When you are dating for character the playing field takes on a new landscape. I’ve decided to add a bonus article to this series called the “wild west of online behaviour” before I close out the series next week.
I date for character - that’s it. I look for compatibility. Because my marriage had a lot of great stuff - effort, chemistry, love, etc but we didn’t have computability so if I ever let someone into my life again it will based on far more than chemistry.
As someone who studies people for a living, every man I went on a date with that said “that worries me a bit”, have all had one thing in common - immaturity. Age wasn’t a factor. I’ve had more open conversations with men in their 20s than their 50s.
I’ve become adept at understanding what someone says is often a good indication of what they’re bringing to the table - no drama? You can bet he’s only bringing drama. If he says he just wants peace he will disrupts yours constantly and blame you.
If he says he isn’t into games you can bet the only thing he’s into is games.
When someone repeatedly declares what they are not, pay attention to what they consistently do. Behaviour is the tell. Words are often the camouflage. I’ve realized why they don’t like that I study is they know I can see through them.
These men are often in everyone’s inbox. They are community dick: a man who is available to everyone and attached to no one. In the digital era, this pattern hasn’t just survived — it has multiplied.
There are the obvious ones — the ones who like everything, comment everywhere, drop innuendo in public, even on your profile picture or a news article - they lust after everything on two legs and everyone can see it. They sexualize quickly, aggressively, and predictably. Their presence is constant and visible. They are transparent in their hunger - I have multiple men on my social media who are on everyone’s pictures, it’s easy to see.
But the more interesting type — the one that requires analysis — is quieter.
He follows every single woman within a 300-kilometre radius. He rarely signals public preference. He does not comment in ways that would reveal anything. But he is active. He watches stories. He slides into DMs. He keeps the engagement private and controlled. Plausibly deniable.
These men are not choosing, they are circulating. And circulation is not the same as connection.
Sexual innuendo becomes the currency of access. Almost immediately, neutral conversations tilt toward suggestion. A hiking message turns flirtatious. A weather exchange becomes “what are you wearing.” A book discussion becomes “I bet you’re trouble.”
There is no build. No depth. No context. Just testing.
It happens to me daily. Multiple times a day. And these are not isolated men. They are the same men I see following dozens of other women I know. No one is special here. The pattern is the point.
For a while I wondered if I was attracting something but through this analysis I realized that my existence is the attraction because these men are not intentional, they’re actually just shooting their shot. Sometimes it’s works, sometimes it doesn’t
When they land in my inbox attempting to sext they discover quickly I’m not that girl.
Psychologically, this isn’t mysterious. If you’re not caught up in being wanted, it’s easy to see through, or maybe it is for me because I’ve spent 2 decades studying people.
Research on sociosexual orientation shows that some individuals are more comfortable pursuing short-term sexual access with multiple partners and minimal emotional investment (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991; Penke & Asendorpf, 2008). In digital environments, that orientation becomes amplified. There is no social friction. No public rejection. No visible accountability. A man can test ten women before breakfast without ever having to feel the weight of a real no. Instead of building something, they test the waters, then move to the next pond.
Add to this what we know about social reinforcement. Studies have shown that social approval and attention activate reward pathways in the brain (Meshi, Morawetz, & Heekeren, 2013). A response — even a brief one — becomes reinforcement. If one woman replies sexually, the behaviour is neurologically rewarded. If ninety-nine ignore it, that doesn’t matter. The system only needs to work occasionally.
That’s what I discovered in this process. When they couldn’t access me through testing, some gained access by engaging with me over hiking, then moved it to sexual quickly. I reinforced them with a response. Hard not to do when they feign interest and you are genuinely answering a question. They then move it to their original intent which is deeply disturbing behaviour because it really shows they are calculating how to get to you.
This is what psychologists refer to as intermittent reinforcement — the most powerful form of behavioural conditioning. You don’t need consistent reward. You just need occasional reward to keep the behaviour alive.
Now layer pornography into that equation. Research has linked heavy pornography consumption to shifts in sexual scripts, including increased objectification and normalization of rapid sexual escalation (Wright, Tokunaga, & Kraus, 2016). When sex becomes immediate, visual, transactional, and detached from relational depth, men begin to treat every interaction as a potential outlet.
The DM becomes a testing ground.
What you’re witnessing is not boldness.
It is appetite without discernment.
And appetite without discernment creates diffusion.
A man who is everywhere is not powerful. He is fragmented. His energy is spread thin across inboxes, cities, and conversations. He tells himself he is desired. In demand. High value. But value without focus is performance. A man who is available to everyone has no standards and anyone without standards will chase anything.
This is where the term “community dick” stops being funny and starts being diagnostic.
Because historically, women were the ones labeled this way. Women were shamed as “ran through,” “for the streets,” “community property” if they behaved sexually outside narrow confines. Women were repressed sexually while men were given carte blanche. “Boys will be boys” where a high body count was a badge of honor for men but social pariah for women.
But the script has flipped.
In the age of digital transparency, we can see it.
We see who he follows.
We see who he comments on (or doesn’t).
We see who he is circulating around.
And good women — healthy women — do not want men who are publicly property.
This isn’t prudishness and isn’t insecurity. It’s discernment. Because what once disqualified women now disqualifies men, too.
A man with open DMs to every woman in a 300-mile radius does not signal intention or character. He signals instability, a lack of containment, surface level and validation seeking. He signals a man who cannot be alone long enough to build depth.
This is not about moral purity. It is not about casual sex being wrong. Casual can be honest, nuanced, even deeply enjoyable when both people are clear about what it is. I have had casual experiences built on communication, mutual respect, laughter, and an understanding of an expiry date. This isn’t that. I’m a big fan of people taking time between relationships to date, have fun, and explore.
Casual does not mean shallow.
But lust-driven circulation does.
This is about men who say they want more. They will speak about depth. They will claim they are tired of games. Some will execute excellent dates. They know what to say because they have practiced at scale.
But their behaviour tells another story.
Their attention is never narrowed long enough to see if anything actually feels good.
They are sampling, not selecting.
And sampling creates burnout.
This is part of why the dating landscape feels barren to women who are genuinely looking. Many are diffused across too many spaces, mistaking validation for connection and lust for intimacy.
There is also something more unsettling here.
Sexual innuendo in DMs is not harmless. When grown men well past adolescence — immediately pivot conversations toward sex with women they do not know, whose last names they do not know, whose safety they have not considered, it signals something deeper than flirtation. It signals a reduction of women to stimulus for their own benefit.
These are men who treat your inbox like their personal OnlyFans account, and one they’re not paying for. They assume access to your attention means access to your sexuality. They test and test and test again, because someone somewhere will respond.
They don’t actually care about you as a person — only as someone to fill a gap, a distraction from whatever they don’t want to face, and once you understand that, it stops feeling personal.
And yes — lots of women do respond. That is part of the ecosystem. It does not exist in isolation. It persists because it is intermittently rewarded.
But from where I stand now, after watching this pattern repeat hundreds of times, it is not flattering and it is no longer confusing.
It is empty.
If you bring nothing to the table but lust, why would I sit at it?
Even casual can be healthy but still requires context. It requires reading the room, earning intimacy. But when you’re looking for something more? It requires two people choosing each other, not one person scattering himself across the community and hoping someone bites.
Intentional men narrow their focus.
Community property expands theirs.
And once you’ve learned to recognize the difference, you stop confusing attention with value.
The men who say, “I don’t play games,” are often operating entirely in games. The ones who say they value honesty most often avoid clarity. The ones who claim they’re tired of drama actively create ambiguity.
It’s deflection. These men are not ready for more. So I leave them for the streets, they can be community property but I won’t be part of it. I notice the men who DON’T sexualize me, who DON’T land in my inbox, who are out living their lives not chasing anything with a pulse for validation.
Integrity doesn’t need a disclaimer. It demonstrates itself through consistency. Character isn’t loud or ambigious, it’s clear.
And consistency is rare in men who are diffused across the community.
They will keep you in a roster of women and it’s up to you if you end up in the rotation.
References
Meshi, D., Morawetz, C., & Heekeren, H. R. (2013). Nucleus accumbens response to gains in reputation predicts social media use. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 439.
Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2008). Beyond global sociosexual orientations: A more differentiated look at sociosexuality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1113–1135.
Simpson, J. A., & Gangestad, S. W. (1991). Individual differences in sociosexuality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(6), 870–883.
Wright, P. J., Tokunaga, R. S., & Kraus, A. (2016). A meta-analysis of pornography consumption and acts of sexual aggression. Journal of Communication, 66(1), 183–205