491–500 of 588 posts
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humblebrag detected
Say what you will. I would have preferred to have stayed with my ex-gf. Internet dating is not fun for me either, but again I'm not looking for sympathy -- just to tell you that the hypothesis people are advancing seems correct from my POV.
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>But my question is, "why?" Because they view the issue as being conditioned by today's society; while I admit it's not best to jump to such a conclusion without serious critical investigation, I find it tiresome that you call it "ideological" - as if an explanation which specifically seeks to avert any critical view of the development of Western society isn't itself "ideological". Is it the result of the sexism of p…
> under capitalism reproductive activities emerge that are primarily carried out by women Those reproductive activities can be viewed across the near entirety of the animal kingdom. And the societal "value dissociation" of child-rearing is not a product of capitalism. Across large communities, the value of child rearing is mostly realized within the context of a family unit. That just means that to entities outside o…
I don't think this is true at all, since the ideological role of capitalism (and its class role) tends to encourage accumulation of capital above all else, so whatever can be made into capital-accumulating value will be, for instance over the past 50 years digital goods (and other otherwise freely reproducible goods) have been subsumed into capital - capital did this through its political arms, e.g the creation of copyright law. In the same way, capital may use its political arms to encourage 'family values', in a non-obvious alliance between the neo-conservatives in the 80s and the neolibreals. I understand value in the Marxian sense as a social relation, not value as in a purely "subjective" judgement. Value is both objective and subjective, in that it exists supersensibly but that existence is conditioned by a variety of objective social factors.
> Many women do not want to reproduce at all.
I find this line of argument relatively unconvincing, because it only works by assuming we are in total control of what we want, and that being ignorant of the origin of our desires, we assume them to come from within ourselves. It's a neat ideological point, but from social psychological perspectives is too simplistic to have much explanatory power. The point of my critique is that capitalism not only arranges society in a particular economic mode, but that this arrangement is therefore reflected in culture and society. Your argument is that capitalism gives the choice, and the choice is being taken, but this does not at all explain the context in which the decision is made in the first place, which is usually for economic reasons (whether the choice maker knows it or not).
>Many women, however, do want to reproduce, and the fact that women and men tend to diverge in their roles regarding child rearing is not simply something that can simply be asserted as being a consequence of capitalism.
I didn't claim that the difference in roles is solely due to capitalism, my claim is that the division of the roles between men and women works well with the liberal distinction between public and private - what is private ostensibly cannot be touched (by capital, by the state, by anyone) but what is public can be regulated by society in general (through the market) or by the government. The choices to remain an unmarried woman or to marry and have children are greatly dependent, before they reach the forefront of the mind, on the economic conditions of society.
The "family unit" is ideological, the free choice to "work hard" is ideological (see Weber's dissection of the "protestant work ethic" and capitalist society), the notion that many (even today) hold that women should be primarily caregivers in the home is ideological (along with its cousin, the belief that emotional or even reproductive labour does not truly count as labour because it is not valorized). These ideologies come about due to the economic system that underlies them, capitalism. Under different economic systems, or even different time periods, these ideologies are not present, or they are in a different form (see the last paragraph of my comment).
I honestly believe the rise of incelibacy will lead to increasing destabilization of the US. There's nothing worse for a country than a bunch of lonely angry men without jobs and without sex.
When I was younger, I wanted sex all the time. But around the time I turned 29 or 30 I rapidly began to lose interest in sex. It was like someone turned off a switch. It doesn't seem normal - I should want sex more than I do. I'm healthy and my hormone levels are normal. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I wonder how many people aren't having sex because, for whatever reason, they're losing interest at a relatively young age…
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> Only a small percentage of people can have "really interesting" photos. If everyone suddenly got photos that today are really interesting the photos would become mundane. True, but this isn't the problem we have yet. So start getting more interesting/funny/hot pictures. Once they all become mundane, people will start to look for other things (maybe even normcore pictures) > A lot of men lack confidence and humor I…
>True, but this isn't the problem we have yet. So start getting more interesting/funny/hot pictures. Once they all become mundane, people will start to look for other things (maybe even normcore pictures) Sure, it's relatively easy to be in the top 80% of men. But the point, which I don't think I made clear enough, is that there's always going to be a bottom 20%. Evening out everyone in one area just means that some…
How are the 80% going to one up them? One thing about dating apps for straight people is that you don't know what your competitors are doing. If the 20% up their game, most of the 80% won't know how. Also, remember that there is a 20% for women as well. I know that standards for men are crazy high on dating apps, but I also know some of the 20% women. They usually don't end up with the 80% men, and they often end up with men who are AWFUL (not just in terms of looks). 20% men can date 20% women.
> Someone lacking in confidence and small talk type skills isn't likely to naturally get better
I agree that small talk takes some work (just like becoming funny), but confidence is truly something you fake until you make. If you act confident, people will think you're confident. Then you pick up on people thinking you're confident, and that makes you feel even more confident. If you don't act confident, people won't think you're confident, and that will be one more thing holding you back from being confident.
I'm am not naturally confident. I've had my fair share of self esteem issues and have doubted myself on many other fronts. Fake it till you make it is terrible advice for a lot of things, and you also shouldn't always fake confidence (sometimes it's good to let it all out), but if you start faking it (especially with people you don't already know), you will make it.
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Having spent a fair amount of time doing the online dating thing at one point in my life, and having taken the time and effort on writing good messages, I don't feel like this is true at all. That's why you see men writing a bunch of generic low effort messages to women: because it is ultimately a more successful strategy.
I'm interested in your counter-point, and have a couple of questions: - When you were writing good messages, were things very conversational and informal? - Did you ever get reviews from women about how you were good at conversing? It also counts if they told you how the other guys they talked on dating apps were mostly awful at talking - Would you are cognizant of messaging social norms (e.g. you know when to omit p…
What else would they be?
> Did you ever get reviews from women about how you were good at conversing?
No, but women rarely respond at all so I'm not exactly surprised by that. Even the women I eventually went on dates with never mentioned it.
> Would you are cognizant of messaging social norms
I would say I actively detest messaging social norms. I write legible full English sentences just like you see here because I'm an adult. I specifically ruled out women who obviously felt differently.
> If you're very attractive, yes.
If anything I would say that being very attractive is the only circumstance under which you can reliably get results without spamming low-effort messages.
> But if you're aren't very attractive and you're sending bad messages, how is that more successful than sending good messages?
Numbers. What my experience taught me was that message content was basically unimportant, what mattered was reaching out to as many potentials as possible in the hopes of a few being receptive.
It was a strategy I detested. Combined with the general tediousness and awfulness of the online dating experience I decided I'd rather not date than engage in it.
By "low-effort" I mean messages that are basically form letters one can apply to anyone so you don't have to put any thought into crafting them for the person you're trying to talk to.
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I'm still highly suspicious of the narrative all of this is premised on. TFA mentions the low sample size of the original study, and augments it with Twitter polls. But TFA author's Twitter follows aren't exactly a representative sample of the population... Furthermore, monogamy and sexual activity remains strong for people in their 30s, and I expect this will continue to be true in the future. Women are having child…
>It's exceptionally unlikely that a small subgroup of men who already refuse to adapt is large enough and motivated enough to hold the rest of society at gunpoint. Isn't it the point that it's something like 80% of men that are becoming disenfranchised? That hardly seems like a small subgroup to me.
Are you arguing men have a right to sex? Disenfranchisement is the taking away of rights, that's it's definition. If not, you should be more careful using that phrasing.
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>>For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men. I don't know about porn, but data strongly disagrees with this when it comes to gaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demo…
This source indicates that nearly 50% of people who play video games are women, but it does not indicate anything about the time spent gaming. It is quite possible that men are a bare majority of gamers but play a super-majority of the hours spent gaming.
My point is: the perception that most gamers are men, who on average spend more of their time gaming than women, lacks supporting data. It is easily explained by psychological factors such as confirmation bias and stereotyping.
Sex is not the be all and end all of living an awesome life. Just because blind nature created you rife with the instinctual passion of desire does not mean you have to live as a slave to it. Channel that desire into hobbies that are actually interesting to you, and enjoy life. Sex, intimacy, relationships, marriage and the like do not automatically guarantee you happiness, as perfectly illustrated by this masterpiec…
Perhaps off-topic, but if someone here on HN is from Saudi-Arabia or a similar country: How does this work in societies where rich/succesful males can have multiple women? Are there simply a bunch of leftover men? Or is the number of men who have multiple women today too small to make a dent? Assuming there's 50/50 men/women there too...
You can have multiple wives even if you are not rich or just look average. I would say the majority of men stick to monogamy (90% probably). Having more than one wife comes with a lot of restrictions such as:
- All your wives have an automatic stake in your inheretence. In islam you can't choose who inherits what, its already set in place for you.
- All your wives need to be provided for by yourself. Even if they are rich. You as a male are required to provide for your wife and Children
- Be just between you wives. You bought a house for one? buy the same for the others. You took your first wife on holidays? same for the others. The quran state that you need to be just, but argues that you might not be able to achieve justice all the time.
Most people I know who have a second wife have specific reasons for doing so. For example a guy in my family had his wife choose his second wife for him. She couldn't have any babies and he was adamant to have kids. She agreed to stay with him, but only if she was involved in choosing his second wife for him. They have two houses one next to the other, and the kids play more with his first wife than with their mum.
For monogamy in general, arab men have it really somehow easy to get married. You just need to have a job and look somehow acceptable. There is no dating culture as in the west. You wouldn't find a man and his girlfriend living together and trying things out for a few years before deciding to marry. You get to know your future wife and meet with her (between a few months to a year most likely) and then decide to get married.
Having sex before marriage is frowned upon, but doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Most women in the muslim/arab world are actually looking to build a family and have kids. Not all of them agree to you having a second wife.
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This source indicates that nearly 50% of people who play video games are women, but it does not indicate anything about the time spent gaming. It is quite possible that men are a bare majority of gamers but play a super-majority of the hours spent gaming.
That could be the case, but unless you have actual data supporting it, it's just speculation. My point is: the perception that most gamers are men, who on average spend more of their time gaming than women, lacks supporting data. It is easily explained by psychological factors such as confirmation bias and stereotyping.
I think your comment on perceptions of gamers misses the point that "gamers" are people who spend lots of time playing video games. The research on the wikipedia page isn't about "gamers". It's about people who play video games at some level of frequency, which is a much broader category. This is why our intuitions about "gamers" turn out to be accurate, even though they are not consistent with the data about the much larger category of "people who play video games".