You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
I contemplated whether to try to build a dating site a few times while I was single, and every time what stopped me was the perverse incentives. Making a financially viable dating service without actively making things worse on purpose is really hard.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
Stats consistently show that women only select about 5% of options displayed from online dating apps. Men select about 50%. And women disproportionately give their attention to the most conventionally attractive men. (To say: That 5% is not evenly distributed amoung men.) The bottom half of men (from attractiveness ratings) basically get zero matches... ever. Online dating is brutal.
I'd probably pick only the top 5% too if I was inundated by matches, so I'm not surprised.
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
Yes, it's more difficult - I'm old enough that there was a period I had regular dates by sending corny chatup lines on IRC and it worked so I know well how easy it used to be.
But my point was that most men are doing such a shit job at presenting themselves on their profiles that it isn't that difficult to massively improve your odds by making a profile that is better than average.
Spending more than 5 minutes ensuring you have a profile picture that is decently lit, taken from an angle that present you well, and that you look like you're capable of taking care of yourself is a good start, but judging from conversations with a lot of women while I was dating, that is a high bar to clear for most guys on dating sites.
Exactly. And then they complain about not getting matches.
It is still effort if you make a decent profile on places like Tinder, because Tinder is very much intentionally trying to frustrate you to make you pay, but even just having a female friend you could ask to help pick a photo that won't actively repel every woman that ever sees your profile ups your chances so much...
I met my first girlfriend ever on Yahoo! chatroom.. that's right, all the effort it took for me was to send a "hi" message to a random woman online..
We ended up dating for 5 years after that after meeting this person.
water-data-dude · · focus · HN ↗
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
throwaway2037 · · focus · HN ↗
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
elmer2 · · focus · HN ↗
6/10 would get a response and some, dates.
The apps make it so there's no conversation and it's all about your profile.
Way more difficult to get noticed.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
But my point was that most men are doing such a shit job at presenting themselves on their profiles that it isn't that difficult to massively improve your odds by making a profile that is better than average.
Spending more than 5 minutes ensuring you have a profile picture that is decently lit, taken from an angle that present you well, and that you look like you're capable of taking care of yourself is a good start, but judging from conversations with a lot of women while I was dating, that is a high bar to clear for most guys on dating sites.
testing22321 · · focus · HN ↗
90% of the guys had a photo of them with their pickup truck, a pic of them drinking heavily, and a pic of them giving the middle finger.
Not in a particularly redneck or rural area either. Lowest effort possible.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
It is still effort if you make a decent profile on places like Tinder, because Tinder is very much intentionally trying to frustrate you to make you pay, but even just having a female friend you could ask to help pick a photo that won't actively repel every woman that ever sees your profile ups your chances so much...
swat535 · · focus · HN ↗
We ended up dating for 5 years after that after meeting this person.
I miss the old internet.