• papalonian@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Gonna preface this by saying Ive got no issues with you or your comment, I recognize what community I’m in.

    But advice like this is so frustrating for actually normal people who are single and are struggling to find a partner. It implies anyone who can’t get a date can’t do so because they’re the equivalent of a stinky smelly mongoloid who’s been wearing the same underwear he uses to clean his pits for 3 days.

    Again your comment is perfectly valid given the context. OOP probably left out that he tipped his fedora to the m’lady because of all the dandruff that fell off when he did it. But being told in normal communities to “just take a shower bro you’ll get a date 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽” feels like being corrected on your spelling, in a math test, when you spelled the word correctly in the first place.

    /rant

    Edit: oof. So I upset some people with this one, obviously, but the only people I care about that I upset are the ones who pointed out the unfortunate term used above. As some had guessed I had no idea of it’s origins. (Ironically, I noticed the similarity when my phone generously assumed I wasn’t a bigot and tried autocorrecting to something… marginally less offensive, but in the midst of typing out a rant I didn’t think twice.)

    I’m leaving it so others can see my mistake and hopefully learn from it. But when selecting fun and frivolous language, I’ll make sure to remove that one from the pot.

    • Yuki@kutsuya.dev
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      2 months ago

      Oof, also I laughed at your example at the bottom. This actually happened to me in highschool and it still haunts me.

      • 0ops@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I had one geography and pre-algebra teacher in junior high that was like this. She practically refused to give out 100% on any assignment or test, and as far as I know no one ever could. She took the time to pick out any little flaw. Word misspelled? You lost points (granted, that’s fair for place names in geography). Handwriting not typewriter-perfect? You lost points. Didn’t quite erase something to her standards? You lost points. Didn’t format a handwritten page precisely as she defined (and she was extremely precise)? If you’re lucky you lost points, but she often threw those away with a zero. Used the wrong type of pencil? Allegedly she could tell if it wasn’t written with a #2 pencil, and would throw the it away if it wasn’t. The best grade I got in either of those classes was 99.5%. What did I miss? One of my 'i’s had the dot slightly touching the rest of the letter. Real Umbridge character personality-wise too, more than anyone I ever met.

        All this allegedly to prepare for college. So it was a shocker when I got there find out that I could straight up get 2/10 correct on a calculus test but still be graded at 80% because (read this in a slavic accent) “you made mistakes in algebra, but you know your calculus”. Go figure

        • Yuki@kutsuya.dev
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          1 month ago

          Omg… I would’ve been so angry with her if that were to happen to me XD! 99.5% because of a fucking dot on the i …

    • adam_y@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Dude, the use of “mongoloid” is not cool.

      You know what it means, right?

      • MBM@lemmings.world
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        2 months ago

        The double whammy of referring to a specific syndrome and racist origins

        • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Holy shit, just looked that up, and it has layers to it. Based on the rest of their comments in the thread, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, they probably had no idea of the origins and meanings (I certainly didn’t), but man is that one problematic.

          • papalonian@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            OOF.

            Based on the rest of their comments in the thread, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, they probably had no idea of the origins and meanings

            Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt. Probably should’ve clicked when my phone graciously tried to save me with autocorrect, but I was typiiiing.

            Original comment updated.

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I WINT SHOWER BEFORE SEEING A SEX WORKER I WONT SHOWER BEFORE SEEING A SEX WIRKER I WONT SHOWER BEFORE SEEING A SEX WORKER I WINT SHOWER BEFOR E SEEING A SEX WORKER I WONT SHOWER BEFORE SEEING A SEX WOREE

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      BTW, and now that we are doing this, dandruff is not a sign of lack of hygiene. It is a common symptom of skin conditions like dermatitis. I don’t like to recommend subreddits in Lemmy, but take a look at r/sebderm and read a couple of threads there. Fortunately, most people don’t know it, but a chronical skin condition can get you suicidal.

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yeah, dandruff was an unfair blow. I just figured if I was going for a standard 4chinner insult, it almost made it better.

        If the OOP is actually real I don’t actually think they’re a fedora warrior.

    • workerONE@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The comment doesn’t imply that everyone who can’t find a partner is unkempt, it’s just a recommendation to help people out.

      Like if I said that people who ride bicycles are physically fit, I wouldn’t be implying that everyone who is physically fit rides bicycles

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Like if I said that people who ride bicycles are physically fit, I wouldn’t be implying that everyone who is physically fit rides bicycles

        Right, but if you were a fat guy who cycled to and from work every day and you made a comment online about how unhappy you are with your body, don’t you see how…

        “Guys: ride a bike, go outside, stop driving down the street to get the mail. Exercise is sexy

        … might make you feel like there’s something wrong with you? “Man, if all the advice anyone should need is, ‘go ride a bike’, and it isn’t working for me, what the hell is wrong with me? I’m fucked.”

        So yeah, I understand that it’s just bullshit generic “advice” meant to “help” people, but when you’re struggling to figure out why people won’t give you the time of day and everyone says that all you gotta do is take a shower and people will find you attractive, you’re not in a mind state to go, “hey, I already did that, so it doesn’t apply to me/ I shouldn’t consider it”. You think, “so everyone ranks me with the guy who doesn’t shower”, “there’s no point in trying because I’ve already done what everyone said”, “there’s something inherently wrong with me/ women/ men/ society because the system works for everyone but me” etc etc etc.

        And actually no. “Take a shower and wear clean clothes” is almost never meant as genuine advice to help someone out. It’s a tongue in cheek insult, directed at men like OOP who dared to express their loneliness online, meant to belittle them and make the commenter feel superior over someone desperately looking for companionship.

        If someone who has been studying hard says they’ve been struggling with math, is “bro, read a math book. Do some actual sample problems. Stop blowing off your homework.” advice, or a condescending insult?

        • workerONE@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Nobody says that’s ALL you have to do. How are you taking this personally? How do you think the tip is secretly meant as an insult? I can see that if you’ve thought about this a lot and tried many things, it could be frustrating to see simple tips like this. Regardless, you’re reading more into people’s personalities and their intentions than is really there.

          What this means to me when I read it- many people have a very sensitive sense of smell and after even any light activity or enough time, people will not smell perfectly clean anymore. I have showered and then spent 15 minutes working on something and then been told that I smell. Good luck if you meet someone that has a sensitive sense of smell- you will probably be told to take a shower whenever you are not perfectly clean and want some physical interaction. Will you tell them “that is secretly meant as an insult against people like me who have tried everything…” Or will you take a shower? Then you’ll be told to shower every time it’s relevant, maybe multiple times per week, that’s on top of showering every day. Now you’ve been informed that there are people like this. Relationships require some accomodation to the other person’s wants, and hope the other person will likewise make a similar effort to accommodate the things that are important to you.

    • 474D@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You do realize that the vast majority of “actually normal people” from your comment are or have been in relationships? Like what is your definition of that, I don’t think it’s what most would think.

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m not really sure what your comment is asking or saying.

        Yes, I realize a majority of these “normal people” (in this context, people that don’t need advice from internet strangers to know you should shower and wear clean clothes) have been in a relationship. I’m included in these “normal people” , and have also been in multiple relationships.

        I don’t know what you think I mean by “normal people” but I feel it’s easy to decipher what I meant given the context, and I don’t know how people having previously been in relationships relates to what I said about these people struggling to get into one currently.

        • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          OK but that advice was clearly meant for people like OOP who haven’t been in a relationship as the post implies. If you have been in a relationship and are just in a slump then the shower advice was pretty clearly not meant for you? Not everything is meant for you.

          Honestly if the energy your putting out in this comment section is the energy your approaching people with then that might be your problem.

          • papalonian@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Everyone is getting really bent out of shape over this response, disregarding the fact that I acknowledged (twice) that the comment I replied to wasn’t doing anything wrong in the given context.

            I never said they made the comment specifically about me, I said that when that advice is given to people looking for help or even just a little compassion that having “take a shower” thrown in your face over and over is discouraging.

    • ladicius@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Never implied anything like what you fantasize here, especially not something like “getting dates only when clean” and other bullshit.

      If you never get a date then personal hygiene may play a role, that much is true. But there’s a myriad of other issues that influence your success with the wanted person/persons, including being a whiny bitch that insinuates dumb stuff for example.

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Thank you for reading the part where I said that I didn’t take any issue with your comment, it’s context, or what you said.

        But funnily enough, your response reads much like what I was talking about in another comment… angry people on the internet, hurling insults at those they’ll never meet, for the crime of expressing their struggles online.

        I expressed zero animosity to you, instead joining your joke at OOP’s expense, while lamenting a common frustration. Your immediate response is to defend your statement (despite it not being attacked), and try to further cut down someone who is just trying to talk about what’s bothering them. That’s unfortunate.

        I’ll briefly summarize a story from The Buddha, in which he is approached by an angry man who accuses The Buddha of being a know-it-all, telling others how to live their lives, etc.

        The Buddha asks, “if I gave you a gift which you did not accept, to whom does the gift belong?” to which the man replies, “it belongs to you, for it came from you, but I did not accept it.”

        The Buddha then says, “Then, like my gift, I reject your anger. It belongs only to you now, and you are the only one who must live with you anger.”

        I suspect you won’t bother reading a majority of my response, and will either ignore it or try to respond to it with more insults, but you’ll have to try calling other people names (and come up with some more clever ones!) if you want anyone to accept the gift you’re offering! Have a nice night.