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The full thread is here (click on the right arrow to see all the comments).

https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...

I'm really happy that you found the love of your life!

I'm not saying you should be careless, but I am saying that the way you put in effort is by having good, healthy relationships with others around you. I think the kid needs guidance and mentorship on how to become a self-confident person more than anything.

Completely agreed that it is harder to find people to meet. But also, the people you meet in your late 20s/early 30s will be much more mature than those you meet earlier in life, so it's not all bad.

Gender skew is a very serious problem -- but the student is primarily in need of guidance about self-confidence. And again, some comments have pointed out that there are more women at Berkeley than men.

To be clear, as a woman, hearing a potential partner (of any gender -- I'm pansexual) whine about how they can't get a girlfriend would make me instantly uninterested in a romantic relationship with them.

Also, the advice to focus on meeting people and making friendships first is what _I_ got, and it's worked out pretty well for me. Even at times when I was single, enjoying what I had rather than pining for things I didn't was a much healthier attitude to life.

I linked to it in the comment you replied to. Here's the link again: https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...

(You need to click on the right arrow to see the full series of images on Reddit.)

That's not the OP, and in any case that's much more of a comment than a question.

To be clear, it was not an answer to a question. It was a reply to a commenter (not the OP) dumping on an unrelated question about job advice. At no point did anyone ask for dating advice.

> All systemic problems of the kind you're talking about involve the behavior of a specific group. Otherwise, you're talking about, what? All humans? All mammals? How is that useful to a guy trying to find a girl?

You're not wrong at some level, but phrasing matters a lot when you're talking about sensitive topics like this! Someone commenting on "stark" differences in "behavior" comes off as much more of a creep than someone making the more general point that it can be harder to find someone with a gender skew.

By the way, the idea of a gender skew has been disputed -- apparently, Berkeley has more female students than male ones. You can find other comments pointing that out.

> What motivation do most men use to get their act together? Women. That's not a bad thing. It's human nature.

I don't think that's true -- I've never heard any of my male friends say they were inspired by anything like that. Even if it is the case, it doesn't seem that much like human nature.

Personally speaking, the idea of getting my act together so I can find a partner is completely alien to me. My main motivation for getting my act together has been so I can fulfill my responsibilities to the people (and animal) I care for.

I think a serious, mature comment would have provided at least one citation about gender ratios, and would have treated this as a systemic problem rather than commenting on any individual or group's behavior.

A serious comment would have also included an exhortation to the student to get their act together and stop thinking of life in terms of "looking for a girlfriend" -- the student he was replying to comes off as in some serious need of self-confidence, something that most well-adjusted people seek out in a partner.

Be that as it may, the phrase, and the comment in general, just does not reflect the gravity of the issue.

A large gender skew is really, really bad for society and needs to be taken extremely seriously.

At no point was a student asking for dating advice.

I come from a country which has been suffering from this problem for many decades. A large gender imbalance warps society, and is a real concern particularly for straight dating/marriage. There are many ways to talk about it that reflect the seriousness of the problem.

But all too often in the Bay Area, laypeople talk about it without the gravity that it deserves. Unserious comments, like the professor talking about "artillery distance", are what you can't make in polite society. And I think that's good.

From what I've found [1] the OP asked for ideas on what to do after they graduate, not dating advice. Then, a commenter started off responding but quickly switched into dumping their emotions about how they can't get a girlfriend. That commenter also did not ask for advice.

The professor then replied to this commenter, not the OP, with his thought about how women in "artillery distance" of the bay area have stark behavior differences. Some of those women he was talking about were, presumably, his own students.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...

edit to add:

A model response from a professor who did want to weigh in on this might be something like "Stop thinking about life in terms of looking for a girlfriend, and start meeting new people and forming relationships with them, some of which may turn romantic." The student's attitude is just not a healthy way to go about life, and the general demeanor they have (that kind of response to a job-advice post) is not conducive to actually forming healthy relationships.

Yes, that's the name of Berkeley's department.

If you're from a minority group in an area, it is _extremely_ unpleasant to hear yourself being talked about as if you're the object of a tactical military operation. "Artillery distance", really.

Agree that if he'd said that women can't do well in the field, that would be much worse.

This is wildly inappropriate in a professional setting. As a woman reading that, I'm shocked. For a woman hoping to get into tech, comments like that made by authority figures just reinforce prior beliefs about how hostile our field can be to women.

I'm glad the professor apologized, at least.