Mel Robbins is doing the podcast rounds to promote her latest book and was interviewed on the Prof G podcast this week. I’m no fan of hers. To me, she’s just another pop-psych self-help pitching huckster like Ramit Sethi, Jay Shetty, Ryan Holiday, Huberman, et al.
However, I like Prof G and was interested to see how he would handle Mel. I actually thought the interview was decent. And, like all successful hucksters, she tossed in a few nuggets of wisdom amidst her avalanche of bullshit.
My favorite was when she spoke about dating apps. She said (I’m paraphrasing here):
On dating apps everyone uses filters to define the “perfect match”. This perfect match doesn’t exist and if they did, they wouldn’t be interested in dating you. This ideal person you are fantasize about is a Frankenstein creation of yours. You should remove all your filters and date people who might not meet every one of your criteria.
That’s a brilliant analogy. I made me think of the Bride Of Frankenstein – the perfect beautiful mate created for Frankenstein who ran away from him when she was made alive.
I happen to agree with Mel on the filters. Love and attraction didn’t work out for me by following a checklist.
That said, if I ever date again, there are still some big deal killers that would end any type of romantic relationship. But none of those would be discernible from a simple checklist anyway.