Posted by tobr 6 days ago
You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity.
I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.
There's this joke about a man in his 40s. He goes to the gym and asks the instructor which machine he should use to look more attractive to young ladies. The instructor looks at him and says "you'd do well by using the ATM outside".
Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean the inverse is true and you score big time if you are an ugly bum. It just means other qualities matter often more than men think. Being a kind guy, having humor, being emotionally reliable (meaning you're emotionally stable and not easily provoked, angered), being fun to be around, things like that.
I was one of those guys who always had more female friends than the average dude and I can assure you the stuff girls talk about when they consider partners are more often about how a guy is, than what he has.
Not that there aren't women who decide based perceived wealth, of course they exist. But why on earth would you consider catering to those? Got nothing else going for you except money?
But the joke wasn't about long term, successful relationships. The guy was interested in looking attractive. That could have any kind of relationship goal, from one night stands to marriage, or even meeting someone who could introduce them to even more people.
Now if all you want are short hook ups, sure. But I'd suspect most people are looking for a lasting partnership where the other side likes them for who they are and both people have a good time being together. And widely desirable traits can paradoxically make it harder to find that, also because the other side has incentives to fool you.
But that's also consistent with money being the ticket of entry, the thing you need to have to be considered as a partner in the first place (much of the time). Especially in the context of dating apps where there are so many to choose from, you might not even get the chance to show yourself as a kind, emotionally stable, fun guy to be around.
(Certainly there's a baseline: most people want a partner with at least the financial resources to take care of themselves.)
That type of partner is commonly referred to as a gold digger. It's very rare that gold digger will tell you the honest reason why they're with you.
It does happen though. There's an extremely high profile couple in the US. She was asked in an TV interview if she'd be with him if he wasn't this rich. She responded "do you think he'd be with me if I wasn't this pretty?". Brutally honest I tell you.
How about a partner who chose you because you had money, but stayed because less superficial things?
It's maybe sad, but it's not so surprising.
This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”
In this context (non-work related decisions) I find the “analysis paralysis” stems from a person not knowing themselves well enough or knowing themselves but not sure how to assert it without coming off in an off-putting way.
For the latter, “which restaurant should we go to tonight?” I take that as whatever I pick is it so I pick what I want (as long as I know the other people dont have allergies to the place or something) and that's it. When people ask for a place to pick they usually mean it (from my experience), and they are happy to tag along whereever -- otherwise they will suggest something and ask others opinion, I take that to mean they want to go there but don't want to seem bossy or some other weirdness, and so we go there unless I have a problem with it that I'll voice and suggests something similar.
For the former, I think people are too worried about coming off as "selfish" (and avoid learning themselves). It makes sense because some people really are, and being around them makes decent people really not want to be that. But knowing what you like and want especially when it's not what you have been told to like and want is the biggest hurdle to getting past the “analysis paralysis” here. If you know you and what you like and want than there is really not much to analysis, the analysis should be happening everyday of your life so when these big things come up you have a solid foundation to go on. Otherwise, a lot of it is trying to figure out what the best option is according to outside guidelines you've been given -- which is great for work, but not so much for oneself.
Of course, maybe there are people who can't do the above for whatever, but it's a skill to know what you like and want and a skill to put it into practice without being rude, just like talking to random people or programming. You get better with real world practice/exposure.
That’s where the analysis paralysis would come in to play in dating.
[edit] I missed the indefinitely, read as definitely - so if you mean only one of them forever. The one I liked best, which really isnt far off from how I do thing now. I use to drive past multiple starbucks to go to the one I enjoyed most. It's not like they had better coffee than the others, I simply knew I liked going to that one the most.
I get this may sound trite, but by knowing myself. I've made it priority to know my mind (and feelings/emotions as best I can) and work on figuring out what is mine and what was given to me or told is suppose to be mine. From food to politics to values, I still find things ingrained that are not me. It's like keeping a workout/exercise routine and not get lazy with it.
How to choose? I will have already put them in order and know what foods I like where, then when asked the question I will know what I want to eat and the places to satisfy that -- from there its about other things too, do we have time to drive the the farthest one that I want? no? okay this other one is closer and it has this other thing I want so we go there. One has a long wait and we are both actually hungry? I hear there is one like it and my date is also adventurous so it'll be fun to try a new place together.
Honestly it's about knowing yourself, what your priorities are and what can be worked around. It's so much easier when you have a solid grasp on "knowing yourself". I know if this swank restaurant is going to take 30min drive and another 1.5 hour wait and I'm hungry, it doesn't matter how impressive the place is because I will be at my least impressive. If the date really wants to go there, I will have a snack before-hand so I wont be a stubborn-hangry-asshat (because I know I will be and instead of fighting it, own and manage it so everyone has a good time)
It is a much more pernicious idea. Barry gives the example of salad dressing. If you have the choice between 100 salad dressings, no matter what you pick you will like the salad dressing less than if you only had 3 choices because with a 100 you can't know how much better the others ones might be. It would be quite rational to suspect there is another that you would like more so you aren't going to be as happy with the choice you made relative to having less choice. That is the paradox.
Curiously, I found that the better I got, the less movies I actually watched. It became more about collecting than engaging.
I think this is a corollary to your point: vastly increasing access and reducing our objects of desire to a standardized neatly storable form can easily divert us into hoarding behavior, to the detriment of actual engagement with what’s being hoarded.
Have you considered setting up "Ersatz TV" and then configuring dozens of movie channels to never watch?
Ditto with the women who like them.
You can, after all, delete all the other games from your emulator, or your entire data hoard except one document etc. Somehow that doesn't seem appealing either, does it?
Ending a lot of sentences with a question here I know, but I honestly don't think I've got this figured out.
If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing.
If I have one or two "maybes", and you introduce me to someone, it's easy for them to be clearly better than anyone I've got, and therefore clearly "the one", at least the one to pursue right now.
But if you give me one hundred, then there probably isn't one of them that is clearly better than all the others. Hence, analysis paralysis.
Not quite. No matter how badly you want a relationship, I guarantee there exist potential partners with whom a relationship would make your life worse, not better. And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people.
Care to expand on why?
As far as I remember, it jokingly assumes that one's active dating period might be ages 20-40 and then applying the optimal solution from the secretary problem means that you should calibrate your expectations until age 27 (assuming regular dating of course) and then immediately marry the next best person that exceeds this threshold.
It’s the only way.
You’re right that the comment you replied to was describing a different effect (adverse selection?)
I do think that we humans have such complex brains and hyper-specialization and the amount of intellect in the world when you look at it is ridiculous. So the ideas of arrange marriage working in favour of evolution, and not in favour of the person, while somebody does that is, very interesting...
I think cultures play a major impact in how one approaches dating.
I believe it's the opposite, they're exactly aware of this and have taken advantage of it to maximize engagement and profit, of course with the accompanying insanity, emotional burnout and further division/culture wars fuelling.
At this point in my life, I’m fairly convinced that some people would be able to build a successful relationship with nearly anyone while other are doomed to fail even with the "perfect" person.
The problem of dating is not so much dating. It’s expectations which are totally unaligned with the reality of life.
I wish I could upvote you more.
Speaking from experience gained the hard way, I thing compatibility matters a lot. But it's hard to measure and probably includes a lot of physical stuff like chemistry that can't happen online.
But I also think what you're pointing to is critical. People aren't static consumable objects, and what you are willing to do for a relationship with someone matters as much as anything.
It may be that some women may prefer being single (for a variety of reasons) than be paired with a large enough portion of men such that the effects become visible on the societal scale.
Women being able to go through life without having to be paired up with a man is a relatively new thing, the long term effects of which are just coming into fore.
And then there's "average person fallacy"
Then, it won’t matter that there are richer, more attractive, more intelligent options out there: you love what you love and that’s what you should pursue, and when you get it, that’s when you will know peace. It will feel like you won at life.
If people cannot overcome the paradox, it is because love in this world has become short in supply.
Me when shopping for camera lenses.
Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.
1) The platforms aren't growing that impressively. Most of their users have been on the platform for a while, were previous users, etc.
2) It doesn't matter how good the app is, you need a network effect. New users are going to go to where the potential dates are.
3) Marketing does wonders. An app can suck and have great marketing. It will get users over an app that actually works and doesn't have good marketing.
4) Lots of people on dating apps are looking for dates (hookups), not partners. If the apps can keep you getting dates, not partners, they can keep you on the app and happy.
I know this sounds judgemental but I'm not convinced the people going on lots of dates are "Happy" even if they're being successful in dating and hookups.
The relative newcomers - Bumble and Hinge - grew by trying to offer a better experience, especially for women, who are traditionally overwhelmed with unreciprocated interest on conventional apps. Both seem to have admitted defeat now and moved to the usual model.
In terms of revenue, the incentive to keep millions of users spending is far higher than the nominal gains from persuading friends of a successful couple to join up. Given that most users aren't successful, that network effect is tiny.
There's an opposing network effect of *keeping customers unmatched, because this provides gossip and entertainment among friends, which gives them a reason to continue using a service.
We know that string-alongs are a real thing on dating sites - especially, but not exclusively, for men.
There's also a small but not negligible subculture of (mostly) women who use dates for free meals and get a good return on their monthly subscription.
And a lot of sites - not just Tinder - overlap hook-up culture with people seeking marriage and kids. If anything the former is a more popular option now.
No, this is implying they are doing it with intention - which they dont even have to insist on! They can keep the users, because matching based on an app does not work for 99.99% real cases. So if you treat them well, they will stay anyway, unless your product is shitty.
If you want to drive top-of-the-funnel growth, make the product good even it causes some folks to drop out once they’re in a relationship.
Most young men can't approach women, most young women can't handle being approached and we don't have shared spaces where people can get to know each other and pair off anymore. Young people think the apps are dumpster fires, they hate them, but the alternative is sadly worse.
Userbase expansion is new users less leaving users for a time period. So there are two factors, not just "new users."
In any case, Match Group apps are well into the phase of focusing on extracting the most money possible from their paying users as opposed to gaining new users.
After all, infinite users are useless to a company, even if it costs nothing to support them, if none of them pay.
- i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country
- dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly
- the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isnt even debated.
And here comes why: the most important thing to form a relationship are "technicals" which can NEVER be introduced into an app. There may be some advances in genomic matching, but no body deployed this so far and it wont happen unless Apple watch as a gene encoding module.
There are one night stands, there some marriges (we had a "winners board" in our office), but 99% of all cases when people met, its going to be "failure" (in a sense "no match")
Regardless how good your algo is - it doesnt matter when it comes to a reality check.
Therefore, Dating apps have absolutely no fear of you signing off because you fond someome - its very likely that you will come back soon, second: From operators perspective it would be a good thing if people would tell "i found my match on XYZ", but sine this does happen only super rarely, there are only few such stories.
So - NO: Dating sites do fear someone deleting the account.
(except: you are a startup and have to keep every profile to gain some size)
What labels do they use for training their algos though? What is their definition of a successful match, is it a date, a recurring date, or something closer to a long-term relationship?
If matches predominantly result in "failure" they might just not have enough "long-term success" labels to go by, and their proxy labels will be biased towards short-term successes.
All thi matching stuff like "match with X%" is just bullshit.
The only platform having a useful approach here was OKC years ago. (but even for their scoring you would not need any type of sophisticated tech)
just to make that clear: churn is tracked/written down for sure, but its not debated in a context of "is churn growing if more people are matching successful" - because in 99.9% of all cases people do not meet successful, so this metric is irrelevant
I believe you that these app devs think they are optimizing for user success, but that doesn't change the incentives that frame their work.
The greatest utility of a dating app should be that it provides a higher number of opportunities. This feature is explicitly broken by the most popular dating apps. Often, it is put behind a paywall, which has the same effect as being broken.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Limiting opportunities can actually be a better experience. Too many choices can lead to decision paralysis.
Limitting search/result is often used to tease users into the subscription. Eg. Tiner allows in free mode only a certain number of swipes. Is it this what you mean? This is usually depends on: Search + text for free but limited, or "pay for everything" I do not see why putting some features behind a paywall is "against users interest" and how this limits/increases his/her chances?
You are claiming that dating sites should be free - this doesnt work usually (POF as exception) - and making users pay for those does not increase his/her chances: EVERYTHING that happens before you met someone will be crashed usually in the very first second you met (and smell!) someone.
So if you have a chance with another person, is something that is completely(!) out of control of the website operator. EDIT: this is something website operators do know, they cant change it and this is something that they should put on their website - they are selling dreams and expectations, which wont become true in real.
A dating app that is effective at solving the problem it is ostensibly designed to solve will never make money as people will be matched quickly and will have no need to pay for the service. So clearly no profitable dating app is good at matching people.
I'm of the opinion that using a tool that is constantly setting you up for romantic failure and rejection in the name of keeping you on its platform is a really good way to wreck your mental health.
Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various reasons and durations.
When the Overton Window shifts to the point where saying "people should be decent to one another" becomes a radical ideological statement, make sure you flag every comment that says that too. We can't have radical ideologues on HN, after all.
It's fine to discuss ideology on HN, but it needs to be done so in a spirit of curiosity and exploration, not battle and belligerence.
We've had to ask you to respect the site and observe the guidelines a few times before in the past couple of years. The HN guidelines and HN's intended purpose are the issue here, and sermonizing about ideology seems a deflection.
We just need you to observe the guidelines, no matter what point you're trying to make (and we really don't much care what point you're trying to make). Indeed this is in your interests to do this, because your point will carry more weight if you make it whilst keeping your discussion style within the site's guidelines and norms.
Bravo, I haven't laughed this much in a while. God-tier satire.
Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and the profits, just like the gambling industry.
What women want is > 6' tall, over $100K a year, reasonably good looking, and reasonably young compared to the woman. This is about 1% of the US male population.
But a much higher fraction of dating service profiles. Two good-looking women I know have shown me their side of a dating app. Each had over 1000 matches, but the ones they met did not live up to their resume. (Fun fact: the organization of ex Navy SEALS says that there are at least 10x as many people claiming to be ex-SEALS as actually exist. There aren't that many of those guys. Only a few thousand. But on dating apps...)
For me, developing vulnerability and risk taking caused me to go from completely unsuccessful, to being able to date pretty much anyone I wanted on these apps. Counter intuitively, the main thing I had to do was stop holding back the things I had previously been afraid to share about myself because I was afraid they made me seem unattractive, and instead confidently own who I really am. It’s very rare for a woman on these apps to encounter someone that seems genuine, unafraid, and vulnerable- and you will stand out like crazy.
It’s not just men having a hard time on these apps- despite the huge number of people, most women really struggle to find anyone that seems appealing, and most of the dates they do go on end up awful as the men are emotionally unavailable, nervous, and afraid to be vulnerable, which makes them impossible to connect with, no matter how tall and rich they may be.
It’s very appealing to believe that the problem is something outside of your control, but it’s rarely the case.
Please. Online dating is 80% looks, 10% height and 10% money.
Or too wrapped up in their own machismo to particularly care.
There are 4 billions women on this planet.
The average women as a concept is meaningless for someone looking for a person to date. Even if you could only find someone far in the metaphorical tail, variance and population size are so high we are talking millions of people. Lesbian manages to find people to marry for god sake.
This kind of weird generalisation really needs to die. It helps absolutely no one.
What most women who use dating apps are looking for, in a profile on that dating app, is essentially what you described, or at least a set of similarly rare attributes. Even worse, is the set of attributes that she is looking to avoid.
Dating apps are nothing but attributes. That's their core problem, and their core success. If you can get a small percentage (probably male) of users to attract a less-small percentage of (probably female) users, you end up with an infinite churn of "success" (read engagement).
The natural incentive in this situation is to show that small percentage of popular male profiles to as many users as possible. This gives you both profitable engagement and actual success metrics that you can brag about!
---
So now that we understand the problem a little more, can we start working to solve it?
For example, it used to be that something like 30-40% of relationships started in the workplace.
Even before then, I don’t think dating apps were the only issue—it was more the general lack of human interaction, with everything shifting online. Being in a relationship is nothing like just "chatting" or being "connected." I’m not complaining, but during my teenage and young adult years, I feel like I had less-than-ideal real-life experiences, which shaped my social skills and expectations. Talking to people in their 30s now, I get the sense they’re only experience this much later in life.
The only new factor that COVID brought in concerning dating is that it separated society into two groups which in German are disrespectfully called "Coronazis" (those who defended the restrictions of civil rights because of COVID-19) and "Covidioten" (those who did not believe in the COVID-19 fearmongering and the government measures). Both of these groups realized that they are not compatible with the other group on a human level and are thus no suitable dating matches.
This actually lead to the inception of a new dating site for those who are skeptical of official COVID-19 narrative or feel attracted to people who share personality traits of such people: https://www.conscious-love.com
No it also brought kids who missed one year of socialization, positive social experiences, mingling.
Just one year? It changed habits forever in favour of remote classes, in which schoolm don’t play their role in giving a cohesive experience for students.
I was talking to this about this to my mum just a few days ago and she said that no it didn't impact, but I was so shocked because honestly I feel like its just not even the kids but everyone which got impacted but I genuinely feel like that there was this sense of loneliness in covid
I am not sure but before covid everyone was friends with everybody else kind of things, I was in 6th grade and I would honestly consider it one of the best periods of my life, I remember how one of my friends had prepared covid as a general knowledge fact for an exam and he spoke it in class and we didn't think much of it untill it started spreading and then our 7th class became purely online due to lockdowns etc.
I do feel like that there is a lost year or more and that has impacted people in a lot of ways.
Personally, the one thing I noticed was the fact that a lot of the times, we felt like being watched by others and what not to a bigger degree.
Like, I remember just talking to girls as friends when I was in 6th grade, It wasn't that much of a big deal but later in covid and even after covid, when the school re-opened. I found that girls used to sit seperately and we boys used to sit seperately in completely seperate rows, not even on the same rows or the same benches.
Before covid this wasn't the case and we were sort of forced by our teachers to sit whether with boys or girls randomly and there were some good interactions that I deeply miss.
I am not sure if this is just something that naturally tansitions from 6th to 7th grade thing or something, We boys and girls used to talk but there was clearly this disconnect of 1 year between us, boys used to talk so frequently in boys group and girls in the girls but whenever a girl talked to us, it was most likely in public chats and I mean, you could never just small talk to somebody, I think I loved small talks so I used to create personal groups with my homies just chatting but the mere act of adding a girl to talk personally online felt really making a big deal I guess.
I personally noticed so many smaller things which I have felt as if have somewhat radicalized both girls and boys even in small mannerisms.
There became a us vs them mentality at a younger age which really got radical in 9th grade for sure.
Depending on the shape of the discussion, maybe she denied it so you don’t fell into the “I’m victim, it’s over now” trap. Grownups do that. Don’t take it bad. I’m 45 and single, and grownups tell me all the time that it’s not too late for me. I think they deny the obvious to console me, but living in a situation where everyone denies your actual situation is disorienting, and makes things worse than facing the truth.
> boys and girls sit apart
That’s a sudden transition in about 1 year at the age of ~12 (I don’t know what 6th grade is). It’s forever; after that they only rejoin again as couples ;) You can still make girls into friends, and groups like at the workplace include women easily (hopefully), but there’s always a tension on who’s going to date whom, and is this guy trying to creep on me, etc. which makes both genders more natural apart.
Just to help you distinguish between Covid effects and normal life.
What’s probably specific on Covid was: Dating fell off (2021), dating at the workplace is a big nono (2017), cost of living (2022), radicalization of opinion and realization that pro-Covid and doubters don’t fit together (2020). On the last point, I remember leftists and rightwings living together before that, and it might have started in 2017 with the Trump election, but each other deny the sanity of the other group. i.e. really radicalized.
I wasn't intending to victimize myself, I am not saying that its just me whose changed, but its rather the whole world which feels changed idk really
That’s a sudden transition in about 1 year at the age of ~12
Yeah I was of 11 years in 6th grade, and since the sudden transition happened after covid in 7th-8th grade when I was in 12-13 years old, I assumed it was because of covid where this seperation began, its good to know that isn't the case but still
Afyer 7th grade, I wasn't on any social media like instagram even though my whole class generally was.
I feel like online helps reduce the tension but as someone not using insta, I wasn't going to ask a girl her number since even in 7th-8th grade I knew that it felt as if a huge deal.
I always felt like the us vs them thing, we boys didn't need a reason to talk to each other, "hey bro what's up"
Whereas as I said, you always felt like a reason to talk to girls, I mean not always but usually, simply because you haven't talked to a person in 1-2 years and they don't even sit with you and you rarely need their help and vice versa
Honestly all of these things just make me treat woman really in a way to not be myself completely, like as an example, I am confident with my homies, I would just rant about anything or be myself completely and live my life but I will try to present myself in a better light in front of woman generally, not sure if that's a bad thing or good thing but I just want a girl really to be completely honest to each other to see if me and her are compatible or not and if there were some issues, then to read the relationship issues and try to fix what I can fix in my life really.
> I’m 45 and single, and grownups tell me all the time that it’s not too late for me. I think they deny the obvious to console me, but living in a situation where everyone denies your actual situation is disorienting, and makes things worse than facing the truth.
I will tell you the truth in the sense that its a mixed bag. Culture plays an important role in influencing what a girl seeks in a man in the sense that there is just a (sensation?) that if they like a guy or not whereas we males generally have a somewhat fixed/universal standard of what we look for in a girl.
So now whatever a girl feels, one of the most important factors found is culture/shared values. As an example, Girls with strong countryside culture or cultures which value money, might value a guy whose stable in his 40's more than a struggling artist but I have found that there are other girls whose culture makes them value struggling artist more than the stability.
I think you just need to find common values. Try to meet woman more and actually ask for dates etc. start slow, start by asking for time from a random girl (the example the book gave), and move up to complimenting to then asking for dates to random girls
Another key note is that everybody has a very high rejection/ low compatbility rate, mark manson's book gave an idea about it but I found out that rejections are common, in fact more probable so you shouldn't bother about it at all or atleast try not to.
Personally i have tried such things but I wasn't ready and I still think I am not, I am honestly just going to talk to girls asking for dates etc only after getting to know them first instead of the opposite, maybe sharing some common qualities like coding/messing around with linux and niche ideas y'know?
But I would still recommend you that although I understand you, I also understand why everybody denies it, simply because they don't want to make you lose hope in the whole situation.
It maybe hard but there is no definition of hard here really, There are some qualities which other people might envy of you for sure and you might too but you are you and they are them, you are perfectly fine in your own body and playing with whatever thing you have got, no matter how hard or easy it is. I would say its still worth it and also maybe once again, that you might be thinking of it as something too hard and I understand that.
Just try to be a honest guy, if you think you really enjoy the company of some girl, just tell them in an honest way and just be yourself, I feel like that could help the most but I would say to please keep my advice with bare minimum as my track record for dating has been ... rough to say the least and I have taken a break from it for sometime I suppose.
Oh man, I don't know, I don't have any gaming hobbies or etc.
Whom am I gonna share how I fixed my disk using testdisk and show my dotfiles or any cool project that I found to?
Its a very big part of me and I want a girl to understand it. To embrace it if possible. I wouldn't say I am programming as much as I am tinkering and making shit work and I feel like I can do a lot of things which I am proud of, of which otherwise I would have given up but I persisted.
I do want someone to appreciate it, appreciate me wholly. Understand me.
Although maybe I am having too many expectations.
Would love to have a chat / continue this chat with ya if that's possible really.
Ironically I met my wife while I was on a date with another woman. We had a much better organic connection, and she was way hotter than almost all the girls on the apps.
> I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3 new women a week
> the quality of dates was significantly worse than what I used to get from just approaching women in places like
There's also just the quality aspect. Hot high value women don't need the apps to get a good suitor, and if they're on the apps even tall successful good looking men face rough odds, since these women can skim the cream of the cream on platforms and usually are looking for the best sugar daddy. In person you can be charming, kind and a good conversationalist, and as long as you meet a woman's bar (which I pretty much always did) you can shortcut the line because you're REAL and here NOW. A bird in the hand an all that...
In my own experience I quite agree. When you have more than a hundred matches, it just sucks, because the fact that you have that many matches means you’ve cast your net too wide. You swiped right solely on the basis of looks but the good dates are good because other factors like personality and similarity in interests and sense of humor turn out to actually matter. Those are things best gauged via face-to-face interaction.
At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar.
But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match.
Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on.
If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.
The secretary problem is a solution to the problem of having to make repeated choices. In essence it's a solution to the problem of having to choose a secretary every morning for the day. You can even say it's a solution to the problem of a computer process spending a few seconds consuming an infinite stream at the top of every hour for the next hour. It's not a solution to the problem of making a (hopefully) unique choice.
And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.
There’s plenty of examples on dating apps of people making fake bios with extremely handsome men described as being evil (I.e child abuseres) and who still had lines of women who wanted to date him.
He had excellent photos and an obvious 6 pack. His pictures looked professional and showed his (large) social group where he was obviously the leader.
I do not blame anyone for not being successful on dating apps because I believe a persons current physical appearance and attractiveness have little to do with their character or suitability as a partner.
> Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures are bad.
> He had ... an obvious 6 pack.
It fascinates me that if you listen to what women say, 95% will say they dislike dating profiles the most when the man has shirtless photographs. Yet, 95% of women will also say that guys with a six pack are hot. It reminds me of the old adage: "Watch what women do, not what they say."
If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction.
This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run
Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal).
Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
> Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
> (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle.
This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, it’s not like we exchange pictures afterwards.
I genuinely don’t have any pictures of myself.
Are me and my friends weird for not documenting every second of our lives?
I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.
I’m actively exhausted when I go out with my partner because I know that I’m going to take lots of photos.
I’d love to be in a world where this is so rare that people can’t even explain where the photos go: but unfortunately I ask the opposite question, which is “where do these people get the time to do literally anything else with how crippling their social media and photography addictions are?”
I’m not a woman nor do i use instagram or any other kind of social media.
> I’m actively exhausted when I go out with my partner because I know that I’m going to take lots of photos.
People actually curate the profile and copywrite the text. It’s not real authentic life documented by accident. Once you put your profile there for others to judge you soon figure out that it needs to be manufactured. That’s when you start asking for others to snap a photo while your out doing the thing you maybe wouldn’t even do if it was not for the show.
Practical suggestion: you can ask. Someone takes a picture with you in it, say "hey, you mind sending me that?" Like lots of social things it's not automatic (which, you know, Facebook was for a few years, and that was nice), and you have to "put yourself out there" a bit. Most people won't say 'no', and the thread with the photo is an opportunity for further interaction, if you want it to be.
or
“Hey let’s get a selfie.” (Do young people not say this anymore?)
It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.
The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)
"Most of what you read on the Internet is written by insane people"
> The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
I guess a lot of people you would call "cool" I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)".
Yes, this people may have a much easier time finding dates in real life, but if you are rather into different kinds of people for a relationship and are more on the introverted side, I guess dating in real life is not the best idea for success.
You're essentially describing almost the entire online dating userbase here though.
How are people who are marketing themselves as the best chance for sexual gratification through display of their usually either materialistic or pretentiously modest lifestyle, providing useless tmi list requirements from the other party not self-centered?
They have literalized the concept of dating market, they have no existential inhibition of identifying as a product to be desired to be consumed as much as possible and treating others the exact same way.
Of course we have to thank a handful of evopsych "researchers" for that who are gaining traction from mass consumption podcasts by promoting their absurd, academically dubious fringe "findings" about supposedly deterministic human behaviors whose effectiveness is irrefutable for sexual reproduction success (remember, according to them homo sapiens have no deeper intellect and are moving meat that solely care about maximizing their offspring # and will do whatever it takes to succeed, so if you don't fit this description you're disordered and destined to extinction). Ideas that end up being diluted and appropriated by groups to demoralize those psychologically vulnerable.
I personally just try to talk to people (girls) my age who have similar interests and maybe express if I feel any emotions to them and accept or embrace both rejections/acceptations.
That being said, there is this idea of desperation of constantly needing someone to love you or is it too much to ask for being loved etc. I had created a place even whose intentions was to help people struggling in finding relationships but that made me realize that people just used it to ship each other or have controversies or use it as a way to meet/date and I was none the wiser/ didn't think much of it as I was decently happy thinking that some people connected because of my efforts yet i personally felt really weird with my niche hobbies and my place felt so mainstream that I couldn't be myself in my own place or didn't feel like it so I quickly abandoned it and now its just abandonware really
I personally feel like dating irl is the best thing after all my experiences or talking to people in general online, Even in dating irl, I would consider for many reasons that dating apps are still net negative. As I said, personally the best thing I feel like doing right now is maybe working on myself to be more confident and if i find a girl attractive and want to know more, then to directly approach her. Atleast, that's my goal in dating to be confident enough and to work on. myself on being a better partner.
I think the core difference is whether you're connected into a healthy community or not, or whether you're outgoing enough to find yourself making friends in circles outside your own regularly.
1) There are a lot more men on the dating apps than women.
2) Using just pictures to judge men doesn’t really work for women. See https://archive.ph/20251006053755/https://medium.com/the-kno... for discussion.
My personal experience, based on what I’m going through and what friends have to say:
3) 17 years ago, it was possible to meet and know really attractive women on the apps.
4) These days, the really attractive women no longer use apps.
5) The apps are optimized for engagement, not giving people successful romance.
Right now, the woman I’m currently dating is someone I met at church, not on the apps. The men I know who have success with women prefer the women they meet outside of the apps.
As a shy geek without too many social connections, the apps (websites, actually) were a very positive game changer 17 years ago. These days, they are more a liability than asset when it comes to dating.