Comment by linguae | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linguae | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not the original poster, but I'll respond (disclaimer: I'm a single male, about to turn 30 in a few months, who lives near Silicon Valley):

1. Single men vastly outnumber single women in Silicon Valley due to the unfortunate gender demographics of the tech industry, making for a very competitive dating environment for single men.

2. Due to the Bay Area's high housing prices, single people living in the Bay Area who are not Bay Area natives tend to be highly-paid young professionals. These people tend to be driven, ambitious, and have very high dating standards. There's nothing wrong with having high standards, but it makes the dating scene more difficult since you have to work on meeting those standards in order to be successful with the dating scene. It seems like a man has to be in excellent physical shape, make a ton of money, and have the right pedigree in terms of degrees and credentials in order to be attractive in Silicon Valley since there are so many young professional single men in this area.

3. There's a big problem with "flaking" in the Bay Area, where some people have a bad habit of standing people up on dates and other social outings. This has happened to me, and it is very rude and inconsiderate, especially with the busy schedules that many people in Silicon Valley have, as well as the traffic.

4. This is probably my most controversial point, but despite the Bay Area's reputation as a politically progressive place, ethnic minorities seem to have a harder time dating than non-minorities. This matters to me since I'm black, a rarity in Silicon Valley. While the statistics on this page from OkCupid (https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...) are not confined to the Bay Area, based on my personal experience and on empirical research I've done by reading other sites regarding the dating scene in the Bay Area, it is a problem here.

To be frank, while I enjoy Silicon Valley's career opportunities, the high cost of living and the difficulties I've experienced dating here make me want to research some alternatives, although as a lifelong Californian (but not a Bay Area native), I'm a bit apprehensive about leaving the state since I enjoy California's diversity and weather. I've thought about Tokyo, which I've lived before as an intern and absolutely loved, but it would be a massive cut in salary.

I'm with you on these points. After 6 years in San Francisco (Engineer), my wife and I both took new opportunities and moved to London. It's been 3 years, and we're still enjoying it.

Stockholm might be the city for you. Work at Spotify. When Swedish girls marry foreign, they prefer english-speaking partners. Swedish men marry Thai and Russian girls. https://www.population-europe.eu/pop-digest/cross-border-mar...

I am also speaking from experience here.

WHEN they marry foreign. You're making it sound as if he'll have a huge advantage in Sweden just because he's foreign, which I highly doubt he will.

A colleague's cousin (they're Arabs from Tunisia) went to Sweden for a couple months for some school thing. He was getting so much attention there from women that he stayed there for PhD. He did not get that kind of attention in Tunisia.

Come to NYC!

Try Sydney. Similar in lots of ways to California, good tech scene, and much better gender balance.

> It seems like a man has to be in excellent physical shape, make a ton of money, and have the right pedigree in terms of degrees and credentials in order to be attractive in Silicon Valley

Isn't this universally true and not based on location at all? I'm a bit confused by this point TBH.

Minimum standards are waaaay higher in the Bay Area is what he’s saying. Two out of three of those would make you a real catch anywhere else.

> Isn't this universally true and not based on location at all? I'm a bit confused by this point TBH.

I think what is universally true is that the ladies will go for the highest ranking guys they can get. What seems to be happening there is that gender imbalance accentuates the effect by raising the bar higher than it otherwise would be.

Your point #4 will be magnified to the extreme in Tokyo.

Interestingly enough, back when I lived in Tokyo, I seemed to get more attention from women there than I ever did in California, whether it was the Central Valley, the Bay Area, or the Central Coast. But I was pining for someone back at home while I was on my internship (spoiler alert: I was rejected as soon as I returned home), and so I ignored the attention I received.

This has nothing to do with the dating scene, and I risk deviating from the topic, but I felt this indescribable, overwhelming sense of freedom as an African-American in Japan that I never felt in America. I felt the difference in treatment, where I was treated better in Japan than in America. Women in Japan wouldn't walk on the opposite side of an alley whenever I walked by, nor would they act scared whenever I was alone in an elevator with them (I had an incident in Sacramento as a teenager when a white woman refused to enter an elevator with me and another black guy.) I felt like I was in a place where I could finally be myself. To me, being a "gaijin" in Japan was an upgrade from being an African-American in America.

That really speaks to the horrors of America, given that in Japan, as a white male foreigner with command of "hai", "arigato" and on good days, "ah, so desu ne", I definitely got the sense of being put up with - albeit more so in Tokyo than elsewhere.

But at the same time I can sympathize in that street interactions in California have grown openly hostile across the board. The level of polite hospitality is so low and paranoia so high that it is actually hard to go outside and do business without ending up in a confrontation of some kind. Just the other week I was crossing the street in SF after seeing a movie[1] and a lady(a white lady) crossing the other direction gave me the finger and screamed "fuck you, fuck you" for no reason I could fathom.

We passed, and then I had a feeling of deja vu and thought, "didn't that happen the last time I saw a movie here too? Does this woman just go around in the evening cursing out strangers for self-care?"

And that is the kind of thing that sounds dreadfully believable for SF these days. The privilege spares me from most avenues of material loss, but that's hardly something to be proud of.

[1] The film was Sorry to Bother You, if it matters. I enjoyed it

That’s true but he’ll be much, much more of a rarity in Tokyo. Trust me there are girls who have a thing for Americans and there are girls who have a thing for black guys and they have limited options. I sincerely doubt Tokyo is worse than Shanghai for xenophobia or racism and all the black guys I know here are dating or married to Chinese girls.

Beijing is great for dating from the foreign guy perspective also, regardless of ethnicity (black, Indian, white, ...).

Now if you are a girl, things are actually tougher in Asia.

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