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More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?
Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.
Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.
There are traps involved in the hard work ethic, you can justify a lot of pain for very little gain. I'm not bitter about it because I did learn some useful skills and it was good for my character, but a friend of mine who milked the welfare system for years while picking up multiple marketable skills has at last catapulted far beyond me in earning power (his work ethic was impressive in its own sense of course). It really does seem like 'learn a marketable skill by whatever means' is the path to success, hard work doesn't really pay off in shitty jobs where there are very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).
Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.
You only have to win once if you're looking for a wife!
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What does this mean?
My friend runs a language exchange and while it's a great place to meet women and overcome awkwardness, he's got lots of stories about a particular type of guy who has a combination of awkardness and lack of humility that eventually leads to their banning from the group (and sometimes making threats to my friend afterward). The ego comes into play when they realise no one likes them and they try to save face by saying stuff like (real examples) "I'm a doctor/I'm a lawyer and I'll sue/I get laid all the time anyway (with prostitutes)".
Being awkard is fine, being persistent in overcoming it is good, refusing to take well-intentioned feedback from guys who are clearly more socially adept can be a bad move.
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My interpretation of this was that it was a case of the man bitterly going on a misogynistic rant about women who don't appreciate his greatness and thus leading to being subject to social ostracization and/or bullying. I've seen this kind of thing happen from time to time in my online circles.
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Honestly that's something I've increasingly noticed as I reach my late twenties and look at my friends.
Majority of whom have somewhat capped out in the first 3-4 rungs of their career where it's worker-centric & essentially an automatic promotion every couple years for just being technically proficient, and now it's way more of a patience/politics game to ascend managerial rungs. I managed to sidestep a lot of that via being super aggressive with company-switching + using some startups to get to a position of early seniority, but increasingly noticing my compatriots stalling out.
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Although I think you are correct, I think your argument and anyone else making that argument is missing the point.
Successfully getting a woman has always been a numbers game, true. Our fathers might have had to try 50 times, we might have to try 100 times. This discrepancy is what needs to be dissected and analyzed. The man who would have given up at 57 tries would be shit out of luck nowadays. Individually sure, just try more, do everything more, divert more of your time and attention to becoming sexually attractive, yeah whatever. On a societal level it's a lot harder than that. At one point let that be 50,100,150,200 average trails, things become unsustainable because it just becomes too hard for the excess time, resources and loss of surplus/Dead weight loss (Effort post on this coming soon) to not leak into other domains of life/society. Least of all, if you were declared king, would you really want a plurality of your populace live lives of quite suffering? (I know, I know, male suffering doesn't count).
Far easier to do it at industrial scale these days, though. I managed to go on first dates with 50 different women last year in a mid-sized metro, all from the strength of polite conversation on an app. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of my forefathers wouldn't have met 50 'viable' women (Not that the majority of that 50 turned out to be viable after a first date) in a lifetime of living in a small agrarian village.
What % of those 50 were viable?
Of those who weren't, what were the common reasons?
I'd say 3 or 4 where I had instantaneous 'I would marry this woman' vibes, probably 15ish where I was like down for a second date. Still ticking with some of those.
I started from a pretty low place in terms of attractiveness so a lot of the early ones were just dealing with some combination of obesity, weak English skills (very multicultural society) or lack of a real lifepath which spaced them.
Jesus, I thought I was a man slut for dating (on average) a new woman every month before covid. Why did you hook up new dates when you found women you would marry? Pursue one of them! You might be married by now if you had slowed down a bit, they probably sensed you were playing the field!
First 30 or so were during a rapid weightloss/self-improvement phase and it was more about getting through dating anxiety through exposure therapy. Very few actual leads in there.
Still going with one or two of the strong vibe ones, but online dating people are super flaky.
Aha, well in that case well done! Very well done, I hope you are proud of yourself.
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But this honestly just implies GREATER COMPETITION.
If it's easier to do it, more people are going to try and thus the red-queen-race effect is that everyone is putting in more effort, and yet is less likely to stand out.
It's not the kind of industrial scale that is producing more viable matches/relationships, it is apparently just forcing everyone to make more attempts for comparatively fewer results.
Now, if the apps were better at sorting people towards those they are likely to click with rather than trying to addict people to the dopamine hit of "maybe this next person is THE ONE" swiping, it'd be different. but maximizing throughput is not the same as improving everyone's odds.
True, and it's multi-faceted.
The girls I met who I was super-enthused about probably saw me as being towards the lower end of their prospects (assuming that attractiveness is the same for everybody), thereby creating a mismatch.
Like if I'm a Male 6/10 who's getting normally distributed dates at an average of say a Female 4.5/10 (since inherent gender gap), I'm gonna look like a great prospect to my 3/10's who I'm not gonna want and I'm gonna see the fellow occasional 6/10 as a great lead but not get the same enthusiasm in return since their dating range will have some 8/10's.
Makes me wonder if the solution is to ban apps which rely on self selection and mass exposure to all other users.
And get the guys who design the trading engines for major stock exchanges to set up apps that are solely designed to match people of similar 'market value' and completely exclude users from even seeing others' profiles where the mismatch/price spread is too great, so people are only getting matched with those who are similarly 'priced' and thus actually willing to 'trade' for a dating relationship with that person.
This is a function that matchmakers perform, but that's usually expensive and doesn't scale as well.
I think the issue is the intergender mismatch and the casual sex thing that stops direct alignment.
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