Gen Z Men Have Given Up On Dating. And Honestly, Who Can Blame Them?

80% of men are deemed “unattractive” by women

How did the Zoomer dating scene get so fucked?

Gen Z has initiated history’s first asexual labor strike.

45% of men aged 18–25 have never asked a woman out in person. Another recent Pew study revealed that a pathetic 37% of young men claim to be in relationships.

Young men are so miserably failing at the dating game that the rate of young women in relationships more than doubles that of young men, with only a measly 34% of young women admitting to being single.

The Hill summarized Pew’s findings in a brutally honest headline: “Most young men are single. Most young women are not.”

“Men in their 20s are more likely than women in their 20s to be romantically uninvolved, sexually dormant, friendless and lonely,” The Hill reported.

So what’s going on? Are all the ladies dating Leonardo DiCaprio?

I live in New York City.

Statistically among the “worst places in the nation for singles.”

But New York is a microcosm for the rest of the Western world. What happens here spills over elsewhere. If plant-based everything is trending, it’s from here.

What you’ll notice in NYC is that relationships are fickle. Sickeningly so.

People are more concerned with their careers, college, paying debts, networking, and socializing than they are with investing in a relationship.

The original Pew study, which was released just before Valentine’s Day, found that a “majority of single adults are not interested in being struck (or even grazed) by Cupid’s arrow,” with 57% of Americans saying that they are not currently interested in a relationship.

Even if you are interested in a relationship, thanks to dating apps and social media, there are so many options nowadays that you can treat a relationship like leftover pizza from last night — something to be consumed without much thought or effort.

The Coming Asexual Revolt

I don’t like this word. I think it gets weaponized by sanctimonious people—similar to terms like “emotional intelligence”—but here I go: empathy.

Ew. Gross. Now empathy’s essential, like oxygen, but leave it to the holier-than-thou crowd to turn it into a sanctified circus, ruining it for the rest of us.

With that said, because of this dating imbalance where it looks like both genders are checking out, post-2030 projections are that by the end of the decade, 51% of Gen Z males will cross the threshold of irreversible neurobiological alienation.

This article took shape after I noticed arguing from my previous takes on the dating imbalance. Strange. Did they miss the last presidential election?

The war between men and women isn’t just a cultural spat; it’s a proxy for the political chaos bubbling beneath. The dating scene is ground zero.

Back to empathy. Both men and women are losing it. But especially men—it’s why right-wing commentators like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate are so popular.

If you listen to them from the perspective of a disaffected man, which there are plenty out there—they won the election for Trump— it’s like a panacea:

I fear that women, but more so men’s capacity for empathy will fully detach like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. As Fuentes and Tate preach: “don’t involve yourself with women, radicalize yourself,” and women will cease to be subjects of longing or rage—they will be irrelevant, like cacti or street signs.

Think about it, the word “incel” didn’t even get popular until ten years ago.

The youthful fire and enthusiasm with which these men would have greeted any woman into their life, having long left them, will metastasize into a silent, smoldering apathy.

Think all of this is bullshit? Guess again. During the 2024 election, Nick Fuentes was the third most-watched streamer on Rumble, trailing only mega-names like Tim Pool and Steven Crowder, whose combined audiences stretch into the tens of millions.

Historical precedent for the above exists: Meiji Japan, where masterless samurai (ronin) turned their nihilism into a national rebirth by dissolving feudalism. Gen Z’s rebellion is against our own current systems (dating & work).

One last study you should check out by dating app OkCupid, a whopping 80% of men are deemed “unattractive” or simply “below average” by women.

From that post:

“As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable. But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.”

In the dating world, average men are losing.

Average women are winning (or deluding themselves).

And above-average men are seriously freaking winning.

Patriarchy & Modern Dating

One quick word on the patriarchy. Modern dating boils down to this: Young women got better—much better. They out-earn young men in several U.S. areas, outperform young men in college, and have larger social networks than most men.

And that “getting better” leads to higher dating standards.

So you get more young women dating up and more young men giving up.

Indeed. I recently watched the “Barbie” movie, and boy did it have some guts. It points out that the reason for the tensions between genders is… [cue dramatic music] the patriarchy. And guess what? It blamed every single man for it.

Funny. Funny & wrong.

It misses that most men are detached from a “patriarchy” — they won’t be the ones at the top of a pyramid. But they are still blamed for it.

The film asserts that the life of an average woman is hard. No. The life of an average person is hard. Life is fucking brutal and true privilege only falls into the laps of a select few.

Final Thoughts

Men have many problems they need to address.

• There’s porn addiction

• Video game addiction

• Lack of courage to ask women out irl

• Less motivation for work & college and less interest in socializing

But I think many of these problems, in part, stem from decades of dunking on average men without giving them any guidance on how to navigate life.

It’s like the Slayer song “Guilty of Being White.” Blaming an average person of privilege — they may or may not even have — divides us all. It’s poison.

It also makes perfect sense why militant male figures like Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels and Nick Fuentes would rise in reaction to this force.

I do believe that mentoring young men is crucial, but I fear we’re accelerating toward something irreversible. The crisis is on the horizon, shadowy and undefined, but inevitable. History has a habit of repeating itself, and the next Franz Ferdinand moment or Ronin revolt is closer than anyone wants to admit.

---