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Notes -
This is a frequent subject of contention between me and a particular friend. He maintains that heightened rates of male romantic lonliness are almost entirely due to women refusing to date anyone who isn't in the top e.g. 20% of looks/status/earning power (take your pick), whereas it seems absurd to me to ignore the fact that so much more of people's free time is spent in isolation rather than in social settings where men and women are likely to meet and hit it off.
Can you be more explicit about your point of contention with your friend? It seems to me like those things can both be true, and in fact reinforce each other. When people are meeting in person at social settings with a healthy gender ratio, two things happen. First, you just meet a lot more single people of the opposite gender. But also, the women are a lot more friendly and responsive. They'll talk to you, give you their number, maybe go on a date with you, just because "hey, why not, this guy seems nice." Whereas if you meet through something like online gaming, social media, or dating apps, they just get swamped with so much male attention from thirsty simps that they all have their guard up, and shut down any guy who they don't absolutely love.
They're absolutely not mutually exclusive - the point of contention is whether or not supposed female hypergamy accounts for the majority of the changes we're seeing in the dating landscape (my friend's POV is that it does).
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