30 People That Should Be Prohibited From Dating

To learn more about the wild world of dating nowadays, we reached out to dating and relationships coach Rachel New, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. First, we wanted to hear Rachel's perspective on how the internet has impacted the dating world.

"Online dating has opened up opportunities for more people to connect with more people," the expert shared. "This has lots of good and bad consequences. Shy or socially anxious people get to connect without having to go to parties, people who live in remote areas can connect with people further away, and everyone gets to see profiles of people from different walks of life, a greater range of ages, ethnicities, levels of education, and so on."

"Research shows people mix more through dating apps and that this is good for breaking down barriers of prejudice and making us more open to different cultural norms," Rachel added.

But there are downsides to the internet's impact on our dating lives as well. "Some negative consequences of dating apps are that now we are connecting with people who might have very limited experience of connecting with others, and if we have a few bad experiences, we can start to believe the majority of people are like that," Rachel shared.

"There are lots of reasons why people can’t connect in the offline world that don’t make them evil or mean: it could be poor social skills, a lack of experience of mixing with others who are different from them, trauma, lack of good role models and attachments growing up, mental health challenges, neurodivergence, or other life challenges," the expert explained, adding that certainly not all people with those challenges will send problematic messages.

"We may judge that a message is inappropriate, offensive, aggressive, sexist, or defensive - like many of those illustrated here," Rachel continued. "But it’s possible that some of the people sending them may actually be unaware that their messages violate the rules of social interaction. In the offline world of people who have good social skills, they would be told immediately or socially ostracised – in other words, punished for not playing by the rules of safe, kind social interaction."

"But if they are not part of [the offline] world [of people with good social skills] – perhaps in their lives they have only experienced people getting angry and aggressive, or putting others down, or sulking – they won’t be familiar with other ways of doing things," Rachel explained. "A simple example is that of the person who thought going to a café for a first date was weird. To many of us, that is completely normal, but it wasn’t part of this person’s world, and so they equate unfamiliar with weird."

We also asked the dating expert if she had any advice for people who simply want to date the "old fashioned" way. "Research from YouGov shows that most people in the UK still meet in real life – about 66-76%, depending on age," Rachel told Bored Panda. "This can be at work, through friends, in a bar, or at a social event/group activity such as volunteering, a choir, a language class, a sport, or a Meetup."

"I recommend that people try to meet people both online and offline, to get a healthy balance, especially as we use different parts of the brain when we meet in real life, for example being less likely to judge people by appearance," the coach says. "Having a short video or phone call to cut down on the messaging before you arrange an in-person date is a good idea too. More people are meeting through social media such as Instagram now, because people’s posts and videos are thought to be more authentic than dating profiles."

But Rachel also says that many people can enhance their online dating experiences with some expert input and support. "This includes tweaking their dating profiles, messaging skills and arranging a first date," she noted. "There is lots of research on what works best, particularly when it comes to creating that warm connection and becoming attuned to each other, as well as judging when someone isn’t right for you to date. I especially enjoy dissecting people’s unsuccessful online conversations with them and making suggestions about how they could have said something differently or avoided a misunderstanding!"

When it comes to the posts on this list that feature people responding poorly to rejection, Rachel says that, "Sensitivity to rejection or feeling 'disrespected' is often a trauma response, where someone has experienced abandonment or ridicule, most likely in childhood, and not processed it."

"Such people develop survival strategies to protect them from the pain of rejection, such as denigrating the person rejecting them so that their opinion doesn’t matter (like number 24 and 30), or bigging themselves up so they feel less disempowered (like number 8), or having strict deal-breakers (like number 12 and 22)," the expert explained. "They may already feel bad about themselves but keep it buried by treating people badly or getting angry with them."