mdurak
6hr ago
How would men appreciate it if women started discussing frankly "Look, you'll be 35 in two years. That's way too old if I'm thinking of having kids with good prospects. You better set your sights lower, some 40+ woman done with childbearing will probably take you if you smarten up, get rid of those awful clothes, and hit the gym" 😂
Well, except for "some 40+ woman done with childbearing will probably take you", men do in fact listen to and take all that other advice you mention!
mdurak
6hr ago
What you're actually complaining about is that you can't talk to women the same way you talk to men.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. And I suppose this would be because women are more inclined towards bonding than problem-solving.
mdurak
6hr ago
Hahaha I think you have hit on something here. The spergouts are themselves a vibe, but perhaps as someone else mentioned, they're the vibe of "instrumentalising", "dehumanising", and "commoditising".
mdurak
6hr ago
Well yeah, did I imply that this is a topic I talk to random strangers about?
mdurak
6hr ago
I also know of such an anecdotal story. She did express a wish at some point that he would make more money eventually, so it's not like she didn't feel this at all. But she seems to have made peace with that by the time they got married.
mdurak
6hr ago
This would seem to imply that the era before mixed gender schooling was common produced a lot of socially maladjusted men and women. It doesn't seem to me that the Victorian era had that reputation.
mdurak
6hr ago
I feel like I saw life as a male 2/10 all the way to a 7/10 which was pretty illuminating.
Wow. Care to elaborate on the differences in life at the different tiers?
mdurak
6hr ago
Haha like I said, "not in those specific terms," but
How do you feel about dating older women, Johnny?
Not over 30 man, not for me. I want little Johnnies running around, and women over 30 ain't gonna be giving me that. Have you seen those charts?
Well okay, but most women still have a half-decent shot at it even at 35. Why write off a girl who's just a little over 30?
That right there is a discussion about "mate selection strategy," mate ;)
you’re probably giving off an overly analytical, clinical, impersonal vibe that most people don’t like to see applied to human relationships.
But that's fair. And so the autist in me asks, why? What is wrong with applying abstract reasoning to human relationships?
mdurak
6hr ago
assuming – based on the experience of their mothers and grandmothers – that marriage and children is something that just happens anyway, will have the same consequence.
That's fair. That's what I had assumed when I first started dating as well.
mdurak
6hr ago
One key aspect of dating is illegibility. It starts with flirting, where (I have read that) a key goal is to maintain plausible deniability
Where did you read this? This completely tracks, I would like to know more.
So it is reasonable to enter a mode of cognitive dissonance where you don't notice that common trait and instead focus on how you like men for being funny or whatever.
Men still have the same preferences, some prefer smaller tits, some larger ones, but few prefer flat-chested women. But admitting to that would mark them as some kind of perverts. So their brain protects them from themselves and becomes really good at not noticing how they like boobs, and will invent all sorts of other proxies or unrelated variables to explain whom they find hot.
This is also in line with how jealous people will not admit that they are jealous of someone else, but will invent all sorts of excuses for why they dislike that other person. Is there a word for this proxy-variable phenomenon?
mdurak
6hr ago
You won't get guys to be any more honest about their sexual experience than you will get women to be honest about female sex appeal.
This has not been my experience with men. Male virgins will admit when asked that they've never been with a girl.
To your larger question, all the stuff you're talking about is male-oriented models of the dating scene.
What are female-oriented models like?
If the model produces useful results for you in real life, who cares if women acknowledge it?
Well, it's not about getting recognition from women. But if the topic of dating comes up ("So and so got back together with that guy again", "Ah heck, why doesn't she move on from him already?", "It's hard, dating in this town sucks"), this is exactly the sort of thing that might be relevant to the conversation.
mdurak
7hr ago
Let's be realistic, a husband who's initially obsessed with looks, SMV and biological clock is somebody who gets bored after a couple of years of sex, is mad about inevitable body changes with pregnancy, won't coparent kids or co-maintain the home, then runs off with the now-higher-SMV secretary 15 years in, leaving his wife permanently companionless with decimated career prospects and the burden of coaching the kids through the trust issues he created.
Ummm... no? That's like, seriously a lot of assumptions. A neckbeard who doesn't think at all about how to make himself look more attractive to girls by getting in shape and dressing better, and finally gets with a woman in her 40's who runs into fertility issues is simply not going to be a father or even a husband at all.
Or maybe you're purposefully hyperbolizing "obsessed." Okay, but I'm not talking about being obsessed with superficial things. I'm talking about merely talking about these things.
#1 and #2 are directly about modeling dating as a short-term transaction.
I don't see how optimizing for the long-term does not involve solving for the short-term. If you cannot even get dates, how are any of your long-term goals ever going to come to fruition?
#3 is indirectly the same: ime, professing deep interest in women's biological clocks covers a strictly penile preference for youthful bodies.
And it would seem there's an obvious reason men evolved to have such a penile preference.
mdurak
11hr ago
I would disagree specifically with the characterization of #2. You can still speak of a "used car market" even if used cars come in all sorts of varieties. No two used cars are the same, and the same scratch on a car will be okay for one person and not okay for another. Doesn't mean used car buyers or sellers are any less immune from the inherent implications of scarcity.
mdurak
12hr ago
Good points. How exactly is one to discuss the dating market in the abstract without "commoditising", "instrumentalising", or "dehumanising" anyone?
And why would you want to talk about this enthusiastically and with a partner? It's honestly inherently quite an awkward topic.
Well with my most recent partner, once we got to know each other pretty well, we naturally talked about our personal history with the local dating scene and how that informed our perspectives on dating. We discussed the various causal factors that might've led each of us to have such very different experiences despite nominally participating in the exact same arena. I mean, it's really fascinating stuff, is it not? Wouldn't you want to know about your partner's past lived experiences and what sort of future lived experiences they are expecting themselves to have? And yes, she was somewhere on the spectrum too.
But maybe I should've made this clearer -- I'm talking about talking about this with platonic friends, not women I'm trying to actively hit on. Platonic male friends, at least the bunch I have, have no problem whatsoever talking about what they've needed to do to get to where they are as an attractive mate, or about female fertility and how that informs their family planning and mate selection strategies. Not in those specific terms, but definitely about those specific topics.
mdurak
13hr ago
The signaling game aspect makes a lot of sense, but it's not like women don't signal heavily too. Is it not also in their best interests to understand dating market dynamics and thereby snag a high-quality man, instead of constantly complaining about how shitty dating is nowadays?
And is this topic really too gauche to even broach with platonic female friends?
But what is there to couple together in the first place?
edit: From the other replies, it appears the coupling refers to being able to relate to humans as meaningful individuals while also being able to model them as abstract entities.
mdurak
14hr ago
Why do a lot of women not like acknowledging the practical aspects of dating? By this I mean that women appear to be put off by me simply discussing:
- The importance of looks (not just physical but also fashion) and how one might improve that (whether man or woman)
- The usefulness of economic concepts such as SMV and the dating market
- The biological clock for having kids (more apparent for women, but men also have degrading sperm quality with age)
Of course I'm not discussing these topic with women I'm trying to actually date, I'm not that autistic. But if you're trying to actually find a partner to settle down and have kids with, how do you not take all of these into account? Not only does it reek of impracticality, but on an even deeper level, it appears that any attempt to practically model the dating world at all produces a negative female reaction.
(Maybe it's because some of these women don't ever intend on having kids and therefore don't ever have to be realistic about dating.)
mdurak
3d ago
Late to this thread because I just got the urge to check out the Motte discourse on this event -- but is there a documented history on how the left morphed from 60's era nonviolent protests to the modern day variant?
mdurak
3d ago
How optimistic are you that a capable right-wing takeover of America is going to happen without major blue areas spiraling into civil war or at the very least extreme political violence?
mdurak
6d ago
Well, I feel like many men would be fine without true love then. Better a partner that stays without agency than a partner that leaves with it. See the number of historical societies that have had severe restrictions on divorce.
mdurak
6d ago
Given how divided the country is already due to the culture war, how do you see the country getting back to agreeing on a single myth?
Ok, so then the question is, why is this what the average woman hears when it's not actually what is being said?
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