I had my first dating experiences in life online, and then I met a couple of girls "normally". (Relationships are few and far between for me, and I have to work at getting one and it takes a year or two and finding one is by far the hardest problem I've ever had to solve in my life).<p>I'm trying online again, and the contrast is extremely stark. There is nothing in any other experience in life that has made me think of myself as an unwanted commodity item quite so much as this. As a man in my thirties who is below average in height (5'8) I fight against about 25% to 75% numbers, and the women seem almost universally to be working extra carefully to exclude me and almost always come across as extremely entitled, both in written and in unwritten ways. And I can't blame them for it! They just understand the economics of scarcity, apparently. Despite being reasonably successful in life and being in the best physical shape I've ever been (10% bodyfat or so, can barely see my abs, can bench press 185 for 8 reps at bodyweight of 155), I seem completely uninteresting to women in a nearly universal way without much I can do to change this.<p>There are no doubt some men who succeed fantastically in this environment, but it seems that for someone like me to do so, I would need to, very much, be conscious of playing the game and pretty much doing anything <i>but</i> presenting an unashamed and straightforward version of self-expression. Since I consider it to be the core of my character to neither accept or deal out bullshit from anyone, but to seek the direct truth, this is a problem.<p>This is in contrast to where I've actually had success with women in the past - amateur classical singing and opera. There the population is about 75% women, with many of the men being gay. There, I can get a taste of what dating is like for the rest of the world - I didn't have to play some stupid hyper-masculinized pursuer who throws semi-sincere interest at a hundred women until one of them returns a peep, but situations actually can develop somewhat symmetrically and organically. Clearly the answer for me is to get back into a world like that, despite not being very interested anymore for any other reason. (My passion these days is programming and development.)<p>Anyway, this turned into a big rant, but I've been single for a year, face the prospect of a few more, and it does get to me.