I think the explanation for this becoming popular is much easier than the 8-point list. We are demonstrably in a recession when it comes to all forms of socialization, which includes dating/romance.
The reality is that pre-existing inequalities are going to hit people a lot harder when the floor falls out for everyone. There's a reason why redistributist social justice movements become much more popular during recessions/depressions.
I think it's probably true that in fact rich people lost a lot more money on an absolute basis than poor people during the 2007 Great Recession, but obviously the poor felt their money loss much harder, and you aren't really to debunk the "this was caused by all the evil rich people hoarding all the money" theory during an economic depression by pointing out that the rich probably lost a lot more money.
Those rich people actually caused the recession. I’m not sure this is a good example to prove the lack of responsibility of society in dating problems with.
While all the people who caused the great recession were in the infamous 1%, the vast majority of people in the 1% were not directly responsible.
In the same sense, most of our current social and romantic and sexual norms are influenced disproportionately by extremely attractive people, but the vast majority of "chads" are not really responsible for the modern incel phenomenon.
Those were the ones who devised the scheme , but much more people were complicit in it by taking part in said schemes (because I don’t think poor people had the monetary background to take credits and invest in housing).
You can claim this was recklessness rather than actually bad intent, but the schemers themselves can claim that.
I like your articles as they help to keep me grounded and nuanced, as I’m a man with ASD who is heavily reliant on apps and so I can find it hard to see the grey area a lot of the time. For example if a date doesn’t go well then it’s “because I wasn’t Chad enough and am ugly”, etc whilst failing to look at my past successes. This could also be tied to my neuroticism as well where I take any failures personally, but I digress.
If you’re getting dates off apps then your actions are mostly to blame for dates not going well. That and the general variability that exists within dating. In that sense, it’s not your looks holding you back anymore than it is even for Chad. There’s just variability once you’re on a date.
The main issue I see with men in this space is that they cannot even get a date off an app. Which seems to mostly be ignored in this article.
I'm saying they didn't find you physically unattractive unless you look substantially different from your photos (catfishing) no more than Chad would experience. You're likely just underperforming on a personality front for your dates *and/or* there's just inherent variability... Not everyone you meet will be a match in person. Do you like the personality of every person you've ever met? Probably not. Same is true for them. You both don't know each other and all you know is that you both find each other physically attractive. That's all you've got going up until you meet.
This might surprise you but most women are in a position where they can get a man they find physically attractive *and* find their personality attractive too. Maybe you've never been in that camp yourself - I don't know.
How would I be “underperforming”? I’m not a dance monkey and I only do quick coffee or drink dates. They probably think that they can do better/have better options. It is what it is.
Most men don’t experience raw attraction but luckily I have done. Which is why “courting” women is pointless. How many men do you think that women find physically attractive?
You could be doing a lot of common habits on dates like talking about yourself too much, boring, bringing up exes, talk about work or hobbies too much, etc. There's endless stuff people do wrong on dates and early courting. That's why I say you're likely underperforming if you're able to get a lot of dates but not convert them into relationships. This is assuming you like anyone you meet up with btw. Sometimes people also act poorly when they're not enjoying themselves - so it can go both ways. Some people behave in an unattractive way when you exhibit bad behaviors - leading to mutual disinterest even though it could've been there if both parties had acted properly.
Anyway, my main point is that if you're going on a good amount of dates and not getting much out of it - you have some personality stuff you need to work through and analyze that more. Lots of stuff out there on this..
Pretty sure the stats show that sexual partners is going down *except* for the top percentage of men. That has actually gone up.
So, not sure this is actually backing your point very well here. Go out to a place like NYC and it’s pretty obvious that the men having the most number of partners are quite attractive while the below average men aren’t getting anything. Known a lot of men in these ranges. You don’t need a crappy AWS mechanical Turk study to know that.
I was glancing at another article of his and was wondering about something like this. I think it might've been the promiscuity or virginity one. Could different subsets of the populations be having significantly different experiences while cancelling out the effect on the average?
Hypergamy theories have many versions. The one I encountered the most is that women are attracted to the kind of men who were high status in the ancestral society, brutal, strong, aggressive. Today that means violent criminals.
Good piece. I find it unfortunate that you meddle your analysis with responses to influencers' claims, as it muddles your overall point and makes it less clear to follow.
I have two questions.
>What this shows is that, as with online dating and speed-dating studies, selecting fewer people doesn’t necessarily mean those selections are more concentrated on more consensually desirable individuals, and swiping on few profiles doesn’t mean swiping on the same few profiles – even if the swipes aren’t equally distributed either.
Eastwick has a piece on Selective VS Unselective Desire, and it shows a .25 correlation in romantic reciprocity for people with selective desires (those who don't like everyone but a few people). It's like "undecided desire" defaults to high-status.
I am thoroughly open to the idea that female hypergamy is a myth and non-hypogamy may in fact prevail, in fact for both sexes, and even be put aside when conditions require it, like these days. But isn't looking at mariage in a mariageless, sterile group sort of besides the point? The fundamental question remains: why did people stop pairing up? And why did they stop having children?
1) What do you think is driving the sex drought among 20-30 yo?
The preference for attractiveness is clear, in both sexes as you say, and it does correlate with better well-being, better psychological profile, hence with status. And the big incel focus isn't on status per se as you noted, but clearly on attractiveness with "looksmaxing", which given what we know isn't completely unreasonable. And arguably women "looksmax" naturally through make-up and facial surgery. This seems to fuel the idea that hypergamy is not exclusively female, but also male, and that, more importantly, it cancels out when both groups reach a social equilibrium -- and it's not what we're seeing these days. We're seeing men doing worse in many ways, and this mismatch is arguably driving the mating crisis.
Also it is my understanding that David Buss' dual mating strategy, which seems to be empirically attested (at least if we believe Macken McMurphy), can be colloquially referred to as "beta bux, alpha fux"; but men do it too.
Likewise high status behavioral tendencies are strongly linked to attitudes women find attractive, and Mystery, the first PUA, took a lot from psychology research. His whole idea of seduction can be summed up as displaying pride, which is basically manifesting high status. I believe this is the strongest indicator of revealed preference. And that's a gendered difference here. (I can give you a list of references on this topic if you want)
Prestige, dominance and competency are the 3 status drivers according to psych research, and a bum can be perceived as highly socially dominant thus high status, just like a criminal through physical dominance. But as previously evoked, this wouldn't be such a focus if the average man and the average woman were "a match", but it seems they are less so now than they have been in previous decades. So, in my opinion, this whole discourse around female hypergamy can be perceived more profoundly as a decrying of this fundamental sexual mismatch, a conclusion I think you'd agree to.
>In summary, both men and women prioritize messaging more attractive people over less attractive ones [...]. Is this ‘hypergamous’ behaviour? I don’t know; by the common usage of the term [...] it would be, but in that case it’s a near-universal human behaviour rather than something uniquely female.
You have an issue with your approach women will settle a lot that doesn't mean for a second that is the man she wants she will leave a 5 year relationship as soon as a hot guy comes along we see this with clavicular women leave entire relationships for 1 chad let that sink in
I think some of the wording in this article could be touched up a bit. There's a few areas I found to be excessively vague, and perhaps there's a bit of disorganization in spots that impedes understanding. I also thought the introductory sections were rather lengthy and may have taken away time/energy that could've been better used to explain your arguments.
I have three main thoughts right now though:
1. Despite the PFP (I just think it's kinda funny), I'm not that familiar with the various theories being proposed, but I have seen some OKCupid charts posted several times, so why was this point dismissed so quickly? You said that this data showed men and women had "similar messaging behaviour" but I took a cursory glance and saw the opposite. It looks like the messaging rates and patterns themselves were different (along with male vs female attractiveness ratings). Even though I may be misunderstanding and just need to take a closer look, this seems like a point worth discussing further.
2. You said "Data from a study on Tinder users shows that match inequality is similar for both sexes, with the top 20% of both men and women accounting for about 87% of total matches. The top 10% of men held 75.7%, while the top 10% of women held 73.3%. For the top 5%, it was 63.2% and 55.2%, respectively." After seeing the OKCupid blog graph, this got me wondering how the top 20% is being determined here. If it's based on opposite-sex rated attractiveness distributions, would the top 20% of men and 20% of women be comparable? Perhaps the absolute amount of top 20% women and top 20% of men may be be wildly different? Also, is this based on top 20% of the population or top 20% of the scale? If the OKCupid graphs about how females rate male attractiveness are accurate, this may also lead to a significant difference. Unfortunately, I don't have excel so sorting through the data myself isn't exactly feasible.
3. There are many theories about what the exact problems are, but most people agree there is a serious problem of some kind. Part of its popularity has to do with a shared sense of massive social, economic, and demographic dysfunction. If blackpill theories and narratives are false, with you having demonstrated this ad nauseam, why not move on to other explanations? Perhaps one of the many other groups have a valid point or two? Perhaps those pointing out issues with marriage (I suppose these would be MGTOWs?) have an argument worth steelmanning? Maybe you think there are no serious problems? Perhaps your more balanced perspective would be healthier to the broader discussion on these related questions?
> It seems crazy as even very unattractive women on apps have insane standards and often reject men much more attractive than themselves.
This is pure supply and demand, there's ~3 men for every woman on basically every dating app. That means every woman is swamped with swipes and new messages every time she opens the app, and establishing "insane standards" is just a rational thing to do to thin the herd.
If you've ever hired somebody, imagine you're getting 100 resumes per day - it's basically that.
But this means the apps are a bad idea for most men, and you'll do much better living an actually interesting life that involves you doing things with friends and in mixed-sex gatherings. Go to dinner parties, go to raves, take a dance class, have some fun. It's better for you, and it's a better way to meet women.
Why would the apps be different to IRL? If you struggle on the apps then you're simply unattractive. Living an “interesting life” won't make you magically sexually attractive to women. Also if the ratios were equal on apps then the outcomes would be the same.
Sorry to say but it you struggle on apps then you're just ugly.
The apps aren't a bad idea for men. Where else would they meet women? In person is effort unless she approaches you. Women also don't want to meet men IRL.
Yeah. I can agree that it’s hard to find single women IRL. However, expecting women to approach you is just crazy talk. Unless you’re Chad, that’s not happening. It does happen a lot for hot men especially in places like NYC but if you’re not hot - you will have to approach. Even then, some people claim you will only be approached by women below your level of attractiveness. The whole initiators advantage thing.
“Since these men were autistic, they would have faced issues regardless of the state of the ‘mating market’ – and not just in dating – so there’s no obvious need to invoke broader systemic marginalization to explain why they ended up where they did.”
There’s no such thing as an ugly woman online due to the Simp Industrial Compex
Hilarious to see a manosphere platitude under a well-researched article. Guess it is to be expected though
He's not wrong though. Every woman has an insane number of options and matches, no matter how ugly she is. Look at app data.
Quite a fall from grace being a former Ballon d’Or winner to now commenting on articles about hypergamy…
I’m American
It was a joke regarding your name
Yeah I know he’s not well known here in the States
I think the explanation for this becoming popular is much easier than the 8-point list. We are demonstrably in a recession when it comes to all forms of socialization, which includes dating/romance.
The reality is that pre-existing inequalities are going to hit people a lot harder when the floor falls out for everyone. There's a reason why redistributist social justice movements become much more popular during recessions/depressions.
I think it's probably true that in fact rich people lost a lot more money on an absolute basis than poor people during the 2007 Great Recession, but obviously the poor felt their money loss much harder, and you aren't really to debunk the "this was caused by all the evil rich people hoarding all the money" theory during an economic depression by pointing out that the rich probably lost a lot more money.
Those rich people actually caused the recession. I’m not sure this is a good example to prove the lack of responsibility of society in dating problems with.
While all the people who caused the great recession were in the infamous 1%, the vast majority of people in the 1% were not directly responsible.
In the same sense, most of our current social and romantic and sexual norms are influenced disproportionately by extremely attractive people, but the vast majority of "chads" are not really responsible for the modern incel phenomenon.
Those were the ones who devised the scheme , but much more people were complicit in it by taking part in said schemes (because I don’t think poor people had the monetary background to take credits and invest in housing).
You can claim this was recklessness rather than actually bad intent, but the schemers themselves can claim that.
I like your articles as they help to keep me grounded and nuanced, as I’m a man with ASD who is heavily reliant on apps and so I can find it hard to see the grey area a lot of the time. For example if a date doesn’t go well then it’s “because I wasn’t Chad enough and am ugly”, etc whilst failing to look at my past successes. This could also be tied to my neuroticism as well where I take any failures personally, but I digress.
A good and interesting article.
If you’re getting dates off apps then your actions are mostly to blame for dates not going well. That and the general variability that exists within dating. In that sense, it’s not your looks holding you back anymore than it is even for Chad. There’s just variability once you’re on a date.
The main issue I see with men in this space is that they cannot even get a date off an app. Which seems to mostly be ignored in this article.
No, it’s likely that they just found me unattractive. What variability are you referring to?
I'm saying they didn't find you physically unattractive unless you look substantially different from your photos (catfishing) no more than Chad would experience. You're likely just underperforming on a personality front for your dates *and/or* there's just inherent variability... Not everyone you meet will be a match in person. Do you like the personality of every person you've ever met? Probably not. Same is true for them. You both don't know each other and all you know is that you both find each other physically attractive. That's all you've got going up until you meet.
This might surprise you but most women are in a position where they can get a man they find physically attractive *and* find their personality attractive too. Maybe you've never been in that camp yourself - I don't know.
How would I be “underperforming”? I’m not a dance monkey and I only do quick coffee or drink dates. They probably think that they can do better/have better options. It is what it is.
Most men don’t experience raw attraction but luckily I have done. Which is why “courting” women is pointless. How many men do you think that women find physically attractive?
You could be doing a lot of common habits on dates like talking about yourself too much, boring, bringing up exes, talk about work or hobbies too much, etc. There's endless stuff people do wrong on dates and early courting. That's why I say you're likely underperforming if you're able to get a lot of dates but not convert them into relationships. This is assuming you like anyone you meet up with btw. Sometimes people also act poorly when they're not enjoying themselves - so it can go both ways. Some people behave in an unattractive way when you exhibit bad behaviors - leading to mutual disinterest even though it could've been there if both parties had acted properly.
Anyway, my main point is that if you're going on a good amount of dates and not getting much out of it - you have some personality stuff you need to work through and analyze that more. Lots of stuff out there on this..
Boring? I’m not a circus performer.
What could I work on? Do you believe that “game” exists?
Pretty sure the stats show that sexual partners is going down *except* for the top percentage of men. That has actually gone up.
So, not sure this is actually backing your point very well here. Go out to a place like NYC and it’s pretty obvious that the men having the most number of partners are quite attractive while the below average men aren’t getting anything. Known a lot of men in these ranges. You don’t need a crappy AWS mechanical Turk study to know that.
I was glancing at another article of his and was wondering about something like this. I think it might've been the promiscuity or virginity one. Could different subsets of the populations be having significantly different experiences while cancelling out the effect on the average?
Hypergamy theories have many versions. The one I encountered the most is that women are attracted to the kind of men who were high status in the ancestral society, brutal, strong, aggressive. Today that means violent criminals.
Good piece. I find it unfortunate that you meddle your analysis with responses to influencers' claims, as it muddles your overall point and makes it less clear to follow.
I have two questions.
>What this shows is that, as with online dating and speed-dating studies, selecting fewer people doesn’t necessarily mean those selections are more concentrated on more consensually desirable individuals, and swiping on few profiles doesn’t mean swiping on the same few profiles – even if the swipes aren’t equally distributed either.
Eastwick has a piece on Selective VS Unselective Desire, and it shows a .25 correlation in romantic reciprocity for people with selective desires (those who don't like everyone but a few people). It's like "undecided desire" defaults to high-status.
I am thoroughly open to the idea that female hypergamy is a myth and non-hypogamy may in fact prevail, in fact for both sexes, and even be put aside when conditions require it, like these days. But isn't looking at mariage in a mariageless, sterile group sort of besides the point? The fundamental question remains: why did people stop pairing up? And why did they stop having children?
1) What do you think is driving the sex drought among 20-30 yo?
The preference for attractiveness is clear, in both sexes as you say, and it does correlate with better well-being, better psychological profile, hence with status. And the big incel focus isn't on status per se as you noted, but clearly on attractiveness with "looksmaxing", which given what we know isn't completely unreasonable. And arguably women "looksmax" naturally through make-up and facial surgery. This seems to fuel the idea that hypergamy is not exclusively female, but also male, and that, more importantly, it cancels out when both groups reach a social equilibrium -- and it's not what we're seeing these days. We're seeing men doing worse in many ways, and this mismatch is arguably driving the mating crisis.
Also it is my understanding that David Buss' dual mating strategy, which seems to be empirically attested (at least if we believe Macken McMurphy), can be colloquially referred to as "beta bux, alpha fux"; but men do it too.
Likewise high status behavioral tendencies are strongly linked to attitudes women find attractive, and Mystery, the first PUA, took a lot from psychology research. His whole idea of seduction can be summed up as displaying pride, which is basically manifesting high status. I believe this is the strongest indicator of revealed preference. And that's a gendered difference here. (I can give you a list of references on this topic if you want)
Prestige, dominance and competency are the 3 status drivers according to psych research, and a bum can be perceived as highly socially dominant thus high status, just like a criminal through physical dominance. But as previously evoked, this wouldn't be such a focus if the average man and the average woman were "a match", but it seems they are less so now than they have been in previous decades. So, in my opinion, this whole discourse around female hypergamy can be perceived more profoundly as a decrying of this fundamental sexual mismatch, a conclusion I think you'd agree to.
>In summary, both men and women prioritize messaging more attractive people over less attractive ones [...]. Is this ‘hypergamous’ behaviour? I don’t know; by the common usage of the term [...] it would be, but in that case it’s a near-universal human behaviour rather than something uniquely female.
2) Do you think men are doing worse on average?
Thank you for your work.
You have an issue with your approach women will settle a lot that doesn't mean for a second that is the man she wants she will leave a 5 year relationship as soon as a hot guy comes along we see this with clavicular women leave entire relationships for 1 chad let that sink in
I think some of the wording in this article could be touched up a bit. There's a few areas I found to be excessively vague, and perhaps there's a bit of disorganization in spots that impedes understanding. I also thought the introductory sections were rather lengthy and may have taken away time/energy that could've been better used to explain your arguments.
I have three main thoughts right now though:
1. Despite the PFP (I just think it's kinda funny), I'm not that familiar with the various theories being proposed, but I have seen some OKCupid charts posted several times, so why was this point dismissed so quickly? You said that this data showed men and women had "similar messaging behaviour" but I took a cursory glance and saw the opposite. It looks like the messaging rates and patterns themselves were different (along with male vs female attractiveness ratings). Even though I may be misunderstanding and just need to take a closer look, this seems like a point worth discussing further.
2. You said "Data from a study on Tinder users shows that match inequality is similar for both sexes, with the top 20% of both men and women accounting for about 87% of total matches. The top 10% of men held 75.7%, while the top 10% of women held 73.3%. For the top 5%, it was 63.2% and 55.2%, respectively." After seeing the OKCupid blog graph, this got me wondering how the top 20% is being determined here. If it's based on opposite-sex rated attractiveness distributions, would the top 20% of men and 20% of women be comparable? Perhaps the absolute amount of top 20% women and top 20% of men may be be wildly different? Also, is this based on top 20% of the population or top 20% of the scale? If the OKCupid graphs about how females rate male attractiveness are accurate, this may also lead to a significant difference. Unfortunately, I don't have excel so sorting through the data myself isn't exactly feasible.
3. There are many theories about what the exact problems are, but most people agree there is a serious problem of some kind. Part of its popularity has to do with a shared sense of massive social, economic, and demographic dysfunction. If blackpill theories and narratives are false, with you having demonstrated this ad nauseam, why not move on to other explanations? Perhaps one of the many other groups have a valid point or two? Perhaps those pointing out issues with marriage (I suppose these would be MGTOWs?) have an argument worth steelmanning? Maybe you think there are no serious problems? Perhaps your more balanced perspective would be healthier to the broader discussion on these related questions?
Could social media, the internet, or media in general foster ‘hypergamous’ comparisons that lead to lower relationship quality or length?
Would you agree that apps are much easier for women as they can always get dates and relationships because they get so many more matches?
It seems crazy as even very unattractive women on apps have insane standards and often reject men much more attractive than themselves.
> It seems crazy as even very unattractive women on apps have insane standards and often reject men much more attractive than themselves.
This is pure supply and demand, there's ~3 men for every woman on basically every dating app. That means every woman is swamped with swipes and new messages every time she opens the app, and establishing "insane standards" is just a rational thing to do to thin the herd.
If you've ever hired somebody, imagine you're getting 100 resumes per day - it's basically that.
But this means the apps are a bad idea for most men, and you'll do much better living an actually interesting life that involves you doing things with friends and in mixed-sex gatherings. Go to dinner parties, go to raves, take a dance class, have some fun. It's better for you, and it's a better way to meet women.
Buddy, The don is an incel troll. Don't bother w him.
How am I a troll when the mere fact that if the ratio of men and women were equal on apps then the outcomes would be the same?
Why would the apps be different to IRL? If you struggle on the apps then you're simply unattractive. Living an “interesting life” won't make you magically sexually attractive to women. Also if the ratios were equal on apps then the outcomes would be the same.
Sorry to say but it you struggle on apps then you're just ugly.
The apps aren't a bad idea for men. Where else would they meet women? In person is effort unless she approaches you. Women also don't want to meet men IRL.
Women IRL also have very high standards.
Every comment of yours is some variation on, "Women aren't interested in you unless they spontaneously approach you and ask for sex immediately."
I can't tell if you're actually this retarded or some guy doing a bit.
Yeah. I can agree that it’s hard to find single women IRL. However, expecting women to approach you is just crazy talk. Unless you’re Chad, that’s not happening. It does happen a lot for hot men especially in places like NYC but if you’re not hot - you will have to approach. Even then, some people claim you will only be approached by women below your level of attractiveness. The whole initiators advantage thing.
Has NP covered the MeToo stuff? I've heard many men suggest this is impacting their behavior because they're afraid of false accusations.
I don't think so. But we do know that approaching women doesn't work and I'd be interested to see him cover that.
“Since these men were autistic, they would have faced issues regardless of the state of the ‘mating market’ – and not just in dating – so there’s no obvious need to invoke broader systemic marginalization to explain why they ended up where they did.”
Talking about nuances, actually, there is:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210208085441.htm
The study proves the point that non-autistic people are predisposed against autistic people.
You guys don't even attend the argument that is being made.
And also that the best way of fighting it is educating non-autistic people about autistic people.
Yes uwu