[nothingeasy]

> Ugly and alone? Just be yourself! Never mind that we’ve designed for you a society where personal connections are harder and harder to make and maintain, and we’ve commodified human relationships into the equivalent of online supermarket catalogs.

Having done online dating for years, this rings so true. Some people online talk about the success stories but rarely do they acknowledge the absolute slog that can happen for a huge portion of people and that there is no guarantee even with persistence and a good attitude that you'll ever find someone who neither ghosts or treats you like garbage, and has a true connection with you.

I recall a Louis CK joke:

> 'There’s someone for everyone.' Nope. Not at all true, and stop saying it cause it’s mean to people who never find anybody. There are millions of people out there who we’ve all unanimously decided that they are lightspeed ugly and nobody kisses them on the lips even. Nobody touches their genitals their entire life. They just wash 'em, and then they die. That’s all that happens. 'Aww,' and if you’re feeling bad for them, you can go find one and fuck one tomorrow, you can just solve the problem right there with all that kindness in your heart. 'Aww.' Well, go fuck one. 'Nah.' I didn’t think so."

Out of all my friends, only one tried setting me up with someone on a blind date. Goodness, I can't even describe to you the kind of disgust I felt from her face when I walked through the restaurant door for our first and only date. Even though I knew from the first minute that the date was doomed, I did my best to make non-awkward.

Such is life, we can't choose what we inherit.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Having done online dating for years, this rings so true. Some people online talk about the success stories but rarely do they acknowledge the absolute slog that can happen for a huge portion of people

I’ve seen the opposite of this: Online spaces are full of consensus stories about how dating is hard, dating is terrible, dating is miserable, and that it’s nearly impossible to find anyone.

Many of my (completely average looking) friends have found success in online dating, but they’re not broadcasting it to the world. They also avoid talking about it with people who are struggling with online dating because those people don’t want to hear about other people doing well.

Among my friends who are struggling with online dating into their 30s, this entrenched cynicism is turning into self-defeating mindsets. As an outside observer it’s frustrating to watch them self-sabotage by insisting that the problems with their dating are 100% society’s fault and 0% due to things they could possibly change. This ranges from not spending enough the tiniest effort on personal appearance to declining second dates or follow up conversations unless everything goes exactly as they imagined it. They retreat to online spaces like Reddit where they can get endless confirmation for their biases that other people and society are to blame, and that there was nothing they could do differently. I’m surprised to read the suggestion that “nobody” is talking about the difficulties in dating when it’s quite literally front page topics on sites like Reddit all of the time.

[aidenn0]

I think this comment demonstrates the article very well. People faced with cruel optimism turn to lazy pessimism. There's no room for nuanced "yes the world sucks, but you have control over your actions" Even if your problems are 80% society's fault, giving up on that last 20% will seal your fate.

[lezojeda]

>Many of my (completely average looking) friends have found success in online dating, but they’re not broadcasting it to the world. They also avoid talking about it with people who are struggling with online dating because those people don’t want to hear about other people doing well.

Are they really _average_?

[swagasaurus-rex]

Everybody thinks a 7 is average but on the bell curve there’s 70% of people uglier than them.

Men tend to rate women roughly along the bell curve. Women skew their ratings more heavily towards the most attractive men. I’d post the source but it was removed by okcupid.

[subjectsigma]

I used to be in the “just gym” crowd but as I’m getting older, I’m personally seeing how completely and utterly useless any sentence starting with “just” is.

I have a friend who has the full puzzle and can’t seem to put it together. Used to be fat, poor, lived with his parents. In five years he’s completely turned his life around - he’s young, in shape, has a career, and is moving out into his own place. Still can’t get a date. Starting to both rapidly lose his hair to male pattern baldness and his sanity to the numerous rejections he receives.

This isn’t some comment on society or my friend, I’m pointing out how nobody (especially him) seems to know what he needs to be happy. If even specific advice doesn’t work how could generic advice ever help?

Godspeed friend, hope things get better for you.

[dec0dedab0de]

Most guys I know that can't get a date refuse to lower their superficial expectations. They spent so much time buying into pop culture that they only want to be seen with a woman that the vast majority of people are attracted to. Then they find themselves in a competition where they don't have a chance. It's like if a high school football player insists on going to a top tier football college, but when he gets there he just sits on the bench, not even realizing he could have been a starter at another school. Basically they need to learn their "league" and mostly stay in it.

[goethes_kind]

I think you are half right. My problem is mostly that if I can match with a woman on the looks, I then often find they are education, intelligence and values wise completely incompatible. Somehow, I cannot meet somebody who is compatible along those dimensions and then looks just right so that we can both be physically attracted to each other.

[dec0dedab0de]

One thing that was a problem for me for a while was having a bad experience with someone, and writing off entire swaths of the population that had similar characteristics. For a long time I refused to date anyone that ever voted republican or democrat, believed in anything supernatural, had student debt, made less money than their age * 2000, owned a pet, used windows an iphone or photoshop, enjoyed music that is played on the radio, or a bunch of other arbitrary "dealbreakers" that excluded the vast majority of the dating pool.

When I realized that I don't actually care about most of those things, I just was being reminded of previous bad relationships, it became much easier to figure out the things I actually cared about.

[PuppyTailWags]

IMO This is a standards problem. No one is going to have all of your compatibilities. In fact, very few people are going to even have a super satisfactory number of them. Especially if physical attraction is part of this: physical attraction is going to fade and it's going to fade fast.

If you're having trouble dating, not because you can't land a date but because all the dates disappoint you, it might be time to evaluate whether or not you're realistically setting your standards. People aren't like an RNG where you can roll and roll and roll until you get your perfectly desired stats. It's more like people will always have bad stats and you have to figure out if you can live with it.

[SuoDuanDao]

I was in the same boat - symmetrical features, visible abdominals, decent career. Couldn't put it together describes the problem very well.

I found the book 'Models' by Mark Manson to be a big help. Sometimes, the right advice really does make a difference.

[goethes_kind]

I never understood this obsession with going to the gym. Like, my main problem is meeting women at all. Second main problem is impressing them enough to give me a chance to showcase my attractive qualities, which unlike my unattractive qualities, are not in plain view.

Unfortunately, living in a country where meeting any kind of people at all is extremely hard to start with, I barely get a chance to ever even flirt or ask a woman on a date.

At least your friend is getting rejections. That means he somehow managed to figure out how to routinely get in contact with women.

[aidenn0]

> I never understood this obsession with going to the gym. Like, my main problem is meeting women at all. Second main problem is impressing them enough to give me a chance to showcase my attractive qualities, which unlike my unattractive qualities, are not in plain view.

One thing that seems to work is to find an activity that you like, which will also be done along with a significant number of single women[1]. Then just do it and have fun doing it. People are more attractive when they are having fun and less attractive when they are desperately searching for someone. It also gives you a shared interest, which is a natural starting point for conversation. In the worst case, you are having fun, in the best case you will meet someone.

I have had exactly zero relationships successfully start via the stereotypical "someone set us up" "meet at a mixer" "online dating" methods, despite several failed attempts at those. Everyone I went on a third date with was via me doing some activity where I wasn't looking for a date.

There are plenty of things that are out of your control that can sink a relationship. A surprisingly large number of women will flatly refuse to date someone who is shorter than they are, which sucks for short people.

1: A sibling comment suggests Zumba classes. Using this as an example: If you go to a Zumba class obviously looking for a date, you are likely to come off as a creep. If you want to get cardio exercise though, taking a Zumba class instead of buying a treadmill to use at home is going to give you a lot more chances to meet someone, and is a similar time & money investment, so you lose nothing if all that happens is you get fit.

[Hasu]

> Like, my main problem is meeting women at all. Second main problem is impressing them enough to give me a chance to showcase my attractive qualities, which unlike my unattractive qualities, are not in plain view.

Going to the gym helps with both of these problems. The gym is a place you can meet people, being fit makes you more confident and makes it easier to meet people, and being fit gives you attractive qualities that are in plain view.

[sw104]

The gym I go to has maybe 10 female regulars (including my wife). I think the reason it's so low is because of men advising other men to meet girls at the gym, or people going with that goal in-mind.

My wife has to put up with all sorts of weird behaviour (staring, unsolicited advice, chatting up, following around the gym, and occasionally somebody trying to leave with her, which cuts my workout short) just to get a workout. If we didn't live in such a small living space, we'd build a home gym to get away from public gyms.

I know you're not advising that, but I think more-or-less the gym isn't an environment for meeting people, unless it's truly a per-chance meeting where neither side is actively looking for anything.

[jq-r]

I would even suggest to skip the gym (as in body building kind of gym) and go straight to group fitness classes (say Zumba or something similar). Those are choke full of women and positive energy, and finding someone is very easy. I would even go as further and say that you might even get to choose. Ask me how I know ;)

[_e]

Group fitness classes are great because someone else tells you what to do so there is less to think about when you go.

[SuoDuanDao]

hitting the gym tends to up testosterone which makes one more likely to take opportunities to start conversations. A lot of men don't take all the opportunities they have, 'just hit the gym' is helpful in those cases.

[ge96]

When I was in college, there were so many people to interact with/meet. I then move to another state, I still go to the bars or whatever (spontaneous interaction with strangers is hard but I at least met a guy friend recently to not solo bars anymore). I also spend so much money... it's bad. Strip club for example waste of money, dim, forget what happened next day. Also kind of sad to pay for interaction.

This problem did plague me in school though, it's all I strove for (getting laid).

Step 1) be attractive as they say. Online dating is brutal too, depressing stuff.

I'm just glad there's an outlet for me (porn). Then I can go about my life still.

[googlryas]

If you're a 4 you have to target other 4s. I guess one problem is a lot of 4s decide to hold out for 7s and if they can't land one they say they will be forever alone.

[xyzelement]

// there is no guarantee even with persistence and a good attitude

// Such is life, we can't choose what we inherit

I agree that there's no guarantees but something conspicuously missing from this story is anything you've done to better the odds.

Do you go to the gym or work out at home? Have you found a barber who cuts your hair well? Have you had a fashionable friend help you with your wardrobe? Have you spent any time practicing small talk or put any emphasis on becoming more charming?

None of these things guarantee success either but it's weird to not hear about any work you had put in to make this happen (not saying you haven't done it just you didn't mention it)

[moralestapia]

Dude, come on, that's what TFA's about lol.

[xyzelement]

Yup and I disagree with it. I don't blame the dude for the outcome, sometimes you do what you can and it doesn't work out. But did he do what he could?

[fluoridation]

>Yup and I disagree with it. I don't blame the dude for the outcome, sometimes you do what you can and it doesn't work out.

If it's the case that you can do everything you can and still fail, how are you disagreeing with the article?

[s1artibartfast]

Not gp. Actually agree with the article, but I find it interesting that people seem to be latching on to the first part and ignoring the second part. The article doesn't suggest a solution as much as present a conflict between the two.

Trying to resolve that conflict raises a number of questions: Have you done everything you can? If there's a possibility or even likelihood that you'll fail, should you still try?

[xyzelement]

// If it's the case that you can do everything you can and still fail, how are you disagreeing with the article

It's about moving the probably of desired outcome from zero to likely. Like, let's say op really wanted someone to "touch his genitals"- badly enough to invest a year in working on his physique, appearance, and personality. There's still no guarantee that it will work but it will move the odds tremendously.

If he does nothing, he's taking the guaranteed fail and I think that's sad.

[int_19h]

Is it moving them from "zero" to "likely", or from "zero" to "nonzero but still very unlikely"?

Because for a lot of people it's really the latter, and it's no surprise when working out hard to basically buy a lottery ticket is not something they are enthusiastic about.

[s1artibartfast]

>quarantined fail

What does this mean? Im not familiar with the term