Disclosures

Nature of the author’s interest

The author of this site is a single man living in Phoenix who is, as of October 28, 2026, an active participant in the market it documents. He is catalogued in his own field guide as Specimen 00. Readers should weigh every observation here against the fact that the observer is also one of the observed, and has been continuously since April 20, 2026.

Positions held

As of October 28, 2026, the author holds open positions on 3 dating apps. One is a paid tier, renewed monthly at $29.99. The other 2 are free accounts he describes as dormant, which is also how the apps describe them. Across all 3 he has 9 conversations listed as active and 6 filed under “Your turn.” In the same period the file records 3 outings with 3 people, 2 of which it counts as dates.

No app, bar, restaurant, coach, course, or podcast named or described on this site has paid the author, and none has been asked.

Methodology

Entries are compiled from dates attended, profiles reviewed, conversations overheard from adjacent bar seats, and dating-advice content consumed in the ordinary course of participation. The author keeps notes on his phone, usually within 20 minutes of the event and usually in a restroom. Where an entry records the behavior of another person, the author has generally engaged in a version of the same behavior within the same week, and the entry says so.

Every figure on a scorecard carries the basis it was obtained by: a receipt, a clock, something observed at the time, or recollection afterwards. Durations and costs are measured. Question counts are reconstructed by topic, because the author was not counting at the table. A figure obtained by recollection is marked as unmeasured wherever it is printed, and the mark is not an apology for the figure. It is the figure’s provenance.

Anonymization

Every person described on this site has been altered so that no individual can be identified. Names are never used, and each subject is recorded by a letter that does not identify them. Ages, jobs, neighborhoods and identifying details are changed. Venues are described by street or neighborhood, and those details are altered as well wherever a venue could otherwise be located.

What is not altered is the accounting. Dates, durations, amounts and the order in which things happened are recorded as they occurred, and no entry combines 2 evenings into 1. A document that rearranged its own chronology would not be worth keeping. A reader who believes they recognize themselves has recognized a behavior, and the behavior is widely held.

What is recorded about the reader

This site counts the pages it serves, and whether the browser reading one has been here before. It runs no third-party script and sends nothing to anyone. The counting is done by the site itself, on the same machine that serves it, and the whole of what it keeps is described here.

On a reader’s first page it sets one cookie, named visitor. It holds a random value the site made up, and nothing about the reader. It expires 13 months after it is set and is sent back only to this site. Search crawlers are not given one. Its only use is to tell a returning browser from a new one.

For each page served the site records the path, the hour, the referring site’s host, any campaign tag in the link, the browser’s identification, and the visitor cookie’s value if the browser sent one. It does not record the reader’s IP address. To tell two readers apart within a day, including browsers that refuse the cookie, it also stores a one-way digest of the IP address, the browser identification and a random value generated fresh each morning. The random value is deleted two days later, and from that point the digest cannot be matched to any IP address by anyone, including the author and including anyone who takes the database.

Per-page records are deleted after 90 days. What survives is a count per day: how many pages were served, how many readers they were served to, and how many of those readers were new or returning. For each visitor cookie a browser sends back, the site keeps the first and the last day it was seen, and deletes that record 13 months after the first, when the cookie has expired. The browser identifications are deleted with the page records that carried them.

To stop being recognized, delete the visitor cookie in the browser’s settings: the browser is then new to this site, and its old record is still deleted 13 months after the first day it was seen. To have the record deleted now, write to the author with the cookie’s value, as the browser shows it, and it will be removed.

The games under /games set two more cookies, and only on the pages a game is played on. One protects the game’s forms and expires 6 hours after it is set. The other keeps a phone’s seat in a room and expires with the room. The room and the names typed into it are deleted 6 hours after the room’s last change. Nothing about a game reaches the page counts.

A reader who leaves an email address on the signup form is kept as that email address and the lists they ticked, and nothing else: no name, no IP address, and nothing that ties it to the pages they read. Loading the form sets one more cookie, which holds the form’s protection against forged submissions, is sent back only to the form, and ends when the browser closes. No page but the signup form sets it. Nothing is sent to the email address until a list launches, and then only a request to confirm it, from that list. An email address that does not confirm is taken off that list, and is deleted when it is on no list. A list that is never launched is deleted, with every email address on it alone. To have an email address deleted sooner, write to the author from it, and it will be removed with its lists.

A reader who sends in a window on Cheap Date’s tip form is kept as what they typed and the time it arrived: what it is, where, the city, how much, who it is for, the source, and the email address if they left one. Nothing else: no name, no IP address, and nothing that ties it to the pages they read. The email address is not added to any list, and nothing is sent to it in bulk. The author writes to it once, by hand, about that tip. The tip is deleted, with its email address, once it has been handled, and nothing keeps a copy. Loading the form sets one more cookie, which holds the form’s protection against forged submissions, is sent back only to that form, and ends when the browser closes. To have a tip deleted sooner, write to the author from the email address on it.

Every form a reader can send limits how often one IP address may send it. The count is kept for ten minutes under a one-way digest of the address, made with a key only the site holds, and never under the address itself. The digest is deleted within a month.

The count is of requests, not of people, and it undercounts. A reader whose browser answers a second time from its own cache does not reach the server at all and is not counted again. Automated visitors — search crawlers and the like — are recorded and marked as such, and are excluded from every reader figure on the strength of a list of names the author maintains and knows to be incomplete.

Nature of the content

Nothing on this site is advice. The author records what occurred and what it cost. He holds no recommendations, and his results over 6 months and 12 days do not support issuing any.

Costs and recoverability

Every cost recorded on this site, in hours or in dollars, was incurred by the author. Where a reciprocity panel names a dimension the other party could have carried, her column is entered at the figure it actually held, including when that figure is $0.00. The running total on the front page is computed from every published entry. It moves when an entry brings hours or dollars with it, and a term in the Lexicon brings neither, so most entries advance the count and leave the money where it was.

None of it is recoverable. The author has reviewed this determination at the close of each quarter since April 20, 2026 and continues to make deposits.

Termination

This file has no fixed term. It closes when the author closes his last open position for a reason other than attrition, or when a counterparty makes the file unnecessary, whichever is recorded first.

On that date the author will file a closing entry. It will state the final balance in hours and dollars, the number of outings, and how many of them were dates. No further deposits will be recorded, and the running total on the front page will stop where the closing entry leaves it.

Every cost on this site is carried as sunk, and the author has confirmed that classification at the close of each quarter since April 20, 2026. A sunk cost cannot be recovered. Under the author’s accounting policy it can be reclassified, once, if a later event shows it was the cost of acquiring something. The closing entry will make that determination. The author would prefer to reclassify the entire balance, and discloses the preference here so that it can be weighed against him.

Corrections

Errors of fact, arithmetic, or chronology are corrected in the entry itself, and the entry says what was wrong and when it was found. The file counts 3 of them, all the author’s, and each is named in the report it belongs to. There is no errata page, no strikethrough, and no submission process at this time. Corrections are made on the author’s own review, which is the weakest part of this arrangement and is disclosed as such.

Amendments

Terms in the Lexicon are filed on the day the author first hears them, which is usually before he has seen one operate or measured himself against it. Either may be added later, in the entry itself, below what was already published, and the added passage opens with the date it was written. Nothing published is rewritten to make room for it. An amendment uses the figures on file on its own date, so a term can state two different totals a few paragraphs apart, and each is correct as of the date beside it. A term is numbered in the file from the day it is first sighted. Until then it has a page and a line in the index and no entry number. An amended entry keeps its date and any number it already had, and a reader who saw the first version is not notified.