How does a guy turn into a BBFA ?

 

Japanese authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga continue to produce "idea dividends" in their second book on Adlerian Philosophy entitled The Courage to be Happy. Some of the frameworks in therapy can be really useful in deconstructing fellow Singaporeans. Today I will apply the Adlerian Stages of Problem Behaviour to study, and shed light, on how Singaporean become Bui Bui Forever Alone,  a special breed of Internet troll that exists in our local interwebs. 

Let us first discuss the context of dating in Singapore. Unlike women, men can be judged by their success in life. This is often material or financial in nature. When men gather, they often sort themselves based on hierarchy loosely based on material and financial success. So men who are trying to mate have to contend with female hypergamy. It's not that Singapore women are materialistic - Singapore women may find that having some material success corresponds to psychological traits that make good dads, like conscientiousness and punctuality. 

With the context in mind, we can examine how problem behaviour exhibited by wayward students can map directly to a guys' apotheosis into the life of a BBFA.

Here are the five stages of problem behaviour:

a) Demand for admiration 

Every guy wants to be admired. During the first stage, a guy has this idea that, by simply being himself, he should be able to, occasionally, get a word of praise from women. Because he is new to this game, he often acts like a normal, card-carrying member of society to get the praise he craves. Often they enough from mums at home. 

This is where the problem begins. 

Women won't praise you for being yourself. ( Gen X women may even insult or rebuke you for being too normal. ) Men soon learn that being normal hardly resolves their craving for love in Singapore society.

b) Seeking Attention 

 

The guy realises that he needs to seek attention to stand out. He's also competing against other guys so he needs to set up a marketing department and do some SEO (for his genitals). At this stage, he often gets a gym membership. Others guys may, to the detriment of FIRE, get involved in conspicuous consumption.

This is no longer a personal game. It has to be played against other men. The logical conclusion in ferocious dating markets in Shanghai is that a guy must burn a huge amount of their life energy to buy an apartment to qualify as husband material. 

c) Power Struggle

Everybody cannot win at the mating game. Some men will find that they will fail to seek the attention and love they crave, so instead of attaining a privileged position, they start to challenge women. Popular dating books encourage this bad boy attitude. This is where Millenial guys invented this horrible technique called "negging". Criticizing women and lowering their self-esteem to get ahead in the mating game. Some of my single friends still get very hyped up when talking to my single lady friends on social media, they pick stupid fights betraying their personal lack of sexual access.

A lot of mansplaining occurs at this stage.

d) Revenge  

Things start to spin out of control at this stage. Feeling rejected, and failing to get attention even after negging a woman pushes a guy eventually off the edge.  He begins to take revenge on women.

Some men take to trolling (like me - I love posting offensive relationship articles when I was in my 20s), but if it gets out of control, this is the stage guys talk about Men's Rights and join the more hateful movements like Gamergate. Apparently, games researchers find that the men who criticise and try to exclude women from gaming circles are also the more incompetent players. 

If you are not careful, the law needs to be called in to deal with guys going through this stage.

e) Proof of Incompetence

At this stage, the transformation to BBFA becomes complete. Every attempt a guy has made to get a woman's attention has failed. Trying to stand out failed. Trying to neg them failed. Even revenge did not earn any more than indifference.

The last stage is to simply give up and join the Brotherhood of BBFA. They finally enter a stage of despair. The idea that, at this stage, only a specialist can be called in to help.

Modern society is designed to not really give a shit about leftover guys, they get labelled Bare Branches or Hikkikomori. We will be seeing a lot of men in retreat as we recover from the pandemic as many men will never rejoin the labour market.

Alfred Adler suggests that this problem can be nipped in the bud in a classroom setting if teachers treated students with more respect, but this is kinda hard to apply to single males in Singapore. Women, who have evolved to be the pickier gender due to higher rates of parental investment, cannot afford to sacrifice their own personal interests. 

What if a guy they don't like were to keep sticking to them? 

I have a son. My own personal solution is to shower him with unconditional love but have him be aware of the relentless competition in the dating markets. He somehow has to realise that his parents love him, but society is ready to be completely indifferent to him if he cannot contribute to the country.

But I think a lot of us knows this.

It is entirely possible that no one is thinking about us as we go about our day. 

I know that thought drives a lot of single women crazy.