One thing I've thought about a lot is that average men are much more aware of the treatment that top 10 percenters are getting from women than they were in previous generations. Men are pretty willing to jump through hoops and put up with the kind crap that average men have to in order to date if they simply see it as the price of admission. But if they see Mr. Hawt Guy walk in and have shit handed to him on a silver platter putting up with all that shit becomes a lot harder to justify. I know watching Chads get handed sex and dating just for existing killed any willingness I had to put effort into trying to date. You're just paying for sex at that point, and if you're gonna do that it's cheaper by the hour. There are obviously plenty of other reasons men are checking out and the OP describes one. But I really do think that widespread knowledge of AF/BB is playing a major role in killing men's interest in dating.

i'm just amazed at the magnitude of the fuckup by the "cultural stewards of society". how the fuck do you make the value proposition of getting a partner so bad, that even with all the 20-yo male hormone storm putting the finger on the scales on your side, more and more men still go "eh. not worth the trouble".

Easy travel and communication has been a disaster for civilization. We are meant to be in limited communities with finite populations. Part of maturing is men and women realizing that if they don't want to die alone, they will have to compromise at some point. Wasting your 20s moving to the big city and trying to carve out a livelihood and build a community from scratch is nightmarish.

the risk of ruining your life

I assume this is mostly referring to false rape/assault claims. There is also the cost in time and money that weigh on people.

Didn't Henry Cavill say he won't flirt with women anymore out of fear of being accused of sexual harassment?

I dont want to be bothered while shopping for groceries either, but make it make sense. Approaching sober women in public in broad daylight? BAD! Approaching inebriated women in bars, clubs or frat parties? Good! (well if you accept the risk of coyote ugly turning into a rape accusation)

Rejections certainly add up, but its no longer just a simple 'no.' A lot of messaging today tells young men that they are immoral or completely worthless if women arent having sex with them. Dating is a humiliation/findom ritual where men are expected to pay for a woman's time, knowing she is likely getting her sexual "needs" met on the side by a guy who doesnt have to pay anything.

Women are just so gassed up that they really see average men as too far beneath them to bother. They have their bullshit jobs, an education system built for them, endless attention on social media, and all the gadgets and dragons in their nightstands that never tire. Then theres the fat acceptance and slut walks to bludgeon young men into accepting any repulsive female behavior or be shunned as an incel. The scales are being tipped so harshly in women's favor that at a certain point its not surprising that many young men have so little self-worth and are so exasperated that being 80th in line is appealing.

Once again men gave women exactly what they explicitly fucking demanded and now the women are more unhappy and angry than ever.

Stop listening to women.

This is tangential to your post, but I fucking hate banter, and I hate the value that girls place on banter. I get that they watched every episode of Gilmore Girls or whatever and think that’s how normal people should interact with one another, but I just couldn’t do that shit back when I was single. It’s so god damn phony to participate in, and it’s so god damn embarrassing to watch other people try to do it. I find that the people who are most into “banter” are dipshits who think they’re clever as fuck when they actually have all the wit of a piece of plywood.

The other thing people tend to forget: majority of women you cold approach are already alpha widowed.

Rollo did an excellent video on this. Any woman who has already rode the carousel to any extent on dating apps is already a washed out and ran-through wench. I know a lot of guys don't want to think of it this way or accept this harsh reality, but it's true.

They found that the average 19-year-old girl these days has a bodycount equivalent to a 54-year-old woman from the previous generation. And I'm sure that's a conservative figure given that most women now lie about their bodycount because they know men find it to be a huge turnoff.

So even IF you opt to cold approach, you're either cold-approaching someone who -- as you mentioned -- is already in a relationship, and either not willing to give you the time of day or willing to cheat if you fit the Chad/Tyrone stereotype, or she's already ran-through and alpha widowed and you'll always be a beta-bux provider while she still dreams of being with the Chad/Tyrone who made her walk funny all those years ago.

Unfortunately it's a lose-lose situation for most guys unless you are cold-approaching in an absolutely traditional, highly conservative, middle-of-nowhere place where every young woman there hasn't already become the town bicycle before they even get their first job.

What blows my mind is how even moderately attractive women would rather have 5-10% of Chad’s time/attention knowing he has other women lined up than 100% of an average dude.

You can't negotiate attraction with banter, flirting and game. And from revealed preferences (what they do as opposed to what they say), physical appearance is the biggest factor for attraction.

I've also found that the women who want relationships are already in them. Single women today, including non-feminist ones, are on the dating apps but aren't looking for a relationship. A good way to describe what they're seeking was stated in another community by another individual - a "lifestyle choice".

Men are rejecting cold approach regardless because it's too much of a risk now for much less payoff. They're even stationing police officers in UK nightclubs to deter men from making "unwanted advances".

The loneliness epidemic is going to grow exponentially and it doesn't help when the likes of ShortFatOtaku have been on a recent anti-single crusade to denounce single men as misogynists and state that you're only a man if a woman finds you attractive.

You're not supposed to Cold Approach women anyways, and it rarely every makes sense to.

You're supposed to approach women already in your social group, at a social function, or at the behest of a friend or family member who intentionally introduces you.

The problem is:

• Hardly any adults use normal IRL social groups
• Hardly any adults in social groups attend social functions
• Basically no one is introducing family or friends to romantic partners.

Those are major gaps that need to be filled, and everyone in society is being delinquent about them. If you have a relationship, you need to start looking out for your bros. If you are the bro in question, you need to start navigating IRL social circles, and you probably need a disproportionately woman heavy hobby like reading, gardening, ballroom dancing, antiques, candles, furniture, etc.

I don't know why, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this post was the meme of the fat ugly woman saying "She's not interested!" Still makes me chuckle.

I think you've got a point, but social stratification plays a BIG role too, and I think that is somewhat missed.

I met my now-wife in graduate school. Of our social circle from that era, I know probably 5-6 couples who met in grad school. I know more who met in law school or a post doc or while teaching. All these connections were made by shared interests and shared environments. Of this group of people, none of them have gotten divorced. This goes back say ~15 years, so Tinder was not yet a thing, but there were other dating apps and sites at the time that were widely used.

I know another group of people who met in high school or undergrad. These people were are far more likely to have gotten divorced by now.

I do not have a great deal of confidence that I would have gotten married if I had not gone to grad school.

If you look at academics across the country, today, most academics are married to other academics. (Ok, I don't have statistics for this, but that is my overwhelming impression.)

I similarly today, professionally, know quite a few corporate business people, most of whom are married to women who are also corporate business types.

So if you're part of the professional managerial class, you kind of have an in-group that you fuck, date, and marry in.

If you're not part of that class; if you don't have higher education; if you're not in a VERY high-earning job; and, of course, if you're not attractive, things are going to be a lot harder.

Bottom line..."class" still exists. Apps like Tinder expose all classes to each other, but the value of the class is somewhere missing on first impression. What's left is attractiveness. And that's a battle that most men are going to lose.

But is it realistic to expect every man, or even most men, to develop the level of game needed to pick up girls off the street?

That's kind of where PUA was wrong and some of TRP started looking into evolutionary psychology and other pieces of the female puzzle.

The reality is every male and female has an SMV but there's a filter based on perception. The problem now is that women's expectations are coddled that if a man is equal or lesser to her own perceived SMV, she'll be disgusted that the cretin even had the balls to approach her. Women will typically chase men who are two points above themselves and I sincerely believe there's no workaround for that unless she's past The Wall (meaning past her genetic prime). You can try to improve yourself to increase your SMV through personality or other changes, but there's an upper limit to that based on genetics and intelligence. So men have to play a different game now or just not play at all.

There is a way for guys who aren't male models to be attractive to women: get to know them in a mutual community so their appreciation of your positive features overcomes the "ick"

I'm inclined to agree, but depending on the community you share mutual interest in, you might drop too far below one's own SMV in terms of options. There's also the danger of being too similar to one another that the relationship could bore quickly.

One of the many pieces where Rollo is correct is on the idea of non-polar attraction, which is something I saw in my parents. Have a few common or shared interests with the woman, but be different enough that the relationship can still have a long spark in it, and not so different that you're both incompatible.

I used to do it all the time at bars etc. but I just can't find the give a damn anymore

Women's standards are so high the average man is invisible to them

Women most affected.

Counterpoint:

Most guys weren't cold approaching even 10-15 years ago, because lets be real, it's hard. People did it because there was no other option, and the type of PUA approach dozens of Women in a session is limited to a fraction of a fraction of 1%.

Unless you have a pua mentor behind you physically pushing you, I'd wager no-one here has every approached more than 100 Girls in total. Most dudes would see a cute girl and talk to her specifically, nor shotgun approaching everyone.

I'm not sure if this was what OP was referring too. But as an example of that I know a dude from my pua days maybe 10-15 years ago, i saw him in a mall the other day randomly, doing what he was doing years ago. Walking around looking for chicks to cold approach. The guy has probably approached an appreciable percentage of the Women in my city over the years. There might be 10,000 Women that would have had the experience of being cold approached in my city, but only 1 Guy who has had the corresponding experience of cold approaching.

I suspect the original tweet refers to the more "normal" interaction of asking a Girl your into out in person though. And I think that's just a skill or lack of perceived skill about talking to chicks. There's no scenario thats realistic where asking a girl out and her saying no would lead to any life altering consequences if it was that in itself.

Both are big factors imo. Rejection is never pleasant, and it's become so heavily integrated and normalized into modern dating practices and infrastructure that it makes you wonder if approaching someone is worth bothering with. It's probably a similar phenomenon to other things like unemployment. If you send out say, a 100 job applications and don't get even a single phone call, it starts making you wonder why you should continue. Makes it start to feel Sisyphean.

Things weren't this bad in the past with regards to this kind of issue. It's a relatively new problem to contend with, and no good answers have been found yet. (And by "good" I mean ones that people will actually start finding en masse. Obviously on an individual and maybe regional level you can continue and play the odds as best you can in your favor, work on yourself, and reject a lot of modern thinking for the time being and still find a good person to be with, but that still depends on things like favorable circumstances and is still likely to be a long road until you get what you want)

There is absolutely no scenario left in society in which it is acceptable for a man to approach a woman if she doesn't want him approaching her. That rule set dictates that men will simply stop approaching. There is no room left for failure so the only move left is to just not engage.

In my early 20s, I figured dealing with shit-tests, general rudeness, and shallow interests of many modern women was just stupid. The ease life-ruining accusations is a bonus. I stay the hell away at a hint of crazy or lack of virtue/independent thought, and don't bother dating or sleeping with sane ones I can even stand having a conversation with.

Just go with "Hi! I'm an evil overlord looking for underlings. I'm offering a bimonthly salary, full food and drink coverage, free internet, full insurance coverage, commissions and fully-kitted for apartments as housing. You work 8 hours a day, your job is to obey my every order and carry them out to the best of your ability. Interested?"

But if you don't care what women think then who cares if you get rejected? It only matters inasmuch as other approachable women might witness.

Also I doubt very much that any man except alteady-famous ones have had their "lives ruined" after a cold approach. Why would any woman care that much about a nothing that she already swatted off? How could she even know anything about you to ruin?