Just had to endure listening to two women I know complain about how they've given up on online dating because it sucks. It was agonizing because they kept accusing me of having it so good because I don't have to deal with the problems they do. The main problem is that online dating is basically a big haystack and they have to search for the needle. The amount of filtering work required is demotivating, and for every 1 good guy out there, you will find before him 100 duds and 10 men that behave so poorly that you'll be too demoralized to continue. They said that I'm lucky because I don't have to deal with those problems.

What was so frustrating was that, even though I deeply disagreed with them, I couldn't say anything back. I had to agree with them and pretend like I believed and sympathized with the plight of women in online dating. The reason is because, arguing against them would have required as part of making my case that I admit that I simply don't have very many options, and that's basically self-conflagration if you're a man. I'd be trading away whatever attractiveness I have in their eyes for the sake of winning a stupid argument, so I mostly held my tongue. Now I come here to say what I couldn't say then.

Guess what? All of the problems you complain about, men have as well. It's just that men also have to deal with not having matches in the first place, or going a very, very long time without matches on top of them. Your filtering problem? Yeah, we have that too. Actually, it's worse because scammers disproportionately target men because they know we're more desperate from staring at an empty inbox. And even when a woman is real, the rate of her being any good isn't any greater than the rate of any given man in your inbox being any good. And guess what? Women behave poorly too. I would argue worse, because it often comes from a place of entitlement and unreasonable expectations. But, no, let me just join you in making surprise pikachu face at the realization that men want to sleep with you.

You can have the exact same dating experience men have. Just set this personal policy for yourself:

1. Open your matches. Pick one man completely at random and evaluate him.

2. Regardless of the outcome of your evaluation, you're not allowed to continue looking at other matches. Close your matches.

3. Roll 2 dice. The sum is the number of days you have to wait until you can look at another match.

There you go! Now your dating experience is exactly like what men have!

Now do you see that what you have is strictly better? Because you can choose to not follow such a silly policy. Men have no choice.