Category Archives: Jack Fisher’s Insights

January 5, 2017 · 6:22 am

A Quick Guide To Dealing With Internet Trolls

The late, great Benjamin Franklin once said, “[I]n this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” That little pearl of wisdom has held up remarkably well over the years, especially when democrats are in charge or when despots need more money for their gold-plated toilet seats.

However, if Mr. Franklin were alive today, he’d have to amend that quote in a very specific way. While it’s still true that the only certainty is death and taxes, there is one other inescapable force that makes even the forces of nature tremble. It’s a force so powerful that it can reduce the best of us into wounded puppies begging for a band-aid.

What is this force, you ask? Get ready to embrace the horror because it will affect us moving forward. In fact, it’ll affect us more and more as the pace of technological advancement accelerates. It conjures dread, fear, annoyance, and frustration. It is the ultimate shit stain of the internet and technology in general. They are the true beasts of the 21st century.

Yes, I’m talking about Internet Trolls.

I’ll give everyone a moment to either cringe in horror or roll their eyes. Some of us have experience with internet trolls. Some of us may have even done our share of trolling in the past, although we’ll never admit in public that it qualified as trolling. Like a kid trying to get out of chores, we’ll make any excuse not to be associated with this horror. That doesn’t make us any less guilty of it.

I freely admit that I’ve done my share of trolling in the past. I’m not proud of it, but I’m only human. I’m passionate about a lot of things and I hope that shows in my erotica/romance novels. If it doesn’t, then I’m not doing my job.

We humans are passionate creatures. We always have been. We probably always will be on some levels, despite the efforts of movies like “Equilibrium.” It’s only recently that we’ve had a tool, namely the internet, to convey our passion all over the world about every possible subject from sports to pets to how we style our pubic hair.

I don’t consider this a bad thing. I’m not those who think the internet makes people into monsters or trolls. I believe that humans always had these sentiments to some degree. We just never had a chance to express them on a larger scale. The internet helps us reveal the breadth of our passions. There’s going to be the good and the bad. We can’t avoid either, nor should we.

So in many respects, internet trolls are like the sewer systems of a city. It smells, it’s ugly, and it’s flowing with shit, but it needs to be there. It needs to function for the city to function. You can whine about it all you want, and some people do, but you can’t escape it.

If we can’t escape it, then how do we deal with it? How do we deal with these digital demons that attempt to suck the fun out of anything and everything we hold dear? It’s actually easier than you think, at least for the non-famous population. For the famous crowd, it’s a little trickier, but not by much.

Since I can’t relate to famous people that much, I’ll stick to what I know before I dare to speculate. I’ve been on the internet for over 20 years and I’ve seen it grow and evolve, from the early AOL days to the fall of MySpace. In that time, I’ve picked up on a few techniques to combat internet trolls. Here are just a few:

  1. Assume there will be trolls wherever there’s an opportunity and don’t get overly upset when they show up
  2. Never assume a troll is being one hundred percent sincere, nor should you assume that the troll is one hundred percent knowledgeable either
  3. A troll that makes threats is serious, but a troll actually carrying out these threats is exceedingly rare so keep that in mind
  4. Above all, deny the troll any and all forms of attention or reactions, as this is the primary fuel in which a troll operates
  5. Apathy is the most potent weapon against internet trolls

There are probably more techniques that are unique to certain situations. There’s probably a whole host of tips and tricks to deal with certain trolls that go to much greater lengths to harass others. Those cases aren’t typical.

How can I be so sure of this? Again, apply a little caveman logic and it’s obvious. Human beings have a lot of remarkable mental and physical traits, breasts and balls being some of the most notable. However, when it comes to our attention span, human beings are incredibly lacking.

The average human attention span is not that great and some even argue (albeit not very effectively) that it’s shrinking due to technology. A troll operates at the very basic of levels in terms of human capacity. That means a troll’s attention span should not be overestimated. The internet is full of so many distractions, cat videos being just one of them. A troll that doesn’t get a reaction isn’t going to stay interested for very long.

In the end, the greatest weapon that any of us can use against internet trolls is apathy. That is a troll’s ultimate kryptonite. When a troll goes to such great lengths to harass and demean, but earns nothing but a blank gaze in the end, it’s downright toxic. Their brains simply cannot process why they are wasting time and energy that could be better spent hunting for tigers and seeking fertile mates. It’s caveman logic at its finest.

This is a sentiment echoed by those who have a somewhat larger social media presence. Being a lifelong comic book fan, I frequent comic book message boards and social media. I see a lot of trolling, to say the least. Comic book fans are a passionate bunch, as we learned during the Avengers: Age of Ultron controversy surrounding Black Widow.

This leads me to Tom Brevoort, an accomplished editor at Marvel and a genuinely interesting guy. I’ve met him in person at comic cons. He’s great at what he does and the way he deals with fans is nothing short of astonishing. A couple years back, he responded to a question that effectively proves my point.

When Mr. Brevoort was asked, “What does Marvel fear more? Angry fans or apathetic fans?” he responded as follows:

“Apathetic fans, definitely. When fans are angry, we’re selling comics.”

That’s a refreshing bit of honesty from someone who often has to be coy about his business. It also emphasizes the power of apathy, both in terms of dealing with trolls and dealing with public visibility. That saying about there being no such thing as bad publicity is somewhat accurate, but it’s incomplete in that it ignores how human passions operate.

So with that in mind, use these techniques whenever necessary. If you’re a celebrity, it may be somewhat trickier because internet trolls can sometimes turn into dangerous stalkers, which is an entirely different problem that I’m not equipped to deal with. For those like me, who are a long way away from being famous, this should help make your internet experience more tolerable.

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January 4, 2017 · 5:52 am

Women’s Tastes In Porn (Involves Lesbians)

Brace yourselves because I’m about to say something that’s going to explode heads and confuse genitals everywhere. Are you sitting down? Has it been a while since your last meal? If not, take about a half-hour or so to let it digest. You’ll thank me later. I promise.

Are you back? Are you sitting? Are you bracing yourself appropriately? Okay, here goes. Again, don’t say I didn’t warn you because this is going to shock more people than it should.

Women do watch porn.

Are you done gasping? Have you picked your jaw up off the floor? Take a moment to let this sink in. If you live in North America, a part of the world with a rich tradition of schizophrenic attitudes towards sex, you’ll probably need more than a few. Being an aspiring erotica/romance writer, I need to be in touch with those attitudes. Yes, that includes understanding women’s preferences in porn?

Why do I bring this up? Well, aside from the fact that it’s easy to garner extra attention when you talk about women and porn, it is a relevant topic for me. I want my writing to appeal to everyone, men and women alike. Being a healthy heterosexual man, I have a fairly good idea of what men like, be it porn, TV, and fast food. I need to dig a little deeper for women’s preferences.

That’s actually not as difficult as it sounds. Yes, I know the concept of understanding women is often equated to understanding quantum physics. No, I don’t believe that’s accurate. That’s just an overplayed gimmick in every bad romantic comedy made since 1977.

It is possible to understand women on some levels. You just have to do something so simple, yet so revolutionary, even in 2017. You have to actually listen. I’ll give everyone another moment to stop gasping.

Now I’m not saying I’m a professional listener, but I have a functioning brain and functioning ears. Those are the most vital tools last I checked. In addition, there are others who just announce to the world what women think and what they find sexy. You just have to be willing and able to listen. Again, it’s not as hard as it sounds. It did not need to be a sub-standard Mel Gibson movie.

One such medium that has been very informative to this blog before is ThinkTank. They’re not scientific. They’re not overly preachy either. They’re about as balanced as you can get on the internet these days, which I know is not saying much.

Understanding that anything on the internet has about as much scientific validity as a Star Trek rerun, I still find their discussions informative. Recently, one of those discussions involved women’s tastes in porn. Naturally, my ears perked up, as did other parts of my body. Since I’m trying to appeal to women’s sexy sensibilities, I had to listen to some parts more than others.

Here’s the video. It’s fairly SFW and not overly graphic. It does, however, paint an interesting (and telling) picture.

So apparently, this admittedly unscientific study found out that women in North America love lesbian porn. They love lesbian porn a lot. As a man, I say bless their female hearts because I think that’s something a lot of American men can rally behind. We don’t agree on much, but we can sure as hell agree that lesbian porn is sexy as hell.

That said, I don’t think we’ll agree on the factors behind this. I know there are radical feminists and even a few overly religious types who will whine about the extent to which women are sexualized. I don’t doubt that happens. It’s fairly well-documented, albeit incomplete, that women are more sexualized in North American media than men.

I’ve already done posts about objectification and why I think the whining about that is misguided. There also is some science to back up the claim that men are more visual creatures than women, although that science is incomplete. In this case, I think women’s tastes in porn reflect something else that actually unites genders.

One of the unique traits of lesbian porn is that it’s focused on the wants and needs of the women. It kind of has to be for pragmatic purposes. In addition, those involves in lesbian porn are, by and large, presented as equals. This is more a product of men and women being biologically and physiologically different. When two women are involved, it makes for more equal dynamics and not just because they have the same anatomy.

It’s because of that equality that the mood, tone, and appeal of lesbian porn is unique. I think that uniqueness appeals to women, especially in North America, because so much popular culture, including porn, creates all these woefully unequal relationships. It’s either the man who overshadows the women or the woman who busts the balls of the man. It’s often either/or and rarely anything in between.

It can happen though. A single X-men comic that came out last year proved that a relationship of equals can really work. It’s the kind of relationship I’m trying to craft in my novels. My upcoming book, “Passion Relapse,” really makes an effort at this and I hope it has that unique appeal to women and men alike.

Now I’m sure there are other factors in play. There are probably a whole host of other reasons as to why lesbian porn appeals to so many women. We live in a culture that uses beautiful women as the apex of all things sexual. One beautiful woman has the sex appeal of ten George Clooneys. That’s just how our schizophrenic culture operates at the moment.

With that in mind, I do expect tastes to change and evolve. Today, lesbian porn may be the preferred porn of choice for women. That may change in five years. For all we know, foot fetishes and finger-banging will come into style. It’s hard to say. I can’t predict the proclivities of an entire culture. I can just take note, listen to the whims of others as well as my own, and adapt my sexy novels accordingly.

One final note on lesbian porn for now. If you’re a woman and you enjoy a little bit of lesbian loving in your private moments, check out my book, “Holiday Heat.” The holidays may be over, but the sex appeal of this book should keep your spirits high.

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January 3, 2017 · 9:26 am

Why We Make (And Fail) New Years Resolutions

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about that time when people start making a list of all those who ruined their holiday and how they’ll get back at them. That time has already passed. It’s a new year. It’s 2017. That means we’ve all got a clean slate so to speak. We have a chance to shake off the burdens of 2016 and make 2017 better.

It’s that very sentiment that leads many to make New Years Resolutions. I’m definitely among that crowd. For most of my adult life, especially in recent years, I’ve tried to make New Years Resolutions that will help me improve myself, my life, and all those around me.

I know it sounds cheesy. Some might not even think it’s very sexy. I think it’s an important part of being an adult, finding ways to improve yourself. Isn’t improvement supposed to be sexy? Isn’t that why women get breast implants and why men smother themselves in aftershave? Call it whatever you want. Improvement on any level should be sexy.

I know I’m not alone in making these resolutions. Around this time of year, I notice a significant uptick in crowd sizes at the gym I go to. In fact, there have been some instances where the gym is so crowded on the first week of the new year that it’s hard to get a good workout in.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, as may be the case), those crowds tend to taper off. Usually by mid-February, the crowds are almost back to normal. I think that says a lot about New Years Resolutions and how hard they are to fulfill.

I think we’re all guilty of it at some point in our lives. We make a promise to ourselves to do better or be better in some capacity. Then, for reasons that aren’t always our fault, we fail. It’s sad. It’s frustrating. It can be downright demoralizing. Unless you’re rich enough to pay someone to meet your goals for you, it’s downright inevitable.

Why is this though? Why is it that so many people fail at New Years Resolutions? Well, some of that goes back to the “caveman logic” I’ve cited many times before on this blog. In some respects, our own evolutionary biology is working against.

This isn’t just a case of our brains being wired primarily for survival and reproduction. This is more a product of our brains favoring certainty over uncertainty. Back in the caveman days, not knowing where we would get our next meal, when we would hump our mate, or whether there was a hungry bear around the corner caused a lot of stress. We needed to feel stress so that we’d do something about it. That’s just the laws of nature.

Once again, the problem with our brains is that it still hasn’t gotten the memo that this is 2017. We’re not living in caves anymore. Our wiring still confuses the uncertainty surrounding our whole weight-loss resolution with the uncertainty that comes with not knowing whether a bear will steal the meat we gathered from our last hunt.

Being so crude and blunt, reorienting our brain is like trying to cut glass with a hammer. Technically, it is possible. It’s just not very precise. Our brains are wired to avoid the distress that comes with uncertainty. That’s why it’ll fight you tooth and nail when you try to change something in your life.

I know this because I certainly had to fight it when I pursued some of my resolutions. As I documented before, my efforts to get in shape did not happen overnight. I had to slowly work my way into a healthier mindset. It took time. It took patience. It took a whole lot of frustration as well, but I did it.

In some respects, I was lucky. I had some strong motivating factors behind that resolution, namely recent health issues that some close relatives endured. That, along with getting older, helped provide incentives that my brain just couldn’t work around. Those incentives have served me well, so much so that not exercising causes me distress.

This has been the key to a lot of my resolutions. It’s not so much that I make bold promises. It’s how I go about it. I try to work my new resolutions into a system of sorts. I’ve always been a very regimented person by nature. So when I want to do something, I try to fit it into a schedule or a system that I can live by. If possible, I try to make it as flexible as possible.

A lack of flexibility in setting a goal or a system is usually the first step towards failing. I don’t like to fail. That’s why flexibility is so important. Some of that actually comes from my parents, who made it a point to make everyone flexible to deal with the daily chaos of our lives. It worked when I was a kid. It works even better as an adult.

Now I’m not saying I’m an expert in helping you achieve your New Years Resolution. I’m as qualified to be a self-help guru as I am to be starting quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. However, I’m not one of those late night infomercial scam-artists who will charge you a hundred bucks just to tell you what you want to hear. I prefer to keep things simple and practical.

I know my experiences with New Years Resolutions won’t work for everyone. My situation is wholly unique and it probably won’t work for everybody. I can definitely relate to those seeking a career in publishing or wanting to explore the world of superhero comics. I can’t exactly relate to those whose resolutions involve buying the perfect Ferrari or not getting mauled by a hungry cheetah.

So in the interest of not overplaying my hand or making light of the fact that I’m still an aspiring erotica/romance writer who has yet to accomplish many of his goals, I’ll try to keep my New Years advice simple and concise. It goes like this:

  • Take a moment to analyze your routine/system, how you go about your day, and how well it’s working at the moment
  • Highlight specific areas of that routine/system that has room for improvement and identify those areas as “blanks” that you can reorganize
  • Assess how flexible you are in your current routine/system and, wherever possible, try to improve that flexibility to the greatest extent possible
  • Set small, concise goals at first within the “blanks” and try to work it into your system
  • Do not try to pursue more goals than you can count on one hand at the same time
  • Be realistic and be willing to fail
  • Above all else, learn from your failures

There, that is Jack Fisher’s unofficial guide to pursuing your New Years Resolution. It’s simple. It’s free. You don’t need a guru charging you by the hour. You just need commitment, motivation, and a willingness to try, fail, and learn from those failures. In the long run, the successes will emerge in places you don’t expect.

Also, in keeping with my admission that I am as much an expert as I am a rocket scientist, I’ll cite another more comprehensive list from the fine folks at Psychology Today. The people on this site are likely more qualified than me to assess the intricacies of self-improvement. Their article “Why New Years Resolutions Fail” offers more in depth advice that I’m not qualified to give.

Whatever advice you choose to follow, I strongly encourage everyone to pursue a New Years Resolution. We should all strive to improve as best we can with what little time we have in this world. Why not start now?

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January 2, 2017 · 6:46 am

Post-New Year Advice: Treating A Holiday Hangover

This post may be a day late, but I feel like it’s one of those posts that needs to be said. It doesn’t just apply to the holidays, the time after the holidays, or the time in between holidays. This could very well apply to any day of the year, but some more than others. Anyone who has had a day where comfort comes in one too many glasses of wine, bottles of beer, or shots of whiskey knows what I’m talking about.

Yes, I’m talking about hangovers. For some people, the mere mention of the word is enough to trigger reflexive dry heaves. Some say hangovers are God’s way of letting us know we’re having too much fun. I think they’re more a harsh reminder that our bodies are woefully imperfect hunks of flesh that can’t always handle our vices.

I’ve certainly experienced the joys of a fun night followed by a painful morning. The worst hangover I ever experienced came after an NFL preseason game of all things. I watched the game with some buffalo wings and a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels. For me, this is perfect football food and I was excited about how the game and the upcoming NFL season.

Unfortunately, the game was kind of crappy. The team I was rooting for really stunk. Naturally, I found myself reaching for the Jack Daniels after each lousy play. Then, like an unplanned one-night-stand, one thing led to another. Before I know it, the entire bottle of Jack Daniels is empty. Yes, I said the entire bottle.

Naturally, I became very drunk. I became so drunk that I could barely stand up and I started dancing to the music on commercials. So while it may have been a lousy game, I still found a way to have fun that night.

The next morning, however, was not so fun. I emerged from a restless sleep feeling like a truck hit me and then an entire team of elite kick-boxers took turns kicking my head. It was bad, to say the least. I threw up at least twice and didn’t leave my bedroom until 4:00 p.m. the next day. I don’t know if it could’ve been worse, but it was pretty damn bad.

So, with that painful experience in mind, I’d like to share some hangover remedies. Now make no mistake. There is no miracle cure for a hangover. You can’t just down a bottle of whiskey and expect to be all upbeat and chipper the next morning. Hangovers are a product of biology, chemistry, and sub-par human physiology. As anyone who went through abstinence only education knows, you can’t fight biology.

You can still make things easier for yourself. There are ways to at least ease the symptoms so you don’t feel like you lost a cage match with an angry gorilla. With help from the fine folks at WebMD, here are some of the ways you can ease your hangover agony:

  1. Consume Prickly Pear before you drink
  2. Eat a good meal and drink plenty of water before you start downing shots
  3. If possible, drink clearer alcohols like vodka and gin since they tend to incur less severe symptoms
  4. Don’t smoke, which is not only considerably worse for you, but will augment the symptoms
  5. Down a light drink the next morning to alleviate the symptoms, but don’t overdo it because that’ll just make the symptoms worse
  6. Make sure you have ibuprofen and Pepto-Bismol handy in the morning

Again, none of these are miracle cures. You may still feel like shit, even if you do everything on this list and try a few folk remedies from your crazy uncle. At some point, the agonizing process of a hangover has to run its course. Like teenage hormones, you can’t fight it. You just have to endure it.

I hope this helps everybody get through some rough days in 2017. If you want some more less proven remedies, check out this video from WatchMojo. I want to help people with this blog. Alleviating a hangover may not seem like much, but once you experience one, you’ll appreciate the sentiment.

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December 31, 2016 · 7:52 am

New Years Eve Reflections (And 2017 Aspirations)

Well, we made it. We made it through 2016. Sure, we lost way too many beloved celebrities along the way and there may have been some massive political upheaval in the western world from which we may not recover, but we still made it through. That counts for something, right?

I tend to be an optimist at heart. Granted, I wasn’t always that way. As a teenager, I would’ve run for school president on a pro-apocalypse, anti-homework candidate. I would’ve lost and probably been suspended, but that shows just how crappy my teen years were. As an adult, I’ve learned to keep looking forward and striving to make the next year better than the last.

So with 2016 drawing to a close, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve done, what I hope to do, and what I’d like to accomplish moving forward. I won’t say I’ve had the best year. I won’t even say I’ve made a lot of progress, but I do feel like I’ve made some. In the long run, a little progress adds up. Like extended foreplay, it makes the final climax that much more satisfying. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I’ll try to hold off on the dirty subtext for now, but I won’t make any promises. One of the biggest developments of 2016, by far, was the news I got on my book, “Passion Relapse.” The fact a publisher of any size took a chance on me, an aspiring erotica/romance writer who has received a steady stream of rejection letters for years now, is a pretty big accomplishment.

Now I’m not so delusional to think that this deal will make me the next J. K. Rowling. I’m not expecting to strike it rich or field calls from HBO anytime soon. However, I do hope that this is a stepping stone of sorts, one on which I can create a foundation for a successful future in publishing. I really do want to make a living telling these sexy, romantic stories. This is what I’m passionate about. This is what I want to do.

If 2016 is the first step in a long, arduous process. I’m happy to make it and I hope there’s more to make in 2017. I don’t know what the next step entails, but I will keep working for it. I will keep improving and refining my craft.

The same goes for this blog. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do with this blog for a while. When I first launched “Skin Deep,” I basically abandoned it for a while and by a while, I mean years. I revisited, revamped, and reorganized it with no real goal in mind. It has since become something so much more.

It’s not just a blog in which I can share my thoughts on the joys of sleeping naked or the health benefits of orgasms. It gives me a regular outlet for exploring and refining my writing skills. Spending a little time every day on this blog, talking about the topics that interest me, be they sexy or mundane, is downright therapeutic at times. If I find more success, I want this blog to be an outlet of sorts for my writing and my aspirations.

Again, I don’t necessarily know what that entails. I still intend to write regularly on this blog. I also intend to make it fun and entertaining when I can, like my “Sexy Sunday Thoughts” columns. I also hope to craft other little projects on the side to make this blog worth visiting. I admit it’s small now, but I want to do what I can to help it grow.

In addition, I also want to keep writing more novels. That should be an obvious enough endeavor for 2017. I’ve managed to craft a couple manuscripts in 2016. So far, only “Passion Relapse” has attracted attention. I hope that changes in 2017, but if not, I’ll keep producing more content. I have a fairly good idea of what kind of story I want to tell next. I also have a good idea of the story I want to tell after that. Like I said, I’m proactive.

Beyond writing, I still have my share of personal goals for 2017. Chief among them is to find a romantic partner with which to share this never-ending process. Whether that involves online dating or meeting someone at a dive bar on the Jersey Shore, I’m open to that experience. I want to make that kind of personal progress as well.

There are other goals I hope to make. I feel like I’ve become more balanced as I’ve gotten older, both in terms of my life goals and my approach to achieving them. I’d like to keep working on that balance. I believe it’ll keep me focused, honest, and sincere in my endeavors.

With 2016 drawing to a close, I feel like I can enter 2017 with a healthy bit of confidence. I feel like that’s the best anyone can do, to make the next year better than the last. Sometimes we can only do so much. There are a lot of forces beyond our control, but in our personal lives, I believe we control much more than we think.

So for the rest of 2016, my only remaining goal is to stock up on whiskey, watch college football, read some comics, brainstorm some sexy stories, and watch the ball drop before I get too drunk. If I can do these things while naked, then that’s just a bonus.

Until then, I wish everyone a safe, happy, and sexy New Years Eve!

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December 30, 2016 · 8:36 am

An Online Dating Experiment That Does NOT Bode Well For Me

I know it’s a little early to be contemplating New Years Resolution. We still have to get through the final days of 2016 without losing any more beloved celebrities. Then again, I’ve always been an overly proactive guy. I’m the kind of guy who used to turn in essay papers three weeks ahead of schedule in college. My old professors used to say setting deadlines was useless for a guy like me.

While I appreciate their insight, I do understand that you can only be so proactive with certain activities. Compared to college essays, dating may as well be an Olympic event done drunk, blindfolded, and concussed. I’ve made my recent luck with dating painfully apparent. I’m trying to change that luck for 2017.

Over the holidays, I actually set a very specific goal with my family, one that may or may not be too ambitious. I actually told some close relatives who know how dedicated I am to my craft that I want to bring a significant other to Thanksgiving dinner in 2017. In my family, that’s a big fucking deal. Bringing a significant other to a big family event is right up there with co-signing on a loan.

It’s ambitious, but it’s something I really do want to try. I’m hoping online dating will give me a chance, if only to slightly improve the long odds. Then, while doing some cursory research on the subject for my last post, I came across some very discouraging news.

It has to do with a certain kind of gender disparity. I’ve talked about that sort of thing before and it’s never a pleasant conversation. It’s like talking about taxes, dead animals, and clogged toilets. It’s not going to have pleasant details. With online dating though, I can’t avoid these details.

In this case, the disparity has actual numbers to back it up. After the Ashley Madison hack in July 2015, we learned a nasty secret about certain online dating sites. The amount of men on these sites grossly outnumber the amount of women. How gross is it? Well, according to the Washington Post, only 15 percent of the profiles on Ashley Madison belonged to actual, real-life women.

Think about that number for a second. If you went to a restaurant and you only had a 15 percent chance of getting a meal, you’d say that was a pretty shitty restaurant, wouldn’t you? Well, those are the kinds of odds that men are facing here.

I already have some direct experience with it. Last year, I created an account on two dating websites. In both cases, the only responses I got came from chat bots trying to solicit money for porno webcams. That’s literally all I got. There’s enough pornographic spam on the internet and that’s all I could attract with my online dating profile. What’s that say about me?

It’s depressing, but it’s not just me. People have done actual experiments on this disparity and the results are pretty discouraging. An Elite Daily article profiled a man who created two Tinder profiles, one male and one female. The response rate between them was pretty damn egregious. The female version of his profile got five times as many messages. In terms of raw numbers, that is not a trivial difference.

Other experiments have revealed similar results. The Daily Mail UK did a similar profile on a man from London who actually dressed up as a woman for his profile. It turns out, the men didn’t care. They inundated him with responses, some of them using language I usually reserve for my books.

This is not encouraging. This does not sit well with me. It also reveals something else that gets lost in the laughable number gap. Online dating sucks for men and it brings out the worst in them, which gives the radical feminist, overly PC types a reason to whine.

There are any number of articles where the dirty, pornographic language men use on these sites are documented. Women and the PC crowd love to screen-cap these comments and use them to say, “Look at this! Look how disgusting men are! There’s so much misogyny! All men must be ashamed of themselves and die!”

That may be an extreme response, but extremes are the new normal in this day and age. So I’m not going to waste my time confronting those issues. There’s another side to that coin that will get lost in all the whining and it comes down to this simple truth:

Men are REALLY desperate to find a lover and not having one really screws with their mind.

Think about it because I sure have. When men get really horny, they tend to make poor decisions. Women do the same, but it’s much easier for a horny woman to find an outlet. As these online dating experiments prove, they really don’t have to make much of an effort to get a man’s interest. The massive disparity in gender ensures their options are limited.

With men, however, that kind of horniness really fucks with our brain. Scott Adams even talks about this when explaining the modern phenomenon of sexting. Horny men don’t think clearly and will, in turn, do stupid shit. Remember, our brains aren’t wired for logic and reason. They’re wired for survival and reproduction.

Survival isn’t as big a deal in 2016 so reproduction occupies much more of our mental energy. When we don’t have an outlet, our caveman brains get a little erratic. That leads us to saying some of the disgusting shit that women find so offensive.

Now I like to think I haven’t sent a woman an outright pornographic message, but given the heavy erotic content in my novels, I’m sure I’ve let a few slip. I’m sure some women even found it offensive. There’s nothing I can do to apologize to those women. They’ve already formed an opinion about me and I can’t change that.

So where does this leave me? What can I do at this point if the odds and numbers of online dating are stacked against me? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m serious. I really would like to know because this does worry me.

I guess I’m somewhat lucky because I do have an outlet with my novels. I can take these sexy thoughts that fill my masculine brain and channel them into erotic novels or sexy Sunday thoughts. I think that’s a healthier way to manage my mental energy compared to sending women overtly sexual messages online.

Then again, it still only goes so far. It still leaves me alone, single, and dangerously close to creepiness territory. I still want to make an effort in 2017 to change my romantic luck, but I’m facing an uphill battle here. If, however, it means I can find a good and affectionate lover, then I’d say I’m willing to fight that battle.

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December 29, 2016 · 8:30 am

Online Dating: Should Give It A (Third) Try?

We live in an era where people have a more intimate relationship with their smart phone than they’ll ever have with another person. Think about it. People tell their phone all their dirtiest secrets, trust it to keep those secrets, and turn to it in their time of need, no matter how serious or trivial the situation may be. In the grand scheme of things, a smart phone is a lover, an accomplice, a therapist, and a butler all rolled into one.

There may come a day when our phones and our technology will take the place of lovers. There are some parts of the world where sex robots are already a thing. Until then, though, we will continue to seek out human companionship in some form or another.

I certainly love my smart phone, but I’m not going to form an intimate relationship with it. I can’t make love to it. I can’t enjoy foreplay with it, which is kind of important to me. Maybe I’m old fashioned by today’s standards, but I’d rather have a person as a lover.

This is something I’ve talked about before as a concern. I am in my 30s now and I’m a single male. The older I get, the greater the creepiness factor will escalate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the creepy guy on the block. I’m already the guy on the block who wears flip-flops and a bathing suit to a coffee shop. That’s the most my reputation can handle.

So as I was getting together with friends and family for the holidays, I started having conversations about my goals for 2017. Naturally, most of those goals involved being a successful erotica/romance writer and a more awesome guy in general. Those have been my goals for years now and I like to think I’m making progress in both.

That said, one goal in particular came up and I’m the one who brought it up. Maybe it was due to me seeing so many members of my family find love in their own way. Maybe it’s just the male version of a biological clock starting to go off in my 30-year-old brain. At some point, I do want to find love again and I’d like to make that part of my goals for 2017.

The problem is I have piss poor social skills. I can write novels. I can talk about comics and football for four hours straight. I can work out until I’m a big mass of muscle and sweat. I still can’t, for the life of me, find a way to properly interact with the opposite sex on a face-to-face level. I struggle to enter that mindset where I can use my words and my gestures to win a woman’s heart.

That’s a big reason why I haven’t had a serious girlfriend in a number of years now. It’s for that same reason I really want to change things up for 2017. One approach that many family members suggest is to use online dating. That’s something several family members have used to great success in some form or another. The problem is I have experience with it too and it’s not all that pleasant.

A while back, I did give online dating a try. In fact, I gave it two tries. I signed up for two popular sites and since I don’t know any good lawyers, I won’t name names. I’ll just say you’ve probably seen commercials for both of them.

I put some serious effort into these sites. I worked hard on my profile. I made sure my pictures weren’t too goofy or unflattering. I tried to paint a picture of being an awesome guy with plenty to offer a prospective lover. I must have not tried hard enough because, despite spending both time and money, I basically got zilch out of it. I probably would’ve been more productive trying to seduce a tree.

It’s not that the sites themselves failed me. I just think I’m shoveling sand against the tide with online dating. I’m a single male. There are a lot of single males on the internet looking for love and not all of it is of the healthy variety. The disparity between single males and single females on the internet is pretty goddamn staggering. If you’re a woman of average physical attractiveness, online dating is like a candy store. For men, it’s basically akin to fighting over table scraps.

That was my experience. It wasted my time and my money. It also made me feel ugly, unattractive, and unloved. It was not a pleasant experience. That said, it’s not like what I’m doing now is working any better. I need to do something different if I’m going to find a lover.

So with a healthy bit of skepticism and an unhealthy bit of frustration, I’m thinking of giving online dating a try again. I will definitely not use the same sites I did last time. I will try to use another. I will even invest some money into it. There’s no romance without finance, especially if you’re a man like me. It’s not necessarily fair, but that’s the way the world works.

Again, I’m doing this because my options just seem so limited. I’m a young single man and there are just too many of them on this planet right now and not enough women are willing to give them a chance. I need to find a way to be more awesome than all of these men. I don’t know how I’ll accomplish that, but I’d like to give it a try in 2017. Wish me luck.

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December 26, 2016 · 10:45 am

Staying Sexy In Winter (It IS Possibe)

Christmas is over. The holidays are drawing to a close. Many today are still fighting off hangovers from excessive eggnog, whiskey, and fruit juice spiked with vodka. If you party like my family does, you may be fighting off a combination of all three. If that is the case, I commend you. You are molded from stronger stuff.

As much fun as the holidays are, they do signal something else besides hangovers. The holidays, at least in this part of the world, signal the first stage of a long, cold winter. For those of us who don’t live in a tropical climate where it’s possible to wear a bikini to a Christmas party without risking hypothermia, the end of the holidays marks the end of the excuses we give ourselves to tolerate this time of year.

It’s winter now. It’s going to be cold. You can’t be all that sexy when it’s this cold. Being an erotica/romance writer, that’s kind of a problem. I sort of need to maintain a sexy sort of spirit in order to continue my work. I have a lot of ideas for novels. I have a lot of romantic/erotic concepts I want to explore. That’s going to be a challenge when I’m wearing several layers of clothes, sipping hot chocolate spiked with whiskey, and trying desperately to keep my balls from freezing.

Now I’m not saying I live in a part of the country that freezes over every winter. However, I do live in a part where it’s uncomfortably common to have to dig my car out of a big snow bank at least once a year. It’s not nearly as fun as it sounds. Kids may love snow days, but once they have to start digging their shit out of snow, it loses a lot of its appeal.

So how do I handle it? How do I keep things sexy in the winter time when walking around my house naked is a bit less practical? Well, I do have a few tips. In the spirit of recovering from holiday hangovers and helping others prepare for a long winter, here are some of Jack Fisher’s winter survival tips for those who want to keep things sexy.

  • Always keep hot chocolate and wine handy, as there are few situations that can’t be made sexy with the right drink
  • Take regular hot baths, with a heavy emphasis on candles and bubbles to make for a steamy, sudsy environment
  • Wear colorful coats and scarfs, as color can let the world know that cold can’t stop you from being sexy
  • Just because you have to wear layers doesn’t mean you have to wear them on every part of your body
  • A sweatshirt and no pants will keep you warm and keep you sexy
  • For men, use this opportunity to grow a thick, manly beard to emphasize the scope of your manliness
  • For women, use this opportunity to style your hair and your nails in a way that’ll keep you warm and sexy
  • Find a way to exercise and work up a sweat, if only to remind your body the importance of exerting itself in just the right ways
  • Warm soups go well with a movie, especially those with heavy action and graphic nudity
  • If you have a fireplace, use it and make love near it at least once during a snowstorm
  • If you don’t have a fireplace, use your TV to stream a crackling fireplace to create a similar ambience (it won’t keep you warm, but lovemaking will)

These are just some of the tips I have to offer. If anyone has others they’d like to tac on, please let me know in the comments. I think we could all use a little help getting through the long, cold winter. With the holidays over, it’s just a matter of counting down the days until we can wear bikinis and speedos again. Like the holidays though, those days will come before we know it.

For the record, though, the cold weather will not stop me from sleeping naked. I don’t care how cold it gets or how many blankets I need to pile on top of my bed. I will not give that up.

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December 26, 2016 · 9:04 am

On The Road To The Jersey Shore

Just thought I’d make a quick post today. As per my family’s holiday tradition, I’m doing a lot of traveling. I’m making my way up to the Jersey Shore where I’ve got some relatives with which I spend most of my holidays. There’s beach bars, there’s restaurants, and there’s enough Christmas candy to put anyone into a diabetic coma. It’s a beautiful thing.

While I’m on the road and have limited access to Wi-Fi, I’ll be contemplating a few other topics to discuss before the end of the year. I’m still waiting to hear from Crimson Frost Publishing on news of “Embers of Eros.” Due to the holidays, I’m not expecting to hear much. If I do, however, I’ll make a big deal about it on this blog. That much you can count on.

I also have a few sexy topics that I hope to discuss, which should get everyone in the mood for 2017. I’m still reading “Sex At Dawn,” a book that seems to give me a new sexy idea with every chapter. So expect plenty more discussions about that.

Also, I hope to finalize a plan for my next novel. Depending on how my work with Crimson Frost Publishing and “Passion Relapse” go, I want to go in a specific direction, one that will create that perfect blend of romance and erotica.

So as I remain on the road around the Jersey Shore, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are recovering as needed. We’ve got a brand new year ahead of us and I’ve got plenty of sexy stories and discussions to share.

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December 23, 2016 · 8:58 am

How NOT Tell A Love Story: The Cautionary Tale Of “Passengers”

We live in an era where it’s impossible to hide a twist ending to a movie. Movies like “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Sixth Sense” simply could not be made today and have the same impact. As soon as someone sees it, they just tweet the ending and it’s spoiled for everybody. Even those without social media can’t avoid it.

You could argue whether or not this is a good thing from now and until our robot overlords enslave us. I’m not going to have that argument here. It’s not an argument anyone can win, let alone an aspiring erotica/romance writer. However, this era of excessive spoilers does sometimes pay off, if only in the sense that it saves you a few bucks here and there.

This brings me to the movie, “Passengers.” It stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, two big time Hollywood stars that are at the top of their game at the moment. I’ve made my love of Jennifer Lawrence very apparent many times here on this blog and it’s not just because she walked around naked in an X-men movie, although that definitely helps.

Now I love Chris Pratt too for his role in “Parks and Recreation” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but I’d much rather see Jennifer Lawrence naked and covered in blue paint. That’s just me though.

So with two acting talents like this, I was naturally excited about the prospect of “Passengers.” It’s a sci-fi movie with a lot of sci-fi elements, from interstellar travel to conflicts involving how mankind goes about traveling the stars. It also is heavy on romance, which definitely appeals to me as an erotica/romance writer. After seeing the trailer, I was tempted to reserve my ticket right then and there.

Then, I read the spoilers. I found out that there’s a very important detail that this trailer leaves out. I won’t go into the full scope of that detail, but I’ll just keep it simple. This whole movie is just one big case study in Stockholm Syndrome romance and personally, that just doesn’t appeal to me.

What is the Stockholm Syndrome? Well, if you saw Beauty and the Beast as a kid, then you already know, but didn’t realize it. It’s when a hostage begins developing sympathetic, almost affectionate feelings for their captors. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, it makes perfect sense with caveman logic.

For centuries, we lived in small bands of tribes. Those tribes didn’t always get along with other tribes. Sometimes those tribes fought one another and took captives. Psychologically, this is pretty damn stressful for some people. Our brains, wired only to help us survive and reproduce, developed a mechanism to help us cope. Just being upset and terrified all the goddamn time isn’t a productive use or resources.

While it makes sense with respect to caveman logic, it also makes for a really shitty love story. This is not “Titanic.” This isn’t even “50 Shades of Grey.” At least Anastasia Steel willingly entered Christian Grey’s world of BDSM. The characters in “Passengers” didn’t get to choose shit and when they did, they chose badly.

Now based on the spoilers I read, there is a concerted effort to redeem the characters. There’s even a concerted effort to make a happy ending. However, as the Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie shows, it didn’t really work.

What happens here is that Chris Pratt’s character basically dooms Jennifer Lawrence’s character and he does it for all the wrong reasons. He just does it because he’s lonely and losing his goddamn mind. That’s understandable when you’re marooned, lonely, and lacking in some of your most basic needs as a human. However, it’s worth restating that this is a awful way of establishing a romance.

Even “Beauty and the Beast” did a better job of twisting the Stockholm Syndrome premise just enough to feel genuine. There’s none of that here. There’s nothing Pratt’s character can do to redeem himself. He effectively killed someone just because he was lonely and basically tried to lie, cheat, and justify his actions. That’s not romance. That’s making excuses.

As a result, I’m not seeing this movie. That’s not the kind of romance I care for. It sends the message that if two people are stuck together in isolation, then eventually they’ll fall in love, no matter what sort of lies and atrocities are committed behind the scene. I like to think genuine love is a bit more complex than that.

This movie sends a message that someone can just randomly pick another person and get that person to fall in love with them. I’m not a love expert by any stretch, but even I know human emotions aren’t that basic. A love story based on that premise can only ever be forced and nothing is less sexy than a forced romance.

Now there may be other factors involved in how this movie played out. The premise of the movie might not be the same as the result of the movie. I’m not qualified to speculate, but the folks at Midnight’s Edge, a YouTube channel I follow that digs into Hollywood news, do a great job of breaking it down.

Overall, it’s times like this where I’m grateful we live in a world of abundant spoilers. If this movie came out in the mid-90s, I probably wouldn’t have realized the flaws in this movie until after I bought the ticket. Thanks to spoilers, I saved myself money that could be better spent on whiskey and comics.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that my distaste for this movie is because of some radical feminist concept of men manipulating women for their own ends. I’ve made it clear on this blog that I take issue with a lot of firebrand feminism. My aversion to this movie has more to do with how poorly it handles romance.

As an erotica/romance writer, I feel like my standards for solid romance are a bit higher. Maybe that’s just a byproduct of writing about it so damn much, but it means forced romances like “Passengers” just don’t do it for me. I think Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence deserve better. Hopefully, they’ll get a chance in a future movie.

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