faceh
2hr ago
Ding ding ding.
You also have to obscure your motivations... which makes you behave even sketchier!
"Oh no, I just REALLY like discussing early 20th century Gothic literature with this lovely group of 30-something ladies. It has NAUGHT to do with the two hotties sitting over there in the corner wearing the black lipgloss, my thoughts are as pure as the driven snow."
Because as you say, if they dislike the attention, then they have the option of saying "don't invade womens' spaces just to date them, you have to respect their boundaries!" and exiling you without fanfare.
Doesn't matter is some subset of the women absolutely would accept your advances.
That said, I find it painful to dive into activities where the sole motive is trying to partner up. If the activity isn't enjoyable by itself, then I'd just rather not participate.
Your "data" is not meaningful
I don't think you're the one who determines that, actually.
You could convince me otherwise, but that would require laying down some kind of groundwork.
But what you like to believe is things that reinforce your sense of injustice inflicted upon you by the world. You construct just-so stories that reinforce a particular narrative, you take surveys as "data" and you dismiss any other model of human behavior because it doesn't fit your priors.
This is so wildly incorrect about my mode of thinking I can't even take offense to it, its like you threw a rock at my head but it flew off into the thicket of trees about 100 feet to my right and scared a Bobcat.
I genuinely have no sense of 'injustice inflicted upon me by the world.' Its just people, treating other people in ways they might not want to be treated in return, if anything.
Its rather interesting, however, that you think my data about large scale social trends leads me to wrong conclusions...
But you think your assessment of the inner workings of another person's mind is going to be spot on based on limited interactions.
Genuinely, explain your epistemic philosophy that lets you make confident conclusions about individual psychology whilst ALSO denouncing data-based analysis of trends. I want to hear it.
My personal thesis is that its the algorithms, not explicitly the phones (obviously the phones are a prerequisite).
Early Facebook was fine. It was a chronological feed consisting solely of what your friends posted.
Early online dating was also fine. You could navigate and search out people you thought were compatible, message them directly.
The rise of curation via opaque algos is when we saw things shift towards optimizing attention, ad dollars, and ragebait and brainrot. And in dating they removed the ability to filter directly and just gameified it and blew up the 'organic' nature of the environment entirely.
This is reaching an apotheosis now with gambling integrated in everything we do.
Twitter/X just open-sourced their algorithm, and I've been seeing people pointing out some of the direct factors in there that would lead to 'toxic' feedback loops and demolition of organic communities.
Have to assume its the same on every other site, too.
faceh
3hr ago
The huge irony is that my boss is a woman, and my workplace overall is slanted towards female employees. But since she's an utterly remorseless businesswoman who grinds it out in the trenches alongside her employees, she is EASILY the most meritocratic employer I've ever worked for.
I don't rock the boat politically (thanks to having an outlet here, I suppose), I put in the work and bring in the cash, I keep my personal life separate enough that it rarely bleeds over.
My friends in White Collar corporate jobs seem to be navigating byzantine labyrinths where the goals are ever-shifting, the ability to progress uncertain, and the actual rules for personal conduct are opaque in places. Loyalty doesn't exist, of course. Thankful to have avoided that for most of my life.
faceh
3hr ago
If the data were based solely on matchmaker reports sure.
But its in the survey data. More women are college educated these days. College educated women are VASTLY more picky.
Its literally women saying it themselves that they can't find partners who meet their expectations.
When the data, the anecdotes, the personal observations and the testimony from 'experts' end up all pointing at the same direction, I am just inclined to Occam's Razor that they're probably pretty accurate.
Been reading some insistent advice on twitter that you can meet women out at dance classes or in book clubs.
I've tried the dance classes, and the gender ratio tends to be skewed towards males... and the women tend to bring their own partners.
So you've got a small pool of available women with a circling school of dudes trying to elbow in. I can see why that'd be daunting for single women, and potentially drive some of them away.
The book club... that's asking for quite a bit of commitment for something that has very small odds of working out, and has some small chance of backfiring.
And even if those were two viable options, its still an indictment that we've so severely narrowed the acceptable arenas to meeting others outside the apps.
faceh
4hr ago
Almost as convincing as your old OKCupid survey.
Still waiting on data to contradict it.
Have you seen the extremely comprehensive data from tinder that shows basically the exact same thing?
Here's a youtube video based on that data if that's more appealing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3pvkgUc9Zbc?si=Tktvaz4PBg-Vsr5K
Your personal disappointment over my lying eyes, obviously we will both trust our respective sources.
You can keep saying this, but I sincerely suspect you don't actually believe it.
I just like to believe true things.
faceh
4hr ago
I just do not believe that all of it should be blamed on women wanting an unrealistic fantasy.
Can we blame the social forces/media that women are susceptible to for inculcating those unrealistic fantasies?
Maybe regulate those factors a bit?
faceh
4hr ago
It could be a lack of trying on the male end.
Sure.
Incentives have to be sufficient.
If the reward for 'trying' is you get rejected 90% of the time, ghosted another 5-9% of the time, and the 'win' condition is you get a woman who is overweight, in debt, doesn't know how to cook, and is iffy on if she wants kids.
Where's the appeal to putting in the effort?
I think a lot of guys are accurately assessing that their odds of winning a real prize are lacklustre, and so efforts spent on themselves pay off more.
You could meet someone through work, but many might consider the risk of drama to not be worth it.
This became a fairly explicit minefield after #metoo. Even if the woman is welcoming the advances or even advancing herself, HR is going to try to kibosh it to avoid their own liability/publicity issues.
faceh
19hr ago
Reduces arterial plaque, and a few other little benefits too.
At the 10,000 FU dose level, which I ran for about three months.
Brief discussion of it here:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2732/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/357853?context=8#context
I started it after @thejdizzler recommended and my cholesterol did indeed see significant reduction.
faceh
20hr ago
I don't think any of the older kids have the juice to fill his shoes. Barron is shaping with potential but obviously the age thing.
faceh
22hr ago
I think there's a (relatively thin) slice of Blue Collar skilled professional who has made out extremely well due to a relative dearth of competition for a smorgasbord of work in the trades. Lot of dudes getting rich off working in oil fields or, more recently, Data Center construction.
But... we can't ignore the immigration surge exerting pressure on e.g. construction work, trucking, unskilled trades.
So different pressures... but still impact that would fall primarily on males. And still arguably coming from the same source (political favortism for groups other than white males).
Anyhow, they're still struggling on the partnership front.
https://wng.org/roundups/study-shows-working-class-men-arent-getting-married-1749503094
faceh
23hr ago
...the other factor is that she's presumably willing to defer to the Father's judgment as to who she should date and marry, which gives dad a large say in selecting a worthy man and scaring away the Lotharios.
After all, he has an EXTREME amount at stake and thus has incentive to help her select the best as possible... and possibly to punish those who do commit abuse.
We still do that whole "Father walks the bride down the aisle and 'gives her away' to the Groom" at weddings. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
faceh
1d ago
Something approaching half of them are projected to be single by 2030
If that's not a result of 'refusing to settle' en masse then what could it be.
And my basic reminder, I am more than happy to look at data you present that contradicts my point, or accept any argumentation pointing out where my analysis is flawed.
Anyway, here's testimony from a matchmaker (also a female) about the standards put forth by a 31-year-old single woman. "There are a decent number of profiles like this."
faceh
1d ago
Fermi estimates are the best we can do for now.
But when you START with the fact that 40% of women are obese, you've already shrunk the pool considerably, and every criteria you add shrinks it further, you start to see the shape of the problem.
(Yes, about the same % of men are also obese. There's research that obese men are fine settling for obese women but the reverse is not true. This is borne out by my personal observations.)
Then you get the spike in mental illnesses, the increasing amounts of debt held by women, the spike in LGBT identification, the increase in sexual partners (I'd wager this is anti-correlated with obesity but who knows), and the decreased prioritization of marriage and you can visualize how each of these is narrowing the non-obese pool significantly.
Even if the error bars are pretty huge, I have little problem believing <10% of single women out there are really 'appealing' as partners.
faceh
1d ago
Very fair summary and counter. I will not relitigate anything but this:
If you get your life together as a young man, you will be fine in the dating market, it will very quickly be tilted in your favor and not hers.
It has of course recently been discussed (at long last) just how hard the deck was stacked against young men over the last 15 years.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
So I simply point out that the things guys are supposed to achieve to make THEM seem marriageable are dangled further out of reach of many of them based on nothing but their gender and color of their skin. They are not imposing these restrictions on themselves.
Whereas, as I point out on occasion, literally every change in gender-based policy in the U.S. for the past 50 years has been in favor of women. It has put more of them in education, the workplace, and granted them outsized political power. (this also has NOT made them any happier).
So these men are expected to work harder than ever just to overcome the systemic bias, with the reward of pulling from a pool of women who are less appealing than ever, whilst the entire legal/economic edifice of their country is trying to slow them down.
So I think it is absolutely hard for an individual man to tilt the market in his favor unless he he lucked out in rolling his stats to have high charisma, rich parents, and good genes for height/aesthetics.
"Get your life together" is one hell of a lift for, I'd say, 60% of young men, especially because it'll take like 5+ years of solid work to hit the point where they'd be noticeable as a potential partner, and even then its not a guarantee.
And this shows up in the fact that many men just opt out of dating rather than accept constant psychological damage they're powerless to change.
faceh
1d ago
That's a very cynical point of view,
My cynical point of view has an extremely good track record of predictions, sad to say.
I mean, what, is he supposed to lock his wife up at home so you don't suspect him in "showing off"?
Should he have? She ended up leaving him. His extant strategy clearly didn't work.
I don't think it is fair to demand from everybody who shared one's opinion publicly to become full-time role model.
For better or worse, he adopted that approach, near daily streaming and constant commentary on daily events
You could definitely pick WORSE role models, but I think he was happily putting himself out there in that regard.
faceh
1d ago
I saw the list of countries that had tariffs on us, and it suggests that there's a larger strategy of reducing overall trade barriers by forcing everyone else to reduce their own tariffs in the eventual trade deals.
I've talked about this point at some length.
If you haven't figured out that Trump likes to use door in the face in the opening rounds of a negotiation for an eventually agreed deal, don't know what to tell you. Its in that book he wrote.
faceh
1d ago
Vance and Rubio, if they continue to play cards right, should be able to form a strong ticket by all accounts.
If Trump does manage a 'clean' handoff of power to one or both of those guys (preferably Vance) that may just be the single best legacy he can leave.
faceh
1d ago
Yeah, hence why an institution that can try to build up the next candidate to receive the blessing seems like a necessary component.
Trump himself is popular amongst people who voted for him, I expect that to remain true.
Nominally this would be a job for the Republican Party apparatus but lol.
Yeah. It seems unprecedented in modern history, especially modern American history for a leader to have a sufficiently large cult of personality that when they leave it would be all but impossible for the next candidate to inherit their predecessor's supporters without their explicit blessing.
I guess... North Korea? They solve it by straightforward passing to the next of kin, along with a massive propaganda campaign to deify each successive leader, right?
Actually... I have never questioned it but who is in charge of NK's institution that upholds the Juche ideology and propagandizes the masses? In theory THAT is who is ensuring peaceful transition of power.
Edit: Oh my. Currently its his sister. I guess that tracks.
faceh
1d ago
Is it really 'narcissism' when you are actually that good?
Okay, that's a joke. I mean, he is THAT GOOD, if the talent in question is making everything about himself.
But that also gives him a weak form of Skin in the Game, where he actually DOES want 'good' things to happen since that is precisely what will enable the best legacy for him. It helps that he's seemingly got no real malice as part of his self-aggrandizement (maybe a little, he sure does seem to despise Obama), and generally prefers cooperative outcomes for all involved parties.
If we achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine, and he insists that the Peace agreement be called "Treaty on Russian–Ukrainian Mutual Peace", do I care that much?
No, not really.
My overarching concern has been that his 'movement' is so tied up in his ego it isn't clear if it CAN move on to anyone else once he's out of office, and that will be a major problem if there's no clear successor.
Very related to a tweet I saw that pointed out that the BBC (and Netflix) has created an unintended issue where they portray all the female characters, especially those in relationships, as hypercompetent and strong, while their male partners can be incompetent and silly.
But they ALSO tend to portray interracial couples with the male being black and the female white. So there's now an abundance of bumbling black male characters that gets uncomfortably close to looking like a minstrel show portayal. But they're trapped insofar as its impossible to portray the gender-swapped scenario.
I don't watch enough media to confirm with my own eyes, but this is pretty funny in its own right.
Well, there are caveats.
Likewise, sports gambling and gambling ads were banned for a long time. Tobacco ads were banned in living memory b/c of health implications.
Me, I think it would be simple enough to just mandate that every social media site that hits above a certain userbase size must open-source their algorithm.
To a degree this is similar to mandating 'Nutrition Facts' on food. People are consuming content from a source that is completely opaque about how that content is selected and curated.
Hard to see a 1A concern there.
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