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.