I think this is true and I don’t really understand the downvotes. Before the Sexual Revolution it was simple, not necessasarily satisfying but the rules were easy to grasp.
The early stages of the Sexual Revolution, say 1940-1970 were simple too. Pretty much everybody understood that the kind of guy who is good at sports and dancing and similar things will get the girls, and they would pretty much just go to the dances on the weekends, where Tommy Dorsey type of music was played in the 1940′s or the newer rock and roll in the 1960′s, and these dances still had traces of the old ballroom etiquette where girls would be sitting on one side and the boys on the other and they would approach a sitting girl and politely ask them for a dance. And things would develop on their own from there. Although the SR meant people stopped marrying as virgins (excluding the religious crazy at least) the goal was still to get married after having a few relationships and women were pretty open about basically testing men for marriage or LTR and attitudes were monogamous so there was this idea that you knew those five boys are far better than you but still as the five prettiest girls at the dance grabbed a firm hold on them the other girls had to realize that they lost that game and they have to settle for you.
And the whole thing was made even simpler and easier by people pretty much being carbon copies of each other. Everybody wore the same clothes and hairstyles and due to having similar sportly hobbies most boys would have similar musculature, fat people were rare because eating outside formal mealtimes was less common and so on. Remember in the movie Easy Riders how guys having somewhat long hair is a scandal in a small town, because they are so used to looking like each other. Today people look very individual, and this means no look is really scandalous but on the other this also increased competition in looks.
At any rate this started to break down in the eighties. I was born in 1978 so I have not seen the first phases of the breakdown, but in 1994 already what my parents taught broke down. There was no more pair dancing, just people forming circles on the dancefloor or dancing alone. But I guess it is was still recognizable what you do there, go to a girl, shake together then invite for a drink.
From about 2005 on things really started to make no sense. I saw guys just go in the dancefloor and plain simply grind their crotch on the backside of girls. Are they their GFs? No it turned out for the younger folks it became normal to do it with strangers. But the fun part is this, risk increased. This behavior could get an attractive guy a zero-effort bang and get an unattractive guy arrested for harassment. Also, as I mentioned above, there were no carbon-copy looks anymore so people competed highly in looks.
All in all, it seems the whole thing became more and more incomprehensible. It seems it is highly optimized now for the best. Guys who figure out how to look really good, or read social cues really easily can have it extremely easy now, while the rest who think there should be rules you can learn with your brain have it increasingly difficult.
Things got better for me when I left the world of dancefloors and got into internet dating, in an instinctively anti-Tinder way, as in, looking for women with no or grainy photos and really intelligent texts on their profiles It did not mean they are ugly, it mean they did not want to be judged after their looks. They make good partners. I think with Tinder internet dating is becoming something similar to the dancefloor, highly optimized for a few and not working for most. It is important to stick to less looks focused types of internet dating sites and I think filtering for no picture is still a good idea. Disclaimer: it helped that I did not live in an area with a lot of obesity, or else the lack of a picture may easily mean gravity-distorting mass.
Guys who figure out how to look really good, or read social cues really easily can have it extremely easy now, while the rest who think there should be rules you can learn with your brain have it increasingly difficult.
Why? Just because the rules are very different than what they used to be (i.e. there is far less jumping through hoops, and a lot more direct, often intuitive/implied negotiation) doesn’t mean that such rules don’t exist or can’t be learned conciously. Even “looking real good” is very much a craft that can be improved upon.
I think I have not expressed myself clearly. I need to go one meta deeper.
The limiting factor is courage or confidence. When rules are more direct, you must muster more courage to follow them because there is also a higher risk (of being accused of harassment or public embarrassment). Same with looks, there are less conspicious kinds of good looks, like the past, where you would put on a well tailored suit, and more conspicuous kinds of good looks, like a todays dance club where it is spiky hair and sleeveless shirts showing gym-made arms. Where it is more conspicuous kinds of good looks required, it is a test of courage or confidence, because if you don’t have so much, you will feel that you are noticed too much or stand out too much or look like a clown, basically get too “self-conscious” about it.
So the central issue is that today the rules test courage, confidence or testosterone harder, because you need more conspicous looks that attract too many gazes and you may feel like you are being ridiculous, or braver negotiation that could result in louder embarrassment.
My impression has been a well-tailored suit is more in right now than a sleeveless shirt. My friends and I were making fun of how many over-dressed guys there were at a show a few weeks ago; way too many dress pants and blazers for a concert.
Where it is more conspicuous kinds of good looks required, it is a test of courage or confidence, because if you don’t have so much, you will feel that you are noticed too much or stand out too much or look like a clown, basically get too “self-conscious” about it.
I guess that the being “self-conscious” has a bigger effect than the actual looks.
I think so too. I should also say I don’t like this term very much, it is unaccurate, so I like that you used quotes. Self-consciousness is supposed to mean a good thing, like knowing what you are doing and why. But a while ago in the English language this term gained a different, and more negative meaning, e.g. Daniel Radcliffe: “I used to be self conscious about my height, but then I thought, fuck that, I’m Harry Potter.” What would be a better term to express that feeling? It is something close to being inhibited and artificial because your attention is focused on yourself and not on the situation. Recommendations from other languages are welcome, we can Anglify them by translating them to Latin then using that root :)
I think this is true and I don’t really understand the downvotes. Before the Sexual Revolution it was simple, not necessasarily satisfying but the rules were easy to grasp.
The early stages of the Sexual Revolution, say 1940-1970 were simple too. Pretty much everybody understood that the kind of guy who is good at sports and dancing and similar things will get the girls, and they would pretty much just go to the dances on the weekends, where Tommy Dorsey type of music was played in the 1940′s or the newer rock and roll in the 1960′s, and these dances still had traces of the old ballroom etiquette where girls would be sitting on one side and the boys on the other and they would approach a sitting girl and politely ask them for a dance. And things would develop on their own from there. Although the SR meant people stopped marrying as virgins (excluding the religious crazy at least) the goal was still to get married after having a few relationships and women were pretty open about basically testing men for marriage or LTR and attitudes were monogamous so there was this idea that you knew those five boys are far better than you but still as the five prettiest girls at the dance grabbed a firm hold on them the other girls had to realize that they lost that game and they have to settle for you.
And the whole thing was made even simpler and easier by people pretty much being carbon copies of each other. Everybody wore the same clothes and hairstyles and due to having similar sportly hobbies most boys would have similar musculature, fat people were rare because eating outside formal mealtimes was less common and so on. Remember in the movie Easy Riders how guys having somewhat long hair is a scandal in a small town, because they are so used to looking like each other. Today people look very individual, and this means no look is really scandalous but on the other this also increased competition in looks.
At any rate this started to break down in the eighties. I was born in 1978 so I have not seen the first phases of the breakdown, but in 1994 already what my parents taught broke down. There was no more pair dancing, just people forming circles on the dancefloor or dancing alone. But I guess it is was still recognizable what you do there, go to a girl, shake together then invite for a drink.
From about 2005 on things really started to make no sense. I saw guys just go in the dancefloor and plain simply grind their crotch on the backside of girls. Are they their GFs? No it turned out for the younger folks it became normal to do it with strangers. But the fun part is this, risk increased. This behavior could get an attractive guy a zero-effort bang and get an unattractive guy arrested for harassment. Also, as I mentioned above, there were no carbon-copy looks anymore so people competed highly in looks.
All in all, it seems the whole thing became more and more incomprehensible. It seems it is highly optimized now for the best. Guys who figure out how to look really good, or read social cues really easily can have it extremely easy now, while the rest who think there should be rules you can learn with your brain have it increasingly difficult.
Things got better for me when I left the world of dancefloors and got into internet dating, in an instinctively anti-Tinder way, as in, looking for women with no or grainy photos and really intelligent texts on their profiles It did not mean they are ugly, it mean they did not want to be judged after their looks. They make good partners. I think with Tinder internet dating is becoming something similar to the dancefloor, highly optimized for a few and not working for most. It is important to stick to less looks focused types of internet dating sites and I think filtering for no picture is still a good idea. Disclaimer: it helped that I did not live in an area with a lot of obesity, or else the lack of a picture may easily mean gravity-distorting mass.
I downvoted to say “less like this.” advancedatheist has brought this topic up far too many times.
Why? Just because the rules are very different than what they used to be (i.e. there is far less jumping through hoops, and a lot more direct, often intuitive/implied negotiation) doesn’t mean that such rules don’t exist or can’t be learned conciously. Even “looking real good” is very much a craft that can be improved upon.
I think I have not expressed myself clearly. I need to go one meta deeper.
The limiting factor is courage or confidence. When rules are more direct, you must muster more courage to follow them because there is also a higher risk (of being accused of harassment or public embarrassment). Same with looks, there are less conspicious kinds of good looks, like the past, where you would put on a well tailored suit, and more conspicuous kinds of good looks, like a todays dance club where it is spiky hair and sleeveless shirts showing gym-made arms. Where it is more conspicuous kinds of good looks required, it is a test of courage or confidence, because if you don’t have so much, you will feel that you are noticed too much or stand out too much or look like a clown, basically get too “self-conscious” about it.
So the central issue is that today the rules test courage, confidence or testosterone harder, because you need more conspicous looks that attract too many gazes and you may feel like you are being ridiculous, or braver negotiation that could result in louder embarrassment.
My impression has been a well-tailored suit is more in right now than a sleeveless shirt. My friends and I were making fun of how many over-dressed guys there were at a show a few weeks ago; way too many dress pants and blazers for a concert.
I guess that the being “self-conscious” has a bigger effect than the actual looks.
I think so too. I should also say I don’t like this term very much, it is unaccurate, so I like that you used quotes. Self-consciousness is supposed to mean a good thing, like knowing what you are doing and why. But a while ago in the English language this term gained a different, and more negative meaning, e.g. Daniel Radcliffe: “I used to be self conscious about my height, but then I thought, fuck that, I’m Harry Potter.” What would be a better term to express that feeling? It is something close to being inhibited and artificial because your attention is focused on yourself and not on the situation. Recommendations from other languages are welcome, we can Anglify them by translating them to Latin then using that root :)