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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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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

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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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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.

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

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