Dating Apps Are Lying to You

“Why are women so obsessed with dating taller men?”

Reddit user ozymandeas302 stands at 5’8″, or approximately 173 centimeters in height. He says he gets 1 “like” every 3–5 days on the dating app Hinge.

As an experiment, he changed his displayed height on the app to 5’11” just to see what would happen. He received 6 likes in a single day.

In other words, adding just 3 inches resulted in a 2900% increase in interest from women.

“That’s really messed up,” he said. “Why are women so obsessed about dating taller men?” he wrote in the title of his thread.

One user commented, “people are shallow as f**k,” and “they just often pretend not to be because it’s supposed to be a bad thing.”

Dating apps tell us that people are shallow and super picky.

Women swipe right on only 1 out of 20 men they see on the apps. They filter for men above a certain height and various other “shallow” metrics. It’s as if they’re trying to pick only the very best aesthetically appealing apples amongst a pile of equally nutritious apples in a grocery store.

Observing this behavior, many men make the conclusion that dating is extremely cutthroat, that the average man only has a snowball’s chance in hell to find a woman who will like him.

However, the apps are LYING to you.

Human behavior on the apps isn’t an accurate representation of what actually happens in the real world.

In response to the person claiming that people are “shallow as f**k,” one man offered some sound wisdom:

“I think the apps are dehumanizing in general. When I’m swiping on the apps I only like/message Women who are within 5 years of my age either side, childless, university educated and conventionally attractive. I don’t apply this filter to Women I meet in real life because I know them as a whole person not a set of arbitrary filters.” — Reddit user Yarndhilawd

Regardless of gender, people tend to act pickier on the apps compared to how they actually act in real life. And women act even pickier on the apps when swiping on men because the supply of heterosexual men is way too high on there. When supply increases, demand decreases.

It’s much, much easier to find and attract a partner out in the real world through social events and approaches. People are generally much less pickier in these situations. That same redditor has experienced it himself:

“As a pretty average looking slightly overweight middle aged guy who puts in a lot of effort in grooming and fashion I am consistently surprised by the amount of very attractive women who will give me a shot.” — Reddit user Yarndhilawd

I’ve experienced this myself.

As a short man (5’5″) who has been called ugly before, I definitely don’t get as much success on the apps as I do out in the real world.

The same women who would swipe left on me on Tinder will give me a chance to make them feel something if I approach them face to face.

I have had a number of lovers who told me that I wasn’t their usual physical type. Social skills and seduction skills take you much, much further than looks. While the bar is extremely high on the apps, it’s much, much lower in meat space.

Women will often swipe left on men who would be extremely attractive to them in real life. One woman I talked to said that she approached a man and asked for his phone number when she saw him at a cafe, but she realized that she actually swiped left on him on a dating app sometime before. Just stop and think about that for a moment. It takes an incredible amount of attraction for someone to overcome their approach anxiety and approach someone, and it takes even more for a woman to do so in light of our social scripts that normalize men making the first move and women being coy. The man she approached had absolutely zero chance with her online after she swiped left on his profile in less than a second, but has every chance with her offline.

There are also tons of stories these days about women who swiped left on men who they would eventually marry after meeting in the real world through some other way. Women’s bias toward swiping left as a default move on these apps will cause you to have far fewer matches than you would have dates if you approached women out in the real world.

— Excerpt from Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women

You may have just a snowball’s chance in hell to find a girlfriend on Bumble, but you’ve got extremely good odds in actual physical places.

What happens to men who fall for the lie that dating apps are an accurate representation of how things actually work?

This warped view of women being super picky leads tons of men into becoming incels or “black pilled” or “red pilled” or whatever weird pills people are taking these days. It’s f**cked up.

The apps force us to make decisions based entirely on “shallow” metrics. It’s not how most of us choose mates in the real world. If men start believing that that’s how people really are, though, they’ll be left with nothing but bitterness and resentment.

Men, it’s up to us to save ourselves. We need to get off the apps and out into meat space again. That’s where all the hottest women are, anyway.

As a men’s dating coach, while I do advise my clients on how they can optimize their dating profiles and “text game,” I tell everyone to treat the apps purely as a supplementary source of meeting women. You should primarily be getting your vitamins and minerals from whole foods, aka approaches and social gatherings.

Have you ever tried consuming nothing but protein shakes for an entire day? You end up sh*tting your pants. You brain will end up sh*tting itself if you rely entirely on dating apps. The dehumanization will mess up your mental health.

I know approaching is scary.

Downloading an app and hiding behind a phone screen is the path of least resistance. The very idea of walking up to a woman in real life can be a million times more nerve-wracking.

However, meeting women in real life can actually be super easy, barely an inconvenience: