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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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I was catching up on the quality contribution threads for last month (yes, I'm very late...) and I ran across this post from @Amadan.

I found this part specifically was interesting in the broader context of the discussion:

Assuming, of course, that their standards are not too high... You don't want fat Sally the checkout clerk or carousel-riding Cathy, fine. You insist on a 20-something slim attractive virgin who is agreeable and submissive? Hmm, good luck if you're not a 6/6/6. (Or a Mormon.)

One of these things is not like the other.

For men:

  • Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).
  • Six feet: mostly driven by genetics and childhood nutrition. And only achieved by 14.5% of men in the US (according to Google).
  • Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

For women:

  • 20-something: every woman will be a 20-something for ten years of her life.
  • Slim/attractive (they're mostly the same thing): partially driven by genetics? But still, exercise and diet go a long way here.
  • Virgin who is agreeable and submissive: these are all completely within the median woman's control. As they say, manners cost nothing.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

(Apologies for responding so late and in a top-level comment; I didn't want this getting buried in a weeks old thread.)

All of this assumes that 6/6/6 is true and that even an unattractive woman will only date a cute guy who is 6/6/6/6 (six foot, six figures, six pack, six inch long reproductive organ). This all comes from the myth that only a small number of men have sex with the majority of women.

That isn’t true.

If this were true, then we would see married women secretly having sex with other men while ovulating, and cuckolding their husbands. However, multiple genetic studies show a very low level of cuckoldry in western societies. Most of the time, the husband, the “beta provider” if you will, is the father of a woman’s children.

What surveys show (the information from surveys is collaborated by STD rates) is this:

  • About 20% of men and women both are very promiscuous
  • It would appear that, since most women aren’t promiscuous (if all of those “nice girls” were sleeping with “Chad”, we would see a lot of them have STDs from “Chad”, but we don’t), those 20% of “Chad”s are sleeping with women who, in turn, sleep with a lot of men.
  • There is a slight polygynous shift, but it’s nowhere near 80% of the women sleeping with 20% of the men.

It is true that women are very picky on most dating apps, but that’s because dating apps are about 70% men and 30% women. Fortunately, even though there is a single graph from one Dr. Michael J. Rosenfeld at Standford which claims everyone now meets on the apps, most people do not use the apps to meet partners.

Point being, women being super picky and things being hopeless for 80% of men is just a myth. For myself, I now have a girlfriend again, it was a lot of work to find her, yes, but we’re working out quite nicely.

I was just recently thinking about the guys I know (from a various social circles) that have had a lot of girls and how what they have in common, moreso than looks, is just that they're generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with, the sort of guys that guys also generally want to have as friends. When it comes to lotharios I've known short guys, tall guys, thin guys, chubby guys (even at least one morbidly obese guy), muscular guys, non-muscular guys, whatever. I'm not saying looks are unimportant, just that looks more affect the attractiveness of the girls you can get with rather than the basic ability to be a promiscuous guy if you wish. (And also that heterosexual guys genuinely don't always understand what girls find physically attractive.)

Men are also naturally drawn to women that are, as you put it, generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with, especially shy, undersocialized men.

My pet theory is that the wonders of modern technology allow men (already naturally inclined to prefer things to people) to remain undersocialized, to replace social interaction with books, discussing the culture war, video games, watching porn and entering into parasocial relationships with generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with streamers.

If there's anything we need to retvrn to, it's the limited entertainment in a premodern village. When your only options for entertainment are singing, dancing and physical games, you can't avoid socialization. When you literally know everyone of marriageable age around you, you know your general ranking and what your chances are.

Sure, so long as we symmetrically destroy the wonders of modern (social) technology that enables women to create a social environment that pushes men away from socialization due to their extreme levels of unchecked social aggression. Men wouldn't be so inclined to remain "undersocialized" if we didn't enable women to abuse them so much in their intragender status games while denying men the ability to complain or often even talk about it, let alone retaliate without instantly jumping on them to "protect" the women in question--granting the women the status gains they were going for in the process.