James White

I'd rather eat a knuckle sandwich than get married.

And I'm vegetarian, so that's saying even more than it usually would.

On 3/15/2018 at 1:02 AM, Apathetic Echidna said:

2nd reaction: lol aromatic

I'm in Organic chemistry right now, and we're covering aromatic stabilization. I keep jumping when I hear the word.

Concrete gender roles

I really dig Northern California

WMILI

Banned because monotremes (such as echidnas) are too weird for me to comfortably consider them to be mammals, even though I know they technically still are because of their mammary glands.

I'd rather study abroad in Australia than get married. 

Oh wait... 

It'S HapPenInG

I meant washing dishes LOL

On 12/4/2017 at 12:51 AM, ladyasym said:

I would rather hike a long trail and live in the dirt for 6+ months than get married. 

If I prepared for that, I might actually enjoy such an ordeal. It's a thing people do for fun. I could go walk the Appalachian (pronounced APP-uh-LATCH-un)  trail, looking at birds and salamanders the whole way. That would be awesome. Maybe not the dirt part though. Eh. There's clean streams and rivers up there, so washing is easy.

LOL I'm not sure where the boundary between romance and sex actually is. If I did, maybe I wouldn't find myself entirely confused whenever I'm attracted to someone. 

I only know I've crossed the r/s boundary when it happens, but that act sets off my romance-repulsion. So I leave. Too quickly to take time and identify what just happened.

what is going on in my life; please send help; ahhhhhhhhhh

On 5/25/2017 at 2:02 PM, NullVector said:

 I suppose if you were in a tightly-knit tribal group (i.e. most humans for most of human history) then a degree of social ostracisation might be the difference between life and death. It's not so relevant now, but could go some way towards explaining the degree of conformity to societal expectations a lot of people seem to display? (as in: conformity has a sizeable survival advantage vs. my own idiosyncratic non-conformity?)

1. Evolutionary psychology makes me happy. It hits me right in the feels. Especially when I see other people who understand selection pressure.

2. I think you're right about social instincts being selected for. Unlike aromanticism, there's a huge body of research on that subject.

On 8/30/2017 at 11:27 AM, Bardock said:

When somebody tries working their charm on you, hoping you will flirt and return said feelings, and you don't care or even notice what they're doing:

 

I may have to keep that as an example.

okay so I'm definitely keeping it and also sending it to my parents because it's perfect

@IceHurricane Note the presence of the word "just" in three of those points.

Whenever I talk to people, I make a point of leaving it out. Nobody ever just wants something. Nobody ever just is something. People are far too complicated to box in like that. It's a word intended to compartmentalize the subject into something manageable and comprehensible to the user, often at the cost of any real meaning. "Just" is a tool used to create and implement the Straw Man Fallacy. It's a way of saying "that's all they are," or "that's all they do." Perhaps something like, "that's all you need to know about them." It is a tool to simplify the complicated, and for that it's often misused. Certainly not just in dismissing aromanticism.

When someone tells you you're just afraid of commitment, keep that in mind. I'll actually admit I am afraid of commitment, but I am absolutely not JUST afraid of it.

There's a whole other argument to be made about the use of the word "can't" but I feel it's less relevant here. 

The biggest misconception I've come across is that "aromantic" is a temporary description, not an identity. That I'm completely aromantic this week, but next month I'll change my mind. I've even had friends tell me they might be aromantic, but then immediately forswear it when they realized it was an innate quality. 

I prefer Alchemy, Plastic, and Worth It. I have no Idea what Everlasting Sigh is about, but it sounds good. 

On the other hand, Worth It has a weird sound editing thing that I tolerate because the lyrics are great. It's my favorite one.

@Mark where did you hear that?

3 hours ago, AppleJu said:

"uuuuuuuuuuuhhhh sooooo they...kiss I guess...??"

the ...?? really makes it work

Elon Musk

Does a plain green heart mean anything else? I figure it'd be a pretty good symbol, especially for its simplicity. Also, it dispels the idea that aromantic people are some kind of loveless abomination.

I would rather spend an hour in a bathtub full of spiders than get married.

As long as I am given a gas mask, and it's a one-time thing.

PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY TEXT WALL

Romance is a sensation produced by both evolutionary selection pressure and self-reinforcing social construction.

This sensation rewards participants for selecting a specific mate (you don't actually have to literally mate to experience it though). Many people experience profound emotional connections to others, but romance is a specific flavor of connection that usually forms only during partner selection, and the maintenance of a relationship with that partner.

People experiencing romantic attraction report a powerful urge to spend time in the presence of a specific other person. Certain bonding activities (often varying between cultures) become charged with romantic feeling by association. Such activities in European cultures might include (but are not limited to) hand-holding, kissing, and candlelit dinners at expensive restaurants. Other, more specific rituals may produce this emotion as well, especially depending on the individual. 

Romance's evolutionary function (note the absence of the word "purpose") is to keep parents together. This constant closeness (emotionally and physically) allows them to divide the labor of child-rearing, leading to greater reproductive success in the wild.

The genetic and/or epigenetic operons responsible for the romantic trait have not been identified yet, but the reason for their existence is clear.

However, evolution isn't some monolithic system that makes every member of a species behave according to some optimized model of success. Not everyone is born with the ability to express the romantic trait. That's where we aromantics come in.

Different developmental and prenatal chemical factors may influence our ability to express the romantic genes most people carry from birth. Aromanticism is almost certainly not just genetic in origin, though genetic factors may play a role in its expression.

Love?

I haven't devoted as much effort to figuring out what that is since it isn't absent from my genome or epigenome. Have fun dissecting that one.

Remember that especially intolerant part of the United States that @Dodecahedron314 brought up? Tennessee, my home state, is near the center of that region. Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia are to North of us. Missouri and Arkansas are West of us. Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are South of us. North and South Carolina are both East of us.  North Carolina's okay though.

The South (the overall term for the southern states I have mentioned) does a lot as a group. The states bond over their food (REAL barbecue), their elected officials (whoever will cut taxes most for rich people, despite the overwhelming poverty of Southerners in general), and their pathological need to make sure that literally all people  are Christians of some varying Protestant denomination.

the South is still, in many ways stuck in the Civil War. We're still trying to secede from the union in little ways. Many residents are patriotic af to the United States, but they want to distinguish themselves somehow. They might do this with their hospitality to strangers, or by ranting about barbecue when foolish Texans think they know how it's done. I kept both these quirks when I left. Others express their Southern-ness by suppressing the votes of African-Americans, or banning transgender people from using their bathrooms of choice. It's important to note that these aren't always the same people, but I think we all know they usually are. 

But now I live in California, and that's a totally different place, worth its own explanation.

In the dark depths of your soul

Bacon.

(It's Jaws, but with bacon instead of an unrealistically large great white shark)

@Ace of Amethysts looks like you're accomplishing that goal pretty well

I'd rather take a shower in cold, mushy, canned tomato sauce every day than get married.