally, MrMan5.5 would be better renting than buying, yet he still proposed and we do intend to get married some day. I thought maybe he was just pot committed - he had invested so much in this relationship that it'd be a waste to just toss it out. Yet there are people who have been married for 20+ years who get divorced, so there is nothing to say that won't happen to me. It's just my risk averse nature that makes me want to avert the possibility of that happening as much as I can, and a part of it is saying, "Well, if you never get on the horse, you can't fall off." Which is a bit ridiculous, because if you never take that risk, and you are interested in finding someone to share your life with, then you'll never be able to truly commit to someone as you have one foot out the door ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I do have a solution, and that's the baby trap, as I know MrMan5.5's sense of duty would mean that he would want to raise that child as best as he could, but I would be so sad if I knew that the only reason he stayed with me was because of our child(ren).

So I don't know, how can you ever know whether someone will really be with you happily ever after? I'm going through a phase at the moment where I am trying to improve myself to increase my value to MrMan5.5, but what if I'm dumping all of my stats in X when I should really be working on Y? I don't know what Future MrMan5.5 will want. I guess all I can really do is try my best, it'll hurt if I fail, but I did the best that I could. I think I'm also fortunate that when we have had problems in the past, he has been willing to at least try to work it out, so hopefully I won't just wake up to an empty bed and a note on the kitchen counter some day.

The Third Person Must Be a Stranger

Nate: A threesome?
Dan: Oh yeah. Just me, Olivia (his gf), Vanessa (his best friend), two girls, four boobs, one Dan Humphrey.
Nate: Aw.
Dan: How awesome am I?
Nate: How stupid can you be?
Dan: What?
Nate: Buddy. Okay, I know things. I've been to Europe. Chuck Bass is my best friend. Alright, the third person is supposed to be a stranger.
Dan: The fact that it was Vanessa is what made it so fun.
Nate: Okay, the problem is that during a threesome there's always a twosome and a onesome going on.
Dan: You know what? The onesome was not so bad.
Nate: Okay, you may have enjoyed the show. But let's face it Vanessa is very vocal. It couldn't have been easy for Olivia to hear all that.
Dan: You know what, Olivia was fine. We talked the next morning. And so was Vanessa. I mean I haven't really seen her much, but I'm sure she is. Why are you being such a buzzkill?
Nate: Because you're lucky to have both of them in your life.
- Gossip Girl: The Last Days of Disco Stick

I was reading some old blog posts, and came across the saga of "That Guy", which I feel is one of the biggest mistakes I have made so far in my life. TL;DR: Wanted sex  one day and Charmeleon was unavailable, suggested meeting up for sex with one of my guildmates from WoW. We did. Then we did again. Then he wanted to, but I wanted to study, so I said no, but he kept insisting. So I decided I didn't want to see him anymore, and he said:

(sic) Alright, lol? okay.. see you like to make your insignificant life soo out there. and bitch to the open, i think in my defense i should only reply to your blog so others can read, alright. 

for starters I’ve only ever read ur blog twice, coz i know you love to bitch about people and life after certain events like all myspace/blog kiddies (100% predictable of course) 

Now. i’ve never called you. so why lie to make this much more of an issue to dramatize ur pathetic low life? i only messaged you twice to ask why u blocked me so i really dont understand why you make such bullshit up… So yes, i do regret even knowing you. even having sex with you on the first meetings i ever met you, well for me the experience was very daunting. you wondered why i couldn’t climax, that’s because it was like having sex with the grand canyon. 

Alright. soo now that we’ve established your a self righteous bitch unable to face a problem and a delusional moron with 0 life experiences as so expressed from her 1 of (I’m sure many, in her boring ramblings of her depressing thoughts aka “blogs”  ) shit analogies , and a shit root and a slut lol.. i think i will finally decide to not even initiate ur pathetic existence in this world and will forever regret knowing you. 

my 2cents.

So... Very harsh, but not entirely undeserved. Maybe I gave the impression that it was an ongoing thing, like I had with Charmeleon, and I wasn't entirely clear that I didn't want to see him again - which is highly likely, given how much I hated being direct back then (and still do). Thinking back, I realised it was a really risky thing to do. Although "That Guy" wasn't a complete stranger (he was a friend of a friend of one of my cousins), getting into a car, and then sleeping with someone you've never met before probably isn't a good idea!

In retrospect, that was one of the moments I would like to redo if I went back in time. I don't think it has affected me very much, but it was cruel of me to do that to someone as if they had no feelings. Sometimes it makes me feel pretty sick that I could do that.

Someone at work asked why I didn't just ask one of my male friends at uni? For one, it's a heap safer in the sense that I will have had some time to scope out whether they're an axe murderer or not (although with some people, you can't tell...). The thought had crossed my mind, but I decided against it for a few reasons.

At the time, I still lived with my family, and I didn't really think they'd be happy with me bringing a stranger to our house. My mum doesn't even like it when we invite over people we know really well! We could have done what I did with AG, was just do it in his car, or at his house - or, and I feel really bad about this one, at the house he was house-sitting (I really hope he washed the sheets afterwards =/). However, I barely knew anyone who had their own car, much less someone who had moved out of home. The people who did fill those criteria were mostly people who were already in a relationship, so they were definitely off-limits.

There was also the problem of my lack of confidence. I didn't think anybody would say yes. I asked someone at work who I also happened to go to uni with, and  he said he would have said no. I'm not even looking anymore, but even that felt a bit crushing - I don't think I could have handled a real rejection.

Most importantly, I had a great fear of ruining a friendship. It's kinda like snoring - how can you really know whether you snore or not?  How can you know if you're good in bed or not? You can ask your partner, but they have a huge motivation to lie to you, which is why you hear women saying, "He wasn't very big anyway" after a relationship has ended, but who don't complain during the course of the relationship itself. Sometimes it's just a spiteful insult, but I think sometimes it's true. For all I know, I could be the grandest of all canyons, but I can never find out as I will have nothing to compare with (and if I couldn't work up the courage to ask someone I knew to have sex with me, I would definitely not have enough courage to ask someone I know to have sex with me and then sex with lots of other girls to compare).

When it's just a throwaway relationship that you haven't spent time building up, then there is no fear that the person you're sleeping with might not enjoy it, and so even if it is bad (from either person's point of view), you haven't really lost anything. However, if it is a friend, then there is the potential that the friendship will never be the same - especially if you are a coward like me and struggle to confront someone directly.

I've never been in a threesome, but for the reason above, I feel like I should stick closely to the Gossip Girl rule: The third person is supposed to be a stranger. We've talked about possibly asking people we know, and I think it was mostly decided that it would be weird. Nate's point from the quote, about it being a twosome and a onesome is another great one, as at the end of the day, we are going to cuddle together in bed and go to sleep, while whoever the other person is gets packed onto a train for a lonely trip home. Would anyone want to do that?

I guess ideally, to be fair, you'd have two couples, and one really strong bed, but then it's just partner swapping or in the worst case, you end up with a threesome and a onesome. Or a twosome and two onesomes. I wonder if that's how people get into cuckolding. Or bukakke.

The only other solution seems to be to pay someone to join you, but I'm really worried about diseases. I think they're meant to tell you whether they have something or not, but I don't know if you can ever really know for sure. Though the same is true for your friends. Do you all go and get tested together and open the results together? That seems like something that'd kill the mood pretty quickly. Plus, anyone can print out some paper and put it in an envelope. I've never actually been tested, do the results even come in an envelope? Maybe they just email it these days.

There must be an app for this kind of thing...

Dunbar

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. ... This number was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. ... he proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. ... Dunbar's number states the number of people one knows and keeps social contact with, and it does not include the number of people known personally with a ceased social relationship, nor people just generally known with a lack of persistent social relationship, a number which might be much higher and likely depends on long-term memory size.- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

To continue from my last post, the reason why I'm thinking about the value of friendships is because I am meeting a lot of new people through the various activities I am doing, and so I feel like I don't have the capacity to continue to maintain friendships, but I don't know of a good culling process. To be honest, my ideal would be to have a few friends that I see regularly (once a month or more), a large group of friends who I see sporadically (once a year or more, but less than once every few months), and to rarely see the rest of my friends (less than once a year).

I've mentioned this before, but I always wanted to have a best friend like in the movies, but I feel like in trying to maintain so many friendships, I am missing out on the chance to find that person and grow that friendship.

Another experiment from the Dan Ariely book. In this experiment, the participants could click on three different doors: red, blue, or green. Each click used up a click, of which they only had a hundred. Each door contributed a different amount of money, which the person got at the end. So in the first case, once the participants worked out which door had the highest payout, they just clicked that door until they ran out of clicks.

He changed the experiment so that if you clicked on a door, the other two doors would shrink each time you clicked it, and eventually disappear. But you could click on a shrunken door to grow it again (though at the expense of the other two doors shrinking a little). You would think that it wouldn't matter, same as last time, once they found out which door paid the most, they would keep clicking it. But that's not what happened in the experiment. He found that most of the participants would start clicking the shrinking doors to try and "save" them, even though they know that clicking them would pay less, and that their optimal strategy was to just spam the highest paying door.

In the next experiment, he added a "revive", where you could click a door that disappeared and it'd come back. So in this case, people shouldn't waste their clicks saving doors, as it only takes one click to bring it back. He did find that people were no longer saving the shrinking doors, but they were still "reviving" disappeared doors as soon as they disappeared, even though they weren't using them, and even though they could have revived them at any other time with no loss.

One of the things he wanted to illustrate with this experiment is the irrational nature of people to keep doors open, even at the expense of better things, and even when the doors aren't really closing. That was definitely the biggest lesson I learned in 440 - as we spent so much time trying to keep our options open, to avoid having to refactor later, that we never really committed to an implementation until far too late into the project.

So back to the culling thought.

On Friday, I went to a bar with some friends, including one who I consider a very good friend. A couple of drinks later, and I found myself pushing him into doing something that he wasn't very keen to do. Morning after, and much more sober, I suddenly got this horrible feeling in my gut that my actions the night before might have caused this friend to hate me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about it, and in the end I decided to email him and apologise. Luckily, he forgave me, but that horrible feeling really stuck to me. I felt like I had just narrowly avoided falling off a cliff.

Is that how you decide who is a friend that you want to keep? You try and picture how you would feel if they absolutely hated you and never wanted to have anything to do with you ever again.

In regards to the friendship debt point, Gerald pointed out that debt is perceived, and you might feel like you did someone a favour and that they owe you, but they might just see it as a regular thing that isn't a big deal. So as these debts are never formally documented, there can be a skewed perception of who owes who what.

In the case of this hypothetical hate method, how much I am willing to invest in this friendship should be related to how horrible I would feel if that person hated me. I think this way you are only as invested as you feel you should be, and you have no resentment that you are putting in more or less than the other person. It could be a self-regulating method assuming if the other party starts pulling away as they feel like they are not getting as much out of the friendship, this will cause you to feel non-hypothetically terrible, and so you will put more effort into the relationship - if that feeling of terribleness is enough to motivate you. If you put in too much effort, you will not feel so terrible at the idea of losing them, and so you can relax a bit.

Market For Friends

A good friend helps you move. A great friend helps you move a body.

I disagree with this, I think a great friend doesn't make you an accessory to murder.

I've been reading Predictably Irrational, and it has made me think about the decisions I've made in my life. He talks about the differences between people's willingness to do something based on market norms, vs. social norms.

SO WE LIVE in two worlds : one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult... if you've ever offered a potential romantic partner the chance to cut to the chase, split the cost of the courting process, and simply go to bed, the odds are that you will have wrecked the romance forever.
Ariely, Dan (2013-04-04). The Irrational Bundle (Kindle Locations 1242-1247). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

In the book, he gives the example of a lawyer who may be perfectly fine doing pro-bono work (social norm), but say you were to offer them $30 to help you with something, they'll probably refuse as they don't think it's worth their time (market norm). Many people are  perfectly happy to help their friends out for free, because that's just what you do as friends.

It got me thinking, at what point do market norms come into play with regards to social interactions? I can think of a bunch of people off the top of my head who I will happily drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, but I feel like a part of that is due to the length of our friendship, and how likely I believe they will reciprocate. I can also think about a much larger group of people who I would refuse to drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, and once again, this is mostly due to how likely I believe they will do the same for me. However, I will gladly send them my chocolate chip cookie recipe, or tell them which restaurant that photo I posted on Facebook came from. Surely this is a market norm? I am basing how far I am willing to go for them on how likely I believe they will go for me. Maybe I'm completely cynical, and nobody else looks at their friendships this way, but I get the feeling that I am not alone in this view.

There are other factors. One of the biggest ones for me is past actions - I feel like I owe something to people who have done something nice for me in the past. The problem is, how do you deal with memory inflation/deflation? For instance, I remember being really upset one night, and I was just sitting by the train tracks. I felt so alone, like there was nobody who would want to help me. I don't know why, but I found myself dialing MrMan1's number, and I didn't want to tell him what was wrong, I just wanted him to talk to me. I think he ended up talking for about half an hour straight, and it made me feel much better. At the time, I felt a bit like I owed him my life, but now, I can't recall exactly how I was feeling - was I really going to jump onto the train tracks? I don't really know what my "debt" to MrMan1 is at.

On the flip side, there was a time when someone was saying some pretty bad things about me, and only one person defended me. When that person asks a favour of me, I usually think about that time, but it has been years since that has happened. Has my "debt" been paid back yet?

Maybe working at a bank has influenced me, but I have some friends who I feel are very far in "debt" to me. From my point of view, I have put in a lot more effort into the friendship, and I'm starting to wonder what I really get out of it. This is tied into my next post - also inspired by this book. The cost of keeping your options open. There is time that I put into friendships that I feel could be better spent on enhancing existing friendships, or making new ones.

To be continued....

Weighting for the Next Big Thing

Last month, after nearly 3 years, I finally hit my goal weight. Well, it was 55.1kg, which is close enough to 55 for me to say that it's a success. I started off really deluded about the entire thing, to the point where I thought I could lose 6kg in 2 months, but after 3 years, I think I have a more realistic view towards weight loss. To be honest, it was really disappointing. I wasn't expecting an invitation to the Quahog Beautiful People Club, or anything like that, but I just thought something would be different. Everything seems the same, and other than increased fitness, I haven't really noticed any amazing lifestyle changes that people always talk about when they manage to lose a lot of kilos. Maybe that's just a testament to the amazing friends that I have. Or maybe it's a sign that I should eat more KFC as it doesn't matter!

1. Friendship

They say that you can't make friends with salad, but during this entire thing, I found the opposite is true. There were so many people who wanted to give me nutritional advice, and I've actually become a lot closer to people at work by discussing how to improve a salad, or make healthy food taste good. I still don't have a good understanding of nutrition, which is why I'm on the Copy Daniels Diet (where I just eat what the two Daniels on my team eat), but at least I can now make a better judgement on what's good or bad to eat. I no longer think chips are a staple part of every meal!

2. Motivation

I've always thought if I were going to associate myself with an element (of the traditional spiritual kind), I'd pick water. I'm happy just to go along with the flow, and if something doesn't work out, then I'll just go a different route instead. It takes a lot of built up force for me to get angry at something and push out against it. I think it's a good trait to have when it comes to making friends, but a horrible trait to have when it comes to heading towards a vague and far away goal. I always felt like achieving it would happen eventually, it was only a matter of time.

That's probably why I didn't really get anywhere in the first year or so. I'd never tried it before, so I didn't really have a good idea of what a reasonable measurement was - except that I knew losing a heap of weight in a short period of time was bad. I fell off the wagon quite often, with the thought that I could just catch up later. I think my biggest problem was that I had no reason to do this other than the fact that I wanted to be skinnier. I was in a happy relationship (and still am), I didn't have a job that relied on my appearance, I didn't play any team sports. This was something that I was doing for myself, and I've never learned to drive myself with that motivation before. I did well at school because I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I practice gaming because I don't want to disappoint my teammates. I read Java stuff outside of work because I don't want to disappoint my co-workers. I'd never had to avoid disappointing myself because I can always convince myself that I'm OK, and that everything in my life is going fine.

The first big consistent drop (i.e. one where I didn't just put it back on after a few weeks), 69kg -> 64kg was after I joined the gym. That's where I met Peter, who helped design a fitness program for me. What made me keep at it was that I didn't want to disappoint him. I know, I know, I still haven't learned how to use myself as a motivational tool, but I do know that about myself, and my way around it is to find someone who I can use as a stand-in for my parents. Peter never said anything bad about me and my lack of fitness. Even as I was detailing my diet, I saw a brief look of horror on his face, but he never made me feel bad about my habits - just encouraged me to make better ones.

To motivate myself to keep going, I started to focus on the improvements I was making. I could now for the train and not be completely out of breath. How I could carry more and more groceries home from the supermarket. I also imagined conversations with Peter whenever I went out to buy lunch. Would he disapprove of this? I wasn't eating incredibly healthy food, but I was eating KFC a lot less.

The next big drop, 64->60 was after I started doing yoga. I found that as work was becoming more and more difficult, it was becoming harder and harder to convince myself to go to the gym. GP's recommendation of the 4-hour-body said that the best method is 30 minutes of intense activity four times a week. I planned to go to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. What ended up happening was that I'd be too tired on Monday, so I'd move that to Tuesday. But then I'd also be too tired on Tuesday, so I'd move that to Thursday. I'd still be tired on Wednesday, so that got pushed to Sunday. And I was left having to go to the gym Thursday to Sunday, which was really optimistic of me, and I don't think I ever managed to do it.

Yoga classes made a difference because they had set times. I had to go Thursday and Saturday, otherwise I'd miss them completely. I found that made it a lot easier to stick to it, as I couldn't put it off. My gym days were still variable, but I knew I had to fit them around yoga, and I didn't want to do Thurs-Sun as I knew I needed a break, so I went earlier in the week. This might sound silly, but I also felt a lot more relaxed after starting yoga. The hour-long class was a great time to zone out and just let my brain process everything that happened in the week - nobody needed to talk to me, I didn't have anywhere else I needed to be.

At this point, I was in the ideal weight range, according to WiiFit, but only just. I figured I could stop at 60, but I wanted to be convincingly in the range, and WiiFit said my ideal weight was 56, so that was my new goal. It was much harder now though. I was fairly active at this point, and eating healthier, and I was worried that the only way to keep going would be to start doing the crazy stuff that you see on late-night TV.

I don't really know what I did to get from 60-57. The things that changed: I picked up pilates, I did some work-outs with Char, there was the Christmas break (maybe less work stress = more weight loss). From 57-55 though, I attribute entirely to the Copy Daniels Diet. It was really strange, I was 57 for a long time, and then one day I weighed myself and I was suddenly 55.1, after two weeks of copying what the two Daniels at work eat. Which is also strange in itself, as they're both trying to bulk up, so their meals are based around that. But the most important part of the Copy Daniels Diet was the fact that both of them would tell me off if I didn't eat something approved by them, and Grad Daniel is very harsh. Again, I just needed someone to avoid disappointing.

3. The Downside

Throughout the whole thing, I hit some pretty dark points. Sometimes I'd forget to eat lunch because I was too busy at work, and afterwards, I would congratulate myself for skipping a meal. It made me feel happy at the time, but in hindsight, I see that it's really bad behaviour.

I also started comparing myself to the people around me. On the train, walking on the street, at work, at the gym. To be honest, I'm really surprised that the obesity level in Australia is high, because I never see obese people anywhere! All I saw was people who were skinnier than me, and I kept feeling like even though I had hit a healthy weight range, it still wasn't good enough. My self-confidence took a huge dive, as did my feelings of self-worth. It's strange as I never noticed these people before - I was just another person in a sea of people, just like everyone else, except now I wasn't. All the differences had become incredibly obvious.

I've improved now. A couple of weeks ago, I went a little too extreme on the Copy Daniels Diet, and reduced my intake of sugar and carbs, as well as swapping from beef to chicken. It got to the point where I nearly fainted at work. I know the old me would have seen it as a good sign, that I was able to do it, but not faint. The new me sees it as a huge red flag, and I spent the past week eating foods full of carbs and fats. I'm back to 57kg now, but I don't feel like passing out - which is super important to me.

4. The Reactions

As I said earlier, I haven't noticed any changes. The Arnie twins told me to measure myself (waist, thighs, calves, biceps) to see whether there were any changes, and the numbers haven't changed very much. I do fit in some of my older clothes (including a shirt I bought when I was 14, which still fits me, showing that I haven't grown at all in the past 14 years! T_T), which were previously feeling a bit tight, but I don't think I've gone down a size.

I wouldn't say I lost a significant amount of weight, so I wasn't expecting people to be nicer to me - and most people are really nice to me anyway, so I wasn't really sure how being skinnier was going to change that. Nobody on my team said anything, but I figured they see me every day, so to them it was just a graduate change. Or they're being polite as it's rude to talk about other people's weight. However, a lot of the women in my old team were congratulating me. They kept asking me what my secret was, and when I told them it was diet and exercise, some of them got a bit annoyed as they thought I was holding out on them. I still haven't been invited to hang out with the "pretty girls", but I'm going to tell myself that it's because I have no interest in going out clubbing after work. 

Most importantly, I feel comfortable with how I am now. When people said I was fat in the past, I would think that they were mean, and work out what mean thing I could say to them in return. If someone said it now, I think I would try and have a more reasonable response. I'd tell them that I was trying to lose weight, and tell them about yoga, pilates and the gym (I also want to start aqua aerobics, hopefully next next Monday). I'd also thank them for their feedback. I don't want to sound all preachy, but here's what I learned from the whole experience.

1. Find people who will give you honest feedback.
2. If that feedback is something you don't like, don't reject it outright. But don't just accept it either. Analyse it.
• Is there something you can do about it? If not, why not?
• Do you want to do something about it?
3. Be patient, change takes time.

My new goal is 50kg, but it's not as important to me now as getting to 55 was. I'm not sure what my next big project is going to be, so I might be like water and flow along until I come across something.