Guys, if your conversation skills are lacking, just know it's not entirely your fault.
This means that both men AND women possess poor conversation skills these days.
I think this is an accurate statement. Both men and women have weaker conversational skills than even in the 1990s at the tail end of the pre-internet era and the early years of the internet.
I can see a difference between my college years (2001-2005) and 2011-present.
But as a man, society dictates that the onus falls on your shoulders to lead and maintain the conversation. Women get a pass, and they're comfortable just sitting back and being a passenger.....
conversation is a team effort, if she ain't contributing anything more than single word answers ("yeah" "no" "sometimes" "maybe" "idk" "not really"), then of course the conversation will be stale, but she'll blame you for being "boring".....
This is the main reason why when (on the rare occasion) a guys scores a date, the conversation inevitably feels like a job interview because neither side knows how to relax and speak naturally - it's just a barrage of questions and one-word answers, and both sides feel awkward.
You're quite correct that women get a cultural pass on their social skills and seem very comfortable being passive and "passenger-like" in their social circle. I've noticed that since the onset of the 2010s, women have seemed way more passive in their conversations. I don't get asked nearly as many questions on early stages than I would think that I would get asked.
This is why conversations have a tendency to feel like job interviews on dates for many men. I've experienced this and I think this is a common male experience now. Even with a better than average female conversationalist, I still perceive that I do far more of the conversational heavy lifting in the early days. With that said, there are women who are talkative and fun. There is the occasional exception of a woman who can carry a conversation in the early days. The exceptions prove the rule.
These "job interview" type dates are more of a result of bad initial screening. Due to the use of tech, a lot of bad dates happen that likely would never have happened in the pre-internet era. I think people got worse at screening for initial interest in the website era of dating (2000s) and this trend continued into the swipe app era (2010s-present). It is really difficult to screen for initial interest behind an electronic screen. In the 2000s and early 2010s, some people would have phone calls with their dating website matches prior to dates. I even remember doing this in that era. I understood why people did it in that era, but in my experience, a phone call prior to a first date didn't really reduce "1 date, no sex, no second date" type interactions. Around 2010 or so, I noticed that it was getting more and more difficult to get potential matches on the phone and with it not reducing bad first date outcomes, I stopped doing those.
It's possible to set up video type chats with swipe app matches and they might be helpful. I think they would be more helpful than the solely voice call. If you're going to go through the effort of having video calls after swiping, texting on the apps, and sending texts to each other's phones, you might as well solely approach in the real world.
Approaching in the real world has always been a better option than the 2000s era tech path (dating website messaging + phone call) or 2010s/2020s era path (swipe app interaction with optional phone/video call).
Truthfully though, if we were to strip away a woman's beauty and observe her in an objective manner, we would see that a lot of women are pretty Godd@mn boring as well.....
I rarely meet a woman that has anything interesting to say or have any humor or have any interesting life experiences.....
If women were judged in the same way of men, most women would be classified as boring. Due to the appeal of their breasts, butts, and vaginas, their personal attributes tend to get overlooked.
Most women don't have interesting hobbies. Few women do something as awesome as even having a sport hobby like playing tennis, volleyball, or soccer. The typical woman met in a bar or on a swipe app isn't playing rec league or pickup volleyball games. Some might go to fitness classes. Considering the overweight/obese rate, not women are exercising enough. I've mainly avoided going on dates with overweight/obese women, which is good. The typical average/slightly above woman from the bar or swipe app (think someone you'd rate as 5.5-6.5) isn't a fitness fanatic. She's likely some not pudgy woman who likes some bullshiit streaming service programming, bull**** YouTube/TikTok, or bullshiit cable/satellite TV network content. She might even love being social on Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn.
At least a woman who plays sand or indoor volleyball recreationally has something going for her.
Ask yourself when was the last time you had a flirtatious conversation with a woman over the phone..... I'm willing to bet it was a long while ago....
The last time I had a flirtatious phone conversation was probably around 2013......
If you're dating women who were born in 1981/1982 or later, it is somewhat difficult to get them on a phone call. I remember being critical of 1980s born Millennial women for what appeared to be voice conversation phobic behavior by the 2010-2013 era. This trend hasn't changed and has likely gotten worse. There are now 15-20 years of adult births out there who aren't as inclined towards voice conversation.
Phone calls have gotten rarer and rarer until the "officially dating/relationship stage". I still have fewer phone calls with women in a relationship stage than I would like to have.
I've even found it difficult to get some of my male friends born in the 1980s on telephone calls. I find that annoying.
That's because around 2014 smartphones were becoming more affordable and everybody had one - from middle school kids to illegal immigrants - everybody had a smartphone and everybody preferred texting over phone conversations....
This happened earlier than 2014.
By 2009-2011, it was essentially impossible to approach White women with bachelor's degrees or higher in their 20s in person with a flip phone. In 2009-2011, I was 26-28, so that's who I was approaching then. You could work around this at that time solely getting numbers on dating websites. The White women I referenced previously were starting to want to text more and that's difficult to do on flip phones. It's not impossible. I was doing some texting on a flip phone circa 2010 but I had to get a smartphone to competitive with doing in-person approaches. I learned around then that women were judgemental about the phone you owned.
There was also some interaction in the mid-2010s where I had an iPhone but not the newest model at the time and some woman sneered at me. That seemed to be more of an exception than the rule. Since the early 2010s, as long as you have some sort of smartphone, you're going to be ok more than not when you collect her number from an in-person approach. However, there are some women who own iPhones who look down on men with Android phones. This is ridiculous because some Androids (mainly Samsungs) are really solid phones.
In the USA, prettier White women with bachelor's degrees or higher tend to own iPhones far more than Androids. I can't recall a time where I saw a higher level looking White woman with a bachelor's degree or higher owning an Android. If you happen to encounter an attractive woman with an Android, she's likely non-White. The only non-White women I tend to approach are Hispanics. An attractive Hispanic woman in the USA might have an Android model but I think even more of them are women with iPhones.
Now we're living in the social media age where 70% of all social interactions are digital...... people are no longer accustomed to interacting with each other in person anymore....
Most interactions are digital. Most interactions aren't worth doing in-person. This was a trend that pre-dated the pandemic but the pandemic accentuated it from early 2020-at least early 2022.
Most social events aren't worth in-person time anyway. I find that I want to devote my in-person stuff to interactions that either involve sex or could lead to sex. General social circle get togethers with friends that won't lead to sex aren't all that interesting to me. A lot of my social circle stinks these days, with 5 pregnancy announcements since mid-2021 and the long term trend of my social circle towards houses in the suburbs, dog, and children.
There aren't a lot of 30 or 35+ guys who live lives where they are either typically unattached, in shorter term uncommittted relationships, or in shorter to medium term committed relationships. I am spending more and more lately socializing with the few 35+ men I already know who tend to avoid the typical blue pill, normie path.
