Dr. Jennie Young: Creating Real Relationships in a Virtual World

Hey, you guys. Okay, so. Oh my gosh. I have Dr. Jenny Young with me today and she's going to talk to you guys about hacking the dating algorithm and pretty much how you can date with intention using dating apps. And I'm really excited. You're every woman's dream right now.

So. Okay.

Are some guys in the do the thing community? Is this just for women? Are the guys are listening? Will this just be tips for them so they know what not to do or tell us about that first?

No, I actually think it's really useful for men to be part of these kind of events. The Facebook group is open to women and non binary folk that my Instagram is obviously open, open to everyone. And I have had a lot of men ask me recently if I, if I would do a burnt haystack for men. And I. Maybe at some point, I don't know. But I, I do think it's beneficial to have men in these conversations. For the, the Facebook group, we kind of wanted to maintain that as a very safe space for, for women and non binary folks.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, let's start off. So tell everyone what you're doing right now and then I'd love to hear how this even came to be.

Okay, so I guess it makes sense to talk about my background first. So I'm a. A professor of English at University of Wisconsin Green Bay. And my academic background is. Is this is going to get really nerdy for a little bit and then it, and then it'll all get cool again. My academic background is in a methodology called critical discourse analysis, which is basically a very formalized methodology of reading between the lines, for lack of a better way to say that. I've also taught some forensic linguistics, which focuses on using grammatical. I mean, it does lots of things, but the method I was teaching to law enforcement and criminal justice students uses grammatical cueing to determine if people are lying or telling the truth. So that's another really powerful tactic to have if you are on a dating app. So this is kind of what I've been doing academically. So when I ended up personally on the dating apps, I hadn't, like a lot of people, I'd never tried it before. I was 50 years old and I, I didn't put that much thought into it. So I didn't realize what an absolute disaster it is until I spent a little bit of time on the dating apps. And then I did what everybody does, which is you kind of deal with it for a while until it's so demoralizing. That you just quit and you decide it's not worth it. I'll, I will die alone rather than tolerate this for one more day. And then three months goes by and you try it again. And this is this vicious circle. So I thought, what tricks do I have? And I have exactly one trick, and that is critical discourse analysis, is that I'm good with words. So I thought, that's the one thing I've got. I might as well use it and see if I can kind of apply it and create some kind of a method to make this better. And at that point, and I started toying with this about two and a half years ago. At that point, my only goal was to help myself. I was trying to save time. I was trying to be more efficient. And I just started playing with some, some tricks. So I wrote a profile in which, well, I, I wrote a profile that was a top 10 list of the things I did not want. And I, I, I'm a, I do a lot of humor writing. So I, I kind of incorporated that too. And it worked really well. It changed everything overnight in terms of the quality of matches that I was getting. And so I wrote an article about that titled, if you want to meet decent men online, write a bitchy profile or something like that, but if you search bitchy profile, it'll come up. And the response to that article indicated to me that there was a need for this, that women especially were fed up, ready to try anything to make the experience better. And a lot of times women get advice like, well, just get off the dating apps. Well, like it or not, the dating apps are where people are meeting right now. I don't like the dating apps either. I mean, they're a shit show. I hate them. Everybody hates them. So my goal was to see if we could make them work better for us. So then I started getting a little more serious about it. And one of the things I use a lot in my academic work is metaphor analysis, or using metaphors and analogies to sort of create alternate ways of dealing with things or perceiving of things. So I started with the metaphor of trying to find a needle in a haystack, because that's what everybody's trying to do, right? On the dating apps. So I googled how do you find a needle in a haystack in real life? And the answer, which I'm embarrassed to admit I never thought of before, is that you just set the haystack on fire. Because if you burn the haystacks to the ground, you going to be Left with the needles because metal doesn't burn. And I realized that's what I had already been doing. I just didn't have that framework for it because what I'd already figured out at that point. So pretty early in the game of using dating apps is that all the advice given to women, or 98% of it, falls into two categories. And the first category is to be as wisely appealing as you can to as many men as possible. So the thought is that this is a numbers game. The more people you appeal to, the more people you're talking to, the more dates you go out on that increases your likelihood of finding a partner. And then the other piece of advice that I kept running into over and over again is that you should give everybody the benefit of the doubt, because people don't always present well in writing, or they're socially awkward but really awesome human beings or whatever it is. I think you should do the exact opposite of those two things. I think you should be exactly who you are with no reservations, no apologies, and appeal to a really small percentage of the population. And I think you should give almost nobody the benefit of the doubt. I think all of that is a waste of time. It sounds generous, and in other aspects of our life we might want to do that, but the dating apps are actually rigged against users. People who own dating apps don't want you to find your soulmate because then you're not on the dating apps anymore. The intention behind the dating apps is lots of people talking all the time. They don't really care so much about people ending up together. And that my primary goal was looking for a long term monogamous partnership. And I realized that was what a lot of women wanted. And the apps were not working well on their own to achieve that end. So I've been talking a lot and I'm gonna. I'll talk. Pause there. But that was the origin of Burnt Haystack Day.

Well, I mean, the first thing that just comes to mind is I love how you took something that was a skill of yours and totally not related to this at all, and you were able to connect the dots together and use it in this way. That's something I really love to help people do. Because I think sometimes when you're doing something new, in this case it was dating, you could not be maybe not as confident doing it, but when you're able to realize, wait, I have this amazing skill from my background and pull it in, then you're able to increase your confidence. And then obviously all this other Stuff sort of blew up from it, which is great.

Yeah. And it also, I think, helped me to put it in academic terms so that it didn't feel as personal and emotional. Once I became intellectually captivated by the challenge, it was much easier to separate myself from the kind of emotional trappings of the day.

I love that. That would be under mindset. Right. Because you're. Yeah. And I like to talk. Talk about that too, also. The experimental side of it, too.

Right. And I think everybody can do that. You don't need to have an academic background to do that.

Yeah. So I did a poll in the community yesterday, actually, 267 votes. 90 people are on the dating apps and hate them, and only nine like them. And then the others were mixed between, haven't used them, don't know, and all that stuff. But that was interesting. So we need help. So this group pretty much. I think I mentioned to you, we do more dating in the wild, where I do encourage people.

Yeah.

The dating app. During the challenge, at least.

Which I love that somebody's out there doing that. Yeah.

Go to a coffee store, join a club, go play pickleball, do what you love and meet people. But I'm starting to realize, and I haven't completely honed in on my thought on this yet, so I need more time to process. And I thought talking to you would really help. I'm realizing that I talked to a matchmaker the other day, and she was like, why not just open up? Just like when you make money, have all these different revenue streams. Right. And so it's the same thing when you're dating. Why not? Just as long as you have a good attitude about it, you're intentional about it. Why not? And so I wanted to keep an open mind. And I love the work that you're doing by being able to empower people to take control of their dating. So I'd love to just have some insight into how it works. And even the study that you did with the women, just all the things that you've been basically working on.

Yeah. So I had some rules for myself that I was using, and I realized I could make those specific and explicit enough that anybody could follow them and that they'd be easy to understand. So I boiled the method down to three rules for setting up a profile and 10 rules for managing a profile. And it is a. It's a strict method. It takes self discipline, but it's. It's not hard. It's not complicated, but it's difficult. Right. From a emotional self discipline standpoint. But the payoff is once you train yourself to do it, the apps will fall to the side or into the background of your life. That's the whole point of the method, is to sort of defuse the addictive and demoralizing and gaslighting effects of the apps that are killing everybody's quality of life and just let them do their thing. Let them be the tool that they are, but don't let them be more than that. So I wrote the rules. I created a bunch of graphics to kind of communicate them. I wrote another article that ended up in the British Independent, and then one that was in Huffington Post more recently. And the readership from those articles, as well as I published this budget stuff on my own, too, drove traffic to the Facebook group, which is now at about, I think, 11.6 thousand, which is a lot to manage for a Facebook group because everybody's communicating in there. It's different than a professional page. Right. Which might have been easier. But I like the interaction, too, because it's now become this really grassroots, crowdsourced community that supports each other. And it's gone so far beyond the dating apps in ways I never would have predicted, but in ways that are actually way more rewarding and more sustainable, I think. And so it's still growing. You can search burned Haystack dating method on Facebook, and then I just recently started putting up content on Instagram as well. That's a different. I think you have all my socials.

So I. Yeah, yeah, I'll share it for sure. We don't have the cool little QR code I had up on the other. Yeah. So if someone's just for the people that I guess that are on them and then the people that aren't, what do you suggest then? What's kind of their first step?

Okay, so the rules for setting up a profile according to Burn Haystack method are not that radical. I'm pulling up a document so I can look at my little cheat sheet here. I tell people to write a specific and concrete profile, so get all the cliches out of your profile. Women hate to read them in men's profiles and vice versa. You want to be talking about a real person. I also say no goofy profile pictures and no misrepresentation. Don't put Snapchat filters on yourself. Don't make duck faces. As part of my research, I've interviewed a lot of men, so I also know what gets women blocked on dating apps or ignored or swipe, swipe, left on or whatever. And it's Usually it comes down to overly filtered pictures, fake looking images, stuff like that. My last tip for setting up a profile is don't tell people what to do or how to be. Tell them who you are. I don't think anybody wants to be told how to behave or how to present themselves or what they should like from a stranger, regardless of gender. So I advise people not to do that in the profile. So those are the profile setting up rules and I can pause there or we can go into the management rules.

Yeah, that's great. Let me check in with you guys. Do you have any other questions for Jenny on that? Christine said, I have used Zeus. I met one guy that I realized in the end was totally not what I wanted. Another showed an interest in me. He has come into work a few times. I think we know we are who we say we are. I'm debating going back to read his post where he was interested in me. I haven't wanted to spend the money though. Oh, like inside a zoosk to go back in there.

Yeah.

And then Dinah saying no one with shirtless pictures.

Yeah, that's a non starter for me as well. Yeah, that and the 55 year old men who want to have kids someday.

And then yeah, then other people are saying oh, scammers. And how do you catfish out the catfisher?

I actually just put a post on both Facebook and Instagram about how to spot a scammer with both images and linguistic clues.

And then Linda said, is it better to be on a free app or a paid site?

I think it's better to be on a paid site. I think if you're looking for someone who's stable and committed to dating, you kind of want them to be paying for a site. Yeah.

Okay.

We spend a lot more on things that last for a much shorter period of time.

And Terry asked, can you explain linguistic clues?

So when I say linguistic clues I'm talking about word combinations that what critical discourse analysis does is tell you what people are revealing without intending to be revealing that. So I'm going to use a really simple one that I think we're all wise to this. But when a man says he wants to meet a woman who's fit, that actually usually means thin. If he says he wants to meet a woman who's generous and accepts him exactly how he is and doesn't take herself too seriously, what that actually means is I don't really want to be bothered with sticky human emotion, but I do want you to put up with me because I'm going to Be a pain in the ass. But I want you to be really simple and happy all the time.

So.

So we do a lot of analysis like that. And these things are so coded and have become such cliches that they're not even that challenging anymore. So in the group, we get into more. If somebody has a specific example, they'll post that and we kind of hash it out.

So you're able to help them through what they're coming across. So then there's basically this. Like you're going to make this code book.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I actually have an article that's like a dating decoder. And these are on Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, I'm like, here's the text, here's what it means. Here's the text, here's what it means.

Right. That's so great. Okay.

Yeah.

As if you're on the dating apps. I would definitely suggest you check that out for sure.

So, yeah, there's a great book also called Tinder Translator, who might be familiar with she's presence, but she also wrote a book that does a lot of the same kind of things.

Okay, I'd love to hear just about now the next step we were going into. So we did the profile.

All right, so we will do the 10 rules of app management. And these are more important. It's more important how you manage your app than how you set up your profile. Because a lot of people don't read profiles anyway. So. All right, rule number one is the app is a tool. It's not a game or a place to live. So if you carry it around all day and check it constantly, it's no longer functioning as a tool. It's become something else that's playing too big of a role in your life. I don't even put dating apps on my phone. I only use them on my computer because I like to treat it like a work function, like how I might process email a couple times a day. So I suggest people look at their dating app for very few minutes once, maybe twice a day. I use the analogy of a toothbrush. You use your toothbrush in the morning, you use it in the evening. You don't spend all day carrying it around and tapping away at it and seeing if it's doing anything new. That would be a bizarre thing to do. And I don't think it's healthy for a dating app either. Okay.

So I throw that one that because it takes away that addictive quality. I do that with Facebook, where I don't have Facebook on my phone. Because otherwise go to it too much. I think it's the same kind of idea. So you're kind of intentionally using it at the times that you want.

Yeah, that's great. Okay, Rule number two is focus on messaging, over scrolling and swiping. Because a lot of people.

I've.

Men for sure. I'm assuming women probably do this too. Will go through and just almost everyone to kind of increase the odds and also send some kind of copied and pasted message. Like, your profile is really fascinating and caught my attention. I'd like to talk about. Okay, that's not really about your profile. That was copied and pasted into probably 100 women's dating apps. So it's not. It doesn't even reference anything in the profile. So why would you believe that? So I only engage with messages that reference the text of my profile that are nicely written and respectful. That's really the only thing that I'll pay attention to on a dating app. I have in my social media a pyramid. That's the hierarchy of dating app conversations. And it starts with, if you receive this, then engage and move it to this level. It's like a choose your own adventure. If this happens, do this. If this happens, you're done. Block that one's over. Go back to zero. Start with a new one. And I've kind of just graphed the most common dating app interactions. And this is something that I've been studying for a while. The rhetorical moves that people make, what they need, what you can expect next. It's almost depressingly simple most of the.

Time, because matching, like the serial daters, the people that have been apps for years and years and years. And it's the script that's monotonous and that's been programmed, which is part of the issue. Right. Because they're right.

Or the scammers who have their own script that's highly, highly recognizable. And the pen pals. Yeah, there. I mean, you can almost categorize it. It's the messages that depart from those scripts in good ways. You can depart in a bad way too. But it's the messages that depart from the scripts in good ways that are really worth spending your time on. So that's the real data is in messages. I wouldn't get too worked up about likes or anything like that. Rule number three, no notifications. So if you must have it on your phone, at least disable notifications. That just feeds that dopamine hit addiction phenomenon. That's not healthy. And I also think there's kind of a rhetorical effect that if you feel like you have to respond to every little bit of attention someone throws you immediately, that kind of smacks of desperation, communicating something that creates an unhealthy vulnerability. I think if you do that, anybody who's worth your time and engagement can wait six hours to hear from you. And if they can't, then that wasn't going to work anyway. Something else was. I mean, we're talking about grown adults, right? You have to be able to delay gratification for half a day with a stranger whom you've never met before. And if you can't, then there's probably some boundary issues or mental health issues or something. So. So no notifications. The next rule is one of the most powerful tool number four. It's probably the most famous burned haystack rule. Black to burn. And what I mean by that is that if someone's not a yes, then you block them. And I don't mean you swipe left or you choose the X, because if you do either of those things, the app is going to recycle them to you. Every single one that I've tested. So. And I've tested a lot of them. So not only is that a huge waste of your time because you've already decided you're not interested in that person, it also prevents the algorithm from. From sending you someone who might be a way better fit because they. The apps are programmed so they have to send you someone. Don't leave it up to them to decide. Once you've decided no, that's a no. And there are ways to block on every single app that do not hurt the other person. I used to think that blocking was for bad behavior, people who seem dangerous or scammers or whatever, and it definitely is for those things. But you can also block and just choose the option of not for me, in which case it doesn't hurt anybody, but it gets them out of your haystack and that's what you want. Number five is no fighting on the apps. And this, especially for somebody who likes to debate like me, this is challenging because people say horrible things and they do deserve to be put in their place, but you just can't do it once you're at the point where you're helping a stranger learn how to act right. You're wasting so much time. I believe there's an energy exchange in, I mean, everything, but definitely in dating. So If I spend 30 seconds of my time arguing with someone on Bumble, that's 30 seconds. I could have either Met someone else or be doing literally anything else, it might be more rewarding. So don't feed energy, that one bit of energy to somebody you don't want.

That's a great rule for life, just so we're all it is, right?

Yeah, that's true. That is true. It's usually. It's usually time wasted. Rule number six is don't be a pen pal. There's a lot of people in dating apps who just want people to text with. And again, if that's what you want, that's fine. Burned Haystack is very specific in its goal, which is long term monogamous partnership. And if that's what you're looking for, don't waste time being a pen pal. Once a conversation starts, it should flow naturally. It should increase in kind of the back and forth in organic development and it should move toward something. Whether it's a phone call or a zoom or meeting in real life, there should be progress. If there's not progress, I think you should block. I personally don't give that too much time. I think that's a personal call, how long you're willing to chat with someone. But you know, like, in terms of.

Because that's one of the reasons why I don't like dating apps generally. The first challenge I did, we did dating apps still. And just people weren't able to go outside and meet people because it's so much easier, right, to meet someone on a dating app. But so part of it was that you're burning that energy. And so that's where I like the way that you're teaching it, because you're teaching it in a way that you're not burning energy. You're able to manage it where you're emotionally healthy, emotionally safe, and just with using a few different strategies.

Yeah. And the messaging. I have a series on Instagram where I do these. Translate it to real life scenarios.

No way.

Yeah, because a lot of dating app conversations are strange. And what can happen is we all get kind of. There's this mass gaslighting effect where you start thinking, am I the problem Is this just how people communicate? So I do these translated to real life scenarios. Like I have one where I say, imagine you're on the first day of a new job, you work in an accounting firm, and you're in your cubicle and the guy next to you that you've never seen before pops his head over the cubicle wall and is like, hey, you're gorgeous. Could you send me some nude pictures? There's no World in which you would think that was okay, but you would contact HR and. But I hear from women a lot and heard that they're like, I don't really feel comfortable with this, but this is what people seem to expect. Is this what I'm supposed to do? And I'm saying, no, absolutely not. And so I do that with a whole bunch of things. We use job interviews and grocery shopping, things that sort of highlight behavior and help you just in your own mind, have the confidence to trust your instincts. So it's really hard to if you're encountering these really strange scenarios over. Okay, so that's number six. Number seven. This is not possible on every single app, but if it is possible, I think you should set your geography. So I want to meet people within 60 miles or whatever. But I don't think you should share location because if you share your location, you're going to get the golf outing dudes who are just breezing through town and their goal is probably not a long term monogamous partnership with the person they meet based on pure proximity. So I don't know. I suppose it's possible someone could encounter their soulmate that way, but I think it's better to limit your choices to people that you could feasibly date in real life.

Yeah, you're trying to conserve the. Like we go back to energy, like time. You're trying to conserve time so then you're not spending all your time sucked into an app. The time that you are on there, it's productive, basically.

Exactly. Yeah. It just makes more sense.

Yeah.

Okay, the next rule is a little bit complicated. No ludic looping. So this might be a new term. L U D I C. The ludic loop is a video gaming pattern that is intentionally built into dating apps. And the way it operates is that it engages you in a narrative that offers intermittent rewards. A little bit of attention maybe, but no true narrative arc, no character development, no plot development. It's the infinite scroll and it's based on the wiring of your brain. So neurology. If you feel yourself getting sucked into this, it's not because there's something wrong with you. It's because you have a human brain brain. And the apps are intentionally gamified to keep you on them, to keep you scrolling and swiping. So the good news about that is once you understand it and once you understand how it works, you can cut it off. And it's like any other addiction you can decide to stop. Right. With whatever form support you might need to do. That I need to take some extra measures. But I think that's really dating app.

Then that's like certain dating apps have that. Is that what that means?

They, I think. Well, I mean, Tinder is the one most famous for intentionally building it in, but they all do it by nature of the dating app itself. So what they know from a lot of medical studies is that people who are in love will experience a dopamine spike. Hormone and serotonin also, I believe, but especially dopamine. What they know is that just the anticipation of feeling a connection also creates a spike. So if you're scrolling through people, every time you see someone that catches your attention, you're getting that little spike. And over time, it's just ramping up and up and up, and it becomes more and more addictive and it becomes this never ending cycle. So you want to first of all understand how that works. And I've got a lot of resources on my blog, which you can get from the Facebook group that explain how that works. Because once you do understand it, it's a lot easier to break it. So that's ludic loop. Okay, we, we only have two more. We're almost there. Number nine is. No, now this one's very gendered and kind of binary, so I apologize for that. But there's a reason. No men who can't plan the date. And I get a lot of pushback on this because first of all, I'm a feminist academic, right? And that's my ideology. So people say, are you serious, Professor Feminist? You're telling us that in 2023 we have to let the men plan the date? I'm not telling you anything. You have to. You, I mean, you go ahead and plan the date. But here, here's the reality. We are not in an equitable labor market in 2023 in terms of especially domestic and emotional labor or compensation for that labor. If what you're looking for is a collaborative partnership, you can gain a lot of information that can save you time or propel you forward by just seeing if the guy is willing and able to plan a date. Because one of the biggest problems on dating apps for women is that men will send a message and be like, hey, do you want to get together? And she says, yes, sure. And then that's the end of it. You never hear anything else about it again. So it doesn't mean that you can't plan the date together. But I see over and over again, women automatically spend stepping into that role and handling all of the, the clerical labor and the emotional labor and the. And I, I think in the interest of time, I would rather sit that out and see what happens.

Yeah. So how do you word that?

Well, I don't ask any. This is also anti feminist. I never ask men out. I just. If they don't want to ask me out, then we're not going to go out. So if someone does ask me out, then I say yes and then I just wait. And if it comes up with a plan, got it on the date.

If not, then I have to do it. Yeah, yeah.

That I block. Now. This is only a rule for the first date. Again, this is a game at this point. It's a method. Right. You're not in a relationship right now. You're trying to get data and this gives you really important data. But you got to be smart about it and you have to be patient.

Yeah, I mean, I do. I really like the idea of the data perspective also because like you said, it does get this other part of your brain to work.

So.

So it's not as emotionally exhausting. It's more just strategizing in a way of just being able to weed through people quicker.

For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's very much aimed at efficiency and at sort of maintaining healthy boundaries. The last rule, rule number 10, is treat the process like a job search, not a takeout order, so that the apps are wired to deliver immediate results. If you want, you can make them do that. I don't think that's a good way to think about it. You could push that metaphor. Right. If I order Taco Bell from Uber Eats, it'll show up right away, but I'm probably not going to feel that great 20 minutes later when it's over. So I think if you're using a dating app to try to meet a long term partner, you have to think of it more as a long term project where you're going to take some time with your profile, you're going to set it up, you're going to put it out there, you're going to attend to it in a methodical way, just like you would if you were sending out resumes. You're going to check in a reasonable amount, but you're also going to go about your life and accept that it might take six months, it might take a year, it might take a year and a half. But if it's something that's going to potentially affect you for the rest of your career or the rest of your life, it's worth playing the long game for and the Apps are not set up to make you think about it that way, but I think it's a better way to think about it.

Yeah, that's really good when you have a strategy to be able to manage it better, too. Yeah. Hear more about how it all actually has gotten so succinct because this is through you trying it. Right. You. You.

Yeah.

In this background. And then you took your. The study, you had the people testing it, and now you have an active community that's crowdsourcing this whole thing. How did that all kind of happen?

Well, I mean, I'm a teacher, so my whole job is to take complex information and translate it for an audience that hasn't yet stepped into that particular arena yet. And I teach all undergrads, so we're talking about young people. I'm actually teaching a rhetoric of dating and intimacy class right now in which we use all these methods. Critical discourse analysis, primary metaphor analysis. So I've had a lot of practice, and thank you for saying succinct, too. That's like music, too. If somebody tells me I'm succinct, it's like the highest. I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to make it succinct. And it's something I've had a lot of practice at because of my career. And then there's been a lot of time sunk into this method. I mean, I try to make it so that it's easily presentable and digestible, but as you probably know, the amount of hours that go into that on the other end is.

What are.

I know.

It's amazing what people see. And then the work is. Yeah, totally. I totally get it. What are the results people are seeing by using the method?

So, first of all, it's still pretty new, right? I mean, this. It's really just still ramping up. Every day, I'm getting messages that say, I think I have one. I want to quote, because I thought this was so beautiful, the way this woman said this. She had burned her haystack down to nothing. There was no matches. And then you get the message that says, you need to expand your filters. And she said, when the apps tell you to expand your filters, don't do it. Sit back and expand your patience. And she said that's what she did. And within two days, it set her a new match. And now they are a thing. They're together.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. There's. There are a number of couples that have emerged, and. And again, I hesitate to. It's been a relatively short Period of time. So I don't feel like I can claim this is it, we've cracked it. But I'm getting several messages every day from women telling me that, number one, the quality of people they're meeting is better and that they're getting more discerning, they're having more faith in their own instincts, and the men that they're spending time on are actually worth dating. Now, it may or may not be the match, but the other thing I'm hearing a lot of feedback about is totally. Well, it's not separate, but I've gotten many messages that sound almost exactly like this. I haven't even met anybody yet, but I don't care because I'm so much happier. I'm so much more at peace. I'm not second guessing myself all the time. I don't feel anxious and whipped up into this cycle. And that to me is almost more rewarding because we have complete control over that.

Right.

I mean, the one thing no method can do is change the pool of people in any given geographic region. It's frequently not great, especially if you're over a certain age. But it can help us root out the ones who are dateable.

Totally. Yeah. And that's. I kind of was thinking along those lines too. As you've taken a while, the demoralizing part of the dating made it more intentional, pretty much.

Well, I think there's also something. The fact if there's 11,000 other people going through what you're going through and you can talk to them about it whenever you want, that's super supportive. It's a really kind community. And if anybody's that kind, then I get them out right away. No warnings, just gone. Because it's really important to me that we maintain the feminist principles of women supporting other women and creating this very equitable and kind community.

I'd love to hear more about your community because I love the community aspect. I think that's part of the do the thing has a formula. It's I'm game and the m in game is my people. And my people is the thing that is you surrounded with people that want the same thing as you and that are supporting and encouraging you. And I think it's really important to have that both mentally and then also to help you do the thing. And so I'd love to just hear how that. How your community has evolved because I feel like we're so starved for that connection. And when you're able to create a space for people to be there for each other, it's so powerful.

Yeah, it's, it's really. The group has really grown and changed recently. When I first started it, it was mostly other women writers because I had posted some articles in a couple writers groups I'm in, in Facebook. So that was kind of who built the original community and that was a great community from the beginning. But there wasn't a whole lot of diversity at the beginning in terms of profession, age, all the identity markers. There just weren't enough people for one thing. Where we're at now, I mean, it's across the world. I'm getting a lot more international members now. Got a really nice note from a trans woman who just joined today and she said I've not been able to find a community like this that welcomes trans women. And we're getting increasingly diverse, definitely racially and ethnically and in terms of sexual identity and orientation. So I'm really excited to see all that happening because I mean, number one, that's a reflection of the world that we live in and I think the world that we should want to live in. But there's also tons of research that the more diverse of group you have working on any thorny problem, the better result you're likely to have. Right. Because you just have a multiplicity of perspectives that can fill in the gaps for each other. Things that not everyone has experienced. So it's growing and changing that way. I think age, it was very homogenous, age wise. At the beginning it was almost exclusively women over 40. I think it's all over the place now. I know because my, some of my students are in there. You know, I have 19 and 20 year olds. I know we have a lot of women in their 70s. It's kind of everybody now.

That's great. And then a few people have asked for dating app suggestions. Do you have certain apps that you like to recommend?

First of all, I think this is regional. I think there's an age category. Younger people tend to be in dark Tinder more. I hesitate to say good or bad things about any of the apps because for one thing the apps, all the apps are, is a place for people to go to. Right. So I wouldn't want to say don't use this app because what if that's the app that somebody's person is on? Here is my best piece of advice though. On any app you're going to get the most engagement right after you join it. So I only ever sign up for an app for one month, which is usually the minimum that you can sign up for any app and you might have to pay a few more dollars for that one month, but it's usually not that much more. And then that gives you a chance to see, do you like the platform? Do you find it user friendly? Are there a lot of people in your criteria group within your region? Because I live in northern Wisconsin. It's not a population dense area. I have to be really picky about the apps I use or there will literally be nobody. Definitely more of an urban center then that might not be the case, but I think you should kind of test out the apps a month at a time. I don't really advocate signing up for five apps at once. I think that's too much to manage. Unless maybe you don't have a job or something. But if you have a job in a life, one app at a time for a month is kind of a good way to figure out what's going to work.

Yeah, that's such good advice. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I love hearing how you were able to figure out a way to make it intentional because that's the part that I really don't like is that addictive side of it. You guys know we're still doing the dating dare challenge. No apps. This one's only five days. So for anyone that is on an app, you will be pausing them. But I do at least want to have us keep an open mind because for some of you, I know it's hard, you're working full time, you don't have the time to look and all that stuff. And that's where maybe at least just exploring the idea of a dating app and using this method could really help. So then it's at least more intentional and not so mindless. Right, right. Goes into this mindless zone. Well, I'd love to hear. I mean, just, I think you have really good advice about this because coming from where you were to everything that you've been doing now, I'm sure a lot of things are changing for you. What would be your number one piece of advice for people on doing the thing?

I'm doing the thing in terms of. With this.

With anything.

Oh, with anything, yeah.

Followed your instinct and you went with it and you're like, honey path.

Yeah. So, okay. I think I have so many things popping into my head. I. Number one, just do it. If you give yourself too much time to think rather than act, somebody else is going to do it or you're not going to do it. So commit to something fully and do it. I also just read this amazing book called the Artist's Way, which I would you. Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty famous book. It's been around for a long time, but I think for anybody who wants to start something new or shift the way they're being in the world, I started using that book right when I started this project. And it doesn't really feel coincidental anymore. It's a creativity program, but you don't have to be an artist to use it. And you can be a creative business person. You could be a creative nurse or teacher or anything like that. And that's one example. But I think doing something really intentional and purposeful to frame the thing, whatever the thing is going to be like. For me, the thing was burned haystack. But whatever it's going to be, I think you have to just dive in, but then also keep diving in. It's not that hard to dive in, but continuing to dive in day after day after day can be challenging. So you have to find some kind of method or framework to keep yourself going.

What was yours? How did you keep yourself going?

I did that program in the Artist's.

Way, but when you. When it got hard.

Yeah, that's.

So that's what you did.

Okay, I did, yeah. It's a 12 week program that you could do forever. But one of the things she says is to recognize that you will go through creative deserts. And that's also part of the process of evolution and of creativity, no matter what it is. So before, I've been writing about this for two and a half years and there'd be times when I'd send an article to 25 editors and nobody even wrote me back. And I would just tell myself, it's okay, you're just in the desert right now. You have to keep walking through the desert. And at the end of one of those deserts, the HuffPost picked up a piece and the group exploded. And you only need that one thing, whatever it is, right? I mean, on a dating app, you only need to meet that one person. You don't need to meet 50 people, you need to meet one. Or if you go play pickleball. Right. You need to meet that one person. So you want to increase your odds of letting that one thing happen. But in order to do that, you have to kind of just push through the boredom and the days when nothing is happening. Yeah.

Okay. Share again where they can be a part of your community if they'd like to join. And then also Instagram as well.

Okay. So if you go to Facebook and search burned haystack dating method, it'll come up. So that's open to women and non binary folks. And on Instagram, I'm at word case scenario. So worst case scenario except word wrd and there's underscore. So word underscore case, underscore scenario.

Thanks so much for coming on, Jenny. This was really good.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it and I love the work that you're doing. I think that's actually a better world. We could all get off the dating.

Apps and for you guys, do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity, create it.