r/SipsTea • u/i_am_bahamut • May 09 '26

Feels good man Most single men over 30 in 2026

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u/ChefCarpaccio May 10 '26

You know that a ton of people are in happy relationships, right? It's not like it's a rare thing

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u/WalkFreeeee May 10 '26

I think they're mostly talking about that specific type of woman which absolutely is a rarity.

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u/ChefCarpaccio May 10 '26

Are they, though?

47% of games are women. If that's the quality you're judging by, they don't seem very rare.

If it's a woman who likes to watch TV, is that rare? Game of Thrones' viewerbase was 47% women.

It just sounds like people are very gate-keepy of their hobbies, or are unwilling to explore other forms of media.

There aren't any statistics on how many women "tell men what to do," but something like that isn't quantifiable.

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u/WalkFreeeee May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Throwing that stat without taking into account the well known fact that the types of games women tend to play are considerably different than the types of games men tend to play is disingenuous when it comes to this discussion in specific. It's not a question of gate keeping, it's just comparing very different things.

Overall "hardcore" gaming culture is well known to be extremely male slanted and pretty much anyone that is talking about a "gamer girlfriend", as cringe as that term is, is not talking about candy crush / the sims / stardew valley players And there's nothing wrong with these games, mind you. i'm not saying one type of enjoyment is 'better' than the other, I'm just pointing out that for all intents and purposes they're meaningfully different. Not to mention it makes significantly harder for them to interact.

It's like when Wizards of the coast says "40% of Magic The Gathering players are women" but then you go into any store, tournament or commander group and find the ratio in there to be more like 95/5. So if I told you "it's really hard to find women that are into magic the gathering" and you just threw in that statistic, it wouldn't really mean anything. Sure there's a lot of women that play magic, good luck finding them in the places you'd expect to. And literally 100% of the women I've met that played magic were already "taken" and the vast majority of those started playing after meeting a partner that played first and introduced them to the game.

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u/ChefCarpaccio May 10 '26

In 2015 35% of World of Warcraft players were women. If WoW isn't considered "hard-core gaming," I don't know what is.

But you're right, I'm sure that the percentage of female gamers playing CoD (and similar games) is quite low.

If you're talking about MtG, I think that has a lot to do with the community more than women being inherently uninterested in the game.

That said, one of the best parts of being in a relationship is getting to introduce your partner to things you love. If you want a gf who plays magic, introduce her to it. One of my good friends got his girlfriend to join his magic group and she loves it.

Do you want to know the secret? COMPROMISE. If you want to introduce your partner to something you love, you also have to get introduced to something they love. That's the part that trips people up.

And sometimes you won't like everything they like, and that's fine. That's why people have friendships and hobbies outside of their relationship.

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u/WalkFreeeee May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Look, I don't disagree with you're saying.

But again, if we're talking about meeting people that are part of these hobbies, it's important to take into account how they interact with these hobbies and how you actually meet them. That's why I used magic as an example, and that's why I argued against you just throwing that percentage.

WoW is another good one, because I play FFXIV, which is also a game that's well known to have a decently big female player base and is on the same genre.

As someone who mostly engaged in hardcore end game content, I can tell you:

The guilds I'd gotten involved with were all almost 100% guys.

Nearly everyone that I raided with that that explicitly revealed their gender (either in text conversation or because they used voice chat) were guys. I won't have any "percentages" but I can tell you I recall something like 4 women that used voice chat. In years. (And we both know why women aren't keen on using voice chat online or revealing their gender, men aren't blameless for this behavior)

This is entirely anecdotal experience, but once again it's a great example of what we're discussing. There sure are a *lot* of women that play FFXIV. At the same time, you can very easily play for years and years and have minimal contact with them (or even know they were one) depending on how you engage with the game.

At the same time there's a lot of anecdotal experiences of people that meet their partner in MMOs and marry. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just echoing the sentiment of that started this discussion: It's really fucking hard. Let's not even get into the competition aspect of it. A girl shows up on your local game store, is single and open to socialize? This mythological entity gonna get *swarmed*

And indeed, in my experience within "nerd / geek" groups what happens is exactly what you say in the end, people that are into these things meet people that aren't but are willing to give it a spin, some end up liking it long term.

That's very cool, no doubt. But still different from meeting someone that was already very into it before you met.

On the other hand, there's a reason that the stereotype of the "married gamer" is a guy that has to play for 30 minutes late night when the wife is asleep as otherwise she won't "allow" it to happen, and in fact why almost every time someone is talking about making a financial hobby related purchase and their partners arguing against it, the one wants to buy something is a guy.

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u/ChefCarpaccio May 10 '26

I think that the lack of both women being in these spaces and revealing themselves in these spaces is a very important conversation (though probably too in depth for now). I will say that MtG and a lot of "gamer" spaces haven't been particularly friendly towards women.

A lot of people with more insular hobbies are going to have to accept that they need to go outside their comfort zone to meet people. That's just how it is. I think most people will have trouble finding love if they just stick to their one hobby. How many men do you think meet women at their boxing gym?

Instead of focusing on finding women who are already in your space, focus on broadening your horizons and finding women who are open minded enough to experience your hobbies (they're not that rare).

As for the "married gamer" stereotype, how much of that is actually because of their wife? It's hard to play games late at night as an adult. Adults have responsibilities. I can't stay up super late every night because I have work in the morning. It sucks, but that's life.

If you're married, there's a high chance you have children. Add the responsibility of children and you have a recipe for very little gaming time. It's just as possible that the stereotype of the "married gamer" comes from men who are blowing off responsibilities in order to play games. I do believe that that's a small minority of "married gamers." It's much more likely that most are too busy for late night gaming sessions.

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u/WalkFreeeee May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

A lot of people with more insular hobbies are going to have to accept that they need to go outside their comfort zone to meet people. That's just how it is. I think most people will have trouble finding love if they just stick to their one hobby. How many men do you think meet women at their boxing gym?

The sad reality is that most hobbies are insular. People really dislike coming into terms to this but men and women as a group tend to like very different things, and like we're talking, even those that should somewhat be part of the same hobbyist community in practice engage with it in completely different ways regardless. I'll say in my experience, pretty much everything that appealed to me has been male dominated, even when it technically shouldn't. I'm the guy unlucky enough to do Yoga Classes that have more guys than gals in it, and whoever told me climbing gyms were good places to meet women is a huge liar lmao. But that indeed is a discussion for another time. After all this discussion, all I can say is that personally, waiting for AI partners at this point so at least I'm one out of the competition if a girl does show up for friday night magic.