Maybe ten years ago, I saw a post on the mouse overpopulation study. It described the results, including the males who just spent their effort on self-care, who in the study were called "the beautiful ones". The post author said, "we are the beautiful ones."
I think this is a little dangerous to think, because in real life a lot of males who end up not in a relationship are viewed as less attractive.
I was thinking, the demographics of people who aren't in relationships. This isn't a new way of thinking; there were articles about 'sheng nu' on ChinaSMACK that I read in 2011 or 2012, and I have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu bookmarked in a folder mysteriously named 'totes profesh | 11 Apr 2015' that has 74 items with no apparent theme.
The general idea that top males match with average females, but top females refuse to match with average males.
But I think the perspective of 'unmatched people can be seen in a positive light' is not wrong. Basically, the whole 'love makes you evil' meme which people avoid thinking about, but which exerts a hidden influence. I had some thoughts about this a couple weeks ago, about a Japanese song I can't remember; either the lyrics, or the attitudes evidenced by the large number of covers of the song. Maybe it was the contradiction and the conflict between the Japanese songs I mentioned, with like genders implicitly blaming each other's actions, without necessarily implying ill intent. Something made me think that it was evidence of people basically looking for someone who could trick them into thinking that the 'love makes you evil' meme was wrong. I.e., the answer to "why is it so complicated". When I watched the Little Apple music video again a week ago, the moment when the female is talking and the male asks "what are you talking about".
The important point is that this all suggests that at some level, there could be a motivation for some people of "this isn't really what I want, but I hope it could lead to something that's better for the world". People are often scared to act alone, but are more willing to do something that other people do. So the "anti-feminist, misogynistic" Men Going Their Own Way movement is not a bunch of males each going their own individual way, but a collective of males going a certain way together. And when a female is attacked on social media for getting an advanced educational degree instead of having children, she is defended by other females (and called beautiful).
And if people think that them being in a relationship would be worse for the world, it's harder to convince them to go to more effort to be in one than if they didn't think this.
Somewhat ancillary (yes I had to look this word up), but I think it's also the case that people mistake the economic effect of someone remaining single. Honestly I was thinking in the context of something like, "what kind of mass behavior would lead to more people donating money to the temple associated with the Hot Q Girls"? (Linked other videos before.) And it's true that an individual is more likely to donate if they have more money, but if they're busy working, they wouldn't know that the dance group exists.
A lot of people just think, "the government taxes single people and gives it to people with families, so more single people is always good". They don't think about the effect on rent and other costs (the kind of thing that Gevlon talked about in https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/my-utopia-free-market-no-worksale-taxes-full-employment-low-gini/). Like, one can expect a family to have higher costs than a single person, but the single person makes just as much money from working. So income taxes affect them equally (or nearly so, with the US having a small reduction in taxes for people with children, for example). Raising taxes to pay for welfare therefore hurts people with families just as much as it hurts single people.
It makes more sense to ask, "after taxes and welfare, do single people have more disposable income than people with families"? Their disposable income determines how willing they are to pay for high housing costs and other costs, like medical. And it's generally accepted that single people do, indeed, have more disposable income. So, even though they pay taxes, this is the argument for why single people should work less, even if they have no intention of using their freed-up time for anything that other people would care about, like attending matchmaking events.
I hope I said everything I had planned to say. I don't know how many people are aware of the mouse overpopulation study, and it seemed relevant to my previous post.
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