I think it's very hard to take anything written about the dating environment seriously if it was written pre-COVID. Too much has changed as a result of that...
While it is true that the pandemic changed the mating environment, all it did was accelerate some longer term trends of the 2000s-2010s.
Roosh's 2018 "Game" book would still have applicability in 2025. However, it is out of print now due to Roosh's religious conversion. Based on that, it's not worth arguing that point tremendously.
2013's "The Rational Male" from Rollo Tomassi still holds up well in 2025. "The Rational Male" was not written specifically as a pickup/seduction manual. In 2022, Rollo Tomassi published "The Rational Male - The Players Handbook: A Red Pill Guide to Dating". That published in April 2022 and was primarily composed while a lot of pandemic restrictions were still in place.
I think a lot of 2010s era content (books, blog posts, and video content) does hold up reasonably well in the 2020s. Content from the 2000s might not hold up as well due to the pandemic and some broader technological changes.
There was a 2000s era tactic that Roosh promoted at one time about asking women about pet shops and other local information. That tactic is dead due to Google Maps, Google Reviews, Yelp, and the rise of AI since then.
I don't think we can throw out all content from the 2000s-2010s regarding the mating environment.
When I first started reading seduction content during my college years (2001-2005), one person I read in those years was Doc Love. Doc Love's "The System" was from the 1990s and made reference to landline telephones. Doc Love even had articles I recall from 2001 and 2002 that still discussed landline telephones.
@EyeBRollin made a post in 2021 below adapting the overall concept behind Doc Love's phone contact strategy to the smartphone and text messaging era.
Here’s my thing - so I just banged the HB 7.5 I spoke about in the other thread (to which I thank you for your advice!). Since we banged, she has been texting almost nonstop with very high interest. Due to our schedules we couldn’t see each other for 9 days (down to 7 now). If I essentially...
www.sosuave.net
Many good fundamentals can transcend changes in technology and overall mating trends.
A significant portion of successful bars and nightclubs took a major hit; popular spots now have specific capacity limits, and certain places (like Harrah's Pool Bar in NJ) haven't recovered and will likely never be as good as they once were.
Bars and nightlife venues sustained damage from the pandemic. It can be argued that the nightlife venue industry as a whole is still recovering from 1-2 years of lockdowns and significant capacity limitations. In my region, I'm not aware of any capacity limitations in 2025. That's something that might still be affecting some areas but is completely irrelevant in others.
The World Health Organization did not declare the pandemic as being over until May 2023. When history is studied in the future, the pandemic era might be considered 2020-2023 or 2020-2022.
I noticed a decline in indoor masking in 2022 and things started to seem more like pre-pandemic times around mid-2022. At the very least, the pandemic disrupted daily life for about 2 full years (March 2020 - Q2/Q3 2022).
2 years of people sitting at home and not congregating as much in bars is going to affect bars.
However, the bar scene did shift a lot during the 2010s and I think the pandemic accelerated certain trends that became evident during the 2010s.
Fewer people were relying on bars to start new interactions in the 2000s-2010s. This started with the de-stigmatization of online dating websites around the mid-2000s. This really took off when Tinder was released in 2012, ushering in the swipe app era. Swipe apps changed the bar scene more than I think the pandemic did.
Many bars became places that were hosting app arranged 1st/2nd dates more than places that people would meet without any previous interaction.
I think that bars have changed enough over the 21 years since I turned 21. I think that many would agree that they are more for same night sex opportunities as compared to date arranging. Finding first dates from later night bar approaches was more realistic in the mid to late 2000s as compared to the 2010s-2020s. I think Roosh captured a part of that in 2018's "Game" and that's a trend that has continued into the 2020s.
A lot of same night sex interactions now start on swipe apps though. A common path now would be swipe app, bar interaction, sex. That's what you did in December 2024 with the flight attendant seduction. That was predictably short term sex.
Too much has changed in the aftermath of being stuck inside for more than a full year. Several classes of college students had their entire experience online and remote, and they never developed the social skills that that environment is meant to teach. And now they become antisocial young adults who live their lives behind their phones.
Antisocial behavior from technology has been rising for decades. In my freshman year of college (2001-2002), it was super common among the freshman class to be sending AOL Instant Messenger messages instead of talking on a telephone or seeing each other in person. This was happening when cellular phone ownership was much lower and the cell phones of the early to mid 2000s also weren't geared for sending text messages. Services like AOL Instant Messenger were the precursor to social media DMs and text messages. By my senior year of college (2004-2005), both Facebook and MySpace had launched.
College in 2001-2005 was more in the real world than it has been during the past decade. However, it is important to not forget what had happened in the pre-smartphone era.
There are now 2 adult generations with stunted social skills due to technology. Both Millennials and Generation Z have experienced social stunting due to tech advances. The oldest Millennials like myself are in their early 40s now. Many Millennials have spent their entire adult lives socially stunted, but appear less socially stunted than the newest adults of Generation Z.
The oldest Generation Z members were born in 1997 and are turning 28 in 2025.
The 1990s/early 2000s born adults have had more technology and have had lower social skills. For older Millennials like myself, a lot of the technology emerged after we had reached legal adulthood. Later Millennials (1990-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012) had many crucial technologies emerge in their childhood and more meaningfully affected their childhoods. Most of the 1980s born Millennials had a more analog childhood.
OnlyFans became insanely popular, and men were revealed to be sad simps. Women earn tons of money from this alongside their social media, and yet are still hypergamous and rule out 99% of men.
OnlyFans has been symptom of trends that emerged pre-pandemic. OnlyFans launched in 2016, multiple years before the pandemic. It didn't really take off until lockdowns. However, free porn tube sites like Pornhub were popular in the 2000s-2010s.
Male thirst and simping had been increasing during the 2000s-2010s as had male sexlessness rates. Male sexlessness rates escalated due to social media, smartphones, and swipe apps. Sexlessness rates started increasing noticeably in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
Most women are not making that much money off of their OnlyFans. Only a small percentage of women make good money from the OF platform. There are enough examples of women making good income from OnlyFans though.
A woman doesn't even need an OnlyFans and doesn't need to be making money from Instagram or social media to experience simping and get lots of attention. There are plenty of women with 2,000 - 9,999 Followers on Instagram who don't make money, post provocative pictures, and get attention.
A significant percentage of women on Instagram (not OF creators and not even women with desires to go to OF) get more attention than the top supermodels of the 1980s ever did.
The bigger epidemic/pandemic has been male thirst.
I've learnt that there are a lot of factors that affect how well the "morning after" goes, most of which are outside our control. A lot of my dating experience centers around trying to control more of those factors; looks, hygiene, conversation skills, cold approaching so I'm the one choosing, etc. I'm not particularly lucky, so I think about niche ways that an otherwise positive situation can be f***ed up - oftentimes the stupidest reasons end up being the correct ones.
I agree that the "morning after" factors are mainly out of the seducer's control.
A lot of same night sex doesn't result in longer term sex. Sometimes, it might lead to shorter term sex (less than a few months). I'd say the most common outcome after same night sex is a parting of ways with no 2nd instance of sex.
