DATING TIPS FROM ACTUAL DATING SITE USERS
"I have read the newspaper articles and am being cautious. I have encountered a veritable army of Nigerian scammers, privacy data theives, russian spammers and spies on the dating site. On top of that there are tens of thousands of newspaper articles warning about this. Additionally, nothing that you engage in with a stranger you are considering for possible intimacy will be valid over a computer, phone or text device. It isn't being paranoid if it is based on actual experience and vast documentation by the rest of America. 60 MINUTES just did a feature segment on how data theives can get all your stuff with just your full name and a picture they can run through image-comparison software. They do it all day long."
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"Every date potential I have ever talked to on the phone wants to meet me. I "give good phone", but that has nothing to do with the "chemistry" reaction the other person will have in person. In online meetups, it is entirely about the in-person reaction that others have. Nothing you do in email, text or phone will count, once you meet in-person. It will all go out the window (ie: as sad as it sounds, pre-communication is a waste-of-time in online dating, because people decide on attraction in the first few minutes of the live meeting). "
"How Much Does A Modern Date Cost According To Tindr Users? Men pay
for dates. Women rarely pay. Tindr and Match.com users have been
discussing this on Reddit and Huffington Post. Let's look at the final
averaged results. If the woman has idealized (modified) abs, surgically
dramatic facial structure or enhanced breasts, the costs are:
First Meeting Coffee Date:
Gas - $4.00
Bridge toll - $6.00
Parking $15.00
Food & Drink Products: $18.00
Your Time: XX
Total: $43.00
Each of First 3 dinner dates:
Gas - $8.00
Bridge toll - $6.00
Parking $28.00
Food & Drink Products: $150.00
Your Time: XX
Per Dinner: $192.00
Average Number of Dinners Before Sex Consent (DBSC) = 3
3 dinners x $192.00 = $576.00
Minimum Cost of 1 Hr. sex session with B-class Craigslist or Match.com
escort = $500.00
If the woman is "normal" or average looking, deduct 30% from those
costs."
Everybody you meet in online dating are the same exact people you will
meet in non-online dating. There is no such
thing as waiting for the naturalmoment in the real world. If it existed
it would have already happened for you
decades ago. Online dating is the best chance to meet single people in
any large city.
"Going on a date" means that both people believe that there is a 60%, or
better, chance that the two of you will have sex.
Did you know that most big dating sites are all owned by one company
called IAC and that IAC is run by Hillary Clinton's daughter: Chelsea
Clinton? Did you know that IAC has been caught posting fake profiles and
using robots to fake you into their scheme? Did you know that IAC sells
your user data and messages to political parties and marketing companies
and that everything you say on a big dating site is harvested, stored
and read by others? Do you want Chelsea Clinton to control your sex
life?
The single most important thing to realize is that "chemistry" is a
series of bio-chemical and audio-visual reactions to
the way a person looks and how they remind you of subconscious things
in-person. It does not work-over the internet.
Chemistry is not a metaphysical thing. You will not be able to decide
about a person unless you meet them in person.
The internet is just a place to see that certain people are single. The
way that media has programmed you, the type of
people the media have told you are attractive and the look and feel of
the people you have gathered around you will
determine how the 42+ different psycho-visual, olfactory and other
sensory reactions determine if you will allow
yourself to be attracted to one person over another.
How Modern Dating Works With The Internet
By Susan Lester
Some of this reality will sound harsh. The new world of dating is not
the "Leave It To Beaver" white picket fence Hollywood-romance that some
may have been led to believe. You need to know these facts, though.
Being aware will keep you emotionally and physically prepared.
You will find that the majority of profiles on big dating sites are fake
profiles, Russian bots, scammers or automated response algorithms that
the dating site has placed there. Until you meet them in person, you
can't believe anything until you see it with your own eyes.
Anybody you meet on the internet should share 50% of the first meeting
costs because of the unusually high number of scammers and gold-diggers
on the internet. Men do pay for the first date in small country towns
where you met at the barn dance but on the internet, it is totally
different. Most people dating on the internet have a different date
every night and they are "playing the odds". Many of them are just
seeking free food and riding a low-self-esteem roller coaster of sexual
conquest. There are ALSO wonderful people who are sincerely looking for
marriage but the internet provides the most sex and free food so there
are people who have embraced that reality too.
All physical interaction requires a verbal "yes". With all of the
lawsuits and sexual extortion scams these days, it is essential to
document a very clear verbal consent for all sexual activity. There are
a large number of people who are seeking to blackmail people with
paternity lawsuits or non-consent sex lawsuits in order to get money
from them.
Match,com, OKCupid, and the other corporate dating sites, sell and/or
have your data leaked, to political parties and marketing companies. You
should know that everything you post or text on those sites is read by
others and may be used against you. Use fake names, burner email
addresses and information that is slightly different than your true
information when you use those services. Move all communications to your
personal email that you control, as soon as possible, to avoid leaving
your private love life data on Match.com servers. Do you really want
Match.com's management (Which includes Chelsea Clinton and the investors
in big porn sites) reading your romantic emails?
A 'date' is a meeting to see if there is sexual chemistry. Many people
are irked by the use of the term "date" but the reality is that dating
is sexual compatibility testing.
There is a whole industry in the dating world called: "Honey Traps". If
you have been on TV or in the news and if you have business competitors
or political enemies, Honey Traps will be hired. These Honey Traps are
people who pretend to be looking for love but they are actually sent to
conduct industrial spying and political sabotage against you. If you
appear to be successful, watch out for Honey Traps.
Big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York have a huge number
of "transaction-relationship" seekers. Because Craigslist and BackPage
have had their sex ads shut down, all of the mistresses, hookers, rent
boys and gold-diggers have moved to match.com, OKCupid and the corporate
dating sites. Because of this, you now either need to 1.) put "NO
transactional relationships" in your ad text or 2.) put the 'code words'
in your ad if you do want that.
Anybody who uses a 'smartphone', on a date for phone calls or social
media, is considered to be hyper-rude, privacy-violating and not aware
of data hacking issues. Keep your phone in a wireless RFID blocking bag
at the bar, coffee shop or restaurant on your first date. Nobody wants a
'social media zombie' with them on a date.
Never use a webcam for online dating. Once the camera has been used,
even once, it notifies hackers around the globe and they will hack into
it to watch you taking showers and sleeping. Webcams can be remotely
activated by hackers and you can't tell that the camera is even turned
on.
You probably don't know if you have bad breath. Get a regular tooth
cleaning at your dentist every 6 months and take MintAssure breath
tablets (Available on Amazon) 15 minutes before each date.
The bigger-the-dating-site/the more it's owner's abuse your rights. All
dating sites read and archive your texts, emails and activities and sell
that data to political groups, government agencies and marketing
companies. Treat your dating data just like you would your medical
records.
Everybody that is on a dating site is dating multiple people at once. Do
not be naive. If you want to be committed and monogamous with a person
just tell them so out-loud. If you do not both agree to that arrangement
VERBALLY, it will never happen. Men and women always assume different
things about the status of a relationship. Most dating issues are about
what stage each other person thought the dating phase was in. Men and
women really, really do have different ways of thinking, different
perceptions of things and different time-frames. Ie: Men are territorial
and war-like. If a woman tells her men friends about a new date, then
those men friends will try to jack up her relationship with the new guy
because their subconscious minds want them to defend their turf.
If you have unprotected sex you will most likely have a pregnancy or get
an STD. For each new partner you must get a blood and urine test for:
HIV/AIDS, Herpes, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Mycoplasma Genitalium,
Trichomoniasis, Human Papilloma Virus/HPV, Crabs/Pubic Lice, Scabies,
Hepatitis/HBV, Chancroid, Bacterial Vaginosis/BV, Nongonoccocal
Urethritis (NGU), Molluscum Contagiosum, MRSA, and Lymphogranuloma
Venereum. Take this list to any Quest Diagnostics Test Center or Public
Health Center and ask for the "Full STD Palette Test" or just show them
the list and ask for the test that covers those items. At the very
least, pick up the off-the-shelf OraQuick test at your local drugstore
and take that saliva test. These tests take only a few minutes and
provides a lifetime of health security.
Sound rough? It is, but if you follow these simple tips the cream will
rise to the top and you will eventually meet a great partner.
Everyone finds what they are looking for within 3 months but you must
have endurance. If you have lived a sheltered life, avoided reading the
news and only hung out with a handful of middle-of-the-road friends you
might be in for a shock when you jump into the real world.
That world is different that the one you see depicted in old TV shows.
Be ready, have an open mind and forget about the Hollywood hype and you
will have a great time!
1. Generally: People have made up their
mind about whether or not they want to be with you 15
minutes after you have met them. Generally, men make up their minds more
quickly than women because
they are sensorial reactive. Decision processing is usually dramatically
out-of-sync between genders based
on genetic hunter/gatherer evolutionary programming. Both genders need
to adjust to find the happy
medium..
2. Most internet dates end in the first
few emails because of misinterpretation. Many people are typing
on their cell phone or iphone or they are at work or they are joking and
you can't see it in email. Do not
make prejudgments based on the first few emails, they are often wrong or
unfair to the other person.
3. A large number of people follow "the
third date" rule. This means that if the two of you have not
decided to be intimate by the third date you probably never will.
4. Almost a majority of first meetings are
cancelled by one of the two people just prior to meeting
because people feel no commitment to a stranger. Do not be surprised if
people using the service are not too
motivated re: the first meeting as many have been through these
out-of-the-blue cancellations already.
5. Men are genetically ingrained to be
territorial. Women's men "friends" may suddenly nay-say the
new guy, use psychological tricks to create stress and suddenly confess
their "secret love" for you in order to
cut the new guy off at the knees. As soon as your guy friends, ex
husband, old boyfriend, (even your
children) etc, hear that you have a date, they will often try to jack-up
your plans in order to protect their
turf. If you are divorced then you usually already have a conflict
relationship over child custody and
schedules, watch for the ex-husband to constantly change child pick-up
times, days to pick-up and other
schedule shifts at the last minute if he suspects you have dating plans.
Stand firm on your plans so you are
not victimized by the ex-husband's territorial strategies
6. Many single people have an obsessive
relationship with their pets if they are single. Consider how
much you talk about or plan your life around your pet.
7. Men have a hard time talking about
feelings.
8. Meet as soon as possible. A majority of
people that spend time talking, first, on this online dating,
seem to be disappointed. The majority have a wonderful set of emails and
phone calls and think they have
met the love of their life. .. but when they meet, the chemistry is not
there and both parties are twice as hurt
by the brick wall because they have already created expectations and
wishful thinking via advance
communication. Most people find each other adorable on hours of phone
calls but only 1% of the people
said they had chemistry in person and vice versa. That has been the
story that most other users on online
dating have posted in tens of thousands of blogs so this appears to be
the consensus of a general trend.
Just an FYI. One would be losing relationships if they try to force a
computer system to act human by using it
for the initial interaction. You have to meet in the real world to not
get screwed up by the computer and its
process. One has to get out of the digital/chat room world as fast as
they can and into the tangible real
world of touch, vision and the other senses. Another reason for meeting
soon is that people blog that a
large number of people they start emailing with, suddenly cancel future
meetings because someone else
they were emailing with met them sooner. In many cases, when they have
to book the first meeting a week
or more out, they will contact you the day before and cancel the meeting
because they starting seeing
others they dated within that week delay. Most connections never happen
because someone else gets there
first.
9. Sexual politics have killed off a
majority of first dates. While it may seem rude or inappropriate to
discuss sex on the first few dates, it is a large part of "dating". If
you get down the road and have actual sex
only to find that you have two different styles, then the whole
relationship is over in minutes after weeks or
months of wasted "dating". Kissing and petting are key to testing the
waters early. Also, if you have not
gone into Walgreen's and asked the pharmacist for the "Home Access
Express HIV Test Kit" , gotten a
Gardisil vaccination and acquired "Plan B" pills (web search these if
you don't know what they are) then you are
not ready to even go there. Condoms leak, spillover and break so must
have these back-ups in place.
10. Brush your teeth and take Breath Assure tablets. Bad breath
kills off many dates.
11. Know what you really want. Most people are specifically
looking for marriages, sex, babies,
distractions, fun, social status, therapy or other certain things.
Compare notes on your actual needs in the
first date. There is nothing wrong with just looking for sex, the volume
of people is higher with computer
dating so the odds are better, just be clear up front. In fact few
people can have "just sex" without falling in
love afterwards.
12. People with kids are able to date just as much as people
without kids if they have a balanced life. Most
single parents are able to get 3 full nights a week totally to
themselves. If you can't pull this off, talk to a
parent who does to figure it out.
13. Don't discuss emotional topics in email with someone you have
never met.
14. On spending money: Women expect men to pay and men expect
women to practice the "womens
liberation" they fought for. Women want proof of stability and men want
sexual reciprocation. Men get
burned out buying a string of meals for strangers they will never see
again. Men feel used and women feel
diminished if the man doesn't pay. This is the hardest subject in
dating. Manage expectations on this from
the beginning. Dating math = To find a great marital partner you will
spend the rest of your life with you
need to meet at least 1000 people. To find a great LTR dating partner
you need to meet at least 150. 99% of
these meetings will not work out. If a guy meets one person a day for a
month and the cost of food, parking
& misc. adds up to $95/night then he has to spend nearly $3000.00 a
month just to see if there is a chance.
If the lady says to the man that "Her mom taught her that the man must
always pay", or "she was raised in
the South", or 'She was brought up to let the man be the provider", in a
recession. How do you think this
makes the guys feel? Avoid dinners for the first few dates or agree to
dutch treat unless you both are
looking for a trophy-partner or transactional-sexual relationship.
15. We live in an age where advertising and media train us to be
attracted to certain facial types: sorority
girl looks like fraternity guy looks, biker guy looks like biker girl
looks, hipster guy looks like hipster girl
types. Realize that we are all being forced to be superficial by this.
Try to get past this, or you will miss
people who are, otherwise, perfect matches.
16. Exchange cell phone numbers for the first meeting. Most people
do not look like their pictures and
many people never find each other the first time. Use a web-voice number
or get a $27.00 phone from
Walgreens if you don't want to give out your real number.
17. Where to meet is a political consideration. People who have
done a few weeks of internet dating know
that 99% of the first meetings don't click and they will never see that
person again , so they are hesitant to
go too far for a first meeting . Women think men should drive to their
location. Men think that they are
going to have to pay for everything so the women should come to them. A
good fix is to meet half-way.
18. In life you have gathered people that are very similar to you
around you in order to create a controlled
and comfortable insulation. In online dating you will meet the full
breadth of people and they are of every
type. Be prepared to broaden your horizons.
19. If you feel the need to tell people that "you need to go
slow"(A concept foreign to most men) or "are
still hurt from your last relationship".. you may not be ready to date.
Not only are most people on a dating
site eager and willing to be in a relationship, but things move much
faster online than not online. Don't hurt
yourself, and others, by using a dating site for therapy. People on
dating sites go fast, generally.
20. If you are wanting to blow somebody off and you are online
dating, do not say you have "met
someone" and then leave your profile up. If they see your profile still
up or get a notice (such as match.com
sends out to everybody each time you go into your profile) they may feel
lied to.
21. IT bears repeating: If you just got out of a relationship, do not
use a dating service to either A: See if you
are over it or B: try to get your ex to become jealous and come back to
you. It is cruel to the other people that
are meeting you that area "ready-to-go".
22. Every single modern TV show on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. depicts
couples running off to have sex within an hour after meeting. All modern
men expect to have immediate sex if the two of you are seeming to be
attracted to each other. Modern men are programmed by TV shows and the
internet to assume that there will be immediate sex. If you are not
interested in a rapid progression to sex you should not date using the
internet.
THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL CLIFF NOTES FROM THE TV SHOW ON "ATTRACTION":
You are a tool of the media. If you are "attractive" you go for people
(without looking for depth) who always use you and
dump you as they search for attraction without depth. Science says
that women with "model attractive" aquiline facial
features will usually fail in love unless they pick the least "model
attractive" man with non aquiline facial features that they can find
because two model attractive people generally do not develop the depth
or intent beyond appearance and only
see the lack of the depth after the superficial comfort has worn off.
Other examples of pre-programming are documented
in the TV series and text of:
Discovery Channel's Science of Sex Appeal- Cliff Notes:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal/
The bottom line, based on over one hundred years of research by
thousands of different entities: "What people think they
want is wrong if they are looking for anything more than just sex" Your
subconscious biological programming will ONLY
steer you to make more humans, it WILL NOT allow you to pick a
relationship partner. It will make you pick someone
who is cute and mostly totally wrong for you. This is why 90% of dating
experiences never work out and 70% of marriages
end in divorce. Online dating causes most of the people that SHOULD be
together to not get picked because the main
choosing process is picture-based.
* Social, media and genetic programming makes you do
things you do not mean to do in the dating process. To
be successful in dating you have to actually NOT go with your
"intuition" or "first impressions because science now shows
us that it is a TRICK. Science now shows that reacting to pictures
only, online, will only get you great sex and NEVER get
you a deep or long lasting relationship.
* You will not pick a person whose eye separation and
distance from nose to brow is not the same as yours unless
you consciously make yourself only look at the person in profile
view. You unconsciously judge attraction based on
equilateral positioning of all facial elements and geometric distances
between points on the face.
* Women are generally repelled by men's scent (except
when they are within a day or two of ovulation)...
* One research study illustrated that women tend to
choose partners based on status or resources as a priority.
Groups of women, selected at random, were shown photos of similarly
dressed men of relatively equal attractiveness.
Following a baseline numerical rating of attractiveness, later groups
were shown the same pictures, but with an indication
of social and economic status -- five- or six-figure incomes. The
attractiveness ratings rose or fell significantly in direct correlation
to perceived income level. Men put fins and flames on their cars and
wear giant watches in order to create status-attraction to attract
women.
* When women are ovulating; their voices change to a
higher pitch to attract men, their skin tone changes to attract
men, their pelvic muscles tighten to create a shimmier walk, they
interpret smells different and they output different kinds of attracting
odors.
* The more a man sways his shoulders in a swager, the
more women will be attracted to him. The more a woman
sways her hips, the more men will be attracted to her.
* And the science of partner selection continues with
human odor as a factor. Couples can discern the special smell
of their partner. Every man has a unique smell -- 'eau de man.' Research
has demonstrated that odor affects us at a
subconscious level. We can't control it. No two people smell the same or
have the same "HMC", as it is called. There is an optimum match for HMC.
* Women are generally repelled by men's scent (except
when they are within a day or two of ovulation); but men,
when exposed to odors, are consistently attracted. In experiments where
men inhale imperceptible low doses
of artificial copulants, the attractiveness rating of women shown in
pictures is higher. Copulants impair men's ability to
discriminate whether a woman is attractive. The scent of copulants
prevents them from thinking clearly. (Odor also helps
us steer clear of relatives and has performed the evolutionary role of
"incest avoidance.")
* With chemistry-inspired flirting, lust, and love all
continuously active below our level of consciousness, can we
maintain attraction to one partner? Attraction has many stages,
beginning with a single biochemical jolt resulting in a
change reaction. Anecdotal reports indicate the "first kiss" is highly
memorable in the attraction that builds (or fails to
build). The abundant testosterone in saliva increases the sex drive.
* Men are genetically programmed at the core of their
genes for tens of millions of years to sleep with as many
women as possible in order to keep the species going. Just as women are
programmed to want a baby like crazy as soon
as they turn 18. A good college education or strict parents are not
going to change this. Recent science has found a shot
that can cause monogamy in men and a shot that can cause baby anxiety
reduction in women.
* Even more sex appeal chemistry influences occur
through the dopamine triggered in our brains. Dopamine is the
brain's pleasure chemical that produces a high that can be addictive,
energy producing, and exhilarating. Biochemistry
shows the link between dopamine and testosterone with exhilaration and
lust. But dopamine is not uniquely linked to sex
appeal. The thrill of sports, bungee jumping for instance, can produce a
dopamine rush. What about love?
* Many of our unconscious preferences and behaviors
are conditioned by our chemistry. Studies report that
women find slightly feminized pictures of the same man more attractive
when they are not ovulating. Married women are
biologically driven to promiscuous behavior as reported by an experiment
based on digital movies of the female
participants dancing during a "girls' night out." The women with long
term partners and on their fertility cycles were the
most provocative. This was concluded from movement and appearance
analyzed through pixels and an estimated
percentage of skin showing. These committed women sent out more sexual
signals than the available ones. In contrast,
other research pinpoints the role of the chemical oxcytocin in monogamy
for women.
* Many of our unconscious preferences and behaviors
are conditioned by our chemistry. Studies report that
women find slightly feminized pictures of the same man more attractive
when they are not ovulating. Married women are
biologically driven to promiscuous behavior as reported by an experiment
based on digital movies of the female
participants dancing during a "girls" night out." The women with long
term partners and on their fertility cycles were the
most provocative. This was concluded from movement and appearance
analyzed through pixels and an estimated
percentage of skin showing. These committed women sent out more sexual
signals than the available ones. In contrast,
other research pinpoints the role of the chemical oxcytocin in monogamy
for women.
* The science on sexual attraction claims that
evolution prepares us to stay together just long enough to raise
children. One study across 58 societies demonstrated a dual reproductive
system going from pair bonding to straying at
about the four-year mark in a relationship. The study conclusion: we are
fundamentally built to stray. Does this mean that
our exhilarating experience of early love is destined to be undermined
by our inherent biology? Will we always fail at long-
term love?
* Men put flame decals, fins, large spoilers, giant
speakers, and raised tires on their cars to draw the attention of
women in order to seek to demonstrate that they have a higher ability to
acquire goods and survive in the urban jungle.
* Science claims that the chemistry of passion, lust,
and love bind us together for a limited period of time. Haven't
most of us figured that out at a personal level? My observation is we
already know we need to build for the future before
the reality storm hits. Yet many of us neglect our marriages and
relationships anyway. Over focus on careers or children,
and overindulging in our selfish habits through individual use of time
frequently lead to rampant neglect of our partners.
Science help us?
* It takes just three minutes to fall in love,
scientists revealed today. What the heart wants, it can establish fairly
quickly, according to American psychologists who studied the behaviour
of 10,500 newly-introduced couples. "Some
people say they're looking for one kind of person, then choose another.
Others say they don't even know what they're
looking for," said Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania.
"But our data suggest that, however it happens,
people know it quickly when they see it." He claimed would-be lovers
generally understand their own worth on the dating
market, and so are able to judge potential compatibility within moments
of meeting. Psychologists analysed the
interactions between speed-dating participants, where men and women are
given just three minutes to assess each other
before moving on to the next person. At the end of a session each
individual indicates which of the 25 or so people he or
she met they would like to see again. "Although they had three minutes,
most participants made their decision based on
the information that they probably got in the first three seconds,"
Kurzban said. "Somewhat surprisingly, factors that you
might think would be really important to people, like religion,
education and income, played very little role in their
choices" Psychologists have often likened relationships to transactions
whereby people select mates based on the
qualities their other half has to offer, such as power and money. But
Kurzba's data reveals that when people meet face-
to-face, things like smoking preferences and bank accounts are not of
great importance. Actual behaviour is worth more
than stated beliefs, he said, particularly in the case of speed-dating
when participants do not want to risk a bad date and
so have more incentive to follow their hearts and desires. The
researchers caution that speed dating is not necessarily
typical of how people usually interact. Their findings will be published
in US journal Evolution and Human Behaviour."
HOW THE FAKE "SHILL GIRLS" OF MATCH.COM, OK CUPID AND POF WORK
You just joined one of the top 5 dating sites. You message some
attractive ladies right near you. You get some responses. Alas, you
don't realize that those "hot ladies", now messegaing with you, are
actually all a guy with a goatee, named Wu Lee, in the Philipines.
While you see lots of talk about these dating services, "not allowing
fake profiles", they are, in fact, the ones who hire the "shill Farms"
to supply them with the fake date experiences.
They only use them for guys because women always get flooded with actual
guys contacting them. Many of the pictures are from the ex-websites of
dead Russian hookers.
The first red flags:
- Your date is out "of the area for a few weeks", or longer, on a trip
or some big project so that a real person doesn't actually have to show
up.
- They have some other excuse to not meet you for a few weeks. The
psychology is that no guy will wait that long and move on to the next
candidate. Alas, the next candidate , and the next, and the next, is,
more often than not, that same guy Wu Lee. If you are savvy enough to
track them in your calender and follow-up a few days after they are
supposed to "return to town", they will tell you that they just happened
to have met someone on their trip.
- They won't talk on the phone. While talking to a person on a dating
site is very comforting, the Shill Farms have escalation Teams that
route phone call requests to sex phone operators, with your local
accent, who do double duty as fake phone dates and fake sex call takers.
Even if you talk on the phone, it still is not gauranteed that you don't
have a shill.
- The shill starts asking you very specfic detailed personal data about
yourself. In real world dating, nobody asks that kind of stuff before
their first date. You look at each other, decide if you both look OK and
off you go to the movies or dinner that Saturday. The reason the shills
want detailed data on you is that the Shill Farm bosses make money from
both providing fake profiles AND harvesting your private data for data
harvesting banks.
- They try to keep you on the site for as long as possible. The Shill
Farmer has a third way of making money off of you. It is called
"Spoofing". The more volumes of people the dating site can show for
their subscriptions and advertisers, the more money they can make.
- They won't meet. For most people, the purpose of a dating site is to
meet someone you can hug, squeeze, kiss and go do things with. It should
seem odd to you, if your potential date won't meet in person ASAP. If
they were real, you would think they would want to see how both of you
are, in-person, before wasting time.
Terms:
Shill- A person pretending to be someone else, or another gender, in
order to suck you in to some scheme to get your money or your data
Shill Farm - A large building, apartment complex, warehouse or other
building where large numbers of shills are based
Shill Farmer - The owner of the Shill Farm. Often Russian mobsters,
Asian gangs or Nigerian cartels
Dating Harvester - Match.com, Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid and similar
automatted conglomerate-owned dating services that are in the business
for far different reasonsthan you might think
Trolling - Working the pretext to try to get the victim/target guy
sucked into the scheme. Using different scenarios and talking scripts to
get the target to loosen their guard.
Spoofing - creating fake user volume numbers in order to help dating
sites trick advertisers into paying more/
---------------------------------
Is Dating A "Numbers Game"? - Comments:
- The cost per date is about $110.00+ for food, travel, parking, gas,
tolls, etc. in the USA. That's $3000.00+ per month to try to find a wife
or lover. All of the women on online dating sites are dating other men so
the odds are greatly reduced by competitive market factors. Science,
dating site marketing brochures and census studies show that you need to
meet a large number of people in person to find a wife (only half as many
to find a lover) but it is a huge effort. If all of the other men are
feeding her too then you will soon be financially and emotionally
exhausted. "Foodie Calls" are now widely discussed in the news, too. This
is where a woman uses dating men for food just like dating men use dating
women for physical satisfactions. If you read the dating anthologies with
all of the online daters comments you will see that 90% of daters agree. -
RG, Long Island
- Men respond to 100% of the contacts from women online, yet women only
respond to 3% of the guys. This leaves men with no choice but to use
partial cut and paste because they would otherwise have to spend 50 hours
a week composing personal messages that nobody ever looked at or that
never did them any good. So: Men DO cut-and-paste. Women don't answer most
of the emails from men. So women should not yell at men if they think they
cut and pasted the first contact email and men should not get mad if every
person they write to does not respond to them. Men must put out a huge
number of inquiries in order to even get even a small number of responses.
- KW, Denver
- Most people would find it amazing that when someone offers their heart,
extends their emotions and makes themselves vulnerable by letting another
person know of their interest, even if part or all of the computer message
is pasted, that there are people out there who would emotionally abuse
them by attacking them in their first response email. You are using a
computer to exchange notices of interest with strangers. Forget about
whether or not the first notification email was cut-and-paste or not. It
is only an issue after you have met in person. - RQ, Fresno
- It is a numbers game if you use a computer because that is how the
computer thinks. The government and dating sites say you have to meet 1000
people to find the "perfect" marital partner (60 to 70% of marriages end
in divorce now) and 100 people to find the "perfect" girlfriend or
boyfriend. There 200,000 single women and 200,000 single men in any major
city. Only 10 are right for each person. How do you find those
10? - HL, Los Angeles
- You are using a COMPUTER to get sex or love or both. This is a database
system that is running numbers so you can meet in person ASAP. Until you
meet you are just interacting with a computer. Of course you will
naturally respond: “But I am not a number”... but to the computer you are
; because that is the way it works. You have to get off the computer and
“In person” as fast as possible because the conflict between the computer
interface and human contact begins the degradation of the process the
second you both are connected.
It only gets worse as soon as you both exchange your first email. “Go
live”, get out into the "real world" as that is the only key to success. -
TL, Brentwood
- Its a numbers game. 50% of the people won’t be attracted to you but you
may be attracted to all or most of them so that can be heartbreaking, 50%
of the people will be attracted to you but you will only be attracted to
25% of them, of the 25% you are attracted to, one of you will have an
issue about sex, money, politics or entertainment choices which will cause
one to terminate, of the final few, if you met them on the internet, they
are forced to date so many people because of the sudden volume of
introductions that they may not pay attention to, or appreciate you, so
you have to meet them soon because most people select their partner within
a week. - GH, Fremont
HOW THE FAKE "SHILL GIRLS" OF MATCH.COM, OK CUPID AND POF WORK
You just joined one of the top 5 dating sites. You message some attractive
ladies right near you. You get some responses. Alas, you don't realize
that those "hot ladies", now messegaing with you, are actually all a guy
with a goatee, named Wu Lee, in the Philipines.
While you see lots of talk about these dating services, "not allowing fake
profiles", they are, in fact, the ones who hire the "shill Farms" to
supply them with the fake date experiences.
They only use them for guys because women always get flooded with actual
guys contacting them. Many of the pictures are from the ex-websites of
dead Russian hookers.
The first red flags:
- Your date is out "of the area for a few weeks", or longer, on a trip or
some big project so that a real person doesn't actually have to show up.
- They have some other excuse to not meet you for a few weeks. The
psychology is that no guy will wait that long and move on to the next
candidate. Alas, the next candidate , and the next, and the next, is, more
often than not, that same guy Wu Lee. If you are savvy enough to track
them in your calender and follow-up a few days after they are supposed to
"return to town", they will tell you that they just happened to have met
someone on their trip.
- They won't talk on the phone. While talking to a person on a dating site
is very comforting, the Shill Farms have escalation Teams that route phone
call requests to sex phone operators, with your local accent, who do
double duty as fake phone dates and fake sex call takers. Even if you talk
on the phone, it still is not gauranteed that you don't have a shill.
- The shill starts asking you very specfic detailed personal data about
yourself. In real world dating, nobody asks that kind of stuff before
their first date. You look at each other, decide if you both look OK and
off you go to the movies or dinner that Saturday. The reason the shills
want detailed data on you is that the Shill Farm bosses make money from
both providing fake profiles AND harvesting your private data for data
harvesting banks.
- They try to keep you on the site for as long as possible. The Shill
Farmer has a third way of making money off of you. It is called
"Spoofing". The more volumes of people the dating site can show for their
subscriptions and advertisers, the more money they can make.
- They won't meet. For most people, the purpose of a dating site is to
meet someone you can hug, squeeze, kiss and go do things with. It should
seem odd to you, if your potential date won't meet in person ASAP. If they
were real, you would think they would want to see how both of you are,
in-person, before wasting time.
-------------------------------------------------
DATING COMPANIES ARE SCREWED:
Match.com denies using "that many" dead Russian Prostitutes for fake
profiles. Says- "Almost all of our Russian Prostitutes are very much alive
and operating our fake profiles with their actual pictures" says
ex-staffer. Says CEO: "I didn't know my staff were doing crimes"
OK Cupid plans to "Mood Test" Match.com staff to prove they are lying.
All 3 also caught using "photo-comparison and analysis facial recognition
software" which FINDS YOU in outside personal and business sites, thus
breaking your privacy and anonimity security and exposing you to stalkers,
hackers, spies, data-miners, marketing companies and rapists. They even
sell your image data to data miners!
-----------------------------------------------
I am cut and pasting the articles below, which are posted across the
internet, for your edification. What are your thoughts
on these?:
The internet guide to dating:
Updated version:
From Salon.com
TIPS:
Everybody you meet in online dating are the same exact people you will
meet in non-online dating. There is no such
thing as waiting for the natural moment in the real world. If it existed
it would have already happened for you
decades ago. Online dating is the best chance to meet single people in any
large city.
The single most important thing to realize is that "chemistry" is a series
of bio-chemical and audio-visual reactions to
the way a person looks and how they remind you of subconscious things
in-person. It does not work-over the internet.
Chemistry is not a metaphysical thing. You will not be able to decide
about a person unless you meet them in person.
The internet is just a place to see that certain people are single. The
way that media has programmed you, the type of
people the media have told you are attractive and the look and feel of the
people you have gathered around you will
determine how the 42+ different psycho-visual, olfactory and other sensory
reactions determine if you will allow
yourself to be attracted to one person over another.
1. Generally: People have made up their mind
about whether or not they want to be with you 15
minutes after you have met them. Generally, men make up their minds more
quickly than women because
they are sensorial reactive. Decision processing is usually dramatically
out-of-sync between genders based
on genetic hunter/gatherer evolutionary programming. Both genders need to
adjust to find the happy
medium..
2. Most internet dates end in the first few
emails because of misinterpretation. Many people are typing
on their cell phone or iphone or they are at work or they are joking and
you cant see it in email. Do not
make prejudgments based on the first few emails, they are often wrong or
unfair to the other person.
3. A large number of people follow the
third date rule. This means that if the two of you have not
decided to be intimate by the third date you probably never will.
4. Almost a majority of first meetings are
cancelled by one of the two people just prior to meeting
because people feel no commitment to a stranger. Do not be surprised if
people using the service are not too
motivated re: the first meeting as many have been through these
out-of-the-blue cancellations already.
5. Men are genetically ingrained to be
territorial. Womens men friends may suddenly nay-say the
new guy, use psychological tricks to create stress and suddenly confess
their secret love for you in order to
cut the new guy off at the knees. As soon as your guy friends, ex husband,
old boyfriend, (even your
children) etc, hear that you have a date, they will often try to jack-up
your plans in order to protect their
turf. If you are divorced then you usually already have a conflict
relationship over child custody and
schedules, watch for the ex-husband to constantly change child pick-up
times, days to pick-up and other
schedule shifts at the last minute if he suspects you have dating plans.
Stand firm on your plans so you are
not victimized by the ex-husbands territorial strategies
6. Many single people have an obsessive
relationship with their pets if they are single. Consider how
much you talk about or plan your life around your pet.
7. Men have a hard time talking about
feelings.
8. Meet as soon as possible. A majority of
people that spend time talking, first, on this online dating,
seem to be disappointed. The majority have a wonderful set of emails and
phone calls and think they have
met the love of their life. .. but when they meet, the chemistry is not
there and both parties are twice as hurt
by the brick wall because they have already created expectations and
wishful thinking via advance
communication. Most people find each other adorable on hours of phone
calls but only 1% of the people
said they had chemistry in person and vice versa. That has been the story
that most other users on online
dating have posted in tens of thousands of blogs so this appears to be the
consensus of a general trend.
Just an FYI. One would be losing relationships if they try to force a
computer system to act human by using it
for the initial interaction. You have to meet in the real world to not get
screwed up by the computer and its
process. One has to get out of the digital/chat room world as fast as they
can and into the tangible real
world of touch, vision and the other senses. Another reason for meeting
soon is that people blog that a
large number of people they start emailing with, suddenly cancel future
meetings because someone else
they were emailing with met them sooner. In many cases, when they have to
book the first meeting a week
or more out, they will contact you the day before and cancel the meeting
because they starting seeing
others they dated within that week delay. Most connections never happen
because someone else gets there
first.
9. Sexual politics have killed off a
majority of first dates. While it may seem rude or inappropriate to
discuss sex on the first few dates, it is a large part of dating. If you
get down the road and have actual sex
only to find that you have two different styles, then the whole
relationship is over in minutes after weeks or
months of wasted dating. Kissing and petting are key to testing the
waters early. Also, if you have not
gone into Walgreens and asked the pharmacist for the Home Access Express
HIV Test Kit , gotten a
Gardisil vaccination and acquired Plan B pills (Google these if you
dont know what they are) then you are
not ready to even go there. Condoms leak, spillover and break so must have
these back-ups in place.
10. Brush your teeth and take Breath Assure tablets. Bad breath
kills off many dates.
11. Know what you really want. Most people are specifically looking
for marriages, sex, babies,
distractions, fun, social status, therapy or other certain things. Compare
notes on your actual needs in the
first date. There is nothing wrong with just looking for sex, the volume
of people is higher with computer
dating so the odds are better, just be clear up front. In fact few people
can have just sex without falling in
love afterwards.
12. People with kids are able to date just as much as people without
kids if they have a balanced life. Most
single parents are able to get 3 full nights a week totally to themselves.
If you cant pull this off, talk to a
parent who does to figure it out.
13. Dont discuss emotional topics in email with someone you have
never met.
14. On spending money: Women expect men to pay and men expect women
to practice the womens
liberation they fought for. Women want proof of stability and men want
sexual reciprocation. Men get
burned out buying a string of meals for strangers they will never see
again. Men feel used and women feel
diminished if the man doesnt pay
This is the hardest subject in dating.
Manage expectations on this from
the beginning. Dating math = To find a great marital partner you will
spend the rest of your life with you
need to meet at least 1000 people. To find a great LTR dating partner you
need to meet at least 150. 99% of
these meetings will not work out. If a guy meets one person a day for a
month and the cost of food, parking
& misc. adds up to $95/night then he has to spend nearly $3000.00 a
month just to see if there is a chance.
If the lady says to the man that "Her mom taught her that the man must
always pay", or "she was raised in
the South", or 'She was brought up to let the man be the provider", in a
recession. How do you think this
makes the guys feel? Avoid dinners for the first few dates or agree to
dutch treat unless you both are
looking for a trophy-partner or transactional-sexual relationship.
15. We live in an age where advertising and media train us to be
attracted to certain facial types: sorority
girl looks like fraternity guy looks, biker guy looks like biker girl
looks, hipster guy looks like hipster girl
types. Realize that we are all being forced to be superficial by this. Try
to get past this, or you will miss
people who are, otherwise, perfect matches.
16. Exchange cell phone numbers for the first meeting. Most people
do not look like their pictures and
many people never find each other the first time. Use a Google-voice
number or get a $27.00 phone from
Walgreens if you dont want to give out your real number.
17. Where to meet is a political consideration. People who have done
a few weeks of internet dating know
that 99% of the first meetings dont click and they will never see that
person again , so they are hesitant to
go too far for a first meeting . Women think men should drive to their
location. Men think that they are
going to have to pay for everything so the women should come to them. A
good fix is to meet half-way.
18. In life you have gathered people that are very similar to you
around you in order to create a controlled
and comfortable insulation. In online dating you will meet the full
breadth of people and they are of every
type. Be prepared to broaden your horizons.
19. If you feel the need to tell people that you need to go slow
(A concept foreign to most men) or are
still hurt from your last relationship.. you may not be ready to date.
Not only are most people on a dating
site eager and willing to be in a relationship, but things move much
faster online than not online. Dont hurt
yourself, and others, by using a dating site for therapy. People on dating
sites go fast, generally.
20. If you are wanting to blow somebody off and you are online
dating, do not say you have met
someone and then leave your profile up. If they see your profile still up
or get a notice (such as match.com
sends out to everybody each time you go into your profile) they may feel
lied to.
21. IT bears repeating: If you just got out of a relationship, do not use
a dating service to either A: See if you
are over it or B: try to get your ex to become jealous and come back to
you. It is cruel to the other people that
are meeting you that area "ready-to-go".
ATTRACTION CLIFF NOTES:
OK. Here are the details from that TV show:
You are a tool of the media. If you are attractive you go for people
(without looking for depth) who always use you and
dump you as they search for attraction without depth. Science says
that women with model attractive aquiline facial
features will usually fail in love unless they pick the least model
attractive man with non aquiline facial features that they
can find because two model attractive people generally do not develop the
depth or intent beyond appearance and only
see the lack of the depth after the superficial comfort has worn off.
Other examples of pre-programming are documented
in the TV series and text of:
Discovery Channels Science of Sex Appeal- Cliff Notes:
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal/
The bottom line, based on over one hundred years of research by thousands
of different entities: What people think they
want is wrong if they are looking for anything more than just sex Your
subconscious biological programming will ONLY
steer you to make more humans, it WILL NOT allow you to pick a
relationship partner. It will make you pick someone
who is cute and mostly totally wrong for you. This is why 90% of dating
experiences never work out and 70% of marriages
end in divorce. Online dating causes most of the people that SHOULD be
together to not get picked because the main
choosing process is picture-based.
* Social, media and genetic programming makes you do
things you do not mean to do in the dating process. To
be successful in dating you have to actually NOT go with your intuition
or first impressions because science now shows
us that it is a TRICK. Science now shows that reacting to pictures
only, online, will only get you great sex and NEVER get
you a deep or long lasting relationship.
* You will not pick a person whose eye separation and
distance from nose to brow is not the same as yours unless
you consciously make yourself only look at the person in profile
view. You unconsciously judge attraction based on
equilateral positioning of all facial elements and geometric distances
between points on the face.
* Women are generally repelled by mens scent (except
when they are within a day or two of ovulation)...
* One research study illustrated that women tend to
choose partners based on status or resources as a priority.
Groups of women, selected at random, were shown photos of similarly
dressed men of relatively equal attractiveness.
Following a baseline numerical rating of attractiveness, later groups were
shown the same pictures, but with an indication
of social and economic status -- five- or six-figure incomes. The
attractiveness ratings rose or fell significantly in direct
correlation to perceived income level. Men put fins and flames on their
cars and wear giant watches in order to create
status-attraction to attract women.
* When women are ovulating; their voices change to a
higher pitch to attract men, their skin tone changes to attract
men, their pelvic muscles tighten to create a shimmier walk, they
interpret smells different and they output different kinds
of attracting odors.
* The more a man sways his shoulders in a swager, the
more women will be attracted to him. The more a woman
sways her hips, the more men will be attracted to her.
* And the science of partner selection continues with
human odor as a factor. Couples can discern the special smell
of their partner. Every man has a unique smell -- 'eau de man.' Research
has demonstrated that odor affects us at a
subconscious level. We can't control it. No two people smell the same or
have the same HMC, as it is called. There is an
optimum match for HMC.
* Women are generally repelled by mens scent (except
when they are within a day or two of ovulation); but men,
when exposed to odors, are consistently attracted. In experiments where
men inhale imperceptible low doses
of artificial copulants, the attractiveness rating of women shown in
pictures is higher. Copulants impair mens ability to
discriminate whether a woman is attractive. The scent of copulants
prevents them from thinking clearly. (Odor also helps
us steer clear of relatives and has performed the evolutionary role of
"incest avoidance.")
* With chemistry-inspired flirting, lust, and love all
continuously active below our level of consciousness, can we
maintain attraction to one partner? Attraction has many stages, beginning
with a single biochemical jolt resulting in a
change reaction. Anecdotal reports indicate the first kiss is highly
memorable in the attraction that builds (or fails to
build). The abundant testosterone in saliva increases the sex drive.
* Men are genetically programmed at the core of their
genes for tens of millions of years to sleep with as many
women as possible in order to keep the species going. Just as women are
programmed to want a baby like crazy as soon
as they turn 18. A good college education or strict parents are not going
to change this. Recent science has found a shot
that can cause monogamy in men and a shot that can cause baby anxiety
reduction in women.
* Even more sex appeal chemistry influences occur
through the dopamine triggered in our brains. Dopamine is the
brains pleasure chemical that produces a high that can be addictive,
energy producing, and exhilarating. Biochemistry
shows the link between dopamine and testosterone with exhilaration and
lust. But dopamine is not uniquely linked to sex
appeal. The thrill of sports, bungee jumping for instance, can produce a
dopamine rush. What about love?
* Many of our unconscious preferences and behaviors are
conditioned by our chemistry. Studies report that
women find slightly feminized pictures of the same man more attractive
when they are not ovulating. Married women are
biologically driven to promiscuous behavior as reported by an experiment
based on digital movies of the female
participants dancing during a "girls night out." The women with long term
partners and on their fertility cycles were the
most provocative. This was concluded from movement and appearance analyzed
through pixels and an estimated
percentage of skin showing. These committed women sent out more sexual
signals than the available ones. In contrast,
other research pinpoints the role of the chemical oxcytocin in monogamy
for women.
* Many of our unconscious preferences and behaviors are
conditioned by our chemistry. Studies report that
women find slightly feminized pictures of the same man more attractive
when they are not ovulating. Married women are
biologically driven to promiscuous behavior as reported by an experiment
based on digital movies of the female
participants dancing during a "girls night out." The women with long term
partners and on their fertility cycles were the
most provocative. This was concluded from movement and appearance analyzed
through pixels and an estimated
percentage of skin showing. These committed women sent out more sexual
signals than the available ones. In contrast,
other research pinpoints the role of the chemical oxcytocin in monogamy
for women.
* The science on sexual attraction claims that evolution
prepares us to stay together just long enough to raise
children. One study across 58 societies demonstrated a dual reproductive
system going from pair bonding to straying at
about the four-year mark in a relationship. The study conclusion: we are
fundamentally built to stray. Does this mean that
our exhilarating experience of early love is destined to be undermined by
our inherent biology? Will we always fail at long-
term love?
* Men put flame decals, fins, large spoilers, giant
speakers, and raised tires on their cars to draw the attention of
women in order to seek to demonstrate that they have a higher ability to
acquire goods and survive in the urban jungle.
* Science claims that the chemistry of passion, lust,
and love bind us together for a limited period of time. Haven't
most of us figured that out at a personal level? My observation is we
already know we need to build for the future before
the reality storm hits. Yet many of us neglect our marriages and
relationships anyway. Over focus on careers or children,
and overindulging in our selfish habits through individual use of time
frequently lead to rampant neglect of our partners.
Science help us?
* It takes just three minutes to fall in love,
scientists revealed today. What the heart wants, it can establish fairly
quickly, according to American psychologists who studied the behaviour of
10,500 newly-introduced couples. Some
people say theyre looking for one kind of person, then choose another.
Others say they dont even know what theyre
looking for, said Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania. But
our data suggest that, however it happens,
people know it quickly when they see it. He claimed would-be lovers
generally understand their own worth on the dating
market, and so are able to judge potential compatibility within moments of
meeting. Psychologists analysed the
interactions between speed-dating participants, where men and women are
given just three minutes to assess each other
before moving on to the next person. At the end of a session each
individual indicates which of the 25 or so people he or
she met they would like to see again. Although they had three minutes,
most participants made their decision based on
the information that they probably got in the first three seconds,
Kurzban said. Somewhat surprisingly, factors that you
might think would be really important to people, like religion, education
and income, played very little role in their
choices. Psychologists have often likened relationships to transactions
whereby people select mates based on the
qualities their other half has to offer, such as power and money. But
Kurzbans data reveals that when people meet face-
to-face, things like smoking preferences and bank accounts are not of
great importance. Actual behaviour is worth more
than stated beliefs, he said, particularly in the case of speed-dating
when participants do not want to risk a bad date and
so have more incentive to follow their hearts and desires. The researchers
caution that speed dating is not necessarily
typical of how people usually interact. Their findings will be published
in US journal Evolution and Human Behaviour."
Computer Taught To Recognize Attractiveness In Women
ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2008) "Beauty," goes the old saying, "is in the
eye of the beholder." But does the beholder have to
be human?
-------------------------------------------
Until humans reach the age of 25, their brains
are incapable of complete reasoning. The front of the brain has not fully
formed yet. That is why insurance companies do everything they can
to keep kids out of cars. That is why teens will suddenly have sex without
thinking about the consequences. Part of this is the human species trying
to get the species to make babies as fast as possible in order to continue
humankind. Notice, in later years, the whole sex drive/must-have-a-baby
thing goes away. Here is a great artucle about the science of this:
National Geographic:
Beautiful Brains
Moody. Impulsive. Maddening. Why do teenagers act the way they do? Viewed
through the eyes of evolution, their most exasperating traits may be the
key to success as adults.
By David Dobbs
Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to
hear about them.
One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to
tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police
barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast." What, I asked,
was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care,
the boy-man I had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled
to the brink of manhood, had been flying down the highway at 113 miles an
hour.
"That's more than a little fast," I said.
He agreed. In fact, he sounded somber and contrite. He did not object when
I told him he'd have to pay the fines and probably for a lawyer. He did
not argue when I pointed out that if anything happens at that speeda dog
in the road, a blown tire, a sneezehe dies. He was in fact almost
irritatingly reasonable. He even proffered that the cop did the right
thing in stopping him, for, as he put it, "We can't all go around doing
113."
He did, however, object to one thing. He didn't like it that one of the
several citations he received was for reckless driving.
"Well," I huffed, sensing an opportunity to finally yell at him, "what
would you call it?"
"It's just not accurate," he said calmly. "?'Reckless' sounds like you're
not paying attention. But I was. I made a deliberate point of doing this
on an empty stretch of dry interstate, in broad daylight, with good sight
lines and no traffic. I mean, I wasn't just gunning the thing. I was
driving.
"I guess that's what I want you to know. If it makes you feel any better,
I was really focused."
Actually, it did make me feel better. That bothered me, for I didn't
understand why. Now I do.
My son's high-speed adventure raised the question long asked by people who
have pondered the class of humans we call teenagers: What on Earth was he
doing? Parents often phrase this question more colorfully. Scientists put
it more coolly. They ask, What can explain this behavior? But even that is
just another way of wondering, What is wrong with these kids? Why do they
act this way? The question passes judgment even as it inquires.
Through the ages, most answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect
the teen. Aristotle concluded more than 2,300 years ago that "the young
are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine." A shepherd in William
Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale wishes "there were no age between ten and
three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is
nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the
ancientry, stealing, fighting." His lament colors most modern scientific
inquiries as well. G. Stanley Hall, who formalized adolescent studies with
his 1904 Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology,
Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, believed this
period of "storm and stress" replicated earlier, less civilized stages of
human development. Freud saw adolescence as an expression of torturous
psychosexual conflict; Erik Erikson, as the most tumultuous of life's
several identity crises. Adolescence: always a problem.
Such thinking carried into the late 20th century, when researchers
developed brain-imaging technology that enabled them to see the teen brain
in enough detail to track both its physical development and its patterns
of activity. These imaging tools offered a new way to ask the same
questionWhat's wrong with these kids?and revealed an answer that
surprised almost everyone. Our brains, it turned out, take much longer to
develop than we had thought. This revelation suggested both a simplistic,
unflattering explanation for teens' maddening behaviorand a more complex,
affirmative explanation as well.
The first full series of scans of the developing adolescent braina
National Institutes of Health (NIH) project that studied over a hundred
young people as they grew up during the 1990sshowed that our brains
undergo a massive reorganization between our 12th and 25th years. The
brain doesn't actually grow very much during this period. It has already
reached 90 percent of its full size by the time a person is six, and a
thickening skull accounts for most head growth afterward. But as we move
through adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive remodeling, resembling
a network and wiring upgrade.
For starters, the brain's axonsthe long nerve fibers that neurons use to
send signals to other neuronsbecome gradually more insulated with a fatty
substance called myelin (the brain's white matter), eventually boosting
the axons' transmission speed up to a hundred times. Meanwhile, dendrites,
the branchlike extensions that neurons use to receive signals from nearby
axons, grow twiggier, and the most heavily used synapsesthe little
chemical junctures across which axons and dendrites pass notesgrow richer
and stronger. At the same time, synapses that see little use begin to
wither. This synaptic pruning, as it is called, causes the brain's
cortexthe outer layer of gray matter where we do much of our conscious
and complicated thinkingto become thinner but more efficient. Taken
together, these changes make the entire brain a much faster and more
sophisticated organ.
This process of maturation, once thought to be largely finished by
elementary school, continues throughout adolescence. Imaging work done
since the 1990s shows that these physical changes move in a slow wave from
the brain's rear to its front, from areas close to the brain stem that
look after older and more behaviorally basic functions, such as vision,
movement, and fundamental processing, to the evolutionarily newer and more
complicated thinking areas up front. The corpus callosum, which connects
the brain's left and right hemispheres and carries traffic essential to
many advanced brain functions, steadily thickens. Stronger links also
develop between the hippocampus, a sort of memory directory, and frontal
areas that set goals and weigh different agendas; as a result, we get
better at integrating memory and experience into our decisions. At the
same time, the frontal areas develop greater speed and richer connections,
allowing us to generate and weigh far more variables and agendas than
before.
When this development proceeds normally, we get better at balancing
impulse, desire, goals, self-interest, rules, ethics, and even altruism,
generating behavior that is more complex and, sometimes at least, more
sensible. But at times, and especially at first, the brain does this work
clumsily. It's hard to get all those new cogs to mesh.
Beatriz Luna, a University of Pittsburgh professor of psychiatry who uses
neuroimaging to study the teen brain, used a simple test that illustrates
this learning curve. Luna scanned the brains of children, teens, and
twentysomethings while they performed an antisaccade task, a sort of
eyes-only video game where you have to stop yourself from looking at a
suddenly appearing light. You view a screen on which the red crosshairs at
the center occasionally disappear just as a light flickers elsewhere on
the screen. Your instructions are to not look at the light and instead to
look in the opposite direction. A sensor detects any eye movement. It's a
tough assignment, since flickering lights naturally draw our attention. To
succeed, you must override both a normal impulse to attend to new
information and curiosity about something forbidden. Brain geeks call this
response inhibition.
Ten-year-olds stink at it, failing about 45 percent of the time. Teens do
much better. In fact, by age 15 they can score as well as adults if
they're motivated, resisting temptation about 70 to 80 percent of the
time. What Luna found most interesting, however, was not those scores. It
was the brain scans she took while people took the test. Compared with
adults, teens tended to make less use of brain regions that monitor
performance, spot errors, plan, and stay focusedareas the adults seemed
to bring online automatically. This let the adults use a variety of brain
resources and better resist temptation, while the teens used those areas
less often and more readily gave in to the impulse to look at the
flickering lightjust as they're more likely to look away from the road to
read a text message.
If offered an extra reward, however, teens showed they could push those
executive regions to work harder, improving their scores. And by age 20,
their brains respond to this task much as the adults' do. Luna suspects
the improvement comes as richer networks and faster connections make the
executive region more effective.
These studies help explain why teens behave with such vexing
inconsistency: beguiling at breakfast, disgusting at dinner; masterful on
Monday, sleepwalking on Saturday. Along with lacking experience generally,
they're still learning to use their brain's new networks. Stress, fatigue,
or challenges can cause a misfire. Abigail Baird, a Vassar psychologist
who studies teens, calls this neural gawkinessan equivalent to the
physical awkwardness teens sometimes display while mastering their growing
bodies.
The slow and uneven developmental arc revealed by these imaging studies
offers an alluringly pithy explanation for why teens may do stupid things
like drive at 113 miles an hour, aggrieve their ancientry, and get people
(or get gotten) with child: They act that way because their brains aren't
done! You can see it right there in the scans!
This view, as titles from the explosion of scientific papers and popular
articles about the "teen brain" put it, presents adolescents as "works in
progress" whose "immature brains" lead some to question whether they are
in a state "akin to mental retardation."
The story you're reading right now, however, tells a different scientific
tale about the teen brain. Over the past five years or so, even as the
work-in-progress story spread into our culture, the discipline of
adolescent brain studies learned to do some more-complex thinking of its
own. A few researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in
a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary
theory. The resulting account of the adolescent braincall it the
adaptive-adolescent storycasts the teen less as a rough draft than as an
exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly
for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world
outside.
This view will likely sit better with teens. More important, it sits
better with biology's most fundamental principle, that of natural
selection. Selection is hell on dysfunctional traits. If adolescence is
essentially a collection of themangst, idiocy, and haste; impulsiveness,
selfishness, and reckless bumblingthen how did those traits survive
selection? They couldn'tnot if they were the period's most fundamental or
consequential features.
The answer is that those troublesome traits don't really characterize
adolescence; they're just what we notice most because they annoy us or put
our children in danger. As B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell
Medical College who has spent nearly a decade applying brain and genetic
studies to our understanding of adolescence, puts it, "We're so used to
seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really
makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a
highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to
do the things you have to do then."
To see past the distracting, dopey teenager and glimpse the adaptive
adolescent within, we should look not at specific, sometimes startling,
behaviors, such as skateboarding down stairways or dating fast company,
but at the broader traits that underlie those acts.
Let's start with the teen's love of the thrill. We all like new and
exciting things, but we never value them more highly than we do during
adolescence. Here we hit a high in what behavioral scientists call
sensation seeking: the hunt for the neural buzz, the jolt of the unusual
or unexpected.
Seeking sensation isn't necessarily impulsive. You might plan a
sensation-seeking experiencea skydive or a fast drivequite deliberately,
as my son did. Impulsivity generally drops throughout life, starting at
about age 10, but this love of the thrill peaks at around age 15. And
although sensation seeking can lead to dangerous behaviors, it can also
generate positive ones: The urge to meet more people, for instance, can
create a wider circle of friends, which generally makes us healthier,
happier, safer, and more successful.
This upside probably explains why an openness to the new, though it can
sometimes kill the cat, remains a highlight of adolescent development. A
love of novelty leads directly to useful experience. More broadly, the
hunt for sensation provides the inspiration needed to "get you out of the
house" and into new terrain, as Jay Giedd, a pioneering researcher in teen
brain development at NIH, puts it.
Also peaking during adolescence (and perhaps aggrieving the ancientry the
most) is risk-taking. We court risk more avidly as teens than at any other
time. This shows reliably in the lab, where teens take more chances in
controlled experiments involving everything from card games to simulated
driving. And it shows in real life, where the period from roughly 15 to 25
brings peaks in all sorts of risky ventures and ugly outcomes. This age
group dies of accidents of almost every sort (other than work accidents)
at high rates. Most long-term drug or alcohol abuse starts during
adolescence, and even people who later drink responsibly often drink too
much as teens. Especially in cultures where teenage driving is common,
this takes a gory toll: In the U.S., one in three teen deaths is from car
crashes, many involving alcohol.
Are these kids just being stupid? That's the conventional explanation:
They're not thinking, or by the work-in-progress model, their puny
developing brains fail them.
Yet these explanations don't hold up. As Laurence Steinberg, a
developmental psychologist specializing in adolescence at Temple
University, points out, even 14- to 17-year-oldsthe biggest risk
takersuse the same basic cognitive strategies that adults do, and they
usually reason their way through problems just as well as adults. Contrary
to popular belief, they also fully recognize they're mortal. And, like
adults, says Steinberg, "teens actually overestimate risk."
So if teens think as well as adults do and recognize risk just as well,
why do they take more chances? Here, as elsewhere, the problem lies less
in what teens lack compared with adults than in what they have more of.
Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but
because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where
risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily
than adults do.
A video game Steinberg uses draws this out nicely. In the game, you try to
drive across town in as little time as possible. Along the way you
encounter several traffic lights. As in real life, the traffic lights
sometimes turn from green to yellow as you approach them, forcing a quick
go-or-stop decision. You save timeand score more pointsif you drive
through before the light turns red. But if you try to drive through the
red and don't beat it, you lose even more time than you would have if you
had stopped for it. Thus the game rewards you for taking a certain amount
of risk but punishes you for taking too much.
When teens drive the course alone, in what Steinberg calls the emotionally
"cool" situation of an empty room, they take risks at about the same rates
that adults do. Add stakes that the teen cares about, however, and the
situation changes. In this case Steinberg added friends: When he brought a
teen's friends into the room to watch, the teen would take twice as many
risks, trying to gun it through lights he'd stopped for before. The
adults, meanwhile, drove no differently with a friend watching.
To Steinberg, this shows clearly that risk-taking rises not from puny
thinking but from a higher regard for reward.
"They didn't take more chances because they suddenly downgraded the risk,"
says Steinberg. "They did so because they gave more weight to the payoff."
Researchers such as Steinberg and Casey believe this risk-friendly
weighing of cost versus reward has been selected for because, over the
course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks during this
period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires
moving out of the home and into less secure situations. "The more you seek
novelty and take risks," says Baird, "the better you do." This
responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It
gets you out of the house and into new turf.
As Steinberg's driving game suggests, teens respond strongly to social
rewards. Physiology and evolutionary theory alike offer explanations for
this tendency. Physiologically, adolescence brings a peak in the brain's
sensitivity to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that appears to prime and fire
reward circuits and aids in learning patterns and making decisions. This
helps explain the teen's quickness of learning and extraordinary
receptivity to rewardand his keen, sometimes melodramatic reaction to
success as well as defeat.
The teen brain is similarly attuned to oxytocin, another neural hormone,
which (among other things) makes social connections in particular more
rewarding. The neural networks and dynamics associated with general reward
and social interactions overlap heavily. Engage one, and you often engage
the other. Engage them during adolescence, and you light a fire.
This helps explain another trait that marks adolescence: Teens prefer the
company of those their own age more than ever before or after. At one
level, this passion for same-age peers merely expresses in the social
realm the teen's general attraction to novelty: Teens offer teens far more
novelty than familiar old family does.
Yet teens gravitate toward peers for another, more powerful reason: to
invest in the future rather than the past. We enter a world made by our
parents. But we will live most of our lives, and prosper (or not) in a
world run and remade by our peers. Knowing, understanding, and building
relationships with them bears critically on success. Socially savvy rats
or monkeys, for instance, generally get the best nesting areas or
territories, the most food and water, more allies, and more sex with
better and fitter mates. And no species is more intricately and deeply
social than humans are.
This supremely human characteristic makes peer relations not a sideshow
but the main show. Some brain-scan studies, in fact, suggest that our
brains react to peer exclusion much as they respond to threats to physical
health or food supply. At a neural level, in other words, we perceive
social rejection as a threat to existence. Knowing this might make it
easier to abide the hysteria of a 13-year-old deceived by a friend or the
gloom of a 15-year-old not invited to a party. These people! we lament.
They react to social ups and downs as if their fates depended upon them!
They're right. They do.
Excitement, novelty, risk, the company of peers. These traits may seem to
add up to nothing more than doing foolish new stuff with friends. Look
deeper, however, and you see that these traits that define adolescence
make us more adaptive, both as individuals and as a species. That's
doubtless why these traits, broadly defined, seem to show themselves in
virtually all human cultures, modern or tribal. They may concentrate and
express themselves more starkly in modern Western cultures, in which teens
spend so much time with each other. But anthropologists have found that
virtually all the world's cultures recognize adolescence as a distinct
period in which adolescents prefer novelty, excitement, and peers. This
near-universal recognition sinks the notion that it's a cultural
construct.
Culture clearly shapes adolescence. It influences its expression and
possibly its length. It can magnify its manifestations. Yet culture does
not create adolescence. The period's uniqueness rises from genes and
developmental processes that have been selected for over thousands of
generations because they play an amplified role during this key
transitional period: producing a creature optimally primed to leave a safe
home and move into unfamiliar territory.
The move outward from home is the most difficult thing that humans do, as
well as the most criticalnot just for individuals but for a species that
has shown an unmatched ability to master challenging new environments. In
scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain in the ass. But they are quite
possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around. Without
them, humanity might not have so readily spread across the globe.
This adaptive-adolescence view, however accurate, can be tricky to come to
terms withthe more so for parents dealing with teens in their most
trying, contrary, or flat-out scary moments. It's reassuring to recast
worrisome aspects as signs of an organism learning how to negotiate its
surroundings. But natural selection swings a sharp edge, and the teen's
sloppier moments can bring unbearable consequences. We may not run the
risk of being killed in ritualistic battles or being eaten by leopards,
but drugs, drinking, driving, and crime take a mighty toll. My son lives,
and thrives, sans car, at college. Some of his high school friends,
however, died during their driving experiments. Our children wield their
adaptive plasticity amid small but horrific risks.
We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry
line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood.
The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to
counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and
other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.
Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards
and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies
show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but
steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids
generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but
not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and
it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent
can offer certain kernels of wisdomknowledge valued not because it comes
from parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own
struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that
she must understand not just her parents' world but also the one she is
entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once
faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.
Meanwhile, in times of doubt, take inspiration in one last distinction of
the teen braina final key to both its clumsiness and its remarkable
adaptability. This is the prolonged plasticity of those late-developing
frontal areas as they slowly mature. As noted earlier, these areas are the
last to lay down the fatty myelin insulationthe brain's white matterthat
speeds transmission. And at first glance this seems like bad news: If we
need these areas for the complex task of entering the world, why aren't
they running at full speed when the challenges are most daunting?
The answer is that speed comes at the price of flexibility. While a myelin
coating greatly accelerates an axon's bandwidth, it also inhibits the
growth of new branches from the axon. According to Douglas Fields, an NIH
neuroscientist who has spent years studying myelin, "This makes the period
when a brain area lays down myelin a sort of crucial period of
learningthe wiring is getting upgraded, but once that's done, it's harder
to change."
The window in which experience can best rewire those connections is highly
specific to each brain area. Thus the brain's language centers acquire
their insulation most heavily in the first 13 years, when a child is
learning language. The completed insulation consolidates those gainsbut
makes further gains, such as second languages, far harder to come by.
So it is with the forebrain's myelination during the late teens and early
20s. This delayed completiona withholding of readinessheightens
flexibility just as we confront and enter the world that we will face as
adults.
This long, slow, back-to-front developmental wave, completed only in the
mid-20s, appears to be a uniquely human adaptation. It may be one of our
most consequential. It can seem a bit crazy that we humans don't wise up a
bit earlier in life. But if we smartened up sooner, we'd end up dumber.