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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Becoming the man a woman wants, and getting yourself to the front of the line is hard.

Sure, again I agree that if you want a woman who is very beautiful and high status and has her pick of men you probably need to work to stand out in some way (at least unless you’re also extraordinarily handsome, and perhaps even then). I’m less convinced that attracting a woman similar to you is as difficult, although I concede that Dubai is probably a very weird place to date and men are very much overrepresented among expats there.

Most women I know make similar amounts (some more, some less) to their boyfriends, have similar bodies (ie the fit gymgoing ones are with fit men, the fat ones with more overweight men), are similarly facially attractive, come from similar backgrounds. If a regular man had to be very successful and fit to attract an average partner, then one would expect to see a widespread phenomenon of handsome and successful men with average-to-ugly women of few means, and that simply isn’t something I’ve seen at all. One occasionally finds a woman with a more generally attractive partner, but it isn’t the norm.

Dubai

Doesn't matter all that much because:

  1. The overrepresented men are in the bottom quartiles of income, i.e laborers who can't speak english. So for the most part they are invisible (and irrelevant).
  2. There is still great volume. Dubai is overpopulated af and growing daily.

It's still nightmare difficult mode compared to other parts of the world for other reasons. The only analogies I have in hand are:

  1. I get 5-6 weekly matches when I use Tinder in the tri state area. I get 5-6 matches in 2-3 months here. Those too mostly from tourists. Girls mostly don't use dating apps here and when they do, they experience the same thing any girl does on a dating app, but turned up to 11 thousand.
  2. Expats are transient, most people are here for a few years and then dip. So the friend group and proximity part is an actual issue on top of all the other ones !
  3. Social life here is so bad (see above), a lot of expats end up leaving exclusively on that basis!

But I don't really need to discuss my personal details (I'm seeing a girl so this topic isn't very salient to me ATM), I'm speaking more in the abstract, for the modal genz male.


widespread phenomenon

The widespread phenomenon of male sexlessness is a proxy for that.

If you don't live in an urban core, or work in tech, and only have to use the dating apps (which is a more and more common mode of finding partners), getting proximity in and of itself requires a lot of time and money and effort ! Just like getting a well paying job.