#asocialmedia

It’s Finally Happened

galby68, , 4 Comments

Just as I knew it would, mind you.

A friend of mine – and this is independent of our friendship, so just don’t – has been diagnosed with PTSD.

From dating.

While what I call Gay Kulture continues to poo-poo my observations of how we enable this lousy behaviors as I stand by and warn that they’re disabling emotionally normal people.

Well, like I said…I did see it coming. Which also means that I get to use this gif:

Further, I’d go one step further and say the only thing that makes this diagnosis unique is that gay men are too narcissistic or oblivious to admit that therapy would do them good.

Collectively, I think gay men delude themselves into believing that as long as they look good, nothing is wrong.

Six pack abs? ✔️

Trendy haircut? ✔️

Sexy undies? ✔️

Yeah. It’ll all be ok, as long as you’re on PrEP. But no one checks in on their mental health and brags about keeping the psyche in shape. At least, it doesn’t happen nearly enough.

You know what takes strength?

Confronting your demons or being healthy enough to stand your ground when confronted with someone else’s. Traditionally, I think gays consider happy hour and indiscriminate sex all the therapy and validation they need.

It’s not.

And this is where that leads.

This PTSD wasn’t due to domestic or physical abuse, and I don’t want to go into specific details, obviously. Rather, this particular diagnosis was the result of someone I armchair diagnosed as a covert narcissist just bailing on their live-in relationship with my friend and then blaming the victim instead of taking accountability for his own shit behaviors.

It was galling to observe, I can’t imagine what it was like to actually endure.

And the result is PTSD. That seems like a pretty high price to pay just for opening oneself up to the potential for love.

My default explanation for the maturity deficiencies in my culture is usually AIDS. While I think there’s definitely a contributing factor argument, I also think it is only that: a contributing factor.

Sure, younger generations of gays are exponentially more “confident” than older gays were at that age. But confidence does not equate to emotional competence. And that’s what we’re dealing with here is an incompetence.

I love the simplicity of stating “That’s not ok” when I see an example of bad behavior. What surprises me about that is how eager other people are to defend the subject of the observation.

“Oh, that’s not what they meant” or “You’re being too hard on them” are common responses to my call out.

I don’t know what they meant their actions to communicate, nor do I think my friends do when they come to someone’s defense.

But it happens.

Every damn time.

Why?

While I find it interesting that there’s a behavioral correlation to Trump supporters’ defense of their pride and joy PoS leader, I don’t think it’s the same motivation. With Trump supporters, I think they vote for and defend the symbol of the behaviors they themselves want to be able to get away with.

With gays, I think it’s a different motivator.

My gut says it’s fear. But of what?

Some sort of Homo FOMO?

Probably. With a side of the American Dream.

We all want what we want, and we certainly don’t want someone else to have something we don’t. That competitive selfishness makes us pursue things – including people – at all costs. This without thinking about the collateral costs – again, including people.

It’s so destructive. Not just to the self, but to anyone in this Greed Splash Zone.

So, here we are.

It’s time for people to stand up and start saying enough. Out loud. Because people can’t be fixed with a meme…and I think these Life In The Time Of COVID days we’re living in is a good time to start.

Hell, to end on a really sad note, with restaurants and bars being forced to close and gyms and movie theaters closing down voluntarily to protect us from our idiot selves, you’d think maybe, just maybe Grindr would have self policed and shut down.

Nope.

So, on top of we’re all gonna die from COVID, now we’ve got to damage each other on the way out.

It’s Finally Happened

Lemme Fix This For You…

galby68, , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Here’s a shituation – and you can feel free to call this “being judge-y”. I don’t care, I’m making a point. Personally, I prefer to call this an observation. Since it’s also an accurate observation, people will see it for the indictment that it is.

Hopefully.

I was scrolling through the notties on the asocial media this morning whilst being lazy in bed and came across this gem. A real stand out in a bumper crop of guys exemplifying how gays have gone from fabulous to frivolous in just a couple of generations.

But on Grindr, all you really need to have in order to set yourself apart from that group is a face pic.

Or a shirt.

Either way – pretty low bar.

Here’s the profile:

This guy needed to be slapped or shaken as a child. Maybe if he’d had a mildly traumatizing childhood, he wouldn’t have grown up to fetishize those things – assuming that when he says “wild” in his profile, he’s talking about kink. And his Instagram confirms he lives in Portland, so I’m assuming kink is a given.

Actually, there’s just a lot of people here who came to Portland, didn’t get it, can’t afford to leave on a PT barista income and are using kink to just feel something besides their oppressive existential gloom.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Don’t worry, I’m not going all the way back to the beginning beginning – reading regulars will already know my take on open marriages.

Synopsis: you’re with the wrong person.

Everthemess, here’s this guy imploring potential suitors – if you can call them that, since the best case with this guy is missing out completely an orgasm – that they be exciting.

I’m unreasonably excited that he at least said “please”. Albeit in a totally lazy manner. Thankfully, he didn’t bore me with a pithy “Plz”…there is a difference.

No, the beginning I’m going back to is actually only as far away as that headline.

More specifically, the follow up.

Pls be exciting

If you follow that up with “Happily married”, I’m left with little choice but to call BS.

Here…

Crappily married

I fixed it.

Pls be exciting + happily married = you don’t understand the core concept.

I’m not even going to parse out how the words “fit” and “tummies” don’t actually belong in the same sentence. Well, ok…but I’m only sparing him one thought there:

This guy put the “moron” in oxymoron.

I’ve stopped trying to understand the avalanche of people in open relationships. It’s beyond my capabilities to help.

However, what I’m left with is the shock and amusement that these people think they can do better. I mean, seriously…you trapped tricked one person into a relationship, that already seems like a lot for you. Now you think you deserve random hookups, too?

I’m just gonna say it, those random hookup? Well, that’s the best you deserved. But this is America, by all means expect more, you Montessori level Stupid American.

There’s an old saying, “Boring people get bored”. Sweetie, if you need exciting people around to be excited, well…

At the same time, since I’ve visited the Instagram you linked in your profile, let’s talk about that. You took a trip to Thailand in December with your husband. That certainly seems like what some people would consider a “trip of a lifetime” – not to mention exciting.

Yet, here you are, hand out for more.

I hope you don’t mind my saying you are a bit more physically attractive than your spouse.

Couple years younger, too?

I’ll go out on a limb and assume he paid for the trip.

As well as your gym membership to some douche-level gym. You’re not coming across as someone who’d be satisfied with a pedestrian level gym like 24 Hour or LA Fitness.

So boring, those gyms.

As I’m assuming your spouse must be. If you’re looking for exciting – I’m assuming it’s not as an escape to all the excitement of your home life.

But, well…I guess my earlier synopsis covered that. Leaving us to riddle out how you failed to grasp the core concept behind the phrase “happily married”.

Unless…

Are you defining happiness as having some rube provide you with the foundational levels of Maslow’s pyramid?

My guess is that’s the elephant in the bedroom. That awkward time of the week (for his sake, I hope getting a little unenthusiastic weekly sex from his future ex is the return on his investment in you) where you’ve gotta “pay rent” to the guy who probably does love you and demonstrates it by making sure your physiological and safety layers are solid.

Leaving you to shuffle uncomfortably from one foot to the other when confronted with level three. Hoping your asocial media trolling drops someone hot enough exciting in your lap.

If it happens, I’m sure the three of you (you, your exciting person and your community property divorce settlement) will all be very happy together…until you realize that your top tiers of esteem and self-actualization were just bastardizations of pride and unnecessary levels of physical fitness built of someone else’s projection of love and belonging on to you.

Then you’ve got to hope your landing from the fall from that top tier isn’t too devastating for you to start over at the third level again.

Hopefully, that’s an exciting challenge for you, Sugar.

It’s certainly not exciting at all to observe. It’s depressing as all get out, to be completely honest.

I’ve lived both sides of the scenario this guy is embracing – well, not the delusional crappily married part, so I guess I started out a little better prepared than him – and you know what? I’ll take my occasional ennui over his absent excitement any day.

Either you know why, or you don’t. There’s really no explaining it to people who don’t get it – kind of like trying to reason with Trump supporters at this point. If they still support him, it’s absent of reason.

But I still get out of bed each day hoping there are enough people who understand that not getting it isn’t the first step in the journey; knowing that you probably don’t even know you aren’t getting it is step one.

Those people are exciting!

Lemme Fix This For You…

A Study In Opposites

galby68, , , , , 6 Comments

That’s what I am.

Somewhere today, I got a wild hair to start cleaning up my Instagram. I had noticed a few days ago that my follow to followers ratio was about 3:1.

I wouldn’t say that bothered me, per se, but I did wonder what that imbalance provided me.

Entertainment.

Giving it a very little bit more thought, I added a qualifier or two.

Minimal and prurient.

I was able to admit that I got nothing out of this but minimal entertainment watching strangers’ stories and pics as I mindlessly scroll my free time away. Sometimes that entertainment is minimally thrilling, too, as several of the folks I followed were prone to what I like to call soft core selfie-porn.

A lot of this was obviously one-sided, too…remember that 3:1 ratio?

There were also random or aspirational restaurants that I hadn’t gone to in over three years.

Some had closed.

There were people I chatted with on asocial media back during my 2018 writing challenge that led to Dating Into Oblivion. Some of these pages had zero posts, and only ever posted story videos.

A couple of the empty pages had thousands of followers, too. Thousands of followers without a single post?

Yeah…hi, comrades.

A few of the pages I deleted hadn’t posted in years. I knew some of them and wondered if the attention they put into their pages shifted to relationships.

There were a couple of friends that I knew had died. I just couldn’t delete their pages. Is that nuts?

So, what’s the opposite?

I’m doing this as I am actively adding friends on the Facebook. Last year, I started weaning myself off of my Facebook habit. When I wasn’t driving, I had lots of free time during my public transit commute to spend mindlessly scrolling through social media.

Now that I’m driving and notably not commuting to or from work, I wanted to put a little discipline into that scrolling habit.

But ever since mid-December, I’m adding friends on Facebook. Some are friends of friends. Others are guys I had texted with after hitting it off on asocial media. One worked at a bar that suddenly shut down a couple years back. Still others were just cute.

Shoot me, ok? I’m a guy.

But the real standout was a guy that currently works somewhere I worked three or four years ago.

Four. It was four years ago.

What truly set him apart was that I’d given him a ride in my car! I had picked him up from a something-con at the convention center a few months back.

He granted my friend request and then began chatting with me on Messenger.

Our conversation was catch up stuff on the random crossovers in our lives.

Then some strange things began dropping into the conversation.

How old are you, hon?

And “hon” had company like “dear” and “sweetness”…which in chat is a little hard to interpret.

So, I just flat out ask the question.

Are you flirting with me?

Too many denials followed. Enough that I was left feeling both undesirable and dubious about their veracity.

A couple days later he drops in that he has a date.

I mentioned that ~36 hours after clearing up his disinterest in me was a little too soon to begin parading a date with someone else into the conversation. He apologized. Then mentioned he had a follow up date the next day.

So wait…you’re going on a first date on Christmas Eve and already scheduled a follow-up for the next day? What if you don’t like him?

“Oh, that’s what the second date is for! We’re doubling with my bestie – I won’t know if I like him until my best friend meets him.”

Wow. Don’t give away all of your decision making power there, Sparky.

I also thought, what a junior high level dating mistake. That thought just kind of faded into the mist of my memory since I had no further contact with him. I actually began to wonder if he’d unfriended me.

I popped over to his page and the very top post – from just a few hours before – was “In A Relationship With”.

It had been a week since their first date. And he lives an hour south of town.

Kids.

Outside of this post, I kept my thoughts to myself. But each of the red flags he’d bemoaned during our chats was now being waved in celebration…

The bestie must have really liked him.

But as the realization and acknowledgment of my – oh, hell – inconsistent behaviors settled in, i consoles myself with the knowledge that at least on the Facebook it’s a mutual decision. With Instagram, you can pretty much follow whoever strikes your fancy. That’s the allure, Insta is more entertainment than actual friendship.

At least my list building is mutual.

And in the other hand…

I’m down to about a 2:1 ratio on Instagram. So, there’s that.

A Study In Opposites

Dating Into Oblivion: Fin

galby68, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Welp, I just deleted a draft called Dating Into Oblivion ep6. The only note I had in my draft was

Who was this bachelor? I know it happened…

…which is a bad sign on the surface. Thinking a little harder about it – as I’ve been doing, being the end of this yearlong initiative – it might have been one of the better dating experiences I had in 2018.

Nothing good or pleasant stuck out, sure…conversely, nothing awful kept my experience with him fresh in my mind.

No tardiness or flakiness about getting together.

Not a sexual misadventure.

No ghosting.

Just neutral.

So, here’s to the unmemorable dude that was probably my best date of the year!

Like I mentioned, though, being the year end, I had been giving some thought to my 2018 writing initiative.

Did I “meet” my goal? Sure. I can average my $20 dating experiences in order to meet my 1/month goal. Some months were “feast” and others “famine”, so I could have been more consistent in channeling content.

Strangely, that consistency thread kept coming back in my ruminations. As did the question, “Do I want to continue this theme into 2019?”

I’m blaming this percolation of thought for ending my New Years Eve watching Rom-Coms until 2:30 AM. Turns out, my mild night was the known wildest – by virtue of latest bedtime – of my friends.

Yay, me!

It actually started out with the intent to be lame. I’d thrown a personal gauntlet down as I left my parents after my Christmas visit: Dry Week.

They didn’t believe it.

Not sure that I did, either, I threw my discretionary money into my debt-abyss, saving $100 for spending money.

Just not enough to get into any real trouble.

Forced success!

Except…

The Silver Fox wasn’t having it.

Sallory was coming to town for a tweener holiday party a friend of hers – and frenemy of The Fox and I – was throwing. His annual is a post-Christmas/pre-NYE party on the 30th. She wanted to meet for a drink before, and I’ve been terrible about making it to Happy Hour on her recent visits.

For his part, the Silver Fox wanted to make dinner on the 31st and then go to Tanner Creek Tavern for a low-key drink. Since they were closing at 11, he was entertaining the notion of closing the place.

Fate stepped in to help my decision making: the hundred I’d set aside for incidentals until my post-NYE midweek payday evaporated overnight in the form of an auto-pay I’d set up on my renters insurance coming due. Alright, well…good to have that paid up again. I’ll bet I forget again next year, too, but I’m betting my coffers will be in better shape to absorb that surprise.

Still, The Fox just wasn’t entertaining my lameness. He offers to buy and I try on an exasperated acquiescence.

That’s how I came to have some free time on New Years Eve 2018 to think about my writing goals for the past and upcoming years.

Of course, I didn’t realize it initially. I sat on my couch, TV off and remote in hand, debating just going to bed. I’d had two glasses of wine at dinner and one at the bar, I had enough alcohol on board to ease me off to Nod.

Deciding that the midnight revelries would just wake me up, I decided to wait it out. I put on the first movie in my Amazon queue without thinking much of it: Hitch.

Great. I enjoyed this movie in the theater and figured it was a good way to pass the time.

Now, once it hit me that this was a chick flick, my writing ruminations kicked back in. Those resurging questions made me reconsider whether three glasses of wine over five hours was actually enough.

I opened a throw away bottle of Robert Mondavi’s off brand Cab Sauv that I’ve had for about four years. I’d been saving it to serve up as a second bottle some night.

Since that opportunity had yet to present itself – and since I fully expected to be pouring most of this into my “cooking wine” bottle, I went for it. With a nice, healthy pour and settled back into Will Smith helping the fat guy get the pretty girl.

I raised my glass to the TV and toasted, “Screw you asocial media!” and watched the show about a dating doctor for men. My mind was engaged in a little back-burner thought exercise about deleting OKStupid since it had yielded only two in-person dates over 12 months.

More on that later, but key word: moron.

Hitch ended with me laughing and crying and possessing an empty glass. Amazon was suggesting a movie about a one night stand that lasts two nights after a blizzard shuts down NYC.

Well, three-quarters of a bottle ain’t gonna fit into my cooking wine

…armed with a second glass, I start the movie.

I didn’t expect this to hold my attention, and it didn’t. It was entertaining enough – in a disastrous type of way – but as its premise was based on two people meeting for a one night stand off a hookup site, I found my back-burner thoughts creeping to the forefront.

I distractedly opened up my vintage hookup site, just to see what was happening nearby. Note, I said “site”, not “app”…I tell myself that using an actual website is somehow better than using the apps I so vocally despise.

Hey, I haven’t gotten laid on a national holiday since the post-Rib romp of Thanksgiving…2013?

What could possibly go wrong, right?

Nothing major, but it does turn out that the closest gay guy to me is just 200 feet away…basically in the hotel whose bar I had left at 11 PM. It also happened to be an overly precious guy I nailed a couple of times while living in Shittatle.

I think he didn’t like that I didn’t feel as fortunate that he’d graced my bedsheets as he apparently thought I should. We probably both wrote that off as a character flaw and just never evered each other again.

Tonight wasn’t going to be an exception to that, certainly, but I kinda hoped he saw me next door. I was listening to our mismatched lovers on the TV as I looked out my naked living room windows, wondering if J’s hotel room window overlooked my balcony.

Karma.

I decided to polish off the bottle and focus on the movie, knowing it wasn’t good enough for me to ever come back to if I turned it off now. There was only 45 minutes left and one more good pour in the bottle, so why not?

See, it’s rhetorical reasoning like that that provides answers to the question I’m always musing on…

What could possibly go wrong?

Welp, I got back to the couch and settled into the end of the movie, unsure of exactly how our female protagonist ended up in jail…but rolling with it.

A few minutes later, my phone let me know I had a message. It was someone who thought I urgently needed to know what his butthole looks like without the benefit of even a “Hello”.

<block>

Back to the movie.

Oh, good…at the ungodly hour of 2:15 AM on January 1st, in the 2019th year of someone’s lord, someone has decided fireworks were necessary.

Someone very nearby.

Luckily, I hadn’t gone to bed.

Let’s see…an ex lovah next door, fireworks and anonymous assholes. Yeah, I think 2019 is off to a good start.

The movie’s big finish?

A New Years Eve party.

Perfect.

On that full circle happy ending moment, I drained my wine glass, shut down the TV, popped a couple of Mellies and hunkered down in bed.

What I ultimately decided on to answer my earlier “continue” question was; hell, NO! It doesn’t mean I will or won’t delete OKCupid or my throwback hookup site. Those decisions are TBD, but I’m looking at them through the stop/start/continue filter and leaning toward stopping those actions in favor of starting an unknown other.

Nor does it mean that I won’t continue to catalog any notable dating experiences under the DIO hashtag, maybe the final entry down the road will be about a great date with a guy that continues to show up.

But my immediate payoff for this thought exercise of the past week? Waking up to this suggestion from OKStupid

Really earning their nickname with that one.

Seriously? That Lost Boy is your best dating suggestion to welcome me into 2019?!?

FML…

But, hey, Diezel…I got a live one you might like!

Dating Into Oblivion: Fin

Bad Influences

galby68, , , , , 15 Comments

Have you been bombarded by so-called Influencers lately? Speaking from personal experience; I have and it’s been tedious.

When I was a kid…no, that’s not right. Earlier this century, back in the aughts, being an influencer was kind of a rare thing. Usually, it was someone from the media or a local personality. I encountered a lot of them when I was opening the “don’t call it a flagship” Sur la Table in Bellevue, Washington in ’09.

Thank gawd it was a rare thing back then.

They.

Were.

Precious.

Most of them were women, maybe a step or two above a debutante or socialite. Mostly by a decade or more in age and a tenuous claim to a job. Most of those jobs amounted to being a blogger, back before everyone had one.

But there were a couple of published lifestyle authors and an occasional morning show host that came with some gravitas. They were important to be able to connect with and talk to because they had an audience and they knew that connecting with me was about promoting the brand I represented versus a vested interest in their own self-promotion.

Unlike the other dilettantes and poseurs.

But today, it seems like dilettantes and poseurs are all that’s left of the once almost illustrious title of influencer.

What’s more, just like one doesn’t call it a comeback or refer to oneself as hot or cool…maybe true influencers don’t call themselves influencers.

I started thinking about this just before Christmas while visiting with the ‘phew. He’s in the middle of his freshman year of college and we were just catching up on his quick trip to SoCal to attend a music festival called Rolling Loud. He’d gone with some of his high school classmates. When we came around to next year and whether upgrading to the VIP experience would be worth the extra $100/ticket – he thinks it will be, so why not? – money in general came up.

Tickets: $250-350

Airfare: $250? I’m guessing, but it’s in between the Thanksgiving and Christmas peak travel season, so I bet they aren’t giving away plane seats.

Hotel: $150/night for three nights, and this is for a hotel room near USC so it could be more!

Plus Ubers everywhere and food.

So, yeah. Money came up.

That segued into a classmate of his who he said was an influencer for he didn’t know what, but she got around $3k a couple times a month for whatever she did.

For the first time this holiday season, I was able to maintain a neutral expression while inside I was doing my best Gilbert Gottfried and disbelief was spewing out of my figurative mouth while I mentally debunked everything.

My immediate thoughts, when I began turning this over in my head later that night, was all of the self-proclaimed influencers in my Instagram feed. Don’t be surprised, but I follow a lot of random gay guys.

Ok, fine…take a moment to regroup.

…

…

Better?

Off we go, then.

There’s a guy I follow named Ben Something. By all initial accounts, he was just this cute lil college kid in NYC that liked showing off his dimples and nice butt on his Instagram feed.

Then it turns out that he’s dating a fairly well known gay porn performer. Ok, I know the porn star is a bottom, and the Ben kid sure pinged as a bottom, so I wasn’t surprised to see them both post “single again” Insta-stories within a couple hours of one another.

Kids. So cute.

I wasn’t even surprised when Ben was dating someone else less than a week later.

Lost Boys. But this is part of finding oneself, right? And he’s an appropriate age for it.

<Looking at you, PNW guys in your 30s…>

Then I started seeing him post “paid partnership” pics on behalf of Pure for Men, which is a supplement for men who engage in receptive anal sex. I’ve never looked into it, but I’m assuming it’s basically a $20 solution for a $5 problem.

I actually dug around the Amazon for a bit and proved my own theory without disproving my own hyperbole: psyllium supplement is $.17/dose and Pure for Men is $.85/dose.

Then I got to watch a trip to Paris, that turned out to be a meet up with his ex…and several other actors for CockyBoys. I’m sure you can figure out what the trip was actually for. Seriously, though…who flies porn “stars” into Paris to make a movie?

What a time to be alive.

I mean, getting by on your looks.

To recap: Pure for Men mouthpiece, CockyBoys actor…and all this time I thought he was a ballet student. Yeah. Regardless, there’s a life plan full of intent.

Then there’s the 19 y/o Aussie bodybuilder…I started following him after seeing a before/after pic of his struggle with acne.

Frankly, the before pic was the stuff of teenage nightmares. I felt awful for him. But his story was impressive. He’d managed his acne with a combination of medicine and diet.

It was very Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, so I was drawn to it. Plus, the FS&ND guy was also an Aussie, which I found to be an interesting coincidence.

Turned out, the Aussie kid was only 18. He’d not only managed to overcome his acne through his dive into nutrition. Following diet up with exercise, he’d transformed himself from a 98 lb weakling – sorry, I’m not converting that empirical expression into metric – into a buff bodybuilder.

He competes now.

Frankly, he’s rather overworked, in my opinion. Then again, that’s kind of the end goal for a bodybuilder: keep building body, right?

But his journey was inspirational. Until I tried listening to him talk. It was painful. Then again, teenagers are usually still learning their own voices, so I just hit mute and watched his sometimes fun beach antics with his friends and his impressive gym videos.

What I did learn from him, though, was he wanted to create a fitness culture on YouTube to help others find what he found through fitness and nutrition.

Not a bad goal.

Somewhere in there, he also created a clothing line of fitness apparel. Mostly sleeveless tops, but I assume he was going for a specific audience.

This past week, I saw a story of his that was captioned “last day at one of my three jobs”. That made me pay a little more attention to what had been going on with him. Working three jobs and about 50 hours a week is a lot with his fitness regimen-slash-gym time. Factor in commute time between jobs and it’s not just a 50 hour commitment, either.

Until…

Later that day – the same damn day – he posted on his story that we should all follow his “private account” because he was starting an Only Fans page.

Where to start?

Ok. Only Fans is a feature that you can enable on Instagram that allows you to charge a monthly subscription for selfie porn.

Seriously.

I’ve seen many of these random gays I casually follow start Only Fans and then embarrassingly promote themselves to gain subscribers. They seem to charge $2.99-9.99 a month for the privilege of seeing their exclusive content.

I’ve actually found this internet secret that allows me to get free porn, so I’ve never once been tempted by this Only Fans nonsense. However, I remembered my nephew’s classmate and her alleged twice monthly $3000 payday.

That’s only 600 subscribers at $9.99/month. Plus, straight guys are way dumber about porn than gay guys. Maybe a hot co-ed can get more than another gay gym bunny.

Speaking of straight guys being idiots about porn? This Aussie kid is straight. Too narcissistic to stay that way in my opinion/experience, but he’s 19. He’ll probably figure it out. For now, he’s starting his Only Fans for $19.99/month!

Marketing to a gay audience at twice the market rate is a pretty bold marketing decision. We’ll see how that works out for him.

For now, I see him starting to pop up in the stories of guys around the world, whose sole purpose on Instagram is to help one another build their follower-ship into the tens of thousands.

Fine. I get that. We’re in the Me Generation on Crack. It’s all about the likes and follows.

For my part, these random people Instagram thinks I should follow? I do. Sometimes…if they don’t engage with me, then I unfollow them.

I’m sticking to social media being a social experiment versus playing into the likes and follows culture. If I wanted empty socialization, I’d hang out on hookup apps, aka: asocial media.

I figure if some guy in Brazil can post in Portuguese and engage with me in English, Australians, Brits and even Americans can be bothered to interact occasionally with their followers in their native language. It’s how I virtually separate good folks from pretty trash on line.

I know, I set a high bar for people. <eyeroll>

Anyway…this Aussie kid. Flash forward a few more days and he’s slashed his Only Fans to $9.99/month. Looks like he’s learning something. Nothing important, in my opinion…

But then he posts a pic of one of his bros and says they are going to be creating some “hot content” together for his Only Fans subscribers…maybe he’s learning something about himself that is important.

Or, not…

Back in my day, cute young guys knew how to behave. Straight guys slept with as many people as possible, like it was their right. Gay guys acted like they were too good to deign settling for a lesser human as a sex partner, 10s Only was the attitude.

Now it’s Fans Only.

Noted.

Regardless, the meme makers have these guys covered.

See ya around, Influencers. When I see shit like this clogging up my corner of the internet

…I swipe and unfollow. I don’t know either of those guys. I guess I’m – surprisingly – not under the influence.

Bad Influences

Maybe I Can’t Blame Lack Of Sleep…

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I was talking to the Silver Fox over a beer last night at Big Legrowlski. It was kind of touch and go for us last week when he floated the notion of not drinking any more. I’m fine with not drinking any more, of course, it was the realization that he meant that maybe he should drink less.

Like zero.

He was trying to blame his acid reflux on beer and wine. I – unsurprisingly – was not having it.

Of course, my not sleep deprived brain got weird with it and made it into a song, a la Duran Duran’s song The Reflex.

The Reflux.

Flux.

Flux.

Flu-flu-flu-flu-flux.

I distracted myself from this ear worm with a story about my mother’s new contact info.

Yeah. I’m one of those guys. With just a hint of this guy, but only for comedic effect. Swearsies.

My contact info is separated out into three solid categories with a couple of fringe elements:

Nicknames: people I love

Names: friends I regularly associate with

Numbers: people I don’t know whether I like yet or not

These unsaved numbers used to just get a first name, but then I ended up with a whole bunch of people saved by first name only – and really, how many Mikes and Peters does one phone list need? Also, there were a lot of people with the surnames Scruff and Hookup.

So I did a clean sweep and deleted all those one name wonders. Haven’t missed them since. Now, I don’t save a contact until I know the person’s first and last name and they prove they aren’t a flake.

There are exceptions, of course.

The Fox taught me his best practice for eliminating phone clutter. Consider this a bonus Today I Learned: if someone calls from an unrecognized number and doesn’t leave a message, he blocks the number. I had been saving the number to a contact called Likely Scam. I just changed all that. Now I do as the Silver Fox do!

The other exception actually occurred last Thursday when I got a lot of attention – and a special freebie – from a very bored stripper. I was texting The Fox (and by texting, I mean accidentally waking up at 1:30) and this stripper came back from his set. In a fit of pay attention to me-ness, he took my phone out of my hands and then texted himself and created his own contact.

So, now I’ve got a stripper’s phone number. Again.

Oh, well.

He’ll either upgrade of get deleted.

And unless I’ve been sleep deprived my whole life, I can’t blame any of that nonsense on lack of sleep.

Because of evidence like this, which is years old.

Look, ma…no asocial media apps!

I dunno. Maybe I’m just weird. I am a native Portlander.

Maybe I Can’t Blame Lack Of Sleep…

Dating Into Oblivion #BonusTrack

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The “Why Do I Even Try?” edition…

There’s a lot to unpack here.

A) I probably wouldn’t. I know this about myself, and I do feel like a piece of shit because of that knowledge.

2) This guy has lived down the block from me for almost 4 years and. just. hit. me. up.

Fuuuuuuuck that.

Just allow me my four limbed sense of outrage, here.

Here’s how my mind works: it’s not that I wanted this guy to hit on me, but knowing our close proximity over the years of me dropping into and then back off of this site, I just figured we shared a mutual disattraction. Knowing that suddenly isn’t the case made me feel like I was so unattractive to him that it took him this long to get desperate enough to talk to me.

Me being me, I mention this, of course. He gives me some noises about just noticing me and I reach for this:

…while wondering why he thinks I’d date a guy with no arms and what are obviously missing – or at the very least poorly operating – eyeballs.

He’s game. Or determined. I’ll give him that. For a guy with no arms, he can type. I get a flurry of messages before closing out and going back to my innocent chatter with my very supportive-of-my-inability-to-wrap-my-arms-around-dating-a-guy-with-no-arms bartendresses.

(Hey, you had to know that pun was coming)

Better use of my time: drinking beer with people in real life.

When I visit the site again a few days lonelier – er…later, I get a new flurry of messages from this no arms fella. So, for years he didn’t notice and now I can’t get away from him?

From scatoma to attenuated. Lucky me.

Then again, this is normally the caliber of lost boy that I get, so I don’t know why I’d complain

Not to be too graphic, but this guy led with an unsolicited pic – ladies, I know you’re forever suffering from unsolicited dick pics from guys who aren’t even senators…but there are worse body parts guys lead with, trust me – and then backpedaled to foreplay. Or what he calls foreplay.

I was having none of either.

The profile I’d created here clearly stated that I wasn’t there for one night stands – I can get those the old fashioned way, thank you very much – or guys in relationships. This guy boldly checked both boxes.

Does anyone really have time for people like this fella?

Plus, he was old. Like, younger than me, but barely. My thoughts on that would be, “not looking before you leap” is kind of a 20-something behavior that age trains you out of…and if I have to choose between an Oldie Hawn that still acts like a 20-something or an actual 20-something?

Yeah, I’ll take the 20-something every damn time.

I came away from this whole episode challenging myself to examine whether my instant reaction to disqualify someone as a date because of obvious handicaps was better, worse or the same as my response to someone who presents less obvious but likely more crippling social defects. Cuz I think I jump on those pretty quickly.

The net positive here is that I deleted my profile on this site. The ROI was becoming a moral bankruptcy.

Dating Into Oblivion #BonusTrack

Dating Into Oblivion ep8

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Admittedly, this will be an atypical post for this theme.

Spoiler Alert: No Date

It’s much more like January’s no-show dates. What makes it different is that these guys couldn’t even show up virtually. That’s how dire it is with these Lost Boys, my friends.

Without further doo doo, episode 8.

The other day, on my one remaining “Why do I even bother?” asocial media site, I had occasion to quote Maya Angelou.

It was a guy that had bothered to hit me up with an inscrutable wink via their messenger function. I mean, here, a wink can fairly well be interpreted as

I want you, but haven’t the social skills to actually successfully execute an action plan to formally seduce you…so maybe this will work?

Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good summary of a the definition of a “non-verbal” greeting on asocial media.

And here’s the deal, on these types of sites, there’s tells to back up someone’s intent. They may set their statue to some version of “Looking for Now” or if they have pictures they wish to only share discretely, they may make their stinky eye pic visible to you along with their winky eye greeting.

At least there used to be tells like that that you could rely upon to clarify someone’s intentions. I think people are getting more jaded on the ROI for flashing their selfie porn to strangers. That less than phenomenal individual is called a pic collector. That pejorative moniker can be a reality if a guy actively seeks out or requests that someone unlock their private gallery or it can be restorative if someone sends unsolicited access to their buttoir pics and then doesn’t get the response they were anticipating.

Either way, it’s a sad substitute for initiating an actual conversation or behaving in a way that isn’t just a base form of selfishness. I mean, FFS, masturbate already.

Anywho…I checked his profile and his status didn’t indicate he was looking and his nudie pics were still locked up. And in a jackalope type rarity (he isn’t unicorn-cute), his profile had words in it! It wasn’t just a bunch of checked or unchecked boxes…and the words were clever and funny.

I replied.

Now, there’s a third vague tell that I employ to suss out someone’s intent…y’know, whether they are just killing time or are maybe really looking to make a connection that doesn’t necessarily involve an erection.

They’ll introduce themselves.

When I replied, I signed off with my name.

After a few traded messages, I noticed he had yet to do the same. I knew that he was off early on a Wednesday and beginning a little staycation. After a couple more, I knew that it wasn’t just a really long weekend, that he had the entire following week off and that he had plans to do nothing.

Since I still didn’t know his name, I wished him well and told him I hoped he enjoyed himself. When he asked where I was going off to, I let him know that I wasn’t really going anywhere, I just didn’t take him seriously as friend material since he still hadn’t introduced himself.

He actually replied with something I could interpret as charm and chagrin.

Another jackalope moment. Maybe just as a projection on my part. Who knows.

We chatted a but more and then went off with our respective afternoons. I’m sure I had to go drink something somewhere with someone or something.

No, that’s probably exactly what it was…I really need to go back to full-time work!

We exchanged messages over the weekend and throughout the next week, but always about 12 hours out of sync. I blamed it on my janky sleep schedule. But while I was on, I took a look to see who else was lurking around that might be worthwhile.

What did I find? Maybe a unicorn!

A good looking guy with a few shared interests? Sure…he doesn’t maybe take his sexual health as seriously as he should, coming up allegedly on his second anniversary of his last STI screening. Maybe he just doesn’t update his profile here very often. This seems likely since he was 1200 GPS feet from me, it’s Fall and he’s not in Lancaster after a summer in Portland.

It didn’t matter, anyway, since an hour later he’d read my greeting and not replied. His profile says he liked tea, but I’m – obviously – not everyone’s cup of tea.

Or, anyone’s.

Still, it bothered me. Like this…

For me, if you’re looking for honesty and respect, ya oughta reflect it. I’ve broken off dating relationships with a couple of guys since moving back to Portland simply because they bankrupted my emotional bank account. Specifically, they withdrew my affection but never really made deposits, so eventually I just ran out of figurative fucks to give about them.

I think respect works off that same notion. If you only demand it and don’t return it, people aren’t going to give a damn about your demands.

Well, I’m not. I am a grumpy old man, after all.

So, I trotted our my bullshit buzzer and sent him a second message the next evening.

Notice the check mark in the yellow circle, that’s how I knew he’d seen my message.

What I notice about these lurking denizens of asocial media is the overprotectiveness they demonstrate for their brand. Usually, when I call out people on their bullshit, one of two things happens:

A) They posture and make excuses…your basic Crocodile Tears scenario.

B) They go on the offensive. So much energy into what just amounts to a blustering defense of themselves. It’s exhausting to witness and I really just hope this type of person will shorthand it and block me. Get it over with, already.

Well, this guy was a Type A in this case.

But what constitutes a “rather difficult evening”? It’s not really my business, but why bother offering it without context? You read my message but didn’t bother to reply until I impugned your brand the following day. If you hadn’t even read my message would that have meant that you had a “very difficult evening”?

And on a Halloween Weekend Saturday night…should I even care to believe such an excuse from someone? Halloween is generally referred to as Gay Christmas, in a fit of true irreverence. So maybe his costume just wasn’t coming together right and he read my message before deciding that he just really needed to focus on getting his Gay Vampire look just right.

I get it. Halloweekend is a struggle. Difficult times.

Almost as difficult as trying to figure out whether to indulge this fella’s response with anymore of my time.

So, I didn’t.

I had other things to attend to. Like Staycation Guy.

On Friday, I decided to just throw caution to the wind and call the guy out on his intentions. I acknowledged the awkwardness of communicating via a website and suggested we move to text for faster and easier communication.

If he was interested in continuing the charade…er, conversation.

12 hours later, I had his phone number and sent him a text.

Before bed that day, I sent him a message back on the old asocial media website.

I awoke the next day to this

…as well as the realization that text obviously wasn’t going to improve this guy’s communication rhythm.

I went and got coffee with The Fox and let his reply simmer on my mind’s back burner.

Ultimately, I decided not to say anything and just let it lie.

Until…

Six hours later, he messaged me on my favorite timesuck. He was riffing on my follow up via the same routine which was a simple, “I sent a text”.

I sent one back.

Ok, I appreciate a certain wryness. But was that what was happening here or was this guy just fucking with me?

Or was he just a complete social retard?

And, yes, I know retard is not a good word. But I’m saying his social skills seemed to be somehow retarded. Like undeveloped or halted in such a way that he really didn’t know he was failing.

I’m ambivalent about training boyfriends anymore. I think I’m less enthusiastic about training friends. Shouldn’t friendship come naturally?

At the same time, I look around our country today and see how people are so divided. So readily writing people off as The Other. Declaring The Other as an enemy…

I decided to reply. On the timesuck.

In a message that would make a terrible text – it was about 3″ long – I laid it out.

Texting should have been a much more effective form of communication but wasn’t for him.

If we’d failed to successfully burst into the real world when he had no work to complicate it and no other plans for his week, could we reasonably expect it to get easier when he added the complexity of work back into his schedule?

He read it.

I guess there’s a third type of person that I failed to consider, they just do nothing when pushed. No response. Which is probably as much genuine honesty as you’ll ever get from that type of person.

Plus, I’m sure nothing makes a denizen of asocial media less responsive than being confronted with something that’s 3″ long…

Dating Into Oblivion ep8

Dating Into Oblivion ep7

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Bachelor #11: The Transplant.

I know! I’m so behind. Episode 5 & 6 are stuck in draft limbo, but whuddyagunnado?

You could call this one the “Fresh Off the Boat” episode or even the “When It Rains” edition given recent events. Honestly, I think either way you argue it, it comes down to me: I just feel better, and I think the universe is picking up on that and…showering me with rewards.

Or – and this seems likely – I’m still stuck in the dating desert that is Portland and this is all a mirage.

“But, just what is it?”, you ask.

Well, Bachelor #4 from way back in January is back on the radar. He’s the “when it rains” part of this story. Over the year, as we are still connected on actual social versus asocial media, he’ll ping my radar. This has led to occasional text-a-paloozas over the last 9 months or so.

Right meow, it looks like this last ping has some staying power for my radar. And after last night, I’d really like to ping him.

😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈

But, that remains to be seen. He’s still in Vantucky and based on some recent events, logistically unavailable.

That’s different than geographically unavailable, which is one of the factors working against us back in January. He lives in Vantucky, I’m in Portland and don’t drive.

Another thing working against us?

My neurotic self.

I feel like entering into a situation where the expectation is that he haul ass to Portland every time we want to hang out is inequitable. For me, that was a poor start to a dating relationship.

For those and a few other flags – er…reasons – I let it fizzle.

But the sexy lil bastard just. keeps. pinging.

So…stand by. We’ll see what happens.

But, back to The Transplant.

While my old friend, DP, is fond of embracing the relationship philosophy of “Either you go on a date and never see each other again or you go on a date and he never leaves”, I have another notion. It’s not a criteria, which is a designation worth making, so much as maybe that’s just a potentially positive attribute of his.

Rib was a FOB. He’d been in Shittatle for a couple months from LA when we met. I think my ROI on the four years we spent together is pretty solid: I see he and I being friends for the rest of my life.

Maybe catching them fresh off the boat before they get caught up in the tidal wave of lost boys is a strategy with some legs?

The Transplant has been here in PDX for a couple months, having relocated from Chicago.

He hit me up on OKStupid a couple weeks ago.

We’re a ninety-friggin-six percent match.

That 4% intrigues me. He’s a vegetarian, which I want to say is the entire 4%.

Alas.

He’s also as much as stated that his personal style is distinctly designed without and fucks given to making other people comfortable.

Admittedly, my style is kind of the same. However, my Zero Fucks Given fashion manifests itself in me wearing tee shirts that have been in the dryer for three days and wearing clothes that “used to fit” but I don’t have to look at it, so screw it.

His Zero Fucks Given style is less apathy and more expression. He’s prone to inconsistent color in his hair and aggressively ripped clothing versus pathetically burst clothing.

Who knows, though?

If that’s the sum total of of our 4%, I’d say Vegetarian = 3.5 and Very Alt Style = .5 of those percentage points.

Interestingly, that he also ends up working for…Amazon is a complete fit of What Could Possibly Go Wrongness. Fortunately, he’s a third party employee – which is the group of “Amazon” employees that really gets the severest of Rogerings since Jeff – we are not on a first name basis – has very little control over their fate aside from renewing their employer’s contract.

Or, not.

Those third party employees largely tend to be delivery drivers and this is the…third? Yeah, let’s say third such employee I have known personally.

So, there he is texting – because our last message on OKStupid was, “Here’s my number, shoot me a text” – me how much he hates his Amazon job. I try congratulating him on his recent raise to $15/hr. He counters with the fact that that did not trickle down to the most Rogered of “Amazon” employees and six hours later, he texts me that he got a new job.

In a vegan restaurant.

So, I’m guessing this 4% isn’t a passing phase.

Sad face.

But, still…for all the guys I’ve known without jobs or prospects, this guy moves to town, takes any job he can get a paycheck from and then finds another job when it turns out to be 12 hours of this

I’m totally taking credit for being the impetus for him finding vocational satisfaction, because I can.

Neverthemess, we’ll see what happens when we meet face to face. He seems like a responsible and nice young dude, a 96% match and just…pleasant.

How fucked up is it that pleasant is not a given in this dating world?

Wait.

Never mind.

I just remembered who I am.

We’re meeting up Sunday afternoon, so we’ll see.

And I’ll likely report back.

For now, just talking to a guy who is living his life with intention and drive is…nice.n

Dating Into Oblivion ep7

Oh, WordPress…

galby68, , , , 2 Comments

Sometimes I’m surprised by what I encounter online, it’s why I refer to social media as asocial media.

Still, I consider WordPress a fairly safe haven from the general online weirdness. But every now and again, I get a surprise.

Usually, it’s a reader from a far off land reading my blog.

Sometimes, that reader is reading something truly unexpected like my blogs on kinks and fetishes or gay dating. I mean, when it’s a reader where homosexuals still face the death penalty, having this blog in your browser history could prove fatal.

But this search term really made me chuckle.

Oh, WordPress…