Dating decoded: Evolutionary insights on attraction
Welcome to my collection of articles exploring the timeless dance of dating and mating. Drawing from evolutionary psychology, cultural history, and real-world wisdom, these pieces decode the costly signals that shape attraction, reveal hidden patterns in modern romance, and offer practical insights to navigate love’s complexities. Whether you’re curious about biology’s role in courtship or seeking strategies for deeper connections, start reading and uncover what really drives human desire.
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Selling costly signals in 1879: Victorian visiting cards and the logic of modern dating
On calling cards, costly signals, and buying your way into polite society with George D. Carroll’s (1879) Art Stationery and Usages of Polite Society.
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The 1973 dating manual that predicted Tinder: costly signals in action
Andrew DuBrin’s The Singles Game, and the application of management theory to dating advice In 1973, while the rest of America preached free love and “going with the flow,” a…
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Death of the dating app: costly signals, rejection, and the return of real dating
This article appeared in Quillette earlier this month In mid-2025, Bumble’s founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to the company she had left two years earlier and offered a blunt assessment…
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Costly signaling across a century of dating advice
What bowerbirds, a 1920 love manual, and brutal modern advice reveal about trust A 1920 dating manual, a book about animals having sex in a zoo, and a profane modern…
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Sydney Sweeny’s older men: the evolutionary truth behind age-gap relationships
Age-gap relationships are only scandalous when men are older—and the data and hypocrisy prove it On April 7, Sydney Sweeney walked the red carpet at the Euphoria Season 3 premiere.…
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Looksmaxxing: signaling to the wrong audience
Looksmaxxers think they’re attracting women, but the research says otherwise In February 2026, twenty-year-old streamer Braden Peters, known as Clavicular, closed a New York Fashion Week show looking every inch…
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The brief rise of the sensitive new age guy (and why he disappeared)
The man who did everything right and still got it wrong In 1982, Bruce Feirstein published Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, a satirical bestseller targeting a new species of American…
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The rise and fall of the pickup artist
What mainstream critics missed about a misunderstood movement In 2005, journalist Neil Strauss published The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, an exposé that spent months on the…
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Why “playing hard to get” has survived 2,000 years of dating advice
Why Ovid, The Rules, and pickup artists all say the same thing about scarcity and desire “Don’t call him back right away.” “Let him pursue you.” “Be easy to be…
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What the women want: the other side of the passport bro story
Women fleeing machismo and mia nois for respect and real partnerships Last week I looked at the female passport bro—older Western women who travel to West Africa, the Caribbean, and…
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Rent-a-dreads and sex tourism: the female passport bro
Female sex tourists—older Western women traveling to West Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond, chasing romance and sex with much younger local men—get almost zero public outrage. Everyone knows the “passport…
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10 Dating books that changed how people date (and mate)
From ancient Rome to the pickup artist era—a curated list with commentary from my research into the evolution of dating advice Essential dating books Some dating books sell millions of…
What is a costly signal?
Dating & Mating Infographics
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© 2026, Andrew King