If people took a minute to put their phones away and looked around once in a while, they’d notice that males and females tend to self-segregate, with the vast majority of each gender spending time only with others of their own gender. This behaviour is constant in schools, parties, coffee shops, you name it. I’ve traveled extensively around the world, and I’ve observed the same patterns everywhere. Males and females lead drastically different lives. People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.
> “People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.”
Quite the strawman. Does anybody claim that?
Women would certainly agree that social circles everywhere tend to be genderized. And part of the reason is a vicious cycle: men are not used to spending time with women, so they easily misunderstand the situation and get sexual or romantic ideas that are not reciprocated. And having to sort out this unwanted attention and the resulting emotions makes women even less likely to want to spend time with men.
There’s a reason why “the gay best friend” is a trope in American fiction featuring women. It’s not because gays are feminine — it’s because they don’t bombard women with their unprocessed feelings.
If you want to fix the situation, stop rambling about incels and start thinking of ways to get boys and girls to spend more time together at all ages. American parents still seem to tend to treat boys and girls as separate species.
I think the point he was getting at but failed to come around to was that men and women are different enough they don't actually want to spend time together all that much and historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex. Sure, there's some mutual interests there that'll get them hanging out together but it's pretty minor overall.
There's no big reason for a man who's gotten good at online dating or a women who doesn't actively want kids to date seriously or settle down unless they just happen to run across someone who's perfect for them and wants to lock it in.
>historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex.
For women it was also a fundamental question of literally living. Back when women were expected to be full-time housewives, women had to marry to quite literally not starve to death on the streets.
The advancement of gender equality to bring men and women, all mankind, to the same level of freedom and authority has undoubtedly played a significant role in the decline of romance and marriage.
That's a pretty odd take on history. You know women have always worked, right? Female life pre-20th century wasn't permanent housewifeing. They often worked from home in cottage industries, ran shops, took part in family owned businesses (often running the financial side) and many other jobs.
The reason there was pressure to raise a family - for both women and men - had nothing to do with gender equality. It was because there was no welfare state so people relied on their families and extended families to take care of them in old age and sickness.
The pressure to produce more humans was mostly to fuel the armies that need constant supply of young people to throw into the meat grinder; at least in the past centuries in Europe
If you were of high class like the nobility or mercantile, you had children to continue your powerful bloodline. You also married to sign off on alliances and cooperatives. Entire wars have been waged over familial ties and successors.
If you were of low class like the peasantry, you had children to have enough hands to till the fields.
If you were of middle class somewhere in-between, you had children for both of the above each to lesser degrees.
In the modern era there's simply less and less practical reasons to have children, not to mention the costs of childcare and rearing. On the bright side, at least we have less instances of war being waged because Lord Dickus Bigus wants to pork out on a lady and screw everyone else.
A meaningful life is a “big” reason to mate. Living a life in service to worthy people and to be served in turn.
I had a training marriage that ended amicably, and since then have been married 34 years, almost. I live with my wife, grown son, and his wife. My son just celebrate his 10 year anniversary.
I don’t know about “vast majority”. Mixed-gender friend groups are also very common, especially in larger metros. The two cultural shifts currently happening are 1. Loss of interest in “third spaces” (clubs, church) for mingling and 2. widening political divide between the genders.
Same thing as with teen girls mental health. Everything is not enough, everything is a red flag, every partner is toxic, every parent is a narcissist. All men are rapists, all immigrants are stealing jobs AND leeching on welfare. Echo chambers everywhere to divide and conquer.
And the worst part -- we chatting here and being smart are the ones who built it all to pay our own bills.
People were always lazy. What changed is being okay with being single compared to dealing with the least effort the other part puts into it (you yourself always put enough effort of course).
Call it unrealistic expectations and blame social media or empowerment and celebrate it or whatever. In the end somebody finds a way to feed on the resulting discontent and everybody is worse off as a result.
We were sold a model where having a career is the most important thing in life, at the expense of family and relationships. Because of that, the world gets richer but unhappier.
Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names.
We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological needs. Thousands of years of civilization teaches some lessons on what's important (and what's unfair and dangerous). We should look back for some ideas.
Career and grinding is not a goal, but is needed to afford an house and money to help your parents.
Apartment prices relative to income have gone greatly up. Thus, more grinding needed and some low wage occupations are priced out from the market altogether.
The question is why apartment prices keep going up and can we stop it.
Not OP but in a nutshell, everybody who could bought an condo downtown (Toronto + Vancouver especially but this is broadly true of the country) with a home equity loan from their main property as an investment, and the loan math only works if all properties are increasing in value and the interest rate stays very close to zero. Neither are true and unless something happens Canada could have our very own 2008 financial crisis. No biggie.
>Career and grinding is not a goal, but is needed to afford an house and money to help your parents.
It is for me. I have way more than I need to survive or help the people I love. But I want to progress my career and personal brand. I assume that's also true for many tech-millionaires who attends this site.
I think this understates the argument. I’ve been saying for a while that housing prices are the economic problem in much of the developed world. The. Singular. Most other things are in at least okay shape. Tuition and health care are nutty but they are less unavoidable than housing.
I've been raised in an environment where we talked with neighbours and so on - Now 50 after moving a few times - I feel many times people look at me weird when I say things like "Hi, Hey what's this dog breed", "Did you just move in?" or "If you need anything I'm in the house over there"... I'm not looking to build a relationship with everyone, but basic social skills are in some kind of drought.
There was recently a spate of people getting shot (or shot at) for knocking on someone’s door, or pulling into someone’s driveway. (Someone inevitably being an older white man.) How do you develop a sense of community with people who behave that way?
Luckily most people don’t want to live like that. It’s true that people have lost a lot of their ability to socialize, but the kind of hate you’re promoting takes a lot more work. It’s tiring for everyone.
My suspicion is it's the financialization of everything driven by fiance capitalism and enabled by the huge twentieth century population boom.
I know that sounds edgy but explaining it.
With the population surging you could just flat out ignore the need to have children and create the next generation. So the priority then became amassing wealth. As long as the working classes were still behaving like they were living under malthusian conditions that worked. But now the working classes have caught on and are either trying to acquire capital wealth or they're trying to just hang on.
So yeah the working class knows what economic reality they are living under and acting accordingly. Having few children in order to acquire wealth and funnel it to the smaller next generation. The tell this is true is that it's happening everywhere. And the longer a place has been operating where childhood mortality is low and you can acquire financial wealth the lower the birthrate. With the caveat that some places are more culturally amenable to that.
We are letting the most pathological idiots — incels, femcels, masculinity grifters, misogynists and misandrists, trolls — shape a whole generation’s views on gender dynamics and relationships.
Of course I guess it’s like other fields. Antivaxxers and people who think you can cure cancer with a juice cleanse lead health discourse. Conspiritainment grifters and unhinged fanatics shape politics.
Why?
This needs to be etched somewhere on a giant stone monument: trash maximizes engagement.
If you optimize any media for maximum engagement by the maximum number of people, you get trash. Two people walk past you on the street. One says “hi,” and the other smears themselves with peanut butter and clucks like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement?
Edit: I forgot porn. That’s a factor too and another way to maximize engagement that gives people ridiculous unrealistic views on sex.
This has always been true. It’s why “yellow journalism” was a term and why tabloids have always existed and why so much TV was always trash. But we’ve gotten so good at it with personalized feeds and algorithms that it’s become far too addictive and powerful. It’s becoming reality for too many people. This is an existential risk to our civilization at this point.
Banning TikTok is a start. Now do all the other ones.
Define "letting". This seems to me to be the same pattern as every other new communication medium. Sure, it's more addictive now. Do you think playing whack a mole with the definition of addictive will solve that problem? I don't.
I think the only way to get the outcome of "people less addicted to media and dumb ideas" is to make addiction uncool - and government can't do that. People are doing the social changes naturally already. Lots of people are off social media. People are quitting alcohol too, and porn. Those people will be more successful in life, and more likely to reproduce.
I'm not as optimistic about people learning, and addiction has never gone away.
I used to be more of a libertarian about things like financial regulation, but what changed my mind was watching markets and especially things like the cryptocurrency phenomenon where you really did have deregulation. All you get is scams because people keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. None of it is new. Ponzi schemes, bubbles, gambling, rug pulls, wildcat banking, all of it is hundreds of years old or more, but it keeps working because every generation falls for it anew because dopamine.
I think you'd have to re-architect the human dopamine system in very deep ways if you wanted to change this. We are very easy to hack.
It’s truly bizarre. I’m married and have a strong social life, but then I see things like this in my local subreddit where men just don’t want to go out and meet women.
As a "young single straight man" all I can really tell you is that I have utterly no desire nor interest when I have so many other things I could or should be doing instead.
And that’s the confusing thing to me. When I was in my 20s I spent most of my time outside of work being social. I worked 10-12 hour days. What are the things you’re doing that are a priority? I’m not judging - I’m honestly curious and want to understand.
Reading books, playing games, watching anime, conversations on IRC or Discord with long time friends, making stuff in the figurative garage that will never see the light of day...
The list goes on.
And that's besides life's necessities like work, chores around the house, cooking+eating...
The list goes on.
There's just so many god damn things I could or should be doing instead of marriage. I literally do not have the time and thus interest in marriage and all the things related to it. And no, the termination of my bloodline or what happens to my crap after my passing doesn't concern me.
Cool. Power to you. My take on things: I love being married, because I’m always with my best friend, and we’re partners to make all the “life’s necessities” much easier. Cooking+cleaning is a shared experience and not one persons job. Financial burdens lessen as a couple. Sometimes groceries just show up magically. And I always have someone to talk to. We also have different sleep schedules. I’m up early and either hack on a side project or go to the gym. Late at night she watches what she likes without needing to negotiate with my tastes.
I have several friends that would write EXACTLY what you wrote and there is absolutely nothing wrong with your way of life.
termination of the bloodline is a silly thing - however I can tell you from personal experience that having an offspring connects to humanity like nothing else and I feel for you that you won’t experience that part of human existence. it is a remarkable experience…
> I feel for you that you won’t experience that part of human existence
Certainly it's something my depression holds over my head every day. Everything I do is less fun when I consciously realize I'm removing my ancestors from the gene pool in participating in those things. It's like I can choose to put more value in other things besides offspring, but also... I can't? When it seems like every stranger around me is married and/or has children?
When I feel myself backed into a corner and only perceive the choice to call that decision sour grapes, I feel like something has gone seriously wrong...
Interesting. Women used to feel this pressure, wanting success and a career, but also wanting family and children. They looked at men with envy, thinking that men did get to have it all. But men are feeling that same tension.
I think it basically comes down to being finite. We want more than we can get. We have to choose, and we don't want to, because choosing means giving up something that we really want.
I suspect that your depression doesn't make it easier. But the overall struggle is a very common one.
>me? find a gal? nope siree. i simply have too many video games to play and anime to watch! this wolf rides solo. at the end of the day i simply couldnt imagine myself with a sweet little missus in my arms... honestly, i retch at the thought! id much rather hotglue my hatsune miku figurine
trust me brother, the day will come when video games, anime, and surrogate friendships get boring. the copes and distractions dont last forever.
It's not as if these men have willing marriageable women queueing up at their door.
They have not chosen to forego marriage and family in pursuit of these pointless nihilistic hedonistic hobbies. They seek comfort in them because marriage and family are unattainable.
A very common sentiment among young men is that "the juice ain't worth the squeeze".
There is a sense that the average man is being expected to meet increasingly demanding requirements - career, social, fitness, etc (some of which are literally impossible for many due to height, balding, or facial attractiveness) - for a shot at an overweight woman past her prime with dozens of flings and a couple abortions in her past, who will forever secretly think poorly of him, is only ever 5 minutes away from another fling with a random stranger on the app of her choice, and may at any moment become 'bored' and file for no-fault divorce ruining their family and finances.
Or we can do whatever we like for leisure, meet our sexual needs in whatever way we like (abstinence, prostitutes, casual sex, toys, porn, etc) and watch the world burn.
He could have a more balanced view for himself but that wouldn’t change the reality that he’s describing for everyone else (which is probably also shared by a large portion of the other gender).
I exercise, read books, try to learn instruments, look for work, and go to therapy weekly.
I have had strangers say to me that it's no problem if I just want to put myself out there and see who bites, but I do not see it that way. My (same-sex) best friend I knew for 6 years recently cut off all contact when I tried to set boundaries with them. It was the first time in my life I tried to assert myself and because I reaped the consequences I assumed I did something wrong. I read up online and understood logically I did nothing wrong. But fact is, it's been half a year and I haven't recovered from that friendship alone. And there were others like it. I don't have anything to replace that (flawed) relationship and the trauma of being discarded reopened all my pre-existing childhood-and-up trauma they already knew about so, I mean, yeah.
I talk to my therapist about it of course but that makes my current life no less of a torture. I've come to accept maybe that's how it will be.
What this tells me is I'm not ready for a relationship right now. It's my early 30's and I don't understand the basics yet. The way I was raised I've already been through enough confusing social rejection and socializing just demoralizes me nowadays. I'm not willing to go forward and date if I'm no longer interested in the first place because that isn't fair to the other party. I need to make friends before I am ready to date, having zero friends right now, and the interest for that isn't there either. It took me way too long for me to realize my heart wasn't in it and I was doing people a disservice when I need to work on myself first and foremost.
...not to mention I'm still looking for work after being laid off, but I felt no different while I was employed.
And before someone says these are flaws people should accept me for... they're not unfortunately. I'm beginning to suspect they're on the level of a personality disorder. Having enough previous less impactful diagnoses, I think it's on me by this point if I couldn't make anything out of them.
Dating is pretty hostile nowadays. There are a lot of pretty crazy expectations. Coupled with a low tolerance for not meeting those expectations.
The apps have created, for many people, a "grass is always greener on the next swipe" mentality. People who might be good partners are passed over because one or two things don't meet or exceed expectations.
Meeting in real life is better but it's still a lot of work. There really don't seem to be as many social scenes as there used to be. Especially as people get older, over the age of 30, the social scenes feature fewer and fewer single people.
As a cis white guy, it's very easy to get burnt out. Between ghosting and the "slow burn" mentality it just gets exhausting.
I'll also say that most men are pretty shitty. I have a lot of single female friends and we talk about this a lot. Men really do kind of just suck. I didn't used to believe it but they send me screenshots and it's pretty bad.
In general, people just have less social skills and lower tolerance for this stuff nowadays. Being single isn't as stigmatized as it used to be.
I’ll say that men in general suck in the same way that women in general suck. Both suck.
Being jaded and thinking only shit men exist is a very bad mentality. The women I know who didn’t stay jaded and pursued men who were reasonable and showed real interest back have been rewarded immensely. I’m in nyc right now and I see so many women hating every man because these gals only deal with men who refuse to settle down or commit. So many women I know are trying to get commitment from a man who doesn’t want to commit. They need to go to a different market segment but they refuse because the men who don’t commit have all the superficial things they want.
Right now, the biggest issue my sister have is how pushy men are with her, not 'commitment'. In general for the millenials, committed relationships are seeked by men more than women.
My SO confirmed me that me not being a 'forceur' (pushy man) during our first date and showing interest in what she does was probably the biggest two reasons she proposed me the second one.
> Right now, the biggest issue my sister have is how pushy men are with her, not 'commitment'.
I think it's a bit of both. I don't think a lot of women would care about the pushiness if it was with high commitment. It's a lack of commitment and pushiness that is what is uninteresting.
I'm not finding any lack of women who love to completely go nuts on the escalation ladder of a relationship if a guy is high commitment.
Ok, let me rephrase this: at least among women around my age or younger who don't seems care about commitment because a relationship is like the 4th item on their "to do" list, like ones who are pursuing a PhD or those seeking to build their business, pushiness seems to be way more of an issue than commitment.
I think if you're looking at women who don't prioritize a relationship then okay but who cares about what they want? It's like trying to sell a Econovan to someone who wants a 911.
People who want to date them? Or do you think men as well should prioritize seeking a relationship over their family, their friends and their jobs? Honestly i'd rather date women with balanced lives, then try to build onto that. Ultimately the relationship will become #1 for both of you (that happen with when the kid happen in my sample of 1).
>I can’t believe that a young single straight man wouldn’t be all over that event
I'm not young (neither I'm old - a bit over 30) anymore, but I would never go to such event when I was single. Dating events feel like stress, a lot of expectations to meet, and ultimately there's nothing I have in common with those people (or so I think). I always preferred dating in my social, work and hobby circles. I don't know if that's common, but anecdotally my friends feel and do the same.
I think this is the new norm and it will only get worse. Social media isn’t going anywhere and the amount of interconnectedness we have is also not going anywhere. Everyone will be in an environment where any social trend will spread like wildfire and you’ll have to deal with it.
I don’t think there’s much we can do. More likely to see full blown communism than some improvement to the way we’re dating now.
I’ve been single for nearly four years. On paper, I’ve got almost all the things someone is looking for. My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive. Social media and dating apps has made physical attraction more paramount than ever but I can’t do shit about it. I’m getting surgery next month in Beverly Hills to push it along but how many more surgeries will I need before someone will love me for who I am? Who knows but I’ll keep going until I get matched.
> My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive
My main issue is that I can't find someone willing to sell me $VTI at $100/share. Is it possible that your standards of what you consider a woman "attractive enough to date" are too high, and so you are filtering out potential candidates that would be happy to be with you?
Four years seems like a really long time for someone actively looking to be in a relationship to stay single, and surgery with the objective of finding a partner seems wildly extreme (just my own opinion, I clearly do not know your circumstances).
I am the most average looking (if that) man on the planet, and really never had too much trouble dating, and I live in Silicon Valley where the statistics are not even in my favor. Certainly I never went after the prototypical "Instagram model" as that would have dramatically affected my chances, but by no means I am less happy.
There really isn't a good solution here. Lowering your standards to date someone you don't find attractive just so you get into a relationship isn't healthy for you and it's not fair to your partner.
I would consider it a deal breaker if I found out my partner didn't think I was attractive.
> I would consider it a deal breaker if I found out my partner didn't think I was attractive.
Most women really feel this too. For better or worse, most women feel their self-worth is tied to their looks. If you told her that you didn't find her physically attractive (but still loved her and so on), you'd be broken up with by the overwhelming majority of women. I don't know if I've ever met a single woman who has ever said different. I'm sure they exist but may as well be a rounding error.
> Social media and dating apps has made physical attraction more paramount than ever but I can’t do shit about it.
Maybe don't look for relationships on social media and dating apps? There's a whole world out there that you won't be able to access through a screen, but you have to go out and find it. It will not come to you.
And I don't know you, but I can almost universally promise that surgery will not change the outcome. Are you physically fit? Do you smile and laugh when around other people? Do you hold yourself in high esteem? Get the basics right and the rest will follow.
Sounds like you haven't been on the dating market in a long time. There is no "just world" when it comes to human sexuality. Some people are born physically unattractive.
Most people who are college educated meet on dating apps these days. You're not going to escape lookism either by just waving some magic wand about how if you meet someone in person they suddenly can't see your face anymore.
> You're not going to escape lookism either by just waving some magic wand about how if you meet someone in person they suddenly can't see your face anymore.
Yeah, you probably are actually.
Unless you're literally disfigured most women don't care that much about the physical appearance of men compared to other things. Men care way more about this. Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractive man is easy, if he has other attributes women like more.
Dating apps don't change that. It just means you have to meet and impress women outside of them. And obviously be willing to consider non-college educated, it doesn't mean they're dumb.
I met my wife four years ago, which is how long you say you've been single for. We didn't do it via a dating app, she isn't college educated, and I'm a guy of average looks yet she could easily be a model if she wanted. She also has a wonderful personality, a razor sharp intellect and is fluent in two foreign languages. There were a bunch of strategies that went into achieving that outcome that I won't go into here, but suffice it to say none of them involved surgery. They're all about how you make her feel. Not saying it's easy (it isn't), but how to do this is learnable with practice.
> Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractive man is easy, if he has other attributes women like more.
Only seen this with gold diggers. I’ve never seen this in any other circumstance. It’s well accepted that modern couples are mostly paired off by their looks. You’re not seeing models with average looking guys unless she’s trying to escape poverty - which means she’s not with you but with your money.
I live in nyc and never see mismatched looks couples.
Yes I know about the psychology papers that you're referring to, and wealth can be one of those attributes, but there are many others and it wasn't that in this case. She certainly did not need to escape poverty.
That’s assuming there’s something to do or people to talk to outside. For most people (in the US at least) everything outside needs to be accessed by car and then where do you go? Hard to talk to strangers at a coffee shop. Might have luck at a club or church.
recently divorced I'm finding dating is so much harder these days...
I needed to grow up a lot, learn about situationships, attachment styles, co-regulation better emotional IQ, etc... things maybe I should've already known but not something taught....
I think schools should teach psychology classes that prepare people for being successful in relationships romantic, business, or platonic...
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadQuite the strawman. Does anybody claim that?
Women would certainly agree that social circles everywhere tend to be genderized. And part of the reason is a vicious cycle: men are not used to spending time with women, so they easily misunderstand the situation and get sexual or romantic ideas that are not reciprocated. And having to sort out this unwanted attention and the resulting emotions makes women even less likely to want to spend time with men.
There’s a reason why “the gay best friend” is a trope in American fiction featuring women. It’s not because gays are feminine — it’s because they don’t bombard women with their unprocessed feelings.
If you want to fix the situation, stop rambling about incels and start thinking of ways to get boys and girls to spend more time together at all ages. American parents still seem to tend to treat boys and girls as separate species.
How would gender self-segregation be related to __rising__ rates of singledom?
There's no big reason for a man who's gotten good at online dating or a women who doesn't actively want kids to date seriously or settle down unless they just happen to run across someone who's perfect for them and wants to lock it in.
For women it was also a fundamental question of literally living. Back when women were expected to be full-time housewives, women had to marry to quite literally not starve to death on the streets.
The advancement of gender equality to bring men and women, all mankind, to the same level of freedom and authority has undoubtedly played a significant role in the decline of romance and marriage.
The reason there was pressure to raise a family - for both women and men - had nothing to do with gender equality. It was because there was no welfare state so people relied on their families and extended families to take care of them in old age and sickness.
While it may be sadly true that many young people died like that, that isn't why men and women have children.
If you were of low class like the peasantry, you had children to have enough hands to till the fields.
If you were of middle class somewhere in-between, you had children for both of the above each to lesser degrees.
In the modern era there's simply less and less practical reasons to have children, not to mention the costs of childcare and rearing. On the bright side, at least we have less instances of war being waged because Lord Dickus Bigus wants to pork out on a lady and screw everyone else.
I had a training marriage that ended amicably, and since then have been married 34 years, almost. I live with my wife, grown son, and his wife. My son just celebrate his 10 year anniversary.
We’re not all shallow libertines out here.
And the worst part -- we chatting here and being smart are the ones who built it all to pay our own bills.
But ya can only do so much.
Call it unrealistic expectations and blame social media or empowerment and celebrate it or whatever. In the end somebody finds a way to feed on the resulting discontent and everybody is worse off as a result.
Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names.
We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological needs. Thousands of years of civilization teaches some lessons on what's important (and what's unfair and dangerous). We should look back for some ideas.
Apartment prices relative to income have gone greatly up. Thus, more grinding needed and some low wage occupations are priced out from the market altogether.
The question is why apartment prices keep going up and can we stop it.
But there are lots of people with one or two kids in a 2br.
It is for me. I have way more than I need to survive or help the people I love. But I want to progress my career and personal brand. I assume that's also true for many tech-millionaires who attends this site.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
I think this understates the argument. I’ve been saying for a while that housing prices are the economic problem in much of the developed world. The. Singular. Most other things are in at least okay shape. Tuition and health care are nutty but they are less unavoidable than housing.
I'm going full Flanders. I'm gonna get a howdly doodly out of these freaks!
I know that sounds edgy but explaining it.
With the population surging you could just flat out ignore the need to have children and create the next generation. So the priority then became amassing wealth. As long as the working classes were still behaving like they were living under malthusian conditions that worked. But now the working classes have caught on and are either trying to acquire capital wealth or they're trying to just hang on.
So yeah the working class knows what economic reality they are living under and acting accordingly. Having few children in order to acquire wealth and funnel it to the smaller next generation. The tell this is true is that it's happening everywhere. And the longer a place has been operating where childhood mortality is low and you can acquire financial wealth the lower the birthrate. With the caveat that some places are more culturally amenable to that.
Of course I guess it’s like other fields. Antivaxxers and people who think you can cure cancer with a juice cleanse lead health discourse. Conspiritainment grifters and unhinged fanatics shape politics.
Why?
This needs to be etched somewhere on a giant stone monument: trash maximizes engagement.
If you optimize any media for maximum engagement by the maximum number of people, you get trash. Two people walk past you on the street. One says “hi,” and the other smears themselves with peanut butter and clucks like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement?
Edit: I forgot porn. That’s a factor too and another way to maximize engagement that gives people ridiculous unrealistic views on sex.
This has always been true. It’s why “yellow journalism” was a term and why tabloids have always existed and why so much TV was always trash. But we’ve gotten so good at it with personalized feeds and algorithms that it’s become far too addictive and powerful. It’s becoming reality for too many people. This is an existential risk to our civilization at this point.
Banning TikTok is a start. Now do all the other ones.
I think the only way to get the outcome of "people less addicted to media and dumb ideas" is to make addiction uncool - and government can't do that. People are doing the social changes naturally already. Lots of people are off social media. People are quitting alcohol too, and porn. Those people will be more successful in life, and more likely to reproduce.
This seems like a nothingburger for an onlooker.
I used to be more of a libertarian about things like financial regulation, but what changed my mind was watching markets and especially things like the cryptocurrency phenomenon where you really did have deregulation. All you get is scams because people keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. None of it is new. Ponzi schemes, bubbles, gambling, rug pulls, wildcat banking, all of it is hundreds of years old or more, but it keeps working because every generation falls for it anew because dopamine.
I think you'd have to re-architect the human dopamine system in very deep ways if you wanted to change this. We are very easy to hack.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1hyh1r2/where_ar...
I can’t believe that the thread exists. I can’t believe that a young single straight man wouldn’t be all over that event.
Some good speculation on cause behind it in OP and this discussion, but I’m just sitting here confused at the state of things.
The list goes on.
And that's besides life's necessities like work, chores around the house, cooking+eating...
The list goes on.
There's just so many god damn things I could or should be doing instead of marriage. I literally do not have the time and thus interest in marriage and all the things related to it. And no, the termination of my bloodline or what happens to my crap after my passing doesn't concern me.
termination of the bloodline is a silly thing - however I can tell you from personal experience that having an offspring connects to humanity like nothing else and I feel for you that you won’t experience that part of human existence. it is a remarkable experience…
Certainly it's something my depression holds over my head every day. Everything I do is less fun when I consciously realize I'm removing my ancestors from the gene pool in participating in those things. It's like I can choose to put more value in other things besides offspring, but also... I can't? When it seems like every stranger around me is married and/or has children?
When I feel myself backed into a corner and only perceive the choice to call that decision sour grapes, I feel like something has gone seriously wrong...
I think it basically comes down to being finite. We want more than we can get. We have to choose, and we don't want to, because choosing means giving up something that we really want.
I suspect that your depression doesn't make it easier. But the overall struggle is a very common one.
trust me brother, the day will come when video games, anime, and surrogate friendships get boring. the copes and distractions dont last forever.
It's not as if these men have willing marriageable women queueing up at their door.
They have not chosen to forego marriage and family in pursuit of these pointless nihilistic hedonistic hobbies. They seek comfort in them because marriage and family are unattainable.
Life’s necessities are about more pleasant with someone by your side.
There is a sense that the average man is being expected to meet increasingly demanding requirements - career, social, fitness, etc (some of which are literally impossible for many due to height, balding, or facial attractiveness) - for a shot at an overweight woman past her prime with dozens of flings and a couple abortions in her past, who will forever secretly think poorly of him, is only ever 5 minutes away from another fling with a random stranger on the app of her choice, and may at any moment become 'bored' and file for no-fault divorce ruining their family and finances.
Or we can do whatever we like for leisure, meet our sexual needs in whatever way we like (abstinence, prostitutes, casual sex, toys, porn, etc) and watch the world burn.
Women need to look at themselves.
You will not be watching zo. You will be one the one burning with it too and it will be even less fun than the slight frustrations of today.
I have had strangers say to me that it's no problem if I just want to put myself out there and see who bites, but I do not see it that way. My (same-sex) best friend I knew for 6 years recently cut off all contact when I tried to set boundaries with them. It was the first time in my life I tried to assert myself and because I reaped the consequences I assumed I did something wrong. I read up online and understood logically I did nothing wrong. But fact is, it's been half a year and I haven't recovered from that friendship alone. And there were others like it. I don't have anything to replace that (flawed) relationship and the trauma of being discarded reopened all my pre-existing childhood-and-up trauma they already knew about so, I mean, yeah.
I talk to my therapist about it of course but that makes my current life no less of a torture. I've come to accept maybe that's how it will be.
What this tells me is I'm not ready for a relationship right now. It's my early 30's and I don't understand the basics yet. The way I was raised I've already been through enough confusing social rejection and socializing just demoralizes me nowadays. I'm not willing to go forward and date if I'm no longer interested in the first place because that isn't fair to the other party. I need to make friends before I am ready to date, having zero friends right now, and the interest for that isn't there either. It took me way too long for me to realize my heart wasn't in it and I was doing people a disservice when I need to work on myself first and foremost.
...not to mention I'm still looking for work after being laid off, but I felt no different while I was employed.
And before someone says these are flaws people should accept me for... they're not unfortunately. I'm beginning to suspect they're on the level of a personality disorder. Having enough previous less impactful diagnoses, I think it's on me by this point if I couldn't make anything out of them.
It's okay, the WW3 is coming, everyone will be drafted to shake things back to the baseline misery.
The apps have created, for many people, a "grass is always greener on the next swipe" mentality. People who might be good partners are passed over because one or two things don't meet or exceed expectations.
Meeting in real life is better but it's still a lot of work. There really don't seem to be as many social scenes as there used to be. Especially as people get older, over the age of 30, the social scenes feature fewer and fewer single people.
As a cis white guy, it's very easy to get burnt out. Between ghosting and the "slow burn" mentality it just gets exhausting.
I'll also say that most men are pretty shitty. I have a lot of single female friends and we talk about this a lot. Men really do kind of just suck. I didn't used to believe it but they send me screenshots and it's pretty bad.
In general, people just have less social skills and lower tolerance for this stuff nowadays. Being single isn't as stigmatized as it used to be.
Being jaded and thinking only shit men exist is a very bad mentality. The women I know who didn’t stay jaded and pursued men who were reasonable and showed real interest back have been rewarded immensely. I’m in nyc right now and I see so many women hating every man because these gals only deal with men who refuse to settle down or commit. So many women I know are trying to get commitment from a man who doesn’t want to commit. They need to go to a different market segment but they refuse because the men who don’t commit have all the superficial things they want.
My SO confirmed me that me not being a 'forceur' (pushy man) during our first date and showing interest in what she does was probably the biggest two reasons she proposed me the second one.
I think it's a bit of both. I don't think a lot of women would care about the pushiness if it was with high commitment. It's a lack of commitment and pushiness that is what is uninteresting.
I'm not finding any lack of women who love to completely go nuts on the escalation ladder of a relationship if a guy is high commitment.
People who want to date them? Or do you think men as well should prioritize seeking a relationship over their family, their friends and their jobs? Honestly i'd rather date women with balanced lives, then try to build onto that. Ultimately the relationship will become #1 for both of you (that happen with when the kid happen in my sample of 1).
I'm not young (neither I'm old - a bit over 30) anymore, but I would never go to such event when I was single. Dating events feel like stress, a lot of expectations to meet, and ultimately there's nothing I have in common with those people (or so I think). I always preferred dating in my social, work and hobby circles. I don't know if that's common, but anecdotally my friends feel and do the same.
I don’t think there’s much we can do. More likely to see full blown communism than some improvement to the way we’re dating now.
I’ve been single for nearly four years. On paper, I’ve got almost all the things someone is looking for. My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive. Social media and dating apps has made physical attraction more paramount than ever but I can’t do shit about it. I’m getting surgery next month in Beverly Hills to push it along but how many more surgeries will I need before someone will love me for who I am? Who knows but I’ll keep going until I get matched.
My main issue is that I can't find someone willing to sell me $VTI at $100/share. Is it possible that your standards of what you consider a woman "attractive enough to date" are too high, and so you are filtering out potential candidates that would be happy to be with you?
Four years seems like a really long time for someone actively looking to be in a relationship to stay single, and surgery with the objective of finding a partner seems wildly extreme (just my own opinion, I clearly do not know your circumstances).
I am the most average looking (if that) man on the planet, and really never had too much trouble dating, and I live in Silicon Valley where the statistics are not even in my favor. Certainly I never went after the prototypical "Instagram model" as that would have dramatically affected my chances, but by no means I am less happy.
I would consider it a deal breaker if I found out my partner didn't think I was attractive.
Most women really feel this too. For better or worse, most women feel their self-worth is tied to their looks. If you told her that you didn't find her physically attractive (but still loved her and so on), you'd be broken up with by the overwhelming majority of women. I don't know if I've ever met a single woman who has ever said different. I'm sure they exist but may as well be a rounding error.
Maybe don't look for relationships on social media and dating apps? There's a whole world out there that you won't be able to access through a screen, but you have to go out and find it. It will not come to you.
And I don't know you, but I can almost universally promise that surgery will not change the outcome. Are you physically fit? Do you smile and laugh when around other people? Do you hold yourself in high esteem? Get the basics right and the rest will follow.
Most people who are college educated meet on dating apps these days. You're not going to escape lookism either by just waving some magic wand about how if you meet someone in person they suddenly can't see your face anymore.
Yeah, you probably are actually.
Unless you're literally disfigured most women don't care that much about the physical appearance of men compared to other things. Men care way more about this. Finding beautiful women on the arm of a man who is old or unattractive man is easy, if he has other attributes women like more.
Dating apps don't change that. It just means you have to meet and impress women outside of them. And obviously be willing to consider non-college educated, it doesn't mean they're dumb.
I met my wife four years ago, which is how long you say you've been single for. We didn't do it via a dating app, she isn't college educated, and I'm a guy of average looks yet she could easily be a model if she wanted. She also has a wonderful personality, a razor sharp intellect and is fluent in two foreign languages. There were a bunch of strategies that went into achieving that outcome that I won't go into here, but suffice it to say none of them involved surgery. They're all about how you make her feel. Not saying it's easy (it isn't), but how to do this is learnable with practice.
Only seen this with gold diggers. I’ve never seen this in any other circumstance. It’s well accepted that modern couples are mostly paired off by their looks. You’re not seeing models with average looking guys unless she’s trying to escape poverty - which means she’s not with you but with your money.
I live in nyc and never see mismatched looks couples.
I’m living in regions where homes regularly cost $3m. It’s unfortunate but people of similar backgrounds pair off here cause it’s unfair otherwise.
Put the computer down and go outside, it's that easy.
I needed to grow up a lot, learn about situationships, attachment styles, co-regulation better emotional IQ, etc... things maybe I should've already known but not something taught....
I think schools should teach psychology classes that prepare people for being successful in relationships romantic, business, or platonic...