TRIGGERnometry - The Dark Side of Dating Apps - James Bloodworth

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Journalist and author, James Bloodworth joins us again to talk about his thoughts and findings on the modern dating economy. Check out his podcast on the subject: The Modern Dating Economy.  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You go to the mainstream for dating advice, say, and it's garbage. It's just be yourself. It's like, it's just this disinified nonsense. Don't worry, you'll meet someone eventually. Like, fate will take care of it. Just be yourself. Just be nice. And then you go to the college party or something.

And it isn't the nice guys who are like hooking up with the, with the girls that you were into or whatever. And it's, then you feel like you've been lied to. And then you go in search of pickup artistry or the manosphere or you look for things. outside of the mainstream because it feels like the mainstream is either lying to you with some agenda or just some lack of understanding and then you gravitate to alternatives and some of those alternatives are not necessarily good for you you can become radicalized by that. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisholm

and this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant and returning guest today is a journalist and author James Blalbuth. Welcome back man. Lovely to be right. It's been a few years since we had you on. We talked about one of your books which is hired, and that was about how big companies abused staff, particularly we talked about Amazon and Uber and others. And you've been writing a lot of stuff since you've written another book,

and of course you're working on another one, and you've written a lot of articles. And one of the areas of focus, I think, has been particularly masculinity, dating, all that sort of stuff. So it's good to have you back. We wanted to talk to you about dating, first of all, because that is a world that neither of us is particularly involved in anymore.

We're in sales. Yeah, we've upgraded. So it seems to me, just as an outside observer, reading about it and seeing that the way the technology has changed that whole aspect of life has just been extraordinary.

Tell us about that. Yes, I mean, I think dating apps have changed the romantic sphere in the same way that social media is changing politics. And we hear a lot about how social media is changing politics, how social media has made us more adversarial, say Twitter, the way we behave on Twitter. We don't necessarily behave in real

life. I think dating apps are changing the way. The technology we see is just this tool that we use, that we input our desires into the dating app, into our smartphone, and then it just comes out the other end and selects those people for us. Whereas I think, as we've learned with other forms of technology, the technology itself shapes the thing that comes out the other side. So it's not just a kind of neutral platform. It actually funnels our kind of desires into these narrower directions or it actually changes the way we interact with each other quite profoundly because romance is obviously, you know, a central part of people's lives. And so I don't think we take that issue seriously enough. And when you talk about these changes, what is happening? Because one of our former guest,

Mike Driver, who's a business guy and he was just saying, you know, one of the things that will happen as a result with dating apps is you're going to get different people matching up together and getting married and having children than you would have done in the past. So you're actually going to get different people being in relationships than you would have done in the past. But what other impact is it having? Because we talk about Twitter and politics, it's very clear I think that social media is having a hugely detrimental impact on our ability to have conversations and all of that.

What's been the impact on dating and romance from those acts? I think the first thing that dating app technology does is it basically formalizes preferences, which may have been arbitrary before or they may not have had like central importance. So we see something, we see this with both men and women. So we see, for example, women having a preference very commonly on apps for men six foot. You know, there's a setting six foot or over. There's even racial preferences on some apps or that have been in the past where people can screen out people of different, different ethnicities, which we can all see how that could be potentially problematic.

That's the one for me. But it's, I mean, the author Mia Levitin wrote a really interesting book about Tinder, and she went on lots and lots of Tinder dates to write this book. And she said, you know, if you put all the people she'd ever dated in real life on an app, she'd probably swipe right. You know, she'd probably reject most of them because there was something different. It was the chemistry or something else. It wasn't these arbitrary criteria.

So I think trying to kind of funnel our dating preferences through those narrow criteria, that can breed lots of resentment. So we see that in some of the in-sale community, for example, in the Manosphere, where because in the past those kind of, there were those kind of areas where you could meet someone more organically, those, especially with the pandemic, those things have kind of have been kind of rolled back to some extent. It's harder to do that. and we're encouraged to do everything through a smartphone app, everything through a dating app,

organize our lives through these apps. And that can be much harder for it if you don't know how to present yourself, for example, if you don't have an online brand or something and can't sell yourself online very well like that, or you don't match some of these arbitrary criteria, then it can lead to lots of resentment. And we also see the volume of rejection.

So dating apps on the one hand, there is a lower bar to, I mean, when I was kind of in my late, teens, early 20s. I had no success at dating. I lived in the countryside where my ground. I was very shy. Didn't, didn't do very well. But I could tell myself this story, like ego protection story that, well, if I wanted to, if I wanted to get a girlfriend, I could. If I wanted to go and talk to that girl, but I just don't feel like it. No. Whereas I think with apps, there's a low bar. You can put yourself on there very easily. But the sheer volume of rejection, it creates this kind feedback loop of rejection which kind of impacts that age when you're forming an identity.

So that constant negative feedback loop I think can be very detrimental to young men and women, but we're tending to see more of the consequences from men because men tend to act out when they're resentful about things. So you see like violence or these forums with with misogyny and not just misogyny, but but people generally, men generally in a very depressed state lamenting the, the, their results on dating apps. Doesn't it also encourage the superficiality amongst people? Because, look, you know, everybody has their own attributes. And there are some people who may not be as physically attracted,

but they may be charismatic, they may be funny, et cetera, et cetera. But just reducing it to a photo. I mean, that just encourages us all just to go by what people look like. Yeah, I think it's, I think dating apps and I include Instagram when I talk about this, because I think Instagram, in a way, is like the world's biggest dating app in some ways, because I think a lot of people use it, use it in that way. And it's, and dating apps kind of came around the same time. And it's, yeah, it's all about presentation.

So you could be like a great person. You could be a great person. You could just not be photogenic, for example, which is kind of a real thing. And you just don't know how to present yourself in this new digital world through a screen. You don't have someone who can take good photos of you. You just don't know, you just don't understand that vocabulary of how to do that. then you're kind of left behind. And yeah, it is arbitrary. And like you say, sometimes you meet someone and they may not tick certain logical boxes, but they have a

certain vibe or you have a chemistry with them. And that's often more important than commonalities, which is something you tend to more select people for a job or something. Yeah, and it also incentivizes people to be dishonest because they know, for instance, that if they say that their age is, I don't know, 45, they're less likely to get, date. So why not say you're 38? Yeah. I mean, yeah. And it's, but again, because you have these like arbitrary, uh, criteria. So if, I mean, I use this example because I've asked female friends before about, I asked them about

their experience on dating apps because the male and female experience is very different. And lots of them, yeah, they do have this, this, uh, six must be six for whatever. And then I'll ask them, hope so have you ever dating someone? shorter than this or older or young in this. And they always will have in real life. But then they kind of think about it. And it's like, well, but they're getting bombarded women typically on apps with so much attention that you have to feel

to be like some way. So perhaps that's why. There's one last question I want to ask, which is a cross-section between dating and politics that we've talked about. Because I've now seen online, like people say, never date a Tory. And then you've got these sort of right-of-centre, right-leaning dating platforms. Do you? Yeah, yeah.

They've got the right, not on them, just making it care, ladies. But you just go, this is a recipe for disaster in society. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, in terms of politics, I think people are forgetting how to disagree respectfully. So forgetting how to disagree, and as we've talked about before, still be friends with someone, still get on with someone. I feel like, I don't know what it is, and I don't want to just dump on younger people, but I feel like there's...

Please do. fucking hate me. I feel like people... Just because we're no longer younger people, sorry for these. Yeah, no, it's true, though. Tragic. But I feel like it's, I mean, generations, you know,

our generation is true to some extent, but I feel like people are becoming worse accepting criticism. Yeah. Taking it as something personal. You know, it's not something you're doing or saying it's just something, it's about you personally.

And I think that's making it much harder to disagree respectfully. So when you, when you look for, someone on a dating up, you're looking for someone who shares the exact same beliefs as you do. But I also think it's part of the, there's this idea now that romance is, it's like the Disney idea that romance is the center of everything that your romantic partner has to fulfill every one of your needs. So you have to be able to maintain like a strong sexual desire for them and at the same time be able to go, go home and debate kind of Marxism, Leninism at

the kitchen table all evening or whatever. but it's like whereas whatever gets you hard i think um yeah i mean i think i think you know you have to compartmentalize those things a bit more like you shouldn't expect one person just to fulfill every like agree with you about everything fulfill all of your your knees you should have different yeah people for that it's very limiting as well i mean i disagree with my wife and a lot of stuff francis with his girlfriend and pretty much everything yeah they do debate marxism lindenism a lot you mentioned that the female dating experience is very different to the male one. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so I mean, I think, first of all, I think, well, to take it the opposite way around, I think it is very different. And I think that leads to like a lack of empathy between the sexes is about the corresponding experiences. So you'll see online. So I follow a lot of quite a good in-cells online. Part of my research, I say that. now I kind of chat to them and befriend them. But, and you'll see them complaining and stuff.

And then you'll see also lots of women like dismiss that and say, oh, they don't face like potential violence when they're on a date and stuff, which is true, but it's, you know, there's not a limit on misery. People can, two groups of people can be miserable in different ways. And with women, there tends to be bombarded with attention, unwanted attention. It's not just on apps, but in life in general, you know, on the tube or something or walking them in the street. and there is, due to the biological fact that men are physically strong of the women,

there's always on some level that implicit, like, danger of threat of violence, which I think men often don't understand when they talk to women, that the first thing a woman's going to be doing is trying to get a sense, is if I'm alone with this person, will, are they a threat to me? Would they be a threat to me? But so that's one side of it. So, you know, a woman goes on a date. she has to screen the guy,

is she going to end up with a head on a pike at the end of the end of a night, whereas I've never thought that when I've gone out on a date. Whereas men, they tend to, so on dating apps, for example, 80% of men tend to, you know,

that's the kind of rough figure, tend to be just getting rejections, like getting one or two matches very occasionally and just getting just volumes and volumes of rejection. And they then transpose that onto real life and think, well, this is, this is if this is the reality on dating apps, I'm never going to, I'm just going to be alone forever.

Well, it's not really true because if you don't know how to present yourself on a dating app, it doesn't mean that in real life, which is very different, you could not meet someone and hit it off with someone and have chemistry. But people transpose the online experience increasingly because we spend so much of our lives on these apps and online to the real world, where it's not, it isn't the same. But I think that's a danger and that radicalizes lots of these men in these, in certain corners of the manosphere. We'll talk about that in the seg, but we love a bit of doom and bloom here at Trigonometry, but is there something positive to all of this?

In what sense? In any sense? Is there any way in which... About dating apps? Yeah, the existence of dating apps is making our world better, our lives easier, dating, you know, in some ways better. Is there a benefit? Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's all bad.

I think, so I've met people and had had... great time and I've met them from dating apps. And I think it allows kind of cross-cultural engagement as well to some extent. It allows people who are in maybe a much more conservative family setting to then branch out of that and see that another kind of world is possible and other experience is possible. So I do think that they, and you can also kind of hone in on what you actually do want in a relationship. So sometimes those preferences aren't arbitrary. They're born of experience or bad experiences or good experiences. So you can really hone in on that and be like, I do not want this.

And then you can screen those people out on a dating app. So it's quite efficient. So I don't think it's all bad, but I still think that meeting people organically is just much more, you get a much more accurate sense of who the other person is and whether you find that person attractive. Because the big error, I think, with thinking that dating apps will solve our issues, will solve the kind of romance question for us or make it much more streamlined and it's you're treating it again like it like a job interview whereas you know you know my my best friends you know

I could tick all the boxes about our compatibility but it's like I don't want to sleep with them it's like that's that's that's a logical thing but um you know sexual attraction romance and desire those things are that's not a choice that's not like a logical rational decision it's something you feel emotionally on which goes back to something deep biological kind of level. And it's also that old adage. You know, opposites attract. What you think you want in a partner isn't necessarily the things that you actually need.

For instance, if you're a chaotic, creative person, then maybe what you actually need is someone who's a little bit more stable, a little bit more rational, a little bit more calm. Even though in your heads you say, oh, I want a creative type. Yeah, no, I think one benefit I think of apps, funnily enough, is they allow you to kind of play the field a bit more if you know if you can present yourself okay you do okay on apps it allows you to kind of meet more people and that's important i think in terms of um you don't like sometimes what you think you like is not actually what you do like when you like when you're younger you think you might like something in a partner then you meet someone with those qualities and you realize actually

as you say it's not always necessarily something that's beneficial to you so but again you have to meet the people in real life it's uh putting it just into a filter on an app it's uh it doesn't really get you anywhere because until you meet someone you may be they may be on paper your perfect match but then there'd just be no spark hey francis do you like privacy of course i do i don't want the feds knowing my business in case i get whacked because i got too close to the truth the man is everywhere and truth seekers like me need to be careful mate you're a burnout former I'm a primary school teacher who spends too much time on I'm a fat incel.com. Just because you read that the world is run by a cabala lizards doesn't mean it's actually true.

I've never said the world is run by a cabala lizards, but they are definitely tracking my online activity. Well, if you are worried about your data being mined by big tech and sold off to third parties all around the globe, then start mail is the email provider for you. The email accounts you use aren't free. They're mining your accounts and email for data as well. we speak. This data can then be sold on to a whole host of different companies. Startmail keeps your messages private. Every email can be encrypted even if the recipient doesn't use encryption. When you delete an email in Startmail, it's gone forever.

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Go to StartMail.com slash trigger. That's StartMail with a T, S-T-A-R-T-T-Mail.com forward-slash trigger 50% off your first year. Startmail.com slash trigger. Don't let the lizards get you. And it's also as well, I read this statistic and tell me if this is incorrect, that people who meet on dating apps are far more likely to break up than if you meet in college and if you meet in the workplace. It creates a far less stable relationship. Yeah, I mean, I think part of that is there's the kind of choice paradox with dating apps. I think that that is a, an issue where the grass is always greener potentially because whereas in the past I think where

there was more scarcity i think scarcity is a bad thing to view relationships with a mentality of scarcity because you might be you might stay in toxic relationships and because you think i'm never going to meet anyone else but the flip side of that is the choice paradox where you feel like i could just go on an app and meet someone else so the the smallest kind of thing that comes up in a relationship you just walk out the door whereas actually if you'd you know you have to to work at every relationship, even with family members. You can't just, it's treating it like another part of consumer capitalism that you just have this, like a product, you just throw it out when you discard it when you've, when you've had enough of it and you don't work it's available.

Yeah. And I think on it, there's, there's kind of a deeper kind of connection that you have to build with someone to have a sustained relationship. And that involves working through, uh, disagreements, working through things that are called sometimes red flags, because some of those things can be worked through, and actually investing in the relationship, not just treating it as something completely disposable. And there's also the addiction element as well, because you know, let's be fair, it's quite an addictive way to live, a new experience, new person, oh, someone swipe left or right or whatever it may be on my photo, Bing, dopamine hit. Yeah, and again, the big tech company.

companies, they're not, you know, they don't get rich off happily ever afters. They're doing this to turn a profit. There's, so hinge are lying to us, James. What's that? Hinge a lying to, I mean, yeah, I mean, they're not, they're not doing it to, it's not some altruistic thing. They're doing it to make a profit. And, you know, I think we've seen the same with the gig economy with, with, say,

when I was driving for Uber, as research for my previous book, they gamify it to keep you out on the road driving for longer. And the apps, you know, we don't know what's input into the algorithm. We don't know whether it's actually showing us who would be our most suitable matches or whatever. We do know from whistleblowers at some of the apps that the algorithm, you know, they sometimes game the algorithms to get us to upgrade. So when someone upgrades on an app, say, to get more matches, they then stop paying the upgrade and then they take away more of our matches.

so they feel like they're only getting matches when they've paid the extra upgrade fee. Like I don't think we're outsourcing many of our aspects of our lives to algorithms run by a small number of people in Silicon Valley, for example. I don't think that's necessarily something we should just do. I think there's like nobody is new, nobody who creates these things is completely, you know, they're not creating them on a value-free basis.

It's not neutral. They have their own values that inputting into that. for the benefit of their company. And we should be careful, I think, in terms of how we engage with those technologies. Or we should at least think about it. That, you know, this may be someone else's framework they're imposing on us when we open an app. It's a really good point. And one of the things you've referenced a fair bit is the Manusphere.

Let's talk about men a little bit, and boys particularly, because you're writing a book about it. And correct me on this timeline. but sort of around the time of Brexit and Trump, there started to be this conversation about, you know, Jordan Peterson became a big figure and suddenly everyone was concerned about men and men acting out and toxic masculinity became this phrase.

And then you started hearing about the in-cells and then there were these people and then dating apps and all of this seems to be, there's like an emerging narrative about it and there's genuine problems emerging. in that thing. And I remember Cassie Jay's film, The Red Pill. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, I have, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So all of this was kind of happening in that time. And the conversation has moved on a little bit, but I feel like the issues are only getting more concerning, not less in time. Where are we with men and men acting out, as they say?

I feel like with this subject, there's, so I'm just reading Nina Powers book on masculinity, which I think is very interesting, a very interesting engagement with the topic. I haven't finished it yet. But I think books like that, I feel, are quite constructive, whereas I've read other books on this subject, which I just feel are deliberately inflammatory. They take the worst examples from different subcultures

and define the entire subculture by those unpleasant people. I feel like the debate, I feel like there are two debates on this. So we can come here and I feel like we can talk about it properly and we could have a good discussion on it. Chris Williamson, you know, his podcast, they also have an interest in discussions on that. And Narmacates's podcast too, the InSail podcast. But then you go to like liberal spaces and it's like two completely different conversations. And I feel like both sides could learn something.

But I feel like the right does engage more with, well, I'm not saying the right, this is like a right space. but I feel like those outside of the mainstream tend often. What's interesting here, James. Those outside of the mainstream tend to be better often at engaging with the mainstream as well because you can't really avoid it. That's a good framing. Mainstream and not mainstream, I think, is the right way. Yeah, that's a better framing.

You're right. But I feel like I can come here or I've been on Chris's podcast or the InSale podcast and talk about this issue and we can talk about the nuances of why these young men are being radicalized and it's not all just like violent, misogynist men. Some people, it's just men who are very depressed. But then none of that, if I try and bring that conversation into liberal spaces, it tends to be, you won't get commissioned for the most part anyway, but it tends to be, oh, you're just making excuses for in sales, you're just making excuses. Oh, like you're just saying poor men. And there's, it's just a, it seems like a nuisance.

Why can't we talk about the gender pay gap? That's the response you get. Don't work. We shouldn't talk about it. Let's talk about maternity. leave and things like that, which is fine. I think we should talk about that, but I think we can do several things at once, this idea that you, is not a zero-sum thing, you know, if we talk about, say, the declining numbers of men proportionally going into higher education, which I think

we should talk about that. That doesn't mean that we can't talk about things affecting women as well. It just, there seems to be this zero-sum mentality that you have oppressor and oppressed. Yeah. And therefore, if you talk about male homelessness, for example, It's somehow a distraction from talking about women's issues, which I think is ridiculous. I think on that particular issue, that mainstream space that you talk about, they're stuck a little bit in that oppressor-oppressed dynamic. And really, the thinking is reparations. That's what they're thinking about. They're thinking how, the men have had it.

This is their version, in my opinion. Men have had it great. Women have had it terribly. Now, finally, we're making some progress. we've got a bit of a microphone, we can talk about it, it's time to get our own back, it's time to advance our interest. And I think they're not thinking about it in a holistic, constructive way, which is what I'd like to do here in this conversation.

So why are a minority of men, but a growing minority of men, switching off that mainstream dating society thing? Why is it happening? Several reasons, obviously, is a huge topic. But for example, I think let's say to start with dating, for example, there have been huge changes economically in terms of equality between men and women technologically in recent decades, which have meant that the assumptions of our parents' generation and grandparents' generation in terms of romance have gone out the window. So, I mean, anyone who's ever tried to go to someone older for dating advice will know how useless that stuff usually is. It's the way they met has, and even monogamous, monogamy and monogamous marriage is, you know, the numbers doing that are way lower than they were back in our parents' generation. People can pick, women in particular can pick from a select from a much wider pool of potential suitors now, whereas in the past, due to the fact that they had less economic, women had less economic freedom, they tended to, people tended to marry locally anyway.

women tended to they tended to need to marry someone who could financially support them because there was no guarantee that they'd be able to earn a ways themselves for example

so men who might not have much else going for them had the fact that they could they had the whip hand over women in terms of in terms of finances so they could use that to control women within relationships and also find a partner like that dating apps allow give women more freedom to choose from a wider

pool of people. So if you're an attractive young woman living in some village now, you can get, you know, some the back end of nowhere, you can still go on Instagram, build up an Instagram, throw up a load of attractive pictures and you'll get high status, quote, quote, men offering to take you out. So therefore, you know, the guy down the street who has the steady job in the office or whatever is suddenly less attractive propositions. I think that's, that's a, that's a thing. And I don't say that's necessarily like a good or bad thing. It's just something that's happened. And yeah, I think also men's place in work via work has changed. Men's relationship with work with production has changed massively. So that was hired, something I looked at

with hired. Men in the past, working class men in particular would, a lot of identity would come from work, from making things, from producing stuff, from those industries. that existed. Those have kind of been wiped away and we tend to, we've been sold this idea that you should form your identity through what you consume rather than what you produce. But that's much more ephemeral, I think. It's much shallower. It's much more easy to kind of, well, it doesn't have the deep roots. If you're producing something, if you're making something, there's a certain pride of a sense of accomplishment that you take out into the world in terms of confidence. Whereas I think for a lot of men, they don't know,

place in the world because that's no longer there they're no longer the breadwinner they're no longer the someone who has pride in being say a minor or working in industry or whatever it is um it's much harder to get that it's just a wage slave in some like corporate environment you just you do feel kind of emasculated a little bit um some boss like just ordering you around all the time not that that didn't happen in the old industries but there is something there's a it's eroded a strong sense of male identity, I think, and couple that with the transformation in the dating market brought about by these various things, it can be very confusing. And you don't have mainstream society.

You go to the mainstream for a dating advice, say, and it's garbage. It's just be yourself. I remember when I was a teenager, I'd see that stuff. And it's just this disinified nonsense. Don't worry, you'll meet someone eventually. Like, fate will take care of it. Just be yourself. Just be nice.

And then you go to the college party or something. And it isn't the nice, the nice guys who are like hooking up with the, with the, with the, with the, with the girls that you were into or whatever. And it's, and it's, then you, you feel like you've been lied to. And then you go in search of pickup artistry or the manosphere or you, you look for things outside of the mainstream because it feels like the mainstream is either lying to you with some agenda, either from the date, the corporations like the dating apps or, or just some agenda or just some lack of understanding.

and then you gravitate to alternatives. And some of those alternatives are not necessarily good for you. You can become radicalized by that. I was watching that documentary. What was it? The Tinder. Swindler. The Tinder Swindler, exactly.

And that was someone who obviously went around and exploiting women. But what was very interesting about it is the guy presented himself as a billionaire. And the moment he did that, there was always... these women wanting to go to date him wanting to sleep with him. But the problem is, right, it, look, but the problem is, is number one, as my girlfriend pointed out, why would a billionaire be on Tinder? Yeah. Okay, so number two, so number one, that's a problem. And number two, we all want this unattainable lifestyle. We want the billionaire. We want to live this Instagram lifestyle. So the guy down the street with a regular job who might be a nice guy, who might be a good guy,

solid, dependable, have a good, it's just never going to be able to compete with the fantasy. Yeah, I mean, the Tinnis Winner, it was a great documentary. It was really well done. But the, and I did feel sorry for the women, you know, being ripped off and stuff. But there was a part of me, which was also like, you could have just swiped for a normal, and a guy with a normal lifestyle. I mean, it's, if something's too good to be, looks too good to be true, pretty much always is.

And so, yeah, I think it said something interesting about people's expectations of the type of partner, you know, they deserve both men and women. I think that's a, I think an issue of, there's an issue of entitlement among both men and women that we've been kind of sold by consumer capitalism, whatever it is, that you deserve like the perfect Hollywood kind of fairy tale, romance and every aspect of your life should be perfect. So you see men acting out more destructively than women because men are much more likely to be violent and you do see you have this kind of residual misogyny which has just always been there anyway.

James, before we get into that, because I really want to ask you about the man as fair, can I ask you, you talked about how dating advice or whatever doesn't really work, particularly from all the generations. I suppose that if some, I was just thinking if someone asked me for, a man asked me how to get a girl. I'm going to ask you after the show. I can help you. Dr. KK. is going to sort you out. No. But I suppose the way I, what I would say, and it's probably completely inappropriate now, but is like, don't try to find a woman today, but work on yourself, on your job, on your personality, on your skills, on your body, whatever it is that you think is going to make you more attractive.

But really, for a man, it's about raising your status and upping your game, right? Is that still not something that's going to get you where you want to in the current dating environment? Yeah, I mean, I think that's your point is interesting because that's something that you do see people in, say, the Redpool community saying, you know, they go off the deep end by certain things, but there is that basic premise of self-improvement work on yourself, which I think is a good, a good starting point, becoming a better, but the mainstream doesn't really talk about that as much. Either it tends to tell you you're perfect as you are. You know, someone would like you for, who you are, which is, I mean, that is the message.

Oh, someone should like you for you. And it's just, yeah, but there's different versions of you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's, there's the, I know from, you know, I experienced grief recently. There's a version of me which came out then, which I wouldn't want to maintain, you know,

drinking at midday and, and, and just not really doing anything. It's like a temporary thing. But that's like one facet of, of me. Whereas you can be the person who's doing. stuff and yeah I think status can it's still massively important but in a way it's it's more important how you present yourself so you can have people who uh have status say this applied before dating apps as well say someone goes out to a bar and is chatting to someone and they're wearing like a Rolex and their first thing is oh do you like my Rolex or you know they're flashing

money that's very unattractive but then if someone discovers if the woman say discovers later on you know, they interact normally, then the woman finds out later on that he has some high-status thing. It seems more, it seems cooler. It's like, show don't tell. Yeah. But I think with dating apps, you have to know how to present yourself. And if you, you may be the, you may be Jeff Bezos or whatever. But if you don't know how to present yourself, then you're not going to do very well.

Yeah. I can't remember who it was that said, why be yourself when you can be someone actually worthwhile? I think. But to me, that's, that's always been the way. It's like you've got to get better, man. And particularly for a man, if you want success in any field, that's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to up your game. Simple as that.

But let's talk about some of the problems that we're starting to see that are coming out as a result of this. Because you talk about the manorcephir, you talk about incels. Is it a bigger problem or we're just talking about it more? And what exactly is the problem? No, I think disenfranchised men, essentially, who feel... They've got no shot. There's no chance. They're never going to get a girlfriend.

It's not going to happen. Is that how they feel? Yeah, it's this fatalistic, you know, forever, they're going to be forever alone is something you, it's over. You see the insales, you hear the insides saying it's just over, it's over, bro. I think it's wrong because I think, again, transposing experiences on apps to real life, whereas I think those of us who grew up kind of one foot in the digital world, one foot out of it. So my first mobile phone was like 17, I think. So younger it was kind of you grew up experiencing a different world.

I think people coming up now who've just had these experiences mediated by apps. I think that is storing a big problem because it's much harder to get those people to recognize that, you know, that's not the world. Like just turn the app off, go out, let's go out or something. Let's just leave the house. And it's not always as bad as it seems on apps. I think it is storing up a big problem, though. I think you're seeing this with some of the resentments that are specifically.

over from these communities occasionally. But I also think the mainstream is dealing with it very badly. It's not really, partly as a journalist, partly I think that's because there simply aren't the resources in journalism anymore. There's more kind of generalists who just will suddenly write about, say, the in-cell thing, having just looked at it for kind of 20 minutes before, read some stuff on it. And they're churning out these hot takes on it. And you just see inflammatory pieces, which aren't really interested in,

examining how this process of radicalisation happens, just as we do with other forms of extremism, it just tends to be like, oh, well, they're men, they're privileged, so let's just like shut them down or ban their groups. Yeah, pretend it's not happening. Isn't also the problem as well that society has become more feminine over the years? And that, look, and that goes right the way through education.

We could have a whole one-hour podcast about why education has become more feminine in a way it favors girls more. there's one simple statistic for the same for the same misdemeanor in school boys are far are far more likely to face severe discipline than girls for example that's interesting i didn't know that i know what you mean in terms of the labor market so uh the changes in the labor market for example have become more accommodating of women's uh i'd say innate skills on average anyway so it tends to be more service-facing jobs where skills like communication are valued more

more highly. So I think that's obviously had a massive impact, yeah. And there's also as well, we're not talking about the hormonal aspect of it. And a really interesting article that you wrote, I think it was in the Times. We talked about, you talked about low testosterone and the effect it's having on men. So let's explore that a little bit. What does it mean to have low testosterone in a scientific sense? And what are the implications for men? Yeah, so testosterone levels among men in, in developed countries tend to have gone down slightly in recent decades, I think it is. It's in my article anyway. But and there's no kind of...

Well, there's been a steady decline over many decades, hasn't there? And it's essentially, I mean, there are, there are, on the manosphere, there are kind of conspiracy theories about this. And there's also stuff that is a bit more plausible about kind of contamination of water supplies and stuff generally. Turning the frogs gay. Yeah. But a lot of this is kind of cultural things, really.

I don't think it's, yeah, I don't think there's a conspiracy. I think it's lifestyle and cultural factors. So we live more sedentary lifestyles, which is bad for your testosterone. We're much less likely to engage in physical activity. And I mean, this is why one of the first things during this article, I went to interview a doctor about who specializes in this. he's like the first thing you should do is like go to the gym and lift weights because it's you're mimicking some of the stuff you would have had to do in the past and that that kind of

improves your testosterone we don't get enough enough sleep uh because the kind of night night of the office culture basically uh the things we eat the certain processed foods and stuff all of this feeds the amount of time we we sit on a screen looking at a screen um all of this stuff contributes to having potentially low lower testosterone which has a hugely detrimental of effects on all sorts of things. People who are with low testosterone typically depressed. So it's not a good place to be. Hey, Constantine, do you believe every business needs cyber security to succeed? Yes, of course, because otherwise Uncle Vlad will hack the hell out of it.

Wouldn't that be a gross violation of international law? In Putin, Russia, we don't have law. Well, if you don't live in Russia, then pocket seam is the company for you. If you have a business that needs protected. from the unscrupulous elements of the internet, then make sure to check them out. Unscrupulous elements, that is no way to talk about my family. Pocket Seam also provides free resources if you follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you want to keep costs manageable, you can also pay for their services on credit.

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the reason is they're on low, they've got low testosterone. And actually, if they, you know, maybe took testosterone supplements or they went to the gym or changed their diet, they could completely change their lives. Yeah, I mean, and getting to, yeah, depression is often, the symptoms of low testosterone is often mistaken for depression. This was something that came up in, in my discussions with people who have been diagnosed with it. And taking testosterone is like a last resort. Lifestyle, like the legitimate doctors who do this, who work in this area, will always suggest testosterone is a last resort because you can risk infertility with that. But it's also, this is an area where you can't just tell whether someone has high,

hollow testosterone from appearance. We think it's, oh, well, they may appear very manly or they may. So I couldn't grow a beard very well until I was, well, only just now. I still have a patchy beard when it's growing. I couldn't manage even that to my mid-20s. And I was not like super, like, masculine in school, like playing rugby and stuff. But so I got my testosterone was actually like fine. It was a good level.

But then you have other people I spoke to. I interviewed for the article who you would never think that they had low testosterone. But they were, and it took them a long time to seek help because they were suffering with these problems. But they thought, you know, I can't be. it can't be this it'd be depression uh low low or non-existent libido um fatigue a brain fog uh these kinds of things um so it's worth i mean i think it's worth anyone uh especially i'm 39 now i think it's uh especially men around our age it's worth getting checked out if you're

feeling symptoms of low mood for example and what could affect could that be having on a broader section of society um i'm i'm i'm i'm I mean, more people who are depressed. It's probably not good. Yeah, and I think it's, the thing is, increasing your testosterone corresponds with actually living just a better lifestyle anyway. So I think going to the gym and lifting weights

and being healthier generally, I think that will improve all different aspects of your life. I think you're more likely as a man to meet a partner if you get in shape, get trim and stuff. It's like incrementally increases your odds a bit, doesn't it? No, when I read your article, like I said, I found it incredibly worrying. Because to me, you know, we talk about mental health and we talk about, you know, talking is important. And yes, of course it is.

But if you're not addressing the hormonal or the biological, then you're never going to, not sort the problem out, but deal with it effectively. Yeah, and I do think men and women deal with problems in a different way. So, yeah, I mean, we, It feels like, yeah, it feels like that's something that we have to pretend isn't really true. So I think for many women, like on average, I think there's great value in talking about things for the sake of talking about it. Yeah. Yes.

And you, you know, anyone who's been in a relationship, it's like knows that your partner doesn't necessarily want you to solve their problem. They just want to vent at you about it. And I think once you understand that, it makes relationships easier. I think as men, we tend to be, yeah, it's like, talk. into therapy and it's like, all right, talking, but I want her to give me like a roadmap so I can execute these steps and make the change that way. Like, to me, just talking about it, it doesn't, you know, we think of it like, where's the logical end point of it? Yeah. It needs to solve the problem as opposed to just be a process that you go through. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, man. So,

the thing, I'll be honest to you, I feel like we haven't really got deep enough into the, particularly the sort of like the Manosphere in-cell resentment world because I don't know anything about it. And what's going on there, James? Like, what is brewing under the surface that we don't know about? I just think, well, you have the formation of basically new ideologies, really. So, and conspiracy theories attach to them. And what are they? What are those ideologies?

One conspiracy theory, for example, I would call it a kind of a conspiracy theory. It comes from something real. So dating apps, we have the 80-20 rule, which is, you know, the pre-te. distribution rule, where, you know, it's commonly accepted in the stats better is at that on dating apps, it's like 20% of men, the Chad's so-called competing for 80% of women are competing for them, and then the other 80% of men are basically just being, like, ignored. And that is, that is roughly true on dating apps like Tinder and Hinge. But it becomes a conspiracy when it's transposed onto real life.

So when you have these black pillars, as they're called in the in-cell community, That's the ideology. They believe they'll never meet someone because they take that rule as something hard and fast. That there'll be, the 80-20 is 20% of men or less monopolizing every woman in the, well, 80% of women in the world or whatever. I think that's a conspiracy theory which leads people into these very misogynistic. Oh, women are just shallow. Women are just superficial. And these very misogynistic attitudes and it's a very simplistic view.

towards women. I think that's, um, that's quite dangerous. That creates breezes hatred. It's very deterministic that women are like this, men are like this. Stop seeing people as individuals. And, and when radicalization like that takes place and there is that this, now there's, you know, the black pill ideology, for example, um, very deterministic, very fatalistic, teaches people that there's, they have no hope that the art, it's like nihilism, basically. And nihilism is always, always can be, well, it's always dangerous. Especially for young men. Lash out is what's the point.

So what's the counter argument to that, to that worldview? In terms of, in terms of the black pillars and whatever, what do we say to those people? Well, I would say that it's far too reductive, for example. So a black pillar would say that all that matters in dating for a man is looks. All that matters is, so that's why you have. That's just factually incorrect, though, isn't it? Yeah, I think it is, but I think it... I mean, it matters way less than it does for women.

Yeah, no, I agree. But it's there in this echo chamber where they're telling themselves that that's all that matters. And there's kind of an identity attached to being a loser. And I don't mean being a loser as that person's like, oh, they're just a loser. I mean, to losing. They have an identity attached to failure and to losing. And it's kind of like a bucket of crabs as well. So you have anyone who tries to be slightly more optimistic.

mystical say actually it's not as bad as um so i spoke to jack peterson who used to be a like spokesperson for the n-cells and he was saying you it's like anyone who tries to improve themselves it's just like what you're doing you're just wasting your time it's just like like small small town mentality or something where you just kind of knocked down again do you not think this is also about technology like 30 years ago if you were a black pillor without knowing it you you you didn't have access to 10,000 other people who were exactly like you. And so you were surrounded by a world in which you constantly saw counter examples. You're made that you went to school with.

It was a complete loser. And now he's got a great job and a beautiful wife and three kids and whatever. Like that was something that you could see and you had to process that. Whereas now you've got a forum of people who are just reinforcing your beliefs about the world. So how much of this is just technology more than anything? Yeah. And I think that's a good point in that it's, those niches are more accessible.

So you can find your ideological niche, surround yourself for more and more time with like-minded people who just reinforce that all the time. It's about selective focus as well, though, because we can still, we can still, all of us find counter examples to, we could say that, you know, on average, it helps if you're good looking or if you're tall

or whatever as a man in the dating realm. But we all know counter examples of these other things, this person has it, those things don't matter. But I think that's about, if more or more of your time is spent yet on the technology, it's easier to shut, it's easier to have that selective focus where you just focus on the ideology and any time anyone brings up a counter example, you just dismiss it as well. That's, that's the exception. But isn't the problem as well, let's be fair, there's a, I've seen a lot of what they write. There's an air of entitlement to them. They believe that they deserve a woman who is a tenor or whatever it is that they call her, whatever the

terminology, isn't it's like, well, you're not entitled to that particular person. She doesn't have to date you. And there's something deeply narcissistic about it as well, isn't there? Oh yeah, no, I definitely think there's, like, entitlement plays a big part in a lot of that. I would say not for everyone, because, you know, there are, there are in cells I've spoken to who they have, you know, severe facial disfigure, and they're not, they're not expecting to go out with kind of a playboy model. They just want, they just want some company at some point. They would just like to form a relationship at some point.

But I think at the same time, there is an element of male entitlement in terms of some people with their standards is just, like they don't want to improve themselves or make any effort to be kind of a better person themselves. They just want to be distinctly average. And yet they expect to find a partner immediate. who's amazing. That's just, that's just not realistic. No, it's not. I think the thing that worries me about the insales is that, again, it seems to have been a movement, and correct me if I'm wrong, it starts in America, and we've seen it with, you know, the shootings, particularly the one that

happened in Santa Barbara in California, which was that awful, awful case, inso who then went on to kill all those young women, and then it starts to bleed over here. Do you think it's going to become more and more prevalent? I mean, I think some of the high-profile cases, So Elliot Roger was that one. I think some of those cases are slightly exceptional. So he was someone who clearly had a personality disorder. It's not just, oh, he's been on some forums and that's made him do that. It's someone who clearly had, at the very least, narcissistic personality disorder.

If you watch his videos and read his manifesto. And again, there was the incident in Plymouth here, which, you know, it was all when that happened, there were inflammatory comment pieces and hot takes. about this this is why we need to crack down on in cell internet forums and then it later transpired that it really didn't have anything to do with with in cell ideology this was someone again who are deeply troubled and I would say probably that he had some troubled relationships with women in his life so we might say yeah he's he's has some issues with women but I don't think it I think it's a bit

of a stretch to then say that he was radicalized by by these forums I think that the you I I think there will be spillover, though. It's not like I don't think there's a risk of it. But I think we need to put it in perspective. I mean, most of the people on these forums need help to get out of depressed states, usually, to deal with these kind of mental health problems very often. And you have 25% of people on one of the biggest insert forums who have some form of autism.

So it's not just, you know, people being hateful for the sake of being hopeful. You have people with deep-rooted problems, and unfortunately, sometimes that's channeled into radical ideologies, just as we've seen before with Islamic terrorism. We've seen you have some troubled individuals who get drawn into these subcultures and radicalize. We want to stop that. Instead of just, I mean, we can denounce the acts, and people have ultimately a choice whether they go down this road. But we also want to understand it to better prevent it, I think. I think it's a really good point, James. And sadly, I fear this conversation.

is only going to get more important with time. So I look forward to your book when it's out, and we'll have you back and get you to explain a little bit more about this. But for now, thanks for coming back. Where should people check out your work, follow you, etc.? My book's not out for a while, but I'd love to come back. Anytime. Open invitation.

Brilliant. Twitter, J underscore Bloodworth on Twitter, James.bloodworth on Instagram. You can read me in The New Statesman and the Times, and my book hired is available in all good for you. which we interviewed you do about before, so go back and watch that if you're interested in brilliant book. And it was a really important piece of work at the time as well. You exposed a lot of wrongdoing.

Thank you. That was really important. Well, thanks for coming back, James. Thank you for watching and listening. We're going to do a couple of questions from our supporters, for our supporters for locals in the second. But in the meantime, thanks for watching. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or also, all of which go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.

Take care and see you soon, guys. Do you think dating advice gurus actually make a real difference to people? Are they just selling a dream to Insales?