Todd Breaks Down Awful Tinder Profiles & Bad First Messages

Highlights

• How to establish REAL value in your profile
• The RIGHT WAY to have a sexual profile 
• What NOT to send as a first message

Notes

• 0:00 - Intro
• 00:49 - Bio #1 breakdown
• 10:56 - Bio #2 breakdown
• 18:56 - Messaging sequence breakdown

Transcript

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Todd V: "I'll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast." Good rhythm, kind of clever, but it is very blatantly sexual. And it is the first thing you were saying out of the gate is a bit sexual.

Welcome back to the Todd V Show. For today, we have something special for you. We've been talking obviously a lot about online dating recently because let's face it, the way that the biological and geopolitical forces of the world have been interacting has forced a lot of dating online. We've talked a lot about the general principles involved. 

Today, we're going to get specific. I have actually some samples of profiles, samples of messaging from subscribers of the show. Thank you for sending those in, those of you who have. And we're going to break down exactly what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and we're going to get into the particulars of good profiles and good messaging.

The first bio we're going to look at, it's relatively brief. It's basically four one-liners. All right. And actually, one-liners are a good thing to have in your bio. People tend to think nowadays, across the board, kind of in sound bites. Just these little micro capsule ideas, as opposed to long-winded complex ideas. So, actually doing sound bites can work pretty well. 

I'm not a big fan of lists per se. But even lists can be okay in the sense that at least it's not a wall of text and at least it's fairly digestible and you get your points quickly and in a hard-hitting way. So, that format is actually decent. The format of doing sound bites. 

However, the particular sound bites in this profile are concerning. So, the first thing it says, "Pls dont be fat IRL." And 'please' is spelled P L S and 'don't' is without an apostrophe either. So, "Pls," misspelled, "dont," misspelled, "be fat IRL." All right, that's your first impression right there.

And then, the rest of the profile very quick, "Enjoys long romantic walks to the fridge. Let's watch Netflix in a hazmat suit. Looking for something dumb to do." All right. So, I want you to, in evaluating this, think to yourself about the picture, you haven't seen this guy's photos obviously, that would be a separate aspect to this.

But assume just having heard that, get a picture in your mind of who this guy is. Does this guy seem like a successful business tycoon? Does this guy seem like a guy who's living large and having crazy adventures in his life? Does this guy seem highly educated? Does this guy seem really positive about life? Does this guy seem like he is swimming in attractive girls? 

I think the answer to all those questions is it clear, "No." And those are the types of things you would like a profile, ideally, to convey about you. So, let's get into the particulars and see why this one doesn't quite meet up to that. So, first of all, "Pls dont be fat IRL," with the misspellings. 

First of all, misspellings, in general, should largely be avoided. Now, there is kind of a fine line. So, in profile, you almost always should avoid them. In text messaging, oftentimes, some casual misspelling is fine, but you want to be sure that your misspelling doesn't make you appear uneducated. 

So, for example, if you're in texting, you could do the word, YOU as just the letter U. And that's actually completely fine. It's just casual, it's a convention, it's time-saving, whatever. And I don't think anybody's going to think that you don't know how to spell the word, YOU because you used the letter U in this particular case. 

However, an issue you might want to really avoid, there's 'You're,' and "You are," and then the letter U and the letter R. Three different ways that you could say your, or you are, or whatever. Getting those wrong is probably not advisable because a lot of people actually do get that wrong because they don't know how to do them correctly, they don't know the distinction. And doing it wrong in that sense might actually make you appear uneducated. So, a little rule of thumb, yes, you want to appear casual. But you don't want to appear uneducated.

And in profiles, space is not at a premium so much as it is in your messaging. So, in general, just write stuff out. So, in this case, 'Please' should definitely be written out. 'Don't' should definitely have an apostrophe. It's not that hard to be correct here, and it wouldn't even take that much effort extra to be correct. And, it just makes you look more educated. It's the first impression. So, that's number one. 

Okay. "Enjoys long romantic walks to the fridge." Imagine you're dating this guy, that's the experience. That's your image of what your relationship is going to be. Your relationship's going to be some guy whose big exertion of energy is to walk to the fridge. That's not exactly making him seem like a go-getter, ambitious, successful guy in life. It's not doing great things. 

Now, I get what he's trying to do here. He's trying to be low energy, and chill, and not try-hard, and whatnot, and this sort of cynical nihilistic kind of asshole thing that you can get away with if you're already established. If you're already a famous celebrity, being a little cynical and nihilistic can work. But unless someone already knows you're super high value, it just looks like you hate life. So, I get what he's trying to do here. But again, it's not conveying the best images. 

Also, there's the irony of the first sentence, "Pls dont be fat." The second sentence, "I like long romantic walks to the fridge." Kind of not fair. And in fact, this whole profile, he's asking one thing of the girl. He's asking, "Hey, you be special by being not fat." I mean, not fat isn't that special, I guess. But he's asking you to live up to a certain standard, and then he goes through three lines showing that he's not living up to any standard himself. So, it seems like he's being demanding from a position of not power. Okay. So, "Enjoys longer amounts of walks to the fridge," I don't like it. 

The next one, "Let's watch Netflix in a hazmat suit." Now, that one is actually, I don't want to say funny, cause it's certainly not funny. It's kind of clever a little bit. It has that cynical, ironic nature to it, whatever. And so, in the context of a different profile, in the context of a profile that is lighthearted and fun and positive, and he's just clowning on the way the dating world is right now but his overall vibe is good, this line actually could work. 

But by itself, and especially along with other negative lines, it just looks really negative. And it does beg the question, "If dating sucks so much, why am I even bothering doing it?" "If we have to have a hazmat suit to even meet up, why would I go on this date? Why would I want to meet with you? What's even the point? Maybe I'd just forget it and put off dating for a while." Okay. So, it's raising an objection that doesn't necessarily need to be raised.

And again, it's off-topic. In general, during this whole Coronavirus era, a lot of guys are bringing that up in their profile. I think that's generally a very bad idea. People who are on online dating apps, not to be reminded that the world's kind of **** right now. They're on dating apps to have a good time, and get back to normal, and connect with someone, and do those things they're missing.

They don't want to be reminded constantly of politics, and the world, and viruses. Those kinds of **** during their online dating. So, leave that **** out. Leave the negative news out. Let this be an escape and let it be fun for them instead of the other way around. And in practice, I have yet to bring up anything related to Coronavirus at any point in the conversations unless the girl brings it up directly with regards to making plans. Like, we've already agreed to get a date, we're going to drink or something like that. And in terms of choosing the location, she mentions something outside, or this, that, or the other. Okay. 

And in general, I have yet to have basically any girls mention to me, or object to meeting up, or anything like that that are on the dating apps due to Coronavirus restrictions. So, you do not need to be bringing this up, at least not early on. And if you are going to bring it up because of your own safety concerns and stuff, which I wholeheartedly am in favor of. Be safe. You can certainly bring it up once the girl is hooked and once you've established a connection. You certainly don't need to bring it up in your profile and creating that restriction, and creating that negativity right upfront. So, certain things about that sentence I like, certain things I don't. On net, in this profile, I don't like it. In certain profiles, it could actually be okay. So, the line itself isn't inherently bad, but it's bad in this context. 

And then, the last one, "Looking for something dumb to do." Again, he's trying to be all casual, and not try-hard, and just let it happen, which is an interesting vibe. But again, in the context of this whole profile, he seems like the kind of guy, when he says, "Let's look for something dumb to do," he's actually the kind of guy that would be doing something legitimately dumb. 

Whereas, contrast that to if your profile showed you as a successful entrepreneur or showed you as being in the gym and having a sick body, and all these successful aspirational high-value traits, then you could ironically say, "Looking for something dumb to do." But in the context of this profile, he just hasn't made that case yet. Because 'looking for something dumb to do' is congruent with everything else in the profile. It's not ironic when it matches everything else. Okay. 

So, what's he trying to do here? He's trying to show he has standards, but the standards are not very high. "Pls dont be fat IRL." One other tip on that or one other comment on the "Pls dont be fat IRL." It's good to have standards, but if you say, "Pls dont be fat IRL," you're implying that a lot of the girls you've met up with have been fat in the past which, again, is the opposite of social proof. So, that's also negative as well. 

But anyway, overall, on net, this profile is just too much negativity, it's too cynical without value. You can be cynical in an ironic way if you've already displayed value. But if you're cynical without value, you just look like you're an awful time and depressing. And that's what you want to avoid. 

And he's working on this whole, "I'm not trying" thing to the point that... Again, "I'm successful and I'm not trying" is attractive. "I'm not trying and I'm just lazy" is highly unattractive. And he's definitely fallen below that showing success line to where it just looks lazy and it just looks like another typical kind of loser guy.

So, I get what he's trying to do. He's trying not to be try-hard, he's trying not to be supplicating, he's trying not to qualify himself by saying all of his positive accolades. And all of that makes sense, but he's going about it the wrong way. He's going about it in a way that's, if anything, gonna make him look like he's just unsuccessful at life.

The final ironic thing in this profile. So, those are the breakdown on the profile text anyway, but I do want to point this out cause it is ironic. His first photo has him in a shirt. It's kind of a colorful-looking shirt, I guess, with a bow tie. It's kind of stylish, classy looking, and colorful with a bow tie sounded clownish. It's not that. It's actually relatively stylish. But the point is he has this him in a bow tie kind of put together, which also contradicts the rest of this profile. So, there's no congruence. So, some elements of this profile are actually good. Most of them are bad, but some elements are good in the written profile.

Some of the elements of his photo are actually pretty decent. But his photo juxtaposes with his profile, it doesn't present a congruent image. The girls that are going to like that photo are going to hate that profile. And so, he's getting in a certain demographic of girls, and then he's immediately doing something that's going to turn off the very same demographic he just got to look at it. So, congruence matters as well. And on top of the cynical negativity thing in his profile, he definitely has a congruence problem, at least with that photo as related to the text profile. 

All right. So, I've pretty much torn that one all to shreds. Let's look at the next one.

This next profile is a little bit better. I'll read it to you in total and then we'll go through it bit by bit. So, overall it says, "I,ll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast." And by the way, again, grammatically here the, 'I'll,' it's I comma LL instead of I apostrophe LL. Just a little thing, but come on. Seriously?

Okay. So, "I,ll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast. Height: 1.84." I've checked it in feet, it's six feet. So, one meter and eighty-four centimeters, roughly six feet. "Strengths: Bilingual, good cuddler. Weakness: A nice ass. If you haven't been to a gym in the last three years, forget about it." 

Okay. So, this is a definitely better version of some of the similar ideas of the previous profile. So, while the previous profile was saying it had standards in the girl without saying any standards of its own, this one actually does have some standards zone. It says, "Strengths: Bilingual and a good cuddler." "Height: 1.84," which some girls are into to taller guys. It's considered an attractive thing to be above a certain height.

So, there are some positives there. All right. And, "If you haven't been to a gym in the last three years, forget about it." is a much, much better phrasing than, "Pls dont be fat IRL." Because, "Pls dont be fat IRL." says I've matched with other girls that are fat and I don't want you to be that, and that's what I usually get. This, "If you haven't been to the gym in the last three years, forget about it." One, it's kind of funny in that. It's not funny exactly, again. It's an exaggeration, it's kind of humorous. That's an interesting distinction, humorous versus funny. He was saying it in a creative, interesting, semi-clever way.

"If you haven't been in the gym for the last three years, forget about it." He's exaggerating. And legitimately, if someone literally hadn't been to the gym in the last three years, she probably would be really obese. So yeah, that's just a lot more specific. It's a lot more palatable than saying don't be fat in real life. It's also less insulting. Instead of "Don't be fat," "Please go to the gym," it's just a much better phrasing of it. So, much, much, much improved there.

My major issues with this one, and it's one very specific issue. Because it's actually just also the "I'll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast," I like the pacing and rhythm of that. So, he's kind of juxtaposing dinner with breakfast. I'll do dinner, you do breakfast. It has a nice dut dut dut dut, dut, dut. A little rhythm, it flows well. That's good. And it's also saying, "I'll be a gentleman if you take care of me in the morning," so to speak.

My one biggest major issue, there are other issues with it and whatnot, but he's doing a lot of things a lot better. There are some aspirational qualities, which is good. It still has that kind of one-liner sound bite element, which is also very good. And, it reads a lot better. It reads a lot more clever, it reads a lot more sophisticated, a lot more educated, all those kinds of things. So, he seems like a guy with standards similar to the other guy, but who's also living up to his own standards a little more, who actually deserves his standards a little more based on the text. No offense to the other guy cause I'm sure he's a great person in real life. I'm just critiquing profiles here. 

But my big issue here is it's just too sexual, or too obviously sexual. And even, by the way, being sexual in a profile is not a bad thing either. That's actually a good element to have as well, especially on an app like Tinder where it is kind of a hookup app and where you do want to get to the point. And especially if you are going to employ a strategy where you are going to go for the meetup relatively quickly, and you are going to be very sexual, it's definitely useful to have mentioned something sexual in your profile. 

So, even being sexual a bit is good as well. But this one is a little too sexual in this way. So, first sentence, "I,ll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast." Sexual. And it's also kind of quid pro quo. Quid pro quo, by that, it means I'll do something for you, do something for me. So, it's almost like paying for sex. I'll buy you dinner as payment for your sex, so to speak. It's not quite there, but it's a little quid pro quo as well. So, you want to be careful about that. 

But, "I,ll pay for dinner if you make me breakfast." Good rhythm, kind of clever, but it is very blatantly sexual. And it is the first thing you were saying out of the gate is a bit sexual.

"Height: 1.84." Not a big deal one way or another. If you are above a certain height, it's worth including because certain girls are into that. Why not? It doesn't hurt. But it is, again, a physical trait. It's a physical trait about you. 

"Strengths: Bilingual and good cuddler." Good cuddler is, again, sexual. It's, again, sexual. Bilingual is not necessarily sexual. That's fine. It's just an aspirational thing. And by the way, this is kind of funny because this person's profile is in a foreign language. It's in a foreign place. All the words, descriptors are foreign words to me, not English words. I'm guessing this is Portuguese. I think it's Portuguese cause it looks Spanish, but not quite. And, the name as well. So, Portuguese is what I'm going to go with here. 

So, he's writing his profile in English, the bio is in Portuguese. People already know, or probably assume he's bilingual. He might be worried that having to put the profile in English, people would think he can't speak Portuguese. But you don't even need to say you're bilingual. Just put one sentence in Portuguese in there or something like that. Or, if you want to decide whether you're better off writing the bio in English or Portuguese and just go from there. So, the bilingual thing's not even that necessary, and it's already clearly shown. But whatever, there's nothing wrong with putting it. A good cuddler though, again, is sexual. 

"Weaknesses: A nice ass." Oh, guess what? That's sexual and physical once again. And then, this final thing, "If you haven't been in the gym in the last three years, forget about it." Which is nice cause you have a standard. But again, it's a standard that's based completely on physical appearance and sex. So, your profile basically says sex, sex, sex, sex, and sex. 

So, while it is a good idea to put something sexual in your profile to show that you're not afraid of discussing sex, to show that you are a sexual person, to show that you're not here just looking for friends, all of that is good. But if your entire profile just hammers them over the head again, and again, and again, with sex, physical body, sex, physical body, sex, it really does look like you're looking for just one thing. And there are certain girls that are full-on just down for sex.

If you have this profile and you have just the most insane physique ever, it will probably work because girls will be looking at that physique and be like, "I'd take that just for sex." But you are very clearly saying to a girl, "Just sex." In a way that, and that's not even a bad thing to have a 'just sex' vibe, but you should at least have enough mystery about it or enough plausible deniability about it that the girl can, in her mind, convince herself that she's not being slutty meeting up with you. She may deep down know it's just for sex, but she can at least find something to point to be like, "Well, no, but he's actually genuine in this way." Or "But, no, there's this thing about his personality as well."

This doesn't even have that. It's just screaming sex, sex, sex, sex, sex so blatantly that the only girl that's going to go for it is a girl that's just looking for sex. And even if you do have a very good body and very good pictures to the point that a lot of girls would be looking just for sex with you, I will tell you that the hottest girls are not going to be going for that cause they have that option readily. It doesn't matter. So, you're probably only going to get girls with this that are up to your own level of physical attractiveness. You're not going to get girls above your level of physical attractiveness even if your level of physical attractiveness is very high. So, that's my issue with this one is it's just so blatantly sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.

However, good things again, it is more aspirational than the first one, yes. The sound bite thing, good. The actual wording is very light-hearted, funny, well-phrased, has a good rhythm to it. So, that's all really good. My only issue again is you're just hammering on this one sex thing over, and over, and over again.

Instead, take some of the best elements of this profile and keep them, keep one or two mentions of sex at most, maybe just one, but two is probably fine. And then, have some of the rest of this, use that same cleverness, use that same nice rhythm and wit to convey some other positive qualities about life, to say something more interesting about yourself, to maybe put a standard out there other than just a physical one for the girl to live up to so that a girl who is very confident in her physical appearance, but has something to prove in other ways may feel the desire or need to qualify to you or may feel that it's a win if she wins you over. So, I would really suggest having something about connection, relationship, interaction, something about a person, either her or you, that's not directly sex at some point in the profile. It's going to make a big difference. 

Okay. So, let's look at a sample of some messaging that went wrong.

So, in this case, just a general overview, and then I'll give you the specific messages. It's basically a situation where guy and girl match, guy messages the girl and gets no response, guy messages the girl again and gets basically a really, really kind of harsh negative response. You could argue it's a worse response than what he deserved. Although I would argue it's a better response than what he deserved because what he actually deserved was silence. 

And understand this is important in text messaging. Any response is better than silence. So, be happy when you get strong negative responses. I've turned around strong negative responses before. 

One that comes to mind, I had a girl when I was about, I would have been thirty and she was eighteen. And so, I messaged her and her first message was that me being thirty and her being eighteen was creepy and gross. And she was disgusted that I messaged her.

I was able to, through some clever messaging, eventually turn it around, get a phone number, go on a date, which ended up being a date at her place, and then we ended up having sex on the first date. So, I think that the, "You're creepy, you're gross." message was a lot better in that case than silence would have been, for example.

So, no matter how negative the message, silence is the worst response. Any message is better than silence. Keep that in mind. But that said, the message you got here is pretty negative. So, let's get into the exact specifics. 

So, his first message, and we don't have, unfortunately, he didn't send the girl's profile so I can't read into what he was picking on in the girl's profile to derive this message, but we'll just go with the messages in a vacuum. He said, "I'm sorry, but you do not look like a military girl." I guess that's his opener. Now, what's good about this opener? What's bad about this opener? 

Well, what's good about this opener is that it is specific to her. It's about her and her profile, so that's positive. And it is at least a little bit challenging. It's something where she might feel provoked to respond in some way. The thing that's bad about it is that very word I just used, provoked. This message is phrased like an attack. The same concept, the same idea could be phrased in a lot of different ways and a lot of better ways.

So, for example, instead of "I'm sorry, but you do not look like a military girl." Almost sounds like, "I don't trust you. I think you're lying to me." Or, it sounds like, "You couldn't hack it in the military. You're not tough enough." Or, something like that. It's just very either condescending or attacking in a lot of ways, and it's very likely to provoke a negative response. And again, provoking any emotional response is better than nothing. But you don't want to just go out of your way to make it a clearly negative response. You can say something that's vaguely challenging without being so harsh. 

For example, "You do not look like a military girl." You could point out what specifically about her isn't very military. For example, maybe she has one picture where she's in fatigues and another picture where she's in a nice dress or something like that. And you'd be like, "Wow, I can't imagine a girl in that dress being in the military." Or, something like that.

Does that make sense? So, you're giving more of a specific thing. It's still a challenge it's still like, "Could you hack it? Are you that type?" Et cetera. And it still definitely provokes or motivates a response or an explanation, but it's a lot more positive seeming. 

And when you are teasing girls, when you are even negging girls, that sort of thing, you don't want to be so overtly negative that it feels like you tried to be negative. You want it to be like you're trying to be positive and it's just they didn't quite win you over. Or, your version of politeness and positivity because there's just something about them, there's a little thing that they're taking the wrong way, or they're insecure about. That's much better than flat out, "I tried to insult you. I tried to attack you." 

So, his first message is actually quite attacking in that regard. And so, yes, there are some girls that will respond to something like this. But a huge amount of girls, a huge percentage of girls are just going to be like, "Why would I explain myself to you? I don't know you yet. What is that? This is an attack. I don't get it. I don't like it. I don't want to explain." Et cetera. So, you're very likely to get a lot of non-answers to that. 

And then, the ones that you do get might even be antagonistic, and then you'll have to turn around the antagonistic one. So, you kind of have this idea of a Venn diagram, a circle of all the possible girls. And then, you have this big chunk of girls that will be offended. This chunk of girls that will respond, but in a negative way. And then, this tiny chunk of girls that were responding the exact way you want.

And yes, the girls that respond the way you want will be qualifying themselves and it will be good, but you're eliminating such a huge fraction to get there. And with something a little more polite and cordial, even with the same sort of tone, same content, or same idea behind it, you could get that same segment of girls responding well while also increasing the number of girls that respond and also increasing the number of girls that respond positively. So, it's just badly phrased and is very attacking. 

Okay. So, he gets silence. Now to his credit, instead of just quitting on silence, which most guys do, he actually follows up, and you should do this. If you get a silence, follow up one time. Typically, the way you want to follow up is either one of a couple of things. Either you can continue the previous thing, the whatever theme or joke or whatever, and just exaggerate it to another level, take it further and make it funny or make it more interesting. That can work in some cases, especially if the first one wasn't super committed or super out there.

Or, the other thing you can do, and this is something guys overlook, you can just send a brand new opener and just pretend that the first opener never happened. It's crazy. It doesn't make sense in terms of flow, but it works. Just send a second opener. 

What you don't want to do, Cardinal rule, do not escalate off of shit tests and do not escalate off of silence. So, what does this guy do? He says, "You do look pretty adventurous though, and I liked that. How many countries have you traveled to?" Now, this message is the type of message that would make sense in a particular context. 

If the interaction was going well, the girl's laughing, responding a lot, seems willing to qualify and prove herself to you, this is a great kind of hoop to put out there. "Hey, you seem to be adventurous. How many countries you've traveled to?" She'd be like, "Oh, I traveled to this, this, and this." And now, she's trying to impress you, and starting the conversation, gives you a reason to like her in order to get her number or to pursue it. So, that's all really good. But, this is all predicated on the idea that she likes you enough to want to respond and want to qualify herself to you cause you're being demanding again. 

So, on the first message, he attacked her and got silence, which is a negative response. On the second message, he's being demanding of a response from her. And so, legitimately, I would say the vast majority of girls in this case, because it's Cardinal sin, escalating off of silence, escalating off of shit test simply doesn't work. It's just format-wise wrong. So, he should expect silence. Instead, he got this, "Hey, sorry. I prefer men with good etiquette who start conversations with 'Hi, nice to meet you. How are you doing?' I'm not a cheap picture, but a ******* dentist. Don't talk to me like you're a thirteen-year-old boy."

So now, that is unnecessarily harsh. She doesn't need to say he's immature. She doesn't need to swear at him. She doesn't need to get offended and say, "I'm not a picture, I'm a dentist." Et cetera. But the fact that she's offended is why? Because he's being, first of all, attacking then demanding. So, you can understand where she's coming from with being offended and all of that. 

I'm sure she doesn't actually want a guy who says "Hi, nice to meet you. How are you doing?" That's one of the most boring messages ever. But in her mind, what she's saying is, "I just want a guy to be normal and not attacking." She actually would prefer a guy who's clever and interesting rather than a boring guy. But I think emotionally, at least in terms of comfort level, it's not in terms of what would necessarily work to get a date with her cause that probably wouldn't work either. But at least in terms of comfort levels and wouldn't make her less unhappy, not being attacked and not being demanded something of would make her less unhappy. So, she's pointing out that flaw. 

So, question is, how do you solve this? The right answer is to text better in the first place. Have a better opening message that's not attacking. Phrase it or frame it differently. The second one, don't escalate and don't demand off of silence or a shit test. So, those are the first things. 

But once you've gotten this message, what can you do? First of all, I'll tell you flat out, it's probably a lost cause most of the time. You're not going to turn this around the vast majority, but you will sometimes, and you can go ahead with it. Now, one thing to be careful of, if the girl seems really angry, maybe just don't message her. Cause you don't want to, again, get reported, or blocked, or that kind of stuff on the app. If the girl seems really unhinged, just leave it and just say, "Fuck it. I'm done. There are other girls in the world." Et cetera. 

For a response that's only mildly negative, by all means, go ahead and try and turn it around. And I'll tell you something that's maybe controversial in the dating advice community, which is it's okay to apologize. It's okay to apologize. Now, you don't want to apologize in a way that says you're a loser, or that you're lame, or that you did something wrong, or evil, or stupid.

But you can apologize for the fact that you didn't get the response you're intending, or maybe you misread a situation or something like that. So, you wouldn't apologize like you did something morally universally wrong, but you might apologize for just misunderstanding, or this, that, or the other.

So, she said, "Hey, sorry. I prefer a man with good etiquette, who start a conversation with this boring stuff. I'm a dentist, don't talk to me like you're a thirteen-year-old boy." So, just off the top of my head, I haven't really drafted this out, but off the top of my head, something along the lines of, "Hey, sorry if you were offended by my message."

Notice it's not, "Hey, sorry my message was offensive." It's was like, "Hey, sorry if you were offended by my message." Or, something like that. Or, you can even say, "Sorry if my message offended you, maybe." That's in-between. But you don't want to say, "Sorry I wrote a bad message." Say, "Sorry my message had the effect it had."

Then you'd get maybe genuine cause here's what she's telling you. In her objection, she's telling you "I don't want you to be a dick and immature. I want you to be a little more straight-forward with me." And she actually did go to the lengths of still messaging him, so she cares at least a little bit.

She cares at least enough to, at least, put him in his place or at least enough to engage. What you might say there is you would actually take the frame. So, she is saying, "I want a guy who actually respects me." You can reframe these two messages, "You don't look like a military girl." and "Are you adventurous? How many countries you've traveled to?" You can reframe that very easily as "I was just curious to get to know you." Be like, "Hey, I'm sorry if my message defended you. I just thought you might be intriguing, but I know very little about you. I was wondering..." yada, yada, yada, "Because I like girls that are this and this."

Something like that actually really could work, because what are you doing? One, when you're saying, "I'm sorry," you're giving her the ability to drop it. You're giving her the ability to drop the anger part. Number two, you're not being apologetic in the sense that you did something wrong. You're not saying you messed up, you're just explaining. But you're not justifying. You're not saying like, "I was lame for doing it." Or, "I did this to impress." Or, "I'm an okay person because of this." You're just explaining where you were coming from. Not explaining why you're a reasonable ok person, explaining what your intention was.

You see that difference, right? You're not explaining yourself, you're explaining your action. That's very, very important in terms of apologizing without being low value. So, keep that in mind. But something along the lines of just being sincere, being to the point, and she said she wants a guy that says "Hi, nice to meet you. How are you doing?" You could even write that in as kind of a cheeky thing. 

You can say, "Sorry, it is nice to meet you. And I am curious how you're doing. I guess the point of my messages was that I do want to..." et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, you can agree with her frame without falling into it. And that, in this case, is probably going to be a good way to go. Because again, in general, do we want to supplicate, and qualify, and apologize a lot? No. But in this case, number one, you deserved the bad response in this case. Number one, okay. 

So, there's a big difference between if you've written actually good messages and gotten a bad response, then it's on the girl. In this case, he wrote two bad messages. He can acknowledge that. Not, he shouldn't acknowledge it that way, but he should acknowledge that the girl's not coming from a crazy place. He should also acknowledge that the fact that the girl's even messaging shows that she cares on some level. So, yeah.

Who knows? Maybe it's kind of good. And then, she's telling him her blueprint in a way. Not necessarily her blueprint overall, but she's telling her blueprint for replying to the next message. "Hey, I'm looking for a guy that would write me something like this." So, you don't have to write exactly that, but she told you, "Write me a message like this."

Now, don't write her a message like that in a way that says everything you did was wrong. Write her a message like that in a way that says, "Okay, I'm capable of writing that message, so let's move forward." And, it might work. Am I saying that absolutely it would work? No. But it might.

And notice, by the way, it's not the most clever message in the world. A lot of my messages, especially when I'm dealing with shit tests and stuff like that, will be very clever. In this case, though, that's not what's called for. He was already being kind of gamey in his first two messages. What he's missing right now, in my opinion, is being a little bit genuine. So, there's a place for it. 

And, understand that game is a balance. Game is a balance of value and comfort. Game is a balance of gaminess and normalness. And so, listen to what the girl's saying. She's going to give you a lot of clues about what she needs next. Now, that doesn't mean do everything the girl says. There's a difference between listening to what the girl says and follow the girl's orders. These are very different ideas, but pay attention because she's giving you lots of clues of how to best interact with her in a way that's going to be mutually beneficial and fun for everyone.

So, I hope you enjoyed those breakdowns, and please feel very free to send me your profiles as well. I'd love to do more breakdowns of profile mistakes and also some breakdowns of good profiles. So, just because your profile is good, doesn't mean to not send it. And don't also think that just because you send it, I'm going to rip it to shreds.

I'm sorry if I did that a little bit on this video. But, I want to give information as raw and real as I can.