The tragedy here is that so many women are terrified of unknown men. A real culture of fear we’ve got going, which serves to isolate almost everybody.
I’m not completely naive - I know this stuff does happen - but the chances of being kidnapped are far lower than, say, being in a road traffic accident, and yet billions of people drive daily without a second thought, without fear, just assuming everything will be fine.
Hey, wait a minute! Buyer lady was afraid the seller lady would turn out to be a lad, so she sent a lad in her place? What did she think would happen if seller lady actually showed up and got jump-scared by this buyer lad instead? She’s lucky both these lads got along, because either of them could have decided to call off the deal and go home when they saw the terms were violated.
Having sold a few things online, it’s fairly common for one person to chat online and another to have over/receive the money. The person chatting is the person who is most interested in the item; the person handing over is the person who has the time on the day.
Could be they didn’t know who was selling it. I’ve done some anonymous stuff like that, where I just showed up without knowing who was there to give the thing. Or if they saw a dude there they just asked about it instead of going full on abort mission abort mission lol
I would assume that neither seller or buyer specified gender for the trade. I also don’t think that having another gender than expected counts as violation of terms.
Checks out.
Presuming this is occuring in or near Seattle, yep, yep, the “Seattle Chill” has these days basically become ‘Permaonline / hikkikomori / over exposed to fear inducing media / paranoid main character myopia to the point of delusional antisociality.’
And then you have other people who have like, basic social skills, who do not become infuriated by a bit of small talk with a rando at the same bus stop.
I still don’t understand sports fans and how they interact with each other. I just buy my thing and leave, maybe talk for a bit if its an item that would imply same hobbies or something but I the only place I’ve had drinks with randos is at a vegas card table and even that was uncomfortable.
I still don’t understand sports fans and how they interact with each other.
“Did you see that ludicrous display last night?”
imply same hobbies or something
They’re both into the same team so probably wearing a Jersey or something for game day. Something to talk about. The situation with the spouses was also an easy ice breaker.
Kind of rude of the wife’s to send them out when the game is going to be on.
Probably had time to do it before it
If it was a bear selling that lamp, none of this would have been necessary.
But then the bear would still have to be afraid of honeypots
I also choose the gay bear
This is honestly so heartwarming. Adult dudes have such a hard time meeting other guys, this actually makes me happy seeing two dudes just meet and say hello
I met a fellow in my neighborhood by happenstance. We happened to be crazy similar. He was really cool.
I felt bad not really getting around to checking in on him more often. I was shy and afraid of what I didn’t know, or making a fool of myself. But damnit he was a really cool guy…
Occasionally I’d catch him with his garage door open and we’d have a chat. (You gotta understand, nobody interacts in this neighborhood.) We met because I was out running in the rain like a crazy guy (we rarely get rain lol) and HE decided to introduce himself to me as I ran by his house LOL.
So anyway…I saw he hadn’t responded to my Merry Christmas text.
…And just a week ago or so I got a text from his wife that he had passed away from an aneurysm 4 months prior.
When I brought her flowers for him, she told me he had said that he thought. . .that I was very cool. . .
Why I’m sharing this:
I know it’s awkward sometimes trying to make new friends as an adult, but also it’s foolish to simply assume tomorrow is guaranteed. Do that hangout. Plan the game night. Talk about random stuff in the backyard. Whatever.
You will never regret more time spent in fellowship and good company.
I would have been a really good friend to him if I just reached out more…
The loneliness epidemic is absolutely real, and this isolating society is killing us all by design and it breaks my heart.
That is all.
Thanks for sharing that story, we should all try to get to know our neighbours a bit Better.
Ngl I remember even highschool being a hell for making friends because there was this 70% they will turn out to be andrew tate fans after.
Hey, wanna hang out?
Do you have hotwings?
You’ll have to tell me how hot these wings are.
Bird wings are hotter than bat wings, IMO.
uwu
Agreed
But dude should check in with his wife if he’s just gonna not come home suddenly
Wife was already stalking his location, is fine
Plot twist, he was the kidnapping target and he never returned from that bar
Jim and Adam now live near Seattle and adopted a dog.
Why didn’t she go with him? Cuz she wasn’t scared and was being lazy.
Maybe they have kids…?
Womym BAD amirit??
Updoots to the left!!!
The best deals are worth the risk of dying
I’m a bully, bearded, outdoorsy dude, and you can describe a lot of my friends in a similar way.
Once upon a time, one such friend had a few trees on his property that needed to come down (damaged by storms, emerald ash borer, etc,) so he made a decision to have a “lumberjack day”
The plan was simple, we’d all show up with axes and saws and other implements of destruction and cut down these trees and chop them up to manageable sizes.
We also all kind of had the same idea that we’d show up in flannel shirts and suspenders in hopes that our one friend (coincidentally my now-wife, though we had not yet even begun to think about dating) who was sort of our unofficial group photographer, would show up with our camera, and we could get some cool shots of us being rugged badasses and maybe a group picture.
Sadly, she had to work that day, so no pictures exist.
I decided for this occasion that I wanted a big ol’ double-bit felling axe. It just seemed appropriate.
Now I could have gotten one from a hardware store if I just wanted a prop, but I did want an actual usable axe. Most new axes you can easily get your hands on these days just aren’t that great unless you’re willing to shell out some decent money (they’re not outlandishly expensive, but certainly more than I could afford at the time as a 20-something pizza guy)
Which meant that I’d be looking for a used axe. This was something I’d already been keeping my eye out for at yard sales and flea markets and such but unfortunately I was coming up empty. So with Lumberjack Day fast-approaching, I turned to craigslist.
And sure enough, I found a guy selling axes. Quite a lot of axes in fact, I suspect this guy had been snatching them up from the same flea markets I’d been hunting at before I got a chance. He’d clean them up, hang a new handle if needed, and sell them. His sharpening skills left a bit to be desired, but I’m handy enough with a file and whetstone so that didn’t matter.
We exchanged some messages, he sent me some pics of what he had, and we arranged a time for me to swing over to his house to buy an axe from him.
So one Sunday morning I swerved over to his house, not thinking to tell anyone where I was going.
From the pictures he sent, I kind of thought he had these axes in a shed or garage.
Instead when I went there and knocked on his front door he invited me inside and told me the axes were in his basement.
I step inside his living room, and this man had no furniture.
We go down into the basement, and every wall and float surface is covered in axes (and some similar hand tools- hammers, hoes, picks, shovels, etc)
I think this may have been some kind of serial killer’s lair.
But, luckily, I did not get axe-murdered that day. Instead I checked out his wares, handed him $60, and walked out with a rather nice vaughan axe that was probably from around the '60s
Took it out to my car, sat there for a minute considering my life choices, and went on my merry way.
Then a week or two later I put that axe to good use at lumberjack day. It’s a good axe, I still have it and find some good excuses to use it from time-to-time.
So anyway, he may possibly be a serial killer, but I do recommend Craigslist Andrew if you ever need to buy a decent used axe at a fair price.
a moth wrote this comment
spoken to a wizard, who was polishing their orb
Oh hey, have you guys heard of this thing called “lemmy”? It’s part of the fediverse. You might enjoy the memes!
We have beans, jeans, and no pooping, unless they were all taken away on Taylor Swift’s jet.
I’m sad that that “no pooping” guy never explained himself.
Maybe he was sacrificing his colon for the well-being of the fediverse.
Bro can’t even text his wife that he isn’t coming straight back home? Wtf?
It’s an hour, man. Don’t be weird.
Do you need to know where your partner is 24/7?! That feels suffocating. These people even have location sharing turned on and she knew he was at Buffalo Wild Wings before she even asked
I don’t think they were implying that at all. Instead imagine the situation where you send your spouse into a burning building and then they go out the back door and don’t call you. If the wife was afraid the seller was a murderer, this isn’t a case of needing to know where their partner is 24/7. It’s knowing where their partner is after what they view is a very unsafe situation.
Frankly, I can easily imagine them going “hey let’s got for a beer and see which one of our two paranoiacs freaks out first”.
Checking my location is a less distracting way for my husband to know if I’m safely on my way home than texting or calling me while I’m driving. She might have thought his phone had been stolen because he hadn’t planned on getting wings.
Someone had to stay with the kids
He should just be glad he wasn’t bringing home snails.
Or Jim 😄
This story is so wholesome. :)
It must be so relaxing being a cis, het, white man.
Right, some more discrimination is exactly what we need to fix things.
“Hey honey, I fear for my life in this situation I engineered. Because of your gender I need you to go face that danger instead. BTW if you don’t do this, I will question your gender identity.”
Even in your own little bubble, your hate doesn’t make sense.
I know this obviously wasn’t your intention, but you managed to encapsulate the attitude of my ex and her family to the letter.
I grew up with food insecurity and poverty, she came from wealth. My family was always open and honest about our thoughts and feelings, her family had strict expectations and roles.
Both her and her mom would constantly engineer situations where I would be forced to prove my masculinity, regardless of how uncomfortable, scared, tired, or belittled I felt. This included things like going out to dinner during a snow storm, moving us from one apartment to another on my own, trying to convince me to physically assault someone else to “defend” her, and purchasing heavy items online that she couldn’t lift and while I was injured.
In hindsight I can see and understand how toxic that relationship was, but at the time I was excited to be receiving any positive attention from someone I was attracted to (whenever I was able to fit their mold), and didn’t know any better.
Apologies for the long rant, your comment hit the nail on the head and also apparently triggered those memories for me.
One of the greatest feelings is having been helpful to those we care about. It’s sad that some people will abuse that to no end, and you didn’t deserve that in the slightest.
I hope you’re doing better these days. <3
You’re not wrong there, my friend - I stride through life on easy level knowing that nothing bad nor troublesome will ever have any bearing on me, nor my life, in any way whatsoever. It is a most relaxing life.
Ngl it’s a pretty sweet gig, although lately the het part has been kinda dubious.
Bait
I’m not sure I’d call it “relaxing,” but It’s definitely easy mode.
Of course, that’s why so many of the losers among us go off the right-wing/incel deep end: if you’re living on easy mode and you still manage to fail, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. But they can’t handle that either, so they go fucking insane desperately trying to find scapegoats.
Yeah, the pressure to never show emotion, to always be strong and never ask for help, to try not to show the distress at being inherently distrusted because so many people who happen to share the same kind of chromosomes. Totally easy mode.
Just because it’s less stressful than some other demographics doesn’t make it, in any way, easy. Just slightly less difficult.
I wouldn’t even call it less difficult. Just differently difficult.
This. Profoundly this.
I wish people would just realize this and strive to lift each other up instead of trying to one-up each other in the pity-demographic olympics.
Exactly. Different people have different challenges. A woman working in finance in NYC faces many difficulties, but so does man working at a gas station in Albania. It’s not a competition.
I’ve tried both, and being Myself is harder than being a man. More rewarding, but way way more effortful.
That’s awfully presumptuous. Maybe Adam over here is getting some dick on the side, you don’t know his life.
