The Private Man Has Completed His Journey

It is with great sadness that I have to inform everyone that Andrew Hansen a.k.a. The Private Man has completed his journey as of 9:27 PM April 3 2017.

As many know unfortunately his cancer had returned a few weeks ago and there was not much to be done to help him. He chose to face it head-on rather then try experimental treatments. His greatness and courage in the face of knowing his own mortal demise is an inspiration for us all.

It’s a great loss for not only all that followed his writing and his teachings but for those of us who consider him a friend. His last days were as comfortable as possible and he passed peacefully.

I can only hope that he realized how many peoples lives he touched and we were all better for knowing him. As the saying goes “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

Also I want to announce that this site will stay up. For any of his commenters I am Mark AKA Richard Cranium and I am honored and humbled that he is chosen me to keep his teachings and writings alive. There is much knowledge and wisdom to be learned here and I will do my best to keep his legacy preserved.

Godspeed my friend. Your time with us was short but meaningful.

My Going Away Party

UPDATE 3/7/2017

The party was a lot of fun. Thanks to all who attended and special thanks to all who helped!

UPDATE 3/3/2017 @10:42AM

LIVE STREAM URL (YOUTUBE)

 

So, my cancer went terminal recently. It’s now called Stage 4 Metastatic Liver Cancer. But despite this uncomfortable news, I have been granted a unique gift. I have a bit of time left. So, to that end, rather than just die miserably from liver failure, I’ll carve out some time and have a fine going away party! Seriously. This will likely be the last chance to cast your gaze upon my glorious visage and hear me wax bombastically on a variety of topics.

I’ve made arrangements to get a Saturday night (March 4) reservation at one of favorite places here in Boynton Beach. Here are the details:

March 4, 2017 @ 6:30PM (through at least 8:30PM)
The Living Room Pub
1709 North Congress Ave
Boynton Beach Florida 33426
http://www.livingroomboyntonbeach.com/

Local hotels:
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/pbibb-courtyard-boynton-beach/
http://hamptoninn3.hilton.com/en/hotels/florida/hampton-inn-and-suites-boynton-beach-BOYBHHX/index.html

As both hotels are within walking distance, it’s not necessary to rent a car unless you want to check out South Florida in all its weirdness. The beach is quite close. Tri-Rail serves both the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports. Uber is available from the West Palm Beach airport. Also, Uber will get you from a Tri-Rail station (Boynton Beach) to the hotels.

There is, however, a chance that I won’t be at my own going away party. That would be because I would have already gone away. If that’s the case, it’ll be a memorial party. No matter, this party will be fun with music, drink specials, and some really cool people. Maybe even a bunch of crazy motorcyclists from ADVRider will show up.

So, for my readers and Twitter followers, book your flight. Get your collective asses down here. Don’t waste this opportunity.

You’re welcome. Oh, and let me know if you’re coming.

[For those not aware of what’s going on with my health, here are a couple of links…

Most recent update: https://theprivateman.wordpress.com/yeah-i-got-cancer-so-what/#comment-37443

Full backstory: https://theprivateman.wordpress.com/yeah-i-got-cancer-so-what/]

Again, A Defense of Pickup Artistry (PUA)

My buddy, Dagonet, recently wrote a superb blog post where he defends pickup artists (PUA). One of his many good points is that there is an almost visceral negative reaction to the term “PUA”. That reaction is all over the Internet. There are Tweets, blog posts, and entire websites that excoriate pickup artists for being “man-boys”, “losers”, and “selfish assholes” who aren’t thinking of society’s greater good. The following Tweet shows it quite well:

The Tweet links to a thoughtful blog post about moral ambivalence. The shaming language in the Tweet is standard stuff and generally used when PUA causes emotional distress that can’t be resolved by applying even a small amount of logic and reason. I responded to that Tweet with a Tweet of my own:

A collection of Tweets then cascaded down with fairly good points being raised by a number of Tweeters. The biggest objection to PUA was that men were not considering how their individual actions impact our culture at large. Such objections are a couple of decades too late and are no longer relevant. We are well past what “should” be and firmly in the land of socio-sexual reality.

Twitter is good for getting to the heart of the matter. It really doesn’t matter how PUAs are created. Learning and practicing PUA is a logical and rational response to the current cultural conditions regarding how men and women interact in a socio-sexual context. Through the various waves of feminism, women have been effectively released from the social contract between the two sexes. Until the Internet, most men were unaware that they were upholding one part of a contract and women had fled their part of the contract. Now, men know better. I’ve written about that previously and the comments on that blog post are excellent.

So men responded, almost predictably. In order to meet their socio-sexual goals, men simply applied their brain power to the problem of understanding how women respond to predictable stimulus vis-a-vis sexual attraction. Dagonet pointed this out clearly in his blog post:

The natural, and rational, reaction to this situation is to learn game. To become a “pickup artist.” What this really means– despite the negative connotation– is that a man takes active control of his sex life and decides to start maximizing the behaviors that garner positive reactions from women, and minimizing the negative. He also might actually discover new abilities, confidence, and more attractive ways to present himself physically (clothes, working out, hair style, etc.).

Speaking as a man who supports men and things masculine, there is nothing wrong with this at all. Our society liberated women to pursue any number of (approved by feminism) options. So, in the spirit of equality, it’s completely and utterly fair to free men to pursue any options they so desire and to free him of the pressure to sacrifice his very life on the altar of a society that sees him either disposable or completely invisible. Men needn’t be cultural cannon fodder.

But, like women, in order to pursue options, a man must learn new personal skills. Women now make up the majority college attendees and graduates to hopefully learn skills to enter careers. Men – especially young men – seek out and learn PUA to gain a skill set that allows them to pursue more options. That’s perfectly reasonable and rather balanced in the grand scheme of things. PUA skills will become increasingly necessary because of hypergamy and the imbalance between men and women receiving college degrees.

As a skill set, PUA can be used however a man sees fit. Given the strong negative response to those three simple letters, we can change up the nomenclature to mollify those with delicate emotional sensibilities. Let’s call this skill set “learned charisma and confidence”. That sounds so much better, no? It’s not sleeping around, a man uses his new skills of charisma and confidence to fulfill his relationship goals with the opposite sex. Isn’t it fun to bandy semantics? Wordplay aside, if a man wants to use his charisma and confidence find himself in horizontal repose with many women, I give him two thumbs up. If he wants to find a special woman with whom to secure an intimate and committed relationship, my thumbs remain up.

As an aside and as Dagonet pointed out, there’s an awful lot of political discussion amongst the guys in the ‘Sphere. This is not my bailiwick but it does make sense given how culture and politics are ultimately intertwined. I argue that men need to now act individualistically without much regard to how their actions impact either politics or culture. With a large number of men acting on a such basis, a collective and masculine inertia will commence, if it hasn’t already started. In his blog post, Dagonet spoke of how many men found a relatively unorganized but ultimately unified endeavor through PUA. When a sufficient number of men operate in concert – even if to be more successful with their relationship goals – a cultural shift for the benefit of men will inevitably occur.

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Notes About Blab (@Blab)

In my quest to find a web-based platform to facilitate real-time conversation, I was referred to Blab from Bobbi Palmer who had some very good things to say about it. It’s far more interactive than Periscope without the setup of Youtube live streaming. I never got into Google Hangouts because Google keeps changing things. Skype also lacks certain features needed for group-based discussions. I’ve been using Blab for over two weeks and have spent many hours hosting Blabs or watching and participating in separate Blabs covering a variety of/ topics.

Blab does have some great features that show great promise. Hosting a Blab is easy as is participating in a Blab (video/audio or just typed comments). The Blab can be recorded and replayed at any time. There is also a tie in with Twitter so that one’s Twitter followers are notified if that person is hosting or participating via video in a Blab. Having a Twitter account, however, is not a prerequisite to lurking in a Blab. The platform can be accessed via a web browser and mobile devices, too. I’ve only been using it through a browser (Chrome).

Yet Blab is not without some fairly serious issues that need to noted:

1. No clear and cogent step-by-step instructions to either host a Blab or watch a Blab. In fact, when I sent Blab an email about the absence of such instructions, I received a rather snarky email in response. “As they say…if you need a manual..you’ve already failed.” Um, who has failed? The software developers who didn’t quite get the user experience figured out or the user who needs real help? If Blab thinks it’s the user, then here’s my message to Blab as that user:

Go screw yourselves, you arrogant nerds.

I remember such arrogance from 1999 and 2000, right before the Internet 1.0 bubble burst and you nerds found yourselves unemployed by the hundreds of thousands. (Rant over)

I understand that Blab is still in a beta release stage. This is a poor excuse for the lack of solid support other than live Blabs with Blab support people. That live support, by the way, is very cool but I question if that’s sustainable with growth. The other type of support is users helping other users. This is also unsustainable in the long run. Business users, in particular, won’t be adopting Blab for internal business purposes unless the platform doesn’t require such hand-holding, regardless of who’s hand is being held or who is doing the hand-holding.

2. Small user base. Blab has been available since May of last year. That’s an epoch in Internet time. But the user base is still too small for the platform to be compelling with solid and diverse content. There are rarely more than a few dozen or so available Blabs to join, most with under a dozen participants. Blab, the company, is not releasing its user statistics. Sure, the current users are very enthusiastic. But that applies to all early adopters of a product that hasn’t yet crossed the chasm. For Blab, that chasm currently looks like a vast gulf.

3. User-created content is inconsistent. Some Blabs are well-structured and compelling. These discussions are usually focused around nerd talk or marketing talk. That’s understandable and serve to set a solid bar for future Blabs that don’t focus on these two topics. The rest of the Blabs are usually of folks simply talking idle chit-chat about the minutiae of their personal lives. This is understandable except that new users don’t know the other Blabbers and so don’t understand the backstory behind the personalities. Think of those Blabs like sitting down at a high school cafeteria table where everyone else is happily gabbing about stuff that the newcomer knows nothing about. That’s hardly a good way to get new users engaged with the platform.

4. Technical glitches still remain because the platform is still in Beta (for eight months?!). The streaming video/audio burps and farts way too much. This requires the user to refresh, restart, clear the browser cache, or a combination of all three in order to use the video feature (the “hot seat”) or even just watch as a lurker. As well, first-time users who want to participate via video don’t always get things to work right away. These issues may not be because of real technical problems. But without clear step-by-step instructions to guide newbies through the Blab process, such difficulties might as well be the result of technical glitches. Such glitches might also be the result of poor connection speeds or inadequate hardware but the user doesn’t know that without explanation of some sort. “I don’t know what’s going with Blab today” is a too-oft heard comment.

Frankly, Blab doesn’t yet know if it’s a platform for real-time discussions or a community of users who simply happen to be using the Blab platform for such discussions. If it’s a platform, there is much room for technical improvements. If it’s a community, the users need to up their game seriously with better on-topic Blabs and less of the “we’re the cool early adopters and you’re just barely welcome as a newbie while we gossip about other Blab users you don’t know” mentality.

As a blogger and Tweeter with a community of readers, Twitter followers, and blog commenters, I’m keen to have discussions within my community and invite others to join in. Right now, I don’t think Blab is the platform for that, yet. I’m going to keep trying with Blab. However, I will also be trying other platforms that seem less like a boot-strap endeavor and more like an effort with clear progress towards maturity and milestones of good software development.

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Racism In Dating?! (Not This Crap Again)

Start here. Read the article. Do some research on the author. Then come back to this blog post. Here’s a quote from the piece:

In 2014, the data-obsessed OKCupid calculated the odds of a user “liking” a profile on its Tinder-like service Quickmatch. When it comes to straight daters, they discovered that women expressed a strong preference for men of their own race. But one group of males fared particularly well outside of their race: Asian and Latina women showed above average odds of “liking” profiles featuring white men.

[Note: I’m ignoring the part about the online dating website about white folks seeking white folks]

I’ve written about this before and each time this accusation of racism in dating preferences erupts like an infected cultural cyst, it must be cleaned up with alacrity. First of all, “data-obsessed” is a great thing. Data shows patterns of human behavior. Data shows generalizations, a good thing for helping to understand human nature. Don’t like it? Tough shit, sociologists and psychologists need such data. OKCupid has some of the best research of real, honest human behavior based on real actions, not some bullshit surveys rife with sample bias.

Hey Tracy Clark-Flory, how about “my body my choice” be applied to attraction preferences between the sexes? Imposing still more social expectations on attraction and dating won’t make the process any easier. Such expectations only serve to increase personal frustration. If a woman prefers one type of man, where do you get the vile conceit that you can apply some sort of pressure for her to change her perfectly natural preferences? Dating preferences are private. Attraction happens between our ears, away from the prying eyes of politically correct busy-bodies anxious to transform dating into a delusional utopia.

Wait, there’s more!

In a blog post, OKCupid’s Christian Rudder refrained from labeling these preferences as racist. “On an individual level, a person can’t really control who turns them on—and almost everyone has a ‘type,’ one way or another,” he wrote. “But I do think the trend—that fact that race is a sexual factor for so many individuals, and in such a consistent way—says something about race’s role in our society.”

Good for Rudder. He’s a data guy, not a politically correct guy. He’s also clearly aware of the perils of collecting such data. Ever hear of the term “hate facts“? Rudder certainly has so he selects his words carefully. Private human behavior is not politically correct. What happens between our ears is the zenith of privacy if it’s not spoken or acted upon. Until the thought police becomes real, attraction can’t be enforced by social justice warriors or even shamed by that same group of cultural miscreants.

Tracy Clark-Flory is attempting to play the race card in a game where she, and her unpleasant ilk, are unwelcome. Think of a party crasher with bad manners and poor hygiene. Attraction is not a choice. It can’t be shamed. It can’t be negotiated. Anyone who falls for such nonsense is clearly not ready for dating. The ugly stink of political correctness must be washed off before attempting to start using online dating websites. As well, dating is not about achieving cultural ideals. It’s about fulfilling personal relationship goals. Let’s wrap up with a last quote from the article:

In other words, swiping right on a white guy seems more innocuous than navigating over to Where White People Meet, but on a societal level, it just might be a smaller expression of everyday racism.

“Everyday racism”. No, everyday social shaming from you, you horrible person. I recommend that every online dating user swipe how he or she decides based on his or her own personal preferences. This applies to everyone, straight or not. As someone who provides attraction and dating information based on reality, I will never shame a woman into desiring a short guy. I won’t shame a guy into desiring an overweight woman.

Something else I haven’t mentioned in this blog post, my own individual dating experiences and preferences. Why? Because it’s none of anyone’s fucking business.

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A Woman Responds To A Recent Blog Post

I sometimes get some great comments. The one that I received today is mid-range. It’s worth commenting on but not worth letting through moderation. The commenter, a woman, was motivated by this relatively recent blog post on feminine pleasantness.

The original comment is in italics, my responses are in boldface.

Wow. That post was really unkind and unreflective of reality. And by unkind, I mean misogynistic and lacking in human compassion. Women are human, just like men.

Misogynistic? I get that often enough. This is because I violate the 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not criticize women”. Women are indeed human. They also have patterns of bad behavior and character flaws that cause huge problems when it comes time for them to find an intimate relationship with a man.

We also do not want to hang out with men who cannot control their moods and who are grumpy and sullen day after day. It is also not our job to make a man happy when he cannot find his own happiness.

I agree with this. Any adult, man or women, who doesn’t have at least some control over their negative moods is nothing more than a child. Men, in particular, must control those moods. Women are cut way too much slack in this area. Also, why is he grumpy and sullen? Bad day at work? 

We also are attracted to men who can remain calm and smile through adversity. Replace the female pronouns, etc., in your post with male pronouns and vice versa and your post would be equally true.

Again, I agree. Men must be stoic in the face of adversity. This is true strength and shows serious backbone, catnip to women.

Your idea that women are “naturally” one way and men “naturally” another way is false and silly.

This statement is idiotic. Common and predictable behaviors based on one’s sex are well-studied and well-known. Of course, you have an exception to those common behaviors which you mean to prove my assertions incorrect. Guess what cupcake, you’re using the logical fallacy of “the example of one”. Brilliant. #facepalm. Look beyond the solipsistic confines of your own experiences.

My husband had that attitude and that is why he’s now single. He believed he could stomp around the house and pout, take me for granted and treat me however he wished, and my job was to smile, bake cookies and give him a BJ.

His biggest mistake was stomping around and pouting. But, you said “yes” when he proposed. But was he always like that? Or did you encourage him to be more in touch with his feelings? Guess what, that stomping and pouting are expressions of his feelings.

Ummm, no. Not going to happen. Now he gets to smile at himself, bake his own cookies and make friends with his right hand, all while being a single parent 50% of the time and cleaning his own house and living off 50% less salary. See how that worked out? Granted, he is now working on finding the doormat of his dreams, but thankfully it won’t be me.

Why 50% less salary? Oh, right… alimony and child support? Wait, no child support, 50% custody. You’re still getting child support with only 50% custody? Oh my. Regardless, since you’re getting alimony in the form of 50% of his salary, that means he was the primary breadwinner. Congrats, you won the divorce game! There’s a lesson here, guys.

Additionally, women would not be required to be so strong and independent if they could actually rely on men, but the biggest complaint I hear from women my age (early 40s) is that having their husband is like having another child.

Men of a certain age have been taught, by women, to let the women be more strong and independent. You think men want to be hopelessly dependent? I agree, that’s awful. But here’s a solution to all you strong and independent women disgusted with the state of men today, date other women. As for men being like kids in the house, how are they at work? Oh, right, those women have no clue. But I’m sure they reap the benefits of those men’s salaries.

You know what’s a huge turn off for a women? Being incapable. Emotionally, psychologically, verbally, around the house, with the kids, etc. If your wife has to take care of you like a child, she doesn’t want to sleep with you too. Because, that’s gross. She doesn’t want to service you at night after doing all the stuff you were incapable of doing all day in addition to her own tasks.

Um, back to his salary, he seems to be capable of that. And please don’t spew that “it’s all about his money” crap. You’re taking alimony, remember? That’s his money. However, in the scenario you described, perhaps he’s getting alimony from you! If that’s the case, you go guy!!!

She doesn’t want to have to help you “identify your feelings” and “use your words” in conversation and then do you later. Not sexy, guys. And if you don’t want to hear a women speak her mind, get a prostitute. I think it was Billy Idol who said, “I don’t pay to sleep with them. I pay for them to go away.”

That was Charlie Sheen, by the way. OK, you’re contradicting yourself here. On one hand, you want the man to be stoic in the face of adversity and now you’re talking about helping him with identifying (and expressing, no doubt) his feelings. Pick one. Guys, while she’s trying to sort that out without her brain overheating, let me help. Be stoic in the face of adversity.

Also, when a woman speaks her mind, is it valuable to him? Does it really add to the conversation and even the relationship? If not, women must activate that ol’ verbal filter. Far too often, “speaking her mind” is code for “I’m gonna bitch and moan and inject verbal drama in your life but don’t stop making a salary”.

If you want your wife to sleep with you and then pretend she doesn’t have thoughts, feelings and concerns in life, marry a prostitute and pay her day rate every day.

There are more than a few guys who think that’s the current state of marriage. Of course, they’re still not getting the sex they paid for. Doh!

This whole comment is nothing more than “men do it too!” Yeah, some do. But I don’t write like that. I also stand by my assertion in the original blog post that kindness, pleasantness, and caring are wonderfully feminine traits and men must screen for those type of women during the dating process. Keep those comments coming!

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Frame – Three Quick Personal Stories

It is both a blessing and a curse to live in a town where all the locals know, or know of, everyone. It’s a unique place because it’s surrounded by a large metropolitan area, Fort Lauderdale. But once across the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, the city is left behind and the smallish seaside town of Lauderdale-By-The-Sea takes over.

There is a healthy turnover of tourists and part-time residents (“snowbirds”). Separate from that population are the folks who live here permanently. That’s me and a small few thousand. During the off-season, summer, when the hot and humid nastiness smothers us, the local population is together. Normally, we all mostly get along with a polite friendliness and some typical gossip. Of course, familiarity does breed some contempt.

There are three local women who loathe me. They are all older than me, if not in age, in hard-bitten experience with too much tough living along with past and present bad decisions. I won’t go into details of a life in the sun does to the skin. All three have this problem. With their tough hides come tough personalities. Sophisticated, these dames ain’t.

Why they loathe me, I have a hunch why but it’s not particularly relevant here. I pay them little attention aside from being briefly cordial. I know they loathe me from a few verbal exchanges that were inflicted on me. For each of the three woman, I took a different tactic but held to my strategy of having very strong frame. Some background here… in each exchange, the women were drunk to some degree.

The first incident happened at my local neighborhood dive bar. I was sitting across the bar, not talking to anyone, my dog at my feet. I was fiddling around with my smart phone. My dog, sitting on the floor next to me, barked a couple of times.

“Andrew! Shut that fucking dog up!” screamed a woman from the other side of the bar. This was one of the women in town who loathes me.

I just looked at the woman and didn’t say anything. The bartender, a good guy and almost standing between us, wasn’t getting involved.

In an attempt to escalate, the woman continued and screamed at me again. “You’re a fucking scumbag!”. Having a good frame, I came back with a classic agree and amplify.

“You’re right Laurie! I’m a scumbag! I come from a family of scumbags!”

She glared at me. I continued.

“My father was a scumbag, my grandfather was a scumbag…”

Her glare got worse.

“but my great-grandfather was a total douchebag!”

With that, the bartender burst out laughing. Several other patrons overhearing the verbal exchange also started laughing. I quickly went back to my smart phone. I didn’t waste a further look at the woman.

The next incident came from my neighbor, a woman I’ve written about her previously. She often spends her evenings sitting outside, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beer until she gets obstreperous with the drink. The booze melts what little of a verbal filter she still possesses. Because of temporary Internet connectivity issues I had to walk past her towards the back of the building to capture a Wifi signal on my phone. She was ready at ambush me verbally when I walked past the old lady and gave her a polite greeting as I always do.

“You going back there like the loser neighbor?”

The neighbor in the front unit also sometimes does the same thing because of Wifi issues.

“Yup, I have connectivity issues” I replied.

“You’re a fucking loser like her” was her pithy retort. I was not fazed because I’ve experienced this kind of stuff from her previously. I simply laughed and continued walking.

On return a few minutes later, she continued. “You piss me off so much because…” She spouted off a things about my work schedule (I work a lot from home) and that I had no shame or some such nonsense, yadda yadda yadda. I actually stopped to address her, with a smirk on my face.

“Your emotional response to me is not my problem. That’s your problem” I said pleasantly. “I actually make you angry? That’s something you have control over.” This stymied her completely. She was expecting a defensive, snarling response from me.

“I’ll remember that…” she said with a stammer. I didn’t know if it was a defensive comment or an acknowledgement. I didn’t care. I was still focusing on my frustrating ‘Net connectivity issue.

As I walked into my place, the old broad had a classy parting shot.

“You’re such a loser, you can only date niggers!”

“Wow, stay classy” was my calm response and I closed the door behind me.

Yes, she escalated to that point because she was desperate to break my frame by using a personal attack that is actually true. I was indeed involved with a lovely black woman and my curmudgeonly neighbor had met her on several occasions. This black woman was also from England with an hilarious Birmingham accent to go along with her lovely and dark-skinned visage. She thought I was a wanker and I thought she was a pain in the butt. Ah, ain’t dating grand? [Update, 01/01/2016 – P is reading this now]

It is now at least a month later and my old lady neighbor does not even acknowledge my existence. No matter, I still offer a pleasant greeting each time I see her. I thank that galls her in some way. Excellent.

The third woman in this string of estrogen wonder confronted me at my local pub hangout. She and another woman were bitching about Lucy, my ugly dog. I was ignoring them while I sipped ginger ale and worked on a blog post on my laptop. There were some comments about how I took care of my dog (Lucy the ugly dog was with me, as usual) but nothing really personal as my old lady neighbor had done.

Later in the evening, one of the women moved to the other side of the bar because the other had left. I was only vaguely aware of her move until she started yelling at me.

“You’re a jack ass, Andrew!” The place was pretty crowded so her loud insult wasn’t heard by many. I glanced up at her and said nothing. I looked down at my keyboard because I was gnawing on a stubborn sentence. She yelled something at me again. I completely ignored her. Eventually, she lost interest and began bothering the guy sitting closest to her. Poor fellow.

In all three instances, I never let my frame waver. I used several of the tactics I learned from reading Manosphere blogs. There was agree and amplify, amused mastery, and completely ignoring someone. The unflappable man doesn’t let words faze him. None of these three women did anything physical. They were attempting to start a fight with words. I didn’t let it happen.

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Attraction, Dating, And Aspirational Lying

Researching, observing, and experiencing attraction and dating has taught me that human beings are not particularly honest. We lie. This is central to the human experience. Of course we talk a good game about honesty because we’re socially expected to be honest and talk about being honest and expecting everyone else to be honest. That’s mostly true but quickly falls apart when verbal behavior crosses swords with attraction and dating.

The dark triad man is remarkably adept at aspirational lying. That man will say almost anything to achieve his goal, especially in the social context of seduction. The female equivalent of the dark triad man, the Cluster B woman, behaves in the exact same way but with different content in the lies. Call this meta lying. We state who we want to be, not who we are.

Since I couldn’t find a solid, concise definition of aspirational lying, I’ll provide one for my astute and intellectually curious readers:

Aspirational Lying – A type of dishonesty where an individual makes untrue statements describing herself/himself as what they aspire to be or how they currently behave. The purpose of this type of lying is to increase one’s self-esteem and ego or increase one’s attractiveness and desirability to others.

Here’s some additional background for your edification and intellectual fulfillment.

This form of lying pops up in predictable places. Certainly it’s painted thick on online dating profiles. A 43 year old woman states her age as 39. A man who is 5’7″ tall describes himself as 5’9″ tall. This is incredibly common. It’s so common that even the most naively honest feel pressure to also aspirationally lie on his/her online dating profile.

Aspirational lying can easily ruin socialogical studies. It’s a crime against intellect when both social researchers and journalists fail to recognize that survey answers reflect how the respondent want to be perceived, not how he or she actually feels or behaves. Stupidly, this even applies to anonymous surveys. Human beings can too easily wallow in such profound stupidity when affairs of the ego are involved. Such lies are not for the survey-takers, the lies are for the person responding to the survey.

Business marketing is chock full of aspirational lying. It’s so pervasive that it’s easily ignored. “Most”, “best”, “greatest” are superlatives that have become effectively meaningless. Or, such marketing becomes part of confirmation bias. A product’s attributes are described by the marketers and the consumer of the product goes through some mental exercises to justify a purchase decision. based on those described attributes.

On something of a side note, actually working to improve one’s self is the opposite of aspirational lying. Such efforts are the actions, the lying is just the words. However, a woman’s efforts that are simply cosmetic (no analogy intended) are a bit less clear-cut because make up is a temporary effect. Plastic surgery is a clear-cut (groaner analogy) example of actions over the mere words of aspirational lying.

When it comes to dating, it’s important for a man understand and account for such dishonesty. I’ve already brought up this is in a recent blog post. But that’s simply the online dating profile. Cluster B women present a very different scenario of lies. This requires a level of serious observation and the willingness to overlook the extraordinary sexuality of such women. “Crazy in the bed, crazy in the head” is not just a locker room aphorism shared amongst the guys. Men need to be completely aware of common and predictable feminine behavior, the good and the bad.

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Let’s Try To Fix Online Dating

One of the biggest problems with online dating is the vast number of messages that attractive women receive from men. This makes the online dating experience too frustrating for both sexes. Too few women get bombarded with too many messages. Those women are forced to weed through the terrible mediocrity of those messages. Ordinary men get fed up because their response rate is so low. This is a lose-lose proposition for everyone including the online dating company.

Another huge problem is that too many people don’t take online dating seriously enough. They don’t log in particularly frequently or respond enough to incoming messages. They also don’t even open messages before deleting them. This is not online dating, it’s “catalog” dating, a serious limitation with online dating where the assumption is that there is always another profile, another member of the opposite sex available for a date.

A solution to this is to limit the number of incoming messages a woman can receive in a certain interval of time. Even if she deletes the message(s), no more messages can be received until the next interval of incoming messages commences. Mix it up it further by introducing a random element of time, 30 days, then 17 days, then 23 days, etc. That interval is never revealed to any user.

When a woman receives the the maximum number of incoming messages for that given time period, her profile is not available for display, it is completely hidden. There is no incoming message queue or waiting list. As well, the more incoming messages and pace of those messages, the fewer number of future messages she could receive for the next incoming message time interval.

Here’s another bit of functionality that would very much stir up this new hypothetical online dating website. Once a certain threshold of incoming messages is reached and she hasn’t responded to any of them, a woman cannot send out any type of message to a man, not even a “flirt” or “wink”. She can still view profiles but even if she views them, the men are not notified that the woman has looked at their profiles. The ability to send outgoing messages is determined by the response to existing incoming messages.

As for that responses to incoming messages, there can be two options, “Start a correspondence”, and “No, thanks”. This is a simple check box. If the person receiving the incoming message is sent a message with the “Start a correspondence” option selected, the two may continue messaging each other regardless if the original receiver’s incoming message queue is full or not. If a “No, thanks” response message is sent. The recipient is made invisible to both users, permanently removing both from seeing each online again.

To ensure that the two people escalate into a phone call or text, the number of back and forth messages is limited also. One of the messages must include a phone number that might be validated through a text through the system. The purpose of all this involvement with technology in the communication is to help push along the corresponders into an actual date.

Other solutions would be to only allow message deletion to occur after it has been opened and the sender’s profile displayed. Deleting an unread message without reviewing a profile completely defeats the whole online dating process. Having users read messages and the associated profile before acting encourages using the online dating website seriously.

Of course, the profiles are validated so that scammers, catfishers, and other users with things to hide are not permitted to sign up. That automated technology now exists and is in use by at least one online dating website. This functionality will likely become the trend for the future given how scammers have saturated existing online dating websites.

By acknowledging that men and women behave differently with their online dating efforts, such functionality essentially acknowledges and supports those common online dating behaviors. There’s no attempt to inflict social expectations on the process. Yes, this new online dating would be for heterosexuals only.

This new functionality would be required for creating better online dating profiles. This would naturally include photos (for both sexes) and more involved text descriptions. There would be one section requiring that both male and female users describes what he/she offers a potential paramour. The minimum number of characters required for this section would be greater for women than men. Women still haven’t figured out they have to describe specifically what they have to offer in the context of attraction and dating.

This flips the online gender power dynamic. Attractive women (and a few men) must pay more to get more messages. Regular women pay the regular rates because they are not bombarded with messages. For those people, the free trial period that includes all functionality can be extended. Of course, if a woman wants to pay more to have her desirability validated more, she’s welcome to it. This also forces women to take online dating more seriously. With fewer incoming messages, she must evaluate the profiles more carefully and act on them by sending a response in a timely manner.

While this new functionality applies mostly to women, it can also be applied to men who get lots of incoming messages. They, too, would have incoming message limits applied just like the popular women. In effect, the sex of the person doesn’t impact the core functionality of limiting messages and other features. There are, however, some features and functions that are sex-specific. Men and women are different, especially in the context of attraction and dating.

These system features both slows down online dating yet speeds up parts of it. Women (all popular singles online, in actuality) must be slow to review profiles displayed through incoming messages yet quick to respond. The haste is enforced with the vanishing message and profile after a certain period of time. If the woman doesn’t respond, the man’s message and profile is completely hidden from that woman. Her rejection through inaction effectively turns into blocking a profile.

There would also be functionality to encourage users to be more serious.
Popular message recipients would be encouraged (the carrot) to log in more often – and therefore taking the process more seriously – by increasing the numbers of allowable incoming messages by a modest amount until an eventual limit is reached. That amount would need some additional research and would be based on algorithms that would dynamically change that amount.

The opposite of the login frequency carrot is the stick where the profile is completely removed from searchability if the login frequency drops below a certain threshold. Of course, warnings would be sent out. Additionally, if the woman doesn’t respond to messages within a certain time interval, her profile visibility on the website decreases to the point of complete invisibility, even if a user name search is done.

The text descriptions in profiles would have a minimum number of characters and photographs. The backend system would, of course, require the primary photo to be a face shot and any improper photo could be flagged for speedy removal. As profiles are validated, that face shot would match the user. Also, profiles could be flagged for not including a full body photo. Hell, the profile wouldn’t even get approved without such a photo.

For an interesting thought experiment, the system could screen for a list of prohibited profile terms like “princess”, “diva”, “queen”, or any phrase that speaks of excess entitlement. That list would be dynamically modified through a review process by the website moderators so that new profiles would be rejected with an appropriate error message so the user could modify the profile .

There would not be an Android or iOS version of the website. Squeezing in a bit of online dating while on the go is not healthy for dating in general. Because fewer messages are available to read, the person reading them shouldn’t be staring into some wee phone screen hoping to find a match while sitting at a stoplight. A personal computer or tablet displaying the full website is required. Here’s another thought experiment – the website can only be accessed when the user is completely alone. Camera and software technology in the PC or tablet could do that.

Also, there would be no algorithms to match people automatically. The user knows what he or she wants, not simply a person selected by a bit of software, regardless of how sophisticated it might be. I certainly believe in the power of technology but I also believe there are some human actions that cannot be replaced by computer programs.

With the weaknesses of conventional online dating causing increasing frustration despite it’s still growing popularity, there simply must be new solutions to address that frustration. Of course, the suggestions I presented comes under the “it’s so crazy, it just might work!” category.

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Online Dating Profiles – How To Figure Out Women’s Lies

It’s well-established that most of us lie to some degree on our online dating profiles. There are plenty of websites and blogs to help women find the lies on men’s profiles. Because my primary priority is to help men, I give you the list of potential lies that men must face when evaluating a woman’s online dating profile. I also give some solid tips for identifying those lies.

1. Fuzzy photos. Cell phones and digital cameras have gradually improved over the years. The megapixel count has increased and this means generally sharper images for recent photos. So if you see a fuzzy photo, it might be older. Bear in mind that some online dating websites will re-sample images to make them smaller in terms of memory. Photos may also have an upward memory limit. This will make photos less than crystal clear.

2. Outdated fashions. Women typically chase fashion styles and are willing to spend lots of money to be up to date. If the photo has outdated fashion styles, it’s an older photo. This requires, of course, that a guy has to know what’s in style now. Consult some women’s magazines on this and pay careful attention to what women are wearing as you are out and about. This includes shoes, accessories. A woman’s age does certainly impact her fashion she wears in public.

3. EXIF data. This is meta data hidden in digital images. It includes when and where the photo was taken among other information I’ve experimented with some Plenty of Fish photos and haven’t found much in the way of EXIF image data. However, it’s worth checking, regardless. It’s very easy to do and this Google search results page provides links to websites that look for that data in images.

4. Stolen photos/fake profiles. For free online dating websites, this can be a huge problem. Thankfully, there are ways to do searches to find similar images.
Google images and Tineye are good resources. Use them both.

5. The “angles” and lack of a full body shot. The younger men talk about the “secret Internet fattie” (SIF) and it’s a thing. If a woman identifies her figure as “average” and doesn’t have a full body shot, it’s very likely that she’s a SIF. Women are also very good at posing and fashions to tone down the curves. By the way, “curvy” is fat.

6. She’s too good to be true. If a guy gets a message or return message from a truly sexy dame, it’s time to be really suspicious of a fake profile. Use the photo searching tips from item four before responding to the message.

7. The age factor – 29, 39, 49, 59… This is a classic. If any woman claims her age to be any number with a nine as the trailing integer, add at least four years to her age. Verify that by taking a very hard look at her photos. Hands and facial wrinkles don’t lie. Actually, add at least two years to every woman’s claimed online dating age to get a more accurate estimate of her actual age.

8. Various hair lengths in the photos. Here’s a general rule of thumb – the shorter the hair, the more recent the photo. I have yet to meet a woman who grows out her hair as she gets older. Eventually, they all become Q-tips after about 60 years old.

9. Her self-described figure. Average is generally overweight because the average American is over weight. There is a huge exception – foreign-born women. When they say average, it’s actually slender or athletic when compared to American female bodies. But guys, if you’re overweight as well, you’re not going to get a good response rate from slender or athletic women.

There might be more and I’m sure my clever and thoughtful readers will contribute in the comments. As well, perhaps validated profiles will squash many of these lies. Such lies are what drives matchmaking services.

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