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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.
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...
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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.
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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.
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.
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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...
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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.
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