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Comment by Bucephalus355 | Hacker News Reader

This is getting more and more common. A couple of reasons for this:

- the world is dividing into “social haves” and “social have-nots”. It’s not a surprise that as wealth and inequality have taken off dramatically, we’d see social and sexual repercussions.

- ppl really underestimate the role community has played in American history in “hooking up” people and playing matchmaking. I know going to bars looks awesome in the movies and is indeed a cool thing for meeting men/women, but it’s inherently not scalable for a society and really only possible for the subset who can conquer social anxiety

- due to financial constraints, people are living in “extended adolescence” longer and longer. Also is a consequence of ppl getting more and more education. Hard to date as actively when you live with your parents

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Is it getting more and more common? Is there any evidence to support that?

https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/992105680000749570?r...

Really want to emphasize that the loneliness of “loveless men” is one of the very underestimated sad things of the late 20th and early 21st century. Despite hollywood tropes, men, who have smaller social networks than women, typically benefit more from relationships and suffer more after their dissolution.

Timothy McVeigh, of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine killers, as well as many of the September 11th hijackers, were all virgins. Many authors and postmodern theorists have made this connection.

This is not an isolated issue. It links together with the lack of economic growth of the last 40 years, the rise of autocracy throughout the world, and the failure of capitalism and secularism to dictate any kind of end goal, purpose, or mission statement other than a kind of bland “do what you want, be you”.

Angela Nagle very effectively even links this to the growth of populism and even the alt-right in her book, Kill All Normies.

https://www.amazon.com/Kill-All-Normies-Culture-Alt-Right/dp...

> This is not an isolated issue

Of course not. Make sex outside of marriage socially acceptable and of course the bottom 30% of men are the losers.

Historically a huge proportion of men have never had kids. Far higher than the number of women who never had kids.

How does one follow from the other? If true, then weren't the huge proportion of men who never had kids be losers too?

Radical groups like neo-nazis have been actively recruiting from this pool of angry virgins— everything from gamergate to incels.

There’s a huge amount of crossover on reddit between 4chan/gamergate/incel/stormfront/the_donald.

It’s basically a bunch of older men recruiting vulnerable boys into their personal army.

> Timothy McVeigh, of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine killers, as well as many of the September 11th hijackers, were all virgins. Many authors and postmodern theorists have made this connection.

Do countries with legalized prostitution have more, or less, domestic terrorism?

Sir Issac Newton was a virgin too, just to add some balance to things.

Yea; one's position in the sex/desire spectrum doesn't necessarily change their general value/happiness in life. I think one key is in finding something (a hobby) that you identify strongly. I think they call it sublimation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(psychology)

I doubt the issue is about simply sex, like, have sex and the problem goes away. This is the problem of being undesired, which I feel has more implications than sex.

They could join Buddhist monasteries. It doesn't have to be sad. Lot of Dalai Lama fans around here I see anyways.

One of the problems with this is our debt based economy. I would have ordained at one point if it weren't for the fact that having taken loans out for school means I'm ironically too poor to take a vow of poverty.

Judging from the downvoting, it seems like a large proportion of people either misunderstand or disagree with your larger point, but you're absolutely correct.

One of the biggest fundamental drivers of radical Islamist terrorism is the deadly combination of polygamy and stratefied wealth created by oil. Turns out that when you have a population of young, angry, aimless men and ensure there's absolutely no hope of a lasting romantic relationship or procreation, they become much easier to radicalize.

Ultimately, social stability requires a critical mass of the population to be future-oriented and put their amygdalae in check. But that doesn't work if there is no hope for the future.

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