There’s quite a lot in the queue since last time, so this is the first large chunk of it, which focuses on apps and otherwise finding an initial connection, and some things that directly impact that.
I’m long married but I have three kids, some rapidly entering the age of dating. Much of this aligns with my thoughts, but that it needs to be written shows the issues involved in dating now (I guess). Thanks for adding so many scenarios. Lots to talk about here with teens.
> if your current goal is a long term relationship rather than short term dating, and you have enough practice, it might outright be a mistake to be primarily (rather than opportunistically or additionally, the goods are often non-rivalrous) trying to date people who aren’t your friends or at least friends of friends? That instead you should focus on making platonic friends with people you find attractive, without trying to date them at all, and then see what happens?
that seems more true if you’re younger (any given friend is more likely single + making friends is on average easier) and less true if you’re older
I can't speak for other men, but the backlash against flirting made me worry that any time I approached a woman, I would be seen as overstepping boundaries, not taking the hint, etc. I've never really been worried a woman would mace me or call the cops or whatever.
The red pill manosphere wanted you to believe that men were attacked for asking women out because they like their audience feeling like victims to keep the grift going. The reality is just like in the rest of society, there's little real consequences for men who commit sexual violence much less harassment or "awkward" flirting. Being expected to get affirmative consent and not get people wasted doesn't make us victims of some oppressive big education conspiracy.
Men had careers destroyed over things vastly less than 'sexual violence'. And you look at the rolling stones case or the duke lacrosse case - the insitutional response to accusations of sexual violence is to assume these accusations are true in the complete absence of evidence and be willing to destroy mens' lives over it, completely contrary to narratives like yours.
You dismissing anything that disagrees with your insane takes as 'red pill manosphere' is completely asinine.
If the shoe fits about the manosphere, and it creating a system of whining men, then at least own it. What other source out there other than the manosphere telling men they are victims of some oppressive all men are evil conspiracy?
Please bring forth evidence of this wide spread attack on us poor abused men. Show me that there's more men in prison for rape they didn't commit than men not in jail for rapes they did. You won't because you can't since it's not true. Likewise bring evidence of all these poor innocent men being kicked out of school unjustly that we should all be terrified by university administrations.
See the thing is, what you call my insane takes are backed by evidence (for example the link I provided disproving that universities are expelling men for poor dating), where yours and the post I originally responded to are backed with feelings. Kind of hard to dismiss, so instead you go with name calling because that's all you have to offer.
But then again looking at the posts you like on substack including posts about "nuking chinks", "obsessive estrogen compulsive disorder" and a post claiming to prove the Holocaust wasn't real because of Jewish population numbers in the 1970s, I'm more than okay with you thinking I'm asinine and insane. Honestly I'd have to reassess my life choices and values if you didn't.
The overall gist here is that this is a system in transition. This is what the system looks like when women are on their way to becoming the sexually dominant gender. At some point men will be the utterly mysterious ones sending the subconscious signals and women will be the idiots failing to receive them. This is not a masculine/feminine thing, it's a dominant/submissive thing. Women are slowing taking power across the society and taking power includes coming into sexual dominance. And dominance makes us blind to the feelings of others. It's just how it works.
Not remotely true. Even to the extent that women have started becoming the 'dominant gender', dating has not changed at all in the way you're describing. Dating is still dominated by the dynamics produced by the way men and women differ. Women like submissive men no more than at any other point in history.
If women are doing anything sexually at the moment, it is showing complete disinterest in weak and submissive men and putting themselves in a position to be pursued by the subset of dominant men in society (which means different things to different women). Of course, this 'women becoming the dominant gender' idea is mostly nonsense anyway when extended to anything beyond having the upper hand in the dating market or representation in lower level positions in large isntitutions.
Also, nobody is "taking power". Every ounce of power women have has been given to them by men. If men wanted women to have no power, they would have no power, and this is true regardless of any moral judgements about this state of affairs.
I don't think we're gonna convince each other either way, so whaddaya say we meet back here at this comment 15 years from now and see if we feel differently? I'll put it on my calendar if you'll put it on yours.
But let me be clear on one thing. I never said women are seeking submissive men. We're far from that point. This "taking of power" I'm claiming has been underway for hundreds of years. And right now we're approaching the dominance swapping midpoint, where men and women are like ships passing in the *day*, utterly confused at why they can't maneuver their ships to bring them together. Women don't *yet* want submissive men, but someday they will. Or so says I.
“even if it's a skit there's still opportunity there. You could win her over or could even impress others in the vicinity!”
This betrays a stunning lack of street smarts. It obviously isn’t real, but you can’t assume it’s an innocent skit for TikTok. 99/100 times this is a scam, and no woman is running a scam like this without some scary protection. If you were to go to a second location with this person there is a high chance of being extorted or drugged or both (common in Kabuchiko and plenty of other places). At best she’s a prostitute and will charge a fair price.
7 dating roundups in and we are still dancing around the actual problem.
The sex ratio in meatspace is approximately 1:1, yet the sex ratio on every dating app ever is massively slanted towards men. Why? Why are single women not flocking to the apps where they can take their pick? This is the only question that matters. If the reason is that dating apps are bad technology, then we need a societal effort to fix or replace them. If the problem is that women do not want to date the men who want to date them, and would rather be single, then we have a much deeper problem. Fixing the apps will not fix the underlying problem that there is no way to match up the bottom 20-30% of men.
There is no way for the bottom X percent of men to date.
There is no fixing the apps - you cannot create an app that designed with the bottom X% of men in mind AND an app that large numbers of women will actively use. Women use these apps in proportion to how much it allows them to date men they consider high value. Most women will stop using the app in proportion to how much this ability is crippled.
These sites/apps fundamentally unsuited for last swathes of the population, especially the male population. It's like saying we're going to fix LinkedIn so that it helps low human capital workers get good jobs. It's not meant for them, and it can never work for them, and anything that makes the site ostensibly cater to these people will result in employers not caring about the site any more. They're there to make it easier to get the best people, not to help the bottom 30% (or even more) of job seekers. This dynamic isn't as obvious on something like linkedin because most people this describes don't bother signing up in the first place, whereas many men who have had zero dating success in life will try their hand at tinder.
There's likely not "fix" for this problem at all. A fundamentally different cultural and social dyanmic exists today brought about by significant and fundamental forces that have been in motion for decades. This is the 'new normal', and other than these men finding a way to significantly make themselves more attractive to women (physically and/or non-physically), which is still at least partly zero-sum, there's probably no practical "fix" for the issue.
Agree with Hanania that the replies are pathetic. Ok, so it might be a scam… but if it was, she’d still run the scam even if they approached her. So by that logic, just don’t talk to anyone, ever. And they wonder why they never get laid lmao. To those commenters: stop justifying being such a pussy and take a risk, have some agency. If you’re as smart as you obviously think you are you’ll be able to sus out whether it’s a scam or not.
(That said, I’m not convinced that women approaching men is the solution here, at least not at scale. The times I’ve been approached by women have never worked out. No, not because it was a scam, but because it just didn’t do it for me; I’ve always preferred being the one approaching, and I suspect most men are the same way. It’s deeply ingrained in our programming. We just need to destigmatize men approaching women in good faith.)
That doesn’t make any sense. A random woman in public is very unlikely to be a scammer. A woman approaching you for sex is nearly guaranteed to be something you are going to pay for.
I have half a thought somewhere that's something like "having a pet that you really like having around you can be a good way to learn how to learn body language or other nonverbal communication, and especially that this learning can take time" that's probably applicable to dating, though I'm also sort of a lifetime of pets in to noticing this is a thing. Anyways, can especially recommend cats for this because they tend to have very strong personalities and preferences that they often may not be able to clearly communicate to you but there's also often overlap and body language commonalities among most cats, dunno how true this is for dogs. Surely this is something you learn from having children too but it's harder to get those from PetSmart.
I think trying to give advice to people about dating their friends is a trap for everyone involved; anyone who could give this advice doesn't need it and anyone who needs to receive it isn't in a position to understand it (I guess, this is the problem of generational knowledge transfer generally but anyways). And this is the precise thing where getting it wrong is responsible for probably 90+% of gender relations discourse.
Lazy River had the correct take on the fake random public flirting; it's not just "am I being filmed" it's "who's watching in an attempt to get a cheap laugh from my impending suffering". The closest I ever got to being genuinely bullied growing up was a girl pulling this kind of grift in a way that, fortunately for me, ended up being sort of hilariously pathetic on her end.
I dunno if this is a novel take but I never see anyone mention that it's less important whether you have common interests than that you have compatible interests. There was a viral tweet going around from some dating show where some girl was being verbally excited about her planned scuba trip to Australia or whatever and everyone was being Big Mad that none of the guys wanted to date this cute nerdy girl but like who was going to say yes that didn't also have an extremely specific preference for scuba travel regardless of how hot or otherwise nerdy she is?
Fake flirting has a justifiably high expected correlation with bullying or intended exploitation. The filming in question is actually more benign than a lot of other possible situations. If someone thinks flirting is fake, it makes sense for them to try to get out as quickly as possible.
I do know, on many levels, that approaching (women, as a man) is fine – as of 'recently', I've been doing it regularly, I haven't cared about 'what happens next', and I've had several almost pleasant rejections, and am flirting for fun anyways (and it IS fun).
I've also had some not-great (but not actually bad) rejections, also 'recently', and they were fine too after the (mild) acute pain faded.
And yet I can still feel the FEAR, however faint of a whisper it might be most of the time.
And the inherent 'laziness' of most people on social media results in a lot of careless 'letting the wackos define a group' being passed around about everything. Cartoon Hates Her specifically has done this in a way I found irritating enough to comment on! And I do it too! One of the habits of the Rationalists I've most appreciated is not just emphasizing the virtue accuracy, but also the virtue of precision – not 'men do ...' but 'one guy I met one time told me that he ...' or 'several friends told me that a guy had done ...'.
And I've been unfollowing and often muting a bunch of people that are particularly bad about this. It is grating and wearying and it seems clear to me how it could be easily perceived as more like strict norms than sloppy expression by lots of people. I feel it myself even if I can also (sometimes) notice it and correct any changes in my thinking.
I do think you're maybe underestimating the sheer epistemic _adversity_ of a lot of people's specific romantic histories. It's really hard to develop accurate models with poor AND limited data that is extremely more salient than any watered-down 'paraphrase' of any other kind of larger scale 'aggregation' of other's data. We – everyone – are absolutely living in radically different bubbles. (And it absolutely doesn't help that the epistemic waterline is generally SO low.)
I tried a matchmaker during Covid, because it was harder to date then. Do not recommend. Matched me much worse than I did on my own with apps. Presently married, and definitely not to a woman the matchmakers found.
I wonder how reliable that friends first data is. It doesn’t sound accurate. The friends first then dated is nearly unheard of in my social circles. A ton of couples met in college but they were not friends first. What I have heard is “we knew of each other then dated later.” Often just due to one of the two not being single at the time.
But for the post college crowd, meeting through friends still seems uncommon. It feels like online dating is the far and away leader for the educated professional crowd who didn’t meet their spouse in college.
A lot of these seemed to be grasping at straws more than usual.
“Any way to change the topic into other things shakes that up and puts you in a better spot. It might be a bit slower, but you absolutely get to know people when not explicitly discussing getting to know them.”
I would submit that this is true in almost any social situation, and that you actually get to know people *better* by talking about ideas, things, other people, almost anything in fact than poking at the (inevitably curated) image of themselves they want to present to the world.
Podcast episode for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dwatvpodcast/p/dating-roundup-7-back-to-basics
I’m long married but I have three kids, some rapidly entering the age of dating. Much of this aligns with my thoughts, but that it needs to be written shows the issues involved in dating now (I guess). Thanks for adding so many scenarios. Lots to talk about here with teens.
> if your current goal is a long term relationship rather than short term dating, and you have enough practice, it might outright be a mistake to be primarily (rather than opportunistically or additionally, the goods are often non-rivalrous) trying to date people who aren’t your friends or at least friends of friends? That instead you should focus on making platonic friends with people you find attractive, without trying to date them at all, and then see what happens?
that seems more true if you’re younger (any given friend is more likely single + making friends is on average easier) and less true if you’re older
I can't speak for other men, but the backlash against flirting made me worry that any time I approached a woman, I would be seen as overstepping boundaries, not taking the hint, etc. I've never really been worried a woman would mace me or call the cops or whatever.
Oh yeah Rob Henderson and Richard Hanania truly the masters of game
The “massive consequences for men dating poorly” position was (is?) very mainstream in the context of university administration in the US.
What massive consequences?
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2022/11/16/title-ix-which-colleges-suspended-expelled-students-sexual-misconduct/8323307001/
The red pill manosphere wanted you to believe that men were attacked for asking women out because they like their audience feeling like victims to keep the grift going. The reality is just like in the rest of society, there's little real consequences for men who commit sexual violence much less harassment or "awkward" flirting. Being expected to get affirmative consent and not get people wasted doesn't make us victims of some oppressive big education conspiracy.
Men had careers destroyed over things vastly less than 'sexual violence'. And you look at the rolling stones case or the duke lacrosse case - the insitutional response to accusations of sexual violence is to assume these accusations are true in the complete absence of evidence and be willing to destroy mens' lives over it, completely contrary to narratives like yours.
You dismissing anything that disagrees with your insane takes as 'red pill manosphere' is completely asinine.
If the shoe fits about the manosphere, and it creating a system of whining men, then at least own it. What other source out there other than the manosphere telling men they are victims of some oppressive all men are evil conspiracy?
Please bring forth evidence of this wide spread attack on us poor abused men. Show me that there's more men in prison for rape they didn't commit than men not in jail for rapes they did. You won't because you can't since it's not true. Likewise bring evidence of all these poor innocent men being kicked out of school unjustly that we should all be terrified by university administrations.
See the thing is, what you call my insane takes are backed by evidence (for example the link I provided disproving that universities are expelling men for poor dating), where yours and the post I originally responded to are backed with feelings. Kind of hard to dismiss, so instead you go with name calling because that's all you have to offer.
But then again looking at the posts you like on substack including posts about "nuking chinks", "obsessive estrogen compulsive disorder" and a post claiming to prove the Holocaust wasn't real because of Jewish population numbers in the 1970s, I'm more than okay with you thinking I'm asinine and insane. Honestly I'd have to reassess my life choices and values if you didn't.
The overall gist here is that this is a system in transition. This is what the system looks like when women are on their way to becoming the sexually dominant gender. At some point men will be the utterly mysterious ones sending the subconscious signals and women will be the idiots failing to receive them. This is not a masculine/feminine thing, it's a dominant/submissive thing. Women are slowing taking power across the society and taking power includes coming into sexual dominance. And dominance makes us blind to the feelings of others. It's just how it works.
Not remotely true. Even to the extent that women have started becoming the 'dominant gender', dating has not changed at all in the way you're describing. Dating is still dominated by the dynamics produced by the way men and women differ. Women like submissive men no more than at any other point in history.
If women are doing anything sexually at the moment, it is showing complete disinterest in weak and submissive men and putting themselves in a position to be pursued by the subset of dominant men in society (which means different things to different women). Of course, this 'women becoming the dominant gender' idea is mostly nonsense anyway when extended to anything beyond having the upper hand in the dating market or representation in lower level positions in large isntitutions.
Also, nobody is "taking power". Every ounce of power women have has been given to them by men. If men wanted women to have no power, they would have no power, and this is true regardless of any moral judgements about this state of affairs.
I don't think we're gonna convince each other either way, so whaddaya say we meet back here at this comment 15 years from now and see if we feel differently? I'll put it on my calendar if you'll put it on yours.
But let me be clear on one thing. I never said women are seeking submissive men. We're far from that point. This "taking of power" I'm claiming has been underway for hundreds of years. And right now we're approaching the dominance swapping midpoint, where men and women are like ships passing in the *day*, utterly confused at why they can't maneuver their ships to bring them together. Women don't *yet* want submissive men, but someday they will. Or so says I.
“even if it's a skit there's still opportunity there. You could win her over or could even impress others in the vicinity!”
This betrays a stunning lack of street smarts. It obviously isn’t real, but you can’t assume it’s an innocent skit for TikTok. 99/100 times this is a scam, and no woman is running a scam like this without some scary protection. If you were to go to a second location with this person there is a high chance of being extorted or drugged or both (common in Kabuchiko and plenty of other places). At best she’s a prostitute and will charge a fair price.
In broad daylight on an American college campus, though?
7 dating roundups in and we are still dancing around the actual problem.
The sex ratio in meatspace is approximately 1:1, yet the sex ratio on every dating app ever is massively slanted towards men. Why? Why are single women not flocking to the apps where they can take their pick? This is the only question that matters. If the reason is that dating apps are bad technology, then we need a societal effort to fix or replace them. If the problem is that women do not want to date the men who want to date them, and would rather be single, then we have a much deeper problem. Fixing the apps will not fix the underlying problem that there is no way to match up the bottom 20-30% of men.
There is no way for the bottom X percent of men to date.
There is no fixing the apps - you cannot create an app that designed with the bottom X% of men in mind AND an app that large numbers of women will actively use. Women use these apps in proportion to how much it allows them to date men they consider high value. Most women will stop using the app in proportion to how much this ability is crippled.
These sites/apps fundamentally unsuited for last swathes of the population, especially the male population. It's like saying we're going to fix LinkedIn so that it helps low human capital workers get good jobs. It's not meant for them, and it can never work for them, and anything that makes the site ostensibly cater to these people will result in employers not caring about the site any more. They're there to make it easier to get the best people, not to help the bottom 30% (or even more) of job seekers. This dynamic isn't as obvious on something like linkedin because most people this describes don't bother signing up in the first place, whereas many men who have had zero dating success in life will try their hand at tinder.
There's likely not "fix" for this problem at all. A fundamentally different cultural and social dyanmic exists today brought about by significant and fundamental forces that have been in motion for decades. This is the 'new normal', and other than these men finding a way to significantly make themselves more attractive to women (physically and/or non-physically), which is still at least partly zero-sum, there's probably no practical "fix" for the issue.
Agree with Hanania that the replies are pathetic. Ok, so it might be a scam… but if it was, she’d still run the scam even if they approached her. So by that logic, just don’t talk to anyone, ever. And they wonder why they never get laid lmao. To those commenters: stop justifying being such a pussy and take a risk, have some agency. If you’re as smart as you obviously think you are you’ll be able to sus out whether it’s a scam or not.
(That said, I’m not convinced that women approaching men is the solution here, at least not at scale. The times I’ve been approached by women have never worked out. No, not because it was a scam, but because it just didn’t do it for me; I’ve always preferred being the one approaching, and I suspect most men are the same way. It’s deeply ingrained in our programming. We just need to destigmatize men approaching women in good faith.)
That doesn’t make any sense. A random woman in public is very unlikely to be a scammer. A woman approaching you for sex is nearly guaranteed to be something you are going to pay for.
The woman in the TikTok didn’t even mention sex
I have half a thought somewhere that's something like "having a pet that you really like having around you can be a good way to learn how to learn body language or other nonverbal communication, and especially that this learning can take time" that's probably applicable to dating, though I'm also sort of a lifetime of pets in to noticing this is a thing. Anyways, can especially recommend cats for this because they tend to have very strong personalities and preferences that they often may not be able to clearly communicate to you but there's also often overlap and body language commonalities among most cats, dunno how true this is for dogs. Surely this is something you learn from having children too but it's harder to get those from PetSmart.
I think trying to give advice to people about dating their friends is a trap for everyone involved; anyone who could give this advice doesn't need it and anyone who needs to receive it isn't in a position to understand it (I guess, this is the problem of generational knowledge transfer generally but anyways). And this is the precise thing where getting it wrong is responsible for probably 90+% of gender relations discourse.
Lazy River had the correct take on the fake random public flirting; it's not just "am I being filmed" it's "who's watching in an attempt to get a cheap laugh from my impending suffering". The closest I ever got to being genuinely bullied growing up was a girl pulling this kind of grift in a way that, fortunately for me, ended up being sort of hilariously pathetic on her end.
I dunno if this is a novel take but I never see anyone mention that it's less important whether you have common interests than that you have compatible interests. There was a viral tweet going around from some dating show where some girl was being verbally excited about her planned scuba trip to Australia or whatever and everyone was being Big Mad that none of the guys wanted to date this cute nerdy girl but like who was going to say yes that didn't also have an extremely specific preference for scuba travel regardless of how hot or otherwise nerdy she is?
Fake flirting has a justifiably high expected correlation with bullying or intended exploitation. The filming in question is actually more benign than a lot of other possible situations. If someone thinks flirting is fake, it makes sense for them to try to get out as quickly as possible.
Humans make life difficult for themselves
-- a schizoid watching from the sidelines.
Edit: Zvi's post was a jumbled mess, like a pavement pizza.
I do know, on many levels, that approaching (women, as a man) is fine – as of 'recently', I've been doing it regularly, I haven't cared about 'what happens next', and I've had several almost pleasant rejections, and am flirting for fun anyways (and it IS fun).
I've also had some not-great (but not actually bad) rejections, also 'recently', and they were fine too after the (mild) acute pain faded.
And yet I can still feel the FEAR, however faint of a whisper it might be most of the time.
And the inherent 'laziness' of most people on social media results in a lot of careless 'letting the wackos define a group' being passed around about everything. Cartoon Hates Her specifically has done this in a way I found irritating enough to comment on! And I do it too! One of the habits of the Rationalists I've most appreciated is not just emphasizing the virtue accuracy, but also the virtue of precision – not 'men do ...' but 'one guy I met one time told me that he ...' or 'several friends told me that a guy had done ...'.
And I've been unfollowing and often muting a bunch of people that are particularly bad about this. It is grating and wearying and it seems clear to me how it could be easily perceived as more like strict norms than sloppy expression by lots of people. I feel it myself even if I can also (sometimes) notice it and correct any changes in my thinking.
I do think you're maybe underestimating the sheer epistemic _adversity_ of a lot of people's specific romantic histories. It's really hard to develop accurate models with poor AND limited data that is extremely more salient than any watered-down 'paraphrase' of any other kind of larger scale 'aggregation' of other's data. We – everyone – are absolutely living in radically different bubbles. (And it absolutely doesn't help that the epistemic waterline is generally SO low.)
I tried a matchmaker during Covid, because it was harder to date then. Do not recommend. Matched me much worse than I did on my own with apps. Presently married, and definitely not to a woman the matchmakers found.
I wonder how reliable that friends first data is. It doesn’t sound accurate. The friends first then dated is nearly unheard of in my social circles. A ton of couples met in college but they were not friends first. What I have heard is “we knew of each other then dated later.” Often just due to one of the two not being single at the time.
But for the post college crowd, meeting through friends still seems uncommon. It feels like online dating is the far and away leader for the educated professional crowd who didn’t meet their spouse in college.
A lot of these seemed to be grasping at straws more than usual.
“Any way to change the topic into other things shakes that up and puts you in a better spot. It might be a bit slower, but you absolutely get to know people when not explicitly discussing getting to know them.”
I would submit that this is true in almost any social situation, and that you actually get to know people *better* by talking about ideas, things, other people, almost anything in fact than poking at the (inevitably curated) image of themselves they want to present to the world.