It was 2023, and Dr Jennie Young was sick of online dating. She was on the lookout for a associate, and as an alternative all she present in the apps have been inappropriately sexual come-ons and conversations that went nowhere. It felt like on the lookout for a needle in a huge, rancid haystack. So someday, annoyed and completely out of concepts, she Googled “how do you actually find a needle in a haystack?”
The reply: burn it down.
Thus, the burned haystack dating methodology (BHDM) was born. With the assist of some buddies and her tutorial experience, Young – a professor of rhetoric at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay – developed a algorithm for “people who are searching for a long-term, stable, monogamous relationship”, as the Facebook group devoted to the methodology states.
The BHDM has two primary elements:
1. The 10 “rules of engagement”, or pointers for utilizing dating apps: these embrace not spending an excessive amount of time on the apps, not turning into “pen pals” (messaging for too lengthy), and blocking any consumer who doesn’t appear like a match. In BHDM on-line communities, this is often known as “block to burn”, or B2B.
2. The 33 crimson flag rhetorical patterns, or language clues that a match doesn’t have the similar dating targets: For occasion, “test and apologize” refers to an inappropriately sexual first message, adopted by an apology like: “I’m sorry, I never do that.” This is a manner of constructing believable deniability whereas testing a boundary, Young says. If a man makes use of crimson flag rhetoric, you’re meant to B2B.
The full methodology is viewable in the Facebook group and Young’s just lately launched ebook, Burn the Haystack. When carried out, it is meant to assist girls use dating apps extra successfully, and establish potential companions with out getting sidetracked by males who’re impolite, inappropriate, unavailable or simply enthusiastic about hookups.
“It’s not hard to find a polyamorous guy on Tinder to have a one-night stand,” Young says. “You don’t need a method for that.”
Once she began burning her personal dating haystack, “it started changing everything immediately”, Young says. “I felt like I’d stumbled on a cheat code.”
She began a personal Facebook group so she and her buddies might share their experiences of implementing the methodology, and over time it ballooned in dimension. Currently, it has greater than 260,000 members. The group is personal, and open to girls and non-binary individuals who date any gender. Membership is not open to males.
In the description of the group, Young explains that the BHDM “seeks to confront common problems of dating in the digital age, many of which are rooted in patriarchal structures and toxic masculinity”. Young nonetheless moderates the web page and should approve members. Additionally, she writes a Substack e-newsletter about the matter.
“I’m convinced that the only reason it went viral the way it did is because it was so badly needed,” Young says. “Women could tell I was telling the truth. And I wasn’t blaming them. These are legitimate problems and they should be angry.”
Online, responses to the methodology range. Many swear by it, saying that, as Young skilled, it fully remodeled their dating lives.
The 12 months after Elisa Sparkman, 41, found BHDM, she went on half the variety of dates she had in the earlier six months. But they have been “much better matches” and extra ceaselessly led to second, third or fourth dates, she says. At the finish of 2025, she met her present boyfriend by means of a dating app.
Carrie Juhasz, 44, a hair stylist, says she additionally had “fewer matches but more quality dates” when she began utilizing BHDM. She appreciates the sense of group in the Facebook group, calling it “a place where women can learn together how to better navigate modern dating” – particularly those that, like her, are dating after a separation or divorce.
Others argue that the methodology results in judging males and their profiles too harshly.
In a Reddit submit titled “Is Burned Haystack method getting out of hand?”, one consumer argued “we are all just human beings trying to do our best” and that they don’t count on males to be completely self-aware, as a result of they aren’t both.
“The man hating is over the top for me,” one other consumer responded. They noticed a “lack of compassion towards men and imperfect human beings” in the Facebook group, noting that there are many terrible girls on the market too.
Young is aware of this criticism.
“[Critics] say [BHDM] will lead people to disqualify good men, and is that possible? Sure,” she says. “I think that is way less of a risk than wasting your entire life with a bunch of bad men.”
Young suggests making too many concessions for dangerous conduct from males might be harmful. “This is going to sound hyperbolic, but that argument is the foundation of rape culture,” she says. “It’s holding women responsible for men’s bad behavior, and tasking women with accommodating that behavior.”
Much on-line dating recommendation describes dating as a numbers recreation, the place you enhance your probabilities of a good match by going out with as many individuals as doable. Dating is certainly a numbers recreation, Young agrees – however one about figuring out a small, centered variety of individuals. “You want to appeal to the narrowest minority of people who would actually be a good match with you, and only spend your time with them,” she says.
Being intentional about dating is important, says Bela Gandhi, dating coach at the Smart Dating Academy and host of the Smart Dating Academy podcast. But replicate on your personal dating and relationship patterns earlier than whittling down your matches, she suggests. It’s not sufficient to identify crimson flags for those who your self will not be arrange/ready for the form of partnership you need.
“Before you burn the haystack down, it’s important to look inward and say, do I have dating patterns? Am I doing the same thing over and over again?” Gandhi says. “There are just as many women treating men badly as men treating women badly.”
Dating app fatigue is a much-reported phenomenon, and many individuals are in search of dating guidelines and pointers. “Nobody has gone to dating school or relationship school,” notes Gandhi. Further, as a result of dating apps are gamified, they appear to empower customers to speak and behave in methods they by no means would in actual life. “[App] conversations are not normal,” Young says. “There are constant aggressions, both macro and micro.”
So how do you handle all of it? Give your self grace, says Juhasz, who has been implementing BHDM.
“Don’t take it to heart when you make mistakes and experience failures in dating,” she says. “Life and dating are really about learning to love yourself.”
