To all of the good points made about quality of the women and the quality of the men they're trying to attract, I'd add something about how modern OLD and social media has destroyed IRL meetups.

Every woman I know is addicted to social media. If not instagram and tiktok, at least facebook. Meanwhile, no guy I know is on social media aside from curating a presence to attract women. This has destroyed women's ability to actually interact in real life with a stranger. Go to any bar, and you'll see groups of guys laughing, drinking, and generally having a great time together, while all the women groups are just huddled around looking at their phones, snapping selfies, and no doubt posting about how there are no guys at the bar. Just going up and talking to these women is a challenge because you need to compete for her attention with whatever post from her bestie that just showed up on her feed. And if you manage that, you'll get an awkward conversation with a woman whose first language has become emojis and makes autistics from 30 years ago seem like smooth social animals.

Second, if you go to a bar or meeting to hookup, in the old days, you were only competing with the other guys in the bar. That's why the mad scramble at closing time was a real thing. But now, your competition is the guys at the bar plus whatever random dick she can dial up on tinder. You need to outcompete the guys at the bar, random guys she's swiping through on tinder, plus old flames texting her for a late night booty call. FWIW, this also works in reverse (if she wants you, she needs to compete against what you can get from tinder). So overall, meeting in real life is no longer a forcing function that forces people to compromise a little bit for the sake of meeting someone. Even if the bar closes and you're empty handed, tinder is still open for business.

Finally, #metoo has had a real effect on IRL meetups. Hanging out after work used to be a real and cherished thing, and lots of people met their wives / husbands that way. No more. But even non-work meetings, women are so much more on edge, and a harmless flirtation is now seen as harassment or at the least "creepy" and could end with you being ostracized from the group by women and white knights "protecting" women from the trauma of receiving a compliment from a guy they're not attracted to. Who needs to risk all that? Who wudda thunk that declaring more and more parts of your life to be off-limits to flirtation from a man would lead to... less flirtation from men? But hey, at least there's no more oppressive male gaze, since well, no guy is around to look at her anymore!

All of this has combined to lower your chances of success in random IRL events, while increasing the consequences and chances of something going wrong. Even if you're a guy having no success on tinder, you know you'll have equal or lower chances IRL, so why bother?

And the final part is a tipping point effect. If you're looking for a romantic connection, there's a sweet spot range of male:female ratios that is conducive. Obviously, if there are no women around, it sucks. But if there are too many women around and not enough guys to keep them occupied, that also is bad. The conversations degenerate to a bunch of women bashing guys and expecting you to apologize for everything some man has ever done to her, plus paying for everyone's drinks, and expecting to give a ride to whichever woman ends up drunk and crying in the bathroom. Not to mention, the cockblocking gets cranked up to 11: even if you find one woman to chat up, the rest of the single women will be seething with jealousy and actively trying to break things up: either by trying to "protect" the woman from your advances, or whispering about how she's a slut and that's why she was able to attract you while other women couldn't.

I know it's a guy fantasy to be in a group with a lopsided male:female ratio, but the truth is, it sucks. You end up being forced to play dancing monkey / open wallet (of course you need to buy drinks for the entire group, you're the only guy!) / therapist / bouncer for a group of increasingly drunk women talking about their female problems and inevitably having meltdowns when their lack of control over their liquor combines with the ego crushing lack of male attention and collides with the usual drama women tend to stir up amongst themselves. It's not a fun night. More like hell. IMHO, 1.5-2:1 is ideal (keep the competitive juices flowing but let every girl still think they have a shot). 3:1 can be managed if you have a group of really gregarious and fun, social guys. But that's about the max.

You can tell this happened in the meetups the OP talked about: she mentions that the few guys "cleaned up" i.e. he talked to a lot of women and "picked a few favorites". Unless he had a 3-/4-/5-some that night, that's code for, he had the "privilege" of entertaining a bunch of women with witty flirtatious banter and then left empty-handed (at best a few phone numbers), while the women he chatted dialed up a random dude on tinder on their cab ride home. What guy would want to waste a night doing that?

It’s the same paradox that men face. Some for our entire lives. The less appealing that you are, the more of an effort that you have to make. But women who are generally appealing don’t go to the places that men “making an effort” go, because they can get access to the men they want easily: just check the IG DMs and see who’s sliding in.

Well, these older women aren’t appealing. So they have to “put in effort”. But men who they’d like don’t have to. They’re the ones sliding into the DMs of attractive women on IG.

Sure, at events like these, you’ll have a couple men show up looking for some layups. But they get the same level of choosiness as the women had from back in the day.

Also, let’s not forget the elephant in the room: successful men tend to be married. the older that women get, the more that their dating pool shrinks. And the ones that shrink out fastest are the exact ones they’d like to date.

Well, straight men that want to "meet people" (translation: get laid) fall into two broad groups in the modern "dating" meta.

Group 1: Good looking enough to right swipe on fresh 20-something pussy on Tinder/etc, and has no real need to show up to events where they'll get hassled by aging skags that they can't left swipe. And the few that do show up are going to have their pick of the litter so any average woman is shit out of luck for anything long term. Oh, you are a 40+ yr old woman? Good fucking luck, men you want don't want you.

Group 2: Has no reason to show up since they'll get treated as subhumans if they get noticed at all.

And women deserve this hell due to them self filtering 80+% of the men from their pool from the get-go.

“Why won’t men show up so I can reject them and feed my ego?”

There weren't just 2 men. There were 2 men you were interested in and the other ones you yeeted from your little personal universe.

Overwhelmingly female, but what caliber of female? As the saying goes:

“The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

Notice what she didn’t write… how many of those women are fat? A random group of women in those venues is going to be mainly comprised of fatties and outright land whales. Most of them might as well not be there based on that factor alone, and then we have to consider all the other disqualifiers like bastard children and feminism.

This is like all those articles bemoaning the alleged lack of suitable men. Once you weed out unsuitable women the “scarcity” reverses: there are more husband-grade men than there are wife-grade women.

This is interesting, because what probably happened here is that she had woman goggles on.

When she said that she didn't see any men, what she meant is that "I didn't see any men who I considered to be attractive enough to not reject out of hand." While there might have been a greater ratio of women to men, the idea that there were only 2 men out of 40 participants is bullshit. Especially since that man "cleaned up", since we know that women don't give unattractive men any attention regardless of the ratio of women to men.

Look closely at the very top of her post, it says "45f"

That means 45 years old and fat.

She still has not worked out what is going on. The calibre of men that banged her when she was 25 will now not even look at her.

When she says 'where are the men' she means 'where are the hot men'.

I'll tell you where they are - as far away from fat, 45 year old, entitled, impotent, idiotic, lazy, demanding cunts like her as they can get.

You'll find them one of two places;

• In a relationship with a decent woman.
• Balls deep in some plate that is 10+ years younger than them, and 50 pounds lighter than her.

The answer to all of her questions is always going to be the same - cats and wine.

I would love to round up a bus load of incels and drop them off at one of these events. Then I would interview every woman that comes out of there.