22 ms·

A 4-month online dating experiment using 10 fictional singletons (2012)

133 points by luu 6y ago

mmastrac 6y ago
Link seems to be dead. archive.org to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20191130004809/http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/ https://web.archive.org/web/20191130004809/http://jonmillwar...
kaiju0 6y ago
You have to fight scale with scale https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- csunbird 6y ago
  That is an interesting approach. Maybe I should do something like that too!
- purplecats 6y ago
  can you expand on that saying of "fight scale with scale"?
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Presumably the two uses of the word "scale" refer to "the scale of the problem of being just one person competing against thousands" and "scaling up your chances by going on many first dates", respectively.
  - kaiju0 6y ago
    Let's say your response rate for initial messages is 10%. Next is if a girl will engage beyond the initial response chances drop from 10% to something like 3%. Then they have to accept your call to action. We are down to even a lower percentage now. With these kinds of numbers working against you you need scale on your side or your getting nowhere fast. But if you are able to contact 10k people what comes out of those small percentages are decent numbers.
- ezl 6y ago
  (Note: Loved this story, so I don't want this comment to be interpreted criticism.) If you strip away the machine learning/computer/math part, the story is: After 88 first dates, Chris finds someone he thinks he wants to marry. (Article says from the first 55 1st dates -> 3 2nd dates -> 1 3rd date). It seems possible that going on 88 random dates would lead to a similarly shaped funnel. While "use math" sounds like smart strategy, many (most probably?) happily married people have not gone on 88 actual first dates.
carabiner 6y ago
[2012] A 2020 version: 18 Yr Old Woman Tries Being A Man on Tinder https://youtu.be/DZTIbHIsIYw https://youtu.be/DZTIbHIsIYw She tries to get as many matches and dates as possible using the male host's pictures. Spoiler: after a week of paltry messages and matches, she says she's "struggling" and "feeling down, even though it's not my damn profile. I thought this would be easy. I don't want to do this again. I hate this."
- dang 6y ago
  Year added above. Thanks! Also, discussion from back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544
- nmfisher 6y ago
  Wow, that guy was on the more attractive side of the spectrum, too. Reminds how eternally grateful I should be that my romantic life predates Tinder.
  - collyw 6y ago
    Tinder looks a lot of fun. Wasn't around before I got with my current partner. The closest we got was "hot or not" where you could rate pictures of the opposite sex (or the same sex if you preffered) from 1 to 10. Had a lot of fun "competing" with friends on that.
    - CuriouslyC 6y ago
      Tinder might be a lot of fun for college kids on campus or spring break, because the pool is fairy homogenous and almost everyone will be within walking distance leading to instant dates. For adults looking for something substantial in a broader area it's hot garbage. There's also a VERY specific skill set to Tinder you'll have to develop; you can be attractive, do well on other online dating sites and be able to meet women at parties easily enough and still fail hard.
d33lio 6y ago
I got banned for deleting and re-creating my account too many times. (on the same device) I also tried being a "marginally" attractive woman one time and the results were stunning. 100's of matches in the first hour. Even creating an account with male pictures easily 5-6x as attractive as me yielded meager results at best (1-2 matches per day). I will say, these apps work better in large cities. However, the real reason I suspect my account was banned, was from me realizing you get a default "boost" on your account for the first 24-48hrs (seems to be the case both on Tinder and Bumble). If you really want results, just keep deleting and re-creating your account after results start to fall off after a few days.
pers0n 6y ago
These sites are built to make money. Match, who owns most of them (okcupid, pof, ...) has all kind of other services they offer: boost, profile makeovers, date coaching, etc... They limit you and force you to go through profiles 1 by 1 because it benefits them to do so. Because you are more likely to pay to have more access, get boosts, etc. They have optimized the site to make money, so the longer you are single the better. While you might find someone on the site, I find real life is better, granted with COVID things are a bit rough now. Nevermind that many people now have overinflated egos and feel they have tons of option. In the case of women I think they forget most of the thristy guys are just looking to hit it and quit it and take it as their value and worth is higher than it really is.
- geogra4 6y ago
  My now-wife was relatively new to the city we were in when I met her. we were both on OkCupid at the time but I didn't meet her from there. I wonder if we had met on OkCupid we would have hit it off as well
geogra4 6y ago
I was actually hoping to hear more about the kinds of messages that men receive. Back in my single days I never received any messages from women unsolicited so I'm curious what these are like
- throway98752343 6y ago
  Looking at the last few times a woman messaged me* first: 1. Oh hey [Name] Srry for the late msg [3:24 AM] I just wanted to take initiative since I was the first to match and all.. 2. hey! having any good adventures in quarantine? 3. hit me up w a netflix rec [my bio mentioned this] 4. Hi there. From your emojis you say art is helping you get through this. What kind of art are you doing? 5. Hi [Name] 6. Hi [Name]! You seem adventurous 7. why are u holding onto that [mammal in one picture]! that's horrible ! 8. Where’s that volcano picture from? Of these, 3, 4, 7 and 8 are tailored to my profile. 4 is a decent, if unexciting, opener. 8 is pretty dull. *30's straight white American male without visible issues, based in a major city listing college, a good job, and a female friend-vetted bio and gallery. As other comments suggest, my match rate went from awful to not terrible when I got better pictures.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm kinda tired of "dating sites are horrible for men, but it's hard for women in a different way" being the extent of the discussion. Article is from 2012, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt that this same experiment hadn't yet been repeated over and over with slight variations to the same result when it was written. It is at this point common knowledge that online dating as it exists today is horrible. My personal take on that is it is because dating itself is horrible and there are some things you just can't fix with a website, but if we're going to have a discussion around online dating are there at least any studies out there that might inform a better way to do things?
- knaq 6y ago
  Well, they aren't horrible for two groups. 1. Men in the top 5% who are seeking commitment-free sex. 2. Women in the top 50% who are seeking commitment-free sex. If you happen to fall into one of those two groups, online dating is wonderful.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    The hookup problem has been solved. The find someone who would fit in socially with me issues hasn't even been addressed by anyone. The find a soulmate algo hasn't been written yet.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      maybe this is overly cynical, but I suspect there is a business reason for this. a successful "find my soulmate" app would be actively destroying its customer base. a "find a hookup" app can be very effective and still have lots of repeat customers.
      - thekyle 6y ago
        This is why I was excited for Facebook Dating. Although I don't really like Facebook as a company, they don't really have this problem. If two users meet on Facebook dating and form a LTR then it's unlikely to make them leave Facebook.
elchief 6y ago
Men liked 61.9% of women on Tinder and women liked a mere 4.5% of men on Tinder https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775719301104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571...
- jfengel 6y ago
  4.5% makes a lot more sense to me than 61.9%. If you're liking more than half of everybody, you're not really filtering anything. And that puts all of the work on them to do the filtering, which is inconsiderate.
  - throwaway39938 6y ago
    > 4.5% makes a lot more sense to me than 61.9% Seems backward? Why artificially limit your dating pool based on something as superficial as a 10-word profile and some photos? Surely makes sense to be open to meet as many people as possible?
    - wolco2 6y ago
      Women want the best 5%. If you are not in that group go to a smaller room.
      - throwaway39938 6y ago
        How do you think that translates to the context of online dating? There are no rooms, just 1-1 matches. You can't stand out more by swiping less, can you? Your best strategy is always simple to swipe as much as possible (until the algorithm punishes you for doing that.)
        wolco2 6y ago
        Go use a smaller app or a smaller dating site. Is tinderthe only site you use ? Why not go more niche. Are you Jewish, Christian, plenty of sites can be found. Are you into a specific sexual preference or gender? Plenty of sites around those...
colmvp 6y ago
What's interesting to me is what's missing in this post is ethnicity. When I first started online dating, I noticed something curious, as an Asian male I got zero responses from non-Asian women from my parents country of origin. For me at least, I don't care about the ethnicity of the woman I'm dating especially given that I'm not the majority ethnicity in the country/city so I've always kept an open mind as to who I'd want to date. Many of my Asian female friends had no trouble finding matches with white/black men. For background, I live in the West in a region which is 50% white and 50% mixture of Black/Asian/Latino, I write/speak fluent English, I have progressive and liberal values, and I have a very stable life. I decided to record my interactions with the dating app for a multi-year period manually by putting in details in an excel spreadsheet. I receive 10-20 profiles per day, and if any of them like me back, chat unlocks. I put their details ethnicity, age, how attracted I was to them based on photos, and the outcome. Well after 5 years of using it I can say that I have had zero White/Black/Latino women ever chat with me. Zero from thousands of matches over a period of years. We're not talking about first dates, relationships, we're talking about literally someone on the other end hitting the 'like' button to unlock chat. And I'm not someone who just likes super attractive women I was open to literally anyone ranging from less conventionally attractive profiles. At To be honest, it completely changed my perspective of women altogether.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  Being an Asian American male myself, my friends and I had similar experiences. Asian males have it rough on dating apps. I really think the reduction to text and photos emphasizes racial disadvantages in the dating market, at least in the USA. I had a lot better luck abroad.
- qsssekk 6y ago
  I've had a related experience. Ethnically, it's hard to place me by looks, and I get an ok number of matches. However, once I've started chatting with women, some 2 dozen times I've gotten ghosted IMMEDIATELY when they find out where my family is from (it's a country that doesn't get much positive press). I don't think it's a reflection on women, specifically. I think it's more an indication of how strongly cultural biases are ingrained in all of us.
saberience 6y ago
Can someone explain the seeming asymmetry between men's and women's experiences in online dating? Average looking and better women seem to get huge amounts of matches: if you're better than average this can be hundreds per day in a big city. Going by my own experience and friends experiences, as a guy, even if you're better than average looks with a good job, nice photos etc, are lucky to get a handful of matches per week. So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? Is it literally only the top 0.1% of men that are getting the majority of the matches? i.e. are women who are say 7-8/10 on the looks scale only matching with guys who are 9.5/10 on the looks scale, so guys who are 7-8/10 getting zero matches?
- carabiner 6y ago
  > So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? Is it literally only the top 0.1% of men that are getting the majority of the matches? Yes, basically massive "wealth inequality" among men as expressed by Gini coefficient: https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard-to-be-an-average-man-on-dating-apps/ https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard...
- throwaway39938 6y ago
  > So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? I don't understand what you're confused about. Men swipe on a large proportion of women. Women swipe on a small proportion of men. So most women's swipes will be reciprocated, most men's won't be. Not sure why you can't see how it would work?
  - jandrese 6y ago
    More to the point I think the population of men on those services grossly outweighs the population of women. The women have to be selective because they don't have time to engage with each of the hundreds of responses they get. It might be interesting to run a dating service that limited signups to an even gender ratio. Or at least didn't let the imbalance grow more than a modest amount. Of course then most men would complain that they can't even sign up. You'd have to be very aggressive about culling idle accounts.
aerophilic 6y ago
As someone recently single for the first time in over 14 years... it was an eye opening experience to see how things had changed. Online dating is very much a skill, and books I have read point and tell me even more. My short version of what I have learned (and have succeeded with): 1. Appearance matters, but more so for females 2. For men, it is more important that you convey what you are doing than absolute attractiveness. Women are most attracted to “rocket ships”, people that are going places with their lives (it doesn’t matter your current state). Also, I recommend Hinge over most of the apps out there... for what it is worth, I have had my most success there, including the girl I am currently dating. Just my two cents...
- carabiner 6y ago
  Always calibrate the dating advice by the attractiveness of the person giving it. It's just a very different game for different types of people.
  - akavi 6y ago
    I'm reminded of a 6 ft tall, blonde roommate I once had who advised me to "make sure your photos have you doing something in them, so the women you match with have a hook to start the conversation with.". (If you don't see what's hilarious about that advice, you are either not a man, are extremely attractive, or haven't ever used a dating app)
    - carabiner 6y ago
      I have male friends who get approached by women in bars, rather than the other way around. I guess their advice would be "go to bars and just wait, someone will notice you." I go to bars and this has never happened to me in my life.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Back in the days when I went to bars, I'd tease a handsome friend of mine that his pickup line was "ok".
wolco2 6y ago
Men always had to chase after women why would online be any different.
deleted 6y ago
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at_a_remove 6y ago
I worked at a dating service, pre-Web, in many capacities. After seeing various listed preferences, matches, relationships, and so on, I began to do my own (amateur, although I did take rather a lot of statistics for my major) probes of trends. First, you can take away the "online" component. None of the trends OKCupid had blogged about (and were since deleted) were new to my experience. Online magnifies trends through sheer numbers but that's about it. The men tended to make a lot of requests; the women tended not to. Most of the men were rejected; most of the women were not. Women tended to have more "must haves" than men. And so on and so forth. It was all very disheartening. I wonder if I could still pry the data out of dBase III.
- roel_v 6y ago
  "I wonder if I could still pry the data out of dBase III" Is that in .dbf file format? I happened to be working with that format today, there are 2 up to date and complete libraries for Python for it, it's trivial to get such data out.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    Well, it is a bit more than that. I would have to remember the field mappings for something that used dBase III as its underpinning for all kinds of preference questions, which I would also have to find the template for. And then there's the decades-old floppies ... In any case, I think the deletion of the old OKCupid statistical analyses is fairly telling: most people do not want to look at the evidence, and ignore it when it goes against the grain. You will get a lot of pushback when you conclude "men have a harder time dating than women" from what you gather. I've often considering "doing something" with it, but it is likely unethical and, in any case, wouldn't really change any minds.
dang 6y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544
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atlgator 6y ago
I would like to run a dating site just to observe the interactions and statistics. I find it so fascinating.
JoshTko 6y ago
The author doesn't try their own advice on how to send an interesting message, using less attractive men. The presumption here is that the interesting message matters, but I'm doubtful that the bottom two men in terms of attractiveness would have gotten a response.
grecy 6y ago
I had a great lesson in the reality of online dating a few nights ago. At a friend's house I overheard three late-twenties women talking about one of them going on a date with a guy. Looking at the pone all three of them exclaimed in joy "OHHHH - He's CUTE!!!". The guy proceeded to stand her up three times - no showing to planned dates -, said he can't hold a job, his car broke down, and then stood her up again. I'm quite confident a doormat could be a better person/partner in terms of dependability and respecting someones time. All three of them are still enthralled with him. Because he's cute.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Why isn't there a more political movement around "lookism?" Seems equivalent to the body positivity movement and the anti fat-shaming movement. Incels and other types who find little success with women have a certain right to be frustrated that we just accept other forms of social justice while leaving them out. Consider that some european states already believe that sex is a transcendental enough experience to call for or implement policies like this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-sexual-assistance-prostitution-disabled-people-greens-scharfenberg-a7519721.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-sexu... https://www.mic.com/articles/85201/the-surprising-way-the-netherlands-is-helping-its-disabled-have-sex https://www.mic.com/articles/85201/the-surprising-way-the-ne... Incels and other folks who are truly marginalized from the dating and/or casual sex market should have have a good reason to long for state assistance. This would be very good for society as a strong reason for radicalization of the youth is shame over being marganalized from the sexual marketplace...
- meiraleal 6y ago
  Because men prefer to aim to be in the top 20% than make life better (and average) to 100%.
- throway98752343 6y ago
  Capitalism's answer is to improve access and affordability of "cosmetic" surgery so everyone can keep up with the Kardashians. You won't have a right to romantic love, but you'll have a right to become hot enough to qualify for it. That or sex robots fill the demand. Either way, the economy grows.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  I tend to agree. However it's not hopeless - we already have a system to serve them. It's the culture of monogamous relationships and marriage. That removes the most attractive men from the dating pool, leaving the remaining women available for the less attractive men. If we didn't have that, we'd probably instead have a lot of polygamy with most men missing out entirely and most women sharing a partner. That's effectively what it's like for short term relationships - women don't get exclusive access to the attractive men - they have to take turns.
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mcguire 6y ago
"Morals aside (where would space travel be without the unpleasant demise of Laika the Soviet space dog?), I set about creating ten dummy dating profiles on the world’s fastest growing online dating site: OKCupid." And this is why real researchers have to deal with a review board.
vncecartersknee 6y ago
As a maybe slightly above average Australian male, I found it interesting travelling around Europe. I do ok-ish on dating apps at home, it's not fun but I could get a date or two a month if I made a consistent effort to message people. Maybe a short relationship or a handful of hook-ups a year if I'm lucky. In northern Italy, Spain, south of France, I got virtually no matches at all. However in the week or so I spent in Scandinavia, almost every woman I swiped right on matched back, many of them messaged as well. I would consider men and women in Scandinavia somewhat more attractive on average than people elsewhere and of course vastly more attractive than I am. Unfortunately I don't speak any Danish!
Vaslo 6y ago
Online dating messages and resumes have one thing in common - the more specialized to the recipient, the more hits you will get. If your message to every girl is “what’s up”, then you are doing the resume equivalent of creating a single resume and sending to every job on LinkedIn. The more your resume matches the job, the better your chances of getting called. The more your first response to a woman on the dating site shows you’ve read their profile and have interest in their interests, the more responses you will get back. It’s better to pick 1-2 people every day you are truly interested in (more than just looks) and put some time into a real message. Not just “what’s up” to 30 girls. Oh i always kept sending messages to new people no matter how I was doing with someone else on the site. These things would fizzle out suddenly after a few weeks for all sorts of reasons and you could miss out on some great people.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Another massively asymmetric market. Yes; personalization helps, but most efforts are simply wasted because a majority of the jobs are inactive, overwhelmed, or just using interviews to get free help on their problems.
jl2718 6y ago
Has anybody ever done something like this for the tech job market? I’m aware of the resume name variation studies, but more interested in what it’s like from the hiring side.

133 points by luu 6y ago

Link seems to be dead. archive.org to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20191130004809/http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/ https://web.archive.org/web/20191130004809/http://jonmillwar...

kaiju0 6y ago

You have to fight scale with scale https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/

deleted 6y ago
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csunbird 6y ago
That is an interesting approach. Maybe I should do something like that too!
purplecats 6y ago
can you expand on that saying of "fight scale with scale"?
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Presumably the two uses of the word "scale" refer to "the scale of the problem of being just one person competing against thousands" and "scaling up your chances by going on many first dates", respectively.
- kaiju0 6y ago
  Let's say your response rate for initial messages is 10%. Next is if a girl will engage beyond the initial response chances drop from 10% to something like 3%. Then they have to accept your call to action. We are down to even a lower percentage now. With these kinds of numbers working against you you need scale on your side or your getting nowhere fast. But if you are able to contact 10k people what comes out of those small percentages are decent numbers.
ezl 6y ago
(Note: Loved this story, so I don't want this comment to be interpreted criticism.) If you strip away the machine learning/computer/math part, the story is: After 88 first dates, Chris finds someone he thinks he wants to marry. (Article says from the first 55 1st dates -> 3 2nd dates -> 1 3rd date). It seems possible that going on 88 random dates would lead to a similarly shaped funnel. While "use math" sounds like smart strategy, many (most probably?) happily married people have not gone on 88 actual first dates.

carabiner 6y ago

[2012] A 2020 version: 18 Yr Old Woman Tries Being A Man on Tinder https://youtu.be/DZTIbHIsIYw https://youtu.be/DZTIbHIsIYw She tries to get as many matches and dates as possible using the male host's pictures. Spoiler: after a week of paltry messages and matches, she says she's "struggling" and "feeling down, even though it's not my damn profile. I thought this would be easy. I don't want to do this again. I hate this."

dang 6y ago
Year added above. Thanks! Also, discussion from back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544
nmfisher 6y ago
Wow, that guy was on the more attractive side of the spectrum, too. Reminds how eternally grateful I should be that my romantic life predates Tinder.
- collyw 6y ago
  Tinder looks a lot of fun. Wasn't around before I got with my current partner. The closest we got was "hot or not" where you could rate pictures of the opposite sex (or the same sex if you preffered) from 1 to 10. Had a lot of fun "competing" with friends on that.
  - CuriouslyC 6y ago
    Tinder might be a lot of fun for college kids on campus or spring break, because the pool is fairy homogenous and almost everyone will be within walking distance leading to instant dates. For adults looking for something substantial in a broader area it's hot garbage. There's also a VERY specific skill set to Tinder you'll have to develop; you can be attractive, do well on other online dating sites and be able to meet women at parties easily enough and still fail hard.

d33lio 6y ago

I got banned for deleting and re-creating my account too many times. (on the same device) I also tried being a "marginally" attractive woman one time and the results were stunning. 100's of matches in the first hour. Even creating an account with male pictures easily 5-6x as attractive as me yielded meager results at best (1-2 matches per day). I will say, these apps work better in large cities. However, the real reason I suspect my account was banned, was from me realizing you get a default "boost" on your account for the first 24-48hrs (seems to be the case both on Tinder and Bumble). If you really want results, just keep deleting and re-creating your account after results start to fall off after a few days.

pers0n 6y ago

These sites are built to make money. Match, who owns most of them (okcupid, pof, ...) has all kind of other services they offer: boost, profile makeovers, date coaching, etc... They limit you and force you to go through profiles 1 by 1 because it benefits them to do so. Because you are more likely to pay to have more access, get boosts, etc. They have optimized the site to make money, so the longer you are single the better. While you might find someone on the site, I find real life is better, granted with COVID things are a bit rough now. Nevermind that many people now have overinflated egos and feel they have tons of option. In the case of women I think they forget most of the thristy guys are just looking to hit it and quit it and take it as their value and worth is higher than it really is.

geogra4 6y ago
My now-wife was relatively new to the city we were in when I met her. we were both on OkCupid at the time but I didn't meet her from there. I wonder if we had met on OkCupid we would have hit it off as well

geogra4 6y ago

I was actually hoping to hear more about the kinds of messages that men receive. Back in my single days I never received any messages from women unsolicited so I'm curious what these are like

throway98752343 6y ago
Looking at the last few times a woman messaged me* first: 1. Oh hey [Name] Srry for the late msg [3:24 AM] I just wanted to take initiative since I was the first to match and all.. 2. hey! having any good adventures in quarantine? 3. hit me up w a netflix rec [my bio mentioned this] 4. Hi there. From your emojis you say art is helping you get through this. What kind of art are you doing? 5. Hi [Name] 6. Hi [Name]! You seem adventurous 7. why are u holding onto that [mammal in one picture]! that's horrible ! 8. Where’s that volcano picture from? Of these, 3, 4, 7 and 8 are tailored to my profile. 4 is a decent, if unexciting, opener. 8 is pretty dull. *30's straight white American male without visible issues, based in a major city listing college, a good job, and a female friend-vetted bio and gallery. As other comments suggest, my match rate went from awful to not terrible when I got better pictures.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm kinda tired of "dating sites are horrible for men, but it's hard for women in a different way" being the extent of the discussion. Article is from 2012, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt that this same experiment hadn't yet been repeated over and over with slight variations to the same result when it was written. It is at this point common knowledge that online dating as it exists today is horrible. My personal take on that is it is because dating itself is horrible and there are some things you just can't fix with a website, but if we're going to have a discussion around online dating are there at least any studies out there that might inform a better way to do things?

knaq 6y ago
Well, they aren't horrible for two groups. 1. Men in the top 5% who are seeking commitment-free sex. 2. Women in the top 50% who are seeking commitment-free sex. If you happen to fall into one of those two groups, online dating is wonderful.
- wolco2 6y ago
  The hookup problem has been solved. The find someone who would fit in socially with me issues hasn't even been addressed by anyone. The find a soulmate algo hasn't been written yet.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    maybe this is overly cynical, but I suspect there is a business reason for this. a successful "find my soulmate" app would be actively destroying its customer base. a "find a hookup" app can be very effective and still have lots of repeat customers.
    - thekyle 6y ago
      This is why I was excited for Facebook Dating. Although I don't really like Facebook as a company, they don't really have this problem. If two users meet on Facebook dating and form a LTR then it's unlikely to make them leave Facebook.

elchief 6y ago

Men liked 61.9% of women on Tinder and women liked a mere 4.5% of men on Tinder https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775719301104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571...

jfengel 6y ago
4.5% makes a lot more sense to me than 61.9%. If you're liking more than half of everybody, you're not really filtering anything. And that puts all of the work on them to do the filtering, which is inconsiderate.
- throwaway39938 6y ago
  > 4.5% makes a lot more sense to me than 61.9% Seems backward? Why artificially limit your dating pool based on something as superficial as a 10-word profile and some photos? Surely makes sense to be open to meet as many people as possible?
  - wolco2 6y ago
    Women want the best 5%. If you are not in that group go to a smaller room.
    - throwaway39938 6y ago
      How do you think that translates to the context of online dating? There are no rooms, just 1-1 matches. You can't stand out more by swiping less, can you? Your best strategy is always simple to swipe as much as possible (until the algorithm punishes you for doing that.)
      - wolco2 6y ago
        Go use a smaller app or a smaller dating site. Is tinderthe only site you use ? Why not go more niche. Are you Jewish, Christian, plenty of sites can be found. Are you into a specific sexual preference or gender? Plenty of sites around those...

colmvp 6y ago

What's interesting to me is what's missing in this post is ethnicity. When I first started online dating, I noticed something curious, as an Asian male I got zero responses from non-Asian women from my parents country of origin. For me at least, I don't care about the ethnicity of the woman I'm dating especially given that I'm not the majority ethnicity in the country/city so I've always kept an open mind as to who I'd want to date. Many of my Asian female friends had no trouble finding matches with white/black men. For background, I live in the West in a region which is 50% white and 50% mixture of Black/Asian/Latino, I write/speak fluent English, I have progressive and liberal values, and I have a very stable life. I decided to record my interactions with the dating app for a multi-year period manually by putting in details in an excel spreadsheet. I receive 10-20 profiles per day, and if any of them like me back, chat unlocks. I put their details ethnicity, age, how attracted I was to them based on photos, and the outcome. Well after 5 years of using it I can say that I have had zero White/Black/Latino women ever chat with me. Zero from thousands of matches over a period of years. We're not talking about first dates, relationships, we're talking about literally someone on the other end hitting the 'like' button to unlock chat. And I'm not someone who just likes super attractive women I was open to literally anyone ranging from less conventionally attractive profiles. At To be honest, it completely changed my perspective of women altogether.

faitswulff 6y ago
Being an Asian American male myself, my friends and I had similar experiences. Asian males have it rough on dating apps. I really think the reduction to text and photos emphasizes racial disadvantages in the dating market, at least in the USA. I had a lot better luck abroad.
qsssekk 6y ago
I've had a related experience. Ethnically, it's hard to place me by looks, and I get an ok number of matches. However, once I've started chatting with women, some 2 dozen times I've gotten ghosted IMMEDIATELY when they find out where my family is from (it's a country that doesn't get much positive press). I don't think it's a reflection on women, specifically. I think it's more an indication of how strongly cultural biases are ingrained in all of us.

saberience 6y ago

Can someone explain the seeming asymmetry between men's and women's experiences in online dating? Average looking and better women seem to get huge amounts of matches: if you're better than average this can be hundreds per day in a big city. Going by my own experience and friends experiences, as a guy, even if you're better than average looks with a good job, nice photos etc, are lucky to get a handful of matches per week. So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? Is it literally only the top 0.1% of men that are getting the majority of the matches? i.e. are women who are say 7-8/10 on the looks scale only matching with guys who are 9.5/10 on the looks scale, so guys who are 7-8/10 getting zero matches?

carabiner 6y ago
> So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? Is it literally only the top 0.1% of men that are getting the majority of the matches? Yes, basically massive "wealth inequality" among men as expressed by Gini coefficient: https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard-to-be-an-average-man-on-dating-apps/ https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard...
throwaway39938 6y ago
> So what I don't understand then is if all these women are getting huge amounts of matches, how can men be getting less matches? I don't understand what you're confused about. Men swipe on a large proportion of women. Women swipe on a small proportion of men. So most women's swipes will be reciprocated, most men's won't be. Not sure why you can't see how it would work?
- jandrese 6y ago
  More to the point I think the population of men on those services grossly outweighs the population of women. The women have to be selective because they don't have time to engage with each of the hundreds of responses they get. It might be interesting to run a dating service that limited signups to an even gender ratio. Or at least didn't let the imbalance grow more than a modest amount. Of course then most men would complain that they can't even sign up. You'd have to be very aggressive about culling idle accounts.

aerophilic 6y ago

As someone recently single for the first time in over 14 years... it was an eye opening experience to see how things had changed. Online dating is very much a skill, and books I have read point and tell me even more. My short version of what I have learned (and have succeeded with): 1. Appearance matters, but more so for females 2. For men, it is more important that you convey what you are doing than absolute attractiveness. Women are most attracted to “rocket ships”, people that are going places with their lives (it doesn’t matter your current state). Also, I recommend Hinge over most of the apps out there... for what it is worth, I have had my most success there, including the girl I am currently dating. Just my two cents...

carabiner 6y ago
Always calibrate the dating advice by the attractiveness of the person giving it. It's just a very different game for different types of people.
- akavi 6y ago
  I'm reminded of a 6 ft tall, blonde roommate I once had who advised me to "make sure your photos have you doing something in them, so the women you match with have a hook to start the conversation with.". (If you don't see what's hilarious about that advice, you are either not a man, are extremely attractive, or haven't ever used a dating app)
  - carabiner 6y ago
    I have male friends who get approached by women in bars, rather than the other way around. I guess their advice would be "go to bars and just wait, someone will notice you." I go to bars and this has never happened to me in my life.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Back in the days when I went to bars, I'd tease a handsome friend of mine that his pickup line was "ok".

wolco2 6y ago

Men always had to chase after women why would online be any different.

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at_a_remove 6y ago

I worked at a dating service, pre-Web, in many capacities. After seeing various listed preferences, matches, relationships, and so on, I began to do my own (amateur, although I did take rather a lot of statistics for my major) probes of trends. First, you can take away the "online" component. None of the trends OKCupid had blogged about (and were since deleted) were new to my experience. Online magnifies trends through sheer numbers but that's about it. The men tended to make a lot of requests; the women tended not to. Most of the men were rejected; most of the women were not. Women tended to have more "must haves" than men. And so on and so forth. It was all very disheartening. I wonder if I could still pry the data out of dBase III.

roel_v 6y ago
"I wonder if I could still pry the data out of dBase III" Is that in .dbf file format? I happened to be working with that format today, there are 2 up to date and complete libraries for Python for it, it's trivial to get such data out.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  Well, it is a bit more than that. I would have to remember the field mappings for something that used dBase III as its underpinning for all kinds of preference questions, which I would also have to find the template for. And then there's the decades-old floppies ... In any case, I think the deletion of the old OKCupid statistical analyses is fairly telling: most people do not want to look at the evidence, and ignore it when it goes against the grain. You will get a lot of pushback when you conclude "men have a harder time dating than women" from what you gather. I've often considering "doing something" with it, but it is likely unethical and, in any case, wouldn't really change any minds.

dang 6y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165544

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atlgator 6y ago

I would like to run a dating site just to observe the interactions and statistics. I find it so fascinating.

JoshTko 6y ago

The author doesn't try their own advice on how to send an interesting message, using less attractive men. The presumption here is that the interesting message matters, but I'm doubtful that the bottom two men in terms of attractiveness would have gotten a response.

grecy 6y ago

I had a great lesson in the reality of online dating a few nights ago. At a friend's house I overheard three late-twenties women talking about one of them going on a date with a guy. Looking at the pone all three of them exclaimed in joy "OHHHH - He's CUTE!!!". The guy proceeded to stand her up three times - no showing to planned dates -, said he can't hold a job, his car broke down, and then stood her up again. I'm quite confident a doormat could be a better person/partner in terms of dependability and respecting someones time. All three of them are still enthralled with him. Because he's cute.

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Why isn't there a more political movement around "lookism?" Seems equivalent to the body positivity movement and the anti fat-shaming movement. Incels and other types who find little success with women have a certain right to be frustrated that we just accept other forms of social justice while leaving them out. Consider that some european states already believe that sex is a transcendental enough experience to call for or implement policies like this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-sexual-assistance-prostitution-disabled-people-greens-scharfenberg-a7519721.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-sexu... https://www.mic.com/articles/85201/the-surprising-way-the-netherlands-is-helping-its-disabled-have-sex https://www.mic.com/articles/85201/the-surprising-way-the-ne... Incels and other folks who are truly marginalized from the dating and/or casual sex market should have have a good reason to long for state assistance. This would be very good for society as a strong reason for radicalization of the youth is shame over being marganalized from the sexual marketplace...

meiraleal 6y ago
Because men prefer to aim to be in the top 20% than make life better (and average) to 100%.
throway98752343 6y ago
Capitalism's answer is to improve access and affordability of "cosmetic" surgery so everyone can keep up with the Kardashians. You won't have a right to romantic love, but you'll have a right to become hot enough to qualify for it. That or sex robots fill the demand. Either way, the economy grows.
lopmotr 6y ago
I tend to agree. However it's not hopeless - we already have a system to serve them. It's the culture of monogamous relationships and marriage. That removes the most attractive men from the dating pool, leaving the remaining women available for the less attractive men. If we didn't have that, we'd probably instead have a lot of polygamy with most men missing out entirely and most women sharing a partner. That's effectively what it's like for short term relationships - women don't get exclusive access to the attractive men - they have to take turns.

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mcguire 6y ago

"Morals aside (where would space travel be without the unpleasant demise of Laika the Soviet space dog?), I set about creating ten dummy dating profiles on the world’s fastest growing online dating site: OKCupid." And this is why real researchers have to deal with a review board.

vncecartersknee 6y ago

As a maybe slightly above average Australian male, I found it interesting travelling around Europe. I do ok-ish on dating apps at home, it's not fun but I could get a date or two a month if I made a consistent effort to message people. Maybe a short relationship or a handful of hook-ups a year if I'm lucky. In northern Italy, Spain, south of France, I got virtually no matches at all. However in the week or so I spent in Scandinavia, almost every woman I swiped right on matched back, many of them messaged as well. I would consider men and women in Scandinavia somewhat more attractive on average than people elsewhere and of course vastly more attractive than I am. Unfortunately I don't speak any Danish!

Vaslo 6y ago

Online dating messages and resumes have one thing in common - the more specialized to the recipient, the more hits you will get. If your message to every girl is “what’s up”, then you are doing the resume equivalent of creating a single resume and sending to every job on LinkedIn. The more your resume matches the job, the better your chances of getting called. The more your first response to a woman on the dating site shows you’ve read their profile and have interest in their interests, the more responses you will get back. It’s better to pick 1-2 people every day you are truly interested in (more than just looks) and put some time into a real message. Not just “what’s up” to 30 girls. Oh i always kept sending messages to new people no matter how I was doing with someone else on the site. These things would fizzle out suddenly after a few weeks for all sorts of reasons and you could miss out on some great people.

jl2718 6y ago
Another massively asymmetric market. Yes; personalization helps, but most efforts are simply wasted because a majority of the jobs are inactive, overwhelmed, or just using interviews to get free help on their problems.

jl2718 6y ago

Has anybody ever done something like this for the tech job market? I’m aware of the resume name variation studies, but more interested in what it’s like from the hiring side.