The Pitters' Place

I don't get it .

That was great.

This actually a pretty old sketch. Not bad though.

Rapey.

Lololol

Gendo wrote:Rapey.

I dunno, I wouldn't see it as rapey. A bit creepy but not rapey.

At best it's predatory behavior. Trying to pick up women by falsely engineering the perfect conversation to make her think you're exactly who she wants. Same thing in Groundhog Day, and although I love that movie, I was a bit bothered by that last time I saw it.

How is that rapey?

I thought rapey meant predatory behavior.

Yeah, I agree with that. I would have been creeped out if he'd succeeded. But the ending made up for it, and could even be construed as a twisted scifi cautionary tale.

Scenario 1: You've got a one minute time machine. What use is that? Well, you can use it to quickly undo minor mistakes which occur in the moment.

Scenario 2: You're talking to an attractive person. The idea of a romantic liaison with this attractive person is a pleasant one, so you do your best to say things which you think they will find pleasing. This is how wooing is done.

Combine scenarios 1 & 2. Do we now have predatory behaviour? No, not in the context we are given. If someone invented the one minute time machine for the specific purpose of being more successful in the sexual arena you might say it was creepy. If the guy in the video invented it with the specific purpose of seducing this particular woman, that could constitute predatory behaviour. Unless it's a romantic comedy where predatory behaviour is adorable, or a YA novel aimed at young women where all bets are off.

In a way he was coercing or manipulating a woman to have sex with him. It is a little predatory.

Dr_Liszt wrote:In a way he was coercing or manipulating a woman to have sex with him. It is a little predatory.

Exactly. Manipulating a woman into having sex with you, by pretending to be something you are not, is predatory.

A different situation... you want to talk to a woman, but want to make sure she thinks you have common interests, so before you talk to her, you have her followed. You have someone follow her around and listen to her conversations and observe the things that she does. This way, when you go to talk to her, you can be sure to say the right things; to feign interest in the things she is interested in and say the types of things you know she likes to hear.

This seems like the same thing to me. You are betraying her trust and privacy by getting to know her without her getting to know you. All so that you can have sex with her. You're pretending to be someone other than who you really are, because you know she wouldn't really have sex with you if she got to know the real you. You're being sneaky and manipulative, doing things that affect her without her knowing about it. All so that you can have sex with her.

Gendo wrote:

Dr_Liszt wrote:In a way he was coercing or manipulating a woman to have sex with him. It is a little predatory.

You're pretending to be someone other than who you really are, because you know she wouldn't really have sex with you if she got to know the real you. You're being sneaky and manipulative, doing things that affect her without her knowing about it. All so that you can have sex with her.

That's exactly how all relationships start

Blade Azaezel wrote:

Gendo wrote:

Dr_Liszt wrote:In a way he was coercing or manipulating a woman to have sex with him. It is a little predatory.

You're pretending to be someone other than who you really are, because you know she wouldn't really have sex with you if she got to know the real you. You're being sneaky and manipulative, doing things that affect her without her knowing about it. All so that you can have sex with her.

That's exactly how all relationships start

Not really.
Think of it as the map scan on mass effect 2. At first you probe, you get some minerals, then you see if you can land.

At first you probe

If that's first then what's the point of all that other stuff?

Dammit!

Dr_Liszt wrote:In a way he was coercing or manipulating a woman to have sex with him. It is a little predatory.

Coercing or manipulating? Which is it, because they're entirely different. There's no coercion involved.

Gendo wrote:A different situation... you want to talk to a woman, but want to make sure she thinks you have common interests, so before you talk to her, you have her followed. You have someone follow her around and listen to her conversations and observe the things that she does. This way, when you go to talk to her, you can be sure to say the right things; to feign interest in the things she is interested in and say the types of things you know she likes to hear.

Having a woman followed and spied upon is an invasion of privacy. Listening to the things she tells you is not.

Gendo wrote:This seems like the same thing to me. You are betraying her trust and privacy by getting to know her without her getting to know you. All so that you can have sex with her. You're pretending to be someone other than who you really are, because you know she wouldn't really have sex with you if she got to know the real you. You're being sneaky and manipulative, doing things that affect her without her knowing about it. All so that you can have sex with her.

Perhaps you're the first person in the history of the world who doesn't pretend to be someone they're not.

Ptolemy_Banana wrote: Perhaps you're the first person in the history of the world who doesn't pretend to be someone they're not.

Not to trick girls into having sex with me I don't.

Coercion, no; manipulation, yes. He's changing things so that woman would agree to have sex with him. If he persists, we can assume a 100% success rate (which wouldn't happen in a normal situation) - i.e. he looks at this situation as: "This woman will have sex with me, eventually". There is effectively no room for her to refuse, even if she is unaware that that possibility has been taken from her.

I tend to think that taking advantage of someone is bad should be common sense among "decent" humans, but apparently a scenario of a man manipulating a woman to have sex with him still causes some kind of controversy. I find that even more creepy.

I'm starting to regret my "that was great" comment.

Derived Absurdity wrote:I'm starting to regret my "that was great" comment.

Well Groundhog Day was great and it has the same problem. We can find things great while acknowledging that it contains a bad element.

Well, in this case the bad element seems to be the entire focus of the sketch.

Derived Absurdity wrote:Well, in this case the bad element seems to be the entire focus of the sketch.

Good point.

Dr_Liszt wrote:I tend to think that taking advantage of someone is bad should be common sense among "decent" humans, but apparently a scenario of a man manipulating a woman to have sex with him still causes some kind of controversy. I find that even more creepy.

Hey, the woman did it too. Misandry.

Yeah, but when women do it is payback. Like when guys complain about catcalling, you're like "IT'S NOT NICE ISN'T IT? THIS IS REVENGE!" [/feminazi][/misandy]

Well, in this case the bad element seems to be the entire focus of the sketch.

Perhaps at first, but I saw it as him getting payback for it, so... that was great.

I could see the manipulation argument, but he is mostly using it because he said something stupid and wants a re-try (which I'm guessing virtually everyone has wished for something like this before). If he happened to just say the right thing the first time in every instance, would that have been as creepy/rapey?

If he happened to just say the right thing the first time in every instance, would that have been as creepy/rapey?

Nope, but there's a very, very, very slim chance that he would have been able to do that; and if he had been, it would make him an extremely brilliant and socially aware communicator, which might be what makes him seem attractive - i.e. he's misrepresenting himself as more skilled and empathetic than he actually is, and as someone capable of something that a very tiny minority of humans are.

However, if he were to continue using that time machine throughout his entire relationship, then what she sees would effectively be what she gets, and that might actually make it more okay.

In my opinion this is creepy for the mere fact he is making sure of removing all the options from her. If he says the right thing the first time she still has the choice of refusal. With the machine he's making sure she doesn't.

Dr_Liszt wrote:In my opinion this is creepy for the mere fact he is making sure of removing all the options from her. If he says the right thing the first time she still has the choice of refusal. With the machine he's making sure she doesn't.

truth

Dr_Liszt wrote:In my opinion this is creepy for the mere fact he is making sure of removing all the options from her. If he says the right thing the first time she still has the choice of refusal. With the machine he's making sure she doesn't.

^

I agree with Gendo.

Dr_Liszt wrote:In my opinion this is creepy for the mere fact he is making sure of removing all the options from her. If he says the right thing the first time she still has the choice of refusal. With the machine he's making sure she doesn't.

But if he says the right thing, would she refuse?

Since God knows the past, present, and future of all things, He's the most creepy. He knows what you're going to do and then punishes you for doing it.

Anakin McFly wrote:

If he happened to just say the right thing the first time in every instance, would that have been as creepy/rapey?

Nope, but there's a very, very, very slim chance that he would have been able to do that; and if he had been, it would make him an extremely brilliant and socially aware communicator, which might be what makes him seem attractive - i.e. he's misrepresenting himself as more skilled and empathetic than he actually is, and as someone capable of something that a very tiny minority of humans are.

Meh, I don't think most people are entirely themselves when they meet someone on a first encounter. I think the bigger issue is how the woman's character is written - not so much his behavior.

It's irrelevant how you represent yourself.

Dr_Liszt wrote:It's irrelevant how you represent yourself.

No, I just don't view it as significantly more creepy than other encounters where a person tries to misrepresent him/herself. I think it appears that he removes options for her because of how the female character is written, not necessarily because of his actions.

No. This is more creepy because:

1. Misrepresenting yourself to have sex with a difficult woman and succeeding. Just makes you a douche and a jerk, but all the time she has the possibility to walk away.
2. Misrepresenting yourself and technically removing all possibilities of rejection to have sex with a difficult woman, by insistently pushing yourself onto her, makes you creepy and a douche.

She's written as a difficult woman, you make it sound as if she doesn't want to be manipulated she just has to say yes to any encounter she has. Maybe I'm being insistently with this myself because of how many guys I've had to deal with that won't take no for an answer. Trust me, the solution is not to change a woman's character, the solution is just to leave the woman alone and move on.

But I got tired of discussing this. Either you don't understand or you don't want to understand.

Dr_Liszt wrote: But I got tired of discussing this. Either you don't understand or you don't want to understand.

Lol, okay

According to the video, all possibilities exist. He isn't making it happen. He's just choosing the show he wants to watch on the Everything is Possible channel.

So I'm going to amend my opinion and say that the sketch goes far beyond creepy and predatory and well into "rapey", which is what Gendo said originally. Basically this:

Dr_Liszt wrote:Misrepresenting yourself and technically removing all possibilities of rejection to have sex with a difficult woman, by insistently pushing yourself onto her, makes you creepy and a douche.

Sums it up for me. It's rapey. He's removing all possibility of rejection. There's no consent. Gendo was right and Liszt explained it very well. I was wrong. I'm really ashamed of myself that I didn't catch onto it earlier.

The time continuum, as presented in the video, is like a "Choose your own adventure" book. All the possible stories are in the book. He's making a choice and it sends him to page 98 where he gets shot down. He returns to the previous page and makes another choice, sending him to page 217. Shot down again. He repeats until he gets to a page he likes.

The story he likes exists in one of the infinite possible universes. He's just cheating the process to find the one he prefers.

Pope Bucky wrote:The time continuum, as presented in the video, is like a "Choose your own adventure" book. All the possible stories are in the book. He's making a choice and it sends him to page 98 where he gets shot down. He returns to the previous page and makes another choice, sending him to page 217. Shot down again. He repeats until he gets to a page he likes.

The story he likes exists in one of the infinite possible universes. He's just cheating the process to find the one he prefers.

I'm not sure it's really like that. He's not simply picking out random pages that were already set there, his decisions are creating the pages. Those alternative universes wouldn't exist without his choices. So the universe in which he eventually succeeds would not even exist if he wasn't trying over and over and over again to create it. And in that universe he removed all theoretical possibility of her rejecting him by blunt trial-and-error. He created the universe/situation in which she would have no choice but to do what he wanted.

All universes already exist based on every choice we could ever possibly make

Dr_Liszt wrote:because of how many guys I've had to deal with that won't take no for an answer.

This is another great point. All manipulation or misrepresentation stuff aside, the guy is clearly not taking no for an answer. When a woman turns you down, it is wrong to continue to pursue that woman. Despite what we may have been told by certain people, "no" does not sometimes mean "maybe; try harder." The woman said no, and he continued to peruse. Be happened to do it in a way that she had no memory of him having ever pursued in the first place, but that's irrelevant here. He refused to take no for an answer.

Blade Azaezel wrote:All universes already exist based on every choice we could ever possibly make

This is actually in line with several versions of multiverse hypotheses. As soon as we are presented with a decision we will make every choice available.