Transcript of AE 1048 - Dating in Australia | What You Need To Know

G'day, you mob. Back here again for another reaction video. Today, I am reacting to Adlyke Down Under. She has a YouTube channel, go check her out. And this video is about dating online in Australia. A whole bunch of you have been asking me about dating tips, so what do I know? Let's hear it from someone who has experienced it. Anyway, let's go.

Hi, there lovely people. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For those who are joining us for the first time, you're most welcome. My name is Adlyke and I talk about different lifestyle issue. And at this point of my life, I'm getting a little bit passionate about dating. So, today we're going to be talking about things I learnt about online dating in Australia.

And well before I got married, I had a fair bit of playing around with the dating apps, and some of the dating apps I've used is Bumble. I quite like it because the girl has to make the first move. So, if you're confident, at least you can use Bumble...

Yeah. So, there's obviously a whole bunch of different apps that you can use in Australia. Tinder's probably the most famous or infamous nowadays. I haven't been on this, obviously, having been married myself a few years ago. I haven't been on this for four, five, five years maybe.

There's Bumble, there's- There are quite a few, but Bumble is an interesting one because I think you do the swiping like Tinder, but the woman has to make the first move where she'll be the one who responds to the like. And if you both obviously like each other, you can chat.

Tinder on the other hand, you both have to swipe right for one another to communicate. But yeah, there's a whole bunch of apps. Use them, try them out. If they work for you, good. If they don't, don't.

There's also Tinder, but I know now Tinder has a bad rep for just being a Hook-Up site.

Yeah, with Tinder, I think you're going to get out of it what you put into it, if that makes sense. So, if you are looking for just hooking up with people...

How you doing?

...You can obviously use it that way if, on the other hand, you are looking to meet people and, you know, eventually have a relationship...

No question about it. I am ready to get hurt again.

...With a man or a woman, whatever it is, then you can also use it for that too. That's what I was doing when I was using it. I never really used it- In fact, I never used it for just hooking up with randoms. It was much more about getting to know other people that I would never actually come across in real life.

And then if I clicked with them when chatting with them, I would be like, oh, do you want to get coffee? Or do you want to go out to this restaurant or something? And then, you know, see how it goes and keep dating if it goes well. Obviously, it didn't go that well, though, because I met my wife through YouTube and not through Tinder.

I also really liked Zoosk, and I think eharmony, they are quite good. So, there are so many dating sites, but and sometimes it can get so confusing on how to go about your dating or online dating experience. So, today I'm going to be sharing things that I learnt, and the first one is that the competition is so high.

There's a lot of competition in town.

Can you imagine in a world whereby a guy has so many girls, it's like a whole catalogue of girls to choose from...

See, this is funny. This is funny. I'm going to take Adlyke here to sort of task a little bit. For me when I was using Tinder, it seemed like it was much more that the girls were the sharks, if you will, and the guys were kind of the fish. You know, we were the ones who- By and large guys have, I think if you go in and look at the actual science of people who've studied these apps and men and their standards, women and their standards.

Men are much more likely to swipe right and say the average woman is attractive, whereas the average woman is, I think she's likely to say that 80% of men are below attractiveness, average attractiveness.

So, it is really interesting. But I always felt like it was the woman's choice effectively, that she had guys just swiping right all the time. Men were swiping right to everyone, and the woman could effectively choose. So, it's interesting that Adlyke here thinks that it was tough in terms of choices for her, for guys, and that there were a lot of competition. But never dated guys, so what do I know?

So, it's crazy. So, you have to really put your best foot forward, and this is just based on your photo, they get to judge you based on your photos. So, make sure you have a photo that you look so, so bomb...

He is so hot.

...I've noticed most of the popular girls are the ones that are showing their personality in their photos. So, you either if you're bubbly, make sure you're laughing. If you like nature, you're out there in nature. And just bring out your best personality with a photo, because unfortunately, whether we like it or not, we are being judged on our photo.

That's life, though, right, guys. I mean, any time you're dating in the dating world, everyone's judging everyone based on everything that they do. You're trying to discern, you're trying to work out if someone is the right match for you, whether that's physically, emotionally, intellectually, monetarily or whatever it is.

We're judging each other constantly until we sort of get enough ticks and enough boxes, and we're like, yeah, this person ticks enough boxes for me and is the right person.

But it is interesting. I remember hearing from a few of my friends- It was a friend in Queensland. She sent all of these images from guys on Tinder, I think, who were all holding fish. And she's just like, what the fuck is with everyone holding fish in these photos?

So, there do tend to be these stereotypes where guys at least I remember hearing about this and seeing these photos that they'll hold up fish, they'll be in singlets, they'll be holding beers, they'll be out with their mates. So, it is interesting how we signal this way using photos on these apps.

And for women, obviously a lot of the time, for me, at least, it was always women out clubbing with their girlfriends, at the beach in a bikini, you know, with drinks in their hands, doing all this sort of stuff. For what it's worth, my two cents would be, yeah, as Adlyke says, use the photos to tell a story about your personality, but more than just, hey, I look sexy in this dress.

I mean, obviously you've got to show your appearance a little bit. You don't want to show up to a date and someone be like, whoa, you're completely different from what your photos suggested.

I, ah, really thought you were, ah...

Oh, yeah, they were taken ten years ago. Sorry about that. But you do want to show a bit about, you know, are you into cars? Do you like nature? As she said, do you, you know, like going to the gym? But you have to do it in a kind of tactful way, right.

If you're a guy and you just like going to the gym, and you're just in the gym, you know, with your shirt off showing off your muscles, you're probably going to freak out a few potential great matches on the app.

The second thing is, one, that you probably are all going to agree with me is because there are so many frogs, you're going to kiss or probably be with so many bad guys, going to go through so many bad dates, so many heartbreaks before you get the one.

So, please don't give up, just- It's just it happens to the best of us. It happens to everybody. So, you might go through so many dates, but at the end of the day, as much as like people always bash Tinder about being just a hook-up site, I have friends who've actually found their life partners on Tinder.

100% Tinder can be used for whatever it is that you want. If you just want to hook up with people, you can use it to hook up with people, right. It's connecting you. If you want to use it to find decent human beings, you can also do that. It's up to you really, right. So, she was talking about frogs, right. So, I think this is an analogy of kissing a frog and he'll turn into a prince.

But obviously there's a lot of people you kiss, and they don't turn into princes, so bad eggs, right. People that you go on dates with, you don't click with, and you think, waste of my time. That's the game, right. That's the game. I remember someone telling me that for guys fishing- Fishing? Dating is like fishing; you want as many hooks in the water as you can because it's a numbers game. It sounds horrible when you say it that way.

It sounds horrible when you say it that way. But I think the message was more you need to effectively give yourself as many opportunities as possible to meet women so that you can meet the right woman for you, right. Obviously, if you're just going out there and you date a single person, and the first person you date, you're just like, oh, well, we kind of get along, let's get married. That's a bad idea, right.

You want to have dated 100 people, you know, whatever the number is, so that you get an understanding of what is out there, what people are like, what you want in someone, what you enjoy, what you click with. And again, that isn't to say sleep with every single person that you go on a date with.

It's to say get to know people. You can go on a date without hooking up with people, even as a guy. You know, there are plenty of guys, including myself, where I went on dates, and the ultimate goal was to get to know the person that I was on a date with. It wasn't to bring them home that night after the first date.

Whatever you say.

There are those kinds of people out there, but you just have to get good at sifting them out. And obviously it's a numbers game.

When you're looking for your partner if you're going to be using dating sites or dating apps, you need to get into the habit of obviously dating or at least communicating with lots of different people to get an idea of what suits you, the kind of person you're looking for that is going to make an amazing life partner. Anyway, rant over.

...Go from one day to another and just keep putting your best foot forward. The other thing that I've also realised with online dating is that don't ensure that your radius is quite small. You say that maybe a five minutes, 10 minutes or max, maybe 20 minutes' drive.

I know sometimes girls do this, if they're not finding cute guys or guys that they like within a small radius, they start to expand their radius to 30 minutes' drive or 40. Seriously, and then you complain about never meeting the guy because in the first place they're going to think of it as a chore. Who wants to drive for freaking one hour for one date?

Depends how well you get along with the person, I think. If it were me and I had really clicked with someone, I would probably have driven 30 minutes, 40 minutes to go see them right, you know. I guess on a first date, it might be different, you may be willing to put in less in terms of effort. But it just depends if you get to know them before you go on the date, you know, by chatting to them and you hit it off, man, give it a whirl.

Just drive a little bit. But yeah, obviously her point is that the further away they live, the more it's going to be a bit of a drain, right. If they're four hours away and you're going to see them every other month, then it's probably not worth your time if you've got someone that you could go and see five minutes away.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

So, just keep your radius short and keep looking and make sure your profile speaks a lot about you, you have words that are short and yet very well detailed in regards to explaining your personality.

Oh man, I have such a good point that I need to bring up here. This is something that was a pet hate of mine, a real pet hate of mine. Not every woman does this, and in fact, the majority of women don't do this. But this was something that I would encourage women not to do. Don't put in your description a list of criteria that you need for the successful applicant who's going to go on a date with you, right.

If you start saying things like, hey, I'm looking for my Prince Charming and I want him to be six foot tall. He needs to have abs. He needs to have, you know, a steady job with an income of over $100,000 a year.

Oh, that's gross.

Just, you know, don't do that. Even if that's the case, even if those are things that you need, don't advertise that openly because it would be like guys saying, I need a supermodel who, you know, has a PhD and has a job that's blah blah blah... Don't put those sorts of things on there because it's really grinding, and it just puts things on the wrong foot, right from the get-go, right.

That there's all these superficial conditions that you need ticked before you'll even give someone a chance to get to know them. So, yeah, that's my little thing there. But I saw that so often that women would have all of these, you need to be this, you need to be this, you need to be this, you need to be this, you know, sometimes there'd be lists of like 20 things and you'd just be like, why am I even going to bother?

What are my chances? To be fair, I've only dated women. So, women who are watching this comment below what are the dos and don'ts for guys? Because one thing I can assure you, the number of things that irritated me about women's profiles on these sorts of dating apps, I can almost be certain there will be ten times the number of don'ts for guys, right.

You know, appearing with your shirt off in your first photo, holding a fish, being out with the boys, having drinks and getting wasted. Guys don't do that, don't do that either. I mean, yeah, who am I? I'm not the dating guru. This is just my two cents, okay. And obviously Adlyke's.

...Probably based on my second point whereby I say that you're going to kiss so many frogs, there'll be so many bad dates, is please don't make online dating your only primary source of dates.

Because a lot of girls are like, oh, I don't have- I hate all the time with my friends, I have no time to go out, I don't have time to go meet guys anywhere else, so I'm solely relying on online dating. And then you start to get desperate, and I'm telling you guys can sense desperation from a mile away.

I'd say women can sense it. It's like blood in the water for sharks.

Ooooh.

...Right. I don't know if that's a good analogy, right. Because you sort of, you're running away from it, you're not coming towards it. But I would say that women can definitely sense desperation. So, again, guys, you know, tone it down, tone it down.

So, just make sure that you are there, go to the gym, go for a walk, go for nature, join a book club. Just do other activities that you love and be open minded to meeting people in those areas. It's not that it has to be just online dating, because I hear my friends, they are single, but they don't want to meet guys anywhere else, it has to be online dating. Or when they go to work, they have their earphones on.

I think it's time we stopped wearing our earphones, especially if you're single. Just be there, be present, make sure that if somebody wants to make a conversation with you, please speak back to them, smile. You can meet guys anywhere else.

This is a good point that she makes here. I think a big thing about dating today is that people go towards the internet and all these apps because it's just easy, right. There's no face to face. You can kind of match with people and then just get rid of them and they're out of your life forever, you're never going to see them.

But you end up- If you're only relying on that, you end up removing all these other opportunities to meet and get to know people in the real world where you do have amazing opportunities to get to know people really well, face to face, whether it is at the gym, doing social activities at clubs, just going out with friends and being open to having conversations with strangers, right.

I remember I've asked out, when I was younger, I'd asked out quite a few people that I met at cafes and just struck up a conversation with them, whether they were working at the cafe, whether they were also at the cafe getting coffee or at the restaurant, whatever it was.

I ended up just, you know, making small talk with someone and then hitting it off and then saying in the conversation, you know, oh, would you ever like to catch up again? You know, do you have Facebook, or can I give you my number?

Oh, wait, can I get your number?

And if they said yes, you know, there you go. You've just met someone that you have sort of vetted and found out that their normal human beings and you can go out and get to know, and who knows, could be your life partner. So, yeah, it's the same with making friends, I think. A lot of the time I get questions from you guys, how do I meet people in Australia?

A big part is just socialising and like that analogy with hooks in the water before for dating, it's the same thing with finding friends. You just need to be making sure that you're coming into contact with loads of different people in your day-to-day life because you're not going to be friends with everyone. But, you know, 1 in 100 people is probably going to be a real keeper...

I knew he was a keeper.

...That you can make, you know, a very, very, very good friend. But if you're only coming into contact with a handful of people a week, your chances are much lower. So, yeah, socialise, get to know people, make small talk.

...And for example, myself, I actually met my husband- I was on online dating, but we didn't meet through our online side, we actually met at uni. Okay. So, we went to the library, and I was doing my thing and he said, hi. Then we bumped into each other another day, we went for a coffee, had our coffee, had dinner and five years down the line now we're married. So, be open to meeting guys everywhere.

The other thing, and probably this is one of the most important thing, is guys, please be safe. We've all seen on the news people getting kidnapped, people having really weird experiences, even being, you know, killed or something of that sort.

I mean, those are kind of the scare stories, right. Imagine how many interactions there are in terms of dating on a day-to-day basis. And then every year or two you do hear these horror stories of someone being murdered or killed, generally the woman. So, again, yeah, 100% be safe. My advice here with dating people, especially for first dates, and even I did this, is go to a cafe during the day.

Try to avoid going out at night if you can, especially if you're a woman. I mean, I know it's one of those things that's kind of like either you're going to say, oh no-duh, Pete. Or you're going to say, you know, I'm a feminist, I'm, you know, don't you tell me what to do. I'm a single, independent woman, blah blah blah.

All right. But again, it's about being safe. You don't know these people that you're meeting up with, and especially if you're the woman and they're the guy.

So, yeah, I would say go out during the day if possible or at least, you know, during the daytime. Go somewhere where there's loads of people, so, you know, it's probably not the best idea to agree to go on a road trip and have the person drive off wherever into the woods, especially if you're a girl.

And agree to a short period of time, make it an hour or half an hour and have a plan to finish early, so that if you don't get along really well, you do have an out and, you know, you can bail. But yeah, as you obviously build your relationship and get to know the person, then you can take it further and further and further and do other things. But that was something I always did.

There were a few times that women I matched with on Tinder were like, hey, just come over tonight. And I was always really wary of that, and I never, ever went to someone's house randomly after matching with them, even as a guy. Because I was like, how do I know who this person is behind these photos talking to me? It could be this huge guy who has a fetish for bald dudes.

What's wrong, dude? You yellow.

What do I know? So, there's no chance that I'm just going to some person's house at 8pm at night when I've never met them because they're like, hey, you know, you look really hot. Let's hook up. It was always, yeah, how about we go get coffee somewhere tomorrow at lunchtime? See how we go. And maybe if things go well in a few weeks or whatever, we can end up getting together. I don't know why I'm doing that. Anyway.

So, the number one rule that I tell everybody, before you go for a date make sure to tell your friend, make sure to tell somebody that you're close to. Don't keep it a secret. Everybody- In this day and age everybody knows that people go for dates, so make sure you share your partners or whoever you're meeting their name, their contact and their location.

Okay. So, those things are so, so important, any time you go for a date, as much as this guy you've been talking to him for like ages, you never know. Creeps have disguised into very good-looking people, so just make sure you're safe.

Yeah, there are some psychos out there, man. So, be 100% careful. Both women and men, there are psychos. What else was I going to say? I guess, to finish up here, I really like Adlyke's channel. Go check it out, guys. I had a look at some of the other videos on our channel here, "Adlyke Down Under". She talks about life in Australia and a bunch of these kinds of topics, so go check it out.

But besides that, with dating, yeah, I think, you know, to sum it up, if you're in the dating market currently and you're having a bit of trouble, the sort of takeaway here is obviously apart from be safe, get to know a lot of different people. You don't have to rush into things, you don't need to feel like you need to go home with someone and get straight to the sex part.

If you feel that kind of pressure it's probably a bad sign, and things probably aren't going to go very well for very long with that person. So, again, make sure that you click with them. And if you get that kind of pressure from anyone, whether you're a guy or a girl to, you know, come straight over and do XYZ and you're not comfortable with it, just don't do it, don't do it, you know, you can say no, 100%.

My old house mate, I don't know how he managed this, but he used to go out five times a week with five different girls and always be bringing home two or three of them a week.

And I would just be mind blown at the number of women who had just met him that day, even though he was a relatively nice guy and obviously wasn't going to harm them. But I was just mind blown at the number of women who would just appear at my house that had never met any of us and had only met him that day and were just like, yeah, sure, I'll come over and stay the night. Mind blowing.

So, again, you know, obviously it's your life, but just be safe. Yeah. So, that's it for today, guys. Go and check out Adlyke's channel, "Adlyke Down Under". She's got great videos talking about different aspects of Australian life. She's a migrant herself. I think she's living over in Western Australia. She's married an Australian, I believe.

So, there may be some really good content here that is useful for you. And then re-dating, again, just be safe. You can use these kinds of apps but set up your expectations. If you don't want to use them for hooking up with people randomly, you don't have to do that, right. Use them to be an extension of your social life where you can meet people you otherwise wouldn't normally meet, and you can get to know them, right.

So, that's it from me, guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to keep learning about Australian culture, go check out this one over here and I'll see you next time. Bye.