Anon has nerdy hobbies

I just want to talk at the fellas here. Man to man.

If you do this shit, the women will leave and not come back. I know the incels are going to think that's typical female behavior, and I'm here to say, no, it's not. It's typical for someone, of any gender, to want to exit a situation where they feel vulnerable, and that's what is happening.

Think of it like this: you end up in prison, and your naked, alone, you have no allies or friends, while taking a shower with about 100 other dudes, and Bubba comes over with a grin saying "you're awful pretty". How would you feel? I'm guessing you would want to nope the hell out of there and never take a shower with Bubba in the room, ever again. And that's natural. You were in danger, you want to avoid that danger. While the circumstances might be different for the women you're interacting with, that raw emotion, the exact same one you would have felt with Bubba talking about how pretty you are, the feeling that gave you, it's exactly the same.

Now think, after Bubba made such a statement, what could Bubba do to win your trust to shower next to them again at all? Probably not much. Same deal fellas. There's little to nothing you can do or say to make them feel comfortable being around you when you've done something that inspires that unsafe feeling of danger.

Now, how could Bubba avoid the situation of you feeling like you're in danger and wanting to get out of there. A reassurance? Like Bubba instead saying "don't worry, I'll protect you".... You're going to wonder "from what?" Because until Bubba spoke up, you had no feeling of danger. How does that make you feel? Well, I would feel like there's danger that Bubba knows about that I don't, so now I'm on edge, looking for what Bubba is talking about, and all of a sudden, I'm having the same feeling of danger, just this time from an unknown assailant. That's not good either. I'd still want to gtfo and not go back. Worse now since I don't know what the danger actually is. Not only would I not want to shower with Bubba nearby like in the previous scenario, but now I don't want to be left alone with anyone.

Same deal fellas. By trying to reassure the lady, you imply that there's danger indirectly; she gets creeped out and leaves to not come back.

So, what's the right thing to do here?

It's easier than you think. Treat them like you would any of your male friends. Treat them like a person. You don't need to reassure your male friends that you'll protect them, nor do you feel the need to defend them when their "honor" is challenged. Let them handle it, but have their back if they need you.... and only if they need you.

Be a friend first, and if something happens that makes your relationship with that person, more than just friends, so much the better. Don't expect it, women aren't slot machines, where you put in enough tokens of niceness and eventually you win the sex jackpot. It doesn't work that way. It never has, and it never will. You can't force someone to like you, and if you try, you'll either take any attraction that they might have had for you, and destroy it, and/or simply cause them to feel unsafe and creeped out, and they'll find a way to exit and never return.

People, regardless of gender, just want to do things they enjoy. If you also enjoy those things, then engage in the enjoyment of those things with the other people who enjoy them. Don't make it about gender. If, beyond that, you both like eachother, you'll find a way to spend more time together and that's when things can grow to more than just being friendly, as long as you're both agreeable to it.

If you continually obsess over the fact that their anatomy is different, you'll end up filling whatever negative ideas you have about the other gender, and push yourself so deep into a hole of confirmation bias that you may never recover. Just be people. Treat others the same, as people.

I believe in you. You can do better. Always improving.

You will fall, you will be rejected, you will have set backs. And that's all normal. It's a part of learning. You got this.

Lemmy is the best social media platform out there, holy shit
- Good, that you finally realize. :p
This is some nice advice but
Treat them like you would any of your male friends.
Don't do this. Understand that you wouldn't do this with any random guy either. As with any new acquaintances everyone is cautious in the beginning and women more so. Whether you find the new girl appealing or not all you have to do is cautiously get to know her through your interactions with her, like any other relations you may build with initial strangers and get used to their presence and predilections.
- You're telling me not to rip a wicked funny fart and sock her hard in the shoulder when she's too much of a panty waist to laugh? Pfsh.
  Some guys have no idea how to talk to chicks.
Imma be real with you. I ain't reading all that.
- I can summarize: It's an appeal to reason written from the perspective of a nice, caring, socially aware man called Bubba, who doesn't understand why women run from him when he approaches them in the shower.
- Tldr?
Thank you for this. You are eloquently and (hopefully) non-threateningly (is that even a word?) stating a message that really, really needs to be said again and again until everyone friggin' gets it.
- IMO, A nontrivial amount of blame goes to the fathers of such people.
  This shouldn't imply that those who need to hear this are exempt from blame; they should have simply been educated by their parents on simple social etiquette....
  Of course, I'm also certain that a nontrivial number of those father's actively encouraged such misbehavior.
Trust is at its most basic a finite resource. Whenever a person messes up they recover by giving some of that trust away. Eventually that trust runs out. In rare cases you can regain some of it. However, in the vast majority of situations you'll never get back all that trust lost.
So spend wisely.
Or rather don't spend at all.
Think of it like this: you end up in prison, and your naked, alone, you have no allies or friends, while taking a shower with about 100 other dudes, and Bubba comes over with a grin saying “you’re awful pretty”. How would you feel?
Erect?
I'm imagining one of those problem-guys saying specifically this during a game.
Thanks Chat GPT-4, life is so much better since you came along!
- This text is not from generative AI like GPT-4.
  How do I know?
  Its original, e.g. the part around bubba. And with original I do not mean the exact phrase but the idea of the simile.
  Is is not generic. A genAI always resorts to getting very generic the longer the text it is forced to generate is.
  I does not follow a usual structure. genAI resorts to following a language teachers paradigm. Introduction, main part, conclusion.
  and other minor signs.
  This is just a fellow human giving solid advice.
Meanwhile I just try to have normal conversation but they go for avoidance manuever right away.
- It can often be how you go about it. If you just dive in and start talking to them, even if well intentioned and you literally do just want to talk to someone new about whatever, because of all those past experiences of guys only trying to do that to get with them, they'll see you as probably just another one of those creepos.
  It's a dance, and it's an annoying one at times for sure, and it takes practice. If you can recall the last time you tried to strike up a conversation, or next time it happens, afterwards, really stop and think about it from the other person's perspective. If you know a woman you trust, try asking her to go over the whole interaction with you.
  In college I was a major incel neckbeard loser and truly was the epitome of the green text above. I'm not proud of it. I took a chance and asked a few women I knew why I kept being single and lonely and if they could advise. They did exactly that for me. Took me through some of my interactions, explained where I went wrong, and helped me reframe my thoughts. I now am pretty much always able to strike up a conversation wherever I'm at.
  TL:DR - find someone you trust to walk you through the why. You got this

This is why all of my gaming groups just start with an orgy and get that out of the way right off the bat. Everyone gets everything. Sex communism solves all. (Major /s if not obvious)

How do I sign up comrade?
Wait, isn't this what session 0 is for? Getting all the tension out and working through your issues?
Can I wear full plate to the orgy?
- It is in fact required
Found the Greek!
Sex communism solves all.
Controlling the means of reproduction!

I really wish this didn't have a giant kernel of truth to it. I've had to leave so many tables because such a large percentage of people insist on making it weird, that I largely have given up.

On more than one occasion, there has been a dude that intentionally played a lesbian character upon learning that I would be playing and not so subtly directed the million unnecessary sexual advances at me in an indirect manner.

Apart from that general incel style bullshit, there seems to always be a fucking white knight nice guy that refuses to see past my rl gender and acknowledge that I am playing something like a male half orc stereotypical barbarian.

D&D has been a huge passion of mine since the 2e days, and I really understand that it draws in people that tend to be socially inexperienced and/or impeded in some way (hell, I'm one of them), but at this point I am trying to play with 40+ year-old men that are fine in social situations outside of the game, but once the session starts they immediately get creepy.

I know this is long and ranting, but I think there are a lot of people that need to hear it. Even if the overall tone of the game is light-hearted and silly, you still need to be a fucking adult when interacting with other adults.

I know when you are pretending to look at your phone as an excuse to stare at my tits. Stop.

I would recommend learning how to play roll20 (free to play virtual table top) and finding a westmarches Discord server. I moved to an area where I have zero friends and got into playing dnd that way. It's pretty fun, flexible scheduling, out of game roleplaying whenever. I'm a 38 y/o cis male so I can't say there will be no issues, cus I never really experienced them at all. I'd totally imagine you'd have a different, and hopefully better, experience than irl games. Feel free to DM if you'd like more info.
- I second this. There are some really great Discord communities to play on that I'm part of. Generally, it's much easier to keep the creeps out by just banning them. It doesn't have to be a Westmarches server, but any TTRPG server with an actual community that runs game on the server itself, instead of just another LFG fishing pond.
..people secretly stare like that? What? Tbh, it is unfair that people can get away with that yet I cannot ever have social interactions by me being autistic.
... How the hell do you pretend to look at your phone but also look at tits... I need to know for... Reasons lol.
- camera? also, no.
I know when you are pretending to look at your phone as an excuse to stare at my tits. Stop.
While this may be true, I brought a laptop on a game yesterday and I'm not sure the girl on the opposite side of the table didn't think something like that when my eyes were on top of the screen. Which was a lot of times, because naturally all the people are above the screen and only the keyboard and the table are below the screen.
So - please consider the fact that if there's a direct line of sight to your tits, and someone has to look in that general direction, they may occasionally from time to time look there. And also that due to, eh, basic uncontrollable instincts they may do that unconsciously a bit more than they need. Like looking at a bunch of pencils and noticing the red ones more than the grey ones.
Also when I talk to girls about my hobbies, they very often apparently perceive this as some nonsense to get romantic. Usually that means that they gradually ignore me more and more and refuse to believe that it's more complex. Though kinda recently (and long ago before that which led to a trauma, but eh) it was me who thought that they are fine with talking about hobbies, while being more romantic was expected, eventually led to being ignored too.
- At least in the adult world, I think most women can differentiate looking around the room/staring into space and staring at their tits.
  I assure you, they're the experts. 🤣

Find a group of mostly older/married people. It might not solve the problem, but it'll delay it enough that you can get a solid playtest of your latest build before things go to shit.

When I was young, the more females that joined, the less it happened. DND, MTG, whatever.
- females
  They are called girls, you know.

Your best bet is to try and find groups with better ratios of guys to gals. These groups tend to self regulate and give the creeps the boot.

People play fantasy games to live out their fantasies. And for some sad people, their fantasy is to touch women because they act so repulsively no one wants to risk getting close to them.

Just be fat, it worked for me.

Are you serious? It doesn't work that way where I am.
- Be fatter/s

Yup, and no matter how the DM handles it, it's still a pain in the ass.

My table? That shit don't fly, but it's still going to mean some dude getting butt hurt and needing a firm talking to. Might go years without it happening, but I don't know a DM that hasn't run into it it once or twice with new groups or new players.

One of my long term players is a woman. She was a "girl" when she started with the core group, if you count 16 as a girl still.

She's a great player, and a good friend. The number of times I've had to tell guys to fuck off and not come back is absurd. Shouldn't even be once, though you'd expect teenagers to pull it. No, it was grown ass men. The last one, we were all 40ish in the core group, and the guy that pulled it was older than us. He was an acquaintance from where I used to work, and had always been chill with women. No bullshit, no problems. But he still couldn't get past the idea that she was there and obligated to give him a shot just because they shared a hobby.

This is why a lot of women keep our nerdy hobbies to ourselves and don't really talk about them much in public.

People get weird.

My wife plays FPS games and doesn't even speak because the moment she does, half the dudes feel like they need to show off and get her attention, and the other half get sexually frustrated and laser focus on only her.
- In counter strike it seems to manifest pretty quickly as misogyny.
- I only play FPS in VR and the male/female interactions are weirdly wholesome. Literally never seen the behaviours that are sadly the norm in flatscreen gaming. I'm still not sure why this is the case, maybe the reporting system is just better, or it's something to do with feeling more present in VR.
- There's no need to speak in online games anyway. I never use a mic or headset to play games like that, I still just use the chat. Voice chat always off.
Really liked your work in The Baby
- It's spelled Barbie

I’ll save her.

You should shoot your shot
- Already did after seeing that cute picture ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
I like how often people who start white knighting are looked down on by both sides. Something about the disingenuousness of it I guess

Hang out with more LGBT people. If I wanna get laid, I can turn on Growlr and have a dude deliver himself to my basement.

... So what you're saying is you're choosing the bear?
- He is the bear.
This post & username combo has me in a state I can only describe as Terroroused.

Guy chiming in. I use to go to small, monthly lan parties a lot. Every now and then a woman would show up and 4 or 5 of the average 10 total guys would make weird jokes about there being a female present. I don't think I ever saw the same woman twice.

a female
Men and females
- Read it again. This self-proclaimed man uses 'women' to describe some people, and also uses 'females' for how some other people describe them.
- I'm not sure your point. I used both "woman" and "female" in my comment. I used the term "female" specifically when I did to reinforce the idea that certain people in the group saw the women more as foreign objects than new people.
  I don't hang out with those people and if you asked me if I stepped in to do anything about that weirdness, I wouldn't have because it would have been a loss cause. I hang out with better groups now a days.
That's sad. At our LAN there were two women regularly. One lost interest in PC games and the other now comes with her friend. She's pretty good at Chivalry. What a bloodthirsty girl...
- It's was weird. Growing up, I took the "girls don't play video games" attitude as self deprecating machismo. Finding out that, no, this was how many people, including many girls my age, though was... disappointing.

Some married women tend to assume you (unmarried somewhat attractive woman) want their man.
- Man, there is just no winning is there?
- Yeah usually the ones being unfaithful themselves are the most controlling and paranoid.

Would have been nice if more of the women in mmorpgs I played growing up were like that. Too many guilds were torn apart intentionally by women who damn well knew what they were doing and knew that at least one of your staff members was easy to twist around their fingers.

Edit: For anyone seething, women are people and they deserve respect like anyone else, but they are also people, and some of them are assholes.

Yeah this is the flipside to OP. Don't know why you're getting down voted. Women can be misanthropic trolls just as much as men can.
Never thought I'd sign up for socials again but you're an angry little misogynistic shit who happens to be so close to the truth.
You're not being downvoted because you're wrong. You're being downvoted because you came into a thread about women's issues and detracted from it for your own grievances. You say you respect women? Prove it by shutting the fuck up and listening when they speak about their problems without having to make everyone about yourself. Learn from this and maybe you'll become a more likeable person and you'll find a woman that wants to get on your dick.
Don't bother responding. I said everything that needed to be said, you'll either get it or you won't.
- Women can also be assholes, deal with it. And don't gatekeep threads like this, it's annoying and stupid.
- This is an online forum. You can't tell me not to respond or not to discuss something. Doing so isn't misogynism. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the community this is posted in is not a women's exclusive space either.
  You want to see misogynism? Go hunt down the guys who treat women like objects in the OP. I don't know what you want from me.
- To think you "signed up for socials" just to try to white knight a hypothetical person, fuckin loser you've made this entire thread worse with your shitpost.
- Now that you've signed up, you can now block users and communities. Dont forget to block me!
- It's also about women entering men's spaces. Some people's experience is women causing the issue
I was in a guild on a mmorpg that was predominantly women, and there was a squabble between a couple women.
I said, "Settle down, you both have very big penises." One responded, "Uh, were girls." I replied, "Then why are you having a dick measuring contest?" It didn't go over particularly well, but the bickering died down.
- Knowing my luck they would both turn on me if I was in that situation.
  I do appreciate how there's more women in online games now though. FFXIV has a lot of women, and it's great because I don't have to be that guy anymore and deal with identity politics if someone acts out. There will probably be another woman in the group who is equally annoyed by whatever bad behavior is going on and call it out.
It is nice to blame women for being manipulative and not the men for falling for the manipulation and causing the infighting, right?
/s
- Everyone involved is at fault yeah. Don't know what you want me to say.
- So it's better to victim blame then? Got it.
- So..... victim blaming?

Aw :(

That sucks.

For real, I was just reading this and thinking: "Damn, that was totally me back in the day, those poor girls." 🙁
- Well, the best thing you could've done is grow enough to have the maturity to post this comment. So there's that

On the one hand, I sympathize - on the other, it'd be awesome to find someone who shares my interests.

If it's an overwhelmingly male group, just wait. If she's looking for a boyfriend then she'll come on to one of you first. For the men it's a prisoner's dilemma; your chances are really bad.

No one on 4chan believed her because of rule 30 and because "they didn't know that you can play games in the kitchen". I can read the comments without the comments.

You know, it really makes it feel like those comments are particularly useless when, just by having used the website for a long enough time, you can imagine them simply by the scars they have branded onto your thinking goo. It becomes totally redundant at that point, totally useless, even worse than it having contributed nothing but empty space in the first place, it now occupies empty space in the brain. It's like old farts constantly remembering and bantering about ad jingles from their youth, it fills me with dread.
- The things I have seen.... 1000 yard stare

Most women won't even accept a strange man into their activities. That's why you don't hear about this happening to men. Because unwanted sexual advances from women on men in women's friends circles definitely happen I can tell you from first hand experience. And women tend to be very insensitive to men's sexuality and not only encourage it but pressure you accept the advances because men "go for anything" so it shouldn't make a difference to you.

I always have to remind myself that I was introduced to and raised in nerddom from my godmother. Everything was through the lens of her curated tastes.

So when I hit puberty later in life all the deranged horniness suddenly clicked in me as MY problem since for me it wasn't normalized. Playing D&D and MMOs just didn't have that foundation, so I could compare.

Thanks godmother for keeping me somewhat normal. I've been often alienated from gamers due to my application of basic respect and sometimes just plain apathy towards women.

Regrettably, can confirm. I’ve been so much more docile since finding a partner. I wish I’d always been this way.

huMON FEEEmaaale?!

Rom would never

this happens to me constantly with girls as a man

We did it on purpose to protect our virginity. No girls allowed in the boy's club!

Source: I was there.

Some cases but not really, my friend group everyone maybe except 1 already has a significant other so no one bothers the girls. And we all play DotA 2 lmao

Imagine how hard it could backfire if you meet someone who wants to have kinky sex with you since you share the same kink.
- Or just come across someone who is enough of a dipshit to decide to ruin your reputation after you reject them.
- So like what that person would have to kill themselves to fulfil the kink? Bit extreme, innit?

Yeah hormones are persnickity things when youre trying to be one of the guys

I mean, is it trying to be one of the guys, or is it simply enjoying a hobby that is predominantly male? There’s a big difference between a pickme and someone who simply enjoys a hobby.
- I took that as "trying to get along/fit in, with a predominately male group".
  It would seem that you took it as more of "trying to get 'in' with a boys club".
  I don't think either interpretation is wrong, per-se, but one does have a bit of a more negative tone to it, IMO.
  Far be it for me to tell you what to think, or that your understanding is wrong. Bluntly, it was a fairly poor choice of words on the commenters part.
- If youreplaying with a bunch of males, yeah youre working on fitting in which makes you one of them
Men will literally blame anything but themselves for their own behavior. Wild.
- Right because no woman ever has ever blamed hormones for her behavior

Just hook them up with your single friends. Or find a female only group.

When you go to play games with your friends, do you feel bad when none of them try to get you to suck their dicks and let them fuck you?
I'm willing to bet you don't, because it's actually weird to feel sad about not getting unwelcome sexual advances in a friendly, unromantic context.
It's crazy, but hear me out: most women don't want to be hit on when they're just going about their lives.
- most women don’t want to be hit on
  So you’re saying there’s a chance?
- Women are not entitled to platonic relationships with men. And men like myself do get unwanted sexual advances from gay men and it's not the end of the world. You just respectfully decline, while understanding they have feeling too and that they're in a quite vulnerable position having hit on you.
  Just because an unwanted sexual advance made you feel really bad doesn't make it bad. You're feelings do not define reality.

I could never feel sexually attracted to a nerdy girl. They’re somehow even grosser than boys