something_else

Obv it helps to have money when it comes to long term relationships, but you don't need to be loaded like OP is arguing. You just need to have a stable income. If you're making at least the median income for your city/area you're doing absolutely fine and you will be able to find women who want to date you. OP is arguing that you need to be like top 1% income in order to have any chance whatsoever at getting into a relationship as a guy, which is blatantly false.

Six figures was an arbitrary number to begin with. Now you’ve applied inflation to an arbitrary number to get an even more arbitrary number. I’ve met very few people under the age of 30 making $270k per year, and zero under the age of 25. All I can really think of are a few Silicon Valley software engineers while travelling, and I assure you they were not rolling in women. I also met dirt poor Indonesian surf instructors making $20 a day who were dating perfect 10 western backpacker girls. The vast majority of people I have met under 30 are not earning this crazy money, yet are dating just fine. I have a feeling your mind has been heavily warped by living in massive US metropolitan hell holes where you need to earn insane money just to live above the poverty line. The rest of the world is not really like that, and while there are women everywhere who only care about money, there are plenty of normal women in most cities too. It just all depends on where you live, who you surround yourself with and how interesting of a person you are, but you’re being extremely general and oversimplifying everything to “if you don’t have money no woman will ever love you” because that is just blatantly false.

$270k? Why that specific number I’m sorry but you have to be either chronically online or a bit thick to believe that if you’re not making more than precisely $270k then no women will ever look at you. And yea, of course there are women out there who only care about money. The goal is to fucking avoid those women, lol. It sounds like you’re not doing a good job with that based on the opinions you’ve formed.

Let's assume you have 6 pics to fill up on Hinge/Bumble (probably the best two dating apps in most places) then a good template for a profile is something like this: Pic 1: Professional or high quality photo of yourself with a clear view of your face (this should be the only staged pic, the rest should be natural or it will likely end up look like a LinkedIn profile unless you really know what you're doing) Pic 2: Full body shot of you doing something cool or interesting Pic 3: Group pic where you look confident and sociable Pic 4: Another shot of you doing something cool or interesting Pic 5: Another group shot where you look confident and sociable, ideally with a different group of people Pic 6: Cute/funny/hot pic, basically a wildcard photo where you can express some personality, humour, or show off more of your good looks if you have them. If you have a nice body, show it off here but in a non-douchey way e.g. a beach pic Bio/prompts should be something short and witty, and they should encourage a girl to swipe right or ask you about something. It helps if the bio ties into one of your pics. In my case I have a pic of me holding a giant rat in my profile and my bio is "Yes that's a giant rat I'm holding, it's a cool story and you should ask me about it" You don't have to follow this template exactly, but it's a solid starting point.

I don't think anybody here denies that woman have many challenges to face in dating as well, but that doesn't mean that you can't empathise with some of the struggles men have instead of just dismissing them. In general it's better if both men and women try to understand the issues faced by the other gender as much as possible instead of just trying to one-up each other on the victim scale, that's not very productive. In fact it actually makes the problems both genders face worse because it increases hostility and resentment.

Build a solid social circle. Holy fuck, that supercharges your dating results. I tried for years to do things without many friends and it's such a handicap. Dating apps may work well for you too, but you need good pics. It took me like 3-4 years to get solid dating app pics, almost all of them are from travel.

It always freaks me out when I see high ageplay scores because I know what questions it asks for that category

I think corruption is too strong of a word for this. I suspect if the mother was known amongst the community of these churches they'd have helped her. Christian churches are very cliquey from what I gather and they'll be very supportive of members, but not very supportive of random people unknown to the church. I also suspect that if the mother went there in person she'd have been offered more help as well. Buddhists make a bigger deal out of helping everybody they can regardless of their relationship to the organisation.

I'm similar. I had two tiny draws off a joint my friend has and it was almost like I'd taken a low strength tab of acid. Insane. They thought I was making it up. I think this explains why I HATE smoking weed around other people, especially when I've been drinking. It makes me incredibly hyperaware, paranoid and anxious.

I’m having more success on dating apps than ever. I’ve used them at three different ages, 17 (was allowed on tinder at the time), 21-22 and now at 25. At 17 I barely got any attention at all. At 21-22 I got some, but rarely from girls I actually thought were cute. And now at 25 I finally feel like I’ve got it on lock. The success largely comes from having really cool travel photos from a year of backpacking. I also look a bit better than I used to in terms of style and grooming

You're right, but what I think you're missing is that in order to transform your life from that of a socially anxious basement dwelling neckbeard into that of a work of art will require a lot of effort. It isn't something you can just 'do' or 'be' on a whim. I don't particularly like the framing of a lot of pickup advice but it is a good first step to get a man out into the world and talking to people. I think framing it as 'pickup' is a fundamental mistake because, like you say, it's very needy. It has a lot of very negative connotations and for good reason. It's much better to instead frame it as building social skills, but a lot of the stuff involved is very similar regardless of what you call it. It largely just involves forcing yourself into social situations, pushing your comfort zone socially, making friends, and yea, trying to get laid. I'm sure you'd agree that none of this is inherently bad behaviour. Most men go through a stage like this in their late teens to early twenties without even really knowing what pickup is, it's just a natural stage of male development that got formalised into pickup at some point.

I don't doubt there is some truth to this. There's a good quote: "Society views men as disposable agents and women as precious objects" which explains this quite well. Because men are typically seen to have more agency, they are blamed for their actions much more. While women are seen to have less agency and control over their behaviour, and therefore society sees them as less inherently responsible for their actions. While it sucks that men are often blamed more, being treated as actually having agency is of massive benefit too. For example I expect if you conducted a similar experiment which attributed credit to positive actions, men would receive much more credit than the women would for the same actions.

Are you financially capable of moving into a serviced apartment or built-to-rent style place? A lot of them offer social events for residents, it's a very easy way to make friends and reduce the feeling of isolation. Moving into one of these places was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Like you I used to struggle with isolation, but now I have a really solid friend group living in the same building as me. It's amazing. The downside is they're really expensive.

Yea, I hate going out with guys who are hyper-competitive. I can compete if I want, to but it just sucks the fun out of the night. I'd rather go out with people who's main goal is to have fun rather than to get laid. I've always gotten laid more when out with chill mixed gender groups anyway, mostly when I wasn't even trying. It makes you look more high status and approachable than being with a group of 5 thirsty dudes scanning for women on the dancefloor like meerkats. Also, ironically, I've found that the best wingmen are always women, married dudes, or gay guys.

If you're relatively good looking as a guy, "acting properly" can pretty much be summarised as "be sociable, meet lots of people, and don't be weird" and in many cases that will be enough. If you want to set charisma as your main goal then there is more involved. Being weird/unique is actually a good thing, but it can take a lot of practice to figure out how to express your weirdness in a way that is charismatic and not off putting.

Club nights aren't as popular with my generation or younger anymore. They typically seem to prefer what I'd call a 'bar with a dance floor' over a traditional nightclub. But that's just a preference, it's not like clubs are going to go away anytime soon. And these bars are good places to party. I will say this is very UK centred opinion as well. I have no idea what it's like elsewhere.

It’s usually just some light teasing or flirting that socially awkward pickup dudes have given a name to because they don’t know how to respond

It’s definitely not too late. I’d focus on making friends first though, having friends to do stuff with makes meeting women much easier

In some sense I agree with you, our society favours quick pharmaceutical fixes over long term healthy choices. That isn't really a secret, and yes, big pharmaceutical companies exploit this desire we have for quick fixes. But you are suggesting something even more extreme than this. You're suggesting that there is a natural quick fix available to anybody, which is being kept secret in some worldwide conspiracy. There are many problems with this thinking. Here are a few that come to mind: why do the rich and powerful, who are presumably aware of this conspiracy, still die of cancer and other ailments when simple and readily available vegetables could cure them? how many people would need to know about a conspiracy of this scale? probably several million people worldwide, what are the chances they all keep their mouth shut and the secret doesn't leak? any one of them could revolutionise the world at a moment's notice, yet for some reason they don't what is the mechanism by which, for example, broccoli, kills cancer cells? yes, eating healthy throughout your entire life will prevent many diseases, but you are suggesting that eating a specific diet can cure, not just prevent, cancer. That literally means there has to be a mechanism via which broccoli kills cancer cells if what you are saying is true

Sure they did, lol. Obviously if you eat healthy throughout your entire life it significantly reduces the chance of you getting serious diseases, it's a preventative/proactive measure you take over many years. But the idea that you could cure pre-existing late stage cancer with a temporary prescription of broccoli and camping just seems a bit delusional.

You should avoid pills and try to get pure powder/crystals. The pills are usually cut with all sorts of random stuff, harder to test, and dosage is harder to predict. Also, while MDMA is an amazing substance you really shouldn’t take it more than a few times per year or you’ll really start to fuck with your brain chemistry. The first few times you won’t get much of a comedown but my friends who have taken it more than a handful of times almost always have really awful comedowns now.

This sounds like a reframing of the feminist idea that patriarchal structures typically harm men as well.

AI is really bad at flirting, making coherent jokes and sharing genuine things about yourself to build connection. These are the three major ways you can actually engage with people on dating apps. You’d probably have to configure it to just push for drinks/coffee date pretty quick, that might work quite well, if you’ve got a solid profile.

I often see people who sleep around being shamed with comments like, “You’re going to catch an STD.” And yeah, the risk definitely increases the more partners you have, and the more partners your partners have had. That said, I’ve been pretty promiscuous over the past four years and haven’t caught anything. Honestly, I’m surprised by that, because I always grew up thinking that if you slept around, you’d almost certainly end up with an STD. I haven’t even picked up HSV-1 or HSV-2, which a huge percentage of people have. Have I just been lucky? Or is STD risk in general just overblown? I always use condoms carefully and practise safe sex within reason, which I assume makes a big difference.

Believe me, I know, and I’m not complaining It shocks me how many of my male friends are completely happy with having unprotected casual sex, and also how many of the girls I’ve been with were pleasantly surprised when I brought a condom out. In some cases some girls even asked not to use one. My overall point is just that if you religiously use condoms and get regularly tested, I think the STD risk of regular casual sex is pretty minimal. Herpes does scare me though, but again I’ve been very promiscuous and avoided it thus far.