Dating Tips Through The Ages

Have you heard of the Sprinkle Sprinkle Lady? Until recently, I didn’t know who she was. But apparently, lots of people do. Also known as SheraSeven, she has over 3 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where she dishes out dating advice. When a woman asks what zodiac sign to avoid, her reply is, “The negative bank account sign. The minus sign. Sprinkle Sprinkle!” When another lady asks “Are 22-year-olds trustworthy?” she snaps back, “No man is trustworthy. Sprinkle Sprinkle!”

I’m starting to understand why she’s called the Sprinkle Sprinkle Lady.

SheraSeven advises women not to date for love, but instead to maximize for money. One of her most viral tips is to never give a man your phone number, but instead to ask for his CashApp or credit card number.

She’s just one of countless influencers who’re trying to help us find love (while also trying to help themselves find sponsorship deals).

Some of these people are probably sincere in their matchmaking efforts, offering nuanced and commonsense advice to frustrated singles. But you shouldn’t listen to those people because their numbers are trash. They don’t get attention because attention on the internet comes from one thing and one thing only.

Pure unhinged insanity.

The influencers who rise to the top of the algorithm are the extreme ones. The misogynists, the moneygrubbers, the nihilists. Plus this lady, who apparently doesn’t like drinking coffee or getting her steps in.

But dating advice didn’t start with the internet. Before the advent of AOL, we got our romance tips the old-fashioned way: From Barnes & Noble. Books like The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus dominated the bestseller lists.

Another popular book from that time was The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society Of Pickup Artists, which revealed that what women really want is a man in a giant fuzzy top hat.

Let’s go back even farther in time. I recently stumbled across a fascinating and revealing book full of tips for selecting a spouse. While some of the material struck me as a little...strange, the advice was based on the most up-to-date research of the time, so there had to be something to it.

The year was 1902. Phrenology was all the rage. According to this trendy new form of pseudoscience, you could tell everything about a person simply by studying the shape of their head.

Chicago phrenologist L.A. Vaught was an “expert” in the field in the same way that the Sprinkle Sprinkle Lady is an “expert” now. Meaning: This dude’s ideas were wacky.

According to Vaught’s Practical Character Reader, there’s really only one way to find out if a man is good husband material: Whether or not his head is shaped like a butternut squash.

If you were a dude on the dating market back in the early Twentieth Century, Vaught had you covered too. On page 25, he advised (with the syntax of a 4 AM Trump tweet), “It will pay to remember this head formation and especially all men who would select wives who will make good mothers.”

The lady on the right would clearly make a terrible mother, as you can see from the giant weird bulge on the top of her head. What you really want when you’re looking for a wife and mother is someone more like the lady on the left, who has a giant weird bulge on the back of her head.

Vaught’s Practical Character Reader is filled with hilarious helpful methods for picking a future mate. Here’s one more tip for all you single ladies out there:

But none of this is new. Experts have been dishing out dating advice since the beginning of time. Literally. Back in the Garden of Eden, God (the OG influencer) shared his tips with Adam and Eve. His big red flag had something to do with fruit.

The Bible is full of questionable relationships. Remember when Samson hooked up with Delilah? All it took was a haircut and he went from alpha male to beta cuck. And look at what happened after David got the hots for Bathsheba. He had her husband sent off to the front lines where he knew the dude would be killed. Which in my opinion is a major ick.

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Courtship is complicated. From tradwives to toxic men, from pickup artists to deities, everyone wants to help you sift through the dating pool. Honestly, it makes me happy I’m no longer on the market. Although, just to be safe, I did just order a pair of calipers. I’m already working out how I’m going to broach the topic with my wife: “Just hold still, honey. I need to make sure you don’t have a deceitful chin.”

Thanks as always for reading. I’ll see you again soon.

Sprinkle Sprinkle!

Lee