faceh
2hr ago
Don't even have to go to a specific site for it.
I have an OKCupid account that I haven't really touched in over a year, and whenever I log in I'll have a handful of likes from Filipina ladies.
faceh
3hr ago
Alas, I'd probably have to extend attorney-client privilege in order to get her to talk, so they'd have to offer me a ton of money to breach that with the goods.
When the entire world is experience a massive decline in relationship formation simultaneously, I think complaints and concern are merited, and the people who are claiming disbelief are in fact being... obtuse.
Y'all start sounding like boomers saying "sharpen up your resume and go and give the hiring manager a firm handshake."
Everyone seems to easily admit that the job market is harder on new entrants than it used to be, and is dysfunctional for the average person. Most would admit that the housing market is WAY harsher on new entrants than before, and is extremely distorted.
Most people can even acknowledge this is due to broad factors that distort those markets, NOT individual action.
But try to say the same thing about the dating market, and they immediately go "Well YOU must be doing something wrong."
Nah bro. You're just being a spiritual boomer.
Of course, I keep pointing this out to @Primaprimaprima, and they keep ignoring the point to drill down to individual solutions, which as we see are just not viable.
The thing that REALLY gets me is that financial troubles are easier to weather with a partner. It's easier to build wealth with a financially sensible co-tenant, even if you aren't joining all your funds together. It just is, by any sane approach.
So guys who are trying to build wealth in order to become worthy of a woman are, BY SHEER DEFINITION, going to take longer than usual to build that wealth and thus will be dating much later in life, missing out on vital experience and still ending up poorer overall.
I'm pretty much moved on from my Ex, but every time I think about how much more financially better off we'd be if she had stuck around I cringe in mild mental pain.
Previously we could split our approximately $2200/month basic living expenses down the middle. And split chores, and helped out with basic stuff like watching the dogs (instead of paying for boarding) or splitting food deliveries and such.
Upon her leaving, I immediately went from shouldering $1100/month in living expenses to just about the whole $2200. In addition, she is now going to have to shoulder a $1300-1600/month for her own separate living expenses.
Granted I could have downsized, and I didn't, but at least now I'm almost immune to lifestyle inflation, can't afford to upsize!
So I, personally, am now $14,000+/year poorer than I would have been in the counterfactual world where she stayed.
Between the two of us, we're collectively like $24,000+/year poorer than we'd have been than if we'd continued splitting expenses.
There's a lot of stuff that could have been done with that money. I guess in a Keynesian sense that having that extra economic 'activity' is somehow better overall, maybe. But there's no doubt that we'd both be wealthier and have a better financial future.
So this logic that "you have to have your own life together and be completely financially independent before you seriously start dating", which is peddled to women AND men, is ass-backwards from my perspective.
Also, I've seen enough Caleb Hammer episodes to know plenty of people will NEVER. EVER. get to that point.
Its financially sensible to find someone reliable earlier on to help contribute to your mutual growth. That's a big point to getting married at all.
And as per usual, I'm starting to lose my mind when the response to this is to put more and more pressure on men to step up, without examining what the actual incentives are, and why the problem is so widespread.
(add in the fact that women are increasingly likely to have a student debt burden as well, so the man will be paying for THAT too!)
Like you say:
This no longer sounds like a problem that can be fixed merely through self-improvement.
Its not viable, UNLESS there is more incentive/pressure on women to date guys who aren't yet financially independent but have all green flags otherwise.
Which is to say, pressure women to settle, and settle earlier. But good fackin' luck finding any voice saying anything like that, meanwhile the amplified message is "don't ever lower your standards girlie, in fact, raise them. If you can't find what you're looking for its just proof that you're too good for this world. You owe nothing to men, and their concerns don't matter."
The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional.
Yep. But saying it out loud marks you as lower status, "hah, this guy is poor and can't get bitches." Well maybe, but a bunch of us are poor and can't get bitches, and if we can't talk about the problem it'll get worse for everyone.
When do we admit the current advice is insufficient?
This is just your insecurity talking.
Yeah sure. And if you have a job applicant whose resume shows 12 different jobs in the past 5 years, none of which lasted more than 3 months, they're 'insecure' if they pass you over for an applicant with a more stable history, right?
(hint: it shows trouble actually committing, i.e. a red flag).
Nobody is obligated to be 'secure' about promiscuity, that's laughable to even suggest. Its about the one thing we are genetically wired to BE insecure about.
Which is to say, your comment reads like satire.
but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.
And it was less normal in the past.
Granddad had a 64% chance of marrying a woman with only 1 or fewer sexual partners.
Guys now have a 27% chance, at best.
Strangely, more people got married back in granddad's day.
faceh
2d ago
I want to know that society isn't going to collapse because nobody was willing to be a little mean to women, mostly.
After decades of giving women more and more benefits, why wouldn't the solution entail withdrawing some of them? And if we try that and it doesn't really help, at least we can say we tried.
Let it be known that I was expressing these same sorts of concerns back when I was with my Ex (I can drag up my posts on the Reddit Motte from like 5 years back to prove it), and I would still express these concerns if I got a new stable relationship.
I can see possible solutions to my personal problem, I sure do wish that certain other people would stop actively making it harder, though.
But I would really, REALLY like to avoid what seem to be eminently predictable outcomes of ignoring the larger issue.
I read your linked comment and right at the end:
I really do think that a lot of the "singleness epidemic" is due to a combination of personal choice and unrealistic standards
Yes, this is almost precisely what I said about you.
And then this claim:
But I don't just go bitch and moan in the corner about how the world's unfair and how people should like me more and how we need "communism for pussy" as @HughCaulk so eloquently put it.
Is ironic because the communism has been benefiting the 'pussy' for years now.
Like, every single change to the economic structure of the country for the last 50 years has been in favor of women and against men. Tax money flows to help women get medical care (including abortions), to get into school, to get hired, and to otherwise live independently. This is generally pulled from the pockets of the most productive men. All the material wealth they rely on comes from male-dominated industries.
Its male labor all the way down.
So basically, the only thing that ISN'T being redistributed is pussy.
This is the core asymmetry that makes men feel as though the social contract is not working in their favor at all.
MY suggested solution isn't communism for pussy (I DARE you to find where I suggest it), and is dismantling some of the communism that's already in palce.
You are, apparently, suffering from some financial troubles.
Negative. I'm making more now than I was with her, and more than, I believe, 90% of my age cohort.
I'm simply pointing out that I'd be way better off if the woman I thought was worth keeping had stuck around.
And that most women would be financially better off if they settled with a decent guy early on.
That's it. Save me the patronization, I have no need.
You could be one of them. What's stopping you?
Ask the dozen or so women I've tried to date in the past couple years.
Literally none of them, LITERALLY ZERO have gone on to find fulfilling stable relationships. This mystified me until I did the research. Its simply because EVERYONE is encountering difficulties.
Some of them became single moms, some decided to get into deeper debt for a master's degree, some of them got fat. Some just putter along on their course.
If I was the problem, why weren't they scooped up by a better man?
Think about your attitude first. Are you happy with your attitude, or are you being a bitch? Start there.
I'm satisfied with literally every aspect of my life aside from the romantic one. I love my job, make good money, I'm in great shape, I instruct at my gym, I've got a healthy routine, a house (a rarity amongst my peers), a dog, a dedicated and supportive friend group, and enough free time to pursue some hobbies.
Life is objectively great. But that just makes the one portion that ain't working out all the more obvious.
Indeed, part of the issue is most women can't even meet my basic expectations for fitness, fiscal responsibility, and mental stability. And the ones that can are taken.
In other words, you have entirely and utterly misjudged my actual material position AND my arguments on this particular topic. And I don't consider my personal material position relevant to the argument anyway. I'm here advocating on behalf of guys who are worse off than me, so you can't just dismiss me as a miserable incel.
I don't just care about the men... I notice that WOMEN are dissatisfied with things as well. they've got everything they claim to want, and they're miserable.
But you don't tell THEM to put on their big-girl-pants and suck it up, do you?
What is annoying is that, as stated, the spiritual boomers don't want to ever, EVER admit that maybe we need to put a tad less pressure on men and tad more pressure on women.
Because as I've said before, what do you think happens when the current generation of young men hit their 30's, have no family, no marital prospects, poor economic prospects, and yet are continually blamed and put down as though its all their fault?
Seriously. What do you expect? I'm genuinely curious.
faceh
2d ago
My first hope is that someone has some countervailing argument or data that actually shows its not so bleak as it seems.
I want to understand the problem well enough to know if I'm not seeing something, or I'm seeing something that's not actually there.
Nobody has brought that forth that I've seen.
And finally, if nobody is going to implement a solution... fine. But the status quo will not hold!
What is going to happen in, say, 10 years when a majority of men aren't married, don't have kids, and are being expected to keep on working and upholding a society that doesn't give them anything in return?
I suspect a combination of:
A) Men voting for some RADICAL policies that REALLY DO start stripping women's rights away, because they have ceased to give a shit about women's opinions;
B) Men lashing out in more violent ways (both in lone wolf ways and maybe organized) because there's no rewards for good behavior;
C) Men just dropping out and refusing to do the basic work that keeps civilization afloat. If they refuse to become cops, soldiers, garbagemen, construction workers, but stay in their room jerking off or playing video games, then things start breaking down. And in this case, we will have fewer people to protect us from the violent guys.
I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.
All that to say, I think you should stop worrying so much and become a doomer, like me! I guess I still worry, anyway, so I'm doing it wrong.
The crazy thing is that I'm still pretty optimistic at my core. Despair is not in my nature. But I also REFUSE to lie about reality as I see it.
And I get a certain amount of joy from arguing someone into the ground and, if not forcing them to admit defeat, at least getting them to stop spouting stuff that I know to be false or inaccurate.
Everyone's entitled to their point of view in here, after all, but I'm happy to interrogate their view, and be interrogated in return.
faceh
2d ago
I think I would have a lot more respect for the women who hit their late 30's still single and childless and realize how they've messed up if said women were willing to openly act as a warning for those younger.
Most of them want to reframe themselves as a complete victim and garner sympathy and attention that way.
Or, we need to empower the elder women who actually "GET IT" and want to ensure that they have grandchildren to raise to be a stronger social force.
Hot on the heels of failing out of art school and declaring himself the robofuhrer, Grok now has an update that makes him even smarter but less fascist.
And... xAI releases AI companions native to the Grok App.
And holy...
SHIT. It has a NSFW mode. (NSFW, but nothing obscene either) Jiggle Physics Confirmed.
EDIT: Watch this demo then TELL ME this thing isn't going to absolutely mindkill some lonely nerds. Not only can it fake interest in literally any topic you find cool, they nailed the voice tones too.
I'm actually now suspicious that the "Mecha-Hitler" events were a very intentional marketing gambit to ensure that Grok was all over news (and their competitors were not) when they dropped THIS on the unsuspecting public.
This... feels like it will be an inflection point. AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) have already one-shotted some of the more mentally vulnerable of the population. But now we've got one backed by some of the biggest companies in the world, marketed to a mainstream audience.
And designed like a fucking superstimulus.
I've talked about how I feel there are way too many superstimuli around for your average, immature teens and young adults to navigate safely. This... THIS is like introducing a full grown Bengal tiger into the Quokka island.
Forget finding a stack of playboys in the forest or under your dad's bed. Forget stumbling onto PornHub for the first time, if THIS is a teen boy's first encounter with their own sexuality and how it interacts with the female form, how the hell will he ever form a normal relationship with a flesh-and-blood woman? Why would he WANT to?
And what happens when this becomes yet another avenue for serving up ads and draining money from the poor addicted suckers.
This is NOT something parents can be expected to foresee and guide their kids through.
Like I said earlier:
"Who would win, a literal child whose brain hasn't even developed higher reasoning, with a smartphone and internet access, or a remorseless, massive corporation that has spent millions upon millions of dollars optimizing its products and services for extracting money from every single person it gets its clutches on?"
I've felt the looming, ever growing concern for AI's impact on society, jobs, human relationships, and the risk of killing us for a couple years now... but I can at least wrap those prickly thoughts in the soft gauze of the uncertain future. THIS thing sent an immediate shiver up my spine and set off blaring red alarms immediately. Even if THIS is where AI stops improving, we just created a massive filter, an evolutionary bottleneck that basically only the Amish are likely to pass through. Slight hyperbole, but only slight.
Right now the primary obstacle is that it costs $300 a month to run.
But once again, wait until they start serving ads through it as a means of letting the more destitute types get access.
And yes, Elon is already promising to make them real.
Its like we've transcended the movie HER and went straight to Weird Science.
Can't help but think of this classic tweet.
"At long last, we have created the Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator from the Classic Scifi Novel 'For the Love of All That is Holy Never Create a Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator.'"
I think I would be sucked in by this if I hadn't developed an actul aversion to Anime-Style women (especially the current gen with the massive eyes) over the years. And they're probably going to cook up something that works for me, too.
faceh
1d ago
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't.
I have a generalized model for Western Women:
They have a set of three roles they want to be 'seen' fulfilling:
High-powered career woman (Girlboss).
Freespirited, cultured, 'independent' woman. That is, one who travels everywhere, has a fun and carefree life, and flits from party to party. Thirst traps abound here.
Devoted and effective mother.
I'm actually frustrated that they AREN'T acting more different than men, and eschewing the one role that men can't actually fill.
Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
Yes, indeed, all a woman has to do to be considered 'fit' is 'not be obese.' Just don't be obviously and grotesquely fat.
AND YET, they're still the more obese gender.
I don't know what to tell you man, they have an overall lower bar, and many of them don't even try to clear it.
Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.
And like with other issues, women now have more premarital sex partners than they've had in the past.
Yet another way in which the average woman is less desirable as a partner than they were before.
Which cannot be fixed by telling men to improve.
Man, we're getting to quite a number of asymmetries that favor women and are mostly controlled by women's behavior, aren't we? The obesity, the heightened expectations, the low childbearing rates while men keep doing the (literal and metaphorical) heavy lifting.
faceh
2d ago
And, like the automobile market, the dating market has come to resemble a market for lemons.
You won't find out if the person you're dating has any disqualifying hidden flaws until you've already 'driven them off the lot,' so to speak.
I didn't even mention the most befuddling and depressing stat:
When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children.
While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.
21% of childless women say the DON'T want kids, compared to 15% of childless men.
Men by and large want kids.
And the ones they'd have to do it with are by and large NOT seeking kids.
"Oh but 12% isn't that big a difference."
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of men that represents.
Women are passing on men who would date and marry them. It is not the reverse.
The ONLY way this gets solved is convincing more women to settle and have kids.
Men can't improve their way out of a shortage of women who want kids.
faceh
2d ago
And for damn near a year this was basically MANDATORY during Covid restriction times.
If you weren't meeting people in your online circles, you weren't meeting people.
faceh
2d ago
The idea that the woman would spend 4-6 years in tertiary education and come into the relationship with $15-50k in debt is a pretty new innovation though. Only about 30 years old, even.
Which is why I think attacking that particular factor might bear fruit, although women will flip out about it.
faceh
2d ago
Because female bodies have value, and male bodies do not
Yeah. But as the TFR rates are showing, women largely aren't doing the thing that actually makes their bodies valuable.
Whilst men are still using their bodies to do all the work that actually lets us maintain some level of civilization.
Yet another asymmetry. And not due to men's failings.
who said that she felt like she's the one who has to settle, so, maybe the grass on the other side isn't as green as you think it is.
I think that you're kind of proving the point, because a woman has to settle for grass that's less green than she'd like.
A guy has to settle for, metaphorically, starving to death.
The alternative to getting their ideal partner for women is getting a guy they find unattractive.
The alternative for guys is... nothing.
faceh
2d ago
You're doing the same thing as the women who say "yeah I have 20 options but I'm just not feeling any of them, you know?" It's the exact same thing.
Sure. So why do you only think it's a problem when men do it?
Its the asymmetry that grates me.
Once again I assert that you are completely and utterly off base about my material conditions.
As stated, I've gone on dates with a number of women who, far from getting scooped up by better men, just end up alone and slowly have their lives spiral away.
If I were the problem, why aren't they going on to something better?
faceh
2d ago
Given that the median WHITE male salary for under 40's in the U.S. is about 60k and its about 33k for the under 30's, I think I can spot where your largest filter is.
If a woman in her 20's is looking for a guy in his 20's making 70k or more, then she's already eliminated 90% of her options before zeroing in on other traits.
But uh, there's a bigger question there. Why are these guys single if they're such objectively good catches? Unless they're choosing to remain single, then this just shows that women are still rejecting them for some reason.
Alsoooo I notice that you didn't include "is heterosexual" in the criteria, so I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these desirable dudes are actually just gay. Yes, even considering that they attend church once a month. Also probably a good number of divorcees in there.
faceh
1d ago
Why would they continue to work on 'productive' labor when there is no actual purpose to doing so?
I mean that literally, why would they do more than the bare minimum, enough to keep their electricity and internet on?
Why would they do any job that carries any amount of risk or requires excess hours of their time?
And, of course, why wouldn't they just vote for the most radical political candidates in the meantime?
Its prevalent enough in Japan already that they have a term for it: Herbivore men..
Consider that there are two types of 'fuck you' money.
Being filthy rich so that you can afford to lose a bunch of it.
And being so dirt poor that you have nothing to lose and thus don't care about losing.
The only real suckers in this scenario are the guys stuck in the middle class doing most of the productive work and paying taxes whilst receiving very few benefits back.
faceh
1d ago
I just now realized how both the pager operation that decapitated Hezbollah leadership and the decimation of Iranian military ranks with precision strikes sort of pattern match to the idea of an angry God smiting the enemies of his chosen people.
faceh
1d ago
Well broadly if you ask them, they can't find men that meet their standards.
But its broadly women who are passing on men, not the other way around. Which explains both the large number of single women AND the fact that apparently desirable men remain single.
And the fact that half of Gen Z men are just giving up.
And young women are significantly less likely to report being single.
For those that are:
Close to half (45 percent) of college-educated women say not being able to find someone who meets their expectations is a major factor, while only 28 percent of women without a college education feel the same. This education gap is slightly smaller among men. One-third (33 percent) of college-educated men claim not finding someone who meets their standards is a major factor for them, compared to 19 percent of noncollege-educated men.
DESPITE this, young single men report greater interest in dating than young single women:
There is a significant disparity in dating interest between single men and women. Nearly half (47 percent) of single men report being open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of single women. The gender gap in dating is even wider among young singles. More than half (52 percent) of young single men say they are open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of young single women.
This doesn't make sense if MEN are the ones passing on women.
So yeah.
That's been my point all along and I haven't seen a single piece of data that would refute it, yet.
Possible. But obesity would have to be her only disqualifying factor.
Oh, did you know there's research showing that obese women aren't willing to date obese men? Even though most obese men would settle for an obese women?
Women are the ones judging obesity (in others) harshly.
Again, why is the onus on the men to settle, here? That's not the source of the asymmetry.
It is interesting to think about what sort of evidence you personally would need to bump your personal probability of "God" existing to like 99%.
There's a bit of a problem in that '1 off' events can be 'explained' as an extremely rare confluence of factors that produced an unlikely (but not impossible!) occurrence. And events that seem impossible but are repeated with some kind of regularity can be studied and eventually 'explained.'
And a lot of things CAN be written off as hallucinations or misperceptions of an otherwise normal event.
For me, I'd count "Reviving someone who was proclaimed dead, on demand" as pretty high up the scale of things that can't be explained (yet) with current science, and thus proof of 'divine' intervention.
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