Bill Ackman: Why billionaire investor Bill Ackman is being mocked after sharing dating advice for young men. Here’s what he said
Bill Ackman said he was concerned about the tendency for young men to struggle to meet women in public due to internet culture. “So I thought I’d share a few words I used in my youth when meeting someone I found interesting. ‘Can I meet you?’ Before we start talking any further,” Ackman wrote in a post on Saturday.
“I almost never got a no. It inevitably led to the opportunity for further conversation. I met a lot of interesting people this way. I think the combination of effective grammar and politeness was the key to its effectiveness. You can try it. And yes, I think this should work for women seeking men as well as same-sex interactions. Just my two cents from a happily married old man concerned about the happiness of our next generation and population replacement rates.”
Ackman, who is now worth $9.3 billion according to Forbes, claimed that in his youth the reception line “almost never got a No”, adding that “the right combination of grammar and politeness was key to its effectiveness”. “Just two cents from an old, happily married man concerned about the happiness of our next generation and population replacement rates.”
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Bill Ackman mocked for giving dating advice
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s dating advice for young men has gone viral, with thousands of social media users mercilessly mocking his outlandish pick-up line and online users quickly turning the dating advice into a meme. While many users joked that the phrase wouldn’t work in 2025, others wrote humorous takes such as “I will never take advice from a Boomer again.” “Can I meet you?” one user wrote in a post with a photo of comedian Shane Gillis looking at the camera.
Another added the pick-up line to an awkward interaction caught on camera at a sports match in which a woman raised her palm to reject a man sitting next to her — “talk to the hand” style. “‘Can I meet you’ from a 5-foot-11 hedge fund billionaire,” another user wrote next to a photo of actress Sydney Sweeney smiling, “etc.” Next to a less-than-satisfied photo of Sweeney, the user wrote, “Can I meet you?” from a young banker who is 6 feet tall and earns a total of $160,000. he added. Another user commented that dating app Hinge asked “Can I meet you?” Attached a screenshot showing the message. It was sent to five women – not a single response was received. Yet another user sarcastically added the following sentence to a video of a man surrounded by women asking for a photo: “’Can I meet you?’ life after saying “ALSO READ: Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who beat Elon Musk to become the richest man in the world, lost more than $100 billion in 2 months. What went wrong for the tech billionaire?
How did Bill Ackman react?
Bill Ackman said Wednesday that he was pleased that his dating advice went viral on X over the weekend and hoped it would encourage more connections to the real world in the age of social media isolation, according to The New York Post. “There’s a generation of people sitting at home on Twitter, or rather Instagram, or wherever, looking at people living fake lives. The truth is, human interaction is critical,” Ackman said during an interview on “Mornings with Maria.”
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Ackman attributed the decline of face-to-face relationships to broader social trends, including falling birth rates and loneliness. “You look at things like the population decline that you’re having globally, and I think you can go back to social media being the primary cause,” he said. He doubled down, saying his life has been “transformative” since meeting wife Neri Oxman eight years ago.
“I feel like one of the luckiest people in the universe because I met an amazing woman and we have our fourth daughter now, which is a really great thing and it’s not going to happen on the internet,” Ackman said. Ackman noted that his approach seems most effective when in motion.
