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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27812 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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So the Bezos-Sanchez wedding took place, and by all accounts it was exactly as overblown, tacky, and vulgar as anyone's little heart could desire. I haven't watched any of it myself, so why am I mentioning it in the Culture War thread?

Well, because Tina Brown commented on it, and it's at least tangential because we've often discussed on here "what do women want/dating apps/men get the rough end of the stick in divorce/other such delightful War of the Sexes fodder".

I get the impression that Tina wasn't on the guest list so there may be an element of sour grapes here, but in general I think I agree. Jeff Bezos, fourth richest man in the world (depending on the day and the ranking) could have pretty much any woman in the world he wanted. So, who did he blow up his marriage for and before we get into the complaining about his wife taking him to the cleaners, it was he who caused the divorce (actually, divorces because his inamorata was also married at the time)?

The woman next door, a triumph of grinding determination to keep her figure through diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. She managed to find a classy wedding dress so kudos for that, as well as showing off the results of all that effort.

Back to Tina's commentary:

Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.

Ouch. But also, yes. What am I trying to say here? Mostly that the next time there's yet another post about reversing the fertility decline by putting obstacles in the way of women going to higher education, steering them to marrying early, and good old traditional 'the man is the head of the house and women should work to please their husband and that includes sex whenever and however he wants it', remember this. Male sexuality is a lot simpler than female sexuality. Jeff could have destroyed his marriage for a nubile twenty-something with naturally big assets, but he went for tawdry 'sexy' with the trout pout and plastic boobs (though once again, I have to salute her commitment to starving and exercising in order to keep a taut muscle tone). It's not much good to criticise women for being shallow in the dating market when the fruits of success are to dress like this and hook your own billionaire.

What exactly does Bezos gain from being married again?

Prostitution is still considered low class enough it's not really an option for someone so public

All wives are trophy wives

Care to elaborate?

The traditional meaning of "Trophy wife" (something like "someone married as a status symbol instead out of love") implies a false dichotomy. Or at least, it ignores the fact that a man gains status by having a wife. I would maintain that an alone Jeff Bezos is lower status than one with a suitable wife.

Monogamy is a huge time saver. A spouse can help you with all sorts of random life crap.

Bezos got married young and doesn't want to learn how to do things like plan dinner parties with his friends while in his 50s.

Sure he could hire personal assistants and prostitutes, but he's got a company to run and it's just easier to have a wife.

He has a space program, I don't believe it's beyond his power to get someone to manage dinner parties easily, or at least more easily than a massive 80 million dollar wedding. If anyone is elite human capital, it's bezos. He can learn!

Nobody goes that far as a matter of convenience. Bezos is not marrying out of convenience, there must be some deeper reason.

I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife. In fact it's the one thing I hear most guys complain about at work.

Men will bitch about their wives, but these same men would be eating a take-out sandwich over the sink without them.

I don't know, sure, some wives certainly make some men miserable. Any man with children (except in very rare circumstances) will say it's easier to have a wife.

I was gonna say, if you have a kids a wife is essential (so is a husband, tbh). With more than 1-2 kids, you no longer have a "relationship," you now have a "small business" that requires more than one employee to smoothly operate.

I don't think men will be eating a lot of take-out sandwiches if they are billionaires and can afford a private chef.

Depends on the quality of the take-out. In any case my illustration was an example of the usual man's lack of gumption when it comes to certain aspects of life. With a wife, certain aspects change, and I'd argue mostly for the better. Of course YMMV.

Damn right. They'll be delivered.

Sure we would, we'd just eat more of it.

Cooking is simple. Just read the instructions, then do it. 2/3rds of recipes can't really be messed up in a truly bad way either.

I keep hearing about these guys I can't cook, but looking at my parents I'm pretty sure "can't cook" is just calculation. "If I never learn to cook she can't ask me to cook."

I started cooking for myself as soon as I lost access to subsidized meals. It wasn't difficult at all. Pretty much every single guy I've ever lived with could also cook. Not that big a sample, sure, and they were mostly engineers, but still..

I've become the primary cook for our family and have come to rather enjoy the process of putting together meals. But on the rare occasions I'm on my own for dinner, I cook maybe 10% of the time. It's mostly not worth the effort for one person, especially if you are not a fan of leftovers for days.

I would argue that it's not that big of a deal and that clearly if single men's preference is to eat simply or quickly then it's just not that important to them.

Men can be great cooks. It’s just there’s a certain domestic… well, something when your woman is running a space.

It's not that men can't cook, I can actually cook great (by standards of men my age, though my brother is actually much better). But I also don't take much care of myself and if there's no one I'm accountable to and for, I'll probably go for least effort solutions (fast food, or junk frozen meals).

Me too, and I even like to cook but during my last period of being apart from my wife, I maybe cooked for myself 40-50% of the time, tops. Other times I might have gotten preoccupied with doomscrolling The Motte something or another or I might just not have had the time or bandwidth to actually cook. On those times I was either eating out or throwing frozen food in the Ninja to bake or air fry.

I think I'd distinguish between being able to prepare a meal and being able to cook. I can prepare simple meals without a recipe and moderately more complicated ones with, but I would still describe myself as not being able to cook. I don't have the knowledge nor inclination to stray far from known recipes, and while I enjoy the results I very rarely enjoy the process. My wife on the other hand can take pretty much anything lying around in the kitchen and make an at least palatable meal out of it and almost never follows recipes even when it is her first time making a dish. She both has the knowledge and experience to make things up on the fly and enjoys the process nearly as much as the end result. I don't know exactly where the boundary between being able to cook and not being able to lies, but I'd put it somewhere between us.

Cooking is simple (like going to the gym), but it's a hassle until you're just used to doing it. And for many I assume the calculation goes "I'm less assed eating a lazy meal/paying for takeout than I am instilling a habit to cook".

I as well am master of the culinary arts. Still my wife is better, hands down.

I'm not suggesting men have to be this way. I'm suggesting often they simply don't care enough to bother.

As a newly married man, my experience has definitely been that having a wife makes life easier. Pooling our social lives means that she picks up maybe 70% of the organising seeing friends, she organises most of the house stuff, she helps me draft tactful messages with her womanly social skills. Plus even if I'm working from home I'm guaranteed to spend at least some time socialising every day. 12/10 would wife again.

I understand the point but in relation to Jeff Bezos you are not explaining how having a wife is easier than having paid assistants do all of the things that need to be done.

I dunno dude, the idea of thinking of a wife as like some kind of utility calculation around chore maxxing or whatever seems like the kind of thing that deranges radical feminists. Our society is structured around you picking one person who is closer to you than anyone else, that swears to you a mutual pact of loyalty and confidence. They aren't like your butler who can quit at any moment and you're expected to congratulate them on getting a better offer. We've added some escape clause but the basic idea is still to death do us part. You pick them and then get to turn off the part of your brain worried about mate selection and the two of your focus on the more important things, the two of you against the world. You can't pay and assistant to have undying loyalty through sickness and in health. Maybe Bezos isn't getting that from his wife, I wouldn't know, but I'm providing that to one person and she's providing it to me.

I dunno dude, the idea of thinking of a wife as like some kind of utility calculation around chore maxxing or whatever seems like the kind of thing that deranges radical feminists.

That's not what is being done by me to any greater extent than it was being done by the person I replied to.

I'm not interested in your selective disagreement with me. Marriage in this thread was leveraged in two contexts, a material function one, i.e. you wife can do things like organizing, doing housework etc, and an emotional function, i.e. you love them, they are your soulmate etc.

My point was that Bezos, on account of being a billionaire, does not need a wife for material function. So leveraging the utilitarian functions of marriage in support of an argument that marriage is beneficial to Bezos is asinine. I'd even argue that such a thing would be stupid. He probably has more than one giant house. Do we expect the wife to clean all of that? Of course not. Same for organizing big social gatherings. Hell, why even bother to cook when you can have a learned chef cook for you? It just doesn't make any sense.

For the emotional function, you don't need marriage to love a person or spend your life with them.

As for your definition of marriage, I'd argue that the only coherent view of marriage is when two persons want to start a family together. Marriage is a contract, Both a legal and not, between two people who a binding themselves for the ultimate task procreating. It can be because two people feel a very special connection and want to be with one another forever and start a family. It can also be because two people who don't really know one another all that much were pushed together because of necessity, and everything in between. Marriage is important and sacred all the same as a starting point for procreation.

To contrast this with your view, you can pay an assistant to functionally have undying loyalty through sickness and health, and you can marry a person who doesn't have that. I'm sure you have an enviable marriage, but I'm not sure if you leveraging that is conducive to a coherent argument.

You would also need a butler to supervise the assistants - managing staff is a job in itself.

Having a wife is a job in itself - my coworker every day.

I guarantee you your coworker goes home to his wife and bitches about you/his job all night long.

You have a coworker who is just a bitchy wuss of a person. You can identify this by all the bitching he does. You should exclude his bitchy opinions from your mental map of the opinions of capable people.

In fact, you should do this with more people that you meet, even online. Bitchy whiners should be ignored. If they can express a solution, even a crazy solution, that’s different, but if all they do is whine, ignore them.

Anyways, to countersignal your coworker, my wife and I have our ups and downs for sure, but she is not a “job in herself.” She’s the best part of the day, for which, through the struggles, I remain grateful.

More comments

Most guys with jobs complain about their jobs, it is nonetheless easier to have a job than not to have one.

Leaving aside those who can get all the benefits of a job without one, but those are rare individuals.

Jeff Bezos is one of the rarest.

It's way easier to have a wife. And yeah a lot of guys complain about theirs, but that's generally venting about minor grievances rather than a serious complaint. In truth, most of those guys would be miserable without their wives, and they probably know it.

I think there are two moving parts here: Jeff's marriage and the average dudes marriage. I don't think these two are comparable. And I doubt Bezos doesn't have a bunch of personal assistants and potentially prostitutes.

To that extent the argument that monogamy is a huge time saver does not apply to someone who is in the position to outsource the work. Nor would it apply to Bezos like it would some average guy.

So I'd agree that the average guy is better of with a wife to the extent he can not achieve his wants without one, but that's not saying much in my mind.

It is easier to have a wife.

My recently divorced coworker begs to differ.

Doesn't have a wife, now does he?

Have we considered that he's in love? IDK, seems like the most plausible reason to me.

In general men on the internet have this level of paranoia about marriage that needs to be pushed back on as much as the 'OMG all men are rapists and abusers' tiktok feminism demoralizing women.

There's paranoia and then there's simply asking what a man would get out of it, and in particular a billionaire in his 60s.

My theory: VHNWI are so disconnected from reality that they seek out proletariat experiences in order to feel human.

But the funny thing is they seem to fail so hard at it that it probably makes their valley feel even more uncanny: Bezos wedding, Musk trying comedy with Dave Chapelle, Musk trying to get into Berghain, etc.

Oh well, it's probably just cope for being a wage slave. At least I don't have to try to manufacture experiences for myself to feel human.

This is honestly the most convincing theory.

I dunno, based on interviews he seems sappy enough that he believes in the institution of marriage.

One view is he felt his sex life dwindling and his mortality creeping in and didn't want to accept that, so he started lifting and doing roids and wanting to party a bit but his then wife wasn't really into picking up that same lifestyle.

If being the richest man in the world was worth anything, surely it would be cheating old age at least a little bit.

That's why I'm surprised that she managed to keep him once she'd hooked him. She has now successfully landed the fish! I imagine if his lawyers had any say there's a hefty pre-nuptial, but even if this ends in divorce down the line, a few measly scraps of tens of millions may be just about enough to keep the wolf from the door for her.

This might be another Anna-Nicole Smith case, in the end.

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