Two additional beneficial outcomes of attempting to boot up / improve shoulder advisors:
You are more likely to really pay attention during interactions with them. You get better at interactions in general if you are quite focused. And others tend to notice and react positively when they see that you really care about what they are saying.
You learn to be more curious about others’ thoughts, actions, and backgrounds. This can help you be more empathic, and can also help shine light on your own motivations and influences.
Anecdotal, but the friends of mine who simulate people / hear others’ voices tend to be among the most thoughtful and socially-buttery-smooth people I know.
Overall, I think that this is a good primer and useful for both beginners and more advanced users of dating apps alike. I am particularly interested by the T-shape suggestion for things to signal, and the practicality focus here. I consider myself decently proficient with dating apps but have rarely spent a lot of effort on aesthetics, for example, and will attempt to put more thought into this.
A few questions / suggestions:
I think some of your “advanced user” advice could be a bit more helpful:
I feel like I am an “always upbeat and positive” person, but I have no idea what to do with “If you are the sort of person who is always upbeat and positive, try to signal this through your expression, posture, and clothes.”
My hunch says that signaling that you host social gatherings / plan parties is not much more beneficial than signaling that you attend them. If there is literature that suggests otherwise, I’m very interested in hearing about how and why.
Alongside the previous hunch, I’d guess that tact (or perhaps whatever the opposite of desperation is? confidence? nonchalance? ) probably also has an effect on female evaluations of male profiles—perhaps this is through a perceived difference in social ability?
For example, I think explicitly saying that you host parties (even via snapchat screenshots) is hard to do in a way that doesn’t make you seem like you’re trying a bit too hard.
I am also a bit worried in general that males without a decent grasp on social nuance might be a bit too transparent in signaling things like wealth or physical attractiveness, resulting in them seeming desperate / less desirable
Overall, very informative post and I will be reading Mate to get a bit more info on all of this, and looking forward to post 2 or 3. Willing to help out if there’s anything I can do.