Male here. I did online dating for a couple of years. Based on my narrow experience, it seems the odds are indeed dramatically stacked against men—I ended up ge

Male here. I did online dating for a couple of years. Based on my narrow experience, it seems the odds are indeed dramatically stacked against men—I ended up generally not expecting a response from anyone. When I changed my profile to “bisexual” (which I am), I saw one reason why—scads of creepy, low-effort messages from men, sometimes with their profile set to “female” to attract more responses. The imbalance leads to slimy game tactics and drives down the quality of experience for everybody. The only real women who ever messaged me first had qualities that I guess some people consider dealbreakers, such as being big, disabled, trans, non-white, or just not “conventionally pretty”. Curiously, for me and most of my male friends, none of those things would even be a problem, as long as there were basic chemistry and lifestyle compatibility. In the end, I made a few good friends, and I think that’s actually a very good use case—OkCupid’s “match percentage” for example is a pretty good metric of how much you agree on basic politics, demeanour, and so on. It just falls short of predicting a “spark” in real life—I went on dates with “99% match” women who turned out to share many of what I consider my worst qualities. Ironically, soon after I gave up on online dating, I met my lovely partner at an internet meetup—so you really never know!