Submitted 3 years 9 months ago by AlexP.
San Francisco is NOT an ideal location for men looking for dates or relationships. San Francisco is the only densely populated city in the country where male college graduates outnumber female college graduates by a large margin. Combine this with a large supply of thirsty, sexually desperate men (representing sexual demand) and a scarcity of attractive women, and you have a market that is extremely difficult for men to compete in.
Everyone who is fortunate enough to call San Francisco home earns top dollar (or comes from good money). And, let us face it, money is intrinsically linked to prosperity, strength, determination, and so forth. When every guy has money and is competing for the same girls, an absurdly lopsided buyer's market results. And, when a woman is relentlessly harassed and pursued by a pack of drooling dogs, is there any reason for her to make any effort at all, let alone pursue back? No, what is the point? Human beings take the path of least resistance.
So, what are you going to get? A jumbled mess of losers attempting to invite the same indifferent women out to the best restaurants. The women are dull and lukewarm, with little or nothing to say. Moreover, THEY ARE NOT SEXY! Even international women are frequently impacted. SF has the most repulsive foreigners of any city I've visited. Attempt to find an au pair who is not obese.
As a result of the large number of homogeneous assholes in the dating pool and the abundance of options, women developed a partner checklist. A make-your-own-boyfriend. Is he taller than 6 feet and earns more than $100,000? Abundant choice is not something that human beings are biologically evolved to deal with, particularly for females. We'd be better off if we had fewer options to make. When the number of options increases, so do the drawbacks, until we are overburdened. Constantly being asked to make decisions, even about trivial matters, forces one to spend time, resources, and a healthy dose of self-doubt and dread. Option, at this stage, debilitates rather than liberates. It could even be be said to tyrannize.
I moved to San Francisco from a small town about an hour north of the city with a dating pool about 1% the size of SF's. You'd think my prospects would improve with the move, wouldn't you? False! In that small town, I had the pleasure of dating some of the most interesting women I'd ever met. In comparison, 1% of the population provided 1,000% of the quality dates. They were wonderful women, morally superior to almost everyone in San Francisco.
Dating was routine and enjoyable. I got to know people on a personal and intimate level.
After moving, I was shocked to discover that no one is interested in getting to know another person in San Francisco. It's all about restaurants and banging. And the banging has little to do with the other person and more to do with meeting a biological need. I know because I've done it. It's sloppy and pitiful. Thus, we've all become representatives of a dating pool of narcissistic, lonely, horny, impulsive assholes with a short attention span. Rather than putting in the effort to get to know someone, we'd rather keep swiping right to see who else wants to fuck our profile picture than eat pho and watch Netflix.
Here's the low down on San Francisco:
Homogeneous: Despite what you might have read about San Francisco being a cultural mecca, it is highly homogeneous, divided into two buckets. To paint a wide picture, there are the tech people who are generally annoying, uncultured, and boring. Then there's 'everyone else,' who receive a fraction of what techies do (while resenting them), have a cultural 'holier than thou' mentality, but are a lot more interesting in general. There seems to be a shortage of a significant middle class, or they have been forced out of San Francisco. In New York, I was acquainted with actors, teachers, artists, and so on, but this isn't the case in San Francisco.
Flaky: The people here are highly flaky. The highest cost of living in the country generates a swim-or-sink economy and mentality in which many people don't have time for long-term relationships, so they rely on a steady diet of hookups and use apps that provide a variety of sexual choices with instant gratification. Between very long work and school days, yoga, Pilates, hiking, and texting, they literally don't have time or energy for any love or relationship, no matter how casual or severe. These kinds of implications can occur in any work that is stressful and requires long hours. That is everything there is to it.
Costumes: This is a minor quibble, but where I come from, we don't need an excuse to get together. In San Francisco, you can't go anywhere without wearing a mask. It's as if the nerds wanted a way to hang out with the cool kids, so costume parties were conceived. "Hey Jimmy, this way we can invite girls!" he says, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
Expensive!: Rents in SF now exceed the rents that I've paid in real cities in the most desirable neighborhoods. My budget runs substantially higher in SF and I'm not quite sure what I get for the money. Inside SF it's high rent, high traffic, lots of bums and streets are dirty. Outside SF it's high traffic, high sprawl, enormous cost of living everywhere and a billion year a day commutes.
Passivity in general: Nobody seems to care about anything other than how organic their tomatoes are.
The majority of the people here are shit, and the social classes hate and distrust each other underneath the surface. What's the point? You only focus on the scenery, architecture, and history, and enjoy the weather. Pretend that the other hominids aren't present.
People are humbly dishonest: ("I'm so liberal and open-minded... If you're into what I'm into")
I can say this with authority: SF is the worst city in the US for a single man, and I have lived in and visited many. It is a dump. Crowded, over priced, tacky and boring. I can't stop shaking my head at the enormous amount of money spent on average houses in crowded neighborhoods with narrow streets and boring people.
The only silver lining is that if you can make it here, going anywhere else in the world will be a breath of fresh air. New York is expensive but actually worth it in terms of urban amenity (unlike SF). There really isn't anywhere in the U.S. that has that urban density, so if that's what you want, NYC provides it. San Francisco, on the other hand, would not be on the map if it weren't for the venture capital industry. Its economy is more one-dimensional than that of Los Angeles. It charges New York City rates for a Portland lifestyle.