Now that RWC pool games are over, and expertley predicted by me (mostly), it is time to move on to the fun stuff - the knockout stages. The 4 Quarter Finals being:
Wales v Argentina Ireland v New Zealand England v Fiji France v South Africa
I will make a detailed prediction for each match and publish later in the week (once some of the injury situations have been clarified).
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
The man is an utter disgrace to humanity and to the Labour Party he claims to speak on behalf of.
How can he claim to speak for Labour? He sits as an independent and the party has barred him from standing for Labour at the next election. Short of taking out a contract on him I'm not sure what else you expect Labour to do.
It is no coincidence this is happening now. The thing Hamas fears above all else is that Israel's relationship with the Muslim and Arab world is normalized.
And by baiting Israel into a response in Gaza, they ensure that the public in the Muslim world will be incensed, and the possibility of improved relations between Israel, Saudi and the like becomes much diminished.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
An opposition to working class pay rises is pretty widespread among much of the middle class.
Remember the anger two years ago about increasing pay rates for delivery drivers, supermarket workers, agricultural labourers, abattoir workers etc.
Indeed it is - higher wages = higher costs for the middle classes who use services. It was great nice Svetlana the cleaner was from Bulgaria but even better that she didn't cost that much to employ because there were so many like her.
There was a report the other week on the back of surveying various CEO's about AI's effects on their workforce. The headline I saw was something like 'Top CEO claims workers will have 3.5 day weeks!".
Which when you read the report was actually "Workers will need to work two part time jobs!"...
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
Lots of countries have been getting migrants they don't want in recent years.
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
Doesn’t work. An entire population of more than 2 million kicked out of their homes - won’t happen, can’t happen, not worth spending too long hypothesising.
Occupation, yes. I think that’s likely. Will that be better or worse for the inhabitants than the present day’s living prison, I suppose that depends.
Why can't it happen ?
Destroy the energy infrastructure, destroy the water infrastructure, destroy the food infrastructure, destroy everything apart from the way out.
Unpleasant to contemplate from outside but certainly possible for someone with the power and determination to do it.
And we have just seen it done in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Gaza has a much larger population of course but that might even make it easier - two million people require a lot of food and water.
Yes, you can do that.
It will, though, result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Now, maybe you argue that that's just war, and that the Gazans brought it on themselves by attacking Israel. But that would be a disparity of destruction that would, I think, be unmatched in modern times.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
The paper's political leanings aren't really relevant, this is a news feature not a comment piece. It would be weird if they wrote a piece about the cost squeeze driving pubs out of business and didn't cover issues around staffing availability and costs. It's perfectly possible to be in favour of higher wages whilst also acknowledging that they're going to create problems for marginally profitable businesses. IMHO the problem pubs face is that their potential customers spend so much money on rent they have nothing left for discretionary spending on nights out. Fix housing and a lot of other problems will get fixed, too.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
The man is an utter disgrace to humanity and to the Labour Party he claims to speak on behalf of.
How can he claim to speak for Labour? He sits as an independent and the party has barred him from standing for Labour at the next election. Short of taking out a contract on him I'm not sure what else you expect Labour to do.
I read the remark as he is a disgrace to the party precisely because he does not actually speak for it (anymore), not blaming the party for him, that that he continues to choose to be a part of them rather than go his own way acts as a millstone on their necks, since in his own mind the members still want the same things they wanted under him, when they've proven more flexible.
Truthfully I think he did come to enjoy the approbation he got as Labour leader, who wouldn't even if humble minded, and whilst he still gets a small group of people fired up, he probably hoped for far more of a grandee sort of role than what in fact has occurred. He's not faded into the niche obscurity of before his time as Leader, but the things he says and does, even if picked up and condemned, don't end up reflecting on the party anymore, because he's so decisively been rejected by the leadership.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
An opposition to working class pay rises is pretty widespread among much of the middle class.
Remember the anger two years ago about increasing pay rates for delivery drivers, supermarket workers, agricultural labourers, abattoir workers etc.
Indeed it is - higher wages = higher costs for the middle classes who use services. It was great nice Svetlana the cleaner was from Bulgaria but even better that she didn't cost that much to employ because there were so many like her.
There was a report the other week on the back of surveying various CEO's about AI's effects on their workforce. The headline I saw was something like 'Top CEO claims workers will have 3.5 day weeks!".
Which when you read the report was actually "Workers will need to work two part time jobs!"...
AI is going to be the equivalent for graduates in the creative world as automation was for car workers - far less need for them
It is no coincidence this is happening now. The thing Hamas fears above all else is that Israel's relationship with the Muslim and Arab world is normalized.
And by baiting Israel into a response in Gaza, they ensure that the public in the Muslim world will be incensed, and the possibility of improved relations between Israel, Saudi and the like becomes much diminished.
Big costs now to stoke the flame for future generations. They probably see it as worthy sacrifice.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
The man is an utter disgrace to humanity and to the Labour Party he claims to speak on behalf of.
How can he claim to speak for Labour? He sits as an independent and the party has barred him from standing for Labour at the next election. Short of taking out a contract on him I'm not sure what else you expect Labour to do.
We have BJO on here posting daily with withering critiques of Starmer (BJO busted potty-mouth- gate) and the current iteration of the Labour Party and eulogies for Corbyn.
I suspect Corbyn too can't believe the party to which he has devoted his life, speak as red Tories. He, I suggest believes he and his fellow travellers speak for the spirit of the Labour Party including their disgusting nods to anti-Semitism.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
The paper's political leanings aren't really relevant, this is a news feature not a comment piece. It would be weird if they wrote a piece about the cost squeeze driving pubs out of business and didn't cover issues around staffing availability and costs. It's perfectly possible to be in favour of higher wages whilst also acknowledging that they're going to create problems for marginally profitable businesses. IMHO the problem pubs face is that their potential customers spend so much money on rent they have nothing left for discretionary spending on nights out. Fix housing and a lot of other problems will get fixed, too.
You're right for the most part, but your first sentence did make me snort.
Suggests America is anticipating some kind of all-out war in Israel
BBC livestream is reporting on it as :
More from the United States, which has promised additional support for Israel, as we mentioned earlier.
The US military is deploying naval vessels and combat aircraft to "to bolster regional deterrence efforts" amid the ongoing fighting in Israel, a Pentagon statement says.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says a fleet of vessels centred on a US Navy aircraft carrier has been directed to the eastern Mediterranean. This deployment also includes several guided-missile cruisers and destroyers.
In addition, US Air Force squadrons in the Middle East are being augmented. "The US maintains forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required," Austin adds.
Extra resources, including munitions, are also being dispatched to Israel, with the first security assistance expected to arrive in the coming days. Austin says the action "underscores the United States’ ironclad support for the Israel Defence Forces and the Israeli people".
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
It is worth remembering a few things, though.
Firstly, those Germans had somewhere to go to: Germany. And, indeed, many of the ten million had started heading there even before they were forced by Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovakians, Bulgarians, and the like.
Secondly, Gaza is a small strip of land, surrounded on one side by the Mediterranean Ocean, on two by Israel, and by the Sinai desert on the fourth.
Israel can't drive the Gazans into the sea. They can't arrange a boat lift for them without (a) an insane amount of money and (b) somewhere to send them.
They can't absorb them into Israel.
They can't even easily send them to the West Bank. (And, if they did, they'd create an even greater disparity between the number of Settlers and the number of pissed of Palestinians.)
Which leaves only several hundred miles of Egyptian desert with no settlements or water.
So, yes, Israel could drive the Gazans into Sinai. But at the cost of perhaps 100 or 200 thousand dead.
Also bear in mind that Egypt is Israel's best ally in the region. And having two million Gazans starving in the Sinai would not be great for that relationship.
I disagree with your "they've got nowhere to go to" suggestion - they would have the same places as millions of other current refugees from MENA go to.
They might not want to go there and they might not be wanted but that's the fate of millions of refugees from that part of the world and has been for generations.
The deciding factor will be how much Israel wants them out.
There would be a cost to Israel of going all-in on the all-out strategy but that might be a cost it prefers to the cost of the current situation.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
i reckon Israel will go further than that, this time, because this nastiness - as described in your last paragraph - is what it has always done. Tighten the noose, kill a few thousand, make life worse, and... the result is 700 dead Israelis in one day
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
The Israelis are missing a trick, flood Gaza with cheap fentanyl, booze and hookers and all the young men there will be too monged, too happy or too pissed to want to have a fight.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
An opposition to working class pay rises is pretty widespread among much of the middle class.
Remember the anger two years ago about increasing pay rates for delivery drivers, supermarket workers, agricultural labourers, abattoir workers etc.
Indeed it is - higher wages = higher costs for the middle classes who use services. It was great nice Svetlana the cleaner was from Bulgaria but even better that she didn't cost that much to employ because there were so many like her.
There was a report the other week on the back of surveying various CEO's about AI's effects on their workforce. The headline I saw was something like 'Top CEO claims workers will have 3.5 day weeks!".
Which when you read the report was actually "Workers will need to work two part time jobs!"...
AI is going to be the equivalent for graduates in the creative world as automation was for car workers - far less need for them
A rather striking description I heard was along the lines of "It will do for cognitive labour what the Industrial Revolution did for physical labour".
Though the RT-2-X papers also give me a little worry for a host of other jobs too.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
The paper's political leanings aren't really relevant, this is a news feature not a comment piece. It would be weird if they wrote a piece about the cost squeeze driving pubs out of business and didn't cover issues around staffing availability and costs. It's perfectly possible to be in favour of higher wages whilst also acknowledging that they're going to create problems for marginally profitable businesses. IMHO the problem pubs face is that their potential customers spend so much money on rent they have nothing left for discretionary spending on nights out. Fix housing and a lot of other problems will get fixed, too.
I think it is a lot more selective than that. Remember a growing proportion of young people are living with their parents at home. While they may make some contribution, it will not be the at the same level as rent. Certainly, round where we live (and, admittedly, it is vastly under-representative of the country being North London), the pubs are chocked full of people in their 20s - and those I know by sight are all living with their parents post-university.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
Gordon Brown really does have a lot to answer for.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
The use of slick videos, the go-pros etc, at very least have been copied from the way ISIS did it. Now who and why managed this, there are as many different Islamist factions* as there are Grant Shapps online identities, but obviously it is Iran with the money / rockets / drones etc. And its easier than ever to create such high quality videos.
* ISIS itself managed to convice a real weird mix of people to join the callephate project. I always wondered where they melted some went home to Europe, i think i read some went to Africa.
Obviously Iran backed Assad against ISIS....so on the face of it you would think no, but shrugs as I say ISIS got a real pick n mix of people involved.
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Israel is powerful, but small. It does not have the power and capacity - absent nukes - to do anything too strategic - especially when the terrorists are being funded - and perhaps even controlled - by Iran and others. Therefore Bibi's response will be to flail around and do whatever they can - and that will be bad for Hamas on a tactical level, and disastrous for the Palestinians.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
I recall having a lunch in Tel Aviv with some tourist minister dude who had recently transferred from something quite senior in the military. This must have been 12 years ago, or more
We got to talking about the situation and he was pretty hardline. He reckoned Israel could suppress the Palestinians indefintely, with superior tech and training
I said to him: eventually the world will change, America will weaken, other powers will rise, and Palestinians will find a way to REALLY hurt you, you need to seek peace now (I don't claim any prescience, many have said this for decades)
He was dismissive. I wonder if Israel missed a trick 15 years ago, and a peace was available? I don't know. Israelis will argue that the PLO et al were never really serious
Anyway that monent has gone and the future is dark
25-ish years ago when the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, putting an end to the Oslo peace process.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
No, I don't. If you don't leave the house, then you won't get laid.
That's not incel, that's always been the case, just there's more now not going out. Its entirely to be expected.
Stop making excuses for people like Minassian or Tate.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
Lots of countries have been getting migrants they don't want in recent years.
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
Doesn’t work. An entire population of more than 2 million kicked out of their homes - won’t happen, can’t happen, not worth spending too long hypothesising.
Occupation, yes. I think that’s likely. Will that be better or worse for the inhabitants than the present day’s living prison, I suppose that depends.
Why can't it happen ?
Destroy the energy infrastructure, destroy the water infrastructure, destroy the food infrastructure, destroy everything apart from the way out.
Unpleasant to contemplate from outside but certainly possible for someone with the power and determination to do it.
And we have just seen it done in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Gaza has a much larger population of course but that might even make it easier - two million people require a lot of food and water.
Yes, you can do that.
It will, though, result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Now, maybe you argue that that's just war, and that the Gazans brought it on themselves by attacking Israel. But that would be a disparity of destruction that would, I think, be unmatched in modern times.
Perhaps you could persuade Israel to accept a few thousand extra deaths so that the casualty ratio falls to a level you find more normal.
Remember Israel came close to going nuclear in 1973 - what do you think the disparity of destruction would have been from that.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Israel is powerful, but small. It does not have the power and capacity - absent nukes - to do anything too strategic - especially when the terrorists are being funded - and perhaps even controlled - by Iran and others. Therefore Bibi's response will be to flail around and do whatever they can - and that will be bad for Hamas on a tactical level, and disastrous for the Palestinians.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
I recall having a lunch in Tel Aviv with some tourist minister dude who had recently transferred from something quite senior in the military. This must have been 12 years ago, or more
We got to talking about the situation and he was pretty hardline. He reckoned Israel could suppress the Palestinians indefintely, with superior tech and training
I said to him: eventually the world will change, America will weaken, other powers will rise, and Palestinians will find a way to REALLY hurt you, you need to seek peace now (I don't claim any prescience, many have said this for decades)
He was dismissive. I wonder if Israel missed a trick 15 years ago, and a peace was available? I don't know. Israelis will argue that the PLO et al were never really serious
Anyway that monent has gone and the future is dark
25-ish years ago when the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, putting an end to the Oslo peace process.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
A friend of mine is always complaining that he only has sex with his wife once a year. Sounds like he might be having a relative feast of it.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Yes, imagine having to go out for a walk when your lady friend wants to. Or indeed at all.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Nice to see 'havering' used properly on PB, for a change. Have an Empire, sorry German, sorry Belgian biscuit.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
The use of slick videos, the go-pros etc, at very least have been copied from the way ISIS did it. Now who and why managed this, there are as many different Islamist factions* as there are Grant Shapps online identities, but obviously it is Iran with the money / rockets / drones etc. And its easier than ever to create such high quality videos.
* ISIS itself managed to convice a real weird mix of people to join the callephate project. I always wondered where they melted some went home to Europe, i think i read some went to Africa.
The Francophone Sahel and Northern Nigeria are a hotbed of Islamism. It is a 3 way civil war between Islamists, Wagner mercenaries and Western troops, mostly French and EU. ISIS are there, but it rarely makes the news here because we care little about those bits of the world.
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Israel is powerful, but small. It does not have the power and capacity - absent nukes - to do anything too strategic - especially when the terrorists are being funded - and perhaps even controlled - by Iran and others. Therefore Bibi's response will be to flail around and do whatever they can - and that will be bad for Hamas on a tactical level, and disastrous for the Palestinians.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
I recall having a lunch in Tel Aviv with some tourist minister dude who had recently transferred from something quite senior in the military. This must have been 12 years ago, or more
We got to talking about the situation and he was pretty hardline. He reckoned Israel could suppress the Palestinians indefintely, with superior tech and training
I said to him: eventually the world will change, America will weaken, other powers will rise, and Palestinians will find a way to REALLY hurt you, you need to seek peace now (I don't claim any prescience, many have said this for decades)
He was dismissive. I wonder if Israel missed a trick 15 years ago, and a peace was available? I don't know. Israelis will argue that the PLO et al were never really serious
Anyway that monent has gone and the future is dark
25-ish years ago when the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, putting an end to the Oslo peace process.
Speaking of 25 years ago: Dana International won Eurovision for Israel, AND it was held in the UK. Dana International was Trans as well!
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Nice to see 'havering' used properly on PB, for a change. Have an Empire, sorry German, sorry Belgian biscuit.
Create a UN protectorate. Administered for a generation by an experienced former colonial power with no skin in the game.
Who'd want to take on responsibility for that mess?
I am prepared to serve as Viceroy of Palestine.
It was nice knowing you.
I'll be a success.
I'm the Muslim who works for a Jewish* bank.
I am the embodiment of bringing people together.
I'll do it pro bono publico, all I ask for is a peerage, a GCMG, and the rank of an Ambassador for perpetuity, so people have to address me as Your Excellency.
*Not quite, but we rule the world apparently, it was in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
It's be interesting - though I suspect difficult - to find out how much this was an 'actual' change over time vs. a change in how willing people were to mention/admit it.
I seem to remember the 'are you gay/bi?' question changed quite dramatically and eventually settled once people were ok with answering the question.
Also - somewhat related in a way - I seem to remember 1970s comedy shows often featuring people leaping off wardrobes into bed as some sort of 'exciting' sex thing. Also egg whisks being a common innuendo.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
That's what I call a very conscientious parenthetical.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
The use of slick videos, the go-pros etc, at very least have been copied from the way ISIS did it. Now who and why managed this, there are as many different Islamist factions* as there are Grant Shapps online identities, but obviously it is Iran with the money / rockets / drones etc. And its easier than ever to create such high quality videos.
* ISIS itself managed to convice a real weird mix of people to join the callephate project. I always wondered where they melted some went home to Europe, i think i read some went to Africa.
The Francophone Sahel and Northern Nigeria are a hotbed of Islamism. It is a 3 way civil war between Islamists, Wagner mercenaries and Western troops, mostly French and EU. ISIS are there, but it rarely makes the news here because we care little about those bits of the world.
I always wondered where shall we say the ones that aren't "lifetimers" particularly the ones from Europe. I am sure the truthest of true believers have moved onto the next holy war as they have for 20+ years (or until they get their visit to meet the virgins).
With the slick marketing, ISiS appeared to manage to attract a new demographic, seemingly many educated types, who hadn't previously rushed to join such things. Maybe the numbers of such are overstated in our minds because of the high profile nature of some of the stories.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
How?
This is probably way too much info, but during the pandemic I went 8 months without sex, I was like Michael Douglas in Falling Down after six weeks.
Create a UN protectorate. Administered for a generation by an experienced former colonial power with no skin in the game.
Who'd want to take on responsibility for that mess?
I am prepared to serve as Viceroy of Palestine.
It was nice knowing you.
I'll be a success.
I'm the Muslim who works for a Jewish* bank.
I am the embodiment of bringing people together.
I'll do it pro bono publico, all I ask for is a peerage, a GCMG, and the rank of an Ambassador for perpetuity, so people have to address me as Your Excellency.
*Not quite, but we rule the world apparently, it was in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
It appears TSE is massively overestimating his abilities, a toxic trait that comes that seems to infect privately educated guys.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
FWIW Al Jazeera's coverage of the crisis is worth a look for balance, particularly for those who, like maybe most of us, both support and oppose all sides about equally.
Create a UN protectorate. Administered for a generation by an experienced former colonial power with no skin in the game.
Who'd want to take on responsibility for that mess?
I am prepared to serve as Viceroy of Palestine.
It was nice knowing you.
I'll be a success.
I'm the Muslim who works for a Jewish* bank.
I am the embodiment of bringing people together.
I'll do it pro bono publico, all I ask for is a peerage, a GCMG, and the rank of an Ambassador for perpetuity, so people have to address me as Your Excellency.
*Not quite, but we rule the world apparently, it was in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
It appears TSE is massively overestimating his abilities, a toxic trait that comes that seems to infect privately educated guys.
I am a modest man, I am likely to be underestimating my abilities.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
"I want a modern wife, Johnston, who speaks English and French! And who can dance the quickstep!"
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Maybe Foxy does The Worm on the dancefloor whilst women look on and gasp in awe.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
That's what I call a very conscientious parenthetical.
Dude, wait til you reach your 50s. I have friends who have gone without sex for DECADES. Indeed one - tho he is exceptional - who has gone without sex THIS MILLENNIUM
Women can be divided into two types. Those who go off sex as soon as they have had their last child, and those who go off sex when they hit menopause
Google the "atrophied vagina" if you want to see a vision of a cosy "incel" Ugg Boot stamping on a desperate male face, forever
FWIW Al Jazeera's coverage of the crisis is worth a look for balance, particularly for those who, like maybe most of us, both support and oppose all sides about equally.
Its actually far superior to likes of Sky News even if you factor in its Qatar backed.
Suggests America is anticipating some kind of all-out war in Israel
BBC livestream is reporting on it as :
More from the United States, which has promised additional support for Israel, as we mentioned earlier.
The US military is deploying naval vessels and combat aircraft to "to bolster regional deterrence efforts" amid the ongoing fighting in Israel, a Pentagon statement says.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says a fleet of vessels centred on a US Navy aircraft carrier has been directed to the eastern Mediterranean. This deployment also includes several guided-missile cruisers and destroyers.
In addition, US Air Force squadrons in the Middle East are being augmented. "The US maintains forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required," Austin adds.
Extra resources, including munitions, are also being dispatched to Israel, with the first security assistance expected to arrive in the coming days. Austin says the action "underscores the United States’ ironclad support for the Israel Defence Forces and the Israeli people".
The US is there to deter Iran, not to weigh in with Israel.
Yesterday I posted that it would takethe Israelis 48 hours to muster for a large scale ground assault on Gaza. Tonight US officials estimate a ground operation is going to start in next 24-48. The Israelis still have issues behind their lines to sort, however, which might hold it up.
Reading between the lines on this, the reported movement of a US Carrier Group to the Eastern Med suggests that the US isnt going to attempt to hold Israel back for now and is making a statement that no one should intervene. Any proper ground assault in an urban zone is fraught with difficulties and even though its a pretty compact space, you'd have to assume a couple of weeks worth of activity at least. Many Israeli units know the territory but not all.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
That's what I call a very conscientious parenthetical.
Dude, wait til you reach your 50s. I have friends who have gone without sex for DECADES. Indeed one - tho he is exceptional - who has gone without sex THIS MILLENNIUM
Women can be divided into two types. Those who go off sex as soon as they have had their last child, and those who go off sex when they hit menopause
Google the "atrophied vagina" if you want to see a vision of a cosy "incel" Ugg Boot stamping on a desperate male face, forever
I'll have to pass on that one, my imagination is doing enough work for me.
FWIW Al Jazeera's coverage of the crisis is worth a look for balance, particularly for those who, like maybe most of us, both support and oppose all sides about equally.
Its actually far superior to likes of Sky News even if you factor in its Qatar backed.
Yep. It is. They are prepared to show some hardcore stuff and they are prepared to say some unsayable things, and they are less Woke. You do have to sieve out the slight dusting of Islamism, but it is not hard
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
A friend of mine is always complaining that he only has sex with his wife once a year. Sounds like he might be having a relative feast of it.
A professor has a thesis that people's happiness is linked to the amount of sex they have. At a talk, he asks all those who have sex daily to put their hands up. A few people with big grins raise their hands. "Two or three times a week?" Smiling people raise their hands. "Once a week?" A few slightly less cheerful raise their hands slightly less high. "Once a month?" Slightly glum people barely raise their hand. Delighted his theory is playing out, he asks "Once a year?"
One guy jumps up, bouncing with joy, waving his hand around to make sure he is noticed. "Yep, me!"
Somewhat confused, the professor says "You have sex once a year?"
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
It isn't that unusual. These figures put little or no sex in around 15% of US marriages.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
That's what I call a very conscientious parenthetical.
Dude, wait til you reach your 50s. I have friends who have gone without sex for DECADES. Indeed one - tho he is exceptional - who has gone without sex THIS MILLENNIUM
Women can be divided into two types. Those who go off sex as soon as they have had their last child, and those who go off sex when they hit menopause
Google the "atrophied vagina" if you want to see a vision of a cosy "incel" Ugg Boot stamping on a desperate male face, forever
I'll have to pass on that one, my imagination is doing enough work for me.
Puzzled as to the distinction between a chap - or, given Leon's wording, a chapess - who has gone without sex for decades, i.e. more than 20 years, and one who has gone without for a minimum of 23 years, 10 months and 8 days (leaving aside the question of how one defines a millennium). Does somethign strange happen in that three and a bit years?
Yesterday I posted that it would takethe Israelis 48 hours to muster for a large scale ground assault on Gaza. Tonight US officials estimate a ground operation is going to start in next 24-48. The Israelis still have issues behind their lines to sort, however, which might hold it up.
Reading between the lines on this, the reported movement of a US Carrier Group to the Eastern Med suggests that the US isnt going to attempt to hold Israel back for now and is making a statement that no one should intervene. Any proper ground assault in an urban zone is fraught with difficulties and even though its a pretty compact space, you'd have to assume a couple of weeks worth of activity at least. Many Israeli units know the territory but not all.
This is not gonna be a standard Israeli assault on Gaza. How can it be?
They have to make sure the 2023 Oktoberfest of Jewkilling never happens again. What that means, only Jehovah knows. And maybe a few nervous and angry IDF generals. But it won't be Things As Usual
Yesterday I posted that it would takethe Israelis 48 hours to muster for a large scale ground assault on Gaza. Tonight US officials estimate a ground operation is going to start in next 24-48. The Israelis still have issues behind their lines to sort, however, which might hold it up.
Reading between the lines on this, the reported movement of a US Carrier Group to the Eastern Med suggests that the US isnt going to attempt to hold Israel back for now and is making a statement that no one should intervene. Any proper ground assault in an urban zone is fraught with difficulties and even though its a pretty compact space, you'd have to assume a couple of weeks worth of activity at least. Many Israeli units know the territory but not all.
Do you expect any military action in places other than Gaza?
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
A friend of mine is always complaining that he only has sex with his wife once a year. Sounds like he might be having a relative feast of it.
A professor has a thesis that people's happiness is linked to the amount of sex they have. At a talk, he asks all those who have sex daily to put their hands up. A few people with big grins raise their hands. "Two or three times a week?" Smiling people raise their hands. "Once a week?" A few slightly less cheerful raise their hands slightly less high. "Once a month?" Slightly glum people barely raise their hand. Delighted his theory is playing out, he asks "Once a year?"
One guy jumps up, bouncing with joy, waving his hand around to make sure he is noticed. "Yep, me!"
Somewhat confused, the professor says "You have sex once a year?"
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
I just counted, there are 12 things in Foxy's list of suggestions, one of which was learn to dance.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Nope, it really works. Girls are much more keen to dance than blokes. If you are one of the first males up on the dancefloor and are not embarrassing you shift the odds radically in your favour.
And it is fun. This is why Strictly is so popular.
Create a UN protectorate. Administered for a generation by an experienced former colonial power with no skin in the game.
Who'd want to take on responsibility for that mess?
I am prepared to serve as Viceroy of Palestine.
It was nice knowing you.
I'll be a success.
I'm the Muslim who works for a Jewish* bank.
I am the embodiment of bringing people together.
I'll do it pro bono publico, all I ask for is a peerage, a GCMG, and the rank of an Ambassador for perpetuity, so people have to address me as Your Excellency.
*Not quite, but we rule the world apparently, it was in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
It appears TSE is massively overestimating his abilities, a toxic trait that comes that seems to infect privately educated guys.
I am a modest man, I am likely to be underestimating my abilities.
"He was a modest man with much to be modest about."
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
I just counted, there are 12 things in Foxy's list of suggestions, one of which was learn to dance.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
Nah, @Leon doesn't need any advice in how to pick up women, just advice on how to sustain a long term relationship.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
The use of slick videos, the go-pros etc, at very least have been copied from the way ISIS did it. Now who and why managed this, there are as many different Islamist factions* as there are Grant Shapps online identities, but obviously it is Iran with the money / rockets / drones etc. And its easier than ever to create such high quality videos.
* ISIS itself managed to convice a real weird mix of people to join the callephate project. I always wondered where they melted some went home to Europe, i think i read some went to Africa.
Obviously Iran backed Assad against ISIS....so on the face of it you would think no, but shrugs as I say ISIS got a real pick n mix of people involved.
It is not just the videos but the beheadings and the display of victims, the contemptuous objectification of women, the mass slaughter of civilians, that are reminiscent of ISIS. Hamas might be equally brutal but in the past has relied on firing rockets against Israel rather than invasion, whilst beating and murdering its Palestinian opponents, not so much the war porn.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Nice to see 'havering' used properly on PB, for a change. Have an Empire, sorry German, sorry Belgian biscuit.
Havering is next door to Redbridge and Barking!
Some would say that Havering is well beyond Barking.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Nope, it really works. Girls are much more keen to dance than blokes. If you are one of the first males up on the dancefloor and are not embarrassing you shift the odds radically in your favour.
And it is fun. This is why Strictly is so popular.
She works in Tate Liverpool, which like last year are hosting a number of fringe events for the Labour party this week.
Found out that last year, one of her colleagues (20s, not interested in politics) was on as 'greeter' for the 'Sir Keir Starmer talk'. She sees a group approaching and heads over:
"Are you here for the Keir Starmer talk?" my wife's colleague asks the lead punter. "I am Keir Starmer," comes the reply. "Well, in which case you definitely are here for the Keir Starmer talk aren't you?" she replies.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
I just counted, there are 12 things in Foxy's list of suggestions, one of which was learn to dance.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
It's a mortifying load of autistic wank. Brush your hair, clean your teeth, learn to dance, polish your brogues. wear a doublet, clean your collar, make sure you bring dubbin, laugh at circuses, sodomise peacocks once a week, work out morse code, eat a curry every sixteen and a half days, and always always make sure you own your own home and a car and a bespoke basalt buttplug by the age of 24
The German State elections in Hesse and Bavaria are very good for AfD and CDU, ok for the CSU, who seem to have lost ground, poor for the Greens and SPD and disastrous for the FDP, who have lost all their seats in Bavaria and are hanging on by a thread in Hesse.
In Bavaria, the CSU/FW coalition has been comfortably re-elected though AfD finished second and will form the main opposition group. In Hesse, the governing CDU/Green coalition has dropped from 69 to 62 but still has a majority. The AfD with a projected 23 seats will also be the main opposition in Hesse.
Not good then for the SPD/Green/FDP Government but the problem for the Union is they are nowhere near a majority themselves and as long as they refuse to deal with the AfD, they are forced back to one of the current governing parties to form a coalition. On current poll numbers, a Union/AfD Government might be very close to a majority in the Bundestag.
Elsewhere, we have the Luxembourg general election and the CSV Party have won 21 seats, the Democratic Party 14 and the LSAP (Social Democrats) 10. As we all know, there are 60 seats in the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies - the Greens have lost ground and are down to 5 and the ADR (Alternate Democratic Reform) also 5. That means the governing coalition (DP/LSAP/Greens) has lost its majority and now has just 29 seats.
The CSV (the party of one Jean-Claude Juncker, remember him?) has been out of office since 2013 but I suspect it may return to power but it will need to do some coalition building.
Before you ask, the other five seats are split between the Pirate Party (3) and The Left (2).
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
It isn't that unusual. These figures put little or no sex in around 15% of US marriages.
She works in Tate Liverpool, which like last year are hosting a number of fringe events for the Labour party this week.
Found out that last year, one of her colleagues (20s, not interested in politics) was on as 'greeter' for the 'Sir Keir Starmer talk'. She sees a group approaching and heads over:
"Are you here for the Keir Starmer talk?" my wife's colleague asks the lead punter. "I am Keir Starmer," comes the reply. "Well, in which case you definitely are here for the Keir Starmer talk aren't you?" she replies.
Made me laugh anyway.............
Nice anecdote.
Did your wife's colleague receive a stream of expletives for her faux pas? Only I've heard on twitter...
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Nope, it really works. Girls are much more keen to dance than blokes. If you are one of the first males up on the dancefloor and are not embarrassing you shift the odds radically in your favour.
And it is fun. This is why Strictly is so popular.
I'm always up there first.
Big box, little box, cardboard box.
I am a bit more Northern Soul, but no longer up to the more gymnastic moves.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
I think this works sometimes but more often than not you will meet the 'nice guys finish last' problem.
@kyf_100 is correct in what he has been saying today about this issue. It isn't that Andrew Tate is in any way a positive role model but he is the product of a certain cultural situation. If Tate goes down then there will just be a replacement. It is like Donald Trump, the nightmare will just go on and on....
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Nice to see 'havering' used properly on PB, for a change. Have an Empire, sorry German, sorry Belgian biscuit.
Havering is next door to Redbridge and Barking!
Some would say that Havering is well beyond Barking.
err, maybe … coloured pink on the map but subcontracted by the UN, like the blue berets
We had a go, and not sure it was that fun.
As I recall we were attacked by both the Arabs and the Jews, and British forces post WWII had a torrid time trying to keep order.
See Claire Foy in The Promise.
Yes, and some say it was part of the font et origo of present travails. But now is not then, and now urgently needs sorting for the sake of the world which why there should be a UN mandate. And it would be a UN responsibility to keep the peace and bring stability and improved conditions for the people there. It would need to be done by a single capable administration, perhaps militarily, under UN auspices.
One other oddity. If this is Iran sabotaging the various Israeli-Arab agreements, where is Hezbollah? Sure, they've fired a handful of rockets as a belated token measure but there has been no invasion of north Israel and no sign of any coordination with Hamas in the south.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Nope, it really works. Girls are much more keen to dance than blokes. If you are one of the first males up on the dancefloor and are not embarrassing you shift the odds radically in your favour.
And it is fun. This is why Strictly is so popular.
I'm always up there first.
Big box, little box, cardboard box.
I am a bit more Northern Soul, but no longer up to the more gymnastic moves.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
I just counted, there are 12 things in Foxy's list of suggestions, one of which was learn to dance.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
Nah, @Leon doesn't need any advice in how to pick up women, just advice on how to sustain a long term relationship.
I don't WANT to sustain a long term relationship. Seriously. It's not me
There are people like this - like me. The world is diverse
The only person I have ever wanted a longER term relationship with was my wife, but she was 24 and I was 57 and she wanted kids and I didn't (had mine) and that was that
There is a price to be paid, in moments of loneliness, but there is also a priceless freedom, and I don't rely on one person for my happiness or companionship, and I don't encounter these "sex deserts". Despite being unmarried I now have more sex than 80% of my married friends - who have none
Yesterday I posted that it would takethe Israelis 48 hours to muster for a large scale ground assault on Gaza. Tonight US officials estimate a ground operation is going to start in next 24-48. The Israelis still have issues behind their lines to sort, however, which might hold it up.
Reading between the lines on this, the reported movement of a US Carrier Group to the Eastern Med suggests that the US isnt going to attempt to hold Israel back for now and is making a statement that no one should intervene. Any proper ground assault in an urban zone is fraught with difficulties and even though its a pretty compact space, you'd have to assume a couple of weeks worth of activity at least. Many Israeli units know the territory but not all.
This is not gonna be a standard Israeli assault on Gaza. How can it be?
They have to make sure the 2023 Oktoberfest of Jewkilling never happens again. What that means, only Jehovah knows. And maybe a few nervous and angry IDF generals. But it won't be Things As Usual
No it wont be but the Israelis know how this works, its going to take time and time is always against them. They are going to take a lot of damage with it whilst handing it out and you can only assume that Hamas & PIJ has prepped to make life difficult or try to melt away with a bit of token resistance. The latter looks rather difficult though.
The Israelis have already been in Gaza this evening, probably by sea, to pick themselves up a possible intelligence prize.
The US presence in the region, which is about to get formidable enough on its own to bomb seven shades out of anyone, also has a second purpose beyond acting as a guard, which is possible evacuation of US citizens in the region. Not just Israel but Lebanon, Egypt. All has to be considered if this gets hairy.
@Williamglenn, I suspect only if they have to. You might find some local actions to keep say Hezbollah on the back foot but a multi front assault across their borders North and indeed east to the West Bank is never desired and would have to be seen as an absolute necessity.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
There is no hence, there is no causation here.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
So you don't find male virginity being stable at 8ish% from 1989 to 2008, then suddenly spiking to 27% odd at all?
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
If they'll want a girlfriend then they need to think with their brain rather than their dicks.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
"Learn to dance"
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
I just counted, there are 12 things in Foxy's list of suggestions, one of which was learn to dance.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
It's a mortifying load of autistic wank. Brush your hair, clean your teeth, learn to dance, polish your brogues. wear a doublet, clean your collar, make sure you bring dubbin, laugh at circuses, sodomise peacocks once a week, work out morse code, eat a curry every sixteen and a half days, and always always make sure you own your own home and a car and a bespoke basalt buttplug by the age of 24
Spare us, Doctor Divergent
The only one of those I've mastered is sodomising peacocks.
Comments
Wales v Argentina
Ireland v New Zealand
England v Fiji
France v South Africa
I will make a detailed prediction for each match and publish later in the week (once some of the injury situations have been clarified).
It is no coincidence this is happening now. The thing Hamas fears above all else is that Israel's relationship with the Muslim and Arab world is normalized.
And by baiting Israel into a response in Gaza, they ensure that the public in the Muslim world will be incensed, and the possibility of improved relations between Israel, Saudi and the like becomes much diminished.
Which when you read the report was actually "Workers will need to work two part time jobs!"...
It will, though, result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Now, maybe you argue that that's just war, and that the Gazans brought it on themselves by attacking Israel. But that would be a disparity of destruction that would, I think, be unmatched in modern times.
Andrew Tate is just the latest of a long line of charlatans that have always existed.
He's not been "caused" or "fueled" by anything. There have always been characters like him and nothing has changed to fuel him other than the internet gives him a lot of morons to feed off.
IMHO the problem pubs face is that their potential customers spend so much money on rent they have nothing left for discretionary spending on nights out. Fix housing and a lot of other problems will get fixed, too.
Truthfully I think he did come to enjoy the approbation he got as Labour leader, who wouldn't even if humble minded, and whilst he still gets a small group of people fired up, he probably hoped for far more of a grandee sort of role than what in fact has occurred. He's not faded into the niche obscurity of before his time as Leader, but the things he says and does, even if picked up and condemned, don't end up reflecting on the party anymore, because he's so decisively been rejected by the leadership.
I suspect Corbyn too can't believe the party to which he has devoted his life, speak as red Tories. He, I suggest believes he and his fellow travellers speak for the spirit of the Labour Party including their disgusting nods to anti-Semitism.
More from the United States, which has promised additional support for Israel, as we mentioned earlier.
The US military is deploying naval vessels and combat aircraft to "to bolster regional deterrence efforts" amid the ongoing fighting in Israel, a Pentagon statement says.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says a fleet of vessels centred on a US Navy aircraft carrier has been directed to the eastern Mediterranean. This deployment also includes several guided-missile cruisers and destroyers.
In addition, US Air Force squadrons in the Middle East are being augmented. "The US maintains forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required," Austin adds.
Extra resources, including munitions, are also being dispatched to Israel, with the first security assistance expected to arrive in the coming days. Austin says the action "underscores the United States’ ironclad support for the Israel Defence Forces and the Israeli people".
They might not want to go there and they might not be wanted but that's the fate of millions of refugees from that part of the world and has been for generations.
The deciding factor will be how much Israel wants them out.
There would be a cost to Israel of going all-in on the all-out strategy but that might be a cost it prefers to the cost of the current situation.
I would suggest that kind of increase in male celibacy or inceldom, or whatever you want to call it, is very likely to "cause" or "fuel" something. Hence the reason you have incel terrorists like Alek Minassian, and "steadily increasing" misogyny to the point it becomes a serious terrorist threat. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/30/global-incel-culture-terrorism-misogyny-violent-action-forums
So I put it to you again, that a steady 8%ish from the 80s to the late 2000s then a sudden spike in 2008 and a continuing trend upwards is neither a good thing, nor normal, and explanations should be sought.
Though the RT-2-X papers also give me a little worry for a host of other jobs too.
As it is, it's 3-3 after 37 mins.
Fiji struggling v Portugal is good news for England.
* ISIS itself managed to convice a real weird mix of people to join the callephate project. I always wondered where they melted some went home to Europe, i think i read some went to Africa.
Obviously Iran backed Assad against ISIS....so on the face of it you would think no, but shrugs as I say ISIS got a real pick n mix of people involved.
That's not incel, that's always been the case, just there's more now not going out. Its entirely to be expected.
Stop making excuses for people like Minassian or Tate.
What do girls want? It ain't a seething misogynist disappearing down an alt-right online rabbit hole.
Wash and dress presentably. Shave and brush teeth, girls think these things important even if they cannot see why. Learn to talk about things that girls like, and be a good listener. Learn to dance. Treat women with courtesy and kindness. Don't ghost them and be surprised that they aren't interested when you text them weeks later. Don't stalk them or threaten them, don't distribute dick picks to girls you barely know.
It isn't rocket science. Just be the sort of person girls want to spend time with.
On what we've seen so far, what chance would England have?
Remember Israel came close to going nuclear in 1973 - what do you think the disparity of destruction would have been from that.
I was chatting with some friends on mine, and one - who recently split from his wife - has a new girlfriend. "Phew," he said, "I thought I was going to go my entire 40s without having sex."
Another confided that he hasn't sex with his wife (or anyone else) in eight years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Rugby_World_Cup#Knockout_stage
Madness. You're havering, man. What you need is some decent supplements from an alt-right twitter account, a sedentary lifestyle and at least 1000+ points on World of Warcraft.
Unfortunately for them it already happened against Argentina.
Though, 40+ years later, I'm used to it.
Ireland were excellent last night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5W3ko1ft2M
I'm the Muslim who works for a Jewish* bank.
I am the embodiment of bringing people together.
I'll do it pro bono publico, all I ask for is a peerage, a GCMG, and the rank of an Ambassador for perpetuity, so people have to address me as Your Excellency.
*Not quite, but we rule the world apparently, it was in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion.
I seem to remember the 'are you gay/bi?' question changed quite dramatically and eventually settled once people were ok with answering the question.
Also - somewhat related in a way - I seem to remember 1970s comedy shows often featuring people leaping off wardrobes into bed as some sort of 'exciting' sex thing. Also egg whisks being a common innuendo.
All things shall pass...
With the slick marketing, ISiS appeared to manage to attract a new demographic, seemingly many educated types, who hadn't previously rushed to join such things. Maybe the numbers of such are overstated in our minds because of the high profile nature of some of the stories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine#:~:text=The Mandate for Palestine was,World War I in 1918.
This is probably way too much info, but during the pandemic I went 8 months without sex, I was like Michael Douglas in Falling Down after six weeks.
Yes, that's it. Guys, all you have to do is learn the foxtrot with a dash of salsa, and all your issues are solved
It sometimes worries me that you have actual charge of human patients
Women can be divided into two types. Those who go off sex as soon as they have had their last child, and those who go off sex when they hit menopause
Google the "atrophied vagina" if you want to see a vision of a cosy "incel" Ugg Boot stamping on a desperate male face, forever
but subcontracted by the UN, like the blue berets
Reading between the lines on this, the reported movement of a US Carrier Group to the Eastern Med suggests that the US isnt going to attempt to hold Israel back for now and is making a statement that no one should intervene. Any proper ground assault in an urban zone is fraught with difficulties and even though its a pretty compact space, you'd have to assume a couple of weeks worth of activity at least. Many Israeli units know the territory but not all.
One guy jumps up, bouncing with joy, waving his hand around to make sure he is noticed. "Yep, me!"
Somewhat confused, the professor says "You have sex once a year?"
"Yes - but it's tonight!!"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202309/how-common-are-sexless-marriages#:~:text=As many as one in,people stay in sexless marriages.
This was in a study where recruits specifically wanted sex, yet:
"47 percent of participants reported staying in a sexless marriage because they felt that, aside from the lack of sex, they had the ideal partner."
They have to make sure the 2023 Oktoberfest of Jewkilling never happens again. What that means, only Jehovah knows. And maybe a few nervous and angry IDF generals. But it won't be Things As Usual
As I recall we were attacked by both the Arabs and the Jews, and British forces post WWII had a torrid time trying to keep order.
See Claire Foy in The Promise.
I reckon if you do half a dozen of the other things you'll be fine without the dancing. Hope that helps you.
Seven Nations matches in Lisbon!
Win by 8+ points and it's Eng v Aus!
But now Fiji try!
And it is fun. This is why Strictly is so popular.
Big box, little box, cardboard box.
She works in Tate Liverpool, which like last year are hosting a number of fringe events for the Labour party this week.
Found out that last year, one of her colleagues (20s, not interested in politics) was on as 'greeter' for the 'Sir Keir Starmer talk'. She sees a group approaching and heads over:
"Are you here for the Keir Starmer talk?" my wife's colleague asks the lead punter.
"I am Keir Starmer," comes the reply.
"Well, in which case you definitely are here for the Keir Starmer talk aren't you?" she replies.
Made me laugh anyway.............
Spare us, Doctor Divergent
The German State elections in Hesse and Bavaria are very good for AfD and CDU, ok for the CSU, who seem to have lost ground, poor for the Greens and SPD and disastrous for the FDP, who have lost all their seats in Bavaria and are hanging on by a thread in Hesse.
In Bavaria, the CSU/FW coalition has been comfortably re-elected though AfD finished second and will form the main opposition group. In Hesse, the governing CDU/Green coalition has dropped from 69 to 62 but still has a majority. The AfD with a projected 23 seats will also be the main opposition in Hesse.
Not good then for the SPD/Green/FDP Government but the problem for the Union is they are nowhere near a majority themselves and as long as they refuse to deal with the AfD, they are forced back to one of the current governing parties to form a coalition. On current poll numbers, a Union/AfD Government might be very close to a majority in the Bundestag.
Elsewhere, we have the Luxembourg general election and the CSV Party have won 21 seats, the Democratic Party 14 and the LSAP (Social Democrats) 10. As we all know, there are 60 seats in the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies - the Greens have lost ground and are down to 5 and the ADR (Alternate Democratic Reform) also 5. That means the governing coalition (DP/LSAP/Greens) has lost its majority and now has just 29 seats.
The CSV (the party of one Jean-Claude Juncker, remember him?) has been out of office since 2013 but I suspect it may return to power but it will need to do some coalition building.
Before you ask, the other five seats are split between the Pirate Party (3) and The Left (2).
Did your wife's colleague receive a stream of expletives for her faux pas? Only I've heard on twitter...
*Portugal scores a try after Fiji are reduced to 14 men*
Errrr....
@kyf_100 is correct in what he has been saying today about this issue. It isn't that Andrew Tate is in any way a positive role model but he is the product of a certain cultural situation. If Tate goes down then there will just be a replacement. It is like Donald Trump, the nightmare will just go on and on....
East Ham is very nearly Barking.
It was an impossible given the Balfour Declaration and aftermath of WWII.
Since that win they’ve been poor . If they do scrape through then you’d expect with the pressure off they’d play better against England .
There are people like this - like me. The world is diverse
The only person I have ever wanted a longER term relationship with was my wife, but she was 24 and I was 57 and she wanted kids and I didn't (had mine) and that was that
There is a price to be paid, in moments of loneliness, but there is also a priceless freedom, and I don't rely on one person for my happiness or companionship, and I don't encounter these "sex deserts". Despite being unmarried I now have more sex than 80% of my married friends - who have none
The Israelis have already been in Gaza this evening, probably by sea, to pick themselves up a possible intelligence prize.
The US presence in the region, which is about to get formidable enough on its own to bomb seven shades out of anyone, also has a second purpose beyond acting as a guard, which is possible evacuation of US citizens in the region. Not just Israel but Lebanon, Egypt. All has to be considered if this gets hairy.
@Williamglenn, I suspect only if they have to. You might find some local actions to keep say Hezbollah on the back foot but a multi front assault across their borders North and indeed east to the West Bank is never desired and would have to be seen as an absolute necessity.