221B. Dating Economics
The dating economy is a sub economy, shrouded in mystery, that is undergoing radical change. It has implications for our well being, our future, and even the existence of our species.
Changes in how we forge relationships and even how we experience pleasure have undergone transformation in the last generation. Our beings, forged from 250,000 years of evolution, are entirely ill suited to adaptations of this magnitude, in this short a time span. The result may be subtle to some, but the catastrophic degradation of mankind’s mental health globally can only be described as subtle to those that do not understand what they are seeing, that dismiss it for petty reasons.
“Only the unloved, hate”
Quote from the movie “The Great Dictator”, 1940
[This movie was Charlie Chaplin’s first speaking role in a movie. I felt it important to cite it here, and this is not an endorsement of his very poor behavior in his personal life]
What is Dating Economics?
The economics of dating has received an increasing level of attention from academics over the last ~50 years. Due to the nature of academia, these studies tend to focus on a very small niche or mechanism of a greater whole. That greater whole is daunting in scale and complexity. In 2010 I sought to learn as much as I could about why people date, how they do it, what their goals are, and how to better meet consumer demand for tools to improve their dating experience.
I went about this by “studying women in the wild”, similar in approach to how the great Professor and Dame Jane Goodall studied primates in the wild. Without academic or public support I was only able to self fund my field work for 10 years until 2020. As I am a neuroeconomist, and not an anthropologist, my work was no doubt sloppy and primitive.
Nonetheless, the broad scope of my work, and the hybrid economic and neurologic lens I used during my observations may hold value for both the public and more qualified academics that may do more serious work on this topic in the future.
I have simplified the economy by reducing it to the trade and effect of four key “goods”. I believe that advances in this new field could lead to advances in public health, mental health, public safety, happiness, and mitigation of the Demographic Collapse trend.
Methodology
I presented as “male” and matched with ~250,000 people who identified as gender female. This did include some trans women. Apps used included OKCupid, Tinder, Bumble, Happn, and Seeking Arrangement. The latter is expensive so I only used it from 2018 to 2019. Those matches yielded ~25,000 conversations and ~2500 first dates. Second dates were rare. I made it clear in all my profiles that I was asexual.
My rules were that I did not disclose my research to those I talked to, I recorded nothing anywhere for security purposes, I made no physical contact unless an extended friendship developed*, I typically paid for first dates, and I made no money transfers ever.
*I had an open policy that if I encountered a terminally ill person in their last month of life, I would offer free cuddle services to them. I believe that only the most villainous of people deserve to die alone and lonely. Fortunately these situations were very rare, but the service was very much appreciated by recipients.
The Four Primary Currencies/Goods in the Dating Economy
Currencies act as both mediums of exchange and also “goods” in their own right. The last currency is volatile when traded so it is the most highly valued and scarce. My bolded descriptions are meant as abbreviations only, and not to be used literally. I will use them to simplify the discussion, but all these currencies are very complex.
Money ($): While complex, it is the most studied of the four currencies. $ includes any material gifts of significant value. So in a dating environment, buying food for someone could be considered $. I did give away a lot of food over those ten years.
Influence (FAME): Transferable power based on how many people know you, and your associated reputation. FAME can be used to create opportunities or to get people to do labor for you, just as money can be. While $ is generally universally accepted, FAME is more situational. FAME and $ are interchangeable with some effort and some inefficiency of exchange. [FAME is a complex currency. I will not consider it in this paper, in order to simplify the discussion]
Excitement (THRILL): Provides a pleasurable but edgy experience. Primary chemical involved is Dopamine, and future research would measure this. THRILL is addictive and down regulates (becomes less exciting) if repeated. THRILL is physically and emotionally fatiguing, but its primary purpose is to reduce psychological stress. Abuse of THRILL can generate psychological stress, creating a loop that leads to various disease states. Casual sex is a strong source of THRILL but going on a platonic adventure, if done well, can be just as potent.
Emotional Well Being (LOVE). Provides a pleasurable and euphoric experience. Primary chemical involved is oxytocin, and future research would measure this. Transferring LOVE to another person is much more complicated and generally time consuming than transferring THRILL. The oxytocin at the source of the sensation has a very short half life (4 to 8 minutes). These two factors make it expensive to transfer in a positive way, and sources may be hard to find. LOSING LOVE is much easier, and this is a central theme of my findings. Sex workers typically sell THRILL in exchange for $ but take a hit to their LOVE reserves in the process. This can lead to disease. LOVE also has the ability to reset the addictive effects of THRILL, making it exciting again and reducing addiction.
Normal Human Social Physiology and Effects of Disruption
Humans have a variety of basic biological needs that, if met, create a happy and healthy person. $ and FAME are modern human constructs and not part of our physiology, so will not be addressed in this section.
Evolutionary effects occur very slowly within a species, typically occurring over tens of thousands of years. As various tribes existed in different environments, isolated from other distant tribes, they slowly evolved in different ways. We often describe these different paths as ethnicities. These variations tend to be minor and thus all ethnicities are biologically compatible and follow almost identical physiological rules.
Humans appeared on the scene about 250,000 years ago, quite suddenly and recently by Earthly standards. For all but about the last 8000 years they lived in small tribes where all members knew all other members from birth to death. There was no loneliness and one’s reputation was known by all. Males likely died more often than women due to hunting/defending accidents and a mating ratio of 1 male to 3 women was maintained as with other great mammal species.
As there was no internet, books, paper, or other distractions other than perhaps primitive music and story telling, and no taboos around touch, early humans likely engaged in a lot of intimate THRILL activities. With the largest male genitalia and smaller testis relative to primates, pleasure seems like a big deal for our species. Smaller testis might be due to longer lifespan and less need for frequency of offspring.
The introduction of agriculture ~8000 years ago meant that men and women now had similar survival rates and adult populations. The immediate result was increased competition between males, which likely was a real problem. Agriculture also allowed the formation of relatively permanent settlements of much larger size. Thus “society” and religion were born, with one of the top priorities being to regulate mating behavior. Thus monogamy was born.
Note that agriculture did not improve lifespan as eating grain caused teeth to rot and fall out at an early age.
As Adam Smith described in his Wealth of Nations (1776) book (the foundational text for modern economics) rural women could be expected to produce 20 children during their reproductive years (from 13 to the expected maximum lifespan of 35 years). Even 250 years ago, before medicine and gyms, women had much better fitness compared to modern times as they toiled all day physically and had no access to sugar or processed foods.
Human social needs were massively disrupted with the advent of industrialization. In order to feed machines and factories, we needed cities and a constant supply of cheap labor to keep things running. The migration to cities meant that we no longer knew the people around us like we used to, and now there was a need for dating and courtship.
As couples were expected to mate for life without possibility of divorce, these new rituals were taken pretty seriously. Note that women typically didn’t marry until their mid 20s even in the 1800s, and having an out of wedlock pregnancy would have been catastrophic. Unwed mothers were seen as morally corrupt and disreputable. This taint would pass to their “bastard” children and the entire bloodline.
I explain all this history as it is necessary to demonstrate how far and how fast we as a species drifted from “biological normality”. Some key take aways:
Early human life was full of activity. Exposure to THRILL was abundant but measured. Too much THRILL would kill you and remove you from the tribe.
Early humans were bathed in LOVE at levels that modern humans can’t even imagine. This is the biological normal for us.
Industrialization from ~1750 to 1960 caused oxytocin deficiency from puberty to marriage, ~10 years. This was very stressful. Finding the right mate was considered the most important decision of one’s life, and usually happened with the assistance of the community.
Early Psychologists started telling people to not touch their children in the 1910s, leading to a relative explosion in mental illness.
Dr. Wilhelm Reich split with his mentor Sigmund Freud and became one of the first sex researchers. In the 1920s he studied the Trobriand Islanders, a native matriarchal tribe. This was one of the first and last opportunities to study natural tribal behavior before the last of these tribes were ethnically cleansed. He found them to be remarkably free of mental illness.
The invention of birth control in the 1960s completely transformed society. Instead of being the most important decision one could make, choosing a mate became the equivalent of ordering a burger and fries from a fast food window.
By 2013 all interactive media industries (gaming, social media, dating apps) were experimenting with dopamine optimization to increase addiction/THRILL.
In 2013 I am summoned by the ICPEN (international regulators) to testify for the protection of children exposed to online gaming content. I warned that gaming companies (and all IM) would soon deploy dopamine optimized products, disrupting human (and especially children’s) development and mental health.
In 2011 Dr. Paul Zak gives his amazing TED talk on Oxytocin. In 2014 I contact Dr. Zak and we agree to collaborate. That year I got funding and facilities from Wargaming to do secret neuroscience research on oxytocin and gaming. The Russian invasion of Crimea, and ensuing sanctions, ended up halting the project.
In March of 2026 Meta and Google successfully sued for harming consumers by knowingly promoting dopamine addiction that was harmful to users.
Between 2010 and 2023 suicide rates for young men in the USA increased 31%. For preadolescent girls, the rate increased 300% between 2010 and 2019. Meta’s own internal (secret) research showed that Instagram was extremely dangerous for female minors. Rank seeking behavior seemed to be the main culprit, as girls could not meet impossible beauty standards.
I developed low dopamine, high oxytocin delivery mechanics for online games and dating apps between 2014 and 2026. No interest from industry yet, despite early deployments generating billions of dollars in revenue.
Dopamine is an amazing human hormone. It acts as the primary THRILL molecule and is released any time you do something risky, especially if you are successful. The rush is less each time you repeat the risk. Recreational drugs such as cocaine and nicotine work by stimulating dopamine release. So do real time online games and many mechanisms used in social media and dating apps.
Dopamine causes physical and emotional stress. The more you are exposed to it, the more you adapt and the less it works on you. So you need more and more. But your body never adapts to the negative effects like high blood pressure and high heart rate. So you keep using more and more to get a THRILL and your body gets closer and closer to dying each time. Damage is progressive. I published a paper on this in 2017 called I’m Dying to Play. You can imagine my industry wasn’t too happy with me.
Yet, now they are getting successfully sued for hundreds of millions, and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars for ignoring my warnings.
Oxytocin is described by Dr. Zak and others as the “trust molecule”. It is the chemical responsible for LOVE. Connecting with someone emotionally is risky. Dangerous. Possibly terrifying. Especially if you REALLY like them. Normally, in a tribal environment, you fully trust everyone in your tribe and the resulting oxytocin release when they touch you protects you from the natural anxiety that also shows up when someone touches you.
When I was the trainer for the UCLA and USA Olympic women’s track teams, we were a tribe. Everyone trusted each other which was critical to success. This allowed me to work on all the athletes, hands on, every day. That just builds trust further. I was requested for that role because I had been demonstrating trustworthiness in the elite women’s athletic community for years. There were no doubt more qualified people (including women) for that role, but none were trusted. Trust is a big deal in such situations.
It really should be a big deal in any situation where someone is touching you.
Strong regular releases of oxytocin boost your immune system, protect against and reverse psychological harm, and massively boost trust. The latest research also indicates that oxytocin can reverse/refresh dopamine receptors, allowing you to feel pleasure again even if you’ve been abusing dopamine generating events. This is invaluable to gamers and daters or in any relationship. It is also critical for anyone trying to sell you dopamine. It is very frustrating for me to see my industry implode, as I predicted, because leadership has been a bit slow on the uptake of this key element of our industry.
This is also why people who are in love, tend to stay in love, even after 50 years together. A tender moment, a brush on the cheek, a long soulful look into each other’s eyes… and all of a sudden it’s 1999 again!
Abnormal Effects Caused by Dating
Modern dating apps, almost all of which are owned by one company (Match Group), are all optimized for dopamine delivery. Yes this makes them just as vulnerable to lawsuit as Meta and Google, if not more so. They want you on the dating carousel. If you get off (of the carousel), they don’t make money from you. So they do not want you to find a long term partner. And, if you do, they want to lure you back on the app to “find someone better”.
Even if you find that perfect person that makes you groan like Meg Ryan, by that time you are so desensitized that you will find that person boring in a few months and dump them. Then slither back to the dating app in search of that next THRILL. Soon you find no one interesting, but you are too addicted to stop searching. But at that point the problem isn’t the lack of mate selection, it’s your adaptation to dopamine flooding.
There is a solution. That’s the good news here. All you have to do is fall in LOVE! But how to do that if you find everyone boring now because you jacked up your dopamine receptors? Exposure to LOVE resets those receptors. Find someone interesting and do not have sex with them. Spend time with them as if you actually cared about that other person, not just your pleasure. Learn to drop your armor so that you can feel other people. I explain how to do that in my paper on Soulmates.
Unfortunately, there is one more complication. Gender Supremacists are going to put you under threat in order to advance their agenda. They will explicitly admit that they want you to be afraid of other genders. Social media algorithms boost this content to keep you threatened. I really wouldn’t recommend anyone use social media, but if you do you need to read my paper on Gender Supremacists in order to identify them quickly before they get their hooks in you. If they have already, and you have adopted Gender Supremacist ideology, then you are pretty much screwed in the LOVE department if you are heterosexual, unless you do the work to rewire yourself and stop hating.
At the risk of sounding old fashioned, when dating it is super critical to approach it from the lens of building trust, not seeking pleasure. The pleasure is multiplied by the trust. If the other person dumps you after the first date, because you didn’t have sex, then they are a dopamine junky and would need a lot of rehabilitation in order to have a long term relationship. Of course they could also dump you after the first date because they didn’t find you interesting. Dating is a skill, and being able to tell if someone actually likes you is a big part of that skill.
Advanced Dating Economics
A Warning: First off, if you detect gender supremacy language, then the other person is not there to build something with you. You are prey! That’s why I wrote extensively on this topic before tackling Dating Economics:
Those papers and this advice applies to all genders. Get out as soon as it is safe to do so, and record your exit as appropriate. In most cases you can vet for this in pre-date discussions and avoid actual direct encounters.
My Motivations
We are about to have a serious conversation about dating and mating. If you are delicate about these subjects, this is your last chance to bail out. If you have ideology that says these things are “bad”, these will be difficult subjects to objectively analyse.
I was prematurely sexualized by my family at the age of 7, and kidnapped by a paedophile later that year. I attribute this to everyone treating me as an adult by that age, even my teachers. I describe this in my paper on Age Inappropriate People. AIP’s are extremely rare and there is no scientific explanation for their existence yet. They tend to be the ultimate fetish for some adults, which makes life extremely dangerous for them.
I was homeless from the age of 17 to 22 due to the existence of predators in my family. Even working full time, I could not afford both food and housing in Los Angeles as LA is a very expensive city and as a competitive track athlete I needed 8000 kcal a day. So I made ends meet by doing legal sex work from 18 to 21. How was this legal? Some local scientists had interest in my genetic material so I kept them supplied for 3 years. I’m not exactly sure what they did with all my DNA.
As you can imagine I’m not ideologically opposed to sex work, but I do consider it hazardous. Some of the hazards are not obvious until years later. I also see that our Master’s are doubling down on the legalization of SW, for reasons I am about to explain. Thus I wish to detail the pros, cons, and equilibriums the normalization of SW will create. Education is critical to correct the information asymmetry here that threatens those outside the Master class (that’s the other 99% of society).
Master and Common Economies
Just as the general economy has economic systems for the Masters (the top 1% by assets) and Commoners (the other 99%), so does the Dating Economy. Adam Smith calls commoners “Freemen”, but otherwise these distinctions have changed very little since 1776 when he published The Wealth of Nations.
Our masters have always been interested in worldly pleasures. But as economics has been refined over the last 250 years, the wealth disparity between the Masters and Commons has vastly expanded. In centuries past, Masters used to build museums, gardens, mansions, libraries, hospitals, etc and slapped their names on them. Of course they still do this but it’s the “worldly pleasures” budgets that have greatly swelled.
This in turn has caused related technologies and infrastructure to expand. A good analogy would be how the move to factory farming allowed way more livestock to be grown on less and less land. That’s not an abstract analogy. Adam Smith was perhaps the greatest advocate of his era for the end of slavery. His argument was that you own slaves, and don’t own Freemen. So Freemen are cheaper because when they die you don’t lose capital. Livestock are capital, so they have to be treated better than Commoners.
Back in the old days (20 or more years ago) Masters typically had <50 concubines a year (I’m estimating here). They would go to trusted “brokers” like Uncle Jeff, Amber Heard, or Paolo Zampolli and get access to elite parties and “dates”. These services were expensive and often involved getting filmed in compromising positions that could later be used for blackmail. Clearly this wasn’t a very efficient system and involved unnecessary risks. Thus it wasn’t going to last.
The Automation, Normalization, and Legalization of Sex Work
Brandon Wade created Seeking Arrangements in 2006, two years before Uncle Jeff pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor. He had this idea that if you had a “relationship” (arrangement) with someone and engaged in money transfers, that wasn’t prostitution. He argued that this occurred all the time in marriages, and marriages aren’t illegal. Recent research, including my own, backs up this argument.
These relationships were called “Sugar Dating”. “Arrangements” would be forged between Sugar Daddies/Mommas and Sugar Babies, and then they would …do whatever. This vastly expanded the pool of escorts from thousands to tens of millions. This was a lot more convenient, cheaper, and less hazardous. This in turn allowed the Masters to have hundreds of concubines per year.
Everyone was happy. Matt Gaetz, Republican lawmaker, was so happy that he was showing nude pictures and films to his peers in Congress from his SA account in 2021. This made his fellow congressmen unhappy. Not because they disapproved, they were all using the same app. They just didn’t like Matt spilling the beans so publicly.
Uncle Jeff met his untimely end in 2019 and by 2021 all the Masters had fully transitioned to the new systems. When Masters keep going to Disneyland/world during national emergencies, they aren’t there for the rides attractions rollercoasters. They are there to get lost in the crowd and find a Baby to try to keep their stress levels down.
High end escorts fly between major cities, often on different continents, on a fixed calendar schedule. That way Masters can make appointments with their favorites (or try something new!) for maximum convenience. Done properly, all of this is legal and low risk. If you have to ask how much this costs, you can’t afford it.
I first got familiar with SA in 2016 after a Master I was doing some design work for went through a divorce. His trophy wife slept with her personal trainer. He wanted to know what was the best way for a rich person to “date”. Since I’m not in his demographic, I had not bothered to look for this information before. But if you knew what to look for, it’s right there.
I created his profile and he was off to the races. He slept with 26 women in the first 2 months. He was just getting warmed up and had almost totally forgotten about his divorce. For the Babies this is incredibly lucrative. I’m a highly paid person in Game Development (when I’m working) and these Babies can fairly call me a “Dusty”. Earning power peaks around age 26 and drops off rapidly after age ~32. Some people age better than others, and drug use can really reduce your career length.
Dying within a year or two from drug overdoses or falling asleep while drunk driving was, from my surveys, not uncommon. Smart Babies keep it clean. Much to my great personal pain, it seems that neurodivergent Babies typically needed “help” navigating this environment and tended to expire very quickly.
How Is the Common Man Affected?
Just as I’ve explained that AI is sucking all the oxygen (money) out of the room away from game development, the normalization of sex work has largely eliminated “free” dating for straight men. As women are accepted into colleges and hired into jobs at higher rates than young men, even non sex working women their age out earn them.
Women who don’t want to “sugar” still prioritize dating men with money, and money transfers are the norm from men to women even in today’s “traditional” dating. This often starts with women expecting the men to pay for dates and dinners and slowly escalates as emotional connection/dependence forms.
Young women realize that dating a “low value” man creates an opportunity cost that can interfere with looking for more “high value” men to date. These effects are more pronounced in big cities where the cost of living is higher.
The end result is that 90% of young men will get less than 1 “free” date a month, and they can’t afford any other kind of date. ~10% of young men and a higher proportion of middle aged men get all the action. We call these fortunate men “Chads”. Chads have to pull their weight and can end up getting more than 50 dates a month to keep the women supplied with, um, THRILL and LOVE. Because of the transitory nature of young dating interactions, monogamy is almost unheard of and THRILL is high while LOVE is very low.
Of course it’s even lower for that 90% of young men who are getting zero action. They are often called “incels”. That stands for “involuntarily celibate”, which they are. Of course they would prefer to be getting action if they could. There are also a lot of women who are involuntarily celibate, though this cohort is smaller than it is for men. They are almost never shamed, where male incels are victim shamed savagely, sometimes even being compared to terrorists just because they are unwanted in the dating market. 10% of men aged 22–34 report they had zero sex in 2022–2023. In 2013-2015 this rate was only 4%.
In order for these numbers to be possible, Chads are very busy. More importantly, Masters are farming this system at rates at least as high as what I described with my friend in 2016. This is a new economy built by Masters, for Masters.
Just below the Masters, middle aged men with decent incomes are advantaged. If they want to sugar date but don’t have much money, they can try to trick women into thinking they are full sugar daddies. These men are often referred to as “Splenda Daddies”, “Salt Daddies”, and “Dusties”. These men can afford to pay for dates, but can’t realistically afford allowances.
Key Take Aways
Money transfers from straight men to straight women are the norm, reducing men’s economic strength and improving women’s economic strength
Women willing to do SW far out earn their male peers
These various money transfers are never reported to the government, generating data that is entirely inaccurate
The transactional nature of modern dating leaves all genders dangerously deficient in emotional reserves (LOVE). The result is a massive increase in mental illness and suicide that authorities either don’t understand, or hide. This prevents effective intervention.
Since you learn how to have relationships by having relationships, women and especially men have delayed maturity. As with delays in career initiation, relationship delays can create compounding effects that are difficult to overcome.
Non neurotypical women are especially at risk if they engage in SW, but perhaps more likely to do so anyways since they are already marginalized
Older women are greatly harmed as the men their age are increasingly dating “down” in age. This puts middle aged women in a similar situation to young men. This imbalance is solved if older women date younger men and don’t charge them. Don’t expect much maturity from these young men though.
This can be especially frustrating for middle aged women who may be completely unaware of what younger women and similar aged men are doing. Sometimes they divorce for economic reasons only to find themselves in a dating desert.
Young women are short term winners and long term losers, especially if they try to create careers later in life. Masters are the true winners in this economy.
LOVE-less relationships only produce children by accident. This is contributing to demographic collapse and poor outcomes for the children we do have. There is some evidence this is generating more neurodivergence.
There is a huge explosion in MTF trans surgeries. I fear that much of this is economically motivated as this can massively boost the incomes and dating options of men transitioning to women. Later in life this could be problematic. It is too early to have data on this.
Conversely, anecdotal evidence suggests that FTM trans are at very high risk of suicide once they realize how much harder it is to be young and male.
All commoners are under stress as the system is changing faster than culture can adapt. This is leading to rapid increases in Gender Supremacy language. Demoralization can be expected to generate Agitation, with blame going to victims instead of to Masters.
Sources of transactional LOVE (hugs, massage, GFE, host clubs, AI companions, para-social relationships, and pets) are going to become rare (except AI) and rise rapidly in cost. This could cause a mental health death spiral. I saw a booth that charges $3/hr to pet stray cats in Beijing.
Non transactional LOVE is becoming very rare. Since relationships are a skill, you won’t develop that skill if you never do it. This is as far from biological normal as we can get.
Final Thoughts
This is a very complicated subject. Despite the length of this paper, I feel like I am just scratching the surface. Please ask questions and I will attempt to answer. Note that my 2500 dates in 10 years is atypical for men. I attribute this to my being a very experienced dater and my ability to break the algorithms of modern dating apps.
Dating is a skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Being able to endure a bad date and keep going is described as “dating resilience”. This attribute is lower in younger people than older generations, and may cause them to give up entirely. Mental health caregivers are massively over burdened at the moment. Even a national effort to train many more would have a many year lag time.
Thus beginning discourse on this taboo and uncomfortable subject of modern and transactional dating is something we need to be having now, not later.
I entertain the idea of taxing all of that undeclared SW income and creating a fund that would subsidize young men so that they could afford to date. The money would just circulate back to women, but it would re-introduce young men to the dating pool before it is too late to avert Demographic Collapse. Perhaps make it a “dating card” that has to be spent at participating date friendly locations, instead of being hoarded. There would be a lot of scams until the kinks are worked out. Gender supremacists might scream bloody murder before they realize this benefits them by giving them more mating choice.
[Update: I realize this will never happen because the Masters don’t want their extracurricular activities tracked, and they have the power to make sure they are not monitored. But what they are doing is essentially a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on young men, on the most important service imaginable: Their ability to reproduce and perpetuate the species. This is very dangerous game our Masters are playing in the name of pleasure.]