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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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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).

It’s absurd that some subset of Very Online young men believe something as diverse, dynamic, and multifaceted as women’s preferences in men can be reduced to simple numbers such as “six figures,” which in and of itself would already cut the desirable pool of men down to the 25% of men who make $100,000 or more...

...When the number should be at least $125,000 to account for inflation, given “The Triple Six Standard” has been Noticed for at least six years now. I have memories of reading/hearing of it going back as far as mid-2000s, perhaps even earlier. I suppose “six feet, six inches, and six figures (in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars)” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

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

Such is life. Eggs are expensive; sperm is cheap. Hence variations on other sayings such as:

  • Women live life on tutorial mode
  • Men have the burden of performance
  • Women are; men become
  • Women are human beings; men are human doings

Young women are attractive by default. They just need to “don’t,” to not fuck it up through things such as tattoos, obesity, single-motherhood, being too insufferable, hoeing around too much or for too long. And if they fuck up—even fuck up colossally—given male thirst and tendency to simp, they can still find some chump to serve as their retirement plan, although he may not be as attractive as the guy she could had bagged in the absence of fuck-ups. Women have built-in plot armor; they can just exist and have good things happen to them.

Young men—and men in general—need to do. Merely existing means social and sexual death, perhaps literal death soon thereafter. Unless they are unusually tall or at-least-not-short + unusually good-looking face-wise, men have to earn their attractiveness through status/income/achievement/working out, being funny/interesting/entertaining/courageous. And even if they are unusually tall or at-least-not-short + unusually good-looking face-wise, that can be canceled out by lack of status/income/achievement/working out, being insufficiently funny/interesting/entertaining/courageous.

The general male burden of performance is well-allegorized by the classic “amount of work required to look good” meme. For women, it’s “nothing, just don’t eat like a fucking hippo every single day.” For men, it’s “years of hard work at the gym many times a week and a strict diet with enough proteins and little fats and sugars.”

Walk around a sorority house and you’ll find lots of girls who have physiques similar to Brie Larson or Scarlett Johansson in the Avengers series, despite a diet of pizza and Franzia and a workout regimen that consists solely of sometimes teeheeing around in a sports bra and volleyball shorts.

Walk around a fraternity house and you won’t find any guys who have physiques similar to Avengers Chris Evans much less Chris Hemsworth, unless they have a robust workout regimen and a diet sufficiently high in protein and sufficiently low in carbohydrates—and perhaps some pharmacological assistance as well, especially for the second Chris’s physique.

Walk around a sorority house and you’ll find lots of girls who have physiques similar to Brie Larson or Scarlett Johansson

True. Find those same girls ten (or fewer) years later and they will all have physiques similar to pre-semaglutide Melissa McCarthy. The frat guys may or may not have gained beerguts.

Chris Evans definitely took steroids, too. It's all over Hollywood, man. I bet it's scrambling the brains of tons of women to see every movie have men like that. Kind of like how anime gooners eventually can only get hard for anime girls because they are exposed to them so frequently, except like, on a society-wide involuntary basis.

There was a huge rebellion on the part of women for unrealistic body standards, but no such project was taken up on the part of the men, where those bodies are pretty much just literally impossible without 'roids. Especially if you're in your 40s, like Chris Evans is. Or like Ryan Reynolds is. Yeah, totally natty achievable for a dude in his 40s.

Chris Evans definitely took steroids, too.

Exogenous testosterone? In my Captain America?

It's all over Hollywood, man.

Yeah, my default assumption is that when it comes to male Hollywood actors with good physiques, it's "likely juicy" even when "natty attainable"—including Evans, as there's been ample debate as to the extent his physique was enhanced by CGI in Avengers films during key moments, especially the first Captain America film. Good for them, if a large part of their job is looking good shirtless or in a tight shirt.

Kind of lame, though, when almost all of them consistently lie about it. Even juiced to the gills, it still takes hard work for a man to have a good physique.

Yeah, totally natty achievable for a dude in his 40s.

50s! He just eats clen, trens hard, tests himself, anavar gives up.