Two guests this time, both of whom met each other at a Meetup event. Sean Tremblay runs the largest social Meetup group in San Diego and has organized events for thousands of people. Desiree Wilson is twenty-three and has done the app thing extensively enough to have a system for it.

The core argument is that meeting people in person skips a step the apps can't. You find out in thirty seconds whether there's anything there, instead of investing weeks in a conversation that dies on the first coffee. Sean's route into that was running events rather than attending them, which is worth hearing on its own: he was, in his words, a dateless wonder, and organizing was how he got the practice.

The part I'd point people toward is Desiree on screening. She describes deliberately raising a mildly controversial view early to see how the man responds, on the theory that someone who needs her to concede is showing her he wants control, and someone whose goal is control is a predator regardless of how the evening is going. She's also good on love bombing being the same behavior wearing flowers.

We get into why men and women have completely different experiences of the same app, why "let's just be friends" reads as an insult when you met on a dating platform and doesn't when you met in person, and the thing men worry about, which is being there to buy dinner for someone who was never going to date them.