I want to discuss the first statement in your last reply - about “lumping all single men together”.

That is just how quantification of anything works. If we were talking about unemployment, or number of people with blue cars, or days with rain - if there is an increase, you mark on the sum increase over the previous baseline, and discuss potential reasons for the new influx.

If you think you are part of the previous baseline - guys who would have been single in past generations, then the discussion doesn’t apply to you. Even if no one goes through and specifically excludes you. Because the influx is what is being discussed - not the baseline.

But I don’t think you are actually upset at being lumped in with the influx. I think you are upset because the guys in the influx are being rediculed and you desperately want to find a reason to both be mad about that and to say those criticisms don’t apply to you.

You say you don’t want to be assumed to be a PoS bc you don’t have a gf.

If you really are not trying to date, I don’t think you run the risk of that.

The criticism in the top post is directed at guys who are obsessed with their dating status - but see it as a game they are losing, and women as objects to be manipulated into what they want.

If you are trying to date but see women as hostile opponents to be ‘managed’, you are going to act like a PoS.

What determines your PoS status isn’t your dating status - it’s whether you see and treat women as fully equal people with the same expectations to dignity and respect as your guy friends, or if you see women as alien beings on an opposing team - targets to potentially be manipulated to get what you long for, or targets of resentment for withholding or being inaccessable for what you long for.

If you are truly single and don’t have any resentments towards women about it, you are unlikely to come off as a PoS.

But honestly, that isnt how your comments are coming off

Another way to put it is that our culture is creating a lot of men who no one wants to be around. Who either don’t see themselves as needing to be likable or who see being likable as something that goes completely against their identity – something that is ‘impossible’ for them that they refuse to work on.

A lot of this may be tied to ideas of masculinity that see social awareness, empathy and cooperation as feminine traits since ‘tough guys’ in media can get ‘respect’ and attention despite eschewing all of those traits.

If you feel particularly lacking in those traits, it can feel very reassuring to tell yourself you can’t work on those things and it’s unfair to be judged or suffer consequences for deficiencies in them - because there is no escaping the sense of vulnerability one feels when trying to build up something one is weak in.

So we end up with a lot of guys who are sullen about being miserable and being miserable to be around.

These guys have a lot of hard work ahead of them. The first big hurdle is accepting that they have to be responsible for becoming people that others like being around - and getting over their safety blanket idea that they ‘can’t’ so they shouldn’t bother.

I think this is still a skills issue, the question is “what skill?”

You have a passionate interest. What you don’t know how to do is talk about it in a way that shares why it is so fascinating to you. That can be worked on. It’ll take practice, including more times where you flop, but you can try to watch how people with other niche interests pull people in and create intrigue and excitement.

Trying to learn this skill for your passion will help you do it more generally; it will make you a more interesting person that people enjoy connecting to.

If you are male and lonely but it is because of social anxiety, why do you feel attacked by this? You have a different, external reason for being lonely than the broad swath of the criticism.

Why do you feel attacked by this if it is advocating for circumstances (men improving their interelational dynamics to build deeper friendships) that would likely improve your opportunities to comfortably challenge your social anxiety?

If you feel attacked, is it because your attitude is the problem being criticized? That rather than seeing your social anxiety as your burden to overcome, you instead see it as a reason that society owes you access to the company of women you find attractive - that at the heart of it, you feel aggreived that women don’t have to pick you?