It was 2023, and Dr Jennie Young was sick of online dating. She was looking for a partner, and instead all she found in the apps were inappropriately sexual come-ons and conversations that went nowhere. It felt like looking for a needle in a big, rancid haystack. So one day, frustrated and totally out of ideas, she Googled “how do you actually find a needle in a haystack?”

The answer: burn it down.

Thus, the burned haystack dating method (BHDM) was born. With the help of some friends and her academic expertise, Young – a professor of rhetoric at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay – developed a set of rules for “people who are searching for a long-term, stable, monogamous relationship”, as the Facebook group dedicated to the method states.

The BHDM has two main components:

1. The 10 “rules of engagement”, or guidelines for using dating apps: these include not spending too much time on the apps, not becoming “pen pals” (messaging for too long), and blocking any user who doesn’t seem like a match. In BHDM online communities, this is known as “block to burn”, or B2B.

2. The 33 red flag rhetorical patterns, or language clues that a match doesn’t have the same dating goals: For instance, “test and apologize” refers to an inappropriately sexual first message, followed by an apology like: “I’m sorry, I never do that.” This is a way of building plausible deniability while testing a boundary, Young says. If a guy uses red flag rhetoric, you’re meant to B2B.

The full method is viewable in the Facebook group and Young’s recently released book, Burn the Haystack. When implemented, it is meant to help women use dating apps more effectively, and identify potential partners without getting sidetracked by men who are rude, inappropriate, unavailable or just interested in 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 started burning her own dating haystack, “it started changing everything immediately”, Young says. “I felt like I’d stumbled on a cheat code.”

She started a private Facebook group so she and her friends could share their experiences of implementing the method, and over time it ballooned in size. Currently, it has more than 260,000 members. The group is private, and open to women and non-binary people who date any gender. Membership is not open to men.

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 still moderates the page and must approve members. Additionally, she writes a Substack newsletter about the topic.

“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 method vary. Many swear by it, saying that, as Young experienced, it completely transformed their dating lives.

The year after Elisa Sparkman, 41, discovered BHDM, she went on half the number of dates she had in the previous six months. But they were “much better matches” and more frequently led to second, third or fourth dates, she says. At the end of 2025, she met her current boyfriend through a dating app.

Carrie Juhasz, 44, a hair stylist, says she also had “fewer matches but more quality dates” when she started using BHDM. She appreciates the sense of community in the Facebook group, calling it “a place where women can learn together how to better navigate modern dating” – especially those who, like her, are dating after a separation or divorce.

Others argue that the method leads to judging men and their profiles too harshly.

In a Reddit post titled “Is Burned Haystack method getting out of hand?”, one user argued “we are all just human beings trying to do our best” and that they don’t expect men to be perfectly self-aware, because they aren’t either.

“The man hating is over the top for me,” another user responded. They observed a “lack of compassion towards men and imperfect human beings” in the Facebook group, noting that there are plenty of awful women out there too.

Young is familiar with 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 harmful behavior from men could be dangerous. “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 online dating advice describes dating as a numbers game, where you increase your chances of a good match by going out with as many people as possible. Dating is indeed a numbers game, Young agrees – but one about identifying a small, focused number of people. “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 essential, says Bela Gandhi, dating coach at the Smart Dating Academy and host of the Smart Dating Academy podcast. But reflect on your own dating and relationship patterns before whittling down your matches, she suggests. It’s not enough to spot red flags if you yourself are not set up/prepared for the kind of partnership you want.

“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 people are seeking dating rules and guidelines. “Nobody has gone to dating school or relationship school,” notes Gandhi. Further, because dating apps are gamified, they seem to empower users to communicate and behave in ways they never would in real life. “[App] conversations are not normal,” Young says. “There are constant aggressions, both macro and micro.”

So how do you manage it all? Give yourself 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.”