I mean, I think the problem you are talking about is actually a solution. You ditched a bunch of people who were your “friends”, but who didn’t actually care about you. Good! That’s what you should do! Building a good social circle isn’t about being friends with literally everyone, and it isn’t about staying friends with people who don’t value you - it is about finding the people who value you for who you are, and who actually give a shit about you.

Your abusive upbringing, your experience having bad friends - I don’t wanna say that shit doesn’t suck. But my advice here is to look for the lesson that you can learn. I’m not religious, and “everything happens for a reason” doesn’t resonate for me - but I do believe that in every painful human experience, there is an opportunity for growth and learning if you look for it. So with your shitty friends, you learned something about how you don’t like to be treated. You learned about some personal standards you will hold future friends to. Same with every other time you got taken advantage of - you learned what shitty people do, how they manipulate you, what warning signs to look out for. Every time you have a shit experience, you learn more and more about how to identify the assholes so you can filter them out of your life quickly and efficiently.

The fact that you are comfortable doing things solo is great. Being able to feel good and get shit done on your own is a foundation of living well. But at the same time, I wouldn’t use it as an excuse to retreat from social life. However far you can go solo, whatever you can accomplish, however good you can feel, I guarantee that you’ll be able to go farther and get there faster, with less effort, with friends - good friends.

I am trying to rebuild my life, and part of it has to involve (early on… as early as possible actually) to get a girlfriend.

This is an awesome goal, and I 100% support you. However, I recommend you reframe this to “I want to rebuild my life, and part of it is becoming the type of man who is confident in his ability to get a girlfriend.” Because when your goal is just “get a girlfriend”, you can end up with someone who isn’t a good match for you just because that was your goal. And if you don’t feel confident that you can get another girlfriend, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking “well, she’s good enough, it’s not like I could do any better” or “I don’t like it when she does that, but I better not say anything or she’ll leave.”

I always keep a small circle of friends when I do have them and I would rather keep it that way. I am picky about that for a reason.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with having a small circle of close friends. I’m not recommending, like, trying to get 100k followers on IG and calling them all friends or some shit. But the “when I do have them” part is concerning. If you only have 3 people you consider friends, but none of them are that close and you periodically lose them, then you have a very shaky social support system. What you should aim for is having a small circle of really close, really supportive friends who you are fairly certain will not ditch you. But no one just shows up in your life and immediately becomes a close confidant - you meet acquaintances, then those acquaintances become loose friends, then regular friends, then close friends. At each stage, most people in each level will not make it to the next level for whatever reason. Meanwhile, your small circle of close friends will often shrink for one reason or another - hopefully for good reasons, like a friend getting their dream job on the other side of the country. But that means in order to maintain your strong social support system, you need to always be feeding your friendship pipeline. If this sounds Machiavellian, I can assure you that in practice, it isn’t. It just looks like doing things like what you are already doing, like going to meetups, meeting new people, spending more time with people you like, not spending time with those you don’t, and becoming comfortable opening up emotionally to the people you like the most.

I want to convey that, no I will not be using her as an emotional dumping ground. That’s just not style. It never was.

I will say that if you have never used a girlfriend as an emotional dumpster, then you probably will soon. It’s kind of just an inevitable part of the process of becoming a more dateable man. You have a bunch of pent up shit, and then you end up finally feeling close enough to someone to open up, and then it ALL comes out. Therapy can be helpful, but isn’t really the same as dumping all your shit on someone you know. I’ll also say that if you aren’t talking to people in your life about your worst shit, you aren’t really making the progress towards emotional openness that you need to form good relationships long term. Your eventual goal should be to have a solid group of friends you can talk about your deep shit with, plus a therapist, plus a girlfriend. That’s called redundancy.

On the topic of NG/CA, I think your concerns and experiences are 100% valid. Like I said, I think it is pushed way to hard as “the way to meet girls”, when actual success rates are rock bottom. I think you are holding on to some limiting beliefs on this front, but at the same time, I don’t think they are worth addressing at the moment. You’d do much better focusing on SC and OLD. If you wanna try to pick up girls in the club - at any age - I think it is possible and I think you have a shot if you put the work in. But it’s inefficient and there are easier ways to meet girls that won’t fuck up your circadian rhythm. It sounds like you don’t wanna do that, so good! Don’t do that. Same with CA.

Also, you hit the nail on the head with how dating advice is doled out. It is at once extremely generalizable and extremely specific to the individual.

On the other hand, you say you lack a good social circle, and in my opinion, that will be a big hurdle you will have trouble avoiding. I would like to gently recommend that you consider that you might not be as introverted as you think you are, but that you feel introverted because of your social anxiety. That your social battery doesn’t run low just because that is the way you are, but because it is draining to feel anxious and to hide yourself and to feel like you will be judged and rejected in social situations. This isn’t to say that you need to spend every minute of every day out meeting with people - but you seem you almost seem committed to not being social. And the reality is… women want to date guys who have friends. They want to date guys who have a good social support system outside of them, so they don’t become the guy’s emotional dumping ground. The friends you have and your ability to make new friends has a huge impact on where you will be able to go in life, your success in your career, your ability to take care of yourself, etc. Humans are social animals, and not being social at all is going to be a big red flag to a lot of women.

I 100% support you seeing a sex therapist. Professionals exist for a reason. I wouldn’t depend on your therapist to solve all your problems - you have to be the captain of your own ship - but therapy definitely sounds like a piece of the puzzle for you.

As far as the 15 years spent on lifestyle - I think you can do it faster. What those years were spent on were overcoming social anxiety, building a community of supportive friends, establishing habits around diet and exercise, getting my career to the place where I didn’t hate my job, finding hobbies I enjoyed and getting good at them, and then also a lot of pointless floundering. I got myself from being completely isolated, hopeless, and depressed, to being hopeful and somewhat happy, with communities based around things that I found personally meaningful. Ie, I created a life that some women would find interesting and want to be part of. So when I actually buckled down and made a tinder profile, I was already pretty fit and had cool hobbies to show off and a good lifestyle to talk about.

I’ll dm you the tinder guide.

I think you do kind of need to get over resistance to engaging with some PUA material. The reality is, male sexuality is demonized in mainstream society, and so any frank discussion of how to improve your dating life as a man gets pushed underground. It’s like buying drugs - there are lots of people in the drug world who are honest and reasonable, and just want to help others have a good time and make some money. But because their product is illegal, they are always going to be mixed in with seedy crooks. So try to think of “PUA” stuff as more of an ecosystem than a monolith. There are some people giving really terrible advice. Some people who have some good tips mixed in with their toxic bullshit. And a few people, often hidden, who have a lot of really good, solid advice that can help you.

Manson was a PUA. He blogged for several years about men’s dating advice, refining his ideas until he published Models. The latest edition is the most polished, and gives an excellent and fairly obvious framework for becoming a more datable person. If you read the forward to this edition, it is fairly obvious that his ideas evolved somewhat between the first edition and the second. The impression I get is that he wanted to rewrite several parts to emphasize the idea that becoming more dateable is about becoming more emotionally open and becoming a better person. But also the impression I get is that he simply removed some of his more controversial statements and coded others, because he was trying to sanitize his past for his move into mainstream writing for the upcoming publication of his next book. If you are hesitant to engage with his content because of his PUA history, I recommend reading a book called “Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser”, which was written by a female feminist, kink-friendly, rationalist-adjacent blogger. Her blog and the comments on it were also a very good read on the intersection between kink, feminism, and pickup - but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and it looks like it was taken down from the wayback machine.

Anyway - you should read Models. Manson is a smart guy, and the title is a clever joke. It is meant to draw in the typical guy who would normally take PUA advice - the kind of guy who wants to fuck models - but then the book quickly explains what the title actually means. It is about creating mental models of what it means to be an appealing and dateable man. The book is, in large part, a response to the toxic pickup culture that Manson was a part of, and his attempt to create an alternative that is less toxic.

Tinder can be frustrating because you put in all your effort up front. Being successful on Tinder is all about having good pictures, and it can be a lot of time and effort to get good pictures. Like I said, my success on Tinder was a few months of direct effort, but 15 years of indirect effort. The indirect effort was all about cultivating a good lifestyle where I was physically healthy, had overcome some of my social insecurities, and was doing cool things I actually cared about. The direct effort was getting a haircut, putting on some nicer clothes, and shooting photos where I looked like a cool, confident dude who would be a good fuck. I can send you the guide I followed. Again, the author had a history in the PUA/red pill space, but has since renounced most of that.

So, there are 4 major arenas of dating that we talk about in men’s dating advice. Daygame/cold approach, night game, online, and social circle.

In my opinion, the PUA advice emphasizes CA and NG too much, when most guys have the most success in OLD and SC. I think this is because CA and NG are harder, and so guys like to talk about how successful they are at them to prove what hot stuff they are. If you don’t have much experience, you should make things as easy as possible so you can get experience.

In OLD, you know that every girl you message or swipe on is looking to date - that’s why they are there - so you are absolved of any feeling that asking a girl out or flirting would be inappropriate. If you get a rejection - even a harsh rejection - it is usually just through text so it stings less. And if you have a good profile, it is easy to set up multiple dates each week, so you can get a ton of experience really quickly.

Social circle is where you meet girls via mutual friends or in clubs or hobbies. In social circle, you benefit a lot from already being a known entity - a girl you meet already knows other people trust you, so she is more likely to trust you, and therefore be open to your advances. Plus, you tend to be more confident around your friends, or while you are doing something you enjoy and are good at - and confidence is sexy.

DG/CA and NG have their place, imo. First, they are good if you just want to make a hobby of chasing girls. If you just find you really enjoy walking up to strangers and introducing yourself, then go ahead and do it. Also, if you really want to date/have sex with the hottest, coolest women, then you will need to do pursue these avenues. First of all, because these women already have tons of suitors online and very booked out social lives, so if you don’t introduce yourself when you randomly see them you will never get the chance otherwise. And second, because walking up to a stranger and straight up asking if they are interested in you takes some balls, ie, confidence. And, again, confidence is attractive. Getting good at these avenues can also be good because then you are open to opportunities which arise even if you don’t specifically spend time pursuing them. For example, if you are spending time in a nightclub or a coffee shop just as part of your day to day life, and then you see a cute girl you are interested in, having DG/NG skills lets you confidently make a move on her rather than nervously glancing at her until you or she leaves and you think of what could have been. But finally, really the most important reason for most guys to do CA/NG is simply to overcome social anxiety and gain confidence - but this is for guys who are somewhat experienced already, who want to take their dating to the next level.

In general, I would recommend not talking about your dating life at work, at least until you are more experienced. It can be dangerous for your employment status, as you already know. Keep your conversations about dating to close friends who you can trust.

Well, I gotta say, that was a wild ride.

Personally, I grew up emotionally disconnected, unsupported, socially isolated, and bullied. Like, kids at school making fun of me for wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed, because my parents either didn’t notice or didn’t care. I ended up depressed, socially anxious, and socially stunted as a result. For years as a kid, I prayed for the day that I would have the courage to pick the lock on my dad’s gun and blow my own brains out.

Luckily, I moved out of my folks house at 18 to go to college, and have barely been back since. I avoid spending time with my parents as much as possible, since I seem to have pavlovian conditioning such that being around them triggers my depression, and leads to excessive alcohol consumption.

After agonizing about it for years, I finally lost my virginity at 23. After that, I failed to sleep with another girl for years. At 29, I panicked, said FUCK THIS!! and decided to do whatever it took. So I found a paint-by-numbers guide to getting laid on Tinder on the internet, followed it to the T, and managed to actually start sleeping with women.

I’ll say, the experience made me happier and changed my life for the better. It made me a better person. But at the same time, it didn’t solve all my problems. And also, the couple months of effort that I put in at 29 was really just the culmination of work I’d been putting into myself and my life since I was 13. I still have some heavy emotional problems I’m dealing with - but feeling sexually desireable isn’t one of them anymore, and I’m grateful for that.

To me, it sounds like you’ve been through the shit, and you are taking the right steps. You’re cutting out people who make you miserable - that’s excellent. You are going out to meetups and meeting people. Awesome. You are going to therapy - that is fucking amazing. Seriously, the fact that you’ve been knocked down so many times and are still getting back up is something to be proud of.

Our culture is really weird about sex and dating, so it is really hard to find good advice. I think my best advice is to focus on improving yourself to be more datable for a while (like, yeah, it’s okay to want more people to be into you!), and then to take a break and focus on other things, before coming back to it. You get better at things when you focus on them. But you also need to relax and be happy and not be one dimensional. So alternate back and forth, hopefully without burning out.

I recommend you spend as much time as possible meeting new people and cultivating friendships. Dating and improving yourself is so much easier when you have a deep and wide network of friends to lean on.

For a macro view of how to become a more datable man, I recommend the book Models by Mark Manson. It boils down to “don’t be needy”. If you want to know how to not be needy, you might have heard of the next book he wrote to answer that question - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

If you have problems moving things forward with women - anything from introducing yourself to asking them on a date to getting them into bed - the best advice I ever heard is “stop trying to be smooth.” You are autistic. This is actually a superpower in dating, because you will have a hard time sending and receiving the subconscious, unspoken cues most people give each other. Instead, you use your autism to be direct - tell girls exactly what you are thinking and exactly what you want. Ask them what they are thinking and what they want when you are uncertain. Just be autistically honest. As long as you are honest and respectful, just say anything that pops into your head. “Hey, I saw you over here and thought you were really pretty. What’s up? I’m John.” “I’m glad you agreed to go on this date with me, but I have to say, I’m kinda nervous.” “You have a beautiful smile and it makes me want to kiss you.” “I’m having a good time with you tonight. Do you wanna go back to my place?” “You seem nervous. Are you okay?”

At the same time, learning to flirt and communicate effectively is a process that doesn’t happen overnight. To learn how to flirt, I recommend a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis”. Read it, and everywhere it says “Tennis” just replaced that with “flirting”.

This isn’t about people who go out and get hammered 6 nights per week. It’s about normal people doing a very normal thing - grabbing a beer at a bar, or sharing a joint on the back porch, or hell, making out with a stranger at a rave while you are both high on molly. These are normal, run of the mill dates and encounters that normal, responsible adults have all the time.

If you don’t drink, that’s fine. If going on a first date at a bar makes you uncomfortable, that’s also fine. If someone asking you out on a date to a bar causes you to not want to interact with that person even further, once again, totally fine. But if you think it is creepy for normal, average, responsible adults to meet up and grab a beer and maybe make out, then you are bonkers.

Okay, you are seriously terminally online. “Let’s grab a drink” is a classic first date. I can go to literally dozens of bars tonight and see tons of people out on first dates over a reasonable amount of alcohol. Like, Jesus fucking Christ you’re off the deep end if you think this constitutes creepy behavior.

Sorry, I should have also added: don’t be autistic.

Yeah, have other conversations. Meet people. Have a good time at a party. And then when you see someone hot, say hi and flirt with them, and then go by vibe and see if they wanna jump in the sack with you.

You said “no alcohol or drugs”. You’re aware that a shit ton of relationships start in bars, clubs, house parties, music festivals, etc? You just explicitly excluded one of the most common scenarios where people do their mating dances.

I’m ethically non-monogamous and am currently sleeping with multiple different women with their very enthusiastic consent. The fact that I understand and can speak frankly and honestly about my sexuality - as well as anything else on my mind - is a turn on for them because it means that they can understand how I’m feeling and appreciate that I am relating to them authentically.

They don’t feel dehumanized by the fact that I think they are hot. They feel sexy and appreciated. And they understand that having sexual urges towards someone doesn’t mean they can’t also be human. Really, being sexually attracted to others and wanting others to be sexually attracted to you is one of the fundamental experiences of being human.

There is a stereotypical male sexuality which is based primarily around physical appearance. And there is a stereotypical female sexuality based around personality. These are not strictly limited to one gender or another, but the stereotypes exist for a reason - because the correspond with broad demographic trends. I have a stereotypically male sexuality. I understand and accept that the women I sleep with have a different sexuality in some ways. So I try to understand what they want, and give it to them, because I like seeing them happy. And they try to understand what I want and give it to me, because they like seeing me happy. We are different in some ways and similar in others, and that’s part of what makes spending time with each other fun. So no, I’m not going to apologize or feel bad about my sexuality.

I don’t think of women as objects to fuck, because the feeling of horniness is an emotion which emerges before rational thought. Rational thought is plastered over our emotions post-hoc. That’s how the brain works.

And what I described is how my sexuality works. If that offends you, well… That’s your problem. I’m not going to apologize for something I didn’t choose and can’t change. And if we’re going to have a discussion about how dating works, then I’m not going to lie.

No, you aren’t pretty normal to think of everyone as “someone to fuck”

Then why do all dating sites put pictures front and center?

and instead of saying “hey want to throw hoops together” to a woman too, you would say “want to fuck”. That’s asocial behavior.

Asocial is when you don’t socialize. Asocial behavior would be not talking to anyone. What you are thinking of is antisocial behavior - behavior which violates social norms. And that’s my point. There are social norms around asking women to have sex which don’t exist around basketball or asking men to have sex, because men and women are different.

And no, it doesn’t matter that women and men have differences.

So you would tell a man to make a dick pic his lead photo on Tinder? Because that’s what they do on Grindr.

So yeah, drop this toxic line of thinking first.

Toxic thinking is denying reality and trying to invalidate someone else’s sexuality because it contradicts your political views.

She wanted him to.

Gotta say, this looks like a recipe for hamstringing yourself. Be confident. Be respectful. Accept that you’ll get rejected, sometimes harshly, and that you just have to get back out and try again.

Like, seriously, you shouldnt introduce yourself to a woman at a party who is having a drink? I know we’re on Lemmy, but that’s still a pretty autistic take on human social interactions.

Here is the hard truth to understand. You have phobias. Phobias are, by definition, debilitating - they are a maladaptive mental response which makes it difficult or impossible for you to live a normal life and function as normal people function.

Let’s say a woman goes on a dating app made by a wizard. On this dating app, she can choose to match with one of two identical guys - they are equally handsome, charming, and intelligent, and she knows this with complete certainty. Because wizard. The only difference is that one guy is missing all his arms and legs, and the other has fully functioning arms and legs. Who do you think she is going to pick? What if one guy has a crippling gambling addiction and the other doesn’t? What if one has intermittent bouts of schizophrenia and the other doesn’t? And what if one has agoraphobia and enochlophobia and the other doesn’t? Because this is essentially the choice women are faced with every day - they can open a dating app and swipe through guys, swiping left on guys with any obvious shortcomings while being quite certain that they will not run out of options for guys without these obvious issues who will match with them. Their problem is sorting through average guys to find an awesome guy while also not getting kidnapped and sold into the sex trade. Your problem is that your phobias make you a below average guy who is not even on the table for consideration.

Even women who are agoraphobic or enochlophobic will be largely uninterested in you, because there are plenty of guys who do not have those problems who are willing to say “don’t worry babe, I’ll go get the groceries if the store is too crowded right now.” Women like tall men with strong jawlines, but more than that they care about personality. Confidence. Social acuity. Leadership ability. You know what’s really fucking hot? The guy who organizes pickup frisbee in the park. The guy who starts dancing at the concert before everyone else, and gets everyone else dancing, too. The guy who comes up and introduces himself at a party like he’s someone worth knowing. Your problem isn’t that you can’t introduce yourself confidently yet - your problem is that you aren’t even at the party!

Dating is a numbers game. And you might, by sheer chance, find someone who is interested in you. But it’s a slim chance - made slimmer by the fact that you actively avoid the best opportunities to meet a lot of people, ie, out in public where there are… a lot of people. There is no place you can go with a high concentration of women who are interested in people with your specific mental disabilities. The only good advice for you is to become a more appealing man. The only way to get better at the numbers game is to play more times or improve your odds. Self improvement improves your odds. Meeting more women means more chances to play.

So. Unequivocally. Your top, most important, number one priority for your dating life should be overcoming your phobias. Period. I am being blunt with you because you seem to have missed the point the other comments made. Phobias respond well to therapeutic treatments that we have. Go to therapy. Put the work in. If you run into other problems along the way, figure them out. Get to the point where you can live a normal life, have a few hobbies that you regularly participate in outside the house, and have a solid group of friends who you hang out with in real life. Then you are at the starting line for finding someone to date.

The best advice is “women are people too, not some mystical being from outer space”. They feel the same emotions, they get hungry, they get horny, they get anxious or shy too."

Honestly, this is terrible advice for guys who are having trouble with women.

I only have real experience being me, and interacting with other people, for knowledge of what “people” are.

Let’s say I’m in the park shooting hoops alone. I see someone else walking around in the park, not looking busy or in a hurry. I could wave at them and say “hey, wanna shoot some hoops?”

When I see a woman I’m attracted to, I want to fuck her. Personality, interests, etc - those are all nice and all. Those are things that make me want to hang out with a girl, spend time with her, talk to her. But if she has big tits and a thin waist, my penis says “hey, we should fuck her”, and say “what a great idea, Penis!”

So based on my own personal internal experience of being human, my experience interacting with other humans in other contexts, and your advice that “women are just people” - what I should do is see a woman in the park, wave at her, and say “hey, wanna fuck?”

However, based on every other piece of information I have about how to interact with women, I am led to believe that I should not do this. So if women are just people, but I shouldn’t interact with them in a way which is very understandable to me, then that must mean that I am not a normal person. That there is something wrong with me.

Now, based on the fact that I’ve already written this much, and the sheer fact that I’m here on Lemmy, this is probably a valid assumption. But sexually, it is not. Sexually, I’m a pretty normal guy. Guys are mostly aroused by people’s physical forms and want sex immediately, with emotional connection being lower on the list of immediate priorities. This is very obvious if you simply look at a gay man’s Grindr, where many men set a picture of their asshole as their leading profile pic and allow other users to see their location down to the meter so they can fuck Right. Now.

The reality is, men and women are different. At this point the gender studies crowd usually jumps in and says something about “gender essentialism”, or about how “everyone is different.” Great, everyone is different. But there are some broad trends we can observe, and for the purposes of heteronormative dating, we can fairly easily divide the world into men, women, and other, where “other” are largely irrelevant to the discussion since - if we are giving advice to heterosexual men - either you don’t want to fuck them, or they don’t want to fuck you. So we talk about men and women, and how you as a man should interact with women so that they will want to fuck you.

In order for a guy to improve at being fuckable, he needs to understand that women are different than him. That they want and expect different things. And this is fine. Yeah, women are people. But they are also women, and if you want to date women, you need to treat women like women like to be treated when they date someone.

I’m sorry you had that experience. I had a similar, but different, experience. You keep referring to “they” who were giving you advice - who were these people and where did you meet them? It seems like this was a consistent group?

I eventually found some good advice, which boils down to:

1. Be honest. Be honest with people about who you are and what you are interested in. Some people might not like what you are offering. Some might even be offended. But this is all fine, as long as you are honest and respectful and talk to each woman with the assumption that the two of you are on the same team of figuring out if you are interested in each other.

2. Improve yourself. For most guys with dating issues, this includes things like going to therapy, building a healthy social life, being physically healthy, and generally being a happy person.

3. Talk to lots of women. People are different and want different things. In order to find the women who want what you have to offer, who are themselves offering what you want yourself, you need to talk to a lot of women.

Improving at these things is best accomplished from a place of a positive mindset, good mental health, and with a strong support system.

Like what exactly?

Because trashy people never saw Austin Powers and updated their use of quotation marks to denote sarcasm.

Quotation marks were historically used to add emphasis to text, the way asterisks are used today. Old people who refuse to change and don’t realize their way of writing is actively making fun of themselves still use them this way. These are also the people who watch Fox.

It’s a tragicomedy. The joke is that love is stupid.

I mean, there are plenty of boomers who also didn’t save for retirement. It’s not like this is a kids-these-days thing.

Some of my friends, I assume, are not saving for retirement. I don’t know what they plan on doing. Others I assume are sensible enough to contribute maximally to their retirement plans while they are working, so they’ll have some healthy funds to live on later. I, personally, always maxed out my 401k and IRA before I put any money in my other funds. And I bought 2 houses which I run as investment properties. Frugality can get you a long way.

I’m not gonna say defrauding a health insurance company is a bad thing.

One friend who has kids is a teacher. His ex was a school administrator. Now that they are divorced, he’ll take the kids for one month in the summer, and she’ll take them for the other.

Another is currently working on outfitting his camper van to be family-ready, plus building out a trailer to function as a home office. He works as a therapist while his wife works remotely for a nonprofit.

Another friend just had a daughter out of wedlock irresponsibly young, and now just does odd jobs under the table in his 40s when he wants money.

Friends with home bases do a number of things. Some rent them out - this is easier if you hire a management company or have someone nearby to help out if things go wrong. Some actually do make enough money to just leave them sitting there for a while. One friend has a “home base” that is literally his friends well water pump shed. A few friends have raw land that they park their vans on, which they are constructing more permanent homes on at their own schedule.

Passive income streams for everyone I know of are landlording or index funds. This is what I personally do. I have two properties - one is a big house in the city where I rent by the room. The other is a mountain cabin vacation rental. I do pretty much all the maintenance and management of these places myself. Just today I was pulling weeds in the gravel driveway, and the next time I have a gap in guests I’ll be restocking the soap and coffee and TP at the cabin. This summer I’ll be getting dirty and sweaty doing fire mitigation and landscaping. You can say it’s a grift, but all I see is that I’m offering affordable rent to people who recently moved to my city, often giving them a community in the process; and then helping families enjoy the beautiful mountains when they have a week or a weekend of vacation off. Of course, I am profiting simply from the fact that I bought the land at a particular time - for more on that, I’d recommend reading about Georgism, the most fair and efficient taxation scheme you’ve never heard of. But at the end of the day, the system is what it is, and I’m unlikely to change it. So why leave the opportunities around me just sitting there (where someone else will scoop them up anyway) out of some kind of impotent moral outrage?