Some people would argue that the modern dating world is a zero-sum game, i.e. every success for an individual is equally paired with another person's failure. The most recognizable small-scale indication of this is two men vying for a woman's affection, one man succeeds and gains "mating rights", the other fails and is left with nothing, and must find another option or be left with no sexual prospects.

However, I'd contend that it's even worse than a zero-sum game. The way online dating, social media, and sexual permissiveness have changed the dating market nowadays have turned it into a negative-sum game. Every gain is not matched with an equivalent failure, but rather multiple failures and losses of utility of greater magnitude than the original gain.

Let's say a tall, handsome man enters the sexual marketplace. He easily matches with thousands on Tinder and plows through hundreds of women a year, many of whom are cheating on or leading on some less sexually attractive man. By the end of this man's crusade, he does not net any additional happiness after each new conquest. However, each lay permanently etches a higher standard of what each woman will demand sexually from any guy who wants to fuck her without paying, and leaves the men who she would have gotten with otherwise (who would have benefited far more from a relationship) with fewer options in a market already dry for them.

This continues systematically for years in every major city in the western world. Those at the top of the sexual totem pole lose the pleasure they gained from their first few conquests, nevertheless would never sacrifice their sexual hegemony. Everyone close enough to slayer status will work countless hours perfecting their body, DMing hundreds of women, and feel chronically insecure that they do not measure up. Average guys must deal with a minima of sexual options, and often are forced to contend with sexually passive LTRs with women who see them as patently inferior to the men they got with in the past. The women, on average, had a taste of top 1% men, and see everything else as a sour compromise. Rather than more options leaving everyone more satisfied, they have left everyone less happy and more insecure.

Opening the floodgates to sexual promiscuity has allowed all this to happen, and has made everyone less happy than they were in the days when monogamy was strictly enforced. I do not agree that monogamy should be enforced, yet the reality of what social media, OLD, etc. has led to cannot be ignored, especially in it's horrendous affect on the psyche of young men and women.