Brothers,

I commented on a post that has since been removed, but I realized my comment could stand on its own as a post. So here it is.

Context: Someone posted a rant on AFCs - you know the type, guys who protest that they are "great listeners" and why oh why aren't women interested in them - but more importantly, who show little promise for improvement.

That set me off, and I shared a few reflections on how my attitude as a teacher and as a man have changed toward people who show no signs of being motivated to make a difference in their own lives.

Your brother,

Kempff

‘But I’m a great listener!’

That is top-notch cringeworthiness.

Taking your post as a jumping-off point, I'd like to detour into a mini-rant on AFCs who come to the RP community and complain they just can't get laid.

Speaking as a teacher, although I cannot read minds, I have seen enough of life and people to make accurate, educated guesses about a student's disposition and future performance, sometimes just by the way he lumbers in the door on the first day of school. Making similar guesses about newbs to this community is no different. I can tell - and I assume you and many others among us can tell - within a few seconds if a guy is serious about embracing and practicing RP in his life, or if he is just lonely and wants our company.

Don't get me wrong, I have enough patience to keep some people company on the internet, but my patience wears thin pretty quickly with people who "just don't get it".

Again, don't get me wrong here. I have had students for whom college would have been - and ended up being - a slow-motion train wreck. In the last several years, for example, I have begun to tell parents, up-front, that their little prince should skip State U and just become a union electrician, or their little princess should forget about college applications and go straight to Community Tech, get her Associates in health care, and take it from there. There is no shame in blue-collar, except in the minds of uptight suburbanites. But I digress.

All teachers love go-getter, self-directed, excited students, whatever the subject. And there are ways to get through the 'tudes of the gangbanging homies (St Jaime Escalante pray for us). But an inert lump of a kid, who is always - always - dealing with outside issues that I cannot fix, if I didn't maintain professional emotional distance and outcome-independence, can bring down the most bubbly and feisty educators.

And then into this community comes your Average Frustrated Chump, begging us to review his endless screenshots of his endless stupid text conversations with girls on Tinsel or PlentyOfPoon, complaining that he is depressed or just not good looking enough or shy or some other excuse, and there is nothing I can say to him beyond Lift, Next, Read.

I hate to say it but I've thrown in the towel with guys like that. They simply don't "get it". Perpetual victims of circumstance, blaming anything and everything but themselves, waiting for self-improvement to happen to them instead of self-improving. And after meditating on how I would want better men to treat me, if I were in their position, I've decided that yes, I would want to be left behind, instead of coddled and milk-fed and caressed, because no change happens until I make it happen.

And on the day I have taken charge of my life and destiny, help will come out of the woodwork. IMO - and I don't mean to concern-troll here, but - that's the only kind of man this community has time for.