Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[virgil]

Fair enough... They have a paid level, which seems to mostly just make it easier to find what you want (or find that what you want doesn't exist in your area).

That was largely what I took away from OKC. I will say that I've managed to get some success, generally dating about 2 women a year. I keep in touch with one as a fairly decent friend (dating didn't work out) in fact. I did only use it lightly and kept expectations of success low without lowering my standards. I would advise that you be watchful, because getting raped is not fun, as I discovered.

[Prak]

The only success I've found with OKC is a friend who I would have dated, had she noted moved about a month before I contacted her. So far, no other success.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Fair enough... They have a paid level, which seems to mostly just make it easier to find what you want (or find that what you want doesn't exist in your area).

That was largely what I took away from OKC. I will say that I've managed to get some success, generally dating about 2 women a year. I keep in touch with one as a fairly decent friend (dating didn't work out) in fact. I did only use it lightly and kept expectations of success low without lowering my standards. I would advise that you be watchful, because getting raped is not fun, as I discovered.

You can fucking say that again, bro.

I consider Match.com to be less shady because guys like me aren't even welcome, heh. My nearest match lived over 300 miles away. So I canceled.

Craiglsist? Individually, that one really bad time from OKC was the worst, but collectively Craigslist takes the cake. Using Craigslist personals was one of my all-time boners, I'm telling you.

[Hicks]

Stable and workable? I have no idea. Neutronium will be hella-dense so manipulating it into a structure that humans could interact with would probably require an incredible amount of energy.

Funny you should say that, the ability to harness incredible amounts of energy has been on my mind for months. I got a lot to get off my mind.

It boils down to turning the negative quirks of the Alcubierre warp drive into positive features. One of the most onerous obstacles was that the drive annihilates space-time to move the craft forward, and any matter once located there is converted into an amount of energy equal to its rest mass; basically the ship is smacked on the nose with a nuclear blast every time it drops out of warp. In the original draft of the drive the warp field displaced the same volume as the ship,and had the same corresponding crossectional area, and the trace matter in interstellar space would, over the course of several lightyears, be enough to blast the ship to smithereens. Subsequent drafts of the drive changed the warp field's geometry to be smaller than the width of a proton, meaning that the ship would statistically annihilate a single atom after 100,000 lightyears (or after 10,000 years of use at the maximum projected velocity). But then I hit upon the idea of ramming a warp drive through matter intentionally as a faster than light weapon that explodes in a burst of gamma-rays when it drops out of warp inside its target.

But such warp missiles, though effective against targets with no delta V (or change in velocity), can be simply dodged by a maneuvering ship far enough away, and missiles take up mass and volume for each shot, and would be extremely expensive given that each one was effectively a warp drive; furthermore I remembered that NASA's experiment to warp space time is to shine a precisely targeted laser, activate the "warp inferomoniter", and measure the deviation of the laser beam from its intended target.

Re-read that last sentence. NASA IS BUILDING A FUNCTIONAL DEFLECTOR SHIELD THAT CAN DEFLECT DIRECT FIRE WEAPONS! Seriously. The entire idea of a functional warp drive is predicated on the idea of inflating, destroying, and bending space-time; an unguided weapon like a bullet or laser beam could be harmlessly swept aside. But if you can bend space-time a little for deflector shields, and a lot for warp drive, you can dial the drive to only 99.999% and turn a spherical explosion like a nuclear warhead into a directed energy weapon where all the energy was directed away from your ship and focused toward a target.

Enter the Burst Cannon, my projected near future ultimate weapon. Stage 1: matter is loaded it the cannon. Stage 2: that mater is annihilated when a space-time destroying warp drive is activated. Stage 3: a second warp drive is activated around the region of destroyed space time. Stage 4: the stage 2 warp drive is deactivated. Stage 5: the resulting gamma-ray burst is directed in its entirety to a target by the stage 3 warp drive. Stage 6: the stage 3 warp drive is deactivated. Stage 7: repeat stage 1. It is a reusable matter-conversion cannon. The denser the matter loaded into the cannon, the greater its power, and the less energy is needed to activate the smaller volume stage 2 warp drive. My initial ammunition was pellets of Iron because it is plentiful, not radioactive, can be manipulated magnetically, and will dampen a cascading fusion reaction as it takes more energy to fuse iron than you get from its fusion. I then moved onto gold, because it is denser and would provide a more energetic conversion. Now I am trying to utilise neutronium, which is basically one step away from tossing black holes into the apparatus, which have their own problems of trying to eat the ship should accidents happen.

My next bright idea was intentionally aiming a burst cannon at the rear of the ship to blow off chunks of fusing hull In a controlled manner as reaction mass to accelerate the ship. Excess heat generated by the "impulse drive" would be transferred by a cooling fluid (possibly liquid iron) and passed through a boiler, which makes steam that drive turbines that turn generators. Excess molten Iron would be atomized through a sprayer and suspended in a plasma boosted magnetic field encapsulating the ship, radiating heat into space and acting as a regenerating particle whipple-shield to absorb interstellar dust, micro-meterorite strikes, cannon fire, and sub-light missiles.

Burst cannons would be used in barrages against a maneuvering target's randomly fluctuating deflector shield. Statistically speaking, one will eventually hit the target. Increasing the volume of the conversion chamber increases the power of the cannon, but requires more energy to fire, requiring more space dedicated to impulse engines in liew of weapons that now have a longer cycle time. A more elegent solution is to keep the conversion chamber volume static and increase the density of the ammunition, Ergo the question on the feasibility of neutronium; I figure it has to be more accessible than kerr-newman black holes, which are better batteries than bullets anyway.

[Juton]

You've clearly put a lot of thought into this. The only rejoinder I'll add is that the energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive is so staggeringly massive, even if the drive is scientifically plausible and way for humans to generate that amount of energy is science fiction.

[Prak]

In a Mage game, if a mage summons, say, a dragon, away from sleepers, then sends it out, and it winds up in Grand Central Station, surrounded by them, what the hell happens to the dragon? Does Sleeper disbelief cause it to poof?

[Orion]

OKCupid being free skews it more toward poor people like artists, leftists, anarchists, The Youth, and so on. In my mind, that counts as an advantage. Res gustibus and all that. There definitely are fake accounts, but I find the fact that they actually tell you which accounts people are still checking makes up for it. I'm honestly surprised to hear that people had such poor results--it's not just the Den that I'm hearing that either, but various places I've brought it up. I started 4 months ago and did 6 first dates. I'm currently friends with 4 of them, and not going to detail the other results. I know I'm the baby of the Den, and that may be the difiference; the site feels very youth culture. But I see tons of women in their 30ss come up in my matches who are looking for other adult-type people so I didn't think it would matter that much.

If you specifically wants to get laid, here's what I recommend. Get someone who knows what the hell they're doing with a camera to take a picture of you. Play with the lighting until it looks nice. Throw it up along with at least 2 others. It doesn't really matter if the other two are any good or not. They can be group shots or blurry profiles of you playing pool or whatever the hell you want. The point is that more pictures= more legitimate, and 3 is the number that shows on the front page. Fill out your essays. Come back a few days later and revise them. During the revisions, think about how you're going to "brand" yourself. Don't worry about giving a comprehensive, thorough explanation of yourself so much as highlighting something appealing. Try to get all but one of your essays working toward a theme, and then use one of them to dump other shit you feel obligated to mention and to give a sense of depth.

Now start browsing your matches. The most important thing is to limit your search to users who have logged in in the past week. Heck, if you have time to check OKC 3-4 times a week, limit your search to people logged in in the last day. Doing that ensures that you see new faces every time you log in until you tap out your area, and it means you get more same-day or next-day responses, so you feel more rewarded for your effort. Plus it cuts down the analysis paralysis and helps you pick one person to start with. Anyway, using a strict time filter is crucial, and I'd do it no matter what you were looking for.

Answer a bunch of match questions. The important ones to answer are the sex ones, plus a bunch of hobby ones. The hobbies are to dilute the sex questions in your answer list, and to ensure you have something to talk about. Make sure you're actually marking a lot of stuff "unacceptable," even on the hobby questions. It will seem weirdly petty, and go ahead and make them all "low importance." None of them are thing you would actually reject someone over but in aggregate, they'll make sure you're finding people you have something to talk about with.

Set your search for women looking for casual sex around your own age. Read through their profiles and immediately reject 40% of them for not interesting you and 40% of them for having terrifying profiles that make it clear you don't want to get involved. Use the "hide" button to clear the rejected profiles out of your way. It's crucially important that you hide the hot-but-scary ones so you won't be tempted to make bad life choices. You now have an actually reasonable number of people to write to.

Now, I happen to think that "standards" is not a particularly helpful way to frame the challenge here. Some people seems to imagine that women are sorting men into an enormous ordered list, starting at the top, and working their down the list. I really don't think that's a good model. I prefer to think of like this: everyone has a ton a ton of people they would never sleep, and a bunch of people she would hypothetically sleep with. The challenge is that no one actually sleeps with everyone they "would". The limiting factor on the number of partners they have is the number they want, not the number of acceptable candidates. So you're trying to get picked out of a big pool, but I believe it is a pool rather than a list. In other words, how easily or narrowly you made the cut is not particularly important.

The actual deal is that when someone wants she is ready to meet someone new, you want her to remember you exist in that monkeysphere way where we pretend there are only 100 people in the world; also, you want to be perceived as "low threat" which is mostly about being perceived as an acquaintance rather than a stranger. Most of the women you actually want to talk to will have the scary red dot of "replies very selectively." So going in directly asking for anything--whether a date or a hookup or whatever--is risky. If you don't happen to catch her at a moment of wanting to meet people, you will be thrown into the slush pile and won't make it into the list of people she thinks of as being real. Once someone has chosen to interact with you in any way, they become a little bit invested. So what you need to do is find some way, any way to get them to write you a message.

I recommend asking a question. This is where your familiarity with nerd culture is going to come in handy. You pick something off their list of books and movies and you ask them something about it. The first one that pops to mind is usually the classic "I see you liked X. Have you tried Y? It's similar in some ways." That one works fine, but ideally you have something that signals intellectual respect. Something like "I see you like X band. I do too. Which would you say is their best record?" or "I see you like X author. I keep hearing I should read them. What would you start with?" You can honestly send the question by itself as a one-liner, or you can add your name and a one-paragraph bio. Anyway, almost anyone will answer a direct question about something they enjoy, and then you've already bumped up from complete stranger to acquaintance. After that you can ask to meet them. Go on some dates. Many of your prospects will be too busy, or will agree that meeting would be good in theory and then never get back to you. What you want to do with them is send a "maintenance" message about once a month with a comment or question about a shared hobby. That way you stay on the list of people who exist. And they may get in touch with you later (or more likely, may be responsive if you ask them out again in 2-3 months).

I don't know, I obviously don't have experience being anyone other than me, but when I hear about people having no luck finding anyone I wonder if they were filtering their searches aggressively enough.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I will be honest and say that I expect a lot from the women I date. I messaged dozens of women, and 9 out of 10 ignored me completely. I typically get bored and stop talking to someone if I feel like I'm carrying the conversation. I have been on so many dates where the chick just sits there and doesn't contribute anything. Like just deigning to speak to me is a huge treat for me. If I hear "I like to have fun" or "I like all music except country and rap" one more time I'm going to catch erectile dysfunction.

Also, if i just get a one-word reply from a message I sent, I don't send another message. I am not a performing monkey and I am not here to entertain anyone.

I've been told repeatedly that I have to make myself seem like someone that another person wants to be with. And the fact I ask for the same makes me some sort of evil nazi terrorist communist obama supporter.

I don't care. To me, being alone is superior to having to carry a relationship.

I got a large number of women that ignored me utterly (which is fine, I didn't know any of those people), I've had dozens of women agree to meet me then not show up (which perplexes and infuriates me, why not just fucking say no?), and the two women I ended up meeting turned out to be not very nice once I got to know them. (the other one got real controlling real quick. And maybe I don't know how to let someone down gently, but she did not take it very well when I told her after the second date that I didn't want to hang out anymore).

Maybe it's because i wasn't using it for random hook-ups? I found out if you go to enough bars and ask every woman there if they'd like to have sex with you, you usually can find one to say yes if you keep at it long enough. I've had my fill of random hook-ups, and want something more emotionally fulfilling. It could be I am, as the internet says, doing it wrong...

[Chamomile]

I found out if you go to enough bars and ask every woman there if they'd like to have sex with you, you usually can find one to say yes if you keep at it long enough.

I'm reasonably certain this is the secret behind all the PUA success stories. Having a script to follow makes it easy to try multiple mates in one night, and putting on a different personality than your own when you make the proposition means it takes the sting out of rejection (because they weren't rejecting the real you, just a facade). PUA success I imagine has less to do with actual ratio of rejections to sex had and more about making success by attrition more doable.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Except I wasn't creepy about it. Well, not AS creepy. I didn't put down women to make them want to gain my acceptance, I didn't keep wearing them down, I just asked them if they wanted to have sex. And for about six months, i did pretty good. I learned that wasn't what I was looking for. I'm glad i did it because i learned a lot, but I grew out of it.

EDIT: Random OKC story: I was having a good rapport with one women until I said I was a brony and she accused me of downloading pictures of fluttershy to jerk off to. Bitch, I'll jerk off to anypony I want.

[Chamomile]

Yes, my hypothesis holds that the actual techniques used by PUAs are at the very best only very slightly increasing their chances, and most likely not helping at all or making things worse. The meat of their strategy, despite all their pretension, is just persistence. Everything else is built out of whatever narrative they find most comforting.

[Orion]

Yeah, I'm most familiar with the hookup angle of OKC. It's basically the same as hitting bars, only from the comfort of your home. A bar where you don't have to buy drinks, that you can pop into on your lunch break or before work or whatever, and that is pre-filled with nerdy people.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

When I was younger, I was more at home in bars than I was in my actual house. I don't drink like I used to (and probably would be dead if I drank like I did back in the day), but I enjoy my Jameson.

[Orion]

Maybe it's because i wasn't using it for random hook-ups? I found out if you go to enough bars and ask every woman there if they'd like to have sex with you, you usually can find one to say yes if you keep at it long enough. I've had my fill of random hook-ups, and want something more emotionally fulfilling. It could be I am, as the internet says, doing it wrong...

When it comes to more emotionally fulfilling, I wouldn't know. I'm reasonably optimistic for myself, but it's too early to tell whether I'll have any luck. And anyway, when it comes to something more complicated like finding a long-term partner, people are going to need radically different scenes and approaches depending on their specifics. I wouldn't presume to tell anyone how to find a girl or boyfriend they liked. I will say that I have no idea why one would look for hookups in bars. OKC is like a bar full of nerds where you don't have to buy drinks, that you can browse from the comfort of your home. That seems obviously superior.

It's also surprisingly good for finding people to game with, because you can vet players by reading through their answers. It's nice to know who's a Republican before you accidentally invite them to hang out. And particularly nice to know what someones weirder fantasies and prejudices are before you decide whether to bring them into your D&D group.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

That's because nerds are overwhelmingly male. I'm not saying that female nerds don't exist, because I know a few. There's a lot of women that want to claim it because it's the cool thing right now, but a vast majority of women (and maybe men, I don't know) are too busy pretending to be better than they are to really be a nerd.

Granted, all the women I know who i'd call nerds are either in very happy relationships, are lesbians, or both. In none of those cases would I be crass enough to disrupt their lives when perfectly good pornography still exists on the internet. I dated exactly one girl that was a nerd, and I was assaulted physically, sexually, then verbally afterwards. I don't even look for nerdish women anymore.

[Orion]

I hear you can get Jameson in your house.

[Emerald]

I can't speak to the straight success rate on OKC, but I've had good experiences with the gay side of things. As the Count said, the site's full of male nerds of all orientations, so while people just looking for sleazy hookups are certainly a thing to watch out for, I met a bunch of great, fun, sociable (for nerds) guys there, including my current boyfriend of over a year. Probably comes from the fact that I'm in an area without lots of gay bars or other meet-up spots and none of the guys involved have an appearance or personality that really scream "gay and available," so online dating was their best option for relationships rather than a method for hookups.

Sounds like it sucks for you guys who have to deal with women. Seems like a lot of work. You have my condolences.

[Prak]

I think this is really just a case of Sacramento sucking, then.

[Shrapnel]

I don't even bother trying to get companionship on a meaningful level. I figure I should get my own shit in order before I add another persons life to my troubles.

[Neeeek]

I think this is really just a case of Sacramento sucking, then.

I dunno. One of my best friends, who lives in Sacramento, got married last September to a guy she met on OKC. You might just be looking in the wrong places.

The thing you have to keep in mind when using online dating sites is you have to assume that 90+% of profiles are inactive. People don't go back to the site to turn their profile off when they aren't actively on the site anymore.

[Avoraciopoctules]

One of my new classes wants me pick a non-senator Member of Congress from the 53 California representatives on this site:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

We're going to be following them all quarter, so we are encouraged to go for someone with some interesting achievements on record. Any suggestions?

Swalwell and Matsui are already taken.

[Username17]

One of my new classes wants me pick a non-senator Member of Congress from the 53 California representatives on this site:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

We're going to be following them all quarter, so we are encouraged to go for someone with some interesting achievements on record. Any suggestions?

Swalwell and Matsui are already taken.

No question: Darrell Issa. That man is completely full of crazy it's hard to even describe it. He describes himself as the GOP's "chief watchdog" and bravely stands up against disaster victims for wanting to "lard up" bills with "pork" like flood relief. Chronicling his "achievements" will be a non-stop hilarity fountain.

-Username17

[Neeeek]

One of my new classes wants me pick a non-senator Member of Congress from the 53 California representatives on this site:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

We're going to be following them all quarter, so we are encouraged to go for someone with some interesting achievements on record. Any suggestions?

Swalwell and Matsui are already taken.

Well, Jackie Speier has a fairly insane personal history.

[Avoraciopoctules]

One of my new classes wants me pick a non-senator Member of Congress from the 53 California representatives on this site:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

We're going to be following them all quarter, so we are encouraged to go for someone with some interesting achievements on record. Any suggestions?

Swalwell and Matsui are already taken.

No question: Darrell Issa. That man is completely full of crazy it's hard to even describe it. He describes himself as the GOP's "chief watchdog" and bravely stands up against disaster victims for wanting to "lard up" bills with "pork" like flood relief. Chronicling his "achievements" will be a non-stop hilarity fountain.

-Username17

Thanks, man. I okayed it with my professor, and I think you just made my PoliSci a lot more interesting.

[Koumei]

Who do you talk to about psychological dependency? I know I'm not chemically addicted to the painkillers they used in hospital - for the doses and duration, that is completely out of my system, I'm even shitting normally.

But when I try to sleep, I remember the pain. It pretty much takes over my mind, the memory of the pain I was in, how it felt like I had eaten shards of glass, the way I collapsed from one cough, and then the release every time they injected me with morphine or fentanyl. There was no high, just a complete absence of pain (and of stress, I relaxed and found it so easy to sleep). I want that feeling again, and I want to lose the pain memory.

Now, if this is permanent I totally could go forever without giving in to it - I don't know any drug dealers, for a start, and I'm not going to go on a surgery binge just for the morphine. But I can tell there's a problem, and I don't know if that's a doctor thing, a therapist thing, or something else entirely.