Why GenZ isn't dating

[Anonymous]

This NYT "thought piece" I think is giving way too much credence to fringe behavior by positioning it as mainstream. What say you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/opinion/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QVA.a3NV.5apj7_Wu0kSD&smid=url-share

My kids are GenZ. They're dating. I don't know any boys doing this looksmaxx BS. Am I wrong or is this article just complete BS and out of step with the zeitgeist?

[Anonymous]

My son is 20 and has dates all the time. He’s got really solid emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills for a kid - at least he’s way ahead of where I was. I think that helps.

While I wouldn’t call him a looksmaxer he lifts 4-5x per week, plays basketball with his friends, hikes, skis and cooks healthy almost every night. I think young men are certainly for fitness and health focussed than they used to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This NYT "thought piece" I think is giving way too much credence to fringe behavior by positioning it as mainstream. What say you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/opinion/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QVA.a3NV.5apj7_Wu0kSD&smid=url-share

My kids are GenZ. They're dating. I don't know any boys doing this looksmaxx BS. Am I wrong or is this article just complete BS and out of step with the zeitgeist?

The article was paywalled. What is the reasons they give that Gen Z is not dating?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This NYT "thought piece" I think is giving way too much credence to fringe behavior by positioning it as mainstream. What say you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/opinion/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QVA.a3NV.5apj7_Wu0kSD&smid=url-share

My kids are GenZ. They're dating. I don't know any boys doing this looksmaxx BS. Am I wrong or is this article just complete BS and out of step with the zeitgeist?

The article was paywalled. What is the reasons they give that Gen Z is not dating?

I provided a gift link. Did you actually click on it did you just assume it was paywalled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son is 20 and has dates all the time. He’s got really solid emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills for a kid - at least he’s way ahead of where I was. I think that helps.

While I wouldn’t call him a looksmaxer he lifts 4-5x per week, plays basketball with his friends, hikes, skis and cooks healthy almost every night. I think young men are certainly for fitness and health focussed than they used to be.

This isn’t looks maxxing this is just being a healthy grown adult. The internet is turning some of the young men into weirdos quite frankly and borderline asexual it’s very odd. I think the NYT is making something niche into something broad, but this is definitely a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son is 20 and has dates all the time. He’s got really solid emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills for a kid - at least he’s way ahead of where I was. I think that helps.

While I wouldn’t call him a looksmaxer he lifts 4-5x per week, plays basketball with his friends, hikes, skis and cooks healthy almost every night. I think young men are certainly for fitness and health focussed than they used to be.

This isn’t looks maxxing this is just being a healthy grown adult. The internet is turning some of the young men into weirdos quite frankly and borderline asexual it’s very odd. I think the NYT is making something niche into something broad, but this is definitely a thing.

Yeah, the example from the article is some dude who uses a hammer to break his face in order to try to shape his face bones or something.

[Anonymous]

The guy in the article sounds very very sick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son is 20 and has dates all the time. He’s got really solid emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills for a kid - at least he’s way ahead of where I was. I think that helps.

While I wouldn’t call him a looksmaxer he lifts 4-5x per week, plays basketball with his friends, hikes, skis and cooks healthy almost every night. I think young men are certainly for fitness and health focussed than they used to be.

This isn’t looks maxxing this is just being a healthy grown adult. The internet is turning some of the young men into weirdos quite frankly and borderline asexual it’s very odd. I think the NYT is making something niche into something broad, but this is definitely a thing.

It's not all about the men. Women have their own problems. From the article:

And women, for their part, are moving away from the corporeal entirely, celebrating yearning rather than in-person relationships, decentering men and solo-romanticizing their own lives.

[Anonymous]

Just from my perspective of watching my children and their friends, dating just starts slightly later than it used to. Like maybe 1-2 years behind 20 years ago. Otherwise seems fairly normal

[Anonymous]

In the most recent issue of The Point magazine, the Gen Z writer Mana Afsari recounted meeting right-of-center men with this mind-set in the wild, at a party in Washington, D.C. “They’ve had all summer to pursue opportunities in real life, but the forms of gender-specific discourse that had given them consolation were more gratifying, or familiar, than the opportunity to encounter real and receptive women. Instead, they talked about the abstract women, archetypes they’d read about online, who would always hurt them.”

I think this quote really sums it up. This generation only thinks of the other gender in the abstract based on what they see on the internet. The internet has told them what the other gender believes or how they act with out actually interacting with the other gender. When it comes to women I have wondered if the increased popularity of romance novels with gen z is reflected in this. They don’t want to deal with the real men so they entertain themselves with the imaginary one.

[Anonymous]

The guy in the article sounds very very sick.

+1...but his site brings in $100,000 PER MONTH, so he's attracting others.
IME, it's kind of like the anorexia, bulimia, and cutting sites.They are dangerous, in large part because they make sick actions seem normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The guy in the article sounds very very sick.

+1...but his site brings in $100,000 PER MONTH, so he's attracting others.
IME, it's kind of like the anorexia, bulimia, and cutting sites.They are dangerous, in large part because they make sick actions seem normal.

He is part of Nick Fuentes's orbit and sucks in that part of the internet.

[Anonymous]

The NY Times loves to find 3 people in Brooklyn doing a thing and calling it a trend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This NYT "thought piece" I think is giving way too much credence to fringe behavior by positioning it as mainstream. What say you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/opinion/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QVA.a3NV.5apj7_Wu0kSD&smid=url-share

My kids are GenZ. They're dating. I don't know any boys doing this looksmaxx BS. Am I wrong or is this article just complete BS and out of step with the zeitgeist?

As a Gen Z male who is around "looksmaxxers" and who is very familiar with it, including following Clavicular from before he was mainstream the truth is that there's a small percentage of men who are sleeping with an absurd amount of women and then a much larger percentage of men and women who are not sleeping around at all.

I am friends with guys who are "looksmaxxers" who've slept with hundreds of women before 25 because they're active on Apps and in person. What used to take years of learning how to get a girl into bed started from we were around 14 and then we were on the apps before we were 18 (kicked off a few times) then redownloaded for good at 18 then it was game over. Reason being is quite simple: in a second or two to look at a profile women who have much greater control of their choice of who they want to sleep with (and believe me they do want to sleep around still) will choose the top 1-3% of guys on the app. Those 1-3% of the guys will earn a disproportionate amount of likes. I say this because I've been on it and slept with multiple women in a day depending on the week from the app.

Then you go out to club and a bar 2-4 times a week and meet girls there and you're talking scheduling issues because you're sleeping around so much. Again, this is much easier if you're in the top 1-3% of guys because women who used to think you were out of their league have a false impression of how attractive they are because they receive an outsourced amount of attention online.

I've since stopped sleeping around and I am not proud of it but I am still in close contact with guys who are active in these circles and the behavior is now repulsive to me (group chats bragging about who's going to sleep with the most girls for the week, sending nudes of girls etc). Horrible horrible stuff that isn't nearly talked about enough is going on in the Gen Z dating world. The worst part is, is that a lot of these women are misled that the sexual revolution and them sleeping around is empowering when I've seen and heard these girls cry first hand about why I and or a friend ghosted them after a one night stand (sorry you were just a number for me to try beat my friends for who got the most girls for the week). Then recorded her crying from another phone and sent into the GC to laugh at.

If I was someone who knew of this happening and wasn't attractive/etc. I would simply stop dating, which is what I suspect is happening to a lot of Gen Z

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The guy in the article sounds very very sick.

Clav is very very popular amongst Gen Z and Gen Alpha boys (14-25). If you have a son that age who is online and reasonably social at school there's a very high chance he's heard of him and a higher chance he's interacted with a post from him. They've manipulated the algorithm to an insane degree that it's near impossible to avoid him.