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Why Should I Care?
I recently greatly enjoyed Naraburns' post on the life of Dylan, so I thought I would give back by putting together my thoughts as someone that empathizes greatly with Dylan, and would probably be picking pineapples right next to him if I didn't happen to be born with some aptitude for shape rotation. To provide some context, I've been in a bit of a malaise for the last few days, having had a rough week at work, and I get into a spiral of fantasizing about quitting my job when the thought hits me - why, exactly, do I even care about the job? Why do I actually care about contributing to society?
As any good economist knows, people at scale generally do what they're incentivized to do. Yet from the point of view of a young man it's increasingly harder to get a bite out of carrots historically used to incentivize men to act pro-socially, while simultaneously most of the sticks and fences previously used to corral people's worst impulses have disintegrated. Viewed from a sufficiently cynical lens, it becomes more and more rational from a self-interest perspective to drop out of the system and become a disaffected bum, and indeed this does seem to be reflected in the male labor force participation rate.
The elephant in the room is, of course, dating discourse. It is absolutely true and subject to much discussion amongst these types of circles that relationship formation and TFR is dropping off a cliff in almost all countries on the planet. Everyone has their own hot take as to what's going wrong and who's at fault; personally, I just think it comes down to incentives.
Men no longer need women for sexual gratification [when HD video porn exists] or domestic labor [when household appliances exist], women no longer need men for physical or economic security [when careers and the state will provide] and there's significantly less status or social pressure for either gender to get into and stay in relationships early, unless you run in religious or traditional circles. It's a similar story for having children; most people, if asked, will at least nominally say that they want children, yet revealed preference is for global TFR collapse. In agrarian societies having children isn't a great burden relatively and they become useful quite quickly, whereas in modern societies having child(ren) will result in significant changes to your lifestyle, and impose notable financial burden [less than what most PMC's might think, but certainty an extant one] for at least twenty years for a very uncertain return; it's a hard sell to the modal person to make sacrifices to their quality of life and economic stability for the sake of very expensive pets [from an economic perspective].
As a result, polarization between the sexes is at an all-time high as a result as neither sex really needs the other, and left to their own devices the observed tendency is that they mostly end up self-segregating. For men that do still want a relationship and marriage, this means it's the hardest it's ever been; in-person ways for singles to meet have all but disappeared, dating apps are perhaps the most demonic application of technology ever invented, and the very high amount of options that most women now hold [including that to eschew dating altogether] heavily disincentivizing making any sort of commitment [to be clear, almost all men would and do act in similar ways given the same breadth of options as well].
I don't agree with the blackpillers, in the sense that I think the majority of people could eventually find a partner if they put in enough effort [which might be an incredible amount depending on the starting point!]. However, it is true that we went from a society where the standard life script ended up with everyone except for a few oddballs partnered up, to one where the standard life script results in most men ending up alone unless they spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on dating or are exceptionally [hot/rich/charismatic/lucky] in some way. Most people really just go with the flow, and hence increasingly more people end up alone.
Even for those who do manage to summit the mountain, the returns on entering into a relationship and marriage seem to be diminished for most men. It's likely to be expensive financially [I'm not convinced by Caplan-style arguments that relationships save you money, the most expensive budget items like housing, childcare and healthcare are largely rivalrous or wouldn't otherwise exist, and it's reasonably well studied that relationships where the woman makes more money suffer] and of course there's little to really secure commitment or incentivize sticking it out if something goes wrong; getting divorced is one of the easiest ways to have your life ruined, after all.
At the end of the day, modern relationship formation is less about the practical benefits as was the case for almost all of human history, and almost entirely about self-esteem and self-actualization; hence the rise of incels [who are bereft of the validation of being desired, not the literal act of sex] and romantasy fiction. How much does it validate me that I have a high status / hot / rich partner willing to have sex and be seen in public with me? Have I now truly found my soulmate, the ideal parent for my children? This is, of course, an impossible standard to meet for the vast majority of people and relationships and hence most people who think this way end up dissatisfied and unhappy - and yet without the illusion of self-actualization what else is there really to gain bonding yourself to someone else with a bond that is not a bond?
With all is said and done, as the mountain grows ever-harder to summit and the rewards for reaching the peak become ever-increasingly a mirage, I think it's an increasingly rational choice for many people to decide not to climb and to try and find contentment at the bottom. That's certainly how I've been feeling lately, at the very least.
This brings me to my next point, where if a first world man decides that they no longer want to conquer the mountain, there's not really much else that buying into modern capitalism can offer them in many cases. It is of course a stereotype that men are happy living in squalor, and that women be shopping, but I've found it to be remarkably accurate; women make up something like 70% to 80% of consumer spending, and in general it's motivation to be a provider that drives many men to work as hard as they can, most of whom otherwise are pretty happy living with a mattress and WiFi.
If one's lost the motivation or opportunity to provide, suddenly most of what remains expensive in modern abundant society doesn't really matter; you don't have to spend money on up-keeping a lifestyle and status symbols to attract a mate, and you no longer need to spend most of your life paying off a house in the best school district you can afford to keep the wife happy and the child as advantaged as possible.
Similarly, the stick of impoverishment is no real threat in any rich welfare state; He who does not work, neither shall he eat is now comically false, food [and non-housing living expenses in general] are pretty trivial to cover if you're smart/frugal about it and if you're not the gibs will probably cover them for you anyways. Housing is a real problem that's been exacerbated near-universally across the world, but if you no longer need to provide for a family or make a lot of money there's still plenty of ways to keep a roof over your head without working too hard; living out of a van, moving to somewhere where the jobs aren't great but living is cheap, or the good old solution of failing to launch.
Anecdotally, my college friend group includes a guy who dropped out to live with his parents and do gig work and a high-powered lawyer who inherited a few million, and despite their significantly different socioeconomic classes still live materially similar lives and are still good friends. Sure, the lawyer can afford to live in a massive house, fly business and collect a bunch of expensive trinkets, but when it comes down to it neither of them worry about their basic needs, and spend most of their leisure time doing the same things; working out, playing the same video games, watching the same tv/movies/anime, scrolling too much on social media and going traveling to similar places from time from time.
Of course being wealthier and more powerful gives you more optionality in the face of adversity, and that's great if you're born into wealth or are exceptional/lucky human capital, but honestly the vast majority of people are never going to have enough power or money to matter if anything really goes wrong with their life, even if they spend their entire lives grinding and buying into the system. "Making it" to middle manager at a big firm or owning a small business doesn't save you from targeted lawfare, developing late-stage cancer where the experimental treatment is going to cost a few million out of pocket, or your home burning down and getting denied by insurance. And of course, no amount of money can save you from the true black swans e.g unaligned superintelligence, gain of function^2 electric boogaloo or nuclear war - how many young people in the first world really believe that they'll be taking money out of their retirement fund and living life as normal in 2080?.
So if the dating market is FUBAR and money has questionable marginal utility, what else is left to encourage men to work hard? Well, people will think you're a loser and low status if you don't work or you work a shitty job, maybe that will work? That's true, and historically granting young man status when they do pro-social things has been a pretty effective motivator.
Yet now we live in a highly globalized society for better or worse. No matter how far you are up your chosen totem poles, status has gone global; it's easy to look up, see who's still above you and feel bad about yourself. Chad is probably just a twitter DM away, in fact! Being unemployed or a gig worker might be low status, but even "good" jobs don't feel much higher status either; it's hard to feel the average software engineer or electrician job is particularly high status when constantly inundated with people who are orders of magnitude more successful. To me, it feels like the endgame is SoKo or China; competition for "high status" becomes more and more ludicrous and absurd, and everyone else sits on the sidelines resigned to feeling like a loser even if their lives are materially still great.
Faced with such competitiveness, you can either throw yourself into the maw and try and win an winnable game, or decide to tap out of the game altogether. Sure, there will always be those with immense will to power that will maximize for status, to strive for the stars and win at at all costs, but realistically most people don't have such strength of will. If the only options are play and lose and not play at all, it increasingly feels like the best play is to just drop out of striving for status altogether; it helps if you're no longer invested in dating or careerism, the arenas where status is most instrumental...
This piece ended up being significantly longer than I intended, and really I don't expect any sympathy nor do I have any solutions [much less politically viable and moral ones] to what I see as a deeply society-wide malaise. I have a deep respect for the incredibly autistic open-source emulator developer, the Japanese master sushi chef, and the Amish craftsman, those who still Care about their crafts in the truest sense of the word. Yet one cannot choose to win the lottery of fascinations, one cannot choose to be born into a high-trust society, and one cannot choose to have faith when it does not exist.
At the end of the day, it's hard to argue it's not a triumph of society that the modal first worlder spends most of their time wallowing in comfort and engaging in zero-sum status struggles in a world where so many still suffer. Yet what is great can easily be lost, and modernity as it exists today cannot survive without the buy-in of young men. Maybe it doesn't matter, that in the end us dysgenic neurotics will end up being weeded out of the gene pool, and that future populations will be able to break out of this local minima and take over the world. Perhaps the prayers for the machine god to deliver us salvation will come true and the priests shall finally immanentize the eschaton so that none of this matters.
In some ways it feels like to me that the barbarians are banging on the gates while nobody else notices or cares, as everyone else seems to be whiling away the hours eating bread and going to the circus. But well, if nobody else is manning the walls either, why should I be the one who cares?
Maybe it’s down to my social bubbles, but the way men are described in these kinds of posts just doesn’t mesh with the men I know.
Like the supposed truth that men aren’t big spenders and would happily sleep on a mattress in a cardboard box that had wifi. Sure men don’t tend to own as many knick-knacks and care less about interior decorating, but men loooove to spend big time on things they care about, like “gear” for their hobbies. Who’s buying $2,000 GPUs, 4k ultra wide monitors and pricy mechanical keyboards? Expensive guitars when they can barely string together a few chords? Ridiculously pricy sports gear? Who tends to spend extra on high performance sport version of cars even though they look basically the same as the base model? I don’t know any women who are impressed by a $1500 espresso machine, but I know guys who have them.
I’ve never seen an “average” man have issues with dating (casual sex, sure, but not dating). The guys I know who can’t seem to find a single woman to date… you can tell why from like a 5 min conversation. It doesn’t take the average guy an inordinate amount of effort to find an average woman and get married. Even awkward nerdy guys I know are getting married as long as they’re not actively unpleasant to be around.
I feel like that kind of malaise and blackpilling mostly happens to neurotic, terminally online people. If you touch grass in a first world country, those issues aren’t really there.
Of course I can't speak for all men, but I think it's a bit more subtle than men be spending too; yofuckreddit put it well in the sense that many men's lives are more simple. Sure, I spend money on my home office and gym because I can afford it, but that doesn't really change my day to day life; if I ever went broke I'd still have a computer and be working out.
Obviously speaking in generalities, but I've found women enjoy a more dynamic life and are more attuned to keeping up with the lives of others; new experiences, new toys, new clothes etc. You can see how this might pre-dispose men to dropping out as opposed to women.
I agree in the sense that most people, especially in middle-class+ demographics, could probably find a partner if they put a lot of effort into it and relaxed their standards; a lot of incel/red pill discourse is either fairly lower-class coded (single mothers, criminal chads etc) or wildly high standards for a partner and for a relationship.
The point I'm more trying to make is that it's significantly more difficult and costly than it ever used to be to find a partner, and even for those who do, the incentives for actually having a partner are falling further and further. Having high standards is not wrong, for a lot of people it probably is true that they're better off alone vs partnering with the people they can convince to commit to them; the single life is pretty damn good nowadays!
I will say that this is emphatically not the lived experience of most (straight) young men nowadays [it may be different in queer spaces like yours, I'm not sure].
Others already linked Radicalizing the Romanceless, but in general unless you're significantly above average in looks/charisma/wealth etc you're not getting set-up [especially work relationships are verboten], off-the-cuff hook-ups are not happening unless you're in college and rarer even there, and the primary way most men are going to meet women is through the dating app hellscape.
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Yeah. I move in / post in / am at least aware of many different circles of guys (old high school friends, nerdy types, lefty types from my lefty activist days, church guys, football fans etc.), mostly millennials but sometimes trending towards zoomer, and in all of the circles a clear majority of guys is either married, in a steady relationship or has no trouble with dates, perhaps barring the church guys who obviously are playing a somewhat different game (and even there there's been a number of marriages recently, typically to girls from the same parish). Of course the traditional answer is that since I'm an (early) millennial I can't possibly know what it's like with zoomers, but even the younger guys in my circles seem to be doing OK.
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Everything else you wrote rings true - but this is absurd! Or rather, not my lived experience at all. The person sleeping next to me now can tell you about all the expresso machines in all the various price ranges and why one is better than another.
But, all things have exceptions I imagine.
My wife wants some fancy espresso machine and is opinionated about which sort is good.
She refuses to drink my AeroPress coffee.
Whaaa....? My head just exploded.
ETA: Is she possibly looking for some sort of frothed milk beverage with espresso in it? Because that's the only way I can make sense of those two sentences together.
She wants espresso in steamed milk, so yeah.
Yeah, thanks, I was all, "how could anyone who is opinionated about which sorts of fancy espresso machines are good refuse to drink from an AeroPress?!" Then my brain kicked back in.
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This has always been amusing to me. Online discourse is profoundly rife with "alpha fux, beta bucks" and "no man can get dates finder is a hellhole" but all my male friends seem to have as much sex and dates as they want.
Admittedly, my social sphere leans towards white collar yuppies downtown, so there's lots of fish and no one is answering "flip burgers" to the "what do you do" question.
But even my childhood friends, who are not yuppies, still pull?
One guy works like 2 days a week (smokes weed the other 5) and lives in a shitty apartment but always has a new girl, and they're bartenders/bottle girls/etc (one time a stripper lmao) so they're attractive, if messy.
Another is decidedly not conventionally attractive, works a non status job, and churns first dates enough he had to stop posting Instagram stories of sunsets because he was getting worried someone would notice (it's his first date move).
Im not sure how to reconcile these two realities.
Possible that they're extraordinarily charismatic and kind of...retired from the high-reward, high-stress lifestyle that you get when trying to monetize that. Like a guy with a math degree from Princeton undergrad working the counter at Subway, or the former investment banker working as a chef or cook at a small resort.
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I wonder if it’s basically shared knowledge. The thing about dating is that nobody will tell you how it works. If you’re lucky in your social circle, you and your friends figure it out in your late teens and pool your shared knowledge and experience. If not, your only option is people who are incentivised to lie to you: priests, gamer girls, masculinity influencers, MeToo journalists, etc.
For various reasons, all these people tell you what they want you to believe, not what’s true. For high-conscientiousness men especially this is a killer.
People flock to those like themselves, so you have all-male groups who collectively have no idea how to get dates and have male hobbies as an alternative, versus mixed groups like yours who all date constantly.
I think that might explain what you see.
I'm confused, how do you figure priests are incentivized to lie to people about how to find dates? I wouldn't go to a priest for marriage advice (for obvious reasons), but plenty of priests dated (and yes, even had sex - priests are sinners too) before joining the clergy. For example, the pastor of my parish is a pretty young guy who was engaged before he decided he was being called to the priesthood, so he could probably give decent advice about attracting women (if you're in Brazil where he's from).
There are priests who are good at this and priests who are bad at this, IME.
Obviously if you ask your priest how to get laid on a first date he will answer ‘dont’. But the better ones are fine people to listen to. Few of them are popular on the internet.
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Essentially along the lines described below by other posters. I would expect priests to be disproportionately virgins or bad at dating for the obvious reasons, and they are also often older and regarded as pillars of the community. Finally, Christianity has certain ideas about what women and dating are like and how they should work (as do feminism, PUA, etc.) and priests are sort of expected to uphold those values.
As such, it's not that priests are incentivised to lie to you exactly, but I think to some extent they are motivated to lie to themselves and also they will not necessarily tell you all their own private thoughts. Some very self-aware exception will exist, as with any other creed, but I don't think institutional authority figures in general are very helpful in this sphere.
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Priests and especially Protestant pastors, influenced by feminist tendencies, often tend to push misandric, gynonormative ideas, even though Christianity as a creed is unreservedly and unquestionably patriarchal.
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It's not about having no experience, it's about them having a tendency to tell you that behaving like a good christian or [insert religion] will surely lead to you finding and holding a partner, when it's at best unrelated or at worst actively counterproductive.
Ironically, I would actually say that they are better equipped to give good relationship advice once you already are committed to each other, for the same reason.
I was going to say that churchgoing women outnumber men, so yeah maybe. But, now that I google it, articles say young women are attending church at much lower rates than previous generations. So much lower that it flipped to more young men than young women who regularly attend church.
Sorry young guys, you missed the boat on that one.
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It's simply the 'alpha fucks, beta bucks' phenomenon in action. And what you and @rae are generally describing are the 'I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon' effect in action.
But what I'm saying is that my friends really aren't too 5% Giga-chads and those last two example friends are extremely not that.
So if I know lots of non-alphas who are fucking, what's up?
Yeah I guess my thinking was if below average men in the looks/earnings/status department can get laid regularly, anyone can
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At the risk of being circular, one answer is that if your friends are getting loads of dates / sex with reasonably attractive girls, they are in fact giga-chads because that's what being a giga-chad is. Whereas if someone is rich and handsome but can't get girls interested in him, it would be odd to call him chaddish. Some men seem to have It, a strange factor that impresses other people, and much of the verbiage spilled here and elsewhere is working out what It is and how people who don't have It can get It.
That's a fair point
I guess my thinking was if they can do it, anyone can. But thinking about it more today, one dude is extremely forward and the other is nominally shy/introverted but he does play the numbers game.
I guess for the "shy" one, I'm still suprised he pulls as much as he does (given internet discourse) as he uses tinder, etc and isn't that hot. So the narrative "tinder only works for the hottest men" falls apart a bit.
Also both of them are more than happy to date women that aren't perfect (one literally dated a stripper). So they're also realistic about standards.
That seems sensible. I know a fat, short dude who's fun but not good looking by anyone's standards (think fat Gimli) but he has a happy marriage with a lovely girl who he essentially seduced away from a much handsomer and richer dude; he's as forward as that sounds.
I think that it's partly that dating is heavily subject to virtuous cycles - even if you're dating on tinder, if you've got photos of yourself with affectionate women, if you're obviously comfortable with women, if you know how dating works and how to take the lead and make people feel comfortable, that makes up for a lot. Which is encouraging in that it suggests that datability can be improved, it's just that from a certain starting point it's hard to see how in an easily actionable way. @kky had the right of it when he talked about tractability. Also mixed friendship groups probably help a lot.
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I feel like I occupy some sort of intermediate space. On one hand, a fairly comfortable majority of men I knew (including myself) paired up without much trouble, or at least had no trouble finding intermittent partners when they were not too busy actively wrecking their lives; but on the other, I do see some 30% of guys that seem to live the internet discourse stereotype (orbiting, being serially relegated to the "friend zone", or outright socially shunned by any women) without being terminally online, or with the terminal onlineness appearing downstream of their misfortune. For maybe half of them, it is somewhat obvious to me what about them tanks their chances (though I have to wonder how much of these traits is upstream rather than downstream of the outcome), but there is a remaining set where I feel like I just lack the UV cone cells that allow birds to tell that the flower is fake, or something.
In some cases, it also seems to be a case of product-market mismatch: certain guys elicit the "I couldn't ever see him like that"~revulsion spectrum of reactions only from a particular demographic, and do normally with others. This is unfortunate when they only target that particular demographic - some combinations where I have seen this patterns is nerdy white guys and white girls (which is why you can always find the CS department by following the gradient of WMAF couples), Chinese-American guys who have Chinese Dad aura and Americanized Asian girls, and Indian guys and Asian girls independent of assimilation. There are cases that go against the common patterns though - I used to know a particular Caucasian guy in CS who elicited baseless shockingly cruel commentary from the Asian girls I was friends with, but paired up with a (status-matched, in my estimation) girl of his own demographic halfway into grad school.
don't I fucking know it ...
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I was (by my own analysis) a pretty good catch for years. My problem was that I couldn't find any women up to my standards. It is exceedingly grim out there for anyone with expectations that would have been reasonable even 30 years ago.
Found one eventually and we're very happy. Years later we're still constantly telling each other "I can't believe no one else got to you first."
Even so I know too many other men my age and younger who can't find a decent wife for anything.
That's so awesome man, congratulations to both of you.
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There's definitely a trend of men being too timid to take the initiative in relations between the sexes.
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I could not disagree with this harder (+the data backs me up). Maybe it’s slightly different 5-10 years older than me, but there are so so many single men in my social circles. Sure some of them have some social skills to work on, but they’re mainly average guys with average hobbies. Some of them haven’t been on dates in years.
Are you a woman by chance? Perhaps that might explain our different perspectives.
I’m a trans woman but before that I was a man and dated women and men. My experience isn’t typical but I know a decent number of straight men and I have trouble believing an actual average guy can avoid having a single date for years, unless they’re avoiding all social situations with the opposite sex.
If you’re a regular straight person, everything is basically designed for you. You can ask out basically any single member of the opposite sex. People try to set you up with their friends/co-workers/whatnot. You can hook-up with random strangers at a party if the chemistry’s right without having to worry if they’re in the <5% that’s attracted to you, if you’re sexually compatible, or if you’re trans and passing, that they won’t react violently.
You don’t have to deal with people hiding your relationship, you can just follow a preset script, introduce your partner to your friends, meet their parents without fear, etc. And as a man the bar is honestly pretty low and it’s ridiculously easy to set yourself apart in terms of fashion/being a decent partner/a decent father, and your attractiveness is dictated by a multiple of things rather than just your rapidly declining physical appearance.
Plus most straight men seem to be attracted to most women? I don’t understand it but it should make your life easier to not be picky.
If you're autistic and not otherwise impressive or a "supercrip" it's rather gross for you to want to be anything other than a celibate and prosocial monk. As for fashion: I suspect that the schlubby straight guy is countersignaling some kind of social grace stuff. At least in some places. At my hospital: the medical students dress better than the residents, who in turn dress better than the attendings. One attending I mistook for a janitor or laborer at first!
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In other instances, (gynephile) trans men reported that they found dating as a man was a lot harder.
do you realize that this is exactly how women see average man? median woman considers median man repulsive. This is only advantage for cishet males who are in top 5-10% and/or in low population density. Homosexuals have had their solutions to dating which serve average gay in big cities better than average heterosexual.
"script" used to be, now it's gone along with arranged marriages.
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I'm one of the many, many guys who grew up with the bedrock knowledge that I should never display romantic interest in a member of the opposite sex, for fear of creeping them out.
I can entirely believe that on balance, your analysis here is more or less accurate. I'm pretty sure Trans people do in fact have it significantly harder than straight men, and certainly much harder than straight women. But straight men have it pretty hard, and a lot of them have achieved common knowledge that approximately no one is interested in helping or even sympathizing with them in any way. The bitterness this produces is severe, and mixes poorly with claims that "everything is designed for them".
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Jeez I have no idea why you got downvoted so hard.
If you follow the upvote/downvote patterns you’ll notice that a fair chunk of the motte’s lurkers are pretty stereotypical internet right-wingers these days, of the type who are likely to read “I’m a trans woman” and instantly downvote. And/or the type who are wont to react with instant negativity to anyone saying that “the straight man dating world/heterosexual relations aren’t that bad, actually”. Sad but true.
Edit: plus some good old-fashioned identity elements. The straight men lurking the motte presumably didn’t take kindly to a queer person talking about them from outside their Lived Experience.
I was talking about my own Lived Experienced™ though! Maybe I should have cleared that up more. Oh well.
I think blackpill/manosphere/battle-of-the-sex discussions benefit from queer viewpoints as they can bridge the gaps between the sides so to speak, so I’m happy to give my two cents regardless.
I mean I'm pretty transphobic but the whole reason this place exists is to be an open forum where people of widely-divergent viewpoints can have conversations and consider each other's perspectives. I upvote effort and sincerity. Downvotes are reserved for bad form, not for disagreement. This is basic stuff and it bugs me that even among our much-smarter-than-average userbase people can't seem to figure it out. Downvoting you for your perspective is the equivalent of rating an item on amazon one star because USPS delivered the package late. Real trog hours.
Also @TheDemonRazgriz since I'm coming back late.
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As a bi guy, I've dated both men and women. And it is multiple orders of magnitude easier to get a date with a man than it is with a woman. Quantitatively, my inbound like/match rate online was literally 100x when matching with men (I'd get a number of likes in a day with men that it'd take me almost a year with women).
Sure, a fair bit of that was just casual sex. But even if 75% were just looking for casual sex, that's still an order of magnitude more ease dating men than women.
I suspect this mismatch is that your "average man" encompasses a lot of things that make him substantially above average.
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No one's is. I think the intercontinental, intergenerational (intersectional? a dirty word around here) scale of the internet makes comparisons nearly useless while also allowing almost any reasonably credible explanation to find enough support to pass as "true".
"You could meet someone at work" say 1000 people who work at bars in LA.
"I can't meet anyone at work" say 1000 guys who work in provincial warehouses.
"You can meet people at parties" say 1000 people who like to go clubbing in NY.
"I don't go to parties" say 1000 guys who like programming.
"You can meet people through friends and family, or at church" say 1000 Mormons in SLC.
"I was raised by 4chan and social workers after my dad abandoned my alcoholic mum and the only people who go to church are old or weird" say 1000 guys from the underclass.
"You can meet young, fun, attractive women online" say 1000 20somethings who live across the street from a middle tier university.
"Apps are full of divorcees and single mums" say 1000 40somethings who live in low turnover commuter towns.
Then a statistician comes along, shoves them all into one box and finds that 50% of people find someone at work/at parties/at church/online/etc.
It's like the blind men and the elephant. They're all true but without the full context people are talking past each other. This thread itself is a microcosm of this phenomenon.
On the other hand the internet is the only place where we can discuss this at length because workmates, party goers, friends, family, parishioners and statisticians alike are neither keen nor useful for sitting around IRL bemoaning one's dating woes at length, and maybe even less for proclaiming one's dating success. "Hello boss/barkeep/buddy/cousin/sir/professor, care to share some fully generalisable insight into why some people are struggling with dating? Not me though, I'm swimming in pussy. High five!"
Choose ten separate and unaccompanied strangers and then actively confirm which ones aren't single. As a trans woman you might have an intuition how different your approach and the results would be asking as a man or as a woman.
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I think the major difference is people who have monosexual friend groups vs mixed friend groups. If all your friends are nerdy guys you're probably not going to the kinds of parties where there are lots of single ladies to hook up with and you're relegated mostly to cold opens. People have been making less friends now than ever before so it's pretty common to not have one member of the opposite sex that you see regularly and platonically, and if you meet your friends through mostly male hobbies then, lets just say monosexual friend groups aren't rare.
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I have to ask what you're basing your statements off of because none of these statements are true for the "average" man, and they haven't been for at least the last 10 years. Full disclosure, I'm a late millennial/early zoomer (late 90s to early aughts) straight male.
You can do that in the same way that you can run through a minefield and not get blown up. The fact of the matter is simply that the consequences for running into a vindictive, cruel, or simply insane woman is now much greater than it ever was in the past. They used to tell you that the worst thing they can do is say "no" (this was never true, but it was true enough to be good advice maybe 15 years ago) but now the worst thing they can do is pull out their phone and start blasting your face all over the internet. And that's not even the worst thing they can do. If she calls the cops on you, you'd really be in hell.
First of all, dating at work is on of the worst things you can do to yourself. Again, it's simply not worth the risk. You're not putting just your reputation on the line, but your career as well. Secondly, maybe this is just because of my circles, but I've only ever once seen someone else even attempt to set up their friends. It happens so rarely, that I have to seriously doubt that it ever happened at all, even before the current climate.
You can hook up with strangers at a party (Personally, I'm not sure where these parties are or who's going to them. I haven't been to a single party outside of work events after college). This is one that might be colored by my own experiences, but I have never hooked up with a stranger at a party, even when I was going to them back in college. I have to assume that it's due to my deficiencies because it apparently happens enough to other people for it to be a prevalent thing.
In my experience, it's not my pickiness that's the problem. Or maybe it is. I don't consider myself unattractive (I give myself 6/10 simply because I'm tall and not overweight and I don't have any physical deformities), but according to at least a sizable minority of women, most men are unattractive, so in reality a 6/10 is probably actually a 2/10.
All in all, I legitimately don't know on what basis you're making your claims because they run almost completely counter to what I've experienced as a straight male. I have to assume that they must have been true in the near, or even distant, past, otherwise they wouldn't be so oft repeated. The only people who talk about how supposedly easy it is to date are either old and out of touch or have at least one attractive trait that is above average (looks, charisma, or money). None of the people who I consider "average" have the experience of dating being "easy".
Essentially, dating is a hock like challenge, good luck in the boreal forest and tundra.
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This is my own lived experience as a bisexual man (at that time), and this was in the last 10 years as well. I’m not American though, so perhaps it’s different and more cut-throat in the US?
I was no “chad”, just a short skinny effeminate guy. I had an awful personality, little interest in women and still a few hook-ups and flings just happened from going with the flow. Getting set-up at work was a real thing that happened to me.
Nice humblebrag. Now I understand that was most likely not even meant as one, but that's how it comes across because that's how awful it is for most men nowadays. I'm not going to rehash Radicalizing the Romanceless, but it's even worse nowadays than when that article was written. Men are suffering.
And I think you're right in that it's worse in America, especially compared to East Asia, where I and my family were from originally, but with how widespread the American ideological contagion has become, I don't see thing getting better any time soon.
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When I was younger I hooked up with multiple women at the local club, which is kinda like a party that regularly happens in one place. Or used to be, about twenty to ten years ago. No idea what it's like now.
There are also music parties (usually techno) that are petty much designed for taking drugs, showing off your physical abilities through dance, and then hooking up.
University parties were also a thing, but I was too busy studying.
Actual house parties, I'll admit, I haven't seen since school.
Office parties exist, but hooking up there, as you said, can be tricky.
Clubbing is just another thing that gen z has killed, I'm afraid. I've never been to a club in my life, so I can't relate, but if you just search on youtube, you'll find dozens of videos that lament how the clubbing culture from the 10's is completely dead.
I've been to a single music party (concert?) though, and I have to say that I don't think I've ever felt more out of place than I did when I was there. The music was alright, but I don't take drugs and I don't dance so it was just awkward for me to be there. Didn't help that the friend that actually invited me canceled at the last minute.
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It's easier for straight cis guys (or even people like myself who are bi), but I think you overestimate how easy it is to walk into a relationship, depending on social class and work/life balance. This is an older poll, but you still end up with sizable percentages of unmarried adults having never had a date, and a much bigger group struggling to try to get a relationship; it's only gotten worse since.
Straight men can ask out anyone... kinda, and there's pretty strict social norms against doing so anywhere near work and several different classes of enthusiast hobbies. People try to set up straight men with friends and coworkers... if you're already the sort of person who has. You can hook up with random strangers... if you're in the tiny percentage of straight guys that can get a tindr date. There's a lot of ways for straight guys to set themselves apart to women... in the negative sense as easily as the positive: (het, cis) women are far more likely to get the ick for single 'red flags' that can end up being. Straight guys don't have anywhere near the expectations of attractiveness... but they're also dancing a very narrow line between coming across as too aggressive or not forward enough.
((and... straight guys are picky in a different way. The expectations are lower, but anything under them is far more strict limitation, in extreme cases to the point where even a guy that wanted to muscle through it in the interest of an orgasm or a relationship would find themselves 'pushing rope'.))
If you're able to make the first move, a lot of those problems disappear, but in turn a lot of the ways (straight, cis) men were allowed to make the first move have disappeared too. Of my social environments, there's maybe one in which asking someone out on a date would be accepted (and, uh, coincidentally this is also the gayest one, thanks FFXIV), and maybe three where it's not explicitly ban-worthy. I can't speak on straight guys getting set up by friends or family from personal experience, given the bi bit, but from what I've seen second-hand there's a lot of people where that either doesn't happen, or it only happens in situations that have developed the various taboos.
Some of that's downstream of selection effects as I've aged and been in a relationship for a while, but it's very different from the gay world or from what I can see of most of the trans-friendly dating world. A number of gay writers are pretty strong advocates of that model replacing the classical one for hets, but I'm not sure it's working out great for the gays: I have a hell of a time when quite a lot of my options are split between bars or dances, down2succ-level 'casual', or online stuff that's never going to graduate beyond RP and hard to even keep time synced. Where these options are unpleasant in a gay context, they seem unsolvable in a het one.
((And the dodges are so common that Scott Alexander had a post on how "you can tell why from like a 5 min conversation" explanations radicalize a lot of people who are very far from the central example of what I'm hoping are your actual focus, over a decade ago.))
Again, I'm not saying that het (cis) guys have it worse or even anywhere near as rough as you do, but I think you're running into a version of the lemon market problem in things like comp sci hiring; it's really easy for the absolute worst to get vastly over-represented, while a lot of those who are either slightly under-par or who are not as assertive won't show up much on your radar.
A nitpick, but it’s tinder, with an e. Grindr dropped the e — I guess because “grinder” sounds more like a meat processing tool than a dating app. (Not that dating apps don’t grind people up inside!)
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The stats are what they are. Do you reject this information, or doubt its accuracy? I'm in that category, AMA.
This would be an appropriate time to provide those stats.
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Bro, why you gotta single me out like that?!
Don't worry, it's in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that if you can get through the opening chords of "Smoke on the Water", you can buy any guitar you can afford.
0-3-5 has entered the chat
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One such man I know IRL, who I was friends with at the time, said something like "I would ask Gaashk out, but she would probably stab me," in front of me. He did not in fact ask me out), and is still single and complaining about it on Facebook.
Yes, men are not women.
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Right, he was using a women's strategy and women's strategies don't work for men. Maybe that would have worked if he'd seen her reaction, decided he wouldn't get stabbed (or "HELP, AUTHORITY, REMOVE THIS CREEP"), and then asked directly.
But the direct methods of trying are forbidden for men (see above in all caps) unless they succeed, and the penalties have done nothing but increase.
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Isn’t that asking someone out? Or at least heavily indicating a desire to do so?
My understanding is that both parties provide plausible deniability whilst looking for positive indications. So the reply might be a laugh and a change of subject for no and a smile + ‘you’ll never know unless you try’ for yes. Am I totally off here? Paging @TitaniumButterfly here also.
Nobody teaches you how to do this stuff, unless you’re lucky and have generous male friends who know better than you do.
My general impression is that women seek plausible deniability (sometimes to the point of sabotaging their communication to men), but they want men to be direct with them (insert Darth Plagueis meme here), at least within the bounds of decorum. i.e. women want you to ask them on a date directly, not to talk about how you want to have sex with them if it goes well.
That is unfortunately true. I wish that such blatant double standards didn't exist, but what can you do.
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Forgive my directness, but as someone who desperately needs reliable advice, is this coming from an experienced participant or an onlooker like myself?
If a woman is interested in you she wants you to be direct.
When I decided my (now) wife was the one, I didn't pussyfoot around. It does take a lot of confidence to pull off though, which is why step one is "Become someone you can be confident about being."
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A bit of both I guess? I'm married, but my wife and I met through OKCupid a decade ago. So there wasn't the need to navigate asking her out on a date, because we met in a way that made it clear what the expectations for the relationship were.
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Literally every experienced participant will, if being honest, tell you the same thing.
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So... would you have stabbed him?
No, I wouldn't have even pretended. I would, at worst, have sighed a bit at his puns.
To be sure. Just had to note that you hadn't actually denied the allegations =P
All the best to you if you're still on the market.
Haha, I'm now married with children. Because he kept asking me out, more than once, to interesting places, even though I turned down the initial invitation and even gift.
That's a bit tricky though.
You turned him down, even after he invested in a gift, and he kept pursuing. And I don't know what if any signals he was reading that led him to think it would succeed.
Meanwhile, the advice that men would get, both from most women and men, is you have to move on after a rejection, because continuing on is 'creepy,' or is 'simping' (ESPECIALLY the gift-giving), or maybe even straight up stalking or harassment. How many rejections is a man supposed to 'ignore'? How much should he invest before it becomes throwing good money after bad?
There is no good answer. And there's the risk of a woman actively exploiting this tendency in men to pump as much money and effort from him as possible.
This pursuit model of the man slowly, politely grinding down a woman's barriers and making increasingly enticing offers for her time and affection is one that I personally prefer. But it just doesn't work very well when women have many available options, and to continually pursue one who has already rejected you just reads as 'desperation' which is a turnoff on its own.
Simply put, why would a guy put himself through that without some reasonable expectation of success?
Yeah, most of the married people I know met their husband in a fairly small cohorts, such as a church or volunteer group (not rotating volunteers, a specific stable cohort), where that sort of thing is more likely to work out, and both parties will experience negative repercussions if they act badly.
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It used to work when you could do this in the context of socially sanctioned courtship. The man knows he isn't being played too hard because no one is having sex with the woman. Women in turn get to get more exposure to a man and test his level of interest commitment. I think it's a W for both sides. Certainly women seem to still like it today (why is Pride and Prejudice still so popular).
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Well, would you have gone out with him?
Maybe. I'm not sure. It probably wouldn't have worked out romantically.
Well, I don't know what it's like to be a woman, but when I try to imagine that situation I feel pretty turned off. Somewhere between cowardice and whining. Like he's trying to plausibly-deniably get you to initiate.
Anyway congratulations on your husband and family. WAGMI.
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