Online Dating Is Making Things Tougher For Guys Than Ever Before
After talking with a few friends this past week, I was reminded of just how drastically the dating landscape is changing for men, so I wanted to take some time lay out exactly what I see happening and tell you how you can avoid ending up with the short end of the stick.
I personally feel this one change is going to separate the strong from the weak and the smart from the dumb going forward.
Just like how the economy is tilting more in favor of the ultra-rich, I believe the “dating economy” will turn in favor of the smartest and most strategic guys, leaving the others to fight for scraps.
The following is a complete guide on everything you need to know to survive the coming shift. I will lay out exactly why these changes are happening…
Why dating has become so difficult these days…
Why it’s going to get worse…
And what you can do about it.
So first, let me tell you why this is happening…
I’m Sure You’ve Heard It…
We spend almost our entire days in front of screens. We use our phones way too much, and spend the rest of our time in front of a computer screen or TV. It’s robbing us of our face-to-face social interactions and communication skills.
I believe this is what’s led to the massive rise in online dating sites and apps, which seem to be multiplying exponentially, and keep growing by millions of users every month.
How Men Got “Out of Control” Online…
I’m guessing there’s a 98% chance you’re currently using or have used a dating site or app.
And why not? It’s damn easy.
You just sit on your couch and flip through your phone like you’re shopping for women on Amazon.
But this is what every guy is thinking.
I remember, a guy once came up to me at a seminar and said, “Hey Craig, you know I find myself so anxious to talk to women, but online, I have no anxiety at all. I can send as many messages to women as I want!”
I got the sense that he actually felt unique in his thinking.
But the truth is, all guys are thinking like this.
They think online dating is great because in their minds:
I don’t have to leave the house…
I don’t have to approach any women…
I don’t have to get rejected in public…
I can meet more women quicker…
You can just copy-and-paste a bunch of messages and send them to women over and over.
But again, unfortunately, all guys are thinking like this.
So now we’ve got a bunch of “fearless” men who are copy-and-pasting hundreds of messages to women every single day…
Here’s The Effect This Has On Women…
Here’s a screenshot from the average girl’s OK Cupid inbox…
A good-looking girl on OK Cupid gets anywhere from 50-100 messages a day. That number is just rising as more people join online dating.
You might be fearless, you might copy-and-paste faster than any guy on earth, but your one message is still just a drop in her bucket, and one that’s dependent on a lot of different factors (like pure luck) just to get your foot in the door!
The sheer quantity of messages women are getting online are causing serious problems for men:
1) Faster Filtering. Women are now hyper-picky about who they talk to and cut hundreds of men off out of necessity.
2) Buyers Market. Women now have more options in life than they have ever had. The average girl used to have just 3-5 suitors, now she has hundreds.
3) Decide Now, Think Later. Women take less time to get to know you and will end things with just the slightest slip-up or disappointment.
This all makes online dating really, really difficult.
So why do men keep doing it?
A few reasons…
First, it still seems really, really easy on the outside.
Yeah, just sit on my couch where it’s warm and flip through my phone.
But also…
Men Are Being Lied To By The Media (And Other Men)
Maybe you’ve come across an articles claiming dating has become “so crazy” lately because of dating apps and it’s just turned into a giant hookup scene.
They claim there is so much hooking up going on that it’s the “dating apocalypse” and these apps are “tearing apart society.”
Let me be the first to say this, these apps generate mediocre results at best.
I’ve personally done a lot of testing of my profile and photos and I’ve also compared notes with many other men who are above-average in their ability to attract a woman.
None of them are killing it on these sites in the U.S. like the articles above indicate, and especially none of them are doing well in New York City, which is largely a “hookup city.”
Yet these app companies are trying to tell us just the opposite…
And it’s not just the app companies who have a stake in this deception. Plenty of sites are running these clickbait pieces about “wild millennials” hooking up on these new apps, and it’s a great story which probably generates tons of visitors to their sites…
I just wish it were true.
In the NY Post article above, one banker goes on to brag about the endless daily hookup options these apps provide him, but he doesn’t give his name. This guy could either be completely made up or just looking for an opportunity to lie about his accomplishments in public.
But despite all of the time and effort invested into this avalanche of articles, they only had two real, measurable impacts:
First, they herd thousands of more men to these sites and apps.
And second, they drive thousands of women away from these apps who have no interest in joining a service labeled as a “hookup” site or app.
The Sad Truth Most Men Refuse To Believe…
Online dating is a time suck.
Minute for minute, hour for hour, if you time yourself on the couch and figure out exactly how many hours it takes you to actually generate a date for yourself, I think you’ll be shocked.
If you took even HALF of that time and applied it to attending a party or a bar with a solid single girl ratio, you’d be blown away by your results.
Too nervous to talk to women in real life? I don’t blame you, but this is also a big opportunity and I’ve got a pretty good technique to meet women easily, almost anywhere you want.
Like I said, every guy thinks like this and every guy is scared to approach an attractive woman.
So you want to be where those guys aren’t.
That’s where the big opportunity is.
The “Gold Rush” Is Over…
I believe that at one point, back in 2005, online dating really had rich opportunities for guys.
-Adventurous women were trying online dating sites, so many of the sites at the time had a much higher ratio of women to men.
-Apps didn’t exist yet and it wasn’t nearly as easy to get a photo of yourself online, so there weren’t nearly as many men using these sites. The men who did use them actually hand-typed their messages and put some thought into each one.
-These sites didn’t yet have a “hookup” stigma surrounding them.
-You could send a message to any woman you wanted on Facebook any time you wanted without getting hit with serious warning messages.
-MySpace was a thing – and it was great!
But that gold rush is over.
And now every idiot with a phone can set up a profile and throw his countless spammed messages into the ring.
A guy today can set up a profile and start sending messages in literally minutes. There are no barriers to entry. Any idiot can do this.
And this is exactly why it is so damn bad.
And it’s also why it’s so easy to end up sitting on your couch, flipping through photos and spamming messages for hours and hours…and maybe getting little or no response.
Things Are Also Getting Weird…
I spoke with a friend who runs a large service in the online dating industry. He’s spoken with a lot of men, and he tells me that he believes many men today are lying to themselves.
They tell themselves that they just need to shuffle a few more photos around…
Send a few more messages…
Browse a few more profiles…
And something is going to happen.
They just need to join a new site.
Or write a new profile.
But the truth is, a lot of these sites are actually either designed to look like there are more active women than there really are, or they are straight up filled with bots or employees in third-world countries that are paid to talk with you and keep you on the site, blowing as much money as you can. (See this article).
In June of 2015, hackers leaked data from popular infidelity site AshleyMadison.com, which was the first public exposure of a dating site intentionally deceiving its users, although it’s insider knowledge that this sort of abuse of male customers is widespread among such sites. Ashley Madison is in the middle of a class-action lawsuit–it will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Perhaps more interesting is just how many men were paying to use the site, despite probably not getting any messages at all back from these fake accounts. Or how many men just couldn’t tell the difference between messages coming from a bot or a real woman.
Even worse, there are still plenty of men using the site even after the truth about the fake profiles has come out. That leads me to believe some men would just live in a fantasy world rather than face reality and start earning real success in life.
Graph courtesy of Gawker Media. Gizmodo dug into the recently leaked Ashley Madison user database and estimated close to 99% of the users were bots and/or fake accounts
At the end of the day, just be honest with yourself…
Is Online Dating Actually Getting You Women, And Are You Getting The Women You Want?
I’m not saying this is an easy question to answer.
It’s hard to look in the mirror and admit to yourself that women don’t seem naturally drawn to you.
I was in a place like this myself, but being faced with failure was what allowed me to let go of the old, shitty life I was living and set forth in search of something better.
Even if you’re getting few or zero messages on these sites (which I suspect could very well be the case), it’s probably not your fault.
What I mean is, it’s not because you’re unattractive or unlovable or don’t have sex appeal.
You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You’re sifting for gold in a river with thousands of men who are also sifting when there are only a few precious flakes in the whole damned thing.
It’s a bad place to look for gold.
Just How Bad Is it?
This is where I whip it out…
The data that is.
Just to give you some “cliffs notes” so you don’t have to go sifting through these boring graphs that I’ve included, here are the highlights…
- On average, a guy only had a 4% chance of getting a reply. That means only one out of TWENTY FIVE women will respond. (stat from 2013)
- If you want to date a girl 10 years younger than you, your chances of a response drop to less than 1%. You will need to send OVER ONE HUNDRED messages in order to get a response. (stat from 2013)
- Global Web Index reports about 30% of Tinder users in the U.S. are actually married or in a relationship and there is a high likelihood they are just looking for validation, are bored and will totally waste your time
- Just as a side note, I use Tinder as an example more frequently here, because most men view it as the “ultimate time saver” dating app, so by showing what a time-suck it is, it’s easy to see how sites like Match and OKCupid are even worse.
- According to Tinder’s own PR gal Rosette Pambakian, the average user spends 77 minutes a day, or 9 hours per week, using the app. (stat from 2014)
If we apply some of these stats to Tinder, for example, I’m going to say you get about 50 free swipes per day if you don’t pay for the PLUS version, which means if you’re going for the younger, attractive women, you’ve got a 0.5% chance of matching…
If you do match, I’ve found there is roughly a 60% chance she will flake. She’s getting hundreds of other likes and messages, and the majority of women get distracted (by men they meet in real life?) and don’t even check their messages…
If you do get a good back-and-forth going. I’d say there is a 30-50% chance you actually see her for a first date, and another 50% chance you both like each other on that first date (I’m being seriously generous here)…
That means that in a given day on Tinder, there is only a 0.0075% chance that a given girl will work out.
You’d have to be an idiot to go into battle with these odds, but the allure of swiping photos on your phone on the couch is insanely deceiving.
Consider This Alternate Reality…
If you leave online dating and switch to meeting women in person, you can make your dating life 10x more efficient. For example…
- You will INSTANTLY know exactly what every girl looks like. No Photoshopping. No cropped photos. No weird camera angles. No waiting for photos to load. No sifting through endless photos for a full-body shot to figure out what she really looks like.
- If she’s interested in you, you’ll know it. Not every guy is savvy to the signals a woman sends when she’s interested, but if you know what to look for, these little signals can change your life.
- You’ll instantly know if you have chemistry. Instead of blocking off an entire night of your busy week just to meet a girl just to see if you like her, you can instead take just 60 seconds of your time, start a short conversation with her, and instantly know if it’s meant to be (or a total bust!)
- Conversations in real life happen in “hyper speed” compared to online. You won’t have to wait a week for a girl to respond to a message, and you definitely won’t have to send her any follow-up messages to see if she got your first one.
- Your first date will be your second date. If you meet and end up talking for an hour or two, then your first date will feel like it’s your second date. This will move things along much quicker and more naturally.
There are a lot more benefits to this, but the primary one is time.
Get Up And…
Two things I’ll say to you are:
1) Exercise self-control, and
2) Know that these sites and apps are fighting to keep you on their site.
They have expert influencers with huge marketing budgets trying to hypnotize you back onto their website.
The emails will come. Specific emails designed by an expert marketer, automatically sent to you at just the right time with your name in the headline, trying to lure you back to their site.
These marketers have tests hundreds of different techniques, all in an attempt to identify the most effective way to woo you back.
If You Want to Get Started, Here’s What I Suggest…
1) Delete all profiles and apps, and turn off all future communications.
2) Put some real dates for some real events on your calendar at some places where there will be real, single women. Identify the best places to meet attractive women from this list of over 27 different places created by my buddy Magic.
If you hate going alone, recruit a friend.
You should have plenty of newfound hours in the day after quitting online dating.
3) Use my proven method for starting conversations.
And, like I mentioned above, learn to see the hidden signs a woman is interested in you.
Do these things right away, either today or tomorrow.
You should be well on your way.
This won’t be easy.
This won’t feel as comfortable as sitting on your couch, smart phone in hand.
But I do promise this will almost certainly make your life better, more time-efficient, and you will meet higher quality women, and more of them.
Leave the sucker behind and let them fight for scraps online.
To your future!
