Has anyone read the book "Land of the Losers"

Tevorino · 2024-12-02T20:00:39+00:00

I haven't read the book, but I did do a teaching year in Japan in the early 2000s via the JET program so I can comment to some degree on what he would have experienced there.

Unlike "Niceguy", I had already been reasonably successful in dating. I prefer large, blue-eyed white women, so I expected that if I dated anyone in Japan it was going to be other JET teachers. What immediately shocked me in Japan was how readily Japanese women would indicate interest in me. At least half of the conversations I had with Japanese women led to her asking about my blood type, which in Japan is the equivalent of asking someone about their star sign and is based on a certain idea that is about as rational as astrology. After I told her my blood type, she would often proceed to ask "Do you have girlfriend?" Almost all of these women were asking these questions in a very reserved manner, yet they couldn't have made it more obvious that they wanted me to ask them out on a date.

While it wasn't originally my intention to have sex with any Japanese women, I decided that if some of them were going to make it that obvious that they wanted to date me, I would ask out the one who I found most appealing (and who wasn't a student of mine because that would be grossly unethical) and see how it goes. So, when she asked "Do you have girlfriend?" I told her no and then asked if she had a boyfriend. She blushed, looked towards the ground, and said no, so I immediately asked her out for dinner to see how she would react. Her eyes immediately lit up and she accepted. Afterwards I asked if she wanted to kiss and she excitedly agreed. She proceeded to agree to everything else I suggested and by the end of the night we were having unprotected sex. I couldn't believe how easy that was; it was like playing a videogame that is normally set to high difficulty, and not initially realising that the previous player changed the difficulty setting to easy.

What was really going on there, however, was that I was a white man in a country where white men were outnumbered dozens to one by women who are curious about white men. Essentially, this was sexual geoarbitrage. To be very clear, I'm not saying that all, most, or even a large minority of Japanese women had such a curiosity. I'm only saying that enough of them did to completely outstrip supply. Furthermore, I was conversing in English and obviously the kind of Japanese woman who would be motivated to become good at speaking English is not going to be representative of the general female population of Japan; there was some very heavy selection bias at play.

None of this is helpful to Japanese men who, in my experience back then, also tended to be shy and demure (not as much as the women, but still very shy compared to western men). I don't find these traits to be attractive in women; I'm attracted to confidence. That said, I don't find such traits to be unattractive either (in Japan I found it to be cute), while it seems that women do tend to find these traits to be quite unattractive in men. That can't possibly bode well for the prospects of Japanese men in their own country, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the rate of male loneliness in Japan is as high, or higher, than in the west.

I don't know how much things have changed since the early 2000s. At that time, this geoarbitrage phenomenon was sufficiently well-known to inspire things like this comic. I don't know how accurate this 2010 article is (the author seems to be far from objective); if it's accurate then I did JET just in time to experience the phenomenon and the ship has since sailed. The Philippines, on the other hand, is a cheap country that has English as one of its official languages where, for whatever reason, an obsession with whiteness continues to be prevalent to such an extent that this kind of pairing is possible.

firsthandgeology · 2024-12-04T21:16:26+00:00

Looks like they published the first chapter on their website. Just google "land of the losers preview".

Title	Has anyone read the book "Land of the Losers"
Author	MSHUser
Upvotes	44
Comments	4
Date	December 2, 2024 11:58 AM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1h4tcdd/has_anyone_read_the_book_land_of_the_losers/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/has-anyone-read-the-book-land-of-the-losers.1537345 https://theredarchive.com/post/1537345

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