Dating Apocalypse: Exploring Trends That Have Left Women Struggling to Find Mr. Right

Welcome to today’s podcast. Dating Apocalypse: Exploring the Demographic Trends That Have Left Women Struggling to Find Mr. Right! The Dark Renaissance discussion continues.

Yesterday I came across the Pear Ring, which spurred this investigation into why many of my lady friends can’t find boyfriends or husbands. In this discussion, I will cover… One, the Pear Ring, get it? Like the fruit, but a pun with the fruit? Cute, I know. It’s a ring to let others know that you’re single and open to someone striking up a conversation in person, even if you’re in a coffee shop so focused on Twitter.

Two, demographic trends in America and China. Three, why there are so many more eligible women to date than men. Four, the male suicide rate. Five, less sex, more virgins. Six, the globalised dating market and how this has changed dating dynamics, especially on apps. And lastly, seven, how AI is going to radically reduce the number of eligible men to date.

Alright let’s jump in, what’s the Pear Ring? It’s a ring sold by a UK company for $25 to signal you are single. The goal is to reduce the use of dating apps. Vogue claims that “76% of people are open to being chatted up in real life" but feel free to fact check that.

Personally, I don’t think this will work very well. The writer of the Guardian article, Elle Hunt, said she went unnoticed. No surprise there. I don’t think Date Me Docs or Pear Rings are going to move the needle in any meaningful way. Demographic and technological forces are at play, and they’re very strong.

That said, I think this is the preface to augmented reality dating. Imagine walking down the street and seeing someone in your club with a clear indication they are single. Balaji hinted at this a while back with an AR flag that indicates you are part of a network state. While the ring might not work, I think it will work incredibly well in AR. Paired with an increase in mobility due to self-driving cars and network cities, the future is bright for those who want to establish meaningful relationships.

Alright so let’s discuss some trends in dating. It’s clear a meaningful percentage of the world has “dating app fatigue”. Personally, I’ve been off all dating apps for 3 years now and I haven’t looked back, despite it being extremely lonely for a while.

I think this is really healthy, and the dating app culture has created a deep rooted neediness that exploits women’s desire to have children by 30. You know, all that bullshit. The societal pressures, namely hundreds of your friends’ weddings photos on Facebook and your parents asking you why you’re single at the family dinner. This leads to neediness and neediness leads to unhealthy relationships. Be alone, be independent, and then you’ll start to find happiness. I think freezing your eggs also removes this subconscious neediness.

Anyways, we’ve all become so selective in our dating options. Globalisation, availability of the much bigger dating pool, and an increase in mobility has completely changed dating. Before we discuss China, let’s discuss some trends in American dating.

In America, and probably across the West, there aren’t enough eligible guys to date. Far fewer men are going to college and this gap has only increased over the last 20 years. According to Pew Research in 2022, “the gap in college completion is even wider among adults ages 25 to 34: 46% of women in this age group have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 36% of men.”

Anecdotally, I can confirm this too. It’s extremely obvious in major cities, excluding San Francisco, but since this mass exodus, this has probably changed a bit.

Here’s some data from this book, Date-o-nomics, “According to 2012 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 5.5 million college-educated women in the U.S. between the ages of 22 and 29 versus 4.1 million such men. In other words, the dating pool for college graduates in their twenties really does have 33 percent more women than men—or four women for every three men. Among college grads age 30 to 39, there are 7.4 million women versus 6.0 million men, which is five women for every four men.”

Women in major cities, do you feel this in your every day life? I do!

Second, not only are there less people to date, but there are many more virgins. It feels like everything is hyper sexualised, and that would lead to far more sex, but the opposite is true. Cardi B’s song, “Wet Ass Pussy” and OnlyFans seem to only have decreased how much sex Americans are having...

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of girls age 15 to 19 who have had sexual intercourse fell from 51 percent to 43 percent between 1988 and 2010; among boys, the decline was 60 percent to 42 percent. I think these trends have accelerated in the last 10 years too, but feel free to check me.

Third, this decrease in eligible guys to date is exacerbated due to mental health issues, which is most apparent in the suicide rate. According to the CDC, men are 50% of the US population but 80% of the suicides. As a woman, it’s easy to fall into the feminist mentality that women have the short end of the stick, but 80% of the suicides… it’s a lot.

An increasing percentage of the male population in America has turned to involuntary celibacy too. While many of these men wouldn’t be considered eligible to date by women, which is why they turn to involuntary celibacy, we shouldn’t further disregard them.

I find the word “incel” to be derogatory, and it feels like it refers to the mass shooters and crazies. I try not to use that term. The pendulum always swings, and if we as a society disregard any group and generalise them, I think it often leads to more harm than good. We can stop rape and achieve the goals of modern feminism while valuing men. Personally, I don’t think of feminism as anti-men, it’s not. It’s against injustice.

Fourth, after suicide, apparently there are more gay men than gay women in major cities too. This came as a bit of a surprise to me because I know plenty of awesome hot lesbians, but here’s a quotation from this Dating Lopsided book: “If 11 percent of the under-40 male population in Manhattan is gay and 1.5 percent of the under-40 female population is lesbian, that means Manhattan’s man deficit among heterosexual, marriage-age, college grads is not smaller than the national average, but larger.”

I’m not going to go down this rabbit hole much further because I think it’s a pretty nuanced topic that probably lacks great data, especially with the rise of bisexuality and gender fluidity... but it’s worth pondering.

Ok now how has globalisation changed dating, has it? I definitely think so.

For instance, on Raya, you don’t just match people from your area, you match people globally. In some ways, this likely leads to a period where people are less happy, especially during Covid and lockdown. I matched with a few dream dates. Once again, dates, not necessarily partners, but we couldn’t meet up. It was a big disappointment. But now that I see self-driving cars, new types of citizenship like Cabin and nomadic network cities, this type of globalised pool of candidates will lead to better matchmaking. In some ways, life had to get really bad before it got better! Or maybe life is just fundamentally different once the Dark Renaissance fully takes off. Time will tell.

Globalisation probably leads to more playboys and prostitution. Here’s the trend I see. Cities are expensive, and men with money tend to be in these cities. From there, these men can attract a large pool of women both in the city, and women who want to visit these cities, and they can abuse their privilege.

This makes it much worse to be a woman looking for a meaningful partner. There are tons of women who will blur the line of prostitution or “putting out” in order to visit a city and have the guy pay for everything. I know this is unavoidable, but it seems more prevalent than ever due to mobility, globalisation, and the rise of vain influencers. Long story short, this means that women who are seeking eligible men will struggle in cities.

Ok now for the big wrench in the mix.

AI will completely change dating in every way, very soon, especially in China due to the lack of women. For the English speakers listening, they are called guang gun (光棍), meaning bare sticks.

We didn’t see this with OpenAI because the API’s weren’t very permissive regarding flirty chatting, but now that we have open source models, we’re about to see the tsunami. Male loneliness is a far larger problem than most women realise. According to a New York Times article last year, 15% of men have no friends at all, a fivefold increase since 1990. In China, this problem is much, much worse due to the lack of women due to the One Child Policy.

Combined with the rise of AI, we are going to see a whole new wave of darkness. Here are some of my predictions:

First, a 30% decrease in eligible men to date in both China and America. To be clear, this is not referring to men who are considered “ineligible” to date, that is, those who didn’t go to college, or have an equivalent educational background. The nature of educational backgrounds will likely shift as AI takes off too. We need far fewer accountants, bankers, and consultants, and far more mechanics, plumbers, and maintenance crews.

Second, a 100% increase in mass shootings, globally. You might think only America has serious gun problems, which is mostly true right now, but due to 3D printed guns, I believe mass shootings will increase everywhere. We already saw the Prime Minister of Japan shot by a home-made gun, and I think this trend is going to increase everywhere unfortunately.

I am mostly anti-gun but I don’t see draconian laws being put in place to confiscate 3D printers or monitor every printed item… It’s just not going to happen. Perhaps new network states form with extremely strict 3D printer laws.

It’s like everyone cracking jokes about Yudkowski bombing GPU farms, you aren’t going to stop AI development either. We must adapt.

So what about the ineligible men? Well, I am both extremely optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. I’m convinced most men, and a meaningful percentage of women, let’s say over 50%, will fall in love with their AI.

We’ve seen the movies, we’ve read the books. To me, this is the most obvious drastic shift in humanity we’re about to see. Women especially tend to think romance as some unknown set of mystique variables, but it’s really not that complex.

Ignorance is definitely bliss here, and I’m not going to deep dive into a Freudian subconscious discussion, but AI will easily cater to human’s romantic and sexual desires. This is guaranteed. We’ve seen this in subcultures in Japan and Asia, especially in anime waifu. It’s strange at first, but it’s worth learning more about.

Anyways, that’s all for today. To summarise, women have an uphill battle ahead. Playing the victim card and blaming men for our troubles isn’t going to improve the dating pool. This narrative is coming to a dead end.

Empathy and thinking about how to build AI’s that raise boys into masculine men who we want to date, marry, and raise families with, is a worthwhile pursuit. The journey won’t be easy, and I predict many women will disagree with one another, but that might be the silver lining – with AI, we all get choice about how to raise our kids with a new degree of granularity and feedback loops that didn’t exist before. I can say with 100% certainty that humanity, especially dating, will no longer be the same as we enter the Dark Renaissance.

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