Not to give a milquetoast fence-sitter response but I do think it's more of a two-way game than you make it out to be. Men do the "pick me" dance for women, for sure, and women do have the pick of the litter but lowkey women do tell me some wild shit about their relationships a lot of the time. Most of the women I know with extensive dating history have been sexually assaulted or otherwise abused, and imho men just aren't attractive in the same way women are so I don't blame women for not being thrilled with the value proposition. So many men I know basically just see women as status symbols or means to get laid and I've heard enough horror stories about men that I'm skeptical of this sort of one-sided criticism that I think your post represents. A lot of dudes also downright dread the idea of having to be emotionally available for women, or invest energy into a relationship at all and they are often not shy about letting that be known. It's p common for women to have something close to contempt for men and to not want to deal with them, but most women I know at least pretend to give a shit. Sometimes I feel like women suck, but other times I feel like maybe men suck more, but then other times... I also think hypergamy is a bit of an over-simplistic idea. Women have standards for sure, whether that be in terms of financial, educational attainment, social capital, etc., but when women go from one dude to another you'll find that they often aren't "upgrading" in a traditional sense. It also seems to imply that human hierarchical structures can be clearly plotted, and that we can therefore say definitively that any given woman is dating "up" or "down" when it's really much more complicated. As you've said yourself, women are in and of themselves often considered highly desirable (superficially or otherwise) but men don't enjoy the same often dubious distinction. Many women are sort of "dating down" by being with a man at all since most men often don't really confer any status whatsoever. For example, I was and still am a loser. I dated a woman for six years before she left me for someone else, but she didn't "monkey branch" or practice hypergamy per se because she left me for someone who was also a loser lol.
By contrast, the pick me dance is exactly what it sounds like: a shallow performance. Dudes switch up on women so fucking fast when they realize she doesn't wanna fuck them or whatever. So few of them are willing to actually play the long game to get to know somebody as an actual human being when they can instead try to rush as fast as possible to the part where they get what they want.
I also think that looksmaxxing is responding not just to women, but male expectations of beauty as well. What's the Clavicular quote? Something along the lines of "I don't care about women any more, I just want to mog other men?" Dudes who looksmaxx often have insecurities that go well beyond just trying to impress women.
