What's Up, Doc?

Welcome to my favorite time of the year. Despite the Super El Niño trying it's damndest to make everything unseasonable, fall is finally here with it's cooler days, long cozy nights, a hint of crispness in the wind and the festive spookiness of Halloween. It's actually nice to be able to enjoy some coffee out on the porch in the crepuscular hours, watching the sun slowly break over the horizon and listen to the city wake up... something that's next to impossible when it insists on being 89 degrees at 6 AM and only getting warmer from there.
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I swear I feel like a werewolf except I start growing a cardigan and a checked button-down instead of fur and fangs.

Besides the cooler weather and my love of outerwear that I can't wear for 75% of the year, it's a time for getting together with friends, hosting fun, chill parties and feeling the warmth of companionship as we come together while the shadows grow long and the dusk comes earlier and earlier.

If there were ever a time when you get the urge to cuddle up with that special someone... well this is the start. But first, you have to find that special someone... and I want to talk a little about one of the ways you might be sabotaging your own progress.

Let's do this...

No, She's Not Talking to 400 People While you're Talking to 20...

This week, I've had a lot of thoughts about a myth that keeps spreading like a fungus through Reddit, TikTok and elsewhere: the concept of who has “options”. That is, that women have “more options” than men do. This shows up in various forms and incarnations, but the version that's currently sitting atop that very, very cursed leaderboard is a variation of “You’re talking to 20 women on the apps, but she's talking to 400 men”.

I'm going to be blunt here: this belief is not just unhelpful, but it’s also untrue to a degree that only serves to prove that the people who sincerely believe this don’t have female friends or don't actually listen to them when they talk about their experiences on the apps.
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The logic goes that every woman on a dating app is getting flooded with attention from men, which means that she has her pick of the lot. Meanwhile, men are having to fight to get even a little attention from women, and are in a competition with every other man who is talking to her. Worse, because women “control” access to sex, they get to set the terms, while men – who crave sex like plants crave water – have to accept them. So if you’re average at best, then you end up having to take what you can get and should just get used to being alone forever. Meanwhile for women, dating is like a taxi: she raises her hand and waits for a line of men to pull up.
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To be perfectly frank, it doesn't take much to realize that this isn't true; the mere fact that there are literally hundreds of books and magazines and millions of videos, blogs and social media posts offering to teach women how to find boyfriends and husbands would put the lie to that if it were that easy. It’s almost impossible to overstate how many women struggle meet people… y’know, just like men.

It's an easy belief to get suckered into because it feels true, especially if you feel like you're struggling to get even the briefest amount of attention. You feel like you're jumping up and down and waving your arms for people who never seem to realize that you're even there. Worse, knowing that other men are on the apps shotgunning their attention everywhere leads to your feeling like you're standing at the back of a very, very long line and everyone in front of you is a former Abercrombie and Fitch model.
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This is especially true when it seems like it takes no effort for women to be deluged with swipes, roses and messages from people almost before she hits "publish" on her profile. How is a normal guy supposed to stand out or even compete in this environment?
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But let's acknowledge something important first: one of the reasons – the single biggest reason, really – why women get more unsolicited messages from men is because the gender ratios on most dating apps are wildly out of balance; most dating apps have between a 3:1 to 4:1 ratio of male users to female users, and many are worse. It’s also important to note that the most common tactic men use on dating apps with a double opt-in mechanic like swiping or mutual liking is to swipe right on everyone in order to maximize matches and sort out who they’re actually interested in after they match. It's the shotgun approach: throw enough lead in the air and you'll hit something, eventually, right?
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This is emphatically not the same as women having their pick of hundreds upon hundreds of men. In fact, this deluge tends to have the opposite effect: women tend to get overwhelmed by the storm of low-quality, low-effort and frankly dehumanizing attention. At best, it's like drinking from the firehose. At worst, it's a reminder of how many of these men aren't considering her as a person, but as a bot, someone who doesn't even rate more than a generically written message that gets blasted to everyone on the app. And that's assuming that she's not just being used as a means to juice someone's position in the app's algorithm.
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But for the sake of argument, let’s grant those numbers are true: every woman on a dating app gets their pick from every adult male in her geographic region. Here’s the first mistake that’s baked into the premise: that women are actually considering all 400 men as possibilities. They aren’t. What’s actually happening is that the vast majority of these messages are 12 characters long. Not words. Characters, including spaces and punctuation. The messages that exceed the average tend to be low-quality and lower effort – messages pasted from a pre-written template or ghost-written by ChatGPT serving as a digital Cyrano DeBergerac from someone looking for the first same-night hook-up he can find that will require the least amount of actual investment from him.

These messages don't get dates, they get tossed in the trash. They’re incredibly obvious, even insulting. But that doesn’t mean that what remains is the cream of the crop. It just means that these are the ones that put in a little more effort than their peers. But many of those are often poorly written and poorly thought out – many of them proving to be boorish come-ons, preemptively angry and hostile screeds or the quintessential "Crouching Nice Guy/Hidden Douchebag", where a seemingly normal message is followed up by a demand for nudes or trying to get her to come to his place for their first "date". By the time someone has waded through the flood – and it is a flood – of bad-faith matches and impersonal messages, women aren't feeling "in demand" or popular, they're feeling exhausted and burned out. It's like trying to find a song you like on the radio while dozens of other radios are blaring loud enough to drown out almost everything else until it's just a cacophony of white noise and hints of notes just at the edge of your hearing.

The next mistake that is baked into this premise is that women are comparing their digital suitors to one another, only picking the top tier candidates who get to advance to the next round of competition.

The reality is far different: women aren't comparing profiles against one another and deciding who to pick after tallying up points on a spreadsheet. They're looking at one and saying "do I like this person, yes or no?" and then moving on to the next, asking the same question. Your competition isn't against other men; your competition is against Netflix and a glass of Malbec, a night of playing board games at a friend's house or dinner with her family. You're not trying to beat out other men, you're trying to beat out the frustration of, as my friend and co-host Dr. Liz says, "looking for a sip of clean water in a swamp."

Here is the truth: the other men on the app aren't the obstacle you face in getting people's attention. Once you have fine-tuned your profile, picked your best photos and polished everything to a fine degree, your single biggest obstacle... are the apps themselves. Despite how it feels, the apps aren't designed to keep you single; they're designed to frustrate you. Not too much – not so much that you delete your account. Just enough to get you to convert to a higher-tier subscription.

It's best to think of dating apps like Candy Crush; it's technically possible to use them for free, and they'll encourage you to think that it's possible. It'll even feel at first like you're getting the better end of the deal. But past a certain point, that initial algorithmic boost wears off and suddenly the frustration starts to seep in, bit by bit, drop by drop. Now, the offers of boosts and power ups start to appear more and more and feel more appealing. Sure, you swore you weren't going to pay but look at this deal they're offering. Surely a 50% discount on a gem booster pack is worth the price, right?

So it is with the apps; after that initial trial period, the matches slow from a stream, to a trickle, to a drip. The recommended profiles are poor fits and you start getting those hints and nudges that the good ones are just waiting behind the rose-covered gates. It couldn't hurt to buy one pack of roses, right? Would it be so crazy to pay to boost your profile in the algorithm? And honestly... maybe they have a point and subscribing to the Plus or Pro tier might get you better matches...

It's not men getting in your way, it's the apps themselves. Women aren't getting the better end of the deal; they're getting as shitty of an experience, just in different flavors. This myth of their advantages on the apps only serve to demoralize you, frustrate you and sap your emotional resilience... and leave you more willing to pay up for services that won't and can't deliver what they promise.

This is why I'm such a broken record on the topic: dating apps should be a supplement to how you meet people, not a replacement, and used with a degree of mindfulness and care. They're designed to bait you into a cycle of swiping and frustration, to keep you feeling like you have to check in constantly, see if someone has seem your message, seen if anyone has swiped right on you and always feeling like you're just on the cusp of finally breaking through.

It's a curious game... and the only way to win is not to play by their rules.

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From The Archives

​This Is How You Break Your Self-Limiting Beliefs​

Random Open Tabs

What I'm reading: Since the live-action adaptation is coming soon to Apple TV, I thought this would be a good time to read William Gibson's Neuromancer for the first time since... Christ, since the 90s. I'll be honest: I didn't care for it much at the time. I thought the way it portrayed computers was laughably inaccurate (ah the arrogant certainty of youth), the jargon self-indulgent and the plot to be meandering. I was a much bigger fan of Snow Crash instead.
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Reading it now, decades later... shit this is a fun read, and more approachable in some ways than it's descendants like Cyberpunk 2047. And damn if the are-they-saviors-or-devils debate about the AIs doesn't hit different in the far flung future of 2026. (Affiliate link)

What I'm Watching: Speaking of Apple TV, call me late to the party but 'tis the season and so I'm just now getting into Widow's Bay. Two episodes in and it's hitting a lovely balance of spooks, chills and humor. Matthew Rhys and Betty Gilpen are excellent but frankly, my standout favorite is Stephen Root – one of my favorite character actors and "hey it's THAT guy!" working today.

What I'm Listening To: In "least expected album drop" news, Social Distortion just their first new album in almost 20 years and I regret to inform you that it slaps.

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I've ended up putting their cover of "Wicked Game" on multiple playlists because it's such an infectious little ear-worm that manages to take a song that seems outside their usual oeuvre and yet melds wonderfully into their style.

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The latest episode of Do As We Say (Not As They Did) drops this Wednesday; Dr. Liz and I dig further into the topic of dating apps, who really has the power in dating and a whole host of ADHD-fueled digressions and targets. Come hang out with us!

If you haven't already, be sure to check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, I Heart Radio, YouTube, and everywhere else fine podcasts are casted. And if you're digging what you hear, hey, share with your friends and leave us a review; it's a big, big help.

That's gonna do it for now. Stay safe, be good to yourselves and I'll be seeing you again soon...

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