7 ms·

Peter Thiel backs conservative dating app The Right Stuff

24 points by harambae 5y ago

profstasiak 5y ago
wow. There are 5 men for every woman on Tinder. I wonder what kind of ratio there would be at this app, I imagine young male conservatives outnumber female consertives by a huge number. We have a funny situation in Poland with dating apps. The government banned abortion which massively pissed young women. Two conservative parties got a heat and some time ago about one third of profiles had in there bio, that if you support those parties you can swipe left (dont contact them). Basically having a sex strike on conservative people, altough not coordinated
- zdragnar 5y ago
  I know quite a few women who are disgusted by the number of men just looking for short term gratification that tinder and the like attract. If anything, I would expect it to mirror the ratio found on sites like eHarmony- basically more long term / marriage / family oriented than Tinder would be. That said, it is a dating site- men outnumbering women is practically guaranteed.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    For young conservatives, short term gratification is just as much of a problem as for liberals.
  - legostormtroopr 5y ago
    > I know quite a few women who are disgusted by the number of men just looking for short term gratification that tinder and the like attract. Why are they disgusted? Tinder seemed to be a direct clone of Grindr early on, and was focused on “here are people near you, looking for casual sex”. When it got popular, the new influx turned it into a dating site, but it’s whole interface and design is for hookups. Getting mad at men for looking for hookups on Tinder is like getting mad at someone on Uber only wanting a lift somewhere.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  The sex ratio doesn't really matter if he and his friends get preferential treatment in the app. That's the usual reason for starting / financing a dating app.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Where did you get this info from?
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  quality over quantity is always better for those looking for an LTR
- csdvrx 5y ago
  > There are 5 men for every woman on Tinder. I wonder what kind of ratio there would be at this app, Among humans, the sex ratio is about .5. If you are noticing a different ratio, you have a selection effect at play. > I imagine young male conservatives outnumber female consertives by a huge number. Speak for yourself! I personally find very disturbing than male geeks assume I must be some kind of leftist. Hell, no! OTOH, I appreciate they announce their colors so easily. It makes avoiding them much easier for me.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Among humans, the sex ratio is about .5. If you are noticing a different ratio, you have a selection effect at play. Yes, neither “people who identify as conservative” nor ”people who choose to use dating apps” are random samples of humanity, both have significant biases on many axes, including (in both cases and in the same direction) gender.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sterlind 5y ago
I wonder if this app will even have M4M/F4F. It'd be ironic given Thiel's orientation if it didn't.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  I don't see why it wouldn't, considering there are conservatives of all sexual orientations, and one has nothing to do with the other.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    It's a small app serving a niche on a saturated market and gay people are (most likely) underrepresented in that niche. So it might make sense to skip it rather than just having the section mostly empty.
    - true_religion 5y ago
      People are conservative because of their upbringing, community, and their own personally decided values. People are gay because of their genetics. Thus there are many people who are both conservative by choice but gay by nature. No doubt they would love to meet other gay people who share their politics. It’s possible this app would be perfect for them. The only downside I thought was that since they may not be openly gay, they wouldn’t want to take the chance of being outed but the apps messaging seems to revolve around the idea that conservative are an embattled minority so it may have the appearance (and maybe reality if features are built in) of protecting user privacy.
      - Kye 5y ago
        Apps like this seem to have trouble attracting competent developers. They keep forgetting that incremental IDs make scraping easy.
      - Sebb767 5y ago
        Gay is not binary, you can be on a spectrum. Now, the following is conjecture, but I'd assume that slightly gay republicans are far less likely to try a homosexual relationship, especially when compared to those on the liberal side. I'm also pretty sure that mostly gay republicans are far more likely to not be openly gay or to have switched their political orientation due to receiving contempt and no support. Sure, there are openly gay republicans and I don't want to ruin their chance to find love, but I'm very sure that people that are both openly gay and openly republican are quite rare. To make matters worse, to like the idea of a dating app specifically for your political orientation, you'll most likely need to be quite invested in it - someone moderate to slightly right will not be particularly pulled by this concept. And openly gay die-hard republicans are even rarer. Lastly, there's also a deterrent effect. I'm not saying that republicans are necessarily homophobic, but I'm pretty sure that quite a bunch are at least not thrilled by the concept. If the app provides gay dating and therefore implicitly promotes it, it might drive away some of it's core demographic and, given that they're niche as-is, this might not be worth the tradeoff, especially when accounting for network effects.
paulpauper 5y ago
If this were shark tank I would pass. very saturated market, not much margins or growth.
pcdoodle 5y ago
Nice! I've noticed on most dating apps, if you turn on the conservative filter, the matches/results become more attractive as well. Hope this pans out.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Not just you. I've noticed that too. In my area, anyway.
  - pcdoodle 5y ago
    That and mental health as well.
squarefoot 5y ago
"The right stuff" to me will always be a wonderful 1983 movie about the early US space program. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
- matthewmcg 5y ago
  If you liked the movie, check out the book.
  - GauntletWizard 5y ago
    I will never forgive Tom Wolfe, writer of such crazy titles such as "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby", for not calling it by a much punnier name: "The Wright Stuff" Fantastic book, though, like all of his writing.
idoh 5y ago
This is interesting, I wonder how the trend will play out. I remember the days when there would be apps like, "It's uber, but for lawn care / hair cuts / etc ...". Now we are heading into a future where you'd say "It's like Tinder, but for Republicans / some group / some other group". Is this bad? I have no idea. It seems like it might solve a real problem. I live in San Francisco, and for science I've asked some of my friends questions like "Would you date a Republican?" or "Can you be a good person and vote for candidate X/Y/Z?", and the responses, well, let's just say that it is not favorable.
- marcofatica 5y ago
  Jdate, blackpeoplemeet, Christian mingle, farmers only. All Tinder for X and most of not all of them predate tinder
ericmay 5y ago
This is the consequence of having dating apps for any specific group of people. ChristianMingle, there's one (or was I think) for farmers, there are dating apps specifically for women, or for any race or sexual orientation. As much as Conservatives have exasperated me lately idk why anybody would be upset or angry about this. If they don't already exist I suspect (hey maybe show HN) we'll see dating apps for libertarians, communists, anarchists, skiers, mountain climbers, dog owners (ugh), #vanlife (Because it gets lonely on the road) and more. Hell maybe you can make a dating app for sports and then just have someone turn on/off the sport they want to date around (so you show idk, 100 sports and someone picks skiing as their sport and the app only matches them with other skiers). All this noise around Peter Thiel is irritating too. But I guess it gets clicks for the conspiracy-minded who think he's Darth Sidious instead of just some smart rich guy who happens to like Trump. Maybe the Gawker saga will just cause him to be a person of interest for all time. Or maybe the stakes in our society are so low and we have so little to do that this is what we resort to.
- vernie 5y ago
  Yea this only noteworthy because of how horny HN is for anything Thiel does. This will probably end up getting acquired by Match Group like every other dating app.
  - weare138 5y ago
    Or just fail miserably like every other 'conservative' dating site.
- trs8080 5y ago
  > But I guess it gets clicks for the conspiracy-minded who think he's Darth Sidious instead of just some smart rich guy who happens to like Trump This is... not why people dislike Peter Thiel.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    It is essentially what it boils down to for everyone I have chatted with about it. Your mileage may vary.
andrewclunn 5y ago
OKC allowed users to filter for (covid) vaccinated people, but not for unvaccinated people. By making the default supposedly neutral sites lean left politically, it naturally creates a market for those unserved by those offerings.
- pcdoodle 5y ago
  That is gross! They used to be a cool company releasing a lot of data points on their users. I miss the metrics...
  - technofiend 5y ago
    That all fell away when they were bought by the same people who bring you every other dating site like match, or so I've read.
bobobob420 5y ago
azinman2 5y ago
The more people self isolate in information bubbles the worse for society. There’s already plenty of proxies for extremists to find like (religion, communities, etc). To continue this trend for the right across all internet properties will only further divide people. Why does who you vote for have to run so much into every aspect of life beyond it? This is exactly the agenda of those who want political power — devote your life to the “cause” and shun out everyone who doesn’t. What better way to stay in power than have a rabid fan base that thinks about you daily?
- zo1 5y ago
  Whoever we're referring to with "the right" in this discussion tried this before, and they got, in my opinion, bullied into conforming rather than people trying to bridge a divide. Now that the right wants to create "Safe spaces" free from "persecution" and discrimination, they're being told to not go into bubbles and why are "they" the ones that want to further the divide. If it wasn't so society-level sad, it'd be comical how the majority flip flops on issues when it suits them. Even your post, I'm sorry, smells of passive-aggressive condescension against these individuals.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Well if it does smell that way, certainly that wasn't my intention. If all you consumed was Fox News, I can understand why you might think certain ways. But keep in mind from the very beginning it's been about us versus them in terms of MAGA -- you're not hearing this from other political arenas in the same way. So it's not like they're being cast into a bubble by the left as you described. It's self-selection as asked for by their thought leaders. What I was trying to not be passive at all about was my disregard for the Trump/Carlson universe that is actively trying to create a variety of ways to split people at the societal level and funnel them into their own worlds. They're not the only ones to do so, but they're enjoying great success at achieving this by the millions. There is no force that's doing this in terms of actively dividing people... the only other equivalent might be 'cancel culture' that's trying to do it with thoughts, but at least that's aimed at the individual issues rather than who you vote for. A huge component of Fox News is telling you that the 'mainstream media' is lying to you so don't bother listening to them (never mind they're actually the biggest mainstream media source by audience size). Trump will tell you everyone that isn't for him is lying and creating hoaxes so don't listen to them either. Now they're trying to create their own Twitter, dating apps, etc. It's slowly partitioning the world by ideology conformance down to literally who you date from the start. People already self-select enough (homophily is a strong force) -- to lubricate that for political gain will only lead to destruction.

24 points by harambae 5y ago

wow. There are 5 men for every woman on Tinder. I wonder what kind of ratio there would be at this app, I imagine young male conservatives outnumber female consertives by a huge number. We have a funny situation in Poland with dating apps. The government banned abortion which massively pissed young women. Two conservative parties got a heat and some time ago about one third of profiles had in there bio, that if you support those parties you can swipe left (dont contact them). Basically having a sex strike on conservative people, altough not coordinated

zdragnar 5y ago
I know quite a few women who are disgusted by the number of men just looking for short term gratification that tinder and the like attract. If anything, I would expect it to mirror the ratio found on sites like eHarmony- basically more long term / marriage / family oriented than Tinder would be. That said, it is a dating site- men outnumbering women is practically guaranteed.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  For young conservatives, short term gratification is just as much of a problem as for liberals.
- legostormtroopr 5y ago
  > I know quite a few women who are disgusted by the number of men just looking for short term gratification that tinder and the like attract. Why are they disgusted? Tinder seemed to be a direct clone of Grindr early on, and was focused on “here are people near you, looking for casual sex”. When it got popular, the new influx turned it into a dating site, but it’s whole interface and design is for hookups. Getting mad at men for looking for hookups on Tinder is like getting mad at someone on Uber only wanting a lift somewhere.
xiphias2 5y ago
The sex ratio doesn't really matter if he and his friends get preferential treatment in the app. That's the usual reason for starting / financing a dating app.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Where did you get this info from?
stronglikedan 5y ago
quality over quantity is always better for those looking for an LTR
csdvrx 5y ago
> There are 5 men for every woman on Tinder. I wonder what kind of ratio there would be at this app, Among humans, the sex ratio is about .5. If you are noticing a different ratio, you have a selection effect at play. > I imagine young male conservatives outnumber female consertives by a huge number. Speak for yourself! I personally find very disturbing than male geeks assume I must be some kind of leftist. Hell, no! OTOH, I appreciate they announce their colors so easily. It makes avoiding them much easier for me.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Among humans, the sex ratio is about .5. If you are noticing a different ratio, you have a selection effect at play. Yes, neither “people who identify as conservative” nor ”people who choose to use dating apps” are random samples of humanity, both have significant biases on many axes, including (in both cases and in the same direction) gender.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

sterlind 5y ago

I wonder if this app will even have M4M/F4F. It'd be ironic given Thiel's orientation if it didn't.

stronglikedan 5y ago
I don't see why it wouldn't, considering there are conservatives of all sexual orientations, and one has nothing to do with the other.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  It's a small app serving a niche on a saturated market and gay people are (most likely) underrepresented in that niche. So it might make sense to skip it rather than just having the section mostly empty.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    People are conservative because of their upbringing, community, and their own personally decided values. People are gay because of their genetics. Thus there are many people who are both conservative by choice but gay by nature. No doubt they would love to meet other gay people who share their politics. It’s possible this app would be perfect for them. The only downside I thought was that since they may not be openly gay, they wouldn’t want to take the chance of being outed but the apps messaging seems to revolve around the idea that conservative are an embattled minority so it may have the appearance (and maybe reality if features are built in) of protecting user privacy.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Apps like this seem to have trouble attracting competent developers. They keep forgetting that incremental IDs make scraping easy.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      Gay is not binary, you can be on a spectrum. Now, the following is conjecture, but I'd assume that slightly gay republicans are far less likely to try a homosexual relationship, especially when compared to those on the liberal side. I'm also pretty sure that mostly gay republicans are far more likely to not be openly gay or to have switched their political orientation due to receiving contempt and no support. Sure, there are openly gay republicans and I don't want to ruin their chance to find love, but I'm very sure that people that are both openly gay and openly republican are quite rare. To make matters worse, to like the idea of a dating app specifically for your political orientation, you'll most likely need to be quite invested in it - someone moderate to slightly right will not be particularly pulled by this concept. And openly gay die-hard republicans are even rarer. Lastly, there's also a deterrent effect. I'm not saying that republicans are necessarily homophobic, but I'm pretty sure that quite a bunch are at least not thrilled by the concept. If the app provides gay dating and therefore implicitly promotes it, it might drive away some of it's core demographic and, given that they're niche as-is, this might not be worth the tradeoff, especially when accounting for network effects.

paulpauper 5y ago

If this were shark tank I would pass. very saturated market, not much margins or growth.

pcdoodle 5y ago

Nice! I've noticed on most dating apps, if you turn on the conservative filter, the matches/results become more attractive as well. Hope this pans out.

stronglikedan 5y ago
Not just you. I've noticed that too. In my area, anyway.
- pcdoodle 5y ago
  That and mental health as well.

squarefoot 5y ago

"The right stuff" to me will always be a wonderful 1983 movie about the early US space program. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

matthewmcg 5y ago
If you liked the movie, check out the book.
- GauntletWizard 5y ago
  I will never forgive Tom Wolfe, writer of such crazy titles such as "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby", for not calling it by a much punnier name: "The Wright Stuff" Fantastic book, though, like all of his writing.

idoh 5y ago

This is interesting, I wonder how the trend will play out. I remember the days when there would be apps like, "It's uber, but for lawn care / hair cuts / etc ...". Now we are heading into a future where you'd say "It's like Tinder, but for Republicans / some group / some other group". Is this bad? I have no idea. It seems like it might solve a real problem. I live in San Francisco, and for science I've asked some of my friends questions like "Would you date a Republican?" or "Can you be a good person and vote for candidate X/Y/Z?", and the responses, well, let's just say that it is not favorable.

marcofatica 5y ago
Jdate, blackpeoplemeet, Christian mingle, farmers only. All Tinder for X and most of not all of them predate tinder

ericmay 5y ago

This is the consequence of having dating apps for any specific group of people. ChristianMingle, there's one (or was I think) for farmers, there are dating apps specifically for women, or for any race or sexual orientation. As much as Conservatives have exasperated me lately idk why anybody would be upset or angry about this. If they don't already exist I suspect (hey maybe show HN) we'll see dating apps for libertarians, communists, anarchists, skiers, mountain climbers, dog owners (ugh), #vanlife (Because it gets lonely on the road) and more. Hell maybe you can make a dating app for sports and then just have someone turn on/off the sport they want to date around (so you show idk, 100 sports and someone picks skiing as their sport and the app only matches them with other skiers). All this noise around Peter Thiel is irritating too. But I guess it gets clicks for the conspiracy-minded who think he's Darth Sidious instead of just some smart rich guy who happens to like Trump. Maybe the Gawker saga will just cause him to be a person of interest for all time. Or maybe the stakes in our society are so low and we have so little to do that this is what we resort to.

vernie 5y ago
Yea this only noteworthy because of how horny HN is for anything Thiel does. This will probably end up getting acquired by Match Group like every other dating app.
- weare138 5y ago
  Or just fail miserably like every other 'conservative' dating site.
trs8080 5y ago
> But I guess it gets clicks for the conspiracy-minded who think he's Darth Sidious instead of just some smart rich guy who happens to like Trump This is... not why people dislike Peter Thiel.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  It is essentially what it boils down to for everyone I have chatted with about it. Your mileage may vary.

andrewclunn 5y ago

OKC allowed users to filter for (covid) vaccinated people, but not for unvaccinated people. By making the default supposedly neutral sites lean left politically, it naturally creates a market for those unserved by those offerings.

pcdoodle 5y ago
That is gross! They used to be a cool company releasing a lot of data points on their users. I miss the metrics...
- technofiend 5y ago
  That all fell away when they were bought by the same people who bring you every other dating site like match, or so I've read.

bobobob420 5y ago

azinman2 5y ago

The more people self isolate in information bubbles the worse for society. There’s already plenty of proxies for extremists to find like (religion, communities, etc). To continue this trend for the right across all internet properties will only further divide people. Why does who you vote for have to run so much into every aspect of life beyond it? This is exactly the agenda of those who want political power — devote your life to the “cause” and shun out everyone who doesn’t. What better way to stay in power than have a rabid fan base that thinks about you daily?

zo1 5y ago
Whoever we're referring to with "the right" in this discussion tried this before, and they got, in my opinion, bullied into conforming rather than people trying to bridge a divide. Now that the right wants to create "Safe spaces" free from "persecution" and discrimination, they're being told to not go into bubbles and why are "they" the ones that want to further the divide. If it wasn't so society-level sad, it'd be comical how the majority flip flops on issues when it suits them. Even your post, I'm sorry, smells of passive-aggressive condescension against these individuals.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Well if it does smell that way, certainly that wasn't my intention. If all you consumed was Fox News, I can understand why you might think certain ways. But keep in mind from the very beginning it's been about us versus them in terms of MAGA -- you're not hearing this from other political arenas in the same way. So it's not like they're being cast into a bubble by the left as you described. It's self-selection as asked for by their thought leaders. What I was trying to not be passive at all about was my disregard for the Trump/Carlson universe that is actively trying to create a variety of ways to split people at the societal level and funnel them into their own worlds. They're not the only ones to do so, but they're enjoying great success at achieving this by the millions. There is no force that's doing this in terms of actively dividing people... the only other equivalent might be 'cancel culture' that's trying to do it with thoughts, but at least that's aimed at the individual issues rather than who you vote for. A huge component of Fox News is telling you that the 'mainstream media' is lying to you so don't bother listening to them (never mind they're actually the biggest mainstream media source by audience size). Trump will tell you everyone that isn't for him is lying and creating hoaxes so don't listen to them either. Now they're trying to create their own Twitter, dating apps, etc. It's slowly partitioning the world by ideology conformance down to literally who you date from the start. People already self-select enough (homophily is a strong force) -- to lubricate that for political gain will only lead to destruction.