Anime Girls and Greed
Mating is hard. Really hard. The problem got worse, with a coin flip divorce rate, loneliness reaching the stratosphere in America, I puzzled over this problem I suffered.
How to fuck? Is this possible? Is there love, whether romantic or physical touch on a consistent basis, is this attainable in our lifetimes? This stellar breakthrough of connection which even the most accomplished and talented suffer thorns?
I gave up. High school hit, and with it, puberty. Alone in a room with thirty-odd people I never got to know, and several beautiful girls. I had my eyes laser locked on them. Even I, in the haze of hormone addled puberty, thought of myself as the creepy loser in the back of the room.
I wore a red windbreaker for two years. One day waiting in line to check out some manga, I heard the people in front of me talking. About me, it seemed. About how I wore a red windbreak for two years. I stopped wearing that red windbreaker.
My mom forced me into getting a job. A job as an usher at a movie theater. There, I was closer to the girls, and more afraid of them. No one could speak to me about the secrets of girls. I knew nothing, so I fumbled, got embarrassed, did nothing, and never grew.
The most embarrassing conversation in my life happened while I was working as an usher. We got on the topic of having a robot girlfriend. I was all for this. What the people I talked to said were the first to give me pause that I should improve my social skills instead. I should be a better person, first, I thought.
Years later I still want a robot girlfriend. These days, as the wisdom of age and self-reflection hangs on me, I want a robot girlfriend more honestly. I see less shame in it, there is still shame. The difference between back then ushering thinking I should be better at the mating game versus now is that I learned how difficult mating is in the first place.
In my twenties I abandoned the world. I quit my usher job to become a writer. I didn’t write a single thing. I browsed 4chan all day and played World of Warcraft. Whatever game looked good, I played. Whatever anime I could download, I downloaded.
In those times the Anime Girls were the best part of my life. I cherished them. An unearthly existence, the sound of their character voices let me believe I had them to myself alone. These wholesome, sexy, cute, and desirable creatures living out ideal lives. I believed listening and watching them that I was loved, and not alone. That continues to this day.
It wasn’t until my mid-twenties I began to listen to more and more podcasts. Endless 4chan browsing turned up a lead in an interesting direction— The Black Phillip Show. The thread I heard about the podcast was full of complaints about girls and their unknowability. I acknowledged the pain while disagreeing that this is the girls fault. I believed the fault lie in my understanding of girls, and not the girls themselves.
Listening to The Black Phillip Show, I learned little. I enjoyed Patrice O’Neil. And I got another lead. I got curious about one of the guys on The Black Phillip Show, a fellow comedian and friend of Patrice O’Neil, his name, Dante Nero.
I searched for Dante Nero, and as if it were fate, Dante Nero did a podcast. He called it The Beige Phillip Show, as of this writing it’s called Man School 202. The lessons I learned from listening to Dante were many.
I would play WoW or some other game then take long walks discussing with an imagined version of Dante about how women work. And, I saw this as a gateway to how humans work as well. The experience and depth that lie in his lessons shook me to my core.
Years later, I wrote a short story attempting to summarize all I learned from Dante in mock-Socratic dialogue. I wanted my understanding organized, I wanted to see for myself how people worked, how to deal with them, and how to engage with women and others for the sake of connection.
Now, is this greedy? Was my desire for understanding, my pursuit down a rabbit hole of listening and inner imagined conversational inquiry, was that greedy?
I don’t believe people would use the word greed for this. They might call it hard work. Obsession. Accomplishment. Insanity. All of these, I accept.
I wanted to understand. And by understand, I meant control. Control past a certain point will always show a shade of greed. If I could have a robot girlfriend or an Anime Girl in exchange for all my inquiry and listening over the years, I would take the magical girl.
Because, it’s easier for me. Because, I wanted more. Mating, mating is hard. It’s hard, I’ve come to think, for several reasons.
First, the expectations are about as high as the last prettiest, most admirable, most endearing, and most vulnerable love target you’ve found. This ideal love doesn’t exist in the real world. Meanwhile, the love created from an imagined character is amplified by the fact that you can never consummate the relationship, which makes the relationship even more perfect as you don’t have any of the downsides of usual romantic relationships.
Second, our skills are low. Very, very low. Now, I myself am a special case here, bordering on retardation of the highest degree as well as erudite complexity not yet known to this world, still, I have observed that people are very bad at communication.
Being bad at communication is a separate topic I’ll explore in the future, for now, I want to say people don’t talk with communication in mind. When people talk, they do make noise. That is true. Little communication occurs. When it does, I consider this the exception.
Partner this puzzle of poor communication with high expectations and you have a recipe for misery. No one is good enough for you, and at the same time, you can’t offer much to others on an emotional level. The default position to escape this horrifying reality is simple: use tricks.
Makeup is a trick. Money, a trick. Muscles? Clothes? A good uniform? A high paying job. All of them, they are ways to appear like we’re worth being around. Rather than, of course, actually offering meaningful value and investment in another person.
There are many reading this who I believe who have the problem licked and sorted beyond my comprehension, where they will pity poor me and say, “It’s just you. This rarely happens. People have these skills, they’ll grow past it. It’s a passing fad. It’s adolescence. This is no big deal.”
I say nay, nay my socially competent friend, and in a grey robe with a staff bent over I will point with a crooked finger towards the storm clouds on the horizon. And I will say, “This is the oncoming storm. You are not prepared.”
The future modern man will have the least social ability in history. They will also, at the same time, have the highest expectations for relationships. And between both of these, a great greed for women and men to be far, far better than is possible will be born.
Anime Girls will rule our future. The point to change this has already passed. A great deal of society is already locked into our cybernetic future. Will they be able to learn, and grow, and then move on to real relationships? Is that possible for them?
I cannot answer. What I know is the fear I had, and have, of real relationships and real women. Mating, mating is hard. And the difficulty goes up the less we are aware of what the real investments needed are, what the real lessons are that need to be learned to succeed at real relationship are.
If we are greedy enough as people to demand our entertainment be perfect lovers, then in the future, we might find that we soon have the demand of ourselves to become perfect lovers. As the pressure mounts and desperation builds, what will people do when they have bottomless greed to take all of others, and offer so little of themselves?