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I’m sure Joyce was both somewhat curious and unsurprised that she was rated poorly by the guy she punched in the face.
Alternatively, Joe could have intentionally given her the lowest rating to disguise the fact that they’re actually in regular communication for some reason.
That was a few weeks ago; they’ve actually been talking about fairly emotionally intimate topics since then, and seem to kind of be friends.
At this point, this is a pretty shitty thing to be writing about her.
Even then, it’s probably understandable enough if it was something he wrote about and forgot, given the aforementioned punching and her general overbearing fundie attitude from early on.
… Except that this is a list he openly shares with other people. This description here is how he’s describing a friend, or at least decently friendly acquaintance, to others.
Almost certainly the biggest reason most people are pissed at him. If this was just a private list, most people would be rolling their eyes and thinking “typical Joe, using the little head instead of the big one”, even if some of them were offended by the rating he gives them, and just dismiss him as the dumbass frat boy he keeps trying to be like. But, nope, it’s just so much worse.
No, he does share it with other people. We’ve seen him ask others if he “subscribes to his ‘do’ list” and has offered the password out. What we don’t know are how common these occurrences are, but it’s definitely been stated that it’s not something he keeps to himself.
I haven’t seen any indication that anyone other than Danny knew about the list, and that was only to write the (apparently poor) security.
Plus, it’s probably not a bad assumption that he wrote that about her very early on in their interactions.
Does that make this any better? Not really, who you are in the dark and all that, but his previous reactions seem to be that he didn’t think anyone had access to it.
It’s come up before, but those are the most recent appearances. He mentions the list constantly, though he doesn’t always make it clear it’s an actual online list with an RSS feed.
I stand corrected, but that makes his current behavior confusing. If he was just handing access out to anyone, why is he so frantic that just anyone has access?
I mean dorothy knew about it, but I don’t think she’s the type to do this. My money is on Roz, since she has sex with Joe on a semi regular basis and may have been informed of the list, or he left it open on his computer.
Hey, that’s…not racist, sexist? No…um, gross generalization of a varied, multifaceted, culture? Eh, still compelled to say racist, but then, I’m a fan on CinemaSins.
Why read it: Seeing the evidence is important before going out on premature judgments. This is not just an ugly comment from an idiot you neither know or care about and never have to hear from again, this is someone you mostly considered a friend(?) who turns out to have gone full bongo. You can’t just ignore that/him, so it’s important to at least confirm the facts before condemning him purely on hearsay.
Apparently just the number otherwise I’d expect the bit about “she’ll hire a guy to punch you repeatedly if you try and fuck her” would have made the list.
Which just goes to show how superficially worthless his list is at even its shitty stated purpose. He’ll go back to edit the number, but not the notes.
Yeah, I was wondering that. Joyce has grown a huge amount but I don’t recall her actually acknowledging the issues behind what was very much assaulting a man for his thoughts.
It was very much not for his thoughts. It was for pushing on her the “guys think about sex every seven seconds” bullshit like a fact of life she can’t do anything against. Like, she didn’t just read that on the internet or something and go on a punching spree, Joe dug his hole very much himself. The retaliation was over the top, yes, and warrants apologizing, but… he was warned, and overall is very much sweet poetic justice for all girls other than Joyce who couldn’t protect themselves from his harrassment so effectively.
I don’t think it was. I mean, there’s a lot of value in your comment, but if you go back, the moment where Joyce stops trying to get Mike to stop and actually encourages him- and apparently joins in- is when Mike points out that Joe was looking at Connie.
Attacking someone for sexual harassment is one thing, but Joyce didn’t really react to that beyond trying to convince Joe he was wrong. She was trying to converse with him right up to that point. THAT was her line. Not sexual harassment or spreading sexual BS- the idea that Joe was looking at (and therefore thinking sexual thoughts about) another woman.
In that context, I would rate Joyce’s actions at that moment (and ONLY in that moment) as worse than Joe’s. She assaulted him for looking at another woman with the implication that she was thinking about him. That’s horrific.
All of that is said with the very strong awareness that Joe’s behaviour overall is distasteful at best and repulsive on average.
Yeah, no kidding. My usual rating is “Forget it son, you don’t have a chance. Why? Pick any of ten reasons. Now say nothing/treat her like a human and get out of there (depending on circumstances)”.
I’m still a bit lost on Joe and Joyce’s relationship? Do they not know they’re texting each other or they know and are keeping it secret for some reason?
At least part of it is probably because he doesn’t want to sleep with Joyce, so there’s no “gotta hit that” feeling behind his interactions anymore. In person (and/or in things he might potentially share with “bros”), though, he still has to keep up appearances or something like that.
I think it’s more that he’s someone who doesn’t talk about feels. At all.
I mean, his attitude towards the value of a woman just for companionship is obviously reeeaaally problematic, but the talking-about-feels thing goes much deeper for him I think.
I suspect that relationship with Joe is why Joyce looks so hurt here, she thought that they were connecting as real human beings and now she’s reminded of how Joe used to think of her, and maybe still does. And, you know, how he rates and describes all other women.
What kind of women do you know who would be repelled by a ukulele. I would come over to check it out and hang around afterwards just in case someone plays it
Always thought joyce to be a brunnete over blond. But can’t blame her for being curious. Even if you don’t care bout results ya alway wannna know what a list involving you says.
She looks like the type of blonde who was medium-light blonde when she was little, and her hair darkened a little as she got older. My sisters were like that; they ended up somewhere around medium-dark blonde, which would translate to Joyce’s hair in a comic strip, heh.
Joe and Joyce has a relationship beyond his stupid bro-script. She reached out to him, he comforted her when she needed it. They have extended a measurement of trust.
He’s managed to poison his relationship with the only 4 people who have put up with him and is well on his way to poisoning his relationship with Jacob. If he keeps on his road, he’s going to have no one around him and no one to blame but himself.
I wonder if Joe is somebody who is so afraid of abandonment that he creates it — like, he gets people to just leave already (so he’ll have a feeling of power over it, or so he won’t have to continually fear it, or to reinforce his worldview that everyone leaves eventually). It’s not an uncommon pattern, and he’s going to be very lonely if he keeps it up.
…Or maybe that’s more Sarah’s thing, dovetailing with her self-fulfilling fear of rejection. (It could be both characters, but Sarah has it way more front-and-center.) Joe spends all his energy purposely avoiding any self-reflection whatsoever, so it’s harder to pinpoint his motives. But, if self-fulfilling-fear-of-abandonment is part of his deal, he could be being difficult with Danny to subconsciously test whether Danny will stay this time.
It’s not only “not uncommon”, it describes one of the personalities explored in attachment theory. So yeah, it’s a very real possibility. I would like to know more about his parental relationships, though- what little we’ve seen from his father would reinforce this, especially if he was the primary caregiver in Joe’s childhood.
I literally stopped interacting with a friend cause they went PUA. If I was in Danny’s shoes, if I was kind enough to drag him away and he said that? I’d drop his head right on the steps and walk away.
I’m glad you couldn’t be a pickup artist if you tried, because it’s a terrible thing to be, and you probably have the good sense not to wanna become terrible. Yay for not being a jerk.
You do mention a lot of really negative self-judgment and feelings of worthlessness. If you don’t mind me asking, are you getting some help for that? It seems like your brain is being super unkind to you, which is important and difficult, and I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to hafta deal with it all alone.
I stumbled across a short “how to” on the Internet, many many years ago, sort of an introductory handbook, and read a few pages in horrified fascination before saying out loud “and the only cost is – your soul!” and closing that window.
used to. hasnt helped beyond this point despite many types of pills and therapy and such. some people are meant to be happy and be able to socialize and the like and others just arent.
Seriously, I was feeling completely hopeless last week. More depressed than I’ve been in, like, 6 years. Then I got a little suspicious of how strongly that voice was insisting that nothing could possibly help and that I shouldn’t even think about trying. I picked up an old meditation book, read a bit, and despite reading about how meditation won’t magically solve problems, something flipped in my brain and the hopelessness now seems like a bad dream.
Like, sure, I’ve still got plenty of problems, and there’s no guarantee I’ll solve any of them. But they don’t feel so unbearable any more. I don’t feel like existing is torture. I’ve got a little space to breathe again
I dont try or think about giving myself a game over almost ever in comparison and that is probably all i can hope for now. I’m trying to get pearson comptia a plus certified right now but the second test is making me its bongo.
ive failed it more than twice already and am trying again tomorrow and already planning for just in case i fail which i think is about a 79 percent chance, but im still gonna try to pass it. just frustrated cause each try is 100 dollars and ugh…..
Well if i fail again im going to have to just stick to a study thing. my big problem is when i am in the groove if anything breaks me out of it i pretty much wont get back in it the rest of the day.
I… don’t actually understand that first sentence. I get the second one, though. I pretty much have to trick myself into starting things, if I try to “just do” them my brain’s just “lol nope”.
…like the mushrooms I was halfway through cleaning. ah crap. now I have to find a way back there again… maybe if I just find the bag I was going to put them in…
Yeah, they are more an organization for creating a complex justification for serial rape than anything actually related to their stated purpose and mostly just trade various strategies for exploiting social niceties and people’s good will in order to be more and more invasive of others’ personal spaces, often to the point of sexual assault.
So yeah, not really something anyone wants to be.
As to yourself, I think you can be kind to yourself. It’s a worthy endeavor to want to be your best self and sort yourself out before dating and it isn’t actually an uncommon thing to be unaware of flirting. I’m notoriously bad at noticing that stuff cause I’m ace and so am never looking for it. Usually people have to state it out loud for me to realize that’s where the conversation was going.
At “best” PUA are all about manipulation, down to the very first interaction they advise men to have with women, the negging.
Everything is already there in the negging: the aggression, intent of instrumentalization, blatant disrespect, denial of the woman as an individual, demeaning with the stated purpose of lowering her self-esteem and making her vulnerable, and the sugar-coating of the compliment to make her confused (mixing hostile and friendly signals = abusive relationship 101) and unable to counterattack.
Now when it comes to their *culture*, it is, sadly enough, almost as horrifying. They are basically a proto-sect, complete with its very own language and pseudo-mythology. They divide humanity between categories, use cryptic words (acronyms mostly) to disguise reality, etc.
Not to mention their relationship to the equally repulsive incel community and their practice of secrecy (as when they closed their forums following Elliot Rodger’s massacre, to take the time to erase his posts and make sure no one else talks about him).
Basically a community of bitter people without current partners who blame women for not sleeping with them even though they are an angry mass of red flags and view it as a violence committed against them that they need to get revenge for.
It was the community that Elliot Rodger belonged to and which were the first group to go after Zoe Quinn. They are genuinely terrifying and many members of their community have gone on shooting sprees or otherwise murdered women in their lives.
And the insiduous thing is that the incel and PUA communities are rather easy to stumble into, especially if you’ve been steeped in toxic masculinity’s messaging, and for whatever reason haven’t met someone.
Didn’t help that I was hanging out on Slashdot a lot as a frustrated teenager, where you’ve got a ton of right-libertarian nerd-rage boiling over, and that naturally seems to lead to incel/PUA stuff. Somehow, I figured out that it was all a bunch of misogynistic bullshit, but a lot of people don’t.
I think it’s incredibly triggering at times, but is really good at keeping track of the various misogynist hate movements and their recruitment strategies and modes of attack as it helps deconstruct shitty things that happen online and in life.
the point is going so far over his head that he might as well be just off the coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean, which is the opposite side of the world
When I was young, I went from strawberry blonde to what we called “dishwater blonde” and ultimately transitioned to dark brown (with silver sparkles in the right light these days). Joyce’s hair looks like that mousy light brown I had during the aforementioned transition.
As a fellow blonde, we come in many shades. From platinum to Joyce’s color. I’ve seen it called a lot of things: ash blonde, mousey blonde, dirty blonde, dishwater blonde, etc. It’s basically the darkest shade of blonde. Almost brown but not quite brown yet.
I am wondering where this endgame with Joe will lead. I’d like to think this to be something of a redemption arc in the sense that he’s still a somewhat shitty person (because there’s even some things Willis can’t do) but there’s stricter limits to his shittiness. Like Mike only less violent and…well, less shitty.
All characters have retained their personalities from those previous incarnations.
So Joe’s having his coping methods explode in his face, next he’ll realise that everyone is so mad at him that he’s really alone which will force him to actually admit he wants the things he’ been trying to avoid and have to work to gain them.
As it is, he’s absolutely trashed his potential relationships with a large portion of the university through the outing of his “Do list”. Coming to terms with the fact that his focus on sex to exclusion of all other parts of normal relationships has and will continue to bite him in the ass from here on out would be a good start.
If he recognized that his views and behavior won’t be tolerated and that he needs to change if he wants to not be viewed as a total scumbag and took steps toward that goal, it’d be great.
My read on Joe is that he’s outright, genuinely terrified of any sort of non-physical healthy relationship. Sex is the closest he can get to filling his need for intimacy and socialisation- with where he is right now (if my take on him is correct) is that others being unwilling to connect with him emotionally is fine but them being unwilling to hop into bed with him is a terrible idea.
We’ve seen some hints of that mindset starting to unravel with his texting with Joyce, but this seems to have reminded him of the “importance” (to him) of the sexual connection. I’m eager to see where this goes.
sometimes its best to let yourself be buried because once they are done at least you can try to dig yourself out of what was thrown at you and see if anyone stayed. digging a deeper hole never seems to work.
But for Joe to admit to the problem he’s now having he would have to admit that emotionally connecting with others can be okay, and emotionally distancing himself from everyone is unhealthy. I don’t think he’s in a place where he can handle that idea, so he’s doubling down on the sex front to reinforce- to himself- that that’s okay and good.
That’s what I’m getting from this anyway.
I’m just picturing Joe doing an apology through the list since it’s public, but then no one reading it because they are all disgusted by it and then he goes right back to his normal ways.
Oh it is. But he went after a 0- he once rated as a 4, because he thought the “repression sex” would bump it to a 10, cause it’s fulfilling the challenge and the victory of that totally trumps someone having any skill at sex, any interest in sex, or their likelihood of falling into a deep despair for having sex.
What attracted him was the challenge. That’s what pinged her on his radar and made him pursue her. And it’s like a fucking beacon for those types.
I think he edited the number, but not the post after the “date”. Zero-minus due to the hitting, while the comments, which don’t mention the violence, reflect what he was thinking before.
Also apparently before he was so attracted to Sarah.
Thank you! That part has been bothering me all morning, since it’s been pretty obvious Joyce is no longer on his list of people he wants to have sex with. Didn’t consider the possibility he just forgot to erase the rest of the post.
Are you mad or happy about that cuz I’m one hand he’s zero sexually attracted to you, but on the other hand he might not be romantically into you….why does that sound familiar.
Okay I wouldn’t say I ship it as I’m not actively invested in whether or not these two do end up in an actual relationship at some point but I would not be at all surprised if they do. With the texting I feel like this relationship is evolving into something deeper. It doesn’t have to ever be romantic but it very well eventually could.
I’ve been falling behind on some webcomics, and I’ve lost track of which ones they were. Since I tend to fluctuate wildly from following 1-4 webcomics and, like, 25.
Joe isn’t a terrible person, just an idiot, and a bit of a misogynist. Nothing gender studies class can’t fix, I’m sure. That seems to be where all the catharsis happens on this campus.
Definitely if you’re a misogynist who writes up personally insulting to creepy reviews about every woman you meet, with some of the reviews implying that sex will fix them, and post them on an RSS feed and give out the password to fellow bros without at any point thinking or caring about the people who get hurt because you generally think of women as sex objects…you’re not a good person!
There are people worse than Joe, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good person.
The desperation with which we need to label people as “good person” or “bad person” says everything about the Christian culture most of us have grown up saturated in, regardless of our religious affiliation.
Yes, yes, yes.
Joe is the person he learned to be. In all likelihood his repulsive behaviour is a defence mechanism, as we’ve seen his very strong discomfort with bringing emotions into any sort of relationship. He’s learned to act as he does to protect himself.
This doesn’t make his behaviour okay, not on any level, but there’s a big difference between something being understandable and being justifiable. I see Joe’s personality- with what little we know of his past- as entirely understandable.
I don’t think he ever gave out the password to anyone. He freaked out that it got out there, and Danny stated that it wasn’t very secure.
Reducing women to numbers-as-sex-objects is still terrible, but it’s a big step from doing so privately, and doing so publicly. One requires an extra element of cruelty.
Though, admittedly, he did state his ratings aloud when talking with Danny.
I guess we don’t have actual confirmation but he does talk about letting people subscribe to it and I’m not really sure of the point of a completely private RSS feed.
He does say he was remiss in not offering Raidah the password to the feed and appears to be sending it to her with his phone as he says that.
I think he’s just panicking about being hacked and not thinking that one of the people he gave it to might have passed it on.
He has the potential to unbecome a terrible person! But he hasn’t even started that process, as we see here. He’s just digging in further to the terribleness at the moment.
Well I suppose that means that everyone is at least somewhat of a terrible person, since misogyny is thoroughly ingrained in our culture. I believe Joe is capable of overcoming that though, so I personally do not view him as an outright terrible person. If rating women is the worst thing he’s done then he’s better than most.
I further submit that there is a difference between being affected by misogyny ingrained in a patriarchal culture like ours, and being an outright misogynist like Joe is.
I disagree. I don’t see it as a dividing line, more as a gradient, where one can be more or less accepting of misogynistic views. Certainly Joe has a lot of work to do, but I don’t see him as irredeemable, which is why I don’t label him as a terrible person.
That would be a distinction other people aren’t making.
Joe’s behavior is awful, and so is he, for as long as he keeps it up. Insisting he’s “not terrible” comes much too close for my liking to minimizing the harm done by his behavior, and his own responsibility for changing it.
I’m not insisting it, it’s just my personal take on him as a character. I definitely have some bias, I like how he’s written and I want him to become a better person, so I’m inclined to defend him, even when he does terrible and stupid things.
Looks like irredentist takes “he’s a terrible person” to mean he’s an intrinsically and immutably terrible person.
I think the other commenters are more figuring Joe is a person who has a terrible worldview, and who is doing terrible things, but not that he can never change.
Everyone seems to think Joe could learn to knock it the heck off and improve his actions, so that, with work on himself, he could act/become a-ok.
Oh, I don’t think he’s irredeemable. I just think he’s currently terrible. He is perfectly welcome to become less terrible, and then I will revise my rating.
I draw a distinction between being a chauvinist and a misogynist but one easily leads to the other. Joe has gone from being hyper-sexualized and focused on getting laid to outright treating women as utterly unimportant as people. Now we’ve found out he’s always been this way. Not cool.
I am a bit on the fence on this one. If I was asked, I wouldn’t characterize Joe as a misogynist. Not sure what I would call him, but not that. However I am open to changing my opinion on this.
That’s absolutely not true. You can certainly want to have sex with women and still despise them. It’s kind of common, in fact. The whole “women are only good for sex” thing is about as misogynist as it gets.
Oh my. If you want a demonstration of how very possible to have your entire worldview be a potent mix of intense misogyny and overwhelming desire to have sex with women, just venture into the MRA communities.
They are so far from mutually exclusive I can’t be emphatic enough. It clearly does cause some epic cognitive dissonance though. “Women are disgusting! They are inherently inferior and cruel! I desperately, desperately want to have sex with them!” +/- some extra weird shit about how women are incapable of really loving their partners and they’re all such good guys.
So MRAs have now become MGTOW, I did not know that. (I live under a rock and pay little to no attention to whats happening in the world)
Don’t think there are any “good guys” left tbh, at least not near me. (There are some Danny types but most are Joes, I don’t like either, Danny is to submissive for my tastes and Joe is…well he’s Joe)
Hi. Unless we’re being existential and discussing humanity’s inability to truly be “good” and the spectrum of good vs evil, I’m definitely on the “good” end of the spectrum. I’d say my husband and closest male friend both are too (which is why I’ve allowed them to get and stay close.)
Perfect, hell no. But compassionate, considerate, caring, actively trying to be respectful of others and of the differences between us and desirous of seeing the world be a better place? Definitely. We’re out there.
gossip can spread like wildfire and a link to a website wouldnt be to hard. especially if they screen shotted stuff and put it on some image sight in case he deletes it.
It’s unfortunate that Joe seems to have internalized his dad’s behaviors and not learned from the divorce. Then again, if anyone can get through to him, it’ll be Danny and Joyce.
I would say he definitely learned from the divorce. Not a healthy lesson, but I’d guess that he learned not to get attached, that relationships don’t work so why bother trying and they suck anyway, that if you do try you’ll get hurt.
If the father was the primary caretaker there may also be abandonment issues from the relationship essentially leading to his mother’s departure, which would be traumatic to a child. The fact that she didn’t seem to be at family freshman weekend may indicate something.
At least it’s not your blood type that’s being recorded Joyce.
…
Dear lord please tell me O negative is not Joyce’s blood type or things get way creepier
To expand on this for anyone missing a blood type lesson:
A quick search tells me that approximately 85% of Americans have rhesus(Rh) positive blood. That owes to Rhesus negative being recessive (like blond hair and blue eyes), so it shows up rarer, many more carry the Rh- gene.
Type O is the same case. It is also recessive, whereas A and B are dominant genes. As such someone of blood type A can have either A/A or A/o as their gene pair for blood type. Both being dominant is also why the AB blood type exists, but there’s no AO blood type.
So O- is the combination of gene-pair o/o and Rh-/Rh-. Any other combination would change it. However, even then it is not the rarest blood type, which is supposedly AB-.
I’m guessing Joe wrote the summary before their first date and added the rating in the aftermath and then never went back to edit after their relationship evolved into whatever it currently is.
Ruth takes the femurs for her collection. It’s not as satisfying as harvesting them fresh, but hey sun-bleached old femurs are better than no femurs at all.
I don’t care how misogynistic rating women is, it’s a real dick move by whoever just hacked Joe’s computer or whatever and published it for everyone on campus to see. Like, what if someone just released all of you porn searches for all your peers to see? I know Joe’s list is no where as common as porn but still.
Hacking’s not necessary. He gives the password to the RSS feed out like candy. All it takes is someone he told to tell someone else and so on. Which is a thing he WANTED because he saw this as a ‘help guide’ of sorts for guys who couldn’t get laid.
Thank you, for I missed this plot point. I’ve been seeing int eh comments a RSS feed for the list, but didn’t understand the reason why the list was setup like that. Ugg, so dudebro then, I take it? With any luck he’s almost to bedrock, and someone will toss him a rope.
…except 1.) the actors in your porn are doing it with knowing consent* while the women on this list are included against their will, and 2.) comparing making a dehumanzing list of the women who you’d like to have sex with to porn is fucking disgusting.
*well, massive footnote needed about the porn industry, but that’s not the point of this comment
Joe himself was giving the password to it out to just about anyone, even if they hadn’t expressed the tiniest bit of interest.
Joe did this to himself. Someone else just helped him a little. And so far, everyone we’ve seen who’s found out about the list was on it, being described in gross, degrading detail.
It’s a dick move, but that’s not why. It’s because making Joe’s ratings and summaries widely public is hurtful to the women involved. Fuck Joe, he brought it on himself. It’s Joyce, other Rachel, probably even Mandy, who are feeling worse for having read it, and knowing that others around them have read it, that makes it a dick move.
The only way I can see this leak not being a dick move was if the person doing it was like ‘Oh my god, this person is saying all these creepy and/or mean things about all the girls, they deserve to know, because this is awful.’
I assume we’ll find out the who and the why as the storyline progresses. It might be exactly that situation, it might be something else. Looking forward to finding out.
Yes, it was profoundly shitty of Joe to make this list. And yes, this is an invasion of Joe’s privacy and that’s not cool even though he was being an asshole. But neither of these two wrongs are the most serious issue here.
Joe’s list, while gross, was mostly harmless as long as it was private. But once made public, it hurts people. It’s the difference between a private sexual thought and street harassment: street harassment is weaponizing that private thought by making it someone else’s problem.
Joe crossed that line when he shared the list. And he crossed that line when he told women how he rated them. But he crossed it on a small scale relative to this. The person who widely distributed this list crossed that same line but in a MUCH more profound way.
Whoever did this was willing to hurt every single woman on Joe’s list in order to use that list to hurt Joe.
OTOH, you could argue that while there’s pain involved in finding out you’re on a list like this, there’s also harm being doing by the list continuing to circulate without your knowledge.
You can make that argument that it is, but I don’t think you can make it compellingly. You would be forced to acknowledge that the circulation of the list does harm in order to make the rest of your argument. But because Unknown circulated the list more widely than Joe, you’d have to argue that the victims not knowing about the list does more harm than everyone knowing about it.
You could argue that if the victims don’t know about the list, it creates the potential for harm in the future: they could be harmed by someone else seeing the list and treating them differently because of it or they could be harmed by finding out about the list because the knowledge would be distressing and humiliating. But rather than insulating the victims from those harms, widely circulating the list maximizes the risk. If everyone on campus knows about the list, then anyone on campus could treat the victims differently because of it. And if the victims know about the list, then there is no possibility that they will be spared the distress and humiliation of knowing about the list.
We actually already have established social norms around this sort of thing when we use a different name for it: gossip. Gossip is mean and petty and wrong. Gossip has the potential to really hurt someone, either if they find out about it or if it impacts the way others view them. And Joe is an assholes for gossiping. But Unknown spread Joe’s gossip. They chose to broadcast it far and wide. They essentially signal boosted it. And in doing so, they ensured that Joe’s gossip hurt and humiliated everyone Joe gossipped about. The person who did this victimized everyone on that list for the sake of hurting Joe.
Social norms also say that people being talked about behind their back deserve to know what’s been said and by who. And once one of them finds the list, it’s being leaked to the rest of the girls was inevitable.
No. Social norms dictate that people being talked about behind their backs by friends or family have a right to know.
But strangers and even acquaintances really don’t need to know every sexual thought that pops into someone’s head. There are things we have a right not to know. And some random dude’s fantasies are definitely on that list. Even if he shares his fantasies with a few buddies. Having sexual thoughts about a stranger or an acquaintance is not sexual harassment. Telling them about those thoughts is.
You are not entitled to make your sexual thoughts someone else’s problem. Full stop.
We don’t know who all got the list. So far, it seems like everyone ON the list has now seen it, which would make a lot of sense, but we don’t actually know that it goes any further than that.
Even if it does, this stuff was already going around. Frankly I’d rather know about it than have it entirely behind my back, so that I have no idea why people are (or might be) acting differently towards me because of it
Keep in mind that Joe didn’t even know Joyce’s name when he added her and that he added Other Rachel even though he was for sure not interested in her (he gave her a 3). So we know he’s adding both women that he doesn’t know and women that he’s not interested in. Fifty-one percent of the ~48,500 students enrolled at Indiana University are women and roughly 13,500 students live on campus. So if Joe is only rating students, there are somewhere between 6,800 and 24,700 women he could have potentially rated, depending on if he’s only rating undergrads who live on campus or if he’s rating a wider cross section of female students.
In other words, the odds are very high that a lot of women we’ve never seen in the comic have just had their day made a bit shittier by finding out they’re on this list. And most of those women probably don’t know Joe or any of his friends.
So if a total stranger put you on a shitty list to talk about how much he did or didn’t want to bone you and you didn’t know anyone who he shared that list with, would you honestly want to know about it? If so, can you understand why a lot of women would not want to know? And if we err on the side of disclosure, where do we draw the line? Do you also want to know if some dude who passes you on the street says something about you to his buddy once they’re out of ear shot? Because if we expect him to disclose what he’s going to say, how is that any different from street harassment?
Also, if the person who distributed this list only sent it to the women on it, that’s not exactly better. That means someone hunted all of these women down and found, at minimum, their names and student email addresses. Personally, finding out I was on a “do list” that was being circulated would make me super uncomfortable but getting that “do list” in my email from an anonymous (?) source would completely freak me out.
“Whoever did this was willing to hurt every single woman on Joe’s list in order to use that list to hurt Joe.”
I really, really doubt that they saw it that way. Most likely, they’re someone who had the password given to them (whether directly by Joe or not), only to wind up disgusted and horrified by the sheer disrespect of the act of Joe willingly spreading such a list.
Especially considering that the women on the list are really only “hurt” if they valued Joe’s opinions anyway. Enraged, oh, definitely. Hurt…? Maybe the lowly rated ones, if they’ve got self esteem issues and weigh Joe’s dumbassed ratings more than they do the support of all the other women involved in the mess.
It doesn’t matter if the person who signal boosted Joe’s list saw it that way any more than it matters if Joe saw it that way. Broadcasting Joe’s list is harmful for many of the same reasons that street harassment is harmful. And I hope you wouldn’t argue that the only women harmed by street harassment are “the lowly rated ones, if they’ve got self esteem issues.”
Harmful for sure, but I do think we need to talk about intent as well as impact. Perhaps not together, because a person who is hurt or traumatised or upset by a thing is hurt or traumatised or upset regardless of intent. But it’s a separate and equally important discussion to have, in my personal opinion, especially here where the person who spread it is very likely to be a recurring character rather than some random offscreen presence we never hear from again.
Here’s the thing though: Joe has been hurting women with his approach all along. He harasses them and objectifies them, and so long as he does it to one at a time, the others look away and feel awkward and helpless.
But this has allowed them all to band together, and given them all power to push back against Joe. They have literally done nothing to him but quote his list back at him and already he wilts away.
Imagine how gratifying this must be to girls who’ve had Joe tell them their ‘rating’ and offer to subscribe to his ‘do’ list, now that they see others reacting to it in outrage.
This is a cleansing sort of hurt, that allows you to feel better later, and free of helplessness, resentment and uncertainity festering within.
That’s actually a really good point. It’s made the day of the women on it worse but it’s also given them a power we haven’t seen used against Joe before. Whether that was the intent or the overall impact remains to be seen but I’m glad I saw your comment.
Also no one needed to hack shit. He gave the password to anyone and everyone who wandered past him, including folks expressing disgust at the notion of his “to do” list.
This was always going to happen. No need for a “doxxer”.
Joe, I know people don’t immediately change after being smacked with their mistake, but a very adaptable person would at least change the damn mask they wear almost immediately to compensate! You’re just rushing full steam ahead without dropping any damn cargo!
Joe is the opposite of adaptable, I feel. I believe he’s doubling down out of fear of admitting he’s wrong to himself. Also he’s being driven by emotions right now, which isn’t known for helping with logic and reason.
while it isn’t an excuse I think he is backed in a corner more than he ever has before and as someone who has less than healthy emotions the fight or flight mindset is in place and since danny has to drag him away it seems flight isn’t his options.
Unless im looking at them i forget their hair color half the time. of course in real life i can’t describe people i’ve known my whole life easily beyond the super basic so its probably just me.
I’ve had this happen to me, being unable to describe someone I’ve literally been with a moment ago when I try to find them in a crowd or something. It’s more clothes-wise though.
I’m an odd person. I cant describe my parents beyond the very basic. I have a hard time reading and expressing emotions, and on top of that i have a weird tongue. although thats not bad, but still at least being a “super taster” is not a hinderance like many of the other wrong things about me.
I’ve been thinking the same for a while now. I think it started for me when she spent her weekend home texting him. I think it would be good character development for both of them if they manage to get to that point.
I think Joe’s not popular right now. It’s not this one particular ship that’s any worse. Once Joe has made inroads on his character arc towards not being a big ole jerk, I think you’ll find more people in your corner. Heck, there are a surprising number popping up in the comments lately.
Maybe that’s meant to imply she knows Ryan’s off the streets now, and therefore is more comfortable being out alone. That said, she still has her back carefully to a wall.
Looking a Joe’s expression in panel four I think Joyce is the first girl he’s actually feeling guilty about, and is trying very hard to convince himself he’s not (because if he feels bad about her that means accepting he’s actually done something worth feeling guilty about).
And looking at Danny’s expression in the same panel I think he’s noticed.
Joyce is, apparently, the first girl he’s had a real conversation with that wasn’t focused on him getting laid. Their online chat over the weekend she was away.
He’s definitely not comfortable with that and especially not with acknowledging or continuing it in person, but it is there.
I don’t know about that. Danny’s seen Joe in all forms of light. Danny knows Joe’s ups and downs and how high and low Joe can get. Danny probably knows more than anyone that Joe can change, he just needs help that not even he can provide. He can help with that help, but that’s about it.
I’m actually relieved for Joyce that she had a Zero rating. Given her history, it’s really important for her not to see Joe or random dudes as constant sexual threats right now. She does not want to be randomly sexualized, at ALL.
Plus it’s so extreme that, when she wants to feel attractive to a person of her choosing, she can discard his opinion as 100% Joe’s Baggage And Not True. A ‘3’ would actually hurt more.
It must have been written after their terrible date. (Before that, Joe told Danny that he thought of her as a six. And he hoped he’d “upgrade” her. With his penis. Ew.)
Joe later said she’s been “practically excised” from the list. That must mean he’d re-rated her as a zero-minus.
I’m actually disappointed Joe’s ratings are really really short and immaterial. Just random tweets about people. Shameful, Joe, you should have handled this scientifically and with much research as well as justification. This may have flown in junior high but you’re in college now!
Okay, I’m going to do a thing where I lead with a non-WTF Joe moment for each panel, cause holy fuckballs is there a lot of WTF Joe-ness in this strip.
Panel 1: Someone noted that Joyce is on her phone right after we saw Becky less than thrilled glancing at her phone. As such, it’s fairly likely that Becky’s less than happy demeanor is because she’s being filled in on this crap and seeing how Joyce has been maligned and mistreated on it.
But I’m also happy for Joyce in a weird way. She’s alone outside. Sure, it’s right outside the door on a day where there doesn’t seem to be much foot traffic, but this would not have been remotely doable for her all that long in the past. Like it feels small, but when you’re rebuilding back a functionality from a bad patch of PTSD, these little victories are the world. And so I’m sad its been partially tainted by Joe’s douchery.
Okay, yeah, let’s tackle this. I’m not going to criticize anyone’s PTSD or fear responses. The freeze response is intense and very hard to control and it is absolutely terrifying…
But I have a real hard time buying this is a freeze response. A freeze response is rarely this coherent or able to interact or easy to break off of to banter with Joyce. Which means he’s deliberately doing nothing to aid himself forcing Danny to drag a man who must be 1 and a half times his weight who very easily could carry himself on his own power.
And he’s doing it while Danny is doing him a solid he has no reason to do given how Joe has consistently mistreated him. Which is I think what bothers me the most about Joe’s behavior in all this. He doesn’t seem to acknowledge in any way that this was his fuck up. That he did this and what he did was terrible.
Instead he’s treating it like a game. Pretending that all the women are just hormonal and thus not to be trusted as to their righteous anger, bullying Danny into performing a toxic role for him and then making a mockery of that offer by intentionally making it more difficult than it needs to be and excoriating him to complete the task faster and “better” and more silently. In complete disrespect to Danny as a human being.
And that’s honestly somewhat disgusting. Like, Joe’s behavior in this whole mess is bad. His reaction to Danny trying to reinvent himself by trying to force him back into a set of behaviors he’s criticized for about a month repeatedly. His inability to take ownership of his own fuckup.
But this bit, where he bullies Danny into doing him one last solid in memory to their friendship. Knowing he’s been pushing him away, knowing that Danny has no reason to give in and bail him out of his own fuck up, knowing that he should own it or at least walk away like the coward he is without excuse. And then treating him like shit and pulling a dumb sibling prank about it like ha ha loser, way to fall into this shitty toxic dynamic we have.
It’s unnecessarily cruel in a giant bucket of WTF.
I know! I wanted to highlight that, because yeah, those small victories are so big when you’re dealing with PTSD. Like, there was a bad week of agoraphobia I once had as part of a really bad PTSD attack after having a pair of neo-nazis threaten to kill me. It took about an hour of prep work, but I managed to get myself to walk down to the corner store for some food and walk back.
The feeling of triumph that created? Was huge. So yeah, I’m 100% behind Joyce finding her ways to reclaim her power.
I got myself to the grocery store yesterday *and* today despite anxiety’s BS, but, I wish I knew how to get feelings of triumph. :/ it’s like there’s just a hole there where other people supposedly have have good feelings after accomplishing things? or a wall.
a wall made of “don’t relax, when we relax bad things happen”, I suspect. :/
“we saw Becky less than thrilled, glancing at her phone”
I didn’t think of that! Any chance Becky is on the list? There’s a number of ways that list can have earned Joe a spot on her bad side.
Joyce can be darn near all-loving, but this added possible twist of choosing between her best friend, and Joe, is not the kind of option Joe needs to be giving one of the few people who’ve confided with him, at this very moment.
Hell, just having Joyce be a zero minus and having guys be encouraged to “do her” would hit like ninety different sore spots for her even if she managed to avoid falling on his radar.
No, not on Patreon. Apparently Willis once considered making a version of the list but thought it was seriously creepy and he had enough projects to work on at the time.
Panel 2: I love Joyce’s gentle call out here. Noting that she has a name, that she’s a person. Maybe even a partial reminder that he’s been perfectly able to be a reasonable human being capable of giving good conversation and advice when he’s not married to this twisted performance of toxic masculinity so none of his ever-shrinking “bros” dare think he has a sensitive bone in his body.
And that performance is part of how toxic masculinity rips apart the person enmeshed in it. Joe is so committed to performing the dude above it all, casually mistreating people, especially women creatures that he’s alienating everyone and hiding the only pieces that might make anyone want to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt.
Also, I’m just going to note that this is Joyce, who is what a week or two from nearly being gunned down, who he had to talk through the fear of seeing her family, who he knows had something happen to her that gives her very strong triggers. And yet, he’s still so committed to performing the douchebag and letting that become his actual personality.
And it’d be tragic if I wasn’t rapidly running out of sympathy for him.
Panel 3: Again, I love Joyce’s great comic timing of shade. Like, this is a perfect follow-up line and a nice way to center the conversation on something real instead of Joe’s performance.
But I also want to just highlight the casual shittiness of Joe’s list above and beyond it being a widely distributed “bang list” with literal fuckability ratings. Like that part is already shitty beyond compare, but what’s worse is the casual dehumanization of who he views as ambulatory sex organs being guarded by unfortunate human imperfections.
The women he casually objectifies are not even names to him, just descriptions of behavior, reductive to stereotypes and revealing that for all his supposed “studying of anatomy” these are all superficial and quick readings based on fucking nothing of real matter. And they aren’t even descriptions that are well-hidden. Anyone who is in Reed Hall would know that when he says “churchy blonde” in this manner he means Joyce, especially given the practically dox level of information he adds on in notes.
He can’t even pretend to view the people he supposedly wants to share an intimate sexual experience with as humans. And that’s the fundamental bit of PUA which makes it impossible to be a good person or a worthy partner when enmeshed in this shit. It trains you to view the people you want to have sex with as numbers, as superficial physical traits, as obstacles to getting a fuck.
And I might just be an asexual, but I understand that sex should never be a means to a “yes, I’m a man” end. It’s not something you “get” whether or not the woman is interested in it. Sex is a collaborative experience, a shared moment of intimacy and connection, of pleasure. Sex that is one-sided, that you “take” irrespective of the person is often shit and will rarely be as satisfying*.
*And I want to clarify that this is in respect to viewing sex as a thing you “get” from women rather than someone who is just into receiving pleasure or giving pleasure. A person who has fully consented to an interaction going one way (which is usually what I am when I am in such a moment with a partner) is a very different situation than a person demanded it and refusing to see their partner as fully human.
Plus, can we just highlight this little touch here? Cause yeah, Joe has semi-valid reasons for “rating her down” given she literally paid a man to assault him repeatedly during their “date”, but this whole thing of petty PUA revenge tactics like this get a lot less “ha ha” in life. Like, I’ve had friends who’ve had stalkers or been physically attacked simply for turning down a PUA. Because the culture breeds a sense of aggrieved entitlement where women are locking away the pussy you see as rightfully yours and as the sole source of reinforcement of your fragile hold on masculinity and so every rejection is a personal attack on your very manhood that deserves immediate punishment.
And the thing is we’ve seen that tendency in Joe. Like, in his interaction with Sarah, he immediately went on the defensive and started putting down her character because he pushed her to a point where she had to literally scream at him to get him to stop sexually harassing her and trying to override her clear lack of consent.
When a woman rejects him he reacts badly to it and gets little petty revenges where he can. And then he passes on those revenges to the other men he throws this link to. Makes them complicit in getting similar revenge on the woman who “dared” defy the order. Like, none of the guys receiving this have any reason as to the actual reason Joyce was rated the way she was. It could have been for literally nothing. But they’d be encouraged to harass her nonetheless.
And in Joe’s perfect world anyone who ever decided to date her would deserve to be socially shunned for daring to date a “0-“.
Ryan could have accessed this list. That pushes this storyline from funny/dark/cathartic to heartbreakingly scary and real.
… I honestly hope Joe finds out he unwittingly endangered every girl he’s ever known, including his friends. It would be exactly the kick in the pants he deserves.
…. by “Ryan could have” etc, do you mean, “this is something that was within the realm of possibility, adding a level of risk to an already-fraught situation”?
Or do you mean “I think this could be how it actually went down and Joe unintentionally but carelessly set into motion events that led to Joyce’s near-rape and everything that followed”?
I doubt it.
Joyce is the only mark we know of – there were almost certainly others, but we don’t know anything about them. He approached her at a party where she was standing quietly alone – typical isolated good choice of prey for any kind of predator. And not in any situation where she’d likely be linkable to this description.
More likely is that Dorothy was recognized either from the party itself, or through her activities as a reporter. (Remember, Ryan mentions specifically that “she ruined his life”)
The first one. The second one, while certainly possible, seems too coincidental to have actually happened. He targeted Joyce because she was alone and Christian at a party.
Panel 4: I like that Danny is just looking at him like “yeah, I’m going to let you dig your own grave here” and not feeling any temptation to intervene on his behalf which continues what a good growth taking time from Joe’s little selfish whirlwind of shittery has been for him. And honestly? Joe’s behavior makes me kind of hope that Danny gets away from him and continues to grow.
Like Joe and Danny can try to be friends again in the future when Joe has sorted out his shit, but right now? He’s really not good for Danny.
And part of that is this interaction here. First up, this is yet another instance of Joe refusing to take ownership of his own shit. Like, if you’re going to be an immense asshole and you get caught being an immense asshole? Fucking own it. Don’t get upset with the people noticing. Don’t try obvious bullshit lies to weasel out of facing any consequences for your shit. Just fucking acknowledge it, apologize and move on with your life.
Like, I especially have little patience for this dance having witnessed the rise of a right-wing army of gaslighters who refuse to own the massive violence and normalization of literal nazis they have committed and having witnessed my old head of school’s attempts to gaslight everyone involved out of noticing how big a horrific immoral action he committed.
And the worst part is Joe’s face. Not only is he looking away and bald-faced lying, he’s angry about getting called out. He’s mad that he’s getting caught out and immediately throws that back on the woman who caught him out, because that’s another piece of the toxic masculinity pie. Not only can’t you own your shit (because admitting fault makes you weak and womanly so double down no matter what), but the only emotion you’re allowed to express is anger, especially at women.
So you’re trained to get mad at people who notice your behavior for what it is. To attack them for noticing the obvious. And it twists you up inside and makes you worse.
Like, this is Joyce, the person he’s had real interactions with, the only one he’s opened up to about what is actually hurting him, who he knows he fucked up with and who will now trust him way less with anything. And he can’t even do her the solid of not lying to her damn face.
He so little respects her as a human being while in this mode.
How shitty Joe’s being? This is why toxic masculinity is the cage most men have to escape from. Because the road he’s on is one that leads to bitterly ranting about percussion instruments on reddit and 4chan, and using the terms incel in all earnestness.
And it is up to him to jump off and make himself into a man that isn’t a piece of shit. Who is worthy of the second-chances Danny and Joyce keep throwing his way. Part of me wants to still see that Joe. Part of me wants to see him burn away everyone who was willing to tolerate him and be left alone in his toxic hellpit.
Panel 5: … Yeah, I got nothing for this one. There’s so much terrible on here.
1) This shit is almost dox level detail, revealing the lack of name as an intentional dehumanization rather than any real means of establishing anonymity for his “targets”. And he throws it to anyone and everyone who walks by him. He throws this amount of detail to them, and especially to “bros” who seem to “get” his campaign of being shitty to women.
And that’s dangerous. Like, he’s basically got a targeting guide here. How to find and punish or exploit this person sexually, here, please do so. And I can’t help imagine this in the hands of someone like Ryan and I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t part of the tool he used to track Joyce back to her dorms for his little revenge scheme.
Like, imagine this information in the hands of an abuser or a stalker. This gives appearance, likely outfit, exploitable habits, roommate information and an open call to “hit that” with her regardless and likely antithetical to her consent.
2) Let’s just highlight the “angry black woman” trope. Cause yeah, black women get dismissed as violent and dangerous simply for existing. Their every action read as somehow angry and aggressive and dangerous and needing to be constrained or censored. And this falls into that face first.
And it’s even worse because Willis stated that this was just from Joe’s very first interaction with Sarah.
He decides to literally shove his friend at her and treat her like an object who’ll want to just fuck him simply for existing as a man, which she did an amazing job of taking in stride and being incredibly civil about.
He then proceeded to assume she’s had sex before and thus open to all comers (while she was still in listening distance), cause y’know any woman who’s had her “freshness seal” “ruined” must be willing to fuck any cock that comes into frame. *intense angry eye roll*.
During all of this, Sarah holds her tongue and only calls him a sleazebag when he’s fully gone, being way more polite than any reasonable human should expect her to be.
She then approaches him in a very calm and reasonable manner because he obviously has aims to shittily use and abuse Joyce who she cares about, asks to talk, to which he responds by basically assuming that her very approach is a literal invitation to a threesome.
Despite this, she still remains calm. Notes the reality of Joyce, begs him to not abuse her and break her in the name of getting his dick wet, to which he accuses her of accusing him of aiming to rape Joyce (which, no, she just very calmly said “hey, don’t break her”, that’s not the same as “don’t rape her”, which should be a given), claims to be good at consent and not into rape (yeah, no) and then literally cites corrective rape logic frequently used against asexual women.
To which she again remains calm, makes one eye-rolling comment and disengages before she gets angry. And when he insisted on trying to keep up the interaction, only then does she say, “fuck off” with regards to this and her attempt to reach out to his douche ass.
And that’s what he interprets as angry. That’s what he’s decided is so angry she poses a genuine threat to Joyce’s life to the point where he’s encouraging gross guys to target her. That that’s the sole comment about her.
Because in a super calm discussion where he was nothing but vile, she said “fuck off” at the end in sadness.
And it highlights the fact that there is literally nothing a black woman can do not to be written off by this type of man as “angry”. No amount of civility or kindness, because the mere act of disagreement is in and of itself somehow proof of “anger”.
And it’s a nice racist cherry on an already shitty pie.
Judging by the question mark next to the “cranky black roommate” quote, even Joyce is picking up on Joe’s blatant racism towards Sarah. Which shows some nice growth for Joyce – she’s picking up on those things now, which she wouldn’t have done at the start of the comic.
If Willis said the description was from before the date (and he apparently only updated the rating and not the description to warn people about Joyce’s propensity for violence), odds are Joe wasn’t sure if Sarah was Joyce’s roommate back then, hence the ‘(?)’.
3) The encouragement to other sleazebags. Like I touched on this in the other two bits, but literally telling people to “hit that” against her, knowing she’s not one for casual sex, knowing she’s likely never had sex? That people should target and harass her for sex despite all that and her stated comfortability with such interactions?
It’s what makes a joke of his supposed “bonafides” about consent. Cause fucker doesn’t actually value consent. The only consent he values is someone’s right to say yes to him. If they say no, he mistreats them to their faces and pretends to be a victim of a false accusation of being a rapist. And the same if he gets called out on being a creep.
And if they have a whole persona of “I don’t want to do this”, he sees that as something to finagle and encourage others to finagle.
Joyce is allosexual and repressed, but this shit gets thrown at asexuals a shit-ton. To the point where a lot of asexuals have begun to resent sex-positivity and especially certain men who claim sex-positivity. Because way too many douchebags see it as their “duty” to target them relentlessly in order to “cure” them of their “repression”, by any means necessary and encourage all their shitty friends to do the same.
And it gets a little hard to stand a lot of the time as an asexual and can be literally fatal as a trans woman. So I have little sympathy for Joe’s shit here, especially seeing as how…
4) He still refuses to own even a small part of his shit. Like, fuck, she’s reading out his receipts and here he is fucking doubling down again on the shittiness. Oh, was I racist piece of shit who encouraged people to sexually harass you? Well, yeah, bet she is a murderer who’ll kill you any day for the indignity of calling me out on my actions in the most calm and reasonable manner possible.
And he fucking feels justified in this anger. Not for anything real she’s done, but simply because she’s daring to read his own words back to him.
And that has specific resonance at the moment. After the sexism eruption of this last election, after so many angry men and other privileged douchebags have tried to argue that being called out on their racism or sexism was what actually made them into nazis as if they weren’t already nazi-leaning before?
This aggrieved entitled anger, quick to lash out at any woman who dares not fit into the script the dudebro has in his head is ever-pervasive and in too many circumstances can be genuinely fatal.
And Joe doesn’t even recognize how awful of a place he is. How fucked it is that he can even pretend to anger at this situation when there’s no one to be angry with but himself.
But he’s so unable to own any shit, that he turns that embarrassment into lashing out angrily and inventing a justification for said anger.
And it’s why Joe needs to sort his shit out or see all his friends leave (and I feel the same way about Mike). People who abuse others because they can’t own their own actions do not deserve to have friends or second chances and Joe is burning through second chances about as quick as he can and is showing absolutely zero self-awareness to realize the enormity of what he has done and how inappropriate it was.
And the worst part is he can’t even claim ignorance. Literally almost every woman he has met has reacted in the same way to the knowledge of his list. Even the ones who agreed to sleep with him. With disgust, with telling him to stop. And yet, Joe, the supposed believer in consent has dismissed them and treated their requests as garbage, not even removing those people from the list.
Because he doesn’t believe in consent. Oh he believes in being viewed as someone who gives a fuck about consent. He believes in saying whatever pro-consent nonsense he needs to to get a woman to fuck him. But actually living true to the principles of consent, actually valuing women’s requests and warnings and statements as real rather than barriers to him getting what he wants?
Fuck no. Which means his consent is a hollow lie. And hopefully he’ll learn that before he crosses the line he can’t uncross and rapes someone.
Cerb, the last life status update of yours that I recall, you were preparing to go back to college for a higher degree.
(That or you were dancing on the ashes of your evil principal’s employment. Don’t remember which order those two came in.)
Are you sticking with STEM, or are you going to be doing something that DoA is relevant to?
Because in the latter case…. holy crepe! You just wrote 7 pages in under an hour based on 5 panels! Make your dissertation on DoA and you’ll have it finished in under a month!
I haven’t read everything you just wrote (because 7 pages, give me time!), and I’ll make a real reply to it if I have a question, something to add, or some extra bit of silliness/seriousness.
But I needed to stop in first and say… DO YOUR DISSERTATION ON DOA!
….
…. okay, maybe I won’t wait to post something silly/serious.
Yup, still waiting to hear back from the grad school program. In the meantime, I’m going to a new job, which will give me summers off which I can put to use writing fiction like I used to when I was younger.
Not quite a dissertation, but I’ll have work in at least one anthology fairly soon (it’s been accepted and it’s in the last round of editing and formatting).
You’re still teaching even when you’re not. Looked up ‘allosexual’ because that term was new to me and now have a working distinction between asexual and allosexual+repressed. Thank you for something new to think about almost every day.
I feel like the version of gender and sexuality I learned from our culture is drawn in crayon on the inside of a folded-out Bud Light case.
Great analysis on all of this but oh god please please please don’t compare Joe at least to Mike. Mike is a shithole too but Mike owns everything that he’s done. Like, he’s figuratively screaming from the rooftops for people to call him on his shit compared to Joe here dancing around the blame or evading consequence.
Mike “wants people to call him on his shit” just so he can point out what hypocrites the potential shit-callers are. He’s not any better than Joe on that.
Joe speaks of himself as god’s gift to women, thinks of himself as god’s gift to women, and then treats women like garbage and freaks out and jumps through hoops to avoid blame when people learn by reading his own words how little a gift to anyone he really is.
Mike calls himself an asshole, thinks of himself as an asshole, and when people call him out on it he openly acknowledges it and if anything he seems infuriated by how passively everyone reacts when what he wants is an actual fight–and if they score a win on him or react with righteous fury to his assholery being unacceptable (unfortunately, often just because it was hitting to close), he’ll shut up and let them have the point.
Joe is a hypocrite. Mike is an asshole. And Mike’s definitely got his own sexist baggage to own up to, also, but unless this plotting with Ethan and Danny goes MUCH farther than I anticipate then Mike is not trying to manipulate and coerce the people around him into buying a forced narrative that violates their sexual consent-edging boundaries like Joe is.
I basically never post here, but I read the comments BECAUSE of your reaction posts. Hell, the conversation a while back about DID issues led to some of my plural friends finding some great resources. Thanks for being amazing.
I’ve been looking for a good place to say this, but I’m tempted to read Joe’s consent talk (and Willis’s commentary on it years ago) as a way in which the cartoonist has grown.
Like I think it was a bit simplistic to say, “This character is big on consent,” and Willis said it at the time but as he continued to write Joe it became clearer and clearer to him that Joe’s respect for consent, and his respect for women (once framed as both being better than Danny’s and Walky’s, in a bit of an ironic turnabout) weren’t actually that strong, and that Joe needed to do more self-examination and confront that fact.
But that’s just a guess. I think the arc is being well-written either way — I just know Willis has talked before about how characters and their needs evolve as he writes in ways that have surprised him (he tried to make Amber happier), and that he’s in a continual process of growing as a person, too (long ago, a protagonist said the r-word in all seriousness, where more recently Raidah called that out as being really crappy to do), as we all in the comments (and the world) are also doing…
So it makes a lot of sense to me, and makes that slight dissonance where early Joe was sometimes positioned as a better advocate for women’s agency than characters like Danny (who have in the meantime ALSO grown a lot themselves — I think Danny would be a better partner now, and definitely more able to tell a girl like Billie that HE’S not comfortable with casual sex, rather than laying that at her feet with attempted mind-reading about how she was going to regret it).
It tells you a lot about Joe that he clearly thinks that Joyce being annoyed at him basically publishing insulting commentary about her attractiveness and lifestyle is somehow her wrongdoing. I’ve noticed that he reacts in the same way to other girls’ objections too and, if I may, I do think that this total social obliviousness is his real worst characteristic. He literally doesn’t understand that anyone has a right to be annoyed with him.
Mm hmm, he never respects no. He just treats it as some moral failing on the person in question that somehow says more about them than it does about him.
It’s always someone else’s fault and he never makes any space for anyone to be legitimately upset at his behavior even though there is no way he’s so bad at body language that he doesn’t know exactly how his usual approach is taken.
This is actually a little crushing…Both of them talk, and care for each other, but both of them are probably destroyed by this…It’s an asshole thing to make a list like this, but he cares for Joyce, and never meant for it to get out. He’s not in the right, but it feels like it’s definitely going to be worse than he deserves, especially considering the two of them confide in the other for their needs.
Is his do list a blog so he can’t change older entries? If not, he’d had a lot of time to reevaluate his entry which sounds like it’s written before their date.
So, he didn’t do anything to make this right even after he had more contact with Joyce.
Avatar-Roulette again because some stupid aggressive ad showing up in several places (here, gws and namesake) keeps trying to highjack my browser.
I whish there was noscript for iOS.
Oh, he wanted the people who were on it to see it, just not the ones who ranked low. I don’t think for a second that Raidah’s not on the list (since, you know, she’s a lady he met), and he offered to give it to her, and he specifically said he doesn’t tell the low-scoring ones what he rated them.
Addendum to add something that came to me thinking about Joe’s behavior these last couple of strips.
He’s angry at Danny and Joyce.
He’s angry that they are not fitting into their roles. That they aren’t reassuring him and telling him his behavior was okay and it’s just those percussion instruments who can’t take an honest assessment. That they aren’t helping enable his downward spiral.
And that anger plays into how he’s mistreated Danny so far this comic. The entire comic he’s attacked all of Danny’s personality, demanded he change it to serve him. And the very specific way he wanted to change it was someone who would help enable his behavior and cheer it rather than viewing it as the sad catastrophe of misogyny and fear that it’s always been.
That’s his ideal. A cheerleader validating his behavior, celebrating his sad ambitions, treating his actions like something that mattered. Going “wow, you managed to strong-arm a woman into sleeping with you, how big were the superficial features porn has trained you to over-emphasize and which actually mostly just cause lower back pain”.
And nothing else. No other humanity to remind him that this important person in his life is a human being with their own “stuff” going on.
And he’s pissed off that the people in his life are refusing to fill those roles for him. That they have been passively ignoring his douchery and they are not at all in disagreement with the folks who think he did something scummy.
That they aren’t propping up the fragile fantasy he has chosen to escape to because it promised a land beyond the reach of feelings.
And that might be the worst thing about him. Even the people who choose to care about him, he still, in his fear, devalues to props. And he treats them like toxic masculinity trains him to treat women, as malfunctioning toasters who refuse to toast the bread.
I’d take it one step further on his dehumanization of Danny.
He’s not angry at DANNY, because Danny isn’t ranking as a person either. He’s angry at the situation. He’s angry at reality for not being what he thinks it should be. Danny’s just a thing in reality, though. He might rate frustration or exasperation, but not anger.
…. but I’ll differ with you about Joyce.
Joyce actually got THROUGH to him. On an emotional level, not in a he-actually-learned-a-lesson level I think it’s when she turned his date expectations completely on their head and then complimented him in the elevator anyways… but it was sometime before they were texting each other on Joyce’s trip home. I don’t believe that what he wrote reflects what he actually thinks/feels about her…. which again, might be the toxicity that he’s forced to project rather than admit some non-PUA conflicts.
Now I don’t think he’s in love (just because), and they’d definitely not make a good pair, and I’m not talking about any sort of seeds of redemption in that. (Maybe he has a redemption arc in him, but I don’t think that’s it.) But I think Joyce has managed to force him to see her as human, if only in the privacy of his own subconscious.
On the other hand, I kind of feel like my point holds, because Joe edited the number but considered that blurb just fine. It still got his post-date stamp of approval. You know?
Congrats, Joe! Your toxic masculinity, stupid shenanigans and psychological hangups have damaged your lifelong friendship with Danny, and possibly terminated your budding friendship with Joyce.
(Sigh)
You know … It’s this strip that finally made my dislike of Joe outweigh my pity for him.
I feel bad for Joe here, hes been blind sided (its his own fault of course) and I’m guessing the rough time frame since this part of the strip began is like 5 minutes?
So hes probably not thinking clearly, hes on the defensive because he feels hes being attacked so he probably won’t be able to process everything thats happening until he gets somewhere quiet, at the very least.
Everything he knows has probably been picked up from his father, it seemed like the divorce messed him around and now he runs into Joyce who inappropriately dredged up memories of his parents divorce on their very first date
He was probably a big man in High School and now hes having to face the reality that the same behavior doesn’t doesn’t fly in college so his entire world view is crumbling
Again this is a situation entirely of his own making but hes still a teenager, hes shown he can be caring so hopefully once the dust settles and hes had some time to reflect (damn hard to make changes to your behavior when you’re right in the middle of the situation itself) he’ll get more story time to attempt to make amends
I hope he does become a better person out of this because if he doesn’t learn anything and drives his, remaining, friends away then he’ll become properly dangerous
Hes tall, attractive and in good shape, if he goes total PUA then he’ll be able to hurt a lot of people
Blonde? She’s meant to be blonde?
Well that explains the aryan comment Becky made about her family.
I thought it was a reference to their uniquely blue eyes
I know the Russian word for this sort of hair which is pretty common here (my mom’s hair is like this… tho not as shiny at that picture ofc lol) – русые волосы, but as far as I can tell English just… doesn’t
blonde sounds fair enough to me
I interpreted Joyce’s hair as brown all this time and was super confused by Becky’s comment a couple panels ago. I feel like Joyce being blonde is the DoA version of The Dress (the “is it white+gold or blue+black?” one).
I’d say Dorothy is a straight forward blonde while Joyce and her siblings have dirty blonde hair. It’s darker than Dorothy’s, but lighter than say, Danny’s. It’s kinda inbetween!
Y’know, at first I thought Joe was just a stupid kid playing with fire. But I lost patience with him a book or two ago when he started doubling down even after he’s been shown and told again and again that he needs to stop. And now that it’s time for him to burn, he just keeps trying to one-up himself.
I hope he gets what he deserves. There’s no excuse for this crap.
Reducio ad absurdium, I believe it is called. It’s a fairly well-known narrative trope, most commonly used in satire, where you take a behaviour or concept and portray it in the most out-of-the-park ridiculous way to expose just how stupid it is.
Both Joe’s behavior and the angry reactions to it are completely realistic.
Some men will go to far greater lengths to broadcast shit like this, especially teenagers. Women already have to deal with enough casually demeaning garbage as it is, without dudes putting in extra effort to document that objectification and then share it with their friends.
In the real world, things like Joe’s list get far more invasive, like that Facebook group that a bunch of Marines were using to share nude photos of female colleagues.
We still haven’t seen a bunch of bros come out of the woodwork to defend Joe’s godgiven right to rate women and silence all the ladies as “hysterical”.
All up in arms? Reductio ad absurdum? You think so?
Other Rachel was angry but then she was publicly insulted as a 3. Now Joyce is upset and hurt, but she got called a 0- by someone she was starting to trust.
The others we’ve seen so far were Mandy looking unimpressed, and three other women shooting dirty looks at Joe while he talked about Mandy’s ranking. For responses to finding someone has an on-line database on you, that all seems pretty reasonable to me.
Yeah he would, except their mutual unstable friend Amber would be so messed up about it. Well Danny needs some soul-searching time anyway, and Ethan too probably.
Just a thought: Notice that Joyce is wearing more ‘cover up’ clothes than ‘three days ago’. I might be reading too much into this but I wonder if she’s feeling a bit insecure about herself on a physical level after reading Joe’s rather devastating assessment of her attractiveness and relationship prospects. This is someone who she thought was her friend, after all.
She wore that in previous strips as well. Also, this particular outfit is an anniversary update of her 20 year old design, so I think you might be reading a little too much into this.
This will do wonders for Joyce’s ability to trust men, I’m certain. She trusted Jos enough to seek his advice in coping with her parents (something she didn’t even go to Dorothy for) and he still wrote that and kept it up for so many douche bags to see. With the exception of Jacob and Ethan, have any of the dudes in this school treated her with consistant respect?
The fact Joyce looks sad in that last panel makes me sad.
She had a genuine connection with Joe so this is just… disappointing. She doesn’t even look angry, just let down and defeated. This isn’t something she can punch away – she has no idea how many people saw it – it’s just… a thing, that she has to deal with.
I’ve got to say that Joe’s closing comment on panel 5 is, in my view, the most vilely hateful thing that he’s ever said to anyone. He’s under extreme social pressure, I know, but that does not under any circumstances justify his treating anyone in that manner.
I’ve got to say, what he says about Sarah is far from nice either. I’ve got the feeling that, when a woman rejects him in any way, he reacts like a spoiled child denied a demanded treat or toy – He lashes out in a spiteful and hurtful way, hoping to cause as much damage as possible in an act of petty revenge.
Thats over the top, he shouldn’t have mentioned her skin colour (theres no need for that) but theres been more than enough examples in this strip where its not unreasonable to label Sarah as cranky
I’m pretty sure Raidah would probably agree with Sarah being described as cranky or Rozs little sister or Billie or well many of the cast that have interacted with her
Devils advocate: Maybe he noted that she was black in case someone was trying to find her, so mentioning her skin color would ease the search?
(He did give out his list to anyone who wanted it)
Except Joe is basing his opinion on what JOE knows, not what we know.
When interacting with Joe Sarah has actually been fairly relaxed and friendly …except while he was repeatedly hitting on her, or talking about “fixing” Joyce with his penis. So because she didn’t take kindly to that, he decided she’s cranky. The fact that it happens to be accurate in Sarah’s case doesn’t really make that any better.
Joe wrote that blurb before his date with Joyce. Sarah was perfectly reasonable and polite until the very end of that conversation, where she told him to fuck off because he was a pig who took ‘don’t break Joyce’ as ‘you are a rapist’. He had no reason to call her cranky.
It seems to possibly be a mix of ‘you’re annoying, why wouldn’t she get annoyed by you’ (‘I feel this way therefore everyone must’), racism (assumption that black = violent though he has no reason to believe Sarah is, we know she has been twice but he didn’t at the time of writing and she hadn’t been at all at the time of writing and still is not violent in general), and entitlement (‘I don’t want to be called out so you’re being annoying and will bring the wrath of others upon you and deserve it’).
I am not sure about that. She was fine being alone with Walky or Ethan. But she panicked when she ran out of Leslie’s class and realized she was alone.
Walky and Ethan are friends of her, so I’m reckoning Artemis meant that she was scared to be around guys that were strangers to her while being alone. Regardless, I was also under the impression that being alone in general triggered her anxieties and fears, so I’m confused that she is just chillin’ outside like that. Maybe her triggers were only activated when she was alone while surrounded by strangers???
The problem was specifically with men she didn’t know. Ethan, Walky, and even Joe were all fine.
If you go back to that strip, you can see how she’s only nervous at first, until people start walking past her, and that’s when she gets terrified, as all the guys’ turn into Ryan.
With him in rotting in a dumpster somewhere (or I suppose possibly jail), the fear that she might run into him again at any time which was causing her to see his face would be considerably less
Maybe she just decided to try this whole ‘being outside on my own’ thing one step at a time. Fears are not an immutable unchanging thing, and neither is PTSD. Maybe she’s just having a good day.
Willis, I want you to draw Joe’s mouth open a little wider in the last panel so he looks even more delightfully ridiculous and childish, like Calvin yelling.
Joe’s list was really creepy and dehumanizing. If he loses his friendships and no one will date him now, he’s earned it. The fact that he isn’t even apologetic for treating all the women on campus like objects instead of people shows they are right to be done with him.
I love how Joyce handles this. One of her most appealing features is that she is aware of her quirks and gently mocks herself. Like when they were breaking into Becky’s house and she bemoaned that prison food touches on the plate.
She uses that sense of humor and cleverness here and leans into Joe’s insult – I have a name you know – and makes him own his awful comments. Joe can’t fight on her level and is reduced to sniping like he’s on a playground.
So is the zero minus Joe’s way of noting a completely platonic relationship or did he wrote that after their one date went to hell and forgot to change it??
btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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“better Zero Cool than Zero Minus”
Joyce, why you readin that anyway, it’s like the comments on a feminist/trans ally article
[or really any internet article]
Morbid curiousity? “Know your enemy”?
I’m sure Joyce was both somewhat curious and unsurprised that she was rated poorly by the guy she punched in the face.
Alternatively, Joe could have intentionally given her the lowest rating to disguise the fact that they’re actually in regular communication for some reason.
That was a few weeks ago; they’ve actually been talking about fairly emotionally intimate topics since then, and seem to kind of be friends.
At this point, this is a pretty shitty thing to be writing about her.
Even then, it’s probably understandable enough if it was something he wrote about and forgot, given the aforementioned punching and her general overbearing fundie attitude from early on.
… Except that this is a list he openly shares with other people. This description here is how he’s describing a friend, or at least decently friendly acquaintance, to others.
Almost certainly the biggest reason most people are pissed at him. If this was just a private list, most people would be rolling their eyes and thinking “typical Joe, using the little head instead of the big one”, even if some of them were offended by the rating he gives them, and just dismiss him as the dumbass frat boy he keeps trying to be like. But, nope, it’s just so much worse.
I think it was written a few weeks ago, and that he never updated it after their list.
Also, he doesn’t openly share it with other people – someone broke into it and shared it online.
No, he does share it with other people. We’ve seen him ask others if he “subscribes to his ‘do’ list” and has offered the password out. What we don’t know are how common these occurrences are, but it’s definitely been stated that it’s not something he keeps to himself.
Hey, Joe! Stop Dannying everything up all over the place and try fucking APOLOGISING to every female on campus instead!
I haven’t seen any indication that anyone other than Danny knew about the list, and that was only to write the (apparently poor) security.
Plus, it’s probably not a bad assumption that he wrote that about her very early on in their interactions.
Does that make this any better? Not really, who you are in the dark and all that, but his previous reactions seem to be that he didn’t think anyone had access to it.
He comments on it to the whole gender studies class here. In the next strip Dorothy comments about it – saying it’s so “junior high”.
Not long before he offers Raidah the password, even as she reacts with disgust to the concept.
It’s come up before, but those are the most recent appearances. He mentions the list constantly, though he doesn’t always make it clear it’s an actual online list with an RSS feed.
Dammit html
offers Raidah the password
I stand corrected, but that makes his current behavior confusing. If he was just handing access out to anyone, why is he so frantic that just anyone has access?
I mean dorothy knew about it, but I don’t think she’s the type to do this. My money is on Roz, since she has sex with Joe on a semi regular basis and may have been informed of the list, or he left it open on his computer.
Joe won’t fucking shut up about his list, everyone in the gender studies class at least is in formed
I mean, with how widely he seems willing to share it with people, I think it’s worth knowing what information about you is being put out there.
“Information”?
Yes, for a general definition of information.
Disinformation, misinformation, it’s all information, right?
Right! Welcome to the post-truth era.
who needs information
when you’re working underground…
mess with the best
die like the rest
joe’s really gonna crash and burn over this one.
or rather, crash, but no burn.
Closest thing I’ve read with vitriolic comments was the Hollywood Reporter.
Hey, that’s…not racist, sexist? No…um, gross generalization of a varied, multifaceted, culture? Eh, still compelled to say racist, but then, I’m a fan on CinemaSins.
Like the comments on a webcomic post?
Why read it: Seeing the evidence is important before going out on premature judgments. This is not just an ugly comment from an idiot you neither know or care about and never have to hear from again, this is someone you mostly considered a friend(?) who turns out to have gone full bongo. You can’t just ignore that/him, so it’s important to at least confirm the facts before condemning him purely on hearsay.
jeez really seeing the full extent of joe’s shittiness
Not really. In this case, Joyce physically assaulted him.
That happened.
I don’t care if Joe was being rude, Joyce was in the wrong there.
That doesn’t make Joyce’s quote from the last panel more forgivable… at all
They were both shitty to each other. Shitty behavior doesn’t cancel out.
Word of Willis on Patreon was that this entry was written before the date.
Yeah, but didn’t he edit it afterwards?
Apparently just the number otherwise I’d expect the bit about “she’ll hire a guy to punch you repeatedly if you try and fuck her” would have made the list.
Which just goes to show how superficially worthless his list is at even its shitty stated purpose. He’ll go back to edit the number, but not the notes.
He re-numbered her, but apparently the blurb is pre-date.
Yeah, that was shitty of her. Difference between her and him? She’s tried to own the wrongness of that action.
Did that actually happen? Because the way I remember it, she never acknowledged that she was in the wrong.
Yeah, I was wondering that. Joyce has grown a huge amount but I don’t recall her actually acknowledging the issues behind what was very much assaulting a man for his thoughts.
It was very much not for his thoughts. It was for pushing on her the “guys think about sex every seven seconds” bullshit like a fact of life she can’t do anything against. Like, she didn’t just read that on the internet or something and go on a punching spree, Joe dug his hole very much himself. The retaliation was over the top, yes, and warrants apologizing, but… he was warned, and overall is very much sweet poetic justice for all girls other than Joyce who couldn’t protect themselves from his harrassment so effectively.
I don’t think it was. I mean, there’s a lot of value in your comment, but if you go back, the moment where Joyce stops trying to get Mike to stop and actually encourages him- and apparently joins in- is when Mike points out that Joe was looking at Connie.
Attacking someone for sexual harassment is one thing, but Joyce didn’t really react to that beyond trying to convince Joe he was wrong. She was trying to converse with him right up to that point. THAT was her line. Not sexual harassment or spreading sexual BS- the idea that Joe was looking at (and therefore thinking sexual thoughts about) another woman.
In that context, I would rate Joyce’s actions at that moment (and ONLY in that moment) as worse than Joe’s. She assaulted him for looking at another woman with the implication that she was thinking about him. That’s horrific.
All of that is said with the very strong awareness that Joe’s behaviour overall is distasteful at best and repulsive on average.
Wow, they really cleaned the stairs well. I figured there might be some blood or broken concrete after Amber was done with Ryan.
I don’t see a chalk outline and police tape, at the very least.
Pity, that.
That just means Amber and Dorothy worked fast.
Dor’s first cover-up. Adorable.
and teeths
Outside bones. No standard bones either.
We can’t really see the upper surface of the steps and landing where the bloody business went down.
John, your avatar is PERFECT for that comment.
Don’t rate women, Joe.
My ratings of someone is typically “better than me” I dont think i’ve needed a second rating for anyone ive gotten to know.
Yeah, no kidding. My usual rating is “Forget it son, you don’t have a chance. Why? Pick any of ten reasons. Now say nothing/treat her like a human and get out of there (depending on circumstances)”.
it’s delightful to see him reaping what he saw.
Damn it all.
These comments of yours never fail to make me smile.
Roz has already given us the perfect answer to this entire debacle
Make a video with Joe?
Somehow I don’t think that is in the cards any longer…
…which more than anything should tell you how badly Joe has fucked up. Even by HIS OWN stupid bro-metrics he is doing badly.
I’m still a bit lost on Joe and Joyce’s relationship? Do they not know they’re texting each other or they know and are keeping it secret for some reason?
The restaurant (diner?) scene made it evident they knew who the other was.
I imagine for some reason or other, Joe is less of a repulsive dick when he’s texting.
At least part of it is probably because he doesn’t want to sleep with Joyce, so there’s no “gotta hit that” feeling behind his interactions anymore. In person (and/or in things he might potentially share with “bros”), though, he still has to keep up appearances or something like that.
It’s easier to be open with people when you’re not face to face with them.
He tries to keep up appearances as someone-who-doesn’t-talk-about-feels-with-women.
He is stupid that way.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/afternoon/
I think it’s more that he’s someone who doesn’t talk about feels. At all.
I mean, his attitude towards the value of a woman just for companionship is obviously reeeaaally problematic, but the talking-about-feels thing goes much deeper for him I think.
I suspect that relationship with Joe is why Joyce looks so hurt here, she thought that they were connecting as real human beings and now she’s reminded of how Joe used to think of her, and maybe still does. And, you know, how he rates and describes all other women.
EAsier to drag him without an ukulele in the other hand, too
I don’t actually see the ukulele. Maybe he made Joe carry it. Add insult to injury.
Though I imagine it’s quite repellent to women, which he may find handy right now. He can use it to ward them off, like waving a cross at a vampire.
If he borrows Danny’s hat too, they’ll leave him alone entirely.
Obviously Danny has acsess to Ukulele-Space
What kind of women do you know who would be repelled by a ukulele. I would come over to check it out and hang around afterwards just in case someone plays it
Always thought joyce to be a brunnete over blond. But can’t blame her for being curious. Even if you don’t care bout results ya alway wannna know what a list involving you says.
I don’t. if its bad I probably already thought it. If it is good I tend to assume they are lying to spare my feelings.
She looks like the type of blonde who was medium-light blonde when she was little, and her hair darkened a little as she got older.
My sisters were like that; they ended up somewhere around medium-dark blonde, which would translate to Joyce’s hair in a comic strip, heh.
There’s a lot of kinds of blonde. Just as your favorite hair stylist for a list.
Tawny, golden saffron, flaxen, etc.
https://youtu.be/vONUjXW-_xU
Ouch…
Joe and Joyce has a relationship beyond his stupid bro-script. She reached out to him, he comforted her when she needed it. They have extended a measurement of trust.
So that she is hurt…. hurts. As it should.
He’s managed to poison his relationship with the only 4 people who have put up with him and is well on his way to poisoning his relationship with Jacob. If he keeps on his road, he’s going to have no one around him and no one to blame but himself.
Danny apparently still continues to put up with him, though. So that’s only 3/4.
Danny’s teetering on the edge of just walking away and had already started pulling away and crafting himself anew as Joe had pushed him away.
I doubt being berated about the ukulele and then this shit is not doing his feelings in this regard any favors.
I wonder if Joe is somebody who is so afraid of abandonment that he creates it — like, he gets people to just leave already (so he’ll have a feeling of power over it, or so he won’t have to continually fear it, or to reinforce his worldview that everyone leaves eventually). It’s not an uncommon pattern, and he’s going to be very lonely if he keeps it up.
I could see that.
…Or maybe that’s more Sarah’s thing, dovetailing with her self-fulfilling fear of rejection. (It could be both characters, but Sarah has it way more front-and-center.) Joe spends all his energy purposely avoiding any self-reflection whatsoever, so it’s harder to pinpoint his motives. But, if self-fulfilling-fear-of-abandonment is part of his deal, he could be being difficult with Danny to subconsciously test whether Danny will stay this time.
Kinda,I think. Or rather, he wants to create a new Persona without the perceived flaws of the old one,not seeing the flaws of the new one.
Hotdog!Joe don’t do feels so his heart won’t hurt… But hotdog! Joe hurts everyone around him, which will hurt a lot more
It’s not only “not uncommon”, it describes one of the personalities explored in attachment theory. So yeah, it’s a very real possibility. I would like to know more about his parental relationships, though- what little we’ve seen from his father would reinforce this, especially if he was the primary caregiver in Joe’s childhood.
And there you have it, the perfect entry point strip for new readers.
well huh……. yeah i dont know what to say about joe so im going to say danny is being a better friend than i would be to joe at the moment.
I literally stopped interacting with a friend cause they went PUA. If I was in Danny’s shoes, if I was kind enough to drag him away and he said that? I’d drop his head right on the steps and walk away.
pua?
Pick-Up Artist
i couldnt be one if i tried. I have lost track of how often others told me that “she was flirting with you” and i never noticed.
well that plus i think I want to be worth someones time before i try to date.
I’m glad you couldn’t be a pickup artist if you tried, because it’s a terrible thing to be, and you probably have the good sense not to wanna become terrible. Yay for not being a jerk.
You do mention a lot of really negative self-judgment and feelings of worthlessness. If you don’t mind me asking, are you getting some help for that? It seems like your brain is being super unkind to you, which is important and difficult, and I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to hafta deal with it all alone.
I stumbled across a short “how to” on the Internet, many many years ago, sort of an introductory handbook, and read a few pages in horrified fascination before saying out loud “and the only cost is – your soul!” and closing that window.
meh, that should probably be somewhere else in this tree, but whatevs.
and yeah, like they said – messed up as you (we?) are, there are worse ways to be. really.
used to. hasnt helped beyond this point despite many types of pills and therapy and such. some people are meant to be happy and be able to socialize and the like and others just arent.
Keep trying. I used to be there, too.
That’s what it *wants* you to think.
Seriously, I was feeling completely hopeless last week. More depressed than I’ve been in, like, 6 years. Then I got a little suspicious of how strongly that voice was insisting that nothing could possibly help and that I shouldn’t even think about trying. I picked up an old meditation book, read a bit, and despite reading about how meditation won’t magically solve problems, something flipped in my brain and the hopelessness now seems like a bad dream.
Like, sure, I’ve still got plenty of problems, and there’s no guarantee I’ll solve any of them. But they don’t feel so unbearable any more. I don’t feel like existing is torture. I’ve got a little space to breathe again
I dont try or think about giving myself a game over almost ever in comparison and that is probably all i can hope for now. I’m trying to get pearson comptia a plus certified right now but the second test is making me its bongo.
ive failed it more than twice already and am trying again tomorrow and already planning for just in case i fail which i think is about a 79 percent chance, but im still gonna try to pass it. just frustrated cause each try is 100 dollars and ugh…..
well, good luck!
(wanna talk about debugging those fails? I’m avoiding chores I guess…)
Well if i fail again im going to have to just stick to a study thing. my big problem is when i am in the groove if anything breaks me out of it i pretty much wont get back in it the rest of the day.
I… don’t actually understand that first sentence. I get the second one, though. I pretty much have to trick myself into starting things, if I try to “just do” them my brain’s just “lol nope”.
…like the mushrooms I was halfway through cleaning. ah crap. now I have to find a way back there again… maybe if I just find the bag I was going to put them in…
Yeah, they are more an organization for creating a complex justification for serial rape than anything actually related to their stated purpose and mostly just trade various strategies for exploiting social niceties and people’s good will in order to be more and more invasive of others’ personal spaces, often to the point of sexual assault.
So yeah, not really something anyone wants to be.
As to yourself, I think you can be kind to yourself. It’s a worthy endeavor to want to be your best self and sort yourself out before dating and it isn’t actually an uncommon thing to be unaware of flirting. I’m notoriously bad at noticing that stuff cause I’m ace and so am never looking for it. Usually people have to state it out loud for me to realize that’s where the conversation was going.
At “best” PUA are all about manipulation, down to the very first interaction they advise men to have with women, the negging.
Everything is already there in the negging: the aggression, intent of instrumentalization, blatant disrespect, denial of the woman as an individual, demeaning with the stated purpose of lowering her self-esteem and making her vulnerable, and the sugar-coating of the compliment to make her confused (mixing hostile and friendly signals = abusive relationship 101) and unable to counterattack.
That’s for the PUA theory.
Now when it comes to their *culture*, it is, sadly enough, almost as horrifying. They are basically a proto-sect, complete with its very own language and pseudo-mythology. They divide humanity between categories, use cryptic words (acronyms mostly) to disguise reality, etc.
Not to mention their relationship to the equally repulsive incel community and their practice of secrecy (as when they closed their forums following Elliot Rodger’s massacre, to take the time to erase his posts and make sure no one else talks about him).
PUA = complete misogynistic, borderline criminal garbage.
I’m afraid to ask – what is incel?
“involuntarily celibate”
Basically a community of bitter people without current partners who blame women for not sleeping with them even though they are an angry mass of red flags and view it as a violence committed against them that they need to get revenge for.
It was the community that Elliot Rodger belonged to and which were the first group to go after Zoe Quinn. They are genuinely terrifying and many members of their community have gone on shooting sprees or otherwise murdered women in their lives.
INvoluntary CELibate. AKA men who cannot find a girlfriend.
I don’t know if the term involves anything beyond that.
Incel stands for “Involuntarily celibate.” I think it was another one of those spawned by Reddit. A quick guide to these:
If you hate yourself, you want r/foreveralone.
If you hate women, you want r/incel.
If you hate humanity, you want r/The Red Pill.
I see I was wise to be afraid. EUGH.
And the insiduous thing is that the incel and PUA communities are rather easy to stumble into, especially if you’ve been steeped in toxic masculinity’s messaging, and for whatever reason haven’t met someone.
Didn’t help that I was hanging out on Slashdot a lot as a frustrated teenager, where you’ve got a ton of right-libertarian nerd-rage boiling over, and that naturally seems to lead to incel/PUA stuff. Somehow, I figured out that it was all a bunch of misogynistic bullshit, but a lot of people don’t.
Do you visit WeHuntedTheMammoth, and can you.share your opinion of it if so?
I do!
I think it’s incredibly triggering at times, but is really good at keeping track of the various misogynist hate movements and their recruitment strategies and modes of attack as it helps deconstruct shitty things that happen online and in life.
the point is going so far over his head that he might as well be just off the coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean, which is the opposite side of the world
Since when is Joyce a blonde?
…always?
Joyce is supposed to be blonde?
Dirty blonde. Although evangelicals consider that a “devilish” slur so they use churchy blonde instead.
If there were a bit more red I could buy strawberry blonde for her.
That would be the hair type of a Joyce-and-Becky love child.
I suddenly feel bad for Becky. Is that a correct feeling to be having?
That Joyce would never love her like Becky does? I suppose it’s a correct feeling, but she has found love with Dina and she’s in a better place now…
More of meant the strawberry-blonde thing imeanyes, that, that thing you just said.
When I was young, I went from strawberry blonde to what we called “dishwater blonde” and ultimately transitioned to dark brown (with silver sparkles in the right light these days). Joyce’s hair looks like that mousy light brown I had during the aforementioned transition.
Dark brunette here. *waves hand* Never heard the term dishwater blonde. How peculiar.
Regarding the light silver part of your hair, my dark brunette mom is prone to slight dark red tint in the sunlight. I think I’m the same as well?
Dishwasher blond must be the equivalent to the German “Straßenköterblond” (stray dog blonde). Hair stylist call it ash blond, I think.
http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=912785&idForum=2&lang=de&lp=ende
Myself, I went from a fairly light blond to right on the edge of blond and brown as I got older.
And then, when I actually decided to grow facial hair out, it was red, so… yeah.
I’ve also seen and used “sandy blonde”.
Yeah that’s a good fit for Joyce – sandy blonde.
As a fellow blonde, we come in many shades.
From platinum to Joyce’s color. I’ve seen it called a lot of things: ash blonde, mousey blonde, dirty blonde, dishwater blonde, etc. It’s basically the darkest shade of blonde. Almost brown but not quite brown yet.
http://ell.h-cdn.co/assets/16/40/480×720/gettyimages-518941986.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/c6/cc/64c6cc19cc8d7d178ab00c9d058faaeb.jpg
I can see why some people might think it’s actually brown. But it’s def blonde, and I say that even as a platinum blonde.
joe, stop talking. just stop.
Also stop writing. That too.
I keep forgetting Joyce is supposed to be blonde.
I know right ?
To me, blonde is Dorothy color but I have hair the color of tree bark and still get called blond as often as not so…
Not to be birchy, but there are many colors of tree bark, so… I’ll just leaf you with that.
Yew may come to regret that post…
Puns ain’t too Poplar around these parts…
Wood you cut it out?
Oak-ay, I’m pine-ing for the ‘ent’ of this.
Oh, fir goodness’ sake.
I am wondering where this endgame with Joe will lead. I’d like to think this to be something of a redemption arc in the sense that he’s still a somewhat shitty person (because there’s even some things Willis can’t do) but there’s stricter limits to his shittiness. Like Mike only less violent and…well, less shitty.
You should read It’s Walky!.
I have. As well as Shortpacked. Too bad this will nothing to do with those too barring the characters involved.
All characters have retained their personalities from those previous incarnations.
So Joe’s having his coping methods explode in his face, next he’ll realise that everyone is so mad at him that he’s really alone which will force him to actually admit he wants the things he’ been trying to avoid and have to work to gain them.
As it is, he’s absolutely trashed his potential relationships with a large portion of the university through the outing of his “Do list”. Coming to terms with the fact that his focus on sex to exclusion of all other parts of normal relationships has and will continue to bite him in the ass from here on out would be a good start.
If he recognized that his views and behavior won’t be tolerated and that he needs to change if he wants to not be viewed as a total scumbag and took steps toward that goal, it’d be great.
My read on Joe is that he’s outright, genuinely terrified of any sort of non-physical healthy relationship. Sex is the closest he can get to filling his need for intimacy and socialisation- with where he is right now (if my take on him is correct) is that others being unwilling to connect with him emotionally is fine but them being unwilling to hop into bed with him is a terrible idea.
We’ve seen some hints of that mindset starting to unravel with his texting with Joyce, but this seems to have reminded him of the “importance” (to him) of the sexual connection. I’m eager to see where this goes.
“is sometimes accompanied by evil dude who punches my face, can’t be bribed, just wants to watch the world burn. AVOID.”
Joe. Shut UP. Take a HINT. God, he has to have realized he’s in a hole by now and his reaction is to just keep fucking digging.
I’m thinking right now, Joyce’s strangle-counter has muuuuuuuch longer left on it than yours does, Joe.
sometimes its best to let yourself be buried because once they are done at least you can try to dig yourself out of what was thrown at you and see if anyone stayed. digging a deeper hole never seems to work.
But for Joe to admit to the problem he’s now having he would have to admit that emotionally connecting with others can be okay, and emotionally distancing himself from everyone is unhealthy. I don’t think he’s in a place where he can handle that idea, so he’s doubling down on the sex front to reinforce- to himself- that that’s okay and good.
That’s what I’m getting from this anyway.
I’m just picturing Joe doing an apology through the list since it’s public, but then no one reading it because they are all disgusted by it and then he goes right back to his normal ways.
How do you vocalize a question mark in parenthesis?
“parenthesis-question-mark-end parenthesis”
I figure a sort of lilt on the last word followed by another questioning sound? But it is a conundrum.
She probably spoke it as “question mark” in a slightly lower tone and slightly faster.
“(?)”
Intonation?
your voice rises by the end of the phrase and then you pause for a moment to process it like what the fuck did I just read???
If shes a zero-minus, why would you want to hit that?
The “challenge” of fucking someone with a stated desire not to fuck. Cause that shows how good you are at “game” and seduction.
It’s why these fuckers swarm over lesbians and asexuals. Because we’re “hard mode” for these fucks.
I figure the ratings were on a scale of ‘hot to not’, not ‘how much they want to do it’. A zero-minus would imply that Joe found Joyce repulsive.
Otherwise Sarah would be a zero-minus-minus.
Oh it is. But he went after a 0- he once rated as a 4, because he thought the “repression sex” would bump it to a 10, cause it’s fulfilling the challenge and the victory of that totally trumps someone having any skill at sex, any interest in sex, or their likelihood of falling into a deep despair for having sex.
What attracted him was the challenge. That’s what pinged her on his radar and made him pursue her. And it’s like a fucking beacon for those types.
I think he edited the number, but not the post after the “date”. Zero-minus due to the hitting, while the comments, which don’t mention the violence, reflect what he was thinking before.
Also apparently before he was so attracted to Sarah.
Thank you! That part has been bothering me all morning, since it’s been pretty obvious Joyce is no longer on his list of people he wants to have sex with. Didn’t consider the possibility he just forgot to erase the rest of the post.
I like Joe, but it’s very satisfying seeing him experience consequences to his douchery.
Same. He’s very likable in some ways, but it’s nice to see him get some actual consequences.
Are you mad or happy about that cuz I’m one hand he’s zero sexually attracted to you, but on the other hand he might not be romantically into you….why does that sound familiar.
I wonder who Joe pissed off to end up in this predicament?
Or maybe Mike was just bored.
He tends to piss off girls by offering them the password to the list, so he’s been setting himself up for this something fierce
‘And that’s how your parents Joe and Joyce got hooked up and married, kids’
Okay I wouldn’t say I ship it as I’m not actively invested in whether or not these two do end up in an actual relationship at some point but I would not be at all surprised if they do. With the texting I feel like this relationship is evolving into something deeper. It doesn’t have to ever be romantic but it very well eventually could.
Hey, it could still be..! Uh…
Does Agatha own a sweatervest? (Does anyone know who Agatha is without having to look her up? I didn’t.)
Tall blonde Mormon. Super-nice. Was part of Robin’s original squad in the other universe, and later Robin’s McAwesome’s counterpart.
Alternately: the Heterodyne.
Wendy’s default gravatar a few posts up.
dude, thank you!
I’ve been falling behind on some webcomics, and I’ve lost track of which ones they were. Since I tend to fluctuate wildly from following 1-4 webcomics and, like, 25.
Time to go catch up with the Heterodynes.
Joe isn’t a terrible person, just an idiot, and a bit of a misogynist. Nothing gender studies class can’t fix, I’m sure. That seems to be where all the catharsis happens on this campus.
I submit that being a misogynist makes you a terrible person.
Definitely if you’re a misogynist who writes up personally insulting to creepy reviews about every woman you meet, with some of the reviews implying that sex will fix them, and post them on an RSS feed and give out the password to fellow bros without at any point thinking or caring about the people who get hurt because you generally think of women as sex objects…you’re not a good person!
There are people worse than Joe, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good person.
The desperation with which we need to label people as “good person” or “bad person” says everything about the Christian culture most of us have grown up saturated in, regardless of our religious affiliation.
Yes, yes, yes.
Joe is the person he learned to be. In all likelihood his repulsive behaviour is a defence mechanism, as we’ve seen his very strong discomfort with bringing emotions into any sort of relationship. He’s learned to act as he does to protect himself.
This doesn’t make his behaviour okay, not on any level, but there’s a big difference between something being understandable and being justifiable. I see Joe’s personality- with what little we know of his past- as entirely understandable.
I don’t think he ever gave out the password to anyone. He freaked out that it got out there, and Danny stated that it wasn’t very secure.
Reducing women to numbers-as-sex-objects is still terrible, but it’s a big step from doing so privately, and doing so publicly. One requires an extra element of cruelty.
Though, admittedly, he did state his ratings aloud when talking with Danny.
I guess we don’t have actual confirmation but he does talk about letting people subscribe to it and I’m not really sure of the point of a completely private RSS feed.
He does say he was remiss in not offering Raidah the password to the feed and appears to be sending it to her with his phone as he says that.
I think he’s just panicking about being hacked and not thinking that one of the people he gave it to might have passed it on.
I stand corrected.
I think they meant he’s not thoroughly terrible, since his misogyny could be unlearned?
He has the potential to unbecome a terrible person! But he hasn’t even started that process, as we see here. He’s just digging in further to the terribleness at the moment.
^^ This
Well I suppose that means that everyone is at least somewhat of a terrible person, since misogyny is thoroughly ingrained in our culture. I believe Joe is capable of overcoming that though, so I personally do not view him as an outright terrible person. If rating women is the worst thing he’s done then he’s better than most.
I further submit that there is a difference between being affected by misogyny ingrained in a patriarchal culture like ours, and being an outright misogynist like Joe is.
I disagree. I don’t see it as a dividing line, more as a gradient, where one can be more or less accepting of misogynistic views. Certainly Joe has a lot of work to do, but I don’t see him as irredeemable, which is why I don’t label him as a terrible person.
If he weren’t a terrible person, he wouldn’t need to be redeemed, would he?
I think of terrible people as being definitively irredeemable. Like Ryan, or Trump, for instance. Just my personal view.
That would be a distinction other people aren’t making.
Joe’s behavior is awful, and so is he, for as long as he keeps it up. Insisting he’s “not terrible” comes much too close for my liking to minimizing the harm done by his behavior, and his own responsibility for changing it.
I’m not insisting it, it’s just my personal take on him as a character. I definitely have some bias, I like how he’s written and I want him to become a better person, so I’m inclined to defend him, even when he does terrible and stupid things.
Looks like irredentist takes “he’s a terrible person” to mean he’s an intrinsically and immutably terrible person.
I think the other commenters are more figuring Joe is a person who has a terrible worldview, and who is doing terrible things, but not that he can never change.
Everyone seems to think Joe could learn to knock it the heck off and improve his actions, so that, with work on himself, he could act/become a-ok.
Oh, I don’t think he’s irredeemable. I just think he’s currently terrible. He is perfectly welcome to become less terrible, and then I will revise my rating.
Well then we simply define “terrible person” differently is all, nothing wrong with that, such is to be human.
thank you
<Lars> Dude, at this point, everything is terrible.
I draw a distinction between being a chauvinist and a misogynist but one easily leads to the other. Joe has gone from being hyper-sexualized and focused on getting laid to outright treating women as utterly unimportant as people. Now we’ve found out he’s always been this way. Not cool.
He’s a teenager so hes held his views since he was a child, hes certainly not even close to being irredeemable
I am a bit on the fence on this one. If I was asked, I wouldn’t characterize Joe as a misogynist. Not sure what I would call him, but not that. However I am open to changing my opinion on this.
Walky and Sal are having catharses, separately, over in math. And Sal/Jason shared two more of their own.
Joe is many things, but he’s not a misogynist. (He wouldn’t be having sex with women if he was)
That’s absolutely not true. You can certainly want to have sex with women and still despise them. It’s kind of common, in fact. The whole “women are only good for sex” thing is about as misogynist as it gets.
That would be sexism, misogyny is hatred of women.
I hate mosquitoes, so I’m not going anywhere near them.
You can still be heterosexual and want sex even if you’re misogynist. You can hate women and want to fuck them.
The difference between sexism and misogyny is a bit subtler than that.
Oh my. If you want a demonstration of how very possible to have your entire worldview be a potent mix of intense misogyny and overwhelming desire to have sex with women, just venture into the MRA communities.
They are so far from mutually exclusive I can’t be emphatic enough. It clearly does cause some epic cognitive dissonance though. “Women are disgusting! They are inherently inferior and cruel! I desperately, desperately want to have sex with them!” +/- some extra weird shit about how women are incapable of really loving their partners and they’re all such good guys.
So MRAs have now become MGTOW, I did not know that. (I live under a rock and pay little to no attention to whats happening in the world)
Don’t think there are any “good guys” left tbh, at least not near me. (There are some Danny types but most are Joes, I don’t like either, Danny is to submissive for my tastes and Joe is…well he’s Joe)
Hi. Unless we’re being existential and discussing humanity’s inability to truly be “good” and the spectrum of good vs evil, I’m definitely on the “good” end of the spectrum. I’d say my husband and closest male friend both are too (which is why I’ve allowed them to get and stay close.)
Perfect, hell no. But compassionate, considerate, caring, actively trying to be respectful of others and of the differences between us and desirous of seeing the world be a better place? Definitely. We’re out there.
this is like a much less sympathetic harriet the spy
oops, wrong thread
“I can’t be a misogynist, I love women! My wife is a woman!”
That’s not what the word fucking means.
I sometimes think of Joyce’s hair as beige.
… maybe more of a taupe?
Well Joe is shittier than I thought previously. At some point during the day, I’m expecting someone to kick him in the crotch.
Joe’s rating system is weird.
Didn’t expect Joyce to see Joe’s do list as well. One of the people he gave the password to must have sent it to every girl on campus or something.
gossip can spread like wildfire and a link to a website wouldnt be to hard. especially if they screen shotted stuff and put it on some image sight in case he deletes it.
A while ago, Joyce remarked that Joe’s anger seemed familiar. When are we going to learn the story behind that?
2011.
I could be oversimplying it but do you happen to mean this?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/divorce/
If I am wrong no worries feel free to say so ><
Okay, now I get it. Thanks!
It’s unfortunate that Joe seems to have internalized his dad’s behaviors and not learned from the divorce. Then again, if anyone can get through to him, it’ll be Danny and Joyce.
I would say he definitely learned from the divorce. Not a healthy lesson, but I’d guess that he learned not to get attached, that relationships don’t work so why bother trying and they suck anyway, that if you do try you’ll get hurt.
If the father was the primary caretaker there may also be abandonment issues from the relationship essentially leading to his mother’s departure, which would be traumatic to a child. The fact that she didn’t seem to be at family freshman weekend may indicate something.
It’s really, legitimately nice to see these three together. Serious nostalgia trip for me. I think I started reading Roomies in middle school…
*plays the Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons song “Rag Doll” and follows it with the Aerosmith song of the same title, on the hacked P.A. speakers*
At least it’s not your blood type that’s being recorded Joyce.
…
Dear lord please tell me O negative is not Joyce’s blood type or things get way creepier
Oh! There’s a late Roomies strip set at SEMME where Walky’s reading off Joyce’s file. I’m pretty sure her blood type’s on there!
.:.
Aww fuck, he gets cut off right before he gets to it.
It IS the most common blood type.
O+ is most common. O- is rarer.
To expand on this for anyone missing a blood type lesson:
A quick search tells me that approximately 85% of Americans have rhesus(Rh) positive blood. That owes to Rhesus negative being recessive (like blond hair and blue eyes), so it shows up rarer, many more carry the Rh- gene.
Type O is the same case. It is also recessive, whereas A and B are dominant genes. As such someone of blood type A can have either A/A or A/o as their gene pair for blood type. Both being dominant is also why the AB blood type exists, but there’s no AO blood type.
So O- is the combination of gene-pair o/o and Rh-/Rh-. Any other combination would change it. However, even then it is not the rarest blood type, which is supposedly AB-.
apparently I am o negative if i am remembering the little put a few drops of blood in these and see what happens i did so many years ago was accurate.
Well, there’s no residual bloodstains visible from this view of the entrance at least. Is a week long enough to clean up the crime scene in Indiana?
I’m guessing Joe wrote the summary before their first date and added the rating in the aftermath and then never went back to edit after their relationship evolved into whatever it currently is.
He still seemed to have the same opinion about her when he described her to Raidah after he and Jacob met with her and Sarah.
Other commenters have said that Willis said as much, yeah. Although I haven’t seen that myself.
Speaking of death, is this when someone finally finds not-Ryan’s bleached skeleton hidden in the bushes?
Ruth takes the femurs for her collection. It’s not as satisfying as harvesting them fresh, but hey sun-bleached old femurs are better than no femurs at all.
I, too, noticed the conspicuous lack of bloodstains on the surrounding concrete.
I don’t care how misogynistic rating women is, it’s a real dick move by whoever just hacked Joe’s computer or whatever and published it for everyone on campus to see. Like, what if someone just released all of you porn searches for all your peers to see? I know Joe’s list is no where as common as porn but still.
Hacking’s not necessary. He gives the password to the RSS feed out like candy. All it takes is someone he told to tell someone else and so on. Which is a thing he WANTED because he saw this as a ‘help guide’ of sorts for guys who couldn’t get laid.
Thank you, for I missed this plot point. I’ve been seeing int eh comments a RSS feed for the list, but didn’t understand the reason why the list was setup like that. Ugg, so dudebro then, I take it? With any luck he’s almost to bedrock, and someone will toss him a rope.
Yeah, it’s got a password, but it also has an RSS feed and subscribers. You don’t add a subscription option or a feed for a private bang book.
Just needed it explained out to me. Kinda an inversion of mansplaining, pretty much, I think.
Okay my mistake then. I still think whoever leaked the list is a kind of a jerk but now this is more on Joe than I thought. Sorry all.
…except 1.) the actors in your porn are doing it with knowing consent* while the women on this list are included against their will, and 2.) comparing making a dehumanzing list of the women who you’d like to have sex with to porn is fucking disgusting.
*well, massive footnote needed about the porn industry, but that’s not the point of this comment
Joe himself was giving the password to it out to just about anyone, even if they hadn’t expressed the tiniest bit of interest.
Joe did this to himself. Someone else just helped him a little. And so far, everyone we’ve seen who’s found out about the list was on it, being described in gross, degrading detail.
It’s a dick move, but that’s not why. It’s because making Joe’s ratings and summaries widely public is hurtful to the women involved. Fuck Joe, he brought it on himself. It’s Joyce, other Rachel, probably even Mandy, who are feeling worse for having read it, and knowing that others around them have read it, that makes it a dick move.
The only way I can see this leak not being a dick move was if the person doing it was like ‘Oh my god, this person is saying all these creepy and/or mean things about all the girls, they deserve to know, because this is awful.’
I assume we’ll find out the who and the why as the storyline progresses. It might be exactly that situation, it might be something else. Looking forward to finding out.
John nailed it.
Yes, it was profoundly shitty of Joe to make this list. And yes, this is an invasion of Joe’s privacy and that’s not cool even though he was being an asshole. But neither of these two wrongs are the most serious issue here.
Joe’s list, while gross, was mostly harmless as long as it was private. But once made public, it hurts people. It’s the difference between a private sexual thought and street harassment: street harassment is weaponizing that private thought by making it someone else’s problem.
Joe crossed that line when he shared the list. And he crossed that line when he told women how he rated them. But he crossed it on a small scale relative to this. The person who widely distributed this list crossed that same line but in a MUCH more profound way.
Whoever did this was willing to hurt every single woman on Joe’s list in order to use that list to hurt Joe.
OTOH, you could argue that while there’s pain involved in finding out you’re on a list like this, there’s also harm being doing by the list continuing to circulate without your knowledge.
But is the harm greater?
You can make that argument that it is, but I don’t think you can make it compellingly. You would be forced to acknowledge that the circulation of the list does harm in order to make the rest of your argument. But because Unknown circulated the list more widely than Joe, you’d have to argue that the victims not knowing about the list does more harm than everyone knowing about it.
You could argue that if the victims don’t know about the list, it creates the potential for harm in the future: they could be harmed by someone else seeing the list and treating them differently because of it or they could be harmed by finding out about the list because the knowledge would be distressing and humiliating. But rather than insulating the victims from those harms, widely circulating the list maximizes the risk. If everyone on campus knows about the list, then anyone on campus could treat the victims differently because of it. And if the victims know about the list, then there is no possibility that they will be spared the distress and humiliation of knowing about the list.
We actually already have established social norms around this sort of thing when we use a different name for it: gossip. Gossip is mean and petty and wrong. Gossip has the potential to really hurt someone, either if they find out about it or if it impacts the way others view them. And Joe is an assholes for gossiping. But Unknown spread Joe’s gossip. They chose to broadcast it far and wide. They essentially signal boosted it. And in doing so, they ensured that Joe’s gossip hurt and humiliated everyone Joe gossipped about. The person who did this victimized everyone on that list for the sake of hurting Joe.
Social norms also say that people being talked about behind their back deserve to know what’s been said and by who. And once one of them finds the list, it’s being leaked to the rest of the girls was inevitable.
No. Social norms dictate that people being talked about behind their backs by friends or family have a right to know.
But strangers and even acquaintances really don’t need to know every sexual thought that pops into someone’s head. There are things we have a right not to know. And some random dude’s fantasies are definitely on that list. Even if he shares his fantasies with a few buddies. Having sexual thoughts about a stranger or an acquaintance is not sexual harassment. Telling them about those thoughts is.
You are not entitled to make your sexual thoughts someone else’s problem. Full stop.
We don’t know who all got the list. So far, it seems like everyone ON the list has now seen it, which would make a lot of sense, but we don’t actually know that it goes any further than that.
Even if it does, this stuff was already going around. Frankly I’d rather know about it than have it entirely behind my back, so that I have no idea why people are (or might be) acting differently towards me because of it
Keep in mind that Joe didn’t even know Joyce’s name when he added her and that he added Other Rachel even though he was for sure not interested in her (he gave her a 3). So we know he’s adding both women that he doesn’t know and women that he’s not interested in. Fifty-one percent of the ~48,500 students enrolled at Indiana University are women and roughly 13,500 students live on campus. So if Joe is only rating students, there are somewhere between 6,800 and 24,700 women he could have potentially rated, depending on if he’s only rating undergrads who live on campus or if he’s rating a wider cross section of female students.
In other words, the odds are very high that a lot of women we’ve never seen in the comic have just had their day made a bit shittier by finding out they’re on this list. And most of those women probably don’t know Joe or any of his friends.
So if a total stranger put you on a shitty list to talk about how much he did or didn’t want to bone you and you didn’t know anyone who he shared that list with, would you honestly want to know about it? If so, can you understand why a lot of women would not want to know? And if we err on the side of disclosure, where do we draw the line? Do you also want to know if some dude who passes you on the street says something about you to his buddy once they’re out of ear shot? Because if we expect him to disclose what he’s going to say, how is that any different from street harassment?
Also, if the person who distributed this list only sent it to the women on it, that’s not exactly better. That means someone hunted all of these women down and found, at minimum, their names and student email addresses. Personally, finding out I was on a “do list” that was being circulated would make me super uncomfortable but getting that “do list” in my email from an anonymous (?) source would completely freak me out.
“Whoever did this was willing to hurt every single woman on Joe’s list in order to use that list to hurt Joe.”
I really, really doubt that they saw it that way. Most likely, they’re someone who had the password given to them (whether directly by Joe or not), only to wind up disgusted and horrified by the sheer disrespect of the act of Joe willingly spreading such a list.
Especially considering that the women on the list are really only “hurt” if they valued Joe’s opinions anyway. Enraged, oh, definitely. Hurt…? Maybe the lowly rated ones, if they’ve got self esteem issues and weigh Joe’s dumbassed ratings more than they do the support of all the other women involved in the mess.
It doesn’t matter if the person who signal boosted Joe’s list saw it that way any more than it matters if Joe saw it that way. Broadcasting Joe’s list is harmful for many of the same reasons that street harassment is harmful. And I hope you wouldn’t argue that the only women harmed by street harassment are “the lowly rated ones, if they’ve got self esteem issues.”
Harmful for sure, but I do think we need to talk about intent as well as impact. Perhaps not together, because a person who is hurt or traumatised or upset by a thing is hurt or traumatised or upset regardless of intent. But it’s a separate and equally important discussion to have, in my personal opinion, especially here where the person who spread it is very likely to be a recurring character rather than some random offscreen presence we never hear from again.
Here’s the thing though: Joe has been hurting women with his approach all along. He harasses them and objectifies them, and so long as he does it to one at a time, the others look away and feel awkward and helpless.
But this has allowed them all to band together, and given them all power to push back against Joe. They have literally done nothing to him but quote his list back at him and already he wilts away.
Imagine how gratifying this must be to girls who’ve had Joe tell them their ‘rating’ and offer to subscribe to his ‘do’ list, now that they see others reacting to it in outrage.
This is a cleansing sort of hurt, that allows you to feel better later, and free of helplessness, resentment and uncertainity festering within.
That’s actually a really good point. It’s made the day of the women on it worse but it’s also given them a power we haven’t seen used against Joe before. Whether that was the intent or the overall impact remains to be seen but I’m glad I saw your comment.
Yeah no.
Also no one needed to hack shit. He gave the password to anyone and everyone who wandered past him, including folks expressing disgust at the notion of his “to do” list.
This was always going to happen. No need for a “doxxer”.
Joe, I know people don’t immediately change after being smacked with their mistake, but a very adaptable person would at least change the damn mask they wear almost immediately to compensate! You’re just rushing full steam ahead without dropping any damn cargo!
Joe is the opposite of adaptable, I feel. I believe he’s doubling down out of fear of admitting he’s wrong to himself. Also he’s being driven by emotions right now, which isn’t known for helping with logic and reason.
Wow, Joe, shut the fuck up. She’s one of your friends.
while it isn’t an excuse I think he is backed in a corner more than he ever has before and as someone who has less than healthy emotions the fight or flight mindset is in place and since danny has to drag him away it seems flight isn’t his options.
Wait. I don’t understand. She’s a girl. And she won’t put out.
What is this “friends” thing?
Oh, no, Joe, that’s a low blow, bro.
Joe. No. Just no.
Also, I never saw Joyce as anything but blonde? Apparently I was alone in that lol.
Unless im looking at them i forget their hair color half the time. of course in real life i can’t describe people i’ve known my whole life easily beyond the super basic so its probably just me.
I’ve had this happen to me, being unable to describe someone I’ve literally been with a moment ago when I try to find them in a crowd or something. It’s more clothes-wise though.
I’m an odd person. I cant describe my parents beyond the very basic. I have a hard time reading and expressing emotions, and on top of that i have a weird tongue. although thats not bad, but still at least being a “super taster” is not a hinderance like many of the other wrong things about me.
These two are totally gonna end up a couple btw. I see it coming.
I’ve been thinking the same for a while now. I think it started for me when she spent her weekend home texting him. I think it would be good character development for both of them if they manage to get to that point.
Blech.
Joe’s got a long, long way to go before he gets to that point. And that’s even without having this bit of nastiness to get over.
I know it’s not popular right now, but I hold on to hope for Joece.
I think Joe’s not popular right now. It’s not this one particular ship that’s any worse. Once Joe has made inroads on his character arc towards not being a big ole jerk, I think you’ll find more people in your corner. Heck, there are a surprising number popping up in the comments lately.
Joyce appears to be out there unaccompanied. Did I forget something, or is this new?
Ryan is dead, the fear is gone.
Or so I hope.
No one dies in Dumbing of Age, but gosh darn it, Ryan. You’re cutting it close.
Maybe that’s meant to imply she knows Ryan’s off the streets now, and therefore is more comfortable being out alone. That said, she still has her back carefully to a wall.
Looking a Joe’s expression in panel four I think Joyce is the first girl he’s actually feeling guilty about, and is trying very hard to convince himself he’s not (because if he feels bad about her that means accepting he’s actually done something worth feeling guilty about).
And looking at Danny’s expression in the same panel I think he’s noticed.
Interesting idea. I’m not sure if that’s how I read their expressions, but I hope you’re right.
Joyce is, apparently, the first girl he’s had a real conversation with that wasn’t focused on him getting laid. Their online chat over the weekend she was away.
He’s definitely not comfortable with that and especially not with acknowledging or continuing it in person, but it is there.
Just drop him, Danny.
the way the panel is drawn, it looks like Joe is standing on his own power in panel 4.
I don’t know about that. Danny’s seen Joe in all forms of light. Danny knows Joe’s ups and downs and how high and low Joe can get. Danny probably knows more than anyone that Joe can change, he just needs help that not even he can provide. He can help with that help, but that’s about it.
I’m actually relieved for Joyce that she had a Zero rating. Given her history, it’s really important for her not to see Joe or random dudes as constant sexual threats right now. She does not want to be randomly sexualized, at ALL.
Plus it’s so extreme that, when she wants to feel attractive to a person of her choosing, she can discard his opinion as 100% Joe’s Baggage And Not True. A ‘3’ would actually hurt more.
A small part of me suspect she wonders something like
“If I was so ugly and horrible why did you go on a date with me?”
assuming this lets her know it was written before the date.
It must have been written after their terrible date. (Before that, Joe told Danny that he thought of her as a six. And he hoped he’d “upgrade” her. With his penis. Ew.)
Joe later said she’s been “practically excised” from the list. That must mean he’d re-rated her as a zero-minus.
He said she was a four before the date. He re-rated her on the way home from La Porte. He wrote the blurb pre-date though.
Man, that is yet another level of wack, then. I’ma join miados’s wonderment regarding why he’d go out with somebody he thinks is awful.
Because he thought he could ‘upgrade’ her with his dick.
Yeah. I guess there are several reasons to go out with someone you don’t like, but they’re all awful.
Jeez, Joe.
I feel like there is a joke here about a flash drive, but I cant think of it..
he’s desperate
…. welp, there went the scenario in which Joe therapeutically opens up to Joyce via text.
….
…. now has SARAH seen that review of Joyce?
well joe isn’t dead yet so……
It’s a big campus, it would obviously take Sarah some time to find him.
She is adding spikes to the bat as we speak so that he will BLEED when she hunts him down.
I’m actually disappointed Joe’s ratings are really really short and immaterial. Just random tweets about people. Shameful, Joe, you should have handled this scientifically and with much research as well as justification. This may have flown in junior high but you’re in college now!
And I feel unclean having said that.
Same here.
Comic Reactions:
Okay, I’m going to do a thing where I lead with a non-WTF Joe moment for each panel, cause holy fuckballs is there a lot of WTF Joe-ness in this strip.
Panel 1: Someone noted that Joyce is on her phone right after we saw Becky less than thrilled glancing at her phone. As such, it’s fairly likely that Becky’s less than happy demeanor is because she’s being filled in on this crap and seeing how Joyce has been maligned and mistreated on it.
But I’m also happy for Joyce in a weird way. She’s alone outside. Sure, it’s right outside the door on a day where there doesn’t seem to be much foot traffic, but this would not have been remotely doable for her all that long in the past. Like it feels small, but when you’re rebuilding back a functionality from a bad patch of PTSD, these little victories are the world. And so I’m sad its been partially tainted by Joe’s douchery.
Okay, yeah, let’s tackle this. I’m not going to criticize anyone’s PTSD or fear responses. The freeze response is intense and very hard to control and it is absolutely terrifying…
But I have a real hard time buying this is a freeze response. A freeze response is rarely this coherent or able to interact or easy to break off of to banter with Joyce. Which means he’s deliberately doing nothing to aid himself forcing Danny to drag a man who must be 1 and a half times his weight who very easily could carry himself on his own power.
And he’s doing it while Danny is doing him a solid he has no reason to do given how Joe has consistently mistreated him. Which is I think what bothers me the most about Joe’s behavior in all this. He doesn’t seem to acknowledge in any way that this was his fuck up. That he did this and what he did was terrible.
Instead he’s treating it like a game. Pretending that all the women are just hormonal and thus not to be trusted as to their righteous anger, bullying Danny into performing a toxic role for him and then making a mockery of that offer by intentionally making it more difficult than it needs to be and excoriating him to complete the task faster and “better” and more silently. In complete disrespect to Danny as a human being.
And that’s honestly somewhat disgusting. Like, Joe’s behavior in this whole mess is bad. His reaction to Danny trying to reinvent himself by trying to force him back into a set of behaviors he’s criticized for about a month repeatedly. His inability to take ownership of his own fuckup.
But this bit, where he bullies Danny into doing him one last solid in memory to their friendship. Knowing he’s been pushing him away, knowing that Danny has no reason to give in and bail him out of his own fuck up, knowing that he should own it or at least walk away like the coward he is without excuse. And then treating him like shit and pulling a dumb sibling prank about it like ha ha loser, way to fall into this shitty toxic dynamic we have.
It’s unnecessarily cruel in a giant bucket of WTF.
Hey, you’re right! Joyce is getting better! Good for her, even baby steps are hard with any PTSD.
I know! I wanted to highlight that, because yeah, those small victories are so big when you’re dealing with PTSD. Like, there was a bad week of agoraphobia I once had as part of a really bad PTSD attack after having a pair of neo-nazis threaten to kill me. It took about an hour of prep work, but I managed to get myself to walk down to the corner store for some food and walk back.
The feeling of triumph that created? Was huge. So yeah, I’m 100% behind Joyce finding her ways to reclaim her power.
wow. *agos*
I got myself to the grocery store yesterday *and* today despite anxiety’s BS, but, I wish I knew how to get feelings of triumph. :/ it’s like there’s just a hole there where other people supposedly have have good feelings after accomplishing things? or a wall.
a wall made of “don’t relax, when we relax bad things happen”, I suspect. :/
I wonder how much of that is knowing that Ryan is
hospitalizedbehind barsdeadmarooned in the Amazon.“we saw Becky less than thrilled, glancing at her phone”
I didn’t think of that! Any chance Becky is on the list? There’s a number of ways that list can have earned Joe a spot on her bad side.
Joyce can be darn near all-loving, but this added possible twist of choosing between her best friend, and Joe, is not the kind of option Joe needs to be giving one of the few people who’ve confided with him, at this very moment.
Hell, just having Joyce be a zero minus and having guys be encouraged to “do her” would hit like ninety different sore spots for her even if she managed to avoid falling on his radar.
Becky is on the list. :c
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/snarrghl/
She’s likely under “Tasty Redhead”.
It’s on Patreon, right? I have to get on that.
I figured that Tasty Redhead would be the moniker.
No, not on Patreon. Apparently Willis once considered making a version of the list but thought it was seriously creepy and he had enough projects to work on at the time.
That makes sense. But I still have to get Patreon, for everything else mentioned in these parts.
Panel 2: I love Joyce’s gentle call out here. Noting that she has a name, that she’s a person. Maybe even a partial reminder that he’s been perfectly able to be a reasonable human being capable of giving good conversation and advice when he’s not married to this twisted performance of toxic masculinity so none of his ever-shrinking “bros” dare think he has a sensitive bone in his body.
And that performance is part of how toxic masculinity rips apart the person enmeshed in it. Joe is so committed to performing the dude above it all, casually mistreating people, especially women creatures that he’s alienating everyone and hiding the only pieces that might make anyone want to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt.
Also, I’m just going to note that this is Joyce, who is what a week or two from nearly being gunned down, who he had to talk through the fear of seeing her family, who he knows had something happen to her that gives her very strong triggers. And yet, he’s still so committed to performing the douchebag and letting that become his actual personality.
And it’d be tragic if I wasn’t rapidly running out of sympathy for him.
Panel 3: Again, I love Joyce’s great comic timing of shade. Like, this is a perfect follow-up line and a nice way to center the conversation on something real instead of Joe’s performance.
But I also want to just highlight the casual shittiness of Joe’s list above and beyond it being a widely distributed “bang list” with literal fuckability ratings. Like that part is already shitty beyond compare, but what’s worse is the casual dehumanization of who he views as ambulatory sex organs being guarded by unfortunate human imperfections.
The women he casually objectifies are not even names to him, just descriptions of behavior, reductive to stereotypes and revealing that for all his supposed “studying of anatomy” these are all superficial and quick readings based on fucking nothing of real matter. And they aren’t even descriptions that are well-hidden. Anyone who is in Reed Hall would know that when he says “churchy blonde” in this manner he means Joyce, especially given the practically dox level of information he adds on in notes.
He can’t even pretend to view the people he supposedly wants to share an intimate sexual experience with as humans. And that’s the fundamental bit of PUA which makes it impossible to be a good person or a worthy partner when enmeshed in this shit. It trains you to view the people you want to have sex with as numbers, as superficial physical traits, as obstacles to getting a fuck.
And I might just be an asexual, but I understand that sex should never be a means to a “yes, I’m a man” end. It’s not something you “get” whether or not the woman is interested in it. Sex is a collaborative experience, a shared moment of intimacy and connection, of pleasure. Sex that is one-sided, that you “take” irrespective of the person is often shit and will rarely be as satisfying*.
*And I want to clarify that this is in respect to viewing sex as a thing you “get” from women rather than someone who is just into receiving pleasure or giving pleasure. A person who has fully consented to an interaction going one way (which is usually what I am when I am in such a moment with a partner) is a very different situation than a person demanded it and refusing to see their partner as fully human.
Plus, can we just highlight this little touch here? Cause yeah, Joe has semi-valid reasons for “rating her down” given she literally paid a man to assault him repeatedly during their “date”, but this whole thing of petty PUA revenge tactics like this get a lot less “ha ha” in life. Like, I’ve had friends who’ve had stalkers or been physically attacked simply for turning down a PUA. Because the culture breeds a sense of aggrieved entitlement where women are locking away the pussy you see as rightfully yours and as the sole source of reinforcement of your fragile hold on masculinity and so every rejection is a personal attack on your very manhood that deserves immediate punishment.
And the thing is we’ve seen that tendency in Joe. Like, in his interaction with Sarah, he immediately went on the defensive and started putting down her character because he pushed her to a point where she had to literally scream at him to get him to stop sexually harassing her and trying to override her clear lack of consent.
When a woman rejects him he reacts badly to it and gets little petty revenges where he can. And then he passes on those revenges to the other men he throws this link to. Makes them complicit in getting similar revenge on the woman who “dared” defy the order. Like, none of the guys receiving this have any reason as to the actual reason Joyce was rated the way she was. It could have been for literally nothing. But they’d be encouraged to harass her nonetheless.
And in Joe’s perfect world anyone who ever decided to date her would deserve to be socially shunned for daring to date a “0-“.
… Something horrifying just hit me.
Ryan could have accessed this list. That pushes this storyline from funny/dark/cathartic to heartbreakingly scary and real.
… I honestly hope Joe finds out he unwittingly endangered every girl he’s ever known, including his friends. It would be exactly the kick in the pants he deserves.
…. by “Ryan could have” etc, do you mean, “this is something that was within the realm of possibility, adding a level of risk to an already-fraught situation”?
Or do you mean “I think this could be how it actually went down and Joe unintentionally but carelessly set into motion events that led to Joyce’s near-rape and everything that followed”?
I remember a few months ago, I had a theory that Ryan got his list of marks from that list – or at least ideas for how to approach them.
I doubt it.
Joyce is the only mark we know of – there were almost certainly others, but we don’t know anything about them. He approached her at a party where she was standing quietly alone – typical isolated good choice of prey for any kind of predator. And not in any situation where she’d likely be linkable to this description.
Ryan may not have been using the list to find marks, but it might have led him to Joyce and Dorothy after the fact.
I don’t think that is very likely.
More likely is that Dorothy was recognized either from the party itself, or through her activities as a reporter. (Remember, Ryan mentions specifically that “she ruined his life”)
The first one. The second one, while certainly possible, seems too coincidental to have actually happened. He targeted Joyce because she was alone and Christian at a party.
sarah is better than everything
Panel 4: I like that Danny is just looking at him like “yeah, I’m going to let you dig your own grave here” and not feeling any temptation to intervene on his behalf which continues what a good growth taking time from Joe’s little selfish whirlwind of shittery has been for him. And honestly? Joe’s behavior makes me kind of hope that Danny gets away from him and continues to grow.
Like Joe and Danny can try to be friends again in the future when Joe has sorted out his shit, but right now? He’s really not good for Danny.
And part of that is this interaction here. First up, this is yet another instance of Joe refusing to take ownership of his own shit. Like, if you’re going to be an immense asshole and you get caught being an immense asshole? Fucking own it. Don’t get upset with the people noticing. Don’t try obvious bullshit lies to weasel out of facing any consequences for your shit. Just fucking acknowledge it, apologize and move on with your life.
Like, I especially have little patience for this dance having witnessed the rise of a right-wing army of gaslighters who refuse to own the massive violence and normalization of literal nazis they have committed and having witnessed my old head of school’s attempts to gaslight everyone involved out of noticing how big a horrific immoral action he committed.
And the worst part is Joe’s face. Not only is he looking away and bald-faced lying, he’s angry about getting called out. He’s mad that he’s getting caught out and immediately throws that back on the woman who caught him out, because that’s another piece of the toxic masculinity pie. Not only can’t you own your shit (because admitting fault makes you weak and womanly so double down no matter what), but the only emotion you’re allowed to express is anger, especially at women.
So you’re trained to get mad at people who notice your behavior for what it is. To attack them for noticing the obvious. And it twists you up inside and makes you worse.
Like, this is Joyce, the person he’s had real interactions with, the only one he’s opened up to about what is actually hurting him, who he knows he fucked up with and who will now trust him way less with anything. And he can’t even do her the solid of not lying to her damn face.
He so little respects her as a human being while in this mode.
How shitty Joe’s being? This is why toxic masculinity is the cage most men have to escape from. Because the road he’s on is one that leads to bitterly ranting about percussion instruments on reddit and 4chan, and using the terms incel in all earnestness.
And it is up to him to jump off and make himself into a man that isn’t a piece of shit. Who is worthy of the second-chances Danny and Joyce keep throwing his way. Part of me wants to still see that Joe. Part of me wants to see him burn away everyone who was willing to tolerate him and be left alone in his toxic hellpit.
I dunno, I’m large, I contain multitudes.
Panel 5: … Yeah, I got nothing for this one. There’s so much terrible on here.
1) This shit is almost dox level detail, revealing the lack of name as an intentional dehumanization rather than any real means of establishing anonymity for his “targets”. And he throws it to anyone and everyone who walks by him. He throws this amount of detail to them, and especially to “bros” who seem to “get” his campaign of being shitty to women.
And that’s dangerous. Like, he’s basically got a targeting guide here. How to find and punish or exploit this person sexually, here, please do so. And I can’t help imagine this in the hands of someone like Ryan and I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t part of the tool he used to track Joyce back to her dorms for his little revenge scheme.
Like, imagine this information in the hands of an abuser or a stalker. This gives appearance, likely outfit, exploitable habits, roommate information and an open call to “hit that” with her regardless and likely antithetical to her consent.
2) Let’s just highlight the “angry black woman” trope. Cause yeah, black women get dismissed as violent and dangerous simply for existing. Their every action read as somehow angry and aggressive and dangerous and needing to be constrained or censored. And this falls into that face first.
And it’s even worse because Willis stated that this was just from Joe’s very first interaction with Sarah.
So let’s highlight Sarah’s very first interaction:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/piece/
He decides to literally shove his friend at her and treat her like an object who’ll want to just fuck him simply for existing as a man, which she did an amazing job of taking in stride and being incredibly civil about.
He then proceeded to assume she’s had sex before and thus open to all comers (while she was still in listening distance), cause y’know any woman who’s had her “freshness seal” “ruined” must be willing to fuck any cock that comes into frame. *intense angry eye roll*.
During all of this, Sarah holds her tongue and only calls him a sleazebag when he’s fully gone, being way more polite than any reasonable human should expect her to be.
She then approaches him in a very calm and reasonable manner because he obviously has aims to shittily use and abuse Joyce who she cares about, asks to talk, to which he responds by basically assuming that her very approach is a literal invitation to a threesome.
Despite this, she still remains calm. Notes the reality of Joyce, begs him to not abuse her and break her in the name of getting his dick wet, to which he accuses her of accusing him of aiming to rape Joyce (which, no, she just very calmly said “hey, don’t break her”, that’s not the same as “don’t rape her”, which should be a given), claims to be good at consent and not into rape (yeah, no) and then literally cites corrective rape logic frequently used against asexual women.
To which she again remains calm, makes one eye-rolling comment and disengages before she gets angry. And when he insisted on trying to keep up the interaction, only then does she say, “fuck off” with regards to this and her attempt to reach out to his douche ass.
And that’s what he interprets as angry. That’s what he’s decided is so angry she poses a genuine threat to Joyce’s life to the point where he’s encouraging gross guys to target her. That that’s the sole comment about her.
Because in a super calm discussion where he was nothing but vile, she said “fuck off” at the end in sadness.
And it highlights the fact that there is literally nothing a black woman can do not to be written off by this type of man as “angry”. No amount of civility or kindness, because the mere act of disagreement is in and of itself somehow proof of “anger”.
And it’s a nice racist cherry on an already shitty pie.
Yikes, thanks for highlighting the racist “angry black woman” trope. Can’t believe I missed it.
JEEZ, Joe.
Judging by the question mark next to the “cranky black roommate” quote, even Joyce is picking up on Joe’s blatant racism towards Sarah. Which shows some nice growth for Joyce – she’s picking up on those things now, which she wouldn’t have done at the start of the comic.
Actually, I assumed the “(?)” was in the note. Probably meaning he was guessing they were roommates.
Ah, that would make sense too.
If Willis said the description was from before the date (and he apparently only updated the rating and not the description to warn people about Joyce’s propensity for violence), odds are Joe wasn’t sure if Sarah was Joyce’s roommate back then, hence the ‘(?)’.
Not to mention, He even ended fetichizing her “anger”in the end
Panel 5 continued:
3) The encouragement to other sleazebags. Like I touched on this in the other two bits, but literally telling people to “hit that” against her, knowing she’s not one for casual sex, knowing she’s likely never had sex? That people should target and harass her for sex despite all that and her stated comfortability with such interactions?
It’s what makes a joke of his supposed “bonafides” about consent. Cause fucker doesn’t actually value consent. The only consent he values is someone’s right to say yes to him. If they say no, he mistreats them to their faces and pretends to be a victim of a false accusation of being a rapist. And the same if he gets called out on being a creep.
And if they have a whole persona of “I don’t want to do this”, he sees that as something to finagle and encourage others to finagle.
Joyce is allosexual and repressed, but this shit gets thrown at asexuals a shit-ton. To the point where a lot of asexuals have begun to resent sex-positivity and especially certain men who claim sex-positivity. Because way too many douchebags see it as their “duty” to target them relentlessly in order to “cure” them of their “repression”, by any means necessary and encourage all their shitty friends to do the same.
And it gets a little hard to stand a lot of the time as an asexual and can be literally fatal as a trans woman. So I have little sympathy for Joe’s shit here, especially seeing as how…
4) He still refuses to own even a small part of his shit. Like, fuck, she’s reading out his receipts and here he is fucking doubling down again on the shittiness. Oh, was I racist piece of shit who encouraged people to sexually harass you? Well, yeah, bet she is a murderer who’ll kill you any day for the indignity of calling me out on my actions in the most calm and reasonable manner possible.
And he fucking feels justified in this anger. Not for anything real she’s done, but simply because she’s daring to read his own words back to him.
And that has specific resonance at the moment. After the sexism eruption of this last election, after so many angry men and other privileged douchebags have tried to argue that being called out on their racism or sexism was what actually made them into nazis as if they weren’t already nazi-leaning before?
This aggrieved entitled anger, quick to lash out at any woman who dares not fit into the script the dudebro has in his head is ever-pervasive and in too many circumstances can be genuinely fatal.
And Joe doesn’t even recognize how awful of a place he is. How fucked it is that he can even pretend to anger at this situation when there’s no one to be angry with but himself.
But he’s so unable to own any shit, that he turns that embarrassment into lashing out angrily and inventing a justification for said anger.
And it’s why Joe needs to sort his shit out or see all his friends leave (and I feel the same way about Mike). People who abuse others because they can’t own their own actions do not deserve to have friends or second chances and Joe is burning through second chances about as quick as he can and is showing absolutely zero self-awareness to realize the enormity of what he has done and how inappropriate it was.
And the worst part is he can’t even claim ignorance. Literally almost every woman he has met has reacted in the same way to the knowledge of his list. Even the ones who agreed to sleep with him. With disgust, with telling him to stop. And yet, Joe, the supposed believer in consent has dismissed them and treated their requests as garbage, not even removing those people from the list.
Because he doesn’t believe in consent. Oh he believes in being viewed as someone who gives a fuck about consent. He believes in saying whatever pro-consent nonsense he needs to to get a woman to fuck him. But actually living true to the principles of consent, actually valuing women’s requests and warnings and statements as real rather than barriers to him getting what he wants?
Fuck no. Which means his consent is a hollow lie. And hopefully he’ll learn that before he crosses the line he can’t uncross and rapes someone.
Cerb, the last life status update of yours that I recall, you were preparing to go back to college for a higher degree.
(That or you were dancing on the ashes of your evil principal’s employment. Don’t remember which order those two came in.)
Are you sticking with STEM, or are you going to be doing something that DoA is relevant to?
Because in the latter case…. holy crepe! You just wrote 7 pages in under an hour based on 5 panels! Make your dissertation on DoA and you’ll have it finished in under a month!
I haven’t read everything you just wrote (because 7 pages, give me time!), and I’ll make a real reply to it if I have a question, something to add, or some extra bit of silliness/seriousness.
But I needed to stop in first and say… DO YOUR DISSERTATION ON DOA!
….
…. okay, maybe I won’t wait to post something silly/serious.
i would totally read cerberus’ thesis on dumbing of age
hell i would friggin’ edit cerberus’ thesis on dumbing of age. i’m at my best with grammar/word choice but it would be a freakin blast
Yup, still waiting to hear back from the grad school program. In the meantime, I’m going to a new job, which will give me summers off which I can put to use writing fiction like I used to when I was younger.
Not quite a dissertation, but I’ll have work in at least one anthology fairly soon (it’s been accepted and it’s in the last round of editing and formatting).
That’s awesome! Congrats/good luck!
YAY! Congrats!
Go get ’em, tigress.
wow, this was brutal.
every bit true, but all the more because of that.
thank you, again. (and congrats on your life changes.)
I read Joe’s “better hit that[…]” as more of a note to himself, not as an appeal to whoever reads this list.
You’re still teaching even when you’re not. Looked up ‘allosexual’ because that term was new to me and now have a working distinction between asexual and allosexual+repressed. Thank you for something new to think about almost every day.
I feel like the version of gender and sexuality I learned from our culture is drawn in crayon on the inside of a folded-out Bud Light case.
Great analysis on all of this but oh god please please please don’t compare Joe at least to Mike. Mike is a shithole too but Mike owns everything that he’s done. Like, he’s figuratively screaming from the rooftops for people to call him on his shit compared to Joe here dancing around the blame or evading consequence.
Mike “wants people to call him on his shit” just so he can point out what hypocrites the potential shit-callers are. He’s not any better than Joe on that.
Joe speaks of himself as god’s gift to women, thinks of himself as god’s gift to women, and then treats women like garbage and freaks out and jumps through hoops to avoid blame when people learn by reading his own words how little a gift to anyone he really is.
Mike calls himself an asshole, thinks of himself as an asshole, and when people call him out on it he openly acknowledges it and if anything he seems infuriated by how passively everyone reacts when what he wants is an actual fight–and if they score a win on him or react with righteous fury to his assholery being unacceptable (unfortunately, often just because it was hitting to close), he’ll shut up and let them have the point.
Joe is a hypocrite. Mike is an asshole. And Mike’s definitely got his own sexist baggage to own up to, also, but unless this plotting with Ethan and Danny goes MUCH farther than I anticipate then Mike is not trying to manipulate and coerce the people around him into buying a forced narrative that violates their sexual consent-edging boundaries like Joe is.
I basically never post here, but I read the comments BECAUSE of your reaction posts. Hell, the conversation a while back about DID issues led to some of my plural friends finding some great resources. Thanks for being amazing.
I’ve been looking for a good place to say this, but I’m tempted to read Joe’s consent talk (and Willis’s commentary on it years ago) as a way in which the cartoonist has grown.
Like I think it was a bit simplistic to say, “This character is big on consent,” and Willis said it at the time but as he continued to write Joe it became clearer and clearer to him that Joe’s respect for consent, and his respect for women (once framed as both being better than Danny’s and Walky’s, in a bit of an ironic turnabout) weren’t actually that strong, and that Joe needed to do more self-examination and confront that fact.
But that’s just a guess. I think the arc is being well-written either way — I just know Willis has talked before about how characters and their needs evolve as he writes in ways that have surprised him (he tried to make Amber happier), and that he’s in a continual process of growing as a person, too (long ago, a protagonist said the r-word in all seriousness, where more recently Raidah called that out as being really crappy to do), as we all in the comments (and the world) are also doing…
So it makes a lot of sense to me, and makes that slight dissonance where early Joe was sometimes positioned as a better advocate for women’s agency than characters like Danny (who have in the meantime ALSO grown a lot themselves — I think Danny would be a better partner now, and definitely more able to tell a girl like Billie that HE’S not comfortable with casual sex, rather than laying that at her feet with attempted mind-reading about how she was going to regret it).
It’s a webcomic about making mistakes. The audience it draws gives us as many opportunities to learn as these college heroes.
It tells you a lot about Joe that he clearly thinks that Joyce being annoyed at him basically publishing insulting commentary about her attractiveness and lifestyle is somehow her wrongdoing. I’ve noticed that he reacts in the same way to other girls’ objections too and, if I may, I do think that this total social obliviousness is his real worst characteristic. He literally doesn’t understand that anyone has a right to be annoyed with him.
Mm hmm, he never respects no. He just treats it as some moral failing on the person in question that somehow says more about them than it does about him.
It’s always someone else’s fault and he never makes any space for anyone to be legitimately upset at his behavior even though there is no way he’s so bad at body language that he doesn’t know exactly how his usual approach is taken.
ha. hahaah yeaah
“it’s not my problem, it’s your problem for having a problem with it”
This is actually a little crushing…Both of them talk, and care for each other, but both of them are probably destroyed by this…It’s an asshole thing to make a list like this, but he cares for Joyce, and never meant for it to get out. He’s not in the right, but it feels like it’s definitely going to be worse than he deserves, especially considering the two of them confide in the other for their needs.
Is his do list a blog so he can’t change older entries? If not, he’d had a lot of time to reevaluate his entry which sounds like it’s written before their date.
So, he didn’t do anything to make this right even after he had more contact with Joyce.
Avatar-Roulette again because some stupid aggressive ad showing up in several places (here, gws and namesake) keeps trying to highjack my browser.
I whish there was noscript for iOS.
“never meant for it to get out”?
He’s got an RSS feed and hands out the password like candy. Even if no one he gave it to ever shared it, that’s still hardly keeping it secret.
He made the list explicitly for it to get out. Just not to people who were ON out. He deserves this.
Oh, he wanted the people who were on it to see it, just not the ones who ranked low. I don’t think for a second that Raidah’s not on the list (since, you know, she’s a lady he met), and he offered to give it to her, and he specifically said he doesn’t tell the low-scoring ones what he rated them.
Love Joyce’s fresh new look. She ought to have started dressing like this several years ago. A jet-setting ensemble.
Addendum to add something that came to me thinking about Joe’s behavior these last couple of strips.
He’s angry at Danny and Joyce.
He’s angry that they are not fitting into their roles. That they aren’t reassuring him and telling him his behavior was okay and it’s just those percussion instruments who can’t take an honest assessment. That they aren’t helping enable his downward spiral.
And that anger plays into how he’s mistreated Danny so far this comic. The entire comic he’s attacked all of Danny’s personality, demanded he change it to serve him. And the very specific way he wanted to change it was someone who would help enable his behavior and cheer it rather than viewing it as the sad catastrophe of misogyny and fear that it’s always been.
Like, here:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/knockers/
That’s his ideal. A cheerleader validating his behavior, celebrating his sad ambitions, treating his actions like something that mattered. Going “wow, you managed to strong-arm a woman into sleeping with you, how big were the superficial features porn has trained you to over-emphasize and which actually mostly just cause lower back pain”.
And nothing else. No other humanity to remind him that this important person in his life is a human being with their own “stuff” going on.
And he’s pissed off that the people in his life are refusing to fill those roles for him. That they have been passively ignoring his douchery and they are not at all in disagreement with the folks who think he did something scummy.
That they aren’t propping up the fragile fantasy he has chosen to escape to because it promised a land beyond the reach of feelings.
And that might be the worst thing about him. Even the people who choose to care about him, he still, in his fear, devalues to props. And he treats them like toxic masculinity trains him to treat women, as malfunctioning toasters who refuse to toast the bread.
I’d take it one step further on his dehumanization of Danny.
He’s not angry at DANNY, because Danny isn’t ranking as a person either. He’s angry at the situation. He’s angry at reality for not being what he thinks it should be. Danny’s just a thing in reality, though. He might rate frustration or exasperation, but not anger.
…. but I’ll differ with you about Joyce.
Joyce actually got THROUGH to him. On an emotional level, not in a he-actually-learned-a-lesson level I think it’s when she turned his date expectations completely on their head and then complimented him in the elevator anyways… but it was sometime before they were texting each other on Joyce’s trip home. I don’t believe that what he wrote reflects what he actually thinks/feels about her…. which again, might be the toxicity that he’s forced to project rather than admit some non-PUA conflicts.
Now I don’t think he’s in love (just because), and they’d definitely not make a good pair, and I’m not talking about any sort of seeds of redemption in that. (Maybe he has a redemption arc in him, but I don’t think that’s it.) But I think Joyce has managed to force him to see her as human, if only in the privacy of his own subconscious.
I think that’s possible, but the blurb was written before their date and so he probably didn’t see her as human when writing it.
No, the blurb was written after their date. That’s why she’s a “0 minus” instead of the 4 he originally gave her.
Sounds to me like the blurb was written before, but the rating was changed after the fact. Apparently there’s Word of Willis to that effect.
Nope, Willis said on Patreon he wrote the blurb before their date.
Gotcha.
On the other hand, I kind of feel like my point holds, because Joe edited the number but considered that blurb just fine. It still got his post-date stamp of approval. You know?
Huh, mine mostly give me shoulder and neck pain. Maybe I have weird posture.
Congrats, Joe! Your toxic masculinity, stupid shenanigans and psychological hangups have damaged your lifelong friendship with Danny, and possibly terminated your budding friendship with Joyce.
(Sigh)
You know … It’s this strip that finally made my dislike of Joe outweigh my pity for him.
When someone as sweet as Joyce is put out with you, you should Really rethink your way of life.
and while you’re at it, stop selling death sticks.
Cigarettes or Dynamite?
Get off those steps!
They bring DOOM!
DOOOOOM
I see what you,did there, Ghost Kitty.
I feel bad for Joe here, hes been blind sided (its his own fault of course) and I’m guessing the rough time frame since this part of the strip began is like 5 minutes?
So hes probably not thinking clearly, hes on the defensive because he feels hes being attacked so he probably won’t be able to process everything thats happening until he gets somewhere quiet, at the very least.
Everything he knows has probably been picked up from his father, it seemed like the divorce messed him around and now he runs into Joyce who inappropriately dredged up memories of his parents divorce on their very first date
He was probably a big man in High School and now hes having to face the reality that the same behavior doesn’t doesn’t fly in college so his entire world view is crumbling
Again this is a situation entirely of his own making but hes still a teenager, hes shown he can be caring so hopefully once the dust settles and hes had some time to reflect (damn hard to make changes to your behavior when you’re right in the middle of the situation itself) he’ll get more story time to attempt to make amends
I hope he does become a better person out of this because if he doesn’t learn anything and drives his, remaining, friends away then he’ll become properly dangerous
Hes tall, attractive and in good shape, if he goes total PUA then he’ll be able to hurt a lot of people
Blonde? She’s meant to be blonde?
Well that explains the aryan comment Becky made about her family.
I thought it was a reference to their uniquely blue eyes
She is pretty obviously blonde from where I’m standing.
Looks light brown to me. Especially compared to Dorothy or Mike.
Now you all have me humming that song in Sweeney Todd covering the different kind of blonde. It’s the least un cheery song in the show, at least.
this one
https://youtu.be/vONUjXW-_xU
I figured her hair for something like this:
http://shpilki.net/wp-content/uploads/blesk-i-siyanie.jpg
I know the Russian word for this sort of hair which is pretty common here (my mom’s hair is like this… tho not as shiny at that picture ofc lol) – русые волосы, but as far as I can tell English just… doesn’t
blonde sounds fair enough to me
Oh yes Joe. Yes it does but the baseball bat will be for your if you don’t shut your mouth or start behaving like a decent human being…
Never post stuff on social media under your real name if you don’t want people you know finding out about it.
Plasma Mongoose isn’t your real name?
I have to say this social media exhibitionism terrifies me a bit… people just giving up so many details of their lives
Joyce is wearing her SEMME uniform, and her wrist brace is gone, and she’s sitting by the stairs of death. Shit’s about to get real.
Should we put on the “One Punch Man” theme?
So, you’re predicting that she uses her telekinesis to use Force Choke on Joe?
Panel 3: I don’t like the way Joyce is staring at the knife in her hand.
I interpreted Joyce’s hair as brown all this time and was super confused by Becky’s comment a couple panels ago. I feel like Joyce being blonde is the DoA version of The Dress (the “is it white+gold or blue+black?” one).
For me she was always this… hay-coloured blond.
I’d say Dorothy is a straight forward blonde while Joyce and her siblings have dirty blonde hair. It’s darker than Dorothy’s, but lighter than say, Danny’s. It’s kinda inbetween!
Y’know, at first I thought Joe was just a stupid kid playing with fire. But I lost patience with him a book or two ago when he started doubling down even after he’s been shown and told again and again that he needs to stop. And now that it’s time for him to burn, he just keeps trying to one-up himself.
I hope he gets what he deserves. There’s no excuse for this crap.
honestly, i find it funny. people are all like up in arms about this, it’s kind of ridiculous.
Reducio ad absurdium, I believe it is called. It’s a fairly well-known narrative trope, most commonly used in satire, where you take a behaviour or concept and portray it in the most out-of-the-park ridiculous way to expose just how stupid it is.
Both Joe’s behavior and the angry reactions to it are completely realistic.
Some men will go to far greater lengths to broadcast shit like this, especially teenagers. Women already have to deal with enough casually demeaning garbage as it is, without dudes putting in extra effort to document that objectification and then share it with their friends.
In the real world, things like Joe’s list get far more invasive, like that Facebook group that a bunch of Marines were using to share nude photos of female colleagues.
We still haven’t seen a bunch of bros come out of the woodwork to defend Joe’s godgiven right to rate women and silence all the ladies as “hysterical”.
All up in arms? Reductio ad absurdum? You think so?
Other Rachel was angry but then she was publicly insulted as a 3. Now Joyce is upset and hurt, but she got called a 0- by someone she was starting to trust.
The others we’ve seen so far were Mandy looking unimpressed, and three other women shooting dirty looks at Joe while he talked about Mandy’s ranking. For responses to finding someone has an on-line database on you, that all seems pretty reasonable to me.
Ranking women as fuckable objects is something worthy of scorn. Joe’s a creep.
JUST FUCK ALREADY
no
I don’t know, despite all the history with Joe, I think Danny would be happier with Ethan.
Yeah he would, except their mutual unstable friend Amber would be so messed up about it.
Well Danny needs some soul-searching time anyway, and Ethan too probably.
Joyce can do a lot better. To be fair I guess, almost everyone on campus can do better than Joe and at this point, they know it.
Just a thought: Notice that Joyce is wearing more ‘cover up’ clothes than ‘three days ago’. I might be reading too much into this but I wonder if she’s feeling a bit insecure about herself on a physical level after reading Joe’s rather devastating assessment of her attractiveness and relationship prospects. This is someone who she thought was her friend, after all.
She wore that in previous strips as well. Also, this particular outfit is an anniversary update of her 20 year old design, so I think you might be reading a little too much into this.
It could also be colder weather. Joe and Danny are wearing long sleeves and layers.
Be careful Joe; Joyce’s wrist seems to have recovered. And she might have looked up how to reduce wrist injuries when punching someone.
I’m sure Joe is well aware that Joyce has no issues with punching people
I thought that was just a legit vest, not a sweatervest.
This one might be a legit vest, but DoA Joyce is known to wear sweatervests, and Joe typed that at some point in the past.
This will do wonders for Joyce’s ability to trust men, I’m certain. She trusted Jos enough to seek his advice in coping with her parents (something she didn’t even go to Dorothy for) and he still wrote that and kept it up for so many douche bags to see. With the exception of Jacob and Ethan, have any of the dudes in this school treated her with consistant respect?
Maybe Mike, on a technicality. Mike’s level of respect for most people is pretty consistent over time, but also either minimal or negative.
Without the loophole… Umm… Nope, none that I can think of.
Its probably fair to say that Walky has treated Joyce with the same respect shes treated him
Although Walky started it to be fair
The fact Joyce looks sad in that last panel makes me sad.
She had a genuine connection with Joe so this is just… disappointing. She doesn’t even look angry, just let down and defeated. This isn’t something she can punch away – she has no idea how many people saw it – it’s just… a thing, that she has to deal with.
I’ve got to say that Joe’s closing comment on panel 5 is, in my view, the most vilely hateful thing that he’s ever said to anyone. He’s under extreme social pressure, I know, but that does not under any circumstances justify his treating anyone in that manner.
I’ve got to say, what he says about Sarah is far from nice either. I’ve got the feeling that, when a woman rejects him in any way, he reacts like a spoiled child denied a demanded treat or toy – He lashes out in a spiteful and hurtful way, hoping to cause as much damage as possible in an act of petty revenge.
In fairness to Joe, she does kind of give off a “I will kill you if you annoy me” vibe
Thats over the top, he shouldn’t have mentioned her skin colour (theres no need for that) but theres been more than enough examples in this strip where its not unreasonable to label Sarah as cranky
I’m pretty sure Raidah would probably agree with Sarah being described as cranky or Rozs little sister or Billie or well many of the cast that have interacted with her
Devils advocate: Maybe he noted that she was black in case someone was trying to find her, so mentioning her skin color would ease the search?
(He did give out his list to anyone who wanted it)
So hes stupid rather than racist?
Well sure but in this day and age making reference to someones skin colour is asking for trouble
Except Joe is basing his opinion on what JOE knows, not what we know.
When interacting with Joe Sarah has actually been fairly relaxed and friendly …except while he was repeatedly hitting on her, or talking about “fixing” Joyce with his penis. So because she didn’t take kindly to that, he decided she’s cranky. The fact that it happens to be accurate in Sarah’s case doesn’t really make that any better.
Could it be that hes talked to other people so he knows the most basic characteristics of people?
ie Joyce = Fundie, Walky =Immature, Dorothy = Driven (well he’d already know that) Billie = messed up etc etc
Although what you say sounds more plausible
Remember, the notes were made before his date with Joyce, so that initial interaction with Sarah was all he had to go on.
Could he gone back and updated the notes at any time?
Certainly, and he apparently updated Joyce’s rating.
But the comment reads as if before the date or there’d be something about “Beware psycho chick. Hired someone to punch me.”
Word of Willis on Patreon is the blurb was before the date.
Joe wrote that blurb before his date with Joyce. Sarah was perfectly reasonable and polite until the very end of that conversation, where she told him to fuck off because he was a pig who took ‘don’t break Joyce’ as ‘you are a rapist’. He had no reason to call her cranky.
Considering that Sarah tried to talk him out of dating Joyce, the idea she would kill Joyce (and not him) is rather strange.
It seems to possibly be a mix of ‘you’re annoying, why wouldn’t she get annoyed by you’ (‘I feel this way therefore everyone must’), racism (assumption that black = violent though he has no reason to believe Sarah is, we know she has been twice but he didn’t at the time of writing and she hadn’t been at all at the time of writing and still is not violent in general), and entitlement (‘I don’t want to be called out so you’re being annoying and will bring the wrath of others upon you and deserve it’).
Wait, Joyce is alone out by herself? Does this mean the scarface was caught in the preceding three days? Does she feel safe out on her own now?
Being alone wasn’t the problem, being around guys was. (Because they all looked like Not-Ryan)
I am not sure about that. She was fine being alone with Walky or Ethan. But she panicked when she ran out of Leslie’s class and realized she was alone.
Walky and Ethan are friends of her, so I’m reckoning Artemis meant that she was scared to be around guys that were strangers to her while being alone. Regardless, I was also under the impression that being alone in general triggered her anxieties and fears, so I’m confused that she is just chillin’ outside like that. Maybe her triggers were only activated when she was alone while surrounded by strangers???
The problem was specifically with men she didn’t know. Ethan, Walky, and even Joe were all fine.
If you go back to that strip, you can see how she’s only nervous at first, until people start walking past her, and that’s when she gets terrified, as all the guys’ turn into Ryan.
With him in rotting in a dumpster somewhere (or I suppose possibly jail), the fear that she might run into him again at any time which was causing her to see his face would be considerably less
Maybe she just decided to try this whole ‘being outside on my own’ thing one step at a time. Fears are not an immutable unchanging thing, and neither is PTSD. Maybe she’s just having a good day.
How is Joyce “Blonde”? She has brown hair.
http://shpilki.net/wp-content/uploads/blesk-i-siyanie.jpg
Plays “Cross town traffic” on kazoo and harp.
I wonder what will happen when Sal meets Joe?
I imagine it’ll something similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-bsf2x-aeE
Willis, I want you to draw Joe’s mouth open a little wider in the last panel so he looks even more delightfully ridiculous and childish, like Calvin yelling.
Joe’s list was really creepy and dehumanizing. If he loses his friendships and no one will date him now, he’s earned it. The fact that he isn’t even apologetic for treating all the women on campus like objects instead of people shows they are right to be done with him.
He hasn’t had a chance to be apologetic because he hasn’t had a chance to think about whats happened because its all happening right now
He needs to have a breather, gather his thoughts and then, hopefully, he can start to rebuild
I’d personally advise him to start by wiping everything on his site and issuing a genuine apology
He has been told repeatedly, by many different women, that what he’s doing with the list is gross and wrong.
There is no new information about this that he’s taking in right now, other than that now his bullshit is public.
He knew it was bullshit already, and he was already publicizing it.
His response right now is what he’s been thinking all along.
I think we did learn SOME new information. I wasn’t expecting him to not even refer to their names. Like Billie’s description as desperate and chubby
I love how Joyce handles this. One of her most appealing features is that she is aware of her quirks and gently mocks herself. Like when they were breaking into Becky’s house and she bemoaned that prison food touches on the plate.
She uses that sense of humor and cleverness here and leans into Joe’s insult – I have a name you know – and makes him own his awful comments. Joe can’t fight on her level and is reduced to sniping like he’s on a playground.
So is the zero minus Joe’s way of noting a completely platonic relationship or did he wrote that after their one date went to hell and forgot to change it??
0- is probably the closest he gets to the idea of platonic friendship.
Weirdly, he just rates Danny a regular 0.