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.
- 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.