Young Male Virginity on the Rise Chart

Submission 7,464

Part of a series on Involuntary Celibacy / Incel. [View Related Entries]

About

Young Male Virginity on the Rise refers to a chart or graph showing the rise in the percentage of men under 30 who report zero female sex partners since turning 18. Originally shared by The Washington Post journalist in 2019, the chart has repeatedly gone viral online since, with users editing the chart and making memes to show what happened in 2008, the year when the rise in male virginity started.

Origin

On March 29th, 2019, The Washington Post^[1] published an article on a drop in sex rates in Americans titled "The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high." While the article contains a similar chart showing rates for both young men and women, the chart showcasing the rise in the number of men who report zero female sex partners since turning 18 was posted by the author of the article Christopher Ingraham on X^[2] / Twitter (post shown below).

Spread

Since 2019, the chart saw viral spread online, being reposted on X, Reddit, and other sites. Notably, on May 15th, 2022, an in-depth analysis of the chart was posted on Keyhan Vakil's blog.^[3]

Prior to January 1st, 2021, an unknown X / Twitter user posted the earliest edit of the chart, marking June 2007, the month near the start of the continuous rise in male virginity in 2008, as the time of iPhone release. On January 1st, 2021, Redditor WomenAreEvilWhores reposted the image to the /r/PurplePillDebate^[4] subreddit, where it gained 19 upvotes (shown below).

On March 20th, 2021, X^[5] user @blknoiz06 reposted the unedited chart, commenting, "bro this is an INSANE chart." The post garnered over 10,000 reposts and 46,000 likes in three years. On March 28th, Redditor VisualZookeeper6 posted the chart, adding the date of League of Legends release in October 2009 to it. The post (shown below, left) gained over 860 upvotes in the /r/196x^[6] subreddit in three years.

On October 8th, 2021, Redditor allahsiztosbaa made a similar post in /r/memes, which received over 13,000 upvotes in three years (shown below, right).

On July 27th, 2023, Dexerto posted the chart on its official X^[7] account, with more memes based on the chart being posted in the following week.^[8]

On April 25th, 2024, X^[9]^[10] user @ramzpaul reposted the chart, with user @TiffanyFong_ making another repost several hours later. The posts garnered over 1,500 reposts and 15,000 likes, and 730 reposts and 8,200 likes, respectively, and prompted more humorous edits of the chart in the following week (examples^[11]^[12] shown below).