This is not a takedown of online dating or people using online dating, since I am one such person. This is an attempt to explain why otherwise successful men have difficulty meeting women online.

1. Contact

Touch is very important to intimacy, report, and attraction. Obviously, this is impossible to do through the tubes of the Internet (for now). Even basic eye contact is not possible through a computer.

2. Value Inflation

Just as adding more currency into an economy devalues all the other currency while increasing prices, adding more messages to the dating economy devalues other messages and inflates the self-perceived value of the girls.

Very attractive women do not benefit directly from online dating. If they are attractive they can meet men anywhere. Why do they create profiles on dating sites? Validation. They crave the attention of men, even those they’d label the C word. They get many messages a day and rarely respond. What happens next to the men on these sites is a lowering of standards. They begin to contact the lesser-attractive women. These women have their self-worth filled as well as their inboxes. They begin to think they are more attractive than they really are and begin responding to messages more selectively, thus continuing the cycle.

In the end, guys are contacting women they’d never speak with in real life (other than at 2:30 a.m.). The inflated self-perceived sexual value these women develop spills out into the real world, making it more difficult to pick them up. Luckily, the ones most affected by this are the women you’d likely avoid anyways.

3. Confidence

Women are attracted to confidence. Confidence is very difficult to express with a photo or a description. The best profiles show humour and cockiness; true confidence is elusive. The mere act of contacting a women online is quite simple (I cut and paste responses). This does not show confidence like, say, approaching a woman in a coffee shop might. It reveals little competence, as any macro program can do as good a job.

4. Impossible Standards

A few years ago, OKCupid surveyed their users on what they found attractive. Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, women rated 80% of men below-average. Let that sink in for a minute: It doesn’t take a post-grad in statistics to understand that is some pretty skewed data. If only 20% are above average how many of us are actually considered good looking? Clearly, these are standards the vast majority (90+%) of men can’t ever hope to meet.

This data supports number three above. Since women find confidence attractive, and confidence is difficult to express online, it isn’t hard to see why women are not attracted to the men who are online.

5. SIFs

I won’t go into detail. Secret Internet Fatties have already wasted too much of your time.

6. Fairy Tale Princess Endings

The average woman fantasizes about being swept off her feet by Prince Charming while doing some mundane task like buying groceries, sitting in a coffee shop, or buying a book. They want to believe that the meeting was complete chance and that some characteristic of her was so striking that the man could not help but be overwhelmed with the need to approach her. Of course, this man would say the perfect things at the perfect moments and they’d together live happily ever after. This is exactly why game works the way it does, and why many women get very upset when they hear of game and PUA culture. They want to believe everything just happened; premeditation takes away the magic.

Nothing about online dating is magical. It is completely contrived and is set up in a pretty logical manner (not surprising since they all were designed by men). The popular sites have added features that allow you to see random matches in a way that tries to replicate a little of the magic women crave, but have not been successful to date.

Despite the above six points, which clearly show online dating can never be as good as approaching women in real life, it’s not a complete waste of time. Gaining experience online can improve understanding of game and success with women. There is value in online dating. You will get laid. You’ll just have to cast many times before you get something on the line.

Read More: Internet Dating Killed My Game