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Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023

Sounds like Swedish teens were having a lot of sex when you were that age. How common was it? What birth control methods were used? How were they obtained? Did Sweden ever have significantly high teen pregnancy rates? I don't understand why people find it necessary for teens, particularly male teens, to be having sex. Teen years are meant for studying to get into a good college. Here in the USA conservatives complained for decades about pre-marital sex, teen pregnancy, etc, etc, and now all of a sudden they've done this 90 degree turnaround and the lack of young unmarried people (particularly men) NOT having sex is somehow a problem. I don't get it. They should be celebrating the decline in teen pregnancies and pre-marital sex.

Incels chronically live online. They don't get out much and when they do they don't open their eyes to the couples around them. Assortative mating is the rule. There is no pandemic of most women hanging off the arms of the rare, high value Alpha Chad.

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Two comments: One to propose a theory of Becky, and one follow-up to propose a small research project that the bloggers might want to pursue.

In regard to Becky, let us also consider the generic low-status male. Incels don't seem to have a name for him, so I choose "Virgo". In the US, back around 1960, when one was in the final stage of one's education (secondary education for most people), one would start lining up who one might marry. So the Beckies and Virgos pair off, graduate, marry, etc.

But one reason this was so stable was the structure of the economy. Back in those days, Becky would work as a waitress in a diner and Virgo would work at a petrol station. The difference was that work at the petrol station involved some "heavy lifting" as it was called; Becky really couldn't do that sort of work well, despite that the economy needed it. The result is that Virgo got paid considerably better than Becky, despite that his "skills" weren't superior. But it also means that Becky had an economic need to pair with a Virgo, which meant that she had an important task to pursue.

Looking at today, work is much more "feminist"; brute strength, the one real advantage of males, has quite low economic value. Becky now works at Starbucks, but so does Virgo; Virgo doesn't have a big economic prize to reward Becky for marrying him. So Virgo has no way of attracting women, and Becky doesn't have an important task as she's marking time in class to finish secondary education. Both of them feel bereft of purpose.

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>The Beckies are as useless as the incels, and there’s not even a Jordan Peterson to tell them how to be less useless

Maybe you are that Jordan Peterson.

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Much to like here. I may enter the conversation more fully, though this is not a peer group for me (I would be Guttentag peer group). I am about to turn 70, and have five sons, three adopted. Four are married, the youngest is 27 and still in the world of dating apps and misery. So some random thoughts:

Razib Khan interviewed Dr. Tania Reynolds of UNew Mexico about the evolutionary bases for intrasexual competition that you might find intriguing.

Dating apps sprang up because the previous system of having nowhere to go but bars to meet people was equally toxic. Before that you met potential mates at school - a mating hothouse where too many of the same age were unrealistically crammed together - or church or work, which at least were more age balanced but had their own land mines.

I had a radically different adolescent experience of expectations (but see below). I was in AP classes and went to an elite East Coast college. So lots of Jewish friends and even secular Jewish GF's, not that different than my Swedish-English heritage. There was no expectation of "normalcy" and being like the others. Remember that your view is colored by your Swedish expectation of believing that "Our Swedish ways are clearly superior to everyone else's, but we don't believe in anyone setting up any personal superiority. Ewww." For us, excellence, dominance, and standing out were the goal, male and female. The girls I went with eventually married late or not at all, had terminal degrees, or perhaps had one child. I now think I got misty over my wife because early in our relationship she said she thought 3-4 children might be ideal even though she was already applying to graduate school, which was an insane rarity at my college. Because of reunions I have been in touch with many classmates, and the resentful emotions, from females much more than males, resurface. I am still pondering what this means.

I thank you for that Swedish-normal description of the expectations of girls in your era. I grew up in a mill city with plenty of elite aspirants, but I will bet that your experience was the same as many girls in my town. We forget, don't we, the people from our hometowns who were not our own friends?

I think your insight into incels is excellent, and the contrapuntal relationship to feminism solid thinking. I don't think you naturally think about the rest of the spectra, male and female, however. What was it like for the off-girls in your era and now, and the major boy groups then and now? You hit some of these with compassion and understanding, but others seem not to be mentioned.

Because it is difficult to show humor and emotional nuance on dating apps, they end up screening out what men have always used to show their intelligence and generosity, two qualities of enormous importance to women. Humor falls flat so easily, and anything emotional comes across as whiny/simp. The screens women use toss out exactly the men they are looking for. So appearance and money take on exaggerated importance. (Men do something mirroring to women on dating apps, don't get me wrong.)

Last fall I did a whole series on how dating apps were affecting the whole sexual culture, and perhaps even returning us to tolerance of polygamy. There were lots of posts, so you might pick and choose. But I think it might be fun, even if it is a deep rabbit hole. https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2022/10/dating-apps-and-new-polygamies.html

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One factor that I think hasn't been explored is the increasing search costs to finding potential partners:

- an aging population reduces the density of potential mates in an area; also means fewer people in prime working demographics per person requiring care

- increasing costs of living, more hours spent meeting costs of living, more hours of work required to "go out", reduction in third spaces where people can meet face-to-face

- time spent searching for a partner is time not spent trying to become more attractive (e.g. focusing on career)

It's possible that digital spaces can provide a pseudo third space (albeit less psychologically nutritious) and can be provided more cheaply to patrons than today's bars, festivals and restaurants. It's just that search tools today (tinder? bumble? hinge?) skew towards physical attractiveness and ELO style rankings of their populations.

P.S. If you ever get around to writing that post that celebrates betas I hope it also celebrates the beckys of the world.

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As someone who still adheres to the traditional gender roles and conservative marriage and family ideals, I can only speak for what I am seeing with my son who is in his mid 20s. He is a college graduate with 2 Master's degrees, but he has had two problems. 1. Social media means no one socializes in person. It is difficult to make a choice about someone based solely on their looks. Do you remember being that teen surrounded by girls who maybe weren't the cutest at first, but their personality made them more beautiful? In person interaction is so important. 2. The girls that do surround him are so far left and so immature socially, they aren't likeable. These girls are constantly belittling and preaching what is and isn't acceptable, it makes for an uncomfortable relationship. Social media taught them this behavior. As for what I personally believe, I think we've allowed society to tell these young girls that hundreds or thousands of years of being a wife, a mom, a homemaker wasn't enough. I believe most (not all) are hardwired genetically to be fulfilled by these roles, so now that we've shamed it out of existence, the lower achievers don't feel good about being okay with that role and claiming it.

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Thanks for distilling the different attitudes and conditions faced by the groups past and present. I thought you were right on point regarding the milieux. I think much of what we are ignoring is the media interface. Media is sometimes a less-than-perfect reflection and driver of where we are and what we strive for. Look at popular shows, movies, websites annd even video games and you will see a similarly to the population. If media portrays more families with lots of happy children, you will see young people incorporating that model into their expectations for the future, if they see “Sex in the City” they might be too facile to recognize the heartache and futility of that exciting life but instead think that’s just the way adult women live their lives. The current generation of popular movies, shows and themes bear no reality to real life, show characters that are gender non conforming and homosexual, super heros and fantasy/science fiction etc. Without role models, and raised in single parent homes, a teen must ask “what can I expect” as a grown up man or woman or etc?

As they attempt to mirror the media or their parent(s), the outcome is what you see now. Without close in-person relationships they don’t know that adult women can have intense relationships with other women without that being a romantic relationship, many a best friend has pulled women out of their distress by just letting them vent, commiserating with them, supporting them. Now often enough that closeness might be mistaken as a romantic bond. After all they have plenty of education and examples telling them that lesbianism is a valid life choice and should be celebrated.

To me this is an irresponsible media. In search of the almighty dollar, they are sacrificing a generation or more of young people. Media and social media do not inevitably win, there’s a lot to be said about learning the “hard way”. Eventually young people realize this isn’t working and then recalibrate. For some it will be too late. They may have wasted their youth chasing unhealthy or unrealistic goals. Plenty of middle aged men and women find love eventually, but as for wasting their youth and childbearing years, it’s too bad.

If you look hard, you can find a subset of popular niche media that reflects healthy relationships and realistic lifestyles. Too bad it’s so hard to find.

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Well done. I too am not convinced Haidt has it right. I think social media and smart phones are contributory but secondary. I see the primary cause of increased female depression being the feminist movement that has altered gender relationships.

And now that same source has caused such gender and sexual confusion, the kids cannot find their way to relationship fulfillment. But females tend to participate in, and support, the very set of progressive ideas that the feminists push.

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Great post. I always smile at the fact that what you post vs. what Anders posts is basically gender stereotypes come to life: you are more likely to write about interpersonal relationships, while Anders writes more about things and the "big picture": empathizing vs. systemizing.

I do wonder though, when you say that you were a "freak" in school, what does that mean? Like you were a fan of metal or other edgy music?

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Fascinating read!

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I agree with the importance of the factors listed here and I'm pleased to see someone who agrees with Haidt responding in a way that isn't just agreeing that smartphones are the devil. The situation is more complex than any handful of factors that we can easily identify and may better be described with reference to homeostatic collapse. As I commented on Haidt's substack:

"When we look at social media or phone usage as a cause for teenagers mental health falling apart, we're looking at only the most recent elements in a long sequence. We appear to have passed a collapse point for mental health. The explosion of the smartphone (and its social media capacities for teens) in 2012 was present at this inflection point, but not the sole cause. What we are seeing is a final failure of an exhausted and overwhelmed homeostatic process which has succumbed to various injuries over the last hundred years.

Imagine a wearable health device measuring the core body temperature of a man lost in a snowstorm. When it is recovered from his frozen body days later, his would-be rescuers can compare the data with his likely path through the wilderness. Perhaps it took him 12 hours to die. Over the course of those 12 hours, perhaps he came near without realizing it to shelter that would have saved him, or doubled back on his tracks, or moved away from safety. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we could determine at which hours of his final 12 he made mistakes that spelled his doom. And yet the measurements of his core body temperature will show only small fluctuations and a slight decline right up until the final precipitous plunge down into hypothermia and death. That's the collapse point. We can look at that final plunge, that final hour in which he laid down, stopped moving, and went to sleep for the last time. That's when there was a big change in temperature. So obviously that must be the important hour, right?

In a manner of speaking, yes, of course, that final hour is the important one. But for understanding the process that led to his demise, the final twelve are just as salient. His metabolism faithfully maintained homeostasis for those long grueling hours when he was already lost beyond the point of no return. Perhaps at any point therein he could yet still have been saved. But if we focus merely on his last mistakes, his few delirious actions in his last hour of life, we will learn very little about what it means to be lost in the wilderness. So too with blaming Instagram. Perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps it was merely there when things finally unraveled. For certain, it is not the first gross outrage against good mental health that the human race has experienced the last century or two.

[…] They say that growing old makes conservatives of us all. I'm not sure that holds universally, but in the cases where it does, the newly minted conservatives always make the same mistake. Whatever innovations that have gone before that they themselves accepted uncritically in their youth are wise and good examples of progress and it is only the new fangled innovations that are the real problem."

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I find the ideas interesting but am not sure if everything is quite correct. As somebody who is not quite high value, but very ambitious, this is my experience:

The women who I would deem in my league (ambitious but also not quite high status) consider it settling to be with someone like me in their early 20s, they prefer to be single and to have fun with high status men, that naturally then reduces their values in my eyes, when they finally decide I am worthy of them. A lot of these women end up traumatized due to falling in love and being used emotionally and physically by assholes. This makes relationships with them very challenging because the trauma just never goes away. On my own part, I can look further down for a woman who is just a woman, but I find lack of ambition really unattractive and don't know how I could relate to somebody like that.

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"The custom of forming high-investing, stable romantic couples is increasingly being lost. Especially among liberal people."

I'm sorry but this is just flatly wrong. No one is forming more stable marriages and families than high-status liberals.

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> Haidt and his team reason that it is better to get all possible criticism before the book is launched than after. That is clever, I think. Everybody should do like that.

Lorenzo Warby is doing this with his own book on Hellen Dale's substack, Not On Your Team, But Always Fair:

https://helendale.substack.com/p/worshipping-the-future

I can verify that he takes criticism seriously and well!

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So, get real, find someone else real, stay real, be happy? Plausible! I like it.

Do you think that there is less aversion to reporting depression, or unhappiness now compared to two decades ago? Have the norms changed? Have people become more aware of depression and become more able to recognize it in themselves and others?

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