This was a good article about some changes in game from the early 2000s until the late 2010s.
A lot of men ask me what it was like to run game on American women over 15 years ago. While I don't automatically take the nostalgic view that everything in the past was better than today, if you knew how to cold approach in 2001, you received significantly higher results than from the same effort i
www.rooshv.com
I remember when texting first became mainstream. This was right before i phone 1. If you texted a women she would say " don't be a bytch just call like a man". Now it's the exact opposite. If you call then you are a creeper.
The same can be said for online dating. If you were dating online in the early 2000's you were a weirdo. Now if you approach in real life you are a weirdo.
iPhone 1 was released in July 2007. You're talking about 2005-1st half of 2007. In 2005-first half of 2007, you didn't need to text women. Women expected to make phone calls. In that time, I had a basic cell phone that was used only for making phone calls and the main advantage of it was that I could make and receive phone calls when I wasn't at home. I received a few text messages per year on this during that time. Women didn't expect you to text. I'd say that by the 2009-2010 period is when women started expecting text messages. They also expected you to have a smartphone around then too and if you tried to get women's numbers with a basic/flip phone around then, you were seen as a leper.
I started noticing around 2010-11 that it was difficult to get anyone to talk on the phone, male or female. I turned 27 in 2010 and 28 in 2011 and was mainly dealing with people 22-28, male and female. Texting became more practical then.
It's true that if you were dating online in the 2000-2004 era, you were a weirdo. I remember driving to high school in the year 2000 and hearing a radio segment about how online dating had become de-stigmatized. I think that was wishful thinking at the time but around 2005 is when it was de-stigmatized. From 2005-2012 (the latter part of the website era), online dating was normal but plenty of people were still meeting offline. When apps replaced websites is when tech assisted dating became the norm. I'd say 2013-15 is when that happened.
Since about 2015, I've had many instances where women could not process the fact that I was approaching them. One of the more drastic instances of this occurred on a walking path where I made a comment about the tourist destination on a woman's t-shirt and tried to make conversation around that. She started walking faster when I did that and acted like I was a homeless man asking her for money. That was socially inept. She wasn't the only one to do that. In the 2015-19 era (pre-pandemic), I did many grocery store approaches where the woman didn't understand a man approaching them and making conversation in that setting. It seemed like a such a foreign concept to them and it was uncomfortable for them. It is understandable why they might act that way, as daygame (non-bar approaching) has always been a niche activity, even from 1985-2005. However, their reactions demonstrated an overreliance upon tech, which is something that a 20 something woman in 2005 wouldn't have done.
The GenZ guys truly can't imagine how different it was back then. Women we're almost....fun. An average guy could have decent success well up until around 2012ish. Much of the rift between some posters is just a generation gap. The world has changed so much so quickly that it's hard for us to relate to each other.
The fact that up to 30% of GenZ guys are still virgins is astounding. This was almost unheard of in the Millennials. Back in the day some chick would give you some puzzy.
I think you're overstating how successful average men could be in the 2000s. The 2000s was not that great of an era for the mating environment. With that said, 2003-2006 (when I was 20-23) was an easier environment than 2012 and later. I moved to a new city in 2011, just like I moved to a new city in 2005 after college graduation. I recall having a conversation in early 2012 about how women were unfriendlier and a bigger pain to deal with in 2011-12 as compared to 2005. It was amazing to me to have a similar relocation circumstance in 2005 and 2011 and have the experiences be different.
Most of the big changes happened when the Millennials were in their 20s/maybe early 30s. The stuff that
@Pandora thinks are unique to the Gen Z men had their origins in the first half of the Millennial generation (1982-1988 births). If things were so great in the mating environment in the 2000s, "The Game" (published in 2005) would not have been as popular as it was. Roosh and Heartiste had their origins in the 2000s.