Girl on the Net

Before I get stuck in, a confession: I had a different blog post lined up for today. It was a silly piece expressing some frustration at horny men who ‘volunteer as tribute’. When I write about how much I love getting fucked, there’s often a random stranger ready to pop up in the comments offering to fulfil my sexual needs. ‘Volunteering as tribute’ to let me wank him off or whatever it might be. Raising his hand, like that’s all that’s ever required.

OMG I just read your blog post about how much you love sucking cock and – weird coincidence, bear with me – it turns out that I have a cock! And what’s more, I really love having it sucked! We should definitely meet up and I can help you out with your problem haha! You like sucking dick? I volunteer as tribute!

As I say, the post was ready. I even commissioned a lovely image from Stuart to accompany it (see above) and – as always – he’s perfectly captured what I was trying to say in the text. But on reflection the text wasn’t good. It was suffused with a bitterness that stopped it from being funny, and instead made it seem mean-spirited. It is frustrating when strangers ‘volunteer as tribute’, and it’s OK for me to notice and acknowledge that, but the way I wrote about this particular phenomenon… eh… it felt like battle lines were being drawn.

Connecting with people shouldn’t feel like a battle. That’s partly what’s so tiring about dating in general, to be honest. So let’s have a go at connecting instead, and try to see each other’s perspective.

Straight dating is demoralising

Get ready for yet more gendered dating chat. I’m talking specifically about men dating women (and vice versa) cos that’s where my experience lies. I’ve used ‘straight’ as a catch-all term but obviously I date bi/pan people too, it’s just that I focus on men and I’m a woman, so… ‘straight’ feels like the easiest way to express what I mean. If there’s a better term, do let me know. 

I’ve been having a lot of conversations about dating recently, and one thing rings out loud and clear: straight dating on the apps sucks big time. Men and women both acknowledge this. One thing they don’t always acknowledge is that it doesn’t just suck for one gender or another, it sucks massive arse for all of us.

Personally I think we all have the same problem: a massive gender imbalance, which results in shocking, dramatic, and overwhelming differences in the number of matches. This video is the neatest demonstration of the problem that I have seen, and I link people to it frequently when discussing this issue.

So we end up where we are. The problem (imbalance) seen from radically different perspectives:

Women get way too many interactions: often short messages which involve no more than a ‘hey!’ or ‘how’s your day?’, or matches with people who aren’t appropriate because they’ve not bothered to read our profiles. When we do interact, often men will seek to escalate incredibly quickly – before they’ve asked us any questions or made an effort to establish rapport. It’s tricky for us to find genuinely interested guys amidst the sea of men who are thinking ‘eh, you’ll do’ and thus getting in the way. For us, it’s powerfully dispiriting to be confronted by so many undiscerning suitors who clearly just want any woman who might be willing to turn up.

Men, on the other hand, are confronted by a wall of silence and frequent ghosting. It’s rare for women to message first, and when we do reply to messages we often disappear after one or two – sometimes because the men have demonstrated the problem above (they just want anyone), other times because we got swamped by other responses and it’s hard to juggle twenty conversations at a time. Dudes get confused and upset by this behaviour (understandably), but because of the way straight dating works on the apps, this kind of behaviour is basically inevitable. As it’s inevitable that men get demoralised and subsequently put in even less effort. After all, why bother composing a fun message if it’s only getting hurled into the abyss?

Then women get more spam, ignore more men, become even more dispirited.

Men get even less fussy, match with more people and send a tonne of ‘hey!’ messages, which get ignored and cause them more misery…

…and the cycle continues.

Opportunity cost of dating

As a sex blogger, I often find myself on the receiving end of behaviour from men that’s essentially an enhanced version of what I run into as a normal person on a dating app. So when dudes pop up in my comments to ‘volunteer as tribute’, it feels like the above mistake, but on steroids.

Guys see the challenge they’re facing (lack of willing volunteers to fuck them) and assume that we are the same: “You want to get laid? Great news! I’m here!”. In fact, although my problem – here as on the apps – is the same as theirs, I’m seeing it from a radically different perspective. Imbalance is the issue. I’m on the side which gives me a spammy abundance of thoughtless ‘volunteers’, while yours gives you tumbleweed and no volunteers at all. You want me to say ‘yes’, I want to work out whether your offer is personal and specific to me. But if you get ignored or told ‘no’ too many times, your offers (understandably) become less and less personal, which in turn makes me even more wary of saying ‘yes’… and the cycle continues.

Men are behaving exactly as society has told them to: they are supposed to step up and volunteer, and we women are supposed to pick and choose from the crowd like they’re suitors who’ve turned up for the hand of the princess. We’re trying to pick from the limited number of genuinely suitable suitors, but those guys are drowned out by the roar of a much bigger crowd.

“Why can’t you just give him a chance!?”

I recently had an interaction on an app that went like this:

Me: sends an interesting first message, ends with a question about something fun from his profile.

Him: how about I answer your question over a drink?

Me: that’s a bit rapid for me, I’m afraid.

Him: I just hate messaging back and forth for weeks!

I get it, my friend. I hate that too. I’m not interested in becoming anyone’s pen pal. But a few messages (not for weeks, but minutes would be nice) are crucial to establish whether we have rapport, by which I mean whether you’re genuinely interested in me or just keen to go out with anyone. This guy proposed a date, and was baffled that I wouldn’t immediately accept what – to him – would be a very tempting offer. It isn’t tempting to me, though. He’d have far more luck if he understood that I’m coming at the same problem from a very different perspective: everyone’s volunteering, so I need to make sure I don’t waste my time.

When I spoke to my Mum about this recently she asked why I couldn’t just give this guy a chance, so I explained: if I give a chance to every guy who pops up in my messages, I will be busy every single night of the week, and spending at a minimum £14 (one round, two pints), though more likely £28 (two rounds, four pints) on each and every chance I happen to give. That’s a very high cost for each ‘chance’ and it simply isn’t one I can afford.

As I say, I don’t wanna be pen pals either. But there’s an opportunity cost with every ‘chance’ I show to any given man. The cost of a lost evening that I could otherwise spend with friends, or on my own wanking and eating biscuits, or even more importantly – doing the thing I’ve actually come to the dating apps to do! i.e. find someone who is into me. I’m certain I won’t find that particular guy if I waste every evening in the pub with one who’ll be pleased with any woman who shows up.

So what’s the solution?

You’re right to ask, my friends, because obviously I have the power to magically fix this with a sentence or two. Here’s how we solve it, and my advice is going to be gendered because we’re approaching the problem from two different angles:

Women: message first! I mean it. Message men first. Please. Firstly because it’s fun – it allows you to set the tone of a conversation and express interest in the things a guy has said on his profile that are actually drawing you in. This way, even if you don’t end up hitting it off, men get a nice boost of knowing that a) a woman liked them and b) there are things in their profile of which they should rightly be proud. What’s more, you’ll start to understand a little of what men go through: there’s nothing like a little rejection to help you understand the other side.

I’d also advise (though men may well get angry at me for this in the comments) that you unmatch people as soon as you realise it’s a no-go. Just unmatch, it’s fine. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, and it will keep your inbox clearer (and spam at a minimum), which will mean you’re more likely to stay on the site. As I say, men won’t like this, but personally I’m here to help people who are serious about finding someone good, and your chance of finding a decent dude who likes you is immeasurably improved if you suppress your instinct to people-please or give a chance to guys your gut is telling you are definite ‘no’s, and instead laser-focus on the ones who might be a ‘yes’.

Men: make every interaction count. I know you don’t get many of them, but the solution isn’t to just throw more and more shit at the wall to see what sticks, instead you need to hone and refine what you’re doing. Don’t send messages until your profile has been filled out with detail. And don’t send messages like ‘hey!’ or ‘how are you?’ or anything else that could have been copy/pasted to any woman you see. Be honest with yourself about whether you’re genuinely interested in somebody, and if you aren’t then move on. Don’t get in the way of them finding someone who is. Stop waving your hand in the air to ‘volunteer as tribute’, instead make the effort to apply as a genuine suitor.

As I say, I expect this advice will definitely fix the whole problem, but on the off-chance it doesn’t then I wish you all the best on the apps. Straight dating sucks in general, and sucks even harder when we’re doing it on platforms that seems almost designed to keep us apart. It exacerbates the problem we all face, compelling us to view dating as two sides of a battle rather than a war we should be fighting side by side. The problem is the same for men and women, but our radically different perspectives can lead to heartache, misery, bitterness, and sex bloggers like me penning snarky blog posts that they eventually have to delete in favour of hastily drafting something a bit more conciliatory.

I hope that the straight/bi/pan men reading this will up their game a little, and that straight/bi/pan women reading this might consider sending a few first messages to men you think look fun. Understanding each other’s perspective is important in any relationship you might embark on in the future: empathising with it while you’re dating feels like a great place to start.