LA’s Decline in Dating Culture and Beauty Dysgenics
LA probably has one of the toughest dating markets in perhaps the World. That explains why a lot of the original PUA culture from the 00s emerged from LA along with Miami. Men online focus primarily on hypergamy and feminism but demographic issues like an aging population, income inequality, and breakdown in social capital have a huge negative impact on dating dynamics. In contrast with Millennial Hipsters reviving public spaces, due to homelessness, urban decay, and rising crime, which make public spaces less safe and appealing, young women don’t go out as much in LA. LA’s high status crowd are having more private curated venues and invitation only parties that exclude the riff raff, and women are using dating apps to find a high status guy. Also, affluent zoomettes in LA are more likely to be into health conscious activities like yoga rather than going out to bars.
I’ve attended some really cool parties in LA, so it is not like I am a loser who doesn’t get invited to parties. There are these micro scenes like sort of Dime Square adjacent, with art hoes, even though that brand is dated and cliche. Beyond just dating, there is no sense of community unless you are rich, part of some ethnic immigrant community, or niche social scene, which I sort have found. During the millennial Hipster era, there were more opportunities to achieve status through creativity while zoomer culture is more superficial, even if LA has always been a tad materialistic and status obsessed. It is part of a broader enshattification that is hitting the country at large with smartphones, and dating apps. Us elder Millennials were the last generation to experience society before all that.
Gentrification leads to an increase in hot women, because they value safety and luxury amenities. That wave of millennial hipster gentrification of LA’s urban core slowed down, especially due to the pandemic, but also because Zoomer prospective gentrifiers are a smaller generational cohort. Basically, millennial hipsters were the last mass White youth subculture in America with Zoomers overall being much more non-White, as people socialize more with their ethnic clique rather than one mass youth culture like in the past. However, there is a more niche zoomer hipster subculture, like the Safe Sleazy types in Echo Park and Highland Park, but just less of a mass culture. Venice Beach, even as recently as the mid 2010s was all these young people living together with roommates and the boardwalk had a party atmosphere. Homelessness destroyed the boardwalk while the young renters were replaced by older more successful people, due to rents rising.
The big decline in LA’s mall culture started with the demographics becoming more third world around Y2k. Malls were finished off by e-commerce in the 2010s with the pandemic the final death knell. For instance, when I was a teenager, all the popular upper class coded teens from Pali high and all the private schools on the Westside would all congregate on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica every Friday and Saturday night. The Promenade ended up attracting a more third world clientele and then eventually became a ghost town except for the homeless. However, the Grove and Century City are still popular, as the Grove is a tourist trap and Century City appeals to a niche ultra wealthy clientele that feels like Dubai now.
While I have seen a lot of demographic change as an older millennial, I can’t imagine how much of a transformation from when Boomers were young. I was talking to a rightwing Jewish boomer who grew up in Santa Monica. He told me that when he was young, Santa Monica beach was so blonde and Anglo that he felt out of place for being Jewish. Now whenever he visits, he is the only White guy amongst all the brown people. Gen X icon, Bret Easton Ellis, had a podcast in which he said the Norms in West LA was the hangout for all the good looking rich popular teens back in the 80s but he went back recently and it was all Mexicans, incels, and homeless people. I remember going to the 4th of July celebrations in the wealthy suburb of Palos Verdes in my youth in the late 90s and early 00s and it was all blonde teens. I went back there recently and it was a mix of old White people and middle aged Chinese immigrants.
The most dramatic demographic decline was in the White middle class, while the White upper class is also declining, albeit much more modestly. The wealthy Whites who are leaving LA are mostly relocating to Orange County, San Diego, the Conejo Valley bordering LA and Ventura County, and Santa Barbara, with a handful moving out of state to places like Scottsdale. The Pacific Palisades, which had the highest concentration of both White families and attractive White people more broadly, was destroyed by the fire. However, its residents mostly relocated to other areas in SoCal like Manhattan Beach and Newport Beach. In contrast, middle class Whites are more likely to leave California altogether.
The wave of school bussing induced White flight in the 70s, 80s, and 90s had an extremely dysgenic impact, with middle to upper middle class Whites fleeing LA in droves. For those who stayed, even among the more affluent, having to pay for private school negatively impacted their fertility. I remember as an adolescent how the most attractive girls attended private schools, which I was envious of while attending a ghetto public school.
We are seeing the bust of the echo boom in that the LA region had a ton of local attractive White Millennial girls that grew up on the Westside, nice parts of the Valley, and in various suburbs from Calabasas to Manhattan Beach. GenX was a smaller generational cohort than zoomers, which explains why Zoomers are a smaller cohort than Millennials, on top of a lot of Genxers getting priced out of LA’s housing market by Boomers. Despite being a larger cohort, a lot of Millennials can’t afford to start families in SoCal, so they either stay as aging hipsters or move out to Arizona, Texas, or Washington to start families. Meanwhile, there is a trend of affluent White zoomers in California attending universities in the South, as a reaction to both DEI and Asian grindset culture, but also the popularity of Southern frat and sorority culture from TikTok.
The main reason for this decline was not so much ethnic displacement but rather Boomer homeowners aging in place after their Millennial offspring have grown up. Older people are sitting on large homes that upper middle class families would otherwise have moved into and are not downsizing due to prop 13, which freezes property taxes. These tax breaks don’t benefit younger families that much. While it is the well off Boomers who are aging in place, there was a big wave of White middle class Boomers leaving SoCal in the 90s when they started families.
While the ultra wealthy are not impacted, the cost of living crisis impacts the youth of the upper middle class, thus nimbyism is dysgenic. There isn’t that much new housing being constructed either for younger families or for the elderly to downside to. In contrast, immigrants can cram a bunch of people into one apartment or flop house, so they are more resistant to nimbyism. Basically, both prop 13 and nimbyism, which conservatives tend to support, are also to blame alongside immigration and school bussing. When the Boomers pass or if Boomers downsize if the economy really tanks, a lot of these aging wealthy communities will rapidly change demographically. However, there may be a lack of Millennials and Zoomers wealthy enough to afford these homes. Regardless, high fertility is starting to become a status symbol among subsets of the wealthy in California because it is a way to flex in an area with such extreme anti-natalist pressures.
Attractive women came to LA to become starlets, stayed to create a social scene, and then settled down, married a rich guy, and passed down their genes into the upper class. A lot of various Millennial actresses also grew up in LA’s upper middle class suburbs. Due in part to the DEI takeover of the entertainment industry, far fewer attractive women are being hired for acting and behind the scenes roles, thus, there is less induced demand for attractive women from all over the country to seek their chances in LA. Even if DEI is being rolled back somewhat, the entertainment industry is in decline and leaving LA for economic reasons, as well as AI, which could wipe out Hollywood.
While coastal SoCal has an aging and heavily non-White population, among the young Whites who remain, they are some of the best looking people in the nation. Especially among various exclusive upper class coded bubbles from Montecito near Santa Barbara to coastal South Orange County. There is this upper class coded caucasian spectrum starting with the Anglo/Germanic, and other European Whites, the quintessential California beach blondes, from old money to transplants. Then you have the blonde mischlings (half Jewish) who are really something, full on Ashkenazi, and then Persian Jewish. The Jewish and Persian population is probably stable, not declining like European Americans but not growing that much either.
LA native, actress Halston Sage, who epitomizes the archetype of upper class coded blonde Jewish women in LA
There were a lot of hot Russian and Ukrainian women showing up in LA under Biden, due to the war, but I have no idea if that is continuing under Trump. I also heard that there was an increase in Brazilian and Colombian immigration to LA from the Biden migrant wave, but no idea if there are a lot of hot women. If this war in the Middle East escalates, LA could attract a lot more hot Israeli and Iranian refugee women. Koreans are considered the hottest Asian women in LA and Korean immigration is much lower now and Korean fertility is abysmally low. The rich Chinese are more in Orange County and other suburbs like San Marino, in the San Gabriel Valley, and not so much in LA proper.
The hottest Latinas in SoCal are generally Mexican Americans whose families came from Jalisco or Northern Mexico in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (primarily harnizo with some castizo). California has done a poor job attracting hot Latinas over the past 30 years, as recent immigrants tend to be squat indigenous types from the poorer regions of southern Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America. Harnizos are like the popular clique among chicanos, so they tend to be more socially dominant and uppity while those more indigenous types from Oaxaca or Guatemala are more chill, humble, and tend to keep to themselves. Thus, I don’t necessarily dislike these people, as they are docile and are too low in status to try to cuck Whites socially and sexually.
The Latino immigrants who come to LA skew from the lower class, and lower classes are on average less attractive, as well as skew heavily male. However, immigration to LA is actually slowing down, and the Latino population is starting to age, which I guess is good from a racialist standpoint but terrible if you want to date young Latinas. Basically, no ethnic group is really growing that much anymore. Middle class Mexican Americans, like the White middle class before them, are also leaving LA for exurbs like the Inland Empire, Vegas, Phoenix, and Texas. You also have this hoeflation due to upward mobility among the harniza type Mexican American women. For instance, an attractive middle class harniza zoomette gets a college degree to become a girl boss while her Genx mom worked in fast food in her youth, thus likely has much higher dating standards. While a lot of millennial Latinos still aspired to whiteness, such as being hipsters, Latino Zoomers don’t view Whites as high status as previous generations.
LA is a hybrid of the third world and first world where the geni index for income inequality is at third world levels but women’s wages are at first world levels, a combo of which is a disaster for men’s dating prospects, unless they are at the top in looks, money and status. Basically, LA combines the worst aspects of Latin America and the Anglosphere in that it lacks the niceties of the Anglosphere, like cleanliness and high social trust, but lacks the better dating culture and fun culture of Latin America, where people party on the beach until early in the morning, which appeals to passport bros. In contrast, Latino immigrants mostly come here to work, so they don’t bring that party culture of Latin America, and their communities are fairly insular.
It is hard to predict whether LA will see more gentrification due to demographic and economic trends and leftwing politics. However, that original Hipster wave of gentrification coincided a recession, like we are facing now, while the economic recovery of the late 2010s meant that high status young people stuck to areas that were already nice and embraced materialism over bohemian novelty. If rents crash due to the recession, it is plausible that more young people, who were priced out, move back to LA with roommates. Also, California becoming more YIMBY and building a ton of new apartments, both affordable and luxury, might help LA attract and retain attractive women and is good for creating amenities where young people can meet each other, after the recession is over.
There is a conservative candidate for LA mayor, Spencer Pratt, who was a reality TV star who grew up rich and popular on the Westside of LA. While Pratt’s chance of winning is extremely slim, if he manages to win for some fluke, he has an obligation to make LA beautiful, eugenic, vital, sensual, and sexualized because of the kind of privilege and popularity he experienced in his formative years.
Even if LA’s image of glamour does not hold up as much anymore, the hype of LA being over is also overblown. There is also hype about LA having a comeback with the Olympics and the new subway down Wilshire to Beverly Hills. There is still this image of LA on instagram that strivers and rich people from across the globe aspire to. Not to mention the premium placed on living near the coast with a pleasant Mediterranean climate, if LA decides to capitalize upon it. However, I don’t see how the status quo can be sustained for another decade, so either LA improves or continues to deteriorate into a third world city.
https://robertstark.substack.com/p/reasons-for-las-decline-in-dating