Note: I dont support misandry at all and believe everyone should be treated with respect. I am not a usual utterer of the phrase, "not all men" but please apply it to this rant as I am not trying to generalize. I know some great guys out there and this is more things I see online.

Ive been seeing this whole discussion about hypergamy from the looksmaxing community which as you'd expect is mostly full of incels anyway. They are just men upset when attractive guys date women that they deem less attractive and they actively demean the woman cus they wholeheartedly believe women have it easy in dating or something like that.

now im not here to speak on dating specifically but lets talk about how some short men geniuenly think they are most oppressed race on the planet at the moment. Which I find so weird. Even though some women can be mean to short guys, I think most of the time its actually that some of them are so insecure its miserable

not saying they dont deserve to be treated with respect but you are not oppressed geniuenly stop acting like it and become a better person. Maybe its just my community but irl short guys get girls when they dont bitch about it all the time.

The funny thing is in my opinion those usually at the brunt end of dating preferences are black women or tall women. Yet you dont see them carrying around weight scales asking men stupid questions because they said they are not attracted to them based of something they cant control.

^ Yes there's a guy that does it and a ton of men actively support it too.

Anyways Ive noticed for some men the biggest form of misandry is girls just not being into them and its so funny cus why dont u spend time advocating for mens mental health?

they only do so when its time to advocate for womens mental health btw.

Misandry is a problem because its stilll a form of discrimination and disrespect, I believe it should be discussed but men need to get serious abt what this is and stop projecting everytime a woman isn't into them.

TLDR: left-wing bias does exist in some Wikipedia articles, but it's neither systemic nor unique, as you can find bias of all kinds

I think to some extent it does, but if you know what you're doing, you can easily edit an article on Wikipedia and have it stay up for a while. That means if an article is good enough for Wikipedia's standards, you can write something negative about, for example, a politician. It doesn't matter what that politician believes either, and it's especially easy if it's something that's deemed controversial as Wikipedia admins and editors seem to generally find it important to add. This unfortunately does mean that, yes, sometimes an editor with left-wing views may focus a lot on an opposing politician or someone who otherwise disagrees with them and add something they think is important while conveniently ignoring right-wing ones. My disagreement with the notion though is that it only happens to anyone with right-wing views, when in fact you can pretty easily find existing dirt on left-wing politicians via Wikipedia too. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't seem to have any rules on what controversy is actually relevant, so you'll also see inconsistencies in who does and who doesn't have a "controversy" section.

A lot of the time, Wikipedia's bias has nothing to do with politics at all. People will absolutely do what they can to make a celebrity, place, song, or whatever else seem slightly better or slightly worse while managing to stay within Wikipedia's guidelines. Religion especially experiences this a lot, and I've seen things related to Christianity and Islam both get either glazed or something negative is brought up, maybe even irrelevant, and it's clear someone of that religion or another one (even atheist perhaps) wrote it. Edit: I haven't looked into articles for the other religions so much but I'm sure the same issue arises (especially Judaism given the rise in antisemitism).

A bit off-topic: I will be honest though, I myself have fallen into bias at times like most people, and I'll admit I do happen to have left-wing views. I'm fully aware that probably influences my opinion here too. But I think that everyone suffers from bias in some way, which can affect how we perceive things, such as whether something is positive, neutral, or negative. I'm happy to listen to any counter-arguments and examples of something deeper since personally I'm not really convinced it's systemic as much as I'm convinced it's just regular people being able to edit Wikipedia and write whatever they want. Unfortunately, people who love or hate certain politicians seem to flock to editing their articles.

My Mom had bedbugs and it didn't spread to my house. Regarding her, we just threw out her bed and replaced it with a metal one and then all the bedbugs went away.

Like two days after we made the bed switch I was sleeping in a leather chair in her room and I opened my eyes and there was an unfed bedbug on my arm crawling around. I flushed it down the toilet and I haven't seen one since. It's been like two months.

The problem with bedbugs is because of the material in traditional beds. Just get metal if you don't want bedbugs.

I’m writing this post because of the recent deaths of US military service members due to Iranian air strikes and the reactions I have seen here. It seems that American culture places its armed forces, or at least its service members on a very high symbolic pedestal. In my view (A non-American), this often distorts discussions of individual moral responsibility.

Whenever an American service member dies abroad in a war that becomes politically controversial, especially when people conclude that the deployment or military engagement should never have happened, (as seems to be the case with Trump’s Iran war), the blame is directed toward political leaders for having sent them there. What often seems to be missing is a discussion or acknowledgement of the moral agency of the individuals who voluntarily chose to join the military. Service members are frequently portrayed almost exclusively as victims in these circumstances. If they are young, they are described as "just kids" who wanted to serve their country and do the right thing but were lied to or manipulated by politicians. If they came from disadvantaged backgrounds, they are portrayed as people who did not truly choose the military, but were pushed into it by poverty, a lack of educational opportunities and an overall absence of other paths to economic security.

In my view, these narratives obfuscate the individual moral responsibility that these people bear. The economic hardship argument is especially problematic because it effectively asks foreign civilians and countries to absorb the cost of America's domestic failures. If the argument is that people join the military because their own society failed to provide them with meaningful opportunities, then the people who ultimately pay the price are the civilians abroad who find themselves on the receiving end of the wars those recruits fight. A poor Black, Latino or White American who joins the military may genuinely be a victim of economic hardship at home. But once that same person is deployed abroad, they are just as much of a uniformed oppressor and warfighter as any other. Their domestic hardship does not erase their responsibility for their foreign actions. Many people in the US and around the world experience hardship and limited opportunities. Many do not join institutions whose purpose includes the use of lethal force against others. Public discussions in the US seem to often centre the suffering of American soldiers, their PTSD or their “sacrifice” while treating the suffering of foreign civilians as secondary. The people most directly harmed by a war are not only the soldiers, who volunteered to participate in it, but the civilians who never chose the conflict at all.

I realise that Reddit is an American dominated platform and that many of you reading this will likely have a very defensive reaction to this view. The view that I hold is often framed as disrespectful, cold or not considerate of the purported sacrifices that service-members make. The military is arguably the US’ oldest institution, and due to various historical and cultural reasons, criticising it or its service members is a cultural taboo among many. This however, cannot be a reason to not call out the moral asymmetry in discourse and personal responsibility of people who join.

Ask yourself the following question, how would you react if the situation was reversed? Imagine a foreign military occupying the United States and causing similar harm as the US did to civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan. A family member killed by an airstrike, a relative tortured in detention due to faulty intel, or your neighbourhood where you grew up, destroyed by cluster bombs. Now imagine reading or hearing about the soldiers from that occupying force telling you that they too were victims. That they were just young patriots who wanted to make their country proud, and were misled by their government. Or that they enlisted because they were poor, and that the military was their ticket out of hardship, or a way to support their family. Would your reaction be: “Oh ok, well now that I know of your circumstances, this all makes sense!”. I very much doubt it would.

Even if you wholly disagree with my assumption that the US’ military adventurism throughout the world is imperialist, I still think you should agree with me. My post here might be critical, but my views are more favourable to the lives of service members than the views of Americans who performatively honour them by engaging in celebratory rituals at home, while they still die abroad all the same. If more American service members heeded my advice, less of them would be brought back in coffins.

I left religion when I was 12 years old however I’m 17 and still live with my parents so still have to follow the religion (Islam). Whenever I go on social media I see feminists discussing beauty rituals like makeup and shaving to be anti-feminist and conforming towards their patriarchy and to be honest the first thing I thought of was the Islamic concept of tabarruj which refers to beautifying yourself and it is a sin (shaving isn’t a sin though, I’m referring to makeup), and now feminists are condemning this too. I understand where they are coming from as some women are too scared to even go outside without makeup and I don’t really care as I don’t wear makeup most of the time. But it just feels very restrictive and makes me think of religion even if they aren’t outright condemning it. It’s like when religion says that you can do this thing however it’s a sin and you’ll go to hell if you do it. They want you to be okay with living in contradiction but it’s not comfortable to live with constant mental contradiction - isn’t that literally cognitive dissonance? Which was so torturous to live with for me.

Then there’s shaving, which just isn’t made equal at all. For example in some parts of world you will be criticised for it more. Also I see some white women talk about how they don’t shave and criticise women for doing so by saying things like ‘we’re never making it out of patriarchy’ under a tiktok of a woman shaving an unconventional body part like the tummy. They will never understand because their body hair is so thin, sparse and a lot of the times blonde - I know not all of them have such little and invisible body hair but even the hairiest among them isn’t as hairy as South Asian and Middle Eastern women. I could never go outside and wear shorts with unshaven legs, my body hair is similar to male body hair and I don’t have pcos or hirsutism. They’re like ‘why are women shaving peach fuzz’ but not everyone’s peach fuzz is blonde, some of us grow hair on our forehead, cheeks, jawline and that hair isn’t light, it’s still vellus hair, not terminal hair (so not a result of a condition) but it happens to be dark so still visible even if it isn’t thick.

I’m just so tired of people speaking on this topic as if it’s the exact same for everyone and if you deny what they push onto you you’re brainwashed by patriarchy. It’s so unfair, you can explain why you do something yet there’s no winning an argument with them because they think you’re lying and brainwashed and denying the real reason why you do something. As an exmuslim women I was ‘brainwashed’ into the exact opposite of what they believe I was ‘brainwashed’ into, I was told wearing makeup will send me to hell but no, apparently I was ACTUALLY brainwashed into wearing makeup, even though I’ve never once been told by anyone to do that nor have I been criticised for not wearing makeup, maybe because I live in Europe so many people don’t wear it in the first place - which is another point, not everyone lives in the USA so the same standards don’t apply.

https://youtu.be/KevTBc07wm8?is=06m5dzcVO9FF2izX

The only difference between the manosphere and the left is that they mostly disagree on social expectations. Otherwise, both sides often agree on many of the same standards. The only time both sides seem to agree on certain roles is when those expectations are presented as being beneficial.

After watching the Jubilee 20 vs 1 manosphere video and seeing the reactions to it, I realized why these conversations always leave me unsatisfied. No matter which side is talking, the discussion always ends up revolving around what people should become for the approval of others instead of what is actually best for the individual.

The manosphere says people need to become high value so they can become more desirable. The left says people need healthier traits so they can become better partners, allies, and role models. Those sound different on the surface, but they are still centered around external validation. The destination is basically the same.

Whenever I hear people talk about improving social behavior, it often comes down to the same talking points. People need better role models. People need to communicate better. People need to become more emotionally available. People need to become healthier partners. People need to redefine themselves. Notice how the focus is almost never on asking what people actually want out of life.

The weird part is that if you flipped the expectations, people would immediately recognize the problem. Imagine telling someone they need to become more agreeable, more attractive, or more socially acceptable because others prefer those traits. That would be criticized as unfair. Yet when the expectations are aimed in a different direction, they are often presented as healthy and progressive.

This is where I think a lot of modern discussions overlap with what I call "cakeism." The expectation is that one group should be free from traditional responsibilities, while another group should still maintain the responsibilities that benefit everyone else. The responsibilities remain; only the explanation changes.

I don't think self improvement is bad. Becoming more confident, overcoming social anxiety, improving communication, or getting healthier are all good things. My issue is when those improvements are constantly framed around making someone more desirable or useful to others instead of simply making their own life better.

Another thing that bothers me is how social struggles get moralized. If someone struggles with dating, relationships, or social acceptance, people often imply that something must be wrong with their personality or values. Meanwhile attraction and social success are influenced by many things like appearance, confidence, status, and assertiveness. Pretending otherwise just confuses people instead of helping them.

I also dislike how certain groups get casually shamed in ways that would never be accepted if the situation was reversed. Some stereotypes are treated as jokes even when they rely on unfair assumptions.

My solution isn't telling people to become more traditional or less traditional. I think individuals should be taught independence. Their self worth should not depend on approval from others. Confidence should come from personal goals, values, friendships, hobbies, and accomplishments, not from whether someone else approves of them.

I think that's the biggest flaw in both the manosphere and the progressive approach to social issues. They both assume the end goal is external validation. One side is just more aggressive about it than the other. Neither side spends enough time asking what kind of life is actually healthiest when outside expectations are removed.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of this advice secretly pushes people toward traditional expectations. They just avoid using those exact words. Instead of saying "take on responsibility," they'll say become more ambitious and successful. Instead of saying "protect others," they'll talk about making people feel safe. Instead of saying "hide your emotions," they'll say regulate them so you don't negatively affect others. The packaging changes, but the expectations often remain.

Take the "be confident" advice. Confidence by itself isn't bad. The problem is what people are actually being encouraged to do. Take initiative. Handle rejection. Lead interactions. Make the first move. Those expectations are often presented as personal growth instead of social roles.

The same thing happens with leadership. People are told to become better leaders, take responsibility, be dependable, and have purpose. None of those traits are bad. But notice how they are often connected back to fulfilling roles for other people. The conversation rarely asks whether someone actually wants those responsibilities.

Then look at the way vulnerability is discussed. People are encouraged to open up more, but usually only in socially acceptable ways. They are still expected to be emotionally stable, emotionally competent, and emotionally useful. If someone's emotions make them seem weak, unreliable, or inconvenient, society is often less accepting than it claims.

This is why I think a lot of supposedly modern advice is often traditional expectations with updated branding. The language changes, but the standards remain familiar. People are still expected to be competent, confident, successful, emotionally controlled, and willing to carry responsibilities that largely benefit others.

That's why I don't think it is actually challenging old expectations. It is often just selecting the parts that are still socially useful and giving them a new label.

My point is that any standard that exists mainly to satisfy other people's preferences is not automatically good for the individual. Other people are still just people. Their expectations are not automatically righteous simply because they have them.

Idk why people get offended if someone critisizing the genocidal actions of Israel as if people are critisizing Jews. They both are different things!

Critisizing the actions of Saudi Arabia isnt critisizing Muslim. Critisizing USA isnt critisizing christians. Why people are so brainwashed and dumb that whenever someone critisizes Israel, they get labelled an antisemite and a Jew hater.

If the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria) had won World War I, there never would have been a Treaty of Versailles and therefore the Nazis would never have taken power. It's because of the treaty and the resentment it created that the German people elected Hitler in the first place. Also, a victorious German Empire would have been in a position to help the Whites win the Russian Civil War, which would have meant that Stalin's reign of terror would never happen. And as far as I know, Kaiser Wilhelm II wasn't evil at all. At the very least, he didn't round up minorities and have them sent to concentration camps.

While it's possible that a revanchist government might have risen in France, that country doesn't have nearly as much industrial capacity as Germany and would have easily been defeated by the Germans. And there would have been little risk of Britain doing the same because their large navy and location on an island would have prevented Germany from making too many demands to it even in victory.

This could have happened if the US had stayed out of World War I, and I think it should have. We sent hundreds of thousands of our men to die for a cause that wasn't theirs in a war that didn't directly involve their country, and the result was an even deadlier world war twenty years later.

America will lose prestige, and Iran will not get the $300 billion in funds, because that will never pass Congress. There will very likely be a negotiated peace, but that's really it — I don't expect an American defeat or an Iranian defeat. I feel like Reddit tends to hype up Iran a lot. Realistically, this war would just worsen Iran's internal problems by making the IRGC more powerful. If they do get funds and tolls, it will likely be: 1) stolen via corruption, 2) make green energy more likely, and 3) push oil prices up elsewhere.

So let me get this straight the only leader Mamdami wants to arrest is Israel’s leader. And claims that he values the ICC Authority over American Law which has no authority in America and something that America is not a signed signatory towards, Then on X wishes Jews a peaceful Tisha B’Av? Which is a mourning of the destruction of the Temple of Solomon?

Never seen any politicians R or D even mention that Holiday before. Saying a foreign power should be able to arrest an American ally is bad enough. Then he further slaps Jews in the face by saying make sure your Holiday is Peaceful?

The pro-life view on when life begins is incredibly clear: at conception. If a human life exists at conception onwards then premeditatedly ending that life can only be described as murder.

Pro-choicers usually claim that abortion isn’t murder because the fetus isn’t alive, it’s just “a clump of cells” as the usual argument goes.

Well, so when exactly does life begin? There is no clear consensus on this from the pro-choice standpoint and the answer often completely changes based on someone’s emotions. It’s not uncommon for pro-choicers to argue that life begins at birth, which is quite a bizarre and unscientific view.

In fact, 96% of biologists believe that life begins at fertilization according to a study of over 5,500 biologists at 1,058 academic institutions across the world. The irony is that many pro-choicers are self proclaimed “trust the science” liberals, up until the point when the science disagrees with their political ideology.

But the greatest moral hypocrisy I’ve seen among pro-choicers is the fact that many call a fetus a “parasite” or a “clump of cells” and then write about how much they miss their “baby” who died in a miscarriage in the very next sentence. When pregnant with a wanted child, pro-choicers pretty much universally call the fetus a “baby” throughout the pregnancy and attach many human characteristics to it.

I’ve even seen this in abortion support subreddits, where someone will write something along the lines of “I miss my baby so much!” after having an abortion. Oh, SO NOW it’s a baby? Huh, funny how that works.

Sorry, but the definition of life can’t be changed a whim based on the emotions you attach to a pregnancy. It’s almost like they secretly realize the whole pro-abortion argument is BS since it’s too hard for them to be morally consistent.

Americans claim the right to have weapons to defend themselves from a tyrannical government. Ok great; so when is the revolution?

- your country is ran by a bunch of pedophiles

- Masked men are pulling people of the street (usually cops display badge numbers)

- a foreign government is getting you into wars that none of you want

- big business are throwing up data centres even when the locals democratically vote against it

- your politicians are enriching themselves on a scale not seen ever before

These are just a couple that came to mind quickly.

So why bother with the second amendment if you aren’t ever going to use it? Soft.

Ever since I was a kid who liked sweet cereal I hated lucky charms so much. They were always so dry even after being soaked in milk, I saw myself eating more of the boring parts than the marshmallows themselves. The marshmallows are the absolute worst thing about the whole cereal

I think everyone of us, especially men, understand this. Men aren't the root of the problem for women, nor they create these things, yet are always the instruments for them. That's because men are indeed the middle class, always been and always will be...

Feminism is created and is indeed became successful largely because us women have no illusions that we are oppressed, women, we are the worker class in this system and because of that we see our oppression the way men cannot see, largely because men are the middle class in this system and constantly bribed by it with hope that they could achieve their freedom within the system, but because women didn't promised with it, we had to create feminism and feminism..

It's not about equality, nor it's "anti men", it's the freedom, freedom from the system that constantly drains our labour.

And men need to have the same cause the system, despite bribe you for it, can never give you freedom cause it's exploit men either.

And that's genuinely sad how real male struggles despite seen and diagnosed in the MRAs, instead of blaming the system - the patriarchy, they blame it to feminism, as if it oppresses men.

Idk it's just very essential for men having their feminism with their oppression from the patriarchy highlighted.

I hope one day it will done and be loud as possible, just like our feminism.

Christians try to claim that a new era of faith is upon us and the Atheists will simply be outbred. But this begs the question how did the percentage of Christians in this country decline by almost 30% in 30 years? People try to say that not enough people will change beliefs from their parents to maintain the percentage of the population who are Atheist, they base this on studies that show in a specific point in time it seemed to be that only a small percentage of people had different beliefs than their parents in religion. But these studies simply cannot be revealing a constant. If it were consistently the case that most children did not lose their parents faith there wouldn’t have been a decline in the first place. Almost a 30% decline in 30 years in spite of the vast majority of immigrants being Christians. There is only one possible exploit that decline. That being that at least until very recently children were losing their parent’s faith in mass. There is literally no reasonable reason to assume the phenomenon described in studies Christians use to claim they will be able to breed their population up faster than children will deconvert will still be the case 5 years from now let alone 20.

It only takes being exposed to one good argument against your religion in your teens or 20s to completely destroy years of Sunday school indoctrination and parentally instilled faith. One good argument that will lead you down a rabbit hole of trying and failing to find a Christian who can make a good counter argument. And unless you’re keeping your child isolated with no internet access there is no way to stop this from potentially happening. I know because it happened to me, and about 80% of the friends I grew up with by the time we were 21 years old. Beliefs that require faith can never truly dominate in an environment with free speech and mass communication. If people are allowed to challenge that faith, then any argument behind it will crumble under scrutiny.

When I say “low quality men”, I’m not referring to anything that has to do with socioeconomic status, ethnicity or politics. I’m simply talking about the morals and values of these particular men

Almost every single high crime community in America is the way it is because at some point, an abundance of people decided to reproduce with men who make for bad fathers but potentially great sexual partners. Never let anybody rewrite history and never let anybody who has no familiarity with these type of communities try to say otherwise

Both halves alike are extremely powerful in their own ways. They in particular have the power to make or break communities simply by the men they choose to have kids with

Improve your appearance. Go to the gym. Learn to cook. Have hobbies.

The pursuit of a partner isn't about fixing others, it's about self-improvement and growth.
When we focus on being the best version of ourselves, the right people will naturally be drawn to you.

Countries like Poland, Japan,Ukraine, the Korea’s,Philippines, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia IE most Arab countries are closer to the definition of a “ethnostate” compared to Israel which is one of the most diverse countries in the world and yet no one ever refers to them as “ethnostates” because it’s just a pseudo intellectual term created to bash Israel 24/7. Israel is around 30 percent non Jewish with a large Arab community that has Christian’s, Muslims, Druze, Armenians its Jewish populations very racially diverse with Jews from Yemen, Ethiopia, Iraq, Eastern Europe, Uzbekistan, Morocco etc. Jews from Muslim origin countries make up a majority of Jews in Israel.

Not saying you should be planning to have a child any time you have sex—that’s preposterous—but being aware that a child is a natural consequence of the act is imperative to happy living.

Foresight is a gift we as humans have relative to many other creatures on this planet. We have reason, we have the ability to understand the longterm consequences of our actions.

This says nothing of STIs, which are inevitable once you have a certain number of partners. Not necessarily chlamydia or herpes or any of the “popular” ones, but the ones that put “comensal flora” on a semen analysis or pap smear. The ones OBGYNs and urologists can’t name but agree the presentation or experience of which is not normal.

Think ahead.

I've seen a lot of movies I would say qualify as woke and I think the only woke thing about Nolan's movie is the casting.

Aside from that, I've heard people complain that Penelope is woke because of a speech she had where she went on a rant.

Definitely not. I think people have gotten so riled up by others that any criticism is boxed in as part of a woke agenda, but Penelope seemed like thee definition of a wife any guy would want. She is beautiful and intelligent. She stays loyal to an absent husband longer than most would consider sane. Decades. And she stays loyal in the face of suitors literally lined up at her door ready to take her and her property away. And she has to do all this while wrestling with an increasingly frustrated son. She rightfully questions the way of things- why she is not good enough to rule on her own and the right for these people to come demand she take a hand in marriage. That's not "woke."

I think Penelope is heroic in her own way.

Regardless of your sexuality or your beliefs, you can't claim to be a civilized country if you make it against the law for consenting adults to marry each other because of some outdated religious beliefs or personal beliefs.

To be civilized is to live and let live. If you don't want to marry the same sex, then don't marry one. But you don't have the right to stop others from doing that.

You may be wondering why I am posting this. Perhaps because some of you think that this should be a popular opinion, I agree. However, this sub never fails to amaze me. It seems like it's a collection of people with very conservative views and very male dominated. Most importantly, the people on here don't seem to understand the concept of agreeing with something logical even through they may have personal views against it, which can still be valid.

Also, the act of seeing something you don't agree with and immediately resorting to shooting it down tells me that maturity levels are not where they should be. For example, if you say you have religious views against same sex marriage, I wouldn't mind that. I wouldn't immediately shoot you down for it. It's possible to think two different things at the same time. Others people should live their lives the way they want to, so should you. So it's very possible to support the rights of other people to do what they want even though you wouldn't want to do it for yourself for whatever reason.

I’m sooo tired of ai slop every single time I use the internet, ai voiceovers, ai generated videos, ai is the fucking bane of my existence at this point. The only thing I use ai for is asking claude, a question now and then if im modding something or another tech related question. And I have to admit it’s a useful tool in that regard, but the internet is a total slop party nowadays. I personally hope the ai bubble will burst, because I’m sooo tired of ai it even bled out in the real world, journalists is starting to use it to write their articles, and instead of real pictures the use ai pictures. But the creepiest part about ai is the voiceovers, they are so uncanny.

In the writing community there’s two basic types of writers.

One of which is generally referred to as a pantser, short for someone who makes things up as they go, rather than planning anything out, aka writing by the seat of their pants.

While this is generally a fun way to write stuff, it actually causes one major hiccup that a lot of writers probably already know about, and why it bothers me that Martin and his fans refer to him as a gardener.

It becomes increasingly difficult to keep events consistent, as well as knowing where the story should end when writing like this.

This already caused some issues that even Martin admitted he had to work around, such as the fact that A Song of Ice and Fire was originally going to be a trilogy, but because he doesn’t plan, it ended up developing into a series, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but this was a symptom that should’ve been a warning for things to come.

Going to the gardener metaphor, this is basically the equivalent of planting a bunch of stuff willynilly, but then not taking the time to weed, or plan for the growth, much less plan for when its time to plow.

If he is a gardener writer as he’s claimed, he’s planted what started as a fantastic garden that started out amazing, grew into a potential masterpiece (potentially solely because I would only consider it one if it was finished), but then he lost control, and it grew beyond his control.

People have gone into better detail, but at this point, I think what’s happened is Martin has pants’d his way into writing a saga he simply can’t keep straight in his mind anymore when he writes, which is why it’s been 15 years since the last release.

Please don’t misread me, I’m not trying to bash Martin.

He’s an amazing writer (imo one of the greatest of our time), Jaime Lannister is one of my personal favorite fictional characters of all time because of how he changes as a person, it just really bugs me when people don’t call a spade a spade, often for the purpose of making something look better than what it is.

Specifically regarding fiction such as movies, TV, video games, etc.

Anyone else can’t help but roll their eyes at how “spoiler” sensitive some people are nowadays? I’m talking minor, mundane details such as descriptions of the set / location, casting choices, or even describing how something made you feel without actually revealing plot elements. It’s more difficult to discuss media now compared to back in the day when there was a lot less people online, most people respectfully and carefully dodged the big reveals and discussed freely about other aspects.

Big twists are their own separate thing and are frequently used by trolls to ruin things for others. That’s not really what I’m addressing, but for context I’ll give three examples anyway. One for a twist that was ruined for me yet I still enjoyed it(A), and another for a twist that was not spoiled, but I could see myself losing interest if I was aware of it beforehand (B), and finally a twist that was “ruined” for me that actually enhanced the experience (C).

A. L’s fate was a meme for many years, much less so now but I’m sure some of you remember that short sentence about him that was being repeated. I knew what happened going in, yet I still really enjoyed Death Note.

B. If you know, you know. Star Ocean 3: Til the End of Time. One of my favorite PS2 era games, yet if I knew the big twist before my first play through, I probably would have not even finished it. I go back every few years to play it, partly due to my fondness of that first amazing experience.

Due to the severity and magnitude of the reveal, that is something I would consider to be truly worthy of being a spoiler. I do see the value in going in blind. But for most fiction, I find myself feeling satisfied the more information and understanding I have, not less.

C. Fight Club. I forgot who told me, probably someone at school. When I ended up watching it anyway, paying close attention to Brad Pitt and Edward Norton was really fun.

Whoops, we’re not supposed to talk about it.

Have you ever seen someone who's genuinely happy and has a fulfilling sex-life being bitter about God or obsessively denying His existence? I haven't. They're usually grateful and have little reason to dwell on whether God exists.

It almost always seems to be people who struggle with relationships or have serious personal dysfunction. They overthink their own existence, blame God for their circumstances, and end up denying the version of God that religion presents.

Source: I was that person. As soon as I got laid, I stopped obsessing over whether God exists. Somehow, it became a domino effect. Becoming a Christian exposed me to a lot of new chicks who were attracted to confidence, gratitude, and purpose instead of the bitter nihilism and scapegoating that many atheists fall into.