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Modern-day dating feels like a complicated sport. And now, with a whole new vocabulary to describe every trial and tribulation, it’s becoming even more challenging to break out of the amateur dating division. Is it a red flag, a beige flag, or an amber flag? Is he ghosting me? Breadcrumbing me? Lovebombing me? Who knows, maybe he’s on the verge of delicate dumping me? Welcome to smart dating in the digital era. So, you’ve learnt the zeitgeisty lingo and have a newfound confidence in identifying certain behaviours. Things are seemingly going well with a third Hinge date on the horizon – then BAM. You find your promising beau’s face splashed across a Facebook group filled with tens of thousands of strangers asking: Are we dating the same guy? Originating in New York with over 110,000 users, the Facebook group has since branched out to London, Paris, Dubai, Toronto, Dublin, Los Angeles and Boston. For the blissfully unaware, Are We Dating the Same Guy works like this: Women share screenshots of dating profiles and ask for intel or red flags. The Facebook posts are often inundated with personal experiences ranging anywhere from STI claims, cheating allegations and toxic behaviours. To join the groups, women are asked a series of questions before agreeing to a set of robust rules and digitally swearing they will not leak any of the group’s contents to outsiders. Among the rules are no doxxing (publicly sharing someone's personal details), no roasting, and no naming of the men. That said, it's become all too easy to identify people online through reverse image searches and word of mouth – to name a few. “The popularity of these groups are in alignment to the increase of smart dating – this is a phase that I think society is in,” dating expert Paul Brunson tells Indy100. “We’re becoming more aware of dating behaviours – a prime of that being the word ‘toxic.’ Twenty years ago, no one was speaking about ‘toxic dating’, but now there are many people who believe they can define it.” The intention of Are We Dating the Same Guy is to keep women safe and create awareness about toxic behaviours. “These groups have great intentions because ultimately it is about identifying dangerous people and behaviour, which is a good thing,” Paul explains, citing that while women are going through an incredible “empowerment phase” with “more time and command over the dating space,” it is still is very much “far tilted on the man’s side.” “We still are living in a society that is far greatly tilted towards men when it comes to dating, and it’s not just men from a general standpoint,” he continues. “It’s even some of these terrible nuances in dating.” These include narcissists, psychopaths, Machiavellians, and sadists – people that contribute to the psychological theory of personality. Furthermore, a recent study from the charity Plan International worryingly revealed that a third of German men still find physical violence against women to be acceptable. A staggering 34 per cent admitted to violence against their partner to “instil respect in them.” Meanwhile, a further 33 per cent thought it was acceptable if their “hand slipped” during an argument. “The fact that we still have survey results like that shows that we definitely need spaces to protect and empower women,” Paul adds. Paul, who recently added Global Relationship Insights Expert to his impressive matchmaking resume in addition to Married at First Sight and Celebs Go Dating, explains how we’ve got “much more information and content around dating than ever before that goes beyond anecdotal.” There's now empirical evidence, with researchers who have been conducting studies for 10-20 years, which Paul believes to be the “driving force behind smart dating.” Paul highlights that women are becoming exceedingly great at dating which is often driven by feedback loops due and open discussions about their experiences. They've become more emotionally available, more courageous, and understand how to be less neurotic when dating. Men, on the other hand, hardly have any feedback loops, and Paul believes we could actually benefit from mixed-gender groups, as men need to catch up and “have a higher dating IQ.” “We know that guys suck when it comes to emotional intelligence, compared to women – so a lot of it is poor execution.” Ultimately, there are “far fewer bad guys than there are good guys.” We know bad men exist, but according to evolutionary psychologist Dr David Buss, the highest percentage of men that fall into the dark tetrad personality types is 15 per cent of the population. "That's the group that has evil intentions," Paul continues. This is not to get confused with misalignment and miscommunication when dating. When intentions aren't communicated, you could end up with two people seeking two different things. Subsequently, the person who seeks long-term commitment views the behaviour of the short-termer (i.e. casual sex and friends with benefits) as toxic. “Ultimately, I think we have a lot of guys that their intention is not fully outlined, and because of the misaligned intention you have the interpretation of their behaviour as being ‘toxic’, when in actuality, sometimes it’s not,” Paul explains. To make dating a more positive, safer and enjoyable experience, Paul shared three invaluable tips to have under your belt: Don’t exchange personal information right away A dark tetrad or a straight scammer will try and move you off the app quickly. And the reason they try and do that is because the apps are really good about safety now. If someone is asking for your personal information, the safety features will inform you not to send that information, thanks to the AI built into the app. If you have given up your information, the app can no longer protect you. Stay on the app and let it protect you. Be cautious when people ask for things The moment you have anyone ask you for anything, mainly money, that is a huge red flag. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a grand amount, it could be as simple as “I don’t get paid until next week, please could I have five pounds." Meet in a public space Meet in a public space, never get picked up from your personal address and inform friends about the date details. Most importantly on the first meet-up, set boundaries. You can very quickly see how respectful someone is to your boundaries. An example being, you meet up on your lunch break and you only have until 2pm. When that time comes, do they try and push you to stay even longer – despite informing them you have to leave because you have something to do? Anytime someone is disrespecting your boundaries, that is also a red flag. Have your say in our news democracy. 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Jurgen Krauss’s elimination from the 2021 Great British Bake Off caused such a scandal, Ofcom received 115 viewer complaints. The lovable German baker was seen as a top competitor, winning three star baker prizes before being booted off in the semi-finals. Nearly two years on, Brighton-based Krauss, 58, has no hard feelings – but he did see the uproar coming. “I had a feeling there would be complaints – a feeling that people would take it very seriously,” he says. But he still has only good things to say about the show, noting the “overwhelmingly positive reaction was quite amazing”, and crediting the experience with boosting his baking skills massively. He speaks particularly fondly about the period before the competition started, when the contestants were in a bubble and testing their recipes. “We had nine weeks to prepare one signature and one showstopper each week and submit the recipe – that was really a huge time for growth,” he says. He calls this a period of “non-stop new ideas, non-stop new processes”, adding with a wry laugh: “Most of the things I’d done in the tent I’d never done before, and some of them I’ve never done since, [and] I’m not sure I’ll ever do them again. It was tough – it was amazing.” Many of the bakes Krauss made on the show were inspired by his childhood in the Black Forest, Germany. This formed the start of his new cookbook, aptly called German Baking: Cakes, Tarts, Traybakes And Breads From The Black Forest And Beyond. “During Bake Off, the briefs of all these signature bakes often included references to childhood that really reconnected me to my culinary home, to the Black Forest and the cooking of my parents, the things I liked to eat as a child or teenager, or while I was studying.” Some of Krauss’ favourite food memories growing up are from the period before Christmas. “My brother and I, we were always in the kitchen with my mother, we were always part of cooking and baking Christmas – the time before Christmas was always amazing,” he remembers. “It was fun, getting hands sticky in dough and tasting it all, and using ingredients like kirsch [brandy made from cherries]. I didn’t think much of it, being able to make cakes like cheesecakes or Linzer torter [a spiced tart that would kick off the Christmas period in Krauss’ household]. “But then much later, after the move to England [in 2003], I really took a deep dive into making bread. After 10 years or so, I really was craving German bread.” From apple marzipan tarts to the classic Black Forest gateau, Krauss’ book is an ode to his childhood and where he grew up. “Black Forest is an interesting region, because it has influences from France and Austria,” Krauss explains. “It had a varied history. It was Austrian for almost 200 years – you get dark breads, but rye isn’t such a dominant grain as it is in other German areas. That’s the Austrian influence – you get a lot more wheat and you get things like pancakes and dumplings, more than in other German areas, which is clearly inspired by the Austrian kitchen. “You have also a huge influence from France and Alsace in terms of day-to-day cooking, so it’s a bit of a conglomerate.” Despite its name, Krauss suggests the Black Forest gateau was actually invented in Dortmund – a city around five hours’ drive away from his home. “But it has become iconic because on the borders of the Black Forest in the Rhine Valley there are huge orchards and cherries grow very well there. Making kirsch has a long tradition, making fruit brandies has a long tradition in the Black Forest because of that.” Other recipes in the book include the Flammkuchen, or what Krauss describes as “kind of a Black Forest pizza”. “It’s an unleavened bread, so you could say it’s a matzah with sour cream on it, and you can put lardons on it, onions, or you can make it sweet with cinnamon sugar and apple slices. It’s really so easy – you can have it ready in 20 minutes, from start to finish. You just need to have an oven that goes really hot.” While the book is all about traditional German baking, Krauss has added the occasional modern twist. He says animal products are prominent in German cooking, “And they don’t run very strongly through my bakes in the book, because I wanted to make it appealing to a very wide audience. So I didn’t use lard, where a traditional Black Forest baker would probably use lard or lardons – things like that. I definitely scaled back on that. You would make dumplings or doughnuts in lard, you would fry them in lard – this sort of thing has lost its appeal over the last few years I think.” While he’s still known to many as “Jurgen from Bake Off”, Krauss says he’s come a long way since the show. “I feel much more in command of things,” he muses. “It feels a lot easier for me to change things. I got to a stage in bread baking where I can go fancy and know the outcome will be OK. I never had that with sweet things before Bake Off. “But now I can see how to change ingredients and how recipes work in general – so that’s a huge change.” ‘German Baking: Cakes, Tarts, Traybakes And Breads From The Black Forest And Beyond’ by Jurgen Krauss (published by Kyle Books on 31 August, £26). 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