The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 122: The Unseen And Horrifying Knock On Effect Of Dating Apps On Our Society - Scott Galloway

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

In this moment, professor and author Scott Galloway discusses how technology has taken over dating and the impact of this. Traditionally, a third of couples met via work, another third through friends and a final third at school, however dating apps have completely taken over the dating market. This change to dating has had dramatic impacts specifically for young men, as the men who are in the top 10% of attractiveness attract 90% of female attention. This has led Scott to the belief that online dating has been great for the top 10% of attractive men, OK for the top 50% and a total disaster for bottom 50%. These bottom 50% of men are effectively shut out of the dating market and can have devastating impacts for society. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/Q7GUorgx9Bb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Scott: https://twitter.com/profgalloway

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. What do you make of dating apps? Well, I think my advice to young people would be to do it all. You know, it's how people meet. It used to be how people made it, if you will, is that it used to be a third work, a third friends, and a third school.

Now it's well above 50% online. So the majority of relationships are beginning online for people your age. And it's very efficient. But what happens when technology comes into any sector is it consolidates it. It becomes a winner-take-most market. So whether it's e-commerce, social media, search engines, once technology comes into it, you have one company that owns 50% of all online retail, two-thirds of all social, and 93% of search. So technology has come into mating with dating apps. And it's created a winner-take-all or winner-take-most dynamic, which is somewhat unhealthy. And it plays out like something like this. Women are interested in men based on three criteria. The first is their ability to signal

resources. The second is intelligence. And the third is kindness. It doesn't matter how rich or how smart you are. If you're an asshole or you're not kind, people eventually don't want you as a mate. And unfortunately online, it's very difficult to signal two and three. So you can signal one.

And when everyone has access to everyone, women who have a much finer filter for mating, because the downside of sex is so much greater for them if they get pregnant, so they have much finer filter. They end up all being drawn or expressing interest to a much smaller group of individuals. So what the dynamic is you have 50 men on Tinder, 50 women on Tinder, 46 of the women will express

all of their interest to just four men, which leaves 46 men vying for the attention of just four women. So if you apply the Gini coefficient to online dating, it's got the same Gini coefficient as income inequality in Venezuela. So mating inequality is greater than income inequality in Venezuela. And what it leads to is what I call Porsche polygamy. And that is that men who are able, who are the top 10% in terms of attractiveness online get 90% of the interest. So that does not lead to good behavior or establishing long-term relationships. Kind of 50 to 90 percentile do okay, but the bottom half of attractiveness of men based on online attractiveness are totally shut out of the market. And as a result, in America, one in three males under the age of 30 has not had sex in the last 12 months. And I find people hear the term sex and their mind goes different places.

I think of it as the key step to an elemental foundation of any society and that is relationship. So in the US, what's happened with online dating is it's amazing for the top 10% of attractiveness of men. It's okay for the top half. It is a disaster for the bottom half. And when I say attractiveness, I mean by very crude metrics. So if your Tinder profile, I went to MIT, I just started at KKR, and my Rolex accidentally is visible in my profile picture, and I'm geolocated living in Manhattan or living in Beverly Hills, you're gonna get a massive amount of attention. The bottom half, who are not able to express anything

other than wealth, which they may not have, are totally shut out of the market. And the knock-on effect here is that we're producing too many of what is the most dangerous person in the world, and that is a young, broken, alone man. So the guy who attacked Salman Rushdie recently in the US, that wasn't about the fatwa, that was about a young man living in his mother's basement.

When you hear about mass shooters in the US, you know who they are before you know who they are. So we are producing an enormous cohort of economically and emotionally non-viable men. And I think it's bad for society. I think it creates an existential risk for us. I think women, as a result, don't have as many, find there just aren't as many economically or emotionally valuable men as they would like. Women are graduating at double the rates of college as men now. For every one male graduate in the next five years of college, there's going to be two women. And you think, well, okay, it's time women leveled up. They're finally getting their due.

Okay. But this has, just realize this has huge societal impacts because women made socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. In some, women with college degrees typically aren't interested in men without college degrees. So we're seeing less household formation, lower birth rates, and these things usually stunt an economy. So I think it's a big issue. And again, I think it comes down to providing more opportunity for young people in general. I think if you had sort of gender specific affirmative action towards men, it would just become so politicized and heated that it wouldn't be worth it. I think you need a massive

leveling up of all young people that I think will disproportionately help young men. How do we get those bottom 50% of young men laid? I think you need to make them first and foremost more economically viable. I think more job opportunities. I think it builds confidence. I think you need to get them out of the house. I think it's vocational programs.

I think it's opportunities to go to college or get some sort of certification. I think it's thingsational programs. I think it's opportunities to go to college or get some sort of certification. I think it's things as basic as social service or more opportunities for them to get together. Community. Yeah, and I think it's a certain amount of education that embrace some of the things that are wonderful be about being a man.

Being aggressive is fine. Be physically fit and strong. I think we're blessed with, and this is true of men and women. I'm a big fan. I believe the forward-looking indicator of your success is the amount of time you spend sweating versus watching other people sweat.

Any person under the age of 30, man or woman should be able to walk into any room and think if shit got real, I could kill and eat everybody or outrun them, one or the other. And it's not about being ripped. It's not about being skinny. it's not about being skinny, it's about being a stronger version of yourself.

You'll be happier, less prone to depression, more attractive to other mates, you'll be kinder because you will feel more confident. So I think embracing physical fitness, young people have one thing that's terrible about young people is they've gotten unhealthier consistently the last 50 years. I think social service,

and I think figuring out institutions and means, whether it's school or social service, so they can meet each other, develop friendships, fall in love, have more opportunities to have, not only make relationships, but have guardrails. Young men need guardrails. They need a girlfriend, a job to tell them, no, you need to put on a shirt and get into work.

No, you can't get high and drunk every night. No, if you wanna continue to have sex with me, you need to get your shit together. I think that's really important for a young man, especially young men and young women need it as well, but just not as much. So I think what you have is a generation of young men that have no motivation, no guardrails.

They get their dope hit of addiction on Robin Hood. They don't have the mojo to get out there and meet women as much because they're watching so much porn. They get this illusion that they have some sort of worth or affirmation when they say angry things on social media that they get rewarded for. They start blaming other people. Specifically, they start blaming women and they become much more prone to misogynistic content. They start believing in conspiracy theory. They're less likely to believe in climate change.

And some, they become just really shitty citizens. And we're producing just a massive amount of these individuals. And the scary part is we'll just ignore the weirdo and put them in the corner. The problem is the government doesn't ignore them because we're very misogynistic when it comes to our elected leaders.

In the US, we've been producing more female college graduates than male college graduates for the last 40 years. But still only 28% of our elected representatives are female. People, societies, men and women conflate leadership quality with height and depth of voice. So we will always, at least in the US for a long time, elect more men.

And who do these men appeal to? How do they get elected? They appeal to this cohort of conspiracy-driven, misogynistic, anti-government young men. These young men will always have over-representation in government, which leads to elected leaders saying that they believe the elections are rigged, that they stoke nationalist fears, that blame immigrants. I mean, really, really hateful stuff. And so not only are these individuals dangerous and unproductive, but what's even more unproductive is they will have a disproportionate voice in our politics because the easiest way to get elected is to tap into the tribal instincts or motives of this cohort.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm interrupting this broadcast with a very special announcement. Two years ago, I started writing a book based on everything I've learned from doing this podcast and meeting all of the incredible people that I've had the privilege of meeting, but also from my career in business, from running my marketing businesses, my software business, my investment fund, and everything else that I've been doing in business and life. And from this, I've created a brand new book called The Diary of a CEO, The 33 Laws for Business and Life. If you want to build something great, or become great yourself, like the guests that I've sat here and interviewed, I ask you, please, please, please read These 33 Laws, the book I always should have written. If you like this

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