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.
> individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
When everyone invests equally in getting to the top 5%, because of how competitive it is, then it results in people maintaining their same spots as before on the leaderboard.
Also you can't improve things like height which is one of the most important things women care about.
>there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men
Historically it's been solved using religion and families enforcing monogamy in society, like in the past 2000 years of human history, to ensure most men and women get to find a pair to make a family and giving them a relatively equal opportunity/stake in the future of society as an incentive to help maintain and defend it.
Without these traditional enforcement mechanisms, I guess we can explain them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats, then they can't all share the same top 5% of men, and so will need to settle for a realistic man in the same league as them, instead of waiting for gigachad because their biological hypergamy instincts tells them to.
> When everyone invests equally in getting to the top 5%, because of how competitive it is
Yes, but everyone isn't doing that. You'd think men would, but I suggest you ask around some women on their experience of the quality of mens dating dating profiles.
The fault is in the assumption that "That 5% is static". There's zero proof behind that assertion.
If every man groomed himself and presented just "good" portraits and captures in his dating profile pics, that 5% would probably improve.
I'm a hetero man, but I've formed a fake female profile just to investigate. Wow... my competition is 95% disappointing. My non-existent labia recoiled in dismay. "May or may not be an axe murderer." "Thinks sports fanwear is dressing to impress." "I just killed this animal! Date me!" "Dude, do you realize you are grimacing?"
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.
lelanthran · · focus · HN ↗
That 5% is static - individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
When everyone invests equally in getting to the top 5%, because of how competitive it is, then it results in people maintaining their same spots as before on the leaderboard.
Also you can't improve things like height which is one of the most important things women care about.
>there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men
Historically it's been solved using religion and families enforcing monogamy in society, like in the past 2000 years of human history, to ensure most men and women get to find a pair to make a family and giving them a relatively equal opportunity/stake in the future of society as an incentive to help maintain and defend it.
Without these traditional enforcement mechanisms, I guess we can explain them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats, then they can't all share the same top 5% of men, and so will need to settle for a realistic man in the same league as them, instead of waiting for gigachad because their biological hypergamy instincts tells them to.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, but everyone isn't doing that. You'd think men would, but I suggest you ask around some women on their experience of the quality of mens dating dating profiles.
PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
THe top % are. Which is the yardstick you're being judged on, even when you're not in the top %.
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗
If every man groomed himself and presented just "good" portraits and captures in his dating profile pics, that 5% would probably improve.
I'm a hetero man, but I've formed a fake female profile just to investigate. Wow... my competition is 95% disappointing. My non-existent labia recoiled in dismay. "May or may not be an axe murderer." "Thinks sports fanwear is dressing to impress." "I just killed this animal! Date me!" "Dude, do you realize you are grimacing?"