Comment by thirdsun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thirdsun | Hacker News Reader

> One area where there was a lot of debate was the amount of time one should wait to text back. Several people subscribed to the notion of doubling the response time. (They write back in five minutes, you wait 10, etc.) This way you achieve the upper hand and constantly seem busier and less available than your counterpart. Others thought waiting just a few minutes was enough to prove you had something important in your life besides your phone. Some thought you should double, but occasionally throw in a quick response to not seem so regimented (nothing too long, though!). Some people swore by waiting 1.25 times longer. Others argued they found three minutes to be just right. There were also those who were so fed up with the games that they thought receiving timely responses free of games was refreshing and showed confidence.

Until that last sentence, I had to wonder what's wrong with people. Who enjoys these games? If I'm available, read your message and have time to answer, you'll receive an answer immediately. Pretending to be busy, upper hands - I get the idea, yet I really don't think it's preferable to being yourself.

Also, doubling response time every time is essentially exponential backoff, a strategy I mainly use when trying to let an uncomfortable discussion die gracefully.

I think HN uses a variant of that to prevent long back-and-forth discussions.

You mean, if HN detects a long back-forth, it'll not show your post to anyone for a while after you've submitted it?

That's quite interesting. Is this used anywhere else on the web?

The reply link won't appear immediately for deeply nested comments. Initially a minute or two, eventually many minutes. The comments still appear as fast as you allow with your "delay" setting in your profile (2 minutes for me: time to edit, and time to delete the stupid messages that felt good to write but that I shouldn't have written).

Sometimes (always?) the reply link doesn't show up in the comment thread, but shows up when you visit the individual comment through its permalink. That's probably a bug though.

Always and I think it's deliberate. Those who know can keep it going, but it requires deliberate effort (just enough more than clicking reply) that it might stop some of the back and forth ("Do I really need to put in this much effort for this conversation?").

No, it's on purpose. PG added it years ago, presumably as a speed bump.

In rapid back-and-forth discussions, the HN interface won't show the "reply" link for a short cool down period.

So it's not letting you post (temporarily), instead of hiding your post after you have submitted it.

> Who enjoys these games?

I don't know if anyone really does. However, like me, most people probably like to think there's a right way and a wrong way of doing this, and that it's not all just a random coin flip where the house always wins. If someone we're attracted to apparently dislikes us for no discernible reason, it's comforting to think it's simply because we didn't follow the commonly accepted rules.

But what if it's not that they are "commonly accepted rules" -- as if it was a conscious decision -- but more about how the brain is hardwired to act? What if the relatively simple rule of "if you're interested, just reply already, dammit!" doesn't accurately model how human sexual interactions work? Maybe we do a lot of signalling, some overt, some unconscious, some non-visual, just like it happens with other animals?

I have no idea whether they're commonly accepted rules. Like most other cargo cult daters I like to think there are rules, and that they mean something, but when all is said and done I'm pretty sure you're right. It's a complex interplay of roles and traits shaped in part by evolution to weed out unfit candidates. On that we built our cargo cult: I have no idea what I'm doing, but when interacting with a potential love interest I'll mimic the actions that have apparently served others so well, and even when they make absolutely no sense they'll probably still work. I suspect a lot of other interactions in the digital world can be partially explained by cargo cults based on evolved behaviour.

Conclusion: I might not be the only person who has no idea what he's doing when it comes to dating, so a lot of us are faking it and hoping for the best.

> It's a complex interplay of roles and traits shaped in part by evolution to weed out unfit candidates.

That would only apply to procreation, surely, not dating.

Dating might be entertainment to some, but I'm sure it's procreation to most.

In modern times dating is the primary mating ritual between individuals.

You know the old story:

Whether you're a lion or a gazelle, you'd better start running

And who enjoys running? Nobody. It's just the way things are. Sex is hard work, in any possible way, throughout the whole animal kingdom.

Playing games isn't new to the dating scene - among people who don't date well.

This didn't start with texting - phone calls, second dates, rules about a certain number of dates before sex. All bullshit.

People who play those games are not people who are good at dating and never have been. They seem to think everything is a power play, or a formula stat-keeping event. You can't build a functional relationship with someone you are always attempting to keep score with.

> Until that last sentence, I had to wonder what's wrong with people. Who enjoys these games?

I've met people who enjoy these games as a source of power. They like knowing they have power over someone else and their emotions. What's perhaps most disturbing is that such games are them being themselves.

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