There are a lot of good insights on this thread so far....
I will just throw in part of an article I wrote on nightclubs. Having worked in them for a few years gives me some perspective that other guys might find useful:
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Nightclubs are about hooking up; anyone who tells you otherwise is full of **** (if you’ll excuse my French). Girls will tell you ALL THE TIME about how they go to nightclubs “just to dance” or “just to party with my friends” or “just to have fun”. Don’t believe a word of it. Realize that, they have to say those things to prevent themselves from looking like sluts. If they admitted to the truth: “I go to nightclubs to drink, dance, get hit on by boys, and hopefully get ****ed really well” — they would be scorned and ostracized by all their female friends for breaking the code.
So when a girl tells you, “I just go to dance. I would never hook up with a guy in a club.” Realize that the word dance is a code-word for the “dance” of the mating ritual. After all, the prowess a girl shows on the dance floor is basically sexually exhibitionism — the women who can shake it best get the most attention from guys.
Why Nightclubs are a Deliberately Horrible Environment for Hooking Up
Think about it - what are some characteristics nightclubs share in common?
* Loud music - makes it hard to talk, hear, or be understood
* Dim lighting - makes it hard to see anyone, judge their complexion, etc
* Colored lighting - minimizes skin imperfections, makes people look “warmer”
* Alcoholic beverages - impairs judgment, motor coordination (dancing??!)
So, given all the above, why on earth have we as humans decided to built environments for our leks that are so logically horrible for lekking?
It may be a question without a good answer, but I have a theory. I believe that we our nightclubs have these characteristics in order to do two things:
1. Level the playing field
and
2. Weed out the timid.
To point #1, in a nightclub, it’s much easier to fake. A woman doesn’t have to as attractive to get play in a nightclub (not only because she has makeup and implants) but because the lights are complimentary to her hair and skin. The harsh light of fluorescents would reveal her for what she truly is — a bad evolutionary choice — but a nightclub allows guys to see her as pretty, even desirable. (The general rule of thumb is that, for any point value assigned on the Hot Woman Rating Scale (0-10) to a girl in a club, subtract 2-3 points for “club effect”).
Point #2 is really the corollary of #1, only for men. Since a woman’s attraction to men is not predicated on their appearance, but on their level of masculine dominance (courage/tenacity/strength of character) it only makes sense to put leks in a confined, loud, dark, often violent place where social status is obvious and a timid (beta) man would fear to tread.
Nightclubs serve as a pre-screen for women: only a relatively courageous, social man will venture into them at all (the socially maladjusted, extremely anxious, fearful or “weird” just stay out of them) and once he gets there, it will be easy to distinguish him from the TRULY alpha, dominant, fun-loving guy.
This is why so many girls who are JUST looking for no-strings attached or ‘fun’ sexual hookups frequent nightclubs — they know that the loser-ish “beta” guys are mostly already weeded out, and all the other levels of status segregate and stratify out in a very easy-to-see way, like layers of silt on a riverbank.
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Full article
http://realitymethod.wordpress.com/2007/01/20/what-nightclubs-are-good-for/