I mean yeah, you can exploit it to your benefit by going full pickup artist with your profile(s) but that's a) a lot of work if you're just trying to get normal dates and b) generally frowned upon in polite society.

Going full pickup artist does not generally work if you are physically unattractive (mainly based on face and height if you go by what various studies have shown). Dating apps have utterly decimated dating for a big percentage of the young population - that did not win the genetic lottery - and exposed various strong biases and conditioning in the female sex [1].

The following was deleted since many expressed fears that it would further fuel "incel culture" not to mention it's bad for business, but I managed to find it on archive.org.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...

That's quite an interesting analysis. On OKCupid women shift their attractiveness expectations only slightly ahead of the curve when compared with men. OKCupid is generally accepted to be more of a long-term thing than the alternatives. I predict that this does not apply to Tinder and Hinge.

Bear in mind that that post was 2009, and Tinder launched in 2012.

This isn't about whether you go full peacock fedora pickup artist. The thing I would like to emphasise is that each side knows the deal. Women are provably better at festooning the deal in the presence of other men, but the deal remains. This includes "normal" dates.

I can't know what sort of girls you are generally around, but I was with a group of girls the other night, who were comparing their recent Tinder matches and fucks with each other. They were not talking any differently about the guys they'd met to how men are generally portrayed to talk about women, including size appraisals of varied body parts.

On the polite society comment, each gender is just as calculating as the other. From my experience, this fact does not change particularly based on education level, though the festooning around it might well.

A girl who really has no prospects of a quick fuck might indeed be more inclined to settle for what you would be implying with a normal date. The same goes for for guys in a similar bracket as well.

It's also bad if you're actually interested in finding someone to actually date seriously. Do you want someone who falls for your act?

Kundera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughable_Loves

Nietzsche: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24702467-aphorisms-on-lo...

Houellebecq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomised

Bukowski: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38500.Women

Kundera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Be...

I appreciate the reading list, but wouldn't mind more clarity. Why do you suggest these readings in particular?

Anyhow, I've only read Women from the list. The book seemed to be a male perspective about women. Bukowski doesn't know why they prefer what they do, or why he would be attractive to them. He doesn't know how to get involved with them without some degree of harm or drama either. A great book, but how do you feel it relates to the conversation at hand?

These books have reinforced my belief that all relationships are transactional. Why should romantic relationships be the exception? They have reinforced my belief that romance is something made up by guys for guys, that women gladly play into the romantic ideal to their own ends, and that by focussing on finding an interesting woman to date seriously as an end in itself, you lose that woman. It’s a lost cause. I don’t mean this negatively or positively.

I think that's cynical and incorrect. Charles Bukowski's Women is not an example of a normal relationship.

By a vague enough definition, all relationships are "transactional." Both parties can intellectualize their feelings and point to what they get out of it, and both parties can point to a theoretical breaking point, where the transaction no longer has any benefit.

But, when most people say "transactional" they mean something a bit different: that the relationship is devoid of genuine emotion, and instead based on some selfish benefit, such as money or shelter. I think you're equivocating the two here. Real, genuine affection does exist. The fact that both people are "getting something out of it" doesn't mean that it's transactional.

This is why I said that I do not mean it positively or negatively. The foundation of a relationship is the transaction. It is not necessarily a bad thing.

The emotion exists on top of the transaction. Real, genuine affection and love do not exist, as they cannot be defined objectively. Romance is the terms, such as love and affection, and framework we use to describe our subjective emotions in the context of the transaction.

One party can use the other's emotion and his or her conception of romance around that emotion to sway the transaction to her or his benefit.

Charle's Bukowski's relationships were normal for him. The relationships described in the other books were normal for their authors. The settings change, but the unproductive idealisations of romance and desire for motherly affection remain.