Chads and Incels, Glazing, Socializing
Links and recommendations
You can now catch my conversation with Liam DeBoer on The Blendr Report podcast.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Wall Street Journal
I have a new piece out in the Wall Street Journal about chads and incels.
The Myth of the Chad (alternate link here)
Excerpt:
A popular story online—especially among young men—is that a small group of men are having lots of sex partners while everyone else is left out. This belief breeds anger and resentment. It frames dating as a winner-take-all competition. But the data tell a different story, challenging the idea that society is divided into sexual elites (aka “Chads”) and permanent losers (aka “incels”).
For most young adults, the most common number of sexual partners in the past year is one or zero. A minority of men and a minority of women account for most casual sex, and they mostly pair with each other. Most sex still happens inside relationships.
In his 2017 book “Cheap Sex,” sociologist Mark Regnerus drew on data from more than 15,000 American adults. He found that 20% of men between ages 25 and 50 account for about 70% of reported sexual partnerships with women. Those figures are easy to misread. They don’t mean that 70% of women are sleeping with 20% of men, because women show a similar pattern. About 20% of women account for roughly 65% of reported male partners.
Read the whole thing here or here.
New York City Event:
A relaxed, off-the-record conversation and Q&A.
Thursday, Feb 26 at 6:30pm.
Details and registration info here.
The Only Reading App I Use:
I’ve been using Readwise since April of 2021.
If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter/X, you’ll know I regularly share screenshots like this from books or articles I’ve read:
These screenshots come from my Readwise app.
Readwise aggregates your reading highlights from various sources like Kindle, Apple Books, Substack, Twitter, and so on. It stores your highlights in one place, making it easier to stay on top of your reading.
Each morning, it emails me 8 random excerpts from different books I’ve read. Since 2021, that daily message has been a quiet ritual for me: fragments from books I half‑forgot are resurfaced, like my own past self giving me a tap on the shoulder.
Moreover, when I’m thinking about a particular topic, a quick search pulls up not just my notes but every highlighted Kindle passage I’ve ever saved on the topic.
Exclusive Offer for My Readers
Use this link → https://readwise.io/robkhenderson/ to try Readwise free for 60 days (double the length of the standard free trial).
I suspect, like me, you’ll wonder how you ever read without it.
Links and recommendations:
Women Are More Likely Than Men to Endorse Political Violence by Colin Wright
Are People Innately Lazy? by Roy Baumeister
Cooperation is the scaffolding principle of life by Lionel Page
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here
Three interesting findings:
1. Using data from 1,683 unrelated heterosexual spousal pairs, a 2020 study revealed that people preferred partners who were genetically equivalent to fourth cousins (note: they weren’t actually fourth cousins; their genetic relatedness was equivalent to fourth cousins). A separate study from 2008 found that the greatest number of offspring was seen in couples related at the third- to fourth-cousin level. This is what you would expect if some degree of assortative mating conferred evolutionary fitness advantages.
2. How many hours does it take to make a friend? It takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to “casual” friend, an additional 40 hours to be considered a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a “close” friend. (source).
3. Since 1998 the percentage of Americans who say patriotism is an important value slid from 70% to 38%. The share of Americans who value having children has halved, from 59% in 1998 to 30% today. These are not indicators of a cohesive society. (source: The Origin of Politics by Nicholas Wade).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
Order your copy now:
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
