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Every time I see this meme format I’m a little frustrated and sad.
A long time ago, Cosmo did a bunch of studies on dating app users. It published a bunch of their results and people have been miscounting it ever since to serve their assumptions.
On dating apps, when one woman matches with one man, 90% of women match with 10% of men. This is largely a result of the app populations, which were and are mostly men. Unless you’re okay with your girl dating ~9 men at once, dating apps will only match a small percentage of men, because that’s how maths works.
When asked to judge dating app profile pictures (no other profile information), women judged men’s pictures lower than men judged women’s. This is as much a factor of the profile pictures we choose as anything else. In addition, men’s match preferences had a strong relationship with their attraction ranks. Whereas for women the relationship was weaker, and the content of the profile was a larger deciding factor. But people hear about the judging profile photos thing and go ‘women are more critical of appearance than men are -> women are shallow’.
When asked ‘what age are [men/women] most atteactive’, women tended to answer close to their own age (with a drop off around 50). Most men said 20-25. But most men saying still typically matched close to their own age. Much like the women with profile pictures, they were trying to answer a direct question with what they believed was a critical, scientific, ‘objective’ answer, rather than reflecting their own dating preferences. But now women fear (or believe) that any men will not find them attractive as they age.
There’s a lot of interesting things in those findings, if you acknowledge it is specifically measuring dating app users, had nuanced findings, and was not scientifically robust in the first place. It’s broad conclusions DO NOT apply to the population as a whole.
And I ache a little each time I see its conclusions reduced and misused to justify misanthropy. Much like the myth of ‘the alpha wolf’, it’s misinformation that refuses to die.
Dating apps are social cancer
Make friends with women, jumping straight to “romance” with zero friendship is like running a relationship on insane difficulty
I don’t agree with this. They are a stream-lined method to meet other people who are interested in making new contacts without going out of their comfort zone. I also may be biased since I met my s/o on Bumble but we are 6 years in and this is the healthiest most loving relationship I’ve ever been in. I know my experience is most likely the exception rather than the norm YMMV
Also I don’t know how going on a few dates with someone is “jumping right to romance”
Dating apps are quite horrible, but I would have never met my girlfriend without them. We are both very shy and agree that even if we had met by chance, nobody would have ever made a move.
None of my women friends are romantically interesting to me and I’m not the kind of person who meets a lot of new people. I’m very happy with my small circle of friends and neither my job nor my hobbies expose me to new people.
A dating app helped me to work around that. I was very lucky though and the first person I met with turned out to be the perfect match for me.
Women also use dating apps for their own reasons, too. While its true there are a lot of socially inept men on them, I’m uncomfortable with your phrasing. It seems to be blaming men (and not women) for the apps’ existence.
Dating apps are mostly a reflection of a society with poor options for socialising organically. They’re trying to get people connected in a world that makes organic meeting places increasingly expensive or rare, or work hours that are particularly long and limit our energy and free time.
The world is also increasingly hostile to the ‘cold approach’. Dating apps are environments where men know they are allowed to interact with women, snd both can easily disengage from bad matches.That’s especially crucial for the more gentle men that don’t want to make women uncomfortable in the first place, since they would likely never cold approach, or feel uncomfortable admitting interest to their friends and acquaintances.
That last paragraph speaks true to me. I’m not the kind of person to make a move. But with online dating, there is always romantic context.
“I’ve been seeing this person from the dating app for a few weeks now and I’m really attracted, we always have a great time, maybe I should ask if they’d like to kiss” is a lot easier than initiating intimacy without that context.
Thank you for this break down. It makes a lot more sense than the stat alone.
Great breakdown, thanks
I’m always super hesitant to comment on stuff like this because I don’t want to be lumped in with the fascists but I’m going to break that rule just this once. When people hear “Male Loneliness Epidemic”, it means different things to different people. It appears to me as most left leaning people hear, “I don’t have a woman that caters to me and my needs”. For myself it means, “I don’t have a Support System of friends and family to lean on.” A partner would be great but I would get far greater satisfaction in gaining a group of friends or a sense of belonging. Paired with likely Autism and ADHD, things aren’t super rad for me on any aspect of life. That’s all my own stuff to deal with though.
The takeaway is I hope anyone reading this is doing okay, regardless of gender. I may not get the struggles of your life, but I hope you are overcoming them.
I think there is a general loneliness epidemic, but it’s particularly acute with men who were never pressured or given the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain a community around them.
Like the systems and environments that used to facilitate this no longer exist, and it is left to individuals to do it them selves, something impossible without those skills. Those institutions and systems that used to facilitate community building have been pivoted to profit or dismantled if they couldn’t generate profit or if they were actively undermining the profitability of something else.
Yeah, that was my interpretation as well, although I’ve heard the alternative usage too. Also, same situation for me. I’ve got a very few people that I’m friendly with, but no close friends. Hope it gets better for you, man.
When you tell most men their problem is they don’t have any friends not that they don’t have a girlfriend they take that very personally and reject the idea
Painting all lonely men as douches is kind of fucked up, no?
Yeah it’s really invidating and alienating young men.
Liberals wonder why young men flock to the conservative, and then they say stuff that’s just very invalidating. Like, if you want to convince somebody, you have to make an attractive offer. Instead, it feels as if today’s “feminists” are just blaming everything bad in the world on men. Even though your neighbor man has exactly zero responsibility for the world at large.
People just aren’t wired to handle uncomfortable self truths. We haven’t figured out a way to get around it yet as a society.
Not all lonely men are douches, but most douches are lonely.
(if your reflexive instinct is to downvote and argue, you might be a lonely douche who wants validation more than outcomes. Nah, I ain’t arguing with you, go buy some youtube streamer’s self-help book surely that will do the trick.)
In my experience, the douchiest of men are surrounded by women. Look at the Tate brothers, for an example.
While I don’t necessarily disagree, citing the Tate brothers for the amount of women around them isn’t great because they’re probably trafficking most of those women.
I’m more referring to their female social media followers, who go on about how great their (toxic) masculinity is, rather than the very real female victims of their narcissism , which you’re quite right to note.
Not all douches are lonely. There’s a stereotypical “rich man with a yacht that gets all the women” and the “high school football player who’s an arrogant douche and still gets all the girls”.
I’m not arguing with you either, i’m just writing it for the other people reading this thread.
Not even remotely true. Reminder that Trump won white women voters in 2024.
Those are pink women
He did. But by a smaller margin than he won white men.
So, the shortage of men who aren’t nazis is actually there. And I suspect that the nazi women are having little trouble dating.
Abuse towards women is unfortunately so normalized by society that I bet most of those women don’t realize how much they have been manipulated since childhood to be against their own autonomy, especially if they grew up in a religious environment.
It’s possible that women of minority demographics voted more blue because some realized how anti-(their specific minority) republicans are but, just like the white women, weren’t put off by republicans’ misogyny.
Well, that is basically what OP’s meme was saying, though:
That for a man, holding “liberal” values, gets him game.
And that’s just blatantly not true.
In fact, there’s a whole meme around it, being the “nice guy”.
This is very deresponsibilizing though. I don’t think you can explain mass phenomena with it. To me it seems more reasonable to conclude that gender is not that relevant here and that social conditions, education, family upbringing etc. are.
how much they have been manipulated since childhood to be against their own autonomy
And how do you explain poor people voting against their economic interests, immigrants voting for xenophobic parties etc.? I don’t think that individual abuse can be used to explain every case, it feels as a way to rationalize something you can’t justify otherwise (e.g., it’s unimaginable how a woman would vote against her own autonomy). I do believe that everyone in a way is a victim of some kind of influence, marketing, societal pressure, class violence, different biases etc., but we need to draw a line at some point for people to be responsible for their shitty ideas.
To make an example, an immigrant who went through a tough immigration process, with all the anxiety and insecurity it caused, and finally managed to make it is probably going to suffer heavily of survivorship bias and it’s not impossible they will be xenophobic against illegal immigrants and perhaps will even vote for whom proposes harsher immigration policies. You can argue that society abused them etc., but they are still responsible for their ideas.
So my point is that I don’t disagree with you, but we can find exogenous reasons for why people have shitty ideas in all cases. Doing so though we deresponsibilize the individual from checking with themself and reflecting on their own positions. I think it’s fair to consider that some people simply have shitty ideas, are greedy, selfish, racist, classist, or whatever else, without necessarily trying to trace back those ideas to some external factor.
100% some people are genuinely shitty people and their behavior would happen even if society wasn’t misogynist, classist, etc.
My goal wasn’t to alleviate them from responsiblity. I do not believe it is their fault for growing up in a society that is against them, but it is their fault for not thinking crtically and choosing to perpetuate that hate once they are an adult.
Also I was thinking of abuse on a societal level, not an individual level, but that does contribute. (I probably could have used a better word. I do agree that abuse implies individual rather than societal.) I find the fact that so much misogyny and other hate exists within the overton window to be repulsive. Trump said “grab her by the pussy,” (plus a bunch of other terrible things) and got into the oval office not once, but twice, which shows that society has a major problem with finding hate acceptable. Why people find that hate acceptable I imagine varies between demographics.
I still do stand by my previous comment, which is my thoughts on why specifically women voted the way they did, although I agree it has room to be expanded on more.
I think a major part of it is that people simply aren’t thinking things through enough. They should be questioning society’s misogyny, racism, etc, but for some reason they choose to accept it as normal.
Trad wives who get off on being told what to do
I really feel like this is an idea that needs to die. Plenty of abusive and hateful men seem to have no problems with getting the type of relationships they want; this just inadvertently promotes the idea that one needs to be a ‘nice guy’ in order to have a relationship. Not every guy who leans left succeeds in wooing a woman, and right wingers complaining about where the women are at are probably in circles with primarily left-leaning women and they need to go look in a church or country concert or something.
Yeah, i even suspect that what makes men turn a bit more to the right with age is the realization that it’s more likely to find a woman-partner this way.
I.e., adapting “work hard” way of thinking to earn more money, because women are ultimately also largely attracted to wealth.
this just inadvertently promotes the idea that one needs to be a ‘nice guy’
I think if anything we have radically fucked up the messaging if we think “not being a nazi” means “being a niceguy.”
Yeah you’re right, I’m only alone because Im garbage, thanks for that reassurance.
This post is such a stupid take on a very complex issue. Most of the problem is related to economic-socio problem. If everyone can get a $100k/year job that solves a whole bunch of problems in itself. It’s hard to convince someone to date if we are only earning like 25k/year. Some women are going no thanks I will take a chance with an old guy who maybe divorced but seems financially settled. Then comes introverts/anxiety problems, etc. these dudes have a hard time even approaching women because they may get humiliated. Then comes looks, only around 30-40% people are tall enough and good looking enough to get chosen with no effort instantly.
Add all these and we have like 55% dudes below the age of 30 with no partner.
Can I ask how old you are?
Mid 30s
You’re welcome!
Unfortunately there are a lot of similarly awful women, especially in more rural and suburban areas.
True. Never forget that conservative women exist and they can be highly unpleasant.
And that some of them end up being elected to congress
But you have no meme for that, so how can we believe you?
Don’t date them either!
Southern confederate states and rural states love white christianity more than their country.
I am a moderately liberal guy, and I cannot get any girls. I’m shorter than average and socially awkward. I’ve managed to get a few dates from dating apps but none of them went anywhere because I’m so awkward in person.
Most people don’t use dating apps.
While I am unable to find any scientific papers on the topic- I’m pretty sure there are several sources that show online dating has skyrocketed past any other form of meeting a new potential partner. MANY people use dating apps.
https://www.theknot.com/content/online-dating-most-popular-way-to-meet-spouse#ei-1748607854655
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18h7k9g/how_heterosexual_couples_met_oc/
Yeah I remember seeing an infographic that basically said that 50% of partners are met through online dating today.
If guy A meets someone irl and has a 5 year relationship and guy B has 9 hinge dates in that time that last a week then 90% of partners in this set are met via online dating, but you’d probably rather be guy A than guy B.
oh, yeah, but i think the infographic meant “where did you meet your current partner?”
that invalidates your argument, then.
In the scenario I described above 50% of current partners would be from dating apps and I’d still rather be guy A. Guess we’d need to see the actual infographic and who produced it to really say anything definitive.
That leaves plenty of room for OP to find a partner in different areas of life
I agree, it does- but the idea of “Most people don’t use dating apps” just doesn’t track with what I have read, or seen anecdotally.
Seriously. Physical third places have been dying for years. Of course people are going to meet their partners primarily online.
Yes, I think the “traditional ways” of finding a partner (or rather places) are breaking away slowly. There are more ways to stay occupied. More choices in events/clubs etc to go to. That gives more freedom in regard to finding somebody that fits greatly, but also reduces the pressure to pick from a small pool or to run into others occasionally. The pressure to form a family to just make ends meet (division of responsibilities/labor; shared resources etc) should be lower as well.
Right wing men aren’t lonely. They have community. They have validation. They have support. Thats why lonely men go to the right.
I’m lonely, I wonder what’s wrong with me
You must learn to love yourself before wanting to get loved.
It’s hard while being blamed for being lonely
Ya, we see so many lib men drowning in pussy, and hot vapid women in no way voted for this…
I am actually going to be reentering the dating game after a little over 10 years. I sometimes wonder 'am i still attractive ’ but then I remember this…
I’m discovering that it isn’t really “am I attractive?” It’s " I feel attractive."
Like I’m down 100lbs, been pumping my protein and weights, and I got muscle definition where I’ve never noticed muscle definition before.
Clothes that fit, glasses I feel comfortable in. I don’t really want to “date” because I’m so much happier with impressing myself than trying to impress someone else.
not to be sapphic but that type is women
Besides the stupidity of this post, you guys do realize that male loneliness is, in part, just how we organize as primates, right?
