Thanks for the piece. I want to dig into it more, but from what I see, most of it is self-report data. For obvious reasons, I don't think the “chads” in this case are going to be telling on themselves. This speaks to strong monogamy norms of course. However, if you have insider accounts from certain high status subcultures (e.g. pro athl…
Thanks for the piece. I want to dig into it more, but from what I see, most of it is self-report data. For obvious reasons, I don't think the “chads” in this case are going to be telling on themselves. This speaks to strong monogamy norms of course. However, if you have insider accounts from certain high status subcultures (e.g. pro athletes - maybe the most extreme case), I think you can find a lot of evidence that there are men operating essentially digital harems. Not sure this practice has really changed much over time (because the fundamental preferences are the same) but it is certainly easier and more discrete to do now.
Yes, it's self-report, I'm not sure how else you would get this sort of data? But I don't agree that men with a lot of partners would feel the need to underrepresent that on an anonymous survey, and from what I can tell on Twitter men with high body counts seem happy to share it publicly in many cases. While it could be the case that men at some *extremely* high percentile of sexual success (that we can't reasonably assess from survey data), like pro athletes, have even higher numbers now than they did a couple of decades ago that wouldn't have a meaningful impact on the distribution of sex for the average guy (which is the claim I'm responding to), simply because there are so few of these men.
Yes, so yes I think I agree as a population phenomenon, chads are not really a big thing enabled by apps, but I also don't think "chads" are exactly a common phenomenon either based on EP understandings of how female preference works. It's a bit crude to spell out, but I think willingness/seeking behavior is quite different in women when comparing between normie men and obvious high status men. If you haven't seen this irl, even at smaller scales, it may seem surprising. (There's also structure in the population of women that are happy to participate and some that opt out).
So I think the relevant question culturally is how sexually successful and prolific this power law defined group of obviously high status men. Billionaire aren't common but a lot of people are worried about their wealth. The chads will have an outsized influence on the sexual psychology of everyday men.
So in terms of how to accurately assess what's happening in this high status slice... I don't know. It is likely almost impossible because most these men have good reasons to be discrete (often bc many are publicly partnered).
And I think we have a lot of supportive anecdotal reports here. In some cases this is relying on rumor, which isn't great but it gets at something. Think about the behavior described in many #MeToo cases. If Harvey Weinstein could operate for decades forcing women into undesirable sexual encounters, think of how easy it is for younger, physically attractive men with status who can dangle commitment and resources in front of prospects. Think of the many political sex scandals despite the many incentives against engaging in such behavior. These are slanted peeks at normal conventions of sexual behavior but they speak to something real.
Yes of course there are some men having much higher numbers of sexual partners than I’m showing here. But I don’t think comparing this to wealth quite works. Someone like Bezos is 100,000x wealthier than the average person and while men can have a lot of sex they’re still limited by having to physically be there, it doesn’t scale with the same extremity. Also the women these guys have sex with are still mostly on the market and go on to have sex with other men! From my perspective what should matter to regular men is how often they are able to have sex rather than the number of unique women or how many women the top 0.001% sleep with in their lives. If Bezos was married to a 100,000 women that would be a more comparable situation to his wealth.
I agree that these women are still on the market and that high status monopolization of wealth is substantially different than that of sex.
However, I think this misses something about how the psychology of the normal man works in this context. Say a normal man - one who is typically guided by a strong desire for a physically attractive mate - has somehow won himself a "hot" woman. He lives in fear that this woman would immediately dispense with him in favor of a higher status option, thus he persists in a state of agitation and resentment. I would guess the intensity of this insecurity is higher the further you go the status ladder and the higher the physical attractiveness/allure of the woman is.
Even if this is not a real or common situation (the people who stably partner don't seem to do so on the basis of physical attractiveness - though stable partnerships are increasing enriched among higher status people), this is the imagined situation that motivates many young men, who are the type who can be responsible for an outsized share of social instability.
Relatedly, pointing to the statistical realities overlooks the strong desire of men to monopolize sexual access to partners for obvious evolutionary reasons. As stable partnerships go down and out of wedlock birth have gone up, these anxieties are piqued more.
Thanks for the piece. I want to dig into it more, but from what I see, most of it is self-report data. For obvious reasons, I don't think the “chads” in this case are going to be telling on themselves. This speaks to strong monogamy norms of course. However, if you have insider accounts from certain high status subcultures (e.g. pro athletes - maybe the most extreme case), I think you can find a lot of evidence that there are men operating essentially digital harems. Not sure this practice has really changed much over time (because the fundamental preferences are the same) but it is certainly easier and more discrete to do now.
Yes, it's self-report, I'm not sure how else you would get this sort of data? But I don't agree that men with a lot of partners would feel the need to underrepresent that on an anonymous survey, and from what I can tell on Twitter men with high body counts seem happy to share it publicly in many cases. While it could be the case that men at some *extremely* high percentile of sexual success (that we can't reasonably assess from survey data), like pro athletes, have even higher numbers now than they did a couple of decades ago that wouldn't have a meaningful impact on the distribution of sex for the average guy (which is the claim I'm responding to), simply because there are so few of these men.
Yes, so yes I think I agree as a population phenomenon, chads are not really a big thing enabled by apps, but I also don't think "chads" are exactly a common phenomenon either based on EP understandings of how female preference works. It's a bit crude to spell out, but I think willingness/seeking behavior is quite different in women when comparing between normie men and obvious high status men. If you haven't seen this irl, even at smaller scales, it may seem surprising. (There's also structure in the population of women that are happy to participate and some that opt out).
So I think the relevant question culturally is how sexually successful and prolific this power law defined group of obviously high status men. Billionaire aren't common but a lot of people are worried about their wealth. The chads will have an outsized influence on the sexual psychology of everyday men.
So in terms of how to accurately assess what's happening in this high status slice... I don't know. It is likely almost impossible because most these men have good reasons to be discrete (often bc many are publicly partnered).
And I think we have a lot of supportive anecdotal reports here. In some cases this is relying on rumor, which isn't great but it gets at something. Think about the behavior described in many #MeToo cases. If Harvey Weinstein could operate for decades forcing women into undesirable sexual encounters, think of how easy it is for younger, physically attractive men with status who can dangle commitment and resources in front of prospects. Think of the many political sex scandals despite the many incentives against engaging in such behavior. These are slanted peeks at normal conventions of sexual behavior but they speak to something real.
Yes of course there are some men having much higher numbers of sexual partners than I’m showing here. But I don’t think comparing this to wealth quite works. Someone like Bezos is 100,000x wealthier than the average person and while men can have a lot of sex they’re still limited by having to physically be there, it doesn’t scale with the same extremity. Also the women these guys have sex with are still mostly on the market and go on to have sex with other men! From my perspective what should matter to regular men is how often they are able to have sex rather than the number of unique women or how many women the top 0.001% sleep with in their lives. If Bezos was married to a 100,000 women that would be a more comparable situation to his wealth.
I agree that these women are still on the market and that high status monopolization of wealth is substantially different than that of sex.
However, I think this misses something about how the psychology of the normal man works in this context. Say a normal man - one who is typically guided by a strong desire for a physically attractive mate - has somehow won himself a "hot" woman. He lives in fear that this woman would immediately dispense with him in favor of a higher status option, thus he persists in a state of agitation and resentment. I would guess the intensity of this insecurity is higher the further you go the status ladder and the higher the physical attractiveness/allure of the woman is.
Even if this is not a real or common situation (the people who stably partner don't seem to do so on the basis of physical attractiveness - though stable partnerships are increasing enriched among higher status people), this is the imagined situation that motivates many young men, who are the type who can be responsible for an outsized share of social instability.
Relatedly, pointing to the statistical realities overlooks the strong desire of men to monopolize sexual access to partners for obvious evolutionary reasons. As stable partnerships go down and out of wedlock birth have gone up, these anxieties are piqued more.