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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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IMO with Online Dating the amount of stuff that'll be an instant killer when you're one profile of 100's and not to be too big a deal when you've got some actual traction/met in person is huge. Down to the gender dynamic and the lack of communicative nuance, really.

I’ve never done any online dating (met my wife in college). But just seems like there could be different strategies between maximizing dates and maximizing potential mates.

As someone who has dated online, I think this is a bit naive.

I went on about 20 first dates but only a handful of second dates and met only one potential long term partner (my fiance). Online connection != real life connection so it's necessary to cast a wide net.

I was lucky and was able to get lots of dates. Many men are not. Removing themselves from consideration at the first stage of a long funnel would be an unwise dating strategy.

I was lucky and was able to get lots of dates. Many men are not. Removing themselves from consideration at the first stage of a long funnel would be an unwise dating strategy.

Essentially my point. A lot of stuff that a girl might nix you for on paper will be fine with some in-person chemistry and vice-versa.

For the average heterosexual man, it's probably best to lean hard into a particular niche; a perfectly reasonable, inoffensive profile of an average man who would be fine in the real world has nothing to offer women over the dozens of similar profiles of very attractive men. There has to be something to make a woman choose your profile. The default is not being in consideration at the first stage of the long funnel, and you've got to place yourself in consideration.

Attractive men are probably best off being generic, getting a suitably wide funnel, and filtering out based on in-person compatibility. Prefiltering by leaning hard into a niche doesn't improve the quality of the matches nearly enough to counteract the lost opportunities and the battered Elo score (so you won't even be presented to compatible matches who would like your non-generic profile).

Ugly men are pretty much SOL on online dating, no matter their strategy, and should mostly focus on real life and becoming more attractive.

Sure, but it has to be a niche that exists. There is no unserved market of single, conservative women who are looking for a conservative man to hook up with. 61% of women identify as Feminists {higher among the young women mottizens are actually looking at} while 53% belong to a church. Obviously these are non-exclusive, some religious women describe themselves as Feminists; and for that matter some religious women are interested in hookups and some Feminists are conservative. But for the most part, marketing yourself as conservative on a dating app is marketing yourself to women who are neither religious nor Feminists, which is a vanishingly small portion of the dating market. In my lifetime, I can count the number of women like that I've known on my hands. For the most part Feminists will not be interested in a man whose niche is being obnoxiously conservative, while religious women will not be interested in hookup apps and will marry young to someone they meet in real life. Actively excluding the majority of young women from your dating pool, in exchange for nothing, won't help you. Picking an evolutionary niche is great, picking one that doesn't exist in your environment is a path to extinction.

To bring it back to corporate, referencing my own prior comment:

In the academy, Democrats are estimated to outnumber Republicans something like 12:1. While studies note that the concentration is highest in Northeastern elite colleges, those are also exactly the colleges that set the trends the rest follow. Is it any wonder that Democrats rack up ever larger leads among college graduate voters?

...

In the tech industry, the vast majority of donations from employees go to Dems. The FAANGs in particular all gave over 80% to Ds. Tech entrepreneurs aren't much redder than their employees as a class. Research scientists, somewhere between Academics and tech workers, also lean overwhelmingly left, with 80% Dem/Lean Dem as far back as the Bush admin.

Corporations get very little benefit from going hard right, among the competitive classes of employees that companies need to attract. This is worsened by Rightists being, broadly, Capitalists by belief, and family men by inclination. Rightists are going to prioritize making money, both personally and for their families, and not making a political point in their choice of job. Making signaling Left the "correct" choice.

Also frankly from hanging out with such circles, young female conservatives are in a pretty insanely good spot to meet people 'organically' but also tend to be sensible to date up in both age and resources.

Anecdotally I'd say there's a very limited market for young male conservatives who aren't plugged into families with means. Conservatism trends very masculine to begin with, and the rare young females who trend that way can suddenly have their pick of the litter with both males of the same age and males who are older.