site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   31374 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So much clueless discourse and blathering on here really makes me think that a lot of people here have rather interestingly false conceptions of the gap between them and an attractive man in terms of dating success. That's not to speak of the absolutely massive gap between the average man and the average woman that I think could do with some amount of rectification though the use of a couple particularly pertinent examples. In short-- the average man i.e a guy who would probably get rated a 6 or 7 by most people is virtually invisible to women online to a degree that's frankly quite horrific when you compare it to the experience of an attractive man. The average guy could probably expect to reasonably manage about 5 to 10 likes a day, probably dropping off to less than that after the first week, with maybe a couple matches a week and perhaps 1 out of 50 matches actually converting to a date and an even smaller proportion converting to anything more significant than that. That doesn't sound too bad, right?

The thing is, an attractive man isn't just getting say 10% more matches, or even just doubling their matches. The amount of attention they get from women usually dwarfs the average male by several orders of magnitude. The top profiles on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, are maxing out the like counter in give or take under an hour, the rungs below that with ease in under a day and so on and so forth. There are plenty of men who are not rich, not famous, not exceptional in any way really other than the face God gave them and perhaps the muscles Trenbolone gave them (though if you're thinking steroids alone will make you one of these men, you're living in a world of delusion-- women want the complete package) breaking 20,000 matches in relatively modest sized metro areas like Copenhagen, Stockholm or Denver. I should probably note that these profiles are typically white men though, as funnily enough even here racial gaps manifest, though this is frankly a matter of degrees, as even these disadvantaged attractive men of color are usually not lacking for women-- but it's going to be generally significantly less attractive and desirable women and they'll have to be a point or two better than their white counterpart to compete. These men have such an abundance of choice and easy access to women that they effectively dwell in a completely separate reality when compared to the average man-- they are the pickers and choosers and have no desperate need to compromise or settle down with one woman. Think of the gap between a man with 70 IQ and a man with 160 IQ in terms of capacity for intellectual output and perhaps multiply that gap a few times and you'll have a somewhat decent grasp of the dynamic in play here.

No amount of game or self improvement will ever get you close to that if you lack the genetic basis for it. It's like thinking a 70 IQ man can become a world class physicist and win the Nobel prize if he just tried hard enough-- the world doesn't work that way.

It's well known that attractive women have their pick of the litter, but I'll just add in that a woman need not be particularly attractive to be bombarded with options. The average girl you see on the street could open any dating app and find literal thousands of men throwing themselves at her within a day, maybe two or three if she's a bit ungifted in the face. Though as with attractive men, there's a pretty big gap between the kinds and amount of attention that white women get, and every other race of woman, including Asian women (of the northeastern and southern varieties) and having blue or green eyes supercharges this a surprising amount.

Here's an album of proof

  • -12

Okay, look buddy -

You spinning up a new alt every few weeks to whine about your lack of sexual success is not strictly against the rules, though you're bordering on single-issue posting and we dislike alt-churning, which means the next time you create a new account to repeat the cycle we may not let it out of the new user filter.

This top level itself did not violate any rules though it did incur the displeasure of many people reporting it. There is a certain entertainment value in a good blackpill rant, but not everyone finds them entertaining, especially as the problem with blackpillers is that they take themselves very, very seriously and become increasingly irate when they realize other people do not.

Which is where you are now, heading in a predictable direction, which is getting belligerent and insulting towards everyone who argues with you and sounding like the penultimate act of The Feminist. You're filling the queue now because everyone from those politely disagreeing with you to those offering well-intentioned advice is getting snarled at or told they're lying about their own life experiences.

Knock it off. Take a breath. Touch grass. But mostly, accept that other people's perspectives may not match yours, and if you want to doompost, you still need to engage with civility and the same charity you would like to be extended to you.

and sounding like the penultimate act of The Feminist.

God that's a weird read.

Yeah, it veers between "well I kinda feel sorry for the guy" to "he deserves it". The end seems to be strongly implying he's gonna do a Canadian University mass killing via suicide bombing?

I find it difficult to believe that I've been churning alts on the Motte when I've quite literally never made a post on here before this. I'd appreciate some enlightenment on my alter egos which I've been miraculously unaware of until this very moment in time. I mean, I admit, the topic isn't terribly original, but this is probably the first time I've been accused of being an alter of someone else I have absolutely no prior knowledge of by a moderator.

especially as the problem with blackpillers is that they take themselves very, very seriously and become increasingly irate when they realize other people do not.

I don't feel that I'm taking myself overly serious or anything. Other people make covert insinuations about my motive for posting one thing or another, I make my own set of insinuations about them right back.

Which is where you are now, heading in a predictable direction, which is getting belligerent and insulting towards everyone who argues with you and sounding like the penultimate act of The Feminist.

Interesting short story, not sure how it applies to me other than "believes that attractiveness disparities exist = bad" which is a pretty hilarious connection to make for a moderator on the forum that exists because they got kicked off every other place on the internet for having heterodox beliefs on cultural issues (which in practice just mean lacking the freedom to scream about IQ and muh based Christianity all day) but that's pretty typical from conservatives, so I'm not really all that surprised.

told they're lying about their own life experiences

If calling out an obvious liar who is lying specifically to try and make their point seem more credible gets me banned, so be it.

But mostly, accept that other people's perspectives may not match yours, and if you want to doompost, you still need to engage with civility and the same charity you would like to be extended to you.

You should take your own advice, mon ami.

I do not believe for a second this is your first rodeo. But in any case, I cannot make you heed my warning. The course from here is up to you.

The absolute last thing anyone here needs is more blackpills about dating. Yes, the apps suck. Yes, there are people who will always be more attractive than you due to the vagaries of genetics and society. Yes, birth and marriage rates are going down the drain. No one can deny these things; we live them every day and they have been discussed to death here and elsewhere. If you have some new data apart from Tinder screenshots, that would be interesting. If you insist that we must all accept our place at the bottom of the totem pole in our new de facto polygamous society, that could be an interesting line of inquiry too. After all, we have plenty of historical examples for comparison, as well as other analogous traits (e.g. will people respond any differently to being told they belong to a group with below average IQ vs. a group with below average reproductive success?). Just give us something to work with besides "we're cooked, gooners."

"we're cooked, gooners."

You're cooked, gooners. We're at the decline into decadence stage of the cycle of civilization, the polar opposite of the whole "when old men plant trees in the shade of which they shall never sit" stage. This is probably terminal, and no, a carpet of maggots eating a soon-to-be-corpse do not constitute a healthy living body. This civilization, which fails to achieve a remotely reasonable TFR, is absolutely fucking doomed. It will die and something new will take its place that does not suffer from the same affliction. Probably said maggots.

Go down with the ship or find some Amish to link up with.

I'm a pretty firm advocate of the techno robocracy. Low TFR among high performers may be extant, but Korea would rather give robot kpop stars citizenship and permanent bodies than let foreigners take root in their soil, and frankly who can blame them. Europes mistake was not leaning into robo-utopianism instead of their chosen path of human unversalism. The 20-40 year timespan for East Asian robotopia vs the Southmuskbotland is more likely than East Asia or USA opening the floodgates to satisfy the VOO IRR.

Take note of that feeling you're feeling.

That feeling is why people (a) push positivity ("don't bring up a problem unless you have a solution in mind," etc.) and (b) shoot the messenger.

Like I'd expect that most people here most of the time are on the other side of this kinda thing, and are the "disagreeable person" or "T" who believes that first you define the problem and then you get to work on it, and keeps getting annoyed, confounded, frustrated, and/or attacked, by others who unaccountably keep wanting to stop them at the "define the problem" stage.

I know I am. (Well, was until I just learned to mostly just not talk.)

(Personally I believe the whole "don't bring up a problem unless you have a solution in mind" attitude is what prevented any effective response to climate change my whole childhood and youth and now it's too late...but w/e)

Anyway. I'm a married mom and what I hear about the current dating situation leaves me feeling like I got the last helicopter out of Saigon...except...what about the kids?

I'm not expecting a solution; I don't even really disagree with any of it. But even if the sky were falling and we all saw it coming I would eventually get tired of people running around screaming "the sky is falling!" without any original commentary.

That's about it.

Even bringing up the relationship recession to make the complaint marks you as lower status. "Lol this guy can't get dates!"

And yet, if the problem doesn't get acknowledged, it all just stays in the 'positivity' loop. "You'll find someone eventually, just make yourself better and it'll get easier" even as the objective facts show this is simply untrue.

And finally, people who won already and have committed relationships have less reason to pay attention to this issue, and are more likely to assume the complaints are overblown, and so join the chorus of voices dismissing the speakers sounding the alarm.

I literally just want to figure out the most most efficient way to show the Boomers pushing the "just improve yourself and then women will flock to you" advice that this is horribly insufficient and increasingly divorced from reality, so that they can be convinced to either start helping with the problem or, preferably, stand aside to let others fix it rather than just interfering with anybody who tries so NOBODY can fix it.

The fact that they don't let any 'serious' guy talk about the problem or take genuine actions is why Andrew Tate is the main voice men get to hear about this from.

The youngest living Boomers are roughly 70 years old. What's the point in trying to convince them? People generally don't change their worldview over the age of 35 anyway.

Because they still largely hold the reins of power, which at a bare minimum means they can stop solutions from being implemented.

Other solution, aside from outright revolution, is to wait patiently for them to die.

Are Boomers in particular an obstacle? Can you give some examples of Boomer reins of power halting solutions from being implemented?

It's true that Boomers might deny the problem. They are the quintessential caricature to say "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" but everyone -- not just Boomers -- shares that sentiment.

I literally just want to figure out the most most efficient way to show the Boomers pushing the "just improve yourself and then women will flock to you" advice that this is horribly insufficient and increasingly divorced from reality.

You're not going to get very far with that. As anti-woke as this place is, a good chunk, possibly the majority, of the people here are progressive, and the only way they'll accept a criticism of progress is if you 50 Stalins it:

  • Global warming can be accepted as an issue, because the solution is anything from galaxy-brained Green New Deals to maor nuclear power.
  • The romance recession cannot be accepted as an issue, because the only solution that comes to mind is rolling back of progress
  • Declining birthrates might be accepted as an issue in the future, particularly when it starts looking like artificial wombs are realistic, so we'll have a 50 Stalins solution to a progressive problem.

Other than that no one who doesn't fundamentally agree with you already will suddenly start, no matter the amount of evidence.

Why bend over backwards to dunk on the forum, instead of proposing solutions yourself? There is an obvious 50-Stalins solution to the "romance recession", which is waifu/husbando tech/ever-improving AI partners. The obvious endpoint for a society of individuals whose standards have them demand ever more while providing ever less is to put everyone in their personal lotus-eater simulation hugbox, anyway.

That being said, if we make it past all the impending Great Filters at all, I'm not too concerned about these lesser problems in the long run. In my entire social bubble, tracking from early graduate school if not earlier, there are few signs of "romance recession" - most everyone has organically paired up, whether it is from in-person matching or online dating or circulating date-me docs, and I guess we'll see in the next 5-10 years what will happen with birth rates although some are already starting to have ~2 kids, maximum observed 4. There clearly are subclusters of more sustainable norms in the waiting; given that feedback length is on the order of one lifetime, I would expect natural selection to spread them fast, and the (particular) problems we are observing to only be this one wretched generation's cross to bear.

Why bend over backwards to dunk on the forum

Sorry about that, but I'm a bit jaded about the pretense of rationality in these discussions. They never have been, and I doubt they even can be.

instead of proposing solutions yourself?

Ban porn sites, dating sites, smartphones, and civilian wireless internet.

There is an obvious 50-Stalins solution to the "romance recession", which is waifu/husbando tech/ever-improving AI partners.

I might be missing something, but it sounds like the opposite of a solution.

In my entire social bubble, tracking from early graduate school if not earlier, there are few signs of "romance recession"

Like I said, not a rational conversation. This argument would be immediately dismissed if it was used to argue for something you disagree with, and you know it.

Sorry about that, but I'm a bit jaded about the pretense of rationality in these discussions. They never have been, and I doubt they even can be.

What are examples of irrationality in these discussions to you?

Ban porn sites, dating sites, smartphones, and civilian wireless internet.

Usual objection: coordination problem. Assuming you can even create a strong enough dictatorship in one country or several to implement all of these, how do you stop people from defecting to a country that doesn't participate in the bans, and that country subsequently curbstomping yours?

I might be missing something, but it sounds like the opposite of a solution.

Uh, it depends on what exactly you define the problem to be. Do you want people to report happiness/satisfaction of a cluster of needs that could be summarised as "companionship", or do you want people to pair up? It's obviously a solution for deficiences in the former but not in the latter, but if you consider the latter to be the only problem you want to solve, you run the risk of winding up in a world where nobody even agrees with you that there is a problem.

To a skeptic, this exchange may be isomorphic to something like:

Tribal elder: It is a problem that nobody sacrifices to the grain gods anymore, but you progressives will never acknowledge that there might be a problem there because there is no progressive solution to it.

Progressive(?): Well, there's a perfectly progressive solution. We just have to build up a fertiliser industry and develop industrial farming, so there will never be a shortage of grain again.

Tribal elder: This sounds like the opposite of a solution.

Who is right? On the surface, the progressive really did propose something close to the opposite of a solution to the Elder's problem as stated, but on the other hand it seems quite reasonable to treat the prospect of a grain shortage as the problem the Elder was actually talking about. Certainly, the Elder's authority would have suffered if he had been forced to make explicit from the outset that he doesn't care whether there is grain or not, but just wants people to sacrifice to the Gods regardless. His position depends upon being able to lean on an implicit assumption that sacrificing to the Gods is good (whether for the stated purpose of improving grain yield, or some other unnamed good), without having to explain or defend this.

Like I said, not a rational conversation. This argument would be immediately dismissed if it was used to argue for something you disagree with, and you know it.

Instead of talking about a hypothetical dismissal, please actually explain the grounds on which you want to dismiss it yourself. I don't see anything obviously wrong with it - variants like "$country will be majority-Muslim in a few years even if we stop immigration now" are structurally exactly the same thing deployed to right-wing ends. Do you think that one can be dismissed too, or are Muslims uniquely capable of receiving the boons of natural selection?

What are examples of irrationality in these discussions to you?

Instead of talking about a hypothetical dismissal, please actually explain the grounds on which you want to dismiss it yourself.

I'll be happy to, but I must also note that the dismissal would absolutely take place (and that you know it would), because the non-rationality of the discourse is part of our conversation. If you want a non-hypothetical example, just look at the conversation in this thread, and note the amount of people that don't even bother questioning OP's evidence, putting forward arguments that are later refuted with evidence, but not changing their mind, etc. This sort of stuff happens all the time, has always happened, and will continue to happen. At some point we should just come clean and admit that the conversation we're having is not based on reason.

Usual objection: coordination problem.

We ban shit all the time, and you don't need a dictatorship for it. The EU basically forced retarded cookie banners on the world, so they can force porn sites back into the underground as well.

how do you stop people from defecting to a country that doesn't participate in the bans, and that country subsequently curbstomping yours?

I'm not convinced this is even a realistic threat. Who is going to leave behind their house, job, and family, because they're not allowed to goon and/or doomscroll on a mobile device?

Uh, it depends on what exactly you define the problem to be. Do you want people to report happiness/satisfaction of a cluster of needs that could be summarised as "companionship", or do you want people to pair up?

The latter. If I wanted to maximize reports of happiness/satisfaction, I'd be hooking people on heroin, and ensuring they answer the survey while high.

To a skeptic, this exchange may be isomorphic to something like:

Tribal elder: It is a problem that nobody sacrifices to the grain gods anymore, but you progressives will never acknowledge that there might be a problem there because there is no progressive solution to it.

Progressive(?): Well, there's a perfectly progressive solution. We just have to build up a fertiliser industry and develop industrial farming, so there will never be a shortage of grain again.

Aren't you the tribal elder and me the progressive in this scenario? I'm the one insisting the goal is reflective of material reality, while you're the one pushing for a simulacrum with no connection to it.

Anyway, this only proves my thesis. Either your example is reflective of our case - two people talking about two different issues, and the progressive is more than happy to chime in, because he has a progressive solution to a progressive issue - after it's been reframed to be about something else (grain production, rather than the originally raised decline of religion). Or - let's assume the Elder was actually worried about a potential famine - he's happy to talk about it because there is a progressive solution on offer.

In my entire social bubble, tracking from early graduate school if not earlier, there are few signs of "romance recession"

Like I said, not a rational conversation. This argument would be immediately dismissed if it was used to argue for something you disagree with, and you know it.

Instead of talking about a hypothetical dismissal, please actually explain the grounds on which you want to dismiss it yourself. I don't see anything obviously wrong with it

You really don't see an issue with the bit I quoted? You'd accept an argument like "in my geographical bubble there's few signs of 'global warming'"?

variants like "$country will be majority-Muslim in a few years even if we stop immigration now" are structurally exactly the same thing deployed to right-wing ends.

Not exactly. Sure, it's possible that resistence to anti-natalism will be passed down, but then again it's also possible that it won't, so you're basically saying "we might recover or not" and bring no new definition to the table. And even if recovery does occur, your argument offers no insight into what such a world will look like, and whether we should embrace or avoid it.

Do you think that one can be dismissed too, or are Muslims uniquely capable of receiving the boons of natural selection?

I actually think Muslims in Europe are just as susceptible to progressive anti-natalism as Europeans, they might still end up the majority because of different starting points for the trends, but I'm not in favor of naive extrapolation of the present state.

I mean, even in the Good Old Days, there were lifelong bachelors and spinsters who never got married, or the chance to marry, due to different reasons: lack of financial support (men who couldn't earn enough to support a wife and family, women whose families couldn't provide dowries - and for example, in the wake of the Great Famine in Ireland having that kind of financial inducement for marriage, be it the eldest son inheriting the land or the eldest daughter having a dowry going with her made a huge difference in marriage prospects, and could lead to younger siblings having no such prospects), not enough potential spouses (too many women, or too many men, depending), oddities of character (being ugly, being weird, being otherwise not considered suitable), women being stuck at home in the caretaker role for elderly parents and missing out on the chance to marry until too old, etc.

There are modern reasons why people don't marry, or can't marry even if they want to, but it's always been true that at least some element of the population was never going to marry either.

More comments

I'm not convinced this is even a realistic threat. Who is going to leave behind their house, job, and family, because they're not allowed to goon and/or doomscroll on a mobile device?

Many emigrate from places such as Russia because they were merely afraid that at some point the nuts will get screwed tight enough that they won't be allowed to doomscroll what they want and goon to what they want to on their mobile devices. Or ban being gay, or ban talking about being gay, or do a number of other things the young view as backwards and retarded.

It is not very pronounced in Russia because emigrating to the first world from the second world is hard. The other way around seems like a much easier choice.

More comments

Declining birthrates might be accepted as an issue in the future, particularly when it starts looking like artificial wombs are realistic, so we'll have a 50 Stalins solution to a progressive problem.

This is not a solution. Tokophobia is a minor part of the birthrate decline; the median woman who won’t have kids won’t do so because she doesn’t want to be a mom, not because she’s afraid of getting pregnant.

You don't have to tell this to me, but I've already heard arguments like "look at those silly conservatives crying about falling birthrates but opposing IVF / surrogacy / artificial wombs".

It's not just tokophobia but how pregnancy can permanently change your life in many ways.

Sure, and a huge number of these changes boil down to ‘you have a kid now’.

Yes, but even outside of that pregnancy can have changes that affect your life permanently. Many women have permanent body changes and problems that they have to live with. Apart from health issues, there is still the fact that many women are unable to do much during pregnancy and it affects your career.

The romance recession cannot be accepted as an issue, because the only solution that comes to mind is rolling back of progress

Fifty seven years on, and Humanae vitae looks better and better. Everyone was expecting, especially in the wake of Vatican II, that finally, finally, the Catholics would get with modern times and accept birth control (after all, the Anglicans had given in on this as far back as 1930).

Instead, Paul VI went "nuh-uh", everyone was horribly disappointed, and the teaching of the Church remained unbroken. And now, all these decades past the Sexual Revolution, we're looking at the problem "but why is nobody dating? having sex? having babies? getting married? staying married? how did this happen after all the liberty and joy we were promised?"

Humanae vitae (Latin, meaning 'Of Human Life') is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and dated 25 July 1968. The text was issued at a Vatican press conference on 29 July. Subtitled On the Regulation of Birth, it re-affirmed the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the rejection of artificial contraception. In formulating his teaching he explained why he did not accept the conclusions of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control established by his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, a commission he himself had expanded.

Mainly because of its restatement of the Church's opposition to artificial contraception, the encyclical was politically controversial. It dogmaticized a conservative interpretation of traditional Church moral teaching on the sanctity of life in the context of human intervention in fertility and the procreative and unitive nature of Catholic conjugal relations.

Respectfully, this seems slightly off the mark. There's plenty of RETVRN-posting on the Motte, sometimes quite overtly. Just look at all the people who indeed advocate for Christianity as the only path to running a functioning civiilization.

Sure, I didn't mean that everyone at the motte is progressive, just a decent amount. Possibly a majority, but I'm less sure of that.

And I think RETVRNpoasters (of which I am one) will tend agree with him. Perhaps not on the specifics of the causes and the solutions, but on there being an issue, and the uselessness of boomer-tier "muh bootsraps" advice.

Ah fair enough; on a strict reading you did say as much.

Honest dating advice coaches aren't like "just improve yourself and then supermodels will jump on your cock every day", they're more like "improve yourself and you will be able to maximize whatever you're starting out with". It's not like the Internet dating advice space is just entirely made up of the sort of "bro just improve yourself and you'll start having to fend off supermodels all the time" material. There's plenty of that, but there is also more realistic stuff out there. Sure, there are many grifters out who promise unrealistic abilities, but there is also plenty of dating advice out there that actually works to maximize whatever basic gifts you started out with.

I don't know what serious actions could be taken about the issue on a wide-spread level other than sexual communism. But I myself do not desire sexual communism. Partly for a moral reason... I do not wish women to be coerced to have sex with people they would not otherwise want to have sex with. But also for non-moral reasons. I prefer to compete openly in the sexual marketplace and thus know from an ego perspective that whatever I am getting, I am getting due to my own qualities rather than because of some outside pressures. This is also why I have never had any interest in visiting prostitutes. Which is a funny two-sided thing. Because on the one hand it shows that I value sex for more than just sex, but then if I really dig down into it one of the main reasons why I don't want to visit prostitutes is just because it would be an ego decreaser. I just don't have a sex drive so high that I want to fuck no matter what... for me the satisfaction of having the other person want me is a key part of it, and while that might sound good abstractly, it actually might say more about my ego than about my morality.

In any case, I can't think of any political answer to the issue that wouldn't restrict women's liberties, and I'm not into restricting women's liberties. Most of why I'm not into it is because my morality, the rest is because of a sense that wanting to restrict women's sexual liberties as a man is loser-coded and the proper masculine thing to do is to let women do whatever they want and attract them anyway, not to try to restrict their sexual decisions.

Most of why I'm not into it is because my morality, the rest is because of a sense that wanting to restrict women's sexual liberties as a man is loser-coded and the proper masculine thing to do is to let women do whatever they want and attract them anyway, not to try to restrict their sexual decisions.

Dragging only this chunk out to comment on it.

If you firmly believe this, it implies that men as they acted for the first 6000 years or so of civilization had masculinity wrong. I find this to be extremely improbable, and I am betting that you are operating strictly on modern vibes regarding masculinity, which I believe are actually designed to destroy masculinity in both thought and deed.

If I am wrong and you feel you have applied a great deal of thought to the idea, then I accept we have come to different conclusions. But if on reflection you also think that you may just be running on vibes, I urge you to really dig deep into how some male role model of yours in the pre-modern era approached his interactions with women.

I can't think of any political answer to the issue that wouldn't restrict women's liberties, and I'm not into restricting women's liberties. Most of why I'm not into it is because my morality, the rest is because of a sense that wanting to restrict women's sexual liberties as a man is loser-coded and the proper masculine thing to do is to let women do whatever they want and attract them anyway, not to try to restrict their sexual decisions.

We've run this experiment for about 30 or so years.

That is, we tore up any laws or social norms that might be considered restrictions on women's liberty (Even WITHIN the marital relationship!), gave them 'equal rights' to every legal benefit they could want, we have every single cultural institution, Academia, Corporations, Social Media, Hollywood, all telling them they never have to settle.

Then the few guardrails that remained (i.e. religion) have been pushed aside, so that women genuinely do not have ANY pressure on them to live up to ANY standards, whatsoever.

And what we see is that women have more mental illness, are more medicated than ever, have more radical politics than ever, are less healthy than ever, they have more sex partners yet fewer children, and self reported happiness is lower than ever.

Don't know what to tell you man, women are miserable under this current state of affairs, too. And they tend to blame men, despite having been given all the agency they could possibly want.

Solutions that DON'T directly restrict sexual liberties could involve removing the direct incentives to put off relationship formation and simply reinstate the cultural 'guardrails' that at least give them a path they can follow that tends to create healthy outcomes.

Surely we can put some 'pressure' on women to settle down earlier without making it a legal mandate?

Surely we can put some 'pressure' on women to settle down earlier without making it a legal mandate?

Sure, but that relies on men wanting to settle down earlier, and in the halcyon days before liberalisation as described, men saw marriage and fatherhood as traps, as women trying to net a husband and tie a man down. Jokey references such as "the old ball and chain" may have been jokes, but also were a cultural assumption that wives were shackles (literally) on a man's freedom - to have sexual experiences, to travel, to drink/smoke/have fun, to enjoy being a bachelor.

The movement towards Free Love and Sexual Liberation was two-pronged; men wanted to be free of obligations as much as women wanted the sexual freedoms of men. The (to my ears) rather whiny lyrics of the 70s hit Lydia express this: the guy wants to be free but also wants a no-strings-attached woman and place to crash when he wants/needs it.

Lydia keeps my toothbrush in her apartment and she never complains.
Well, hardly ever. And then jokingly she says.­
Boy, it's been so long since I held you, I nearly gave you up for dead. I nearly gave you up for dead. I nearly gave you up for dead.

Lydia, Lydia how come you understand?
I can offer you nothing at all. This is more than I had planned.
Lydia, Lydia I am at your command, at least until morning comes,
then, I must be off again.

What exactly counts as either coercion or restriction in this particular context though?

This is indeed a relevant question given Women’s susceptibility to social pressure.

the proper masculine thing to do is to let women do whatever they want and attract them anyway, not to try to restrict their sexual decisions.

So I guess all men and women of good character before the sexual revolution, from Caesar to Confucius to Queen Victoria to Jesus Christ were all loser coded and immoral.

What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

Christianity was different in that it put restrictions on male sexuality, as well as female sexuality. Now there was a new standard for men to live up to.

Matthew 5: 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Matthew 19: 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."

1 Timothy: 3 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

...12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. 13 For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

1 Corinthians 7: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

...10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife."

So men must be as chaste as women; no whoring around, no mistresses, no divorce-remarry-divorce-remarry, no casual sex.

I do not think Abrahamism and Christianity in particular is special in regulating the sexuality of both sexes. There's plenty of other moral doctrines that do. It may do it more or in different ways, but the proposition that one sex had total dominion on the other at any point in history except in times of rape and pillage is highly dubious.

But Christianity, as per those quotes from Scripture, put the same limitations on men. For Judaism (and Islam afterwards) divorce was the right of a man, easier for him to obtain, and the divorced woman was left in a parlous position. The Classical world at the time of early Christianity, such as Rome, had no qualms about men divorcing and remarrying multiple times. Polygamy may have been tolerated culturally in some societies, ease of sexual access for men was unquestioned (legal prostitution, mistresses, etc.)

Christianity came along and said no. One wife. No mistresses. Wives have the same right of sexual access to their husbands as husbands have to their wives. No sleeping around before/within marriage. No prostitution. No divorce.

Now, did Christians live up to that code? Of course not. But as a change from the prevailing attitudes, it was incredible. Even the stories of martyrs, like St Perpetua, defying the traditional authority of father and husband and family were amazing new changes in the status and freedom of women.

What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

You could at least call him "Moon and Star" before diving into the insults

but to this place where destiny is made, why did he come unprepared?

You know what, maybe I should start haunting people's dreams. That seems like a good use of my time.

I doubt Caesar would have feared competing in a free sexual marketplace.

"Every man's woman, every woman's man" 😀

In 18 BC, Augustus passed the Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis which made adultery a crime and contained the following penalties:

  • The woman’s father could kill his daughter and the lover if they were caught in the act of sexual intercourse.
  • The husband was not allowed to kill either party, but was to be treated kindly if he happened so to do.
  • The husband had to divorce a wife found guilty of adultery or risk criminal charges as a pimp.
  • The husband had 60 days to prosecute his wife when she was accused of adultery and if he did not do so, the case could then be taken up by someone else.
  • The guilty parties were to be exiled and the woman lost half her dowry and a third of any other property she held.
  • The lovers were to be exiled to different islands.
  • If a woman returned from exile, she appears not to have been able to remarry.
  • Men lost half their property.

I guess the man who won the Roman civil war and made his adoptive father a god and himself an emperor at only 32 was loser coded.

Do you want to know what Victoria, ruler of the largest empire in history, thought about free love or shall we leave it at that?

I interpreted @Goodguy's comment to mean that someone arguing for reducing women's liberties for the sake of improving their own dating prospects is loser-coded. Caesar and Augustus probably had more conservative sexual ethics than most western people do today, but I imagine that was for reasons other than worrying that they'd lose out to chad if women could choose their own suitors.

I think that the concern that either sex would chose the fleeting fun of an attractive partner instead of someone who's dutiful and pro social springs eternal, actually.

Parents have always feared this and will always fear this. They simply used to have more cultural power to enforce their will in societies that had or still have more tight knit familial bonds.

And moreover, the consequences of licentiousness used to be far more immediate and catastrophic for women before widespread contraception and on demand abortions. It's no surprise that the sexual revolution and the advent of that technology coincided.

Still, the more pernicious effects remain there and that includes the destabilizing effect of winner takes all harem dynamics.

You are correct about my meaning. I probably should have made that more clear in my original comment.

It's not "loser-coded" if you're just a loser. Nobody would even blink an eye at a poor person being for socialism, it's not even a great condemnation to note it. It's sort of a trivial statement that losers look like losers.

"Loser-coded" implies that the act itself carries the stench of failure and ressentiment no matter who does it.

Gibbon tells us that of the first fifteen Roman emperors, only Claudius had sexual tastes that were "correct."

Augustus introduced these reforms to marriage, was succeeded by a series of perverts and deviants for decades until the dynastic changeover at least.

Rome was a pretty libertine society at the upper rungs, but you need to take dirty rumors about Roman emperors with a grain of salt. Politicized smear campaigns were just as much of a thing back then as they are now, and often that stuff later ended up being written down as fact. In 2000 years it will be “well established historical fact” that Emperor Trump was once micturated upon by princesses from the Kievan Rus and that Proconsul Hillary was a witch who drank blood to extend her lifespan.

More comments

It's true, people rarely live up to their principles, and powerful men are no exception. But people still understood that as a failure.

Sexual impropriety among the Romans caused them real concrete problems that those reforms tried to ameliorate. The idea that those were just the hangups of losers that don't merit consideration is silly.

More comments

Only one biological child - a daughter - and gives the empire to his stepsons? Cuck.

No amount of game or self improvement will ever get you close to that if you lack the genetic basis for it. It's like thinking a 70 IQ man can become a world class physicist and win the Nobel prize if he just tried hard enough-- the world doesn't work that way.

I've certainly met people who aren't very attractive but some combination of attire and posture and personality gets them laid a lot.

It mostly seems illegible to me (and probably them). When it comes to discussion of game I imagine it's people trying to crack that code for themselves. It's probably not hopeless to try, if that's one's goal, even if they aren't the top 10% hottest in terms of profile pics.

Online dating is probably not your strong suit if you're not in the top 10%. You're probably a lot better off going out and getting drunk and hitting on girls in that case.

I've certainly met people who aren't very attractive but some combination of attire and posture and personality gets them laid a lot.

I mean, why do you think women wear makeup and dye their hair blonde? Nature has not given us all equal good looks, so you maximise what you have. You make your lips redder than nature did, you smooth out your complexion to be even and flawless, you emphasise your eyes, etc.

It seems illegible because it's basically not a real thing. There's a reason you don't see any fat goofball or "guy with a super good personality" getting lots of attention on Tinder-- because women aren't actually attracted to these type of men, the stories about this archetype existing are exaggerated to mold a narrative, and the quality of woman that goes with a man like this is usually in the gutter. Sorry to break your fantasy though!

in paragraph 3 I acknowledge/agree this won't work in online dating

This was originally intended to be a response to a post by @faceh below where he links to an article that contains the oft-quoted statistic that the top 80% of women are contending for the top 20% of men and the bottom 80% of men are contending for the bottom 80% of women, or some similar numbers that are eerily close to the Pareto distribution. I've heard this mentioned a lot, particularly in the context of people complaining about dating apps, but it seemed a bit suspicious since approximately 100% of the friends I've know who have used them with the goal of landing a long-term partner have found one, and several of those friends are nowhere near the to 20% of guys using whatever metric you want to use to rate desirability. Not to mention that the app companies themselves are notoriously tight-lipped about their user data. So I decided to trace the source of this, and post it here so it won't get buried.

It turns out the statistic is incredibly dubious. The quote comes from a [Medium post from 2015] in which a blogger named worst-online-dater attempts to come up with the Gini Coefficient to prove how unfair Tinder is. This blog has 6 total posts, four of which weren't posted until seven years after the initial two posts (which include the post that contains the statistic) and were only created to address the increased attention he had been getting in the wake of his study being quoted online and occasionally in mainstream media. There is no biographical information provided for the author of this "study", so at best it can be said that it comes from the very definition of an "online rando", and at that, one who seems to have an axe to grind.

The actual study the guy conducted was a very informal one where he used pictures of a male model to attract likes from women on Tinder, and used his chatting privileges to ask them questions about their usage. He doesn't say what questions he asked or how many women actually answered, but he says that the women reported, on average, to liking approximately 12% of the profiles they looked at. I could comment on how the sample size is small and the methodology dubious, but that's neither here nor there because the actual research he did doesn't factor at all into the whole 80/20 statement. That seems to just come out of nowhere, without explanation as to how he extrapolated it from data he collected or attribution from another source. It's collateral to the point of the study anyway, as he's trying to calculate a Gini coefficient and uses it as a number he plugs in somewhere along the way.

Of course, that was the takeaway from the article, and not what he was even trying to say, which is that dating inequality on the apps is worse than economic inequality in all but a handful of countries. Years later, after the statistic began to gain traction, he addressed it in a followup post in which he responded to criticism of the original article. Someone sent him a link to an article that pointed out that the whole 80/20 thing was a lie. He responded to the criticisms that were leveled at him in the article, but he never adequately explained where he was getting the whole 80/20 thing from. As far as I can tell, at best he's getting it through an uncertain derivation based on data from a highly flawed study. At worst, he just made it up.

That isn't the end of it, though. Another of the responses to his original post was a separate study of Hinge data based on actual comprehensive data that was conducted by an employee of the company. He doesn't discuss the results of this study in the same terms as the 80/20 thing, but the results are similarly dramatic: Men as a whole only receive 14% of the likes sent out on Hinge. This breaks down further to 9% for the top 20% of men, 4% for men in the 50%–80% range, and just 1% for the bottom 50% of men. By contrast, the bottom 50% of women receive 18% of total likes. He claims that this Hinge data basically confirms the conclusions he drew from his Tinder data. It certainly makes it seem like even attractive guys have no chance if they're not even getting the same amount of action as below-average women.

There's one huge problem here, though, in that it takes two to Tango. I can't comment too much on the Tinder stuff because I never used Tinder and am therefore unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies. I have used Hinge, however, and basing success on likes received is enough to make me discount the study before I even look at the data. It's my understanding that unless you're in a paid tier, with Tinder you just swipe on profiles you like with limited personal information and match with people who happen to swipe on you as well. In other words, everyone has to swipe, and there's no guarantee that someone you swiped right on will even see your profile. On Hinge, however, you can like a profile and even send a brief message, and you're like will always show up on the person's queue. So there are two ways to match: You can send out a like and hope the other person matches, or you can automatically match with one of your incoming likes.

And, like in the real world, while either sex is free to initiate, the way it usually works is that men get matches by sending out likes and women get matches by choosing from their incoming likes. While the opposite can happen, most women only send out likes because they aren't getting enough incoming likes, so it's rare for men to get likes, and when they do it usually isn't from anyone they're interested in actually dating. Likes received is a bad barometer for determining success on Hinge, and given that the author seems to have no grasp on how Hinge actually works, it leads me to question whether he understands how tinder actually works, and whether the data he is purportedly measuring is actually a reasonable proxy for dating success.

I tried to come up with some ideas on how to accurately measure success on Hinge but I came up short each time. the experience of men and women on these apps seems to be so different that it would be difficult to quantify who has it "easier". Part of the problem is that while the whole thing is seen as a grind, the statistics we use to determine success tend to celebrate the grindy aspects of it. Someone who is on for a month and only matches with one person is seen as a failure compared to someone who matches with a couple dozen people, but if the former finds a long-term partner and the latter goes on a string of boring dates, we all know who was more successful. Until we figure out exactly what we're measuring, these "studies" are all useless. It's all bogus information based on proxies for other proxies, and a set of assumptions that amount to nothing more than a house of cards. And with no shortage of people willing to complain about online dating, I don't think these dubious statistics are going away any time soon.

The fact that none of the dating apps will release good information on how successful their users are at getting matches, much less getting relationships, is already a tell for how abysmal it is.

This guy did a pretty good analysis with about the most reliable dataset available.

Here it is in text form.

https://www.swipestats.io/blog/tinder-statistics

Here's the crux:

Match Rates Women's average match rate: 30.7% (median: 32.96%)

Men's average match rate: 2.63% (median: 2.14%)

Women are 11-15 times more likely to match than men

Add in that there's a 2:1 ratio men to women in there, and this looks an AWFUL LOT like women matching exclusively with the 'top' 20% of men.

And here's a song that accurately reflects my feelings about the apps:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=77vmhSwDBds

The point of my post was to point out that there's no statistical basis for believing the 80/20 thing. I'm not saying it isn't true, just that we don't know. Either way, even if I assume that it is true, one of the following things must also be true:

  1. There's a lot of room for profile optimization to allow men of average looks to get into the top 20% of profiles, or
  2. Bald guys with salt and pepper beards with a height at the low end of average are now considered top tier in the looks department

Like I said, I've never used Tinder, but I've had no problems on Hinge. And this is with me selecting for attractive, non-obese women with professional jobs that usually involve advanced degrees. I match on about 20–25% of likes, on average, and even then I occasionally get into trouble where I have more matches than I can handle from swiping 4 or 5 days a month. I suspect that I could probably do "better" if I were swiping more and started going after the hairdressers and phlebotomists of the world, but I'm trying to find a girlfriend, not farm matches.

I was around for both eras; when I was in college, online dating had about as much social cachet as taking out personal ads in the paper, and I exclusively dated women I met IRL until relatively recently, but now that it's mainstream, I can confidently say that the women I'm meeting now are in a similar class to those I was meeting before, there's just more of them.

You have to keep in mind that if you set up a dating profile, that's you as far as women on the app are concerned. You know that there's more to you than that, but out there people are dealing with limited information. Too many guys half-ass their profiles and wonder why they aren't getting any attention. You've got one chance to make a good first impression, and so many guys waste it. Either that or they send out likes with messages that don't have any substance to them and don't give the girl much to work with in terms of a response. At worst, they suggest that the guy didn't even bother reading the profile and just clicked on a pretty face. Trust me, if some of my friends can find wives on here anyone can. Nobody wants to hear this because it means ditching the defeatist attitude and requires putting in some actual work, but if you can't put the work in for a fucking dating profile, what does that say about the kind of work you'll put into an actual relationship?

Then again, there's the possibility that you weren't dating much before the whole online thing took off, in which case, you can't expect women who wouldn't date you in real life to suddenly become attracted to your digital persona.

Like I said, I've never used Tinder, but I've had no problems on Hinge. And this is with me selecting for attractive, non-obese women with professional jobs that usually involve advanced degrees. I match on about 20–25% of likes, on average, and even then I occasionally get into trouble where I have more matches than I can handle from swiping 4 or 5 days a month. I suspect that I could probably do "better" if I were swiping more and started going after the hairdressers and phlebotomists of the world, but I'm trying to find a girlfriend, not farm matches.

Sure you do. Why don't you export your Hinge data and just show us your actual matches? Somehow I doubt you're doing better on Hinge than signed models-- but that's just kind of a hunch you know? If you're really a 6 or 7 to women, you should have upwards of a few thousand matches after a month or so. That's even if you only swipe a couple days a month, it's just not that hard to rack them up if you're truly good looking. I expect I'll be waiting for a very, very, very long time though. People just loove spinning absurdly fantastical tales to anyone with a modicum of experience in this to try and inflate their credentials.

Hinge example

Data example 1

Data example 2

Data example 3

Nobody wants to hear this because it means ditching the defeatist attitude and requires putting in some actual work, but if you can't put the work in for a fucking dating profile, what does that say about the kind of work you'll put into an actual relationship?

You keep making this very interesting assumption that putting work into a dating profile meaningfully changes your results. If you're not good looking it won't. Full stop.

I don't know if you know how Hinge actually works , but you can only send out about five likes a day, so even if I were swiping every day and getting 100% matches I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near a couple thousand. But anyway, I'm not trying to claim I'm exceptionally good looking or exceptionally successful, just that I'm getting enough good matches that I'm getting satisfactory results. Honestly, having more than three active matches is a waste of time, since it's hard to keep up with that many conversations in any meaningful way, let alone schedule dates if you're a reasonably busy person with an actual life. So yeah, I'm sure there's some super users out there with thousands of matches , but it's a pointless comparison. These guys don't "have their pick" because there's no possible way to even make that selection. So fine, I'm probably in the bottom ten percent of users and doing terribly, but if this is what doing terribly is like, then nobody has any reason to complain.

Advice columnist Carolyn Hax once wrote something to the effect of, "We have five senses for a reason. How smart is it to look for a romantic partner without using any of them?", referring to the fact that photos are often old or complete fakes.

There's a lot of room for profile optimization to allow men of average looks to get into the top 20% of profiles, or

You see how this is a Red Queen's race, though, do you not?

If every guy puts in incredible effort to up his game, to make his profile as slick and impressive as possible... then NOBODY actually improves their status relative to the others much. Its a lot of effort burnt for no real improvement in the overall situation.

Well, women get a bit of a benefit, but they're still given dozens of options with no pressure to settle so its not like it'll encourage them to actually CHOOSE the guy in front of them.

And on the flip side... the quality of the women they're in competition for is lower than before, so what exactly is the MOTIVATION to put in all this effort, to try to win the race for her affections...

For a woman who already thinks you're unattractive:

https://x.com/whatever/status/1927741663054553242

This is a massive genre of video, I could pull dozens of examples of women openly declaring they don't find average men attractive. Despite not being very hot themselves. The toxicity is not just a small subset of them.

Even obese women won't settle for an obese man, although an obese man is willing to have an obese woman. this is quite the asymetry... and its not solved by men 'getting better.'

This is my point with my earlier post. The Pool of women who are actually appealing to marry is small, compared to the vast number of single guys fighting for their attention.

The only way this resolves favorably is to increase the pool of women who are marriageable.

But nobody will even broach that topic... except Andrew Tate.

If every guy puts in incredible effort to up his game, to make his profile as slick and impressive as possible... then NOBODY actually improves their status relative to the others much. Its a lot of effort burnt for no real improvement in the overall situation.

Maybe in an ideal world where nobody does stupid shit and then complains about the consequences of their actions,but if we ever get there, then the fact that it may make online dating slightly harder would only be a minor downside.

For a woman who already thinks you're unattractive:

https://x.com/whatever/status/1927741663054553242

Isn't this woman doing exactly what you suggest women should be doing, i.e. settling for men she doesn't find attractive?

As for the second two videos, yeah, some women shallow, self-centered, high maintenance bitches. That isn't exactly a groundbreaking revelation. I don't see the point in cherry-picking the worst of Tik-Tok and acting like its representative of half the population. And as for the second one, when exactly does she suggest that she doesn't find average men attractive. She's obviously high maintenance due to her attitude, but the substance of what she's suggesting isn't even controversial. If you want a world where women settle for you out of necessity, you're going to have to pay for a lot more than flowers and dinner.

This is my point with my earlier post. The Pool of women who are actually appealing to marry is small, compared to the vast number of single guys fighting for their attention.

As @FiveHourMarathon and others pointed out, to which you didn't respond, the vast number of men fighting for their attention is only a problem if you don't apply ridiculous nine-point tests to determine whether any "reasonable" woman would want to date them. It's ridiculous that you're complaining that women won't lower their standards when it comes to looks (which is a dubious assertion to begin with) and with a straight face point to your own set of criteria that excludes 99% of the female population.

the oft-quoted statistic that the top 80% of women are contending for the top 20% of men and the bottom 80% of men are contending for the bottom 80% of women, or some similar numbers that are eerily close to the Pareto distribution.

Never have I seen the 80/20 rule stated that way in the context of the mating market anywhere. What I can surely state is that the rule was originally popularized (in the online space, that is) on Manosphere sites sometime around 2008 or 2009 (definitely not 2015). I can’t cite sources because those sites disappeared a long time ago due to various reasons (doxxing etc.). It’s a simple interpretation of the Pareto effect (i.e. that 80% of the consequences/results come from 20% of the causes/effort) applied to the mating market, and was usually stated as “20% of the men attract 80% of the women” or “20% of all men have 80% of all the sex” etc. I’m aware that those statements are rather different but that doesn’t matter because all of them assume the same Pareto effect. (Some detractors even came up with the argument that what’s actually happening is that 20% of all men engage in 80% of all sex acts with 20% of all women, which’d still be an example of the Pareto effect/distribution). Again, the fundamental intent behind the whole argument is to differentiate the current society of unrestrained female hypergamy from the bygone society of enforced monogamy, because a lot of people were unaware of this distinction, especially back then.

I have used Hinge, however, and basing success on likes received is enough to make me discount the study before I even look at the data.

Although the Hinge post that included their top line numbers has been scrubbed, it's still available on Wayback. They address your point directly:

When we look at the rate of men forming connections – rather than the rate that they are sent initial likes, as we did before – we find that index of inequality greatly decreases.

With straight men on Hinge, the Gini index of connections comes down to 0.324, or approximately the UK — a huge improvement.

As an aside, this movement toward equitability when dealing with connections exists with straight women too, so much so that the Gini index becomes meaningless.

That, arguably, supports your point (things are substantially less dire than looking at raw likes), though I think the credibility depends on how the junior data analyst defined "forming a connection."

What I'd love to see is the Gini coefficients of mutual matches for different dating apps in 2025.

In Morocco I got about 150 likes per day and literally didn't have time to look at 3/4ths. I think online dating is evil and have never otherwise tried, so nothing to compare.

By chance are you a white American or European?

This hits on two points that I think apply to a lot of online discourse around dating.. The first is that in any competitive environment, playing in a game where the odds are not in your favor is dumb. Anyone with a tiny bit of quantitative background will tell you that playing slots at a casino is a bad idea. In fact, playing anything in a casino unless you have an edge is probably a bad idea. But those same people (assuming they are guys) will get on dating apps and then complain. Dating is a competitive endeavor. Those apps are massively stacked against you unless you are very attractive. So the logical solution is: don't play. Go find other options where you have a competitive edge. Is it fair? No. Why should it be. Is it harder this way? Of course, if it was easy, the app people would be doing it.

Which brings me to my second point. Whenever these conversations come up online, there's always a strong undercurrent of self-pity from a bunch of the people talking. And self-pity is death. I wonder sometimes what evolutionary advantage self pity-ever carried. In any case, it underpins a huge amount of the terminally online world, and is dragging society down with it. But for a guy trying to date, it truly is the mark of the beast. Women will not go near a guy who stinks of self-pity. And the isolation it breeds just serves to reinforce it. It's a painful cycle to break out of, but unless you're ready to curl up and die, there really is no other choice.

Because self-pity can be a sign of loserdom, but also can be a sign of (as @Wave_Existence said) "a genetically excellent 12 year old...put down by a group of older but genetically deficient guys," it has not always been unattractive to all.

(I always found it attractive, I think because it is a possible sign of "genetically excellent but had bad luck," IOW (to be all markety about it) an undervalued asset; the women in my family have a history of such marriage choices (of marrying men before and often long before their peak in status), so I think I just inherited an attraction pattern that evolved to target undervalued assets in a variety of ways, and this is one.)

From my perspective as someone who does find it attractive, and who watched what to me is the "new" hatred of self-pity come in, the current extreme aversion to self-pity is part of what I might call "the dysfunctional Third Wave feminism / anti-colorblind-racism / etc. cultural suite."

Which had actual reasons for evolving; there were problems with colorblindness, I experienced them too (I just ended up concluding colorblindness is still the better option if we have to choose).

I remember the wave of anti-self-pity sentiment initially coming in as the anti-"nice-guys" movement that Scott then got a name arguing against. "Heartless Bitches International" who wrote the imperfectly-coherent (because new) manifesto, of course named themselves that as reclamation. (It's always been weird to me to encounter young people to whom that isn't immediately obvious. I mean, of course a name like that is reclamation? It exists because at the time they named themselves that, men could say that about them and expect broad sympathy.)

IMO movements like that among women had a similarity to "incel" type movements in that they were reactions to having done "what they were told" and having had it not work out. They "gave the nice guy a chance" because back then they WERE told to and he turned out to be a terrible boyfriend. (Maybe the ratio of "quality but bad luck" to "actual negative traits are what led to his bad experiences" had gone down.)

So I accept that there were real reasons for it...but...overall I do think it has turned out to be dysfunctional.

Partly because IMO it comes from heightened awareness of the (real) problem of the stalker / won't-accept-a-breakup type, but also lower awareness of the problem of the time-waster. (Hey, my generation of blue women were actually told "people will try to warn you of waning fertility, but that's a sexist lie meant to restrict your ability to succeed in your chosen career and find your best match, ignore it." We didn't just have lower awareness, we were actively inoculated against even learning of our own time limit, never mind men who also didn't know or care about it.)

So @faceh I actually agree that one way to begin to tackle the problem would be to begin to punish the time-wasters. No, it's not actually OK to just string a woman along for sex with no intention of ever marrying/giving her children. But I would add that uh also we need to teach our kids to even be aware of this as a phenomenon. Because that's been neglected (that's why so many of them fall for or fall into it). (You might not be sure you want to marry your girlfriend, but did you actually want to ruin her life? If that's what you're actually doing, you deserve to know that so you have the option to, like, not.)

I always found it attractive

You found self-pity attractive? Please explain yourself. That sounds about as wrong as it gets.

It's a fine balance. Open self-pity? No, that's not attractive. Angst, on the other hand? Can be catnip (listen, I love Athos from the Three Musketeers - all versions, book included, this is the BBC version - and he's the King of Angst).

See this 80s hit:

You can tell from expressions that he makes public
That he suffers from a badly broken heart
He smiles as he feeds the afternoon pigeons
But he cries as he walks the night streets of St. Mark

Sulky artist-types are attractive to a lot of women. The "emo" thing is one relatively recent manifestation of it. It's a niche, but a big enough one that some guys do really well in it.

This is all so many words to say that you're both living in the past in terms of online dating being not that prevalent and also in deep denial if you think dynamics suddenly radically change once someone steps off Tinder. This might be a bit mindblowing-- but the fact is that when you step off Tinder and go to a club, women will not suddenly drop all their standards and become physically attracted to you. If you don't do well online, you're probably not going to do well offline either.

There could be two different alternatives:

  1. A man fails at online dating for the same reason he fails at a club, which is he doesn't meet women's standards. He is equally (un)successful in both arenas.
  2. A man fails at online dating but fares a little better at a club. One reason for this might be men do not take as many flattering photos of themselves as women do.

(2) seems to be the case in my experience. This is not to say the fundamental dynamics are different, or that 2's become 8's in person. But all men should get off dating apps, or hire multiple professionals to revamp their profile.

I'm a little confused about what you are replying to. I certainly never said that online dating isn't prevalent. Nor did I make any generalized statements about what happens offline. My point was simply that spending some time and effort searching for alternative dating pools is probably more worthwhile than spending that same time and effort on an easily accessible dating pool with poor outcomes.

Let's look at specifics. A club is a poor substitute for online dating, because you get very little time to interact with someone. So it requires people to make the same snap judgements that they do online. A better alternative is something that is going to put you in repeated contact with the same people over and over. That is traditionally how relationships have formed throughout most of human history. You also probably want to choose something where the odds are your favor.

Assuming you are a guy, there are any number of classes, part time jobs, volunteer work, or group activities in female dominated areas that would probably accomplish this. And if the first one doesn't work, you can easily keep trying others until you find one that does. It requires some effort and strategy. But if the alternative is repeated disappointment with dating apps, it certainly seems like the better option.

The first is that in any competitive environment, playing in a game where the odds are not in your favor is dumb.

It is quite possible that that is the only such game, or all the available games are similarly bad. As is attributed to Canada Bill Jones: "I know it's crooked, but it's the only game in town."

One can always attempt the Hock as an alternative

The Hock provideth, either through victory or death.

In abstract/general sense, I agree. If your options are to accept a bad lot or to gamble with long odds, it's probably better to gamble. When it comes to dating though, I have a hard time imaging a situation (or at least a common situation), where apps are literally the only option. Maybe if you are in a mining camp?

Couple the fact that Gen Z was raised with phones in their hand and thus don't remember a time before dating apps, and Covid demolishing the in-person social scene for a year or two... and arguably it never came back, as it got replaced with digital interactions.

And its not surprising that Gen Z is basically relegated to the apps for meeting new people to date.

But the bigger point is that literally any app where you users can interact with each other can become a de-facto dating app.

So the same rules are in play on Instagram, tiktok, twitch... take your pick.

what evolutionary advantage self pity-ever carried

maybe its there to counter our natural thirst for revenge at wrongdoings, perceived or real.

imagine a scenario where one tribe wipes out all but one member of another, a young man who ran away. His choices are either to flee forever (and maybe survive) or die trying to enact some token revenge against his enemy. Running from something like that likely foments guilt and self pity, but its also the only path towards survival in some situations.

My initial thought was that it was some form of sexually antagonistic selection. Self-pity in women isn't nearly as detrimental to courtship as it is in men. And it does work really well as a defense mechanism. Given that it isn't terribly important for lower tier males to reproduce from an evolutionary standpoint, having such a defense mechanism that helps women survive at the expense of some men is probably a good tradeoff.

Lower tier males isnt necessarily what we're talking about here though, a genetically excellent 12 year old could absolutely be put down by a group of older but genetically deficient guys. Being able to cope with the aftermath of avoiding terrible martial engagements is probably an advantageous trait to have for anyone who isn't part of an overwhelmingly forceful collective, whether male or female.

I did just watch a movie called The Northman about a badass little viking child that escapes a raid on his village, and thats probably coloring my current thought process on the matter. I dont know how common of a plotline that is in reality.

I did just watch a movie called The Northman

The Northman was ahistorical subversive GARBAGE. I got 15 minutes into that film and it was looking pretty based and redpilled and then ^^^Anya Taylor-Joy^^^ showed up. So now we have to take a historically accurate film set in Scandinavia in the Eighth Century AD on Earth and cram an ayylmao actress into it in the name of “diversity”

—inb4 some onions boy is like “weeell ACKSHUALLY there were ayylmao minority populations living in Scandinavia back then, look at this article from ^^^Barbra Xorlon-Stygggaszzzt^^^ from the history department at ^^^the University of New Mexico, Roswell^^^”

I don’t care. One blurry UFO in one Viking woodcut doesn’t mean we have to take work away from human actresses and give it to ayys. This is human erasure.

I presume you're familiar with the argument about representation, and sure the casting may not be historically accurate, but it's important for human-alien hybrids to see figures like them in popular culture. If Anne Boleyn can be black but have a white daughter, then a 10th century Rus princess can be played by a hybrid.

Assumption should be any and all media products set in past are ahistorical garbage. Modern casting choices are secondary. When they get casting right, and these days they may get look of the props right, they still get it wrong how the weapons and armor works, how society works, how interpersonal relationships worked. Occasionally such things may no be entirely incorrect when the producers got good source material and scriptwriters did not warp it beyond recognition.

Drawing inference about historical past from regular entertainment products is failure. It's like trying to understand cold war era intelligence work watching Goldfinger, and your biggest complain about inaccuracy concerns the gadgets in Bond's Aston Martin. Yes, the car is not real, but it is not the only not-real thing in the movie.

Can't say anything about the Northman, but the only TV series about the Viking Age that I have heard any positive feedback from archeology/historians is Vinland Saga, and that is faint praise as it obviously suffered from overabundance of shonen conventions. (But it was the first anime I saw that had nearly intellectual treatment of Christianity, usually Japanese authors warp the Western religion to unrecognizable goth aesthetic that is present for visuals only.)

It's a copypasta.

This seeeeeeems like a tongue in cheek pantomime of anti woke media preferences, but ahem.

If you think The Northman is pozzed then i literally dont know what you want out of movies. That actresses eyes arent quite far apart enough to make her diverse.

This seeeeeeems like a tongue in cheek pantomime of anti woke media preferences, but ahem.

It won’t seem so “tongue in cheek” when the Martian Tripods are marching on Whitehall, treading down all of Western Civilization under the pitiless gaze their vile heat rays.

That actresses eyes arent quite far apart enough to make her diverse.

I have over four hundred photographs of this particular specimen (for research purposes), and I assure you, her eyes are very far apart.

Anya Taylor-Joy's character in The Northman was a slave taken from raids on other lands. The raid the protagonist is taking part in when he finds out about his uncle and then runs off to take revenge is a raid on Garðaríki, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar%C3%ADki

Not Scandinavia.

Also her character is meant to be Olga of Kiev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev

So Olga was just another Russian single mom? Because that's how she ends up at the end of the movie.

Basically, but instead of being single because she decided to date a ghetto thug who left her the moment he found out she was pregnant, she became single because the father had to have a buck naked swordfight on top of a volcano against his uncle to avenge his father's murder and secure Olga and their children against future possible reprisals from his uncle.

More comments

What “other lands” could possibly explain casting Anya? Mars? Proxima Centauri? I don’t buy it. It’s clearly woke pro extraterrestrial propaganda. They take special glee in ayy-washing films set in ancient Europe. It’s the same reason they cast her The VVitch.

There is something about the human psyche that makes it very difficult for many of us to actually emotionally come to terms with unfairness. We might understand the unfair nature of life perfectly well intellectually, yet not come to grips with it emotionally. We live in a world where some people are just born with vastly more wealth, and/or sex appeal, and/or intelligence, and/or health than others... there are things we can do to improve on our starting position, but there are no guarantees of success.

There is a tendency to develop compensatory psychological narratives, defense mechanisms... ideas like "in the afterlife god will judge us and I will be compensated for all of this unfairness", or "if I am a good boy I will be reincarnated in a higher caste", or "I swear in just two more weeks I'll launch the great people's revolution that overthrows the rich", or "women aren't attracted to me but they're a bunch of degenerate sluts anyway and I'm the real based sigma male, I don't really want those evil whores anyway".

Another common way of dealing with it is to give up on any hope of actually remedying the unfairness while emotionally latching on to more powerful groups through psychological identification mechanisms. One example of this is the depressed housewife who spends eight hours a day watching the lives of celebrities on TV so that she can emotionally exist in a virtual world in which she feels like she has some stake in their lives. Another is the nationalistic soldier who is willing to go fight and die for the interests of his country's elite class because he has become emotionally identified with the entire nation as if it was his family - even though, even if he wins the war and survives, he will become no richer for it.

The whole obsession with fairness is just an outgrowth of humans' acute awareness of social hierarchies. People lower on the totem pole hate and envy those above them and dream of moving up. Those near the top live in constant dread of losing their spot. Nobody is happy.

On top of that, the optimal strategy for a happy individual is not aligned with the optimal strategy for a society. For an individual, the best strategy is to climb high enough to meet all of your needs, and then stop worrying about the hierarchy. For a society, the best strategy is to convince everyone to be satisfied with their current place in the hierarchy and to not rock the boat. It's no coincidence that basically every major religion pushes this message.

In the end, the messaging from society usually wins. So most people "accept" their place, but not in some zen sense of the word. They use defense mechanisms that hurt their chances of improving their situation, but numb some of the pain. A win-win for society, but not great for those holding it up.

Here's a good study to add to your arsenal in regards to this topic: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367325876_Sexual_loneliness_A_neglected_public_health_problem

The distribution of the number of sex partners among American heterosexual men was skewed already, but in just ten years, the distribution of sex partners among men became even more skewed. During the same time, there was no such change in the number of sex partners for heterosexual women. Sex is concentrated within a small, yet sexually active, group of people. In one study, it was reported that the 5 % of the population with the highest number of vaginal sex acts (penile-vaginal-intercourse) accounted for more vaginal sex acts than the bottom 50 % of the population with the lowest number of vaginal sex acts. 4 Using the Gini index, it is found that the distribution of the number of sex partners both for men and women throughout their lifespan is as unequal as the distribution of wealth among the most unequal countries in the world (South Africa Gini 0.63 in 2014 and Namibia Gini 0.59 in 2015). The number of female sex partners is more unequally distributed among single men (Gini 0.60) than the number of male sex partners is among single women (Gini 0.58) although both male and female sex partners are highly concentrated among people. 5 While sex is not like money or wealth in every aspect, the lack of access to sexual experiences can be seen as a concern for distributive justice6 and a problem for public health since an active sex life is beneficial for people’s health and well-being. There are numerous studies that show the link between active sex life and our mental and physical health.7 On the other hand, people experience negative emotional effects when being without access to sexual and romantic partners. Sexual loneliness decreases self-esteem and positive mood in both men and women. Especially for men, sexual loneliness might cause anger and aggression, which can manifest violently.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of The Motte posters are well aware of the enormous variation in men's attractiveness to women. It's not like it's some secret knowledge that is only available in obscure corners of the dark web.

If they're well informed of this gap, they seem to be doing a very good job of acting as if they do not. The amount of kneejerk denialism, overt or covert jealousy, envy, rage, and sometimes just attempts at outright spirited rejection of this basic reality point to this being something that most denizens on the Motte would rather either pretend does not exist or vehemently lash out at anyone who even suggests that it may in fact be a real thing.

This is just a consequence of the contrarian discussion norms here, which is getting dogpiled by disagreement. Rarely do people waste space voicing empty agreement. For example, I agree with the tone and content of all your posts, but I'm only replying here to disagree with you!

I'll add: my first thought after reading your top-level post was that you were essentially engaging in consensus-building. That is to say, you were not looking to discuss the topic. You are mostly looking to persuade/change the vibe of the Motte. (Persuasion is not really against the rules, but most top-level posters here do not exude such visceral offense at the ratio of posters who share their beliefs; most people poast for the fun of it.)

Rarely do people waste space voicing empty agreement.

Especially here, where low-effort posts like that are explicitly against the rules. This may make some views seem less popular or more controversial than they really are, even among posters here, if that's all you're going by.

I don’t really get the point of dooming about dating.

There are lots of very unremarkable men who have sex and even get married and have kids. Yes, even in “hyper competitive” 2025.

If they can do it, you can do it.

I do agree with you, but also feel that a lot of the people who end up in the dating app loop tended to have 'missed the boat' on stuff like meeting organically through friends group and at college.

That's becoming less true every single year. In every single country.

Call it dooming or blackpilling if you want, it is happening. It is observable.

If it were just some smallish subset of people experiencing it then we could say its something you can change individually.

When it is happening everywhere to everyone at the same time, that reads as a systemic/societal issue that no individual can change.

South Korea shows just how bad it can get.

We in the U.S. can fall even further if the course isn't changed.

Maybe.

Then again, the stereotype of that happening is a man rapidly approaching middle age who's had little luck up to this point finds himself in a situationship with a woman who's had her fun already and has run out of options. One thing leads to another, she decides "He'll do I guess" and they live happily ever after in constant seething resentment. Her because he wasn't who she wanted to end up "stuck" with, and him because this lady treats him like something that got stuck to her shoe and constantly humiliates him in public with stories of the sexcapades she used to have in her 20's. But not with him. Eww. She doesn't do those things anymore.

Shit, I ran into five of those couples at a school function last week. Putting aside the insane inappropriateness of bringing up your 20's sexcapades not just in mixed company, in front of your husband, but with your fucking kids not 10 feet away on the jungle gym.

Needless to say, yeah, people can eat shit. People can draw straws lost at sea. But most would prefer not to find themselves in situations where those are there only options.

breaking 20,000 matches in relatively modest sized metro areas like Copenhagen, Stockholm or Denver

Interesting. Source?

First picture in the proof album. Do note that "Niko" is only about 5'8

Where did you get all those pics and screenshots in the album?

There isn't nearly enough context in that gallery to prove your point.

To be honest, what strikes me most is how unattractive the guys in that gallery are. Gosh, doesn't Finn look like a git? A lot of those guys look like total pillocks. I am glad I don't look like any of those guys, and I regularly get complimented on my appearance by women in real life.

What I see here is an extreme generalisation with firstly little evidence that it's true on dating apps, and secondly little reason to believe that even if it's true on dating apps, it generalises to anything in real life.

It doesn't really matter what you personally think of Finn or Niko's looks-- the proof's in the pudding, hundreds to thousands of women found them attractive and made the determination for us. It doubly doesn't really matter whether or not some women compliment you here and there, because if you were actually attractive, no offense intended, you would be able to just show us your profile on one of these dating apps and show us your thousands of matches. I'll make a wild guess-- you don't because you're the kind of guy who gets maybe one or two likes in a day if he's lucky, and if he's really on a roll, maybe three or four. You don't like seeing the Mariana Trench sized disparity in attractiveness between you or Finn, so instead of actually engaging you just choose to dole out some meaningless childish insults. Why? It's so nakedly displaying your own internalized envy and jealousy.

I beg your pardon? This is just unmerited aggression. I expanded just below, giving some reasons to be skeptical of your conclusion (it is inconsistent with anecdotal experience, and it is inconsistent with what I understand to be a well-replicated observation, that women care less about appearance than men), and then also speculating about some alternative explanations for the limited observation that you made. I consider this a good-faith engagement.

And your response is... to call me an ugly loser?

Looking further down the thread, this seems to be your general response to anybody who expresses skepticism of your claim, no matter how politely or well-reasoned. "You don't understand because you're an ugly beta, not a chad like the guys in this gallery."

Probably some of the other posters are correct and you're simply trolling. Well, I hope you had your fun.

I wouldn't call them unattractive, I think they are quite handsome, but they don't strike me as some unattainable ideals.

  • well-dressed? That's the easiest thing to fix
  • professional photographs instead of a fish picture? Hire a photographer
  • sub 20% body fat? Attainable
  • nice even teeth? Dentists are expensive, but still attainable
  • charismatic? Go flirt with 100 women you don't want to have sex with to grind some XP

Frankly, the biggest problem is the hair. If you have limp thin hair, you need to find a good barber that can find the right hair style and teach you to maintain the look plus visit him every two weeks to maintain the right length.

You're free to believe that, but I'd be more than willing to bet that even if you or any other man on this forum managed to check off every point on your list, they still wouldn't break 15 likes on any dating app within a day. People on this forum fundamentally do not get or understand male attractiveness. This is the dating equivalent of a beer bellied man on the couch watching football on a Monday night thinking he'd be able to make that touchdown those darned mediocre running backs couldn't manage. You literally don't know enough to judge the size of the gap between him and you.

I’m attracted to men so I do think I understand male attractiveness, and I agree with the posters above. Finn looks like a git, Niko is cute but not in a 1 in 100 way (I absolutely see a lot of men equally or more attractive if I go on Tinder/Hinge…), and a lot of the other men are handsome sure but kinda unappealing. Give me men that look like they have personality, not just generic pretty boys.

I don’t see why the number of likes is that important anyway unless you’re just looking for an ego boost.

It's not that they're unattractive, it's just that you don't know how to properly judge attractiveness in men and have a seriously distorted view of the distribution. Finn and Niko are at minimum 1 in 100 males. If you don't believe me, make a female profile on Tinder, you'll only see a man that good every hundred or two hundred swipes. In fact, you can even go on the Instagram pages of college frats and you'll find that most men are simply not on that level.

There is a difference between what men think is attractive and what women think is attractive. Women are picking up on personality cues from those photos, and whether they're correct or not, that makes or breaks the deal.

To men "Well he's tall, he's slim, he has fair hair, his face is good" is enough. To women "his hair is styled badly, his clothes are poorly put together, he looks awkward in this photo" send the signals as to whether he's confident and would be fun to spend time with, or if you'd have to listen to an hour-long lecture about maths or trains. (If you're a woman who wants to hear a lecture about maths or trains, go for it!)

Take Nikolas - he's the guy who has it all put together, he knows the image to present and that's why yeah he's successful on that app. Like I said, I would consider him fun but not long-term material, but there's no denying he'll slay. Compare him and Niko to see the difference between "good presentation".

I'm far from convinced of this - if I think about what women of my acquaintance tell me about male attractiveness, and how it syncs up with my own judgements, it certainly doesn't seem as if I'm blind to what they like.

I actually find your argument here a bit odd because it's a well-replicated finding, surely, that women care less about physical attractiveness than men do. Attitude and bearing are worth a lot more than symmetrical facial features. Women do care about appearance, but as far as I'm aware, less intensely than men do.

In this case specifically I wonder more about the algorithm. I don't know how Tinder works specifically, but I've used other dating apps before and most of them have some kind of recommendation function, where the app will suggest particular people to you. In most apps I've seen you can pay money to the app to get yourself bumped higher up the queue. So for all I know, X random man with some ridiculous number of hits is just some guy who got really lucky on the algorithm - who had the Tinder equivalent of going viral on Twitter. But you shouldn't make sweeping generalisations from a weird outlier. It's like seeing someone win the lottery and assuming that it's due to his in-born talent for personal finance. For all you know it's a combination of random chance and buying a lot of tickets.

As I said, I don't know how Tinder works specifically. I understand that Tinder is a casual hook-up app, and I have no interest in that, so I've never used it. (Though that probably also distorts the results and makes them unrepresentative of most people's romantic preferences and experiences.) I'm speculating wildly here, but I suspect no more wildly than you are.

1/100? Maybe on tinder. They look like 7-8s not >9.9s.

You're doing more to convince me of the poor quality of the median man on tinder than of some great social injustice.

I'm 80% convinced you're just a troll.

I don't see what's so outrageous about the post you replied to that you'd assume trolling. Maybe saying Finn and Niko are top percentile is hyperbole, but not crazily so.

Brand new account makes poorly supported histrionic post (and follow-ups) about a subject that inevitably will bait a certain segment of themotte to make embarrassing long-posts, immediately gets linked on rdrama.

As a woman, it's hard to figure out who his "incest, cannibalism and John 3:16" blub is attracting. Finn looks pretty average, kind of douchy.

My advice in general would be for guys to take photos from below, girls take photos from above, maybe seek a professional photographer if it's that important.

My advice in general would be for guys to take photos from below

Just generally some easy appearance hacks for guys- take photos from below, have a good haircut, wear clothes that fit, unless you're notably tall wear cowboy boots(comes off as masculine and adds 2"), know thyself with respect to facial hair(Nietzsche moustaches and civil war general chops are out, obviously, but some people benefit from a beard and some don't), stay in shape but don't worry about muscles. Dress a rung or maybe two up on the formality ladder from what the situation technically calls for. Obviously, groom yourself well.

This is terrible advice. If you want to succeed on Tinder or Hinge and you're not facially gifted, you MUST be jacked if you want any attention at all. You are not going to get anywhere on online dating apps as a 5/10 twink, flat out, you do not have the luxury of neglecting your physique. Keep in mind the kind of physique you need for serious appeal isn't just one or two years in the gym, but preferably the physique of someone on steroids or close. Second is probably noting that facial hair is probably the easiest way to ruin your face if you have any sort of jaw. Women can tell when you look like a 12 year old underneath the beard, and it makes you look older in a bad way.

If you want to succeed on Tinder or Hinge and you're not facially gifted, you MUST be jacked if you want any attention at all.

Unless you're gay yourself, you have no idea the little differences that make the difference to straight women. "Get muscles and be model-quality in the face" will do nothing if your photo has you looking like a goofball or dressed in sloppy band T-shirt and backwards baseball cap.

preferably the physique of someone on steroids or close.

Now you're just trolling. The "condom full of walnuts" look appeals to no-one but professional judges of bodybuilding. See this relevant Stonetoss.

Yeah, I can't imagine who sees that line and thinks "exactly my type!" though there may be matches from girls just looking for some fun but nothing serious. Nikola, for instance: that would be fun if intense but short experience, but definitely not long-term boyfriend material, much less husband. Much too aware of how good he looks and poses like a romance cover model. He'd be kissing your hand and handing over a bouquet of thirteen red roses while at the same time setting up a date with six other women for the rest of the week 😁

Niko seems like a nice young man but he badly needs advice on "not a polo neck with a blazer with jeans, dear, and clear the paper bags off the table before taking the photo, and don't smile so hard, you look nervous not relaxed".

This kind of attempted mockery has always struck me a bit as being more or less being sour grapes. It's a bit odd that you'd write a couple paragraphs about how he needs to do this or that when he's easily already a top 1% profile on Tinder and has functionally infinite access to attractive women. Does seeing a man this sexually successful just make you insecure? Is it something deeper? There's pretty obviously no need to change your approach to dating if your approach has already given you north of 25,000 options to pick from.

Does seeing a man this sexually successful just make you insecure? Is it something deeper?

No more deep than I think he's not especially All That and could do himself some favours. If men think of certain women as fuckable for short-term fun but not wife material, women think the same about some men.

I don't think it's sour grapes; my understanding is that HereAndGone identifies as asexual. Asexual people, having known multiple as friends... don't often understand just how little they understand about how sexual attraction works. You can see that in how none of her criticism is actually about attractiveness -- she's judging their personal style and how they come across in a social-presentation manner, not whether they're hot or not.

But also people can be very critical, especially when evaluating people as romantic partners, and especially when doing so as an exercise instead of actually dealing with a real person. Men can be similarly critical of women, if you put them in the right context, or if they won't tell you about the labor dispute at Starbucks. This is a big reason why dating apps enable and drive some of our worst instincts -- people are caricatures and not people.

That being said, the turtleneck is a bit silly and the photos do look overly polished, but standing out by dressing slightly oddly and taking overly polished photos is basically what you have to do. If you're going to be a caricature of yourself, you might as well lean into it.

What I'm saying is yeah, Nikola is very attractive, but the way he styles and presents himself does not say "looking for long-term relationship, hopefully marriage and four kids", it's "I'm an international man of mystery who will rock your world tonight but I can't be tied down to one lady at a time, I have a girl in every port".

You know you'll have a fun time with Nikola, but you also know it's not going to last. Amicable breakup, he won't treat you badly, but he's not going to get married for another ten to fifteen years. Will Nikola have lots of matches and lots of hookups on dating apps? Absolutely. Will he be The One? Absolutely not.

For Niko, he does come across as genuinely nice, so much better chance of long-term or serious relationship there. The poloneck is not bad by itself, but it needs to be carefully considered as part of an entire ensemble. He's clearly slim, not very muscular, so he needs to dress in a way that does not make him look like a beanpole. For example, advice such as this.

I'm not a fan of the number three style, since I don't think jeans and jacket go well together, but for Niko something like number six would be better - more layers so makes him look less skinny - or number two, which is more casual and suits his age range better.

You can see that in how none of her criticism is actually about attractiveness -- she's judging their personal style and how they come across in a social-presentation manner, not whether they're hot or not.

Meh, this is exactly the dating advice I'd expect from a cookie-cutter representative of Women, Inc.; the identification as "asexual" is... also exactly what I'd expect, too. So's the specific criticism, which appears to generalize to "this dude pattern-matches too closely to a woman to be husband material"- again, as much of a 'straight woman' thing as you can get.

Not that there aren't similar representatives of Men, Inc. around here, of course; you can tell someone is like that if they say things like "women who have sex have something wrong with their souls" or similar.

See, we already have a blueprint of what asexuality in women looks like; that's what that "secrets of female attractiveness" thing that gets passed around here is. Female asexuals just cold-open conversations with this type of thing and, if you're a man, will probably paint your nails for you if you ask nicely.

So's the specific criticism, which appears to generalize to "this dude pattern-matches too closely to a woman to be husband material"- again, as much of a 'straight woman' thing as you can get.

Honey, if you're trying to attract straight women, then maybe knowing what straight women think would help?

"Gosh, I look like a 70s Greek porn star, why amn't I hip deep in pussy in 2025?" Who can fathom the mysterious whims of the female?

I'm afraid I'm not really that familiar with how pornography actors look in general, much like those from different places and times.

He legitimately looks like a woman (lesbian?) in that shot. I can understand "he's so self-aware of his looks that you're just going to get Romance Subroutine #1 that he runs for everyone else", but wouldn't that criticism itself suggest a difference between people who can sell very well on first glance ['it's just like hanging out with my girl friends except with the romance program'] but have nothing to follow it up with, and people who know how to play that game but are successfully pretending they aren't?

Of course, I didn't read that far into it initially.
I just looked at his face, saw "woman" written on it, and it just kind of followed from there.

The point of by grandparent commment was that it shouldn't be hard for people to match that guy's rizz. At least half the men at my college were as attractive as Finn. I didn't mean it in a sour grapes way. I have a husband who I think is much more attractive (though he has the benefit of being older.)

Edit to add on reflection: I just realized that the youngest guy I ever found attractive based on photos/videos (and not in-person interactions) is David Boreanaz in Buffy season 1 and he was 28. When I was young I found classmates attractive at times, but that was generally only after they had shown some kind of interest in me. (By doing me a favor, making art for me, something personal, not just a swipe or like.) A man who makes it to his 30s with under 25% body fat is likely going to have an ok time if he knows how to dress and style his hair.

I'd say that there's approximately a zero percent chance that half the men at your college were better looking than Finn or Niko, unless you went to a college full of runway models from Milan. Like most people here you just don't comprehend male attractiveness and have a seriously skewed view of both what makes men attractive and just how attractive the average male is. Saying that older men are more physically attractive is another hilariously delusional take. The reason why women go for older men isn't looks-- it's money, status, stability. And frankly the average age gap in relationships is usually quite small anyways. If you're not attractive to women at 20, you're going to be even less physically attractive to them at 35.

Like most people here you just don't comprehend male attractiveness and have a seriously skewed view of both what makes men attractive and just how attractive the average male is.

Straight woman attracted to men doesn't realise how attractive men are. Mate, I suggest you try the other side of the aisle, you may do better with gay guys with an attitude like this.

Look, I'm a woman. I married someone a decade older than me, so I am an outlier. For what it's worth, he didn't make more money than me at the time. I saw him as undervalued and received an excellent return on the investment. He was the first person I found very sexy, which was a feeling that only occurred after three dates. Mostly, we could talk to each other for hours and it was really nice to hang out with him, and then I felt real sexual attraction for the first time at the age of 26. (But also it was tied up in the thrill of the hope of a future together. Sexual attraction is different now, having attained that future.)

I feel 0 sexual attraction to Niko or Finn, just like I felt 0 sexual attraction to anyone who didn't first show interest in me. I would say that at least half my college classmates were not overweight and didn't have obvious deformities so that is why Niko and Finn go into the top half of the assessment. Every boy in High School and College seemed like a child to me - who would want to marry a child? Niko and Finn seem like children, too.

I think we're really hitting on something here if you can hear me out. Women are not men. Look at what my first comment was about - the words he chose to describe himself. I noticed that it's weird he put incest on his blurb. I don't know who that is attracting. I looked at words first to see if I would find this guy attractive.

The other woman here zeroed in on clothing choices and location of the photos. Not any immutable facial characteristic.

If a man is not obviously deformed or overweight, then to me it's not the photos causing the problem. Maybe there is some kind of woman out there who feels sexual attraction to a photograph, and these are the kinds of women who respond on Tindr? But I cannot tell you what motivates these women, because I have never been in a social circle with such a woman. From what I have heard, sexual abuse can lead to sexually promiscuous behavior in women. Maybe that's what's going on?

I'm not sure why you being a woman means you are innately blessed with the knowledge of what most or all women find attractive. Being a man did not endow me with the power to know what kinds of women most men were attracted to, nor did it give me any mystical or unique knowledge about attractiveness. Much of this just reads like completely delusional cope and the ramblings of someone who is seriously maladjusted and/or an outlier compared to the average woman-- which is frankly confirmed by the fact that you're posting on niche alt right websites when you're married and in your 30s.

If a man is not obviously deformed or overweight, then to me it's not the photos causing the problem.

This matters about as much to me as the fact that there are women that experience sexual attraction to dogs. You will not make yourself more romantically successful with women by putting on dog ears, getting on all fours and barking because there are a couple women out there that like dogs.

But I cannot tell you what motivates these women, because I have never been in a social circle with such a woman. From what I have heard, sexual abuse can lead to sexually promiscuous behavior in women. Maybe that's what's going on?

You either literally don't interact with women at all or your entire friend group is asexual. More than 61% of relationships start online. It's not nearly as rare or niche or abnormal as you make it seem, and implying a supermajority of women were turned to online dating through sexual abuse is either a hilariously bad faith argument or just genuine detachment from reality.

More comments

That was what jumped out at me, too. Frankly it makes me think that I really ought to try Tinder again with some better photos, if this is all it takes.

Seriously, better photos will make an awful lot of difference. I've read some of the rationalist dating docs on the ACX dating threads and the photos made my heart sink, because by their self-description they were clearly nice, genuine people but the photos they picked made them look like the equivalent of wilted lettuce.

Both are lettuce, but which do you think looks better? This or this?

It is possible to revive wilted lettuce, just make the effort!

Feel free to try. It's just I highly doubt you'll manage to even break 15 likes in a day, and you'll be perhaps humbled by the experience.

To slightly derail your post, what is the best way to judge one's market value? How do I know if the problem is tinder or my expectations?

Would the market benefit from a impartial third party rater that could tell people what is realistic for them based on market conditions.

"Is the problem the market or is the problem my expectations?" may not have a real answer.

"What is realistic for you based on the market" is an economic question and "is the market the problem" is a moral question, no?

Run yourself on dating apps. If you can't break 30 likes in 24 hours, you're most likely unattractive. If you can't break 99+ in 24, you're most likely not above a 6 in the eyes of women.

This is a totally out of touch standard. Have you actually used a dating app? I use hinge and have been on dates/slept with very attractive girls and I probably get 2-3 a day.

It's not out of touch or anything really, you're just not attractive to women. Your results are literally bang on average, it's just that you were unaware until now of the actual nature of the curve and for whatever reason assumed yourself to be at the top end. It's like when a kid who's pretty decent at math in his class of first graders gets his first taste of just how much average he is in comparison to IMO gold medalists.

You are weirdly desperate to get people to take the blackpill. Again, what experience do you have using dating apps? Because so far most of your posts read like someone who reads a lot about them, and knows a lot about them, but has never actually used one. To be clear I do pretty well on the apps and have been on plenty of dates with objectively attractive women that I met on an app. I don’t totally disagree with your thesis, but it’s way too doom and gloom considering how much low hanging fruit there is in getting good pictures and not messaging like a boring weirdo.

I find it really interesting how convinced you seem to be that you're attractive despite women literally telling you to your face through Tinder that you aren't. No, if you only get two or three likes a day on Tinder, you aren't attractive, you aren't some Casanova, and you're objectively doing quite badly in comparison to actually good profiles. Furthermore, I don't really give a damn how many dates you go on with "objectively attractive women"-- that's a more or less irrelevant metric when I'm willing to bet that nine out of every ten of those dates stopped at the first date, and probably nine out of every ten of the remainder led to precisely nothing (not to mention these objectively attractive women are probably 5s at best anyways). I have experience on dating apps, I know plenty of people who've used them, I've used them personally. I even have some data from an actual top profile to back up my point. You can go compare yours. You don't match up.

Tinder example 1

Tinder example 2

Tinder example 3

If I'm taking this right, you think that getting swipes is more important than going on dates from the swipes? So 100 'yes hi' and nothing more is better than three dates from three 'yes hi' messages?

That seems to me to be a strange measure of success, but it does seem to fit the theory that "women don't go on dating apps to meet men, they go on dating apps to receive validation by getting swipes".

Is that what you are aiming for here? More swipes means more validation but you don't actually want to meet or date any of the people who matched?

If I'm taking this right, you think that getting swipes is more important than going on dates from the swipes? So 100 'yes hi' and nothing more is better than three dates from three 'yes hi' messages?

This is a caricature of my position. Firstly-- you need to consider that most only a fraction of likes will convert into matches into dates into sex or relationships. If you want to be successful on this app, you need to rack up likes and matches and be able to filter through a large amount of women relatively quickly. This is pretty basic stuff. If you get 10 likes a week, you're probably going nowhere.

That seems to me to be a strange measure of success, but it does seem to fit the theory that "women don't go on dating apps to meet men, they go on dating apps to receive validation by getting swipes".

Non-sequitur.

Is that what you are aiming for here? More swipes means more validation but you don't actually want to meet or date any of the people who matched?

Non-sequitur.

Also, it isn't just women saying "yes hi"-- matches will show more interest and desire if you're more attractive. The benefits don't stop at raw numbers of likes or matches.

Hinge match

More comments

Well firstly I said that I primarily use hinge. How old are you? Tinder is pretty dead for Gen Z, at least in NYC. Secondly, going on dates with attractive women is literally the only success metric that matters when talking about dating apps. Whether or not there’s a second date/you get laid is almost totally determined by your game and her mood, rather than how good you looked in 6 photos. Also your example is totally irrelevant because it has no time measure, no location settings, and more importantly no info on how hot these matches are.

I'm just a bit genuinely curious on your philosophy so I'm going to ask flat out. Do you actually think that you're going to get more dates with two matches a day rather than two hundred?

Whether or not there’s a second date/you get laid is almost totally determined by your game and her mood, rather than how good you looked in 6 photos.

I'm not trying to be rude but this just isn't true. If a girl is actually physically attracted to you it takes pretty close to no effort to get laid with her. Of course as with anything it's a matter of degree-- but saying it's all or even mostly game is just straight up wrong.

Also your example is totally irrelevant because it has no time measure, no location settings, and more importantly no info on how hot these matches are.

If you actually took a look you'd've seen that there were quite literally multiple time measures, so this is a bit of an odd question to ask. The rest of this seems a lot like special pleading and goalpost moving. Hinge match

More comments

You do get a pretty big exposure boost for the first 24 hours on a fresh account

The impartial third party kind of exists already. I use photofeeler, you get ratings on your dating photos, and you can see roughly where you stand.

For example, one insight I got is that it didn't matter a whole lot which photo I think is good and which photo I think is bad - they all get roughly the same ratings. By using your best vs bad photos, you might get 0.5-1 point increase, as opposed to 2-3 points difference.

As a benchmark, I get ratings around 6-7, and very few matches in dating websites (though I am very picky). So you should aim for 8-9.

This is actually pretty easy to figure out.

Swipe right on everyone. Then, observe whether you get zero matches, or whether you get matches with obese single moms and MtFs.

Was "getting matches with available people you find attractive" not an option?

In short-- the average man i.e a guy who would probably get rated a 6 or 7 by most people is virtually invisible to women online to a degree that's frankly quite horrific when you compare it to the experience of an attractive man.

What sort of scale is this? Surely "average" means someone who most people would rate around 5/10.

Standard sports pages player ratings model. 6/7 is average. 3/4 is terrible. 8/9 is excellent. Almost no one scores 1, 2 or 10

Why is 3/4 terrible but 6/7 is average? I admit, I have no grasp of numbers.

Read it as “three or four,” most likely.

Oh, right: I was reading it as "three out of four" not "three or four". I get you now!

That's about how it works when men rate women.

Not the case when women rate men.

I think women do judge men more harshly when it's based on photos, because women are accustomed to "this is how you must look to be attractive in a photo" while men seem to go "I combed my hair, that's good, right?"

First impressions are unkind, but if you're trawling through hundreds of images, things that are small flaws in themselves build up to make choices harder.

I think women do judge men more harshly when it's based on photos, because women are accustomed to "this is how you must look to be attractive in a photo" while men seem to go "I combed my hair, that's good, right?"

I agree. There's a joke that every other man has a profile picture with a fish because that's the only time when a guy asks his friends to take a picture of him. Women are generally more aware of their appearance and asking a friend to take a picture of you just because you look cute or hot right now is perfectly normal.

If a guy tells his friend, "hey, it's overcast and windy today, go get your camera, let's put sport coats on, style our hair and hit the pier, we can take moody pictures of each other and attract girls who are into dark academia by posting them on our Tinder profiles," they will both agree that this activity is both fake and gay, even though it totally works.

Yep.

The whole problem with apps is they've all converged on the "Swipe through cards endlessly" model rather than letting you target in on people you actually think would be a good match (how OKCupid used to work). Plus gamification algorithms.

My last foray into the apps, I FELT myself dehumanizing the people in the photos more as I went. You see 150 different profiles in like an hour, and you get very critical of even small flaws.

There's also the argument that men look better in motion since women like seeing men do things. So a dating app that let men post 5-10 second videos of themselves, e.g. playing guitar, rock climbing, playing tennis to showcase a skill would probably even things out a bit in the attractiveness field.

Have to assume the app companies don't want to deal with policing the content of millions of videos, though.

Late to the game but both Bumble and Hinge allow you to post videos, Hinge also allows voiced answers to prompts. I would say a minority of women use the video feature, I'd imagine most guys don't even bother.

Have to assume the app companies don't want to deal with policing the content of millions of videos, though.

Social media companies already do this, YT does this, it's not an unsolved/unsolvable problem.

Making a dating app that works isn't an unsolvable problem, OKCupid was pretty effective back in the day.

They abandoned the hell out of that though.

If it would cost them more money and make it less likely people stay on the apps indefinitely, I can't see why they'd implement the feature.

Sure, but the number of videos on YouTube with nudity is less than every other video.

policing the content of millions of videos

so yeah heres me playing my guitar AND THEN I PULL MY GIANT DICK OUT WOOOO

Okay, but who is using ‘dating’ apps?

Studies consistently show that approximately 75-85% of Tinder users identify as male, while women make up only 25-15%. In some regions, the disparity is even more pronounced, with ratios as high as 91:9 in Italy.

Even these numbers overestimate the actual percentage of female tinder users who would be willing to hook up with a man from the app, since a substantial percentage of tinder’s women users just do it to get some easy attention and never meet up with anyone from the app at all (whereas almost every man who uses it would probably be willing to hook up with an attractive woman he met on it).

So in reality, what do dating app statistics tell us?

They tell us that a substantial percentage of the male population is competing on the apps to have casual sex with the ~15% most promiscuous women, who as a result have their pick of the men. Given that this 15% run the gamut of hotness, that means maybe 4% or fewer of women are both attractive and open to casual sex with random men from dating apps.

This results in the genre of ‘sad tinder despair’ male posts. It also explains how most men who rack up high body counts (and aren’t celebrities, famous athletes or male models) are usually hooking up with less attractive women.

This does not tell us much about the dating habits of the vast majority of women. The kindergarten teacher whose hobbies are crochet and collecting Disney memorabilia who is far too shy to meet a man off the apps (and far too insecure to create a profile at all) is not fucking a new guy off Hinge every week. The average man never even encounters this kind of woman except maybe in passing.

You seem really quite misinformed about the prevalence of online dating in the current year. It's no longer the niche, obscure, relatively novel apps of yesteryear-- online dating quite literally forms a supermajority of all dating in the year 2025. It is arguably more "real" and relevant than bars or clubs. You're also considerably naive if you think this kind of treatment only exists on Tinder. I've spoken with the man in the side profile selfie, and his life is like something out of a bad porno movie. I've seen him on video to be clear, so this isn't just hearsay, been surrounded by several women as if he were Justin Timberlake, been offered money upfront at a club by women to take their virginity (not unattractive women either), paid for transport somewhere where he didn't have a car by letting the woman drive him simply give him a blowjob, and the list goes on. You are very much just not in the know when it comes to things like this.

No, there really are lots of quiet, shy, stereotypically feminine women who aren't part of the mainstream dating market because it scares them. They'll venture out into some attempt at dating every once in a while, get scares, and withdraw back to their shells.

This does not tell us much about the dating habits of the vast majority of women. The kindergarten teacher whose hobbies are crochet and collecting Disney memorabilia who is far too shy to meet a man off the apps (and far too insecure to create a profile at all) is not fucking a new guy off Hinge every week. The average man never even encounters this kind of woman except maybe in passing.

These women, in my experience having dated and befriended a lot of them, are just generally not on the market or only on the market for like a week per year in which they try Hinge as a New Year's Eve resolution and then quickly delete it after their third untoward comment received. Then maybe 6 months later they go home for Thanksgiving and get ribbed by mom and it's downloaded again but it doesn't stay.

Billion dollar idea - rent-a-yenta. A service where an overly critical older woman follows around the timid marriageable types and needles them constantly about their relationship status, frequently trying to set them up with their neighbor or cousin’s kid until finally something clicks and they find a suitable match.

Studies consistently show that approximately 75-85% of Tinder users identify as male, while women make up only 25-15%.

Accepting these facts as true, what are all the young single women doing?

  • Do they not care about being single for the rest of their life?

  • Are they stupid and can’t comprehend cause and effect? (i.e. “If I make a Bumble profile, I am more likely to get a boyfriend”)

  • Are they slutting out? (I’m including having a Chad fwb who obviously won’t commit in this category)

  • Are they in church and expect to find a worthy man there?

  • Are they mindkilled with wokeness to the point where they fail to understand normal human behavior?

“If I make a Bumble profile, I am more likely to get a boyfriend”

I do wonder about that. How many people who are now on Bumble are looking for proper relationships, versus at the beginning? Dating apps may also be seen as the last refuge of the hopeless, or that men are using them to hook up/cheat while in relationships:

Shares in Bumble crashed 30% this month [August 2024] after a bad earnings report. Match Group, the Dallas-based owner of Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge and others, has reported a decline in its total number of paying users, for seven straight quarters. According to Pew research, nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative.

The same study found that 52% of online daters said they had come across someone they thought was trying to scam them; 57% of women said online dating is not too or not at all safe; and 85% said someone continued to contact them after they said they weren’t interested.

...Allie Volpe, Vox writer and author of a recent article advocating for finding romance offline, says her single friends in Philadelphia are burned out by online dating.

“People are sensing that it has become so impersonal, and such a numbers game, that people feel there are infinite options out there, we’re not really that nice to people on the apps any more,” Volpe says.

“People are looking for organic ways to meet each other,” she adds. Running clubs and sewing circles, for example. “At least in person you can tell them, ‘hey, I’m not interested’, but online you feel like you have no control on the other side, and they have the means to contact you, that’s kind of scary.

“It can be kind of weird on the apps to go from stranger to being potentially romantically involved immediately,” Volpe adds. “It can be jarring, and that doesn’t happen when you’re meeting somebody face to face.”

But Volpe volunteers that the situation is confusing. “The pandemic normalized the dating app experience because you couldn’t go places or meet them in a bar because they weren’t open. For gen Z, maybe their first dating experience was during the pandemic. So they’ve never dated except online, and don’t know where to go where there are people they don’t know.”

I think that the obvious missing bullet point here is "They date from their pool of IRL friends, coworkers and acquaintances, like normal people". (Church is only a special case of this.)

This may be a thing that happens, but it cannot explain the effect.

To be absolutely clear, what needs to be explained is the anomalous predominance of men on dating apps (and in the dating pool more broadly) when a naive gender-symmetrical model of monogamous pair-bonding would imply equal prevalence of men and women in such spaces when the population sex ratio is 1:1.

Pointing to the existence of even a large number of male-female pairings does not help explain the discrepancy because such pairings (should) remove one woman and one man from the dating pool, leaving the absolute discrepancy unchanged.

I think this is easy. More single men are looking to date than single women. According to a PEW study from 2020 61% of single men were looking to date vs 38% of single women. There was pretty significant age stratification for women (61% of women 18-39, 29% of women 40+) but much less so for men (67% of men 18-39, 55% of men 40+). That does not get you quite to the extreme numbers in the OP but is surely part of the explanation. Add to that young men (under 50) are much more likely to be single than young women (51-32 ages 18-29, 27-19 age 30-49).

The population of single heterosexuals might be roughly equal (PEW reports both 31% of men and women report being single) but desire to get in a relationship in that pool is not symmetrical.

‘Women less motivated because they have less agency’ doesn’t explain it?

Maybe, but all they have to do is take selfies and go, “tee-hee, I love coffee,” which I understand is what they do anyways.

If a woman is downloading an app, she's saying, "No guy in real life wants me." Or, "I don't care about being loved, I just want to fuck."

Women want to have a man fall for them naturally, just by being in her presence. Going on a dating app is admitting defeat.

Is there a big spike in female dating app usage at 35? That’s about when “admitting defeat” becomes the rational thing to do.

I'll look for any relevant stats, but it looks like women are more likely to report dissatisfaction with Dating Apps than men. (51% vs 42%) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/

I think that's less of a thing than it used to be. Social groups/interests are more gender delineated, workplace flirtation isn't what it used to be due to the potential massive ramifications of going too hard.

I spent about a year in 2022 dating a bunch of educated, upright upper-middle class 25-35 year olds with a view to finding a wife with whom to have children. I now have wife + child, but the experience made me think that the issue is that a lot of the shyer girls just only very sparingly spend time on the market. They'll download an app for a week or two until they have a meh date or get distracted, then either find a mate or delete the proverbial app for 6 months before quarter-heartedly trying again in hopes of their Prince Charming happening to be in the first 2-3 serious conversations they strike up on the app before the next deletion.

Also these women are truly inexperienced, which means those brief forays are more likely to go anywhere since the mindset is more 'formulaic husband interview' than anything romantic. I had about 60 first dates in 2022, 50 or so of which would fit into the broad category of educated women looking for something serious with actual careers and an intent on 'settling down' and I found about half seemed to legitimately be completely inexperienced romantically.

workplace flirtation isn't what it used to be due to the potential massive ramifications of going too hard.

Notably, though, getting MeTooed for coming on too strong is rather less of a concern for women, and explaining why fewer women use dating apps is exactly what @Quantumfreakonomics wanted explained. If the workplace dating scene is hostile to men who are proactively looking for a partner, but less so to women who are doing the same thing, that fits pretty snugly with a lot more men than women turning to dating apps.

Yes but the vast majority of women are not proactive in approaching in person, so if men are unwilling to be the first to initiate interest that's going to have a large impact on the amount of inperson relationships being kindled.

I had about 60 first dates in 2022

Uh, what? Are we even talking about the same concept at this point? How does one both have the opportunity to go on 60 first dates in a year and also none of them go well enough to terminate the process? Is this some poly thing?

How does one both have the opportunity to go on 60 first dates in a year and also none of them go well enough to terminate the process?

My guess would be that women on the apps always have a better option than you. Unless you're obviously her Prince Charming on the first date, why would she bother on a second date if she's matched with five other guys in the last hour?

In my dating days I used the apps and had lots of first dates but far fewer second dates. It's possible that I was just a bad date, but then I didn't have the same issue with girls I met in real life.

Oh I'm married and with child now, having finally struck gold with the 60th but I did a ton of field anthropology along the way.

I live in a majorish metro, managed to work my way up from a 5/10 to like a 7/10 through weight loss + trial & error and essentially didn't turn down a first date with anybody who was open to get a coffee and not obviously a hard no.

You're correct about the gender ratio on dating apps.

You're missing that every app that allows users to interact can become a dating app.

"Twitter is a dating app" is a meme, but it is also true. Instagram's gender ratio is more equalized.

So consider how many women have instagram, tiktok, snapchat, whatever, and put themselves out there with photos of themselves, and then entertain proposals from men who "slide into their DMs."

So that Kindergarten teacher who likes to crochet and collect Disney Memorabilia would need only start up an Instagram account and post a couple photos of herself holding her cute Tinkerbell ornament wearing a hat she made herself and has a decent shot at getting a guy's attention.

So that Kindergarten teacher who likes to crochet and collect Disney Memorabilia would need only start up an Instagram account and post a couple photos of herself holding her cute Tinkerbell ornament wearing a hat she made herself and has a decent shot at getting a guy's attention.

This sort of implies that the optimal male dating strategy is shameless simping, which… would probably explain why there is so much male homosocial stigma against it.

Has this been the solution all along?

No. Simping is the wrong way to go about it.

I'm someone who has reliably slid into DMs. Leaving aside the first and second rules of dating, the third would be to not come across as desperate. Be charming, be funny, but don't come across as a simp. You want her to know you're interested, but without giving her the impression that you couldn't withdraw at a moment's notice if things don't work out.

Or shameless hating. Apparently shoeOnHead married and had a kid with a hater who slid into her DMs.

Although her first relationship was... interesting and unique to say the least.

Its one of those things that DOESN'T work when a bunch start doing it at once.

Too many men simping and a woman can simply bask in the attention whilst giving nothing back to any individual one.

Information asymetries also make it possible to condemn simping whilst continuing to do it on the downlow.

In what aspect is the discussion clueless? Please elaborate.

I think people don't get how Power Law distributions dominate on dating apps.

So they think an "average" guy is doing okay on the apps, even if he is jealous of the more attractive guys who have it easier.

When in reality, the Average guy is barely scraping by, as virtually all serious female attention flows to a handful of Top Tier guys, so the mismatch is SEVERE.

Top tier guys obviously have no incentive to change this. Dating apps don't have much incentive either, since they can sell the lower tier guys various products that they imply will help, and those guys don't have many other options.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

So average guys are getting quietly more desperate but can't do anything about it or even talk about it because talking about it marks you as a loser and further lowers your status.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

Side tangent but I think you would enjoy this blogpost from someone who works at a dating app (not sure which dating app though).

https://blog.luap.info/what-really-happens-inside-a-dating-app.html

I think this is the best bit:

Can dating apps work?

There are a lot of people saying that dating apps are evil, that Match Group exploits people's feelings. That's true on one hand and wrong on the other.

First the expensive resource on a dating app is girls, not girls because they will pay you, but because if you have girls it will attract guys, what impacts the retention of girls on a dating app? The number of likes they send, so the first goal of a dating app is to make girls like, clearly not something evil. There is no interest in making them pay as none will do it. (Hot girls can be replaced by bots, or by girls that promote their Instagram, they should just not like everyone but they don't need to be real for the system to work, in truth it is not super complex to acquire these girls, so no need to have bots.)

Second the most expensive resource on a dating app is hot guys, because without hot guys you won't get girls, well hot guys are the users that have the best retention, without effort they will have a 50% retention, so in fact you just have to wait some time and the app will fill up with those guys, need a specific strategy? No, do nothing. Is this evil? No.

Then the last most expensive resource on a dating app is guys that are willing to pay, what can you offer to guys that want to pay? More likes received. Well good news more likes received = more retention for these guys. So the things these apps do, is how to make a guy pay the most to access likes? It is very similar to any business, a football club has the same objective, a restaurant has the same objective, a gaming app has the same objective, a gym has the same objective. The ones that are left behind are actually the ones that are not paying. Tinder for example, they are just the best at converting you into a paying user and keeping you, and they will not keep you if you don't get likes.

The problem of dating apps is not the product in itself it is the users of these apps. People that complain about datings app are either:

MALE

  • Not willing to date (so they complain they cant accumulate matches as fast as they would like),

  • Make no effort to be attractive (everyday we would receive emails to the support of guys saying "im not receive likes and im not the less attractive", well yes you are ),

FEMALE

  • Not willing to like anyone (We have plenty of girls that can scroll through 300 profiles and not like anyone and deleting their account saying "I dont like anyone" well

  • Liking users too attractive that would only want to have sex with them

The hard truth is that if you are a guy and you dont go on a date with at least one new girl per week and dont have your picture taken by a professional photograph you are loosing your time on a Tinder-like dating app

And if you are a girl and you dont date at least one guy per week and you dont lower your appearances standards then you are also loosing your time on a Tinder like dating app

So for me dating apps currently work, and actually they are the biggest place people meet these days. But using them is very disappointing

I am wondering if we are going to see a rise in relationships between ugly women and relatively attractive men. A lot of men are priced out of the dating market and will be forced to date down. There could be strange effects were a woman who is a 4 and a women who is a 7 could end up dating equally attractive men. We end up with the elite of women getting the elite of men. Then a huge surplus of men who are 6-8 attractive and a large span of women being able to meet equally attractive men with many choosing not to in the hopes of dating up.

Anecdotally, in public I notice pairings where the guy is clearly a bit of a gymrat, good muscle definition, takes care of himself, and he's got a woman with actual physical fat rolls latched onto his arm.

And some guys are just into that. Whatever. But I think its the marginal effect of men having a harder time and the competition being stiffer.

The reverse pops up MUCH less often. Although I have seen a few petite, waifish women on the arms of some large, obese men.

And some women are into that. Whatever.

While working at an outdoor retail it was a semi-regular occurrence where I'd be chatting with a fit, outdoorsy guy and then his girlfriend would walk up, and… well, let’s just say she wouldn't be a fun belay. If she took a whipper, he’d be in for quite a ride. Fit women were usually well-matched in terms of looks. More elite guys - expert kayakers, climbers, and guides - usually had attractive girlfriends.

In everyday life, the imbalances I notice between attractive women and less attractive men often involve guys who were once "cool" but have since gained weight and lost hair. For example, a former football lineman who married a cheerleader might now seem mismatched because she has maintained her appearance better than he has. While there's an imbalance now, there wasn’t in the past.

For people that don't think this exists or thinks it goes the other way I believe they anchoring off of >0.1 percentile guys like Harvey Weinstein, who looked like a cave orc yet would have a world-class smokeshow on his arm.

Also anecdotal but I see men who are not gymrats or muscly with extremely hot women absolutely all the time. They are reasonably fit, tall and athletic though. I'd say if you take the very most beautiful women of all, it's actually uncommon to see them with men who are on the meathead side of the athletic/strong spectrum.

Men get in shape for women, men become meatheads for themselves.

Truer words have never been said. You don't have to do that much to appeal to women. If you've got bulging pecs and veins, you're going to get a lot of compliments from other men and little else.

I knew this meme for years, but when I started lifting in earnest about a year ago, I was still quite tickled when literally the only people paying me compliments were dudes. "Arms looking thick!" "Great work on that bench PR!" "I see those biceps!"

Nary a peep from any woman, friend or otherwise.

That said, at least I can be pretty secure in the knowledge that if the guys are noticing it, then there are visible improvements that the women will notice too, even if they say nothing.

Interesting. My brother always got compliments from women by virtue of being handsome, and ever since he put on visible muscle it only increased. Rules 1 and 2 in action?

I think back when I worked out, I got maybe 3 compliments from women over 6 months for the pain.

To be fair, women just generally avoid compliments on male looks unless they're already very much into the guy. It's just too risky. What you need to look out for is staring when they think you're not looking, giggling/sheepish smile when you look at them, etc. It's probably also mediated by cultural factors I can't judge too well for India, but in general I'd say being complimented on your looks as guy would require one to be a rather extreme outlier, and a specific kind of hotness to boot (basically bishounen).

More comments

I saw someone recently point out that bodybuilders are rarely with conventionally 'hot' women.

It seems likely that the time commitment required for being serious about bodybuilding and the lifestyle changes for diet and such would actually make it VERY HARD to date seriously, that's time, money, and effort that takes away from your fitness goals.

And of course there's evidence that women don't find the roided-out look very appealing anyway.

A lot of bodybuilder types are actually geeks / nerds. The best example of this that comes to mind is Dr. Mike Israetel on YouTube. Watch just a few of his videos and you'll catch the sense of humor; a little too dry, heavy on puns, self-deprecating in a very cringey way. He gives out excellent lifting and nutrition advice and I do recommend him for that.

But as far as personality, charm, charisma, and "game" go, Dr. Mike reveals the truth of a lot of gym rats -- they're weirdos who just autist'd their ways to the weights.

That's why he has an Asian wife that is built like a mooring bollard.

There's also the slight issue that Hollywood has deformed the idea of what 'natural' and 'roided out' looks like.

Clueless discourse and blathering is it. Well. I am trying to find your point, which seems to be, give up? Anyway all this talk makes me want to throw myself into a profile just to see what would happen, though I'm well out of the game.

Every time the Motte begins discussing dating culture, my reaction is to go and hug my wife and children.

It's not that bad. People just like to be dramatic and use questionable statistics to explain away their crappy profiles.

Look at this man, boasting about a wife and children /s.

Yeah.. If I had a wife and kids and saw this, I'd feel like I caught the last chopper out of Kabul. Thankfully you did haha

You really like rubbing it in.

Everyone has the relationship they deserve.

Them's fightin' words.

Thank you, Candide.

More like de Maistre.

And this is why only clueless people use pure online dating. Meet girls IRL. Chat with her a bit. Take her contacts. Is it THAT hard?

Meet girls IRL

That's not how couples meet anymore. Especially among young people, who don't get out much anyway, they grew up in the digital world, and Covid made this even sharper. You can't meet Gen Z girls by just 'going out.'

The gender ratios in most public spaces are skewed towards men, which also makes women more averse to being approached over and over agan.

Women can get on the dating apps or any social media site and get all the attention she wants, so there's no need for her to entertain IRL offers.

Is it THAT hard?

Yes.

Now what.

What exactly are you looking for here?

Do you just want people to tell you that it's hopeless? Very well then. It is hopeless. I agree that you should give up hope. Do with this what you will.

If this is a prelude to arguing for certain policy proposals, then it would be more interesting if you made the case for those policies directly, instead of gesturing angrily at the stats and insisting that something (what, exactly?) must be done.

Stack guns and ammo, get multiple passports and generally prepare for the strife that inevitably comes from cultures rife with men that have nothing to lose.

There is nothing else to do because any solution would undermine the status quo too much.

I see this online a lot lately: supposedly all these "tfw no girlfriend" guys are going to rise up. "You are in danger!"

No. These guys are, frankly ,not the warfighting kind. They'll jack off to porn and seethe and imagine burning it all down (and you'll get the occasional Elliott Rodgers) but there's no movement of dateless men ready to "do something" and even a more political Andrew Tate probably couldn't move them to that kind of action.

You misunderstand. There is not going to be the prophetized "beta uprising" where wizards use their magical powers to enslave normies, that's not how things work.

Society is just slowly going to become lower and lower trust until it becomes an incomprehensible mess and collapses under its own weight. Incels are not going to do something, they're going to do nothing. And your society needs a whole load of something to work.

Tate is a good symptom of this actually. Note that he does not advocate people engage in pro-social behavior and become pillars of their community, only in looting. Get your own, pump and dump, get the lambo, evade taxes, scam others. Because if society is not willing to offer a fair deal, that's all that's left.

There's no talk of marrying and having children and buying a house and paying into your retirement fund here.

You will see violence. But that's because decay and lawlessness invite it. "These guys" are not going to go out and harm people for the most part, but they won't stop those that would.

I see. That's a more depressing prediction, though perhaps more realistic.

I don't see dateless men being a significant factor in that, though. I don't actually believe incels are a factor at all, other than online.

All the men who maintain your civilization are human beings with emotional needs you know. Large proportions of them having no stake in the future is going to have some consequences. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter.

There's a reason the people of the past thought so well of marriage that they literally made it sacred. We're just going to painfully relearn why.

More comments

If it is indeed hopeless, than we can at long last dispense with the concept of building anything for the future. Loot what you can, while you can.

My observations shows that the genz are as outgoing as the millenials and X-ers before them. They gather and drink beer in the park when the weather is warm, love going out clubbing, love going out on hikes and so on and attend shittons of house parties. There is probably selection bias since I drink quite a lot with the outgoing ones, but I don't think that there is massive epidemic of reclusive people.

Covid did move to house partying - but that is not a problem - you could obtain or host one.

Nearly half of Gen Z guys say they're not dating at all.

You're SEEING some of them out, but how many of them are you just not seeing because they're not visible.

You have put quite a lot of links showing that single people are not trying, few that prove it is hard.

...

Is your belief that out of nowhere, for no reason at all, young people, around the planet, have chosen to 'stop trying', unlike every other generation that came before them?

Does that pass muster to you?

Or is it just possible that it got HARDER, (and/or the rewards have diminished) which made it much less appealing to try?

Anyway, here you go:

https://archive.is/X72VS

Tons of analysis of the issue.

A decent summation:

If I had to sum up this big messy story in a sentence, it would be this: Coupling is declining around the world, as women’s expectations rise and lower-income men’s fortunes fall; this combination is subverting the traditional role of straight marriage, in which men are seen as necessary for the economic insurance of their family.

I've spent inordinate amounts of time researching this stuff. I'm not 'proud' of that, but I can provide you just about whatever form of evidence you want.

Here, check out how dating apps work in South Korea, which is even worse off than the U.S.:

https://instagram.com/reel/DFyqCOmz-LM/

Does that seem 'reasonable' to you, or is it maybe a lot more competitive than it used to be?

Is your belief that out of nowhere, for no reason at all, young people, around the planet, have chosen to 'stop trying', unlike every other generation that came before them?

"For no reason at all" is a strawman. Looking at the wide variety of hedonistic pleasures available to the 2020s twenty-something from the comfort of their own couch, it's not surprising that fewer and fewer people are "going out" - with each other or otherwise. Going outside, literally, has lost a lot of its appeal relative to other stuff you could be doing with your free time. It's hardly surprising that this applies to going out to meet girlfriends/boyfriends just as it applies to going out to meet platonic friends in-person. Logging into the groupchat has replaced meeting the lads at the bar. I'd never have met my first girlfriend if I hadn't been in the habit of meeting up with mixed friends, in person, outside, and that's happening less and less.

Yes.

But this is my point. Yelling at men to 'get better' is not a viable solution when the reason they're not putting in the effort are mostly attributable to FACTORS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL.

More comments

Bars aren't that much better, often lower quality women and more women than men. Starting a hobby to meet women is not efficient at all. Signing up for tennis/pottery or language classes just to meet women is a massive commitment of time to say high to maybe one or two single women in your age group.

Bars and clubs have kind of died as a place for 'average people to unwind', especially past University age. There's simply too much competition from other entertainment mediums, atleast in my experience. A certain subset of extroverted nightlife enjoyooors rotate around between eachother visibly, but as a subset of the population I believe it's smaller than it has been historically.

That’s obviously not what people mean when they say meet people in real life. You’re right that most hobby groups are filled with retirees, because those are the people who have time to do those things.

You meet people in real life by making friends, getting invited to parties, meeting more people, getting invited to more parties (by which I include everything from barbecues to housewarmings to weddings to Halloween to NYE, whatever) until you have a relatively busy social schedule because one of your dozens of friends and acquaintances is probably hosting something this weekend and you’re invited.

100%. This very night, I caught up with my best friend and his rather inebriated girlfriend. A little bit into the conversation, she interrupted me and asked me if I was considering getting married, to which I reacted in the affirmative, albeit in a year or two. She immediately tried to set me up with her sister, and by set up, asked me if I wanted to marry her.

Having platonic female friends is life on easy mode, women love few things more than matchmaking. Prove that you're not a creep, and they'll send people your way.

I can remember several platonic female friends complain about women in their circles that no one was interested in, and then refuse to make introductions.

Were the guys that they refused to make introductions for lacking social proof? The guy they've never seen in a relationship before, even if a good guy in other aspects of his life is not a known good party for a relationship, he's an unknown, untested, possibly one that has some red flags that scare women away because increasingly as a man gets older from a woman's (mistaken) point of view it should have happened at organically if there was nothing "off" relationship wise with this guy.

Once a guy has just one relationship that wasn't completely disastrous done, only then have I seen women willing to endorse him.

It's the classic 'Your need several years experience to get an entry-level job' problem.

No wonder people compare dating nowadays to job-hunting.

Having platonic female friends is life on easy mode, women love few things more than matchmaking. Prove that you're not a creep, and they'll send people your way.

Not in my experience. I have had plenty of platonic female friends, but none of them ever tried to set me up with someone. Nor (as far as I'm aware) did they do so for any other dudes they were friends with. I can only speculate as to why, though (generational difference? nerdy women don't get into matchmaking the way normie women do? who knows).

You meet people in real life by making friends, getting invited to parties, meeting more people, getting invited to more parties (by which I include everything from barbecues to housewarmings to weddings to Halloween to NYE, whatever) until you have a relatively busy social schedule because one of your dozens of friends and acquaintances is probably hosting something this weekend and you’re invited.

This is key and what a lot of dating discourse neglects. The problem is that many men who want a romantic partner often aren't particularly interested in making more platonic friends. Psychologically, it also feels a lot more indirect (compared to being told how to looksmax or how to cold approach), so can be difficult to generate enthusiasm for this approach.

I would also like to note that from the recent discourse about marriage in Mormons/religious groups, it was pointed out that the men are a lot more social and very regularly go to non-romantic social events where they get to know the women in their community (and the women get to know the men).

You also don't need to start a new hobby to meet people. For hobbies with any women and even a modest number of young people taking any initiative, even the bare minimum, is often enough to make a big difference in your social life.

For example, my local hiking meetup was always desperate for hike organizers. What is involved with organizing a hike? Sending a single email to the list saying "Hey I'm going to X trail at Y time I expect it be Z difficultly. I can take 3 people from W parking lot, if you are arranging your own transport we leave promptly at Y from the trail head." By spending 30 seconds composing an email you get to:

  • Choose a trail you actually enjoy
  • Any single women that do show up will be primed to talk to you, you did "organize" things after-all
  • Meet other men and couples who will expand your social circle. There might not be a bunch of single women who show up, but if you do not give off mega weird vibes you'll probably get at least a couple of social invites per event.

You don't need to directly pull numbers at your hobby to have it expand your social circle.

Do you have a manual on how to do this.

Arrange an event and invite the people you want to get to know better.

The main ingredients are an easily understood distracting activity or two that promotes interaction (cooking/eating, watching sport on a screen, simple table games, whatever suits you and your group), somewhere to rest and an informal atmosphere.

If you don't want to arrange something yourself look for similar low stakes events around your area and ask if they're thinking about going, then if they're open to the idea suggest meeting there.

Set up a standing social event - church used to fill this role for many. You can still do that, but adding another regular event helps. It’s a low-effort way to invite people without the mental load of planning. For me, planning one-off events often fell through, so I stick to, “I’m at trivia at this spot every Thursday; first beer is on me.” People say young adults aren’t going out, but I see plenty of attractive mid-20-somethings at the trivia nights I hit up. Really want to amp it up, I have beautiful big dog (thanks to my wife) that is a magnet for women.

Get roommates and run the house so you can choose who lives with you. Bonus: you cover your rent. Double bonus if you can house-hack.

Learn to cook and make cocktails. Create facebook events for house parties. Eventually someone will bring couple of girls they are hitting on. Befriend them. They have friends, they can invite other girls and they will vouch for you that you are cool guy and not a creep.

The average age of people on Facebook is like..55.

Fuck.

Take her contacts.

What?

She's not going to want to look at you with 20/20 vision.

He likely means get her contact information.

He means get her contact information, not steal her contact lenses. What PUAs call a number close (distinct from the k-close, which involves kissing, and the f-close, which involves fucking).

Good news (ish). While it's possible for such Chads to make a good crack at saturating the demand for casual sex, they're far more constrained when it comes to fulfilling the very real demand for steady relationships. Maybe they can juggle 4-6 women at once by operating in a gray zone or being noncommital, but it only goes so far.

Yeah, the actual “average” guys I know are doing just fine when it comes to finding a steady long term relationship, even if they might have issues with casual sex. It’s the high IQ, terminally online, borderline autistic guys that tend to struggle with both, and they often tend to get stuck in cognitive black holes.

I agree wholeheartedly, albeit in 2 entirely different countries.

Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. Short of prostitution, courting a partner/paying the bride price was the only way to get your willie wet for the overwhelming majority of men.

The fact that norms have changed, and a small fraction of men are able to avail of it.. Well, that naturally emboldens everyone else. Yet, a longer relationship (that includes sex) is both easier to achieve for the average man, and often more fulfilling. But everyone dreams of driving a Lambo on a Lada budget, and here 'tis the same.

"Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. "

Indeed. The issue, however, is that progressive maxims generally proclaim inequality is bad and that luxury should be distributed more equally. Yet women are the supreme luxury for men, and their distribution remains highly unequal despite being obviously more important than wealth for male well-being.

I don't care very much if I have twenty thousand dollars more or less, but I'd exchange a significant chunk of my fortune for success with women, and an even bigger chunk to keep the love of my life that came and went last year. What man wouldn't make that trade? The simple truth is that failing to attract women (or a least a woman) makes the average dude's life much, much worse in a way that doesn't seem to be true for women in the corresponding situation. Between the choice of accepting this gigantic inequality as inevitable and denying it exists, it's no surprise many pick the latter option.

Speaking more broadly, I honestly think a big part of the current malaise of the West is caused by the relationship and sex recession. It's difficult to find cultural meaning when you can't get find a girl or at least get laid every now and again, and civilization decline seems to be what no pussy does to a mf.

The recession in turn is caused by many trends, but chief among them in my book are 1) women gaining ever more status and wealth and being generally hypergamous, 2) women using their voting power to tax men so that the state indirectly provides much of that which individual men used to give them, and 3) dating apps rigging the game to the disadvantage of most men.

This trend, coupled with increased tokophobia due to the internet making it easy to research pregnancy and childbirth, leads straight to a sudden and sharp demographic decline. This then runs the real risk of creating an unbreakable demographic death spiral in the entire West (since less children means downsizing of schools, a bigger burden for the coming generation, et cetera, which in turn makes children both more difficult and less enticing). Climate change might be annoying, but demography is the real threat looming over us. The Shadow of sexlessness has fallen over Middle-Earth, and it is hard to see how it might be vanquished. But it's still too early to give up hope, and maybe there'll come a change for the better soon.

Once again, I add here at the end, the foresight of Kipling makes fools of us all:

"On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

women gaining ever more status and wealth

And weight

Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. Short of prostitution, courting a partner/paying the bride price was the only way to get your willie wet for the overwhelming majority of men.

I'd have assumed most men throughout history have had access to prostitutes.

Short of prostitution

The idea that the majority of women of good character and upbringing could have premarital sex with men with the public being aware without devastating repercussions on her future is less than a century old.

Notably, most self-proclaimed incels react quite negatively to the idea that they could get around their anguish by paying someone for a quick fuck. They have a point, since a steady relationship is very different from being a john. Casual sex without money explicitly changing hands is one of the greatest/sincerest forms of validation a man can have, it means that they're so intrinsically desirable that there's no need for any of that.

Nope.

High IQ, terminally online, borderline autistic guys were probably just the first to notice.

That link doesn’t work btw.

For all the men I know who are perpetually single, it’s pretty obvious why they’re that way, whether it’s from an off-putting personality, impossible requirements, or just plain never leaving the house. I don’t know a single one of these mythical average nice guys that somehow can’t get a girlfriend despite their best efforts.

Even this assumes a certain amount of stupidity or desperation among all of the women involved. If you want to keep up the pretense of dating someone, you have to at least make an attempt at seeing them a minimum of once a week, and unless you're in a committed relationship, you have to actually date them; that means that inviting them over to your house so they can hang out while you do whatever it is that you normally do on a Tuesday night doesn't count. Simultaneously stringing along 4–6 women thus means committing the bulk of your free time to dating, which seems horrible and expensive. It also means that there's some additional deception being pulled here—in addition to having to pretend you aren't dating four other women, you have to pretend that you have an active social life that keeps you from seeing them. So now if you do decide that one of these girls is the one, she's quickly going to find out that no, you don't ride bikes on Wednesday nights or go to the book club Thursday nights or bowl in a league on Friday nights or have dinner with your family on Sunday nights and even if she doesn't suspect that you were lying because there were other women, the image of yourself that you sold her on will be revealed as a sham, and you're likely to end up with zero women in the end.

and you're likely to end up with zero women in the end.

in a small village, maybe. In large cities the hypothetical hypothetical would get new ones quickly.

I didn't mean zero women in the grand scheme of things, I meant zero women among the 4 or 5 you're trying to simultaneously date.

The problem is tons of women are happy to believe they should be able to marry someone like the pool of guys they've slept with throughout their most attractive dating years.

The majority get the hint eventually. Some have too much pride to accept that they're going to have to settle, but most women I know eventually figure out that soulful men with sixpacks and a guitar aren't strictly necessary for a fulfilling partner.

Of course, (attractive) men do have it easier. A 40 year old man has far more prospects than a 40 year old woman, and can compensate for age and waning looks with things like money and prestige. Those hold far less value for women.

Here's a genuine question, because I do think men and women have different attitudes to sex, relationships, love, the whole package (e.g. the stereotypical excuse of the cheating husband when caught "it was only sex, I really love you, honey!")

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I'm asking because I see a certain amount of resentment in comments (not necessarily on here) about women being too picky and they get loads of matches on dating apps and they only reply to the most desirable ones. Well, if you had a selection of possible sexual/romantic partners vying for your attention, would you reply to Number Fifty on the list as well as Number One, or would you just select out Numbers One Through Ten of the ones you personally find hottest and ignore the rest?

I'm not trying to gotcha anyone or point fingers, I'm honestly curious.

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I'm asking because I see a certain amount of resentment in comments (not necessarily on here) about women being too picky and they get loads of matches on dating apps and they only reply to the most desirable ones. Well, if you had a selection of possible sexual/romantic partners vying for your attention, would you reply to Number Fifty on the list as well as Number One, or would you just select out Numbers One Through Ten of the ones you personally find hottest and ignore the rest?

I'm not trying to gotcha anyone or point fingers, I'm honestly curious.

This is the plot of basically every harem anime out there, or at least the plot of every harem anime made after the realistic social, legal, religious, and economic constrains that forced the protagonist to choose a single girl to wed gave way to the pure wish-fulfillment fantasy of polygamy. And the revealed preference of men is, overwhelmingly, to keep them all.

Operating under the assumption that all 50 are somehow equally interested in me for some inexplicable reason, I'd work on narrowing them down to find the one that's most compatible with me in terms of personality, outlook and life goals.

And then marry her.

This assumes that I'm actually aware of your theoretical scenario. Otherwise, I'd probably come to the conclusion that they're just being nice, and nothing would come from it.

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

This was basically my experience of the summer of 2010, I went from being invisible and unable to get a date, to having the attention of several girls in the space of about a month. Not fifty, but five or so was more than I could handle at 18. So I can tell you from direct knowledge: I would try to have it every way, be seized with indecision as a result of the abundance, fail to commit to any one choice, piss them all off a little bit when they figured it out, and like Baridan's ass starving in the midst of plenty eventually fumble the whole lot of them. I would behave with mild immorality, while using vague language and a personal sense that I'm a "nice guy" to assuage my guilt about clearly not giving any of the women what they actually want. I would date or make love to as many of them as practical, rising to my Level of Incompetence and eventually screwing up the whole thing.

Luckily I'd learn something useful for the next set of fifty.

if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

Top ten. Even if I'd want to sleep with all fifty women, to sleep with one each day would take almost two months, and also involves losing every evening to womanising. And that's assuming every single one would put out on the first date. Even libidinous 20-year-old Crowstep would find that tiring.

Answering as my younger self, i'd probably do some initial sort to eliminate ones with some particularly off-putting personality trait or very gross physical features that would mean the baseline amount of sexual attraction just wouldn't be there. Above the minimum physical attraction threshold, basically not at all concerned with trying to pick the "hottest" as then it's more important to find both a personality, philosophly/values, and commitment match.

I may be highly unrepresentative, but I would sleep with precisely zero of them before getting to know them and, at a minimum, not suspecting or knowing they weren't marriage material. Sleeping with someone I would not consider a potential serious long-term partner seems actively repellant, and I strongly dislike other men who have a significantly different outlook on relationships and women.

Ten? Hell, I'm trying to juggle five right now and that's only because of a combination of luck and poor judgment on my part. 50 is almost inconceivable. Even if it's clear to both parties from the start that this is only going to be a hookup with zero possibility of a second date, you're still looking at nearly two months of stringing number 50 along before you get to her, and that's assuming you're available every day with no other obligations. In my experience, if you're going to ask a girl out on the apps you'd better do it within the first week or so, depending on message frequency, or they're going to think you're just stringing them along and stop responding. You have a better chance of success if you try to cultivate 2 or 3 at once than if you try to spread the limited amount of time that you have too thin.

Yep.

Dating apps have made everyone so flighty that the OPTIMAL strategy is to try to have like 3-5 on the line at any given time, as most won't even lead to a date, so you run up the numbers as best you can.

But if you get a string of luck (if you're a dude) and actually GET 3 women to go on dates... suddenly your incentive changes to keep this bounty going and drag that out as long as possible.

I think women are dynamic enough that you keep pursuing as many women as you can reasonably allocate the time to do so.

The 10 most attractive in other words may be bad lays (way common than you'd think), annoying, etc. The probability that the best overall woman is in the "Bottom" 40 is high. It's your minor league farm team.

Answering from the perspective of my younger and more ignorant self…

I would start by dividing the women up into those above my “bar” of attractiveness and those below. Harsh, but that’s basically how it works. With that done, I’d attempt to engage with every woman above the bar. However, I’d very quickly realize this was much more difficult than I thought, because (youthful lechery aside) I do like women and don’t really enjoy making them feel bad by brushing them off etc. At that point, I’d start trimming numbers until I got a manageable amount, prioritizing attractiveness. But then, as the warm feeling of approval started wearing off, I’d start being more picky again, mostly on the basis of personality. (Any man who says personality has nothing to do with how attractive a woman is either has no experience with them or is totally disconnected from the women he fucks.) Specifically, pleasant, caring, and engaging women will make the cut, while mean, erratic, and dull ones will fall out. And eventually I will realize that more than one is nothing but trouble and just go for the best one.

The number isn’t 50, and it wasn’t like I had an absolute pick of the litter, but this is a somewhat accurate if abstract story of my dating life (minus all the women I tried dating solo before learning what real standards I had).

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I can tell you what I hope and pray I'd do, but I don't know if asking a bunch of wallflowers a question about getting attention like this will yield a realistic answer.

You're talking to an Indian living in Europe, trying to dodge a marriage arranged by his auntie. If there's anyone here playing on hard mode, it's him... Well, on the other hand he is a doctor... Ok, so I don't know exactly what all that calculus comes down to, but if he's able to maintain some optimism, I think he's worth hearing out.

You're talking to an Indian living in Europe, trying to dodge a marriage arranged by his auntie.

That was a year back, and fortunately said aunt managed to get the hint eventually.

I am still unclear on the difficulty setting on the British server, so to speak. I spent the past year in a steady but unexciting relationship with a girl over in Scotland, which ended amicably. So I wasn't really on the dating market, and had maybe 2 MILFs and 2 young and cute co-workers hit on me or evince interest. My lifestyle has been work and wasting away at home, with the majority of the incidents mentioned happening when I'd ventured out to the nearest pub. In previous discussions, I had accepted that being an Indian guy makes dating in the West an uphill struggle, so that's far from the worst.

In India? No issues really. I just had my best friend's girlfriend try to hitch me up with her cousin. Too many issues for me to go that way, but I'm confident that I could end up married in a few months or at most a year if I wanted to be. I've just given myself a few more years of potential runway because I think finding the love of my life is worth the effort.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats