This happens to me when I rarely open up Facebook. I'd see someone I was obsessing over in the 10s, and now I just wonder what I was ever feeling with them. It's not like something happened and they're massively different, they're more or less the same. Really the world changed a lot and I'm not the 
I used to be.
I'm not dating anyone new now. But if I had to judge someone as hot, they would have many of the following characteristics:
- left of some soft (Marxist, Anarchist, hell I'll date a decent socdem)
- mask wearing
- vegan
- high empathy, worry about the suffering of others
- reader
- actively organising something in their community
To be honest, I had a pretty basic taste in dates back in the day. If anything, this should be a self-crit.
this reminds me of how a friend of mine took this girl to prom. I would describe her as quiet and seemingly normal.
anyway, by her mid 30s, she was posting on Facebook non stop about how Obama was in the Muslim Brotherhood and actively helping ISIS into the US. big Operation Jade Helm brain. like posting memes of Obama with like evil red eyes and stuff, unironically.
I can't even imagine what level of Q / JFK manifestation energy she is on now.
Facebook is going to be remembered like that racist newspaper that Henry Ford stuck in cars. Or maybe like cigarettes or heroin. It's the most effective brainworm tool ever created and it's caused multiple generations to have severe cognitive problems.
Once a month I'll log into FB. Even with my lefty friends and what I'm following, the content is just super bad. It's gotta be the worse social media out there now.
Some of the most generic white people from 20 years ago are the most aggressively reactionary now.
i used to be the douche with shitty politics in high school. they were all relatively disengaged and civility types. in defiance of the historical american trope, i grew up in a large urbanized metro "blue" area of a "blue" state and moved away to live/work in a series of smaller towns, mostly underserved regions, generally in starkly "red" areas of "red" states. and, much to others' shock, my political development has gone in a completely different direction than that of my stayed-in-civilization high school cohort, who now find themselves in a battleground/contested area with suburban pockets of extreme reaction.
i don't feel like my life's arc has particularly been smart. my internalization of the information and ideas around me has been slow. all the pieces have been there for decades, but i was not putting them together mostly due to stubbornness and laziness. it all seems obvious to me how wrong i was back then and i am embarrassed at who i was.
i swear to god, every time i looked up somebody from high school back when i still had fb, they became massive chuds. they used to be chill and disengaged when i knew them, but somewhere along the way they plugged into the dumbest info streams and just plain gobbled it like hungry piglets. like just 70% "build the wall" type immigrant-hating chuds. and then like 25% anti-bernie, homeless fearing LIBS with the difference being weirdos who went off the rails, moved away, and vanished into the mists.
watching it has given me a lot of antipathy towards the passive assumption that in relation to rural life, urban life in america is an engine of tolerance or progressive politics. rather, that particular view is driven by the uncritical positionality of researchers and thinkpiece authors.
The Gentrification Of The Mind is about the systematic destruction of urban engines of tolerance or progressive politics, and their replacement with the amusement park version. The author, Sarah Schulman, said the scale of what was lost during the AIDS crisis cannot be explained to those two young to remember the times prior.
i spent highschool trying desperately to be attracted to men
so dear god yes
That sounds like a special level in hell. I'm glad you realised after high school.
My standards are pretty much just
-
wears a mask
-
not literally a fascist
-
not utterly bloodthirsty and completely opposed to veganism on principle
which limits my options in my area to a total of... 0 people. As far as I can tell. I have literally never met someone who meets these three criteria. death to america.
Unironically you're the most attractive person in your area. I wish there was more people like you.
Being a leftist in public is asking for trouble, not to mention leftists are more often visibly queer, or disabled, an ethnic minority, etc. I've had dating profiles with leftist stuff (free Palestine, acab, eat the rich, etc) and more than a few times people would match with me just to call me a piece of shit.
I've had people follow me around shouting at me too. I've had my life threatened in broad daylight. This is why I own a gun.
I'll make a longer answer as a comment in your thread, but it's just like if you have sincere leftist beliefs, you're already part of a marginalized group.
There are already dangerous people out there, you know?
Ohhh. Fair enough. Ya I'm sorry for some of the bullshit that often men perpetrate.
-
Dated someone for like 2 weeks, felt stuff for them. At one point they say they have something special to show me, something I'm going to like.
They pull out a wood carving of a swastika interlaced with a star of David. I'm immediately like "huh." They're all smiles asking me if I feel anything from it. They get confused when I ask if this is a weird joke or something.
Over the next hour I put together they're a deep level member of the Raëlian Church. UFOs, magical symbols, seraphins visiting and a weird amount of transphobia even though 1) I thought Raëlians were cool with that and 2) I'm very obviously non-binary. They tell me stories of how the covid vaccine gave them amnesia, how they believe they're a clone. After the second date I get a bunch of texts claiming that aliens had replaced them in the night, with some sounding panicked. I got pictures of their hair with things like "Abduction last night. Clear change in hair length on left side."
I should have noticed all the signs, but they were really into me and I was desperate for attention. Sometimes I think about what it could have been like, they were actually a vegan, seemed to have legitimate interest in me as a person too. I kept getting a "I can fix them feeling" but looking back now I realize I was just starved. They were one of only two people who ever expressed romantic interest in me.
I should have noticed all the signs, but they were really into me and I was desperate for attention. Sometimes I think about what it could have been like, they were actually a vegan, seemed to have legitimate interest in me as a person too.
I've been exactly here, comrade. Loneliness is hella painful. I'm glad that you're OK now. I hope that she's fine.
Yeah I'm ok, I'm more comfortable with myself these days and realizing I'm more on the grey-asexual spectrum, which has really helped with the loneliness somehow.
thank you, you're sweet. I try to be better for myself these days.
I get vibes of someone with a psychotic disorder. Sounds like they needed help, though I don't mean to imply you needed to be the one to help them. I think you made the right choice; just hope they can someday get the help it sounds like they need.
Yeah I eventually got that vibe too and had no idea what to do. There was an instance one night where I got about 150 text messages in a row, sometimes of repeated numbers or people's names. It got scary.
You rejected the Prophet of Yakub (PBUH) and now you will be punished.
that's weird because I lead a very dull life comparatively. I think I'm just a weirdo magnet.
Abduction last night. Clear change in hair length on left side.
They have a cat? one of my friend's cats regularly munches on her hair while she sleeps
That's rough though, I can definitely relate to just being like "but they like me that never happens" to excuse shit just not working
From the pictures I got sent there was no change. They'd also claim to suddenly have different colored eyes or a different colored aura. It was not normal stuff they were saying.
yeahhhh I kinda figured I honestly just thought the cat thing was funny
I grew up in small-town Oklahoma so pretty much every person I ever crushed on back in the day falls into the 'what was I thinking' category.
Tbh I think most of the people I had major crushes on in my teens/early 20s ended up becoming communists, so young me was onto something subconsciously! Kindness has always been important to me, so that's probably part of it.
About masking, though...
I don't technically know for some of them but I would be shocked if they were still masking. Unfortunately, the commies and libs in my life have been utterly indistinguishable on this front.Not really because I know the answer to what was I thinking is always "I wasn't thinking, he was gorgeous and I wanted to fuck him."
The ones that I actually did fall in love with I still love and still see within them the things that made me love them.
I used to do this thing where I'd start a new job or someone would start at my job and I would have a crush on them just to the point where I got to know them. Every time this happened, I ended up completely turned off by their personality after a little while. Not that I would date a co-worker, but where else do you really meet people anyway?
I realized I would build up this version of the other person in my head based off of a couple friendly/flirty interactions, then they would shatter it. I was always glad when the illusion vanished, because I'd rather just go to work and do my job.
It made me realize why I had so many bad relationships though. Glad I met my wife. I didn't go through that process with her.
Oh my god being in my thirties, I still remember dating a guy who kept a katana in his bedroom. I'm so glad to have my standards where they're at now.
A vegan guy who respects masks and pronouns is the bare minimum.
I had a friend make the news because she was chased by a long term bf wielding a katana.
Gonna go against the grain and say: not really...no. There are people I wouldn't pursue now due to incompatibilities and/or that know well enough now in hindsight to know their shitty qualities out way their positives...but I still kinda get what I was thinking at the time. In some cases, at the time I was interested it was because back then I was a different person.
I think if anything the way my perspective has changed is that I started to open myself up to people that back in the day I would have written off more quickly. Like with my current partner for example I think I probably would have just noped out the first time she talked about her obsession with skin care routines and how often she visits Sephora...but now that I'm not an angsty/shitty twenty year old I get that's just the thing she geeks out about in the way I geek out about nerd shit.
Ya past me probably thought that women caring about their beautify was cringe. Nowadays I just see it as a personal interest.
This is how I feel. I always find it a little odd when people reflect on their past negatively or with some kind of confusion. Like, you don’t know what you were thinking? You don’t have access to your own thoughts???
Not really. When I was younger I would give it a go with pretty much anyone who showed interest in me because I wasn't very confident, so a sure thing was very appealing. I only ever met two people I really clicked with. The first one I dated through most of college and the second one I married ten years ago this month
Shocking that anyone would put up with me this long, but here we are!
My first girlfriend is now married to a Baptist peacher, and one of the more recent ones is now married to a fairly well-known (he has appeared in the dunk tank) Dark Enlightenment trad weirdo, recently converted to Catholicism, and has 6 children under ten years old. Really dodged some bullets there. Luckily, I found a rad communist lady to settle down and get a bunch of cats with.
