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.
This is why women are very upset about the existence of bisexual men (and why casual biphobia is tolerated among straights and the rest of the LGT community). Women hate knowing how easy it is for a bisexual man to leave/cheat. They hate having far less "control".
Men need an equivalent to political lesbianism.
Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
Lesbian women have literally the opposite. The memes about domestic violence and other serious problems among lesbian communities would be funny if they weren't so true.
When I see these sad "women are from Venus, men from Mars" style of comments, all I can feel is that this is a sad truth of the universe.
The men who enjoy showing off pictures of their fishing/hunting haul. The men who use android phones, the men who want to show themselves topless (even in contexts where this makes sense). These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires. Women account for like 80% of consumer spending and advertising/marketing folks know some extremely uncomfortable truths about group-think/hive-mind mentality among women. These men should celebrate that they are showing their authentic selves, not the contorted version they have to repeatedly summon to satisfy foids.
Basically, men should actively be proud of our achievements, and any who can ignore societies intense biphobia should lean into the masculine side of their desires, as their relationship satisfaction will likely go significantly up.
> These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires.
They are not objectively "low quality", but they are objectively less desirable to women if women find them less desirable for it.
You can enjoy leaning into those things all you want, but you are not owed anything from women. They have no obligation to look past how you present yourself. And so if how you present yourself reduces their interest in you, that is on you. If you're fine with that, then by all means go ahead.
For my part, it was a very small sacrifice to spend a couple of hours figuring out which parts of my personality women actually finds attractive, and how to signal that with my pictures and profile text.
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.
Der_Einzige · · focus · HN ↗
Men need an equivalent to political lesbianism.
Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
Lesbian women have literally the opposite. The memes about domestic violence and other serious problems among lesbian communities would be funny if they weren't so true.
When I see these sad "women are from Venus, men from Mars" style of comments, all I can feel is that this is a sad truth of the universe.
The men who enjoy showing off pictures of their fishing/hunting haul. The men who use android phones, the men who want to show themselves topless (even in contexts where this makes sense). These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires. Women account for like 80% of consumer spending and advertising/marketing folks know some extremely uncomfortable truths about group-think/hive-mind mentality among women. These men should celebrate that they are showing their authentic selves, not the contorted version they have to repeatedly summon to satisfy foids.
Basically, men should actively be proud of our achievements, and any who can ignore societies intense biphobia should lean into the masculine side of their desires, as their relationship satisfaction will likely go significantly up.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
They are not objectively "low quality", but they are objectively less desirable to women if women find them less desirable for it.
You can enjoy leaning into those things all you want, but you are not owed anything from women. They have no obligation to look past how you present yourself. And so if how you present yourself reduces their interest in you, that is on you. If you're fine with that, then by all means go ahead.
For my part, it was a very small sacrifice to spend a couple of hours figuring out which parts of my personality women actually finds attractive, and how to signal that with my pictures and profile text.