hckrnws

Funny thing is that when dating apps used to be "browse profiles, send message", nobody had to debate inner workings. Users could self select people of interest, send them a message directly, and know there'd be a very good chance that their profile/message would at least be seen.

Issue today is that apps control visibility, both in terms of profiles and likes. I've tried Hinge a few times. Did like a 4 month initial stint that had me consistently matching/meeting very attractive women (ones in the standouts section), tried it again a year later under a paid plan and had one mediocre match in 2 weeks (same photos and profile).

Skimmed the article so maybe this was addressed, but there's dark patterns happening on these apps, or faulty algos, or both.

I think Hinge was better when it was new. Probably people who try a new, non-sleazy dating app early on are more serious about meeting someone and more active, so you get more and better matches.

One problem I’ve realized lately is that a lot of people are on dating apps because they feel like they have to be to meet someone, but they don’t actually enjoy chatting online and may not even be very good at it. Apps probably have a stage when they have a high percentage of “online” people who are just better at texting and, for better at worse, on their phones more.

I ran into the opposite a decade ago when I used dating sites. Many women would just be happy chatting forever through text or email to fill an emotional need and never want to meet in person (they could have been cheating, exploring, etc).

I would have a 2-week rule: If we didn't meet in person (or setup something in the future) within 2 weeks, I would move on.

This helped filter out the people that weren't interested in actually meeting.

Two weeks is a really long time. You should’ve cut that down to 3 days. You’re right about there being a lot of women on these platforms who just use it as a validation and emotional need tool. It’s probably most of the interactions men have on the app since these women would be prolific on them and clearly spend more time on the app than women who want to immediately meetup and get into a relationship.

Hinge has a great user interface undermined by the theme of deep intentional relationships

A lot of people join specific dating apps by the theme

So you get a large percent there just because of the pacing and look, and then a large percent of actual dates that are like “wait I thought casual hookups werent part of this app”

> Hinge has a great user interface

Why do you say so? IMO Hinge obscures all the relevant details of a persons profile into the tiny, horizontal scrolling thing. Age, location, family plans, etc. all crammed in here, and then the best real estate dedicated to stupid prompts that are almost invariably “I go crazy for… amazing food!” “One thing you should know about me… My ig @hotgirl”

I really dread the idea of having social media algorithms decide who gets to talk to who. This "browse profiles, send message" actually how I met my first boyfriend on /soc/!

> I really dread the idea of having social media algorithms decide who gets to talk to who.

We're getting there, whether that's dating apps controlling your stack of faces one at a time, or even seemingly innocuous things like this site's opaque comment ranking system.

These things happen by inches.

"/soc/" Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. A long time...

The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS. That in turn made demographics very skewed, which made the problem worse.

In fact I'd say being able to balance this gender imbalance is THE issue to solve for modern apps. Everything including monetization models is built around that.

"The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS."

Many women I know loved the attention and having the ability to choose.

Have you seen a woman using tinder? They absolutely have the ability to choose, almost every right swipe will be a match. Now they just have to give an ok before the pm notifications reaches them.

The current model is clearly preferred as tinder made dating apps mainstream.

As a gay dude who didn't experience it anyway, bumble did this (only the woman can message first otherwise men can't interact) and found that women eventually hated that as well. Obviously they just switch that whole feature off for us gay dudes.

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.

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!

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.

Most people (all sexes and genders) are bad at handling rejection, period. It’s why online dating is popular in general—a rejection over a digital medium is a lot less intimidating and less confrontational than the same in person.

The rate and experience of rejection does not seem to be symmetrical across the sexes by a significant degree. Of course nobody likes rejection, but this point doesn’t really advance the discussion.

They were responding to "women are worse at handling rejection", and if they disagree with that (as I do too) then it is advancing the conversation to say so, even though it doesn't advance a part of the conversation that specifically explains dating app use.

Men handle rejection poorly, I’ve seen it, as I’m sure we all have. Weeping, drinking, wallowing in self-pity. It can get bad.

Women handle rejection with anger, resentment, and vitriol towards the rejecting party. So much so that I’ve seen people get married and divorced because the man was basically bullied into sticking around, and she left in the end anyways. Happens all the fucking time.

[flagged]

most women do not approach men first; men are usually first to be rejected

This is true, but from what I've seen it's not because women are particularly scared of rejection, it's because they use men's approaches as a filter. That is, they want men to be confident enough to approach them, and charismatic enough to do it well.

[flagged]

Read the guidelines and in general don’t call people an “incel” because they disagree with you.

That's not why I called them an incel. I called them an incel for spouting a hateful opinion as fact that makes women out to be inferior, you know, the thing incels are known for doing.

You should essentially never call someone an incel if you want to be taken seriously. Second, it’s obviously against the HN guidelines.

Yet, my comment remains left intact. Sometimes inaction says just as much as action...

Congratulations on your shaming ad-hominem language. Your lack of any genuine counterpoint reveals your men-hating nature by your remarks, which deserve no further response.

Me calling out you for your distorted view of women === I hate men?

Solid logic. 100%. Probably the same logic that resulted in your wack determination about rejection.

PS. I'm a man. One who doesn't hate women. Or men. Not in general. I am able to hate individuals though, and their gender plays little into it, while their sweeping generalizations and hateful pseudo facts often do.

Women complain about the poor quality of conversations they encounter

We should do a study on that itself, because I think guys are having quality conversations, pulling teeth with an entitled beautiful woman they are prioritizing, and everyone else is waiting for the guy to lead and there is no bandwidth left! so guys spread themselves too thin to procedurally lead every new conversation after accumulating matches

while girls are particular on the matches

“ Women complain about the poor quality of conversations they encounter”

From my experience in online dating there are a lot of women who expect the guy to do everything. He needs to approach and then also carry the conversation. Out of maybe 10 initial messages I received from women there was maybe 1 that was more than “Hi”.

yeah, old Bumble never worked for me. I was attractive enough to be matched with but not prioritized for women to start the conversation.

It was very validating to know that Bumble dropped their one unique value add because women were afraid to approach and werent doing it enough

> 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).

My cap was maybe 5. Seems I have less capacity.

To be fair, I was crazily driven and treated it like a job. Intimacy is crazy important to me

Edit: interesting that I got at least 3 downvotes for that comment. I don't mind, genuinely. It's just interesting. Different world views and all that

People will downvote you for stating a truth they don’t like.

I can corroborate this.

When I was using dating apps I kept a spreadsheet to track the response to like ratio, and indeed, the amount of women who liked me back in any given month was exactly 5% of those whom I liked.

Much as I wish that ratio was higher, data is data. The Tinder style matchmaking will always bring out this behaviour.

I didn’t run the numbers but I also quickly figured that the only chance to make progress is to like a lot of profiles. For a while i liked only profiles which i thought are a really good fit but got no responses. Turns out spamming works better. Once a woman likes you back, then you can take a closer look.

[flagged]

have you considered that dating apps suck for literally everyone and everybody should leave them?

No worries. My method worked and I am off the market.

But the method doesn't die with you. Now when someone gets a like it is meaningless.

What's the alternative? Complain that you never get a match? The recommendation to only contact people you think are a perfect match and then send a customized message doesn't work.

When people match with me, then read my profile, get mad about what's in my profile, send me a message expressing said anger, and then unmatch, it's a big waste of time. And that's actually the best case scenario. Worst case they don't read the profile at all and keep stringing me along.

The first time I joined a dating website I got a like from a person who I would have thought was way out of my league. I was really confused. Am I actually super hot and didn't know?

No. It's that EVERYONE on dating sites is playing this stupid game that wastes women's time. Some people are doing it with spamming likes, other people are doing it with more active gamification and pretending they have beliefs they don't actually hold. This is why most of the women left on dating apps are bots trying to direct you to their onlyfans.

If I didn't know the game men are playing, that first interaction and subsequent interactions on dating websites would have given me an inflated sense of importance, like, damn, maybe I've actually been dating below my league this whole time? I think that's where this article gets the impression that women only like 5% even if all the contenders shown are attractive.

Like seriously, I'm angry enough about this that I want dating apps to have something that's the opposite of a super like, where you can pay them money to penalize people not using the apps in a genuine manner.

Seems these apps are not healthy for your mental state.

I haven't used them in years. I've been dating in real life.

[flagged]

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).

These points will ruffle feathers:

> But I think dating apps can currently be used at each women and men advantage, it is just necessary to have the right strategy:

> For girls you need to lower your standards and force you to go on a date with guys that you dont have the flame for (it is actually very hard to do that for a girl, very very hard)

> For guys, you need to pay a photograph (to get liked) and pay the premium plan (so that your profile is shown to other users). If you think a dating app has no incentive to show paying users to girls, then you didnt read this article ^^

> For girls you need to lower your standards and force you to go on a date with guys that you dont have the flame for (it is actually very hard to do that for a girl, very very hard)

I kind of didn't understand the logic behind how he got there. According to the article women get more matches then they know what to do with. Why would lowering your standards in such an environment be a good strategy?

Lowering your standards will find guys who aren't just interested in sex. The problem is that most women want the same (small proportion of) men. He said that the more matches a man gets, the more likely he'll just want sex and not a relationship. So you go for the less desired men and you find better quality matches, if you are looking for more than casual relations.

It does seem like there are a lot of hidden assumptions here. Is the man who gets less matches really more likely to want a relationship rather than sex, or is he faking that opinion because he doesn't think he has options and thinks lying will get him more matches.

My assumption would be someone who changes their mind on what they want based on availability of choices would probably not be a good relationship partner.

So would lowering your standards really get you more "quality" matches, or just get people more willing to lie about what they want because they are more desperate?

It can be explained with simple statistics.

Let's say 50% of men want casual sex, 50% want a stable relationship, regardless of their desirability.

Let's say that the 10% most desirable men get 10 "conclusive" matches a month, the others get 1 per month.

Let's say that for men who are in for casual sex stay on the platform for 1 year, those who are in for a long term relationship stay for as long as they need to.

Let's say that 1 in 10 matches can lead to a long term relationship, if desired.

The result is that on average all men who is in for casual sex will stay for 1 year, attractive men who are in for a long term relationship will be there for 1 month and less attractive men who are in for a long term relationship will be there for 10 months.

So with a 50/50 long-term/casual split, and by taking into account how long they stay you will have:

- 51.2% of less attractive men who want casual sex

- 42.7% of less attractive men who want a long term relationship

- 5.7% of attractive men who want casual sex

- 0.4% of attractive men who want a long term relationship

The result is that if an attractive man is still on the platform, there is 92% chance that he is in for casual sex.

Of course, plenty of assumptions here, but the general idea is that attractive men looking for a long term relationship won't stay long, and those who remain are more likely interested in casual sex, whereas it is more balanced for less attractive men.

Of course, it also works for women.

I think the obvious conclusion to that is that dating apps are only good for hookups, and anyone who wants a real relationship would be best served by going elsewhere where the signal to noise ratio is higher and not skewed in this fashion.

Interestingly though you are basically describing a lemons market. However we don't usually advise people buying used cars to go for the crap-looking car.

You're thinking about it wrong. Any guy you meet who struggles with women is generally going to be looking for a long-term relationship. Starving men don't toss fish back into the water.

>Is the man who gets less matches really more likely to want a relationship rather than sex, or is he faking that opinion because he doesn't think he has options and thinks lying will get him more matches.

I'd say more likely down the line there's not a huge difference between the popular and unpopular men regarding what they aim for but the men who get a ton of matches and gravitate towards a fixed relationship are more likely to be out of the dating market.

Presumably, men who get less matches would have more sex when they are in a relationship versus when they are not in one.

The article is a bit a of jumble of thoughts, but I believe that advice is aimed at girls who aren't liking and therefore not matching. Some lines that mention this particular grouping:

> Only 50% of girls sent 10 likes in their account lifespan.

> 10% of girls that finish the onboarding never send any pass or like, ...

> We have plenty of girls that can scroll through 300 profiles and not like anyone and deleting their account saying "I dont like anyone" well

Because if you only like the hot guys, you only match with guys that everyone else likes too, and who just want sex.

There is simply no incentive for such behavior. The person always hopes for the best (the hot guy will choose me over all those who like him). And what about the worst case? Sex with hot guys? Sounds like a very solid strategy to me.

Not if their goal is a serious relationship, it's a terrible strategy.

> 2:1 men to woman is a far better ratio than what most people claim (5:1 is usually thrown around with no evidence).

Hah, check out this claim 3 women to every 2 men. Of course there's no mention of what site/app it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059778

Retention is a terrible metric for a dating app. The "perfect" dating app would have a 0% retention rate since the first person you meet would be your "ideal partner".

It's tantamount to measuring a hospital's performance by it's retention rate.

> Retention is a terrible metric for a dating app. The "perfect" dating app would have a 0% retention rate since the first person you meet would be your "ideal partner".

A terrible metric for the users. For the shareholders, the perfect dating app is one where the users are strung along for their whole lives, paying for a subscription but never finding anything permanent.

This is why you fundamentally cannot fix dating apps without changing the incentives around dating apps. The only incentives that modern apps have today is to, as you said, string users along, just frustrated enough that they can't leave, but not frustrated enough to quit outright.

There are ways to fix it, but you have to fundamentally restructure how the app works. Instead of subscriptions, the app has to be paid upon success. Did the matches lead to marriage? Great, they get paid. Otherwise nope. Until incentives are aligned there is literally no financial incentive for them to do otherwise.

There is one app I'm aware of that works this way, but I won't link it so I don't end up sounding like a shill account. But as a user I really hope they succeed, because the current generation of dating apps aren't in anyone's interest except the people who run them.

The only other option would be to have one run by a non-profit organisation.

This is mentioned in the article:

> I don't think retention is a good metric for a dating app, unfortunately that's how VC evaluate performance of B2C apps. When we think about dating it is more about quality than quantity.

For long-term relationships, yes. For the people that exclusively use them for hookups and similar, those will "always" be there.

That's not a business model. Creating opportunities to mate, not to therapy. ;)

Managed Dissatisfaction, FOMO, Abundance: And the users want it. That's what the data shows. Proof: essentially, every app is a dating app covered up as "social features."

Apple just entered the dating app market.

> Managed Dissatisfaction, FOMO, Abundance: And the users want it. That's what the data shows

Correction: the users don't "want" it, but many of them aren't strong or wise enough to resist those features.

The (presumably usage) data can't show what the users want, only what they do, and those often aren't the same thing.

I think users "want" it the same way smokers "want" cigarettes.

> 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).

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.)

There should be an app where you can find a woman friend to assess your pictures for a dating app.

I think this is meant to be funny, but what if you could stage your dating profile away from the apps and send to friends for review? Maybe have 5-10 of them?

I would watch this romcom.

My experience was different, it was more than a few years ago, but when I used it professional photo won by long shot. At the time there was an algorithm that would put your best picture first depending on like/dislike ratio. Some things I thought is that firstly no one knows you took those for this specific use case, they don't even assume that. Second is that it still indicates status in a sense that you had the money to spare to do it, the thought and time to go for it and possibly a good reason out of the app of needing that professional photo for some purpose. I didn't have mirror selfies, I thought I had what I consider well balanced set of photos showing different activities, etc.

>> 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.

> pay a photographer for canned real shots (nothing highly edited).

So, instead of having my pictures taken by a professional photographer, you recommend that I pay a professional photographer to take my pictures?

I've heard of irrational bias against the passive voice, but this is extreme even in that genre.

English doesn't seem to be their first language. My interpretation of what they were saying is that if you don't have pro photos you are wasting your time, along with any money given to the app (not the photographer, who you didn't pay anyway)

That was the original author's notes.

Im saying dont do this: https://www.koby.photography/blog/2024/8/14/why-professional...

I mean your response here is equally extreme if not clownish.

Do not pay for staged professional photos that convey exactly that.

If you do pay for photos, they should look _real_ like an actual photo taken with a phone while you are doing something. Way less processed, less uncanny vibes, less holding you suit button looking out into nowhere.

A good professional photo won't look like a professional photo.

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.

A good professional photo should always be taken with a smart phone.

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?

I optimized heavily on good photos. It worked for me, YMMV.

This is the correct answer. Only do dating apps as a way to do A/B testing. ;)

> conveys neediness & a level of desperation

In your experience, to what extent would displaying these qualities negatively impact a woman on a dating app?

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.

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.

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?

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)

> 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?

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.

Tangentially related: but I find professional headshots on LinkedIn also kind of weird…

My best dating apps lately have been Trader Joe's and Ducky's Car Wash.

I wear aloha shirts every day, and nearly every time I go to TJ's, someone asks me where they can find a particular item. It may be a guy or a gal, but I am always happy to help a neighbor find what they need.

That is not the reason I wear aloha shirts. I just love these shirts! Every spring I get the Cooke Street shirts at Costco, one of each new pattern.

One time at the Menlo Park Trader Joe's I was talking with the guy restocking the freezer section. He said, "Nice aloha shirt! I bet people sometimes think you work here."

Sure enough, a minute later a young lady walked up to me and asked if we had organic bread. I walked her over to the bread section and pointed out the organic breads.

Later I caught up with the freezer guy again and told him "you were right!"

Ducky's, for those unfamiliar, is a car wash with several locations on the SF Peninsula. Even if you just get an exterior wash, after you go through the tunnel they hand dry your car.

There is a waiting area outside with a dozen chairs, and it takes 5-10 minutes before your car is ready.

And you never know who you might run into there!

The key to this, of course, is to be outgoing and friendly, and open to surprises.

Ok I understood the Aloha shirt —> people thinking you’re a TJ employee —> asking for help connections. I feel there is quite a gap between here —-> getting a date. How does that work?

You start vibing and based on vibes you ask them whether you wanna grab coffee/a drink sometime soon, exchange numbers, smile and continue shopping.

You got it! The other thing is to be open to any kind of friendly interaction.

Just yesterday I was at the Redwood City TJ's and a guy asked me where to find soy milk. I wasn't as familiar with the layout of that store, but an actual crew member was standing near us, and I said "I'm not sure, but I think this gentleman can help you."

After he got his soy milk we ran into each other again, and he said "I'm sorry, I was sure you worked here. The shirt!"

I told him, "No apology needed! It happens all the time. And sometimes it's a nice young lady who asks me where to find something."

Best dating advice I ever got was "get busy doing something you are good at and proud of, and you will attract someone who appreciates that".

Apparently you are good at wearing aloha shirts and finding products. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

Tiny detail: that "something" has to be out of the house and in a populated area.

And popular with women too. You’re not going to meet many women if you’re racing motorcycles.

Yep. How amazing is it that women as well as men shop at Trader Joe's and get their cars washed at Ducky's!

Almost said nonstarter for us, people dead set on programming, but then remembered there are still co-working meetups.

Wait what lol

If you’re dead set on spending your discretionary time working and coding then dating will be impossible. I don’t think the opportunity to co-work together with others is the solution but I’m willing to be proven wrong. If this sounded snarky I don’t mean it to be, the programmer hobbyist is becoming rarer and rarer these days. Cheers

I don't know about co-working specifically, but meetups for startup founders, educational meetups for software engineering, and hackathons attract plenty of people of both genders.

That is the best dating advice I have ever heard!

And yes, you nailed what I may be good at.

I guess I am also good at having conversations with random strangers, male or female. I always smile at people - men or women - but never in a creepy way.

And I say hello if it seems appropriate. I never expect anything out of this, I just enjoy meeting my neighbors.

We built a dating app and saw these same metrics.

Our "twist" was that anyone could be a matchmaker, pairing other people (in addition to our recommendation engine).

An interesting thing happened: lot's of people just like using dating apps in a voyeuristic way, with no intention of dating.

Tinder eventually launched this feature, but it fell flat.

I still think there's merit to human-based recs over "AI" matchmakers.

I daydreamed a dating app once where all the matching was done by tween girls at pyjama parties, and everyone signing up had to abide by the matches provided. I reckon the young ladies would have a very high hit rate of who was meant to be with who.

And while I’m here, OKCupid when it existed as mostly a website around 2013 was probably the best actual dating app and attempt to provide a decent enough platform for people to express themselves, and the question answering section where it would then deliver a compatibility rating was really good. But then the churn and being bought by Match completely killed it. OKC was the first dating platform that seemed like it was genuinely designed to work.

I second the part about OKCupid.

(For the first part of your post I think I am not qualified to comment).

That makes me think of the in-person introductions my older friends have tried to arrange for me. It was a thoughtful gesture but really not a lot of consideration of what I would consider attractive.

Yeah the idea was that peers could help bolster match acceptance, both parties would still need to agree, which is much different than a blind date where you aren't interested, but have to still have to go through the in-person charade.

Candidly, assuming your gender based on your username, it would have been a net positive compared to the stats ;)

Have you done any research on the type of users who use dating apps primarily?

The article is really good on the product decisions but light on what kind of life and situation these users have.

This was over 10 years ago, but iirc the primary demographic was what you might expect: 20s to mid-30s living in urban areas, skewing lower on that spectrum.

Our data was almost identical to the article, showing the same imbalances.

I don't mean the generic demographic categories but rather similarity in behavioural patterns. Were these people terminally online, more or less attractive on average, had rich social life?

The qualities that women find attractive in men cannot be captured in a static profile on a website ... plus most of the men in that site are there because they don't have those qualities.

Let's just say that if you can open your mouth enough to say hi to a woman without hesitation, you are completely wasting your time on dating sites.

If you’re good looking, you’re not going to be wasting time on apps

These days, saying hi seems to be risky for more reasons than rejection. Maybe more so if you’re not good looking. Hence the apps

Can confirm as a good looking male, I slay on apps compared to my peers.

However I believe it also boils down to personality traits too.

Saying "Hi" isn't enough. One needs to be creative to stand out from the field. Women get absolutely swamped on the apps.

Swamped is on point. I watched my roommate-now-girlfriend get over 1,000 likes in no time at all (I can't remember well but certainly on the order of hours, not days). It was in a populated, well-off area, but still. When you see something like that, it puts a lot of this whole thing into perspective.

Women being swamped on dating apps has absolutely no relevance to saying hi in real life.

Women who are swamped on dating apps are not swamped with attention from men in real life.

They see this discrepancy, and instinctively interpret that as the dating site being a space where all the world's desperate losers have gathered.

You don't need to stand out, just not stand in that same place.

> These days, saying hi seems to be risky for more reasons than rejection. Maybe more so if you’re not good looking. Hence the apps

Its actually not, and that so many guys believe that just leaves the field unguarded

What women say online about not wanting to be approached practically anywhere is a vocal minority, and other women don't even see these conversations

Positive interactions with men are not even categorized as the ones that annoyed them, despite the interaction being the exact same. so it remains up to you to figure out where you are on that totem pole

I am above average in looks and while lots of people do like being approached, it is sometimes not so fun. I've been stalked, assaulted, molested - this is not an issue you'll hit online. And it's easier to filter the really bad news without any possibility of someone following you home.

yes, the people choosing to stalk, assault, molest are the problem and I’m sorry you experienced that and its good you found a mitigation.

its important that everyone else knows this has no bearing on whether they can approach at all, and simply choose not to stalk, assault, molest.

the issue (and proof) is the lack of accountability to those that harassed you, lots of guys believe they will be marked as one of those harassers from simply saying hi. when its much more likely thats not so, and the issue becomes the lack of accountability for the person overfitting and accusing in their attempt to filter out actual harassers

we can create accountability in both scenarios.

Just walking up to a girl in person and saying "hi" is a nuanced thing. If you set off the creeper alarms at all you're DOA, so you need to have an aura of genuine chill and say hi to them in a way that seems completely casual and un-premeditated. Then you need to have them in a captive situation for a while to make some progress (standing in line, etc) and you need to come up with a reason to continue interacting with them later, and you need them to find you funny/charming/attractive/interesting enough that they give you contact information and don't just automatically ghost you.

This applies to when you approach girls cold. If you're really hot it's a different game, girls will just give you that look when you're walking around on the street, at the mall, etc, and if you walk up and say hi to them they will fuck you if you play it cool at all.

There are other approaches such as manufacturing social proof and demand for yourself

Many women are pretty traumatized by the captive situation logic, because a lot of guys do that and its pretty obvious. Like a beggar on the street “asking a question” and you already know to ignore it but want to give the benefit of the doubt that its not about money

Manufacturing social integration is a deep but fairly simple topic that many people find attractive, but it nullifies the need to try to prolong an interaction with a woman and is pretty much the opposite. where essentially you’re too cool and have too much going on to entertain her. if you’re interested in women, plural, it doesnt have to be hard or a coveted thing with much work behind it. and you’re not putting her in a captive situation so your already ahead of the pack

honestly most attraction are gender neutral concepts that work with business partners and relationship partners a like

That used to be true in the pre-Tinder age. Tinder and other mobile dating apps have somehow normalized dating among both the highly social and the good looking.

Tech bros rewrote millions of years of evolution in a decade. You heard it here.

Nonsense. Looking good on dating apps is like fishing with dynamite.

We’re in agreement there. I think my wording was a bit confusing in my sentence (“not wasting time” as in apps will be hella effective)

You're relying on outdated stereotypes. Online dating is the most common way new couples meet and has been for years.

I can only speak about my personal experience (and this was also in the pre-tinder times and on OKCupid, so generally a more nerdy than average demo), but I had the experience that even if one isn’t top-looking, women were generally impressed if you could string whole sentences together and showed reading comprehension of their profile. That seems like a very, very low standard, but from what I was told, that filtered out a lot of people.

I thought it was power & wealth, fairly easy to capture in a profile

[dead]

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

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.

What did you do to growth hack Tinder? Seems significantly harder than OkCupid as profiles aren't public and it's predicated on one-by-one swiping.

I'll talk about the things I'm willing to post publicly (feel free to email me for what I can only say in private).

1. Get the BEST possible pictures of you. If your picture doesn't look like the best picture you've taken all year, don't use it. Just know that online dating is more about being photogenic and looking good in the perceptions of others than actually looking good. However, if you're unattractive IRL, make sure you have a way to compensate for that. I am a really playful person during dates and that lightens the mood a lot to the extent that some women start to see me as attractive but that's simply positive vibes being associated to my looks

2. Rate your pictures. I use photofeeler.com, there's also rankpick.info. You need at least 3 8.5 pictures, I barely got them after 50 well crafted/taken photos. My friends got them way quicker (I'm a tough case due to a cleft lip and small shoulders)

3. How to start a conversation: make a comment based on her pictures. It's the best trade-off between being original and writing a fast conversation starter. The more imaginative and creative you are, the better

4. Don't be standard. No "what are your hobbies?" style type of conversation

5. If you write a bio it has to pop. If your bio doesn't pop, just keep it short. Stuff that I had:

  Cuddle champion of 2019 <-- just a playful eye catcher
  Meditation for 2 hours per day <-- wasn't true (I did 1 hour per day but aimed for 2. All is fair in love & war)
  city 1/city 2/ city 3/ city 4 <-- city 1 = home city, city 2 = city I'm currently nomadding at, city 3 & 4 = the cities I plan to go to or cities that just sound hip
  
  Shout out to:
  - Group of people you like #1 (e.g. artists)
  - Group of people you like #2 (e.g. geeks)
  - Group of people you like #3 (e.g. ambitious people)
  --> Give fun names to them such as: creative people with an imagination, board game lovers and people that want to conquer the world

My most successful opener by far was simply saying her name with followed by an exclamation mark. If she responded at all (almost always by my name followed by an exclamation mark), then it usually resulted in a lay. Other openers could very easily result in a waste of my time.

Interesting, will mention this to friends who are dating

Thanks, those are all the pretty standard things I've read about as well, especially about optimizing photos. I had thought you did some advanced scraping and data analysis like the OkCupid guy above but regardless I'll email you.

Sorry but if I ever start growth hacking my fucking tinder profile promptly push me off a cliff.

edit: Sorry for the inflammatory language. Not one of my finer moments.

This is what your competition has been doing for a decade

Just leave the app if you don't want to participate

Guys have to behave like attractive women do, which is discerning and the opposite of how guys use the apps, OP’s article gives the rubric

I get it man. A part of me feels the same way. The practical part of me however decided just to get on with it

Online dating is toxic, and I fought it back with toxic and somehow through all of that I found my dream wife and I tol her all about what I did. She agreed that what I did was toxic, but that there's a "the means justify the end" ethics at play since we found each other

With that said: I don't think the dating scene should work this way. It's too much based on being photogenic and having beautiful looks. And this comes from someone who knows the ins and outs of training charisma and finding a potential partner that way (still possible but not in the initial steps of online dating)

Has anyone noticed that the histograms have some spikes and valleys that are probably artifacts?

My guess is that there's some rounding or floating point shannanigans going on.

Yes this is what I have to contribute to the conversation, I cannot speak to the dating dynamics as I am an unexpert on that subject

There's definitely something going on there that needs review or explanation.

If it's not an error, perhaps it involves something where once your profile approaches certain cutoffs for liked/viewed ratio, the system changes how (and to whom) it presents your profile... Except the higher and lower outliers are not always adjacent either.

Yes this bugged me too

Dating apps are nothing more than window shopping. The lowest effort, most shallow, unlimited options buffet of meat sacks to choose from.

When you have unlimited options, and a potentially better one is just a swipe away, people become disposable. Fuck or not fuck. Hot or not. Bang or pass. Where in the past someone might tolerate an insignificant quirk someone has, nowadays such a thing is often all that it takes to ghost and keep looking.

The users that get a lot of matches often put in zero effort into talking. They expect you to do all the conversation, and often act uninterested, if you ever get a reply after the match at all. Matching and never getting a reply after contact is more common than not, regardless of how much thought and time is put into the first message.

Profiles often read more like a list of demands, a quota that must be reached before you'll even be considered worthy. This is true for all the genders.

"Make me laugh" is a demand that I've seen on countless profiles. Entertain me monkey, make me laugh. So many "Make me laugh"s that I've started to wonder if most of the profiles I see are actually bot/scammer accounts, because so many of them have slight variations of the same exact profile bios. AI is only going to make that shit show worse, and I'm sure many people are already trying to wine and dine an AI profile and have no clue.

Let's also not forget about the clear "looking for a greencard" mail order bride profiles, and the weird as fuck profiles where each picture has a child as the focus of every picture, very intentionally so, in a way that I can't quantify but when you run across them, it just feels off, weird, saying something without saying something.

Dating apps are all exactly the same anymore. Same fake profiles. Same gamification of attraction that you have to pay to win or have to grind every day against those who do.

Dating apps are not there to match people. That would put them out of business. They are there to extract funds from wallets while keeping you hopeful that your perfect 10 is one more premium teir up the chain, one more swipe away, one more billing cycle in the future.

Make me laugh is just a proxy for iq.

Not being on the apps is a proxy for iq

Equal parts fascinating and dystopian.

I'm even more convinced now that online dating has reached a local optima, but eventually someone is going to find a solution that is less shallow and predatory and blow it out of the water.

I’m more cynical. Dating apps are easy, and entertaining. Finding a good person to spend your life (or a prolonged period) with is hard. I’m not sure there is an external solution to this in the world we live in - it’s like getting fit. People need to suck it up and put in the work if they want results.

My understanding is that dating apps just let you meet people. What you do after that and how much effort you put in is up to you.

Picking that example when we're entering into the ozempic era is brave

Hahaha I did think of that. Unfortunately as much as it helps, it won’t give you gains.

I think they’re pretty close to global max on “relationship-flavored entertainment app for single adults”

Optima for “stable-relationship-forming app” are yet to be discovered — and also, I think, to really be sought at all

OKCupid was doing pretty well at this until they were acquired.

Yeah I just mentioned this in a different comment. OKC stunned me when it came out because it seemed so interesting and effective. I met my ex-wife on there! Ha.

Living by yourself is becoming increasingly regular and marriage is sharply declining amongst people who didn’t attend college. I don’t think software is gonna fix this.

If anything, usage of dating apps makes it worse, leading to more dependence on apps, as the social technology of couples meeting outside apps decays. Self-reinforcing feedback loop.

> More than 50% of men just never receive a like, and never means maybe 2 or 3 likes in the lifespan of several weeks

Half the user base are patsies is basically the fundamental design.

Math checks out:

if women use 4 criteria (face, body, money, iq) with a strict cutoff of even 55th percentile, they will reduce their like ratio to 4%. (0.45 ^ 4 =0.04)

Men are using only 2 criteria (face and body) to get to 25% like ratio: need 50th percentile on both: (0.5 ^ 2 = 0.25)

He ends with a very interesting proposition to "fix" dating apps:

> To me, the next revolution is really concepts that will make you meet other people without having much information about them. As a user, you will trust the algorithm to match you with the right people. And these concepts will be paying only

> So to summarize, a concept where users pay and commit that they will meet people without knowing them before. So yes, it will take a few dates to really find someone that you like, but so is going every day in dating apps and meeting people that you don't like either.

This is very close to the Dutch app Breeze: https://breeze.social/. There's no chatting in the app. It's focused on meeting people as soon as possible. People pre-pay for dates (covers drinks) and the app partners with venues to check on the couples (they know their names). People who cancel dates get a badge on their profile saying that they have canceled. Ghosters get banned.

Breeze arguably is even more superficial than other apps. You don’t get the chance to talk or anything. You have to show up and make it work.

For most women, you’re only going to do that with a guy you’re 100% physically attracted to from the get go.

I wouldn’t recommend Breeze to any men who aren’t above average in looks. It will also quickly stop showing you people when you’re getting rejected a lot. An interesting aspect of the app. At least you’ll know where you stand after about a week or two. (Getting only 3 options a day says that it thinks you’re not going to ever get a match)

Breeze is in NYC now. So, it’s making way into the US slowly.

Thanks. These are really good points.

My anecdotal user-end data-science-ish story about dating apps:

A few years back I was single and on Hinge a fair amount. If you used Hinge back then, you'll remember some key differences between the platform and other dating apps: 1) when you "like"'d someone, you'd have to comment on a specific part of their profile (a photo, a prompt answer, etc), 2) these likes showed up in their inbox, independent of whether they liked you or not (as in, you didn't have to like each other mutually; the other end decided whether to reply or ignore after delivery), and 3) there was limit per day, you could like/message 8 profiles per day, no more. On average, swiping through my 8 per day, I'd generally get 1-2 new replies, which turned roughly into 3-4 first dates per month.

One of the key elements is that the inbox was time-ordered: the most recent like you received was at the top. There was discussion on the Hinge subreddit about how girls would typically only click through the top few items in their inbox daily, and if you were lower down, you were doomed to drown under the mountain of new message they're getting on top. So I figured I'd solve for "what is the optimal time of day to be blasting out my likes to ensure I end up higher in the inbox?"

You can probably see where this is going: I requested a GDPR data export, which happened to have all my conversations, time-stamped. Crunching through in Python there was something in the data I didn't really expect.. a disproportionate number of first-replies (replies to my initial like/message, that is) were around the 2-3pm bucket. Not what I would've expected (don't these people work?) but fair enough, I started doing all my swiping in those hours instead of in the evening as I usually did.

And it worked. Good god did it work. I consistently started getting replies to 70-80% of my initial messages (from the ~10% before). I was drowning in conversations to the point where I wouldn't swipe at all for days for fear of yet another conversation to manage. Within a few months I ended up meeting my current girlfriend and haven't been back on since, but it was surprising how well something simple like time-of-day affected my reply rate.

> don't these people work?

They do! 2-3 p.m. is around the time people get fidgety at work and start looking at the clock, checking their phones, and such. They are no longer at lunch. Whatever busywork they had to rush through in the morning is done.

That's similar to getting votes on HN, it's mostly about appearing near the top of the comments, and that has mostly to so with getting in relatively early.

You also need to be reasonably good at commenting (ie, don't be ugly).

Or just reply and hijack the top comment.

Quite interesting! But you’re leaving us hanging, did you ask her why she was on Hinge at 2pm?

I never talked to any of the girls about this. Pretty obviously "I analyzed the data from hundreds of conversations to optimize..." is not a good look.

I'm pretty confident though that it's just the after-lunch doldrums and people just.. sit around swiping at work? Best guess anyway

It could be deeper, maybe they start thinking about their evening plans?

My guess is that time would be the first little work-break from the post-lunch session. About an hour after lunch and you take a little break pause so you swipe on Hinge to see if you got any matches.

You sound like a manager.

This is the spirit of Hacker News. Now this is hacking!

Funny, thank you for sharing. I wonder what the relationship with girl's age is.

I would imagine there are huge differences between let's say 20,25,30 and 35+.

Did you happen to group by age bucket ?!

I did not, because I filter on pretty strict ranges ("half your age plus seven" was my lower bound, my age was the upper bound). Not enough of a spread there to get any interesting statistics.

> ("half your age plus seven" was my lower bound,

i remember reading about this rule of thumb but dang, i'm 35 and can't imagine dating someone that's 24-25 right now. no judgments here btw.

Any problem can be solved with enough data munging.

It really highlights that volume of interactions is the issue that dating apps are failing to solve.

https://xkcd.com/196/

> 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

> I will mostly ignore homosexual interactions.

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.

Another assumption that doesn't really work is that there must be equal numbers of male and female homosexual groups.

Assuming that male and female behavior doesn't change regardless of the partner they're seeking, it will still be true that the more groups are gay, the higher the acceptance rate will be, and it will also be true that gays are more interested in forming these groups than lesbians are.

Lesbian numbers are negligible. Pursuing women is a sport dominated by men. Even Trump won’t ban men (trans or not) from pursuing lesbian women.

I already knew a lot of what was written here but for some reason reading this made me uninstall bumble.

I paid for a lifetime membership to Bumble premium a couple years ago, but as I noticed matches/likes declining for no apparent reason, I made a 2nd account with different credentials, paid for a week of premium, and had a bunch of matches (exact same profile as my other account).

From my anecdotal experience, they have some algorithm that leads to diminishing returns in order to keep extracting money for boosts or whatever.

sounds like you're swiping through people inyour area faster than they join?

I'm a digital nomad and changing locations frequently, so I have actually tried this A/B test a couple times when arriving in a brand new city. Same results.

The author pointed out in the article that users who join are shown to users who have been on the platform the longest and are thus more likely to provide likes because they are more desperate.

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.

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.

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.

Or just use a kernel density plot, goodness.

> 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!

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.

And at some places like Hinge, they'll identify your type so well that your "standouts" page (the one you have to pay to message people on) will be composed of 100% people you would probably like to speak to while your free feed will just be composed of people you have no interest in talking to!

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.

They know what you like, but remember they want to make money. You finding success means you are probably less likely to get desperate and pay for premium options on their app. They drip feed you as little success as possible to still keep you on the app, but make you desperate.

It sucks, but a dating app doesn't want you successful, they want you to use their app for as long as possible.

I also had that reaction, but I kept reading and it was worth it. They mean it in a very narrow sense, and talk about the nuances and challenges of practical recommendation for much of the rest of the article.

If this doesn't all make perfect sense and square with your observations you're not jaded enough.

I worked in this space briefly. This is a really good article in line with the conclusion of the OK Cupid! team which were scrubbed from their web site but are in this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataclysm

If you're a guy and you want to depress yourself, find a female friend who is signed to a dating app and see all the likes and messages she gets. When I was in this space, an attractive woman was getting on the order of 1000 messages a day. 95% of those messages were one-worders, "hi", "wassup". Basically a total tsunami of garbage.

LLMs are going to change this space enormously as they are going to act as your agent to talk to the other person's agent. The world of online dating is going to be horrible.

I already know people who have dozens of verified female dating app profiles staffed by LLMs and overseas operators that they use to trick men into clicking links to generate revenue.

Enshittification all round.

The OK Cupid blog was on my mind as I read it as well.

The thing interesting about that blog was — if I remember it correctly — they posted results of initiations by men and women. That suggested there was kind of an optimal strategy for men and women, in that there was kind of mismatching going on in terms of who reached out to who.

IIRC, they were suggesting that it was good for women to reach out to very attractive men, because men in general were not getting contacted, including attractive men, but were responsive to being contacted, and a woman could take advantage of that, even if they were less attractive themselves. Men in contrast would do better to reach out to women who were slightly less attractive, because most of mens' attention collectively was focused on a very small group of very attractive women, and the women who were less attractive, even slightly so, were getting contacted much less often.

Typing this out I think the distributions were very different from in the current article, but also I think they were analyzing different things. In that they were looking at actual initiations, and in this they're looking at likes. Also this article breaks things down a bit more in terms of goals in using the app, which plays into things as well in a big way.

The complexity of it all increases quite a bit very rapidly.

To me, it reveals that women are not really interested in dating.

Women go on app when they feel a bit sad, when they need to feel a bit better.

People want to stay single. Introversion is on the rise.

I don't think it says that. I think it confirms that they are extremely picky and that these apps amplify that, making things worse for everyone except the apps... which is the point, to make money, not hook people up with healthy lasting relationships. This is yet another externality of capitalism.

To me, being extremely picky rhymes with not wanting a relationship.

I live in france and somebody said on the radio that the state family fund (CAF) should organize dancing ball for people to meet.

Maybe the core problem is that dating apps should not make money, or at least find another way to make money.

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.

They sure make money though.

Retention is at odds with the goals of the users of dating apps. I wonder if there’s a more aligned system that charges for premium features when there’s inactivity. Or you can only use the app’s premium features again after some period of inactivity if you pay

Inactivity serving as a potential signal that you found a match, or you’re no longer in the market. Although the incentive system would have to ensure the app isn’t aligned to make the experience so annoying you stop using it either

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.

> the infamous OKcupid study

Not sure which of these you meant, but here's links for those who haven't read them:

The one blog post that got removed when match-dot-com (InterActiveCorp) bought OKC in 2011-Feb:

https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldneverpa...

The other OKC data analysis posts (archive link to 2011-Jan):

https://web.archive.org/web/20110126012317/http://blog.okcup...

It does imply a potentially interesting algorithm though:

Show all of the women to all of the men. From this you get numbers on which women are the most highly rated. Then, show women a) men who are at the same percentile as them or below and b) the smaller number of men who have already liked them.

The result is that 60th percentile women end up primarily liking 60th percentile men and so on, because they're the highest rated men they're typically shown, and they're going to pick the top 5% of whatever distribution you show them.

Then you end up with good matches, instead of having all the women match only with the 95th percentile players who don't want a serious relationship.

This only works in a vacuum. In the real world women will just close your app and open the one that has hot guys. I do wonder what would happen if you told people their own ranking and the ranking of their recommendations plainly though.

The only way to find out if it will show them hot guys is by using it for a while, at which point they'll already have liked some normal guys. Who then reply to them and aren't all pickup artists and make them want to keep using this app instead of the one that only matches them with polygamous himbos.

won't work. many women won't end up liking anyone. And like he said, the most expensive thing to acquire is women. You have to be able to give women their "dream man" to retain them. And in apps, much much much more so than in real life, they will mostly all choose the same dream man.

showing a 60 percentile woman, men that around 60 percentile is a sure way to drive women away from your app

> many women won't end up liking anyone.

The implication being that the 60th percentile women who don't like 60th percentile men would have liked 95th percentile men. But that's useless, because finding matches for those men was never your problem to begin with. And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a hookup, so you're neither solving any problem for the platform nor any problem for the women.

> You have to be able to give women their "dream man" to retain them.

That's just a charade. The 60th percentile women on average can't actually land the 95th percentile men, but if you show them all the 95th percentile men then it reduces the rate at which they like the men they could actually land, which frustrates both the men and the women, because they're both looking for real matches that could actually go somewhere.

> showing a 60 percentile woman, men that around 60 percentile is a sure way to drive women away from your app

If you show them 95th percentile men then they like them but so do most other women, and then the men in that group will either not reply to most of them or will reply to all of them intending to ghost them after having sex or cheat on them, which... is a sure way to drive women away from your app.

> And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a hookup

That’s exactly what happens. Those guys have plenty of hookup opportunities, and the women have the mirage of being able to get any guy, just for some reason all these jerks only want sex, but somehow someday one will stick

Which is why you need to take away the mirage so they stop chasing it and go find actual water.

Having them leave the app isn't any worse than having them never like anyone they could actually land. Having the ones with impossible standards go malign your competitors could even be to your advantage, because then the competing apps get a higher proportion of the women who never reply, whereas the thing you need to make your app work is to have the women who do reply.

if women left the app, guys would leave. possibility of connecting with women is what's being sold to paying customers on dating apps. Without ladies, the men leaves and the app dies.

It isn't all women who leave, it's the ones who refuse to have anything to do with men in the same percentile as they are themselves. And you couldn't sell that to men anyway.

less women overall, worse experience for guys, paying customers leave. App dies. Its a vicious cycle. A dating app, commercially has no reason to chase women off. A woman who is present and only occasionally swipes is very very commercially viable.

Your premise is that this would chase women off. Let's consider their experience.

Under the status quo, they get shown 100 guys and like five of them. Four are above the 95th percentile and two of those never even reply. The other two are players. The fifth was at the same percentile as the woman and is the only interaction we're trying to preserve because it's the only one of any genuine value to either her or him. He also replies, so she gets three replies, but the two players are hotter so her first two dates are with them. They both suck and one is so sleazy it turns her off the app before she even goes on the third date that might have been good, and she's gone. And if she's not gone yet then she matches with another player before she goes on a date with the third guy, so even if she goes on the date she's already written him off because she's got a date with another philandering Ken doll the day after.

Now suppose you don't show her those guys. She doesn't like as many people at first -- only three or four instead of five. But they're all in the same percentile as she is, they all reply, none of them are players, and she goes on dates she actually enjoys. She's now going to be on this app until she enters a committed relationship with someone instead of quitting after two bad dates.

Yeah I guess. If we could get Trump to nuke Tinder or something I don’t know that I’d loudly oppose it. It would be better for all of us for that mirage to go away, but the fact is women choose it. They do land the guy occasionally. Only it turns into a situationship, hot-cold, disappearing and coming back later, the illusion of him just slipping through her grasp (even if there was no chance at a real relationship from the start). I’ve watched as female friends have gone through it over and over. You wanna say something, but at the same time, we all have our delusions, and it’s especially hard to be real with yourself when an addictive slot machine makes money from your remaining deluded.

> You have to be able to give women their "dream man" to retain them

Same strategy as attracting men: fake profiles and spambots.

how do you get the percentile ranking for the men to do the matching with?

Being shown to people who don't like you causes you to move down. Being liked causes you to move up. Apply the relevant statistical math to apply a slightly stronger signal when the like is from someone who themselves is higher rated.

You missed the fundamental point. The only ranking that can be done via a dating app is a ranking of the attributes that can be shared via a dating app. That will always leave out the attributes that would otherwise be shared via person-to-person interaction.

The only way to meaningfully change this situation is by sorting/ranking after interpersonal interaction.

The article identifies a very specific problem. Women will swipe through the app and reject the bottom 95% of the men immediately, but then all of them women end up matching with only 5% of the men. This is useless to both the 95% of men who don't get any matches and the 95% of women who can't all be in a monogamous relationship with that 5% of men.

In theory you could just stop showing the top 5% of men to anyone, but that's pretty useless. Then the 90-95th percentile men would get all the matches and you haven't solved anything.

You could assign percentiles at random so that some 80th percentile women only see 40th percentile men and vice versa, but that seems less likely to work for obvious reasons.

The problem you need to solve is to get the 60th percentile women to go on a date with the 60th percentile men to begin with. What happens then is up to them, but at least you're putting people in a situation that could lead to something, instead of the one:many matching that sucks for everyone except the players.

Again, this is all predicated on what data can be measured inside the app.

The top 5% of men would be a completely different group if it was measured differently. It's not the actual men we are ranking here, it's their profiles.

How to measure it isn't really a difficulty. It's the ones who cause the women to hit the like button.

Are you even reading my comments?

Men are dying of thirst in the desert and women are dying of thirst in the ocean.

(not my analogy, but IMO very succinct)

More like dying of thirst in lake Baikal, if the analogy meant abundance of choice. Desert and ocean both contain no drinkable water.

the implication is that they have a lot of water but it's unpalatable or toxic most of the time and needs filtering I think - easy matches but most of them bad?

Most men are insane from frustration, not unpalatable or toxic.

If the first part of your description is true, then the second needs corrected by replacing the "not...or..." with "therefore...and...".

"Insane from frustration" explains, rather than contradicts, "unpalatable" and "toxic".

People generally do not want to have an insane, frustrated partner.

It's literally enough to sip the surrounding water, it's that easy. Truly toxic frustrated people never have problem with finding sexual partners.

The one I heard was "dying of thirst in the swamp." Lots and lots of water, but nothing you can stomach.

The blog post wasn't taken down because of DEI reasons like you imply. Match group acquired the company and the blog post which can be still be found online said that you shouldn't pay for a dating site because of how ineffective they are.

The okcupid labs reports are still available through archive if you're interested. I don't have the links handy at the moment (they're on an old laptop I think), but if you know what you're looking for, you can probably find it by searching with site:reddit.com/r/okupid or "OKCupid study" site:reddit.com , grabbing the URL, then plugging into archive.org

One thing that lead to this problem is that pretending every relationship goal must be bundled together with every other relationship goal.

There is nothing invalid about wanting casual sex. The problem is failing to communicate that that is what you want. The result of that problem is "players" of "the game" devolving the entire situation into something that is fundamentally intractable for everyone involved.

It turns out that a significant percentage of women do want casual sex. The overwhelming majority of those women also don't want to be exclusively objectified and used, because that leads to poor quality sex, and a general lack of post-sex aftercare (which is important groundwork for good next-time sex). This situation is nearly always expressed by women with the same overgeneralized story that paints every man who has ever interacted with her as an abusive narcissist. The problem is that a woman's desire for casual sex is overwhelmingly catered to by men who ignore this story, and most of those men do so by behaving (intentionally or not) as abusive narcissists. Why? Because the men who do listen to this story are left with no meaningful room to make a move.

We have too much narrative focus on women telling men "don't". Obviously that's an important discussion to have, it just needs to be accompanied by women telling men what to "do", and "how". Most men really need to hear everything a woman is concerned about, good and bad.

Dating apps have involved themselves in this problem by replacing dating itself with advertising. If a woman has a real conversation with a man, then there is real room for her to lay out positive interest. On the other hand, if a woman advertises her positive interests, then she is effectively asking for both constructive and harmful interaction. So very few women actually communicate (on a dating app) any interest other than a desire for committed romance. Those who do are overwhelmed with men who finally found what they are looking for. Those who don't are overwhelmed with men who just want to check behind the curtain.

If a man wants to advertise himself as a thoughtful listener, there is no meaningful way for him to prove he is genuine. If a man wants to advertise himself as the best compromise (who will give you lazy sex, but be hot enough to make up the difference), then he must compete with the rest on a scale of immediate attractiveness and nothing more.

---

Like most of our social problems, the advertising model sits right at the heart of it. My answer to that is to do something about its foundation: eliminate (or significantly redesign) copyright.

> most guys don't open the profiles of a girl, and girls open much more often but more for discarding a user than for looking for more information

this is a factor of why it is a loosing strategy to do dinner, drinks and coffee dates

first the user experience is an arduous interview that is reliant on a “spark” that leaves too much to chance

secondly, the ask is for somewhere you can hear each other, “get to know each other”, and have one foot out the door easily to leave

on the woman’s side…. its the same as this article is saying: for disqualifying, not qualifying.

for the guys side, whatever your goal is, would be accomplished by disregarding the woman’s preference. in reality, she likely did go on a more elaborate and rambunctious date, generated endorphins (the spark), got more intimate than her risk models dictate, and then realized she didn't know the guy.

if you want any of that to happen, be like the other guy

it is optimal to be like the 5% guy that is closing with women. if you cannot replicate that on dating apps, you may be able to with other in person approaches and date ideas

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.

> 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.

Well, sure, but you can lead a horse to water... . The less hot guys might be better options for those girls, but are they going to swipe on them? If you stop showing them the hot guys, will they stick around for the less hot guys or just switch to a different app?

Turns out even highly motivated professionals don't understand that correlation is not causality:

> For girls, it is the number of likes sent; the number of likes received has no impact on retention, maybe a little bit but less than 1%. The number of likes sent has a huge impact; a user that liked no profile in her 100 first scrolls has a d30 of 12%, and 19% for girls that like 10 profiles and 16% for girls that liked 5 profiles. The d1 retention is almost 100% correlated to a girl sending 5 likes to active guys in the first 24 hours (the real thing is to get a match, but it is easy to get a match when a girl sends 5 likes). So to have the perfect d1 retention for girls, the only thing you should focus on is to get them to send 5 likes. And you have about 100 scrolls to do so.

If you read the article, it is very clear that the author understands that this correlation is not causation. He points out numerous times that the thing which causes girls to send likes is that their feed contains attractive men.

My point was that they misunderstood that sending likes does not necessarily cause later user retention just because it correlates with it.

I really appreciate the writer sharing their insights, but I wish they had asked someone (or an LLM) to proof read their writing.

I'm starting to love when text is not perfect. So genuine!)

> Guys that the girls think she wants to see but she will never like

Brutal.

I definitely noticed I was using the apps more for entertainment than for dating. Which is why I stopped using them.

Agree. People are addicted to the dopamine hit of matches and message pings. I'm a pretty good judge now of whether someone is just bored at working passing time on the apps or whether they're serious about meeting. Oh and all the time wasters get really shirty if you call them out on it, so I stopped doing that long ago

> 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.

> 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.

I’m not accusing you of being an incel (I’m really not trying to be sarcastic). But this has some real incel vibes.

Are you a 2 only trying to date 10s?

And I am not looking down from you from on high. I’m not wealthy. I’m doing okay. I’m definitely not tall. In my younger dating days I was in great shape (a part time fitness instructor) and if I weren’t out there as one of the few straight men without any feminine tendencies (is that a PC thing to say?) in a industry mostly with women and gay men, I wouldn’t have fared as well.

But I wasn’t 5 foot 4 trying to step to a 5 foot 10 supermodel.

They probably are literally involuntarily celibate.

Women in the west are choosing, quite reasonably, to hook up with the top 20% of men and ignore the rest. I'm not saying that as a blame thing - I don't blame them, I might make the same choice in their position. But the result is that the bottom 80% of men have practically no options - and no, lowering their standards doesn't help, it's not a problem of having potential partners they don't want, it's a problem of not having potential partners at all. I wish we could at least be honest about this rather than victim-blaming.

61% of women in the US are married or cohabitating and that doesn’t include those who are dating.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-...

Yes I know that not all women are heterosexual. But I also didn’t include women who are in a heterosexual relationship but are not living with someone.

It’s statistically impossible for only 20% of the men to be in a relationship or having sex.

> 61% of women in the US are married or cohabitating and that doesn’t include those who are dating.

> It’s statistically impossible for only 20% of the men to be in a relationship or having sex.

That's a backward-looking number though. Look at how fast the lines on your link's graph are dropping, and what that implies the rate might be among the newest cohorts.

Is much of that disparity due to economic causes?

From my original citation:

> Among those ages 25 to 54, 59% of Black adults were unpartnered in 2019. This is higher than the shares among Hispanic (38%), White (33%) and Asian (29%) adults.

https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/wealth-gaps-across-ra...

Many people don’t want to get married until they are financially stable.

(On a side note: I had no idea that there was such a disparity between Black weslth and White wealth and I’m Black).

Ignoring race, but males aren’t doing as well financially as in the past and they may have something to do with them dating less and getting married less often.

While the previous commenter's numbers are exaggerated, the data from articles like this (and a decade ago, from okcupid), consistently shows stark asymmetry between the dating preferences of men and women - to the disadvantage of men in the "bottom" 50%. Before marrying, most of those 61% of women dated other men, and likely with a strong skew towards the top 20% as claimed.

I finally get a chance to pull this obscure study out of my back pocket. It supports your thesis. I’m short by the way and married for the first time at 28 and the second time at 38 (still married). Short men are never in the top 20%.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/link-between-mens-height-divo...

Tall men were found to marry sooner in life, but were more at risk for divorce later on, as shorter men had more stable marriages. However, researchers note that the link between short men and stable marriages could be because they chose to marry later (or didn't have the option until later). Tall men were also more likely to marry women closer to their age, and who were better-educated.

> Women in the west are choosing, quite reasonably, to hook up with the top 20% of men and ignore the rest.

Ive been living abroad the past few years and it was night and day. in america, intimacy was a rare thing. outside the country, I've had zero issues finding partners who I find extremely attractive. Some of my well meaning friends back home warn me that they are "only interested in money" but I've never spent more than a meal at a decently priced restaurant for two. My current gf is significantly hotter than women who reject me back in the states and the only expensive thing about her is her love of instax photography. (that film ain't cheap, learn from me and do not get one of those cameras for your gf)

TLDR: if western women arent' interested in you, do everything you can to be able to sustainably live outside the bubble.

This kind of advice only works if you’re not interested in a woman who works. You’re not going to be getting an ambitious woman from abroad and bringing her back to the US. Most of those women would already be in the US if they were interested in such a path to begin with.

> This kind of advice only works if you’re not interested in a woman who works.

Personally, I don't want a woman that works because I travel and I'd rather she travel fulltime with me. However, in my experience, latinas and asians are some of the hardest working women you'll ever meet. They seek out education and a lot of them want careers. they just arent' super entrepreneurial. Thats more about the culture they come though. people in the third world get drilled into their heads the importance of getting the right certifications. Once you get that shrink wrap off, you'd be surprised how many do start thinking about starting their own businesses.

> Most of those women would already be in the US if they were interested in such a path to begin with.

I couldn't disagree more. most latin people dont' wanna come to the united states. they value family and community more. Besides, the united states is notoriously difficult to come in legally. I'm trying to get my gf a visa and the application process requires a full interview, a year of waiting AND a nonrefundable fee. its not a surprise to me at all that people try to come in illegally.

How much of what you want is really representative of what an average American man wants? You want to travel fulltime, probably don't want kids, and are okay with a woman regardless of her income.

It's a very niche target you're aiming at. Most people want kids, most people want someone who works, and most people don't want to travel fulltime. Your advice really seems tailored to you and no one else.

> Your advice really seems tailored to you and no one else.

not at all. yes I have specific needs in a partner but there are plenty of women in colmobia, mexico and elsewhere that would be happy to live in the united states and start a family. my partner and I discussed it and she's happy to do so when the time is right. She's young enough that we have plenty of time.

by all means, if you like the attitudes of american women, go for it. but if you're a good guy and jsut can't seem to be valued by them, I also suggest getting out of the country and seeing what you can find. even if things dont work with my partner, I personally would never date another american woman. I wont say why because I would rather not get downvoted.

He wants a wife that will be both attractive, loving, AND pulling in a $500k+ salary.

While I personally think it’s a pretty bad way to live life and I more agree with your overall stance (my wife is American but she is second generation immigrant from an Asian country and I can quite appreciate the difference in culture you are hinting at, thankfully she grew up with strong values from her parents more consistent with the ones of a first-generation immigrant like myself), I admit it’s going to be hard for him to fit the last requirement with someone from abroad (it still can be done though).

My speculation is that he comes from certain cultures that tend to be extremely aspirational, and given his looks and general transactional attitude he is going to be extremely disappointed in the long term, and he is robbing himself of precious years of love, affection and meaning chasing silly pursuits like cosmetic surgeries to improve his dating odds.

But I agree that if he wants all those requirements he probably should look for someone who is already a professional in the US.

> He wants a wife that will be both attractive, loving, AND pulling in a $500k+ salary.

And if she has all of that, why would she date “down”? She can pick anyone she wants. I don’t know anything about the parent commenter. He said he was “unattractive” and I assume lacks self confidence. I’m in no way trying to criticize him.

And if he were born “poor” (again his words), he probably still comes across as someone who has “imposters syndrome”. Women can smell someone who lacks self confidence a mile away.

I didn't put any of those specific requirements out there. I've said a professional working woman. If she made $500k+/yr, that'd be very nice but I don't think that's even remotely plausible for someone of my looks. I've known several women who fit that criterion and all have expressed that I'm way below their looks threshold. Women at or above that income tend to get exactly what they want from a partner. I've yet to meet one that is lacking in great options.

Overall, I'm interested in a more balanced relationship. I want to be involved in my children's day-to-day life and be a present partner as well. I can certainly make enough on my own to afford a $3m mortgage, private school for the kids, and so forth. I've already done it but it has a great cost in terms of my time and energy. I'm not interested in a transactional relationship where I'm used for my financial resources. I don't want someone to be with me due to their reliance on me for financial support either. I've been in that situation already and it's not fun to question whether someone actually loves you or just loves your ability to spend money on them.

I'd rather be with someone who genuinely loves me for who I am and can keep up with the demands that living in the bay area requires. I come from an incredibly poor background and don't expect someone to be where I'm at but if they can't even afford to support themselves adequately with their own labor in some place like NYC or SFBA then we're going to be incompatible.

You also said that you would want a wife who could have your back it you lost your job and help pay $20K a month mortgage for a $7 million dollar home.

I hate to tell you. But really attractive women don’t have to work.

And you are going to be single for a long time…

Do you realize how hard is with the price of childcare to have a woman who works and have kids?

In my circle of professionals, most wives with small kids don’t work and even many of the wives that do work, the husbands can afford for them not to work. One entire income goes to things like college funds, investments, vacations, etc.

But you said in another reply that you made $700K and you really still need to worry about having a wife that works or her income?

I’ve travel full time for a year when I was making $225K with my wife and next year we plan to travel at least through the summer.

Honestly, after you get a certain age, a lot of American women expect you not to need them to work.

So I was downstairs at my hangout spot at the bar where I’m good friends with the bartender. A group of us started talking and this 45 year old lady who was attractive, a lawyer, multiple paid off properties, with two small kids going through a divorce and she was saying if she gets serious about someone, it would have to be someone who could pay all of the bills so if she didn’t want to work, she didn’t have to.

But if she did work, her money was her money. She would use it to buy for her kids, help her family (aging parents mostly). Her husband shouldn’t expect “her” money to be used for household expenses. Funny enough, I have a cousin who is in her early 50s also a lawyer with her own practice, divorced with two grown children and a 14 year old who feels the same way.

She wants to be able to stop working. You would be surprised at the number of self sufficient American women who really don’t want to work.

For me personally, I’ve been married since I was 38 and my wife was 36 and we agreed for her to stop working when I was 46 and she was 44.

First I didn’t want her working during Covid in 2020 and then after Covid we started traveling a lot including a year of doing the “digital nomad” thing flying one way across the country. I had just gotten a job that was paying 7x more than she was making.

She has her hobby/passion projects that bring in a little money. But that’s about it.

As far as I know, you're also not spending $3m+ on a home. Even at $700k/yr income, I still need another income to afford a decent bay area home unless I want to live on the absolute razors edge. It also means that if I lose my work, we're completely fucked and I better find another job very fast. That $20k/month you gotta pay for the home ain't gonna disappear on its own.

I too could live in a world of not needing a wife with any income if I chose to live in BFE or moved to Thailand. However, I want to raise my kids in a decent community with ample opportunities and be in a region where I have a good amount of career options rather than being tied into the singular (low-pay) employer that exists within the region or be stuck in remote-hell.

> Even at $700k/yr income

Then don’t live in the Bay Area? I make less than a 3rd of that and live in a nice condo with multiple bars in walking distance - including one downstairs, restaurant downstairs, multiple pools, two gyms. Max out my 401K and HSA and we have over a dozen trips planned this year including a few to see family. But most just to check things off of our bucket list. We are flying out to Las Vegas next week just for concert.

I didn’t make over 200K until 2021 at 47 and I have had two nice houses built over the years, we just bought our condo three years ago.

There is an entire United States outside of the Bay Area and there is a such thing as remote work.

The median home price in the US is $410K.

I had my second home built in north metro Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 - 5 bed/3.5 bath/3100 square feet for $335K and sold it last year for $670K.

Funny enough, in 2020, an Amazon Recruiter reached out to me about as an SDE job that would have required me to relocate after COVID. Even with the $100k more than I was making I could have negotiated, I couldn’t have reproduced my lifestyle in Seattle.

I did keep talking to the recruiter and they suggested I apply for a “permanently remote”[1]/“field by design” role at AWS Professional Services based on my background. It only paid $55K more. But allowed me to work remotely and a year later, we moved to state tax free Florida saving more money.

[1] As of this year, even the “field by design” roles have an RTO mandate when they aren’t on a customer’s site. Luckily I left in late 2023.

> I also means that if I lose my work, we're completely fucked and I better find another job very fast. That $20k/month you gotta pay for the home ain't gonna disappear on its own.

You’re really thinking that statistically the chance of you finding a spouse who has an income that can support your budget if you are out of a job is likely?

Guess how little I stressed when I got Amazoned in 2023? I didn’t need to chase BigTech compensation to be comfortable.

My Plan B was a regular old Enterprise CRUD job. I’m now making around what I did at AWS working (remotely) at a third party consulting company. There are some remote jobs out there. At some point, I’ll probably try my lot as a “fractional CTO”.

BTW, when I was living in Atlanta in 2020 with the big house in the burbs in the good school system, our total budget including our mortgage was around $8000. I only put 3.5% down to have it built.

> I too could live in a world of not needing a wife with any income if I chose to live in BFE or moved to Thailand

You don’t need to move to Thailand - just out of the Bay Area.

Again, your lifestyle might work for you but it doesn't work for everyone. What you want is to travel a lot and nowhere do you mention anything about kids. If you're wanting to make sure your kids have every option available, they need to have the option of feeder schools like Harker. If you're serious about providing options to your kids, you're gonna have a hard time getting away from these very expensive regions and therefore needing a high income that most remote options won't provide.

If I didn't give a shit about the future of my kids, I could live in BFE or travel a lot too.

How’s your lifestyle working out for you right now? Are you happy?

Don’t you think it is strange that you make $700K a year and can’t find the same sort of contentment that many have making literally 20% of what you make?

Guess how many kids lead fulfilling lives without getting into prestigious “feeder schools”.

Do you really want your kids to also be chasing money and status like you seem to be doing at the expense of their happiness?

Your fallacy is thinking that all of these kids are miserable. I know a lot of these children and they're very happy. They work reasonably hard in school but then after they get out of school - everything is so incredibly easy. They went to the right schools from an early age which allowed them to get into target colleges which lead to target jobs and good marriages from college or from being in the right social circle (which target school+job allows).

It's mostly people like me who have grinded to high incomes that are the miserable ones. We have had to struggle at each step and had no one to help us at any point in our journey. I struggle to meet anyone with my background in any of the social circles I'm in. (In fact, I never have)

They're welcome to go down different paths. It's about giving them the options from an early age. I never had the option to go to an Ivy League (which would've made my life such a joke in comparison) because I was born into an incredibly poor and unknown area.

This was my question:

> Are you happy? Don’t you think it is strange that you make $700K a year and can’t find the same sort of contentment that many have making literally 20% of what you make?

You are worried about your potential children being “happy” when you can’t find anyone to procreate with to create children. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

You’ve worked hard, make good money and still seem to be miserable. Just maybe the answer isn’t money?

I am French, not American so I may not get all the subtleties, but for me this woman is simply an egoist or is looking for financial support in exchange for something.

Pay for me with your money, but what is mine is mine.

I think the problem with apps is they emphasise looks, when women are also attracted to confidence, which is something you can work on.

I think we’re going through a cultural shift. Looks is becoming the most important thing across the board. Most people won’t meet your partner but they’ll see them on social media. You need someone you feel proud about and secure of. On top of this, women are becoming more superficial than in previous years due to relationships being luxuries.

If a man was a solid laborer, upstanding citizen, and otherwise a dedicated family man - he would’ve done alright in certain periods of our history. But now, that’s not really that attractive. Women are much more susceptible to shifting societal trends. You can see this around the world. As women become more online, marriage rates plummet.

We’re moving further and further away from meeting your partners in real life. It’s going to be an uncommon way to meet in the future and what we will find isn’t that everyone just meets online - it’s that most people refuse to be together overall.

Out of curiosity... what does "ugly" mean? Is it deformed, or just not conforming to a cultural beauty standard?

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.

> 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.

Do you think if a non-profit open source dating app existed, with a sizable userbase, results would be different for the average guy?

People are quick to blame the greedy for profit business model, and I'm sure that has something to do with it, but with women swiping left on 95% of profiles (according to the article) it's hard to imagine designing a dating app that changes the math meaningfully. No matter the business model, you're not likely to turn that 95% into 75% or 50%.

I don't think so, because there are more factors. For example, that women are extremely much more picky in apps than in real life. That's something that a FOSS product wouldn't solve, because it's a behavioral thing.

Let’s say that you meet a few hundred average women in real life and none express physical attraction to you. I’d say you’re still ugly.

Meeting single women in real life through acquaintances is pretty uncommon. Most of the women I meet through friends aren’t single. For good reason, most men burn their bridges with eligible women and most women have no interest in showing you to their friends.

The only person who ever introduced me to any women was a very kind gay man and it was abnormal even for him. He really reached for me but both women rejected on the spot due to their lack of physical attraction.

if dating apps are killing your confidence. Get off and delete them forever!!!

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.

The article says it all: paying is the losing strategy.

> Likes received [by men] have a positive impact, but it is very light, which is a good thing from a monetization standpoint (you can make guys pay and not show them to anyone; they will keep paying, just a bit less than if they received likes. [...])

I can confirm. Payed once for a whole year, and got absolutely buried. Went from a decent rate of interactions to 2~3 likes (not matches) per week. And after the premium period ended, exactly on that same day, the previous rate of likes was restored! That's how I know they were intentionally not showing my profile around to other users.

Taking revenge on other users because of the predatory design of a dating app is, sincerely, disingenuous, childish and even irresponsible. Just stop using the bad product and try to cultivate real connections with people out there.

Understood. Thank you.

Under 6'2".

Hey, I am a man who got work that is probably like what you are getting. Email is in bio if you want to talk a little.

Get a passport. You only have one life.

Find a poor girl. You are probably going for the ones with a ton of options. Get out of your bubble.

I’m not interested in charity or exploitation.

A girl who started off at the same level as you, will appreciate what you have accomplished. A girl who grew up well off won't.

I’ve experimented with both. Neither really values where you come from and what you’ve accomplished. What they care about is what you’re going to do for them.

In my case, I just happen to care about what they’ll do back because I’m not interested in super imbalanced relationships.

You’re judging “balance in a relationship” by how much money you both make?

You said earlier you are making $700K. Would you not date a teacher making $70K?

This is some entitled, toxic bullshit.

edit: This was harsh and inaccurate. I apologize.

I think most people feel entitled to a romantic relationship in their life, and they're going to do whatever they need to do to attain that, regardless of whether or not you think it's "entitled".

You're not entitled to a relationship is the fact of the matter. It should be treated with respect and not as something you are owed.

You know why? Because the man or woman on the other end of it is a person with a whole lived experience, feelings and capacity for love. They deserve better than some bitter resentment at never getting something you were "owed by destiny".

I think pretty much everyone deserves to be in a relationship for the same reason I think everyone deserves to learn how to ride a bicycle, or read a book, or learn to swim or have a friend or get a job. It is simply an experience that I think everyone should experience at least once in their life.

People aren't entitled to a relationship? In what sense? Legally? sure. The fact of the matter is that on a basic level, most people expect to find love in their life. And whatever institution that interrupts most people from achieving normal life goals like having a decent-paying job and having a normal relationship will either be torn down or will tear down society with it, whether it's AI automation of jobs or dating apps or whatever.

I am also a human being with an entire lived experience, and I am done with people like you belittling me. I have my own goals, and I am going to achieve them regardless of what people like you think. Is that entitled? So what? A lot of my difficulty in dating has been building my confidence and overcoming this notion that I don't deserve anything instilled in me by people like you.

I am not resentful or bitter, but I am angry at people like you for misrepresenting my beliefs and presenting your own perspective as "fact", when in fact you are the minority. Most people do feel entitled to a relationship, whether or not they say so.

That's entirely fair. Sorry I struck a nerve.

People say this to feel better about the situation with zero regard for the insidious societal issues it causes. It's absolutely true but it's basically never productive to make a point of it. For your own good and the good of society, develop more helpful insights or don't say anything at all.

Going through life with basically zero romantic opportunities will completely fucking fry the brain of an average human. Sex, romance, etc. are a top psychological priority to ensure the continuation of the species and most people on this planet are hardwired to be in pain in the absence of it. With some luck, people hurting like that hold on to some hope of things changing for them and it provides enough motivation to break even on societal contribution.

If they give up hope, our society is structured in a way that doesn't give them any reason to play by the rules any more. If you're holding down a good job, blow your money on stupid shit; you have no wife to disappoint and no kids feed. If your hobbies consist of jacking off and playing video games (these are super easy, so you should definitely consider them) just half-ass whatever job lets you squeak by on rent if you're not fortunate enough to crash at your parents' place indefinitely. Get super into drugs, you're not really hurting anybody but yourself. Your friends might think you're a fuckup, but they're busy with their family and don't have a lot of free time to spend with you, so you don't have to be ashamed of your situation all that often. 30+ years of no responsibilities other than don't die (and even that part is kind of optional). Gonzo lifestyle. It's all yours, baby. It's lit.

There are people out there that are just plain bitter, unstable, unable to be reasonably loved, and maybe even ugly to boot. There's not much to be done about that. That being said, in the modern era, it is very possible (maybe even easy) for good people to never form any romantic relationship that would tie them into productive society, and turn into burnouts with apathetic, bitter worldviews. "You aren't owed anything and you got what was coming" is not encouraging in the slightest.

The advice to boys/girls felt very real. And also, objectively not equal.

Girl: lower your standards.

Boy: pay a photographer to look nicer.

This double disadvantages women as I see it: Their standards are held to be unrealistic (downpoint) and they have to incur the dissatisfaction of beleiving it, and acting on it to lower their expectations. AND Boys are expected to glam up and project a demonstrably less real state of themselves, to get over this bar. So women have to accept lies, and tolerate reality.

(63, in a longterm 40y relationship, not using the apps and not judging individuals here)

If the advice had been "Boys: lower your standards, girls: pay a photographer" I wonder if you'd have said "guys just get to be dawgs, women have to spend money to beautify themselves".

I very much might have. Everyone brings their own bias to the table.

But, remember the asymmetry in this space is large. The asymmetry of risk, of expectations, of outcome. It doesn't go to what you project as a hypothetical, it goes to the one I responded to. If you can show me a dating app with the right dynamics to demand the response you hypothesized, we can see how the numbers pan out. The one we have, it's the other direction of bias in expectation and behaviour.

Ask yourself why the asymmetry in hinge/bumble about who initiates contact exist.

With no intent of doxxing your bio page here says you're a social scientist. I'd welcome an understanding of if the current praxis in your field suggests the kind of cultural bias I projected isn't widespread, and if your field views this as "anti men" because I certainly didn't mean it to be, I simply think there is an inherent asymmetry to who has to act, and how they act, in the recommendations from this author in this space, which appears backed by data.

My view is it's mostly human nature not cultural bias. Sex differences in mating are cross-cultural (Donald Buss has done a lot on this). Whether either side can be said to be "disadvantaged" is a bit of a hard one. Compared to what hypothetical, and what's the measure of disadvantage? Having to hire a photographer seems like a bigger disadvantage than just lowering your standards: it costs money.

> Having to hire a photographer seems like a bigger disadvantage than just lowering your standards: it costs money.

The opportunity cost of entering a relationship with someone lower in your ranking system is to forego a relationship with someone higher in that system down the line. It makes sense to err on the side of picky if there's a tangible 'gain' to it, purely strategically speaking.

Yes, I also thought that. But once you've hooked your fish, the investment paid off. It feels like money trumps all other cost/benefit choices because it has strict numerics and orders linearly. "Lower your expectations $4.99" doesn't compute. "Take this temu boyfriend, the Amazon boyfriend is out of stock"

Men are judged more harshly. Men need to pay a photographer to have their picture taken.

> This double disadvantages ..women?

Sorry, I don't follow you.

Especially since women's unrealistic judgement is to blame. Women are, objectively, rating men all wrong:

https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/how-men-and-women-rat...

(I just pulled the first article that has the famous Okcupid graph.)

"blame" and "wrong" being words you brought to the table not I. So, in agreeing the bias exists, I don't cast the same emphasis as you in the situation. I see this as women demonstrably are being asked to accept lower standards than endogenously they seem as a set to believe in. To me thats a net cost on women, against their own beliefs. To you, they are to "blame" and they are "wrong"

I did say disadvantage. I own that word here. In fact, the situation disadvantages men just as much: either project an unrealistic version of yourself or be cast aside. But, thats the singular burden on men, because Women are being advised both to accept "less" and to believe the best they see, which is an artifact of professional portraiture. I've seen myself in candid shots and in pro shots and the pro shots are not me: I don't usually wear a shirt without food stains, and like George washington I am careful about my smile.

Life's not equal. This is the least of it.

> You would need to be a pro at user interviews to really get interesting feedback. (Well maybe this is the norm in B2C but at the end of the day user interviews were of no help).

This shouldn’t be surprising. Interviewing humans is a skill. Doing so in a product context, and learning useful things from it, is not easy.

I hope they don’t approach other things this way. “You’d need to be a professional plumber to stop water leaking out of this. Maybe that’s the norm but at the end of the day plumbing was no help.”

"The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say."

Market research and observational/UX research are not the same. Market research looks for trends in bulk; UX research looks for individual actions and preferences. The difference is important, and it’s lost on the article’s author.

In UX research you don’t ask people what they want or what they like, you (e.g.) put them in front of software/prototypes, give them tasks, and watch them work. What you learn in this context is _why_ people do things; it’s hard to get that from metrics.

You also don’t get new product ideas from customers. There are aphorisms 100 hundred years old about that which everyone should know: “If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said, ‘A faster horse.’”

Thanks for this detailed post. While I think most are aware of the broad situation, it's impressive to read it all laid out like that. And whenever the author tried to make a statement about guys, the gist of it was "we don't know, it doesn't matter, boys will stick around". Made me chuckle.

There are a lot of dating apps out there with very different audiences. I think the mistake made here is generalizing the conclusions for all these apps. Women date differently than men. And not always with men. Or only with certain types of men.

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.

>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.

When everyone is dating everyone else, this essentially creates a tragedy of the common where no one wants to commit because they see better options always, but ironically, no one person will find their best option and have that best option also find them as the best option too.

And statistically, if you are short, you have absolutely no chance on dating apps I assume.

I am short. I have never been on a dating app. The first time I was single as an adult out of college was between 1996-2002 so they weren’t really a thing and the second time I was single between 2006-2011 and wasn’t looking at dating anyone.

> 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?

What sucks nowadays is picture filters can't tell what's real I guess until you meet them

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.

> Got about 300 matches

Number of people I'm interested * Number of people who respond

(1 / 60) * (1 / 60) = 3600 people to get one match.

Times 300 = 1.08 million profiles I'd have to view.

Maybe you like 1 of 6? (is it that high, for most people I don' think so). And you manage to get a response from 1 of 10 (because I'd expect the other side to also be at best 1 of 6 + less likely to respond)

So, that's basically saying you went through a minimum of 18k profiles to get your 300 matches.

Did you get 300 matches or is that just a statement that you did well and the numbers aren't actual numbers?

> (1 / 60) * (1 / 60) = 3600 people to get one match.

What are those numbers? According to the article, those numbers should be (1 / 4) * (1 / 25) if we use the median man randomly matching with the median woman, respectively.

Those numbers will trend much higher, if both of them are attractive, of course. In the long tails plottet for the article, there are still quite a number of men 1 out of 3 woman will like, and there's plenty of woman 9 out of 10 men will like.

I swiped about 200k profiles during the time I was on the Tinder [1]

The matches and swipes are rough estimated, but are accurate enough

I don't know the statistics of the blog post, I'm just stating my experience

> There is also face detection that is now pretty advanced and can detect the face of celebrities, people on social media.

Which naturally results in celebrities and models getting blocked from signing up periodically.

Label your fucking axes!

Yes, and give them meaningful titles too. I think sometimes "men" means "performance of male profiles" and at other times it means "behavior of male users"? It's not really clear.

This data looks interesting but I'm not really sure what I'm looking at.

These apps optimize for engagement, not meaningful connections

Funny how he concludes that men should pay.

Sounds like this article is just astroturfing with some tech data.

Any idea which dating app Paul Gonsolin is talking about here? This is a lot of data.

it's probably a small niche one, he graciously provides y-vals in his graphs, so ~20k women and ~60k men (from rough counting)

The image of profile pictures mid way through the article has a "Jubilee" water mark, and that name appears to associated with a dating app called "Nectar"

Bad guess :)

Women are selective in their very nature, while men are competitive.

yes and no. I've been to a few countries where beautiful women are everywhere and being pretty doesnt afford you as many advantages as it does in america. If you come in with education, a sense of integrity and can carry a conversation, girls can and do get competitive with each other for your attention.

it's as trivial as it gets.

simplest CRUD.

issue is either we are ugly or dark patterns make dating sites unusable.

It's funny because you can tell they barely discussed with actual girls:

> they are used to receiving a lot of likes, so you have to show them they get liked

They hate that, most girls registering on Tinder get 1000 likes in a week.

> Dating fatigue is bullshit

See last point

> Having a profile doesn't impact the app experience

That's what changed the game, nobody bothers on Tinder because it's not mandatory whereas it works very well on Hinge.

> ELO score

What does ELO stand for?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Dating apps are scams. The developer is out to make money, which happens through subscription renewals. Profile visibility means nothing. Messages mean nothing. You can send message after message after message, but unless you have spent enough money or are onenof the lucky ones that the system allows through, your profile is not shown to anyone but bots.

Want to test this? Remove your image from your profiles on social media and remove your last name (i use my middle name as my surname on facebook). The key is to remove your profile image. Set your privacy to maximum, so other images of you cannot be searched. Try talking with someone. With no way to profile you, the chat bots used by the dating apps cannot have a "conversation." You will never be matched, conversations will hit walls and go in circles or you get ghosted because the chat bot has no data to use.

After your first renewal - after you have spent more money - then you may actually get to talk to a real person.

No. Never again.

Your complaints are highly exaggerated.

Anecdotal, but more than enough data to disprove your point, over the last 8 years I've used multiple dating apps, never paid a dime, and have been on somewhere around 400 first dates.

I'd also add that my match rate with bots or scammers is very low, certainly under 10%.

Are you still on dating apps? And was your initial intention to find an amazing gf, or just play the field? Not poking just curious.

Yes, I just enjoy meeting new people, not looking for anything longterm other than maybe friends.

> Can Dating apps be fixed?

> What I meant by "fixed", is an app where:

> It is possible for someone to reach out to anyone and get an answer, and discussion can be interesting from the start (at least as much as in real life)

> Your looks, how you behave, the tone of your voice,... reflect what you look like in real life

> It is easier to meet new people than attending local events

> I don't think it can

Well, as long as the metrics app builders are optimizing for are "retention" and "monetization", like this post obsesses over, and the people building the apps continue to refer to women as "girls", like they've never had a relationship with an adult woman, then I agree, dating apps are going to continue their process of enshittification.

Having to do the same conversation again and again is just tiresome.

[dead]

[dead]

[dead]

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.

While men having to pay is potentially no fun, I think it is definitely men that “make this place this way”. Men act entitled to whatever woman they find attractive. They accordingly act aggressively, don’t respect boundaries both on and offline, and frequently lie about themselves and their intentions to get the girl. Men should take a note from women and be more picky before they pursue (and stop when told no).

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.

> Among girls : 10% where lesbian, 84% were hetero and 12 % were interested in both genders

> Among guys: 7% homo, 92% hetero and almost none were interested in both genders

That's insane.

I've heard that listing you're bi is considered a red flag on a guy's profile? maybe people are hiding it

Yes, I hide it. Based on surveys, it lowers your chances. No reason to play fair there when things are bad enough as they are.

As a bi person who's currently a man, but considering transition, I can't help but wonder if maybe all the bi guys are just... picking up and leaving to become bi gals :P

I think nonbinary people are the most likely to be attracted to many genders.

And women are more likely to be attracted to many genders.

Men are more likely to be attracted to just men (and perhaps nonbinary people) or to just women (and perhaps nonbinary people)

But I think this is due to social conditioning more than something like biological predisposition. Social attitudes on men and masculinity are not very encouraging of same-sex attraction, it's very common for men to get lumped into "gay" or straight". Whereas I think women and non-binary people are more often encouraged to explore queer sexuality or even expected to (well, I suppose gender-queer people by definition have queer sexuality also). Men are also more conditioned to be more competitive in general, and to view other men as sexual/romantic competition.

I'm a man who's a little bit queer, and many of my friends are queer, so my experience is likely influenced by my crowd, but I know many more gender-queer, nonbinary, gender-fluid, and gender-nonconforming people than I know trans-men and trans-women. The AMAB people I know who aren't gay men, and have nevertheless recognized some degree of attraction to men, very often are not male-identified. But I think it's much more common for them to be gender-queer than to be women. But again, this may coincide with me knowing more NB people than binary trans people in general.

For AMAB people who acknowledge their attraction to men (but are not gay men), I do think this awareness of a sexual identity that, in men, is less socially encouraged/understood often leads to questioning the value of identification as a man entirely (especially since the male identity has so much baggage already).

I've been surprised by how differently people experience desire after transitioning. I've seen every possible combination of sexual-orientation switching in trans people. If there's a general direction, I'd say that people are more likely to be bi/pan after transitioning. IMO, transitioning is already taboo, it's not that much scarier to explore being attracted to a wider group of people.

Possibly all the gays are going to gay specific apps like grindr

It tracks, actually. Men tend to pick a sexual orientation and be disgusted by the other sexual orientation[0]. Women are a lot more hetero- (and homo-) flexible.

[0] It works both ways! A guy once told me and my wife that we made a cute couple despite how disgusting heterosexuality really was. And I was like... okay, thanks?

Not completely true. Most men are not disgusted by a lesbian couple. I don’t mean just men that fetishize about it. But many are disgusted or at least discomforted by seeing gay men being romantic.

Thought experiment: if a wife in a heterosexual marriage told her husband that she previously had relationships with women, I know many men (including me) who would just shrug and move on and not really think about it.

On the other hand, a man couldn’t just tell his wife most of the time that he slept with men before

Silly question, but on that last point, why? (I can't imagine, but I'm unimaginative.)

My guess is gender roles? Women don’t see gay men as “masculine” while men don’t see gay women as less feminine.