[HN Gopher] Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts
___________________________________________________________________
Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts
Author : tobr
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-10-30 16:20 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| gassi wrote:
| I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned
| incentives.
|
| 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.
| cbondurant wrote:
| This is exactly why I always make it a point to discourage my
| friends from using dating apps.
|
| 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.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| On the other hand, if it was so easy to find a match, then we
| wouldn't be trying to use dating apps. I think it is just
| generally hard to find a good match for many people these
| days.
| nradov wrote:
| The other side of that is that many people are simply
| terrible and really unsuitable for being in any sort of
| long term stable relationship. No dating app can solve that
| problem (unless maybe they incorporate mental health and
| life coaching services, which seems kind of sketchy as a
| combination). Whether the situation has gotten generally
| harder these days is impossible to say but I certainly
| don't envy those still in the dating pool.
| 10000truths wrote:
| This is often parroted, but the reasoning is flawed. The vast
| majority of the platform's growth will come from new users, who
| are _entering_ the dating scene. If they fail to capture that
| audience (say, by having a reputation of not performing as
| advertised), then no amount of upsells or string-alongs of
| existing users will sustain them, as their user base will only
| ever decrease, and investors will see that and withdraw
| accordingly.
| djoldman wrote:
| > The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from
| new users...
|
| 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.
| parpfish wrote:
| And to add to that- seeing a real world friend go on dates or
| start a relationship because of an app is better than any
| marketing you could ever buy.
|
| 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.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| They don't need that. What option do most young people
| have?
|
| 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.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't think this counterargument holds. It's a hell of a
| lot easier to get a customer who already paid once to pay a
| second time than it is to get a customer to pay for the first
| time. Also, I think most people are well aware that by and
| large, dating apps have a very low success rate for the
| majority of their users. People use them anyway.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Since your marginal costs per customer are veeeery low, you
| can hammer thm with 50-60% discount, which ends up on most
| platforms at 10 - 20 bucks per month, and if you make 3 - 4
| dinners, you get much more out of it than an evening in the
| cinema
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Everything about this is wrong.
|
| 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.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| "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.
| yousif_123123 wrote:
| Happy in terms of being a customer of the app perhaps.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Match's growth peaked a long time ago. The site is now trying
| to grow by "offering new products" and "cutting operational
| costs."
|
| 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.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Wrong claim: "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."
|
| 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.
| trashface wrote:
| FWIW, Hinge has been owned by match for some years now.
| Bumble is still independent by their stock is down ~92%
| over 5 years. I think they will eventually be bought out by
| match.
| brudgers wrote:
| _Users who find a partner_
|
| Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various
| reasons and durations.
| e2e4 wrote:
| Facebook dating has different incentives.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/dating
| jeffbee wrote:
| The only thing I can dream up less appealing than that would
| be dating on Nextdoor.
| phkahler wrote:
| IMHO they _should_ be the best one and use that to draw
| people to FB. They don 't need to keep people in the dating
| app since its not the primary business.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Bingo. This is the effect that keeps (a) incumbent platforms in
| place, (b) users on those platforms, (c) and potentially new
| platforms from coming online and offering a "superior"
| experience.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| I'm not sure it's purely malicious. It might just be the result
| of optimizing for engagement metrics
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| This is pretty obviously addressed in the article. The premise
| of the article is why don't users migrate to better platforms
| when the large ones are extracting as much money as possible
| (because the incentives are misaligned)
| ta12653421 wrote:
| By far absolutely _not_ true:
|
| - 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)
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| And yet, the premium features are _overtly_ aligned against
| user success!
|
| 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.
| svv wrote:
| > - 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.
|
| 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.
| ed wrote:
| I don't think speed dating is as popular as submarine[1] articles
| suggest. But the constraint of being in-person and with a limited
| set of options may be helpful for some people. The paradox of
| choice is a significant issue on apps.
|
| I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person,
| we've evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more
| acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after
| matching. But a few bad apples spoil the bunch.
|
| There's an alternate explanation - that the fittest companies
| prioritize engagement and revenue until reaching some threshold
| of user dissatisfaction. The healthiest businesses often have
| customers who wish they could leave, but can't.
|
| 1 - https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| johnfn wrote:
| Tangential from your point, but I don't think this is a
| submarine article. This is just a single blogger. "Submarine
| article" typically refers to articles written by large news
| corporations (NYTimes eg) and incentivized by PR firms - none
| of which applies here.
|
| The reason I mention this is that "submarine article" is
| typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I
| can't see any reason to do that to this article.
| ed wrote:
| I was suggesting OP may have been influenced by submarine
| articles since the popularity of speed dating is a
| potentially unfounded premise of their argument. (Personally,
| I know very few folks who've done speed dating but of course
| that's anecdotal.)
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > (...) 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?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I've been around someone trying to get into dating apps, he
| just started asking us to "take a picture of him real quick"
| while we're doing outings with the bois "so I can out it on
| tinder".
|
| 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.
| rendaw wrote:
| I've asked friends before, but the photos they took were
| uniformly terrible.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Ask women (ideally an Asian woman) and they will take
| pictures in the top 10% or better of what an average person
| can take. The only more reliable group are professional
| photographers - and consider that zoomers prefer iPhone or
| even Kodak style of photos vs a Sony or canon ultra
| realistic style
| plasticsoprano wrote:
| I would say, instead of "ideally an Asian woman", a
| millennial woman. Was recently in a tourist spot for a
| work outing, we asked a random person to take our photo
| in front of the big monument and the photos were awful,
| including a finger of the photographer in each photo.
| This woman was in easily 50+. Gave the phone to a passing
| millennial aged woman and got 10 well compositioned
| photos in both landscape and portrait mode.
| Artoooooor wrote:
| I used to take more pictures of myself on parties and general
| group events. Now I am less involved so less pictures are
| taken.
| bovermyer wrote:
| You're not weird. I've wondered the same thing myself.
| tbossanova wrote:
| You only need a few pictures to fill a profile. Taking a few
| snaps when doing interesting stuff likely spread over months or
| years isn't "documenting every second of our lives".
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| If I take a picture I'm not in it. If someone else takes a
| picture they don't share it with me. How would I get pictures
| for a profile?
| eszed wrote:
| +Fifteen years ago, Facebook was _amazing_ for this:
| everyone posted all the pictures they took at [event] and
| tagged everyone who was in them. But, you know... That wasn
| 't as profitable as all the [everything else] they thought
| up, and they ruined the platform.
|
| 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.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Ask your friends for a picture if they take it...
| relaxing wrote:
| "Hey send me that one."
|
| or
|
| "Hey let's get a selfie." (Do young people not say this
| anymore?)
| plastic3169 wrote:
| > This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps:
| where do all these pictures come from?
|
| 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.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| This. People are taking trips just to collect dating/social
| profile pictures, it's insane how manufactured successful
| profiles are.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You're weird. The vast majority of instagram using women take
| so many photos that the joke is that "the camera eats first".
|
| 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?"
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I'm actively exhausted when I go out with my partner
| because I know that I'm going to take lots of photos.
|
| Did you ever try to push back? Example: Tell her very
| directly that you want to focus on the experience of a great
| dinner, not her taking photos for social media. Another idea:
| Ask her to leave her mobile phone at home when you go to
| dinner.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > You're weird. The vast majority of instagram using women
| take so many photos that the joke is that "the camera eats
| first".
|
| I'm not a woman nor do i use instagram or any other kind of
| social media.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice.
|
| 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.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Commonly called "analysis paralysis". For most people, I
| believe, once you have more than a small number of options it's
| basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all
| options to make what seems like a rational and logical
| decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one
| arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people
| will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to over-
| analyzing the situation, and maybe never come to a satisfactory
| conclusion.
|
| This applies to almost anything, even "which restaurant should
| we go to tonight?"
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > ...once you have more than a small number of options it's
| basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all
| options to make what seems like a rational and logical
| decision.So some people will just get frustrated and pick one
| arbitrarily, or give up and pick none.
|
| 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.
| losteric wrote:
| If you lived in an area with many restaurants offering the
| same favorite-cuisine/foods, and you were picking one to
| eat at indefinitely and exclusively... how would you
| choose?
|
| That's where the analysis paralysis would come in to play
| in dating.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > If you lived in an area with many restaurants offering
| the same favorite-cuisine/foods, and you were picking one
| to eat at indefinitely and exclusively... how would you
| choose?
|
| _[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)
| KolibriFly wrote:
| It's wild how the brain taps out after like 5-7 options, but
| dating apps hand you an infinite scroll of possibilities and
| say "good luck"
| HPsquared wrote:
| There's also something like a "market for lemons" effect where
| the best people (i.e. those most suitable for relationships and
| capable of sustaining them) tend to pair off and disappear from
| the market.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Isn't market for lemons about a situation where consumers can
| not tell the difference between good and bad quality product
| so they only buy the cheapest assuming it's bad.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Yes, and that also applies to dating apps. It's easier to
| fake being attractive on an app than in real life. So the
| apps will be dominated by low cost fakes.
|
| You're right that the comment you replied to was describing
| a different effect (adverse selection?)
| HPsquared wrote:
| There is information asymmetry, it's just that it exists on
| both sides. Neither person really knows the other's history
| or intentions.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think the secret is "clearly better than anyone I've got".
|
| 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.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it
| 's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing._
|
| 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_.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| > And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous
| potential partners is most people.
|
| Care to expand on why?
| DANmode wrote:
| The quoted section felt like a portrayal of the
| individual's mentality from the example, more so than
| actual objective logic.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That makes me think of the Secretary Problem [0]... which
| apparently is also known as the Fussy Suitor problem, at that
| makes it extra apropos.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
| Sol- wrote:
| I remember the book "Algorithms to Live By" actually also
| uses finding a life partner as a fun, if perhaps
| unrealistic, example of applying the secretary problem.
|
| 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.
| DANmode wrote:
| Make the shortest list of requirements, and hard-no traits,
| possible.
|
| It's the only way.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| It's like making a spider web diagram for each person. Then
| calculating the area under the polygon to make a decision. With
| the vertices of diagram weighted by your preference vector.
| Under normal circumstances, majority can match with majority
| like a lock and key combintation. This could be the reason why
| arranged marriages work. I don't think evolution would care for
| 100% maximum compatibility as a target.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I would consider that arrange marriages work solely for
| evolution. Usually, arrange marriages / their families
| usually advocate the people who married to become parents.
| Thus for evolutionary purpose, maybe they can be good but at
| the same time, they might only be together later because of
| their chidren and that is a tough cycle for a children and
| some anti natalist points can be made in that regards.
|
| 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.
| deadbabe wrote:
| There is only one way to beat the paradox of choice: fall in
| love.
|
| 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.
| m_fayer wrote:
| But what if the paradox of choice is what's draining the
| world of its available love?
| _factor wrote:
| When I was a kid, I had one video game and played it all the
| way through. When the system was emulated and access to every
| single game ever created became available, I lost interest.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Part of my self-administered IT education in my early 20s was
| to feed my film nerdery through exquisite data hoarding.
| Automation, NASs, media servers, all of it.
|
| 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.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I found the way to square the circle of music hoarding is
| to place your player on full-library shuffle. Music is
| unique because you can enjoy it while doing other things,
| such as spamming Hacker News. Movies cannot be appreciated
| with such divided attention.
| zenoprax wrote:
| > Movies cannot be appreciated with such divided
| attention.
|
| Have you considered setting up "Ersatz TV" and then
| configuring dozens of movie channels to never watch?
| antegamisou wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| foofoo12 wrote:
| > one makes more money
|
| 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".
| atoav wrote:
| When I ask myself who in my friends circles has had the
| happiest, longest lasting relationships it almost _never_
| were the guys with the money.
|
| 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?
| thwarted wrote:
| Money (or access to money) is often a proxy for a certain
| kind of stability and access to leisure, two things that
| many people strive for.
|
| 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.
| atoav wrote:
| Being attractive can be helpful to get to know people.
| But it can also be a curse. If you know _really_
| attractive women (like international fashion model types)
| you will learn that it can be very hard for them at times
| to find friends that don 't just chose them for their
| looks.
|
| 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.
| DANmode wrote:
| The parable, the story, is to teach that what brings people
| running to your doorstep will not always secure your
| happiness, desired life.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| The paradox of choice feels like one of those concepts that
| sounds trivial until you live it. Dating apps amplify it to an
| absurd degree
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| It's impressive to me how many people mistake relationships
| for a choice issue when it's entirely a building in common
| thing. Obviously, having a shared vision or the ability to
| built one initially matter but the rest is very much work.
|
| 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.
| derbOac wrote:
| See also "taxicab theory".
|
| 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.
| est wrote:
| > 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.
|
| And then there's "average person fallacy"
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Me when shopping for camera lenses.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm just not sure there's a real phenomenon here. People's
| complaints about dating apps match up pretty precisely with
| common complaints about dating more generally. It's an inherently
| frustrating process!
|
| I think it's pretty telling that the alternatives people talk
| about are always alternative strategies for how to meet lots of
| people. The most common pre-app experience, where you _didn 't_
| meet lots of people and married a random person in your social
| circles rather than a best friend who gets you and shares your
| key interests, isn't something most people are interested in.
| tern wrote:
| A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating
| apps because they find the experience awful and they have no
| problem meeting people in real life
|
| 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.)
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use
| dating apps because [...] they have no problem meeting people
| in real life
|
| > 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.
| whynotmakealt wrote:
| My personal philosphy is that dating is extremely hard in
| dating apps to the point that its not worth it
|
| 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.
| antegamisou wrote:
| > I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are
| often very concerned about their public image (i.e.
| narcists)".
|
| 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.
| tern wrote:
| The people I had in mind were the ones who are just friendly,
| kind, loving people (think: Miyazaki film character or
| something), but there are certainly self-centered people who
| would be embarrassed to be seen on a dating app too.
|
| 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's even more stark if you weight it by sampling online
| content rather than a sample of people online (who are mostly
| lurkers). Certain types of people tend to post a LOT, so a
| random sample of online content will be biased towards the
| "high posting frequency" type of person, who is probably not a
| normal average type of person.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827
|
| "Most of what you read on the Internet is written by insane
| people"
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I get this post is a bit of a hot take, but you make a good
| point. If you listen to "alpha women" (the most attractive), a
| common humblebrag that they use is: "Oh, I'm not even on the
| (dating) apps. I've got plenty of hot guys approaching me
| public."
| lordnacho wrote:
| Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you
| have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one
| that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than
| all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are
| really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of
| people.
|
| 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.
| krackers wrote:
| Maybe we need to spread the word about the optimal stopping
| rule [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
| 0x264 wrote:
| The secretary problem is a bad way to formalise the problem
| of dating and the stopping rule doesn't work in that context,
| for a very simple reason.
|
| 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.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| There's less "maybe someone better is one swipe away" and more
| "this is who's here tonight"
| nextworddev wrote:
| Nerds will do everything to avoid practicing game, including
| writing blog posts
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Not everyone is a disgusting hedonist wanting "game", you know?
| trallnag wrote:
| I don't understand how hedonism fits into your argument. I
| can be a hedonist enjoying myself privately in my own four
| walls to the fullest without needing any game and pick-up
| artists.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| You're reading B => A where I wrote A => B. If you're
| searching for "game", I reserve myself the right to use the
| word hedonist when describing you.
| etothepii wrote:
| My guess is that most startup founders are in a relationship.
|
| I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 16 years I
| would thus not be in a position to be a first customer.
| roenxi wrote:
| The author didn't consider a more basic selection bias that the 3
| contradictory facts are driven by different groups of people.
| That makes it rather easy to reconcile 3 apparently contradictory
| views. You can't jump-start a new market for a dating app with
| in-person speed daters because they are the people who refuse to
| use an app!
|
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures
| are bad.
|
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your
| pictures are bad.
|
| For the record, I assume you are speaking about men whom are
| seeking women. The reverse is certainly not true.
| > He had ... an obvious 6 pack.
|
| This is very specific. Did he have shirtless photographs? I
| assume yes.
|
| 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_. "
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Concerning "dating apps suck": OkCupid was decent in its heyday.
| But even at that time, there were very few users of it near the
| city where I lived or even in the country where I lived. Thus, it
| simply was nevertheless not useful to me. But no other dating
| site uses a similar algorithm; perhaps most people care about
| other things in dating than what OkCupid is optimized to give
| them.
| Bissness wrote:
| That OkCupid was allowed to be sold to the Match Group was yet
| another massive antitrust failure
|
| Founders selling out should also be viewed more critically than
| it currently is.
| relaxing wrote:
| Truly one of the more despicable examples of enshitification.
|
| OkCupid was amazing for those who made full use of its
| "here's who I am and here's who I want" question matching
| system. Removing those features and turning it into another
| swiping app was a terrible anticompetitive move.
| johnfn wrote:
| Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating
| apps _dont_ suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal
| minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A
| sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the
| population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same %
| would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in
| stable LTRs or married who met through dating apps. But I don't
| think you typically find these people participating in discourse
| about dating apps. If anything they've probably moved on to
| complaining why wedding planners and baby books or whatever suck.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more
| single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps
| are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something
| about the modern world is clearly not working.
| vladms wrote:
| I mean, we're already six years past COVID--something that
| placed a heavy mental burden even on older generations. I can
| only imagine how much worse it was for younger people. I'd
| argue we'll need another 20 years before most of the effects
| fade.
|
| 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.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I mean, we're already six years past COVID--something
| that placed a heavy mental burden
|
| 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
| eastbound wrote:
| > The only new factor that COVID brought in
|
| 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.
| whynotmakealt wrote:
| As a kid in final days of high school. This is so true.
|
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| > she said that no it didn't impact
|
| 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.
| whynotmakealt wrote:
| Yeah radicalization is really bad
|
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| Yep, that's the moral of the story: Keep trying, for both
| of us. PS: Don't expect a girl to share programming as a
| hobby, it's virtually nonexistent, even if it looks like
| this at school.
| atmavatar wrote:
| A big part is that it is now socially unacceptable to ask
| someone out at what were some of the places most likely to
| produce couples in the past.
|
| For example, it used to be that something like 30-40% of
| relationships started in the workplace.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| How soon until your (true) point is used to spin RTO
| propaganda?
| Animats wrote:
| > Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly
| dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a
| vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on
| them?
|
| 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...)
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I thought the Navy Seal thing was to impress other men. Does
| it have sex appeal? Probably depends on your social circle..
| but I'd think being ex-military as highly unattractive (more
| violent than the average person, and highly likely to have
| trauma)
| bell-cot wrote:
| I'd assume that those guys (falsely claiming to have been
| Seals) were poor judges of what women find appealing.
|
| Or too wrapped up in their own machismo to particularly
| care.
| JackSlateur wrote:
| Are not (some) women attracted to bad boys ?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Not to mention jody!!!
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Bro, women don't care about reasonably young, the vast
| majority of women want older men, the daddy and silver fox
| memes are real. For younger women, the preferred age gap is
| smaller, but the older the woman gets, the larger the age
| window above her gets. A lot of women in their early 30s are
| thirsting after men in their mid-late 40s with resources and
| their shit together.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > What women want
|
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I think it's true that most people have a bad experience, but
| I don't think it's caused by things like height, age, and
| income level.... But social skills, confidence, and emotional
| vulnerability, which are things almost anyone can develop
| with deliberate effort, and also lead to better and more
| stable relationships.
|
| 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.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The only problem with this is its defeatist framing.
|
| 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?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Dating apps 100% suck. I'm a good looking guy and I put the
| effort into getting great pictures and optimizing my profile to
| the point I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3
| new women a week, and while it was validating, the quality of
| dates was significantly worse than what I used to get from just
| approaching women in places like bookstores, after yoga
| classes, etc when that wasn't as culturally abnormal.
|
| 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.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| This anecdote does not really feel like an argument that
| dating apps suck. Sounds like you were using them wrong
| somehow
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| I mean, that's not really an informed skepticism is it?
| Respectfully, you'd have an idea of what the commenter
| means if you're attractive.
|
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3 new
| women a week
|
| For the record, you are probably well into the top 20% of
| attractive men on the apps. You should know that your
| experience is very much _unlike_ the average man. The average
| normie on dating apps (5 /10 in looks) gets, quite literally,
| zero matches, or matches only from scammers/bots/OnlyFans.
| There are numerous long-form YouTube videos on the topic with
| first hand experience. > the quality of
| dates was significantly worse than what I used to get from
| just approaching women in places like
|
| This is an interesting comment. Can you share one or two
| specific things that come to mind? I can offer one from my
| personal experience: When you approach someone in public (get
| their number, etc.), then later meet them for
| lunch/drinks/dinner, their enthusiasm and effort is much
| higher than people I meet on the apps.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's a big part of it. When I met women in person they
| could get my vibe and know 100% what was on offer, so if
| they decided they were interested they were in it. I think
| the uncertainty of meeting someone new tends to linger for
| a while even if a date goes well, so it creates some
| dissonance.
|
| 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...
| jacob235 wrote:
| The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for
| the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate
| every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need
| to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as
| the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise
| you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating
| profile is not reflective of the reality of the person.
|
| This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you
| want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending
| time together in person will invariably be different. This
| results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed
| to the one from initially meeting in person.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not
| for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully
| curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1)
| you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you
| come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags)
| because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward,
| and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of
| the person.
|
| I would rather create a very honest profile because if some
| potential candidate is rather into the "artificial persona"
| that I project in my profile, when the relationship gets more
| serious, the match will soon realize that in real life I'm not
| a particular good fit.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Nice theory but in my experience 98% of profiles are generic
| and say almost nothing.
| knotimpressed wrote:
| Not related directly to the article, but I'm so glad there's a
| "tell me mistakes I made to fix" box. I wish more sites, hell
| even news sites had that.
| noduerme wrote:
| I went to a speed dating thing once that tried to incorporate its
| own (clearly homemade) tech stack into the experience. Every few
| minutes you'd get a text telling you who to find next... to look
| for the person in the red scarf or cowboy boots or something. By
| the time you found them and found somewhere to sit, you had a few
| minutes to talk.
|
| 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.
| rolandog wrote:
| I may be showing my age, but my wife and I both agree that we
| were very lucky to have met just before the dating apps became a
| thing.
| nunez wrote:
| People always "hated" dating apps, even when I used them back in
| the early 2010s.
|
| However, like the iOS keyboard, people will put up with some
| annoyances if the overall product is valuable, and swiping for a
| mate (or, back in simpler times, answering heaps of questions on
| OkCupid and doing lots of clicking) is easier than doing so
| through church/school/work/bar/other opportunities through
| consistent exposure. (To wit: I met many incompatible people
| through the usual methods and met my wife through OkCupid, so the
| dating apps aren't useless!)
|
| Also, as a former speed-dating host, speed-dating has always been
| something people mostly did for the entertainment value. I never
| did the math on it, but if I had to guess, it probably had about
| the same odds of finding someone than the apps back then.
| kesor wrote:
| So ... dating apps just need to remove text messages and replace
| them with voice messages. Problem solved. Thanks!
| imtringued wrote:
| Isn't it weird that they are called online dating apps and you
| can't date people online on them? You know, doing things like
| video calls. It's like Omegle and Discord are the actual apps
| where you get to date, whereas the dating apps are where you
| beg for attention.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Discord is where you go to be groomed into believing that you
| want to date anthropomorphic animals or worse.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| People come to dating apps for all sorts of reasons, and with
| different levels of investment. Pretty much every woman I know
| who has used a dating app has said she has gone on a dating app
| to alleviate boredom. That's probably not fun for the person on
| the other end if they are actually trying to find a partner.
|
| If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates
| minimum level of investment in the interaction.
| bjackman wrote:
| I think this is an inevitable side effect of the business
| model. I signed up for these apps to find love, that's the
| "strategic" reason I use them. But 99 of the time, the actual
| reason in the moment that I opened the app is for a dopamine
| hit.
|
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I like this final paragraph. You touch upon an important
| emotional issue. Most people want to believe in the fairy
| tale stuff of chance meetings, true love, etc. The whole idea
| of a "marketplace" to find a partner is so off-putting. Yes,
| it is practical, but it is emotionally unsatisfying.
| ianpenney wrote:
| Article leans heavily towards American social norms which are so
| far from global norms because it treats the U.S. model of dating
| (apps, atomized urban life, and market logic) as universal,
| ignoring that in much of the world relationships still form
| through family, community, or social context rather than
| algorithmic matchmaking. It's a very "Silicon Valley is the
| world" kind of framing.
|
| For example a lot of communities in Canada just don't work like
| this. Highly incompatible with this kind of social network,
| mostly due to the pre existing real social fabric.
|
| And: shout out to Max and Chris because they really got it with
| OKC in the beginning, which this article doesn't seem to say
| anything about other than just to name drop.
| relaxing wrote:
| You want one guy writing a blog to be an expert on dating
| worldwide?
|
| I don't like rampant US-centrism either, but at some point just
| write your own article on dating in Canada eh?
|
| I'm guessing the author wasn't around for the glory days of
| OKCupid. A distant memory at this point.
| locallost wrote:
| I like these types of opinions that challenge entrenched beliefs,
| i.e. network effects etc. But in the end I don't think there's a
| contradiction -- if you have 30 people in the room speed dating,
| you have 30 people in the room. If you have 30 people on your
| app, you have 0 people on the app because most of them are there
| at different times and then they give up because nobody's there
| except them. People gravitate towards where everyone else is, in
| the case of a dating app it's where thousands of people in your
| area are, and for speed dating it's where 30 people per event
| are.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| That filter graph: looks attractive and is not insane, i feel the
| last part could be its own category. I am prolly insane as well,
| but I would say 90% of my 'dates' through apps were, completely
| and utterly mental. The other 10% were amazing and friends for
| life!
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Alain de Botton claims (probably with only anecdotal evidence)
| that we tend to find love in people who remind us of the template
| our parents gave us... so this is an explanation why certain
| individuals end up attracted to loving terrible people. How would
| you hope to possibly convey this?
|
| Also social proof is such a big deal for women, I think being in
| public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self
| worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on
| dating apps...
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of
| qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely
| difficult to convey on dating apps...
|
| In my personal experience, when I meet people from dating apps,
| there is a huge disconnect between "online charm" and "in-
| person charm". So much so, that I now try to arrange an in-
| person meeting _ASAP_ when I connect with someone. You really
| know very quickly if the other person is showing enthusiasm and
| effort, and if you have a connection.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| this: > ASAP when I connect with someone <
|
| Just one point to add: Have a 5min call before to hear the
| voice. Weeks ago I had an "experience" with someone, her
| texts were absolutely OK but with small typos, some which are
| typical if you are learning the language but all in all it
| was possible to have a conversation.
|
| Then we met.
|
| She could barely form a useful sentence in real life
| conversation in our langugage, and she didnt speak English
| :-/
| KolibriFly wrote:
| Dating apps feel bad not necessarily because they are less
| effective, but because they encourage a mindset that's draining:
| endless swiping, ghosting, the paradox of choice, etc.
| Nexus42 wrote:
| Are there any dating apps that try to bridge the two worlds? That
| is, put focus on having short video conversations with as many
| people as possible, rather than just selecting people based on
| their profile/pics and then texting.
| keskival wrote:
| OkCupid used to work on the basis of high bandwidth of
| information and excellent matches.
|
| This wasn't profitable enough though so they changed to the
| Tinder-style swiping which doesn't work. More engagement
| interactions means more opportunity to show ads. If you find
| people good matches they will just leave the app.
| designwhine wrote:
| Makes you wonder why innovation hasn't bridged this gap yet,
| especially when user dissatisfaction is so obvious. Is the
| winner-take-all dynamic just too strong?
| trashface wrote:
| I don't think speed dating is going to replace apps. I did some
| dating pre-app, it wasn't big then. Its unnatural, and doesn't
| appeal to many personalities.
|
| I'm one of the men apps don't work for, easy to see why we hate
| them. For women, I think they say they don't like apps, but they
| do like the fact they get an endless stream of potentially date-
| able men from them. So their revealed preference is they like the
| apps, and that is why the apps continue to be relevant.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-02 23:01 UTC)