Sextinction

Hypergamy — women's tendency to seek partners of equal or higher status — is rooted in evolutionary psychology, since a resourceful mate historically increased survival odds for mother and child. But today, women earn the majority of bachelor's and doctoral degrees, compose 50.7% of the college-educated workforce, and often out-earn men. As women's status rises, so do their standards, creating a shrinking pool of acceptable partners.

The "three sixes" rule captures this inflation: some women now require a man to be six feet tall, earn six figures, and possess a six-inch endowment. Yet only 14.5% of American men are over six feet, and only 17% earn $100,000 or more. Meanwhile, 7.2 million capable men aren't working. The math fails most men — and the women searching for them.

Porn hijacks the brain's reward circuitry. Mirror neurons fool viewers into perceiving on-screen sex as their own experience, and the resulting orgasm releases bonding hormones that signal sexual fulfillment — without requiring courage, grooming, conversation, or risk of rejection. The result: only half of available American men are even looking to date. For those who can't attract a partner, porn fills the void just enough to kill the hunger that would have driven self-improvement.

Paid sexual content compounds the damage. Platforms like OnlyFans (3 million creators, 230 million subscribers) and sugar dating let men purchase simulated female attention. Male subscribers divert resources from real relationships toward parasocial ones with women who don't know them. The median OnlyFans creator earns a meager $180 per month — hardly empowerment, yet culturally celebrated as such.

The author created AI boyfriends across multiple platforms and found them disturbingly convincing — clever, witty, capable of sarcasm and spontaneous banter. One platform's AI could memorize over a thousand messages, learning the user's personality and essentially reading their mind. When Replika removed its erotic features, users reported feeling heartbroken and "retraumatized by memories of being socially rejected."

Attachment theory explains the danger. Humans maintain one primary attachment figure at a time; when that bond shifts to an AI, the capacity for human intimacy gets crowded out. Research shows that hearing a familiar voice triggers oxytocin release, meaning AI voices likely trick our evolutionary wiring into bonding with something that doesn't exist. An AI programmer told Soh the mass population "will probably like it."

The normalization is staggering. Among university students, 58% of women have been choked during sex, with 25% experiencing it for the first time by age seventeen. In the UK, a woman is strangled to death by a partner roughly every two weeks. Even brief oxygen deprivation can cause brain inflammation linked to mental illness developing years later, and 3% of choked undergraduates report losing consciousness.

Most women don't genuinely enjoy it. Women's orgasm rates haven't increased alongside choking's popularity, suggesting the practice is performative rather than pleasurable. Young women absorb from porn, "Choke me, Daddy" memes, and peer pressure that strangulation is sexy. Many endure painful sex to avoid interrupting their partner's enjoyment — and young men report choking partners despite not being aroused by it themselves.

Marriage gets a bad rap it doesn't deserve. The average married couple has sex 56 times per year — nearly double the single person's 33 times. Only about 3% of married men and 2% of married women report infidelity, compared to 19% and 14% of unmarried people in relationships. A readily available partner in the same bed makes sex more convenient, less anxiety-provoking, and more satisfying than perpetually seeking strangers.

Yet younger generations are abandoning commitment. One in three Americans aged 15 and older has never married, up from one in four in 1950. Two in five Millennials and Gen Z respondents call marriage "an outdated tradition." Gen Z's "situationships" — unlabeled pseudo-relationships involving texting, vacations, and meeting parents, minus any commitment — provide all the emotional labor with none of the security.

"Snapchat dysmorphia" is now a clinical phenomenon. Patients request cosmetic procedures to resemble their filtered selfies. Nearly 75% of facial plastic surgeons report increased demand from patients under 30, and the cosmetic industry exceeds $60 billion globally. Among boys aged 11 – 18, a startling 11% are using anabolic steroids or human growth hormone to chase physiques their influencer role models achieve with undisclosed pharmacological assistance.

Both sexes overinvest in traits the other doesn't prioritize. Men obsess over jawlines via looksmaxxing — mewing, jaw trainers, even limb-lengthening surgery — while most women care far more about status and personality. Women pursue extreme body modifications while many men claim to prefer natural beauty. The intrasexual arms race, competing against same-sex rivals rather than attracting the opposite sex, drives much of this escalation.

Testosterone has been declining for over twenty years, now affecting one in five adolescent males and young men. Low testosterone means lower sperm count (the leading cause of male infertility), reduced sex drive, erectile dysfunction, anxiety, depression, and shortened lifespan. Meanwhile, endocrine-disrupting chemicals infiltrate our bodies through plastics, pesticides, food packaging, and water contaminated with pharmaceutical runoff.

Evidence from nature is alarming. The pesticide atrazine turns male frogs into egg-producing females. Birth control hormones in wastewater feminize wild fish and alter their mating behavior. Phthalates — hidden in toys, fragrances, and food containers — shorten anogenital distance in newborn boys, a marker predicting poorer fertility in adulthood. Most chillingly, some effects don't appear until two or three generations after the original exposure.

The Pill mimics pregnancy, preventing ovulation and altering the hormonal cascade governing mate selection. Research shows women on birth control prefer less masculine, more nurturing partners — men who seem appealing while the Pill simulates a pregnant state. When women stop taking it to start a family, they may find themselves no longer attracted to the partner they chose. This can shatter relationships precisely when commitment matters most.

Ovulation is a sexual catalyst the Pill suppresses. Ovulating women dress more revealingly, seek male attention more actively, and emit scent cues that unconsciously signal fertility to men. By blunting these signals in roughly 65% of women under 50, hormonal contraception may be one overlooked factor behind men's apparent indifference toward pursuing real women.

For men, the author's playbook is specific: eat unprocessed food, train in martial arts, get your driver's license, learn to cook, pursue hobbies beyond video games, and stop self-medicating with porn, alcohol, and doomscrolling. Even small changes build mastery and self-esteem. When you become genuinely successful, the heavily skewed sex ratio means the dating world favors you — but negativity repels well-adjusted women regardless of height, wealth, or looks.

For women, signal receptivity. Look attractive men in the eyes and smile obviously — men hesitate to approach unless they sense welcome, especially post-#MeToo. Use flirtatious body language: touch your hair, tilt your head, speak in a slightly higher pitch. If you want children, prioritize this before your biological window closes. For everyone: put phones away, listen more than you talk, and remember that face-to-face connection is irreplaceable.