Sad state of affairs. We continue to treat women as a “minority”, giving them preferential treatment in education and jobs to the detriment of the men they eschew. Apparently women don’t like the results, i.e., a smaller pool of 666’ers. To my brothers, I suggest getting off the apps and meeting women in person. Hold yourself to a high standard and pick someone who is humble enough to recognize your worth. She is out there, guaranteed. Do things you like to do and you will eventually meet others who do those very same things. Be forward without fearing rejection. It isn’t creepy to be a happy confident male who clearly states that he finds someone else attractive right up front. If you get rejected, so what? Move on. It’s a reflection on her bad taste not your intrinsic value. And brothers, watch out for sex! Sounds good, but it will mess with your emotions and distort your judgement. Only do that if you both feel it is right and it will deepen the bond, not infuse negative feelings. IMO.
I spent most of my twenties and early thirties being single and can attest to many of the challenges in this article. I’d like to commend the author for making me so thoroughly recall the challenges in dating during that time :)
I used dating apps while living D.C. There was a direct correlation between how liberal the woman was and if she expected me to pay for the drinks, and not in the way you might initially think. I was just starting my career and barely making ends meet. 2-4 drinks at a decent bar was already $50 before tip, and then chances are one or both of us would never want to meet again. One night a woman called me a disgusting misogynist because I expressed my sincere doubt over the veracity of the claims against Kavanaugh. The average liberal woman thinks that to have a good partner he must agree with her every political opinion, which is largely informed by media outlets who regularly vilify straight white men. Just an all around miserable dating scene. I don’t miss it.
When my husband comes home tonight I’m going to tell him how grateful I am for him. Not for how he curls my toes, tells me I’m beautiful or the necklace he bought for me. I’m grateful because during my lowest and darkest times he was there. When I was in need of physical care or emotional counsel he was there.
My hope for the younger generation -get your issues sorted out and find someone to settle down with. 25-50 and beyond, life is filled with land mines. You’re going to be grateful you have a partner who has your back. Choose wisely. The 666 rule? Those are meaningless without good character and integrity. A virtual girlfriend? Honestly I don’t even know what to say on that. It’s just sad.
I was one of the first men to find a spouse of Eharmony.com slightly more than 20 years ago. When I was on it you had to go through a long personality profile to match you up, then have controlled conversations through the app, and then after weeks of corresponding I finally got to see a picture of the woman who is now my spouse.
We've been happily married nearly 20 years! I wonder if there's something to the idea of seeing if you connect emotionally and intellectually, before all the physical stuff gets in the way? Had she cared first and been able to ask about my looks and bank account, I would have ignored her anyway.
Any person of substance shouldn't start with a focus on such ridiculous stats. It's a shame that these apps and the system in general seems to primarily cater to those craving one-night-stands over relationships of substance.
Dear Young Men: Stay off of dating apps. Love, Your Future Selves Who joined a house of worship, joined a fitness program, volunteered and basically got into the real world and met a nice woman who loves you for who you are and your potential in life.
Women don't actually want the 666 thing. They want a man who knows how to be a man, but men seem to have forgotten how to be that. Not toxic masculine. Real masculine - good manners, chivalrous, decisive, responsible, self directed, in the world (ie available and not holed up behind a screen) and with integrity. Real women support and respect men like that with their whole selves.
I recently wrote an article about passport bros, and one of the main points I made in the article is that although many men say they're going overseas because western women are "not feminine," I think the greater problem is that men are no longer earning enough to provide a comfortable life for themselves let alone a family.
I live in South East Asia and the lifestyle truly is amazing, I would have to earn ~$150,000 a year in America to match the lifestyle that I have here for a pittance.
I would argue that to fix dating we need to fix a society in which the median income buys you a tiny dump of an apartment and little hope of a better future.
Congrats Libs - you've created a generation of insecure, unmotivated feminized men. And you wonder why people such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson are garnering huge followings? There used to be plenty of men who lacked all the basic "qualifications" but were happily married to very nice women. "Problem" was, they were men who knew they were men and acted like men. Do the insecure, sad males with cats described in this article sound like men?
Of course, the question left unasked is "who would want to date the vapid, materialistic, narcissistic women described in the article?"
Geez, when did the free press comment section get so negative. Some optimism.
Look, a lot of these young men have grown up online, had boomer/gen X parents who raised them poorly and can now hardly take care of themselves, have no idea how to communicate with the opposite sex, let alone do the sex part, and simply bring little to the table for women as they’re distracted with their internet lives.
Women are stepping their ish up, men should too. We shouldn’t be lowering the bar because weak, lazy men can’t manage it. Put a copy of 12 rules for life in all these soft Peter Pan hands and pull yourself up to the level your desired mates are operating at. I did it and it worked for me—I built a career from nothing after starting in retail, I built a strong body from gamer-fat, I built a strong mind with reading + therapy, and took care of issues in myself and my life. If they could just clean their rooms they might eventually be able to take enough responsibility for their lives to land a date.
Sure the internet has fueled some unfair dynamics but certainly not all is lost.
Society has changed too much over the decades. This dating scene is complicated. Just some observations. Men should always be learning something new and improving themselves for their own confidence and self worth. Get involved in activities where you meet quality people without sex being the primary desire and see what develops.
How sad and disheartening for a generation far removed from mine. It feels as if we have a perfect storm of technical and sociological trends: remote work isolation, religious practice in decline, workplace relationship taboos, the tyranny of apps, real inflation, and misanthropic feminism, to name a few. Increasingly, the Luddite in me wants to jettison many of the trappings of our internet-addicted lives. I wonder if/how much circumstances would change with a return to a pre-smartphone era, where we actually speak instead of texting, pursue education rather than simply degrees, and meet each other in schools, workplaces and churches without the benefit of an online profile.
But I do love the conveniences: shopping, banking, reading online. What to do, what to do. It’s a puzzlement.
Remote work and very few opportunities for social interaction have created quite the conundrum. People do not go to church either. We all recognize the problems but seem unwilling to address them. I fear the internet will lead us all to our demise alone and lonely.
Fertility in the US is 1.6 and dropping. It needs to be a minimum of 2.1 just to stay even. And 1.6 isn’t bad: South Korea is 0.8. We can argue about the reasons but the undeniable reality is that modernity is failing.
Sad state of affairs. We continue to treat women as a “minority”, giving them preferential treatment in education and jobs to the detriment of the men they eschew. Apparently women don’t like the results, i.e., a smaller pool of 666’ers. To my brothers, I suggest getting off the apps and meeting women in person. Hold yourself to a high standard and pick someone who is humble enough to recognize your worth. She is out there, guaranteed. Do things you like to do and you will eventually meet others who do those very same things. Be forward without fearing rejection. It isn’t creepy to be a happy confident male who clearly states that he finds someone else attractive right up front. If you get rejected, so what? Move on. It’s a reflection on her bad taste not your intrinsic value. And brothers, watch out for sex! Sounds good, but it will mess with your emotions and distort your judgement. Only do that if you both feel it is right and it will deepen the bond, not infuse negative feelings. IMO.
I spent most of my twenties and early thirties being single and can attest to many of the challenges in this article. I’d like to commend the author for making me so thoroughly recall the challenges in dating during that time :)
I used dating apps while living D.C. There was a direct correlation between how liberal the woman was and if she expected me to pay for the drinks, and not in the way you might initially think. I was just starting my career and barely making ends meet. 2-4 drinks at a decent bar was already $50 before tip, and then chances are one or both of us would never want to meet again. One night a woman called me a disgusting misogynist because I expressed my sincere doubt over the veracity of the claims against Kavanaugh. The average liberal woman thinks that to have a good partner he must agree with her every political opinion, which is largely informed by media outlets who regularly vilify straight white men. Just an all around miserable dating scene. I don’t miss it.
When my husband comes home tonight I’m going to tell him how grateful I am for him. Not for how he curls my toes, tells me I’m beautiful or the necklace he bought for me. I’m grateful because during my lowest and darkest times he was there. When I was in need of physical care or emotional counsel he was there.
My hope for the younger generation -get your issues sorted out and find someone to settle down with. 25-50 and beyond, life is filled with land mines. You’re going to be grateful you have a partner who has your back. Choose wisely. The 666 rule? Those are meaningless without good character and integrity. A virtual girlfriend? Honestly I don’t even know what to say on that. It’s just sad.
I was one of the first men to find a spouse of Eharmony.com slightly more than 20 years ago. When I was on it you had to go through a long personality profile to match you up, then have controlled conversations through the app, and then after weeks of corresponding I finally got to see a picture of the woman who is now my spouse.
We've been happily married nearly 20 years! I wonder if there's something to the idea of seeing if you connect emotionally and intellectually, before all the physical stuff gets in the way? Had she cared first and been able to ask about my looks and bank account, I would have ignored her anyway.
Any person of substance shouldn't start with a focus on such ridiculous stats. It's a shame that these apps and the system in general seems to primarily cater to those craving one-night-stands over relationships of substance.
Dear Young Men: Stay off of dating apps. Love, Your Future Selves Who joined a house of worship, joined a fitness program, volunteered and basically got into the real world and met a nice woman who loves you for who you are and your potential in life.
Women don't actually want the 666 thing. They want a man who knows how to be a man, but men seem to have forgotten how to be that. Not toxic masculine. Real masculine - good manners, chivalrous, decisive, responsible, self directed, in the world (ie available and not holed up behind a screen) and with integrity. Real women support and respect men like that with their whole selves.
I recently wrote an article about passport bros, and one of the main points I made in the article is that although many men say they're going overseas because western women are "not feminine," I think the greater problem is that men are no longer earning enough to provide a comfortable life for themselves let alone a family.
https://theunhedgedcapitalist.substack.com/p/do-you-even-have-a-passport-bro
I live in South East Asia and the lifestyle truly is amazing, I would have to earn ~$150,000 a year in America to match the lifestyle that I have here for a pittance.
I would argue that to fix dating we need to fix a society in which the median income buys you a tiny dump of an apartment and little hope of a better future.
Congrats Libs - you've created a generation of insecure, unmotivated feminized men. And you wonder why people such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson are garnering huge followings? There used to be plenty of men who lacked all the basic "qualifications" but were happily married to very nice women. "Problem" was, they were men who knew they were men and acted like men. Do the insecure, sad males with cats described in this article sound like men?
Of course, the question left unasked is "who would want to date the vapid, materialistic, narcissistic women described in the article?"
Geez, when did the free press comment section get so negative. Some optimism.
Look, a lot of these young men have grown up online, had boomer/gen X parents who raised them poorly and can now hardly take care of themselves, have no idea how to communicate with the opposite sex, let alone do the sex part, and simply bring little to the table for women as they’re distracted with their internet lives.
Women are stepping their ish up, men should too. We shouldn’t be lowering the bar because weak, lazy men can’t manage it. Put a copy of 12 rules for life in all these soft Peter Pan hands and pull yourself up to the level your desired mates are operating at. I did it and it worked for me—I built a career from nothing after starting in retail, I built a strong body from gamer-fat, I built a strong mind with reading + therapy, and took care of issues in myself and my life. If they could just clean their rooms they might eventually be able to take enough responsibility for their lives to land a date.
Sure the internet has fueled some unfair dynamics but certainly not all is lost.
edit: typos, boomers + gen x
Society has changed too much over the decades. This dating scene is complicated. Just some observations. Men should always be learning something new and improving themselves for their own confidence and self worth. Get involved in activities where you meet quality people without sex being the primary desire and see what develops.
How sad and disheartening for a generation far removed from mine. It feels as if we have a perfect storm of technical and sociological trends: remote work isolation, religious practice in decline, workplace relationship taboos, the tyranny of apps, real inflation, and misanthropic feminism, to name a few. Increasingly, the Luddite in me wants to jettison many of the trappings of our internet-addicted lives. I wonder if/how much circumstances would change with a return to a pre-smartphone era, where we actually speak instead of texting, pursue education rather than simply degrees, and meet each other in schools, workplaces and churches without the benefit of an online profile.
But I do love the conveniences: shopping, banking, reading online. What to do, what to do. It’s a puzzlement.
As my grandfather brilliantly once said......"son, you get a lot cuter if you're standing on a pile of money" Just sayin......
Remote work and very few opportunities for social interaction have created quite the conundrum. People do not go to church either. We all recognize the problems but seem unwilling to address them. I fear the internet will lead us all to our demise alone and lonely.
Who are these women?!! Advice to young men: women worth knowing aren't on dating sites. Editorial comment: we're doomed.
Fertility in the US is 1.6 and dropping. It needs to be a minimum of 2.1 just to stay even. And 1.6 isn’t bad: South Korea is 0.8. We can argue about the reasons but the undeniable reality is that modernity is failing.
“But I can’t even get my foot in the door. And if they don’t talk to me, what can I do?”
Accept that the world is unfair. Improve yourself 1% every day. Be your biggest support pillar.
Everything else follows.