What If The Problem Is You? Why Women Ignore The Dating Advice That Actually Works

In the first ten seconds of these whiny videos, they tend to speed run through a list of men’s top dating red flags. Visually, they’re no Megan Fox. Temperamentally? They’re neurotic but judgmental, entitled but unremarkable, high maintenance but withholding. Behaviorally? They’re too upfront about their novelty-seeking, promiscuousness. They over-index on things that are only valuable to other women, not men—things like career success, education, independence, and how funny they think they are. 

In other words, qualities that earn clout on estrogenic platforms like TikTok but don’t translate into desirability for the kind of men they claim to want. I’m not making the case that men don’t value those things, but in the same way that women run men through a filter of certain qualities before they can appreciate others, men do the same thing. So maybe you are really funny, but that doesn’t matter much if you’re 100 pounds over their acceptable preference.

I know this sounds harsh, but I promise you I’m writing this altruistically, because I see the mistakes women are making and how badly they’re marketing themselves. It’s not that they’d make bad partners or are unworthy of love; it’s that they’ve mistaken female-coded validation for cross-sex appeal. The fact that they’re genuinely baffled by men’s apparent lack of interest in buying what they’re selling suggests to me that they’re in need of a little perspective. Because without it, that confusion turns into resentment that gets externalized into bitter monologues about how men are intimidated, emotionally unavailable, or just can’t handle strong, independent women such as themselves. 

They’ve mistaken female-coded validation for cross-sex appeal.

Here’s what I think is the problem. Men get entire subcultures dedicated to self-improvement. They’re in no short supply. There’s one for every kind of male archetype there is. Whether it’s that they need to clean their room, hit the gym, build something, start a company, restore their hairline, make more money, acquire status, learn a trade, or looksmax. Hell, no matter what a “loser” a man is labeled, perceived to be, or lamented from their own point of view, they almost never take an un-agentic approach. They may be unreasonably nihilistic, but they’re self-critical. When they’re not having success in dating, they assume something is wrong with them, there’s something missing, or something to improve. And while this gets pathologized in blackpill circles that haven’t learned how to turn that self-awareness into action, they’re not wanting for introspection. They’re drowning in it.

Women, by contrast, have been sold a delusional kind of self-regard. A belief that they’re enough as they are, regardless of how undesirable they are. Many of them have become allergic to self-improvement. I’m not sure if it’s a result of female socialization or biological aversion to criticism, but I’m leaning towards the former, because women used to intuit that there were a number of qualities they had to cultivate and attributes they must possess to secure a man. In recent decades, however, self-love has been all the rage. Honest self-assessment isn’t internalized misogyny. It’s how you get what you actually want. Sometimes, honest self-assessment has to do with understanding how you’re perceived, regardless of whether it’s reflective of who you really are. 

Take this viral video posted by @advicebeforebed on TikTok, which quickly made the rounds on X as ragebait. In it, a young 30-something woman airs her grievances with the dating market in various cities—particularly, San Francisco—and she’s scoping out the scene in New York. Her opening line is a filtering mechanism: “If you’re a man in your 30s and you’re single and you live in New York or San Francisco, please stay. Everyone else can swipe up. GREAT. Now that I have the attention of the people that I need, I have a question for you.” It’s already smug. It’s not giving charming, demure, playful, kind, mysterious, or virtually any positive quality that could grab someone’s attention in a positive way. Instead, it’s immediately off-putting.

From the get-go, she positions her friend group as hot, high-value women, or as she puts it, “hot, stunning, beautiful, great personality, great job,” but laments they’re all inexplicably single, despite insisting they’re all “pretty much 9 out of 10.” To play devil’s advocate here, this woman does not actually label herself a 9 out of 10, but her friends. Nevertheless, it’s implied through tone and association that she’s comparably attractive, so you should always anticipate that people will give you the least charitable interpretation. That’s why words, tone, framing—all of these are incredibly important.

Here’s where she’s losing people. First, she positions herself as hostile, then it borders on presumptuous, if not delusional. Rather than ask why they’re all perma-single women in their 30s or reflect on what signals she might be putting out, she cycles through men archetypal of various cities—and the way she lumps them in as “New York men” or “SF men” is very dehumanizing to begin with—but then she begins insulting them. The implication is clear: her and her friends are doing everything right, they’re all catches; it’s the men who are wrong.

Men in San Francisco are all one-note tech bros who all have the same job and are regrettably “vanila,” she asserts. Most ironic among these complaints are that these men lack EQ (emotional intelligence). They either want to jump the shark and get married on day two or they “don’t know how to date.” Here’s the thing: all of these things could be anecdotally true. But that doesn’t matter, in the same way righteous indignation from a past employer that wronged you doesn’t matter to a prospective new employer who’s interviewing you. As far as they’re concerned, whether you were wronged or not is besides the point. Can you still manage to market yourself in a way that doesn’t use others as scapegoats? If not, you should probably put the EQ lectures on hold. 

The problem isn’t that she has standards or bad dating experiences in certain cities. It’s that she expresses them with such condescension and entitlement. There’s an air of unearned superiority and a misunderstanding about desirability. Men don’t care about how many cities you’ve lived in (if it’s any sort of flag, it’s definitely not a green one) or how funny your friend group thinks you are. Desirability is relational. Before they can care about those secondary qualities, they need to evaluate your temperament, beauty, femininity, and availability. When you lead with “My friends and I are so smart, funny, and hot, what’s wrong with men?” it doesn’t read as confident, but delusional. But don’t take it from me. Men on X weren’t the only ones reading her for filth. The entire comment section on the original TikTok video is filled to the brim with the same criticisms. “Your friends aren’t 9s & neither are you. That’s the issue,” read the top comment. “The problem is you’re a solid 6.7/10 with a personality of 5-6/10,” read another. And another writes, “You’re nowhere near a 9. Mainly because of your pretentious, entitled, delusional and materialistic personality. I’m the men you’re looking for and I would never take you into consideration.”

Women have been sold a delusional kind of self-regard.

The irony is that she is genuinely asking why it’s not working out for her and her girlfriends, and her TikTok caption asks for “honest truths only.” But instead of looking inward, she chooses to frame herself as the victimized prize who’s too good for the pool she’s swimming in, priming herself to jump ship to different coastal waters on the other side of the country. Pro tip: advertising that you’re traveling to different cities around the country in search of a better dating pool is very unattractive. The caption “Contemplating a move across the country to find love” is giving passport gal energy. Again, I’m not saying it’s inherently weird, but it’s certainly not something you want to advertise.

The turn-off isn’t that she’s single, has standards, is educated, or confident, but that she radiates a kind of performative superiority while seeking sympathy. You won’t get it from men. This is the inverse of the male black pill: women who view themselves as infallible, confused that the market isn’t behaving accordingly. What makes the video so grating to men is the complete lack of earned humility, social self-awareness, or understanding of mate dynamics. It’s like it was designed in a lab to provoke negative attention from men. And what makes this dynamic so tragic is that there are people giving women effective, compassionate, and actionable dating advice that would produce the desired result, but they get vilified for it. 

Allyson Taft posted a simple, straightforward, and self-evident axiom on X last month: that being thin, pleasant, and self-aware will carry you incredibly far with men. And I’m no fan of the incredibly boorish “All men want is a woman who shuts up and keeps her man’s stomach full and balls empty” platitudes. That’s undeniably dehumanizing, and yes, I do think that women who parrot such indelicately phrased sentiments are shameless pick-me. But is that what Taft is guilty of here? 

She’s not talking out of her ass. She’s genuinely done the work herself to level up, losing 120 pounds, a mammoth task in itself, transforming her skin, optimizing her appearance, which had carryover effects on her confidence and demeanor. Within six months of this transformation, her boyfriend called to tell her she was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He would become her husband. Is this really objectionable advice that warrants quote tweets characterizing it as “pick-me misogyny?” Some have noted that the kneejerk aversion to this sort of advice feels a lot like the reaction angry incels give when content creators and researchers like Datespych try to tell them what women like. 

Much like it’s uncontroversial to tell men who want to become appealing to women to be more productive, handsome, and interesting, this advice is straightforward, sensible, and well-meaning. She isn’t flexing on or shaming other women; she’s communicating what men like and how simple your priorities should be if you actually care about becoming someone who attracts men. If we can’t communicate these simple truths, Datepsych argues, then we can’t communicate anything. 

It’s an unobjectionable truth that produces results. You can whine about it, or learn how to better advertise your attributes, or you can pivot to becoming a lesbian, I suppose. But I doubt that thin, pleasant, and humble women will soon lose their appeal to men. Again, that’s not to say you should reduce yourself down to these qualities alone, but if a man asked for my advice and told me that he’s prioritizing spamming a bunch of gym mirror selfies of his shredded physique in boxer briefs, I would tell him that can be off-putting to women. Not because women hate men who go to the gym or are strong or muscular, but because it’s a delicate balance to walk between displaying competence, strength, and capacity to protect versus menacing, homo-erotic, vain self-obsession. Notice how the advice isn’t to forget about all that stuff, but to understand how the female perspective determines what we find appealing. Yay for nuance!

But it’s not that women never hear or internalize what men want. It’s that when they do, it’s often delivered by Machiavellian grifters peddling the sugar baby lifestyle on unsuspecting women, encouraging them to embrace unabashed hypergamy. Think of the Female Dating Strategy types like SheraSeven. They tell women how to become exactly the type of baddie men like, so they can extract money and commitment from “high-value” men (men with a fat wallet). It’s purely transactional and framed entirely in terms of what you can get from men, not who you can be to lock down a good one. This strategy works precisely because these women acknowledge what men like: femininity, youth, affability, and beauty. 

They’ve essentially cornered the market on female dating advice by exploiting the reality everyone else is too scared to say out loud. But instead of using that knowledge to encourage healthy, committed, and fulfilling relationships, they use it to grift. They’re selling you courses on how to be a sugar baby—fattening their pockets and growing their subscriber counts, while you remain undignified arm candy with access to his AmEx card. Women like Allyson Taft aren’t convincing women to prostitute themselves. She’s telling a truth women apparently can’t handle hearing unless it comes with a Birkin Bag.