By David Futrelle
If you were to ask one Reddit’s self-described “involuntary celibates” just why they were celibate, they would probably give you an answer something like this: Because I’m ugly and short and a socially awkward loser, and in today’s terrible world “Chads” get all the chicks — though back in the good old days I would have been assigned a wife through some sort of arranged marriage or something and thus I wouldn’t be alone and mad and, oh, by the way, women are a bunch of worthless whores.
Apparently these views are held pretty widely on Reddit. In a new paper, Menelaos Apostolou, an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Cyprus’ University of Nicosia, looked at a Reddit mega-thread devoted to the question: “Guys, why are you single?”
With help from several other researchers, Apostolou sorted and categorized the 13,429 comments that attempted to directly answer the question, discovering that dateless Reddit dudes were most likely to conclude that they were dateless because they were ugly and/or short and/or socially awkward losers. Typical comments included:
Cause I am ugly as fuck and have been cursed with awful genetics.
Being under 6′0″ means I am invincible to women.
Because I have massive self-esteem issues, I think I’m worthless, and I don’t do social things because I don’t want to inflict my stupid, worthless presence on other people.
If I remotely have a crush on you I’m probably gonna be really fucking awkward.
Sounds a bit like the Braincels subreddit, minus the extreme misogyny.
It’s not clear how many respondents, if any, commented on “Chad’s” relative dating success, but Apostolou felt the need to inject it into the discussion, not as an incel obsession but as a simple statement of fact, declaring that “men who are … good looking may choose not to commit to a long-term relationship, but choose instead to have many different casual relationships.” (Guess what, dude? Men who are not conventionally attractive can do that too.)
Apostolou also brings up the arranged marriage issue, noting that men who are bad at flirting suffer in the contemporary world, in which people seek out partners themselves. “We can ask whether in a pre-industrial context, where marriages were arranged and/or male-male competition was strong, these same men would be single,” Apostolou writes,
The answer is most probably no. Flirting skills were irrelevant because men did not have to flirt with women: Wives were either provided by parents or obtained through force.
No wonder so many guys today are bad at flirting, Apostolou suggests: Evolution hasn’t prepared them for it!
[I]n an ancestral pre-industrial context, the selection pressures on flirting skills would be weak, resulting in many of our ancestors having poor capacity for flirting. This capacity has passed to contemporary generations who live in post-industrial societies.
And they. Apostolou suggests, are kind of screwed.
Apostolou isn’t just reporting what Reddit dudes think are the reasons they can’t get dates. He’s basically accepting their explanations as fact, and adding some convenient “evo psych” rationales to buttress their arguments. He’s taking the skewed perceptions of Reddit’s single men and treating them like scientific insights.
He is certainly aware that a Reddit thread is not a scientific or demographically representative survey, and that there is no proof that any of the answers given are actually true. He mentions both of these issues in his paper. But in the end he concludes that most of the respondents were probably telling the truth and that’s good enough for him. “We think … that most people have an accurate understanding of what drives them to be single,” he writes, “so this is not a major bias.”
Really? Because after spending nearly ten years reading (if not always posting on) Reddit, with much of my attention in recent years devoted to incels and MGTOWs and other dudes who can’t find dates (or who claim that they don’t want to), I would have to say that I am a little bit less convinced that Reddit dudes “have an accurate understanding of what drives them to be single.”
Well, that was a bit of deliberate understatement. I’m convinced that a pretty hefty chunk of Reddit’s single men have no fucking clue why they’re single. Incels are convinced that they are too ugly to date women, who only want to date the absolute handsomest of men. Neither of these things are true. When incels post pictures of themselves online to “prove” to the world what horrible ugly freaks they are, most of them look just fine. And women date less-than-perfect-looking guys all the time.
Hell, some of the most romantically successful guys I’ve known have included a pudgy goofball with a weird baby face, a guy with a cleft palate, and a short grouchy schlub who rarely shaved. A former roommate basically lived the life of an incel until his mid-twenties when he suddenly found himself dating a series of women most people would have assumed were out of his league. (And no, he didn’t learn “game”; this was more than a decade before any of that crap.) A friend of one of my close relatives is happily married to a lovely woman even though his face was burnt off by acid when he was four.
Some of these guys succeeded because they’re smart and funny and confident and genuinely decent people; the others, well, I’ve never been able to figure out what women see in them. But they share one thing in common: Seeing only their pictures, Incels would classify them all as ugly “subhumans” destined to spend their lives alone. And they would be wronger than wrong.
Apostolou’s study was posted online only a few days ago by the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science (note to self: do not subscribe to Evolutionary Psychological Science), and it’s already being discussed in the subreddits populated by Reddit’s angriest single men — where it’s seen as belated scientific proof for the incel worldview.
Not that they’ve given Apostolou much credit for coming to the same conclusions they came to long ago. While some took issue with the way the study was being framed — in a way that focused on the social awkwardness issue and downplayed the issue of looks (the incel obsession) — others complained that it was little more than a restatement of what to them seemed obvious.
Pointing to Apostolou’s discussion of arranged marriages, one Braincels commenter sneered: “I have been saying this for YEARS you hack.”
“Another groundbreaking study from the academic journal of No Shit, Sherlock” wrote a commenter in r/ForeverAlone.
If your “scientific” study simply reiterates the accepted, er, “wisdom” of some of the internet’s most hateful and deluded men, you might want to think twice about publishing it. Hell, you should probably reconsider your entire career.
So I went to take a look at this Evolutionary Psychological Science Journal, to see what else they get up to. It’s Springer, which is where I’ve been published – they aren’t great but they’re big and they’re generally decent. Basic science editing and publication with a commercial attitude. You can’t pay your way into getting published, but editing is pretty straightforward. (I know this ’cause I’ve edited for them in the past.)
But this journal, you guys, holy noodle. There are some free-to-read publications from the recent issue and oh wow. Here are some of the titles you can go read, right now:
Younger Escorts Advertise Higher Charges Online than Older Escorts for Sexual Services Cross-Culturally
Is Kevin MacDonald’s Theory of Judaism “Plausible”? A Response to Dutton (2018)
How Stifling Debate Around Race, Genes and IQ Can Do Harm
I didn’t cherry pick these, these are just the three at the top of the list. Holy noodle, you guyse, the fuckin’ nazis are invading science, and they invented this shitty non-discipline to do it.
Evolutionary psychology? This guy should go back and study history. “Pre-industrial” men and women flirted, dated and married like crazy. In fact, they did it kind of like they do today, minus the internet.
Arranged marriages and “force” were hardly the only solutions to the single life. But then, he’s an evolutionary psychologist, so he doesn’t know much already. He sure doesn’t understand valid scientific testing practices.
@jsrtheta: Yuuuup.
Even if your bride-to-be was granted to you by your parents and hers, YOU still had to win them over and prove that you were good enough.
And even then that was only for upper class families who were looking to climb the social ladder, and not for lower class people who had to spend most of their time working for said upper class families. They just were flirting and carousing and doing everything just the same as we might do now, sans tech.
It’s not that “Times have changed and that’s bad”, it’s that “I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong and it’s so much easier to stew in that bitterness than it is to actually get up and continue to attempt it.”
I think its easier for non conventionally attractive men than non-conventionally attractive women. They are more likely to be seen as having other qualities that make up for it.
Once again, I am convinced that evo psych types have built themselves the ultimate echo chamber, and they will NEVER LEAVE.
I think non conventionally attractive men have it easier because they are more likely to be seen as having other qualities that make up for it.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes
But those are just the open-access articles; surely the paywalled ones would be-
What Caused over a Century of Decline in General Intelligence? Testing Predictions from the Genetic Selection and Neurotoxin Hypotheses
(Presumably these toxins also turn the friggin’ frogs gay.)
The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”: the Rejection of Collective Religiosity Centred Around the Worship of Moral Gods Is Associated with High Mutational Load
(Y’see atheists, y’all straight-up twisted)
Y’know, anybody who thinks there was no flirting in the pre-industrial age needs to read more Elizabethan poetry. John Donne probably could’ve talked me out of my panties:
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and shew
The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.
Scildfreja has already addressed the dodgy nature of the journal – and a big boo hiss to Springer for associating itself with such trash…
So I’ll just roll about laughing at the notion that people didn’t flirt Back In The Day. Please, dude, have you not looked at art from different periods and cultures? How about poetry? Novels and stories?
BIG TIME FLIRTY STUFF
And a lot of it was not even connected to marriage, or prospective marriage. People did it for fun, and still do.
What’s the “selection pressure” for fun, I wonder?
(I don’t, really).
@Ariblester
What the fuck is the second one saying? Atheists typically have more mutations?
I mean, the title is rather self-explanatory, I just didn’t think anyone would be awarded grant money to produce that nonsense.
Maybe someone should write an instruction manual? One that doesn’t assume access to middle class resources.
Yeah arranged marriage was basically only done for political gain/inbreeding BY ROYALTY. I know that if your only source of knowledge about history is period dramas it might seem like everyone “back then” spent their days lounging in pretty dresses or looking dashing on horseback but like. Nobility, let alone royalty, has always been a minority and an outlier. Peasants, merchants, soldiers and other working class people had plenty of freedom to marry and frankly if the village smith was a fucking creep he would remain single while all the busty milkmaid Stacys flocked to men who weren’t repulsive.
Does he even bother to show evidence that in the good old days, women didn’t want men who were attractive and charming and were all just perfectly happily to accept any man who came a courtin’?
If he hasn’t studied the history of love and marriage, hasn’t he at least read books and plays from pre-industrial cultures? I mean, he must at least have passing familiarity with the most famous of Shakespeare’s plays, right? Because old fictional love stories are not fundamentally different from contemporary fictional love stories. People have always flirted. People have always had unrequited crushes. People don’t change all that much.
He’s also apparently taking it for granted that flirting and other social skills are innate and fixed and not you know, skills? Skills that one can learn? Sure, flirting comes easier to some than others. I’m not great at flirting myself. But you can learn the basics if you want.
Men need to stop looking for excuses for why it’s unfair that they should have to attract dates and/or sex and just make an effort to be more attractive (looks-wise, personality-wise, or both). Because whining about how women should be falling all over you but aren’t is about the least attractive thing ever.
@Victorious Parasol
they need to read pushkin too ?
and Jane Austin
I can’t stop laughing.
My nerf claws don’t work on him! He… he must be under 6’0″!
(Frantic hiss of frustration)
(sound of retreating footsteps)
I have questions born of those sample comments:
I too have awful genetics. Among other things I inherited a host of allergies, perhaps the worst of which is to grass. How can I possibly date a hu-man feeeeeeemale if we can’t do that thing that happens in every romantic movie where the lovers roll around in the grass and make googly eyes at one another? I mean, I could do that, but I’d be red and swollen from head to toe by the end of the date, and probably covered in ticks too. Do women find oozing rashes, hives, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever sexy?
I am over 6 feet tall. Do I need to worry about squadrons of woman-piloted starfighters attacking my exhaust ports?
I too have self-esteem issues, and I think it’s quite likely I’m a terrible girl inside… and you hate my intuition, as I hate my wretched pride. So go on and throw me to the wolves, my murderous angels. Just lead me to the naked and vicious woods, and run. Can anyone name the song* I, erm, borrowed most of this paragraph from?
I had a crush on a good friend from fourth grade through twelfth, and it was never awkward until I finally told her and asked her out our senior year. She turned me down. I had a short sad. I got over it. Life went on. We’re still friends in that vague sort of way that people who’ve lived their own, totally separate lives for a decade and half. Does that make me a cuck, an alpha, or a wicked child of the deshret?
Also, on the concept of arranged marriages (as envisioned by incel redditors):
Do they really want their mommies and daddies to choose their partners? Have they thought this through? I know I certainly wouldn’t want anything to do with someone my shallow, image-obsessed super-conservative parents chose for me.
*The answer, in rot13: Jbyirf ol Rtb Yvxrarff
@Vucodlak
Of course. Incels are nothing if not rational and think only the best thoughts, the most well-thought-out thoughts. These thoughts do not hold up in the real world, but that is the fault of the real world.
That word…it does not mean what you think it means.
And that being said, maybe being vulnerable, and losing your toxic masculinity syndrome, would make you a bigger success with women.
Also, I note that the author of this piece of…dubious scientific value…is a Greek Cypriot. No wonder he hit on the whole arranged-marriage and allegedly-traditional-values “solution”. They still do that over there, although probably not as much as they used to.
And with no happier results, I’d imagine.
Once upon a time, way back in human prehistory, environments changed slowly over time. Species adapted to the changes. Evolution, we called it, and it was a good thing.
Fast forward to modern times. Social and cultural changes began to happen at a quicker pace. Gender roles transformed. Everything went all feminazi. Certain men were having trouble adapting.
Obviously, the only solution was to roll back the world to accommodate them.
Now that evolution was mainly cultural, it was bad and had to be stopped. Still, scholars insisted that evolution (the good kind) demanded that we revert to the mating behavior of Neanderthals and medieval feudal lords. As proof, they pointed to caveman cartoons in back issues of “Playboy”.
Everyone gasped at this unassailable logic and women resumed their “natural” behaviors of making sandwiches in 1953. It was agreed that evolutionary progress was only good when men did it. It was further agreed that bending society into pretzels so that a small number of heinously creepy incels could have sex was a brilliant adaptive strategy and in no way the exact opposite of natural selection. From his tomb, Darwin applauded.
The end.
If evolution worked the way prof here, thinks it works, wouldn’t all people be attractive?
Or, if that’s too much to ask of Mother Nature, then would we not have evolved, psychologically speaking to not discriminate between faces.
After all, those poor wives assigned to repulsive men against their will, could not exactly have been the best companions, or receptive to sex, married or not. This can’t have been good breeding strategy.
Oh, fuck, why did this guy make me think about shit like this? Effing sadist!
“Pre-industrial” seems like a bad way to say “the past”. The start of the industrial revolution is usually pinned at 1750, and that’s just the spinning jenny; for steam engines you have to wait until 1800. 1800 is just not that long ago. The average Londoner in 1800 was not in an arranged marriage.
I mean… the Wife of Bath is a definitively pre-industrial story, and I don’t think her husbands married her by force.
Nobody noticed it, because being six feet under made him invisible to women and men.
How does this work? I’m just slightly under 6′, so do I get the full invincibility, or am I still mostly vincible?
I assume he means “invisible”. As someone who has spent my whole adult life trying not to be noticed, and has largely succeeded in being invisible, I’m pretty sure this guy could become visible without using platform shoes. I’ve known a number of short guys who were very popular.
Lumipuna: