I was going through my Tumblr feed and found this:

It was exceptional only in its apparently masculine subject; I would say about 1% of my Tumblr feed comprises women posting things like: “I’m sassy and chaotic, if you want to date me you have to be able to lift 300 lbs, drink like a lumberjack, write poetry like Ted Hughes, and make a girl feel like a cherry blossom in The Last Samurai“. I normally just scroll past these with an irritated sigh but today I thought: what the fuck is wrong with these people? why do they post shit like this?

Then I remember Heartiste posting a similar Tinder profile, a man’s, which was something like: “Only interested in a 9/10 or higher, no body fat, under 25, must be charming and sociable”, and this average-looking chubby guy got hundreds of biotches swarming his ass.

At the time I just thought “women are weird”. But what if narcissists (women), who are constantly imagining how they are perceived by others, read this and think “I’m like that! I can be like that! I’m special!” – then, the more demanding the specifications, the more it flatters the object, since she begins to imagine herself as this special paradoxical unicorn, so rare, so perfect, so wonderful.

Not sure it would work with men. At least with me, I just think “Christ, how can I filter this garbage out of my Tumblr feed?” (I mostly subscribe to trad Tumblrs) and if a woman ever told me something like “to date me, a man has to -” I would most likely just walk away in distaste, since this enumerating tendency is part of the modern realm of quantity whereof Rene Guenon wrote.

It seems of a piece with our modern world, that most people wish to be flattered; it’s something I noted with mainstream coverage/attacks on Trump – it implicitly flatters the consumer, saying “look at this idiot! You are smart! You read the New York Times! You use big words!”

George Steiner cryptically remarked that pornography flatters the attention. I didn’t really understand it, and still don’t completely, but his comment played on my mind as I read the above “Captain”. You could say that most of modern society flatters, in one way or another, like a whore.