So there’s apparently an Asian Male Dating Crisis

The first time I came across clips like these, I dismissed them as TikTok brain rot of the rage bait variety.

I thought they were trying to disseminate racial divide where it did not exist. And took it as a sign to stop scrolling and go to bed.

I didn’t take them seriously at first because I was not aware of any first principles from evolutionary psychology that would allow me to make sense of a race-based dating disadvantage

You see I thought that primates such as ourselves have evolved to find each other attractive based on traits relevant to survival or procreation, or both

For example, height and muscle mass are attractive in men because they are signal for physical power and potency, which are important for survival and procreation

Handsome men are attractive because aesthetic traits like facial symmetry and healthy skin complexion signal health and a history free from infectious disease, which are also important for survival and procreation

Even more abstract traits like wealth and fame still have an evolutionary basis for why they are attractive

Wealth means owning a lot of resources; and fame would have meant something like having high status within the tribe in a primal environment. Both of these things are useful for survival and procreation by themselves. But they also signal competence. Because a primate would have usually needed to have consistently outperformed their peers to be able to acquire a lot of resources or high status within the tribe in the first place. And competence is of course useful for survival and procreation

Now what about race. Could being Asian or black or white or any other race signal anything useful about survival or procreation? Well I couldn’t think of any at the time

So this Asian Male Dating Crisis business must be fake right?

Well no, I wish it was that easy.

You see although my initial reasoning through evolutionary psychology was structurally sound, it did not take into account the role of culture

Culture is one of those things important enough to separate humans from other animals after all.

And it influences us in profound ways

At times it can make us behave in ways that seem counter to our evolutionary instinct to survive and procreate

Think about the kamikaze pilots in world war 2 who gave up survival to inflict damage on enemy ships

Or the priests, monks, and nuns, who’ve sworn oaths of celibacy thereby giving up their prospect of procreation.

Given that, I thought I should at least consider the possibility that culture could influence modern dating pattern too.

So I sat down and researched this topic.

I quickly realized however that this was a rather heated area of public discourse, full of pseudo-science, algorithmically amplified rage-bait, and references to research that don’t exist

At first glance it can be hard to tell if anyone is making sense.

So in today’s video I want to take a deeper look at the Asian Male dating crisis, for the sake of my own sanity, and also that of truth.

I’ll look past the rage bait and the apparent racial and political divisiveness,

and attempt to find the deeper signals beyond these surface level noise

This one's important, guys. Our Asian brothers’ ability to get laid is on the line here.

And perhaps if we can look at the facts together long enough with a tempered gaze, we can lower the temperature a bit in this part of the conversational landscape, which should at least help with our blood pressure, if not for our collective sense making.

So let’s get started with some stats

Because the Asian male dating crisis is surprisingly well documented in research.

For example in 2018, Bruch & Newman’s analysis found that Asian men are the least desirable ethnic category for heterosexual women, and consistently so across all 4 of the American cities under their study

Now Asian men are not always the least desirable in every study. But they almost always rank close to the bottom

The exact ranking changes a bit depending on when and where the data is collected, as well as the ethnicity of the women from whom the data is collected.

For example, OkCupid, a dating site, published their result over the course of 6 years

And we see that Asian men’s ratings change a bit from year to year, but are otherwise consistently one of the lowest from women of all ethnicity with the exception of Asian women

By the way you’ll see a lot of people online saying that Asian men are so unpopular that even Asian women don’t want to date them.

That is not true.

Asian women do like Asian men. What is true though is that according to the data, Asian women also like white men.

If you are wondering which one Asian women like more

I don’t want to start some weird competition here but the answer is that it depends on the year

Asian women rate one above the other in some year, in some years they don’t

What is consistent is that Asian women have rated both Asian and white as above average in attractiveness

So I don’t see this as evidence for a dating disadvantaged for Asian men. It looks more like a dating advantage for white men

In any case the reasonable conclusion is that Asian men’s dating disadvantage is more applicable for non-Asian women specifically

And if you wondering how much of a disadvantage being Asian is for men, there’s a study from the University of Chicago and MIT that managed to quantify it with income.

And it’s brutal

They looked at how much more money a guy needs to make to compensate for his dating disadvantage

For instance if a guy is really ugly, he needs to make an extra $186K per year above the medium income to have the same luck in the dating market as someone who isn’t ugly

If a guy is short, let’s say 5'6", he needs to make an extra 221k per year to have the same luck as someone who isn’t short

Now if a guy is Asian, he needs to make an extra 247,000 per year to have the same luck as a white guy with white girls

Now caveat, this particular measurement is only with white women. The study didn’t provide the measurement for women of other non-Asian ethnicity unfortunately; I think they didn’t have enough participants to get that data

So this isn’t a true apple to apple comparison. Also this is a study from 20 years ago so don’t take these numbers too literally

What we can conclude is that being Asian is a legitimate dating disadvantage for men in the West, and in certain context, being Asian can be worse than being short or ugly

That feels a little depressing to say out loud

But Asian men’s disadvantage only exists in the West. It’s important that we don’t over extrapolate and conclude that Asian men have a disadvantage everywhere in the world.

I see people do this quite a bit online, especially in rage bait content

They’ll say things like

Asian guys don’t have a chance. Passport bros will go to Asia and take all their girls. The local Asian dudes can’t compete, etc.

That’s not true.

I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest being Asian is a disadvantage for men in Asia

In fact since almost everyone is Asia is Asian, most dating studies there ignore the racial category altogether.

The data that does exist suggest that Asian women overwhelmingly choose Asian men

International marriages for instance are marriages between a local and a foreigner

They account for about 10% of total marriages in Korea

less than 4 percent in Japan

and less than 1% in China

And the majority of these international marriages are still Asian marrying other Asians. It’s just Asians of a foreign country, like a Chinese guy marrying a Korean girl, a Japanese guy marrying a Vietnamese girl.

This is not to say that there are no women in Asia who prefer men of a different race. There just aren’t enough of them as to create a measurable disadvantage for local men

In other words, Asian men are doing just fine in Asia. But once they get to the West they start struggling.

The question is what is causing this.

Now the first cause is something called homophily, which basically means in-group preference

It refers to our tendency to form ties with people who are similar to us.

This is not necessarily racial in nature. It can be in accordance with any traits, like age, education, religion, language, hobbies, etc.

In-group preference is also not necessarily racist or insidious. It's human nature if you will, observed across culture, and even across species, many animals exhibit behaviors in-group preference

In terms of race in the context of dating, in-group preference means that people usually prefer to date within their own race.

Now Asians are a minority in the West. For example in the US they are around 6% of the population ()

As a result, Asian men can seem less popular in the West simply as a result of math

Let me show you.

Let’s say I’m conducting a study about dating preference.

I recruit 10 women as subjects. 8 of them are green. 2 are blue.

As a result of in-group preference, the green women will prefer green men. The blue women will prefer blue men.

Now if I aggregate this result in an unsophisticated manner, I could start making conclusions like

“study shows that most women prefer green men”

“8 out of 10 women prefer green men over their blue counterpart”

So “On average, women see blue men as less attractive”

“Oh my goodness, there is a dating crisis for blue men”

“Yondu can’t get laid”

your average Redditor will then pick that up, it gets on TikTok and goes viral, rage baiting the entire blue men community

And next thing you know some guy on YouTube has to make a video about it

What I’m saying is this:

It’s possible that most women in the West don’t prefer Asian men because most women in west aren’t Asian.

As a result of in-group preference, it’s not necessarily surprising to see Asian men as one of the least preferred ethnic group when Asian are a small minority of the total population

But in-group preference is not the only factor causing Asian men’s dating disadvantage.

There are nuances in the data that confirms this

For example, if you look at OkCupid’s result, you’ll see that – yes, women tend to have lower match score with men outside their race, which is expected from in-group preference.

But their match score with Aisan men are especially low. That is, often lower than men of other ethnicity who are also of a different race ()

In other words there seems to be an extra penalty against Asian men on top of in-group preference

Also remember that study that shows how much more money a guy needs to make to compensate for their dating disadvantage?

They found that to have the same luck as a white guy with white girls

A Hispanic guy needs to make 77k more

A black guy need to make 154k more

And an Asian guy needs to make 247k more, as we said before

In other words Asian men need to compensate the most

Which again shows this extra penalty against Asian men on top of in-group preference

So the question is what is causing this extra penalty

Well western media is one of the most referenced causes

For a long time, Asian men have not been portrayed in the best light in media

There actually weren’t that much portrayal of Asian men in media to begin with

For example, across the 1300 top-grossing films between 2007 to 2019, less than 6% had speaking characters that were Asian or Pacific Islanders () ()

And when Asian male characters do appear on screen, they usually fall into a series of one-dimensional stereotypes

Many of which are negative:

Nerdy

Geeky

Weak

Weird

Or otherwise treated as the Butt of the joke

And even when they are portrayed in a positive light, they are typically asexual

Such as a wise martial art guru who are strong but otherwise never get laid

The best example of this is a movie called Romeo Must Die from the year 2000

The movie is loosely based on the classic Shakespearean romance story: Romeo & Juliet, But with a modern action twist.

The male lead is played by Jet Li, a famous Asian martial art action star.

Jet Li kicked ass in that movie so I would say it’s a pretty positive portrayal of an Asian character

But since the movie is based on Romeo and Juliet, You’d think that a romantic theme would be mandatory right?

Well no, what we ended up seeing is the Asian guy getting friend zoned in real time

He didn’t even get to kiss the girl in the end

famously there was originally a kiss scene at the end of the movie. But it got cut out and replaced with a hug scene, because the original kiss scene didn’t test well with the audience

Perhaps the western audience was not used to seeing Asian characters having romantic interactions with women outside their race back then

Now what’s shown on screen matters because media portrayal of a minority group has an effect on how the broader culture perceives that group in real life ()

If women in the West rarely, or never, see Asian men portrayed as attractive or romantically relevant,

When they see Asian guys in real life, they’ll perceive them through that impression to some degree, if only subconsciously

This impression of the Asexual Asian men is then further amplified on social media

Now one thing that makes social media different from traditional media is the algorithm

And the algorithms love outrage

Some people have figured out that when you make fun of Asian men with negative stereotypes, it makes them angry.

That anger fuels engagement, which makes the content go viral

And the result is a strange phenomenon on social media of all these viral clips of people making fun Asian guys and getting tons of views for it

What’s even stranger is that a lot of this type of content are from Asian women

There are Asian women who would go onto public platforms, and announce to the world a slew of false negative stereotypes about Asian men

This is not all Asian women of course. Most Asian women are not racist.

This is a very small, but vocal group of Asian women, who for some reason, seem to be very dedicated to the project of denigrating the men of their race

So much so that there’s now a name for these women called “Auntie Lu”

Now I want to linger on the term Auntie Lu for a bit. Because the way this term has been used online illustrates a common moral confusion that I want to highlight

First of all, I don’t like the term Auntie Lu. I don’t even like it semantically.

Like Lu is not an uncommon Asian last name. There are women whose last name is actually Lu, and they are catching heat for no reason

But the more important the way this term is used online collapses two different behaviors with very separate moral implications into one insult

For example there are Asian women out there who simply have a romantic preference for men outside their race. They don’t hate Asian men. They are not racist against Asian. They are just not attracted to Asians.

That is totally fine. Yet these women are being called Auntie Lu online. People accuse them of internalized racist for not wanting to date Asian men. To the point where some of these women start to feel shame around their dating preference

I want to be very clear here: There is nothing wrong with having a romantic preference. It’s totally fine to have a type. In a free society you are free to pursue your type

These women should not have to endure such abuse simply for having a romantic preference

Now let’s say some of these girls decide to go onto public platforms and announce their romantic preference to the world.

Now that’s a strange decision, but it’s a free country and you have the right to do that

So it’s still fine so far

But then she goes:

“And I don’t date Asian men, because insert false negative stereotype about Asian men”

Now that is racist

And to be extra clear, it’s not racist to not want to date Asian men. It’s not racist to announce that to the world, although it is strange. But it is racist to reduce a gender of an entire race of people into a false negative stereotype (at this point, use red box around the part of the text with an arrow pointing to it with text saying “this part is racist”)

In a way, she’s not just telling the world that she doesn’t date Asian men. She’s trying to convince the world to not date Asian men too.

I’m not sure why these women are so passionate about cockblocking the men of their race but it’s working

When people see clips like these from Asian women, it creates a visual illusion of sort

Because she is Asian, it makes what she’s doing seem less racist

At the same time, her being Asian gives her perceived authority over the subject.

People think: “Look she’s Asian. She must know what she’s talking about regarding Asian men”

So even though what she’s saying is both racist and not true, it’s perceived as both true and not racist

So it’s very effective at spreading negative stereotypes about Asian men.

Now what seals the deal is how Asian men behave in response to seeing all this wind at face when it comes to dating.

For example many Asian men become discouraged, and stopped trying to date outside their race altogether, even though there might be women outside their race they are attracted to.

I personally believe that it’s almost impossible to stereotype a person once you get to know them. But many girls in the West never get a chance to do that with Asian men, because Asian men don’t pursue them.

As a result this stereotyped impression of Asian men remains at large

Now what makes this all the more insidious is that there is a dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecy here such that simply knowing about the Asian men’s dating disadvantage can become a disadvantage in and of itself for Asian men

You may not know this but, I am Asian, and a man

“yes, thank you”

Now if I firmly believe that being Asian is a disadvantage, that will probably make me feel insecure and less confident when interacting with women

Lacking confidence is unattractive, which will probably cause women to reject me more

I will then attribute these rejections to the fact that I’m Asian, thereby re-affirming my belief that being Asian is a disadvantage. And it’s a downward spiral from there

Interestingly I never believed the Asian male dating crisis was a thing until I started making this video

So when girls didn’t like me in the past, (yes I know it’s shocking that that happened), I attributed it to, you know my haircut, or what I was wearing, or something I said, or whatever was the insecurity of the day, but it was never my race

Now having now seen the data, I think it’s quite likely that there were women were uninterested in me because I’m Asian.

But I just never interpreted it as such, as a result I never went down on the downward spiral of self-fulfilling prophecy

Now looking back, it’s clear that my impression was objectively false. But it was, in a way, productive

Because I can’t change the fact that I’m Asian.

So any efforts spent ruminating on that would have been wasted efforts.

So I’m quite glad that I never knew about this issue before. But it’s too late for us now.

If you are an Asian guy watching this, I’ve just spent an entire video telling you every which way that the Asian male’s dating disadvantage was real.

I have cursed you with knowledge

You’ve heard the facts. You can no longer unhear them

So let me do some damage control

First of all, I’m not suggesting that we should be willfully blind of facts. Asian men are indeed disadvantaged in the western dating market.

That is a fact. We shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand about it

What I am saying is that it’s unproductive to fixate on things we can’t change.

Speaking for myself here, I can give you quite a long list of shortcomings about me that I can actually change.

And the list is so embarrassingly long that even if I spend the rest of my life working on them, I’m still not sure that I can exhaust that list before I die

There are more than enough things I can work on before I need to start looking at things I can’t change

And the best practice here is obvious and even cliché at this point. Right we all know this:

you know we should work on the things we can change, and let go of the things that we can’t, and have the wisdom to know the difference

But that is of course easier said than done

So if you are really struggling to move on from this issue mentally, allow me to offer you the following controlled experiment:

I am lucky to have done a bit of traveling at this point, gotten to see a few different cultures.

In particular I’ve lived in both Asia and the West for extended periods of time

Now when I interacted with girls in these different places. I have notice that women have treated me with the same level of indifference across culture and geography. It strikes me as one of those unifying human experience

Now as I mentioned earlier, the Asian male dating disadvantage only exists in the West. It doesn’t exist in Asia.

Yet I observed that women in both the West and Asia treat me the same.

What could this mean?

In other words it means that what is blocking my success with women is probably not just my ethnicity. I probably have other things to worry about here

it gives me permission to move on from fixating on my ethnicity and start working on the things I can affect.

So if you find yourself fixating on your ethnicity more than you’d like, go to Asia and give this a try. And let me know how it goes

Now in the spirit of ending on a hopeful note. I’m happy to report that it’s 2025 now and dating Asian men seems to have become more acceptable in the West

This is in part due to the changing media landscape

At the time of my writing this script, the most popular animated film in theatre is from Japan: (Called Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, )

The most viewed season of any TV show on Netflix is from Korea, (called squid game)

Four out of the top 5 most played video game on steam are from Asia

Spotify’s charts update on a weekly basis but it’s not unusual to see songs of Asian origin on there

The list can go on but the pattern here is that Asian media, like kpop, Korean drama, anime, etc., which have traditionally had a niche following in the West. Have recently become much more mainstream.

There has also been an increase in Asian representation in Western media as well

If you count the speaking or named characters of the 100 top grossing fiction films, 3.4% were Asian in 2007. That’s gone up to 15.9% in 2022. So, more than quadrupled in a decade and a half

Now it’s possible that some of this is due to activism. That is people putting more Asian roles on screen because they think it’s morally righteous to have more media representation of minorities

And there are people who worry that this could impacts the quality of the products

For example if movie studios are choosing Asian actors preferentially instead of choosing the most qualified actor, that could result in worse movies.

And indeed most of us probably don’t have beef with activism until it makes our movie bad.

I don’t think we need to worry about that in this case though

The truth is people didn’t watch squid game because they want to support Asian minorities. People watch it because it’s the most entertaining option in the Netflix catalogue

When the movie producers decided to fund the Crazy Rich Asian project, some of them might be motivated by activism, but most probably just want to make money. Right: that movie ended up being the highest grossing romantic comedy of the decade in the US.

Asian culture is a profoundly underrated source material, for entertainment, and content in general. And it’s just a matter of time before capitalism starts capitalizing on it

I can always count on corporations to be greedy for more money so,

The trend of increasing Asian representation in media is somewhat inevitable in my view

The free market will pretty much take care of itself here

And just as the negative portrayal of Asian men in media caused Asian men’s dating disadvantage, the increase in positive portrayal of Asian men in media is now slowly removing it

Dating Asian men is becoming less unpopular in the West

For example in the book The Dating Divide published in 2021 by the University of California Press

The authors found that Black and Latina women are now about as likely to respond to Asian men as they are to men of their own race

So the effect of in-group preference seem to have disappeared to some degree

 White women still show in-group preference, but no longer avoid Asian men any more than black or Latino men. So the extra penalty on top of in-group preference that we spoke about earlier seemed to have disappeared in these observations as well

And these findings point to a trend of improvement of Asian men’s image in western culture

There is also evidence from qualitative interviews, where some interviewees explicitly express attraction towards Asian men (They say things like “Asian guys tend to be very smart…ambitious… more interesting, etc. ”)

Obviously I’m an example of what they are talking about

So there are women in the West with romantic preference for Asian men.

They are not the majority but I wouldn’t be surprised that in some context, being Asian can be an advantage for dating

For example, Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating app, reported last year that Asian and Pacific islander men are the most popular ethnic category on their app

Now Coffee Meets Bagel’s demographic skews towards Asian. So maybe there’s a degree of selection effect there where women who choose that app are more likely to like Asian men, or at least don’t hate them.

I’ve also come across advice that says Asian men should go to Asian-themed social events like kpop night or mahjong board game parties

The logic is that these events self-select for people who appreciate some aspect of Asian culture and by extension probably like Asian men or at least don’t hate them.

Anyway I’m not trying to give dating advice here. It should be obvious that I’m not qualified to be a dating coach given my track record, or lack thereof.

The broader theme I'll leave you with is that the dating project is not totally doomed for Asian men in the West

If you are an Asian guy watching this, I hope you get the impression that there are many proactive things that you can do

to be the change you want to see in the world, which is a quote from Gandhi

or to stop complaining and go do something productive, which is a quote from my mother.

I’ll let you pick whichever one works for you :)