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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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The implication is … that if you can't get dates from women your own age, this is because they can see the red flags of your unsavoury character.

And the same argument works the other way around. If you’re a woman who has trouble finding suitable men your own age, you should begin with your own self-assessment to determine what your contribution to the problem is. And if you’ve delayed too long and burned your advantage, there’s nothing a man can do for you except to tell you you’re incompetent at making decisions.

The solution is therefore to Be Better and self-improve until women your own age DO want to date you.

No. He ‘did’ do better. He went to a table with better odds, and found women willing to be more receptive to him. “Do better” =! Jump through hoops for me until I’m satisfied to the point where I want to date you.

The solution is not to instead date inexperienced young things, these being the only things you can get, because their red flag detectors haven't grown in yet.

And how do people get experience? If all it takes for a man to earn a red flag is to be met with female disapproval of such a facile kind, well, good luck with that, but I doubt she’ll get much support with that one. More 30+ year old men these days have less dating experience than a newly minted female adult does, now, more than ever.

Men left out in the cold aren’t writing opinion pieces and accounts wallowing in self-pity or rage, when women reject a man who owns a pencil box and a lime green T-shirt, but will give 6 children to an alcoholic that beats them. If you want to meet an appropriate man your own age in your youth, be less stupid.

No. He ‘did’ do better. He went to a table with better odds, and found women willing to be more receptive to him. “Do better” =! Jump through hoops for me until I’m satisfied to the point where I want to date you.

Also a lot of the 'do better' is relationship/dating-experienced link. Whilst there's a lot of baseline attractiveness stuff that can be done, there's a large factor of 'Can't get job without experience, can't get experience without job' at play

Well any functional relationship is never going to be one-sided. The problem with relationships today is far less rooted in “experience” or lack thereof; it has to do with people’s expectations and larger cultural shifts.

As it relates to the last part of your statement, I think that finds itself in many places of society. I recently came extremely close and lost out on a very promising job opportunity as a result of a this dynamic at play. As to be expected, it was a government position. Let’s just say I brushed too close to the edge in my background interview to things that I guess make me a highly suspicious candidate. Despite having no criminal background of any kind.

It’s a similar problem in a way to the difficulty the government has in hiring hackers. Highly qualified candidates get passed up due to their eccentric lifestyle, in favor of unqualified stooges that are always playing catch-up in cyberspace. You wouldn’t want a pedophile to babysit at a daycare for instance. That’s obvious. But should that also mean you shouldn’t have poachers as gamekeepers? There’s a difference between “thinking like an attacker” and “acting like a criminal.” But there are times also where those two things appear to come awfully close to one another, and in some cases may even converge.

Relationships and institutions that can resolve these contradictions (which isn’t difficult to do) whether it’s in relationships, employment, or public policy, are almost always going to stay ahead of everyone else.