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On the contrary, with online dating, I think people who are "bad at dating" have an advantage compared to old fashioned social circle dating. You get much more practice, ie opportunities to improve, and also many more chances to find someone who's a great match. When things go south you haven't made a friendship awkward, you just move on.

If you don't look at bad dates as a learning opportunity, and instead allow yourself to blame factors outside of your control for causing your bad dates, you tread dangerously close to incel mentality.

I'm not convinced that online dating is quite the effective learning environment you're making it out to be. You are much more disposable online, and people tend to have less empathy. If the only feedback you get is ghosting, then it could be something you said recently, the person could be busy, or perhaps a more attractive match came along. It's usually challenging to narrow it down if you aren't making the most basic mistakes.

Some men bitterly turn misogynistic as a result of their failures, but that doesn't mean that their failures are entirely unique and personal.

Sure you get more practice but what you're getting practice with is online dating, not dating in general.

If you're a man who's not in top 10% of most desirable, it's a barren wasteland. Your best hope becomes to attempt to match with basically anyone, and even when you do match most won't respond. So maybe you tried to be witty the first several times and got no response or possibly unmatched. A lot of men will lose their wit after this and just start sending "Hey" in hopes of getting some kind of response.

Meanwhile if you're a woman, nearly anyone who you click 'like' will be a match (except for the few you really want). The men you'll match with may not be charming because they've become tired or desperate or jaded, some may be outright rude, sexist, or cruel, and maybe the guy you want isn't responding at all -- because he's in that 10% of guys that all of the women are trying to match with and he's ignoring you.

The upside of it being impersonal so you have more freedom to screw up without much effort or commitment is also it's downside, where the people you match with don't put much effort or commitment in for you either.

> If you're a man who's not in top 10% of most desirable, it's a barren wasteland

Then how comes the marriage/dating rates are way higher than 10%?

Self-selection. The women who aren't chasing the top 10% find a workable match sooner and remove themselves from the pool.

It's the same adverse-selection effect as "why are all my job candidates terrible?" Because you're only interviewing the people who have failed to get a job.

Lagged effects.

You don't get any practice. That's the problem. Online dating is a distinctly different game from dating. And the problem is that sooner or later it will have to turn into actual dating. But you are being filtered through an unreasonable and non-working filter.

If you want practice and opportunities, go out and and try yourself in bars/clubs. I know it sounds scary and and even superficial but it's humane and it does work. I know, I've been there. My social circle never worked for this purpose, especially not after high school. I've tried online dating about a decade ago just to find that it's completely dysfunctional (it was, even back then!).

However, talking to actual people in bars was always fun even if scary at first (I like that environment a lot, so that might be a factor too, others may work for other people). Heck, even a rejection feels real and less upsetting than online. Not to mention that even the rejections are waaay more civilized and a lot less likely. I used to keep thinking about how to fix online dating back then and one of the problems is that socially unacceptable behaviour is not only goes without negative consequences there but it's actually the easy thing to do. Thus no surprise the whole thing ends up being toxic pretty quickly as people constantly annoy and provoke each other through this.

E.g. if you start to talk to someone in a bar, even if you say the most boring thing possible, they will almost never just turn their back on you and don't respond. Even a quick rejection will probably include a smile and a response like "no, thanks", or "I'm with my friends", etc. But, at least in my experience and my case, that would be below 10% and the other 90% would be at least a short conversation. Which just feels good. Compare this with what you get online. (In my case it was, again 10 years ago!, the reverse or even worse. I.e. over 90% no response. Same person, same looks.)

I have a friend who is very good looking (and I mean it: girls turn around after him in the bars or straight walk up to him) and even he doesn't have too much success online. I mean he does get matches, probably a lot more than e.g. I would get, but then he usually runs into dates not working out, girls looking vastly different than on the profile picture, etc. This just doesn't happen IRL.

> If you don't look at bad dates as a learning opportunity, and instead allow yourself to blame factors outside of your control for causing your bad dates, you tread dangerously close to incel mentality.

I definitely don’t disagree with the above, but I honestly don’t think the exact opposite is very good either. In other words only blaming yourself can get you in a heap of self-doubt, discouragement, distraction and all around lack of faith and hope in ever having a dating life or serious relationship. I mean at this point you don’t think the opposite gender is the problem you think you yourself are. I honestly fall into this trap way too often. Can also say I’ve fallen in the above quoted sections trap from time to time too. But I’m not saying forget doing self introspection. That is important but also don’t beat yourself up. I’m saying you and speaking in general here these comments are not directed towards the parent commenter in any way.

You don't improve, you just fake it better. That's what most people do anyway. This is for me the most overlooked problem with privacy. If you have your life out in the open then everyone who has an interest in you can tell you the things you expect to hear without knowing whether they're genuine or just stalking you. It's much easier to flirt someone if you know what movies/music/books she likes, what bars/cafes she visits, what's her political view etc. And this creates a culture of vultures who fake their identities all the time.

Furthermore, I implore anyone who thinks that online dating is easy to create a fake profile with a photo of a semi attractive woman as a test. You get flooded with thousands of requests in no time. I tried it on Facebook and I reached the 5.000 friends limit in just four days. There's no way anyone can reach out and flirt in this mess. You become irrelevant in the noise.

Just a quick note of my thinking. You are calling it FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) but it's full-fledged MO, without the FO part.

Missing out is not necessarily meaningful. FOMO is the anxiety caused by missing out. which may cause you more pain than actually missing out on that thing.

Ah this is a great point - worrying about something that could happen as opposed to worrying about something that did happen, but also leads me to the conclusion that the very idea of “missing out” is pure fear, a narrative about what other people are doing and the self-imposed expectation that you should be doing the same thing, right? Maybe there is no MO without FO?

If you choose to miss out then watching other people having fun on snapchat is no problem. The anxiety and/or depression kicks in when you see your friends or social group having fun together without you when you never were invited in the first place.

Emotions just are. Thoughts come and go, but we may or may not pick the ones on which we loiter. If undesirable emotions ebe when we loiter on certain thoughts, repeated behaviors may emerge. Let's do this to get rid of that emotion, your brain might say to itself.

Missing something, like your sunglasses, makes you wonder where they are, look for them, call people asking if you left them over, etc. This is worry, which is a light version of fear.

"Missing out" isn't like looking your sunglasses but still makes you wonder if where you are isn't where you should be, which is still a type of anxious behavior which will lead to repetition if the emotional response is allowed to go on unchecked.

Check out "Plutchik's wheel of emotions" for emotion groupings.

Perhaps "feeling of missing out" could work as a good description? If more reminds one of things that one is "missing out" on, one probably feels more that one is "missing out" more than otherwise would, given equal amounts of things that others are doing that one is not doing?

colloquially this is how the acronym is used though (doesn't have to make sense)

A guitar teacher told me the same things about guitar learners: Before people just learned some basic stuff and were happy. But nowadays they constantly compare themselves with thousands of youtubers guitarists who are very skilled and then always think that they themselves are shit compared to them.

This is true of the guitar, but even more dangerously true when it comes to fitness and body images.

Yeah, fake natties all over the place. Sponsored by Gymshark and other supplement shops so they obviously cannot admit to using steroids etc... because they would lose the $$$ from sponsorhip asap.

There is also the Freedom of Missing Out. What if you lived a life unconstrained by the various appointments we all have to make, a life where you're not obligated to go to parties, play the dating game, or buy the latest fast-fashion item of clothing?

Some people want to go to parties and date the opposite sex because they enjoy those things, not because society is telling them to. Most people like being in relationships and hanging out with friends.

Allowing your identity to be defined by other people is not healthy.

You mention cryptocurrency, so I have to ask. Do you think Satoshi is sitting on a yacht tweeting out photographs of their fancy trips?

Envy is a negative-sum emotion. It's no fun to be envious, and while people think it must be enjoyable to be envied, it's really not. When you're aware of it at all, it's just uncomfortable. It's a shitty emotion on both sides, but it's great for capitalism.

Comparing yourself against others is a loser's game. If the person is better, you lose. If the person comes out worse, you're taking a dip by comparing yourself at all to that person, so you still lose.