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.
@Buttercup, @Lumipuna,
*applauds wildly*
Where would you two like your Internets and kitten baskets delivered?
From The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”, posted by Ariblester:
In other words, they didn’t actually bother checking the mutational load, but instead used statistics about rather unreliable markers. They could have sequenced DNA from some people and checked, but they didn’t bother.
This is indicative of a problem in evolutionary psychology. They tend to jump from hypothesis to conclusion and forget that part in the middle; you know, the part where you do the actual fucking science.
It might be because I am a bit tired this morning, but I cannot stop watching that dog gif.
It’s hypnotic.
“Being under 6′0″ means I am invincible to women.”
Don’t forget, supervillain wannabes, if you are under 6’0″, you have a damn good shot at beating Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, etc. in a fight. If you are over 6’0″, they are far more likely to kick your ass. Always send in your less than 6’0″ supervillains to fight the ladies.
Not to this woman.
I think the fundamental problem with Evo Psych is that behaviour doesn’t fossilize, so that you’re left with far too few dots to join up. When humans do that, their biases and preconceptions fill the gap seamlessly, and whichever group gets to the gatekeeping positions first gets to lock in their own world view, daft bits and all.
Somewhere there’s an alternate universe where evo pshych is dominated by women, and the papers are a whole different flavour of very silly.
WTF? Man who is shorter than 6 feet actually has a girlfriend who recognizes that he’s shorter than 6 feet, still loves him, but needs for him to stop lying about his height? What kind of bizarre alternative universe have I landed in!
Help! My Boyfriend Insists He’s 6 Feet Tall. He’s Not.
Daniel Mallory Ortberg: Welcome back to me, hello again to all of you, and let’s chat!
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/08/when-men-lie-about-their-height-and-more-advice-from-dear-prudence.html
Buttercup Q.: And Darwin’s name? Albert Einstein.
When I first heard of evo psy I assumed they study animals like great apes and compare their psychological traits to modern humans and use data from bio-anthropology to construct a model of how humans’ brains evolved.
Apparently it is just a bunch of untested or poorly tested hypotheses about why middle class white westerners in the 21st century have certain behaviors given some assumed past that has little to do with reality.
Sigh.
Heck the problem with evolutionary anything is that even fossils don’t fossilise. Or rather to say, very, very little of the biota is preserved and even if some things are preserved in the record, the rock has to be subsequently exposed and then accessible to humans who know what to do with them.
But back to the topic at hand, the incels this time are right, that is some seriously kack science, but they are right for (mostly) the wrong reasons.
It makes me sad that evo psych, which sounded like it could be so much fun (much as described by Heirloom Roses above), is taken over by people with such dubious values and such poor methodology.
… yeah, right… that’s kinda like being a Professor of Astrology….
And for the closeted incel mammotheer… good news!!
https://slate.com/technology/2018/08/sex-robots-could-totally-redefine-the-institution-of-marriage.html
Well shoot. I’m 6’3″ and was kind of banking on my invincibility as a pick-up line “Hey, I’ll let you shoot me in the head, and if I live you have to go out with me.”
Guess I’ll have to fall back to the classics *swaggers* “Do any of you ladies (and short dudes) need something off a high shelf?”
Okay, so this guy seems to have a pretty solid analysis of why he’s single. There may be other factors, but that one is major.
@Ariblester: re: neurotoxins
Reading the abstract, they seem to be arguing that *BAD GENETICS!!! are responsible for a supposed drop in average IQ in the past few decades. They seem to be arguing against the hypothesis that neurotoxins (i.e. lead and mercury) and other environmental hazards might have a deleterious effect on a developing brain.
*dog whistle for interracial marriage I’m pretty sure.
@ Heirloom Roses;
… and why those behaviors are CLEARLY SUPERIOR….
All based on the dubious presumption that socialization in the 21st Century is driven by behavior learned 15,000 – 100,000 years ago. Like there’s been no change in society in the interim.
I think the most interesting was the guy who discriped himself with massive self-esteem issues, because that one is nearer to the truth, than the rest.
If I interprete it nice, I am dateless because I feel bad about myself and don’t give people a chance to know me, is honest.
It is far more right than ugly or too small.
(With the incels there is the personality and the hatred, that makes thinks worse)
I wanted to highlight it, because it is far from the others at last a good evaluation were his problem is.
About aranged mariages: (Only common among high nobility see above) I gave them a husband/wife and a way to get legitimate children, but stabil is different. The men often had mistresses (in France there were some who were oficial part of the political class and political powerhouses) and a bastard was not uncommon. There was a problem if there was no heir and sometime kings took extreme messures (Henry Tudor is infamous for that).
So I wanted to say that even than love was often found outside of merriages and most of the arrianged merriages were not what we today think as a loving meriage.
Well the Norwegians say it’s a peer reviewed periodical (2015 start at four issues a year) but I wonder how it scores on the official peer review measure that’s used to rate journals by the number of citations? Anyone know how that works? Even so as noted you can’t draw qualitative data from a forum for the like-minded; there needs to be some Kinsey level of study into social media and sexuality to understand it but also factor in platform and systems for dating in the modern world.
It’s messed up. There was a recent article about plastic surgery increases for nose jobs from people who post selfies; the selfie can make a nose appear 30 per cent bigger depending on the shot position. So they would come in to say their nose was too big and show the evidence and surgeons, the good ones, would say you’re fine and explain the camera issue.
So people’s identity of self is being warped by the tech they use; and reddit peeps get to scream their sads to the like minded who egg each other on. Then there’s the chans.
I grew up with hard copy porn being the only thing you could get and it was hard to get. Now the worst of sex is but clicks away. So sad people see hot people doing it and their perception of normal is gone.
I’m a black pill in their parlance; but someone liked me enough to get past that. Go her.
But I know their sads, that was my life as a teen, but I didn’t have this insane place where I could cook off and be encouraged to do so.
I don’t know how I’d have gone being a teen now young man today in such an environment; I could have been sucked into that world view with the tools and platforms that enable such views to take root.
In the end it boils down to empathy; put yourself in the place of a woman and imagine having to negotiate this world. I shudder at the horrid things I said as a sad teen to girls whose only crime was to be a peer and female.
I could never go to a school reunion; I’d be too ashamed to face them for the way I acted to them because I knew I was not attractive and I presumed they hated me.
And they didn’t; I just didn’t appeal to them that way.
And that’s no one’s fault.
You like who you like and if you’re lucky they will like you back. But you can’t be angry at someone who does not feel the same way as you because you have no choice and you cannot force your attention on them—esp. If you tried and they said no.
Being a sad man who feels unloved sucks; forcing a woman to be with a man because their culture makes it so sucks way more.
What if I was a woman? That’s all they have to do to get it.
@heirloom roses:
Honestly good evo psych doesn’t even do that. Even with the other great apes, there’s too much divergence to discuss actual behavior and very few good evo psychologists will really do that.
Most good evo psych is about things like how humans can’t judge the angle of the ground further than about ten to fifteen feet away, because based on our running speed and how fast our visual cortex processes, that’s all we’d ever need.
But that doesn’t make for sexy, overblown headlines.
The investigator is extrapolating male dating patterns from a sample of Reddit users – many whose primary population-defining characteristic is failing at having a romantic partner. The lumps my girlfriend’s cats leave in the litter box have better external validity than this study. No psychological study* has perfect external validity, but that is a HUGE (YUGE?) external validity problem for this study, which the investigator just briefly handwaves at the end by saying, “Like oh yeah, people in the IT world may be over represented.”
The problem is his data do not fit his theory. There’s a difference between making causal conclusions about male dating patterns and making a conclusion about male meta-cognition about perceptions of being single. The data provide some basic support for the latter conclusion, but not the former because he’s simply relying upon subjective perceptions and then shoehorning them to fit a theory.
*This would technically be better classified as a sociology rather than a psychology study due to the (albeit, basic) content analysis methodology and the nature of the theory building.
Runia, it was hardly only royalty, but the larger point is true, arranged marriages (at least in the West, don´t know too much about other cultures) is strongly connected to property being involved in the deal.
When you descend the social ladder down to self-owning farmers, for example (in Sweden), the families were very much involved setting up a match, but the future bride and groom still had to get to know each other first and accept the whole thing. The maiden might be reproached by her family for rejecting what was considered a good match, but it wouldn´t make her a social outcast doing so, just maybe seen as a bit bitchy. The man would have even more freedom.
There has NEVER been a time where people went “hey, you’re a man! Here is your complimentary wife!”, except, perhaps, if you were born into royalty.
The majority of lower class families (and thus the majority of people) partnered by choice, because not having much/any in the way of property, wealth, political power etc. means there’s no point to arranging marriages to consolidate those things. Even in cultures where arranged marriage was fairly common, the suitors would still have to win over the family of the bride, by being charming or wealthy or successful or part of a powerful family. So basically all of the things that “Chads” would be good at, and incels not so much. There’s no benefit to arranging a marriage to a schlub.
But of course if we go back to the good old days, the incels will definitely take their rightful place as god-kings that are handed everything they want and have the power to harm anyone and anything who do not please them. It’s definitely only feminism and women actually having choice in their partners that stands in the way of that future./sarcasm
If six feet or more is the magic height for male desirability, I’d really like these Neinsteins to explain to me why Dudley Moore, who was all of five-foot-TWO on a good day, was so popular back in the ’70s and ’80s. His height was not a dirty little secret, it was a straight-up ASSET when it came to publicity. His nickname was Cuddly Dudley, and he was routinely paired in the tabloid headlines with tall, statuesque beauties.
But then again, that ain’t none of my business…even though, from personal experience, I can confirm the old adage that ’tis better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall. As long as he’s not bitter about his height, it’s all good.
I know others have pointed out a lot of things about arranged marriages, and I just wanted to add –
Do they not realize that while parents could arrange marriages, the woman’s family also had to agree? A lot of times there was some level of exchange. It wasn’t just this “my parents will find a woman for me and then somehow force her to marry me”. Also, while marriages can be arranged, they can also be unarranged. European history is full of nobles marrying off their daughters, then annulling those marriages and marrying the daughter off to another person as the father saw fit.
There are so many reasons why we need to do a much better job teaching history at the pre-college level.
Bina, I remember Dudley Moore being frequently referred to as a “sex thimble” by the tabloids.
If you don’t want to be angered by another form of “traditional” marriage, don’t look up “bride kidnapping”. This is still prevalent in at least some of the Stans; in Kyrgyzstan, I think something like half of all marriages involve kidnap (though some of that number will really be elopement).
I looked up their RG Impact score.
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1474-7049_Evolutionary_Psychology
A 1.28 is… not good:
http://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/26159
That sticks them pretty much in the basement in terms of how often they’re cited.
And yeah, EvoPsych is to actual Evolutionary Science what Alchemy is to Chemistry, or Astrology is to Astronomy. There’s a lot of interesting measurements and data buried in there, and you could use that to build a real scientific discipline from it, but first you’d have to clear out all the woo and bias that is built into the primary assumptions.