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Honestly I’ve been surprised how poorly my dating life has gone despite ostensibly having it together. I’m nearing 30 and it feels like an endless slog. But hey if every person I meet is an asshole, it might just be me.
I like the term ‘jestermaxxing’ and similar vocab from 2010s incel fourms now appropriated by streamers. That word feels like what I have to do - desperately try to entertain someone indifferent to me. 9/10 times, even if I give it my best, it’s not going anywhere.
I wouldn’t generalize that to most people around me, but I really think women will never appreciate the kind of perseverance it takes to keep pushing forward. It’s a unique and lonely experience, but you get a glimpse of hope every once in a while and go chase it down.
Status and social skills help but unless you put yourself in situations where you will meet people, you will work and then go home to sit around with your thoughts. The places where you meet people could expose you to people that hurt your ego and make you even more cynical. But it’s better than not trying.
I think the dating apps are especially demeaning and demoralizing for men. While many women pay for subscriptions, it’s so that they can be extra picky and use travel features. For men it is a racket built to exploit your loneliness - but hey maybe that 48 hour super Boost for $100 will get you somewhere!
Of course there’s a lot more value in long term commitments etc. I’m sure if you meet kind women at art galleries and through friends of friends, it’s much different. But if you want occasional meet-cutes or to meet someone at a club, you sure have to put up with a lot.
Do NOT do this. Women can smell desperation from a mile away and it's a huge turnoff. You also need to align your expectations properly - the majority of people you meet on first dates will not be a good match.
You're already doing good if you can regularly go on dates. You just need to improve this experience. Try to have a mindset where you can still have fun and you can get some enjoyment out of it, even if it goes nowhere. It's extremely hard to do for antisocial people, but remember normies can enjoy chatting up passerbys that they will never see again.
Of course you still have to looksmaxx and up your social and flirting skills as well. Don't neglect this, as it highly affects the level of indifference that women have.
It Just so Happens that as your looks improve—your personality, social and flirting skills, and perceived showering frequency all somehow automatically improve with women as well without any further work or life changes.
Doesn't this make logical sense?
Sometimes I do feel like there's a kind of opposite effect for men where if a 8+ starts being friendly to me for no obvious reasons my immediate reaction is 'wait what's the angle/scam here' as opposed to 'woah this beautiful person has randomly decided to kindle a friendshi'
I mean, one of the few situations where an average man will suddenly find himself on the receiving end of attention from multiple attractive women is going to a (decent) strip club. Where, of course, they are trained and optimized for getting you to pay as much money as quickly as possible.
So you figure out real quick that attractive women showing spontaneous interest are usually being put up to it by some other third party with other motivations.
And it is very hard to identify the rare case where the intentions are genuine, and the further along you go trying to figure it out, the more you're exposing yourself to whatever scam is being run.
One time I made a profile on a sugar-daddy website, and had the crazy experience of the hot women (well, assuming they were real) crowding into MY inbox. Including, through random utter chance, one girl I knew from high school.
Quite the clearpill for me.
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I can relate to this quite a bit, and I think the whole dating app experience has made me quite indifferent to most women in general. I'd rather have my independence than date or marry someone I don't like.
It was a terrible thing to notice that the mere act of swiping across 100 profiles makes me feel more indifference towards them all.
It isn't helped by the fact that most profiles converge on 1 of like 3 archetypes.
And then getting a handful of matches, engaging in the best playful banter you can manage, then having the interest peter out and then unmatch without a date and its clear that there's no point to investing feelings.
No individual connection has value at that point.
One of the problems with internet dating is that people end up trying to force/enforce a connection before they'll meet IRL. There are all kinds of understandable reasons for why that is the way it is, but dating might be a little bit less onerous if people could dial their expectations down to the level where they could go out for a coffee without having to convince themselves that this one definitely might be The One.
With lowered expectations and the prospect of a raft of more low stakes dates there would less incentive for people to get overly invested in the outcome of any particular date before that connection has developed.
It's hard to solve a stopping problem if you constantly resist, or encounter resistance, starting.
Yes and no.
Even moderately attractive women have a ton of options in front of them. They could go on a new casual date every single day if so inclined.
The stopping problem is basically the ENTIRETY of what they face. But most don't have anything resembling a strategy.
And the very fact that they have so many options inflates their self-perceived value, so their immediate incentive is to keep going until their PERFECT candidate arrives.
But that perfect candidate is likely a dude who, himself, has many options. And so the market devolves into something like the Redpill model of women in active pursuit of those perfect candidates, and those perfect candidates able to passively select/exploit casual hookups almost at will.
For the guys who don't have options, there's not much to be done about their stopping problem, since they can't select from what they don't have.
I really think its just the gamified nature of the apps that makes it unworkable even for those with a good strategy as it mixes in people with very different expectations and backgrounds.
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Do share.
In my local area you have:
The nominally conservative country girl who loves church and outdoorsy stuff and the beach. But there's usually some tell on her profile that she's not REALLLY ready to settle down. Beach photos in a bikini often somewhere on the profile, and THAT'S usually how you find out if she's gone heavy on the tattoos or not. Photos of her wearing cowboy gear, hanging out with the girlies, and sometimes holding a fish.
The career-first lady, always has the professional outfits, usually has travel photos, usually subtly implies that she makes more than you. Usually in their mid-late twenties, these are good prospects but the question is always 'why hasn't someone snatched you up.' Gym selfies are the raciest thing they'll post. Rarely tatted up.
Nurses. Oh so many nurses. Usually the most direct about what they expect/look for, and almost always have some racy pics in clubwear, or bikini, or just something casually suggestive. The vague message seems to be "I'm hot and approachable but NOT. EASY." 80% of the time happily displaying tats.
Less common but comes up as well are the bartenders/service workers who are either the ones who are actually modest in their expectations or the least aware of their relatively low status.
There's a deluge of single moms but I filter those.
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There's a slog both ways but it expresses itself differently. I'm now married with kids but did like 2 years on the dating apps in 2020-2022 plus still have friends/relatives of both genders on them.
Women tend to be more of the 'generate a profile for 2 weeks every 6 months in a moment of particular loneliness/boredom then either find a boyfriend or get spooked off by a bad experience' model whilst men are more eternally optimistic. Plus the barometer for 'bad experience' for women in my experience can just be 'oh I had 2 dates with guy and they went nowhere and I had a project at work pick up' so it's not like they're even being raped and pillaged perse.
I got super lucky with my now-wife since I essentially happened to be first cab off the rank on her second attempt at dating after a multi-year relationship, especially since she flaked on a first date with the guy she'd set one up with on the prior 6 months window and then deleted the app. I know my current status is essentially pure RNG dice rolling even having found somebody good who I have chemistry with, since with her pattern of behavior realistically there were probably thousands of eligible bachelors in my proximity and she was only going to engage with like... 5 per app download period. And this pattern is quite similar for her friends and other 'educated, not particularly promiscuous and career orientated' women who I've met socially and dated briefly.
To be fair, one could argue that everything about our lives is RNG dice rolling. Even for the things that we successfully work to improve about our lives, it's RNG dice rolling that gave us the necessary health, tenacity, intelligence, and lucky happenstance of birth location to actually make the improvent possible.
With some of our closest friends, it's often possible that if on certain days we had stayed home for some random reason (maybe a head cold) instead of going to a particular location, we might never have had the conversation that initiated our friendships. Same with many other things.
But this point of view, while it may possibly be true, is not a very fun or helpful one to hold, it seems. The sense of agency feels good and is motivating.
I don't mind RNG when
A) its the natural result of large scale processes that combine the effects of hundreds of different inputs...
and
B) There are clearly steps I can take to change my own odds or move to a different place in the gamespace where I think the odds are more favorable, and thus have some control of my fate.
The whole problem with apps is they're manipulating the RNG for their purposes, and in so doing skewing outcomes in a way that is REALLY bad for the players, and in a way that the players themselves are unable to influence.
Even in a Casino I can at least make the choice between playing Poker, Blackjack, Slots, or Roulette, with the varying influence of 'skill' on the outcomes that is available there, even knowing the house always wins.
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I mean I'd agree broadly that one's life would likely change a lot without exact specific conversations etcetera. On the other hand if you assume you've got like actual proximity to most people in your social life through work, school, hobbies etcetera you do get a lot more shots.
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See, when you say it out loud like that it sounds genuinely psychopathic and someone looking at this from the outside would say that the ecosystem created by the apps needs to burn down entirely and the earth salted.
"I go the casino once every 6 months, play the slots for 10 minutes, and if I don't hit a jackpot such that a boyfriend pops out, I just leave."
This would be an unhealthy way to engage with virtually any hobby, but triply so when it comes to finding a partner.
Or maybe its more closely modeled as "opening up the fridge and browsing for food, leave if nothing appeals, then repeat until you're hungry enough to accept a particular option."
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Nah, you really don't. Recognize that the juice ain't worth the squeeze, and bring balance back to the force.
Based and you-were-the-Chosen-One-pilled
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I can't speak to the apps, but I can say that the worst time in my life was when I had a strong desire for romance in early college, and felt desperately lonely. I was already struggling socially, and I tried to go and meet people anywhere I could, and I just felt like I was getting nowhere. What you said about perseverance is very true, but another thing that I'd note is that, because the male dating strategy is inherently a numbers game, the more you put yourself out there, the more your oneitis gets sanded down. But the flipside is that this means the passionate romantic hope you might be able to experience for a new woman get sanded down as well, and if you're a romantic-type man you start to lose motivation and people start blending together into an amorphous mass. I remember when I was a teenager I could feel such passionate crushes and such intense butterflies, but by the time I made it through college I couldn't really feel much of that at all. It just felt numb.
I'm really sorry.
I think that's normal. That's what growing up is, and it happens to everybody. That first crush, that first kiss, that first love really hits different, but the butterflies mostly are just adrenaline. And the novelty makes it special and forms stronger memories.
It's sad in a way, but I find it reassuring that it happens to most people, even the people who end up being married to their first crush for 60 years.
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Very much agreed. Especially when your grandparents and in some cases parents got the real deal - they met one person that decided to accompany them forever.
It seems practical to sand down those teenage feelings but you’re right that it makes you lose your muscle memory for it.
The one thing I always try to tell myself is that you’re always thinking relative to what you have. I could just as well be miserable with someone I don’t particularly like and desperate for alone time. I could be dating someone really clingy or highly distant, which I wouldn’t like. All sorts of stuff. At least being alone is simple enough and the default state of being for most men.
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Yeah, it sucks. Being a man in dating is literally the meme Its essentially akin to the job market: practice interview with a career coach, practice for the technical interview, get to the 100th round, and then receive a rejection email. Not to mention the 1000s of resumes to each job posting. Just to find one job that pays $7 an hour.
It used to be that people met at church or through friends of friends, but because friendship & socializing is on decline, the above is essentially the path to success going forward until we can find a solution to lack of socialization. Its the major thing that exemplifies the issue (that and the economic circumstances mentioned)
If it makes you feel better, 1 in 4 people over 40 never get married so you arent alone, if you dont find someone.
This women does
I just wonder how other men that aren’t doing as well handle it. I think about that Elliot Rodger kid or like the sino-cel subreddits. While the incel panic was overblown, the feelings that come from rejection and disillusionment are strong and upsetting. Worst is that I don’t think there’s really a healthy way to deconstruct it except to just keep pushing on.
But status is a good cushion. I would really, really hate to have these feelings and also feel less than other men who went to college and got good jobs etc. All things considered, I’m doing alright and things will fall into place.
I know this Indian guy who got banned from a bar for creeping out some of the female guests, and bro insisted on defending himself instead of, you know, deleting his socials and hopping to the next city over with a new name. He went years prior to this tanking probably a 100 rejections. Talk about persistence. Anyway, about 6 months later, he posted an Instagram reel with a gorgeous Japanese broad celebrating their engagement. They seem to be going good as a married couple almost 3 years on...
Not that I'd rec his strats or try them out personally, but if there ever was a case that persistence really does reward after all (coupled with a massive stroke of luck obviously). Not letting the rejections and shaming to knock his self esteem is deadass a superpower.
Based persistent Chadpreet. “No way! Why should I have to delete socials and change cities with a new name? The barthots are the ones who suck!”
It’s easily worth offending the princess complexes of a hundred barthots if it lands you a cutie 3.14 Japanese waifu in the end. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Given female passivity, a lot of dating success for men is driven by the numbers game. You miss every shot you don’t take.
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Ways that deconstruct it are not natively compatible with [human] biology.
You are supposed to get laid or die trying, you are supposed to kill other men and take their wives if there are not enough of them for you.
It's not supposed to be tolerable; organisms that can tolerate it are either malfunctioning or engaging adaptive responses to hopeless situations, generally through a quasi-hibernation process, typically called "depression" when it misidentifies successful conditions as hopeless. This summarizes the self-replicating feature of the organic process called 'life'.
Fortunately for modern civilization, we've done a pretty good job of killing all reason to desire things and provided reasonable simulations, to the point that most people don't notice and as such conditions are generally stable.
This is a caricature, it's biological determinism on meth. What's the "supposed to" here? Cro Magnon rules? I balk at a lot of what I read, both here and everywhere, but this seems as if it were written by an AI writing about humanity after having trained wholly on the meager, repetitive opus of PUA gurus. A human society that normalized homicidal competition for sex would not long survive.
Rising above savagery may seem to some as an impediment to getting laid, or whatever the goal is in this case. But come on.
That's what "instinct" means, yes. Is it perfectly adapted at all times, particularly in modern post-scarcity environments? Well...
Human societies normalize this all the time; it's just usually directed towards the tribe over the hill there. It's also not necessarily this way,
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