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Notes -
And once we admit this, it shouldn't surprise us to see things follow a power-law distribution rather than a normal one.
The 'average' guy doesn't have an 'average' chance of finding a mate. Rather, the top 10% of guys have it extremely easy, then the ease of dating/marrying drops off sharply from there.
The average woman, on the other hand, can easily get the attention from the average guy, but is more likely going to target someone in that top 10%.
Yes I'm fudging the statistics but this particular distribution of attractiveness and ease of finding a mate is maybe the most well-documented anthropological/sociological phenomena ever.
I say anthropological because throughout almost every culture on earth and history, there's been a class/caste of male who gets to have a harem of women whilst the rest of the male population is in a state of hypercompetition for what remains.
So to simply state that the average guy, who doesn't have the collection of physical features that make him stand out from the crowd, has it much harder than the average woman, as long as she has one feature that she can display to find attention, is to REALLY undersell the reality of the situation.
Average guys get laid and married on the regular, mind. By definition most guys will fall in this category so the law of large numbers means that SOME of them will still get mates even if it is just luck/chance. This is NOT the same as saying that most average guys will get laid and married.
And now let us add in the point that a man's attractiveness tends to scale up as he ages if he puts in the effort, and the situation looks even bleaker for younger men of average physical attractiveness.
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