Impersonators who are paid to flirt on dating apps
qz.com
qz.com
Almost every person would match with me. Everyone would message me straight away. If I didn't reply most would message again in a few hours. A few would get very angry/upset that I didn't reply.
I think Tinder is a real stroke of genius. All users, men and women, get given the same interface and the same choices. But of course things are not really equal. Men shotgun and women pick and choose. Tinder has essentially made Bumble, but they have plausible deniability. No need to enforce any rules about women messaging first when that emerges naturally.
Str8 dating app scams barely exist on gay/bi apps. There's no need for it due to how men are. Horny and looking 24/7.
”The sex drive refers to the strength of sexual motivation. Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found. Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive. The gender difference in sex drive should not be generalized to other constructs such as sexual or orgasmic capacity, enjoyment of sex, or extrinsically motivated sex."
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327957PSPR050...
It would be healthier to assume both sexes have fully functioning sex drives, perhaps stronger in some individuals and discard the outdated notion that women are not as 'interested' in sex or need to be 'persuaded'.
These outdated notions introduce some problematic concepts, reinforce traditional gender roles and taint a mutually beneficial activity into an unhealthy construct of 'giving' and 'taking'.
There are differences. Testosterone makes makes men more aggressive and this may well show in all range of behaviors including sexual but must be tempered with the fact that human beings do have control. Men are also unlikely to be turned on by social status but many women respond to both physicality and things like status which complicates attractiveness and drive.
Is this really a thing or is it code for something else? Who is really so oblivious to think that looking for friends of the opposite sex on a dating app where people are there for more than just friendship is a good idea?
I would never go on a dating app to find platonic friends. That is exactly the last place I would go.
There is often an element of self-deception too. "I'm not the sort of person who would use a dating app, I don't need it" You see a lot of "I'm just trying out this app to kill time" people too.
Other people use it as a built-in refusal. They can say "Sorry, I'm just looking for friends" when they are asked on a date by someone they aren't interested in. When someone more appealing asks them out no one will complain that they aren't following their "just friends" rule.
Dating is full of interesting meta-behaviour like this.
Though that might be different for the really good looking to hot guys.
Another interesting thing you can become old news(after months of having the same picture in your town) yet if you travel 10 to 20 miles down the road your new hot news and the instant gratification of lots of prospects continues.
Hiring a ghost writer to do the work on a bi/gay hook up is laughable. Though wow str8 app dating has gotten so hard guys are hiring ghost writers and fakes of himself to chat up/seal a date. WOW thats ridiculous lets kill these apps and meet the old fashion way!!!
From what I’ve heard from my friends, 99% of first messages on Bumble are ”hi” or a single emoji, kicking the ball straight back on the men’s side of the field.
I wish dating as a research subject wasn’t so wrapped in weird MRA activism and other politics, there’s a lot of fascinating phenomenoma to be observed.
The same kind of invitation plays out in real life with eye contact and body language.
The second pass is her sending the first message.
You have to be quicker/better at texting-style communication, though, compared to something like OK Cupid which was a bit more email-like back when I used it last.
I found that if I only responded to people who actually sent me a 'real' first message it was an actually good experience, good conversation and led to easily the majority of my dates.
There were a few articles that came out a few years ago arguing that, no, dating apps were terrible for women because it makes men even more noncommittal with such easy access to dates. My hypothesis was that the women they interviewed for those pieces were all going after the same small group of elite men. Thus, ~3% of the whole male population is sleeping around with ~20% of the female population. Makes me wonder if polygamy is the natural course of things.
The other implication of polygamy is that a lot of men simply didn't have a chance to pass on their genes at all.
Mentally ill people and geniuses are overwhelmingly male.
I cam across an interesting article here on HN posted about the link between polygamy and upheaval in the Economist https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732695-p... .
Whilst its not evidence, it certainly makes the case.
I am not so sure this was modus operandi for commoners when it came to marriage. Caste-bound poor village dwellers, with few prospects and no family wealth to maintain, I imagine married for love more often than not.
You dated two weeks at 15 and then announced marriage and then it was for live.
I am not denying that pre-arranged marriages are a thing, and that they played a more prominent role in the past, but to say that genuine love played no part in the match making process until 200 years ago, like the OP suggested, is an exaggeration.
Love is a part of human evolutionary toolbox, it's been around for a while. Accordingly, the subject of love, and marrying for love, comes up in literary works since the start of recorded history.
Yes, many anthropologists have theorized the same idea. William Tucker (journalist) wrote a whole book about marriage being a social mechanism to reduce violence:
https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Civilization-Monogamy-Made-H...
That’s why there is a famous saying “Don’t shit where you eat”. Workplace relationships seldom end well.
Flirting in criminal court and at funerals are also probably bad ideas.
Intent matters a whole lot and their intent is not to harass you but rather to reach out and probe for your potential interest.
Accusing people of harassment, for simply trying to approach you, is imho a seriously crappy thing to do and very unreasonable.
Is being approached by a beggar harassment? Is it these individual guys fault that many little annoyances add up to be a big headache/borderline harassment? It's not like clairvoyance is an actual thing, so what are you actually blaming them individually for? And what could they, individually, ever do to prevent that situation?
The expectation you are having here is that all males should instead always be passive and never approach a female of interest because she might or might not have been approached before and thus feel harassed. Doing this "equal" would mean females should also never approach males, where would that leave us?
Tbh there is no easy solution to this because there are issues for both sides: Females getting dogpiled and males usually getting nowhere without taking opportunities leading to said dogpiling.
On a more practical note: There are subtle ways to prevent at least some approaches from happening and deflecting them somewhat effectively. Like wearing visible headphones when in public, instantly, but politely, declining the approach with body language by keeping a steady pace of urgency and slightly shaking the head.
With time this is bound to get better, at least if eroding of societal role expectations happens equally for all genders and females actively approaching males becomes something that isn't considered "out of the ordinary" due to its sheer rarity of happening. Imho that's something that very likely will require a multigenerational effort.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OneY/comments/7elhvu/men_at_work_wo...
> Men, most men, arent afraid that they dont know how to treat women with respect. Which every single comment to the article suggests men dont...every fucking one. [...]
> What men are worried about is how can they interact with women and KNOW that there is no way they are going to have to defend against a sexual harassment accusation and lose their careers. Thats the question men want answers to and thats why suddenly even crack-pot [Vice President] Pence makes some fucking sense.
> Which is what the NYT couldnt bring itself to say. Because even if it did, it knows theres no answer.
I worry about dying in car crash but that doesn't mean I never get in a car.
Women always had that specific kind of power in real world. When/if you go to a party, observe the people who are alone, standing against a wall; they're invariably men, without absolutely no exception. This says everything about power.
Having said that, bear in mind that this kind of power is only a (arguably small) part of relationships between the sexes. It says a lot, but it's still a (small) part.
> Why would they try to find a date in any other way?
Because the dating medium strongly correlates with the interest of the people involved. Not everybody's looking for the Tinder type of relationship.
"Before Tinder", one would just go to a nightclub. It's exactly the same experience; and for the same reason, not everybody goes to nightclubs.
It's honestly changed the way I think about relationships.
Is that a descriptive or prescriptive statement?
Or put another way: Are you observing and remarking on cultural norms, or stating "This is how things should be?"
I only ask because when someone says "It's X's job to [whatever]" the connotation is "X should [whatever]" but the context surrounding this made it ambiguous.
Should it be that way? The answer likely depends on whether you're a man or a woman. From the male's POV changing the game benefits us since there's less work to do. If you're a woman then it's the opposite and a net negative.
This sexual dynamic evolved for a reason, so changing it seems like the epitome of an uphill battle.
Men can brag Baku their sexual lives and even exaggerate it. Women have to do the opposite and be very secretive.
Perhaps it ties to the dynamic. Women are buyers. Men are sellers. Easy to spend $1000 to buy things, hard to earn $1000 to sell something.
Western dating is a totally different beast than other countries.
I think there are three different datings - the one when you look for partner, the one where you seek temporary fun and then the one when you seek brag points/social status through trophy partner you don't really care about. These discussions tend to confuse them.
I don't have a horse in that race, but I do have an ethical concern.
If you tell men that they're supposed to try, then it's likely that a lack of success will be met with trying harder.
What does this result in, practically speaking? Being more forward? Being more touchy? Being more in their face putting in the effort?
a.k.a. creepy, stalkerish behavior and possibly an increase in the incidence of sexual assault and/or harassment.
That's the concern I have with the "should" position.
Inhabiting different environments. E.g. a female friend suggested I take up yoga as yoga classes tend to be more/mostly female. Within a few classes I was dating a woman I met there.
"Putting it out there" by which I mean proactively telling friends that you're interested in meeting women. This was suggested to me and my first reaction was "That's silly. Everyone knows I'm single and looking..." but in fact most people - even your friends - aren't prioritizing your dating life. If you mention it to them it sometimes can trigger a "Hey, that reminds me, I know someone who's also single...you two might be a good match."
Increasing your velocity. At the end of the day meeting someone you want to date is a numbers game. The more women you meet the more likely you are to find a match. "Trying harder" can simply be making more attempts to meet more women.
I.e. trying harder doesn't have to be creepy.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898821
> I think the person employing that strategy would quickly find that it doesn't work as well as some other ways of trying harder.
You'd think, but in practice, not always. Aren't humans amazing?
I think if we're being prescriptive, I think working towards a culture where all parties involved do both choosing and trying. Put forth the effort to get to know people, then choose who you want to be romantically/sexually involved with among the people for whom there is even a remote mutual desire.
>Aren't humans amazing?
I wasn't suggesting it's not tried. Simply that it's unlikely to be successful and thus will find fewer adherents.
>working towards a culture where all parties involved do both choosing and trying
This happens already. Women pursue men all the time, they just don't have to expend as much energy as men do.
The observable consequences of this imbalance offers insight into human nature. The article and comments in that thread delve far into them.
It's worth reading.
BBC has a good intro on the subject: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160624-we-have-the-wrong-id...
it's really the same for all generalizations. i can make the statement, "males are attracted to females" and it will be true in 95%+ of cases. just because some limited counterexamples exist does not make this generalization a poor representation - these are not laws of physics or mathematical axioms that need absolute conformance to be usefully true.
IMO this is very close, but missing an important point. It's a man's job to escalate, it's a woman's job to choose.
Women definitely try. They put a lot of effort into how they are perceived (looks, mannerisms, etc.) and giving us subtextual clues that they are interested.
All we have to do is be a little vulnerable and ask them out on a date, go for that first kiss, get down on one knee and so on.
It's a lot more complicated than that. Getting down on one knee can be more expensive than a knee replacement.
So females should probably collude to enforce dating-monogamy, to encourage males to clearly commit or reject. Polygamy works only when females judge 1/Nth of the attention of the best males to be worth more than 100% of a lesser male. Polyandry doesn't work well, because the males have negative incentive to participate--why compete over one woman when those men could just compete on the same terms for all women?
I can envision a system wherein all the women establish a ranking of their top prospects, and an algorithm deconflicts their preferences, such that only one woman can contact a given man through the system at one time, until one or the other publicly repudiates the match. If a woman expresses her preference for only alphas, she may be in a situation where she cannot contact any of them, because they're all "busy" at the time. If she tags a bunch of betas--or even omegas--she might be able to date several of them concurrently. It forces the males to judge based on "good enough for me, or not" rather than "better or worse than potential alternatives". The women would always be dating "the best available that does not compete with the other women".
It's just not realistic to implement a symmetric experience on dating apps.
For one, the male class is not given any opportunity to rank females, as it is presumed that most males would attempt to game their own preference rankings to maximize their chances at getting a match. Secondly, the classes are not closed, and additional members may be added or removed at any time, when some matches may already be dating.
To be sure, whomever it is that figures out the fair dating algorithm would have to cite Gale-Shapley as a starting point.
Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse” https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-cu...
I think is noted literature in that field
Do they actually? I've spoken to many men and those apps don't seem to work at all. Usually gets deleted after a few days of usage. Like what's the point of being there if absolutely noone wants to write?
It's no wonder Tinder is up there on the Play Store as the second highest grossing app alongside all the online gambling apps. That's because Tinder and all the online dating platforms are exactly designed to mimic gambling.
You can't win if you're not in the game.
In Asian countries, white guys are the choosers.
The issue is selling hope to incels. That's where the real money's at.
Men in aggregate will crawl across an interface made of broken glass if they perceive it as providing access to women.
I know men in both categories.
- "Men on Tinder Explain Why They Swipe Right on Literally Everyone" (https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ae55xk/men-who-swipe-...)
- "Cupid on Trial: A 4-month Online Dating Experiment Using 10 Fictional Singletons" (http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial...)
A larger context in the "taking initiative" section of "Dating for Nerds (part 2): gender differences" (http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender-differ...).
Awful to see it written out like that.
The first day I was surprised at the amount of messages I received. I think it was at least 10 in a few hours. However, it quickly faded, and after a few days, I was lucky to receive one message a day. That gave me a little confidence, knowing after the first day, the average woman was not receiving hundreds of daily messages.
Similar to what you said, a few people would get angry if I didn't reply. A third of the messages hinted at sex, thinking they were being clever with winky emojis.
In the end, on my real profile, I think I was decent with messaging. I sent out 200 messages on OkCupid (I focused on roughly the top 10% of profiles over a large radius), and had over 50% of those turn into conversations. My first messages were always similar. I would write one or two sentences that joked about something in their profile and asked a simple question. The idea was it needed to show I read their profile, it needed to make an attempt at being funny, and most importantly, it needed to be easy to reply to within a few seconds. When you write long messages with complicated questions, people don't want to invest the time in a reply, so they'll respond "tomorrow", which never happens. The other thing I did was almost always message women that were online at that moment, and I tried to turn the messages into a real-time conversation with instant replies.
As a simple example, let's say a woman's profile said she liked the Fast & Furious movies. I would write a first message saying, "If you had to choose between me and Vin Diesel, who would you rather date?". There's a high chance she would respond saying the obvious, "Vin Diesel :P", and then I would reply, "Would it change your mind if I said I had 100% more hair than Vin Diesel, and I go for ice cream on first dates?". These type of messages are very easy to reply to, innocent, and people can be creative and fun with their responses. In that example, I'm even hinting at a date, and it doesn't seem pushy. In this case I would then keep writing playful messages and then ask her to meet up for the ice cream like I originally suggested.
Dating as it stands is only a recent phenomenon. It is far better when three people with different preferences keep the others in mind when out dating. Far better to do introductions than always be out for yourself.
1. It implies you're so desperately single that even your friends are trying to set you up with people.
2. Whether true or not, it sounds like your "friend" is actually you, which comes across as very cheesy.
Neil Strauss once in frustration pointed out that after The Game was published, his look became a cliche because guys were copying him. Not because it was particularly fantastic, but because the changes he'd made to his own style were quick and simple fixes. E.g. balding? Not easy to fix, but easy to shave it all off. Bad sense of style? Some things are hard to get wrong, so follow some basic "safe" advice and stick to it.
It won't get you to model looks, but look around you and see how many people wear clothes that don't fit properly, for example, and how awful it often looks. It's not hard to fix, yet people (me included) often just see themselves blind to it because for most guys it's well down the priority list.
Step by step guide to to getting a date on an online dating site:
1) Be attractive
Casually Explained's videos on Dating and Is She Into you are strokes of beauty.
Dating: https://youtu.be/ZuzPcW4djrA
Is She Into You: https://youtu.be/xa-4IAR_9Yw
Did they do the same test where identical messages were sent, only with a "reasonably handsome" guy? Because being bold and displaying confidence goes a loooong way.
But I think OP's getting results because he's being funny, sounds interesting and is creative. That gets you a long way with most people, men or women.
Most guys on dating sites (going from the women who've shown me profiles of those who messaged them), are creepy, reek of desperation, and have absolutely no self-esteem.
...is a source I often point to when I'm personally lamenting how weirdly...impersonal dating seems to have become.
Bumble, Tinder etc. are only tools, it's how we use them and plenty of us are quite capable of using them in a "moral" and savoury way.
So it's "doing" nothing to many of us.
If it is the former, you can work at it if you really want it. If it is the latter, then realize that you don't have to put that pressure on yourself, even if it sometimes feels like it. On the whole, people judge others by the metrics they're winning at. Computer nerds look down on others because they don't know as much about computers, for instance. It's just a silly thing the human mind does. you can simply choose to not care, because you have other priorities in life.
You act as if you are privy to an established truth about human interactions that holds at least a majority if situations people find themselves in. That is just not the case.
And btw, you have only a limited say-so in your own desires and actual needs. Social and sexual interaction is a pretty basic, that is not something you shut on and of. It is what defines you as a human being.
It'd solve men's natural urges, and women's constant insecurity that they're going to be abandoned, once they get wrinkles. It'd remove so much undisclosed resentment and tension within families and society.
It'd free up people involved in billions upon billions of dollars worth of industry, to do something useful, instead of preying on people's monkey-brain urges and insecurities.
I'm a dreamer, maaan.
Wasn't that ideal, for what concerned family and societal tensions.
For what concerns Italy, maybe Tinto Brass' "Paprika" and other of his movies are a good NSFW primer on this specific subject.
But apps like Tinder are like gambling. If you are one of the guys that that matches several times a day, it can get addictive with
See my point about family values. Families are longterm. Dating is by definition short term.
People don't like short term human interactions - we want stability. We don't want new friends every few weeks, or a new job, or a new anything. We don't like change, we like change every now and again, in things that don't matter, like seeing a new movie or going to a new restaurant.
Modern societies are in a strange place where whatever is most profitable (except hard drugs), is what is 'good'. Candy? Good. Tinder? Good. Coffee? Good. 'Working hard'? Good.
It's a vector that has nothing to do with what people actually value longterm. Hence people have 'stuff' and companies have 'profit' (short term), neither have much integrity (longterm). Oh well :)
The children are just the product of successful sex, and we are just vessels for our genes.
My own experience confirms this, as I greatly desire sex and have no inclination whatsoever to have children. Though before the advent of contraception I likely would have ended up with children regardless because I pursued sex so much.
Sex feeling good is the incentive to have sex and as a result, procreate.
What I'm saying is that the urge to have sex itself is the natural urge, not the resulting offspring, and it sounds like you're agreeing with me.
What I’m arguing is that the urge to have sex itself is the manifestion of the true urge, which is to procreate. You want to have sex because you naturally want to procreate, even if you don’t consciously want to.
Thinking about it more though, you might be right. There might be a reason that not 100% of sex turns into procreation. If we were truly focused on optimal procreation, why did we evolve into small familial groups? Maybe there is more natural purpose to sex beyond simply procreating. Maybe we do truly yearn for sex in of itself because it represents opportunity or potential, creating a metric for determining the best mate to procreate with. And that’s what we are actually focused on subconsciously...who knows.
Interestingly, if you look at the polyamory community, you find that men are much more accepting of this lifestyle than women, even though women stand to benefit from it more.
The landlords wouldn't like it, though.
The problem is that that is a vicious cycle. The more men shotgun the more women have to be picky. So nobody answers and man have to write to even more women...
Usually this get's "fixed" by limiting the amount of messages men can send. But that doesn't really work.
There should be a system that "punishes" women for being picky and men for being desperate. Maybe publicly show the ratio of received/sent messages, or so?
I don’t want to misinterpret you, so is this what you meant to write?
There's an obvious imbalance in pickyness between the genders. So counter-weight that somehow.
It should encourage being picky for men, and discourage it for women.
So we have to limit something for men, because it's easier to become picky.
What if you could sort people by the ratio of messages to answers? E.g. as a man you would show up more easily in results if you don't shotgun. And as a woman you will stay more hidden if your postbox is already overflowing.
However I strongly assume that most women on those site just are picky. Looking for something they can't find in real life... So the system is just broken anyway, at least for "normal" men.
Tinder has a bit of a mechanism for this: you can only right-swipe on 100 people per day (as an unpaid user). That helps limit the "shotgun" approach to an extent, though it's probably not enough.
I tried the shotgun approach for a very short time once on Tinder. I stopped soon after because I got so many matches from women that I just wasn't interested in or attracted to, and I felt really bad about popping up as a match for them, and then disappearing suddenly, which I've seen women complain about. (Plus I ran into that 100-person limit.) So I only right-swipe for women I have some interest in now.
You should try dressing up as a woman and walking down a random street. I bet it's a totally different experience as well.
It sounds like I'm joking, but if you're a moderately attractive male in a smaller city, a Grindr account will give you a very similar experience. Within an hour I had quite a surprising number of, let's say, risque images sent to me.
Nowhere near the same number of weird or inappropriate messages, though. Some of them were pretty blunt, but nothing I didn't mostly expect, and nothing like the awful things I sometimes see being said to women on the internet.
Don't even need a whole profile, as a teen in the 90's I'd regularly mess around with different names on an online chat system, didn't even have user profiles back then.
Just the name alone would make a major difference how interactions with people went. Barely anybody was interested in talking to "RandomMaleName", but once you logged in as "Tina21" everybody would be all over you and if you played it right, they'd tell you all kinds of personal details about themselves, while I only revealed made up information about a fake persona.
Juvenile me would get an extra kick out of hosing all those guys asking Tina21 for sexting/phone number for phone sex, I'd start sexting with them and after a certain point just write them really weird, off turning stuff, usually ending the whole interaction by notifying them that they tried to jerk off to a 15-year-old dude.
To this day I'm not sure if that was a good thing to do or a bad thing? I guess, at least I taught a couple of people a valuable lesson about the Internet and anonymity.
I've walked the dark path of trying to implement "pickup artist" material(can't imagine that'll be received well), and I can say that:
A) an objective approach works (if you're humble and willing to recognize/adjust for failure)
B) there's a torrent of snake oil out there
C) you learn a lot when you try this stuff. A lot.
You can't buy them, and if you don't have them, it shows in your behavior.
You can't have someone Cyrano de Bergerac your way into a date by behaving that way, because in the end the girl shows up and meets you.
Furthermore, the proposition that this is a service for people who don't have time to send messages in these apps doesn't hold water. Not having the time to respond promptly is an asset. Bailing on some conversations is an asset. You're a busy man with a lot going on, not a desperate man glued to every prospect.
That's my two cents.
A) Is superior in every way.
Now let me fill in the gaps a little bit and maybe some-one else will find this information useful.
First step is to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself `do` you find yourself physically attractive? Do you have good posture, Do you have a low 10%-16% body fat percentage? Are you dressed to impress or just dress just it over with?
If you answered no, then 10000% work on those aspects of yourself first before wasting time with dating apps and also meeting people in person.
For the remainder or if you're curious keep reading.
You're going to have to come to the realization there are going to be certain percentage of women out there who want to have sex with you. You're going to appeal to a group of women, Hispanic, Greek, Asian, Caucasian, Indian and age groups. How are you going to find this out? You're going to put yourself out there and be judged by women. It sux's, you're going to get some women who're going to receptive to you and there are some women who literally will run away from your approach to them. Though that is going to be the only way you're going to find out what type of Women are attracted to your personality and your appearance.
Finally, forget dating app's. Unless you're the top 5% tall guy with a six pack and a fantastic smile you're wasting your time and money.
Time that is better spent approaching women and learning.
I've had exactly none of those things and I have had a fair degree of success with women. In fact, when I started bodybuilding/lifting, I found that my sex drive became unbearably strong and would scare away many women due to how aggressive I had become.
The key is not trying too hard and becoming a good conversationalist/wordsmith. That's what I like to call the right hand path. Of course, there is also the left hand path as well. That involves using pharmaceutical agents such as nootropics like Phenibut or GABA PAMs like Etizolam, but the cost is possible addiction, so I wouldn't recommend it.
I don't think you need to be in the top 5% physically at all. Perhaps if all you want is a hook-up that helps, but I got plenty of dates and I'm now engaged to a woman I met on Tinder and I definitely am not some greek sculpture.
Although I'm mostly for hook-up's for guys bellow the age of 30. I don't think its healthy for a guy to meet one women and declare her the love of his life. Women in western countries have it too easy to make a mans life living hell.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892674/ `Also of note is that observers adjusted both the attractive and healthy male body figures to consist of approximately 16% fat and 80% muscle, given a mean body weight of 78.24kg for the subject identities. The figure of 16% lies within the healthy fat range of 8–21% for young adult Caucasian males `
15% is actually very close to the ideal attractiveness for males.
~25% Body Fat https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4995441/
25% BF isn't much to go off, but above 25 BMI you're putting yourself at un-necessary risk. 25% BF still is very high. Heath wise you should look at 8–21%.
It basically teaches you how to do sales and run a lead-to-conversion pipeline.
One important part IMO is that you are optimizing a very specific skillset, and depending on your goal it might not be an optimal for you.
It’s the same as driving for days around town in your car to learn how other people drive, how they react to your car, how your town is structured and dramaticaly improve your driving. You’ll gain invaluable insight from the experience, but from your perspective for instance you could have prefered grinding on tinder instead.
TLDR: people choose their battles
That is to say, unless I feel like being more plastic than a Ken barbie doll, and less significant in identity, emotion, and purpose than the next 5,000 Ken models off the factory line, then I don't see how I couldn't possibly feel any more alone after applying redpill?
What I found after taking redpill and succeeding by their standards, I didn't find myself in any way happier or more at peace with myself, or happier in the company of anyone that is attracted to that. Maybe it has just been highly successful at producing traumatic experiences, which does help me grow. But there has been nothing redpill or the women it has been able to match me with that has been able to counter the type of gutless, "take-take", or just purely sexual tension-oriented relationships it seems to encourage men to get involved with! Those are highly destructive experiences if you're not careful.
My peace of mind is worth so much more than that.
I can respect redpill, because I understand what it's for. But I don't enjoy the people it connects me with. I think it boils down to a lack of a proper examination of personal happiness in redpill's promise at large, and i don't think they contend with that subject nearly as much as they should! (Though I can understand why the women like it, because it encourages men to not care about what they need to grow as a person, while essentially demeaning them to the point of being uncompensated and emotionally-deprived and ego-devalued sex servants =P)
Meanwhile, the people who were bold enough to actually talk about their more individualized interests got my attention and resulted in some great conversation and dates, even if they didn't result in relationships.
I fell into the trap in my 20's of being generically appealing. I did very well in the 'dating' market, had attractive partners, married a particularly beautiful one. Then I realized that 'success rate' meant squat other than a minor ego boost, and I was stuck with a person attracted to generically appealing me and not ME. And physical attraction fades.
Luckily I got out of that situation, started representing myself accurately, and I live in a large enough city to be able to find at least some women online who do the same. The conversation, dates, and relationships have been SO much more rewarding, because the people connect with ME and not a generically appealing version of me.
I think being generically appealing does build confidence, and confidence is important. But hopefully redpillers and all the generic profile creators online can eventually see the value of specificity.. and attracting quality over quantity. I think it'll breed a lot more happy relationships.
The only reason I call it PUA is that I don't know what else to call approaching strangers I find attractive in a respectful and honest way, especially because it seems that where I live or the people I go out with never meet new people.
6cd6beb encapsulated it wonderfully, if PUA is taken as only this and not the manipulative alpha male b/s that is taught, I believe it can teach men a lot of perspective and respect towards the opposite sex:
[...] the general formula of "know your value, be confident and unapologetic about what you want, be ready to accept 'no' quickly and gracefully" is the buried gold. Maybe it's just me but grinding through failure after failure after failure taught me those things.
It's really kind of a shame that the entire pickup community is judged by the scummy, the scammy, and the worst of the MRA/Redpillers (themselves judged by the worst among them) because they really do have the ability to help. Society has given us a completely broken model of how attraction works, and if you don't learn that that model is just something people talk about as a form of virtue-signalling, you try and apply it and find out just how crap it is. You get frustrated, angry, and depressed because the world doesn't conform to your broken model, and when you turn to people for help they feed you back that same broken model.
The real value of pickup isn't techniques, 'game', or tricks, it's showing you how utterly ridiculous that broken model is and helping you to construct a more accurate one.
Anyway, all that online dating made him horribly cynical. But damn if it doesn't make for good writing:
> If she doesn’t give the number, if she ignores your request and tries to continue the conversation– it’s dead. Maybe means no. Hesitation means no. I’ve had a few exceptions. But frankly, if a woman wants to make you work for it, it’s an insult. And all online conversation is just a chance to f%ck up. The point of OKCupid is that we are dehumanized slabs of f%ckmeat and there are a million of us. No individual matters. Move on.
For more: https://delicioustacos.com/2014/08/04/okcupid-starter-kit-co...
Not sure it is cynical. It might just be interpreting contemporary human communication correctly. In other contexts, "maybe" tends to be used when the other person don't really want to do whatever you want them to do. If you just spent two days trying to convince someone to go white water kayaking, then it normally means he dont want to be kayaking, it is the same.
I got responses maybe half the time and a date (coffee, nothing involving alcohol) maybe a third - I probably messaged 15 women over a year.
Two proper relationships and one that is two years old in July and I plan to spend the rest of my life in.
I did not use the shotgun approach, I excluded any woman who didn't fill her profile in with information (if they don't tell you about themselves how the hell do you know if you have anything potentially in common), excluded ones with terrible spelling and grammar (I'm not Chaucer but again it shows effort) and then only replied to ones where we had at least some interests in common (the two relationships where cycling and heavy metal respectively).
I wasn't looking for one night stands, didn't push for dates, asked questions relevant to their interests and discussed mine.
And it was all fine.
My current partner showed me her messages after we'd been dating for a while and it was just a sea of "hey Babi, want sum fuck?", I mean she speaks three languages and has a degree in finance that approach was never going to open a conversation.
My bar was "if I didn't find this person attractive would I want to be friends with them?"
If the answer wasn't yes then it was a pass.
I wasn't on there just for sex, if that was the goal I can just go out on the piss on a Saturday night.
I also avoided tinder like the plague, it's just too shallow (for me), I did like OKC though (where I met my current partner).
So I signed up at OKC before and deleted my account at some point frustrated. Actually I even had 2 dates through it - after tons of right swiping and writing so many messages that I had to delete ones from my Sent folder.
When I recently signed up again, at first it didn't really work out again. I swiped right when I thought the person looks good.
So I changed my approach: I swipe right when I imagine I would feel at least kind of comfortable meeting that person. And tadah, I have far more matches. Also I recommend stopping to write a person immediately when there is obviously no interest, that just brings frustration which doesn't improve the writing in turn. So I think 3 women were then willing to date me, although somehow it didn't happen because of difficulties finding a proper date/time. (Yup that also changed, I prioritize realworld higher than online ;) - doesn't really help with dating but maybe better for general happiness)
I gather been in good shape in your late 30's gets you a few bonus points.
I'm bi so i use all apps .. i sure as hell wish Tinder was like Grindr and Scruff are for me. Open either app and have tons of messages .. pick and choose who you want to chat with and boom you have a collection of potential guys to meet up with for fun when the mood hits you. I guess that's what its like for average to good looking to hot women ... have a collection of guys to pick, choose and chat. Guess it's the Same for good looking to hot str8 guys.
Not surprised about paid dating apps and their fake news scams. Match.com suddenly sends you a ton of winks and messages just as your subscription is about to expire yet there all fake or paid impersonators. Not sure how that is legal?
Unless you don't meet the minimum height requirement. That's more important than looks.
You ask people to improve the carriage, they'll tell you to make a faster horse. If you ask a woman what they want, they'll tell you tall dark and handsome.
I'm sure it would have worked even better if I were 6' and looked the same. But looks on their own do very well.
This was even true on okcupid, where you had to list height. I also got a lot of attention, and routinely got that "congrats, you're attractive" notification the site would send.
(If any short man is reading this, my advice would be: Get lean, and get muscles. This matters far more for you than for taller men, who can coast.)
That is a very recent, Western view of finding a partner. For much of history, and even now in large parts of the world, a person's family had/has the job of finding a suitable match often with the aid of "professional" matchmakers. I wonder what percentage of people who grew up in this current Western model of individuals dating and finding partners would trade it for the other model if they could?
It's impossible I think to say either one is "better", unless you can specify what exactly your goal as a society is. If your goal is a very stable society with everyone following the traditional monogamous marriage + kids path, and minimizing divorce, it seems that the Indian way probably produces better results. If you desire more freedom as an individual, it doesn't.
0) playful message about profile/photo
1) flirt for one or two exchanges
2) pivot to drinks. I like the highly elaborate, "Sounds like something we could take about over drinks, are you free this week?"
Reminds me of this story:
One day in September, in a conference room populated with about 25 members of the Mac team, Steve [Jobs] was lecturing on how to hire.
"A players hire A players," he said. "B players hire C players. Do you get it?"
Apparently not. Somebody in the back of the room raised his hand and asked, "so how do you hire more B players?"
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
In my own life, despite being an uber-introverted nerd, I've gravitated towards just the normal way of finding people I'm interested in in person and just asking them out. The advantage of this is feedback is much easier to intuit when the person you're asking out is right there in front of you.
I don't really see the point anymore in spending large amounts of time and effort to optimize a algorithmic online search pattern when daily life in a city gives one all the bandwidth one could ever need to find someone.
This is not new. Back then it was affectionately called “e-whoring.”
So it sounds like these people would make time to go on dates, or have a romantic partner, but they find online dating tedious so they pay to have someone do it for them.
But in this case, I think it's insane. It reduces to, "I don't want to spend getting to know a person I might spend the rest of my life with, so I'm going to jump right to paying somebody to lie to them." It's contradictory, at least for a real relationship. I think what it really means is, "I want a woman in the same way I want a new car: as enjoyable, status-enhancing property. But they insist on talking. So fuck that."
The process has also included getting-to-know-you conversation and trust-building, neither of which this impersonation accomplishes.
A date does take a couple of hours max. But if it works, it blossoms into a relationship, which takes significant time. And that same sort of significant time can be applied to dating.
Online dating can be a long torturous experience. That is why people are saying they want to skip it and do the parts that are enjoyable. Some because it was long and people don't have time for it. Some because it can be torturous and life is too short to put up with that.
I understand that humans in general are lazy, and normally I am fine with that. But a) being lazy is different than not having time, b) if you don't have time to date, you also don't have time for a relationship, and c) you can't just skip the early parts of building a relationship. That's not how dating works.
It isn't true that online dating isn't relevant to whether a person can have time in their life for online dating.
When people talk about not having time for something, they are speaking in a metaphorical sense about the value of their time. Truly, most people have time to count to a million, but most people don't have time to count to a million.
Is that really true? I've never heard of the common phrase "swf looking for swm"[1] -- being called out in mainstream circles as racist.
Unlike employment or assigning bus seats in Alabama, the domain of romance was given the latitude for racial preferences without being demonized as "racism".
also language, because between the three largest south asian countries there's something like 25 languages spoken...
While you're talking about the melting pot in the western world, it just so happens that eventually most whites end up with just whites, and blacks just blacks. Most beautiful women end up with rich men, and religious people end up with religious people. Long term "melting pot" relationships aren't as common as you think. If sexual selection eventually filters all but those common traits, why not be blunt about them?
E.g., while the Indian dating sites you talk about bluntly list salary, western sites use complicated proxies (like interests == international tourism, or your profile photo with a tesla you own).
That dating has to be complicated and subtle and what you need has to only be "hinted" isn't any better than being blunt about what you're looking for, and being blunt about what value you think you'll provide to the other. At the least, you'll have saved time and heartbreaks.
http://www.thehindu.com/classifieds/matrimonial/
there's a whole jargon and set of acronyms that takes some puzzling out. I guess what I was trying to write in my original post, is that if someone is developing software/database/backend (or presentation layer) for a dating website or app, that there's a considerable diversity of ways people search for certain criteria, other than those that are commonly seen on a site like plenty of fish, bumble, etc.
sort of like this problem: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Since your comment was on top, I wanted to throw my two cents about how if one were to unabashedly formalize the requirements for viable long term relationships to optimize for search time, that's what you'll end up with.
Casual dating and short term relationships are a whole different thing.
(wanted to throw my two cents before folks start overgeneralizing about people from other nations/cultures. Which you're not, but others reading it might)
Are there similar threads in mostly female communities to see their perspective?
https://www.amazon.ca/Dating-Vandalized-Katerina-Lyadova-ebo...
Build an AI to automate this process using the same guidelines.
https://www.oglaf.com/performance-anxiety/
Not safe for work obviously.
And at least they're honest.
I don't know what this says about us as people, but damn... that's so sad.
This is only true if client is looking for a long-term monogamous relationship.
We also help with online-dating messages, but we'll help you to improve your own communication skills. Text flirting seems like such a trivial thing, but getting better at it can be life-changing, because it ultimately leads to better relationships.
Keeping you engaged with fake activity to increase the chances of becoming a paying user seems very questionable.
That's not true for the majority. Looks are the first signal you notice of the other person. Unless you are after poets, artists or other people whose work reach other people without "the looks" then I don't see how - even subconsciously - it's not important. Pics are furthermore do indicate personality.
I agree that Tinder is an industrial scale meat grinder, but the advantage is that wide exposure is better for your chances. It's like saying HI to a tons of people on the street you otherwise wouldn't meet.
However, the thing that makes Tinder great (and also Bumble, though I haven't tried that one yet) is that both parties must "like" each other for any messaging to occur. This still isn't the norm on "traditional" dating sites, for some reason. The traditional sites are bad for men, because they're encouraged to put forth a lot of effort to write meaningful messages to women, but almost all the effort is simply wasted because most of them go to women that have no interest in those men, and the man has no way of knowing this.
Tinder/Bumble fix this by forcing the woman to "like" a man's profile first, before he wastes any time and effort writing her a message. It also helps women by massively reducing the amount of unwanted messages they receive from men: if they get unwanted messages, it's partly their fault (and entirely under their control) for "liking" those men, and encourages them to be more selective with their right-swipes (so maybe they'll come up with some strategies for avoiding creeps, such as only right-swiping people with something meaningful written in their profile, and not just guys with gym selfies and backwards ball caps).
But for dating, I think it's pretty lousy. But as you said, most people (over the age of 30 I suspect) seem to use it for dating, not casual sex. And they're right to use it for that, because even though it's lousy IMO, it's where everyone is, and despite the rest of the UI being lousy for selecting quality matches IMO, the killer feature is the fact that both parties have to "like" each other. Why other dating sites like OKcupid don't adopt this, I have no idea, except maybe it's not good for their business model in their view. For women I've talked to, sites like OKC are just awful because they get so many unsolicited messages; this isn't much of a problem on Tinder and Bumble since they're in control.
People can adjust to looks given enough time, and their physical attractiveness to certain types are shaped by their positive interactions with a person. Apps like Tinder basically force looks to be at the forefront, despite all that.
When I hear criticisms of the tech community being so bro-y and full of insecure dudes, I tend to rebuff them because I don't personally see it as much. But man, that behavior is coming out in full force on this post.
Aren't they mutually exclusive by definition? Or does "bro" now mean "any men I don't like"?