I’m a member of Universe Club.

If you want to avoid a person to avoid, I think it’s safest to follow what the original poster said. But since Fuu had the opportunity, I decided to make an offer to a woman with a selfie profile who was registered individually and not with a club. I guess Fuu got lucky, because she turned out to be amazing and has become one of my monthly arrangements. She said that people had commented with opinions like the original poster’s, telling her they would make an offer if she properly registered with a club. But she’s busy with work, couldn’t be bothered to go to an interview, and sees it more as an extension of using a dating app. In many ways, the relationship feels just like one from a dating app. She normally uses dating apps to look for men and has zero experience with papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan). Specifically, there’s no “four-hour rule” or anything like that—she doesn’t even know about it. A normal date is fine. Since she lives nearby, I pick her up near her place and we go for normal drives and dates. She also understands that we’ll do what adults do—she loves it, gets very into it, and actually wants it. Since it started through a dating app, there’s hardly any money-minded attitude. It really depends on the person. I’ve made lots of offers through clubs and had plenty of painful experiences with people to avoid, but this time feels like a gift from heaven. The odds of it going badly are probably high, but it might be interesting to make an offer out of curiosity. The happiness you feel when you expect it to go badly but it turns out well is truly something special. I definitely don’t recommend it, though. This was just luck. Please do so at your own risk, haha.

As you said, with anyone outside Universe Club, it was usually just edited photos, and there were barely any videos either, so I hid my profile quite a while ago. I use Patro as well, but unless someone has interviewed and registered with Universe Club, I think it’s fine to ignore their messages. It’s no exaggeration to say I hid my profile because I was tired of replying with that same reason every time I turned someone down. P.S. Yozakura, nice to meet you. I look forward to getting to know you. I’m not that kind. Toward the end, I even made a template response along the lines of, “For anyone outside Universe Club…” I often hear from proactive women I’ve met that they don’t get replies when they message men first, while messages from the men are much more likely to lead to an offer. This is just my personal opinion, but almost all of the people I’ve met started with me messaging them first. I may have mentioned this before, but I have made offers to people who carefully read my profile and showed genuine enthusiasm. However, that’s quite rare. Hope this helps.

PATOLO has been unavailable for about a year, and it seems the points I was given as a birthday gift—or something like that—have expired too. Whether you want to make offer after offer through a club or PATOLO, or whether you actually want a relationship, I think things often work out surprisingly well once you’ve clarified that for yourself. A papa’s role is to fulfill the woman’s wishes, so to do that, I think you also need to have a clear understanding of what you’re looking for. It’s also important that the woman can sense your own enjoyment. And how will you respond to what the woman wants? Without first understanding your own flexibility, I think that can be difficult as well. > Being able to negotiate the allowance terms in advance is a major advantage that Universe Club doesn’t offer. If that’s how you see it, then I suspect you’re not really looking for a woman you’re compatible with and can have a proper relationship with. A woman who genuinely wants a relationship wouldn’t put negotiating the allowance first. That creates the contradiction that you’ll only encounter professionals—papa-katsu pros, perhaps. It makes me seriously question whether there’s any point in using the club, or whether you’ll actually feel you’re benefiting from it.

It’s Fullerene! Personally, my preference is: No filters > lightly edited > no photo > heavily edited photos. I’ve actually made offers to women outside Universe who didn’t have photos, too. When a woman uses a heavily edited image—though it’s not really a photo if it doesn’t reflect reality, haha—you can get a sense of how she thinks men will perceive her and what she expects to happen when they actually meet. Anyway, Universe uses consistent standards, but the clubs participating in PATOLO don’t all share the same standards, right? That means you have to assess each woman while imagining the standards of the club she belongs to. Since that adds another variable, unless she has something unique enough to outweigh the added risk, you may end up thinking, “Why not just go with someone registered with Universe?” Even I only made offers to women registered with Universe when using PATOLO. (I do wish the participating clubs would promote themselves by saying, “These are our profile standards!”) Come to think of it, I’ve never negotiated an allowance through PATOLO.

I’ve only been with the club for two years, but I’ll share my experience if that helps. During my first year, I had access to PATLO as a perk, so I mainly used it. The photos were nice, I could communicate directly with the women right up until the day of the meeting, and it had the casual convenience of an app. As it happened, everyone I made offers to was a non-club member. These days, I exclusively use the club. The reasons are: - There’s less difference between the photos and how they look in person. - The club staff work hard to coordinate things on the day. I actually feel more at ease with them than dealing directly with someone whose background I don’t know. (I experienced two last-minute cancellations on PATLO, including one where she didn’t contact me at all.) - The women I met through the club were generally more polished and well-mannered. (That said, I only met two women through PATLO and three through the club, so this is just my personal experience based on that small sample.) Incidentally, the only relationships that have continued are with women who are club members. So when the question mentions “club members listed on PATLO,” I guess that really is the best of both worlds. Maybe I should have searched that way too...? At this point, I don’t think I need to use PATLO anymore. Thanks as always to the staff.

> I’m too nervous to make an offer to female members of dating clubs other than Universe Club because their photos are edited and there are no videos. I completely understand how you feel. I think you may feel that way even more because Universe happened to have a policy of not editing photos. However, outside the world of Universe Club, photo editing is standard practice. The degree of editing—the level of naturalness, you could say—varies, but it has been common knowledge for a long time that even photobooks are edited. In the case of photobooks, they usually don’t dramatically enlarge anything. The editing is done subtly and naturally, so it’s almost impossible to notice. Even so, it has long been known that the photos are retouched in one way or another. This leads to the question of whether it’s really okay for women to be the only ones who don’t look their best at Universe Club. And doesn’t makeup count as a form of editing too? Does that mean you won’t accept someone unless she looks completely makeup-free? That’s how the discussion expands. Why does it expand that way? Because clubs that post edited photos may not be able to measure how disappointed men feel afterward, but the editing does help them receive offers. In other words, as I’ve said before, Universe is too focused on the men’s perspective. What I mean is that, from a woman’s point of view, the club posts unflattering photos and then she ends up thinking: “No one’s going to make an offer with a photo like this. If they posted a prettier photo, I’d get offers.” “I received tons of messages on apps, but I don’t get any offers on Universe.” “It must be because the photos aren’t good.” From the man’s perspective, he may think: “She looked cute in the photo—beautiful, even—but when I met her, she was nothing special. What is this? I want my money back.” But if editing is standard everywhere outside Universe, is that really something to complain about? Maybe not. If the general standard in society is to use edited photos, then shouldn’t the default be that you’re meeting women whose photos have been edited? In other words, when you look at a photo, you recognize that it’s edited and imagine that she may look somewhat different in person. That’s the norm in society, while Universe alone exists in a separate world. And in reality, not editing photos may mean missing out on opportunities. You might meet a woman whose photo was edited and find that she looks different in person, but her personality, mannerisms, and overall presence are wonderful. In other words, meeting her turns out to have been the right decision. I think that happens routinely at other dating clubs and on apps. If that’s the case, women who are confident they can win someone over once they meet are losing opportunities. From the man’s perspective, he may also be missing out on someone who would have turned out to be a great person if they had met. People who only care about looks, who want a doll and don’t care about what’s inside, probably won’t agree with me. But aren’t those people simply not suited to dating clubs in the first place? Even as I write all this, I do think Universe’s refusal to edit photos is rare, and that’s probably one reason the club has grown so much. Still, if you’re saying that photo editing is unacceptable, I can’t help thinking you still have a lot to learn. Maybe it would be better to meet without seeing the woman’s face at all. That idea was actually part of the concept behind Universe Club Noblesse, but it’s proving quite difficult. I sometimes think that, before long, more men may start thinking, “Maybe I’ll meet her without seeing her face first.” But whether that day will ever come… who knows. P.S. > https://lab.universe-club.jp/help/ > It’s a shame there’s no button for submitting questions here, isn’t it? (This is for Mr. Maezawa.) There is one on my screen, though. What exactly do you mean? You can also send me an email if that’s easier.

Since videos are the only thing I can rely on, even on PATOLO I only make offers to women from Universe Club. https://lab.universe-club.jp/help/ It’s a shame there’s no button for posting questions here. (This is for Mr. Maezawa.) ■Mr. Maezawa It’s in the top-right corner on a PC, but on smartphones it’s tucked away in the hamburger menu, so it’s hard to find.

Over-edited photos start to make people look like the aliens from those UFO specials we used to see on TV—with huge eyes and thin noses and chins. In a way, I wonder if that’s the form of evolution humanity has always longed for. If you’re going to edit a photo so heavily that it no longer resembles the original, I’d honestly prefer it to be blurred. Based on my limited experience, people who frequently use heavily edited photos, including on social media, tend to have various personality issues as well. (That’s just my bias.) For profile photos, I prefer natural, unedited smiles.

> Do you all feel the same way? No, I don’t. I don’t trust Universe either. It’s not that I trust the girls in the first place—I don’t take everything they say at face value. If anything, the person I trust the least is myself. I’m not playing with words or trying to turn the question around. That’s genuinely how I feel. The only things I can really use as reliable information are age, height and weight, bust size, and maybe whether her face is round or long. I think my impression of the Universe staff is probably the least reliable thing of all. Anyway, the only option is to meet as many people as possible. I’ve been a member for nine years, but my hit rate for finding women I actually want to keep seeing hasn’t changed since the beginning. You may think it’s a waste of money, but you’re already spending money unnecessarily by doing this kind of dating in the first place, so there’s no point worrying too much about that. > Being able to negotiate the allowance in advance is one of Universe Club’s major advantages. I completely agree with that. Addendum: Women wear makeup, right? That’s already a form of editing. The other day, a girl told me she had an identical twin sister, so I thought it would be interesting and asked her to bring her along. She came in a hoodie and sunglasses, saying, “I’m about to go to bed and I’m not wearing any makeup—is that okay?” They looked like a side-by-side before-and-after makeup comparison.

I put my PATOLO account on hold at the end of last year, but after noticing that more clubs had been added, it seemed to have become a real mixed bag. I was surprised when a woman listed as a night companion on Universe suddenly became a general office worker after transferring to another club within PATOLO. I happened to be messaging with her, so I asked her about it, but she completely ignored the question. It’s possible both were true, but when it comes to reliable information—including the photos—I’m reminded that Universe is the one I can really trust. I usually negotiated the allowance after meeting in person, but I did feel it was an advantage to be able to get to know someone beforehand. I wonder if this question will get hidden too… lol

I’ve never considered negotiating the allowance before actually meeting someone. Since I mainly operate in Type B, I don’t want to date anyone who tries to negotiate the allowance in advance. I don’t use PATOLO myself, but I understand that you may have no choice but to look exclusively among women from Universe Club.