Teaching women how to spot losers on dating apps & find a gem

What started as a personal quest to “outgame” dating sites has become a movement with The Burned Haystack Dating Method ® Facebook page amassing over 255k followers. Founder Jennie Young, PhD, 54, professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, talks to Rebecca Ponton ahead of the April 7 release of her book, Burn the Haystack, by HarperCollins.

Rebecca Ponton: What are some of the red flags that, in your opinion, are reasons for women to immediately “block to burn” a man on a dating site?

Jennie Young: We’ve identified a whole bunch of rhetorical patterns that when you see them you “block to burn” without further consideration. It’s a time saver, but also a safety [measure].

Disciplinary Directive. Instead of using their dating profile to introduce themselves, talk about their interests or their beliefs, [these men] use it either to threaten or order women around, and there’s a wide spectrum of how that manifests. The reality is any man who decides that it’s acceptable for him to be making rules for women or “laying down the law,” is a problem man. That’s going to go badly, ranging from, ‘Is this guy going to be annoying?,’ to ‘Is this guy extremely dangerous?’ The craftier men can be so subtle that if you don’t understand the grammar of the disciplinary directive pattern, you’ll move right past it. Once you learn to read for rhetorical patterns, they light up like neon.

Conditional Decency. ‘If you behave this way, then I’ll do this.’ ‘If you show up looking a certain way, then dinner’s on me.’ This is problematic for a lot of reasons. There is a transactional aspect to human relationships in some ways. We do tend to respond better to people who are kind, but this is on a different level. Again, he’s assuming this position of authority and the right to [grant] approval whether it’s a woman’s body or appearance or whatever. That’s a highly toxic one.

Blue Ribbon for Bare Minimum. These are the guys who brag about things like, ‘I have never hit a woman,’ and think that’s cause for celebration. That’s a big reveal. They must think hitting women is the norm, so if they’re bragging about the fact that they don’t, that’s a very disturbing conception of women. What tends to happen more often than not is, the guys who brag, ‘I have never hit a woman,’ are doing everything else – psychologically terrorizing her, or pathologically lying, or issuing threats, and then giving themselves a pass.

RP: There are always going to be dissenters, but some people say, ‘This is too harsh. If you do this, you might accidentally block a good guy.” What is your response to that?

JY: That’s a good question and a valid one. Is it possible that I’m so harsh I’m going to miss a good guy? Sure, that’s possible. However, is it far more likely that by not being harsh enough I’m going to waste days, months, potentially years of my life, with a bad guy – or bad people – and possibly suffer whatever’s associated with that. That’s a [far greater] risk and it’s also more likely. I am partnered now – I did meet my partner through Burned Haystack – but I had always had the attitude that I would much rather risk ending up alone with my very enjoyable life and job than risk ending up with a bad guy.

RP: Do you think dating has gotten more dangerous?

JY: Oh, for sure. Most crimes against women are never reported or prosecuted. I also get very concerned about women taking a clean record as reassurance that the person is safe and he may very well not be. I have a lot more faith in rhetoric than I do in public records. Dating has gotten more dangerous because of the modality and just because of the world [in general] and, specifically, because of the abundance and immediacy of online pornography.

Burn The Haystack book cover; photo courtesy of Jennie Young, PhD

RP: What is one of the worst dating app experiences you’ve heard about?

JY: The reality is that the worst dating apps stories I’ve heard – and I’ve heard hundreds – end in the hospital and with lifelong sexual trauma. I think that needs to be stated, but I also don’t want to [share details] to get clicks off of women’s trauma.

But, I want to make sure I answer your question and the method through which I’m going to answer it is also really interesting. I put a post on the Burned Haystack Facebook page and said I wanted to poll the group for the wildest, most outlandish dating app stories. To give you an idea of the scope, I left the post open for 37 minutes and got over 540 responses.

One woman’s date took out his teeth at dinner and set them on the table … Another woman went out with a man who, very early on, revealed that he was an “adult baby,” who wore diapers and onesie pajamas … Yet another woman met her date at a concert, where he showed up completely hammered, and then said he’d only go home if she agreed to do acid with him. After she got him into an Über, she ran away, and he yelled out the window, “I’ve got mushrooms, too!”

I’ve had my own personal experiences. I had met a man on [one of the major dating apps], who was a police officer in a nearby town. I felt like he had a lot of free time for a police officer and I was having that gut feeling. Because it was a small town and I knew his first name, I went to the police department website and found his picture. I ran my own background check and he was on unpaid administrative leave for stalking his former girlfriend and trying to poison her horse.

RP: And, now, we all want to hear one of the most inspiring success stories that you know about!

JY: The book is full of them and people can also go to the Facebook group and run a search on “success stories.” I’ve decided to share an unorthodox one and I’m just going to read it to you. It was posted with a picture of two women sitting in a restaurant and the woman wrote, “I posted the profile of someone I briefly dated and, against all probability, the comment section contained the note, ‘I am 99.9% sure this is my ex.’ I DM’d the author of the note and, sure enough, she had dated him for a while a few months before I did. We compared notes about how accurately his toxic profile reflected his actual behavior. This method is the real deal and then we started chatting about other things. Soon enough, we agreed we needed to get together because we’re both so vastly much more awesome than the guy who united us. It was so fun and now we’re friends. Thank you, Jennie. This group is not only helping women date better, but also creating opportunities for genuine connection.”

RP: The Burned Haystack method, obviously, is geared toward women, but could it work equally as well for men?

JY: This originated as a dating method. I was just trying to find a more effective way to game the dating apps rather than having them game me, but what we’re finding is how applicable it is to other aspects of life. To me, the feminist revolution angle is more interesting and more powerful than its application as a dating method.

It’s specifically designed to guard against things that would fall under the umbrella of toxic masculinity or abusive patriarchy. Women can manifest those criteria, as well, but they don’t as often. I definitely think men could get something out of learning some analytical tools, critical discourse analysis, all the methodology we use from applied rhetoric.

I did get a nice message from a man who said, “I’m a widower in my 70s and I’ve been following your Instagram account. I’m realizing how many of these toxic patterns I, unknowingly, have been going through the world exhibiting and I’m trying to do better.”

If men really want to help, that’s the best way – and they will be more successful at the dating game.

RP: Did you say you met your partner through a dating app?

JY: I did, yes. I met my partner at the end of July and he’s an absolute gem of a human being. I reassure everybody it was the strictest application of Burned Haystack and he just didn’t have any of the rhetorical patterns. In the initial phase, you rule out people from their rhetorical patterns but, once that’s been done, what happens from there? And it’s just continued to get better and better.

I want to recognize that there’s an element of luck, too. The algorithm matched us, but that could just as easily not have happened. There’s definitely [a matter] of stars aligning and that’s unavoidable when you’re on a dating app. I say this as a compliment, but I’m pretty b*tchy – I just don’t have tolerance for any of it – and I feel like if the Burned Haystack worked for me, theoretically, it can work for everyone.

To learn more, visit Jennie Young’s website.