You can make the half-serious argument that in order to be a winner in today’s world it pays to be a loser. After all, you get subsidies. You get sympathy. You can play the victim card. Above all, you get the girl.

This inversion has been achieved by the counterintuitive method of degrading women. One website that endeavors to explain why women like losers points out that the taste for losers is achieved by making women losers themselves. Here are the reasons given for why a woman would like a deadbeat. “We don’t believe we are worthy. … We’re afraid to be alone. … We think we can teach a dog how to speak. … We’re losers ourselves! … We’re afraid to get hurt.”

This last is interesting but quite logical. Many a woman out with a Pajama Boy-type is probably reassured by the fact that at a pinch she can thrash him within an inch of his life and therefore feel safe with him.

But the insight of mutual degradation may provide the right clue. We probably seek people in proportion to our own aspirations. Our romantic goals are formed from our inner state. If we develop a taste for basements, then we look for stuff there. Civilization has lost its taste for manly men, not because those vanished figures are any less admirable but because steadfastness, courage and the need to be true have gone out of style.