In my times, a pretty girl existed within a perimeter of perhaps 20 kilometres, with an audience of a few hundred men at most. Out of those hundreds, perhaps five had the guts to approach her, strike up a conversation, or propose to her.
And if she accepted someone, the whole community would eventually come to know about it. Other men would back off because everyone knew she was already taken.
Life was simple.
Today, the same woman can extend her perimeter to the entire world through social media. Men no longer need the guts to approach her in person. They just need to follow her, like her pictures, leave comments, and slide into her DMs.
The attention never stops. Whether she has a boyfriend, is married, or is entertaining the attention of multiple men remains largely unknown to her online admirers. There is always another man waiting to try his luck.
And here is where the real problem begins.
Women have discovered that male attention is a resource they can exploit indefinitely. They enjoy the validation, the admiration, and the feeling of being desired by hundreds or thousands of men. Some deliberately keep admirers interested, even when they have no intention of reciprocating their feelings. Others enjoy the attention while keeping their actual relationships away from public scrutiny.
The problem is not that women receive attention. It is when they begin to believe that being desired by countless men is an achievement in itself, or that the attention they receive entitles them to special treatment.
Social media has given women an unprecedented level of romantic attention without requiring them to invest anything comparable in return. And when such attention becomes readily available, the temptation to exploit it is difficult to resist.
Of course, a phone is private property, and nobody is automatically entitled to their partner’s passwords. But privacy should not become an excuse for dishonesty.
Power reveals character. And when someone has an endless supply of admirers, their character determines what they do with that power.
On the other hand there is this beautiful quote about power – ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, did social media ruin women?
I wouldn’t say it ruined women. I would say it gave women opportunities to exploit male attention on a scale that was unimaginable in my times.
And the men? They have become nothing but simps in the process.