All of social media is optimized to promote conflict and Twitter/X is now a far-right swamp. The bio of the guy whose tweet of the photo of the two teens went viral reads, in part, "tit enthusiast| I miss the Deep South| ADPI coochie crusher"
While I agree with you that kindness to prospective partners is unequivocally the most important prerequisite for a relationship, romantic or otherwise, I think it is important not to dismiss or ignore the effect of status on relationships. I live in the South, and yeah, a plumber pulling good money would not find their profession a barrier to dating around here. But there's bound to be people even here that would not be interested in a plumber, and I think there are definitely entire cities where that population is larger proportionately. We can talk all day about how kindness is key, but I fear that some of that kindness should be reserved for men struggling to cope with the effect of status on dating. They aren't hallucinating the existence of a relationship between desirability and status, no matter how much more likely a lack of kindness is an overriding factor.
Yes, if somehow there was a beautiful woman with low status, men would be happy to date her. In practice this never happens because women derive much of their status from their beauty, but it's the beauty the guys are after. Guys would brag about dating a stripper, but handsome plumber is going to have a much tougher time.
I'm not an expert on plumbers, but I suspect there aren't many opportunities to meet women there, other than chatting up the occasional single mom. That goes double if your hobbies include watching football at the bar, shooting guns, etc.
That said, I think it's important to have a disclaimer that one may need to move for a better dating scene. Or make time to date (e.g. stop working night shifts). Status matters to conservative areas more than liberal ones (but yes, there will be judgmental women and men who look down on you for your job and even less relevant traits everywhere). One way or another, you need to fit into the world of women
Speaking for myself, I need to find better ways of interacting with women regularly. I'm still working on it, but I try to think about the vibes women want. For example, I wanted to start playing recreational sports after work a couple years ago. A desire shared across genders, races, wealth, etc.
I continue to play Ultimate Frisbee, dodgeball, and basketball in the park regularly. I found the event through Meetup.com after hearing people say I should look there for dating/friendship opportunities. You go there an you mostly see other tech guys like me (which is something I heard before and that actually put me off from trying something new, unfortunately). I thought like a tech guy and met other tech guys.
Women are into exercise too obv, but it has to have a gentle vibe, for lack of better words. Hell, even "Sports" as a concept can leave a masculine, rough, competitive impression which can turn women off (unless she's ovulating 🥁🔔). Also, perhaps more importantly, cute girls generally don't want to drive to the gym or a group hike and get hit on by men they don't know.
Think about places where you're not going to get hit in the face with a rubber ball, have to guard the ball from big strangers, or ideally even go to a random park you've never been to. In my experience, the best way to meet women the fitness route is to go the THE yoga studio/franchise in your area with a good IG. A place where she can do her wellness routine, talk to her girlfriends, and just maybe chat with that man with cool jewelry after.
You gotta think Instagram (or Tumblr), not Reddit if that makes sense. I know that's a lot more complex and vague than "Just get a haircut" or "Just be hot" or yes, "Just be kind", but that's my understanding as of Gucci Mane Day 2025. Rule #1 of dating as a straight man: Don't scare the hoes.
The mental cycle is so pervasive. Hypothetical plumber believes women are superficial. Hypothetical woman fulfills the role of superficiality because she closes off as a response to the energy of the plumber. She sees him as crass. He sees her as superficial.
It feels more like the plumber is afraid he is lacking depth and cannot digest that feeling so he bypasses it and opts for the easier “she doesn’t want to date me because of status” narrative.
If you think attraction is based solely on status just watch the video of Quentin Tarantino trying to convince Fiona Apple of his worth lmao
i'm going to repeat something my therapist told me; that we should be giving each other more grace, because we're all just flawed human beings, living in an imperfect world.
I think this is a great analysis, and extends a good deal more empathy to both sides than many of the pieces on here, so thank you. As a man who has waded through the sea of substacks that decry even associating with men as crossing the battle lines, maybe I’ll write the other half to this, idk.
You really think a woman with a college degree would be willing to date a plumber? I'm not so sure, even if he made more money than her and was nice to her.
Stats would be helpful here. As we mature as men we always eventually end up learning the lesson to judge what women do, not what they say. I can see why it’s a noble feeling to say and really believe that one would date someone of lower status, but that doesn’t mean it’s what that person ends up doing in reality (often even subconsciously).
Men do this too in other situations. We all like to think of ourselves as noble, martyred and heroes in our stories.
Here's a N = 64000 study on women saying they value kindness the most in partners.
But that's not really "Proof." The thing about gender war rhetoric, like good conspiracy theories, is that they're impossible to actually falsify with or without stats.
I can't *prove* that I don't make Diddy jokes behind closed doors, I can't prove I care about women enough to stop an attempted assault (I've never been in that situation), I can't prove I'm less terrifying than a bear (granted, women tend to walk past me but not bears on the trail).
She can't prove that she values personality over Chad's status, she can't prove that her dating preferences are not racist, she can't prove that she's not going to use me as a wallet.
I guess an equivalent for men is saying they defend women (*especially* when they're talking about trans bathrooms and school shootings, and not about groping on the bus). Like how many of those damn Uvalde cops said they were the Thin Blue Line until they actually had to stop a school shooter. It's one of those things where talk is cheap and you have to be Tested in some way.
I am honest curious what "Stats" or "Proof" you are searching for. I don't know what can prove/disprove "none of the young women in the audience would be willing to date a guy who works as a plumber" (and associated rhetoric). Would the Stats be a scientific study on something particular? The No Kings protests to have women holding a "We want kind men" banner? Brad Pitt/Chris Brown/some other famous POS with a ton of female fans gets cancelled?
Ultimately, this is an area where I fear stats don't convince anyone (not the only area!). The Ultimate Proof is of course being kind and getting laid. Short of that, I guess seeing your actually-nice-but-perpetually-single "plumber" friend get a GF or hear women say nice things about men (that doesn't involve men just doing stuff for women or having a rich job).
Lastly, I really am grateful that Magdalene stays humble and objective about dating and gender and there's a space where we can work together. She said in this article "It would be preposterous to think that niceness alone is all that it takes in the ineffable swirl of emotion that makes up attraction."
If you don’t think anything can be proven, have you not ready any studies or surveys or papers or have any idea what sociologists and psychologists do for a living? There are many studies looking to identify people’s preferences. And as far as proving, you’re right, humans are more complicated than ‘proving’ gravity exists. But we can still glean insights about human nature, behaviour, preferences, etc. At the very least you can learn correlations, if not causations from data.
Let me give you an example of a claim and potential ‘proof’ that data could falsify.
Claim: women don’t care about men’s height when it comes to choosing a partner.
Finding: majority of women set the height filter on dating apps at 6+ feet. (This is an example and I don’t know the precise number but a good deal of women do this from Hinge and tinder data).
Does this ‘prove’ that height is the most important factor? No, but it does confirm that what people say and what they do are not always the same. And that women do in fact care about height, but it sounds crass to say so out loud.
Check out the book Dataclysm by Christian Rudder. Lots of insights in there about human preferences when it comes to mate selection. You can see that we can glean a lot about people’s preferences when you look at their dating profiles, DMs, etc.
Zackly. That woman slicing cheese at the Stop-N-Shop would think she'd won the lottery. Some Grievance Studies grad would think he was seriously down-market and socially embarrassing, unless he could be leveraged in some way. A woman (any woman) in Williston, ca. 2012, would think he was a pauper, unless he had a house to live in or something.
That's my instinct. What looks are to men, status is to women. For whatever reason, blue collar workers are considered to be lower status. A guy with options won't date an unattractive woman and a woman with options won't date a plumber. I suppose an unattractive woman with a college degree would consider it if she were desperate.
Can't speak for all women or what culture you're speaking from, but as a college educated woman I'd totally date a plumber (if I was attracted to him and we shared similar interests). I think trade jobs are a noble skill, but then again I'm speaking as someone who values passion, drive and financial literacy over 'status,' so white collar vs blue collar is irrelevant to me. Just some perspective. That being said, I think one of the points Magdalene is making is that women these days often don't even have the option of weighing pros and cons of multiple suitors (this isn't The Bachelorette! lmao), because men are not treating them with respect or kindness to begin with. It's down to the wire.
We as a species are currently experiencing the mother of all growing pains as we reckon with overcoming millennia of oppression against women. You can’t expect all the kinks to work out in less than a generation.
"On an immediate level, there are many men for whom a woman’s niceness is entirely secondary: even if she is unkind to him, his attraction to her will not wane."
You've never seen this same situation with women? While I agree that we all need to be nice to each other and that it is important for gender relations and society at large, I have to disagree that just being nice is enough for guys.
I've been attracted to women that were awful to me, and nice to me. I've seen the same with friends that are women. Sometimes it is a psychological issue where someone wants to be treated badly, but most of the time it isn't. The truth is that it doesn't matter if you're nice or not. You can be a nice guy/girl (and I mean an actually nice person here) and not be able to attract a partner, and you can be an asshole and still not be able to attract a partner. I know some real misogynists who get laid plenty and I know decent dudes who have never had trouble with women.
I really feel like this a relic of Christian society that we can't see things in any other terms besides nice/not nice, good/bad etc. The Abrahamic religions have one God and therefore one way of acting morally. People can't admit that they're attracted to anything else besides the pure, morally righteous person and have to deflect even when the evidence is all around them to the contrary. Women and men fall for bad people literally all the time.
Old novels like Dracula and Nosferatu at least had the insight to recognize that sometimes the bad person can be tempting, sometimes they just have something that the "good" person doesn't. Also, Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray were popular for a reason! Obviously those books are fantasy, and no one actually wants to be treated like that. But something in them is still true, and we would be better off analyzing that instead of denying it entirely.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we all need grace, kindness, and patience for/with one another in this transitional era in gender relations. It's going to take time. Has everyone forgotten that we share this same planet and therefore, that we NEED each other?
This doesn’t seem hard to me, gentlemen. If you want to be in a relationship with any one, being kind and thoughtful is a pretty basic first step. If you like some one, then treat them like you like them. I am honestly puzzled by many of rthese comments.
Great article and I'm 10000% on board with your message! Kindness is so important.
I do have thoughts about this section:
"No, women do not like what other men might perceive to be as a “nice guy” who doesn’t stand up for himself. Women do not like guys who think of themselves as “nice guys” but are actually exclusively wielding their so-called kindness for sex and then become hostile to women when they don’t receive it..."
This isn’t really describing a nice guy. I totally get what you mean, but I think calling these examples “nice guys” muddies the point, especially when the argument is that it’s good to be nice! The first example sounds more like a doormat or people-pleaser, which isn’t the same thing as being nice. The second is someone using niceness as a transaction for sex, which is anything but nice. Could these be reframed as a doormat or a transaction-seeker, rather than lumping them under “nice guy.” Maybe if we introduce more respectful way of talking about truly nice guys, we'll get a little more traction. The term "nice guy" has nearly become a dirty word for this reason and I think that's unfortunate. Thoughts?
I think you're dead on, but unfortunately the way she uses the term is solidly in line with how it is commonly used. It's one of the more frustrating aspects of online discourse in this area, honestly. "Nice guy" mainly refers to passivity, not niceness. Women like it when men are actively nice: taking time out of the day to initiate, engage with them, chat about interests, hang out, etc. When guys are passively nice, adopting a live and let live approach, being generally kindly when spoken to, women tend to completely ignore them.
Which brings us to the confusing world we currently inhabit, where every girl says their top priority is finding a(n actively) nice guy, while (passively) nice guys go for years on end without a sliver of female attention. Leading some people to believe that women are liars and nice guys are chumps.
That picture throws me for a loop. They do seem to be together. Can we at least admit that such a thing is extremely unusual? Not impossible though. There are obvious things, like the guy is rich (they appear to be in college, so maybe his family is rich), or maybe he's a celebrity that I'm not familiar with. But also possible that somehow this sclhub is actually brimming with confidence, despite everything the world has probably thrown at him. He may be hilarious, the life of the party. He may be a celebrity on that campus. I have so many questions. He was competing with many other dudes for that girl and somehow he won. Would love to know more.
Incidentally, that is the real thing the pickup artists are teaching: confidence. Or at least how to mimic confidence, which could turn into real confidence once it starts working. It goes back to status, but how does one measure status? Mostly if someone acts like they have high status, other people will believe it, lacking data to confirm or deny the basis of said status. But then if a guy walks into a room and everyone cheers for him, is talking about him, his status will be soaring. That's why being a rock star or celebrity is the highest status you can have and those guys have women throwing themselves at them.
Honestly, a lot of men and women should just put their money where their mouth is and opt out of dating entirely instead of having this schizo hot/cold attitude where the opposite sex is both awful but still is obligated to jump through hoops to date them (or even more hilarious, give the speaker a shot to overcome their conceited prejudices). Both gents and ladies can absolute mainline content creators who exclusively make stuff to flatter this attitude, and it leads to bizarre posturing towards an invisible audience that half the time doesn't even exist.
I know a lady whose story feed is an absolute trainwreck of skits about how awful modern men are (they microcheat, apparently) and screencaps of spats she gets into in comments sections interspersed with brags about what wifey material she is, then on other days it's boasts about how good the single life is and how she's done dating men, followed by an inadequate date post-mortem the next week. At a certain point you'd expect her to toss in the towel.
I'm about six years older than her (36), but I feel like in my 20s the prog message to men was to make like women and learn to build a happily single existence *before* desperately trying to fill the woman-shaped hole in that life. And there's been a 180 there from all directions: being single is now either a sign you didn't make the cut (shared by both trad ladies more sympathetic towards women and a lot of lib feminists) or a brave position to hold in a war of attrition until the other camp crumbles to the threat of loneliness and shapes up (any masculinity guru).
Beautifully said. It’s wild that “be kind” has turned into a radical concept in dating. You’re right, most people don’t actually dislike the opposite sex, they’re just performing outrage because tenderness feels risky now. Maybe the real rebellion is learning to care again.
All of social media is optimized to promote conflict and Twitter/X is now a far-right swamp. The bio of the guy whose tweet of the photo of the two teens went viral reads, in part, "tit enthusiast| I miss the Deep South| ADPI coochie crusher"
Do you have a problem with tit enthusiasm?
Yes. Misogynists are granted one tit only, and it is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_(bird)
While I agree with you that kindness to prospective partners is unequivocally the most important prerequisite for a relationship, romantic or otherwise, I think it is important not to dismiss or ignore the effect of status on relationships. I live in the South, and yeah, a plumber pulling good money would not find their profession a barrier to dating around here. But there's bound to be people even here that would not be interested in a plumber, and I think there are definitely entire cities where that population is larger proportionately. We can talk all day about how kindness is key, but I fear that some of that kindness should be reserved for men struggling to cope with the effect of status on dating. They aren't hallucinating the existence of a relationship between desirability and status, no matter how much more likely a lack of kindness is an overriding factor.
Yes, if somehow there was a beautiful woman with low status, men would be happy to date her. In practice this never happens because women derive much of their status from their beauty, but it's the beauty the guys are after. Guys would brag about dating a stripper, but handsome plumber is going to have a much tougher time.
I'm not an expert on plumbers, but I suspect there aren't many opportunities to meet women there, other than chatting up the occasional single mom. That goes double if your hobbies include watching football at the bar, shooting guns, etc.
That said, I think it's important to have a disclaimer that one may need to move for a better dating scene. Or make time to date (e.g. stop working night shifts). Status matters to conservative areas more than liberal ones (but yes, there will be judgmental women and men who look down on you for your job and even less relevant traits everywhere). One way or another, you need to fit into the world of women
Speaking for myself, I need to find better ways of interacting with women regularly. I'm still working on it, but I try to think about the vibes women want. For example, I wanted to start playing recreational sports after work a couple years ago. A desire shared across genders, races, wealth, etc.
I continue to play Ultimate Frisbee, dodgeball, and basketball in the park regularly. I found the event through Meetup.com after hearing people say I should look there for dating/friendship opportunities. You go there an you mostly see other tech guys like me (which is something I heard before and that actually put me off from trying something new, unfortunately). I thought like a tech guy and met other tech guys.
Women are into exercise too obv, but it has to have a gentle vibe, for lack of better words. Hell, even "Sports" as a concept can leave a masculine, rough, competitive impression which can turn women off (unless she's ovulating 🥁🔔). Also, perhaps more importantly, cute girls generally don't want to drive to the gym or a group hike and get hit on by men they don't know.
Think about places where you're not going to get hit in the face with a rubber ball, have to guard the ball from big strangers, or ideally even go to a random park you've never been to. In my experience, the best way to meet women the fitness route is to go the THE yoga studio/franchise in your area with a good IG. A place where she can do her wellness routine, talk to her girlfriends, and just maybe chat with that man with cool jewelry after.
You gotta think Instagram (or Tumblr), not Reddit if that makes sense. I know that's a lot more complex and vague than "Just get a haircut" or "Just be hot" or yes, "Just be kind", but that's my understanding as of Gucci Mane Day 2025. Rule #1 of dating as a straight man: Don't scare the hoes.
The mental cycle is so pervasive. Hypothetical plumber believes women are superficial. Hypothetical woman fulfills the role of superficiality because she closes off as a response to the energy of the plumber. She sees him as crass. He sees her as superficial.
It feels more like the plumber is afraid he is lacking depth and cannot digest that feeling so he bypasses it and opts for the easier “she doesn’t want to date me because of status” narrative.
If you think attraction is based solely on status just watch the video of Quentin Tarantino trying to convince Fiona Apple of his worth lmao
i'm going to repeat something my therapist told me; that we should be giving each other more grace, because we're all just flawed human beings, living in an imperfect world.
I think this is a great analysis, and extends a good deal more empathy to both sides than many of the pieces on here, so thank you. As a man who has waded through the sea of substacks that decry even associating with men as crossing the battle lines, maybe I’ll write the other half to this, idk.
You really think a woman with a college degree would be willing to date a plumber? I'm not so sure, even if he made more money than her and was nice to her.
Yes, I really think a woman with a college degree would date a plumber. I am a woman with a college degree.
i think the more relevant question would be if a plumper would be willing to date a woman with a college degree
Stats would be helpful here. As we mature as men we always eventually end up learning the lesson to judge what women do, not what they say. I can see why it’s a noble feeling to say and really believe that one would date someone of lower status, but that doesn’t mean it’s what that person ends up doing in reality (often even subconsciously).
Men do this too in other situations. We all like to think of ourselves as noble, martyred and heroes in our stories.
Here's a N = 64000 study on women saying they value kindness the most in partners.
But that's not really "Proof." The thing about gender war rhetoric, like good conspiracy theories, is that they're impossible to actually falsify with or without stats.
I can't *prove* that I don't make Diddy jokes behind closed doors, I can't prove I care about women enough to stop an attempted assault (I've never been in that situation), I can't prove I'm less terrifying than a bear (granted, women tend to walk past me but not bears on the trail).
She can't prove that she values personality over Chad's status, she can't prove that her dating preferences are not racist, she can't prove that she's not going to use me as a wallet.
I guess an equivalent for men is saying they defend women (*especially* when they're talking about trans bathrooms and school shootings, and not about groping on the bus). Like how many of those damn Uvalde cops said they were the Thin Blue Line until they actually had to stop a school shooter. It's one of those things where talk is cheap and you have to be Tested in some way.
I am honest curious what "Stats" or "Proof" you are searching for. I don't know what can prove/disprove "none of the young women in the audience would be willing to date a guy who works as a plumber" (and associated rhetoric). Would the Stats be a scientific study on something particular? The No Kings protests to have women holding a "We want kind men" banner? Brad Pitt/Chris Brown/some other famous POS with a ton of female fans gets cancelled?
Ultimately, this is an area where I fear stats don't convince anyone (not the only area!). The Ultimate Proof is of course being kind and getting laid. Short of that, I guess seeing your actually-nice-but-perpetually-single "plumber" friend get a GF or hear women say nice things about men (that doesn't involve men just doing stuff for women or having a rich job).
Lastly, I really am grateful that Magdalene stays humble and objective about dating and gender and there's a space where we can work together. She said in this article "It would be preposterous to think that niceness alone is all that it takes in the ineffable swirl of emotion that makes up attraction."
I literally don't know what else to say.
If you don’t think anything can be proven, have you not ready any studies or surveys or papers or have any idea what sociologists and psychologists do for a living? There are many studies looking to identify people’s preferences. And as far as proving, you’re right, humans are more complicated than ‘proving’ gravity exists. But we can still glean insights about human nature, behaviour, preferences, etc. At the very least you can learn correlations, if not causations from data.
Let me give you an example of a claim and potential ‘proof’ that data could falsify.
Claim: women don’t care about men’s height when it comes to choosing a partner.
Finding: majority of women set the height filter on dating apps at 6+ feet. (This is an example and I don’t know the precise number but a good deal of women do this from Hinge and tinder data).
Does this ‘prove’ that height is the most important factor? No, but it does confirm that what people say and what they do are not always the same. And that women do in fact care about height, but it sounds crass to say so out loud.
Check out the book Dataclysm by Christian Rudder. Lots of insights in there about human preferences when it comes to mate selection. You can see that we can glean a lot about people’s preferences when you look at their dating profiles, DMs, etc.
Zackly. That woman slicing cheese at the Stop-N-Shop would think she'd won the lottery. Some Grievance Studies grad would think he was seriously down-market and socially embarrassing, unless he could be leveraged in some way. A woman (any woman) in Williston, ca. 2012, would think he was a pauper, unless he had a house to live in or something.
That's my instinct. What looks are to men, status is to women. For whatever reason, blue collar workers are considered to be lower status. A guy with options won't date an unattractive woman and a woman with options won't date a plumber. I suppose an unattractive woman with a college degree would consider it if she were desperate.
Can't speak for all women or what culture you're speaking from, but as a college educated woman I'd totally date a plumber (if I was attracted to him and we shared similar interests). I think trade jobs are a noble skill, but then again I'm speaking as someone who values passion, drive and financial literacy over 'status,' so white collar vs blue collar is irrelevant to me. Just some perspective. That being said, I think one of the points Magdalene is making is that women these days often don't even have the option of weighing pros and cons of multiple suitors (this isn't The Bachelorette! lmao), because men are not treating them with respect or kindness to begin with. It's down to the wire.
We as a species are currently experiencing the mother of all growing pains as we reckon with overcoming millennia of oppression against women. You can’t expect all the kinks to work out in less than a generation.
"On an immediate level, there are many men for whom a woman’s niceness is entirely secondary: even if she is unkind to him, his attraction to her will not wane."
You've never seen this same situation with women? While I agree that we all need to be nice to each other and that it is important for gender relations and society at large, I have to disagree that just being nice is enough for guys.
I've been attracted to women that were awful to me, and nice to me. I've seen the same with friends that are women. Sometimes it is a psychological issue where someone wants to be treated badly, but most of the time it isn't. The truth is that it doesn't matter if you're nice or not. You can be a nice guy/girl (and I mean an actually nice person here) and not be able to attract a partner, and you can be an asshole and still not be able to attract a partner. I know some real misogynists who get laid plenty and I know decent dudes who have never had trouble with women.
I really feel like this a relic of Christian society that we can't see things in any other terms besides nice/not nice, good/bad etc. The Abrahamic religions have one God and therefore one way of acting morally. People can't admit that they're attracted to anything else besides the pure, morally righteous person and have to deflect even when the evidence is all around them to the contrary. Women and men fall for bad people literally all the time.
Old novels like Dracula and Nosferatu at least had the insight to recognize that sometimes the bad person can be tempting, sometimes they just have something that the "good" person doesn't. Also, Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray were popular for a reason! Obviously those books are fantasy, and no one actually wants to be treated like that. But something in them is still true, and we would be better off analyzing that instead of denying it entirely.
Excellent points! We have to look at what people do rather than what they say.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we all need grace, kindness, and patience for/with one another in this transitional era in gender relations. It's going to take time. Has everyone forgotten that we share this same planet and therefore, that we NEED each other?
This doesn’t seem hard to me, gentlemen. If you want to be in a relationship with any one, being kind and thoughtful is a pretty basic first step. If you like some one, then treat them like you like them. I am honestly puzzled by many of rthese comments.
most dudes are nice. niceness doesnt win women over, it's attraction
Great article and I'm 10000% on board with your message! Kindness is so important.
I do have thoughts about this section:
"No, women do not like what other men might perceive to be as a “nice guy” who doesn’t stand up for himself. Women do not like guys who think of themselves as “nice guys” but are actually exclusively wielding their so-called kindness for sex and then become hostile to women when they don’t receive it..."
This isn’t really describing a nice guy. I totally get what you mean, but I think calling these examples “nice guys” muddies the point, especially when the argument is that it’s good to be nice! The first example sounds more like a doormat or people-pleaser, which isn’t the same thing as being nice. The second is someone using niceness as a transaction for sex, which is anything but nice. Could these be reframed as a doormat or a transaction-seeker, rather than lumping them under “nice guy.” Maybe if we introduce more respectful way of talking about truly nice guys, we'll get a little more traction. The term "nice guy" has nearly become a dirty word for this reason and I think that's unfortunate. Thoughts?
I think you're dead on, but unfortunately the way she uses the term is solidly in line with how it is commonly used. It's one of the more frustrating aspects of online discourse in this area, honestly. "Nice guy" mainly refers to passivity, not niceness. Women like it when men are actively nice: taking time out of the day to initiate, engage with them, chat about interests, hang out, etc. When guys are passively nice, adopting a live and let live approach, being generally kindly when spoken to, women tend to completely ignore them.
Which brings us to the confusing world we currently inhabit, where every girl says their top priority is finding a(n actively) nice guy, while (passively) nice guys go for years on end without a sliver of female attention. Leading some people to believe that women are liars and nice guys are chumps.
That picture throws me for a loop. They do seem to be together. Can we at least admit that such a thing is extremely unusual? Not impossible though. There are obvious things, like the guy is rich (they appear to be in college, so maybe his family is rich), or maybe he's a celebrity that I'm not familiar with. But also possible that somehow this sclhub is actually brimming with confidence, despite everything the world has probably thrown at him. He may be hilarious, the life of the party. He may be a celebrity on that campus. I have so many questions. He was competing with many other dudes for that girl and somehow he won. Would love to know more.
Incidentally, that is the real thing the pickup artists are teaching: confidence. Or at least how to mimic confidence, which could turn into real confidence once it starts working. It goes back to status, but how does one measure status? Mostly if someone acts like they have high status, other people will believe it, lacking data to confirm or deny the basis of said status. But then if a guy walks into a room and everyone cheers for him, is talking about him, his status will be soaring. That's why being a rock star or celebrity is the highest status you can have and those guys have women throwing themselves at them.
Honestly, a lot of men and women should just put their money where their mouth is and opt out of dating entirely instead of having this schizo hot/cold attitude where the opposite sex is both awful but still is obligated to jump through hoops to date them (or even more hilarious, give the speaker a shot to overcome their conceited prejudices). Both gents and ladies can absolute mainline content creators who exclusively make stuff to flatter this attitude, and it leads to bizarre posturing towards an invisible audience that half the time doesn't even exist.
I know a lady whose story feed is an absolute trainwreck of skits about how awful modern men are (they microcheat, apparently) and screencaps of spats she gets into in comments sections interspersed with brags about what wifey material she is, then on other days it's boasts about how good the single life is and how she's done dating men, followed by an inadequate date post-mortem the next week. At a certain point you'd expect her to toss in the towel.
I'm about six years older than her (36), but I feel like in my 20s the prog message to men was to make like women and learn to build a happily single existence *before* desperately trying to fill the woman-shaped hole in that life. And there's been a 180 there from all directions: being single is now either a sign you didn't make the cut (shared by both trad ladies more sympathetic towards women and a lot of lib feminists) or a brave position to hold in a war of attrition until the other camp crumbles to the threat of loneliness and shapes up (any masculinity guru).
don't agree with conclusion but rest is very solid
Beautifully said. It’s wild that “be kind” has turned into a radical concept in dating. You’re right, most people don’t actually dislike the opposite sex, they’re just performing outrage because tenderness feels risky now. Maybe the real rebellion is learning to care again.