4 ms·

I don't think that's necessarily true. To be a market for lemons, in the original sense, it's required that goods are objectively better or worse to all buyers,

I don't think that's necessarily true. To be a market for lemons, in the original sense, it's required that goods are objectively better or worse to all buyers, and it's required that sellers know the value of their goods to buyers. Put more concretely, because different people have different dating preferences, one person's lemon can be another person's peach. In addition, a market for lemons usually requires a seller to be able to determine the value of goods while the buyer can't. On dating sites, both the user and the site itself are trying to "sell" that person to prospective matches. Neither of those parties has all that much better of a way to determine a person's match-ability, so there's not all that much asymmetry. I suppose the site does know a little more based on history, but I don't think that's necessarily enough. I do think dating sites are pretty garbage, but I don't think it's due to the phenomenon described by "a market for lemons", but rather due to multiple other factors.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Fair. WRT. lemons, I was thinking primarily about the aspect that the most desirable people disappear from these sites first. Sure people have different dating preferences, but they're correlated, not uniformly random. I believe that, while there may not be a total order of people that's the same for everyone, there is some rough order that would be acceptable to most, and the closer to "best" end in that order a person is, the shorter they're likely to stay on a dating site.
J-dawg 7y ago
> one person's lemon can be another person's peach That's a nice way of looking at the world, and of course it's true sometimes. But...hasn't all the data coming out of dating sites kind of proved the opposite? Especially for men, something like the top 10-20% are getting basically all the matches and messages.
- taejo 7y ago
  At least to some extent, dating sites have made the opposite. The more people know about each other, the greater the variance in their assessments of each others' attractiveness. ISTR a study that showed that the less people know each other before starting dating, the more likely people are to end up with partners who are about as physically attractive as themselves.
  - J-dawg 7y ago
    This is a good point. I guess it's important to remember that dating sites do actually change people's behaviour, rather than being a representation of how everyone behaves.
lmm 7y ago
> In addition, a market for lemons usually requires a seller to be able to determine the value of goods while the buyer can't. On dating sites, both the user and the site itself are trying to "sell" that person to prospective matches. Neither of those parties has all that much better of a way to determine a person's match-ability, so there's not all that much asymmetry. Well, the person posting their height/weight/photo knows whether it's accurate or not, whereas the person reading it doesn't; that's your asymmetry right there.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Fair. WRT. lemons, I was thinking primarily about the aspect that the most desirable people disappear from these sites first. Sure people have different dating preferences, but they're correlated, not uniformly random. I believe that, while there may not be a total order of people that's the same for everyone, there is some rough order that would be acceptable to most, and the closer to "best" end in that order a person is, the shorter they're likely to stay on a dating site.

J-dawg 7y ago

> one person's lemon can be another person's peach That's a nice way of looking at the world, and of course it's true sometimes. But...hasn't all the data coming out of dating sites kind of proved the opposite? Especially for men, something like the top 10-20% are getting basically all the matches and messages.

taejo 7y ago
At least to some extent, dating sites have made the opposite. The more people know about each other, the greater the variance in their assessments of each others' attractiveness. ISTR a study that showed that the less people know each other before starting dating, the more likely people are to end up with partners who are about as physically attractive as themselves.
- J-dawg 7y ago
  This is a good point. I guess it's important to remember that dating sites do actually change people's behaviour, rather than being a representation of how everyone behaves.

lmm 7y ago

> In addition, a market for lemons usually requires a seller to be able to determine the value of goods while the buyer can't. On dating sites, both the user and the site itself are trying to "sell" that person to prospective matches. Neither of those parties has all that much better of a way to determine a person's match-ability, so there's not all that much asymmetry. Well, the person posting their height/weight/photo knows whether it's accurate or not, whereas the person reading it doesn't; that's your asymmetry right there.