How the Manosphere Is Changing Modern Dating Culture

Are you dating at the moment or are you in a relationship? I'm I'm neither. Just sort of. How come? Just don't want can't be bothered. A lot of people don't want relationships nowadays. All my girl friends, we're all pretty much all of us are single, but it's just our choice. Not doing it anymore. But that's quite Isn't that a bit sad? Yeah. But we're happy with ourselves and we're happy being single. If you speak to single people, it can sound like the dating scene today is worse than it's ever been.

Dating is draining and I just can't keep doing it. I'm just going to lay it out straight. We're in a dating crisis. Dating is Dating scene for men has never been harder because if you try and approach a girl at a bar, she's going to think you're a weirdo straight away. So yeah, dating, man. It's just one of the hardest things now. 78% of people who use dating apps say they're either mentally, physically, or emotionally exhausted by them. At what point do you just accept being single forever? I don't know. But this isn't just an issue with the internet. Globally, the number of single people is on the rise. In this series, we're on a journey around the world to find out what's gone wrong with dating.

We are doing a video about why no one's dating anymore. Have you GOT ANY IDEAS? NO, NOT YET. I'M IN what's apparently the loneliest place in the most single city in the UK, the constituency of Boxhall and Campbell Green in London. I want to speak to people here and get their take on the dating scene today. I'm so tired of like men in their 30s on Hinge saying still figuring out my dating goals. I was on a date last night actually which probably didn't go as I wanted it to. I just didn't fancy him. Yeah. What would you say you are looking for when you're on dates? What type of man are you wanting to meet?

This is going to sound really bad, but if they are in like a stable position, that does help. It's appealing. I think it's slightly innate within women to like think that as well. Is dating something that you're doing? Is it going well? Not well. Me right now? No. Not really. It's not really a focus for me. Um, right now I need to focus on things that's got to help me grow. How do you know when you're ready to start looking for someone? Um, like when are you done? When am I done? Well, in that case, I'll never be done and growing. Never. Before dating, I try to be a better man. Like I try to be economically stable.

How old are you? Uh, 21. Wow. Yeah. So, you're currently at 21 working on like becoming a better man before you date? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Okay. Stability or something is what people are after. And then maybe like a lot of us just aren't that stable. What does stability mean? Stability means having a stable job and being like someone who's going to you know where they're going to be every day of the week or like or people have like specific goals and want to achieve them.

I'm hearing a lot about men's goals on this journey making this like it's not really something that you used to hear that much about and it feels like suddenly everyone's got like goals and vision. the checkbox list is tiny. Like I know when I've been in a really good relationship, like you inspire each other to reach those goals together. Like, wouldn't that be so fun? Yeah. Maybe it's just that they're literally not speaking to enough women and they're getting just all their ideas about what women want from men and like stupid people on social media. Then get stuck in this conflict of should I work on myself or should I go

out and date? And this is actually a very real uh issue that's going on in the male community. If you hate yourself right now because you're fat and broke, the last thing you should be doing, fellas, is looking to get into a relationship. You see all these, you know, distractions. When I say distractions, I'm talking about girls. All these thoughts of, you know, dating and that, cut them off. When you worried about women, bro, what it do? It throw you off your grind. It throw you off your purpose. Make six figures per year, 35 or older, have 6 months to one year of savings, be in shape, and then have sex with 50 women. And then that's the point where you would say, "Okay, now it could be an

intelligent decision to settle down with a woman." Yes. I'm surprised by how many young heterosexual men I've met who sign up to the idea that they need to improve before dating. To get a broader view on why men and women seem to be moving apart, I'm speaking to Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist. We've heard the headlines that young people are dating less, they're having less sex, they're not forming relationships in the same way. What would be some of the main reasons you would see for this shift? Women are outpacing men in achievement. So women are graduating from high school at greater rates. They're graduating from college at greater rates. They're going to college at greater rates.

They're entering the job force in greater numbers. And this poses a challenge because many women tend to be hypergamous, meaning that they want to make upward. So, they want to be involved in long-term relationships with people who have at least as much education and at least as much earning capacity as they have themselves. What this does is it creates this very small pool of men that are potentially sort of um appropriate mates for a woman who wants to mate with somebody who's at least at her same level. And so, there's a shortage of these men. And so a lot of women, especially um accomplished women, uh feel very frustrated. Um and what happens is this very small pool of accomplished men, a lot of these men are

choosing to just date casually for a really long time because they don't have any constraints on their fertility. Some of the sentiment that we've heard from um young guys, it was this, I don't think you have this phrase in America, but the phrase is like, I can't be asked. I'm just out of it. I can't be bothered. I don't have any motivation. And I just found that really sad. Basically, I don't like to be one of those people who blames everything on our smartphones. When you get rewards without effort, it's just like dopamine hits without any effort. Dating is effortful. I mean, it's hard.

It's Friday night. I'm in Manchester and I'm about to go to an elite speed dating event. It's literally called elite dating and it's advertised by the organizers as dating for people with quote unquote professional jobs. So, I'm here to find out whether what the experts have told me is ringing true for these people. So, this event is dating for like professionals. Why was that something that you were attracted to? Uh because I don't want to go on a date with a bum. Like plain and simple. I don't want someone that hasn't got a job, that hasn't got a life, that hasn't got dreams and aspirations, or someone that has no money and is going to rely on me.

Like, I want to go and build a life with someone that's on the same wavelength as me. Do you think that makes dating easier or harder? It's more of a niche pool. There's more single bums than there is single people with money and aspirations because someone's already gone, you're great. I'm going to take you. I'm inside. We're not actually allowed to film the event for obvious reasons. Basically, it's a very classic speed dating event. Everybody's had a drink of procco. They're about to sit down and spend 3 minutes all getting to know each

other. So, I'll report back. I can't explain why that was so intense. It was literally mental. How was your night? It was okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. I ticked two people. Okay. So, that's good. Two to three days. I'll find out. Two out of I think there was like 10 people. 10? Yeah. Well, that's all right. You're going out as a group now. So, I mean, new friends. Yeah. And the two that you ticked going out for a drink?

Yep. Good night. Bye-bye. See you later. Did you want to hand your sheet in or Oh, no. I didn't tick anymore. Oh, did you? Okay. I'll let you still get Oh, are you seriously? All right. Okay. I'm being pure journalism. You'll still get to find out who's ticked you anyway. So, I don't think anyone would have ticked me because I told them I was a journalist. Yeah. Yeah. But did you tell them you were married? No. Well, then well then you might still have got some tick to have. It's becoming clearer why the men I've spoken to in London feel the pressure they do. But I wanted to understand why

it seems to be stopping so many of them dating at all. I'm not too force me about relationships. I'm not Yeah. Not too long. Isn't that a bit sad? People like just aren't dating and aren't like I'm quite happy. I just think like drinking alcohol like going out with your friends and then that's when you sort of like you've had a drink for I'm going to go speak to that girl or whatever like that. I don't it just doesn't happen anymore. I think people are too focused on like the career and making sure that they look correct at all times and I think people are just in constant fear. I suppose

what's planted the idea that's what you should be doing in your early 20ies. I honestly think it's the rise of like all these men that do these like podcasts and all that sort of thing and then they're telling other men this is what girls want. They want a provider. They want this and they want that. But as far as I'm concerned, I've never seen any girls podcasts which have like said that. It's all just men telling men what they should be or what kind of man they're supposed to be. Amazing. Thank you so much. You were so good. We've cracked it cuz she just confirmed it. It seems that if rising levels of equality have made things tougher for lower income heterosexual men, then the male self-improvement ecosystem is

offering solutions that are actually not helping them. I really want to speak to someone making this kind of content. So, I'm heading to Milton Kees to meet Alli Benhuriz, a male self-improvement Tik Tocker. If you want people to buy into you, you must buy into you. People ask me all the time, Ally, don't you think the self-improvement niche is saturated? And I'm like, I don't care if it's saturated because there isn't another like me out there. Hello. Thank you for coming. I'm Leia. Is this literally what you wear all the time? This is me all the time. Yeah. My friends always tell me, Allie, just dress down, please, for once. I love your place.

Oh, thank you. It's uniquely me. I would say I want it to feel like a gentleman's lounge, like a cigar lounge. That's the kind of look I'm going for. There's a I guess quite a funny video. You say if you're fat and you're broke, you know, the last thing you should be doing is looking for a relationship. Do you think there are times when it's it's a distraction to be kind of dating? If you're not where you want to be, you're often doing yourself a dis you're doing the other person a disservice. Traditionally, men are obviously supposed to arrange the date and take the lady out. I am quite old school in that approach. I still

maintain that approach and I preach it on my social media platforms. It makes you feel better about yourself as a man when you can do that. And I think every guy knows that's the right thing to do deep down, especially I think every guy knows that. Yeah. Well, I mean to be fair nowadays there's people saying that no, no, I will never pay for the entire day. I'll go 50/50. And I just think you're going into that with a scarcity mindset. One of the things about this space is it's men talking to men generally. It's almost feels like it can be a bit of an echo chamber with men telling men what men should do to meet women, but like where are the women in the conversation?

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think a lot of guys look at women as the end result. If we do all this stuff, we'll get the woman. That's why so many guys are so obsessed with building this life before inviting a woman into it. Yeah. But like it's not going to work out if you've been doing all that without chatting to any women cuz you're not going to be very good at it. Well, exactly. You know, you're going to be rusty, you know, and I think as you're improving yourself, it's okay to go on dates. You don't have to get to a level first and then start meeting women. You can meet women as you're

improving yourself. So, I said the fat and broke thing. If you're somebody who's going to the gym and right now you're overweight, but you're, you know, improving, you're feeling better about yourself, it's okay to start dating at that point because you're you're engaging in the actions. What why is it all I literally talking about just talking to women? I'm not even talking about dating. I'm just talking about like having friends who are women and just having a group of friends where there are females in it. Like that's really useful, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think you know obviously everybody has a their own preference when it comes to you know what kind of friends they want to have.

Do you have female friends? Yeah, I mean I have you know female colleagues that I've I've worked with. Me personally, I don't have many female friends but I can understand why somebody may want to have female friends, you know. So every everybody has their own preference. When you're talking about women and what it is that women want, where are you getting that information from? Yeah. So, as I said earlier really from my personal interactions with women, now what I talk about isn't necessarily developing friendships with women and socializing with women. It's more so how to carry yourself Yeah.

in a romantic interaction with women. A lot of the things that I speak to guys about, I've I've done myself. A lot of the mistakes that I've made and also from conversations I have with many of my male friends, I always ask questions, you know, so what's got you to this point? Especially when I see an old couple, I always, you know, like to speak to them because, you know, that they always have something lovely to say. But you know what they'll say? They'll say, "We met through our friends." Cuz back then, people just had groups of friends and they mixed. You know, it wasn't kind of men all together and like and then going off and dating. It was a more organic thing to just know people of the opposite sex.

Do you have a partner? At the moment, no. At the moment I'm a single man but uh it's it's something that I do aspire to um to have in the near future as well. Gentlemen, it's absolutely important for us. Speaking to Alli made me wonder what it is that makes young men follow this kind of advice and it reminded me of a conversation I'd had in Manchester. People are actually being less successful in meeting partners. Is there not a bit of an issue that people are hearing from influencers and social media what they think they need to do to find romantic partners, but the success rate is going down?

People are thinking this is a normal thing. Yeah. Like the people always ask themselves the questions of why is it not working? If you keep going to the same grocery store and you keep getting moldy vegetables, why would you keep going back for the same thing? Yeah. Well, why do people keep going back to these people giving this advice? Oh, that's a tough question to ask. I'd say it's cuz they don't take the initiative to find an alternative. Maybe it's cuz they don't believe there is an alternative. When I met my partner, I was doing quite a lot better than I am now. Uh I was working for a big bicycle manufacturer in France, so earning quite a bit more money. And it is very different now. I'm

working almost minimum wage in the Trafford Center. Do you think it would have been different had you met now? Could well have been. Yeah, I think I would have probably felt quite different about the situation. Yeah. How do you mean? Probably just wouldn't have been so happy to sort of commit to anything in the way that we have done. I don't think it's bad for a guy to strive to want to do better or to want more. Uh but at the same time, I don't think you want to wait your whole life or spend your whole life waiting for the beat to kick in. Um do you know what I mean? It be really sad if you get to 50 and look around, you kind of done nothing with your life cuz you have been waiting for everything

to be perfect. It is sad that people are dating less kind of, but the reason why I find it sad is because I think concurrently people are having less fun. On top of that just base level sad vibe, it's also not working. So people are striving very hard to become a particular type of person in order to get a date, but they're doing it in a vacuum that means they're really not learning how to connect with people. It makes me feel and sound really old, but I had so much fun when I was in my 20ies and I just are not getting the feeling that's a priority anymore. And I think it's really admirable for people to like have hopes and dreams and stuff, but I don't trust the motivations of the people who are

telling them that's what they need to focus on. I don't think it's the right mindset for most people. I think that they may end up looking back and being like, "Oh, I probably didn't need to be worrying about all of that at that stage." In the next episode, we're heading to the US to see how politics and religion might be affecting how people date.