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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
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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