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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.)
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:
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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.
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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:
(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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
I have over four hundred photographs of this particular specimen (for research purposes), and I assure you, her eyes are very far apart.
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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.
This sounds like the hillbilly Oresteia.
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Something we can all relate to
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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.
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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.
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