6 Ways Online Dating Compares vs. Meeting Women in Real Life | Girls Chase

6 Ways Online Dating Compares vs. Meeting Women in Real Life

Chase Amante

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Chase Amante's picture
online dating comparison
Dating apps and online dating are a fast, low effort way to meet loads of partners. But are they a perfect substitute for real life?

Over the last 15 years, the way people use the Internet to date has changed, in some ways.

But in other ways, it's remained exactly the same.

The first time I tried online dating, in 2004, it was still sort of a new, fringe thing. There weren't that many people dating online. There were around 1,000 online dating websites at the time (844, according to Wikipedia). Today, according to Forbes, 1,000 new online dating sites open each year. Match.com and Adult Friend Finder were the big fish then (the founder of AFF, Andrew Conru, invented online dating in 1994). Scammers were already well established; a clever spam message from a gorgeous girl-next-door type with a phone number two digits short claiming she saw me on Match.com, where I'd recently deactivated my account, lured unlucky-in-love 2004 me into paying $50 to for some fake dating site before I'd figured out what happened. Online dating at the time had a reputation of being a place desperate losers and awkward weirdoes went to. If you tried online dating, there was probably a reason, and that reason was likely an unfortunate one.

Since 2004, I've tapped online dating to meet women in various ways. Online is a useful supplement, but it's always taken the back seat to real life for me. Of late though I've seen online dating and dating apps become a lot more prominent among men. Meanwhile the portion of their women guys meet in real life is falling.

This is not a good thing for men, for many reasons. You may not want to hear it, but swiping your way through a dating app and thinking you are doing "game" is often not going to lead you where you want... unless you have a very clear idea about what you want.

But it's not all bad news and gloom. Sometimes, the right dating app can be just what you need.

Today let's compare online dating and dating apps to meeting women in the real world. We'll compare along six (6) dimensions:

  1. Quality

  2. Quantity

  3. Intentions

  4. Effort

  5. Risk

  6. Satisfaction

Let's go.

Comments

SZ's picture

1. That article about that professor was crazy and very ironic since he met her in real life. What should he have done in this entire situation Chase? at what point should he have known that this girl was about bad news? and how should he have handled everything after sex?

2. with the forum member, hope he's doing better. what do you think he could have done to prevent his situation? and that oral sex thing makes no sense to me? how did he lose that? how is that even possible that wasn't consensual? but what could he have done to not have this happen? how does a person have consensual sex in every category? do they have to ask before they do everything?

So how could these two situations have been avoided if sex was still to happen?? what could they have done to save themselves after sex or right before it? It sounds like for them everything happened to fast for them to realize any flags. and you just can't avoid sex from all women, so avoiding them would not have saved them because it could have happened with another chick. So what could they have done?

Thanks 

 

Author
Chase Amante's picture

SZ-

If you look at that college professor's ordeal, there are red flags everywhere:

  • Woman approaches him and is far too obvious: strongly compliments him when he doesn't take the first hint and tries to direct her away. Then persists when he brushes her off: "Sorry I just don't know anyone" (persistence line to appear vulnerable/available). Approaching men is super scary, hard, and unusual for 99.9% of women and the best they can usually muster is a single lame joke or boring comment, hoping you will take the reins. When they're able to be present and clear about their intentions, it's usually a sign that either a.) they're experienced enough approaching men that "the game has slowed down" for them or b.) they're psychopaths who don't feel nervousness. Both are large red signs

  • She's a single mother (at least a yellow flag, usually orange), a single mother to more than one child (orange flag), whose ex is a woman (red flag), and who is currently rooming with a transsexual (red flag). In addition, the (transsexual) roommate is "battling depression", and this is something the woman feels this guy needs to know on the first date (orange flag).

  • Then she invited him to her place, initiated the kissing herself, and initiated the sex. This can be a yellow flag (I've known marriages that came from the woman initiating intimacy, where the woman was really pretty kind/stable overall, just slightly in huntress mode), all the way up to a red flag, depending on context. Given all that's already happened I'd consider it 'red flag' territory.

I guess it depends on your sensitivity, but I will say that if I see one red flag, I lose a lot of interest in a girl. I might still pursue just to be thorough at that point, but I'll be on-guard, and any further flags will generally lead to me abandoning the lead / ignoring efforts by her to set anything further up.

The hard thing here is this guy was in scarcity. He didn't know how to meet women and had no other women in his life. Men in situations like that tend to ignore red flags much more than they should. The offer of sex is too hard to pass up even in the face of several glaring signals.

From what I know of the forum member's case, there's nothing realistically he could've done to avoid the situation. It sounds like she did most/all the initiating and she left apparently satisfied enough. He didn't say he was pushy at any point or she gave any indication she was unhappy. So unless he did something he didn't realize or she was throwing off signs he didn't pick up on, there wasn't an indication she was going to throw him under the bus later. We don't know her motivation either, if she had a boyfriend and got found out and needed to say it was rape to keep the boyfriend ("I just went over because I thought he seemed nice and I was looking for friends <sob>, I never thought he would rape me!"), or if it was something else. So I can't say "He could've prevented it by asking if she had a boyfriend first and not hooking up with her if she did." I'd be a hypocrite there, too, because I never ask women their relationship status; I don't want to know about it and consider it irrelevant unless they themselves bring it up.

Best thing he could've done was stick to meeting women in real life, where flags are a lot more obvious and he'd be meeting prettier girls. Dating apps encourage men to settle for homelier, more broken women, and the odds of that going the wrong way are a lot higher. If you do dating apps / online dating you have to accept there's a certain amount of crazy there, and you are rolling the dice with each chick you shag.

Or you could do what this forum member now does, which is video record all his initial sexual encounters. Had he done that in this case he would've had exculpatory evidence and he wouldn't have gotten the sodomy (forced oral sex) conviction he did. Again though, hard to blame him for not doing that. It's a pain to set up secret recordings and feels paranoid. Until, I guess, you need that video and it isn't there. Not saying you have to or should do this... however if you do a lot of high risk dating (dating apps, drunk girls, girls on drugs, feminists, women with personality disorders) you may want to think about setting this up.

Chase

Joe London's picture

Hi Chase. Very interesting article here! I have done lots of online/app usage and recently started some direct daygame (around 20 street approaches so far but looking to branch out and try different venues). I have to say that, after reading this article, I think that you're being a bit too harsh on online.

One thing that you didn't account for is cost. It should be considered separate to effort because there are plenty of guys willing to put in the effort but unable or unwilling to schedule it. Real life is expensive in the sense that it takes up a LOT of time. In my sessions, it was 5 approaches done in 90 minutes to 2 hours. The wing who I know who managed to do 20 approaches in one session (continuing his session after I went home) was out a total of 7 hours. When you consider that even the best daygamers are getting just one date every 20-30 approaches, you see how meeting women in real life is very time consuming. Don't forget that we have to add travel time to this too. Online, it's totally reasonable to expect that a guy could work up to 2 hours total time spent on apps/sending messages to arrange a single date. In real life cold approach, the numbers I put there suggest that it is impossible to match that on average. Remember also that the more hours of approach sessions we do, the less time we spend on other things and the closer we are to the guy whose only hobby is picking up women (which we don't want to be, as you said!). I was at a point at which I couldn't work on writing a book or doing research because I had to go for my scheduled approach session. Now is that a good thing or a bad thing you tell me...

Regarding quality, I was able to hide my poor fundamentals online by taking deceptively good photos. Doing this, I got some exciting ladies with e.g. lots of interesting interests, a passion for art or science, a well-directioned career, lots of intelligence etc. out on dates. I found that being an interesting guy yourself can actually get you quite far online. They weren't ugly either. In my daygame adventures, I have found that a guy is totally at the mercy of his fundamentals. If he does not look good, the woman he approaches will feel charmed and happy at his direct opener, but then hit him with "thank you for that; I have to go" very soon. Posture, voice, eye contact, dress etc. has, for me, only served to improve the reception to the direct opener. It hasn't turned a no girl into a yes girl, but rather turned a no girl into a polite and happy no girl. And there "I have to go" girls were much less exciting than the ones I find online! The point is that maybe an interesting, successful or socially savvy guy can do better online than he would in real life, where only his fundamentals, and none of those other things matter.

Thirdly, you do indeed find more victimized or eccentric ladies online. But consider that not all ladies are open to going on a date with a guy who they met on the street. If we restrict to the ladies who are open to it, do you think that we might find a higher prevalence of eccentric or victimized ladies? Just something to consider.

Anyway, this is only from my experience of doing direct daygame on the weekends. I have not tried other real life avenues yet. E.g. social circle could be a world of difference. Overall, I think that you're being too harsh on online.

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Joe-

Excellent and thoughtful points!

I'd wrap up the time element under 'effort' from the article above. But you're right, I didn't go into that much.

Dating apps can be more or less time-consuming depending on how you use them. If you're very efficient about it, have excellent pictures, and tightened down online game, for sure, you can set up more dates faster than what a guy who's efficient, with good fundamentals, and good game can reliably produce with cold approach. (the friend taking 7 hours to make 20 daytime approaches is not being efficient, by the way... that's one approach every 21 minutes! Unless he took several of these women onto insta-dates, in which case it makes more sense. If not though, he either needs to get more aggressive in his approaching, or find a better venue with more women to approach. He wants to at least aim to cut that in half)

The flip side is there are a great many guys who are not very efficient, lack excellent pictures, and do not have tightened down online game. These guys can fall into the trap of sinking far more time into apps than even most obsessed cold approachers spend on meeting women. I've seen a lot of cases of guys being on their phones all day, every day, swiping on matches, talking with women they match, trying to set up dates, to the point where it affects their jobs or school because it is too distracting. Usually these guys are getting few dates, often with women they aren't that thrilled about, too. Which only seems to incentivize this behavior more: "I have to keep swiping and spend even more time on this to get the really worthwhile girls!"

The other thing to weigh is the opportunity cost. Let's say your average cold approach lay is 7.5 on the 10-point scale and it costs you twelve hours of preparing, commuting, approaching, and dating (including approaches and dates where it doesn't work out) to get such a lay. Then let's say your average dating app lay is a 6 on the 10-point scale and it costs you eight hours of swiping, messaging, and dating (including conversations and dates where it doesn't work out) to get such a lay. So you can get a 6.0 for eight hours of work or a 7.5 for 12 hours of work. Where's your energy better spent? That's going to depend a lot on the guy. (of course, if you're very good at one of this and not the greatest at the other, your numbers may be more skewed than this... maybe you can get 6.5s from online and only 7s from real life. Or you get 8s in real life and can't do better than 5.5s online. It'll be a different story if either's the case for you)

Regarding quality, I was able to hide my poor fundamentals online by taking deceptively good photos. Doing this, I got some exciting ladies with e.g. lots of interesting interests, a passion for art or science, a well-directioned career, lots of intelligence etc. out on dates. I found that being an interesting guy yourself can actually get you quite far online. They weren't ugly either. In my daygame adventures, I have found that a guy is totally at the mercy of his fundamentals. If he does not look good, the woman he approaches will feel charmed and happy at his direct opener, but then hit him with "thank you for that; I have to go" very soon. Posture, voice, eye contact, dress etc. has, for me, only served to improve the reception to the direct opener. It hasn't turned a no girl into a yes girl, but rather turned a no girl into a polite and happy no girl. And there "I have to go" girls were much less exciting than the ones I find online! The point is that maybe an interesting, successful or socially savvy guy can do better online than he would in real life, where only his fundamentals, and none of those other things matter.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I'm the opposite from you. I haven't had the experience of having met an intelligent, successful, passionate, stable woman who also looked good over online. I've met some who were seemingly the earlier stuff, but not particularly attractive. And plenty of attractive (a handful of very attractive) ones who were dead broke, batshit crazy, tattooed, single mothers, etc.

On the other hand, I've met a lot of beautiful, successful, intelligent, highly educated women who weren't broken/crazy via both night and day game. Lots of women with master's degrees (a strong requirement for me to consider a girl for a girlfriend role). I almost seem to have a magnet for them.

I can imagine if my experience was reversed to yours, I'd be gung-ho about online too! We seem to have opposite experiences here.

Thirdly, you do indeed find more victimized or eccentric ladies online. But consider that not all ladies are open to going on a date with a guy who they met on the street. If we restrict to the ladies who are open to it, do you think that we might find a higher prevalence of eccentric or victimized ladies? Just something to consider.

Well, you get a higher percentage of high openness to new experiences, impulsiveness, romanticism, and other such characteristics among women you successfully cold approach. Less open, impulsive, romantic, etc. women in general are just more onguard to approaches by strangers and it's much harder to crack them before they excuse themselves and leave.

Yet, just like you note you do "indeed find more" victimized or eccentric chicks online, I doubt you'd find anyone who'll argue the same about, say, meeting girls on the street. Women who are nuts are easier no matter where you meet them, street, club, friends, or online. But their prevalence in online is at least an order of magnitude greater than what you'll find even with nightlife, which is itself an order of magnitude greater than what you'll find with daytime. Online serves as a concentrator for crazy as well. I don't want to pull numbers out of the air, but... if we say on average crazy girls make up 4 out of 100 women out and about during the daytime, and they are 2x as likely to be responsive to you, that means 8 out of 100 successful dates you secure via daytime will be nuts. Meanwhile if on average crazy girls make up 25 out of 100 women online (I think it's higher than this, but let's just say it's 1/4), and are 1.5x as likely to be responsive to you here, that means 38 out of 100 successful dates you secure via online will be nuts. I don't know what the real numbers are, but these numbers feel very roughly correct to me based on my experiences.

Anyway, this is only from my experience of doing direct daygame on the weekends. I have not tried other real life avenues yet. E.g. social circle could be a world of difference. Overall, I think that you're being too harsh on online.

Social circle's highly variable based on the circle... if you're in a nightlife after-party circle, a lot of nuts there, though probably not quite as bad as online. If you're in a feminist trannsexual LGBTQ+ circle, it's going to be worse than online. If it's just a normal cool people circle with attractive women with half-decent jobs where the circle doesn't tolerate messed up behavior you'll have few/no crazy people and can have higher odds of landing an attractive, sane, normal woman than anywhere else (though you won't have near the quantity of online or cold approach. All the big, high turnover social circles have much higher prevalences of crazy chicks, usually near the higher end of what you see with nightlife).

But yeah, sounds like we have different experiences. If online's working for you and you're specialized in it and happy with your results with it, I think that's a very excellent thing!

Chase

Aiden J's picture

Quantity alone is why online apps are better than direct approach in today's world. What are the odds you'll meet a girl who is very attractive, has her sh*t together, is smart, single, and has similar interests as you when you do direct approach? Probably very low. Online, however, you can and will probably meet that person. I did - I was in a 3 year relationship with a girl I met on Tidner. I had the most meaningful relationship with her compared to any girl I met offline. The sheer volume makes it so much more likely that you'll meet the type of girl you're looking for.

Every single girl is using an online dating app. Most just make themselves unseen when they're not using it.

@Joe London, you nailed it. I'm a pretty attractive male and I have tons of success online. I think looks is huge online, not anywhere near as important in direct approach. Also, I wonder how many women around Chase's age or women looking for guys his age are online. And cost/time is a huge factor. Going out to game is takes up way too much time and effort. Times are a changin' as they say. Very hot, very high value girls find online to be a safe and relable way for them to meet attractice, high value males. I have plenty of friends who are in long term relationships with people they met online and one of my best friends married a girl he met on an app.

Author
Chase Amante's picture

Aiden-

What are the odds you'll meet a girl who is very attractive, has her sh*t together, is smart, single, and has similar interests as you when you do direct approach? Probably very low.

The odds are actually pretty good.

Of course it depends on where you are meeting women. If you're looking for an intelligent gal with a good career and similar interests in the hip-hop club at 1 AM, probably not. If you're in an upscale lounge at 11 PM or you're at a café or transit stop in the higher end part of town, different story.

The sheer volume makes it so much more likely that you'll meet the type of girl you're looking for.

Confused me until I realized you meant 'concentration'. As in "the concentration of single-and-looking women online beats anywhere you can meet women offline" which is true.

"Likely you'll meet the type of girl you're looking for" is going to depend if the kind of women you're looking for are findable online. I can't say I've met a woman I want anything more than a one-night stand with off online. And my buddies who've had relationships with online gals, the consensus after they break up seems to be "Yeah, no more relationships with girls from online." But if you're looking for something that more closely aligns with the type of women who are online, you may have a different experience.

Every single girl is using an online dating app. Most just make themselves unseen when they're not using it.

A few years ago guys used to say "Every single girl goes out to bars and goes clubbing."

Guys who hook up with lots of married women tend to say "Every single married woman cheats."

Guys who are enmeshed in a scene and don't go outside it much tend to have blinders on to women who exist outside it. There's a huge swath of women who never touch dating apps beyond downloading them on their phones, swiping a few times, then ignoring them. Many women turn the dating app on when they're bored or lonely or newly single, get messages from a few guys, get annoyed/disgusted, then turn them back off. I cannot tell you how many women I have met who have tried dating apps but "have never met anyone through it yet." Some of them may be lying, but most aren't. Women in general are pretty open about having used an app these days if they have.

Every single girl has tried an online dating app. Many women have never met a guy off it in real life (and aren't motivated to).

The most recent Pew survey is from 2016, and to the question of "Have you ever used an online dating site and/or mobile dating app?" 27% of 18-24 y/os said yes, and 22% of 25-34 y/os said yes. Put another way, in 2016, 73% of 18-24 y/o Americans and 78% of 25-34 y/o Americans had never used online dating or a dating app.

I'm sure the numbers have gone up significantly in the past three years. The "Ever tried?" numbers I'd guess might be in the 50-60% range now. The "using right now" or "have ever gotten a date off of" numbers will be a lot lower, of course.

There's one other thing to consider. Something close to 80% of Tinder's userbase is male. So while a sizeable portion of the populace is using dating apps, most of these are male.

There's still plenty of quantity on dating apps. The concentration is high. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking all or even most women are on them... because most aren't.

Also, I wonder how many women around Chase's age or women looking for guys his age are online.

Haha... well, I've had many lovely conversations with women "my age." But I certainly don't date them. Past a certain point women's looks begin to degrade, and their behavior when single changes in some less-than-desirable ways. That's another odd thing about online dating though as you get older, though -- age plays a significantly more prominent role in sorting and choosing than it does in real life. Of my (male) friends who use dating apps, I've seen them fairly consistently have to lie about their ages on apps before to not get automatically sorted out of the younger women, placed in a bin with women their age (whom they would not date).

That said, all the disadvantages of online/apps we've discussed in this article and in the comments applied every bit when I was 20, 23, and 27 as they do now that I'm in my middle 30s.

The apps have increased in popularity over the passed decade. But the overall use is still the same, and the patterns are still the same. The only major difference I see now is there's less of a stigma attached to it. But there's less of a stigma attached to a lot of things these days...

Chase

Jamesstu's picture

Great article Chase!

Quick question in regards to online dating. Do you have a message strategy you would recommend using? I’m familiar with your texting strategies but given this is a different platform I’m curious to hear your approach on this.

Thanks for everything you do!

- James

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