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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29757 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Came across the following post from the other site. The OP deleted it shortly after posting, so I'm pasting it below (strange that the mobile app preserves the text longer than the web app).

Title: I (29M) got 200 Hinge matches in 1 week, likely because of my job title. Am I wrong to feel some resentment?

I (29M) want to start out by saying I'm not a particularly handsome or good looking guy. I have a high hairline and a very weak chin. I'm a bit overweight, and not muscular. I'm 5'9.

After not dating for 3 years (I got brutally cheated on), in 2020, I finally made my first Hinge profile. I got maybe 20 matches over a month, then Trump went on TV and said he was cancelling all flights to Europe because of COVID and I ended up deleting the app.

During COVID, my career really became a rocketship. I had always been a hard worker (I don't drink and I'm kind of introverted, so I mostly focused on work), but things really came together for me during the pandemic in a really surreal way. Working remotely at my parents house, I spent a year rising up in my firm, and then because of my niche knowledge set, I was recruited to become a Partner at a very large venture capital firm. I'm currently making $350k a year, and depending on how the fund performs, up to $1.5M a year. None of it really seems real because I essentially didn't talk to anyone but my parents for two years and have basically been sitting all day on a computer in my highschool bedroom.

At the beginning of the year, I moved to a big city and started a relationship with a former friend. It was really tumultuous (she had much more experience than me and seemed to relish throwing it in my face) and it ended after half a year. It was my second relationship of my life, and she really hurt me in ways I'm still unpacking. She told me I'm lacking in confidence and inexperienced and immature and hard to love.

A few months after the break up, I decided to create another profile on Hinge just to see what was out there. I put on my profile that I was "Partner at VC firm" and HOLY SH*T. I got over 200 matches in a single week. Not to be shallow but these aren't mediocre people either. Many are beautiful women with serious jobs as doctors, private equity analysts, lawyers, etc and more. Several of them have messaged me first.

I feel absolutely and totally overwhelmed, and I've since stopped swiping on the app. I can't bring myself to message a single person, and over a hundred have already fallen into the "hidden" section because I never sent a message.

On one hand, I am feeling so overwhelmed by this female attention that I don't know what to do. All of these women seem to have their lives together, and meanwhile I'm this introvert with a weird internet job with no dating experience (seriously, I've never asked a woman on a date formally) and I don't know how to catch up. I seriously feel like if I meet in real life, they'll smell my inexperience on me. I also, for some reason, just don't want to be rejected if that makes sense.

On the other hand (and I'm doing my best to unpack this here), I can't help but feel disappointed at how much more female attention I'm receiving as a result of having a more prestigious job and title. I think the person I was 3 years ago was much happier, kinder, less jaded, more fun, more ambitious, more authentic and all around better as a whole - but I could barely get any matches. I literally miss the person I was. I look at these beautiful women in my matches now and I kind of feel a sense of resentment towards them for only showing interest in me now that I've climbed the mountain or become (at least outwardly) a "finished product" so to speak. I can't help but feel like I'm basically just being objectified for my money, and any relationship I start with these women will be tainted.

If anyone could offer some words of advice on how to get my footing or at least help me unpack why the way I'm feeling is incorrect, I'd be very appreciative. Thank you.

https://old.reddit.com/r/amiwrong/comments/161q6df/i_29m_got_200_hinge_matches_in_1_week_likely/

Once you've adequately formed your opinion on this, I would like to ask:

How quickly did you think that the story is entirely made up?

I'm posting this because I'm worried that I am more gullible than I thought. Hundreds of comments on the thread point out fairly convincing reasons why this is a creative writing exercise: some claim to have equally prestigious job titles and/or make more money, but did not experience anywhere close to the reported success here; others say they've temporarily changed their job titles to something made up and far fancier and it didn't move the needle; then some point out that 200 matches in a week would require he swipe 400 times at a 50% match rate, and that seems excessive for one who claims to not have bothered messaging any of them; finally, there are some vaguely incel tropes that make this seem more likely to have a hidden agenda in influencing popular opinions.

In my defense, the majority of comments seems to buy into the OP's story and responds sincerely; they also have more upvotes, suggesting the majority of lurkers tend to agree. But I think most people here hold themselves to a higher intellectual/rational standard than the average Redditor, so I do blame myself for not thinking critically enough. Are there any simple heuristics that I could have employed here to better avoid falling for creative writing exercises? I did think the post had challenged my priors about what drove dating app success rates, so perhaps one strategy is simply to be more faithful to your priors.

P.S. lol @ the new 500,000 character limit on posts. Seems excessive...

Like everyone else, I assume most posts like this on reddit are fake more often than not. Others have mentioned a lot of the reasons to doubt its veracity. A few things that stood out to me:

  1. Too many details that are just too perfect for the agenda it's pushing. Incels really hate that high-status women chase high-status (wealthy) men, so "Ugly loser living in his parents' basement attic suddenly gets lots of matches when he advertises that he makes a lot of money" is candy for a certain type of redditor.
  2. I'm not all that familiar with the financial world, but the idea that his career as a "VC partner" "skyrocketed" while he's working from home in his parents' house in his jammies seems... unlikely.
  3. $350K is a very decent salary, especially if he has occasional $1M+ years, but it's not mega-rich, super-high status, it's not Hollywood star or decimillionaire-level success, of the sort that would have literally hundreds of hot doctors, lawyers, and private equity analysts (whatever that is) flocking to him. Especially if he's as homely he describes. That sounds like a number someone who's never made anywhere near that pulled out of the air as "makes a lot of money."
  4. Someone who lists himself as a "VC Partner", especially if he doesn't look like one in his profile, I would assume raise alarm bells with women viewing him. Women know just as well as men do that people lie on the Internet. I'm sure he'd get some hits, but I doubt he'd get that many VC-chasers credulously sliding into his DMs.

I came to the same conclusions. The chances of someone being a VC Partner and living in mom’s basement are basically nil. The people hiring him would have noted signs of low status (and not having your own place and car are extremely low status.

Some of the richest people I know still live with/at their parents' place, but their parents place is like a $20m Manhattan townhouse or 14-room co-op in a top building where they have a chef, a live-in housekeeper, and their parents are away 8 months of the year so they essentially live 'by themselves'.

That still wouldn’t be “living in mom’s basement.” He’d have a whole wing of the house, and a nice car that would advertise status enough to overcome the perception of poverty. Especially if the family is obviously rich.

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