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Culture warry, but I don't have enough meat or a specific post to include this on the main thread: in your opinion, how much of current dating discourse and the corresponding social trends are due to changing material conditions and economic anxiety? I've seen much more dialogue about how Gen-Z women are regressing to the mean compared to their Millennial women counterparts - more concerned with materialism and man's ability to provide, more expectant of chivalry (though they've renamed it "princess treatment"), more averse to hookup culture. Gen-Z women are much more considerate than Millennials of the fact that there are determinants of partner quality beyond just "love" and that a purely "equal" relationship is not necessarily ideal. This is despite (or perhaps because of) their ostensible feminism. I've also seen talks of how looksmaxxing is a response to changing socioeconomic conditions, that it is a means of restoring some sense of control. The theory goes, the economy is becoming increasingly obtuse and inaccessible to many young people, so to cope, they turn to something they can more immediately affect change upon: their bodies.
What do you think?
On the one hand, I think you make a good point. It's always safer to be able to earn your own money so as to not be economically trapped, but the safe paths to that for middle class gen-z women are far from guaranteed.
I also think that the rise of easy to make short form content lets pointless materialists find and indulge each other more than ever (it's always existed just with less variety, previous generations had qvc china birds and beanie babies vs the disgusting labubus, designer handbags, and those plastic dumpling things) and that's true for gold-digging as well. I think consumer goods are so cheap compared to other costs of living our scarcity magpie brains just can get overwhelmed and greedy. Its just easier to visualize when there are millions of video posts vs GenX / Senior millennials having no public content they actually created until maybe magazines in their mid-20s? I don't think "princess treatment" is anything other than financial wanting to be bought stuff, not a true respect for chivalric norms aside from open the door and pay the check.
But I think the hookup culture thing is more strongly related to kids having no freedom as teenagers (no jobs / alcohol / driving) and then putting them into colleges that tell them anyone unattractive hitting on you is part of rape culture.
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