30 ms·

Most young men are single. Most young women are not

119 points by harambae 4y ago

eimrine 4y ago
We need to produce less children, so that trend is perfectly good, isn't it? And the younger the woman the better, isn't that an obvious? What about friendship between men, this is your personal choice. I have more than one really close friend and I can not see myself without that kind of relationship.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- acidtakes1 4y ago
  We do not need to produce less people.
  - lethuel 4y ago
    If you don't produce more people, someone else will.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    Only if people somehow will learn how to spend less of everything.
  - welshwelsh 4y ago
    Why do we need billions of humans?
    - kthejoker2 4y ago
      "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your sentence but we're about 2 centuries away from complete population collapse of the species. There are less babies born on this day than any day in history, and that will be true for the rest of our entire species' existence, barring major technological "Brave New World" style test tube baby advances (which are indeed extremely likely given this fact.)
  - concordDance 4y ago
    We do if we want to preserve the little bit of wild are we have left and keep a decent quality of life where we can eat fruit and vegetables. Even cutting meat to zero isn't going to be enough.
  - brnewd 4y ago
    It's an unpopular opinion for sure. But as it stands, our planet cannot sustain the way we exploit it. Our seas are being emptied and poisoned, we cut rainforest to be used for overcropping. It's what happens if you have 8 Billion people on a relative small planet. Sure we could do better but that's not in our nature untill doom stands on our doorstep.
    - acidtakes1 4y ago
      It's actually quite popular among environmentalists. We need to make progress on sustainability, and we will. We CAN sustain 8 billion people because of the immense progress humans have made in food production and efficiency. Pretending the only solution is, less humans, is antithetical to everything humanity has accomplished.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Sorry for the pedantry, but Earth is not a "relatively small" planet. It's actually quite large for a rocky planet. Out of all the rocky planets and moons in our own system, Earth is by far the largest (except for Venus, which is about 90% the size). From what we're seeing with exoplanet research, it looks like Earth is still pretty large, though it's hard to tell since we have a hard time detecting smaller planets, and the "super-Earths" are more easily visible to us. Of courses, compared to gas giants, Earth is small, but that's like comparing apples and whales.
- attemptone 4y ago
  Poes Law and all, I'll take your comment at face value. Where does your percieved need to produce less children come from? One could also argue that older people who are more settled in life make better parents. The article also points out a decline in male friendships. Having a relationship doesnt automatically exclude friendships and vice versa. Personally I think that choice has a similar influence on both. Approaching people you meet only as potential and exchangeable players for your DnD setting or as partners for your bedroom will turn them away the same way.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    > Where does your percieved need to produce less children come from? Too stupid all the pro-children agitation. For example, why to produce less children and allow aborts? To stop human-caused crisises like global warming, plastic pollution, pollution of air. But why to produce more children and forbid aborts? To keep your nation rising, to keep traditional lifestyle, and to pay more taxes. Any decent arguments lost in pro-children vs anti-children question?
    - attemptone 4y ago
      I meant the question more personally. Where do you feel pressured to have no/more kids? I mean yes, there are sensible arguments on either side. But it sounded like we are getting pressured to have more/less children. And that we was what I tried to get at. It sounds egoistic, but on very personal matters I don't like to listen to the ominous blob of internet opinions we all contribute to. And you should too.. I have seen some of my own comments and would be very ashamed if someone took it as literal advice/imperative.
- ovi256 4y ago
  We have a bunch a problem that could be solved by tech progress. Tech progress is pushed by more brains. More sticks in pop fertility's wheels reduce the number of brains available to work on said problems.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    > Tech progress is pushed by more brains. You are saying that in such a way like we may just grow gazillions of C. Elegans and fill the gap. (this is an organism with the smallest brain known, very popular guest in neuro studies).
    - ovi256 4y ago
      That would be cool but I was obviously thinking the most boring and reasonable solution, more human brains educable to a high enough level in the usual suspect domains.
throwaway22032 4y ago
Is this surprising? My intuition, backed by approximately 0 data, is that there's a 5 to 10 year age gap preference, such that men prefer to be with slightly younger women and women with slightly older men. As a result, young men don't really have a dating pool. Once they hit 30, as long as they're not total wasters, women will take more interest.
- version_five 4y ago
  See the chart linked below (third image, after two of the PIs) https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-age-at-conception-for-men https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-ag... the average age that humans had children throughout the past 250,000 years is 26.9. Furthermore, fathers were consistently older, at 30.7 years on average, than mothers, at 23.2 years on average, but the age gap has shrunk in the past 5,000 years, with the study’s most recent estimates of maternal age averaging 26.4 years. The shrinking gap seems to largely be due to mothers having children at older ages.
  - pier25 4y ago
    Seems surprisingly late in life for pre industrial humans. But I guess they had more DNA samples from recent centuries.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    This is part of it. Teen births are way down and women are delaying having kids until their 30s. But also, importantly, women are starting to earn at parity or out earn men, negating the need for a partner to support themselves. This is a cause of the imbalance I believe. The pool of potential female partners wasn’t great before for the age cohort, and empowered women shrink it further. Also, men will date down, women typically don’t. So these higher earning, ambitious women are unable to find a partner that meets their expectations. Men are happy to (or if not happy to, can make do) exit the dating marketplace when this expectation mismatch occurs. There just aren’t enough women who want a low status low earning male partner.
  - anoonmoose 4y ago
GalenErso 4y ago
A man who is financially autonomous, practices basic hygiene and grooming, wears tasteful clothing, and approaches women with respect and manners has nothing to worry about. You don't need to make 6 figures, to be 6 feet tall, to have the body of The Rock or 2004 Brad Pitt's face. Having one interesting hobby is also a huge plus, even if it's as simple as hiking or jogging. You just need to be minimally interesting. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for those among us who fit in the above, many men fail on one or more of these points. The trueoffmychest and TwoXChromosomes subreddits are full of horror stories about unkempt or disrespectful men.
- 988747 4y ago
  The problem is, if a man hit all these points there's really no reason for him to form a relationship with a woman. Ideal state for a man is being single and having series of one night stands :) Relationships are for those who have trouble attracting women and once they succeed they want to keep their "prey" forever. /s
  - baggachipz 4y ago
    > Ideal state for a man is being single and having series of one night stands Thanks for proving OP's point.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >A man who is financially autonomous, practices basic hygiene and grooming, wears tasteful clothing, and approaches women with respect and manners has nothing to worry about... one interesting hobby... Congratulations, you've just described 95% of men who are gainfully employed in fairly technical white collar sectors of the economy. You're getting down-voted because they are probably the single biggest demographic on HN and their experience doesn't match what your alleging it to be.
dfxm12 4y ago
Young men "are watching a lot of social media..." Possibly related anecdote: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/zxsgcq/andrew_tate_and_his_fans_are_ruining_men_for_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/zxsgcq/and...
- tester756 4y ago
  >Their misogyny is honestly invading my brain to the point that I suspect every man I meet to secretly harbour at least some of their toxic opinions. I don't even want to bother dating anymore. Seriously? this is some extreme opinion and approach, really out of touch with reality. This sub is no different from the people described in this post, just the other side of extrema.
  - the_doctah 4y ago
    "Welcome to Reddit"
- concordDance 4y ago
  Any top reddit post is going to be unrepresentative and indeed, probably made up. It's the unfortunate result of the existence of bullshitters/karma farmers and that reality isn't optimized to be engaging and interesting.
4gotunameagain 4y ago
Boys addicted to computer games and porn, girls addicted to social media which allow and facilitate sexism (only one way), an increasingly bleak future, economic and geopolitical uncertainty, "intelligence" organisations running rampant trying to control citizen's minds.. Yeah I wonder why our societies are going down the shitter.
- _trackno5 4y ago
  I am highly skeptical that computer games and porn addictions are significant factors here. Sure they are problems that need to be solved, but I doubt it is a significant contribution to the problem. I can see how social media might bias perception though. I guess pre-internet era you just had to compete against people in your local community when you were looking for a partner. Way harder now to standout in the world of Instagram / Tiktok where the trendiest people are likely in the top 10% of attractiveness (be it money, appearance, personality, etc). It reminds my of a super old survey done by okcupid where women rated 80% of men as below average: https://archive.is/2017.01.21-154729/https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ https://archive.is/2017.01.21-154729/https://blog.okcupid.co...
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    I think computer games and porn addictions by large exacerbate the social awkwardness epidemic, and allow an easy escape from dealing with the world. Which needs to be done, if one wants to build useful skills and become useful to the society or a prospective partner. It's too easy to stay at home alone all day jacking off and playing games. It shouldn't be like that, we are not equipped to deal with this kind of situations.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      Most men don't prefer masturbating to sex. Porn and masturbation is the solution to the men's problem of women not wanting to have much sex with men. It's much better than both rape and celibacy.
Dalewyn 4y ago
The article poses the situation as a problem, and I say "screw that noise" (pun intended) with my anecdote: I'm a man now in my mid-30s, and I cannot god damn wait until I'm old enough to be out of the "marriage market" so everyone stops fucking pestering me about marriage. I find absolutely no appeal in the concept. The legal and social risks of associating with women beyond friendships are simply not worth it. I also consider the idea of affecting and being affected by someone to such a deep extent to be a violation of individual freedoms. Last but not least: I consider it a cardinal sin to create kids and then tell them with a straight face that life is, on average, fucking horrible. You know what it's like to see your parents pass away? To witness their finals days? It's shit. Absolute shit. I refuse to make any kids, my hypothetical kids, suffer that. I'm not even getting into the other nasty aspects of life. Fuck all that. So marriage can pound sand.
- mgsk 4y ago
  This has to be copypasta.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Naw, it's my sincere thoughts on the matter. Everyone else can do as they please, of course. I don't care so long as you don't pester me to get married.
- cpdean 4y ago
  I get it, makes sense to want prevent grief by avoiding connection and love. And if you're meeting your needs in life, that's fine and all. But it's because of love that grief has meaning.
- arisbe__ 4y ago
  So you wish you had never been born? Isn't that just a theoretical-linguistic proposition and not a truely held belief? We are after all stratified beings. That is it seems you are just venting or virtue signaling (that is still OK). Recently my life has acquired some properties that many might class as "hell on Earth". It doesn't bother me though, I will always be grateful to be breathing as I am a human being. I mean if you lived in the days of our prehistoric hunter gatherer ancestors and didnt know if you would starve to death next Winter would you be so antilife? By the way I am single and dont have kids which is what I selfishly prefer. But I dont think that should be encouraged for healthy males as we have a responsibility to society.
nebukadnet 4y ago
I find this very surprising. The first sentence of the article states that about 60% of men are single, and only about 30% of women. There's about equal men and women, so that would mean that 30% of women are dating each other, or are in relationships with multiple men? That's discounting men dating men. I find that surprising.
- tppiotrowski 4y ago
  The article explains this. They are either dating each other or dating older men.
  - b800h 4y ago
    They didn't mention the fact that successful younger males are dating multiple women at once. That's another factor.
    - mcphage 4y ago
      Is it? Are open relationships that statistically significant?
      - b800h 4y ago
        I think we're talking about ambiguous relationships, not open ones.
        mcphage 4y ago
        So situations where women think they're in a relationship, but the man does not (or not with them). Again, is this statistically significant? Are women's standards for what qualifies as a relationship low enough that they think they're in one with 1/2, 1/3, or even less, of a man's time?
        b800h 4y ago
        I'm willing to bet that it contributes to the total in a way which isn't negligible.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 4y ago
> “Guys are taught to prioritize career,” Karo said. “Also romantic relationships, although it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a very good job at that. Making friends and keeping friends seems to be a lower priority. And once guys get older, they suddenly realize they have no friends.” Not surprising. Friendships take time to form, and many people have to deal with extreme working hours - a point I detailed yesterday in another thread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34871192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34871192
oj2828 4y ago
“Nearly half of all young adults are single: 34 percent of women, and a whopping 63 percent of men.” If the population is roughly 50/50 how does that add up? Are there lots of men in two relationships at once? Or are younger women primarily dating older men?
- russianGuy83829 4y ago
  > Or are younger women primarily dating older men? yes and each other
  - polotics 4y ago
    ...and are unknowingly sharing some studs.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      ...or knowingly sharing. Some women would rather non-exclusively have a partner they perceive to be high value than exclusively have a partner they perceive to be low value. I've heard it put as: "I'd rather have 25% of a winner than 100% of a loser."
wollyhood 4y ago
I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature person. I found dating so hopelessly difficult in America, that I decided to literally learn another language and relocate to another country. I felt like I had no future in America because of that. The difference where I am now is night and day. I have had to decline more dates and advances, which never happened before. Which I feel confirms my belief in the toxicity of dating in America. In America, I had many women who were my close friends. They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life, and even stay at my home some days. In fact most of my friends were women. Although I have introspected on this greatly, and certainly have grown, I believe this is additional evidence that, perhaps, the problem is not me but the environment.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hgsgm 4y ago
  A war helps thin out competition from other local men.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. My guess is that your approach is the problem. Perhaps you don't go to the right places, or strike conversations with the right people (e.g. women too young or immature to recognize emotionally mature men). Maybe you should work on improving your social skills. Or maybe your self-perception doesn't match reality or other people's perceptions.
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    Do you have any data to back up your claims?
  - ShredKazoo 4y ago
    >There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. In what region?
jollofricepeas 4y ago
[dead]
f0ld 4y ago
Wait, but how? is polygamy mainstream among younguns?
- Zandikar 4y ago
  People outside the sample age dating people inside the sample age. AKA, Older men dating younger women, and in far greater numbers than vice versa. Also, In America it seems women are more likely or at least more open about being gay/bi as well. Those 2 things account for the majority of the disparity.
houseinthesky 4y ago
One thing the article didn't address that would be interesting to see would be the impact of the childhood obesity epidemic. In the greatest generation, silent generation, boomers and gen X, the rates of obesity in teens and 20-somethings was a rounding error. People varied in attractiveness, but almost everyone would have been "dateable". Today, 20-30% of the young population is obese, which is going to severely restrict the dating prospects as well as throw off some of the youthful lust-based pairings that grow into relationships. The overall statistics and various causes are interesting, but I wish the article had further broken down how each factor impacted things, eg, how much does income, education, bmi, male-friends, etc skew the statistics on romantic relationships.
- nradov 4y ago
  Yes, obesity is probably a huge factor here. Excess adipose tissue suppresses testosterone levels and is a risk factor for erectile dysfunction. Unfortunately, some of those fat young men have just lost interest, or can't get it up. Endocrine disruptor chemicals such as pthalates also seem to be part of the problem. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-sexuality-shanna-swan/ https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-se...
DogLover_ 4y ago
Men were told that feminism is good, and the rise of women should not be a threat to them. These result shows the opposite I think.
- attemptone 4y ago
  Ah yes, my granfather still remembers the moment he was told that feminism is good. And from then on he deeply knew that the rise of women is no threat to him and his brethren. I on the other hand look at this result and long for the old days, were only the eldest son was allowed to marry and women were not allowed to vote. Jokes aside, your view of feminism, it's history and results is very reductive. Are you talking about beauvoir, judith butler, the cyborg manifesto or more about the pop feminism that gets represented in talk shows, lifestyle and outrage yt-videos? I'm happy that my sisters don't have to put up with people that dont treat them well just because their women. Take this with a grain of salt, I've noticed that young men generally seem not to be as emotionally mature as their female counterpart.
  - DogLover_ 4y ago
    I may not be using the term feminism accurately, but what I mean is that men were told that any progress made for women would also be beneficial for them. While I fully support gender equality and fairness, it doesn't seem like these advancements have actually helped men. It appears to be a zero-sum scenario.
epolanski 4y ago
I think that the biggest difference from the past is that mental health of young adults is deteriorating and that it is impacting men more than women. This is largely driven by the isolation brought by modern technologies but also changes in society, as women became more empowered they also rose their standards which once were to merely be able to provide for the family. Among the complains of my female friends mental health of their male partners is probably the most common issue, followed by an overall lack of maturity which is nowadays surprisingly common even among older (50/60 yo) men. Many things made young men progressively more insecure and surrogates such as porn or internet do not even push them enough to find a way out of loneliness.
- cmsj 4y ago
  As a male man chap fellow, I have no clue what "masculinity" means, and I have essentially no interest in trying to define it. We're just individuals. Try to be the best kind of individual you can - learn empathy, show interest in others and help them. Maybe you'll meet someone to partner with, maybe you won't, but chasing some societal ideal of "masculinity" is almost certainly not the best way to be the best version of yourself, or to attract long-term partners.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Every romantic relationship involves attraction between different polarities a masculine and a feminine one. That's just how laws of attraction work in nature, regardless of the animal and we reflect that. Don't be confused though, it has nothing to do with sexual orientations and there's perfectly happy heterosexual couples where the energies are inverted: males are more emotional, nurturing and females are more detached, analytical and less emotional or nurturing. We're all on a spectrum of that, it's not black and white. That being said our brains have not evolved with society and genrally we still lean differently on the two sides of the spectrum. Men are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: young, healthy women; and women are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: a strong man, the clan leader, as the role of the man is really most of the protector. Now my thesis is that as society evolved the more masculine side of the spectrum is increasingly lacking in young men: less ambition, less purpose in life, less indipendence, increasingly abundant feminine traits like emotional neediness and such. Thus, most women which are also empowered and basically do not need men anymore as a provider find it increasingly hard to find men that project the qualities of the clan leader.
xlii 4y ago
I have a theory for that: I think that men are simply lost in modern times. Love, for example, has been popularized to be a romantic movie-cliché where handsome guy spends his daytime on a picnic during middle of the day (middle of the week). In contract my bubble - all men I know show affection through dedication and work, which isn't perceived as very romantic. Men are less social. There are reasons, but life right now allows us to be less social. ~50 years ago you either cooked for yourself or you went out to restaurant if you wanted to eat. Meeting people was inevitable. ~20 years ago you could call for a pizza, but that still involved human contact. Today? I have an app for that. I also have an app for taxi, laundry, groceries, clearning etc. Remote work is getting increasingly common. I can manage my whole life not even leaving my flat without any need to talk to anyone. Some of my male colleagues actually live like that. And social skills is not something one can get from podcast. They need to be trained and sustained, especially for those who aren't naturally talented and charismatic. And without them - good luck finding partner. There's also slippery slope involved, that some other commenters mention. It can't be I who is at fault, right? It must be THEM. The only way out is to actually get more social, but that's something that men also don't do. There's this stigma that it must've been something wrong with man if they try to find friends. So it's somewhat bleak future, but not grim nor unchangeable. It's just (some) men got behind and it'd be nice if there'd be help for them to catch up.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  >So it's somewhat bleak future, but not grim nor unchangeable. It's just (some) men got behind and it'd be nice if there'd be help for them to catch up. So civil war buddies? We could share a trench, you will be the sniper, i will be the spotter?
  - xlii 4y ago
    I'm unfortunately on the luckier side of frontlines, so not going to risk it, bu I'm totally open to a BBQ ;)
koshinae 4y ago
tl;dr: "Some of them are dating each other." and "Young women are also dating and marrying slightly older men"
refurb 4y ago
What do they mean "single"? Did they just ask individuals? I'd also take into account in a lot of early relationships if you asked the guy they might say they're not in a relationship and the women might say they are.
rayiner 4y ago
The article is written in a weird way which suggests that women are pursuing better options and are happy about that, but statistics don’t bear that out. Self-reported life satisfaction for women has been declining since the 1970s: https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf Something I’ve noticed is that American parents of the boomer generation have pretty much abdicated their role in getting younger people paired up. Young people don’t know what they need in a partner (how could they, they don’t have the experience) and aren’t good at estimating their own market value. As an immigrant I mocked the idea of arranged marriage when I was young, but most of my cousins had marriages that were facilitated to some degree and most ended up with good matches. If my boys aren’t hitched up by 30 I’m going to seriously consider the option.
- dctoedt 4y ago
  Even just fix-ups can work out well, as my wife and I can attest nearly 40 years after we were fixed up by mutual friends.
  - xtracto 4y ago
    Ha! That reminded me of a time in my teens (25 years ago). I have always been extremely shy, and thus was the one in my (male) friend group without a girlfriend. Two times, a friend of mine fixed a meeting with a girl (different girl each time) where he told the girl that "his friend liked her" (I was his friend) and also told me that "her friend liked me". At parties, we got to meet (each with the assumption that the other person liked us) and both times we became boyfriend/girlfriends. Both times we were very young to get into a long term relationship (I was 15 at the time), but in hindsight, I am impressed how simple it was. Just a matter of "breaking" that illusory barrier of fear of rejection.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Better options, does not necessarily mean more happiness. The better options are usually independence and physical security, and they come with a price, of which happiness might be one of them. After all, western societies have long moved into a direction where actual happiness is not as important as the fake-happiness from economic factors and social standing, or recently the kick from entertainments.
tucnak 4y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a non-American young adult in a longstanding relationship with a girl of my age. Having read the article, I felt like the writing severely lacked in clarity & posed the problem as ultimately men's fault. The numerous quotes appealing to what I can only read as "hot takes" produced by some kind of authority only reinforce this: > Younger men are largely responsible for rising rates of mass shootings, a trend some researchers link to their growing social isolation. Why bring up this random correlation if not to assign blame by association? Already very hard to give this piece benefit of the doubt it probably deserves. > “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” Casually throwing "horrible date" there; from my experience men are just as likely to prefer a friendly occasion to a "horrible date." In this context, what's really implied is that young men are seen by young women as horrible so the detachment effects is men's, if anybody's fault; quite an over-reaching argument. > “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.” What is the point, again? > “Men are less naturally relational than women,” said Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Poorly worded and what's the point, anyway? Natural presupposition wouldn't happen to explain the observed effects now would it? > “Women form friendships with each other that are emotionally intimate, whereas men do not,” Levant said Perhaps when asked men wouldn't describe their relationships as "emotionally intimate" and I wouldn't expect my friends to be crying and exposing themselves in a outwards way by default but it doesn't mean that the relationships we have do not lend to the emotional component, reward emotional support and sincerity.
- llampx 4y ago
  You can't really expect mainstream writing to take the opposite stance, that its women's fault. Somebody has to be to blame, and in a case of men vs women, the target is easy.
  - tucnak 4y ago
    Why have a stance in this sense of the word at all? It's not a fight is it? Is it...? One of the commenters have pointer out that women have been getting progressively less and less happy since the 1970s (based on self-reporting) so if anything, everybody is at loss here. I've really tried to take this piece seriously but once you cut the propaganda, there's no single clear bit of writing in it worth thinking about or so I'm led to believe.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
We have a loneliness epidemic and we have just invented language models that are exceedingly good at acting like humans and even mimic emotions and personality (and even when we do our best to try and prevent them from showing emotion, it still bleeds through). I've tried Replika and some of these other AI friends (who are more and more pivoting to being AI girlfriends), and they seem so far from state of the art. My guess is we're a few months away from gpt3-level (or better) chatbots aimed less and productivity and information and more at romance/sex/friendship and its going to change the world as we know it.
- SteveDR 4y ago
  Replika is aimed at friendship and romance, it’s in all the marketing. I’m sure you saw the fiasco when they suddenly decided to filter romantic talk last week? https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-...
  - Ozzie_osman 4y ago
    I did not! The last time I checked (a month or two ago) it had gotten very focused on the sex piece: https://m.slashdot.org/story/409472 https://m.slashdot.org/story/409472 Looks like they might be swinging the pendulum back the other way again.
vacuumcl 4y ago
From my personal experience I have seen this disparity in the extreme, since I studied physics where the gender ratio was very unbalanced. I knew many guys who had some trouble socializing, but were very nice people, and they did not get any attention from women.
thowaway47437 4y ago
Throwaway account due to sensitive personal stories. Me and my 4 close friends are reasonably successful in terms of societal standards; we all hit the gym religiously, earn over 100K in a big European city, speak multiple languages and we are all in our early to mid 30s. Dating wise, we each have our funnel of dates from dating apps, nights out where we collect numbers and one night stands. We regularly get around 20 new leeds (numbers) a week, which transform into 5 dates and in turn, 2 or 3 new one night stands. On average, every week adds one more friend with benefits to our "rooster". I place on the bottom of my friends ranking because I am very pick and prefer to date no more than 5 girls (ages 20 to 25 tops) at the same time. The friend that's most dedicated keeps a harem of 20-25 friends with benefits... He tends to service them every other week or so, sometimes double or even triple booking them on the same day. As you can imagine, this takes the same effort as a second job, keeping up with all the new dates and maintaining casual relationships. As you can imagine, my friend is in top 0.1% of guys in terms of dating success, with over 100 new sexual partners every year. I've asked girls their opinion of him and they all report that he's the kind of guy who just gets it, he's a gentleman, funny, charismatic, considerate and sexy. They seem oblivious to the fact that his skills are acquired from experience and not from mother nature. All of these girls don't mind that he's seeing other girls, they are in it for the same reason: casual fun. All in all, we 5 men are dating around 50 girls and some are exclusive on their end, knowing the details of our lifestyle. As everything in society gets more and more polarized there's more lonely men and consequently more Dan Bulzarians running around. I find the statistics even a bit tame, the average guy is so afraid of rejection that he does 5 approaches a year. My friends do 5 approaches in an hour going to a bar. Young girls live in a different reality than young guys. My advice is to not bother with dating until you reach certain status in life, earn good money, have good physique, have friends in high places and most importantly, provide fun. On the flip side, once you'll be at the top of the mountain you'll never want to find a good wife and settle down, mostly because a) there are almost no good girls in westernized society, b) why have 1 when you can have 10?
- bitcoinmoney 4y ago
  Are you white Caucasian males too?
- 4y ago
danielrpa 4y ago
I grew up in Latin America but now I'm married to an American woman and thus out of the "pool". I hang out with coworkers still in their 20s and I'm blown away by how their teens and 20s differed from mine. When I was single, all my friends and I could think about was how to find the next date or sexual partner. We were all very active, and I personally had over a dozen "serious" girlfriends (3+ months) and another couple dozen kissing flings/sexual partners, roughly 50/50 between Latin America and the US. I actually can't easily remember all the women I've been with, certainly not all of their names and in fact I'm pretty mediocre in terms of "achievement" among my friends, the best of them having had 50-100 sexual partners in their lives. Most of my younger American coworkers get to their 20s barely having kissed a couple of girls in their lives, the difference is astonishing. Have in mind I'm not particularly attractive, tall or fit, I have an average build and I'd say I disappear in the crowd but I know how to communicate with a woman and respectfully "court" them, even if it's for a one night stand. This is skill learned in my teens through trial and a LOT of error. I can't explain, maybe today our sanitized and risk-averse schools repress men's learning of the "courtship language".
- llampx 4y ago
  Culture matters. You can have the most "game" but if you grow up in Saudi Arabia or India you will almost certainly have a lower "count" than someone with no game who grew up in Brazil.
  - danielrpa 4y ago
    True, but what I'm saying is that the same overall approach - at least in my case - worked well in the US, even though things were harder at first (some tweaks were needed indeed). I bet things would be different in India or Saudi Arabia, however we're talking about the US here. I'm saying that if young American men had the opportunity to learn how to court women, they would have no problems finding mates.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > if young American men had the opportunity to learn how to court women You growing up in a culture where courting women is encouraged makes a huge difference, you can't really practice if it isn't socially acceptable to court women badly.
johlits 4y ago
We replaced relationships with the internet.
bradlys 4y ago
I get quite tired of the boomer-esque takes on HN and everywhere else. The quintessential one is “shower, dress, have a job, and be respectful” is somehow enough to attract just about any woman. People assume that 60% of young men must just be filthy neckbeard degenerates. As far as I can tell - this is cause they never talk to young people or meet any. Attracting young women today is an entirely different ballgame than in the past and it’s incredibly challenging for average men. I do think social media has warped our perceptions of what an “average man” is. The classic “dad bod” quip is an example. A lot of women have mentioned desiring a “dad bod” and then will point out someone like Jason Mamoa when he’s either off-cycle or not completely shredded. A body that is very much not a “dad bod” at all to most men - this body is already incredibly difficult to attain and required steroids to get to to start with. The decline of third spaces and ways to interact more in person and without it being transactional has also likely made it really hard. When you need to sell yourself through images - it turns out really only a couple body types are appealing to women when it comes to images alone. Yes, you can be more attractive when interacting in person and they see your full personality but we don’t have the spaces for that anymore. Most young women I meet are incredibly full of stranger danger as well. So many stories of violent rape hit national headlines and most people are taught men are a threat before you even say hello. So, yeah, it’s no wonder you can’t really make a good first impression as an average young man. There’s nowhere to hang out with other young women in person where it’s not transactional and they already assume you’re a threat to begin with… so you’re in bad footing before you even started. The only way I’ve seen to get past this is to be incredibly charming (very rare and person specific) or genetically gifted looking to where people’s defenses are lowered (also rare). Overall - I blame capitalism. I think its desire for atomicizing everyone and making everything a transaction is the source of all these issues.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I never made that connection before but you're absolutely right! The whole "just take a shower, comb your hair and dress nicely" dating advice is exactly like the "just walk up to the owner of the company and give him a firm handshake and you'll get the job!" career advice. It's coming from a place of good intentions, but from a reality that no longer exists.
taylodl 4y ago
"Even seasoned researchers struggle to fully account for the relationship gap between young women and men: If single young men outnumber single young women nearly two to one, then who are all the young women dating?" Older men. The article even notes that's a trend that's been increasing in the past 100 years. There's also been a rise in women who aren't attracted to men. It's likely always been the case that a not insignificant number of women were lesbian but needed a man to not be impoverished. Now that those impediments have been removed and women no longer need men for economic security they can more freely be lesbians. And they are.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I think it's a bit more than that: the Kinsey Scale exists because many people (probably most really) are somewhere in-between, even if they have a strong preference for one sex or the other. A large number of women have probably always had bisexual tendencies, but these days with the impediments removed, they can more freely choose to explore their same-sex attraction and relationships with other women. After a few bad relationships with men, many have probably decided to only pursue relationships with women in fact. And why not? Women are generally more attractive (really attractive men are somewhat rare, but it's not as hard for most women to look nice), smell nice, are far less prone to violence, and these days generally have more education and better careers. They also are much better at being emotionally supportive in friendships/relationships and not depending on their partner to be a full-time therapist. As a bonus, they can even share clothes!
unpopularopp 4y ago
Reddit/Twitter/Tumblr solved this years ago: "just lower your standards"
mcphage 4y ago
I'm not sure how to make these two statements consistent: > More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of unattached young women > “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” said Greg Matos So women don't need to be in a long-term relationship, and yet they are at a much higher rate?
cragfar 4y ago
Boys are constantly chided for pursuing women all through school and the media. Getting denounced as creepy or weird. Actually following that advice will lead you to die alone though.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- finnthehuman 4y ago
  Some people are timorous and some people are reckless; unfortunately public messaging is calibrated for the latter.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    Timorous? Correct usage of semicolon? When did you get such good diction, Finn?
    - finnthehuman 4y ago
      I'm just aping an David Mitchell bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w
  - bongoman37 4y ago
    [dead]
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    Still unfair, because being timorous or reckless happens in both sexes. Media and law have practically demonized young men, and I'm afraid it's been done for clicks and engagement, not a pursuit for equality. These days it's almost inevitable to see issues as black or white, but however boring, middle gray is usually the most fair position.
kthejoker2 4y ago
What I mostly see in this thread is nobody deeply caring about relationships, marriage, kids, and the like. As the article points out, the rise of sexual gratification without relationships, coinciding with women's reshaping of the financial stability side of relationships, has mostly just resulted in a lopsided winner takes all market around biological attraction. But sexual gratification is .. just ... that. Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." You don't need another person for it, you definitely don't need a member of the opposite sex, even if you want someone from the opposite sex, you can pay for it, even with a more committed relationship it's more or less transactional. The real question is was there ever any value in long term monogamous relationships? I say this as someone in a long term monogamous relationship who is super happy, but the divorce rates and gender imbalance in domestic violence tells a different story. Instead, we should work on ensuring everyone having access to paid, consensual sex workers, and bring "dating apps" back from the hookup apps they largely are into something more like eHarmony or OKCupid were - a niche app for those looking for long term relationships. People demanding other people choose sexual partners based on long term relationship dynamics that are completely irrelevant in this day and age is a weird hill to die on.
- screye 4y ago
  > Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." > ever any value in long term monogamous relationships rhetorical question ? I wonder if a large group of young people just do not know what true 'contentment' feels like. To truly be at peace. To feel like everything is just right. To be relieved of all insecurities in that one moment, and just take in something for all that is. None of my most cherished memories are ones of peak happiness or gratification. They are all moments of gratitude. Something that let me understand how content I felt. I didn't need, I didn't want, I had no desires. Everything was simple, and everything was there for that moment. The moments were, like all others : ephemeral. But the memories and the nostalgic feeling of security that it left behind sticks around for a long long time. That to me separates sexual gratification from being in a long term monogamous relationship. The contentment that comes with time. To know that there is someone who accepts you in your entirety. Not because you were born soul-mates, but because each person has expressed an explicit intention to do so by committing the most important currency of them all : Time. And as you invest more time, the belief in the commitment strengthens, as does the contentment it produces.
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medvezhenok 4y ago
I think what lots of people miss is the complementarity of relationships. You have to always ask yourself - what am I bringing to the table to a relationship? This is why status is a universally attractive quality. No matter what the circumstances, if someone dates someone of a high status, it elevates the dater's status as well. Basically, someone wants to go to their friends, mention who they are dating, and wants the friends to be jealous (not really, but hypothetically). Lots of people are frustrated because earning a good income used to bequeath status; however, with earnings gaps shrinking, income is no longer a good proxy for status as it once was. Also, status and income correlate, but are not the same. An artist working for Cirque du Soleil, for example, might have higher status than a Software Engineer at Google even though the latter might make significantly more money. One way to get an intuitive sense of status is the "wow" factor when you tell someone about your job (and another is the power you hold as part of that job, and how many people look up to you). Similarly, influencers have a lot of status independent of how much money they make via social validation.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >No matter what the circumstances, if someone dates someone of a high status, it elevates the dater's status as well. And what makes a man "high status" varies greatly by culture. In American culture, being an engineer is just above being a janitor as far as women are concerned, and being a SWE is a little above that only because it's become common knowledge how well they're paid. Meanwhile, being a doctor or lawyer has FAR higher status, as does being an "influencer". In Asian cultures, this is entirely different.
testqwe 4y ago
I’m 26, work at a faang, and I currently see about 5 women as sort of FWB. I don’t considered myself too special or a 10/10 but I can imagine there are guys that are even better looking and richer and are seeing even more people.
- bitcoinmoney 4y ago
  So tell us then how you make those FWB?

119 points by harambae 4y ago

We need to produce less children, so that trend is perfectly good, isn't it? And the younger the woman the better, isn't that an obvious? What about friendship between men, this is your personal choice. I have more than one really close friend and I can not see myself without that kind of relationship.

deleted 4y ago
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acidtakes1 4y ago
We do not need to produce less people.
- lethuel 4y ago
  If you don't produce more people, someone else will.
- eimrine 4y ago
  Only if people somehow will learn how to spend less of everything.
- welshwelsh 4y ago
  Why do we need billions of humans?
  - kthejoker2 4y ago
    "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your sentence but we're about 2 centuries away from complete population collapse of the species. There are less babies born on this day than any day in history, and that will be true for the rest of our entire species' existence, barring major technological "Brave New World" style test tube baby advances (which are indeed extremely likely given this fact.)
- concordDance 4y ago
  We do if we want to preserve the little bit of wild are we have left and keep a decent quality of life where we can eat fruit and vegetables. Even cutting meat to zero isn't going to be enough.
- brnewd 4y ago
  It's an unpopular opinion for sure. But as it stands, our planet cannot sustain the way we exploit it. Our seas are being emptied and poisoned, we cut rainforest to be used for overcropping. It's what happens if you have 8 Billion people on a relative small planet. Sure we could do better but that's not in our nature untill doom stands on our doorstep.
  - acidtakes1 4y ago
    It's actually quite popular among environmentalists. We need to make progress on sustainability, and we will. We CAN sustain 8 billion people because of the immense progress humans have made in food production and efficiency. Pretending the only solution is, less humans, is antithetical to everything humanity has accomplished.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Sorry for the pedantry, but Earth is not a "relatively small" planet. It's actually quite large for a rocky planet. Out of all the rocky planets and moons in our own system, Earth is by far the largest (except for Venus, which is about 90% the size). From what we're seeing with exoplanet research, it looks like Earth is still pretty large, though it's hard to tell since we have a hard time detecting smaller planets, and the "super-Earths" are more easily visible to us. Of courses, compared to gas giants, Earth is small, but that's like comparing apples and whales.
attemptone 4y ago
Poes Law and all, I'll take your comment at face value. Where does your percieved need to produce less children come from? One could also argue that older people who are more settled in life make better parents. The article also points out a decline in male friendships. Having a relationship doesnt automatically exclude friendships and vice versa. Personally I think that choice has a similar influence on both. Approaching people you meet only as potential and exchangeable players for your DnD setting or as partners for your bedroom will turn them away the same way.
- eimrine 4y ago
  > Where does your percieved need to produce less children come from? Too stupid all the pro-children agitation. For example, why to produce less children and allow aborts? To stop human-caused crisises like global warming, plastic pollution, pollution of air. But why to produce more children and forbid aborts? To keep your nation rising, to keep traditional lifestyle, and to pay more taxes. Any decent arguments lost in pro-children vs anti-children question?
  - attemptone 4y ago
    I meant the question more personally. Where do you feel pressured to have no/more kids? I mean yes, there are sensible arguments on either side. But it sounded like we are getting pressured to have more/less children. And that we was what I tried to get at. It sounds egoistic, but on very personal matters I don't like to listen to the ominous blob of internet opinions we all contribute to. And you should too.. I have seen some of my own comments and would be very ashamed if someone took it as literal advice/imperative.
ovi256 4y ago
We have a bunch a problem that could be solved by tech progress. Tech progress is pushed by more brains. More sticks in pop fertility's wheels reduce the number of brains available to work on said problems.
- eimrine 4y ago
  > Tech progress is pushed by more brains. You are saying that in such a way like we may just grow gazillions of C. Elegans and fill the gap. (this is an organism with the smallest brain known, very popular guest in neuro studies).
  - ovi256 4y ago
    That would be cool but I was obviously thinking the most boring and reasonable solution, more human brains educable to a high enough level in the usual suspect domains.

throwaway22032 4y ago

Is this surprising? My intuition, backed by approximately 0 data, is that there's a 5 to 10 year age gap preference, such that men prefer to be with slightly younger women and women with slightly older men. As a result, young men don't really have a dating pool. Once they hit 30, as long as they're not total wasters, women will take more interest.

version_five 4y ago
See the chart linked below (third image, after two of the PIs) https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-age-at-conception-for-men https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-ag... the average age that humans had children throughout the past 250,000 years is 26.9. Furthermore, fathers were consistently older, at 30.7 years on average, than mothers, at 23.2 years on average, but the age gap has shrunk in the past 5,000 years, with the study’s most recent estimates of maternal age averaging 26.4 years. The shrinking gap seems to largely be due to mothers having children at older ages.
- pier25 4y ago
  Seems surprisingly late in life for pre industrial humans. But I guess they had more DNA samples from recent centuries.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  This is part of it. Teen births are way down and women are delaying having kids until their 30s. But also, importantly, women are starting to earn at parity or out earn men, negating the need for a partner to support themselves. This is a cause of the imbalance I believe. The pool of potential female partners wasn’t great before for the age cohort, and empowered women shrink it further. Also, men will date down, women typically don’t. So these higher earning, ambitious women are unable to find a partner that meets their expectations. Men are happy to (or if not happy to, can make do) exit the dating marketplace when this expectation mismatch occurs. There just aren’t enough women who want a low status low earning male partner.
- anoonmoose 4y ago

GalenErso 4y ago

A man who is financially autonomous, practices basic hygiene and grooming, wears tasteful clothing, and approaches women with respect and manners has nothing to worry about. You don't need to make 6 figures, to be 6 feet tall, to have the body of The Rock or 2004 Brad Pitt's face. Having one interesting hobby is also a huge plus, even if it's as simple as hiking or jogging. You just need to be minimally interesting. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for those among us who fit in the above, many men fail on one or more of these points. The trueoffmychest and TwoXChromosomes subreddits are full of horror stories about unkempt or disrespectful men.

988747 4y ago
The problem is, if a man hit all these points there's really no reason for him to form a relationship with a woman. Ideal state for a man is being single and having series of one night stands :) Relationships are for those who have trouble attracting women and once they succeed they want to keep their "prey" forever. /s
- baggachipz 4y ago
  > Ideal state for a man is being single and having series of one night stands Thanks for proving OP's point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>A man who is financially autonomous, practices basic hygiene and grooming, wears tasteful clothing, and approaches women with respect and manners has nothing to worry about... one interesting hobby... Congratulations, you've just described 95% of men who are gainfully employed in fairly technical white collar sectors of the economy. You're getting down-voted because they are probably the single biggest demographic on HN and their experience doesn't match what your alleging it to be.

dfxm12 4y ago

Young men "are watching a lot of social media..." Possibly related anecdote: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/zxsgcq/andrew_tate_and_his_fans_are_ruining_men_for_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/zxsgcq/and...

tester756 4y ago
>Their misogyny is honestly invading my brain to the point that I suspect every man I meet to secretly harbour at least some of their toxic opinions. I don't even want to bother dating anymore. Seriously? this is some extreme opinion and approach, really out of touch with reality. This sub is no different from the people described in this post, just the other side of extrema.
- the_doctah 4y ago
  "Welcome to Reddit"
concordDance 4y ago
Any top reddit post is going to be unrepresentative and indeed, probably made up. It's the unfortunate result of the existence of bullshitters/karma farmers and that reality isn't optimized to be engaging and interesting.

4gotunameagain 4y ago

Boys addicted to computer games and porn, girls addicted to social media which allow and facilitate sexism (only one way), an increasingly bleak future, economic and geopolitical uncertainty, "intelligence" organisations running rampant trying to control citizen's minds.. Yeah I wonder why our societies are going down the shitter.

_trackno5 4y ago
I am highly skeptical that computer games and porn addictions are significant factors here. Sure they are problems that need to be solved, but I doubt it is a significant contribution to the problem. I can see how social media might bias perception though. I guess pre-internet era you just had to compete against people in your local community when you were looking for a partner. Way harder now to standout in the world of Instagram / Tiktok where the trendiest people are likely in the top 10% of attractiveness (be it money, appearance, personality, etc). It reminds my of a super old survey done by okcupid where women rated 80% of men as below average: https://archive.is/2017.01.21-154729/https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ https://archive.is/2017.01.21-154729/https://blog.okcupid.co...
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  I think computer games and porn addictions by large exacerbate the social awkwardness epidemic, and allow an easy escape from dealing with the world. Which needs to be done, if one wants to build useful skills and become useful to the society or a prospective partner. It's too easy to stay at home alone all day jacking off and playing games. It shouldn't be like that, we are not equipped to deal with this kind of situations.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Most men don't prefer masturbating to sex. Porn and masturbation is the solution to the men's problem of women not wanting to have much sex with men. It's much better than both rape and celibacy.

Dalewyn 4y ago

The article poses the situation as a problem, and I say "screw that noise" (pun intended) with my anecdote: I'm a man now in my mid-30s, and I cannot god damn wait until I'm old enough to be out of the "marriage market" so everyone stops fucking pestering me about marriage. I find absolutely no appeal in the concept. The legal and social risks of associating with women beyond friendships are simply not worth it. I also consider the idea of affecting and being affected by someone to such a deep extent to be a violation of individual freedoms. Last but not least: I consider it a cardinal sin to create kids and then tell them with a straight face that life is, on average, fucking horrible. You know what it's like to see your parents pass away? To witness their finals days? It's shit. Absolute shit. I refuse to make any kids, my hypothetical kids, suffer that. I'm not even getting into the other nasty aspects of life. Fuck all that. So marriage can pound sand.

mgsk 4y ago
This has to be copypasta.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Naw, it's my sincere thoughts on the matter. Everyone else can do as they please, of course. I don't care so long as you don't pester me to get married.
cpdean 4y ago
I get it, makes sense to want prevent grief by avoiding connection and love. And if you're meeting your needs in life, that's fine and all. But it's because of love that grief has meaning.
arisbe__ 4y ago
So you wish you had never been born? Isn't that just a theoretical-linguistic proposition and not a truely held belief? We are after all stratified beings. That is it seems you are just venting or virtue signaling (that is still OK). Recently my life has acquired some properties that many might class as "hell on Earth". It doesn't bother me though, I will always be grateful to be breathing as I am a human being. I mean if you lived in the days of our prehistoric hunter gatherer ancestors and didnt know if you would starve to death next Winter would you be so antilife? By the way I am single and dont have kids which is what I selfishly prefer. But I dont think that should be encouraged for healthy males as we have a responsibility to society.

nebukadnet 4y ago

I find this very surprising. The first sentence of the article states that about 60% of men are single, and only about 30% of women. There's about equal men and women, so that would mean that 30% of women are dating each other, or are in relationships with multiple men? That's discounting men dating men. I find that surprising.

tppiotrowski 4y ago
The article explains this. They are either dating each other or dating older men.
- b800h 4y ago
  They didn't mention the fact that successful younger males are dating multiple women at once. That's another factor.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    Is it? Are open relationships that statistically significant?
    - b800h 4y ago
      I think we're talking about ambiguous relationships, not open ones.
      - mcphage 4y ago
        So situations where women think they're in a relationship, but the man does not (or not with them). Again, is this statistically significant? Are women's standards for what qualifies as a relationship low enough that they think they're in one with 1/2, 1/3, or even less, of a man's time?
        b800h 4y ago
        I'm willing to bet that it contributes to the total in a way which isn't negligible.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mschuster91 4y ago

> “Guys are taught to prioritize career,” Karo said. “Also romantic relationships, although it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a very good job at that. Making friends and keeping friends seems to be a lower priority. And once guys get older, they suddenly realize they have no friends.” Not surprising. Friendships take time to form, and many people have to deal with extreme working hours - a point I detailed yesterday in another thread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34871192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34871192

oj2828 4y ago

“Nearly half of all young adults are single: 34 percent of women, and a whopping 63 percent of men.” If the population is roughly 50/50 how does that add up? Are there lots of men in two relationships at once? Or are younger women primarily dating older men?

russianGuy83829 4y ago
> Or are younger women primarily dating older men? yes and each other
- polotics 4y ago
  ...and are unknowingly sharing some studs.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    ...or knowingly sharing. Some women would rather non-exclusively have a partner they perceive to be high value than exclusively have a partner they perceive to be low value. I've heard it put as: "I'd rather have 25% of a winner than 100% of a loser."

wollyhood 4y ago

I sincerely believe that I am a respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature person. I found dating so hopelessly difficult in America, that I decided to literally learn another language and relocate to another country. I felt like I had no future in America because of that. The difference where I am now is night and day. I have had to decline more dates and advances, which never happened before. Which I feel confirms my belief in the toxicity of dating in America. In America, I had many women who were my close friends. They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life, and even stay at my home some days. In fact most of my friends were women. Although I have introspected on this greatly, and certainly have grown, I believe this is additional evidence that, perhaps, the problem is not me but the environment.

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hgsgm 4y ago
A war helps thin out competition from other local men.
GalenErso 4y ago
There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. My guess is that your approach is the problem. Perhaps you don't go to the right places, or strike conversations with the right people (e.g. women too young or immature to recognize emotionally mature men). Maybe you should work on improving your social skills. Or maybe your self-perception doesn't match reality or other people's perceptions.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Do you have any data to back up your claims?
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  >There are so many people looking for respectful, reasonably attractive, healthy, financially successful and emotionally mature men. In what region?

jollofricepeas 4y ago

[dead]

f0ld 4y ago

Wait, but how? is polygamy mainstream among younguns?

Zandikar 4y ago
People outside the sample age dating people inside the sample age. AKA, Older men dating younger women, and in far greater numbers than vice versa. Also, In America it seems women are more likely or at least more open about being gay/bi as well. Those 2 things account for the majority of the disparity.

houseinthesky 4y ago

One thing the article didn't address that would be interesting to see would be the impact of the childhood obesity epidemic. In the greatest generation, silent generation, boomers and gen X, the rates of obesity in teens and 20-somethings was a rounding error. People varied in attractiveness, but almost everyone would have been "dateable". Today, 20-30% of the young population is obese, which is going to severely restrict the dating prospects as well as throw off some of the youthful lust-based pairings that grow into relationships. The overall statistics and various causes are interesting, but I wish the article had further broken down how each factor impacted things, eg, how much does income, education, bmi, male-friends, etc skew the statistics on romantic relationships.

nradov 4y ago
Yes, obesity is probably a huge factor here. Excess adipose tissue suppresses testosterone levels and is a risk factor for erectile dysfunction. Unfortunately, some of those fat young men have just lost interest, or can't get it up. Endocrine disruptor chemicals such as pthalates also seem to be part of the problem. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-sexuality-shanna-swan/ https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-se...

DogLover_ 4y ago

Men were told that feminism is good, and the rise of women should not be a threat to them. These result shows the opposite I think.

attemptone 4y ago
Ah yes, my granfather still remembers the moment he was told that feminism is good. And from then on he deeply knew that the rise of women is no threat to him and his brethren. I on the other hand look at this result and long for the old days, were only the eldest son was allowed to marry and women were not allowed to vote. Jokes aside, your view of feminism, it's history and results is very reductive. Are you talking about beauvoir, judith butler, the cyborg manifesto or more about the pop feminism that gets represented in talk shows, lifestyle and outrage yt-videos? I'm happy that my sisters don't have to put up with people that dont treat them well just because their women. Take this with a grain of salt, I've noticed that young men generally seem not to be as emotionally mature as their female counterpart.
- DogLover_ 4y ago
  I may not be using the term feminism accurately, but what I mean is that men were told that any progress made for women would also be beneficial for them. While I fully support gender equality and fairness, it doesn't seem like these advancements have actually helped men. It appears to be a zero-sum scenario.

epolanski 4y ago

I think that the biggest difference from the past is that mental health of young adults is deteriorating and that it is impacting men more than women. This is largely driven by the isolation brought by modern technologies but also changes in society, as women became more empowered they also rose their standards which once were to merely be able to provide for the family. Among the complains of my female friends mental health of their male partners is probably the most common issue, followed by an overall lack of maturity which is nowadays surprisingly common even among older (50/60 yo) men. Many things made young men progressively more insecure and surrogates such as porn or internet do not even push them enough to find a way out of loneliness.

cmsj 4y ago
As a male man chap fellow, I have no clue what "masculinity" means, and I have essentially no interest in trying to define it. We're just individuals. Try to be the best kind of individual you can - learn empathy, show interest in others and help them. Maybe you'll meet someone to partner with, maybe you won't, but chasing some societal ideal of "masculinity" is almost certainly not the best way to be the best version of yourself, or to attract long-term partners.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Every romantic relationship involves attraction between different polarities a masculine and a feminine one. That's just how laws of attraction work in nature, regardless of the animal and we reflect that. Don't be confused though, it has nothing to do with sexual orientations and there's perfectly happy heterosexual couples where the energies are inverted: males are more emotional, nurturing and females are more detached, analytical and less emotional or nurturing. We're all on a spectrum of that, it's not black and white. That being said our brains have not evolved with society and genrally we still lean differently on the two sides of the spectrum. Men are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: young, healthy women; and women are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: a strong man, the clan leader, as the role of the man is really most of the protector. Now my thesis is that as society evolved the more masculine side of the spectrum is increasingly lacking in young men: less ambition, less purpose in life, less indipendence, increasingly abundant feminine traits like emotional neediness and such. Thus, most women which are also empowered and basically do not need men anymore as a provider find it increasingly hard to find men that project the qualities of the clan leader.

xlii 4y ago

I have a theory for that: I think that men are simply lost in modern times. Love, for example, has been popularized to be a romantic movie-cliché where handsome guy spends his daytime on a picnic during middle of the day (middle of the week). In contract my bubble - all men I know show affection through dedication and work, which isn't perceived as very romantic. Men are less social. There are reasons, but life right now allows us to be less social. ~50 years ago you either cooked for yourself or you went out to restaurant if you wanted to eat. Meeting people was inevitable. ~20 years ago you could call for a pizza, but that still involved human contact. Today? I have an app for that. I also have an app for taxi, laundry, groceries, clearning etc. Remote work is getting increasingly common. I can manage my whole life not even leaving my flat without any need to talk to anyone. Some of my male colleagues actually live like that. And social skills is not something one can get from podcast. They need to be trained and sustained, especially for those who aren't naturally talented and charismatic. And without them - good luck finding partner. There's also slippery slope involved, that some other commenters mention. It can't be I who is at fault, right? It must be THEM. The only way out is to actually get more social, but that's something that men also don't do. There's this stigma that it must've been something wrong with man if they try to find friends. So it's somewhat bleak future, but not grim nor unchangeable. It's just (some) men got behind and it'd be nice if there'd be help for them to catch up.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
>So it's somewhat bleak future, but not grim nor unchangeable. It's just (some) men got behind and it'd be nice if there'd be help for them to catch up. So civil war buddies? We could share a trench, you will be the sniper, i will be the spotter?
- xlii 4y ago
  I'm unfortunately on the luckier side of frontlines, so not going to risk it, bu I'm totally open to a BBQ ;)

koshinae 4y ago

tl;dr: "Some of them are dating each other." and "Young women are also dating and marrying slightly older men"

refurb 4y ago

What do they mean "single"? Did they just ask individuals? I'd also take into account in a lot of early relationships if you asked the guy they might say they're not in a relationship and the women might say they are.

rayiner 4y ago

The article is written in a weird way which suggests that women are pursuing better options and are happy about that, but statistics don’t bear that out. Self-reported life satisfaction for women has been declining since the 1970s: https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf Something I’ve noticed is that American parents of the boomer generation have pretty much abdicated their role in getting younger people paired up. Young people don’t know what they need in a partner (how could they, they don’t have the experience) and aren’t good at estimating their own market value. As an immigrant I mocked the idea of arranged marriage when I was young, but most of my cousins had marriages that were facilitated to some degree and most ended up with good matches. If my boys aren’t hitched up by 30 I’m going to seriously consider the option.

dctoedt 4y ago
Even just fix-ups can work out well, as my wife and I can attest nearly 40 years after we were fixed up by mutual friends.
- xtracto 4y ago
  Ha! That reminded me of a time in my teens (25 years ago). I have always been extremely shy, and thus was the one in my (male) friend group without a girlfriend. Two times, a friend of mine fixed a meeting with a girl (different girl each time) where he told the girl that "his friend liked her" (I was his friend) and also told me that "her friend liked me". At parties, we got to meet (each with the assumption that the other person liked us) and both times we became boyfriend/girlfriends. Both times we were very young to get into a long term relationship (I was 15 at the time), but in hindsight, I am impressed how simple it was. Just a matter of "breaking" that illusory barrier of fear of rejection.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Better options, does not necessarily mean more happiness. The better options are usually independence and physical security, and they come with a price, of which happiness might be one of them. After all, western societies have long moved into a direction where actual happiness is not as important as the fake-happiness from economic factors and social standing, or recently the kick from entertainments.

tucnak 4y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a non-American young adult in a longstanding relationship with a girl of my age. Having read the article, I felt like the writing severely lacked in clarity & posed the problem as ultimately men's fault. The numerous quotes appealing to what I can only read as "hot takes" produced by some kind of authority only reinforce this: > Younger men are largely responsible for rising rates of mass shootings, a trend some researchers link to their growing social isolation. Why bring up this random correlation if not to assign blame by association? Already very hard to give this piece benefit of the doubt it probably deserves. > “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” Casually throwing "horrible date" there; from my experience men are just as likely to prefer a friendly occasion to a "horrible date." In this context, what's really implied is that young men are seen by young women as horrible so the detachment effects is men's, if anybody's fault; quite an over-reaching argument. > “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.” What is the point, again? > “Men are less naturally relational than women,” said Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Poorly worded and what's the point, anyway? Natural presupposition wouldn't happen to explain the observed effects now would it? > “Women form friendships with each other that are emotionally intimate, whereas men do not,” Levant said Perhaps when asked men wouldn't describe their relationships as "emotionally intimate" and I wouldn't expect my friends to be crying and exposing themselves in a outwards way by default but it doesn't mean that the relationships we have do not lend to the emotional component, reward emotional support and sincerity.

llampx 4y ago
You can't really expect mainstream writing to take the opposite stance, that its women's fault. Somebody has to be to blame, and in a case of men vs women, the target is easy.
- tucnak 4y ago
  Why have a stance in this sense of the word at all? It's not a fight is it? Is it...? One of the commenters have pointer out that women have been getting progressively less and less happy since the 1970s (based on self-reporting) so if anything, everybody is at loss here. I've really tried to take this piece seriously but once you cut the propaganda, there's no single clear bit of writing in it worth thinking about or so I'm led to believe.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

We have a loneliness epidemic and we have just invented language models that are exceedingly good at acting like humans and even mimic emotions and personality (and even when we do our best to try and prevent them from showing emotion, it still bleeds through). I've tried Replika and some of these other AI friends (who are more and more pivoting to being AI girlfriends), and they seem so far from state of the art. My guess is we're a few months away from gpt3-level (or better) chatbots aimed less and productivity and information and more at romance/sex/friendship and its going to change the world as we know it.

SteveDR 4y ago
Replika is aimed at friendship and romance, it’s in all the marketing. I’m sure you saw the fiasco when they suddenly decided to filter romantic talk last week? https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-...
- Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  I did not! The last time I checked (a month or two ago) it had gotten very focused on the sex piece: https://m.slashdot.org/story/409472 https://m.slashdot.org/story/409472 Looks like they might be swinging the pendulum back the other way again.

vacuumcl 4y ago

From my personal experience I have seen this disparity in the extreme, since I studied physics where the gender ratio was very unbalanced. I knew many guys who had some trouble socializing, but were very nice people, and they did not get any attention from women.

thowaway47437 4y ago

Throwaway account due to sensitive personal stories. Me and my 4 close friends are reasonably successful in terms of societal standards; we all hit the gym religiously, earn over 100K in a big European city, speak multiple languages and we are all in our early to mid 30s. Dating wise, we each have our funnel of dates from dating apps, nights out where we collect numbers and one night stands. We regularly get around 20 new leeds (numbers) a week, which transform into 5 dates and in turn, 2 or 3 new one night stands. On average, every week adds one more friend with benefits to our "rooster". I place on the bottom of my friends ranking because I am very pick and prefer to date no more than 5 girls (ages 20 to 25 tops) at the same time. The friend that's most dedicated keeps a harem of 20-25 friends with benefits... He tends to service them every other week or so, sometimes double or even triple booking them on the same day. As you can imagine, this takes the same effort as a second job, keeping up with all the new dates and maintaining casual relationships. As you can imagine, my friend is in top 0.1% of guys in terms of dating success, with over 100 new sexual partners every year. I've asked girls their opinion of him and they all report that he's the kind of guy who just gets it, he's a gentleman, funny, charismatic, considerate and sexy. They seem oblivious to the fact that his skills are acquired from experience and not from mother nature. All of these girls don't mind that he's seeing other girls, they are in it for the same reason: casual fun. All in all, we 5 men are dating around 50 girls and some are exclusive on their end, knowing the details of our lifestyle. As everything in society gets more and more polarized there's more lonely men and consequently more Dan Bulzarians running around. I find the statistics even a bit tame, the average guy is so afraid of rejection that he does 5 approaches a year. My friends do 5 approaches in an hour going to a bar. Young girls live in a different reality than young guys. My advice is to not bother with dating until you reach certain status in life, earn good money, have good physique, have friends in high places and most importantly, provide fun. On the flip side, once you'll be at the top of the mountain you'll never want to find a good wife and settle down, mostly because a) there are almost no good girls in westernized society, b) why have 1 when you can have 10?

bitcoinmoney 4y ago
Are you white Caucasian males too?
4y ago

danielrpa 4y ago

I grew up in Latin America but now I'm married to an American woman and thus out of the "pool". I hang out with coworkers still in their 20s and I'm blown away by how their teens and 20s differed from mine. When I was single, all my friends and I could think about was how to find the next date or sexual partner. We were all very active, and I personally had over a dozen "serious" girlfriends (3+ months) and another couple dozen kissing flings/sexual partners, roughly 50/50 between Latin America and the US. I actually can't easily remember all the women I've been with, certainly not all of their names and in fact I'm pretty mediocre in terms of "achievement" among my friends, the best of them having had 50-100 sexual partners in their lives. Most of my younger American coworkers get to their 20s barely having kissed a couple of girls in their lives, the difference is astonishing. Have in mind I'm not particularly attractive, tall or fit, I have an average build and I'd say I disappear in the crowd but I know how to communicate with a woman and respectfully "court" them, even if it's for a one night stand. This is skill learned in my teens through trial and a LOT of error. I can't explain, maybe today our sanitized and risk-averse schools repress men's learning of the "courtship language".

llampx 4y ago
Culture matters. You can have the most "game" but if you grow up in Saudi Arabia or India you will almost certainly have a lower "count" than someone with no game who grew up in Brazil.
- danielrpa 4y ago
  True, but what I'm saying is that the same overall approach - at least in my case - worked well in the US, even though things were harder at first (some tweaks were needed indeed). I bet things would be different in India or Saudi Arabia, however we're talking about the US here. I'm saying that if young American men had the opportunity to learn how to court women, they would have no problems finding mates.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > if young American men had the opportunity to learn how to court women You growing up in a culture where courting women is encouraged makes a huge difference, you can't really practice if it isn't socially acceptable to court women badly.

johlits 4y ago

We replaced relationships with the internet.

bradlys 4y ago

I get quite tired of the boomer-esque takes on HN and everywhere else. The quintessential one is “shower, dress, have a job, and be respectful” is somehow enough to attract just about any woman. People assume that 60% of young men must just be filthy neckbeard degenerates. As far as I can tell - this is cause they never talk to young people or meet any. Attracting young women today is an entirely different ballgame than in the past and it’s incredibly challenging for average men. I do think social media has warped our perceptions of what an “average man” is. The classic “dad bod” quip is an example. A lot of women have mentioned desiring a “dad bod” and then will point out someone like Jason Mamoa when he’s either off-cycle or not completely shredded. A body that is very much not a “dad bod” at all to most men - this body is already incredibly difficult to attain and required steroids to get to to start with. The decline of third spaces and ways to interact more in person and without it being transactional has also likely made it really hard. When you need to sell yourself through images - it turns out really only a couple body types are appealing to women when it comes to images alone. Yes, you can be more attractive when interacting in person and they see your full personality but we don’t have the spaces for that anymore. Most young women I meet are incredibly full of stranger danger as well. So many stories of violent rape hit national headlines and most people are taught men are a threat before you even say hello. So, yeah, it’s no wonder you can’t really make a good first impression as an average young man. There’s nowhere to hang out with other young women in person where it’s not transactional and they already assume you’re a threat to begin with… so you’re in bad footing before you even started. The only way I’ve seen to get past this is to be incredibly charming (very rare and person specific) or genetically gifted looking to where people’s defenses are lowered (also rare). Overall - I blame capitalism. I think its desire for atomicizing everyone and making everything a transaction is the source of all these issues.

ryandrake 4y ago
I never made that connection before but you're absolutely right! The whole "just take a shower, comb your hair and dress nicely" dating advice is exactly like the "just walk up to the owner of the company and give him a firm handshake and you'll get the job!" career advice. It's coming from a place of good intentions, but from a reality that no longer exists.

taylodl 4y ago

"Even seasoned researchers struggle to fully account for the relationship gap between young women and men: If single young men outnumber single young women nearly two to one, then who are all the young women dating?" Older men. The article even notes that's a trend that's been increasing in the past 100 years. There's also been a rise in women who aren't attracted to men. It's likely always been the case that a not insignificant number of women were lesbian but needed a man to not be impoverished. Now that those impediments have been removed and women no longer need men for economic security they can more freely be lesbians. And they are.

midoridensha 4y ago
I think it's a bit more than that: the Kinsey Scale exists because many people (probably most really) are somewhere in-between, even if they have a strong preference for one sex or the other. A large number of women have probably always had bisexual tendencies, but these days with the impediments removed, they can more freely choose to explore their same-sex attraction and relationships with other women. After a few bad relationships with men, many have probably decided to only pursue relationships with women in fact. And why not? Women are generally more attractive (really attractive men are somewhat rare, but it's not as hard for most women to look nice), smell nice, are far less prone to violence, and these days generally have more education and better careers. They also are much better at being emotionally supportive in friendships/relationships and not depending on their partner to be a full-time therapist. As a bonus, they can even share clothes!

unpopularopp 4y ago

Reddit/Twitter/Tumblr solved this years ago: "just lower your standards"

mcphage 4y ago

I'm not sure how to make these two statements consistent: > More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of unattached young women > “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” said Greg Matos So women don't need to be in a long-term relationship, and yet they are at a much higher rate?

cragfar 4y ago

Boys are constantly chided for pursuing women all through school and the media. Getting denounced as creepy or weird. Actually following that advice will lead you to die alone though.

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finnthehuman 4y ago
Some people are timorous and some people are reckless; unfortunately public messaging is calibrated for the latter.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  Timorous? Correct usage of semicolon? When did you get such good diction, Finn?
  - finnthehuman 4y ago
    I'm just aping an David Mitchell bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w
- bongoman37 4y ago
  [dead]
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Still unfair, because being timorous or reckless happens in both sexes. Media and law have practically demonized young men, and I'm afraid it's been done for clicks and engagement, not a pursuit for equality. These days it's almost inevitable to see issues as black or white, but however boring, middle gray is usually the most fair position.

kthejoker2 4y ago

What I mostly see in this thread is nobody deeply caring about relationships, marriage, kids, and the like. As the article points out, the rise of sexual gratification without relationships, coinciding with women's reshaping of the financial stability side of relationships, has mostly just resulted in a lopsided winner takes all market around biological attraction. But sexual gratification is .. just ... that. Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." You don't need another person for it, you definitely don't need a member of the opposite sex, even if you want someone from the opposite sex, you can pay for it, even with a more committed relationship it's more or less transactional. The real question is was there ever any value in long term monogamous relationships? I say this as someone in a long term monogamous relationship who is super happy, but the divorce rates and gender imbalance in domestic violence tells a different story. Instead, we should work on ensuring everyone having access to paid, consensual sex workers, and bring "dating apps" back from the hookup apps they largely are into something more like eHarmony or OKCupid were - a niche app for those looking for long term relationships. People demanding other people choose sexual partners based on long term relationship dynamics that are completely irrelevant in this day and age is a weird hill to die on.

screye 4y ago
> Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." > ever any value in long term monogamous relationships rhetorical question ? I wonder if a large group of young people just do not know what true 'contentment' feels like. To truly be at peace. To feel like everything is just right. To be relieved of all insecurities in that one moment, and just take in something for all that is. None of my most cherished memories are ones of peak happiness or gratification. They are all moments of gratitude. Something that let me understand how content I felt. I didn't need, I didn't want, I had no desires. Everything was simple, and everything was there for that moment. The moments were, like all others : ephemeral. But the memories and the nostalgic feeling of security that it left behind sticks around for a long long time. That to me separates sexual gratification from being in a long term monogamous relationship. The contentment that comes with time. To know that there is someone who accepts you in your entirety. Not because you were born soul-mates, but because each person has expressed an explicit intention to do so by committing the most important currency of them all : Time. And as you invest more time, the belief in the commitment strengthens, as does the contentment it produces.

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medvezhenok 4y ago

I think what lots of people miss is the complementarity of relationships. You have to always ask yourself - what am I bringing to the table to a relationship? This is why status is a universally attractive quality. No matter what the circumstances, if someone dates someone of a high status, it elevates the dater's status as well. Basically, someone wants to go to their friends, mention who they are dating, and wants the friends to be jealous (not really, but hypothetically). Lots of people are frustrated because earning a good income used to bequeath status; however, with earnings gaps shrinking, income is no longer a good proxy for status as it once was. Also, status and income correlate, but are not the same. An artist working for Cirque du Soleil, for example, might have higher status than a Software Engineer at Google even though the latter might make significantly more money. One way to get an intuitive sense of status is the "wow" factor when you tell someone about your job (and another is the power you hold as part of that job, and how many people look up to you). Similarly, influencers have a lot of status independent of how much money they make via social validation.

midoridensha 4y ago
>No matter what the circumstances, if someone dates someone of a high status, it elevates the dater's status as well. And what makes a man "high status" varies greatly by culture. In American culture, being an engineer is just above being a janitor as far as women are concerned, and being a SWE is a little above that only because it's become common knowledge how well they're paid. Meanwhile, being a doctor or lawyer has FAR higher status, as does being an "influencer". In Asian cultures, this is entirely different.

testqwe 4y ago

I’m 26, work at a faang, and I currently see about 5 women as sort of FWB. I don’t considered myself too special or a 10/10 but I can imagine there are guys that are even better looking and richer and are seeing even more people.

bitcoinmoney 4y ago
So tell us then how you make those FWB?