HOW MUCH BS CAN YOU HANDLE? Same facts. Your choice of how deep to go.
JUST A SHOT. I have things to do.
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Businessman Chris Hatch offered young men an 11-step plan for finding a girlfriend: put down the video games, shower, get a haircut, ask a woman out and bring flowers.
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His seemingly harmless advice triggered an online backlash, including one self-described millionaire who responded by insulting an entire generation of young women.
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Twitchy writer Just Mindy jumped into the argument with a story about her own 20-year-old daughter — and one commenter delivered a hilarious parody of dating advice from another century.
GIVE ME ALL THE BS. I’ve got time.
A businessman has apparently discovered a revolutionary new method for helping young men find girlfriends.
Take a shower. Get a haircut. Leave the house. Talk to an actual woman.
And if she agrees to a date, maybe bring flowers.
Somehow, this has become controversial.
Businessman Chris Hatch ignited a social media debate over the weekend after posting an 11-step guide for young men struggling to find romantic relationships.
His advice was hardly groundbreaking. In fact, much of it sounded like something a father might have told his son in 1955.
But the responses revealed just how contentious the modern dating scene has become, particularly among men and women who spend considerable time arguing about relationships online.
Hatch opened his October 10 post with an observation about the young women he knows.
“Attention Young Men: I am surrounded by 20 year old girls in my life that are smart, capable, hard working and cute. Nobody is dating them.”
“Not sure what the deal is, but I don’t get it,” he added.
Then came the instructions.
“Step 1: Stop playing video games.”
“Step 2: Head to great clips and get that lettuce cleaned up.”
“Step 3: Hit a shower (when dating hygiene is critical).”
Hatch also recommended cleaning the car, signing up for a yoga class and introducing yourself to someone you find attractive.
He urged young men to ask for a phone number, follow up within two days and arrange an actual date rather than relying exclusively on dating apps.
And he was remarkably specific about the preparation.
“IMPORTANT – come up with a good game plane for date night,” Hatch wrote, apparently meaning a game plan.
“Get a dinner reservation, get an activity planned. Let them know in advance what you are doing so they can dress appropriately.”
He even anticipated the difference between a young man’s preparation and a young woman’s.
“I know you are gunna roll off the couch and head to date night, but they are not,” he wrote.
“They are going to stress about what to wear and call at least 6 different people on FaceTime to ask their opinion.”
Then came the flowers.
Hatch recommended visiting Trader Joe’s, buying two inexpensive varieties and combining them into a bouquet.
For men who don’t know which flowers look good together, he offered another suggestion: find a woman in the store who reminds you of your mother and ask for help.
His final instructions were equally traditional.
“Be a gentleman on the date.”
“She isn’t there to hear your life story. Ask her about her.”
“Open Doors, pay for the meal, be polite.”
Hatch concluded by encouraging young men to keep dating until they found someone they couldn’t imagine living without.
“My life is complete with my wife as my companion,” he wrote.
“I wish you the same fortune in life. Happy Hunting.”
That might have been the end of a pleasant social media exchange about dating.
Instead, it became a battle over modern relationships, gender expectations and what some commenters believe is wrong with young women.
Twitchy contributor Just Mindy highlighted the controversy Sunday, noting that much of Hatch’s advice seemed perfectly reasonable.
She did, however, take issue with one particular recommendation.
The yoga class.
Mindy argued that many young women prefer Pilates and might not appreciate men joining their classes specifically to pursue dates.
Her suggestion was simpler: go to the gym.
She also explained why the original post resonated with her personally.
“My daughter is one of those 20 year olds,” she wrote.
Mindy described her daughter as attractive, physically fit, studying to become a nurse and committed to her Christian faith.
She said her daughter had never used dating apps but still struggled to find a suitable boyfriend.
According to Mindy, the shortage wasn’t necessarily of young women interested in serious relationships. It was finding young men willing to pursue them.
But one response to Hatch’s original advice took the discussion in an entirely different direction.
An X user identifying himself as Beaver dismissed the suggestion that young men were having trouble finding women.
“I am a 6’4 blue eyed multi millionaire,” he declared.
He then claimed the problem wasn’t a shortage of women but that every young woman was sexually promiscuous, using a crude insult to describe them.
Mindy was unimpressed.
“First of all, not all 20-year-old women are ‘w****s’,” she responded in her article.
She suggested that men who genuinely believe every woman they encounter is unsuitable might want to try meeting women in different environments, including church.
Then she asked the question at the heart of the controversy.
“Secondly, the advice basically was: approach a woman respectfully, plan a nice date, bring flowers and call her after. Why are men acting like this is outrageous?”
Another commenter, Patrick Neve, decided the original advice sounded so old-fashioned that it deserved a full parody.
He rewrote Hatch’s instructions as though they had been delivered by someone whose understanding of modern dating came entirely from the 1950s.
“Step 1: Stop playing the Pokemans.”
“Step 2: Go to a local mall (where all the youths hang out) to find a girl.”
“Step 3: Tell her you think she’s a grooovy chick.”
“Step 4: Ask her to the sock hop or to get a milkshake at the soda shop.”
And for the grand finale?
“Step 5: When she says yes, do a cool skateboard trick and say ‘Far out man!'”
The parody neatly captured one criticism of Hatch’s post: that advice about finding a spouse can sound disconnected from how young adults actually meet people today.
But other commenters strongly defended his underlying message.
An X user named Rachel urged young men to stop overthinking the yoga recommendation and focus on the basics.
“If you want a wife, do this,” she wrote.
“Get off the apps. Go outside. Talk to people in real life.”
She argued that flowers, good manners, personal hygiene and respectful behavior remain attractive qualities regardless of changing dating trends.
“Being a gentleman never goes out of style,” she concluded.
The exchange also exposed a familiar contradiction in online dating discussions.
Some young men complain that modern dating has become impossibly complicated, while some young women complain that men rarely approach them respectfully or make the effort to plan dates.
Hatch’s original post was an attempt to bridge that divide with a fairly simple proposition: stop treating dating as an internet debate and start treating it as something people do in real life.
The resulting argument demonstrated just how difficult that proposition can become once social media gets involved.
Hatch didn’t propose a new dating app, a psychological theory or a complicated relationship strategy.
He told young men to clean themselves up, put down their controllers, introduce themselves to women and behave like gentlemen.
And within hours, the internet was arguing about whether that was an outrageous expectation.
Modern romance may be more complicated than it used to be.
But judging from this exchange, getting people to agree that a shower and a bouquet of flowers are reasonable starting points might be the real challenge.
