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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   31284 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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I know the dating crisis has been done to death on this forum, but I want to talk about it perhaps from a slightly different angle than previous posters; that of the collapse of the ability to make collective decisions/sacrifices. Various self-improvement substackers seem to be populating the majority of my feed these days, and one, Get Better Soon had a post yesterday about how to attract women. Although much of the post is the standard dress better, be fit, be more interesting shtick, one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was Get Better Soon's insistence that you had to be making at least $70k to be thinking about having a girlfriend, as well as living by yourself and preferably owning your own house/car. Now the median income in the US in $60k, and even controlling for the fact that men out-earn women, Get Better Soon is effectively saying here that more than 50% of men in the US are undateable. This no longer sounds like a problem that can be fixed merely through self-improvement.

Now I'm not saying that the advice I see from this guy is necessarily unhelpful for the individual: you will have more success if you earn more, aren't fat, and can hold a conversation. And historically some self-improvement was necessary to have for example, land to support your wife and future family. But we've rapidly gone from a situation in which pretty much everyone, including the ugly, mean, and poor bottom 50% of society could expect to get married, to a world where maybe that will happen to 20% of the population, and most of those people should expect to get divorced. The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional.

It's not just dating, I kind of see this with everything. We used to be able to take effective collective action as a country. Things like ballooning government debt, government incompetence, rapid urban decay, and breakdown in communities are relatively new phenomena that have popped up in the last twenty to fifty years. Aurelian loves to talk about how much the civil service and government in general have decayed in the UK (and France I think) since the end of the Cold War, and lays a lot of the blame at the feet of the focus on individual outcomes. I'm not sure if he has the causality the right way round, but it seems clear to me that we can no longer really effectively do things as a society. The inability to form lasting romantic and family attachments is only part of that.

What are the solutions here?

Imperial Japanese biopolitics included a range of policies designed to increase the Japanese race in number and quality via pronatalism and eugenics. The pronatal policies included restricting female employment, a bachelor tax, career penalties for being childless, family allowances, bigger houses for those with more children... Their whole culture spoke with one voice too, there were next to no dissenters against the message. There'd be big posters explicitly explaining the need to expand Japan territorially and demographically, it was a theme expressed in their cultural output. Accordingly they had high fertility rates (TFR around 3-4 during a major war when many men were deployed overseas) and in an urbanizing, industrial society too. Japanese fertility peaked in the 1920s due to still-low urbanization. But even in the 1940s with urbanization around 50% and a war they were far above replacement. Relationships were just a side effect.

Then when the US won WW2 and rewrote Japan's constitution, they added a section on women getting full political and economic rights alongside men. Japanese fertility never recovered from this.

Another solution in my opinion is mass-scale cloning, if the family is obsolete (we've lost the technology, we don't know how to do that anymore) let's go all-in on technology. Or have AI do all the work (romantic, physical, economic).

What's unlikely to work is tiny fiscal tweaks, a tax break here, subsidized childcare there. We know that doesn't work. A full totalitarian effort is needed to really put in effort along economic, social, legal, cultural dimensions. You have to make pro-natalism as big as anti-racism is today for it to really have a strong effect. You can be fired for being racist in a business, what about being fired for not having enough children? Hate speech is a thing, what about hate celibacy? The concept seems so cartoonish and silly to me, the horseshoe version of anti-incel rhetoric but that's the kind of normalizing power, the push-power that media and govt has. 'Hate speech' is just sparkling xenophobia, one of the oldest and most longstanding ideas in history.

I don't see any mechanism for a social fix to work outside of China, even they may lack the totalitarianism needed to push people back into having families and children. A technical fix is a lot easier, despite being a far more radical transformation.

But pretty much every Western society recovered from having TFR crash to near-replacement or below in the 1930s to 2.5-3 in the 50s and 60s, ie. the baby boom. (See Sweden for an example.) This happened without a full totalitarian effort.

But pretty much every Western society recovered from having TFR crash to near-replacement or below in the 1930s to 2.5-3 in the 50s and 60s, ie. the baby boom.

TFR is synthetic parameter, and much noiser than the actual fertility, the advantage of TFR is that it's available now rather than 40 years later. If you look at actual total fertility, it's much smoother and shows no such crash.

Please explain the difference.

My thesis was the temporary victory of cultural conservatism that was necessary because of war struggle, collective action and anticommunism + tech innovation and huge economic growth. Delete the low hanging fruit of recovery and growth, and then in the 68 eliminate the antileftist culture, and you have it.

Countries like Sweden didn't go through the war, and the Communists (and socialist parties in general) were never as strong in Western Europe as after WW2 (countries like Italy, France and Finland most clearly, but most Western European countries saw stronger-than-ever numbers for the Communists in the immediate WW2 aftermath).

Every Western society is now more urbanized and educated, plus there's porn, video games and everything else people blame for the fertility decline. It's going to be much harder to do anything today than in the 50s or 60s. Implicit, unspoken social technology that worked then has now broken or been broken.

I mean, think about what was happening in the 50s, what caused it then? A prolonged period of wages growth would certainly help but there are plenty of countries with huge wages growth today and cratering fertility. There's no reason to expect that to result in success. In Sweden they'd just come up with the welfare state. We still have welfare states and there don't seem to be much gains to be made there in terms of fertility despite huge amounts of money sloshing around.

We're left with other aspects of the 50s and early 60s that are a harder sell for the general public.

The golden age of eugenics. Mad Men-style sexism. Nuclear family as standard. The mindset and assumptions that put all of these into practice. Plus an overt, explicit understanding of what the goal is, precisely what we want and why rather than free market fundamentalism. Something besides treating the fate of nations like inexplicable changes in the weather, to be observed and adjusted to rather than altered and improved. That's what we're missing I think.

That list is basically for dating middle class girls off the apps. Become a line cook and you'll see plenty of the bottom 50% get laid and have the chance to date working class girls yourself lol. Marriage hasn't collapsed for the bottom 50% because they can't get laid but because they don't participate in any social institution these days. Ala the Fishtown of Bowling Alone. I feel like this whole world is invisible to the programmers and engineers on the Motte chasing girlbosses on the apps.

It's not a problem that can be fixed with self improvement. But it's a pretty easy problem to solve, for any non-obese, non-insane, white guy 45 and under, just outsource. Open FilipinaCupid.com or go study some bullshit continuing education course in Manila and you'll have dozens of eligible pretty slim women falling over you. Yes there will be pure gold diggers and green card hunters but also don't discount the natural attraction being wealthy and high status induces is women.

Don't even have to go to a specific site for it.

I have an OKCupid account that I haven't really touched in over a year, and whenever I log in I'll have a handful of likes from Filipina ladies.

I hate to be pithy, but the problem is that we have forgotten God. I'm serious.

As we lose our connection to the divine and to a personal sense of moral agency, and responsibility, our society can't help but fall apart like this. A religious revival is desperately needed.

I hate to be pithy, but the problem is that we have forgotten God. I'm serious.

If by "forgotten God" you mean learned he never existed in the first place, then yes.

No need to be so rude. We have different beliefs. I believe He exists, so yes forgotten God is how I put it.

Problem 1: God isn't real.

Problem 2: Many societies have done fine enough without God, like East Asia up until a few decades ago. They had watery "spirituality" like Shintoism's ancestor worship or Confucianism's philosophy, but those are very different from God.

Well, serious question.

How do you make God more interesting than or more impressive than whatever's happening in their smartphone?

You reminded me of that 10 day revival on a Christian College campus over two years back. Which was very interesting to see at the time, but nothing else seems to have come of it? How to maintain such a thing in the current era of extremely short attention spans.

How do you make God more interesting than or more impressive than whatever's happening in their smartphone?

Well, he could start doing stuff again. Blatant smiting, parting of seas, that sort of thing.

Even the parting of the Red Sea would get secularized these days.

19 Then the angel of God who went before the host of Israel moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness; and the night passed[a] without one coming near the other all night.

21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued, and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down upon the host of the Egyptians, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians, 25 clogging[b] their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily; and the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel; for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”

That’s easily attributable to luck and unusual weather conditions. Even if the whole modern world saw it being broadcast live on TikTok, I’m not sure it would change the priors of anybody, one way or the other, really.

Things like Elijah calling down fire from Heaven, and God speaking to Job from the storm, those might be more plausible. But then…AI and movie magic. I’m not sure those would have any effect on anyone who wasn’t directly present, and perhaps not many of those, either.

It is interesting to think about what sort of evidence you personally would need to bump your personal probability of "God" existing to like 99%.

There's a bit of a problem in that '1 off' events can be 'explained' as an extremely rare confluence of factors that produced an unlikely (but not impossible!) occurrence. And events that seem impossible but are repeated with some kind of regularity can be studied and eventually 'explained.'

And a lot of things CAN be written off as hallucinations or misperceptions of an otherwise normal event.

For me, I'd count "Reviving someone who was proclaimed dead, on demand" as pretty high up the scale of things that can't be explained (yet) with current science, and thus proof of 'divine' intervention.

I just now realized how both the pager operation that decapitated Hezbollah leadership and the decimation of Iranian military ranks with precision strikes sort of pattern match to the idea of an angry God smiting the enemies of his chosen people.

God is inherently interesting and doesn't need us to make Him anything. Eventually more and more people will be broken by the dopamine treadmill and will come back to God, as I have. Happens every day.

It may not necessarily happen immediately, I'd imagine this will play out over a large time scale as it often does. But the wages of sin are death, especially on a societal scale.

Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything? I get that's low hanging fruit but that's what a return to Christianity also implies, the wages of sin are death. If so what do you actually think we should do about the gays? I feel like we have enough Scientific and psychological knowledge about them and their are millions of them just in the US so what are we gonna do? I think that a quiet return to Christianity works a lot better when you have secular society for your gay sons to fade into

In addition to mindfulness centering outside oneself distrust of materialism and all that good stuff. It seems a some sort of neo-Confucian philosophy without the anachronistic rules of Christianity would work much better. Of course if you believe Christianity is true well than that's that. But every religion says the same thing about it. A Muslim might say the same you just haven't come back to God yet. Actually that's why English speaking Muslims tend to call converts reverts. They've finally abandoned the sinful world and returned to the true faith.

Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything?

A practical Church-oriented solution would probably wind up looking like homosexual desires are a cross some people wind up bearing, like some people have kleptomania. It doesn’t matter how much you desire to steal, or how seen and valued it would make you feel, or what great justifications wordcel kleptomaniacs can generate to justify themselves. Civilization just isn’t going to let people steal all the time. The ordered solution is to not do it.

I imagine Richard Simmons was the optimal gay guy, from the Church’s perspective. Did he break down and sin from time to time? I’m sure he probably did. He was discreet enough that we will never know for sure, though.

But when society condones disordered living, it causes real harm to both society and the individual. Just like when society condones shoplifting, for any reason, SJW or otherwise, eventually stores start shutting down, harming society overall and the individuals who were doing the stealing.

Addendum: This stance presumes that homosexuality is, in fact, irresistibly based in biology, which I am not aware is proven.

Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything? I get that's low hanging fruit but that's what a return to Christianity also implies, the wages of sin are death. If so what do you actually think we should do about the gays? I feel like we have enough Scientific and psychological knowledge about them and their are millions of them just in the US so what are we gonna do? I think that a quiet return to Christianity works a lot better when you have secular society for your gay sons to fade into

This is a great question, and definitely one the Church has struggled to have a convincing answer to for the modern world. Personally I do think that being gay is sinful and overall worse than being attracted to the opposite sex, and aiming for a family. I don't think pushing gays back in the closet will fix everything. However, I do think that promoting and growing the amount of healthy, happy marriages with children who are treated well will fix many of the problems in our society, if not most!

Of course if you believe Christianity is true well than that's that.

Yep... that is that heh. I do love Buddhism though, and actually was deeply into it for over a decade before I converted. So I agree with you on some things at least.

Just wanted to say I admire your ability to keep an open mind despite defending your beliefs strongly!

Hey thanks man. It’s a gift from God, was never very good at it without Him heh.

I tentatively agree, but in the sense that "people need to reach a breaking point before they will return to the thing that they've been avoiding all along."

The church has the advantage of having been around for centuries and centuries, so they will be the default option people return to when most else fails.

But in the meantime I think the phones will probably win the attention game.

Knock your girlfriend out, drag her to a campsite outside cell coverage, tell her it's surrounded with bears (and hope she ends up on the right side of the man/bear question), and after she recovers her focus and executive functions, drag her to church?

Not even exaggerating, I've strongly considered making up some third-date ideas that require both parties to spend extended time away from their phones, or at least without internet access on them.

Or failing that, just carrying around a signal jammer.

Convincing a woman to give up a their smartphone will probably go as well as asking them to cut off a finger, but maybe one can wean them off the most harmful apps and restrict them to just messaging friends and sharing photos to a site that doesn't allow viewers to interact directly.

Convincing a woman to give up a their smartphone will probably go as well as asking them to cut off a finger, but maybe one can ween them off the most harmful apps and restrict them to just messaging friends and sharing photos to a site that doesn't allow viewers to interact directly.

Yeah, as if finding fit, financially responsible, and mentally stable wasn't hard enough, then add in "not addicted to their phone/social media."

As a man whose girlfriend is addicted to her phone, I’m telling you that it’s actually a blessing in disguise. She puts much fewer demands on my time than the non-addicts I’ve dated, because she is capable of entertaining herself rather than pestering me for validating attention every 10 seconds.

And it’s not as if I entered the dating pool in pursuit of riveting conversation in the first place.

I think that might be how it feels until she slips into a particular corner of tiktok or where-ever that starts shaping her mind in ways that you will truly dislike.

In such cases you might prefer being the main source of her validation.

Unless she has a good mental filter of her own to keep nonsense from taking root.

And that one is particularly salient insofar as an otherwise mostly stable and fit person can become more unstable and then lose their minds due to effects of smartphone usage. (open question as to whether they'd lose their mind anyway.)

At least, that's what happens with young people.

Jesus, one of the things I hate about this discourse is that everyone just takes a half-baked detail and… runs with it.

Here’s the actual quote:

What is a good job? It’s a job that pays you enough to afford your own apartment, own a car (unless you live in a place like NYC or SF where it’s impractical), and pay for an adult lifestyle—probably $70K at the low end, depending on the city. If you can afford your own place, congrats, you’re an adult man...until you can do this, you’re a boy. Men, as a rule, don’t have roommates.

$70k is a location-specific estimate for a set of far more concrete guidelines. The guy is saying: you should own a car and pay for your own place. (Small note, IME the roommate thing is not a particular dealbreaker provided your roommate is cool and you have space which is obviously yours.)

He then benchmarks: in the average CITY, he reckons this at around $70k. (Again, IME this is a little conservative, a lot of second-tier cities will run you fine for $60k or less.) NB: cities are more expensive than the country.

OK, let’s drill down on his raw expectations. What percentage of Americans have cars? Over 90% of households, according to a quick Google search. Pretty attainable by that metric. How about the rough cost of renting a 1bed? Average of $1650, which if you follow the “1/3 of your paycheck” rule, is around $60k average, regardless of location - so the average American can rent a small apartment affordably. And in places where the pay is lower, the rent should be lower too, so this should be a large average of people who can live this way.

So our entire discussion got arbitrarily pegged to the $70k figure, plucked out of the context of WHY he thinks that, in an article that already assumes the context of by-college-educated, for-college-educated. I mean, for Chrissake, he barely gets across the page fold before linking out to his favorite books list. This guy’s a nerd! $70k is pretty damn attainable in his class - it just shows you’re at least trying!

So, reading his article, I can comfortably say that this is correct and attainable advice for any man in the larger class of college-educated, intelligent, but not a true natural with the ladies. If I’m being perfectly honest I’ve seen too many chicks spring for a fella who didn’t have what he’s slinging to take it too seriously; the big thing is actually just to interact with women regularly, turns out they go for whoever shows up! But working on yourself gives you some major advantages with women you’re meeting for the first time, so they want to interact with you a little more regularly. And having a car and your own place DEFINITELY lowers barriers to sex. The rest of this, the “systemic” talk - yeah, obviously things are happening on a larger scale, but come the fuck on man, why are you already talking about yourself like you’re a statistic? Don’t you have any self-respect? Or is it just other people you treat this way?

Flip it around. Here’s a strong pronouncement for you: the thing that let our society do great things in the past is the same one that let people get married, and it is PERSONAL initiative and responsibility, not collective. If someone has to be “empowered” to do something, what does that say about where the power really lies?

Are roommates just not a thing at all anymore, or is anyone with one now undateable? If so, is this because of the current lack of roommate-driven sitcoms starring attractive people a la Friends?

I feel like "housemates" is still pretty dateable, especially in expensive cities.

Oh, you mean proper roommates, like bunk bed? No idea, I’ve not lived like that since college and can’t think of anyone who does. Maybe it’s workable, but sex seems like a real drag.

No, I mean there is a 2-3 bedroom apartment and 2 or even 3 people live in it. Like on Friends!

No, "roommates" in this sense is people who share the same house but have their own rooms.

In the old days, people who only needed a single room could instead live in a single room occupancy (e.g. Judy's apartment in Zootopia), but ever since we decided to make those illegal, anyone who cannot afford a studio has no choice but to move in together and rent individual rooms in a house or apartment, with all the attendant friction and problems.

(This is one big reason I still live with my mom; if I have to have a roommate anyway, who better than my mother who loves me? What's the point of moving out just to become roommates with a stranger?)

(This is one big reason I still live with my mom; if I have to have a roommate anyway, who better than my mother who loves me? What's the point of moving out just to become roommates with a stranger?)

Because living with one’s mother runs a higher risk of ick-induction in potential female partners than living with an unrelated male roommate, which in turn runs a higher risk of female ick-induction than living solo.

Living with an unrelated female roommate can be tingle inducing for potential female partners if she’s attractive, given preselection and female mate choice copying.

Maybe this is the key. Female roommates.

(This is one big reason I still live with my mom; if I have to have a roommate anyway, who better than my mother who loves me? What's the point of moving out just to become roommates with a stranger?)

Because it makes bringing partners home for sex less weird.

I have two roommates. Everyone in the Bay Area has like 7. Get Better Soon is a bit out of it IMO.

You are totally talking past what I wrote. The individual advice works, I don't disagree. All of these things will help find a romantic partner. The problem is it doesn't fix the larger issue of why these things have to be said in the first place: in the past 50-30 (but really the last 10), the whole landscape of dating and relationships has imploded. Self maxing isn't going to fix this.

Where do I refer to myself a single time in this post? I haven't had the most success with dating, but I'm not an incel. I've basically said in other posts that the most actionable things to do align with what this guy is saying (car, diet, not being a doormat). Me playing the system this way is not going to fix the fact that the system is broken.

As far as the last part goes, I could not disagree more strongly. Yes individuals did great things, but they were only able to do those things because of the presence of continually enforced social norms surrounding gender roles and expectations. The farmer and factory worker of the 1880s worked hard to provide for his family. We were able to win the civil war and the first and second world wars because we had competent social systems (at the family level and beyond) that have since vanished. Dating is only one part of this.

Sorry buddy, Rambo rules apply, you drew first blood. Your whole post was spurred by a single dollar estimate taken totally out of context from that poor guy’s Substack, and what he was saying has zero bearing on anything you said. In reality, he could have said anything at all, it didn’t matter what, you would have read whatever you wanted out of it. That’s why it’s all about you. You don’t need to make it about yourself explicitly; your post is saturated with yourself. You couldn’t even keep it down enough to read what the guy wrote! No protesting, I brought receipts.

If you want to complain about Society, do it on your own. Don’t twist other people’s words into it.

This is far too much heat, not enough light. And I'm a little perplexed because you and the user you're talking to both have a history of AAQCs and no warnings, and even your other posts in this thread are basically effortful with minimal (albeit admittedly not zero) antagonism. To the point that I was tempted to let it go entirely but even with maximal "benefit of the doubt" this was a little too rough to not at least flag.

I'm sorry this is ridiculous. Talk about ad hominem. Attack what I actually wrote rather than assuming things about my personality and life.

This is why people don't want to make top-level comments.

I did. Everything I wrote was about what you wrote, starting from how you plucked a single word out of context as a launching point for your own hobbyhorse. I oppose that. It’s a sign that the real has been subsumed into the symbol. You know the “everything I see reminds me of her” meme? It’s like that, but with theory, and it’s poison to discourse. You would have written the same post if he’d cited minimum wage numbers.

Okay bucko let's look at what Mr. Get Better Soon wrote and see if I really took it out of context.

What is a good job? It’s a job that pays you enough to afford your own apartment, own a car (unless you live in a place like NYC or SF where it’s impractical), and pay for an adult lifestyle—probably $70K at the low end, depending on the city. If you can afford your own place, congrats, you’re an adult man...until you can do this, you’re a boy. Men, as a rule, don’t have roommates.

This is the quote that I refer to and you and I cite. How reasonable is 70k? The median income after tax in 2020 was 64k, and data that I could find from 2016 from the census bureau suggests that cities on average had about a 4% higher household income than rural communities. So let's call the median income 66k in cities, and since men out-earn women, 70k actually does make sense.

The national average for a one bedroom is 1,713 a month, so you are indeed right that this fits with the suggested 70k income, leaving plenty of money for savings, car payments and discretionary spending.

Can you achieve these milestones on a lower salary? The first quintile is pretax earning 45k a year. In this scenario a single apartment is eating up more than 50% of your income, not to mention car payments. So possible, but not financially wise. So maybe we lower the bar and say that these income requirements are locking out around 25-30% of men out of the dating market. Point still stands.

Now what do I actually say about this advice:

Now I'm not saying that the advice I see from this guy is necessarily unhelpful for the individual: you will have more success if you earn more, aren't fat, and can hold a conversation. And historically some self-improvement was necessary to have for example, land to support your wife and future family.

Nowhere do I dismiss this advice as bad or non-actionable. In fact, some amount of wealth generation is and has always been necessary. This is the expectation. What you fail to engage with is my argument that I don't think the average man can meet these standards. It doesn't matter if the number is 70k or slightly lower, more and more men are being priced out of the market.

This also has fuck-all to do with my personal income situation. I don't make 70k now, but I will as soon as I finish my PhD. In terms of his other requirements, I think I'm okay too: certainly below 15% body fat, dress pretty well (although this could be improved easily), am well read, speak multiple languages and am quite social. What I'm critiquing is this attitude that you, Get Better Soon and other posters here that we can solve these issues merely by improving ourselves. I am not saying self-improvement is bad, nor that it won't increase your odds of success, I am saying that it is insufficient to deal with social decline, which is manifested in this issue and the others that I mention.

I appreciate talking specifics here!

For the first part: $70k is well within the target range. The numbers I picked up said it was actually a little high. However - point being - while the average 1bed costs somewhere in the $1,600-$1,700 range, that means that half of them are BELOW that in cost, matching the roughly 50% of workers occupying that income range. So, in fact, you can get below the average and still meet the concrete requirements that he sets. Here's a link out to some cities with REALLY cheap rent. When you're talking $1k/mo or less, you could practically get away with minimum wage. Not saying you necessarily want to live there, but considering that the cities he has top of mind are NYC and SF rather than Des Moines and Madison, you should expect the number to be skewed.

And that's my point! He gives an estimate that is highly specific to the kind of coastal city he's used to (the guy's from Portland, OR), and the only reason to index that estimate highly is if you're trying to live in a similar city. (He's actually pretty far off even for Portland - median rent there is $1,380, which puts target income at around $50,000 - median income is just shy of that at $47,000, making it within reason for a single guy and well within budget if it helps you land a girl to help pay rent.) So the number is not what matters. He even caveats the number as "probably." I'd certainly caveat it as "probably," given that it's the wrong number, but I'm not here to beat up on the guy over the math he did or did not do before his fingers hit the upper row of his keyboard. I'm here to say that the meat of that paragraph is this sentence, edited down to exclude all bait:

It’s a job that pays you enough to afford your own apartment, own a car, and pay for an adult lifestyle.

Now we hit the real point of contention. Can the average American afford their own apartment, own a car, and pay for an adult lifestyle? When you consider that the costs of these things scale based on place and class, the answer seems to be a pretty confident yes, most men have the potential to do it, even assuming a relatively luxurious (but not frivolous) American adult lifestyle. If we're looking at the type of person who he is trying to advise, the kind of person who has even heard of Substack or who is willing to hire a dating counselor, I'd estimate that the number approaches 100%.

Let's go back to what you said in the beginning.

Although much of the post is the standard dress better, be fit, be more interesting shtick, one thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was Get Better Soon's insistence that you had to be making at least $70k to be thinking about having a girlfriend, as well as living by yourself and preferably owning your own house/car. Now the median income in the US in $60k, and even controlling for the fact that men out-earn women, Get Better Soon is effectively saying here that more than 50% of men in the US are undateable.

I've highlighted the two assertions that seem totally unsupportable to me after reading the guy's actual post. He doesn't insist on $70k, he spitball estimates it, and he's wrong. Oops. As for the second, here's what he actually says:

The good news however, is that nearly all men can clear the bar if they’re willing to work on themselves...

This is why I'm accusing you of reading what you want out of the piece rather than what's actually there. If you told this guy "hey, I read a Substack post the other day that said you need to make more than the national average income to have a chance at scoring a woman," and then revealed to him it was his post, I bet he'd be shocked at the twist reveal. Call him innumerate, sure, but actually talk about what he wants to talk about. Are those fair standards for a job? Can nearly all men live up to them? I think so, on both counts. But, if we're being honest, assuming that there's a substantial contingent of men who CAN'T meet that bar is actually more about the job market and the housing market than the dating market.

So, for your big point, and here I'll do exactly what you're asking and respond to you personally:

I am not saying self-improvement is bad, nor that it won't increase your odds of success, I am saying that it is insufficient to deal with social decline, which is manifested in this issue and the others that I mention.

I couldn't disagree more. It's necessary to deal with social decline.

Draw back. What is a society if not the totality and product of its constituents? What is the quality of a society if not the quality of its constituents? What could cause a society to decline if not a decline in the quality of its material?

When you talk about societal decline, you say:

Yes individuals did great things, but they were only able to do those things because of the presence of continually enforced social norms surrounding gender roles and expectations. The farmer and factory worker of the 1880s worked hard to provide for his family. We were able to win the civil war and the first and second world wars because we had competent social systems (at the family level and beyond) that have since vanished.

We're not talking specifics here, so I don't know how much I agree with you on the details, but what you're describing here is coherent. So: how were these social norms continually enforced? Was it done by God, by the laws of nature, or by the individual members of American communities on the back of their own character? When we talk about competent social systems, aren't we talking about the competence of these old Americans? You say: "The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional." OK, then who's supposed to fix it? "Us" "communally?" Come on, we all know how value-props that start as "we should really..." wind up going. "We" means "nobody," unless there's someone in the room who hears "we" and thinks "me."

That kind of thinking is, very specifically, the poison in America right now. It's the thought that you, personally do not have responsibility to fix a given problem, that it doesn't rest on your shoulders, that it's communal guilt. Say what you like about Christ, but he was big on personal guilt, that it's not enough to say that everyone else is doing it, that you personally must repent and uphold standards. He was even willing to make that his own cross to bear. He took on our sins, and died for them. Our Lord took on our communal guilt - so we could no longer have the excuse.

At my current stage in life, the biggest thing on my mind is my family. In particular, it's the future of it. My parents were not especially good at keeping the fabric of the family together. I love them dearly, they have much to commend them, but that was not one of their strengths. I want to keep mine together. I want my children to have faith, to have me and my wife, to have their eventual spouses and children. I want them to have honor. I don't see any way for them to get this if I do not act faithfully and honorably. I don't see how they can be faithful and honorable to their friends or even to strangers if they can't be that way within their family. I don't see how their family can be that way if I am not that way. I don't expect these actions to magically change the entire world, but I do hope that they will change my family, and that we can be fruitful and multiply, that we can be a bedrock for our communities wherever they may be. And I believe that individuals making these decisions, over and over again individually, is what will create the new great American society.

Obviously I am still a poor sinner, no matter what I aspire to, you need no help picking that particular out. But I believe that the things I do matter for the people around me. My family is, right now, living in a better society than it was when I was a feckless adolescent because of the actions I have taken. It is a small society, but it is theirs, and I am proud of what I've done for them, no matter how small. That is what I believe in.

Now we hit the real point of contention. Can the average American afford their own apartment, own a car, and pay for an adult lifestyle?

No - the question is "Can the 30th percentile 20something American man afford these things?" Half the population being too poor to date is a failure condition, telling young men to spend their 20s careermaxing and start dating in their 30s is incompatible with the cisHajnal marriage pattern, and the reversed gender pay gap for young childless people makes things worse.

I think that most men who are in about the top 80% of male attractiveness could find a girlfriend or wife if sufficiently motivated, even without changing their income or physical appearance. I agree with @2rafa. Much of this is about motivation. Many guys are just content to do things other than seeking out women. Also, some men are holding out for the most desirable women instead of being willing to lower their standards. I think a third factor is that women are no longer as much expected socially as they probably were in the past to have the kind of men-pleasing, friendly, docile personalities that a large fraction of men find sexually desirable, which explains part of men's motivation problem. The more fun and personable that a man finds the average woman, the more motivated he will feel to go out and interact with women, as opposed to sitting at home. I'm sure that this goes both ways, and many women find themselves far from impressed with the average man's personality.

I think a third factor is that women are no longer as much expected socially as they probably were in the past to have the kind of men-pleasing, friendly, docile personalities that a large fraction of men find sexually desirable, which explains part of men's motivation problem.

This. 100% this. I spent many years on dating platforms and saw hundreds and hundreds of young women who were just.... unlikable. Shallow, prideful, promiscuous, and just generally masculine. The number one lie that modern feminism has sold to women is that the male gender role is what defines success: money, strength, ambition, stubbornness, ruthless competitiveness, etc. Men had all of those and that was oppressive and if a woman wants to be successful she needs to have all of those. And women believe this and become strong independent faux-men and don't even try to be good women. To be clear, I think it's acceptable if a woman naturally inherently through her own preferences wants to be ambitious and strong and all that. But that doesn't make her an attractive dating partner, and more importantly we shouldn't have a nation-wide psy-op trying to brainwash young girls into becoming this because they were born too feminine or something. And we shouldn't lie to girls and tell them that masculinity is attractive. If we as a culture openly and honestly told young women what men actually want a lot of them would become more feminine on purpose because they like men and want to be attractive to men.

I happened to luck out and eventually find one of the few remaining friendly, docile, feminine women left and married her. But now she's not in the pool anymore. This is not a generalizable solution because there aren't enough of them to go around.

I happened to luck out and eventually find one of the few remaining friendly, docile, feminine women left and married her.

I understand wanting to marry a woman who is friendly and feminine. But docile? Not to imply anything about your sexual proclivities, but the only time I see that used as a positive descriptor of a relationship partner is when talking about sexual submissiveness. And wanting your partner to act docile in bed is different from wanting them to be docile in normal life. So I'd like to understand why you list that as a desirable trait in a life partner.

How do I respond without sounding like an asshole....?

It's a combination of things which just make life easier. The positive traits, near-synonyms but not quite, are things like being kind, generous, quiet, agreeable, un-argumentative, untroublemaking. These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring. I find them to be wonderful traits, some of which I share in common.

The riskier way of putting it, and I caveat this by saying she was already this way when I met her and not beaten or threatened into this, is that I can always get my way. In more wholesome cases this is simply her being indecisive and not having strong preferences, so when we go shopping for food she wants me to choose what we're going to cook that week. Both because she wants me to like, and so that she doesn't have to make up her mind. She'll still veto things that she doesn't like or we've already had recently, but then she wants me to think of something else. When we want to play a game she wants me to decide what we're going to play. Again, when she has a preference she'll speak up, but the majority of time she's just happy if I'm happy so I can do stuff.

In more conflicting scenarios, she's is afraid of conflict and will typically end up backing down given any level of pushback on any idea. Now, she's at a level of submissiveness that's unhealthily too far, we've been working through building her self-confidence and getting her to stand up for herself, both to me and to others. But when push comes to shove I can, at any time I choose, put my foot down and win any argument simply by insisting. Calmly and rationally, I don't have to get mad and threaten, I try really hard not to take advantage of this and only do it when I genuinely think I'm right and my decision will be best for both of us. The only real example I can think of is one time she wanted to get this giant tattoo on her back and I though it looked kind of tacky and gross, and although it's her body I was going to be the one to see it the most often, more often even than her, so I said I didn't like it and she shouldn't get it. While the argument was not pleasant for either of us, she didn't get the tattoo, and I'm still confident that was the right choice for both of us. And, importantly, it's not a recurring argument that keeps coming up with her harassing me about how I won't let her do what she wants or something.

And such scenarios are incredibly rare because we rarely argue in the first place. Because she naturally inherently wants to please me and it makes her happy when I'm happy and make decisions for us. It's just convenient and simple and easy. And she's still a person with preferences, she runs around decorating the house with flowers and animal-shaped pots and dragon figurines. But the docile is about... voluntary hierarchy. I did not ever ask to be put at the top, in charge of the household. I didn't ever even ask or attempt to be there. She does not feel comfortable or safe unless someone is above her to make the important decisions when she gets to stressed out to think clearly, and I comfortably slot into that role. Once there, having a clear and mutually acceptable hierarchy clearly established leads to a lot less ambiguity or conflict that other couples seem to have as both of them jockey for top position. You can't have a Democracy with two equal citizens: someone has to break ties.

Thank you for your in-depth reply. That makes sense.

You are mostly talking about Big 5 trait agreeableness. There's a good Jordan Peterson lecture about it from before he became politicized. It's convenient for a person's managers, husband (if they're into that), and infants. It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.

These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring.

Two highly agreeable people together can be quite annoying. They don't get high quality feedback about each other's preferences, and end up playing guessing games about what the other person wants. They have a bad time raising older children. I can't remember it well enough to find it, but there was a Less Wrong post about how it is actually an onerous imposition to one's host to flaccidly say that whatever they want to do is great, they're totally happy with anything, because this makes more work for the host -- maybe they don't like making a bunch of decisions.

It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.

It also encourages people to pursue harmony, intimacy, and compassion, which are real positives. I don’t endorse the “I get whatever I want thing,” but I simply can’t bond with a disagreeable person because I care deeply about fairness and I prefer to resolve conflicts in a way where everyone is heard and cared for. I believe in stating preferences openly, and finding compromise; I’m certainly not interested in docility, but in every kind of human relationship I strongly prefer cooperation and compassion, because we all need it.

I usually think of myself as rather disagreeable, but that does sound like a description an agreeable person would give of themselves. Huh.

Anyway, I would frame the attractiveness of agreeableness as being more about similarity and bonds of affection. I simply don’t like disagreeable people, not because I can’t exploit them (I don’t like exploiting anyone!) but because I feel like I’m constantly being exploited by them, if they even see me as a source of any value, which they usually don’t. I don’t like living like that. I’d rather lay cards on the table and cooperate rather than engage in games of status and one-upmanship.

It’s true that agreeable-agreeable pairings can have their own downsides, but I’ll stack them up against other personality combinations any day, particularly for intimate relationships. Especially if you couple your agreeableness with honesty and forthrightness. Maybe that’s what HEXACO honesty-humility+agreeableness looks like? I don’t know.

As the child of two undocile people, it’s because in a two-person system with no rank or higher outside authority, such people rip each other apart the moment they have a real, serious conflict. Temperamentally neither is equipped to back down gracefully or elicit sympathy from the other, so the relationship ends up either in prolonged turf war or divorce.

That’s not to say you should be marrying a cocker-spaniel instead of a woman, just that if you find yourself a male born with an undocile temperament (many such cases!) your relationship is going to do a lot better with a laid-back girl than with a spitfire or a girlboss.

The opposite scenario is also true, but proportionally less likely for biological reasons.

On a broader case, I think this extends to a principle that we can encourage women to be assertive OR have a tradition of equal, gender-neutral gender roles, but not both.

If we as a culture openly and honestly told young women what men actually want

I was under the impression that we do, as a culture, openly and honestly tell young women what men actually want, and the problem was that it currently results in them spitting and going "fuck men then".

Well, "we as a culture" don't ever fully agree on anything. A hundred voices are screaming a hundred different things, and the truth is lost in the noise.

Some people are telling the truth, and some people are not. But these signals are not all received equaly. But collectively, the average socially acceptable advice given by the mainstream media and by middle aged women to their younger colleagues tends to be feminist nonsense. And then a lot of young men, seeking not to give good long term advice but instead to get an easy lay, are giving the advice that they want women who are easy and sleep with them immediately. And the women believe them and become "popular", but nobody wants to marry them and the men get bored and leave. This in turn causes them to doubt advice from men and listen more to the feminists.

The problem isn't quite as simple as men saying what they want and women spitting in their faces. The scenario is older men saying what they want, younger men saying what they want short term and pretending it's long term too, older women who've been burned by this spitting in the faces of both, and then younger women watching this exchange and then eventually following the older women, possibly after getting burned once or twice themselves.

The thing that REALLY gets me is that financial troubles are easier to weather with a partner. It's easier to build wealth with a financially sensible co-tenant, even if you aren't joining all your funds together. It just is, by any sane approach.

So guys who are trying to build wealth in order to become worthy of a woman are, BY SHEER DEFINITION, going to take longer than usual to build that wealth and thus will be dating much later in life, missing out on vital experience and still ending up poorer overall.

I'm pretty much moved on from my Ex, but every time I think about how much more financially better off we'd be if she had stuck around I cringe in mild mental pain.

Previously we could split our approximately $2200/month basic living expenses down the middle. And split chores, and helped out with basic stuff like watching the dogs (instead of paying for boarding) or splitting food deliveries and such.

Upon her leaving, I immediately went from shouldering $1100/month in living expenses to just about the whole $2200. In addition, she is now going to have to shoulder a $1300-1600/month for her own separate living expenses.

Granted I could have downsized, and I didn't, but at least now I'm almost immune to lifestyle inflation, can't afford to upsize!

So I, personally, am now $14,000+/year poorer than I would have been in the counterfactual world where she stayed.

Between the two of us, we're collectively like $24,000+/year poorer than we'd have been than if we'd continued splitting expenses.

There's a lot of stuff that could have been done with that money. I guess in a Keynesian sense that having that extra economic 'activity' is somehow better overall, maybe. But there's no doubt that we'd both be wealthier and have a better financial future.

So this logic that "you have to have your own life together and be completely financially independent before you seriously start dating", which is peddled to women AND men, is ass-backwards from my perspective.

Also, I've seen enough Caleb Hammer episodes to know plenty of people will NEVER. EVER. get to that point.

Its financially sensible to find someone reliable earlier on to help contribute to your mutual growth. That's a big point to getting married at all.

And as per usual, I'm starting to lose my mind when the response to this is to put more and more pressure on men to step up, without examining what the actual incentives are, and why the problem is so widespread.

(add in the fact that women are increasingly likely to have a student debt burden as well, so the man will be paying for THAT too!)

Like you say:

This no longer sounds like a problem that can be fixed merely through self-improvement.

Its not viable, UNLESS there is more incentive/pressure on women to date guys who aren't yet financially independent but have all green flags otherwise.

Which is to say, pressure women to settle, and settle earlier. But good fackin' luck finding any voice saying anything like that, meanwhile the amplified message is "don't ever lower your standards girlie, in fact, raise them. If you can't find what you're looking for its just proof that you're too good for this world. You owe nothing to men, and their concerns don't matter."

The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional.

Yep. But saying it out loud marks you as lower status, "hah, this guy is poor and can't get bitches." Well maybe, but a bunch of us are poor and can't get bitches, and if we can't talk about the problem it'll get worse for everyone.

When do we admit the current advice is insufficient?

There's a lot of stuff that could have been done with that money. I guess in a Keynesian sense that having that extra economic 'activity' is somehow better overall, maybe. But there's no doubt that we'd both be wealthier and have a better financial future.

This is a silly strawman of what economics says. Economic activity is only useful if people are getting something they want out of it, otherwise economists would advocate for going around breaking random windows to generate "economic activity" by repairing them.

meanwhile the amplified message is "don't ever lower your standards girlie, in fact, raise them. If you can't find what you're looking for its just proof that you're too good for this world. You owe nothing to men, and their concerns don't matter."

Of course, this is women sabotaging women.

When do we admit the current advice is insufficient?

We will admit it by means of, or coincident with, a concerted effort from women such that women's tears stop winning in the marketplace of ideas. Men can't do that alone; this is a problem women have to solve for women.

I think I would have a lot more respect for the women who hit their late 30's still single and childless and realize how they've messed up if said women were willing to openly act as a warning for those younger.

Most of them want to reframe themselves as a complete victim and garner sympathy and attention that way.

Or, we need to empower the elder women who actually "GET IT" and want to ensure that they have grandchildren to raise to be a stronger social force.

I increasingly agree with the suggestion that infinite easy entertainment online, constantly available, means young people are just less interested in the opposite sex overall than previous generations were at the same age.

Sure, in the abstract the average 19 year old would probably still be interested in having ‘a girlfriend’ or ‘a boyfriend’, but that’s different to going out and making it happen. And there’s a real sense in which maybe they want one a little less than their equivalents did in 1990 or 1965.

Some young man sated by porn, twitch, games, TikTok whatever might still want a girlfriend, might still take one if she fell into his lap, but he is often still going to put less effort into looking for her than his father did at his age. Maybe that’s all bullshit, but I don’t think so.

The humiliation, self-consciousness, embarrassment of seeking romantic affection that most people experience to some extent is just less desirable and more easy to defer if good alternative (in the moment, not long term obviously) entertainment sources exist.

Strong agree with this post.

Some young man sated by porn, twitch, games, TikTok whatever might still want a girlfriend, might still take one if she fell into his lap, but he is often still going to put less effort into looking for her than his father did at his age.

This is basically where I am in my life right now.

It's a combination of how good the expected rewards are, and how much effort would be required to attain it. I could probably get a wife if I expended an enormous amount of effort, but... why bother? I'm happy enough as it is, and living life as a single man in the modern world with all its comforts really isn't a bad deal at all. A highly-compatible girl could improve my life of course, but there are a bunch of very well known failure modes too. Not just divorce, but that kind of empty relationship where the man falls backwards into doing a greater share of the work and doesn't even really like his wife any more, but divorcing is too much of a hassle so he just stays where he's at. My dad fell into this hard.

If I were to put in a lot of effort into my life somewhere, going for a better job to earn more money would almost certainly have a far higher ROI for me.

Another way to think about this is like filter bubbles. People are through the internet and digital media increasingly able to engage in only the activities they enjoy the most, with the people that enjoy them the most (just like with politics). It turns out that the sexes on average have different interests so now they don't meet organically.

The guys play video games and watch porn and the girls are on social media and read romantacy. Both want a partner but the meeting place activities have been outcompeted so they more rarely meet in social settings where forming a relationship is a possibility. Oops!

And for damn near a year this was basically MANDATORY during Covid restriction times.

If you weren't meeting people in your online circles, you weren't meeting people.

Or, if you wanted to meet in public with other people, you basically had to do a voluntary pledge of allegiance to specific political policies.

I don't think I'll ever forgive some people for that.

I like this post because it can be interpreted two ways- in the 'fuck covid, the virus is so deadly it doesn't affect those who don't give a shit, I'ma do what I want' platform or BLM.

I think one of the really frustrating aspects of these conversations in the broader public sphere, particularly when strong progressive voices are present, is that so often this conversation devolves into a litany of scolding for young men, while young women are treated as victims, and at the same time, caricatures of traditional societies are still held up as the thing to be avoided. Which is to say, there is an insistence on both a kind of rights based liberal individualism as well as somewhat incompatible oppressor-oppressed dynamics for the male and female classes. It seems like a total dead end.

But (and I guess I'm going to get all Patrick Deneen "Why Liberalism Failed" here) insisting conversations get crammed into these dynamics does a grave disservice to the actual reality of why traditional societies actually worked, and why they worked the way they did. I grew up in a much more traditional religious subculture, and there was an overwhelming sense that people, from birth, were heavily invested in by the broader culture around them (especially by their own parents), and in some sense, they were acting as extreme free riders. And the way that these free riders transitioned from being takers to makers was to settle down, choose an appropriate mate, begin creating families, and pay forward all the ways they had been invested in by the strong, valuable culture that they had had the good fortune to be born into. And in that world, there was an overwhelming sense that young men AND young women who didn't make the transition were not really adults or people of esteem or worth in the community. They were damaging the loving people who had invested so much in them. There was severe cultural pressure for both young men and young women to fulfill that duty. And of course, there absolutely were gender roles that focused on high, distinct standards for both young men and young women, with a notion of complementarity to roles that, one assumed, were supposed to align favorably with existing biological differences between men and women, bolstered external pro-social needs, and help grease the wheels of those interactions, helping men and women find each other valuable and distinct... But in an important way, the specifics of the gender roles were less significant than the broader framework of the role of individuals in relationship to the larger community that had nurtured them.

And obviously, that kind of world can feel restricting. But it can also feel entirely sensible and worth investing in to all parties involved, because that fundamental relationship, between the individual invested in and that broader community that nurtured them, was something worth investing in. And there was absolutely a virtuous feedback loop, too - it might be restrictive to live up to hard pro-social ideals, but you get the benefit (ideally) of other people, especially mates, living up to hard, pro-social ideals too.

This is the framework I can't help but see and compare to when I look at the "young men need to be scolded, young women are always victims" public discourse, because at a basic human level, it just seems so totally anti-human and disconnected from reality. It has a strong "the beatings will continue until morale improves" vibe. Every time I hear it, all I can think is, why in the world would anyone think that young men are going to continue listening to this, taking it seriously, and accepting its authority? And indeed, I think my internal sense of that, for the last decade, is proving more and more well-calibrated.

I totally understand (neverminding questions of faith or metaphysics) how those more traditional societies are suppose to work, just in game theory terms. It's like joining the marines - you have to live up to hard, pro-social standards, and maybe that sucks, but then you get the benefit of being around other high trust individuals who also live up to hard, pro-social standards.

But I can't understand, at all, or figure out what's in it for young men to tolerate the current general public progressive world of atomized individual liberal oriented around rights and liberation (with a strong denial of basic cause and effect) plus oppressor-oppressed dynamics with young men as the enteral oppressor.

And as should be totally obvious from how I'm writing, my sympathies have very much drawn back to those older forms of cultural organization that I was raised in, despite my leaving it in my early young adulthood. I think I, and a lot of people like me, threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater.

Great write up thanks for pointing all of this out. I didn't grow up with anything like this, and eventually drifted to a more traditional lifestyle after seeing where the atomized liberal worldview led. I wish I had! It's hard for kids to see the benefit though, I'd imagine.

By the way you would probably get a lot out of Stepheson's The Diamond Age if you haven't read it.

Idk I've heard a lot of bad about Stephenson. I feel like I might have read some of his stuff in the past and liked it? Hard to remember.

But these hidebound traditional cultures have mostly not survived. And not so much because of rebellion by the youth, but in many cases because the parents WANTED their sons (and later daughters) to escape and sent them off to college. I can't even conceive of such a culture in today's world without it being an unfit anachronism.

Every time I hear it, all I can think is, why in the world would anyone think that young men are going to continue listening to this, taking it seriously, and accepting its authority?

Same reason they accepted the authority of the patriarch in patriarchal cultures. Because they have no choice. Actually, they did have ONE other choice in patriarchal culture -- they could leave the culture, go it alone or perhaps form groups of other disaffected young men. This was known as being an outlaw, and it rarely turned out well. You can't actually escape the culture by doing that in modernity.

This is true, and it's also important to remember that this is happening on the margins, not to everyone. It's not that NO ONE is getting laid. It's that a few percentage fewer people are. But in the same way that an economy with 5% unemployment is radically different than one with 15% unemployment even if the majority of people have a job under either condition, a world where 25% of people are unwilling virgins at 30 is vastly stuff from one with 5%.

Probably true, as long as we remember that is the case for both genders not just dudes. Girls can easily obtain instagram orbiters or read things like Fourth Wing that push those buttons without putting in effort.

Yes, I agree.

It’s interesting that this represents a shift to the historical norm for western societies- courtship was srs bznss for adult men who could support themselves and their families with no outside help, and a woman of indeterminate age but usually early twenties. And generally, that does seem to be the pattern- teenage dating is an artifact of postwar liberal consensus and declining like every other artifact thereof.

The idea that to court a woman you have to be an adult male with the economic means to marry her is pretty normal, actually. It’s deeply engrained in the psyche of humans domesticated by agrarianism. We should expect it to re-emerge over and over again.

The idea that the woman would spend 4-6 years in tertiary education and come into the relationship with $15-50k in debt is a pretty new innovation though. Only about 30 years old, even.

Which is why I think attacking that particular factor might bear fruit, although women will flip out about it.

Bridesprices are Lindy(as is borrowing from Shylock to afford it), though, and most urban European women from the high Middle Ages until the first sexual revolution married in their twenties- post conventional college age.

It’s true that those women were generally not spending their time getting certificates in literacy, but in broad strokes it’s nothing unusual.

Bridesprices are Lindy(as is borrowing from Shylock to afford it)

Brideprice is negative (i.e. dowry) in the vast majority of cultures with strong monogamy norms. In the particular case of cisHajnal culture, the wedding-related flow of funds is traditionally from the bride's extended family to the newly-formed nuclear family.

Right, which is to say that it seems like we're really just borrowing all the factors that put duties/obligations on the male side, whilst systematically dismantling the expectations on the women's side.

Or am I wrong that there was some system in place to confirm virginity on the wedding night during that time? I might be wrong.

The upper class in Qing China had some ritual involving a square of white silk, which was supposed to come out bloodstained as proof. Or so I've read in a historical fiction which may or may not be accurate (in which the newly weds deliberately faked the results so they wouldn't have to have sex the first night).

In Northern Europe? Just took the girl’s word for it. There were actual incentives often granted for marrying known-not-virgins often as well- most of the high Middle Ages had an indulgence for marrying a prostitute, for example.

There was a custom of high status weddings having witnesses to their consummation. That might be what you’re thinking of. But in Northern Europe girls left the house to work as servants in early adolescence. The Mediterranean(even Christian parts) kept girls at home until marriage in their teens; this was not a Northern European custom.

I appreciate this post. Too many people view the past as something like Saudi Arabia and don't realize how much freedom and independence women had in Northern Europe historically or how late the marriage ages were there. Settling down in your 30s was just what sensible middle class people did to have a good life. Just like going to university or putting money into a 401k today. At least in Northern Europe it wasn't girls getting married at 15 to much older men.

Thé average marriage age for urban women inside the Hajnal line in Northern Europe was much younger than today; it was also not in the teens. Early-mid twenties as opposed to late twenties.

Now marriage in the teens also does not seem to have been seen as sharply negatively as it is today, either- the average age at marriage drops in American colonists, for example, and those were fine, upstanding citizens who happened to have much better economic opportunities much sooner. And while not Saudi Arabia women faced substantial legal disabilities; they worked but there was restrictions on profession, pay might be legally required to be less than male employees, they didn’t have full control of their finances, etc.

Yes I agree with all that. I probably should have been more specific. I just meant that a lot of the talk of teenage brides is not actually trad for Northern Europe.

What dating crisis? This is just the almighty hand of the free market at work. Standards are high, as they inevitably will be when all parties are equally free to enter into voluntary associations.

We need to take "collective action as a society" to remove impediments to men's access to women (including, presumably, the "ugly, mean, and poor bottom 50%" of men) -- yeah, ok, have you asked the women how they feel about that? "I have this plan that will make it more likely for you to date someone who's ugly, mean, and poor". Wtf that's a terrible sales pitch.

Guaranteed monogamy for all is nothing more than the socialized ownership of the means of reproduction.

There is another possible framing: many women should reevaluate their standards. The bottom 50% ugly, mean and poor women can settle for someone on their level or choose no one at all.

Like a very poor person saying they would like a car, but insisting on only a brand new Range Rover. They should instead consider options that are attainable given their circumstances.

And, like the automobile market, the dating market has come to resemble a market for lemons.

You won't find out if the person you're dating has any disqualifying hidden flaws until you've already 'driven them off the lot,' so to speak.

‘Pass’ is a valid selection for the bottom x% of both sex, and it’s probably reasonable for women to be pickier- as they always have been. If your only options are bottom quartile men you’d probably pick staying single.

Guaranteed monogamy is also one of the few ways that actually produces stable societies. You mess with it at your peril.

Let's take one popular example of a society that practiced a more old-school approach to dating: Europe up until about 100 years ago. Far from being stable, this society regularly engaged in revolutions and warfare. If you plotted every battle location from the years 1000-1918 on a map of Europe, it would be so covered you'd hardly be able to see any other geographical features. There were numerous peasant revolts, usually brutally suppressed. There were massive wars like the Thirty Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and WWI. There were bloody revolutions like the French Revolution. There were assassinations, feuds, political plots. Personal crime wasn't low, either. It's hard to estimate the homicide rate from hundreds of years ago, but it was high enough that most people seemed to be fine with using brutal public executions to address it. It wasn't a politically stable society, either. This was the society that invented liberalism, communism, and the modern concept of women's rights to begin with.

Of course technological changes account for much of this. My point is that what to me is the most obvious example of the kind of society you're talking about was, in fact, not actually stable.

But the population of 19th century Europe was booming, not shrinking during that time period. Europe was growing and filling whole continents with Europeans. A European country might be individually unstable but European civilization as a whole was not in danger, it was the danger. The TLDR of history from 1000-1918 is basically 'Europe gets stronger and stronger and wrecks everyone else'. European empires expanded even after WW1, finally dealing the death blow to the Ottoman Empire.

Today Europe is shrinking rather than growing. Individual countries may be 'stable' under the EU system. Elect social democrat, get excited for next social democrat! But the system as a whole cannot handle change precisely because of its stability. A united, 'stable', rich Europe of some 450 million apparently cannot deal with a poor Russia of 140 million without America. Europe is not grappling with new technologies in space or AI, they're not leading the frontier anymore, they're in a passive situation dealing with the rise of China, with refugee crises. That's the kind of stability that's unstable.

Strength in a changing universe (in a universe that one's very presence is changing) requires constant change that's easily conflated with instability. Surface-level stability can just be inflexibility that inevitably leads to catastrophe and disaster.

Far from being stable, this society regularly engaged in revolutions and warfare.

Sure, if you game the metrics you can prove whatever you want. All these wars made less of a dent than what's happening with the birth rates.

Guaranteed monogamy for all is nothing more than the socialized ownership of the means of reproduction.

That's good!

Best take on this site.

The dating discourse here tends towards “communism for pussy” as I’ve said before. Funny that on a mostly libertarian leaning site, many posters write screeds about the “top 20% of men”, kinda like you’d see on some socialist forum about the “top 1% of earners”. Libertarianism for what I do have, communism for what I don’t!

You want more wealth and income? Better work for it! Want more pussy? Better work for it!

Good news is that they are somewhat correlated, so you can do a two birds one stone situation here.

The future will be robowaifus and robohusbandos to fulfill the emotional satiation quotient of the bottom rung of society that will be doomscrolling on welfare just to keep them out of trouble. The rewards for the highest performers will exist as status and superior experiential material comfort, and their contribution will be state or private embryo donations to perpetuate a superior line.

Other than that I don't see a solve. Women want dewy skinned sparkly guys who aren't abusive assholes, guys want therapy cumdumps, and this is just a fundamental tension of society. Just let people live their life, if they turn out to not be great let them/us rot in our little coccoon worlds and expire without trouble. The big issue is jealous assholes who want stuff in reality and are happy to leverage physical abuse to get their way. Maybe arm the robospouses with kung fu skills, I dunno.

When the entire world is experience a massive decline in relationship formation simultaneously, I think complaints and concern are merited, and the people who are claiming disbelief are in fact being... obtuse.

Y'all start sounding like boomers saying "sharpen up your resume and go and give the hiring manager a firm handshake."

Everyone seems to easily admit that the job market is harder on new entrants than it used to be, and is dysfunctional for the average person. Most would admit that the housing market is WAY harsher on new entrants than before, and is extremely distorted.

Most people can even acknowledge this is due to broad factors that distort those markets, NOT individual action.

But try to say the same thing about the dating market, and they immediately go "Well YOU must be doing something wrong."

Nah bro. You're just being a spiritual boomer.

Of course, I keep pointing this out to @Primaprimaprima, and they keep ignoring the point to drill down to individual solutions, which as we see are just not viable.

Ok, but on an individual level, don’t you want a solution that works for you, not someone to validate your feelings?

Ok, but on an individual level, don’t you want a solution that works for you

Assumes that there is a solution that works for your individual situation. I know that for me, personally, there's no fixing my problems — I'm a defective sub-human with no reason to live, and should probably spare myself the decades of pointless misery that lie ahead and just gas (helium) myself now.

Look, this is worth nothing, and I am no therapist, but I feel like a cry for help should get some kind of answer. I don't know you or your life situation. I don't doubt it's shitty for you to feel like this. But "defective subhuman" sounds pretty dramatic and very unlikely, and as for "decades of pointless misery," there are some things that are outside your control and some things that are not, and very people are truly fated to "decades of pointless misery" for reasons entirely outside their control.

I won't go further since I am not diagnosing you or trying to probe more into your "problems." If you just wanted someone to hear you, I hear you. If you want solutions, they exist.

If you want solutions, they exist.

[Citation needed].

I've been on psych meds and getting therapy since 2004.

Edit:

I don't know you or your life situation.

I've posted on my situation repeatedly here on the Motte (and the subreddit before that, and SSC before that), if you search through my post history.

He‘s always been like this. @Capital_Room , take some happy pills, for god‘s sake. @self_made_human what do you recommend?

@Capital_Room , take some happy pills, for god‘s sake

This is me on "happy pills." I've been on multiple psych meds, including antidepressants, since my first suicide attempt back in 2004.

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I could have sworn that I'd previously and seriously advised him to see a psychiatrist or therapist IRL. It certainly can't hurt. I'm not supposed to diagnose him with clinical depression, but let's just say it rhymes.

Alas, I don't know of any actual happy pills, but a small helping of magic mushrooms did wonders for me.

(This is excluding the possibility that his life and personal circumstances are utterly FUBAR, which happens more often than I'd like. But what can I do about that? I'm a shrink, not a miracle worker.)

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I want to know that society isn't going to collapse because nobody was willing to be a little mean to women, mostly.

After decades of giving women more and more benefits, why wouldn't the solution entail withdrawing some of them? And if we try that and it doesn't really help, at least we can say we tried.

Let it be known that I was expressing these same sorts of concerns back when I was with my Ex (I can drag up my posts on the Reddit Motte from like 5 years back to prove it), and I would still express these concerns if I got a new stable relationship.

I can see possible solutions to my personal problem, I sure do wish that certain other people would stop actively making it harder, though.

But I would really, REALLY like to avoid what seem to be eminently predictable outcomes of ignoring the larger issue.

Hey, I want to say I like your posts a lot and I read all of them. They are well thought out and have the stats to back them up and I agree with them. That said, this comment in particular has struck me: what is anyone here supposed to do about it? Convincing people that you're right is cool and all, but I genuinely don't see any way to work towards the social outcome you want from here. Are there people here in favor of policies that make the problem worse? Do they act on it? This is kind of similar to the problem I see with democracy: the population might want something, but none of the politicians that get elected give the population what they want. Even if you could convince many people, are you seriously suggesting taking off any gimmes for women from the budget? That's not possible even for things that a whole lot more people want gone, like Medicare or food stamps. All that to say, I think you should stop worrying so much and become a doomer, like me! I guess I still worry, anyway, so I'm doing it wrong.

My first hope is that someone has some countervailing argument or data that actually shows its not so bleak as it seems.

I want to understand the problem well enough to know if I'm not seeing something, or I'm seeing something that's not actually there.

Nobody has brought that forth that I've seen.

And finally, if nobody is going to implement a solution... fine. But the status quo will not hold!

What is going to happen in, say, 10 years when a majority of men aren't married, don't have kids, and are being expected to keep on working and upholding a society that doesn't give them anything in return?

I suspect a combination of:

A) Men voting for some RADICAL policies that REALLY DO start stripping women's rights away, because they have ceased to give a shit about women's opinions;

B) Men lashing out in more violent ways (both in lone wolf ways and maybe organized) because there's no rewards for good behavior;

C) Men just dropping out and refusing to do the basic work that keeps civilization afloat. If they refuse to become cops, soldiers, garbagemen, construction workers, but stay in their room jerking off or playing video games, then things start breaking down. And in this case, we will have fewer people to protect us from the violent guys.

I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.

All that to say, I think you should stop worrying so much and become a doomer, like me! I guess I still worry, anyway, so I'm doing it wrong.

The crazy thing is that I'm still pretty optimistic at my core. Despair is not in my nature. But I also REFUSE to lie about reality as I see it.

And I get a certain amount of joy from arguing someone into the ground and, if not forcing them to admit defeat, at least getting them to stop spouting stuff that I know to be false or inaccurate.

Everyone's entitled to their point of view in here, after all, but I'm happy to interrogate their view, and be interrogated in return.

I do not see a scenario where men continue to just keep eating the shit sandwich AND contributing to the society that is force feeding it to them.

I do. If they didn't lash out while they were younger and hot-blooded, why would they do it in older, lower-T age? And it's not like all of them are going to have the fuck you money to just drop out of productive labor.

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Of course, I keep pointing this out to @Primaprimaprima, and they keep ignoring the point to drill down to individual solutions, which as we see are just not viable.

Bit of an odd way of phrasing it, considering I just wrote a post a few days ago where I said "we need to look at structural factors for the downturn in dating and not just individual factors".

So why, in spite of that, do you perhaps perceive that I still put a strong emphasis on individual factors?

One of my biggest pet peeves is whining. I can't stand whining. I'm empathetic to a great many things, I pride myself on my ability to consider things from other people's perspectives in fact, but even then, my sympathy has limits. And one of the fastest ways to make me lose sympathy for your cause is for you to start whining about it. We've all got a sob story, and rare is the stranger who will care about yours.

There's a very fine line between whining, and suffering just the right amount of righteous indignation so that you're actually motivated to go out and do something about what's bothering you. A very fine line indeed. It's a tough line to navigate, it requires judgement. We would never be motivated to change anything at all if we didn't suffer some sort of emotional wound. And "doing something" may, indeed, involve enlisting other people to our cause. But you have to thread the needle where you manage to do all that without being a bitch about it.

I'm not criticizing lonely men from the outside. I'm on the inside with all of you! I have a long history of being spectacularly unsuccessful with women. Like, actually embarrassing shit that I still cringe about when I remember years later. I'm a weirdo autist, I can't hold a normal conversation with a normal human. Women, predictably, find these traits repellent. So I know what it's like to suffer.

But I don't just go bitch and moan in the corner about how the world's unfair and how people should like me more and how we need "communism for pussy" as @HughCaulk so eloquently put it. What I do instead is I look in the mirror and say, "I'm a weirdo autist. That's not going to change. That's what we have to work with. So it's time to figure out how to make the best of that, rather than getting all mopey about it."

You are, apparently, suffering from some financial troubles. I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. But there are lots of poor people who fuck, y'know? There are poor people fucking right now, as we speak. There are even poor people in committed long term relationships. You could be one of them. What's stopping you?

It always comes back to your attitude, y'know? Forget about the structural and the individual and the historical and the metapsychological and whatever the fuck else it is. Think about your attitude first. Are you happy with your attitude, or are you being a bitch? Start there.

I read your linked comment and right at the end:

I really do think that a lot of the "singleness epidemic" is due to a combination of personal choice and unrealistic standards

Yes, this is almost precisely what I said about you.

And then this claim:

But I don't just go bitch and moan in the corner about how the world's unfair and how people should like me more and how we need "communism for pussy" as @HughCaulk so eloquently put it.

Is ironic because the communism has been benefiting the 'pussy' for years now.

Like, every single change to the economic structure of the country for the last 50 years has been in favor of women and against men. Tax money flows to help women get medical care (including abortions), to get into school, to get hired, and to otherwise live independently. This is generally pulled from the pockets of the most productive men. All the material wealth they rely on comes from male-dominated industries.

Its male labor all the way down.

So basically, the only thing that ISN'T being redistributed is pussy.

This is the core asymmetry that makes men feel as though the social contract is not working in their favor at all.

MY suggested solution isn't communism for pussy (I DARE you to find where I suggest it), and is dismantling some of the communism that's already in palce.

You are, apparently, suffering from some financial troubles.

Negative. I'm making more now than I was with her, and more than, I believe, 90% of my age cohort.

I'm simply pointing out that I'd be way better off if the woman I thought was worth keeping had stuck around.

And that most women would be financially better off if they settled with a decent guy early on.

That's it. Save me the patronization, I have no need.

You could be one of them. What's stopping you?

Ask the dozen or so women I've tried to date in the past couple years.

Literally none of them, LITERALLY ZERO have gone on to find fulfilling stable relationships. This mystified me until I did the research. Its simply because EVERYONE is encountering difficulties.

Some of them became single moms, some decided to get into deeper debt for a master's degree, some of them got fat. Some just putter along on their course.

If I was the problem, why weren't they scooped up by a better man?

Think about your attitude first. Are you happy with your attitude, or are you being a bitch? Start there.

I'm satisfied with literally every aspect of my life aside from the romantic one. I love my job, make good money, I'm in great shape, I instruct at my gym, I've got a healthy routine, a house (a rarity amongst my peers), a dog, a dedicated and supportive friend group, and enough free time to pursue some hobbies.

Life is objectively great. But that just makes the one portion that ain't working out all the more obvious.

Indeed, part of the issue is most women can't even meet my basic expectations for fitness, fiscal responsibility, and mental stability. And the ones that can are taken.

In other words, you have entirely and utterly misjudged my actual material position AND my arguments on this particular topic. And I don't consider my personal material position relevant to the argument anyway. I'm here advocating on behalf of guys who are worse off than me, so you can't just dismiss me as a miserable incel.

I don't just care about the men... I notice that WOMEN are dissatisfied with things as well. they've got everything they claim to want, and they're miserable.

But you don't tell THEM to put on their big-girl-pants and suck it up, do you?

What is annoying is that, as stated, the spiritual boomers don't want to ever, EVER admit that maybe we need to put a tad less pressure on men and tad more pressure on women.

Because as I've said before, what do you think happens when the current generation of young men hit their 30's, have no family, no marital prospects, poor economic prospects, and yet are continually blamed and put down as though its all their fault?

Seriously. What do you expect? I'm genuinely curious.

Indeed, part of the issue is most women can't even meet my basic expectations for fitness, fiscal responsibility, and mental stability. And the ones that can are taken.

This was the most frustrating asymmetry that drove me crazy when I was on the market. Putting in serious effort to be fit, financially stable, mentally stable, well-rounded, interesting hobbies, solid friend group, and all the other many attributes that high quality male candidates are supposed to have, only to be confronted with legions of single women doing, at best, a few of those things. It seemed like the women doing most/all of those things got married to someone they met in college or grad school.

I've never experienced this directly, but it was depressing as hell watching a friend of mine trying to find someone to marry; here was a guy extremely fit, handsome, very well off, retired before 40, with a hobby list as long as my arm, and he still struggled to find a long-term partner.

I couldn't help but watch all this in action and left helplessly thinking, 'Christ, if HE'S having problems, what chance do I have?'

He did eventually get married to a wonderful woman, however, but he's still had to make a number of quiet sacrifices. Nothing technically major, but still...

This is a long story, but I'm getting to a point, I swear.

A buddy of mine in college converted to Mormonism to date a girl. He was a character, but this story is going to be winding enough without getting into that. One day we went over to his girlfriend's house to meet before we all left to go see Lord of the Rings in theaters. I forget which one, maybe Fellowship. It doesn't matter.

It's around Christmas time, and this huge Mormon family is bursting at the seems with wholesome energy. Every little girl wants to show you want they've been baking with their mother. Every little boy wants to show you their somersault or some trick. The house is decorated, the Christmas tree is up, good times. So me and a buddy of mine are awkwardly sitting in the living room, not really sure what to do or say because this is not a vibe we grew up with. In addition to our usual awkwardness I might add. And two of these kids are throwing a little toy football closer and closer to the Christmas tree. My buddy and I, we don't say anything, but we're looking at each other with a panicked expression that needs no words. We are both thinking, if that ball actually hits that tree, a kid is gonna die in front of us.

Anyways, ball hits the tree, ornaments fall, train doing loops around the base falls over aaaaaaaand.... nothing. Dad chuckles, asks them to take it outside, life carries on like nothing ever happened. The boys clean up the mess they made and go throw the ball around outside. After my buddy and I piled into the car to go see the movie once everyone had arrived, we talked about how Christmas was at our homes growing up. How the house was transformed into a veritable museum of Christmas, and our mothers would fly into a violent rage if they so much as heard an ornament jingle due to a single heavy step within 20 feet of the tree. And it slowly dawned on us, that we were the fucked up ones. That family we just visited, they were the happy well adjusted ones.

It sucks realizing in your 20's that you were raised wrong. And not just "could have done better, but basically OK", but fundamentally the opposite of how you should have been raised. With all your intuitions about family dynamics and how to view and treat loved ones horrifically and possibly permanently miswired. It sucks watching the increasingly small demographic of well adjusted, family oriented peers you may have politely filtering you out and pairing off. It sucks getting older and realizing, you've been left behind with the other rejects, and now you've got to find the least damaged item in the returns bin to try to build a life with, knowing full well that's all you are to someone else as well.

I have no fucking clue how I did it. I have no fucking clue how anyone else is expected to do it today, except that it seems even more impossible, and the odds even more remote. But it sucks seeing all the "good ones" taken, and it hurts even worse realizing that goes for you too.

It sucks getting older and realizing, you've been left behind with the other rejects, and now you've got to find the least damaged item in the returns bin to try to build a life with, knowing full well that's all you are to someone else as well.

I have no fucking clue how I did it. I have no fucking clue how anyone else is expected to do it today, except that it seems even more impossible, and the odds even more remote. But it sucks seeing all the "good ones" taken, and it hurts even worse realizing that goes for you too.

Yeah. And it's hard because so many damaged items in the return bin are still convinced they're the well-adjusted ones.

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It is indeed a pretty brutal and humbling realization. I knew exactly what you were going to talk about with the Christmas tree!

Having parents explode with anger at children is a terrible thing, and I pray I don't end up doing it if I'm blessed with kids. Except in rare circumstances, of course.

Yeah.

Its a little less bad if you aren't exclusively staying on the dating apps, which I avoid like the plague now.

Its annoying as hell to strike up a decent convo with a woman you find attractive, only to find out she doesn't do much aside from Netflix, Starbucks, Shopping at Target, and maybe Music Festivals or something, and is generally not in great financial shape to boot. Often times they advertise their mental illness diagnoses.

And if you've gone to the effort of squaring away so many aspects of your life, its actually riskier to try to add someone in who might disrupt all those arrangements!

I genuinely ask myself the question "does adding this person to my life improve it or am I basically just getting an overgrown teenager with a caffeine addiction?" and it kills my interest. "The ick" as they say. The times I've gone on dates with such women hasn't done much to improve that perception.

On the flip side, you get the girlbosses who ARE spending their time at work (so have finances in order), slamming out sets at the gym, and pursuing six different side activities at once. Which is kind of neat, but they don't have time to go on dates.

What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.

It seemed like the women doing most/all of those things got married to someone they met in college or grad school.

That seems to be the blunt truth of it. The best women are getting scooped early, and, generally, stay in their relationships.

So the pool is mostly comprised of those who either didn't get scooped or couldn't stay in said relationship for [reasons].

This wouldn't be so bad if there were decent ways to filter for what you're looking for (old OKCupid!).

Its annoying as hell to strike up a decent convo with a woman you find attractive, only to find out she doesn't do much aside from Netflix, Starbucks, Shopping at Target, and maybe Music Festivals or something

You must be frequently annoyed then.

The modal chick’s interests and hobbies consist of consooming, painting her face, taking selfies, and teeheeing around in skimpy outfits, but she will complain men are BORING with no sense of irony. Men have the burden of performance.

and is generally not in great financial shape to boot.

Reminds me of a Tweet from some chick that was making the rounds, along the lines of:

Boyfriend: “Would you date a broke, struggling guy?”
Me: “No, for personal reasons”
Boyfriend: “What if I told you that to me, you are that struggling guy?”

I can’t stop thinking about this convo

And naturally some Noticers laughed at her phrasing it as “personal reasons” rather than acknowledging hypergamy.

Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.

One chick I casually dated at least had some self-awareness on that front.

No one:
Her: “If we got serious one day and moved in together, I don’t see how I would contribute to your lifestyle, you even know how to cook and clean better than I do”
Me: *Anakin face*
Her: “There is something I could contribute, right?”
Me: *Anakin face*

Its annoying as hell to strike up a decent convo with a woman you find attractive, only to find out she doesn't do much aside from Netflix, Starbucks, Shopping at Target, and maybe Music Festivals or something, and is generally not in great financial shape to boot. Often times they advertise their mental illness diagnoses.

This struck a little too close to home for me.

What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.

See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't. Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.

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Some of them became single moms, some decided to get into deeper debt for a master's degree, some of them got fat.

Again with the fat, it's always the fat... is it really that much of a dealbreaker?

I think fat girls are sexy af, so I'm biased, and I'm aware my biases are not shared by everyone. But, it can't be that bad, right?

Being fat isn't sexy. It's just a fact. Let's not kid ourselves.

Speak for yourself!

It's not a kind thing to say, but anything over a little pudge is actively revolting to me.

So you see, the gudness of the git gudder matters not, because people will always just reject the message anyway. But it matters not. "Git gud" always reigns supreme in the end, for it is the truth.

I think fat girls are sexy af, so I'm biased, and I'm aware my biases are not shared by everyone. But, it can't be that bad, right?

This is almost indistinguishable from advice sarcastically attributed to tradcons. "Men, you need to git gud, and you need to be willing to marry overweight single mothers!" Boy, what an appealing reward for gitting gud.

Well, appealing for me, at any rate!

(Not the single mom part though. That's one of the few things that actually is a hard limit for me.)

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The two most interesting motte posts that shaped my views on the dating world were one by a poster who I don't think posts here any more, who made an argument that the sexual revolution can't be inherently responsible for the male-female happiness gap because such a large gap is present only in the United States and not in Europe, where the revolution happened even more strongly; and @Terracotta linking a chart that showed the massive climb in obesity in the US, suggesting that if you're looking for a woman who does not qualify as obese or overweight, you're limited to the top 25% of women -- who, of course, are interested in similarly-top men.

Both of these convinced me something funky is going on in the US in particular, and that the obesity crisis, as well as general physical fitness (young men don't have muscle like they used to), are responsible for the unique unhappiness of American dating.

is it really that much of a dealbreaker?

If you want kids, its a concern.

ESPECIALLY if you want those kids to be raised to be healthy themselves.

Of course, Ozempic is giving us a chemical solution to all this.

And I am not asking for a rail thin girl, or a muscular one, or even one that goes to the gym regularly.

Just one that actually considers health important and takes necessary steps to maintain it.

It's a pregnancy risk, sure, but, life's full of risks. One of my ex's whole family was fat af, and they managed to reproduce.

Maybe next time before you pass on a fat girl, you could give her a chance for a little while, with the idea of suggesting Ozempic or an exercise plan once the relationship is more established? Just a thought. Could help widen your pool of available options a bit.

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"I'm a weirdo autist. That's not going to change. That's what we have to work with. So it's time to figure out how to make the best of that, rather than getting all mopey about it."

Do share. How did you make the best of that? Did you manage to land a wife? Have you had kids? What did you have to settle for? It's all well and fine to say "Git gud", but it helps to show your work.

Single, childless, drifting somewhat aimlessly, generally an emotional wreck on a daily basis. But what of it?

You see, no one ever likes to be told to "git gud", so there's a readymade generic counterargument you can always deploy against any assertion of "git gud". I see this in lots of domains, not just dating, it happens all the time in competitive games for instance. First you ascertain how gud the "git gudder" actually is, and then you have two options. If they're gud, then you say "well yeah, easy for you to say, you're already gud, and you probably got there by luck or natural talent anyway, so you don't know what it's like to suffer as someone who's not gud". If they're not gud, then you say "well what do you know anyway, you don't know anything about being gud, so just stay out of it."

So you see, the gudness of the git gudder matters not, because people will always just reject the message anyway. But it matters not. "Git gud" always reigns supreme in the end, for it is the truth.

Obviously if someone is giving concrete step by step advice on how to do XYZ, then it's reasonable to ask for their credentials. But attitude and intent are freely available to all the fortunate and unfortunate alike. Avail yourself of them.

Serious question. Would ever consider an arranged marriage in India or dating a Filipina overseas, in order to find a match?

No, she has to be white or at least east Asian.

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Single, childless, drifting somewhat aimlessly, generally an emotional wreck on a daily basis. But what of it?

You don't actually know how to "git gud". You have zero proof that your diagnosis of the problem, nor the way out is correct. You should not be giving advice to anyone, nor judging anyone else for how they are handling it.

First you ascertain how gud the "git gudder" actually is, and then you have two options. If they're gud, then you say "well yeah, easy for you to say, you're already gud, and you probably got there by luck or natural talent anyway, so you don't know what it's like to suffer as someone who's not gud". If they're not gud, then you say "well what do you know anyway, you don't know anything about being gud, so just stay out of it."

Because you left out the 3rd option. If the people saying "git gud" is good, and has actionable advice, you actually do it. People are not limited to the cacophony of narcissistic rage.

You have neither.

You don't actually know how to "git gud".

Ah, but I never said I did! All I said was two simple words: "git gud". You see the difference, yes?

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I'm not saying that the individual shouldn't do the things he mentions. They will work. The problem is expecting this to resolve the crisis on a larger scale. The system is broken, gaming it won't magically fix things.

Sure, you can have this opinion but it sounds like a progressive complaining about wealth inequality and saying the “capitalist system is broken”. Spare me…

Is it a free market? Are you factoring in the market distortions of women taking out massive loans for fake degrees that don't pay, and then lobbying to have the taxpayer just forgive them? Or the weaker market distortions of income based repayment? Are you factoring in the cartel like behavior of HR which is predominantly run by overly educated women? Are you factoring in all the assistance programs women get for almost every facet of their life?

There is a lot going on, but at no point would I claim it's the "hand of the free market at work".

I don't understand this response. What do spurious degrees, the failed debt forgiveness plan, or "cartel-like" (????) behaviour of HR have to do with the dating market? Are you confusing the real economy and market with the dating market? I don't think this engaged with Prima's question about why women would settle for poor stupid smelly boyfriends

Are you confusing the real economy and market with the dating market?

I don't think this engaged with Prima's question about why women would settle for poor […] boyfriends

Evidently there is a link between the real market and the dating market.

(And if the descriptor “stupid boyfriends” means “un(der)educated boyfriends”, then “women taking out massive loans for fake degrees that don't pay” is an example of another “market distortion” identified in the original comment that affects the dating market. Now, there’s nothing inherently gendered about this strategy, so a man who is willing to sacrifice earning potential in order to meet the criterion of not being a “stupid boyfriend” can do so. But then he gives up his ability to not be a “poor boyfriend”, so he fails that criterion too.

None of this addresses the “not being a ‘smelly boyfriend’” criterion, of course.)

But the guy who wrote that even flagged that those pointless degrees "Don't pay.", am I now to take that the men in this scenario are poor because their potential girlfriends have psychology BAs and work at Starbucks? What's the connection here, beyond asserting that it's evident? The number of undergrad degrees as a percentage of young people has been increasing steadily for decades, and women have been earning them at a greater rate than men since at least the 80s (People who are now likely out of the dating market or irrelevant). Where's the link in this argument? It sounds just like vague outgroup complaining "Those idiots with fake degrees/who control HR/ who don't want to date me" etc

There is no true free market. Give me a market, and I will provide a counterexample to how free it is.

But there is truth behind "All is fair in love and war": I would agree with primax3 that dating is one of the free-est of markets, which may also be why there's so much complaining about it.

I feel like this blog post cannot be used to make sweeping conclusions about the failure of western society. While I agree with your general outlook, there is a bit of a misunderstanding here.

When he's listing requirements, those are not requirements to date someone, really; those are requirements to date the actually desirable girls.

Just as >50% of the male population ages 25-45 that don't make the $70k cut, >50% of the female population 25-45 don't make the implicit cut for this blog post.

We had this discussion before

To summarize:

@faceh contended that there were about one million women who met the criteria he considered marriagable: Single and looking (of course). Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified. Not ‘obese.’ Not a mother already. No ‘acute’ mental illness. No STI. Less than $50,000 in student loan debt. 5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’). Under age 30. Therefore there aren't enough good women for all the men.

I countered that there were approximately 617,000 American men under 40 meet all the specified criteria: Single, Earning at least $65,000 annually, No felony convictions, Exercise at least once a week, Attend religious services at least once a month, Have not used drugs other than marijuana in the past year, Not classified as alcohol dependent. Therefore, there aren't nearly enough good men for even that small number of women.

I picked 65k because it's about what you make as a Cop/Teacher, or a forklift operator at a local warehouse that's always putting up billboards for workers if you pick up a little overtime.

Given that the median WHITE male salary for under 40's in the U.S. is about 60k and its about 33k for the under 30's, I think I can spot where your largest filter is.

If a woman in her 20's is looking for a guy in his 20's making 70k or more, then she's already eliminated 90% of her options before zeroing in on other traits.

But uh, there's a bigger question there. Why are these guys single if they're such objectively good catches? Unless they're choosing to remain single, then this just shows that women are still rejecting them for some reason.

Alsoooo I notice that you didn't include "is heterosexual" in the criteria, so I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these desirable dudes are actually just gay. Yes, even considering that they attend church once a month. Also probably a good number of divorcees in there.

By 30 one can absolutely be a teacher, forklift operator, or cop. In fact I think in most places you can't become a cop much after 30. 18-30, which I guess is what you mean by under 30?, captures a huge number of men (about 16%) who are in college, and effectively earn nothing.

Yes these men are single for any number of reasons. Do we ask the same question about your million good women? ((I should note that my age range for the men was under 40, as it seems like more of a match))

If a lot of these men were gay, it would just make my point even better, there would be even fewer straight men competing for those good women. I don't think women care about past divorces in a man.

None of your objections answers the questions raised: what part of this do you think is either not a thing your hypothetical good woman would look for, or not a thing under the control of the men? Sure most men don't meet these standards, THAT'S THE POINT. And you can do it easily!

what part of this do you think is either not a thing your hypothetical good woman would look for, or not a thing under the control of the men?

All men can't earn above average (or whatever percentile $60k is) wage in the way that all women could have less than 5 lifetime partners. If they did, it wouldn't be above average anymore and the buying power of that money would be lower.

I don't care if all men can do it, I care if any man can do it.

Any man can become president. That's still a very bad life plan to be offering to people as a whole because all of them except one will be disappointed. It matters that the majority of people have decent lives.

Are you really comparing becoming president to getting a job as a cop, teacher, or forklift operator?

It absolutely matters for people to have decent lives, but I'm not sure what that has to do with who gets access to the best million women in the country.

Why are these million women single if they're desirable? Clearly men are passing on them for some reason.

Well broadly if you ask them, they can't find men that meet their standards.

Maybe its politics.

Maybe its the money.

Maybe its about the weight

But its broadly women who are passing on men, not the other way around. Which explains both the large number of single women AND the fact that apparently desirable men remain single.

And the fact that half of Gen Z men are just giving up.

And young women are significantly less likely to report being single.

For those that are:

Close to half (45 percent) of college-educated women say not being able to find someone who meets their expectations is a major factor, while only 28 percent of women without a college education feel the same. This education gap is slightly smaller among men. One-third (33 percent) of college-educated men claim not finding someone who meets their standards is a major factor for them, compared to 19 percent of noncollege-educated men.

DESPITE this, young single men report greater interest in dating than young single women:

There is a significant disparity in dating interest between single men and women. Nearly half (47 percent) of single men report being open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of single women. The gender gap in dating is even wider among young singles. More than half (52 percent) of young single men say they are open to dating, compared to only 36 percent of young single women.

This doesn't make sense if MEN are the ones passing on women.

So yeah.

That's been my point all along and I haven't seen a single piece of data that would refute it, yet.

An 11% (or 30%, depending on how you calculate) difference is not much. Plus the fact that most of the effort of courtship is still expected of men (granted, it’s not that much in the modern world). But it’s easy to imagine those 11% men ‘would be open’ to a relationship with a woman who showed up all baked and ready to go at their door, but aren’t willing to text various women for weeks/face rejection.

Plus the general tendency of women to undercount their sex partners and men to overcount them. That is, men are supposed to want it, women aren’t supposed to want it. If you abandon the chase as a man, you're a loser, and if you're mancrazy as a woman, you could be a slut or a bad feminist. That alone, the shy loser and the shy slut, could explain the discrepancy.

I didn't even mention the most befuddling and depressing stat:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/#:~:text=Among%20adults%20ages%2018%20to,t%20want%20to%20get%20married.

When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children.

While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.

21% of childless women say they DON'T want kids, compared to 15% of childless men.

Men by and large want kids.

And the ones they'd have to do it with are by and large NOT seeking kids.

"Oh but 12% isn't that big a difference."

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of men that represents.

Women are passing on men who would date and marry them. It is not the reverse.

The ONLY way this gets solved is convincing more women to settle and have kids.

Men can't improve their way out of a shortage of women who want kids.

5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’). Under age 30.

Oh come on this is just getting silly now.

People have sex, and age. If that's a dealbreaker then you're basically just looking for an excuse to stay single at that point.

It is the fate of every woman to grow old and watch her beauty fade. Would not mind if she spent her youth, beauty, fertility, and purity on me; that is, indeed the greatest gift that a woman can give a man. But the thought that she gave them to another man is unbearable.

From "Fertility" by the Dreaded Jim:

It would seem that the male belief that fertility and attractiveness decline rapidly once a woman reaches a certain age is phallocentric and oppressive.

Equality means that female ovaries have the same functional lifetime as male testicles, which is logical, and, like equality itself, insane.

So here follows a public service announcement for women:

Ovaries dry up a lot quicker than testicles. At age thirty six two fifths of women are infertile, and most of the women that are theoretically fertile have a hard time getting pregnant, plus there is a substantially higher risk of the pregnancy going wrong. So you should have your babies before thirty six. If planning three babies two years apart, need to get pregnant at thirty one. If pregnant at thirty one, married at thirty. Which is why your prospects for getting married plunge abruptly at thirty, because any potential husbands are doing the same arithmetic. Yes, some woman you know got pregnant and married at forty four – but your chances of being that woman are not good.

And from "Michael's Story":

As a man I am very visual. God made me this way. I cannot help finding a physically beautiful woman attractive. Why did these women not at least give me a few years of their youth so I would have time to fall in love with them and permanently burn their image in my mind’s eye? I need something to remember when we are 50 and married. Yet she spent her 20’s parceling herself out to guys who gave her nothing and offers nothing to the guy who gives her everything. I’m expected to commit hard earned resources to raising children with what is ultimately a suspect woman whose history I know nothing about. A 30+ unmarried women has very high chance of having a questionable past and baggage. I believe the more men a woman has been with the less likely she is to be emotionally committed each subsequent one. When you have handed out little pieces of your heart over years to dozens of different men what is left for the husband you proclaim to truly love? What value do the words “I love you” mean when she has stared into the eyes of 10-100+ different men and said the same thing?

At 30+ women’s physical appearance has nowhere to go but DOWN. Is this what women mean by “saving the best for last”? Marrying at 30+? How can women spend trillions of dollars a year on beauty products yet at the same time claim a women’s age “shouldn’t be important” to a man? And what about children? Did they ever think their husbands might want to have children? What’s more likely to naturally produce a quicker pregnancy and healthy offspring? A fertile 24 year old in her physical prime… or a 35 year old aging womb? What if I want multiple children? At 30+ a women can easily before infertile after her first pregnancy.

As a result of everything I’ve seen and experienced in my life I would like to make an announcement to all the desperate 30+ year old women out there: I would rather suffocate and die then spend my hard earned income, love, trust, and substance on you. Your entitled, ageing, feminist, jaded, baggage laden and brainwashed. And if I cannot marry a women in her 20’s I REFUSE TO EVER GET MARRIED. Given my high income this should not be a problem. However I’m concerned at some point I will have to start looking overseas (Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe etc.). I’m not going to marry one of these 30+ ageing entitled females who clearly have an agenda of their own. I intend to get married once. Marriage is meant to be forever. I will not be a starter husband for one of these used up women. I can’t tell you the number of men I’ve known who married late and were rewarded by losing everything they spent their lives building…

People [...] age.

The problem's not "they will turn 30". The problem's in "they turned 30 before you started dating them". If you want four kids, you want to give the woman a rest between pregnancies, and it takes a couple of years before you get close enough to make babies, you're looking at the last pregnancy starting around age 38. That's starting to get dicey in terms of fertility. Certainly, you're going to have problems if you want to date a woman much over 30 (I say woman, because men can in fact have kids in their 50s or 60s, although not so much 70s because they might be dead by then).

You might be thinking that "wanting four kids" is unrealistic. My answer to that is: a society in which this is unrealistic is a society that will die out. Women need to have over 2 kids on average to replace themselves - because slightly more men than women are born - and we're in a technological state where "having kids accidentally" is not really a thing due to contraception but "not having kids accidentally" very much is. So a large chunk of people need to be intending 4+ kids in order to get the average up to 2.1 or so. If this isn't realistic, halt and catch fire; something needs to be done to fix that ASAP as a matter of societal survival, which is of course the position you're arguing against.

Where's the insanity in trying to marry young? That seems like a normal predilection.

As for partner count, I think those statistics are mostly useless anyway.

But regardless, everyone is welcome to have their preferences. Just be prepared to put in the work to get what you want. If you want one of the top million women, be one of the top million men at least.

Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.

And like with other issues, women now have more premarital sex partners than they've had in the past.

Yet another way in which the average woman is less desirable as a partner than they were before.

Which cannot be fixed by telling men to improve.

Man, we're getting to quite a number of asymmetries that favor women and are mostly controlled by women's behavior, aren't we? The obesity, the heightened expectations, the low childbearing rates while men keep doing the (literal and metaphorical) heavy lifting.

Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.

12 dudes isn’t that bad bro, you’re just being insecure. If they played a full court 5-on-5 basketball game, each team would only have one sub!

@erwgv3g34’s humorous exasperation from a few weeks ago comes to mind, where (to paraphrase) due to hoeflation we’ve gone from “she doesn’t have to be a virgin, bro” to “if she had an STD in the past that doesn’t make her any lesser as a potential wife.”

Yet another way in which the average woman is less desirable as a partner than they were before.

Which cannot be fixed by telling men to improve.

If some large subset of men doesn’t meet women’s preferences, it’s a male problem and those men need to improve themselves.

If some large subset of women doesn’t meet men’s preferences, it’s a male problem and men need to improve their preferences.

Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.

Ok but this is entirely normal in Western culture and has been since like the 70s so about 50 years now. And it's not just her that's expected to have 6-12 previous partners it's you as well. If you don't well that's probably part of it but the vast majority of men in modern Western society would not be at all phased by a body count of 6 and thinking they would be shows you as an extreme outlier. I realize modern Western culture is also an extreme outlier but nevertheless that's the culture you live in.

Now it's actually not that hard to marry a virgin in the US you just need to sincerely convert to one of the dozens of conservative religious denominations that enforce this many of which have more women than men. The other way is to ingratiate yourself into a more conservative nonwestern culture and try for marriage there. But acting like a body count of 6 is some damning thing when that is what is culturally expected of modern secular women is not going to get you very far. Modern secular women and men are expected to have several previous relationships and flings from high school and college that's the cultural expected norm. It's totally fair to not like that but understand you are like a Saudi woman searching for a sensitive feminist hipster plenty of those exist but you are going to have to go out of your cultural comfort zone to find them.

Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.

This is just your insecurity talking. You're afraid that you might be worse off in some way than a previous partner, and thinking of sex like it's a "performance" instead of viewing it as a mutual exploration of intimacy, pleasure, and most importantly, as a way to bond with your partner.

Also 6-12 partners, those are rookie numbers. Like I could understand being weirded out by your partner having over 50 hook-ups, but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.

This is just your insecurity talking.

Yeah sure. And if you have a job applicant whose resume shows 12 different jobs in the past 5 years, none of which lasted more than 3 months, they're 'insecure' if they pass you over for an applicant with a more stable history, right?

(hint: it shows trouble actually committing, i.e. a red flag).

Nobody is obligated to be 'secure' about promiscuity, that's laughable to even suggest. Its about the one thing we are genetically wired to BE insecure about.

Which is to say, your comment reads like satire.

but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.

And it was less normal in the past.

Granddad had a 64% chance of marrying a woman with only 1 or fewer sexual partners.

Guys now have a 27% chance, at best.

Strangely, more people got married back in granddad's day.

Yeah sure. And if you have a job applicant whose resume shows 12 different jobs in the past 5 years, none of which lasted more than 3 months, they're 'insecure' if they pass you over for an applicant with a more stable history, right?

If you’re dating a 28 year old, that 6-12 is spread out over ~12 years, so a new sexual partner every 1-2 years. Switching companies every 2 years is perfectly normal in industries like software engineering (in fact it’s often easier to further your career that way than by getting promoted internally).

Also you’re assuming those 6-12 partners were 3 month long relationships. It could have been two high school boyfriends, 3 college flings over the span of 4 years, and a 5 year long relationship that just ended. Are you really going to call that behaviour promiscuous?

Nobody is obligated to be 'secure' about promiscuity, that's laughable to even suggest. Its about the one thing we are genetically wired to BE insecure about. Which is to say, your comment reads like satire.

Body count has never been an issue in my relationships. I know people who’ve had over a hundred sexual partners, now that I understanding having some reservations with, but 6-12 is still in the perfectly normal range. We’re not talking about people who take part in rationalist polyamorous orgies here.

If you’re dating a 28 year old, that 6-12 is spread out over ~12 years, so a new sexual partner every 1-2 years.

That spread can still be a red flag, depending on the distribution. If it's evenly spread out, it sounds like someone with issues forming long-term relationships, who'll sabotage the relationship after 1-2 years. If it's unevenly spread out, it could indicate a slutty period of their life depending on which side of that 6-12 range we're talking about.

Well, we're getting to the root of your dating problems at least. "Ah, where have all the virgin 25 year old 130 lbs women who have more interesting hobbies than just Netflix gone..." You're doing the same thing as the women who say "yeah I have 20 options but I'm just not feeling any of them, you know?" It's the exact same thing.

but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance

It would be utterly bizarre if she didn't! How could you not compare! This is what humans do!

Basically we've discovered that you're not after "dating" (quite attainable), you're after "she has to be noticeably above average in most metrics, and I have to own her mind body and soul, there has to be no chance that she ever even thinks about a man other than me, lest I constantly be paranoid about cheating" (maybe not as attainable, unsurprising that you're having difficulties).

You're doing the same thing as the women who say "yeah I have 20 options but I'm just not feeling any of them, you know?" It's the exact same thing.

Sure. So why do you only think it's a problem when men do it?

Its the asymmetry that grates me.

Once again I assert that you are completely and utterly off base about my material conditions.

As stated, I've gone on dates with a number of women who, far from getting scooped up by better men, just end up alone and slowly have their lives spiral away.

If I were the problem, why aren't they going on to something better?

Its the asymmetry that grates me.

They have a uterus. You don't.

That is the asymmetry.

And a huge (and growing) portion of them aren't using it.

Whose fault is that.

Yes, I think that's pretty much it. The modal <50th percentile woman seems to be a heavy single mother, who will bring a lot of drama into her boyfriend's life.

In my experience, it's not even that they have to be making $70k now, either, but more like that they clearly would be able to buckle down and do it if they ended up having kids together.

Everyone’s entitled to their preferences and requirements (abs, height, penis, tits, age, religion, veganness etc), no matter how high, unrealistic or weird they are, but somehow I dislike this cash requirement the most.

Maybe it’s because I’m lazy. Or because feminism has always presented the heavy burden of providing as a male privilege. Or because it seems materialistic and exposes the harshness of the transaction. If a funny guy is with a beautiful girl, in a way he’s exchanged his jokes for her tits. But I find this far more pleasant and acceptable than if he had used actual dollars (if he’s a successful comedian and she doesn’t find him funny). I don’t condemn it morally, I don’t condemn prostitution either, but there’s something distasteful about it I can’t quite explain.

Maybe it’s just the old nagging desire to be loved for yourself alone, unconditionally and forever, which no lover has ever achieved. If she loves you because you're tall, you can't test her love by losing a few inches, and her love is somewhat secure. Otoh you can test or lose her cash-based love by abandoning or losing your job. So that kind of love never feels secure, it's more a sword of Damocles hanging over you. In the neighborhood where I grew up, two fathers who lost their jobs killed themselves.

If a funny guy is with a beautiful girl, in a way he’s exchanged his jokes for her tits. But I find this far more pleasant and acceptable than if he had used actual dollars (if he’s a successful comedian and she doesn’t find him funny).

Money is the universal medium of value. Can't we say that I exchange my data science skills for her beauty?

To be clear, neither my mother, nor I, nor the friends I can think of married a man who had, from the start, what you would call a career, or was making that kind of money. My mom's mother gave them money for a down payment, because my dad was never going to have it himself.

Ultimately, I think it's more important to signal potential love and commitment, but that's more subject to specific circumstances, and making more money is also nice for other reasons, so it's a safe thing to focus on.

I would prefer it if someone was just trying to harpoon an heir or heiress like some Becky Sharp or Bel-Ami. You wish to live on yachts? I respect your moxie.

Some women love you because you have a french accent, or you made them laugh once. I’m told some wives love you because you leave a love note on the fridge for five minutes everyday. But others want the whole 8 hours. Just in a cubicle, being miserable for money, so you can hand it over. It’s as costly a signal of love and commitment as it gets. For the one ‘buckling up’. The requiring party’s love and affinity is more doubtful.

Anyway, nothing against you, obviously it’s a very very common requirement. Some people say it’s hardwired in the female psyche, although I don’t know how nature would hardwire a wealth preference into humans in an ancestral environment where wealth was just ‘being fat’, and some sticks and shells. How could Lucy in the savannah have learned to be turned on by zeroes on a bank statement. By contrast the male ‘gaze’ seems more clearly hardwired to like certain aspects of the female form which have remained the same.

Some people say it’s hardwired in the female psyche, although I don’t know how nature would hardwire a wealth preference into humans in an ancestral environment where wealth was just ‘being fat’, and some sticks and shells. How could Lucy in the savannah have learned to be turned on by zeroes on a bank statement.

Women are not attracted to zeros in a bank account; they are attracted to the things to the things you buy with those zeroes. Which is why rich men go out of their way to signal their wealth with expensive cars, flashy jewelry, bespoke suits, etc. Those things confer status, and status is something which has always existed and which women are definitely hardwired to be attracted to. No woman is going to be attracted to a man who has a million dollars in his bank account but lives like a pauper, at least not for his money.

There is a much more parsimonious explanation why she spurns the lentil millionaire and welcomes a big spender, even on credit: she likes money. No evo psych needed. If a male chimp gives a female a banana for sex, the female was not attracted to the chimp‘s banana procurement skills or his status: she was attracted to the banana.

Because it makes marriage look like it’s just a long-term form of prostitution. Which I guess for some people it basically is.

those are requirements to date the actually desirable girls.

What do you consider to be an actually desirable girl, exactly? Just curious. Because I feel like my own criteria is not the norm.

For men employed full time, median earnings are at about $68K, so yes. He also says you have to have 15 percent body fat, your own apartment with no roommates, and be highly intelligent and socially skillful. It's not quite 6-6-6, but it seems designed not to provide useful advice but to discourage. Not really surprising.

Ehh, I dunno.

First of all, to be fair, he didn’t say you need 15% BFP; he said you need sub-20% and 15% is ideal. This is eminently achievable for most men, especially if you have access to amphetamines or GLP-1 agonists (or both).

The other requirements (income threshold, solo living situation, social skills) are also fairly easily within reach for basically any 110+ IQ man in his 20s or 30s with 50th %ile+ conscientiousness who lives in a mid-size or larger metro area.

Yes, I am aware that the median man is, almost by definition, practically incapable of meeting this bar, and I agree with OP’s sentiment that the bar has gotten higher and the responsibility for meeting it has devolved further to atomized individual men acting on their own. But the bar is definitely way lower than 6-6-6, and (unlike height or penis length) the traits mentioned in this post can realistically be improved through deliberate effort. So I don’t see this post as discouraging, certainly not to the extent of, say, what goes on in /r/BlackPillScience

Yes, this is liberalism in the era of post-detraditionalization, and it's where I find myself sharply offboard with the classical liberals of both the left and right, and have theoretical sympathy for the progressives for whom 'wokeness' was a project to rebuild social scaffolding.

As you point out in this thread, the thing about 'liberalism' and this atomic individualism, is that it's good for you (the individual who can 'win' in it), so people have a vested in escaping some kind of constraint, will advocate for it. And this isnt' bad per se. At least not in the way communism is bad. But unrestrained, you get the tragedy of the commons.

The thing is that the commons are protected or at lead hidden when you're knocking down superfluity, non-loadbearing parts of social infrastruture, and then load bearing ones that can temporarily shift weight to other pillars. ANd for several decades, liberalism in a traditionalized world was doing just this. Finding ways to peak above the pack for an advantage, or loose a restraint for everyone.

But here we are where the fat has been long since trimmed, and we're left hypermaxxing individually. So where previously, we had social expectations that kept people largely on broad tracks toward success as a society, those have been whittled away.

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