People treat romantic interest from young men as pathological. They are criticized no matter what they do. If they don't approach women, they are criticized. If they do approach women they are criticized. Do we really expect young men to act on romantic interest then? Behavior is all about incentives and the culture is telling men to leave women alone. And that is exactly what the men are doing
Yes, feminism taken too far can backfire. Women get to be "right" about men, and they get to be alone, too (or turn to each other as an alternative). Demonizing men for being men is not constructive.
I think it’s time to admit the tech companies and especially the pornographers have traumatized the living shit out of our kids.
What young woman (or man) who’s not a complete sociopath wants to date chronically online porn-informed weirdo? It’s goddsmn frightening and deeply disillusioning.
I diont understand the reluctance to do this.
Many adults find it amusing. It’s not funny at all.
Like so much else, the phrase 'arranged marriage' covers a range. Most of my seven children (granted, we are part of a religious community) met their spouses when friends, neighbors, and/or relatives met someone they thought would be good for them and asked if they could make an introduction. Others met at religiously based social activities. So, their father and I didn't tell them who they should marry but we and the entire community are involved in thinking of and introducing men and women as well as vetting options so that the likelihood of meeting someone totally unsuitable is less.
Well well well. The internet, that thing that was supposed to make life better for everyone has made it worse. In some ways much worse.
Women shop for men on the internet like they shop for anything else. For a man to have a chance in that environment, he must be spectacular. Most men are not spectacular.
It happens pretty much every day now, sometimes more than once. I'll be out walking the neighborhood, maybe with my dog. At some point I encounter a woman coming down the sidewalk toward me. If she doesn't cross the street, which they do about half the time, she studiously avoids eye contact. At the moment of closest approach she looks off to the side, actively thwarting any possibility of interaction while wearing an expression of annoyance, as though she had detected an unpleasant odor. She might as well be waving a sign: Do NOT approach.
I'm no troll. I'm a nice-looking guy, non-creepy, older but still capable of turning the occasional head. When I was younger I did not lack for female companions.
This is a classic case of disparate impact. For any male rating 7 or less, it's a desert. But for those with an edge, meaning Chads and pretty much any woman rating 4 or better, the online dating scene is a banquet.
The knock-on effect is no more bands. You start a band to impress girls. Gen Z got it wrong. Gen X men put on makeup on stage with a band to get women; Gen Z men put on makeup and call themselves women. I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of the “makeup to get girls” strategy.
Male psychotherapist here, specializing in men’s trauma. It only took dating app tech founders, whose greed and hubris are biblical in size, all of about 10-11 years (since Tinder’s takeoff) to reverse centuries of human social contracts, and thrust today's men into a world where they are going to work longer hours, have worse/less secure careers, and pay just as many taxes into a system to take care of other people’s children while they have fewer chances to ever have their own. Monogamy is a social bargain to harness male competition into technological, social ingenuity and progress that benefit all in a society and not just "the king's offspring." Ancient evolutionary history is ugly and as a society we seem to continue toying with a return to that. Modern dating apps encourage harem structure where average men can expect a response from 0.87% of women aka 1 out of every 115 swipes. Totally unreal date-pocalypse that people just don’t talk about nearly enough.
Henderson says 50% of our current crop of young men have never asked a woman out on a date. Given the normalization and moral sanctioning they receive in school for homosexuality, I wonder how many of them are having sex with each other? It's alot more than prior generations, that's for sure. I suspect both trends are connected and self-reinforcing.
I am sad this wasn't longer. More of a sampler than a deep dive. Social media has definitely thrown a wrench into the dating market along with several other issues.
One thing I am more keen on is the rise of divorce. Boomers were the first generation to normalize divorce, so my generation was raised witnessing it. I wonder if that has an effect on how people treat relationships.
When I was growing up I had nothing but negative information from my (religious) parents about sex, dating, and marriage. Brainwashing against all of it. At 35 my mother said, for the first time, something like "it would be good for you to find someone"
What exactly these parents expected to happen still baffles me
~~In other words, explaining failure isn’t that interesting or useful. Explaining success is where the money is.~~
Well he's also said it multiple times in interviews, that in other words, being poor is the default. (We're all born poor.) Success is the exception.
But I also really like Thomas Sowell. Would love it if you could interview him. If you can't, you should sometime talk to Theodore Dalrymple (my second favorite living thinker). He's written a lot about topics like love among the lower class and such.
~~In 1930, family and local community dominated everyone’s lives, so that’s how couples came together. You’d either end up with someone you’d known your whole life, or someone that someone you’d known your whole life had known their whole life.
Today’s online-dating-dominated landscape is about as far from that as you can imagine. It’s a largely impersonal, algorithm-driven guessing game.~~
The other thing to note is that today there are just less family and community in everyone's lives. Couples came together back then because you'd at least have something of a background check on your prospective mate. Now? Everyone is strangers because families are fractured and communities are in even worse shape.
The very beginning of courtship (body language, wordless flirting, sexual attraction itself) has become taboo. This is the phase of “limerance,” fantasy about the other. Yet as Papa Papola points out (that’s three p’s) he doesn’t want his children to have loveless lives. They have to be taught the route to marriage and it doesn’t occur without asking someone out.
It took 25 yrs to develop Romantic Dynamics, full coverage of the science behind “traditional” human courtship searchable and surfable free at https://Romantipedia.com
People treat romantic interest from young men as pathological. They are criticized no matter what they do. If they don't approach women, they are criticized. If they do approach women they are criticized. Do we really expect young men to act on romantic interest then? Behavior is all about incentives and the culture is telling men to leave women alone. And that is exactly what the men are doing
Yes, feminism taken too far can backfire. Women get to be "right" about men, and they get to be alone, too (or turn to each other as an alternative). Demonizing men for being men is not constructive.
I think it’s time to admit the tech companies and especially the pornographers have traumatized the living shit out of our kids.
What young woman (or man) who’s not a complete sociopath wants to date chronically online porn-informed weirdo? It’s goddsmn frightening and deeply disillusioning.
I diont understand the reluctance to do this.
Many adults find it amusing. It’s not funny at all.
Like so much else, the phrase 'arranged marriage' covers a range. Most of my seven children (granted, we are part of a religious community) met their spouses when friends, neighbors, and/or relatives met someone they thought would be good for them and asked if they could make an introduction. Others met at religiously based social activities. So, their father and I didn't tell them who they should marry but we and the entire community are involved in thinking of and introducing men and women as well as vetting options so that the likelihood of meeting someone totally unsuitable is less.
Well well well. The internet, that thing that was supposed to make life better for everyone has made it worse. In some ways much worse.
Women shop for men on the internet like they shop for anything else. For a man to have a chance in that environment, he must be spectacular. Most men are not spectacular.
It happens pretty much every day now, sometimes more than once. I'll be out walking the neighborhood, maybe with my dog. At some point I encounter a woman coming down the sidewalk toward me. If she doesn't cross the street, which they do about half the time, she studiously avoids eye contact. At the moment of closest approach she looks off to the side, actively thwarting any possibility of interaction while wearing an expression of annoyance, as though she had detected an unpleasant odor. She might as well be waving a sign: Do NOT approach.
I'm no troll. I'm a nice-looking guy, non-creepy, older but still capable of turning the occasional head. When I was younger I did not lack for female companions.
This is a classic case of disparate impact. For any male rating 7 or less, it's a desert. But for those with an edge, meaning Chads and pretty much any woman rating 4 or better, the online dating scene is a banquet.
Yet women still complain.
" that finding a spouse and building a family is the central project of adult life"
Do you know how they're goinng to reply? "That's a patriarchal idea aimed at keeping women at home"...
The knock-on effect is no more bands. You start a band to impress girls. Gen Z got it wrong. Gen X men put on makeup on stage with a band to get women; Gen Z men put on makeup and call themselves women. I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of the “makeup to get girls” strategy.
Male psychotherapist here, specializing in men’s trauma. It only took dating app tech founders, whose greed and hubris are biblical in size, all of about 10-11 years (since Tinder’s takeoff) to reverse centuries of human social contracts, and thrust today's men into a world where they are going to work longer hours, have worse/less secure careers, and pay just as many taxes into a system to take care of other people’s children while they have fewer chances to ever have their own. Monogamy is a social bargain to harness male competition into technological, social ingenuity and progress that benefit all in a society and not just "the king's offspring." Ancient evolutionary history is ugly and as a society we seem to continue toying with a return to that. Modern dating apps encourage harem structure where average men can expect a response from 0.87% of women aka 1 out of every 115 swipes. Totally unreal date-pocalypse that people just don’t talk about nearly enough.
Henderson says 50% of our current crop of young men have never asked a woman out on a date. Given the normalization and moral sanctioning they receive in school for homosexuality, I wonder how many of them are having sex with each other? It's alot more than prior generations, that's for sure. I suspect both trends are connected and self-reinforcing.
I am sad this wasn't longer. More of a sampler than a deep dive. Social media has definitely thrown a wrench into the dating market along with several other issues.
One thing I am more keen on is the rise of divorce. Boomers were the first generation to normalize divorce, so my generation was raised witnessing it. I wonder if that has an effect on how people treat relationships.
When I was growing up I had nothing but negative information from my (religious) parents about sex, dating, and marriage. Brainwashing against all of it. At 35 my mother said, for the first time, something like "it would be good for you to find someone"
What exactly these parents expected to happen still baffles me
~~In other words, explaining failure isn’t that interesting or useful. Explaining success is where the money is.~~
Well he's also said it multiple times in interviews, that in other words, being poor is the default. (We're all born poor.) Success is the exception.
But I also really like Thomas Sowell. Would love it if you could interview him. If you can't, you should sometime talk to Theodore Dalrymple (my second favorite living thinker). He's written a lot about topics like love among the lower class and such.
~~In 1930, family and local community dominated everyone’s lives, so that’s how couples came together. You’d either end up with someone you’d known your whole life, or someone that someone you’d known your whole life had known their whole life.
Today’s online-dating-dominated landscape is about as far from that as you can imagine. It’s a largely impersonal, algorithm-driven guessing game.~~
The other thing to note is that today there are just less family and community in everyone's lives. Couples came together back then because you'd at least have something of a background check on your prospective mate. Now? Everyone is strangers because families are fractured and communities are in even worse shape.
The very beginning of courtship (body language, wordless flirting, sexual attraction itself) has become taboo. This is the phase of “limerance,” fantasy about the other. Yet as Papa Papola points out (that’s three p’s) he doesn’t want his children to have loveless lives. They have to be taught the route to marriage and it doesn’t occur without asking someone out.
It took 25 yrs to develop Romantic Dynamics, full coverage of the science behind “traditional” human courtship searchable and surfable free at https://Romantipedia.com