Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating | Hacker News Reader

Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

alfiekohn.org

92 pointsautarch84 comments

Having just been back in the scene this past week, this is disturbingly accurate. I'm 41.

I'm surprised by the number of women that are still on the site from the last time I went through this 5 years ago.

I have a large profile, with a ton of hooks for conversation, and yet the number of girls I talk to on there either don't want to or can't be bothered to ask a question. And unfortunately, the one that does, I have no attraction to.

Being 41 is also problematic. There is a change that happens to a lot of the women around this time. They seem to shift from something that is attractive, to suddenly looking like a mom. The haircut, the face, the body. For the life of me, I can't seem to make myself attracted to this Mom look. Which means looking for partners much younger.

It's also been strange, you'll message a girl, and ask a question. She'll respond with the answer, and that's it. Trying to keep that going ends up trying to share something about myself, and then ask another question. They answer the question again, and provide nothing to carry on the conversation. I get the feeling that these women want to be wooed, but that happens after we meet. At this stage, you're trying to find compatibility. You could be a dog, you could be a gay man who poses as a woman because he likes the compliments (read it on Reddit), a bot, etc... Interaction is the key.

Ah well, back I go.

Going by what you typed here, I can't help but think you might be going about it the wrong way. When you talk about not being attracted to the people who talk to you or are in your age range, are you going purely by looks? Maybe if you met up with them and talked over coffee or whatever you might start to develop attraction. It's entirely your prerogative if you want physical looks to limit your dating pool, but just seems like an unnecessary restriction to me.

Another plus of meeting up with potential dates is you do get to make conversation. Having a back-and-forth Q&A won't help you get to know someone. You get to learn facts about them, but you won't learn if this person is fun in conversation, if they can keep up with you or you can keep up with them, if you'll see them as an interesting conversation partner or boring, etc. I think at the messaging stage it's about trying to establish friendliness and familiarity, and of course of establishing basic facts about this person (although if that person was a dog, I would most definitely want to meet the dog!), with the goal of setting a meeting time. The face-to-face meeting is where you try to find compatibility. The face-to-face meeting will also let you confirm facts about their profile (bots can't meet in real life, and if a dog was chatting with you I would most definitely want to meet them!).

Lovely thought, but that's not how humans are designed. And I never hear this from people that actually have an ugly partner. I'm 40, not 80, so sexual attraction is an important part of selecting a mate. I don't find many women unattractive, but 300lbs is at least 100lbs more than what I consider attractive.

Sounds like the girls are getting too much attention, and so are passively enjoying swatting flies more than enjoying the hunt for a match.

Actually answering questions takes a lot of effort when you're responding to 25 people in parallel. That you're even getting /any/ response is a testament to you, given that you're 41 and yet not looking for a "mom".

Anyway... As someone else suggested, it sounds like you need to get these girls out of the email-back-n-forth as fast as possible. e.g. "Hi, I see we have X in common. Want to meet up tomorrow for lunch?"

I agree, I have have 3 coffee dates lined up this week after taking that approach on Sunday.

Might I suggest the possibility that you yourself have become as unattractive to the 40-year-old women as they have become to you?

Definitely for some, and I have a dozen ignored messages to prove that. But the number of likes I get, and the fact that I'm responding to girls that actively "liked" my profile, makes me get a sense that it's something else.

> you'll message a girl, and ask a question. She'll respond with the answer, and that's it.

this. Most of the interactions I’ve had go something like… “I see you like [some author that we both like], have you read [an older book or something related]?”

“No.”

“…”

I’m left with the impression that we’re in the middle of a massive societal shift whose rules are still being written, and by the time it all gets sorted out we’ll be too old for it to matter.

Hell, in 2010 when I was still single I encountered this through text/IM and all that. Worse scenario is if you end up "dating" or there seems to be a budding interest in person, but online/SMS communication still goes like this followed by "why don't you ever talk to me?" I'm so glad I'm married now heh.

My experience of online dating taught me one thing: you have to actually meet someone in person before you ever really know what they're like. If you can just enjoy that -- the novelty of meeting a new person - then whatever happens, dating can still be an interesting and less-painful experience.

The best advice I ever got seems illogical and is barely workable. ("Love always happens when you're not looking for it.") But maybe dating is just something we do to fill the hours while we're waiting...

I think the advice is pretty sensible, even if counterintuitive. Love happens when you stop caring so much about looking for it. "We're both lonely" is probably the worst social object to build a relationship around. Just stop looking for it and go enjoy the rest of life with people (personally I do not subscribe to the view that relationships are the most important thing in life; while I like them, I also like a lot of other things). Start attending events, meetups, parties, where you can find people with a similar interest to one of your own, and - here's the actual hack - just make sure that the group contains people of appropriate age and gender. Before you know you'll find yourself gravitating towards someone :).

I'm surprised by the number of women that are still on the site from the last time I went through this 5 years ago.

Some sites have been known to retain profiles from members that have since quit...all as a marketing tactic.

If you were to actually respond to one, you'll get silence on your side but the now-gone user will get a "hey, someone is interested in you, come back!" teaser.

OKCupid shows you the last time they logged in, and I've checked with a dummy account and it's off by 10-15min at most. I've also chatted with a couple, so there is definitely a real person at the other end.

I think it's probably more efficient to be mysterious and let the woman's imagination do the rest. Maybe you have written too much on your profile?

  One question asks how we’d feel about being slapped hard in the face during sex
  — and the possible answers include “horrified,” “aroused,” and . . . . .
   “nostalgic.” 
  More than I want to meet the woman of my dreams, 
  I want to meet the employee who came up with that last option.

This quote is a keeper.

You'd figure for such a long piece he'd at least have an understanding of this widely-publicized feature of okcupid, which is that questions and answers are crowdsourced from the users. Sheesh!

I seem to recall that most of the questions are user submitted.

I don't know about most, but many are; you earn the right to create questions after having answered enough yourself.

Certainly by numbers virtually all questions are user submitted. The first ones you see are the okcupid-written ones. You used to be able to see who wrote a question but after match.com bought okcupid that was quickly phased out in favor of the very stripped-down appified UX you see now.

What triggers a flash of actual nostalgia is a memory of the days when you met someone in the real world, perhaps at an activity that both of you enjoy, perhaps someone who wasn’t even supposed to be your type. That person might have caught your fancy, and the first order of business was to figure out whether he or she was, like you, unattached.

Honestly people, you can still do this. Nothing's stopping you.

You know what my best "dating site" has actually been? Facebook events. Whether it's something public, a meetup, or friends' parties and the like, I meet people who know people and sometimes those people are attractive and then I ask them if they want to go out sometime.

I have gotten more dates that way in the last 6 months than I have in the entire history of using online dating websites. The whole experience, even in its' ideal, is so utterly artificial, compared to just meeting someone in person. I am on the verge of just dismissing the concept as a sham. They seem to exist mostly as an outlet for desperate men to harass women in bulk volume.

I still glance at Tinder occasionally, and I have an OKC subscription I keep forgetting to cancel, but in the former case it's become little more than a mobile version of "Hot or Not" to play when I am bored (the rare response is almost always spam), and in the latter it's more of a "well, if I hit a lull, maybe ..." sort of a thing.

I'd much rather just meet actual humans face to face and give us both a chance to see what we're really like in person. That's where a natural connection is going to come from anyway.

I don't think on-line dating is a sham. It seems to be a natural answer to the growing problem - meeting people in general, and potential romantic partners in particular, gets an order of magnitude harder when you finish education. For most people, it's suddenly 9-10h/day spent at work (8h + commute), and it's hard to maintain a social life when you're both a) tired every evening, and b) required to be in good shape the next morning. Of course, many deal with it perfectly fine. Many deal only sort-of, which is why workplace romance is so common even though employers try to fight it as much as possible. But then there's a large group that simply can't find the right opportunities. On-line dating is great for those. And it works at least sometimes - I personally know of people who met and got married through one site.

That said, I'm totally not surprised by your observation about Facebook events. It's more natural to meet people like that, without prior obligations. People tend to be more open, and conversations more genuine. Especially if this is a topical event, you automatically have people pre-selected for interest compatibility. Just like money can be detrimental to the projects of passion, on-line dating seems like "trying too hard", compared to casual meetup. I tried using a dating service once, and such dates actually felt to me more like a business transaction than a meeting of strangers. But then again, I'm shy, I prefer going the roundabout way :).

And to add N=1 story, my success in finding a potential future friend or romantic partner tends to be inversely proportional to how much I try, and a direct function of number of events and public appearances I make. I'm thankful for services like Facebook and Meetup, which let you know about interesting events in the area without having you spend a ton of time on finding them.

That said, I'm totally not surprised by your observation about Facebook events. It's more natural to meet people like that, without prior obligations. People tend to be more open, and conversations more genuine. Especially if this is a topical event, you automatically have people pre-selected for interest compatibility. Just like money can be detrimental to the projects of passion, on-line dating seems like "trying too hard", compared to casual meetup. I tried using a dating service once, and such dates actually felt to me more like a business transaction than a meeting of strangers. But then again, I'm shy, I prefer going the roundabout way :).

Honestly, I'm starting to think this is just true of dating in general. "First dates" are awkward. The original article is not wrong about blind dates. It's hard to really get comfortable with someone when you're just thrust into this 1-on-1 scenario with nothing to go on and all manner of confusing social expectations.

Really, I think it's just important to keep your options open, meet plenty of people in social situations when you can, and learn to find that balance when you do meet someone who strikes you of seeing where it can lead in a natural way.

Because for me, at least, all I really am looking for is someone compatible and fun to spend time with, and that part's a lot easier to establish and find out before you start putting labels on things and everyone gets spooked.

Met my current very lovely girlfriend online (and many other perfectly lovely people, some of whom are still friends).

I think the number 1 mistake people make online, which leads to disillusion, is thinking that online dating is a replacement for meeting. I hear all the time complaints of not being atracted to any of their matches, or that they seem boring, etc. etc.

"Well, did you meet?" "No, he's so not my type."

How can you possibly know? Instead, understand the purpose of the online phase, and adopt the following strategy:

1. Match with someone who does not seem completely unappealing (some people look a lot worse online than in person... and vice versa. To a striking degree! -- Being charming in a chat room and sexy in a picture does not always carry to the real world).

2. Make sure they are not a completely insane person.

3. Skip the Q&A. Ask to meet up for a quick lunch.

Your goal is to meet as many people as possible. Forget it's even a date. Seriously, every day go have lunch with someone new. Worst case scenario, you had a boring meal. Best case scenario, you had 30-60 minutes to talk one-on-one with someone interesting: now ask them out for a proper date!

To me this is far superior to trying to subtly-or-not-so-subtly hit on people at random events, or, God forbid: a bar.

I also skipped Q&A and awkward cold introductions when using dating sites. I just straight asked them out and usually got a yes. I don't even read profiles they're usually all BS anyway, you meet the girl and she admits everything in it was a facade for work/school peers or judgemental family who found her account what she was really into you discover in private.

Maybe it's just because I was raised in the "don't use your real name on the internet" era, but I still am not quite comfortable asking a perfect stranger to meet just right off the bat like that.

As a single late 40-something, I found myself chuckling in agreement with all the main points of this really well written article.

The online dating process, to me at least, falls somewhere between setting myself on fire with lighter fluid and posting cat vids (well, anything really) on Facebook.

I tried it a few years back and very quickly realized it just wasn't for me and didn't fit my personality worth a damn.

It's a desensitizing/lonely/desperate numbers game where all incentives lie with lining up as many "targets" as you can and hoping for hits.

The OP is right, tho...as you get older it gets harder and harder to find potential long term mates, especially if you are a recovering addict with felonies in your background, as I am, for every women I did meet online immediately ran background checks.

> every women I did meet online immediately ran background checks

Are you serious?

Women actually run background checks on dates?

I don't know where to begin with my questions. Did you tell the women about your background, or they just do it on everyone? What company or service does these checks? Don't they have to get authorization from you to do a check? Wouldn't this be expensive? Is this something typical in the country/community where you live (and where is that)?

He probably means they just googled his name. If it's an uncommon name and he has multiple felonies, they will find him.

They do this for their own safety. It might not be fair if what is in someone's background check doesn't reflect who they are today. They may be truly remorseful for red flags that show up. But then again, they may not, and the woman just saved themselves the trouble of gambling on someone with a record.

They don't have to get authorization from you if the records are public. And it seems like a small price to pay for safety.

We have Clare's Law (or rather The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme) in the UK where you can find out if you partner has a record for domestic violence.

http://content.met.police.uk/Article/Domestic-Violence-Discl...

It doesn't seem too outlandish to me. Date rape is a thing that happens with depressing frequency. Women have to be constantly alert, and if something happens to them everyone will tell them that they deserved it or did something to bring it on. In that sort of an environment, you'd damn well better expect background checks.

Background: I'm currently a 30-year-old male, who used OKCupid as a 21-23 year old male, before finding my wife on there.

I think a lot of it has to do with what you're expecting out of online dating. I was a person who liked to date, and found fun experiences even in disastrous dates. That approach often leads to lots of dates with people with the same mindset.

>It's a desensitizing/lonely/desperate numbers game where all incentives lie with lining up as many "targets" as you can and hoping for hits.

Can't that be said for practically all forms of dating? I mean, I've met divorcees from arranged marriages who criticize the process on the same basis...

Running background checks for a date is a thing these days? How times change...

"We're only a few years away from a point where no mating will ever occur because no one will pass the background check." -- Scott Adams

Is that the same Scott Adams who said that the only thing stoping him from murder is regular hugs.

I don't know. I didn't do the background check.

The replies on this article, and on others I've seen about the topic of online dating before, give me the impression that somehow everybody here only uses the 'free' online dating services. In my experience there's a huge difference in the efficiency of dating sites where everybody can sign up for free (even if they need to pay up later to actually get in touch with someone), and dating sites that only allow paying members.

When I was still dating online I've used multiple different sites, and the experience was always perfectly aligned with the the article (which by the way was very enjoyable to read, mostly because it was so recognizable, but also because it's well-written and witty).

That was, until I decided to sign up for a paid-members-only online dating site. All of a sudden all the profiles seemed so much more truthful and realistic. Women would actually respond to my messages, if only to politely let me know they were not interested. I would regularly receive unsolicited messages from women, often because they liked things about my profile text, which almost never happened on the free sites even though I used the exact same text. Within less than a year I met my current girlfriend who I've been with for 2 years now, and surprise: like many of the other women on that site she's a perfectly normal person who didn't feel the need to stuff and fluff her online profile like everyone seems to do on 'free' online dating services.

Moral of the story: there's plenty of opportunity to find someone online, if you look in the right places. Don't expect to have a lot of success on the free websites though, there's so much noise in the profiles on these sites that the whole concept of writing something about yourself and sending messages falls apart. Half of the profiles on these sites are fake or abandoned anyway.

Finding a mate is a numbers game, pure and simple. Online dating facilitates meeting X women in Y amount of time. One typically starts of with requirements {a, b, c} but then as they go along they figure out that their requirements are in reality {b, d, e, ...}. The qualities {a, c} just weren't that important.

Source: I tried online dating off an on for years, met my wife on pof. ymmv

"Love -- bah! Just a boy meeting a girl under the right conditions. So, we're arranging the conditions."

--The King, Cinderella (1950 film).

My take on it is - count on online to "increase how many people you meet" rather than "increase the quality of people you meet." Use the numbers, meet lots of people. Like Jim Collins might recommend to business, "hire slowly, fire quickly" though in this case, maybe "date quickly, leave quickly" until you find someone that seems compatible in person.

Your comment reminds me of the last book I read as per Bill Gates : "The Rosie Effect". Albeit the protagonist takes it to an extreme level but his conclusions matches yours. Humorous quick read.

It is a numbers game and the problem with dining is that you can only make one try per night.

Try the old school method: take ballroom dancing classes.

Ballroom dancing is not only funny, it is a very clever algorithm to select a long term partner, and one of the best features is that you can try 40 partners per night.

I used to be that guy that sits in the corner drinking all night: "dancing is not for me". Can't believe how much time I wasted.

This. Also, try yoga...

I would disagree. Most attendees of yoga, at least as I've seen in Boston, treat it similarly to a gym. It's a "come in, do yoga, resume rest of day" attitude that doesn't cater well towards conversation or interaction. I'd be curious to know if others have had any different experiences.

I wonder if it's just me or does the complaint concerns mostly oc cupid, which is very data obsessed. For example Tinder, a far more successful online dating tool seems to be much much simpler in purpose and not suffering from those problems.

In other words - I think it's specific to data obsessed nerds take on online dating and not the problem with online dating at all :-)

I think Tinder nailed the concept that many people don't want/have time to write 10,000 words about themselves or answer stupid quizzes. At least in my experience, a lengthy profile isn't going to help you; it can only hurt, and the item of largest importance (as the article states) is the pictures.

Tinder seems ideal to quickly move from 'swipe', to a couple text messages, to a date. It's the first date that really matters. I'd argue that most people will know within the first 10 minutes of the date if they have any interest in continuing. Messaging back and forth prior to this date doesn't seem to do much except waste time.

Yeah. Tinder was willing to acknowledge and work with the fact that in seeking out new partners, the first thing that people notice and care about is physical appearance/attractiveness. If you can't get past that, there's little chance of anything happening no matter how awesome the other person might be in all other aspects.

I'll admit to having been firmly attached since before Tinder came onto the scene, but my guess would be Tinder skews towards a much younger, hookup-friendly crowd.

I'd assume older singles pursuing more serious companionship would gravitate towards the eharmony, match, okcupid type sites.

I have probably as much anecdotal evidence as you have, but from my experience tinder caters toward pretty much everyone, I've seen people trying to do a hookup for childcare on tinder.

I don't think Tinder is very effective. Most guys swipe right on everyone, meaning girls make the first choice, then guys select from those that they mutually matched with, to start a conversation. That's the summary.

Still, it's like the first iteration of the Stable Marriage algorithm :)

What makes it effective or not is if it's actually producing dates.

Makes sense for a guy to swipe right on most women. Being selected by the woman is the swipe that matters. Not much different than the real world. Same economy.

Just like in real life. How could it be different?

Every time I see an article like this on hacker news it reminds me of how disconnected and out of touch the userbase on this site is. I know so many people my age who claim to use hacker news, but I almost never see comments that seem to be from anyone under 30 or even 40.

It really hammers home how startups and entrepreneurship is rapidly becoming a game only the mega-rich can play, and which virtually all millenials are excluded from.

24-year-old here. I don't have much expertise in the vast majority of HN topics, so I mostly lurk. Every once in a while, something will pop up that I can somewhat contribute to, (semiconductor manufacture, fitness, dating, etc) but the vast majority of things? Nooope.

You can participate in startups by joining one. Certainly no requirement to be 'mega-rich'. I'm not understanding this notion at all.

There are opportunity costs to even joining a startup (the possibility for your job not to exist in a few months, the need to relocate to SF as opposed to a more affordable place or even taking a job near you) that dissuade people who aren't already independently wealthy or otherwise financially privileged (for example, being a Harvard alum with rich parents who can bail you out if necessary).

Starting a startup as a working-class person with the requisite technology skills? Good fucking luck.

Huh. I've done nothing else but join startups my entire career. Not been without a job for more than a month or two in 20 years. The first time I ever got laid off was after Dell bought our startup. So no safety in huge corporations either!

I think the risks are overstated. A startup job is... a job. Like any other.

I worked at my first startup at the age of 26 and was the third employee, got to know quite a bit about the business side of things. I was far from mega-rich. I barely had a positive balance in my checkbook.

Did your parents?

Hahahahahahah....hahahahah! Wasn't expecting that question. No, we were barely middle class. There were months that we went without cable tv. I was already moved out and living on my own at that point, too.

Used okcupid last year, went on 3 dates in the first two weeks, ended up seeing one of them for 3 months, lovely woman but just not a long term fit so no regrets.

Not used it since while it was fun I'm just not at a point where I want another long term relationship.

I seemed to get quite a few messages from women which is very strange since I'm on the "a face only a mother could love" side of the attractiveness curve - (hell the profile picture was me on a bike when I was 40lbs overweight, I actually look better now than then - also got told that, 2 of them said I should use a better more recent pic). I was brutally honest on my profile which all 3 dates said they liked, I'm also finding it a lot easier to meet women in real life as well, I dumped a load of weight last year and got back into the same shape I was in in my early twenties and I think that combined with the confidence that comes with age (I'm mid thirties) has had a dramatic effect.

Also the less I look the more women I seem to end up going on dates with, not sure how that works either.

Also the less I look the more women I seem to end up going on dates with, not sure how that works either.

People who are "actively looking" often come across as really creepy. When you stop doing that you're a lot more likely to get a date.

Not sure if "creepy" is the right word. I like to interpret it as women having a natural defense against being hit on. When you don't look like you're searching for a date, they tend to lower barriers, and by the time they start feeling attracted to you it's too late for them to raise those shields back. :).

There was a TED talk where a woman tried to crack the algorithm for a dating site - and succeeded. She tried things like creating fake profiles to identify popularity-provoking words (like "fun"), and eventually succeeded in creating the site's #1 most popular site, drawing thousands of responses.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U

Ask HN: Who is single?

I... don't see HN as being a decent dating service. My guess is that the demographics align to the average engineering / CS program, which does not bode well for the vast majority of people trying to get a date.

Of course, for the women among us, the Georgia Tech mantra applies - the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

(Currently taken, with a girlfriend who says "Yes dear" when I start talking about anything computer-related. I sometimes wonder if the reason that our relationship endures is that I'm good at killing spiders)

I am an attractive woman who spends at least 3 hours a day on HN. I'm sure my soul mate is on here somewhere.

So, how you doin'?

grin

> I... don't see HN as being a decent dating service.

Unless you're in the valley.

I'd love to say that things are any more pleasant for gay people, but I dare say it's the worst of both worlds: Most of the messages you receive are poorly written, by guys looking for a one-night hook-up rather than to start any sort of meaningful relationship (like the women endure in this story). At the same time, because most of the guys in the world are attracted to women, the potential dating pool is tiny (like the men endure in this story).

Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. I'm 26 and never even been on a date, so that could be it too.

> Could it be age? Well, maybe for you it could, but in my case I frankly don’t see how. I am, after all, still in my prime as a “40-something” — a label I’d argue is perfectly valid, in much the same way that 3:35 could be described as “a little after two o’clock.”

I get that this is a joke, but to give the full context, he's 58 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_Kohn

For an interesting time try foreign social media, for example I go on Russian facebook and see who is in my area here in Vancouver, Canada. It revealed dozens of single late 20s students doing graduate degrees which is my age range so I simply ask them out with nothing on my profile but a picture. I also used another site (topface? badoo? can't remember) and it was stocked with foreign students too. I'm still dating a girl I met off VK last year.

It's even worse than job-hunting and equally time-consuming.

Imagine if matchmakers existed on the same scale and employed the same tactics as IT recruiters! A terrifying thought.

Hi there, I see you have experience with crazy women. I have an opening right now that sounds like a great fit!

More like...

Hi there, saw your profile online and was very impressed. I see you're looking for brunettes in their thirties in Metro Boston. I have a blonde in St. Louis who is just a bit over 50 but who I think would be PERFECT for you. Call me ASAP.

This is actually real - see adds on porn sites and in your spam folder. Also, whoever sends/shows those ads has probably "saw your profile" just as likely as the IT recruiters do.

isn't that stalked-in?

This is quite a cri de coeur from the author. It makes me very glad to be outside all of this.

People just have to designa better dating site that's not just a database with a sniper rifle, or a swipe-til-you-drop bonanza.

Designing better mechanisms for dating sites doesn't have enough leverage on which dating sites become useful and valuable. Like, matching markets are well understood and very effective, but AFAIK there isn't anything in the online dating scene that works that way. It'd be straightforward to replace a Tinder-style swipe-fest with "put up profile & rank the profiles you see, then go on a date with the highest ranked profile that doesn't want someone they ranked higher". There's no point to doing that without a marketing budget.

But you can't get funding for that...

http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/

Yeah, I saw that in the past.

I also wrote an article in 2008: "Why do dating sites charge?"

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