- 6th grade - extraordinarily unattractive to the opposite sex.
- 8th grade - not outwardly reviled.
- 9th grade - outwardly reviled again.
- 12th grade - actually dating, with a bit of interest here or there.
- Freshman year of college - lower relative interest.
- Senior year of college - enough girls are interested that they're fighting with each other.
- 1st year in the workforce - outwardly reviled again!
- 5-10 years into the workforce - hard say, got married, so I must have been doing something right.
So, did I change much between 8th and 9th grade? Or between 12th grade and freshman year of college? No, obviously not, but my status relative to the bellcurve of available men did change quite a bit. This was most evident from my senior year to college to my first year in the workforce. I went from amazing, to worthless all due to graduation!
Please bear in mind, I'm not complaining about the nature of female preferences here. However, I do wish someone had explained that this would occur, and also why it would occur. I remember being quite surprised at the time.
It's quite cynical, I know.
It USED to be be the same thing when you were in highschool before tinder and social media: as a male, the more senior the higher status you had -- i.e. 9th grader males will just drool at their female coleagues going out with more senior males, until in 12th grade you finally hit payday.
Not so anymore because tinder and social media allow females to reach a much broader male audience.
It's the same thing with women in their thirties -- they notice they get a lot less male attention -- first the bad boys stop noticing them and a couple of years later even the nicest of guys won't give them that sweet validating attention women crave, so the smart ones settle down with a nice guy in her early thirties, the not so smart ones end up basically cat ladies.
Which is another problem men in their 20s face. They're competing with men in their 30s for the same women. There's simply a larger number of men trying to date a smaller number of women. The numbers mean someone gets left out.
Even in western cultures where monogamy was pretty strictly enforced by the church and society, I doubt that more than 80% of men procreated (wish I could cite sources, but there doesn't seem to be good data about this)
We also need to do away with the stigma that you can't have a fulfilling, productive and contributive life without children.
[1] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
If you read my post carefully, you'll see I only estimated the percentage for societies where monogamy is enforced (either through peer pressure, religion, or both)
I also did not cite the source you did, because I consider it of enough poor quality to be unreliable in debate.
If you're a 28 year old woman without a partner you only have a few more years of being physically optimal to give birth to a healthy child.
So the average-looking men suddenly become more interesting. They have a career going, they are stable, aren't womanizers, and won't gather too much attention from the competition.
I'm definitely average looking and I didn't get much attention in my late 20s. Only in my 30s I started getting attention from women who would formerly only go with the types of men they now avoided like the plague.
One of those guys is a good friend of mine. Great looking guy, just a great person if you're... not a woman. But he's the "bad boy" women fell for when he was in his 20s. Now he's in his 30s and still playing his old game.
Take a pick:
Option #1: An 9/10 looking 6,2ft tall guy who had over 100 sexual partners, constantly plays the seduction game just to get laid, is constantly flirted with by younger women, can't hold a conversation unless it's about sex, booze, or soccer, still goes to clubs several times a week.
Option #2: A 7/10 looking 6ft tall guy who had 4 sexual partners in his entire life (all longer-term relationships), can hold a conversation, has female friends, worked on his career instead of being in clubs 5 times a week.
Sure, there are still women who fall for him. His most recent relationships were women in their early to mid 20s. He's actually trying to settle down and find a long-term partner, but he has no clue how. The last 5 of them he fell in love with, all left him hanging just a few weeks into the relationship.
I am in my 30s and when I was on dating apps I'd suddenly get a ton of matches. Obviously also from women who are like my friend: promiscuous (no judgment here) women who, in their 20s, got pregnant and were left by the father.