tl;dr: have a friend who has historically always been mad when his friends got a gf/wife. He acts like he's 15 years old and saying "bros before hoes" still. He calls me and other friends a yuppie or breeder, and he thinks crosswalks are authoritarian so he has to always be a "rebel" and make it seem like he has the most unique viewpoint in the world. He doesn't change anything about himself, and he's stubbornly proud of having "no filter." This has caused every wife/gf of his friends to not like him. He will never be invited to any kind of social event because he will say stupid shit. Like, nobody has to be a rabid commie all the fucking time. Him and my gf got into a huge fight because he always talks like an asshole, and i live with my gf, so he doesnt come to my house at all because he'll say some shit. He still brings up this fight when im around him, and it's like get the fuck over it. I basically don't share anything about my life that involves my partner now, because he'll say something fucking stupid about her. He also begins a lot of sentences with "well" or "actually" which is never helpful. He literally can't admin when he is wrong, even about the simplest shit.
This really all seemed to get worse once I started my current long term relationship, and then it got way worse when my gf got sick of his shitty attitude and how he treats everyone like an asshole. He literally just can't be chill at all. No leftist(or similar) should be ranting constantly about every single injustice during every single social situation. That is exhausting to be around, and there is a time and place for it, but there has to be an ability to switch that shit off.
Finding and keeping relationships requires changing yourself just a bit, and making compromises, and it's now become apparent he isn't capable of that.
related question: have you ever dumped a long time friend? This is all a somewhat recent change, like the past 3-4 years, and it really seems to be because im in a relationship like most of our friend group, so now he's totally alone. Ive heard him say he's in therapy but i have to wonder if that's true, because it clearly isn't working. I'm annoyed by him but I pity him too because he can't fucking change for anybody at all.
He's right though, jaywalking didn't even exist until the past few decades. How the fuck are feds going to make a law just to harass minorities crossing the street, and just have everybody be cool with it?
Pedestrians should always have right of way.
https://marker.medium.com/the-invention-of-jaywalking-afd48f994c05
History of Jaywalking. Tldr: roads used to be for public use. Yes, crosswalks and safe places to cross the road good. But the fact is that urban streets used to be places for people, not cars. Jaywalking as a crime only exists to make people hate pedestrians just crossing a street. I live in bumfuck nowhere, where everything is completely car dependant. There are no crosswalks on many intersections, or they can be up to a mile away from where you actually need to cross the road. Why should it be considered a legal requirement to be in a car to be on 90 percent of local property?
No, I am not against cross walks, nor did I ever say that. You're working with shit I didn't say. You're making assumptions about what I'm advocating for with no real base for it. I literally even said crosswalks were good in that paragraph, so this isn't even in good faith now.
All I am saying is that crosswalk enforcement in my bumfuck middle of nowhere American existence, I have only ever seen black people getting harassed for crossing the road in the wrong area. Why is it illegal to cross an empty street not on the crosswalk? Why is it considered acceptable that a law like jaywalking widely used to harass minorities to be upheld? How are carefully enforced crosswalks even helping people not get ran over? Are cops saving lives by harassing minorities for crossing the street in the wrong spot?
That wasn't you asking, that was you going in for a sarcastic dunk. You asked if I believed something specifically stupid and made an effort to make it sound stupid in the question.
it very much tracks that someone here would be like my friend lol
lol. reported for hostility and blocked, blessed is the block button. i do like that my post was about someone who say "well hackshually" and then you did the thing.
damn i did edit that out lol. i figured i had got my use out of it anyways.
So he thinks crosswalks are authoritarian in how they limit him as a driver?
no as a pedestrian. he literally walked away from our group to jaywalk by himself. the main reason the rest of us didnt want to jaywalk is because they have shit to live for like a wife and kids.
haha yea, even at that time i was like "i mean youre not technically wrong" but it's just an absurd reach. it's almost some libertarian thinking to be against every law ever made. For example i think a lot of people don't really appreciate how much murder the law against murder is preventing.
Is that what they mean? I thought they were saying "Cars having to stop for people at crosswalks is authoritarian" I could have misread it though
better get to jaywalking, you rebel. he's also a BIG fan of Trotsky.
... he likes trotsky but he's anti-authotarian? does he know trotskys role in the russian civil war..
trust me, lately his left politics are super inconsistent and contradictory.
stop using money to buy food, and instead simply acquire the food, with the help of a large coat or backpack.
know what else is authoritarian? youtube making people pay to remove ads. He will literally apply it to anything. Wants the revolution, doesn't want to be authoritarian. Failed revolutions are cool!
i mean the law is authoritarian in general but that's kind of its point also. I share OP's frustration with their friend though, some people really don't read situations well or know how to interact without alienating themselves
related question: have you ever pretty much cut ties with someone after knowing them for a long ass time?
Yes. A friend I'd known for decades, from primary school. I'd just learned that I'd acquired a 10-year-old step-niece. My sister had started living with her now-current-husband/then-boyfriend. He had custody of his daughter due to the biological mom making a very long string of very bad decisions. I told my friend about this and how much I was looking forward to being the awesome-cool uncle I knew I could be, to this bright kind kid with some lingering trauma.
The first words out his mouth were "Is she cute? Is her mom hot?"
So in the span of about a second I realized I needed to go no-contact with my childhood friend.
(Step-niece grew up to be a professional nurse, and has been making a long string of very good personal-life decisions, and has become the kindest gentlest playfullest aunt of her own to her toddler niece.)
We called it the paraphilic continuum in Crim Psych.
And yeah. It's not a road to go down. I know some pretty disturbing statistics. Maybe one day I'll make a post about them. But I'd have to CW the whole thread.
It's been like 18 years but I can do some digging and see if I can find some academic sources. I mostly studied serial killers.
I can tell you this off the top of my head:
Extreme CW:
spoiler
If a serial rapist begins to use a knife or scissors to remove clothing the chance that they will murder their victim go way up. Like you got 2-3 victims before they start cutting and stabbing as part of their assault.
It's some grim shit. I had to stop studying it because it was fucking with my head. It's why I can't do all that "True Crime" shit. It's a Nietzschean fucking abyss I'd rather not gaze into.
Yeah. I was friends with a person for years. Would stand up for her when people talked bad behind her back. Supported her transition.
Then one day she ghosted me. Which is fine, we all got our lives but I liked our hangouts and kinda left it open if she ever wanted to reconnect. Later on I found out she went all 'truescum' and it was such a ladder pull. I was done. Good riddance.
truescum
hexbear, always showing me new words i never knew about. from what i read it's basically a trans person who gatekeeps.
Pretty much. Like you couldn't actually be trans without hormones and surgeries. Pretty shit take. I never wanted to deal with her shit again.
I've thought about that angle myself. Oh, so nobody was trans before modern medicine? Two-Spirits in Native culture were just playing pretend? Poor people can't be trans? What's next? Too old to transition? The argument has so many holes you could use it for a colander.
I think a lot of trans people want so badly for there to be an objective measure of when you should be considered a particular gender.
To them, the gender spectrum being a sliding scale leaves them open to accusations of "not really" being their preferred gender. Medicalism, which is not an objective measure, at least approaches a level of objectivity that can provide more structure and "proof" than cultural approaches.
its really crazy. i like to think a lot of them grow out of it, the pain of surgery can kinda fuck your head up for a couple of years sometimes
he really is closer to a nutjob libertarian than he thinks. the other day he said youtube charging to remove ads is authoritarian. but also when i pirate video games he talks about how they need that money to make more games. there really is no consistency. i guess it's what no theory does to a mfer.
he's very much anti capitalist, but his dream of attaining that is either unclear or absurd. He's anti capitalist but also anti authoritarian, so a revolution is then impossible.
He sounds bitter that he's still single while all his friends have a girlfriend/partner, and there's definitely some self sabotaging behaviour occuring because of that. Like thinking he's better than anyone else and refusing to change. That way he stays single, can continue being/playing an arsehole, and doesn't need to do introspection or ask himself some hard questions. I know I've phrased that really crudely, but sometimes you need to call a spade a spade.
Other than trying to tell him this somehow and let him connect the dots himself, there's not much you can do.
exactly, nobody wanting to go on more than one date shows a lot, and when they don't want to go out again it's their fault because they don't accept his shitty teen-like behavior. No woman wants to date a manchild.
When him and my gf had a fight, i even said to him "do you think our other friends wives/gfs like you? cause they don't." I named one friends wife in particular(call him Dave), and i found out later he texted/called Dave in disbelief that his wife wouldnt like him. Daves wife and my friend got into a fight over a situation years ago where he just had to be abrasive and shitty, and Daves wife definitely still hates him. Also if i told Dave some of the shit my "friend" said about his wife behind his back, he'd cut him off totally.
The worst part is i dont even want to tell him, because i know he'll just dig in further about his shitty attitude and how it's the world with a problem and not him. I really don't even know what to do except avoid going out with him.
Is there any way you can try tell him this/suggest it and let him figure it out himself? Because that's probably the only way out here if he thinks he's better than anyone else.
that would just take bravery on my part, because it's just gonna end up into some fight about how i've changed because im in a relationship. It will never be a problem that he is causing, it's always external forces to blame. He's 16 years old in the brain, so if i don't take his side or my gfs side, i've betrayed him.
It sounds like you've done all you can.
It's not your job to fix your friend - that's his job.
A friendship is not a deposition - you don't have to tell him everything.
It sounds like you've brought up all these issues with him previously to no avail - it's totally fine to just distance yourself now.
If he realizes you're less available and confronts you, you can tell him that spending time with him is stressful for the reasons you've previously brought up, and you haven't been up to dealing with the additional stress. This leaves an opening for him to at least attempt to behave more like a friend engaging in mutual care than a personified rant, and gives you an out for ending visits when he does not.
most of the time it was someone he met in a real life event. as far as i can tell he had pretty much zero success at getting any dates on any apps. i never saw his bio, or the chats, but i can only assume he threw up flags right away just because he has to say too much too fast. anymore im pretty sure he doesnt even try to find dates now, i think he's internally accepted he'll never like someone enough to make compromises.
most of the time it was someone he met in a real life event.
what kind of events?
sometimes a work event, sometimes it was local theater when he was doing that.
i think i couldnt tell as much when we were both just simple Obama libs. i know him well enough that i know trying to convince him of something is a true waste of effort.
the silver lining of having zero outlook for making friends: I won't wind up meeting this guy
Halfway through, I thought this is a bit of Lenin complaining about Stalin being rude to his wife.
i didn't even know about that. let's flip it though cause I like Stalin and my friend does not haha.
I’ve pretty much dumped a long time friend during Covid, cause they went full on fash pretty much. It hasn’t been an explicit thing, the dumping, we just no longer talk and I don’t really consider him a friend anymore. A shame too, I mean he never had perfect politics, I mean tbh he was probably always a bit center right, but he was a good guy to hang around. But at one point people change and it’s just not fun to talk with them anymore.
I have other friends who, I wouldn’t say I’ve “dumped,” we still talk occasionally and I see them now and again, but the relationship has undoubtably changed. They got big fancy office jobs whereas I worked a series of absolute shit, no money jobs interspersed with periods of unemployment. The divide was exacerbated when I was on the front lines of Covid and these guys were complaining about work from home. We just no longer see eye to eye and the relationship is hard. It’s sad since at one point a long time ago we were inseparable. But time keeps moving and we all change, you just need to accept that.
with my friend we agree politically like 90%, but its diverged since he has gone 100% anti authoritarian whereas im saying what we want to happen to the wealthy is definitely authoritarianism. but that would require him admitting he was wrong in some way.
pretty much. One time he was trying to get at me for not reading enough of Marx and shit, and then he admitted he hasn't actually read any of the full works. As far i can tell he mostly just reads fantasy novels. And im certain he hasn't really read any anarchist theory either, despite being so proud of his history degree. His viewpoint is almost entirely "anti-authoritarian" without any further analysis of why its absurd for a "revolutionary" to be a hardline anti-authoritarian. He thinks we can win the revolution and end up in utopia immediately. He doesnt even call himself an anrchist though, all i ever hear is anti-authoritarian, because he also thinks "real" communism/socialism hasn't ever existed so therefore it's not worth trying to achieve. He has no support for AES. He thinks China is killing all the Uighurs. He thinks the Ukraine war is good because Putin is bad.
im pretty sure he doesnt want to claim to be an anarchist/socialist/communist because then that would make him part of a group of people that thinks similarly, and he constantly has to be the most unique snowflake in the room.
Your former roommate has very unnerving scoff/click intervals
Yep. Dude prided himself on being an asshole since highschool. It was funny back then, but the kept it up, became more of a jerk and mocking me constantly, married an ex of mine and turns out he beat her and broke her down emotionally like he always did to everyone else. Went down the AnCap/sovereign citizens pipeline and started posting about how terrible teachers are - my partner is a teacher. No regrets about ghosting him, I don't even think about him any more and my life is a lot better. We live too short of lives to hang around with people who treat you like shit.
Dude prided himself on being an asshole since highschool. It was funny back then, but the kept it up, became more of a jerk and mocking me constantly, married an ex of mine and turns out he beat her and broke her down emotionally like he always did to everyone else.
I hope he gets blown up by a creeper when mining diamonds in Minecraft so he falls into lava and loses all his diamond armor (too much of a noob for netherite).
I just hope he becomes a better person. After his second divorce he married some chud woman that he quickly got pregnant and they moved to the middle of nowhere. We have a mutual friend from high school who also went off a different deep end (religious), but is a lovely person - him and his wife helped the asshole guy's second wife escape the violence, so they learned a lot of details they don't want to repeat. But one time he said to me "I think he's moving out into the sticks so no one can hear his wife scream"...
"I think he's moving out into the sticks so no one can hear his wife scream"
Horror movie material. This means to me that he is truly a dangerous person and I pray that he never meets you guys again, unless you're all armed and ready to deal with him.
Def armed up, and he's blocked by us on social media. Last time he reached out was over 3 years ago so I think we're in the clear. Thing is, personality wise he's almost a clone of my brother, whom we know is much more of a danger to us (christo-fascist and active III%er). We don't see him unless he shows at holidays, and we refuse to be alone with him. Shits fucked, but I have no regrets keeping these kinds of people out of our lives.
most of my friend group exploded recently when one of them cheated with another's wife. the weird thing was that friend always said he hated that person, in fact our entire friend group thought she was incredibly toxic and that their relationship with their husband was abusive (i won't get into details but it involved SA).
and then, after that relationship was broken up between the toxic wife and her (now-ex) husband, our friend group further fragmented when the ex-husband, while super depressed and drunk, asked another also super drunk (male) friend if they wanted to kiss, and then that male friend interpreted that somehow as somehow equivalent to sexual assault (nothing violates consent like..... asking for consent before doing anything? i was there the whole time and nothing especially weird happened other than that question) and stopped hanging out with us. i think it was homophobia or less likely some kind of internalized repression.
i also had to stop hanging out with a cousin because he got randomly super pissed at my then-boyfriend while we were trying to play a game of warhammer 40k. my then-boyfriend literally moved ONE MINIATURE 7 inches before my cousin started shouting and saying he did it wrong or was cheating. i measured the move several times to make sure it was rules legal. we literally never got past thte first movement of the entire game, nothing had even happened enough to determine the outcome, no attacks were made, no objectives taken, just the one movement and he ragequit. then afterwards tried to make it about 'respect' or something when my then-boyfriend was acting totally normal like the rest of us that night. like yeah, we took a while to set up, because we were all casually hanign out and talking, we ALL were. it doesn't explain why my cousin got so mad about that one movement phase for one miniature at the very start, its a post-hoc justification for their freakout.
its all good tho 'asking to kiss - SA' guy was an annoying reddit brain who thought chatGPT was as sentient as people (its all just statistics! we are stochastic parrots!), and my cousin always seemed to have problems with gay people, and once said something about how we can't criticize italy electing that fascist Meloni person because 'thats just what they believe in!'. it feels stupid to say but like the vast majority of people are just too ignorant for me to exist around peacefully apparently.
also i will always talk about communist stuff at all times and anyone that doesn't want to hear it can fuck off. i don't need apolitical friends, i need people that are fundamentally on the same page as me in terms of morality. its weird to me that thats such a common complaint OP had abut their example, when the misogynist stuff seems a lot more problematic.
also i will always talk about communist stuff at all times and anyone that doesn't want to hear it can fuck off.
that's so limiting though. there's a difference between apolitical friends and just being able to have an apolitical conversation. Someone who always sounds like Lenin giving speeches is going to be exhausting for everyone around them.
i have to mask the entire time i'm in public, i need my friend group to be a safe space. if i have to conceal my views we aren't really friends anyway.
edit: also i would unironically love to be around someone giving lenin speeches constantly lmao
im not saying you have to hide your views or not ever talk politics, im just saying think of other shit to talk about. at this point in my life, talking about politics with most friends would just be us agreeing with each other. People need other hobbies and interests to talk about outside of politics/news.
i mean i do talk about other stuff sometimes but not as like an exclusive either or thing. theres often a political element to talk about and i and the people i hang out with unironically enjoy that kind of critical analysis.
edit: but its fine to have different needs and comfort levels, i'm not trying to relitigate your disagreements with your friend. even in the best of scenarios different people have different needs, and any interpersonal problems can be compounded by all of the toxic and oppressive systems in our world, not to mention unrecognized or untreated trauma. its a world writhing in suffering.
edit: also i would unironically love to be around someone giving lenin speeches constantly lmao
me too, if they were good at it
i think its like a trade in of self worth for a sense of intellectual superiority and knowing 'how it really is' like with some reactionary misanthropic new-atheists. maybe a bit of techno-worshipping 'AI is the offspring of our species' stuff as well.
i also had to stop hanging out with a cousin because he got randomly super pissed at my then-boyfriend while we were trying to play a game of warhammer 40k. my then-boyfriend literally moved ONE MINIATURE 7 inches before my cousin started shouting and saying he did it wrong or was cheating
Tabletop 40k claims another relationship
Honestly sounds like a couple of people I've friend dumped, with a little variation.
Therapy, if it is doing anything, might take years to show any results. You don't need to put up with that in the interim. If you want, you could give him some notes to take to his therapist, but that may not go down well at all.
Edit: this thread was cathartic. You should talk to your other mutual friends about this though
I had a long term friend that I made in my freshman year of high school because we both enjoyed fanfiction. It was definitely a friendship of proximity imo.
I didn't like how they became my mom's friend and eventually my mom would go out with her without inviting me.
She talked down about all my interests, was openly homophobic (this is before I realized I was queer), and she hated men. Hated to the point of being vicious to her little brother and using physical violence. When I left my family I went no contact with her too. I understand she had her own baggage and trauma, but she became the definition of gaslight, gatekeep, girl boss.
Immature and loud outbursts are definitely what is happening here. Like he just can't shut off his ranting, he will have to go on some long rant about some injustice and its like, we just wanna have a friendly dinner goddamn. But he also still fights with his parents all the time too, much like he did when he was 16. He has always had a "don't tell me what to dooooooo" thing going. Him still bringing up the fight he had with my gf is an issue too, he just can't let shit go or shut up about it, he always has to claim how "correct" he always is.
for real, 90% of the issues seem to be how he's still mad at his parents for being parents.
