i think that it would help both the discourse and a bunch of romantically disadvantaged men to just admit that some people don't have partners because they are short or ugly or have an annoying voice, and that this is not fair but that anything you could do to establish fairness would be worse
The reason I hate this talking point is because... Why now? It's not like short fat and ugly guys had a great in the past. They struggled too.
And it really overstates What most women are asking for Which a lot of the times is " smell nice and don't try to rape me"
this bs is childish. "most women" are not going to sleep with anyone who showers and asks consent. they do in fact have sexual preferences, some of which are more predominant and immutable than others. repeating this crap actually *generates incels* when they find out it is not true
Out: Government-mandated girlfriend In: Harrison Bergeron Tinder
Juxtaposing this next to your 14th amendment posts reminds me acutely how governmental and personal values are at times in strong opposition
Permitting individual gender discrimination in romantic relationships is actually a pretty important personal freedom!
Seems like people tend to date people roughly on their level when it comes to looks. Seems like there are always guys who want to level up and can’t, or who overestimate their own looks (or personality or whatever) and then blame others for their rejection
One thing I've noticed about the Gender ™️ discourse is that everyone seems to be only considering the top 10% most attractive people of the considered gender
Yes. 50% of adults are obese in the US and it is shocking how seldom it comes up in discussions of why people aren't going out or dating as much.
No such thing as a short king.
i mean this is certainly a factor in why the PUA shit finds purchase. they're willing to say these things when they are normally considered kind of impolite
ultimately I think it's even beyond "anything you can do would be worse"—people want to be wanted, and "to be wanted" simply cannot be compelled, it's not possible.
The pessimist in my says that people of all sexes basically know what their preferred partner wants, and many of them prefer complaining to putting in the work to become that person. The optimist in me says circumstances have rarely been worse for dating, which means that they can get better again.
Yeah this is the thing You can either accept and embrace this or go insane
i'm interested in both options!
the best thing you can do is fire up the human variation go brrrrr printer and point it at the problem, and even in the limit that doesn't equilibriate at anything like one soulmate per soulmate, unfortunately
"unfortunately" I mean there are some problems with the scenario where you organize the universe that way as well
me breaking into the Love Department in the Heaven Before Creation offices and leaving little index cards covered with one-electron universe Feynman diagrams all over the place with suggestive captions: this is a great idea that doesn't have downsides
me gazing down from the Heaven Temporally Co-Extensive With Creation on a universe where every successful first date ends in a scourging blast of 2000 MT of gamma radiation: okay I guess there are some downsides
There's someone out there for everyone. 1. Don't be a douchebag. 2. Don't hold out for a supermodel when you look like a toe.
I mean, a bunch of people (myself included) are also just naturally boring and not very smart, and no amount of basic decency will stop people from getting (probably rightfully) bored with us if they know us for too long.
Have you seen the ugly awkward assholes out there breeding? Come on.
See, “awkward asshole” can at least be interesting the same way as a plane crash; I am legit so boring people have stopped bullying because of it. Keep in mind I’m not complaining; sometimes it is what it is, and I’m less interested in dating than seeing the Republicans disappear like the Whigs.
But I mean, there are a lot of boring people out there who just want a quiet simple life.
You're doing the thing bsky.app/profile/theo...
people are disagreeing but I think this is usually right? unless there's something about your personality or your beliefs that makes you dangerous to date in some way, there usually is sometime compatible
might be a gender gap on this one lol
I know too many short ugly dudes who speak through their noses (and barely know how to dress) who have found love for this to be the right take.
Not how it works dude
"oh, no, ugly people don't find it harder to find a partner. they're just single because they're a moral abomination" is a way of flattering one's own sexual preferences as being fundamentally rational, when in fact they are typically pretty shallow, racist, et cetera.
But Mr. Theophite my preferences ARE perfectly rational, I'm sure of it
we let this slide (in every case not involving actual children) because they are more or less immutable, but letting them slide does not mean that everything about how people select their partners is wholly rational.
Disagree about physical appearance mattering much at all. Would agree some personality and psychiatric conditions beyond people’s control can make it very difficult…but much of that can be helped too.
I disagree. Ugly people can still get dates. They just get dates with other ugly people. It's like weight classes in boxing. Featherweights can't complete with heavy weights. But they can still win matches in their own weight class.
Yeah I really, really disagree with OP. One of the most successful dating app users I know is also not a handsome guy. It’s about expectations and personality
In any case there isn’t a perfectly balanced universal pool of people. A given person may not be in situation where there is a compatible partner. There will certainly be people that are not having success through little or no fault of their own.
Granted, I would guess this is somewhat rare to have occur over an entire lifespan. But it wouldn’t be impossible.
Yep these chuds can't play tee ball and think they should be in the major leagues.
I think it would be a whole lot more helpful if people familiarized themselves with the actual study. If you don't want to dive into all the gnarly details, here's an excellent writeup. It will dispel some misconceptions you may have about this population.
I didn't realize there was a paper. I thought this was about a Substack essay (that talked about "progressives" taking over the (male) "why can't I get laid?" space. I'll try to find the link. Paper is interesting, but the self selection of respondents needs to be kept in perspective
The article I provided above goes into a fair amount of detail & contains ample quotes from the authors of the study. And a link to the study itself, if you want to go deeper.
I agree, by the way, about the self-selection of respondents, but the authors laid out future steps with potentially falsifiable hypotheses.
Too many people in the world. You can be short and ugly and have an annoying voice and plenty of people will like you if you aren't an incel dick. Though you have to be ready for the incels to accuse you of having a three foot dick or eleventy billion dollars.
Is no one going to mention the attractiveness of wealth? Plenty of "ugly", socially awkward but wealthy men regularly attract plenty of women.
Lots of short, ugly people with annoying voices have partners is the thing.
I think the other side of the coin on this is that each of these things is an impediment, not a firewall. They're disadvantages, but you can overcome them to some extent if you're not a dud in a bunch of other ways. Sometimes even spectacularly!
thing is there *are* guys who are duds in a bunch of other ways. "guy who is 10th percentile along five tough-to-change axes" sounds unlikely, but given billions of men, "unlikely" still describes hundreds of thousands
I didn't imply there weren't? My point was that one or two disadvantages have real impacts we need to ackonwledge, but we also have to acknowledge that those aren't in any way completely damning. It takes being a real piece of crap to really have no shot. [And honestly, some of them make it work.]
Can we include in that a brief discussion on reasonable evaluation of self and unobtainable goals?
I’m short and have an annoying voice; skill issue.
(Sounding like Gilbert Gottfried) My voice sounds like this because I eat pussy so much
I've said that everyone who uses the phrase "dating market" should get the wall, but *despite* that, I think a lot of people in that bag are falling through the cracks due to market friction more than being undesirable to an insufficient number of women
I dont know that theres necessarily a solution for this, is the thing.
I mean the main thing to know is that it's not their fault, all the good advice they get *will* move the needle and they still need to consider that falling short still might be preferable to trying to move heaven and earth
The only part of the "male loneliness crisis" that needs to be seriously addressed is lack of platonic friends
That would also address the other thing
They’re not really different things, general lack of irl social activity in favor of screens
this is why dudes need to take improv classes
Yes, and?
Sigh.... It's worked on me
It’s genuinely a fun way to goof around and get attention
Even someone who is going to strike out 99% of the time does still have potential partners out there, it's just that finding them is probably not worth the emotional harm, and that's fine. I also don't think they should assume that they're unlovable
my $0.02: a lot of this is how dating apps are an inherently bad medium for dating we replaced social filtering (info from your friends or hobbies or whatnot) and personal interaction (you can tell quickly if you *click* and can't run out of things to talk about) with self-promotion and a feed
The flip side of online dating, where women have serially awful experiences, is also an effect of no social filtering or personal interaction. Those "are we dating the same man" things wouldn't be necessary if we met people in communities where social groups were stable and reputation mattered.
people find this alienating but didn't live through the Before Times and so conclude that that's just what dating *is*, man
I mean, I’m old enough to remember the before times and as a socially awkward person it definitely wasn’t better? And was quite a bit worse in my experience. If you weren’t good at in person social promotion and were uncomfortable approaching strangers it didn’t matter how you dressed or anything.
I mean, I think people forget what it was like to be a nerd in the 90s?
Also, I find it weirdly underdiscussed that (mainly for women) being approached by strangers sucks and online dating is theoretically (if not in pratice) an improvement on that side of things
Yeah, there's certainly not a halcyon Before Times in my experience. It's always been some flavor of awful, and there's a reason everyone is on the apps now even though all the classic avenues still exist. There's a lot of value to a place where everyone is advertising they're receptive to advances.
Though, I will say, the apps feel a lot more miserable in practice than they should seem in theory. Replacing the awkwardness of the initial negotiation with essentially SEO to compete in the melee of attention. And a barrage of names and faces that essentially numbs you to seeing people as people.
Funnily enough, despite enjoying a heavily online life in basically every other aspect of my existence, I never liked the apps or found much success. Had more partners from offline than on. And old fashioned romantic I am, I met my wife at an event at a bar.
this is intentional product design.
They really are the true torment nexus.
It’s tough, because I met my wife at work. And you don’t necessarily want to go back to a place and time where people rampantly hit on coworkers, but it’s an easier way to get to know someone than through an app
well, yeah, I shouldn't imply this or ~any change is purely a change for the worse. another thing it's done that is (you'd think) good is helping people meet a more diverse set of partners. interracial marriage for example is up a lot recently
I mean, I remember when guys who struck out with girls were just geeks or nerds and channeled themselves into their obscure interests to make up for it. The incel thing seems line a vastly less productive manifestation of a similar phenomenon?
I mean, you can see some of the same threads of moral panic around it even, just look at the D&D/James Dallas Egbert phenomenon.
I found my wife on a dating app because it made it easier to find someone with similar interests. It's the swipe left/right craze with them that has done a lot of damage. I understand that they're a lot different than they were 10 years ago.
I've had decent luck with other men, but trying to use it for straight dating is psychological torture on the level of those eating disorder communities. They've gotten so much more monetized after COVID too
two years ago i got by what all accounts was an incredible success given statistics for men on these things (1.5 month usage, about four dates a week, relationship) and i hated it so much that i felt like i was being tortured by chaos demons
The anime girl pfp once again throwing me off the gender scent
i am not saying this to brag because i hate humblebragging, i am trying to go to show how *even being successful at the metrics that count* made me want to jump off the bridge into the potomac river and drown myself
Also having to play a person you're not to get a shot at a relationship of any kind is not only a miserable experience, it builds an immensely toxic perception of what relationships are about
it came largely from the need to convert my personality into 2-3 sentence elevator pitches
you get far more room to be a person in one page resumes
Ugh. That sounds awful. I have always been very picky. I think I went on dates with less than 10 women before I met my wife in my early 30s. I was lonely but I didn't let it make me better. And I made sure I learned and cultivated good relationship skills.
its not that any of these women were bad people. it was just the app put them in a situation where they could not be themselves
and i felt genuinely sorry for them, like 'you deserve to have a good man. that isn't going to be me, i'm sorry an algorithm made me waste your time'
but so many people were just genuinely so miserable and it was so totally depressing
I'm not saying they were. I'm saying that dating that many different people that quickly sounds awful, to me, even if they were all nice. I've only ever been interested in a long term relationship and a bunch of dates like that would require paying little attention to compatibility.
But for me, personally, I also know it's hard to find someone compatible.
My partner and I have a much easier time relating and understanding one another than I have in previous relationships, male or female and I wonder if it’s because we’re both queer. I’ve never dated a fellow Bi before and it’s much easier to reach understandings on things.
Yeah, the Match monopoly pretty much destroyed any ability to filter through common interest. It's monthes, maybe years, of fine-tuning to get any singular message that's not "dtf?" or "hey"
As a certain organization said, "you only have to be lucky once"
It's not just that they are short or 'ugly' which can be subjective. It's that some men are conditioned to believe they should get exactly the woman/ person they want. The mismatch with reality makes some men turn actual ugly.
the problem with this is a big part of incel-ism is telling average looking, average height men that their height and their appearance is the reason they’re not getting laid, in many cases when they’re at a totally normal age to not be getting laid
Therapy and/or early intervention would work WONDERS for a lot of these guys.
Yeah, average looks can't make your dating prospects worse than average.
Have they tried trying
Combing their hairs, not calling women bitches and such. Wearing deodorant. No fedora, etc?
You are the problem
Me?
Nah
Yeah, I’d encourage anyone curious about this to go in youtube while logged out and see what kind of dating content you’re immediately bombarded with in shorts.
at what age are these men thinking they're "supposed" to be regularly having sex?
do 17 year olds today think they should be fucking on the reg?
I think 17 year olds have basically always felt that way but they haven’t always had internet forums where people will tell them that the reason they aren’t fucking in the reg is bc of female hypergamy
I hear from Gen X that they were fucking in high school, which I think is weird
Even us millennials were fucking in high school, it's Gen Z who are the weird ones on this lol (note that "weird" is not the same thing as "bad")
I remember being a teenager... I had exactly *one* friend who had sex at that age.
And it was a few times, then he and that girlfriend broke up, and then not until college. Which is totally normal.
My social psychology textbook from the 80's said that experiments showed that average height men were rated the most attractive.
Personality way more important. Our culture also important. If male dominance/violence is acceptable, many women stay out of dating market completely. Women don't feel particularly affable towards men in a culture where dying from preventable sepsis is a result male-dominated policy choices.
I think a lot of the vitriol and anxiety in this arena doesn't actually come from being short or ugly or having an annoying voice, though! a lot of resentful incels are basically ... normal looking, except for being incels
I mean, Elliot Rogers was a genuinely good-looking guy!... Except for that whole thing where he felt so entitled to women that he went out to kill as many of them as he could.
I mean, i know multiple people who have grown out of being incels. I don’t have good handle from data how common that is
That's true, but it still feels like we need more conversation about how Sometimes Partnering Doesn't Happen and That's Okay, in contrast to the current default of Literally Just Be a Good Person and That's It… which is what "nice guys" were saying a couple decades ago and rightly derided!
I mean it's "okay" in the sense that it's natural and unavoidable, but someone in that situation is not going to be persuaded that it's okay
This is where I disagree! I think there's a huge range in the possible emotional reactions to this, and that various current societal assumptions are actively immiserating people who could otherwise feel at least neutrally about their situation.
A similar (and highly related to this discourse) deal obtains when it comes to social narratives about homeownership, renting, and "still" living with parents, but in that case the problem is straightforwardly solvable by changing rules and laws to increase urbanization.
By contrast, it's not yet totally clear what needs to change societally to address this Thing, but I do believe a ton of assumptions need to be tossed out. And a core one would have to be that sex, I dunno, Means Something in a way that extends beyond the two-or-more-people having it together.
I'm not really sure I get what you mean here. I don't think that my desire for emotional and physical intimacy (sex or otherwise) is socially constructed. It feels pretty much physiological to me.
I don't mean the presence or absence of the desire, but the way you relate to it, i.e, whether or not being unpartnered is effectively the end of the world, the way that many incels gloom-and-doom
Sure. Being unpartnered doesn't ruin my life, there's lots for me to enjoy. But it definitely feels like a significant deficiency.
Self-loathing is a big driver. "I'm unlovable/unfuckable" becomes part of their identity, then a self-fulfilling prophecy e.g. "she's showing interest, so she must be broken"
I mean, I hear you, but the way more important message is "as a man, as an individual, you cannot reliably generalize from your desire to understand others'. Become your fullest self and inexplicably good things will probably come your way." Like it's truer than "you're fucked if you're ugly"
Lots of short, unattractive guys can get dates, as long as they keep their expectations realistic. And not even necessarily with unattractive women! OkCupid once did a study that found that women are much more likely than men to message someone they didn't find physically attractive.
As long as you've got a good personality, you've got a shot. I'd say the biggest obstacle for decent men these days is that we exist in a climate where women are increasingly just uninterested in even trying to interact with men because so many of them are purely toxic.
A bunch of bad actors are ruining things for everyone else. Like, sure, I'm speaking from a position of privilege because I have The Kavorka, but I'm confident that if we could foster a culture where women felt safe and respected, a lot of these dudes would get dates pretty quickly.
Maybe not literally everything. Dating apps turn preferences which people would be more lenient about if meeting a partner in-person into hard exclusionary criteria, because they offer the illusion that the perfect person who passes all your filters is just one more swipe away
This is the actual thing, short guys, bigger women, anyone more than a standard deviation from average gets filtered out. Unclear why OP felt like this was his big shot to say short people are undateable
That’s bad though
Like it’s not true that people who are short of fat or disabled are undateable
I think there's a strong argument that the apps have made things much worse for those people than before them
I’m too old to be on the apps but can we agree that’s bad though? And posting on Al Gore’s internet that short people are just undateable and should accept it, is kind of not nice?
I know when I say that I am 5’3” that means this is just sour grapes, which is true, but also I have two sons who are also really short?
I agree that it's bad! I thought that was clear
Ok! Im feeling some feelings about it, not your fault
This is @slothropsmap.bsky.social Thought
You’re goddamn right it is
10,000 movies and shows and we still scroll through Netflix saying there's nothing on.
I think you’re generally right *but* I think many more men think they are romantically disadvantaged than actually are, and also straight men have more ways to make up for physical disadvantages than straight women
I don't think I have an opinion either way, but why do you think men have more ways to make up for physical disadvantages?
I think straight men tend to be shallower than straight women when it comes to physical attractiveness
All of these are obviously gross generalizations
I agree, but how is that a way to make up for physical shortcomings? I thought you had something like "be rich" or "build muscles" or things of that type in mind.
Oh I mean yeah, I think status can definitely improve a straight man’s desirability, but I also mean stuff like charisma, humor, interesting hobbies etc
Ah, gotcha.
It's not a law of nature or anything, but it's definitely how our society works
partly, I think, there's always a gap between "I want to be desired by EVERYONE" and "I want to be desired by this person in particular" and then the reality of "I am desired by some cool people"
Being desired by everyone would be an absolute nightmare. Like bad genie curse shit.
I mean, sort of true, but have you seen the sort of dude who (a) goes to a lot of metal shows (b) Is someone in the Vorkosigan sage would be defined as a 'mutie lord', and (c) nevertheless has hot blondes all over him? I just think it's important to understand attractiveness is ..complicated.
It can be hard for some people to get a relationship. I've certainly been there. What I never did was blame women for it or embrace misogyny over it. That certainly makes the chance of finding someone who wants to have a relationship with you much less likely.
People who are short, ugly, and/or have annoying voices get relationships all the time. Is it harder? Sure, but there are plenty of people willing to judge others for who they are inside, and to whom that's what matters most in attraction. You just have to make sure that what's inside isn't rotten
And you have to make sure you aren't superficial about what you want too.
Fundamentally, you have to make sure that you'll be a good, caring partner. And circumstances might make it so that it takes a long time to find someone, but you can't give in to bitterness or hate over it.
I'm very short and have an annoying voice and I'm married with two kids. Hope springs eternal!
It's interesting, the PUA movement was the clear predecessor of the incel movement, but one way in which it was at least better than what came after was that it posited a (pretty bad) method out of the wilderness for awkward guys as opposed to just an echo chamber of school shooter hopelessness.
There would seem to be some sort of space for a realistic - "some guys are going to have it easier than you" - but positive - "here are some ways you can still meet people" - message in the men's dating space. Maybe we don't need a Joe Rogan of the left, we need a Mystery of the left.
I do think there's some problems here from a narrowing of cultural events hosted at third spaces. I'm not hot in any traditional sense but I'm a decent singer and funny, karaoke allows me to present myself very well. Fewer places to display talent in public now, and most of them 21+.
bsky.app/profile/nest...
I think another thing that's going on is that while dating apps probably haven't reduced the number of people in relationships they probably *have* resulted in single-ness being distributed differently and this is making people a little weird
They have absolutely reduced the number of people in relationships
imo the main thing that makes dating apps so corrosive is that they make all the hypothetical rejections into real ones before Tinder you had no idea how many women weren't interested in you unless you actually hit on one and got shot down but now you know there's hundreds of women saying no
now of course a dating app "no" and a real life "no" are different things blah blah blah but i think that's the main thing driving everyone insane if nothing else the information age has taught us that "more information" is not always good for the brain
interestingly this is probably playing out in the opposite way a lot of incel types say, dating apps pretty clearly move the limiter away from "social confidence to approach people in public" and that just has to advantage socially awkward people on margin
the problem is that for normal looking people with reasonable expectations you could always do better and this in where the internet dating metagame is now, leads to total apathy
This was 100pct true during the days of early tinder though
now it’s just “oh wow this guy is way nerdier than I realized…” I need some normie hobbies
"I'm scared to talk to the girl at the bar" -> self-loathing over inaction "No responses on the Apps" -> loathing women or the taller guy
yeah
I’d say make ‘em read Harrison Bergeron but I fear they’d come away with the wrong ideas
They absolutely would, Torment Nexus style.
