[HN Gopher] What really happens inside a dating app
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What really happens inside a dating app
Author : polote
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-02-03 19:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.luap.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.luap.info)
| ramoz wrote:
| > To me, if you are a guy on a dating app and your pictures are
| not taken by a professional photographer then you are losing your
| time, and if you are paying you are also throwing your money.
|
| Don't do this.
|
| You need good pictures that convey attractiveness (looks, as well
| as personality). Using professional photos conveys neediness & a
| level of desperation hidden under a shell of an ego the shot
| tries to portray. So you end up relying on looks with a handicap.
| A good looking person doesnt need professional shots to show
| that.
|
| Sure, if you currently have mirror selfies, professional shots
| are better. Otherwise - if you are not a model who has magazine-
| published shots you're including in your profile, then don't go
| use or pay for professional shots. Figure out how to take canned
| shots on your own or pay a photographer for canned real shots
| (nothing highly edited).
| acuozzo wrote:
| > conveys neediness & a level of desperation
|
| In your experience, to what extent would displaying these
| qualities negatively impact a woman on a dating app?
| ramoz wrote:
| If a woman is using professional shots? Or a male? Either way
| -
|
| For an attractive person: not much impact, though I think
| there is still a bit of a handicap depending on the type of
| person they are trying to attract and how much confidence
| plays into a valued trait for the other person. The same goes
| for how much of it seems ego-driven vs genuine.
|
| For the average person: I mean you're simply limiting your
| pool. And potentially attracting personalities that look to
| exploit emotionally vulnerable people (the type willing to
| drop a lot of money on a photoshoot in hopes of getting more
| dates). As opposed to attracting the people they want to be
| dating.
| almatabata wrote:
| Can't it communicate the opposite as well? You could read
| it as, I take this seriously so I will invest money into
| looking my best?
| ramoz wrote:
| I should say my advice is for younger adults. Im sure the
| dynamics of 45yo+ dating is much different.
|
| This is where I say your pool becomes limited. You need
| potential-matches who (1) not only seek "serious"
| partners, but (2) are emotionally more receptive to the
| photos. I would suggest the latter as actually adding
| more pressure vs receptiveness...
|
| I think there is a paradox of "seriousness" converting to
| less success on apps - even with both sides having mutual
| interests. Declaring your seriousness sets a very early
| expectation FOR STRANGERS. When Im connecting with a
| woman who has "life partner only" on her profile... I
| feel pressured, regardless of attraction. Even when I
| (and literally 99% of the world) desire that type of
| human connection.
|
| This is why natural occurrences in person are touted for.
|
| This is why rising kink apps are seeing success as well
| as a bit of a revival with tinder (here is all of me, no
| expectations, if you like it - cool, lets see where it
| goes)
| brazzy wrote:
| If I see a very attractive person with professional photos
| on a dating website, I'll assume it's a scammer using
| photos of some model.
| diggan wrote:
| > Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of
| desperation.
|
| Instinctively, I agree with you, but might this actually not be
| true anymore? I've noticed how "accepted" it is to share lots
| of selfies today, while before that used to be very obvious
| signs for self-absorbed/narcissistic/superficial/etc people, so
| I'm wondering if maybe we're both wrong thinking this today.
|
| Maybe like how selfies became part of the modern social
| interaction, getting professional photographs for dating
| services might be entering the same phase too?
| ramoz wrote:
| I mean I don't have the data. Instinctively... the below both
| have the same implication and contrived negative attraction:
|
| - A mirror selfie of a man smiling
|
| - A professional photo of the same man posing with a
| confident look (confidence is highly conflicted here imo)
|
| Intuitively I don't think it's about norms vs general laws of
| attraction.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A good professional photo won't look like a professional photo.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There a lot of possibilities.
|
| There's the "Sears" kind of photo where somebody unskilled
| works a camera installed in a studio which is not too
| expensive.
|
| There's something a step up from that (maybe $100) where a
| pro photographer does the same thing.
|
| I do environmental portraits, often with a 90mm or 135mm
| prime, sometimes with a wide zoom. Sometimes I discover
| places where I can get a great photograph of anybody in terms
| of lighting and background. It can be really special if you
| get a photo of somebody in an environment that's special to
| them but I don't think that's what you want for a dating
| site. But one of my generic environment shots would really be
| a winner, and I can shoot one in ten minutes inclusive of the
| walk to and from my office.
|
| I'm not good at the people part of it. Some people photograph
| really well always (the alumni relations guy from my school,
| a disabled friend who might be high-functioning autistic)
| other people (me, my wife, my son) just don't. I can get a
| good photograph of somebody like that despite themselves but
| I have to try many sessions.
|
| I've been doing sports photography seriously for about two
| years, lately I've come to see it as "people photography" and
| realized I do better if I think about it in terms of "getting
| pictures that make the players look great" as opposed to
| "following the ball". I am doing a volunteer gig that I'm
| treating as an audition for paying work and I'm planning to
| get a bunch of portraits out of it, so far as the technical
| stuff I went to the arena with my neurodivergent friend and
| used him as a stand-in. Now that I think about it I have two
| weeks to do something about the people side.
| mettamage wrote:
| I optimized heavily on good photos. It worked for me, YMMV.
| ebiester wrote:
| Don't get a professional headshot, of course!
|
| But you absolutely should have someone who knows how to make
| you look as good as possible in a natural environment.
|
| You should also have a woman friend critically evaluate your
| profile. (If you don't have a friend you trust, you should
| first make sure you can make trusted friends with women who
| will tell you the truth.)
| globular-toast wrote:
| What you really want is candid pictures taken in good light
| with an 85mm lens. I had a few like that taken by friends and
| they were successful. Paying someone to take plandid pictures
| seems lame, but if you don't have a friend with a good camera
| then what are you going to do?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The data here falls in line with the infamous OKcupid study
| (which got cancelled and taken down because men and women are
| identical, donchaknow?)
|
| The takeaway is that humans best date by meeting people in person
| through mutual acquaintances.
|
| Without the forced direct social interaction, women are only
| interested in the top 10% of guys, and guys are just aimlessly
| running at anything that moves regardless of their actual
| interest (i.e. liking and seeking sex from women they have no
| real interest in dating). Guys end up with no likes and no dates
| and women end up with mountains of disingenuous likes and dates
| with disingenuous men.
| brazzy wrote:
| Men are dying of thirst in the desert and women are dying of
| thirst in the ocean.
|
| (not my analogy, but IMO very succinct)
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| More like dying of thirst in lake Baikal, if the analogy
| meant abundance of choice. Desert and ocean both contain no
| drinkable water.
| plants wrote:
| > Recommendation of profiles that you may like is a solved
| technical challenge at Tinder level and at mostly any dating app
| today.
|
| It's hard to take the rest of the article seriously after reading
| this!
| 383toast wrote:
| They know what you like, but that doesn't mean they will show
| you those profiles. Their goal is to maximize revenue, not
| maximize users finding good matches.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I disagree. "The algorithm" is understood by everyone in 2025
| to be a more-or-less perfect attention hoarder. TikTok, Insta,
| YouTube, etc. have proven they can definitely surface the
| content that users will like. I see no reason why profiles
| would be different.
| bongoman42 wrote:
| Interesting data in the article though nothing unexpected for
| people who follow this space. Some notable points:
|
| > The other thing that interests you is the like ratio, or the
| openness, among 100 profiles that the user sees, how many of them
| does he like? (The median for men is 26% and for women is 4%.)
|
| >The like ratio of a girl is almost independent of the profiles
| she sees. For example, if a girl has a like ratio of 5% and you
| remove 50% of the profiles, even if you remove only the profiles
| she will not like, her like ratio will still be 5% (you can do
| that by removing very unattractive people for a guy that is very
| attractive, for example). It is funny to observe, but it seems
| like a girl has internal reasoning on a dating app, and they know
| they can only like x% of profiles whatever she sees (of course,
| it doesn't work if you show only ugly people).
|
| And lastly:
|
| >Whats interesting is that the more attractive the guys were
| ranked by girls the more they were looking for something not
| serious.
| marinmania wrote:
| I have a theory for the swiping behavior of women. When they
| swipe right, it will most likely be a match, and they mentally
| don't want more than X active conversations at a time. This
| strikes me as rational and reasonable.
|
| For men, most swipes will not be a match, so less reason to
| ever think about swiping left to maintain a certain swipe
| pecentage.
|
| Just a theory!
| mettamage wrote:
| > they mentally don't want more than X active conversations
| at a time
|
| This is true. My cap was at 50 conversations at the same
| time. After that, my brain got fried (male here).
| globular-toast wrote:
| Another theory: when you swipe and _don 't_ get a match, that
| could be considered a rejection and women are worse at
| handling rejection (probably due to never having to learn to
| deal with it). Men, on the other hand, have to learn to
| accept rejection so little is felt when almost all swipes
| don't match.
| carabiner wrote:
| This one is classic:
|
| > Girls would say, red flag if a guy has shirtless pictures and
| then liking profiles where guys were shirtless.
|
| This is surprising:
|
| > In our case we had even acquisition in terms of male/female,
| but the retention of girls is lower than that of men, so you
| end up with 66% men and 34% women.
|
| 2:1 men to woman is a far better ratio than what most people
| claim (5:1 is usually thrown around with no evidence).
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| There is a truly fascinating talk by a data scientist who
| "hacked" the "algorithm" of a dating site and became the most
| matched person in californina.
|
| Highly recommended.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJod9kRYyao
| mettamage wrote:
| Yea, hacker mindset is what I applied with Tinder. It worked
| wonders, went from 1 to 100 matches per month. I feel like
| having a hacker mindset with dating in general works wonders.
| Oh, and not having social anxiety of course.
|
| It took a long time to not have that.
| allenbina wrote:
| I'm not going to go into details as I don't want to create a
| throwaway account for HN, but I can attribute a lot of people's
| feelings in dating apps to a few things. I got an email from
| Bumble a few years ago that said I was in the top x percent of
| people swiped on.
|
| If you try to brute force stats your way to dating apps, you will
| fail.... to some extent.
|
| A lot of this comes down to looks that you can control, and looks
| that you cannot control. Some people are born better looking than
| others and when you spend less than a second filtering people,
| the first factor you use is looks. That said, not everyone is
| looking for the same qualities so ymmv, but better looking people
| find dating apps much easier.
|
| Throwing money at apps works. I'm not going to go into details
| because my opinion is not based on anything other than my
| opinion, but I found that the more I spent on the apps, the more
| dates I would get.
|
| Modern dating when compared to traditional dating offline is not
| even the same thing. Ghosting and talking romantically to
| multiple people is normal. You can't let yourself get emotionally
| attached to anyone until you actually know them or expect
| anything from them.
|
| I've heard horror stories from both men and women from online
| dating, and I've only had great exeriences from it. Some people
| find me attractive, and at the time I was very active and fit, so
| I usually got past the swipe test. I'm honest with myself and ok
| with my flaws. I'm also comfortable in social situations which
| helps me talk to new people.
|
| I think crunching the numbers in this style only looks at a
| binary 'reality' of dating apps and not what you can do to help
| yourself and other factors that can lead you to what you
| ultimately want from partnership, or relationships or physical
| comfort or whatever else lead you to online dating.
| ge96 wrote:
| What sucks nowadays is picture filters can't tell what's real I
| guess until you meet them
| semitones wrote:
| > I got an email from Bumble a few years ago that said I was in
| the top x percent of people swiped on.
|
| Was this humble brag relevant to the rest of your point?
| mettamage wrote:
| 6 out of 10 male here (on looks), if that. Got about 300
| matches, because I understand social systems and have a hacker
| mindset. Ultimately, met my wife after 30 dates. Didn't expect
| that.
|
| > Throwing money at apps works. I'm not going to go into
| details because my opinion is not based on anything other than
| my opinion, but I found that the more I spent on the apps, the
| more dates I would get.
|
| I've experienced that too.
|
| > Modern dating when compared to traditional dating offline is
| not even the same thing. Ghosting and talking romantically to
| multiple people is normal. You can't let yourself get
| emotionally attached to anyone until you actually know them or
| expect anything from them.
|
| Similar experience.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I 've heard horror stories from both men and women from
| online dating, and I've only had great exeriences from it. Some
| people find me attractive, and at the time I was very active
| and fit, so I usually got past the swipe test._
|
| How old are you / how long ago was this? I've been active on-
| and-off on the apps for the past year; and once you are over
| the hump of getting consistent matches I feel like the apps
| create poor behavior that really isn't measured by these
| companies.
|
| I think being stuck in "situationships" is something that
| doesn't come out of the data but is caused by dating apps. It's
| very hard for me to get people to commit (or worse, just give
| me a hard no), which led me to casting a wider net. Potential
| partners are reluctant to tell me "I don't like you", and will
| either ghost or just keep playing along because it's something
| to do. I started to adjust my behavior by dating multiple
| people at a time - this eased the sting of wasting time on
| someone but then I became less sure if I wanted to commit to
| someone (e.g. I need a date to event X, I'll give Alice 2
| weeks, and she doesn't respond so I ask Bobette day of, which
| pisses Bobette off because she feels like a second option).
|
| I've also had issues where women rarely advertise upfront what
| they want is a hookup (for obvious reasons), but then I spend
| 2-3 weeks courting a woman who doesn't have the guts to tell me
| she didn't see a future with me.
|
| If your goal is a long term relationship, even if you get
| matches, it's still a mess and I feel the whole rating curve
| distracts from that.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A great article that elicited a lot of thoughts.
|
| (1) I used to make those kind of non-informative scatter plots
| with xvgr when I was a grad student, this package does a great
| job for those kind of cases
|
| https://seaborn.pydata.org/generated/seaborn.relplot.html
|
| even if you don't use it you can copy its patterns to make
| designs that work
|
| (2) An obvious commercial offering for guys is a photography
| package. About 20 years ago I went to the biggest photog in my
| town and my publisher paid $100 for a headshot that was just a
| junior photog in the studio. If you were a bride you would get
| premium hair and makeup to go with your photography, even if you
| were appearing on TV you would probably get a little hair and
| makeup help.
|
| (3) With the right choice architecture you could control things
| such as "the percentage of people that you like" or "the number
| of likes that you receive". For instance if you were going just
| on looks it would be easy to show people a stack of 10 photos and
| have them sort them in attractiveness; you could also show pairs
| of profiles and pick an ELO for each one. If you look at it as a
| relative ranking process you can peel off whatever percentage off
| the top that you want.
|
| An obvious objection is that given such a choice the "hot" people
| will be the only ones that get chosen but a counter to that is
| that you can put an upper limit on how many "likes" somebody gets
| by not showing them to people.
|
| This contradicts some things he says later on about things that
| help the apps retain people, but from the viewpoint of making an
| app that "works", girls who are looking for commitment really
| aren't benefiting from seeing profiles from hot guys who get a
| lot of attention and provide nothing but casual sex.
| underyx wrote:
| This is such a detailed article but it's giving me weird vibes.
|
| For instance there are all these drops to near-zero in the
| histograms at .28, .46, .56 for no clear reason, and the article
| doesn't even consider that noteworthy.
|
| The "Men Like ratio (y) vs ratio (x)" has an inexplicable wall
| around .33 which I could only explain with some sort of product
| limitation maybe? But I really wish it was explained what
| artifacts the product introduces.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Since there's a spike followed by a drop, it seems like some of
| the data points are "misattributed" to the neighboring bucket.
|
| Since it happens at the same place in each graph (eg a spike at
| 0.28-0.29, followed by a drop at 0.29-0.30) I wonder if it's
| some kind of number-theoretic effect from the fact it's
| actually a ratio of integers. For example, with less than 20
| views there's no way to get to the 0.29-0.30 bucket, but 4 ways
| to get into the 0.28-0.29 bucket. Hmm.
|
| Also notable that 0.56 is exactly twice 0.28.
| carabiner wrote:
| Definitely points to some rounding error, aliasing in the data.
| It would be fixed by making the buckets larger. No reason for
| the buckets to be that small.
| impure wrote:
| I definitely noticed I was using the apps more for entertainment
| than for dating. Which is why I stopped using them.
| imtringued wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the first four graphs alone already prove that
| dating apps don't work.
|
| Dating apps are supposed to match people, but desire to match up
| is very lopsided towards one gender, with the other gender having
| very little desire to match up.
|
| Having unrealistic expectations is one thing. Being the monkey
| paw that fulfills those wishes is on a wholly different level.
| jameslk wrote:
| > The likelihood to like and exchange inside homosexual groups is
| much higher than in heterosexual ones.
|
| > The like ratio of a girl is almost independent of the profiles
| she sees. For example, if a girl has a like ratio of 5% and you
| remove 50% of the profiles, even if you remove only the profiles
| she will not like, her like ratio will still be 5%
|
| These two statements sound like they would be at odds. It seems
| either the first statement is incorrect or women on dating apps
| are more choosy when it comes to men only. I'd be curious how the
| stats play out on lesbian dating apps
| nemomarx wrote:
| Only at odds if you assume the behavior is gendered and not a
| response or effect of the dating community in general -
| homosexual sub communities could have lots of community effects
| that change this up, just like heterosexual communities differ.
| bradlys wrote:
| > More than 50% of men just never receive a like, and never means
| maybe 2 or 3 likes in the lifespan of several weeks
|
| As someone in that more than 50%, it's very annoying to
| constantly get told to get on the apps to meet women. I'm
| surrounded by men in the top 20% because I'm affluent, well
| educated, and spend a lot of time at the gym. Sadly, I'm just
| around these people and wasn't born into the same kind of family.
| I'm an outsider. I was born poor and ugly. I've solved the poor
| thing but being ugly is incurable. I'm going to Beverley hills
| next week and getting more surgery to try to alleviate the
| ugliness but it's pathetic what a man in his mid-30's has to do
| now to even get a single like back on his profile.
|
| Women don't need men anymore in the developed world. Men are
| luxury goods and women are completely happy to live without. A
| man isn't needed but merely wanted and only wanted if he fits a
| very particular set of criteria.
| jfengel wrote:
| Out of curiosity... what does "ugly" mean? Is it deformed, or
| just not conforming to a cultural beauty standard?
| bradlys wrote:
| Ugly by most standards is simply not being desired by anyone.
| You don't have to be an acid victim like two-face to be ugly.
| I'd say someone is definitely ugly if you swipe on a few
| hundred average looking people and get zero matches back.
|
| That's ugly.
| jfengel wrote:
| Understood. Thank you.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _if you swipe on a few hundred average looking people and
| get zero matches back. That 's ugly._
|
| What's ugly is using an anemometer to measure a distance. I
| mean, using number of matches in a dating app, to measure
| uglyness. Dating apps are products designed by psychologist
| and built by engineers to generate frustration and make
| people pay, not to serve as a measurement stick of the
| average person's attractiveness.
|
| Dating apps are utterly broken. Don't do that to yourself,
| or to anyone.
|
| Meeting women in the Real World through common
| acquaintances. That's where the moat is.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Can confirm from personal experience. Do not even think
| of installing Tinder as a male with intention not to pay.
| Tinder with platinum is frustrating enough for a male. In
| revenge, every relationship initiated with gold and
| platinum I threw out to the bin after some sex.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| What I hate about Tinder is that it has become the only way to
| find woman for sex and for relationship, even if with miserable
| probabilities. Even in my tiny non English speaking country. The
| man has to pay for the app. Women ending up on Tinder loathe how
| despicable the app is ("looking for a pearl in this cesspool",
| "don't believe I ended up here" etc.) while somehow don't notice
| that they make this place this way.
| gwern wrote:
| Any idea which dating app Paul Gonsolin is talking about here?
| This is a lot of data.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| This is really really cool insights into the industry and
| consumer behavior in general.
|
| Going to save it to my google docs so I never lose it.
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(page generated 2025-02-04 23:01 UTC)