Blame IJJJJI...

For putting me on to mind maps.

In case anyone's wondering what the social theory I've been puttering with but not posting about concerns, this is an (admittedly cryptic) sneak peek at about 1/3 of it - what I've been thinking of as anhedonic drives. The interaction of stuff like language coding, cognitive dissonance, the documented correlation between well-being and sense of control, and where those all intersect with our perceptions of cause and effect. And what that means about the way we think, and the way we get to fucking.

Boxes are peer-reviewed psych articles, color-coded for conceptual overlap. If you ever wanted to see a Hitori idea in what basically amounts to its purest form, you're looking at it right here. Questions welcome, naturally. Still mulling over how best to structure an overall explanation.

(EDIT AGAIN: Fixed to include one source two sources I forgot)

To the Anonymous Poster Who Requested More Social Theory-

As near as I've been able to determine, the community isn't receptive to the most important analytical stuff I've done about social dynamics since my last monster post.

That said, I've considered writing one big synthesis post about all the stuff that the community did/could handle.

Slice of Life: Thresholds

"-- even that wasted I knew to not make out with him at all costs, though," I say. "So he cracked - this is weird - a lot of boys do this. If you dodge giving them a clear-cut yes or no signal for long enough, they crack - I think of it as cracking - and then they just end up telling you their problems."

He's laughing.

I say, "It's true! And weird. They're all -- 'Sex, sex!' and then suddenly it's like, 'I'm lonely.'"

He says, "Actually, girls do a kind of similar thing, but for girls it happens if you make out with them for too long without fingering them. It's some kind of threshold thing, and the time kinda varies, but it ends up like: get your hand in her panties within twenty minutes, or listen to her problems for two hours."

Slice of Life: The Craziest

Snippet from a recent four-hour catch-up call with one of my absolutely favoritest boys:

"Did I ever tell you about the first time I met HBHunter's family?" he asks me.

"No," I say. "Tell!"

"Well," he says, "she told me to come over, but I guess she hadn't told her parents I was coming or anything. So I arrive at the house and the first thing I see is -- outside in the front yard, hanging from a tree -- two deer carcasses that are being drained of blood."

"Oh, man!"

"So I head inside, and I've got the full multicolored mohawk and the studded jacket going on, and first thing I see when I get inside is that totally coincidentally her dad is sitting at the living room table and he's got his guns on the table and he is cleaning his four guns - two handguns, a rifle, and what he said was another handgun but I swear with the barrel on that thing it was like another rifle."

I'm like, "Oh God, that must have been a moment."

He goes, "So I go in the kitchen with her and her mom is there, and I gather she'd told her mom she met a cute boy with a mohawk at school, because her mom turns to look at me and the first thing that comes out of her mouth is: 'I told you not to bring him here.'"

And now I'm laughing. "Were you scared?"

"Well, I was trying to think about the situation from an objective perspective -- like, these people are probably reasonable and will probably not shoot me without first at least telling me to get off their property."

"Still!"

"If I'd thought about it more from the perspective of my personal reaction to the situation, it might have been different."

"You know," I say, "I use you as an example of a certain kind of guy."

He bites. "What kind?"

"Well, I think there's a certain kind of guy who's good with women, you know -- but doesn't really know why exactly or what he does, or think about it that much. So these guys end up with the girls who want it most, which is to say -- the craziest girl."

Now he's laughing. "Yeah," he says. "That's pretty much me."

"Your girl now sounds pretty sane, though."

"Oh no," he says, "she's batshit nuts. I'm totally infatuated with her, though."

Slice of Life: Yeah, Whatever

This is how I met my right-hand man: when I was sixteen, I met a boy who could read me better than anyone else I've met, before or since - better, in fact, than my immediate family. Well, I figured at the time, if he's going to read my fucking mind anyway, I might as well just tell him what I think.

Socially, you could imagine him as a guy with the eye of a master craftsman but whose only tools are - on the one hand - a wood chipper and - on the other - a sledgehammer.

"So I like this boy," I said to him today. "He's kind of... Open. I don't smell any calculation on him, and it kind of makes me let my guard down."

"Yeah?" He says.

"Yeah," I say. "I don't meet a lot of boys like that."

"I've never seen you let your guard down with a boy," he says.

I say, "--You haven't?"

He says, "I'm a man. I've been to war."

I say, "You know what I mean."

Slice of Life: Hypothetically Speaking

A very different boy, a very different day -

"A lot of girls say they're okay with you dating other people," he says, "but when it comes down to it they're really not."

"It's one of those situations where the proof is kind of in the pudding, I guess" - because I've already said my peace on that.

"If the pudding is pictures of you fucking other dudes," he says - and we haven't even met yet much less fooled around - "I don't want any."

I say, "I have a no-pictures, no-videos policy."

Him: "That's smart."

"You know why?"

"Why?"

"Well, every time I've ever heard naked pictures come up it was two guys kind of sitting around together and one turns to the other, like -- 'Hey... You wanna see my ex naked?'"

"I won't lie," he says, "I have some videos of my exes and when I've felt wronged, I was tempted. I didn't do it, but -- I was tempted. I like to know I could, though."

Me: "At least you didn't."

Him: "Well, I try to be ethical. Probably the most unethical thing I ever did was film this woman without her knowing -- I mean, knowing her, if I'd told her 'I'm filming this' she probably would have been like 'that's hot.' But I just left the camera running the first time, when I was pretty sure something was going to happen."

"What'd you do with the video?"

"I watched it, added like subtitles and stuff."

"What you actually said, or like jokes?"

"Funny stuff, then I deleted it."

"At that point, you might as well like... Get out Aftereffects and add lightsaber FX." We'd been talking Star Wars, earlier. "And noises."

"Haha, you'd know exactly where to put them, too."

"But yeah, that's why I don't do pictures -- or videos."

"But if you had exclusive control of the video and when it was shown," he says, "with the right guy, you might do it."

I say, "Maybe."

Slice of Life: Provisional non-hatred

I had him deleted from my phone for a month and a half before we cleared the air-

"Tell me you weren't avoiding me," I told him, "and I'm prepared to provisionally not-hate you"

So now he goes out of his way to show me I'm wanted. "We're thinking of coming down to visit," he says - meaning him and a friend I've never met who wants to try his luck with me - "but you're an hour and a half away."

"Well, you're welcome to drop by."

"You're an hour and a half away. "

"I wasn't even thinking about you. You called me. What are you, looking for me to try to bribe you?"

"What are you going to bribe me with?"

"I'll get you drunk," I say, because it's true. Would be true for anyone who stopped by at this point, with my freezer full of hard liquor. But facts are beside the point.

He says, "Let me call you back."