Objectivist “love”—ur doing it wrong.

Remember, lonely objectivist males, the next time you wonder if you’ll ever meet that special lady, re-read The Fountainhead. All you need to do is locate an attractive woman who thinks she’s too good for you (she’s secretly intimidated by your awesomeness!), then rape the shit out of her until she understands that you now own her, and that she should be damn grateful to have an awesome ubermensch like yourself as her lord and master. Even if she marries some other dude, she’ll know she’s actually your property.

Sorry :blush:

I’d just like to see the responses an ad like this would get, if any.

What I find interesting is that they didn’t note in the original article that absolutely all their sample set were men looking for women.

Can you imagine that.  *sigh*

Sounds like he’s gone all John Galt on the ladies and is going to withhold his fabulous love unless the system is dramatically changed to his liking.

Atlas Shagged is the greatest book, evar.

I love the last one.  “Finding someone is not a priority for me.”  That’s why I’m posting an ad on a dating site.

absolutely all their sample set were men looking for women.

There may be a reason for that if the ad posted is representative.

This one seems about perfect:

“I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking (but other fields are great too). Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.”

But how could that even be real?

Oh, my.

I especially like the one that has the full-on psychobabble stream, but still wasn’t able to resist leading off with his first priority: “a skinny woman.”

I have changed many girls’ lives…

By introducing them to the joys of restraining orders and pepperspray, no doubt. Is it just me, or does this ad sound like it was written by Tek Jensen. “Obviously I’ve had hundreds of girlfriends.”

Yes, he wants someone *deep*...as long as she’s beautiful, and skinny.

Do these children even proofread what they write?

“her writing is beautiful”

Gotta disagree with you there, INTPagan.   When I did my research, I was amazed at how schlocky and over-wrought her metaphors were.

These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.

I’ve read better erotic symbolism in a Poppy Z. Brite story.

Is it just me, or does this ad sound like it was written by Tek Jensen.

Or Zapp Brannigan.

“Sheesh”, I thought, “and psh! More Pandagon reporting on reporting.  Come, fair Fairfox, let us hie to yon Atlasphere.com and consult the source”

Oh, man.  I thought Objectivists didn’t believe in altruism, but this is the gift that keeps on giving.  Just the entry page alone:

“The Atlasphere is the electronic Atlantis. It’s a great way to find fellow Ayn Rand readers locally and around the world.”

Am I mistaken, or is this blurber confusing ATLANTIS with “an atlas”????  Or is this just a clever reference to BIOSHOCK?  (kudos to the latter!)

That was Rapture, not Atlantis, Eric.

If you drop an R, Andrew Ryan is an anagram for “Ew, Ayn Rand.”

“..I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.”

Sounds like every slacker who ever wanted to ‘start a band’ to me.

“I have changed many girls’ lives, but no one has blown me away yet.”

Give it time, dear. I’m sure that some special, shotgun-totin’ gal will, eventually, be happy to oblige.

“...all their sample set were men looking for women.”

Which just proves that every available “girl” in the world has “already been beaten down to a flimsy, irrational, empty pulp” incapable of understanding the greatness of delusional and self-important Randroid boys.

MP, well, yes, but it WAS a city under the sea!  It’s either kinda sorta somehow connected or this dope is ‘WAY better than I thought.  ::totters off::

Oh, and a ::high five:: for your stick rattling on their cage above. Superior snarking!

(Damn, the thought behind BIOSHOCK rocked!)

It’s not that Rand is a beautiful writer—there’s something very readable about her. You get ideas, you get to feel smaht, you get a narrative and there’s no wondering what the hell “inelectuable modality of the diaphny” is or means (though with Joyce you do get to look up skirts). She’s soothing. I meet a lot of women (I work at a bookstore in a Red Suburb of Colorado) buying Rand and wanting to talk about Rand. Rand seems to be the champion of the “undah-rekkanized Jeenuis. My time will come…just you wait.” They’re not dumb, mostly smart and accomplished from what I can glean. I wonder if smart, motivated women are more likely to see themselves in Galt.

Anyway, Rand is more dangerous because she’s so inviting. I think that is scarier than her ideas. (self deluded manipulation scares me more than out & out oppressive stupidity?) I keep trying to get them to read Gaddis’ “JR” as THE last word on capitalism and the role of the lone genius in society.

For comic geeks check out some of Steve Ditko’s Randian/objectivist comics. He helped create Spiderman and then moved to these crazy, boring tracts. Frank Miller is pretty well infected.

All you need to do is locate an attractive woman who thinks she’s too good for you (she’s secretly intimidated by your awesomeness!), then rape the shit out of her until she understands that you now own her, and that she should be damn grateful to have an awesome ubermensch like yourself as her lord and master.

Of course, you also have to look like Gary Cooper.

One of my favorite Bad Movies of all time.

Eric—if you’re interested, I did a review of Bioshock vis-a-vis Objectivism.

“I have changed many girls’ lives, but no one has blown me away yet.”

Give it time, dear. I’m sure that some special, shotgun-totin’ gal will, eventually, be happy to oblige.

Thank you, Sarah.  That was my laugh of the day.  Seriously, is the featured ad a parody?

I read all of Ayn Rand’s fiction, and I always thought that the lead female characters were characterized as thin so as to physically manifest their cold, ruthless efficiency. She was very much a product of her time and not a truly a revolutionary mind and as such her philosophy often contradicted her ideals.

I’d bet that if she herself were to contact some of these awesome Objectivist catches, they’d reject her. Rand herself was rather overweight - I’d bet none of these prizes would ever consider dating her.

“Women…women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake…but I do deny them my essence.”

INTPagan, Rand was a raging hypocrite, a selfish child who conveniently forgot her rationality and edicts when they didn’t serve her. On the Media did a great piece on her and Objectivism a few months back.

I think she rolled a high CHR but used INT as her dump stat. It’s why she has a cult and not a serious academic following.

lostpainting, Hagerstown, Maryland
Please note: If you’re overweight, I won’t date you. If you believe in God, I won’t date you. If you vote for Democrats, I won’t date you.

Really, Amanda, tsk, your fact checking needs some work.  (From the link above), this one COULD be a woman.

It isn’t, but it could have been.

+++++++++
Rand’s writing: while there’s too much of it, some of her descriptions are great.  The opening scene of “Atlas Shrugged”—man, I’d like to film that.  And the description of the locomotive ride is very lyrical.

50 page radio ‘speech’?  Not so much.

Finally, a site for our friend Propaganda Due.

Mighty:

Eric—if you’re interested, I did a review of Bioshock vis-a-vis Objectivism.

Bookmarked!  Here goes twenty minutes!  >8^)

LET us go then, you and I, 
When the babbling is sprayed out into the sky  
Like a meatbot lobotomised within an office; 
Let us go, through certain loony blogging, 
The relentless slogging
Of ranting posts in an alt.net Usenet group  
And Objectivist essays that eternally loop: 
“Logic” to follow in a tedious argument  
Of insidious intent  
To lead you to pointless questions
Oh, dare not ask, “What is it?” 
Let us go and make our visit. 

In my mind the women come and go  
Who the fuck is Michelangelo?

There’s nothing I can add to this thread - except bravo PiatoR.  I guess i’m not the only one who, while loving the lyricism of the original poem, finds it just a tad whiny.

Who is spanking John Galt’s monkey?

I am deeply grateful to have “meatbot” introduced into my vocabulary.

Sounds like he’s gone all John Galt on the ladies and is going to withhold his fabulous love unless the system is dramatically changed to his liking.

Humanity can only hope he does the same with his sperm.

Seriously, I wonder if any of them have ever had sex.

They’re Amanda’s Nice Guys™—for these nerds (nerds, not geeks), sex is part of a contractual obligation. Unfortunately for them, the attractive women they covet don’t understand the nature of the contract. Stupid wimminz—“hipsters with innies,” all of ‘em!

Mighty Ponygirl, EXCELLENT Bioshock/Objectivism review, I was very diverted!  The comments were ever so much fun too!

Yeah, it’s a year late, but two tweeks:
1)  I coulda sworn I harvested just one Little Sister (the first) and still got the Good Ending ( I couldn’t bear to do it again—well done, E2!).

2) It’s “martial” law.

BTW, the trailer for BIOSHOCK 2 is out on YouTube.

I love that photo. SO MUCH.

Please note: If you’re overweight, I won’t date you. If you believe in God, I won’t date you. If you vote for Democrats, I won’t date you. If you’re lucky, I won’t date you.

Fixed.

Thanks! :D The Bioshock 2 trailer is indeed awesome.

Randy Humor

http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/parody/index.html

The 25 Most Inappropriate Things An Objectivist Can Say During Sex
http://www.savethehumans.com/instantgrat/thelist/objectivist_sex/index.shtml

[ The Floating Head of Ayn Rand: A Timeline ]
http://www.saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/ayn_rand/

Of course MP adding S and C to Andrew Ryan gets you “Screw Ayn Rand”

I don’t really have anything to say about this article.  I’m just making this comment so I can post a link to this picture of Ayn Rand which I, for some reason, shooped one day when I was non compos mentis. 

Randites are funny.

“Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.”

“I want a woman who will give up her hopes, dreams, achievements, ambitions & identity for the opportunity to carry my noble seed.”

Atlasphere.com sounds like the waiting room for Crap Email from a Dude…

Wow Ponygirl, that review is really interesting. I don’t even like videogames, but now I want to check this out. Thanks.

I still think that her writing is beautiful, but it’s also morally horrifying - especially when considering the kind of people it attracts.

INTPagan on 11/25 at 03:51 PM

She is rather like Irvine Welsh that way!

Dang, you gotta join theatlasphere to read more. But they do claim to have “females.”

These guys make NiceGuys(TM) look smooth and reasonable. I would have guessed that the date-seekers had Asperger’s syndrome. Mensa attracts a certain number of self-absorbed geeks looking for women worthy of their seed, so this is another option.

A propos: Does anyone else watch The Big Bang Theory, on CBS Monday nights?

Mighty Ponygirl,  Randian “love” sounds suspiciously like the “Gorean” lifestyle:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/508733/the_gorean_lifestyle_a_womans_right.html?cat=47

I have a soft spot for Ayn Rand because the books came into my life when I really needed them - as a teenage girl. The lesson I took from them wasn’t that women were made to be subservient to the perfect male, or that we should all go around kicking poor people. Rather, the books taught me that my happiness shouldn’t be my last concern, and that being self-sacrificing for the sake of my (abusive) boyfriend wasn’t noble at all.

Then… I found the internet. I’m really embarrassed to tell people who much I like her books now.

If reading Ayn Rand helped someone other than a solipsistic teen male without social skills live within his shortcomings, bravo.

All that Rand’s books (AS in particular) taught me was that only capitalists could orgasm, and that true believers could sit through a 50 page radio address.

You have to read that thing in a pretend German accent.  Like the German guys who bought NBC on 30 Rock.

Sometimes I like to read ads on craigslist and translate the personal ads into what the author really means.

It’s not as fun when every single entry translates to “I am a rapist”

Though he wrote it on another subject, I think today’s observation by Roy at alicublog fits in perfectly here:

In that vast madhouse echoing with anguished howling that is the blogosphere, it doesn’t surprise me to find several of these every week, nor to find that they very often are made by privileged white guys who think their story needs no better claim on our attention than that they are telling it.

These guys make NiceGuys(TM) look smooth and reasonable. I would have guessed that the date-seekers had Asperger’s syndrome.

People with Aspergers want very much to succeed with other people, but just don’t have the ability.  Randroids seem to me like schizoids - they don’t care about succeeding with other people, because they don’t value other people in the first place.  One thing they both have in common is that they are far more common personalities in men than women.  (Again, I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.)

Objectivist = Schizotarian?

I used to read Atlas shrugged…. my copy has a paper clip that pins together the pages of ‘the speech’. Mentally I just substitute it with: inspirational words. Weird thing is, I don’t miss it. The book reads just as well without it.

Weird?  Of course it reads better—she just spent 47,392,732 words saying the same damn thing.  Twice.  The speech just stops everything.

I used to do radio: 1 minute was one triple spaced page of very large type.  Anyone ever TIMED how long that speech would actually take to deliver?

I have changed many girls’ lives, but no one has blown me away yet.

How did the word “away” slip in there?

Damnit, Sarcastro, ya beat me to it… 

I guess I was third in line behind Sarcastro and FlipYrWhig to make the “blow me <strike>away</strike>” crack. Sad face.

For being so sophisticated, they sure do call women “girls” a lot.

I have a female friend who is very sweet that likes Ayn Rand, a holdover from high school I guess. She posted on her Facebook that she was joining an Ayn Rand dating site, this one. Without even seeing this article I immediately reacted with horror. One of her friends posted a response along the lines of “Uh, I’m not sure about the kind of guys you’ll meet on an Ayn Rand dating site.” and another more succinctly said “U r the most retarded person I have ever known.”

Sarcastro is full of win, since s/he came at the “blow me away” line from such an ARTFUL angle.  Bravo/a!

Read Atlas Shrugged - I shrugged.
Read Anthem on a plane - and left it on the plane.
What swill.

Hector

Big Bang Theory is a fave for me - even though they are nerds extraordinaire (or actually because of it!) I was once a geeky grad student and a postdoc as well as inordinately in love with my own field of study. Monday’s was particularly hilarious for me as Sheldon tried to compare Penny’s behavior to primate behavior (yes, I am a geek).

For those who wonder how the ads from the distaff side read, Erica C. Barnett at slog.thestranger.com, posed as a Roark-type and became a member of theatlasphere. The women’s ads seem equally weird, but commenters suspect they are put-ons.

Can I just say—The muscles it takes to hold yourself up the way the two girls at the bottom of the pic are… Yeah. Ouch.

My first exposure to Objectivists came reading a newspaper put out by the campus club at university. I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever read, until I found out it wasn’t meant as satire.

I like Big Bang Theory also, although it would be better if Johnny Galecki (Leonard) learned a second facial expression besides “tilt head back and squint”.

I think that one thing people like about Rand, and this has been mentioned by drakk on this thread, is that Rand focusses on why selfishness is a good thing. She says that while selfishness is often viewed by people as a vice, the reality is that society depends on it. And she’s right as far as that goes.

The problem is that Rand took her idea and got completely fundamentalist about it. She concluded that we should worship assholes because they’re so full of selfishness, like walking Roman Catholic churches which contain the remains of a saint. She took Nietzsche’s ideas and made them even more grotesque, while also changing them a bit for popular consumption.

If you read Rand and were interested by her discussion of selfishness, while also being turned off by the adolescent, and even Schizoid character of her stories, then I’d like to suggest another writer. La Rochefoucauld was a Frenchman who finished his best work, the the “Maxims” in 1678. You can read it online too. He can be a little sexist, because he was writing in 1678, but overall he approaches the topic of selfishness in a way that is much more reasonable, honest, and human than Rand’s works.

Sorry, the “read it online” link should have been this.

Never read a word of Rand, but she seems to be the ultimate in ‘middlebrow’ writing & thinking, from all I’ve heard. And a Cold War relic. And a phase reasonable people get over after about age 16 or so.

File her under Stuff Like People Magazine And Ron Paul And Snickerdoodle Cookies That Actual White People Like But Not Those Educated Upscale Pseudo-Liberal Ones That It Is More Culturally Correct To Make Fun Of.

For being so sophisticated, they sure do call women “girls” a lot.

Whenever I use the word “gal”, I feel like a private eye from some b & w movie. Too old skool.

I never kiss a girl that doesn’t deserve mine

That is such a brilliant line.  It shows a level of narcissism that makes me laugh.  Although I have a feeling that the author could have written, “I have never kissed a girl.” 

I never read any of Rand’s books.  I recall glancing at one in a bookstore 35 years ago and laughing out loud at the description on the back of the book.

<blockquote.Although I have a feeling that the author could have written, “I have never kissed a girl.”</blockquote>

It is kind of a masterpiece of re-framing, isn’t it?

“You think I’m a geeky guy who can’t get laid? No, I just don’t want to give up my essence to an undeserving woman.”

D’oh, HTML!

People with Aspergers want very much to succeed with other people, but just don’t have the ability.  Randroids seem to me like schizoids - they don’t care about succeeding with other people, because they don’t value other people in the first place.  One thing they both have in common is that they are far more common personalities in men than women. 

You mean sociopaths.  Schitzophrenics want to succeed with people, but the voices keep telling them they’re evil.  And Randroids aren’t sociopaths.  They desperately want to impress other people, and don’t realize how moronic they come off - so they try even harder.  Aspergers all the way.

Whenever I use the word “gal”, I feel like a private eye from some b & w movie. Too old skool.

A true gentlemen addresses women as “dames.”

You mean sociopaths.  Schitzophrenics want to succeed with people, but the voices keep telling them they’re evil.  And Randroids aren’t sociopaths.

Please find and read a description of schizoid personality disorder.  Schizoids are NOT schizophrenics, though they apparently have an increased risk of it.  As far as I can tell from reading, they’re usually not sociopathic.  Musicians Kate Bush and David Byrne are two people I’ve long suspected of being schizoid, and to my knowledge neither is sociopathic.

Oh.  Never heard of schizoid personality disorder.  I will have to read up on it.

Many many years ago I was involved with a woman who was an ardent Randist - to her credit she never tried to push it on me. Still one day she discribed the whole John Galt thing of Atlas Shrugged and I quoted DeGaulle’s remark to the effect that the Graveyards are full of indenspesible men.  She didn’ t much like that. And we had a weird converstion reguarding the fountainhead - were I agrued what about the folks who built the damn thing, the guys who risked thier lives walking the high steel - you think would like their work blown up? she didn’t like that much either.
We didn’t last much longer.

Rand’s writing: while there’s too much of it, some of her descriptions are great.  The opening scene of “Atlas Shrugged”—man, I’d like to film that.  And the description of the locomotive ride is very lyrical.

If you like somewhat overwrought lyrical prose with what most people would regard as too many adjectives, I really can’t recommend Alfred Lord Dunsany enough. Plus there’s the advantage that he inspired virtually the entire fantasy genre, rather than a bunch of self-obsessed wankers.

My schitzophrenic brother is a big fan of Rand,Gavel Down. It reinforces his exaggerated sense of persecution, sense of women as possessing a single hive-mind, and his belief that he is the one true genius. He could have written most of these personals himself, but he at least has the excuse that he has a medical condition. Don’t know about the rest of these Ubermensch…

Big Bad Bald Bastard, you’re going to hell just for knowing about John Norman.

I think she rolled a high CHR but used INT as her dump stat. It’s why she has a cult and not a serious academic following.
Mighty Ponygirl

Marry me.
We’ll have beautiful character creation together.

Aspergers, schizoids, sociopaths—can’t an asshole be simply an asshole? You think if they were diagnosed with (whatever) they’d work on it and took their meds and got a therapist?

It’s really late, I’m really tired, but surely I am not the only one who read that to myself in the voice of Comic Book Guy.

Of course, if you’re into what is objectively beautiful, you’d have to be sure your own turn-ons are properly calibrated to the objectively beautiful. Why would a woman have to be skinny? Why be heterosexual at all, objectivist men? Maybe you’d like a nice man with the body of Howard Roark?