Stalking 101: How to not talk to girls

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

And (usually) in this case when you get raped, it is bad. Hide-and-seek has got nothing on this shit.

I dunno, I've had some that're pretty cute. If they cornered me in a room or alley or something, I might not have fought back.

[squibbles]

And (usually) in this case when you get raped, it is bad. Hide-and-seek has got nothing on this shit.

I dunno, I've had some that're pretty cute. If they cornered me in a room or alley or something, I might not have fought back.

That isn't really rape then, though, so I don't think it counts.

[otters~1]

And (usually) in this case when you get raped, it is bad. Hide-and-seek has got nothing on this shit.

I dunno, I've had some that're pretty cute. If they cornered me in a room or alley or something, I might not have fought back.

That isn't really rape then, though, so I don't think it counts.

If he wants it to be rape -- which he does -- then it is.

[otters]

I dunno, I've had some that're pretty cute. If they cornered me in a room or alley or something, I might not have fought back.

That isn't really rape then, though, so I don't think it counts.

If he wants it to be rape -- which he does -- then it is.

Personally I think it follows the Rape Rule, which is like the opposite of the Avant-Garde Corollary, which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

[chocollama]

...which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

totally consensual, besides it doesn't matter if they have a cute face. if they corner you in a fucking alley, they have to be crazy in the head, and i myself, dont like crazy people. (just an opinion)

[otters~1]

Personally I think it follows the Rape Rule, which is like the opposite of the Avant-Garde Corollary, which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

... if neither party enjoys it, it's avant-garde?

[otters]

Personally I think it follows the Rape Rule, which is like the opposite of the Avant-Garde Corollary, which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

... if neither party enjoys it, it's avant-garde?

No, the Avant-Garde Corollary states that if nobody likes it, it's not really art.

[Geti]

Personally I think it follows the Rape Rule, which is like the opposite of the Avant-Garde Corollary, which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

This is a result of misinterpretation and a lack of education about what rape actually is by a whole lot of people who've never had the misfortune of being in that sort of situation and don't have the social or cognitive capacity to empathise and could get you into a lot of trouble and hurt a lot of people if you actually believe anything along those lines deep down. Just saying.
Play the feminist card and I'll play the you're a horrible person card and then we can go back to our peaceful game I suppose. Yes, I know they're feeding the trolls a little but there's a pretty legit point behind it all.

In other news, this thread is mostly good, except for the whole pingponging from serious to irreverence that blurs the line between funny and unfunny.

Yes, 20 separate calls over the course of a few days with only about 4 messages left on her voicemail. I'm not extremely insane. After trying to call her I figured she got my messages and was notified of my missed calls and that she would respond eventually.

I do this kind of thing sometimes too, but rarely leave voicemail messages. Not being able to get in contact with people is freaky, especially when they're important to you.

[Universezero]

There is a difference between consensus and enjoying something. For instance, you can agree to sit through a time share seminar simply to get the free prize at the end, but that doesn't mean you'll enjoy it.

[Geti]

Consensus is an general agreement between a large number of people, you mean consent, but yes, basically that. And there is some grey area with the whole rape thing (eg sex you agreed to without coercion etc but heavily regret, sometimes both parties sometimes only one: this happened to a friend this week, shit is hitting the fan socially), but it's still not funny.

[squibbles]

Personally I think it follows the Rape Rule, which is like the opposite of the Avant-Garde Corollary, which is to say that if both parties enjoy it it isn't really rape.

... if neither party enjoys it, it's avant-garde?

No, the Avant-Garde Corollary states that if nobody likes it, it's not really art.

But what if it was intended to be disliked by everyone, as a commentary on the subjective nature inherent to art?

[chocollama]

But what if it was intended to be disliked by everyone, as a commentary on the subjective nature inherent to art?

Have you ever hated something so much you just had to get a piece of it? Ex: TV Shows, Works of Art, Video Games.

I myself slightly enjoy some video games that suck-ass. And if that's what this is about I may have discovered the art of aggressive sex. Yay me.

[Tanner]

No, the Avant-Garde Corollary states that if nobody likes it, it's not really art.

But what if it was intended to be disliked by everyone, as a commentary on the subjective nature inherent to art?

Artistic intention should generally not be considered when critiquing a piece of art. If nobody likes it, whether or not the artist intended that is inconsequential.

[otters]

Disclaimer: the Rape Rule is not serious, and I wasn't expecting it to be taken seriously. Oops. In the same way, the Avant Garde corollary exists solely for humor and is not necessarily condoned by incluye or any affiliated parties.

[chocollama]

In four days we went from joking about rape to an in-depth conversation about art. I don't know how we did it. Congrats guys, hugs all around.

[Vyacheslav]

In four days we went from joking about rape to an in-depth conversation about art. I don't know how we did it. Congrats guys, hugs all around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7TQLujqWvA

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Have you ever hated something so much you just had to get a piece of it?

I collect pictures of ugly people.

I myself slightly enjoy some video games that suck-ass.

I think I might still have Zoo Race installed.

[chocollama]

Good job class. Zoo Race sucks-ass. Time for recess!

[im_bad_at_n]

My Life: The Stuttering Donkey

Have you ever heard the phrase "the last straw" before? Maybe, but what about the story behind it? Well as the name of this realization suggests it is about a donkey. However it all starts off with a salesman. Every day he loads up hay onto his donkey's back and travels to the market, where he sells the hay. But one day he meets a buyer that pays double the usual value he sells for hay. The next day he loads up extra hay for the donkey to carry, adding more and more to the total each day. But one day the donkey becomes overloaded with hay. The salesman doesn't take any notice and spots one straw (of hay) in the back corner and places it right on top of the teetering tower on the donkey's back. However that one little straw is too much for the poor donkey and the donkey collapses, never to rise again.

So, 'the last straw' is something that finally pushes a person over the edge, where they breakdown completely. This story could also explain the phrase every little thing counts, because it is just one straw, the last one, that causes the collapse. But how does all that fit into my life?

Well obviously I am the donkey. But I am more than that, because I have what that donkey didn't: stamina. After somebody places the last straw on me and I fall apart, after a while I can get back up. I can become strong enough to handle the load everyone puts on me. But the salesman, which to me is everyone else in the world, doesn't stop one bit once he sees that I am walking again. All he does is find more hay and keep loading it onto my back again. That's where my stuttering comes in. I'm the stuttering donkey, the one that gets back up again and again, in vain because all I receive for my valiant efforts is a slap in the face and a load of more hay. But there is a point where even I can't take it anymore, a permanent breaking point.

I feel like that point finally reached me:

My family treats me like a slave.

My friends forgot I existed.

My girlfriend says I'm incapable.

Who else left is there? All I can think about is online (gaming) communities. People I have never met. People with usernames instead of a real one. That is not very much. It is nothing if the only thing I have is them.

So I am just giving up. My family can treat me like a slave. My friends can live their lives without remembering me. And I am incapable, unable to make my own choices, unable to argue my own opinions.

But before I go I want to record why I feel those three things are true. Let's start with the first:

1) My family treats me like a slave.

Well the big one. Let me start with… my youngest brother and work my way up. Cody, to put simply a mini me. He is showing the early signs of the path I have been on. he argues his points, and breaks down but can still bounce back up easily. But why he bothers me? Well I already said it, he is a miniature me. Meaning he copies nearly everything I do. Exceptions: when he is copying my other brother. But when he argues, it is exactly the same as my own arguments. But it comes out so childish still. I would call him a jester, jokingly copying everything I, the slave, does just to mock me, to annoy me. Like when somebody starts repeating everything you say. It gets annoying, but he is not the worse my family gets.

Jesse, my second youngest sibling, again a brother. I guess that one could call him the spoiled son of a King. he gets away with pretty much everything because he knows that the slave, which is me, will be blamed for every mistake. Ants in the bathroom? My fault. A light left on? My fault. Doesn't matter what? My fault. He sets it up too, like purposely turning on my heat lamp on my desk (I believe that is him). But even worse is that he tries to boss his older brother around, and plain ignores when I try the reverse. Sound familiar? Oh right, just like a slave.

Julianna, the other slave in the house. But a different type of slave. She could also be the other spoiled kid of the house, but she is different than Jesse. She gets almost everything she wants (within reason. But she gets more than that too. her dad signs her up for sports she doesn't even know about. She does three school sports a year, despite that she doesn't want it. She is trapped in a world where she gets all the attention, but she doesn't want it all. That is where she is like me. I hide in my bedroom probably 20 hours out of one day. She is exactly the same. She is so similar to me in that regard that it is a pain to see. We rarely speak to each other around the house on a typical day, just like two slaves might not talk to one another. They feel pity towards each other, but the whole ordeal is just pointless.

So past my siblings and onto my parents. my mom is younger so I'll start there. I guess I could call her the compassionate owner, the owner that sneaks extra food and clothes to her slaves when the big man is gone. But that disturbs me. if an owner feels that towards their slaves, why not set them free? It is because they are scared, too scared to ever stand up against her husband, the crazy huge emperor of the house.

My father. This I feel is the centerpiece of my whole stuttering donkey I call my life. he is the salesman in my story. he just does not care one bit about me, the slave, and nor should he ever. I'm nothing to him. Well that might be wrong. I'm the person he yells at, bosses around, pushes, embarrasses, teats with disrespect, ignores, doesn't listen to, complains about, and is mad at constantly. All jam packed into one minute. That times 1440 minutes in a day makes for one really bad day. But isn't everyday a bad day for a slave?

Summary: One brother is the jester, mocking the slave. One is the spoiled one, ignoring the slave. One is the other slave, doomed to never know the other. One is the compassionate owner, never freeing the slave. One is the big boss, enough said.

2) My friends forgot I existed.

It all starts with the 30 day nightmare of a trip. A trip barely any of my friends bothered to know about. But actually it starts two days before the trip. Where my phone broke. it was late that night so I just went to bed. The next day was college orientation. An all day thing. But anyways my dad was actually kind enough to head to the at&t phone store that night and get it replaced. But I said bye to my entire address book, all the stored pictures, everything that was on there. Then early the next morning we left on our trip, before I could tell facebook or anybody what happened to my phone.

But no biggie right? Whenever the first one texted or called I would have their number and I could ask a favor of telling others this lame story. Except one thing: Not one of them called, or texted. For the entire month long trip. Oh sure two of my sisters friends and one of my brothers could text me (due to a wrong number) but not one of mine. So it is clear to me I'm forgotten, out of their minds.

It is not a he surprise though. I guess I was the kid in the corner. But more than that, the kid that went to the corner. I was the only one that could talk to everyone in the classroom. The others in the corner? I was the only one that became friends with them. What happened? The rest accepted that but turned their backs on me whenever I was gone. I had to remind them I existed all school year. My name probably wasn't in many conversations at school if I wasn't there.

3) My girlfriend says I'm incapable.

Right from the start it is obvious. She is not my girlfriend anymore. She called it all off, with a repetitive speech that said one thing: I'm incapable of a long term relationship. I apparently can never decide what to do when I am with her. I'm a "nice" guy but I'm nowhere good enough for her. But I couldn't know what to do and never did anything to further the relationship. However tell me: does a slave know what to do when they have a small chance at freedom while still in captivity? Sure: jump at it. But that is it. It is like a dog chasing a car: what would it do when it caught it? (just remembered that’s from batman, that was bothering me). The answer is: it does not know. Just like I did not know. Just like I will never know.

I asked her to tell me if something was bothering her. But that was wrong because she still let it all fester up inside her. I can't tell if what I am doing is the right thing. I couldn't even tell she liked me until she said she did. I can't tell the difference if a girl likes me (that way) versus hates me entirely.

But it's my fault. I am incapable. I was never taught how to tell things like that. My social savvy is so low, it is something to be ashamed of. When I told her all this she said it wasn't but then not a few days later she uses that against me and says she can't be with a person that "doesn't know what to do all the time." She was completely right and even though she never used the word, she said I was incapable of being free and shoved me right back into the world of only my family.

So that is my life, the stuttering donkey. The one that finally fell down for good. I've become a zombie now, obedient and a good listener but never able to talk for himself or argue his points. So good bye old life, hello new one. I'll probably find it impossible to remember you, or how I felt doing everything I had.

Good bye.

[origami_alligator]

Any sensible farmer would buy another donkey or a truck.
I don't know what your parents are like so I won't comment on your home situation.
If your friends forget about you and your girlfriend feels you are incapable then you need to do two things:
1. Evaluate YOUR ACTIONS over the last year without thinking of what other people did to you. Have you become more secluded and introverted simply because you found it easier to do?
2. Evaluate the ACTIONS OF OTHERS over the last year and determine what reasons they might have had for doing the things they did to you. It is rare (it seems to me, at least) that people intentionally mean to hurt you.

There is no such thing as a "last straw". I don't care how horrible and ridiculous your life seems. Even homeless people find ways to live day-to-day. Even children in those dramatic Christian Children's Foundation commercial find ways to keep living. You think your life is that horrible? Get sold into prostitution as a child in Korea like a close family friend. She's in her 80's now, had 3 children, is living in California in the mountains.
Grow the fuck up and make your own damn decisions about how your life is going to be. You are not incapable, you're lazy and submissive. Tell your parents you think they treat you like a slave. TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS. (I feel like you became more and more introverted over the last year and your friends didn't actually forget about you, they just never heard from you or they stopped calling you because you stopped hanging out.)

I went through a similar feeling when I was 14, that I was incapable of telling people things and that I felt I was being ordered around like some well-trained workhorse. This lasted for about 3 years until one day I woke up, decided things were never as bad as they seemed (key word: DECIDED) and began to make my life more enjoyable. I must say, I'm pretty low on the scale of productive and intelligent choices, but I enjoy who I am now and that's because I figured life wasn't worth living if I wasn't going to enjoy it. Notice I chose to enjoy my life rather than accept it and/or end it. I think you should do the same.

[SlappyMcGee]

Frankly, if nobody texted or called you in a month, it's probably because they had nothing to talk to you about, which either reflects on your dissimilar interests or, moreover, their lack of activity. I do not suffer "casual talk" on my cellular phone, though, so maybe that's just me.

[im_bad_at_n]

Actually I think it was quite the reverse. I came out of my shell senior year. I started doing things I never did the previous years. All the group assignments i had, i did with brand new people, people i have rarely talked to the other three years (my chem lab partner was actually the most popular girl in our IB class). I hated music junior year, now I have an ipod with 120-130 songs strong and growing each week (at least 20 i want to add currently). If that still hasn't convinced you then maybe the fact that I got a girlfriend, my first one during my senior year says that I did something about coming out a shell that I was in.

This is a bit harder but Ill try. Well more people have started talking to me, i guess accepting me into their groups. But outside of school, well I never saw any of them. Why? ... i think that because I do not curse, drink, anything like that, is why i never got an invite to any party with those things (and that's a lot). so I never really did hang out with them. That might be why they didn't have anything to say.. because they don't know what to say. i guess i didn't come out of my shell enough.

*From the mod: I hit edit instead of quote on your post and didn't notice, I can't find a way to restore all of it, sorry <_< *

[Destiny]

This is a bit harder but Ill try. Well more people have started talking to me, i guess accepting me into their groups. But outside of school, well I never saw any of them. Why? ... i think that because I do not curse, drink, anything like that, is why i never got an invite to any party with those things (and that's a lot). so I never really did hang out with them. That might be why they didn't have anything to say.. because they don't know what to say. i guess i didn't come out of my shell enough.

If you need to drink and curse to fit in with your friends, you need new friends.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

im_bad_at_n,

I disagree completely with the people above me who have suggested that you talk to your parents about your perceived slavery. I think the problem is with you. You need a reality check.

Step One: Realize that underneath all of the drama and teenage angst and insufferable first-world problems, your parents have been providing and caring for you for 18 years. They've been dutifully driving you to school, feeding you, comforting you, buying you a fucking cell phone and iPod, and will now be paying out the ass for your college. Because you haven't whined about it, I'm going to assume that they let you choose your friends and your relationships, your extracurricular activities, your academic interests, the media you consume, your diet, your bedtime, your online activity, and more or less how you spend all of your free time around the house (e.g. gaming). Do you have a car? Cuz if you do, I'm willing to bet they bought that shit, also, and continue to pay for it.
It is completely downright fucking stupid to call yourself a slave. Given the above facts, I don't care if your mother is constantly intoxicated and screams at you daily that she wishes she had aborted you, or if your father throws his empty beer bottles at your head and pisses on your bedding when you're out of the house --- so long as the above paragraph is true, you are nowhere remotely close to a slave. You have zero justification for thinking that word applies to you, and I want you to feel like a world-class moron for ever having thought it did.

Step Two: Take the following to heart and reconstruct your life around it:

one day I woke up, decided things were never as bad as they seemed (key word: DECIDED) and began to make my life more enjoyable.

In the absence of any real problems, teenagers find any ridiculous shit they can to complain about. It's symptomatic of their entire age group. And you are no exception.
I know that's something you'll probably hate to hear. But y'know what? I am fucking brilliant, and although I was slightly less fucking brilliant when I was your age, I was still a lot more fucking brilliant than you are now... but I understand in retrospect that I was doing exactly the same Stupid Bullshit That Teenagers Do, and which you are doing now.
So it's important to realize that no matter what your raging hormones and evolving psychological outlook on human relationships are telling you, you are greatly exaggerating what are trivial problems at best, and you are being petty.
Mr. Astralis took exactly the correct approach to dealing with this problem. You should do what he did.
For bonus points, consider how ridiculous it'd be for one of your classmates to pull the same kind of thing you are. In my second year in high school, one of my friends decided to himself that he wasn't so sure that I was really his friend, and not some highly caricatured emotional vampire incarnated solely to sow grief and misery wheresoe'er I roamed. So unbeknownst to me, he actually started keeping a mental tally of how many genuine expressions of friendship I extended in his direction. On my end, I did in fact consider him to be a close friend, and I did in fact respect him and put a high value on our friendship, but because I didn't have the time or energy to walk around constantly validating every positive perception everyone I talk to could have of me, he suffered silently for weeks until he finally exploded and accused me and the rest of his friends of neglecting him, using him, disrespecting him, et cetera.
It sounds to me that this is exactly what you're doing. Undoubtedly, these problems you're brooding over are genuine problems -- your parents don't respect your boundaries, your friends could include you more, your girlfriend's misunderstanding of sexual relationships is as ridiculous as a high schooler's -- but you're making them much, much more than they really are.
Knock that shit off.

Step Three:

teats with disrespect

Step Four:
Force yourself to spend less mental effort making internal commentary about how the people you interact with are disrespecting you or are ignorant of your "pain", especially during those interactions. Because y'know what? We are all very emotionally intuitive people. Unless you are a complete sociopath (which would mean you wouldn't have these "problems" to begin with), most of Us can pick up on your attitude from every subtle difference in your face and eyes, no matter how cleverly you think you may be hiding it; you are not the only person with this magical gift. And when you feel something particularly intensely, as you seem to with your description above, We might as well be capable of reading your fucking mind.
Now put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you're in a circle of your friends, and you're all talking about whatever stupid shit teenagers talk about... skateboarding, or Justin Bieber, or what the hell ever. Now imagine one of the people in that group is clearly in no small amount of emotional pain, but is making an adorably bad effort at hiding it, and he thinks he's succeeding. The combination of "upset" and "trying to hide it" will invariably trigger every "this person is needy" alarm in your head. A few shared glances among your other friends will confirm that those alarms are going off for everyone else in the conversation, as well. And you'll do what any of Us will do when We realize that someone We're talking to is needy: you'll distance yourself from him. All of your friends will. And when his silent rage is enough to make him leave your circle of friends, you'll all share the relief that the guy who's always bringing you down is gone. Good riddance.
Solution: don't be a needy little bitch, and this will never happen.

If there's one self-imposed behavior of mine that has made a dramatic improvement to my social life, it's this one:
Unless people are being overtly and intentionally malicious, assume all disrespect is only in good fun; if they're not actively trying to hurt you, then there's no reason it should hurt. Take it on the chin, smile, and forget it happened at all.

Step Five:
Take the weekend to yourself to think about how much your behavior is based on how you think people are treating you, and consider how you'd treat each of those people if you had met for the first time.
Then give everyone a clean slate. Forget every terrible thing everyone has ever done to you and drop all the tension you create with your friends and family. Relax. Snap out of this mindset where you feel you're enduring people's abuse. Stop seeing yourself as the camel (because it is actually a camel, not a donkey, as in "the straw that broke the camel's back"), and start seeing yourself as side-stepping the abuse entirely.
But most importantly, stop carrying it with you.

If all else fails, you can always just make yourself a Rorschach mask and sit around like a creepy wierdo, figuring that people can't abuse you if they don't feel comfortable in the same room with you in the first place. Talk to UniverseZero if you're interested in going down that road.

Step Six:
Your girlfriend sounds stupid. Inform her of this. What kind of moron looks for a serious, long-term relationship out of high school, for crying out loud?
Of course you can't put down that level of commitment; you're not fucking deranged. Just because her crazy ass is fifteen years ahead of schedule doesn't entitle her to drag you down that same road to single parenting.
Bitches be crazy.

[otters~1]

Disclaimer: the Rape Rule is not serious, and I wasn't expecting it to be taken seriously. Oops. In the same way, the Avant Garde corollary exists solely for humor and is not necessarily condoned by incluye or any affiliated parties.

You did respond to my joking response, incluye. Maybe I should've added a little ;). Wait, no, I despise people who do that.

EDIT:

If there's one self-imposed behavior of mine that has made a dramatic improvement to my social life, it's this one: Unless people are being overtly and intentionally malicious, assume all disrespect is only in good fun; if they're not actively trying to hurt you, then there's no reason it should hurt. Take it on the chin, smile, and forget it happened at all.

This is excellent advice. If everyone who had a bully at school followed this, bullying would die out even more than it already has.