House of Eratosthenes

This made me think a bit more about a thought I’ve had fermenting away in the brewery of my head. It’s an exploration into why people on dating sites receive more messages when their pictures are better-looking.

Given the popular wisdom that Hollywood, the Internet, and Photoshop have created unrealistic expectations of how a woman should look, I found the fairness and, well, realism, of this gray arc kind of heartening.

Now let’s superimpose the distribution of actual messages guys have sent:

When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque. Someone like roomtodance above gets nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.

The medical term for this is male pattern madness.

Ha! It sounds like male pattern baldness, that makes it fun-ny…

My observation is that a reasonable person, sitting in quiet contemplation of the question “Is this really madness?” without any cajoling from anyone, wouldn’t likely answer in the affirmative. We’re talking about messaging attractive people as opposed to not-attractive people. I’m assuming things haven’t changed since the last time I was on the market, and messaging is the first step; these people don’t know each other, whether they’re pretty or homely. Preferring a good-looking mate just makes sense, so why are we condemning it as madness? It’s alright for women to do that, isn’t it?

The honest answer is: Because it’s men who are doing it, and men are easy targets.

My theory is that, while we have all been sleeping, this has slowly but surely become the accepted way to deal with men: Everything we/they do is silly, or nuts, or crazy, or psycho, or what has become the most-favored of all: insecure. But if you take the time to evaluate what’s being done rationally, you find it’s actually quite sane, or at least, understandable & to be expected of rational people. Who may or may not have lost control of their emotions in some particularly jarring circumstance, which rational people do. It’s become so commonplace, and so normalized, we now have generations of males & females who don’t know anything different.

Men make up a unique demographic group. Our group is caught up in a raging, passionate cultural conflict between oppressors & oppressed, and as the purported oppressors, our bodies are actual weapons. And so the tactic that has emerged is to put a man in a situation in which a rational person is more likely to lose it. Not being able to see his own kids, as if he’s committed some sort of crime, is good…there are others. Designating his workspace as a cubicle next door to some neurotic insecure cat-lady who’s just itching to call H.R. at the slightest little discomfort, thereby putting his livelihood in jeopardy if he doesn’t dance to the right tune. And then leaving it up to an actual crazy-person to decide what that tune is.

Other things are like, asking for his latest tale from the front as the divorce grinds onward, and then at the end of it looking down your nose at him, and letting loose with a dismissive bout of victim-blaming…”Well you know, you basically said this was alright when you married her,” or the time-honored, brain-dead “Not All Women Are Like That.”

Morgan Rule One is, “If I’m going to be accused, I wanna be guilty.” It has the potential to save a man’s sanity; but, most men don’t live according to my Rule One, because most men haven’t been called crazy over & over from childhood until they just give up trying. And so, paradoxically, they keep dancing to the changing tune their whole lives, trying to avoid being called crazy, so they don’t lose their marriages, houses, kids, jobs etc….if they learn to go sunup to sundown without glancing at any pretty girls, and talk in a pitch roughly an octave above what’s natural for them, sometimes the noose stops tightening and they feel like they accomplished something. See? I did it, all the other guys can do it too!

But by that time, they really have gone crazy.

You saw it with that Brooke Baldwin thing, where the insensitive male lout asked the gamma male who was helping to excoriate him something like (2:39) “Don’t you like boobs too?” and the gamma had to homina-homina-homina…visibly wondering what he should & could say in response to that…ultimately refusing to say anything.

Kinda like Principal Skinner. “Just tell me what to say!”

So that’s my theory. We keep wondering “WTF happened to men??” and the answer is, we happened. The Big We. We put men in situations in which a non-insane person would lose his cool, and if it happens we see to it the subject is defrocked of his status, occupation, property, family situation, or what-not…so that the point gets across, “you better not do that.” Which it does. As a result, men really are going insane. After all, they’ve tried sanity and it didn’t work for them.

Update: Oh yeah I forgot all about it…great example of what I’m talking about. It’s called by many an “inappropriate” reaction, and it seems he did go on about it to excess, but Ms. Gilligan did look very appealing in her bathing suit. And I’m getting the impression the real mastermind of the off-topic drama was the jealous brunette, with her “inappropriately” behaving male co-anchor playing goof-ball to help her play straight-man…or, straight-scold as the case may be…

So these examples are going to fall primarily into two categories: Appreciating the sight of a beautiful woman, or in some other way behaving like a normal male; and, acting like a threat or wounding has taken place, after being threatened or wounded.

By lowering the boom of “Don’t act like that,” our evolving notions of decency have imposed an expectation on men to stop being what they are. So, a refresher scorecard of sorts:

Visual beauty: The correct response is to look at it and appreciate it. Yes, tastefulness is a factor. No, “She thinks you’re up to par and you’re the guy she wants to attract” is not the metric that decides what’s tasteful vs. what’s a lewd leer. That’s silly.

Sexual harassment rules designed by lawyers to make men into targets: The correct response is to act like you’ve been targeted. And, to resent it.

Your wife wakes up unhappy one morning and initiates a divorce process that’s going to make you poor: The correct response is pretty much the same response a normal woman would show when her husband does the same thing. Lots of stress, apprehension about the future, hurt feelings, and some anger, yes men are supposed to have these reactions too. I know right? Crazy stuff!

Being told “Well you knew she was daffy when you married her so that makes it okay”: A knuckle sandwich.

An authority figure concluding that in their “tender years,” your kids are better off with your ex-wife and you get to see them every other weekend: More resentment, more anger, and some wonderment about how the “justice” system could be so wrong and unjust…because ya know what? It is. And, a thought or two spared for other men and their kids, who are being similarly wronged by the same system. Because ya know what? It’s really happening.

A steady stream of commercials in which the smart wife is using the right product and the dopey husband is using brand X: Resignation, a touch of sadness, quick changing of the channel, and a mental note not to buy the product. No, men are not obliged to maintain a “sense of humor about themselves.” If they were, we would have to grapple next with the troublesome question about whether such commercials are really funny…

The lady jogger in the skimpy shorts indignantly asking what the hell you’re looking at: As the punchline to the old joke says, the correct response is “What you’re showing me.”

ThatIsAll.

Subset of the “smart wife/dumb hubby”adverts is the “smart kid/dumb dad” adverts. Just yesterday, there was one for Little Caesar’s “pizza” in which Dumb Dad brings home dinner – “I got a great deal on pizza!” The kid coldly replies with some long complex sloganeering about Little Caesar’s latest deal on flavored styrofoam with topping-like toppings. “Did you get that?” Dumb Dad, chastened: “No. I got a terrible deal on pizza.” And the kid promptly reaches up to the “#1 DAD” hat and removes the “#1” part of it, which is held on by velcro.

The reaction of a sane man to such a statement from their pre-teen child is, “No, I didn’t go there. I got you actual pizza. And if you don’t like it you can go to bed without any, now.” The reaction of the insane Dumb Dad was to wander off, chastened, utterly accepting of his deserved humiliation at the hands of his seven-year-old.

And this apparently succeeds in selling flavored styrofoam product to a hungry population that could have actual pizza instead, and not get insulted and demeaned in the bargain. What a flippin’ world we live in.
- nightfly | 10/04/2017 @ 13:57
Rereading this it hit me of another sign the OKcupid blogger was female. It was this line: “So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.”

Because to females giving up entirely on men because you couldn’t have the top dog makes sense. But for guys (and we know it) what is ACTUALLY happening (and fits the curve) would be this:

Imagine 10 guys and 10 girls that are all single and judging each other.

All 10 guys message the very hottest girl of the group (the “perfect 10”). She chooses 1 of them.

What happens next? Well the remaining 9 guys message the 2nd hottest girl of the group. Then she chooses 1 of them.

So the 8 remaining guys message the 3rd hottest girl… and so on until eventually there is pretty much 1 guy left and 1 girl and they figure “eh, there’s always beer.” So I doubt the charming, fairly cute girls really go without being messaged.

Of course that’s why things like the “friendzone” and “nuclear rejection” actually end up hurting women in the long run just as much as men. Both instances are the top end women either keeping a man in her sphere of influence instead of letting him go to go find another – more suitable – woman. OR Of making a rejection so large scale that either the man is too wounded to ever ask a girl again or no other woman would ever want him (because of the issue with pre-selection).

If you ever really want a great joke, it’s to listen to a woman who’s son is in the dating world. Her horror at it will usually be in direct proportion to how horrible she was at the time she occupied it.

It has the potential to save a man’s sanity; but, most men don’t live according to my Rule One, because most men haven’t been called crazy over & over from childhood until they just give up trying.

Well, most men RIGHT NOW. There is a whole generation or two being raised at this moment under those conditions so time will tell whether any of the upcoming boys will pick up your rule.
- Nate Winchester | 10/05/2017 @ 15:05

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