I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have.

I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.

We don't talk too much about this but it's clear to me that it hurts them a lot, because it's not only about feeling desired, self-steem, or they can't fullfill their sexual desires.

It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.

The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars. But they're in their 30s, their self-steem is already pretty low, and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running. The times we've been around women, they get tired after a while and just want to grab me and go somewhere else.

The've had GFs and hookups from time to time (meaning maybe about 2 years), and from my POV the've been treated pretty badly.

IDK what to say, but I try to not think about it too much because it makes me sad.

I'm not there in those interactions but I wonder how much of it is a mismatch between what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person.

This is simply the other side of the coin, "online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers"

What is happening is that in the same way most women get more attention than most men, the few men who do get attention get to pick and choose because all of the women are going for them.

They get less desirable as time goes by so when they decide to ‘get serious’ at 35 it is already getting late

My take is that "age gap" relationships are difficult, even somebody who is 50 today grew up in a very different world than someone who is 27 on top of all the other issues about not outliving your partner too much, etc.

There's two metrics here though which influence and confuse one another. Women get plenty of attention on the attractiveness side, but just because you can get laid doesn't mean you can get a relationship. It makes sense that if a lot of people are acting as suitors that you would then down select from this group. The problem is that on the woman's side you don't know if the suitor is looking for a relationship or just to get laid. Without a good metric for that, you can't properly down select and might just end up with a pool of only people that want to get laid. Especially if the primary initial selecting criteria is simply attractiveness (i.e. you're using an app). This is probably unsurprising considering in the digital world we often convince ourselves that we have stronger relationships because of tools like these (e.g. keeping up with friends more because Facebook) but in reality we don't because we are sacrificing the only meaningful tool to build and maintain relationships: physical time together.

For modern society, this return to acting out the ancestral environment makes everything unstable. I predict in my lifetime for depression and suicide to be overtaken in number by extreme bouts of violence and riots.

What the head wants and what the heart wants ...

I am not sure, if this is a new thing, but there quite some social norms and expectations, that are impossible to fullfill (for both sides), creating unfulfillment and then drama.

I cannot say, that I know many happy couples. I met some and trying to work on my relationship, but it is really, really hard. Much harder, than I thought it is supposed to be.

Okcupids data showed this in nice clear charts.

The numbers invert as you get closer to 40. Single women at 40 are desperate, single men at 40 have a jaded, and quite accurate, view of the majority of women.

Then they meet someone, it's hard to drop everything if there's still more matches you haven't met yet.

Online dating is the death of our species.

What about that majority of cases when a woman doesn't want a commit? People grow to sexual age in 18 and can be not committed until much later, so in between they can/should/want to have less consequential encounters, right? So what about that majority of cases, do women still struggle when they are in the same situation - when they would have sex but unwilling to commit?

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I think this needs correction. By that age, puberty is already over. For girls, onset of puberty is 10, reproductive maturity is 14.

It could be that you mean something else, namely a related social/legal construct, but that does not seem likely to me because of the word "grow".

While I think that globally the sentiment about this is true (market is driven by women), I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".

That however doesn't mean that male friends would rule out going with said girl.

There's the "wisdom" which summarizes the idea that there are no ugly women. It's in other words the same idea as above - for vast majority of women men would still go with them.

They need your wife to bring her single friends to the bar.

If they have a hard time reaching out to women hitting bars without friends won't help them much.

maybe people are just waiting until you're down on their level

When I learned to play poker, one of the key insights was that beyond the point of basic competence, literally the most important factor is table selection, and second most important is seat selection. It doesn't matter how good of a player you are if you're in a game with an even better player on your left. Similarly, you don't have to be very good to make a lot of money if you can find a terrible player and sit to their left.

I think this applies to dating and social skills more generally. While it's great to occasionally get out of your comfort zone, you're more likely to have success socially and romantically in settings where you feel in your element. The more comfortable you are and the more you're authentically enjoying yourself, the more attractive you'll appear to others. So unless you really like bars and clubs, don't go to them--or at least look for places with a vibe that suits you, not places where you feel like a loser. The best bet is to somehow find the overlap in the venn diagram of 'places/activities you authentically enjoy' and 'places where single women are present'.

They aren't always easy to find and it might take some work to arrange these types of settings if you don't have access to any that already exist, but at the same time, anyone can host a game night or book club or running group etc. and start promoting and networking to get people involved.

I have a friends like this. One solution a couple of them have found is dating internationally. Not via "mail-order" services though. It was sort of a situation where they had a domestic friend who had friends or relatives abroad who were looking for a US marriage. So there was some trust there, and it was set up sort of like an arranged marriage. A lot of people hate on arraigned marriages, but the older I get, the more they make sense.

Also, is it really long term solution to loneliness? If only motivation for marriage was to get the attractive citezenship, what will hold the marriage after it's done? Anecdotally, internet is full of stories of "mail-brides", who divorce the men and take a sweet part of his assets with it.

As I said, this isn't through a mail order service. This is via friends of friends. The marriage would not just be for citizenship. Just like the arranged marriages I mentioned, there would be an element of matchmaking via the intermediary (the mutual friend in this case, or the two families in a traditional arrangement) that has a true belief that the two people would get along well together and share similar values. Then you would have visits and such to see how you liked the other person.

But yes, I see how that can create problems in specific locales. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the problem can be solved universally.

Judges can override prenups. I just did a little Google research, and just under 50% of prenups are invalidated during divorce.

The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.

As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?

Re: paying for everything. A lot of women want to step outside of their own traditional gender role but have a man firmly inside his.

It could be hard to figure out what would be better - this kind of initiation with associated large risk of getting emotionally attached to the paid person, or staying virgin for years and years, having no comparative to peers experience and somewhat falling more behind, so having to dig out from deeper and deeper pit. So I wouldn't with certainty recommend looking for paid services to get initial experience, even though that could - not always - simplify subsequent interactions. Even though such an approach could be sufficiently different for men vs. women.

Existed, sure. Whether they “work” or not is... well, for most of history no one was gathering data, but arranged marriage still exists now, and there is evidence linking it to higher rates of suicide, for women particularly.

Note that this is *not* to say that international relationships can't work--I've seen some that do (including my own) but I do not know of one that didn't involve one person being in the other's country already (although I would not rule out both people being in a third country, I just don't know any such.)

even if it's just for short term flings.

a lot of average guys tend to get overlooked with online dating, and don't have the cojones to approach their local women.

whereas if it's international - you become interesting - just by being someone a woman doesn't interact with on a daily basis i.e you not the local loser. so chances of her fucking you for the "wow" factor are higher than if you were a local.

of course don't go there trying to find love

Bars are a fairly decent place for low stakes socialization, at the very least.

In person dynamics are just different - I met my husband in a bar. At the time neither of us were looking to date anyone for various reasons but we happened to get chatting and our chemistry was immediately apparent. If he were exactly the same person but I first "met" him as a dating profile on the screen I almost certainly would have passed.

In night clubs? Better hope you've hit the gym for the last month...

There's a strong winner-takes-all effect online

So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad).

I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyone, including women, wants a satisfying relationship. And most people aren't getting one at any given moment.

And it doesn't seem like any part of your calculus is how to square those perspectives? Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?

And you don't think this might be part of the reason your negotiations are failing? Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first. Why do you think it should work any different here?

The imbalance since the onset of online dating is huge and it and its dismissal with implied equivalence on each side is a real problem for society.

This is overstating the case. This can all be measured. Statistics like median number of partners, age at marriage, etc... are indeed all trending downward and growing more asymmetric between men and women. The linked article cites a few studies like this. But it's not a "huge" effect.

This is a meme, created largely by feedback communities like the incel folks. Note, FWIW, the Betteridge question mark in the title of the linked paper. Contra everyone's assumptions here, it does not seem to be presenting solid evidence for a "public health problem".

In the simple model where people pair up 1-1 exactly once, a 2% imbalance means 2% of people can’t pair up no matter what they do.

I wonder how this plays out in places like India and China that practice sex selective abortion.

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bare-branches-secur...

> What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.

https://theconversation.com/pity-chinas-bare-branches-unmarr...

> Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is a highlight in Chinese society. But for many young people, the joy of vacation and family reunion is mixed with questions from parents and relatives about their achievements in the past year, including about their relationships.

> This is a particularly stressful occasion for single men who – unless they choose to rent a fake partner or have a stroke of luck at the local marriage “market” - are forced to face the miserable fate of singlehood.

> These involuntary bachelors, who fail to add fruit to their family tree are often referred to as “bare branches”, or guanggun. And the Chinese state has recently started to worry about the dire demographic trend posed by the growing number of bare branches.

> The 2010 national census data suggests that 24.7% Chinese men above the age of 15 have never been married, while 18.5% of women in the same age group remain unwed.

'Bare Branches' and Danger in Asia - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/07/04/b...

I fail to understand your arguments leading to such outcome, unfortunately.

Presumably what spaniard89277 means is "I have talked to long-term-single men and this is what I think their aggregate perspective is, I don't know many long-term-single women so I don't really know their perspective"

After all, if he knew a lot of single people of both genders, presumably he'd point them at one another.

Understanding could be required, but sufficiently not sufficient condition. That understanding should have a chance to be demonstrated - and the choice of actions, given highly unpredictable short-term decision making, could easily make or break the transaction.

I say "could be", even though I seen cases where that was completely bypassed - only the form was in place, and one side of the transaction remained under wrong assumptions long after the initial actions had place.

And to repeat: that same logic is identical to sales, which is another area most incels are extremely bad at.

Of course intimacy is a two-way transaction. It's also a thing where the chain of events and actions happen, and there are many possible breaking points, which at beast move the interaction to square one. So to summarize in short words, "make women like me" means passing this chain of events - from men's point of view - so that there's a passable chance to actually complete the transaction. Note that the situation is hardly symmetrical for men vs. women - I'd argue men are much more forgiving and willing to continue the chain of actions should something go sufficiently unexpected, in the wrong enough way.

I would guess you don't see the attempt to square the perspectives because it could be too obvious to talk about. Like, when we talk about programming we usually assume ability to handle basic addition of numbers under a hundred, which comes handy - and similarly when we talk about relationships we assume the two-wayness just the same, there's no need to talk about it.

> Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first.

This could vary widely. One can study somebody else for long time - see e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735/ The Sting, where the conspirators take time to study the ways their counterparts behave. Or in other case one could fly by the seat of your pants on a dance floor, when he sees a woman partner for some minutes at best. There could be little opportunities to get to know the other side better though - Tinder illustrates that when you make a split-second decision having barely even studied the image on the screen, not saying anything about the person themselves.

> Why do you think it should work any different here?

I guess because the analogy doesn't quite holds.

There's a whole industry around it peddling advice that ranges from effective (yet impossible to implement for a broken person) to counter-productive and evil.

It's really very simple, but people just have massive amounts of negative programming that radiates out from them like a reverse pheromone.

Those who are hungry do not eat. You can't fake it, but letting go of fear and just talking to strangers in public flirting spaces (bar, club, maybe target, NOT WORK OR FRIENDS) over and over again while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest will eventually give one the appearance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes. Having a conversation with any kind of sexual implications while maintaining a stance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes is my definition of flirting.

The mindset (feel free to actually say this. it works): "I think we should do sexy stuff together because it would be fun for both of us, and I'm happy to tell you that because even if you say no, I hope I've flattered you and spoken my truth and that feels good."

Edit:

-Therapy

-Dance classes (not for flirting, just having positive touch experiences)

Dance classes could be still a downlifting experience but yes, could still be beneficial, even though not by much. Some numbing could be achieved, when after downfall one reaches a plato where for some range of input conditions the output doesn't worsen.

Cheaper options would be trauma or addiction groups if those fit.

A lot of people have just horrible “truths” they absorbed from their upbringing that need to be deprogrammed. Framing this as a parental trauma and working through it in a group setting could be useful.

Some people have had success with MDMA or psilocybin

1. The same strategy applies to public speaking, or product demos, or chairing a meeting, or systems design for people who feel they are not good at it. The human mind is incredibly adaptable and has great capacity for learning when exposed to new environments. The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.

Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.

> The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.

It's likely everybody had a rejection at least once. It's also likely a large percent didn't particularly enjoy the outcome. I don't think that so many people should seek professional help though - or it should be something very different from what we assume now.

If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.

A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.

Hmm...

> A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.

Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?

No, because you can't. Person in a healthy etc. can realize that thing about fear response, but be unable to control that said response. Somewhat, but not quite, being unable to hold breath voluntarily, for arbitrarily long time.

You might be right about the need talking to professional expeditiously. However many don't, and are ok, even though they pass through quite - to the point of those thoughts - dark area in their life. We know about some unfortunate outcomes of such situations; that doesn't mean all the rest have it easy.

No, I would not - but if I survive the encounter, I would learn to swim under highly controlled circumstances (i.e. while not being chased by a maniac), and swim an increasing number of laps to help my endurance. That way I may have confidence to swim across raging river, if my life involved having to borrow axes from strangers near rivers.

By "club" do you mean hobby type things? It's perennial advice but it has the serious flaw that to a large degree you encounter the same people over and over, most of whom are too young/too old/not available.

I'm married so I'm not looking but as a game I have paid attention to the suitability of those I get to know--and the number of relationship prospects approximates zero.

It is possible to not drink alcohol at a bar and still have fun, but I also never liked bars to meet people.

And "clubs", no he did not meant a "hobby thing", but a place where you can dance and enjoy music.

Dancing is a very old way of hooking up.

Back in time it was the village dance, where the young people got close. And this still works, either in formal settings like a dance studio - or free style on a dance floor.

Dancing is body language and you can signal to other people, whether you are interested, or not. And then you get close, or apart.

This is tricky, but key. If you hide your interest, you will most likely act weird.

And yes, rejection is part of the game and no problem. Unless of course - like you say - one is already broken. Then a simple rejection can be devastating of the remaining confidence.

Flirting is a game, but some never learned how to play. I also learned it quite late and remember the awkward teenage years and feel sorry for those who never got the chance. And nowdays it even seems harder.

That would mean it's not very natural, which could be doubtful. However the quality of play could vary, with corresponding outcomes.

And relations are not always about sex, the most stable relations are based upon understanding and care friendship. Sure sex is something but after the kids do people still want to live like rabbits, well there much more in life than sex. The media might make you think peole have sex every day or so, thats bullshit some relations are not based on sex at all but are by all means perfect relastions. (some people dont enjoy sex, or because of medical reasons).

If you want a happy life enjoy other peoples smile, go to places where people smile, enjoy your life yourself visit places. There is no perfect face or figure. And stay away from people who build their life on consumables as drugs or alcoholics a its reciepe for disaster.

Dont try to search for it, not online either, accidents just happen ;)

I would definitely recommend a more active approach. Time goes by, and can come to an end unfortunately.

How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?

I don't know your friends, but have known people in similar situations. In all those cases, their were others in our social circles who looked worse "on paper" but had no real difficulties here - it wasn't really about attractiveness or intelligence, but about behavior and/or expectations.

Sometimes it's all available time. Which could be really small or none at all.

Behavior could be significantly affected by proximity with women, when you're in certain age and experience. It's described in the literature, for here it could be said a social - social - situation with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend - and where such goal doesn't quickly appear and supersedes whatever other goals there were - could be rare to find.

> Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away,

This is not normal, and if it's happening probably points to deeper problems.

It took me a while to understand, that "bars" here do not correspond to "outdoor exercise equipment".

> that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived.

Recently I saw Mozart's "The Magic Flute" for the first time. Papageno character heavily resonates with this observation. So, the problem is not new.

I have not read the paper yet so I don't know if this idea was captured but I agree the issue is not only about the sex, it's also (maybe even moreso) about intimacy and connection.

I wonder to what degree this is an issue brought on by a higher level of education and awareness. I mean there are plenty of loveless marriages and I expect the further in the past you go the more common this was. I can not imagine that at the time when marriages were usually arranged, mostly for economic reasons, there was much love unless they were lucky. There was also just so much inequality contributing to this. I can believe many people were not aware better was possible.

Have people become aware that relationships can be more and now find it impossible to settle for less?

Edit, just to make it clear, is not necessarily a bad thing. Changing the expectation about what a relationship should be towards one where more things are valued is a good thing. It does however mean we are suffering the consequences of being in the transition period between two value systems.

Unfortunately, women that frequent bars are very likely to be alcoholics.

The only person who should "make women like me" is a female lesbian Doctor Frankenstein.

Anyone else has to make themselves likable to women.

The only person you should make do or be or like things is yourself.

You can't force other people to like you, just because you feel like it.

It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.

I doubt it's that much. Is the very-best movie from last year, uncovered by ten or fifteen minutes of targeted searching and reading, likely to be better than whatever I'd have picked up at the video store based on gut feeling and what a few friends had told me? Oh, god yes, of course it is. Am I happier this way, though? I'm less certain about that. Probably a little? But I don't think it's a large effect.

Ditto having "the world's knowledge at your fingertips" (well, ignore that it's far from all of it and that you're probably still better off hitting the books for a lot of things, but it's good at the trivial stuff anyway). Can I answer most silly little "I wonder..." questions in five to ten seconds? Yep. Am I happier this way? I'm not so sure, since before the Internet was available nearly everywhere nearly all the time I rarely even became consciously aware of such trivial thoughts and they were very easy to dismiss when I did.

everyone can perceive that this acts as just gatekeeping for unattractive people

yes, newsflash people would rather not have advances from ugly people, but to masquerade that as trying to vilify advances at all is pure fiction

It feels that way because it is that way (stats from OKCupid, but I suspect the effect generalizes):

https://archive.is/lGIdO

I used Tinder for close to a year and had an experience close to what you're describing. I only managed to go on two dates that both went nowhere. At the suggestion of someone on one of the dating subreddits, I switched to Hinge, saw the difference in the amount of attention I was getting, and never looked back. Eventually, I met my girlfriend on there.

Sure, and 90% dudes are chasing the top 10% women.

Of course, what really helps is to be on the favorable end of the gender mismatch if you're somewhere like SF or NYC. It's not nearly as bad as online people say it is though. You only need to find one person!

If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1.

Rather than a social problem this is an economic problem, and as dystopian as it sounds I personally think the solution here is a non-profit or even govt sponsored dating app. It would be stupidly easy to do this and also add a whole lot more trust (bad actors may face real consequences), which is one of the other huge reasons why dating apps struggle with getting women into their app.

Well... kind of. Except that men also tend to all be looking at the same pool of younger women, while women tend to look for men closer to their own age, according to OKCupid's data.

https://www.businessinsider.com/dataclysm-shows-men-are-attr...

IIRC the OKCupid data showed that women rated most men poorly, but then still responded to their messages, so, like, it didn't matter.

The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.

The dynamic is the same in real life, for example at a nightclub where women drink for free, promoters who bring them get paid per girl, and lonely men pay $40 cover for a chance to shoot their shot

In some ways this is great because you don't waste your time, or their's, if there's a serious incompatibility. But I think it can also be used negatively when people are too picky. Sure, there are people who are too picky in real life, but those snap judgements are based just on what you can see. The absence of other information can make someone go, "Ok, I'll give them a shot even if they're average looking because maybe they're interesting/mysterious/etc".

I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.

Hahaha—I have a pretty good track record at the game, "spot the software industry dude" on hiking trails. We have a certain look and demeanor. Our preference for conspicuously-expensive outdoor gear from the right brands (not "hick" or "red" brands) does make it relatively easy as such games go, though.

> The dynamic is the same in real life...

While I agree it isn't unique to OLD, it's vastly different to real life. In real life you can strike up a conversation with someone, become friends, develop feelings, and end up in a relationship weeks/months/years down the line.

Tinder would be more comparable to a swinger club in this regard. Swinger clubs will charge single dudes well over 100$ for that same chance, and those guys will have to try to get lucky with predominantly older couples. Usually these dudes will find that their success levels go up if they are bisexual too. (The reasons for that are left as an exercise for the reader)

But a gov-sponsored app? No way. It's bad enough they have your whole financial/employment history (IRS), but to add your health (medicare/aid) and now dating/sexual histories too? What's left that you can keep private? Sorry, bad idea there.

(And I would like to see government job boards, also, for basically the same reasons.)

But again the IRS, which deals with everyone most directly (more than say intel documents) is notoriously bad and behind the times at it’s computer systems.

MatchGroup might sell your data to a company for ads and the like, but it’s opt in, and one of several. When’s the last time government did something opt-in?

Who knows, the ads might be useful sometimes. Giving politicians and bureaucrats access to more information about you in another centralized db somewhere is a recipe for disaster, and even if they are angels, it’ll be a huge target for others!

Ultimately you decide who you want to date, but in scenarios where most people meet through apps, those apps have a lot of influence over who meets who. Nobody knows how the matching algorithms work, all we see is the effects and a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some men are having a difficult time finding partners.

I don't know the stats but on places like Blind there's a lot of anecdotes about the dating scene favoring men in NYC and favoring women in SF, due to the gender balances.

If you are a straight man, the NYC dating scene is heavily in your favor. Opposite in SF

Expanding user graphs for matches across multiple nodes isn’t just easy, it’s actually way more efficient too. Have nodes calculate match likelihood among their users and verify they’re using the same algorithm with a simple hash. Then you’ve reduced getting matches for user X from the entire population Y (calculating distance, applying filters, and then ordering by compatibility, all expensive tasks) to getting matches for user X from nodes N that are purposely geolocated nearby reducing the search space even more.

Basically not only could you do this open-source and decentralized, it would actually be more secure, safer, and way better both accuracy wise and cost wise at finding matches.

I've talked about it on other threads but where and how you earn your money matters. 300K per year as a lawyer = sexy and powerful. Even "don draper" vibes. 300K as a SWE? The moment you mention this at a bar the girl knows you went to university courses that averaged 9 men to 1 woman. They know you're likely on the ASD spectrum. The know "the odds are good but the goods are odd".

This is why blind is filled with posts by high earning folks who can't ever get a single date. It's hard out there and thinking that you can beta-bux your way out of it in a west coast city isn't going to work out for you.

It is not hard to get a date on the west coast on $300k as a tech person, as long as you have more to offer than just that.

There's endless science that supports why this happens though. In order to understand why this exists we have to go back in history. For every single man that reproduced, theres 10 other women that reproduced [1]. That means that a significant percent of the male population died without having any offspring, unlike the female population which could always find a partner. On the other hand, polyginy has always been practiced throughout the world universally pretty much everywhere in most cultures, especially by men of influence and power, unlike polyandry which is quite rare [2]

The theory goes that evolutionary speaking, women try to find the best mating partner (most well-off, most influencing, most powerful etc) in order to secure the best future for their offspring to grow up healthy, without any regard whether that man already has other offspring or partners. This is also supported by the fact that women 100% know that the offspring is in fact theirs since they gave birth to them, unlike men which have zero assurance that the kid is in fact theirs. And this is why for most of recorded history premarital sex for women in civilized societies was a big no no up until like the 1950s that started to change in the western world.

So dating apps create this perfect environment where choice is abundant, so men take their shot on everybody, and girls only choose the most handsomest, most well-off guys on there. Its similar to a big high school environment, where most of the popular pretty girls from all years and generations would date a dozen guys in the sports teams and just swap around every few months. In high school and college I was in a similar situation, and girls were in fact excited that I was so experienced and that I was seeing other girls at the same time.

On dating apps most men get somewhere like 0-4 matches a week and most women get somewhere like 100-1000. That’s a 25x difference best-case scenario and often it’s over 100x. Which is kind of insane considering there are about 50/50 men to women ratio in real life.

People say “the 20% top men get 80% of matches” but it’s worse than that. The 20% top men may get something reasonable like 3-4 matches a day, but your average women is getting something crazy like 1 match every 15 minutes.

Because a lot of men like to swipe right on nearly everyone and buy passes which get them unlimited swipes. And most women get extremely choosy and swipe right on only the super handsome nearly-perfect men, but you can’t even blame them when they have literally 1,000 matches.

So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create. You'll have much easier time.

[1] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy

Given your self-description, you're probably not understanding the problem from the men side. The problem is - how, specifically, to go out and talk to girls in real life.

As Elon Musk says, let this sink in. We're talking here about modern times, where people have less opportunity to contact each other - and the problem existed way before, now it only became harder. The main chunk of the problem is that it's unclear how to arrange for a lot - enough - opportunities to talk to girls in real life so that the results would be sufficient.

But the fact is, there are thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.

We should not forget that building a social circle, joining clubs or groups, and participating in activities that align with your interests are all great ways to meet new people. Additionally, working on building social skills and confidence can also help in real-life interactions. And not all dating apps are created equal, and some may have a higher success rate for men than others. Some apps or websites are geared towards specific interests or demographics, and targeting these may increase your chances of success.

tl;dr dating apps can be a useful tool, but they should not be the only way to meet potential partners. It's important to actively seek out opportunities to meet new people in real life and to put in the effort to build genuine connections.

OLD used to be a great way to meet people. However, helping people establish meaningful longterm connections and stop using the service isn't a sustainable business model.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patie...

When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories:

The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance.

The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date.

The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches.

Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.

I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?

It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.

(Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.)

One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.

The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention.

The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.

The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s.

But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.

Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.

So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.

Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.

(For instance, it's easy to "change" if you're a burn victim. If you're going to be scientific, be specific.)

So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control.

A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.

If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.

My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.

I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.

My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.

Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.

I just never saw a lot of the awful behavior that women get on the regular. E.g., the guys who will go from "u r hot" to "fuck you bitch" in a series of DMs over 12 hours with absolutely no response from women. It honestly amazes me that so many of them stay in the dating market at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Gender_differences

Besides, as long as you get those few responses, that will be enough for all but the most active and adventurous daters. There are only so many hours in the day.

I guess some things have to be experienced for real understanding. No, this is surely not a burden by any measure, it is a huge privilege.

In tech, fending recruiters off with a stick is far less of a burden and stress than being unemployed or permanently underemployed or underpaid in a different field. It's annoying, sure, but it's not going to cause you depression to have so many people showing interest in you, it validates some amount of self-worth. Recruiters also take an approach to recruitment very similarly to men in online dating, treating it as a numbers game and where they don't care about candidate quality before first contact. Blast out interest and feelers indiscriminately to anyone and then evaluate the quality of those who respond and be happy to settle for any commission in the end. Both are broken processes of course, but the power dynamics seem similar.

They might actually be related... "Human resources" people are overly female. Maybe they just apply their normal behavior and experience to work?

You could actually test your hypothesis,make yourself deliberately less desirable, then check the reactions and what that does to your self esteem.

Some anecdotal evidence from a female who wrote a book about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book)

Pornography by and for gay men, is as popular if not more so, with gay men as pornography is with straight men. The market for such material aimed at women, gay or straight, is rather marginal by comparison.

Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.

The sexual behaviour of homosexual men and women is very different at a population/statistical level. Whether it's nature or nurture can of course be debated, but it seems like a very strong indicator that women's and men's sexuality are of a slightly different nature.

I would love to know the actual number here, as someone in the gay male open relationship category.

I remember discussing this with a friend of mine, who is also in an open relationship. He came out with a fascinating statement that he had never seen a long term monogamous gay relationship where both parties were perfectly happy. After he said it, my first thought was that was ridiculous and then tried to think of friends who were the exception... I couldn't name a single one either. Every monogamous gay couple I've met going for longer than >1 year had at least one person in the relationship air that they were sexually frustrated to me in private and wanted more. Most were jealous of our relationship, but worried about the consequences of opening their relationship.

I am sure the monogamous gay couple who are happy is out there somewhere, but I've yet to meet them.

> When analyzing the whole sample, approximately 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships;

-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/

Similar ratio from studies done in 2005 and 2015 in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/22/gay-dat...

As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.

Funnily enough I am precisely the opposite. I spent my 20s trying to hunt for "the one" and had a series of short, failed relationships. Now I'm in my 30s I am in a 9 year long successful (I think?) open/polyamorous relationship.

Really I think gay men (and men in general) struggle with communication skills and emotional maturity. Gaining those skills are key to maintaining long, healthy relationships. Non-monogamy is an avenue towards working towards achieving those skills because maintaining a healthy, open relationship means a lot of communication is required. In my opinion, it is a high risk, high reward strategy to a maintaining a relationship.

> but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.

I think we have to distinguish minor annoyances from major communication issues due to sex. Like it or not, sex is a big part of being human and sex drive is something can be wildly different between people. Non-monogamy can be an outlet for this.

This is the ultimate source of much of the struggles for men.

Women generally don't like sharing their partner with competition. (Neither do most men. Threesomes men pursue are almost always MFF, not MMF.)

None of this is surprising.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZTIbHIsIYw

The ratio is so badly skewed that the apps end up working for no one. Neither men nor women.

Probably best to keep it that way.

* It's easier to find a partner when you already have one

* There are much higher standards in getting dates (akin to interviewing) than once in a relationship

* Theres a power imbalance due to cultural expectations that men are the pursuers

I've been told by a male friend who (quite successfully) uses several of these apps that even on that one that makes women initiate contact (is it Bumble?) the first message is just "hi" like 99% of the time. Meanwhile, that's a guaranteed way for a dude to get ghosted, on any platform where guys can initiate contact, as is responding with a reciprocal "hi" on that one. In either case the clear expectation is that the guy needs to present something interesting right out of the gate, very first message, and generally drive the discussion. (this guy attributes his success largely to his A+ chat game, so I'm inclined to believe his take on this)

There is also a power imbalance due to men being physical more powerful than women, which is a concern for most, if not all women.

Pro tip: You should probably agree to swipe right on everyone indiscriminately to avoid a potential argument.

Not so pro disclaimer: I'm single and not married, so your mileage may vary. Please report back for... research purposes. :)

Yeah this is a unstable feedback loop.

Women want men to message first. So they don't message first. So a lot of men spray all the women with generic messages first (because spending even any amount of effort on a single woman is most likely going to get ignored, so men just assume 1 in 100 people respond and don't put much effort until there is at least one response from her). Women then get inboxes flooded. Women then increasingly don't message first because they get complacent with the hundreds of messages in their inbox.

The dating culture needs to change, women need to stop expecting men to lead, take some control, and pick and message people they'd like to get to know. If men start getting some nonzero amount of inbound from people who like them, they are less likely to need to "spray" the entire female population with generic messages.

Personally, I prefer the experience as a male. Instead of getting flooded with goofs, I can focus on a small amount of matches.

I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.

This outcome generally signals to at-risk men (in terms of mental state) that women they would find attractive have all swiped left on them only leaving below average or physically unfit women. It's also entirely likely that they might just not be desire-able on dating apps and in fact, are only matched with people who don't have standards. That said, I think standards are important on both sides AND I've had men far more attractive than me also encounter a situation of only having a handful of matches even in NYC.

What's your definition of attractive height…?

For women? Maybe in the Netherlands.

You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynamic via socially enforced pair bonding. When you lose that social adaptation, you revert back to more atavistic matching dynamics.

The sad truth is most men are disposable (from an evolutionary point of view), much like the vast quantities of sperm they produce.

Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.

We don't change our instincts just because there are laws. Look at how many people are in prison for drug possession. The law is much weaker than brain chemicals being expressed. (Also, not every law is based on wide agreement of human emotion. Sometimes lawmakers simply do whatever. I'm mostly talking about the ones that have been around since the dawn of humanity.)

Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations.

Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin.

There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Humans are complex and very weird.

I think, slut shaming might have a biological component: you can't be shure the kid is yours.

The #1 cause of men not being datable is the advice they get from other men. Try listening to women instead.

In workplace settings, men tend to speak up whether or not they have something wise to contribute. This communications style carries over into the way men use dating apps.

Also, you can't sell the libertarian techbro thing as attractive. It isn't. Your prerogative to be that way. It doesn't bother me in a workplace setting. But it is a massive turn off. You are lowering your odds. You can find counterexamples, such as that when I was an undergrad, women ran the Objectivist newspaper. But outliers be outlying.

(Similarly, richer people/political donors are usually liberals and the richer/more they donate the more liberal they are. It's all thanks to education polarization.)

Her inbox might be flooded with messages, but most of those messages are spam. Most of the guys didn't even look at her profile, and instead swiped right on everyone and copy-pasted the same message to all of their matches. If she replies, most of them will not respond. Few will put in the effort to have a substantial conversation, and fewer will actually try to go out on a date with her.

If she goes on a date, she would end up in the same situation. She will probably carry the conversation and will be more interested in them than they are in her. Many will agree to have sex with her for the sake of their own pleasure, but few would attempt to give her pleasure. If she gets into a relationship, chances are the guy won't pull his weight (because he's not really interested) and she will end up doing all the work. He will regularly flake on her to hang out with his friends and play videogames, and will try to hide the fact that he doesn't actually like her as a person or enjoy being around her.

On the other hand, if you get a handful of responses, that means a handful of women are interested in you. They actually want to talk to YOU, to the extent that you are accurately represented by your profile. The chance that one of those people are a good match for you, and that they are willing to give you a fair chance is high. And if they end up not actually liking who you are, they will do you the favor of ending it instead of wasting your time.

As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures. No, those pictures suck too, try again.

My experience on dating apps, and in real life dating (including with my current partner) is that it's the man's burden to entertain the date. The overwhelming majority of date time was spent with me asking questions to try to coax the girl into actually talking, and talking about themselves (which people like to do).

Hell, most of the time that girls ghost guys on dating apps is because they're "boring". Dick pics are not sent out by more than half of all men who are rejected, but at least half of those rejctees we're "boring".

One way to try to fight this is to jestermax or goofmax. I refuse. I shouldn't have to become a damn comedian to prove that I've got "game".

In practice, the proportion of good matches are similar for men and women. The issue is that men get many fewer of them in total, which means many fewer good, invested matches.

No amount of picture taking changes the fact that being short or ugly or bald or old or non-white firmly entrenches the profile in the "never match" category.

You also have to have some hooks --things that are part of your personality that can instigate some interest. Could be climbing, playing an instrument, working on a farm, etc. But also don't make things up. Looks matter, but after that initial attraction, other things matter, are they organized, are they too compulsive... You know their habits and so on. You want someone normal but also not someone boring, for the most part.

The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience. For girls, often as not, the first sign of sexual interest is a creepy older man making uncomfortable comments at them when they're 11 years old. IIRC this shows up in mental health statistics -- boys who start puberty earlier tend to do better; girls who start puberty earlier tend to do worse. And of course there are different social standards applied to men's and women's sexuality.

Women also have much bigger safety concerns than men do, and have a harder time getting anything done about attacks afterwards.

I think all of this does make it harder for women to understand the destructive loneliness that a lot of men (particularly young men) face. I've been there, and I remember that trying to talk about with my female friends was a frustrating experience. But over time I've come to see that women don't really have it any better than we do. We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.

Hence, if you're going to try and show interest in a woman, do it in a way that's clearly going to be interesting, exciting and empowering to her, even if she doesn't seem to reciprocate sexually. (Which in practice means you'll need to show genuine social interest and friendship to her, combined with a modicum of sexual interest that's demonstrably connoted as non-threatening. Mostly by showing yourself off as sexually attractive and attainable, and leaving it at that. Yes, it's very unintuitive from a male POV - many males will reject this approach as weak. But a neutral assessment of strategy says it will work, and give women what they're mostly looking for.)

I wonder what examples would you have in mind?

It's easy to say "just be great".

I know for sure that a lot of men, significant percent of my single friends, actually tried that for years, with little to no effect. Seems like when a woman needs the man to be interesting and exciting, she wants some non-trivial specifics which are actually hard to either understand or achieve.

> So the bar is not that high.

Would you think that this whole situation the article describing happens while the bar is not that high? Do you think the problem is illusory? Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?

Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.

(Of course, the consequences of this lack become all the more apparent when ludicrous excuses are put forth to minimize or justify serious coercive and predatory behavior. Teach people to relate to each other in better ways, and you'll also deprive dangerous predators of the excuses they like to fall back on.)

The question effectively was, do you know a smart thing the majority of the rest of people doesn't know - and that is for a problem which is older than all of us here. Seems like you believe you do but can't explain :( .

I think it's more like, we're both in a corner store and while many men can't afford something to eat, though it's right in front of them; women won't stop looking before they find Caviar and a bottle of Champaign.

I wouldn't be surprised if some men were already doing this.

For men it's like finding fresh water in a desert.

For women it's like finding fresh water in a swamp.

I'm a man, 40 years, polyamorous, yet I have zero problems finding people to date. On average, I have more partners than the women I often date. I agree that Tinder and such are highly skewed, but it doesn't make it useful for any gender. In-person (events, social groups, etc), I find there are a large number of people who actively want to date me and spend time with me.

I don't see a clear gender divide in dating opportunities in my personal experience. I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men. I am not a "10" in any way; I just have a lot of hobbies.

> I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men.

You are attractive. That's all there is to it. Hobbies are a red herring.

You might not be a 10, but "just" an 8, but that still means you are two orders of magnitude more successful than a normie.

I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles.

Up your f'ing game guys, it doesn't take much apparently.

I got out of my shell by having dinner at the bar and talking to strangers of both genders. Now I'm a known regular and sometime people buy me a shot. This took years, so get started today.