184. Dating OS: "What Happened to All the Good Men?"

Women in the West increasingly don't find men attractive. Is this culture, biology, social media, or something even deeper? If we can solve the riddle, maybe we can reverse the trend.

The goal of my “Dating OS” series is to address how humans are being rapidly reprogrammed in society and how this is affecting their relationships. I’m not focused on the biology (the “Hardware”) so much in my Dating OS series. Here I assume that the programming (the “Software”) is being updated but not “QA’d” and this is causing things to break.

I also need to say that I try very hard to avoid “gendered” content. I’m very much an “equality of opportunity” person who also has a strong work ethic and belief in merit. But here, what I’m going to talk about is very much gendered. What I mean by this is that men and women behave very differently in the area I’m going to discuss here, and that divide is getting larger.

I see in social media a lot of gender polarization with the “misogynist” camp lining up against the “misandrist” camp. Both camps seem to be expanding which is worrisome.

The topic I’m addressing here is women increasingly saying they don’t find the men available to them attractive. This is most often expressed with lines like “Where did all the good men go?” The implication is that there must be good men somewhere, but not on dating apps. Assuming people are mostly monogamous (a bit of a stretch in 2025, but let’s go with it for a moment) then you would expect the “best” men and women to try to find their best partner and then exit the dating market. Everyone still dating is either non-monogamous (probably unethically so) or “leftovers”.

But just like in the job market, people exit relationships and end up unemployed/unattached until they create a new relationship. So there is a constant influx of “fresh meat”. Some people go 10+ years on dating apps, never leaving for more than a month or two, because their dating game is strong but their relationship game sucks. Both are skills, and the more time/effort you put in, the better you get. Relationships require a lot of communication and compromise (we used to call this Diplomacy) and some people just don’t have the skills or patience for that.

But, there’s something deeper going on here. Consider this data gathered by OKCupid in 2016 before Match Group came in and took a blowtorch to their data:

I apologize for the video quality. The original source has been deleted and to get this chart I had to take a picture of someone taking a picture. I keep trying to connect to OKCupid datasets and they seem to have been deleted. This chart is from the data collected back in 2016, which was a bit controversial just because it was collected in the first place. But we still rely heavily on the data that OKC collected as Match Group has a near monopoly and doesn’t want you to have this data. Why? Maybe we can figure some of that out today, together.

Here if I ask men to rank women on an attractiveness scale from 1 to 7, they give me a near perfect bell curve. Proper left right symmetry and the poles are smaller just like they should be. Men have historically been better at math, but I’ve always suspected some of that was cultural. But here the men seem to be operating quite rationally. And, they also seem to find women attractive in general.

Where men rank women a median “4” out of 7 on average, women are approaching this totally differently. They give men an average of “2.5” out of 7. That’s only 1.5 from 1, instead of 3 from 1 with the men. Thus women are only finding men half as attractive as men. Or, they are just shitty at math. I can’t rule out either of these two options.

I put “$1000 per month” there because I already did the math in my Gender Wars paper explaining that men in the USA give women $1000 per month over their lifetime in heterosexual relationships. I argued there that this is the price of being male in modern society. But based on the above graph, this might be the price of being ugly!

What we are measuring here isn’t real life attractiveness of course, we are judging pictures. The cosmetics industry is huge, and mostly caters to women. Then we have hair coloring, cosmetic surgery, implants/injections, skin care, filtering, and catfishing. Women are clearly spending more on their appearance, and they even often cite this as why men have to pay for dates.

So maybe women just look better in their pictures, while men just don’t take that stage of dating nearly as serious. But this begs the question: If men are that ugly, why do straight women spend so much money on their appearance?

The obvious answer would be that women still find men valuable, just not so much for their appearance. This plays into the female hypergamy argument where there is a financial incentive to date. My Gender Wars calculations seem to verify this as at least a partial reason women date.

But like with everything I publish, if I had the same answer as everyone else, I wouldn’t bother to write about it. I’m going to go way deeper and take you on another trip down Ramin’s Rabbit Hole.

The first thing to understand is that women may talk a lot about competing with men (and they do do this in the workplace, which can create very dangerous situations for men), but in dating they are competing against other women. Or sometimes transwomen. Hell hath no greater fury than that of a woman beat to the prize by someone they think is competing unfairly. Again this may play into the hypergamy scenario because if the average retainer for women is $1000 per month, if they under perform they might only get $500 per month. That means someone else is getting $1500 and that’s a serious difference.

I’m not entirely satisfied with this answer though. I think it’s critical to understand the differences in gender rank-seeking behavior. I’ve talked before about how as an elite athlete working in very unathletic environments I’ve run afoul of men’s rank seeking behavior. When men are puffing up their chests and trying to thump each other, it’s fairly obvious.

With women it’s not like that.

Men are almost always overtly rank-seeking until they agree on a rank ladder they are all comfortable with. Then they usually stop fighting because conflict between men is very high risk. Women instead tend to be overtly cooperative and covertly sabotaging their fellow women. The subterfuge levels get crazy, which is why men are at a huge disadvantage in the workplace if they end up on the wrong end of this.

Men highly value exclusivity, and prefer a woman that will not force them into ranking behavior with other men. Again, rank conflicts between men are dangerous so men do their best to sort these out quickly. Thus men will date an “ugly” woman if that woman is giving off “loyalty” vibes. And appears to have a low body count. If a woman has a high body count, then she isn’t yours, it’s just your turn.

Women value how well a man is domesticated or how they perform “off camera” much more than their initial appearance. When women date, they aren’t dating against men, they are dating against other women. Women keep asking “why is that ugly dude with that hot gal?!?” You may not know, but you want to know, don’t you? A man’s “rank” among women is derived from the women he’s been with before, more than any other factor. Not looks, not money. Women know that the most important things a man has in relationship are things they can’t say in their profile. If they do, you can safely assume he’s lying. So you find out by seeing who’s been with him before and for how long. If it’s a high ranking woman, then the man’s got something valuable even if he’s not talking about it.

Overtly, women don’t like to break from the pack and risk upsetting the Sisterhood. And most women are very nervous about asking me who I’ve been with before. (I’m happy to tell them if they ask.) But, they really want to know. That’s why when the Tea app came out, they were all racing to give up their driver’s licences or passports to get access. If they dated a hot guy and then got ghosted or dumped, do they give that guy a good review? Hell no! They are in competition with other women and if this woman lost, they want the Sisterhood to lose too. It’s not even really about the guy at all.

Why Dating Apps are Upside Down

It used to be, when we lived in small communities, that everyone knew everyone else and everyone knew who you dated before. This made it very easy for women to figure out how they ranked, and that ranking often depended on the men they had and could keep. For men, they would rank women on how many men they didn’t have as loyalty was of paramount importance.

For women, they viewed men’s value as which women they could pull and keep, and this raised a man’s value. For men, this would lower a woman’s value. Especially if there were a lot of guys. Also, men tend to peak in value at age 45 where women peak in value at 26. This gives women a much more long term view of men’s value. They approach dating more strategically. Men approach dating more like the Indianapolis 500 because if you aren’t first, you are a loser. Women would much rather let someone else train their man, then wait for him at the finish line. They will backstab each other brutally if necessary.

But what’s going on with dating apps? A woman used to have to really worry about her reputation. Now that’s all hidden. A woman can go through 50, 200, even 500 men and then show up on a date acting the like Virgin Mary. Guys can get dumb if there is enough attraction and will fall for this.

How are men different? The normal metrics of how a guy ranks are erased in dating apps. For celebrities, you know who they’ve been with before and how that turned out. Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio will dump you when you hit 26, but if you are 20 that’s still 6 years away! And you don’t care if he’s got the Dad Bod, because you know he can still pull those 20 year old models. That’s your competition. Flip the genders, and it’s a whole different story.

While I’m here, why do guys do that? Why do 45 year old men date 26 year old women? Is it creepy? Maybe. But if you look at it from the view of rank and even Sexual Arbitrage, a man at his peak is chasing a woman at her peak. Both are seeing it the same way. If it was the same way when you reversed the genders, then you’d see a lot more 45 year old women dating 26 year old men. They could , but 26 year old men are low rank. That’s like admitting defeat to your fellow ladies.

So, is there a way to fix this? To make women happier with men, and men happier with women? Yes! Yes there is! Instead of focusing solely on pictures (which are almost certainly going to be “augmented”) and profile descriptions (ditto), what if we removed the anonymity in dating? Heck, we could entirely remove the profiles of both men and women. It’s just there to be misleading anyways.

We replace that with only the record of who they have dated before and for how long. That’s much more useful information, especially for women. Men might be happy to date someone with a questionable dating record… for one night. Women tend to be more strategic and either want something more long term, or have this fantasy of “converting” a bad boy to a good boy. These sorts of conversions rarely work for either gender because once you’ve built up an intense enough dopamine addiction, you are going to get bored super fast in any situation where the stimulation keeps repeating.

Could This Really Be Done?

Actually, with how little privacy we have left, there’s never been an easier time to build an app like this. The Japanese have a state funded dating app now, they should totally do something like this. Of course you have to consent to this loss of privacy, but you do this same thing every time you write up your resume and look for a job, right? Why is this any different? Working relationships and personal relationships are both super important, why not treat them with the same level of seriousness?

Of course women with a LOT of dating history probably wouldn’t want this sort of information to get out. But then they just wouldn’t use an app like this. For men, the only thing worse than a lot of dating history is no history. That will get you labelled an Incel or even a terrorist! Women don’t want to have to do the work of breaking a guy in. They’d rather let someone else do that and wait at the finish line to trip the other gal up.

Actually OKCupid used to have the ability for people who you’ve dated before to put comments on your profile. Match got rid of that in a hurry when they bought OKC, because they want you to have as many partners as possible! Getting you hooked on dopamine, is key to their business model. If you get in a long term relationship, you churn out and that’s lost revenue. Match Group is a “secular” company that started with the Christian dating app Match.com. I find it quite amusing what these people will do for money.

So yes we could totally track you on a long term dating app. If you go on a date with someone, the app could record that. If you refuse to record the date, but the other person did, we could track that too. You’d develop an “under cover” rating, so people know you are probably “cheating” someone. You’d have had to exchange some talk on the app first to be able to declare you went on a date. Ideally, both parties would have to declare they were going on a date before you went on the date. If the other person didn’t, that would be a huge red flag. This could also be a safety issue.

Of course if both sides were cheating (perhaps they are both married, to other people) they could agree to keep their tryst confidential. That’s fair, you can’t prevent that unless you live in a Dystopia where everyone has a chip that shows their location at all times. It could be coming…

With that sort of tech, it would be very obvious very quickly the quality of person you were talking to on a dating app. This would be super important for all genders, but perhaps in different ways.

We would also get a more honest metric of who was attractive.