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> While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them When it comes to dating apps, e

> While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories: The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance. The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date. The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches. Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.

ryeights 4y ago
Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality. I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?
- astrange 4y ago
  "Attractiveness" is very under your control and like half of it is how good your photos are.
  - bmn__ 4y ago
    That's false. Out of the seven characteristics of attractiveness, only one is under locus of control, the rest are genetically determined and exceedingly hard to change.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Nothing is genetically determined. The environment happens to you after your genes do. (For instance, it's easy to "change" if you're a burn victim. If you're going to be scientific, be specific.)
      - bmn__ 4y ago
        > The environment happens to you after your genes do. So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control. A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
        astrange 4y ago
        Sure, but then say "it's too late to change it". Which I agree with! But being overly pop-scientific leads to, you know, eugenics. If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I would follow some accounts like She Rates Dogs and Ask Aubry to see some of what women are up against on dating apps. Every woman on those apps has an experience like you'll find on those feeds of their own, and as a man on those apps, it helps to understand the experience they're used to, and are expecting could happen again at any moment.
- ssully 4y ago
  Men do the same thing. That’s literally why the swipe style of dating apps was created; to quickly judge if you are interested or not mainly in appearance. That’s why the OPs first point was about good photos and presentation.
  - ryeights 4y ago
    This is correct, to an extent. But all the good presentation and clever bio-writing in the world will not save you if you are a typical 5/10 male on Tinder. It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  I'm betting the #1 cause of men rejecting women is also looks based...
  - ryeights 4y ago
    Yes, except most men do not enjoy the liberty of being picky about it. For most guys I know, the attractiveness cutoff is merely “not obese”
    - Mezzie 4y ago
      The average woman does way more to take care of herself than the average man. I'm betting if most/a substantial portion of women didn't wash themselves, for example, that that would become another cutoff pretty quickly. Or if women didn't shave regularly/were showing stubble everywhere. Or if they routinely showed up with rat's nest hair. (Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.) One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
- rngname22 4y ago
  I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual. And the guys they do think are attractive are often just their particular brand of 'cute' average guy who to my eyes as a non-attracted-to-men person don't look that much different than the previous 10 guys they swiped left on.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    > I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention. The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
    - rngname22 4y ago
      Sorry but people quoting the OKCupid study always ignore the part of the study that isn't convenient to their narrative. The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s. But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        These findings are replicated across many dating sites, not just okcupid. Here's the stats for Hinge: 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... Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.
      - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
        The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles. So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that. Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.
cph123 4y ago
This has certainly made me rethink my approach...
koonsolo 4y ago
I can't upvote this enough. HN is known to be very negative towards Tinder. My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome. I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date. My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.
- avmich 4y ago
  > But the men are just uncoachable. Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.

ryeights 4y ago

Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality. I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?

astrange 4y ago
"Attractiveness" is very under your control and like half of it is how good your photos are.
- bmn__ 4y ago
  That's false. Out of the seven characteristics of attractiveness, only one is under locus of control, the rest are genetically determined and exceedingly hard to change.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Nothing is genetically determined. The environment happens to you after your genes do. (For instance, it's easy to "change" if you're a burn victim. If you're going to be scientific, be specific.)
    - bmn__ 4y ago
      > The environment happens to you after your genes do. So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control. A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
      - astrange 4y ago
        Sure, but then say "it's too late to change it". Which I agree with! But being overly pop-scientific leads to, you know, eugenics. If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I would follow some accounts like She Rates Dogs and Ask Aubry to see some of what women are up against on dating apps. Every woman on those apps has an experience like you'll find on those feeds of their own, and as a man on those apps, it helps to understand the experience they're used to, and are expecting could happen again at any moment.
ssully 4y ago
Men do the same thing. That’s literally why the swipe style of dating apps was created; to quickly judge if you are interested or not mainly in appearance. That’s why the OPs first point was about good photos and presentation.
- ryeights 4y ago
  This is correct, to an extent. But all the good presentation and clever bio-writing in the world will not save you if you are a typical 5/10 male on Tinder. It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
Mezzie 4y ago
I'm betting the #1 cause of men rejecting women is also looks based...
- ryeights 4y ago
  Yes, except most men do not enjoy the liberty of being picky about it. For most guys I know, the attractiveness cutoff is merely “not obese”
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    The average woman does way more to take care of herself than the average man. I'm betting if most/a substantial portion of women didn't wash themselves, for example, that that would become another cutoff pretty quickly. Or if women didn't shave regularly/were showing stubble everywhere. Or if they routinely showed up with rat's nest hair. (Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.) One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
rngname22 4y ago
I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual. And the guys they do think are attractive are often just their particular brand of 'cute' average guy who to my eyes as a non-attracted-to-men person don't look that much different than the previous 10 guys they swiped left on.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  > I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention. The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
  - rngname22 4y ago
    Sorry but people quoting the OKCupid study always ignore the part of the study that isn't convenient to their narrative. The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s. But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      These findings are replicated across many dating sites, not just okcupid. Here's the stats for Hinge: 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... Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.
    - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
      The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles. So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that. Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.

cph123 4y ago

This has certainly made me rethink my approach...

koonsolo 4y ago

I can't upvote this enough. HN is known to be very negative towards Tinder. My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome. I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date. My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.

avmich 4y ago
> But the men are just uncoachable. Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.