Entrepeneurs in Cars had a list of six lessons learned in 2017. Three caught my attention:
1. Only a very small proportion of men are willing to do the work to make themselves a better version of themselves
2. Manage your energy - give a frak only when it’s going to benefit you
3. If it’s not Hell Yeah, it’s Frak No
And I’m going to take the first and third as somewhere to start.
Am I one of that small proportion of men prepared to do the work to be a better version of myself? Ask what I would look like if I wasn’t sober, exercising, single and employed. I’d be a mess. I’d be on filthy drugs with names ending in ‘statin’ or ‘formin’. I would have no muscle tone, I would have a gut, with even worse body-fat than I have now. I would be paying alimony, living in a squalid flat because that’s all I could afford after the divorce. I would be alone in an empty marriage. If I wasn’t sober, I’d be dead. And don’t doubt that. Ever. I would be mostly unemployed, with occasional breaks of clerical work through agencies: if I was lucky, I’d have a postal round.
You know what? I pretty much am a better version of myself. Actually, as long as I’m sober, I a better version of myself. Two things.
First, maintenance is a bitch. When you’re ‘better’, very few of your options take you to ‘even better’, and those are hard work. Enough is enough. Better is the enemy of the good (old Russian proverb). And so on.
Second, I’m not having as much fun as I could be, in fact, I’m rather good at denying myself fun. Some of that is due to the habits of denial acquired by wearing dental braces for eighteen months. Some of it is about logistics, and I’ll get to those.
Next. If it’s not Hell Yeah, it’s Frak No. Now I like this. The idea is that if I’m not immediately up for whatever it is, I don’t talk myself into it because what else am I doing? What this made clear to me is that there are some things I want to do, but talk myself out of, usually on the basis of cost and logistics. I may need to reverse the maxim: if it’s not Frak No, it’s Hell Yeah.
My idea of fun is cultural consumption. That includes good food in nice restaurants. A good few years ago, the culture industry jacked the prices up: £18 for an art movie? £72+ for Shen Yun at the Dominion Theatre? £33 for a concert at the Wigmore Hall? I don’t demur at the prices for modern dance at Sadlers Wells, but that’s because it’s My Thing and there’s no alternative. For £33 I can get a top-end Wagner opera on CD. Wait a few months and I can get the movie on DVD for £10 or less in Fopp. (You can tell I’m a Pricing Guy.) And usually there’s more than the ticket price. If it’s mid-week, I park in Richmond so I can avoid the ultimate buzz-kill of travelling from Waterloo after 20:00. That’s nearly £14. And there’s a supper as well, say £10 or so even for a pizza. Going out in London is expensive.
To which I tell myself, either spend the money or find some other kind of fun.
Logistics. I wake up at 05:30, do a day’s work, and you expect me to be looking forward to a two-hour show at 19:30 and a return commute at 22:00? Especially with a session at the gym and a light meal to pass the time between leaving work and the start of the show. That’s a long, long day, and there ain’t no sleeping-in the next morning. Last year I trapped myself into trying to wake up refreshed and relaxed. As if I could do that with an extra sleep cycle. But dragging one’s ass out of bed into the kitchen every morning can lead to the belief that There Must Be Something I Can Do. There isn’t, but I fell for it. Trying to get enough sleep and wake up at 05:30 means no activity in the evening at all. Late afternoon at the latest. Movies that start at 18:30 in town are verboten. Even 18:30 locally could be a bit late.
I think the objection-by-logistics is an excuse for not doing something. I live where I live, not in central London. This is one of those suck-it-up things. And right now, it’s damn cold, and that makes any kind of going out feel like a really bad idea.
No pretty, full-of-motivation conclusions, but for the moment that’s where I am.
Monday, 8 January 2018
Monday, 1 January 2018
A Happy and Prosperous 2018
A Happy and Prosperous 2018 to you all.
Start your year with some Moody Blues
I don’t think I listened to this after 1970, and then I found it on Tidal. Maybe this is buried in my unconscious, or just maybe it’s a good album, even if some of the lyrics could be twee even by late 1960’s standards. Their other albums are not as good, though ‘Nights in White Satin’ is one of those Singles That Made The Sixties.
(If the playlist doesn't work, look it up on your streaming service.)
(If the playlist doesn't work, look it up on your streaming service.)
Thursday, 21 December 2017
November 2017 Diary
Next month’s diary will explain why this one took so long. November was 80’s music month. Instead of Radio Three, I had Heart 80’s on first thing in the morning, and played a bunch of 80’s stuff on Tidal as well. And my considered opinion is that 80’s music was The Best. 60’s music was the most groundbreaking; 70’s music when good was transcendent, but so little of it was; by the 90’s the music scene was fracturing into a zillion genres, so that by the 00’s I could be following one genre and know nothing about what was in the charts, and care not a damn what the youth were listening to.
I watched my way through S5 of Elementary like eating candy: it Lucy Liu and is well written, has silly plot lines, Lucy Liu, Johnny Millar portraying an addict rather well, and I may have forgotten to mention Lucy Liu. Because it has her, in case you wanted to know.
I read Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project, and Tversky and Kahnemann; The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray; Richard Blandford’s London In The Company of Painters; made a start on Richard Yates’ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, which I finished in December; and set myself the first volume of Hegel’s Aesthetics as bedtime reading, knocks me out in ten minutes but not before I feel I’ve read something profound.
Tidal added the entire ECM catalogue. If you don't know what that means, keep quiet until you find out, or people may never talk to you again. I spent a day or so going through John Surman's back catalogue just because I could.
I watched Suicide Squad on DVD. No movies. Sis and I had supper at Demartino on Great Portland Street, because it’s run by a guy who goes to my gym, and good hearty Italian food it is too. I caught up with a couple of former colleagues at Encant on Maiden Lane - he was out of ice cream, but the lamb chops were terrific.
I was trying to get to sleep earlier, and I am watching a fair amount of You Tube junk to pass the time, as you can gather from some of the posts, and I don’t mean that the content is junk, but that I “ought” to be watching or reading more sustained content. But then at the end of some days I'm just brain-dead, and listening to Paul Elam having a good rant is just about my level.
I watched my way through S5 of Elementary like eating candy: it Lucy Liu and is well written, has silly plot lines, Lucy Liu, Johnny Millar portraying an addict rather well, and I may have forgotten to mention Lucy Liu. Because it has her, in case you wanted to know.
I read Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project, and Tversky and Kahnemann; The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray; Richard Blandford’s London In The Company of Painters; made a start on Richard Yates’ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, which I finished in December; and set myself the first volume of Hegel’s Aesthetics as bedtime reading, knocks me out in ten minutes but not before I feel I’ve read something profound.
Tidal added the entire ECM catalogue. If you don't know what that means, keep quiet until you find out, or people may never talk to you again. I spent a day or so going through John Surman's back catalogue just because I could.
I watched Suicide Squad on DVD. No movies. Sis and I had supper at Demartino on Great Portland Street, because it’s run by a guy who goes to my gym, and good hearty Italian food it is too. I caught up with a couple of former colleagues at Encant on Maiden Lane - he was out of ice cream, but the lamb chops were terrific.
I was trying to get to sleep earlier, and I am watching a fair amount of You Tube junk to pass the time, as you can gather from some of the posts, and I don’t mean that the content is junk, but that I “ought” to be watching or reading more sustained content. But then at the end of some days I'm just brain-dead, and listening to Paul Elam having a good rant is just about my level.
Monday, 18 December 2017
I May Never Feel Well Again
Sunday evening. Three days of spasmodic coughing and retching, a slight temperature, waking up at two in the morning, and unable to leave the house for sixty hours. And no sign of it easing. I can only drink hot water and eat potatoes and some cheese. The bits of fish I bought on Friday when, like an idiot, I thought I was going to be feeling healthy, those are now expired. I have to go to the supermarket tomorrow as I'm about to run out of Lemsip and paracetamol. There's a small window between about half past ten and midday when I can do that, and then it all goes away. This happens to me twice a year at least, sometime three. I don't know if my immune system is under-performing because I train and wake up at silly hours, but I take vitamins and eat right, so I doubt it. It's because I travel on trains with people who have military-grade viruses from Poland or Russia or Romania. But if I traveled on the other trains I'd be jammed between people with children who bring back viruses from school that are unknown to medical science. I could blame the awful air conditioning at the office, or the really cold weather we've been having, but I've been through cold weather before and not got these four-five day cough+cold+fever. I try to go to sleep in the evening and can't drop off because I haven't been active enough during the day. Nobody else gets colds like these at work, but Sis does, so maybe the vulnerability is genetic, but the rest of the world strides through other people's viruses and cold weather and rain and exercise and doesn't so much as sneeze. Don't even try to comfort me. I may never feel well again.
One of the most beautiful pieces of television is the first thirty or so minutes of Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation where he visits the remote islands of Celtic Christianity. That's how bad it is: I watched the first three episodes, which are amongst my favourite pieces of television ever. Now I'm going to let about half and hour pass and try to sleep. I'll be working from home tomorrow but really I'll be sleeping or dozing or coughing.
One of the most beautiful pieces of television is the first thirty or so minutes of Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation where he visits the remote islands of Celtic Christianity. That's how bad it is: I watched the first three episodes, which are amongst my favourite pieces of television ever. Now I'm going to let about half and hour pass and try to sleep. I'll be working from home tomorrow but really I'll be sleeping or dozing or coughing.
Thursday, 14 December 2017
Upgrading Hi-Fi Interconnects
In this video
Hans Beekhuysen describes how he gets rid of excess sibilance (that “sssss” sound) that can appear even on audiophile records such as Jennifer Warnes’ Famous Blue Raincoat. Since his systems are already hi-end, he chooses to upgrade the interconnects, by spending over £1,000 on cables from Audio Quest and a LAN Adapter from Pink. He says these make a difference to the sound, and he does this for a living, so I’m going to take his word for it.
There’s a lot of scepticism about the improvement an interconnect can make. Cable isn’t passive. Like any electrical component, it has resistance, capacitance and inductance, however small, and the effect of last two vary with the frequency of the signal. Resistance causes loss of power by turning the current to heat, while inductance and capacitance cause a phase shift that changes with frequency, distorting the waveform that makes the ‘digital' signal. This might be enough to cause a change in the content of the signal at some points, turning a 0 into a 1, which will be converted by the DAC to an analogue waveform that gets passed to the amplifier and passed to the loudspeakers. The interconnects cannot make the signal better, only leave it the same, or make it worse.
So if a change of interconnect seems to improve the signal, it means a two things: a) the digital signal from the source must be of a very high quality, and b) the amplifier, speaker cables and speakers must also be high quality. What does ‘high quality’ mean? That they must be able to respond faithfully to the tiny changes in signal that changing the interconnects produces. They must have a great deal of precision and low intrinsic noise from thermal effects, power voltage variations and so on. Using a £500 interconnect between an iPhone headphone jack and a low-end amplifier from Sainsburys is silly: all it will do is more faithfully transmit the distortions of the low-quality iPhone DAC. Using expensive interconnects between high-end kit might make a noticeable difference, as it more faithfully transmits a high-quality signal.
£1,000 is slightly more than I spent on my Marantz / B&W kit. It makes no sense for me to buy expensive interconnects, because, though the Marantz CD6005 blew away the Marantz CD5005 it replaced, and that blew away the Cambridge Audio player, which blew the Denon I had before that, I doubt the CD6005 has the industry’s best DAC. It might help to get some better interconnects, rather than the usual grey cable ones provided, just as one should set aside the Apple ear buds as reserves and buy some decent ear phones from Bose, Sennheiser or other manufacturers who know what they are doing.
I suspect that audio equipment is a lot like cars: there’s low-price stuff that doesn’t drive or perform well and is uncomfortable, and there are Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, but mostly there are solid, mid-range cars that keep getting better and better, but will never be a Bugatti. On the other hand, a modern Fiat Punto will leave most 1960’s sports cars in the rear-view mirror, will brake harder and corner faster, and only E-type Jaguars and AC Cobras will leave it behind. (Don’t believe me? An early 1960’s E-type with a 3.8 litre engine did 0-60 in 7.1 seconds. A 2010 Fiato Punto 1.4 Evo does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds. As for the aerodynamics of those 1960’s cars? Awful.) Streaming 320kps MP3 through my iPad and a Dragonfly DAC gives me a better signal than my 1970’s Goldring Lenco turntable with its Shure cartridge and diamond stylus.
With modern manufacturing techniques, I’m fairly sure there’s no significant additional overhead to making a high-end cable out of some superior materials - the difference will be the cost of the materials, and that will be far less than the difference in price the market will pay for a high-end interconnect. Supplying the small audiophile market with a £500 interconnect can still be profitable, and it also serves to re-position the price of the mid-range stuff - suddenly £100 doesn’t look so bad. I think this is the real reason expensive interconnects are produced: it’s a great marketing device, and makes a unit profit. It may even actually make a difference.
Hans Beekhuysen describes how he gets rid of excess sibilance (that “sssss” sound) that can appear even on audiophile records such as Jennifer Warnes’ Famous Blue Raincoat. Since his systems are already hi-end, he chooses to upgrade the interconnects, by spending over £1,000 on cables from Audio Quest and a LAN Adapter from Pink. He says these make a difference to the sound, and he does this for a living, so I’m going to take his word for it.
There’s a lot of scepticism about the improvement an interconnect can make. Cable isn’t passive. Like any electrical component, it has resistance, capacitance and inductance, however small, and the effect of last two vary with the frequency of the signal. Resistance causes loss of power by turning the current to heat, while inductance and capacitance cause a phase shift that changes with frequency, distorting the waveform that makes the ‘digital' signal. This might be enough to cause a change in the content of the signal at some points, turning a 0 into a 1, which will be converted by the DAC to an analogue waveform that gets passed to the amplifier and passed to the loudspeakers. The interconnects cannot make the signal better, only leave it the same, or make it worse.
So if a change of interconnect seems to improve the signal, it means a two things: a) the digital signal from the source must be of a very high quality, and b) the amplifier, speaker cables and speakers must also be high quality. What does ‘high quality’ mean? That they must be able to respond faithfully to the tiny changes in signal that changing the interconnects produces. They must have a great deal of precision and low intrinsic noise from thermal effects, power voltage variations and so on. Using a £500 interconnect between an iPhone headphone jack and a low-end amplifier from Sainsburys is silly: all it will do is more faithfully transmit the distortions of the low-quality iPhone DAC. Using expensive interconnects between high-end kit might make a noticeable difference, as it more faithfully transmits a high-quality signal.
£1,000 is slightly more than I spent on my Marantz / B&W kit. It makes no sense for me to buy expensive interconnects, because, though the Marantz CD6005 blew away the Marantz CD5005 it replaced, and that blew away the Cambridge Audio player, which blew the Denon I had before that, I doubt the CD6005 has the industry’s best DAC. It might help to get some better interconnects, rather than the usual grey cable ones provided, just as one should set aside the Apple ear buds as reserves and buy some decent ear phones from Bose, Sennheiser or other manufacturers who know what they are doing.
I suspect that audio equipment is a lot like cars: there’s low-price stuff that doesn’t drive or perform well and is uncomfortable, and there are Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, but mostly there are solid, mid-range cars that keep getting better and better, but will never be a Bugatti. On the other hand, a modern Fiat Punto will leave most 1960’s sports cars in the rear-view mirror, will brake harder and corner faster, and only E-type Jaguars and AC Cobras will leave it behind. (Don’t believe me? An early 1960’s E-type with a 3.8 litre engine did 0-60 in 7.1 seconds. A 2010 Fiato Punto 1.4 Evo does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds. As for the aerodynamics of those 1960’s cars? Awful.) Streaming 320kps MP3 through my iPad and a Dragonfly DAC gives me a better signal than my 1970’s Goldring Lenco turntable with its Shure cartridge and diamond stylus.
With modern manufacturing techniques, I’m fairly sure there’s no significant additional overhead to making a high-end cable out of some superior materials - the difference will be the cost of the materials, and that will be far less than the difference in price the market will pay for a high-end interconnect. Supplying the small audiophile market with a £500 interconnect can still be profitable, and it also serves to re-position the price of the mid-range stuff - suddenly £100 doesn’t look so bad. I think this is the real reason expensive interconnects are produced: it’s a great marketing device, and makes a unit profit. It may even actually make a difference.
Monday, 11 December 2017
How to Get Home From The West End
Two hours to do what should be a one-hour journey. I think the problems I can see on the Train App are due to cascading earlier problems caused by the snow. Oh, the innocence of the uninformed.
19:10 Leave Bill’s on Old Compton Street (Don’t judge me.)
19:20 Bakerloo line from Piccadilly Circus to Waterloo.
19:26 Arriving at Waterloo, we’re told to get to the platforms via the Jubilee Line, which is about an eight-minute walk. Ask the young man making the announcement, is this because of crowding on the main concourse? Yes, he says. I hear something about ninety minute delays. Nope.
19:28 Bakerloo line north to Embankment
19:35 Arrive on Westbound District Line platform, next Richmond train in 10 minutes
19:45 District Line to Richmond
20:10 Due to late running, this train will be terminating at Gunnersbury
20:18 Everybody off at Gunnersbury. You have never been to Gunnersbury. That’s because there is no reason to go there. I don’t know where the people who live there work, but if it’s central London, they get off at Turnham Green and walk, to avoid the shame of getting off at Gunnersbury.
20:22: London Overground to Richmond - but not after it’s vanished from the display board after being announced as “Approaching”. 20:30 Richmond. The Train app is lying about everything, but I’m sure I saw a badly delayed Windsor and Eton train on its way down. Look again three minutes later, it’s vanished. Talk with a man who’s been waiting half an hour, when an Ascot train appears on the board, arriving at 20:47. That will do.
20:40 A badly-delayed Windsor and Eton train arrives. The nice lady on the platform tells me this is all caused by a fire at Waterloo, but the service should be okay tomorrow morning.
20:45 My Bedtime App tells me to go to bed in fifteen minutes to get a good night's sleep.
20:53 Arrive at Feltham.
21:01 Unlock car.
21:05 Park car.
19:10 Leave Bill’s on Old Compton Street (Don’t judge me.)
19:20 Bakerloo line from Piccadilly Circus to Waterloo.
19:26 Arriving at Waterloo, we’re told to get to the platforms via the Jubilee Line, which is about an eight-minute walk. Ask the young man making the announcement, is this because of crowding on the main concourse? Yes, he says. I hear something about ninety minute delays. Nope.
19:28 Bakerloo line north to Embankment
19:35 Arrive on Westbound District Line platform, next Richmond train in 10 minutes
19:45 District Line to Richmond
20:10 Due to late running, this train will be terminating at Gunnersbury
20:18 Everybody off at Gunnersbury. You have never been to Gunnersbury. That’s because there is no reason to go there. I don’t know where the people who live there work, but if it’s central London, they get off at Turnham Green and walk, to avoid the shame of getting off at Gunnersbury.
20:22: London Overground to Richmond - but not after it’s vanished from the display board after being announced as “Approaching”. 20:30 Richmond. The Train app is lying about everything, but I’m sure I saw a badly delayed Windsor and Eton train on its way down. Look again three minutes later, it’s vanished. Talk with a man who’s been waiting half an hour, when an Ascot train appears on the board, arriving at 20:47. That will do.
20:40 A badly-delayed Windsor and Eton train arrives. The nice lady on the platform tells me this is all caused by a fire at Waterloo, but the service should be okay tomorrow morning.
20:45 My Bedtime App tells me to go to bed in fifteen minutes to get a good night's sleep.
20:53 Arrive at Feltham.
21:01 Unlock car.
21:05 Park car.
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Sharing MGTOWs and Silent Bachelors
Yep. I’ve been listening to Sandman. I think that means I will be banned from reading The Rational Male by its cookie. Sandman asks at one point, what is the difference between a MGTOW and a confirmed bachelor, and suggests that a bachelor will keep quiet about how he lives as a single man and why he chooses to do so, and if he does will mention how great a life he leads, whereas the MGTOW will talk about the reality and risks of domestic relationships. The bachelor gets left alone by the SJW’s and cat ladies, but the MGTOW gets a ton of shaming dumped on him.
That got me thinking, since I’m a bachelor rather than a MGTOW. A bachelor isn’t getting married or entering into domestic relationships. The same way you aren’t going to cut off your left hand. Instinctive, basic, physical. I didn’t make that decision for a reason, because I never made that decision, anymore than I decided to have brown eyes or mild lordosis. Born with it. It has nothing to do with how women behave: they could be, to the last one, faithful, loving, strong, sexy and loyal through all the good and bad parts of their partner’s life, and I still wouldn’t get married - though I might look with a little more wistfulness on married couples than I do now.
MGTOWs may have started life wanting to be part of a domestic relationship, but what they saw changed their minds. They may also have been forced to develop high-content pastimes and projects when younger (an idea tol be discussed in a later post) and are effectively lost to ordinary socialising and relationships. MGTOW’s are single for a reason, and that reason is about avoiding the downsides and risks they see as inherent in domestic relationships.
A bachelor can’t share his why any more than he can his brown eyes. A MGTOW’s why can be shared. Bachelors don’t have a common how in the way that MGTOWs do because the MGTOW’s how is the way he maintains his apartness. A bachelor doesn’t have to maintain his apartness: it’s part of his physical make-up.
A popular bachelor tactic is the “I’m so busy I’m a terrible boyfriend” exemplified by The Great Henry Rollins here:
This line needs a lot of self-confidence to pull off without it turning into self-deprecation or self-pity. External proof of the value of your busyness - recognised accomplishments, money, public success - also helps. Being busy at a job that doesn’t pay in a career going nowhere is not convincing.
This tactic is a conversation-stopper. Generally, bachelors don’t want to talk about why they live as they do, mostly because they are surrounded by married people andwant to be polite to the unfortunate don’t want to upset the marrieds don’t want to get into shaming discussions about what a ‘real man’ does oh heck, because it’s just easier that way.
The married men have made their decision and are stuck in it except at great cost. If they’ve been it for more than five years or have two children, they know the realities, and they don’t need some snippy MGTOW telling them. At most they need another married man to say that, yep, that shit happens to all of us, and here’s what we do to get by.
The single men who want to get married are either delusional and so won’t understand any help a MGTOW tries to give; or desperately want to believe in NAWALTs and so will refuse to hear that help; or have their suspicions that all is not as advertised. That last group, and they alone, are the audience. There’s a small proportion of them, and the most anyone can do is put a body of work out there - as Sandman, Rollo and others have - and hope those who need them can find it.
The mainstream media makes content for the audience advertisers want to reach, and shrewdly guess that people who work hard, exercise, eat fresh food, buy only what they need with money they already have, don’t drink too much and don’t care about impressing people they don’t like, those people are not going to be prime targets for consumer junk. It’s not easy making content about fit, employed, sensible people, as they don’t have soap-opera lives. The only stories the mainstream wants about bachelors end with us a) getting married, b) being seen to be sad and lonely, c) like Hugh Grant...
(It’s impossible to follow that scene, so I won’t try.)
Sandman’s comment hit a nerve. We bachelors don’t do a lot of communicating about how we live our lives, the feelings and problems we have to deal with and how we dealt with them. Perhaps we should. It’s just not going to be about women, except in the same way it might be about cars. Or broadband connections.
That got me thinking, since I’m a bachelor rather than a MGTOW. A bachelor isn’t getting married or entering into domestic relationships. The same way you aren’t going to cut off your left hand. Instinctive, basic, physical. I didn’t make that decision for a reason, because I never made that decision, anymore than I decided to have brown eyes or mild lordosis. Born with it. It has nothing to do with how women behave: they could be, to the last one, faithful, loving, strong, sexy and loyal through all the good and bad parts of their partner’s life, and I still wouldn’t get married - though I might look with a little more wistfulness on married couples than I do now.
MGTOWs may have started life wanting to be part of a domestic relationship, but what they saw changed their minds. They may also have been forced to develop high-content pastimes and projects when younger (an idea tol be discussed in a later post) and are effectively lost to ordinary socialising and relationships. MGTOW’s are single for a reason, and that reason is about avoiding the downsides and risks they see as inherent in domestic relationships.
A bachelor can’t share his why any more than he can his brown eyes. A MGTOW’s why can be shared. Bachelors don’t have a common how in the way that MGTOWs do because the MGTOW’s how is the way he maintains his apartness. A bachelor doesn’t have to maintain his apartness: it’s part of his physical make-up.
A popular bachelor tactic is the “I’m so busy I’m a terrible boyfriend” exemplified by The Great Henry Rollins here:
This line needs a lot of self-confidence to pull off without it turning into self-deprecation or self-pity. External proof of the value of your busyness - recognised accomplishments, money, public success - also helps. Being busy at a job that doesn’t pay in a career going nowhere is not convincing.
This tactic is a conversation-stopper. Generally, bachelors don’t want to talk about why they live as they do, mostly because they are surrounded by married people and
The married men have made their decision and are stuck in it except at great cost. If they’ve been it for more than five years or have two children, they know the realities, and they don’t need some snippy MGTOW telling them. At most they need another married man to say that, yep, that shit happens to all of us, and here’s what we do to get by.
The single men who want to get married are either delusional and so won’t understand any help a MGTOW tries to give; or desperately want to believe in NAWALTs and so will refuse to hear that help; or have their suspicions that all is not as advertised. That last group, and they alone, are the audience. There’s a small proportion of them, and the most anyone can do is put a body of work out there - as Sandman, Rollo and others have - and hope those who need them can find it.
The mainstream media makes content for the audience advertisers want to reach, and shrewdly guess that people who work hard, exercise, eat fresh food, buy only what they need with money they already have, don’t drink too much and don’t care about impressing people they don’t like, those people are not going to be prime targets for consumer junk. It’s not easy making content about fit, employed, sensible people, as they don’t have soap-opera lives. The only stories the mainstream wants about bachelors end with us a) getting married, b) being seen to be sad and lonely, c) like Hugh Grant...
(It’s impossible to follow that scene, so I won’t try.)
Sandman’s comment hit a nerve. We bachelors don’t do a lot of communicating about how we live our lives, the feelings and problems we have to deal with and how we dealt with them. Perhaps we should. It’s just not going to be about women, except in the same way it might be about cars. Or broadband connections.
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