Writing blog posts with true Linux Thinkpad Chaddery. Trust me, the ladies love it ;)
24-09-17 I wrote this article following a rash decision to shave my hair including my beloved goatee. My university proffessors pointed out my baldness to the class, despite still calling me Thomas which is not my real name. I bald-ly replied 'this is my new start', here is the backstory:
To conform or not conform?
That is the question. The shortcut to social status in Korea is to execute monkey-see-monkey-do mentality. Clothes, apps, trends, mannerisms, generational psychological trauma. Recieve. Immitate. You'll fit right in! Bonus points for Korean ethinicity and underacting upon the will to outspokenness. Forget self-expression. Instead express the Korean NPC archetypical view, or risk suffering social suicide. Or as it is called 아싸 당하다. But seriously, why bother chasing an archetype to 'fit in' to Korean society? Koreans will say 한국 정서 is paramount. My western brain says FREEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDOOOOOMMM!
It all started in my first year of academia, I was an immature teen. Tall, lanky, long curtains, no beard. I wore a purple Bape T-shirt and my hobby was longboarding for crying out loud! Due to daily niche-internet consumption, my personality evolved. I became anti anything 'blue-pilled' or mainstream. Soon after, during my online self-help mega consumption period I decided that long hair is for soy boy chumps. I did as any impressionable young redpiller would do and shaved my head.The height of online TRP awareness reformed my lifestyle. I Started lifting which is awesome, started martial arts which is awesome, started getting less girls and devled into the realm of Linux configuration. Awe...som...e...
Writing blog posts with true Linux Thinkpad Chaddery. Trust me, the ladies love it ;)
Admittedly, the Linux stuff was outside the realm of TRP. Who needs modern dating ideology anyway? Woman are temporary but Linux is eternal! That all sounded fantastic until lonliness showed up at the door. That sucker knocks like a mothertrucker on a stick! Don't get me wrong, various internal factors changed in my life and the reasons for me not meeting woman are extensive. I stopped using dating apps, stopped acting like a player (ditched TRP) and became a virtuous individual. Not to say I play Mr.Niceguy™ but choosing a partner is the ultimate future-defining decision, so why elect anyone second rate? Any hole is NOT a goal. It's an absolute catastrophe. I know (of) childhood friends who had kids at 18. As a young man I couln't imagine the time investment let alone the financial. Monogamy is cool. Nearly as cool as Linux Evangelism.
Anywho...
Leaving TRP and embracing the streotypical Linux user worldview (conservative/tech independence), I started to value my own decisions. Non-conformity felt empowering. I sure as hell wasn't going to let Microsoft or Google have any control over my digital freedom! Linux allowed me to stick it to the man and was the best computing decision I have ever made (second to having no home internet). The internet blogs I consumed shaped my actions and thus my outer appearance to match my new identity. Last year I grew out a beard in an attempt to appear masculine/not-a-soy-boy and believed I was valuing my perception of myself over others perception of me
. I was experimenting being a streotypical anti-big tech non-conformist perhaps for superficial reasons. This time unlike TRP, my philosophical focus point was on resisting 'the system', not dating woman. Living life by my own rules, in a society jam-packed with social pressures.
Living here in Korea there is a simple equation for fitting in socially, especially regarding dating. Have long hair. Don't have either a beard or a shaved head. Wear only what is trending and behold, female attention! Why looking 'less masculine' attracts girls, the western mind cannot comprehend. I learnt this the hard way when a self proclaimed 'feminist-socialist' agreed that my shaved head makes me look manly, albeit far less attractive. I kindly held back my theory about feminism having the same effect. Not to dunk on Feminism but it is essentially TRP for women. See the 4B protests in Korea if you disagree.
All this higher order virtue non-fitting in was great, all until the root cause of my TRP fallout emerged again - a lack of true intamacy with women. Why can't I meet girls just by being my(non-needy)self? In life there are games and you have to play by the rules to win. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Still though. What da fuggg! I want to assert my male dominance!! I want to meet woman again, I don't want to conform into 'the social standard'.
It was at this moment I recieved a timely call from a friend of mine. (He also runs a kickarse blog which you can find here.) I'll refer to him as SJ for the sake of convinence. SJ calls me up and I swear to god when I looked in the mirror I saw Neo from the matrix. His case was that while you should stick to your values, most people conform to societal pressure out of weakness. According to SJ conformity has meaning if you view it as a sacrifice. In my case I didn't want to give up my sweet beard because I want girls to like me for me. In an ideal world I wouldn't have to. So I asked him 'Why should I value other peoples perceptions more than my own?' and he told me,I need to see conformity from a different lens.
The reason Koreans get all up in their group mentality and have an unspoken 'Korean way' is because of history. Japanese occupation of the peninsula & The Korean war created a generation raised psychologically f*cked up to say the least. Try not conforming when the Japaense soldier is threating to pull [*super graphic imagery*] in 1910 Korea. Being raised in a country burnt to a pulp, poorer than Afghanistan. Japan is great but it is difficult to fully love it after looking up unit 731. I'm convinced all these weeaboos skip over Japanese history. Perhaps they are secretly neo-nazis, which wouldn't be far off for the average chronically online incel Japanese learner. Chad Korean learners can't relate ;)
Fast forward to now, with individualism only being introduced after the Korean war, its only the younger generation who have the slightest hope of ideological change. Old people never change, period. Korean boomers love their dogmatic views on life. Because they carry the trauma of their parents, therefore the youth are taught to conform as the only means of survival.
SJ told me on the phone how "Koreans valuing family is so beautiful", that the level of sacrifice they have towards their culture is to be respected. My Anti-conformist westerner brain initially denied that idea. Why would Koreans want to conform?!! Why can't they just value their own lives?! But I was viewing it from a conform vs non conform frame. If you veiw it as a sacrifice it all starts to make sense. Thats when I put down my phone and thought about a recent conversation.
My Dominican friend Peter hates the group mentality thing just much as me. According to Peter, Korea wasn't always a conformist culture. Instead in recent years the younger generation got caught up in following trends. Cold hearted capitalistic competion ruled out a large majority of individuality and independent thinking. There is certainly truth in that. I see it at school all the time. People walk around in groups for multiple semesters. Introduce themselves in the same format, following the previous speaker to a T. Words such as 아싸(outsider) 인싸(insider) became standard daily vocabulary. Talk about progamming herd mentality, at least they're not on Kim ilsong II's level. He even got me buying his merchandise, check this out:
Peter is not wrong about the collectivist attitude but are the younger generation the problem? Perhaps 'Damn kids and their cell phones', is not a boomer conspiricy theory. Maybe social media has a bigger influence than we thought. Maybe its the chem-trails or that Korean airlines flight that went missing a couple years back that caused all this. Either way, the fact of the matter is conformity is everywhere. Wake up. Big Brother is watching.
Okay so how does this tie in to anything at all? I've been on a journey recently. I tried to purposely be a based Linux user who 'just doesn't give a f*ck'!!!! The problem is the guy who has an IDGAF T-shirt usually gives the most Fs. By no means am I going to comprimise my morals but the intention behind my every action counts. Why do I care that multiple Korean friends told me the reason I haven't had a girlfriend for a year is because of my beard and shaved head? Because I know they are right, but I hate the idea of conforming. Reframing it, I am scarificing a part of myself to find a woman.
For the record I am done with casual relationships because they are never truly casual. Also delayed gratification is where its at. If I am to find a woman, she will be a life long partner. I have no intention of sleeping around nor comprimising a monogamous relationship.
If that is the case, do I have to play the game of fitting in for the social benefits? What's the point of being a based hyper-masculine Linux user if you are going to die alone? Of course I do not 'need' another half to fufill me. However, I do want a family one day and I want to make my wife the greatest choice I make. If I changed my looks, how much of my identity am I sacrificing? Will that sacrfice be as meaningful as SJ says? Or am I better off sticking it outand ignoring the voice of social stigma?
My thoughts as of now are I am going to experiment with being conformist in my looks. Adopting the Korean mentality that greets my everyday. I will only go as far as hairstyle and fashion. No way am I touching makeup. Sorry but straight guys should not have to be putting on makeup to get girls. I don't care if its 'acceptable in Korea'. Who are the men anyway? Those concerned with beauty or those concered with survival and war? To win in this battle (finding a wife) I may have to sacrifice a small part of my ideals concering my exterior. But god willing I will never back down in telling the truth, standing up for what I believe in and doing what is right in the most dire moments.
I hope my efforts to be sought after by the opposite sex are well recieved so I can be over with dating and focus on my mission. I try not to operate from a place of neediness. 'Fitting in' is an experiment to increase my dating prospects. I know deep down I do not HAVE to conform to the Korean lookism. I can still find love taking the long hard road. But when many people give you the same advice, I think it is worth listening. I am polarising enough being a 6ft 4 white guy, having a shaved head and beard is like optimising for a 0.1% subset of woman. Why climb Kilamanjaro bare knuckle when you can do it with mountaineering gear and have a suitable challenge? Bare knucle sounds like it might be more meaningful but is it worth the pain? In the same way, looking how I want to look for myself might not be worth the pain of low female attention/no wife. A small change in hairstyle and fashion might enable me to meet the greatest lover of my life. It seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. Its either the Korean culture has finnally gotten to my head or my friends are right and I don't have to be so stuck in my counter-culture frame of mind. Redpill Bluepill. I hope I'm taking Red.
Hey! You! Reader with amazing taste in writing check out my other stuff here. Thanks for reading the blog, be sure to share it with a friend and have a blessed day.P.S This post was all over the place and I wrote about conformity from a dating/societal beauty standards perspective. I still think its lame to conform to ideas without thinking about it, this post is documenting my 'thinking about it'.