Since the pandemic started, I’ve only had sex with women that I had sex with prior to the pandemic. The pandemic makes forming new relationships difficult.
There has been. Masks make approaching at the gym or grocery store next to impossible. I’ve not been in a mall since before the pandemic. The mall would be the same as gyms and grocery stores. Fewer people are also likely go to malls as well. Before the pandemic, I didn’t like mall approaching as much as gyms/fitness classes and grocery stores. There were guys who could do mall approaching much better than I could.
The most viable option for meeting new people now is outdoors until herd immunity occurs and indoor masking ends. Walking/hiking paths are a really good option. Men who live near a beach are better positioned.
The people who entered the pandemic in relationships had an advantage but many of them frittered away their advantage, as divorce filings have increased as have non-marital breakups. I think that even a lot of men in mediocre to slightly subpar relationships are “sheltering-in-place” in their relationships, even more so than they would in a non-pandemic time.
The 2010s were not a good time for bar game for those reasons you mentioned. You’re exactly right that in the late 2010s (or 2019 as you call it), men had a slim amount of hope at bars. I had de-emphasized bars for pickup in the first half of the 2010s.
Even if you didn’t use bars for initial approaching, the bars of the 2010s were still useful in the seduction ecosystem as venues for hosting early-stage dates. All the app swipers were doing that, as well as the non-bar venue approachers. The loss of bars is a very big loss because it is extremely difficult to cut bars out of the early stage seduction equation.
In October, I had this conversation with a 6’4”, good looking guy who is my friend. He’s been in the same relationship for 5+ years and got married last year. He’s become more beta over time. In his heyday of pickup in the early-mid 2010s, he was getting laid a lot from bars and even supplemented on Match.com before swipe apps got big. He said that he perceived it wasn’t worth doing the apps unless you were a top 5% guy because women have too many choices. I wouldn’t call this guy red pill or black pill in the present day, nor would I have called him those things in the early-mid 2010s. Purple pill when he was most prolific in racking up a solid notch count.
I said the top 10% can do swipe apps.
I also think there’s a market for the oldsters (50+) who are looking the date other oldsters that is a little more forgiving. If you’re in your 20s or 30s and trying to use swipe apps, you have to be a top 10% guy. If you’re a 40 something guy looking to date 40 something women, you still have to be better than average. Maybe top 20% of 40 somethings.
The general idea is true but the specific number could be an exaggeration.
The typical guy is not a participant on SoSuave. The typical guy is not a pickup artist. The typical guy is not an acne-ridden, overweight neckbeard as well. The typical guy is a guy who is either married or in a multiyear relationship. Those guys in established relationships are not getting laid all that much but they aren’t incel. A married guy plowing his wife’s vag twice a month sounds like a good deal to a complete incel like Elliot Rodger was, but it is not a good deal in general.
A lot of the unattached guys get laid less than a reasonable person would think, which is why a lot of non-top tier men “shelter-in-place” in relationships, pandemic or no pandemic. The typical male (many would call this man AFC/beta in this forum) is reliant upon extended relationships to get laid and isn’t getting laid much in between relationships.
You’re overestimating how much interaction men have with women at their jobs. White collar men have been primarily working at home for the past 12 months. More of their interaction with women has been on Zoom video calls and phone calls. Additionally, fewer romantic relationships have been forming in workplaces since the 1990s, as the white-collar culture has dissuaded romances from forming. Blue collar men work jobs that typically don’t have a lot of women present as co-workers. How many auto mechanics and construction site workers meet women at work?
More men have weaker social circles now than they did in 1990. Despite the ability to have hundreds of thousands of friends/connections on various social media platforms, the typical guy who isn’t living in the same city as where he spent his birth-age 18 years (if he was lucky enough to even be in the same place his entire childhood) doesn’t have a strong social circle. The guys I’ve know who have used social circle best were guys who were geographically fixed to one specific area their whole lives. These guys are typically not players either. They are either serial monogamists (guys who continually get in 1-5 year long relationships and never marry) or guys who get married, have long relationships, and the occasional divorce and start over.
