The Matt Walsh Show - This Country’s Dating Culture Is Falling Apart FAST
Aired: 2026-04-25
Duration: 18:10


=== Dating Apps Are A Scam (04:52) ===

[00:00:00]  So, last week I did a video on how dating apps are a scam that are destroying the dating pool and making life very difficult for young people, young men in particular, which is obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention.
[00:00:13]  There's no question that the dating culture in this country is a catastrophe.
[00:00:21]  A lot of people responded with their own thoughts, their own dating advice, their responses, and some of the responses were smart, some were stupid.
[00:00:30]  And we're going to read through a collection of both.
[00:00:35]  First up is Melvin Dean, who wrote As a young man, I decided that I needed to stop depending on dating apps to find a relationship.
[00:00:40]  I have to start walking up to women I find attractive because at the end of the day, I'd rather embarrass myself than to regret what possibly could have been a genuine connection.
[00:00:49]  Yeah, I think that is the answer in many cases.
[00:00:51]  Not an easy thing to do.
[00:00:53]  I can't really give advice on how to do it.
[00:00:56]  I'm not going to pretend that I can.
[00:00:58]  Approaching random people to strike up conversations has never been my strong suit.
[00:01:02]  Also, never been something I've ever really been interested in doing.
[00:01:06]  Unfortunately, I'm married, so I don't have the same pressure to do that.
[00:01:10]  I'm more likely to be on the receiving end of unsolicited conversations these days than to ever solicit them.
[00:01:17]  But anyway, I mean, the ultimate solution is to revert back to the real world.
[00:01:22]  And I think the huge challenge, additional challenge, is that when you approach somebody in the real world, And I don't say this to dissuade you, but just to recognize the challenges.
[00:01:38]  The challenge is that you're not competing with just the real world.
[00:01:42]  You're talking to a woman who's right in front of you, maybe, but she's also on dating apps.
[00:01:48]  And so you're competing with all that.
[00:01:49]  And this is why it was just better when none of that stuff existed.
[00:01:52]  Now, when we talked about dating apps, I started that conversation by saying, I met my wife online in the early days, in the primitive early days, the caveman days of online dating.
[00:02:05]  So, it's maybe seems hypocritical for me to say we'd be better off without any of this stuff.
[00:02:11]  The point is, this is the world we're in now.
[00:02:13]  And so the stuff exists.
[00:02:14]  And if you can utilize it to your benefit, then you should.
[00:02:17]  I did.
[00:02:19]  But if I could snap my fingers and just make it so that none of this stuff exists, I wouldn't snap my fingers and make it so that it never existed because then I never would have gotten married.
[00:02:26]  But if I could now make it so that it doesn't exist, I think I would.
[00:02:30]  I think it'd be better for everybody.
[00:02:34]  One of the things that it does, like when you're.
[00:02:37]  Before the, this has been one of my criticisms of dating apps, especially the way they work now.
[00:02:43]  Because, you know, back 15 years ago, you meet somebody online.
[00:02:47]  I talked about it's like eHarmony.
[00:02:48]  You fill out a long questionnaire, you had to put a lot of time and effort into it.
[00:02:54]  And then when you were like going through on the site, you'd go to somebody's profile and you'd see all this information about them and you'd see the picture.
[00:03:02]  What you didn't have back in the dark ages was the app on your phone where you're just swiping.
[00:03:08]  And you're making determinations based on nothing but really, right, the picture.
[00:03:15]  And that's what you have now.
[00:03:16]  And so there are, it's just people are making determinations visually really quickly, which for women in particular is not natural.
[00:03:26]  Women are not as visual as men.
[00:03:28]  But the dating market has sort of reprogrammed women's brains so that they're making determinations on a potential mate based on a visual, a quick visual examination.
[00:03:42]  Which, as I said during that video, is like if you're a guy and you're not strikingly handsome, if you're an ugly ogre like me, well, it puts you at a disadvantage because in the past, it's like, well, maybe you have that.
[00:04:00]  That's the downside.
[00:04:02]  But before the advent of dating apps, all you're going to do is meet women in the real world.
[00:04:06]  And so then you have a chance to compensate for.
[00:04:11]  The looks department by if you're smart, if you're funny, if you got a good personality, whatever, if you're charismatic, other things that kind of factor in right away.
[00:04:20]  But when you're making these quick determinations based on the little thing you see on the phone, none of that, you don't get a chance.
[00:04:28]  And there's also just too many choices.
[00:04:29]  There are too many options.
[00:04:31]  There's the paralysis of analysis that I talk about all the time.
[00:04:35]  You go down a grocery store aisle and you want to get mayonnaise, and there are 57 different types of mayonnaise.
[00:04:41]  And It doesn't help.
[00:04:44]  Now you went into it, you're not confused about mayonnaise.
[00:04:47]  You know you want mayonnaise.
[00:04:48]  And next thing you know, you're looking at all the options like, okay, I thought I wanted mayonnaise.

=== Too Many Choices On Phones (04:41) ===

[00:04:52]  And now I'm not sure.
[00:04:53]  Like all these different varieties, I don't know.
[00:04:55]  And it's that same thing that's happening with dating apps, I think.
[00:04:59]  When everything was just in the real world, everyone had fewer options, a lot fewer, which was actually better.
[00:05:06]  Eric says Incels pointed this out like 10 years ago, but now we're supposed to take it seriously now that Matt Walsh is talking about it.
[00:05:12]  Change the laws or shut up.
[00:05:14]  This problem isn't going away overnight because the companies that run these scams are worth billions.
[00:05:19]  I love these kinds of responses.
[00:05:20]  You know, I make a point and somebody goes, Oh, so now you're talking about it.
[00:05:25]  So now we're supposed to take it seriously just because you said it.
[00:05:31]  First of all, I never said that you should only take it seriously because I said it.
[00:05:35]  I didn't say that.
[00:05:37]  Did I start that conversation by saying, Everyone's talking about dating apps, but nothing that anyone has ever said about it matters.
[00:05:44]  I will tell you the only thing that matters about this.
[00:05:46]  Did I say that?
[00:05:47]  Ever?
[00:05:48]  Did I even imply it?
[00:05:50]  I think I just said, hey, here are my thoughts on this subject.
[00:05:54]  This is like if I went up to you and told you, hey, it's raining outside.
[00:05:58]  And you went, well, someone else already told me that.
[00:06:00]  But now that you say it, now that Matt Walsh has said it, I guess I got to go grab my umbrella, huh?
[00:06:08]  It's like, dude, calm down.
[00:06:11]  Calm down, son.
[00:06:13]  It's okay.
[00:06:14]  I'm just telling you it's raining.
[00:06:15]  That's it.
[00:06:15]  If you already knew it, then that's fine.
[00:06:19]  If you already knew it, then you don't have to listen.
[00:06:22]  If you already knew it, you didn't have to click on the video and listen to it.
[00:06:26]  Because this isn't even me walking in the room saying it's raining.
[00:06:28]  This is you seeking out and clicking on a video of information that you say you already knew.
[00:06:37]  So, why did you listen to it?
[00:06:41]  Anyway, and I'm not just saying this for the first time.
[00:06:45]  This is my curse.
[00:06:46]  This is my cross to bear in life.
[00:06:49]  And maybe it's not that bad.
[00:06:50]  People have worse.
[00:06:52]  It could be worse, but still, this is my frustration is that I'm constantly accused of saying things for the first time, even though I've been saying them forever.
[00:07:01]  I'm constantly, my curse is that I say something for like the one billionth time and I get these morons who go, oh, now you're finally saying it.
[00:07:10]  Now you're finally saying this thing you've said like every day for 15 years.
[00:07:16]  I've been talking about this with the dating.
[00:07:18]  I've been literally 15 years.
[00:07:20]  I mean, for as long as I've had any kind of platform, I've been making all of these points.
[00:07:28]  And, you know, I actually, this is, if you want a real, the real criticism of me is that I repeat myself too much.
[00:07:36]  That should be the criticism, which I think is kind of inevitable.
[00:07:39]  You have to repeat yourself.
[00:07:40]  There's only so many things to say.
[00:07:43]  It's my job to say things every day.
[00:07:44]  It's like there's only, you know, there's only about, I've found about 27 things to say.
[00:07:52]  I've counted.
[00:07:54]  There are exactly 27 things worth saying.
[00:07:57]  And so all you're doing is just reordering those things.
[00:08:00]  You're just rephrasing those things, reframing them.
[00:08:05]  Or maybe I'd say there's only 27 opinions a person can have in general.
[00:08:09]  You get 27 and they apply to everything in life.
[00:08:14]  So, probably even less than that.
[00:08:18]  It's probably like three opinions.
[00:08:21]  I think everybody has three opinions.
[00:08:24]  You have like three basic opinions and you just apply it to all the things happening in the world.
[00:08:29]  And so then you end up repeating yourself a lot.
[00:08:31]  That's the criticism of me.
[00:08:32]  It's not that I'm constantly changing my view on things.
[00:08:35]  That is the opposite of my problem.
[00:08:38]  That's the, if you could not be farther off base if you're trying to come up with an insult for me.
[00:08:49]  All right.
[00:08:53]  I was just looking.
[00:08:54]  There's another rash of this.
[00:08:56]  I don't even know what it was referring to, but I went on X and my mentions are full of, oh, flip flop wall, shad it again, flip flopping.
[00:09:03]  Flip flopping?
[00:09:05]  Now, my problem is I refuse to flip flop on anything.
[00:09:08]  Like, I'm much more likely to cling to something stubbornly, you know, out of pride.
[00:09:15]  Than I am to just put my finger in the air and switch over to that viewpoint.
[00:09:21]  Neither one of those things are good.
[00:09:22]  I'm not saying that, but my vice is much more the stubborn, I'm not going to ever change my mind thing.
[00:09:30]  Anyway, this video is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

=== Stubborn Pride Over Flip Flopping (08:36) ===

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[00:10:30]  Ziff 1066 says online dating is like shopping on the clearance rack, nothing but XXXL and damaged goods.
[00:10:37]  Yeah, it's like shopping at a TJ Maxx.
[00:10:41]  And you know, that's funny, kind of true, but also not, you know, because it's actually not just fat, ugly, mentally unstable people on dating apps.
[00:10:51]  I think so.
[00:10:52]  When you go on a dating app, you're like, oh, everyone's fat, ugly, and mentally unstable on the dating apps.
[00:10:57]  Well, the reality is, I'm afraid, more depressing than that because the truth is that everybody is on dating apps, right?
[00:11:05]  So if everybody on the dating app appears to be fat, ugly, and retarded, well, that's just because that's people.
[00:11:15]  That's just because there are so many people that way.
[00:11:19]  You know, it's like when you go to the DMV.
[00:11:21]  And it's the most depressing sea of humanity you've ever seen.
[00:11:27]  Everyone, I mean, as everyone knows, the DMV is really depressing, but it's not just because you're there for a long time and the people that work there have no idea what they're doing.
[00:11:36]  It's also just the people you're around.
[00:11:37]  You walk into the DMV, you're like, this is the most, I'm, I'm, I'm, I want to cry.
[00:11:43]  Like I might say, everyone knows how I feel about crying in public.
[00:11:46]  You're not ever supposed to do it.
[00:11:47]  But, and I think I've listed like six occasions where it's acceptable for a man to cry.
[00:11:52]  Maybe I'd add a seventh going into the DMV.
[00:11:54]  And not because you're frustrated about how long it takes, but just you're looking around.
[00:11:57]  It's like, this is a tragedy.
[00:12:00]  I'm looking at all these people.
[00:12:01]  These people are tragedies.
[00:12:06]  But then it's even more tragic because you realize that, no, well, the DMV is one of those places where everybody has to go.
[00:12:12]  Doesn't matter who you are, everyone has to go to the DMV.
[00:12:17]  There are occasions where everybody has to go.
[00:12:20]  And so if you look at the DMV and everyone is like hideous and fat and gross, well, that's just.
[00:12:30]  That's what people look like.
[00:12:31]  That's what people look like.
[00:12:34]  All right.
[00:12:37]  Weak Ass Comments says, you wouldn't believe the amount of conservatives and Trumpers, the amount of conservatives don't bother that women put right on their profiles.
[00:12:50]  The first thing you see is political nonsense, and that's frighteningly common.
[00:12:54]  WTF couldn't believe it bailed pretty quickly.
[00:12:57]  I think actually it's one of the upsides of dating apps, actually.
[00:13:01]  One of the few upsides is that, is when they put that.
[00:13:04]  I mean, I would look that as a mark in favor of the dating apps if a woman just puts right in the profile or whatever, conservatives don't bother.
[00:13:16]  That's good because you get that out of the way right away and then you don't have to waste your time.
[00:13:23]  Right.
[00:13:23]  Because otherwise, if you've got some, if you're dealing with some lib, some feminist, we all know the worst thing a man can do.
[00:13:31]  I mean, the worst thing a man could do.
[00:13:35]  Is date and then, God forbid, marry a feminist.
[00:13:37]  The worst decision you ever make in your life.
[00:13:39]  Ruin your life.
[00:13:44]  And, but if they just put that in the profile, well, then, okay, well, you can move on.
[00:13:52]  Because otherwise, you know, you go on a date and like maybe you find that out on date number five, think about how much time you've wasted.
[00:14:00]  Or, God forbid, you find that out after you've already walked down the aisle.
[00:14:05]  If you find it out afterwards, that means that you were very unobservant.
[00:14:11]  And that's why I think, even if they don't put it in the profile, you go on a date, you should be talking about this stuff on the first date.
[00:14:18]  This is something I've also been saying forever.
[00:14:21]  Talk about it on the first date.
[00:14:23]  And I'm not saying you sit down and the first thing you say is, hey, who'd you vote for?
[00:14:29]  But as you're talking and having a conversation, you should find out.
[00:14:35]  What their values are, what they believe in.
[00:14:37]  Find it out right away.
[00:14:40]  Because if your values don't align, if they're misaligned at a fundamental level, then just break it off and leave.
[00:14:48]  Don't waste any time.
[00:14:50]  You sit down on the first date, you're having dinner or something, and you get into this conversation, and the woman reveals that she's a feminist or she has voted for Kamala Harris.
[00:15:01]  Just get up right then and leave.
[00:15:03]  Don't even finish the date.
[00:15:04]  There's no reason.
[00:15:04]  Total waste of time.
[00:15:06]  And don't pay because she's a feminist.
[00:15:09]  She would love to pay, right?
[00:15:10]  She's a strong, independent woman.
[00:15:12]  So she should love that.
[00:15:14]  And just get up and leave and move on.
[00:15:21]  All right.
[00:15:25]  Let's see if I'll do one more.
[00:15:27]  KJ Scar says, met my wife on Tinder.
[00:15:30]  Sometimes the diamond in the rough is worth all the digging, even when the game is rigged against you.
[00:15:36]  Well, yeah.
[00:15:38]  This is kind of the lesson of life in general.
[00:15:40]  This is my point about all of this, about the dating in particular, ultimately, which is that it's really hard, it's unfair, it's stacked against you.
[00:15:52]  It shouldn't be like this.
[00:15:54]  All of those things are true.
[00:15:57]  But it would be better if dating apps never existed.
[00:16:01]  I mean, it wouldn't be better for me, but it would probably be better for society ultimately if dating apps never existed.
[00:16:10]  But they do.
[00:16:11]  And this is just the situation.
[00:16:14]  But I mean, we read that retarded comment early on from someone's: oh, change the laws or stop talking about it.
[00:16:20]  Change what laws?
[00:16:24]  That's just a way of deflecting.
[00:16:26]  That's a way of deflecting because you don't have an interesting point to make.
[00:16:29]  When someone says, oh, just change the laws or stop talking about it, it's like, I can't.
[00:16:33]  First of all, I can't change any laws, actually.
[00:16:36]  I wish I could.
[00:16:37]  I should be able to.
[00:16:40]  I mean, obviously, I should be the emperor of the world.
[00:16:44]  That's my rightful position, but I'm not, sadly.
[00:16:49]  So I can't change any laws at all.
[00:16:55]  And even if I was in a position of power, it's like, well, what's the law?
[00:16:58]  Ban dating apps?
[00:17:01]  I mean, again, don't tempt me.
[00:17:03]  You could certainly convince me of that argument, but that's not going to happen.
[00:17:07]  It's just not going to happen.
[00:17:09]  That's not a thing that is going to happen.
[00:17:11]  So this is how it is.
[00:17:13]  This is the way it is.
[00:17:15]  And what else are you going to do?
[00:17:19]  You got to get in there and look for the diamond in the rough.
[00:17:21]  And I don't mean on Tinder necessarily, I just mean.
[00:17:25]  In the dating scene, in the dating pool, as messed up as it is, as difficult as it is, as I said, as unfair as it is, as rigged as it is, you got to get in there because what's the other option?
[00:17:40]  The other option is to give up.
[00:17:43]  The other option is to consign yourself to a life of loneliness, to never have a family, to never have children.
[00:17:55]  To never experience your birthright as a man, that cannot be an option.
[00:18:03]  So get in there and make it happen.
[00:18:06]  There we go.
[00:18:08]  Speech over.
[00:18:09]  Goodbye.