masculinity is a scam conversation.

[Boris97921234]

Disclaimer: a lot of these are generated by AIs, though i mostly agree with it.

In many ways, our modern culture struggles badly to talk about **healthy masculinity** — or even define it clearly.

Here's a rough sketch of the landscape:

Old models of masculinity (stoic, dominant, provider, protector) are often criticized now as "toxic" or outdated — but no strong new model has fully replaced them.

Many male role models, like sports stars, actors, or even politicians, are constantly in scandal, controversy, or personal chaos — which erodes trust and admiration.

Men’s spaces (where masculine traits could be healthily expressed and refined) — like fraternities, sports teams, armies — have often been tainted by real abuse or hazing scandals, so they get painted as automatically "bad."

Women (and society at large) often struggle to articulate what a healthy masculine role model even looks like. Sometimes they describe it in bits ("kind," "strong," "protective," "vulnerable," "leader," "emotional intelligence") — but these traits can seem contradictory, and without a lived example, it feels vague.

Media portrayals swing wildly — sometimes glorifying the macho jerk, sometimes the soft, neutered nice guy — neither of which most men actually aspire to.

A lot of guys today are just winging it.

In truth, one thing that is missing from the discussion is class, or wealth. i think the manosphere mentioned it, or even some mainstream media, if you are in the top 1% or the ruling class or whatever, life has never been better. you have endless supplies of high quality attractive women. whereas if you are anything other than the ruling class, you are kind of screwed no matter what u do.

For wealthy, powerful men (top 1% or even top 0.1%), life is incredible — they get status, access to the most attractive women, respect, freedom, options. They can be "bad boys," "good guys," "nerdy," "alpha," "emotional" — whatever — and still win.

For the average guy, it's way tougher. Even if you do “everything right” — be emotionally available, work hard, stay fit, be kind, be respectful — you still often get overlooked because you simply don’t have the resources or status that the top guys do.

The Brutal Truth

A high-status man’s "toxic" traits (arrogance, selfishness) are often excused or even admired.

A low-status man’s "good" traits (loyalty, hard work) are often ignored or mocked.

The system isn’t just unfair — it’s self-reinforcing. Wealthy men gain more opportunities to grow; ordinary men get stuck in cycles of invisibility.

 

The Two Tiers of Modern Masculinity

Tier 1: High-Status Men (Top 10-20%)

(Wealthy, elite-educated, physically attractive, or socially dominant men)

Dating Life:

Women compete for them (even passively, via dating apps/social media).

Can be "flawed" (aloof, emotionally unavailable, even rude) and still succeed.

Options = power — they can afford to be picky, take risks, or delay commitment.

Social & Professional Life:

Mistakes are forgiven; failures are "learning experiences."

Seen as naturally authoritative — their opinions carry weight by default.

Networking and mentorship come easily (other powerful men invest in them).

 

Tier 2: Ordinary Men (Bottom 80%)

(Middle-class, working-class, or struggling men)

Dating Life:

Must "play the game perfectly" (be emotionally intelligent, fit, funny, ambitious) just to get considered.

One mistake (awkwardness, neediness, financial instability) can disqualify them instantly.

Online dating is brutal — often invisible unless they stand out extremely.

Social & Professional Life:

Mistakes are career-enders; failures are seen as personal flaws.

Authority is earned through grind (if at all).

Fewer mentors, fewer second chances.

 

Trapped in contradictions:

"Be vulnerable, but not weak."

"Be ambitious, but not entitled."

"Be confident, but don’t intimidate."

Key Insight:
For these men, masculinity is a minefield — society tells them to be "better," but the goalposts keep moving.

Is There a Way Out?

For ordinary men, the path isn’t about "fixing masculinity" — it’s about strategic adaptation:

Master a high-value skill (tech, trades, sales) to climb economically.

 

[Nilsi]

Your AI is hitting something real here - but it goes even deeper.

Sex at Dawn - Ryan and Jethá - got some of it right: early human groups were more or less egalitarian, less locked into the hierarchies we see now. But the real rupture wasn’t just culture - it was surplus. Marx already saw it: once you have agriculture, property, capital - you get real asymmetries. Not just in wealth, but in status, in mating, in everything that matters.

The sexual revolution tried to roll some of that back - break up rigid ownership, give people freedom again. You can see the echoes of that optimism in Reich, Marcuse, and the early Freudo-Marxists - the idea that if you just liberated desire, the old authoritarian structures would collapse. But they underestimated how capitalism could capture liberated desires even faster than it captured labor.

The revolution didn’t touch the material structure underneath. And by trying to “free” sexuality without dismantling the economic base, it actually unraveled the few structures that had kept the worst dynamics more or less in check - monogamy, the burden of childbearing, fidelity, basic long-term pair bonding.

Lyotard already saw it coming: liberation doesn’t stop the machine - it feeds it. Desire gets re-coded, re-marketed, turned into endless circulation. Nick Land just pushed it to the logical conclusion: capitalism doesn’t repress desire - it is desire, stripped of any pretense, accelerating toward total abstraction.

You can adapt - you can build skills, increase your value, move differently - and you can win if you play it tight. But the deeper structure isn’t going anywhere. The genie is out of the bottle. The machine isn’t stopping - it’s accelerating.

Edited April 26 by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

31 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Your AI is hitting something real here - but it goes even deeper.

Sex at Dawn - Ryan and Jethá - got some of it right: early human groups were more or less egalitarian, less locked into the hierarchies we see now. But the real rupture wasn’t just culture - it was surplus. Marx already saw it: once you have agriculture, property, capital - you get real asymmetries. Not just in wealth, but in status, in mating, in everything that matters.

The sexual revolution tried to roll some of that back - break up rigid ownership, give people freedom again. You can see the echoes of that optimism in Reich, Marcuse, and the early Freudo-Marxists - the idea that if you just liberated desire, the old authoritarian structures would collapse. But they underestimated how capitalism could capture liberated desires even faster than it captured labor.

The revolution didn’t touch the material structure underneath. And by trying to “free” sexuality without dismantling the economic base, it actually unraveled the few structures that had kept the worst dynamics more or less in check - monogamy, the burden of childbearing, fidelity, basic long-term pair bonding.

Lyotard already saw it coming: liberation doesn’t stop the machine - it feeds it. Desire gets re-coded, re-marketed, turned into endless circulation. Nick Land just pushed it to the logical conclusion: capitalism doesn’t repress desire - it is desire, stripped of any pretense, accelerating toward total abstraction.

You can adapt - you can build skills, increase your value, move differently - and you can win if you play it tight. But the deeper structure isn’t going anywhere. The genie is out of the bottle. The machine isn’t stopping - it’s accelerating.

But there’s also another path - if you’re sharp enough to see it.

You don’t have to funnel desire back into the old symbolic structures - power, sex, money, status. You can let it move freely - productive, nomadic, untethered - the way Deleuze mapped it: a will to power without justification, pure intensities chasing their own unfolding. You’re not escaping the game - you’re just refusing to play it on its terms.

But let’s be real: that path is just as brutal, just as selective. There’s no mass redemption here. Whether you play to win in the old economy or ride the fractures into something freer, it’s still a minority move - still a Redpill.

Edited April 26 by Nilsi

[Basman]

2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

 Now, under late capitalism, sexual dynamics follow the same brutal winner-takes-all logic as capital. A tiny elite captures a ridiculous share of attention, options, and access - and for everyone else, the margin for error keeps shrinking.

You can adapt - you can build skills, increase your value, move differently - and you can win if you’re sharp about it. But the deeper structure isn’t going anywhere. The genie is out of the bottle.

How does that work exactly? You can't horde relationships in a bank account like you can do with money. There's no way half of the human population is exclusively dating men who are rich and tall, which is probably only about 1-3% of the male population, or at least rare.

Women just tend to date older, which is not new. The older you get, the more the relationship discrepancy between men and women equalizes (to about 30-40% being single) (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/08/for-valentines-day-5-facts-about-single-americans/). 

[Boris97921234]

5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

But there’s also another path - if you’re sharp enough to see it.

You don’t have to funnel desire back into the old symbolic structures - power, sex, money, status. You can let it move freely - productive, nomadic, untethered - the way Deleuze mapped it: a will to power without justification, pure intensities chasing their own unfolding. You’re not escaping the game - you’re just refusing to play it on its terms.

But let’s be real: that path is just as brutal, just as selective. There’s no mass redemption here. Whether you play to win in the old economy or ride the fractures into something freer, it’s still a minority move - still a Redpill.

Thank you for adding your thoughts to the discussion buddy! I really appreciate it.

[Boris97921234]

3 hours ago, Basman said:

How does that work exactly? You can't horde relationships in a bank account like you can do with money. There's no way half of the human population is exclusively dating men who are rich and tall, which is probably only about 1-3% of the male population, or at least rare.

Women just tend to date older, which is not new. The older you get, the more the relationship discrepancy between men and women equalizes (to about 30-40% being single) (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/08/for-valentines-day-5-facts-about-single-americans/). 

I think the core of our discussion is really about how dating and masculinity function within a capitalist system. The asymmetry in demand is huge, because heterosexual men in general prefer multiple, young and attractive partners, whereas women are more inclined to settle for one stable provider. Plus most girls are just not cream of the crop, high quality, attractive women. From personal experience, age plays only a minor role compare to things like status and wealth. If you have great charisma or personality or humor, thats a huge bonus as well, of course. 

Edited April 26 by Boris97921234

[Basman]

7 minutes ago, Boris97921234 said:

I think the core of our discussion is really about how dating and masculinity function within a capitalist system. The asymmetry in demand is huge... 

...From personal experience, age plays only a minor role compare to things like status and wealth. If you have great charisma or personality or humor, thats a huge bonus as well, of course. 

Well yeah, women are talent scouts. The asymmetry is that there are more guys looking to mate with attractive women than there are available women.

The major difference between now and then is that women are no longer dependent on getting married in order to survive. Less women are going enter relationships or stick with them like they used to given it is no longer a necessity.

Probably a skill issue, but that is a good thing. The advantage that men have over women is that men can do more to improve themselves. An ugly women has way less options. Plenty of ugly dudes get hot chicks.

I find that this theorizing about how useless and powerless you as guys are is the male equivalent of how neurotic women fantasize about how everyone hates them. Go on a feminist subreddit and it is all complaining about how everyone is out to get them.

[Nilsi]

On 26.4.2025 at 5:07 PM, Basman said:

How does that work exactly? You can't horde relationships in a bank account like you can do with money. There's no way half of the human population is exclusively dating men who are rich and tall, which is probably only about 1-3% of the male population, or at least rare.

Women just tend to date older, which is not new. The older you get, the more the relationship discrepancy between men and women equalizes (to about 30-40% being single) (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/08/for-valentines-day-5-facts-about-single-americans/). 

You can’t hoard relationships like you hoard capital, yes. But you can hoard attention - or more precisely, optionality.

Most people still imagine the mating market like a school dance. Everyone pairs off. Some hierarchy, sure - but mostly even. Desire distributed like slices of cake.

That might have been true. Once.

But again: Then came the sexual revolution. It stripped away the old guardrails - monogamy, fidelity, child-rearing obligations. The liberators believed desire would flow freely and fairly once unshackled. But they misunderstood the deeper mechanics.

When surplus is unbound, it doesn’t flatten things. It amplifies asymmetries.

Desire, like capital, accumulates in nonlinear patterns. A few receive exponential returns. Most get crumbs. Economists call this a power law distribution. Not by conspiracy, but because open systems reward small early advantages with runaway feedback loops.

That’s exactly what happened.

As monogamy weakened and markets opened up, attention pooled at the top. Not evenly. Not morally. Just mathematically.

A small minority of men - and a few women - became what network theorists call supernodes. They didn’t hoard relationships. They hoarded the possibility space of relationships. This became the real sexual capital.

Most women remained in stable partnerships. But those bonds grew increasingly conditional. If a higher-value option appeared - socially, sexually, materially - many would recalibrate. Not out of disloyalty, but because systems without friction always flow toward higher perceived value.

For most men, especially those without status leverage, relationships became provisional. Companionship, stability, or gap-filling where better options weren’t available.

This isn’t just a story about sex. It’s the same dynamic shaping the evolution of intelligence, technology, and capital. As Kurzweil and Bostrom observed: once positive feedback loops form, they accelerate. Intelligence feeds intelligence. Technology feeds technology. And as Nick Land argued, desire itself accelerates - stripped of tradition, abstraction, or morality.

What began as liberation became a self-reinforcing system. Faster. Less forgiving. Beyond individual control.

Same surplus dynamics. Same asymmetries. Just higher velocity.

And the next phase is already visible.

For most men, unable to compete in this accelerating market, the system now offers technological exits. AI companions. Synthetic intimacy. Sex robots. Not as consolation. As a structural solution - a way to reroute surplus desire into non-disruptive flows. A market niche for those excluded from human pair bonding.

For the winners, dynamics sharpen. Biohacking, neural enhancement, algorithmic social amplification. Visibility. Status. Mate value multiplied beyond what unaugmented humans can achieve.

For women - and it must be said plainly - their role as selectors persists, but within a choice architecture optimized by the system itself. Algorithms steer most toward mid-tier outcomes while continuously reabsorbing surplus desire upward toward the supernodes.

Lyotard already saw this: the system - the machinic - does not desire everyone equally. It desires what can circulate, amplify, accelerate. Low-status men become systemically invisible. The surplus desire displaced by their exclusion flows upward - reabsorbed into circulation among those still visible to the machine.

This is no longer a human economy of love, choice, or fairness. It is a cybernetic feedback loop, where desire itself has become capital - optimized, routed, accelerated.

No return to equilibrium. No restoration of balance.

What was once human strategy has become non-human process. Desire is no longer what people have. It’s what the system does.

Edited Thursday at 03:34 PM by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

12 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

You can’t hoard relationships like you hoard capital. But you can hoard attention - or more precisely, optionality.

Most people still imagine the mating market like a school dance. Everyone pairs off. Some hierarchy, sure - but mostly even. Desire distributed like slices of cake.

That might have been true. Once.

Then came the sexual revolution. It stripped away the old guardrails - monogamy, fidelity, child-rearing obligations. The liberators believed desire would flow freely and fairly once unshackled. But they misunderstood the deeper mechanics.

When surplus is unbound, it doesn’t flatten things. It amplifies asymmetries.

Desire, like capital, accumulates in nonlinear patterns. A few receive exponential returns. Most get crumbs. Economists call this a power law distribution. Not by conspiracy, but because open systems reward small early advantages with runaway feedback loops.

That’s exactly what happened.

As monogamy weakened and markets opened up, attention pooled at the top. Not evenly. Not morally. Just mathematically.

A small minority of men - and a few women - became what network theorists call supernodes. They didn’t hoard relationships. They hoarded the possibility space of relationships. This became the real sexual capital.

Most women remained in stable partnerships. But those bonds grew increasingly conditional. If a higher-value option appeared - socially, sexually, materially - many would recalibrate. Not out of disloyalty, but because systems without friction always flow toward higher perceived value.

For most men, especially those without status leverage, relationships became provisional. Companionship, stability, or gap-filling where better options weren’t available.

This isn’t just a story about sex. It’s the same dynamic shaping the evolution of intelligence, technology, and capital. As Kurzweil and Bostrom observed: once positive feedback loops form, they accelerate. Intelligence feeds intelligence. Technology feeds technology. And as Nick Land argued, desire itself accelerates - stripped of tradition, abstraction, or morality.

What began as liberation became a self-reinforcing system. Faster. Less forgiving. Beyond individual control.

Same surplus dynamics. Same asymmetries. Just higher velocity.

And the next phase is already visible.

For most men, unable to compete in this accelerating market, the system now offers technological exits. AI companions. Synthetic intimacy. Sex robots. Not as consolation. As a structural solution - a way to reroute surplus desire into non-disruptive flows. A market niche for those excluded from human pair bonding.

For the winners, dynamics sharpen. Biohacking, neural enhancement, algorithmic social amplification. Visibility. Status. Mate value multiplied beyond what unaugmented humans can achieve.

For women - and it must be said plainly - their role as selectors persists, but within a choice architecture optimized by the system itself. Algorithms steer most toward mid-tier outcomes while continuously reabsorbing surplus desire upward toward the supernodes.

Lyotard already saw this: the system - the machinic - does not desire everyone equally. It desires what can circulate, amplify, accelerate. Low-status men become systemically invisible. The surplus desire displaced by their exclusion flows upward - reabsorbed into circulation among those still visible to the machine.

This is no longer a human economy of love, choice, or fairness. It is a cybernetic feedback loop, where desire itself has become capital - optimized, routed, accelerated.

No return to equilibrium. No restoration of balance.

What was once human strategy has become non-human process. Desire is no longer what people have. It’s what the system does.

But - and here lies the crack Land never accounted for - desire is not a fixed input.

As Deleuze and Guattari argued, desire is not a scarce resource to be optimized. It is creative, productive, and irreducibly nomadic. It flows across bodies, systems, and codes. It forms alliances, assemblages, intensities that resist capture.

Queer theory followed this insight. It mapped how desire can escape optimization - refusing reproduction, refusing value capture, refusing even the identity slots the machine assigns.

It crosses bodies, sexes, machines.

Leather grips prosthetic limbs. Silicone meets muscle. Hormones pulse alongside electrodes.

Men birthing futures. Women wielding phallic power. Flesh swapping roles - faster than the system can compute.

Orgies form. Not for hedonism, but for counter-economic play. Multipartner swarms. Post-gender hookups. Breeding kinks that fracture the reproduction market.

Desire spreads sideways - into scenes, into encrypted collectives, into viral meme-sex rituals the algorithms can’t monetize or predict.

As José Esteban Muñoz wrote: "queerness is not yet here; it’s a horizon, a vector of escape."

In a fully accelerated system, even the capture mechanisms can be outpaced.

The fatal circuit holds.

Until it doesn’t.

Edited Thursday at 03:45 PM by Nilsi

[Basman]

58 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

You can’t hoard relationships like you hoard capital, yes. But you can hoard attention - or more precisely, optionality.

Most people still imagine the mating market like a school dance. Everyone pairs off. Some hierarchy, sure - but mostly even. Desire distributed like slices of cake.

That might have been true. Once.

But again: Then came the sexual revolution. It stripped away the old guardrails - monogamy, fidelity, child-rearing obligations. The liberators believed desire would flow freely and fairly once unshackled. But they misunderstood the deeper mechanics.

When surplus is unbound, it doesn’t flatten things. It amplifies asymmetries.

Desire, like capital, accumulates in nonlinear patterns. A few receive exponential returns. Most get crumbs. Economists call this a power law distribution. Not by conspiracy, but because open systems reward small early advantages with runaway feedback loops.

That’s exactly what happened.

As monogamy weakened and markets opened up, attention pooled at the top. Not evenly. Not morally. Just mathematically.

A small minority of men - and a few women - became what network theorists call supernodes. They didn’t hoard relationships. They hoarded the possibility space of relationships. This became the real sexual capital.

Most women remained in stable partnerships. But those bonds grew increasingly conditional. If a higher-value option appeared - socially, sexually, materially - many would recalibrate. Not out of disloyalty, but because systems without friction always flow toward higher perceived value.

For most men, especially those without status leverage, relationships became provisional. Companionship, stability, or gap-filling where better options weren’t available.

This isn’t just a story about sex. It’s the same dynamic shaping the evolution of intelligence, technology, and capital. As Kurzweil and Bostrom observed: once positive feedback loops form, they accelerate. Intelligence feeds intelligence. Technology feeds technology. And as Nick Land argued, desire itself accelerates - stripped of tradition, abstraction, or morality.

What began as liberation became a self-reinforcing system. Faster. Less forgiving. Beyond individual control.

Same surplus dynamics. Same asymmetries. Just higher velocity.

And the next phase is already visible.

For most men, unable to compete in this accelerating market, the system now offers technological exits. AI companions. Synthetic intimacy. Sex robots. Not as consolation. As a structural solution - a way to reroute surplus desire into non-disruptive flows. A market niche for those excluded from human pair bonding.

For the winners, dynamics sharpen. Biohacking, neural enhancement, algorithmic social amplification. Visibility. Status. Mate value multiplied beyond what unaugmented humans can achieve.

For women - and it must be said plainly - their role as selectors persists, but within a choice architecture optimized by the system itself. Algorithms steer most toward mid-tier outcomes while continuously reabsorbing surplus desire upward toward the supernodes.

Lyotard already saw this: the system - the machinic - does not desire everyone equally. It desires what can circulate, amplify, accelerate. Low-status men become systemically invisible. The surplus desire displaced by their exclusion flows upward - reabsorbed into circulation among those still visible to the machine.

This is no longer a human economy of love, choice, or fairness. It is a cybernetic feedback loop, where desire itself has become capital - optimized, routed, accelerated.

No return to equilibrium. No restoration of balance.

What was once human strategy has become non-human process. Desire is no longer what people have. It’s what the system does.

The main difference then and now is just is that relationships are no longer a sufficient condition for survival like they used to be since women can get jobs now, which means there are going to be less relationships overall. And an age where marriage was a condition for basic survival wasn't about fairness, choice or even love necessarily either. A market theory applies well to online dating but that is also because men heavily outnumber available women and aren't just looking for validation. Reducing mating dynamics to capital also ignores how interpersonal relationships are and how dynamic choice can be that can't be simplistically be reduced to economics.

There are more men interested in mating than there are available attractive women. That is the crux of the issue. Statistics don't have to apply to you individually however. This whole quote is crying about things not being easy but they never really have been. Most guys just don't seriously prioritize it in my experience. If you are approaching women in real life you are already doing more than most guys.

[Schizophonia]

It's paranoid; There are plenty of 60 IQ human trash who have girlfriends.

 

[LordFall]

On 4/26/2025 at 6:18 AM, Nilsi said:

Your AI is hitting something real here - but it goes even deeper.

Sex at Dawn - Ryan and Jethá - got some of it right: early human groups were more or less egalitarian, less locked into the hierarchies we see now. But the real rupture wasn’t just culture - it was surplus. Marx already saw it: once you have agriculture, property, capital - you get real asymmetries. Not just in wealth, but in status, in mating, in everything that matters.

The sexual revolution tried to roll some of that back - break up rigid ownership, give people freedom again. You can see the echoes of that optimism in Reich, Marcuse, and the early Freudo-Marxists - the idea that if you just liberated desire, the old authoritarian structures would collapse. But they underestimated how capitalism could capture liberated desires even faster than it captured labor.

The revolution didn’t touch the material structure underneath. And by trying to “free” sexuality without dismantling the economic base, it actually unraveled the few structures that had kept the worst dynamics more or less in check - monogamy, the burden of childbearing, fidelity, basic long-term pair bonding.

Lyotard already saw it coming: liberation doesn’t stop the machine - it feeds it. Desire gets re-coded, re-marketed, turned into endless circulation. Nick Land just pushed it to the logical conclusion: capitalism doesn’t repress desire - it is desire, stripped of any pretense, accelerating toward total abstraction.

You can adapt - you can build skills, increase your value, move differently - and you can win if you play it tight. But the deeper structure isn’t going anywhere. The genie is out of the bottle. The machine isn’t stopping - it’s accelerating.

This is a really good comment and indeed a huge conundrum. Some people are living the dream while the majority are in scarcity. AI will probably make that worse.

What's your thoughts on religious principles? That's what the 7 deadly sins warn about. Lust and greed.

That was basically my dating goal to become a supernode. I'm getting more into religious thinking these days though and realizing perhaps those fantasies were toxic and I need to introspect on where and it's coming from and the impact I wanna have on the world. 

[Emerald]

7 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

It's paranoid; There are plenty of 60 IQ human trash who have girlfriends.

 

I wouldn't put it in those terms, as I wouldn't call people human trash and pick on people with a lower IQ.

But this is indeed more reflective of the dating reality more than any of the other posts on this thread.

It's nonsense to think that only the top 20% of guys are getting female attention.

People who believe this need to just go to Walmart or the airport and look with their eyes and they will see that there's no such dynamic going on... and that there are plenty of guys who are solid 1s who have a girlfriend.

[Schizophonia]

4 hours ago, Emerald said:

I wouldn't put it in those terms, as I wouldn't call people human trash and pick on people with a lower IQ.

But this is indeed more reflective of the dating reality more than any of the other posts on this thread.

It's nonsense to think that only the top 20% of guys are getting female attention.

People who believe this need to just go to Walmart or the airport and look with their eyes and they will see that there's no such dynamic going on... and that there are plenty of guys who are solid 1s who have a girlfriend.

Mea culpa yea i was unnecessary aggressive (I was in the anima )

But yes, there are people with low economic and social status and/or physical appearance who are cool just about everywhere, and vice versa.

There's a self-flagellated self-concept behind these stories.

[Nilsi]

13 hours ago, Emerald said:

I wouldn't put it in those terms, as I wouldn't call people human trash and pick on people with a lower IQ.

But this is indeed more reflective of the dating reality more than any of the other posts on this thread.

It's nonsense to think that only the top 20% of guys are getting female attention.

People who believe this need to just go to Walmart or the airport and look with their eyes and they will see that there's no such dynamic going on... and that there are plenty of guys who are solid 1s who have a girlfriend.

Sorry again for the disgusting content, but it’s simply true.

Yes, plenty of low-value guys are in relationships - not because they reflect what their girlfriends truly desire, but because they act as pragmatic gap-fillers, meeting basic emotional and sexual needs.

Most women would gladly leave these arrangements if a real chance to move up to the 8s and 9s came along.

And what do you think those women fantasize about, even while lying next to their beta male boyfriends?

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

Sorry again for the disgusting content, but it’s simply true.

Yes, plenty of low-value guys are in relationships - not because they reflect what their girlfriends truly desire, but because they act as pragmatic gap-fillers, meeting basic emotional and sexual needs.

Most women would gladly leave these arrangements if a real chance to move up to the 8s and 9s came along.

And what do you think those women fantasize about, even while lying next to their beta male boyfriends?

That's just incorrect.

But it's reflective of a major insecurity that many men have that women don't actually love them and are always going to want to leave them for some better guy. And if a woman likes an average guy, she's just settling and deeply sexually unsatisfied... and that she will leave the "sexually unsatisfying average man" until a "more sexually satisfying alpha man" comes along.

But this is not reflective of how pair bonding operates from the female perspective. Women fall in love with a man's personality first and foremost. And when she feels sexually attracted to a guy, she wants to have sex with his personality.

From the female perspective, there is love and bonding... and men are more than just their value signifiers and more than the sum of their parts.

And women are far more motivated to bond with someone on the basis of the unique quirks of personality rather than to seek out some kind of ideal male specimen who happens to sit on top of some hierarchy.

I always think these fears come from the fact that the guys who fear it would leave their average looking girlfriend if some super-model-type started showing them attention. And that is true for a lot of guys that they don't really feel that deep love of a woman's personality, and so women are like fungible and that it's better to leave the average ones for the more attractive ones.

But that's only for men who haven't experienced real pair bonding before... and it takes a lot of maturing for a man to get where a woman already is naturally in this way.

Women tend to get really attached to the men that they're with and bond with them on the basis of their personality, which can't be replicated by another human being.

As a woman, I can tell you that I've been madly attracted to a guy who might be a 5 in the eyes of society and felt absolutely nothing towards men who might be a 10 in the eyes of society.

And that's because it's all about his personality and how he makes me feel. And on that level, he is irreplaceable because he is the only one of him in the world.

That's how pair bonding works from the female perspective. It's not, "Let me settle with this trash average guy because I can't get any better... until some Chad who will have me comes along."

If a woman is with you and she really like you, she likes you for who you are. 

And only women who themselves are really immature and shallow are thinking of relationship with men from a "bring me a better model" perspective.

[Emerald]

9 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

Mea culpa yea i was unnecessary aggressive (I was in the anima )

But yes, there are people with low economic and social status and/or physical appearance who are cool just about everywhere, and vice versa.

There's a self-flagellated self-concept behind these stories.

No worries. I just had to specify that I wasn't agreeing with that element of the post... because I was expressing agreement for the rest of it. More of an "preserving my own identity" kind of concern.

But yes, definitely a lot of insecurity and self-flagellation in these kinds of perspectives as its reflective of a common fear of "Any woman who is interested in me is just settling and waiting for someone better to come along." or "Women will never like me because I'm just an average guy. They are just lacking options and settling out of loneliness and being rejected by the Chads. And of course a woman who's attracted to me would be defective and therefore rejected by the Chads."

Really, the issue is just that they've never been a woman who's madly attracted to an average guy before. So, they can't fathom of it.

Edited 7 hours ago by Emerald

[Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Emerald said:

That's just incorrect.

But it's reflective of a major insecurity that many men have that women don't actually love them and are always going to want to leave them for some better guy. And if a woman likes an average guy, she's just settling and deeply sexually unsatisfied... and that she will leave the "sexually unsatisfying average man" until a "more sexually satisfying alpha man" comes along.

But this is not reflective of how pair bonding operates from the female perspective. Women fall in love with a man's personality first and foremost. And when she feels sexually attracted to a guy, she wants to have sex with his personality.

From the female perspective, there is love and bonding... and men are more than just their value signifiers and more than the sum of their parts.

And women are far more motivated to bond with someone on the basis of the unique quirks of personality rather than to seek out some kind of ideal male specimen who happens to sit on top of some hierarchy.

I always think these fears come from the fact that the guys who fear it would leave their average looking girlfriend if some super-model-type started showing them attention. And that is true for a lot of guys that they don't really feel that deep love of a woman's personality, and so women are like fungible and that it's better to leave the average ones for the more attractive ones.

But that's only for men who haven't experienced real pair bonding before... and it takes a lot of maturing for a man to get where a woman already is naturally in this way.

Women tend to get really attached to the men that they're with and bond with them on the basis of their personality, which can't be replicated by another human being.

As a woman, I can tell you that I've been madly attracted to a guy who might be a 5 in the eyes of society and felt absolutely nothing towards men who might be a 10 in the eyes of society.

And that's because it's all about his personality and how he makes me feel. And on that level, he is irreplaceable because he is the only one of him in the world.

That's how pair bonding works from the female perspective. It's not, "Let me settle with this trash average guy because I can't get any better... until some Chad who will have me comes along."

If a woman is with you and she really like you, she likes you for who you are. 

And only women who themselves are really immature and shallow are thinking of relationship with men from a "bring me a better model" perspective.

Well, I think the problem is that you’re talking about love, and I’m talking about desire - and the two are always at odds, no matter how much of a hopeless romantic you want to be about it.

Of course, I agree with everything you said. Even when you love someone, with all their idiosyncrasies - which is definitely real (and trust me, I’m firmly in the hopeless romantic camp too) - what you desire is a whole different beast, and much of it operates unconsciously.

Desire is always this je-ne-sais-quoi, that much is certain. But it’s also something that’s constantly receding, something that can never truly be possessed - which is why desire so often fades in long-term relationships unless both people keep evolving, riding out the shifts through ongoing transformation.

What I’m describing is simply the underlying current of desire and where it statistically tends to flow. That doesn’t mean you can’t subvert it or be conscious about it. I intentionally painted it in a bleak and mechanistic way to make the structural forces visible - so they can actually be worked with rather than ignored.

And again, I offered what I think is a very optimistic horizon with my references to Deleuze, Guattari, and queer theory (if you want to go back and read it). So I’m not some psychoanalytic or evolutionary-psych fatalist.

[Basman]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

Most women would gladly leave these arrangements if a real chance to move up to the 8s and 9s came along.

And what do you think those women fantasize about, even while lying next to their beta male boyfriends?

Because all women never actually love the person they are with.

All this theorizing just comes off as contrivance and cowardice. Reducing human beings to just an economy as if you never even have to try if your just handsome enough. Some people have certain advantages for sure but but that is not a good reason to not even try. It is not the case at all that mating has been monopolized by a minority of chads or that it is going to. That is ridiculous.

42 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I always think these fears come from the fact that the guys who fear it would leave their average looking girlfriend if some super-model-type started showing them attention. And that is true for a lot of guys that they don't really feel that deep love of a woman's personality, and so women are like fungible and that it's better to leave the average ones for the more attractive ones.

A lot of guys tend to see mating only through the male perspective and assume that women are as obsessed with looks as they are. It's a lot of projection, as overused that word is.

[Nilsi]

20 minutes ago, Basman said:

Because all women never actually love the person they are with.

All this theorizing just comes off as contrivance and cowardice. Reducing human beings to just an economy as if you never even have to try if your just handsome enough. Some people have certain advantages for sure but but that is not a good reason to not even try. It is not the case at all that mating has been monopolized by a minority of chads or that it is going to. That is ridiculous.

A lot of guys tend to see mating only through the male perspective and assume that women are as obsessed with looks as they are. It's a lot of projection, as overused that word is.

I have a feeling you’re just reading the outrageous bits and ignoring all the context this is situated in.

And I stand by these claims, by the way. Yes, women generally play the role of selectors, not men - that’s where the asymmetry comes from.

But all of this only makes sense when you look at it from a macro, systemic perspective. These are emergent, statistical patterns - not necessarily what you’d notice just by observing individual people.