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.
No, all women get some attention using online dating apps. A bunch of YouTubers have created fake online dating profiles with incredibly ugly women (bad face or bad body), and they still get matches. This guy on X has run lots of these tests with hilarious results: <a href="https://x.com/MurrayHillGuy1" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/MurrayHillGuy1
> Dating is brutal.
I can confidently say that dating was not brutal before the apps. (I am pretty old.) Before the apps, couples were mostly looks-matched: the ugos dated each other, the mids dated each other, and the best dated each other. Unless the guy was very personable/funny/rich, most people were looks-matched. Online dating has reduced everyone to a few photographs.
Women demonstrate incredibly different behaviour when "selecting mates" when comparing (1) familiar settings, like work, school, church/temple, friend/activity/hobby groups vs (2) unfamiliar settings, like bars, clubs, public places, and online dating. For (1), they find many more men attractive because they can evaluate them on more than looks. For (2), they can only evaluate on looks. If you ask women to rate strangers based only upon looks, they will rank only 20% as attractive. That is what makes online dating so awful for average men.
When young (average looking) guys tell me about their awful/non-existent dating lives at the office, I always recommend that they try approaching women in public more often. Ignore the shit you see on social media where the fake #MeToo women come on to put guys on full blast for approaching. Don't worry about them. They are awful people, and you don't want them. Yes, you will get rejected a lot (maybe 5-10% hit rate), but it is way better than online dating apps. You can approach in supermarkets, stores, cafes, festivals/concerts, gym, parks, etc. That way, plenty of other people are around, and she won't feel unsafe. And start by approaching ugos/low-mids. You only need to get their socials or chat app. Even if you have no serious interest in that woman, you can practice chatting with her. Once you build some confidence, approach average looking women. Eventually, you will find success. As long as you dress average/OK, groom (comb/style hair, etc.) and don't smell bad, they won't put you on full blast if she is not interested. She will politely decline, or give socials, but never reply to chats.
Please don't read this post as an attack on women. It is an attack on our current ecosystem of online dating apps.
You literally give the advice to "start by approaching ugos/low-mids. This entire post comes off as vain, but your disclaimer at the end doesn't absolve it of also being misogynistic.
You're telling men to use "conventionally" unattractive women as target practice, implying they will be more receptive to attention, presumably due to a general lack of it. Then your advice is to leave these women behind once you've gotten what you needed, and to then seek women more attractive to you.
What, exactly, is why the dating "marketplace" as ugly as it is? Is there actually a point you wanted to make, or was there just a vague notion of a point?
> Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves
1. You assumed without asking that I was male. This indicates an inherent bias on how you perceive and interact with others.
2. You assume I have a nascent understanding of how women think and feel, compared to yourself, who must be an expert on women.
3. You group all women into a single monolithic group with shared motivation and behaviors. This is textbook prejudice and misogyny.
4. You claim that women are even more misandrist than men are misogynist, implying a justification for OP's and your own misogynistic perspective. In actuality, you're only further expressing the depths of your own misogynistic attitude towards women.
5. You claim to know what they say amongst themselves while implying I don't have the same knowledge; Are you a woman? Or do you have hidden cameras on women? How else could you have possibly ordained this forbidden knowledge?
5. My partner, a woman, does not think or act the way you described. She does not engage in overt misandry with her friends.
6. I have encountered plenty of extremely misogynistic and legitimately creepy/abusive attitudes towards women at "Sunday school" and while receiving religious education. Every one of the many dozens of churches I've been to have had extreme misogynistic undertones, and often brazen overtones. If you are trying to establish a basis for what isn't misogyny, you couldn't have picked a worse target.
7. "But I'm not the only one who does it" has never, ever, ever been an excuse for prejudice.
8. Dating "marketplace"? What are you even talking about? Apps? Websites? Dating in general? I am not conventionally attractive by modern society's standards, I'm overweight, and outspoken. I have not had issues finding or attracting women. Determining long-term compatibility is much more difficult, but a lack of vanity or a misogynistic outlook was never the problem.
My advice? Touch grass, ask a woman what she actually thinks, and listen. You clearly are not currently in a position to give others advice on women; you are in need of advice.
>
3. You group all women into a single monolithic group with shared motivation and behaviors.
<
You will be shocked, if you talk with men who are really able to analze their traits and talk openly about it, how SIMILAR and shared these are :-)
Men are quite simple on some layer. Especially this dating layer. Even if some claim not being part of these "mind & traits behaviour", nonetheless they mainly think the same.
Now we're also assuming that I don't know how men talk to each other, either? Is the assumption that I live in a box with no windows or doors?
You might be interested to know that "this is the way things are" is not a valid excuse for perpetuating learned prejudice. I in fact take issue with some of the collective behavior of both men and women. Shocking, right?
You can speak out against whatever is your desire. But more interesting is, why you think that whatever Babo in US would behave differently to whatever Babo in Europe vs against whatever Babo in Asia.
Men are simply >simple<. You do not have to accept this, even if its statisticly true.
And upon this adds men-specific behaviour with huge costs to society,but thats not part here.
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 ↗
sokoloff · · focus · HN ↗
Dating is brutal.
Online dating seems like it perhaps speed-runs that a bit, but I don’t think it dramatically changes the essence.
throwaway2037 · · focus · HN ↗
Women demonstrate incredibly different behaviour when "selecting mates" when comparing (1) familiar settings, like work, school, church/temple, friend/activity/hobby groups vs (2) unfamiliar settings, like bars, clubs, public places, and online dating. For (1), they find many more men attractive because they can evaluate them on more than looks. For (2), they can only evaluate on looks. If you ask women to rate strangers based only upon looks, they will rank only 20% as attractive. That is what makes online dating so awful for average men.
When young (average looking) guys tell me about their awful/non-existent dating lives at the office, I always recommend that they try approaching women in public more often. Ignore the shit you see on social media where the fake #MeToo women come on to put guys on full blast for approaching. Don't worry about them. They are awful people, and you don't want them. Yes, you will get rejected a lot (maybe 5-10% hit rate), but it is way better than online dating apps. You can approach in supermarkets, stores, cafes, festivals/concerts, gym, parks, etc. That way, plenty of other people are around, and she won't feel unsafe. And start by approaching ugos/low-mids. You only need to get their socials or chat app. Even if you have no serious interest in that woman, you can practice chatting with her. Once you build some confidence, approach average looking women. Eventually, you will find success. As long as you dress average/OK, groom (comb/style hair, etc.) and don't smell bad, they won't put you on full blast if she is not interested. She will politely decline, or give socials, but never reply to chats.
Please don't read this post as an attack on women. It is an attack on our current ecosystem of online dating apps.
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
You're telling men to use "conventionally" unattractive women as target practice, implying they will be more receptive to attention, presumably due to a general lack of it. Then your advice is to leave these women behind once you've gotten what you needed, and to then seek women more attractive to you.
This is a perverse way to approach people.
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves, this dudes comments will sound like Sunday school talk.
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
> Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves
1. You assumed without asking that I was male. This indicates an inherent bias on how you perceive and interact with others.
2. You assume I have a nascent understanding of how women think and feel, compared to yourself, who must be an expert on women.
3. You group all women into a single monolithic group with shared motivation and behaviors. This is textbook prejudice and misogyny.
4. You claim that women are even more misandrist than men are misogynist, implying a justification for OP's and your own misogynistic perspective. In actuality, you're only further expressing the depths of your own misogynistic attitude towards women.
5. You claim to know what they say amongst themselves while implying I don't have the same knowledge; Are you a woman? Or do you have hidden cameras on women? How else could you have possibly ordained this forbidden knowledge?
5. My partner, a woman, does not think or act the way you described. She does not engage in overt misandry with her friends.
6. I have encountered plenty of extremely misogynistic and legitimately creepy/abusive attitudes towards women at "Sunday school" and while receiving religious education. Every one of the many dozens of churches I've been to have had extreme misogynistic undertones, and often brazen overtones. If you are trying to establish a basis for what isn't misogyny, you couldn't have picked a worse target.
7. "But I'm not the only one who does it" has never, ever, ever been an excuse for prejudice.
8. Dating "marketplace"? What are you even talking about? Apps? Websites? Dating in general? I am not conventionally attractive by modern society's standards, I'm overweight, and outspoken. I have not had issues finding or attracting women. Determining long-term compatibility is much more difficult, but a lack of vanity or a misogynistic outlook was never the problem.
My advice? Touch grass, ask a woman what she actually thinks, and listen. You clearly are not currently in a position to give others advice on women; you are in need of advice.
KellyCriterion · · focus · HN ↗
You will be shocked, if you talk with men who are really able to analze their traits and talk openly about it, how SIMILAR and shared these are :-)
Men are quite simple on some layer. Especially this dating layer. Even if some claim not being part of these "mind & traits behaviour", nonetheless they mainly think the same.
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
You might be interested to know that "this is the way things are" is not a valid excuse for perpetuating learned prejudice. I in fact take issue with some of the collective behavior of both men and women. Shocking, right?
KellyCriterion · · focus · HN ↗
Men around the world are functioning the same way,esp. on some levels like dating. Like it or not :-)
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
KellyCriterion · · focus · HN ↗
Men are simply >simple<. You do not have to accept this, even if its statisticly true.
And upon this adds men-specific behaviour with huge costs to society,but thats not part here.
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
KellyCriterion · · focus · HN ↗