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The story
A claim that “once you’re over 35 and still single, every other stat you have — education, income, height — becomes meaningless” sparked a debate on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G board (a general live-chat forum). The thread split between posters who say a person’s worth boils down to single-vs-married, and others firing back with examples like baseball star Hayato Sakamoto and Ichiro to argue “marital status alone doesn’t decide how you’re judged.” Married posters piled on to needle singles, while some questioned just how fulfilling married life really is, and across 17 separate reply chains the clash between “stat theory” and “happiness theory” kept going.
What people said
High income? Just makes you a money-obsessed creep with nothing to spend it on.
Tall? If you can't even get a girlfriend with that, something's wrong with you as a person.
By 39 it's already confirmed, automatically (no going back).
And then you'll just die early, right??? What's the point of investing then.
So being fat doesn't get cancelled out, huh…
Man, you can only cling to "at least I'm married" and yet you actually managed to get married…
Well, I guess that makes singles ranked below guys who can only cling to being married.
Is that really okay with you?
No it doesn't.
Is Hayato Sakamoto below you?
Achievements outside of marriage — like your career — obviously get factored in too.
That's not how it works anymore.
Unlike the Heisei era when childless singles could walk around proudly, things have shifted toward "anyone who's had even one kid deserves respect."
And the birth rate has actually been leveling off.
Exactly this.
"You don't have to get married (or have kids)" — that's a Heisei-era value.
So people say "update from that Showa-era 'you must marry' mindset!!"
But in Reiwa, "having kids is just righteous" is basically the vibe now.
Does that actually prove Hayato Sakamoto is ranked below some random parent in the eyes of society?
That's not even addressing the point.
Answer the question you were actually asked first.
That's some serious self-esteem you've got there.
You're not Takeru Sato or Hayato Sakamoto, though.
And it's not even remotely the same situation.
Doesn't it embarrass you to even say that?
That's how much of a negative stat being single in old age really is.
Sure, there are welfare recipients (namapo, slang for people on livelihood assistance) who look down on corporate wage slaves too.
That doesn't mean anything.
Judge it by the average societal evaluation.
Sure, a tiny handful of handsome guys or celebrities can easily marry and have kids even past 40, but they're just outlier alphas.
For an average regular guy, 39 is the final deadline, so you'd better hurry.
Well, if a celebrity — or an "alpha," whatever — gets married, it gets reported in the news,
but for a regular person, it never becomes news at all,
so nobody even knows.
There it is, there it is.
Anything inconvenient gets waved off as an exception.
The moment you start making exceptions based on job, income, or looks, your logic already falls apart.
That's exactly the average societal evaluation, though.
If Sakamoto turns 50 still racking up hookups and never marries,
society won't see him as a success — just as "new money with nothing but a sex drive."
Whoa.
Then if you have kids, go ask your friends or coworkers:
"I have kids, so that makes me a greater person than Sakamoto, Furuta, or Ichiro, right?"
How many people do you think would say, "Yeah, that's totally true"?
I really don't think anyone treats it that way.
Right?
If you're single but happy, I don't see the problem.
Though whether you can still be happy single past 50, who knows.
Furuta and Ichiro are married, though.
And I never made having kids the issue anyway.
Ugh.
You jumped into a conversation that was originally about kids, and this is what you say?
I got played.
Well, I guess you would be.
What's even fun about marriage, it's ridiculous.
You've got no credibility saying that until you've actually experienced it.
"I don't even have a girlfriend" — why though?
Being older, single, having zero intention of marrying, but still having a girlfriend — that's the most nonsensical combo there is.
Am I not allowed to say this?
The problem is the singles in this thread aren't exactly living it up either.
Come on, quit it…
Though it's pretty brutal that a married guy's Sunday plans are specifically coming to Nan-G to mock singles.
Looked at alone, an individual that can't reproduce may be unfortunate in that it leaves no offspring, but multiple studies show that, viewed at the species level, such individuals play an important role in supporting the species' overall prosperity.
Well, elites making over 10 million yen a year like that genuinely make up less than 1% of people, though.
If you're unhappy as an individual, then honestly…
Spending your whole life as a cog supporting other people's kids, like some unpaid volunteer, sounds insane.
Well, even married people start out single, so of course everyone's experienced both lol
The point is, someone who's only ever known being single can't actually make the comparison.
Sounds like a comparison to me.
If what you're doing married is the exact same thing you did single — hanging around the bottom-feeders of Nan-G on a Sunday.
Nah, I don't think married people can compare fairly either — everyone wants to believe their current situation is the best.
The only people who could actually judge it properly are those who got married and then lost their spouse, like through death, and had no choice but to go back to being alone.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The claim that “being single ruins all your other stats” is a recurring line of argument on 5ch’s marriage-hunting and dating-related threads, and this time it played out by invoking real-life celebrities — pro baseball players, actors — to test whether “not being married reduces your social evaluation to zero.” Some posts pointed to a value shift in the Reiwa era toward “having kids is simply righteous,” but that’s just one poster’s personal impression, not something backed by statistics. Likewise, the “39 is the final deadline” figure never rises above folk wisdom — no supporting data was ever presented in the thread. In the end, the argument boiled down less to whether being single is good or bad, and more to a single question: can you actually score someone else’s life using stats?
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Once You’re Over 35 and ‘Single,’ Doesn’t Every Other Stat Become Meaningless?.”
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