You suck at dating apps because you're not off-putting enough

I reveal my secrets and solve all dating problems forever

Well, really it’s because you’re straight. But that’s okay, we can work with that. Nobody’s perfect.

As previously discussed, apps are for gay people. If you’re a man looking to pick up men, or a lesbian who isn’t a coward, apps solve all your problems. But straight people have a different problem: men and women are slightly different from each other. This ends up creating instabilities in the equilibrium that ruin everything:

Say men are only a little more likely to engage in “short term mating behavior” (i.e. horndog fuckboy bullshit) than women are. […]

But say there is just one extra horndog man who, for whatever reason, got left out—the unlucky runt of the litter. This man is now unoccupied and unattended, and will wreak jolly hell on the remaining pool of women. […]

Now all the non-horndog men who really did just want a drink and a chat and maybe to kiss passionately in a sun-dappled garden have to try harder to reach any women at all. In fact, cruelly, they have to adopt horndog fuckboy strategies—sending lots of poorly differentiated messages to maybe get a single response. Now, to the average woman, all horndog and non-horndog men look exactly the same—because they are behaving the same.

Fortunately, there is a solution.

Be more off-putting

Straight women (and bisexual women wearing clever disguises): your problem is the firehose. You are standing in front of an unstoppable torrent of penises. They’re slapping limply onto the windshield of your car, piling up in your driveway, creating trip hazards on your doorstep. It is unseemly. You would like to take one home, but how on earth are you supposed to sort out this terrible mess?

Like this except it is penises and mostly they are not going in your mouth.

Almost all women develop some strategies for filtering down the firehose, and those strategies are, to put it mildly, the most retarded thing I have ever heard of. For example, filtering by height. Most women want a man who is taller than them, and very few women are 6 feet tall themselves, but 6 is a nice round number, so why not? 6 foot plus men are roughly similar to under-6 foot men, and, crucially, there are fewer of them, so surely this is reasonable?

[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER NOISE]. Wrong. Wrong. Idiotic. Wrong. Yes, 6 foot men are roughly as interesting, kind, and intelligent as under-6 foot men. They are also roughly as dull, cruel, and stupid as under-6 foot men. Filtering by height is like going to a famous gourmet restaurant and choosing your appetizer, entree, and dessert by selecting the item which happens to be listed third on the menu. Be so serious with me right now.

No. We can do much better than this. You have been gifted a cornucopia. Under no fucking circumstances should you be wasting it like this.

Perhaps you are are tempted by the strategy that is slightly less retarded than the absolutely most retarded one. All else being equal, you prefer an attractive man to an unattractive one; you prefer he be more intelligent than less; that he have a larger collection of antique slide rules than a smaller one. Surely you should be attempting to game the market to secure the “highest quality” man you possibly can—swiping right on men with the highest paying jobs, the largest number of abs, the most convincing physical description of his therapist?

[VERY EXTREMELY TREMENDOUSLY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER NOISE]. Let us assume for the sake of argument that “sexual market value” theory is real, that assortative mating drives everything, and that you are highly unlikely to secure a man significantly outside of your “league”. What’s the plan? Strap on some stiletto stilts and step over as many other bitches as possible to secure the very best man inside your league, as determined by his legible qualities? Don’t you think those other bitches might have also thought of that? I’m not even going to mention my old school friend Perverse Incentives. Again: be so serious with me right now.

By all means—attempt to improve your “league”. Grow your hair out. Get a boob job. Acquire more antique slide rules. Whatever, I’m not your dad. That’s all neither here nor there.

Securing a (rolling my eyes, making jerking-off motions) “high quality man” is only one of your goals. Your other goal is to have fun and enjoy the dating process.

If you’re not having fun you have no business dating. Not Having Fun is the dragon gnawing at the root of the world tree, the great wolf devouring the sun. You need to have fun or you may as well find a husband by packing yourself up in a UPS box and having yourself mailed to someone with both his balls and most of his teeth, because it’s over for you.

This is, literally, without exaggeration, your dating life. Loki is there too I think.

So, what shall you do about the all the penises wiggling desperately in your direction, nosing at your person, slapping gently at your face like you are going through a car wash? Rest your heart at ease. I will tell you.

1. Dissuade the faint of heart

First, you must dissuade some number of the penises. You do this by making your profile a bit off-putting. Not very off-putting, you understand. There’s no need to be front-and-center about your most universally unappealing traits—your syphilis, your opinions on network television, your malformed-yet-somehow-horrifically-still-alive homunculus that you keep in a jar under your bed—just particular ones. Think about what parts of yourself you like, and don’t intend to change, that others often don’t. Find some way to display these traits; in your photos or your prompt responses. What’s the most obscure and tedious thing you’re most excited by? What’s your most annoying trait that you’re most proud of?

This will take some soul-searching. Be honest with yourself. No stupid interview bullshit like “I’m too caring and I work too hard”. Find something actually controversial about yourself, and show it off. Become a living scissor statement.

Now of course many men aren’t reading your profile at all, having set up a complicated contraption of many pulleys, wheels, springs, and hamster wheels to repeatedly swipe right on as many profiles as possible. This brings us to our second tactic.

Your future husband is not operating one of these—well, unless you’re into that sort of thing. I kind of am, honestly.

2. Trap the undiscerning

Second, you can trap some penises as they scamper desperately across your profile. Hinge makes this easy by showing you which element of your profile a man has interacted with. You can use this to your advantage.

First, obvious stuff. Many men will send a like to the first thing on your profile. If that first thing is a message reading “I will unmatch anyone who interacts with this prompt,” this immediately makes your life easier. (Exceptions can be made for men who send a message in response to this prompt which make it clear that he is doing it on purpose, to be impish and difficult—such a man would certainly intrigue me.)

Second, photographs. I have a number of images of myself on my Hinge profile. They showcase my colorful and extremely annoying personality. In one I am waving a chainsaw around. In another I’m wearing a punk vest that says POSEUR on the back. But one is a pretty generic, uninspired titty pic; I’m on the beach, my tits are out. Yawn. Any man who chooses to click like on that picture is right out.

There are surely other approaches, but the core insight is the same: just as your profile is a disjunction point to drive discernment, so too are specific elements of your profile.

I encourage experimenting with it to find what works best for you. Try hiring a pair of knights to guard your profile, one of which always tells the truth and one of which always lies. Consider deploying a fiendish riddle, or some kind of witch’s curse.

3. Take the penis by the horns

Supposing that a brave and stalwart penis has made it past your labyrinth of tricks and misdirections. Now you are messaging the poor soul it is attached to. This is a critical juncture.

Even if you have done a good job of steps 1 and 2, you likely have more options on the table than you can realistically manage. You can’t really tell if you’re attracted to any of these prospects; you’ll have to go out with them in person to figure that part out. And if you were to go out with every prospect, well, there goes all of your free time.

So you’ll have to find some way to pare it down, but don’t forget your goals, in roughly this order of importance:

1. Have fun

2. Secure a pleasant evening

3. ?????

4. Profit Secure a husband

In order to have fun messaging on the apps, you should consider what you want to talk about. Don’t just react to whatever he gets on about. Be proactive.

It’s good to have a unique, particular profile to attract the kinds of men who are interested in you, specifically. But from there it can become a liability. As interested as I am in doomed Antarctic expeditions, I’m not nearly as interested in explaining what happened on the 1897 Belgica expedition the 50th time I’m asked about it.

To avoid this, assert your dominance over the conversation. You already know that you are a vast soul, unique among snowflakes. But what about the young man on the other side of that little pane of glass? What about his vast soul?

What’s something you can ask him that you really want to know? Maybe you are really used to men asking you about yourself, and aren’t used to being interested in them back. Well, time to cultivate some curiosity, or else let yourself be bored to death. Surely something in his profile piques your interest. Remember, you’re trying to have fun, but you’re also trying to set up a date that you’re actually excited to go on. What can you learn about this man that would make you really want to see him—or else certain that you don’t?

Again, this requires some soul-searching, some serious examination of what you really want. Lesbians have to figure this out early on or consign themselves to a life of celibacy, but the structure of hetero dating means that straight women can easily go their whole lives exclusively making yes/no decisions about prospects who approach them first. This is, of course, suboptimal.

Now, I don’t really believe in the Gale-Shapely algorithm as the be-all of female dating strategy—male and female strategies are not perfectly symmetric—but there is some wisdom to its core insight. You can’t spend 100% of your time reacting. You are going to have to pull up your big girl shorts and lunge for the penis that you want.

We can also apply this wisdom to the first date—

(Suddenly, a HETEROSEXUAL MAN runs onto the stage; breathing heavily; his eyes are red and mascara-streaked; he is holding a revolver, just barely able to keep a sweaty grip on the heavy instrument of death)

You obsequious bitch! (he cries stupendously) You blackguard! You cur! I ask you, what is the fucking point of giving (his lip curls in disdain) women (he cannot prevent himself from spitting in disgust) this advice? They already have it so fucking good! You are passing tax cuts for the rich! You are standing at the throne of the fat and gouty king, rendered immobile by his excessive wealth, explaining to him how best to extract the destitute villager’s crops for his feasts, their children for his wars! Are you not ashamed? You are hellbound! Cursed! Blasted! Out of touch! You are completely ignoring the real issue of our times! What about me? What about my penis?

(The HETEROSEXUAL MAN cocks the gun and points it at my head, trembling; I hold his gaze, with endless love and pity in my eyes; I am prepared to die for him, if that is what he needs from me. Finally he throws down his weapon and collapses at my feet in supplication)

Young man, I am taking your hands in my hands. I am sweeping you into my arms, embracing you as my own child, clasping you to my tender bosom. I wish I could take on all your pain, your rage. I wish you didn’t have to suffer.

Young man, I am telling you: I care so much about your penis. Your penis is of deathly serious importance to me.

Young man, I want to tell you this—the advice for you is much the same as the advice for the young woman. Be particular. Be authentic. Be proactive, but discerning. Differentiate into your niche. Trust in your own heart. Also, try not to tank your ELO early on, because if you get sorted into like the bottom quintile or something of an app’s users, it’ll be really hard to get enough matches to come back from that into the main pool. You’ll either have to find a way to make a new account or just switch to a different app, and that’ll be a pain in the ass.

Young man, you are not so different from the young woman. You have a shining soul, and so does she. She wants to be loved for who she is, just as you do. Dating is a path you and she will walk together, and the game you play with her is co-op. Make it easy for her—let her find you, let her see your soul.

Young man, the world is not so harsh. Love is real, terribly real, and it is out there. That’s a threat.

But, young man, you won’t believe me. I’ve been on Grindr, Lesbo Tinder, Hetero Hinge—but I’ve never lived your life. I’ve never been a heterosexual man, not really. How can I possibly presume to give you advice when I have never been you? When I have never flirted with madness in the echoing silence of the dating application’s halls? Never beaten my head into a brick wall of non-response? Never felt my heart beat in excitement at a single notification, only to find that it to be a covert advertisement for the young woman’s OnlyFans?

Young man, I understand. You’re right. I can’t presume to give you such advice. Not yet.

Young man, give me your skin.

Young man, don’t be such a pussy. It barely even hurts, this knife is very sharp. I’ll give it back when I’m done. I’ll get it dry-cleaned first, I promise.

Young man, I told you. I’ve never been a heterosexual man, but as we say around these parts, growth mindset.