Solo hit me up with an interesting question once:
There’s been lot of threads popping up lately of how technology/social networking has changed dating, I know I’m a bit younger then most, however I truly didn’t start dating till the mid 2000’s (by then texting and Myspace had already taking full flight)
What was dating like in the 80’s? 90’s? or hell even the early 2000’s? Was Attention Whoring in clubs/bars as astronomical as it is now? Was flaking an epidemic in the 90’s?
I talked to a guy who use to be a vendor for a sales company I worked at. He told me the biggest difference in the 90’s was that the cost of dating was cheaper and it was easier to go bareback with a girl.
In 1993 a number close was actually significant because it meant she was giving you a personal landline number you could call, not a nebulous cell phone number with caller ID. I think guy’s these days still think a number close means something, it doesn’t. In 1995 a kiss close was somewhat significant, but not a guaranteed lay or implicative of anything beyond a flirtation. Now it’s almost necessary for a girl to make out with a guy in order for him to get the message.
There are a lot of 80’s and 90’s era dating holdovers that young men still think are applicable today. Which is kind of silly when you think about it. I would’ve laughed my ass off if a 40 year old guy told me that dating rituals in the 70’s were still applicable in the 90’s back then. I met Mrs. Tomassi at a gig I was playing in 1995 (you know, at a club, the place every white knight tells you you’ll never find a ‘quality woman™’). No cell phones, no IM, no internet. Compared to 2012 that was the wild west as far as dating was concerned. There was no manosphere, and if you owned a book titled “How to Pick Up Girls” you were obviously a loser who’d mail ordered it from an ad in the back of Hustler (analog porn was still all there was). Basically you were on your own to figure things out.
The Wild West
In the 90’s feminization had reach it’s apex. I know that comes off as a bold statement, and probably a lot of guys would disagree with me because of the dating environment they find themselves in now. However, I say that because it was the wild west and feminization was unchecked and normalized, and there was very little any guy could realistically do to unplug himself. Go back and watch any of the sitcoms or movies from that era and pay attention to the mannerisms of men and women. Seinfeld, Friends and Fraser are good ones to observe. All the time you do, remember there is no internet, there is no global consortium of men comparing experiences about women’s observed behaviors and their motivations, and there is no way to unplug from the Matrix beyond one’s own upbringing, character and insight. Compared to the mid 90’s, the mid 2000’s was the age of enlightenment for Men.
The most tragic reminder of this era being feminization’s apex can be summed up in the suicide of Kurt Cobain. The archetypal self-loathing, tortured-artist beta marries the era’s archetypal fem-warrior, attention whore slut. In hindsight, was there any doubt there’d be a casualty? Aint love grand?
Women flaked and Attention Whores were present, but not in such identifiable ways as now. With the rise of the internet and social media it was proven to me that ALL women are attention seeking to varying degrees, and they’ve always been so. However now the technology is such that they can more actively indulge in their attention obsession from both sexes, so it appears as if women have become more self-important. I’d argue they were always this way, but lacked the outlet to entertain it. It’s ironic that the girls in the 80’s and 90’s who were so repulsed by the nerdy computer geeks are the same 40 somethings sitting in front of their computers for hours at work soaking in the attention of their “Friends” on FaceBook today.
There was also no Netflix or even movies-on-demand on cable. No Tivo. Haute cuisine and “foodies” didn’t really exist at a price point the average gal could afford. Venture and Zayre didn’t carry high fashion knockoffs like Target. There was no Etsy and vintage thrift boutiques were few and far between. The problem today isn’t flakiness in women, it’s that there are too many competitive “high reward” options for men AND women. The competition isn’t usually other men, it’s other “omg I’m so high from power shopping!!!” activities. I still prefer dating today over 20 years ago because there are… Read more »
Don’t forget the worst beta-izing sitcom of them all.. Home Improvement. Tim Allen was the poster child of the the incompetant man who always had to take Wilson’s feminized advice to make up to his wife.
Spice Girls were teaching women Grrrl Power at the same time too.
Yeah the 90’s sucked.
Bud and Coors light was what restaurants served, Heineken was considered a good beer and even exotic yuppie drink (just like their yuppie car phones), flaking was even more of an epidemic then, and none of the women – none of them – were worried that riding the carousel and partying down would leave them as cat-owning 40 year old mid-managers. Feminism really was at its apex then, we’re just living in the ruins now. The 40 year old women bitching now about men, the Kate Roiphes who dominate the conversation now, are the ones who chased Alphas back then… Read more »
What would you say about women who do not use facebook? (that are sane, not fat and not ugly)
[I call her my wife actually.]
^Keeper
Don’t forget the worst beta-izing sitcom of them all.. Home Improvement. Tim Allen was the poster child of the the incompetant man who always had to take Wilson’s feminized advice to make up to his wife. When I’m at Gold’s at 5:30am reruns of this show is on a couple of the TVs around the gym. Mercifully all the sound is muted, but I look at the mannerisms and the clothing and the hairstyles and the facial expressions – Tim is just the epitome of 90’s defeated, supplicating beta schlubery, and his man-wife is the epitome of 90’s short-hair, shoulder… Read more »
Joe Blow touches on something huge – if you want to know what dating was like in the ’90s, look at a 45 year old woman today. Great point about feminization in mass media. Remember how scandalous UFC was back in ’92 or so? Cities banning UFC fights, etc. I remember a buddy getting underground videos of the Gracies and it was practically like getting porn. Now it’s so mainstream it’s weird to think about just how controversial it all was. And the idea of a PUA – it was a joke, not something real men did. What was the… Read more »
“Feminization’s apex” is right. Dating in the 90s? The decade when the first episode of JAG was about pushing a female pilot? The decade when the serious distortion of domestic violence data took place and we got VAWA courtesy of Joe Biden? The decade of the Vagina Monologues? The decade of the “THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE” T-shirt? The decade when it became “cool” and “enlightened” to be a feminist with the only serious opposition to that notion being the tradcons? Thanks, but no thanks. Dating in that environment would have been hazardous to my mental (and possibly… Read more »
I know exactly two women who are not on facebook, and they are sisters. One is a very nice girl, good character, religious, married in her 20s to an overall good guy beta (not wimp at all, fun and confident but not a player), not a huge partier, virgin till marriage, SWPL (in a good way), family oriented, the whole package. She is sane, thin, average-cute. Not perfect, she parties some, and had an orbiter in college and dated a bad boy briefly, but she never made a habit of it. She has no reason to attention-whore herself, so I… Read more »
Instead of facebook and social networking, they had those phone lines you could call and then pay for like an hour or a week’s worth of time. then you’d shuffle through the introductions until you heard a voice you liked and would ping the girl. then you could chat with her. I met a couple of chicks this way. There were newspaper ads. There were pagers. There was also chicks who would write you a letter suggesting coffee or would pass you a note. You either met chicks in bars or in classes or social occassions. Reruns of MASH with… Read more »
I still prefer dating today over 20 years ago because there are still plenty of women who refuse all of this modern behavior, and there are far more men who are addicted to porn, video games, 60 sports channels on cable and whatever else the average schlub can’t get enough of.
That means the gal:guy ratio is far better today than it was in 1992. Also, some of the higher status power positions for men are getting weaker
I would argue that the obesity epidemic has made these “advantages” a wash.
I can only think of one chick whom I have met over the past several years who isn’t on facebook, and she just so happens to be an early 30’s ball busting cunt. Another one I know hasn’t been on there for long (she has only had a cell phone for a couple of years as well) and doesn’t seem to be umbilically connected to these things like most women are these days. This one is the sugar baby type who jumps from rich guy to rich guy. It’s a fucked up world when the “normal” women can’t go two… Read more »
I was in college in the late 1980s and dated as a young working man in the 90s. 1. There were obese girls and chunky girls, but not nearly as many as there are now. 2. Flaking was worse. 3. Lots more entitlement princesses — expecting expensive dates, dinner/movie, etc. 4. Harder to contact the girls. You had to call and leave a message with her roommates or on her landline answering machine. There was no total availability and no texting. You met up at the party. If she didn’t show, you can’t text or call. (This also made it… Read more »
Dating is much better now because of online dating and the unlimited source of women to tap into. They’re all damaged goods but fuck it, what do we care. Just gotta wrap the shit up. The biggest risk is them knowing where you live, cause they crazy ones do stalk.
As deti above states, the AIDS and Date Rape hysterias made dating a nightmare for most of the early 90s. Things changed dramatically towards the late 90s to what they are today (thank you Bill Clinton?)
I was at the gym and heard one of the champions of feminism Gwen Stefani and one of her overplayed, terrible songs from the 90s.
She was just a girl, lucky her.
the only way you could improve this blog would be through correct apostrophe usage
First, nothing is better than college, where else are there thousands of hot, young girls within a few square miles? That’s true no matter what decade you live in. Other than that, the biggest thing to impact the dating scene is online, not the dating sites necessarily, but sites like this where men can swap stories, compare notes, etc. Honestly, up the that point, most men were stumbling in the dark. Because of that, I think it has improved…slightly. One thing’s true, women then were told by their mothers not to be dependent on a man for a career; they… Read more »
I’d actually disagree about Home Improvement just a bit. Most of what you all say is true, most of the gags came from Tim Taylor’s stupid/irrational parody of masculinity and Jill was the more logical and centered one. Plus there were frequently bits where even the models would be shown to have more knowledge or common sense than him. However, the show definitely had some strong points that set it apart from Friends/Seinfeld and most lower-tier sitcoms on other channels: Tim Allen himself has decent cocky/funny attitude (and isn’t a sarcastic nihilist like Seinfeld). The show portrays an entire middle-class… Read more »
There certainly wasn’t any roadmap back then. The phrase “nice guys finish last” was there, but if you wanted to get out of nice guy land and have more success with women, there were very few ways you were going to learn that being a fucking asshole wasn’t what made a guy successful with multiple women, it was his indifference to them. Back then, that took some serious observation combined with significant trial and error. I was the stereotypical nice guy with tons of female friends and limited sex in high school. Breaking out wasn’t easy. Here are the basics… Read more »
One of the defining films of the 90’s was “Reality Bites” which contrasted the Alpha Ethan Hawke character with the beta Ben Stiller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khs56S_qcM8
Also Friends….with the betas Ross and Chandler vs the alpha Joey who’s regarded more as a douche and an outcast.
“Matters were made worse when Cobain’s parent’s divorced when he was seven and by his own account Cobain said he never felt loved or secure again. He became increasingly difficult, anti-social and withdrawn after his parent’s divorce. Cobain also said that his parent’s traumatic split fueled a lot of the anguish in Nirvana’s music.”
To bring this full circle, the divorce of Cobains parents probably fucked up his life.
Anders Breivik has criticised both of his parents for supporting the policies of the Norwegian Labour Party, and his mother for being, in his opinion, a moderate feminist. He wrote about his upbringing: “I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminising me to a certain degree.”
Love love LOVE your last paragraph. A lot of profound insight there. Tagging on Facebook everywhere you go, posting photos of everything you eat, AGHH live your life for yourself girls, not other people!!
[…] Rational Male – Size Matters, Kill The Bunny, Sex In The 90s […]
one other difference…in then 90’s there was no set of resources on game. You had no access to how to game. One contrast with then and now. if you asked a chick out and she gave you some set of waffle, often i was stuck with making a case for why all those reasons could be managed, not realizing it was a brush off or shit test. The other day, I shot a girl I’d been gaming a text. We’d been out 2-3 times, hanging out, dinner, dancing, DHV. I text: Hey princess. Monday. Patron Her a day later: waffle… Read more »
So true point on the general shaming tactic of discounting any nighttime venue hook-up-leading-to-a-relationship as a (morally) inferior means of meeting someone. Feminine imperative requires you to place the shameful, male sexuality-driven nocturnal snog-fest to a lower category to any acceptable sober daytime social function acquaintance. “So one can really meet someone in a club”, as the semi-obnoxous, loud significant other of a manginist workmate once commented in a bar about another workmate’s current girlfriend. The Great Matrix at work. Also on the mark with the “How to Pick Up Girls” book thingy (you rapist perv) and the revenge of… Read more »
1 day after that: “Oh.”
Lol’ed
+1 Joe Blow. I am presently living on the campus where Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain became an item. I think there exists some brief history of them somewhere on campus, compiled by students & such, as well as early recordings of the two & their music before Nirvana was big, or possibly before Nirvana existed. But I don’t know much about either of them, except for the obvious. Divorced parents & resultant trauma [+ Courtney Love (or Women) & resultant trauma] + Washington & resultant shitty mood due to the climates personally offensive nature ( – this place can… Read more »
I was a teen in the 90’s and it was hell. So much forced feminization, paranoia about AIDS, and boomer parents all over were retreating into a “I didn’t do that and you shouldn’t either!” moralism about sexuality that papered over their own sexcapades in the 60’s and 70’s. Maleness was a punchline, a la Ted Nugent or Tim Allen, and the effete, ironical Wayne Campbell, Ben Stiller and Kurt Cobain archetypes were forefront in the public mind. MTV became a political powerhouse, pushing all manner of left-liberal social activism from the anchor desk (including a program series from comes… Read more »
“normalizing oral sex”
I knew a lot of girls in college in the mid-80s who would do everything, even anal, but would not suck dick. “You can put that anywhere but in my mouth.”
2.) I don’t recall the entitlement being nearly as bad then as it is now. The 9′s and 10′s were still tough to catch and every girl obviously wanted the best guy she could get, but I don’t recall entire swaths of 5′s and 6′s expecting they deserved knights on white horses as the case seems to be today. When I re-entered the dating scene about a year ago, I was surprised with this change. Maybe it’s the insta-attention from online dating or something, but 6s and 7s almost never punched above their weight class and 5s were always approachable… Read more »
Just going to throw this out there for those saying there were no resources back in the 1990’s. For the most part, they are correctly, however, there was one that I know of. I’m not sure when I first started going to the alt.fastseduction newsgroup (via NNTP), but I’m pretty sure it was late 90’s…maybe mid-90’s? Damn, that decade is a blur now! Pieces of good advice interspersed with field reports and the wars between the guru’s/wanna-be guru’s in that newsgroup. Such epic flame wars… But to be honest, how you perceived the 1990’s depends entirely on what you were… Read more »
Rock Throwing: “Maybe it’s the insta-attention from online dating or something, but 6s and 7s almost never punched above their weight class and 5s were always approachable by even the worst shlub.” That’s how it was 25 years ago. It’s not just online dating. I think it’s a combination of the following: 1. premarital sex is even more on offer. 2, There are just no stigmas against premarital sex anymore, now that even the Church has scant little to say about it. 3. 5s, 6s and 7s learned they can get sex from the hot alphas. They don’t care about… Read more »
I’m probably a similar age as Rollo, or old enough to remember Nirvana being “Courtney Love’s boyfriend’s band”. But I have a different take on the “peak feminism” thing. Yes, men were expected to be somewhat beta-ized ‘sensitive males’, but on the other hand the girls were expected to be more sexually agressive and ‘cool’ aka easy. So to some extent it worked, for a while. This started getting dialed back in late 1990s with things like “The Rules” and the ‘bad boys’ meme in woman’s magazines. This was seen as a reassertion of feminine power, but at the same… Read more »
The biggest advantage today is the level of information available and the ease in which any one can access it. However the same factors of success remain regardless of the era in that one has to be able to readily apply the available information and develop the right amount of an edge to rise above the fray. If you are an older guy you either have to adapt to the changing terrain or die out (so to speak).
I think it’s worse. Today’s woman has a lot more dating choices and the internet has made it even more prolific. Most guys seem have to work even harder then years prior, to get a decent date. A relatively attractive girl/woman on Match gets hundreds if not thousands of e-mails – Match has even installed filters so e-mails from men that don’t meet predefined criteria get deleted. Also, the taboo for women dating outside their race has been erased and, let’s face it, she can have as much sex as she wants without being called a slut as long as… Read more »
Yes, men were expected to be somewhat beta-ized ‘sensitive males’, but on the other hand the girls were expected to be more sexually agressive and ‘cool’ aka easy. So to some extent it worked, for a while. This is my take as well. I was 16 in 1990 and obviously 26 in 2000, so for me the 90s was my entrance to the dating scene. I was a complete loser AFC up until about 95-96 but things started to change with many hours in the gym in 1996. One thing about the late 1990s that maybe is different from today…I… Read more »
@jimmy — You’re correct that there’s a lot of good information out there, but the converse of that is that the Internet has no quality filter, so it’s up to you to pick the peanuts out of the giganto turd. It’s great there are so many resources and “safe spaces” for guys to hash this stuff out, but at the same time the inexperienced guy is still largely at square one and going to have to learn things the hard way. (I read about some PUA instructors that weren’t getting laid, but “really knew the material”, which IMO is symptomatic… Read more »
primus- coattails of a deadman
@ Mike C — There was a definite shift where girls stepped up their game and got a lot more feminine but also started screening a lot harder (for ‘dominance’ or bedroom prowess or provider qualities or whatever). You have to adjust for age differences, but I dated younger girls for as long as I could get away with it & definitely saw it. Can’t pretend to explain it totally. Maybe girls were rebelling against their feminist castrating mothers? Products of the ‘everyone is special’ (and gets a perfect mate) educational system? Economic uncertainty? A logical outcome of gender equity?… Read more »
Say good bye to beta. Say c ya to buffers. Ya wanna be a man.. then stand up. Frame. Never Never forget… They are a plant… a flower. They only can have what comes to them. We are the bee’s. We are free. We go where we want. So who has the advantage? Take the honey.
Oddly, Kurt Cobain doesn’t look too beta in that picture. Courtney is girlishly affectionate to him, he seems to be keeping cool.
There have been two changes that have made it harder to pick up women better than 7’s: 1. Cell phones 2. Bottle service 1. I started dating in ’99 and only a few people had cell phones back then. That made everyone who was out at a bar/club be in the moment. The hot girls where not texting each other, or the guys that they would hook up with later that night. That means if they were out they were more open to meeting new people and you could get a number if you could spend as little as five… Read more »
number closes in the 70s 80s 90s, lmao….I guess if you liked pizza, the number a flaky girl would give out could have been considered a score!
[…] attempts to reveal the rudiments of Game in the mid 90′s, and considering this decade was the apex period for the feminine Matrix it’s all the more […]
We’ll that’s 2004 to know for you.
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