Episode 1 - We've Lost the Magic

Everybody, welcome back to the handsome hour. We're here again. I'm Wes Myers.

It's the first episode. Is it welcome?

This is the well, we're creating this is what people want from a podcast is they want

A sense of infinite continuity.

Yes. We're welcome welcoming them into our our world. So if we're being honest

The problem is that this is a shtick that nobody else in the world except me is in on, which is that you always say welcome back at the beginning of every meeting. No matter no matter the no matter the context, this should be the first time you're meeting somebody ever and you say welcome back.

Well, it'll make sense on the second episode. You know.

I don't see how.

It's the handsome hour. So we're here. You guys We are here. This is what happened. Yes.

You said they said, Wes, you are in charge of the podcast. And, you know, we we have Stoney here. Stoney, I don't know your last name or I can't pronounce it. It's

Gruno. But it's it's a tricky one.

Yeah. It's got it has it's more consonants than it sounds like. And today, have Cody Zervas in the studio with us. Cody's Cody's here. He's he's Cody.

Why don't you introduce yourself? I don't know how

to introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Cody.

Cody's here. And yeah. So we we we started a podcast, and first thing we did was we spent $5,000 on equipment. Stoney spent 5,000

And

and we had a lot of ideas. We we were talking ideas, and we were like, well, we're gonna build a 30 story building, and we're gonna fill it with with men and women of of different races. And then it was, you know, I said, nope. We're just gonna we're gonna do the podcast is gonna live and die on whether we can talk.

This isn't this isn't what I was hoping for. This isn't the the the magic.

Yeah. Well, I'm thinking, like, you know, usually the way people listen to podcasts is you don't you know, no one's listening to a new podcast and, like, starting on episode one. Right? So part of the charm of a podcast is you go back and you listen to, like, the early episodes and it's you know, it sucks. And it's it's it wouldn't be like a it's it's supposed to be like an underdog story.

Right? You're supposed to be like, wow. This this is look look where these guys started. Right? And so we're we're ostensibly talking about dating.

Yes. And Sony was talking about he chews very loud. Sony, is that that's been a problem in your dating life?

No. Only when I'm sitting next to my daughter who has misophonia, which is a supposed not I don't know what it's called.

I that's where it's gross when you hear sounds. Like like, I dated a girl who she she couldn't be in the she had to, like she had, like, anxiety attacks in the subway if someone was chewing gum near her. Is that you I thought it was fake.

No. No. Well, it it might be fake, but a lot of people have it. So I guess it's not fake. So one of my exes also had it with her father.

So So sometimes I wonder if it's a familial thing.

It's just certain people. It seems to be. Yes. Okay. My ex had it.

She hated when people whistled. Aaliyah hates that. I don't know. We can cut that out. They say in Russia, if you whistle, it's it's bad luck.

Oh, yeah. She was telling me about this on Wednesday. She was she was saying it means that you're gonna be poor.

Yeah. They hate they hate Russia. They don't like people to enjoy themselves, I I think. It's part of their part of their stick there.

Right. Any expression of individuality or joy.

Yeah. So, yeah, misphonia. It was really hard because I do eat loud, I guess. People have told me that. Do you think it

Is this gonna have any structure or are we just rambling?

Well, we're just, you know, we're finding the voice. We're we're do you guys have topics? Do you have something you wanna talk about?

You were supposed I thought you had something prepared.

No. That was the intro. I just told I did the intro. I told you I had an intro prepared.

I'm gonna agree with Wes in the sense that if this ever does become popular, God forbid, the number of people who are gonna go back and listen to the first episode is probably gonna be minor. Everyone just wants to hear the latest episode. No one wants to go back and hear all the episodes. So this is this is our this is our our baby. It doesn't have to look good.

You have to fuck But your

are we we're not gonna we're not gonna do we have any content? Do we have any any idea of where we're

gonna go to format?

Have we even named the podcast officially? Like, we have discussed it before recording, but maybe it's time for one of you guys to say the name of the podcast.

We we said welcome back to the handsome Great. The handsome hour. And it'll be about sixty minutes of mostly this, I think. And well, let's, Cody, you're single. How's, why?

What are your what

are the emotional problems that are stopping you from finding love?

Oh, boy.

I was joking with that, but if you wanna attack that answer, go for it.

Jeez, we're going real deep, real fast. Let's see. I mean, the main reason I'm single is because after all of the ups and downs and roller coaster eyes and trauma of dating in my twenties, I finally arrived at a somewhat zen like state where I'm really totally content with holding out for the right person. And the right person, I'm quite confident is astonishingly rare. And so basically, I'm building a dating app in order to find her.

It's great motivation. I think Keeper was well, we do Keeper. People the listeners know about Keeper by now. And that is the most motivating part of it is, like, at the very beginning, I was like, Oh, I'm just going to build this for me. I need this, right?

I be patient zero. I will be the first one to have my optimal soul mate. And then, you know, I got a girlfriend, but Yeah. You build it for yourself.

Do you think your current location complicates things? Do you view New York City, which has amazing density within a geography, but do you view that as an ideal or non ideal place to meet what you were looking for?

Probably non ideal. I don't think it really ultimately matters that much, honestly. I think I this is probably not true. This is this is not gonna generalize to most people, would imagine. But for me, I think I'm so particular and specific, and the person I'm looking for is as well, that almost no amount of density can address that.

Like, sure, she might live in New York, but how would I find her? What am I gonna do? Knock on all 8,000,000 doll, 8,000,000 doors? Like, she's not gonna be at the karaoke night at the local yeah. I'm not gonna meet her through any traditional avenues.

So it's I need a search function that hasn't been invented yet, which is obviously, you know, keeper. But yeah, don't so I don't think being in New York is material.

The question of how do you reach people is core to everyone with a dating challenge. And I find that interesting. So I was approached on LinkedIn by a matchmaking service who was trying to pair me with women. And I responded and I was like, sure, I'll give it a shot. But I'm curious, are you guys going to build into Keeper the ability for outreach to happen, even through things like LinkedIn?

Not in the short term. Maybe in the, you know, medium to maybe in the long term, there's going be some some way to do that, that's reasonable. The problem, the challenge there with outbound is that you need so much information to make a really high quality match. There's, you're starting from absolute, what is effectively absolute zero on any of the existing platforms. There's no way you can glean enough information from somebody's LinkedIn profile, or their Instagram, or whatever, to, you you might be able to essentially apply what's the equivalent of like a few filters, right?

Like obviously, if they have a photo, that gives you something, and you know, whatever, but it's just nowhere near enough. And and the conversion rate would be so low, you could reach out to them, what do you say? Hey, we're we're keeper with this random matchmaking sort of you've never heard of. So maybe when we get to the level of cultural

I was converted. I mean, they reached out to me.

Okay. It's gonna be, I mean, just frankly easier to convert men. It's not that it can't happen, but it's it's it's it's just almost certainly not a good, like, good use of time. Well, like, the right way to go is just build your pool, have the information already on your users, and then you can run the full set of information through the algorithm.

I would personally rather someone who wasn't on a dating profile, or wasn't on a dating app, I take the Groucho Marx approach almost.

It's like any club that wants me, wouldn't want to be a part of. Well, did you when you signed up, so they reach out to you, but was it like was it effectively an advertisement? Like, hey, join our platform, or were they like, we have a match?

Cold email or cold LinkedIn message request. I can find it for you guys if you ever want to see it. And it said, Hey, we're and I'll name the thing. I think it was three day matchmaking or three day rule matchmaking And they said, Hey, we have someone who we think is going be a great fit for you. Would you like to have a, I think it was a short interview or something?

And I was like, Sure.

But do you think like, did that feel sincere to you?

It depends what you mean by sincere, but it was clear that they had chosen to reach out to me. And I think it might be easier to search for men on LinkedIn if you're focusing on someone who's maybe career focused, which is not something that men traditionally focus on with women. So maybe LinkedIn is a much better place to find men who fit criteria.

I don't know. Did it work out?

I went on one date with one person and then two dates with the next person. And they're both really nice, but I at the same time could I got a feeling why they were single, which I can. Sure.

Let's talk about that. Well, we can come back

to that. Sure. We I mean, there's it's this is part of the intrinsic problems that they're so like, I mean, I guess this is true about a lot of industries, but it's especially true about dating, which is that there are many problems that are all interlinked and related, and very difficult to tease apart. And to solve one, you have to solve another, and then to solve that one, have to solve a third, etc, etc. And so it's like, when you imagine the ideal end state, it would be everybody on Earth is on the same platform.

That platform knows everything about you, and, you know, knows how your friends think about you. They know they have this totally omniscient view, and they know they can see your soul, and they can have everybody in the database, and so they can literally find your optimal match on Earth. And it's not weird because everyone's doing it. And that that would be the the the thing that actually solves the problem to its greatest extent. Right?

And like everything beneath that is a compromise in one way or another. And so, you know, like, I think you whatever solution that you try to implement has to be trying to work towards that. You know, so it's like, anyway, just addressing what you said, Stoney, you know, it's like, well, you don't want to be on any platform that would have you. It's like, well, then that's the problem. It's like, the problem is that like, and that problem is downstream of the fact that like, the reason that there's stigma around using matchmakers is because they don't work.

And so they only get the weirdos who can't find love anywhere else. If they worked, then it would be a virtuous cycle, and their reputation would be higher, would be greater, and everybody would use them, right? It would be a self solving problem. So yeah, it's like you have to, you had, if you, that is both the cause and the solution. It's, so yeah.

Well, think that a matchmaker is generally working with a pretty specific type of person. So for them to send you a message like that cold, there's no way that they have enough information on you based on your LinkedIn or even what's publicly available about you to accurately assess if they have a one woman in mind. They're not looking at Stoney and being like, oh, Stoney looks like a great match for this one woman.

Right. That's my point. It's like, you know that they're desperate because otherwise they wouldn't be using a matchmaker to reach out to you on LinkedIn.

Well, they just know that they have a lot of women, like a guy on LinkedIn who's in his 30s or late 30s at a professional guy and you know, doing well and taking his career seriously is like probably what most of their women are looking for. So they know that if they can just get you to sign up, they're gonna be able to send you on a date with someone. But they have no I cannot look at your LinkedIn and be like, Oh, she look at look at his she loves guys who went to Rutgers.

So what you guys are now talking about is the difference between have we fulfilled our contractual obligation to get this woman to sit down and have a drink with a man and get one step closer to we provided you five dates, to are we finding the ideal man and how the heck would we do that? Oh, he's in tech. That that tells me nothing.

I signed up for that three day rule, because I've met one of these matchmakers at, like, a conference, and she really wanted to match me. I the the sign up was like it's like, what are you interested in? And it was a checkboxes. It was like I I put camping. I haven't been camping, but that was like the closest thing to anything I would be interested in that was on the list.

So it was like, okay, well, they're not. Why don't you just let me tell you that? Which is obviously that's what Keeper does. But it's very much I think that the degree that matchmakers can be successful, it's just because they're allowing people to self select in. It's like, if you're a man and you seek out a matchmaker in, you know, the economy of 2025, and there's another woman who's seeking out a matchmaker in the same cultural whatever, you probably saw something similar that just made you both converge on that source.

Even then, they're not having very much success.

Yeah, I did not take that very well earlier, but the point is that it's this vicious cycle that you can never break out of, like they don't have the cultural capital, because they don't actually succeed, and because they don't succeed, they can't gain the cultural capital, Because they don't have the cultural capital, it's weird when they reach out to you, like, etcetera, etcetera. All these problems that interrelated, and like, what you have to fundamentally and the reason they they can never it can never work is because they're they're working from a fundamentally broken starting place, which is the assumption that they can make matches as a human service and with a small pool manually. Like, you cannot do it mathematically, statistically. It is impossible to make high quality matches as a human, running the algorithm manually. You cannot search through enough people, high quality matches are so rare, one in a 100,000, somewhere in that order of magnitude, that like, human just can't read through 100,000 profiles, right?

It's just not possible.

So what about all the people who found the love of their life in high school senior year, and there's only, you know, 400 kids in the high school. So that's a different mathematical probability. Is that a situation where when you're 18, you're more flexible, you're still figuring out who you are, and you get married and you grow together? Whereas now that we're no longer in that youthful moldable territory, our brains are no longer plat, our personalities are no longer plastic, the matching is that much more difficult.

So that's definitely a thing, I think we could devote a whole episode of that, frankly. I think that's really interesting that like the yes, the older you get, the more idiosyncratic you and your life get, and it becomes harder to match you. No doubt. But it's many things. First of all, I mean, I would I would I would say many things to that.

I mean, first of all, that's exceptionally rare. Right? Like, we probably all know one of those couples or something of the thousands and thousands of people that we've met in our lives or something. So like, even that's pretty rare. And we and we all know about that person because they're like mildly famous because they that happened.

Right? It within their spheres. So there's also like the it's it's our ability to hear about it is is is much higher than is over represents how often it actually happens. Number two, it's it's they don't always work out. So like, you know, divorce rates obviously are quite egregiously high among most earlier generations.

And so like one of the interesting trends is that you see like young people these days are getting married less often than ever, but the divorce rates are much lower as well. So they're holding out for the person who is a better match. And so yeah, so it's like, know, just because they were a quote unquote high school sweethearts, like doesn't, a lot of times it didn't doesn't actually end up working out, right? So, and then the third thing is that, or I guess my fourth thing, don't know what we're on now, yeah, like, you know, I think there's, there's also a mindset thing, which is that, you know, it depends on what we're defining as a long term match or as a soul mate or whatever. Those relationships almost certainly are not perfect, obviously.

And but they go into it with a different mindset, which is that like you a relationship is work, and it's something that you build. And I think most people these days don't have that mindset. They're looking for it to be something that's perfect off the shelf. And that's what they mean when they say they're looking for their soulmate or whatever. They it's just like this magic hand and glove fit, which is that's the thing that's exceptionally rare.

Yes. If you can if you're you're willing to go into it and work and build something and do hard work and go through fights and fix things and ta da da, like, yeah, that you're gonna be able to do that with a lot a lot more people, but most that's just not the attitude that I think is most common these days.

Yeah. Well, for a long time, it's that's just what marriage was. It was you were going to get married before you were 23, and so you only had so many options. You found the best one and you understood it as this is I'm not optimizing, I'm satisficing. And I think a lot of people still, I mean, do think there's something to be said about if you find the love of your life at 18, like, well, you're not fully developed.

So hopefully you develop along the same path and you're neurologically similar and you grow together in a way that, you know, you can kind of become one, right? And if you're, you know, marrying your high school sweetheart, it's like you did kind of grow up together, so you have like a very similar context. There are still, I mean, obviously people on dating services don't fit this category in general, but there is just always going to be a category of people who are like townies, right? Like, I'm from a small town and then there's definitely people who just never like, it would never occur to them to move away, Right? They're like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, run the auto body shop here in town, and that's all I wanna do.

I wanna manage the auto body shop.

And frankly, those people are just gonna be easier to match.

They're the happiest people.

I think we're all secretly jealous of them.

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

I know a guy who's managed a pizza shop since we were in high school, and all he wants to do is manage the pizza shop. And I'm like, I want I'm miserable because of all the things I want. And if I just if all I wanted was to drive my Tahoe and and listen to Lil Wayne, that'd be awesome. You know?

To dip into Eastern philosophy, nirvana is the state of bliss because you don't want anything. And I don't think I want nirvana. I think I want to seek and to discover and to drive.

Are you saying that because if you well, you can't if you can't want, you can't want nirvana. Isn't that part of it?

I I have no interest in reaching that state.

Okay. Just being happy?

Having no desire sounds awful.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think that there's like a monk who desires nothing. All who who there's also like a lot of other people who desire nothing. And it's just like burnouts or drug addicts or there's an overlap there.

Yeah. My resistance to that sort of like Buddhism and Eastern philosophy type stuff is that it feels like it's, you know, an ideology designed to to to keep keep the unwashed masses from revolting, right? It's like, if you sort of can just be okay with self erasure, and be okay with the boot on your neck, it's like, no, don't mind the boot, life is suffering. Find peace with the boot.

I think desire is a little bit like, it's almost a little bit like anxiety in a sense where like, you will attribute anxiety to something in your life, but the anxiety exists independent of any of that, you're just attributing it. So like, desire is a state. And no matter where you are in life, like you have a set of things you desire right now. And if you attained all of those things, you would find a new set of things to

desire. Completely.

And it's, you know, what if you were a normal person that you're channeling it in a healthy way.

And perhaps the trick is to simply recognize that and then to enjoy the desire rather than to see it as a negative.

I do think though that I don't know if actually which one of you guys was making this point a second ago, but I do think like, there is a selection effect thing. It's like the people that need dating apps, and need matchmakers, these are the kind of people who move out of their hometown to go find something in the big city or whatever. And you know, that is like the modern myth, like the modern hero myth is, you know, you you escape your small town, you move to the big city, you get you live alone in like a one bedroom, you get your daily Amazon box, and you open it, and you're like, oh, boy. And then, you know, you have your your high status job and finance or as a consultant or whatever, and you make something of yourself. And then, you know, you find then you have your your sitcom or your your your rom com romance, you meet cute with somebody at the whatever.

And and then you've, know, after you've both made it, then you sort of move to the burbs or whatever. And like, that's the that's the myth. That's the that's the archetypal story that like, these people are everybody I don't wanna say these people. It's like most of us are trying to live out. It's obviously in many ways, destructive and antithetical to sort of human nature, and the way that we're meant to live.

And in many ways, it's all sort of all the pro all the dating woes are just downstream of a larger set of of human woes that are that are that are that are a product of of that. Yeah.

In my mom's suburbs, and I I lived in my mom's house for on and off. Family members were ill, I was helping look after them. The neighbors had achieved that. You know, I think they had met in Hoboken, and they were very nice, beautiful couple, three kids. But that was the was the selection bias.

You don't move to a nice house in the suburbs if you haven't succeeded in the youthful dating market of New York City.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And not to say that it doesn't work for some people, obviously. Every system works for some people.

But everyone here in New York City is almost those who it hasn't worked for. You know, I I think about showing up at a garage sale at four p. M. On a Sunday. That's a different selection of items than what happens if you show up Saturday at 8AM.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So in many ways, I mean, what's the Nick Lam quote? Cities are IQ shredders?

Like, they're also like yeah, they're this place that is specifically a gravity well for people to be unhappy with their dating lives. It's like, let's pull all the people from the whole world who are most likely to be unhappy with their dating life and put them all in one place.

What a dark way to look at it, but I don't think I can disagree with you.

Well, the real rite of passage isn't moving to the city and discovering yourself. It's the disillusionment that comes after you do that and realize it's your life script that you had in mind was just a lie.

But if you get a house in the country while you're single, then you're admitting defeat almost.

That's totally right. That's I mean, by by right, I mean, that is the unspoken thing that, like, everybody believes and feels, and it's part part of the myth.

I know several people who have done that and it, like, immediately turned around and been like, this was not the move. Like, they yeah. Single guys. I can think of two friends in particular who were, like, you know, successful young, and they're like, they didn't have a a woman or anything. And they're like, I'm gonna go homestead now.

And then they go do it. And then it's like they're like, this is you know, it's not a solo activity. Right? Like

Did they keep their New York City residents, or did they shift their entire life to homesteading?

One the one guy I'm thinking shifted entirely to homesteading. He did it for, like, two years.

That would be so difficult. Where would you meet a young single woman who is a good match for you? Man. I remember I was driving through a remote part of New Zealand, And I went into a place that I think sold fish or something like that. And there was this really nice German temporary worker there.

And I remember thinking, what a nice young lady. I bet there's not a suitable candidate for her for about a 100 miles because we were truly in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand. And I'm like, imagine going on Tinder, God forbid, you know, you swipe left twice and you're like, oh, you're done.

That's it. Well, most people eventually are. You're going to find someone. And there's a, you know, I mean, we're building keepers so that you can find the optimal person no matter who you are, where you are, what stage of life, right? But most people are going to find someone and it's like, are you going to put yourself in a situation where you can find like the best, like reasonably the best person you can find, which is still very difficult?

Or it's like, how far are you going to lower your, I don't want to say lower your expectations, because it's not always a sad thing. Like sometimes it is like you form a beautiful relationship with someone that you would have imagined yourself with a few years earlier or something. But You could

say reduce your criteria as a more neutral.

Yeah. Or like, at what point does the practical pain or the drive to not want to be alone start to override the things that you think you'd need out of a person just out of the box in a relationship?

In my experience, that happens continuously, but they're always five years phased back. So they keep on lowering their expectations. Okay, I'm not gonna go for a 10. I'm gonna go for an eight. But in that time frame, they've gone from an eight to a six, and they're always it's almost like gravity.

Someone explained to me that gravity is you're falling towards Earth, but missing it, cause you're going sideways so quickly. And I think about that analogy for them.

Orbiting, like, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a fantastic point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like the, so, I had this, these terms I like to use, which is vertical preferences and horizontal preferences. So vertical preferences are ones that are normative, meaning they generally more is better, and everybody is in rough agreement on what they are.

And so for example, attractiveness, it's like, yeah, generally most people agree that like Brad Pitt's attractive and, you know, whatever, the ugly guy at the local trailer park is not. And then same with like, you know, intelligence, generally everybody's like smarter is better, finances, being richer is better, etcetera, etcetera. Horizontal preferences are ones where it's more about just idiosyncratic match. It's like interests. You want somebody who shares your interests, and there's no interest that's, you know, everybody agrees is like the best interest.

And a large percentage, not all of, but a large percentage of dating preferences are vertical. And that explains a huge and and the problem with that is that the vertical date, you know, the vertical preference market, so to speak, is zero sum. Like, you know, you not everybody can be happy, not everybody can win, like you are competing for those the people who have those traits with everybody else in the dating market. And so but a lot of the a huge part of the problem is that this is finally getting back to your point, Stoney. People don't, for whatever reason, the adult is a product of modernity, or what they do not understand how this works, and they don't understand their place in that market and what they have to offer.

A lot of people have delusional beliefs about their own value and their own markets, you know, mating market value. They don't understand that it even is zero sum and that there are leagues. So like, this is very we see this among keeper users all the time, but I think this is just a common thing. It's like people, they don't understand that like, no, you're a six, and you're actually going down. Every year you become a lower number, and you know, you better like, you should plan your life with that knowledge, but they but, you know, they don't leave they don't they don't.

I have a very specific memory of woman. She was nice. We went on a date, but there was not a lot of fit. And we were texting after that. And I actually sent her a YouTube video about I am the table.

And I was like, I think this is you, I think this might be helpful. I was trying to be helpful. And she wrote back and said, I know my my value. I said, you might know your worth, but your value is set by the marketplace. You can't control your value.

She didn't appreciate that.

I am the table. What's that?

So when this is this is referencing a well known YouTuber who talks about dating, but he's he suggests that, you know, women often ask what do men bring to the table? And then you say to the woman, what do you bring to the table? And their response is, I am the table. So I don't need to bring anything to the table. My my presence, my beauty, my whatever is the table.

Wow.

There's a there's a there's a Kanye West there. He says, how do I bring nothing to the table when I'm the table? I guess that's what I there's a reference to. I thought it was a joke. What is a joke?

Is the idea that every woman says that thinking that they're being clever and are the first to say it?

No, don't. Sadly, I don't think so. I think they're saying I don't need to bring anything to the table because I am the table.

No, I know. But who is saying that line?

Originally or who's saying it genuinely?

Is it a woman saying it?

There's there's several TikTok videos of women saying I am the table.

Right. That's what I'm saying. So it's it's that's the title of the thing because that is a pattern that they all say this phrase.

It's like those what are those Japanese restaurants where you eat sushi off the woman's back? They're like the It's just like that. Well, when someone says I'm the table, I

imagine That's very literal.

You're on the floor. Like, if someone said that to me, I would be like, get on all fours and I'm gonna put a plate on your back.

Can I just add? I really have never desired to eat food off a stranger's back.

Mixing food and sex is weird.

And that's not even, yeah, that's not even sex. It's just someone's back, and you hope they showered, but, you know?

Well, it's supposed to be like a I I I assume you're not doing it, like, for any it's it's supposed to be some kind of weird fetish, right?

I always thought it was a a display of a this is how wealthy I am. This is how

I see.

This is my status. Because you're eating strawberries?

No. Because you're wealthy enough to pay someone to pretend to be a table.

I see. Oh, okay. Okay. So we're talking about okay. The Japanese.

Well, I thought when I was a kid, thought, food was a very normal part of sex because, like, in TV shows, they would use, like, know, they're doing, like, strawberry strawberries on their nipples and stuff. Like, that yeah. That was a it was like a TV trope that I thought. And then I've never you know, once I developed actual sexual desires, I was never like, let's get some let's get, like, a Slim Jim.

You also don't wanna confuse the action of chewing, you know, of strawberry and chewing, like, a body part. There there's there's nibbling, but but chewing should not be part of that.

Yeah. And you get you get stuff stuck in your teeth. I don't think yeah. People do, like, whipped cream or something. I've never it's you know, I for a lot, I don't like whipped cream.

And like, skin is gross. Like, I don't wanna lick. I don't wanna you know what I mean?

If I want whipped cream, I'm just gonna have whipped cream. I don't need to have it on a nipple.

Yeah. Do we wanna try to structure this conversation anyway? Focus it on a particular

question We really or covered everything. I didn't expect it to go into the, you get stuff stuck in your teeth. I didn't expect that line just yet. I mean, the challenge is even to begin to discuss it as we started to, whether you're looking at it from the view of a matchmaker or view of changing society or view of preferences, it's just so difficult in today's day and age when community is fractured. And therefore the chance to repeatedly meet people in a small environment is harder.

Workplace is less. It is less acceptable to meet your future spouse in the workplace. There's less church attendance. And bars, I don't think have ever really been a great sure, you hear a couple stories. Someone met someone at a bar, but that just seems so rare.

Yeah. Whenever we talk about like a value, you know, dating market value or market value, I think that people get really hung up on thinking of it as like an actual hierarchy. And of course, it is a hierarchy because it's about some things being in more demand than others and some people being in more demand than others. However, the idea behind having a realistic assessment of your own value in the dating market isn't about you being less or more or something because what you want is someone of similar value to you and that's what's going to make you happy.

I would caveat that and say you want the highest possible value, not someone of similar value. It's just that you end up realistically being aware that you're not going to get anyone that much higher than you because everybody wants. I mean, we'd all date movie stars. I actually don't know if I really would, but we all look at movie stars first. I think we all wanna do as well as we can.

Just like a job. You wanna make as much money as you can. You wanna date the most beautiful person you can. And then the reality hits, but then we go back to not being aware of why aren't I finding that person. Well, because everyone's looking for that person.

Yeah. I mean, and a big part of, like, what I mean, the dating literature, like, shows this. Like, again, like, vertical preferences explain most, not all, but most of the they are the majority of people's preferences. They explain a huge part of just dating outcomes in general. It's like, it's just your ability to get the highest value thing.

And and a big part of just like the feeling that you like a person, like a lot of, you know, with the the sort of all the magic and butterflies of finding this special person, this soul mate, like the the the black pill is that like a lot of that is actually just the sensation that you've been able to lock down somebody who's out of your league. And that when somebody is able to, you know, for whatever reason, fetch the person who they their limbic system recognizes as being higher SMV than they are, that's what triggers those feelings for you.

I think the perfect match is two people who have mistaken the other person for higher value than they are.

That's exactly right.

And it is so hard to engineer that.

That's exactly right, yes. And in fact, that is one of the fundamental thesis of Keeper, which is that, like normativity is at least in part a function of insufficient measuring resolution. So if you can measure traits with higher degree of resolution and higher precision, then what you'll find actually is that, well, is in slight disagreement actually, about what is, for example, attractive. And your what you consider to be an eight to somebody else is actually a 7.2 or whatever. And you there's a particular combination of eye width and nose size and hair color and all these things that if it were optimized for you, there would be this dealt, you could, there's some optimal global maximum of Delta between your preferences, and the average market prefer the norm the normative preference, such that you can get somebody who is quote unquote out of your league.

But, and and that that's where they so to speak, market alpha is. So the it just comes down to your ability to buy or one's ability to measure all of those traits on every dimension, not just attractiveness, but personality, intelligence, all these things, and then find the person who meets that, which is again, kind of where we get back to the, well, that person, that's where the incredible rarity comes in. Yes, that combination of things does exist. It's incredibly rare, and you have to be able to like, recognize, like measure all of those things, recognize that person, and you have be able to do that search with a level of breadth and depth.

I say this jokingly, but also truthfully, I have often thought that one of my approaches is to identify traditionally undesired or neutral characteristics that I seem to do well with. So you take a tall, very intelligent woman who has succeeded well in her career. A lot of those characteristics I like, but those are not universally desired characteristics. So I will often identify that as, okay, she won't necessarily like me any more than anyone else. But a lot of people might like her less than that, therefore narrowing my pool of theoretical competitors.

Totally. I think that's the right way to think about it. Yeah. Yeah. What do you like that other people don't, and vice versa?

What do you not like that other people do? And the more you can find those gaps.

Almost what are the complementary defects? What are the defects you're looking for?

That's right. Yeah. And that's why I think, you know, it's like the optimal dating strategy for anybody. I mean, hopefully, eventually, it's use keeper. In the meantime, the optimal dating strategy is everybody okay.

The optimal dating strategy is put your both your best foot and your worst foot forward as aggressively as possible. That will narrow your pool massively. And then once you've done that, expand your reach. So show that picture to as many people as you possibly can. And then those are just the two, those are your two dials.

So you have a selectivity dial, and you have a reach dial that is, there's a million ways to get that reach, but and you just keep turning that ideally, you just crank them both up to 12. And and if you do it just right, like you'll a 100,000 people will see you, and one of them will like you, and that's your partner.

I found when I was on dating apps, and I had to I had to narrow the pool somehow. You know, I got good pictures and so I could get as many matches as I ever wanted. I put Christian conservative in my bio, which is not how I would ever describe myself, but it was just a filtering mechanism because I knew that if a girl saw that was immediately like, nope. It's like, well, a girl who's in that mindset is not someone I'm going to want to date, so I'm going to use these signifiers to, you know, filter somehow with the tools I have available here. I find it really interesting what you say about putting your worst foot forward almost.

Not to I'm not, you know, not to derail the conversation, but it reminds me like Nigerian Internet scams. They they come across very stupid to any intelligent person, but the reason they do that is because

It's a filter mechanism.

To filter for someone who's dumb enough to fall for it.

That's right.

I mean, they want to weed out people who can spell properly. But I agree with putting your best and worst foot forward. I can think about it in economic terms as you're lowering the search costs for everyone. So rather than only putting your best foot forward on the first five dates and then exposing more of yourself on the sixth date, by which point they go, oh, actually, I don't want you anymore. You might as well do that on the first date.

That's right. Exactly. Yeah. And the problem is that, like, it's not just that, like, the search time will be shorter. It's that a lot of times people don't they they get stuck in relation it could be infinite.

Right? The search time because you could get stuck this is very common. People get stuck in relationships for the rest of their life, or for huge and miss fractions of their life with somebody who fundamentally on a deep fundamental level has some incompatibility with some fundamental part of themselves. And that becomes a huge source of angst and and disagreement and conflict in the relationship or whatever. And it's like, yeah, you wanna you wanna you wanna get that that's gonna be a thing.

You wanna surface that as quickly as possible.

It could be you need a lot of relationship experience, I feel like, to understand when that's happening and to see it happen in real time. Because it's very, very easy once you become attached to someone to rationalize almost anything. And the reason you stay in a relationship is because it provides some degree of comfort or, you know, meaning or something to you. And a big part of the thing at Keeper when we started asking people all these questions is it's like a lot of relationships are going to die on things that didn't become an issue until eighteen months into the relationship. And at that point, if you could have filtered for that on the first date, there's a year and a half of your life that you get back.

And I think it took me a really long time of being in suboptimal relationships to realize that like those are things that you can actually recognize when they're happening and they don't kind of blindside you. Because you can develop a, like in one of my last relationships, we would clash a lot because we were both like kind of type A kind of people. And that was something I'd liked for a long time, and I thought that was something I wanted in a relationship until like it actually hit a fear pitched and just thought, you know, house of cards came tumbling down. And then I realized, like, you know, in hindsight, it's like, well, the signs were there all along that this was going to be a persistent problem. It was Right.

Going to

That's right. It's so much harder once you're you're invested and you're emotionally intertangled and everything to actually rationally, objectively, calmly make the correct decision when it comes to that incredibly complex mess of traits and preferences and how you two relate to each other. So best to do that earlier when you can do it more objectively.

But any relationship is also going to have some of that. You're never going to be like, there's always going to be something that you don't like or that bothers you or that and about knowing the difference. Because if if you know, it's definitely possible to overcorrect in the other direction where you're like, I'm out at the sign of anything bad. And and at that stage, you're you're going to be alone forever.

That's right. That's absolutely right as well. It's a good point. Yeah. And that's and in fact, I think most people are actually too far in that direction, which is that they they yeah.

They're sort of expecting this, like, superficial cosmetic perfection. And at the slightest yeah. The slightest sign of, wait a second, this is gonna be work. I'm gonna have to like, make myself vulnerable to another person. Fuck that.

Yeah. So that's right. So it's like, yeah, the first step for I mean, is kinda everything always kinda leads back here, but it's like, the real first step is like interest, like do the philosophical and introspective and psychological work on yourself first, so that you understand who you are and what's really important to you. And that's, yeah, so what I'm saying, you know, put your best and worst foot forwards, that is a sort of a heuristic, almost flippant way of saying it. But the non flippant way, the true way would be yes, do all of that introspective work.

Talk to your therapist, figure out what the core things that are central to what you believe in and what you think is makes you valuable. That's your best foot. And then find the things that are, you know, that either you disagree with society that you believe in, but most people disagree with, or that, you know, you might agree aren't perfect, but you're realistically probably never going to change. Yes, define all of the contours of who you are and having a good understanding of that so that you know, and you can and then and then the small stuff, be ready to compromise and be ready to work on it. Have your core things that aren't gonna change, get those right.

On everything else, you better go and be ready to work on it because it's relationships are hard.

So I think this is also the challenge with casual or lighthearted dating because your requirements for who you're looking for for casual dating. Oh, we're just gonna, you know, hang out once a week and have fun. And then all of a sudden a year goes by and you're emotionally closer And two years goes by and you're like, wow, we formed this amazing relationship. Where is this going? And you suddenly realize, oh, we are massively incompatible for having kids, combining bank accounts, buying a house together.

And what do we do now? Because we have real feelings for each other, but we can't proceed. So while I was very happy casually dating when I was younger, now I see it as just nothing more than a giant opportunity cost to take years of your potential search or relationship away from you.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, would say this is, if I had to pick one, this is the number one most common mistake that people make, is not being clear on whether they're trying to do short term or long term dating.

Or even worse, they are both clear they want to do short term dating, and two years in to short term dating the same person, they're like, Oh my God, whether it's the hormones or the sex or just the glowing, the growing friendship and closeness, their their requirements shift, but it's too late because they didn't optimize for long term. So I'm not against short term dating in of itself. It's just that, sorry, there's you've got the risk that you might fall in love with the short term dating person you're dating and suddenly find yourself in love with an incompatible person.

Sure. Yeah, I think that happens. That happens too. I think there's 7,000 rom coms about that.

I think a lot of times I mean, yes. Also, I think probably a lot of people end up in perfectly fine relationships that way.

Well, that was the way that all relationships used to form. Right? Like, you knock up your 16 year old high school girlfriend, and then it's like, oh, I guess we're getting married now. And then you make it work. So it's actually it's in a weird way, like, is actually how we are designed to work.

Like, that that is the way it's supposed to work. The humans are designed to, you know, be suckered in suckered in. Oh, you know, the the the the the temptation and allure of the short term relationship is what initiates the long term relationship, and then you make it work, and you figure it out, because you have a kid to take care of whatever. So that that is actually how it's supposed to work. The difference is there's supposed to be all of these social and cultural structures, religion, etcetera, Small communities, local communities, they're built around that to provide structure and support to make that work.

So that's the whole point of a wedding. That's what a wedding is. It's like, look, regardless of how this relationship began, we are now in front of the whole town, making a commitment to see it through for the benefit of this family or whatever. So it's it's all the supportive infrastructure that we have lost. And now, you know, turns out that was important.

And now we kind of have to like make do.

And I can imagine that divorce is often a individual best strategy. But I can also imagine a society being in the situation that no, actually forbidding divorce is in the best interest of society, even if it makes the lives of a number of people worse. I'm not advocating for that, but when I look at it on an individual basis, you know, it's the difference between do we all like going 10 miles above the speed limit? Yes. But at the same time, if you don't pull anyone over for speeding, we're all gonna drive like idiots.

Yeah, there's some interesting weird game theory there, and also paradoxes, because I think in many ways, the magic of marriage is the fact that you cannot, you should, theoretically, you cannot escape it. You are chained to the mast with this person, no matter what. And there's something magical that happens when you burn the boats, that like you are forced to overcome, like whatever weird fucked up things about you, whatever problems existed in your brain and your personality, you have to work them out with this person, and same for them. And that's what forces growth, and maturation, and stuff. And so, you know, while I agree that there certainly can be some situations where obviously divorce is optimal, I think that's, that was the genius of the technology, the technology of marriage as it was invented, and

If you look at child rearing, we are there. You don't say to your child, this isn't a good fit. You don't say we're gonna re home you.

Yeah. You know,

You're you're stuck forever home. Sure. You know, if they if they are truly psychotic and and have psychotic episodes, might try to have them semi institutionalized, but you don't you just you have to accept that this is this I have created this being and now I'm going to work with whatever we have to make the best of it. And it's weird that we we do say to our romantic partner, This isn't a good fit, but we don't say that to our children. And I guess we're hearkening back to a day where the idea of saying, Oh, I got married with this person, but it isn't a good fit, is as socially unacceptable as saying, Yeah, I had a child, but this really cut into my social schedule, so I put it up for adoption.

Like, I think we would all be emotionally horrified and possibly never speak to that person again. But we're like, sure, you got divorced. Let's have a divorce party.

Baby had bad vibes. It happens. What gonna do? It's not me, it's you.

What are gonna do? Raise a bad vibe, baby?

Yeah. There's no solution. Well, it's I'm always interested because we talk about the technology of marriage and not passing judgment on anyone, but when I see people getting married and they're like, well, they don't share the same last name or something, just to give an example. It's like, building this hybrid model of it's like, well, why are you getting married, right? Like the, to me, a part of the giving of the name is like, we're one thing now.

We're so committed to each other. We're on the same team here to the point that we have the same sounds that you use to refer to us, right? Like, that's the level of oneness. And I think that's what you want in a marriage, right? Like, the point of a marriage is not personal growth, but you're going to experience, hopefully, if you're in the right marriage, a level of personal growth that you're not going to be able to get on your own by sharing mind space in a very intimate way with another person just for such a long period.

Yeah. I think this is just like a generally general pattern with like modern dating and just modernity in general. It's like, you had this almost paradoxically, these forces working in opposite direction. It's very difficult to find the point of optimization along them, or along those vectors, or whatever, where it's like, yes, on the one hand, it's like the magic of marriage is commit to somebody, commit as young as possible, you know, etc. Etc.

On the other hand it's like, well actually divorce rates are lower than they ever have been today, and you have all this opportunity to find the person who's just right for you. Okay, so do you wait forever for the perfect person, or do you marry when you're 17? Like, yes, both. Yes to both. Okay, well which is right for you?

Good luck!

It's like there's a graph of like lifetime utility that you're going to get from being with a person, and if you're 25 years old and it's like, we've had someone who's 99% compatible for you. Would you rather have the 99% compatible wife or husband now or the 100% compatible one when you're 32? And it's like, well, those seven years of utility that you're getting, like, how does that compare to the 1% delta or whatever?

And if you throw children into the mix, then that changes even more. Because how long are you in their lives? How long do you have the energy?

Yeah. This is actually like, I mean, I wanna say this. There are analogous problems that are roughly solved, I wanna I wanna say. Like, you know, in mathematics, this is like a studied thing, like when you're doing a search, right, like what what is your expected, you know, utility of of continuing to search versus settling? And I I remember actually it's actually a Veritasium video now that I think about it on this, where, like, you know, hold holding everything else equal, like, roughly usually their optimal strategy is something like 28%.

It's like search through 28% of the

You're thinking of the more famous one I know is the Feynman restaurant problem.

That's right.

You go into a city and how many restaurants. And I remember it being about a third, but yeah, 28% might be the right number.

Yeah. So obviously, it's incredibly multivariate. And I'm not saying like, well, you should wait 28% of your life because it's really complex. But the same sort of logic can certainly apply, and that's what you're talking about Wes, which is like, yes, if you want to be totally, totally brutally, just like instrumental about it, and logical, and rational, and apply a rationalistic approach, then you should say, well, yes, there's some amount of time that you should conduct the search, and then acknowledge that the best you found at a certain age is roughly speaking, probably as best as you're going to find, and it's time to settle. The only push, and that is I think the rational approach, and so for most people who wanted, like, yeah, it's probably like, that's probably around, it's probably just earlier than we think, So it's probably around '24 or something for most people.

Because that search is equally like saying, find the best chair, but we're playing musical chairs. So your best chair might be sat in and the longer you wait, eventually we're going get down to no chairs. So it's not just a challenge of finding the best apartment because apartments come onto the market all the time and no one minds them that much more because they're a 100 year old apartment. But someone does mind a 100 year old dating.

That's right. Yeah. But the the only caveat I would give to that is that like, I do think it's hard, it'll be hard for me to put this into words. This is sort of stretching the edge of my rat, my my sort of rashiocitative or or articulate articulation abilities. But like, I I do think there's an extent to which like, you you don't wanna be too rational when it comes to this space.

There is a certain amount to which like, it's one of the ways I think we've aired in modernity is making everything too rational and too too and I I don't wanna I don't know. Like, if you're if you're fabricating, you know, a car and in a factory, yeah, you better be rationally, better bust out your protractor and apply engineering methods. I think that there's a limit to the value of engineering methods to the world of love and stuff, and that might be a sort of cliched take, but I think a lot of times that you there are these sort of, like, it is is it's the it's the it's the not to get too philosophical here, but it's it's like the Kierkegaard leaf of leap of faith thing. It's like, you have to get a little religious about it to really make it work. When you're getting married to somebody, you have to it's magical.

You're committed forever. Your souls are intertwined forever. You have to believe it. That's what makes it work. Is that true?

No. If you were being rational, would you ever accept that agreement? No. That is and yet, it's the right approach, etcetera, etcetera. And I think that you can apply, there's other that's not the only one.

I think that there are other others that are sort of like that in this space. And so I think that's whatever, not to go go on too long or too deep here, but I think that's part of what makes this extreme extremely complex and difficult to tease out, because if it were just solving a math problem, well, we would all just solve the math problem, or somebody would have solved it. There'd be somebody that came along that applied engineering, we'd have the Elon Musk of dating. So

I feel like it needs to be rational on the market level, and not on the individual level, which is why, like, if you're building keeper, it's you're trying to build a rational market for dating so the right people can meet each other. But I think and I see this in New York City dating, or when I was dating in New York City is that when, you know, the current dating paradigm is you're going to go on lots of dates with lots of people until you find one that's the right one. And so you will go on dates with people where they are basically the QA inspector at the end of the assembly line. Yes. And they're not there to have fun on a date and get to know a new person and learn about you and, like, laugh.

And even if it's not like, you know, sometimes you go on a date with someone and, you know, in the first five minutes that that's it's not it. Right? But, like, try to make the most of it or something. But it's like, you'll meet you'll I've gone on dates with girls. I guess this is my second date tonight.

All the all the yeah, yes. Exact sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, just doesn't feel special.

You're saying it exactly right. Yeah. Because that's exactly my point, which is that like, the reason I felt the need to say what I just said is because in a weird fucked up way, like, part of what I feel like is happening is that, like a lot of that sense of ineffable magic has been taken out of it, even though it has to be there. In a weird way, everybody is is being too rational, like that's the problem, but they're doing it poorly. So it's like it's one thing if everybody in New York City is gonna be a rational dater, and they're gonna be like, they're gonna be smart, and had they have high IQs, and they're gonna apply the rational process well.

It's that they're it's that they have bad, they're not good at math, and they're not good at rationality, and yet they have sucked all of the all of the of the you know what I mean?

All of the joy, of the magic, the excitement, the tingle. And the way I I totally agree with you. The more they're viewing this as simply a marriage application process, the less desirable dating them is because it's going to be less It's

going to

be a checklist. It's going to be, you know, and I remember someone was very emphatic that they wanted a serious relationship. And I was like, I'm not, I'm not against a serious relationship, but just even the word serious. Who wants a serious child? Who wants a serious party?

Who wants a serious dog? We don't want anything serious. And all of a sudden, and I understand what they mean by a serious relationship, but it might be better to phrase it as I'm investing in it. I'm looking forward to a committed relationship rather than serious. Because it's just the wrong word or it is the right word, sadly.

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's in it to to extract as much value from the marketplace as they get. Everybody's a fucking economist where they're like, you know, it's like, well, I went on my date. They raised you know, everybody in New York, like, doubles up on dates.

You know, they'll do two or three dates in a night. It's like, well, I had my date with the six five blue eyed finance bro, that was date number one, but he was, you know, he he was a little sad. He didn't pay for the you know, he wanted to split the check, and he, you know, didn't didn't have quite my sense of humor. So he gets he gets 39 points on the checklist. But date number two, and it's just like, you know, how and it's like, oh, well, the next guy got 30, you know, 39 and a half points.

So he is the winner for tonight. He'll he'll advance to round two. I'll have a second date with him next week, and it's just like, you know, fuck that.

We knew we knew somebody who got married and his wife had gone on dates with whatever number of guys and built like a model to to rate all of them, and he won in the model. And I mean, they're happy from what I can tell, but I hear that and I'm like, that's not why I want a woman to pick me, right? Mean, look, I'm picking her. Okay, let's be real. But you know what I mean?

Like, it's if you're you need to be open to serendipity. And if you're going into dates with a checklist and you're immediately disqualifying candidates every time some bullet on that checklist has missed, it's like, sure, maybe that is an important bullet, right? But also just going in with that mindset, like you're not going to be a fun person to be on a date with. And part of that, like a lot of times you don't like, first dates are awkward. First dates are not the best format for evaluating a person as far as what it's like to be around that person.

And so you're going in with the mindset of like an HR person and not someone who's here to get to know someone. And you're closing yourself off opportunity of like making a real connection that is

Yeah, I feel like it's the underlying mindset just that the human experience is reducible to a series of quantitative structured data fields, and that there isn't something intrinsically, ineffably divine about consciousness, and the human experience, and our idiosyncratic way that we, you know, sort of experience and experience it all, and and that the mindset is not, you know, let let me go try to connect with another soul and escape the infinite void of loneliness for a brief moment. It's it's, you know, yeah, it's it's like how do I fill fill the spreadsheet? It's not even the spreadsheet, it's like, it's not even that that that bothers me. It's like, you know, I know, I obviously know the person that you're talking about, and my read on actually on their particular relationship was that, like in in that particular case, I actually didn't have a huge issue with it. It's more the it's the, it's the extractive mood of it.

It's like, it's seeing like a state. It's, it's like, it's, it's the need that necessitates the spreadsheet, which is, which is, let me manage this situation and extract value, so that I can optimally, you know, solve this part of my life, and win. And it's like, that's what's fucked to me. It's like, you wouldn't need the spreadsheet if you were, if your goal was different.

If I can jump sideways, but still talk about the same thing, when you look at some of the hiring practices, and I think one of the questions to be an early employee of Airbnb was if you found out you had terminal cancer and we're going to die in a year, would you still want to work here because you're so committed to our mission? So this is a dollars and cents like every company focused on the bottom line, but their criteria was not did you score the highest on our developer test or can we give you the most dollars, but are we aligned on the mission? And if a company which is ultimately aligned on dollars can put forward, no, we're gonna be mission first, I don't see why a couple couldn't be. And this is also why we certainly used to get married in a church and not a town hall, because it was divine.

Yeah. Totally. And I I think that's that is just a it's a bigger problem than just in dating. It's part of the it's part of my problem with cities. It's part of my like, not to get not this to make this about Cody rants about modernity.

But, like, there is something that happens when you take when you do this selection process where you take all these people from all around the country that are most likely to be this personality type, and then you put them all in one place, and you have them bump into each other every day, day in and day out, where it just, it turns people into numbers, and it sucks all of the, just all, yeah, all of this specificity and magic of the human experience out of everything. And I feel like that's just a big part of like, it's like we're just we're not designed, we're designed to live in small communities of like 150 people. We're not designed for this level of of scale, and, like, there's this for and so, like, it's the I always in my head, I always go to, like, you know, you hear the, like, the the zombie voice girl. Right? Where she's like, yeah, these are red scare or whatever.

It's like, yeah, whatever. And it's like this yeah. It's like it's like you can hear it in their voice. That's the voice of somebody for whom, like, life has become just this meaningless status game. Right?

Like all that's left is just to win. Just to win the status game. There's no meaning left.

I think being in the city makes people feel extremely disposable. I think that, well, of all, if I was dying of terminal brain cancer, I'm not really sure how my passion for short term rentals would factor in. I that specific question is filtering for a certain type of person who's just willing to lie to your face. Sort of like, you know, how North Koreans pretend they believe all these crazy things about the leader, right? It's like a social function.

But I've always thought this specifically, you know, several years ago, I dated a couple girls who lived in New York City, and I didn't live in New York. I lived in a small town and I would travel to see them. And I always I it was my first experience really dating girls from a big city, but I think that there is something about seeing hundreds of thousands hundreds of thousands of people in the course of your regular life, making eye contact with them, knowing that they have an inner world of their own and are living a story of their own.

It's the desensitization to that.

And that it doesn't matter and you will never see them again. And it's like, you know, that's like what that movie American Psycho is supposed to That's just be about, so interchangeable. And it's like, no, well, we developed in, you know, we evolved in an environment where everyone you met was an important collaboration partner because you shared a community and you were all dependent on each other. And in some way, that's still true. It's just become so abstracted because it's like, you know, what is it?

10 people is a tragedy. A million people is a statistic, It's just you're coming face to face with that by the nature of your experience.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's the desensitization to the value of the individual.

Yeah, I had a, you know, I lived in an apartment in Philadelphia, and I grew up in places where you would know all your neighbors because you wanted to know all your neighbors because you would see each other and you, you know, would ask each other for things and there weren't that many people. And then there was, you know, I there's a person in the apartment next to me and I hear him having sex. I don't know what he looks like. I he he won't say hi to me in the elevator if you know, I try to start a conversation with him. And then someone moves and the guy's like, you know, moves in there.

He's like from rural Chile and he like he's like wants to be my friend. I'm like, this is awesome. Like, we are from a similar social context. We understand that, you can't apply that at scale in cities. But it feels like a definitely a more life affirming point of view.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that's part of the horror of the modern dating landscape is that as a result of all of these processes, anything that would have made made it just becomes reduced to just this pure cynical marketplace dynamic.

Well, how you think about other people is going to be the way you think about yourself. So if you treat, you know, if if treat the people you're going on dates with as like applicants who you're trying to, you know, make tick a certain number of boxes. Well, is that how you think about yourself? Like, do you think that everybody you meet is making like an economical an economic running some kind of formula to determine your value because that's not how you should think about yourself. You should think like I'm an interesting person who has a lot to offer and a lot of those things I have to offer are things that you can't put on a spreadsheet.

And you want to get to know me so you can discover those aspects of who I am. And that's the serendipity you should be like welcoming into your dating life when you're looking at other people and just being open to, you know, some letting things take you by surprise and being in a mindset for that.

I'm going to take a slightly different view to what you just said in the sense that when, and I don't know what it's like to be a woman, so I'll only speak from the point of view of a guy, When you're a guy in the dating market and you're not finding success, the advice people will give you as well, it's never gonna hurt to be in better shape, to dress better, to be making more money. And maybe to dress better doesn't make a better world. But if all the guys decide to get in better shape and not just to make more money in the I want more dollars, but to generate more value and to apply themselves more. I don't think it's bad to have this feedback loop. And granted, it's a competition to the top.

And two hundred years ago, we we didn't have very much, and now we do. So someone from two hundred years ago, someone from today, had they gone back in time, would have a tremendous amount. So it's not objective. We're all competing relatively. But I don't mind that this competition largely leads to, at least from a guy's point of view, guys trying to be better.

I agree with that. I think that it's a what I'm saying is it's a process of calibration. It's a process of like, okay, could I date Margot Robbie? Like, maybe if I focus completely on making a ton of money right now and I get in incredible shape and I do all of these things to improve myself, like, maybe one day I can date Margot Robbie, but is that the life I want? It's, no, you should be motivated to improve yourself to get the relationship that you want.

Yeah, I think what I would advocate for is that it should just be a balance. Like, think what I'm what I've been saying for the last few minutes is that I feel like we've just lost the balance. There will always be a zero sum component to the dating market, obviously. That's just like and there's always gonna be a vertical component where some people are just more attractive, and that's just the way that it is, and everybody wants to date them, and you can't get them probably, and that's fine. And like, and so, but that just can't be all of what it is.

It can't just be purely reduced to, let's all just, you know, that it's just this exchange, it's just this brutal exchange of value, of instrumental value, and you're hot, and I'm rich, and those, they equate the number, the number in this column equals the number of this, in this column, and that's a match. So yeah, it's like, you know, remove, the reason that's good advice for most people, for most guys is because, well, you know, the the the brutal truth is that, unfortunately, I think it has swung too far in that direction. So given that fact, what do you do about it? But, yeah, it's like, well, if that you know, you might as for most guys, is a bottleneck. And so, you know, in the absence of better advice that's more specifically tailored, remove bottlenecks.

Fine. But, yeah, I guess that's why I'm advocating is like, you know, it's just we gotta I don't know. We gotta restrike that balance, and that's the kind of thing where like, individual just had, like, yeah, it's it's what you're saying. It's like, have to just look inwards. Like, it it does come down to like, this is not a this is not a prescription that can be addressed at the societal level.

Like, individuals just have to go like, look, if I'm treating other people like that, is that really the life I want? Like, yeah, what I that's a place that I've read that. It's not just not to, you know, make it about me or whatever, but like to circle back to your question, one of things that you said earlier, Stoney, it's like, I'm very much at a place that I part of why I'm single now is like, I I I really don't, like, have any desire to optimize along those paths. I used to. I used to, like, get excited about, like, dating the hot girl.

And it used to be kind of exciting to play that game. And I think it just lead it's very vacuous, and it leads to, like, you know, like, just shitty places. Like, you feel shitty about yourself, and you've spent ten years chasing the status hierarchy and chasing the go as high in the dating market as you can, it's like, you gotta again, it's this sort of paradox whatever. This is a kind of paradoxical thing where it's like, yes. Is that a fundamental truth that will never go away?

Yes. But you kinda have to pretend it's not. Like, you kinda have to cultivate a mindset of, like, I don't care if other people I don't care if it's true, don't care if other people act like it's true. I'm gonna act like it's not. And Like what's not?

Like most of the most of the dating landscape is is describable as or reducible to these sort of economic terms. Like, I'm not gonna go out and go on the dating apps and swipe based on hotness, and try to, like, I I am gonna try as hard as I can to look at every encounter as this is a person with a rich inner life. And she might have a lot to offer that's not whatever, like, just purely like looks or or this or that, like and and like, I'm gonna try to for like, every moment, I'm gonna I don't whatever. I feel like this is getting to a weird place.

No. It's like religious The point you're making is is the point that I was trying to make earlier about the attitude you go into a date with is is that if you are choosing to look at it that way, not only are you going to probably save yourself your mental health, but you're also going to be a better person to go on a date with. That when you do go on that date with the person who does check the boxes, you're much more likely to get a second date with them because treated it like, you know, you came across as someone who was there to have fun and not like no one wants to go on a date with HR.

I've I've been on I've been on dates where very quickly you realize, okay, this isn't a match, but it doesn't stop you from deciding how what your goals are. And it's very, I don't want to say easy, but it's very simple to say, you know what? My goal is to make this person laugh and to give this person the best possible date given the criteria. And also, if I can make this person who isn't a good fit for me enjoy themselves and laugh, then I can only hope I'm going to be even better at having the person who is a good fit for me enjoy their first date with me.

At the very least, it's good practice. And I think for my own just mental health and sense of well-being as a person, the biggest change that actually affected me was like, I feel like this is like Anthony Bourdain ass advice, but like, just learn to enjoy meeting people for the sake of doing so and getting to, you know, grow your understanding of what people are like by talking to a new person that's different than you and you don't know. And if you just make a habit of doing that, which is it ties back to the city's thing too, is because you're not doing that in cities because there's too many people. People won't even say hi back to you, right? But like, you know, if you see someone on the street with a fucking, you know, crutches, be like, what happened to you, right?

They might talk to you about it and you know, that gives you a sense of connectedness and just makes you just a much more enjoyable person to be around. And it makes you appreciate others, which makes you appreciate yourself.

I ruptured my tendon and I was on crutches. And what was fascinating was that people did talk to you more. But I think as a six foot three guy, I might be a threat. But if I'm on crutches, I'm not a threat. You can run away from me.

And people were absolutely and I haven't even said the word nicer, but they're they were less guarded around me because I was on crutches. And I also had the forearm crutches, which are usually used long term, not the short term armpit crutches. So maybe they just looked at me and thought, okay, this is this is a guy who's, you know, never gonna walk normally again. I'm gonna I can be nice to him.

That's interesting.

And when I finally put them away, was overjoyed, did not need them anymore. But there was this tweak of, oh, I'm gonna miss this social ticket to people treating me nicely.

I think it's subconsciously, I think people sort of subconsciously view each other as threats in a lot of cases, especially when you're like a taller guy like you. So, you know, you're not a threat if you can't chase me, right? They're not really, they're not thinking like, I'm going go talk to this guy in crutches because he can't hurt me, but it makes you more approachable just by default. So tip for all the guys out there, go get your foot run over with a car and more women will talk to you. This is where the rubber meets the road.

The downside is when they realize that's what you did, you become less attractive.

Yeah. It's not So the answer is lying. Yes. Just wear a boot. Don't I don't know.

What do you value more? Integrity or women what is it? I guess it's maladaptive to be getting hit by cars on purpose. I don't know. I was I was at a I was at a jazz club with my girlfriend, and there was a guy walking around with a saxophone, like, as a patron of the bar wasn't playing jazz.

And he, like, groped my girlfriend. Like, he was not I don't wanna say groped, but, like, he was very aggressive physically with her when she was on the other side of the room getting a drink. And then she came over and she told me that that happened. And then after the I didn't know it was the guy with the saxophone. And then he was he was, like, glaring at us.

And then as we left, I, gave him two thumbs up, and I I didn't I didn't notice him. And I was like, hey, man. Good good job playing tonight. So I thought he was the saxophonist from the jazz quartet. I just gave him thumbs up.

I was like, nice job, man. And then we left. And then she was like she was like, yeah, that's the guy who, like, attacked me. I'm like, oh, I thought he was the saxophonist from the band. So that guy like, oh, this is just this is a stupid story.

But it's just like when you go, you talk to people like that, like, you get it. You know, funny things happen. Because from that guy's point of view, he Right. Aggressively hit on my girlfriend, saw her come over to me, and then I walked up and gave him two big thumbs up, which is what you're I'm not on camera, but and then so I just looked like a a douchebag, but I just thought I was telling him he played well.

Well, he might have been holding the saxophone just as his ticket in.

Yeah. Or, like, he's I mean, probably he wants girls to think that he is the saxophonist or something.

There's a name for this, I can't remember what it is, and it was like, but yeah, in evolutionary biology, which is like, a certain type of male has a strategy where they try to surreptitiously impregnate the females of the, usually of the higher status men.

The reason that it's advantageous to impregnate the tribal leader's wife is because you are making the tribal leader bear the costs of raising your children, getting a great upbringing from you know, a high status person, and you are bearing none of the costs, but your genes are the ones being propagated. So, I mean, that's probably why we evolved jealousy.

And for the ourselves and the listeners, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm going to presume the word cuck, which you just said, comes from the cuckoo bird. And I don't know if you guys know how the cuckoo bird reproduces, but it will find a nest with eggs in it. It will lay its egg, and it usually hatches before the other eggs. And the first thing the cuckoo fledgling does is push the other eggs out of the nest to their destruction. So that's the strategy is the cuckoo bird has the other birds unwittingly raise its young at no food cost to the parent.

So that's where cuckolding and cuckoo and cuck come from because of the behavior of a very specific bird with a fascinating reproduction strategy.

I don't like the word cuck. It bothers me. The way it sounds bothers me. Just aesthetically? Just it's it's gross.

It's a gross sounding word. Why couldn't they call it coo coo coo coo coo I'm a coo coo. Like a

That just sounds like the chickens from Zelda.

Yeah. Or like a clock or something. Well, do people like that? They do you know? I I I've heard theories of why, like, someone will be that.

That

I don't understand. But, yeah, I have no idea.

We gotta get one of those guys in here. We we could do that would be good. I would love

Why are you into giving cuckoldage?

Yeah. Like, what because there's nothing that is the thing that bothers me more than anything, is the thought of that at all happening to me. Right? Totally. Like, that is that is probably what it would take for me to kill a man.

Right? And, you know, I can't I I have heard theories, and I don't know if we want to talk about that. But I it is interesting because it's like so so different than any way I could ever imagine feeling in that situation. It's it's complete inversion.

We'll have to save that for another episode.

Yeah. The Handsome Hour episode, episode two, Attack of the Cucks.