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I tend to disagree with this. Depending, of course on what is meant by "nice." Here's an example: Suppose you need help with something, such as moving a heavy object. So you ask someone you know if they can help you. Maybe it's the person down the hall in your college dorm. Maybe it's the person in the next cubicle at work. Most people would agree that the "nice" thing to do in this situation would be to help the person.
But when it comes to romance, if a man helps a woman in this way (and they are not already in a sexual relationship), it will reduce his chances of being sexually attractive to her.
So it's not just that being "nice" is given little weight. Being "nice" undermines the man's chances.
I see this as an exaggeration of something which is ultimately true. Being a slut definitely makes a woman less attractive to men for long-term relationships. Especially if the woman has bastard children as a result of her promiscuity.
Of course it's true that men put a lot of value on looks. And the current relationship and sexual marketplace in the West is heavily tilted in favor of women. So yeah, a slut who is decent looking will still be able to find a decent man.
So to sum up: Men are told that being "nice" makes them more attractive to women. This is completely wrong. Women are told that being sluts makes them less attractive to men (for relationship purposes). This is correct, although admittedly the slut penalty is not so great if the woman is childless.
In general, your point seems to be one of those false balance types of arguments. The unspoken argument is something along the lines of "Ok, so men are lied to about niceness, but women are lied to as well, so it's less of a big deal."
It’s not completely wrong at all. In the choice between a handsome, confident, successful and ‘evil’ man (a cheater, neglectful or abusive parent, etc) and a handsome, confident, successful and nice man, most non-damaged women will pick the latter. The issue is that being nice doesn’t outweigh the first three things.
Similarly, all else being equal men will go for the less promiscuous woman. But all else is rarely equal.
When the message is sent to men to "be nice" it's not really "don't cheat" or "don't be an abusive parent." Rather, it's things like "be kind"; "be considerate" "be a good listener" "be the kind of guy who helps her move a heavy thing" etc. So you are pulling a bit of a bait and switch.
(Even so, if a man is otherwise attractive but is a cheater or is abusive, it's not going to hurt his chances with women all that much. The fraction of women who are turned on by a guy who mistreats them is not just a small number of "damaged" women. Let's put it this way: If I needed to find a wife and I had a choice between being perceived as (1) a man who is kind, considerate, a good listener, etc.; and (2) a man who is a cheater and or abusive, I would definitely take the second option. Almost all women are disgusted by men who are kind/considerate/a good listener. Most women will put up with men in the second category if they are otherwise desirable.)
I find this hard to reconcile with reality, but I think it's for two reasons:
You are focusing on traits that correlate with other more or less desired traits. "Women," generally, may be attracted to men who cheat or are abusive, but not because they cheat/abuse. It's that men with attractive qualities like physical vanity and high-risk-taking are also more likely to be abusive and cheat. Men who listen well are probably also unattractive in other ways. Being someone who expresses kindness along with risk-taking and physical attractiveness should be the goal to attract the most women.
I suppose there are many women attracted to abusers and cheaters, but those would be exactly the women that I would not find attractive, including for all of the traits that likely correlate with those women: status chasing, too much attention to physical attractiveness, shallow thinkers, etc. It sounds like horrible advice, to me, for men to optimize attracting the most dysfunctional women.
Just so we are clear, are you claiming that, generally speaking, most men could improve their dating/romantic lives if they acted more kindly and considerately towards women?
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It's much simpler than that. It's "be attractive while doing these things". Imagine the two guys from the "hello, Human Resources" meme carrying a heavy box for a woman. One of them, she's staring at his forearms flexing, one of them she's watching the sweatstains break through his shirt with mounting disgust.
If you're reading this and it annoys you, stop typing and give me 30 pushups.
I wonder how many mottizens could give you 30 pushups at all.
I could do it with a few weeks training but I'm also 130kg.it's not hard for most men to do pushups
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But you're not comparing a "nice" man and a "not nice" or "less nice" man, you're comparing him with an "evil" man. In practice, "not/less nice" cashes out to something like "has judgment and standards about whom he is nice to." Which seems pretty evident to me to be more attractive to women.
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Strong disagree. Hybristophilia and a predilection for dark triad traits are well-known patterns of female attraction. There is a reason why the stereotypical romance novel love interest is a werewolf or a mafia boss who treats the protagonist like shit for 90% of the story.
Girls simp for Snape and Sasuke, not Harry and Naruto.
I've long been under the impression that "dark triad"/"evil" is an imperfect proxy/correlate for what women find attractive in those instances (which is not that well-understood or easily described). Otherwise, redpill-type advice would be much more effective - the men who take it are usually already resentful towards women and society, are you saying that as a group they are still somehow more held back by scruples about doing harm to others than silver spoon fratboys who have never encountered meaningful social adversity in their life?
Any theory of female attraction also needs to explain incidental features of it such as the widespread fascination with horses, which is transparently sexually charged. You can hardly project more dark-triad/evil traits onto horses than, I don't know, hyenas or pigs.
This is related to Beauty and the Beast, and vampires/werewolves. Women want men who are dangerous to bad men, and kind to them. Lacking that, some will settle for generally dangerous.
There’s also the “tortured soul” energy of your examples — a werewolf, a vampire, and the beast are all cursed with an affliction that tortures them and separates them from the human. The women in the stories serve as a stabilizing force — in BatB, literally the lifting of the curse itself — that humanizes him.
They’re dangerous, but deep down, beyond the curse, deeply good. A man who gets passionate and heated, but can be calmed by a touch of his woman, is a pretty real scenario couples experience all the time. Everyone knows that guy who will start yelling about something, and his wife squeezes his hand, and he chills out.
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That's not too different from saying that obviously men like promiscuous women since women in the male equivalent form of fiction - porn flicks - are promiscuous, no? Fantasy is fantasy, reality is reality.
Porn flicks surely feature promiscuous women sometimes, but do they do so at the same sort of dominant rate as the gender-swapped version? Porn has become so diverse and large and also are extremely under-studied, so I don't know exactly. But, in general, men tend to care much less about the actual backstory of the women in the porn and much more about their looks and personality. And the personality tends to always be some form of "extremely eager to have sex with [viewer character]," I believe, but that's orthogonal to promiscuous. There's certainly cuck/ntr porn that's popular, but I don't think, in general, women commenting that you're the 6th man she's banging tonight is all that common or something that would tend to make some given porn better for most men, the same way that some man being a werewolf/billionaire/doctor would make some given romance novel better for women, all else being equal.
Personally, I have no trouble finding porn where there's no implication whatsoever of the woman (or women, as the case tends to be) has any sort of sexual history besides what happens within the bounds of that particular video, which strictly involves 0-1 males. As such, this type of porn where the women aren't known to be promiscuous appears to me fairly popular.
I disagree. You can't be promiscuous if you treat sex as a low-priority activity or it has a high activation cost for you.
If that falls under "promiscuous," then I'd posit that it is true that men do prefer women to be a certain type of promiscuous woman over not promiscuous. The certain type being that she considers it a high-priority activity with low activation cost when with him and only him and the exact opposite when it comes to any other man. But I don't think that means it'd be accurate to say that men prefer promiscuous women over not promiscuous women, since "promiscuous" without qualifiers covers a much wider ground.
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As far as I can tell women like men who can do handyman work that they themselves are scared or incapable of doing, and find it attractive when men can do masculine things like lifting heavy objects.
All things being equal, I would agree. But all things are not equal. When a man does nice things for a woman with whom he is not already in an intimate relationship, it undermines her attraction for him.
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To your first point, you’ve just described Briffault’s Law. I don’t know how many people here would strongly contest that point, but I’ve observed much the same. Maybe “help,” here and there, depends on the circumstance but sure. If she’s asking me to sacrifice, she’s going to have to begin negotiations. The only people I will unconditionally sacrifice for is my family. Most of these arguments rarely end up disputing the points of the other side directly. Instead they argue on the length and degrees of different factors.
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If a woman asks a man for help and he turns her down, you think she'll be more attracted to him? Why would you think so?
Absolutely, in the sense that she'll be more attracted to him than if he had simply helped her.
I think so because that's what I (and other men) have observed. If I had to guess at the underlying psychology, my hypothesis would be that when a man does nice things for a woman, he is putting her above him. He is "supplicating" as the PUA's would say. This goes against her hypergamy instincts, i.e. it becomes harder for her to look up to him. Which kills attraction.
Huh. It seems like the feeling of "looking up to" a man and thinking him significantly higher status doesn't necessarily kill attraction (movie stars are attractive), but it does kill the chance of an actual relationship most of the time, he's too high status even to interact with.
I would have to disagree with this. A man is going to lose a lot more romantic/sexual opportunities by being too low status than by being too high status. I don't see Leonardo DiCaprio complaining that no women want to date him because he's just too famous and successful.
Sure, being famous and successful will improve a man's status, and then he can get away with things. Even if his status is very polarizing, like Trump, he can still get away with a lot. That's an argument for being rich and successful, not for treating people worse. I assume DiCaprio, being successful and charming, would flirt about it and possibly hire someone to help his girlfriend out.
I disagree. Treating people too nicely (and a lot of men make this mistake) communicates that you are low status. People who are too nice need to start treating people worse. It doesn't mean that they need to start being actively mean, of course.
As a side note, once a man is in a sexual relationship with a woman, he has more leeway to do nice things for her.
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I disagree with the maximalist version of this. I agree if we're talking about the guy bending over backwards to help a woman because she's a woman, maybe some sort of childish misguided chivalrous ideal is pushing him and women resent that because they feel like the guy taking on this chivalrous role is trying to push her into the role of the grateful rescued maiden. But the well-liked, pillar of the community, popular with women guy is a helpful guy too. The difference is that he would help anyone, not just "fair maidens", and women know and feel that difference.
I knew one guy like this in college. He would drop everything to help just about anyone. He was popular with women in the sense that they all raved about what a prince he was. None of them dated him and as far as I know he graduated with his virginity intact.
I do agree that if a man is high enough status, he can probably play the "I am a humble servant and a lowly worm" schtick and still attract women. I would call that "countersignaling."
"Literally me" would be hyperbole, but I feel kinship with this guy insofar as I was eager to help with classwork, except I went out of my way to help attractive women less because I realized what it would look like if it appeared I was simping. Unfortunately, being just enough of a normie to understand how I might be perceived for my actions wasn't enough to overcome aspie mannerisms.
If I must tie this personal anecdote back into culture war issues, I'd like to cite "Autism is the real Blackpill," but a DuckDuckGo search and a Google search isn't turning up anything. Did I just hallucinate this piece? Does it sound familiar to anyone else? I'd like to have another go at it and see if its sources actually held up, or if I just gravitated towards assuming whatever says the worst about me is accurate - a dangerous bias.
Was it this one?
Yes, thank you.
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FWIW the guy I am talking about did not have any aspie characteristics. He was just a very nice guy.
I guess part of the problem is that if you act like you are eager to please others, people perceive it as low status. In a medieval court, who would be running around trying to please everyone? Most likely one of the servants. Who might even be popular, but not respected. Not respected in the way that the king or his best warrior would have been respected.
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No, that's the thing, high status men don't play "signaling" games. They don't play act like they're servants, they're just bros to everyone. They just don't act like women are different in that matter.
Honestly, the second you start thinking about how to "signal" and playing games to attract women, you've lost; you're not and will not be high status that way. Maybe you'll trick some broken women into sleeping with you, which is maybe from some perspectives better than staying a virgin "nice guy". But high status men don't even know when their charm is on. I know some of these guys. They're just charisma black holes, there's no switch they don't act different to men and women, and their charm works on both equally, even straight guys. When they join a conversation, whatever the topic was is immediately dropped for everyone to talk about them and what's up with their lives and please talk more about yourself.
I strongly disagree. For example, let's suppose you're a typical guy. A girl wants you to do something nice for her, such as help her move something; hold her purse; buy her a drink, etc. Your brain (informed by years of propaganda) is urging you to do it. No, no, no. Don't do it. If you do it, it (generally speaking) ruins your chances with her.
Everyone plays "signaling" games, it's part of being human.
Your chances of what? Your chances of quick casual sex, maybe. I don't think it harms your chances of falling into deep, mutual love, though, which is best done on a solid foundation of honesty and friendship. You cannot build a soul-deep connection with another human being if, from day one, you're playing mind games where you treat them worse than you would a stranger in an effort to push their evopsych buttons. Those tactics may get you somewhere, but that "somewhere" will not be love.
Either one. It's very difficult to build a long term relationship if there isn't initial sexual attraction.
I'm not sure I would use the phrase "mind games" to include "getting in the habit of acting in such a way as to receive respect from others," but however you want to label it, you are incorrect.
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In trading it’s called adverse selection bias. If people are willing to fill your bid then they probably have a better model of value than you and are the one with edge. A guy being nice to a girl is essentially telling a girl he’s willing to trade with her (resources for sex). The guy unwilling to trade with her (give her free stuff hoping for sex) is implicitly telling her his price is higher than what she has to offer.
Sure, and then they will not have a match, and will have very little to do with other, and any attraction will just be theoretical and not become an actual relationship. But I can't think of very many real life people who's relationships are primarily characterized by resources for sex, since they're mostly earning similar amounts before getting together, and the women have to continue working after.
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That’s not really his point, I think. His point is that if you’ve already served that purpose, there’s nothing further to gain insofar as you offered assistance freely without anything in return; and as such, you get marked as “that” guy. You’re basically a chump.
That assumes you're interested. If you give her a hand and are aloof and disinterested you've lost exactly nothing. Women can smell a guy who moves the boxes or whatever because he wants to get laid. Like almost everything there's no real rule here. There's, as always, calibration of your behavior and how you carry yourself. Would you disagree?
Well, if one of my homegirls really needed help and couldn’t get it elsewhere and she offered to buy or make dinner later (I’ve had this happen), sure; why not? (I wouldn’t do this if I was in a relationship though, unless my girlfriend/spouse was okay with it) If on the other hand she thought she could dial me up because she was a pretty face who was entitled to my assistance for no other reason than the fact she exists, she wouldn’t be in my contact list for very long. As we used to say growing up: ass, grass or cash for those girls.
That is certainly one way to be. I'm more a friend in need is a friend in deed. Though I don't actually know what the hell that means. I help whoever when I can. I help people with bags. I helped an old woman today work the coffee machine in the hospital 7-11. But I tend to take over tasks as my own if I'm helping. I don't want to be told every little thing, that pisses me off. But sure.
The phrase, as I understand it, is "A friend in need is a friend indeed." The way I always understood it is that friendship isn't a transactional relationship where you log who did what for whom and try to even it out; it's one where you support each other because you love each other as friends. So it's only when a friend is in need that you can truly be their friend, by sacrificing something to help him out of that need; otherwise, you could just be leeching off of them. I'll also add that, I thought a line from John Wick 4 captured the same idea pretty well, when Wick, chased around by assassins, turns to one of his old friends for protection and apologizes, and his friend just responds, "Friendship means little when it's convenient."
I think your own understanding of the phrase (as well as its typography) is correct.
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I used to be like that. I still am but less so given the way I’d get treated. If it’s an elderly woman or a man who seems really down on his luck, I’ll offer a helping hand and some of my time, but I don’t do it for just anyone anymore.
No good deed goes unpunished, certainly. One has to ask oneself why one does it, of course, and measure that against the act and potential consequences/blowback. My rule of thumb is never be reactive emotionally. I fail at this often.
That’s a quote I’ve really taken to heart over the years. A basic charity and generosity is obliged to others, per Catholic social doctrine. Beyond that though, I closely guard what’s in my self-interest and I’m not stupid. If someone puts in a tall order that involves me, they’re absolutely going to pay for it. Over the decades I’ve collected so many favors from others, I own as much social debt in my friend group as Japan owns financial debt on the US economy; and they know it.
My father used to tell me “the trick is not to make an emotional investment,” and “judgment is the first step to attachment.” I’m a highly judgmental man and it’s taken a lot for me to temper that characteristic and I have to a great degree; but it’s also meant that I don’t entertain bullshit. When you lose control emotionally and get mad, you’re not solving anything, you’re just mad at that point; and you become a hostage to the next thought and whatever emotional punchline it contains.
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