It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
Well, statistically it seems to be harder than you think.
I blame the sweet dopamine hit of mobile phones, video gaming, and weed.
All are “more fun” than going out and actually meeting someone.
There is no dopamine hit bigger than going out and actually meeting someone.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
Well, statistically it seems to be harder than you think.
I blame the sweet dopamine hit of mobile phones, video gaming, and weed.
All are “more fun” than going out and actually meeting someone.
And perhaps a loss of contexts to meet people without it being a date.
Take Young Conservatives; it used to be famous for being a marriage market, and now it barely exists at all.
If Boris Johnson has remained as Prime Minister, do you think he would have been doing better or worse than Liz Truss as Prime Minister, or much the same?
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
Well, statistically it seems to be harder than you think.
I blame the sweet dopamine hit of mobile phones, video gaming, and weed.
All are “more fun” than going out and actually meeting someone.
There is no dopamine hit bigger than going out and actually meeting someone.
With all due respect, you (and I) are very, very elderly. It was different when we were young.
It's Leicester vs Forest tonight and some Leicester fans are apparently hoping to lose the match so their cash-strapped owners have no choice but to sack the loathed Rodgers.
When he was Prince of Wales, King Charles had planned to speak on climate change at COP27. Now he is king, would it be appropriate for him to still do so?
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
When he was Prince of Wales, King Charles had planned to speak on climate change at COP27. Now he is king, would it be appropriate for him to still do so?
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
That Times article is confused. It mentions the Black Sea, then suggests geography that implies the White Sea.
Paper of record? My arse.
I’ve been listening to a fair amount of times radio over the past year or so - I’ve picked up lots of simple factual errors.
My conclusion is that the times isn’t immune to the financial dynamic in journalism. Cheaper, younger, more inexperienced staff. Less oversight by expensive editors. Churn out more and more content. More opinion, less investigative journalism, etc etc.
Accuracy suffers.
Very little decent journalism left.
Panorama, the FT, BBC today/WATO/world tonight, maybe. But with the exception of the FT, quality is declining across the board.
There are a lot - I mean a LOT - of retarded seeming 20-something males.
I don’t blame the girls for steering clear.
A large proportion of young men have almost always been socially awkward - certainly since the start of the 20th century. Just go read PG Wodehouse. Almost invariably the bright ones are the women and the men are the dopey ones being swept along by the tide.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
You can't be suggesting that the decline in male sexual activity is purely down to male attitudes?
Young women now earn as much (more?) than men. Whilst men are happy to date down, women less so.
Women's standards/expectations are much higher than they were a generation ago.
Online dating is to the benefit of a small number of men.
What percentage of males are self-identifying incels? I would suspect a fairly small minority.
There are a lot - I mean a LOT - of retarded seeming 20-something males.
I don’t blame the girls for steering clear.
The lack of sympathy on this site for socially awkward young men is really quite repulsive
Having been a socially awkward young man myself I eventually found the solution in trying to be less socially awkward rather than hope society would bend itself for me. While results were initially intermittent, my 16-year marriage would suggest that ultimately the strategy worked.
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
So the redoing of elections - that’s fine as long as the Ukes who have been removed to Russia are allowed back. And then Russia will claim it’s fixed once Ukrainians return.
Why not give Crimea to the Tartars or Cossacks (Kazakhs) as it was theirs before Russia’s as an independent state? Surely as legitimate?
If Ukraine must remain “neutral” then they should insist that Crimea is demilitarised including removing the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol.
Crimea is handed over to Russia if it defaults on trillions of reparations to Ukraine.
TBH, The Crimea is strategically useless post this war to Russia. Sebastopol would be in easy reach of anti-ship / HIMARS batteries and its use as an air base similarly reduced due to likelier much improved AA systems on the Ukrainian side. In effect, any Russian forces in Crimea would be hostage to the whims of the Ukrainians. Similarly, I can't see many Russians thinking Crimea is a safe place to emigrate.
Russia is fucked
Wasn’t being overly serious - just doing an Elon Musk and chucking out ideas which have no basis in what either side wants and having no real skin in the game.
But in the end there must be a peace (or we are all dead). If it happens it will probably look something like Elon’s vision (tho Ukraine might demand NATO status)
Neither side will be “happy”. However, Armageddon will be averted
Of course there will be a peace. Ukraine isn't going to march on Moscow. I can see why a country would use nuclear weapons in self-defence, but not because of a lost war of conquest.
There are a lot - I mean a LOT - of retarded seeming 20-something males.
I don’t blame the girls for steering clear.
The lack of sympathy on this site for socially awkward young men is really quite repulsive
They just need to meet socially awkward young girls, of whom there are plenty
Which is exactly what online dating was before it went "mainstream" and everyone else did it whether they needed it or not because literally everything went online.
There are a lot - I mean a LOT - of retarded seeming 20-something males.
I don’t blame the girls for steering clear.
A large proportion of young men have almost always been socially awkward - certainly since the start of the 20th century. Just go read PG Wodehouse. Almost invariably the bright ones are the women and the men are the dopey ones being swept along by the tide.
Socially awkward isn’t quite what I meant by “retarded”.
That Times article is confused. It mentions the Black Sea, then suggests geography that implies the White Sea.
Paper of record? My arse.
I’ve been listening to a fair amount of times radio over the past year or so - I’ve picked up lots of simple factual errors.
My conclusion is that the times isn’t immune to the financial dynamic in journalism. Cheaper, younger, more inexperienced staff. Less oversight by expensive editors. Churn out more and more content. More opinion, less investigative journalism, etc etc.
Accuracy suffers.
Very little decent journalism left.
Panorama, the FT, BBC today/WATO/world tonight, maybe.
Didn't SeanT used to write for the Times? I leave it to everyone else to decide for themselves what that means in the context of your posting.
“Bank of England buys just £22mn of bonds in latest purchasing operation
Central bank has bought £3.7bn worth of government debt out of a possible £20bn since scheme launched“
Yes, that is good news. But are those pension schemes who went into LDIs just suffering cash flow issues or have they suffered actual capital losses on rising bond yields with their gearing to put their insolvency seriously at risk? If they have then solving the short term problem does not solve the longer term.
When he was Prince of Wales, King Charles had planned to speak on climate change at COP27. Now he is king, would it be appropriate for him to still do so?
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
He also won't do any further nuking because he knows he won't have to. He will simply annex everything up to, not NATO countries, but actual home grown nuclear ones. So we get to live, and go on holiday to France.
There are a lot - I mean a LOT - of retarded seeming 20-something males.
I don’t blame the girls for steering clear.
The lack of sympathy on this site for socially awkward young men is really quite repulsive
Having been a socially awkward young man myself I eventually found the solution in trying to be less socially awkward rather than hope society would bend itself for me. While results were initially intermittent, my 16-year marriage would suggest that ultimately the strategy worked.
Stopping caring is what worked for me. Off the back of an abortive engagement (I came home early from a rig to find someone else brushing their teeth in my bathroom) I stopped worrying about women for a while and, of course, that inevitably meant that I stopped making a fool of myself. Being cool and distant works well if it is genuine. My wife and I have now been married 29 years last month.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
I think that is good advice for the dating market of the 1950s...to be honest i dont think decades of soft living has helped men at all.....
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
I think that is good advice for the dating market of the 1950s...to be honest i dont think decades of soft living has helped men at all.....
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
I think that is good advice for the dating market of the 1950s...to be honest i dont think decades of soft living has helped men at all.....
Treat 'em mean, eh, tovarisch?
Many girls want to be “treated mean”. The question is how to do so without being an actual misogynist creep.
So what scene of Threads are we on now? Must be getting very close to the half hour mark.
Wake me up when that lady wets herself. Wait, are we talking about the Tory Party Conference?
That would be worse than letters falling of the backdrop, wouldn't it?
(And top tip: Don't suggest Threads as a Date Night Movie. Go with something with intellectual depth, or a romcom like The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill. Worked for me.)
It's Leicester vs Forest tonight and some Leicester fans are apparently hoping to lose the match so their cash-strapped owners have no choice but to sack the loathed Rodgers.
I will be going shortly. Everyone wants to beat Forest, but also Rodgers sacked.
If we go behind there will be a toxic atmosphere. They are a dreadful team, the second worst in the league.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
Labour 52% (+6) Conservative 24% (-5) Liberal Democrat 10% (-3) Green 5% (+1) SNP 5% (+2) Reform UK 3% (-1) Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 28-29 Sept
redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voti…
Whoops
Lead below 30 points.
Conference bounce for Truss?
Why are Lib Dems taking a hammering - they didn’t aid and abet the bad budget! 😠
Libdems the only challengers throughout Blue wall so why don’t they share the Tory slump? Something whiffs about these polls to me, I think they are Mickey Mouse polls, I don’t trust them as being remotely permanent.
There has been ephemeral polling glitches before, Hague wiped out Blair’s lead during Labour conference week one year, voter frustration with not liking being unable to put petrol in car. It was all short lived, polls went straight back to normal a few weeks later.
Without that foundation in fact Lib Dems should not be dropping by a quarter, they should be going up with blue wall voters switching from Tory to them, I refuse to believe these polls are for keeps, I choose to believe it will be back to a Lab lead about 10 in a few weeks and Lib Dems back to 12+. You can’t believe something is for real when its not founded in fact. Do you see what I mean.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
My memory is vague, but doesn’t the author of that book end up having quite a lot of sex with a large number of women? ie in the hundreds, albeit not millions?
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
Decades ago Afghan and Iranian women lived much as we do in the West. Rights once granted can be taken away
Yep. May seem unlikely, but better to be overcautious than not enough.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
And it helps if you had a constitutional settlement by 1690 between parliament and a monarchy with roots in the 8th century which no-one has been foolish enough to unravel.
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
I think that is good advice for the dating market of the 1950s...to be honest i dont think decades of soft living has helped men at all.....
Treat 'em mean, eh, tovarisch?
Many girls want to be “treated mean”. The question is how to do so without being an actual misogynist creep.
Leon is eloquent on the subject.
Certainly many women with low self esteem wind up with controlling men who confirm their opinion of themselves. It isn't a good place to be.
Sir Keir Starmer is too boring to win an election, am I right?
Truss vs Starmer (2 October):
Starmer leads Truss on ALL attributes:
Cares about people like me (47% | 16%) Understands problems affecting the UK (46% | 23%) Represents change (43% | 26%) Can build a strong economy (44% | 22%) Is a strong leader (41% | 22%)
Labour leads by 28%, largest lead for ANY party that we've recorded.
Westminster Voting Intention (2 Oct):
Labour 52% (+6) Conservative 24% (-5) Liberal Democrat 10% (-3) Green 5% (+1) SNP 5% (+2) Reform UK 3% (-1) Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 28-29 Sept
Redfield and Wilton.
Lawyers are awesome, this is just further proof.
As well as proof that taking the SNP subsample from a single UK poll isn’t a reliable indication.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
My memory is vague, but doesn’t the author of that book end up having quite a lot of sex with a large number of women? ie in the hundreds, albeit not millions?
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
Doesn't he also ends up divorced after a short marriage to a much younger woman, with two daughters who don't live with him (and one lives on the other side of the world?) Doesn't he end up spending much of his time on the Internet, trying to convince strangers that his globe-trotting life is anything more than an empty shell?
Didn't he also get tried (and acquitted) for rape?
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
He wouldn't need to invade Britain - he'd invade other countries that he sees as being in his sphere of influence, and then just subvert our democracy to be more pro-Russia. And we'd just take it.
Worse, other countries will see this 'nuke diplomacy' works, and do the same. That *will* end up in total nuclear war.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
My memory is vague, but doesn’t the author of that book end up having quite a lot of sex with a large number of women? ie in the hundreds, albeit not millions?
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
Doesn't he also ends up divorced after a short marriage to a much younger woman, with two daughters who don't live with him (and one lives on the other side of the world?) Doesn't he end up spending much of his time on the Internet, trying to convince strangers that his globe-trotting life is anything more than an empty shell?
Didn't he also get tried (and acquitted) for rape?
No thanks.
Still. He did have an awful lot of sex. With hundreds of women - many of them highly attractive. Didn’t he date the young Mariella Frostrup? When she was exactly this age?
A lot of men might settle for that. Not me tho. I prefer the cut and thrust of pb debate!
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
In which case, why not the "let off a nuke of our own and then tell everyone else what to do" party?
I am just dropping in. Is anyone discussing Iran? Or what it means to realise that universal human rights are not in fact universal? Or indeed the courage of women in such countries, courage few of us would be able to replicate?
Or are we back to @Leon's views on sex and why young men are not getting enough of it? And that this is all women's fault for not wanting to be pawed by men they don't like? Again.
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
He wouldn't need to invade Britain - he'd invade other countries that he sees as being in his sphere of influence, and then just subvert our democracy to be more pro-Russia. And we'd just take it.
Worse, other countries will see this 'nuke diplomacy' works, and do the same. That *will* end up in total nuclear war.
How would he subvert our democracy? He wouldn't, because Russians in the House of Lords would be come unacceptable.
And n oit won't. The more we all roll over and let him have his way the less his incentive to nuke anything. Why cause a mega airburst over Paris if you expect to own the place in 6 months time?
Sir Keir Starmer is too boring to win an election, am I right?
Truss vs Starmer (2 October):
Starmer leads Truss on ALL attributes:
Cares about people like me (47% | 16%) Understands problems affecting the UK (46% | 23%) Represents change (43% | 26%) Can build a strong economy (44% | 22%) Is a strong leader (41% | 22%)
Labour leads by 28%, largest lead for ANY party that we've recorded.
Westminster Voting Intention (2 Oct):
Labour 52% (+6) Conservative 24% (-5) Liberal Democrat 10% (-3) Green 5% (+1) SNP 5% (+2) Reform UK 3% (-1) Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 28-29 Sept
Redfield and Wilton.
Lawyers are awesome, this is just further proof.
As well as proof that taking the SNP subsample from a single UK poll isn’t a reliable indication.
Have a heart, SNP 3% (-2) in another poll provided Leon with a teeny moment of blissful distraction.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
My memory is vague, but doesn’t the author of that book end up having quite a lot of sex with a large number of women? ie in the hundreds, albeit not millions?
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
Doesn't he also ends up divorced after a short marriage to a much younger woman, with two daughters who don't live with him (and one lives on the other side of the world?) Doesn't he end up spending much of his time on the Internet, trying to convince strangers that his globe-trotting life is anything more than an empty shell?
Didn't he also get tried (and acquitted) for rape?
No thanks.
Still. He did have an awful lot of sex. With hundreds of women - many of them highly attractive. Didn’t he date the young Mariella Frostrup? When she was exactly this age?
A lot of men might settle for that. Not me tho. I prefer the cut and thrust of pb debate!
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
You are completely right in your analysis
The same process is seen in desirable professions. Eg writers. It used to be quite a lot of people made a decent income from writing. Journalists, copy writers, biographers, midlist authors
Now due to multiple changes from tech to English language hegemony a small percentage of writers make huge money and for the rest it is barely worth doing
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
Fine.
So if Putin gets his way by waving a nuke, I will finish my Violet Club replica and demand some bits of other peoples countries.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
I am just dropping in. Is anyone discussing Iran? Or what it means to realise that universal human rights are not in fact universal? Or indeed the courage of women in such countries, courage few of us would be able to replicate?
Or are we back to @Leon's views on sex and why young men are not getting enough of it? And that this is all women's fault for not wanting to be pawed by men they don't like? Again.
Self-importance verging on Get professional help now, levels. Nobody is obliged by law to read your essays, you have been told a thousand times to self-edit or actually get edited to make them readable and you just won't listen, and yes we were talking about techniques for removing feminine underwear with one's teeth.
My advice for 20 year old “socially akwards” is to focus on your career, and some suitably outdoorsy hobbies, and return to the “market” at 30.
The market winnows pretty quickly.
That's good advice. My advice for socially awkward 20 year olds (and I was one as well, in a way), is to listen more than talk, and be nice. Don't lie to impress, as they'll discover the truth soon enough.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
My memory is vague, but doesn’t the author of that book end up having quite a lot of sex with a large number of women? ie in the hundreds, albeit not millions?
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
Doesn't he also ends up divorced after a short marriage to a much younger woman, with two daughters who don't live with him (and one lives on the other side of the world?) Doesn't he end up spending much of his time on the Internet, trying to convince strangers that his globe-trotting life is anything more than an empty shell?
Didn't he also get tried (and acquitted) for rape?
No thanks.
My advice to the socially awkward is to practise socialising. Take up some sports/activities that attract a mix of people. Don’t try.
The local sailing club makes a fortune hiring out its rather grand HQ for weddings. Mostly of people who met while sailing….
not only that but a ceasefire would save many ukrainian lives too
Hahaha, we're already right back at the 'People die while defending themselves, so they should stop' that we got at the start of the invasion.
Tell it to Jeremy Corbyn, he'd be receptive.
It's like no one has ever experienced any work of fiction or morality reminding us that, occasionally, things are worth fighting for. As the Header might suggest.
Jacobin that @Leon quotes is a pretty hard left site, and like much of the hard left doesn't seem aware that Russia is no longer Communist.
You could engage with the argument rather than pleading guilt by association
I despise Putin, loathe this war, and I am delighted Ukraine is on the attack
But we have to be realistic, because Russia is a great power with nukes. That’s just a fact
Totally humiliating Russia will simply provoke the ultra-Nationalists. Even if Putin falls he’ll be replaced by someone WORSE, who might be happy to hook up with China
Let them keep Crimea if Crimeans so desire
I don't buy this "There are first and second class countries in the world. The first class countries are allowed to make decisions for themselves, but the second class ones have to ask permission of the nearest first class one."
Ukraine is allowed to join NATO or the EU or whatever: Russia doesn't get a veto on the basis that they were once a great power.
Except the members of NATO and the EU do get a veto on Ukraine joining, so you haven't really eliminated hierarchy.
And Ukraine cannot continue the war without western arms and money, our money, so we also get a say. And while we want Putin rebuffed and diminished - or gone - we don’t want him replaced by someone even worse and we don’t want to die in a nuclear war. So we have our say
We get an opinion. We don't get a veto. And if we were stupid enough to try I hope they would tell us to go fuck ourselves.
And if Putin drops a modest nuke on Snake Island or Odessa, what do we do? Should we all die for Ukraine?
No we should continue to fight for them - which is about the only chance we will have to live. Because if Putin sees he can drop nukes and no one does anything then we know he will not stop there.
I rally cannot comprehend why people just don't get this. If dropping a nuke gets him what he wants, why wouldn't he do so again to get what hw wants? And why wouldn't every dictator want nukes and save all the money their conventional armies cost (which as Russia shows can be lacklustre)?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
He only has to drop one nuke, because if it works, he knows he can do whatever the fuck he likes without ever actually dropping another. Deterrence theory is both incredibly complex and brutally simple like that.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
If he drops one nuke I would expect every Russian asset and troop concentration within Ukraine (including Crimea) to be taken out by conventioanl means within days. This would include the Black Sea fleet.
I am just dropping in. Is anyone discussing Iran? Or what it means to realise that universal human rights are not in fact universal? Or indeed the courage of women in such countries, courage few of us would be able to replicate?
Or are we back to @Leon's views on sex and why young men are not getting enough of it? And that this is all women's fault for not wanting to be pawed by men they don't like? Again.
Mrs J lived in Iran for a short period in the early 1980s (her dad was in the diplomatic service, and when he fell out of favour got transferred from London to Tehran). The experience turned her into a lifelong feminist.
You can always tell you're out of favour when you get transferred to a warzone...
And yes, the women are very brave. I hope they win.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
ConHome not exactly stirred by Kwasi’s oratory: There was by now an atmosphere of concern. This felt a bit like listening to a doctor who insists that he knows what needs to be done, but is unable to communicate the essential element of confidence.
A cursory peroration about patriotism, and the speech was over. At a guess, about 60 per cent of those present rose and gave the Chancellor a short standing ovation, but 40 per cent remained seated.
The man sitting in front of me continued to sit, and shook his head in an angry way. The speech had not satisfied him, and had not delighted anyone.
As people drifted away, the mood was almost funereal. Morale had not been restored. But maybe the speech will have gone down better with those who did not listen to it, and just hear that Kwarteng delivered a damp squib rather than a fireworks display.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
Which is fair and absolutely true. But it misses the crucial point that online dating - particularly the newer generation of swipey swipey apps rather than text based descriptive profiles - is almost entirely predicated on looks alone.
And given online dating is increasingly the only game in town, then...
I am just dropping in. Is anyone discussing Iran? Or what it means to realise that universal human rights are not in fact universal? Or indeed the courage of women in such countries, courage few of us would be able to replicate?
Or are we back to @Leon's views on sex and why young men are not getting enough of it? And that this is all women's fault for not wanting to be pawed by men they don't like? Again.
This thread on Iran is well worth reading. Some amazing scenes of protests.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
Well, statistically it seems to be harder than you think.
I blame the sweet dopamine hit of mobile phones, video gaming, and weed.
All are “more fun” than going out and actually meeting someone.
There is no dopamine hit bigger than going out and actually meeting someone.
With all due respect, you (and I) are very, very elderly. It was different when we were young.
Well maybe. I concede it's been a few years since I was involved in this sort of thing. But surely it's just an immutable fact of biology: the hit, the dizzying hit, that your body gives you from meeting someone of the opppsite sex who will take a little bit more than an interest? It stays with you for days, weeks, months, years. That's how humans are still going, surely? *drifts into happy reverie*
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Is thay true any more - that yhe vast majority of people don't use dating apps to get partners?
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
But this is simply and probably wrong (you fat clueless twat etc etc)
These days people meet via social media, very often dating apps. It’s absolutely standard
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
You are completely right in your analysis
The same process is seen in desirable professions. Eg writers. It used to be quite a lot of people made a decent income from writing. Journalists, copy writers, biographers, midlist authors
Now due to multiple changes from tech to English language hegemony a small percentage of writers make huge money and for the rest it is barely worth doing
See also artists, photographers, and so on
Well, it's analysis heavily based on Houellebecq and a few more recent behavioural psychologists and statistical analysis of who swipes on what, and how frequency, on dating apps (see here: https://archive.ph/JqVOC for example), but thanks.
But I think you're right in that the whole attention economy has shifted this way. From influencers with millions of followers pushing diet pills to us ordinaries with 153 followers, to, as you say, there being a small number of mega-journalists, writers, artists, photographers etc who make a living out of the whole thing while everyone else languishes in obscurity.
It is undoubtedly a result of the the internet becoming the ultimate frictionless border through which ideas and art are propagated, and has had the same predictable results.
I openly state that the recent riots & unrest in Iran were schemes designed by the US; the usurping, fake Zionist regime; their mercenaries; & some treasonous Iranians abroad who helped them.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Vast majority is way wrong, the interweb thinks 40% of relationships start online.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
But this is simply and probably wrong (you fat clueless twat etc etc)
These days people meet via social media, very often dating apps. It’s absolutely standard
I wonder if I was one of the earliest PBers to meet a partner through the Internet? I met a GF through a bulletin board (Mono, if anyone remembers that) in 1992. Pre-WWW.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Vast majority is way wrong, the interweb thinks 40% of relationships start online.
Yes, and I bet that in the 20 to say mid 30's age group it's much higher than that. Older people might be using dating apps less, but younger folk?
When he was Prince of Wales, King Charles had planned to speak on climate change at COP27. Now he is king, would it be appropriate for him to still do so?
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Vast majority is way wrong, the interweb thinks 40% of relationships start online.
Both my lads met their girlfriends that way, both nice lads but hardly top 10% looks wise.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Is thay true any more - that yhe vast majority of people don't use dating apps to get partners?
Certainly looks to be that way from all the stats. Not least because, taking Tinder as an example, in 2021 89% of all Tinder users were male and only 9% female. Unless there are a hell of a lot of gangbangs going on that is not a recipe for a majority of dates being by online dating.
Edit. The other stat I find amusing is that 42% of all Tinder users in the UK are already married or in a 'steady' relationship.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Vast majority is way wrong, the interweb thinks 40% of relationships start online.
Both my lads met their girlfriends that way, both nice lads but hardly top 10% looks wise.
It’s how everyone meets. Probably a majority of under 40s
It’s how I met my last 38 girlfriends. That’s not an exaggeration
It’s how you find someone who REALLY suits you. It makes total sense. It widens your choice by orders of magnitude
When he was Prince of Wales, King Charles had planned to speak on climate change at COP27. Now he is king, would it be appropriate for him to still do so?
It is quite good to read an article that is realistic about the 'arc of history'. It doesn't neccessarily advance in a positive way although educated people often have a quasi religious faith that it does. For the last 15 years the arc of history has been going in the wrong direction with conservatism and patriarchy in the ascendancy, at least on a global scale. In this context I think we could be a bit more positive about our own society and what it has achieved.
patriairchy in the ascendancy the past 15 years....maybe in the minds of extreme feminists but i dont think modern britain could in any way be described as a patriarchy
Why do I suspect that in your mind feminist = extreme feminist?
do you think modern britain could be described as a patriarchy....i dont.....many young men actually think feminism has gone too far...look at the popularity of andrew tate for example
Incels gonna incel.
If tate's popularity is limited to incels (which it might be), then that means there are a hell of a lot of men out there not having sex at all. Which is worrying.
It is a societal problem - aside from the fact we need people to form stable relationships and have children so we can all have someone to look after us in our old age, it implies men and women aren't communicating any more, which is a huge problem in the way we relate to one another.
We also have to question why "incels" are such a uniquely modern phenomenon.
There is the infamous Pew Research chart from 2018 that shows that the percentage of young men not having sex has risen from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 - and while the number of young men not having sex is clearly out of historic norms, young women continue to have sex at normal rates, albeit less than in 2008.
So what is happening in society? Where did all the incels come from, and why did they start appearing so frequently in 2008? What changed?
Dating apps like Tinder
The ugly guy who used to get laid by being funny or clever no longer gets a look-in. The girl swipes the wrong way and his jokes are unheard
The top 10% of males, looks-wise, get 80% of the sex. I believe research has proved this
Though walk about any town centre and there are loads of couples where the male is dishevelled and/or ugly yet paired up. Twas ever so.
Incels need to up their game in terms of presentation, drop their misogyny and treat the women they meet with kindness and respect. It really isn't a difficult formula.
Well, statistically it seems to be harder than you think.
I blame the sweet dopamine hit of mobile phones, video gaming, and weed.
All are “more fun” than going out and actually meeting someone.
There is no dopamine hit bigger than going out and actually meeting someone.
But you only discover that when you actually do it.
You could look at it a different way. Incel (involuntarily celibate) is a subset of 'men who are just celibate'. If dealing with women becomes too difficult and risky, then they could just decide to stop bothering. No one is forcing men to have sex and go in to relationships with women. Particularly now that you have pornography, virtual reality etc. Perhaps it will get to the point where men adopt children, etc, in the way that single women sometimes give birth by IVF etc. Would this be such a bad thing? I am not saying that this is a healthy state of affairs, but it could be where the current phase of the 'sexual revolution' is leading to.
I'm inclined towards Houellebecq's answer, that it is "the law of market forces".
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
All of which kind of ignores the fact that many men and women are attracted to each other for reasons other than their looks. Yes, in a nightclub or bar obviously the first thing that catches the eye is looks but it takes about 5 seconds actually talking with someone to realise that, whatever their superficial attractiveness, you sure as hell wouldn't want more than the briefest of flirtations.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
And again you totally miss the point. I’m not surprised you never got laid for years if you’re this obtuse
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
And guess what, unless they are sad sacks like you, the vast majority of people do not use dating apps to get partners. They don't have to because they are able to actually interact with the opposite sex face to face rather than hiding behind a phone. It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
Vast majority is way wrong, the interweb thinks 40% of relationships start online.
Both my lads met their girlfriends that way, both nice lads but hardly top 10% looks wise.
As one of the very few people on here under 30 and male:
- At uni, not a problem. Endless fun, brilliant women who were attracted to the fact I fancied climbing mountains more than I fancied them. Ended up in a long 5 year relationship as result.
- I met my current girlfriend through a dating app during COVID. Much harder work to find someone who matched my interests and would actually match with me. I can't get any of my slightly mad energy across in a profile. Without being too cocky, far more successful in a "natural" setting than online.
- If I were to date again now, I'd leave the apps alone and probably chance it with someone from a running or walking club. If that didn't work, at least if have met new friends and be doing something I love anyway.
Note: Hinge is really good. Don't bother with the others.
Also note: Girls are into stuff you don't expect. Hands, chest hair, helping your male friends with stuff, engaging with strangers like pub staff, and how you smell.
Comments
Take Young Conservatives; it used to be famous for being a marriage market, and now it barely exists at all.
All Britons
Better: 29%
Same: 47%
Worse: 8%
Con voters
Better: 49%
Same: 32%
Worse: 7%
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1576956741404721163?s=20&t=WQkBvNq6js4EFGebhofrPw
All Britons: appropriate 49% / inappropriate 31%
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1576959509515235329?s=20&t=WQkBvNq6js4EFGebhofrPw
My conclusion is that the times isn’t immune to the financial dynamic in journalism. Cheaper, younger, more inexperienced staff. Less oversight by expensive editors. Churn out more and more content. More opinion, less investigative journalism, etc etc.
Accuracy suffers.
Very little decent journalism left.
Panorama, the FT, BBC today/WATO/world tonight, maybe. But with the exception of the FT, quality is declining across the board.
Young women now earn as much (more?) than men. Whilst men are happy to date down, women less so.
Women's standards/expectations are much higher than they were a generation ago.
Online dating is to the benefit of a small number of men.
What percentage of males are self-identifying incels? I would suspect a fairly small minority.
But your point is well made.
I couldn't possibly comment
They were playing a Robbie Williams song at HT
It reminded me I once sat next to a very pushy insurance salesman at a Robbie Williams gig.
And through it all, he offered me protection
Gets Coat
The market winnows pretty quickly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/xun6gu/drone_caught_a_couple_of_russian_soldiers_during/
(Two soldiers in an intimate moment have a bit of an explosive climax.)
I really shouldn't have laughed, but I did.
#TrussIsRight
Which is fine by me given the alternative.
Wait, are we talking about the Tory Party Conference?
Besides, I don't think he'll use a nuke. There's other, more deniable things he could do. Chemical weapons; disrupting our comms or gas supply. Hitting a Ukrainian nuclear power station. But he knows all of those have dangers, even if they are more deniable.
Putin’s Special Nuclear War Train puts us at about minute 27
Btw that HuffPost headline is from 2011. So a little bit deceptive. Still mad tho
The Russians are emptying banks: the outflow into cash since the beginning of mobilization has exceeded 600 billion rubles.
People take out "cash" from their accounts at a rate of 2.6 billion rubles per hour."
https://twitter.com/EraMertyn/status/1576988463219736576
The question is how to do so without being an actual misogynist creep.
Leon is eloquent on the subject.
(And top tip: Don't suggest Threads as a Date Night Movie. Go with something with intellectual depth, or a romcom like The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill. Worked for me.)
If we go behind there will be a toxic atmosphere. They are a dreadful team, the second worst in the league.
And whatever you do, do not follow *any* of the advice in "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You"
Libdems the only challengers throughout Blue wall so why don’t they share the Tory slump? Something whiffs about these polls to me, I think they are Mickey Mouse polls, I don’t trust them as being remotely permanent.
There has been ephemeral polling glitches before, Hague wiped out Blair’s lead during Labour conference week one year, voter frustration with not liking being unable to put petrol in car. It was all short lived, polls went straight back to normal a few weeks later.
Without that foundation in fact Lib Dems should not be dropping by a quarter, they should be going up with blue wall voters switching from Tory to them, I refuse to believe these polls are for keeps, I choose to believe it will be back to a Lab lead about 10 in a few weeks and Lib Dems back to 12+. You can’t believe something is for real when its not founded in fact. Do you see what I mean.
The dating market is the most capitalistic and selfish market there is - nobody wants to redistribute wealth in this market. There are a variety of things that make a person attractive - looks, physique, wealth, intelligence, sense of humour, style, youth etc. But each and every one of undeniably has a "sexual market value" based on these factors.
Now enter globalisation.
Up until about 2008, you largely met people through your social networks or your immediate surroundings. Social media didn't exist... you have to remember Facebook was limited to universities only until 2006 and the other stuff, instagram, tiktok, tinder, blah, didn't exist at all. So you'd go to a bar, meet through a college society, the young conservatives, a friend of the family, work colleague etc.
That all changed once our lives went online.
Consider an absolute stunner of a 21 year old girl. She's got model good looks and every man who meets her wants her. In 2005, she probably would have met people through uni, or at a bar, at her place of work, etc. Take out the oldies, the uglies the fatties etc - and she's probably got a dating pool of 1000 eligible bachelors in her town or wider social network to choose from.
Fast forward to 2022. All a beautiful 21 year old has to do is have access to an iphone and instagram and just by posting a few bikini shots, she can have 10,000 followers and premier league footballers in her DMs, if she's pretty enough.
Her sexual market value hasn't changed, but her access to an infinitely larger global sexual marketplace has.
This is very good for the attractive people of this world, but very bad for the unattractive ones. The attractive people have vastly more options at their disposal. The unattractive ones - well, are still unattractive, so many, many, many more rejections. It doesn't matter how many instagram selfies they post, they still get no interest.
We know that this is true of Tinder, if Tinder was a country it would have one of the highest gini coefficients in the world.
https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a
What all this means for society is, unfortunately, exactly what you'd get in any society where the resources are so unevenly distributed. You have an aristocracy with high sexual market value (through beauty, money, status etc) hoarding all the wealth, with an impoverished peasantry slowly starving to death.
Might all be lies of course - probably is - but if true it suggests his advice is not all bad
And it helps if you had a constitutional settlement by 1690 between parliament and a monarchy with roots in the 8th century which no-one has been foolish enough to unravel.
And if he drops one, I would vote every time in a GE for the Let Vlad do what he wants up to but not including invading the UK (Britain actually, he is welcome to NI) party vs the Some things are more important than life itself lot.
Great header from @Cyclefree.
Didn't he also get tried (and acquitted) for rape?
No thanks.
Worse, other countries will see this 'nuke diplomacy' works, and do the same. That *will* end up in total nuclear war.
A lot of men might settle for that. Not me tho. I prefer the cut and thrust of pb debate!
Or are we back to @Leon's views on sex and why young men are not getting enough of it? And that this is all women's fault for not wanting to be pawed by men they don't like? Again.
And n oit won't. The more we all roll over and let him have his way the less his incentive to nuke anything. Why cause a mega airburst over Paris if you expect to own the place in 6 months time?
https://twitter.com/labourdesign/status/1576982531605696518?s=46&t=65cnXc3WZ6WXR76a_ak9QQ
The same process is seen in desirable professions. Eg writers. It used to be quite a lot of people made a decent income from writing. Journalists, copy writers, biographers, midlist authors
Now due to multiple changes from tech to English language hegemony a small percentage of writers make huge money and for the rest it is barely worth doing
See also artists, photographers, and so on
So if Putin gets his way by waving a nuke, I will finish my Violet Club replica and demand some bits of other peoples countries.
This simple truth is proved by the fact that, in spite of the fact that 99% of us - whether male or female - are not 'stunners', the vast majority of us end up in romantic relationships that thankfully outlive the initial superficial attraction.
Have a nice evening.
The local sailing club makes a fortune hiring out its rather grand HQ for weddings. Mostly of people who met while sailing….
You can always tell you're out of favour when you get transferred to a warzone...
And yes, the women are very brave. I hope they win.
Internet dating. Dating apps
They make everything much more instant and visual. So the less good looking guys don’t even have a chance to pull. This is a real phenomenon and it is unquestionably bad for society. See all the incel shooters in the USA
A cursory peroration about patriotism, and the speech was over. At a guess, about 60 per cent of those present rose and gave the Chancellor a short standing ovation, but 40 per cent remained seated.
The man sitting in front of me continued to sit, and shook his head in an angry way. The speech had not satisfied him, and had not delighted anyone.
As people drifted away, the mood was almost funereal. Morale had not been restored. But maybe the speech will have gone down better with those who did not listen to it, and just hear that Kwarteng delivered a damp squib rather than a fireworks display.
And given online dating is increasingly the only game in town, then...
The white sea seems the appropriate location one would have thought
https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1576961571334500352?t=DFJypjC5Kk5El6HszyRBjA&s=19
It is you who completely miss the point. You are the incel.
I concede it's been a few years since I was involved in this sort of thing.
But surely it's just an immutable fact of biology: the hit, the dizzying hit, that your body gives you from meeting someone of the opppsite sex who will take a little bit more than an interest? It stays with you for days, weeks, months, years. That's how
humans are still going, surely?
*drifts into happy reverie*
But this is simply and probably wrong (you fat clueless twat etc etc)
These days people meet via social media, very often dating apps. It’s absolutely standard
But I think you're right in that the whole attention economy has shifted this way. From influencers with millions of followers pushing diet pills to us ordinaries with 153 followers, to, as you say, there being a small number of mega-journalists, writers, artists, photographers etc who make a living out of the whole thing while everyone else languishes in obscurity.
It is undoubtedly a result of the the internet becoming the ultimate frictionless border through which ideas and art are propagated, and has had the same predictable results.
I openly state that the recent riots & unrest in Iran were schemes designed by the US; the usurping, fake Zionist regime; their mercenaries; & some treasonous Iranians abroad who helped them.
https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1576886347151069184?s=21&t=8S58SL9_XJMy4W-htEJgZg
No Twitter ban hammer for the supreme leader either.
The White Sea is stunningly beautiful. And pure. And kind of White. I went to the Solovetsky Islands in 2019
At the moment however it is Truss who is more in need of a popularity boost than the King
Edit. The other stat I find amusing is that 42% of all Tinder users in the UK are already married or in a 'steady' relationship.
It’s how I met my last 38 girlfriends. That’s not an exaggeration
It’s how you find someone who REALLY suits you. It makes total sense. It widens your choice by orders of magnitude
You’re simply wrong
https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1576956213975056385
One branch chair tells me he ordered 10,000 leaflets five days ago boasting about the 45p rate abolition. They’re all in the bin now. His branch is definitely not happy.
- At uni, not a problem. Endless fun, brilliant women who were attracted to the fact I fancied climbing mountains more than I fancied them. Ended up in a long 5 year relationship as result.
- I met my current girlfriend through a dating app during COVID. Much harder work to find someone who matched my interests and would actually match with me. I can't get any of my slightly mad energy across in a profile. Without being too cocky, far more successful in a "natural" setting than online.
- If I were to date again now, I'd leave the apps alone and probably chance it with someone from a running or walking club. If that didn't work, at least if have met new friends and be doing something I love anyway.
Note: Hinge is really good. Don't bother with the others.
Also note: Girls are into stuff you don't expect. Hands, chest hair, helping your male friends with stuff, engaging with strangers like pub staff, and how you smell.