From the nerdy hetero male perspective, it’s tricky to balance being polarizing enough but not too polarizing. I’ve found when I lean too heavily into my polarizing traits on my profile I get the very occasional good match, but they happen very infrequently (like leading to only a few first dates a year), which is not ideal. When I hid my polarizing traits, I got way more matches but also tons of frustrating dates where I knew within 10 minutes I had zero interest. Both were dispiriting and ineffective in different ways.
The problem for us nerdy dudes is our polarizing traits are ones with a gender imbalance that works against us.
Lean hard into your other potentially controversial traits that might not be so gendered. Really like durian fruit? Want to skydive regularly with your partner? Spend your free time making ships in bottles? Those are the things to go for. Worked for me anyway. Lots of non-nerdy women like nerdy guys and lots of nerdy women don’t lead with their nerdiness, but I think a lot of women find stereotypical anything off putting.
But I suspect that Viv will say that men need to distinguish themselves more on their first messages in particular, since it’s almost always men writing them.
I think probably that men sending messages to women on dating apps should use the same advice that Steven Pressfield gives to novelists, admen, screenwriters, and writers of all sorts: make it actually worth reading. https://viverricious.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-to-read-your-shit
I will shout from the rooftops until my voice goes hoarse: the true advice for AMABs is to quit dating apps cold-turkey, check out as many IRL gatherings/spaces/clubs/conferences as they can sustainably manage, and place a premium on meeting friends of friends.
Different things work for different people. Online dating worked much better than real life meeting for me. That was a while ago, but I’ve read enough recent experiences that echo mine that I don’t think the basic landscape has changed as much as people claim.
The problem for men on dating apps is, as Viv’s excellent advice implies, that first you have to be an okay writer, and then you have to put the work in to write decent messages. For a lot of people this is very hard, but it was much easier and more enjoyable for me than trying to date through real life meetups. That needs a different skill set I didn’t have.
Yeah I think it is just empirically true that it works for plenty of people. Tons of couples meet online/on apps these days, and ~half those people are men! Its not like the women who are finding partners on apps are conjuring brand new men from the netherdimensions
I try to get out and meet new people, but now that I’m in my early-30s, I’m finding most women I meet IRL are already paired off, especially the attractive ones. At least on the apps everyone is single.
That was also my experience. To some extent being willing to meet online is filter for women who want to meet a man and are prepared to be explicit about it and that becomes much more common for women in their 30s.
Haha I suspect a lot of the guys on the apps are actually married and sitting on the couch next to their wives as they text you. Women become a form of cheap entertainment. Since I'm a woman I haven't seen the opposite side of this one though.
It seems like "online dating" as it existed when I met my wife in 2013 (by filling out a 10,000 item questionnaire for OKCupid; I think their business model was selling data) has been smothered out of existence by the not-really-for-straight-people apps. But I'm not really up on the scene, what with the having a wife that I met in 2013. Sometimes I feel like I got out just in time.
OkCupid is as great back in the day. You could answer very polarizing questions, but keep the answers private; they would still figure into your match percentage. So you could answer ‘yes’ to “I want my partner to treat me like a dog” or whatever, hide the answer, but know that if you got a 95% match percentage with someone it was probably someone who answered yes to “I want to treat my partner like a dog” but also hid it. I met my most-compatible-girlfriend ever this way. Tragic to see it become just another swipe-based trash app.
There are two narratives here that I'm having trouble reconciling. I met my wife on Yahoo personals (ultimately bought by match.com) way back in 2006, having been on the platform for about 6 months. The problems then were essentially the same as the problems people report now - lots of women's accounts are inactive or turn out to be scammers, even real women often don't return messages, women will often disappear after one date that seemed to go well, and so on. But I'm an absolutely relentless optimizer if I get into something, and I did get into online dating.
When people describe the problems that exist now, they're not really any different from the problems that existed then, and when I read the narratives of men who are successful now, they're not really any different from what I did then, although some of them make me look like a rank amateur in comparison.
I can believe that Grindr was not really a good template for straight online dating. It obviously optimizes for male attraction and and a male-oriented pace and order of events, whereas as every nightclub owner knows if you want to be successful you have to cater to women. Men will go wherever the women go, but women are picky. And in doing so I can see that it created an environment that actually put men at a disadvantage. But then if that's true, why did Tinder absolutely wipe the floor with its more text-based and slower paced based competitors? (although they're all actually owned by Match Group which is an interesting story in itself) It all happened after my time, so I have no idea about the subtleties of this, but something is missing from the narrative.
Improv doesn’t improve your general sense of humor much in my experience. Improv is a game with specific rules and principles you learn to play with other people go also know those rules. I liken it to playing a sport like basketball. Most of what you learn as you get better at basketball is specific skills and instincts for basketball. Does playing make you more athletic in general—does it carry over? Yeah, to some degree, but that isn’t really what it’s about.
You’d think that doing improv would signal that you are playful and willing to take risks and that this would enhance attraction, but I just haven’t seen it work that way.
It’s good to get good at things, yes, but spending five years getting a black belt or mastering salsa is a very slow and indirect route to meeting women. And in salsa in particular very few guys who pick it up as adults will ever be as good as the Latin guys who grow up with it.
Anyway my original point wasn’t to ask for advice on meeting girls—frankly I have probably forgotten more about that than you’ll ever know. It was to point out that leaning into your interests isn’t great advice of your interests are male-dominated or solitary things. I wish I loved yoga but I have tried it and I just don’t. (Might try it again though.)
Yes I agree with this. The same applies to IRL advice about figuring out what interests you and them joining groups and such that do that thing. My interests include playing pickup basketball, heavy barbell weight training, martial arts, tabletop roleplaying games, and improv comedy. The first five are heavily male; the last one just doesn’t tend to draw attractive people of either sex, for whatever reason.
Really, I would think improv is the way to go. At comedy clubs, isn't the crowd ratio about 50/50? But I say lean in to the improv. Go to improv workshops! Meet people (girls). Also, a decent number of women do like funny guys (as well as sculpted and/or athletic guys). Also, a decent number or women are in to martial arts now too.
You’d think so. But in terms of participants, improv doesn’t attract good-looking people. There’s a few but they are outliers. It’s been explained to me that improv is seen as a low-status, uncool activity. It’s perceived more like playing D&D than playing in a band or being a DJ or something. And although women say they like funny guys, I haven’t seen any groundswell of women from the audience wanting to meet the performers, nor do women’s eyes light up when I mention that I do it.
Martial arts, yeah there are a few women but always a minority. And then there’s the problem of relative status; the teachers (almost always men) will always have the highest status in the room. At one place I trained there was a very cute Indian doctor student who wound up dating one of the men there…the head instructor.
Kinda like salsa dancing in that way. Salsa places are often loaded with guys who grew up dancing it and whose skill will always be way, way above anyone trying to pick it up later in life (except a few gifted obsessives). In trying to meet women it isn’t good to be a little fish in a big pool.
The gym has good-looking folks. But from all that you said, I'm going to guess that you're pretty young so fairly insecure and also impatient. Assuming you're not on the spectrum, when you get older, you realize that caring about what people people think is "low status" (or "high status") is just stupid. Because different people have different ideas on what is low or high status. Certainly amongst some people, improv and being great with humor is _not_ low status. You'll also realize that guys tend to age more like wine and that you have a looong life in front of you. Also that there are a _lot_ of fishes in the sea and that it's a numbers game. I don't know if you're solely focused on the really dumb bimbo type or what, but if you have improv skills, I would hope you have a sense of humor and can show that off. Which is the key (to, well, everything, or at least most things): show, don't tell: Don't say you are in to improv and expect girls to swoon. Show off your sense of humor. And yes, guys who put in the time in a discipline are much more likely to become experts in that skill/discipline. Which means if you put in the work, you'll also become an expert in that skill. Especially for guys, there are no shortcuts, but compounding is real. Having patience (discipline) and having foresight and playing the long game is its own superpower.
A little bit so far I just don’t like them as well.
My comment wasn’t “what activities could I do to meet girls?” My comment was “the problem with the advice to lean into your polarizing traits is that if those polarizing traits are very male, then you’re competing with a lot of other guys who have those traits for the few women who have them.” If I lean into the things I am interested in, I wind up in very male environments.
Your suggestion is basically, “how about you don’t lean into what you’re interested in then?” Which is kinda my point….
Was going to say this but you beat me to it. (And viv explicitly says she's not in our shoes.) The ladies don't like the real us, it's about how much we're willing to give up.
I had money (not Bill Gates level but more than average), so they paid attention to me. I was never able to figure out which of the two they were really after.
If they don't like the real you, I'm sorry, but the harsh reality might just very well be that the real you is unlikable (speaking as a guy). Judging from what you wrote, I can't say I blame them. You come across as too guarded and cynical. How do you know they paid attention to you solely because of your money? Did you flaunt it? Also, at some point, figure out what you actually want from life. Like, OK, maybe you don't want a trophy wife? But if you do, then where's the downside?
I didn't flaunt it (in fact I save about 2/3 of my pay after 401k and the rest), but suffice it to say a little Google searching given information they would necessarily have would reveal a high income. Since I'm being controversial on the Internet I will be vague.
But yeah, the real me is unlikable! I've always assumed that! I've tried a couple personalities and none really worked. As for trophy wives...nah, that was never a goal. When younger I wanted true love, then figured it was too much trouble to be constantly emulating a different person and gave up.
The real you is probably plenty likeable to a strange and rarefied group of women who would b obsessed with you. U just need to find them man (I acknowledge this may be very difficult and might not involve a dating app. But I really do think it's true.) Ideally by using your real personality and not a fake one
It has been true for something like, say, 95% of the women with whom I have interacted; it also seems to be the case for most of those with whom my buddies have interacted—they're mostly divorced guys, with a few who never married & are dating, and a few who are unhappily married; just one is happily married; and the ones who are still looking all say, more or less, that they have learned better than to try to be authentically themselves (albeit they might put it in different words: some have gone ham on the "women want XYZ" & have legitimately tried to mold themselves into such a man, some cynically attempt to manipulate things such that they have the *appearance* of being such a man, some aim for "love 'em & leave 'em" after being burned too many times with "love 'em & love 'em", etc. etc.).
As said, this has been my experience too, mostly: being myself has attracted some women, but then it turned out that actually they liked the usual suspects more than myself (more money, more fit, less weird, you know the drill); mostly, it has seemed to put them off; only in one case ever did it work to get me a girl who truly loved me for me & who stuck with me through thick & thin (and it got *real* thick & *real* thin, at times: she stayed even as I developed, descended into, and kicked a serious heroin habit, for example... bathin' my fevered brow with a cool rag, cleanin' up my vomit as I crawled around on the ground sobbing, saving pennies when I once again spent all our savings on opioids...).¹
So: they *do* exist! Look at me—I'm as weird & off-putting as they come, and yet...!
Mind, I've never been able to replicate that, though—so maybe there's just one such woman. Or two, if you count my sole happily-long-term-hitched amigo.
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¹ (naturally—having won the heart of this amazing woman—I thence, eventually, proceeded to betray her horribly for no real reason, after a decade of married bliss. no, I don't know why, why, WHY I would do that, either. except maybe "I'm just a huge piece of shit, lmao!" or similar hypotheses.
(wish I could go back, take it back. God in heaven, how I wish.)
Yeah, sorry about that. :( We've all done stupid things in our lives.
Honestly it's not that I think women are evil (after all, men are notorious for going mostly for looks, cheating, abusing, and all kinds of stuff), and rather that when you've got an 8 in money and a 2-5 in everything else, the money's always such a huge confounder you don't know if they're really playing a long game after it or if it's simply making everything else you have less unattractive subconsciously. You're dealing with an ancient evolved algorithm for survival and reproduction and our conscious thoughts are just a thin layer over that (and that's both sexes--how many times have men done dumb things for sex?).
I think this is probably a lesson for the younger guys to stay in shape etc. so you have more than money going for you. As for the personality...probably that too, but I'm not going to claim I know what to do about *that*!
This comment brings to mind: have you put any effort into converting money into looks or desireable character traits? No panacea, but service industries exist for both.
As a concrete example, during my (quite successful) dating app days as a man living in Taiwan, the first line of my profile was 我不是妳的免費英文老師 (I am not your free English teacher).
Immediately polarizing, not offensive, and made clear to my matches that I'm not intending to be a token foreign friend or conversation partner. I'm gonna date you, and I'm gonna do it in Chinese.
This will obviously not work for most people, but that's the point: It worked for me in my specific situation to filter out one type of woman and attract a different type. Consider your desirable and undesirable matches and try to find something that clarifies to each group why you are a good and bad partner, respectively.
#2 is great, i put a hinge response about anime and anyone who asked me if i liked demon slayer was an immediate no. anyone commenting on my grad photo, also no. you picked the least interesting pic what are we gonna talk about now, my major? boring
Oof. I would intentionally comment on the grad photo to signal respect for her intellect/expertise, and to beat the stereotype of salivating at the boob pic—even though I wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had posted the boob pic straightforwardly for sexy cred, or adversarially to trap and disqualify rubes who reply-tag it. (I’d guess it serves both functions at once. Or is she going to fault me for failing to engage with it? Am I getting written off now as sexless and timid?)
Privately, I’d be nervous and frustrated about whether my intention was coming across correctly. And if something about my approach wasn’t working, I’d never get to know what or why. Zero feedback, zero humanization. I’m just a penis in a pile.
I’d write a thoughtful message worth reading, and it wouldn’t matter.
Whichever option I pick, I’d get quietly discarded, and it would be “my fault” in her mind. Nothing would ever change.
It was like this 99% of the time for twelve years, until I met my current partner at a convention IRL.
It’s a no-win situation. People really need to get off the apps. AMABs especially.
Dating isn’t supposed to be fair. All social interaction, all relationships, are arbitrary to some degree because they’re based on whether somebody feels like engaging in them. There is such a thing as social skills, but you can do everything “correctly” and someone can still not want to talk to you and they’ve done nothing wrong either.
In real life, you could be wearing a t-shirt of a colour she doesn’t like that day, or the wind could be blowing from the east instead of the west, or she could be in a bad mood for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Social interaction isn’t a gauntlet you’re supposed to know how to navigate and so if someone doesn’t want to talk to you that means you’ve failed, which means they ought to only reject you for fair, legible reasons. Social interaction is unfair and arbitrary and always has been and always will be.
Your points are well taken. I agree that human bonding is supposed to be organic and somewhat arbitrary, rather than process-mediated. You don’t win at dating the way you win a court case.
Still, there are serious social problems here.
There’s a massive, hellishly gendered power imbalance between me and Jane Doe.
Her inbound supply and outbound response rate are orders of magnitude better than mine, for no reason that tracks either person’s quality as a date or partner. She can be a literal narcissistic sociopath, and I can be a caring, attentive, romantic, kitten-rescuing, six-figure earner with desired physical features and talents in bed—and she’ll still be the belle of the ball, and I’ll still be the untouchable leper. (I’m reporting this from lived experience. No hyperbole. This is 100% literal down to the detail.)
Negative stereotypes devalue me (and not her) to a comical extent, with no adequate moral pushback from the culture. Polite society sees misogyny as a repugnant crime and an urgent social issue, but literally the EXACT same people insist that misandry is “justified” and “progressive” (or meekly defer to bullies who insist on this), even when said “progressive comeuppance” is obviously targeting a scapegoat in bad faith.
Cis women’s dating profiles often shout this hateful double standard from the rooftops in plain language. On my OkCupid, maybe 20% of the female profiles featured plain-text hate speech. I took lasting psychological damage from how much of this I was wading through. It changed my perception of the society around me, how I can expect to be treated by others, and what the community will likely allow.
It also changed Jane Doe’s perception. There were a lot of abusive Jane Does who correctly predicted they would get away with it. They moved in packs and covered for each other. I’m not making this up. I’m working on a memoir.
The structural container of dating apps makes it easier for Jane Doe to display “what typically entices male interest” than for me to display “what typically entices female interest” (e.g. visual presence vs. scent and proximity; asymmetric demand for physical trust-building). I’m *forced* to feel more excited than her, on a lizard-brained level I can consciously manage but never actually turn off. Meanwhile, I *can’t* raise her up from feeling skepticism, anxiety, and vague resentment and contempt, prior to our meeting IRL—which won’t happen, because her attitude doesn’t inspire her to meet me. A complete chicken-and-egg problem. Even the non-abusive people are like this.
The abusive ones have a field day here: they just give you a “yes” (inconceivable!) and it grants them frictionless access to new targets, over and over again. They’re a *huge slice of the pie* of message replies and first dates, because your average Jane Doe keeps inventing reasons to get the ick at the color of your T-shirt and swat you away with a flick of her finger.
The extreme uphill nature of the culture and circumstances incentivizes me to think long and hard about what I want, what I offer, how to present and conduct myself, etc., while Jane Doe suffers the opposite curse—such an over-forgiving and feedback-poor environment that she doesn’t really have to work on herself as a dater, or understand her role in creating a positive outcome. She doesn’t even have to notice my problem. And if I start talking about it, a legion of angry, righteous, activated Jane Does starts leaping out of the woodwork to mark me for community removal using words like “incel”, a word that means “gender failure” and “rabid dog”. There’s no faster way to blow up a date than by saying a peep (I mean *anything*) about Men’s Issues, no matter how “de rigeur” the ritual of her hazing you with her hateful, unprincipled fourth-wave feminism, and no matter what your lived experience (I have literally been sexually abused and financially defrauded by these sexy young White feminist professionals from dating apps). You clear her hurdles, you jump through her hoops, and you don’t talk back. You sit and roll over like a good dog. And you’d better be wearing a T-shirt color she likes, too. And her favorite T-shirt color will vary by the day. Swipe, swipe, swipe. She controls your shared world with her finger. I once watched a female date pull out OkCupid and say, “Let’s see what’s on *the menu*.” She was one of the nicer ones.
The passive, skeptical, flighty behavior common to Jane Does on dating apps works as a collective bargaining force, compelling AMABs as a class to over-engage and put up with too much. That dovetails with male-coded conditioning and temperament (“no pain, no gain”, “earn your way”, “grindset”)—ultimately feeding everyone’s perceptions of AMABs as disposable reachers who are all equally “enterprising” and desperate and pathetic, and AFABs as uniquely valuable, naturally entitled, wisely defensive, and over-generous if they give you an inch. The AFABs who show up on dates disproportionately display this attitude.
The AFABs I know in real life who have a better character than this, tend to bounce off the dating apps quickly—they don’t *like* playing such a toxic role or operating in such a dehumanizing environment. (Consider the “evaporative cooling” effect there. What does this mean about the remaining dating pool?)
Jane Doe’s version of “platonic intimacy with friends” (her BATNA) wipes the floor with mine, because of female social privileges like access to Adrienne Rich’s “lesbian continuum” or differential access/exposure/encouragement leading them to cultivate aesthetics, body awareness, emotionally nourishing bonds, relationships of touch, a comfortable nest, and so on. These are all human birthrights, and they’re not equally or equitably “distributed”. (I put that in quotes because this isn’t zero-sum.)
My sensitive, evolved male friends and I are openly aware of the tragedy of our assigned gender, and even that awareness doesn’t break the coordination problem; we’re afraid to break protocol in the eyes of the supervising community, because we expect this to curtail our social access in general. The same society that disparages us for being male-coded also punishes us for *violating* that code. It’s like they just want to use us as a pincushion for their hatred. They’re only happy if (a.) we are miserable and separated from them, and (b.) they feel assured of their power to maintain these conditions.
My sensitive, evolved male friends and I have similar experiences in dating. As a cohort, we circulate information about narcissism and codependency to each other. One after another, my friends go through “coming-out” moments where they start to awaken to these patterns and realize something isn’t right. It’s eerie how much this parallels second-wave feminism.
I can never win at respectability politics, either—there’s literally no version of how to behave that will cause Jane Doe to stop seeing me and treating me as just another disposable, greedy, “threatening” penis. I saw countless male daters/profiles trying as hard as they could to strike the impossible, culturally-nonexistent balance between “sensitive modern feminist” and “conventionally attractive male”. I thought they did it well, but it never inspired affection, desire, or respect in the Jane Does. The discarding, neglect, mistreatment, and false alarms just went on and on.
Both observations can be true at once. You’re not supposed to win at dating the way you win a court case, *and* this culture is extremely sick, morally bankrupt, and damaging.
I suffered online for about 12 years, had several deeply damaging relationships during that time, and finally met my extremely wonderful partner at a convention IRL.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STARVE THE BEAST. These app companies need to go BANKRUPT.
I had very similar experiences that caused so much hurt when I was in my early 20s and more open and vulnerable. The level of emotional and psychological damage has seriously radicalisd me to the point that I'm no longer attracted to white women, particularly the middle/upper class ones. So much toxic behaviour, so much arrogance. It's been repulsive. I don't see a way this doesn't end in a revolution of some kind, which I think would be for the best, tbh. I wish we could have been friends in the past 6 years or so. It would have saved me so much psychological harm knowing there were other guys out there going through the same thing.
Thanks for sharing. You’re not alone. We need to be talking about our experiences, and we need to be creating social-relational wealth for each other—me for you and you for me. To reclaim basic power and dignity, we have to start manufacturing “supply” independently of cis women. We have to stop needing them. People always need people—many of the best and most essential things in life can only be given to others and received from others—but there’s no reason for any one identity group to hold a lock on that economy. AMABs can be rich with human capital without a single AFAB holding veto power or bottlenecking the process, if we get wise and turn toward each other. And, under this model, there’s no reason good-hearted AFABs couldn’t be part of our lives and communities, too. But the bad ones…well, they’re on their own. We can pull away from them, ignore them, forget them, and leave them to their own meager devices—the natural consequence of their wickedness. Life doesn’t have to be about them anymore. You and I can be enough.
Are you suggesting that men become gay en masse as an act of social revolution? Like political lesbianism For Men? I of course endorse this completely.
“Men want to fuck more than women do” is kind of an unsolvable problem due to the aforementioned fact that social interaction is intractably based on desire. I guess one could try to make a political platform on mandatory testosterone hrt for everyone who doesn’t naturally produce cis man-typical levels, but I think that would be kinda hard to get off the ground.
But yeah, dating apps are bad. They were made by and for cishet men which ironically made them *godawful* for cishet men, because the tragedy of heterosexuality is that what’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
on the apps, based on the ratio, it’s important for women to be clear about what she needs or wants to allow everyone to make their way to the right person. but it goes both ways. i don’t believe “zero feedback” is cruel. is the alternative not just having things dragged out and your time wasted? everyone should be less open minded when dating. you know what feels right, you know what it feels like to respect someone, if you have to try little too hard to find that care and respect for what someone has to say, it is not going to get easier later on. but maybe it’s hard to come to terms with because it feels dehumanizing. i think it’s just trusting your body.
I enjoyed this piece and read it all the way through despite having never used a dating app and never intending on using one. The core points are spot on: be honest about yourself and curious about others.
I recommend something similar to men: be something 2% of women find crazy attractive and 98% of women find totally repulsive. Like e.g. if you like metal music, lean ALL in - leather clothes, chopper bike, Ozzy sunglasses.
Re: Dissuasion of the faint of heart, here's a fun fact: one of the ways my wife attracted me on OKCupid was by admitting in her profile that she loved watching trashy reality TV, which was refreshing in the sea of women who were all mysteriously either incredibly cultured literary types, or suspiciously big sports fans.
(Her love of trashy reality TV is an asset to this day! It gives me time to do my own stupid, low-class shit.)
I’d be careful about laying down traps. Genuine men can also just be genuine about their interests while still being the person you’re into.
You have a hot beach photo? I like it because you’re looking good. Don’t you want a man who thinks you look good? Yes, you do. You demand it.
You put down some prompt that signals a vague interest in anime. He sees this and says, “oh, do you like xyz?” Maybe he has the same level of interest as you or even less. Maybe he’s just looking for a way to connect because your profile has nothing so obvious.
Genuine men really get the stick on these apps. Putting out tricks and whatnot to “filter” men does nothing useful. Men who want to use you will find ways to do it.
This might shock women but a lot of men want to fuck a hot woman. They’ll gladly date a woman who posts lustrous photos on their profile signaling their sex appeal. They’ll also marry her and give her everything she wanted. These are not incompatible.
You don't know me but I'm a pretty masculine dykey person who most appeals to the type of men who end up persistently attracted to lesbians. Hot girl titty pics are extremely unrepresentative of what I am like and a guy who thinks I look best that way probably isn't for me and vice versa. It isn't a sure thing but it's not an unreasonable signal--I just don't really want guys who want me to "look good" and they probably wouldn't like how rarely I "look good" either!
If the guy liking my titty pic has something really compelling in His profile he can get a by but usually men (and women for that matter) don't have much that's compelling in their profiles at all, because few people are willing to be off-putting enough to be compelling.
I'm also not necessarily looking to avoid getting used. A guy can be endlessly genuine but just not a match for me, and that's fine! I'd rather have a great short-term thing with an excellent match than a protracted "genuine" thing with a meh match.
Also on a meta level, my best matches are guys who think my silly traps are hilarious. Like wouldn't you prefer someone more on-level and straightforward who doesn't do this kind of thing? Buddy I'd get on your nerves! You might even say I'm being a bit off-putting to you! :P
Yeah, it must depend on the woman. Once a man messaged me saying I looked really well-dressed in all my photos, and I thought "oh no, that's not me; you would be so disappointed if you met me." Whereas if someone messages saying he likes my smile, that's a low-information signal but not a bad one.
> the type of men who end up persistently attracted to lesbians
There are enough of me to qualify as a "type"? I was reading a post on the faulty methods used to recolor Greek and Roman statues; looking through the examples of ancient art which the author was using to make the point that these people knew how to color things well, I found myself smitten by a portrait of a woman. I'd expected to see things I could appreciate on an aesthetic level, but I had not expected romantic feelings from a 2,000-year-old work of art. I scrolled down to reveal the caption:
I'm in a weird equilibrium with this as a straight guy. My profile is meant to be broadly appealing, but some of my prompts are more particular. Probably the best differentiator is a prompt that mentions some musicians I like, who are mostly liked by queer women.
Right now I get a few matches per month at best, and they aren't the type of people I'm that interested in, so I see the point of the advice. My worry is that if I differentiate much more it'll go down to zero pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, my best matches have been women with terrible profiles relative to how dateable they actually are.
And here I thought the homunculus was a selling point. Oh well, back to the drawing board I go.
Or I could tell you what worked for me... Basically it came down to only answering messages that were more than "hey" or some line about my physical looks. Then keep dating the one guy to do so for six years and delete the apps like you're throwing out one of the many "neat" rocks you've brought home for some reason.
“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.”
Only know Roland Huntsford's account in his Scott/Amundsen book from the eighties. Sticks in the mind though. Our imaginary date would soon discover my shallowness.
First of all, your writing style is hilarious.
From the nerdy hetero male perspective, it’s tricky to balance being polarizing enough but not too polarizing. I’ve found when I lean too heavily into my polarizing traits on my profile I get the very occasional good match, but they happen very infrequently (like leading to only a few first dates a year), which is not ideal. When I hid my polarizing traits, I got way more matches but also tons of frustrating dates where I knew within 10 minutes I had zero interest. Both were dispiriting and ineffective in different ways.
The problem for us nerdy dudes is our polarizing traits are ones with a gender imbalance that works against us.
Lean hard into your other potentially controversial traits that might not be so gendered. Really like durian fruit? Want to skydive regularly with your partner? Spend your free time making ships in bottles? Those are the things to go for. Worked for me anyway. Lots of non-nerdy women like nerdy guys and lots of nerdy women don’t lead with their nerdiness, but I think a lot of women find stereotypical anything off putting.
But I suspect that Viv will say that men need to distinguish themselves more on their first messages in particular, since it’s almost always men writing them.
I think probably that men sending messages to women on dating apps should use the same advice that Steven Pressfield gives to novelists, admen, screenwriters, and writers of all sorts: make it actually worth reading. https://viverricious.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-to-read-your-shit
Also applies to dating profiles generally
I wish that worked.
I will shout from the rooftops until my voice goes hoarse: the true advice for AMABs is to quit dating apps cold-turkey, check out as many IRL gatherings/spaces/clubs/conferences as they can sustainably manage, and place a premium on meeting friends of friends.
Different things work for different people. Online dating worked much better than real life meeting for me. That was a while ago, but I’ve read enough recent experiences that echo mine that I don’t think the basic landscape has changed as much as people claim.
The problem for men on dating apps is, as Viv’s excellent advice implies, that first you have to be an okay writer, and then you have to put the work in to write decent messages. For a lot of people this is very hard, but it was much easier and more enjoyable for me than trying to date through real life meetups. That needs a different skill set I didn’t have.
Yeah I think it is just empirically true that it works for plenty of people. Tons of couples meet online/on apps these days, and ~half those people are men! Its not like the women who are finding partners on apps are conjuring brand new men from the netherdimensions
(and yes, fewer people are pairing up than they used to, but that's still consistent with tons of people finding partners on apps 🤷)
I try to get out and meet new people, but now that I’m in my early-30s, I’m finding most women I meet IRL are already paired off, especially the attractive ones. At least on the apps everyone is single.
That was also my experience. To some extent being willing to meet online is filter for women who want to meet a man and are prepared to be explicit about it and that becomes much more common for women in their 30s.
Haha I suspect a lot of the guys on the apps are actually married and sitting on the couch next to their wives as they text you. Women become a form of cheap entertainment. Since I'm a woman I haven't seen the opposite side of this one though.
It seems like "online dating" as it existed when I met my wife in 2013 (by filling out a 10,000 item questionnaire for OKCupid; I think their business model was selling data) has been smothered out of existence by the not-really-for-straight-people apps. But I'm not really up on the scene, what with the having a wife that I met in 2013. Sometimes I feel like I got out just in time.
OkCupid is as great back in the day. You could answer very polarizing questions, but keep the answers private; they would still figure into your match percentage. So you could answer ‘yes’ to “I want my partner to treat me like a dog” or whatever, hide the answer, but know that if you got a 95% match percentage with someone it was probably someone who answered yes to “I want to treat my partner like a dog” but also hid it. I met my most-compatible-girlfriend ever this way. Tragic to see it become just another swipe-based trash app.
There are two narratives here that I'm having trouble reconciling. I met my wife on Yahoo personals (ultimately bought by match.com) way back in 2006, having been on the platform for about 6 months. The problems then were essentially the same as the problems people report now - lots of women's accounts are inactive or turn out to be scammers, even real women often don't return messages, women will often disappear after one date that seemed to go well, and so on. But I'm an absolutely relentless optimizer if I get into something, and I did get into online dating.
When people describe the problems that exist now, they're not really any different from the problems that existed then, and when I read the narratives of men who are successful now, they're not really any different from what I did then, although some of them make me look like a rank amateur in comparison.
I can believe that Grindr was not really a good template for straight online dating. It obviously optimizes for male attraction and and a male-oriented pace and order of events, whereas as every nightclub owner knows if you want to be successful you have to cater to women. Men will go wherever the women go, but women are picky. And in doing so I can see that it created an environment that actually put men at a disadvantage. But then if that's true, why did Tinder absolutely wipe the floor with its more text-based and slower paced based competitors? (although they're all actually owned by Match Group which is an interesting story in itself) It all happened after my time, so I have no idea about the subtleties of this, but something is missing from the narrative.
Given the olfactory complications, I do recommend against bringing durian on dates.
(I suggest dates.)
I am not who you are picturing.
Improv doesn’t improve your general sense of humor much in my experience. Improv is a game with specific rules and principles you learn to play with other people go also know those rules. I liken it to playing a sport like basketball. Most of what you learn as you get better at basketball is specific skills and instincts for basketball. Does playing make you more athletic in general—does it carry over? Yeah, to some degree, but that isn’t really what it’s about.
You’d think that doing improv would signal that you are playful and willing to take risks and that this would enhance attraction, but I just haven’t seen it work that way.
It’s good to get good at things, yes, but spending five years getting a black belt or mastering salsa is a very slow and indirect route to meeting women. And in salsa in particular very few guys who pick it up as adults will ever be as good as the Latin guys who grow up with it.
Anyway my original point wasn’t to ask for advice on meeting girls—frankly I have probably forgotten more about that than you’ll ever know. It was to point out that leaning into your interests isn’t great advice of your interests are male-dominated or solitary things. I wish I loved yoga but I have tried it and I just don’t. (Might try it again though.)
I don’t care what is high status. Women care.
Yes I agree with this. The same applies to IRL advice about figuring out what interests you and them joining groups and such that do that thing. My interests include playing pickup basketball, heavy barbell weight training, martial arts, tabletop roleplaying games, and improv comedy. The first five are heavily male; the last one just doesn’t tend to draw attractive people of either sex, for whatever reason.
Really, I would think improv is the way to go. At comedy clubs, isn't the crowd ratio about 50/50? But I say lean in to the improv. Go to improv workshops! Meet people (girls). Also, a decent number of women do like funny guys (as well as sculpted and/or athletic guys). Also, a decent number or women are in to martial arts now too.
You’d think so. But in terms of participants, improv doesn’t attract good-looking people. There’s a few but they are outliers. It’s been explained to me that improv is seen as a low-status, uncool activity. It’s perceived more like playing D&D than playing in a band or being a DJ or something. And although women say they like funny guys, I haven’t seen any groundswell of women from the audience wanting to meet the performers, nor do women’s eyes light up when I mention that I do it.
Martial arts, yeah there are a few women but always a minority. And then there’s the problem of relative status; the teachers (almost always men) will always have the highest status in the room. At one place I trained there was a very cute Indian doctor student who wound up dating one of the men there…the head instructor.
Kinda like salsa dancing in that way. Salsa places are often loaded with guys who grew up dancing it and whose skill will always be way, way above anyone trying to pick it up later in life (except a few gifted obsessives). In trying to meet women it isn’t good to be a little fish in a big pool.
The gym has good-looking folks. But from all that you said, I'm going to guess that you're pretty young so fairly insecure and also impatient. Assuming you're not on the spectrum, when you get older, you realize that caring about what people people think is "low status" (or "high status") is just stupid. Because different people have different ideas on what is low or high status. Certainly amongst some people, improv and being great with humor is _not_ low status. You'll also realize that guys tend to age more like wine and that you have a looong life in front of you. Also that there are a _lot_ of fishes in the sea and that it's a numbers game. I don't know if you're solely focused on the really dumb bimbo type or what, but if you have improv skills, I would hope you have a sense of humor and can show that off. Which is the key (to, well, everything, or at least most things): show, don't tell: Don't say you are in to improv and expect girls to swoon. Show off your sense of humor. And yes, guys who put in the time in a discipline are much more likely to become experts in that skill/discipline. Which means if you put in the work, you'll also become an expert in that skill. Especially for guys, there are no shortcuts, but compounding is real. Having patience (discipline) and having foresight and playing the long game is its own superpower.
Have you tried more female heavy sports? Pilates, yoga, group fitness classes, that kind of thing?
A little bit so far I just don’t like them as well.
My comment wasn’t “what activities could I do to meet girls?” My comment was “the problem with the advice to lean into your polarizing traits is that if those polarizing traits are very male, then you’re competing with a lot of other guys who have those traits for the few women who have them.” If I lean into the things I am interested in, I wind up in very male environments.
Your suggestion is basically, “how about you don’t lean into what you’re interested in then?” Which is kinda my point….
Traits=/=interests
Hahaha, yup, fair.
Was going to say this but you beat me to it. (And viv explicitly says she's not in our shoes.) The ladies don't like the real us, it's about how much we're willing to give up.
I had money (not Bill Gates level but more than average), so they paid attention to me. I was never able to figure out which of the two they were really after.
Don't put words in ladies mouths, they aren't a monolith. I'm sorry u got unlucky tho
If they don't like the real you, I'm sorry, but the harsh reality might just very well be that the real you is unlikable (speaking as a guy). Judging from what you wrote, I can't say I blame them. You come across as too guarded and cynical. How do you know they paid attention to you solely because of your money? Did you flaunt it? Also, at some point, figure out what you actually want from life. Like, OK, maybe you don't want a trophy wife? But if you do, then where's the downside?
I didn't flaunt it (in fact I save about 2/3 of my pay after 401k and the rest), but suffice it to say a little Google searching given information they would necessarily have would reveal a high income. Since I'm being controversial on the Internet I will be vague.
But yeah, the real me is unlikable! I've always assumed that! I've tried a couple personalities and none really worked. As for trophy wives...nah, that was never a goal. When younger I wanted true love, then figured it was too much trouble to be constantly emulating a different person and gave up.
The real you is probably plenty likeable to a strange and rarefied group of women who would b obsessed with you. U just need to find them man (I acknowledge this may be very difficult and might not involve a dating app. But I really do think it's true.) Ideally by using your real personality and not a fake one
This isn't true!
...it's only *mostly* true.
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It has been true for something like, say, 95% of the women with whom I have interacted; it also seems to be the case for most of those with whom my buddies have interacted—they're mostly divorced guys, with a few who never married & are dating, and a few who are unhappily married; just one is happily married; and the ones who are still looking all say, more or less, that they have learned better than to try to be authentically themselves (albeit they might put it in different words: some have gone ham on the "women want XYZ" & have legitimately tried to mold themselves into such a man, some cynically attempt to manipulate things such that they have the *appearance* of being such a man, some aim for "love 'em & leave 'em" after being burned too many times with "love 'em & love 'em", etc. etc.).
As said, this has been my experience too, mostly: being myself has attracted some women, but then it turned out that actually they liked the usual suspects more than myself (more money, more fit, less weird, you know the drill); mostly, it has seemed to put them off; only in one case ever did it work to get me a girl who truly loved me for me & who stuck with me through thick & thin (and it got *real* thick & *real* thin, at times: she stayed even as I developed, descended into, and kicked a serious heroin habit, for example... bathin' my fevered brow with a cool rag, cleanin' up my vomit as I crawled around on the ground sobbing, saving pennies when I once again spent all our savings on opioids...).¹
So: they *do* exist! Look at me—I'm as weird & off-putting as they come, and yet...!
Mind, I've never been able to replicate that, though—so maybe there's just one such woman. Or two, if you count my sole happily-long-term-hitched amigo.
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¹ (naturally—having won the heart of this amazing woman—I thence, eventually, proceeded to betray her horribly for no real reason, after a decade of married bliss. no, I don't know why, why, WHY I would do that, either. except maybe "I'm just a huge piece of shit, lmao!" or similar hypotheses.
(wish I could go back, take it back. God in heaven, how I wish.)
Yeah, sorry about that. :( We've all done stupid things in our lives.
Honestly it's not that I think women are evil (after all, men are notorious for going mostly for looks, cheating, abusing, and all kinds of stuff), and rather that when you've got an 8 in money and a 2-5 in everything else, the money's always such a huge confounder you don't know if they're really playing a long game after it or if it's simply making everything else you have less unattractive subconsciously. You're dealing with an ancient evolved algorithm for survival and reproduction and our conscious thoughts are just a thin layer over that (and that's both sexes--how many times have men done dumb things for sex?).
I think this is probably a lesson for the younger guys to stay in shape etc. so you have more than money going for you. As for the personality...probably that too, but I'm not going to claim I know what to do about *that*!
This comment brings to mind: have you put any effort into converting money into looks or desireable character traits? No panacea, but service industries exist for both.
As a concrete example, during my (quite successful) dating app days as a man living in Taiwan, the first line of my profile was 我不是妳的免費英文老師 (I am not your free English teacher).
Immediately polarizing, not offensive, and made clear to my matches that I'm not intending to be a token foreign friend or conversation partner. I'm gonna date you, and I'm gonna do it in Chinese.
This will obviously not work for most people, but that's the point: It worked for me in my specific situation to filter out one type of woman and attract a different type. Consider your desirable and undesirable matches and try to find something that clarifies to each group why you are a good and bad partner, respectively.
Truly you're one of the best writers I have come across lately. Remind me in like 2 months when my finances are more stable to give you money
#2 is great, i put a hinge response about anime and anyone who asked me if i liked demon slayer was an immediate no. anyone commenting on my grad photo, also no. you picked the least interesting pic what are we gonna talk about now, my major? boring
Oof. I would intentionally comment on the grad photo to signal respect for her intellect/expertise, and to beat the stereotype of salivating at the boob pic—even though I wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had posted the boob pic straightforwardly for sexy cred, or adversarially to trap and disqualify rubes who reply-tag it. (I’d guess it serves both functions at once. Or is she going to fault me for failing to engage with it? Am I getting written off now as sexless and timid?)
Privately, I’d be nervous and frustrated about whether my intention was coming across correctly. And if something about my approach wasn’t working, I’d never get to know what or why. Zero feedback, zero humanization. I’m just a penis in a pile.
I’d write a thoughtful message worth reading, and it wouldn’t matter.
Whichever option I pick, I’d get quietly discarded, and it would be “my fault” in her mind. Nothing would ever change.
It was like this 99% of the time for twelve years, until I met my current partner at a convention IRL.
It’s a no-win situation. People really need to get off the apps. AMABs especially.
Dating isn’t supposed to be fair. All social interaction, all relationships, are arbitrary to some degree because they’re based on whether somebody feels like engaging in them. There is such a thing as social skills, but you can do everything “correctly” and someone can still not want to talk to you and they’ve done nothing wrong either.
In real life, you could be wearing a t-shirt of a colour she doesn’t like that day, or the wind could be blowing from the east instead of the west, or she could be in a bad mood for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Social interaction isn’t a gauntlet you’re supposed to know how to navigate and so if someone doesn’t want to talk to you that means you’ve failed, which means they ought to only reject you for fair, legible reasons. Social interaction is unfair and arbitrary and always has been and always will be.
Your points are well taken. I agree that human bonding is supposed to be organic and somewhat arbitrary, rather than process-mediated. You don’t win at dating the way you win a court case.
Still, there are serious social problems here.
There’s a massive, hellishly gendered power imbalance between me and Jane Doe.
Her inbound supply and outbound response rate are orders of magnitude better than mine, for no reason that tracks either person’s quality as a date or partner. She can be a literal narcissistic sociopath, and I can be a caring, attentive, romantic, kitten-rescuing, six-figure earner with desired physical features and talents in bed—and she’ll still be the belle of the ball, and I’ll still be the untouchable leper. (I’m reporting this from lived experience. No hyperbole. This is 100% literal down to the detail.)
Negative stereotypes devalue me (and not her) to a comical extent, with no adequate moral pushback from the culture. Polite society sees misogyny as a repugnant crime and an urgent social issue, but literally the EXACT same people insist that misandry is “justified” and “progressive” (or meekly defer to bullies who insist on this), even when said “progressive comeuppance” is obviously targeting a scapegoat in bad faith.
Cis women’s dating profiles often shout this hateful double standard from the rooftops in plain language. On my OkCupid, maybe 20% of the female profiles featured plain-text hate speech. I took lasting psychological damage from how much of this I was wading through. It changed my perception of the society around me, how I can expect to be treated by others, and what the community will likely allow.
It also changed Jane Doe’s perception. There were a lot of abusive Jane Does who correctly predicted they would get away with it. They moved in packs and covered for each other. I’m not making this up. I’m working on a memoir.
The structural container of dating apps makes it easier for Jane Doe to display “what typically entices male interest” than for me to display “what typically entices female interest” (e.g. visual presence vs. scent and proximity; asymmetric demand for physical trust-building). I’m *forced* to feel more excited than her, on a lizard-brained level I can consciously manage but never actually turn off. Meanwhile, I *can’t* raise her up from feeling skepticism, anxiety, and vague resentment and contempt, prior to our meeting IRL—which won’t happen, because her attitude doesn’t inspire her to meet me. A complete chicken-and-egg problem. Even the non-abusive people are like this.
The abusive ones have a field day here: they just give you a “yes” (inconceivable!) and it grants them frictionless access to new targets, over and over again. They’re a *huge slice of the pie* of message replies and first dates, because your average Jane Doe keeps inventing reasons to get the ick at the color of your T-shirt and swat you away with a flick of her finger.
The extreme uphill nature of the culture and circumstances incentivizes me to think long and hard about what I want, what I offer, how to present and conduct myself, etc., while Jane Doe suffers the opposite curse—such an over-forgiving and feedback-poor environment that she doesn’t really have to work on herself as a dater, or understand her role in creating a positive outcome. She doesn’t even have to notice my problem. And if I start talking about it, a legion of angry, righteous, activated Jane Does starts leaping out of the woodwork to mark me for community removal using words like “incel”, a word that means “gender failure” and “rabid dog”. There’s no faster way to blow up a date than by saying a peep (I mean *anything*) about Men’s Issues, no matter how “de rigeur” the ritual of her hazing you with her hateful, unprincipled fourth-wave feminism, and no matter what your lived experience (I have literally been sexually abused and financially defrauded by these sexy young White feminist professionals from dating apps). You clear her hurdles, you jump through her hoops, and you don’t talk back. You sit and roll over like a good dog. And you’d better be wearing a T-shirt color she likes, too. And her favorite T-shirt color will vary by the day. Swipe, swipe, swipe. She controls your shared world with her finger. I once watched a female date pull out OkCupid and say, “Let’s see what’s on *the menu*.” She was one of the nicer ones.
The passive, skeptical, flighty behavior common to Jane Does on dating apps works as a collective bargaining force, compelling AMABs as a class to over-engage and put up with too much. That dovetails with male-coded conditioning and temperament (“no pain, no gain”, “earn your way”, “grindset”)—ultimately feeding everyone’s perceptions of AMABs as disposable reachers who are all equally “enterprising” and desperate and pathetic, and AFABs as uniquely valuable, naturally entitled, wisely defensive, and over-generous if they give you an inch. The AFABs who show up on dates disproportionately display this attitude.
The AFABs I know in real life who have a better character than this, tend to bounce off the dating apps quickly—they don’t *like* playing such a toxic role or operating in such a dehumanizing environment. (Consider the “evaporative cooling” effect there. What does this mean about the remaining dating pool?)
Jane Doe’s version of “platonic intimacy with friends” (her BATNA) wipes the floor with mine, because of female social privileges like access to Adrienne Rich’s “lesbian continuum” or differential access/exposure/encouragement leading them to cultivate aesthetics, body awareness, emotionally nourishing bonds, relationships of touch, a comfortable nest, and so on. These are all human birthrights, and they’re not equally or equitably “distributed”. (I put that in quotes because this isn’t zero-sum.)
My sensitive, evolved male friends and I are openly aware of the tragedy of our assigned gender, and even that awareness doesn’t break the coordination problem; we’re afraid to break protocol in the eyes of the supervising community, because we expect this to curtail our social access in general. The same society that disparages us for being male-coded also punishes us for *violating* that code. It’s like they just want to use us as a pincushion for their hatred. They’re only happy if (a.) we are miserable and separated from them, and (b.) they feel assured of their power to maintain these conditions.
My sensitive, evolved male friends and I have similar experiences in dating. As a cohort, we circulate information about narcissism and codependency to each other. One after another, my friends go through “coming-out” moments where they start to awaken to these patterns and realize something isn’t right. It’s eerie how much this parallels second-wave feminism.
I can never win at respectability politics, either—there’s literally no version of how to behave that will cause Jane Doe to stop seeing me and treating me as just another disposable, greedy, “threatening” penis. I saw countless male daters/profiles trying as hard as they could to strike the impossible, culturally-nonexistent balance between “sensitive modern feminist” and “conventionally attractive male”. I thought they did it well, but it never inspired affection, desire, or respect in the Jane Does. The discarding, neglect, mistreatment, and false alarms just went on and on.
Both observations can be true at once. You’re not supposed to win at dating the way you win a court case, *and* this culture is extremely sick, morally bankrupt, and damaging.
I suffered online for about 12 years, had several deeply damaging relationships during that time, and finally met my extremely wonderful partner at a convention IRL.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STARVE THE BEAST. These app companies need to go BANKRUPT.
I had very similar experiences that caused so much hurt when I was in my early 20s and more open and vulnerable. The level of emotional and psychological damage has seriously radicalisd me to the point that I'm no longer attracted to white women, particularly the middle/upper class ones. So much toxic behaviour, so much arrogance. It's been repulsive. I don't see a way this doesn't end in a revolution of some kind, which I think would be for the best, tbh. I wish we could have been friends in the past 6 years or so. It would have saved me so much psychological harm knowing there were other guys out there going through the same thing.
Thanks for sharing. You’re not alone. We need to be talking about our experiences, and we need to be creating social-relational wealth for each other—me for you and you for me. To reclaim basic power and dignity, we have to start manufacturing “supply” independently of cis women. We have to stop needing them. People always need people—many of the best and most essential things in life can only be given to others and received from others—but there’s no reason for any one identity group to hold a lock on that economy. AMABs can be rich with human capital without a single AFAB holding veto power or bottlenecking the process, if we get wise and turn toward each other. And, under this model, there’s no reason good-hearted AFABs couldn’t be part of our lives and communities, too. But the bad ones…well, they’re on their own. We can pull away from them, ignore them, forget them, and leave them to their own meager devices—the natural consequence of their wickedness. Life doesn’t have to be about them anymore. You and I can be enough.
Are you suggesting that men become gay en masse as an act of social revolution? Like political lesbianism For Men? I of course endorse this completely.
Thanks man. You're very eloquent. I agree, a brotherhood is vital and is one of the main things I'm focused on building right now.
“Men want to fuck more than women do” is kind of an unsolvable problem due to the aforementioned fact that social interaction is intractably based on desire. I guess one could try to make a political platform on mandatory testosterone hrt for everyone who doesn’t naturally produce cis man-typical levels, but I think that would be kinda hard to get off the ground.
But yeah, dating apps are bad. They were made by and for cishet men which ironically made them *godawful* for cishet men, because the tragedy of heterosexuality is that what’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
on the apps, based on the ratio, it’s important for women to be clear about what she needs or wants to allow everyone to make their way to the right person. but it goes both ways. i don’t believe “zero feedback” is cruel. is the alternative not just having things dragged out and your time wasted? everyone should be less open minded when dating. you know what feels right, you know what it feels like to respect someone, if you have to try little too hard to find that care and respect for what someone has to say, it is not going to get easier later on. but maybe it’s hard to come to terms with because it feels dehumanizing. i think it’s just trusting your body.
Daaaang, Whatchu got against Demon Slayer? 😅
I enjoyed this piece and read it all the way through despite having never used a dating app and never intending on using one. The core points are spot on: be honest about yourself and curious about others.
I recommend something similar to men: be something 2% of women find crazy attractive and 98% of women find totally repulsive. Like e.g. if you like metal music, lean ALL in - leather clothes, chopper bike, Ozzy sunglasses.
You are so funny and caring oh my god
Re: Dissuasion of the faint of heart, here's a fun fact: one of the ways my wife attracted me on OKCupid was by admitting in her profile that she loved watching trashy reality TV, which was refreshing in the sea of women who were all mysteriously either incredibly cultured literary types, or suspiciously big sports fans.
(Her love of trashy reality TV is an asset to this day! It gives me time to do my own stupid, low-class shit.)
I’d be careful about laying down traps. Genuine men can also just be genuine about their interests while still being the person you’re into.
You have a hot beach photo? I like it because you’re looking good. Don’t you want a man who thinks you look good? Yes, you do. You demand it.
You put down some prompt that signals a vague interest in anime. He sees this and says, “oh, do you like xyz?” Maybe he has the same level of interest as you or even less. Maybe he’s just looking for a way to connect because your profile has nothing so obvious.
Genuine men really get the stick on these apps. Putting out tricks and whatnot to “filter” men does nothing useful. Men who want to use you will find ways to do it.
This might shock women but a lot of men want to fuck a hot woman. They’ll gladly date a woman who posts lustrous photos on their profile signaling their sex appeal. They’ll also marry her and give her everything she wanted. These are not incompatible.
You don't know me but I'm a pretty masculine dykey person who most appeals to the type of men who end up persistently attracted to lesbians. Hot girl titty pics are extremely unrepresentative of what I am like and a guy who thinks I look best that way probably isn't for me and vice versa. It isn't a sure thing but it's not an unreasonable signal--I just don't really want guys who want me to "look good" and they probably wouldn't like how rarely I "look good" either!
If the guy liking my titty pic has something really compelling in His profile he can get a by but usually men (and women for that matter) don't have much that's compelling in their profiles at all, because few people are willing to be off-putting enough to be compelling.
I'm also not necessarily looking to avoid getting used. A guy can be endlessly genuine but just not a match for me, and that's fine! I'd rather have a great short-term thing with an excellent match than a protracted "genuine" thing with a meh match.
Also on a meta level, my best matches are guys who think my silly traps are hilarious. Like wouldn't you prefer someone more on-level and straightforward who doesn't do this kind of thing? Buddy I'd get on your nerves! You might even say I'm being a bit off-putting to you! :P
Yeah, it must depend on the woman. Once a man messaged me saying I looked really well-dressed in all my photos, and I thought "oh no, that's not me; you would be so disappointed if you met me." Whereas if someone messages saying he likes my smile, that's a low-information signal but not a bad one.
> the type of men who end up persistently attracted to lesbians
There are enough of me to qualify as a "type"? I was reading a post on the faulty methods used to recolor Greek and Roman statues; looking through the examples of ancient art which the author was using to make the point that these people knew how to color things well, I found myself smitten by a portrait of a woman. I'd expected to see things I could appreciate on an aesthetic level, but I had not expected romantic feelings from a 2,000-year-old work of art. I scrolled down to reveal the caption:
"Mosaic of Sappho"
You guys are ABSOLUTELY a type, it baffles me but absolutely
I'm in a weird equilibrium with this as a straight guy. My profile is meant to be broadly appealing, but some of my prompts are more particular. Probably the best differentiator is a prompt that mentions some musicians I like, who are mostly liked by queer women.
Right now I get a few matches per month at best, and they aren't the type of people I'm that interested in, so I see the point of the advice. My worry is that if I differentiate much more it'll go down to zero pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, my best matches have been women with terrible profiles relative to how dateable they actually are.
U never know, maybe if you differentiate harder you'll attract the kind of woman you actually like (and who likes you) much more successfully
Can always go back to the old strat later if it's not working
And here I thought the homunculus was a selling point. Oh well, back to the drawing board I go.
Or I could tell you what worked for me... Basically it came down to only answering messages that were more than "hey" or some line about my physical looks. Then keep dating the one guy to do so for six years and delete the apps like you're throwing out one of the many "neat" rocks you've brought home for some reason.
“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.”
Hmmmm. Good to know.
It's been a long time since I read something that made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
Ok but choosing what's first on the menu is in fact the correct strategy. Why else would it be first?
Because the restaurant has the highest margin on that item. Note who makes the menu. Note who's well-being it is trying to maximize.
The 1897 Belgica expedition! Where was the likes of you when I was a young man?
Only know Roland Huntsford's account in his Scott/Amundsen book from the eighties. Sticks in the mind though. Our imaginary date would soon discover my shallowness.
This was so much fun
You are describing the true alchemy.
(2015) Me: quotes a particular passage from Audrey Lorde.
Him: Responds to said quote, shares his poetry website.
Me: Looks at the code and mentions one particular (hidden) markup comment.
Him: Impressed.
Now we’re married.