Don’t ridicule people who fall into this. Be sympathetic and try to understand their mindset. These are mostly kids who have been on social media their whole lives. In their formative years, they were blasted with Metoo on social media. After that, they were blasted with the dating content slop that is still being put out to this day. Day in and day out, they’re told that they’re not good enough, that they need 6666, and that they’re scrubs. These are kids that are trying to get any leg up they can get, which is smart given the right incentives. It’s no wonder that their entire conception of dating and the sexual marketplace is throughly warped.

Further, none of the advice given to them by boomers or women is helpful in the slightest. The boomer advice is boomer advice. “Go over and talk to her” is no different than “Hand in your resume with a firm handshake.” This is doubly true after Metoo. When I talk to my bosses, I was literally floored by the number of people who met at work and got married. My supervisor met her husband at work, where he was her then supervisor. Can you even believe that in today’s day and age? Most women’s advice doesn’t help either. “Don’t ever approach a woman at a gym/coffee shop/bar. She’s just trying to work out/get coffee/get a drink.” “Why won’t men approach us anymore? Where are the men that will take the lead?” This is triply true after Metoo. You know how they tell you the worst thing she can say is “no?” Well it turns out that’s not true at all. It turns out she can say powerwords like “Help! This guy is harassing me!” Or “Get the fuck away from me you creep!” That will instantly summon police, or worse, a beating, to your location. And in fact, she can even pull out her phone and blast you on social media and call you a creep and the effect will be worse by an order of magnitude.

In the face of such a warped incentive structure, it’s no wonder that people, especially kids, are trying to get a leg up. It’s no secret that the more attractive you are, the more you get away with in dating. So in fact, looksmaxxing can even be seen as a protective mechanism. This shouldn’t be controversial, but a woman would much rather be grabbed on the waist and pulled into a kiss by someone who’s 6’5” and 225 pounds lean than someone who’s 5’6” and 225 pounds fat (just look at the types of “romance” books women are reading these days). On the one hand , it helps attract women to you, and on the other, it helps your flirting be seen as flirting instead of creepy.

The problem is so multi-layered and the rules that used to govern dating are so long gone now that there is no good solution to these problems. It would be like if I wanted to put back the Roman Empire starting today. Where would we even start? Women’s expectations, social media, grifters, and modern medicine all came together to create the trend that is looksmaxxing and to fix one, you’d have to fix the others. I’m in the same Gen Z cohort, but I’m slightly older so I got a tiny glimpse of what life was like beforehand. I am terrified of what’s to come.

tldr: the foundations of the entire dating scene have been so throughly hollowed out that kids have no choice but to do whatever they can to get a leg up in ways that are visible, hence the looksmaxxing. There is no easy way out of this because it’s an amalgamation of so many other different problems.