Girls appear to know their matches on online dating (OLD) are more attractive than what they get in real life (IRL)

We’re going on a double date this weekend with my GF’s friend and her new beau, but the interesting thing was what my girlfriend said about the other guy when she told me the plan.

She went out of her way to say that he wasn’t “great looking” because the other couple had met in real life (“IRL”—good for him), and she emphasized that the guys her friend normally matches with on dating apps are “better looking.” She said it in a way that implied this is a general understanding shared by all chicks. To her it’s obvious, like “the sun rises in the east.”

In seduction arts circles, we know that women pick guys online based on looks. Online, looks in the form of photos are pretty much all a guy has. Women are a lot more picky than men when it comes to selecting mates—and they should be, because for most of human history, sleeping with anything less than her best option would often result in pregnancy with a child of lesser genetic quality than she might otherwise have achieved had she been more selective. As I noted in my last post, only 40% of men have historically produced offspring.

However, when you filter this predilection through a dating app, you find that women swipe right on only the best looking 2-5% of men, compared with men, who swipe to match with 40 – 50% of female profiles. Women tend to match +2ish of their SMV, and this has mostly bad consequences for the sexual marketplace and society as a whole:

• Most men can’t match with a partner similar in terms of sexual market value (SMV), or at all.

• Women can sleep with those top guys but have a hard time getting the relationships they really want.

• The top guys behave badly, because they can, leading women to attribute bad behavior to all men, or making spurious allegations on places like “are we dating the same guy?” Facebook groups.

• Fewer people form relationships, marry, and have children. We’re ignoring the bigger purpose of life.

Women now seem to generally understand the first part of this equilibrium, which is that they can match with better looking men on dating apps than they’re likely to attract/meet in real life. But do women understand the downstream effects? As Undead points out in this thread, it would be difficult to purposely date less attractive people, and there’s no real comparison here between the sexes, because if men could do what women are able to do on dating apps, they’d do the same thing—the only difference is, men would be happy about that state of affairs.

Which, in a circular way, leads us back to why those top guys aren’t going to settle down: they are literally living out the ideal male sexual strategy. And what’s more, even if they were inclined to settle down and get married, they’re still subject to the basic problem of OLD for men: women are so picky it’s basically impossible to match with someone who’s equally attractive. Like, if you’re a male 8, are you really going to enter into a lifelong relationship and terrible contractual arrangement with a female 6? No, of course not.

I’m a huge fan of cold approach. Women, being the passive sex, merely need to be open to it (although I can understand why women are frustrated in a society where very few men know how to approach)—unfortunately, many still aren’t, either because they’re still chasing Chads on the apps, or because they’re so addicted to their phone that interacting in person seems “weird.”

However, most women are open to cold approach, and many find it incredibly attractive, which is why it’s a super power for men, no matter your goal. You can certainly use cold approach to sleep with a lot of women, but at whatever point you want to settle down, for most men it’s their only shot at being with a woman who’s similar in terms of SMV.

I’m not super high on double dates, but I’m interested to meet this guy. Also curious to hear if anyone has heard other women talk similarly about this? Drop your thoughts in the comments.