The dynamics of this are straightforward: when a man is not ravenous for female approval, he relaxes and stops contorting himself into shapes designed for the approval of others (which girls hate, ironically), and a natural consequence is a significant step-change in attractiveness. “Confidence” is the casual shorthand for this phenomenon.

Alloromantic people are fascinating. Thank God I (hopefully) shall never live their lives.

People seem to be more willing to listen to advice if it’s provided with a bit of gender flavor. It’s easier to buy that what you’re doing doesn’t work if you can attribute your failure to the Fundamentally Alien And Incomprehensible Nature Of Men/Women. But that doesn’t mean that men and women are fundamentally different—even if the advice works. Sometimes all of you guys are neurotic.

I was cancelled in November of 2021 after about 4 weeks on the app and, of course, I subscribed for 3 months and Hinge never responded and kept all of my money. I have no idea why I was cancelled. One of the women I dated penned the “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back” essay in NY Times and let’s just say there was a giant gap between her in person reality and the epistle she wrote. Another woman I dated would leave me voicemails telling me that “Jesus would save me!” Maybe it was she? I think it was the latter person who narced on me because I was beyond saving. Anyway, the apps are expensive and toxic and I would never go back.

This is a hilarious comment.

see: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/style/modern-love-men-where-have-you-gone-please-come-back.html via: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/hinge-banning-dating-apps-matchgroup/686445/

People are being banned from dating apps without knowing why.

They should be glad they are. Why do people do this to themselves LOL.

Then one day a couple of giggling girls approached me and told me that another girl liked me. The girl in question was, in my opinion, the hottest girl in my year. While there were girls that I would briefly consider the possibilities of a future relationship with, before shaking it off, I never thought about this girl that way even once because she was so clearly out of my league. But these girls were telling me she was interested in me? In me?! The girls wandered off while I sat there in bewildered silence.

After a moment I shrugged the whole thing off and decided to forget about it. Because clearly the most logical explanation was that someone was playing a practical joke, either on me or on the girl. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

Not everyone wants romantic partnership and many singles find more happiness and autonomy in their solo life.

Amatonormativity is a word I coined to describe the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship. The belief that marriage and companionate romantic love have special value leads to overlooking the value of other caring relationships.

The OG.

There’s an irony in this. We use these words euphemistically because we’re too afraid to say the word ‘sex’. Our inability to talk about sex plainly forces us to recruit other (very useful!) words for the task. Because we cannot say ‘fucking’, ‘eating out’, or ‘jerking off’, we say ‘we slept together’, or ‘we were intimate yesterday’. The irony is that this prudishness is making everything more sexual.

I kinda get what this person is tryna say, but it don’t feel quite right. I think for many people reading the article, the message fell flat because of its inherent crassness. I think the author does phrase in a useful way the relationship between social categories and social scripts, but I they ultimately end up falling into the pit of “if only everyone just…” I dunno; I need to keep digesting it.

Goodhart’s law is in part a story of opportunity costs: what you give up in order to chase what seems most useful. You give up a lot of potential weird upsides when you optimize carelessly. What you do tends to compound, improve, and provide you with more of what you spend time doing. If you want more people you like in your life - even just in the form of kids or a spouse or grandkids - you’ll need to spend more time with people writ large.

Dating apps were built on the bones of Grindr. I have been known to joke that everything wrong with dating apps is divine retribution for culturally appropriating them from the gays.

(If this idea makes you freak out about the friend zone, I’m almost impressed with you because young people seem to do so little socializing that no one complains about the friend zone anymore. Pat yourself on the back for having friends if you’ve managed to develop a resentment complex around the friend zone)

This woman sure is able to churn out pithy prose. I agree with her spiritually, but there is a lot of gender essentialism. But perhaps what’s happening is that the apps are actually working to create and amplify differences between the genders (think Shilling, 2017, ch. 2).

I mean, on one hand, I know I can’t talk to you in public ‘cause of how weird I act. But on the other, I can never tell when I’m doing something weird. So better if I just did nothing at all…

All I know about female heterosexual desire that I’ve managed to glean from decades of reading (mostly fan fiction).

via: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/romance-novels-dont-recommend-flowers

— my english professor

via: https://www.tumblr.com/theliterarysnob/153012183592/if-he-writes-her-a-few-sonnets-he-loves-her-if

via: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/romance-novels-dont-recommend-flowers

see: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-other-porn-land

Michael and Peter discuss the ways in which the paradigm shift toward online dating has damaged our brains and hardened our hearts.

I <3 social constructions.

Death to amatonormativity!

see: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logical-fallacy-of-generalization-from-fictional

Obviously, a lot of factors go into creating your filter, and I’m not saying this is the case for everyone. But I think very often both what you find attractive and how you present yourself reflect a deeper sense of what you value in life.