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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   29217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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Here are some thought on the current relationship recession going on.

I've always felt like our society has had a hard time talking to young men about dating, sex, and what it means to be a man. We are basically just throwing them them to the wolves and and having them figure it out for themselves. This results in bad outcomes for both parties: Men being seen as "creepy" for not being able woo a woman smoothly. & women being disappointed in the interactions and not being able to find a prince charming.

On top of culture being abysmal at talking about the problem productively, we now live in a service economy that requires social skills and knowledge to move up the ladder. Gone are the days where one could get a factory job for 40 years and call it a day; those jobs have been automated or offshored to china. But increasingly, young men have fallen behind young women in education: creating a situation where they essentially are locked out of this service economy due to the credential requirements.

Now, being in this young male category myself, ive been pondering solutions for a while now, and i've also notice that this forum doesnt really talk about solutions to the many cultural issues, so im throwing my hat into the ring on what i believe willl be effective, based on the research and data ive collected.

"New Masculinity"

So its apparent in the majority of cases, that societies judge men (primarily) by one large metrics:

The ability to climb up social hierarchy to obtain status.

Most of the other judgements that we place upon men are downstream of this one thing (virgin men being losers/incels, calling men broke, being called a pussy or a weakling ect) Being weak, lacking confidence, hinders once ability to obtain status. Being a incel/virgin indicates that you have skill issues with women. Homeless men are often looked at as "lazy" or "bums". Im not saying i agree with these - but thats how its perceived.

Old Masculinity: being overly independent, not wanting help, being a misogynistic tough guy, or shunning emotion ("boys dont cry") are things that arguably need to be left behind, and didnt serve us in the past and they dont serve us now. But there are obviously elements worth preserving: Being strong, tough, courageous, protective, ect.

If you can make things happen, be socially savvy, be dominant & soft, you will find success. Some of these are within our control, some arent. But i think individuals might be able to tilt the needle enough to find some success individually, minus the obvious changes to society.

1.) Obtaining "Status"

Women desire men with high status. The easiest way to obtain status in society is to get a higher education or to obtain high income (these often correlate). If you can get into Harvard, go for it, but for most cases, a local community college or state university is sufficient. People often meet their spouses there as a matter of fact. Now, if for whatever reason, you find that you can't obtain a degree, there are other options, my father did real-estate (this job can earn a decent living and has the plus of sharpening your social skills!), my uncle had a mechanic shop (Its worth noting here, however that most evidence still points to the degree being the best shot you have). Raising mens income has a positive effect on birth rates - so whatever you job you get, make sure it pays somewhat decent. On top of this, build other skills: learn how to dance (my personal recommendation, ive done this myself and ive gotten some positive attention and even some dates!). This will increase confidence and get you socializing, and if your good, you'll be the coolest guy in the room. Which leads to my next point:

2.) Social Skills.

This new variation of Masculinity needs to focus heavily on social skills. Men as a group are more likely to be poor in this area (higher autism diagonsis, ect). Believe it or not, many men who are single or are having trouble havent even attempted asking out the girl. I know, I know - #MeToo and all, but in my experience if one approaches with kindness (and humors!) it will be received positively. One easy way that worked for me is ride-share driving. Take little step, ask someone about their day, how they feel about certain things, ect. Join a comedy club and try to sharpen your humor! (Incredibly attractive to women in my experience). Charisma and Social skills will positively affect both your dating life, and your career success. Much of the drop in relationships and birth rate are amongst the poor and less educated, partially because of the shifts in the economy towards the service sector jobs that require the ability to talk to others. So sharpening this skill is of utmost importance. You'll probably get the hang of flirting and the like once you conjure up these social skills.

3.) GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM. GYM.

This is so insanely understated by many of people, but as someone who was 240lbs and is now 155 (im 5"6 for reference). Pretty privilege is a real thing. People respect and admire you more when you look good, for men this means wider shoulder relative to hips, and being fairly lean, you dont need to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But if you look like this dude in the thumbnail, your pretty golden. Being tall helps too, but thats not something within your control. Easy way to get thinner: Eat less calories than maintaince (around 2000) and burn said calories via exercise (running on a treadmill, ride a bicycle, lift weights, jump rope). For building muscle, you'll need to eat around ~1lb of protein per body weight, in a slight caloric excess. You''ll have to go through cut and bulk phases where you are basically eating less to burn off fat, and then eating around or in slight excess to build muscle. Get 8 hours of sleep for recovery, drink water, remove suger from your diet if possible. You'll need to be patient as the process is slow, but once completed: your options for mates increases, your status increases, and people will treat you with more dignity and respect. Looks matter.

4.) If you are overly "nice" or sweet, masculinize yourself a bit

This will probably be more controversial, but this needs to be said. Society does have a bias towards men who are more conventionally masculine, shorter men have higher suicide rates, gay men are hated more then lesbians. I've also seen this several times anecdotally and learned this from personal experience: My own mother told me not to cry in front of women, because you'll be seen as weak. My ex told me that being more manly would probably get me further with women. I think a better middle ground here, especially if your a man who is on the less manly side of things, is to masculinize yourself a bit. Best way to do this? Learn martial arts (or do some tough sport - rugby or football) - the mindset thats built from martial arts will help masculinize you to some degree, as well as proving to women that your capable of protecting them (Trust me - they care about this). This part might sound like im trying to change you, perhaps to some extent, i am. But this is in most mens best interest, in my experience - not having some manly-ness to you will hurt your perception, at least a little bit. You can still be soft and sensitive, as a matter of fact, it works in your interests much of the time, just have some "umph" and know when to pull out the sensitive, and tough sides.

One of the main reasons that bad faith actors like Andrew Tait are so popular is because many people in our society dont want to confront various hard truths, that many in red-pill spaces actively expose: Looks, Money, & Masculinity matter. The more we lie and refuse to ack-knowledge this the worse the current social ills become. Its also important that a sort of guide map of masculinity be given (the one ive layed probably would produce positive results individually) so that young boys dont go searching for a road map else-where. Telling people to "be themselves" isnt gonna be sufficient advice in the majority of cases.

Finally, there are societal trends that make some of these harder to achieve today. People do not socialize and gather as they did in the past, meaning many women (though not as much as men) likely are going to have not so good social skills themselves or be more difficult to meet. And as stated before, our economy favors those with educated service sectors skills over those who dont. Sadly, i haven't thought of a good way around these barriers.

Take note that this is something ive written up after thinking about this for a bit, so im open to critiques or flaws in my proposals or reasoning. (As a matter of fact, Its welcome!)

I don't find this post's idea objectionable (I do find it boring), although it's clear you recently read Coming Apart by Charles Murray. But if you're going to write something that is so out of fashion (by this forum's user's standards I think) that it seems like it was written 8 years ago, or by someone very young (which I strongly suspect you are), I really think you need to work on your prose. The random asides, interrupting your own thoughts. The half-finished arguments, the many spelling and grammar mistakes made this a slog to get through. Other people have already eloquently explained why this issue at the social/macro level is more interesting than the trivial advice of "Be friendly, attractive, and rich to make dating easier."

This is a collective action problem:

(1) It is in the atomized individual’s interest to focus exclusively on money, status, and physical beauty at the expense of other considerations, in order to maximize mate choice. (2) This individual self-interest will only increase the success of a small percent of the total population, and only temporarily, because the advice will quickly become the common recommendation, and soon after the required weekly chore, like getting frequent haircuts and new shoes and going to college and being on apps; because status is zero sum, you have succeeded only in raising the number of chore hours globally, because when everyone exercises, then no one is unusually attractive for having a gym body. This is akin to finding a broken new build in a video game: great success for a week, then everyone uses it, then the game is less fun for everyone. (3) Because this raises the bar on the number of chore hours per week, you have greatly decreased the odds of ever solving the root problem, which requires men giving up on self-interest maximization in order to cooperate in pursuit of collective interest; in this case, the collective interest involves conservative social norms, religiosity, and a greater intrinsic status asymmetry between men and women, and some other complex “social technologies”. (4) The end result is that everyone becomes a South Korean, except worse because the Westerner is not genetically suited for that kind of grind; everyone will spend all their free time trying to be more attractive than the next man, in order to win the affection of increasingly picky women. Soon enough, you will be laughed at if you’re not using AI to write tailored messages according to the projected ovulation window of your dating app match as determined by certain keywords and response times after you sent phenotypically-informed memes chosen by an online service out of India. A grizzly prospect. Meanwhile there will be endless scroll AI porn.

The high TFR groups have solved this issue by giving up on self-interest entirely and maximizing for collective interest. The Amish share their wealth and ban vanity and train women to be gracious; the Salafists condemn male and female beautification and force women to obey their father’s marriage wishes; etc. They never exercise, they have no “game”, they look ridiculous and they have 5 or more children. It was really easy in 1950 to enforce monogamous pairings by policing female behavior through shame spread by gossip, but this is impossible when scrolling apps show them the most handsome man in their vicinity who unbeknownst to them goes on two separate and successful dates per week, and when “social” media involving gossip is pretty much over.

A grizzly prospect.

Grrrrr.

Unless you meant grisly.

He knows what he meant. The women will keep picking the bears if men don't up their game.

Har har, very good.

Yep.

This is why I keep throwing myself against the tide trying to point out how the problem is systemic and advice that focuses on what any individual man can do is going to fail for the vast majority of them, which will make them more angry.

Because the men need to cooperate and there's various interests who would feel extremely threatened if men started coordinating to advance their interests, so they expend substantial wealth and effort to disrupt any attempt at coordination.

And I'll also throw in that part of the reason is that women almost instinctively cooperate on the social level even if they are in breakneck competition with each other on the individual level. If they perceive a threat to the interests of the gender, they will very rapidly array as a unified front, and peck any defectors into line. It is uncanny to watch.

Hence social movements can spring up almost overnight to advocate for a women's social issue. Whereas any pressing male problem tends to be stifled for years for simply being unpopular to rally around.

Compare the funding that goes into curing Breast Cancer vs. Prostate Cancer, despite both having similar fatality rates.

The problems are indeed systemic but I disagree that uplifting individuals is not worth trying. One: I think the relationship market just isn't clearing for a lot of heterosexual men and women. It is not a waste to help any individual man or woman see the problems clearly and learn how they can improve themselves and their partner selection. I think there are a lot of people whose current offer to the relationship market is "not acceptable" because they're unhealthy or insipid or have the women on a pedestal or want a bro-friend-with-tits to play vidya and screw occasionally or think that a 6-6-6 man is going to fall into her life or that being a bitch is attractive or. Getting those people in shape and having productive dates before they burn out and join MGTOW or buy a dozen cats is not zero sum. Two: at the very least if you are one source of truth in a world of lies you can help people without them having to waste years. Third: none of us are going to get access to the magic book that lets us rewrite society's scripts, but we might be able to help the lives of some of the people we touch (if they're ready to hear it).

Breast cancer gets so much more funding because everyone cares about women. This is also one factor influencing why women's social movements start so easily: pretty much everyone (normal, minus the lizardmen constant) loves and cares for women! (This is one reason I never bought the "patriarchal oppressor" framing — why do you think men call precious things like their cars "she"? Because they love women!) Other factors include structural support at all levels of society (from special departments at companies to special ministries in government) and an activist class that runs like a well-oiled machine which can be engaged to support women as well as other causes de jour.

You could argue that this is downstream of instinctual/cultural small-group behavior and it probably is.

This is one reason I never bought the "patriarchal oppressor" framing — why do you think men call precious things like their cars "she"? Because they love women!

I think it's because cars, ships and aircraft are expensive to maintain, especially when it comes to paintjobs.

"A ship is always referred to as 'she' because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder."

—Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

I choose to believe that it's also because they're beautiful and cherished.

Also, things that depreciate quickly—especially if already used—but for which a man can develop an attachment via sunk cost, scarsity mindset, and the endowment effect if he owns instead of rents. If it flies, floats, or fucks…

There's a point there, but the whole issue is that women aren't accepting such correction or coaching.

Men hear the coaching, many will attempt to apply it, and after they put in the work they may even notice improvement but, I'd suggest, rarely do the rewards scale with the effort required. This becomes disheartening. If they complain, the only advice is 'man up and try harder.' Over and over again.

Women, by and large, will interpret attempts to coach or correct them as a critique, will often react badly to this critique, reject it outright, and go to their girl's groupchat or post a tiktok to complain about people trying to 'control women's behavior' and they'll immediately have their opinion confirmed and validated by other women (and the male orbiters) and watch a dozen other videos which claim she's empowered for standing her ground.

They're much more ensconced in a media environment that coddles their emotions and confirms their biases overall.

So attempting to do one on one uplifting of individual women when there's an entire Billion-dollar multimedia edifice screaming the opposite in their ear will probably be ineffective in most cases.

It could still be worth doing, but can we at least be honest about the source of the issue?

I daresay one major reason so many feel completely comfortable heaping shame and pressure on men but leave women's behavior alone is the tacit admission that women won't accept influence or advice from someone they do not respect, and so they wouldn't listen at all (or would attack the person).

There's a point there, but the whole issue is that women aren't accepting such correction or coaching.

Not from non-attractive men, that is - and those are incidentally the only social group willing to coach them. It's a deadlock.

Yeah. There's probably a few high-value males out there who would actually constructively criticize a woman's behavior and expect her to listen and change.

But most such men are in such an advantageous position that, to the extent they notice any issue at all, they're not too incentivized to address it, but in the best case they'd rather grab their preferred partner and get out of the pool entirely.

It's a deadlock up until something changes in the media environment.

I live in a part of the world with second and third generation hippies running around and I can't tell you how many millennial men I know who bought into the "love is all you need" mythos, got jobs as massage therapists, glass blowers (weed pipes) or went into "farming" (selling weed, now unemployed since legalization) and they basically can't get women to look at them at all because they make ~minimum wage.

And the excuses! God the excuses. Muscles? How shallow, besides women just aren't turned on by that stuff. Confidence? Jockeying for dominance, I'm all about cooperation. Professional jobs? Can't support the crooked system, man. Stoicism? Just afraid of vulnerability.

But they're slowly, rudely discovering that when women signal an affinity for the hippie ethos that they don't mean it personally, certainly not as they approach the end of their fertile years. A man with a bumper sticker that says "I didn't cry today" and who hosts authentic relating workshops might as well be screaming I'M SO GAY. But they're everywhere. I feel bad for them. They're less fuckable than the median hick HVAC technician you find in the deep south.

They were born into a little micro culture that told them masculinity was bad and they believed it.

I’d say the two important pieces of data here are ‘second and third generation hippies’ and ‘end of their fertile years’. I’m assuming casual and/or premarital sex is completely normalized in social circles consisting of hippie descendants and that not all of these guys are hopeless loser dorks. I imagine many of them are but there is necessarily a level of variation among any group of men. And sexually attractive and blue-pilled men i.e. men unaware of the real sources of their attractiveness and social status do exist everywhere and are not rare. This probably means that many of these guys had affairs and flings with women in their social circle as long as those women were young and mainly interested in having fun, hanging out etc. and just assumed that this is how it’ll always be.

I find it curious that you listed massage therapists. Do those happen to be gay by any chance?

no they're not gay. they're very mad that women won't date them. they just may as well be as unappealing to straight women as gay men

Except that straight women love gay men. I firsthand observed a woman flip from "ewwww, men" to a loving gaze the moment a conventional-looking guy mentioned being gay.

I used to know a guy who listed his sexuality on Hinge as "queer" to increase his matches, even though he was already a black-ish communist.

They like having gay men as friends. It’s simple social dynamics. Young single women in groups of two or more are happy to invite gay men into their social circle because they know these men will never be a source of any jealousy and conflict among them, and that these men will never hit on them.

That doesn't account for the queerfishing. Or the hockey porn. Every woman I have a conversation with apparently judges all media based on how queer it is. I really do think this is becoming a misdirected lust thing; slightly similar to "non-threatening boys" where sex and attraction is scary, so the only men they're comfortable lusting over are guys that will never do something so un-gallant as reciprocate, to the degree they forget that reciprocation is the point of sexuality.

They were born into a little micro culture that told them masculinity was bad and they believed it.

Honestly, i consider this to be almost as bad as the red-pill, if not worse. At least the red-pill had some truth underneath the toxicity.

Alternatively, just leave inceldom by becoming a volcel.

Simple trick that will spare you life of galley slave for rather dubious gains.

You mean a monk?

In a post-patriarchal society that'd be pointless for a number of obvious reasons.

You can’t decide to switch from involuntary celibacy to voluntary celibacy. You are still involuntarily celibate.

Hmm, I could see it: "My mom is 4'10" and my dad is 5'6", so I was Assigned Incel At Birth by life and it never even began. However, I've long since accepted it and now self-identify as a volcel."

I have pictured in mind a transition matrix where one can transition from incel to volcel by 1) acceptance of celibacy or by 2) ascending to theoretical sexhaving ability, but still choosing celibacy. One could transition back from volcel to incel if one's attitude on that front changes, or by volcel/sexhaver to incel if, say, a 2arms1head situation occurs where an accident renders you no longer having the ability to project the dominance that chicks crave. The sexhaver to volcel transition would be exemplified by monkmaxxing. Something like the below, where the top half is united by celdom:

----------------------
|  Incel  |  Volcel  |
----------------------
|     Sexhaver       |
----------------------

I was going to say the opposite: it's incels who don't actually exist (they already constantly argue that female incels don't exist, so they're half right).

If you're comfortably celibate, but refuse to rule out a relationship with a perfect, infatuated woman who shows up at your gamer den with homemade lasagna, do you fall into inceldom? If so, then a lot of women are incels.

It's all haggling about price in the end. Some people's orders get filled, and others' don't. Most "incels" could lower their standards, or increase their efforts (increase their offer), so the concept of "involuntary" dissolves into meaninglessness.

There are no women who get no attention at all, and none that have zero access to sex. In that sense femcels factually do not exist.

Likewise, the existence of prostitutes precludes the existence of incels.

There's a slight difference in that incels would at least need to be able to spend enough money, whereas femcels just need to spread their legs, but it probably doesn't matter much - the decisive factor is almost certainly the social stigma on prostitution in parallel to the social stigma on sluttery, which does actually make them fairly comparable.

I think alot of incels would be ok with banging a fatty, but they lack the social skills to a level that a 2/10 and 7/10 are equally unattainable.

It's not like a 2/10 would just throw herself at any nearby single man. The man still has to ask her out and do all the other formality. It's just that a man with rudimentary skills and low attractiveness will have a much better chance with a 2/10 than a 7/10. For the incel without the right ability or mindset, he will get nothing.

Meanwhile "femcels" can get asked out just by going outside and existing. For them it's 100% a matter of standards.

This isn't bad advice on an individual level, but I would argue that on a societal level, the highest-EV advice is to teach men [and women, although they do seem to be better at it already] how to be content without a romantic partner.

Modernity has made it so that there are very few reasons to settle for anything less than perfection; the internet has annihilated boredom, porn in all its various forms have annihilated the purpose of the sex drive, mass production has annihilated the economic reasons to marry, fruitful and multiply, and individualism has annihilated the social pressures that might encourage someone to settle down.

What both men and women now want in a relationship is self-esteem and self-actualization, to be desired by a high-status partner that they themselves desire, and fundamentally most people won't win that red queen's race no matter how hard they self-improve. If you would like a transactional relationship, hiring sugar babies and escorts for strings free sex, or taking a mail-order bride to bear your children from some impoverished country are still on the table, but fundamentally relying on these options as a bachelor is tacitly an admission of low status, and besides the point regardless if you're looking for a self-actualizing relationship and thus in practice done by very few.

None of this is going back in the box no matter how pundits gnash and wail online about it. Status will always be the final scarce good even if humanity eventually solves scarcity in all other things, and hence the only real way forwards I can see is for people at scale to take up some bastardized version of Buddhism, and realize that the romantic relationship of their dreams probably isn't going to happen and yet still find happiness.

This isn't bad advice on an individual level, but I would argue that on a societal level, the highest-EV advice is to teach men [and women, although they do seem to be better at it already] how to be content without a romantic partner

Perhaps a good first step in this direction would be for society to stop heaping scorn and mockery on men who are unable to attract women.

Edit: I'm actually pretty confident that if society dumped on single women the way it does on single men, this would disappear "women, although they do seem to be better at it already"

The shaming and gaslighting will continue until morale improves.

I partly agree, but at least one very real reason to have a romantic partner even if one is content alone remains: it is to reduce, through both the partnership itself and through children, the chance of being alone in old age.

I worked in a nursing home during my teens, and met many old men and women who married, had families and still ended up living out the end of their lives decrepit and lonely. Their wife/husband passed away early and they struggled to cope, or they had a bad divorce and never recovered, or their relationship ended up deteriorating and kept together largely by inertia, or their kids ended up apathetic / having moved elsewhere / busy with their own lives.

The ones who fared the best had little to do with their romantic relationships; generally it was the vivacious types who still had wide friend networks in old age, and were constantly active and out at social events (bad news for the type of people to post on the Motte...)

I don't mean to say that it's pointless to marry, because a good marriage is likely still a net benefit over being lonely. Yet at the end of the day a life where you grow old is very long, and there are no guarantees given at birth, except that one day you will suffer and die alone.

Right. That's the part I fear. In theory the single elderly can keep each other company, run errands for each other, etc. I'd sign up for some kind of mutual aid society of that type.

It seems like you are approaching the situation from the perspective of an individual man who wants to improve his love life. Which is fine, but I'm more interested in solutions for society as a whole. There are a lot of issues involved, but I think that ultimately man is a tournament species. So in the absence of laws, traditions, social norms, and so on, there are inevitably large numbers of males of the species who do not get the opportunity to have a female mate.

Which is fine, but I'm more interested in solutions for society as a whole.

I think, as far as society goes. Raising young boys, especially those coming from bad family backgrounds with these points in mind + some sort of government intervention policy would help shift the needle.

We'd also need to raise wages for men who can not attend higher education, whatever the reason.

We'd also need to crack down on the american food industry so that people can be skinnier, much of the increase in obesity is basically both the quality of and the amount of food we consume. Becoming attractive physically will help a lot. Thats 3 i can think off of the top of my head.

What's your reason for assuming the interventions needed should target men and male behavior.

Is there something that men have started doing differently that we need to correct?

What's your reason for assuming the interventions needed should target men and male behavior.

I think this touches on the biggest stumbling block in any societal effort to address the "relationship recession," such as it exists. Any proposal is going to affect men and women differently. If there is any perceived disadvantage to women; or if the perceived advantage for women is less than the perceived advantage for men, then women will freak out and society will have a very hard time adopting such a policy.

Here's an example:

We'd also need to raise wages for men who can not attend higher education, whatever the reason.

I agree that this is a good idea. When a man's finances improve, he is more likely to get married; when a woman's finances improve, she is more likely to get divorced (or stay single).

Ok, but suppose there was a policy proposal to create good jobs for men. Kind of like the Hoover Dam project in the 1930s, except with better safety standards. I assure you that feminists would freak out. The whole thing would be revised and water down until the majority of the benefits were going directly to women.

I think that absent some huge technological shift (e.g. artificial wombs; robot waifus; etc.) the only real solution is to wait for more traditional (and more fecund) subcultures to grow in influence.

I still struggle a bit with the mechanics of it all.

The reason things that upset women are political nonstarters is because they will have a disproportionate freakout, they'll get on TV shows and cry (exploiting DEEP biological wiring), they'll march in the street and scream, they'll directly confront people (knowing they won't be physically assaulted!) and they'll, ultimately, show up at the polls and vote against whomever dared make the suggestion in the first place.

But on the flip side, all you need to do in response, as a male politician, is say "no, we're doing it anyway." The women have no recourse beyond more screaming. They don't enforce the laws, and they can't actually go on strike and bring society to a halt. I note that when Roe v. Wade was overturned there was a similar massive freakout... and a few places passed some new laws, but generally speaking things normalized pretty fast. Abortion remains THE primary voting issue for women, but that's all they can do is cast votes and scream. You can plug your ears.

So I suspect we're just waiting to achieve a critical mass of men who are capable of saying "no, we're doing it anyway."

Either because they're just that Chadly or because they've got absolutely nothing left to lose.

Abortion remains THE primary voting issue for women, but that's all they can do is cast votes and scream. You can plug your ears.

Plugging your ears will not magically create a retvrned society where women instantly realize their proper role and shit.

The issue with trying to fix sex relations is that it is not going to be enough for enough male simps to stop caring about women. You want men to care about women, if not in the same direction that they do now. Care enough to grab them off the streets, or buy them from their fathers while garnering the fathers' respect, or do whatever it is they do in Muslim countries.

(Like - suppose I wanted to marry now, the last thing I want to do is to court some old fuck who's probably a backwards boomer opposite of me on politics and all that. I'd rather court the woman, notwithstanding all the woes of modern courting!)

And in the absence of the tradition that taught men to care about women that way, the only ones who will are the crazy ones who will put a crazy bent on it. E. g. Jim.

(Like - suppose I wanted to marry now, the last thing I want to do is to court some old fuck who's probably a backwards boomer opposite of me on politics and all that. I'd rather court the woman, notwithstanding all the woes of modern courting!)

Right, but at least you might expect that dad can be an ally in your quest to win his daughter if he decides you're worthy, he can scare off the other suitors and encourage/push the daughter to make her choice and stick with it.

I've had a bit of a history of pursuing fatherless women and the benefit of not having to earn the respect of a guy who considers his girl a princess is usually outweighed by her having zero discipline in her behavior and lack of experience interpreting male behavior correctly, so its like trying to domesticate a feral fox. You get bitten a lot in the process and they often slip away back into the forest anyway.

So I suspect we're just waiting to achieve a critical mass of men who are capable of saying "no, we're doing it anyway."

There are just a lot of men out there who are obsessed with female validation. But I agree that on the current trajectory, it's almost inevitable that women will lose their disproportionate influence over public policy.

The "simp" problem is hard to quantify.

I've come to believe that a lot of it isn't really Western Men obsessed with female validation. Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene. But for the receiving woman... attention is attention. Money still spends.

I also note how many prominent 'male feminist' types keep getting outed as wanton sex pests and then devoured by the very mob they courted. We are selecting for guys who are able to avoid that trap.

Men really could use a better, coordinated method of keeping each other from pedestalizing women who don't give a crap about them, and, ideally, ostracizing the guys who defect hard and try to become good 'allies' as a means of gaining sexual access.

Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene.

These sorts of Third World males select into red pill and Andrew Tate fandom more likely. Obsession with vagene + low patience for Western women's complaints is already pushing you into "misogynist" spaces that are pre-discredited.

I also see no reason to doubt that there aren't Western simps driving this because you see it in other cases, e.g. all of the celebrities crying and taking responsibility after George Floyd's death, and all of the stuff significantly less famous people did in its wake. All of the people "listening and learning" show the same outgroup preference simps do.

I've come to believe that a lot of it isn't really Western Men obsessed with female validation. Thanks to the internet, its actually millions upon millions of third world males obsessed with bobs and vagene. But for the receiving woman... attention is attention.

I would say that American society was very gynocentric in the 20th century, i.e. pre-Internet.

Most importantly, the trend of forcible transfers of wealth and social status from men to women was in place long before the Internet. The idea that men suck; that women don't need men; etc. was also well established by then. The taboo against saying anything negative about women as a group wasn't firmly established yet, but it was still floating around.

Ok, but suppose there was a policy proposal to create good jobs for men.

There was, and it wasn't particularly controversial.

There was, and it wasn't particularly controversial.

Was this initiative explicitly aimed at creating good jobs for men?

In the same way that Hoover Dam was.

In the same way that Hoover Dam was.

Ok, I understand your point. I am pretty sure that a law aimed at securing good jobs for men, if it were large enough to put a big dent the wealth transfer imbalance from men to women, would have to be explicitly designed for this purpose. Which means that a feminist freak-out would be triggered.

I do concede that something smaller could be done on the down low, though.

What's your reason for assuming the interventions needed should target men and male behavior.

The other possible solutions are probably a no go.

Targeting womens sexuality would probably be a dead end with little return. We as humans dont choose what we are attracted to. Women as a group cant undo their desire for men with money and status any more than i as a man can undo my desire for hourglass figure, youthful girls. The best we could try is having them tought to look for more personality traits outside of attraction, but that wont do as much as good as simply making said person attractive to start with. You cant negotiate it.

We also cant reverse the reality of our economic system: the service economy is here to stay. Social and Mentally intensive skills pay, and i dont see a way around this, itll probably continue as AI make progress.

Is there something that men have started doing differently that we need to correct?

I touched on some of this in the general post: Not graduating college at the same rate, more likely to have little to no friends (lack of socialization), many are even out off the workforce all together.

I know it seems that im kind of unfairly targeting men here, but i see little alternative.

We don't choose who we're attracted to, but we do choose how to act on it. Being a floozy should be just as shameful as being a cad.

One really big problem is that it's hard to offer men a compelling alternative to grifters like Tate, who promise a buffet of pussy, fast cars, and shiny toys. The role of "respected family patriarch" is off the table for obvious reasons, but we could at the very least stop lying to young men and maybe it'd stop them from turning to the grifters. Yes, being strong and competent will help. Almost no women will give you a direct signal of interest unless you're extremely attractive or she's extremely keen on you, so learn the subtle ones. Hit the gym. Learn to dance. Broaden your interests. Do interesting things. Be interesting. Learn to talk about it. Despite all the culture warring, men are still generally expected to be extremely agentic, so teaching them how to be more attractive should pay dividends.

Actually, we should teach both boys and girls how to partner dance so they can spend more time in each other's personal space without freaking out. Hell, they might even like it and decide they like each other.

I know it's not practical to implement, but we do need to teach the girls too. Men need to initiate, that's just the way it is, but then women then have the responsibility of turning men down graciously if they're being courted in good faith. I remember being an awkward teenager and once asking a stunningly beautiful waitress for her number. She turned me down, saying something like "I have a boyfriend, but that took balls. Girls like that." It was an unambiguous but positive rejection, and didn't cost her anything.

I remember being an awkward teenager and once asking a stunningly beautiful waitress for her number. She turned me down, saying something like "I have a boyfriend, but that took balls. Girls like that." It was an unambiguous but positive rejection, and didn't cost her anything.

Yeah. Tons of younger women seem to be unable to effectively flirt OR to effectively and gracefully reject an otherwise polite advance.

You can give men all the coaching you like, but if the women they're targeting either completely shut down/retreat... or get nasty in response, then they will RAPIDLY decide there's no point to it.

Doubly so if the reward for a 'successful' approach is just further humiliation on the actual date. And they know marriage and kids are probably not in the cards.

Yeah. Tons of younger women seem to be unable to effectively flirt OR to effectively and gracefully reject an otherwise polite advance.

You can give men all the coaching you like, but if the women they're targeting either completely shut down/retreat... or get nasty in response, then they will RAPIDLY decide there's no point to it.

I briefly touched on this on the original post. We can add this to the "Have more socialization at a young age between the sexes" solution.

One really big problem is that it's hard to offer men a compelling alternative to grifters like Tate, who promise a buffet of pussy, fast cars, and shiny toys.

It wouldn't be difficult if anyone with the ability to do so was interested in doing so. They are not.

Almost no women will give you a direct signal of interest unless you're extremely attractive or she's extremely keen on you, so learn the subtle ones.

The punishment for type I errors -- responding to a subtle signal when there isn't one -- has become so great that there's little opportunity to learn. If the punishment for failure is at best becoming known as "that creep" and quite possibly some sort of formal punishment, it is hard to find the boundaries. (Thus the earlier suggestion that the right thing to do if this happens is to change cities!)

Men need to initiate, that's just the way it is, but then women then have the responsibility of turning men down graciously if they're being courted in good faith. I remember being an awkward teenager and once asking a stunningly beautiful waitress for her number. She turned me down, saying something like "I have a boyfriend, but that took balls. Girls like that." It was an unambiguous but positive rejection, and didn't cost her anything.

There's nothing in it for them to do this, and in fact it does cost them. The problem the hotties have (or perceive they have) is too many approaches from uggles. Vicious shoot-downs and the prospect of formal punishment create deterrents that winnow the field in advance.

There's nothing in it for them to do this, and in fact it does cost them.

Short term perhaps, but long term they gain healthier relationships with half the human population and the opportunity for many of them to meet guys that could be great matches for them but who have been conditioned to never approach them out of fear of the social consequences.

Wouldn't it be great if HR reps could teach the less-than-stellar candidates how to create good CVs? Instead of having to sift through hundreds of eligible candidates, they could so so with thousands! Maybe there's even a hidden gem in there somewhere.

Women with options don't want less preselection, they want more.

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I know it seems that im kind of unfairly targeting men here, but i see little alternative.

I've proposed literally just return to a status quo ante of circa 1993 with regard to education policy/funding.

I don't think you have to 'target' female sexuality. Literally just level the playing field and stop subsidizing degrees that don't pay well or boosting female employment in careers they aren't suited for. Let the market correct.

And you will then have, on the margins, more men with relatively high status and a bit more wealth, and more women who haven't had their standards raised arbitrarily whilst becoming less appealing as partners.

And we start to reduce the political polarization of women because it is 100% clear that the college education environment is driving the women to the left in droves. Fewer Gender Studies degrees would be an unalloyed improvement.

If nobody is willing to make a policy change that risks upsetting females, the current course will only correct when something breaks.

I bring this up mainly because The Gender Divide is extremely pronounced among younger generations. There's zero reason to think this moderates later.

As the Boomers shuffle off, there's going to be a crack in the dam that currently protects females from social restriction and cultural 'retaliation.'

What do you think happens if a generation where an actual majority of the men don't even believe in gender equality achieves political power?

Implement some solutions now to correct course, or I'm genuinely afraid for how the Zoomers will end up addressing this problem that, from their perspective, stole their future.

There is no likely future where women retain their rights and privileges. That which cannot go on forever, won't. Correcting the problem now would lead to a softer landing, but it's politically impossible, so hard landing it is. Do not mistake this prediction for a preference.

There is no likely future where women retain their rights and privileges.

Well I think one possibility is technological changes which are so radical that these relationship issues are moot. e.g. robot waifus, artificial wombs, etc.

But I agree that absent radical changes in technology, feminism is ultimately a self-correcting problem.

I think this prediction is fraught with the same issues any prognostication more than a couple years out is, thanks to the rapidly changing technological landscape.

But yeah, if we see economic downturn for [reasons] this likely reasserts the gender dynamics, of necessity, because we can't afford to elevate women into critical positions, and the labor men provide will be far more valuable in those conditions.

However, I largely reject people who say anything is 'politically impossible.' Not after what I've seen Trump do. Throwing in the towel without making some calculated efforts is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I do genuinely think that if there's a massive cultural shift and political power starts coalescing on the right, women will gravitate there naturally and discard previous beliefs pretty readily.

I offer the small, tiniest bit of evidence by pointing out two things:

  1. The recent decline in young people identifying as LGBT. The increase in the first place was largely driven by women.

  2. The accelerating disappearance of the body positivity movement thanks to weight loss drugs. Or at least the "healthy at any size" division. (also many of its proponents just... died).

Simply put, if it becomes 'high status' to be a married stay at home mom, expect women to fall into line rapidly. Whether it is technology or politics or something else that creates the change, that's our best chance at a 'soft' landing.

I admire your optimism.

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Cutting down on all the ambient "Men, Amirite?" seems achievable. Right now, only being an absolute panty-melter can get a woman to briefly forget she's supposed to hate her oppressors or whatever.

Agreed

How do you reconcile that idea with the fact that, even in our post-sexual-revolution age in which women are sexually free and can have jobs, fewer than 10% of adult American men are virgins and only about 30% are single?

How do you reconcile that idea with the fact that, even in our post-sexual-revolution age in which women are sexually free and can have jobs, fewer than 10% of adult American men are virgins and only about 30% are single?

I think that societal laws, norms etc. have eroded but are nowhere near the point of having completely broken down.

There's the famous statistic that at one point 17 women reproduced for every man. But if you trace down that claim, it's likely that such an event happened during our hunter gatherer past, not during civilization. I'm not sure that tournament dynamics are compatible with the maintenance of civilization: the polygamous Islamic dynasties were famously unstable, as characterized by Ibn Khaldun, and were repeatedly overthrown by more cohesive, more monogamous groups from the periphery. If you don't have buy-in from most men (and women), and family formation ceases, it's almost tautological that you can't maintain the structure of society. This is a key insight from J.D. Unwin's Sex and Culture, and the strongest counter argument against extreme forms of feminism and sexual libertinism.

There's the famous statistic that at one point 17 women reproduced for every man. But if you trace down that claim, it's likely that such an event happened during our hunter gatherer past, not during civilization

My understanding is that it was during the bronze age, not among hunter-gatherers. And that it was driven, not by massive harems, but by warfare.

The men of one village/clan (who mostly share Y chromosomes due to their shared kinship) attack another clan/village, kill the men and take the women as war-brides. This wipes out the Y chromosomes of the conquered group but not the mitochondrial DNA from the women. The newly expanded clan branches off, forming new villages. So successful male genetic dynasties expand while unsuccessful ones are wiped out. Over time, you get the 1/17 ratio showing up in the genetic data.

It's not as if a typical family structure was one patriarch and 17 wives. More like one man with a wife from his own clan, plus maybe a slave-wife from a conquered clan.

Although you're absolutely right that polygamy is unstable, it also leads to lower birth rates. A polygamous man may have very high fertility, but his 2nd+ wives have lower fertility than if they'd just married monogamously.

Ahh yes you and the other commenters are correct. I mistakenly thought the 1:17 was during the Toba event (massive volcano eruption 30k years ago) but looks like that's wrong from a quick google search.

There's the famous statistic that at one point 17 women reproduced for every man. But if you trace down that claim, it's likely that such an event happened during our hunter gatherer past, not during civilization.

If I had to guess, I would say that /u/thenelection is correct, that it was actually the rise of agriculture which resulted in such an extreme ratio. But even if the ratio is "a more reasonable 4:1," that's still consistent with my claim that man is naturally a tournament species. It seems pretty clear to me that most men would build a harem if they could get away with it. And that most women would join a harem if it were socially acceptable and the economics worked.

You reverse it. Civilization didn't free us from the bottleneck; it created it. Hunter gatherers had a ratio of something like 2:1 to 4:1. It was simply materially impossible for one man to monopolize reproductive access in a community. The advent of agriculture 5000 to 7000 years ago caused that ratio to skyrocket to the 17:1 figure (which is better stated as the ratio of effective genetic population size, but the implication is directionally correct). See "A recent bottleneck of Y chromosome diversity coincides with a global change in culture" (https://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full.pdf).

Later on, as sedentary societies evolved and monogamy norms were created and propagated themselves, the ratio dropped back to a more reasonable 4:1 or 5:1.

I think you’ve explicated this topic well, but I would add some additional points to your model.

Along with status and social skills there is something like emotional mastery/inner state/self-amusement. It is the ability to reframe situations and remain in a positive mood regardless of the external environment. Instead of interpreting events as negative/neutral you take a perspective on them this is positive and/or gives you agency. If something goes wrong you might laugh, propose a solution, not be bothered, or behave as though the universe is teaching you an important lesson so that you may become wiser. You do not want to react to negative situations by getting angry or showing that you have no agency in the situation. This is a very complex topic and I’m not summarizing it well. It is not the same as being out of touch with your emotions.

You need to understand the social media landscape/algorithm that your potential partners are exposed to. Imagine how much time they spend on social media and what they are being shown – better yet have a female friend show you her feed. Among other things you will see lots of encouragement for her to remain single, relationship advice to view the men as suspicious and to be vigilant for red flags (often dubiously defined red flags), and general other content designed to make her doubt herself so that she needs to buy things and/or stay on social media for validation. Specific content examples might include the Vogue article, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now” or her friend celebrating singlehood and getting a bunch of validation for it. You have to understand how constant exposure to this content changes women.

Finally, looking at this advice from depth psychology perspective it is forcing men to present a specific persona that doesn’t reflect their true self. Often this causes problems in the future when men realize that they are only liked for what they produce and how they navigate social situations. If they encounter misfortune (extended unemployment, illness) then they may find the woman loses interest and doesn’t want to support him as he navigates his problems.

Along with status and social skills there is something like emotional mastery/inner state/self-amusement. It is the ability to reframe situations and remain in a positive mood regardless of the external environment. Instead of interpreting events as negative/neutral you take a perspective on them this is positive and/or gives you agency. If something goes wrong you might laugh, propose a solution, not be bothered, or behave as though the universe is teaching you an important lesson so that you may become wiser. You do not want to react to negative situations by getting angry or showing that you have no agency in the situation. This is a very complex topic and I’m not summarizing it well. It is not the same as being out of touch with your emotions.

This is essentially what a therapist will teach you. For reference: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336

Finally, looking at this advice from depth psychology perspective it is forcing men to present a specific persona that doesn’t reflect their true self.

It's possible for most men to learn to perform personas that have ready access to relationships and, yes, casual sex. But for me, although I succeeded at that, it was a fool's errand because it confused a terminal goal (finding someone who brings me joy in sharing a monogamous, lifelong relationship) with proximal ones (having sex; being able to wear the label "has a girlfriend"). It's an easy mistake to make, because one requires the other. But a lot of the strategies offered work against the terminal goal, because you're just learning to perform a persona, and, at least in my case, any benefit in dating you get from that isn't anything that will lead to the relationship you want.

Its kind of maddening that optimizing for simply attracting women and having sex with them will, in extremis, tend to pull you further from your goal of getting that stable, devoted partner you can share a life with.

You'd think "Oh I'll just acquire as much female interest as possible and then winnow down my options and pick a good one."

But the factors that will lead you to encounter and appeal to the 'good ones' are some of the first ones you'd discard in the goal of finding ones willing to sleep with you quickly. You are filtering out the ones that would be best suited as life partners. So you suddenly find that 'winnowing down' a field of bad options just leaves you with bad options.

And having a mentality of "commitment bad" is core to being a player, so there's a direct paradox there. If you DO manage to attract a decent woman, your own internalized reluctance to commit will be a stumbling block for you.

But you still have to be good enough at the skills that make women attracted to get the one worth keeping, you just can't keep going down the tempting, easy path that this suggests.

One of the main reasons that bad faith actors like Andrew Tait are so popular is because many people in our society dont want to confront various hard truths, that many in red-pill spaces actively expose: Looks, Money, & Masculinity matter.

I like Andrew Wilson's take on the reddpill/manosphere: they have correct description but incorrect prescription. Many of the mainstream people are unable to even debate inside the redpill sphere purely due to a fear of being tainted by it, and then ganged up by male and female feminists. So all these prescriptions are living on without any serious challenge with a few notable exceptions. I can also give an example where Andrew Wilson (an orthodox debater) was debating I think Fresh & Fit when it came to their prescription that you should sleep at least with dozens of women before getting into relationship. Andrew had an interesting strategy for it:

  • Did you not say that easy women are of no value to a proper high value man? If yes, then how can easy women be of low value if they provide some value to high-value man in form of this mythical "experience"? So now hoes from the club and dumb prostitutes and OF bimbos are hidden masters of love, who will teach high value men about successful relationship? How?

  • Also why it is necessary to sleep with all those women to get this "experience"? Is it not maybe sufficient to get their number or some such and then dump them, maybe even saving yourself from some nasty herpes or something?

No matter what you think about these arguments, what was interesting was how their edifice crumbled. It was no longer enough to go through the standard redpill talking points of divorce rates or hypergamy or paternity fraud stats etc. As soon as the discussion was taken over to prescriptions and moral oughts, it collapsed.

The advice of planning to have multiple partners strikes me as directionally correct for most men. I made some mistakes with girlfriends and women in my formative years. Those mistakes have not followed me cuz things ended with those women. I also had to learn some things about women that just can't be taught. Or at least I was too dumb to be taught those things. The degree of female emotional attachment that comes with sex was hard for me to understand. I definitely hurt some people before I figured that out.

Planning to be a man-whore and rack up a body count seems like taking it too far. Sometimes the red pillers feel like a cargo cult for relationships. They seem to understand the pre-requisites, but have weird beliefs about why those things are pre-requisites.

The advice of planning to have multiple partners strikes me as directionally correct for most men.

Is it really true? As far as I am aware in all studies related to quality of relationships, the lower the number of previous partners, the better relationship satisfaction reported - for both sexes, like with this graph. Again, it may just be a correlation as for sure low number of sexual partners also may just be proxy for things like religiosity which is then tied to life satisfaction etc. But it sure is at least a hint and definitely evidence against the contrary narrative.

As for my personal anecdote I cannot say that my previous experience was too useful, not that I had a lot. I got married relatively young and I am still with my wife. If I compare my current wife even at the time we got together and my ex of 2 years before, it was a completely different experience. Attitudes, hobbies, relationship expectations and yes also sexuality - all of that was quite different.

Planning to be a man-whore and rack up a body count seems like taking it too far. Sometimes the red pillers feel like a cargo cult for relationships.

I actually think it is absolutely counterproductive. I do think having so many escapades has negative impact on a person, at minimum it has to be a time and resource hog even discounting emotional damage. Speaking of which - I know of three separate womanizers who slept with dozens+ women, who admitted that they have severe trust issues and experience severe jealousy with huge negative impact on their ability to keep a serious partner, just because of their previous experience with easy women. By severe jealousy I am talking about checking if the bed is warm after coming back from work to satisfy their OCD imagination of unfaithful wife. God forbid their wife took afternoon nap.

Interesting.

The graph does imply that up to four previous partners is fine. That seems like a safe number to me too.

I didn't realize I'd be in the manwhore category, depending on what counts as previous partners I've had between 5 (just counting long term girlfriends) and a few dozen (counting anything).

I'm very satisfied with my wife. I think I would have been far less satisfied with any of my previous girlfriends (which is why I broke up with them). I did learn things from those relationships that have definitely made me a better husband. I'm not sure I would have been able to woo my now wife, keep her as a girlfriend, take the leap to propose to her, or stay monogamous and in love during marriage. There are specific lessons I learned from previous relationships to help me through each of those stages.

Maybe other people learn faster than me, or know not to make certain mistakes in the first place. I was an idiot that required some learning.

It was absolutely a time and resource hog, but I don't really know what else would be worth spending my time and resources on. My free time would have been eaten up with playing video games, watching comedy, and arguing with people online. And those things are fun, but not fulfilling.

I often get the sense that the red pillers (meaning people who are really into that community, not just anyone who agrees with some of the ideas) don't actually want to have sex with women, they just want the ego boost / validation of having sex with women. They don't seem to be driven by either lust or romance. Instead, they seem to be driven by fear, ego, desire for status, and so on.

Did you not say that easy women are of no value to a proper high value man? If yes, then how can easy women be of low value if they provide some value to high-value man in form of this mythical "experience"? So now hoes from the club and dumb prostitutes and OF bimbos are hidden masters of love, who will teach high value men about successful relationship? How?

This feels like it's going to descend into the kind of boxing/MMA discourse about quality of opponent.

It's worth pointint out that it's not not 'our society' (western, anglophone), it's every society. People are just socialising less in person in every country on the planet.

So any advice has to start with this, go outside and talk to people in person.

Does no good if everyone else is still on their phones.

My experience is that the problem there is mostly with women. Men still go out and attempt to meet women in person. But women stay inside using social media for 100% of their social life. Or if they do go out, they put out signals of "I'm just here to dance, do not talk to me!" as loudly as possible, while staying clustered with a tight circle of female friends and avoid male eye contact.

That isn't borne out by the data. Women socialise in person more than men (although both are seeing massive declines), and screen time is essentially the same for men and women. Among young single people, men are slightly more likely to be 'looking' (67% vs 61%) but I would imagine that reflects the more passive nature of female romance.

Most of what i would say is in the comments there. There's very different types of socializing and screen time. Women are more likely to socialize in person with a group of already exiating friends (usually all-female) and actively avoid meeting men outside. They're also using sites like instagram and pinterest the most. Men spend their screen time on things like games, twitter, and reddit, which are only barely social, then go out active trying to meet women and get mocked when they fail.

Do you have any evidence for your description, beyond your own impression of what you've seen? Because by definition, you are not meeting either the men or the women who are not going out. And would I be right to assume that you belong to one of the groups you are talking about (i.e. men who go out to meet women and get rejected)? Because you can see how that might colour your perceptions.

Because come on, it would be a remarkable coincidence if this civilisation-destroying technological combo (the internet plus smartphones) had massive effects on women's approach to dating but no effects on mens' approach to dating whatsoever, and in spite of all the evidence showing that it is affecting both sexes in more or less the same way and in the same magnitude.

I think you're correct that most of the change has been due to ambiverts becoming introverts and the overall range of socialization going down, but I'd add to it that there's a phenomenon where increasingly women who go out socializing are not interested in meeting men during that socializing, even in traditional spots for that kind of thing such as bars. I'm not really speaking from experience here, but we've had several posters talk about how younger women tend to stick together and just spend time with each other at bars/clubs/events in a way that wasn't necessarily true in the past. I don't think that's most of the effect, but there does seem to have been a change in how people socialize in public, even when they do.

That said, I'm in the "my idea of a good night is World of Warcraft" personality cluster. I found a partner who's part of the "my idea of a good night is Netflix True Crime documentary" personality cluster. We met each other in college, and I would say our relationship pushes us both to get out of the house more, do fun things, go on a fun date, go for a road trip, although we enjoy snuggling on the couch just as much.

She sent me some screenshots from this video the other day, and texted "We're the 0.74%. I'm glad I met you in college, it was the correct time to meet someone." I think introverted people tend to disappear into the ether after college -- that's true of me -- as the structured time with a cohort of similar-aged people ends after years of school and college. What's left in terms of "obligatory situations where you can meet people" is basically the workplace, especially for the increasingly irreligious who aren't 'joiners,' and that's... fraught, even on a good day.

A big part of the argument for coeducation back in the day was that it made it possible for men and women to meet in a shared collegiate environment instead of the old tradition, where the fraternity boys would throw parties and the girls at the nearby women's college would show up. The joke in conservative Christian circles is that women go to college to get the esteemed Mrs. Degree. My mother was actually recommended by her pastor to go to a regional Christian college because she'd had an engagement that blew up and still was eager to find a man to settle down with; she took the advice, and Mr. Urquan Sr. capitalized on the opportunity.

As for how you meet people after college, that's where it gets startlingly fraught and the modern, internet-enabled attitude of "if it's not required, I won't be there" becomes destructive.

but we've had several posters talk about how younger women tend to stick together and just spend time with each other at bars/clubs/events in a way that wasn't necessarily true in the past.

I guess that's what I'm skeptical about. I was hitting on girls 15-20 years ago, and women going around in groups was normal then too. The old pickup guys designed strategies around it. The image of a young woman sitting at a bar waiting for men to hit on her was just a thing that happened on TV. Women, agreeable as they are, are more likely to say 'I'm just here to hang out with my friends' to a guy they're not interested in, rather than be truthful and say that they would be interested if he were better looking or more charismatic. So the guys on this forum are getting rejected, which is obviously frustrating, and taking the reasons women are giving literally, which is the classic male-female communication failing.

There doesn't seem to be good data from significantly far in the past but this source suggests that the decline in singles looking for love has been driven mostly by men, between 2019 and 2024.

I agree college is an optimal place to meet long term partners. Attraction can build through encountering people many times in different settings (in a group project, and then again at a party). You get to know someone deeper and evaluate them on less superficial traits. Sometime after college many single people seem to accumulate baggage/cynicism, where they used to have optimism/hope.

There are a couple interesting trends on my radar about college:

  • When a college degree no longer guarantees a good job it can reduce a woman's likelihood of committing to an LTR. If the guy is going to end up as a gig/retail worker then he wouldn't make a good partner. So women might want to wait longer to commit until the guy proves he is employed in a stable career.
  • The gender balance of undergrad is something like 57% women in 2025 (varies locally). When an environment contains more women then the men can shift the preferences to more casual relationships in college. In theory this is good for men looking for a LTR, but it creates a signaling challenge because the man needs to differentiate himself from men who just use LTR language to get hookups.

Literally your own link said that women are using instagram and pinterest more, while men are doing online gaming more. But that all gets rolled into "screen time. " Frankly i thought that was just common sense that doesn't need a source? Its not a remarkable coincidence that women and men are different.

'Women and men have different media habits' is obviously not the key part of your argument that I'm addressing, it's that the coupling recession is the fault of women and not the fault of men, contrary to all the actual evidence that both sexes are retreating from the social sphere. The reduction in people coupling up isn't driven by men getting rejected and women doing the rejecting, it's driven by the men and women who aren't going outside at all.

Because from the perspective of forming a relationship, staying at home scrolling Instagram and staying at home playing video games are exactly the same.

I do try and steer away from Bulverism, but this really seems like you're just a guy who has gotten rejected a lot and is bitter about it, and this is driving your explanation of why coupling is decreasing. Am I wrong?

There's getting rejected a lot, and then there's getting rejected with language that the mere act of speaking to a woman in public is some kind of violation. "And then he tried flirting with me, ugh. At a bar, of all places. Who does that?"

I've had women approach ME in bars only for nearby women to reflexively try to "save" her, because they can't wrap their head around a woman wanting to talk to a man and I must be up to no good. And yes, I am bitter about this.

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Like all men I've had my share of both romance and rejections. I am currently in a good long-term relationship. So, no, your personal attack on me is false.

My claim was that men are still purposefully going out in real-life spaces with the intention of meeting women, while women are increasingly relying on social media to get interaction from men. That seems both obviously true in my lived experience, and also true in the evidence that you cited. You seemed to make a very strong claim that "men and women are the same" from some random reddit link about "screen time" which isn't the issue at all. Scrolling Instagram vs playing a video game is very different, when one involves getting likes and DMs from the opposite sex and the other is killing NPCs.

But I admit I get a little defensive about this stuff, because I see so many young men getting absolutely gaslit by feminist dating advice. To put this in your words, I do try and steer away from Bulverism, but this really seems like you're just a guy who argues a lot on the internet and has gotten bitter about it, and this is driving your white knighting of women and attacks on young men. Am I wrong?

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Even though it hasn't been talked about much here, probably because an average TheMotte user skews older, none of this stuff is new to the internet. It's no secret that having status, charisma and being attractive gets you far in dating, and in life in general. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how could one solve this issue at scale. To me, and I've talked about this multiple times on here, it all comes down to screen time. Screens are competing for every minute of our free time, and they are winning. What's easier? Going out on a friday night with the boys (expensive, requires planning and effort, payoff uncertain) or playing some games and then scrolling tiktok until you doze off? You just had a tough week at work, you deserve some rest. Screen time it is. Many people, both men and women, are just opting out from living their real life. It's especially hard to make a case for men to 'waste' their time on all this dating bullshit when it feels like you have to pretty much be James Bond (status, charisma, looks) - look at the list you wrote. Just going off anecdotes, none of my older relatives had to be an all around great man^tm to get into a relationship. My dad was a recently divorced junior engineer (never been to the gym, smoking, drinking, -7 vision, greying at 32) with a son when he met my mom. My (much) older half brother met his (very pretty) wife while being a piss broke bartender with a huge gut and round face due to all the alcohol he consumed on the job. I'm sure stuff like this happens nowadays too, but at much smaller scale. Everyone is glued to a screen, opportunities to be around another gender in an environment where it's encouraged to mingle are almost nonexistent, and hypergamy is making it feel like you have to be at the top of life before you even shoot your shot. So, somehow reducing screentime, while also increasing opportunities for men and women to interact in a natural way would solve dating issues for a lot of men. Israel's birthright, a free 10 day trip to Israel for young jewish adults, where they purposefully group up participants with people of similar age and opposite gender doing their mandatory IDF service, comes to mind.

What's easier? Going out on a friday night with the boys (expensive, requires planning and effort, payoff uncertain) or playing some games and then scrolling tiktok until you doze off?

This is still answering on a personal level, but I think Scott's take on "micromarriages" is a nice framing here. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/theres-a-time-for-everyone

That is, frame going out with the boys and being around girls as a win in and of itself. The attitude is the same in poker: praise yourself for making the right move (probabilistically) even if the pot doesn't go your way.

I wonder how we can encourage that attitude as a society. Maybe celebs start #nophonefridays where everyone goes out without their phones. Maybe establishments start offering some sort of stamps for showing up to events, which can somehow be turned into actual clout or gain.

I'd like to see better public social spaces. Bars are kind of the default, but they feel like a particularly economically extractive kind of space. It does feel like a waste to go to a loud, crowded bar, and buy overpriced drinks for a woman just to get the chance to socialize with her. Where's a place where someone can just drop a $25 and have a nice environment to chat and meet new people?

There are all sorts of social coordination problems that religious gatherings solve. Volunteer organizations too, but they tend to be a bit more sex segregated. I've never heard of anyone IRL meeting anyone (friend, romantic, other) at a bar (I'm an older millennial). A bar is where you go with someone who has already agreed to a date. Most people I know met people at college, a club, or church, then at some point invited them to a bar. Which makes a lot more sense, it's risky to go out with someone who doesn't have any mutual friends, and is unknown in one's social circle.

You don't have to buy drinks for women to socialize with them at bars. It's also possible to find chill bars where you can have a conversation at a normal volume. Unfortunately, alcohol is terrible for health.

It's no secret that having status, charisma and being attractive gets you far in dating, and in life in general.

You'd be shocked at how many deny these basic realities.

But outside of that, you have a good point. As i mentioned before lack of socialization is really killing us here, but this post is geared slightly toward what an individual could do to max out his chances in the context of the current state of affairs (though i would like to see boys raised with these 4 things in mind)

It's not just a lack of socialization, but a kind of mal-socialization that seems to now go on in schools and institutions. You don't just have to learn the basics, but you also have to unlearn the bullshit ideas and habits and norms you've been acculturated into. It's like having to move to another country and integrate into a foreign culture.

You'd be shocked at how many deny these basic realities.

Eh, I would agree with you if we had this conversation 8-10 years ago (height of body positivity era). With rise of looksmaxxing, glp-1s into mainstream even the slowest of the bunch are admitting the obvious.

but this post is geared more towards what an individual could do to max out his chances in the context of the current

fair enough. You made a decent list. I do think it's important to not tie self improvement to getting into a relationship. Going out to dance, while hating it as an activity on its own, is an easy way to start hating yourself and life if expectation of getting a girlfriend out of it is not met.

Also dancing/bar scene has bifurcated a lot more into 'people who love clubbing' than it would have been a couple decades ago when there were less entertainment options.

I have an objectively hot female friend who would be a total catch for any guy. Very confident, green flags around being able to fit in with guy-groups, heaps of hobbies, etc. She's single at 32 and doesn’t seem to have had meaningful relationships, and isn't hooking up or anything.

Got to talking about her dating life. I asked her why not go to a bar. She said "do I really want a guy who does bars and clubs at 32?"

I do think she's holding out for a top 5% earner who's tall and handsome.

She's done a recent round of dates off apps. Nobody got a second date. She's seriously disappointed with the type of guys she has available to her. And my thinking is that most great guys (ha) are probably locked down by a great girl (ha) at that age.

She did the career thing, and has somewhat waited out the pool of guys that she considers worthy of a relationship. She's probably going to settle for somebody at one point and be somewhat quietly disappointed.

I have an objectively hot female friend who would be a total catch for any guy. Very confident, green flags around being able to fit in with guy-groups, heaps of hobbies, etc. She's single at 32 and doesn’t seem to have had meaningful relationships, and isn't hooking up or anything.

Assuming she is childless, almost certainly she is being wildly over-picky.

She's seriously disappointed with the type of guys she has available to her.

If she had planned to start looking seriously for the love of her life in her 30s and expects that she'll have the same success, as measured by the "quality" of the man, as the women who make this their top priority from the time they're 19, she's in for a bad time. The really good ones--both men and women--are locked down early, as you've surmised. By prioritizing career, she's made a tradeoff, whether she realizes it now or not. There is no "having it all".

Of course, there's always black swan events. If, against all odds, she finds her doting 6'4" doctor with the chiseled abs and jaw, she'll be on reddit's r/askwomenover30 in a few years giving really bad advice to people who will then be in the situation she's in now.

the women who make this their top priority from the time they're 19

I'm pretty confident that no such women exist anywhere. Either they don’t make this a priority because it doesn’t even occur to them and would find it icky were it to be suggested to them, or their family make it a top priority for her with her having little choice in the matter because she lives in a patriarchal culture. What does happen in reality is that some women pair up in high school or college and remain committed, usually cohabiting for long years before marrying and having children. But it’s a matter of convenience, not personal strategy. If this does not happen, her chances of mating successfully will start quickly diminishing in the current social reality.

It does need to be said- focusing on becoming a normie housewife(after all, you basically cannot be a career oriented woman without college first, which is going to last longer than that) starting at 19, or in the right circles perhaps 16 or 17, has fairly good odds of working out.

But this woman does not want that. They want a ‘high value’(they and I may disagree on the definition/relative importance of terms here) man. That 6’4 doctor is not going to marry a woman without a college degree. If she’d focused on this at 23(I don’t know how she would do this, but assuming she did) rather than on career advancement, sûre, she’d have had better odds of landing the high-powered husband. But wealthy men do not marry waitresses.

That 6’4 doctor is not going to marry a woman without a college degree.

Male doctors mostly marry other doctors and other healthcare professionals, probably for reasons of availability. I'd be surprised if they cared whether their partners have a certificate, a 2 year degree, or a 4-year degree. (less surprised if they had some preference for or against other doctors)

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wealthy men do not marry waitresses.

Well, not the first time, anyway.

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Agree on all points. I mentioned in another reply that in addition to her real monday-friday job, she is also a qualified physio and is still working at a hospital on sundays. I'm guessing she has half a chance with a doctor who comes out of a bad break up or something.

I can understand not liking the nightclub scene. But I would give the laidback bar a chance; I see mostly older people at a lot of these places, and they are one of the few third places still around to find people today.

heaps of hobbies

What hobbies? Can't she meet any interesting people through said hobbies?

A huge variety. The usual chick stuff, she does pilates, has a side gig cake making business, works a second job at a hospital as a physio on sundays (I suspect her plan with this is to meet a doctor), studied data analytics in her spare time, mostly for fun and to help her with random tasks at work. She's done a lot of different dance styles, coaches high school gymnastics.

She also does charity work.

Whether you're interested in those things or not, she is definitely out there doing things. And compared to the average instagram scroller, she might be in the top 5% in terms of extra curricular activity. And she's a thin, blonde, athletic looking person. She's attractive.

I'm not single, and I'm more her big brother type of work friend. I would never date her because she's got way too much going on in a week to week kinda way. But there's a lot of guys who would be able and very willing to match her energy (I would have though??)

But there's a lot of guys who would be able and very willing to match her energy

This is the point where I start laughing hysterically.

No. No, there is not. The reason I say this is because I do know of atleast one person who does match that energy - and the amount of hoops that he had to jump through to find someone who did match him was... well, it wasn't herculean, but it was definitely more than one and definitely more than you'd expect given the guy in question.

Ironically enough, to a medical doctor. Albiet, one who was still in school, but she later graduated and started practicing. So.

If anything, you detailing her list of hobbies explains pretty much everything about her and why she's having so much trouble.

If she does end up happily married, it'll likely be through a remarkable conflux of near impossible events. Or she unexpected matches with someone that's her total reverse, I dunno.

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They may be entirely gender segregated hobbies.

The good guys (Doctor who is a 10 or whatever) are either locked down or full time dating app lifer whose stuck in their own stasis of go nowhere hookups.

She did the career thing, and has somewhat waited out the pool of guys that she considers worthy of a relationship. She's probably going to settle for somebody at one point and be somewhat quietly disappointed.

Or not. At least from my PoV, it seems that one part of the relationship recession is women who got a wrong impression what kind of guy they can realistically have a long-term relationship with and what real relationships entail, and after seeing the reality that is possible, they decide to forego long-term relationships altogether. And as you say, these women often don't sleep around much either; They are, for lack of better word, volcels.

But otherwise I agree, settling and then quietly resenting your partner is also a popular option.

This is something the data definitely bears out. It is better to find a spouse when young VS old.

Did she use to visit night/dance clubs when she was younger?

One of the main reasons that bad faith actors like Andrew Tait are so popular

The thing is... most "Tate followers" I've encountered irl are completely off brand of what shows like "Adolescence" depict them to be. These men usually display a cluster of traits that fits into the dark triad chad mould who experience near zero barriers to securing sexual/romantic access to conventionally high value women (attractive, educated, stable family backgrounds). I've seen dropdead gorgeous women voluntarily enter and sustain dysfunctional relationships with deadbeats, drug abusers and serial cheaters who treat them like fleshlights.

And these dynamics seem to emerge with little deliberate strategy on the men's part. They naturally elicit strong attachment responses and produce intense dopamine/oxytocin surges during sexual peaks that make the experience feel like an unholy symphony of fear, pleasure, pain and thrill (a recurring trope in women's "dark romance" novels and wattpad stories). And the man is positioned as someone who is uniquely capable of delivering this experience, so the woman becomes behaviourally contingent upon his impulses to maintain access to it.

And incels know this. They do not need some "Andrew Tate" to tell them what they can personally observe in their immediate social environments. They're out here perusing 2 dozen pickup tactics online in an attempt to secure, and fail at, what comes like second nature to Jeremy Meeks, for example. But IMO that's not what they're about. They're mad about the mainstream discourse insists that, unlike male horniness, female attraction is largely meritocratic (and more "refined), and that their dating failures stem primarily from deficient personality or some moral failing.

When narrative collides with lived experience, Streisand effect amplifies some of the rhetoric into reactive extremes. I don't see a structural intervention ameliorating this behavioural sink. A paraplegic can never become a runner, perhaps it's simpler to just break the news?

The basic insight of the red-pillers was that the dark triad is attractive to women and people who don't do so naturally can often exhibit or fake such traits and get success. Or, in the crude terms of a past generation: "Chicks dig jerks." And "At least some kinds of jerks. Be that kind of jerk."

Mainstream discourse might act like female attraction is meritocratic, but in my experience if one talks to actual women they tend to be quite open about the non-meritocratic nature of their attraction to men. I suppose, however, that the majority of straight men who have little sexual experience don't talk to many women in general, so they are not exposed to this. And if they were, it would likely not make them feel much better just because it's honest.

It's possible that women's attraction to men, despite not being meritocratic, is more meritocratic than men's attraction to women. In any case, I don't think it's less meritocratic. But that, too, is small comfort to straight men who don't have much sexual experience.

but in my experience if one talks to actual women they tend to be quite open about the non-meritocratic nature of their attraction to men.

I agree with this. Although, a close lady friend asked me a couple times why she's never seen me on a date (my last relationship was in 2021). She asked if I was closeted, I said no. Then the next 10 minutes was her telling me I didn't have to be ashamed and that I can confide in her. I realised even mature, experienced women can't fully comprehend a reality where you could go 4-5 years without anyone showing interest. I won't claim it's 100% not my fault though, the peace is underrated and at this point, a relationship low key feels like an invasion.

Mainstream discourse might act like female attraction is meritocratic, but in my experience if one talks to actual women they tend to be quite open about the non-meritocratic nature of their attraction to men.

The Blue Tribe has decreed that only feminists are allowed to have an opinion on gender relations, and feminists will insist that female sexuality is meritocratic on average (while defending any individual woman's choices to date badboys, especially their own) because to do otherwise makes women look bad.

This is made worse because the Red Tribe thinks that the people who should be listened to on gender relations are pastors who are , in the current year, more likely than not to say that female sexuality is meritocratic even if they are otherwise-conservative evangelicals. The idea that if you aren't getting laid you must not be praying hard enough is sufficiently pervasive in modern American Christian culture that even the otherwise admirable TitaniumButterfly AAQC hints at it.

It also didn't help that Roissy deliberately chose a term ("alpha") that implies female sexuality is meritocratic (but with a less pussified definition of "merit" than the standard one) while correctly insisting that it is not, and a lot of less talented manosphere writers following him didn't understand that he was using "alpha" in a sense where the positive connotations were ironic.

And access to the ground truth is not available to the men who need it because women do not discuss their own sexuality frankly around men they do not trust. Women being open about their non-meritocratic sexuality happens in all-female settings or in the kind of art fag-ridden mixed groups where straight men who can't get laid are already selected out. Hence the advice to read bestselling Amazon romance slop to understand what women want rather than asking them.

The idea that if you aren't getting laid you must not be praying hard enough is sufficiently pervasive in modern American Christian culture

And any tangible advice is the usual blue tribe rhetoric sprinkled with some macho talk. Don't be insecure! Wife up that 37yo Christian mom with a totally not-unChristian history! Yet, socially stunted 20yo simps probably do line up for her. Just cuz a 5/10M is willing to fuck a 5/10F doesn't mean the reverse is true.

You’re not a stepdad, you’re the one who stepped up. Plus, the sperm donor of a biodad already knocked her up so you don’t have to, thus you’re the winner here.

Indeed, both progressives and modern mainstream conservatives are on the same page with regard to women’s Wonderfulness—and Fun, Freedom for women and duties, obligations, Being a Real Man and Stepping Up for men.

You are ignoring, of course, that even secular, socially liberal red tribers do not see ‘getting laid’ as worth encouraging in itself. The goal is supposed to be a stable relationship that forms a nuclear family. That does not mean that the red tribe necessarily hates premarital sex; that means that it is not the metric by which romantic success is measured.

"If you're not getting laid, you're not praying hard enough" is a message that gets applied by cucked pastors to married sex as well as premarital sex.

I've seen this as well personally. I think this comes down to a combination of point 4, and the meme of "fatherless behavior". These women probably have mistaken these tough guy, treat people like shit behaviors to being "manly" due to poor upbringing. The fact that many women choose these bad actors definitely doesn't help the situations.

Needless to say, my own father & mother are happily married and he is nothing like tate. So its not the case all women are gonna fall for that. They are screwed in the head and you wont be able to have a good relationship with them. And we should also be teaching girls what to be looking for in a man, beyond just "tall w/ money". A lot of people find a person sexually attractive, and then scan for other traits later. Not a good strategy.

We shouldn't be framing the current relationship issues as just a "your a lazy bum" problem. The fact that it exists across societies indicates a larger societal wide problem beyond just the behaviors of individuals.

See that's why I mentioned women with stable family backgrounds... for women who've never had a good relationship model growing up, it's not completely surprising that they repeat their trauma cycle. But why do smart, college educated women get manipulated by high school dropouts? IMO there's something to pin on nature here. These women view stability and direct communication as boring. They've lived a boring, predictable life, and now they crave life on the edge. They need the mystery, intensity and emotional distance to make the attraction work. Imagine you want adventure, would you go paragliding or golfing?

There could also be a generational issue, women in developed countries have never had more options in history. Overpopulation and rising living costs have generally made home ownership and childbearing almost unattainable for the middle class. Singlehood among women is celebrated in western culture. If family is assumed not to be on the cards anyway, women are free to explore the darker edges of their sexuality. I don't think this was nearly as common when our parents were growing up.

Hard agree with the last line though. I've been to a few big cities in India, and I was surprised to see similar dynamics play out over there. Which underscores my suspicion that this is just female nature in its raw, dysfunctional glory.

Honestly I’ve been surprised how poorly my dating life has gone despite ostensibly having it together. I’m nearing 30 and it feels like an endless slog. But hey if every person I meet is an asshole, it might just be me.

I like the term ‘jestermaxxing’ and similar vocab from 2010s incel fourms now appropriated by streamers. That word feels like what I have to do - desperately try to entertain someone indifferent to me. 9/10 times, even if I give it my best, it’s not going anywhere.

I wouldn’t generalize that to most people around me, but I really think women will never appreciate the kind of perseverance it takes to keep pushing forward. It’s a unique and lonely experience, but you get a glimpse of hope every once in a while and go chase it down.

Status and social skills help but unless you put yourself in situations where you will meet people, you will work and then go home to sit around with your thoughts. The places where you meet people could expose you to people that hurt your ego and make you even more cynical. But it’s better than not trying.

I think the dating apps are especially demeaning and demoralizing for men. While many women pay for subscriptions, it’s so that they can be extra picky and use travel features. For men it is a racket built to exploit your loneliness - but hey maybe that 48 hour super Boost for $100 will get you somewhere!

Of course there’s a lot more value in long term commitments etc. I’m sure if you meet kind women at art galleries and through friends of friends, it’s much different. But if you want occasional meet-cutes or to meet someone at a club, you sure have to put up with a lot.

That word feels like what I have to do - desperately try to entertain someone indifferent to me. 9/10 times, even if I give it my best, it’s not going anywhere.

Do NOT do this. Women can smell desperation from a mile away and it's a huge turnoff. You also need to align your expectations properly - the majority of people you meet on first dates will not be a good match.

You're already doing good if you can regularly go on dates. You just need to improve this experience. Try to have a mindset where you can still have fun and you can get some enjoyment out of it, even if it goes nowhere. It's extremely hard to do for antisocial people, but remember normies can enjoy chatting up passerbys that they will never see again.

Of course you still have to looksmaxx and up your social and flirting skills as well. Don't neglect this, as it highly affects the level of indifference that women have.

Of course you still have to looksmaxx and up your social and flirting skills as well. Don't neglect this, as it highly affects the level of indifference that women have.

It Just so Happens that as your looks improve—your personality, social and flirting skills, and perceived showering frequency all somehow automatically improve with women as well without any further work or life changes.

Doesn't this make logical sense?

Sometimes I do feel like there's a kind of opposite effect for men where if a 8+ starts being friendly to me for no obvious reasons my immediate reaction is 'wait what's the angle/scam here' as opposed to 'woah this beautiful person has randomly decided to kindle a friendshi'

I mean, one of the few situations where an average man will suddenly find himself on the receiving end of attention from multiple attractive women is going to a (decent) strip club. Where, of course, they are trained and optimized for getting you to pay as much money as quickly as possible.

So you figure out real quick that attractive women showing spontaneous interest are usually being put up to it by some other third party with other motivations.

And it is very hard to identify the rare case where the intentions are genuine, and the further along you go trying to figure it out, the more you're exposing yourself to whatever scam is being run.

One time I made a profile on a sugar-daddy website, and had the crazy experience of the hot women (well, assuming they were real) crowding into MY inbox. Including, through random utter chance, one girl I knew from high school.

Quite the clearpill for me.

I can relate to this quite a bit, and I think the whole dating app experience has made me quite indifferent to most women in general. I'd rather have my independence than date or marry someone I don't like.

It was a terrible thing to notice that the mere act of swiping across 100 profiles makes me feel more indifference towards them all.

It isn't helped by the fact that most profiles converge on 1 of like 3 archetypes.

And then getting a handful of matches, engaging in the best playful banter you can manage, then having the interest peter out and then unmatch without a date and its clear that there's no point to investing feelings.

No individual connection has value at that point.

No individual connection has value at that point.

One of the problems with internet dating is that people end up trying to force/enforce a connection before they'll meet IRL. There are all kinds of understandable reasons for why that is the way it is, but dating might be a little bit less onerous if people could dial their expectations down to the level where they could go out for a coffee without having to convince themselves that this one definitely might be The One.

With lowered expectations and the prospect of a raft of more low stakes dates there would less incentive for people to get overly invested in the outcome of any particular date before that connection has developed.

It's hard to solve a stopping problem if you constantly resist, or encounter resistance, starting.

Yes and no.

Even moderately attractive women have a ton of options in front of them. They could go on a new casual date every single day if so inclined.

The stopping problem is basically the ENTIRETY of what they face. But most don't have anything resembling a strategy.

And the very fact that they have so many options inflates their self-perceived value, so their immediate incentive is to keep going until their PERFECT candidate arrives.

But that perfect candidate is likely a dude who, himself, has many options. And so the market devolves into something like the Redpill model of women in active pursuit of those perfect candidates, and those perfect candidates able to passively select/exploit casual hookups almost at will.

For the guys who don't have options, there's not much to be done about their stopping problem, since they can't select from what they don't have.

I really think its just the gamified nature of the apps that makes it unworkable even for those with a good strategy as it mixes in people with very different expectations and backgrounds.

It isn't helped by the fact that most profiles converge on 1 of like 3 archetypes.

Do share.

In my local area you have:

  1. The nominally conservative country girl who loves church and outdoorsy stuff and the beach. But there's usually some tell on her profile that she's not REALLLY ready to settle down. Beach photos in a bikini often somewhere on the profile, and THAT'S usually how you find out if she's gone heavy on the tattoos or not. Photos of her wearing cowboy gear, hanging out with the girlies, and sometimes holding a fish.

  2. The career-first lady, always has the professional outfits, usually has travel photos, usually subtly implies that she makes more than you. Usually in their mid-late twenties, these are good prospects but the question is always 'why hasn't someone snatched you up.' Gym selfies are the raciest thing they'll post. Rarely tatted up.

  3. Nurses. Oh so many nurses. Usually the most direct about what they expect/look for, and almost always have some racy pics in clubwear, or bikini, or just something casually suggestive. The vague message seems to be "I'm hot and approachable but NOT. EASY." 80% of the time happily displaying tats.

Less common but comes up as well are the bartenders/service workers who are either the ones who are actually modest in their expectations or the least aware of their relatively low status.

There's a deluge of single moms but I filter those.

There's a slog both ways but it expresses itself differently. I'm now married with kids but did like 2 years on the dating apps in 2020-2022 plus still have friends/relatives of both genders on them.

Women tend to be more of the 'generate a profile for 2 weeks every 6 months in a moment of particular loneliness/boredom then either find a boyfriend or get spooked off by a bad experience' model whilst men are more eternally optimistic. Plus the barometer for 'bad experience' for women in my experience can just be 'oh I had 2 dates with guy and they went nowhere and I had a project at work pick up' so it's not like they're even being raped and pillaged perse.

I got super lucky with my now-wife since I essentially happened to be first cab off the rank on her second attempt at dating after a multi-year relationship, especially since she flaked on a first date with the guy she'd set one up with on the prior 6 months window and then deleted the app. I know my current status is essentially pure RNG dice rolling even having found somebody good who I have chemistry with, since with her pattern of behavior realistically there were probably thousands of eligible bachelors in my proximity and she was only going to engage with like... 5 per app download period. And this pattern is quite similar for her friends and other 'educated, not particularly promiscuous and career orientated' women who I've met socially and dated briefly.

To be fair, one could argue that everything about our lives is RNG dice rolling. Even for the things that we successfully work to improve about our lives, it's RNG dice rolling that gave us the necessary health, tenacity, intelligence, and lucky happenstance of birth location to actually make the improvent possible.

With some of our closest friends, it's often possible that if on certain days we had stayed home for some random reason (maybe a head cold) instead of going to a particular location, we might never have had the conversation that initiated our friendships. Same with many other things.

But this point of view, while it may possibly be true, is not a very fun or helpful one to hold, it seems. The sense of agency feels good and is motivating.

I don't mind RNG when

A) its the natural result of large scale processes that combine the effects of hundreds of different inputs...

and

B) There are clearly steps I can take to change my own odds or move to a different place in the gamespace where I think the odds are more favorable, and thus have some control of my fate.

The whole problem with apps is they're manipulating the RNG for their purposes, and in so doing skewing outcomes in a way that is REALLY bad for the players, and in a way that the players themselves are unable to influence.

Even in a Casino I can at least make the choice between playing Poker, Blackjack, Slots, or Roulette, with the varying influence of 'skill' on the outcomes that is available there, even knowing the house always wins.

I mean I'd agree broadly that one's life would likely change a lot without exact specific conversations etcetera. On the other hand if you assume you've got like actual proximity to most people in your social life through work, school, hobbies etcetera you do get a lot more shots.

See, when you say it out loud like that it sounds genuinely psychopathic and someone looking at this from the outside would say that the ecosystem created by the apps needs to burn down entirely and the earth salted.

"I go the casino once every 6 months, play the slots for 10 minutes, and if I don't hit a jackpot such that a boyfriend pops out, I just leave."

This would be an unhealthy way to engage with virtually any hobby, but triply so when it comes to finding a partner.

Or maybe its more closely modeled as "opening up the fridge and browsing for food, leave if nothing appeals, then repeat until you're hungry enough to accept a particular option."

you sure have to put up with a lot.

Nah, you really don't. Recognize that the juice ain't worth the squeeze, and bring balance back to the force.

Based and you-were-the-Chosen-One-pilled

I can't speak to the apps, but I can say that the worst time in my life was when I had a strong desire for romance in early college, and felt desperately lonely. I was already struggling socially, and I tried to go and meet people anywhere I could, and I just felt like I was getting nowhere. What you said about perseverance is very true, but another thing that I'd note is that, because the male dating strategy is inherently a numbers game, the more you put yourself out there, the more your oneitis gets sanded down. But the flipside is that this means the passionate romantic hope you might be able to experience for a new woman get sanded down as well, and if you're a romantic-type man you start to lose motivation and people start blending together into an amorphous mass. I remember when I was a teenager I could feel such passionate crushes and such intense butterflies, but by the time I made it through college I couldn't really feel much of that at all. It just felt numb.

I'm really sorry.

I remember when I was a teenager I could feel such passionate crushes and such intense butterflies, but by the time I made it through college I couldn't really feel much of that at all.

I think that's normal. That's what growing up is, and it happens to everybody. That first crush, that first kiss, that first love really hits different, but the butterflies mostly are just adrenaline. And the novelty makes it special and forms stronger memories.

It's sad in a way, but I find it reassuring that it happens to most people, even the people who end up being married to their first crush for 60 years.

Very much agreed. Especially when your grandparents and in some cases parents got the real deal - they met one person that decided to accompany them forever.

It seems practical to sand down those teenage feelings but you’re right that it makes you lose your muscle memory for it.

The one thing I always try to tell myself is that you’re always thinking relative to what you have. I could just as well be miserable with someone I don’t particularly like and desperate for alone time. I could be dating someone really clingy or highly distant, which I wouldn’t like. All sorts of stuff. At least being alone is simple enough and the default state of being for most men.

Yeah, it sucks. Being a man in dating is literally the meme Its essentially akin to the job market: practice interview with a career coach, practice for the technical interview, get to the 100th round, and then receive a rejection email. Not to mention the 1000s of resumes to each job posting. Just to find one job that pays $7 an hour.

It used to be that people met at church or through friends of friends, but because friendship & socializing is on decline, the above is essentially the path to success going forward until we can find a solution to lack of socialization. Its the major thing that exemplifies the issue (that and the economic circumstances mentioned)

If it makes you feel better, 1 in 4 people over 40 never get married so you arent alone, if you dont find someone.

I wouldn’t generalize that to most people around me, but I really think women will never appreciate the kind of perseverance it takes to keep pushing forward.

This women does

I just wonder how other men that aren’t doing as well handle it. I think about that Elliot Rodger kid or like the sino-cel subreddits. While the incel panic was overblown, the feelings that come from rejection and disillusionment are strong and upsetting. Worst is that I don’t think there’s really a healthy way to deconstruct it except to just keep pushing on.

But status is a good cushion. I would really, really hate to have these feelings and also feel less than other men who went to college and got good jobs etc. All things considered, I’m doing alright and things will fall into place.

I know this Indian guy who got banned from a bar for creeping out some of the female guests, and bro insisted on defending himself instead of, you know, deleting his socials and hopping to the next city over with a new name. He went years prior to this tanking probably a 100 rejections. Talk about persistence. Anyway, about 6 months later, he posted an Instagram reel with a gorgeous Japanese broad celebrating their engagement. They seem to be going good as a married couple almost 3 years on...

Not that I'd rec his strats or try them out personally, but if there ever was a case that persistence really does reward after all (coupled with a massive stroke of luck obviously). Not letting the rejections and shaming to knock his self esteem is deadass a superpower.

I know this Indian guy who got banned from a bar for creeping out some of the female guests, and bro insisted on defending himself instead of, you know, deleting his socials and hopping to the next city over with a new name. He went years prior to this tanking probably a 100 rejections. Talk about persistence. Anyway, about 6 months later, he posted an Instagram reel with a gorgeous Japanese broad celebrating their engagement. They seem to be going good as a married couple almost 3 years on...

Based persistent Chadpreet. “No way! Why should I have to delete socials and change cities with a new name? The barthots are the ones who suck!”

It’s easily worth offending the princess complexes of a hundred barthots if it lands you a cutie 3.14 Japanese waifu in the end. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Given female passivity, a lot of dating success for men is driven by the numbers game. You miss every shot you don’t take.

Ways that deconstruct it are not natively compatible with [human] biology.

You are supposed to get laid or die trying, you are supposed to kill other men and take their wives if there are not enough of them for you.

It's not supposed to be tolerable; organisms that can tolerate it are either malfunctioning or engaging adaptive responses to hopeless situations, generally through a quasi-hibernation process, typically called "depression" when it misidentifies successful conditions as hopeless. This summarizes the self-replicating feature of the organic process called 'life'.

Fortunately for modern civilization, we've done a pretty good job of killing all reason to desire things and provided reasonable simulations, to the point that most people don't notice and as such conditions are generally stable.

You are supposed to get laid or die trying, you are supposed to kill other men and take their wives if there are not enough of them for you.

This is a caricature, it's biological determinism on meth. What's the "supposed to" here? Cro Magnon rules? I balk at a lot of what I read, both here and everywhere, but this seems as if it were written by an AI writing about humanity after having trained wholly on the meager, repetitive opus of PUA gurus. A human society that normalized homicidal competition for sex would not long survive.

Rising above savagery may seem to some as an impediment to getting laid, or whatever the goal is in this case. But come on.

Cro Magnon rules?

That's what "instinct" means, yes. Is it perfectly adapted at all times, particularly in modern post-scarcity environments? Well...

A human society that normalized homicidal competition for sex would not long survive.

Human societies normalize this all the time; it's just usually directed towards the tribe over the hill there. It's also not necessarily this way,

One interesting thing about status is, even high status in a small obscure social scene can get men laid. Being a singer in a local band, for example, or a bartender at a popular bar. There's something about just having high status relative to the people immediately around you that seems to sometimes attract women, even if the guy is not at all high status in the context of his society as a whole.

This can sometimes be kind of a trap for some men, I think. Having relative status in a small social scene often isn't really the best thing for a man in the long run. Being a big shot in a small group made up mostly of drunks, drug users, and people with emotional disorders can get you laid, but it's probably not what you want to spend your life doing.

Another interesting thing I've noticed about attraction is the huge importance that being in a good mood can have. I've sometimes been approached by women (or, at other times, had women make it extremely easy for me to start a conversation with them, which amounts to almost the same thing) when I was in a good mood or just relatively uninhibited. Whereas I don't think I've ever been approached by a woman when I was in a bad mood and/or "stuck in my own head".

Another big one is, not surprisingly, eye contact. It seems to require the engine of mood to drive it, but if that engine is activated then eye contact can convey the energy with remarkable intensity. There have been a handful of times when I felt extremely "on" mood-wise and sexually, just feeling erotically powerful in a relaxed way for whatever reason, and it's like I had a superpower, I could just have fluid sexual "conversations" with women through eyes alone, like one sees in some movies, and so I could very quickly go from zero to making out with some of them, feeling them up, and so on.

It would be awesome if I knew how to put myself into that mood whenever I felt like it, but alas so far I only know that it seems to become more likely if I am genuinely in a good mood and also seems to become more likely if I have been deliberately trying to flirt with women in the recent past thus being I suppose more attuned than usual to that side of existence. One of the interesting things about such experiences is the present-moment awareness. When highly charged like that, you are not seeking a goal of sex, the actual in-the-moment experience of powerful eye contact and the accompanying intense human connection with the woman is so satisfying that everything just feels natural rather than goal-seeking. Unsurprisingly, the natural state feels much better and seems to "work" better (though working better is not the point) than the goal-seeking one. The experience of communicating with intense erotic eye contact is extremely pleasant in its own right. Maybe this is just how naturally sexually uninhibited people normally flirt, but for people like me who started off shy earlier in life and had to work at learning to flirt it's more intermittent.

Every time I've had a woman approach me in the past 5 years, she's either doing something bafflingly shitty (asking for my number while the guy she's on a date with is standing right there), turns out to not be single (her Instagram is full of posts about how in love she is with her "wife," a bald man who wears a dress), or sends a bunch of overly-affectionate and increasingly sexually-explicit text messages, then mentions being on her period for some reason, then ghosts the day of the date. Or within two minutes of conversation, she manages to mention how much she hates white people (we're both white), how men are all such trash Amirite, how such-and-such film is misogynistic, and how great some book is because it's so queer. Go fucking talk to a brown gay woman then if you hate everything about me so fucking much. Also, since when is it okay to harass a stranger in a public setting? If I flirt back, will you suddenly remember the rules and accuse me of something?

So by now just having a woman talk to me unprompted puts me in a bad mood on the spot.

It would be awesome if I knew how to put myself into that mood whenever I felt like it

There is a secret method, invented at the dawn of civilisation, that accomplishes this.

I'm dense. Do you mean alcohol?

Yes.

I extensively experimented with that method and in my experience, it's been a dud. Some limited use can help at first, but the nervous system quickly adapts to the substance and becomes dependent on it, at which point the effect on socializing is more often to suppress one's vitality and make one dull than it is to create a sexual glow. And the negative effects on health are really bad.

My experiences with alcohol are that it makes me a sad, weeping drunk about half the time and an utterly silly, horny drunk the other half. That roulette wheel can be fun with an intimate partner you already want to have sex with, but I don't think it would be sensible with a stranger.

Alcohol does not, however, make me more social, except with people I'm already likely to be social with. So I might be more talkative to a friend, but I wouldn't be more likely to be socially gregarious to a third party or a date I barely know. And at the point where I'd consumed enough alcohol to get to that point, I would already be so impaired that I came off as uncoordinated and slurring even to myself, which probably means other people would perceive me as mad drunk.

I also tried phenibut once, before the FDA cracked down on it, and as best I could tell it had exactly 0 effect.

The precise date of that invention is controversial. My understanding is that "at the dawn of civilisation" is the late estimate.

Whereas I don't think I've ever been approached by a woman when I was in a bad mood and/or "stuck in my own head".

I was, once. I was in high school, in speech and debate, and I was sitting alone at a table in between rounds staring at my phone. A girl approached me and asked for my number, and I was so surprised that I went, "uh... why?" She responded, "well, you look like you're alone over here so I thought you might want someone to talk to." I can't remember what I said next but it was basically some version of, "no thanks?" I probably came off as a massive asshole, but I was running on 4 hours of poor sleep (as all debate tournaments go) and my brain was fried.

I couldn't tell you whether this was actually intended to be a flirt or not, but if so, it... wasn't a great one. I was actually years later, after college, that I realized, "oh crap, that was possibly an approach."

Yeah, college is pretty much one of the best times to meet a spouse. You're around many single young people your age. I actually asked a girl out using the flowgorithm program in my intro to programming course. Didnt go anywhere, but if your still in school - its definitely a decent pool.

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