Latest / Sex Advice for Seniors Podcast / Your Dating Profile Is Scaring People Away with Eric Resnick

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Your Dating Profile Is Scaring People Away with Eric Resnick · Sex Advice for Seniors Podcast

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[music]
0:07
SPEAKER_00: At Oh My Bod,
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SPEAKER_00: innovation meets self-care,
0:10
SPEAKER_00: helping adults of all ages reclaim confidence, curiosity and connection.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Explore their collection at ohmybod.com.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: That's O-H-M-I-B-O-D dot com.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Suzanne and welcome to Sex Advice for Seniors.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: With a background in PR and crisis management,
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SPEAKER_00: he made the leap into online dating back in 2000,
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SPEAKER_00: which was exactly when I started online dating,
1:24
SPEAKER_00: so we can have a lot to chat about there,
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SPEAKER_00: long before swiping was even a thing, and he's since worked.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not,
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SPEAKER_00: over 40,000 individual daters,
1:34
SPEAKER_00: as well as consulting for some of the major dating platforms.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, he's got loads of perspective on this.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: We can talk about how the industry has changed.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: But today,
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SPEAKER_00: we're really going to dig into what's really going on behind the scenes
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SPEAKER_00: of dating apps,
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SPEAKER_00: why so many people, including myself, occasionally feel disillusioned.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And most importantly,
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SPEAKER_00: what actually works if you want to create genuine,
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SPEAKER_00: meaningful connection in today's digital world.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Eric, welcome to Sex Advice for Seniors.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Hey, thank you for having me.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: So listen, you've been doing this, like me, since 2000.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: What did it look like back then?
2:14
SPEAKER_00: And what do you think has changed the most in your view?
2:17
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to 2000, it was Match.com, Yahoo Singles, and Perfect Match.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: The only thing people will ever remember Perfect Match for now is all of
2:27
SPEAKER_01: the money they spent to be the dating site mentioned in the John Cusack,
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SPEAKER_01: Diane Lane movie, Must Love Dogs.
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SPEAKER_01: Eventually, Match bought Yahoo Dating.
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SPEAKER_01: And the industry exploded.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: EHarmony started coming on there.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: A guy in Vancouver was trying to win a Fields Medal and he built a dating site
2:45
SPEAKER_01: to test the algorithm that he was trying to win this mathematical medal for.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's how we got plenty of fish.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: I was going to ask about Plenty of Fish.
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SPEAKER_01: Which is now also owned by Match.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: And then we got eHarmony,
2:56
SPEAKER_01: which was sort of the first big unofficially Christian type dating site.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: But it was absolutely Christian when it was started by the Reverend Neil Clark Warren.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: And then we got Christian Mingle and JDate and started to expand.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: And then about 12,
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SPEAKER_01: 15 years ago,
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SPEAKER_01: there was a big schism,
3:18
SPEAKER_01: I think partially brought on by sites like OkCupid,
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SPEAKER_01: which was one of the most interesting dating sites in the dating market.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was drawing a younger, more interesting, a little more alternative crowd.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: But people were also starting to get a little tired with the work involved with online dating.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's when Tinder happened.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, and Tinder came out with a product that pretty much you could go from download
3:41
SPEAKER_01: to swiping within 90 seconds.
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SPEAKER_01: You didn't have to write a profile.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: You could just post a couple of photos.
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SPEAKER_01: If you swiped right and someone else swiped right on you, you had a match.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: If you, if you swiped left, you never saw the other person again.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: And that was, um,
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SPEAKER_01: The beginning of a very toxic trend in online dating,
3:58
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
4:00
SPEAKER_01: which has gone to include Tinder and Bumble,
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SPEAKER_01: each of which are the two largest dating sites.
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SPEAKER_01: I think between the two of them, one has 55 or 60 million people a day.
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SPEAKER_01: One has 75 million people.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's because they're so easy to use.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: But they're there because they're video games.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: So we've entered into this sort of new era of online dating
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SPEAKER_01: where there's different types of online daters.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: There's different reasons to use different dating apps.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: There's different dating apps for almost anything you could imagine from farmers
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SPEAKER_01: to Disney fans to people who want to hook up in the next 90 minutes.
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SPEAKER_01: But it's diluted the market.
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SPEAKER_01: It's made it a little harder to find your place.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: It's made it a lot more frustrating.
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SPEAKER_01: But the biggest thing I think that's hurting people right now is the growth
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SPEAKER_01: of those swipe apps, specifically Tinder and Bumble.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: I refer to them as the dopamine slot machine because they train people to focus
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SPEAKER_01: on getting matches, not to focus on who they're matching with.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: And this is a problem that really started exploding during the pandemic because
4:58
SPEAKER_01: for two years, everyone was isolated.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: We were at home.
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SPEAKER_01: We were maybe trapped with partners that weren't giving us the validation we wanted,
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SPEAKER_01: or we were just isolated.
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SPEAKER_01: And you could go onto an app.
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SPEAKER_01: And especially as a female on those dating apps,
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SPEAKER_01: because men tend to swipe right 70% of the time and women swipe right around 4% of
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SPEAKER_01: the time,
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SPEAKER_01: that most women could go on and immediately start getting validation in the floor to
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SPEAKER_01: the dopamine hit.
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SPEAKER_01: That is, you know, it's a match popping up on their screen.
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SPEAKER_01: It trained people to focus,
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SPEAKER_01: as I said before, on getting matches as opposed to who they're matching with.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: And then because those two apps are the two biggest in the market,
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SPEAKER_01: they've really driven the sentiment towards the industry down.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, look, I mean, I can show you the ring right here.
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SPEAKER_01: Online dating does work.
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SPEAKER_01: I've been with my wife for 13 years.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: We've been married for eight.
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SPEAKER_01: I met her on Look, there's somebody for everybody.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I tell my clients,
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SPEAKER_01: if there was someone for me, then there's definitely someone for you.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: I started on a site back in 2000 called Nerve.com, which I think was bought by OKCupid.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I remember
6:20
SPEAKER_01: Nerve, yeah.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: And it had a very quirky little questionnaire that I really liked,
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SPEAKER_00: which was kind of slightly alternative.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: And it was geared towards people who, I suppose...
6:31
SPEAKER_00: It could be classed as kind of quite urban, city dwellers.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: It was very New York, LA kind of thing.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: The thing I loved about it back then was, of course, we were on dial-up.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even see people's pictures.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even care, really.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: I was just so excited about this kind of brave new world
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SPEAKER_00: where you could just meet people randomly on this new thing called the internet.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose for me, what's now changed, I mean...
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I tend to go on the more alternative sites like Field and sometimes,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: you know, for casual connections and things.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried Pure?
7:04
SPEAKER_00: No, but people have been talking to me about Pure, actually.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Pure is literally the dating site for people who are looking to hook up in the next 90 minutes.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So I've been speaking to a few people who have been on Pure, but I haven't tried it myself yet.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: But the stat you just said about the 70% of men swipe right and the 4% of women swipe right.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: It's overwhelming.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: It's so overwhelming.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And even as an older woman where I thought that my chances of anything were going
7:29
SPEAKER_00: to be relatively slim, I'm inundated, like literally inundated with
7:46
SPEAKER_00: One of the most important features on dating apps for a woman is incognito mode.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're on an app that doesn't have an incognito mode, it's going to become overwhelming.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: And the problem is, it's not even overwhelming with quality.
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SPEAKER_01: Because the guys are so mission-oriented.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
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SPEAKER_01: One is dying of thirst and the other half is drowning.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: You work with 40,000 people and,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: the most common mistakes that you see,
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SPEAKER_00: as you acknowledge,
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SPEAKER_00: are men,
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SPEAKER_00: I suspect,
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SPEAKER_00: just not really taking the time over creating an attractive and interesting profile.
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SPEAKER_00: They're just so mission-driven.
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SPEAKER_01: Not just men.
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SPEAKER_01: Men and women both universally kind of suck at writing profiles.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: The difference with men is men get too salesy.
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SPEAKER_01: Men feel like it's me versus all the other guys to get to you.
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SPEAKER_01: And so what they write is something that's trying to convince you to give them a chance.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Whether you're looking for like the love of your life or just a hookup,
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SPEAKER_01: do you want to want that hookup or do you want to feel like you were talked into
9:37
SPEAKER_01: that hookup?
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SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, that's so sexy.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: He wore me down.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Ew.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Aside from the written side of it,
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SPEAKER_00: which is a shit show in itself, I mean,
9:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm always amazed that people are completely unaware of Spellcheck,
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Grammarly, or any of the other tools that are available.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And I, for that matter,
9:59
SPEAKER_00: ChatGPT just like stick some words in that have meaning for you
10:03
SPEAKER_00: and just get somebody else to do it for you, right?
10:06
SPEAKER_01: I ask ChatGPT because I've had a lot,
10:08
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:08
SPEAKER_01: we've seen a lot of impact on what we do because people are like,
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SPEAKER_01: oh, why should I pay someone if I can just have AI write it for me?
10:15
SPEAKER_01: And the reason is because it sucks.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: I actually went to ChatGPT.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole blog post on my site of me asking ChatGPT why it's bad
10:23
SPEAKER_01: at writing dating profiles.
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SPEAKER_01: And it gave me an answer and I've got screen captures up there.
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SPEAKER_01: But basically what it comes down to is AI aims for the middle.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: AI is going to write something that's acceptable to the largest possible population.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: When in reality, if you're acceptable to everyone, you're not special to anyone.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: And regardless of whether you're looking for,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: marriage or relationship or dating or just to like find someone to have sex
10:52
SPEAKER_01: with this afternoon,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: you're not looking to be the most acceptable person for everyone
10:58
SPEAKER_01: to maybe consider wanting to have sex with this afternoon or to marry.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: You're looking for the person who's like, oh, that one.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're looking to connect.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: You're not looking...
11:08
SPEAKER_01: You're not looking to be white bread on mayo or mayo on white bread rather.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: And so you get something that's highly superficial, very list driven.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Even when there's details, there are details without context.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Congratulations.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm really happy you like live music, classical, jazz, punk, war.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you listening to?
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Because those are very different instances.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And that means something to people.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know,
11:34
SPEAKER_01: and so a lot of people come to me either for a free assessment of their profile,
11:39
SPEAKER_01: cause we offer that to everyone.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: And, and I will immediately call them out.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you just had me assess a profile that you didn't write.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: AI wrote it.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: And the funny thing is, sometimes like I didn't write it.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have AI write it.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: I paid someone to write it.
11:52
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11:57
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12:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious though,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: because obviously from my point of view, right,
12:55
SPEAKER_00: as a woman, mainly heterosexual woman, mostly what I see is men's profiles, right?
13:01
SPEAKER_00: So I don't see what you see if you go on and look at women.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm always curious to know,
13:07
SPEAKER_00: because I see these men and obviously women,
13:11
SPEAKER_00: I see the issues around the men's profiles,
13:14
SPEAKER_00: a lot of which you've acknowledged,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:17
SPEAKER_00: this kind of very salesy approach or just this lack of care and attention
13:22
SPEAKER_00: over actually what they want and what they're looking for and what they desire,
13:27
SPEAKER_00: which is reflected in this very bland,
13:30
SPEAKER_00: completely homogenous,
13:32
SPEAKER_00: uninteresting profile from the female side of My suspicion is
13:39
SPEAKER_00: that women have too many tick boxes, but I don't know.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: This is just my suspicion.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: That's part of it.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: There's a list of problems.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: The first one is lack of effort.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for the lack of effort is because the guys are trying too hard.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: If 70% of the people that I swipe on are going to be matches for me,
13:59
SPEAKER_01: regardless of How much effort do I really need to put into my profile?
14:02
SPEAKER_01: I'll just sort through my matches and see what's best.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And that's from the women's side.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: That's on the women's side.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: I see more women on dating apps where you don't have to write texts
14:12
SPEAKER_01: that have not written any text
14:14
SPEAKER_00: or they're just giving you a list of
14:15
SPEAKER_00: a few
14:15
SPEAKER_01: activities.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: What you'll also see more on the female side is more negativity.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: More of what I don't want.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: I was just reviewing a profile for a woman.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: I put my hand up for that one.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: There's a problem with that.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Because when you tell people what you don't want,
14:32
SPEAKER_01: basically you're saying, here's the problems I've had with previous connections.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not ready to move past that because I'm still hung up on it.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: So the healthy guys, the guys that you actually enjoy being around, see that as a red flag.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: And the dirtbags see you as an easy mark.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: So your past doesn't belong in your profile, your relationship past.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: You should never ask for something in your profile that's a basic fundamental of
14:58
SPEAKER_01: a healthy relationship or of just being a decent human.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: If you're asking for loyalty or honesty in your profile,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: you're just saying, I was cheated on and I was lied to, even if you weren't.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, I don't do that.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Mine are all physical characteristics that I just don't like.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Like bad teeth, beer bellies.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Like, I just can't deal with them.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't stop them.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know about that.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: I have a friend who is a white woman who only is interested in dating black men.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: And she had a profile that started with, I only date black men.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: If you're not a black man, do not message me.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: I advised her, this is an awful profile.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: She's still getting enough attention from it that she felt like we can sort through it.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: It's doing the work, yeah.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: More than half of her messages that she gets are from white guys.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: White guys saying, well, maybe you just haven't met the right white guy yet.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Or in some cases, guys who get real aggressive and call her things like a race traitor or worse.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: So she's ending up getting a lot of annoyance and a lot of abuse from At the end of
16:02
SPEAKER_01: the day, here's the thing.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Unless you're dealing with a mutually reliant app like a Tinder or Bumble,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: which I'm not going to advise anyway,
16:09
SPEAKER_01: your success as a man or a woman,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: 99% of the time is going to come down to who you choose, not who chooses you.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Because nobody on a dating app is going on there to make you happy.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: No one is looking at your app,
16:25
SPEAKER_01: you can get your profile and say, oh my God, I could make her so happy.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: No.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: They see you and they say, ooh, me want.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: And men do this and women do this.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: We both do it.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Because if we don't want, there's a potentially better option one swipe away.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: So we're trained to sort of commoditize people.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: And that has led to some of the fatigue that we're having.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think this is especially for females over 50.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: The majority of females over 50 that I deal with are still largely uncomfortable
16:59
SPEAKER_01: with being proactive.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Because for generations, women have been trained to be pursued.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: That it's desperate or too thirsty, you know, for the woman to go out there for the guy.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: I will tell you,
17:13
SPEAKER_01: as a man,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: if an intelligent,
17:15
SPEAKER_01: attractive woman were to approach a man who is interested in meeting an attractive,
17:20
SPEAKER_01: intelligent woman,
17:22
SPEAKER_01: and he's put off by the fact that she said hello first,
17:26
SPEAKER_01: it's a bullet dodged, not an opportunity lost.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: That's a fragile ego that you don't want to be anywhere near when that shatters.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Good point.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And look,
17:36
SPEAKER_00: surely one of the aspects of dating apps,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: which I've long been aware of,
17:42
SPEAKER_00: is it's to their benefit to keep you coming back, right?
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Because they want you to keep paying your subscription fee.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, you're the product.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't benefit them for you to actually be successful.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: So how much of the algorithm is actually about you not being successful?
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: The last time I heard a statistic on cost versus acquisition,
18:08
SPEAKER_01: the marketing cost to get one new member on a dating site equals around
18:11
SPEAKER_01: a three-month paid membership.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Dating apps,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: especially if you're looking at the swipe apps where you don't have
18:18
SPEAKER_01: a search function,
18:19
SPEAKER_01: you have a lot more control when there's a search function in play.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: But dating apps where there's a search function,
18:24
SPEAKER_01: they generally work on daily visibility rankings,
18:27
SPEAKER_01: meaning for every consecutive day that you don't log in,
18:31
SPEAKER_01: your visibility is going to drop a tier.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Until after, depending on the app between two to four weeks, you become invisible.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: But if it's a two-week to invisibility dating app like Hinge and you don't log in
18:44
SPEAKER_01: for 13 days, you're not quite invisible.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: You're almost invisible.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: The largest reason they do that,
18:49
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: in their defense will be if they're trying to show people to each other,
18:53
SPEAKER_01: they don't want to waste their time showing them someone who has
18:56
SPEAKER_01: a lower statistical chance of coming back.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: And the longer you go without logging in, the less chance you're going to come back.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: But if it's midnight on the end of day 13 and you log in, you're back to tier one.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do 13 days to build yourself back up.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: It's literally just, what have you done in the last 24 hours?
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Some dating apps will penalize you for swiping too fast or swiping yes too often.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Some dating apps,
19:23
SPEAKER_01: theoretically,
19:24
SPEAKER_01: although it's all proprietary,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: so you can't really find this stuff out and there'd be too many lawsuits.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Some apps allegedly rank people's visibility by how popular they are.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, again,
19:37
SPEAKER_01: all the more reason to not focus on dating apps where you have no control,
19:40
SPEAKER_01: where you're swiping on a mutually reliant system.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: So I at least hinge.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: If you see someone you like, you can reach out to them immediately.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to wait to be swiped back on.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Same thing with like Facebook dating.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: Whereas then you got things like Match and eHarmony and Plenty of Fish
19:54
SPEAKER_01: where there's still message based.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: So the algorithms that are there,
19:59
SPEAKER_01: think of it more as, um,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: LaCroix,
20:02
SPEAKER_01: it's a Canadian seltzer water product that is so lightly flavored
20:07
SPEAKER_01: that it feels like maybe they walked a piece of fruit past the room that
20:10
SPEAKER_01: the seltzer was in.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: So when you're dealing with these dating site algorithms,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: that faint fruit flavor in the background is your preferences.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: The big bubbles you're feeling are the monetization
20:24
SPEAKER_00: and user engagement algorithms.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's why Hinge,
20:28
SPEAKER_01: which happens to be pretty much my favorite app overall right now,
20:32
SPEAKER_01: They have a free version and a paid version.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: If you're a free member, you can like and reach out to five people a day.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: If you're a paid member, you can like out to an unlimited number of people.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: If you are liking more than five people a day on a dating app,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: you have been on the dating app too long today.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: It's time to go outside,
20:51
SPEAKER_01: get some fresh air,
20:52
SPEAKER_01: pet a puppy, maybe have some ice cream, do something to make you happy.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: But the longer you spend on the dating app,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: You're not paying nearly as close attention to profile 25 as you did
21:03
SPEAKER_01: to profile number three that you looked at.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's a diminished return for you.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: These dating apps will sell you on the idea of this fear of missing out.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the perfect person for you could be one message away or boost your profile.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: So you're seen or, oh, there's a mutual reliant matching algorithm.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: You can buy a rose to get past it.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: No, I've never met a woman.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Who said,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't going to talk to that guy,
21:27
SPEAKER_01: but he sent me a picture of flower that he paid 99 cents for.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what turned the tide.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: No.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: So the algorithms are there theoretically to help you.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: They're starting to get a little scary.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: The CEO of Bumble was just giving a speech the other day I was reading about
21:45
SPEAKER_01: where she talked about how they're going to be applying AI.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: So that your profile will have an AI avatar and someone else's profile will have an AI avatar.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And basically they'll set up matching.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: So the avatars talk to each other first to determine compatibility before you're introduced.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's the most dystopian version of this that I've heard so far.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: It scares me.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: Because it removes the humanity from romance, which is the most human thing you can do.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm a big proponent of online dating,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: not just because it's how I make my living and because of how I met my wife.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: I see the benefit of it for people.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I've always sort of considered society to have been on a bit of a downturn since
22:28
SPEAKER_01: the introduction of the Sony Walkman.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: The Sony Walkman was the first time that people could walk around in a bubble
22:35
SPEAKER_01: of their own technology, isolated from the public, but still in public.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Then we get to the CD Walkmans,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: the MP3 players, now smartphones and noise-canceling headphones.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: We have learned to isolate ourselves amongst each other.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: We've also become more tribal because of social media.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: We've also got a really skewed concept of what everyone deserves
22:57
SPEAKER_01: or what is success based on the curated realities of social media.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: And all of that makes it harder and harder to connect people.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And if you're feeding that stuff into AI...
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And then you're trusting the AI to connect to you.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: It's just going to connect to you with other people who are similarly on messed up paths.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: There's no opportunity to say, okay, there's something unique about this person.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm a big Star Wars fan.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: My wife's dating profile had a line about her having a big collection of Star Wars stuff.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: So I knew not only did I think she was attractive, but I liked her general vibe.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: And one of the most important things you need when you're looking to
23:42
SPEAKER_01: whether you're going to reach out to someone on
23:43
SPEAKER_01: a dating app is there was actually something not that I just could talk to her
23:46
SPEAKER_01: about, but that I'd want to talk to her about.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: It's not about sending
23:49
SPEAKER_01: a, hey, what's up?
23:50
SPEAKER_01: Or I like your profile or some salesy garbage or some clever line you saw on Reddit.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: It's about making a person feel seen and heard and not targeted.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: And building a connection, starting a conversation.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's another really,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: really valid and really important point that I hear from a lot of women is that
24:09
SPEAKER_00: the introduction, that first contact is the most minimal amount of effort, right?
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's just like a, hey, or you look hot.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're so hot.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Or, or something just so innocuous, random, uninteresting.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Copy and pasteable.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: all women want to, everybody, not just women, everyone wants to feel special, right?
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Everyone wants to feel that you've put in some kind of effort and
24:40
SPEAKER_00: that means you've read the profile, you've gone crazy.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, I love my coffee black as well.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, anytime anyone asks if I want sugar, I'm like, no, I hate sugar in my coffee.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: I won't go near sugar.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Or I don't know about you, but I drink four cups a day.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I did actually meet on Tinder and I was with him for several years
25:03
SPEAKER_00: and he really spent time on his profile.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: It was clear, like his picture was super quirky.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: His profile, I've still got his profile.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: Sadly, he died, but I've still got his profile on my phone because I loved him to bits.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it said like, I put the toilet seat down and
25:23
SPEAKER_00: I drink far too much coffee.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm a very arty kind of guy.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: My favorite weekend is like going and checking out different galleries.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And I've returned back to being a visual artist.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: And it was such an appealing profile because it just showed me this kind of Quirky,
25:42
SPEAKER_00: pretty funny, interesting guy.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And he was all of that.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: He was all of that, you know.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: And my kids said, I can't believe you met this guy on Tinder.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't like the hottest guy in the world.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, he was a 60 some odd year old guy.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: But It was just something about that whole profile from both our ends that appealed
26:04
SPEAKER_00: to both of us.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and it is why we stayed together for so long.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
26:09
SPEAKER_00: one of my questions was going to be about the importance of authenticity
26:13
SPEAKER_00: and what does a truly authentic dating profile look like in practice?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And for me, my partner's profile was a really authentic,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: It's a window.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: It was.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: A good authentic profile is a window into somebody's world,
26:27
SPEAKER_01: not a sales pitch as to why you should give them a chance.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: It's not something that is self-aggrandizing.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: It's not something that is mired in lists of details and activities.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: It's something that gives people a sense of who you are.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: It creates the opportunities for conversation.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: All relationships,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: whether you're talking about business or friends or flings or marriages,
26:53
SPEAKER_01: they're all conversations.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: And the strength of those relationships depends on how well that conversation is nurtured.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: And if your profile shows you as the kind of person who can be
27:05
SPEAKER_01: that next conversation for them,
27:07
SPEAKER_01: as opposed to just an ad you're reading and observing,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: you've got a much better shot of connecting.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Because when you read someone's profile,
27:16
SPEAKER_01: so your guy, he talked about going out to art galleries.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: Whereas half the people would just stop at the love going out on the weekends.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay, for what?
27:30
SPEAKER_01: Like horse races or protests or movies?
27:35
SPEAKER_01: What are we doing?
27:36
SPEAKER_01: And he talked about his visual art.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming,
27:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to hope that he probably got at least one photo where he was with some
27:41
SPEAKER_01: of his art to give you a sense of what.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: So, and by the way,
27:46
SPEAKER_01: if you're an artist and you want to show some of your art,
27:48
SPEAKER_01: you still have to be in the picture.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's just a random picture and it's not going to be a thing.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: You have to be in every photo you post.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: An authentic profile is not a profile that tries.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: It's just a profile that is.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that I'm passionate about.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that make me happy.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that I'll fight for, depending on the type of person you are.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that I see as a good partner for me, not my wish list or my F-off list.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's an authentic profile.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: The reason why people hire people like you and why I'm always attracted to people
28:21
SPEAKER_00: who are creatives is because generally speaking,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: they are people for whom I can gain some insight when I look at their profile
28:29
SPEAKER_00: and they're not just this kind of bland set of random wants or needs or some shit
28:35
SPEAKER_00: that went on in their past that they don't want to bring into their future
28:38
SPEAKER_00: or whatever it happens to be, right?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that people always say when they read anything that I write is,
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I get a real sense of who you are.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And the surprising thing as well that I think is that I never post nude pictures
28:51
SPEAKER_00: of myself on hookup apps when everyone else is posting nudies, right?
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you should never post naked photos on the app.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: But on a lot of these hookup apps, the only thing you see is a male, you know, down there.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Because they want to see your boobs.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: No, the serious thing.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Guys want to see your boobs.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: And they assume that if I want to see her boobs, she probably wants to see my junk.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: And I have had to explain to hundreds of men, they don't want to see you junk.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: If they do, they will ask.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: And even still, you should say in person only.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're going to send me your junk, like ask first, can I send you my junk?
29:28
SPEAKER_00: And then you go, not right now.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't really want to ask.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Don't ask.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: It's not even a question you should have to ask.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: Because again, it goes back to that whole sales thing.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: Guys have all different sizes and girths and shapes of penises.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: What I've found from most women, most women aren't size queens.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Most women aren't like,
29:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:52
SPEAKER_01: oh, it's got to be maybe they're like circumcised, uncircumcised, whatever.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: But that's a written question,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: not a here's the visual proof.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: But like maybe this is a very skewed heterosexual male perspective here.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: There are very few things uglier than a penis.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: I always just say, is there a face to go along with that?
30:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, because a penis on its own is not that attractive generally.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: And also, if you've seen a lot of them, you know that the camera angle really does.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: It's like holding up a fish really close to the camera
30:25
SPEAKER_01: to make it look like you caught the big one.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: On one side, a dick pic without a face has no value.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: But on the other side, a dick pic with a face is just a blackmail risk.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the whole thing's ridiculous.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately,
30:39
SPEAKER_00: I have to go to the theater because otherwise I'd talk with you for the next hour.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I could talk about this subject endlessly because I've actually written two books
30:47
SPEAKER_00: about high dating adventures.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: So people know that I have a very strong interest in this topic and a lot of experience.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: But the bottom line is that spending time on And specifically,
30:58
SPEAKER_00: what about you is going to be interesting to people without resorting to
31:12
SPEAKER_00: We could do a whole other podcast on the photos.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: You know what, Eric?
31:29
SPEAKER_00: We might end up doing that because this was way too short.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: But I think we'll save that for another one.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: We might book that one straight in after this.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: But the bottom line is it doesn't really matter whether you're over 50, 18, 25, 35, 45.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: We're all hoping that these apps are going to deliver us someone with
31:47
SPEAKER_00: whom we're compatible,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: whether it's a quickie,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: a long-term, a short-term relationship, whatever it happens to be.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And the more...
31:54
SPEAKER_00: The more clear you can be about what you're looking for in a way
31:59
SPEAKER_00: that truly reflects your character,
32:01
SPEAKER_00: the more likely it is that you're going to be successful.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: And clearly you've been successful.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: I've also been very successful.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So I know that going in with a positive attitude also counts for a huge amount.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: And knowing, yeah, it will take time, does take energy.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's somebody out there for everyone.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Eric, it's been such a pleasure.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And I'm definitely going to get you back again.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: We're going to just talk about photographs.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: we can do a whole series of things on all the different problems people are having
32:31
SPEAKER_01: with online dating if you want.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, we might do that.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: We might do a whole series.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a good idea.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, thanks for coming on the show and have a great day.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, my pleasure.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Fancy a deep dive after this episode?
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Pop over to sexadviceforseniors.com,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: the spot for stories, advice, and I can guarantee a good laugh or two.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: And maybe discover something new about yourself at sexadviceforseniors.com.