38 Comments

Good deep dive - I read Greer's take on this about how he see's this girl as an embodiment of modern red state culture which is also interesting. To me this is just more evidence of the underclass suffering after being unshackled completely - as you point out this isn't new behavior but it was more moderated or controlled. This is the big difference to the past I think, the old rules were better defined and understood. Now there is anarchy across the underclasses as a whole.

Expand full comment

I could have gone even deeper into the biography of her life, there definitely seems to be something tragic there... It seemed that her self conception was "yeah, I'm in college right now, but I'm going back to my small town of 700 people and never leaving." Why? We talk about delayed adolescence in men, but what does that symbolize? But too much individual psychoanalysis in that direction was at the risk of losing the focus on the general "archetype."

Expand full comment

“Most men are convinced that a majority of women are promiscuous.” Where are you getting that from? Which men?

Expand full comment

That's a great catch. I shouldn't be using weasel words without backing it up. Have edited that sentence to be a question rather than a statement of fact.

Expand full comment

This is fantastic writing and your thesis is solid, not that you need to hear it from me. Glad Substack served your goods up for my consumption.

"Men adopt positions like “all women are like that” to feel better about their failures with women."

I think you're right that many men have fallen into that trap. I would also suggest that some men, men who have had a lot of experience with women, perhaps not just in dating but as husbands and fathers of daughters, might also say that "all women are similar". At least, they are in certain ways.

I think that "Hawk Tuah" girl will settle down if she can find a man willing to wrangle her. Maybe that is what she wants, to be dominated a little. Maybe many women want that. Just a little. But it will be hard for a dude to walk the aisle with her knowing that tiktok is out there.

Lesson for everyone: Never, ever, ever, let anyone record you while you are inebriated. Maybe that's why bars are being replaced with at home drinking.

Anyway, great essay. Good luck.

Expand full comment

To your point, even some porn stars get married! I actually wonder what the marital rate of porn stars is. My hypothesis is that porn stars get married at a much higher rate (20%?) than other female groups (self-identified asexuals, for example). So while we often think that hypersexuality is the greatest threat to the institution of marriage, objectively, it is hyposexuality which is more dangerous. But I don't have the data on hand to prove that -- I'll keep looking!

Expand full comment

I'd love to see the data on porn star marriages. I wouldn't know how to begin to track down that info. I hope you have a lead!

My guess is that there are very few porn stars who found good provider, left the biz, had children, and have been married for 10 years are more. I'd expect the typical porn star marriage story is sad and full of various dramas.

Expand full comment

It's getting really silly now. Those "marriages "are like gay marriages with in built infidelity.

Expand full comment

I agree that porn star marriages involve higher rates of promiscuity. My point was merely that asexuals are less sexually and romantically successful than "sluts." Whether or not this equates to happiness is another question, but at least on the level of "brute biology," porn stars are "healthier." Haven't got the stats to back this up as I'm sure even self identified "asexuals" have a fertility rate above 0.0.

Expand full comment

In terms of hereditarian versus environment, I’d also say these go hand in hand. The environment influences the immediate genetic proclivities, which is then passed on through their children. I’d also agree that the most sexually selective, high IQ of women still value credentials as we live in a managerial regime. What I would say, is that statistics show if a man makes more money than a woman, but is not credentialed, she doesn’t care. But interestingly if he has a degree and she still makes more than him, he is seen as lower status.

Credentialism as proxy for mate selection is failing, because the managerial elite are becoming dysgenic, are completely comfortable, and insulated. The living standards they’ve produced for the bottom half of society, which includes more than capable middle-classed, and lower middle classed individuals with great merits (some would say even greater conscientiousness), who’re being pushed into poverty. Ironically it was Marx who predicted this cohort was the first to turn to fascism as they view the upper-middle class bourgeoisie as traitors and backstabbers. This credentialed elite has succeeded in locking out this cohort, and are creating a rebellious counter elite that is attempting to corral the mass against them. There are many deeply intelligent people who ought to be in universities, and have been denied their place in the elite, denied the process of social mobility, and will burn down the entire power structure to get what they view as theirs.

Expand full comment

So I'm not familiar with Canada's 55% post-secondary rate specifically, but as far as America, I'll share this opinion: you are correct that a Bachelor's degree is extremely diluted from even 30 years ago in terms of selectivity (intelligence, conscientiousness, openness) since anyone can get into these programs. However, the trend that I identify is this doesn't mean the end of selection, rather, the moving of goal posts, so now you have to get a Master's or PhD to get into a truly selective program. When we actually look at the statistics, we find huge differences between highschool graduates, college graduates, and post-grads. I could be more convincing on this point if I took the time to write "In Defense of College" showing the data on each group and comparing them...

Expand full comment

The clarify, what I mean by credentialism as proxy for mate selection is failing because credentialism itself is no longer a guarantee for competence. Canada for example, 55% of the population has post-secondary education and absolutely nothing to show for it. Canada is a failing country in real time. The civilization-wide competency crisis, the pathologies and neuroses of this credentialed elite has plummeted faith in institutions by all members of society excluding those already part of it, which increasingly is made up of would-be elites denied access to what should be theirs

Expand full comment

Provide a source backing up your "nothing to show for it" claim. Here's mine:

https://univcan.ca/media-room/publications/universities-help-canadians-get-ahead-quick-facts/

The average income for all Canadians in 2020 was $51.9K.

The average income with a bachelor’s degree was $68.3K.

That's a $680k return over 40 years, and tuition is only $40k for a Bachelor's Degree.

Expand full comment

Look at the state of Canada right now and tell me if you think elite overproduction did anything to benefit, slow or stop its current issues.

Canada has the lowest upwards mobility out of 20 countries for young people in the OECD. It will not economically recover until the 2050s at the earliest. Canada is entering a lost decade and is already in a recession, which is currently being ignored because it’s pasted over with the 1.2-2.2 million immigrants entering it annually, which is propping up GDP.

This newcomer number is also pasting over a massive exodus of educated Canadians who are leaving for greener pastures, primarily the United States. I guarantee if you cross reference BA holders with those working in government jobs, they’ll have higher salaries, because the federal government is the largest employer in the country. Absolutely none of these indicate Canada has anything to show for it.

Expand full comment

I'm making a specific and simple point: education impacts sexual selection. I provided a direct statistic to that point. You seem to be talking about something much broader. I'm talking about how individual women mate with individual men, and how that process is impacted by education. You're talking about some larger issue of how degrees are fake and the economy is imploding. Both of those things can be true at the same time. Degrees can both be diminishing in value to the overall "real" economy, while at the same time playing a role in sexual selection.

Expand full comment

Goethe wasn’t a virgin but newton was

Expand full comment

Good correction. I've edited the sentence in line with your suggestion.

Expand full comment

Higher levels of education and higher income than their male counterparts means women would rather remain single and childless. Southern Europe and East Asia being the most recent examples of dramatic and drastic collapses in birth rates that are seemingly irreversible and are defended by the women as simply the result of our collective choice. That is the Garden of Eden in real life

Expand full comment

I think that folks forget that it costs money to be pretty. Women are afraid of being poor because they're afraid of being ugly. So we go get degrees so we can make enough money to attract a mate.

Expand full comment

> I think that folks forget that it costs money to be pretty. Women are afraid of being poor because they're afraid of being ugly.

This is interesting, because I think the opposite.

From all the data shows us (old Oktrends posts, Gwern's analyses, etc), the factors that objectively matter most for female attractiveness are age, symmetry of feature, and hip waist ratio. You can infer HWR through any outfit, and you can plainly see age and symmetry of feature through pretty much any makeup schema. The entire hours-long effort every day is sound and fury, angels dancing on pins, pointless. It will do barely anything to change a woman's objective "attractiveness" ranking relative to other women, which is vastly overdetermined by things that makeup and outfits don't change.

MEN on the other hand - a man's attractiveness is driven by his confidence, fitness, wealth, status, career, and personality attributes. THOSE can be messaged more through outfits. Confidence could be tweaked with subtle makeup, and fitness with better outfits that accentuate your shoulders or arms or whatever. If you dress like a million bucks, you LOOK more like a million bucks, and so higher in mate value. How you dress can actually be reflective of your status, wealth, and personality.

But do men care at all? Nope. Fashion blind, the lot of them, in jeans and t-shirts or hoodies.

Expand full comment

AWALT is risk mitigation. The point is that you can never know for sure if a woman may betray or mistreat you until it has already happened, so you should be prepared for the possibility. I agree that of course people turn it into a stupid repetitive dogma, because that is what people do, but I believe this is the instinct behind its staying power. It is a male correspondent to a woman's fear of being abused physically; even though of course only a tiny number of men are actually a threat to her in this way, she doesn't know which ones they are, and the negative outcome if it does happen is extremely severe. It's quite understandable to be a bit paranoid in those circumstances.

Anyways, I would posit that perhaps simply having money is another avenue to success here. One of the big features of a PhD is that it usually correlates with money and economic stability. If you didn't go to college but you are financially stable or even quite wealthy, I wonder if having a PhD would still matter at that point.

I would also question the idea of pursuing a graduate degree just so you can date liberal women but this comment is long enough already.

Expand full comment

I also question the PhD, hence, "Maybe there is a mysterious third way…" But I think comparing AWALT to female paranoia is very apt!

Expand full comment

A 25 year old woman who has had sex with 10 men in her life time has probably taken up about 0.01% of the opportunities she's had in her life time.

One a month is 12 in one year alone.

So if she was single for a couple of years of her adult life, she wouldn't be having very many one night stands at all.

Women who post bikini pictures to instagram and go out clubbing every weekend probably do sleep with more men than women who don't but they still do it so so so much less than young inexperienced men imagine they do. The ratio of acting slutty to actually having sex tends to be very high

Expand full comment

Yes and don't forget that a lot of the hot girls online are getting dolled up just to sit around their house all day. What else explains why the women we see in public are so much worse looking than the women we see online? I think it's because the girls on social media put on a face full of make up and a mini skirt, snap some selfies and then watch Netflix

Expand full comment

LOL this is so true: "Christians believe that each person is born totally depraved, and only by accepting the ideology of conservatism can their lust for evil be somewhat mitigated."

Expand full comment

the secret third way is to drop out of grad school at the exact equilibrium between receiving education and assuming student loans (given that formal credentials are now worthless).

Expand full comment

The romance novel archetype seems pretty consistent.

Expand full comment

Pssttt the mysterious third option is to move to another country that increases your likelihood of getting laid.

Expand full comment

"It could even be argued (this is a stretch, but big if true) that Puritans were so sexually selective, that their desire to move to America was itself a desire to gain sexual isolation from their uneducated, unspiritual, unreformed English neighbors."

As an aside, I do recall reading somewhere that the Plymouth Pilgrams did elect to leave the Netherlands because they did not want their children to assimilate (read: intermarry) into Dutch society.

Expand full comment

A question: What stop us from just throwing the game out of the window and invented artificial womb? That method is much easier and cheaper, than trying to court social predators with laws on their side. Or just let time do it job. Remember woman faded in her late 20 but men peaked in their 30, we have time leverage, so I am using it.

I don't really have the problem with women personality. I am disappoint by their lack of honor.

Expand full comment

I believe that is mentioned in Albion's Seed

Expand full comment

So for the credentialism...maybe online is the way to go? You can get the same credential for less time and money, and still truthfully say you have the letters. Seems like unless you're in the Ivy Leagues, no one knows or cares where you got them from.

I got an online MA in psych, and it wouldn't have been ideal if I was trying to launch a career in the field due to lack of networking and IRL mentoring etc... But I think it has been an advantage when applying for jobs, even for mostly/completely unrelated things (like ESL teaching and programming) by providing evidence that I'm a Smart Person.

Expand full comment

The only bug in the thesis is the reliance on, well, an unreliable source called Tinder. I’ve played (with, on,

In) gay versions for several decades. I’ve been the #1 most connected (I don’t like liked) or perhaps notorious, on some. Then I calculated the π r² problem and met Mr. #2 at a nightclub in Barcelona.

#2 was a pimp, knew me at sight, and introduced me to several rent men from ‘the dating app’

Ahh. And the movie producers. Muscular bronzed bearded endowed Poseidon or Zeus figures are quite in demand as prostitutes. I missed my career as a rock hard god.

The chance you talk to ‘a girl’, as you started down the path, is proportional to how far away they are. The candidate pool goes up quite rapidly with the square of the radius irrespective of education.

Sadly the chance you meet someone goes down as the inverse square of the radius. Sadly you’ll meet quite a few people in a pool 1000 miles in radius, but will chance you meet them is zero.

In fact, if you even talk with them you accelerate your isolation because well, there’s only 24 hours in a day, and you are killing time. Using an app isn’t the antitheses of getting laid.

Internet connect people but not sex organs. Quite bad.

I think for a horny gay man, the limit is around a mile, at best. I mean who wants to drive all the way across SF when you can wait for them to come to you… and wait. And wait some more.

In a bar - remember those? Mr. Goodbar? Talking and flirting? Effortlessly easy. Call a Waymo. Bring some friends. Go bar hopping. Good clean fun.

My friends and I who have achieved the near legendary rich muscle daddy nerd visionary hotness tech stratosphere iconic hung HIV-immune homozygous CCR5 delta-32 multilingual multinational status, know that walking to a place where there are people who know who you are is how you get laid all you want. “Cheers”.

Apps are for saps. The house always wins. The more

You play the more you don’t get laid.

Straight and gay, the most popular guys and gals will be hookers, and the fun overeducated are far from

The app having a life, in burning man getting laid, in Mexico on the riviera with friends getting laid, is with friend in Tahiti or have gone en mass to Corsica, or rented a monastery at Ulm, but not wasting quality sex time texting. Naked in the pools of Ventana, 200g of Sass, a nice joint, and more pleasure that people imagine.

Apps are not for the executive women I know. And I know quite a few.

I’m silly and arrogant sexually. But I’m right.

Apps are for saps

Expand full comment