Notices by 🇳🇴 Thor — backup account (thorthenorseman@octodon.social), page 33

@blxckberrying Sometimes women sort of look you up and down and seem to think "Ah, another guy. Okay, let's see if he measures up." and that's not the sort of mindset I have at all, really. Your average guy kind of feels as "other" to me as your average girl. I don't feel like I fully belong in either group. I'm not that "strongly gendered" if you know what I mean.

@blxckberrying And I think my issue is that I don't feel particularly safe myself. Okay, physically speaking I have a male body with a greater muscle mass... Didn't prevent me being bullied in school. Doesn't prevent me from feeling fear when another man is aggressive toward me. When women look at me, they see this guy, and make guy assumptions about me, which is reasonable, but I don't *feel* that way. I'm being tested against a standard, and it's the wrong one for me, sort of?

@CobaltVelvet I say push because we see these people and actively promote them to power. Yes, there are lies involved. That's not too important. The main point is that it happens, and that citizens help it happen by listening to such people. And my overarching point is that this is inevitable, because people have always been like this, for as far back as the history books go.

@blxckberrying There's no doubt that shit tests are useful. They are also not exclusive to women or dating. Recruiters use them too. And the goal isn't always to provoke aggression. Sometimes they're performed to reveal other flaws. What they all have in common is that they make the other person uncomfortable. In my case, they make my mind go blank, which is usually not a good thing.

@CobaltVelvet The reason is because we, collectively as humans, would prefer it if other people made certain decisions for us, and if other people performed certain tasks that we find difficult. Leadership is a specialised skill and it's always in demand. People are always looking for decision makers because they don't like to make decisions and they don't like to have too much responsibility.

@CobaltVelvet Okay, but tell me this: How does a single man, say, Stalin, end up with so much power that no one dares to touch him? How can an entire people be terrified of a man made of flesh and blood that anyone nearby could kill with a gunshot? The answer lays in a form of social engineering called a power structure. Power, beyond simple physical strength, exists in the mind. And if we would all gladly rule ourselves, why do we persistently and actively push individuals into power?

@CobaltVelvet "You", "me". If you haven't already, look into social engineering. It's highly effective and has been demonstrated to be so a million times on television by this point. People trust apparent authority figures all the time. There isn't much left to say if we can't agree about our observations.

@CobaltVelvet I don't need to hear that, especially not at this moment. Please back off.

For those not in the know about shit tests: https://octodon.social/media/CD7sbP004w7qMwtsXe4

Every job I have landed in the past has been through an interview of the non-shit-test kind. Same with every relationship I've ever been in. If they shit test me, it's over.

Let's hope my gut feeling about that job interview is wrong. The last time I had this feeling was after a date that didn't result in a relationship.

The funny thing is that the feeling itself is very hard to interpret. It's not like anger or joy where it's obvious. It's a more ambiguous feeling of having put yourself out in front of people you're trying to gain respect from.

It's just that it never works out between me and companies (or women) who perform shit tests on me.

@CobaltVelvet A person wearing a fluorescent vest looks like they are working for someone important, like, say, the CEO of a company. Uniforms serve as extensions of authority. As in, "the long arm of the law".

The world makes a hell of a lot more sense if you're willing to apply one concept across multiple contexts. The wars of feudal Japan *can* tell us something about running a business in 2018, for example.

@jannamark They're always trying to find contradictions in what you say in order to make you lose your footing. I wonder if it gives them a sense of power to do that...

@jannamark Mostly just trying to calm down. Such interviews leave you feel like you've been stripped naked, and it takes some time to feel normal again.

They brought an HR lady in for the job interview. I received a thorough grilling. Gut feeling about getting this job: 40% chance. At least there are no other candidates for them to consider. They weren't planning on hiring anyone until early 2019. The HR lady might blow the whole thing. That's her job, presumably. To scrape the coat of paint off and check what's underneath, and filter out anything that looks rotten to her.

@CobaltVelvet It's not about your personal experience, though. It's about what people will do on average. On average, social engineering is very successful because people will, say, trust a person who wears a fluorescent vest and a badge. And they'll generally trust what authority figures tell them, for the same reason: They look like they're the ones who are in charge and know what they are doing. This trust only breaks down in times of war and disaster.

@CobaltVelvet In fact, a common piece of advice given to aspiring business people is to reduce the number of decisions you need to make, to free up time and energy for other things.

@CobaltVelvet And there is also a subconscious tendency in us to always "look around the room" for the person who seems to be in charge. If you arrive in a new place and need guidance, you're always going to look for the person in charge, and that's what societies do collectively too. Making decisions is cognitively demanding and most people would prefer to not make too many of them.

@CobaltVelvet I often think about what it means to have power, and the conclusion I've reached is that power is in the mind. Part of it is that the masses have been lulled into a sense of inevitability about our current system, but a big part of it is also the persistent desire that people collectively have for safety and stability. The system resists change because humans resist change. The vast majority of people are comfortable *enough* and will only demand change if they face adversity.

@CobaltVelvet Capitalism is a meme in the academic sense of the word. It's an idea that survives because it matches the fitness function in many ways.