6 ms·

How to Be Good at Dating

58 points by jger15 2y ago

ofirtwo 2y ago
we need more of these on hacker news
thatswrong0 2y ago
> Very roughly the ratios for me were 100 swipes → 1 match → 0.1 dates → 0.05 lays → 0.005 meaningful connections Yeah I think I'm going to stick to becoming friends with friends of friends and with random new people at places where we generally have shared interests, and then seeing if there's any mutual romantic interest after that. This process sounds emotionally draining.
- neogodless 2y ago
  I suspect there's some tongue in cheek with those numbers unless the one meaningful connection they have was the result of literally 20,000 swipes.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    He said he spent several hours a week swiping. Several hours a week times 3 years is a lot more than 20,000 swipes.
  - Nav_Panel 2y ago
    I imagine this is completely serious, and isn't that different from what I've seen in a big city (NYC). Back when I was permitting myself to use these apps (2017, before I truly assessed the cost-benefit analysis), I met a girl who apparently swiped left on every guy. She showed me her Tinder and she had over 5,000 matches (and for some reason was meeting up with me, although it didn't last very long. I think she did get married a few years ago, though). That experience makes me think that the 20,000 number is legitimately a reasonable estimate.
  - kragen 2y ago
    They apparently recommended† spending an hour a day on swiping and chatting; six months of chatting is presumably on the order of 2000 different chattees, so in all likelihood the number of swipes is closer to 0.2 million. ______ † I'm getting a server error, so I'm taking others' word for it.
  - pianom4n 2y ago
    You can download your Tinder and Hinge swipe/like stats, so it's likely accurate. The sad part is that this what "success" looks like. The funnel looks way worse for most guys.
- 331c8c71 2y ago
  I'm not looking but these ratios are insane.
- flowerthoughts 2y ago
  Surely this is why we've traditionally let the parents decide. Seems much easier, and no need for an app or AI.
  - jhanschoo 2y ago
    In a society (or family) where there is no generational gap and parents and children are aligned, parents can be a good judge for a relationship fit.
koakuma-chan 2y ago
[flagged]
cardanome 2y ago
> You need to actually commit to the process, which means setting aside at least an hour a day for swiping and chatting on the apps, and consciously optimizing both yourself and your profile to achieve your goals. Yeah, no, I am out. Not because of the work but how incredible harmful it would be for my mental wellbeing if I did that for any extended period of time. The commodification of sex and relationships that these apps promote is probably causing lasting damage.
- 331c8c71 2y ago
  > probably causong lasting damage And it shows very much in the article imo. Don't hate the player, hate the game? Edit: i actually like the guy's take on fitness. But this is totally twisted: > Lead an interesting life that your potential dates would want to be a part of. But do it for yourself first of all.
  - Nav_Panel 2y ago
    "The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways: The first rule of this game is that it is not a game. Everyone must play. You must love us. You must go on living. Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role. Control yourself and be natural. Try to be sincere. Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere—all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith—in life, in other people, and in oneself—is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time." - Alan Watts
    - 331c8c71 2y ago
      Just wow! It's crystal clear to me that double bind is at the core of so many of my internal struggles. Your comment was literally eye-opening, thank you!
malcolmgreaves 2y ago
This is sad, weird, and very off topic for HN. Guidelines: > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity I fail to see how this even remotely reaches that rather loosely defined bar.
_huayra_ 2y ago
This advice is thorough, but as the author admits a bit autistic. It approaches a relationship as a specific highly-fixated goal that requires reps / practice. In general, I think any guy trying to do this is not going to find what they want. I can only give my own (likely more applicable) advice to other straight men on here (which I suspect is a very high % of the users), but I would ignore much of this advice and do the following: * Live your own life to the fullest. Don't even worry about dating / the apps. Just do activities you love and develop a passion (or more than one!). The apps are basically designed to mess with your psychology and the yield of your time spent on them is very low unless you are extremely attractive (not me lol!). Start rock climbing and go to a bunch of meetups for it, meet new people, and be the one who asks people (men and women) to meet up for climbing. Copy-paste this onto whatever activity you want (I've done it with skiing, climbing, mountain biking, and sailing). You will eventually meet a partner through these group activities and you won't waste any time trying to "date", and often you'll be able to vet your partner in a less intense "setting" than a date. For example, you can talk about what money "means" to each of you while walking to the crag and realize that although she might be attractive, you'll probably just fight about money all the time. * As part of a full life, maintain your friendships. You need to be able to lean on your friendships to fulfill specific needs that your partner shouldn't need to or be able to do. I talk about code with my coding friends, not a girlfriend. I nerd out about sailing with my crewmates, not a girlfriend. I talk about espresso with a bunch of deep-pocketed coffee nerds on discord, not a girlfriend. Think of spending time with friends in the same way you do the gym: it might be tough to fit in on any single "session", but if you stop doing it after a while, you'll find yourself really behind the 8 ball. If you think you can't afford the time, I can almost assure you that the time spent in the company of friends will so vastly reduce your mental rumination / anxiety / depression you fight when you spend so much time alone that the "friend time" will more than "pay" for itself. * Know what you want, and communicate it clearly. If you're looking for something low-key, be clear to your partner. If you are angling to get serious and move in faster, be clear about that. Most of the friction in relationships comes from when each individual is on different pages about the trajectory of where they want things to go. * Talk about money. I see so many couples don't do this and perpetually fight over things that come down to "what does money mean to you?". For example, if your partner gets a tax refund and thinks "oh boy! let me buy a new computer" while you think "give me my interest-free loan back, US government, so I can shove this into an index fund and have greater financial security to tell my employer to kick rocks if things get too terrible", you're gonna have problems reconciling that unless you're very explicit. * Table stakes are similar to the article though: stay fit, eat well, avoid mental numbing mechanism and substance abuse
Morizero 2y ago
"i'm into tall kinky guys and you seem exactly my type" OP has revealed he has a huge advantage. You can't teach being six foot, and in my experience that's the number one qualifier for racking up body count.
- frereubu 2y ago
  He deals with this specifically in the article.
- 331c8c71 2y ago
  How can you be so sure about that? (genuinely curious). For instance, is charisma less important?
- kragen 2y ago
  He claims, "The first thing you must understand is that dating markets are ruthlessly efficient at matching people of equivalent [attractiveness]. (...) dating apps brought gay dating norms to straights." If the first claim is true, you'd expect unattractive het men just get matched with het women who just aren't as attractive, rather than to get matched much less. So they aren't in competition with attractive het men in the same way they might be otherwise. The article does make this contradictory claim, though, in accordance with your own: "The relationship between attractiveness and results on the apps is a power law. If you improve your appeal by 5%, you're not going to increase your matches by 5%, you will double them. The people far above you are doing unimaginably well." (I also take issue with the assertion that height is the most important determinant of sexual attractiveness for men and boys. Being a 1.8-meter-tall 13-year-old was definitely much worse for my attractiveness than being 1.5 meters tall was for twentysomething men I met later. And there are a lot of other considerations like "personality", which includes not just the "vulnerability" mentioned here but also being able to smoothly follow social norms when you want to, a big disadvantage for autists like the OP.)
- astrange 2y ago
  This is important for a certain class of women, but that doesn't have to be your class, and if you're on here you can solve it with the same skills that presumably make you a highly paid professional tech type. Also, go for women taller than you.
kragen 2y ago
I'm getting a server error, but the page survives in archive.today: https://archive.is/20250320170908/https://fantasticanachronism.com/2025/03/20/how-to-be-good-at-dating/ https://archive.is/20250320170908/https://fantasticanachroni...
ravenstine 2y ago
> I had no idea it was even possible to meet a hot young woman who begs you to spit on her face on the first date. This is quite off-putting. It's one thing if that's the author's particular fetish, but on the first date? We all have our kinks, but I'd be concerned if a girl wanted to be degraded by a stranger. I really hope this isn't that common.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kragen 2y ago
  You probably aren't very familiar with kinky people, probably because they sense that if their kink is not your kink, you will judge them for it, so they don't tell you about it. Humiliation is very much not my thing (from either side) but I can tell you it's a surprisingly common kink. People who find it sexually exciting don't usually lead lives that are especially unusual in other ways; it's up to you to decide whether that means they're actually okay or that the rest of us are not.
  - ravenstine 2y ago
    EDIT: Although I think my reply still stands, please try not to take offense at it. I object to your response, but I was not personally offended by it. > You probably aren't very familiar with kinky people That's quite the assumption. > Humiliation is very much not my thing (from either side) but I can tell you it's a surprisingly common kink. That's fairly common knowledge, as I understand it. > People who find it sexually exciting don't usually lead lives that are especially unusual in other ways Who said they did? I sure didn't. > it's up to you to decide whether that means they're actually okay or that the rest of us are not. Yeah, and I can say it out loud, too. My point was that I find it neither appealing nor a sign of good mental well-being for someone to be want to spat on by a stranger on the first date, and the author speaking as if it's an achievement to have kinky acts with a girl on a first date is to me a sign that he has a maturity that is beneath his age. That's my opinion, and I made it extremely clear that I am not making a statement about kinks in general. As people have a right to have kinks, I have my right to decide what I consider a red flag. In my experience, a woman wanting sex on the first (and often only) date is a sign that she doesn't have her head in a place I think is ideal.
puppycodes 2y ago
Until she finds your blog...
tennisflyi 2y ago
So some top level thoughts. Yes, women like to have sex. If you’re going to pay the apps just go to Seeking and turn that 5/6 conversations going no where to 5/6 mets in a hotel a day later. Mention “CNC” in your profile and you’ll get passed on until Kingdom come. Also, talk is cheap from those screenshots

58 points by jger15 2y ago

we need more of these on hacker news

> Very roughly the ratios for me were 100 swipes → 1 match → 0.1 dates → 0.05 lays → 0.005 meaningful connections Yeah I think I'm going to stick to becoming friends with friends of friends and with random new people at places where we generally have shared interests, and then seeing if there's any mutual romantic interest after that. This process sounds emotionally draining.

neogodless 2y ago
I suspect there's some tongue in cheek with those numbers unless the one meaningful connection they have was the result of literally 20,000 swipes.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  He said he spent several hours a week swiping. Several hours a week times 3 years is a lot more than 20,000 swipes.
- Nav_Panel 2y ago
  I imagine this is completely serious, and isn't that different from what I've seen in a big city (NYC). Back when I was permitting myself to use these apps (2017, before I truly assessed the cost-benefit analysis), I met a girl who apparently swiped left on every guy. She showed me her Tinder and she had over 5,000 matches (and for some reason was meeting up with me, although it didn't last very long. I think she did get married a few years ago, though). That experience makes me think that the 20,000 number is legitimately a reasonable estimate.
- kragen 2y ago
  They apparently recommended† spending an hour a day on swiping and chatting; six months of chatting is presumably on the order of 2000 different chattees, so in all likelihood the number of swipes is closer to 0.2 million. ______ † I'm getting a server error, so I'm taking others' word for it.
- pianom4n 2y ago
  You can download your Tinder and Hinge swipe/like stats, so it's likely accurate. The sad part is that this what "success" looks like. The funnel looks way worse for most guys.
331c8c71 2y ago
I'm not looking but these ratios are insane.
flowerthoughts 2y ago
Surely this is why we've traditionally let the parents decide. Seems much easier, and no need for an app or AI.
- jhanschoo 2y ago
  In a society (or family) where there is no generational gap and parents and children are aligned, parents can be a good judge for a relationship fit.

koakuma-chan 2y ago

[flagged]

cardanome 2y ago

> You need to actually commit to the process, which means setting aside at least an hour a day for swiping and chatting on the apps, and consciously optimizing both yourself and your profile to achieve your goals. Yeah, no, I am out. Not because of the work but how incredible harmful it would be for my mental wellbeing if I did that for any extended period of time. The commodification of sex and relationships that these apps promote is probably causing lasting damage.

331c8c71 2y ago
> probably causong lasting damage And it shows very much in the article imo. Don't hate the player, hate the game? Edit: i actually like the guy's take on fitness. But this is totally twisted: > Lead an interesting life that your potential dates would want to be a part of. But do it for yourself first of all.
- Nav_Panel 2y ago
  "The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways: The first rule of this game is that it is not a game. Everyone must play. You must love us. You must go on living. Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role. Control yourself and be natural. Try to be sincere. Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere—all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith—in life, in other people, and in oneself—is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time." - Alan Watts
  - 331c8c71 2y ago
    Just wow! It's crystal clear to me that double bind is at the core of so many of my internal struggles. Your comment was literally eye-opening, thank you!

malcolmgreaves 2y ago

This is sad, weird, and very off topic for HN. Guidelines: > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity I fail to see how this even remotely reaches that rather loosely defined bar.

_huayra_ 2y ago

This advice is thorough, but as the author admits a bit autistic. It approaches a relationship as a specific highly-fixated goal that requires reps / practice. In general, I think any guy trying to do this is not going to find what they want. I can only give my own (likely more applicable) advice to other straight men on here (which I suspect is a very high % of the users), but I would ignore much of this advice and do the following: * Live your own life to the fullest. Don't even worry about dating / the apps. Just do activities you love and develop a passion (or more than one!). The apps are basically designed to mess with your psychology and the yield of your time spent on them is very low unless you are extremely attractive (not me lol!). Start rock climbing and go to a bunch of meetups for it, meet new people, and be the one who asks people (men and women) to meet up for climbing. Copy-paste this onto whatever activity you want (I've done it with skiing, climbing, mountain biking, and sailing). You will eventually meet a partner through these group activities and you won't waste any time trying to "date", and often you'll be able to vet your partner in a less intense "setting" than a date. For example, you can talk about what money "means" to each of you while walking to the crag and realize that although she might be attractive, you'll probably just fight about money all the time. * As part of a full life, maintain your friendships. You need to be able to lean on your friendships to fulfill specific needs that your partner shouldn't need to or be able to do. I talk about code with my coding friends, not a girlfriend. I nerd out about sailing with my crewmates, not a girlfriend. I talk about espresso with a bunch of deep-pocketed coffee nerds on discord, not a girlfriend. Think of spending time with friends in the same way you do the gym: it might be tough to fit in on any single "session", but if you stop doing it after a while, you'll find yourself really behind the 8 ball. If you think you can't afford the time, I can almost assure you that the time spent in the company of friends will so vastly reduce your mental rumination / anxiety / depression you fight when you spend so much time alone that the "friend time" will more than "pay" for itself. * Know what you want, and communicate it clearly. If you're looking for something low-key, be clear to your partner. If you are angling to get serious and move in faster, be clear about that. Most of the friction in relationships comes from when each individual is on different pages about the trajectory of where they want things to go. * Talk about money. I see so many couples don't do this and perpetually fight over things that come down to "what does money mean to you?". For example, if your partner gets a tax refund and thinks "oh boy! let me buy a new computer" while you think "give me my interest-free loan back, US government, so I can shove this into an index fund and have greater financial security to tell my employer to kick rocks if things get too terrible", you're gonna have problems reconciling that unless you're very explicit. * Table stakes are similar to the article though: stay fit, eat well, avoid mental numbing mechanism and substance abuse

Morizero 2y ago

"i'm into tall kinky guys and you seem exactly my type" OP has revealed he has a huge advantage. You can't teach being six foot, and in my experience that's the number one qualifier for racking up body count.

frereubu 2y ago
He deals with this specifically in the article.
331c8c71 2y ago
How can you be so sure about that? (genuinely curious). For instance, is charisma less important?
kragen 2y ago
He claims, "The first thing you must understand is that dating markets are ruthlessly efficient at matching people of equivalent [attractiveness]. (...) dating apps brought gay dating norms to straights." If the first claim is true, you'd expect unattractive het men just get matched with het women who just aren't as attractive, rather than to get matched much less. So they aren't in competition with attractive het men in the same way they might be otherwise. The article does make this contradictory claim, though, in accordance with your own: "The relationship between attractiveness and results on the apps is a power law. If you improve your appeal by 5%, you're not going to increase your matches by 5%, you will double them. The people far above you are doing unimaginably well." (I also take issue with the assertion that height is the most important determinant of sexual attractiveness for men and boys. Being a 1.8-meter-tall 13-year-old was definitely much worse for my attractiveness than being 1.5 meters tall was for twentysomething men I met later. And there are a lot of other considerations like "personality", which includes not just the "vulnerability" mentioned here but also being able to smoothly follow social norms when you want to, a big disadvantage for autists like the OP.)
astrange 2y ago
This is important for a certain class of women, but that doesn't have to be your class, and if you're on here you can solve it with the same skills that presumably make you a highly paid professional tech type. Also, go for women taller than you.

kragen 2y ago

I'm getting a server error, but the page survives in archive.today: https://archive.is/20250320170908/https://fantasticanachronism.com/2025/03/20/how-to-be-good-at-dating/ https://archive.is/20250320170908/https://fantasticanachroni...

ravenstine 2y ago

> I had no idea it was even possible to meet a hot young woman who begs you to spit on her face on the first date. This is quite off-putting. It's one thing if that's the author's particular fetish, but on the first date? We all have our kinks, but I'd be concerned if a girl wanted to be degraded by a stranger. I really hope this isn't that common.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kragen 2y ago
You probably aren't very familiar with kinky people, probably because they sense that if their kink is not your kink, you will judge them for it, so they don't tell you about it. Humiliation is very much not my thing (from either side) but I can tell you it's a surprisingly common kink. People who find it sexually exciting don't usually lead lives that are especially unusual in other ways; it's up to you to decide whether that means they're actually okay or that the rest of us are not.
- ravenstine 2y ago
  EDIT: Although I think my reply still stands, please try not to take offense at it. I object to your response, but I was not personally offended by it. > You probably aren't very familiar with kinky people That's quite the assumption. > Humiliation is very much not my thing (from either side) but I can tell you it's a surprisingly common kink. That's fairly common knowledge, as I understand it. > People who find it sexually exciting don't usually lead lives that are especially unusual in other ways Who said they did? I sure didn't. > it's up to you to decide whether that means they're actually okay or that the rest of us are not. Yeah, and I can say it out loud, too. My point was that I find it neither appealing nor a sign of good mental well-being for someone to be want to spat on by a stranger on the first date, and the author speaking as if it's an achievement to have kinky acts with a girl on a first date is to me a sign that he has a maturity that is beneath his age. That's my opinion, and I made it extremely clear that I am not making a statement about kinks in general. As people have a right to have kinks, I have my right to decide what I consider a red flag. In my experience, a woman wanting sex on the first (and often only) date is a sign that she doesn't have her head in a place I think is ideal.

puppycodes 2y ago

Until she finds your blog...

tennisflyi 2y ago

So some top level thoughts. Yes, women like to have sex. If you’re going to pay the apps just go to Seeking and turn that 5/6 conversations going no where to 5/6 mets in a hotel a day later. Mention “CNC” in your profile and you’ll get passed on until Kingdom come. Also, talk is cheap from those screenshots