Black chicks have too many dating options

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?

So I’ve decided to be an internet mack

Seriously. I mean, why not? Have you seen the people claiming to be macking experts on the twittah, facebook, myspace, etc? Almost without exception, they’re complete assclowns.

Take this guy for instance.

Is that an Affliction T-shirt?

I followed dude on twitter (back when I was actually on twitter for whatever reason) for a second because a couple of my friends did too. Against my better judgment, I hoped that perhaps there would be valuable relationship/dating advice, or at least interesting commentary. ENHHH! He has a blog called “Breaklamps” (see here for rules to twitter pimping) and Buddy’s entire persona and life is based on berating “myspace models” and bitching about groupies. My guess is, and I could be wrong, is that his borderline sociopathic obsession with girls that take lingerie shots of themselves in the bathroom:

Personally, shit like this here worries me far more:

Why, dawg, why?

is predicated entirely on frustration with his lack of ability to actually have sex with these women. Look, I’m frustrated that I can’t tomahawk dunk like Dwight Howard. But life goes on. For most of us, at least. However, buddy has attempted to create a cottage industry of simultaneously downing internet models, while at the same time, going in on #bathwaterslurpers, which is a phrase he’s codified for male groupies of these internet models. Let me get this straight, slim. You spend four hours a day posting pictures and links to myspace models’ pages and you talk about other people being obsessed with these chicks? Say word. Now, I talked to a fairly popular internet model who had been tweeting her about him. I assumed they knew each other. Apparently, not so much. He just showed up at some event he knew she was hosting, undoubtedly trying to get at her. If she’s telling the truth, he did not succeed. Which doesn’t much sound mackish to me.

Then there’s this fella here:

Now, in fairness, I’ve had dealings with this cat before, and he’s a fairly intelligent guy, and I believe a reasonable man. We had some unpleasantness in certain dealings, but I’ll just chalk that up to him being trying to negotiate the best deal he could. So my beef is not so much with the man, as it is with this character he’s created. He goes by the name “His Royal Flyness” which tells you 87% of the things you need to know already.  He’s written a book called “Myspace to My Place” I shit you not. Planned followups include “From Facebook to Face Down” And “Using Twitter to Hit ‘er.” Kidding. My homegirl he sent the book to said it could have been written by a five year old.  Dude joined a group a while ago that may or may not have been started by yours truly and mentioned in a new book that rhymes with “Snitch is the Few Crack.” Needless to say, when it came to back up the expertise, a lot of excuses were made.

So given the competition in the world of being an internet macking guru, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring. So, since we’re always talking about people’s dating issues, let’s try a couple dating solutions. And for all of its negative connotations,

"You's a rest haven for Hoes!"

Craig Sager, er, I mean Willie Dynamite

the truth is: The road to happy comitted black people always starts with macking. In order for a relationship to form, someone’s gotta nut up and open the conversation. Successfully. SisterToldja said as much here in lamenting the dearth of type A males who go out and mack to women. So here’s a very brief, unscientific set of pointers from your new internet macking guru:

1. Just do it. You can justify to yourself a million different reasons not to approach a woman. “She’s surrounded by her girlfriends”, “I’m shy”, “There are too many people around”, “It would be awkward”, “Them light skinned girls think they better than er’body”, etc.. But like a jump shot, if you don’t try, you won’t score.

2. Just do it alot. 1, it’s good practice, so you’ll get better at it. 2. A lot of relationships come indirectly. You may not make a love connection with old girl, but when her and her crew come to the barbecue you invite them to, her homegirl with the curly fro might just be choosing. Just talk to people without an expectation of an outcome. A lot of time, just being more social leads to good things.

3. Speaking of Choosing…That’s women’s work, not men’s. How many times have you locked in on that one girl in a crew, tried with her, and then crashed and burned. What you didn’t know was that her friend was eyeing you and has low moral standards. When there’s a group of women, actually talk to them before you figure out whether you’ve fallen in love yet.

4. All you have in this life is your word and your balls…And since she doesn’t know if you’re honest or not, all you’ve really got at the opening is your balls. so let em hang low. Mack hard, with pride and confidence. Without apology or doubt. The night I got the most positive female attention in my life, I was wearing a dress. A short dress, at that. When I asked the women I met why they were initially attracted to me, the answer was always something to the effect that they were intrigued by the confidence it takes a straight man to wear a dress. In the same vein:

5. Separate Yourself.. The Phrase, “be yourself” is always thrown around by us internet macking gurus while we’re trying to tell you to do everything different than you normally would. There’s not as much dissonance there as you might think. Because who you “are” and what you show may be two very different things. You may be an artistic, spiritual left of center guy, but standing somewhere in a button up, some loafers, and a low caesar, you kinda fade in with all the other non-artistic, areligious, right wing assholes vying for the same woman’s attention. You’re wearing their uniform. You’re probably using the exact same approach. So, and this is where you have to figure it out for yourself, you’d probably be better off letting a potential mackee know from jump what it is about you that’s not like the others. Are you safe and secure, like a Volvo?  Thrilling and dangerous like a Ferrari? Tough and industrious like an F-150? What’s your value proposition? If you know this, it’s pretty easy to articulate it. Hell, you probably won’t even need to. people will just recognize it. If you’re a little confused, figure it out.

6. Wear an Ascot….I’m fucking kidding. You like a complete dickcheese wearing an ascot. There are three peoople in the world who can get away with wearing an ascot without irony. Two of them live in Monaco. The odds are not with you here.

7. Mack with honor: Don’t sell these hoes dreams. If you know she’s looking to land a husband, and you just want to see what she looks like tied up, don’t lead her on. You may miss out on some tang, but in the end, you’ll be a better person for it.

Happy macking

Grade Inflation

Morning, folks. If you want to know why I’ve been so inconsistent lately, it’s because I finished up my thesis last week, and now am moving, so I’ve been flipping between Boston, DC, and NYC. Also, I’m now a Master of Science, so I’m prepared to lord my education over everyone now. I’m going to start conversations with, “Well, as a Master of Science, ….” And I’m going to add it to the back of my name on my facebook profile. “You have received a friend request from Brandon St. Randy, M.S.” I may have my degree tattooed on my back, I’m not sure yet.

I'm too sexy for myself, too sexy for my self, too sexy by farrrrr...

In any case, we’ve been talking about marriage for a couple weeks or so now, but I want to get back into the single life, since that’s where I assume most of my readers live. I came across an interesting article in CNN the other day titled “Is narcissism keeping you single?” by Wendy Atterbery. I think it’s particularly appropriate to our little social group. As I’ve said before a million times, black Americans are the most narcissistic, self-aggrandizing people in the known world. Humility is just not one of our character flaws. Listen to our popular music. Every song on the radio contains some reference to the artist’s tightness, bankroll, sex game, or general grandiosity. Obviously, our long history of oppression and dehumanizing has something to do with this, as well as our legacy of shame about our entrenched poverty levels, but when they free Skip Gates, I’ll let him speak on that. And this celebrity obsession with letting everyone know how sweet you are has filtered down into the world of regular people. A snippet from the article:

Apparently, they’re all just a bunch of narcissists. In an article on The Daily Beast this week, writer Hannah Seligson, explores this theory, writing: “narcissism, even in small doses, has shifted courtship into a high-stakes relationship culture.

Now that people think more highly of themselves, expectations of what a relationship should be like have skyrocketed into the realm of superlatives.

Twentysomethings not only expect to waltz into high-level career positions right out of college, they also expect partners who have the moral fortitude of Nelson Mandela, the comedic timing of Stephen Colbert, the abs of Hugh Jackman, and the hair of Patrick Dempsey.”

Sound like anyone you know? Franky, I blame social media. First Black Planet, then Myspace, then Facebook, and now Twitter has effectively turned everyone  on the plane into their own little reality show. These sites are no longer just mediums to keep up with friends and share pictures, they’re online advertising for “your personal brand.” The fact that you may not be selling anything tangible is irrelevant, you’re selling a dream. You’re selling a vision of yourself as attractive, successful, witty, fly, an e-gangster, whatever. The point being, you control your message. And in doing so, this gives people the opportunity to inflate those qualities that they think other people will respond to, and hide the fact that they live with their parents, have no job prospects, have halitosis, etc. At some point, I really think people start drinking their own kool-aid and start thinking that they are who they’ve invented themselves to be. VSB did a good post the other day on How to seem more important than you really are. It was in jest, of course, but there was definitely some truth to it.

The problem is, hile kool-aid may taste sweet, it rots your teeth and isn’t very satisfying. Man can’t live off kool-aid alone. He needs meat and potatoes. The funny thing about most self-aggrandizing peope is the plethora of problems they have in relationships. A lot of this is directly related to the fact that they’ve built up an idea of themselves that doesn’t square with the facts and other people realize this at some point. It also mans that since they think they’re so tight, their expectation is that their partner is going to be just as tight as they think they are. Since the partner has probably inflated their own GPA pretty significantly, both parties end up being frustrated because they feel like they were sold a bill of goods. It’s totally not conducive to creating a realistic lasting relationship.

So allow me to take you down a notch and let me give you some advice on how to have more meaningful relationships.

Title: Socialite/ Bottle Popping girl

Twitter About me: (Some city’s)’s 2nd Most Influential Young Socialite. Fashion Head. SNOB. (Some college) graduate. Hill Staffer. And I’ve lived in Monaco, yes, Monaco. How’s your life?

M.O. These girls (and actually the above was written by a guy) are people who have chosen to inflate their GPA’s via social status, usually related to nightlife or some tertiary connection to the entertainment industry. They usually pay a lot of attention to fashion and spend most of their discretionary income on clothes that will be out of style next month and drinking, preferably bottle service so everyone can see them. They say things like “Oh, I never wait in line,” “I’m always in VIP,” and “Every time I walk in the club, they get mad.” The problem is that as they’ve chosen to spend the majority of their efforts on extremely flighty, surface-oriented pursuits, they don’t really have anything to offer but what social status they have. So they naturally attract shallow, social climbing members of the opposite sex. And then complain about it.

The Solution: most people grow out of this shit naturally. To some degree, this is just an early-mid-twenties phase, and there’s nothing you can really do with people like this until they get tired of the thrill of being accepted by peope they don’t really know, or have finally proven to themselves that they’re worthy. As Real Housewives of Atlanta has shown us, some people just never learn.

Title: Model

Twitter About Me: NY/Atlanta/ATL/London (word? You have homes in 4 cities?)The baddest chick in the modeling game. Im Puerto Rican, Italian,French, Black & Jewish! (Anything but all black). There should be 2 of me :

M.O. These are just youngish (acting. Some of these broads are in reality a little long in the totth for this bullshit) chicks and dudes who typically have pretty mundane day jobs but use their ass and tits (or abs and arms) to inflate their GPA. The problem is, they typically get a lot of attention from dudes who really just want to bone ’em, and they think this attention should equare into success in their relationships. Of course it doesn’t, because not that many quality dudes want to wife a chick who sends out 15 twitpics a day of her oiled up in a bikini pushing her ta-tas together and licking her lips.

The Solution: Simple. Quit that shit. Everyone’s vain, and it’s nice to have pictures that represent your best features, but unless you’re a percent of a percent of women, you’re not going to be a successfu model. You’ll get a spread in Straight Stuntin’ magazine and a couple calls to do the next Lil Boosie video, but that’s about it. There’s really no money to be made in this particular field. So what you’r doing is driving off quality men or women in favor of people who just want to screw you. You can’t even be mad when that’s what happens, because that’s what you’re selling

Title: Mr./Mrs. Overeducated

Twitter About me: Blank. They joined but never followed up

M.O. This person believes that because of their stellar academic achievements, they are a catch. They went to xxxxx Law school, Business School, Ph.D program, you should not only respect their mind, you should want them, need them even. And not only that, but if you do want them, you’d better have gone to an equivalent or greater school if you want to get some of their time. Problem: This is important in the professional world. Doesn’t really impact personal chemistry that much. it can be impressive when you meet someone, but after that, you’re still the same person as the guy or girl who went to University of Phoenix. Me and my peoples were at Ozio one time and there was a table of really cute chicks sitting next to us. they were all kind of chilly toward us, until the girl said very proudly that she went to Harvard Law School. My boy at the time was at Georgetown Law, and as soon as they heard that and the fact that I knew a bunch of her classmates, the whole tone of the convo changed. At this point though, we were a bit turned off, so when they wanted to exchange info, we politely declined.

The Solution: Realize that no one cares that much. You should be proud of your educational achievements. But perspective, please.

Title: Brofessional

Twitter About me: Uh, I don’t do Twitter. I’m on Linkedin, thanks

M.O. These are the people that are their business card. The homey JAJ once told me about a friend of her friends who was the world’s biggest dick. When someone introduced themselves to him, he’d respond “first name, last name, Trader, Goldman Sachs.” Another female friend of mine met a guy once who when he found out she worked at JP Morgan spent the night discussing whether she worked “in a profit center or a cost center.” isten to Tyler Durden people: You are not your job. You are not your khakis.

The Solution: Bring it down.

Title: Boss Baller

Twitter About Me: I run (insert town here). We gittin’ dis money!

M.O. Do I even really have to describe this kind of fuckery?

The grand point about a this is that if you see yourself or your friends in the above descriptions, and are having difficulties forming legitimate bonds with people, take a step back. Sometimes the things we do to prove to others that we’re worthy of heir love and affection only make us look like dickheads. It’s not the end of the world. We can all embrace a little more humility, and take more time to learn about other people and share their joys and less time telling other people how great we are. we’ll all be happier for it. With that , I’ll leave you with a cautionary video of what to not be like: an Assclown

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Here’s the link to the CNN article