Mating Crisis: Why The Rate Of Single Men Looking For Dates Has Declined | William Costello PT 2 (Fan Fave)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Episode: "Mating Crisis: Why The Rate Of Single Men Looking For Dates Has Declined | William Costello PT 2"
Date: March 7, 2026
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: William Costello (Researcher on incels, internet culture, and mating psychologies)

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Main Theme

This episode explores the so-called "mating crisis," detailing the rise of sexlessness and persistent singleness, particularly among young men. Tom and guest William Costello investigate the psychological, evolutionary, and societal factors shaping this shift—covering online dating's impact, the incel (involuntary celibate) phenomenon, the roles of anxiety, social identity, and the possible future influences of AI romantic partners. The conversation aims for honesty, confronting uncomfortable data and perspectives with a drive to understand the true roots of contemporary mating and relationship struggles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Mating Crisis" and Sexlessness Trends

• Overview: There is a growing demographic of sexually inactive and single men, with data suggesting a small proportion of men are obtaining most romantic success while many struggle or give up entirely.
• Key Observation: This resembles "polygyny" (a few men monopolizing most mating opportunities), something common in ancestral environments but now technologically and culturally amplified ([02:54]).
• Quote:
  • Tom: "You get a huge number of guys that are having no sex and a small number of guys are having a ton of sex. And that feels like a mismatch to me." [02:54]

2. Online Dating, Technology, and Birth Control

• Dating Apps: Expose users to more potential mates than ever before, recreating both opportunities and intensified rejection. The business model incentivizes keeping people single and engaged.
• Birth Control: The pill drastically shifted the mating landscape, allowing women to delay partnership and childbearing, sometimes until opportunities dwindle ([04:29]).
• Notable Quote:
  • William: "Dating apps… expose us to more potential mates in a few minutes than we would in a lifetime throughout our ancestral history… Why would [dating apps'] business model be anything else [than keeping you single]?" [04:29], [07:17]

3. Pornography, Virtual Reality, and Behavioral Retreat

• Porn's Role: High consumers are often already sexually active, not necessarily those who aren’t, complicating assumptions about porn causing retreat from human relationships.
• Virtual Retreat: Men—particularly those with high anxiety—seem likelier to forgo the emotional cost of the real mating market, retreating into online status games, pornography, or virtual companionship ([08:57], [09:57]).
• Notable Quotes:
  • Tom: "If I'm not masturbating… doesn't mean I will go seek a natural human relationship to sort that out?" [10:19]
  • William: "It's not clear to me that just stopping porn in isolation would encourage the mate seeking." [10:19]

4. Inceldom (Involuntary Celibacy): Motivations and Dark Allure

• External Locus of Control: Incels feel powerless to change their fate—blaming external factors (dating apps, genetics) and reinforcing each other’s pessimism across online communities ([24:28]).
• Identity and Community: There is surprising psychological comfort in aligning with a group suffering the same fate (“victimhood identity”), which brings belonging, humor, and simplicity ([12:17], [29:19]).
• Stages: Incels conceptualize their experiences as "Hope, Cope, Rope"—ranging from possible self-improvement to despair and suicidal ideation ([26:08]).
• Quote:
  • William: "A lot of incels… are not aiming at all. And there's actually unique appeal to the incel identity that gets them hunkered down into that life and that victimhood mentality, rather than engaging with the anxiety-inducing mating market." [12:17]
  • Tom: "If you want to flourish… you cannot allow yourself to take on an identity that holds you back." [33:53]

5. Psychic Pain & Human Flourishing

• Pain of Exclusion: Being excluded from mating opportunities is psychologically devastating due to deep evolutionary drives. It is not merely a superficial problem ([38:12]).
• Alternative Paths: For those truly unable (or unwilling) to participate in the dating market due to anxiety or other factors, it’s critical to find fulfillment beyond romantic relationships—but that is easier said than done ([36:27]).
• Quote:
  • William: "It really bugs me when people say, why don't [incels] just care about other things? It's not that easy." [38:12]

6. AI, Virtual Companions, and Dystopian Futures

• Artificial Companionship: The idea of AI partners scratches loneliness and sexual itches, but not the status itch, since being chosen by an AI doesn’t afford social validation ([42:13], [43:36]).
• Status and Sexual Selection: For many men, particularly in incel communities, romantic success is as much about perceived social value as about sex or connection ([43:43]).
• Quote:
  • William: "[An AI partner] might scratch one itch for incels... but there's no status afforded to men who have the best artificially intelligent girlfriend." [42:13]

7. Evolutionary Novelty, Ritual Loss, and Societal Change

• Loss of Ritual/Transition: Without clear cultural or familial rituals, adolescent transition to adulthood and the mating market is chaotic, isolated, and confusing, especially for men ([73:08]).
• Arranged Marriages & Constraints: Data suggest arranged marriages might foster more stable unions than the freedom-driven, endless-choice culture of the West due to self-imposed limitations ([74:10]).

8. Men & Women: Adversaries or Allies?

• Combative Narratives: Online culture stokes male vs. female antagonism, but evolutionary pressure and lived experience suggest cooperation and love are default states ([59:35]).
• Cross-Sex Mind Reading: Much conflict arises from a failure to genuinely understand the differing psychologies, especially regarding sexual desire and mate selection ([63:19], [91:04]).
• Quote:
  • William: "Men are cursed, as they get older, to be attracted to women that are never going to desire them." [46:27]
  • Tom: "If you look at the other sex as your adversary, you are already in trouble." [59:19]

9. Female Counterparts (Femcels) and Societal Sympathy

• Femcel Phenomenon: While less visible, similar trends exist among women (“involuntarily single”), but mainstream discourse treats them more sympathetically than male incels ([63:19]).

10. Free Speech and Evolutionary Psychology

• Cultural Resistance: Discussion of biological sex differences and evolutionary psychology often meets ideological hostility due to fears of justifying inequality. The hosts argue for open inquiry and speech as prerequisites for societal progress ([85:46], [86:39]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "You get a huge number of guys that are having no sex and a small number of guys are having a ton of sex. And that feels like a mismatch to me." – Tom [02:54]
• "Dating apps…expose us to more potential mates in a few minutes than we would in a lifetime throughout our ancestral history… Why would [dating apps'] business model be anything else [than keeping you single]?" – William [07:17]
• "It's not clear to me that just stopping porn in isolation would encourage the mate seeking." – William [10:19]
• "A lot of incels…are not aiming at all. And there's actually unique appeal to the incel identity that gets them hunkered down into that life and that victimhood mentality." – William [12:17]
• "Only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals." – Tom [26:08]
• "It really bugs me when people say, why don't [incels] just care about other things? It's not that easy." – William [38:12]
• "[An AI partner] might scratch one itch for incels...but there's no status afforded to men who have the best artificially intelligent girlfriend." – William [42:13]
• "If you look at the other sex as your adversary, you are already in trouble." – Tom [59:19]
• "Men are cursed, as they get older, to be attracted to women that are never going to desire them." – William [46:39]
• "I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question." – William [85:46]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Impact of Tinder and Mating Inequality: [02:54]–[03:44]
• Role of Dating Apps, Birth Control, and Mating Psychology: [03:44]–[07:41]
• Pornography, VR, and Male Mate-Seeking Behavior: [08:39]–[10:51]
• Inceldom: Identity, Psychology, and Suicide: [12:17]–[29:19]
• Hope, Cope, Rope (Incel Stages): [26:08]–[29:17]
• AI Partners, Status, and the Future of Connection: [42:13]–[44:27]
• Ritual Loss, Arranged Marriage, and Societal Changes: [73:08]–[76:26]
• Adversarial Sexes & Cross-Sex Mind Reading: [59:19]–[63:19]; [91:04]–[93:18]
• Evolutionary Psychology and Free Speech in Academia: [85:46]–[89:10]

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Conclusion

The conversation concludes with a call for honest debate, the cultivation of empathy and cross-sex understanding, and strategic personal growth. Tom urges listeners not to let victimhood or a self-defeating identity take root—even if relationship success isn't possible for everyone, fulfillment and human flourishing are available through alternative paths. The episode provides a nuanced, research-informed lens on the demographic trends, technological disruptions, and identity-fueled communities changing modern mating markets, all the while advocating for open inquiry and adaptation in an era of rapid cultural transformation.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Ugh.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And when I was in my early 20s, while I was very. I am a big believer in love but when I met my wife I didn't think I was going to ever get married. I was very much on the train of like cool, let's have a lot of short term partners. Now that I understand women, I understand the game. I know how to get laid, want to get laid as much as I can.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Bad news is I'm really bad at not catching feels when I meet somebody extraordinary and so fell end up falling head over heels. But when you look at the graph that shows sexlessness and I know that that maybe that's on the reverse and it seems like something interesting is happening there. And I'm not sure I fully understand even though we talked about at the beginning. But anyway on, on the graph I think this same thing leading up to 2018 and then I need to update my data but you can see where Tinder hits and then sexlessness goes up because I'm guessing we're getting into the top percentage of men now monopolize. And so you get a huge number of guys that are having no sex and a small number of guys are having a ton of sex. And that feels like a mismatch to me. Yeah, one I'd love to get your take on that but are there others?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, certainly. And like that could be seen as mismatch or almost a return to this effective polygyny. So I've talked earlier about how we have this ancestral history of exactly that, that polygyny and if you're to look at that data of the top 20% and the top 5% of men really having a lot of sexual partners but a lot of other men appearing to be disenfranchised, that does look like an effective polygyny. So it could be a return rather than a mismatch. But yeah, it's facilitated by the online dating. Other aspects of mismatch. Huge one is the control over our birth control. The pill is probably the most paradigm shifting technology for mating psychology or to impact our mating.

[A]

How's that not only good because if

[B]

we think back to those statistics about women, the involuntary childless women. 80% of childless women where involuntarily. So that's a massively high number. So what must be happening for a lot of them. And I'd refer your viewers to the documentary called Birth Gap by Stephen Shaw. Fantastic explorers the population crisis. And he talks to women who report over and over again that they just simply left it too late to find a partner. And when you talk about this idea of women leaving it too late. You're not just talking about their fertility, their biological fertility. It's it just you don't find a partner. Find a partner you're happy with, convince them to marry you. It doesn't all wrap itself up in a neat little bow in a handful of years if you start trying only at the age of 30, it's like a really, really squeezed time window that you're imposing on yourself. So that's for many of those women, I would wager it's inadvertent. You know, they didn't see it panning out that way and they just left it too late or couldn't find the right partner. So that's evolutionary novel. Dating apps are a huge one. They expose us to more potential mates in a lifetime or in a few minutes than we would be exposed to in a lifetime throughout our ancestral history. Now the way that works in so many different ways, one could be romantic rejection. So I'm asked all the time, I research incels and one thing people say to me all the time is why do they care about the rejection so much? Why not just go on, there's plenty more fish in the sea. And ultra rationalist, logical person could say, yes, that's right, there are plenty of more fish in the sea. Just move on. But if you think about what rejection meant for most of our ancestral history, it was really costly because there was only a couple of dozen potential mates that you might meet in your lifetime. They all kind of knew each other. So if they saw you getting rejected, your reputation takes a spike. So we're, you know, we're designed to be very anxious. It's meant to be very anxiety inducing to engage in the mating market because it going wrong could be very costly. So if we also think about dating apps, and even just in terms of big cities and university settings, exposing us to so many potential mates messes with our commitment devices. So why would we be inclined to commit to one partner when we're getting the impression that there is a limitless supply of other potential mates around and we've got this FOMO of fear of missing out. Is there someone better? Should I keep swiping? Then you got on top of that. Just the business model of the dating apps is to designed to keep you in the dating room, in the swiping room, to keep you single. Why would their business model be anything else?

[A]

That's gnarly.

[B]

You know, it's gnarly and they, they talk about, oh, designed to be deleted. But you know, if you really think about it they want swipers, they want people playing the dating game and they kind of even transparently move to this. Some of their advertisement campaigns are like, it's great to be single, you know, single and swiping. That's good for them. You know, Woof. I know that's that.

[A]

That one I had not thought of. I should have. That's very self evident as you get into it. Okay, so we have these incredible mismatches. How do we like when you think about. So this is something I have to think about a lot. So we're creating a metaverse. I hate calling it that, but that'll get you close enough. And so I have to think about this a lot like this people are now going to be able to build their identity. They're detached from the real world. They are able to get some of the faux cues and things that they might have to deal with in. Sorry, they're getting faux cues of fitness that if they were in the real world they would not be able to mistake. And so one of those would be like pornography where you're getting some sort of subconscious cue that everything is well, where does porn sit in your stack of problems?

[B]

Yeah, that's one idea that it could be this kind of pseudo relationship. In terms of porn, there's two ways of looking at it. So the people who use porn most, most men are quite sexually active men who also simultaneously want to go out mate seeking too.

[A]

But we have data on that.

[B]

Yeah, they're still. It doesn't seem to interfere with their mate mate seeking. Now I'm a bit less optimistic about virtual reality. And as that gets more sophisticated and more embodied cognition of will people and it becomes more costly to engage in the real mating market, will men just increasingly retreat? So it doesn't appear to be that it's just pornography per se because that gets tied up with. Oh well, very sexually unrestricted men use most pornography. But the idea of retreating into virtual worlds, virtual status games like video games and just online on the Internet instead of mate seeking, that seems to have a bit more traction I think. But just pornography on its own gets a bit caught up with. Yes, but the problem is that also the most sexually active sexually people with the highest sexual desires use a lot of porn too. So it kind of loses that dulling effect. Does that make sense?

[A]

It does. I'm not yet clear if people that are very unsuccessful, are they also using porn?

[B]

Yeah, I would say that they are as like a coping kind of mechanism. But it's not clear to me that Just stopping porn in isolation would encourage the mate seeking. It's.

[A]

That is surprising to me. So I don't know if there's data or if that's your hunch, but, but so what you're putting forth is that if I'm not masturbating, that doesn't mean. So I, I'm having pent up desire. That doesn't mean that I will go seek a natural human relationship to sort that out.

[B]

Yeah. And that's the surprising thing. We're seeing this, this data on. These data on men just not being motivated to seek mates and it just could be what the. Yeah, right.

[A]

So totally you're, you're tipping over. I'm realizing now I had a base assumption that was these guys are all masturbating furiously and that is what placates them enough to not go out. Are you saying that's not true? So these guys have, do they have low. So, okay, let's get into incels. Do incels have as. As just an extreme sort of end of this just so we can cut to the chase? For people that don't know incel involuntary celibate, they want a partner, but they believe, rightly or wrongly, that they cannot get a partner. One of my pieces of advice to them would be stop masturbating because that's going to apply massive amounts of biological pressure on you to go out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So now I need you to help me understand how that is not true.

[B]

Incels are a tricky one. When we measured them on porn use against our non incel single men, it was kind of virtually the same. So it's very hard to kind of find control groups for porn users because everyone, every young man is pretty much using porn. It's hard to do those studies. But I just wrote a recent article for Aporia called the Allure of Inceldom why incels Resist Ascension. And a lot of incels you might. It's intuitive to think, oh yes, they really want a mate, they really want a partner and they do anything to go out and get it.

[A]

But.

[B]

But that's not the case. And all sorts of people talk about how incels are simply aiming too high, they need to lower their standards. But my idea is they're actually not aiming at all. And there's actually unique appeal to the incel identity that gets them hunkered down into that life and that victimhood mentality rather than engaging with the anxiety inducing mating market. So to be romantically successful, you need to go through a lot of anxiety. You need to go out, put yourself out there, get rejected a lot, get your heart broken, all those things.

[A]

Is there any data on people taking anti anxiety medication and, and mate seeking success?

[B]

Yeah, I'm not familiar there, but we have data certainly that anxiety levels are very, very high among incels and increasingly just among young men and women. More anxiety everywhere we look. But yeah. And that could be feeding into this reluctance to engage in the mating market, which is like we say, one of the most anxiety inducing things you can do. It's a, it's scary to put yourself out there. And the most success, successful romantic people are ones who are able to take rejection, to go through it. And you could say to incels, I promise you it's worth it. It's worth it to go through the other side, go through all the rejection. But that has become less obvious to me for incels as, as I've gone on.

[A]

So it's not obvious that going through the rejection will yield anything or that getting in a relationship is worth the anxiety.

[B]

I think, I think it's worth it, me personally. But it's not very easy for me to say to every incel who has faced just a lifetime of being rejected to say, yes, it's worth it. Keep rolling the dice. Keep rolling the dice. It might.

[A]

Because they may actually not end up with a partner.

[B]

The cost may come, it may be so anxiety inducing to them that it's. Who am I to say, push yourself through that pain? You know, interesting.

[A]

I don't have the neuron for who am I to say?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which my audience either finds very entertaining or I'm sure in the comments is shut the fuck up. But unfortunately I don't have that neuron. So who am I to say? Yeah, I am going to say this because I really want to see people thrive. And I am a big believer that the only difference between me and the level of success that I've had, whether it's in my relationships or money. No, no, no, it's is that I really believe that you can get better and that at anything. And that on the other side of in the dating market is you. Nothing will ever give you more. Not money, not success, not accolades, nothing than sharing your life with somebody that you're able to have a very high thriving relationship with. Because yes, you could be in a marriage with somebody and sharing your life with somebody you hate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that would be a nightmare. I used, I literally used to have a recurring nightmare about being in a loveless marriage. So I get that side. So I, I want to. The, the Thing that I'm grappling with in what you're saying is that if I knew that they could have a relationship on the other side of that, I'd be like, bro, it is worth it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Like just from a biological standpoint, I'm guaranteeing you that it's worth it because the, the pair bonding and look, there are realities to be faced about how many receptors do you have for vasopressin and oxytocin? If you don't have enough, then you, you just, you may not experience the kind of thing that I experience. But if you have a sufficient level of that, which I will just assume most people do, nothing will give you more ever than being somebody's number one and sharing that life together.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What scares me is that some of these guys may be for real. For real. Of such low mate value that you aren't going to end up with somebody on the other side of that. And so if you're saying that, that there are some people that don't meet what I'll call minimum requirements, this really does suck. And you are going to have to find another path to fulfillment. But my thing is I think most people misunderstand where they fall on that spectrum. Let's talk about a problem that is hiding in plain sight. You're using AI for everything now. Like everybody else, every single conversation is being stored, analyzed and used to build a profile on you. That's where Duck AI comes in. It is a new product from DuckDuckGo, the company that's been protecting privacy online since 2008. Duck AI lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude and other popular AIs or all in one place. Your conversations aren't used for tracking, training or profiling you. There's no account required and it's completely free. DuckDuckGo built this specifically for data protection, not data collection. They're designed to help stop your information from being stored, tracked or misused by hackers, scammers and data hungry companies. No signups, no subscriptions, no learning curve. Duck AI gives you access to the same AI tools you're already using, but without the private privacy trade off. If you want to use AI without giving up your privacy, visit Duck AIImpact today. That's Duck AI Impact, a private way to chat with AI from DuckDuckGo, where AI is always optional and private. A great wardrobe is not complicated. A few pieces that fit well, hold up over time and work in almost every any situation. That's it. That's what you need. The problem is finding them without paying luxury prices. That's exactly what Quint is built around. I picked up one of their cashmere sweaters and let me tell you, the softness is amazing and the quality actually caught me off guard. This is 100% Mongolian cashmere. That makes it easy to build a great wardrobe. Lightweight cashmere linen bottoms, short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, Pima cotton teas. All amazing quality and every factory they partner with meets rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Right now go to quints.com impact pod for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will now available in Canada too. Go to Q U I n c e.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's quince.com impactpod let's talk about Lazy Money. Most people think owning gold is smart, and it is to be honest. But the question is, why aren't you making it work for you? Monetary Metals changes all of that. They've built a way for your gold to earn yield paid not in dollars but in more physical gold, up to 4% per year, more ounces every single month, compounding in hard money your assets producing more of itself. And unlike most precious metal programs, storage and insurance are included so your yield isn't eaten up by hidden fees. Monetary Metals is how you opt out of that game entirely and start stacking more ounces whether the price moves or not. Click the link in the show notes or visit monetary-metals.comimpact to learn more. Again, that's monetary-metals.comimpact this is a paid advertisement.

[B]

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. So let me rephrase. What I was trying to say is yes, I think it's worth it and I think what's on the other side is flourishment or flourishing and fulfillment that is worth all that pain. But I guess what I was trying to say when I said oh, who am I to say? Is that I was trying to understand the mindset of why that wouldn't be obvious to someone, why that wouldn't be obvious to an incel. And I began to realize that incels get a lot out of their social identity of the victimhood identity, the common enemy of women all suck and Chad sucks. They get a rich lexicon of humorous trolling terminology. They have their sense of fraternity with their other fellow incels, a black and white rubric through which to view the world. They actually get a lot out of that identity that I'M beginning to see compared with engaging in an anxiety inducing mating market that, like you said, may not actually yield some positive results at all. We think it would. And it's intuitive to think, oh yeah, just roll the dice enough times and just from a sheer numbers thing, that's probably right. But it may be so costly to do that that they just say it's not worth all that pain to go through. What's another bleak idea is that encouraging incels to re engage with the mating market? These socially anxious young men who aren't very experienced with women, very insecure, we might be careful what we wish for if they find girlfriends. Because people always talk about how dangerous these sexless young men are. These incels are so dangerous. But what is really dangerous is an insecure jealous boyfriend that they engage in way more intimate partner violence and things like that than any sexless young man. So that's a bit of a dark kind of truth to reckon with as well, is that this might be no picnic. And like we talked about earlier, the engaging with the mating market, it's a baptism of fire. There's no training ground for it. There's just go out there into the world, make a bunch of mistakes, learn on your feet. So, yeah, so I guess what I was trying to say is, rather than who am I to say is it worth it? Is that I can understand why an individual incel might elect to hunker down into victimhood, identity and online worlds rather than engaging with the mating market they don't have much faith in. That's what I mean. I think.

[A]

Whoa, that was dark.

[B]

I know. Dark.

[A]

I love it. Because I think people have to face whatever is true. Okay, so that brought up a couple things for me. One of them is frame of reference. So I am obsessed with the idea of frame of reference. So we all believe certain things about ourselves and the world, and that is your frame of reference. Now, anybody that thinks that their frame of reference just reflects objective reality, that person is a danger to themselves and others. And I really, really, really want people to distrust their emotions. I mean, that was so much aggression, man. I want people to distrust their emotions. Nobody distrusts their emotions more than me. And so I'm saying that my success is because I distrust my emotions. So I learned a long time ago that I was only going to allow myself to do and believe that which moved me towards my goals. And so if my goal is to find love, et cetera, et cetera, then I can't allow myself to believe that I'm unlovable that I'm so low on the totem pole, nobody could ever find me attractive, worth being partnered with. While I believe that we're having a biological experience, while I believe that, you know, mate preferences and all that stuff, like there, there is a lot of constraints, but I think there's also some malleability. And I would be looking at what is everything that I can tweak, what are the things that I can max out on, what are the things I have to let go of. And I mean, look, if, if I. I am perfectly happy and I've seen this countless times where you get a really short guy with a super tall woman.

[B]

Word.

[A]

I'm all for it. I'm just saying, like, I want people to distrust that you don't think that you could be of value. There are ways that you could look at different pools of people that are going to find you attractive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that that would be a wise way to approach that problem. But you have to pierce people's frame of reference. If they are just convinced that they are unlovable, then that's the problem. The problem isn't that you can't actually find somebody. The problem is you believe you can't find somebody and now you're not doing any of the things you would need to do to get on the other side of that.

[B]

Yeah, you touched on a lot of areas of incel. Typical psychology there, actually. So one is that they have a very strong external locus of control. They don't believe they can affect change in their own life at all. It's just things happen to them. It's outside forces, whether it's dating apps, feminism, whatever it is, I'm too short. External world has made it so that they're going to be a victim. So that's one thing. So trying to. When we think about maybe any interventions cultivating that internal locus of control that there's something you could do to affect change in your own life, that's very important. But incels lack that a lot. They do have a terminology for what you described of like that self development of maxing. Everything is looks maxing. What is it? Jester maxing to be very funny. Everything maxing. Right. So that's one kind of way some incels look at it and they have a very bleak terminology for the levels at which you can be an incel. So you can be at the stage of hope, cope or rope. So hope describes feeling like, oh, there's still hope out there. I could maybe engage in looks maxing. I'll go to the gym, I'll become self developed. I'll read a lot of books hoping some of them will say it's delusional hope. But to be romantically successful, you need to be. Some have some level of self delusion too. So we talk about it in terms of mating intelligence, which describes mating relevant other deception, but also mating relevant self deception. To not pay attention to the rejection so much and to just keep looking out for the green flags.

[A]

Only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals.

[B]

Right. So that's a important part of mating intelligence. So that's hope that incels might engage in the, the looks maxing. Then there's cope, which is, you know, problematic coping mechanisms like drug taking, pornography use drugs. And we have evidence that incels engage in a lot of problematic coping mechanisms. And then finally, the most bleak of all is the idea of rope, which is suicide, as an outlet. And some of our data shows that suicidality is just so high among incels that it's really, it's really bleak to look at that data because I'm asked all the time about incels from an extremism point of view and it's my opinion, following the data, that extreme inceldom more typically looks like suicide rather than an act of violence towards others. And even the acts of violence towards others have been suicide by cop or something like this. It's an act of self destruction. So, yeah, so incels do have this external locus of control. They don't believe they can affect change. They encourage each other to lay down and rot. Jesus. Yeah, it's pretty bleak gallows humor type language they have. So lay down and rot and take the black pill, which I'm sure you've heard of. The black pill. Yes, it's a derivative of the red pill from the movie the Matrix and describes a particularly bleak truth for incels to swallow. The belief that there's nothing they could do to affect change. Um, so yeah, so that's where they're kind of stuck. And even in my interviews with incels, when I talk to them, the last question I ask in every interview is how would you no longer. How would you know you're no longer an incel? And they talk about it, invariably they all talk about it like, as if it's like alcoholism, that they could relapse. And I say, would you, how would you know you're no longer an incel? Would you need to get one girlfriend, two girlfriends have sex one time? What would have to happen? And they talk about it like, oh, no matter what, you could. It could go back. You could go back. And, you know, you get this sense that there's almost nothing is ever good enough for them in some, to some degree. So they talk about having missed out irretrievably on developmental experiences like young romantic love, early 20s or late teens. There was something so pure about that type of romantic love that I'll never have access to again. Or women, once they've had Chad, they're always going to want him in a way that they'll never want you, even if you do get to marry her. And it's like, at what stage does it become, oh, mate, like, come on, what will ever be good enough for you? One example I have is I put up some statistic about how difficult short men find it on the mating market. And tons of data out there on that, unfortunately. But one guy waded into my Twitter comments and said, I'm five foot two, I'm married with kids. And a load of incels just piled into the comments saying, oh, your wife is probably cucking you and using you for your resources. It's like, this guy is married with kids and that's not good enough for you. You know, it's like it's just hunkered down into this victim mentality all the time. All the way down.

[A]

Yeah. Frame of reference.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Frame of reference. When you can't pierce somebody's frame of reference, like, you're really in trouble and.

[B]

But I think people struggle to understand incels frame of reference of really seeing the world and believing that they never stand a chance. That's the genuine belief of many incels. It's not just this larp and obviously they hunker down into that victimhood identity, but they do. You know, if you and all your social networks were reinforcing this belief and you were, it's what we call self verification theory. So whether you see a cat or a lion in the mirror mirror, you tend to want to surround yourself with people who see the same thing. It's actually frightening and more disturbing to have someone not see you the way you see yourself. So incels actually prefer if you say to them, yes, you really would struggle on the mating market. And the worst thing you could say is, oh, you could do better. Come on, you could develop yourself, you could find a girlfriend. Surely there's still hope. They don't like that at all. Because the little bit of hope is more scary to them than no hope. No hope means you don't have to try. You never stood a chance. It was over. It's not your fault, it's someone else's fault. You're just lost out on the genetic lottery, whatever it is. But at least the game is over. You don't have to go through the anxiety of trying. And that's why they're so resistant to other incels ascending. So ascending is the word they have for when an incel is no longer an incel. And they're very resistant to this idea because it is dispels their idea that they never stood a chance. So they'll even kick an incel out of the forums if he's trying to find romantic success, or they'll call him a fake cell if he does. So it's this coalitional psychology of forming a group that's very valuable. We're social creatures. That is a very valuable evolved need to, you know, there, there would have to trade all of that coalitional psychology off in order to take their place in a mating market that, like you said, they're not confident they're going to do well in. They're exhausted with it, they're anxiety induced with it, and it's expensive and they're invariably very poor. They're highly likely to be neat, not engaged in employment, education or training. And you know, if we talked about the cost of dating, if they don't have the money, you know, and I don't want to use the term, who am I to insist? But you can understand how they would come to conclusion, I'm out, I'm no longer trying. And it must be that they're no longer trying because it's objectively impossible to prove someone is in like, incapable of forming romantic relationships. That's objectively impossible to prove, but. So that means it must be embraced. The identity must be embraced by the individual. But having researched it, I can kind of, I have a, a bit more sympathy or kind of understanding of how they would arrive at that conclusion and the incentive structure to stay in that identity rather than compete in the mating market.

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[A]

Identity. That. That is the other thing that this brings up for me. It again, Just, you can't allow yourself. If you want to flourish, remember my North Star. If you want to flourish, if you want to find ful, you cannot allow yourself to take on an identity that holds you back, slows you down, whatever.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Even if you're going to remove yourself from the dating market and say, you know, that's not a game that I want to play, like, even that I would rather see people go, you know what? Like, I don't find it worth the anxiety. And so not that I couldn't do it, it's that the amount of anxiety that I would have to face given my genetic hand, whatever, I'm not interested in playing that. Okay, cool. Like, at least now you're closer to the truth. Meaning when I think about truth, I think we are all prediction machines, and the closer you get to the truth, the more able you are to accurately predict the outcome of your behaviors. So if you're saying, look, it is true for me to go confront that, it's a ton of anxiety for me to try to get better. You know, I'm five two, my IQ's 89. Whatever. Like, you've got all these things working against you. All right? The amount of anxiety that I would have to go through in order to maximize things that are gonna matter, it's just far too exhausting. Okay, at least you're not adding a layer of falsity to all of this. Cool. We're closer. Now you can find a path to fulfillment in a different direction. Like, hey, I'm taking that one off the table because the anxiety is too high, but I know I need to find a path to fulfillment. So what is that Going to be.

[B]

What incels might say in response to that is, that's exactly what I'm doing. And I'm just commiserating with my fellow incels about that predicament. And why shouldn't I do that? Don't we all deserve social allies? You know? And so the loneliness is off the charts too. And it's interesting. When we looked at our data.

[A]

I don't want that to be a rhetorical question. So why. Why should I not do that? My first question then is going to be, what is your North Star? If your North Star is to have other people reinforce your negative view of yourself, then you're doing the right thing. Yes, but I need to hear you say my North Star is not human flourishing. It is not fulfillment. It is not having contributed anything meaningfully to this world. It is. I want to optimize for other people telling me that I'm as big of a loser as I think I am.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Now I'm done. There's nothing. Okay, cool. You've been honest about what your North Star is. I don't think it's neurochemically advantageous. But you're not lying to yourself. So I don't have any. There's nowhere for me to go.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Cool. So you've optimized for that.

[B]

I think that is exactly what a lot of incels would say is that's where I'm at. That's all I think I can get out of life.

[A]

Now they've started bullshitting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The second they say it's all I think I can get, it's like, okay, that's your problem. If you're being honest, that that's what you're optimizing for. Cool. The second you bullshit and say I. I am like in this small group of people that cannot get better at anything that would lead to fulfillment. I'm perfectly fine with you taking off the table. That I'm not going to pursue mating, which is devastating. Full acknowledgement of how devastating that is. But I'm just saying don't optimize. If that really is off the table. Let's say that you're horribly scarred over 95% of your body and your per. Your penis was burned off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cool. Mating is out for you. Get it? I'm not even gonna waste time on that. But I would not spend time thinking to yourself that you cannot optimize for fulfillment. You still don't need to optimize for having people tell you all day that it really is as bad as you think. Don't optimize for that. I get it. Why? Because Tom Bilyeu's North Star is human flourishing. As far as I can tell, evolution has given you the only recipe that's ever going to matter, which is that you have to work really hard to gain a set of skills that matter not only to you, but to the group. Cool. Now mating is a rad way to be on that path and to matter and to fight and do things for this other. This a much smaller microcosm of your significant other and your kids. But it's still the same idea. I'm contributing to this micro group. So you're going to have to pick a different micro group to go contribute to. I'm very sad that you didn't get the most obvious one that nature gives us, which is the family microcosm. But it didn't. So anyway, I'm just saying the second they say, oh, I couldn't optimize for something else, I can't get better at anything. False.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I think I tend to personally kind of agree with you, but I'm glad to hear you not demean how painful it is to lose out on feeling like you can even participate in that mating arena. Because one thing that infuriates me when a lay listener or someone who doesn't know much about this topic at all starts talking about incels and they say something like why do they care so much about mating? And I'm like, well, because we're all the result of an unbroken chain of ancestors who've solved that problem for long enough to reproduce. It's very important we build billion dollar industries around it in the form of dating apps, cosmetic surgery. It's big business. It's what people care about and it is the root to a lot of human flourishing. So it really bugs me when people say why don't they just simply care about other things? And it's like it's not that easy. But yeah, I think I tend to agree with you. And in our paper we talk about the two routes to responding to inceldom. So you can engage with the mating market again and can do maybe interventions to try and help incels re engage with the mating market. But recognizing that might not be the root that's best for every incel at that given time, maybe eventually. But as an alternative to that, you have to direct them towards better coping patterns or better forms of human flourishing without the mating market, which is a hard sell, but not impossible. Like you say, you need to find a different North Star or find a different vision for human flourishing. But yeah, it just bugs me when people kind of demeanor, that psychic pain when it's like, oh, yeah, oh, you can't get a mate. Why don't you simply care about other things? It's like, that's hard.

[A]

Well, so the great irony is you're 100% correct about the. Just the devastating reality that would be this thing is off the table that evolution is giving me a screaming desire for. And so I'm going to have to find a way to shut that off. Not shut it off, but I'm going to have to find a way to make other things matter more. But I can think of no tragedy greater than not trying. Like, and this goes back to my once. Once we develop this sort of cynical self awareness hope, Cope, rope is already run in the opposite direction. Like you even having that horrendously oversimplified thing that gives you a cool linguistic thing to hold onto. And it's clever and it's funny and gallows humor and all that. I get it. But like, I would personally. So in my marriage, we don't say the word divorce. We call it the D word. And the reason we do that is we just have to reinforce in each other that that just isn't an option. It's not a path that we take. And so we take that off the table. And so we address issues. If you go, cool, I'll do Hope, I'll do Cope. I don't do rope. Like, rope is off the table for me. And so it's like, okay, once Cope starts slipping, if rope isn't an option, then it's like, what are you going to do? What's the path around this? My wife and I played this game in our relationship, in our business, everything, no bullshit. What would it take? And when you start saying, I am going to find a path to this thing, now, I may not be willing to do it, but it puts you in a solution oriented mindset. To that end, I want to give you a question. I beg of you to ask this of everybody in your incel study. Would your emotional agony be diminished if you had an AI robot that felt like a real person in every way could pass the Turing test? Meaning having a conversation with them about the deepest, most intimate parts of your life is indistinguishable from somebody else. But you knew that that robot was programmed to preferentially find you attractive, even if you're burned to a crisp. Penis got burned off, whatever. But that robot just loves you. By programming, are you good with it or do you still need to think of yourself as a loser?

[B]

I think that what you described would scratch one itch for incels the kind of the loneliness need, the sexual need potentially as well. But it wouldn't scratch the feeling like a loser itch because there's no status afforded to men who have the best artificially intelligent girlfriend. There's no status afforded to that. So it'll scratch one itch for incels, but it won't scratch the other. It reminds me of that movie her. Have you seen that one with the AI girlfriend? And it's just devastating to think. But that could be a dystopian kind of future.

[A]

But it's devastating. For what reason? Why is her the movie? For those that haven't seen it, maybe your answer will explain. But why is her devastating? Because for me, it's only devastating for one reason.

[B]

Yeah. And it just, it reminds me a lot of people say why can't incels just use sex workers? There's plenty of sex workers out there. But again, it'll only scratch that one itch. It won't scratch the itch of being sexually selected. Being sexually selected means you're seen as high status. You, how do you describe it? You've done. You've shown competence in your arena, you've shown value, you've created something, you've been chosen. And achieving romantic success is tied up with status for men in a loop. And that's just not going to be achievable by getting the best AI girlfriend.

[A]

That's interesting. So being selected as a proxy for. I'm impressing other people just in general that I'm high status.

[B]

Yeah. There's an interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with Ayla on Twitter. She's like this kind of public intellectual, runs these massive surveys of like sex surveys with 50, 000 Twitter respondents. But she has this kind of pet theory. I think it's Ayla I heard it from. If it's not, I heard it somewhere else. That a lot of men aren't, don't crave having sex with really attractive women all that much. But they love the status it kind of affords them the actual sex that could kind of go without. They'd be happy having sex with their looks match more. But the actual status that comes with being seen as having been able to an attractive woman is so seductive. I think there's something to that for me. Yeah.

[A]

Not for me because I'm super rich. So like I could in theory get Very attractive women just based on that status alone. And man, in my narrow little piece of the universe, I'm also well known. So it's like recognizable to a narrow band of humanity and very wealthy. That is not interesting to me at all for insecurity reasons. So it's like I would much rather be with somebody I think is in my sexual market value on a lot of different dimensions, including age, if I'm honest. Like the Leonardo DiCaprio thing. I'm like, bro, do you just look way better naked than I do? Which I doubt. What the fuck. Like, I want to be. And my wife, God bless her cotton socks, is definitely in better shape than I am. But there's. It's a pretty narrow band. Like I wouldn't let myself go farther because then I would feel like out of her league. That would just. I would not like that feeling at all. So again, not. That doesn't resonate with me. Not because I think I'm cool. The exact opposite. I have insecurities around it. And just the thought of like being with a 20 something. No way. No way. Like, that's crazy town. Even though, like from a porn perspective.

[B]

Word.

[A]

But like from a reality perspective. No thanks.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting because it obviously comes through quite strongly how much you admire and love your wife. But I'm looking forward to hearing about how you make that one sell tonight when you tell her about it. I'd rather not.

[A]

Oh, no, no. My wife, dude, when I say that we have talked about everything. Yeah. If my wife were in her twenties, that would not. I thoroughly enjoyed my wife in her twenties when I was in my twenties too. Yeah. But no, I'm very glad that we are both aging. Even though I'm held to a different standard. That's still. I don't know, like, I feel like whatever that thing is that lets old guys be with super young women. Be with. I get the. Find them attractive. Yeah, I find them attractive. But be with triggers.

[B]

That's a very mature way of looking at it. Very refreshing to hear. But yeah, my supervisor describes it as men are cursed as they get older to be attracted to women that are never going to desire them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like, oh man.

[A]

When I think about the most brutal. This will be interesting saying if we have any incels listening now, but they say that the worst moment for a man, and this resonates with me is the moment that a woman finds you harmless. It's like, oh God, like I would rather be intimidating than harmless.

[B]

Like interesting.

[A]

That's Brutal.

[B]

Yeah. A brutal black pill, as the incels would say.

[A]

Yeah, that, that one is rough. Okay, so you. So going back to her, the reason that I found that movie rough is that in the end he gets rejected even by the AI who's just like, look, humans are just too boring. We can all think it like so much faster and talk to so many more people at one time. We're just going to peace out. So that's why that's rough. But I, when I think about AI and look, I, I'm paranoid. I don't think AI is some utopia. I don't think there are utopias. I think there are only trade offs. But if I were an incel, I'd be like, AI. Oh, word, sex, robots. Word.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I would be, I would be at least like, it doesn't scratch all the itch. Yeah, I hear you. But having some of the itch scratch, like, look, my dog is not a child. I'm aware of that. I think it says cringe when people like post. Yeah, like my wife does it. I even think of myself like my wife will refer to me in front of our dog as dad. So look, I buy into it. Like I get it. I just wouldn't post about it. But it does scratch part of that itch. And it, it does it enough that I'm like, this is actually a part of my strategy in terms of not having kids is having a pet and being like, hey, this is a thing. And also this is really controversial. I'm surprised at how negatively people respond to this. I'm not necessarily proud of the following statement, but it's real, man. It represents a real thought that I have when AI kids become a thing and you can speed up their development. Because the reason I don't want to have kids is I can't fathom like 20 plus years, my wife becoming my number two or number three or number four, depending on how many kids we have. It's like that didn't strike me as a good idea for my marriage. So. But if I could have a kid where I'm like the first two years I want to go by over a weekend because this is a non biological entity, I can speed up its development as much as I want. So for a weekend we'll have a zero to two year old. Fine. Then I want the terrible twos. You know, maybe we spend a week with that just to feel like we earned it. Right. Then three to seven. Maybe I want to slow that down because those are some pretty magical years where they want to be around you. They've got a real personality. And then the teenage years, oh, God, I can't even deal with that. So again, we reduce the entire teenage span to a week or two weeks or, you know, however much suffering we want to do. And then when they hit, you know, 25, and they're like, oh, my parents aren't as dumb as I thought. We slow that back down. Right. So I could see that being a part of my strategy, if I'm really honest, especially if they're in learning mode. And so they really start to reflect your values and stuff. So you're like, oh, my God, like, this is so cool to see my ideas reflect it, like in a quote unquote living thing. So anyway, I, I would. Man, I just cannot, because of my frame of reference. I cannot adopt the lay down and rot mentality and just feel like there are a lot of paths to fulfillment, not necessarily getting laid. Yeah, so I hear you. Yeah, about. They're still not being sexually selected. Yeah, there are other paths.

[B]

I like your kind of white pillow push back against the dystopia that this technological future might bring. And Chris Williamson brought me on to talk about this very thing with him. We talked about this dystopian future of AI girlfriends and things like that. And one white pill that we thought about might be that incels or sexless young men might use a very sophisticated, artificially intelligent girlfriend. Yes, they might retreat from the mating market altogether. And, you know, this AI girlfriend might leap out of the uncanny valley and even surpass a flesh and blood girlfriend, but it wouldn't come with the status. So what they might do instead is use this AI girlfriend as a training ground. I've said a few times on the podcast now, there's no training ground for the mating market, except if you actually have a virtual reality AI, artificially intelligent girlfriend that you can practice on and improve your prospects for the real world mating market. That would come with status. So maybe. And now the pushback I get on that is people say, oh, well, yeah, people don't use pornography to learn about how to be good lovers in bed, do they? And it's like, no, that's not true. But this isn't quite the same thing. It's. It's a little bit different, I like to think. But yeah, the future of. I didn't even think about the idea of artificially intelligent kids and why that might be preferable, especially if you talk about when they begin to mirror you and you see yourself in them. Because all our data show that parents invest more heavily in kids that look and behave like them like to a massive degree. So that would be. The AI might be able to parastasize that parenting mechanism for a lot of people and there could be advantages to it above and beyond the investment in an actual offspring.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Looking brave new world.

[A]

Yeah, I get how this is a brave new world and probably dystopia. And it's super weird that humans rush towards it. And if this were an AI conversation I would, I would lean into that. But for now, full caveat for all of the like propensity for dystopia. Just setting that aside for this conversation, I do find it, it very interesting what will happen when that comes online from. From an every everybody perspective for sure. But certainly from an incel perspective like because that the status problem that you're talking about. Much like it was considered just so cringe to do online dating in the beginning and now it's just like what 70% of people meet online first. Yeah. So it's like eh, the fact that your girlfriend is AI. Like it will be super gross for 10 years or whatever and then it will just be like wait, you're dating a. That's so weird. Again, I understand the dystopia elements, but it's like when computers have human level intelligence and there is only when you cut into them from a surgical perspective they're different, but from the outside you don't notice. They will feel the same. They'll find a way to make them the same weight, they'll have the same intellect. They'll effectively program them to be human. Like but you'll be able to pick the traits that match you and then adjust them as you go. Like dude, for instance. If my wife could make minor adjustments to me, she would a hundred percent like the fact that I. It drives me crazy when things are inefficient. So I will leave things out because it's far more efficient for it to be sitting out. I know right where it is. Right. But it drives my wife crazy. She wants everything hidden. So she would adjust me, tweak, tweak. If she could, I would do the same to her. Like, like stop hiding things for the love of God. And I know it sounds funny but like that actually is a source of real tension in our marriage and has been for 22 years. So it's like yes, I would make that go away, as would she. And so you get into these people would just start making tweaks until it was awesome. And here's one thing you think you want to tweak all the friction away and then you do that and you're like, actually, I need a little friction.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so you tweak the friction back in and then you find, look, 7% friction, 93% get along is perfect. And then it's awesome.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I tend to agree with you. Definitely agree with you on the leaving things out for easy access. If they're hidden away, I forget that they're there. I had the exact same fights with girlfriends in my past, for sure. So I'm with you on that one. But yeah, definitely this idea of. But humans have also this biophilia, this kind of innate love of the natural. And one example I'll use to illustrate that is the resistance to artificial wombs and to in vitro meat. Both of which are kind of peculiar because women in particular are resistant to the idea of an artificial womb. And that's crazy to me when I think of how many women lose their lives in childbirth, how dangerous, how costly it is for women to engage in natural childbirth. Childbirth. They should be the ones banging the drum for artificial wombs. So emancipatory. But they're not, because it strips them of some sort of essence. And I've ran the polls on my Twitter, actually, and I'd love to see these studies done in greater depth. But it was women in particular that was very resistant to this idea of artificial wombs. A completely safe technology, hypothetical technology, very peculiar to me. Just this biophilia that you're in love with, this natural. So maybe we'll put up more of a resistance to it than we think. The other one is in vitro meat. People find it kind of icky to eat lab meat that's cultivated in a petri dish, but they don't find it icky to actually kill and eat an animal. Remarkable. Just this.

[A]

Do you think either of those will fall as they become more prevalent?

[B]

I do. I do think they'll fall, but there's one or both. I would say the in vitro meat will fall faster. I mean, people are even already running towards like artificial meats and stuff like that. But there is some people who still are. Initially, when they came on the market, people were like, would you really eat fake meats? And it's like, yes.

[A]

I personally have no pushback on that one as long as they can figure out how you get the micronutrients of like rich soil into it. Because my feeling is that will be non trivial and that if we're not. Not the meat that you eat is a product of what that meat ate. Even the same is true of vegetables. Like, it's eating something from the soil and the air, presumably. So it's like, what is it intaking? And so we'd have to be thoughtful about that. But if we can solve that problem. The meat thing, I don't have a problem with, but the. The womb thing, that one I get like, that one feels like for. This actually isn't true. This is interesting. I'm peering into my own soul right now. I was going to say that I would have a problem with artificial insemination. And then I thought, well, wait a second, do you. Would I, like, if I knew I could pick? Like, they. They show me up on a screen, which, by the way, this is going to happen. They're going to be able to show you this exact sperm with this exact egg will yield this exact child. And so pick. And they give you, like the option of 50 kids with different height, looks, intelligence, like, personality traits, all of it. And I would do that in a heartbeat.

[B]

Yeah. Embryo selection is just around the corner for sure. But yeah, and you know, you mentioned about the artificial insemination. Like, you know, test tube babies. Now they're completely considered normal. You know, I remember at the time the Catholic church had big problems with them. They won't have a soul. They'll be all psychopathic and all this stuff like, wow, what a ridiculous thing to think. They obviously seem to be normal human beings. Will the same be said about artificial womb babies down the line? It could be that we just embrace the technology pretty without much friction, but it's that idea that it strips women of this natural role, this natural.

[A]

I don't think we're going to get over the womb one fast. This is obviously my bias of speaking here, but when I think about that one, it does feel like because I reacted some kind of way when. God would this have been in the 90s when women started going like, oh, men, what do we need men for? We can take artificial insemination. We don't need guys. And I was like, ooh, I don't like the way that feels. And if there's an artificial womb.

[B]

Yeah. Is it freeing women or is it making them irrelevant, making them redundant? It's. Yeah, but this is the very evolutionary novel time we live in. While it's very emancipatory to free ourselves of the hostile forces of nature, it actually means we're not relying on each other in the ways we have for hundreds of thousands of years. It's a very Strange time.

[A]

Yeah, it's a very strange time. Talk to me about how we rely on each other because one thing that I see happening in the dating market, that makes me really sad. And as somebody who is just a huge fan of love, if you look at the other sex as your adversary, you are already in trouble.

[B]

Yes, I'm glad to hear you say that because that's my optimistic response to when I see this kind of discourse, culture of very adversarial men versus women type thing, I get very annoyed at that because we are each other's best ally. But ultimately I just laugh in the face of it because all those concerted efforts to get men and women to hate each other are pushing up against so many selection pressures throughout our ancestral history that are causing men and women to be equipped to love each other. You know, we'll rebound.

[A]

I've heard you say this before, we'll rebound. But there is a trifecta of books that I think should be mandatory reading. And I mean this I'm not a big fan of. Everybody should do something but this one. We should teach these in school. And they are the Gulag Archipelago. Okay. Mao, the Unknown Story and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And when you realize that we'll rebound, I'm with you there. But that when 100 million people are dying, that doesn't help. That is not like, oh, don't worry, 100 years from now, everybody's going to be fine. Right now though, people are dying by the millions and I really don't want to see this happen. And so I feel like, yes, there is all this evolutionary pressure of like, no, no, no, when you cooperate, things are better. And so there'll be all these sort of neurochemical cues that will eventually get somebody to say, hey, guys, think we're approaching this wrong way. Look at this. This will feel a lot better. People try it out and they're like, yeah, this is better. Then those people grow up and they teach their kids, hey, do this. But that's a long, slow cycle. And in the interim, things can go very, very wrong.

[B]

Yeah. And it's not a non trivial harm, these concerted efforts to get men and women to hate each other and be adversarial, even if it doesn't have the mass effect. If I'm, you know, yeah, more optimistic about our evolved psychology being more powerful. But yeah, you're right, it's not nice to see. And we should challenge it in the cultural conversation for sure.

[A]

So how do we begin to challenge that? How do we get people to stop seeing each other as adversaries.

[B]

I think my friend Chris Williamson talks about it, this kind of idea of the third wave of the red pill kind of thing. This idea that we need to move towards a very accurate cross sex mind reading psychology. So to try and educate the sexes about how the other side sees it genuinely really grapple with that because you know, we, I think we kind of only pay lip service to that mission really of trying to see it as the other side sees it. And one example I'll use there to show a real failure of cross sex mind reading is incels. When they're asked, or men in particular are asked, is there any such thing as a female incel? Why is there no such thing as a female incel? And incels would usually say, well most women can go out and get some sex or some love or some relationship if they want. It might not be the sex or love that they want, but they can get some. And for incels or for men in particular, some is always better than none. But that's not the case for women. For women, sex or relationships is very costly or potentially very costly cost inflicting thing. So it's not like for men sex is like pizza. There's good pizza and there's pizza, there's no bad pizza. But for women there really is bad pizza because it's a costly thing and they'd rather go without. So incels are using their male typical psychology to try to empathize or not empathize with their female counterparts and say oh no, you have some rather than none, that's better. But that's only using male typical psychology. For women that's not the case.

[A]

So is there a female version of incel? It won't be tied to maybe mate selection, but what's the thing where they want it so badly and they can't have it? And to them it's hope, cope, rope maybe.

[B]

I don't think it'll be an exact analog, but there will be the case of so many women who say they're struggling to find, and I know the term is a bit of a grating one for many incels, but eligible men or men that they want to be with. So when you're left with the choice of either mate down or don't mate at all, that doesn't seem like a great luxury. Incels think that's a great luxury. They would say I'd mate down in a minute, that would solve my problem. But that's not a solution to the problem. For women. So it amounts to the same thing. And when I'm asked about where is the female incel community? There is a growing femcel community of kind of similar to incels hanging out in online forums and all that stuff.

[A]

And they're saying my problem is that I can't get sexually selected.

[B]

Yes, similar enough. But the more analogous FEMCEL situation is kind of hidden in plain sight. It's these mainstream media articles about women being unable to find eligible men. They're more likely the involuntary single. Rather, it's not the exact same thing, but the difference is you have mainstream media support and sympathy for these women and it's, oh, men are not economically attractive enough or not eligible enough for these women. There's no such kind of sympathy for the incel situation. So the female incel community is kind of hidden in plain sight. It's these women who can't find men to meet their standards.

[A]

Very interesting. Taking your own hypothesis, though, I'm wondering if that's the one. So you said that that extreme incel behavior probably looks like suicidality. So they hate themselves. That's like their primary thing. It actually isn't misogyny. Their primary. I forget, toxic language, I think is

[B]

what you called it. Yes, that's right.

[A]

Is self hatred.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so what is the thing that makes women have a primary language of self hatred? Is it I can't find eligible men? Is it I'm unlovable? Is it I'm not loved by my parents? I don't know. I'm trying to. Because women are more likely, if I'm not mistaken, they're more likely to be suicidal to attempt. They're less likely to complete by a lot. But they're more likely to be suicidal.

[B]

Yes. And more neurotic. Just generally.

[A]

So is it that they just feel negative about any slight. And so it isn't specified to something like sex, and that just is where men sort of hyper respond.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you could frame the incel problem as. We could argue that there's too much of a hyper fixation on the sexual component. These are just lonely young men who've retreated from society more broadly. They lack friendships, they lack jobs, education. They're not engaging with society.

[A]

So you're not gonna find incels that are great at something.

[B]

Very few. Right. And I hear some incels screaming now, watching this, saying, no, everything is correct in my life. I have a great life. And that's true for a minority, but for the most part, they seem these very disenfranchised Young men like the hikikimori in Japan. Are you familiar with the hikikimori?

[A]

Most people won't be. So please tell.

[B]

So the hikikimori, if we look at Japan over the recent decades, it describes a lost generation of young men who've just completely retreated and barely even leave their. Leave their homes. And they just get food delivered, play video games all day, and don't engage with society. That could be a glimpse of why

[A]

it happened to Japanese.

[B]

The Japanese, I'm not sure exactly why, but they're very technologically advanced. Right. And with kind of online culture. So it might be a glimpse into the future there of the idea of men hanging out in online worlds all day. 20 years ago would have seemed very, very strange to us. Now it doesn't seem that strange now. You can very much imagine it. So maybe Japan is just a glimpse into the future there with the hikikimori. And I haven't studied it too deeply, but I believe there's a massive absence of fathers in those homes. So just kind of. Jordan Peterson talks about it, about the devouring mother who just wants to keep their son safe and get them their food, don't need to leave the house, son, and the son is going to walk all over them. In terms of dominating the mother from rules, I didn't understand that.

[A]

Say that again.

[B]

So if you have a father figure, I don't think there's many fathers who are going to tolerate their son staying inside, getting food delivered to the house, getting their mom to clean up after them. They're gonna say get up and go out and do something. But if you have an absence of that, the son might feel able to kind of maybe push over the single mother who wants to keep him safe as the paramount value and safe and comfortable, and get the food delivered, clean up after them, play your games. And it's very pacifying. And that's kind of what you see as typical with the hikikomori.

[A]

Yeah. This is why I really think the, the friction between male and female temperaments is so necessary. So I read this book a long time ago called the Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. And he talked about how, hey, I think a big problem in society is that there are no more rituals. And because there are no coming of age rituals, you get this interminable youth where there is no moment where you take the kid out into the woods, you kick his teeth in, you circumcise him with no anesthetic, you make them kill a lion. I mean, they. There are some crazy coming of age rituals that have existed. And when I read that, I was like, whoa. Because that very much my journey was I grew up ultimately soft. My dad just got frustrated when I would be weak. But he didn't know how to say, say, hey, kid, you need to toughen up, or he didn't know how to say it in a way that I could hear. He would just give up and. And go do something else. And what I needed was to be around people that just did not tolerate that. And so my wife certainly began that process. And then getting in business was the market does not care forgiving. And it's like, yeah, you either figure it out or you don't. And so in. In pursuit of getting good at that, that I gave myself over to reality, I guess is the right way to say it. And so the idea of the devouring mother who feeds into that, into that, into that is really played out in these rituals. And so in the book the Power Myth, I think, anyway, I've read about this so many times, I can't remember which one. Let's say it was the power of Myth. He talked about how what would happen is the. The night or the day, whatever, whenever this ritual happens, happened, the son would be in with the women, and they would come in, ritualistically tear him away from the mother, who either performatively or for real, is like, no, no, no, don't take him. And so they would rip him away from the mother to be like, okay, that world is done. That door is closed. And then they would go do whatever. And the one that my audience will have heard me say many times is what Nelson Mandela went through, which his book Long While to Freedom is absolutely extraordinary. And then he talks about his coming of age ritual. I think he was 14. And they get you and like three or four other boys, they sit you down buck naked. They have you in front of the whole village. They have you sit there leg spread, and I don't know, shaman or whatever comes with a really sharp rock, grabs your foreskin and just lops it off. And then you have to yell a warrior's credo. I forget what it was he says in the book. And I just thought, yo, like, as terrifying as that is having a moment like that where you have to go through something where you are ritualistically removed from the world of the feminine. And it's not a coincidence that they have you yell this warrior credo to shift you into. You are now different. And I need to go back and reread this, but I'm Pretty sure that then what they do is they cover your entire body in mud. And then as it dries that night or the next day, I can't remember, a young woman comes in and washes it off your naked body. And I said, whoa. Like, it's so, like it's such a thing. Like you pass through this moment. And if I'm not conflating that, and it really is, a young woman comes and wipes it off. There's really something that indoctrinates you into like that whole world. I don't know, man. Like, I find that really interesting. And as I try to think through, the problem of societal context has changed. We've become hyper aware. I don't like the way that hyper awareness makes you cynical, but I also like the way that we can refine some of these rituals. And now I'm sort of answering my own question from the very beginning of this. Like, how do we back off that precipice when we're so aware of this stuff? And I know that there are guys out there now creating these groups where they do take boys and like these, these hard retreats. And they talk to them hard in a way they probably never get talked about. Like, stop crying. I don't want to hear it. I know. Trust me. Comments. Freaking out. But I'm telling you, as a boy, that needed to learn. I was way in touch with my emotions. That was not the lesson I needed to learn. And so it was like I had to also learn to have a gear of being tough as. And like you have to have that gear. If you don't have that gear, I don't care how in touch with your emotions are. Life is going to be brutal in a way. It does not need to be brutal if you figure out the other gear. Now, my marriage is a result of me being in touch with my emotions, being highly articulate, understanding my insecurities, all that very useful. But if I didn't also have this other gear. Yeah, no bueno.

[B]

That's so interesting to see and to hear about those kind of archetypal motifs come through with those rituals you described, like the devouring mother. It's even echoed in the way they do the ritual. Ritual. That's so interesting. But yeah, the lack of ritual, at least whatever about the character of the ritual itself, the. The marker of having achieved a certain stage in life. There's a complete absence of that now. There's just a delayed adolescence and kind of a when do you do a certain thing? It's kind of. And Even like the mating market, the way it works, there's no clear cut blueprint. It's very atomized. There's no one helping you. You know, for most of our ancestral history, you would have had your friends or your family helping you form your mate ships. Now it's just you and the app. Very isolating, very atomized. And yeah, it's not. There's no ritual about it. Do people even set each other up on dates anymore? I don't think that's a done thing anymore. It's just very isolating.

[A]

What do you think about arranged marriages?

[B]

It's interesting when you look at them, they have like a success rate of people who fall in love more. Because the idea is that, well, when you didn't have that much choice and you weren't thinking, what's my way out? When you think, well, I have no way out, it's kind of like you had described with your wife. The D word is not an option. That's really not an option in an arranged marriage. So they tend to make the best out of it. So that's probably what we find.

[A]

Is there data that they're more successful?

[B]

There's some data, I believe, that shows they're more successful because it's just that when you reduce the other options, it's like, well, might as well make the most out of this. And I'm not going to second guess my husband's annoying habits of leaving everything out on the counter because this is my husband and that's it, you know,

[A]

so that's really interesting. So this was something that my wife and I came to very early and I'm very grateful for. It was when we got together, we said, okay, the experiment we're running is what does it look like when somebody shares a life forever? And. And there are going to be certain constraints that we have to put on our relationship to make sure that works. And one of them is we can't, what we call let dust settle. So you can't just let something go that bothers you. You have to address it and you have to come up with rules of engagement. So around me liking things to be efficient, her liking things to be tidy, we've had to come up with rules of engagement of how we navigate that thing. Also coming to understand the difference between a collision in base assumptions, which is, I think the world works like this, and difference in values. I think the world ought to work like this. And when you have a difference in base assumptions, like, oh, I never considered a different angle. I didn't Realize I had that base assumption. Thank you for pointing that out. Now I can adjust. And one of us is right about, you know, it. It. I had just never considered another thing. And we're moving from base assumption to value system. Going from, well, this is how it is, but it's not necessarily how it ought to be. It ought to be like this. And can we it. And so realizing when you have a conflict of values, you have a problem. And when you have a conflict of values, I understand your position. You understand my position. I can articulate your position so well that you will say the words you understand my position perfectly and vice versa. And I still think you're wrong.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so now we have to have a rule of how we deal with that thing. But if you don't say there's no. And look, my wife and I have always said there are three things that we will not, not tolerate for a second. Beating and cheating. And a loveless marriage. Okay, so you beat, you cheat, done. And then if this becomes a loveless marriage, if we can't unwind that, then of course we would exit. So. But we're doing everything that we can. Like I promise my wife, I guarantee it, I will never cheat on you, ever. I may break up with you, but I'm never going to cheat on you because that's in my control. But if I've become someone happy or, you know, whatever, then I would address that first. But if you don't put those confines, because as I really again just thinking through the initial question that we asked, like how, how do you back away from all this? I think you, you have to have confines. You have to have self imposed limitations. And yes, I understand that some of the argument is like, oh my God, are you telling people what to do? Yes, I am telling you what to do. And the question I'm all ten fingers are pointed at me. I'm telling myself what to do because why I have a North Star and that North Star is very definable and it is human flourishing. And I think the way to human flourish is through the recipe of fulfillment. And the recipe of fulfillment just has limitations. And I forget where I first heard this, but your goal makes demands. And once you decide my goal is human flourishing, it makes demands. And one of those demands as far as I can see, is there are going to be limitations put on something somewhere, probably a lot of things.

[B]

That's kind of what I was getting at earlier about this. The maybe corrosive nature of the primary value for people being freedom. And no Nothing being imposed upon me. You seem like the type of guy that you and your wife and your relationship, for the service of that higher goal, you're happy to accept kind of impositions on yourself and, like, rules and things like that. And that seems quite healthily integrated. And there seems to be a kind of a cultural resistance against that tendency type of thing. And it's like, no, nobody should control you except you. The individual, hyper individualism is.

[A]

I can actually, like, I don't hackle at. Nobody should be able to control you but you at the edges. I'm not a libertarian. I. We need some government, but I think governments become very pathological, so you have to have a very big distrust for that. So I don't hackle at that statement a lot. But what I think gets thrown out in the baby and the bathwater is that I think people think that means you shouldn't have constraints. I'm just saying you should be able to choose your constraints.

[B]

Yes. And you tend to choose them. Yeah.

[A]

And you're. You, in my estimation, should be choosing your constraints based on what is the outcome of this situation without these constraints.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's where I feel like we've gotten into some weird politically correct quagmire where people don't want to talk about what is true and that. And look, I asked my audience for a lot of grace on this, and I guess in the macro, I get it because people still watch my content if you read the comments. Not always in the micro, but I need to be able to think through these topics and the way that we think. I mean, literally, these conversations are my way of thinking through these problems. I get to say things out loud that could be horrendously terrible ideas. But if I can't say them out loud, I can't find the edges of where they work and where they stop. Stop working.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. And that's like. Your audience has to be kind of like a family and charitable to you in terms of. Yeah. Latitude to think things through out loud.

[A]

Family.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I don't need my audience to be a family. A. I just don't think that's realistic. But what I do want is for them to recognize at a societal level, forget me as an individual, even forget themselves as an individual. At the societal level, if you can't talk about ideas and work through them and all collectively go, that's a terrible idea. And that's a great idea. As evidenced by the result that we get not what sounds good but actually yields the right result, then we Won't be able to make progress towards human flourishing as a society.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. But you kind of get that organically with your family members. They kind of give you that latitude to talk. They don't forget everything they knew about you. When you say something wrong, it's like, oh, he said something wrong. But I know it's not exactly what he means. There's this very uncharitable kind of dynamic towards people now. The minute they make a slip up with saying something, particularly online, it's like, gotcha. That's it. That's you. Forever and always. It's not. Yeah. We look at people in just isolation like that.

[A]

How do you deal with that? Because you're somebody who's on a. An academic track, the academy has become very feminized and the feminine mode of fighting is reputation dismantling. And so you're somebody out here popping off on a podcast with a guy that's saying some crazy. You might say some crazy. How do you think about that as an academic?

[B]

Luckily, I haven't been burned by it so far. Fingers crossed. But, yeah, I'm kind of lucky enough to have financial support that I don't need to kind of be so worried about. Oh, I have to get any academic job. I kind of want an academic job where I'll feel happy and secure and free to think and research the topics I want to research, talk about things the way I want to talk about them. I don't know if you heard my supervisor, he did an episode with Joe Rogan and he said that this year was one of the first times in like a 30 year career where he went to the dean of the university to say, I want to be able to teach sex and gender and sexuality the way I know I need to make sure I have your backing or I'm not going to teach it in case, if there's any complaints, I need to make sure I have your backing before I do. And he got that guarantee. And that was the first time he had ever done anything like that. That's a very odd thing for me to learn because he's someone who's an absolute legend in our field. And I'm like, if he needs to get those assurances, maybe I ought to be a bit more wary. But yeah, I kind of only want to work in an academic job that I would want and I'd never want to be one in one that I'm going to be completely hamstrung and not able to think about the things I want to think about. Or talk about the things I want

[A]

to talk about, man, long may that continue. And speaking of the pendulum swinging back, I do feel some momentum now in the opposite direction. For a long time, that was why I didn't even really want to formulate thoughts around this stuff, because I, I didn't want to be incongruous. So I didn't want to believe something privately that I was unwilling to say publicly. But at the same time, it just seemed so dangerous. I was like, I don't love that idea. And honestly, while I love doing the podcast, I love doing the podcast. My wife asked me the other. I'm trying to build the next Disney. Like, that's my identity. My identity is not as Tony Robbins or Joe Rogan. My identity is Walt Disney. Disney. That is what I want to build. And so I've always been a little worried that I'll damage the brand because the brand becomes a visual representation of my thoughts and feelings, which may or may not work. We are very much a mission driven company, which is, I want to empower people to live by a set of ideas that will actually lead them to human flourishing. But yeah, I've always been a little bit, bit worried about that, but I've, for better or worse, sort of thrown that to the wind. Anyway, my wife asked me if, if that side of the business were to take off, would I stop doing the podcast? And I was like, yes, I would. So it's interesting. But anyway, I, for better or worse, I've decided that to think through these problems, well, myself, to be a useful conduit to society. And I think podcasts have really become this incredible mechanism by which the culture thinks through problems. Forget any one of us individually, the culture thinks through problems via podcasts where we can get, I mean, think about how weird this is that a doctoral student, I get to bring him in and like, okay, you're studying this thing, like, tell me all about it. And then the world gets to hear you do that. It's crazy.

[B]

And there is an appetite for people to watch long form conversations just between two guys. Like, that's pretty cool. Like, who could have saw that coming? You know, they talked about, like, HBO Max. The public audience has an attention span. You got to keep it. Who could have ever predicted you could sell out arenas with guys having a debate and things like that? It's remarkable. It's great. It re engaged a whole generation with intellectual life. It's brilliant.

[A]

No, it's been cool. And I'm, look, I'll give a shout out to Jordan Peterson, who I've had on the show a couple times, would love to have him back again. I don't want his life. I can't fathom how many slings and arrows he's taken. At one point he said that he was in the middle of like 10 lawsuits. I was just like, Jesus, man, that would be exhausting at a level that I just can't fathom. Strangely enough, I heard you bring up free speech. Somebody asked you for the closing question or were like, what's a thing you would leave people? And you said free speech. I was shocked by that. What are your thoughts on free speech?

[B]

Yeah, it's just something that I think people don't appreciate as a master value value enough. It's the only way mechanism through which you can kind of self correct yourself as a society. I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question. Oh, you need to. Who said that? I don't remember, but it's a good one. But that's exactly the way I feel. But I think free speech as a value, like kind of people give lip service to it, but they really don't mean it. And I think we really need to re engage that part of ourselves like as a core value in the social fabric. It's a huge master value that needs to be respected.

[A]

I agree. Speaking of things you can't question, evolutionary psychology comes under attack a lot. I don't understand why it seems so self evident to me. Why does it? What is people's beef with evolutionary psychology?

[B]

I think a lot of that can be described with the naturalistic fallacy. So that's where the belief that because some of our findings grapple with findings dark aspects of human nature, that what we're saying is natural is seen as to say that that's good, you're justifying it, justifying it. And that's precisely the opposite. The only way you can overcome some of the dark aspects of your nature. So like Darwin talked about the hostile forces of nature, there's a lot of hostile forces of our own human nature that we need to overcome. And we do it all the time, like physical violence. We have instincts for those that we overcome all the time. But you need to be able to understand them and there's no point in burying your head in the sand. So I think that a lot of people have that criticism. I think also people don't are become increasingly resistant to sex differences because they see some as being demeaning to others. I don't really know why I Can't fully explain everything that's going on in the full resistance to sex differences. But there is this cultural drive to pretend that men and women are the same and treat them the same.

[A]

But do you think they're pretending a little bit or do they really believe it?

[B]

So it was very interesting. My supervisor wrote a book called When Men Behave Badly, the Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. And in one of the chapters where he talks about sex differences, he tops the chapter with a quote from the intersectional feminist Kimberly Cremshaw and says, when you treat different things the same and you get. That's not a recipe for equality. You need that's the same. That's the same as oppression. It's treating different things the exact same. So if you treat men and women the exact same and pretend there are no differences between them, that's actually oppressive and often to women. So one example I'll use is the reasonable person standard for sexual crime. So I mentioned earlier in the episode that men perceive sexual harassment and stalking and crimes of this nature as far less harmful than women do. So when we have a legal system that relies on reasonable person standard, it very much matters whether that reasonable person is a reasonable woman or a reasonable man. So that's just a very kind of thought experiment to think, whoa, actually, sex differences could have a huge function here. We maybe shouldn't consider things as the same. You know, we're not just completely exactly the same. So that's an interesting way to look at it.

[A]

This is really powerful. This is something that I come around to in my marriage all the time. And I'm telling my wife constantly, you're judging my behavior based on what it would mean if you did. Isn't what it means when I do it. And so you have to be really careful to your earlier point about theory of mind and like, trying to get into the other person's mind and figure out, okay, what. What does it mean when a guy does it or a girl does it? And so, yeah, I'll go back to this idea of boys and girls. Yeah, we're all prediction engines. And you are closer to the truth when you can more accurately predict the outcome of your behaviors. When I view my wife as thinking the way that I think, she confuses the life out of me. And I'm like, why are you responding like that? That doesn't make any sense. When I think of her as a more typical woman, then it's like, oh, I get it, okay, from your frame of reference, you're going to respond like that very predictably got it understood. And that like in just trying to alleviate the suffering of other people, I'm like, you will do yourself a great service if you come to understand at the individual level. There's always going to be surprises 100% where these are bell curves, the difference between men and women. Bell curves. We have more in common than we have different. But if you don't understand where the bell curves begin to diverge, you will be very confused, especially on any metric where you're towards the end of the bell curve. So if you're towards the one end of the bell curve on, on a trait, let's say sexual desire. So you're towards the high end of male sexual desire, just massive drive. And your significant other mother is on the low end of the female spectrum for sexual desire now it's like she's so far lower than the lowest man that it's like bro, yeah, you're so much farther high than the highest woman. She's so much farther low than the lowest man that that is. You better understand the differences otherwise you will take it personally.

[B]

Yeah. If nothing else, that's literally what our lab is focusing on researching now is this cross sex theory of mind, how accurate or inaccurate is each sex about these massive sexual psychology, differences in sexual desires, in perception of the cost of sexual harm, things like that. And a more accurate cross sex theory of mind is the first step to reducing sexual conflict. Because you know, there are so many examples. It's why men send dick pics and think because they would love to receive such a picture themselves. They think maybe I wouldn't like it.

[A]

I baby, if you're listening, I would love it if you took pictures of your, your lovely bits and just sent them to me in a non stop barrage.

[B]

There's a funny article. Some buzzfeed journalist actually tried to do this experiment. She said she was going to have revenge on all the men who send her dick pics and just send them pussy pics in return.

[A]

Talk about a failure to cross sex. Mind read.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Guys like bring it on.

[B]

Yes, but there are also some other dark examples of failures of cross sex mind reading. So do you remember Brock Turner, the. The swimmer is a swimmer athlete that raped this girl behind a dumpster and two guys stopped him and his father said, oh, but he only, why should he have to sacrifice his whole future? The whole thing only lasted about 20 seconds. Oh God. And it's like, oh wow, what a failure of cross legs. Mind reading. There's other examples of a Texas governor I believe or some politician where he said if a woman is getting raped and she can't get out of it, she might as well just lay back and enjoy it. And all of these things are like extreme examples of massive failures of cross sex mind reading that if you understood how bad that is for the woman, you would never be able that's pretty bad even for a man, right?

[A]

Because if I'm getting raped and the guy's like, well, you can't get out of it, bro, you might as well lay back. What the fuck are you talking about?

[B]

Exactly. Yeah, so these are extreme examples, but there is some level of this at play of the ineffability or inaccessibility of the other's exact sexual psychology. But we can educate ourselves about that and try to bridge that gap.

[A]

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[B]

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