I continue to believe that the problem men are having today... is fundamentally mostly a cost-of-living problem.

Back when r/braincels was a thing, I was trying to figure out why there was this explosion of sexless, depressed, suicidal men (and yes, it's an explosion, not an illusion - sexual activity among young men has collapsed from 89% to 65% in just the last decade).

So I started polling the group a lot, trying to find a common thread. The incels had different ethnicities, different religions, different backgrounds in every way. They all believed they were hideously ugly, but when a few shared pictures it was obvious that the vast majority of them were very average-looking.

And then I threw out a poll that shocked me. I asked them what their living situation was, and out of 310 responses, 307 reported that they live at home with their parents.

And that's... really it, right there. Women are rarely willing to date men who live with their parents. They'll overlook a ton of stuff, but they won't overlook that.

So it wasn't that there was anything fundamentally wrong with them. It was just that they were stuck at home with their mom with no way out in sight. Rents are outrageous, and a lot of them have vague "maybe a couple years after I get my master's degree" plans that will probably never play out because they're too depressed to stick it through college at all.