The 80/20 concept is inherently flawed, based on data that doesn't represent the population, and selectively ignores parts of that data that make men look bad.

I'm a guy. I like a lot of what TRP has to offer. It helped put words to things I had felt and experienced for a long time. But it's very clear that certain pieces of TRP wisdom have spent far too long in the echo chamber and become dogmatized and mythologized beyond all rational sense as a result.

The 80/20 concept is a prime example of this. I often see it referred to as the 80/20 "rule," and see guys use it to show that 20% of all men are Chads running a harem.

The 80/20 rule is, so far as I can tell, based of a combination of a misappropriated Pareto principle and some very selective data pulled from Tinder and OkCupid.

The most glaring issue with treating 80/20 as a rule for romantic interaction generally is that the data isn't based on the general population - it's based on data extracted from two very specific dating sites. The best you can say is that it applies on Tinder and OkCupid. That does not therefore mean it applies to the general population. A small percentage of the population use these apps. They are a product. They attract a certain kind of person, often for a specific purpose. Tinder dynamics =/= dating dynamics.

The Tinder study is so flawed it's hardly worth looking at. It's based off the self-reported data of 27 women. 27. Millions of women on the app, and only 27 were interviewed. So beyond not being representative of the general population, that study isn't even representative of Tinder.

The OkCupid data is a bit more solid. What does it show? Well there are a few things to note:

Yes, it appears women on OkCupid are pretty brutal in regards to how they rate the attractiveness of males. 80% of men on OkCupid were rated as below "medium" attractiveness. But again, this isn't an analysis of dating in general - this is an analysis of how women on OkCupid rate men on OkCupid. It's possible that women on OkCupid are just pickier about looks compared to the general population. It's possible men on OkCupid are just uglier than the general population. It's possible they just aren't good at dressing, grooming, and taking good profile pictures (and having looked over the shoulder of female friends as they swiped, I can confirm there's a lot of dudes who probably look pretty decent but absolutely suck as presenting themselves well). 20% of men were rated as above average. I've often seen this "study" used to confirm that 20% of men "get" 80% of the women. That's nonsense. And here's why:

What TRP conveniently omits from this analysis is that while the women were pretty brutal in terms of who they rated as physically attractive, women also largely went on to initiate contact with that same block of men they just rated as physically below average. Look at the graph. In terms of who women are actually willing to pursue they basically the opposite of picky in regards to looks. Arguably this is evidence that women are not particularly shallow - they have high standards when it comes to looks, but other things in a guys profile - humor, career, charisma, hobbies - prompt them to contact these men.

What about guys (on OkCupid)? Well we're much more fair about attractiveness ratings. It's a nice bell curve peaking right around "medium," although I have to imagine the thought process here went something like "mm... boobs... hot..." But who do guys (on OkCupid) contact? That same study that "proves" 80/20 found that two thirds of all male attention is focused on the top one third of women. So why isn't there a 66/33 rule? Well because that would make men look like shallow horndogs drooling after only the hottest of the hottest women who are way out of their league and then complaining when they strike out. It would make men look bad. So TRP ignores it, rather than codifying it as a rule for all human interaction the same way they did with the data on women. Well that's not quite correct - they only did this with the data that makes women look bad. The part that shows that women happily initiate contact with far more than just the top 20% conveniently gets omitted from this "rule."

Finally, just on a common sense level, one fifth of all men are not Chads. Think of any time you've seen a pretty random subset of the population, have one in five of the men present been jacked, jawlined, charismatic pussy-slayers? No. Not even close. Probably more like 1-2%. And do these men get a lot of sex? Yes. Do they probably get sex from the hottest women? Yes. Does this mean there's no sex available for everyone else? Not even close. A majority of men report having multiple sexual partners over the course of their lives - the 0-1 category is a minority and, considering that many religious people who weren't trying to get laid before marriage are in the 1 category, it's probably even smaller. Only between 12-14 percent of adults aged 20-24 have never had sex. This number drops to around five percent for adults aged 25-29, and by age 44, only around 0.3 percent of adults report never having sex. So if your goal is to be able to effortlessly hook up with different hotties five times a week, yeah, sorry, you're shit out of luck. That's only something Chad (or a very very rich guy) gets to do. But you don't need to be a Chad or in the top 20% of men looks-wise to have a normal, happy, healthy sex life, or even to get laid quite a bit.

CMV

Edit: been bouncing this around for hours. Seen some moderately compelling evidence against my position, some not. Gonna take a break for a bit and I'll try to address all the new replies when I get back. Cheers and thanks for an enjoyable first post to PPD.