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00:00:01
Just Scott - My Dating App Process
112 Plays2 years ago
In which I just talk for 90 minutes straight about my approach for using the datng apps. Yep.
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Transcript
Scott's Perspective on Dating Apps
00:00:01
Speaker
And hello, welcome back to wish you all the best personal podcast about modern dating. This is Scott. It's just me this time. Um, and I thought I would do an episode kind of talking about my dating app process. Um, I got to chat with Chris, uh, last episode, um, which is, I thought a really awesome conversation. I look forward to talking to him again. Um,
00:00:29
Speaker
I think he and I definitely see some things differently, but I think that's really great.
The Importance of Open Conversations for Men
00:00:34
Speaker
I really, I don't know, I'm really proud to kind of put that out there and kind of hold that up as an example of how I think men can talk to each other and support each other through this vulnerable stuff, even if we're not like on the exact same page in the hymnal, if you will, on everything. But I think a lot of his perspective,
00:00:59
Speaker
really helps me to pressure test or to see how I approach dating from a different perspective. And that's always really helpful to me.
00:01:14
Speaker
Anyway, so I got chatting with Chris last episode about this stuff and he kind of brought up, and I've mentioned this in the past, how I use the apps. I have like a, I don't want to take a system, but I have like an approach, I guess, that I use or that I try to use. And yeah, I want to talk about that this time.
00:01:42
Speaker
I want to talk about it not because I think it's correct.
Complexities of Modern Romance and Dating Apps
00:01:47
Speaker
The superstitions that I have developed about the dating apps have led me to think that this is what works for me.
00:01:59
Speaker
any and all of this could absolutely be wrong. I'll get into it as I go through the process, but there is so much about modern dating that is super opaque and even more opaque than, or I don't know, I feel like 50 years ago, someone could have said, oh, no one knows what the ladies want or whatever, and that in some sense is opaque. I mean, that's kind of stupid on its face.
00:02:26
Speaker
Now that technology is like an inextricable piece of modern romance, the algorithms and the systems for that technology to connect people
00:02:43
Speaker
are important and it's easy to spend a lot of time trying to figure out like how to convince Hinge to show you in a good light to a person you want to meet, right? And to the best of my knowledge, I've done a decent amount of digging, but like all of those algorithms are a black box. You don't get to know how that stuff works, right?
00:03:11
Speaker
And so even on top of the difficult to understand or perhaps even impossible to understand nature of like other humans, right? Like the guesswork that goes into how can I make myself attractive to that person, right? There's a lot of guesswork there. I don't want to belittle that.
00:03:31
Speaker
But on top of that, we also have this complex system or maybe complex system, but this unknown system of the dating apps and how they work. And so I like to say I have developed a certain set of superstitions about how this stuff works. And I do kind of want to call them superstitions because it's not based on like hard data. It's based on
00:04:00
Speaker
anecdotes and I don't know. Anyway, I'm putting a big caveat out in front of this, which is to say that I'm sure that a lot of this is wrong. I'm sure that if somebody wants to, they can go digging and cite something and tell me that I'm absolutely wrong.
00:04:16
Speaker
But mostly, I want to put this out there because I don't know. At least in my experience, I don't hear men talking about this, nor do I hear women talking about this, really. I think this is kind of like how you use the apps is kind of a vulnerable and sensitive topic. And again, for men and for women in different ways, but I certainly don't see men talking about it. So I just kind of wanted to put this out there in the conversation and
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe it'll be insightful. I hope it's not too frustrating, but yeah.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah. So that's why I'm going for this and that's what this episode is. Right. Great. So welcome. Here we go.
Strategies for Using Dating Apps Effectively
00:05:02
Speaker
I just finished. So I tend to use the apps in like spurts for my own mental health. I don't just use them perpetually. When I
00:05:17
Speaker
A long time ago I started that way and I just downloaded them and I started using them and my approach was just keep swiping and chatting until you find the one on a date and then you can delete it.
00:05:34
Speaker
And I started that again when I was, again, single about three years ago. And I rapidly discovered that, I remembered, I rather rapidly remembered that I really despised the apps. And that's what first kind of sent me hunting for a matchmaker because I knew that as a strategy, the apps were going to be just a painful experience.
00:06:00
Speaker
And I honestly, I do still think the matchmaker is a really good way to go. I really do. But the apps are kind of the default way that we, that people meet each other now. And, you know, let's put a pin in that because I think at the very end of this, what I want to talk about is like,
00:06:26
Speaker
Actually, I don't think it's the greatest strategy. I think the best strategy is to just find a space in the real world where there are the kind of people who you're going to find interesting and put yourself there so that you can get to know those people. But that's a whole other conversation. So yeah, here's the apps. How to use the apps if you absolutely have to. Part, I don't know, whatever part this is.
00:06:52
Speaker
No, this is not going to be multi-part. We're just going to blaze through this. So I use them for a really short period of time. I do that because using them for too long just burns me out. I get addicted to them. They just soak up my free time. It gets really just
Balancing App Use with Real-World Connections
00:07:14
Speaker
the constant
00:07:17
Speaker
Rejection is hard to honestly, it's just bad for a mental health. Yeah, so I use them for about three ish weeks. And then I and then I then I delete them. Right. So how do I pick that time period? I basically pick a, you know, a month or two where I know that I'm going to be in town.
00:07:41
Speaker
I know that, you know, my weekends are more or less, um, available. Pardon me. Um, and, and, uh, yeah, when I'm not dating anyone, um, and kind of pick that timeframe and figure like, okay, well, if I've got two months ish where I could be dating, I'm going to spend that first three weeks on the apps.
00:08:04
Speaker
And then with any luck, I'll spend the remaining five weeks or whatever's up in the two months, hopefully going on dates and getting to know somebody awesome. And we'll see how that goes. Yeah.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I do it in spurts. That's kind of the reasoning, and that's how I do it. And I just finished kind of a three-week push where I was using the apps, and I'm not going to get into specifics about how it went, but it went
00:08:40
Speaker
I would say pretty normal. Um, I met a few people, um, and it's hard to say if that's anybody who there's like serious potential for, you know, that awesome connection. Um, but I've got a few folks on the radar or a couple of people on the radar who, who, um, I might go out with again. Um,
00:09:06
Speaker
But I think mostly at this point where I am right now, I feel a little...
00:09:12
Speaker
tired. And if I'm honest, I don't feel super hopeful, which is not to be too doom and gloom. I think there's a chance that maybe a date three that happens next week will be great. There's always that chance. I want to say stubbornly optimistic, but sometimes it's hard.
00:09:42
Speaker
So, yeah, I got to and I had a I don't know a bunch of kind of the standard or the expected things happened during this during this during this period. But I guess I'll get to that. I think I'll talk about that when I start talking about like the later stages of this, you know, process. And if you hear my air quotes in the air.
00:10:07
Speaker
because the standard stuff that I find pretty frustrating happens kind of near the end ish of the process when you get into chatting and trying to put a date on the calendar.
00:10:25
Speaker
Uh, that's a whole lot of, a whole lot of prelude enough of that. Um, how, how I use the apps, um, essentially, um, yeah. So three week ish spurts, uh, planned out, uh, in a time where I'm going to have hopefully the opportunity to spend some real time, have the bandwidth to.
00:10:43
Speaker
invest in somebody. It's like I'm planning for
Planning for Success on Dating Apps
00:10:45
Speaker
success. I wanna be on the apps when if I meet someone, I'll have the sort of emotional and schedule bandwidth to actually invest in them. And I think that's mostly for me a psychological thing, right? I wanna really feel like I am planning for success, planning for the possibility of success and not doing something where it's like, well, I'm gonna be,
00:11:11
Speaker
out of town for three months, but I might as well download the apps and try to meet somebody, just because that's more me using the apps out of habit or compulsion rather than using them intentionally to try and meet someone awesome. Right, so pick the time and then start using them.
00:11:37
Speaker
Right. Okay. So big overview. There's basically this funnel, right? You go from one end of a funnel to the other end. And at one end, there's 10,000 people out there on the internet for you to meet. And as you move right on this
00:11:53
Speaker
sort of funnel. There are fewer and fewer people as you kind of move to the right, right? So it's like at the very left, you've got all of the people on the dating app. And then as you move right to that, you filter out the people that you don't want to meet. So then you move to the group that's like the people you swiped right on.
00:12:14
Speaker
And then after that, that group is cut down to the people who swipe right on you, so the people you match with, people who want to talk to you. And then you get to the people who actually want to chat with you. And then you get to the people who want to switch to text message and actually text you on your phone instead of texting in the app. And then it's the people who want to get to either hop on a phone call or go for that first date, whatever sort of next phase is for you.
00:12:42
Speaker
And then, you know, so on and so forth. There are fewer and fewer people like after that first date, those people actually will show up to the date and then there's second date and third date and so on. And eventually the thing that I like to remember is that like on the far left of this funnel is, I don't know, 10,000 people, right? Some really unfathomably large number. And if unfathomably in terms of like, I couldn't possibly have a relationship or get to know that many people. But
00:13:10
Speaker
way over at the right, like at the end of this process, really what I'm looking for because I'm a monogamous person is one person, right? I'm just looking for one person who I'm interested in investing in romantically and they are interested in investing in me romantically. And I just like to remember that because it's like through this whole process,
00:13:37
Speaker
It's the most likely outcome of any connection, meaning any interaction at all on a dating app. The most likely outcome is either they're not going to be interested in me or I'm not going to be interested in them.
00:13:51
Speaker
But that's okay. I try to remind myself that's okay because I'm just looking for one person. Success is one success out of this process. I don't need lots of success. I don't need a lot of people to like me. I don't need a lot of people to want to chat with me. I don't need a lot of people to be excited about going on date two with me. Ultimately, I'm looking for one person who wants to do that. And if I can find that,
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what I'm looking for. Well, I hope this applies to everyone. I hope if you're listening to this, this applies to you. My standards are high. And by my standards, I just kind of mean that like
00:14:39
Speaker
I know who I'm looking for. I've got a pretty good idea of the kind of person who I'm willing to invest in romantically. I don't love the term invest. I've got a pretty good idea of who I want to connect with romantically.
00:14:56
Speaker
I'm 40. I'm gonna be 45 in a week. I know myself pretty well I've learned a lot from relationships in the past and I've put a lot of time and effort into trying to understand this well and To understanding myself well, so I know what I'm looking for right all that to say I try not to beat myself up too much As I'm going through this process because I don't I don't want to
00:15:25
Speaker
You know compromises is gonna happen and you're never gonna meet somebody and you're gonna think oh, this is perfect right but like I want to honor I Want to honor the parts of me that sort of understand what I'm looking for and I want to honor the parts of me that kind of understand my Value, you know, I try to see it that way As I search for someone who
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah, you know, as I search for someone who I want to spend the rest of my life with. Yeah, OK, so right. All yeah, I like to say there's a whole lot of people out there for you to meet on the dating apps. And really, if you're like me and you're a monogamous person, you're just looking for one, even if you're not monogamous, you're not looking for that many people, you know, like you're you're just looking for.
00:16:25
Speaker
you know, that unique, interesting person that's going to have that chemistry, that's going to have similar values, that's going to, that's going to kind of float your boat. And I think these days people are getting more aware, more specific about what they're looking for. And I think that's a good thing. And, you know, I don't, I don't think the apps do a great job of helping us select for that. But that's, that's still kind of, that's still, that's still the process.
Creating an Effective Dating App Profile
00:16:59
Speaker
Okay, so that's kind of the funnel. So the way that you get through that funnel, the way that you move from the big group on the left, I don't know what's on the left, but as the way you move from the big group and narrow that group down to that one person that you're gonna invest in in a relationship, the way you do that is through, at least in the dating apps, is through I think a pretty straightforward process, right?
00:17:23
Speaker
You make a profile. You create, depending on what app you're on, there's different ways to do it, but essentially you make some small digital thing that is your kind of marketing ad for you as a human being. So you make that profile first, and then you start swiping. And this works differently on different apps, but essentially you filter through other people's profiles and figure out if it's someone that you would like to match or not, right?
00:17:53
Speaker
You then, if you're lucky, you match with someone or multiple people and then you start chatting with them. And this is just sending messages in the app to try and figure out, basically trying to
00:18:09
Speaker
Well, I will argue basically trying to get off the app so that you can have an actual conversation. And then you start having a conversation over text is my kind of preferred next option, but you have some communication in some way other than the app. I would say usually text messages.
00:18:29
Speaker
and then kind of optionally, but I would recommend it, like a phone call or a video call, so you can kind of just break the ice and actually talk to the person. And then if that goes well, you have that first date, then if you're lucky, you're dating, and then if the dating goes well, then you're moving on to a relationship, right? So that's the whole process kind of in one very, very simple sort of flowchart. And
00:18:54
Speaker
So in that flowchart, the first half of it, everything from making a profile through to that first date, I would argue even a phone call or a video call, everything from making a profile on the app to that video call, everything in that process of this, every step of the way in that part of the process, I think,
00:19:21
Speaker
And this is horrible, but I really think of it as a game. I really think of it as like silly stuff that I'm doing, silly tactics that I have to follow, silly rules that I have to follow that are just trying to get me to that first date. It's just a game that I'm playing to try and get on a woman's calendar for that first date. And in my book, in my experience,
00:19:48
Speaker
everything that happens before that first date is washed away as soon as I meet that person. I might have picked up some facts about her life, some like where she went to school, does she have a dog, where does she live? But the actual getting a sense of who someone is as a human being,
00:20:16
Speaker
I don't think that I do any of that work until the first date. I think I wash everything clean on that first date. And I think most people, I'm guessing, I think most people kind of feel the same way, even if they haven't thought of it explicitly.
00:20:42
Speaker
Well, for a lot of reasons. Anyway, so the dating apps are essentially a horrible, horrible video game. And that's kind of how I think about it, which is not to say that I ever want to be awful to someone. It's never an excuse to be horrible, never an excuse to dehumanize someone, which is really easy to do. It's really easy to treat someone terribly when they're just two pictures and some text on your phone.
00:21:10
Speaker
I think about it that way. I put it in that framework. Seeing it as a game. Because it makes it easier for me to kind of do what I'm there to do, which is, you know, to try and meet a human being face to face. Yeah, so I guess I just want to put it put that out there.
00:21:34
Speaker
So yeah, let's talk about how I play this game. The first step, making a profile. I think whatever your profile is on the apps, I don't know, if you're on the internet and you have listened to any advice about how to make a profile, it's all
00:21:53
Speaker
kind of similar. I think it's different for men and for women. And I guess I'll talk about both here a little bit. But like for men, I think our challenges for making profiles is just that we're usually not very good at having pictures taken of ourselves. We're just not people who, you know, we're not socialized to
00:22:20
Speaker
to to take pictures of ourselves very often and so it's just hard to have good pictures it's hard it's hard to have pictures that like
00:22:29
Speaker
to show you in good lighting that are recent, that show you in a way that actually shows someone what you look like. So that's a challenge. So the profile part for guys I think that's hard is mostly the pictures. I've used a professional photographer in the past because I just decided it was time to get out there and I didn't have any pictures of myself, so I just hired somebody.
00:22:57
Speaker
I don't think you need to do that. I think the way to go here is just to tell your friends, hey, I'm making a dating profile. Can you help me take pictures? Can you just grab pictures of me when we're out and about?
00:23:12
Speaker
they help me out. Because your friends will know, your friends will be like, Oh, yeah, this is a cool spot, we should grab a picture of you. Or if they're really good, they'll like take candids of you while you're just like goofing around. Yeah, I think, you know, yeah, for your pictures, you know,
00:23:30
Speaker
You want, I think you want pictures that show what you look like. You want a full body picture so somebody can tell what you look like more or less head to toe. It's good to be smiling. If you can get a picture, if someone can have a picture of you laughing, I think that's great. I think we're all beautiful while we laugh. I think that just gives someone a nice sense of you being someone who they want to talk to. And like a lot of the standard advice that you hear
00:23:59
Speaker
on the internet about this stuff. Don't be wearing sunglasses, don't be wearing a hat, don't be too sexy. The bathroom abs selfies are, well, depending on what you're looking for. I'm looking for kind of
00:24:18
Speaker
the committed life partner, and I don't know, she plays her cards right, so you can get the abs selfies later. I don't know, I just think, well, let me put it this way, for men, right, we need to remember that we are marketing ourselves, we need to remember the environment in which we are marketing ourselves, right?
Profile Presentation Tips and Common Pitfalls
00:24:44
Speaker
And I think it is very, very easy for a very small number of bad actors, a very small number of men behaving poorly on the internet to really impact what these spaces feel like for women, right? So being too sexual, too early in general is, I think, a bad idea.
00:25:05
Speaker
Just because Lots of other guys maybe not lots some other guys are doing that And they're not doing it well, and it doesn't make the space feel safe For I think the women on the apps not to say that women don't appreciate Physical intimacy or sex or even You know all kinds of well, you know, I
00:25:34
Speaker
I just think that in the in the in the context where you're first trying to like put yourself out there, a lot of guys open with that way too early. And I think in general, women are just kind of sick of it. I think in general, a big a big theme for how to use the apps as a man is try and remember the context in which
00:25:59
Speaker
a woman is going to be seeing your profile and interacting with you. And it can be hard because the apps look very, very different for women than they do for men. Right. Yeah. So, right. Your profile. Yeah. Pics, I think, you know.
00:26:15
Speaker
Get them have your friends take pics of you If you don't have a lot of pics of you, I think you're like a lot of guys I think the good news is if you ever like made a fake profile and looked at guys profiles or asked a Female friend to look at her dating app. The competition is not stiff like guys
00:26:38
Speaker
in general, our dating at profiles, I think just look much more amateur than than than dating at profiles for women. And I think mostly it's because women, generally speaking, are much, much better at at getting pictures taken of themselves, either selfies or having their friends take them or like, it's just much more
00:27:00
Speaker
I think it's a societal pressure. Pressure isn't even the right way. It's a societal norm that women are more excited about being photographed and they've sort of adapted to that style of online social media. They're better at that. Anyway, get pictures. I hope they're good. Smile. Be yourself.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah. And the last thing I'll say about that, I think this comes up once every other episode on this podcast. But the fish pics, it's a stereotype that women are always saying, why are so many men holding fish in their dating app profiles? I think that happens just because that's the last time somebody with an expensive camera took a picture of that dude. And you're doing something that's kind of fun. It shows that you went outside. In a sense, maybe you're like a hunter-gatherer type look.
00:27:56
Speaker
get food, I don't know. But honestly, I think the main thing there is just that it's like the last time that a pro took a picture of that guy, and that's why it's on the dating app, because guys just don't have that many pictures of themselves. So yeah, that's your picks. Okay, the profile. Oh, the last thing I'll say about picks actually,
00:28:19
Speaker
There's this app, The League, and the big interesting thing that The League does, it does a couple of interesting things. I don't like the app in general, but one of the things it does is it makes your first pick black and white. And I don't know, I haven't experimented with this very much, but I think there might be something to having a black and white pick of yourself. I think it just sort of, I don't know, somehow,
00:28:49
Speaker
makes you more interesting? I have no idea. But it's a thing. There's an app out there that's like their whole thing is make people look interesting by having their first photo be black and white. And I don't know. There might be something to it. OK, anyway. Your profile. Along with your pics, right? You're in a dating app. You're going to have the opportunity to write some sort of blurb to give someone a sense of who you are.
00:29:20
Speaker
This is of course absurd. I think it's worth it to sort of acknowledge the impossibility of this task at the top. OkCupid is a dating app on which there are not that many people, so I can't really recommend using it.
00:29:34
Speaker
Um, it lets you like write volumes if you want to, you can choose 17 different prompts and write like a five paragraph essay for each one. So if somebody really wants to, they can spend, you know, an hour reading your novella about who you are, which I honestly kind of love. I think like,
00:29:55
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know. I'm a fan of the written word. I'm a fan of writing people. I'm a fan of writing long emails. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Writing long letters. I like it. I think it's fun. Obviously, I, you know, sit in here enjoying the sound of my own voice. So. Well, yeah, you get it.
00:30:19
Speaker
But nobody does that anymore. Nobody does that. It's all it's like four prompts and you get to say something. You basically it's like tweet, you know, very, very short amount of words to say something like pithy or interesting. And I really don't know. I don't know what to advise here. Well, I don't know.
00:30:41
Speaker
So in the, I talked about this podcast recently, the Dating Games podcast, it's the
00:30:54
Speaker
Land of the Giants. The podcast is called Land of the Giants. The most recent season was about dating apps. And in one of their episodes, they talked about a guy, they interviewed a guy who tried to make his app profile as generic as possible in an effort to get as many matches as possible. Which I thought was really interesting because it sounded like it worked. And it was interesting in that episode because
00:31:22
Speaker
The woman was trying to find better quality matches, and the guy was just trying to get more matches period, which there's a lot to unpack there. But so he tried to make his profile more generic, like just really stupid, noncontroversial, generic jokes, basically for the profile. For his profile. And I don't know.
00:31:52
Speaker
I haven't tried it. I don't know if that's something that I would advise, but I don't know. There's somebody out there who got interviewed for a broadcast said that that worked for him. So I don't know. That's kind of that. I don't know. My approach for making my app prompts or like the words to put in
00:32:15
Speaker
I try to be pretty short, pretty brief. I try to be piffy. My whole goal through the app process is to be a source of a smile for the woman I'm matching with.
00:32:38
Speaker
I don't know. I fill out the things that say like, you know, do you want kids? Are you looking for monogamy? Are you looking for something short term? Like I fill all that stuff out honestly. But you know, when it comes to the prompts, I just want to like,
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah, just say something that I think is funny to give her a sense of my sense of humor and to be kind of positive, which can be hard when you're using the dating apps. It can be hard to stay positive, but I think it's important to do that. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is,
00:33:24
Speaker
I find there is often the temptation to be a little bitter about the apps, to be a little... I will feel like, in the moment, I'll feel like it's a very honest thing to do and a very transparent thing to do, to kind of talk about how difficult it is to date these days. And that's true. I do honestly think that's true.
00:33:54
Speaker
that's a part of getting to know me. If we get to talking about dating, I don't want to lie to someone, but it's definitely not the foot that I want to put forward. That's not what a relationship with me is going to be like.
00:34:09
Speaker
Ideally, if I meet somebody awesome, we're going to stop talking about the apps pretty quick. I'm going to probably shut this podcast down and invest in time and reading books with them and watching shows with them and traveling with them, doing all the fun stuff of being in a relationship with the whole app thing behind me.
00:34:31
Speaker
If my profile is like a pitch or like an ad for what it's like to be in a relationship with me, I don't want to focus on the app stuff. Even if I think it's a way to connect, even if I think we'll have it in common.
00:34:46
Speaker
Um, because unless you're very, very new to the dating apps, you're probably frustrated with the dating apps. Um, so anyway, I try to stay positive. I try not to stay negative. Um, I try to have people look at my profile. Um, when I, whenever I can, people I trust to sort of look at it. Um, you know, even if their approach is different, even if I think they're like take on dating or what they think I'm looking for, whatever is different, like it's good to get different perspectives on.
00:35:13
Speaker
on how you're coming across in your profile. I recently had Anna, my awesome matchmaker, she was a previous guest on here, look at one of my app profiles and she was like, if I didn't know you, I would think this guy was a nightmare. And I had really just kind of
00:35:34
Speaker
I mean, you know, it was near, I don't know. I think I was just, I thought I was being honest. I thought I was being transparent, but really what I was doing was sort of expressing frustration with the dating app process. And that's not what you want to do. So anyway, I definitely made that mistake. I'm vulnerable to making that kind of mistake. I think a lot of people are. I even see women's
00:36:02
Speaker
uh profiles on the apps that just it just you can just tell that they're mad about it you can just tell that it's been an awful experience and and i get it like it's an awful experience for everyone and it feels weird in a way i think to kind of like quote unquote lie i go lie by omission i guess and you're in your dating app profile but like
00:36:25
Speaker
think about it this way, because it's so fundamentally impossible to give someone a sense of who you are as a person in like four pictures and four blurbs, or even on OkCupid, even with a bunch of pictures and, you know, a short novel, you're really not gonna be able to give someone a sense of who you are. So like, you might as well focus on
00:36:47
Speaker
putting your most positive perspective and your most positive traits forward. Put your best foot forward. Yeah, and I really think that's kind of the most positive way to do that. Yeah, right, like you're looking to be a needle in the haystack here, right? And you've got like 10 seconds
00:37:15
Speaker
to grab someone's attention, and that's horrible and that sucks. But that's kind of the goal. What about you? Can you say next to the picture of you smiling, what can you say that's gonna
00:37:30
Speaker
convince someone who you might be compatible with that they want to chat with you, right? Yeah. Other things that I like doing on the apps, I think some of the apps that you do like video stuff, like you upload a video instead of a picture, I think do that wherever you can. Some of them let you do pictures and videos. I would do one or two videos. I really would.
00:37:58
Speaker
more if you're having fun with it. I just think a video is a much better way. I feel like the profiles of videos, you just get a much better sense of who the person is. I think people are much more attractive in video. I think the way you move, the way you smile, the way you look around really informs how attractive you are. I think we're all
00:38:20
Speaker
more interesting in motion than we are in still photos. And some of them allow you to, I think, hinge primarily. That lets you respond with a voice prompt where you just record a little voice memo to put on the profile. Do that every time.
00:38:40
Speaker
find something to say. It's got to be pretty short. My challenge is often being brief enough for the profile as I'm 40 minutes into this podcast. But yeah, I think use voice prompts wherever you can. I just think it's a better way to give someone a feel for who you are.
Enhancing Profiles with Videos and Prompts
00:39:03
Speaker
And for men, I think a real big part of the goal here is to just
00:39:07
Speaker
Give someone a feel for who you are. I don't know if you can hear that. It's the dog. Please hold. All right. Crisis averted. The five pound poodle that I'm dog sitting has decided that we're safe.
00:39:20
Speaker
Right. For guys, a big part of the goal is to let someone get a feel for you so that they can feel safe meeting you. I think sometimes it's easy to remember. It's easy to forget. It's important to remember it's easy to forget for men that
00:39:42
Speaker
When I'm on the apps, I'm looking to see who I'm attracted to. First and foremost, I'm like, okay, given whatever I see, given the pics, given the voice, the video, whatever I've presented on the app, am I attracted to this person? That's the first thing that I'm
00:39:59
Speaker
that I'm thinking. And I think a lot of guys are like that. I think it's safe to say that for women, the first thing they think, the first thing that they're kind of asking is, here's this dude on the Internet. Do I feel safe with this person? Like, first, you need to feel safe and then you can feel attracted, I think. And obviously, I can't speak for all women. I can't even speak for any women. But like,
00:40:22
Speaker
A lot of them that I've talked to, safety is like you just want to have that sensation, that feeling of safety. And I think a video and a voice prompt, I think they can feel a little more vulnerable. I think when you're making an app, it can really feel like, I don't want to do that. It feels a little I want to put myself out there too much. But I think I think it's a good thing to do. And I also think that it does feel vulnerable. It does feel like you're putting yourself out there.
00:40:51
Speaker
And I think that makes it a smart thing to do, because again, you're trying to be that needle in a haystack, right? You're trying to stand out. And a lot of other guys aren't going to do that. They're not going to feel comfortable putting themselves out there that way. And so that's a great way for you to stand out. And if it's any consolation,
00:41:12
Speaker
Not many people are going to see your profile because there's way more men using the apps than women. And so, you know, the odds of your friend or whoever like seeing you, it's actually kind of low. So, you know, have the courage to put yourself out there as I guess as I guess what I'm saying.
00:41:30
Speaker
And I think the last thing I'll say about the profiles, your picks and the prompts, is to have people you trust look at them. And again, that's really vulnerable. It's really hard to do. But I think it's really worth it because it's just really difficult to
00:41:55
Speaker
It's just really difficult to understand if you're communicating what you're hoping to communicate. Like you know, you, so you know what you meant when you put, you know, that, that silly joke about a bidet in your, in your dating app profile.
00:42:08
Speaker
But your friend might tell you, like, hey, that bidet joke was so funny. Like, this is so you, that's great. Or they might tell you, like, maybe bathroom humor isn't the right way to open up. And this actually doesn't feel like you, you know? I think the thing that your friends can really tell you about your dating app profile is, does this feel even remotely like you?
00:42:32
Speaker
And that's extremely valuable. And I think it's good to just constantly revise. I know I was saying that I only use the apps for three weeks, but even during that three-week span, or even if you're picking them back up after having shut them down for a couple months or whatever,
00:42:51
Speaker
Keep revising. I think it's good to just get back in there, figure out what you can sharpen, figure out what you can add. Do you have a new picture you can add? Can you choose a different prompt? I think that just kind of helps to make it feel fresh for you. A lot of people online talk about how it changes the algorithm or whatever. The computer is going to decide that because you changed something, it's going to put you higher up in the stack.
00:43:20
Speaker
I don't know that stuff is all superstition if you ask me, but I don't know. I think I think revising your profile can be a little fun. And I think it's just it's just good to constantly build on what you've learned and and, you know, get better at trying to make that that profile, you know, show some facet of you
00:43:49
Speaker
that's going to be attractive to the kind of people that you're trying to attract. So yeah, always be revising, I think, or always feel comfortable getting in there and revising. There's no need to just arrive at a profile, a version of your profile that you need to stick with. There's always room for improvement, I think. Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, okay. So right, you've made your profile. Now it's time to start swiping.
Maintaining Mental Health While Using Apps
00:44:26
Speaker
My biggest advice on swiping or the thing that I do while swiping that I think is most valuable is I find a stupid video game. I found this like zombie tower defense game
00:44:40
Speaker
like not a dating app, like an actual game, and stick it in the same folder in your phone as your dating apps so that when you inevitably crack open the apps out of habit to start swiping, that game is there and you can kind of distract yourself and play the game instead. Just because
00:45:03
Speaker
I don't know. A lot of the apps only show you a set number of profiles per day, but some of them will just let you swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe until you get to the, until you've swiped on every single person within the radius of your thing, within the radius that you've sat. And like, I don't know. I just think it's kind of bad for my mental health is what I'll say.
00:45:31
Speaker
I don't think you want to spend too much time swiping on people. You're going to spend a lot of time. They're addictive. The process of swiping is
00:45:48
Speaker
is the process that the apps are trying to get you addicted to and it works. Yeah, you know, I don't know. So yeah, silly video game, something to distract you so that you have an option, like something to click on instead of hinge when you're on the toilet and you pull your phone out. So right, that's the top of it. But what's swiping? Swiping is the phase where, right, you go through and you're trying to figure out
00:46:17
Speaker
Who among all of the denizens of the dating app internet you would like to potentially meet? Right, so my advice on swiping.
00:46:30
Speaker
This is the part that costs money for men. If you cannot budget at all, if you have no budget for dating, I think it's still good to try. But I do think there is a lot of value in paying for the
00:46:54
Speaker
premium platinum membership or whatever, like anything that says that it's going to increase your odds of matching with someone. What it's saying is that it's putting your card higher in the deck of cards that any given woman needs to
00:47:16
Speaker
go through in order to get to you. So for every woman on the dating app, there is a queue. There's a big old stack of cards of men who will show up on her screen, and she will say yes or no. Because there are effectively more men than women on the apps,
00:47:42
Speaker
it's highly likely that she will not see most of the men who have swiped right on her. Maybe, I don't know if she's somebody who's spending hours and hours and hours on the apps, maybe.
00:48:00
Speaker
But likely not, right? It's more likely that in the first, I don't know, 100 or 500 or whatever cards that she goes through, that she's going to find someone that she finds interesting, find multiple that she finds interesting, and is going to start going on dates. Depending on how much time and effort she wants to put into and how many people she wants to date at once, right? But I think generally speaking, it's safe to say that most women who you
00:48:30
Speaker
swipe right on will not ever see your profile. So that's why you pay money to increase your odds, I think. I don't know how the algorithm works. I don't know what exactly it does when you're a premium membership versus when you do a super swipe or whatever. I don't know.
00:48:51
Speaker
All I know from my anecdotal testing is that when I send a super rose or whatever the paid like is and when I, you know, pay for the boost or turbo, whatever it is, spotlight, whatever they call it, when I pay for those things, I tend to get more matches or rather
00:49:20
Speaker
I tend to get matches at all. Um, uh, and that's just been my experience. So it might be that the geography that I'm in is particularly competitive. Um, if you're in New York or LA and you're a guy, maybe it's a little easier. Um, but I'm at it. My approach is basically I set a budget. I figure out how much money I want to spend that month on trying to get a date. Um,
00:49:45
Speaker
And I just try to stick to that budget. I don't know. I don't work for the dating apps. I'm not sponsored by the dating apps. I think they're a net negative for this whole process. But I think it's kind of the only game in town. And
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, if you're trying to meet people on the apps, you kind of have to play their game because they have kind of cornered the market, which sucks. And if you're mad about that, me too. I'm also mad about that. Yeah, it's an easy thing to be mad about, but I think it is what it is. Yeah. OK, so yeah, the swiping.
00:50:36
Speaker
So the three-week window, I try to spend the first two-ish weeks focusing on swiping because usually it takes a few days for a match to pop up. And again, that's me right swiping on someone or clicking like on someone.
00:51:02
Speaker
And my card going to their stack and then it just them taking a while to either open the app up or middle through the other cards so they get to me and then decide yes or no they want to talk to me so you know giving it that time to just happen right. Yes, I spend the first two of that three weeks kind of. Swiping and then I stop because you just want to kind of give it time
00:51:32
Speaker
those matches to happen. And for me, swiping is not fun. I feel like I'm often sitting there thinking, do I want to spend a dollar to send a beep at this person across the internet? And eventually that process starts to feel very
00:51:51
Speaker
For me, maybe not very. Eventually, that process starts to feel negative.
Navigating Challenges and Scams on Dating Apps
00:51:55
Speaker
It starts to feel like, oh, I kind of resent this person because I'm going to spend a dollar to send her a rose, and I'm pretty sure she's not going to like me back. Just kind of that negative voice, I think, that kind of creeps in.
00:52:12
Speaker
Yeah, so anyway, I don't do it for that long, two weeks-ish. And when I do try to match with someone, I will always try to stick to the rule that if I want to go on a date with someone, if it seems like it's a person who I actually want to meet,
00:52:35
Speaker
I try to always spend the dollar to send the super like or the paid whatever it is just to increase my chances of going out. The thing that I try to avoid is somewhere around week two or three.
00:52:54
Speaker
And when I was just on the apps nonstop, this happened all the time. Right. But I get to a point where I feel like, oh, gosh, no one's no one's matching with me. I need to start compromising on the kind of things that I'm looking for. Right. Like, yeah, like I need to start, you know,
00:53:16
Speaker
Trying to match with women who I'm actually not excited to match with Who actually don't think I would have a good time on a date with I just want to go on a date with someone And because of the the odds You know It takes patience for guys Or at least it does for me. I don't know And I find myself I
00:53:42
Speaker
You know, you get to a point where it's like, well, it would be nice just to have this person say that they like me. It would be nice just to get a match so that I can feel nice about that. I really, really, really try hard to not do that. Right. So I try to make it so that every single person I want to try to match with, I try to make it my habit to spend that dollar or dollar fifty or whatever it is.
00:54:08
Speaker
Um, to, to do the super rose or whatever, um, because I don't want to, I don't want to match with somebody and then regret.
00:54:27
Speaker
having to talk with them. I don't want to match with somebody who I wasn't really excited to talk to, given what little I know about them from their app profile. Because I know about me that once I get chatting with someone, I'll find something to talk about. We'll find something in common. And that
00:54:52
Speaker
that will turn into a date and I can like talk to somebody. I can talk to, I don't know, I can kind of talk to anybody. I know it is a gift. I'm grateful for that. I can find a way to have a conversation with most people.
00:55:07
Speaker
But I'm not on the apps to have a conversation with anybody. I'm on the apps to have a conversation with somebody who I think there's the potential for a really awesome, cool connection, right? Anyway, I'd like to say if you're ever on there and you feel like sometimes you're swiping right on somebody because you would just really love to have a match because wouldn't that feel nice?
00:55:34
Speaker
I've been there and I get it and it's a struggle And yeah, my solution to that is to just always only ever send the the paid the paid likes so that every kind of every shot you take you is One that you you are sure that you want to There's one that you're sure about if that makes sense Yeah, okay
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah. I could probably do a whole different episode on scams. While you're swiping, you're going to see scam profiles. You're going to learn to detect them and figure out what they look like. But you're also going to get fooled by a few inevitably.
00:56:33
Speaker
It sort of boggles my mind that there are bad scan profiles because it's really, really easy to make a genuine-looking dating app profile because you just copy someone else's dating app profile.
00:56:50
Speaker
pull their pictures off the internet and use their blurbs in the prompt section. And voila, you've created a convincing dating app profile because you've just duplicated it, maybe from another geographic area or whatever. But anyway, some scams are easy to spot. Some are not, is all I'm saying.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, there's I don't know. There's a whole different episode on scams. It's a thing. It sucks. It's going to soak a lot of your time. I got bored recently. I got bored during this last go through. And I just started swiping right, not like paying to swipe right on them. But like, actually, a couple of my did pay because I was trying to think when you I mean, when you pay, you're more likely to show up higher up in their card stack and therefore for a scam who is matching with everyone.
00:57:44
Speaker
you match faster. So it's an interesting experiment sometimes to swipe right on a profile that's obviously a scam and just see how long it takes for them to match with you because a scammer is going to swipe right on almost everyone.
00:57:57
Speaker
Well, I think on everyone and even the scams if you use a non paid right swipe Sometimes you don't match with the scammer like sometimes the scammer will get caught and booted off the app Maybe before they get to you or they might just not get to you like the queue for like the card stack for scammers is is
00:58:21
Speaker
It's big and it's hard for you to show up on their screen. And if it's an app that only shows them so many profiles a day, it's an interesting, the scams can be sort of an interesting tool to sort of measure how long it takes you to show up at the top of someone's card stack. Anyway.
00:58:39
Speaker
I did get bored and decided to talk to some scammers just because a lot of them are using like chatbots now and you can get them to say some pretty funny things. I posted about that on the LinkedIn for this podcast. Wish you all the best pod on Instagram. I don't know if you can go to that. Anyway, but that's a whole different episode and that's not what we're worried about. Oh my gosh, hang on.
00:59:08
Speaker
All right. Podcasting while dog sitting. Good times. Okay. Um, Oh my God, where was I? Right. Yeah. I try to, I try to be very picky while I swipe. Uh, you'll spot the scammers, avoid them. Um, I don't think you need to worry about reporting them. Anyway, the scammers are a whole different episode. Ignore that for now. You'll, you'll spot them, get around it. Yeah. But you know, be picky.
00:59:33
Speaker
Swipe right on the people who you think you're really going to want to talk to. That's what I try to do. And then just be patient and try and maintain hope.
00:59:47
Speaker
So OK, so that's the swiping part. While you're doing that, eventually you're going to get, hopefully with any luck, a match or two or three, and then you get to chatting. This is the part of the game, the dating app game that I think is the worst. I think the chatting is the worst part. Oh my goodness. Misty agrees.
01:00:14
Speaker
I think it's the worst part. What I try to do is, if you listened to the last episode, you heard Chris and I talk about this a little bit. I am not a fan of the kind of copy and paste opener message. I understand the appeal because
01:00:39
Speaker
It feels like a lot of wasted effort to look at someone's profile. It feels like a lot of wasted effort to do what I do. And that is I look at the person's profile. I try and figure out what I can say to them, given what I know about them from the profile that will start a conversation.
01:01:00
Speaker
It'll be fun and something that I'm actually interested in and potentially start an interesting conversation, something different from the other messages that she's getting on the app. Because again, it's really valuable for men, I think, to understand the context in which you're being seen in these apps.
01:01:28
Speaker
She's getting, with some exceptions, but a lot of women that you're going to be trying to match with on these apps are receiving a ton of messages. They're getting a lot of messages. And their task is to sort of pick who they want to respond to.
01:01:50
Speaker
And again, I kind of see this all as a game, but you still want to be genuine and actually strike up an interesting conversation.
01:02:03
Speaker
I think about this, I try to think like an email spammer. Depending on the app, try and figure out what my message is going to look like when it's in the inbox pane or whatever the interface is. Sometimes it'll be like, oh, you got a message from Scott. And it'll show the first, I don't know, beginning line of the message.
01:02:32
Speaker
Which is to say, I want to make the very beginning of my message sort of look as visually appealing or as interesting as possible. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. I try to send messages that are not copy and paste. I try to send a message that is related to something she had in her profile that's not just how attractive she is.
01:02:56
Speaker
talk about something interesting, hopefully something that we have in common. I try to send a message that is short, easy to read, and has a question that has an easy response. I try to make her smile and I try to give her the opportunity to tell me something that's easy to type so that she responds. All I want to do, I don't know, my philosophy on those first messages, the only thing I want to do is
01:03:26
Speaker
get her to respond. I just want her to actually take the action of typing something at me and hitting send. And I don't know if it's just because I want her to convince herself that I'm worth talking to because she sent me a message. That's basically my goal.
01:03:47
Speaker
I'm not trying to get a big, long dissertation out of her. It's almost always the case that I am putting more text on the screen than she is. And now, if that's extreme and I'm getting back one-word responses, that's usually a red flag for me. But it is very rarely the case that I ask a question or send a text in a dating app chat and get back
01:04:15
Speaker
more text than I sent. And there's a few things going on here.
01:04:25
Speaker
know, I think it's true that in general a lot of women need to feel pursued in order to feel romantic connection. And somehow in like the texts, modern texting, I don't know, protocol, like actual amount of text on the screen somehow equates to effort, which is like,
01:04:49
Speaker
I don't know, I think there's a lot to unpack there, but I think that's maybe a part of it. And also, there's just the fundamental reality that she knows she's got somebody else she can respond to. She's not going to spend a whole lot of time asking me questions and digging deep on a topic. She's just going to lob
01:05:12
Speaker
the conversation back to me and see what I have, um, and flip over to somebody else who's going to say something nice to her and make her smile. And, you know, um, yeah, I, I, I just think like, um, it feels kind of gross, but like she's just got a lot of options. Um, uh, yeah. So, you know,
01:05:36
Speaker
So, yeah, messaging. My first message, I put a lot of time and effort into it, knowing full well that it is very likely that I will just never get a response. And maybe that's because she never sees it because five other people messaged her after I did, and it just scrolled down off of off of that part of the, you know, inbox for the dating app. And she just literally never sees it.
01:06:04
Speaker
or because she, you know, matched with someone else and that spark was there and she decided that was more interesting to pursue. I don't know.
01:06:14
Speaker
there's a lot of reasons why that first message will never get responded to. And I try not to beat myself up about it too much. Um, but of course it's, this is why it's the worst part, right? Like you never get to know, you never get to know why your message doesn't get responded to. Um, and like I was saying at the top, like it's just superstition, right? My superstition is that it's worth it to, um,
01:06:42
Speaker
send a unique message to each match and just hope that it goes somewhere. Yeah. If she does message back and we do get to chatting, this is another part that really sucks about dating apps for men. I think it's worth it to be very, very vigilant about responding.
Communication Strategies for Successful Connections
01:07:09
Speaker
I've never met a woman who has her notifications on for her dating apps because it would just be making her phone buzz constantly.
01:07:19
Speaker
as a man, I think you have to have your notifications on because you want to respond. I don't know when you want to send your first message. I don't think you want to send a first message right after you match because I think the state of mind she's in when she's swiping.
01:07:42
Speaker
Right. So because of the card stack thing, right, you're going to swipe right on her well before she swipes right on you, which is to say, whenever she clicks like on you, uh, you're going to, as quickly as the app can send the notification, you're going to get a notification that says you've got a match. So whenever you get that match, you know, she's online.
01:08:07
Speaker
And again, this is all superstition, but my superstition is I don't message her right when we match or rather I try not to. Sometimes I am bored and I go, okay, great. Someone to talk to. Um, but I find that when I message somebody right after they
01:08:27
Speaker
match with me, I think it's just that like you're in a different state of mind when you're swiping versus when you want to chat. I don't really know. For whatever reason, my luck has been better when I message someone a little bit after, I don't know, like hours or days or whatever, but message somebody a bit after we match.
01:08:52
Speaker
Again, that's another piece of the puzzle that's just blind luck because you send that first message a little while after you match and there's no guarantee that she's going to be online in the next hour or four hours or 24 hours.
01:09:08
Speaker
And if a bunch of other guys that she's matched with have messaged her after you message her, your message just gets pushed down to the bottom of her inbox or further down. And it's like she'd have to scroll through a bunch of messages to even see your message. So that's another reason why I think you might just never get a response. And that's just a part of the numbers game.
01:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know. I don't think it makes a ton of sense to try and game out when you think she'll be online, because I don't know how you would do that. I definitely have caught myself trying to do that sometimes, being like, OK, what do I know about this person? Probably a corporate job. Does she take a late lunch? Maybe she's the kind of person that's going to check her apps at lunch, maybe. OK, so I'm going to try to message back at 2 o'clock.
01:10:00
Speaker
I think that's silly. So you're trying to send that first message, hoping that it's going to be at a time when she'll see it, which is kind of to say, it's hard to guess when you should send that message. It's easy to guess when you should not. You should not send that first message on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. She's out.
01:10:24
Speaker
those nights. She's doing stuff with her friends, she's on dates, she's not at home on the couch, probably not at home on the couch looking at the apps. Yeah. If it's an app where you can see when they're online, it's obviously a good idea to send the message when they're online. Not a lot of apps do that.
01:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. So send that first message at a time when it seems plausible that she'll be at her at her phone, which I think is usually during the day. You know, people do this at work on the toilet. People don't I think don't do it as much at night. I think at night is for getting dinner with friends and watching TV. I don't know. People definitely swipe while they're watching Netflix. And I know I do that, but
01:11:22
Speaker
I don't know. Again, this is all superstition, but I think mostly the takeaway there about when to send that first message is I think probably not on going out nights. So yeah, there's that. So okay, you've sent the first message and let's say you get a response back, right? So this is a whole vigilance thing. As you have your notifications on,
01:11:51
Speaker
when you get a notification that someone has messaged you back, I think you want to message back pretty quickly. And what you want them to think is like, oh, hey, lucky, we were both online at the same time, we might as well start chatting. And then you have the chance to actually start a conversation, like actual typing back and forth at each other, quote, unquote, conversation.
01:12:17
Speaker
Now, of course, you weren't both magically online at the same time you had your notifications on and you have been picking up your phone every 10 minutes to check to see if Bumble has a little red number on it. That vigilance, I think, is really unhealthy. I think it encourages you to check the apps way too often. I hate it. I really hate it. I hate that I have to check the apps.
01:12:42
Speaker
as often as I do. But I think the reality is if you want to go from matching to actually going on a date, you want to have a back and forth conversation because that's kind of the best way in my experience to go from chatting in the apps to switching to texting and we're switching to a phone call.
01:13:06
Speaker
Um, so right. The first message you send it, you wait. When you get that response back, you want to reply as quickly as possible. You want to get into a conversation and your goal is to
01:13:22
Speaker
get a feel for the person, figure out if there's somebody who you actually want to talk to, that kind of thing, sort of. But mostly I think you just want to seem interesting and you want to get to the point where you're like, hey, I'm really enjoying chatting with you, but I've got to go do a thing right now. Can I send you my phone number? Shoot me a text. Maybe we can find a time to hop on an old fashioned phone call and just kind of break the ice and see if we get along. That's like almost verbatim, the line that I use to do that.
01:13:51
Speaker
And it's almost always the same line. It's something like, hey, I really enjoy our conversation about how many clowns you can actually fit in a Volkswagen or whatever. But you're just trying to get away from the app. Because as soon as you have to put the phone down and stop chatting in the app, if you haven't switched to texting,
01:14:12
Speaker
you're only going to continue that conversation if you again message at a time when she's checking the app again, right? Because some amount of time after you message, if enough other people that she's matched with have messaged her,
01:14:27
Speaker
your message is just not on the screen anymore. Or she's just gotten sick of the apps and decided to delete them because they're too much, because they're a lot. The apps are a lot for men and for women, just in very different ways.
01:14:46
Speaker
Right. So when you get to chatting, I don't know. The goal is just to to get off the app. The goal is just to get to a text conversation pretty much as quickly as possible. And I don't know. Not everyone likes that. I've definitely had women respond to me trying to do that negatively. And whenever somebody responds negatively to you in any part of this process, it sucks. It hurts.
01:15:16
Speaker
But I don't know, in my superstitious opinion, that's just because they haven't been on the apps for very long. Or I think they might just have unrealistic expectations about how the apps work. Or they might have just absolutely no idea about how the apps work for men. So yeah, I've had women say, oh my gosh, I'm not comfortable switching to text. I can't believe you asked that.
01:15:47
Speaker
I mean, it's rarely that strong a reaction, but it happens. But most folks are on the dating apps because they want to meet somebody. And if they've matched with you and if you manage to chat and are able to hold up a halfway decent conversation over text,
01:16:11
Speaker
I think that's enough. Sometimes I find myself being bashful in the chatting phase, or at least I used to be. I would think, oh gosh, I don't know what reason I've given this person to really be that into me or to want to switch to texting or switch to a phone call.
01:16:30
Speaker
don't forget, if you match with somebody, they swiped right on you. They like something in your profile. And if they're responding to you, they are ignoring other options. They at least find you interesting enough to give you
01:16:46
Speaker
their attention on the dating app and you are not their only option. So if they're chatting with you, you're doing something right. So I think you might as well try it. You might as well say, hey, this seems really nice. Can we switch to text or do you want to do a phone call? So that's that part of the process. So the phone call thing.
01:17:13
Speaker
My superstition around this is that it's really good to do an old-fashioned phone call. Not a FaceTime, not a video chat, just a voice-only call. The reason I like voice-only
01:17:30
Speaker
I think it's just a little more comfortable. Um, for video chat, she's going to have to like do her makeup and make sure her hair looks good. Um, and I don't know, on video, I just think a lot of people don't look the way they look on video. Um, and really my goal for a phone call conversation is to just kind of break the ice, like just get a feel for,
01:17:56
Speaker
I don't know, just get a feel for it. I just think you can tell a lot from someone about listening to the way they talk.
01:18:06
Speaker
whether or not they like interrupting you a lot or whether or not they, I don't know, sound sober, whether or not they feel strongly about something or whether it's just something they're just kind of saying to make conversation. I think we're hardwired to understand each other through spoken language and you just kind of got to trust that your brain will tell you a lot of useful information
01:18:36
Speaker
you can hear somebody. I think not as much useful information as when you actually meet them, but I think it's a thousand times more information than when you're typing at each other.
01:18:50
Speaker
So yeah, I like the old fashioned phone call, mostly because it takes the pressure off of being on video. And I don't think video actually tells you that much. And I think being on video just kind of makes you nervous. And like, I don't know, these days, aren't we on enough video calls in work? I know I am. So I don't know. I like being on an old fashioned phone call. I usually like put in my earbuds and kind of pace around the apartment and look at my window and
01:19:17
Speaker
Just kind of see if I can get into a conversation with that person, see, just kind of jump in, be awkward, break the ice. And oftentimes, I just open up that conversation with like, how was your day? Like, what did you do today? What was significant?
01:19:33
Speaker
just see if I can get them talking about themselves and just kind of get a conversation going. And yeah, this is where we kind of transition to the non-game part of the thing, which is like if that phone call goes well, you reach out and you ask for a date.
01:19:53
Speaker
I do that by picking a specific place and giving two options. I'll say, hey, let's go to my favorite Italian place. Are you free Wednesday or Thursday night at, say, 7.30? I give them two options because schedules are hard. Yeah, and go from there.
01:20:19
Speaker
And then hopefully, with any luck, you meet face to face. And then it's, I don't know, and then it's a whole other thing. And then it's no longer a game. Then it's meeting a human being, seeing if there's chemistry, and that's beyond the scope of this whole dating app thing.
01:20:43
Speaker
All right, so this is running super long. But I talked earlier on about the outcome of my latest three-week push on the apps. And I did want to talk about a couple of things that happened that, I don't know, are kind of frustrating or I think interesting to talk about. So yeah, here I go.
01:21:11
Speaker
So one big thing that I grapple with as I'm getting to, as I'm in the sort of chatting phase, moving into the talking on the phone, planning a date phase. And again, I don't know if this is just because I'm a guy in San Francisco. I think it might be from the people I've talked to, I think it's probably, there's just a lot of dudes in San Francisco, so women here have a lot of options. But I do
01:21:40
Speaker
when it comes to the whole like trying to schedule a date, like actually trying to put time on the calendar. I think this time around, I had maybe like two or three people kind of do this thing and it happens a lot where it's just like impossible to schedule time with them. And
01:22:05
Speaker
I can't pretend to understand their motivations or their psychology and we're all complicated and we're all works in progress and we're all our own journeys. But a lot of times the impression I get is just that sometimes these women are more interested in feeling pursued than they are in meeting the pursuer.
01:22:34
Speaker
And I think in a certain way, I get it. I think society tells women that your value is, or one of the big messages that society sends to women is that your value is, do men find you attractive? And it's important to feel valuable. And I think there are times when women,
The Reality of Modern Dating Expectations
01:23:02
Speaker
are turns out they're more interested in that than they are in actually meeting you. I don't mean to accuse
01:23:17
Speaker
anyone or any group of people. I don't mean to accuse women in general of being shallow or deriving validation in a shallow or immoral way or whatever. I don't mean to impugn anything here. I just think it's part of the puzzle. And sometimes it'll be that somebody just
01:23:45
Speaker
flakes on a date and for no good reason, or maybe it is a good reason. Maybe it really is the case that she's super sick that day, which people get sick. It's a pandemic. But it happens a lot. I have it happen to me a lot that women will find some reason to not go out on that first date.
01:24:12
Speaker
And I don't know, again, it's that balance through this whole process. It's that balance of having a thick skin about it and yet still staying vulnerable and open so that you're available to connect with someone awesome. And that's hard. That's just really difficult.
01:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't know what to tell you about that. That's just a part of the challenge. But yeah, I don't know. And I think there's also a lot to unpack with the people who can't put you on their calendar kind of thing or the people that are really flaky.
01:24:58
Speaker
I do think there's kind of a modern thing, and I think men do this too, but there's a thing where a busy schedule is somehow a status symbol. I would love to hang out with you, but I'm
01:25:11
Speaker
I'm super busy. And the implication is that I'm busy because I'm popular. I'm busy because, I don't know, somehow being busy is good. It shows that you're either successful or that you're in demand. I don't know. The bottom line is, it's fundamentally not that hard to make time for someone. If it's someone that you're interested in, it's something that you're actually pursuing
01:25:36
Speaker
It's just not that hard to make a time happen when you're both free. For a functional adult, it's just not that hard. And I think it's sort of become a part of the game.
01:25:54
Speaker
So in the online discourse, which I kind of think means TikTok and Instagram, I'm not sure. On the internet, people would talk about dating. There's this trend, or there are some women who say that men don't pursue anymore. I think it's fair to say that there's a trend where women don't feel pursued. And I think there's a few reasons why that might be contributing to that. But I think sometimes
01:26:23
Speaker
this whole scheduling thing can sort of be impacted by that because a way that you can get a way that you can feel like someone is pursuing you is you can just keep rescheduling your date and seeing if they want to keep trying you just to get on your calendar. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say about that. Like I've
01:26:48
Speaker
I'm usually a pretty good sport about it. Like if somebody says they couldn't make a day or they needed to reschedule, I will usually reschedule and say, okay, well, how about this time? I will usually not do that more than once. And I would love to tell you that I don't even ever want to do it once because like,
01:27:16
Speaker
you can't figure out how to make it to a date, to me, that's just kind of a red flag. But the honest truth is that this happens a lot. I have women do this to me a lot, and I think it's because they can. And again, it might be the geography, but I think it's because
01:27:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's because they can and you know Also, I think there's something to be said that like schedules these days are busy And somebody who you met on a dating app isn't I think it's fair to not prioritize that person over like your friends, you know, I Get that
01:28:14
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know. For me, that's a pretty big red flag. And I, you know, maybe it's easy for me to say because I don't have that many people demanding slots in my in my dating schedule. But for me, it's pretty straightforward to like pick a time, commit to it, put on the calendar and be there. Yeah, I don't know.
Reflections on Long-Distance Dating
01:28:46
Speaker
Another interesting thing that kind of happened to me this go around is that I started kind of casting a wider net. And I tried to basically date in LA. And I think this is right. I think in 2023, I've been on more dates in Los Angeles than I have in San Francisco. Is that true?
01:29:19
Speaker
It's at least close to true. And yeah, again, this is kind of me harping on the geography thing, but I think San Francisco is just a really tough city for men, for straight men to date in, or the Bay Area. And so it was interesting this time around.
01:29:40
Speaker
chatting with people who were interested in the possibility of dating somebody who lives, you know, whatever it is, 300 miles away. I don't know. There's kind of not a lot else to say about that. I don't know. I don't get a sense. It's hard for me to tell like what kind of people are open to that. I assume, well, I don't know.
01:30:09
Speaker
It takes a certain kind of person to decide to start dating long distance. Yeah, I guess I don't really know what else to say about that. There's a bigger conversation, I think, around what it's like to date in different cities. And I think I've touched on that a few times in different episodes on here.
01:30:38
Speaker
But yeah, this time around I ended up in a few.
01:30:41
Speaker
a few different connections where it was just like talking on the phone with somebody who lived really, really, really far away or at least pretty far away. And yeah, that was just kind of a, that was a piece of the puzzle this time around. But yeah, I think I'll, I think I'm done with the apps for at least the foreseeable future. For me, it ends up being a thing where I just kind of
01:31:10
Speaker
When it feels exhausting when it just feels like I can't I can't Bring myself to do it and still think about it in a positive way. I just know it's time to put it down for a while And yeah, I think near the end near the end of this Swiping and chatting phase. I was definitely I definitely found myself feeling kind of worn out and Not sort of giving people the benefit of the doubt and
01:31:42
Speaker
you know, just increasingly frustrated by it. And I found it more and more difficult to kind of stay positive. And, you know, that's just my signal to delete them and do life and focus on hanging out with friends and doing the activities and the hobbies and stuff that I care about instead of trying to meet new people.
Invitation for Listener Engagement
01:32:09
Speaker
All right. Well, that was a whole big, old, big, old, big, old long episode. If you listen to all of this, you're amazing. Thank you.
01:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, I know this one is just me. I don't like these ones very much. I like the interviews better, but I wanted to kind of put this one out there just in case you're somebody who's listening to this and you're doing the same thing or something similar in case this was interesting. Yeah, I wanted to put it out there. And again, I could be wrong about any and all of this. I just kind of wanted to share
01:32:41
Speaker
my process for it, my approach, because I think it's something that guys, we don't talk about very much, and neither do women. Maybe they do, but I don't know. Wherever you are with this process, if it's useful to hear my perspective on it, that's why I wanted to put it out there.
01:33:04
Speaker
And yeah, I would be interested to hear yours. If you have a different dating app process and you want to talk about it, come on, come on the show and we can talk about it. Because yeah, this is vulnerable stuff. It's important stuff.
01:33:17
Speaker
You know, it's technology that is impacting, I think the most important decision you'll make in your entire life. And we don't talk about it very much, especially dudes. So I just kind of want to put that out there. All right, thank you for listening. That's all I've got for this time around. Yeah, I hope you're having a lovely day and I will get back in your podcast feed, hopefully with another interview as soon as I can.
01:34:12
Speaker
Okay. Okay. I love you. Bye.