Yeah, you heard me. I know, the preceding statement goes against the conventional wisdom that it’s black men who are awash in the affections of throngs of women and have but to show up in a reasonably stain free shirt to get mobbed by intelligent, beautiful, refined women.
But it’s true. Conventional dating theory assumes the world looks something like this:
I love girls, girls, girls all over the globe...
When in fact, it more than likely looks like this:
I love boys, boys, boys...Hey! Sergio! Stop looking at Lance's crotch! Focus!
Hear me out. Men and women work in remarkably different ways when it comes to the date selection process. As the hunter or aggressor, men typically will chase after what they want and end up eating what they can get. Women on the other hand, get the final say in choosing which male she allows to get close to her. If a hundred women offered to sleep with a man, he’d have sex with 101 of them, the 101st being the doorknob he mistook for a vagina in a weed-induced haze. On the other hand, an average of 100 men a day typically offer to sleep with any given women. Sound high?
Now, granted, this is less than a scientific observation, but let’s assume a woman is of average attractiveness and works in the Central Business District of any major city. She takes the train to work. On her walk to the train, she is leered at hard by 7 men, given a respectful but interested eye by 6 and hollered at by two locals on stolen ten speed bikes posted up by the Metro, one of whom is likely shirtless and smells of weed.
That’s 15
She’s lightly sexually harassed by by 2 of her superiors and merely spoken to inappropriately by 3 others in the morning, including the mail clerk who knows he doesn’t have a shot in hell. On her way to Au Bon Pain for lunch, she’s checked out by another 10 men, 1 offers to buy her sandwich, and the fella asking for directions to Neiman Marcus isn’t reeeaaally asking for directions.
We’re at 32.
She leaves work, goes to Happy hour, where she’s glanced at by 7 men, sent drinks by 3, and is flirted with by another 5.
47
It’s Friday, so she goes out to a large nightclub. A whopping 50 men eyebone, strike up a conversation, grab her arm, buy her a drink, or otherwise, as Chris Rock would put it, offer her some dick. On her way home, she receives sexually charged text messages from another 3 men, 1 of whom she invites over for sex.
That’s 100 men, folks.
You came her to holler at shorty? Me too, bruh. Me too. My dad too. He's getting a hot dog right now.
Sound like a lot? It’s just the tip of the iceberg!!! I heard a great story once about a man asking his grandfather if he ever cheated on his grandmother. His grandfather replies “No.” The grandson says. “Wow. I really respect that. I struggle with the temptation every day. It’s a constant battle. How’d you make it so long without giving in? Why didn’t you cheat?”
The grandfather looks at his grandson and says:
“I didn’t have a car.”
The moral of the story? When you have limited choices, you make do with what ya got. Today’s issue is that with the advent of technology, what you got is not merely the people in your city, or friends of friends, or whose eye you’re able to catch at the Friday night sock hop. Your options are only limited to the number of men that friend you, follow you, or are Matched with you. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if some woman and some man had sex based off a Words With Friends Game. (if you want to play me, feel free, I’m pretty good, but not great. I always hold the J and the Z too long looking for that triple word score/triple letter score combo.)
Take that 100 number, add 500 DM's
So you’re saying, well, the same thing can be said about men and the expansion of their choices. True. But again, men’s choices are limited to who chooses them back. And while women’s choices may be technically limited to the men she would choose, that decision making process is up to her. she can choose every man who approaches, none, or some number in between.
There’s a second issue, which is the democratization of “fame-by beauty.” Up until very recently, in order to be a female sex symbol, model, socialite, etc, and benefit from the social and financial advantages therein, you had to be one of a very small number of people chosen by Vogue or Estee Lauder or whoever. Now, anyone with a cell phone and some lingerie can catapult themselves to instant notoriety if the right person shares or RT’s the pic. And then what happens?
Here comes Chad Ochocinco a-callin’. And Darnell Dockett. And Bow Wow. And five hundred other random dudes offering a chance at sex with them. And thennnn what happens? Well, worst case, something like this:
A couple weeks ago there was a flareup on black twitter because one of these internet models was arrested for child endangerment because she was apparently leaving her kid at home to fend for himself while she flew around the country getting knocked down by celeb types. Meanwhile, she’s twitpicing (is that a word) photos of herself in Bentleys and bottle service and other things of the type the modern negro seems to be enamored of. Mind you, before social networking, this chick would have had zero access to any celebrity outside of those who live there or are playing an away game. But because of the democratization of fame by beauty, I know who she is, and more importantly, Chad Ochocinco and Chris Brown knows who she is. And where to find her. Pre-1997, her best shot would be well-known local stripper. Post twitter? The sky’s the limit.
Now, granted, this is an extreme example. But I’d venture on a much smaller scale, a lot of women are faced with the same option of a “better” class of man available to them via technology and the interconnectedness of the world than may be available to them locally. I doubt most women are going to up and leave their kid with a TV dinner to go and pursue that “better” class of man, but they very well may decide that the middle class local dude doesn’t really measure up to the possibilities of the guy across the country who owns his own accounting firm. Or the dude who scores 17/night for the Nuggets. Or the old college classmate who done lost some weight and got a hairline that doesn’t look like Lebron and John Legend had a love child.
Ironically, given the way that women choose men, this new optimization of opportunity actually increases the dating wealth disparity (you know, 80% of women choose 20% of men). Because while women will actively gravitate towards choosing these select 20% of men, (many of whom can afford to fly them out wherever without a second thought), men will passively accept these choices. Like I said, we tend to take what we can get. And for some of us what we can get is quite a lot. For others of us, not so much)
What say you, blogoshpere? Am I totally off base here? Have you as a man or women increased your options because of technology? Decreased? Found love? Found emptiness? What ya got?
The Bad Life 