I could be way off here, but you sound very young. I remember believing the world worked this way when I was about 19. Get towards thirty and my, how the tables turn. Now, practically everyone I know (including me) is in a happy, stable, long-term relationship. Nobody I know fits that description. Of the ones that aren't, their main complaint is that they can't find a nice, down-to-earth mate. The very few people I am still in touch with who remain as superficial as you describe, are miserable.
The alpha-male / hot bitch thing works okay when everyone is looking for a one-night stand. When you get a little older and thoughts turn to finding someone to spend the rest of your life with, that sort of behavior just seems idiotic.
You believed that's the way things worked when you were 19, because it did. And now when that you're 30+, it's different. You're not smarter, things have changed.
For men, the late teens to mid-twenties is the period where most mate competition takes place. This is where testosterone rates soar, as do accidental deaths as a result of risk-taking behavior http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep026685.pdf
No one you knows fits that description because like you said, everyone you know is in a relationship. What I described happens when people are trying to compete over mates. When everyone has a mate, i.e. past their mid-twenties for most part, they become much nicer.
Well, except for the occasional 30+ yo that likes to make cheap shots about folks over the internet via an implied link between maturity and intelligence.
Remind me again why we're suddenly talking about "smarter", "intelligence" and "cheap shots"?
It's funny, another thing I vividly remember doing around that time was flying off the handle and insulting people who had no beef with me and meant no offense whatsoever :-) The follies of youth...
Get towards thirty and my, how the tables turn. Now, practically everyone I know (including me) is in a happy, stable, long-term relationship.
That's how it was when I was getting towards thirty, too. Ten years later, most of the people I knew then have divorced at least once and are far more cynical and bitter, with lower expectations relationship-wise.
I'll be 50 this year. My experiences match the guy you're trying to call "very young."
> When you get a little older and thoughts turn to finding someone to spend the rest of your life with, that sort of behavior just seems idiotic.
True, but then my office is full of people who've been divorced more than 3 times, and each spouse isn't significantly different from the preceeding one (or at least what the co-workers complain about). I don't think that most people are that logical when looking for a mate.
I find it interesting how, in discussions on this topic here and elsewhere, people tend to come down strongly on either side.
Perhaps it's careful selection of company, perhaps it's different circumstances (none of us are really the type for one-night stands; note the boy-/girlfriend theme of my post!), or perhaps we read events to fit our theories about how dating works; but I've very rarely read someone arguing the middle ("being a jerk can work with some women, but many other women ultimately prefer a caring partner").
The alpha-male / hot bitch thing works okay when everyone is looking for a one-night stand. When you get a little older and thoughts turn to finding someone to spend the rest of your life with, that sort of behavior just seems idiotic.