With regards to the sexual dance, I find it baffling how many men are bad at this. Having been on the giving and receiving end of it several times, with both men and women, it's crazy how much better woman intuit how to go about it.
I always think that if you're on a date, one way to measure that the banter is going well is that, about halfway through, the tension should be so high that all you can think about it ripping each other's clothes off, right then & there.
The first time I experienced tension that had gotten that high, it was about 3 years into marriage after my wife bought a specific article of clothing. I can’t imagine feeling that on a first date. That’s probably either something about me or something about dating as a virgin.
Since I've literally never felt that, it does say something. IF anything an attractive member of the opposite sex produces a sort of threat response, since a flirtation is likely to end in a harassment accusation or if out of work a loud cry of disgust.
As for the overall difference between men and women, I think it's one of those biological differences the left loves to pretend don't exist.
So is it worth? Well if all that work is done only for the purpose of getting a woman, i think the answer is no.
That beautiful wife or girlfriend will NOT, by itself, make you happy.
That said, everything else in the list will increase your standing in society, your confidence, and your overall satisfaction with yourself and your life. Those things will remove some reasons to be unhappy, and give you freedom to take care of yourself and pursue goals that are meaningful to you and to be more connected to others. And will by the way greatly increase the chances for you to find a beautiful and loving woman who want to be on your side, which can also be a blessing.
So its a journey worth taking by itself, regardless of one specific thing you might find at the end. Also because in comparison the alternatives are really almost always worse.
This all is pretty moot advice when the majority of college educated singles in major cities meet their spouses on online dating apps now. The black pill stuff is very appealing because status, social skills, and whatnot are all irrelevant when viewing someone on an app.
I do somewhat agree you can step up in looks by dating someone of lower SES but that’s a sugar relationship with a level of indirection. I don’t think using celebrities is a good example here. No one reading this is a celebrity that needs dating advice and celebrities are in an extremely niche circle that is not available. In real life, we do see that the overwhelming majority of couples are looksmatched upon initial pairing.
I’d say I’m well into the 1% of most of your advice and I’d say it’s moot. Facial attractiveness and frame/height are pretty paramount for dating someone even remotely similar to yourself. I was never able to get dates off apps even with the help of coaches, professional photographers, dozens of friends and strangers, etc. In real life, I’ve only gotten gold diggers who are pretty clear that they don’t want a real relationship. I’ve got the target university degree, the 7 figure income, nice clothes, nice everything, etc. and I’ve done it all while coming up from rural poverty. I’ve had large parties, more friends than I know what to do with, and endless social approval but it doesn’t do anything if ultimately your face is shit. I did a couple surgeries and peptides and whatnot. (My natural T is already 4 std above median) Didn’t do shit cause ultimately my face is still jacked up and it’s what gets turned down the most. It didn’t matter if I had more of a fight club-esque physique - it just didn’t do anything cause most women need a decent face first.
Overall, I’m living proof that a lot of this advice just doesn’t track for the men out there that are actually ugly like myself. Unfortunately, I do think the bar for what is defined as ugly has broadened (and will continue) due to social media.
> I did a couple surgeries and peptides and whatnot.
Sorry, I'm trying to understand here from reading this and your second NYC comment - it sounds like you think you're so ugly it's wrecked your romantic prospects, have plenty of money, did surgeries, but the surgeries didn't help?
Because your case sounds like one that benefit from more dakka in the surgery direction. Get a better plastic surgeon, and spend some real money - if you're confident this is your main blocker, it sounds like you're the 1/1000 guy who really SHOULD be doing "looksmaxxing" Clav style, including facial surgeries and dedicating a good year or so of effort towards optimizing whatever you can there.
I have a friend who's a surgeon, and from what I've seen, they can really work wonders as long as you're willing to pay. At this point, what do you have to lose? And it sounds like the upside is pretty significant if that really is your blocker in terms of finding a great LTR.
I’ve gone through it and done multiple consultations. The issue is that my issues aren’t really “fixable” in the traditional sense. Cosmetic surgery isn’t a science - it’s very risky. I’ve taken the lower risk and lower effort surgeries off the board but now the only thing left are things that are very invasive, risky, and extremely subjective in terms of improvement. The big issue is that I just don’t have a good baseline face to begin with. Even the photoshopped after images - it’s still an ugly dude. That’s how far off I am from the norm.
It doesn’t help that I’m mixed race, an oddity of mixed race in the US as well, and that you can’t really find ethical surgeons who are actually focused on this kind of beauty in the US. Beauty standards for someone of my particular background just don’t really exist like they do for Asians, Europeans, and so forth. Trying to match myself to one of the these also just doesn’t line up well either.
I don’t really recommend surgery unless it’s a last resort. Having been through multiple, it’s just not fun. Extremely painful recovery, you feel weird for years after because that’s how long it takes to heal, and the results aren’t always that awesome.
Like if you had an awesome face but it’s just cause you have one small issue with your nose then okay. But for someone like myself who is certifiably ugly, it’s never just one thing. It’s multiple things and some of those things just aren’t fixable!
It’s similar to being short and doing the limb lengthening surgery. You literally won’t be able to do a ton of normal shit after you have that surgery. Facial surgery is mostly not like that but there are operations that will make your life miserable for a long time after. The people who are recovering very quickly and seemingly have no issues are most likely to brag about it because they have something good to say. People with problems aren’t gonna be as forward. And I did have complications with my surgeries and the results of them weren’t what I had hoped for. They were minor improvements but not the radical shift I had hoped. Lots of reasons why but the big one being: it’s hard to get it right the first time and doing revision surgery is complicated and even more unpleasant. Especially if you already know how bad it was after before and now it’s going to be even worse and it could still not be a good result!!
> And I did have complications with my surgeries and the results of them weren’t what I had hoped for. They were minor improvements but not the radical shift I had hoped. Lots of reasons why but the big one being: it’s hard to get it right the first time
Yeah, ouch - sounds like a truly unfortunate situation to be in, and I feel for you.
You sound like a better candidate than most in terms of a "blind flower girl" type falling in love with you for the content of your character and other attributes, but I imagine they're pretty thin on the ground. And you're certainly not going to be finding any of them on the apps, to your point.
I wish I had advice or ideas, but I don't - I hope you're enjoying the rest of life outside of the romantic domain!
These types of women don’t exist in any significant amount on the singles market. This is why incels keep growing in numbers. This type of woman is being put to extinction through social media. The idea of finding a man appealing through his character is an embarrassment for most women. Most women would rather be single and sexless than date a man who has great character but they lack strong physical sexual attraction to. Even for autistic women, this seems to be quite normal now. This wasn’t as pervasive a couple decades ago. Lots of reasons but social media is really influential for women. Women might not like how men like clav are being extremely upfront about their depraved methods to achieve their looks … but they would gladly entertain any man who looks like him.
Unfortunately, I want a family and to have kids and so forth. Typical American life. This kind of problem leaves a very big hole in my life and gives me very little reason for having achieved so much. I only did all of this and rose out abject poverty because I thought I’d be able to have a comfortable life with a family. If I knew I was destined to live a solitary meaningless life - I’d never have tried at all and I’d arguably be better for it.
My biggest surprise is that you can’t find a gold digger that wants a real relationship. I wouldn’t call my wife a gold digger, but she married me because it was obvious I would become wealthy. She’s an immigrant from a Slavic country, and they are all raised to be gold diggers to some extent. But they are also raised to want a real marriage, with a ring, kids, and companionship. I don’t have your specific problem, but I am mixed race like you. I would look for immigrants that were taught that gold digging requires a real relationship, possibly from one of your ethnic groups.
I have no attachments to my racial background. I don’t have any ethnic background because I wasn’t raised by the people who share my DNA. I was raised in rural whitetrash poverty.
I’ve met some Eastern European women but I don’t think they really were that different from American women and such. I’m sure it would be different if I only met them in Eastern Europe but then how would I meet them if I’m not on an app, don’t speak the language, etc? I wouldn’t. I did try apps when I was traveling through Eastern Europe and it never resulted in anything. Women on apps find me too ugly (regardless of wealth) to be bothered. It makes sense.
I did most of my whoring before apps became dominant but I find this hard to believe unless you are like physically deformed.
More likely you’re doing the standard incel thing of holding out for a Disney princess and ignoring the girl next door who is a 6.
I find it weird that this entire discussion ignores any redpill stuff, in my experience women really do not view nice guys as mates. There has to be some edginess somewhere or else you’re just boring.
Idk, maybe MeToo fundamentally changed the social fabric but I doubt it. Revealed preferences, etc.
I am quite ugly. It’s really been the only thing I’ve ever consistently been given feedback on. Everything else, I do pretty well.
I have next to no standards either. I would prefer someone who is in a similar tax bracket - just so that I’m not paying for literally everything - but that’s definitely impossible. I’ve noticed that women who make over $200k tend to be very picky and won’t move the bar on looks at all regardless of other factors. I’ve lived in a variety of places and traveled extensively.
I don’t think most incels - at least the ones I’ve talked to - have any real standards either. Most I’ve seen are open to dating a lot of women but just don’t get any positive feedback. I do think there are a lot of autistic ones online but irl I don’t know many actual incels. Most of the men I knew in nyc were like me: well off, educated, fit, etc. but they just didn’t have a bad face. So, their limitations were usually due to other things. Almost all could get dates off of apps and I was an oddity. But again, I was in a crowd of the 1% as an outsider. These men have had everything handed to them in life and that’s part of why they were where they were. It wasn’t due to just hard work or whatever. Most didn’t have to overcome anything.
A lot of people would. They just don’t see you in a sexual light. I’m someone that a lot of people liked to talk to. I’m funny, smart, and very experienced in life. A lot of people think I’m somewhat inspiring since I showed you can overcome extreme adversity (while being ugly on top of it!). But when it came to romance, women were completely disinterested because even though I exhibit pretty much all the desirable behaviors and traits - I am still ugly.
I’d go out with multiple groups and the men and women would inevitably pair off as the night goes on - and I’d always be the guy who never managed to be with anyone in any group and never could get a gal from any venue to respond positively (in a romantic and non-transactional way). It’s just how it is.
Maybe longevity max and stack cash until you can afford real life face/off? I'm rooting for youy ugly dude, 😎, but if you can't climb out, maybe climb down more
I already went to the best for my specific work. Contrary to whatever is popular in the media - you cannot become Nicholas Cage from Face/Off. It's not how plastic surgery works. Otherwise, every fucking billionaire would be a god damn model. Try thinking for a few seconds before posting.
In the Romanian language, the word for a man is literally "bearded" or "has a beard." This is separate from the Latin term (om), so it's entirely cultural. Boys can't grow beards, so it's an unfalsifiable signal you're an adult AND male
While mostly this article is relatively true, it's by and large assessing a lot of old data. The dating market has rapidly changed in the last 5 years, let alone the past few decades. Mate quality assessments are much more polarizing for men and women, and only an old fuck like you would hinge all of his analysis on looks lol.
> Mate quality assessments are much more polarizing for men and women, and only an old fuck like you would hinge all of his analysis on looks lol.
Well son, I was literally still single and dating as of about a year ago - but please do enlighten us on how you think mate quality assessments are different now, I'm always interested in hearing different perspectives.
I think the blackpill steelman is better phrased as: Women are comparing you to the top 20% of all of the planet due to social media, not the immediate dating pool she can expect a relationship with. Alternatively it could be phrased as: Because the globe of dating has opened up, the top 20% of men have enough quantity that it creates an illusion that a woman thinks she can attain one and deserves no less.
And thus things like, "What are you going to do, nothing?" falls flat because if the blackpill is true then a lower man who does work will get the same outcome as a lower man who doesn't do work - nothing. I don't disagree that men should fight and struggle simply as a matter of fact but I think the fear issue is due to all social supports being knocked out from the average guy and most people cope badly with that. I think the large part of the 'dating bootcamp' appeal is simply having a guy in your corner cheering you on after failure.
> Because the globe of dating has opened up, the top 20% of men have enough quantity that it creates an illusion that a woman thinks she can attain one and deserves no less.
I dunno, wouldn't this argue that no woman in the developing world would date anybody from their country at all, because they see hot, rich Western influencers on social media all the time? Yet they all have higher fertility than Europe and East Asia!
And why wouldn't it be just as true for men? Men see nothing but a succession of impossibly hot, skinny women all the time, but the truth is practically everyone is overweight - NHANES data, so actually measured versus self-reported:
So are men simply giving up because they can't get a hot girlfriend with a 1/100k waistline? No?
I think most of this is driven by the fact that women don't need or want men as much as men want women. They can replace men with Netflix and pets and do just fine. So they have standards! And if their standards aren't met, oh well, guess it's Netflix and 3 cats. There is a veridical supply / demand mismatch in terms of the median woman's desires re dating and mating and the median man's.
I think your argument comes in at this point and argues "the bar has been raised because everyone spends 7-9 hours a day looking at attractive millionaire influencers on social media." But why wasn't it just as true in the past 4 decades when everyone was watching 6-8 hours a day of TV? Aren't actors and actresses all hot millionaires too?
Or maybe you're saying "because any woman can open an app and swipe and get messages / dates / banged by hot men, they just won't settle for non-hot men." But women want long term relationships more strongly and often than men, and markets work. If they're not settling despite actually wanting a relationship, I personally think it's more likely to be a real quality problem than a standards problem.
I think the bar really IS on the floor, in other words, and the data (9 minutes, 50-60% having problems with their sex lives, etc) bears that out.
Let me zoom out a bit and present the model I find useful to explain this: Gresham's law. That's what happens when a currency becomes debased. In this case I'm loosely using attention/time as our market currency. In the old days the currency was strong - interest reliably led to dating which reliably led to marriage. You can throw sex in there too for the male ladder. A penny bought you a burger, metaphorically.
Nowadays interest does not reliably lead to dating and dating does not reliably lead to marriage. The currency is now debased, coin clipped, counterfeited, etc. This is a huge problem for both genders. For women sex used to reliably lead to marriage and for men attention used to reliably lead to sex, that's the strong currency. I belabor the point but I hope to make it intuitive. The burger now costs $8.00 and rising.
Gresham's law says bad currency drives all good currency off the market. Thus it predicts that marriage-level attention will be noised out of dating apps, which it has, as the men with 'good currency-attention' hoard it privately which they also do. They now give that attention to video games and such because they can't trade in a market with bad currency. Secondly it says no one can tell what good currency is - meaning that on a dating app no one can even tell if THIS guy is the marriage material guy finally. The currency is too debased to get accurate information, any coin could be fake (also called out in the book "market for lemons" which is about cars). It also predicts that almost all dating online attention will be 'boobs penis plz' which is true.
The thing with women, now, is that women are the sellers in the market. In a Gresham's law market sellers will do one of two things:
1) Only trade with gold. That is to say hard backed currency.
2) Raise prices dramatically ala hyperinflation
In both cases they hesitate to sell. And we see both things happening. They want the top 20% of men because they want a hard currency guarantee (our case 1). They also have a gigantic laundry list of demands on any upfront price checks (the woman's 99 bulletpoint list, our point 2).
The blackpill, in this context, is saying ultimately, "We are in sexual market hyperinflation or currency fraud, it's all fucked" which is loosely true. And there are ways to survive in a debased currency market but 'just level up bro' is telling men to try and gather more gold (enter the top 20%) which does work but is not easy for a few reasons. It's simple once you know the game but it's neither easy but most importantly the mental leap is enormous.
This is a systemic view of the issue which I believe models the situation for men and women with strong predictive power included. It's a bit mental model shift so thank you for reading.
Yeah, great analogy and framing, kudos for putting that together.
And it actually argues for an alternative solution - "trading with gold," ie arranged marriages. The data says that arranged marriages are generally just as good as love marriages, in fact better over time (the pattern with love marriages is higher satisfaction in the beginning that burns out quickly arranged start at lower satisfaction but keep growing in satisfaction past the point love marriages are trending downwards).
If people on both sides were entering a market with a guaranteed "gold" outcome and with some guarantees of quality (ie degree, career, whatever), both sides could win. We need matchmakers!
> The blackpill, in this context, is saying ultimately, "We are in sexual market hyperinflation or currency fraud, it's all fucked" which is loosely true. And there are ways to survive in a debased currency market but 'just level up bro' is telling men to try and gather more gold (enter the top 20%) which does work but is not easy for a few reasons.
Okay, but isn't the main problem here online dating? Part of the reason it's so skewed is that it's 70-75% men, of course women can be super picky, there's 2-3 men for every woman. That's just market dynamics.
So...if you're a dude, don't date online? People do it because it's easy, but "easy" isn't "succeeding," AND it's kinda fucked due to instrinsic game theory and economics reasons. Put in effort and actually do stuff in the world, and pick up girls the old fashioned way, which many of them would prefer anyways.
I think the other big contributor here is the fact that lots of people don't have as many friends and just don't do as much real world stuff any more, everyone stays inside staring at screens all day. If you have a robust friend circle and attend parties regularly, you meet enough people of both genders to organically start relationships.
The problem with that is because social circles are weaker and people don't do anything, everyone waits around for somebody else to come up with an idea, so nothing happens. I think if you wanted to do this, build a better social circle, attend parties, etc, you have to resolve to do most of the work, because everyone else is too entranced with the blinky box. But it can be done!
Yeah don't date online. It's the same as walking straight into the market with a circulating debased currency - you have no idea how many coins are clipped and the sellers have bought into the insane game which means they demand gold or their prices are inflated. The arranged marriage idea is an alternate solution, which is to take the trades off-market. It's the 'I'll trade you milk for cloth' basket of barter where you refuse to use the attention economy fake money. Other ideas in that basket are highly insular communities where you need ID to participate (Amish, Muslims, a few other ones). Another one is one you see in the raw milk market - an extremely specific product sold secretly on short notice (certain types of matchmaking where the girl is rapidly taken off market), similar to your arranged marriage. Basically anything you can imagine to escape a rapidly inflating market, mostly Grey market and black market solutions, translated over to dating. The black market predicts OnlyFans too btw.
Having no friends is the market equivalent of ONLY being able to buy in the open market and having no access to the grey market. You are at the whim of the fraudulent currency and its effects.
The suggestions you have that work require stripping away ANY expectation that the old currency has value at all (that's blue pill stuff largely) while accumulating either gold or getting into a grey market network.
Gold is for the looksmaxxed Chad types, since they are inherently valuable. Or people with assets (the rich and famous high status) because a Baron is a Baron no matter the currency failure.
Anecdotally, online, whenever men import their trad-foreigner women to the West, the women sour quickly and become feminist harpies so to speak. The habituation happens rapidly in those cases. Is it because the men were weak? Probably a large part of it.
Men are very eager for any sex, it really tampers down what men are willing to accept. If a 2/10 gave an average (not the elite) man constant easy fulfilling sex he would at least hesitate to dump her. A man can have a hard time delaying orgasm for an hour sometimes while women can delay getting a marriage for decades.
I do agree men want women more than the reverse. The combined 'they use cats/netflix' and 'why now and not when baywatch was on tv?' is that the current crop of women grew up on comparative social media. Comparative is the heavy emphasis which we can also see expressed in ye olden days through 'keeping up with the Joneses' so it's always been there but back then having an intact family was part of the comparison game as opposed to today where 'boss babe' is the comparative status bonus.
> The combined 'they use cats/netflix' and 'why now and not when baywatch was on tv?' is that the current crop of women grew up on comparative social media
I guess I don't really understand why "hot millionaire influencer" is so much more relatable than "hot millionaire actor?" Why is it more comparable in the influencer case? Because you both have phones?? I mean, you both had TV's back when it was hot actors?
Like either way the hot millionaire plainly has a nicer house / bf / social circle than you?
> back then having an intact family was part of the comparison game as opposed to today where 'boss babe' is the comparative status bonus
Yeah, but this is true worldwide. In every country in the world, once women can get educations and careers, fertility plummets, going below replacement over the next decade or so.
It's one of the strongest "revealed preferences" things around, seemingly. I'm not sure it has any solution.
- It's hard to disentangle status from social skills. Maybe women loved Onassis because he was rich and successful. Or maybe he owed his success in business and with women to his charisma.
- it's bad advice to tell people to emulate others in an effort to develop style. True style is personal. It's not about emulating, it's about paying attention, figuring out what you like, and whether it works for you. Otherwise, you'll be a generic walking cliche (like the emos or hipsters of yesteryear).
- I don't think women care about status as such. They care about competence. The things you describe - Harvard degrees etc - are markers of it. But remember that bar scene in Good Will Hunting? Who's more attractive, the Harvard freshman or the janitor?
Genuinely extremely reassuring to read, as a young man who has had little success dating. My strengths tend to be more intellectual than anything else and it's nice to read someone giving specific ways these can be leveraged into success in the dating world. Typically you see one of two things - either vague platitudes like "be yourself!" which aren't actionable in the slightest, or else doomposting about how you're screwed forever if you aren't in the top 1% of men in terms of physical attractiveness. Neither of those things exactly give me a drive to try, but this article (and some others you've written in the past, though less directly) gives me actual, actionable strategies to attempt.
I tried really hard doing all this stuff in college. All that for one "date" with a girl who already had a boyfriend (??). I havent given up but I moved to a new city on my own and its about 100x harder to even run across girls within my age range. Online dating is a complete failure too, I have zero likes ever. Other young guys I meet dont have social lives whatsoever so theres no way to meet friends of friends. Shits fucking bleak
you got pretty close to real understanding of female attractiveness but have some misunderstandings, still wrong but I'm actually impressed
I don't feel like explaining or citing stuff but you do some looking into on why status seems to be attractive(it's actually not) and why women don't ask out(the rando's anecdote is a good starting place but not a clear enough story) would get you to a clearer view
to say that I'm impressed? he came closest to understanding female mode of attractiveness. things are shit now because neither men or women understands female mode of attraction and both sides come up with bs justification and ways of doing things that fucks everything up
it's effortput to put it together in ways people could understand and none of the 10 people max who will read are actually interested in content beyond clout/ingroup signaling. treid some before in another account, was a waste of time
interested in content as in they have some motivation to disagree on specifics instead of vibes incase there's something inaccurate and the possibility makes it worth posting
I approached in my youth a lot of women but nothing came out of it. I am not saying it’s completely worthless, but people exaggerate it a bit too. And with status I kind of don’t really know how to communicate it. And if you are 18 you probably just don’t have it too.
“Approaching in person - The bar here is just on the floor. Basically, if you said “hi” to a potentially eligible woman only once a month, you’d be in the top quartile of all single men in terms of approaching!
Not just that, the vast majority (80%+) of women 18-24 are single AND they would *like* to be approached more. After reading Brangus’ post, I urge you to read another one, where I go over the approaching data here. “
Hilarious, why on earth am I going to boost some random c*nt’s ego and put her on a pedestal by approaching? She should approach me.
The fact that a majority of women surveyed want to be approached just for validation and to potentially humiliate the guy is astounding.
It’s also why I don’t even bother looking at or talking to women I encounter at the gym, shops, public transport etc as I know it’ll be a guaranteed rejection so why try?
With regards to the sexual dance, I find it baffling how many men are bad at this. Having been on the giving and receiving end of it several times, with both men and women, it's crazy how much better woman intuit how to go about it.
I always think that if you're on a date, one way to measure that the banter is going well is that, about halfway through, the tension should be so high that all you can think about it ripping each other's clothes off, right then & there.
The first time I experienced tension that had gotten that high, it was about 3 years into marriage after my wife bought a specific article of clothing. I can’t imagine feeling that on a first date. That’s probably either something about me or something about dating as a virgin.
Doesn't have to be a first date.
Since I've literally never felt that, it does say something. IF anything an attractive member of the opposite sex produces a sort of threat response, since a flirtation is likely to end in a harassment accusation or if out of work a loud cry of disgust.
As for the overall difference between men and women, I think it's one of those biological differences the left loves to pretend don't exist.
So is it worth? Well if all that work is done only for the purpose of getting a woman, i think the answer is no.
That beautiful wife or girlfriend will NOT, by itself, make you happy.
That said, everything else in the list will increase your standing in society, your confidence, and your overall satisfaction with yourself and your life. Those things will remove some reasons to be unhappy, and give you freedom to take care of yourself and pursue goals that are meaningful to you and to be more connected to others. And will by the way greatly increase the chances for you to find a beautiful and loving woman who want to be on your side, which can also be a blessing.
So its a journey worth taking by itself, regardless of one specific thing you might find at the end. Also because in comparison the alternatives are really almost always worse.
This all is pretty moot advice when the majority of college educated singles in major cities meet their spouses on online dating apps now. The black pill stuff is very appealing because status, social skills, and whatnot are all irrelevant when viewing someone on an app.
I do somewhat agree you can step up in looks by dating someone of lower SES but that’s a sugar relationship with a level of indirection. I don’t think using celebrities is a good example here. No one reading this is a celebrity that needs dating advice and celebrities are in an extremely niche circle that is not available. In real life, we do see that the overwhelming majority of couples are looksmatched upon initial pairing.
I’d say I’m well into the 1% of most of your advice and I’d say it’s moot. Facial attractiveness and frame/height are pretty paramount for dating someone even remotely similar to yourself. I was never able to get dates off apps even with the help of coaches, professional photographers, dozens of friends and strangers, etc. In real life, I’ve only gotten gold diggers who are pretty clear that they don’t want a real relationship. I’ve got the target university degree, the 7 figure income, nice clothes, nice everything, etc. and I’ve done it all while coming up from rural poverty. I’ve had large parties, more friends than I know what to do with, and endless social approval but it doesn’t do anything if ultimately your face is shit. I did a couple surgeries and peptides and whatnot. (My natural T is already 4 std above median) Didn’t do shit cause ultimately my face is still jacked up and it’s what gets turned down the most. It didn’t matter if I had more of a fight club-esque physique - it just didn’t do anything cause most women need a decent face first.
Overall, I’m living proof that a lot of this advice just doesn’t track for the men out there that are actually ugly like myself. Unfortunately, I do think the bar for what is defined as ugly has broadened (and will continue) due to social media.
> I did a couple surgeries and peptides and whatnot.
Sorry, I'm trying to understand here from reading this and your second NYC comment - it sounds like you think you're so ugly it's wrecked your romantic prospects, have plenty of money, did surgeries, but the surgeries didn't help?
Because your case sounds like one that benefit from more dakka in the surgery direction. Get a better plastic surgeon, and spend some real money - if you're confident this is your main blocker, it sounds like you're the 1/1000 guy who really SHOULD be doing "looksmaxxing" Clav style, including facial surgeries and dedicating a good year or so of effort towards optimizing whatever you can there.
I have a friend who's a surgeon, and from what I've seen, they can really work wonders as long as you're willing to pay. At this point, what do you have to lose? And it sounds like the upside is pretty significant if that really is your blocker in terms of finding a great LTR.
I’ve gone through it and done multiple consultations. The issue is that my issues aren’t really “fixable” in the traditional sense. Cosmetic surgery isn’t a science - it’s very risky. I’ve taken the lower risk and lower effort surgeries off the board but now the only thing left are things that are very invasive, risky, and extremely subjective in terms of improvement. The big issue is that I just don’t have a good baseline face to begin with. Even the photoshopped after images - it’s still an ugly dude. That’s how far off I am from the norm.
It doesn’t help that I’m mixed race, an oddity of mixed race in the US as well, and that you can’t really find ethical surgeons who are actually focused on this kind of beauty in the US. Beauty standards for someone of my particular background just don’t really exist like they do for Asians, Europeans, and so forth. Trying to match myself to one of the these also just doesn’t line up well either.
I don’t really recommend surgery unless it’s a last resort. Having been through multiple, it’s just not fun. Extremely painful recovery, you feel weird for years after because that’s how long it takes to heal, and the results aren’t always that awesome.
Like if you had an awesome face but it’s just cause you have one small issue with your nose then okay. But for someone like myself who is certifiably ugly, it’s never just one thing. It’s multiple things and some of those things just aren’t fixable!
It’s similar to being short and doing the limb lengthening surgery. You literally won’t be able to do a ton of normal shit after you have that surgery. Facial surgery is mostly not like that but there are operations that will make your life miserable for a long time after. The people who are recovering very quickly and seemingly have no issues are most likely to brag about it because they have something good to say. People with problems aren’t gonna be as forward. And I did have complications with my surgeries and the results of them weren’t what I had hoped for. They were minor improvements but not the radical shift I had hoped. Lots of reasons why but the big one being: it’s hard to get it right the first time and doing revision surgery is complicated and even more unpleasant. Especially if you already know how bad it was after before and now it’s going to be even worse and it could still not be a good result!!
> And I did have complications with my surgeries and the results of them weren’t what I had hoped for. They were minor improvements but not the radical shift I had hoped. Lots of reasons why but the big one being: it’s hard to get it right the first time
Yeah, ouch - sounds like a truly unfortunate situation to be in, and I feel for you.
You sound like a better candidate than most in terms of a "blind flower girl" type falling in love with you for the content of your character and other attributes, but I imagine they're pretty thin on the ground. And you're certainly not going to be finding any of them on the apps, to your point.
I wish I had advice or ideas, but I don't - I hope you're enjoying the rest of life outside of the romantic domain!
These types of women don’t exist in any significant amount on the singles market. This is why incels keep growing in numbers. This type of woman is being put to extinction through social media. The idea of finding a man appealing through his character is an embarrassment for most women. Most women would rather be single and sexless than date a man who has great character but they lack strong physical sexual attraction to. Even for autistic women, this seems to be quite normal now. This wasn’t as pervasive a couple decades ago. Lots of reasons but social media is really influential for women. Women might not like how men like clav are being extremely upfront about their depraved methods to achieve their looks … but they would gladly entertain any man who looks like him.
Unfortunately, I want a family and to have kids and so forth. Typical American life. This kind of problem leaves a very big hole in my life and gives me very little reason for having achieved so much. I only did all of this and rose out abject poverty because I thought I’d be able to have a comfortable life with a family. If I knew I was destined to live a solitary meaningless life - I’d never have tried at all and I’d arguably be better for it.
"Most women would rather be single and sexless than date a man who has great character but they lack strong physical sexual attraction to. "
AFAICT, women seek men who can win status contests with other men. Doesn't have to be looks.
Explain online dating then.
what do u mean by mixed race that is an oddity in the u.s.?
Keep going dude, get the face or end up like phantom of the opera, or just passport bro it I guess…
Would a physician say you had a literal deformity, and you need a reconstructive surgeon instead?
My biggest surprise is that you can’t find a gold digger that wants a real relationship. I wouldn’t call my wife a gold digger, but she married me because it was obvious I would become wealthy. She’s an immigrant from a Slavic country, and they are all raised to be gold diggers to some extent. But they are also raised to want a real marriage, with a ring, kids, and companionship. I don’t have your specific problem, but I am mixed race like you. I would look for immigrants that were taught that gold digging requires a real relationship, possibly from one of your ethnic groups.
I have no attachments to my racial background. I don’t have any ethnic background because I wasn’t raised by the people who share my DNA. I was raised in rural whitetrash poverty.
I’ve met some Eastern European women but I don’t think they really were that different from American women and such. I’m sure it would be different if I only met them in Eastern Europe but then how would I meet them if I’m not on an app, don’t speak the language, etc? I wouldn’t. I did try apps when I was traveling through Eastern Europe and it never resulted in anything. Women on apps find me too ugly (regardless of wealth) to be bothered. It makes sense.
I did most of my whoring before apps became dominant but I find this hard to believe unless you are like physically deformed.
More likely you’re doing the standard incel thing of holding out for a Disney princess and ignoring the girl next door who is a 6.
I find it weird that this entire discussion ignores any redpill stuff, in my experience women really do not view nice guys as mates. There has to be some edginess somewhere or else you’re just boring.
Idk, maybe MeToo fundamentally changed the social fabric but I doubt it. Revealed preferences, etc.
I am quite ugly. It’s really been the only thing I’ve ever consistently been given feedback on. Everything else, I do pretty well.
I have next to no standards either. I would prefer someone who is in a similar tax bracket - just so that I’m not paying for literally everything - but that’s definitely impossible. I’ve noticed that women who make over $200k tend to be very picky and won’t move the bar on looks at all regardless of other factors. I’ve lived in a variety of places and traveled extensively.
I don’t think most incels - at least the ones I’ve talked to - have any real standards either. Most I’ve seen are open to dating a lot of women but just don’t get any positive feedback. I do think there are a lot of autistic ones online but irl I don’t know many actual incels. Most of the men I knew in nyc were like me: well off, educated, fit, etc. but they just didn’t have a bad face. So, their limitations were usually due to other things. Almost all could get dates off of apps and I was an oddity. But again, I was in a crowd of the 1% as an outsider. These men have had everything handed to them in life and that’s part of why they were where they were. It wasn’t due to just hard work or whatever. Most didn’t have to overcome anything.
I don’t think the people you are describing would comport with someone who was so ugly. You are probably being too hard on yourself.
A lot of people would. They just don’t see you in a sexual light. I’m someone that a lot of people liked to talk to. I’m funny, smart, and very experienced in life. A lot of people think I’m somewhat inspiring since I showed you can overcome extreme adversity (while being ugly on top of it!). But when it came to romance, women were completely disinterested because even though I exhibit pretty much all the desirable behaviors and traits - I am still ugly.
I’d go out with multiple groups and the men and women would inevitably pair off as the night goes on - and I’d always be the guy who never managed to be with anyone in any group and never could get a gal from any venue to respond positively (in a romantic and non-transactional way). It’s just how it is.
I guess what I’m saying is - you’d be surprised.
Absolute nonsense. Incels, like most men, have incredibly low standards for women’s looks and aren’t holding out for a “Disney Princess.”
Some of them are.
Very few. As we know most men take what they can get and have very low standards
Most men aren’t incels.
Because they dumpster dive. Most men will never experience raw attraction.
Maybe longevity max and stack cash until you can afford real life face/off? I'm rooting for youy ugly dude, 😎, but if you can't climb out, maybe climb down more
With a seven figure income you should be able to afford the best surgeons in the world. Look them up. Get surgery. Good luck.
I already went to the best for my specific work. Contrary to whatever is popular in the media - you cannot become Nicholas Cage from Face/Off. It's not how plastic surgery works. Otherwise, every fucking billionaire would be a god damn model. Try thinking for a few seconds before posting.
Are you straight up deformed? If you are, I am sorry.
Lately I've been wondering if we're going to see a bigger market for:
* "Charm school" for boys (it definitely used to be a thing for girls!)
* Cosmetic use of HGH among boys (whether the boys themselves seek it out or their dads put them on it)
In the Romanian language, the word for a man is literally "bearded" or "has a beard." This is separate from the Latin term (om), so it's entirely cultural. Boys can't grow beards, so it's an unfalsifiable signal you're an adult AND male
The fate of the Betabucks Deluxe Jestermaxxer is grim.
Even when he wins, he loses.
Their wives used to flirt with me in front of them when I was a bartender. I’m sorry.
While mostly this article is relatively true, it's by and large assessing a lot of old data. The dating market has rapidly changed in the last 5 years, let alone the past few decades. Mate quality assessments are much more polarizing for men and women, and only an old fuck like you would hinge all of his analysis on looks lol.
> Mate quality assessments are much more polarizing for men and women, and only an old fuck like you would hinge all of his analysis on looks lol.
Well son, I was literally still single and dating as of about a year ago - but please do enlighten us on how you think mate quality assessments are different now, I'm always interested in hearing different perspectives.
I think the blackpill steelman is better phrased as: Women are comparing you to the top 20% of all of the planet due to social media, not the immediate dating pool she can expect a relationship with. Alternatively it could be phrased as: Because the globe of dating has opened up, the top 20% of men have enough quantity that it creates an illusion that a woman thinks she can attain one and deserves no less.
And thus things like, "What are you going to do, nothing?" falls flat because if the blackpill is true then a lower man who does work will get the same outcome as a lower man who doesn't do work - nothing. I don't disagree that men should fight and struggle simply as a matter of fact but I think the fear issue is due to all social supports being knocked out from the average guy and most people cope badly with that. I think the large part of the 'dating bootcamp' appeal is simply having a guy in your corner cheering you on after failure.
> Because the globe of dating has opened up, the top 20% of men have enough quantity that it creates an illusion that a woman thinks she can attain one and deserves no less.
I dunno, wouldn't this argue that no woman in the developing world would date anybody from their country at all, because they see hot, rich Western influencers on social media all the time? Yet they all have higher fertility than Europe and East Asia!
And why wouldn't it be just as true for men? Men see nothing but a succession of impossibly hot, skinny women all the time, but the truth is practically everyone is overweight - NHANES data, so actually measured versus self-reported:
https://imgur.com/FmKvAkL
https://imgur.com/S6BPlv0
So are men simply giving up because they can't get a hot girlfriend with a 1/100k waistline? No?
I think most of this is driven by the fact that women don't need or want men as much as men want women. They can replace men with Netflix and pets and do just fine. So they have standards! And if their standards aren't met, oh well, guess it's Netflix and 3 cats. There is a veridical supply / demand mismatch in terms of the median woman's desires re dating and mating and the median man's.
I think your argument comes in at this point and argues "the bar has been raised because everyone spends 7-9 hours a day looking at attractive millionaire influencers on social media." But why wasn't it just as true in the past 4 decades when everyone was watching 6-8 hours a day of TV? Aren't actors and actresses all hot millionaires too?
Or maybe you're saying "because any woman can open an app and swipe and get messages / dates / banged by hot men, they just won't settle for non-hot men." But women want long term relationships more strongly and often than men, and markets work. If they're not settling despite actually wanting a relationship, I personally think it's more likely to be a real quality problem than a standards problem.
I think the bar really IS on the floor, in other words, and the data (9 minutes, 50-60% having problems with their sex lives, etc) bears that out.
Let me zoom out a bit and present the model I find useful to explain this: Gresham's law. That's what happens when a currency becomes debased. In this case I'm loosely using attention/time as our market currency. In the old days the currency was strong - interest reliably led to dating which reliably led to marriage. You can throw sex in there too for the male ladder. A penny bought you a burger, metaphorically.
Nowadays interest does not reliably lead to dating and dating does not reliably lead to marriage. The currency is now debased, coin clipped, counterfeited, etc. This is a huge problem for both genders. For women sex used to reliably lead to marriage and for men attention used to reliably lead to sex, that's the strong currency. I belabor the point but I hope to make it intuitive. The burger now costs $8.00 and rising.
Gresham's law says bad currency drives all good currency off the market. Thus it predicts that marriage-level attention will be noised out of dating apps, which it has, as the men with 'good currency-attention' hoard it privately which they also do. They now give that attention to video games and such because they can't trade in a market with bad currency. Secondly it says no one can tell what good currency is - meaning that on a dating app no one can even tell if THIS guy is the marriage material guy finally. The currency is too debased to get accurate information, any coin could be fake (also called out in the book "market for lemons" which is about cars). It also predicts that almost all dating online attention will be 'boobs penis plz' which is true.
The thing with women, now, is that women are the sellers in the market. In a Gresham's law market sellers will do one of two things:
1) Only trade with gold. That is to say hard backed currency.
2) Raise prices dramatically ala hyperinflation
In both cases they hesitate to sell. And we see both things happening. They want the top 20% of men because they want a hard currency guarantee (our case 1). They also have a gigantic laundry list of demands on any upfront price checks (the woman's 99 bulletpoint list, our point 2).
The blackpill, in this context, is saying ultimately, "We are in sexual market hyperinflation or currency fraud, it's all fucked" which is loosely true. And there are ways to survive in a debased currency market but 'just level up bro' is telling men to try and gather more gold (enter the top 20%) which does work but is not easy for a few reasons. It's simple once you know the game but it's neither easy but most importantly the mental leap is enormous.
This is a systemic view of the issue which I believe models the situation for men and women with strong predictive power included. It's a bit mental model shift so thank you for reading.
Yeah, great analogy and framing, kudos for putting that together.
And it actually argues for an alternative solution - "trading with gold," ie arranged marriages. The data says that arranged marriages are generally just as good as love marriages, in fact better over time (the pattern with love marriages is higher satisfaction in the beginning that burns out quickly arranged start at lower satisfaction but keep growing in satisfaction past the point love marriages are trending downwards).
If people on both sides were entering a market with a guaranteed "gold" outcome and with some guarantees of quality (ie degree, career, whatever), both sides could win. We need matchmakers!
> The blackpill, in this context, is saying ultimately, "We are in sexual market hyperinflation or currency fraud, it's all fucked" which is loosely true. And there are ways to survive in a debased currency market but 'just level up bro' is telling men to try and gather more gold (enter the top 20%) which does work but is not easy for a few reasons.
Okay, but isn't the main problem here online dating? Part of the reason it's so skewed is that it's 70-75% men, of course women can be super picky, there's 2-3 men for every woman. That's just market dynamics.
So...if you're a dude, don't date online? People do it because it's easy, but "easy" isn't "succeeding," AND it's kinda fucked due to instrinsic game theory and economics reasons. Put in effort and actually do stuff in the world, and pick up girls the old fashioned way, which many of them would prefer anyways.
I think the other big contributor here is the fact that lots of people don't have as many friends and just don't do as much real world stuff any more, everyone stays inside staring at screens all day. If you have a robust friend circle and attend parties regularly, you meet enough people of both genders to organically start relationships.
The problem with that is because social circles are weaker and people don't do anything, everyone waits around for somebody else to come up with an idea, so nothing happens. I think if you wanted to do this, build a better social circle, attend parties, etc, you have to resolve to do most of the work, because everyone else is too entranced with the blinky box. But it can be done!
Yeah don't date online. It's the same as walking straight into the market with a circulating debased currency - you have no idea how many coins are clipped and the sellers have bought into the insane game which means they demand gold or their prices are inflated. The arranged marriage idea is an alternate solution, which is to take the trades off-market. It's the 'I'll trade you milk for cloth' basket of barter where you refuse to use the attention economy fake money. Other ideas in that basket are highly insular communities where you need ID to participate (Amish, Muslims, a few other ones). Another one is one you see in the raw milk market - an extremely specific product sold secretly on short notice (certain types of matchmaking where the girl is rapidly taken off market), similar to your arranged marriage. Basically anything you can imagine to escape a rapidly inflating market, mostly Grey market and black market solutions, translated over to dating. The black market predicts OnlyFans too btw.
Having no friends is the market equivalent of ONLY being able to buy in the open market and having no access to the grey market. You are at the whim of the fraudulent currency and its effects.
The suggestions you have that work require stripping away ANY expectation that the old currency has value at all (that's blue pill stuff largely) while accumulating either gold or getting into a grey market network.
Gold is for the looksmaxxed Chad types, since they are inherently valuable. Or people with assets (the rich and famous high status) because a Baron is a Baron no matter the currency failure.
Anecdotally, online, whenever men import their trad-foreigner women to the West, the women sour quickly and become feminist harpies so to speak. The habituation happens rapidly in those cases. Is it because the men were weak? Probably a large part of it.
Men are very eager for any sex, it really tampers down what men are willing to accept. If a 2/10 gave an average (not the elite) man constant easy fulfilling sex he would at least hesitate to dump her. A man can have a hard time delaying orgasm for an hour sometimes while women can delay getting a marriage for decades.
I do agree men want women more than the reverse. The combined 'they use cats/netflix' and 'why now and not when baywatch was on tv?' is that the current crop of women grew up on comparative social media. Comparative is the heavy emphasis which we can also see expressed in ye olden days through 'keeping up with the Joneses' so it's always been there but back then having an intact family was part of the comparison game as opposed to today where 'boss babe' is the comparative status bonus.
> The combined 'they use cats/netflix' and 'why now and not when baywatch was on tv?' is that the current crop of women grew up on comparative social media
I guess I don't really understand why "hot millionaire influencer" is so much more relatable than "hot millionaire actor?" Why is it more comparable in the influencer case? Because you both have phones?? I mean, you both had TV's back when it was hot actors?
Like either way the hot millionaire plainly has a nicer house / bf / social circle than you?
> back then having an intact family was part of the comparison game as opposed to today where 'boss babe' is the comparative status bonus
Yeah, but this is true worldwide. In every country in the world, once women can get educations and careers, fertility plummets, going below replacement over the next decade or so.
It's one of the strongest "revealed preferences" things around, seemingly. I'm not sure it has any solution.
A few thoughts:
- It's hard to disentangle status from social skills. Maybe women loved Onassis because he was rich and successful. Or maybe he owed his success in business and with women to his charisma.
- it's bad advice to tell people to emulate others in an effort to develop style. True style is personal. It's not about emulating, it's about paying attention, figuring out what you like, and whether it works for you. Otherwise, you'll be a generic walking cliche (like the emos or hipsters of yesteryear).
- I don't think women care about status as such. They care about competence. The things you describe - Harvard degrees etc - are markers of it. But remember that bar scene in Good Will Hunting? Who's more attractive, the Harvard freshman or the janitor?
I agreeeee, competence > status but for finite, short games, status is a handy shortcut to signal competence.
But incompetence becomes clear soon enough.
Genuinely extremely reassuring to read, as a young man who has had little success dating. My strengths tend to be more intellectual than anything else and it's nice to read someone giving specific ways these can be leveraged into success in the dating world. Typically you see one of two things - either vague platitudes like "be yourself!" which aren't actionable in the slightest, or else doomposting about how you're screwed forever if you aren't in the top 1% of men in terms of physical attractiveness. Neither of those things exactly give me a drive to try, but this article (and some others you've written in the past, though less directly) gives me actual, actionable strategies to attempt.
Godspeed, Performative Bafflement.
I tried really hard doing all this stuff in college. All that for one "date" with a girl who already had a boyfriend (??). I havent given up but I moved to a new city on my own and its about 100x harder to even run across girls within my age range. Online dating is a complete failure too, I have zero likes ever. Other young guys I meet dont have social lives whatsoever so theres no way to meet friends of friends. Shits fucking bleak
you got pretty close to real understanding of female attractiveness but have some misunderstandings, still wrong but I'm actually impressed
I don't feel like explaining or citing stuff but you do some looking into on why status seems to be attractive(it's actually not) and why women don't ask out(the rando's anecdote is a good starting place but not a clear enough story) would get you to a clearer view
Why even post this?
to say that I'm impressed? he came closest to understanding female mode of attractiveness. things are shit now because neither men or women understands female mode of attraction and both sides come up with bs justification and ways of doing things that fucks everything up
So why not enlighten us then.
it's effortput to put it together in ways people could understand and none of the 10 people max who will read are actually interested in content beyond clout/ingroup signaling. treid some before in another account, was a waste of time
interested in content as in they have some motivation to disagree on specifics instead of vibes incase there's something inaccurate and the possibility makes it worth posting
I approached in my youth a lot of women but nothing came out of it. I am not saying it’s completely worthless, but people exaggerate it a bit too. And with status I kind of don’t really know how to communicate it. And if you are 18 you probably just don’t have it too.
it never begun
“Approaching in person - The bar here is just on the floor. Basically, if you said “hi” to a potentially eligible woman only once a month, you’d be in the top quartile of all single men in terms of approaching!
Not just that, the vast majority (80%+) of women 18-24 are single AND they would *like* to be approached more. After reading Brangus’ post, I urge you to read another one, where I go over the approaching data here. “
Hilarious, why on earth am I going to boost some random c*nt’s ego and put her on a pedestal by approaching? She should approach me.
The fact that a majority of women surveyed want to be approached just for validation and to potentially humiliate the guy is astounding.
It’s also why I don’t even bother looking at or talking to women I encounter at the gym, shops, public transport etc as I know it’ll be a guaranteed rejection so why try?