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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

But who is adjusting their expectations? The data does not show women are and being willing to partner with men they don't currently believe to be suitable, and men adjusting their expectations is staying home, playing video games, and watching porn (which is entirely reasonable on their part, considering the landscape; if you can't win, why play?).

EDIT: @x86x87 We aren't disagreeing. The marketplace trajectory is already locked in due to the crystallization of ideas in this domain by market participants.

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Ultimately everyone has to regulate their own expectations.

If you're a woman and it's either prince charming or bust you're going to most likely end up alone. You decide what you want to do.

If you're a man and expect women to jump all over you when you're not taking care of yourself and cannot hold a conversation + don't want to improve to become more sexually attractive you're going to end up alone.

I feel like many people (men) here seem to live in a different planet than me. Women care so much less about wealth and looks than men think. Be a nice person, caring, reasonably fun to take with, ensure basic hygiene and carry your part of emotional and household duties and there are plenty of women out there who would be interested. But that also requires going out and meeting real women at work or in leisure environments they enjoy.

Honestly it is quite staggering how easy many fellow men find it to blame women for all supposed dating unfairness, but most do not even a basic own effort (or do so once and then give up when it doesn't work). Take care of yourself, have some hobbies and dare to talk to new people. And stop blaming others or the system or an amorphous and diverse group like women which make up more than 50% of the population for your own unhappiness.

I would encourage you to set aside your feelings, and instead consume the data and build your model from there. Observe what people do, not what they say ("revealed preference"). What does the data show us?

I believe I have provided robust citations throughout this thread, and am happy to consider any data you might have refuting those citations; your advice blatantly ignores the data. Certainly, from a dating perspective, hygiene, emotional health, and maximizing social opportunities is important. But you will still arrive at poor outcomes if counterparties are not interested in what you offer (which I address verbosely with links in thread). Expectations are cheap to have, and the cost is borne by the party who must jump through hoops to attempt to meet them.

If aggregate female expectations are beyond what a male population cohort can obtain, what do you expect of those men? They can either grind to meet a standard they will never meet, or opt out and seek their own happiness. Is it wrong to believe someone's expectations are unrealistic? I don't believe so, that is an opinion that can be held. I am happily partnered for over two decades, the advice I give to young men is simple: rapidly ascertain if a potential partner is worth your time and energy, and move on the moment you discover they're not. If you don't want a partner, or the effort is not worth the outcome, opt out and live your best life solo. That is all you can do. ~50% of first marriages fail, and the numbers get worse for second (67%) and third (73%) marriages. Most of this is luck anyway.

(I recommend "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/...)

@toomuchtodo I think we are saying the same thing. Were we differ maybe a bit I read this correctly in how much agency one individual can have and how hard it is to swim against the current.

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