A convoluted multi-national justification of nothingness.

When I first experienced social media, it was the Nine Inch Nails website forum. This is maybe 1999.

It was a very ugly aesthetic experience (thanks Obama), and I can't remember anyone using their own picture as an avatar. Everybody had dark and gothy-sounding names. I was 'pragmatik'. To be honest I can't even remember what we all talked about, but through an apparent appreciation of my writing style, I gained an admirer, who sent me flowers when I was on tour. 

So I guess that's a nice experience.

I eventually evaporated off that forum and instead made occasional appearances on the dicussion boards for the fan club of a band I was touring with pretty heavily. They had a lot of fans, a lot of media attention, so there was always a new dreamy picture of the bass player to talk about. Lovely guy, by the way. Hi Andrew.

And because I was on the exciting side of the velvet rope, fans really enthusiastically engaged with me on there, which translated into real life meetings too. After shows in strange cities I'd usually show a few fans around backstage and introduce them to the band members, and after I'd go party with them in their town, sometimes even at their houses.

It was so easy to make new friends and share experiences, because to them I was an exciting person. So again, that's a nice experience.

Then along came this thing called Friendster. It was basically a site where your friends would write testimonials about you, and you for them. And that's it. Like LinkedIn for friends. It was a really odd concept, but for a time, it existed. And I was surprised because people I barely knew came along and wrote some very touching things about me that I never saw coming.

So once again, there's something nice about that.

I think I've written about this before, but after Friendster came MySpace, and everything changed. I remember I was moving out of my first flat here in Australia, I was going to a place I didn't want to go, but there was nothing better. Everything was gone, except for a sleeping bag and a laptop. So I enjoyed my last night in this house all alone, setting up a MySpace account.

The next day when I woke up, I had a message from a girl in her early 20's, who lived in The USA. She wrote me a message that basically proposed marriage to me right then and there, and so I had my very first internet romance. She was too far away for it to actually work in any meaningful sense, but I'll never forget her, and how she welcomed me to MySpace.

At the time, I thought it was the best thing ever.

We all know MySpace died, and Facebook rose in its place. I jumped ship just like everyone, and in retrospect I regret that, because MySpace encouraged a culture of making friends all over the world, even people you had never met. New communities sprung up, strangers became friends, and I think that's great. There was a lot of straight-up advertising on there, but I made a point of being genuine in my contacts, and through doing that, I got laid a lot made many wonderful friends.

But Facebook never had any warmth to it. Facebook was a soulless robot in a basement miles underground, silently recording interactions and calculating analytics. It was forbidden to add anyone you didn't know personally, because Facebook needed to know about your relationships with real people in the real world, so it could scan your faces and sell you consumer goods and apps.

I gave up on Facebook about 3 years ago at a guess. I left because it restricted who could see my posts, and whose posts I could see. It decided these things without my input, and in doing so it totally undermined the sole reason I used it. 

When it tried to charge me to let all of my followers see my latest post, I laughed and hit delete. In a lot of ways, Facebook ruined social media. It was antisocial media. Facebook hates you. It thinks it knows better than you. It's arrogant and soulless.

So that wasn't nice.

I found Instagram. I loved it. I went through an embarrassing phase of overlaying sparkly stardust on my pics like a 6 year-old girl, but otherwise I came through it okay. 

I loved it because I come from a time when amateur photography was a massive chore, as well as being expensive, so having a device that took/previewed/edited/published pictures all within a 30 second timeframe is like witchcraft to me. I took to it like crazy, for the simple reason that I wanted to record a visual diary of what my life was like in 2013. So I could go back and look at the things that made me happy. So I could see my first selfies, not for vanity, but to say "I exist" at this point in time, and so I could see what I used to look like, before I looked like this.

The occasional MEME started to creep in. I got more followers. I started making friends in other countries- people who I genuinely cared about. I went through their divorces with them, they took me on their holidays. Instagram was amazing.

Fast forward to 2015 in a hyperspeed blur.

And now when I look at Instagram I get so angry. Every time.

I see MEMEs posted of the most inane and illogical bullshit. 'Wisdom' from fucking 12 year-olds. 

I see all of these things like vaping that people with money are using Instagram's clueless attention-whore community to sell to Instagram's pathetic fan community.   

I see fashionistas still trying to convince everyone that smoking is cool. 

Or that pot is harmless (kill me now, honestly, people think this).  Mindless celebrity worship of Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus, and Rihanna (all of whom regularly post pictures smoking pot) only helps to glamorise it.

Girls who smear so much lipstick on their face that they go past their natural lipline as if the rest of us somehow aren't going to notice.

I see accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that only exist to sell you products, where the person in the pictures has never and will never write a word of what you see in there.

Or feeds where a person is so obsessed and enamoured with themself, that every single photo on their feed is of them. They're so transparent and vacuous that they can't find another thing on the entire surface of this planet called Terra that they could possibly find more interesting than their own face.

Or even worse. Seriously, that's her contribution to world culture. And the saddest part is if you heard her sing, your heart would break. She's that good.

Girls who buy some fake tits, and suddenly think they're amazing and better than you.  

Guys who buy some tattoos, and suddenly think they're amazing and better than you.  

Girls who get lipo, and suddenly think they're amazing and better than you.

Guys who buy steroids, and suddenly think they're amazing and better than you.  

I see feeds from girls who complain constantly that no one gives them the attention they deserve. Where they post 'forever alone' MEMEs, and pictures of what movie they're watching alone in bed on the laptop tonight. They have hundreds of comments under every photo from thirsty guys, desperate to be noticed by these gatekeepers of sex. Ranging from "Hi, I'd love to get to know you." through to "I'm want fak u." And every comment remains unanswered. And I don't know who to hate more, these utter attention-whores, or the stupid boys who enable them (and in doing so, humiliate themselves).

We have Instagram celebrities now.

Endless posts of people so fucking delighted with themselves that they post picture after picture of their own self-congratulatory face; people who think the best way to make something out there in the world look better, is to stand in front of it. 

People who worship the Kardashians but who never stop to think about the fact that without plastic surgery, stylists, and hundreds of thousands of dollars; they'd just be regular looking Armenian girls that no one would give a crap about. 

What the fuck happened? When did we decide as a culture to celebrate everything that's fake, and turn our collective backs on reality?

When did money suddenly trump experience?

Obviously I'm just an old idiot walking around in a daze like every generation before me, I can accept that. But this isn't a question of style or taste. I don't care about trap music, but if the kids like it, I think that's great. When I'm 80 I'll still be singing Def Leppard's 'Photograph' to myself, and when some Millennial is 80 they'll hum some Flosstradamus or Lil Yachty. OK

But there seems to be a massive rennaissance of not-thinking, peaking right now. Blind celebrity worship, absolute narcisism, classist arrogance, celebrating fakery... 

I feel like when I'm logged in to Instagram, I'm utterly surrounded by never ending waves of idiocy. The worst kind of stupidity- the kind that has no idea it's stupid. The kind that struts around proud of itself, dribbling, and crapping itself.

And I realised, much to my horror, that being on Insta had changed me. When I was in Los Angeles, instead of enjoying the experience like I would have if it was the 90's, I felt this massive self-imposed pressure to record and document everything for my followers. To gather content. Like I'm some fucking magazine instead of a human person.

And it made me look at these people I felt I needed to serve. I looked at the messages they were sending out into our collective culture, what they were saying, what they think. And I realised i don't give a flying fuck about them.

Why should I gather and present content for these people's approval? The things they like are fucking ludicrous! I know who my real friends are, and they're the people who don't really care about Instagram, or who talk to me in emails from the other side of the world.

Why should I enter into competition with a bunch of brainless 20-somethings? Why submit my life for them? Why try and earn likes from people who like things you absolutely despise? Who do I want to notice me exactly? Who am I trying to impress? And why?

And when will I realise that at my age, trying to competitively Instagram is a humourless joke?

(A little over a week ago.)

It's not a long time, but like with any addiction, it feels like forever to me. Every time I feel like I want to post something, I ask myself:

Who is this for?

What are you trying to say?

Do you think it's positive?

Do you think it's healthy for you?

And after analysing my answers for a second, I realise I don't have anything I really need to say. Will I post on social media again? Maybe, I don't know.

But if I do, it will be because I want to record that moment for me, not to submit a frame from my life for the approval of all the people I actively avoid in my real life.

I know I'm not the only person who has or will go through this. I know social media is a relatively unstudied organism. I know it destroys some people.

I never thought I'd stand at this point, consciously avoiding Instagram and Twitter. I never thought this journey I've traveled along social media; from fun and innocent message boards to soul-crushing apps for people in love with their own reflections, would ever end.

And yet here we are.

Having said all of this, I know there are huge numbers of people who use Instagram to share things they like with people they dig, and that's awesome. There is a lot of innocent fun happening on there, some real networking through common interests, all the good stuff you'd hope for. I guess I'm ranting about the pollution that seems to be spreading further every day.

I want to swim in clear water.

That's all.

Nudity, Dirty Energy, Cosmetics, and the nature of being Human.

Robyn Lawley is a celebrity model with 66,000 more Instagram followers than I have.

She's a lot better looking than I am, so I'm not mad about it; and while some may see what I'm about to write as a direct criticism of her, it isn't. 

I'd like to shine a light on a behaviour the vast majority of we who call ourselves human share, that being denial, and maybe a peppering of ignorance also.

Let's get to it...

We live on a molten ball of iron and rock, hurtling through space at thousands of kilometres per second, surrounded by a tenuous wisp of atmosphere; beyond that? Endless, dark, vast, unknowable space. There is only one planet we exist on. Finite resources. Finite atmosphere. Danger everywhere.

So maybe a dose of denial is a necessary prerequisite to human happiness?

While looking at horrible faux-news clickbait sites that survive on ad revenue from page views, I saw this picture:

 

It's from Robyn's Instagram account, and is in protest of current and proposed coal mining here in Australia. If you read the comments (some of which will make you want to kill yourself if you have a brain and understand things like logic), you will get a feel for both sides of the argument.

I, myself, support Robyn's side of the argument. The Abbott Government removing funding for renewables and throwing open contract after contract to their friends in big coal is definitely worth the scrutiny of a future Royal Commission. It feels like every move they make is a short-sighted grab at cash from those who destroy our environment most, and it's pretty heartbreaking to witness not just that, but the brainwashed small-minded idiots who argue that jobs are more important than the environment (as if there is only one type of job available), or that 'clean coal' isn't an oxymoron.

So- Robyn made her point (I see how getting naked to make that point was guaranteed to get her message out their quickly and effectively. It's a shame that that's what guarantees virality, but she didn't make the rules, she's just using them for everyone's benefit).

Here are her words-

OK, so, to my mind, fair point. 

Robyn spoke her mind from a perspective of feeling that she couldn't sit on this information any longer. So she used her considerable social media reach to spread her message, using a proven trick of advertising 'sex sells' to guarantee virality (and to no doubt win her social media accounts a few new followers also).

I agree with all of this so far.

But what I don't agree with is not the fact she posed naked for the picture, but that she wrote her message in lipstick. I posted a comment (which I will include below), but Robyn didn't reply. I'm sure she has more important things to do than reply to every comment, so I understand. But I would have liked to have heard a response from her about what I thought.

I'm not going to go into detail about the negative impact of lipstick on the environment, on animals, or on human health, but I have linked relevant Google searches to each so all of you intelligent humans can do your own research and not just believe everything I say.

But if massive de-forestation, cancer, lead-poisoning, negative effects on unborn children, or vivisection aren't reason enough to evaluate what it is you're smearing across your mouth, let's look at this instead:

Lipstick has one stated purpose- to make women to feel glamorous and desirable. It does this (apparently) by using colour and texture to highlight the mouth area, thereby bringing attention to it. 

Glamour is a matter of perspective, as is desirability. My personal perspective is that women's mouths are perfect exactly the way they are, and don't need any help to make them more so. Also, I just won't kiss anyone who is wearing lipstick (not even Robyn Lawley). Some guys fetishise it, but some guys also fetishise drinking piss or having sex with their sister, so that doesn't strike me as a solid basis for argument. Having said that, I don't claim to speak for all men- I'd just like to make some points for people to consider.

And of course there are the girls who say "I don't wear makeup for boys, stupid!", and I see them all the time grossly exaggerating their lip lines as if we are idiots who can't see, and asking "Why can't I get a boyfriend?" when the lower half of their face is covered in a layer of whale fat, preservatives, lead, and oils (for no reason other than vanity).

I know for a fact that those girls wouldn't do it at all, and would never have thought of doing it if someone before them didn't tell them to. Like people's choice in religion- if they were raised in isolation with a family of scientists, none of them would be Christian, Muslim, or Shinto. They'd just be well informed people who weren't lied to.

Just like smoking (zero benefit to the user, great financial benefit to rich people who couldn't care less about you or the planet you live on), cosmetics is a staggeringly enormous industry that feeds on insecurity, and invents new ways for you to feel bad about yourself so they can sling you some new potion for youth/hotness that you not only don't need, but is actively bad for you.

And women buy into it, not only supporting it, but defending it.

So here's my statement- Lipstick isn't a necessary thing. It doesn't serve a real purpose (unless you fetishise it). It is a product that has a negative effect on people, animals, and the environment; solely for the benefit of rich people you wouldn't like if you met them. A huge number of men don't like it, and some actively avoid it. Just like diamonds, they have been marketed to you as a crucial element of femininity, when the thing that makes you feminine is the way you carry yourself (it's not exclusively therefore, sole property of women).

If you know all of this, and you still elect to wear lipstick, then that's your business. I'm not here to criticise people like that. If you're armed with information, and you make choices after gathering that information, then I respect the fact you went to the trouble to inform yourself. I may not respect your decision, but a person's decision is their own, and other people don't get a say in it. 

But a decision isn't a decision unless, armed with the facts, you have decided.

But don't be like all of the stupid girls on Robyn Lawley's comment section for the above picture, saying how stupid the Government is for destroying the environment by being pro-coal, while their Instagram pages are packed full of selfies where they are never seen without (forest eliminating Palm Oil packed) lipstick. Where they say they love animals and would never hurt them, but wear a product that is the main reason why species of animals (including apes) are threatened with extinction from habitat destruction.

Don't be like the even more stupid girls who for some crazy reason think that Rihanna is worth taking life advice from, or who is worth any kind of adoration. She's not a 'Queen'. Seriously you guys.

Just because someone tells you something, doesn't make it true. Like religion. The cosmetics industry, the fashion industry, the tabloid press, your Sisters and Mothers and Cousins; they have all said lipstick equals glamour. And because you trust these sources, you simply believe it. This is not what critical thinkers do! People you love can be ill-informed or wrong, so simply swallowing whatever they tell you is a terrible way to find your way through life. 

People influence people, and that is my problem with Robyn Lawley. She's a woman who thinks, is passionate about causes, is successful- there is so much about her to admire. But she took the bait that lipstick is a positive thing, and through her influence, passes on that message subconsciously to anyone who listens.

This is the greatest marketing trick in history, and the shame of it is, the people who do it are in the main completely unaware.

I posted to Robyn's comment section because, as a thinker and environmentalist, I believe if she knew the full story behind the lipstick industry and the product itself, she would re-evaluate her stance on it. Would she become anti lipstick? No one knows but her. But like I said before, knowing the full story is always a good place to start.

I wish this conversation would spread, that more women became aware of the facts, and made their minds up not from peer pressure or viral marketing, but from facts.

And I wish women who are inspirational and influential for others would stop helping the cosmetics industry get rich by destroying the environment, poisoning people, and testing on animals- all based on a lie, that you need their products to be beautiful.

I should mention Megan Gale here too. She's the brand Ambassador for L'Oréal's 'Colour of Hope' campaign. 

The campaign is basically a way for the company to sell more product and get an edge over their competitors. In reality it's a way to give yourself cancer. The sad part is that a portion of the proceeds of lipstick sales go to Ovarian Cancer research. Is that irony? Ever since Alanis Morisette I haven't been able to tell.

So Megan Gale (who I have hung out with, who is beautiful and hilarious, and who I am 100% confident has no idea), is getting paid to sell a product containing cadmium, mercury, aluminum, cobalt, titanium, manganese, chromium, copper and nickel, which both cause cancer, as well as harm the development of your baby’s brain, kidney and nervous system, create learning or behavior problems, and/or cause you to miscarry.

So who loves a 'strong red lip' now?

Some people know the risks and do it anyway. Like Lily Allen who happily smoked through her pregnancy and then looked really sad when her baby died in front of her. Was it a direct result of her smoking? I'm not the coroner, so I can't say. But I can say she rolled the dice, and that makes her a terrible person.

Even if you use a vegan lipstick, that doesn't make it safe for you or your baby. And even if you crush berries from your garden onto your lips as a lipstick that has no negative environmental or health effects, there is still a negative ethical effect:

People may copy you. And if they don't know how you do it, or if they don't have access to that method, or if they're just lazy, they may buy products that do have negative effects. Same reason why vaping isn't harmless- it continues the glamourisation of something negative, thereby creating a demand/market for cigarettes or lipstick (my two least favourite things that people use).

Basically, if you buy into the bullshit that lipstick is sexy, you're one of those people who believe that diamonds are rare and valuable, or that Tony Abbott isn't a liar. People only believe those things because someone else said it was true, and you never checked your sources.

Some people have asked me "What about eye makeup, do you hate that too?" Actually, I really like it and enjoy seeing it on people. The main difference being (if it's ethically sourced) that you don't ingest the component chemicals leading to long-term exposure/poisoning; and it doesn't go in my mouth if I kiss you.

As for anti-ageing creams etc- do some research! Most of it is utter horseshit, some of it actually exacerbates the problem, and a teeny tiny number of products actually work.

I'm not trying to tell you what to do, or how to think here... I'm just begging you to think. To actually think. And to share your thoughts with other humans.

You want glamour? You want sexy? Nothing is more glamorous or sexy than a woman who thinks for herself.

Nothing.

Here is my comment to Robyn:

 

This just in- I saw this on The Guardian site today, and felt it definitely warranted inclusion.

Text-

No industry has aligned itself more closely with the breast cancer movement than the cosmetics industry. It’s long flooded the market with pink ribbon products: pink ribbon lipstick, pink ribbon nail polish, pink ribbon perfume.

The NFL's breast cancer scam sells bunk science to profit off pink clothes

Karuna Jaggar

Read more

Yet while they prominently claim to care about women with breast cancer, their pink ribbon products all too often actually increase risk of the disease – and, as if that’s not bad enough, they’re also pushing toxic products on women in active cancer treatment.
Look Good Feel Better is a psychosocial support program run by the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC), the largest national trade group for the cosmetics industry, and the American Cancer Society (ACS), the nation’s largest cancer charity. They hold free workshops that give beauty tips and complimentary makeup kits to women in cancer treatment – support that some women understandably value while facing a cancer diagnosis and treatments that may alter their appearance.
Member companies of the Personal Care Products Council (like Avon and Estee Lauder) donate cosmetic products for the kits given to cancer patients. The American Cancer Society administers the program nationwide. Cosmetologists donate their time to run the workshops. It’s all selfless altruism, until you look a bit closer.
Cosmetics and personal care products are notoriously unregulated and full of toxic chemicals, and for years activists have been pushing back on cosmetics companies putting pink ribbons on products containing chemicals linked to breast cancer. But many of the Look Good Feel Better kits contain what are commonly referred to by regulators and scientists as “chemicals of concern”, including carcinogens and hormone disruptors.
Carcinogens are implicated in directly causing cancer, and hormone disruptors can increase breast cancer risk by messing with our body’s hormonal system. When these are products used daily – and the average woman uses 12 personal care products each day containing 168 unique ingredients – these doses add up.
The ACS claims that “the benefit of this program outweighs the risk”, which demonstrates a shocking commitment to the cosmetics industry and a blatant disregard for patient well-being.
These chemicals of concern do not just increase breast cancer risk: some may actually interfere with breast cancer treatment. Most breast cancers are hormone-driven and common treatments target the body’s hormonal system. Many scientists are concerned about the ways hormone-disrupting chemicals in our daily lives can increase the risk of breast cancer. Some hormone disruptors – including methylparaben, which is in concealer and face wipes the ACS is giving to cancer patients – have been shown in a lab to interfere with Tamoxifen, a common hormonal breast cancer treatment.
Currently, no one ensures that cosmetic products are completely safe before they come on the market. Personal care products are regulated by approximately two pages of federal law that has only been updated once in the past 76 years. The Food and Drug Administration lacks the authority to require manufacturers to test personal care products for safety before they are sold to consumers (or given to cancer patients). While the European Union has banned 1,300 chemicals from use in cosmetics, the United States has banned fewer than one dozen. The Personal Care Products Council spends millions of dollars lobbying against cosmetic safety regulations to make sure it stays that way.
Furthermore, cosmetic manufacturers do not have to disclose the ingredients that constitute “fragrance” due to a regulatory gap in the Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1973. The term “fragrance” often hides ingredients that have not been assessed for safety and often contain phthalates and parabens; “fragrance” was listed as an ingredient on numerous products in Look Good Feel Better bags, including in mascara.
If the PCPC truly cares about consumer safety as it claims to, the group should hold member companies to a much higher standard of safety instead of lobbying against regulations that would make personal care products less likely to help cause cancer.
And the American Cancer Society must stop protecting the cosmetics industry and started protecting women’s health. They can provide the program’s benefit without the toxic harms. The ACS knows that breast cancer is not pretty, no matter how many pink ribbons are attached – and no matter how many free toxic cosmetics are given to cancer patients.

Blogs are dead, AKA: Getting laid constantly, AKA: The power of the written word, AKA Feminism.

This blog is like hip hop- it's gone through so many changes over the years, and is largely irrelevant to continuing life on Earth. But it has had its moments...

It's no secret that words turn a lot of women on. Despite the proliferation of 'text-style', if you can assemble a sentence, and use words like "despite" and "proliferation", quite a lot of girls will sit up and pay attention.

I've had girls creep on my posts for days, weeks, months, and even years; before eventually revealing themselves in comments or emails, or even finding me on Instagram. And sometimes they proposition me.

Isn't that the craziest thing ever?

Without even knowing what I look like (I look amazing), they seek me out and offer up their internal genitalia for my carnal consideration. Sometimes we meet, we fuck, we move on. I'll get a message, and they say one of two things:

Option 1. I've been reading you for (insert time period here), I agree with/am challenged by/am repulsed by/can't get enough of your thoughts and would love to spend time with (read: look at you while you answer questions and then jump on) the person that wrote them in real life. (Social media link attached.)

Option 2. Naked selfie attached to a phone number and that's it.

And all because of a few words or thoughts that they found appealing...

It's crazy how many girls who absolutely disagree with some of my thoughts written in here are compelled to fuck me. That's one aspect of psychology I just can not get my head around. Like, how does "He is so wrong!" turn into "So I'm going to fuck him!"?

I think it's important to embrace your sexuality, because it's a part of you. If you encounter someone you find sexually electric, and the chemistry is there, there's nothing in the world to stop you from sleeping with them (unless you're in a committed relationship of course).

But I think the whole concept of PUA's or (pick-up artists) to be unbearably sleazy/creepy/douchey.

The idea that you can boil down all female behaviour into a set of stereotypes to exploit for sexual conquest ignores just how nuanced and individual female psychology really is. And it is all about psychology. If you can keep someone guessing by 'running game' on them, increase their suggestability, or convince them to lose inhibition when it wasn't their idea, you're simply being a predator.

It really is that simple.

Now I understand the patriarchy. I understand why some men feel the need to dominate women. I don't subscribe, but I see what they're saying.

They're saying "Women have vaginas. We want vaginas. Women know this. So they make it as unnecessarily difficult and complex for us to get vaginas as they can." So the patriarchy seeks to silence, marginalize, and dominate women. Crazy right?

Especially when you consider that, outside of religion and other artificial constructs (that also silence, marginalize, and dominate women); women love sex just as much as men do, for one simple and mind-numbingly obvious reason-

We are all human beings... Gender is irrelevant.

And the reality is, there are a lot of women out there who have vaginas and in no way have any interest in keeping them to themselves, but when you lump all women in together,  you miss out.

So. Through the writing of this blog, which is a very gonzo vehicle for self-expression, opinion, and my platform for asking questions, marinating on issues, and sharing stories; occasionally people take notice, and sometimes those people decide for their own reasons that they would like to sexually experience the writer.

I'd think it odd if it wasn't for the fact all you need to do to get a guy interested is generally show them a picture of someone hot and ask "would you go there?", so the idea that a woman can peer inside (the depravity and emptiness) of my mind and decide they find that attractive in contrast isn't that challenging.

I'm reminded of all of this because I met a girl when I was out celebrating my birthday last weekend. I went out alone with no expectations of the night, ended up making a bunch of new friends, and getting hit on by 4 women simultaneously. I'm at an age where, when 3.30 am rolls around, and after 10 Jäger shots, I'm in a really good place to go home by myself and just sleep.

I can eat something naughty, climb into my big bed, and best of all not care how I look when I wake up, when I wake up, or anything that relates to other people.

So I watched with a detached kind of interest as these girls tried to outbid each other to get my attention. (Something that ten years ago would never have happened because I'd have been far too interested). If one girl sat next to me with her head on my shoulder, another would sit in my lap and literally block her completely, while the other two danced in front of me. It probably should have felt sexy and empowering, but I actually felt quite sad every time one girl blocked another, because if I was trying to get into someone's pants and I got blocked, I'd feel humiliated.

So I went home alone, and was totally happy to do it. Which is what I've been doing for almost two years now. In this chapter of my life, sex is something I generally can't be bothered with. I'm definitely not interested in chasing after it, learning techniques to entrap it, or to do anything to create space or time for it in my life. Case in point- I'm writing this on Friday night. At home.

Nice'n'cosy.

But before I went home, I saw a pick up artist at work. I knew he was a pick up artist because he had three guys with him, and he was coaching them right there in the bar. He moved toward a girl seated by herself to drop some game. The other three watched with their mouths open.

I'd like to tell you it was amazing, but it wasn't. I wasn't inspired by his confidence or technique. He was quite a good looking guy, dressed nicely, not too out-there, who could pick up a lot of girls just by existing. He flew by the seat of his pants, and ended up failing. He wasn't chastened by that fact, he returned to his students and said "It's a numbers game."

The girl looked at me as he was walking away, and I rolled my eyes. She came over and said "Fuck you!" with a very interested smile on her face. I explained the eye-rolling was in response to the PUA, not at her, and she asked "Where do you think he went wrong?" Being drunk and not into the idea of explaining my innermost thoughts to a stranger (the irony is delicious), I replied "Read my blog if you want to know my thoughts on things. I'm here to party." She asked how she could find it, and I said "Use colloquial vernacular", which confused her, and I made my exit.

The next night at about 4 am she emailed me an 'Option 2'.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.