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Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Women are, on average, more basic than men (e.g., the consistent finding that women substantially underperform men on knowledgeability tests), which will only be exacerbated at the tails. And young attractive women are perhaps the most basic segment of women. Thus, expecting a young attractive woman to have even a fraction of your interest in Motte-adjacent topics would be setting yourself up for disappointment.

Just like when babysitting you engage the kid(s) in topics that interest them (such as their favorite toys or cartoons), when dating women you engage them with topics that interest them, such as reality TV and social media slop. You can also monologue to them Patrick Bateman-style about topics that interest you; however, that generally requires a higher level of frame and attractiveness (and lack of unattractiveness), lest they—ironically enough—find you BORING.

I've read up on this subject before. The question that arises is, can't I weed out the more basic women by attending a school with selective admissions and look within my major? I'm not expecting to talk Wittgenstein and Krauthammer with a random girl I bump into on the street, but surely within a more curated environment, I can find women who have the curiosity and intellectual hardware I'm looking for?

No one person can possibly satisfy all of your needs at once. What you prioritize in platonic friends should not necessaily be the same as what you prioritize in romantic partners. If you find someone like that, great, but most successful relationships are not built on that kind of intellectual foundation. Your girlfriend will never be able to replace your drinking buddies (and vice versa) and you wouldn't want her to try.

If it's really important to you, by all means, hold out for Mrs. Right. Just know that it's a hell of a lot easier if you compartmentalize a little and accept that different sorts of relationships fill different sorts of gaps. Maybe deprioritize intellectual compatibility just a tad and scratch that itch by setting time aside to hang out with the boys.

There's also something to be said for not inserting potential points of conflict into a relationship of you don't have to. There are already so many vectors for disagreement and hurt feelings. I like to play a little rough with my intellectual sparring, and that's a lot lower stakes (and more fun) with male friends than it is with a girlfriend. Romantic relationships involve a lot of compromise and swallowing of pride, and that's not really something I'm looking for with a political or philosophical argument. Are you willing to lose the argument and apologize when a political debate gets heated? I'm not confident of my ability to do that in the heat of the moment, and so prefer to keep those debates to a lower stakes forum.

It really depends. As a female political science major who actually wanted to nerd out about "deep topics", my dating value skyrocketed because this was a rare find even with the department. You will probably need to accept a bit of tomboyish/masculine personality or some "neurodivergence" or both if this is something you want in your partner.

I feel like I want to underline the "probably" in what you wrote by giving an example of an exception: my first girlfriend was a very smart philosophy major whose personality, while not being exceptionally feminine, was also not masculine or tomboyish, and she didn't show any signs of neurodivergence.