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Notes -
Time for another dating market piece
From a non-Western angle this time. I enjoyed* this article on the Chinese dating market and its increasing level of dysfunction
*which is to say, I liked the information I gained. I did not at all enjoy reading it as it has the most irritating style known to man, a turbo Linkedin style piece by someone who thinks they are vastly more profound than they actually are. Do not read it. I have excerpted the interesting bits below:
Speaking from my own experience, the article is a touch overwrought. I'm in a major bubble - I haven't lived there for years, I was a foreigner, and all the expats I know now are successful families with children the same age as ours - but so is the person who uses anecdotes from TV shows and marriage markets. Nonetheless, there is some obvious truth here, given the collapse in marriage and fertility rates in the country.
There does seem to be an inherent contradiction in streaming, with the author assuming the government are both using it as a substitute for human affection, while also trying to crack down on gifting and parasocial relationships. Which is it? Perhaps this is a flaw of the CCP themselves, pulling in multiple directions and unable to find a fix for their country's broken dating market.
It sometimes amazes me that there's anyone who actually pushes back on the redpill observation about "Hypergamy."
The idea that women are selecting for the highest status male in their local social system is integrated into virtually every aspect of human culture. There are exceptions in media (Disney's Aladdin had a princess fall for the street rat rather than an uber-powerful, and not bad-looking sorcerer sultan who wanted to keep her as his slave).
I would argue that reality is more exacting than fiction, here. Find me a real life story where an attractive woman with the option to pick between a handsome, reliable, but only moderately wealthy Blue Collar worker, and a high status millionaire minor celeb, and intentionally settled for the former.
And biologically its perfectly sensible. I don't think there's any other way for a woman to operate if she wants to ensure her offspring's success and her own long term security. Completely fair to acknowledge and accept this biological imperative.
The "blackpill" is that this factor doesn't get turned off if a woman gets married and has kids, so a guy is never fully safe from being supplanted if he loses status or a higher status male sets eyes on his woman. The high status males need to be reined in as well!
There is actual research showing that women who acquire more wealth use that to acquire independence, men who acquire wealth use it to start families.
But we are currently seeing what happens when all cultural guardrails and guidelines that limited that factor are removed:
Approximately, women will start demanding outsize displays of wealth, status, power, physical fitness in exchange for mating privileges, and thereby controlling more and more actual wealth, which leads to further inflation of demands.
This is at least one explanation for why females have gotten less satisfied with their status, even as they've been given more wealth and power.
Find me a single person who can argue with a straight face that females are on balance worse off, socially or politically speaking, than 2002.
And so China is rapidly plunging down this dystopic slope and trying to aggressively re-establish the guardrails from the top down.
Interesting to see if they can get to any sort of agreeable equilibrium. At least they are willing to do things that might upset women.
I would still guess that South Korea is the one plumbing the deepest depths of how far things can fall, but even they are showing the slightest glimmer of things turning around.
To me, it's a no-brainer. In general, people react negatively to anything which is unflattering to women as a group.
The fact is that there are some problems in the dating market. A lot of men are having difficulty getting dates, let alone girlfriends and wives. A lot of women are having difficulty finding a suitable partner for a committed relationship or marriage. According to hypergamy theory, the main reason for these problems is that many women are way too picky; that their expectations are sky-high compared to what they bring to the table. By contrast, according to more conventional thinking, the main problem is that many men are immature man-children; that they are commitment-phobic; that they are lacking in basic hygiene; that they would rather spend their time playing video games and masturbating to online pornography; etc.
In our modern society, which option is more palatable? Obviously the second. As I alluded to, there is a taboo against saying anything negative about women as a group. And that's why people push back against hypergamy.
Take it one level deeper.
Why would it be 'unflattering' for women to actively seek out the best specimen as a potential partner/mate? Not very romantic, granted, but its not like that's a BAD strategy!
Part of it is because it DOES lead women to stray, cheat, and betray 'good' men due to perceived better options.
The other factor, I think, is that their instincts for what to look for in a guy, which were honed in the ancestral environment, run into some massive issues b/c traits that are adaptive in the modern world are different than those that were necessary to survive the ancient one. This unfortunately leads to them getting into abusive and one-sided relationships because a guy who is physically aggressive, risk-seeking, craves power, and flouts social rules would be very appealing on an instinctual level... and is less likely to care what an individual woman feels about him... and will likely want to have more than one woman. Modern prosperity likewise makes it easier to fake those traits long enough to knock up a woman before she figures out the truth.
Not that I would want to cull high-T males from the population.
So I'd argue the 'unflattering' part arises because women's instincts, even if pointed in the correct direction, lead them to sub-optimal choices when applied. We've given women almost full discretion to pick who they screw, who they marry, and who is even allowed to interact with them. And their choice-making has left much to be desired, even to themselves. And some large part of this is due to the actively deceptive males who are optimized for getting laid with minimal investment, who have figured out how to attract women while having few of the actually desirable traits.
Oh I know.
I've put up too many comments reflecting on and arguing that pretty much every single problem in the dating market today can be traced to women's behavior shifting, whilst mens' has remained largely the same... except to the extent they have to interact with women.
I wonder how far can one get sponsoring successful, well-adjusted and ordinary-seeming men and women to promote their choices and the advantages of following them.
What I mean by:
This is probably a solid way to put forth a pro-marriage, pro-natalism agenda.
But happy people in good relationships ostensibly don't feel much need to flaunt how good it is, and talk about what makes things work.
Would definitely need to be an outside observer intentionally tracking them down and publishing their observations from the outside.
Yeah, that's the problem - they don't feel the need to flaunt it, and many probably don't feel like their experiences apply to everyone. That's why I'm proposing sponsoring it. Like lifestyle influencers, but they'd be advertising pair-bonding values rather than makeup brands.
Naturally, it would have to be an exercise in philanthropy because there's no money in it.
There would be ways to monetize it, but yeah, you'd have to accept losses unless you want to be subject to the exact same pressures that lead to influencers putting out braindead, controversy-baiting content.
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