Why men are increasingly preferring Video Games over dating

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yes.....

I play Angry Birds and Animal Crossing every so often...

A lot of the article rings true to me, though I've been trying to work out just how much reward I can expect from pursuing a relationship. I can't swear it off until I've tried it.

The real lesson here is to get most men to realize that women that act like that just aren't worth it, and that the women that ARE worth it realize that a relationship, in order for it to function very healthily, must be viewed not from a boyfriend/girlfriend point of view, but from a person to person point of view.

It is just as important for a female to please a male as it is for a male to please a female. If a man is not satisfied in bed, he will want to do other things. It's the same way with women: they may want to pursue some other kind of activity because it's not wholly satisfying.

Dating is especially this way: here's how I view this. If a woman wants to have all the dates payed for by the man, and wants him to pull out her chair, and "throw the coat down on the puddle", and all that stuff, then she should expect to not be treated equally unless she does the same thing for the guy. My girlfriend and I adamantly emphasize equality in our relationship, we have had many discussions on what feels good and what doesn't, we treat each other like we're on the same level, and she knows I don't take s**t from people that have too high of expectations. We care for each other a lot, and we don't have preset standards for what to go with in the relationship.

In fact, she's so lax, and this may be humorous to some, that she's dropped the expectation that I... ahem, "seal my gas valves" whenever she's around. She says that it's necessary to get used to those kinds of things if we're going to be living together, and I totally agree. There's something awesome about having your special someone say "I don't care either way if you fart or burp, so long as it's not in my face".

There really is. So like I said, my response to this is that men need to reject women that aren't worth the effort, just like women reject men that aren't worth the effort, and not take any BS that comes along with rejecting them. Eventually those women will realize what it takes to not be so stuck up and accept a guy for who he is, not who she wants him to be.

You are the pride of America, son.

Excellent post.

If we're replacing women with something, can we please for the love of god do it with something other than video games? Serisously, I'm not joking, look at how gamers act, especially the younger ones. They are simply OBNOXIOUS. I have no doubt that it's partly because they were raised by games. It's like they're subhuman. I swear.

That made me laugh.

But anyway, I think I should share my experience. One of my special interests is videogames, but specific ones. I like Mario platformers and that's pretty much it. It stems from Super Mario Brothers 3, which was my favorite of all time, and I only like games similar to that. I especially love the SNES and GBA remakes of SMB3. I also like the newer 3d Mario platforming games too, but it's limited to platforming games. I also like the Paper Mario series, even though I don't really like RPGs.

Now, to the experience I want to share. I first started dating a girl back in June. She wanted me over her house all the time and sleeping over all the time. We were in love, and I loved to be with her, but at her apartment, I was away from my special interests. I'd go home twice or three times a week, the rest of the time being with her. Her apartment was small, and I couldn't have my special interests over her apartment, so I got bored. Being away from my special interests, everything I did, from go to work, doing my job at work, going to her house, etc was so painfully boring. Everything in my life was boring to a level I had never experienced. My work suffered because I had no interest in doing my job (I really don't anyway, but it never stimulated my mind during this period), my relationship suffered because I never wanted to do anything, nothing stimulated me like it used to. The feeling was quite interesting. I wasn't dying to get back to my special interests, I wasn't addicted to them, but they seem to keep myself in balance. She let up, and I returned to my special interests, and everything went back to normal. This was a very interesting experience, and gave me quite an insight on what the lack of stimulation to my brain did to me.

Your problem wasn't because you weren't playing Mario as much as before ,but it was the lack of common interests or the motivation for finding something that you both enjoy to do , which in result, made your relationship boring.

You know what? It really doesn't matter what you call it or what model you adhere to. Actions are what speak, here -- not words. No one's ever recovered from any addiction by getting the nomenclature right or theorizing about it in the correct way. It's not a matter of looking at things from the right angle or a "sober perspective."

Cute A.A. saying: "Our best thinking got us here."

Less cute excerpt from the Big Book: "But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge."

No, it wasn't boring, what I meant to say was being away from my special interest caused everything to be boring. The relationship was fun, when we didn't fight.

Coming off of academic reading, this article seems heavily biased and its evidentiary base is weak.
The statistic about 70% of men preferring gaming to women, for example, comes from
questionable sources, and the sources say something a little different. They say that 72% of men would prefer playing a new release to having sex with their girlfriends. There are some darn good video games coming out these days. The author shouldn't leave out important information like that.

My biggest problem is the groundless speculation, e.g., the bogus mathematics. For another example, when he quotes "some random whiner on the internets(sic)", he goes on to say that you could replace "real dolls" with "male drinking buddies". It's not even clear what sentence he's referring to; the term "real dolls" does not appear in the block quote. You'll find that it's hard to imagine applying the quote to "drinking buddies". Some of the speculation seems unfair and biased.

On the other hand, some of the speculation makes sense. Even if we question the legitimacy of the article, we can't assume its claims aren't at least partially true. I wouldn't be surprised if the trend of men rejecting women is real. In fact, the idea appeals to me.

I'd just prefer to see some solid data.
That way I could justify that I largely agree with some of what the article has to say. The cost-benefit concept makes a lot of sense to me.

To be sure, a lot of the things the article discusses would be hard to measure scientifically, and this isn't an academic essay, nor does the author claim that it is. But I just wanted to highlight that these kinds of things can't be blindly accepted.

I'd love to read more on this issue. In spite of my criticism, I did enjoy the article.

researching mgtow is a direct way of studying this issue. But I doubt we will see any scientific study of it for a while maybe between 6 months and 2.5 years.(just a guess)

I totally agree with you.

But we , as men , should focus on this :" I wouldn't be surprised if the trend of men rejecting women is real."

This is a good trend, and will make things more balanced to our favor .

There is no strong evidence against it either. That's the point. Nobody is studying this stuff. Its a new trend. The studies, research and academic debate about it will come no sooner than 2030. Are you saying we need to wait till then to discuss it?

Look into the Herbivore generation in Japan... A third of Japanese men are reporting to have no interest in pursuing sex, and well over 60% have never had a girlfriend. Obviously something is shifting socially and all we can do is take disparate anecdotal date, related trends and try to piece something together. There won't be "strong evidence", only strong logic.






Mmm, did you miss the part where it says "pretend-math" lol? Its a discussion on how men FEEL, not a scientific study. Where a man says "omg, this cold is making it 2x as hard to study", he's not saying "peer reviewed studies have shown that colds make material retention in adolescent students 205% less efficient"... He's just trying to describe a subjective feeling. That part of the article CLEARLY states its describing how things FEEL, not how they are. And even if were discussing how thing are, there are ZERO studies ever peformed in any science to show a) how much pleasure men get from dating or gaming or porn b) how difficult or easy men find dating, relationships etc. You do realize its has NEVER EVER EVER been studied in depth or directly. In fact, I can't find a single study that even shows or studies how much effort men need to put into getting a date. Heck, there's no study to even show any men pursue women at all, lol.



And I'd prefer Santa Claus hand me a ferrari tommorow. You do realize this is a new trend and the data won't be in for at least 20-30 years, right?



You need academia to approve of your opinions before you can have the confidence to express them? That means the only thing you're confident talking about are social issues in the 1940s... And heck, not even all of those are settled in academic circles. Some of those are still debated.

Anyway, I added a new section (not peer reviewed yet!! !):

Its called "if you want to take another peak at this trend"... In it I discuss how:

- Increasingly less and less men are pursuing women*
- Women say that's because "any man who doesn't pursue women is a loser"
- I try to show logically how that's either untrue and A) men are choosing NOT to pursue women OR B) men are inferior

*-No, there is no peer reviewed study on the fact that more and more men are choosing to pursue less and less. Did you even know there isn't even a study that studies who initiates among men and women? Its been the same for freaking thousands of years, but there isn't a single study to look into who initiates more (asks out, kisses first). Basically, in science, there is absolutely NOTHING to show that men ever have or do pursue women.

Its just not quantified in any way. Now, if it hasn't been quantified to begin with, why would you expect a study that measure it decreasing? You can't measure a decrease of something you never measured. There is NO science on how much men pursue now, or ever have. In fact, if you were an alien landing on planet earth and just reading academic papers, you'd NEVER guess that men do most of the asking out, first kisses, sex initiation etc.

I'm therefore basing this claim on the fact that 1) "where have the men gone" articles are dominating female and even mainstream media. This is where women whine about how they're not getting asked out anymore 2) the singles and virginity rates are INCREASING 3) more and more surveys on different countries and different aspects of the courtship process are showing more men opting out.

Will you wait till we have a study on every single country, for every aspect of the courting process to accept that men are pursuing women less? If so, I guess we'll resume this conversation somewhere in 2030 or 2050.

I said as much to ToadofSteel. Every man who opts out is one man less that you are competing with for womens' attention.

But there is a catch: even if this is real, you can't just sit back and wait for women to come to you. Because there are plenty of men who won't opt out. What they will do instead is sleep with lots of women. There is that other thread about "29 year old man has 21 kids" or whatever the number was. He's an outlier but he should also be a heads up. Woman aren't going to go pounding on doors looking for hidden men. They'll share the ones who don't opt out. So if you still have to put yourself out there.

Personally, I believe women are playing a waiting game. They're waiting to see if men really are serious about this "won't pursue thing". Sure, they're writing more and more "shaming" colums where they proclaim non-pursuers to be losers... But those are really last-ditch attempts before they buckle and start pursuing men themselves.

They're barely restraining themselves from starting to in fact "pound on men's doors". They might whine and whine and write columns about how "men need to pursue", but the reality on the street is very different. Women are noticing that their sisters who do pursue men, are getting better results. They try to shame these women away from pursuing by labelling them as "sl*ts", but its not working.

More and more women ARE pursuing men. More and more women are approaching men, and more and more women are asking out men... In essence, the boycott is working. Women would prefer it didn't, but what you don't get is the following (also following your logic).

- The men who DO pursue, are pursuing the more desirable women, not average or below-average and are less likely to SETTLE
- The average and undesirable women who DO break the traditional role will get better results than women who don't. Any time you notice an unattractive girl with a more desirable guy, interview them and you will find out SHE asked him out, she pursued him and maybe even did a lot of the initiation.
- As more men boycott the pursuing role, more women will figure out their choice is between A) a womanizer they have to share with 30 other women B) asking out a decent guy themselves C) settling for a less desirable man

Right now, its really a game of stubbornness. Which gender will be the more stubborn one and better able to prove they can do without the other.

Last edited by AlekNovy on 07 Apr 2011, 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.