cat person

tho tho tho

i read it -- i haven't read a short story in the NYer in many years (if ever) and I thought it was haunting and true.

that marks him out as slightly more villainous than if they'd just left him as a potential everyman.
as i read it, he had been sitting there stewing in the bar for a while and had been drinking. i thought it was a sign of what lurks in the heart of everyman and only comes out when he is empowered with a way to send a message and effectively have the last word.

when i was her age, there was no texting but i have no doubt that average "normal" dudes had many uncharitable thoughts about me. ugh this story stung.

#noteveryman

I am not exactly worried about its quality as a story (lol like I can tell) but it carries a charge, the story does sting for sure. That's a lot than almost any fiction you'd pick up randomly like this.

maybe - i dunno tho, i feel like texting someone "whore" and that whole last exchange to me feels kind of psychotic or at least mra/alt right.

i'd say a lot of men's sexism is less overt than that - exposing that, which the piece did a lot along the way, i guess, might be more difficult/interesting.

i just feel it's better when it shows the creepiness of the actually quite "normal" things he does, like the paternalistic behaviour etc, if he's this angry full misogynist creep it has less impact.

that just feels way beyond the pale to me - it suggests all his other off behaviour he is because deep down hes' this awful angry creep, rather than in fact the normal behaviour of an average man.

xpost i think if the story is trying to say "yes all men" then it'd be more powerful if it didn't end the way it does.

xpost to ll

LG otm there I think

The whole thing lacks any ambiguity really though

the narrator didn't really feel like a character, just an observer, a receptacle for the narrative. the story's sole purpose appears to be winding up/attacking mras, which is a noble enough cause, but the writing is kind of dull and the whole thing emanates a sort of calculatingly nihilistic dysphoria that brooks neither joy nor horror. nothing is left to chance. and in its obsessive recall of detail it comes off quite superficial

― imago, Monday, 11 December 2017 14:04 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmmm what else sounds like

#noteveryman was good tho it were right good

the narrator literally announces she has told this story different ways before now, how much ambiguity do you want

(amking my way through the interview now)

re: the last line. Kristen says it was inspired "by a small but nasty encounter I had with a person I met online", later on in the same interview she expresses nervousness in trying to capture a younger person's texts. So maybe all of that explains the crude ending but I liked it -- from where it started to where we got to. All the witticisms and weeks of flirting turning so ugly, to this one word left like that. It didn't stop from the story from hitting a nerve.

Fills enough time before the next time Trump tweets his thing so enjoy it, says I.

decent story, i also don't think the last line is in keeping with the rest but i don't mind an attempt to swing for the fences.

if he's this angry full misogynist creep it has less impact.

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

i guess i just don't believe that is the action of anyone but a particularly angry misogynist.

lashing out maybe, or getting angry - people get angry in dating. but calling someone a whore is like getting into territory where the word "violence" doesn't feel a misuse. to think otherwise i'd have to try to justify him calling her a whore.

i don't think you have to justify it to understand that it's possible for a person who is performatively kind to find that his kindness is not rewarded as he thinks it should be, gets angry, lashes out drunkenly in a way that is disproportionate to the way he feels he was wronged. it did not feel ott to me, though it was an abrupt ending to the story.

I think the last line would feel over-the-top if it was in isolation but the string of messages before it makes it more credible, imo. Within the context of getting angry/lashing out there are still plenty of guys out there who have no trouble responding like that, doesn't need to be a MRA.

Also don't think this story is supposed to "wind up" anyone, feels like a very weird way to look at it imo.

only a really warped person imo. like it's p much a hate crime, what he does. anyway i guess we won't agree on this - i can't claim to have a full perspective on this story.

xpost

also she basically initiated the relationship based on his apparent (performative) kindness -- that she eventually chose not to pursue further contact with him after their lackluster encounter is another choice she made, one he felt was uncharitable toward him, so he lashed out in anger. It seemed like a conceivable reaction of a man who felt the control had not just been wrestled away from him, but done so by a younger woman -- which is basically totally realistic. Whether or not your average "decent dude" would hurl that word around casually is not really the point. Although personally I don't think it's a stretch.

LG -- even if you believe that "only a warped person" would say/do this, it's a sign of how warped many people (men) are. More than you think!

seemed totally relatable to me and her perspective seemed valuable. i'm not that guy but i certainly know lots of that guys. it's really weird that people are so uptight about either being that guy or knowing that guy that they have to get all captain-save-a-cat-person on twitter but hey it's 2017 i guess.

lol, quite possibly. i was beginning to say "nobody i know would ever do this" but i can't claim to know. i can only use myself as barometer and i know for a fact i would never, ever do this. i don't say that to morally grandstand either, i have no sense of myself as righteous whatsoever, it just makes me recoil and for me personally it allows me to then dismiss him a bit.

a bit like someone using a racial slur - i label them a racist and that allows me to distance myself and kind of treat all their other behaviour with more suspicion. i feel it'd be a stronger story if he didn't get this angry at the end. but i also feel like it'd be a stronger story if it was exposing the creepy paternalism or patriarchal behaviours in ostensibly "normal, happy" relationships. more subtle maybe but more interesting too.

i've spoken too much itt

xpost i find it v annoying that people are getting lambasted for saying it's a bad story. it's a piece of art, you don't have to like it just because of what it's about.

xpost to ll there, sorry!

apart from the ending the story was v successful at casting a kind of awful vibe where a perceptive, intelligent woman drifts from one impulse to another without feeling able to stand up for her own shifting feelings, or even declare them

thought the ending served well to show the dark side of welcoming objectification: narrator finds his reduction of her to a precious doll initially sweet and attractive but the other shoe drops when precious doll discovers inscrutable older guy is shallow/gross/a shitty lay

i think the final "whore" in there suggests that maybe there _was_ danger in those moments and part of what makes the story compelling is that the decisions she made, that had some grounding in her mind in self-preservation, may ultimately have been more necessary than she or we thought in the moment.

yeah I would think the specifics of the story mitigate a bit against reacting to it as some kind of universal takedown of men/masculinity, though obv aspects of it have larger resonance. idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.

if anything the part that didn't ring true for me was her fantasy of seeing herself as young-and-beautiful-with-flawless-skin through his eyes--not impossible I suppose but young people are more insecure than that ime. that said, perhaps I've just hit the limits of being able to imagine myself as the object of the male gaze?

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.

xposts

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, December 11, 2017 7:58 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is extremely true, and your other point about kindness not being rewarded is also true. lots of guys i've known over time, there's this expectation i think that the kindness they show (that no one asked to be shown!) is deserving of some prize or acknowledgement or having someone in your debt.

truth bomb

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says). that's like why it's a problem.

lotta redundant xposts.

idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.
yes, you are sheltered. ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*, of which he was one. not a sad sack, but vulnerable. i might say that in some ways she took advantage of him too -- his attentiveness, his worship. she knew this, and it's why she was worried she would come across as a tease iirc.

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.
OTM x1000

*needy men

feel like tinder and the like (tho they meet irl in the story) have led to a lot of relationships with big age differences. i see this a lot now.

it has always happened? very much like the way it happened in the story! you flirt with some dude, he seems alright, you hang out, and then things go south faster and faster until whatever was there is definitely over.

ahem i am unfamiliar with this dynamic (pulls at collar)

i also think ^^^ is part of the point of the story

in some ways it seems to me a comment on the dark side of assuming sexual agency for all people when we are still playing on a field that is not just uneven, but full of landmines.

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says)

it isn't underneath if he straight out calls her a whore, imo. it's overt. if you're trying to talk about what lies underneath a veneer then you need to show that it lies underneath, which is actually more insidious and interesting. there's a diff between thinking a thing, or having it emerge in your mind, and saying it which would also be p good territory for this story, whatever way it was explored.

xp
good points, thanks LL

it's underneath if it comes out only at the dead end of the relationship, after like a dozen unanswered texts, as the last line of the story.

also i think the fact that it connects, at the last possible second, the nuanced and pathetic image you have in your head and the image of an alt-right shitposter, is pretty deliberate.

ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*

this is rly otm and i liked the stuff w her job at the art theatre: the way he blows up its sophistication first in flattery but gradually in anxious bitterness and insecurity was v true to the usual dynamic between older lonely men w what they think of as taste and younger women whose intelligence they praise until the day it stops working.

(the praise, not the intelligence)

it IS underneath!! he is hiding it, even from himself. it only comes out and breaks his veneer of decency when he knows she is no longer interested (again, her decision) he is robbed/"robbed" of his control over the situation and he lashes out (drunkenly) with what is buried beneath the flirting and jokes and attentive question asking and his urbane apartment and everything. anger at having his control taken away by a young woman he slept with, a person with whom he assumed (incorrectly) that he had the upper hand.

he is not an MRA shitposter -- he is a regular guy. otherwise she wouldn't have spent as much time with him as she did.

it's also a fairly difficult technical problem to have this mentality submerged but not overt when the story is first-person from her perspective

"Later, the bartender told me that he'd written 'whore' to me into the text window, but decided to erase it."

i dunno, i just think him saying that stops him being a regular guy. you don't just call someone a "whore". even thinking "she is a fucking whore" or whatever would be p strange. guess we're going round in circles.

if he's texting women calling them whores he is an mra shitposter, de facto.

i guess i just disagree with that

i think it's important to note that i don't think the author is portraying either of the characters as predatory; it's worse than that. this is business as usual.

a few years ago just turned thirty i hooked up with a girl that was i believe 19 maybe 20 at a and this is a creepy detail a 17 year old girl's birthday party that i went to with friends from work NOT KNOWING it was a 17 year old girl's birthday party. driving home the next morning, she asked how old i was and i couldn't even say it and had to shakingly pull out my drivers license wordlessly pass it to her. she said, comfortingly: no, it's cool, my friend is dating a guy who's like 42. i was smitten with her, got her phone number, texted once, got no response and agonized for a few days about sending a follow up but never did. about a week later? she said she was in the mountains skiing and hadn't gotten my message but she wasn't interested, and i never saw her again.

i can relate, folks. tbf this guy does seem like an mra shitposter right off the bat. story was okay.

xp So many details were true to life and experience imo. I want to use the words "gross" and "banal" somehow but both already seem cliched.

he should have used them about the student bar she suggested

he seemed insecure for sure -- would not extrapolate that to "MRA shitposter"

yeah clearly insecure and i definitely understand that part of it. i dunno, the slightly manipulative exchange at the counter starts it off, the way he suggests jokingly that she insulted him, referring to her as "concession-stand girl."

those were the parts that to me are creepy and more strongly so if the ending isn't as overt

i thought this story was boring. the style seemed cod-DFW to me, but i haven't actually read much fiction so i don't know how accurate it is. it's not a good satire because the protag/main character _just isn't interesting_. he's an idea, not a person - the idea of The Good Ally. does he have interests of his own? everybody does. i've never met a human being as boring as the protag here. you can't have character development when you don't have a _character_. someone who just says "oh i hate my narrow shoulders" all the time isn't a _character_.

he reads all of these books, and he's so... incurious. about himself. i don't think that's part of the character. i think the writer doesn't care about him as a person. only wants to demonize him. or to offer a moral fable of sorts.

he needs a character because you can't _generalize_. to call him an incel... incel was inceptionally a feminist term. the person who created it was a woman (or at least, well, AFAB). i mean the character talks about asexuality being "in vogue", which it isn't, but never is like... asexual is in many cases a _queer identity_. you can find traces of the early incels, how they talked, and there was a lot in there about disability, neurodiversity, social justice. did they turn into today's incels? no, they were _displaced_. the term was co-opted. somebody who tries to "get it" but doesn't and then commits an act of violence (and i didn't "get" the subtext of the ending because by that time i'd stopped caring about the story and was just skimming) - that could make a good character study. a person like that _needs to have a fucking character_. otherwise the story signifies nothing.

I think there's a phenomenon where young men who are prone to depression and self-hatred are drawn to feminism, particularly the most angry at/contemptuous of men kind, because it speaks to what they fear about themselves

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref)

"prone to" honestly seems like a bit of a dodge. self-hatred is learned behavior. that's what i get from it. these guys are ineffectively seeking external validation to make up for their own lack of self-esteem. and yes, that ineffective behavior reinforces their lack of self-esteem. it feels pointlessly gendered. i mean, yes, guys do this, and from my perspective, i don't _care_ why they do the shitty things they do. i'm not trying to understand their thought process or any of that crap. it's none of my business. if i'm gonna be reading about this guy's crap, though, there's one question i'm gonna keep coming back to: why does he hate himself?

How else could it end?

It could end with the guy NOT committing murder, but just kind of continuing to lead a bitter and unhappy life, making days a little worse for people he encounters, for several more decades until it ends in the usual non-murdery way.

Yeah I don’t literally mean murder for most people (!) but rather the way that people who turn it outwards will usually continue to do so. But this is a story where the guy runs after parents in the street to kick their buggy so it doesn’t shock me at all that the writer went for the Elliot Rodger reference. Especially when the guy is hanging out online with all those Nazis and getting worse every day.

“straw man” was probably the wrong term, although it’s definitely as one in certain circles. I think there’s a mishmash of people in feminist/anti-racist/etc spaces who use the language and community for selfish reasons. The character in the story in question is, as kate mentioned, incredibly thin because it’s a caricature of someone who has internalized how NOT to be, what is supportive, and how to move in these spaces but has no actual individual sense of being.

I think it’s reductive but the line about maybe going out to bars or w/e is the hint that maybe you have to have different facets as a person to be interesting to others. The point of internalizing progressive social dynamics is learning how to exist in social spaces without taking them over. You do have to actually develop those facets and find those spaces, which is difficult!

Being social is hard, especially when you’re not in college or w/e where ad hoc socialization is forced on you

I definitely have leaned on negativity and love a good cynical tale, but I recently read something about how it’s much more difficult to write a story where your character can conceive of a future, of personal growth.

I guess everyone just wants to write The Catcher in the Rye and be trapped in perpetual adolescence

it’s a caricature of someone who has internalized how NOT to be, what is supportive, and how to move in these spaces but has no actual individual sense of being.

I think the story is getting at something real in showing how this absence or hollowed out quality (knowing how NOT to be, but not how to be) in the context of being an "ally" can become this black hole of neediness that drains everyone around you, and the viscous circle whereby being criticised for this leads to you attempting to efface yourself further and just becoming more brittle, more self-hating, more dependent on everyone around you for your self-esteem, leading to more criticism etc

people don't really have to "grow up" anymore? as long as they do the minimum of paying their bills/rent, they can play video games for the rest of their lives. and be stuck in adolescence. nobody really cares if you have kids. get married. all that jazz. i mean, maybe your parents do but to hell with them. unfortunately, this doesn't make for very compelling fictional content. if you are a truly amazing writer it might. but mostly i just stare at that huge paperback edition of The Count of Monte Cristo on my shelf and think: that looks like it would be fun to jump into! to hell with sweaty gamer bedrooms. i've got dungeons to explore.
(this might explain why i still haven't read My Year of Rest and Relaxation yet. but i will someday i promise. i felt like i was living it during the pandemic so i didn't really need to read it. i needed something even more bonkers which is why i spent a lot of the pandemic reading The Old Testament and Ducks, Newburyport.)

x-post

You do not need to read My Year. She’s a wildly overrated writer.

all of a sudden i'm remembering this very short and very smart asian-american kid i went to school with in the 80s and he would get made fun of by assholes because he was the perfect target for assholes. what sticks with me the most: he had a picture of Hitler in his locker.

i liked the story collection of hers. ottessa's. i read eileen too and didn't love that. but it was okay.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation was one of the funniest books I've read in years. Not like rofl peeing my pants funny (is there a book that makes people pee themselves laughing?) but a lot of knowing chuckles. My students recommended it and imo it delivered.

Temporary by Hilary Leichter actually made me laugh out loud more than twice. that is one of the funniest books i have read in a long time. But i don't think i actually peed myself.

he had a picture of Hitler in his locker.

and the next morning, he was Kate Bush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9NaEOoOLU4

all of a sudden i'm remembering this very short and very smart asian-american kid i went to school with in the 80s and he would get made fun of by assholes because he was the perfect target for assholes. what sticks with me the most: he had a picture of Hitler in his locker.

― scott seward

yeah, i know i've talked about this before to you in particular, scott, but a lot of this edgelord shit, it's people who are deeply fucked up and alienated. all those first-wave punks into all that nazi shit. and it is cringe. and the people who do that kinda stuff are mostly the people who have certain kinds of privilege that give them access to that. fascism is pretty in favor of white guys, so yeah, if someone's a white guy (or _thinks_ they're a guy) and is a reject for whatever reason, that ideology is gonna have some appeal. again, i was absolutely _not_ ever a nazi, but i knew a lot of people who later went nazi, and it surprised and shocked the hell out of me. because i saw what i wanted to see, i saw them as being _like me_. they weren't. or i wasn't like them. whichever. i just have unfortunately been in a situation where i've observed, over a lengthy period of time, the kind of behavior of these people from a fairly close remove. and from that perspective, no, i don't think this story is a good representation of people like that.

to be clear i'm not calling out for empathy or understanding. i'm _not_. people are responsible for their words and actions. whatever kind of trauma people go through, that doesn't exculpate or excuse people's behavior. i'm saying this simply because the story's author _is_ trying to get into the head of someone like that, and in my judgement he's not terribly successful at that. he leaves out important stuff and he puts in stuff that isn't as important as it might appear to be.

-

Being social is hard, especially when you’re not in college or w/e where ad hoc socialization is forced on you

I definitely have leaned on negativity and love a good cynical tale, but I recently read something about how it’s much more difficult to write a story where your character can conceive of a future, of personal growth.

I guess everyone just wants to write The Catcher in the Rye and be trapped in perpetual adolescence

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh)

i always have and continue to struggle with socialization... the one thing i like is that character at the end, the one who's 23 and is just saying "what the fuck is _wrong_ with you people?" there's some depth and some nuance to that, a recognition that all those things can happen and one can still _not_ turn out like the protag of the story did.

as far as personal growth, i mean, it's boring to write about. people around me - people here - a lot of people haven't had the access or the resources to reach the vision of "adulthood" i was raised with. and i see people feeling a lot of guilt and shame about that. i struggle with it myself, struggle to act like an "adult". all of those markers of adulthood they used to have... those only ever applied to a small number of people. and it feels like it's attainable for fewer and fewer. god, i'm trying to conceive of a future, of personal growth, i'm pushing towards it, but me ten years ago? i wasn't "pushing towards the future" any more than the protag of _i saw the tv glow_ was. and i mean, that protag was concieved of in a certain context, and i don't think the protag of not-cat-person was conceived of in this context, but you know... people can be different sorts of people and have a lot of similar sorts of experiences. and by looking at the similarities i think one can better see and judge the differences, to see that the reasons people go fash are both structural _and_ personal. again, i don't think this story does a great job of conveying that reality.

sounds like you’ve been in the process of conceiving of your own “vision of adulthood,” though?

and if it’s boring to write about, I fear for your boredom! many words

This story made me think of the episode of the tv show "Evil" where the demon character poses as a therapist to lure in incels and radicalize them to take violent actions.

This story made me think of the episode of the tv show "Evil" where the demon character poses as a therapist to lure in incels and radicalize them to take violent actions.

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes)

on the one hand why not have him just do an andrew tate, on the other hand i know full fucking well why not, you'd never be able to get that shit on tv. easier to pretend like eugene landy is going to go out there inciting people to violence.