The penny dating method is the most toxic trend of the year

There have been a number of various dating trends this year but the 'penny dating' trend is perhaps one of the most toxic of them all.

This involves putting in maximum effort with a woman in the initial stages of the relationship, only to decrease this effort over time as the relationship progresses.

The idea is you remove your effort in a way that the woman doesn't notice you're pulling away from making an effort with her accepting the bare minimum as the best outcome.

For instance, you begin by putting in 100 per cent effort, then you lower this to 90 per cent before slightly raising it back up to 95 per cent - this will make the woman feel she's gained an extra five per cent effort when in reality you've actually removed five per cent.

The penny method began going viral as TikToker Erika Tham (@erikatham) shared the method after hearing it from one of her guy friends who he asked her to imagine a girl is a piggy bank.

“In order to get her interested obviously at first you have to be feeding her hundred dollar bills," she explained.

“But putting in hundred dollar bills is a lot of work and you don’t always want to be doing that, so eventually you reduce it to 90.”

“Now here’s where it gets sick,” she added. “The next thing you do is bring it back up to 95. Instead of feeling like they’ve lost 5, suddenly she feels like she’s gained 5.”

Though it really means the guy has removed five per cent as she concluded the method makes her "so afraid.”

“Basically you just keep repeating this cycle and weaning her off your effort until you get to the point where you’re giving her pennies and suddenly, she’s excited to receive a nickel," Erika noted.

Erika's video has since gone viral with over 7.6m views, where people couldn't believe this is a thing that actually happens.

One person said: "Bro penny method? That's just psychotic to know and do."

"I don’t compare his current effort to his last effort, I compare his effort to my standards. This won’t work," another person wrote.

Someone else added: "U can’t convince me this isn’t psychological torture."

"Sociopath math," a fourth person commented.

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