No more bad dates | Evan Marc Katz | TEDxStJohns

ask a stranger what do you think of online dating what are they going to tell you I hate online dating online dating sucks men suck women suck profiles suck everybody stupid everybody lies guys are in such a rush to meet nobody has anything interesting to say this is the going wisdom about online dating evidently now I understand that I will acknowledge that I dated online for many years I'm a dating coach so I understand at the same time complaining that online dating sucks is kind of like complaining that the gym is not helping you lose weight right I mean it's not the gyms job what think about it some gyms have better equipment some gyms have better classes but ultimately whether you lose weight is not up to the gym it's you how often do you work out how effectively how intensely do you work out so as we frame today's discussion I just want you to consider not what's wrong with online dating which is valid but rather what am i doing to yield the best possible results in online dating that's what we can control so I'm an unusual messenger for a number of reasons not in the least of the fact that I love dating I mean I was like I'm that one guy who's like man I love that crap I moved to LA I was 24 25 years old I was a writer I worked from home wasn't big on the club or the bar scene I'm so free this was a natural fit the same people that I didn't necessarily have the courage or access to approaching real life I could talk to them online just by being cute and friendly and so I dated no exaggeration 300 people over the course of 10 years of online dating before I got married I say with a mixture of pride and embarrassment so so I had such a wonderful experience uh Channing experienced that I started to coach this stuff right and now for over a decade I've been helping people fall in love using online dating I work with women smart strong successful women from around the world of all ages helping them fall in love I've helped a 41 year old woman in a wheelchair woman who's eighty pounds overweight woman who's 65 never been on a date before these are my real clients who fell in love using the online dating system that I'm going to share with you today so if I sound somewhat evangelical about my own stuff the reason why is that I've seen it work over and over and over again and I'm very confident that it's going to work for you so what's wrong with online dating to me it's not the online portion of online dating it's the dating part of online dating it's the it's the dad first date you know what I'm talking about if someone has to know what I'm talking about you you get dressed up you drive across town you sit at the coffee shop and two minutes into the date you're like oh my god what am I doing here why does this happen to me over and over again how do I keep on meeting these freaks all right I know the answer to that question I bet you know the answer to that question all right since the gratification we're an instant gratification society we're texting we're tinder how quickly can we make this stuff happen that's why you go on bad blind dates over and over and over again all right so I want to pause it today that if you listen to what I'm about to share with you you're going to go on fewer bad dates better first dates and you're going to move offline from the dating site in less than a week that's not a tremendous time investment to ensure a higher quality experience yet this isn't the way most people approach online dating so before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to do this let's establish one thing guys are terrible at online day I mean you don't even know how bad guys are at online dating I hate to throw my whole gender under the bus but let's roll him over right I told the client that I was doing this presentation I said send me a picture of your inbox I had no idea exactly what I was going to get in return but this totally valid everything 289 messages subject headers hello hi hi none hello hi you are gorgeous you so beautiful very attractive this is what women are dealing with contraction right they have to make the best of that now we know intellectually that not all guys are bad this doesn't mean these men are not relationship oriented or intelligent there's something about the way people use this medium that isn't working all right so we have to figure out what are these guys doing why do they do this let's put ourselves in their shoes and let's have some sympathy for these guys the reason we're talking about why guys are so bad at online dating is that they're the aggressors they're the ones who have to put themselves out so it's going to be a lot more obvious when they're screwing up than women so for women who get very scornful of men have a little sympathy for these poor Schmucks right they're doing the best they can it's just not very good guys get online they see a bunch of attractive photos and again we're instant gratification dating site gives you the option of doing the free wink you know the free wink so what you guys do wink wink wink wink wink wink wink wink wink wink you're a woman you got 289 emails you're gonna pay attention to the guy who winked at you no you're not so the guys they're not dumb they say huh a winking didn't work very well maybe I got to work a little harder so they do beefed up the profile a little bit find some really attractive women because you could only write to the really attractive ones why because they were there so they write to the most attractive women and they talk about why she's great why he's great how much they have in common and then maybe a thousand-word autobiography about him puts 20 minutes into writing an email hours an hour sends out a dozen of them nobody writes back why you're a woman you got 289 emails do you want to read some guy's autobiography some stranger of course not so his intention is pure he's trying to differentiate himself but it's not working he's inadvertently coming across this kind of needy little over-the-top little stalkerish alright not the goal just the byproduct so he says huh well if writing all these these long emails isn't working I guess it's what they say it's a numbers game so I got to play the numbers so how do guys play the numbers dear Nancy I read your profile think you're attractive check me out if you like what you see hope to hear from you soon it's a form letter cut paste end so what do they do they send up 50 form letters you're a woman you got options you got two hundred hitting on guys writing to you you want to write to the guy who wrote you the foreign letter that he clearly wrote to every other woman on the dating site insert your name here all right so again let's sympathize with these guys everything they're trying make sense the long stalker emails and the winks and the form letters just none of it's working all right so they're throwing a whole bunch of crap up against the wall none of it's sticking and they come to these conclusions very logical conclusions first conclusion is that women right most attractive women are like rock stars they got tons of people throwing themselves at them it's really competitive they're probably gonna take the profile down first all right because they're so inundated by responses they get overwhelmed and it's really competitive and I know if I met her she liked me this what guys tell themself I know she'd like me if she met me but I'm not even getting a chance I can't even get in the door I gotta meet him fast right before she disappeared and on the other hand everybody's had the experience in online dating of spending a whole month getting to know someone and then showing up in the date and finding out that person lied about their height or their weight or their age all right that's endemic to the medium so huh well I can't spend a whole month getting to know someone only to find out that they misrepresented so what am I gonna do well I'm gonna move faster that makes sense right so again we're getting this reinforcement that speed is the answer right speed and volume that's sort of the the going story for guys the answer to successful online dating is speed and volume so their next round of emails says something to the effect of dear amber I read your profile I'm not really good at this thing let's see if there's chemistry here's my phone number text me what are you doing on Saturday night it's like all of it right in the first email let's go come on please don't disappear don't lie to me don't go out with anybody else please choose me attractive huh so this is how we see the kind of emails that we see in the in box this panicky direct it's all because guys are failures at online dating this is the result so guys become convinced that speed and volume is the solution to online dating in fact it's the problem with online dating remember the bad blind-date slide that's how you end up on bad blind dates you go out with total strangers that's problem yet guys think it's the solution this is why we need a paradigm shift in how we view online dating so I stumbled onto this I'm no genius I was just a [ __ ] and so I spent years going out with people and people share things with you you tell your you tell your war stories and women would tell me about these guys they'd show me their inboxes they'd read me these messages right it's astoundingly stupid to the point that you can't even believe it's happening some guys like hey you're hot let's do it I'm competing with that I was easy so I figured if every guy was gonna Zig I was just gonna zag if every guy is giving her this all-out verbal assault why she needs to meet him yesterday I had to spend a little bit more time writing emails and saying clever things and spend a little more time talking on the phone and I had a completely different online dating experience than anybody I knew everybody else is talking about the failure I I got to pick people up at their house I got to drive them home at the end of the night first aid all because I put in a little bit more time upfront and so when I became a coach I started to coach this very simple philosophy I told guys slow down every other guy's in a rush you slow down and it worked and then I started a coach women I told him same thing you're letting him dictate the terms slow him down give them incentives to please you give him incentive to court you and it worked and so this is what it looks like in a very simple Venn diagram form I'm only capable of making a very simple Venn diagram men in general want speed women in general want comfort and again buy comfort means I don't want to go out with a potential serial killer like this is these are reasonable terms we're not saying I need a whole month to do a background check on you right men want speed women want comfort and the space between is a good first date where both parties are getting their needs met I think this is reasonable and so the issue here is that men based on that inbox that I showed you earlier are unintentionally making women feel uncomfortable believe me all the guys who make you feel uncomfortable it's not their goal how could I make her life miserable how could I say something creepy it's never the goal it's the byproduct of their failures all right don't disappear don't lie let's meet let's say for this chemistry let's go so imagine you're at a bar you got 50 guys lined up to give you the phone number it's overwhelming and that's what happens online attractive woman has guys just let's meet let's meet phone numbers piling up all right it's not the way women like to meet men so what's a medium in which women do meet men where men have to make them comfortable before they get their phone number I call it real life you've never real life some of you do some of you don't I'm 41 so I do before there was an Internet you would talk to people at parties and stuff and so when a guy talks to a woman at a party he doesn't tap her on the shoulder and be like hey you're wearing red I like red here's my number good terrible way to meet someone that's what people do on the Internet you have a dog I have a dog let's go on a date so how do you guys meet women in real life what talk to someone at a party you say something cute talk for a half-hour it's real fun Organic he says hey uh you want to step outside it's a little more quiet out there I'll get you a drink she goes yeah that sounds fun sure they go outside conversation continues moves and darts and weaves and an hour passes like that all right and then he looks at his watch he's like oh my god I gotta go I've had so much fun talking to you tonight I get your number I'd love to take you out later this week and she says yeah that that sounds great thank you does everybody remember that doesn't that feel good the connection followed by the date right now we've got it reversed right we want the date and then we want the connection so all I'm talking about tonight in my very long waited presentation where I get to my point is that we want to make online-dating feel like real eyes because real life feels good that's the whole principle behind this so how do we do this I call it the to-to-to rule of teaching it for years it ain't that complicated I made it up it came out of my head it's not one of the ten commandments written in stone so you could feel free to play with it but the very basic idea is that you want to go to emails back and forth from each party on the dating site to e-mails back and forth on Gmail or Yahoo to phone calls and a first-date whole thing takes less than a week not terribly complicated not a tremendous amount of work highly highly effective so how do we use this complicated to true to rule well first of all I think it's important to note it's not about tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu doesn't matter right it could be five three one no one's counting all right the whole point is that we understand each other men understand respect the fact that women need a little comfort before they meet women understand the guys want to move fast that they're entitled to that right so this is based on a mutual understanding right we're finding that point on the graph where it feels good to both genders so it starts with having a good conversation on the dating site has to start with a good conversation on the dating site now good conversation isn't that hard except it is because hey what's up not good conversation so what do you do for fun not good conversation a good conversation is about being inquisitive being thoughtful being interesting right having opinions having observations writing paragraphs not one-liners this isn't texting all right if you're a good conversationalist no one's going to say man screw this I'm out of here good conversation sustains itself and it grows again it's like being at a party you're enjoying it and when you make a good connection online it gives you leverage as a woman to say oh by the way Brad what's your regular email address I'll be in much better touch on Gmail and you know what that is that's hey let's step outside where it's a little more quiet you're getting more personal you're getting more intimate you're isolating the person he's talking to ten women on OKCupid he's talking to one person on Gmail that's you all because she said hey let's step outside conversation continues he might say hey let's meet you don't just meet that brings us back where we started all right you don't want to go on blind dates with strangers so what you do is you schedule a phone call now again I know people's resistance to this most people won't do this but understand it's imperative because if you don't schedule a phone call here's what's going to happen you're going to start texting all right texting is the death of communication right it's ubiquitous I'm not trying to put the genie back in the bottle and pretend it's not the problem is you don't get to know someone very well by texting I guarantee it I could talk to you for five minutes on the phone I'm going to get to know you a lot better than if we did one line text back and forth for a week not even close there's something about the nuance of communicating with someone live that texting leaves out so you don't want to get caught in texting so why schedule a phone call unless just you know call well you could pick up the phone and call the problem is you're precipitating another problem that comes with online dating and that's friction things go wrong so I call you at 8:00 p.m. you call me back at 9:00 I'm not around I call you the next day at 2:00 you call me back during your lunch hour suddenly we're playing phone tag suddenly it's difficult suddenly it's not enjoyable we're losing momentum you might give up I might give up that's the problem with I'll call you in general at some time all right I'm around tonight at 7:30 can't wait to hear your voice talk to you then set up an appointment so you just get it right this phone call is your first date this replaces the coffee date if you have a good phone call the guy earns the first date I give advice to women so it's always directed that way so the value of this all right very simple number one you are screening screening so important to avoid bad dates because if you're emailing some guy and it comes off as functionally illiterate stupid negative difficult abrasive in curious lazy you don't go out with him tada problem solved you screen out all the guys who aren't good conversationalist who wouldn't make you comfortable right if you're carrying your end of the bargain it's great and so the flipside of screening is relationship building when this goes well this is just like the cocktail party right it is having a great conversation and what's happening you're building up trust repor anticipation excitement this is the way dating is supposed to feel oh my god I can't wait to go out with the guy that I've been talking to all week oh you got that that's that's the feeling we're trying to evoke so we enjoy dating once again you would rather guarantee go on one great date on a Saturday night then three blind dates with total strangers guarantee and that's all I'm proposing right and the last thing the surprising thing this saves time and it sounds like a lot of work - two - it's not emails take no time to write at a phone call I've talked to you for 20 minutes on the phone and I want to put a bullet in my head because I'm so bored guess what we don't go on the date I don't have to get dressed up drive across town spend $100 and two hours on you that's valuable advice vice versa right if you have a great phone call that's the first date and so I'm not a Luddite I believe in technology I understand chemistry I know people have objections guys are like I can just text someone I can get late I get it the problem is people aren't enjoying dating they're opting out of it right and I think women have the right to enjoy dating right there's not much to this thing but at the end of the day if you just slow down a beat follow the to-to-to rule go from email to the phone to the real life date you're going to go on fewer bad dates better first dates and evoke the feelings that you want that make you excited and optimistic about dating again so please give it a shot try it out let me know how it feels I thank you so much for your time and attention

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 872,058

Rating: 4.6947293 out of 5

Keywords: Lifestyle, Relationships/Romance, ted talks, tedx talks, ted talk, ted x, Technology, ted, Social Media, English, Canada, TEDxTalks, tedx, tedx talk

Id: T704le1D1ag

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 04 2014