How to tell if she's high maintenance

I don't enjoy dating women who are high maintenance. If you do, stop reading now. If you are like me, and you just don't think high maintenance women are worth it, read on. What is high maintenance? Well, in short it's someone who creates more problems than they solve. But I'm sure I didn't have to explain this to you. But how do you tell if a woman is high maintenance, particularly when you're dealing with an online dating situation? I'm glad you asked. Here's how you can tell, BEFORE you invest your time and money in meeting her:

1. She says "I'm not high maintenance." This is the biggest red flag you could possibly imagine. Run away. Run far, far away. Think about this for a second. Why would someone say she is not high maintenance? Because she feels that she needs to defend her high maintenance behavior! Either she has already done something to annoy you, other people in her paste have called her high maintenance, or she just knows deep down inside that she's tough to deal with. Like I said, run!
2. She makes things difficult. Look, I've met a lot of women online. Heck, I wrote a book about it. For 90% of them, the following is perfectly agreeable: We send each other a few emails, I ask her out, she says yes, I ask her to text me, she does, we arrange to go out for a drink. If a woman has a problem with any of this along the way -- for example, she doesn't accept a date invitation after a few emails, she wants to talk on the phone rather than text, she wants something more elaborate than drinks for the first date -- she's not worth it. Move on. She's telling you something, and it's only going to get worse.
3. She has a list of requirements/demands in her profile. Did I mention making things more difficult than they need to be? I feel like I did.
4. She uses the word "gentleman." When a woman uses the word "gentleman," it means she has some fantastical idea of what she thinks an ideal man should be. Be prepared for her to constantly expect that you conform to her ridiculous romantic dream. Sounds like fun, right?

Do women from OkCupid put out more, and does myBestFace work?

Anonymous writes:

I love your book: short and sweet. I came to the same conclusion on sending a generic first email, but was looking for someone who ran the experiment that I wanted to run. Now that I see you did it, I can rest easy.

Question: It makes sense that the women on match.com who are paid members would be more likely to respond and follow through on meeting you, but my how much more or less likely are they to put out quickly compared to the ones from say okcupid?

My theory would be that they are less likely to put out quickly because they are paying and expecting more commitment. But you actually have experience. Are there any noticeable differences?

He continues by offering a couple links on another topic from my book:

Okcupid myBestFace features is pretty useless:

http://jesse.la/okcupids-mybestface-would-be-awesome-if-it-worked/

https://www.joshsway.com/articles/view/stop-using-okcupids-mybestface

First of all, Mr. Anonymous, thanks for reading. I'm glad you like the book. How about a positive review on Amazon? Anyway now that that shameless promotion is out of the way, let's take these questions one at a time.

My WhatsYourPrice Adventure (Part 2)

So it's been a while since I've written about the online dating site for sugar daddies (ahem, generous men) and golddiggers (I mean, uh, women), What's Your Price. At the time I was intrigued by the prospects, but never got around to writing about the outcome of my adventure.

What happened? Well, honestly I figured out much more effective methods to meet women online, and no longer had any need for a gimmicky website like What's Your Price. But since so I've received so many requests to follow up my first piece, here it is, by popular demand, Part 2 of My What's Your Price Adventure.

Why Most Online Dating Advice is Crap

There's a lot of online dating advice out there. The problem is, most of it is crap. Why? Well it's the same reason that most information on the internet is crap. People tend to get too caught up with what they want, rather than focusing on the truth. The result is that most advice is anecdotal or more of a personal desire than actual advice on how to act for success. Here's what I'm talking about:

This guy complains that he get's too many matches and emails with women he doesn't like. From his sample size of... wait for it... three he infers that he should answer online dating profile questions oppositely of how he truly feels. The better advice would be to stop waiting for women to contact you!

Why You Should Date Black Women

I've had a lot of success in online dating. Shit, I even wrote a book about it. But recently I've had even more success. How? By dating black women. Now, before you get all worked up, this wasn't a conscious decision I made one day. It's just something I noticed. I sort of though something was going on, but I didn't really pay attention until one of my friends whispered to me that he'd noticed that black women seemed to love him. When I started to keep track, I realized that I was having a lot more success with black women than any other race. But why? It turns out there are two factors at play here:

Why Tinder Sucks

If you haven't heard of Tinder, you haven't been paying attention. It's the hottest thing in online dating. It's worth billions. I'm not going to bore you with all the details of how it works. You can learn that anywhere, but here are the main reasons Tinder is different, and why it's getting so much buzz:

1. It's not "really" online dating. Tinder has an organic feel. It uses your facebook contacts to link you with friends of friends.
2. It's entirely smartphone based, so is very comfortable and intuitive to people who are familiar with social apps. It doesn't feel like normal online dating.
3. It empowers women. Because you can't communicate with anyone until there's a mutual match, women feel empowered to control who gets to write them.

Yes all these things are true, but there's one fundamental flaw with Tinder that makes it almost entirely useless, completely inferior to virtually any other online dating site: It sucks. Here's how Tinder destroys online dating:

Online Dating Links

1. Online dating tips from our old friends at The Onion.
2. Looks like this guy has experience the "photo from above" deception in my book's list of profile photo red flags.
3. A great video on the economics of sex. Bottom line, it's good to be a man.
4. Guess what? Online dating saves you money.
5. Hey did I mention my book? Check it out here.

What’s the average online dating email response rate?

Match.com, like many other sites, has something called “winks” that you can send to other users. It’s basically a quick way to let someone know that you’re interested in them. Now, when you receive a wink, a screen pops up asking if you’d like to email and stating that:

She’s 15X more likely to respond to an email.

(At least that’s what happened for a male match.com member at the time of this writing.)

Think about what this implies.

The Online Dating Email: Personalized vs Generic

The following is an excerpt from my new book, A Hacker's Guide to Online Dating: How to Train Your Computer to Get You Dates. In it I discuss all my tips and tricks learned over years of online dating, how to optimize your online dating strategy, and how to automate the whole process.

So you want to know if your online dating emails need to be personalized? You want to know whether you need to read her profile to craft an eloquent essay about all the things you have in common, or if you can get away with sending a generic, cut-and-paste email to everyone. It’s an important question. Crafting that perfect personalized email takes a lot of time. And if you consider the fact that even with a perfect email, the likelihood of a response is fairly low, you’re going to have to send somewhere between 5 and 20 emails to get one response. All that time writing emails adds up fast.

If you do some research online, you’ll probably see a lot of articles written by women whining about how generic emails are such a turn off, how unromantic they are, and how no one wants to respond to them, yada, yada, yada. Some articles are less emotional, but also conclude that generic emails are less likely to get a response, usually using a mixture of opinion an anecdote. But those people are missing the point. They’re answering the wrong question. The question isn't, Do people prefer personalized emails to generic ones? The question isn't even, Are people more likely to respond to personalized emails than generic ones? No, the relevant question is much more specific: Is the increase in response likelihood gained by a personalized email over a generic email worth the time it takes to write it? The answer to that question is an unequivocal no. Here’s how I know.

Announcing My New Book!

Dear loyal readers,

I’m ridiculously excited and disgustingly proud to announce the release of my new book A Hacker's Guide to Online Dating, How to Train Your Computer to Get You Dates. Available on Amazon here.

If you enjoy the blog, you’ll love this book. It’s everything I've learned throughout my years in the online dating world. All the tips and tricks on how to optimize the dating process to do what online dating is supposed to do – get you actual face to face dates – as efficiently as possible. Basically, overcoming the paradox of choice. I've even included the automation code that I personally developed and use to have my computer do most of the work for me. Online dating on steroids!

I’ll be posting excerpts periodically – there’s so much good material here that I’m not going to limit it to just the book - but to wet your whistle, the table of contents is below. I also want to do something for my loyal readers. For the next 5 days, the kindle ebook is going to be available absolutely free! No strings attached. The whole thing. Free. What are you waiting for? Here’s that link again. The only thing I ask in return is this: if you like it, give me a review on Amazon. It always helps. And let me know how my strategies work out for you. You can always reach me here in the comments section.

Vaya con dios,
Dorian

Date night

Age: 24
Ethnicity: Hispanic, white mix
Met her: online
Height: 5’ 0”
Body: Somewhat disappointing. A little more than pictures indicated in the stomach, arms, and thigh regions.
Boobs: Again, didn’t live up to expectations.
Butt: Looked ok, but also looked like it took quite a bit of effort to get into those jeans.
Date: Drinks, and -- surprise, surprise -- some unplanned food.
Cost: $31 + $25 paid by her

Summary:
The date is best summed up by the following quotes:

   “Growing up, I was kind of a chubby girl.” (Uh oh)

   “I’ve never really taken care of myself, you know, aesthetically.” (Oh god)

   “Let’s do it again.” (I'll think about it)

Argument for seeing her again: She was cool, easy going. Her body wasn’t THAT bad. She was sitting down next to me at the bar the whole time, which tends to have an unflattering effect on the stomach (Ok, I'm rationalizing). Fat girls, or in this case, formerly fat girls tend to be, let’s just say, more adventurous in bed.
Argument against: Rule No. 4.

Red flags I missed: Upon further review, Nos. 2 - 4 may have been present to some extent. Again I was burned by the “average” body type. Probably should just steer clear of it all together.
Lessons: I’m starting to think the fact that I’m getting regular poon elsewhere is killing my motivation. I’m just not feeling the urgency. I’m not desperate enough. A few months ago I probably would have jumped all over a girl like this. But now? Not worth my time.

My WhatsYourPrice adventure (Part 1)

You may recall my analysis of WhatsYourPrice, the online dating site where men agree to pay for a date with a woman. Sounds a lot like prostitution, doesn’t it? Well, we’re about to find out.

Based on the amount of money I’d spent in recent months on dates with women I’d met online who turned out to be duds, I came to the conclusion that paying for quality might not be that bad an idea... as long as it increased the probability that I'd get laid. So I set out on a mission to find out what this site is all about. Here’s what happened:

Date night

Date #2 with this one.

Date: Music festival/street fair
Cost: $48
Summary: She texted me a couple days after our first date and asked if I wanted to go to some food festival, but I said I was busy since it was a violation of both Rule #2a and Rule #4, and it wasn't clear whether she was expecting me to buy her a ticket. But alas, in the end, I ended up breaking both rules anyway.

This week in...

...child support

• Who knew failing to pay child support could get you shot in the back by a police officer as you try to run away.
• I said it before, and I’ll say it again. See this film if you have the opportunity.
• A man pays child support for 16 years for a child that isn’t his.
  

...women

• For some reason, women just like to worry... and complain.
• We watch female sports if and when the athletes are hot, not for any other reason.

...dating, mating, and baboons

• It turns out, it’s pretty good to be No. 2.

Date night

Continuing on my mission to share way too much information about my love life, here's what I got up to last night:

Ethnicity: Chinese (Cantonese, not Mandarin, in case you were wondering... I wasn't)
Met her: Online
Height: ~5’7” in heels
Body: More substantial than expected
Boobs: More substantial than expected
Butt: Didn't bother to check
Date: Drinks, wine bar
Cost: $29, 1.5 hrs, and a bit of a hangover
Summary:
I wish I had another pair of hands... so I could give this date 4 thumbs down!

Tips on picking up -- and getting rid of -- women

First, here's a link for some interesting tips on approaching women, written by a woman who’s made a career out of helping men pick up women. Nothing too earth-shattering here, so I'll let you click through to the original article if you're so inclined. My summary: basically, just relax and go for it.

The second set of tips, this time from a psychologist, are a bit more useful. I highly recommend taking a look at this one, if only for all the links to other useful articles on topics such as confidence, body language, and asking a woman out “indirectly.” I’ll paraphrase my favorite takeaways here:

Date night

I'm going to try something new here: chronicling my online dating experiences. Basically, it's just for shits and giggles, and because I'm kind of curious how much trouble it'll get me into. I want to be completely open, but more importantly, amusing. So let me know in the comments what kind of vital stats you'd like to hear about, and I'll try to oblige. Here's my first attempt, based on last night:

Height: ~5’5’’ (~5’9” in heels)
Ethnicity: black
Body: thin
Met her: online
Boobs: enormous, likely fake (which is fine with me, just saying)
Ass: a little flat, but hard to say with what she was wearing (maybe that's just wishful thinking)
Date: drinks, pool
Cost: $59
Summary:

Weekend reading

1. The New Yorker explores the history of online dating. Personally, I'm more interested in the future.
2. In case you didn't know, coupons are tacky on a date. Women think it's romantic when you throw money away.
3. Definitely read this very thorough discussion of the many problems with child support calculations. Then read my analysis again.
4. The majority of Canadians now support legalized prostitution. Oh sure.
5. Hopefully you'll never need any of the five legal documents that can protect you in a relationship.
6. Most New Zealanders favor child support overhaul.
7. Good for Malaysia Airlines, banning babies First Class.
8. It turns out the success of female politicians might have a lot to do with nepotism.
9. Here are some good tips on how to be a better liar.

More dating technology

It's great when technology helps you get laid, isn't it? Now, a company is developing a system that will use facial recognition technology to determine the sex of people entering a bar. This data will then be aggregated to keep you apprised of which bars are hopping and the male-to-female ratio of each. Excellent!

Online dating trifecta: beautiful people, iPhone hookers, Zoosk statistics

1. Beautiful People an online dating site that only allows, you guessed it, beautiful people, had to lay down the law on 30,000 “uglies.” Good for them.
2. Apparently iWhores may be in our future. Ah, the march of progress.
3. New research from Zoosk on summer dating (I guess they were jealous of OkCupid). Here are the takeaways:
• Don’t talk about your ex on a first date. (Duh)
• The large majority of people expect men to pick up the bill for first date. (I guess you aren’t THAT independent, huh ladies?)
• Most women have made up their mind about a potential romantic interest by the end of the first date. For most men it takes less than an hour, some only 15 minutes. (Me? 15 seconds.)
• The majority of singles think an outdoor date is best for summer. (Not on the first date. See rule #2.)
• Very few people think karaoke is a good idea on a first date. (Ya think?)
• Most men, but less than half of women would go on date that requires a bathing suit. (My advice: not on the first date. Again, see rule #2. But it can be a good way to find out what you want to know. If she won’t show you her body, you probably don’t want to see it.)