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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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if you're financially successful and stay in shape" the motte is true but the bailey is pure cope

This situation may indeed be so bad that there are guys leaving college a virgin who have ~0% chance of losing it without paying going forward.

But I think the Bailey as described is mostly a POSSIBLE strategy for a guy who has managed to increase his odds of dating success later in life, based on factors he now knows to be true. His SMV can be increased, and with it his odds of finding a partner, if he doesn't give in to despair. If he does give up, then yeah, he falls out of contention and has nothing left but cope.

But his odds of success are limited by the fact that ALL eligible guys are chasing those younger women, so every older single guy is competing with every other older single guy is competing with all the younger single guys for the same pool of women, and there's no way for even half of these guys to 'win.'

Which contributes to the whole "women are slathered in male attention from puberty onward" part.

That said, it is theoretically possible for most older guys to sleep with a whole passel of younger women over time, assuming they never give commitment to any particular one and that woman moves on to a new (older) partner quickly.

So if a bunch of men go with the strategy of banging as many women as possible and 'spinning plates' so he always has fresh ones in rotation, this resolves the above hyper-competition issue to some degree.

But that whole "sleeping with them and never giving commitment" thing is the likely explanation for women growing resentful towards men as the woman gets older.

I think all of this is happening at once to various degrees, which is creating a really unhealthy situation for everyone stuck in the dating rat race. Relatively few people are getting what they 'actually' want (committed relationships with a compatible partner) and many are even having difficulty getting what they're willing to settle for (regular sex and companionship, even without compatibility or commitment).

It all strikes me as suboptimal, but I don't control any of these factors, I just observe.