Friday, April 10, 2015

The difference between outcasts and willful outsiders

I was making the mistake of reading around some of the PUA, men's right and other right-wingish, pro-manish stuff that's out there to survey the current landscape, and I happened upon this bit about being a high school outsider. I found the blod post interesting in large part because 1) it stands in stark contrast to my own experience and 2) it reminds me a great deal of a friend's experience.

The crux of what this guy, Chris, who runs the blog Good Looking Loser, had to say was encapsulate in three paragraphs.

Para 1, describing his hometown:

The premise for the wildly popular 90's show "Beverly Hills 90210" was based on Winston Churchill High School and the town of Potomac (and Bethesda, MD.).

Para 2, his thesis:

My advice is to become OBSESSED with your appearance.

Para 3, the true "holy shit" moment for me:

I know what it's like to be teased when my brother died from cancer. (4th grade)

So, let me address the holy shit factor first. Where I grew up, the ass beatin' you would've gotten for pulling bullying shit like that, even in 4th Grade, would have been unreal. If your parents didn't do it, someone would have done. If all else failed, one of the male teachers would have found a way to make it happen (likely by recruiting a few of the boys who had been raised right).

This might as well have grown up on the fucking moon when I compare my experiences to his. If you read the blog much, you may recall that I grew up dirt poor and rural. While high school shit happened, it happened within a specific context, and most of it was standard jousting for position. There weren't even that many kids who engaged in bullying in my high school, at least relative to what I hear people describe happening elsewhere.

It's funny to me reading that post because it reminds me that there are three types of outsides in this world:

  • Outsiders who are looking in through the window and wishing to join the cool kids.
  • Outsiders who are pissing in through skylight and laughing their asses off.
  • Outsiders who are just passing through and don't care whether the natives kill each other.
I happened to be the third type of outsider, except on days when people insisted upon pressuring me to be included, and then I became the type that pissed on everything in sight. Most of my friends were the type to piss in everyone's Cheerios, and the remainder were almost always the the outcasts who wanted to be cool. I'm a lifelong friend of the fuck-ups and the losers of the world, despite not being someone who is seen as a fuck-up or a loser.

To some extent, a lot of the tension that I experience in life arises from pressure that others wish to apply to people who they see as potential social assets to join their group. The problem in my case is that I have such a well-developed image of myself as a casually aloof outsider just passing through Western civilization like an anthropologist handing out machetes and shotguns to the locals (this isn't a joke; Napoleon Chagnon actually did this!!) that it's very hard for me to make the necessary mental and emotional leaps to ever be included in any group. I enjoy being an outsider, largely because it allows me to appropriate for myself the right of relentlessly pointing and laughing at the stupidity of others.

If you go and read the post by Chris and then compare it to some of the stuff that I post, you'll notice a lot of differences. For shit and grins, let's actually compare and contrast . . .

The Life of Chris

  • Wealthy school district
  • Obsessed with body image
  • Wanted to be cool
  • Mostly harmless poppped collar type
  • Struggled to get the attention of the opposite sex
  • Emotionally abused girls through systematic rejection

The Life of the Aloof Guy

  • Dirt poor school district
  • Barely aware of the concept of body image
  • Willfully firebombing what little passed for cool
  • White trash raised around people who committed several homicides and numerous suicides
  • Confused by the attention of the opposite sex
  • Emotionally abused girls through systematic rejection 
You'll note that the last item is the same. There's a reason I included that. I think its interesting that two very different sets of life experiences can bring two very different people to the same conclusion.

First off, trust me when I tell you that shutting of the attention spigot is likely the worst form of abuse that you can inflict upon a woman. That's the money shot if your goal is to really grind a woman down and question her self-worth. You can beat a bitch senseless, and she'll love it because physical abuse is attention and attention means emotional investment. If you wanna really fuck a woman up, you have to feed her about three breadcrumbs of attention and then cut the supply off entirely the moment she thinks she just might have a fighting chance.

What interests me, however, is that we arrived at the same point from very different starting lines. Chris wanted to be one of the cool kids and wanted the girls' attentions. I aimed to always be an outsider and a fuck-up, and I only wanted the girls' attention if they could be crammed within the very limited space allowed by definition of myself and my limited set of social skills.

At the end of the equation, however, we both wanted to get revenge on the girls. He wanted revenge because they hadn't paid attention to him. I wanted revenge because I didn't understand what the fuck they were trying to get me to do and felt confused and hurt by the entire experience.

How socially retarded was I in school?


It's worth re-reading one of the earliest posts on this blog if you wonder just what a socially retarded mess I was. http://aloofguy.blogspot.com/2011/11/road-to-aloofness.html

Here's the truth of it. I was so socially retarded that I actually thought:

  • Girls who liked me in high school did so purely because we had been around each other.
  • Overt sexual or physical advances weren't any sort of proof of any actual interest.
  • Some girls just liked to talk about stuff that interested them with me.
  • If a girl liked me, she would let me know, especially if I had already said something.
  • Girls simply jerked guys around because they were batshit crazy. (This, however, was based upon my sister, who was crazy enough that a fake pregnancy scare was her go-to move to get a guy to be more serious in a relationship.)
I had zero clue that there was any type of game being played, let alone what anything like game might have been. My basic assumption was that game playing was purely pathological.

I was dumb as a motherfucker when it came to girls.

For example, my first kiss came during a summer party that a friend of friend's family was throwing (they were very devout and decent people from a good background -- just because I was white trash didn't mean I didn't know decent and well-off folk, which is typical of small town rural life in America). I was going into 7th grade the next year, and one of the 8th grade girls who was there (I didn't know who she was) took a shine to me and spent the whole day trying to make her intentions known to me, asking about, trying to corner me and chat me up, etc. None of this registered with me, and in fact I thought she was bullying me.

Toward the evening, the adults had asked the older kids (ya know, 7th and 8th graders) to organize a game of hide and go seek for the younger kids. Eventually the 8th grade girl (usually I change names to protect the innocent on this blog, but in this case I really can't recall what her name was!) got her turn to be it. She made a point of seeking me out, and found me behind a bush at the very edge of the property. She then went straight in for the kill, grabbing me and planting a kiss right on my mouth.

Being the socially retarded mess that I was, I quit the game and spent the trip home bitching to my friend about the girl. His parents never invited me to anything after that tirade, BTW.

At my old age, I of course understand what happened. What happened was I had won the fuckin lottery in terms of middle school accomplishments and then proceeded to light my ticket on fire and run away. Worse, I was pleased with my choice!

I can remember years later discussing this story with a woman on a first date, and she just smiled and laughed, telling me that it was the cutest first kiss story that she had ever heard. In retrospect, I know that most people would think it was a really cute story, but for me it was awful and left me feeling a tad violated. (There is an argument to be had here that if a boy did this to an awkward girl that it would be viewed as closer to a sexual assault than a cute story of young love.)

The difference

For me, the frustration of dealing with other human beings has always been the unwanted pull from them. For a guy like Chris, the frustration arose from wishing that they were pulling him toward the social center.

I think that difference is relevant. Why?

The big advantage I had over a guy like Chris is that I was practically a perfect natural to some of the real nuts and bolts elements of sociosexual game. Having an aloof personality and a strong personal need to push others away allowed me to easily avoid the neediness trap that usually catches guys well before they discover the basic social dynamics of game. I also displayed signs of authority problems at that age, and that of course always sells well in the sexual marketplace. You also create an obvious abundance mentality when all of the girls around you see how retarded one of the hot ones is willing to go. In short, I was packin' aloof bad boy game from the day that I hit puberty, and I couldn't even be bothered to care that I was.

My biggest regret about high school isn't that I could have been cooler than I was. My biggest regret was that I didn't understand just how much pussy I was swimming in.

I've said before on the blog that it would be pointless to go back in time and tell my younger self the deal simply because my younger self would not have cared.

I was so angry about the way girls played the game that it wouldn't have mattered to me. In more than one case, I got the picture well enough to understand that a particular girl liked me. Trust me, when you're sitting in 9th grade Spanish class with a girl leaning back on your desk and tossing her hair around trying to provoke a response, you do get the rough outline of her intentions. For me, at that age, it was pure anger at the idea that this whole dumb process was somehow required.

In that particular case in 9th grade, I just wanted that girl to stew in her own insecurities and self-hatred for not responding to my direct indication of interest in her. I got the idea, vaguely and roughly within my limited scope of social skills, that she wanted me to do something, but I was so pissed that she hadn't provided any response to my direct request, in writing, for a relationship that I simply figured she could go fuck herself. If she cared, she'd do what I did. That's simply how I saw the issue.

I somehow doubt that the younger me, even with the whole concept stretched out in a straight line and explained in detailed, would have changed his disposition in the slightest. If anything, I suspect that I would have been even more angry. Even now, the whole concept of how women half-assedly flirt with guys and then expect guys to carry the entire burden of a potential rejection leaves me feeling a little chaffed. I may understand the concepts, but I still don't find the whole enterprise amusing in the slightest. It's still chickenshit.

It's also important to realize that I never processed the idea that puberty had actually happened to me. I had a self-image going back into elementary and middle that was based in being fat and smart and poor. The fact that puberty had rectified my basic shortcomings didn't get processed until I was in my late 20s.

Making the leap of logic doesn't help


In fact, in retrospect, I think that's where the real evidence of my social cluelessness sits. Even through college, the idea just never sunk into my brain that attractive women found me to be attractive. The biggest problem that I had was making the logical leap to the idea that I was expected to form up as part of the in-crowd, be successful and just act like an attractive and successful person is supposed to act. The concept just never struck me.

Even now as I progress well into my 30s, I may understand the concept, but I also take a perverse pride in laying waste to it. I still quite enjoy watching women go stupid over me and then treating them like shit. I've never ceased to get a kick out it.

Somewhere along the way, I simply developed too ingrained of an image of myself as an outsider, a poor kid, a fuck-up, a fat kid, etc, that it became very easy and very normal to me to sit on the periphery of humanity. I'm proud of it. The idea of seizing my right to be a handsome and successful man has zero appeal to me.

As a willful outsider, it doesn't feel right to me to be cool and to be lavished with attention. What feels right to me is to treat those people like shit and then sit there smirking at them when it sinks in that I'm not playing with them: I really am just mistreating them for my own amusement.

It is funny. I never get tired of watching some cute young thing's face change when she realizes that at least one man in this world just isn't buying into her bullshit, no matter how desperately she tries to explain herself.

I also can't lie: watching almost every single girl who comes into my orbit and shoots out the other side then proceed lose 10 to 20 pounds within six months is the greatest form of ego massage a man can experience. It happens like clockwork, and it is frankly fascinating to watch, especially if you have a sadistic streak and like to watch women hate themselves. I don't even have a strong preference for thing girls! I just like watching the consequences of their internal turmoil and self-hatred boil up into real world results.

I should also point out that frickin lerv feeding a woman just enough line to make her think she has a chance. The longer they stay on the line struggling and fighting, the more I like it. It's hard to find the ones that will stay there for months or even years, but damn is it satisfying when ya do.

Conclusion

It's intriguing to see the difference between someone who's trying to pull people in versus someone who is trying to push them away. It's also interesting to examine how we each get our kicks from getting revenge on the opposite sex. Life experiences take us all to strange places, and a few of us end up being really fucked up messes.

I don't think I can ever understand, on a gut level, why anyone would fight to be one of the cool kids. It's just more fun to make everyone feel like shit because you won't join them. And it's even more fun to string them along and watch their puzzled expressions.

2 comments:

  1. I posted this in response to a prior entry, but I think you are an INTJ. Your story (with the exception of the dirt poor upbringing) including your reactions to social norms, your motivation etc. is the same as mine and screams INTJ, or something very close.

    I had similar social issues at high school and during my university days.

    I'm naturally very aloof and content in my own world, however, my failing in the past has been a very short tolerance for the social games, social archetypes and norms others see as default, that persist on an ongoing basis.

    It presents to others as a sign of social weakness in the status hierarchy but it's been me just sick to death of nonsense that I felt is false and contrived, as I have a very short tolerance for bullshit. I'm getting better at dealing with it but.

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    1. One upside I had from growing up in a bad environment is that people never perceive my behavior as weakness. I can remember a chick at the bar several months back stopping to tell me, "You look like you're looking around to hit somebody. I don't mean punch. I mean, conduct a hit, like an assassination."

      People don't know what to make of me, and that goes a long way toward defusing perceptions of weakness. People approach me about the same way that Chinese tourists walk up to a cow. They come in slowly, duck their heads down, and then slowly attempt to communicate after establishing they won't be killed.

      I think that's one of the main reasons that I respond negatively in situations where women fail to display what I've come to see as an appropriate level of deference.

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