Here is an audiobook about dating. It is written by a comedian, Aziz Ansari, so I thought it would be funny. It’s not especially funny, but it is very informative about dating. And specifically how-to, as studied by actual scientists. I get the impression that Ansari thought this would be a good way to get fact-based advice on how to improve his odds.
Here is the most interesting part: indeed, having lots of choice does make it harder to make a choice. In one famous study, some researchers went to a grocery store offering jam to sample. Some days they offered six, some days they offered twenty-four. On the days when they had six, they had far fewer people sampling, but . . get this . . about ten times more people actually buying. This has obvious implications for Tinder. And also for why I don’t seem to get further than ten minutes into most shows on Netflix.
Second most interesting: indeed, texting someone unpredictably does make you more interesting. As we long suspected, game playing works.
So there you go. Keep a short list and don’t text them very often.