6 ms·

> I'd say it's about 80% male. It's more like most women will go for 20% of the men. If you're part of the 80% you'll feel alone. As an experiment just make a

by arkh 7y ago

> I'd say it's about 80% male. It's more like most women will go for 20% of the men. If you're part of the 80% you'll feel alone. As an experiment just make a fake profile with some model's picture to discover how many women are around.

Lewton 7y ago
On tinder the issue isn’t that women only go for the top 20%, the issue is that the elo algorithm is so aggressive and the gender ratio is so skewed that women won’t even see your profile if it’s in the bottom 80%
kilroy123 7y ago
This is correct. It’s become a winner takes all situation.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  It probably was that way since the dawn of humanity. In 100 BC it was probably worse, if anything
mcv 7y ago
Create a fake profile to prove these are not all fake profiles? In any case, any site where the profile focuses primarily on your photo is probably going to see this going both ways: men going for the hottest women and women going for the hottest men. If you focus more on people's interests, I'd expect you're going to see a very different pattern.
- skocznymroczny 7y ago
  The only major remaining website that tries to match people based on interests is OKCupid. And even it is changing every few months. Unfortunately, the success of Tinder and move to mobile phones first ruined most of the dating websites, which try to emulate its success. Because people mostly use phone nowadays for dating websites, long profiles are mostly gone, sending long letters is gone, many conversations are single sentence now. Also, instead of matching based on shared interests/values, most of the matching is based on "swipe left/right on photo".
  - darkwater 7y ago
    I don't get why Match.com, OkCupid should converge to a Tinder-like working model if they share ownership. I guess that there are different niches of people for those different websites/apps, no?
    - skocznymroczny 7y ago
      Perhaps so that later on they can transition all OKC users onto Tinder and maintain only one product?
      - mcv 7y ago
        Use profiles from one site as basis for fake profiles on another site, and when someone responds to those profiles, mail the user to pressure them to also join the other site.
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        Highly doubt that's their goal. Maintaining multiple dating sites probably just increases their reach and revenue...
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > The only major remaining website that tries to match people based on interests is OKCupid. And even it is changing every few months. Unfortunately, the success of Tinder and move to mobile phones first ruined most of the dating websites, which try to emulate its success. Because people mostly use phone nowadays for dating websites, long profiles are mostly gone, sending long letters is gone, many conversations are single sentence now. Also, instead of matching based on shared interests/values, most of the matching is based on "swipe left/right on photo". You should spend time talking women. They absolutely hated the long-form dating sites. Imagine she is sitting in a cafe. She is not out on a prowl to get married, get laid or go on a date -- she would not mind either of those three if ( long list of requirements ) but she is not here for that specific purpose. She is drinking her macha tea and reading her kindle. Gentleman number one approaches. He smells like he did not shower in a week. He goes into a five minute pitch about his dog, Skippy, and his love for bananas. She is a cat person and she hates yellow things. The gentleman does not leave for thirty minutes Gentleman number two approaches. He is lovely. He fumbles and cracks up a joke. She looks up at him and sees a bugger in his nose. She goes back to her book as he continues to talk to her. Eventually, she says "Look, I'm not interested." He becomes indignant and does not leave for another twenty minutes. That's a long form dating. Here's tinder: She looks up, shakes her head no and a force field ejects him from her table. She does it 114 times. On a time 115 she looks up, nods and exchanges a few words with Mr. 115. If Mr 115 sparks her interest a bit and Mr. 115 decides he may want to see her again, they exchange numbers. Ask your women friends which one of the two they prefer.
wongarsu 7y ago
Both are true. Most people on dating sites are men, and the women that are there heavily skew towards a small portion of men.
LeanderK 7y ago
there was an interesting data-analysis blog-post about this, I think i found it on HN but right now I can't find it. It presents some evidence that your statement is very true. edit: here it is https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0f1561e https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...
- css 7y ago
  Here is another one I have seen floating around, but I am not sure the veracity of its analysis. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
ketzu 7y ago
Is this more than just speculation? According to the linked occupid data (https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0f1561e https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...) while women underrate attractiveness of men, the distribution of messages fllows the attractiveness curve: Men receive about the same amount of messages independent of attractiveness (https://web.archive.org/web/20170331084200im_/https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*aWz0dYzuUR7PO3dP.png https://web.archive.org/web/20170331084200im_/https://cdn-im...). Especially compared to the behaviour of men, which tend to value attractiveness much more. One hypothesis is that it depends on the service you use. E.g., Tinder vs Okupid, where Tinder reinforces decision based on looks while Okupid encourages much more detailed profiles.
- animal531 7y ago
  The study from OkCupid that I saw a long time ago showed that the top 78% of women were only interested in the top 22% of men (where top denotes a score that rates how often others are interested in you, the amount of messages you receive etc). The reverse then meant that the bottom 78% of men had to compete for the attention of the bottom 22% of women. They retracted that study after a while, but other dating sites roughly get the same percentages eventually.
  - watwut 7y ago
    If it is 80% male, that would mean that the women generally simply matched available males and then were done with it all. There is no way to achieve monogamous one-to-one pairing for everyone in place that is 80% male. Of course only minority of men succeeds. And while here it is not exactly 1-to-1, it is not actually all that much far off.
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    It’s interesting to see the Pareto Principle working here as well.

by arkh 7y ago

Lewton 7y ago

On tinder the issue isn’t that women only go for the top 20%, the issue is that the elo algorithm is so aggressive and the gender ratio is so skewed that women won’t even see your profile if it’s in the bottom 80%

kilroy123 7y ago

This is correct. It’s become a winner takes all situation.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
It probably was that way since the dawn of humanity. In 100 BC it was probably worse, if anything

mcv 7y ago

Create a fake profile to prove these are not all fake profiles? In any case, any site where the profile focuses primarily on your photo is probably going to see this going both ways: men going for the hottest women and women going for the hottest men. If you focus more on people's interests, I'd expect you're going to see a very different pattern.

skocznymroczny 7y ago
The only major remaining website that tries to match people based on interests is OKCupid. And even it is changing every few months. Unfortunately, the success of Tinder and move to mobile phones first ruined most of the dating websites, which try to emulate its success. Because people mostly use phone nowadays for dating websites, long profiles are mostly gone, sending long letters is gone, many conversations are single sentence now. Also, instead of matching based on shared interests/values, most of the matching is based on "swipe left/right on photo".
- darkwater 7y ago
  I don't get why Match.com, OkCupid should converge to a Tinder-like working model if they share ownership. I guess that there are different niches of people for those different websites/apps, no?
  - skocznymroczny 7y ago
    Perhaps so that later on they can transition all OKC users onto Tinder and maintain only one product?
    - mcv 7y ago
      Use profiles from one site as basis for fake profiles on another site, and when someone responds to those profiles, mail the user to pressure them to also join the other site.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      Highly doubt that's their goal. Maintaining multiple dating sites probably just increases their reach and revenue...
- notyourday 7y ago
  > The only major remaining website that tries to match people based on interests is OKCupid. And even it is changing every few months. Unfortunately, the success of Tinder and move to mobile phones first ruined most of the dating websites, which try to emulate its success. Because people mostly use phone nowadays for dating websites, long profiles are mostly gone, sending long letters is gone, many conversations are single sentence now. Also, instead of matching based on shared interests/values, most of the matching is based on "swipe left/right on photo". You should spend time talking women. They absolutely hated the long-form dating sites. Imagine she is sitting in a cafe. She is not out on a prowl to get married, get laid or go on a date -- she would not mind either of those three if ( long list of requirements ) but she is not here for that specific purpose. She is drinking her macha tea and reading her kindle. Gentleman number one approaches. He smells like he did not shower in a week. He goes into a five minute pitch about his dog, Skippy, and his love for bananas. She is a cat person and she hates yellow things. The gentleman does not leave for thirty minutes Gentleman number two approaches. He is lovely. He fumbles and cracks up a joke. She looks up at him and sees a bugger in his nose. She goes back to her book as he continues to talk to her. Eventually, she says "Look, I'm not interested." He becomes indignant and does not leave for another twenty minutes. That's a long form dating. Here's tinder: She looks up, shakes her head no and a force field ejects him from her table. She does it 114 times. On a time 115 she looks up, nods and exchanges a few words with Mr. 115. If Mr 115 sparks her interest a bit and Mr. 115 decides he may want to see her again, they exchange numbers. Ask your women friends which one of the two they prefer.

wongarsu 7y ago

Both are true. Most people on dating sites are men, and the women that are there heavily skew towards a small portion of men.

LeanderK 7y ago

there was an interesting data-analysis blog-post about this, I think i found it on HN but right now I can't find it. It presents some evidence that your statement is very true. edit: here it is https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0f1561e https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...

css 7y ago
Here is another one I have seen floating around, but I am not sure the veracity of its analysis. https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...

ketzu 7y ago

Is this more than just speculation? According to the linked occupid data (https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0f1561e https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...) while women underrate attractiveness of men, the distribution of messages fllows the attractiveness curve: Men receive about the same amount of messages independent of attractiveness (https://web.archive.org/web/20170331084200im_/https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*aWz0dYzuUR7PO3dP.png https://web.archive.org/web/20170331084200im_/https://cdn-im...). Especially compared to the behaviour of men, which tend to value attractiveness much more. One hypothesis is that it depends on the service you use. E.g., Tinder vs Okupid, where Tinder reinforces decision based on looks while Okupid encourages much more detailed profiles.

animal531 7y ago
The study from OkCupid that I saw a long time ago showed that the top 78% of women were only interested in the top 22% of men (where top denotes a score that rates how often others are interested in you, the amount of messages you receive etc). The reverse then meant that the bottom 78% of men had to compete for the attention of the bottom 22% of women. They retracted that study after a while, but other dating sites roughly get the same percentages eventually.
- watwut 7y ago
  If it is 80% male, that would mean that the women generally simply matched available males and then were done with it all. There is no way to achieve monogamous one-to-one pairing for everyone in place that is 80% male. Of course only minority of men succeeds. And while here it is not exactly 1-to-1, it is not actually all that much far off.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  It’s interesting to see the Pareto Principle working here as well.