An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology"
A few months ago someone posted an article on the male loneliness epidemic. I had shared my thoughts in the comments on that post. But I think that article and a lot of comments are under the impression that "redpill" content/ideology is still in vogue or relevant in today's world. It still has its followers and influencers for sure, but it's not at the forefront of cultural discussions anymore. To think otherwise is outdated, the redpill era died around 2022/2023 and was replaced by a more incel-derived "blackpill" era.
Thanks to TikTok, what was once relegated to niche internet forums became mainstream. The biggest influencer from this internet phenomenon is Clavicular, who is currently getting articles written about him in press outlets such as The Hollywood Reporter and People.
I am no stranger to talking about looks (side note: I would have taken more time to write that out and discuss broader topics, such as "types," if I had known it would have gotten as much attention as it did). And I have been around looksmaxxxing spaces on the internet since about 2022. I'll try to make this as brief and simple as I can.
What is the blackpill?
The blackpill is a deterministic outlook on life. It states that your genetics determines the quality of your life, and if you were not born with advantageous bone structure and height, then "it was over before it even started." You won't be successful in life, you won't find love, and you will end up a lonely, pathetic person wishing you'd been born looking better.
How does this differ from the redpill?
The redpill has some overlap with the blackpill. Both believe that men are the true victims of society. That feminism has been detrimental, this and that, and the other. The redpill, however, insinuates that you can self-improve. There's almost zero focus on improving looks, and it's almost entirely focused on making money and increasing your status.
A core belief of the redpill is that all women are gold diggers, and in order to get laid, you need to make a ton of money. The blackpill does not entirely dispute this, but it does say that if a woman chooses you for money, she will never actually love you. And that you are paying a lot of money for affection and attention that an attractive man gets for free.
I think that explanation in and of itself should show you the difference between the two.
What's looksmaxxxing? Are looksmaxxxing and the blackpill interchangeable terms?
They are not.
Looksmaxxxing is what guys do to look better, to increase their rankings on the looks scale. So that they can start getting laid (primarily) or start to "mog" (i.e., outshine everyone in a room).
In certain blackpill spaces looksmaxxxing is seen as cope, since, again, your life was determined by genetics and there's nothing you can do to fix this.
You might think looksmaxxxing consists of losing body fat, getting a skin care routine, dressing nicely, hygiene, and cologne. And that is part of it, all of that stuff is considered "softmaxxxing" but there's also "hardmaxxxing" as in surgeries and other more serious treatments such as steroids and peptides (which technically occupy a grey area between soft and hard maxxxing). An example of a popular surgery is double jaw surgery, here's the subreddit for it so you can see examples. If your jaw was not properly developed and you have a recessed chin (or a pushed-in chin), then a double jaw surgery is something you can do that would greatly increase your attractiveness. Although it does carry quite a bit of risk. There are other surgeries that people do on their eyes, their noses, ear pinning, there's a lot.
It is essentially a belief that your best investment is going to be in how you look. It's a bit of a running joke that instead of going to college, you should invest in plastic surgery, and that will do more to make your life better than a degree.
How do they view women? How do they view themselves?
The belief is that women are hypergamous. That they will only want to date up, and it's significantly easier for women to date and get laid, even if they are below average looking. And that even an above average looking man will have trouble since they aren't the holy grail of attractiveness.
Here's a brief explanation of their rating system.
- Sub-5
5 is considered average; sub-5 means below average. Not even that you don't get attention but that you get negative attention from the people around you.
- Low-Tier Normie / Low-Tier Becky
- Mid-Tier Normie / Mid-Tier Becky
- High-Tier Normie / High-Tier Becky
The "normie" categories are all average categories. Ranging from on the low side of average (LTN) to above average (HTN). The High Tier categories are where a lot of attractive actors sit, think romcom leads, the boy/girl next door types.
- Chad/Stacy
Essentially unobtainable beauty. Taylor Hill or Henry Cavill.
Depending on who you're talking to, someone would say that "life starts at HTN" or that life doesn't exist unless you're "Chad." And that if you're anything below that, you might as well not even exist.
How did it get popular?
The first instance most people probably heard of it was likely in 2014 when Elliot Rodger committed a mass shooting at a University. He was a member of a looksmaxxxing forum (the original looksmaxxxing forum, I believe), which led to the site being shut down and thus delaying any chance of its popularity. If you go back and watch and read what Elliot Rodger believed, it makes more sense in today's context now that this thought process has been more normalized.
In 2023, TikTok started promoting this content. Primarily from "edits" here's an example and coinciding with that were also the rise of a few influencers. All leading up to Clavicular, and how dominant he is on social media (thanks in part to funding from Peter Thiel). He was a kid posting on looksmaxxxing forums, was a micro celebrity in the niche, became a slightly bigger internet celebrity on TikTok before streamers started bringing him on leading to his insane fame.
Conclusion
Going back to the initial tildes post that I linked to. That whole thing was essentially saying, if you're just a good person, then someone will want to date you or fall in love with you or want to have sex with you or whatever. And I think part of the reason why looksmaxxxing stuff has taken off is that it feels more honest. It's not coddling you, and if you do improve your looks, you're going to see better results in dating than if you read feminist literature or something. So the takeaway ends up being that one of these places was telling me the truth.
Like, on a broader scale, it's a response to the body positivity stuff from the 2010s. When everyone was being told that it's okay if you're obese, it's healthy, it's beautiful. And there was just kind of a sense of performance to all of it.
The effort to change what people are attracted to, or to shame people for not being attracted to a certain thing. Has it gone too far? Probably, but I think that's why it took off initially and why it grew so quickly.
I obviously have my own personal experience about this, and so I very obviously know that it's not just what's inside that counts. Normal everyday people will make assumptions about you based on the way that you look. And I don't think it's a morally wrong thing to acknowledge that it happens, nor do I think it's a morally righteous thing to pretend like it doesn't.
I'm a woman and I've long been married. However I want to make one comment.
I have a firmly held belief that the modern dating apps lead to a lot more filtering based on looks. Men (and women) are being rejected before the potential partner has a chance to see them be funny or kind or notice that they smell good to them. (pheromones). Back in the day, people would meet in person at dance clubs or churches or other venues. Also social networks played a big role in who got introduced.
Years ago I was on a site called okcupid which had a matching algorithm that was based on answering personality quiz like questions that helped to match people based on their values and what they want in a partner. You could answer both for yourself and for what you would like your partner to answer.
Then tinder came along and you get a picture and are immediately able to tell the system you like or dislike them based on their first impression, which is more often than not just how they look.
Honestly though I kind of view this as part of a greater trend of not being willing to take the time to understand people who are even vaguely different from oneself. The gender gap is real, sadly.
Ultimately though older "analogue" methods of meeting people also inevitably involve people acting based on first impressions based in large part (if not entirely) on looks. It's less explicit when you just never express interest in someone you don't find attractive based on their first impression rather than actively swiping left or whatever the apps do these days, but it's not meaningully less shallow. I like the idea of finding someone based on a genuine personality alignment without any of it being based on looks (and I put my money where my mouth is there, as I've dated two people who I confessed feelings to before I'd ever seen what they looked like), but ultimately for most people and in most contexts that's never been how it worked.
I'm also just straightforwardly sick of men whining about the "gender gap" in dating as though they are somehow less superficial than women, either on dating apps or in general. Women are also rejected and even harassed by men on dating apps for not being attractive enough. I don't want to belittle the experiences of men who struggle to find a partner, but I am so sick of those exact men refusing to believe that women ever have the same problems while simultaneously rejecting and berating women who are too fat and ugly for them. There is absolutely a gap in the experiences of conventionally attractive people vs those who aren't, but men and women who aren't conventionally attractive have way more in common than men who complain about the gender gap tend to be willing to acknowledge.
People talking in a bar are often motivated by looking for hot people, but not always and most importantly not exclusively. Beyond that, there’s an important aspect of real world networking that you’re missing; stickiness. If you start talking to someone in a bar and they’re not completely repulsive, you’ll likely keep talking to them and treat them like a person. Online a person can just see “oh, they’re fat”, block them, and effectively remove themselves from reality before ever giving them a chance.
I think we’re also using the gender gap in a very different way. When I use the term, I’m referring to a difference in lived experience. Young men in particular tend to just not understand how women work or why they do the things they do.
I do get your frustration though. I’m gay, and have always been, so as an outsider some of the things I see young straight people doing in regards to dating seem insane.
Ah yeah I think I misunderstood what you meant by gender gap and was primed by the post's discussion of incels to assume you were referring to the perceived "gap" in the abilities of men and women to have success in the dating scene. Sorry about that! I definitely agree that there's a gap in understanding of each other at play for sure.
My wife and I met through OKcupid based on having a 99% match, and by golly it was right!
Same with me and my partner!
He was my highest match on the whole site (before they changed the algorithm to make high matches exceedingly common), but we lived on opposite sides of the world, so we just became platonic online penpals instead for several years until we couldn't stand it anymore and decided to meet.
That algorithm used to be so good. I remember getting to a point where I just straight out refused reaching out to people if the score was below 90% after several instances of bad conversations or dates.
What happened to OKC and why is their model not around anymore?
So admittedly I didn't follow it too much after meeting my now wife, but I seem to recall that it was bought by Match.com a while ago and for a while was allowed to run independently, but it seems like it has gotten more aggressive with the subscription model which has some perverse incentives in terms of keeping people on the site. They had this before, but I have heard it got a lot crazier and people say the quality has dropped a lot in terms of matches.
I miss OK Cupid :) I was too young to be part of their dating crowd but I loved their surveys and their quirky nonsense such as stinky meat project.
As a short man, i understand that women on dating apps sometimes have a lot of suitors and need a way to quickly filter that list down. I understand that the height filter will be the first one a lot of them go for. There were also a significant amount of height requirements in profiles, which can really erode your view of how others in general see you.
Edit: The above is very me-centric, but I see similar restrictions on race or body type. Height is the lense through which I'm most affected, but I can easily see these things applying for any number of filterable attributes.
I definitely spent some time internalizing that: I'm indesirable because I'm short. I spent time unspecifically angry about it. It's hard not to when you're young and lonely.
Over time I found wisdom in the realization that dating apps provide an imbalanced market of people, and simply aren't "fair" (nor is that their goal). For people who are highly attractive on paper, dating apps are a really good way to be choosy. The less attractive you are on paper, the more the app will make it hard for you.
My personal conclusion is that dating apps aren't for everyone, and some people in particular will have a very hard time. Unfortunately, their pretty ubiquitous, and it's hard to imagine them not being a major influence in this *pill problem. As my kids grow up, I hope they will eschew dating apps. If they use them, I hope they will have thick skin and understand that dating apps are not representative of real life; it's a viable but totally different way of finding people to date than meeting people through clubs and so on.
I never had trouble as a not exceptionally unattractive or attractive short dude. Anywhere from 6in / 15cm taller than me or shorter than me wasn’t a problem. I always thought if someone cares about height, then their values probably won’t align with mine. I’d rather know that up front and not waste my time.
Thankfully I’m older than dating apps, they sound shitty.
I do know women who care about height, but I think men (especially short men who are struggling with dating) wildly overestimate how large a proportion of women care about it and the degree to which they care, especially when a guy is only marginally shorter than average. The quick ability to filter someone out based on a number on dating apps almost certainly makes it worse, but tbqh the type of woman who gives a shit about a dude's height is very much not the type of woman I'd get along with or want to date, even if I were 6'3". Like you said, it's a values mismatch.
When I identified as a straight woman I dated someone who was 6'2" and someone who was 5'6", and honestly the only major difference that the height made was that I could borrow the short guy's clothes because they'd usually fit me reasonably well. And that tall people tend to put things on high shelves I can't reach without thinking about it. I'm no longer a straight woman by any stretch, but I can't imagine I was somehow unique in not really giving a shit about how tall a guy is.
I'm 5'4" and just barely under 200lbs, and while I haven't dated any straight people in a while, I suspect straight women would be a lot more gracious about my physical proportions than straight men. Or at least less nasty about expressing their opinions about them.
Chiming in as someone who also likes men:
I like tall men.
I like short men.
I like medium men.
I just like men.
I’ve said before that I wish straight guys could climb inside my brain for a moment and see men the way that I see them, because I think it would open their eyes to the many wonderful ways that they themselves can be attractive and desirable.
I've dated guys shorter than myself and taller and absolutely none of them have looked anything like body builder or "looksmaxxer" and every (attracted to men) woman I know likes a dad bod to cuddle with.
Even the most attractive man looks very different on a women's magazine vs a men's magazine. And this is all a stereotype in a lot of ways but it feels like they will not believe the population of people they want to date and will only listen to other men about women instead.
I just don't get the choice of mentor I guess. They're always some of the worst people.
honestly in general I think a huge subset of the problems men like this have would be addressed by listening to a wide variety of women (including women they aren't attracted to) and gaining their perspectives. but the bar is on the floor ig.
Back when I was dating, I had more than one man yell at me for rejecting them due to their height. I couldn't care less, I rejected them because they were jerks. The taller a woman is the less likely she is to care, otherwise she ends up with a pretty small daring pool. Most of the women I know who have height as a requirement are very small themselves - one actually told me she would only date men over 6'2" because she didn't want short kids.
Absolutely . Dating apps are the adult love/sex equivalent of gym time kids picking kids, only, one person picks the first one and they pair off and the game stops for the rest of us. Don't stand in that line, go play another game with the other 95% of the people.
I am hopeful that we'll see a resurgence of "touching grass": nerds and kinsters of all types have figured out that at a forum or a convention they can at least be themselves and have a good time, and then sometimes, that's how people hook up or even fall in love.
I wonder what the stats are on app-initiated relationships versus traditional. I might dig into this later out of curiosity.
If you find anything let me know, curious too
Yeah. There's some stats out there that get brought up a lot. One is that women generally judge harsher on dating apps, so someone that they would find attractive IRL will often get a left swipe on Tinder. And another one is like, the top 10% of male profiles get 90% of right swipes from women. Where as men are more likely to swipe right on everyone to just get a match (which funnily enough will get you punished on apps and will get your account de-prioritized).
Even as someone that I think is objectively above average, I don't actually do that well on dating apps in my city. I have to go to different cities to do better (weirdly enough I do better in cities where people are considered better looking generally). Obviously I'm a boy-next-door type of attractive as opposed to model gorgeous, but that shows if you're really not at the top it's kind of a harder battle.
There is also the flip side.
I'm a guy and I end up swiping left on roughly 99% of profiles (this is not an exaggeration) because their profile is the same vapid nonsense that every other profile has. I've spent one too many evening reading through dozens of "want to go on adventures," "likes traveling," "looking for partner in crime," "likes outdoors," and other such nonsense. It's either that or no profile at all. Funny enough, there was an evening in Tinder where I swiped left so many times that the app literally ran out of matches for me.
It's pretty much why I swore off dating apps. There's about as much depth as an inflating kiddie pool there and almost nothing of substance.
So I have a somewhat amusing anecdote to share on this: While I’m taken, I have a guy acquaintance I know through mutual friends, and his Hinge dating app profile has become somewhat of a running joke among our group. He is, I would guess, about 6’5”/1.95m tall, very muscular and generally quite good-looking, and he consistently (and constantly) has dozens of potential matches and open/unread conversations. Like, 50+ at almost any given time.
The punchline: The only thing he ever writes to initiate a conversation, or to respond to someone who messaged him first, is “you look cute”. If he really likes someone and wants to try hard, he’ll however send “you look really cute”, or alternatively “you look very cute”.
While I have never tried this myself, I wonder if it’d work for other dudes too, as a sort of “being blunt” cheat code.
Closing thought, however, is that he hasn’t been in a long-term relationship for years. Maybe there’s a downside to not having to demonstrate your charm, humor or wits in order to convince a potential partner of your non-superficial qualities.
Maybe from that approach (passive fishing, extremely generic and looks based opening move), he's self selected himself out of the company of women who want genuine interest in a person, meaningful conversations, and building a future together.
Perhaps these women are using your friend for casual sex in the same way, and then when they want a relationship they swipe left on him.
I think your friend's experience (have many attractive women want to fuck them) is definitely what a lot of young men want, and if so, then yeah how one looks / money is the only effortless way to get there.
You know the story trope of a rich man can no longer tell which people are close to him only for money? Your friend might be in the looks equivalent. But perhaps this is just a cope and by sheer ease and numbers your friend can much more easily convince a partner he's ready to have a relationship now, any time he's feeling ready, and have his bumbling mistakes forgiven far more easily because he's conventionally attractive.
I used OKCupid back in the day (I'm a woman, and the male-to-female ratio was extremely high), and I found I got much better results when I removed my photos and otherwise stopped emphasizing my 'best' assets like I was advertising myself, and focused instead on the features of my personality that someone's likely to find either highly attractive or highly unattractive (e.g., the fact that I'm an extreme introvert).
I got way, way, way fewer messages, but the messages I did get were far higher quality and with people I was actually interested in meeting. I had several successful dates, and I met the man I've been with now for almost 15 years. (Turns out he was following a similar strategy. He has a number of features that sell extremely well on dating profiles, so he could have gotten a lot more bites if he'd chosen to. But he opted to obscure those and emphasize his weird personality, since personality compatibility is what actually makes or breaks a relationship.)
I don't know if the modern dating apps let you leave off details like height, but if he's serious about finding a long-term partner, I'd recommend he not include that information.
I knew of Elliot Rodger's name from the Hapas subreddit, which, years ago was an extremely negative space where half Asians living in non Asian places share negative experiences, blaming largely "Asian female white male" relationships. In their world view, high value white men hoard all the white women, so low value white men choose Asian women because they're disgustingly racist and want easily dominated women, and Asian women choose white men because of internalized self hatred. Which means no women choose Asian men. Their world view makes sense in their very small narrow locales of racist small town America, but don't make any sense to me because I live in an Asian majority society. And that's how I feel about all these men stuck in blackpill world: leave this dry well and go find the ocean.
I see some parallels in attitude to the red pill and black pill crowds: the ideology feels honest. But one can fall off the left side of the horse as easily as the right. It's a lie that no women care about look. But it's also a lie that all women care about is looks. It's very simple ---> grab a shojo manga or romance novel or watch a Bridget Jones: the heroine is choosing between two or more handsome and/or rich and/or powerful men. Sometimes they're not rich, sometimes they're not powerful, and sometimes they don't even have faces or are a small fuzzy mascot animal or is a pen pal or an evil overlord or whatever. The only constant is that they spend time with her and treat her special. The careful observer will also see that in recent years, they treat her well: the bad boy eye candy is ditched for the golden one.
Looks won't get you love.
Conventionally attractive men for sure have it easier when it comes to people giving them the social benefit, or in dating. Yes absolutely. But so too are the rich. If red pills are sad because in the end the women only love their money, then despair as well, black pills, because you'll become old and wrinkly and less handsome than the next younger man soon. At least the money appreciates.
Trying to look better is good. Trying to live healthy is good. Trying to be financially independent is good. But good heavens, boys, become interesting people, and make friends with interesting people too. There are so many attractive women who have a value system that's vastly different from the small locale you're algorithmically stuck in. Peter Thiel and Zuck et al are only interested in keeping you miserable. Go outside. Go take a cooking class. Learn to sew. Volunteer and as those grannies to introduce you. Stack chairs at the Church. Go cosplay at a con.
Also, some of us have face blindness lol.
One thing I think often gets overlooked or taken for granted in conversations about incels (be they redpilled or blackpilled or whatever) is how they conceive of/treat women who are not conventionally attractive. I feel that many people when they engage with incel ideology take them at their word when it comes to the experiences of women in the world of dating and that they truly are universally more successful and have more opportunities in the dating world than men. Attempts to point out that women who are not conventionally attractive have similar (albeit not identical) struggles in the dating world tend to result in vehement insistence that it's impossible for a woman to be an incel (despite the fact that the term was originally coined by a woman to describe her experiences), often through explicit references to the idea that it's because any given woman could easily go get herself raped.
As someone who used to be a woman who wasn't conventionally attractive (gender is complicated, I was bad at being a girl so I quit), I've found that women who don't meet a certain, usually quite high threshold for conventional physical attractiveness don't even get treated like women by incels and their ilk. My experiences as a woman never remotely corresponded to the fantasy incels have of what life as a woman on the dating scene is like. I never even experienced the sexual harassment that is supposedly universal for women, much less the overwhelming attention, wanted and unwanted, from men in venues like dating apps. When confronted with women who are unacceptably fat or ugly, even purported incels don't seem to consider them "options", and they never account for their existence when explaining all this wild feminine hypergamy and other made-up bullshit. Of course they don't treat women in general like people, but they find it incredibly easy to come up with theories about women in general that completely disregard the existence of women who are unattractive in large part because they demote these undesirable creatures from the category "woman" altogether. Of course, this is consistent with their ideology -- a woman's only worth in their ideology is her attractiveness and the fact that she'll let you fuck her. A woman who isn't attractive fails that.
idk this comment is unfocused af, but I find it frustrating how many people writing about incels seem to similarly ignore the existence of conventionally unattractive women and take their assertions about the increased options and opportunities in dating at face value. This isn't unique to or even directed at this original post, but it's something I've noticed when people discuss incels more broadly, and I think someone smarter than me could construct a solid argument that this reflects a demotion from womanhood for those who aren't conventionally attractive even in society more generally, not just among incels.
I probably could have written a section on the post discussing the adjacent Femcels to all of this.
Because while the main starting point of all of this is men, there’s such a big female audience to this content now Heres an example. It just escaped me in the moment that I wrote this out as a semi-response to the other post on the site.
Not that it’s better or worse that women are joining in on this, but it is noteworthy. And while they do share their experiences there’s still a lot of men calling them liars.
But there are female looksmaxxxers for sure, who flip the argument and say it’s actually men that are hypergamous etc.
I do think it’s not a gendered issue so much as it is just an issue of lookism. That being said it is easier for women to get laid than men, which is where that comes from. But then there’s the issue of if you’re a woman that’s not conventionally attractive then you’re really just being used for sex and they still don’t view you with any form of attraction.
It’s a layered argument to be made for sure.
Get laid? Sure. Get pleasure, the sole reason why people want to get laid outside of reproduction? That's actually harder for women than it is for men. And it's especially hard when it comes to casual sex. Exceptions apply, of course, but they are fairly uncommon. It's extremely out of touch and silly that people get offended about how easy it would be for me to have a completely unpleasant (and sometimes on top of that: dangerous) physical and emotional experience.
Almost any man can easily get laid too if they accept sex that isn't pleasant for them: just step into a gay bar and announce your availability, or download Grindr.
The number of women who've told me that they wish they were attracted to other women because they're sick of mediocre sex with men is too damn high.
Oh interesting, I'd be curious if you did write more about femcels, as I don't have much experience with those circles (my comment above is inspired more by exposure to incels and how they relate to more "normie" women who aren't conventionally attractive)
Actually my first experience learning about looksmaxxxing was through women forums about it. Mostly r/Vindicta. That was the first time I ever saw the term looksmaxxxing.
I myself take it completely for granted that these people are mistaken about most things about men, and that their views of ANY woman is completely wrong. Stacie's don't exist like that, neither do their version of normie women, nor their ignored group of unconventional women. They also seem to completely ignore the extremely real affect of proper skin care, well applied make up as well, and photography. Scarlett Johansson can be photographed looking very plain looking without makeup and in non optimal lighting, and Charlise Theron can look like this from Monster with makeup, good acting and bad posture. They ignore this though
While I would have never called myself an incel, I definitely shared similar thoughts and ideas when I was a lonely teen and into my early 20s. I cringe at the thought of how often I thought to myself "If I was a woman I would just be going around and getting laid like crazy". I definitely used to think women could just go out and get laid anytime they wanted. I had zero concept that this would likely be terrible sex for any women doing this.
I think a lot of it comes from ignorance and low/no confidence. I would only really have success with conventionally less attractive women (not that I would consider myself conventionally attractive), because I didn't put pressure on myself and could be myself. But then I wasn't really attracted to these women and made no real effort to get to know them, so at best it would be a couple dates and/or sexual encounters. On the other side I was terrified to speak to women I found attractive. It was a vicious cycle in my sad little world that I didn't really pull myself out of until my late 20s or early 30s.
Honestly the funny thing is your second paragraph doesn't sound far off from my experiences as a woman who isn't super conventionally attractive. Like, there are definitely some gendered differences in how we're trained to approach romance and sex, but I think a lot of people (and especially incels ofc) really do overestimate how different those experiences actually are on a fundamental level.
It's truly a human experience!
I would definitely agree with you on that!
There was a comment somewhere on one of the lookmaxxing posts on Reddit that was essentially, men are just speedrunning women's beauty standards. Which, while pithy, seems true to an extent. The looksmaxxers are going too far, and are stupid, but it's also not wrong that it's simply true that people will treat you better, platonically, romantically, and in every other social interaction if you look more conventionally attractive. It maybe shouldn't be that way, but it is that way.
It seems inevitable for men to eventually be in the same place women are, aesthetic judgement-wise, as the wage gap closed. It do be what it do be.
I wonder if makeup will be standard for men in another decade or so. Skincare already seems to be going that way. You can kinda see it in haircuts even; the stereotypical gen z boys haircut is the broccoli hair, which involves getting a perm. That's like a hour long procedure at a hair salon that usually cost over $100. Far cry from the $12 box cut at great clips.
Hey if men want to join on skin care and sun scnreen and beauty sleep, and take an interest in their pores and eyebrows and nose hairs and accessories, that's good and wholesome in my books.
Just as long as we don't let the extremely manipulative and unethical cosmetics industries use this movement as an excuse to expand their market share.
Last thing we need is corporations telling more people they aren't attractive/likeable/worth loving if they don't buy some bullshit cream or treatment. It's actually disgusting what society has allowed the health and beauty industry to get away with when advertising to women. The weaponizing of body insecurities on every level in order to push young people into depression and dysmorphia just to make that share price go up a little bit makes my blood fucking boil.
Yeah for sure, just read the other posted article on necrocosmetics. Horror stuff.
Happy medium: cheap, healthy and effective products for all. Like sunscreen. Seriously, people, please.
I'm mulling on this because while I like being clean and I'd prefer to avoid skin cancer I've always associated extensive beauty routines with insecurity and capture by capitalist interests that really don't have our welfare in mind.
I'm aware that how I appear is a language that I'm speaking, so I'm somewhat mindful of what it is I'm saying. But having said that I'm extremely thankful that I'm happy to go in public looking much as I do when I wake up in the morning. I wish everyone that ease.
You absolutely can just wash your face regularly and then hit it with SPF moisturizer in the morning and go about your life. I don't wear makeup either but elaborate skin care isn't required if you don't care about all the rest of it.
Oh that's entirely where I'm at, I do physical work and generally arrive home reasonably filthy. I assure you I wash well, every day.
I'm commenting on the routine beyond that base level, where things start to get a bit (or a lot) more optional but can seem necessary.
Gotcha. I mean I think there's a space for all of that, but on the I don't want skin cancer and want to take care of my skin level... You're doing fine with that routine. Everything else is about trying to look prettier by whatever subculture's standard of beauty is being offered.
For example: I find really Glam makeup looks mostly unattractive, And I think I look weird in a full face of makeup. But I'm happy for folks who like those looks for themselves
Start with sunscreen then. Remember the recent meme about dermatologists at the beach?
No, don't buy the cheapest banana boat :)
If the make up stores are too intimidating, go to Costco.com and browse their k-beauty products / brands. They're mostly very inexpensive, and East Asian branded sunscreens are lightweight, not greasy and designed for everyday wear.
Remember how old people in their 30s looked in the 1900-1970s? Smoking. There's a similar difference in skin quality and youthfulness between people who moisturize / sunscreen vs those who don't.
anything else can be considered **only after** you've taken care of the skin cancer / aging aspect first
For skincare, wash with a facial cleanser, not shower soap.
If you want to go further but still too lazy, try a saborino 3 in 1 sheet mask : put it on your face for one minute and you've got cleansing, moisturising and priming done already. Note: this is highly highly optional. Just sunscreen and a cleanser you're clean and protected already.
If you're acne prone, wear a tiny circle Band-Aid looking patch overnight.
If you have nose hairs sticking out, get your local drugstore cheap version of these round tiped scissors . Also good for if some eyebrows look like they're trying to run away from you
In the 80s and early 90s it was okay for men to take care of their looks and do their hair. Then society got homophobic and convinced everyone caring for yourself is feminine. Fight homophobia by taking better care of yourself!
I'm glad it's gaining some more traction, personally. I wonder how many more men would join in if they knew how much more physically comfortable it is having clean, moisturized skin.
Or how much easier it is to physically be next to clean, soft skinned and nice smelling men. I guess I'm a fan of softmaxxing. Was called metrosexuality back in my day.
Men who take an interest in their presentation are in much better position to appreciate all the work I'm putting into mine.
Actually Clavicular, the influencer I mentioned, wears makeup. One of his tips was to use mascara on your eyebrows to get them to have a more defined look. He also wears lifts in his shoes.
But women are also experiencing their own backlash to the body positivity movement. Which is why figures like Liv Schmidt became popular. And there’s now a renewed interest in Victoria Secret angels.
I use a combination of two Wet n Wild tinted hydrator, mascara in eyebrows, etc — have been forever. I’m tall and skinny so I don’t mess with lifts, however.
I modeled in the late 90s (runway, terrible mall shit mostly) — but that got me into some very basic things that can just make someone look better without any real effort.
Ultimately, being in relative good shape with clothing that suits your body is equally important and shouldn’t be put on the back burner at all.
It’s amazing how much of an impact the jaw surgery has. Good for them. :)
Edit: why can’t we put ‘Exceptional’ on a post? Great write up! I also curl my lashes.
From the jaw surgery best of posts, this comment caught my eye: I look the way I did as a kid again
Some people's chins grow more prominent / jaw moves forward as they age. They slowly look more and more different from how their formative years look in their mind.
And another poster mentioned he could breathe again. Or chew with their front teeth again.
If the surgery is done well by licensed surgeons, seems like it is a relatively safe and positive thing.
right! its so cool. Everybody deserves to look their absolute best or better :)
I just love posts like that, people sorting out their acne, and more.
This is an interesting topic to me because I've been an incel for most of my youth. Then I had a glow up through much effort and established myself as a pretty high tier "normie". In that sense I think blackpill is completely accurate, in some interpretation at least, but you can definitely change your situation. It's just that most people take the wrong lessons from it.
My experience is such that being attractive, especially as a kid, simply makes things easier for you. It's easier for you to get experience talking to people (and girls), your mistakes are forgiven more easily, you get more exposure to it all simply by existing. In that sense, when people say things like "oh it's all about confidence", that's true but for someone who is attractive it's much easier to reach that confidence and the threshold for how hard they need to try is lower. That's all well and good, we probably cannot do anything about it, the halo effect, etc.
The problem is that there is virtually no support group for young men that are affected by this. You get ridiculed, bullied and shunned. You're told it's your fault, you haven't tried hard enough, you're given advice that doesn't match your reality by people who are incapable of understanding it. It's like as a white person there are certain aspects of living as a person of color that I just won't be able to understand. This is how I feel when women comment on anything related to these issues to be honest. I feel like the difference in average experience is just massive. And a big part of that is that support groups for women are plentiful, and they're seen as a good thing, while young men are relegated to these online groups that give them more and more extreme and desperate views, because there isn't anyone to advocate for them. Mostly because if you've never experienced this (meaning you're a "normie"), you just cannot comprehend how can someone even be in that situation - for you everything just works out and your opinions come from that perspective.
I do think it's ultimately a good thing that this view is becoming more mainstream. As you say, it is more honest and maybe will get more recognition for the young people affected. As it stands, it is frankly an accepted form of sexism.
As a women I've never even heard of support groups for girls to look their best. Many of not all of us got by from snarks and hurtful comments and beauty industry ads/magazines instead.
Here's where I struggle to understand. Why aren't there groups of men supporting younger men in positive ways, online and off? Nobody is relegating these younger men and telling them this is the only avenue for you. The algorithm is pushing yes but thousands of channels also exist to softmaxx, no? Heaven knows the cosmetic industry has tried for decades.
Not sure what you mean by support groups for girls to look their best. What I meant that there's support for most struggles women go through while young men and boys are largely on their own. The word incel itself has become an insult.
My guess is that it is because for anyone who does not have these struggles ("normies" and most women) it seems like a complete non issue and they think that something must be wrong with this increasing number of young men. The push is always to say that they must improve, they must do better, women are just upholding the right standard. The rhetoric around women's struggles is that society failed them, men failed them and so the push is for society to change. We've had wonderful transformation in our cultures due to this, but when it comes to supporting struggling young men there is absolutely no push for this. They must adapt or die, essentially.
So the only viable option is these online incel groups, often populated with incredibly bitter and jaded individuals, some truly hopeless, who are hell bent on convincing young men who actually have everything ahead of them that it's hopeless for them too. And the issue is, their toxic views are based on actual reality that is felt by these young men.
Not sure what you mean.
I'm really not sure what you originally meant by support for women then.
Growing up as girls, we get told "hey baby" by men, and "stop looking like a slut" by women. That kind of support? Among our peers, we try to look like we're not trying too hard ("whore!") and downplay anything we're trying to do on our own ("try hard!"). Then there's magazines and movies telling us what to buy. That kind of support?
Any support that does come, come from older women taking us under their wings. For most of us, this is a YouTube channel, not anybody in real life. Why can't normie men who have grown out of their awkward phase after a glow up do that for younger men? And as for the Internet, it's a big place and there are also YouTube channels and subreddits for male fashion and skin care. Nobody is relegating. Drop the doom bitterness groups and look for something else
I'm definitely a proponent of this, and while I try not to make it the sole purpose of my commenting here, after experiencing a college fraternity which had a space for just guys to support each other I definitely can see what @Lobachevsky is getting at. Some of the best times in my college career were nights where we would "close" the house to non members and just have brotherhood focused events.
Post graduation I noticed that all of the churches I've attended would have a women's group and also usually a mom's group. While men would often get a men's weekend/retreat once a year and father's day. Once we got plugged in at my last church I had started talking to guys about forming a young men's group, but I didn't get it started before we moved, and the other guy who was pushing for it also moved at the same time so I don't think that will end up happening there which is a bummer.
I've made it a point to bring up the lead pastor of our new church my interest in starting both a dad's and a men's group at church. I'm not going to be able to get it started immediately, but I am talking to people I meet about it and everyone has been receptive. I'd like for fellow dads to get support from each other, with younger dads getting advise and mentorship from older dads. I'm also hoping while I still fall in the "younger adults" category that I can mentor some guys in our church. I've also started chatting with and am offering to mentor guys in my fraternity who are still in school.
It can definitely be intimidating to start something new, but I agree with you that men should go ahead and take the step and create the support groups and spaces that they need. Get some of the guys offline and around other men who can hopefully be a better impact on them. I know the ~21-23 year old guys I looked up to when I was new to college weren't always the best of role models, but they would still take the time to teach me something or help me out when I needed it and looked out for me at times when I made a fool of myself.
Absolutely that's what I'm talking about!
I fear that I've been too hard on @Lobachevsky: I had wanted to clear the illusion that we women somehow had a magical sisterhood where we were treated gently and guided with patience and love and encouragement. We didn't. But some of us are trying to do that for younger folks and I hope more men like yourself, Pekt, would step up, and more younger men like yourselves would take the gentle offer.
At my old Church my priest also couldn't get a men's group going. He was so starved for fellow men companionship. There are couples things the men grudgingly get dragged to and then after a while they become friends on their own to hang out. So you can try that too but again that relies on women doing the invisible labour of dragging them and making it socially acceptable for these men to make friends first.
I remember a guy in my neighborhood making complaints that there are "all these women support groups" in our area and nothing for men. I pointed out that the local men's shelter and support group are desperate for participation. They had a giveaway for Fathers and single men: drive by and pick up $200 gift card worth of groceries including a brand new slow cooker crock pot already filled with delicious and nutritious stew ready to eat for the night plus a cookbook of easy crock pot recipes . Please. Come pick them up. Call or text or email us if the time or date doesn't work for you. No women trying to feed your kids go away we're trying to reach all these men we know exist but are too afraid to come forward.
They had leftovers as far as I know. Literally couldn't give money away. The guy complaining, I suggested maybe he could go for support or to support others? Nah.
I don't solely blame the men. I blame the toxic Peter Thiel built society that makes men feel like they would rather be punched in the face than to accept companionship and help.
I think my desire to have these men's only spaces stems from my experience in them. Playing American football in high school where I spent an inordinate amount of time with my teammates, both in and out of the season (film review during lunchtime, morning weight lifting sessions before school, weight lifting in our lifting class, after school workout if you weren't playing a separate sport in the off season), and then the fraternity experience in college.
Hopefully I can set up something nice and productive, and in my own selfish desires this is going to help me make some friends in the community.
I wonder how much of this is generational in some respects. The younger guys I meet (usually through church) generally want to be at whatever thing I'm at, but then again they could just be acting like that. Though I would like to acknowledge everything is say is my own limited experience and this could vary widely based on all kinds of local/regional factors. I know we live incredibly far apart, even when I still lived on the same continent as you.
I know my wife and mother in law both encouraged me to go to expat related events when we lived in another state so I could make friends, but I never took them up on that as the events would take place on the north side of the island (which was usually a ~40-50 minute drive from where we lived at the time) and were catered more towards retirees or people with older kids/sitters as the events would start at 8:30 - 9 PM. Just didn't seem worth it to me to drive that far to meet people I may not get along with and then drive all the way back just to get woken up early by my kids.
I know that my own tendency is to be a home body, and my own hobbies are mainly ones I would do at, and I'm hoping to break that mold a bit more by going out with guys I meet for a beer or just grabbing some nasi kandar at a local kopitiam (though I miss the superior nasi kandar in the state I lived before).
That is wild to me as I know free food is usually a sure way to get people in the door. Though I would probably have missed something like that as I'm not as connected in to local community things as I should be. It doesn't help that a lot of stuff is done here via Facebook groups or other social media and I got rid of my accounts years ago so the only time I see things like that is if my wife mentions it or my in-laws share it. My current church focuses on getting together to eat meals (break bread) together, so I'm hoping food will draw some guys in, and also finding things that we can do together like organizing a night to watch football or badminton during big games, or (ideally) doing something community service oriented.
I'd love to see more men take an active role in the affairs of their community and make a difference. If someone wanted to bounce ideas off each other, or even just chat about whatever they can always DM me on here. Great to chat to other Tilders about things like this.
I mean this is exactly what I'm talking about. I think the environment of hostility we face when all we're doing is sharing our experiences is a big reason why there isn't anyone doing this in the mainstream. In addition, as I've mentioned, normies simply don't understand the issue, just like you don't. It's assumed to be a personal failing, which is why you're sending me links to fashion advice. Your assumption is that I'm just not good enough. Now imagine someone sharing their experiences being treated poorly for being overweight. Would your response be to send links to dietary advice and rant about how anorexic people have it worse? And at least that and fashion you can change. Height is unchangeable and it's completely accepted that it's totally fine for women (and other men!) to discriminate based on it. I think this post is quite illustrative.
Forgive me for assuming, but since you are mentioning magazines and movies, are you sure this is still true for the current generation of young women? The culture has changed massively and at least from where I stand, in Northern Europe there is no shortage of women looking as much like "sluts" as they want, and obviously plenty make this into a lucrative career online. This is mostly just accepted, and is yet another option women have.
Not only that, but in addition to all these great new options women got from progressive culture (which are great!) they still have benefits of the traditional, patriarchal societies. Women get approached, women don't need to pay on dates, women can advance in society through marriage or relationships (there are so many examples of this for me because I come from a poorer country). The issue of draft is all over Europe now and women mostly get a pass. And I do really believe that socializing as women is broadly easier, women are more welcome on average. That's my experience at least.
I think that the reason why red pill and black pill got popular with young men is simply because it is more accurate to their reality than saying that women always have it worse, all women are victims of oppression, all men need to figure their shit out. I think it's not the case for the new generation in first world countries anymore.
This happens constantly to people who are overweight even in contexts that are completely unrelated to discussion of their weight, much less when they foolishly reach out for support. I remember back on reddit I unsubbed from r/science because the comments would devolve into berating fat people for being lazy and not becoming thin even when the original article had next to nothing to do with that topic. Being a short guy does suck, but it does not have remotely as much pervasive ill treatment even outside of the dating scene, and I've never seen short men even claim to have experienced anything approaching the vitriolic treatment often directed at fat women.
The rest of your comment honestly reads like the uninformed thoughts of someone who refuses to consider women's experiences as equal to his own. You insist that sexist expectations of women are no longer a thing in modern progressive Western societies, but you're simply wrong about a lot of it no longer being a thing, and the idea that there are no longer strict and complex gendered standards for how women should dress and behave because nowadays there are women posting thirst traps online is ridiculous. You also do the exact thing I complained about in a different thread in this topic and equate the category of "woman" to "conventionally attractive woman", and then you generalize a whitewashed version of their experiences that doesn't even acknowledge any of the real negatives even attractive women experience. You insist that women are generally treated better by society based on these generalizations that are not reflective of most women's experiences and actively dismiss the teal problems they face. You seem extremely dismissive of the idea that sexism even exists. Frankly, it doesn't seem like you've actually abandoned much of the flawed, dehumanizing ways incel culture views women.
Not sure how you got the idea that I think sexism doesn't exist from my comments, considering my whole point is saying that society currently sexist against men in particular, for which there is little pushback except for crazy redpill/blackpill spaces, which is a huge problem. I surely hope you don't think sexism can only be applied against women. Ignoring that, I know it exists, since I'm from a traditionalist, patriarchal and sexist country. I happened to have moved into one of the most gender equal countries on the planet however and I champion what progressive movement has done to accomplish this. It's also obvious that women still experience sexism.
The fact that I need to add these disclaimers to talk about what to me is just basic reality on the ground, and the feelings of me and other young men, is precisely the kind of negativity and lack of support from society that I mean. The fact that your go to response is to call me a "flawed, dehumanizing incel". Yet another illustrative example of the kind of treatment I am talking about. I used the word "incel" on purpose too, instead of just saying "I didn't get laid until my early 20s". Do you see how it's become synonymous with an insult and an instant negative perception?
Sorry, but I don't believe this. My personal experience aside, there's a massive gap between (young) men and women on the ability to find both sex and relationships. Unless you think women in general are more attractive than men, something else must be going on here.
And surely this has about 0 effect on issues like draft. By the way, I am from a country where all men must serve in the military. And women just don't. Please don't just ignore it like it's nothing, it is a part of every 18 year old guy's life there.
Ultimately, all I'm really trying to say is that sexism exists both ways, both men and women face struggles and it's not right to say that one side always has it worse. That's really it. I consider myself a feminist though I don't believe we can ever truly reconcile the biological differences. Hopefully we can get closer though, as we did with women to great success.
Not what I said in my comment. I said that your comment exhibited the same flawed, dehumanizing ways of viewing women that typifies incel culture. You're the only one who's called yourself an incel in this conversation.
As an aside, I didn't address your mention of the draft because it's something I largely agree is both unfair in sexist ways and shouldn't exist at all. I myself have commented critically about the draft and mandatory military service in other topics on Tildes that more directly pertain to that issue, afaik. But I don't really want to discuss issues that affect men with someone who thinks that women and men both have irreconcilable biological differences and that women have it better in society because we've eliminated societal misogyny. That baseline is so fundamentally flawed that I don't think it's something on which a reasonable discussion on how to address gendered societal issues is based, and that's if I charitably choose not to engage with how it invalidates my lived experience as a trans person who was raised as a woman.
This comment of yours reinforces my assessment of your worldview from your previous comment, and I don't think we're likely to have a productive conversation that amounts to more than shouting past each other if we continue to engage with each other on this topic, so I think we should let this thread rest here.
This is very true. Especially today because we have abusers and human traffickers who are rich powerful men, all men get painted with suspicion. When women say that they'd rather take their chances with a bear in the woods, they're trying to avoid the predatory men, but in doing so they're also avoiding the non-predatory men who are also lost and afraid in the woods.
I don't want to make this a competition of who has it worse: but I do feel the need to point out we don't have it that good either. I do want to apologize for just "not getting it" and throwing out "just suck it up", because I am not able to see how much younger men have already been trying to suck it up, all day, every day.
It puts me in mind of those men that feel the need to add "alpha male" to their social media handle. Like they're taking the piss, right? Right? This isn't quite that but there's certainly the same vibe of insecurity, at least from where I am culturally (not American).
It is that. "Mogging" is I guess related to "alpha Male of group" aMOG, mogging. So it's absolutely tied into that sort of thinking.
So my history with the way I look is slightly more up and down. Growing up as a kid, I was chubby, and I always felt isolated from my classmates for various reasons, but partly because I was always a teachers pet. In adolescence I lost weight, but still never dated anyone. This part of my life mirrors yours where family and even some friends would say that I was attractive, but I didn’t really believe it. I always kind of related to the ugly characters in media. There was a great Louis CK joke that I loved where he said “I’m not a panty dropper. Women look at me and go ‘Jesus fuck’ and I got wait just give me a minute.” So I never really had a grasp that I was attractive and it was only looking back where it became obvious that certain girls had crushes on me that I never noticed and I had a certain effect.
What happened after high school is I gained over 100 pounds in my first year of college. And would fluctuate but would largely stay in the 250-300 range. That led an immediate difference to the way that I was treated. But because I was that way for seven years I became used to it. So when I eventually lost the weight and went back to the way I looked in high school, everything kind of unveiled itself to me. And stuff started happening quickly after I reached a certain body fat percentage where I lost my virginity, dated a lot, started drama, etc etc. Which just never happened when I was in college despite having been part of groups and being the most social I had been.
Somewhere throughout this I found this culture, I never really seeped into its belief system fully. I just took their tips, which helped with clearing my skin, bettering my hair, etc etc. But once I got to the other side it confirmed some of their beliefs to me. I dont really think it’s an all or nothing situation. I think they’re very clearly right about some of this. Even the more non PC stuff like it’s easier for women to have sex. I have seen unattractive women have no issues having sex compared to what I see with unattractive men.
So I could be humble and say, I’m really more average looking. But I don’t think that’d be a very useful pretense. I’m not even suggesting I’m like a model, I’m just above average. Like it changed social dynamics significantly.
There’s a part of this culture that says to “ascend and forget” basically once you get to a certain level of attractiveness just to keep up with your maintenance but no longer concern yourself with such things. But it is hard, for me anyway, to just forget the difference in the behavior I see around me.
The thing about the belief system is that they're "right" about the things that everyone already believes. That is, there's no significant opposition to the idea that attractive people are more successful at dating and first impressions, or that women have an easier time finding casual sex.
They seem right because they invent strawmen to represent mainstream/feminist thought.
Everyone knows that if you're hot, you're going to be able to get more dates if you want them. Everyone knows that looks are the single most important factor when people see you and make an impression of you.
What they don't agree with is that it's worth flying across the world, spending 80k to have your shins repeatedly and painfully broken and spending a year in recovery and being effectively disabled for the rest of your life so that you can go from 5'10 to 6'.
Lookmaxxing implies that looks are literally the only thing that's important in life. It really isn't. Having the hottest possible partner, or having the most sex possible will not make you happy. It's never made anyone happy once they got over the novelty of it.
You can see this in clavicular or any of the other popular online black pill personalities. They're all miserable. Theyre not happy or content with their lives, they don't have stable relationships, and they've never focused on the other things in life that are important besides looks.
So yeah, looks are important, but no one disputes that. You can't say that looksmaxxers are "right about some of it", when it's the same thing that everyone else already knows. It's like saying that the Nazis were right about some of it because they thought that having a strong military was key to winning wars. Sure, they believe that, but so does everyone else. It's not a key differentiator.
I think you’re having a disconnect in that you are thinking that there’s a specific end goal in the sense of becoming CEO of something or the other.
When really it’s just saying enjoy your new life and how much better it is than when you weren’t good looking. And that’s in every direction. What you do with that it’s up to you. It’s like akin to eating right, working out, drinking a lot of water and thinking there was has to be an end goal to doing all of that as opposed to thinking about it as a function to live life.
Now what do most guys do? They fuck a lot. If you look at how Clavicular is living his life that’s pretty representative of what people who do looksmaxxx end up doing. Clavicular is now a rich famous guy, who most people consider attractive, who is being swarmed by women to sleep with him. Like his life is undeniable better than it was when he was just a kid on the Internet forums. And it’s better than anything else he could have done with his life considering he got expelled from his college for selling steroids. His sort of rise to fame is somewhat of a confirmation of this outlook of life.
And he just OD'd due to apparent addiction issues significant enough his agent won't represent him anymore until he goes into treatment because he doesn't know how to stream sober.
(and throws around racial slurs because it's fun and appears with racist grifters and sex traffickers.)
He is a very strange choice of role model, and his life is only "undeniably better" if one believes the image he's selling rather than the apparent deep underlying insecurity, substance abuse, and the company he keeps.
The online image is so often a lie with any influencer but like, this is happiness?
Not a role model. Even he himself has said only idiots look at him as a role model. He’s a 20 year old kid. The thing with him too is he just had a ton of issues prior to getting famous. There’s plenty of people with these same issues that don’t have the money and resources that he now has. He would have been in a similar spot regardless, he’s always done a lot of drugs. But where he was heading prior to his rise of fame was being homeless. He got kicked out of his parents house, he didn’t really have a ton of employment options, and was almost entirely relying on his elderly grandma.
I’m just looking at him as a symbol. Right, like he has this level of fame that is not common even among influencers. And he got there on this ideology. And not just that, it’s because he looks the part. Because if he had been morbidly obese or something, he would not be rich right now. No one would know who he was outside a small section of the internet. And how do I know this? Because those types of people already exist among this community. Look at Saint Hamudi.
That’s a confirmation of that ideology. He’s not a lolcow like many people with his mental disorders are. He’s an influencer. And I think not acknowledging that is a bit too stubborn.
He's trying to have it both ways - he's "not a role model" and yet he's an ideal that people are looking at to prove this perspective is true. That's a role model. That's what he's "influencing" people to do.
I mean I'm not even getting into the fact that I doubt someone on this many drugs is having a good sex life, even if he's bringing "20 hot women" back to his place. I think folks underestimate how emotionally hollow that sort of thing is. And plenty of people don't care about that, but I sincerely doubt he's actually good in bed, most 20 year olds aren't.
But he's just negging his audience by saying they're stupid for looking up to him. He needs them to give him money so he wants them to be insecure and "need" him in return.
He is, to my eyes, proof that this is all shiny bullshit for the stream. He has to be high to function, to the point of burning professional relationship bridges. His high profile hookups are mostly other online grifters and sex workers (with no shade to them, they're just absolutely the targets of a ton of verbal abuse from this population) which means they have other motivations for the sex should it even be happening.
And again hanging out with Andrew Tate? Fuentes? Being just a shitty person? I don't think people actually want to live this life he's living. People should be pissed at him for the grift and the lies he's telling him not pissed at women for existing, not looking at him as confirmation of their ideology when his life is pathetic from outside that bullshit filled shine.
I don't get this, I called him an influencer. How am I not acknowledging that? You're the one saying he's not supposed to be looked up to. (I don't call people "lolcow". I don't care that they do, they'd call me worse for existing).
There are so many attractive and thin/fit dudes who don't act like assholes but aren't famous; it's not his weight, it's being willing to grift. There are plenty of "morbidly obese" (ew for the language, btw) or "not conventionally attractive" men who have plenty of good sex. I can speak from experience. And there are plenty of horrid humans who other horrid humans will have sex with regardless of age, weight, looks, etc. for money or power as Trump proves.
He's confirmation only if you believe the images shown through the screen and not what's actually happening. Or, I guess, if any sex is worth any trade off... In which case hiring sex workers and treating them like humans would be less objectifying than what Clavicular is doing.
The fact that he was always on a trajectory of addiction is tragic not proof of him being a symbol of success now. But whatever, as I said previously, the choice of role models makes zero sense to me, and it reads as choosing to dehumanize women and fat people as a way to move oneself up the ladder rather than doing any of the things that make you actually attractive to prospective partners. Denying he's a role model flies directly in the face of him being a symbol of success who makes money from people wanting to be him
I don't think the issue is sex, otherwise just visiting a sex worker as some suggest would just magically solve everything. The issue is desirability. There's just something special in the feeling that someone finds you hot, not because you paid them to pretend, not because they want to settle, not because you charmed them with your charisma, not even because you're in love, but because there's some immense chemistry there, pure attraction. I think failing to experience it growing up and seeing it happen all around is what triggers this kind of attitude of forever chasing it more and more and just having really poor self image in general. I imagine that if you get famous it also wraps around the other end and it becomes "what if they are only doing this for clout" type of thing. But at least for me it's this constant self doubt. And becoming more attractive only confirms the worldview that human beings are incredibly shallow and looks are incredibly important.
The other reason I think this affects young men in particular is because men are practically always expected to be the initiators. I am sort of ashamed to admit it, but I still remember the time when I was approached for a casual encounter by a stranger for the first time and just sort of shut down because I couldn't even process what just happened.
It's a fantasy of desirability (and only in a hetero narrative). Because, if it's not obvious that people want to be with this guy for his fame, and money, and that it's incredibly likely he's disappointing his actual sexual partners while overstating his sexual activity... Idk it seems obvious to me from over here. He's 20. Like he's incredibly insecure and probably never was anything but, hence the drugs. His message is you too can be confident, if you're high all the time.
As a poly, pan woman-ish in nerdy and kinky spaces. I, and others, approached men (and other women) all the time. They weren't thin and fit. (They still aren't.) I insisted my current partner date me (in a non-weird way) and he was disabled and overweight. But funny, and kind and not homophobic and he can cook and I love him. But even 20-year-old, "straight", "cis", naive, skinny me - who hung around a boyfriend far too long in college - wouldn't have found this whole Clavicular thing attractive. If people want to be desired by women, you'd think they'd listen to women about what they want. When women feel safe they will initiate. If they're not doing that it's because they don't feel safe. It's that whole "men fear rejection and women fear murder" thing about dating. Which isn't universal, but none of this is and it's all stereotypes and shadow plays of reality instead of interactions with real people.
If you try to appeal only to shallow people, you'll never make connections with the people who aren't because they'll also perceive you as shallow. It's once again confirmation bias, not actual confirmation.
Why? Anyway I'm speaking more generally, not just about that particular person.
That's good and all, but what is your point exactly? It is clear that the straight dating culture as such that men approach women massively more than otherwise. Kink, poly and queer spaces are their own bubbles that have their own quirks anyway. I don't think if a woman were to post issues she's had dating men it would be appropriate for me to post "well I don't do those things" like it changes her experience.
People are notoriously bad at identifying what they want in reality, that's why when we compare self reports to what people actually choose we get quite different results. Not just in dating mind you. I actually think plenty of women give quite terrible dating advice, both to men and to other women, so I'll respectfully disagree with this generalization. At best it doesn't seem to be any better than advice given by men.
If you had said "When women do not feel safe they will not initiate", I would agree wholeheartedly, and I would not just limit this to women, but to anyone really. To say that it's the only thing that matters I think is not right at all. That being said, I completely agree that safety and risk aversion is a solid part of this dynamic.
I don't know if fearing murder in a country with like 100 murders per year, most of which are related to gang activity is really a rational fear though, while fear of rejection is based on very real life experience. No one usually starts with that fear and I'm sure attractive people never even develop it.
The issue is not with making connections, the issue is with feeling (being) desirable or not. "Connection" can describe all manner of things.
I'm speaking about him and similar role models. I have been explicit in multiple posts that 20 year olds aren't typically very good at sex from a partner's perspective, especially bringing multiple women to their place and high on drugs. There's absolutely no reason to think he's honest - I'm sure he likes whatever sponsorships pay him to like too.
Regarding the types of spaces, am actually speaking mostly about interactions with straight men and straight/bi women, particular in nerdy hobby spaces (LARPing and TTRPG spaces in particular) and I'm using it as an example against a broader societal claim in a thread about that phenomenon, not to an individual person's experience in a thread about their personal struggle. Context matters.
I think the idea that people don't know what they want is sold by everyone from dating apps to PUAs to incel spaces. And that teens probably have less life experience and thus a harder time explaining it. Lots of people are able to thoughtfully share what they look for in a relationship. But by that standard, why would this guy (or these guys) know anything? He literally was hanging out with a sex trafficker. How is that proof he knows what women want?
I have a degree in counseling. Fear of safety is not irrational, fear of rejection is 100% developed by attractive people. It's a human fear, not an "ugly fear." Because you can be incredibly attractive and full of self-doubt and have a poor self image. I personally believe Clavicular probably fits into that camp.
Connection can describe a lot of things because I'm being very general. But if you're talking about how this confirms how shallow people in general are, my point is that you'll only make any level of connection with shallow people when you're focusing on "shallow" things. It's self-fulfilling. If I only look in for guys at Bass Pro Shops I can confirm all men are into fishing, hunting and boats and nothing else.
But if you want to be "desired" and do not care that it's real - sure his is the path to go down. Idk that notable dates with other grifters, or dating a minor last year, proves he's desirable for his looks vs his money and fame, personally. As I said, it's the fantasy of being desired. But IMO he literally walks out of interviews if he's asked questions he likes; he cannot possibly be "mogging" anyone. And anyone who has to talk about how much of a top they are is bullshitting you. As I said, it's all "shiny bullshit"
Of course, because of prior experiences. That's why people like Clavicular (and to some degree myself) choose to embark on the "looksmaxxing" (which is just a stupid word for figuring out how to present oneself better) journey in the first place. We started out as unattractive and changed it overtime and most importantly observed the results. Of course it is very hard to undo the damage built up during the entire adolescence and beyond.
Well it is also my personal struggle. LARPing and TTRPG are insanely niche spaces. Not sure what conclusions to draw from any of this. Good for you and the good people of LARPing and TTRPG spaces.
Why is it not irrational? We live in an incredibly safe society. As for being developed by attractive people, I was talking about people who have always been considered attractive and I guess pretty universally. Many people change as they grow up. That's why also you get the worthless "just be confident" advice given by people who haven't ever had their confidence questioned by reality.
You're the only one who described anything as shallow though. It's just your judgement and I'm not sure what to even respond because I've never mentioned anything I would consider "shallow".
The whole point is that it is real if it comes from a stranger who doesn't know much about you. Then it is pure attraction. There is no chance of it being for financial gain, clout or anything like that.
You're focusing on that guy who I don't even know much about other than that he's become infamous for extreme levels of looksmaxxing. Again, I have nothing to say to that, other than that wanting desire is very normal and valid, feeling unattractive when absolutely no one shows you any signs of attraction without a lot of effort on your part is valid (if unfortunate) and that sort of experience is sadly very real for many young men.
It's a human fear regardless of one's past or present attractiveness. You said attractive people don't develop it. I'm saying that's false. Adolescents are broadly incredibly insecure and the messages given by media and society only make that worse. I lived through the 90s where the "hottest" celebrity women were ripped to shreds for the slightest amount of belly fat. I watched very attractive teens mimic that same behavior. The "results" shown by the role model in question are unimpressive IMO. And all it does is further messages of insecurity.
Ok, I'm continuing to talk about the broader picture not about you specifically and I'm not contrasting my experiences with yours, I was initially replying to someone else and you are also speaking generally. I gave examples of less niche spaces than the "incel" spaces described by others and ones historically perceived as being full of less conventionally attractive or "fit" people. You (general) don't need a toxic subculture to feel better about yourself. That is a choice.
You said "And becoming more attractive only confirms the worldview that human beings are incredibly shallow and looks are incredibly important."
I've been responding to that. I'm interpreting shallowness as used by yourself to mean "focused on looks/appearance" to a degree that directs their decisions. I don't agree that humans are incredibly shallow. I believe focusing on the same "shallow" things attracts other "shallow" people and so it's confirmation bias.
If you didn't mention anything "shallow" we wouldn't be having this conversation.
My point is that this is clearly not the case for one of the highest profile people in the subculture. And if that fantasy of desirability is all someone wants then sure, just don't assume that the world is shallow because you (general) only find shallow people that way. IMO people like Clavicular are deeply undesirable and unattractive due to their personalities, behaviors and beliefs. Once again*, I'm not speaking about you individually. I don't know any of those pieces about you. And I don't want to know in this thread.*
Yeah I was talking about him as a person and a role model the entire time I've been in the convo. It's odd that you replied to that and seem confused or frustrated that I keep talking about him. That was and is what I'm discussing. When someone is being interviewed by "normies" as the exemplar of the subculture, they're a useful person to use to discuss it, and to point out the flaws outside the frame of the twitch/kick (no wait he's banned again) stream. Influencers lie about their lives and how they achieve them.
I think fixating on desirability over emotional connection and a relationship is missing the point of it all. People want to be wanted but IME (professional and personal) it's not just wanting to be wanted just for the point of being wanted. It's wanting to be cared about, loved, and to build connections. But I specifically said if that's all people want, sure, do that I guess. I don't think it actually fixes the self-doubt, poor self-image, or creates a healthy person underneath it and seems more prone to finding other people, especially women in this scenario, as objects to serve ones own ego and be discarded along the way. For folks that can find some self confidence and avoid the dehumanizing trap along the way, that's good and all but it didn't require being in the toxic soup to get the same advice available elsewhere
It's not a confirmation of the ideology, lol. It's confirmation that being rich lets you get away with a lot more. If clavicular was a very good looking broke guy, his life wouldnt be a whole lot different than if he were a moderately ugly broke guy.
I know multiple very good looking broke guys. The only difference between them and the ugly broke guys is that they have sex a little more. (Not even a lot more though, to be honest).
You don't automatically get handed a Ferrari, a designer suit, and VIP passes to a night club once you reach a certain level of attractiveness.
He has all of those things because he happened to become a famous influencer. Casey neistat got all of those things when he became a famous influencer too, and he's decidedly not conventionally attractive.
He has fewer material concerns because of the money, not because of the looks.
The looks aren't even what got him the money though, it's the message that hit at the exact right time, with the exact right people, in the exact right way.
The only reason any of this matters though is that becoming Clavicular is not a path to make your life better. The 16 year old kids watching him are not going to become him. They'll become slightly better looking, more broke, and maybe gain some new drug addictions or health concerns.
I mean, without any judgement, it sounds shallow to me and I don't at all want it for myself. Undeniably better it isn't. I acknowledge I'm very solidly middle aged and perhaps not the target of his influence, but I don't think I would have at any point found this attractive.
You conveniently cut off the last part of the quote and then responded to it as though it was saying his life is undeniably better than yours, even though it stated his life is undeniably better than an alternative theoretical version of his own life. Sure the argument could still be made that it's not undeniably better than being homeless or whatever else that guy could have ended up being, but that doesn't appear to be the case you were making.
Not who you were responding to but
His life could have been better had he not been selling steroids and expelled. That has nothing to do with his looks at all. And he could have been a better person who didn't sell this toxic idea to these young men. If he was still just some rando he won't be remembered with such pity and hate. His fame is ruining his health right now. His life is, from this perspective, undeniably worse.
I'm not really defending the idea that his life is better or worse, I'm not familiar with nor altogether too concerned with the influencer person himself, I just was correcting the record where the prior comment was misquoting/mischaracterizing the statement.
So this the end goal. Jesus, this is exactly how shallow I expected it all to be. I’m a little baffled this is really what “alpha” guys are expecting in life. It is still just dealing with insecurity by overcompensating and becoming real assholes. It was never about fair treatment or acknowledgment, it is just about being “better” than the rest, whatever that even means.
It was not my experience that "most guys" fucked a lot, even in their 20s, either. But idk man, I guess. They're typically shit at it and I see very little in "how to be a better sexual partner" just "how to fuck (euphemism for women)"
Especially in some of these really weird parts of the internet where any sort of affection to women is "gay".
Exactly. Growing up, I always had girl friends and never really felt comfortable with boy only groups. In my twenties, I always had mixed friend groups. These male only groups, where machismo is common, seem incredibly toxic to me. This whole divide between men and women, I just don’t experience it like these men do. And I interact with women because I like their company, the way they communicate, not because I’m thirsty and expect every interaction to lead to sex. Mind boggling how some men think. No wonder women find men threatening and worry about being harassed or worse. It just feels like we as a species are slowly devolving.
I'll take a euphemism rather than a slur, anyway.
There's a thought that when someone hates themselves, they begin to consider those who associate with them as not being worthy of respect either. Maybe the misogyny is a reflection on themseves: the ones who fuck these shallow people must be even more shallow, while the ones who don't are more shallow still because surely they will for someone even more whatever-maxxed
I used euphemism inclusive of slur. It was not intended as a positive alternative.
I'm aware how the self-loathing turns outward too but it's a choice of where to direct one's emotions. Picking the path of dehumanizing others, picking these role models is a choice.
This is tangential to your summary of looksmaxxing/blackpill (thanks it was informative).
The gen Z's I know say that *maxxing is no longer trendy and people only use the terms ironically. I'm sure that's not absolutely true, but it sounds like it's increasingly true outside of niche internet spaces.
I hope so! I'm cool with 12 year old emotional intelligence inspired trends going wide up to a point. I mean most trends pull from the shallow end of the emotional intelligence pool, doesn't necessarily make them bad. But *maxxing is extra dumb.
There was always an ironic undertone to using maxxxing as a term. I mean someone saw a group of chickens and said they were chic fil a maxxxing and went up to a person who was alone and said “you’re by yourself maxxxing.”
Considering Clavicular just got written in multiple normie articles, and also has been parodied on SNL multiple times. I don’t really think it’s accurate to say it’s not trendy anymore.
As a trans person, I don't get why they're not all transmaxxing. If you live in a big city, you don't have to deal with a lot of the negatives, while you do get positives like looking younger, getting the same sorts of compliments cis women get (hair, accessories, etc), and straight up looking more attractive. End the male loneliness epidemic by taking the pink pill and transmaxxing!
you can't get a super hot goth girlfriend -- what if you just become the super hot goth girlfriend instead !!!
[meme: Thanos' "fine, I'll do it myself"]
But on a serious note: if men aren't seeing the kinds of groups where they belong, men can try creating the spaces where they belong, or joining an already existing welcome space. They don't have to fall into inceldom and its incarnations.
"I want a hot goth girlfriend eventually, but until then I want to learn how to help her do her hair and makeup and understand her skincare routine. Can I learn from you guys?"
"I want to be the kind of man who is able to make my girlfriend delicious meals, can I come learn?"
"I'm very into gothic Lolita's and bunny girls and maids. Which sewing classes can I take to be helpful to my future cosplaying girlfriend? ?"
But that falls into the category of "you're asking me to put in effort (cope) when all I want is to be acknowledged how unfair it is I was not born rich and tall and handsome and have women throw themselves at me effortlessly".
story of my life
I saw a discussion describing Looksmaxing as the latest "blue-bottle" body image issue. Underneath the jargon, methods and presentation; its all praying on the innate anxiety of not being born in the right way for the lifestyle they want to live. But this is a MANS issue and not anything like the Pink-bottle ones that also involve addictive and antisocial behavior, eating disorders, invasive/dangerous cosmetic treatments, unattainable (or plain creepy) beauty standards and the like. Both are supercharged by popular media (new and old) and are being weaponized by conman, grifters and the mentally unwell.
Even the name is indicative of being masculine by framing it as something noble and scientific. You're not being vain or insecure. You're "maximizing a key metric that dictates probability of future success". Something objective and scientific. There's a feeling that the public figures are abdicating personal responsibility by saying that they "have to" do it or be left behind. It's something pushed on you by women and the Chads. And then impressionable people suspend agency and follow the leader, simply because its the only path that they have seen to success that they are able to emulate. Beside the odd mail order drug or paywalled content, it seems like entry level Looksmaxing is just inexpensive and sustained self-harm.
It's evident with how a lot of hustle and crypto/stock bros have falling out of favor because interest rates are up and people simply don't have the money or energy to put in any more. Or even how a lot of the red-pill crowd like Tate and Jordan Peterson have all been exposed as the grifters that they are and suffering shrinking relevance.
But this is an impression from the outside looking in. I'm just grateful that the worst things I got sucked into was Toxic Atheism and 2000s Tumblr/FanFic drama and neither caused any permanent damage.
Pretty much all of these intense and problematic internet trends make me realize how many people need better things to do with their time. Sure if someone’s having a difficult time dating that will be a drag. But if they had enough good things going on in their lives they wouldn’t end up consumed by that worry.
Maybe a bit of a tangent, but what does Peter Thiel gain from this? Why fund someone to go all in on looksmaxxing? That scumbag doesn't seem to do anything unless it has a benefit to himself.
Elle Reeve explains the connection in this book. She lays it out so clearly you have those “ohhhh” moments. You see the glue between all the pieces.
https://www.todaysauthormagazine.com/book-reviews/elle-reeves-black-pill-a-disturbing-look-at-meme-magic-and-the-gop/
Tangent to a tangent, but state actors have a vested interest in pushing this as another vector for division.
Weakening population cohesion lowers the population itself. Not only in quantity but quality. So naturally weakening health care systems, TRUST in science, (vaccine skepticism), lowering birth rates, and adding friction to the connections between genders are all ways to make the population devour itself. Chasing off highly skilled immigrants instantly destroys a pool of skilled talent.
Most of these are organic movements but certainly amplified by bad actors, by design. When you can’t take your rival on the battlefield, you help them to fight themself.
You would think the connection between amplifying bros taking themselves too seriously and multi domain warfare would be comical and a stretch but that’s part of its genius.
The US population shrank for the first time in 2025
I'm so glad that someone wrote about this. It's something that should be taught to everyone in school (that probably won't happen in America for as long as the billionaires are in power and that likely goes for the Democratic party too).
I have another question though: WTF are these people thinking? I mean, are they not at all concerned about the long term survival and happiness of themselves and especially their kids? Most of them do seem to have kids. I myself do not, and I'm still extremely concerned about a society that has lost too much cohesion. It's not going to be a fun place even if you're one of the oppressors, or their offspring. Is it that they're low IQ enough to believe Elon Musk will whisk them off to Mars before WW3/4/5, and that it'll actually be a nice environment to settle in to live a life of luxury? What gives?
You remember in Children of Men, where the protagonist went to visit his cousin?
These people are so delusional they really think they can live in a lovely beautiful and safe little bubble in perpetuity while the rest of the world burns. They're too stupid to realize how much effort a world like that takes to build.
I can’t fully explain this. He has his Dime Square thing going on in New York. He funds the red scare girls as well, also probably Liv Schmidt. I think he generally just funds reactionary politics but wrapped in a “cool” package with big parties.
Hey @cloud_loud, I don't have anything to contribute to the conversation but I wanted to make sure to thank you for your post, I really appreciate it. It is very informative and I feel conveys the information in a balanced way that makes it much more palatable than someone coming with their opinion trying to convince everyone about their point of view.
I'm glad you included explanations, as I've stopped keeping up current slang for just about anything. Reading things like this make me glad I'm married and not trying to date anymore.
I met my wife using Tinder when Tinder was still a fairly new dating app, this was in the mid 2010s. I felt like when I was using it I would get an okay amount of matches, and I'm a fairly average looking/average height guy, but I was also in a college town where there is more of a concentration of similarly aged single people. From what I've heard from my single guy friends who are now leaving their 20s or already in their early 30s is that most of them don't try using dating apps anymore as they're not worth their time/demotivating to use. A couple of them will open Tinder once a week and spend a few minutes swiping, but they don't really expect anything out of it.
In response to your conclusion instead of quoting your entire thing.
I remember seeing the modern iteration of the body positivity/healthy at any size happen around the time I was in college, again mid 2010s. Focusing on a guy perspective from that time period since that was the majority of my social circle, none of the guys that I knew bought in to it for themselves, and they would view being out of shape as a detriment to their chances for dating. That's not to say that it eliminated their chances like these black pill people would think of, I even met my future wife while I weighed a decent amount more than I personally wanted to, but that being in better physical shape would in most cases make them more attractive. For a lot of the guys I knew who met their girlfriends while being out of shape, they often met their girlfriend through a social event (something on campus, a philanthropy event, a party, etc.) compared to using dating apps. This definitely echoed what @boxer_dogs_dance mentioned of the ability to meet someone in person and having the chance to "judge" them based on other qualities besides looks.
I don't remember anyone falling down the "red pill" movement in regard to viewing women and success like that at that time, and among the guys I knew it felt more along the lines of focusing on self-improvement which would in term make you more attractive to a potential partner as a bonus. Lots of guys going to the gym together/studying together and treating each other as accountability buddies to make sure they were putting in the effort even when they didn't feel like it. Being a member of a fraternity may explain some of that mindset, though I did see similar outlooks in my friends who were not members.
Edit:
I did hear of one guy who was in my fraternity who years later got one of those surgeries to increase his height from being average to over 6ft. I heard this from guys who are closer to him since he was a few years older than me and I hadn't talked to him in ~7 years. Was a bit surprising as he never seemed insecure about his height or looks, and he didn't tell anyone that he was planning on doing it, or after he had done it and just showed up at an event a lot taller with the guys there obviously asking him what happened.
I’m going to preface this by saying I might be coming from a privileged position (already am married and had sex at least twice) and from simpler times (before internet dating), so please let me know if that’s the case.
From the outside, apps like Tinder seem to act on primarily superficial things, like looks and status. If that’s what you think is the only way to find a date, then I totally understand this movement. But from the outside looking in, I wonder why these men come to this conclusion. The most interesting people I’ve met is through shared interest. Join a scuba club, join a cooking class, join a photography group, sports club, anything that you enjoy and what attracts a mixed crowd. Make friends, be social and don’t try so hard. The fact that men have a hard time competing on platforms like Tinder would be reason enough for me to try different approaches and see how that pans out. Quite like I have rarely responded to any online posted vacancies, but have always found jobs by talking to people instead. It is just much easier to not compete and find different ways. Although I know this is coming from a VERY privileged position, as a white 40 something male, I still believe it will benefit many more people.
This stuff existed before Tinder was a thing, like long before going back to Internet forums from the 00s. Theres plenty a stuff out there from more analog days that shows how society was also superficial and shallow etc.
Tinder just kind of exasperated everything and isolated everyone to the point where you can’t really date without the apps. No one really approaches anyone since MeToo became a thing, bars and clubs are dying, people rather stay at home all day than do any of the stuff you’ve suggested.
I swear, sometime I feel like I am living on a totally different planet than other people. Where do you live that bars and clubs are "dying", and nobody approaches anyone else anymore because of MeToo!? Because, much like @caliper, that has not been remotely close to my experience either. There are still a shit ton of incredibly popular bars and nightclubs where I live (Southern Ontario), and there plenty of other options out there for meeting new people outside of dating apps too, if you look for them. There are sports/hobby related groups (e.g. bowling/pickleball leagues, running/hiking/biking clubs, board game groups, dance classes, pub quiz nights, etc), volunteer groups (both religious and secular), local community events (live music events, community walks, farmer's markets, etc), to name but a few.
And to be perfectly and bluntly honest with you, @cloud_loud, I think you need to totally disconnect from whatever online spaces you're a part of that are feeding you all this inceldom, looksmaxxxing, red/black pill bullshit. The vast majority of it is simply not true, or at best it is an extremely distorted view of reality. And if you actually spent some more time listening/talking to and hanging out with women as friends (not just for the purposes of trying to get into their pants) you would realize just how fucking wrong the red/black pill idiots are. It's not healthy to believe any of the lies those red/black pillers tell to themselves and others, all it will do is cause you to become just as deluded, shallow, insecure, and misogynistic as they are.
And I also think Clavicular's recent OD, and your own near health-disaster messing around with grey market peptides should be a goddamn wakeup call that you're heading down an incredible dark, dangerous, and self-destructive path. Please, I genuinely beg of you to leave those online spaces behind and try to find some healthier ones to be a part of. Go look on Meetup.com or search for local Facebook Groups or even post in your local community subreddit to try to find some real life groups that share a similar interest with you, that meet out in the real world, and that you can be a part of.
This might be true where you live, but it simply isn’t the case around here. There’s so many local initiatives where people organize stuff, like community gardens, farmers markets, small expositions, pub quizzes, etc. I see lots of people in their 20s/30s/40s/50s going to these things and talking to each other. Even more so in student towns where there’s a lot of nightlife to meet new people.
This makes me curious, do you mind sharing where you don’t see this anymore? I wonder if it’s related to the kind of city you’re in.