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Amaris
Guest
I see that the same way I do cuddle parties. If I'm paying someone to cuddle me, they're going to have to do more than that to shatter the all-encompassing depression from having to pay someone to cuddle me.
How to make friends?
- Thread starter Captain alex
- Start date
I recommend the Lounges. Best place here to meet interesting like-minded people and get to know them. Rather a lot of the people who were Fleet Captains with me have become my RL friends.
Geographical distance is indeed a problem, but with the internet it gets less important.
If you're looking for new frieds in your immediate vicinity, how about attending evening classes or joining clubs? This way you automatically have a pre-selection for people wo share your interests and hobbies.
If you like animals, you could volunteer as a dog- or catsitter. That's a good way to meet people who share your intetrest in animals.
At my hometown we have lots of people from foreign countries, so someone had the excellent idea to found an international club. Once a month they offer a cooking class and supper for everyone who likes to participate (a different country and a different teacher every month; next Friday it's Bavarian cuisine) - those are highly popular with the natives and have lead to many very good friendships.
Geographical distance is indeed a problem, but with the internet it gets less important.
If you're looking for new frieds in your immediate vicinity, how about attending evening classes or joining clubs? This way you automatically have a pre-selection for people wo share your interests and hobbies.
If you like animals, you could volunteer as a dog- or catsitter. That's a good way to meet people who share your intetrest in animals.
At my hometown we have lots of people from foreign countries, so someone had the excellent idea to found an international club. Once a month they offer a cooking class and supper for everyone who likes to participate (a different country and a different teacher every month; next Friday it's Bavarian cuisine) - those are highly popular with the natives and have lead to many very good friendships.
One of my graduate students was talking about doing that to pay off her student loans.
I thought that was insane, but who am I to judge?
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Amaris
Guest
I understand her need to pay off student debt loans, and I'm not one to judge either, but I just don't find the idea of charging money for human affection to be a comfortable one. Charging for what is essentially a hug? Eh, just doesn't work for me.
If I could make money out of cuddling people I would totally do it. Even though I would be secretly grossed out.
Just think who you have to cuddle though, and more importantly why they're paying for it
A
Amaris
Guest
I love hugs. I love cuddles. It's the paying for it part. Every aspect of humanity is being bought and sold like every other commodity. That is where it bothers me. It's one more extension of our capitalist nature. Someone says "I'm alone, tired, depressed, and could use a hug," and the response to it is "I could make money charging people for hugs."
People need to make a buck dude.
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Amaris
Guest
Until almost every facet of human interaction requires a surcharge?
No one said anything about "requires". You are free to cuddle your own friends, family and lovers without paying. But if someone finds a way to put food on the table that doesn't hurt anyone why would you look down on it?
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Amaris
Guest
Because I think it does hurt people. Offering something akin to simple human affection for a price, but without the emotion to support it. "Thank you, customer, here is your hug. Transaction complete."
I have a genuine problem with the peddling of false affection. It is a dissonant chord, and it strikes hard. There's enough false affection, false sympathy, false kindness, false cheerfulness, and false kindness to go around. Adding in one more false gesture just to make a buck, in a system that already has a million ways to make a buck, just strikes me as horrifying. Look at what we do to make a buck, all of the damage caused in the pursuit of making yet another buck. Making a buck is not a justification for all of these things.
So you are against sex work?
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Amaris
Guest
Against it personally? I wouldn't engage in it. Against it as policy? No. Just like this whole paying to be cuddled thing, they're free to do it, as far as I'm concerned. I can't stop them anyway. People want sex, people want hugs, I guess people will pay for them if they have to do so. I just hate that it's one more commodity, one more aspect of humanity that gets sold off piece by piece. If it helps you understand my perspective, I consider capitalism a disease. I consider it the source of a great many problems in the world, along with the pursuit of wealth. We have seen what avarice, what the hoarding of wealth has done to other human beings, to the planet. When we start involving key components of the human psyche into that morass of unbound greed, we're putting a price on every single person. We begin to judge what they're worth, not as human beings, but as price points, something to be bought and sold at the ebb and flow of the market.
Even that, however, doesn't account for my own personal feelings regarding the buying and selling of affection. I have a problem with it because I am overburdened with an abundance of empathy. It's not a blessing, it's a curse. It's why false emotions grate on me like they do. When someone's nice to me because they're paid to be nice to me, it bothers me. If I were to pay for sex, I probably wouldn't enjoy it. Sure, a primary component of sex is physical pleasure, but most of that pleasure starts in the brain. If I don't think someone actually wants to be with me for reasons other than money, nothing will come of it. It would be fingernails down a chalkboard for me. It would be the physical version of this:
So the problem on my end is two-fold, at first blush.
Well you come across very judgey. You don't see the fetish element that would be there for some and you don't seemingly see (and this is a common, if ironic problem with marxist spouting people) the actual worker for whom being paid to cuddle might be an excellent job. They might enjoy it, they might feel they are doing a service, they might be grateful they can do this in their time and be home for their kids, it might be a far less exhausting choice than working 40 hours a week in Walmart.
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Amaris
Guest
It is the transfer of false affection for a price. They're free to do it if they want, hence NOT Marxism because I'm not a Marxist, but I can personally be against it because of its fundamentally exploitative nature in the pursuit of yet one more dollar.
How is it false? No one is lying. The person paying for it knows this person doesn't personally love them, the person giving it knows they are doing so for the money. It's physically comforting or arousing for some people as an act in itself, bodies touching. You don't expect to be in a loving relationship with a person you go to for a massage but it will have a similar effect for many, physically feels good and relaxes you.
It's not false affection, it's just a different kind of physical experience. Saying it is fundamentally exploitative is incorrect and judgey of people who freely enter into the transaction.
It's not false affection, it's just a different kind of physical experience. Saying it is fundamentally exploitative is incorrect and judgey of people who freely enter into the transaction.
Funny how this thread has gone from "how to make friends" to "how to pay for intimacy."
No judgment, just an observation.
No judgment, just an observation.
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Amaris
Guest
Just because they enter into it freely doesn't mean it isn't exploitative. A drug dealer handing over a dimebag for free isn't doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. They have a goal, to create a need, or to exploit one that already exists, and to profit it on it. Why should a hug cost money?
Oh come on J surely you can't be this dense.
Someone working in the fetish community does not "have a goal to create a need" the need is already there. You say they are exploiting a need and they say they are fulfilling a need. Comparing sex workers to drug dealers is a shit thing to say. There are all different kinds of hugs, maybe you should compartmentalize a bit more. Have a look at that massage comparison. Obviously a massage you pay for will be different than a massage your lover gives you or a massage your best non-sexual friend gives you. The same thing for hugs or any other physical interaction between people. Just because you hold one kind in much higher esteem than other kinds doesn't mean those other kinds are exploitative.
Someone working in the fetish community does not "have a goal to create a need" the need is already there. You say they are exploiting a need and they say they are fulfilling a need. Comparing sex workers to drug dealers is a shit thing to say. There are all different kinds of hugs, maybe you should compartmentalize a bit more. Have a look at that massage comparison. Obviously a massage you pay for will be different than a massage your lover gives you or a massage your best non-sexual friend gives you. The same thing for hugs or any other physical interaction between people. Just because you hold one kind in much higher esteem than other kinds doesn't mean those other kinds are exploitative.
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