By David Futrelle
So-called Men Going Their Own Way are having trouble getting over the long-running soap opera of Jim and Pam from The Office, a show that ceased production more than six years ago.
Not that they’re fans of either character. In the last few months, MGTOW Redditors have twice posted the same screencap from 4chan calling Pam a bitch; last year one MGTOW typed out a ten-point statement that he thought proved Jim was “the biggest Simp in Fiction.”
Their feelings about these two fictional characters and their imaginary sex lives seem, well, curiously strong. Take this exchange, found in yet another Jim/Pam thread in the MGTOW subreddit.
![AhIndeed 10 points 1 month ago
Jim is a huge beta male that played friend while she got railed by the more dominant Roy. Pam is a typical broad that got the best of both worlds-her abusive ex she gets to leave and look all heroic even though she prob loved the sex and then she gets her knight in shining armour.
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[–]Mylesfakeaccount[S] 4 points 1 month ago
Yes so she will probably find another alpha type
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[–]AhIndeed 7 points 1 month ago
She might cheat on Jim with another roy type down the line, but she secured her beta male provider](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019-11-11_19-22-02.png?fit=600%2C960)
These guys seem to have spent quite a lot of time thinking about “roy types” having sex with — sorry, “railing” — Pam. I’m not quite sure which character they’re even jealous of in this scenario.
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Just out of curiosity, why are they still discussing this show all these years later? Then again, these are the folks who use a metaphor from a 1999 film to describe their flavor of hate.
@Naglfar
And made by two trans sisters, no less.
Wait, Matrix was ’99? (checks) God, I feel old. I didn’t see it in theaters, and I want to say I saw it on DVD, but according to Wikipedia, it was only released on DVD in 2007, after I graduated from high school, and I distinctly remember seeing the movie at home before then, so it must have been on VHS (remember those?)
Gods, that was a good movie.
They also still talk about Sex and the City, so…
“I’m not quite sure which character they’re even jealous of in this scenario.”
All of them, Katie. Jim, Roy, and Pam get to be on TV, while the MGTOW’s are stuck in RL. (It’s not fair.)
They have their feelings.
I have cinnamon Altoids.
I know which one is better for sharing in good company.
@KindaSortaHarmless
I am just old enough to remember VHS. When I was a kid, DVDs existed but weren’t common, and my parents had a large library on VHS tapes. I believe they may still have it, but honestly I haven’t used a DVD or VHS tape in years because it’s easier to just stream stuff. Same with CDs and vinyl.
@WWTH
They also really like The Stepford Wives, though for all the wrong reasons.
I’ve never actually watched a full episode of The Office, but the last few years it has achieved internet meme status, so I’m not sure if I’m missing anything by not watching.
For the information of fellow Brits, these are the equivalent characters to Dawn (Lucy Davis) and Tim (Martin Freeman).
@KindaSortaHarmless
People always tell me that it was a good movie, but it’s so soured for me because it was my abusive ex’s favourite. All I can think of when I see it is a combination of them and MGTOWs. I think I resent that.
@ discussion in general
Umm… people often talk about their favorite media long past when it was first released, why is this a questionable thing to do? It’s why we still have One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Journey to the West, or in fact, any classics of literature, music, theatre… why would film and TV be different?
I’m not defending the opinion of the characters, mind, because it reveals a disgusting misogynistic mindset; but surely it’s weird and gross because of that, not because they chose to discuss a widely popular TV show some years after its release?
I suppose what’s weird about it is that the culture at large is no longer discussing the Jim and Pam. I didn’t watch the show, but I do remember hearing a lot about it. Not anymore. So why is it a hot topic now?
Of course, I still sometimes talk about how Ross from Friends was the worst, so I’m weird too.
@ WWTH
RIGHT?! That dude is the wooorst. I didn’t watch Friends until a few years ago, when I was 21, and I could not wrap my head around how Ross and Rachel had been such an international obsession when he is so terrible.
You know the other day i got into an argument online with one of these types. Must have been a lot older then me because he tried to use sex in the city to prove his point. Had no idea what he was talking about. I had to Google it. Dude was in a rant about women in this 20s and I said I’m 21 years old and ive never seen sex in the city. You know why? Probably because it came out a month after I was born and ended when I was 5 and at that point in time I was really into Scooby doo at that point of my life.
He was actually really shocked to hear this. Kind of like when I told some other guy that brad Pitt isn’t attractive to me. He’s old like my dad.
Point is is that older misogynist men tend to not get that they age and yhe things around them age. What women liked when they were 20 is not the same thing 20 year old women do now
@kindasorta:
Nah, it came out on DVD in 2000. It’s one of the first DVDs I bought. (The actual first was Purple Rain.)
@Lainy
For most of my childhood, whenever my mother had spare time she would watch old episodes of Sex and the City on DVD (nostalgia, I guess) so I associate that show with people a generation or two older than I am. I’ve never watched it, because I don’t watch much TV* and, like you, I was a child during the original run.
*I don’t have a TV, but I do occasionally watch shows on Netflix. Right now I’m watching Season 6 of Bojack Horseman (no spoilers!) and I’m a bit sad that the show is ending.
@Lainy
I’m reminded of the Boomers who still talk about how “Millennials will be in for a shock when the leave college and have to enter the real world,” when many Milllennials are pushing 40 and are looking into colleges for their high-school student children.
Do some people just not understand that time is a thing?
@Allandrel
Like this xkcd comic:
I think it’s partially that people don’t want to acknowledge that they’re getting older and out of touch. Easier to pretend everything is static, then you don’t have to.
@Castrating Harpy
You’re right. The 2007 release was the Ultimate Collection, with all 3 films. Thanks for correcting me.
I haven’t seen The Office beyond a random episode or two, but my understanding is that Pam is portrayed throughout her relationship with Jim as deeply in love with him and committed to him. Is that not right?
If so, these MGTOWs are writing fanfiction where the character is completely different than she is in the show, and then they’re getting mad about their own fan-created character. That’s… That’s a choice.
@Viscaria
I believe that’s rather what they do with the real world, so it makes sense they’d do it with TV characters as well.
I’m a wizened old crone of 39 and I did watch SATC when it was originally airing. I rewatched a couple of years ago. It’s free to stream with an Amazon Prime membership. It did not hold up. At all. It was seen as somewhat feminist at the time because of its candor about sex, but the lack of POC in NYC, the conspicuous consumption and wealth worship and the outdated gay jokes just make it not age well.
As an old crone who has happily slammed through the wall, I thought Jim was supposed to be the quintessential millennial/ audience vehicle suffering snarkily through having to deal with the quirks of the olds surrounding him.
Also, they think that the kid who plays Jim is a “beta male”? Maybe they should start pushing for men to wear veils. If hollywood-homely isn’t good enough, no one without access to a makeup department is going to pass muster.
They go through a rough patch where she’s really hurt by how he treats her and she turns to a male friend for comfort but that’s all. Of course, miggies would probably see her crying to another dude to be cheating.
I don’t think they’re talking about generations anyhow. It’s more like common language has picked up the Word “Boomer” for old people and “Millennial” for young adults.
Even the Millennium was, like, 20 years ago.
People tend to hang on to the cultural references of their teens/early adulthood. MGTOWs are generally an older crowd: middle aged men bitter about divorce, asset division, and custody. Their ’90s references aren’t for us, they’re for each other.
That being said, why are they complaining about fictional characters as if they’re real?
@KindaSortaHarmless
At the risk of sounding like one of the Four Yorkshiremen, I remember before VHS, before cable, when movies came on TV once a year, with non-skippable commercials. The Wizard of Oz was an Annual Event. The Sound of Music was even rarer. You had to wait 2-3 years for theatrical releases to make it onto broadcast TV. The quality sucked – snow and rabbit ears, and changing the channel with pliers because your brother pulled the dial out during a squabble and hid it somewhere and then forgot where he stashed it.
Sometimes I still can’t believe I can watch Star Wars on demand.
@ Buttercup
When I was a kid I was amazed to watch the 8 minute silent Super8 version of Star Wars; in someone’s house!
(It’s actually a pretty good cut)
Zoomer: I like Star Wars.
Millennial: Disney and wokeness have ruined Star Wars.
Xer: Original trilogy only, please.
Boomer: Back in my day, we watched real people walking on another planet.
@Lumipuna
What is a Zoomer? I haven’t heard the word used in that way before.
Just on that topic, having been watching a lot of Agatha Christie adaptations lately, the 2006 David Suchet version of Taken at the Flood had some… yikesy dynamics in it.
SPOILER ALERT for a 70-year-old Poirot novel
So major props to Elliot Cowan, who plays the vile David Hunter with a pitch-perfect mixture of domineering charm and manipulative smugness. In the novel, Hunter begins to manipulate the recently-arrived Lynn Marchment the same way he did serving girl Eileen Corrigan to the point that she breaks off an engagement with a local farmer for him, but the adaptation doesn’t offer enough interaction between the two to justify it. Lynn goes from telling Rowley (the farmer) that she’s still a virgin and wants to jump his bones on their wedding night to “wait, I love this smug controlling lizard-person” after like two scenes together.
It’s natural for Rowley to be upset by being cast aside for the most obvious villain since Bob Evil, but in both novel and adaptation, he takes his anger out on Lynn by assaulting her. Freshly traumatized with a strangling at the hands of her ex-fiance, Lynn then has to sit through the denouement, where the adaptation upgrades her new love from regular murderer to mass murderer, having blown up his own sister’s entire family and household with dynamite. But that’s only after impregnating a teenager, manipulating her Catholic faith by forcing her to abort the pregnancy, then controlling her with a morphine addiction.
And after all this, there’s still the indication that Lynn is in love with this guy. Blessedly, the adaptation has the good sense not to have Lynn go back to the guy who strangled her like the novel did, but I dunno… if I learned the person I was in love with blew up 12 people and kept his last girlfriend in his thrall with drugs… might affect my feelings for him as he’s off to the gallows.
SPOILERS END
The Suchet Poirot adaptations definitely got darker in tone near the end of the series, but Taken at the Flood just leaves you (and probably Lynn) feeling really dirty for having experienced it. A lot of Christie works tend to rack up the body count over their course, but other ones like Hallowe’en Party and Mrs. McGinty’s Dead had their moments of levity with the help of the supporting cast. Taken had zero levity and compounded it with hideous relationship dynamics that were probably questionable even in 1948 when it was written.
Just had to get that off my chest.
So I turned 45 today which lands me slap in the middle of Gen X, with a Boomer mum, a Xer sister (Xennial is not a thing Chloe!), a Millennial sister, then we skip the zoomers/gen z/iGen and now I have two Gen Alpha nephews. The smaller of whom made me watch several hours of kids TV this morning.
I got videogames and sweeties as gifts. Also half a chocolate cake to myself. Birthdays are awesome.
@varalys the dark
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday Varalys!
I turn 40 next Wednesday… I’m in what I and some others like to call ‘the Oregon Trail Generation’.
@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Then there was that frustrating period where movies were out on VHS, but older or more obscure titles were either not out at all, or unavailable at one’s local video-rental place.
I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to be living in a time in which I can watch stuff like Johnny Come Lately (1943) or Ich Möchte Kein Mann Sein (1918) on Youtube.
At my niece’s wedding wedding two weeks ago, I only recognized two thirds of the music played while everything I missed was at at least a half decade old. Apparently my musical taste was finalized in 1994? I knew that I was old (see name) but not that old. So yes, age makes fools of us all.
“LUXURY! Back in MY day we used to have to act out shadow puppets on the wall from the fire of burning the last of our blankets…”
Thanks peeps! The older I get the sillier I become 😀
I genuinely love have a Millennial sister, she kept me and in fact still keeps me up to date with what’s cool. Apart from music, we parted company there in 2001 when the last good music was made. Now I spend a lot of time watching kids TV again with my adorable nephews and I look forward to hopefully being the cool auntie as they get older.*
@Varalys the dark
Happy birthday and many more!
Do you know the pain of Blippy? My now nephew is 3 and to young for me to get him into the good kids show so I’m stuch watching Blippy. Please tell me you know Blippy. Share the pain with me.
@Lainy: my cousin is 5. I know Blippy. I’m sorry you know Blippy too!
My cousin will watch for hours. He’s not allowed to go outside by himself because my dad’s family is terrified of everything, so this is what he mostly does.
Thanks! And I’m in the UK, so not heard of Blippy. The terrible programme my two year nephew loves is called Bing, a CGI cartoon about a black humanoid bunny and his carer and it’s really, really, *really* boring. There’s good stuff, The Twirlywoos, Hey Duggee and Abney and Teal available at the touch of a button but nah, he wants Bing. Snore.
Naglfar – I vaguely recall the kids these days are called “generation Z” or informally “Zoomers”.
Congrats, varalys!
Thank you!
I’m old enough to remember Betamax, and tape cassettes just beginning to replace vinyl.
We certainly have come far. (Pats 8TB external HDD loaded with 1080p BRrips: every Star Wars, Trek, and MCU film thus far released to BR, X-Men, Spider-Man, assorted other mostly action and SF films, and several gigs of music spanning the late 70s to now. All of it backed up on a second disk, of course. And all a few mouse clicks away without the need to juggle whole rooms filled with heavy pieces of furniture filled with little plastic boxes full of little plastic disks. Nor reliant on some streaming “service” that charges by the month, won’t work well over my shitty 3Mbps rural ADSL (or at all if the network or server is down), and randomly shuffles and removes things from its catalog from time to time according to some arcane formula that makes the one used to decide when to celebrate Easter seem sane. )
@Surplus
I’m Jewish and I don’t celebrate Easter, so out of curiosity, what is the formula for Easter? I had always assumed it was a Sunday in April, and never put much thought into the formula.
First Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
@ Lumipuna:
You’re probably right, but locally (Toronto) there was a magazine for a while for (I think) older Boomers called “Zoomers,” which I always assumed was some cutesy attempt to sound hip.
The reasoning at the time for this formula was to help give pilgrims going to nearby holy sites for the holiday better light to spot any approaching bandits and fighting them off successfully.
Or so I’ve always heard. Could be wrong about why it really was done way back then.
@Naglfar, Shadowplay:
Essentially, yes, first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, though the actual calculation is a bit more esoteric, based on the Metonic Cycle of 19 years == 235 months, and doesn’t rely on observations. It’s that way because the original Easter was tied to the Jewish Passover events (the ‘Last Supper’ was generally considered to be a Passover feast) and Passover is based on the Jewish lunar calendar. But when Christianity became tied to the Roman Empire after the First Council of Nicaea, a way to calculate it within the Julian solar calendar was needed.
There’s also the fact that the various Orthodox churches often celebrate Easter on a different day than the Catholic and (almost?) all Protestant churches, because the Orthodox churches never accepted the redefinition of the Easter calculations which came along with the Gregorian calendar. The main difference is that the Orthodox calculation doesn’t take into consideration all the leap days that got removed from the calendar to re-synchronize the vernal equinox, and so the Orthodox Easter averages a couple of weeks later.
(The Julian calendar had leap days every 4 years, while the Gregorian is the modern every 4 years, but not multiples of 100, but yes multiples of 400. There’s 13 days difference due to the removed leap days from 300, 500, 600, 700, 900, 1000, 1100, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1700, 1800, and 1900.)
Sorry, the history of calendars is one of those odd little aspects of history I happen to personally find fascinating.
@Jenora Feuer
I like calendars as well. Thank you for the additional information about Easter and the Metonic Cycle.
I’m familiar with the Jewish calendar, having used it for Jewish holidays, and I’ve noticed that most of the time Passover is around the same time as Easter. This has been an issue in the past for me, as I’ve tried to schedule Passover seders to which I invited non-Jewish guests, who often were unavailable around Easter.
There are some wonderfully steampunky/clockpunky mechanical computers built for the purpose of working out the date of easter.
None of them work forever though; the problem is too intractable for that. Turns out to be a bit of a weird rabbithole of nerdery.
It would be fun to make up a calendar. I mean, the whole creative process of deciding how you would measure what you wanted to measure and so on. I know sci-fi fit writers do stuff like that. For me personally time is more by what I feel than what something else says but I’m still just saying it would be fun maybe. But in my job I keep a real calendar that is what other people say it is and it’s really important and I like doing that too.
@Naglfar:
The Wikipedia page on Easter goes into a fair bit of detail, including having a table for several years which lists the dates of the Full Moon, Passover, Astronomical Easter, Gregorian Easter, and Julian/Orthodox Easter for each year.
This was actually one of the rare years in which the Gregorian Easter and the Astronomical Easter (first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox) were actually different, mostly because the full moon was actually on the day of the vernal equinox, and the ecclesiastical calculations are actually based on the 14th day after the new moon rather than the full moon as such, so it can be a day earlier depending on the lunar cycle. And the vernal equinox isn’t actually on the same day every year.
@Pie:
Calculating Easter is non-trivial for a computer, and is one of the reasons why the main recommendation for any sort of computer time handling is ‘find a library that does it already and use that’. I can easily see that doing it mechanically would be rather difficult.