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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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A question: why do people believe that people - especially men - who are unsuccessful with romantic relationships are unsuccessful because of a lack of moral virtue? A man who's 30 years old and has never gone on a date or kissed anyone is assumed by default to be some kind of fat, basement-dwelling loser. When he is in fact a short but fit engineer, or a corporate lawyer, or a programmer for Google, he's then roundly criticized for being misogynistic or lacking in moral virtue. Occasionally, darker - much darker - suspicions are raised: let's say that there are reasons why these men frequently avoid being around unrelated children. It seems difficult for people to comprehend that an apparently healthy, gainfully-employed individual could fail to meet with romantic success despite a decade of trying...unless there is something seriously morally wrong with them.

Someone who fails at being a salesman, or a business owner, or even at playing basketball worth a damn...doesn't get that. "I'm a nice, decent, hardworking guy...but I can't sell shoes at Nordstrom, I've been working hard to do this and have dreamt of being a salesman since I was 12" is a kind of absurd complaint. He might be a fine human being and maybe he'd make a great heavy equipment operator, but he just doesn't have the talent for sales. We don't think there's something morally wrong with our hero because he can't sell shoes, or because he's a short, clumsy guy that sucks at basketball.

I've never heard anyone suggest that it was a moral failing. That sounds like a completely made up strawman to victim oneself against.

Obviously the reverse causality makes sense: bad people should be less datable. But i e never even heard anyone suggest this should is an is as it's plainly not real.

Where are you getting this moral failing narrative from? You need to justify the premise, because it sounds like extrapolated wallowing or self-loathing.

Doing it on the meta level is pretty funny, I have to admit. 10/10

But like others who point it out in this thread I've seen it both online and in real life. Consider how "incel" went from a morally neutral descriptor to a moral condemnation, with the absurd side effect of married men people want to denounce constantly being called involuntary celibates.

Self loathing is certainly bad, but it seems fair to notice that romantically unsuccessful men are about as low on the totem of sympathy as you can get. Even criminals and prostitutes are more sympathetic. You have to get to pedophiles or something to find people with less cachet.

Consider how "incel" went from a morally neutral descriptor to a moral condemnation

I can't consider it because I've never seen it except in these scenarios where i'm assured it's true by its detractors. I especially haven't seen this in real life.

romantically unsuccessful men are about as low on the totem of sympathy as you can get.

Again, Ive never seen this. Get better friends people. Romantically unsuccessful men are to the contrary some of the most sympathetically talked about people I know. Even where it's not sympathetic and just pathetic, that's not the same as immoral.

Doing it on the meta level is pretty funny, I have to admit. 10/10

If you're contorting my comment into moral repudiation of someone for specifically being poorly undatable, I think we've found the disconnect.

This looks like nothing more than a victimhood mentality looking for a bully.

Even if it were somehow morally (I'm not) maligning the OP it's not for being single or unlucky in love.

If a Jewish guy stands up in a movie theater and shouts, 'AntiSemites are trying to silence me!!", His point isn't proven when people shush him.

Similarly, if you come in and say, 'how come I'm morally maligned for being undatable!", I'm not proving your point by repudiating that claim.

You misunderstand, the meta moral condemnation I'm pointing at is precisely the idea that such complaints could only come from victim mentality, which is pretty clearly a moral error. This is different from the question at hand but it is funny because it's the same fallacious mechanism operating.

You're justworlding too: you haven't seen something bad happen so despite multiple people telling you it's happening it must be because of something inherent to the victims.

Just world theory has nothing to do with my skepticism.