While I agree MGTOW is cringe, dating is initially a numbers game. I have way more matches in a densely populated area such as SF Bay area. Timing and luck play in to it as well, multiple people in my social circle would have dated me if they weren't LTR'd prior.
I think the numbers are a red herring. Finding a date is a numbers game. However, if you've spent any time in a committed relationship, you'll know that pretty much the only things that matter are how she feels about herself and how she feels about you (and the converses for you, which are heavily influenced by those). All the stuff about hotness, income, intelligence, background, careers, etc. fades into the background, and you figure out how to make it work.
I suspect the reason that dating sucks in the Bay Area is because the Bay Area attracts guys (and women, but to a lesser extent) who are overly concerned with how they're perceived by others. After all, everybody is chasing the latest hot startup that will make them wealthy and famous. That same insecurity - and the same insecurity that would make you bail on an area just because there are no girls - is massively unattractive to women.
I spent a year and a half dating around, including some very hot women. After realizing that none of that mattered and the only thing important was how I felt when I was with her, it took me all of 3 weeks to find a partner.
Rebuttal: I am a social retard, typical geek, and it was only in San Francisco that I found some success meeting women. There are lots and lots of really interesting, amazing, beautiful women in San Francisco. I dated a bunch of them.
A year ago, I returned to the Midwest, and haven't gotten a date since.
In NY I could easily get matches/dates... in SF it was much more difficult. And when I did get dates in SF, 2nd dates were much less likely, I got ghosted more often, etc. In terms of the silly reductive attractiveness scale, I went from feeling like an 7 or 8 to a 3 or 4.
Unfortunately, I agree. I've had significantly more trouble dating in Silicon Valley than anywhere else I've lived. In fact, that's why I'm moving to NYC. Using dating apps as evidence:
On the east coast:
- I get 5x as many matches.
- Most of my matches respond to my openers.
- My matches are significantly higher quality.
- My matches suggest meeting up for dates.
- My matches compliment me.
- My matches never unmatch me.
The whole silicon valley gender skew seems like a bad situation for everyone involved. But I'm not sure what can be done about.
I suggested the old-fashioned method because it does no harm. My only issues with the orgies described in the article is there seems to be quite a bit of consent-through-manipulation.
Why are you surprised to hear this? You're hardly the first person I'd expect to not realize the social stigma most men in the tech industry face trying to date; combine that with the supply/demand in the Bay and you should expect that most men will struggle to date at all (really, anywhere on the west coast except maybe LA.)
It's quite fitting that the dating scene in S.F. is often similar to tech interviewing. Play the number games, don't get attached, and move on. Nothing personal, it's just metrics. Is this what cutthroat economic competition does to people?
Dating in these cities as a single man in your 20s and 30s is good for the soul. It forces you to actually develop a personality, figure out how to be fun to be around. Have something interesting going on for you besides working at startup x or being Senior Frontend Engineer at Uber #775.
Women in a city like SF expect more from you, they're not that impressed with money or the fact that you have a stable job. Some look at it as a disadvantage, but is actually an upside. Some men come out of the experience jaded and bitter, blaming "the 49ers" and the ratio. Others take it as an opportunity to step it up and have more to offer to a potential partner. You attract who you are.
Disclaimer: huge generalizations above, take with a pound of salt.
I thought it would be funny to make a joke site with this idea (even grabbed sadsingles.com a few days ago for it) - it's interesting someone is actually trying it.
The dating situation is so bad for single men in their early to mid twenties on the west coast that I'm starting to think it's worth bailing on the area entirely and moving to NYC just for that purpose. (Palo Alto has got to be magnitudes worse than SF which is still pretty bad).
At first it looked like the situation in NYC was even worse for women with the 150k vs. 50k difference, but the population of NYC is 8.2million where SF is only 805k. Still dramatic, but not nearly as bad.
A lot of readers here come from the SF Bay Area, where single men who have their life together are being imported by the boat full, while single women are not. It creates a supply/demand imbalance and it does make dating more work here.
Other places might not have that problem. Dating was definitely more work in SF for me than my hometown.
From what I've seen from 20 years of serial online dating as a male in the SF Bay area, women will throw all caution to the wind for attractive men, since they're basically happy for whatever happens usually. Ive had countless women agree to first dates at my house or their house. While my more homely looking friends will be forced to jump through hoops for safety.
Really??? I need to get a job at Google, apparently. :)
I've found that the difficulty in dating in the Bay Area isn't necessarily the shortage of women, but the overwhelming majority of men. The numbers probably dictate that they're equal, but this is an disadvantageous situation when the South Bay self-selects older, wealthier men and less young, single women.
My point was that if you want to, meeting a lot of women is not hard. Young people in SF date a lot.
If anything, the hard part is finding someone who is willing to commit. Granted, I have a skewed sample because of how I met people, but most of my friends are facing that issue. Easy to date, hard to relationship.
Dating in the west almost feels like an interview these days, at least in the Bay Area. “So where do you see yourself in 5-10 years”? What’s next, you going to ask me to invert a binary tree?
Outside of SF though, the situation is likely reversed - many more women than men are graduating college, and people tend to want to pair off with people of similar educational achievement.
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