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Why would the existence of undatable people in every era imply that their frequency must remain constant over time? That's true if datability is entirely genetic or if it's strictly relative (e.g. datability = being in the top 70% [or whatever]). But if animal courtship rituals involve complex, learned social behavior, then you could easily have cultural and environmental shifts that would reduce the number of people with the social ability to do courting effectively, regardless of their motivation or desire.
For instance, it strikes me that in every era, when you see intelligent young people who grew up like Extremely Online young men today (that is: indulged but also isolated, mostly sedentary life between school and home, 0-2 siblings under the care of a pampering mom or nanny, pressured to study hard with no economic constraints well through their early 20s, socializing largely virtually or in adult-controlled spaces, allowed to pursue status by developing obsessive, frivolous solitary or same-sex hobbies) - the introverted ones also commonly end up unpartnered or childless and a little eccentric. That's the H.P. Lovecraft story and it seems like practically the median trajectory for Gilded Age scions especially, but you can find instances all through history and across cultures.
So as more people are raised like this, you'd expect the ranks of the undatable to grow over time, assuming that some level of charisma or social confidence are necessary to inciting female desire in the absence of countervailing factors. It's just the "zoo animals can't mate in captivity" or the "my dog doesn't get along with other dogs" problem.
My understanding of the claim was that the proportion of undateable people wasn't changing:
If the proportion of undateable people is increasing, then it's entirely possible that if you can't get a date now, you could have gotten a date before. That's what it means for the proportion of undateable people to increase.
No ifs about it. It is increasing.
If you look at the WW2 color photos the government commissioned of daily life, grotesquely obese people were pretty rare back then, basically you can't even spot any, and there's maybe a few mildly overweight ones.
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Right, but OP was specifically critiquing
The point of the trad dating vision, at least as I understand, is not "If only it were The Past, I could have become a more socially adept man, then they'd want to date me." Instead, it's "if only it were The Past, I could have access to more desperate women, then they'd have to date me."
And I think that latter claim is wrong: women's standards are variable above a certain threshold, but there's also a hard limit of interpersonal function below which instinct just says it's better to go it alone.
The parallel question is also interesting to investigate for heterosexual male desire. For instance, if every woman (including every woman in porn) suddenly weighed 4x more, what proportion of men would just opt for permanent singledom? Would any?
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