Are you a Nice Guy who can't seem to get a date because you're too nice?

[TomYo689]

The scientific method starts with a hypothesis. Isn't that how scientists study stuff?

 

[Mise]

Yes, it starts with a hypothesis to explain observed facts. But we don't have observed facts, we have anecdotes about dating. We have "women like alpha males". Err, maybe, if you (a) define what you mean by "alpha male", and (b) provide some kind of evidence to support that women are attracted to alpha males.

 

[TomYo689]

Gotta start somewhere such as the "history of our species and our mating rituals". Sure a four word hypothesis is insufficient but there definitely are observable facts in the history of mating rituals

 

[warpus]

@warpus: In order for your hypothesis to be true, all of those things have to be true. There are looooooads of hidden assumptions in your hypothesis that you can't just handwave away by talking about monkeys and "alpha males".

I'm 100% behind any efforts to study our behaviour scientifically. The problem is, you're not studying it the way scientists study things, you're studying it the way religious people study things. Scientists use evidence and facts; charlatans use broad conjecture and flashy buzzwords.

Who says I'm studying anything? I'm noticing patterns and reporting them. You're the one assigning truth values to my statements, then disagreeing with them.

 

[AltSteve1990]

I know, this is buzzfeed and all, but these silly comics and flow chart express a good principle I think.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/13-reasons-why-nice-guys-are-the-worst

What do you think OT? Are you a nice guy who thins girls are jerks who just want the proverbial BAD GUYS? Do you suspect there may be truth in these silly internet memes, and that perhaps the NICE INTERNET GUY shtick is in fact, not so nice?

What do you think about this phenomenon, or the perception thereof?

It's an okay article, but buzzfeed user seanc31 summed it up for me nicely:

Ironically, i think in light of a lot of the things mentioned in this article, the actually really real nice guys (the ones who are really nice for real) deserve some degree of sympathy seeing as how they are being thrown into a really general category with men who use their fake niceness to seduce women and their ultumate goal is to have sex with them and that's all they care about because men are pigs and bla bla bla. What if you are nice to a women because you enjoy their company and want to share a relationship with them? Here you are being throw in with the worst of the worst. Frequently do legitimately nice guys get thrown under buses because women falsely think that they are using niceness to seduce them, when in actuality they are only looking for something meaningful. I think in this case it safe to say that that woman is just paranoid, and is completely to blame. Then when that legitimately nice guy is standing there in the dust (probably sad), god forbid he say something like “you know what sucks? Everything”, because then people come the down on you; demonizing you for things you didn't do, and categorizing you with people who aren't like you, but you are still equally guilty. I don't see how that's fair…

 

[Hygro]

I think that post is hogwash because the entire point is that the jerk "nice guys" aren't jerks because they are using being nice to seduce women--because the entire point is that they aren't getting women at all--but rather they are jerks because they are misogynist self-victims who don't treat women as people-people. But they think they do, and they think they do and the guys getting the girls don't, and that the girls are stupid and the other guys are awful and all kinds of whatever.

And then they go and write things like "ladder theory" showing that they are nice guys unfairly stuck on the wrong ladder, and by showing I mean they are showing the opposite ;p

Then they get bitter and get into PUA.


Now, genuinely nice guys do get girls and they do sometimes suffer the heartbreak of unrequited love. They can appear different, but are generally in the minority in part because to be truly nice, out of love, a certain amount of core confidence is needed that isn't tied up in some ego, and end up not getting particularly bitter about it.

 

[Hygro]

meant to have posted this a while ago. Forgotten tab:


Er Warpus you seem to have not attributed Mise's quote to him while putting some of my quote out of the quote boxes making it look like you said it.

Mind going back and fixing that post?

Anyway, you listed traits from ~a million years ago, but included "integration within the group" which may indeed mean not being socially "alpha" in today's interpretation, and may mean the opposite. The reason I keep saying this is because the alpha male thing was huge in PUA a few years back and has been dying down a lot from the little I keep up with, which suggests that the guys behaving "alpha" in that way found it was not a successful strategy for happiness let alone getting women the way they wanted.

I won't disagree that an alpha male in the sense of an "A grade man of that 'type' " is generally more attractive to women, sometimes to a very incredible degree. But the designation "alpha male" implies a host of things that are very questionable to apply to humans. McJagger is not an alpha male as such, even if he holds one of the records in all of history for number of women slept with. McJagger is a talented, exciting, top-of-his game world famous musician, but stick him down in a consistent, local community and he A) wouldn't be running the show as an alpha male wolf or gorilla or whatever, be any means. In fact probably wouldn't be a leader-leader in the community, just a well known character. B) He might not even muster the same personality and lady's man-ness if he was stuck in one place.

All of this is speculation.

Now take the opposite classic lady's attractor, the quarterback of the Texas college or high school football team. He's local. He's embedded in one community. He's strong, he's confident, and the cliché is that he's abrasive and cocky. He's probably fairly smart too if you get to know him. This is the closest example to animalistic alpha male-ism I can think of. But there's some glaring holes. He is his coach's , and his coach isn't exactly getting the girls. The town loves him because of his symbolic representation, a modern human trait that is both cognitive and social in nature, and not about fighting enemies necessarily. But it is also the town that gives him this power, and does so by making him conform to their ideal figure. He does not take this power.

In fact, if he is humble and non assuming, he is generally considered even more attractive and worthy of his position. He's displaying less of the dominant traits that we see in the wild. He will get even more respect, and a larger swath of the girls in the area might fancy him (indeed, no matter how on top you are, not everyone is going to want you, especially if you are an... butt).


I will posit that the general most sexually attractive traits that straight men can generally strive for come in two varieties. These are high speculative.

In addition to looks and good smell and health etc:

1) The guy that conforms to the group and social norms and does so both highly effectively and without irony. Unless irony is the social norm, but whatever, you can think about how that's not a paradox in the end
2) The journeyman. Traders sailing port to port, the lone hunter and explorer, the wandering hero, the exiled prince, some misfit... it doesn't matter, his behavior has been effective to some degree surviving the wild and other tribes, and his genetics are sufficiently different from the tribe among which he finds himself, that there's an inclination to use him for the diversity of the tribe.

Who knows. But if that above binary model is a good representation, the brash "alpha male" isn't the most successful.

 

[WindFish]

I learnt a lot from this thread,

Like dating guyz is bad

 

[Mise]

Sorry for splitting your 4 sentence post up into 4 separate quotes and then replying to each of them. I hate doing it, but I don't know any better way of replying in this case. The problem is, I have issue with all 4 sentences!

Who says I'm studying anything?

Dude you've literally been saying it this whole time...

maybe we can gain some insights into some of our behaviour if we actually try to study our behaviour as animal behaviour.

How would David Attenborough figure out if it's happening and what's causing it?

He would probably study the behaviour [...]

Am I totally crazy for wanting to analyze human behaviour the same way scientsits study animal behaviour? It just seems so logical

*shrug* that's how we analyze the mating habits of the animals on the planet.

I'm noticing patterns and reporting them.

Again, you haven't shown me any evidence for these "patterns". You've stated that women are attracted to "alpha males", yet where is the evidence for this? What do you even mean by "alpha male"?

You're the one assigning truth values to my statements, then disagreeing with them.

"Hey, guys, why don't we analyse human intelligence the way David Attenborough does? Black people have lower than average intelligence because intelligence wasn't selected for in Africa, whereas it was selected for in Europe. This is because Africa had a lot more wild animals and stuff, so physical strength was more important. That's why black people can run faster, and are taller and more muscular. Look at all the basketballers - they're all really tall black guys. Look at all the boxers - they're all really muscular black guys. Now look at all the scientists and intellectuals - all short white dudes. Black people have evolved with superior physical abilities, but lower mental abilities. I'm not saying that all black people are stupid of course, just that, on average, white people are smarter. I mean, come on, we all know that black people are, on average, not as smart as white people. It's a commonly stated, widely accepted fact that black people aren't as smart as white people, on average. Of course, there may be social, cultural and environmental reasons why black people have lower intelligence than whites, but you can't ignore the biology! Evolution has been the overwhelming driving force of all humanity, and it would be absolutely shocking if evolution didn't play a role in our intelligence. Agriculture and civilisation has only been around a few thousand years, so surely it couldn't have had as much of an effect as evolution. I mean, we all agree that evolution is a stone cold fact. And this is a perfectly valid, plausible scientific evolutionary biology hypothesis to explain the fact that black people are less intelligent than white people.

Now, I don't know any of this for a fact, so don't assign any 'truth values' to my statements. And I don't have any evidence to support it (what am I, a scientist?!). But I would be absolutely stunned if it evolution didn't play a part in why black people are less intelligent on average than white people."

 

[Crezth]

But... but logic!

Evolution has been the overwhelming driving force of all humanity, and it would be absolutely shocking if evolution didn't play a role in our intelligence.

It is incredibly sobering to realize that people actually believe this sort of thing.