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Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by znnajdla on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:25AM (#47044317)
Not surprising to me at all. I’m a straight man and I’ve always dated single mothers, and it always shocked me how bad their ex partners were. Woman are drawn to toxic abusers like men are drawn to OnlyFans models and the real victims are the children. And women can be incredibly blind to what is going on with their child when they’re in a codependent relationship with the abuser.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by Tzela on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:47AM (#47044434)
"women are drawn to toxic abusers" is very, very wrong. It indicates a wish/desire/need to be abused. No, they are not drawn to that. Many abusers know how to look nice and perfect and are great at manipulation. Also, there may just be a lot of bad men in your social peer group.

Don't make it sound like it's the womens fault.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by blell on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:59AM (#47044835)
It’s called “Hybristophilia” and it’s a well-known phenomenon.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by coryfklein on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:10PM (#47054139)
Yes, but it's the overgeneralization to "women have hybristophilia" that is the problem.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by hnbad on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @11:16AM (#47062619)
Sure, and so is Stockholm Syndrome - except in that case we know the concept was made up by a criminologist working with the local police to help them come up with a psychological explanation for why the hostages stopped trusting them after they had horribly mishandled the hostage crisis and endangered their lives.

Note that most "well-known" examples of "hybristophilia" are parasocial or only exist as distance relationships, especially when the subject of attraction is incarcerated. Being incarcerated literally limits the potential for abuse and especially violent abuse which further contributes to an illusion of safety and control which the abuser can take advantage of by engaging in psychological manipulation tactics like lovebombing.

You don't have to subscribe to pseudoscientific explanations like evopsych or some inherent trait in women making them naturally predisposed to seeking out people who harm them in order to figure out what can cause these phenomena. In fact, I find just-so "explanations" (like you seem to imply by pointing at a term like this as if it in itself holds explanatory power) extremely unsatisfying because they're little more than thought-terminating clichés.

It's also worth pointing out the term was coined by the guy who is best known for promoting chemical castration (which aside from having motivated Alan Turing to take his own life is still a contested issue in the scientific community due to studies showing serious side-effects and the efficacy being questionable as it may heavily suffer from selection bias) and the one time he forced sexual reassignment surgery on a male infant (David Reimer) after a botched circumcision. Reimer later "detransitioned" upon learning of what had been done to him. Incidentally Reimer also accused him of having forced him - when Reimer was a child - to engage in pretend sexual activity with his brother and to watch pornography. Oh, and the guy also considered relationships between children and full adults morally defensible in principle, while also dismissing critics as "right-wing" despite much of the criticism coming from intersex and transgender people.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by 4gotunameagain on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:50AM (#47044457)
It's not very wrong unfortunately. Do you remember back in school that the nice, timid guys were friendzoned but the assholes always had girls after them ?

There must be some evolutionary justification, but we have to live with that unfortunate reality..

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by interloxia on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:16AM (#47044616)
A different explanation that rings true to my experience is that people are drawn to confidence rather than a desire to be abused.

Toxic abusers and high school garbage are good at signalling strength despite their poor character and choices.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by 4gotunameagain on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:00AM (#47044840)
Sure, that also must be a factor.

But then again remember the incredible amounts of fan mail serial killers and serial rapists get while in prison. (this is taking it to the extreme of course)

It is the same like guys finding toxic sociopaths attractive, against our better judgement.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by LorenPechtel on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @04:58PM (#47054019)
Confidence and power.

And all too often they don't recognize until too late that that power will be turned on them.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by hnbad on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @11:40AM (#47062913)
The tell-tale phrase of a soon-to-be victim in a relationship with an abuser is "he's not like that when we're alone", not "I can fix him".

There's a difference between confidence and dominance. It's difficult to grasp given how much our culture tends to conflate them as desirable traits in men but the main distinction is that one is about resilience and the other is about abuse.

Confidence is attractive. Unless you're deeply insecure (and abusers often are insecure even if they try to mask it in displays of dominance) you're likely attracted to confidence in potential partners - yes, even as a straight guy. Just like an insecure person can use dominance to mask their insecurity, a confident person can also act submissively. This isn't just true in BDSM, it's actually a social dynamic many people engage in completely naturally.

An abuser (or I guess the pop-psych term is usually "narcissist" but let's not open the can of worms on whether that is ever applied "correctly") will often seek out a confident partner they can manipulate into a position of vulnerability they can take advantage of to control them.

The problem with power is that it is nearly inseparable from abuse. Abuse will inevitable arise from any power imbalance because the mere circumstance of being in a position of power can easily lead to absuses of power unless you're extremely diligent about your use of it. A healthy social dynamic always requires a balance of power - even if there may be a local imbalance in any one-on-one dynamic it can be offset by the wider network if it is stable and strong enough. If you look at powerful men in modern society almost none of them are actually confident. The few who are tend to paradoxically stand out for their humility and deference (i.e. taking credit for their losses and sharing credit for their accomplishments). But this is of course much more difficult than starting out from a position of power and fearfully lashing out at any potential rival.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by Tzela on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:02AM (#47044525)
No, I do not remember that because I've seen different things. There is a lot of different things going on, like perceived confidence. This is just myth. There is no woman out there who wants to live in fear.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by fc417fc802 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:39AM (#47045085)
"[ Indirectly ] drawn to X [ due to trait Y ]" is not the same as "directly desires X". You are strawmanning the other party.

The OnlyFans example can be twisted in a similar manner.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by rnewme on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:06AM (#47044554)
No one said there were.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by brabel on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:47AM (#47044780)
It’s not a myth. What convinced you that there is a myth?? Almost everyone seems to agree it’s a real thing from what I see online. I recommend you watch this video by YouTube channel @Elephantintheroom https://youtu.be/Gvj8hG2UvbA?si=qz_7aC4jYq2CBfJl

Apparently it’s much worse than what we see around us. Women literally fall in love with monsters.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @07:48AM (#47046926)
Please don't treat half of the people on this planet as if they were some alien species. Treat people like people.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by brabel on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @12:12PM (#47049925)
People are weird. Men are probably even worse if you really dig deep down what we are interested in on a woman. The kind of thing we prefer not to even think about. What we evolved to like is not always “appropriate “ in a modern society.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:46PM (#47057272)
Or -- and hear me out -- you're just wrong.

Which is likelier -- that

(1) the behavior of four billion people can be described by a sentence or two

or

(2) you have an extremely small and shallow reference pool and not enough experience and/or capability to understand and escape it?

Bro science isn't real

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by hnbad on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @12:19PM (#47063472)
The second most recent video from the YouTube channel you linked uses a "triggered feminist" meme image from 2016.

The image itself is a still image from a video posted on Alex Jones' YouTube channel covering a protest against Trump supporters. If you actually watch the part of the original video the image was taken from, you quickly realize the woman in question just has the misfortune of having very naturally emotive facial expressions and the still is taken from an argument between her and a Trump supporter about the alleged concern of immigrant sex abusers and that if you consider the fact they have to yell at each other to overcome the noisy environment she doesn't actually appear at all outraged or angry.

I don't explain this to dunk on the channel - it easily does that by itself. I explain this because the fact that the channel you cited a video from uses this meme in 2026 (10 years after it was first taken, i.e. enough time to learn about its origin and move on) is extremely symbolic of the approach you seem to favor for finding explanations to social phenomena. Yes, "it's just a meme", but that's the point: memes are shorthands that carry cultural context (or in this case entire fossil records of cultural history), they're not just funny pictures.

_That_ isn't "what we evolved to like". "Men" aren't "probably worse". Don't sell yourself short. You exist downstream from tens of thousands of years of human history and at least a hundred thousand years of prehistory. We had already developed tool-making and cooking before we even became _Homo sapiens_ so in all likelihood you can expand that prehistory into the millions of years of _Homo erectus_.

Science has moved on well past the mythology of barter economies or "hunter gatherer" societies where the cavewife tending towards the babies with her oldest daughters while cavehusband and the boys were out hunting the mammoth.

We know that the thing that allowed us to survive as a species was not just our big brain but our close-knit society that cared for its injured, elderly and disabled and was at times so welcoming we now know that early Homo sapiens at times even interbred with our closer extinct sibling species. In fact, our big brains had to come downstream from this because it made childbirth dangerous and arduous while also requiring us to spend the first years of our lives unable to defend ourselves and the first months in fact so reliant on others to help us survive that disruption of those early bonds can traumatize us for life or in extreme cases even cause us to die. Even as adults "touch starvation" has serious mental health implications.

If you think "what we evolved to like" is not "appropriate", chances are the problem isn't what we evolved to like - e.g. ripe fruits - but what systems the modern social order has put in place to make exploitation of those preferences useful for those in positions of power (or extreme wealth, but I repeat myself) even when doing so will harm you - e.g. abundant high fructose corn syrup in every part of your diet so you think food is tasty and crave more of it although it doesn't satiate you.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by bloppe on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:09AM (#47044574)
Just take off those glasses and everyone will realize you're secretly hot
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by 4gotunameagain on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:15AM (#47044603)
Oh this is not a spiteful view of the world, I've been quite lucky with my love life, thanks.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by butlike on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @12:11PM (#47049915)
I think it was a quip on movie tropes
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @08:17AM (#47047184)
> nice, timid guys were friendzoned

There's a reason why "nice guy" is a stereotype. The people who describe themselves like this aren't nice or timid, but insecure, angry and judgmental. They tell stories like "women like assholes" to avoid coming to terms with the idea that they're unlikable.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by butlike on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @12:11PM (#47049910)
1,000,000% this
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by LorenPechtel on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:05PM (#47054072)
Note that "insecure" is not incompatible with "nice" and "timid". Doesn't make them unlikable.

And it's not that women like assholes. Rather, people (not just women) like the traits that let an asshole get away with being an asshole.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by hnbad on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @12:24PM (#47063535)
Both the "nice guy" and the "asshole" are insecure. The latter is just better at masking their insecurities in such a way that others mistake it for confidence.

This is especially true when eveyone involved is young enough not to have a wide enough frame of reference to gauge what's an indication of actual confidence versus abuse and has a brain undergoing massive hormonal shifts that intensify emotions, encourage risk taking and make them seek out novelty. Let's remember that most of the "nice guy" stories people like to tell are about early adulthood or more often than not their late teens.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by baobabKoodaa on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:31PM (#47054385)
The non-wifebeating, non-drug-abusing, non-raping men and boring and unlikeable. It's actually their fault that women fall for the motorcycle riding drug dealers. Got it.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:53PM (#47057316)
Anyone who thinks like this is absolutely the kind of awful, toxic person who has to make up stories to avoid coming to terms that they are the problem.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by lelanthran on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @04:22AM (#47045359)
> "women are drawn to toxic abusers" is very, very wrong. It indicates a wish/desire/need to be abused.

It doesn't have to indicate that. I think it's more likely that those traits that those women find attractive are the same traits that toxic abusers have.

> Don't make it sound like it's the womens fault.

I don't think he was doing that - people can't help what traits they find attractive.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by Teever on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:15AM (#47049128)
Some people are often drawn to toxic abusers.

It's pretty well established at this point that victims of childhood abuse are much more likely to enter into relationships that involve violence from their intimate partners.

One of the best predictors for someone entering a abusive relationship is whether ot not that person has previously been in one and whether they have processed it therapeutically.

I understand your instinct to defend people who have been hurt but this isn't a matter of assigning blame to them. It's about identifying patterns and finding ways to break them.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by zahlman on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:48AM (#47044781)
I think the point OP is making isn't "it's strange that the mother had such a boyfriend", but rather "it's strange that so much forensic effort was required to suspect the boyfriend when he should have been an obvious first guess".
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by krisoft on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:18AM (#47044946)
I mean, there is no official database of “boyfriends”. Even after you identified the girl, and found the mom, how would you figure out if she has a boyfriend, and if so who?

Remember that if you tip them of in any way the abuser might go escape and hide with the girl or even worse decide to get rid of the witness by murdering the girl. So you can’t just do the easy thing and ask the mom nicely.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by 3rodents on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:49AM (#47044449)
“Woman are drawn to toxic abusers”

That’s not true. Abusers are very capable at identifying and targeting vulnerable people. Abusers are drawn to vulnerable people.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by fc417fc802 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:46AM (#47045142)
Both statements can be true. Although the first is better phrased as drawn to traits that correlate with toxic abusers.

You could similarly observe that social groups have a tendency to select toxic people for leadership roles. The explanations as to why are various but the end result is plain to see.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by LorenPechtel on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:08PM (#47054107)
Perfect illustration. It's not a women thing, it's a people thing.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by andai on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:31AM (#47045027)
I met a guy who was the creepiest dude I ever met in my life. Who intentionally was making me uncomfortable with personal questions (and admitted it when pressed! With a grin!). His job? Spending all day with mentally disabled children...

That's not evidence for any wrongdoing obviously, but it left me quite disturbed.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by brigandish on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @02:02AM (#47044524)
I seem to remember a test (I believe I read it in the Kevin Dutton book on psychopaths) where psychopaths would be shown a video of people walking down a corridor, and they were more likely to choose vulnerable people than either chance or the norm.

Whichever it was, they could spot a vulnerable person just from their manner while they walk.

I wouldn't say they were drawn to vulnerable people, though. Like anyone else, they assess opportunity and effort, and these people are easier than others for getting what they want.

Edit: I found one of the studies -

> Key takeaways

> Higher Factor 1 psychopathy scores correlate with improved accuracy in assessing victim vulnerability based on gait.

> Inmates with elevated psychopathy scores consciously utilize gait cues to judge vulnerability more frequently.

> Psychopathy's Factor 1 traits, like manipulativeness, drive effective victim selection among violent offenders.

> Victims often display distinct gait characteristics that predict perceived vulnerability to assault.

> Understanding body language cues may inform victimization prevention strategies for at-risk individuals.

https://www.academia.edu/22213822/Psychopathy_and_Victim_Sel...

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by andai on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:32AM (#47045038)
Remarkable. What does vulnerability mean in this context?

Edit: They asked people how many times they had been victimized, which they defined as "worse than bullying".

> Twelve video clips of unsuspecting targets walking from Wheeler et al. (2009) were used in the present study. The targets were undergraduate stu- dents, of whom 8 were women and 4 were men. As described in Wheeler et al., targets were unknowingly videotaped from behind as they walked from room A to B, to capture natural gaits. The targets indicated whether they had ever been victimized and how many times they had been victim- ized in the past (after the age of 18). The wording of the question was very broad, given the numerous types of victimization that can occur, and the effects of any victimization are relative. If participants asked for clarifica- tion, they were asked to think of victimization as being equal to or greater than bullying. Each target’s gait was coded by two independent judges according to the Grayson and Stein’s criteria (1981). As discussed in the original Wheeler et al. study, interjudge reliabilities were high for all gait characteristics (kappa = .77 to 1.00). Essential to the idea that body lan- guage cues indicate vulnerability, targets coded as displaying vulnerable body language in the Wheeler et al. were more likely to have self-identified as a victim, rho (11) = .68, p < .05.

---

Edit 2: The study references a very similar study from 32 years earlier.

> The original 1981 study by Grayson and Stein was incredibly simple. It involved setting up a video camera on a street in New York City, filming people (60 persons) as they walked by (between 10:00 AM and 12:00 pm over a three day period), and then showing the footage to convicted offenders (12 of them), whose crimes involved violence, and asking them to select those individuals who they would target/victimize (on a scale from 1 to 10), in order to discover if there were any identifiable non-verbal cues that were commonly picked up on/identified.

https://www.bostonkravmaga.com/blog/criminology/that-grayson...

So the 1st study focused purely on target selection and gait analysis, while the 2nd one interviewed the potential targets to see how that lined up with their actual history of being abused.

Now the billion dollar question of correlation vs causation: seems to go both ways, as usual. Neurodivergent people walk differently (and have differences in motor areas of the brain), but also trauma changes your posture and movement...

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by samiv on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @03:38AM (#47045077)
Case in point

A Cuban fitness model engaged to a lowlife drug traffic currently in prison in Finland. She specifically traveled all the way to meet him after sexting with him on social media.

https://www.is.fi/viihde/art-2000011776913.html

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by baobabKoodaa on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:28PM (#47054350)
Imagine you or I sending a DM to some cuban dancer abroad. The probability of that leading up to engagement is basically zero.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by samiv on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @07:43AM (#47060393)
Indeed. Plus getting ourselves banned from the platform for harassment
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by altmanaltman on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:27AM (#47044330)
You've always dated single mothers?
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by tempaccount5050 on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:30AM (#47044346)
After your late 20s, that's like 90% of your pool.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by 4gotunameagain on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @01:47AM (#47044435)
Where, in Utah ?
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @08:09AM (#47047125)
> and it always shocked me how bad their ex partners were. Woman are drawn to toxic abusers like men are drawn to OnlyFans models and the real victims are the children

Huh. It, uh, sure is a choice to declare you deliberately only date women with underage children and then blame those women for being too stupid to recognize when they're dating dangerous men. The added bit about men getting away with abuse because women let them is also something.

Abusive men deliberately find vulnerable targets, exploit them, and then blame them.

Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by baobabKoodaa on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:26PM (#47054322)
Sure. But the prerequisite to make this possible is that wonen in general are very much attracted to dangerous men.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by habinero on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:53PM (#47057319)
That is absolutely not what I said lol, try again.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by mghackerlady on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @10:30AM (#47048543)
Uhh. No. No, we're generally not drawn to abusers. It's the other way around, abusers are drawn to those at risk of abuse. Maybe don't pose ideas formed through confirmation bias as truth?
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by baobabKoodaa on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:25PM (#47054312)
If you look at the dating history of typical abusive males, they have a long list of women who they've been involved with. In comparison, if you take the median male, their dating history involves a few chance encounters, one or two actual relationships, and a lot of struggle with loneliness. As a matter of statistics, women are very much attracted to abusive men, and not attracted to normal men who are not abusive. There is some level of personal accountability with that.
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by mghackerlady on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @09:31AM (#47061322)
source? Even if said statistics are true, there are plenty of other explanations. For example, the abusive relationships may not last as long, the abuser might have multiple partners at the same time, the abuser might be more confident, or the abuser realises it's much easier to force or pressure a vulnerable woman into a relationship
Re:Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl f... by lesostep on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @02:01AM (#47058107)
To be fair, women really aren't in a habit of getting a divorce from normal/slightly fucked up man they had kid with.

Si I'd imagine only dating single mothers had a huge influence on a your statistics.