9 ms·

95% of Tinder swipes by women are passes compared to 47% for men. Women tend to date up. Online dating apps are rigged for men. These apps are search engines op

95% of Tinder swipes by women are passes compared to 47% for men. Women tend to date up. Online dating apps are rigged for men. These apps are search engines optimized to match women with the top 5% of men. These apps are designed for women. Being average or even above average will almost never result in a date. Tinder was designed like a slot machine which will ruin your self-esteem from constant rejection but your hope of a large reward will keep you going for ages. You will have a much higher success rate as an average guy simply with a completely cold approach. That is how bad online dating is for men. As an example, a slightly above average man who generates 16561 swipes on Tinder will generate 7666 likes and 8675 dislikes. Out of these there will be 290 matches and 7596 no-match. A rate of 2.5 matches per day and an overall 3.7% match rate. Out of 290 matches he will send 87 messages and receive 12. 191 matches will never result in a message. Of the 99 messages 31 will be left on read or never even opened the initial message, resulting in 68 conversations. 40 of these women ghosted him, and our subject gave up on 17 of them. Ultimately this resulted in getting 11 phone numbers. These 11 phone numbers in 4 months led to 3 dates and 8 gave up on texting, declined the dating offer, or our subject simply gave up on them. All 3 dates did not materialize into anything long term. It was a complete waste of time. Considering that online dating is the most common method used to find a date these days, the options are grim for men who are not in the top 5% of attractiveness if they use these online platforms. Prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31823294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31823294

beej71 4y ago
I don't think I'm in the top 5% of attractiveness, but I didn't have much trouble getting dates with quality people on bumble. Met someone and it's been going strong for 2+ years. Tinder, however, was a total wasteland. Zero responses to anything. I think it just wasn't my scene.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
> Online dating apps are rigged for men. They're rigged for women. Even on the sites that claim to cater to women by forcing them to make first contact, they overwhelmingly use superficial low effort messages to unlock the other side and then proceed to reject 80% of the men they selected just like with regular sites.
Victerius 4y ago
Honestly I'm getting worried about the future of the existence of the human race at this point. If women would rather remain single than setting for a partner who doesn't match all their expectations and they set their expectations unreasonably high and online dating only benefits the top 5% of men and all real life venues of approach close for various reasons.... what are the bottom 90% of men going to do in the future? Is sex going to become a privilege reserved for only the most elite men? If the majority of men cannot enjoy intimacy, expect incel terrorism to increase exponentially.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 4y ago
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Of all possible takes on the situation I must admit I didn't expect to see this wild one
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      The other condition required is also banning birth control.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        I suppose Afghanistan is the place to be!
        P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 4y ago
        https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
julianeon 4y ago
When I see these numbers, I think: Why do guys bother with Tinder? Why would you give up ALL the alpha, and create 100x more work for yourself down the road, just to have a marginally easier starting experience? Those numbers are so horrendous that you'd be better off going to a bar and hitting on every single woman. You could get shot down 50 times in a row, yet as long as you want to 3 bars in a week w/at least 20 approachable women each, you'd still have a date within a week, which is already 1/3 of the success the guy in your example had in a tiny fraction of the time. And of course, bars are pretty much the bottom of the barrel, as unpleasant as it gets. This is hard mode. Try any other setting - a meetup, a birding club, whatever - and things will be easier.
- type-r 4y ago
  >You could get shot down 50 times in a row You're treating it here like this is no issue, but do you actually know anyone that can take that many rejections in a row and not have it impact their mental state? Even if you know it's not a judgement on you etc. etc., it is hard for any human to continue in the face of so many rejections. It's not just about dating -- successful entrepreneurs are often those people that can take rejection after rejection and continue going. But it's very hard and very rare. In general I am on the same side -- you can get much better success approaching in real life vs. on the apps. But what the apps abstract away is that rejection which you feel very intimately when in person.
- sure_about_that 4y ago
  == Those numbers are so horrendous that you'd be better off going to a bar and hitting on every single woman. You could get shot down 50 times in a row, yet as long as you want to 3 bars in a week w/at least 20 approachable women each, you'd still have a date within a week, which is already 1/3 of the success the guy in your example had in a tiny fraction of the time.== Treating relationships as an equation to be optimized might be the real hindrance.
  - julianeon 4y ago
    You could say that the lowest common denominator of both of these methods is that, in both of them, there is an equation: you are either optimizing the equation, or part of the equation being optimized. You are absolutely being treated like a number on Tinder, after all. But you can choose the system that gets you what you want, faster. So, in choosing the lesser of two evils, choose the bar. Choose anything other than Tinder. Because pretty much any dating alternative to Tinder is better than Tinder.
bityard 4y ago
You don't mention what is probably the biggest thing influencing all of the numbers you describe: What is the ratio of men to women on "dating" sites like Tinder? I don't actually know myself but I'd go out on a limb and guess _way_ more men than women. Which means several things. As you say, for heterosexual individuals, it's much more difficult for a typical male to be matched with a typical female. It also means if you're a male looking for a long-term mate, then you'll do better with the old-fashioned approach of getting out and being social. > All 3 dates did not materialize into anything long term. As an outsider whose exposure to Tinder is largely hearsay, my understanding is that long-term relationships are not really the goal of most users on this particular app.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pas 4y ago
  There is a very big, significant, and above 25-30 I would even wager the majority part of the userbase who is there looking for the one. Of course it's still brutal. Good candidates get out of the pool quickly and so the remaining ones tend to have issues :/
kushan2020 4y ago
Women tend to date up is somewhat similar to how fertilisation of egg is selective with the millions of sperms wanting to fertilise it. When there is a disproportionate number of males competing for chance at mating, females become very selective. I guess the apps are just going with the data.
Supermancho 4y ago
> a slightly above average man who generates 16561 swipes on Tinder will generate 7666 likes and 8675 dislikes. Out of these there will be 290 matches and 7596 no-match. A rate of 2.5 matches per day and an overall 3.7% match rate. I'm that guy (6.5/10). I've never done numbers close to that bad. I could understand if someone was trying to date out of their socio-economic and age ranges (although you can always date up in age, for men). In southern california, more like 200 swipes, 2 conversations, 1 date. Out of 5 dates, at least 1 overnight.
koonsolo 4y ago
Nice statistics. I found my wife on Tinder, and I'm by all means no top 5%. Actually that depends on how you count it of course. Women don't prefer men with 6-packs, if you haven't figured that out already. My wife works as a dating coach, with both men and women. Men are very reluctant to listen or even try the advice, so I'm not going to try to convince you guys that you can make it work. It's not that hard actually, but most men already made up their mind on the whole dating thing. I'm sure there's plenty of "experts" here that can tell you all about how it can never work.
- ibrahimsow1 4y ago
  What's the advice she gives that men don't listen to that isn't easily googleable
  - koonsolo 4y ago
    She gives personal advice of course, which can be very specific for each case. One specific example I can give you: Women find it important that you have clean, well-groomed hands. This is not intuitive or obvious to men at all, unless you know. But I think the main problem is not necessarily the lack of information, but a more a mentality change. A lot of the men think "She has to accept me for who I am". That might be true, but it's not really relevant. You have to show what you can offer in a relationship. A woman doesn't start a relationship with you just because she all of a sudden loves you. No, she starts a relationship because somehow she gets some benefit out of that relationship. So you have to show what you have to offer. You like traveling? Maybe she wants to travel. You like a certain kind of music? Maybe she likes that music and likes to go to concerts. Or whatever. Answering the question "Why would a woman start a relationship with you? What's in it for her?" seems a question that some men don't want to answer. I don't mean that they don't know the answer, I mean they have a problem with the question itself.
  - dwaltrip 4y ago
    I was pretty skeptical about dating books. But I’ve been reading “Models - Attract women through honesty”, and it has a lot of very good advice in it. I would recommend it to any guy. The TL;DR is to improve yourself, work on your insecurities, be emotionally open, and become genuinely not-needy. He provides a lot of specific helpful tactics.
davidguetta 4y ago
Honestly it's more the "5% that make an effort to have decent colorful and well shot photos, ok bio and and look vaguely manly" instead of the 95% who either take a crappy selfie or either look like or speak like they are coming out of a trailer park. I have a friend who ABSOLUTELY do not fit the stereotype of attractive men (1.70m / software engineer and he does climbing but with a small belly) and he f** like 60 girls in 8 months when he discovered the tinder magic. I've done my time too, but at a lower scale, but since I'm slightly attractive that would not make my point. In general the biggest fuckboys Ive met were really not considered nice looking at best.
thrown_22 4y ago
>Considering that online dating is the most common method used to find a date these days, the options are grim for men who are not in the top 5% of attractiveness if they use these online platforms. I'm in the top 5% of attractiveness IRL and tinder was bizarre to try and use. It was this weird self referential world where you needed a completely new set of skills to be noticed. I was reminded of trying to learn how to write an effective resume after university. When I had a woman make my tinder profile attractive to other women I just deleted it: the type of woman who would find that appealing is not the type of woman I would find appealing.

beej71 4y ago

I don't think I'm in the top 5% of attractiveness, but I didn't have much trouble getting dates with quality people on bumble. Met someone and it's been going strong for 2+ years. Tinder, however, was a total wasteland. Zero responses to anything. I think it just wasn't my scene.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

> Online dating apps are rigged for men. They're rigged for women. Even on the sites that claim to cater to women by forcing them to make first contact, they overwhelmingly use superficial low effort messages to unlock the other side and then proceed to reject 80% of the men they selected just like with regular sites.

Victerius 4y ago

Honestly I'm getting worried about the future of the existence of the human race at this point. If women would rather remain single than setting for a partner who doesn't match all their expectations and they set their expectations unreasonably high and online dating only benefits the top 5% of men and all real life venues of approach close for various reasons.... what are the bottom 90% of men going to do in the future? Is sex going to become a privilege reserved for only the most elite men? If the majority of men cannot enjoy intimacy, expect incel terrorism to increase exponentially.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 4y ago
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Of all possible takes on the situation I must admit I didn't expect to see this wild one
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The other condition required is also banning birth control.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      I suppose Afghanistan is the place to be!
      - P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 4y ago
        https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

julianeon 4y ago

When I see these numbers, I think: Why do guys bother with Tinder? Why would you give up ALL the alpha, and create 100x more work for yourself down the road, just to have a marginally easier starting experience? Those numbers are so horrendous that you'd be better off going to a bar and hitting on every single woman. You could get shot down 50 times in a row, yet as long as you want to 3 bars in a week w/at least 20 approachable women each, you'd still have a date within a week, which is already 1/3 of the success the guy in your example had in a tiny fraction of the time. And of course, bars are pretty much the bottom of the barrel, as unpleasant as it gets. This is hard mode. Try any other setting - a meetup, a birding club, whatever - and things will be easier.

type-r 4y ago
>You could get shot down 50 times in a row You're treating it here like this is no issue, but do you actually know anyone that can take that many rejections in a row and not have it impact their mental state? Even if you know it's not a judgement on you etc. etc., it is hard for any human to continue in the face of so many rejections. It's not just about dating -- successful entrepreneurs are often those people that can take rejection after rejection and continue going. But it's very hard and very rare. In general I am on the same side -- you can get much better success approaching in real life vs. on the apps. But what the apps abstract away is that rejection which you feel very intimately when in person.
sure_about_that 4y ago
== Those numbers are so horrendous that you'd be better off going to a bar and hitting on every single woman. You could get shot down 50 times in a row, yet as long as you want to 3 bars in a week w/at least 20 approachable women each, you'd still have a date within a week, which is already 1/3 of the success the guy in your example had in a tiny fraction of the time.== Treating relationships as an equation to be optimized might be the real hindrance.
- julianeon 4y ago
  You could say that the lowest common denominator of both of these methods is that, in both of them, there is an equation: you are either optimizing the equation, or part of the equation being optimized. You are absolutely being treated like a number on Tinder, after all. But you can choose the system that gets you what you want, faster. So, in choosing the lesser of two evils, choose the bar. Choose anything other than Tinder. Because pretty much any dating alternative to Tinder is better than Tinder.

bityard 4y ago

You don't mention what is probably the biggest thing influencing all of the numbers you describe: What is the ratio of men to women on "dating" sites like Tinder? I don't actually know myself but I'd go out on a limb and guess _way_ more men than women. Which means several things. As you say, for heterosexual individuals, it's much more difficult for a typical male to be matched with a typical female. It also means if you're a male looking for a long-term mate, then you'll do better with the old-fashioned approach of getting out and being social. > All 3 dates did not materialize into anything long term. As an outsider whose exposure to Tinder is largely hearsay, my understanding is that long-term relationships are not really the goal of most users on this particular app.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pas 4y ago
There is a very big, significant, and above 25-30 I would even wager the majority part of the userbase who is there looking for the one. Of course it's still brutal. Good candidates get out of the pool quickly and so the remaining ones tend to have issues :/

kushan2020 4y ago

Women tend to date up is somewhat similar to how fertilisation of egg is selective with the millions of sperms wanting to fertilise it. When there is a disproportionate number of males competing for chance at mating, females become very selective. I guess the apps are just going with the data.

Supermancho 4y ago

> a slightly above average man who generates 16561 swipes on Tinder will generate 7666 likes and 8675 dislikes. Out of these there will be 290 matches and 7596 no-match. A rate of 2.5 matches per day and an overall 3.7% match rate. I'm that guy (6.5/10). I've never done numbers close to that bad. I could understand if someone was trying to date out of their socio-economic and age ranges (although you can always date up in age, for men). In southern california, more like 200 swipes, 2 conversations, 1 date. Out of 5 dates, at least 1 overnight.

koonsolo 4y ago

Nice statistics. I found my wife on Tinder, and I'm by all means no top 5%. Actually that depends on how you count it of course. Women don't prefer men with 6-packs, if you haven't figured that out already. My wife works as a dating coach, with both men and women. Men are very reluctant to listen or even try the advice, so I'm not going to try to convince you guys that you can make it work. It's not that hard actually, but most men already made up their mind on the whole dating thing. I'm sure there's plenty of "experts" here that can tell you all about how it can never work.

ibrahimsow1 4y ago
What's the advice she gives that men don't listen to that isn't easily googleable
- koonsolo 4y ago
  She gives personal advice of course, which can be very specific for each case. One specific example I can give you: Women find it important that you have clean, well-groomed hands. This is not intuitive or obvious to men at all, unless you know. But I think the main problem is not necessarily the lack of information, but a more a mentality change. A lot of the men think "She has to accept me for who I am". That might be true, but it's not really relevant. You have to show what you can offer in a relationship. A woman doesn't start a relationship with you just because she all of a sudden loves you. No, she starts a relationship because somehow she gets some benefit out of that relationship. So you have to show what you have to offer. You like traveling? Maybe she wants to travel. You like a certain kind of music? Maybe she likes that music and likes to go to concerts. Or whatever. Answering the question "Why would a woman start a relationship with you? What's in it for her?" seems a question that some men don't want to answer. I don't mean that they don't know the answer, I mean they have a problem with the question itself.
- dwaltrip 4y ago
  I was pretty skeptical about dating books. But I’ve been reading “Models - Attract women through honesty”, and it has a lot of very good advice in it. I would recommend it to any guy. The TL;DR is to improve yourself, work on your insecurities, be emotionally open, and become genuinely not-needy. He provides a lot of specific helpful tactics.

davidguetta 4y ago

Honestly it's more the "5% that make an effort to have decent colorful and well shot photos, ok bio and and look vaguely manly" instead of the 95% who either take a crappy selfie or either look like or speak like they are coming out of a trailer park. I have a friend who ABSOLUTELY do not fit the stereotype of attractive men (1.70m / software engineer and he does climbing but with a small belly) and he f** like 60 girls in 8 months when he discovered the tinder magic. I've done my time too, but at a lower scale, but since I'm slightly attractive that would not make my point. In general the biggest fuckboys Ive met were really not considered nice looking at best.

thrown_22 4y ago

>Considering that online dating is the most common method used to find a date these days, the options are grim for men who are not in the top 5% of attractiveness if they use these online platforms. I'm in the top 5% of attractiveness IRL and tinder was bizarre to try and use. It was this weird self referential world where you needed a completely new set of skills to be noticed. I was reminded of trying to learn how to write an effective resume after university. When I had a woman make my tinder profile attractive to other women I just deleted it: the type of woman who would find that appealing is not the type of woman I would find appealing.