Episode 4 - How to Be a Stalker

Slavishly adhering to being honest is one of the most courageous things you can do in the modern day. What you do

is you bump into her at the store, and you engineer it so you're bumping into her and you say, hey, you you we were just in the same yoga class. Right? I thought I saw you look familiar.

Look, has anybody ever read Romeo and Juliet? Like, we're supposed to be like fall head over heels at first glance and go to extreme stupid lengths.

Welcome to the Hanslem Hour. I'm Stoney.

I'm gay. I'm Wes. I'm Are

you gay, Wes? I'm Wes,

I am straight.

Is that an intentional Freudian slip? No. It's like us up Freudian pratfall.

Your turn.

Introduce I'm Cody. Welcome to the handsome hour and this is where we do it right. I'm gonna make that our new tagline.

This is where we do it right.

Tagline may or may not be consistent with next episode. That's the small print.

We're here.

This is about mindset, Stoney. We're doing it right. You have to say it so you believe it.

We are doing it right, at We least for this

are doing it right.

We be who we be.

We're talking about you said something. I said career, so Okay.

So I was dating this really nice, years ago, pediatrician, and she found great meaning in her work. And she, without quite meaning I don't think she meant this in bad way, she's like, How do you do your job knowing that you don't make the world a better place? And I was fixing computers at the time. And I was kind of surprised by that question, and I thought to myself for a while, and I was like, What about the ambulance driver? Are they making the world a better place?

What about the mechanic who fixed the ambulance? What about the gas station attendant who puts the gas in the ambulance that gets the patients to you? So I guess I want to talk about nobility and honor in careers when it can be easy to overlook a career as not noble or honorific, but making the world still a better place?

Well, for a pediatrician to do her job, everything else has to run efficiently. If there's trash in the streets and the ambulance can't get to the hospital, well, now was a fraction of that child's life is due to a garbage collector, right? And so it's like that's everything. Like humanity is one project, and anything that can make one part of the project slightly more efficient will have a ripple effect throughout everything else to where every small contribution is in some way, shape, or form affecting everything else.

Okay. But I mean, like, you could say therefore that, like, you know, somebody who just does, like, forex arbitrage all day, They're making the market more efficient.

Yes. So I think you're also touching that you're jumping away from value creation to value capture, and I think that's a really legitimate question to be asked about people in this world who don't create value but do capture it. This is what banks are accused of a lot, and I don't have a strong stake on that. I don't know banks well enough to have an opinion on that. But I don't like the idea that there are people running around in our society capturing value and not producing it.

Yeah, I agree. I think capturing value and not producing it, and also, like, are externalities, of course. So like if you're producing bad in some way that is not offset by at least as much good, like, that's bad. It's a spectrum. It's like anything else.

There's moral gray area, but there are poles and

Well, it's also like, it can be very hard. I mean, I dated a doctor for a long time, and and she was mostly stitching up bullet wounds and gang bangers who would be there, you know, more than once because they're getting being shot more than once and like get letting people back on the street who are going on to, you know, kill other people. And I never raised that issue with her because it was no no concern to me. But like if you're a pediatrician, all you have to do is save the life of one future genocidal dictator, you've now wiped out all the good of every pediatrician, haven't you?

Wow. That was dark, and I was just about to to compliment you for your holistic look at society.

And I

was also thinking the word I'm thinking of is, I've only learned this recently, end shitification, when things get shittier. And when you talk about the garbage collector not picking up the rubbish that blocks the ambulance, I think this is when people broadly speak about first world countries and third world countries, what they mean is there are a million itsy bitsy little things in the third world country that grind it to a halt. And everybody wants to live in a country where things are not being ground to a halt.

Yeah. Well, if you look I mean, I think the the part of the reason I don't like living in New York is that it there's just so much ugliness everywhere. And if I'm surrounded by ugliness, I don't wanna create something beautiful because it's like, what what is my one drop of beauty in a world of ugliness? I'm not someone who's motivated by that. But if I live, you know, I was just back home in in New England.

And if I'm there and everything is nice and beautiful around me and it feels like a very, like, high trust, well functioning society, then it's like my expectation is just that I will produce things that are beautiful and and pro human. And I am a product of my environment, but I am also of the environment. People will say that it's not possible to produce beautiful things everywhere, but I I have this this image of a famous sewage treatment plant.

I forget where it is, but they it was a neo Gothic cathedral like looking building that was just designed as a sewer treatment plant. And their attitude was, look, we can make it look ugly or we can make it look beautiful. Yeah. We're gonna make it look beautiful.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I actually just recently saw that posted somewhere. I don't remember where it was either. I wanna say it was in like South France, but

No. It was North America. It might have Okay. Even been

Yeah. I mean, I I look at like, you know, I used to be into like real estate and property and wanting to build like beautiful buildings. I thought that would be the thing I do. But then you look at people and it's like, well, what's a beautiful building filled with ugly people?

Wow. You're are you feeling dark today? No.

I I no. No. But you do think

on the net, people are when you say ugly, you mean ugly inside or ugly outside? Is it pre Ozempic or post Ozempic?

Ugly outside. I mean and I don't mean I don't look, this is gonna be turned into something that I'm not trying to say. But I think that for the world to be beautiful and for humanity to be beautiful, it has to be a project that everybody has opted into. And people have to be opting into it on the individual level saying, I'm not gonna get big and fat, among other things that they should be saying to themselves and acting upon.

Yeah. If we are talking about beautiful people and ugly people, and so much of our perception of someone's physicality is based around just how heavy are they, how fat are they, how much has fat changed the shape of their body and their face in a way that I think we are biologically programmed to not find attractive.

Yeah. And if you're fat, you can I guess, like I don't even think fat people wanna date someone fat? Or if they do, they're like making a compromise because they're like, well, I have this lifestyle, so I have to be okay with this and somebody else. But like, I don't think most like any fat person still would prefer their partner to not be.

Oh, yeah. Just like, I mean, not everyone, but I think most people would prefer to date a movie star than not date a movie star. But because everyone prefers that, the movie stars date the movie stars and the rest of humanity dates non movie stars.

Every girl wants to be a baby. Do you know this? Mhmm. It's like the well, the post I'm reacting to here is like, you know, I'm baby, says woman who looks like she was purchased from a Brazilian brothel. But in my experience, every girl I've dated some very attractive women.

Every girl's been like this.

Is that a compliment that this woman looks like she was purchased from a Brazilian brothel or an insult? I'm really unsure which way this is going.

I think it's a statement. I mean, she's probably great. I don't wanna be saying anything about this woman. I don't even know who she is. But I think that's good.

There's this other my girlfriend and I talk about this exchange a lot. It's like a meme where the girls it's a text message exchange and she's like, what what is going on with x y z political event? And he says, don't worry about it, kitten. And she says, okay. Yay.

And I think I think that fundamentally most girls want that Yeah. Which is, you know, we we I guess the last episode we were all on talking about politics and dating. But I do think fundamentally it's like, your goal should be to create a world where things like that don't matter because you're focused on building your own kingdom and the, you know, what are we going to do with the flower bed is is your immediate concern. Right?

I think that's right. Yeah. And like the overdevelopment of the political sensibility is, like in modern women, it's like this pathological, like, to a cultural climate where they can't do that, right? Right. It's like

Shifting the focus to that which you can control rather than that which you can't control.

No. It's like the girl it's like most women don't, okay. Most women wanna be perceived as girl bosses because it's high status, but they don't want to have to be a girl. They don't want to to do the day to day work of being a girl boss, is interacting with the objective world. And so you get this weird split of where they are forced to perform as an overdeveloped side of themselves that they are not naturally inclined to, and don't naturally they'll tell themselves that they want to do it, but as soon as they are given the opportunity to not be that, most women will choose to not be that.

They just want to be the housewife or whatever, the guy, and they have the man go out and fight nature, and create the little, like you were saying, a little bastion of security and safety for them, and they don't have to worry about the objective reality.

The objective reality is toxic masculinity, and I use that word very carefully, or not carefully, but the concept that we've had toxic masculinity for millennia, and then the women enter the workforce and diagnose it as toxic masculinity, well, this is just the world we we live in and have lived in for millennia. So objecting to it is not going to really improve anything if you're not if you're not happy in this world, maybe you're not gonna wanna bother to change it.

Well, the thing with politics is you're not making a difference. Fascination with politics is is very stupid to me because it's like, your circumstances in life from now until the time you die are going to be affected by politics. But the way you choose to engage with the political process is going to affect your life more than at least as much as the process itself. And from a psychological standpoint, I mean, whatever you think about how whatever policy should be handled, you're not changing anything. Nothing is going to be different based on what you think or feel about anything.

So, like, to allow it to intrude on these other areas of your life that are going to have more impact on your personal happiness is it's like, why are you fixated on on this thing? It I don't

I get totally agree. It may not be productive for us to talk about politics. Again, we already explored that pretty well. But I totally agree. I consider myself to be apolitical.

I know that you're quite political, but both of you are pretty political people. But for me, my take is it impacts your life zero. And insofar as it does impact your life, you can't do anything about it. There's nothing that you can do unless you're Elon Musk or somebody with that level of power where you can influence politics. And then it's actually politics.

Then you're playing Game of Thrones. But what we call politics as underlings is it's like what the peasant says about House Lannister matters not at all. And so all it can only be a source of negativity in your life. It cannot provide any value to you.

It's like you may as well just be interested in sports.

I was about to say that people follow politics like they follow sports teams, and it's so rare that someone would say, oh, can you believe the text of that most recent bill? They never say that. They're always talking about the politician as a sports team, and bringing up Game of Thrones is is pretty apt, because I don't think the serfs in Game of Thrones really had a good grasp of the political machinations, and I doubt I do either. But what you're talking about is changing the circle of focus, circle of concern to the circle of influence. Do not put too much time and energy into that which you can't personally change.

Yeah, absolutely. The discourse is on fire. Okay. There is People are talking. People are talking, as they tend to do on dating.

And I've got here, there's a post that's been making the rounds, people have been talking about, it's been stirring up the convo. Okay. And we're gonna react to it, okay? We're gonna give our patented trademark, one of a kind, handsome hour perspective that only we can give.

This is the no spin zone.

That's right. That's

We're gonna have to edit that one out too. Why?

Is that is that that's not trademarked.

The original post says, dating apps are not working, so here is me shooting my shot on blind. What is blind? I don't know.

It's probably a shooting.

I think it's like some other, you know, app or something

like It's a dating app without photos.

It looks like a Reddit post, but it's, yeah, whatever. Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think it's a dating app. So she go and then the description, this is like a little profile, goes female, 26, security engineer in Seattle. I'm five five, easygoing, and love outdoor activities and travel.

My faith is an important part of my life, and I'm hoping to meet someone who shares similar values. I'm open to long distance and relocating for the right connection. If this sounds like you, feel free to reach out. Crying laughing face, hashtag adult life, hashtag love life.

Those are in the bio?

Those are in the bio.

Okay.

And then next paragraph, if you want pics, message me. I will send them, exclamation point. Also, I am a 147 since so many people asked. This is a woman? Yeah.

This is a woman. So that's the original post. And then, you know, obviously, it's been made the rounds, it's been retweeted, it's been, you know, whatever it is. And then the one I'm looking at right now, which got quite a bit of reaction, there's somebody who has quote tweeted this and said, men in the comments mocking five five and one forty seven as overweight are incredibly stupid with no concept whatsoever of how body composition works. Her appearance will depend entirely on body fat percentage and distribution.

BMI doesn't consider muscle, and regardless, she is still in a healthy range. Fools, all caps.

Fools. I'm trying to get it I'm trying to that's a twenty four and a half BMI, which is

That's up there.

It's I mean, not charts I'm looking you see, you can't find an honest chart about this stuff. You know, there should be a database of celebrities and it just has all of their BMIs. And you should just be able to pull up a

I have a website that does that shows example pictures at each for both genders at each BMI.

Oh, really? I only know that for body fat percentage. Because at each BMI, you know, you could argue that Arnold Schwarzenegger in his lifting days had a high Sorry.

It's for body fat percentage, not BMI. Yeah. Yes, you're right. Body BMI is especially dumb for for men who build this other thing that is not fat. Boys, what do you think?

What's our take on this post?

It's a no from me, personally.

And for that reason, I'm out.

Yeah. I It's a

Shark Tank now.

I don't know. I this is so like, I get I I get really grossed out by like performative sincerity or something. Do you know? I don't know. Where it's like

I wish I the other girls. I it's just the the the gross dating scene doesn't work for me. I'll try here with the real people. Like that, you mean?

Right. Like to me, first of all, I I have lots of complaints and reasons I dislike dating apps. But the fact that you can see photos on it isn't one of them. Like, I I think it's more the fact that it forces you to over index on the photos by providing a, you know, no other information or something or it it encourages a culture of that. But I need to see a photo.

Of course. I'm gonna I'm gonna need a photo. And if you're gonna if you're gonna throw numbers at me like height and weight, contextualize it for me a little bit here. Like tell me what you look like or something or tell me nothing at all.

Well, I think the height and weight are proxies for fitness. And I heard someone describe our focus on fitness as incredibly healthy, and what she said was that our brains are hardwired to focus on reproductive survivability, and that reproductive health is completely tied to symmetry, overall health, body composition, so that by all of us focusing on appearance, what we're all doing is we're all focusing on reproductive health, and that's not the craziest thing to do in a mating or at least dating situation.

Yeah. I mean, look, the reality is that almost everybody cares massively about looks. To try to ignore that is a bit silly. Hopefully, it's not the only thing that somebody cares about, but like, let me say it this way. Very few people are irredeemably ugly.

The French phrase is there are no ugly women, just lazy women. I'm not sure I completely agree with that, but what they were trying to say is that if you put enough effort into it Yes. You will be of an acceptable level to the vast majority of guys.

Yes. That is, I think, roughly true.

Though maybe this is a comedic question, but what's the ethics around, say a woman getting a nose job before she ever meets the guy, they have kids and then the baby has the pre nose job nose. I mean, this to me is mostly funny but it does lead to the questions if we ban steroids in sports, should we ban nose jobs in dating?

I always assumed that if the baby would inherit the post nose job nose, you wouldn't know.

Back to the little western

Maybe don't understand science.

Definitely not.

I went on a date with a girl one time, who over the course of the day, it was like that, it was like over the course of the date, she took off her hair extensions. I was like, oh, your hair is shorter. Don't care, but I was like, okay, this is interesting. And then she took out her contact lenses, and her eyes were a different color. And I was like, oh, that's weird.

And you're oh, I wear And she just kept doing the other ones. I'm trying to remember what the other ones were. Like, padding in her bra, and like, she she, over the course of the night, she just kept revealing more and more of these things about her that were fake, and it was just like, woah, this is weird.

I was trying to imagine a date where a woman casually just takes bra padding out and puts it on the table, maybe as a napkin, like, oh, I got a bit of sauce on my face, hold on a second, and just takes out the bra pad, use it.

I don't remember the exact context of how she because she mean, we we did get naked. But her taking this stuff out of her bra, I think, was prior to that. And I don't remember the context. I think it was just think if I remember it, I was calling her out. I was like, kind of playfully.

I was just like, wow, like what part? This fake is this fake? Are your boobs fake? And she's like, well, actually. And at that point, we had had the level of rapport.

Oh, that's fine. That's that's yeah. If if a woman is jokingly showing that there may be a little bit of a push up bra going on.

Were you like turned off by that? Because this goes back to what we talked about on the episode.

Yeah. Was.

You you think it's insince you think it's insincere for a woman who wears makeup? Yeah. Yeah. You do. Yeah.

You would prefer she shows up with

100%. Zero. Makeup is immoral.

Okay.

Yeah. Makeup is bad. Never No. Wear

No? Okay.

Never wear makeup.

Wow. So not even, yeah, not even lip gloss.

Well, I'm not like a psychopath, like, will I look if she wants to wear lip gloss, will I look the other way? Yes. And I've had my last girlfriend loved makeup. She always wore makeup when we went out. She was really important to like her identity and stuff, and it's fine.

I'm not But I would tell her, I think you're more beautiful without makeup. If it were up to me, you would never wear makeup. I accept you and still love you when you wear the makeup. And to be clear, she was a very authentic person. She had no deceitful bone in her body, which is why I was capable of loving her.

So in her particular case, the makeup was not an extension of an attempt to deceive. It was, whatever, due to other things. To me, that's the ultimate important thing, is like, do I feel like she's trying to deceive me? But yeah, the general principle, makeup is bad. I'll stand behind that all day long.

I don't think women wear makeup for men. I've never heard of a man really complaining about a woman's lack of makeup, even though we did complain about a lack of of, like, too much But leg I I think when you look at the the is am I saying it right? The buccal fat removal from the cheeks, almost every guy I've talked to doesn't like that that over indexed look. And so why is that happening? And is that a female competitive

trait? I think it's mostly that for sure.

There's a my lot of my last girlfriend got lip fillers and I told her I didn't like them and she would like get them and want them to be even bigger. I'm like, no, I don't like this look. This is not a good look. And she's like, but she's comparing herself to other women

Right.

And it's like a what, a race

what's the word for it? Race to the bottom.

Race to the bottom or something. Harmony.

When we look at the National Geographic and they put the the plates in their lips, I don't know what I think is. That's Well, there you go.

The long the neck extensions?

Yeah. Give me

a girl with

a long neck. Give me

Like those giraffe nails?

Yeah. Like, I don't like reaching for the cabinets for girls, like, just just get it yourself, baby.

Like to stand on a step ladder and feed her grapes.

Yeah. Just just extend your neck up there and get the chia seeds.

What were we talking about? Oh, yeah.

We were gonna do another one.

Oh, yeah. It's for it's for other women, for sure. And like, we talked about this in a previous episode, but like, yeah, most people are very out of touch with what is actually attractive to the other gender. I don't know how we ended up there. What a weird place to be at a society where men don't understand what's attractive to women and vice versa.

Well, because everyone assumes everyone else is lying. When you're like, oh, I would rather a girl not wear makeup. Every girl doesn't mean that.

Yeah. That's

true. I'm a bit like that.

It took me a year to convince her that when I said I preferred her without makeup, I really meant it.

Yeah.

Probably more than a year. Yeah.

Yeah. And she trusted you.

Yeah. Yeah. Wild. All right, next post. Pro tip.

If you think a girl is pretty, do not wait for her to finish her entire one hour hot yoga session, and then follow her to Whole Foods after, and then follow her into the store, and then let her know you've been watching her all morning.

I think that goes without saying, but but for those of you who are curious about this, starting off with a light stalking is not usually productive.

This post got a lot of engagement.

Don't frame it that way when you talk to her. What you say is you pretend you were like, did she notice you following her? You're not doing it right. What you do is you bump into her Yeah. At the store.

And you engineer it so you're bumping into her and you say, hey, you you we were just in the same yoga class. Right? I thought I saw you look familiar. Like, wanna go out sometime? Right?

For better or worse, the difference between engineering a bumping into someone and following someone is night and day. And it's crazy that that one would how do you, yeah, how do you even handle that?

What are people saying about this?

Yeah. I thought this might be a jumping off point for us to talk about, like, approaching girls in public and stuff. Like, one person said, what are we even supposed to do then? Yeah, look, I mean, you know, if we don't think there's anything juicy here, we can move on.

Well, give yourself plausible deniability. I do think there is something juicy there. The problem isn't that you did that. The problem isn't that you followed her and, you know, knowing that you have pure intentions, right, assuming that you have pure intentions. The problem isn't following her and engineering a situation where you meet her.

It's immediately telling her, hey, I was watching you all morning and I followed you here to talk to you. Because now you've made it weird.

Obviously, most people will perceive it as weird. You know what? For funsies, I'll take the other side. I think you should tell her. It's fine.

Authenticity. It's fine. You know what? It's not that weird. Is it like, it's hard it's really nerve racking for most guys to approach a girl in public.

And if it takes you an hour or two to work up the nerve, like, I'm not advocating stalking, of course, but if this guy was in a situation and he was freaked out and he was scared, but he really wanted to talk to this girl, and it took him an hour or two to work up the nerve, Like, you know what? It's within the realm of like, it's human behavior. It's okay. He didn't kill anybody. And you know what?

Admit it. It's fine. And if she thinks that's weird, that's fine too. It's fine. Be honest.

Let's stop with the fucking charades.

I disagree with your steel man.

Alright. Why?

I think there's so many things you can tell someone, and whether they perceive it as cute or cute and endearing or unattractive and repulsive But it's the truth. Is the truth is no. It's how they perceive the truth is going to be determined by the frame they put you in. Did we all see the movie Roxanne? Came out a long time ago with Steve Martin.

And there was the scene where the kind of inarticulate firefighter is having his love letters written by Steve Martin's character. And Steve Martin's character says, how did you feel when you first met her? He goes, I was horny. Like, okay, we can't write that. And he says, I was moved when I first saw you.

And then what did you do? Oh, I've I puked. Okay. My only nourishment was you. And there's nothing wrong with framing.

Now, if four years later they get married and he says, well, this was really what happened, that's gonna be adorable. But you can't get to the adorable stage until you go through the framing stage.

I agree with that. And I I think that what it's because the when you meet someone, a new person, they know so little about you, but they their brain is desperately struggling to build an image, a cohesive image of what and who you are, and they're going to do that with whatever information you give them. So you have to be very selective about what information you give them, especially when it's your first time ever talking to them Because they're going to whatever information it is, they're going to unify it and make it make sense and use it to summarize you as a full individual. So with that said, when I read a post like this, the thought in my mind is this woman's describing something that happened to her. She's this is something that just happened to her, and she's saying don't do this.

I don't know That's the implication. That's the implication.

Yeah. He also didn't have permission to follow her, and I think permission is a really big deal. Now, we could all suggest that it's romantic to send a woman flowers every day for thirty days, but until you have permission to do that, that comes across as creepy. Sure.

I mean, in fairness, they were it was they were in public. Right? He didn't, like, follow her home.

No. No. But I'm just I'm talking about tacit talking about tacit permission.

Sure.

And you don't need permission to bump into someone. You also don't need permission to accidentally, and I say that in air quotes, bump into someone. But you no woman would give you permission to follow them around without her knowing your name.

Of course, but they wouldn't I mean, they wouldn't give you permission to do lots of things that you do any like, if you ask a woman permission to do anything in your life, half the time they would say no.

But we're talking about kind of repeated or continuous interaction, not accidental interaction. No. He only interacted with her once. By following her around. Sure.

But it wasn't interaction, it was from a distance.

I I did something like this. I just remember this. When I was in San Francisco, I went to the gym and there was a hot girl working at the gym. And I was gonna ask her out when I left, and then she was gone when I left. So I went on the gym's Instagram page, and I worked really, really hard to her Instagram, and then I DMed her and I was just like, hey, like, I know this is kind of weird.

I don't remember what I said. But I was like, you were working at the gym earlier today when I was there and I saw you and I wanted to ask you out, but then when I looked up from my set, you had left. And so, like, do you wanna grab a drink later? And she said, yes. And we went out and it didn't go anywhere.

But Sure.

You can get away with stuff like that. Look, has anybody ever read Romeo and Juliet? Like, we're supposed to be, like, fall head over heels at first glance and go to extreme stupid lengths over a girl we find attractive. That's just human nature. And I don't like how we've got to this such a weird place as a culture, where every little thing that everybody does is awkward, and cringe, and weird.

It's like And so everybody has to be in this tightly controlled box all the time around me. Am following the social rules? Know, adhering to the social niceties, it's like it was in public, nothing bad happened, no one's safety violated. It's like this was probably a nervous guy. It's like, it's fine.

And if he goes up to her and he tells the truth about that and she's weirded out, that's okay too.

I think that women are afraid of everything and that women live in like perpetual fear for their own physical safety. And that I think this girl probably sucks. I think she's probably overemphasizing the creepiness of whatever this guy did or her perceived creepiness. I think that this guy probably could have gone about it in a smarter way that was more smooth. But I also think that she probably wasn't attracted to him.

I think if she found him very attractive, that's a different story. But if you're like women are preternaturally, maybe I'm using that word wrong, afraid of being followed

Yeah.

Period. I mean, they just have to have one bad experience with a guy that doesn't leave them alone, and now they're they they have that memory to fall back on it. I don't blame them. I'd have the same exact situation.

It's like you're saying like, I am the kind of guy who will follow you. Mhmm. And they don't want that. Okay.

So let me They do want

that if they're in love with you, but that's why you wait and you tell them six or seven dates in that, like, oh, by the way, like, that was a little more premeditated than I let on at first.

Yeah. Here's what would say, okay? What's gonna happen? If he goes up to Let's let's paint a couple different scenarios. Scenario one, he goes up to this girl and he tells her the truth right away.

Hey, I just followed you for the last hour and a half or whatever it was. Not, you know. And I was nervous, and I finally woke up the courage to talk to you, and here I am. I think, actually, that has a decent chance of going okay. But a worse scenario is scenario number two, where he shades the truth, and he tells an incomplete truth, which is that he tries to play it cool somehow, but she somehow figures out that he had been following her for two hours anyway.

And now, the reason that's worse is because now she's detecting that he did something that is questionable, and he's covering it up. And that's it's the addition. So if he just totally owns it, and it's just like, yeah, you know what? I followed you, and I'm sorry. I just was really nervous, and maybe I shouldn't have done that, but I finally worked up the courage to come talk to you, and here I am.

So I'm gonna say that that's a little bit implausible, and I'll tell you why. Even saying I was nervous and I worked up the courage shows a tremendous amount of courage, And if you can do that and pull it off, you're not single in the first place.

So the Or you already approached her two hours ago.

Yeah. Which one? Oh, yeah. Okay. So the scenario you're advocating is almost impossible because for a guy to have the charisma and the the honesty to expose his lack of charisma and and and nervousness and be single all in the same way, it's almost impossible.

I'm not sure I agree. I don't think it requires like, if you just slavishly adhere to the to to it to a to a just being honest, and you just

That is that is courage. Slavishly adhering to being honest is one of the most courageous things you can do in the modern day, and and probably at any time. I think honesty is deadly. Honesty is dangerous. Honesty will get you rejected.

Honesty the entire veneer of politeness exists because we so I'll I'll jump back to the kind of the English American divide. One of the things that the Americans are surprised about is how polite the British are, but you have to ask, why would you need to be polite? If you genuinely like someone, you can just be like, hey. What's up, bro? You wanna go grab a beer?

There's no politeness in that. That's genuine friendliness. So one of the things that the Brits are surprised by is that the Americans really do like you. Like, if you like everyone, why would you need to be polite? If you don't like anyone, you better be polite.

So I think that that honesty is absolutely dangerous.

That yeah. I totally agree with that. I I do agree with you. I mean, look, I'm not saying it's not gonna require some courage. It it takes courage to go up and talk to the girl in the first place.

So, I mean, I'm not saying this is like a, you know, panacea, but I guess in this case, the

You're almost asking why aren't politicians honest? Because all the politicians that were honest got voted out of office.

Right. But the point is that the perception here is that it's actually safer to it to to to lie, which is what you're implying. And I'm saying it's actually the reverse. It's actually

the There's a difference same between lying and skipping over a detail.

Yeah. I think that's worse. And I think it's actually the more dangerous option. It's the more risky. It's the more like, if you just own it, a, I think it's actually genuinely the case that it will be better received by most people in general, but women most of the time.

Because women are very good. They have their naturally They are evolved to be good at telling when guys are trying to posture and puff up their chest and be more than they actually are. Look, the point is, I realize it sounds like I'm advocating for this high, you know, this lofty goal that most people can't can't attain. I actually don't think it's that great. You know, it's like because I'm also advocating that women should give this guy a little bit the benefit the doubt.

If he does something that's genuinely bad, obviously it's fine, it's okay if you wanna reject him on this basis. The real reason I would advocate is trying to tell the truth in this situation and just owning it. I'm advocating that from all perspectives. I'm advocating that that should be accepted norm in the culture, it should be we should be more tolerant generally, I'm advocating that this woman be more tolerant, I'm advocating this guy own this situation to be truthful. Because worst case scenario, he gets rejected, and he will have grown in a way, not to be cheesy, that he wouldn't have grown had he tried to bullshit it.

Like, he'll go, oh, wow. I did this thing, and I was worried about being perceived as creepy, and I owned it, and I got rejected. And I'm okay. It's fine. It turned out fine.

I'm still alive. And now he's not gonna have to wait two hours next time. It's like, all roads converge. However you look at this, all roads converge on, it's fine. It's fine.

The problem is when we get into this weird place where we have to pretend this is abnormal behavior, and then he has to pretend he's not doing it, and then we have to it's like

If I could hire a stoic philosopher to improve society, I would hire you, Cody. But if I had to hire someone to improve this guy's dating life, I don't think it would

be In the longest term, this would.

The challenge is your longest term might be multigenerational.

No, no, it's not that long. It might take a couple of years.

Let me ask you this. If you were a dog trainer, would you want to advertise, hey, everyone, I don't really train dogs. It's simply humans don't know how to deal with them. So I'm really a human trainer for people who are bad with dogs. I don't think that's going to get them business.

But when you step back and ask, what does a dog trainer do? They're really training you as a human on how to interact with your dog. But we allow for dog trainers to market and advertise themselves as I work with problematic dogs. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, with a little bit of a nod and a wink to I'm not gonna expose the fact that you're the problem.

Sure. Look, it's obviously when I say wrong, I'm not obviously nothing no terrible moral injustice was committed here. It's all sort of shades of gray. I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit, obviously. But I think I am trying to point at something real and true, which is that when we fail to take a hard line stance on a couple of these, what I consider to be key issues, as individuals or as a society, we inevitably end up in this place where we are now, where everybody's kind of in hell all the time.

Because we all have to kind of play these games, and there's these layers of bullshit and fakery that's simply untenable, and it makes everybody miserable. Everybody is miserable because guys can't just flirt with women.

The reason I'm gonna disagree with you, I'm gonna reference whenever they talk about how drunk students are getting, and I love those kind of things that every one hundred years someone's talking about students are worse than they were ever before, and then eventually you end up 500 BC with some Greek or Roman philosopher complaining about how students are drunk and don't want to work hard.

Right.

I think that students getting drunk and pissing off people twenty years their senior is universal, and it's going to happen forever. And I don't think that our current society is that much different when it comes to you need to flirt and do well on your first impression. I don't think that's honestly that much different than a hundred years ago or even a thousand years ago.

I do think it's different. I don't think it's that yes, flirting has always been a thing. It will always be a thing. But this is interesting, because we've kind of reversed situations from one of our previous episodes where you were saying things are really bleak, and I was saying it's little bit less bleak. I do think things are worse today in a couple particular ways that matter, which is that in the past, yeah, there was always flirting, but I think in the past it was a little bit more in line with human nature.

So it's like, yes, you had to flirt, you had to be skillful, and the most skillful guys were the most successful, fair enough. But the culture didn't, for example, punish them for trying, or punish them for attempting to flirt, or for behaving as men do. And it didn't tell women to be afraid all the time of all men, because all men are evil. There are these particular elements of the modern manifestation of the modern culture that I think are particularly deleterious. So yes, yeah, that's what I'd say.

Well, yeah, sure. I don't

know, maybe. But what way to take a strong stand?

But if guy, yeah, if you're this guy, don't just don't tell her whatever. Don't tell her that you followed her all morning. That's my that's my take here is is play it cool. Play play it a little cooler.

And and to to to follow-up on that, women don't wanna date not only do the women not wanna date men who follow them in a way that could be perceived as stalking, women don't want to date men who need to follow women. So Yes. The fake it till you make it works in business, and to an extent, it works in dating too. There's nothing I don't think there's anything wrong with faking it till you make it.

Yeah. I I think You're gonna

be faking it your whole life.

Disagree, and as someone who's built enterprise software, there's nothing wrong. So let's touch on the morality of this.

This might be we might have pulled on this thread for too long. We might want move on, but

Great. For those of our listeners who overlap on both dating interest and B2B software pricing, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a feature tier or version on your pricing page that doesn't exist as long as you don't sell it to people. So there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, we have the basic, the pro, and the enterprise. The enterprise might not exist yet, But as long as you don't sell it to anyone, there's nothing wrong with using that to start a conversation with a with a prospect, with a prospective customer.

Yeah. Okay. Now we're really deep into, like, abstract territory. I would disagree with you.

Oh, yeah. This is abstract because I've never done this on my B2B software pricing page. Yep. This is abstract for any future purchaser of any enterprise software I've built. Let me assure you, this is entirely abstract.

Sony played we play with ideas here on Hands and Power. Is it in the in the space of all possible moral crimes you could commit, this is very innocent. It's not that big of a deal. So it's like, yes, realistically, like, fine. Most people are gonna need to do that, and that's how they're gonna live their lives.

And it's like, okay, fine. I am playing the Pied Piper. I am saying, okay, if you guys all wanna go live in your normal human village and live out your days, fine. Okay. But maybe just listen to my little song.

As I come out of the forest, and I have my little elf ears, and I do my little dance, and I say, but what if things could be different? Come follow me, kids. Let me lead you into a different world in which maybe we could all agree to have things be a little bit better, and we all have to live in hell forever.

Remind me, was Pied Piper the good guy or the bad

If this guy were to take my advice, here's what would happen. He would get brutally rejected, and it would hurt. But he would get to go home with this little point of pride that said, I told the truth, I owned it, I wasn't ashamed. And he'll be a little bit stronger than he would have been had he not. And then he'll go do it again.

And then he'll go do it again. It's like a little rep. It's a set. And he will end up making himself over the long term into somebody who is both courageous and who tells the truth. And that is the kind of guy who can attract an extremely high quality partner.

That's a really high quality husband. Every girl should want to be with a guy who is both extremely courageous and extremely committed to honesty. And by making yourself into a genuinely, not a superficially attractive partner, but a genuinely attractive partner with genuinely, extremely upstanding traits, and virtuous traits, and real virtues, you in turn will be able to attract a genuinely virtuous and upstanding partner. And that's It's in the longest term, this will This is the This is for the best, in the best interest of the individual. Will it require some pain to get there?

Yes, it will. Go to the gym, kids.

I really like your philosophy, and I I can't directly argue with it. I will ask you a question. So if you heard someone say, and the night unfolded like magic, is that a man or a woman speaking?

That's a woman speaking.

And why is it a woman speaking?

Because the man had to manifest that man. He to do it. She experienced it.

He had to think very, very hard

That's right.

About how do I engineer the night

That's right.

So that it does unfold without the appearance of anyone having to make any decisions, when in reality Mhmm. All these decisions were made ahead of time.

And do you wanna be with

a That'll be prince honest.

Do you wanna that's right. Do you wanna be with a little princess who who thinks about the world in such a fake way? Totally agree with you. In fact, I I love the way you articulated that, because I have articulated exactly the same way in the past. Every interaction that a woman experiences as magical and serendipitous, and it just happened like that, is the product of incredible skill and foresight and planning on the part of the man, and that's fucked up.

What that

is Why can't that be beautiful? Why does that have to be fucked up?

Because it's pageantry, it's theater, it's fake. And it's the woman who's creating a market for Look, there's nothing wrong with a man putting in effort to create a wonderful evening for a woman. That can be great, putting in the effort. But doing it transparently is the point. And she should know that he is putting in effort.

She shouldn't be under the illusion that this magic just happened, because that's a child. She wants That's a child's view of the world.

She wants the outcome. And one of the things she also wants now, we we you both of you guys, I think, and and myself as well, are not a fan of the girl boss because it's hard to be the girl boss. It's hard to constantly be making these decisions. It's no much more fun than a man, but I think we're a little bit more hardwired for brutal competition. And so one of the nicest things you can do, and this this is the case whether you're married or going on a first date, is that you can give your partner a a vacation from the frontal lobe.

Give them a moment when they say, you don't have to make any decisions. What's one of the interesting things is that in our society, there's this huge conflict between giving someone the choice and also taking away the need for them to make decisions. And when someone says the night unfolded like magic, what they really mean is I didn't feel like I had to make any decisions. Everything evolved at a pace that was comfortable for me. Now, to do that right takes an incredible amount of forethought and skill and empathy, but if you're really doing a great job as a guy and creating a night that unfolded like magic, what you're doing is you're empathizing with the woman and you're saying, how do I move the evening along in such a way that at no moment is she either bored because it's moving too slowly or nervous because it's moving too quickly.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with a guy advertising that, hey, I'm the kind of guy that's gonna allow you to take a frontal lobe vacation whenever you want to. I think that's an amazing thing. And then to tell them that switches on the frontal lobe, which defeats the entire purpose.

That I agree with everything you said right until the end.

Well, tell me why.

It does strike me as a little bit creepy, the desire to turn off the funnel roads lobe so hard. But it's fine.

No, to give them the opportunity. At no moment are you actively turning off the frontal lobe. You're simply not needing for the frontal lobe to be engaged.

Yeah, that's fine. Neither here nor there. Yeah, the part that I took issue with was right at the end when you said, and if you tell them that's what's happening, it turns on the frontal lobe. And so therefore, it has to be, again, covert. Like, they should not be under the illusion that it's that it's happening without effort on your part.

Or that because the what I thought you were saying earlier, and maybe I was misinterpreting, is that the way that I feel like that's usually uttered by women, it's like, well, the night just happened like that, is that they think that it's equally spontaneous for the man, and that therefore that they are just living in this storybook world, this fantasy world, where things just magically happen spontaneously, and because their life is just so magical, not realizing that the man is putting an effort in skillfully making it happen. If there's an acknowledgment on some level that he is doing that, and props to him therefore, then fine, no problems.

I think the end result will be that the women will be most attracted to men who have the night unfold like magic. Yeah, So whether the man tells the woman, I am going through these machinations, or doesn't tell the woman, the end result is the same.

That's true. But clearly this guy is not that guy.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I think

this guy is as far as humanly possible from that guy.

But I I think So what's to be done?

Well, the the the hallmark of mastery is effortlessness or the appearance of effortlessness. And I can't imagine even taking issue with this opinion, but apparently people do. You want everything you do to appear effortless. You don't want like, I spent my entire morning following you as an active devotion. Hi.

My name's Wes. You don't want that. You want, hey. But he did. Yeah, but he well, it didn't work for

him.

Ideally, he The would work point I'm making is that it didn't work.

The Of course it not. Of course.

It didn't

work. Of course. So to be clear, there is a small percentage of girls that we'll work on, and that probably is his girl.

Yeah. Well Or they're already taken by

the other geeky awkward guys that Oh,

has a

Like, yes, but it's you don't don't wanna be filtering on that thing alone. Mean, that's what you do. I think that's a relatively spurious thing to be filtering on is how does she react when I tell her I followed her three places this morning.

Right. But the point is, what do you do with the So you're in this situation. You're this guy. You wake up. You're you.

Now what do you do? You're the kind of guy who, you know, he finds himself in a situation where he's trying, he doesn't have the nerve to go up to her and speak to her immediately, what do you do? It's like, the question, obviously, the ideal scenario is that he's just this incredibly charismatic guy who's incredibly brave, and he already has all the perfect qualities, and there's no there's no issue. Yes, obviously, that's ideal. He doesn't have that.

So what do you do with that? Do you lie about the fact that you don't have that? Or do you own it and deal with it? And what I'm advocating is that it's better for everybody, both at the global scale and the individual scale, if you just own it.

So the challenge with the, quote, owning it is that you're not getting feedback. Or you are getting feedback, but you're not pivoting based on that feedback. And I'm gonna completely agree with Wes when he said that, what was it you wanted to look effortless?

Yeah.

And we all have the opportunity to watch live bad figure skating far more than they have the opportunity to watch Olympic figure skating. I like watching Olympic figure skating even though I have zero interest in figure skating because it's just amazing to watch these people. And boy, does it look easy. They do it so well. I'm like, I guess I'm just gonna slap on a pair of skates, I'm gonna twirl around the ice.

But, of course, my brain knows that this person has fallen on their butt somewhere between 10,000 and a 100,000 times, and we are watching the output of that feedback of them saying, wow. When I land in this way, I end up on my butt. Let me not end up. Let me not land that way. This person is as ethical and and honest as as you can imagine them to be, but they've gotten here by effectively practicing in the dark and taking the feedback from falling on their butt.

And I gotta say, this guy fell in his butt in his approach to talking to a woman, and why shouldn't he take that feedback and say, maybe I shouldn't do that again?

Why would he not get the feedback in this scenario I'm

proposing? Because in your mind, he keeps on doing it again and again and again and forges this iron iron soul, which can be rejected while focusing on the raw truth, and that's not taking feedback.

Well, what's gonna happen is that he he will he will get he will become inured such that he doesn't have to wait two hours. He doesn't have to do the awkward thing of stalking her, he will be able to go up to her, he'll have the courage to go up to her immediately.

It's good that he went up to her. I don't think anyone said that.

Yeah. Actually, props props for that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good that he did that. I don't take issue with anything he did until he told told her he was following her all morning.

So the equivalent would be, to your to to continue the analogy, Stoney, would be if the figure skater went up there and and announced, you know, I was born this way. I haven't practiced figure this is the first day I've ever figure skated in my life. That's fucked up.

No. What you're saying is that if the figure skater falls on their ass, you should continue doing the exact move that made you fall on your ass until you find an audience that likes watching figure skaters fall on their ass.

No. I'm saying that's what practice looks like, is continuing to do the same move and fall on your ass until you don't fall on your ass, in which case now you're a great figure skater. And it has double benefit, because one of two things will happen. Either you will become a great figure skater, and then you won't haul on your ass anymore, or you will meet somebody who loves seeing people fall on their ass. That's also a win.

Either way,

A you get the best possible figure skating coach would say to them, you're doing that wrong. Don't do it again. And I think it's perfectly acceptable for humanity to go onto Reddit and say to this person, nice try. Don't do that again. Don't say to them, I've been following you for the last two hours.

Because even if on the edge case, it might occasionally work, even if on the edge case, you know, landing in a funny position as a figure skater, you could figure that out, the point of the coach is to say, the best way to land this triple whatever move is by doing this? Nailing the move in here is is go up to

her immediately. Don't stalk her for two hours. You're right, that's the correct move. That should be the feedback. The feedback to the guy is, don't stalk her.

Go up to her immediately. But once you've already stalked her, tell her the truth about that. Do the correct behavior in the beginning, and then tell the truth about it. But tell the truth either way.

One more Reddit post to look at.

This is also a Twitter post. There's a this is a genre of posts, right? This is a a meme format. Barely con everybody's seen this meme format. It's the guy who's standing there smugly, he's a Disney character, he's standing, and all the swords are pointed at him.

Yes.

I know that one.

And it's always saying, you know, what's an unpopular opinion that'll put you in this position? Right? Mhmm. So that's the response. So, okay, so this is the unpopular opinion that that gets you your back against the wall surrounded by swords.

Dating apps are the best dating related invention in history, and people who hate them are usually just coping because they're unsuccessful in dating. Hookup culture in America really took off in the seventies, had nothing to do with dating apps, which didn't exist for another forty plus years. Hookup culture has been declining the past two decades, especially pronounced over the last five years. And then, caret, dating apps allow you to transcend any and all social barriers, socioeconomic or cultural differences, and date anyone easily, caret, allows you to date someone you know already, has some baseline level of interest in you, they matched you. Caret allows you to access a quote unquote way better and wider pool of potential candidates than only dating based on physical proximity.

It kinda goes on along goes on on on these lines. I don't know if you wanna read the whole post, but are there trade offs and pitfalls and ways to exploit them or use them in self destructive ways? Of course, just like any technology. But basically, it's just this defensive dating apps. Think that the the basic point here is that a lot of the trends people use to to point the finger at dating apps that I think maybe people say are causal, like for example, dating dating apps causing hookup culture, or dating apps causing some of these other negative trends.

His argument is that those trends actually predate the dating apps, like at the dawn of hookup culture from the seventies, and that they are a technology like anything else that can be used for good, especially if you disconnect them from the causal connection to these negative trends.

Sure. I mean, certain trends predate dating apps, but if you ask people using them who are looking for something serious and pure, they're not having success finding that on the apps. So whether the apps cause that problem or not, they're not solving the problem and that's what they ostensibly exist to do. So he's wrong. Like, think the point he's making is wrong.

Like, I've had plenty of success on dating apps, but I'm still not satisfied with the experience because that's not what

I was going for. The dating apps encourage dating, and that is often not what people want, certainly not what women want. No very few women wake up and say, I want to go on a series of dates that don't lead anywhere, or I want a series of short term relationships. So dating apps increase dating, but I really don't think you're going to find that many women, one out of 10 at the most, who say, oh, I love dating. Usually, women view dating as a valuation process that is not necessarily enjoyable for them to get to the other end of a long term relationship, the other end of the process, which is to figure out, is this person a good fit for a long term relationship?

And yes, I know that some women like the hookup culture, but I think the majority of women would prefer to be in a long term relationship than a series of short term relationships. And I think the dating apps encourage a series of short term relationships.

And I think this guy's claim is that it's a skill issue. That if you were just more skillful at using this technology, like, you know, you could you could use the dynamite to clear out minds and not to blow your hands off.

As you become more skilled, you the I think I mean, don't want the episode to be dating apps bad, but

But dating apps bad.

The as you grow more skilled on the dating apps, the impression that you can always do better grows with you. And it creates a situation where it's very difficult to be satisfied with something that's actually very good.

And also without dating apps, the vectors of which you can improve yourself are so broad. So you could be a gawky, you know, guy who doesn't find it easy to talk to women, but if you decide you're going to become a phenomenal dancer, you're going to do well in that area. But a phenomenal dancer is never going to do better on a dating app. Sure, you're going have a still image of you dancing. That's not going to do anything.

So the challenge of dating apps is it really limits the areas you can excel and produce your unique characteristics. It'll always target towards those who are photogenic and look good on paper, whatever that metric is. And while there'll be some variation, you know, tall is unfortunately one of those metrics. And I say that as the tall guy.

I agree with both of guys, obviously.

What dating apps do do well is they dramatically lower the search cost on certain metrics. So if you think about the search cost, even going back to the pre dating app world where there were dating sites like match.com and OkCupid, you would have to compose traditionally as the guy, because OkCupid did a good job looking at, you know, how many messages did certain guys have to send to get a response. The guy would have to put real time and energy in sending a response. The woman would take one look at his profile picture, say, not my type, and ignore the message. So there was this tremendous effort on the guy's part to try to impress the woman through text, when really they were just getting evaluated on their image.

And so by having the two people put the minimal effort in to effectively say, yes, I will be open to receiving a message from this person, I will not be open to receiving a message from this person, That did a lot of good in a search effort situation, search cost situation, and on top of that, no one was rejected, or it massively lowered the rejection because you were passively rejected. You were either a a yes or a no. You know, it wasn't a you got a no back. So that also, I think, did a lot of positive things. But again, the net was it favored people who did well in dating apps, and it didn't give people an opportunity to really excel off dating app.

Right. It's like if dating apps are a skill issue, well, the skill ceiling is so high that most people will never reach it, and that makes it inefficient for everybody. And even if you do reach the skill ceiling, it's still very inefficient. I can say that as confidently believing that I have actually reached the skill ceiling of using dating apps. And so, no, he's wrong.

Yeah. I agree. And the only thing I would add is that the thing that if nothing there's many reasons that this is wrong. But if nothing else, failing everything else, it's definitely not this is exactly what they want you to think. They want you to think it's just a neutral technology, and it's not.

They have misaligned incentives. They are actively it's not like they just have handed you these tools, and they're saying, okay, go run and do whatever you want with the tools. They are tools that are designed to blow your fingers off. They are tools that are designed to never let you meet the person who's actually your good match. They know who your best match is.

They don't show them to you.

Oh, well, is a dark point of view, and I'd love to explore that. So what you're claiming and this isn't a crazy claim you're claiming that their which is true their economic incentive is to keep you subscribed forever. So therefore, they have an incentive to match you with people who you'll enjoy dating but won't leave the dating app for. Correct. Wow.

That is dark.

Is unequivocally the case.

It's true. They they will say that if you talk to former employees or people who even help design the algorithms.

Yeah. They optimize for the 90% match. That's just good enough to get you to go on the date or to make you feel like you're getting closer to your objective without actually resulting in

a relationship. Matchmatch.com was acquired by private equity in like, well, I don't know, 2009 or whatever, and they actively made the algorithm worse on purpose with the stated goal of making it worse.

Yeah. This is a known thing. Multiple people have reported on it. Yeah.

That is scandalous, and it is Wow. I I follow obscure, you know, trivia, and I've never heard about this.

It make sense? Should do something about it.

Someone should do something.

Yeah. And to be clear, said earlier that they know who your best match is. Let me rephrase, right? Because they don't actually know who your best best match is in terms of They don't know who your wife is. But they have some sense of directionality.

They have some sense of better and worse. And even with that limited ability, with the limited algorithmic ability that they have, they still use that to your disadvantage. All right, that might be where we wrap, unless anybody else has anything.

You know, there's been several difficult moments in my life. One of them was when I realized Santa Claus wasn't real, and the other was when I realized that private equity did not have my best interest at heart. So I just want to say, these are me today and and the time I found the toys in my parents' closet are gonna be the worst days of my life.

I'm sorry you had to hear it here. All right. Well, thanks for listening to Handsome Hour, where we do it right.

Thanks for tuning in. The Steve Harvey show is coming up next.

Thanks, guys.