No. 5793Anonymous 18th September 2018 Tuesday 3:03 pm5793Getting me, and yourself laid more: a case study of James Hawver
I couldn't decide if this belonged here, but I think this board is underused and you should be the change you want to see in the world.
Essentially I want to discover the secret to online dating and what if anything men can do to improve their numbers.
James Hawver the most popular heterosexual man in New York in 2014 on okcupid when asked for his secret he said 'just never swipe left' utterly fucking vapid. This is the wisdom of a man who according to the article " In the three and a half hours we spend talking, the phone will ping 47 times: On Tinder, 35 women will match with him; 12 women on OKCupid will either message or favorite him." Clearly James doesn't know why he was so popular, or wasn't telling. It all points to cliché for male online dating advice "step 1: Be attractive, Step 2: don't be unattractive" essentially a statement about how the odds are already stacked but are they? what makes someone more and less attractive and can we change it? and what is the difference between what men want, men think women want, what women think they want and what they actually want. Given the absurd numbers I think James is the objective ideal to measure from Somewhere hidden in his profile is the secret to dating and I want to crack it
Slightly surprising I mean he isn't a dwarf but if height really matters and taller = better you'd presume someone else taller to be doing better than him.
Money: real-estate agent (never mentioned on the profile)
again nothing to write home about, if this is really relevant someone else surely would have surely cleaned up by mentioning their success.
Age: (at the time) 29
This number it tells us women aren't as youth obsessed as men, as an assumption, and this part is entirely pulled out of my arse, I'd assume the bulk of online daters are in their early 20s amd this number represents women like older men.
Now a bit more opinion
Atractiveness:
body type: he isn't fat, but he isn't muscularly ripped either. He is probably a bit healthier than most, he seems like a man who does cardio at the gym a couple of times a week and might watch what he eats I guess his bod fat is in the teens.
Face: now looking at those profile pictures you may think he's just pretty but when you see him in video you realise that was a trick and he seems like a fucking dork:
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(the other 3 people are the most popular hetro and homo people in New York on okcupid at the time again not remarkable).
What I think this points to might very be the secret of the whole thing: the quality of his photos, they are largely high quality stage pictures where he is the close up focus of them and they have probably been touched up. I think this is such a key part of the profile I might do a more focused breakdown on this later.
Style: he seems to be nothing but blazers shirts and skinny tie- there might be something to this, it seems like a middle of the road, but put a bit of effort in look, there is nothing offensive or divisive about the look dressing like this might help.
His writing: my intial reaction was the content is shit. I feel like it is crap humblebrags all the way down but it is clear and short, his style also is heavily focused on hooks if there is a secret it might be that?
New Yorker magazine described as "self-deprecatingly confident jokes" which slipped me by, maybe there is a halo effect here, or the spell doesn't work on other men Maybe what the new Yorker sees as confident I see as being a smug cunt. I need a women to read this and tell me what they think. The spacing feels Jarring but might be part of why it is clear to read? If this wasn't the most popular profile in new york I would have discarded it as crap, but if there is a lesson to be learned here and I assume there must be, I want to find it.
So in summary my conclusion is: Hit the gym, until your body fat is below 20%, get a jacket and tie, Use a good camera to get decent staged photos. Write in hooks, space like a retard.
I think this sort of analysis leads to the real issue, which is that women can smell a lonely weirdo a mile off.
You can set out as many rules as you like, but the only thing that matters is confidence, or more accurately your ability to project it.
We have this sort of discussion often enough here that I'm considering just giving out my tinder login for the dataset. The most fanny dense period of my life I was really rather fat, and was making nine quid an hour.
>I think this sort of analysis leads to the real issue, which is that women can smell a lonely weirdo a mile off.
>You can set out as many rules as you like, but the only thing that matters is confidence, or more accurately your ability to project it.
That advice is about as vapid as; be more attractive, Just play better, or just be yourself.
I don't care about even how well the conversation goes, this is about getting an intial positive response. And what someone can do constructively.
During my research I managed to find a woman who mini maxed their profile in the same 'lonely weirdo' way to their sucess there is clearly something to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U
It's not vapid at all. It's directly identifying the trait women find, unequivocally, most attractive. If you want to ignore this then go ahead, but you're not going to figure out anything the majority of blokes don't already know.
I'd certainly never tell you to just be yourself, indeed, I'm urging you to change.
Also, if you really want to know what the 'ideal' tinder profile looks like, that research has already been done.
I think it's a couple of pictures of your face, one in artsy black and white, one with you and a woman, child, or dog, and one of you in a suit, preferably at a wedding.
>>5802 >It's not vapid at all. It's directly identifying the trait women find, unequivocally, most attractive.
I'm not disputing the value of confidence but your advice is utterly vapid. You might as well be saying depressed people should just be more happy. Being more confident is something indirectly achieved not something a person can just do.
Confidence is absolutely something you can learn or nurture internally. "Fake it till you make it", rejection therapy, propranalol, hell even the 6 or so CBT sessions the NHS would give you for social anxiety, these are all realistic, actionable solutions.
Out of what you listed only rejection therapy and proponalol have any real chance of success. Six sessions of CBT is fuck all and "faking it until you make it" only works if you really, really work hard at it - for the first six months or so you're just going to stink of trying too hard.
None of this really matters for Tinder anyway, as 90% of it is putting together a profile "interesting" enough for the birds to swipe right on you; you won't actually get to test out your new, faux-confident, persona until you meet in person. Anyone can fake confidence over the internet; look at all the internet hard men we've had just on here over the years.
A far more time-economical approach to beta-testing your new alpha (ho ho) personality is to go to a raging shit ton of speed dating* nights and keep working on your patter until you keep a good 80% of them smiling or laughing throughout your speed date. By that point not only will you probably have had a few decent real life dates with some of those birds but you'll also be ready for the dreaded IRL interactions that come after the Tinder match.
* When I found out that speed dating didn't mean going out on a date while on speed I was incredibly disappointed
Heaven forbid! It gets easier every day, believe me. I'm not just guessing here.
Can't really disagree with anything you've said about tinder, other than no matter how well you fake AlphaChad 6000 (sorry) in the profile, it'll all fall apart in the messages. It's frightening how quickly people can pick up on self-doubt in messages on dating apps. They can smell your fear. No amount of testing can negate your instinct to triple text her when she doesn't respond for half an hour.
> It's frightening how quickly people can pick up on self-doubt in messages on dating apps.
I found this the easiest part to be honest - you just have to find the middle ground between mousy and arsehole and apply it consistently.
Example tinder conversation I just had:
her: hi
me: hi what's up
her: not much you?
me: same old, I reckon we should figure out something more interesting to do together
her: I agree <number>
I don't know if that's what natural confidence looks like, but it's what gets numbers on tinder in about five minutes flat.
Then again, another lad in another thread did say something along the lines of "if they message you first it's basically a guaranteed shag" - which links back in to building your profile and very little to do with being AlphaChad 6000 (unless you figure you're going to fuck things up at the last minute, but that's another story).
>I don't know if that's what natural confidence looks like
Pretty much. Women typically want someone no-nonsense and willing to make decisions. Which is confidence, essentially.
>Then again, another lad in another thread did say something along the lines of "if they message you first it's basically a guaranteed shag"
That was me, as it happens. It's fully true in my case at least, and I'm certainly not the worlds most handsome man, and like I say the majority of my tinder years I was pretty overweight too, and not particularly hiding it in photos etc. I concede that obviously I'm attractive enough for some women to look at my pictures, my one line bio (which is something like "full time chef, part time musician" - yeah, I know) and think "yeah, alright, he'll do". I think that's just a confident woman, though, more than me doing anything special. All I can tell you is once I worked out how to overcome my self esteem and social issues (mostly through practice), the dating game changed entirely for me.
Trying to make it any more of a science than that, for me, just seems like you'll end up convincing yourself you lack the required formula for success, and I genuinely believe everyone has the potential to reliably convince other humans to shag them.
> and I genuinely believe everyone has the potential to reliably convince other humans to shag them
I don't want to gloss over the content of the rest of your post, which merits a response, but I just wanted to muse for a second that given the awful fucking specimens that my father and grandfathers were that there is more than a grain of truth in that.
>I genuinely believe everyone has the potential to reliably convince other humans to shag them.
I'm pretty sure that is true, just by a common sense biological perspective. We are wired to reproduce so unless you look like a decomposing whale I think you should be able to manage.
Regarding the OP, I don't see any mystery there. He's quite simply the most average normal man ever to be normal. He's like the colour beige incarnate. He's right in the middle of all the statistical groups for his height, wealth, age, etc. He's like the template of what a boring average woman wants.
My own experiences with online dating have shown that it really is all about practice. Hammering at it until you figure out what kind of approach works. It's the same thing as real life dating, but these days nobody meets in real life so it's irrelevant. You need confidence, you need to learn how to present yourself, sure. But none of that makes up for simply going through tons of rejections until you figure it out by sheer trial and error.
It's kind of interesting actually when you think of it like that. Previously online dating was a sort of alternative for shy people or those with no social life. But nowadays it's just the normal way of doing things. So the same principles apply- You have to try and fail with a LOT of birds before you start to learn how to reel them in. And that's exactly what you would have told a young lad ten or fifteen years ago, when he was too nervous to go up to that one lass at the pub.
>Trying to make it any more of a science than that, for me, just seems like you'll end up convincing yourself you lack the required formula for success, and I genuinely believe everyone has the potential to reliably convince other humans to shag them.
The more I read of what you say the more you sound like the man from meme. There are plenty of people who are confidant who get passed over, in online dating before they even get a chance to speak. And it isn't because they lack confidance. It is really great that you don't have to try, but it isn't very useful advice.
It feels like you're only hearing what you want to hear, now.
I've made it clear already that I had major self esteem issues for most of my life. I was too shy to even answer my own phone for a long time, let alone independently meet women. I learned to overcome it. I'm still average to poor in the looks department. I look like an older, beardier version of the leader singer of Keane.
>It is really great that you don't have to try
This is where you miss the point. Of course I've had to try, I put work in every bloody time I meet someone, man, woman, friend, or potential partner. I worked hard, as you've said, to learn how to be confident, though many trials and errors, many embarrassments that, had I had a different childhood, I might have learned naturally as a kid - but instead I had to teach it to myself in my twenties. It's true that it's easier now, in that I'm genuinely confident instead of trying my hardest to learn what it means to be confident, but all I did was expose myself to social situations over and over and over again. It took time, and effort, but in terms of actionable plans, it's quite literally as simple as just leaving the house. You just have do to it over, and over.
I'm really, really, tempted to post a picture of myself because mate, the odds are I'm uglier than you are, I'm dead average face wise and have a bit of a wonky eye. But I know you won't see it for the reality it is.
I wish you'd listen because despite what you're telling yourself, that's genuinely all there is to it. I don't think I'm accidentally an incredibly handsome bloke without noticing, I don't tell tinder dates I have money, I just show up and be a bit affable and a bit charming, and have enough conversation to last the evening. That's it. There's no other magic formula. Those are all learnable skills, I can tell you firsthand, and I'm certainly not the only person in the world who's learned these skills.
I agree that the first problem to solve in online dating is becoming 'marketable', for lack of a better term, and that involves careful curation of your photos, etc - but that makes sense. Who wants to date someone who can't even be arsed to show their best side? But, once you learn to be more comfortable with yourself, this becomes much easier. Self esteem absolutely comes through in photos, bios, etc.
My point with this, though, is still that overanalysing the 'system' of tinder is the wrong way to be looking. Instead of looking at the system around you and how to fool it, look inward to see how you could actually just figure out how to fit right into that system anyway. Technology might have moved on and made it faster and more confusing, but human attraction has not changed for a very, very long time.
I realise we've had this exact discussion before, and this is the last I can rant about it - just know I'm far more self aware than you're painting me, and the way you talk reminds me of myself before I pulled my socks up. I genuinely wish you'd listen to me, instead of just dismissing me as a 10/10 hollywood icon who doesn't understand why everyone can't just be like him.
>>5815 At no point have I said I am bad on a date you've just assumed, the entire point of this thread was to talk about maximizing the effect of an online profile, and all you've talked about is how confidant you are on a date, it is irrelevant to the point.
Again, no, self esteem is more visible than you think.
The way you look in photos, whether or not you're with people, the haunted look in your eye, it all translates directly into your tinder profile, and women can pick up on all of this. Believe me or not, it's still true.
When you improve your confidence, you'll naturally project it, in everything you do. Humans are social animals, it's baked into us to pick up on and project barely perceptible personality signals.
Easier said than done to suddenly become confident and socially adept, but it's within us all, I mean, at a genetic level.
>>5820 >if you're not, then getting your dick wet is likely not the remedy
This is such a crucial point. I had a mate who got himself sorted out and finally landed a proper girlfriend at the grand old age of 27 only to immediately destroy the relationship with all the insecurities and misery he had refused to deal with thus far because just hitting the gym for about a year was enough for him to superficially seem more 'normal'.
He wound up dropping out of uni (for the third time) and getting sectioned when it all fell apart because he simply wasn't equipped to deal with it emotionally.
It's been done to death, but unless you're just looking for a bit of action, the best advice is going to be just be yourself. Exaggerate a little in the profile, and put a half-decent picture on it. If you're not that interesting, work on becoming more interesting, if only because you'll probably enjoy life a bit more in general. If you'rea bit of a cunt, work on being less of a cunt.
If you are just looking for some quick action, it may be easier to just pay a professional.
If you just fancy a laugh, go look up Super Seducer 2 on YouTube for some obvious advice, like don't say you'll cut her family into tiny pieces of she won't sleep with you. If you want to see the fragility of the PUA ego, I can heartily recommend the "call Mahmud" option.
>>5825 > If you want to see the fragility of the PUA ego, I can heartily recommend the "call Mahmud" option.
Can you elaborate on that? I can't even try to figure out what you're onto here.
