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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Like everyone else, I assume most posts like this on reddit are fake more often than not. Others have mentioned a lot of the reasons to doubt its veracity. A few things that stood out to me:

  1. Too many details that are just too perfect for the agenda it's pushing. Incels really hate that high-status women chase high-status (wealthy) men, so "Ugly loser living in his parents' basement attic suddenly gets lots of matches when he advertises that he makes a lot of money" is candy for a certain type of redditor.
  2. I'm not all that familiar with the financial world, but the idea that his career as a "VC partner" "skyrocketed" while he's working from home in his parents' house in his jammies seems... unlikely.
  3. $350K is a very decent salary, especially if he has occasional $1M+ years, but it's not mega-rich, super-high status, it's not Hollywood star or decimillionaire-level success, of the sort that would have literally hundreds of hot doctors, lawyers, and private equity analysts (whatever that is) flocking to him. Especially if he's as homely he describes. That sounds like a number someone who's never made anywhere near that pulled out of the air as "makes a lot of money."
  4. Someone who lists himself as a "VC Partner", especially if he doesn't look like one in his profile, I would assume raise alarm bells with women viewing him. Women know just as well as men do that people lie on the Internet. I'm sure he'd get some hits, but I doubt he'd get that many VC-chasers credulously sliding into his DMs.

I came to the same conclusions. The chances of someone being a VC Partner and living in mom’s basement are basically nil. The people hiring him would have noted signs of low status (and not having your own place and car are extremely low status.

Some of the richest people I know still live with/at their parents' place, but their parents place is like a $20m Manhattan townhouse or 14-room co-op in a top building where they have a chef, a live-in housekeeper, and their parents are away 8 months of the year so they essentially live 'by themselves'.

That still wouldn’t be “living in mom’s basement.” He’d have a whole wing of the house, and a nice car that would advertise status enough to overcome the perception of poverty. Especially if the family is obviously rich.