u/AgentHamster

I think the situation looks fine on the short scale but quite bad on the long scale. I don't think all white collar work to vanish in 1-2 years like some people seem to believe, but I would rethink planning around a 10-20+year career in any given field.

I mean, it's not really a surprise, isn't it? People who are less attractive are going to be more likely to turn to such services. Even for those who aren't unattractive, those that choose to use escorts are likely going to see it as a relationship of convenience and not put much effort into it, using it to fulfill a short term (or medium term) fantasy. Those fantasies can even include romantic and savior complex type components - such as through lavish promises.

I understand it's an unpleasant experience, but it's hard for me to say anything other than I feel like that's the nature of any sort of business that revolves around selling convenient fantasies (as bad as that sounds).

I'll preface by saying that everything I'm going to say applies across genders and I would give the same advice to a guy in your position as well.

The truth is that that making friends and social connections across genders is always going to have some friction to it. People are generally more suspicious of those who aren't in their in group. I think everyone knows that a guy walking up to a bunch of women at a bar is probably going to be viewed with suspicion. While guys might be less openly dismissive, they too are likely to view you with some degree of suspicion and treat you like an outsider. I've seen this happen multiple times, where an unfamiliar woman joins a social group with a decent number of men in it and they immediately seem to be on alert. Of course there are various factors that influence how long you are treated as an outsider for - ranging from your personality and shared interests to more superficial factors like how attractive they find you. 

I'm not going to speculate as to why you find that men are more suspicious or less welcoming towards you - there could a variety of causes and not all of them are within your control. What I am saying is that this response should be assumed to be the default rather than proof something is wrong with you. Your friends likely aren't immune to it either - they likely have something (warm introductions, shared interests, or even just greater persistence reduced awareness of being treated as an outsider) that helps them bypass some of this.

Personally, I never really understood this argument. Most of the younger people I see in relationships are more attractive than those not in relationships. When you get to older and middle aged couples, that's not always true, but it's impossible to tell if they just let themselves go after getting in a relationship.

Frankly all you can do is apply and apply broadly. It has indeed been my experience that an Ivy PhD is no protection from a bad job market.

Going to strongly disagree on this one.

If you are talking about masters, high cost and dilution of brands (some top universities use their masters as a cash grab) means that they may not move the needle very much - or at least not to the point they are worth the additional student debt.

If you are talking about PhDs - you shouldn't get a PhD unless you are going down a career path that actually requires a PhD (aka, mostly academia and maybe academia adjacent work like national labs) as there's a massive opportunity cost.

Also, undergraduate prestige may or may not matter depending on what field you are planning on going into, so I wouldn't make strong statements one way or another until I know what OP is hoping to do with their career.

While I'm not one to dismiss AI advancements, I'm gonna laugh so hard if it turns out that our future involves praying to the machine spirits warhammer style to grant us the knowledge of how to operate our tech.

My Woodcutting level is 99.

I can only use Quick Chat.

I'm assuming if you are old enough to have kids, you are most likely to be in the age group where those who wanted to have a family and settle down to live a 'chill' life are off the apps. This means the people you see in the apps are going to bias towards the more adventurous types.

These people not have full time jobs? How are these people existing in today's economy and maintaining that standard of living?

While it's obviously not cheap to do things like this, if you have no kids/significant other etc you'll likely have less costs and less obligations tying you down.

It's not really a matter of should or shouldn't - it's a matter of having something that stands out to an employer. Some people can achieve this with AI, some without. If AI helps you put together a portfolio that stands out more, then yes, you should use AI.

I think this is correct - streaming is closer to making fast food, where consistency, affordability and brand recognition are the most important driving factors. People generally want streams that are 'entertaining enough', don't require a lot of effort to think about and that they are familiar with.

Given these examples, it seems to me that you are taking vague posts and filling in the gaps with your own biases. How do you know that these women aren't 'homely, overweight, neurodivergent women'?

Maybe I don't spend enough time here, but after doing a quick skim I don't see any recent posts where the poster mentioned asking out an attractive woman.

Sorry, where are these stories from? I feel like the vast majority of the posts on reddit of this variety either don't mention how attractive the woman is, or say that it's someone they thought wasn't particularly hot.

I don't know about education quality or other factors, at least in terms of reputation in the job market, this doesn't seem to be true. I've seen UBC and McGill being considered as target schools for a few companies, but I've never seen the same for Tufts. From what I've seen, even BU has a stronger reputation.

You forgot to mention Clawdia from the beach events.

Partially agree - from my observations, for younger couples, the guys tend to be better looking than average (and same for the women too honestly). Sure, if you limit yourself to older/middle age couples, that's less likely to be the case - but whose to say they weren't better looking when they got into the relationship and let themselves go afterwards?

I don't see why this is such a surprise. I think general gaming fans would have liked to mess around on a fresh start/reignited world for a few weeks even if they had no long term interest in the game. I don't think they are particularly interested in the long term survival of the game.

It's similar to people being bummed out that a party got canceled, even if the reason for the cancelation was because of concerns about property damage.

I am a former academic, in roughly the same field, and roughly the same age.

I'd be quite concerned, but not for the reasons you think. The main reason is that your position is unstable and doesn't offer much flexibility. A postdoc is an inherently unstable position, and as an international postdoc in the USA this will be be doubly the case. Even if all goes well and you secure a professorship position, there's also instability there as well - you generally will be at the mercy of whichever university gives you an offer to dictate where you are limited to living in. Once you do secure a professorship, it's likely going to take the vast majority of your time and energy to apply for funding (especially in the current political climate) and fight to secure tenure.

I'm sure some men would be interested - I am probably more biased than the average as I am more aware of how things go in academia. However, I think a lot of people are going to be somewhat aware that your current arrangement isn't the most stable and I think it might deter long term relationships.

First of all, let me say - I do think it's very understandable that potential new players would be disappointed. New hype cycles for a game are always exciting, and people generally like getting together to a new game world and having a blast. I'm sure some people were anticipating this, and it makes complete sense they would be dissapointed.

On the other hand, the long term benefit of having such a hype cycle is completely dependent on being able to retain players. I have no doubt that if reignited launched, people would have gotten together and had a blast for a few weeks. How many of these players would we have retained given the current state of the game? Would we be actually looking at a long term revival of rs3, or would this be a leagues situation where after the original hype is over, we are left with the same playerbase count as before?

My point is that you can't just look at public attention and external interest and assume it will translate to long term growth.

I play rs3 as a solo game myself. With the exception of blood knights (which is getting a solo mode later) and raids (do people really do raids anyway?), most of this game is a solo focused experience. There is optional group content, but this is more of an optional add on to the solo content. As a result, it's quite difficult for me to understand this perspective 

I would argue that is on Jagex for promoting it without putting in the leg work to gauge how it would go.

I'm not opposed to some sort of fresh start adjacent approach in the future, but I am glad that this is canceled. I think it's too early to push this, and I hope by the next time this option is being considered that rs3's progression will be in a state where veteran players will not dread restarting their progress and we can be confident new players won't give up after a week of play.

Sorry, it's hard to find time to respond while I'm juggling siping my organic matcha latte with ethically sourced pistachio milk between my reading sessions of works by Judith Butler while hitting a new PR in the gym between volunteering at the humane society and teaching kids how to cook on the weekends (weekdays are for my job as a Portfolio Manager at deshaws and managing the 5 properties I own in Tribeca).

I just sent a text to my dog and they texted back that this is true, mystery solved!