If you believe it's women's fault

I've already stated that most of the men complaining about this don't believe it's inherently women's fault. The undesirable female behaviors are the symptoms that they're complaining about, but they recognize the disease is social media and dating apps. People generally complain about symptoms since that's what they feel more directly.

because chances are you're not a good actor.

Your perception seems to preclude the notion that it's possible for men to be reasonably disenfranchised from dating. It's as if they should always pursue it, regardless of how difficult or unpleasant our changing society makes it. Much of this likely comes from your own experience - since you managed to overcome those barriers, you believe that other men should be able to do so as well. The problem with this line of thinking is that it severely underestimates just how much things have changed since you were dating. As someone who has dated before and after the existence of dating apps, I feel comfortable stating that it's almost an entirely different world.

This will be massively off-putting

Most of the men I'm referring to have already checked out of dating. They don't care how off-putting their attitudes are to women because they're not pursuing women.

what are you going to do about it?

These men have already decided what they're doing about: finding other ways to occupy their time. As I've mentioned, the effects of this go far beyond those individual men - they affect us all. So I'll turn the question around and ask what society is going to do about it.

Nebulous blaming of everyone else such as "society" will be the end of you

If it's possible for humans to experience a Behavioral Sink, then there's an outside chance it could be the end of society.

Does bottling up all your emotions help? No almost certainly not.

As I mentioned, these men aren't bottling it up - they're discussing it openly and actually supporting each other. For once, they are sharing their emotions. And the reaction of many people in society is to tell them to shut up and to call them losers.

Also you know, this is slashdot. We're a bunch of opinionated nerds, not your friends on the whole. If you post here you will probably get more advice (or just trolling from some arsehole who's had a bad day), and people will knock down you opinions they do not feel stand up to scrutiny. They may be wrong, half the people here are idiots after all.

The reason I'm engaging people on Slashdot is because I used to have the exact same opinions as many of the detractors. It was only after I had many personal experiences directly with it that I realized that the issue isn't 100% on these men. Sure, there's always room for improvement, but at a certain point a rational person has to look at the increased amount of effort it now takes to date and the decreasing rewards of being in a relationship to recognize that a growing number of people feel that it's no longer worth it. This isn't an emotional response - it's one of the most rational decisions a person could make.

The struggles are often quite different. Broadly speaking men get ignored on dating apps, women get torrents of vileness and abuse. Neither is good but the latter is objectively worse

I have no interest in engaging in a pissing contest about which is worse, but I personally would rather some attention, even if it was from assholes, than putting out tons of effort and getting few, if any, meaningful responses.

But you can't both put in zero effort AND blame and complain.

That statements carries a ton of assumptions from someone I can safely assume has not dated in the age of social media and dating apps. Please don't take my word for it - create a profile with all of the characteristics of an average man and show us how easy it is to date. If you're as experienced as you believe you are, it should be relatively simple and you'll get to prove that it's all just a skill issue for these men. The few people I've seen attempt this, mostly women, ended up completely changing their perspectives about the difficulty of dating for men in the modern age, so I hope you'll take the opportunity to prove us all wrong.

So tell me. List 5 things that are great about you. But here's the "catch", they have to be things that are actually great. Nebulous qualities like being "good" or "nice" are not things you bring, they're the minimum bar. Likewise for any flaw you don't have. Utilitarian things (having a paid off car, holding a steady job) are fine and good, but they aren't reasons someone wants to hang out with you.

I think you misunderstand my interest in this topic. This isn't just about me. This is about all of the men that are going through this. I don't pity my situation as I'm a bit older and got to live through better dating times. My interest right now is to improve the situation for young men who didn't get to experience that as well as help reverse a bit of the collapse of birth rates so that the decline won't be as dramatic (population decline is certainly not a bad thing as long as it's not too dramatic).

No matter how bad things are for men, little is less appealing than the victim mentality and men blaming women for their failures

It's not intended to be a victim mentality. It's men expressing their problems and attempting to be supportive of each other. Society keeps telling men they need to express their emotions and then when some men do, they're told they're adopting a victim mentality and to stop complaining.

It's also interesting that you have empathy for women who struggle to find meaningful relationships but not for men who are undergoing similar struggles. In both situations, you appear to be blaming the men. If you recognize that men should increase their skills in engaging women, can't you also admit that many women can do a better job choosing the men in which they engage?

So yeah, you may have disadvantages, but if you never ever find a woman?...well...most of us are ready to put the blame on you, not feminism, not dating apps, not women being cunts....maybe the men who can never snag a woman after years of trying are doing something wrong.

As I said before, most men won't claim that achieving a meaningful relationship is impossible for them. But the fact that it now takes so much more effort to find someone, as well as the fact that relationships don't carry the same sense of permanence they once used to, means that more good men are recognizing that the extra effort just isn't worth it. And while people can call those men losers or incels, given the fact that men are approximately 50% of the population, every man who takes himself out of the dating pool increases the competition among women looking for a man who is still trying. It's not just a problem for those men - it's a problem for everyone in society, yet many people are putting the majority of the blame squarely on men. That's certainly not persuading them to try any harder.

You're either tall and/or have far above average looks, or you haven't dated in quite a while.

No one calls good men incels

I see it all the time.

The insult is hurled when men blame feminism for their bad dating experiences or the entire female gender instead of improving themselves or putting more effort into dating

This is one of the biggest giveaways that you haven't dated recently. I, and most of the single men that I know, had a far easier time dating women in our 20s due to the complete lack of social media and dating apps back then. Dating was far easier despite the fact that we were less mature, had no financial foundation, and weren't nearly as funny or confident back then. Since then, we've gained many qualities that women look for, including tons of confidence, but that doesn't do a lot for you in the world of modern dating. On dating apps, the only thing most women tend to look at is your primary photo - it's hard to simultaneously convey success, a sense of humor, high social status in your friend group, and confidence all in a single photo. Most people provide the brilliant advice to avoid dating apps, but that doesn't help for the following reasons:

• Object permanence: Just because you avoid them doesn't mean that they no longer exist for the women you're looking to date. These apps are providing women with the illusion of abundance and they contain a good number of extremely attractive men who convince average women that they've fallen for them and then ghost those women as soon as they've gotten laid. You're constantly competing with that because it's always available, even if you're not using it.
• It's harder to meet women in person: Especially after COVID, it's more difficult to meet women who are open to socializing. Many people have become homebodies and most of their social outings are coordinated ahead of time via social media. It makes it far more difficult to meet people organically if you're trying to avoid dating apps.
• Women are putting men on blast for shooting their shot in person. It means that when you do manage to find a woman who picques your interest, simply approaching her to try to get to know her better could land you on social media being framed as a creep.

Poor men seem to have NO PROBLEM getting laid. How many single moms have an impoverished baby daddy?

Those guys usually have pretty good genes and the single moms have pretty questionable taste. The increase in single moms means that the number of women available unencumbered with some other guy's kid is fewer. This leaves you with the options of being financially and parentally responsible for someone else's child(ren) or dealing with the growing competition for a woman who doesn't already have kids.

Women don't care much about looks, stereotypically.

This is another giveaway you haven't dated in quite a while. Before dating apps, women were far more likely to give an "interesting" guy a chance, but dating apps have conditioned them to focus on looks far more than they used to. Again, I've seen this first hand and have heard lots of other men report similar experiences. And this isn't just anecdotal - studies have shown that women have developed a far more discriminating taste in men's looks. This may also be due to the illusion of abundance of attractive men on dating apps.

You get called an incel when you blame the female gender for your failings

Many of the men aren't blaming the female gender, at least not exclusively. The situation is a mess humans created once we introduced social media and dating apps. Men do often blame women directly for the entitled behaviors many of them have developed due to the illusion of abundance provided to them by dating apps, and some of that may be justified.

If they put some effort into basic conversation skills and being pleasant and maybe asking about the women and taking an interest in the other person and adapting to the other person's needs...they'd have no problem getting someone...whether they're poor, ugly, or disabled...maybe not a supermodel...but some woman would take them if they actually had something to offer...incels never offer much on any front.

This is perfect advice for someone up to the mid 2010's. Now, it's not nearly as valuable since it's a lot harder to get a woman's attention today in the first place.

Look, I know I'm probably not going to convince you of any of this. You've put in your work in the trenches and naturally assume that the same methods for achieving success in your time will work for the current generation of men because that's how things have worked throughout much of human history. But social media and dating apps have changed culture and human behavior far more than any other invention I can imagine. Unless you're currently out there doing it, please stop judging the men who are (or the ones who have given up). Young men aren't saying that it's impossible to meet women. What they're saying is that it takes far more effort to meet someone willing to give you a chance, and when you do she's far more entitled than women used to be. Either one of those things by itself is bad, but together it creates a mess - the margin of utility kicks in and many men begin to feel that the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

As I understand the situation, if you're a man then you can't register to see the contents of the site for yourself.

In situations like this, I prefer to see for myself rather than take anyone's word for it. Unfortunately, due to Tea's discriminatory registration process I'm unable to do that, so it's just a matter of picking the wild, unsubstantiated rumors that align with your particular viewpoints.

Do we really want to emulate that?

Republicans used to complain about how China operates but now they're alright with emulating it as long as they're the ones in control.

Only those two?

No, but mostly those two. According to AI, this is the increase in national debt for each president:

Clinton: 2.34% (avg 1.17% per term)
W. Bush: 105% (avg 52.5% per term)
Obama: 70% (avg 35% per term)
Trump: 40% over one term
Biden: 23% over one term

The 'national debt' has always been around and will always be around

Until we default - then it doesn't matter nearly as much. Most people are worried about the principal of the national debt (as well all should), but it's the interest that could really sting. According to AI, the US has $9.2 trillion in debt maturing this year with an average coupon rate of 2.75%. Meanwhile, current interest rates are between 4% and 4.5%, so assuming this new debt to pay off the old is really hurting due to the additional (and likely compounding) interest.

Would Harris have helped it?

She probably wouldn't have been able to help it much, but she wouldn't have signed the Big Bloated Bill which is expected to increase our national debt by another $4.1 trillion.

Before Republicans became the Trump Party, they had ideological principles. I didn't agree with a lot of them, and they certainly liked to bend the rules, but they did have principles. Trump, however, has never had principles. He's spent his whole life opportunistically lurching from one situation to another while squeezing whatever he can get for himself without a single concern about how it will affect anyone else. And his followers consistently support him despite the fact that there's rarely anything tangible in it for themselves. People are slowly waking up to the reality of the situation, but the question is whether or not it will be too late by the time most people figure it out.

Now with 10% more fascism!

Is it just me, or does movie popcorn taste far worse than it used to? I know taste buds change and become desensitized over time, so maybe I'm just getting old, but for me none of the popcorn in any of the theaters tastes anywhere as good as I remember it from the 80s and 90s. It could be a combination of not being as fresh as well as using oil rather than butter.

Apple is rarely the first to market in any emerging product/service space. The really concerning part is that their constant floundering regarding AI may be indicative that they have no idea what the fuck they're doing for an important service that differs drastically from all of their other offerings. It's the predictable result of what happens when you install the money guy as CEO of one of the worlds largest tech companies.

The first rule of Herpes Club is that you don't talk about Herpes Club!

With the ever-increasing needs of electricity thanks to AI and shitcoin, why would we want to increase the number of methods we have for generating electricity? Especially methods that are relatively simple to set up and start pumping into the grid quickly. Diversity is for pussies - we need to keep the number of methods for generating electricity as low and outdated as possible.

Yes, that's how patents work. The company that holds them gets a limited-time exclusivity on selling products with that technology. Larger companies aren't allowed to come along and violate those patents just because their products are often more desirable.

So your solution for the government limiting the methods we can use to generate electricity is to have businesses add another six to seven figures of expenditures to buy battery banks to charge during off-peak hours. And that's on top of the rising electricity prices since the federal government is refusing to approve of solar and wind farms that are relatively easy to set up and start pumping into the grid.