> being 'a man' is something that males must pursue actively.
I don’t know about this, but guys like this exhaust me. I figure skate, which is a stereotypically feminine hobby by association with its predominant participants (women). Of the few men who I do see figure skating, I rarely question their masculinity. If anything, I often notice it because I see how their unique strengths manifest in the sport through power and agility. It’s reflected in the height in their jumps or the speed in their spins. They do a thing I also happen to find interesting, the best way they can do it their way, and they don’t make a big deal about it. That’s attractive! It seems pretty masculine to me.
I can only hope that when men are alone with each other, they’re occupying each other’s space because they feel comfortable with each other, not because they’re proving anything. That’s how I choose friends, anyway!
Also, rinks are a third space. Now that I think about it, they’re arguably for men more than women. Maybe that’s a coincidence? It’s hard to say.
> Unlike with women and menarche, males must continuously prove their manhood
I don’t personally find this to be true from the womanhood side of things without further clarification. Simone de Beauvoir famously said “Women are not born. They’re made” and I still find this to be true today even though many things no longer default to being for men. I think I probably “perform” womanhood for other women more than I do for men, and as I said above, that doesn’t necessarily make them like me more or vice/versa. It’s more of a common ground thing.
From the little that I have read, being 'a man' seems to be a human universal. In that, all males are in the status game competition wether they like it or not. Exiting the status game is of course optional, but seems to come with some pretty negative side effects (health, life outcomes, self-worth, etc). Not every culture is like this, but the exceptions prove the rule. I can't find the source or the citation, but I remember that one of the few modern examples of this is some tribe in New Guinea (natch) that suffered some pretty extreme effects from colonialism and that lead to their quite unique culture, much to their continued detriment. Essentially, nearly, but not every, every male human for the last ~3000 years has lived in a culture of status games.
To add to that, the 'gang' also seems to be a human male universal. In that, a gang is the unit of status male humans interact with. The laws and 'honor' of the gang is what matters. These 'gangs/honor bands' can be quite different too, with typical results when they come into conflict with other groups like this (usually violence).
I'm not saying that we need to continue with 3000 years of this. Look at modern medicine, for example. But I am saying that if we are going to tear down this patriarchy system of 'gangs/honor bands' then we have to replace it with something viable for those participants. Right now, it seems to me that most males are desperate for a return to a more tightly held and conforming system than one that we have been making.
On the figure skating angle: My SO is a figure skater too! It's a very interesting place to observe masculinity and status. I'd venture to say it's one of the few places left in western culture that celebrates beauty and grace in the heterosexual male form. Ever since industrialization and Napoleon, the male fashion has outright rejected beauty. Mostly, I think, this is because male fashion follows that of military fashion, and as war industrialized and systematized in set uniforms and the invention of clothes sizes, male fashion then became, well, drab. You might find a bit of color and pattern in homosexual male fashion, but the heteros are just bland by and large. Grace is just wholly left on the road as well.
Figure skating seems to be the one place where grace and beauty are still alive for hetero 'men'. The Raspberry's recent Olympics outfits were decidedly a return to beauty from Chen's mall-ninja shirts and black pants. In fact, I would propose that the media's reaction to Ilia's nerves further cements my point that he must 'prove himself' to regain his 'honor'. Most of the reaction being that he 'has time' still, and not to worry. As if he is now on a quest that he must fulfill like some 5 act plot or movie.
I had no idea the age range was so low! In my mind, men or women, my stereotype of an addicted gambler is older because they’re often retired and have nothing better to do. Or at least they’re in their 40s or 50s and are doing it because they’re… bored? Idk, I don’t get gambling personally. But this is a surprise.
It's the same reason young men are drawn to crypto. Younger generations are faced with an economy that prices them out of the housing market, so they feel the need to explore alternative wealth-building pathways if they're to achieve the aspirational lifestyles they've been sold.
Realistically though, with the demographics as they are, aren't these young men just throwing dice to gamble against and take the money of other young men? Isn't this a 0 sum game?
Or is it more young men vs the establishment where the establishment wins the vast majority of the time but occasionally a young dude makes the right longshot bet?
> Or is it more young men vs the establishment where the establishment wins the vast majority of the time but occasionally a young dude makes the right longshot bet?
Seems like the latter - except that not only describes how people perceive gambling, but the entire economy considering startups, silicon valley, the current crop of tech billionaires and how they made their fortunes, etc.
So, why not gamble on crypto, NFTs, or prediction markets? Might as well go for the longshots since everything is a longshot anyway
A poor person paying $5.00 for an odds–adjusted $4.99 lottery ticket a couple dozen times in their life is likely not making her worst investment. And if she does win, it is hard to argue against the wisdom of it.
The gamblers, however, will see a future where they have paid $5.00 for a $0.03 ticket and still won the lottery a couple dozen times in a row because they deserve it so they will buy all tickets they can right now ending with 3 —because that's important.
Even when you think you have a legitimate insight so the book is mispriced for your actual odds, you should consider the risk.
Risk management is foremost.
What happens if I lose the almost certainly sure bet?
This may come as a surprise to you, but in the real world, there are not few people whose business is making you think you have an edge on your "long shot".
I mean you could be describing society as it already existed. It is what itself capitalism promotes, gambling just seems a bit more direct. When 99.9% of people apply for a job, they are directly competing against other workers in a zero sum game. Maybe a few years down the line they might open up more jobs so over long enough time spans its not zero sum, but for the person seeking a job at that very moment, it is zero sum. Our economy is zero sum in the short term, its not like people can go freeze themselves in cryostasis and wait a few decades for prospects to be better or the economy to expand, they either earn money now, or they throw that opportunity cost into the trash to never be returned.
> Maybe a few years down the line they might open up more jobs so over long enough time spans its not zero sum
Also, everybody benefits from a society that chooses qualified people for a position, and gives everybody an opportunity to get a job. But that is also something that shows over time and many processes, and it is harder to see in the moment.
Nepotism is the zero-sum version of applying for a job. Only the power to take away from others is accounted, no qualification required just raw power. Which nepo-baby gets the government contract, the board position, etc. is a zero-sum game and participants behave like what it is. Betrayal, lies, etc. is part of that game.
Um, no, it’s not. It’s notoriously hard to estimate exactly but annual consumer surplus in the US alone is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars.
So if I come up with a billion dollar invention, does the money just poof into existence? No, that money has to come from other peoples pocket and will no longer be spent on those other things if I sell and collect. Over long time spans no it isn't zero sum, but in anything time that isn't measured in many years, it most definitely is zero sum for all purposes. And since people can't just check out from the economy without losing money, the fact that the economy could be larger in 10 years doesn't make a damn bit of difference to someones right at this moment.
Monopoly isn't a zero sum game, and yet within every turn there is a maximum zero-sum amount of money available in play that can be utilized. And the fact that 5x more money might be on the board 20 turns later doesn't make a bit of difference in what I or anybody else can spend or earn during our turn right now.
Younger men are into gambling for a lot of reasons. It's just too easy to gamble when you can do it on your phone (especially when you're already on your phone). They don't think hard work will get them ahead in life (they are probably correct, given housing prices, etc.). They are bombarded with ads (during the games you can bet on!), influencers, etc. Gambling apps are gamified and give you a lot of incentives to keep coming back. Gambling is addictive enough...
It started as a joke, we used to laugh at the groups of guys who would gamble their food money doing "feast or famine"they knew it was dumb and so did we. Then the joke slowly moved over to my group of friends doing so and we knew it was dumb and treated it so. Fast forward 6 years and its so entrenched in daily life every single guy I know at least casually gambles weekly on their favorite sports and some do multiple bets per day on games they dont even watch. I bet $20-$50 on MMA which is like 5% of my income each week thats considered low.
Young man I’m going to give you a piece of life advice. You don’t throw your money away on something frivolous like that. You buy a long term, safe investment, like FartCoin.
You don’t buy FartCoin for the short term gains, you buy it for the long term. For example it’s down over the past hour, but if you look long term (past day) it’s up.
And yes of course I’m joking. If you’re spending money on these get rich quick schemes instead of dollar cost averaging into an index fund, you’re being irresponsible. That’s real advice.
$50/week at 10% compounding monthly for 10 years works out to ~$41k
Maybe that means a lot in 10 years, but... is it that impactful now? More impactful than gambling surely, and perhaps this is a bit myopic, but I feel like you wouldn't even be able to buy any new car with that amount 10 years from now. Hopefully it'll still count as an emergency fund.
We saw the value of money halve over like 4 years while everyone who had money made bank. It's tough to be hopeful that any amount saved is going to go far in the future tbh. $41k is about 1/10th of a down payment on a half-duplex, assuming you're keen to borrow the remaining $1.1m.
Definitely don't gamble though, that message I can get behind.
The median home price in the US right now is ~$400k[0], so that's a 10% down payment. While 20% is the traditional target, you can get loans with 3% down, so it seems pretty substantial to me. If you saved that $50/week starting at 18, you could be a decently confident home-buyer in your 20s. If you and a spouse each did that, there's your 20% target.
Certainly a fair argument, and in re-reading my comment I realize I forgot to qualify it with "in my city" the prices are unbelievably out of reach, but it was mainly meant to illustrate the point rather than be factually complete.
I don't think ~$400k accurately depicts useful information, but I'd rather be hopeful than cynical, so I think if your only goal is homeownership, then hopefully if one does trade something stupid like gambling for investments, there will still be options somewhere
I agree. I find men in the 18-30 range being a prime target for targeted gambling ads.
In Australia, it is also not just in app/browser ads either. Gambling promotion is very normalised and entrenched.
The major sports on news and sports shows have the odds showing who is likely to win. Some sports analysis shows (especially on pay TV) even go as far as providing overs/unders for line betting or "possibly wins" from multi-bets (bet $100 and you can win $123,000 with this combination).
Around the sports grounds - all covered in ads. The scoreboards have odds. The team and competition mobile apps all have odds. Even commentary on the radio has ads inserted regularly during a call: "Player A runs up and kicks a goal, and they are now level with 10 points on the Elon-Musk SpaceX Scoreboard. An amazing goal, it's a candidate for the Anthropic goal of the week." During quarter/half breaks, they give more options to bet on. Due to this, I prefer mostly to listen to commentary on public broadcasters as they are not allowed to contain ads at all. I find commercial radio trying to insert brand names every second sentence rather than providing expert analysis.
Similar to loot boxes for teens. It's building up habits for future gambling addictions. Mostly FPS games - that are prominently targeted at teenage boys.
Remember that a lot of men in the 18-30 range have been using lootbox mechanics in games since their teens. Or at least similar game mechanics where you are rewarded for taking a risk or loyalty with a random reward (loot tables, daily login rewards etc.).
I think a lot of gambling related material is targeted at the ages below legal gambling age with the specific purpose to get people to start gambling from legal age, however that would be hidden of course. Similarly no one becomes an alcoholic or smoking addict overnight the day they become of legal age for that substance, there is a buildup period.
Gambling addiction is way more damaging the younger you get in touch with it.
Gambling and scalping (and the combo that comes from reselling things like pokemon cards and other blind box products). They really do seem like the only options for a lot of people to live the kind of life that they've been sold as the ideal.
And as much as I hate that this is what is happening, I feel like that's what I'm going to end up being forced to try after 15+ years in working software development jobs, given how badly the companies want to replace us with LLMs. Hasn't gotten to that point yet but I'm shocked every day we're not laid off.
You say "a lot of people" but there aren't many of those. The scalpers/pokemon resellers/... making bank and posting on Instagram are, if not outright fraud, at best the 1% to 0.1% of those trying to do it
Why would a 40/50 year old gamble on the outcome of a bouncing ball when they can gamble on the outcome of a political candidate they work for or a government agency response to an event they helped orchestrate?
I'm not sure if this tracks internationally, but in the UK sports betting is enormous and young men are included in this. I've got mates from uni I distinctly remember putting chunks of their student loans on the football for example.
This is a very legitimate question: In the US, where is it not?
Public buses aren't safe, clean, or timely. Where I am, it's 2.5 hours rather than a 26 minute commute by car. The only reason you ride one is usually if you are already in the proximity of your destination, especially if that destination is downtown. For all other cases, private or ride-share makes way more sense. We're talking buses here, not shuttles, light rails, monorails, etc.
I worked at IBM Research, totally unlike the rest of IBM in terms of how it was run, and being a non-US person it was quite natural for me to take the bus to work because either that or train is how you get to work. I never met any coworkers on there, although I did get to know the cafeteria staff, cleaners, and so on, who all caught the bus, quite well.
Many in the US also use public transportation when they can but busses are generally thought of as a last resort. Unlike trains, teams, or subways their schedule is at the whim of traffic. So the general thinking is that if you are going to be stuck in traffic anyways you might as well be comfortable in your own car if you can afford one.
The problem, from a UX standpoint, is that you need a visual affordance for the behavior. That is, you must indicate that it's about to happen and give the user the opportunity to abort. Alternatively, a continuous gallery could suffice.
Adding visual clues for automatic scrolling is something I really need to rethink in order to make this feature work as intended. Thank you for the hint!
Are you considering jobs that are extraordinarily demanding? What if you're an ER Doctor? Or an Air Traffic Controller? Or someone getting started in their career in their early 20s, when most of us possess the unique combination of a lack of life experience that would prevent exploitation and ambition? For these jobs, I can easily sympathize with the idea that after a workday they're too tired to develop personally. Moreover, it's a manager's job to sap every ounce of productivity out of a person. Modern technology increasingly makes this possible. Even seemingly mundane jobs like working in a call center can be so orchestrated that using the bathroom makes them fall behind. And productivity has done nothing but rise for decades!
I also don't see how your final paragraph really refutes rather than just restates their opinion. Hobbies produce projects and business ventures all the time. Someone also has to find some way or another to socialize with the community. Volunteering is a great way to do that.
My experience mid-2024 was pretty much the same, and when I look now things do seem easier to find. The only caveat is the wider white collar market still seems pretty affected. I have a handful of friends in advertising who have been laid off and looking for more than six months.
My friends have told me that here in LA there are positions but many want you to move or commute excessively far, and there's real wage suppression going on. Also, many of the positions are "unicorn" roles, where they want someone with very niche experience. It's an employer's market for them.
As a single woman still barely holding onto this age bracket (praying to the power of anonymity right now), the fact that this exists and is so clearly targeted at men who honestly look fine for such a high price is sad. If you told me you spent this much money on your profile to meet me, I would immediately subtract whatever smart and attractive points I unconsciously added to you and add them to your insecurity score instead.
edit: In case I must spell it out scoring people like this is weird. Also his own photo is terrible. I'm rarely so negative but seriously guys please save your money.
The best photo for a dating site isn't one that makes you look good, but one that makes you look interesting. That's true now more than ever, when a very polished photo looks like AI.
A good candid is much better. It conveys something of who you actually are: what you like to wear, what you like to do, and ideally looking sincerely happy.
Women are generally less appearance-focused than men like to believe about them. Looking "fine" suffices for most women. Men are convinced that it's their appearance scaring off women, but in fact it's their personalities -- and an over-reliance on appearance is a strong indicator of an unpleasant or boring personality.
(I give similar advice to women, who are more likely to focus on their own appearance. And that's unfortunately expected of them. But at least for me, a good candid is better than a studio shot. Since the custom is usually for men to open the conversation, it helps a lot to give me an opportunity to lead with something more insightful than "Gosh you're pretty.")
> You can do it all 100% free per the guide which describes the process end-to-end
D:
Nooo! Please read.
Your before and afters are good. It's clear you have good qualities, but you can present and pitch them better. The stringent objective approach to your value-add is doing you a disservice. You allude to the fact that it's an art that takes time to get right yourself already.
It's like unit tests vs integration tests. It's easy to think you're testing one thing when you're actually testing another.
You present this as the idea that you understand what objectively makes a portrait flattering (true/verifiable), and the objective evaluation by women using a scoring rubric lends an air of ostensible credibility that suggests the kind of profiling you might see in an integration test named "Good Dating Profile Photo". I think what you have instead is unit tests for acceptability, inoffensiveness, and presentability plus your uniquely gathered insight into their personality. Fluoride makes toothpaste work, not the fact that 4 out of 5 dentists agree. Your learned insight is the fluoride. I guess maybe the men respond to the "4 out of 5" statement already, but it's so easily refutable.
Using your photo as an example, I can see your face clearly now, but I also can't see where you are, your full profile, why you might be there, who you're with, or what you're doing. You also don't seem quite at ease. It's completely sterile. I wouldn't blink if I saw this on your LinkedIn or GitHub profile. On there all I'm trying to verify is that it's you! But on a dating profile I'm looking for a sense of you. I want to see your best qualities, which aren't always visually straightforward in men, presented in a flattering light. You help people find that! By the way, your other photo did have those qualities. I just couldn't see you!
> If you told me you spent this much money on your profile to meet me, I would immediately subtract whatever smart and attractive points I unconsciously added to you and add them to your insecurity score instead.
Yeah for two thousand dollars a person could go on a trip and bring back an interesting story, or get therapy, or a puppy. Could probably do all three, actually.
It doesn't matter if you think it's weird; it works. I did the same process manually many years ago, with Photofeeler and statistics research, and it made an obvious difference. I am now married. Men don't really care if something is considered weird by random female commenters if it is getting them frequently laid and into romances. As they say, don't ask a fish how to fish.
You responded to somebody’s benign personal opinion by saying nobody cares because she’s a “female” (lol), compared women to fish, and wrote that you’re married (lmao).
If “expert on women that can’t say ‘woman’” isn’t a bit it looks like somebody doing some Rules of Acquisition-posting from the Gamma Quadrant
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