It wasn’t even about NNN towards the end there. I was starting to mockingly talk to people the way that super Woke people talk to me, and I got banned for verbal abuse because everyone knew what I was doing. Double standard.

It doesn’t count as verbal abuse if you’re sincerely defending an (alleged) victim from a misogynist (someone asking for evidence). But if that misogynist (someone fed up with this anti-intellectualism) starts doing it back to you to mock it, THEN it is verbal abuse. It doesn’t matter if I was only doing it to male exmos or if the comment immediately afterward explained what I was doing.

The mods banned me for being a problem case after several days of passive aggressively fighting with them about whether or not anyone deserves to know what happened with NNN, like just the summary at least.

I’ll let it go. NNN himself told me to let it go. At least I spoke up.

I’m not comfortable with this new culture where almost anybody can go down in flames in an instant as long as the accusations are plausible and delivered with convincing outrage, because that’s gonna create a bunch of useful idiots who just repeat the mantra “soso is a predator” and act defensive when you say “but he’s not though; at worst he’s socially awkward.”

To which they say, “well, he should have known that he was creeping them out.”

To which I say, “but he is an aspie. Aspies by definition struggle to read people.”

To which they say, “but he was a jerk to all these women.”

“Ya, but they were abusing him over how to pronounce Kwaku. This is more like a ‘Mike doesn’t do confrontation well’ sort of thing rather than a ‘Mike is abusing people who won’t sleep with him’ kind of thing.”

And then I try to share the primary evidence but it gets taken down. And then I sourly throw a fit at how irrational my postreligious community is being. And then I get banned, because the mods jerked me around until the moment to say anything effectually had passed, and I told them to go to hell.

So, it’s over. I’ll try to settle down. Although I will say that this was an missed opportunity to explore why the anything-goes social conventions among exMormons aren’t working for both a lot of men and a lot of women. Dehlin’s podcast kinda dabbled in it, but only from a female perspective. There is a Jordan Peterson sized hole in secular postreligious communities. What I mean is that John Dehlin could mimic what Jordan Peterson does for young conservative men but mold it into something that works for post-religious secular men. We never talk about masculine role models for cishet guys, which is maybe why so many of them don’t know what’s appropriate when hitting on a woman. Every time Dehlin is dimly reminded that he is a cishet white man, he self-abases and apologizes for it rather than setting a strong archetype for how postreligious men ought to be. Huge dropped ball. But also, he can’t shame exmormon men for “throwing everything out” when he himself has been careful to project moral relativism for a decade. If that’s not what he believes, maybe he should talk more about what he believes and plant his flag in the ground. A lot of men and women would find that more appealing than he realizes. Anything but watching him grovel to people who don’t have his expertise in psychology and pretend like he has no opinions.

...This is why is safest to never care...

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...This is why is safest to never care...


I do feel like some people have that gift of taking things easy or having things roll of their backs. Some people love to stir up confrontation online and they get a kick out of angry responses. When I left Mormonism a friends lds mom called me to say that I got Satan in my head. Usually that would have really upset me but for some reason that they I was able to see that she was concerned about my eternal salvation.

Yeah.

There is no Board or Association where one can ask for guidance on how much 'reaction' you can have before it becomes 'overreaction', much less provide a recognized judgment that "You've overreacted!"

Unless, of course, you are In Charge of whatever setting you're in...like a judge in her courtroom. (looking at you, Judge Judy Lot.)

Judy's my sister, EOD. I'm the soul singer.

He was something of a dumpster fire 20 years ago, and not much appears to have changed. I think they are trying to tell you something.

Oh, and Jordan Peterson - also a bright guy. And also a dumpster fire.

Last year I had a group of 2nd graders who loved to engage in DRAMA. Every day when they would come back from the playground, they were all in an uproar. This one said *this*, and that one said *that. This one did *this*, and that one did *that*.

Every. Freaking. Day.

I had to assign a teacher's aide to them to get it sorted out. And when it was time for their lesson, I simply said, "I'm done here. I don't care. I DON'T CARE. Not another word. Have a seat and we will get to work."

That's what's going on here, C-D. The mods over at r/exmo are done with it. They have other things to do. They've put you in time out. They want the nonsense to be over with. Because that's what it is -- nonsense.

Anyone who cares has already figured out how they feel about it, and will act accordingly. Let people have their agency. Let it all die down. It needs to die down.

I've never been there. I just stay here. The older I get, the less likely I am to spread myself all over the internet. I have forums that I've been on for years. They feel like home and home is where I now tend to stay.

CD, your defense of NNN makes it seem as if you believe the ire of the exmo Reddit community is being directed at you for the sins of NNN and you're trying to get people to see how unfair it all is. It's not. Do you feel like you're not getting a fair shake with women or with your particular sensitivities or quirks?

NNN has been in the community for a long time and people know him and know what he's about. They don't know you. You don't need to fight his battles for him. He's been around long enough to know what he's doing isn't going to be well received. Perhaps instead of defending him, you could look at the reasons why it's not going over well.

And one more thing, exmo Reddit, and the exmo community at large isn't real life. But if you get into a pissing match with people on the regular, you might want to ask why.

Yes, I have thought those thoughts before that a woman was not interested in me because of my social awkwardness. It’s also a little deeper than that. You remember how John Bytheway in one of his talks compared looking at porn to being like Ted Bundy, the serial killer? I listened to his talk often and I really took it to heart that my self-pleasuring habits made me dangerous, potentially, if I couldn’t stop. I never felt the urge to harm anyone, but I was still anxious about it. “I’m not saying you’ll end up killing people and committing gruesome acts of perversion on their corpses, but why take a chance?” asked Bytheway (paraphrasing to capture the tone of what my young mind heard him saying) to thousands of naive kids who grew up trusting his voice.

In retrospect, this was complete nonsense but the feeling was real. The feeling was that failure to live up to the high standards of the church wouldn’t end well. After the devil possesses you, who knows what he will use you as an instrument in his hands to do? After my mission, when I got “addicted to porn” for the first time to deal with the culture shock of being home again, I offered to my father to move far away because I didn’t know what was gonna happen next, and he said “I don’t want you to move away just to destroy yourself.” The big stupid bastard didn’t help, because he believed all the same things that I did. Now that Satan had control of my house, my body, what was I capable of? The brief episode where I wanted to cease living had to do a lot with the desire not to hurt anyone. Turns out nothing happened.

Turns out sexual repression is a bitch, and the instant you stop hating yourself just for having those feelings for women, meaning the natural desire to have sex and reproduce, it becomes ok just to exist and you figure out you’re perfectly capable of controlling yourself around other people. The devil does not possess you, and you’re not an addict who can’t control his actions. You’re just a silly religious fundamentalist who doesn’t know how anything works.

NNN has made it his lot in life to piss people off, yes. I shouldn’t get involved, because he tends to throw rocks at bee hives. But when I see people reaching for the worst possible conclusions about him and what he is capable of and the evidence doesn’t seem to warrant any of that and I start to get the sense that his neuro-atypicality may be the main thing creeping people out, my heart swells with compassion. I never heard of him using his tactics to coerce a female into sex or to destroy their reputations for rejection. If he’s just like Joseph Smith Jr, then ya, forget about him and ignore me - I must not know what I’m talking about. I don’t think that he is though. Maybe folks are just tired of hearing about him and their minds are using these latest rumors to put thoughts of him to bed for good. They’re allowed to do that, but the way that must be making Mike feel, just the thought of it makes my heart ache for him.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe more and more people will come forward to corroborate a narrative that he is exactly like Joseph Smith Jr. But such an event has not happened yet, and I don’t see it happening. Most of the evidence that he is a “misogynist” seems to be screenshots him being a jerk to people during confrontations where his opponent happens to be female.

John Dehlin released a podcast episode called “Unlearning Mormon Misogyny,” well what about unlearning Mormon misandry? If men are obligated to introspect until they find ways to drain away every last ounce of disrespectful thoughts put in their heads towards women, are women equally obligated to introspect and undo the extreme distrust and fear put in their heads by the church for men who don’t fit a certain mould? That happens too. I’ve got a cousin whose wife left him because she caught him jerking off in private one time. The only way that makes any sense is if you believe all the things that Mormons believe about how masturbation leads to addiction which leads to criminal behavior down the road maybe. I was getting the vibe in my interactions with female commenters over there on Reddit that perhaps a lot of them are still conditioned to have the worst possible reaction to rumors that a man has fallen into transgression. A lot of the guys just want to make their girls happy in this matter, which is why they also take hardline stances methinks.

There were some though, female commenters even, who expressed their opinions that the way Mike was being talked about verses the evidence presented smacked of irrationality, and they were downvoted just as hard as I was. I’m just the only one stupid enough to keep posting about it days after the event; everyone else figured out it was in their interest to let it go even if they didn’t like it. There seems to be a strong feeling about him more than a strong case against him. All I was asking for was for people to withhold judgment until the *case* against him became strong and obvious. Folks couldn’t help but have an irrational response to what I was saying, which makes me not want to empathize with the things they’re thinking about Mike.

Rationality is how I saved myself from the dark place that the church put me in. I don’t put it on a coat hanger for anyone, no matter how emotional their pleas are. It is how I think now. And if that pisses them off, I don’t care. People are not being rational about this, and I am similarly distrustful of many other “MeToo” narratives where the evidence cannot corroborate what we are expected to believe the accused did but we are nevertheless expected to treat the accused as though he did those things even though we can’t prove it. It’s like everyone just forgot that women are capable of lying too. I believe that men and women are equally capable of being pieces of shit. That’s not sexism; that’s pure egalitarianism.

I’ve got a buddy who was having wild and hot dates with a beautiful young woman before his mission. They were both Mormon, and when they were caught she tried to get out of the shame of it by throwing him under the bus. “He raped me,” she said. Bishop was skeptical, but he took the allegations seriously, and he had my buddy in to tell his side of the story. So my buddy confessed and he described how they had both consensually and enthusiastically did it thirty times in all sorts of weird ass settings. It quickly became apparent that she was lying just to dodge a bullet. So Bishop did not go to the police, and she dropped it.

Nowadays, if certain Woke activists had their way, Bishop would’ve been obligated to believe the woman, period. And my buddy’s life would be over. They both consented, and they both loved it. But facing the slut-shaming that was about to come, she chose herself over him and lied.

What I’m about to say is going to offend everyone. Why do you think the creation story is told in such a way that the woman was beguiled first and she drug the man into it? Progressive sentiments see this is as pure misogyny. It was written by men. But more conservative sentiments see this as an observation about human nature.

The person who wrote the Ecclesiastes said, “And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.” Again, Progressive sentiments see this verse as misogynist garbage. There’s not a shred of truth here, just woman-hating tripe to justify the man’s behavior. This verse was often quoted on my mission between male missionaries who were doing all they could to avoid thinking sexual thoughts about any girl, snd they quoted it half jokingly but half not. They genuinely didn’t want to think about women right then, even though they also wanted to. It was a contradiction of desires. They genuinely loved the Lord and thought that they needed to be asexual for this brief period of their lives to please him, but being men they all knew their weakness for a cute girl. There are a lot of women who when asked “who are the sexiest kinds of men,” they will say Mormon missionaries. The allure of the forbidden fruit, in other words, is not completely made up, and female entrapment does happen, only it doesn’t take the form of holding the man down with physical strength. It takes the form of teasing a man and inflaming his passions until he can’t take it anymore and gives in to temptation.

I always thought it was curious why the law of Moses felt it necessary to require a woman being raped in the city to cry loud enough so that others would hear her or else she would share her mate’s fate when they were found out. This is in Deuteronomy chapter 22. The very next verse says that the woman does not have to cry out if she’s being raped out in a field somewhere. I never understood these verses. But thinking about it now, it must have been common knowledge among the priestly class at least that young people would sneak away to do the nasty all the time and when they were caught the female would tend to blame the male. The penalty for fornication was death in those days. Can’t really blame her for trying to save her own ass - he was toast either way. So, the priestly class who wrote the verses must’ve reasoned that she must cry out because in a Bronze Age city before cars and wide streets and sound-muffling insulation, someone would hear it. And they exempted this requirement from being raped in a field, because it is obviously unreasonable to expect someone to be around hear it. And then they patted themselves on the back for their next-level intellectual ability to solve the issue.

This was how they solved a classic MeToo situation back in the day in ancient Israel. The whole reason you had to be married to have sexual access, and the reason the penalties for fornication were so extreme, and the reason the sexes were segregated as much as possible unless there was proof of sexual rights (or marriage) was to prevent the improprieties that led to sexual harassment and sexual assault. This is also why any culture sits down and tries to think of proper ways to do courtship and proper behavior after marriage. They come up with some pretty different ideas sometimes, but they’re thinking about The nature of men and the nature of women. Their ways might be backwards as fuck to an outsider. But they are thinking about the women. There’s no patriarchal culture that ever existed on this planet that doesn’t think about the welfare of its women, the beings who produce the next generation of men. Culture that does not respect its women is doomed to die out in not many generations.

I used to be conservative. I was very conservative. My horror and disgust with myself over my inability to avoid dabbling with pornography even once almost persuaded me to leave this world when I was twenty-one. This obsession with chastity and sexual purity was my belief in and my commitment to keeping women safe. Any third-party observer back in those days or before would’ve seen me as an extra shy boy with lots to say about why liberal culture would send us all to hell. I was overly obsessed with it, and it’s because I kept a large part of it that I found a home in feminism after my testimony of the gospel was gone. But I found a home in late second wave or early third wave feminism. We are on late third wave and early fourth wave feminism now, and it’s really starting to creep people out. We’ve gone too far in some ways. There was an iteration of feminism that existed 10 years ago or so that I was fine with after my Mormon testimony was out of the way.

The Cult Of Wokeness, aka sometimes as Planet Left, does not own me, and I don’t owe it shit. I am its ally, though, as far as it can keep its positions sane and reasonable. I was horrified by Trump, but after talking to so many people who voted for Trump, they point to the extreme parts of woke culture, or leftist political correctness, to justify their vote and I can’t blame them. After five years of completely batshit behavior and constant moral panic, I can’t blame them for hating it any more than I could blame critics of the church for thinking of it as a dangerous cult once I was familiar with the evidence against it.

I read my scriptures less these days. But I am no less contemplative and speculative about the same sorts of things. I live a life of the mind, and I am happy. Whether or not I find a mate does not matter. If you’re worried that I am concocting a worldview based on the belief that women owe me sex, spare me. That is misandry, it is just as wrong although not as well explored as misogyny.

My interest in Wokeness comes from my curiosity to see what arises next. Because whatever comes after our society stops going to church can’t be all that bad if reason is the governing principle of how we do things. I found it exciting. But perhaps I overestimated the commitment to reason in the hearts around me. Making “believe women“ an article of faith in our new Woke secular culture is not rational. All we are doing is opening the door to hell. I have had nonstop debates with my conservative friends who still listen to me about whether or not liberal culture is going to send the country to hell. I was confident in my positions early on that they, the Right, were being hysterical. I am less certain now of who is right and who is wrong.

But I have no desire to be a mind slave of the Mormon church anymore. And I’m also not interested in being an acolyte of Ben Shapiro. I think Fox News and the broad assortment of talking heads on a.m. radio and in the conservative YouTube sphere are blindly driven by dogma. I have zero interest, none, in being a classical conservative ever again. But I am waking up to Wokeness, or what Christopher Hitchens called empty-headed multiculturalism. In the same vein, I would add empty-headed feminism. If me using the words “empty-handed“ in a sentence that is in anyway connected to women, makes people point a finger at me and call me a misogynist, that proves my point that empty-headed versions of feminism exist. My attempt to distinguish emptyheaded feminism from simple feminism means I am not anti-feminist. Few you people are these days, genuinely anti-feminist I mean.

John Dehlin‘s episode about unlearning mormon misogyny laid a finger on a problem but failed to seriously address it. Woke culture is making everyone miserable. What do I mean? Well, if single men sending dick pics is such a pandemic, why? Why did not one person ask why? John’s panel included two of Mike’s accusers. Those women were not there to seriously talk about what’s wrong with our dating culture in 2021; they were there to bitch about men and to puff their chests out and make themselves feel special that men would never control what they think ever again. And the man hosting them on his own platform quietly sat in the corner of the screen nodding in agreement to everything, no matter how stupid. John self deprecates about white cis/het men all the time, and what he’s doing is he’s trying to say “I know I am white, I know I am straight, I know I am a man, and I know why that’s bad, but this is how I feed my family.”

I do not envy the cultural pressures that that man is under. He has to protect the Open Stories brand, or he can’t feed his family. This is probably why he has sounded like such a moral relativist up until this latest episode - he doesn’t want to offend anyone lest they stop listening. But the winds are shifting. John is seeing evidence that his audience, the people who give him money, are interested in hearing about why we shouldn’t throw out all of our conservative values. And so John dares to speak about some of the things he really thinks about how we don’t need to throw everything out when we learn the church is not true. That was the only part of that episode that piqued my interest. I have been trained my whole life to know how to be a good conservative Mormon man. Is John saying that with some modification, I can exist the way I was raised to exist? Because heretofore whenever the question about how to be a good postreligious man pops up, his chief concern seems to be to spread the Wokeness. Good men shut up and stand back, he says, even though he’s still the one running Mormon Stories.

John has an opportunity to be a secular Jordan Peterson. I don’t think he’s as brilliant as Peterson or as well read, but he can be a thought leader and a male role model. I have issues with Peterson. But I would love to see a secular version of what Peterson does, if only there was someone with a fucking PhD in psychology who has left a really culty religion. Peterson has not rejected gender roles to such an extreme that he is ashamed even to talk about positive male role models for cis/het boys. Just the fact that I have to keep saying “cisgender heterosexual“ is evidence that we’ve gone so fucking far off the rails of what culture is even for. I believe that being gay is natural, and I also believe in the right to transition between sexes if one chooses, but culture was originally for how to train 90% of your population who are typical heteronormative cisgender people how to be good people. It’s to train heterosexual cis men how to be good men, and heterosexual cis women how to be good women, and to mould them both into archetypical roles that serve a greater benefit to society as a whole. I have watched people leave religion and find our Woke bullshit so lacking in this arena that they go back. They don’t believe anymore, but they’ll say things like, “I think humans need the structure“ and this is what they mean.

My father once asked me that if I did take his testimony, what would I replace it with? I answered: what’s wrong with freedom? Maybe that’s not what he was asking me. He might’ve been asking me what is your wellspring for how men like me who want to be good men out to behave? And I had no answer. I didn’t think about it. I thought such things was sort themselves out later, but maybe not if the post religious culture that America is stumbling into is dominated by all of this contradictory woke nonsense that sex is a social construct, that sexism is wrong and gender roles are oppressive, but also that white cis/het men are the fucking worst there ever was because there are certain expectations which have been placed on them that they are not meeting. I’m tired of this garbage. I am a white cisgender heterosexual man, I have been going along with all of this woke stuff hoping that a sane version of it would prevail. There’s nothing wrong with letting women speak up more often. There’s nothing wrong with more diversity. There’s nothing wrong with listening. Those aren’t the issue for me. For me the issue is how I noticed John squirming in his chair because if he knows if he doesn’t mind his p’s and q’s just right his career as a podcaster is over. I have a strong suspicion that he was coerced somehow into hosting that ghoul named Maggie. She hates straight white men. She says it every fucking day on her TickTock streams. That woman created the uproar that canceled Mike, and it all started over how to pronounce Kwaku‘s name. And John hosted it, and bowed his head and said yes to it.

Maggie gets a pass for the horrible behavior that she exhibits because she is a biracial woman claiming oppression. She couldn’t wait to scalp Mike, because that to her is a measure of social justice for the crimes of straight white men against people of color and against women through the ages. This is what I mean by gender communism. This is a new type of Marxism that views men as an oppressive class that must be overthrown. Classic Marxism focuses on economic issues, and the classic bourgeoisie are the business owners and the managerial class. Marxism says: unite all you workers of the world and overthrow your oppressors, because you have nothing to lose but your chains. Well, neoMarxism says some thing like: unite all you women and people of color and gay people and bisexuals and transgender people, and overthrow the straight white man, because you have nothing to lose but your chains. Except in this instance, there is something to lose: all the good white men in positions of power and influence in your life. Imagine a Mormon Stories without John. It wouldn’t be Mormon Stories. But some folks vainly imagine a Mormon Stories that does all the same things but it’s even better because there’s no straight white man hosting it. Such people have tried to come John’s scalp before, but there’s nothing to go on because he is a committed family man who watches his ass.

I can’t just sit on my butt and watch American culture circle this fucking drain anymore. I have visions of an American culture that doesn’t believe in God anymore but where men are free to be classic ladies man in the best way. Christopher Hitchens was old-fashioned and I admire the man. He became my new Jeffrey R Holland, after Holland fell out of my grace. Men have needs, and I don’t just mean they need somewhere to put their dick. Men have emotional needs, and they need a sense of direction. Not religious direction per se, but just some assurance that their manliness is being used to protect something or to build something that makes everyone’s lives better. And they need masculine role models to show them the way and give them courage that X archetype is possible. They need real people to look at and admire and want to be like. They also need this in their literature and media. And yes, giving them some hope that they’ll “get some” for all this effort seals the deal.

What are we doing? No one is constructing a culture with the parameters I just laid out. They’re not constructing a culture at all. What I witness the Woken doing with my two eyes is nothing but fucking cultural arson most of the time. Should we find a way to include women, people of color, and LGBT people in our culture? Yes, of course, this is why I am not conservative anymore. But when asked asked about what’s important for men and women to be like to make a better society, we can no longer just shrug and say “meh, do whatever.” That’s what we’ve been doing and it’s not working. Did anyone notice that Trump picked up people in every demographic except white people? Do you think that maybe all these new Americans of color running around aren’t down for all of this woke bullshit the way that entitled nonHispanic white middle-class people seemed to have thought? A full third of Latinos voted for trump just over the pro-life question. And almost 10% of black people figured out that Trump’s job market wasn’t that bad and they just wanted to work. These voters were less interested in canceling a man who was the living embodiment of sin against Wokeness. The Democrats cannot claim victory for the rest of eternity just because white people are less and less a share of the population. The feeling that the Republicans have been “vanquished“ might just be the polarization and confirmation bias talking. One of these days the Republicans are going to figure out how to shove a female person of color out onto the stage of the RNC. The crowd will go nuts. And they’ll be so enamored with her recent sex that they just won’t notice that she’s the most conservative president that we’ve ever had in some ways. This is kind of what Margaret Thatcher was to Great Britain. Their first female Prime Minister was a Tory, not a Labor. Likewise. President Barack Obama was not nearly as progressive as some people seem to remember.

I want a rational version of liberal culture to prevail. I was smitten with joy at all the possibilities when I let my conservatism go. But I didn’t think the most bullying, irrational, anti-intellectual version of liberal culture would take over. The takeover is not complete, but it almost is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2021 04:38PM by Cold-Dodger.

You cannot blame people for being just a little miffed that in general, white males have been at the center of power in most ways in this world we live in. What happens when any group of people retain power at the top is that the marginalized people figure how to operate with the power they do have. That's just people.

We are now in a new and messy place in this world where we're trying to figure out how to ditch the old ways, rules and centers of power and be more egalitarian and realize it's a big lift to get people who have been marginalized for so long up to something that at least offers hope of parity, if not parity itself.

You are not likely going to be a person who leads to world out of the mire we've been in and into a new sane place that has a sane rule book that CD has developed. It's more likely that you're going to have to find what works for you.

So go ahead, look at what Dehlin's approach produces; look at what Trump's approach produces; look at anyone you like and take the good out of it and leave the bad. What you'll likely find is that the world is full of all kinds of people. Parroting the talk radio labels isn't really very helpful in figuring out what people want and need; say and don't say; push for and ignore. It just makes things seem more black and white than they really are.

You know, you don't really need to pay attention to these people. Let them rant on. I guarantee you that if you went away from that board for 30 days, they all will have moved on to something else.

An art professor of mine long ago told me to choose the people that I would listen to. You don't need to listen to everyone who flaps their jaw, especially in the internet age when everyone can flap their jaw.

Take a long break from that board and think about something else.

Rare achievement. Gold Medal.
What more definitive proof of success?

They have a narrow tolerance over there if one drifts ever so slightly away from the core topic.

from the other day. I'm rather a chicken as I've been attacked on line a few times and it scared me. I ran into a group of gays married to straights who were challenging other gays in the church to get married to women and I said something to one of the wives who just found out her husband is gay and they threatened me. I should keep my mouth shut.

I think the whole mormon sex subject is a difficult one as mormonism definitely messes up a lot of people about sex and how to act out in the dating world. I never was much accepted in mormonism except by those guys at Thiokol and all married. I never figured out how to play the mormon dating game as a mormon and I've never tried as an exmormon.

My "husband" reads over on reddit exmo and he had a comment about how they are quite dramatic over there. My son got banned from fb a few times.

All women are different. If I were you, if you want to date,which I would assume you do, date nonmormons. You're always going to find drama somewhere. That's life. I don't like this culture that is happening right now either. Even outside of mormonism, you are going to find drama especially with dating, but I think you'll find it easier to date nonmormons than exmormons.

Some people just bring the drama, whether it's nevermos or exmos. When I was in college, I made two friends my freshman year and moved off-campus with them my sophomore year. They got caught up in a group of people who were totally into drama. I knew I was done when they told me about a party that they had attended where a fight broke out. That's not anything I care to be associated with. I knew at that point that I needed some new friends. I moved back into the dorms for my junior year, and made some new friends that I have to this day.

There are certain internet communities that are prone to drama. If it's not one thing, it's another. I've learned not to get too caught up in it. If a topic is controversial, I state my opinion, debate it for a bit, and then I'm done. It's okay if people disagree with me. I'm not going to change their minds. I've learned to let it go.

I feel you on this. I went to school and became friends with a couple wanna be hockey players who I discovered loved drama. They would fight physically as well verbally all the time.

The funniest situation looking back was one guy losing it because he wasn’t catching as many fish as me, and then pouting the entire evening. This was the last straw for me.

I ghosted them 25 years ago and I am glad I did.

you wouldn't say in real life.

After my small college experience, I always only lived with one roommate at a time. It tended to keep the drama down. I found the singles ward or any mormon ward had a lot of drama. I would just go to church at the last minute and leave, and not socialize. I hated the drama in mormon wards. It was like middle school.

summer Wrote:
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> There are certain internet communities that are
> prone to drama.

Certain ones? Nearly all of them, Summer!!! It depends who runs them, who the dominant personalities are, and whether the rank and file are able to agree to disagree.

I'm on Duolingo, the language learning app and most of the forums are okay... Except one which is dominated by a very aggressive admin who keeps promoting his own YouTube channel and language classes on there. (There is also a massive problem with s*x spam but that is another issue.) All of the forums are okay apart from that one.

Every forum can have occasional issues, but certain forums are just dumpster fires.

I made a comment that I was happy not to care about the NNN drama. Meaning it felt good to feel no desire to participate.

My inbox filled up accusing me of being a piece of garbage because I was against supporting women. Not the most charitable interpretation of my comment.

I still haven't been back to read the response to my last reply on cold dodger's other thread just in case as some days I can't take the feedback I get. I was shocked that Dehlin only had women outside of Utah and since I don't know about the drama going on with NNN, why were there married women included in the discussion. Have there been problems with issues like naked texting with exmo men sending stuff to married women. I haven't listened to the whole anyway. I should, but I've been too busy.

I loved NNN back in the Joseplied.com days, popping up to photobomb journalists in SLC with Josephlied.com signs. He was great at pissing off Mormons.
Now the Dude seems intent on demonizing women who have wronged him in one way or another. I’ve tuned him out for the most part.

In talking to my son and my gay husband, my son said that all his friends who are girls said that the way guys first contact them is to send them a picture of their dick ALMOST EVERY SINGLE GUY. My son said (and I agree) that most women don't think like that. They don't want a picture of your dick as the first contact and maybe never a picture (that's me talking). I'm too old to understand the dating scene these days. I just got back together with an old boyfriend in 2005 and we didn't send any naked pictures (that would have been interesting NOT). I haven't had to navigate the dating scene. I know my sister who is 4 years younger than I am has and she's run into some "interesting" stuff. I couldn't navigate it.

My ex said that if you send a naked picture, DON'T SHOW YOUR FACE. I know he sends them to other guys. And I'm not entirely sure what dating sites he is on. He has a boyfriend right now.

Dang, I haven't heard of that. It would scare me off.

When one person has the same problem in every group he is in, over decades, he IS the problem.

Mike is problematic, but I’d never heard of him being predatory until this week.

The key there is that you haven't. It was an issue in many groups over the years. He was sexually inappropriate, knew it and continued to do it. Do you really think that someone his age doesn't know what is appropriate? He knows and doesn't care. He will take any attention he can get even if it is negative. FYI he doesn't care about pulling others down with him. Take care of yourself. Don't get sucked in further, there is no bottom.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2021 10:30AM by Cold-Dodger.

A lot of exmos have already formed an opinion about him based on previous behavior. This latest incident is just one.more.thing in a long line of incidents. You are not going to change their minds.

Probably not. I just needed to say something that I thought was right. Forgive a clueless thirty-something for acting on conscience?

And John Dehlin never takes a stand on anything. We've come full circle into comedy now.