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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34484 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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A late tangent, but I was warming my hands next to last week's heated exchange between @DaseindustriesLtd and @gemmaem and one thing that popped out at me was @f3zinker's chart representing women's messaging behaviour towards men in different positions of the attractiveness distribution, depending on their own. I've seen variants of this data - introduced here with the unambiguous line "Women just about exercise dictatorial demand." - on the internet for a long time (since the days of the OkCupid blog), and it always struck me as strange, insofar as it did not seem to mesh at all with the reality I perceive around me. The points of disagreement are numerous:

  • I believe I'm personally around the 60〜70% mark of the male attractiveness distribution, and have always been extremely passive about dating. Nevertheless I've been approached by women in the 50〜90 range of their distribution (as perceived by me), and had those approaches convert into relationships (some of them very long-term) in the 60〜80 band. This would put me smack dab in a pink area in that chart, repeatedly. I do not get the sense that any of those relationships were unequal in terms of effort or resources invested.

  • People around me, including unattractive ones, of either gender match up all the time, and there is no obvious bias in terms of which side initiates. It's not that unattractive and involuntarily celibate men don't exist (especially from the 70th percentile downwards), but the correlation between involuntary celibacy and attractiveness is actually seemingly quite low.

  • My entire academic and academia-adjacent blob has very low attachment to existing social conventions around dating. I know several people who are poly, and the most disapproval they meet is being the butt of the occasional jokes. Contrary to the stereotype, the ones I know do not strike me as unusually unattractive. Yet, the most attractive poly guys are not pulling massive harems, and in fact I've observed the most attractive poly girls reject repeated advances from the most attractive poly guys (in favour of less attractive ones).

So what's going on here? After reflecting on it for a bit, it seems to me that there's actually an obvious answer: the very framing of the question being charted ("do you 'like', with the implication of interest in a sexual relationship, this person, based on their picture?") only captures meaningful data when asked of men, because men are the only ones for whom look is a dominant term in the value function that estimates whether they want a sexual relationship with someone. Rewording this question slightly in a way that I don't think actually changes the meaning to "Given that this person looks like that, would you provisionally agree to having sex with them?", what's actually going has an alternative explanation that I think rings more true than "women have unrealistic standards": if looks are only a small term in your value function, you don't know enough about the value of the other terms, and the median answer to "would you provisionally agree to having sex" is no, then the looks have to be exceptionally good to shift the answer to "yes".

Importantly, this model does not require the original preference against sex with an unspecified man to be unusually strong: for any given expected utility -epsilon that women assign to having sex with a completely random man, no matter how close to 0, there exists a delta such that if looks are only at most a delta-fraction of women's value function for sex partners, then a random man would have to be top 10% in terms of looks for the expected utility for women of having sex with him to turn positive.

As an intuition pump, imagine we created the same chart for men, using some quality that men don't value particularly highly (but perhaps women do), and a base distribution of women that you(r people) are just slightly skeptical of as sex partners (your pick, based on preference: Some ethnicity you don't like? BMI >25? Cat owners? Age >40?). Take a dating app where you can't post your picture, but instead publicise your monthly income, and also all women are at least slightly chubby. Would you be surprised to find a chart like the above, but for men towards women, where the top 60% earners among men only are willing to "like" the top 10% earning women? Would this reflect men exercising "dictatorial demand"?

Like other posters if you have women approaching you regularly, I have a hard time believing you are in the 60-70th percentile.

Unless you are in a high socio-sexuality environment, full of men and women who both don't conventional dating norms (ex women are more likely to take initiative), if you are, and it sounds like you may be then I could believe it. Also if as you say your peers are unconventional, it would be wrong to generalize from your experience to most men.

I’ll throw my hat in the ring and provide another data point attesting the rarity of women approaching.

I’ve banged a low triple digit number of chicks. After some mental-straining, I can’t think of a single bang that resulted from a girl approaching me, whether in person or her sending the first message in online dating or social media.

I can remember a few times over the years where I didn’t eventually seal the deal but a girl approached or messaged me first (such occasions are memorable because they’re so rare), and I still had to grab the wheel and drive the interaction from there if I wanted the encounter to continue. Think of a generalisation of the modern Bumble tip-off to start the game, when a girl messages the guy “hi” or “hi :)” to put the ball in his court so he has to take over and lead the conversation.

The closest to a girl approaching and my later converting that I can think of was quite a few years ago in a nightclub. She walked by me with her friends; we made eye-contact and she smiled. Yet, that was that and she didn’t make it straightforward much less easy for me at all. I still had to approach her at her table surrounded by her mixed group of friends and hold court for the night (she was decently hot so I stuck it out). Despite my efforts that night into the technical morning, including a few shifts from club to club to afterparty, we ultimately parted ways with me leaving with just a number; I had to get her to come over a different night where I converted. If not for me having limited time in her city, she would have likely ghosted and I would have been chumped.

In my experience and that of many others, girls will generally be neutral bystanders at best in the dating process. They're extremely passive in the approach stage and through the early game of courtship. To the extent that they’re active, it’d be to your detriment. Oftentimes, after the approach (if successful from your end), they'll be adversarial in being a pain for scheduling dates with*, stalling, flaking, ghosting, pushing for dinner dates and/or dates that involve her bringing her friends (so you can monkey-dance and court-jester for her friends, too, and still not get laid). This might not change until you’ve banged her and then suddenly she has skin in the game, thus she becomes more reliable and a team-player in communicating and coordinating with you.

To the extent women approach (or should I say “approach”), it’s generally in the form of standing, sitting, or dancing (if in bar/nightclub) in your vicinity, hoping you’ll read her mind and initiate a conversation (see meme: "How females shoot their shot"). My most stereotypical Chad-ish friends, guys who look like they could be The Bachelor, still need to aggressively approach if they want to get laid with new chicks beyond a Lizardman’s constant.

*There’s a Latin American Spanish meme to that effect. My paraphrased translation:

Guy: So when are you free to hang-out

Girl: Anytime you want!

Guy: How about tomorrow?

Girl: No, I can’t tomorrow

Guy: Monday?

Girl: Can’t

Guy: What about Thursday?

Girl: Thursday? Can’t either.

Guy: When then?

Girl: Anytime you want!

Hope you don't live in Scotland:

Men who loudly discuss their sexual conquests in public could face up to seven years in jail under plans to criminalise misogyny in Scotland.

...Women making unwanted sexually-motivated advances towards men, or discussing their sexual conquests in public, would not face sanctions under the legislation.

https://archive.is/2023.03.08-185355/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/03/08/men-scotland-who-loudly-boast-sexual-conquests-public-could/

Pretty misleading article, though to be expected from the Torygraph. Not necessarily saying I'm in favour of the changes that actually are proposed in the report they are referencing, but no-one is going to be jailed for seven years for 'loudly discussing their sexual conquests in public'.

From the Scottish government website:

It is expected that in the great majority of cases, behaviour amounting to an offence under this section would be committed in a public place (for example, watching pornography on a bus where it can be seen or heard by other members of the public, or having graphic sexual conversations on a train where others will hear them).

The section I bolded appears to be just that.

Hmm. Ive had girls approach/initiate though very rare that I can remember most:

  • girl at club came over and asked if I were single. This was in SF.

  • girl came over to me at a bar and bought me a drink. This was in a big city in asia.

  • after meeting once, messaged me on fb. We went on a date afterwards. College.

  • a friend initiating after I’d become single. We dated for 4 years. College.

There are some other examples, and usually girls that were not sober, but maybe Im an exception here. Though most of my dates and stuff were initiated by me. Most relationships were initiated by the girl tho, usually ultimatums.

Totally understand your anecdote about being her and her friends court jester until you seal the deal.

Im glad I never had to do too much dating outside of college - the flaking drove me insane. Much higher hit rate with friends of friends etc. Funny you mention Bumble as I had ok success there for a few months before covid hit. But you are right - the balls still yours to drive up the court once they send a “hiiii”

even if people in polls say they'd still "like" to be in a relationship or have sex, revealed preference suggests they often care less about it than in previous generations.

I blame this on a huge lack of self esteem which stems from increased narcissistic traits in the general population, especially among rich developed countries. I don't think less people want relationships, more people are afraid of rejection because they lack self esteem and so are less likely to put themselves in a position to get a relationship. At least that's based on my experiences.

Its weird I both vehemently disagree with your post, and also generally agree.

When I was 13-17 it was impossible to get sex. When I was 18-22 it was only possible for me to get sex in a dedicated relationship with a woman (usually after a few months of being with them). When I was 23-25 it felt stupidly easy to get sex. I got married after that.

So the majority of my life it was really freaking difficult, and I really started trying to get to know girls and have sex at 13. So it sorta took me a decade to go from "trying" to "this is easy". I have some male friends that were sorta late bloomers and weren't really trying until maybe 17. Those 4 years late still had to be made up.

I agree that it is fully possible to get to a point that it is "easy" to acquire sex, for even not that attractive looking guys. Hell, this comedian is a somewhat known and very successful womanizer.

But I vehemently disagree that getting to this point is at all easy. It took a decade of my life, working approximately 40-60 hours a week at it for me to get to a point where I felt it was easy. I went through a lot of rejection. I went through a lot of soul searching at being basically controlled by my urges. I dealt with depression. I had to fake being an extrovert. I read novels worth of content online to glean some kind of advice. It wasn't just getting sex, I had to learn my whole role in our society as a man.

It feels a bit like telling someone "oh, getting a job is easy, just give a good interview, have some useful skills, and don't expect to be paid millions of dollars". Which is kinda true ... once you already have a job and have been in the job market. But getting to that point can be really difficult. We structure approximately 16 years of a person's life around preparing them for holding down a job.

I do believe that the incel movement is partly a problem of boys just not starting the sexual pursuit young enough. Because all of society is telling them not to start that pursuit. I would stay up to 4am during highschool trying to have sexting chats with girls online. Those chats did not help my grades. I would sometimes spend classes just badly sneaking glances at girls in the classroom, barely paying attention to lessons. I had a 3.2 GPA in highschool. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't impressive either. However, I did come out of highschool somewhat prepared to date women. Not very well prepared, I still fucked up multiple times in college.

And things have sorta come full circle. I'm not getting much sex these days. I have a wife I love and 2 kids. We are having sex about once a month, I'm trying to time it around her ovulation for another kid. We miss it some months if either of us happen to be sick. But I'm pretty happy with this. If my wife told me tomorrow I could treat it like an open relationship, it wouldn't change the amount of sex I was having (she would also never say that). I just don't ever want to spend the amount of time and effort I spent in my dating years for an ultimately empty experience. Sex was really exciting when I was young, and I was willing to spend lots of time and effort to get it. Now, its not. But that is maybe the heart of what bothers me about what you said, just because a lot of people are willing to spend a ton of time and effort on something, and through that time and effort most of them can acquire it. That doesn't mean that thing is easy.

How would gay men fit into your model? They have far more sex than straight men (or women, or lesbians), and it's far easier for them to. And this isn't a minor effect: it's an order of magnitude more sexual encounters, which applies down to the least attractive of them. Isn't that prima facie evidence that sex (for straight men) is hard, in a sense, and the limiting factor is female mate choice?

This was discussed in the latest Bailey podcast.

But as I said, getting laid as an average looking man isn't hard.

How would you know? Ever heard of the shitty lock and the master key? Im sorry but that is irrefuteable science and will be retold for millenia to come.

You know for a group of people that wants to have sex so much and are hard-wired jerk off to lightbulbs that look like ass and need to be told to not rape since they are in kindergarten, they sure don't do it enough given how not hard it is, I wonder what the reason is, perhaps those memes about dudes ignoring sex for video games is actually real and not cope made by women who suck at sex or nag about stupid shit all day eliminating any potential sexual desire for them or just deflecting that those are the kind of guys they are capable of attracting, nope, it's always the video games (and never the netflix or tiktok).

A lack of charity is only really obvious when its levied at your arguments.

A crawl of student bars in the nearest major city or college town is more than enough for the dedicated, average, late-teens-to-mid-20s American male with the most basic social skills to get laid, at least on balance over a few nights.

It's not actually hard, and I don't see why we're pretending that it is.

I completely disagree and think that it is hard. Men want to get laid. If it wasn't hard and men could get laid on the regular, average partner counts would be much higher.

So either young men must value monogamy much more than society suggests, or they must not be aware that they can bar crawl a few nights to get laid.

Or, it is in fact hard.

Like in if we are in a world where it only takes a few nights of bar crawling to get laid... Why are not in a world where the average 20 something has a partner counts in the 20s or 30s? 3 nights a week, a couple times a month, most months a year? That will add up over the years.

There's more to picking up girls from a bar than "make eye contact and tell funny stories".

I'm sorry, but stripped of the anger and bitterness, @f3zinker is right, you literally do not know what you're talking about. You seem to be describing what the men in your social circle tell you. It's rather shocking that it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that you should perhaps not take this at face value.

Because most men do, in fact, show a revealed preference for long term relationships.

Most men show a revealed preference for long term relationships eventually. Yes, most men do desire to eventually settle down with a monogamous partner and have children (though if we're being honest, an awful lot of men would prefer the monogamy be strictly one-sided, which is why we had religion and social disapprobation so that even rich dudes couldn't just sleep around indiscriminately without some consequences). The fact that men, like women, have a natural desire to have a family is not mutually exclusive with a natural desire to bang every chick they can while they have oats to sow.

Because most don't necessary want to sleep with ever larger numbers of bar girls looking for a hookup.

No, most men don't want to sleep with "ever larger numbers of bar girls," they'd usually be satisfied with getting their fill while they are young, and the exact number varies from dude to dude. While most guys don't really want to be sleeping with a different woman every night forever, your rather touchingly naive view that down deep we're all just looking for our waifu is not really true. Some of us settle down faster than others, some of us really do just want to find The One and aren't interested in "bar girls," but almost all men have a desire (even if it's restrained by mores or religious beliefs) for an awful lot more sex than most of us are able to have, at least when we're young.

Because going to a bar, drinking, trying to pick up women etc.. takes some effort, is a use of a Friday evening he might spend with his friends or family, spend playing videogames or getting stoned, because four hours work for a reasonable chance of a few minutes of pleasure isn't actually a great deal?

You seem to be projecting what you think sounds like a good time onto men. There are undoubtedly men who'd rather spend time getting stoned or playing videogames that bar crawling, but most of those men just don't think bar crawling would result in them coming home with a girl, and if they had better success at that, getting stoned and playing videogames (or even spending a Friday evening with friends and family) would be less appealing.

Like, I'm sorry, but almost every (single, non-religious, straight) man, if you told him "Go spend the evening in a bar and you will 100% come home with a girl who wants to bang you" is going to go spend the evening in a bar. Maybe not every single night, but definitely they'd be doing that more than staying home to get stoned and play videogames. Yeah, even the really successful ones might get tired of that eventually or meet someone they really like and want to settle down with. But that's mostly a function of getting older and feeling social pressures.

Perhaps my opinion of men is too high, but I think most men who don't pursue sleeping with huge numbers of women don't do so because they don't want to, not because they can't.

Your opinion of men is not too high, it's just very female-centric. You think it would be a bad thing for a man to want to sleep with large numbers of women, so you convince yourself that "good" men, "responsible, decent, mature" men, don't actually want to do that.

They do. Maybe some of them didn't because in your circles that's just not done (openly). But most men who don't do it, unless they have strong religious or other reasons not to, absolutely would do it if they had the ability. Note that this doesn't mean every man is into the bar scene, specifically. There are plenty of men who don't want "bar girls" even if they could easily get them. But abundant, willing sexual partners, from whatever their preferred dating pool might be? Absolutely. They may be limited by their dating pool (trying to bang every chick in high end London banking circles wouldn't work out well), but again, that's a "can't," not a "wouldn't."

So then why does the same not apply to Gay men? Gay men have counts way higher than straight men. Are gay men not only gay, but also more interested in getting laid in general? More than straight men?

I don't think Gay men have sex drives that different from Straight men, aside from orientation obviously. Rather the the fact that they have so much casual sex is because it's far easier for them to hook up with other men, then it is for straight men to hook up with women.

You have no theory of mind of the human male. Its seriously off like comedically off.

If men could get laid that easily they would all rack up 20-30 partners each. Its literally what sperm cells are for! To spread the seed. Why do you think nature imbued the ability in men to impregnant a woman minimum a day forever.. to not want to do it??? Women literally can pass on their genes only once every 9 months at minimum. Where is the female Ghenghis Khan? Literally cannot exist.

What the fuck do you think men who could get laid all the time are doing? They get laid all the time. The ones who arent are not doing it for a lack of want.

Unfortunately I dont think telling you anything at all even in the most explicits terms will do anything at all, you will still make the same comment every time this topic comes up and refuse to engage with any criticism. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Go watch the youtube videos of Norah Vincent or read accounts of FtM trans people and tell me if they conclude being a guy is not even merely harder but orders of maginitude nightmare difficulty harder relative to a woman trying to get laid. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Also its not hard to benchpress 100kg/225lbs most guys do it after a year of lifting, I dont know why so few women do.. its not that hard really.

Look, I know its easier for the avg guy to get laid than it is for the 90th p woman to benchpress 225, im not a moron. But its not as easy as YOU think it is, guys just do it just like how they do all the other hard things women cant even do, doesnt mean its easy. Calling things you cant do easy, is moronic. You wont catch me saying childbirth is easy even if I know most women can do it.

And im pretty confident you cant because women in general have 0 game/rizz, do a gender swap on your own face and hit tinder and set up a date if you dont believe me. Hint: starting conversation with "hey hows it going" or hi wont work. https://youtube.com/watch?v=DZTIbHIsIYw (Or if you wnt a more realistic experience talk to your dad or your brother or male cousins, I assume they should be somewhat good facsimiles of the male you, if they don't immediately laugh at your idea, congrats you have excellent genetics)

Where are all the female comedians if cracking a few jokes is so easy? Perhaps females dont need to develop a sense of humor to get laid, idk.

Well I think I'm in about the 60-80% range of male attractiveness and haven't been approached by any women! My anecdotal experience and your anecdotal experience clash together, like the blades of two evenly matched warriors.

Maybe my personality is better/worse at hooking women. Maybe the areas we're in are different. Maybe it's fashion. Maybe you have better luck than me. Maybe neither of us is accurately rating our attractiveness. Maybe it's about earning power or prestige. Maybe my 'extremely passive about dating' outweighs yours.

The answer to this is statistics. If we see the OK Cupid blog and statistics showing male sexlessness has risen significantly, it seems eminently logical to conclude that women are generally being pickier and more selective than they used to be. Sure, you can use statistics to prove anything if you try hard enough. But they're still the best way of determining general rules or facts, better than anecdote. On aggregate, fashion sense and all these variables get smoothed out and we see the raw trend.

I'm usually in the bucket of people saying that there is actually something wrong with men that aren't able to find partners, but this time, I've got to say that your experience of being approached by attractive women is so far outside the norm of what I see that you've got to be wildly underestimating your own attractiveness. I would say that I've been pretty romantically successful, including casual encounters, long-term relationships, and a happy marriage, but I've initiated about 90% of the successful encounters I've had, in addition to being rejected in quite a few more advances, and basically never rejecting a woman that I was attracted to. My personal observation is that my experience is pretty common, at least for men under 6'2".

I had the same reaction to this post. OP's experiences are extremely atypical. I'm 6'3", in good shape, and conventionally attractive. I'm married now but was always plenty romantically successful when I was single. Still, I've been approached romantically by no more than five or six women in my life (I'm 35). Even when I was approached, it was always indirect and more of a hint than an actual approach. One time a girl asked me out on a date, but even then she didn't call it a date and I didn't realize that's what it was until it was in progress (I thought she wanted to get coffee to discuss some things about an organization we were both members of). And these women who approached me were, to put it bluntly, not as good looking as the women I would normally date. If you're a man getting regularly approached by good looking women, you're an extremely rare outlier.

And these women who approached me were, to put it bluntly, not as good looking as the women I would normally date

Yeah. Verymuch echos my experience, though I have wondered if that's also due to women of that ilk not being able to rely upon the same social gameswomanship to attract mates so they've just gotta drive the bus or so to speak.

There have been two times in my life when a woman initiated a conversation with me, where looking back I think she might have been hitting on me. Both were in college, and interestingly both women were quite attractive. I think I might have been more likely to pick up on it if they were more "meh" looking.

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One should never underestimate the male ability to completely not notice an approach by a woman.

For attractive men, it's very easy to build skill to recognize signs of women's approaching, because half of women like them. For unattractive men, who are repulsive to 95% of women, most of times when they think they're approached by woman, it'd be a false alarm, so it's difficult to build that skill.

Also female approaches are very much built in a couched 'plausible deniability' sort of a framing. I've been a spectator of enough of my female friends' flirtations that they're trying to actually take lead on, and the whole artifice tends to be built in such a manner as for an initial approach to be made with genuine interest but the whole thing can be retconned/denied if for whatever reason there's any icks.

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because they’ll die alone if they don’t.

Attractive men don't have to get over it, they will be fucked anyway, maybe even by school teacher.

I do agree that guys should generally be trying to err on the side of doing too much rather than doing too little, and definitely believe that that approach will lead to more success so long as you don't... overpursue the false positives. Fail fast, fail often is probably the best way to go for the vast majority of guys.

I also feel that male rejection and female rejection tend to be fundamentally different. A lot of guys will definitely have a point of 'I could literally not sustain an erection' hard no, but there's also plenty of girls who they wouldn't consider wife/girlfriend material who they'd still nonetheless entertain if they took the front foot. Failure for girls is just as likely to be a situationship/FWB kind of a situation as it is to be an actual flat, firm rejection.

But on the other hand I know enough girls well enough that I've seen them get icked by the most absolutely random stuff in the formative period of a new crush/potential romantic dalliance. I've definitely seen guys fumble a pretty sure thing, but I've also seen a plethora of times where the fumble has been something totally random. I also feel like girls have way more ability to just instantaneously flick the switch from 100-0 and vice-versa in the face of an ick, compared to guys where I feel like attraction levels tend to remain consistent unless a truly shocking revelation comes up.

One should never underestimate the male ability to completely not notice an approach by a woman.

Yeah, I received a few mix tapes from girls high school. Since I was known in my friend-group as the opposite of "with it", I just figured they were politely trying to expand my musical horizons.

I've chatted with female friends who are convinced they're sending strong signals to other guys in their chats about potential romantic dalliance... then read the actual chats and it's been the most passive/friendly convo ever that they're convinced is them leading a wild romantic chase.

Also seen a lot of cases where a girl's absolutely fawned over some loose male potential and completely refused to lead and/or 'been ghosted' when the convo is prettymuch as follows

Random dude: 'My love, shall we picnic in the park this eve'

Girl: 'K'

Random Dude: 'When are you available? What is your ring size?'

Girl: 'Like React'

Random Dude: 'Are you free this Friday, my swan?'

Girl: Maybe

Then they accost me with 'why did I get left on read' and it's like... dude was trying his utmost best to get a sign of interest from you and eventually assumed you were trying to signal him to fuck off.

But like I understand the feminine impulse. The consequences of misplaced affections for men tend to be out-and-out rejection, whilst the consequences for a woman will trend far more towards getting fuckbuddyzoned/strung along for novelty's sake.

One should never underestimate the male ability to completely not notice an approach by a woman.

Oh, yes. I once worked with a girl on a project and thought we had a productive working relationship. One day she came to tell that she was being transferred to another project and when she left, my boss (an older woman with stellar social skills) loudly exclaimed, "thank God, I was this close to telling your wife about this situation". Notiсing my visible confusion, she asked if I really didn't notice that the girl had a huge crush on me. According to every woman in the room, it was blindingly obvious that she was in full worship mode. I have no idea to this day if they were pulling my leg.

Was this co-worker attractive? Workplace rumors always seem to spring up around young and attractive women, in my experience. For example, I once had a co-worker who was, bluntly, an absolute smokeshow. When I took up at the acting office manager for a spell, practically every other woman in the office stopped by my office to tell me about some supposed office affair this young lady was having. "I saw her coming out of such-and-such's office!" "She got off the train Monday morning with such-and-such!" "She had lunch with such-and-such three days in a row and then I saw them leave together on Friday!" I suppose it's possible I was an extra in a porn movie and that this lady really was a raging nymphomaniac but I'm pretty sure it was just run-away imaginations on the part of a bunch of jealous co-workers.

No, not really.

I suppose it's possible I was an extra in a porn movie and that this lady really was a raging nymphomaniac

I was going to ask if you were paid as such, but then I remembered that extras in porn movies are compensated via exposure.

I'm not sure why you expect your experience as an older gentleman to have much to do with the experience of twenty somethings which is more central to the original point, family formation. Things change greatly as you age.

your experience as an older gentleman

Oh come on, I'm barely in my 30s. If you called me that to my face, I'd have a premature midlife crisis.

I may be confusing you with another mottezans who had mentioned being an academic much later in life with a similar perspective.

I seem to recall SCCReader talking about waitresses throwing themselves at him or something after being widowered in his 40s-50s?

The repeated insistence by posters of all stripes and their refusal to engage with the central argument, the crux of the matter is really making me just about fed up with this body of ideas.

Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about TFR

Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about older male sexfullness

Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about women's rights

Post about young male sexlessness -> Post about how to pick up ladies

No one wants to discuss what can be done about the fact that young male sexlessness and datelessness have both gone up by 100% compared to the historical base rate (female remains roughly same with a slight increase recently), and what are the implications of this.

Seriously let's go back to the fucking basics. Refute the central point, not some weakman or weak proxy of it.

I'm about to get real uncharitable here but here's my true unfiltered thoughts on the matter;

My cynical side says that no one but the group getting fucked actually has any incentive to fix it. And by that I don't mean the obvious personal incentive, but all of the other groups greatly benefit in the short term from not fixing it, at least on a superficial level. Old men have a wider pool to choose from, younger women don't want to temper their expectations, older women also don't want to temper their expectations. So all you are left with is token condolences and strawmen just getting beaten often brutalized to absolute shreds. This asymmetry in incentives doesn't allow ones minds to honestly tackle with the arguments (even if their hearts are in the right place) because that would be a stupid way to operate for a human. Why understand something if your livelihood relies on you not understanding it. I also think there is a signalling play here, you make a post about widely discussed {problem} and feign disbelief or obliviousness, it's letting everyone know you are high status enough to not only not have that problem, but to not be able to comprehend its existence.

remains roughly same with a slight increase recently

As cimarafa pointed out, incorrect: https://imgur.io/HGlnCTJ?r

....and no confidence intervals. Might be a fluke. Or it might be valid, but temporary due to extreme COVID quarantines. We know that women like to underreport quantity of sex.

Women have been underreporting the whole time.

On the other hand, from Pew:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/02/08/for-valentines-day-5-facts-about-single-americans/

I'm very curious about what the next GSS has to say: my expectation is returning to trendline, but we'll see.

Ctrl f sex zero results

It really depends on which plot you look at which is a simple google search away.

Hint: They all ask marginally different questions.

This graph is about sexlessness and your claim is about sexlessness. Provide another graph, but don't vaguely gesture.

I reviewed all the plots and IFHS compilation of the different reports and you are correct. Post 2018 data shows that young female sexlessness increased, and male sexlessness decreased.

However, this data runs counter to the relationship data which shows 2x as many single young men than women. So what gives?

Here are my uncharitable unfiltered thoughts on the matter: something is seriously wrong with you and other people like you, and you're either unaware of it or willfully ignoring it. Maybe your standards are too high, maybe you lack social skills and weird people out, maybe you're fatter than you think, I don't know. But something isn't right.

I'm not really singling out you specifically, but I just don't understand where these posts come from. I'm a barely above average person. I'm 5'7"/170cm (!!!), face is maybe a 7/10 though under age 25 or so I often got called "cute" (never handsome or hot), body is... I dunno, 6/10? I'm not fat and not ripped, just "normal" I guess. I come from rural nowhere America from a middle-middle class family, went to an average college in a rural state, and prior to marriage made a below average salary. I'm not particularly witty or suave, though I am friendly and genuine and perceived as non-threatening. Never was athletic or played sports, but was also never overweight (until my mid 20s). I'm definitely less intelligent than many people on this board and I only did reasonably well in school, definitely wasn't near the top of my class. I majored in an uncool liberal arts subject and currently work in an unsexy part of tech and make a meh salary for a tech worker.

My point is that my stats are thoroughly mediocre except for some minor strengths here and there (and one big weakness). And yet, after turning 18 I dated continuously for 8 years (4 different women) until getting married at 26. I never had trouble finding a girlfriend, there was always someone in my social circle who I thought was cute and vice versa. I'd rate these women as 7/5/6/8, so I want knocking it out of the park looks-wise, but it was better than being alone and thirsty. I'm only in my early 30s, so this isn't advice in the vein of "just ask to speak to the manager and give him a firm handshake." Perhaps your standards are just too high?

tl;dr as a mediocre person I was able to pull it off, so anyone should be able to pull it off barring serious handicaps.

maybe you lack social skills and weird people out

This is almost certainly it (for me at least). I have sometimes flattered myself with the thought, "oh, I'm just too honest for the dirty, lying, backstabbing tricks required for success in the dating market." I typically dismiss this as egoistic rationalization, but I am again starting to wonder if it is true. I think I am the only regular in the culture war thread who has identified himself as basically an incel. I also notice that the dating/gender war/sexlessness threads do NOT read like they are written by men who are getting healthy amounts of sexual satisfaction, yet every poster takes care to mention that of course they aren't having trouble getting laid and have had multiple deeply fulfilling relationships, they are speaking hypothetically about the 20-30% of young men which they are of course not a part of.

I think some of you are lying.

Typical-minded fallacy is the one fallacy I've noted with alot of Motte posters.

Hint: If you're posting on the Motte, you're very likely nowhere near mediocre.

(I'm exempting myself from this, I will point out. If we plotted every poster out on a bell curve measuring various factors, I'd definitely end up in the shallows, and not on the far end thereof.)

I think I've lost count regarding the number of posters who've made commentary over the years about their dating experiences, only to end with the commentary of 'It's not so hard!' All the while seemingly glossing over their blatant advantages as if they somehow don't count, to the point where I wonder if I'm being gaslit or they're so privileged that they've never stopped to think why their dating experience was so painless.

It's gotten just a little bit tiresome. But hey, that's life...

I had an incel phase but it was mostly related to obesity.

I lost the weight, can now pull pretty well but would still consider it hard to find a stable committed relationship with somebody who I'd consider real wife material, but I'm very aware I've got a stack of privileges that the vast majority of people don't (White, 6'3, muscular, 99th percentile income, blonde etc.) that can outweigh the mild autism and even that I've mostly eroded as a disadvantage through sheer repetition and scripting.

I also notice that the dating/gender war/sexlessness threads do NOT read like they are written by men who are getting healthy amounts of sexual satisfaction, yet every poster takes care to mention that of course they aren't having trouble getting laid and have had multiple deeply fulfilling relationships, they are speaking hypothetically about the 20-30% of young men which they are of course not a part of.

It's a preemptive defense mechanism: the usual way of responding to someone concerned about the topic is to call them an incel, but if they're an uberchad, not only do they avoid that attack but also are taken more seriously, as they've been validated by real life women's attention.

People aren't neatly divided into incels and normies; it's more of a continuum, and most straight men have had to navigate the dating scene. None of the troubles that afflict incels are unique to them: they just take different forms once you actually get laid and interact with women. That, along with extended dry periods, is enough to give men some empathy for the situation.

I've gotten more black pilled after getting laid.

There are certain stereotypes about women that I used to classify as bitter incel talking points. I eventually found out there was some truth to it and more.

The most fundamental one being that I actually dont believe women give much heed to physical material reality at all. The social reality, or the dimention space of words and ideas and feeling and vibes are what women navigate in as a default. Its hard to describe this but

the women I saw just had a spotty relationship with what I consider the truth. Dont get me wrong, they pay heed to physical reality but its just a token. There were so many discussions where the framework of the past was change on "because I feel that". And that "feel" wasnt intuition, it was emotion. I have noticed that the "repeat a lie enough times.." technique is used a whole lot, and it makes perfect sense if reality is just a bunch of word vectors.

None of this made thise women bad people. But it did inform me that hundreds of civilizations for thousands of years keeping them out of thr adults room were perhaps onto something. I dont propse this gets done but the mind does wander.

I think @DaseindustriesLtd wrote about something to a similar effect in the old country, I cant find it.

What you are alluding to can be better explained by "not understanding something since their job depends on not understanding it".

For example, opinions that toe the line on gender issues, even if poorly supported receive no push back when expressed by women. Hence, they have no incentive to think about them critically when the conclusion may not benefit them in the short term.

Plenty of people including men have shown this tendency on other issues when their privilege hinges on not addressing it.

I'm not precisely alluding to this. I am talking about situations that are far less obviously tribal.

For example, if a person starts being disliked, not only is that person disliked from that current point in time but the past is retroactively changed such that that person is terrible from the beginning. This behavior repeated enough times compounds into a total fantasy world. And keep in mind, these are not done with Bayesian logic, they are done based on feelings and vibes.

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Honestly as I wrote the post I had the same intuition. Maybe I'm undervaluing how important social skills are, especially whatever you call the highly situational "reading the room" skill. I am pretty good at reading people and intuiting their motivations.

I have a cousin who is in his mid 20s, 6'0", thin, reasonably handsome face, has a CS degree and a good job. He could probably do modeling. But he's kind of weird, lacks confidence, and dresses like a dork (he goes for a hipster look that was edgy 10 or 15 years ago, which is about as uncool as you can get now). He's really sensitive to criticism and shuts down if he feels people aren't taking him seriously or are making fun of him (even if it's good natured).

You hear all this talk online about how only looks matter, but I think we all know at least one ugly dude who was so charismatic, confident, and/or cool that he never had problems getting laid, making friends, or getting into leadership roles. He always seemed to have a girlfriend and was often chatting up other girls on the side. To me, the existence of these people (and to a lesser degree people like me) is a fatal blow to all this lookism stuff.

And the good news is that unlike your looks, you really can work on your social skills. Before age 16 or so I was a shy little wimp who was all but ignored by girls. I had a "fuck it" moment around 16, and started being a lot more assertive and aggressive towards other people in what I thought was a self-destructive way... only the destruction never came. Instead, people just listened to me more and took me more seriously. The sky didn't fall, I didn't get my ass kicked. And girls started to think I was worth their consideration.

Obviously my epiphany isn't something you can replicate in a lab. Perhaps it's a point that everyone has to reach on his own. But my point is that it's at least possible, and without the need for shoe inserts or mewing or whatever.

And the good news is that unlike your looks, you really can work on your social skills.

People always seem to say this, but I find it to be the exact opposite. There are aspects of looks that can't be changed, such as height or ethnicity, obviously, but IMHO changing looks is much easier than changing social skills. Changing looks is almost entirely a biological/physical engineering problem, of adjusting diet and exercise to change body composition, changing the chemicals one puts on one's skin and hair, changing the clothes one puts on, and such. And these physical engineering problems are mostly pretty well solved and well publicized, and implementing them is a matter of choice and will.

Changing social skills is a much murkier problem with very few well understood solutions, with the space almost entirely dominated by misinformation. It's also a social engineering problem rather than a physical one, which makes it more costly to perform experiments - which are more required due to the aforementioned lack of information about solutions - along with higher costs when experiments go wrong.

Obviously, both can be changed to various extents, and I've personally experienced changing both of them for the better, but, again, when I compare both the difficulty of enacting changes and the magnitude of the changes involved, the difference is stark. Changing my appearance for the better by a significant amount was almost trivial compared to making even a very minor change in my social skills.

You are very much undervaluing the importance of social skills.

People tend to ignore or gloss over that there's a horrendous amount of skills and capabilities that contributes toward being dateable. And if you're skilled enough in one area(say, social skills) this can make up for alot of deficiencies.

For example, if you're skilled in the social sciences, you can get a girlfriend while looking like a small mountain(and not in a good way). Or living with your girlfriends family while not having a home of your own, and somehow this is perfectly fine(wtf?). Or, or, or...

Yeah, no. Not everyone has this skill set. Either through lack of chance to naturally develop such a thing, or simply not gifted with the intrinsic capability. Half the time when people bring up 'I'm socially retarded yet I got a girlfriend' and when they describe their circumstance as to how that occurred, it comes across as pure, blind luck.

Still, you're correct. Social skill is very much a skill that can be learned and developed. The trick, however, is finding a safe space that they can learn these skills, with strict rule sets(because if you know the rules ahead of time, it gives you confidence of how to act within the confines of those rules). And, the arena has to atleast allow for a little forgiveness for when you inevitable screw up.

Nowadays, that's a very tall order. Moreso if you live in an area that doesn't have alot of social arenas to break into in a natural, organic fashion.

I know, I'm speaking from experience. Not that there aren't options, mind, but when alot of these options start costing money, that brings up a whole other set of issues...

Yup, this is the thing. Would it be even worse for your friend if he was overweight, etc. Absolutely. But, I think, unfortunately, too many people actually believe an SNL skit is actually real life. Also, the secret is that a lot of people are coded as 'assholes' because they're good-looking, charismatic, and dress well (for their subculture/etc.).

Yes, there are the typical a-hole guys in a club, or horny drunk guys late night at a bar, but they're nowhere as successful as people think they are. OTOH, yes, they are more successful than somebody who basically spends all their time either in male-dominated spaces or by themselves.

I’ve spent way too much time drafting and discarding responses, mostly on account of excessive snark. Ultimately, I’m left asking:

What is it you want from us?

If you were hoping for society-wide solutions, the TFR and gender roles threads had plenty of attempts. If instead you wanted personal advice, try the pickup threads. Getting upset at the lack of birds-eye discussion of a “central point” strikes me as…unproductive. The people who just want to talk about dating markets are assuming your conclusion, not ignoring it.

What is it you want from us?

I suppose I was pretty explicit in what I wanted, discussion on the matter that doesn't fall into those pitfalls. Those are red herrings and I also pointed out that they have the failure mode of massaging your ego or whilst also throwing off your inner status compass enough that you might not be under the control of your higher faculty.

Despite the fact that I do bring a horse to this race, I don't want anything at all because I have checked out of those discussions given I have taken the maximally doomerist position, I implored everyone to leave their status anxiety and ego at the door when this discussion comes up to not shit it up for those who want to have it and outlined how the shitting up happens.

No one wants to discuss what can be done about the fact that young male sexlessness and datelessness have both gone up by 100% compared to the historical base rate (female remains roughly same with a slight increase recently), and what are the implications of this.

Fuck it, let’s think outside the box.

The way natural fertility rates are going, at some point governments will have to implement state-run conception and child-rearing facilities. In theory, we could use IVF (or even artificial wombs) to select only XX chromosome embryos to be raised. The few remaining couples conceiving naturally would still have a 50:50 chance at XX or XY. Needless to say, the dating market for young men 30-years after the implementation of Project Solomon (named for the wisdom of course) would be much improved.

The key selling point of this plan is that at no point were anyone’s natural rights infringed. All you libertarian-minded folks get to keep your free love and consent-alone sexual ethics, and the feminists get to celebrate that the future is female after all. Everyone wins (except unattractive trad girls I guess).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia method.

The way natural fertility rates are going, at some point governments will have to implement state-run conception and child-rearing facilities. In theory, we could use IVF (or even artificial wombs) to select only XX chromosome embryos to be raised. The few remaining couples conceiving naturally would still have a 50:50 chance at XX or XY. Needless to say, the dating market for young men 30-years after the implementation of Project Solomon (named for the wisdom of course) would be much improved.

Funnily enough I expect the majority of people on "Team Woman" would be absolutely against such an idea, even though it tracks perfectly with everything they profess to believe in. And the objection that this idea "hurts women" can be snapped back with in exactly the same way progressives snap back against MRAs complaining the modern societal system hurts men.

No one wants to discuss what can be done about the fact that young male sexlessness and datelessness have both gone up by 100% compared to the historical base rate (female remains roughly same with a slight increase recently), and what are the implications of this.

Andrew Tate seems like an archetype that is comming back. In the 400s there were was an abundance of Andrew Tates, strong men with a proclivity for fighting and short term hedonism. Men who didn't really care all that much about their society but wanted to go out with a bang while on a major bender through all of Europe. Andrew Tate is the modern day Vandal. The fact that he was the most googled man implies that he struck a chord with young men. Young men aren't going to be given status, money or women, they have to figure out a way to get.

Mexican drug cartels could very well gain popularity north of the boarder by offering the narco lifestyle as a modern equivelent to joining a viking horde. Piracy and mercenary work have been popular historic alternatives.

I don't see how this is going to end in any other way than loser men being organized by some men in the middle who see it as a high risk strategy to reaching the top.

Mexican drug cartels could very well gain popularity north of the boarder by offering the narco lifestyle as a modern equivelent to joining a viking horde.

People keep saying things like this. But the men of the past who went to go wage jihad or kill Persians for women are not the obese, neurotic, more socially anxious types today far more likely to fall into the unsuccessful bucket.

Not the sort to work with or be wanted at all by literal mafia. There's a reason criminal organizations discriminate racially and otherwise even when you'd think they're closing off options: due to basically being defacto under siege it matters way more how sturdy an employee is.

I'm sure many boys and men will absorb Tate-like oppositional/sociopathic behaviors but the mujahideen will be few and far between. Groups of frustrated young men will be Proud Boys-tier or below.

I would be interested in hearing what your proposals to "fix it" are. I think the reason few to no people offer solutions to the issue is that there are not any solutions people operating in a broadly liberal framework would find permissible.

From my own liberal perspective, nobody is owed a girlfriend, or relationship. If you (or a lot of young men) are unable to get someone you want to be in a relationship with to also want to be in a relationship with you, that's a you problem. Relationship formation is that good old double coincidence of wants. It's not enough that you want to be in a relationship with someone, you need to find someone who also wants to have a relationship with you.

And from my own capitalist perspective nobody is owed a job, or a well paying career. If someone is unable to find a job paying them enough to live a comfortable life that's a you problem too. Besides it's not difficult to get a seriously high paying job, I'm surrounded by people who started out their careers earning 6 figures and you'd be surprised how absolutely dumb some of them are. Jobs are also like a coincidence of wants, it's not just you who has to want that well paying job, but that job also needs to want you.

And who cares that nowadays capital is getting a far higher share of the total rewards of work than 50 years ago (see productivity vs pay charts since the 1970s) this is just how the structure of the job market has shifted towards greater automation thus reducing the relative value of labour to the final product; if you really have the skills employers want they'll still bend over backwards for you (compare to comments about how men now need to offer more to get a woman than 50 years ago).

And yet, despite this following the same strain of thought as your comment, modern "liberals" (they are no such thing) would absolutely not agree with this assessment of the job market.

Sure, nobody is saying you can't organize a political program around giving men boyfriends. Just like the couple thousand actual Communist's in America (as opposed to the vast majority of "socialists" who just want a Nordic welfare state) can try to organize a worker's revolution. That doesn't mean it'll work, but you free to try.

By the way, as a left-wing social democrat, I do agree that currently, the job market is a seller's one, but that doesn't mean we should repeal any worker's protections.

A "nordic social state" is the equivalent of a situation where while no woman is forced to pair up, it is it very hard for her to get by independently unless she does. No different to how it's very hard to become wealthy in a nordic social state unless you're born into it, in fact accruing wealth is made so hard that somehow the Netherlands have managed to achieve greater wealth inequality than the entire world as a whole, with Sweden hot on its heels at no.3.

Same here, there are very few people literally asking for government mandated girlfriends, but a vast amount of men who want the current social situation tiled away from women's favour and into men's.

  1. Nationally allow covenant marriage (which removes no fault divorce as an option). Phase current legal marriage benefits to only this type of contract.

  2. Create an award for mothers who have their 6th child with the same (legally recognized) father. it carries significant benefits (my first thought is her social security benefits become the legal max, funded by a payroll tax on anyone with fewer than two children

  3. Colleges are immediately restricted an administrator count of no more than 20% of the count of FTE instructors.

  4. All states will define 12 zoning 'zones' allowed for use in that state. A jurisdiction must allocate all their land into one of these 12 zones or multi use zones that allow multiple zones definitions. Any construction in that jurisdiction approved if it is no more intense than the zone limits and complies with national building codes.

The goal of the first is to greatly restrict serial monogamy. The second is to create prestige for motherhood that ideally exceeds corporate prestige. The last two are intended to dramatically reduce family formation costs.

From my own liberal perspective, nobody is owed a girlfriend, or relationship.

This is, from my perspective, an absolutely reversed framing of what is happening. Its like observing a young girl cutting herself and thinking, "well no adolescent is entitled to have classmates with intact wrists." Yes, it is damaging to people around a cutting girl to see her in a damaged state, similarly, it is incidentally bad for men the way modern women arrange their sexual affairs. But, it is still more damaging to the women themselves. This is shown in basically every statistic available. Happiness in women has plummeted since the 1960s. They have far fewer children than they want. And, lo and behold, all these trends are much much smaller in what we'd think of as "tradwife" communities. Mormons, devout Catholics, etc. All their women are far happier.

So yes, if you frame it as men not getting a thing, that can make the problem appear to be one of losers complaining about losing, but if you think about it at the next level, it is much more about self sabotage because of hyper-stimuli.

Ok. Even through a lens of self-sabotage I think people are almost never justified in coercing someone else to do something because, in the judgment of the individual doing the coercing, it would be in the coerced individuals best interest.

Well, there is currently a large propaganda campaign encouraging the self-sabotage. We should step 1 shut that off. And step 2 do the opposite. Coercion would be a last resort.

Can you clarify how you intend to "shut that off" and "do the opposite" in a way that doesn't entail coercion?

Well first we should eliminate all subsidies, state and federal, for the academic fields such as gender studies, etc. We should also stop allowing unfettered feminism to pervade K-12 public schools with implementation of proper curricula and policing of rebellious teachers who use their classrooms for leftist indoctrination. Indeed, if we need to (and we probably do not), the curricula enacted in k-12 may need to be explicitly traditional and espouse the virtues of motherhood and demonize the thought of women in law firms and other such institutions. As stay at home motherhood currently is.

I would be interested in hearing what your proposals to "fix it" are. I think the reason few to no people offer solutions to the issue is that there are not any solutions people operating in a broadly liberal framework would find permissible.

This is also true of the same argument for men not dating trans-identified males, fat women, black women but it never stopped anyone from finding...circuitous routes to basically arguing for those things.

The real reason is that men aren't considered [charitable] an oppressed class worthy of special consideration or [less charitable] people that deserve moral priority, even when they are clearly the group suffering disproportionately*

* Tell me about all those women stopped from leaving and drafted to die for Ukraine?

This is also true of the same argument for men not dating trans-identified males, fat women, black women but it never stopped anyone.

I don't understand what this has to do with my comment? In any case see here for what I think is the best take on it.

I don't understand what this has to do with my comment?

I'm saying that, if we go strictly by what liberalism allows, there's no solution to those "problems" either.

The exact same line of argument you raised could be raised against those groups and their interminable complaints.

But, imo, the sort of utter obtuseness about even the basic fact - let alone the solution - that OP is decrying is imo not that common in those cases when discussing with progressive liberals . They face the problems and can't seem to stop talking about them, even if many think solutions have to be slower (e.g. via "education", that great liberal panacea) since liberalism does place constraints.

So why does this happen for some groups but not others? Well, they simply don't care about certain groups. Clinton's brazen myopia was just an extreme example to illustrate the phenomenon: one side simply doesn't care and others...well, they apparently don't have Clinton's in-group loyalty.

tl;dr: Liberalism or limited solutions doesn't mean you can't care or discuss this. Not caring means you can't.

I'm saying that, if we go strictly by what liberalism allows, there's no solution to those "problems" either.

I agree, in the sense it would be just as immoral for those groups to employ various coercive measures to get others to form relationships with them.

But, imo, the sort of utter obtuseness about even the basic fact - let alone the solution - that OP is decrying is imo not that common in those cases when discussing with progressive liberals . They face the problems and can't seem to stop talking about them, even if many think solutions have to be slower (e.g. via "education", that great liberal panacea) since liberalism does place constraints.

Sure, I don't disagree that liberals are often more sensitive to issues impacting historically marginalized groups.

There are plenty of things that could hypothetically work, depending on one's analysis of the causes. If it's only the outcome of online dating/social media norms, you could regulate their negative characteristics. If it's porn and vidya, same. If it's economic inequality, you could push policies to reduce economic inequality. If it's a lack of masculine role models for young men, you could encourage the presence of fathers. Etc.

There is a massive space between discussing solutions or giving empathy to people struggling and wanting to pass a "incels can enslave women" law. And there doesn't even need to be a solution for it to be a problem worth discussing and analyzing, but people turn to the implication that anyone wanting to discuss it wants to implement that kind of illiberal law.

As a point of comparison, consider a group afforded sympathy in the social and political discourse: women. Particularly, let's look at the "wage gap." The large majority of it isn't due to discrimination, but to the choices women make with regard to mate choice. Single, childless women face virtually no wage penalty, and it's later intramarriage economic specialization choices that lead to what we call the wage gap. Those choices can be and are constrained, and many women reasonably want partners who'll support their careers and do more housework. But that runs afoul of the "nobody is owed a relationship" perspective; why is it that women who can't find the partners they want are given sympathy and deserve political and social activism to remedy the ill (unequal earnings due to gendered division of household labor), but men who can't find the partners they want are monstrous?

If it's only the outcome of online dating/social media norms, you could regulate their negative characteristics. If it's porn and vidya, same.

What does "regulat[ing] [the] negative characteristics" for dating, social norms, porn, or video games look like in a way that is compatible with liberalism?

There is a massive space between discussing solutions or giving empathy to people struggling and wanting to pass a "incels can enslave women" law.

I agree, but somehow I rarely see things in this space proposed and much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.

But that runs afoul of the "nobody is owed a relationship" perspective; why is it that women who can't find the partners they want are given sympathy, but men who can't find the partners they want are monstrous?

I'm not sure I understand. I can be, and often am, sympathetic to men who have trouble finding someone to date them. Being sympathetic to someone in such a situation is quite distinct from thinking that this is a problem that demands a social or legal or political response. Where that sympathy ends is where those individuals advocate violating liberal principles to get what they want. I suspect women generally get more sympathy with their inability to find a partner because they are less likely to promote forcing society to provide one for them as a solution. Certainly less likely than similarly situated men are.

I agree, but somehow I rarely see things in this space proposed and much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.

Empathising with struggling guys happens so much here that some people now have the idea that motters who say they aren't incels are just incels lying about being gorgeous hunks.

Edit: I'm not suggesting I think they're wrong.

I agree, but somehow I rarely see things in this space proposed and much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.

I think part of the problem here is that you do sometimes need to restrict women's rights in order to protect men's, just as men's rights are sometimes restricted to protect women's. Framing "taking away women's rights" as incompatible with liberalism is a female supremist position, as it is equivalent to saying that men's rights must always give way to women's when they conflict.

I'm curious where you perceive their being a conflict between men and women's rights within a liberal framework.

It's quite common that the exercising of one's rights infringes in some way on the rights of others. Society then comes up with rules to balance the rights of one versus the other, usually putting some restrictions on both. As an example, consider sexual harassment. A man asserts his right to freedom of speech. A woman asserts his exercising of that right infringes her right to not be subject to unwanted sexual stimulation. Similarly, a woman asserts her right to wear whatever she wants. A man asserts her exercising of that right infringes his right to not be subject to unwanted sexual stimulation.

EDIT: Grammar.

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What does "regulat[ing] [the] negative characteristics" for dating, social norms, porn, or video games look like in a way that is compatible with liberalism?

Ban porn or heavily restrict access on the grounds of it being obscene or a harm to children.

Obviously, this is problematic in the view of many liberals today but more onerous and socially damaging restrictions can and have been imposed in the long reign of the ideology.

At worst, it's a constitutional amendment away.

much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.

Perhaps I've missed them, but I've never seen anyone here propose any laws that take away women's rights to choose their sexual partners.

Being sympathetic to someone in such a situation is quite distinct from thinking that this is a problem that demands a social or legal or political response.

To be more succinct, we offer women social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship. We don't offer men social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship.

Perhaps I've missed them, but I've never seen anyone here propose any laws that take away women's rights to choose their sexual partners.

Not this week, but a couple of weeks back there was plenty of talk of explicitly limiting women's access to higher education, etc. along with banning birth control, etc. Now, no, this isn't explicitly taking away women's right to do so, but come on.

Perhaps I've missed them, but I've never seen anyone here propose any laws that take away women's rights to choose their sexual partners.

Fair enough, I'm not sure I've seen it so explicitly here but I feel like plenty of people have Darkly Hinted in that direction.

To be more succinct, we offer women a social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship. We don't offer men a social/legal/political responses to remedy problems that arise due to their inability to create a particular interpersonal relationship.

What are the responses we offer to women? Outlawing gender based discrimination in pay? That seems... fine to me? Again, I'm open to hearing what kinds of responses we should offer to men, but the people oft complaining about this seem light on actionable solutions.

What are the responses we offer to women? Outlawing gender based discrimination in pay? That seems... fine to me?

One has to not be paying attention in order to believe that that is the only response offered to women. Governments around the world have devoted significant amounts of resources towards rectifying the supposedly problematic gender pay gap and resolving women's underrepresentation in STEM and leadership roles.

For example, in my country (Australia):

Noting that the gender pay gap remained significant, the government announced a $1.9 billion package to improve women’s economic security. The sum takes in $1.7 billion over five years for increased childcare subsidies, as well as $25.7 million to help more women pursue careers in science, engineering and maths.

The package also includes $38.3 million to fund projects that assist women into leadership roles.

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/childcare-subsidies-make-up-half-of-new-spending-for-women-20210510-p57qjk

Some quotes from the relevant budget statement:

The Government’s Boosting Female Founders Initiative provides co-funded grants to majority women-owned and led start-ups, and facilitates access to expert mentoring and advice. The Initiative, announced in the 2018 and further expanded in the 2020 Women’s Economic Security Statements, provides $52.2 million in competitive grant funding plus $1.8 million in mentoring support. The program commenced in 2020, with round one of the Initiative providing approximately $11.9 million in grant funding to 51 successful applicants. Round two closed on 22 April 2021.

And:

To further grow the pool of women in STEM, the Government is investing $42.4 million over seven years to support more than 230 women to pursue Higher Level STEM Qualifications. These scholarships will be provided in partnership with industry, to build job-ready experience, networks and the cross-cutting capabilities to succeed in modern STEM careers. This program will complement the Women in STEM Cadetship and Advanced Apprenticeships Program announced in the 2020-21 Budget, which targets women to enter industry-relevant, pre-bachelor study.

And:

The Australian Government is committed to supporting more women into leadership positions and to further closing the gender pay gap. The Government is providing $38.3 million over five years to expand the successful Women’s Leadership and Development Program. This builds on the $47.9 million expansion to the Program announced as part of the 2020 Women’s Economic Security Statement. This program funds projects such as Women Building Australia run by Master Builders Australia to support more women into building and construction. These initiatives form part of the Government’s response to increasing gender equality, extending leadership and economic participation opportunities for Australian women, and building a safer, more respectful culture.

https://archive.budget.gov.au/2021-22/womens-statement/download/womens_budget_statement_2021-22.pdf

That's from the 2021-22 budget statement, what has Australia been doing in 2022-23? Let's have a look:

Further measures in the Budget are focused on helping women into higher-paying and traditionally male-dominated industries. To boost the number of women in trades, the Government is investing $38.6 million over 4 years from 2022‑23. Women who commence in higher paying trade occupations on the Australian Apprenticeship Priority List will be provided additional supports, such as mentoring and wraparound services.

And:

The Morrison Government is making a further investment, building on the success of existing initiatives to improve leadership outcomes for women, by providing an additional $18.2 million for the Women’s Leadership and Development Program.

This includes $9 million from 2023-24 to 2025-26 to expand the successful Future Female Entrepreneurs program to develop and grow women’s core entrepreneurial skills. Funding will continue the successful Academy for Enterprising Girls (10-18 year olds) and the Accelerator for Enterprising Women, expanding it to include all women aged 18+, as well as adding a new Senior Enterprising Women program.

To support women facing unique barriers to leadership and employment, the Government is also investing $9.4 million to expand the Future Women’s Jobs Academy and to support gender balanced boards.

https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/jane-hume-2020/media-releases/2022-23-budget-boost-support-australian-women-and-girls

Governments are not the only ones who have done this. Blackrock, the world's largest asset manager, is explicitly using their voting power as shareholders to force gender diversity in boards of directors.

We voted against one or more directors at over 3,400 companies globally. Corporate governance concerns - including lack of board independence, insufficient diversity, and executive compensation - prompted most of the votes against directors' elections," BIS stated."

According to BlackRock, insufficient board gender diversity was the main reason for voting against a director in the Americas region, where it voted against 1,554 directors at 975 companies - or 61% of the votes that the firm cast against directors in the region - for board gender diversity-related reasons.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210721080157/https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4034687/blackrock-cites-corporate-governance-concerns-voting-directors-elections

When women complain, they receive commiseration, help and often outright preferencing. I can't say that I see the same thing occurring when men complain.

There is little gender discrimination based on pay; it's a gap that opens up when women choose to enter into relationships with men, have children, and enact gendered labor norms. My objection is to the idea that women who do choose to do just that are entitled to the same income as men, despite e.g. working fewer hours or in more flexible jobs than men in order to care for kids. The "pay gap" is largely a relational issue, driven by personal choice (and unfortunately constrained by gendered norms).

More broadly, we make a big deal of women doing more housework than men, but why should that be a social or political concern? It's a purely relational issue, similar to how men not being able to find a partner is a purely relational issue. We can very easily say to women, "get better!" and attract a mate who'll do equal amounts of housework; but we never do that and instead start hurling invective at men. But when a man can't attract any kind of mate, we stop at "get better!"

I've no objection to purely economic anti-gender discrimination laws. When laws and social attention get into the realm of structuring interpersonal relations, either everyone is worthy of protection by them (with equal emphasis on different gendered protections) or no one is.

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We could stop digging the hole would be a good start. It can't actually be that hard to vilify men less.

Who is "we"? By what mechanism do you propose to stop this "we" from digging?

By whatever mechanism feminism has used to advocate for women and criticize every piece of media that doesn't adhere to feminist values. "this is a sexist conspiracy theory against men" should be a biting criticism that is taken seriously. People who whinge on about pay gaps should be looked at like 911 truthers.

Then I encourage you to do this! Call out sexist conspiracies against men in your life. Push back on people who go on about pay gaps like you would a 911 truther. Are you under the impression it was never difficult for any woman to advocate for the range of social changes they have advocated for and achieved?

I do. And I'm sure those early feminists had to enduring sneering pestering like this as well. What even is your angle here?

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It could be less acceptable than it currently is to casually vilify men.

I have a suspicion that women are over-exposed to media and memes that shit on men for cheap hurrahs, and the young ones in particular never actually get the firsthand experience of men that might justify the shitty attitude; the equivalent would be a bunch of 16-year-old boys who think their female classmates plan to marry them then divorce them and take away their money and children that they don't actually have.

But women aren't magnetically, viscerally attracted to men the way men are to women, and women also dictate what status IS; if you tell women that men are low-status simply for being men, they'll believe it, and enforce it, and then be confused as to where all the "good men" are.

Surely any epidemic of male sexlessness is due more to (examples, not my claims) internet-caused loneliness, a lack of organized IRL cross-sex socialization for dating, or more general social changes rather than explicit 'casual vilification' of men. The TRP people don't even claim that more women don't want sex from men, because that's visibly false.

It could be less acceptable than it currently is to casually vilify men.

I probably agree.

I have a suspicion that women are over-exposed to media and memes that shit on men for cheap hurrahs, and the young ones in particular never actually get the firsthand experience of men that might justify the shitty attitude; the equivalent would be a bunch of 16-year-old boys who think their female classmates plan to marry them then divorce them and take away their money and children that they don't actually have.

I think this is plausible. Certainly I've met (and even been) the latter kind of person.

But women aren't magnetically, viscerally attracted to men the way men are to women, and women also dictate what status IS; if you tell women that men are low-status simply for being men, they'll believe it, and enforce it, and then be confused as to where all the "good men" are.

Citation needed.

Citation needed.

The last time you made this request, and have it answered, you ghosted the poster (@anti_dan) who put it in the effort.

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What mechanism led to the promulgation of ideas like "black girl magic" or that men should "shut up and listen"?

They seem like the result of fairly organic social phenomena to me, but I confess I had not heard of "black girl magic" until this comment.

  • -13

An organic phenomenon in circles of varying levels of progressiveness that is exported via mass media to circles that find it distinctly inorganic - because it's practically an alien signal from a foreign reality that doesn't reflect or align with theirs. And you may have noticed that a sizable part of our culture war is spilling-over resentment towards and reassesment of these memes; either due to being fed up with them to the point of dropping politeness or in some cases betrayed by what they feel were implicit lies sold through them.

Like, half (if not most!) of the argument around these issues is that critics find them largely inorganic and astroturfed! And all you can do is serially post strings of words amounting to:

"OK, but so what?"

"OK, but what could you even do?"

"OK, but like, doing anything would be coercive, no?"

You remind me of a friend who talks this way whenever we have a political discussion that trails into something he's either plainly uninterested in or (frankly) unable to seriously defend a pet position of his - his tack of course totally changing when, say, the conversation turns to Roe v Wade. He's a great guy, pretty sharp, makes a good debate partner to keep me on my toes, and so I look past that stuff.

This is just boring and low effort.

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We've banned leaded gasoline, even though it was certainly economically advantageous for every individual driver, and our liberalism calls for less market regulations. We've outlawed OTC cocaine, and made sexualization of minors taboo, with a rather expansive definition too. It's not inconceivable that we could prohibit OnlyFans, Tinder and TikTok. Maybe some more elegant approach is preferable. New problems are born of new clever exploits and profit-making schemes, and after the cost of that profit becomes clear, they call for still newer solutions (which are often enough illiberal on their face). The first step, inescapably, is to allow that a problem be recognized as such, as a problem worth discussing; which is why the space of allowed concerns is so bitterly contested.

If you (or a lot of young men) are unable to get someone you want to be in a relationship with to also want to be in a relationship with you, that's a you problem.

Suppose applying this reasoning to literally any other consensual relationship with high stakes, like employment. Do you think it isn't a «poors problem» when working class people feel they've got a raw deal in the contemporary economic arrangement? Do you think it's a «youths problem» when higher-status Muslims build harems and watch contently as the red-hot madness sizzles underneath their feet?

Ultimately it doesn't matter what you think. Either the dissatisfied party can intimidate you into concessions – or wreck your neighborhood, or tank your economy, or straight up burn your McMansion together with your family – or it can't, and the point is moot.

Rights are merely an issue of negotiation via credible threats. There's a fake oath attributed by Russian bloggers to 15th century Catalan nobility: Nós, que valem tant com vós per separat, i junts més que vós, us investim sobirà i us jurem lleialtat per tal que ens protegiu, defenseu i treballeu pel nostre progrés, i si no, no. Allegedly it means something like this: «We, who are worth as much as you separately, and together more than you, invest you as sovereign and swear loyalty to you so that you protect us, defend us and work for our progress, and if not, then no». This probably wasn't the case in Catalonia. This is definitely the premise of representative democracy (rationalizing the democratic way is the intent of this fiction), and of your liberalism today. People who are not represented by the operating system of the society, who are not protected, defended and aided in their progress, can just say: i si no, no, withdrawing their pledge. It is valuable to minimize the frequency and magnitude of this second «no». There are various means to that end. It is possible to delude them into thinking their problems are negligible or shameful (just as it is possible to provoke a group with no legitimate complaints into a righteous fury), drive them to suicide, prevent their self-organization. Up to a point.

I think the reason for this performative callousness is precisely the intuition that men who don't cut it in the sexual market are pathetic non-threatening worms (at worst, some outliers will become school shooters or rapists) and can be safely utilized as fuel for minor self-affirmation in glib offhand remarks. This has worked well enough in Western polities, historically. I posit that when the cutoff is at 30% and climbing up, and in the context of there being essentially no other self-actualization tracks in a postmodern society, this tactic isn't quite as sound. Sexually frustrated young men are a moral problem, but even if you don't agree, they are a well-known political problem. Your problem too. You are playing with fire.

For the record, I guess I'm roughly in the same place as @4bpp, in that this isn't a pain point for me. I don't much care about how I look or score on some bullshit «you must be this tall to ride» plot: to eventually receive sexual attention even from fairly attractive women in the vicinity (of course, not exclusively attractive… and not only women), I've only ever had to start speaking. (I speak roughly in the same manner I write, although lacking the edit option for typos and l'esprit d'escalier is a bummer; then again, my voice has its own perks). Naturally this works best in dense mixed-sex environments where long-winded conversations are not frowned upon. So that's education and less male-biased sections of the academia, and adjacent gatherings. (In fact I believe that's what many women seek in higher ed in the first place, even if they've been gaslit into thinking otherwise). Not fucking Tinder, which is the go-to platform for matchups now.

Of course, inflating the educational pipeline even more would be insane for a whole host of other reasons. Also, «I got mine» is a not an argument even if true.

@f3zinker is correct that the effect of online dating is already disastrous and we've only began to feel it, and that you all are intent on dodging, downplaying and misrepresenting the core issue. Last but not least, it's frankly disheartening that I feel the need to write this disclaimer to preclude another tedious discussion about personal frustrations, inadequacies and attractiveness scores.

I mean, the actual problem with your argument is the vast majority of the 30-ish percent of men who didn't get laid last year aren't all that radicalized, nor will they be. Speaking personally, I'm part of that thirty percent, and I don't feel some great hatred toward women, or whatever, that leads to me wanting to limit their educational choices or banning no-fault divorce.

It's sort of the same reason there's never going to be the great reactionary turn among white voters that some right-wingers wish and hope for. Because a lot of white people disagree w/ other white people far more than SJWism or whatever, just like most people who have been sexless find incel/MRA/redpill types (and yes, I know they're different, but it's all the same wing of reaction) far more upsetting than swiping on Tinder and not being successful.

Will there possibly be some violence? Sure, but every incel shooting hurts the incel cause.

@f3zinker is correct that the effect of online dating is already disastrous and we've only began to feel it, and that you all are intent on dodging, downplaying and misrepresenting the core issue. Last but not least, it's frankly disheartening that I feel the need to write this disclaimer to preclude another tedious discussion about personal frustrations, inadequacies and attractiveness scores.

I honestly think that it's hard for people who haven't experienced the current post-COVID, online dating ascendancy market to really understand exactly how skewed it is. Even pre-COVID online dating hadn't really settled in with the same level of jadedness, and somebody who's been married for 10 years might as well be from Mars.

the effect of online dating is already disastrous and we've only began to feel it, and that you all are intent on dodging, downplaying and misrepresenting the core issue.

I've been wanting to write an effortpost about how TheMotte (or at least, a significant subset of it) falls into many of the same traps that the mainstream does when talking about sex relations, but haven't really gotten around to it and also realise that post is inevitably going to draw an utterly exhausting flood of dismissive rhetoric and criticism.

Even in heterodox communities like this one there's still quite a bit of dodging and downplaying when it comes to many topics surrounding sex relations, specifically those topics that relate to men's issues and especially those with an element to them that doesn't make women look fantastic. It's a thing that's very emotionally charged and controversial even for a community whose purpose is to discuss topics outside of the Overton window, and bringing up these topics seems to elicit from people quite a bit of pearl-clutching and emotional appeal and fervent attempts to justify their knee-jerk reactions to things they'd rather not confront. Hell, I've seen more pushback here on this than HBD. (Meanwhile in the broader public sphere female claims of victimisation are constantly treated as a pressing social issue even when the core claim is incredibly questionable.)

Really, the discomfort ultimately just seems to come down to something deeper and much more instinctual: "Men who complain about their situation as men (and especially those who do so at the expense of those who possess a greater social claim to protection, like women) are inherently low status". In the case of the dating market, that disgust is further amplified by the stigma that already attaches to sexually unsuccessful males. And my posting and engagement with people on the topic has slowed partially because it's really started to hit home that the asymmetry in discourse surrounding sex relations might be unfixable.

EDIT: clarity

also realise that post is going to draw an utterly exhausting flood of dismissive rhetoric and criticism.

Which is why I dropped the bomb before leaving my house for the day out lol.

Frankly, comments like this decrease my sympathy for men who have issues getting a relationship substantially. It seems little different from the incel fantasizing about the "day of the rope". The sexless men will rise up! And take what's theirs! And all the Chads and Staceys who have wronged them will get whats coming to them! Yawn.

SO there is a certain...manner of speaking that certain men adapt when talking about thing that are difficult, or challenging, or make them feel a feeling that they dislike etc. They want to position themselves as a serious intellectual but also someone who is wrestling with some kind of inner demons, making them even more intelligent and mysterious. it is particularly pronounced when they are trying to position their own pain or discomfort as the most important thing in the world while using very flowery language, the kind one might find in an overwrought fantasy novel.

Overworked vocabulary? Centering their feelings? Thinking they are smarter than they are? Can you imagine Rastling Majere from Dragonlace saying exactly those words?

Dying Wizard.

  • -20

Well, and, if we're repeating ourselves,

I think the reason for this performative callousness is precisely the intuition that men who don't cut it in the sexual market are pathetic non-threatening worms (at worst, some outliers will become school shooters or rapists) and can be safely utilized as fuel for minor self-affirmation in glib offhand remarks.

If not for your predictable, inflexible exercise in glib remarks about Chads and incels and shiet, signaling being a higher-status male in an environment where it's a pointless tactic (has anyone ever found a mate through The Motte, or founded a gang?), this would have been an «inflammatory claim without evidence» I guess.

Now that we've established that we both see each other as cringeworthy posers, do you have anything to say on the object level?

Your explanation of my actions evinces a quite poor theory of mind on your part.

Now that we've established that we both see each other as cringeworthy posers, do you have anything to say on the object level?

Sure. I think your analysis of the motivations of the parties involved and the causal forces at work is far too simplistic. Many groups in society have gotten their way by methods other than threatening violence. Similarly the notion that the current crop of young sexually frustrated men would burn down society for not giving them a girlfriend is absurd. Maybe there are some vocal incels/MGTOWs/whatever online that believe something like that but most people, including single sexless men, like society and all the benefits that flow from it. I think a very small percentage (<1) entertain anything like this idea and it will be very difficult for them to convince others to join them.

  • -11

Similarly the notion that the current crop of young sexually frustrated men would burn down society for not giving them a girlfriend is absurd.

Why are governments like Ireland's (IIRC) dedicating resources to "incel terrorism," then? Why did the PLO marry off their armed wing that carried out the Munich Massacre?

It seems you’re denying the entire category of legitimate claims. If it all comes down to power relations, there is no fundamental difference between single women complaining about fatphobia, black activists threatening to burn down cities if they don’t get handouts, incels, and groups genuinely wronged.

I don’t think a threat makes a right. You’re going to need more than that. At present, on that issue, the case for why their interests should take precedence over those of others is unclear to me. And even if you’re the hardbitten realist and my beliefs are false, those ideals will determine my actions in the political struggle.

It does matter what people think. After all, women didn’t attain what we believe to be a privileged position in society by threatening to burn it down, did they? And it wasn’t the power and threats of the slaves that brought about their emancipation.

It seems you’re denying the entire category of legitimate claims.

Pretty much, yeah. I mean I have a sense of intuitive morality that I believe is informed by the deep structure of the world, simple things like reciprocity being objectively desirable, the first aggressor being in the wrong, etc., – but in the end, such sensibilities are arbitrary aesthetics and can only be legitimized and normalized by political fiat. The only way it could have been otherwise would be if there was a Creator whose intentions for the Universe include ranking of its elements along some specific moral axis.

I have never been able to tell if people who act as if they have access to objective morality (one that others will recognize as such, even!) are more Machiavellian, or just lacking meta-awareness (and whether there is any difference).

I don’t think a threat makes a right.

That's the neat part: a sufficient threat can make you reconsider, at least for purposes of political action – and in a generation or two, for all other purposes too. Sufficient threats effect concessions, and concessions become norms, and norms become the letter and the spirit and the legitimizing justice behind the law.

It does matter what people think.

I agree. Right now, your best bet is that 30% of young men who are effectively emasculated will think «fair enough, I am not entitled to anyone lowering their standards». And perhaps 40 or 50% next.

After all, women didn’t attain what we believe to be a privileged position in society by threatening to burn it down, did they?

I think they very much did, violence, intimidation and support of far left terrorist movements was a significant part of it. Although mainly it was still social shaming, public disturbances (shrieking, vandalism), and abuse of the male sense of pity – options obviously unavailable to young cis hetero men, who are also vastly more violent by default.

Incidentally, women have been having a pretty noisy demonstration just the other day here. I think they'll get all they want, and more, and then discover it hasn't made them any happier.

I’m unsure whether you think our beliefs about fairness affect us or not. It seems to matter for women, and you concede that we could convince incels to accept the status quo (might be sarcasm, though) like they do now, but you maintain that justice consists of nothing but threats.

I can’t help but notice the similarity to woke discourse (now I have to page @HlynkaCG ), which likewise never grants that some rights were handed over graciously. They deride beliefs as an irrelevant superstructure, which leaves nothing but identities exerting power in self-interest, leading to such crushing arguments as ‘you’re a white male’. In these discussions it’s more like, ‘My lady, due to your wonderfulness and the relative cheapness of the gametes, you could never understand my plight, thus I only have my sword’.

I’m unsure whether you think our beliefs about fairness affect us or not.

They do, and they are subject to change because of threats and other external stimuli.

and you concede that we could convince incels to accept the status quo (might be sarcasm, though) like they do now, but you maintain that justice consists of nothing but threats.

There's no contradiction here. «Incels» or like @urquan properly says young sexless men who may one day stop being incels, accept it conditional on the sense of the threat being enough to outweigh the sense of unfairness and vague promise of potential upsides from chaos that men under pressure sometimes feel (and more importantly, conditional on availability of copes, which is why wokeness in games is such an irritant).

If the pressure increases, or more capable men are demoted into incels (even if the bottom 30% on attractiveness perfectly coincides with the bottom 30% on general ability to get shit done, which it does not, the 30th percentile man is not nothing, and the 50th percentile man would be more of something). it may not be enough.

which likewise never grants that some rights were handed over graciously.

The woke are of course rational to do so, because the claim that your rights have been handed over graciously serves solely to imply that they could have been not handed over – or may be withdrawn, if you don't behave as was expected upon them being handed over. It's usually a negotiation tactic to overstate your degree of control over the situation and discourage escalation of demands.

But I also think they are correct objectively. Some people can be persuaded by peaceful means. Heck, some could even be proactively sympathetic while not sharing your burdens in any way, like white Abolitionists were.* In the end, there remains at best a minority of disagreeable profiteers of the status quo who seek to maintain it, and you should hope they will be intimidated into submission peacefully, by the new consensus. But, well, you see – when intimidation is necessary, violence is always around the corner.

This reminds me:

...Neither could the suffragists point to any laws that would be passed under the new regime, since everything on their wish list—higher education, inheritance rights, guardianship of children, divorce reform, factory laws—had already been granted. (So much for the argument that power yields only to force.) Sometimes it seemed like the antis were the only ones who anticipated any practical consequences to follow from suffrage. Of course, the effects they had in mind were things like the routinization of suffragette tactics: blowing up buildings, shouting down public speakers, pouring acid down pillar-boxes, slashing priceless paintings, horsewhipping ministers on the street.

Ultimately, though, women needn't use violence the way that men have to.

* Notice how this possibility is effortfully mocked and denied when applied to this topic. No, the only reason one could be willing to speak in incels' favor is being one, a filthy lying nig fag incel, ergo inherently undeserving of anything better than sensible chuckles and strawmen.

I think it's a completely reflexive, unthinking, subhuman reaction, just a monkey dangling his balls in the interlocutor's face because the situation feels like a natural opportunity to show the goods.

But again: it is informed by the wisdom of public negotiations, and thus rational, even if not quite helpful specifically here.

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Sexually frustrated young men are a moral problem, but even if you don't agree, they are a well-known political problem. Your problem too. You are playing with fire.

Modern society has more defense mechanisms and is refining the ones it has for precisely this reason.

  1. Plentiful cheap entertainment and pleasure to blunt male aggression via degeneracy.

  2. An ever increasing system of controls and surveillance to chase for "radicalization" in any online or media space. This system can be vastly more granular than most surveillance systems in the past; corporate moderators, researchers and actual government agents can track smaller and smaller accounts and users now than someone might have been able to follow a random who only had a telephone or not even that.

  3. Related to 2: this also allows the crushing of any figure for males to rally around, from the milquetoast types like Jordan Peterson to the imo probably legitimately misogynistic and criminal like Andrew Tate.

  4. Attempts to control the academy and so to educate such men into the right mindset to blunt violence (some form of self-hating, self-blaming false consciousness).

A real gauntlet for radicalized men to run. I doubt their frustration amount to much.

Speaking personally, I'm not that worried about Andrew Tate. Partly because a lot of what Tate says was far more mainstream only a few decades ago, just in a slightly different language, and second of all, Tate's audience isn't 20-something incels. It's horny 14 & 15 years olds. Now, as a former horny 14-year-old boy, of course, they're frustrated.

But, the reality is, most of these 14-year-old boys will have some sort of relationship in high school. Guess what, once the option is a makeout session/handjob/etc. or continuing to watch Tate or some other dumb streamer, guess what the horny teenage boy is going to choose? Like, it's obviously not great, but I don't think it's the crisis people think it is.

But, the reality is, most of these 14-year-old boys will have some sort of relationship in high school.

Why do you think this? Only 35% of teens have been in a relationship and I'd assume these people are less likely to be Tate fans.

The system of anti-radicalization controls is really bad relative to what it could be. Far-right twitter users get suspended every few months, but continue to 'radicalize' people. It's certainly less effective than past forms of social control like 'exile/prison for saying something illegal', and dissent existed in those too. The first point has at least 20x the effect of the second.

The most likely outcome won't be any kind of incel revolution, but a constant drag on the economy as more and more young men permanently check out in favor of a minimal amount of wage labor to survive and spend on cheap electronic entertainment. It won't destroy the country, but it'll make it worse off, both for the limited lives those men will lead and for the missing value to society (economic and interpersonal) they won't create.

The basics of arguing? Latter half of your comment is bulverism.

OK, granting everything, what can be done? This is personal business, so liberal precepts I adhere to preclude any kind of heavy-handed intervention. Do you want government ads aimed at women imploring them to tamper their expectations, government girlfriends, or what ?

Do you want government ads aimed at women imploring them to tamper their expectations, government girlfriends, or what ?

I actually don't want anything at all.

I saw a weakness is discourse and pointed it out.

I can get behind that. All is clouded by desire.

then a random man would have to be top 10% in terms of looks for the expected utility for women of having sex with him to turn positive.

Yet as far as I am aware, the first the woman sees on tinder is looks, and ones ranking on them is considered to be important by those that advise men as to how to increase their match rate. Would apperance play second fiddle to character in what women value, suggestions to hire a professional writer to write ones bio would be more common than suggestions to hire a pro-photographer.

and also all women are at least slightly chubby.

What is the negative trait men on tinder posses, which is mirror of this?

Yet as far as I am aware, the first the woman sees on tinder is looks, and ones ranking on them is considered to be important by those that advise men as to how to increase their match rate. Would apperance play second fiddle to character in what women value, suggestions to hire a professional writer to write ones bio would be more common than suggestions to hire a pro-photographer.

Do people actually read/write bios on Tinder, and does however much space it offers for them convey enough of a signal about the traits women actually care about? (To begin with, if we're talking about Tinder, surely it already represents a biased sample of women, namely those who like the idea of swiping on hunks for a fling)

What is the negative trait men on tinder posses, which is mirror of this?

There doesn't have to be one. I don't dispute that there is some inbalance in terms of how much men like the average woman vs. how much women like the average man. However, the chart does not need reflect the scale of that imbalance, any more than the proposed "income to like" chart would reflect the scale of men's dislike for the negative trait in question. At the extreme, we could pick a completely irrelevant trait ("degree of preference for cracking breakfast eggs on the dull side"), and get a chart which would be uniformly one or the other colour given the slightest imbalance.

Since I've been called out explicitly and was the one who made the "just about exercise dictatorial demand". I'll defend my thesis a little. Which I think requires a 10,000 word blogpost to express in detail such that I can't be gotchad, but I have to leave out crucial details when arguing for it on forums, because no I am not writing 10,000 words for someone to potentially "tldr didn't read" it or not understand it in detail.

You are correct. That plot is just about the worst-case scenario for men. The reason is, as you said, it zeroes out all the variables but looks. And doing that is somewhat still true to men's attraction functions but not womens. Fair enough!

The second point you make is that the (leading) question also skews the outcomes the way it does because of what fundamentally boils down to "spreading seed across the lands vs choosing the best seed". So a question like "if you met this person, you had a great time, they said some funny jokes, your life values converged, they have a good career, would you consider dating this person" would decompress the plot a little for men, also true. I understand your proposal of using an arbitrary variable producing just as damning results.

Here's the kicker. Why is it getting worse for young men then? Why does reality tends towards as limit of time goes to infinity looks more like the plot than less?

Given its evident the environment online dating creates is terrible for men for XYZ reasons (women do exercise dictatorial demand in OLD and that is not up for debate), what do we do about that? Perhaps create a maximally friendly environment where young people could attract each other in real life and where the men can leverage their relative status, charisma, sense of humor and pheromones or whatever to win over a lady? Yeah, we are totally doing that.

https://www.businessinsider.com/most-american-couples-meet-online-2016-9

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy473x/our-deepest-fears-realized-most-couples-meet-online-now

Let me hit you with another plot. [Equally pernicious as 'Met online' goes to the moon 🚀, is that 'met through friends' is cratering, which honestly IMO is the best way to do it.][Article above contains non truncated y-axis]

And then we shut down the world, closed off schools and workplaces, and further exacerbated that trend.

Do you think this does not have an evaporative cooling effect on dating culture? As more and more people (a plurality at the moment, majority soon) internalize that the only places to attempt to swoon women is through a screen on a phone? What about tabooing relationships in workplaces, don't you think they will come for the colleges next (it's already verboten within departments, students in maybe a decade or two)? There has already been years of feminist propaganda that says you should not approach women in public ever (yes only applies to unattractive people, I can read between the lines, but it's not about the men, it's about the broader culture)

So what does a man who looks into the future conclude? Yes in an ideal world the 60-70th percentile man is not screwed, but we are doing everything we could to make the world as unindeal the best we can! And believe me if you are using social media used by zoomers, it's plenty evident marginally above average guys are feeling the squeeze.

And I hate reiterating for the 1000th time, I am not saying I am getting crushed! I am pointing out that a squeeze exists and it's pressing ever so harder by the day, many will get crushed, I don't have to get crushed to point out that a squeeze exists, please refrain from taking the conversation in that direction and offering unsolicited advice, let's stay on the object level and reach/diverge on a consensus on as to whether a squeeze exists or not, because the evidence clearly points to it existing.

And honestly, its tiring all the anecdotal evidence the skeptics put out, maybe bring receipts just one time? I get it the economy isn't bad you and all your friends whose dads work at Deloitte got you guys jobs at KPMG, I know people can still get jobs. I know that. I know you think your anecdotes are low error, I think mine are toobut anecdotes of cultural trends and anecdotes of personal life attributes are not made equal.

And also I hate to bring more heat but, there are no "attractive people" in Academia, just being moderately fit among a bunch of pasty non lifters and hunchbacks codes you as attractive, be honest about the attractiveness level of the women your academic peers are pairing up with, I notice that "nerds" have a tendency to grossly overrate the attractiveness of their partners. Let's be honest with ourselves those Academia poly harems are positively horrific not the stuff wet dreams are made of.

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I also think that there's generally been a rise in female and male interest siloing as a result of the great balkanization of media and interests. A lot of guys I know just don't really have plausible pathways to meeting single females outside of the apps, unless they're going to explicitly start taking up feminine-coded hobbies expressly for the purposes of finding a mate.

Especially now that the risk-reward of workplace fraternization is pretty damned horrible if you're in any sort of a career role.

What if the whole problem is "equality" catching up with men and catching them unaware? Women have been plagued by having to invest into their looks and "personality" to attract a mate:

  • improve your face by applying makeup and styling your hair

  • improve your body by wearing the right clothes and shoes

  • improve your social standing by having the right friends and the right hobbies

  • and so on

In a relatively monogamous world where marriage was expected, they had to compete against each other: if you wanted a husband from the top third of the distribution, you had to take make sure you're in the top third yourself. Men, on the other hand, didn't really have to compete among themselves: first of all, they weren't evaluated just by their looks and personality, and second, why bother?

And now, when casual dating is a thing, men suddenly find themselves squished into a narrow band of absolute attractiveness, while women no longer have to run as fast as they can just to stay in the same place, so that when it's time to get married they can settle down with the best possible option.

Those charts where men rate women as 5 on average and women rate men as 2 on average? Truth in television, because it's not a relative scale, it's an absolute scale. Women have been pushing the envelope of what it means to be viscerally attractive for centuries, of course men suck at that. Can you imagine treating your face, your body, your wardrobe, your hobbies and your social circle from the time you're 12 as means to maximize your attractiveness to women? Of course those who manage to learn that or win the genetic lottery get all the girls - it's lonely at the top.

Sooner or later the dating market will fix itself. Men will learn to preen themselves, will know that "foundation" is not just a construction term or a sci-fi novel, will be able to answer what the best and the worst parts of their body are and will act on that knowledge. Women will gradually adjust their expectations, relearning the value of male companionship. But the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, as Keynes said. Or virile, in this case.

I think 'the Squeeze' is a great term for that. Women are gaining power in all aspects and are now putting the 'squeeze' on men. But I also see some problems with that.

The environment I grew up in always held up a very critical lens towards society. Being an active and earnest participant in the rat race of social status and wealth was looked down upon. 'What matters is what's on the inside, not the outside' and other similar tropes. You shouldn't chase personal aspirations that are guided by shallow and vain markers of status and wealth. Instead, aim towards the greater good of how to make the world a better place. That, ultimately, was the true 'high status'.

I feel that the core of that sentiment is inherently humanistic and altruistic. Maybe it's because I grew up with it but I automatically assumed that a lot of the aspirations of any well meaning do-gooder person, especially here, came from a similar place.

So coming from that kind of thinking I can't for the life of me understand how anyone can in any way shape or form look at 'the squeeze' and go 'this is fine'.

From a sort of ingroup/outgroup pathology perspective I understand why there exists a lot of 'you deserve it' rhetoric, like you espouse here. But then what? Because it was bad for women we can now do it to men because... what, we hate them? Two wrongs will make a right? I had sort of assumed, particularly because of my environments rhetoric, that pushing people, men and women, to focus on looks was... bad? I certainly got the feeling that it was the case after being inundated with news stories about the dangers of women being too thin because that's what fashion show runway models looked like. Though those stories are now a distant memory.

Aside from that I find your assumptions about equality harmful to your argument as a whole. Men won't turn to makeup to charm women. We already know what men turn to. Steroids, MMA and drugs. I've already seen drastic societal changes where I live because of this very distinct change in social dynamics. A drastic escalation of violence at all ages, drug use at all ages and status symbols like cars and clothes.

I mean, from an EA perspective, is it useful for everyone to have to spend more time on status, wealth and looks in an eternal 'arms race'? Maybe it's my anti-equality priors shining through, but I don't think 'equality' is doing anyone any good here.

In a relatively monogamous world where marriage was expected, they had to compete against each other: if you wanted a husband from the top third of the distribution, you had to take make sure you're in the top third yourself. Men, on the other hand, didn't really have to compete among themselves: first of all, they weren't evaluated just by their looks and personality, and second, why bother?

What are you even talking about? Are you referencing some kind of immortal man who was dating people in their 20s 50 years ago and is still dating people in their 20s? twenty year olds today have no concept of what dating was like in the past. Even defining "a husband in the third of the distribution" implies men were competing with each other.

Those charts where men rate women as 5 on average and women rate men as 2 on average? Truth in television, because it's not a relative scale, it's an absolute scale. Women have been pushing the envelope of what it means to be viscerally attractive for centuries

You must not be seeing the same people I'm seeing. Women lead men in obesity albeit only by a bit. In every way men have become less attractive women have also become less attractive.

Women have been pushing the envelope of what it means to be viscerally attractive for centuries, of course men suck at that. Can you imagine treating your face, your body, your wardrobe, your hobbies and your social circle from the time you're 12 as means to maximize your attractiveness to women?

In the United States, 84% of men and 80% of women are overweight or obese. Or if you look at obesity alone 50.8% of men and 53.4% of women are obese. This is lower for younger people, so the dating market is a bit better, but not so much as to obviate the point. This is not a population where women are "pushing the envelope" of attractiveness or where they are heavily optimizing their attractiveness from a young age. It is a population where both men and women are unhealthy in a visible way that makes them less attractive, in roughly equal proportions. And weight seems to have an even bigger impact of female attractiveness than male attractiveness. (Now, this makes the rise in overweight/obese people itself a prime candidate for the rise in sexlessness, it seems to make sense that if people were less attractive they would be less interested in having sex with each other. But people seem to think there isn't enough of a correlation for this to make sense, though I haven't looked into the statistics to check. I also don't know what the statistics look like if you look into something a bit more subtle, like if a sedentary lifestyle reduces sex-drive or motivation or something.)

The idea of women relentlessly optimizing for attractiveness is prominent in our culture, not only because the people doing that are more visible but because of its role in feminist rhetoric and pop culture discourse. Similarly, overweight and obese people are stratified by education/class/intelligence/race/social-circle, such that for many people their prevalence might seem like societal dark-matter which shows up in statistics but not real life. (Similar to that large chunk of the population which can't do simple intellectual tasks like reading a bar graph.) But we shouldn't mistake their prominence in discourse for something with much relevance to population-level statistics.

Now, one upshot of this is that if you're a normal weight it's unclear how much statistics about dating apply to you. But normal weight people probably tend to want to date someone else who is also normal weight, not just for an attractive and healthy partner but because of all the other things like class/intelligence/social-circle it correlates with, so this doesn't really correspond to being favored in pursuing that goal either.

And weight seems to have an even bigger impact of female attractiveness than male attractiveness.

Is this true? Maybe it was back in the 90s. I'm sure some of these "overweight or obese" women look like fertility goddesses (though not all of them obviously).

I was just going off anecdotes regarding what people on the internet say influences attractiveness for them and others. I tried looking for a study to provide something a bit more substantial but didn't find anything useful after a couple searches on Google Scholar. So I tried asking ChatGPT ("Is the impact of obesity on attractiveness different for men and women? Cite your sources.") and it actually gave me real studies, one of which was what I was looking for, though its description of what the study said was not accurate. And looking up the study found there was also an equivalent one done for women. This is the first time ChatGPT has provided me with useful information, out of the 4 times I have tried using it as an information source.

Anyway, it's a pretty small study so maybe there's a better one out there, but it shows what I would expect. It's from 2005 if you think it has dramatically changed for some reason, but I doubt that, particularly since the results were broadly similar for the different cultures of Britain and Malaysia.

Male physical attractiveness in Britain and Malaysia: A cross-cultural study

Female physical attractiveness in Britain and Malaysia: A cross-cultural study

Per Table 2 in both studies, BMI accounted for 84.1% of the variance in female attractiveness rated by British men, but only 53.7% of the variance in male attractiveness rated by British women.

I believe in the squeeze.

I think I'd basically internalized it as a thing that exists, and that this post had more of an effect on making me realize other people don't think it exists. I'd probably end up in arguments with those people and we'd just talk past each other, not realizing that we have a fundamentally different view of reality.

It always felt like there was something in the water ... or in the culture that just didn't want men to have sex. I kind of remember in college the first time I realized that women actually enjoy sex. I was dating my college girlfriend, and a new video game had come out. She was texting me to get me to come over to her place. Normally she only needed a light suggestion and I'd run over to her dorm, we'd pretend like we were hanging out to do something else, and then inevitably fuck like rabbits. But this time I was being reluctant cuz I wanted to play this new video game. For the first time she got more explicit in the text messages saying that she wanted to have sex. My mind was blown that she actually wanted to have sex. This "revelation" continued to repeat itself for just about every girlfriend and one night stand I had after that.

At some point I had a talk with my mother about this. She is a biologist by training and never had the normal awkwardness talking about sex things with her kids. She was flabbergasted that I had this idea about women not enjoying sex, she was adamant that she hadn't taught me that. I still don't really understand where I got the idea from. Culture is what I choose to blame, because no one ever said it explicitly: "Men shouldn't have sex. Its selfish, gross, and just plain wrong."

I was very horny as a young man, so despite being aware of the societal conditioning I just went right through it and kept trying to have sex. Its safe to say that my mid to late teens and early twenties were basically consumed with the pursuit of women and sexual gratification. It probably would have been better and more healthy for me if I spent less time so obsessed with sexual gratification. Society had a set of brakes meant to slow me down, but they failed on me, and they probably failed on every other male that they were meant to be applied to.

Instead those brakes seemed to work really well on the guys that needed a push. Scott Alexander and Scott Aaronson both describe it better than I could, and from an internal viewpoint. I also had plenty of friends that I saw fall into that pattern. Many of them seem to have made it out, but it took a while.

I can't help but feel there are a set of guys out there that really should slow the hell down. They aren't doing themselves any favors, the women they sleep with any favors, or society in general any favors. But there is no easy way of targeting those specific men, so society just kind of targets all men. I knew some of these guys, they'd have sex with a different woman almost every night of the week. I was hanging out with one of these guys and he complained to me that the night before he'd messed up his scheduling and thus ended up having sex with two different women the same night. I was like is that normal? And he responded "no, I'm normally better about that, it only happens once a month or so". That guy needed brakes.

In the end, I don't know if I really see things improving in the future. Society and individuals keep getting pissed off at the men that are the equivalent of 18 wheelers barrelling through the roadblocks they setup. The roadblocks work just fine on all the guys that are the equivalent of ford pintos or mopeds. Its a society wide Chinese finger trap, where the correct solution is to relax and push into the trap, rather than use force and try to pull away. If society made it really easy for guys to have sex and meet women, then they'd all start pairing off together. And their would be fewer targets for the guys just trying to sleep with everything that moves.

This is the first time im coming across the brake analogy, I like it and will think about it on as to whether it fits into my current model, because it certainly explains some things, but i need to think on whether its just a side effect or not.

Evidently, I might not have the healthiest ideas about sex or relationships. I too absolutely could not fathom that women enjoy sex at all. The first time a woman moaned when having sex with me, it was a surreal experience. I literally could not believe my lying ears. I dont know who to blame for this either, I definitely did not seek this out either and no one told me as much in explicit terms, maybe the brakes worked on me, I dont know but somethings in the water and I will point that out.

The old joke among incels is that "of course women want to have sex; they just don't want to have sex with you".

Women certainly can enjoy sex... with the right guy, in the right place at the right time, if he does the right things to please her, and so on and so forth. Saying flatly that "women don't enjoy sex" is of course very incorrect, but there are still authentic, irreconcilable differences in how men and women relate to sex and how they experience sexual desire. Women, on average, will never be as radically DTF as men are. They can't afford to be that profligate with their scarce reproductive resources.

A female friend once told me, "putting a dick in your pussy feels like putting your finger in your nose; it doesn't really feel like anything". Her experience isn't universal, but it's common enough. Female sexual desire is more complicated than just "I am having sex and sex is awesome".

While the orgasm gap definitely goes a long way to explaining why women are less radically DTF than men, I think that male sexual desire is also more complicated than "I am having sex and sex is awesome." Yassine put it well in the latest Bailey podcast when he said that the straight male desire for sex is mostly about status. Men want to have sex with the most physically attractive woman they can find willing to have sex with them, because of the status/ego boost. "She's so hot, she could bang literally any guy she wants, and she chose to bang ME!" This explains the disconnect in some of the other discussions in this thread around "incels should stop complaining about how hard it is to get laid, it's really not that hard, all you have to do is X" where X is a list of things like going to bars all the time, learning how to chat up women, learn how to dress better, etc. And at that point it starts to sound like a lot of work. And if you have to put a lot of work into getting laid, suddenly it's not such a status boost, is it? Now she's not banging me because she chose me out of all these other guys, she's banging me because I was the only guy who was willing to flatter her for long enough.

There's certainly an equivalent for straight women but it's the commitment after the sex that is important, not the sex itself. "He's so smart and successful, he could choose to commit to any chick he wants, and he's committing to me!" And I think "can't afford to be that profligate with their scarce reproductive resources" translates to "can't afford to hoe around too much or it will be impossible to get any high-status male to commit to me" in modern times.

the straight male desire for sex is mostly about status

This is a ridiculous assertion. If sexual desire were mostly about status then substitutes for sex would also be about that. But the obvious substitutes (masturbation and pornography) do not confer status. Instead, they mimic the physical qualities of sex. I won't argue that status plays no role at all, but it plays much less of a role than the actual sensations do.

With large cities and many niches, people can find communities to belong to that have selected for people just like them. My gym is 95% men, other gyms are 95% women. My job is all male, my hobbies are all male and not just that but select for people with specific personalities. Meeting through friends is hard when the friendship circle is too similar. Most likely people vote the same as their friends, have the same level of education, similar age group, gender and so forth.

The only really open public arena are bars, but they generally aren't much better than tinder, just more time-consuming.

Personally, I hired a photographer who does viral marketing for fashion in order to go from the 60-70th percentile to the top 10%. I strongly believe a lot of guys could greatly improve their looks by having better pics. I took thousands in order to get good ones. It is hard to take good photos, and having 20 pics to choose from in your phone's gallery is guaranteed failure. Women have often taken thousands of selfies and learned the art. Most men have no idea how to take good photos. Good cameras help a ton, lighting is key, and practice helps. Men are underselling themselves by using awful pics.

I believe a future trend is going to be better arenas for people to meet such as single's nights, speed dating and other ways for people to meet irl.

The only really open public arena are bars, but they generally aren't much better than tinder, just more time-consuming.

I feel like even the crowd of 'people who are not bar people who are actively going to bars to mingle' is kind of dying out, similar with clubs and stuff. 50 years ago just hanging out at the local pub was far more of a mingling opportunity due to lack of options, but now for most people the clubs are a very infrequent thing or only a rite of passage for a year or two.

I do also agree on the male/female interest thing. I believe the genders are far more self-segregating than they were in recent history, meaning that organic meetings are just harder to come by. I similarly managed to grind online apps to the point of doing okay on them, but if the apps were to shut down tomorrow I'd have no idea how I'd happen across a girlfriend with any consistency. Workplace fraternization has a horrible risk/reward and I'm senior enough it's very unlikely I'd run into a female coworker who I wouldn't be doubly-barred from by relative rank/power dynamic. Vast majority of my hobbies are sausage fests, and whilst 'alright go pick up a girl-dominated hobby as a tribute' is a thing, it feels disingenuous.

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