// intel / psychology

why your most embarrassing text is the one that would've worked

tldr: The text you deleted because it felt too weird was the one that would have landed. Editing a message for 15 minutes signals you think she'd reject the real you, and she can feel that anxiety through the screen. Sending the first draft reads as confidence, which is the thing every polished message is missing.

#dating-apps#texting#confidence#hinge#signal-inversion

there's a text sitting in your drafts right now that you'll never send.

it's too weird. too much. too you. you typed it in three seconds, laughed, then deleted it and wrote something safe instead. something reasonable. something you proofread twice.

that deleted one was the winner. the safe one you sent got left on read.

why does the text i deleted work better than the one i sent?

because the deleted one had a pulse.

you typed it fast. no filter. it was the actual thing your brain produced before your anxiety got a vote. it was funny or absurd or slightly unhinged, and that's exactly why it would've worked. it sounded like a person.

then you got scared. you thought "she'll think i'm weird." so you rewrote it into something a corporate onboarding email would produce. polite. balanced. dead.

i did this for years. i'd spend fifteen minutes on a single message on hinge. revising. cutting words. adding a comma, removing the comma. treating it like a performance review i had to pass. my response rate was maybe thirty percent and i couldn't figure out why.

here's what i figured out. she can feel the fifteen minutes.

she can't see the edits, but she can feel the energy of a guy who agonized. a message that took fifteen minutes reads completely differently than one that took five seconds. one smells like fear. the other smells like a guy who has better things to do than get your approval. this is why the perfect opener still gets you ghosted. you optimized the words and killed the signal.

what does spending 15 minutes on a text actually reveal?

it reveals that you think she'd reject the real you.

that's the part nobody says out loud. when you edit yourself into a smoother version, you're admitting you believe the unedited version, the weird funny quirky one, isn't good enough. you're pre-rejecting yourself and calling it being thoughtful.

you're not thoughtful. you're a control freak in a cardigan.

you think you're being careful and considerate. what you're actually doing is treating her like a puzzle to solve instead of a person to talk to. you've decided she can't handle the real you, so you sand yourself down before she gets a chance to react. that's not respect. that's you assuming she's fragile.

i called this nice guy sexism in an earlier video and i'll say it again here. you're treating her like she needs the child-safe version of you. she doesn't. she wants the actual guy. the terrified-of-women act where you play it perfectly safe is the thing killing you, not saving you.

why does my career brain sabotage my dating apps?

because everything that made you good at your job makes you bad at this.

this is Signal Inversion Theory. the traits that got you the promotion, the salary, the reputation as the reliable one, those are the exact traits torching your matches. precision. polish. risk management. proofreading. all elite skills in a boardroom. all poison in her inbox.

you're treating hinge like linkedin. you're treating a match like a job application. you write three careful sentences, include a relevant detail from her profile, close with a thoughtful question, and hit send like you're submitting a cover letter. then you wonder why she doesn't respond.

she doesn't respond because forty other guys sent the same competent, sanded-down message. you texted her like it's linkedin and got a linkedin-tier result. no reply.

the guy who types the first dumb thing that pops into his head and sends it in five seconds is beating you. not because he's more attractive. because he sounds alive and you sound managed.

what does the first-draft version actually look like?

here's the same guy, same match, two versions.

HER BIO: "will trade my dog for tickets to taylor swift"

HIM (edited, 14 minutes): Haha love that! Your dog is adorable though, I don't think you could actually go through with the trade. What kind of dog is it? I'm more of a cat person myself but I appreciate a good pup. How was your weekend?

HER: [no response]

now the version he almost sent, then deleted for being too much.

HIM (first draft, 6 seconds): absolutely not selling that dog to you. it's staying with me now. you can visit on weekends with supervision

HER: excuse me it's MY dog

HIM: was your dog. i have a lawyer

HER: hahaha okay this is not going how i expected

read them back to back.

the first one is a hostage note. it's careful, it's balanced, it references the bio, asks about the weekend, and it has the sexual energy of a dentist confirming an appointment. he spent fourteen minutes making it worse.

the second one took six seconds. it commits to a bit. it's absurd. it hands her something to react to instead of a survey to fill out. and she reacted.

the difference isn't skill. the second guy didn't outsmart the first. it's the same guy. he just didn't delete his good idea. this is the whole game. the dumber and faster you text, the more she responds.

but what if she thinks i'm creepy or weird?

she might. that's fine.

the best mindset shift i ever found on this came from Mark Manson's book Models. every guy, at some point, will be perceived as weird or creepy by some woman, even if he objectively did nothing wrong. brad pitt. tom cruise. doesn't matter. it's going to happen. it's outside your control. so stop trying to control it.

when you send the real version and she thinks it's too much, you didn't fail. you filtered. she wasn't going to be fun. and if she's checked out over one absurd text on day one, imagine month six. imagine trying to keep the sanded-down, no-personality act running for a year. you can't. nobody can.

you're not protecting a future with her by editing yourself. you're building a relationship on a version of you that doesn't exist, and she can already tell that guy is fake.

send the weird one. the ones who like it are the ones you actually want.

how do i stop self-censoring the good texts?

here's the one action item. send the first draft.

that's it. the thing you typed before the fear kicked in. before the fourteen minutes of revising it into corporate mush. that first instinct is the funny, human, slightly unhinged version of you, and it's the one that works.

the problem is you can't see your own good ideas as good. you type something great, panic, and delete it because it feels too risky. you self-censor in real time and send the safe garbage instead.

that's the exact reason i built The Guy. it's not a pickup-line generator. it's not chatgpt or some riz app spitting out canned lines. it's a texting coach that hacks you, not her. you send a screenshot of her profile, you pitch what you're thinking of sending, and it tells you why the safe version is going to die and what to send instead. it gets you out of your own way. it stops you from deleting the text that would've worked.

we built it with women, for the record. because the whole point isn't tricking anyone. it's getting the real you onto the screen before your anxiety talks you out of it.

do the math on this. you spend ten, fifteen minutes per message for a thirty percent response rate. that's a garbage return. send the first draft, get out of your head, and watch it climb.

that embarrassing text you deleted wasn't a mistake. it was the best thing you were going to say all day.

try The Guy at asktheguy.app. paste your conversation, get the version that actually works.

video transcript

Good morning, guys. It's time to talk about the epidemic that is your over-edited text messages to women on the dating apps. Because let me tell you guys, she can feel that energy. She knows you spent 15 minutes revising your message, and that comes across much differently than a guy who had the confidence to just send what first popped into his head and took him five seconds to type out and then he just sent it.

So we really need to talk about this because number one, it's quietly sabotaging your text game, and number two, and most importantly, what it reveals about yourself. 'Cause this is the type of nuance I just really don't see the dating influencers on the internet talking about. Because what you're signaling when you spend 15 minutes revising your text message, you're signaling deep down subconsciously that y- you think she would reject the unedited version of yourself, the absurd, funny, quirky, weird dude.

'Cause let's be honest here, we're all a little weird, and that's what makes us unique and human. But you think by showing that vulnerability upfront that she'll reject you And furthermore, it's you thinking of yourself as a thoughtful dude, but actually you're just masquerading as a control freak. That's what it's really getting at.

And she can feel this energy. That's why the guys who spend two seconds writing up their text messages saying the first thing that pops into their mind get way more success on the apps than the dude. And it all goes back to the signal inversion theory that we've been talking about on this channel. You know, everything that has made you successful in your career, in your finances, in your, um, you know, social life, those traits are what's sabotaging you.

And your text messages when you spend 15 minutes editing them come across as like corporate bland emails that you're sending to your boss. They come across as a LinkedIn message. And that's really the problem here, guys. You're treating it like a job application. You're treating the dating app, whether it be Hinge, Bumble, God forbid Tinder, you're treating it like LinkedIn.

And then you wonder why no one responds. So this is just a type of nuance that I just don't see guys talking about. And that is exactly why we built the guy with the help of women, I must add. And that's why I think you really need to kind of get in the mode of just sending the first thing that pops into your mind.

And that is what the guy will help you do because it's not some AI generated text pickup line nonsense. No, it's way deeper than that. It goes way, way bigger. It is an AI texting coach, much different than ChatGPT, even Claude or Riz AI, something like that. So it will ask you, first of all, you send a screenshot just like any other chatbot for her profile.

Then it will ask you, what are you thinking about sending? You pitch it what you think, and then it'll give you feedback and most likely tell you why you shouldn't send it and what to send instead. And the big thing here is that we're not hacking women. No, what we're doing is hacking you. We're getting you out of your own way because otherwise you would self-censor yourself essentially and end up saying something that's just bland and boring.

And again, this is, this is communicated because basically it comes across as you not having confidence. That's the real story, man. And confidence is very different, you know, obviously in person versus, you know, text-based screen communication with these phones. But it's the digital equivalent of going to a bar and just s- you know, mumbling over your words, as I almost just did right there, you know?

So this is a really critical concept you have to start to understand because this is what's going to change everything. So one action item, if anything, other than checking out the guy in the description, you just grab a free trial, test it out yourself. Trust me, it'll change your life. But one action item going forward for you, if you take away nothing else from this video, is just to send the first draft, man.

And I also wanna say, I think a lot of you guys don't want to send the first draft because you're worried about coming across as weird or creepy. And that's basically every guy. Every guy has had that fear at one, at one point or another when it comes to approaching women or being on the apps. And the only thing I have found in my life that's actually helped me make a mindset shift and not even be concerned about this, quite frankly, is, um, the book Models by Mark Manson.

He talks about how, like, listen, at a certain point in time, every guy, whether you're Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, every guy is going to be perceived as weird or creepy by a woman, even if objectively he didn't do anything weird or creepy. It's just bound to happen. It's something you can't control. So don't even try to control it.

Yeah, some people will think the messages are weird or absurd or ridiculous and won't be into it. Okay. You just, you just filtered that poor match out 'cause if she wasn't gonna be fun, uh, you know, from the get-go, then how do you think it's gonna be a year from now? And that's another thing. You're afraid to be absurd and ridiculous and just your own genuine self, but how do you think things are gonna be six to 12 months from now?

You think you can still keep up this act? It's not gonna be possible, man. It's simply not. So that's what it is. And then it also comes down to one of the previous videos I made. Oop, I don't know what happened. All right, we're back. It comes back to one of the previous videos I made where it's this form of benevolent sexism, nice guy sexism, as I'm going to call it, because you're assuming, you're assuming that- You assume that if you're...

Essentially what you're assuming is that she can't handle the real you. That's what it is. And so you have to edit yourself because you're treating her almost like a child. You're not treating her like a human being at that point. You're not treating her like a person. You're treating her, treating her, excuse me, like a puzzle to be solved.

So hopefully these mindset shifts help you. This is the whole reason why I'm putting out this content. And guys, I don't wanna come off as lecturing you. Trust me, I was making all the mistakes. I was spending 15 minutes on every single message. And guys, at the end of the day, if nothing else, if nothing else convinces you to make the change, change it just for the fact that, dude, it is a horrible return on investment to spend 5, 10, even 15 minutes on one of these messages.

And then, you know, like your, your response rate's like 30 to 40% probably until you get the guy and it goes to like 60, 70, maybe even 80%. So dude, you know what to do. Check out the guy, get feedback on your messages and see how you can start improving. It's a free trial. You've got nothing to lose. Trust me.

Link in the description. That's all for me in this one, fellas. Hopefully you got something out of it. If you have any questions, drop a comment. We'll get back to you. See you in the next one. Peace.