site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

15
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Since @Amadan announced to the whole world that you are a woman, He actually did me a favor by allowing me to craft my response better (You and I are operating at from a massive inferential distance). And my response differs based on gender not because I think women are dumb (despite my frustration fuelled writing). But because there are certain experiences so obvious, so universal to a specific group they needn't be reiterated at all. For young men (like me) nowadays that experience is the difficulty in attracting a woman long term. The satirical story at the end is speaking to that audience of young men, men who I am quite confident know exactly what I am talking about. As a woman, you really do not understand that difficulty.

The tldr intention of the post was to convey that; Men keep on catching all the flak for all the worsening social fabrics. Young women live quite dysfunctional/unhealthy (physically and mentally) lives as well but there is just about no mention of that in any context. Exxagerating exactly how the modal modern young woman's life is ridiculous and antisocial was my attempt to discuss the specifics. Then I shoehorned in what I actually think that women hold they key to the TFR because they hold the key to reproduction, to begin with.

And I am sure you know this. But there is a sex recession. And the reason for that for those on the ground is clear as day. Women's standards have just become ridiculous. I catch a lot of flak for saying this from older/married users here but the modern Instagram/Snapchat/Tinder-injected dating scene is really something they are NOT used to.

So I am getting up on podium and saying; So what if you fix the economy, so what if you fix culture? What are you going to do about the fact that OLD made it such that instead of settling with the guy from college or the office, a good chunk of women think they deserve to marry and build a life with the 99th percentile men they get attention from on tinder (men will fuck anything within reason). The modern young woman thinks being able to bed a man of high status is a reflection of her own high status. This is not true! A man being able to bed a high-status woman is. It doesn't work the other way around, men will fuck anything, women only fuck equal or better. And the young women are okay with this arrangement, because once you go black. No one will ever tell them otherwise. So what happens? This young woman goes on till shes 35 passing along every guy of equal sexual status.. because they did not match up to Tinder Date #7, well she doesn't match up to Tinder Date #7! The OLD cat is out of the bag and there is honestly no way to put it back in.

I will just watch the decline and maximize my net worth in the meanwhile.

Sure. But unless you introduce literal sex slavery, you can downgrade the economic conditions for women all you like and still not be able to force them into "I have to marry the first guy that asks me and have six kids which he will have very little interaction with since he'll be busy with his career". Why do you think prostitution got started in the first place? Make it hard for women to get legitimate jobs, and the sex trade will flourish because Mr. Husband and Father with wifie at home looking after the six kids wants something different, something that won't be kid number seven, and all the tricks that his wife who married him straight out of high school doesn't know or doesn't want to do.

Maybe women now do have ridiculous standards. But so do men. The entire problem here is women acting like men act in the sexual marketplace. Don't like it? Well, this is why society used to be all about encouraging marriage. Are we laughing at the Victorians for being prudes now, or can we afford to laugh at them?

Do you seriously claim that is how prostitution got started?

Maybe women now do have ridiculous standards. But so do men.

Women's marriage standards are "six feet, six figures, six inches." Men's marriage standards are "teenage virgin". These are not the same. Every woman was a teenage virgin once (modulo the few who got broken in as lolis). Most men never meet the three sixes. There isn't a possible world where most women get what they want (becoming the exclusive wife of a top man); there is a possible world where most men get what they want, and we lived in it from the abolition of polygamy until the sexual revolution.

Never forget what they took from you.

Men's marriage standards are "teenage virgin".

With DD boobs and who is a slut whore who will perform any sexual act he asks for, at the same time as being a teenage virgin. There are unrealistic expectations on both sides.

Those are preferences, not standards. Yes, obviously, every man would prefer a 10/10 supermodel with huge tits who will act like a lady in the streets and a whore in the sheets and never ask for commitment (or, better yet, two of them), but most are perfectly happy to marry the 6/10 girl next door as long as she is still young and virginal. Whereas women would rather be booty call #3 on Chad's phonebook than marry an average beta provider nice guy, and spend their teens and twenties doing just that.

From "The Archetypal Modern Woman" by Free Notherner:

So, in a nutshell, Tracy Clark-Flory is the the stereotypical, nay, archetypical, modern woman. She fucks uncountable alphas, ignoring the beta who likes her, throughout her years of youth and prettiness. She realizes how empty it all is, but only once the wall approaches and the good times are coming to an end, so she uses the last of her fading feminine charms to husband-up the barely tolerable beta.

And from The Dreaded Jim's Gab:

The reason women are marrying late is that as they lose their looks and their eggs dry up, they fall off the bottom of mister one in thirty’s booty call list, then they fall off the bottom of mister one in twenty’s booty call list, then they fall off the bottom of mister one in ten’s booty call list, then they will reluctantly marry mister average, and hate him for it.

Those are preferences, not standards. Yes, obviously, every man would prefer a 10/10 supermodel with huge tits who will act like a lady in the streets and a whore in the sheets and never ask for commitment (or, better yet, two of them), but most are perfectly happy to marry the 6/10 girl next door as long as she is still young and virginal.

This brings to mind something I heard from some podcast by 2 women a long time ago. I forget what podcast and who, but the women would sometimes judge men's fuckability/marriageability using a score system, with the scores being 1 or 0. This is in contrast to the near-universal score system of 1-10 that straight men tend to assign to women. Obviously no one knows for sure, but I was told by a woman that the 1/0 scoring system is much more in line with how women in general tend to judge men. The sense that I get is that this is broadly true, and if we were to try to convert one scale to the other, that the bar for reaching a "1" in the former scale would roughly correspond to 8.5-9 in the other scale.

Red Scare podcast?

I think that was the one.

I never proposed reducing womens economic prospects. I proposed to stop artificially inflating it. The major recepients of economically non productive higher education degrees are women. Those women majority fields are also overlap with fields that suffer from a lack of rigour. A psychology and an Electrical Engineering BSc are not created equal.

Also men dont have ridiculous standards, the top percentile of men might. But the pile of evidence shows that the average woman is equivalent to the 95th percentile man when it comes to dating power.

economically non productive higher education degrees

Did you class them as that when they were majority male?

Yes. I'm a libertarian who believes in HBD. I class just about everything that gets welfare/subsidies as economically nonproductive, if not being against the idea of subsidies altogether.

The enternal Wordcell - Shape Rotator War knows nothing about sex or race, or any other petty category.

And the reason for that for those on the ground is clear as day. Women's standards have just become ridiculous. I catch a lot of flak for saying this from older/married users here but the modern Instagram/Snapchat/Tinder-injected dating scene is really something they are NOT used to.

I am both older and was dating on Tinder until 2 years ago (until I met my current girlfriend there). My experience of being a mid-fifties, pudgey, 5,11 (not even over the magical 6 foot barrier!) partially retired academic is that I was able to attract much younger, more attractive women than I would expect. Sure my British accent helps with dating in the US but I will give you an anecdote that was repeated across a large spectrum of the women I dated in that time.

Most were between 25 and 40, professional, smart and often making more money than I do. I'll call one Sandra. She was 30, a computer programmer earning 6 figures, graduated college at 18 and smart, beautiful and accomplished. On our third date I made her breakfast in the morning, and she burst into tears. It emerged that no man had EVER cooked for her. She had even lived with a serious boyfriend between 24 and 29 and he never once cooked, cleaned or did laundry. The fact I had a decorated place with a bed frame and not just a mattress on the floor was a marvel to her. The fact I could cook a few dishes (and I am far from the worlds greatest cook) was astonishing. That I could actually run my own life. I broke up with her because there were some compatibility issues, but she would be a terrific catch.

The 27 yo journalist from New York I dated had similar stories to tell. As did the 33 yo doctor and the 31 yo nurse. Their experience is that what they call high-value men are very rare. But to me what they were even looking for in high-value men is the bare minimum. So the proposition that emerges is that while women's standards may have increased, it seems equally possible that the standard of men has in fact decreased. They were clearly willing to date men who made less than they did, because I made less than virtually all of them. They were also willing to date less accomplished men from a life skills point of view because that is what they had been doing!

If you can cook at least a few basic dishes, make your home look like something livable, dress and groom yourself to a decent standard (including picking out a cologne/scent to smell good, which is in my experience really important) then you are ahead of a lot of men 25-35 in North East of the United States at least as far as I can tell. I'm a chubby, hairy man in my 50's who works part time and otherwise lives off my pension. I should not be able to compete with well put together 25-35yo men in the prime of their life for women who are significantly more attractive than I am. But there appear to be very few of those to compete with.

I courted my first wife when I was 19, 35 or so years ago, and her standards were high. Here and now, if anything women's standards on average appear to be lower as far as I can tell. Now it is quite possibly also true that there are fewer high value women as well, but it's fairly easy to filter for those you want. And at least if you work or live in a city, there are literally thousands to pick from.

Correlation does not equal causation.

Yes, yes, we've heard it all before. 'Just have the skills of a functioning adult and women will flock to you'. Barring all the cases we've seen of where this is... not the case, just because I can make a cheesecake and cook steak with ease doesn't mean the random spawn chance for 'eligible and interested girlfriend' is magically going to bump up in percentage.

You yourself stated that you're partially retirted(IE, have lots of money), academic(IE, likely have a large amount of social skills), likely had your own domicile, exotic factor(british accent), and probably a large number of other factors you haven't mentioned. Congrats, you were a sugar daddy! Older man, lots of money, lots of social catchet, and you're wondering in confusion as to why you were able to pull younger women compared to men thier age?

Man, take the beam out of your own eye before you try to remove the splinter from others.

She was 30, a computer programmer earning 6 figures, graduated college at 18 and smart, beautiful and accomplished. On our third date I made her breakfast in the morning, and she burst into tears. It emerged that no man had EVER cooked for her.

I habitually cook and make all the other food-related decisions (ie. what to purchase, when to purchase it, where to go eat out etc.) in our family, and it amazes me how my wife reports that other women, including her mother, have gushed over this when she talks about it. It's fun, relaxing and means that since I take care of the entirety of a large sector of domestic housework I mostly get a free pass on others (chiefly cleaning, which I find fairly less relaxing), what's not to like? And it makes sure you're always in charge of what you get to eat.

I'll call one Sandra. She was 30, a computer programmer earning 6 figures, graduated college at 18 and smart, beautiful and accomplished.

Yes she started settling at 30. Leaving her what, the opportunity to have maybe 3 (healthy) kids at best if he's lucky?

Some women get married at 18. She graduated early but too bad she was the wrong sex for that to matter for her romantic prospects. She had been rejecting marriage for over 12 years!

She had even lived with a serious boyfriend between 24 and 29

Who believes that? If he's serious he puts a ring on it within a year. Smart and beautiful woman gets strung along for 5 years. Many such cases! Sad! That must be the one lesson she skipped by spending so much effort on government school.

I know women in the same age range / cohort as these women who are currently married with children and cohabited with their future husbands for years, many of them for more than five years. One of them has been together with the same man for 22 years, and their first child is only 4 years old. Another one cohabited with her man for around 7 years before they had their first child. And so on. So this approach does actually work. (And no, expecting men to put a ring on it within a year is usually not a viable approach.) I’m not saying this is normal, or should be normal, because it takes abnormal levels of self-control, foresight and low time preference on both sides, but not only can it work, but I believe this is unfortunately the only viable approach in the current mating market for people who want to have a family.

However, one crucial aspect is that none of these women paired up with men who “never once cooked, cleaned or did laundry”, or displayed characteristics similar to these – instead, their partners gave obvious signals of willing to maintain a long-term relationship (which is why I find it strange that you left the second half of that sentence out when replying to it). Then again, noticing such signals and then attracting such men into relationships is something the average woman has been capable of doing for millions of years, so I’m sure it’s not that difficult. So yes, I agree that the smart and beautiful woman you mentioned was indeed foolishly strung along for 5 years.

However, one crucial aspect is that none of these women paired up with men who “never once cooked, cleaned or did laundry”, or displayed characteristics similar to these – instead, their partners gave obvious signals of willing to maintain a long-term relationship (which is why I find it strange that you left the second half of that sentence out when replying to it).

Well being a functional adult seems like a prerequisite to get married since the point of marriage is to be in charge of children.

While it's possible to never have had to cook, 'learning how to prepare food' is as simple as watching a few youtube videos.

(And no, expecting men to put a ring on it within a year is usually not a viable approach.)

A woman with an aggressive approach to marriage should do just that (and not wait to be in her late 20s to get aggressive either).

For the 2015 woman I recommend joining alt-right circles. For the 2023 woman there's America First.

A woman that would go out of her way to find a man that is interested in cooking is actually a red flag in my point of view.

That means that she is either not too motivated to cook because she doesn't like it, she doesn't like the idea of pleasing her husband and family, is unconfident in her (poor) cooking skills...

Or that she expects her husband to shoulder a large share of cooking duty because her family is so non-traditional that she cannot expect any female relative to ever help when she is heavily pregnant, postpartum or sick.

That latter one is incredibly common and you should consider it carefully with the rest of that potential wife if you ever want a large family.

Unless you already have an incredibly supportive family which will provide more than enough help, but then why would you have any issue getting married, what did you do with that highschool sweetheart arranged by your parents before your birth?

What proper women should be looking for imo is a man that is capable of being a single income earner and provide moral guidance to the family.

Having a healthy supportive family is also very important but again, people like that get off the market really quickly.

I appriciate the hopium but you are aware that not a single one of those things can be conveyed through online right? After all they wont be able to tell if I can make a bed or cook from a photo.

When there is so much overwhelming data that only the top percentile attractive men have any sucess at all on OLD, I dont think any further conversation on the matter would be fruitful. Congrats on your success nonetheless.

My wider point was the damage done to the social fabric by the Internet. There are nth order effects. Imagine Sandra meets a guy and likes him her friend who is an OLD fiend might make a drunken remark about how Sandra could do better. Sandra could technically do better. Sandra gets marginally anxious about her status. But that comment wouldnt be made if the social fabric wasnt frayed. Sandra would have better friends, etc etc.

After all they wont be able to tell if I can make a bed or cook from a photo.

Sure they can, if you pick the right pictures. One of mine for example was a picture of me cooking. Another was of me helping a friend build a wall. In your profile, put that you are taking cooking classes and ask to swap recipes. Make a joke that you're only on Tinder to steal secret family recipes.

It may require different tactics, and you can't rely on meeting them and being charming while you are both half-sloshed but if a chubby old bastard like me can do it, then there is no reason most people with a lick of sense who want to date for marriage and are looking for someone the same can't. But you have to work at it. Spend time on your profile, and your pictures, stage em if you have to. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Have 5 or 6 openers ready to go, and check the profile and pics if you do get a match so you can come up with something witty.

Sure you might not match many and then 50% won't even respond and another 25% will peter out after hellos. But that 25% is still more than you get through by being introduced by friends in the old days. It's a numbers game in a very different way than traditional dating was when I was a lad. There the issue was finding someone available and getting close to them in the first place. But you only need one.

Thanks for the advice, but.

In your profile, put that you are taking cooking classes and ask to swap recipes. Make a joke that you're only on Tinder to steal secret family recipes.

Very naive of to assume anyone ever reads bios. Countless experiments with literal pedophilic shit in dating profile bios have shown to still work if the pictures are sufficiently good enough. You are correct about the pictures that a lot more gets extrapolated from them than they should.

It's a numbers game in a very different way than traditional dating was when I was a lad. There the issue was finding someone available and getting close to them in the first place. But you only need one.

Sure. My match rate was 3/100 swipes, message reply rate 2/10,message -> date rate 0. Realistically this is still less time consuming than how it was done in ye old days. But it feels extremely degrading, just going window shopping and being rejected by 97% of the people. I settled on not working up the mental faculty to not let that get to me. Btw, the women I match with online are much worse than ladies I saw in real life. It's really not worth it.

And I don't want to. I plan on just trying irl after I am done with graduate school and can get a higher-paying job, which should improve my prospects. I don't want to put on a clownshow and have ready made lines and stage shit just to be considered worth having gone out with, that is not how humans operate. I am not ready to dispense all my sense of self-respect.

I don't want to put on a clownshow and have ready made lines and stage shit just to be considered worth having gone out with, that is not how humans operate. I am not ready to dispense all my sense of self-respect.

I think this is just an update of how we used to have to do it pre-mobile phones. You think you just approached a girl you really wanted on a wing and a prayer? You thought about what you wore, what you looked like, had some good lines, hell, maybe you brought a wingman to make you look good. None of this is new. It is exactly how people operate. You leveraged everything you possibly could. Sure if you just want to pick a girl up in a bar, for sex, then whatever, low pressure, though even there if you were going out with that in mind, you would definitely dress and plan accordingly, but we are specifically talking about looking for your marriage partner.

Your one job at the start is to get your foot in the door. And that means putting your best foot forward. Especially if you are aiming for someone high-value who therefore would have had a lot of approaches. The beginning stages of flirtation and courtship are all about making yourself look as good as you possibly can. If you're not willing to do that, then you will probably lose to the people who are. With my first wife, I fell for her the day I saw her, so I found out she was going to a mutual friends party and then I found out everything I could about her, talked to a couple of female friends about her, had my buddy there to wingman. A person to love is unlikely to fall into your lap. Working for it is going to increase your odds.

Now there is another option, after my first wife passed, I met my second wife through a group of friends and we were friends first, and dated second. That way your foot is in the door in a different way. That is a much lower pressure situation, but it's much less certain. It's a more passive approach (at least at first). But requires you to be able to tell when someone is interested in you (or hope she will take initiative which is a gamble). It's definitely still workable.

But OLD is a replacement for the first method, the cold pick up where you don't know the woman in advance, and that largely hasn't changed in how you have to get that first yes as far as I can tell having had experience of both. You have to work to signal you are someone worth paying attention to. And yes, being conventionally attractive reduces the amount of work you might have to do for sure, just to be clear.

I catch a lot of flak for saying this from older/married users here but the modern Instagram/Snapchat/Tinder-injected dating scene is really something they are NOT used to.

So I am getting up on podium and saying; So what if you fix the economy, so what if you fix culture? What are you going to do about the fact that OLD made it such that instead of settling with the guy from college or the office, a good chunk of women think they deserve to marry and build a life with the 99th percentile men they get attention from on tinder (men will fuck anything within reason).

Have you considered going around with a hammer smashing (young) w*men's cell phones?

Is the censor some sort of anti-SEO, or...?

Using an asterisk to replace a letter in a word like that was originally used to censor slurs (think bleeping out parts of inappropriate words on tv), but has since been applied for humorous (your mileage may vary for if it is actually humorous) effect on words for groups of people which are not generally considered offensive.