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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

Tinder is not an app people seem to use to find "the one".

From speaking to people who use Tinder (I settled down some years ago, so my experience of online dating was limited to OKCupid and PoF which were big back then), that the traditional route of finding a future spouse is still open, and Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding "friends with benefits" type relationships.

None of them are thinking they're going to find their future spouse on Tinder, that would be a nice bonus. Tinder is an app for getting laid.

When I was single and I went to a bar because I wanted to get laid (and I'm prepared to admit I was shallow enough to want to do this on occasion), my search parameters were very, very different than when I decided I wanted to settle down and find somebody to share my life with.

I don't think I'm unusual in this.

This article takes a slim premise and develops a hypothesis as fact that is too large a burden for it: that because on Tinder people are making flash judgements based on attractiveness, long-term relationships will change in their fundamental structural nature as relates to attractiveness.

This is nonsense. Tinder is an asynchronous singles bar.

It's the same behaviour that has been going on for hundreds - perhaps thousands - of years, but you can raise the bar of what you're looking for in terms of attractiveness if you yourself are attractive because you are not time-bound to last orders at the bar, and you are less likely to drop inhibitions because you are hopefully not constantly drunk whilst using it.

Sure, people might get married after meeting on Tinder, just as they do after a hook-up from meeting drunk in a bar. But falling in love at work or based on a long social relationship is not suddenly going to stop happening because of Tinder.

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If you haven't been in the dating pool for a long time, this is sort of like someone in Duluth making sweeping statements about Silicon Valley culture. Sex is undeniably part of Tinder's allure, but consider that the lascivious media stories and coworker jokes make it a lot less likely that couples that met through Tinder are going to volunteer the information. You're going to be misled by quite a bit of sampling bias if you just go by what you've heard.

As someone engaged to someone I met on Tinder, and I met a lot of attractive, relationship-minded women, Tinder is just far and away the most efficient way to meet attractive women. Even if you're looking for a relationship, the idea of placing any weight in elaborately written profile statements (which often tell you far less than 10 seconds in front of a person) and sending messages to random women on OK Cupid seems like a waste of time. Tinder takes all of the most awkward "breaking the ice" parts of looking for a hook-up OR a partner and turns them into a fun little swipe game.

I'll also add that most women I met on Tinder weren't above a hook-up but not-so-subtly had a relationship on the agenda, and that this affects guys behavior. If you sleep with an attractive, compatible woman a few times, it's not unheard of to start to form a friendship, at which point most (not all) guys in our society start to blanche at the idea of her doing the same with other partners. There's also the fact that for many of us, hook-up sex isn't even the best sex. So there's a natural draw to exclusivity.

All these is nice, but quite anecdotal.

This coheres with my dating experiences as well. The medium may have changed, but we're all still people, with mostly the same spectrum of motivations we've always had.

My issue with dating apps is that they're too efficient. Our attractiveness fluctuates dramatically based on context. If we're doing something we love, doing something interesting, or exhibiting a particular behavior or trait, we can be far more attractive than any five curated photos will show. And vice versa.

Dating apps remove all contextual variety and flatten us out. And in that case, "efficiency" is actually inefficient.

wasn't Tinder originally named 'Bangs with Friends'?

Nope, you're talking about DOWN https://downapp.com

As a 30-something year old woman on Tinder I agree. Among my female friends, everyone is sorting through Tinder for relationship-signaling behavior. What does this mean? Clear pictures (hopefully one in a tie), a witty tagline with correct spelling and grammar, maybe a dog or picture of you doing something you are good at (i.e. surfing, dancing).

Men might try to use Tinder for hook-ups, but the higher quality female users sort out male users who project this image. I would 100% rather swipe right on a bald guy with a picture of him dancing with his niece at a wedding than with a muscular 25-year old taking a shirtless selfie in a dirty bathroom mirror.

I think that's what the original article gets wrong. Men who can signal their potential as a good mate on Tinder get matched with higher quality women, even those who are more attractive than them.

You say men are still looking for attractiveness, and women are still looking for stability? Imagine that. Glad to hear Tinder hasn't uprooted our most basic animal instincts.

Great point. It's also telling how you offhandedly refer to "everyone" of your female friends sorting through Tinder - another thing the gp poster misses is how strong the network effects are! I've been off of it for 2 years, but even then, Tinder had quickly become basically the only game in town. For almost all single people I've met in recent years in a variety of communities (college/grad-school aged, many professional circles) it's just the default method of dating.

Yes, absolutely. Other apps are promising--especially Bumble--but Tinder has the quantity. If dating is a numbers game, you're more likely to win on Tinder.

My main problem with Bumble was the lack of women on it (small network). The "women start communication" part was interesting, but ultimately frustrating. I'd have a dozen matches, and one would talk to me, maybe. I think this is going to turn more men off the service in the long run.

Yeah, I've basically given up on it. I'm not convinced that there's a single real woman on there actively, and I have some girl friends that are on there.

But is that really a different experience than messaging a dozen women and getting, maybe, one reply?

Yes. At least I've done something more than just swiping and tried to reach out on the other platforms. It's still frustrating but not as bad as seeing dozens of potential connections made and then slip away before even a single word is said.

I'm a woman and I tried Bumble but no one matched with me. For that reason, I think other apps are better.

Bumble has the problem that women treat it like Tinder - swipe right once in a blue moon and wait for matched men to make the first move.

I am a 30-year-old man, healthy, moderately attractive, athletic, intelligent, and this frightens the shit out of me.

I am very relationship-minded, but after having a couple of very long-term relationships that began online, I am seeking some damn serendipity for the next relationship. The thought of women swiping (either direction) in response to some fleeting half-glimpse mostly based on how well I could choose photos that overstate my attractiveness is seriously a distressing idea.

The shift in the way people perceive online dating stresses me out. In general it makes me feel that I would not be considered or evaluated in serendipitous real-life encounters, because everyone has filed away "dating" to be "that thing I screen for on Tinder." People you meet in random circumstances, and who might strike up a conversation about going on a date, are now universally panned, perhaps because there is a risk factor with meeting a stranger that way that feels mitigated on a platform like Tinder. But whatever it is, it means that non-empty, substantive, 3-D interactions out in the real world are heavily discounted compared to what I really feel are hollow, checkout-line-candy-bar low-substance representations of our selves (e.g. Tinder profile, OKCupid profile) ...

I'm very secure with being alone, so I think my only realistic hope is that later on, maybe when I am 35 or maybe when I am 40, some single women in the age range I am seeking will stop viewing it this way, and someone they happen to meet when they are out doing something will again be evaluated as a possible partner. I've more or less resigned myself to being alone and missing out on sexual opportunities between now and then. I don't consent to being evaluated the Tinder way ... and I'm just gonna go ahead and keep on not consenting to that.

I can only speak about the male perspective on this ... but I imagine the same would be true for females, except that it seems likely that a higher proportion of male Tinder users are seeking casual sex. As a result, something like Tinder is well-suited to women who either do want casual sex, or who want to screen against people seeking only that. It doesn't seem to offer reciprocal utility for a male in my situation.

I think I'd feel less stressed if everyone was just using Tinder for casual sex.

It's probably just torschlusspanik anyway O_o ...

"The thought of women swiping (either direction) in response to some fleeting half-glimpse mostly based on how well I could choose photos that overstate my attractiveness is seriously a distressing idea."

If you like having lots of women around, this same concept works outside of apps, in the physical world.

Yes, it is distressing if you aren't interested in doing that. People eventually want the luxury of not being judged this way while having the emotional attachment to someone.

For most people, it's far more difficult to successfully fake substance in the real world than on Tinder.

> torschlusspanik

What an awesome word! TIL that it's German for 'gate-shut-panic', [1] or 'fear that time is running out' apparently. Literally the feeling that medieval peasants had when the castle gates were closing for an upcoming onslaught by enemies.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik

Interesting, because the modern usage is more from the perspective of the onslaughting invaders, panicking that the gate may close before they arrive.

Dating has always been annoying. For guys, pre-internet dating heavily, heavily favored the outgoing and macho. Does this sound like you? Finding single women was at least as much of a chore then as now, and unless you were something of a pickup artist, it was just as awkward actually initiating a relationship out of the context of a few circumstances where introductions are easy (parties, a bar scene, etc.).

Also, consider how scripted and industrialized the quest for "serendipity" actually was - for most people, it amounted to an otherwise boring trawl through bars often devoid of anyone attractive to you.

I can't really comment. I hate traditional parties and bars and just don't go to them. Small parties with friends who are verifiably not loud and obnoxious are good, and so are dinner parties. Basically most generic group interaction modes are just loud and dumb. No thanks.

I go to quiet cafés when I want to think or relax, and mentally I'm not in the headspace of evaluating mates. I guess I'd be open to a woman who made the first move in that situation, but I don't expect it. Even when I go to concerts, it's generally (shock) to listen to music, and I try my best to tune out the existence of the crowd.

The point of serendipity is that it happens when you're not trying to make it happen. By definition, if something is industrialized and scripted, it's not serendipitous. Trawling bars or going to a party with explicit goals to evaluate potential mates is totally the opposite of what I'm talking about, and things like Tinder, while reducing some up front costs (you don't have to physically go anywhere, you don't risk in-person rejection, etc.), are like hyper mega on-steroids version of trawling with explicit mate evaluation goals.

I'm not sure I agree about the macho comment either. In my experience, trying to win the affection of intellectual women, humor is by far the most critical thing.

Here's a DFW quote that has meant a lot to me regarding my modern understanding of the personal importance of serendipity:

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."

> Small parties with friends who are verifiably not loud and obnoxious are good, and so are dinner parties.

Seems reasonable. I'm all about being as committed to my personal life as my work and I make those dating apps WORK for me. I am talking 1-2 dates a week when I'm in search mode.

But I met my current SO after I went climbing with my friend and he invited his housemate along. Within a day I knew I was at least somewhat interested, but there was another man partially in my friend group I was interested in. Within three weeks the other man had done something that killed my interest and the climbing man had consistently impressed me.

So I made a move. Tada, two years later we're living together and happy as clams.

There's something to be said for the pre-filter of friends that I find can't be matched yet with online algorithms.

I agree that friend networks can be a good pre-filter. Unfortunately for me, I live pretty far away from my closest friends, and I may be moving even farther away, so it has been hard. Once I am settled, I will have to invest in finding more friends in order to have the network. It's easy to let the salience of online dating seduce you in this kind of situation though ... but really it's like going for a candy bar when you need a meal.

I find your wording very cute: "the climbing man had consistently impressed me" -- I'm imagining some kind of Tarzan character who happened to be out with you when all sorts of freak occurrences happened that were perfectly suited for climbing: getting a cat out of a tree, getting a ball back for some children, getting back into an apartment when you've locked yourself out.

It's funny, when I read "the climbing man had consistently impressed me" I had a completely different image in my head. Rather than a show-off, I imagined a polite and friendly man, that showed genuine interest in the poster, struck up conversations about interesting topics, etc.

It's quite weird to me that the unusual adjective 'climbing' had no impact on the way you pictured it. Of course your description is more likely the real outcome, but it's a very unlikely immediate picture to have when the person describing it is making use of a bespoke aspect of the person (that he climbs) as the primary means of identifying him.

I just realised that a bunch of people I like are into rock climbing, which might be the reason for the different association I had. Climbers are nice people, in my experience.

I agree, and a number of my grad school friends were into climbing. I would never have identified them as "the climbing man" or "the climbing woman" though, since it was just one aspect of their personality. If someone had introduced one of them to me as "the climbing man" then the climbing stereotype would have obviously had some effect on my perception.

>Within three weeks the other man had done something that killed my interest and the climbing man had consistently impressed me.

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did the other guy to do kill your interest?

>Even when I go to concerts, it's generally (shock) to listen to music, and I try my best to tune out the existence of the crowd.

Haha, this reminds me of a concert I went to in Manhattan a couple of years ago, for a German metal band from the 80s. It was a pretty small venue, the total crowd was less than 500 (I think the fire marshall's sign said max capacity of 450), and as you might expect for a German metal band, the crowd was overwhelmingly male. So I stood near the back (since I like to do that, I'm not into mosh pits) and saw two women come in together. Unlike the men who were obviously all there to actually see the band, and who were using their phones to take pictures of... the band, these two women took selfies of themselves with the band in the background, then promptly went over to the bar to troll for men. None of the men seemed too interested in them...

How do you spend your free time? Are you part of a community? I'm thinking of things like a charity, or a rock climbing group, or a choir, whatever interests you. Spending time in a social setting like that is a sure way to get to know new people, and I know many people who met their partners like this (and even if doesn't work, you'll spend your time doing things you like anyway)

I took a swing dancing class once on the advice of friends who said I needed to join some social group for the purposes of meeting women.

Most of the participants were men doing the exact same thing. Most of the remaining participants were married couples. Perhaps young, single women are aware of when they might be walking into an ogling trap?

The main thing I learned (apart from novice swing dancing) was that joining up in social groups for the explicit purpose (or even partial purpose) of evaluating potential mates is inefficient.

There is another aspect of this that I legitimately want to ask questions about: what do you do if all of your interests are male-dominated, and you're seeking a female partner with characteristics anti-correlated to those types of interests?

I'm not just talking about preferring some male-dominated things, and needing to try new things. I'm talking about already having tried lots and lots of things and learning that, after years of reflection, the only things you actually enjoy just so happen to be male-dominated. (Basically, I'm saying the excuse of "try something new" is not applicable in this case).

For me personally, one of my greatest recreational hobbies is to play very complicated, strategic board games. I love playing immersive games that take many hours to play and require fairly intensive level of thought and focus. I grew up playing competitive chess, and I have always just had a really deep seated fondness for this type of game, even from a very young age. I love the idea of having a partner who likes it as much as I do, but after years of going to board game meet-up groups, university game clubs, and playing with my extended network of friends, I have not ever met a female who enjoys these games anywhere close to the level that I do.

In terms of athletics, I mostly like to do long distance running and weight lifting, both because I tune everything out and have "introvert time" -- definitely something I don't want to share with a partner. I also love to play squash which is unfortunately a very male-dominated sport.

I love hiking and camping -- but what is so funny is that you can take an activity like hiking and just add one tiny variation to it to turn it into geocaching, and now suddenly it is a male-dominated "nerd" hobby with a very negative connotation when dating.

Hiking == good, rugged, self-reliant, healthy

Geocaching == dork, lame, anti-social, takes too long

Sigh, it's all about status.

I also enjoy recreational software development, which again is heavily male-dominated. Even the interests I have that skew on the more popular side of things, like Premier League football or certain obscure corners American humor, tend to be male-centric (e.g. how disappointing that the subreddit about Earwolf's Hollywood Handbook is so male-dominated!).

Yet I consider myself extremely willing to try new things. My interest in feminist literature was piqued once after reading a Slate Star Codex post, and I went off the deep end reading every highly regarded piece of feminist literature I could for months. I have gone through long patches of life when I am pseudo-religiously focused on yoga and meditation. Animals are a hugely important part of my life, particularly cats. I mentioned taking a dance class.

I'm not going to win awards for being the world's most well-rounded guy, but I try hard to challenge my perspective and explore new things. And even still, the God's honest truth about who I really am inside is that I just so happen to be most passionate about a bunch of hobbies that happen to be male-dominated.

Probably the singular interest I have that is widely shared with women is that I love cooking and spend a lot of time perfecting recipes and cooking unusual things. But I am vegan and a lot of that has been motivated by my desire to never sacrifice the tastiness or desirability of my food just because I am vegan -- and so even this makes people uncomfortable.

The uncomfortable truth as I have grown older and become more comfortable about understanding who I really am is that I just simply don't share hobby interests with very many women. I would prefer to meet and share relationship experiences with more women, but I have adjusted to accept that dating life for me means long periods of being single punctuated by opportunities to date those extremely rare women who happen to be interested in or at least curious and tolerant of my interests and personality. They have been amazing women ... but it's still not the ideal.

Maybe if you like yoga, try pilates. Only one time in my pilates class has there been a guy. I've also heard barre is pretty these days and I think that's also mostly women and maybe similar to yoga.

If you like hiking, there's a ton of meetup.com groups for that which seem to basically be singles' mixers.

OK. I've seen this work so often, but it could be that this is not efficient if you are actively looking.

I think I understand your dilemma with male-dominated hobbies. Most of the things I do are male-dominated as well. I met my girlfriend in high school, and for a long time it annoyed me that she showed little interest in my stuff. Until at some point I realised that it's not necessary to like all the same things. It doesn't matter that we are different in many regards; over the years we've still found a lot of things we both like, and deep down we seem to have a similar world view despite being superficially completely different.

So maybe you should stop looking for women that are similar to you, and accept that your future partner will not care about the majority of your interests. At least in my experience that's really okay; as long as you have respect for another.

I don't mind looking for women who are different from me. Some of my previous girlfriends were very different from me and we got along very well.

I wrote my reply based on the claim that I should join some social groups or something to heighten the chances of randomly meeting someone new.

If you assume that is the way to do it, then the dilemma is (a) it's not very efficient because most people doing the activity aren't really a good match and are just trying to do the activity, and (b) all the activities that actually make me happy are male-dominated and even anti-correlated with popular depictions (depictions that are borne out in the data too, e.g. when OKCupid posts their data) of what women want in a man.

If you disregard the suggestion of needing to use social hobbies as a means for finding a date, then I agree with you, and finding people who are different from me has been the primary way in which I have had previous relationships.

At my local university, there is a salsa dancing group that meets every week, and goes on outings to clubs regularly. There seem to be 4 girls for every guy. The guys have to timeshare across different girls, and of course girls end up dancing with each other much of the time.

i'm 32m. in my mid-late 20s i spent 4-5 years online dating - i really put in the effort and time, and i got laid a lot. however, in the end, i found that i'm not really the relationship type. and getting laid a lot, once you get over the initial novelty and thrill of it, is kind of boring. it just becomes a giant blur of faces and nights out.

it's just too much work, for not enough payoff, and i'm also too picky about my mates. i found that the women i attracted really didn't add much into my life, nor did the actual companionship. i found it to be much like a 2nd job to maintain a relationship and the expectations that go along with it. i already have a job, i don't need a second one. maybe that's my problem, but it is what it is.

i plan on retiring somewhere cheap and warm in my 40s or early 50s and not really bothering with mortgage or family or anything.

personally i think a lot of guys are like this, they just don't talk about it because the social expectation of career/family/mortgage is too strong.

Similar feelings here, although I've been married for a number of years. It took me a long time to figure out that "that's just what you do" (dating and marriage) maybe didn't always mean it was the best thing for each individual.

Although relationships are very difficult, I think it's probably beneficial for me to have a wife since she keeps me from entirely isolating myself from all human contact and also creates "excuses" for me to experience things I otherwise wouldn't (like, let's go to this play or that ballgame, where just me I'd never just go myself). Plus we can be there for each as we get older.

I applaud you though for being able to see through social pressure and figure out what you want in life. I think you're right about people not talking about it.

Amen to your post beachstartup!

"Why do my eyes hurt?"

"Because you've never used them before..."

Have you looked into the MGTOW community? You sound just like them. They are smart guys, but they get a lot of shit because they push back against those exact social expectations that you talk about.

i've read all the same material as everyone else. i wouldn't label myself anything specific though.

Sounds like a whole lot torschlusspanik. But you've already pointed that out. Look, you've got a lot going for you except your outlook on how you think the dating world is going to perceive you. I've never really understood why apps like Tinder are labelled shallow, when in actual fact they mimic life more accurately than, say, OKC for example. IRL,I imagine, that you like the way somebody looks before saying hello to them, then you start talking to them until they do something weird that disqualifies them or they do something that you really like and you take it further. I think Tinder captures this model of interaction perfectly. In real-life 3D interactions, nobody is walking around with a bio with their hobbies,likes, dislikes and pet-peeves. Tinder may be scary because it so perfectly captures reality in it's raw unfiltered form. Anyway, I don't think I'd be able to convince you that you would probably do quite well in the dating world and that there really is nothing to be so besorgt about. I don't think people's views on dating have shifted that much even though the method of introduction has. You should go out and just test your assumptions and find out that many of them are really quite unfounded.

>but I imagine the same would be true for females, except that it seems likely that a higher proportion of male Tinder users are seeking casual sex.

No, this isn't true at all for females (I have no idea about males, I don't look at men's profiles). Women who are 30+ on Tinder are NOT looking for casual sex. source: looking through probably thousands of women's profiles in the 30-45 age range.

I'm really getting sick of these meme about Tinder being for hook-ups. It's only the 18-25 crowd that's like that. Stop generalizing the entire adult population based on what college kids are doing.

Huh, kind of OT, but I had no idea that it's spelled Torschlusspanik. In Switzerland all I ever heard was Torschusspanik (as in "die Angst, den Ball rechtzeitig ins Netz zu bringen", which incidentally also makes the same kind of sense). Well, TIL.

Which part of Switzerland? -- I might actually be relocating to Switzerland for a job. If I do, I would be relocating to the St. Gallen area. Do you know if this is a reasonable area for a dopey American with extremely limited German abilities to get by OK? Is St. Gallen a reasonable place for a young-ish adult to live, or extremely boring? And how do you people in Switzerland get anything done on Sunday when everything is closed?

As a conventionally unattractive guy (short, non-white), Tinder has been abysmal for me. Match rate of 2/500 swipes, back when the auto-swipe apps worked. And then most of the most matches were horrifically unattractive. OkCupid produced vastly higher quality matches for me, probably because the profile text and questions let me expand on my personality more. I used the same photos on both profiles. Tinder seems only useful for conventionally attractive men. I have never gotten a Tinder match who was remotely more attractive than me, but I had plenty on OkCupid and a few on Bumble.

Also, regarding the shirtless selfie. It's highly effective for men who have muscles: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile.... This is in line with the old male chestnut "what women say they want is not what they want," women strongly side toward only vocalizing preferences that reflect well upon them.

You're not alone. This short non-white guy has also found Tinder abysmal and self-esteem thrashing, with only a couple matches after hundreds upon hundreds of swipes. (Unlike your comment, I won't dismiss those matches as unattractive, which would be unfair, but the fact that the very few matches I have gotten have been the same color as me suggests to a paranoid mind more than just coincidence regarding all the other rejections...).

Like you, I've had much better luck with OkCupid, which makes it distressing that the online dating population in general seems to be shifting from OkCupid type sites to Tinder type ones.

> with only a couple matches after hundreds upon hundreds of swipes.

This isn't you being ugly, this is you misapprehending the math. a couple matches after hundreds of swipes is regular average successful male mating behavior.

Hmm, OKCupid seemed to have a much higher reply rate---something like 30-50%. (But haven't used for three years, since I'm not single anymore.)

2% response rate on advertising is considered good.

I feel like the message about sexy abs in this ok cupid post is more in line with the old saying "if you've got it, flaunt it." They even say, "We would never suggest to a Fitzgerald or a Dave Eggers to limit his profile to 100 words, and so why should guys with great bodies keep their best asset under wraps?"

Having a six-pack reflects a certain kind of lifestyle and certain values. Being witty in a profile or conversation or showing pictures of you engaging in things that are meaningful to you convey a different set of values. I don't know your experience, but I do believe that showing your personality via any dating app delivers better results.

lol, are those really the pictures that women want?

This sounds too much like the stereotypical stuff women want and less like actual things a individual would consider worth while.

30-something.

Your website https://upyourtindergame.com/ - Are you a Tinder consultant?

I am. But I came across this thread and wanted to share my experience and what has been shared with me by women in several focus groups.

I don't have the experience of being a man on Tinder, but I can tell you from my experience that most men don't market themselves well. My approach is for guys to show what makes them unique, via text and pictures.

As for the arguments above, 1) about how girls say they don't like muscle selfies, and then do like them, or 2) about how girls don't like guys with dogs--honestly, its each to their own. I think its better to display things that are reflective of your personality than to show pictures designed to impress girls. So if you and your dog are inseparable, show that--they girls who like cats will find someone else, and you'll find your dog-lover.

If you represent yourself accurately and make the selection process as transparent as possible for women, you will have success on Tinder. This optimizes the problem for women, which seems misplaced given that women already have an abundance of choice. It's designed to whittle down the field for women. For most men, the field is more barren and a different strategy makes more sense: appeal to as many women as possible, get your foot in the door with an actual date, then let your actual interaction determine further outcomes.

> I don't have the experience of being a man on Tinder

I think this is the fatal flaw. I'd value the advice of a man who looks like me who has managed to be successful on Tinder 100x over any woman's. He has faced the same challenges as I, you have not. It's the same as talking to a white person about racism, or trying to discuss gender privilege with a man. The privileged can speculate on the difficulties of the less privileged, but has never felt them. The gulf in life experience has an enormous effect on quality of advice.

Women do not have an abundance of choice. There are more women than men in the United States. In major urban areas there are many more mating age straight women than men. When you look at the number of college educated straight women compared to their male cohort in urban areas, there are more women. This is reported, often, in the media.

Women in their thirties circulate these articles around their friend groups via email, and they are met with scared-face emojis and nervous laughter. There are more of us, which puts the odds in men's favor. We are not the privileged.

So, being that there are more eligible women than there are men (and not just us 30-somethings, there are more younger women out there too) doesn't it make sense for a man to try to find the best partner for him from all these options? Studies have shown that shared values and personal goals forge the best relationships. So why would men, who have the advantage of choice, go out with just anyone? Why not try to connect with the best match for you? Someone you think is attractive and shares your enthusiasm? Being transparent allows for more authentic connections.

I'm not just talking about relationships. If you're looking for something casual, I think your profile should reflect that. Then you meet someone who isn't looking for a relationship right now. I think this is more ethical than getting your foot in the door with a woman who is looking for a relationship, then leaving her broken-hearted when you move on three months later.

There is lots of information out there about how guys are successful on Tinder. From what I've seen most of it seems to be from the PUA perspective, which relies on chipping away at a woman's self esteem, and games. That brings a different result than the approach I take.

>Women do not have an abundance of choice. There are more women than men in the United States. In major urban areas there are many more mating age straight women than men. When you look at the number of college educated straight women compared to their male cohort in urban areas, there are more women. This is reported, often, in the media.

This is absolutely incorrect. Actual numbers are irrelevant, what's important is experiences. Talk to actual women using online sites and find out their experiences. My ex-wife, just after we decided to break up (but before actually being divorced) got on OKC and was absolutely bombed with messages from men. She had a bunch of dates, no bad experiences at all, but basically got overwhelmed with all the attention and shut it down for a while. (Then she ended up meeting someone through a friend and they're a couple now.) Men just don't have this experience, unless maybe they're over 60 or something. Ask any man if he gets a lot of action on online sites. They don't, unless they're a very rare minority who's very successful for some reason. The frequent complaint on OKC is that they write a bunch of long, thoughtful messages and get no responses.

You're looking at the absolute numbers of women and men, but that assumes that they participate in online dating in equal numbers. I think that's a completely flawed assumption. Men have long been more likely to participate in online dating, and women have long been far more wary of it. Also, I think a lot of women simply avoid dating altogether in their 30s because they have kids.

Finally, you're flat wrong about women in urban areas. It's well known that single women outnumber single men in east coast cities (esp. DC and NYC), whereas the reverse is true in west coast cities (esp. SF/SV and Seattle). Men and women don't work in the same industries in equal proportions, and certain industries are concentrated in certain places (e.g. tech in SV, fashion in NYC).

>Women in their thirties ... There are more of us

This is flat wrong too, if you look at population figures. Men outnumber women from birth to about 30 (children are more likely to be born male). Around 30, the numbers become equal. Women don't really outnumber men until after 40 or so, because men die earlier than women usually.

>If you're looking for something casual, I think your profile should reflect that. Then you meet someone who isn't looking for a relationship right now.

You obviously don't talk to many 30+ women, and you obviously haven't swiped through thousands of women's profiles. There are zero women like that over the age of 30 on Tinder. There's a tiny number of swingers, and that's about it. Everyone else says "no hookups". (I'm not looking for something casual, I'm just pointing out the fallacy here.)

>There is lots of information out there about how guys are successful on Tinder. From what I've seen most of it seems to be from the PUA perspective, which relies on chipping away at a woman's self esteem, and games.

Yeah, and that information is being sold by people who are trying to profit off that advice; it may or may not be correct. But if it is, that really says something about women, doesn't it? Actual research (by OKC's data people I believe) has shown that women are frequently dishonest about what they want and what attracts them (and not just dishonest with men, but dishonest with themselves too). If women really were repulsed by PUA tactics, then they wouldn't work, would they?

> children are more likely to be born male

Wait, what. What I remember from biology classes it's that it's 50/50.

Nope, go Google it. For humans, it's something like a 1.07/1 male:female ratio, IIRC. Sorry, I don't have a link handy.

> So why would men, who have the advantage of choice

this made me laugh out loud.

for any men reading this -- do NOT listen to a woman, no matter how logical her advice may sound, when it comes to dating advice. just don't.

"Men might try to use Tinder for hook-ups"

that's traditionally what it's been for. The "long term relationship" crowd has literally every other dating app out there, but so many of them flooded onto Tinder to "just give it a try" that it changed things.

"but the higher quality female users sort out male users who project this image"

That comes across as kind of... snobby?

"maybe a dog or picture of you doing something you are good at (i.e. surfing, dancing)."

you'd be surprised how many other women complain about guys doing just that in photos.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions. Traditionally? Tinder hasn't been around that long. I think of Tinder as a marketplace, just like a singles bar--some people are there to hook up and some people are there for a long term relationship.

I'll take the criticism on labeling females who are looking for long term relationships as "high quality." I'm not judging anyone's motives. But I will stand by the sentiment that people are sorting for matches that meet their goals, and many women have #relationshipgoals.

The women who complain about guys doing things in their photos don't have to match with those guys. They can match with non-dancers, non-surfers.

>that's traditionally what it's been for.

No, that's what it was for, and still is for, for the 18-25 crowd. When the older crowd started using it, their interest was different.

>The "long term relationship" crowd has literally every other dating app out there, but so many of them flooded onto Tinder to "just give it a try" that it changed things.

No, it was the 25+ and especially 30+ crowd flooding onto it that changed things.

The reason they like it is because Tinder works better for both men and women. Men hate traditional dating sites because they spend all kinds of time looking through profiles, then writing messages, only to get no response. Women get overwhelmed on those sites by all the messages from men they have zero interest in. Tinder solves this problem by forcing both parties to respond affirmatively in order for communication to proceed.

>you'd be surprised how many other women complain about guys doing just that in photos.

I have no idea what you're complaining about here. I mainly look at 30-45 women, and they love pictures of men with dogs, and frequently say they'll swipe right just for a picture of a man with a dog. Sucks for me because I like cats and not dogs, but oh well. And women typically love dancing, so that's not going to repel them either. What they do complain about is shiftless selfies, selfies in the car, selfies in the bathroom, headless torsos, and pictures of the guy with a bunch of women.

> No, that's what it was for, and still is for, for the 18-25 crowd. When the older crowd started using it, their interest was different.

That's an assumption you're presenting as if it's a fact.

> No, it was the 25+ and especially 30+ crowd flooding onto it that changed things.

Again, an assumption. I'm not wrong in what I said.

> I have no idea what you're complaining about here.

I'm not complaining about anything. What I'm saying is that for every man or woman you see complaining about things in profile photos, there's another man or woman that loves it. I've seen plenty of female profiles on Tinder complaining about pics of guys with animals.

That's one of the things about online dating, though - people are clearly having different experiences. Neither of us are wrong.

No, anyone who generalizes Tinder across all age ranges is wrong. That's what I'm pointing out. I've never seen any woman complain about guys having pics of animals. But if you've seen that, and you're looking at women aged 18-25, then of course you're going to have a different experience than me, because I don't look at those women. And you're not going to see the same things as me if you're not looking at 35-40yo women. What 18-25yo women do or like is completely irrelevant to me, as what 35-40yo women do or like should be completely irrelevant to you.

Astroturfing doesn't work as well when your profile links to your financial motivation.

As an early-40s man on Tinder, I don't look at other men my age to see if they're looking for hookups or not, but I very, very rarely see women on there who are, and those who are tend to be younger (less than 30). Most women, especially the 30+ crowd, specifically say "no hookups" in their bios.

However, I don't get many responses or matches, but I think that's mostly because of my distance. I only look for women who live over an hour from me, because that's where all the desirable women live, but they don't seem to be interested in dating a man that far away. So I guess I'm stuck being single until I can relocate myself closer.

I wonder how large part of "No hookups" is to avoid solicitation and requests for prostitution, as opposed to a genuine wish to avoid hookups.

'Tinder is not an app people seem to use to find "the one".'

I think this is both true and not true. A suspicion I have (and I'm sure there's got to be research on this) is that a lot of people interested in casual dating/hooking up on Tinder and/or in bars are unconsciously looking for a long term mate. In some ways this is a very effective strategy, since you're cycling through a large number of potential mates to find one who meets some kind of acceptability threshold. I read somewhere (sorry can't find the reference), that extroverted, high frequency daters ended up in happier long term relationships simply because they had more selection, which on the face of it seems to make sense.

This is always what I tell my friends who have this "focus on work now, find someone and get married later" vision.

You definitely can find someone in your late 20s if you have little relationship experience. But you won't be able to make an informed choice and will miss a lot of red flags.

Be prepared to pivot?

On the other hand, there's a better chance that you'll get to know the real person after 30. There's less influence from friends and family. The person's identity has usually smoothed out. And, they generally know themselves better - their motivations and goals, their likes and dislikes and principles. They're usually more confident in themselves and open about it. There's a better chance to 'get what you see'. I recommend to all of my friends to not look for a marriage partner until after 30.

Well, on the other hand, by that age you've probably both got pretty established patterns that are harder to break as part of your marriage. I don't think there's necessarily a "right" age to do it.

Studies show that the divorce rate among people who get married at 27+ is measurably lower than people who get married younger.

And that has nothing to do with the dating pool pre and post 30? All of my friends who are dating in their 30s complain about the typical dysfunctionally of the people they date.

Wouldn't that also bias towards people who spent more time in a relationship before getting married? Personally, I would never get married with someone unless I dated them for at least 2 (preferably 3) years. I'm hoping that in itself will make it much less likely that I get divorced.

I just don't think it's a case where "studies show" is all that helpful. You're trying to get insight into a relationship with which you are intimately familiar by looking at aggregate data of people whose relationships are all over the map in various ways. It's like trying to figure out your risk of getting into an accident by looking at statistics for drivers in your age group without taking into account years of experience, propensity for speeding, and so on.

Not true if you're a woman. The playing field shrinks as you get older, at least if you're looking for "good men."

Let's not kid ourselves, it shrinks for men too. As a 40 year old I thank my lucky stars that I'm out of the dating pool nowadays.

It doesn't shrink as much.

Mainly the result of societal pressure or expectations. Being a 33 year-old man, never married. That's "normal". If I were a woman, people would be asking me when I was going to get married and have kids (very much depends on area, but this is not at all uncommon). As a 33 year-old man, it's also not thought of as strange for me to date women in their early-to-mid 20s. The same is not true for women my age.

Then there's also just how people tend to rate attractiveness, which is something that really matters in a lot of these online dating systems. Men are generally viewed as (physically) attractive at higher ages than women are. A few wrinkles on a guy, some gray. That makes him "distinguished". You don't here people saying that about women as often.

The age range and feature-sets for what makes women attractive (again, this is emphasizing first impression attraction) are much narrower than for men.

I suspect that men are simply judged on a wider feature set than women. women prefer younger men if judging on aesthetics alone (full head of hair, abdominal definition, clear skin), but place a lower priority on attractiveness and will tolerate signals of aging in men if they are accompanied by signals of wealth/cultivation/accomplishment. Men who are unaccomplished/uninteresting and also older will experience 'pool shrinkage' at a similar rate to women.

"Being a 33 year-old man, never married. That's "normal". "

My experience was different. I was called a loser by more women than I could count because I wasn't ever married by then or had kids.

Where is that? I'm in the US for what it's worth and my particular experience is in the southeast.

Mostly in the SF Bay Area, of all places. I moved to north Texas and while it still happens, it happens way less often. But the Tinder landscape is definitely different.

Only if you're lazy. If you improve yourself (gym, career, hobbies) your pool should only grow as a man into his 40s.

Men's peak attractiveness is at 38. You aren't too far off it.

Not true if you're either sex. People who other people want to marry are getting removed from the pool.

People are also being added to the pool, probably at a faster rate since marriages are happening later and the human population is expanding.

The pool being larger has nothing to do with, for lack of a better term, marriageable people dwindling from the pool as time goes on. Sure you'll have more options overall at any point, that does not mean that you're not slowly losing options as people who are desirable life partners marry other people in the same position.

There is a strange nearly perfect analogy with the dysfunctional problem of hiring "good programmers". Complete with expensive and time consuming rituals, unrealistic requirements vs the actual job, blind faith in technological silver bullets to improve the process, and elaborate psychological rationalization houses of cards all of which make little rational sense from an external viewpoint.

Some of the similarities are insane, like the laser like focus on demographic membership, first impressions, ageism, all the way down to stereotypical trivialities like wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

I'm not sure if its baked into the cake because of something as simple and obvious as the rather extreme gender ratios in HR and Programming bleeding thru into the business processes, or both rituals come from the same larger culture so naturally human selection processes would be similar, or of there's a third more elaborate, probably more interesting, explanation.

> Some of the similarities are insane, like the laser like focus on demographic membership, first impressions, ageism

I don't think demographic membership and age are invalid criteria when trying to find someone to marry and raise children with. Different demographics have different cultures, and different cultures have different ideals of what is good and bad, how to raise children &c. Age is rather pertinent if one wishes to have children. Even if one wishes to marry and not have children, culture fit is pretty important (and age determines a heck of a lot about culture!).

> wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

In both dating & hiring, the issue is not so much that there are no good options, but that sieving the wheat from the chaff is incredibly difficult. In both cases, so far as I can tell, it's an unsolved problem (or possibly it's solved but we don't like the solutions: I've not quite made up my mind).

Most nations are generally monogamous. The playing field is the same size for all hetero people.

Thats kind of how things go. It's a penalty for not being serious early on.

I tried to focus on finding someone in my 20's and 30's and couldn't find anyone and now I'm in my 40's and I just give up. It's too time consuming etc. I've come to the realization that most likely there isn't anyone for me and my life would have been much better if I had focused completely work and not bothered with dating.

I mentioned it above, but have you looked into the MGTOW community? They feel the same way.

Thanks but I'm a woman.

This is such bullshit. Every time I hear an explanation of Tinder like this, it's from someone who isn't even using Tinder and only reads about it vicariously through the people who brag about Tinder dating. The rest of us, men and women, use Tinder as an extra dating pool to add to Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid. They all have pros and cons. Hinge was great until they gave me 24 hours to respond to woman; sometimes I'm busy. Bumble requires the woman to message me first which is very nice as it takes that awkward "don't blow the first communication" line out of my hands.

Yes, there are people who use Tinder for hookups. People use OKCupid for hookups. Match for hookups. That has not even remotely been the desire of the women I've met on Tinder.

People also use bars, clubs, bookstores, meetup events, weddings, and vacations for hookups.

Yes, not only is this bullshit, but this article's premise is too. It takes A LOT of personal experience in the world to draw a true pattern about relationships. Even the opening sentence cries 'perceptual bias': "When was the last time you met a couple where one person was attractive and the other was not?"

I see this all of the time, but how often do you think the author sees it too and consciously or unconsciously brushes it off as, "they must not actually be together." This article is like intellectual white-nighting, though not directly offering to save any girls - it's implying that the author knows better than the women whom are caving in to the wrong stimuli via "online dating."

This is also a denial of sex statistics. If this new environment is keeping you ugly men from getting laid more today than you could yesterday, then who are all the ugly women banging? Otherwise, the author needs to claim that attractive men are actually getting laid more, while unattractive men are getting laid less or not at all. I don't see any evidence that less attractive men together have worse access to women in general than they had before. If anything, physical attractiveness of masculinity has decreased in some female's selection criteria over a long period of time due to the fact that a man's ability to physically defend himself and his family has become less necessary. Furthermore, studies have shown that the use of birth control causes women to be attracted to different (more feminine) men than they would otherwise - a side effect not often discussed or listed on the contraceptive package inserts.

This seems to be less true outside the US. I've seen Tinder pick up a lot in Vietnam in the last two years but people use it to find more traditional dates or just to network or make new friends. It's not a hookup app here.

Yes, it is the same in Prague. I've met my current girlfriend of one year in Prague and I don't believe that I am an exception. Many of the girls were looking for a long term partner. Maybe it's just about selection. If you are looking for a hookup you will surely find it there, but it is no problem to find long term partner instead.

Agreed, in the Netherlands dating apps are having serious troubles because Tinder is free, easy and quick. Dating apps now try to sell there "privacy aware" attributes because you don't need facebook with them (which you do need with Tinder).

Personally I have no experiences with it, but in my circle I see tinder being used as a dating app.

Out of curiosity, what are those other apps?

Same here in Switzerland. So far I have met 3 couples who are together for over 6 months who met on Tinder.

All would be great if my Tinder app in California would load Switzerland profiles..

Same in Kenya. Though there are some hookers on there, but they leave nothing to the imagination, so it's easy to sort them in/out if that's what you're looking for.

Since many people disagree with you, I'm going to chime in and say that I agree with you 100% when it comes to Tinder being used for hookups, at least where I live. I am a 25 year old male in South Jersey (near Philadelphia), and Tinder is primarily used for hookups here. I think it varies a lot based on where you live though.

I mean if you think about it, it's an online dating platform that provides nothing more than a few pictures and a sentence as a basis for decision making. It's designed to allow for fast selection of people based solely on appearance. This is backed up by the fact that there's no profile text displayed when you're swiping...all you see is a picture of the person. If you want to view their actual profile, you need to click their picture, which hardly anyone does.

This is unlike other dating sites where you have to take a personality test, provide a detailed description of your interestest, etc...

However, like someone else said, many people go there for hookups, but they are actually seeking a longer term relationship whether they like to admit it or not. Some are probably looking for hookups maybe with the possibility of a longer term relationship. Additionally, this is going to come off as sexist, but I feel that there's a large percentage of girls on there who aren't looking for anything at all other than attention. This is particularly true for attractive girls. Hell, who wouldn't love to have people constantly telling them they're beautiful? I've even talked to a few attractive girls who use Tinder "because it's funny". For guys, I will go out on a limb and say that 90% of guys on Tinder are looking for some action.

EDIT: Just to add, keep in mind that age plays a huge role here. I am 25 years old, and many of my friends are in the 20-23 year old range. I have a feeling that the average age of the commenters here is slightly higher, which could explain why so many people don't agree with Tinder being used for hookups. There's a big difference between a 35 year old and a 21 year old when it comes to maturity in dating.

Engaged to woman met on Tinder, met her at 26, disagree

It provides a sentence and picture for decision making but only in the context "I would like to write to this person'. Conversation usually follows before you meet up with your match. I find this way more interesting than other dating apps. It is also much closer to real life dating. In real life you also don't know much before you approach the person for conversation.

On Tinder getting a match is really just a first minor step.

> Tinder is not an app people seem to use to find "the one".

There is one flaw. Usally it just happens that you find the one. A person doesn't go "Oh I am getting married now let me find that person I want to marry."

My Mom: "Careful who you date since you could end up falling in love with them. AKA Don't date people you wouldn't want to marry"

Yeah, I feel like this is one of those things where if you set out to do it you will not be successful.

Please don't generalize outside of areas that you have experience with.

In the gay community (male at least), tinder is more relationship-oriented than your description (because there are already many other apps for hooking up).

But his generalization is apt. It's a generalization. It does not apply to your specific circumstance. Nor mine, actually.

And further to the point, his observation does not change if you find and replace 'tinder' with whatever app you DO use for hooking up.

I don't think his generalisation his accurate, and lots of others agree.

Not only the idea that Tinder is majority used for hook-ups, but the idea that people have been having casual hook ups for hundreds or thousands of years, and mostly falling in love through work or long term social relationships. You don't have to look very far in time or geography to see societies that don't work anything like that. Arranged marriages, gender segregated schooling, lack of women in the workplace until relatively recently.

And FWIW, within my social circles, Tinder is frequently used to find serious (as opposed to casual) dates. I have just moved in with my girlfriend who I met on Tinder.

>But his generalization is apt.

It's baseless and directly contradicts the data in the article, with no evidence outside of a personal experience with Tinder.

Which data in the article did it contradict?

It's even worse: as he himself said in his second paragraph, he has no personal experience with Tinder at all, it's all from "from speaking to people who use Tinder"!

This is the most aggravating thing, even beyond the content of his comment and the way that it implicitly insults people who are trying to use Tinder for more than hookups: people see an app/phenomenon like Tinder and make a quick simplistic judgement based on what they want to see and their moral biases, and then make sweeping pronouncements like that.

Seconding this for the lesbian community. For heterosexuals, sure, this may only be a hookup app. For lesbians? Long term relationships from Tinder abound (I say this as a lesbian, albeit one who met her wife at work).

Maybe this is not really an issue for homosexual couples, but I would never have considered Tinder because unlike OK Cupid, there's no way to filter out Republican-hates-the-gays-hates-abortions types. The question/answer filtering and profile text was the most important part of online dating to me.

Don't you have to talk to people before you set up a date?

OK Cupid also has questions covering:

- Evolution.

- Whether or not dinosaurs were a thing.

- If the Moon landing happened.

- The relative size of the Earth and the Sun.

- If Astrology is scientifically accurate.

... among others, all of which I had marked, with the correct answer set as "mandatory". If someone answered enough of these with the wrong answer, you won't even see them (if you do, you'll have a high "enemy" percentage), so you won't waste your time talking to them.

They actually instrument the process of setting up your own personal information 'bubble'? 1984 was 30 years ago, so its probably overdue.

I wouldn't use the term "information bubble" to describe this sort of filtering. It's not as though a person is unaware of those who believe differently regarding topics like evolution or the moon landing, or will never hear those arguments. It's just not necessarily a good idea to try to form a romantic partnership with someone who you don't respect because they believe a position you consider to be "crazy".

The moon landing thing would be important to me.

I have been on a date with a conspiracy nut, and can confirm that this is something I'd want to filter out if I was still dating and not in a long-term relationship.

It's funny you say this, because I am a Republican pro-life lesbian. I have used both OkCupid and Tinder in the past, and I 1. Didn't find OkCupid to be terribly good for filtering out those with worldview I disagreed with 2. Liked Tinder more because it forced that initial conversation with someone, which I would rather have, as I am interested in their mind just as much as their looks. Best of both worlds. YMMV.

> Republican ... lesbian

As someone who doesn't like to be used as a political boogeyman or have their rights dangled in front of them when it's convenient, I will never understand this.

I go back to the old-school, small government intellectual Republicanism (this may sound crazy to many of you, but I assure you, at one point it existed). I realize that this is currently not where the party is (see: Trump, Cruz, Jindal, Carson, Palin, et al), but I believe in trying to change it from the inside.

As it stands, I vote libertarian a lot.

Current and future quality of life for myself and others trumps paying lip service to ideals that are never realized.

Given the past ~30 years, saying that is the equivalent of saying you're a Nazi jew, because the Marxist in you likes some principles of national socialism. I still don't get it.

If she didn't qualify her comment with the statement about often voting libertarian, you'd have a point. But the political spectrum she fits into is currently covered by the Libertarian (big-L) and Republican parties (specifically, a minority libertarian portion of the Republican Party). A pro-life position would push someone back towards the Republican party, along with the fact that the Libertarian Party isn't going to win many major elections any time soon (maybe if Trump gets the nomination and the Republican party finally fractures?).

Bingo. My academic studies of political systems, US politics, game theory and economics leads me to believe that a true free market economy is the causa sine qua non for a more tolerant and free society.

I also believe that one cannot legislate social mores, and that the government does not, can not, and should not grant or even 'uphold' rights. Further, I believe that free markets CAN and HAVE caused (on net) greater social change than any legislated social change, and that on an individual level, free markets are the best channel for allowing minorities/oppressed individuals to champion their cause while simultaneously avoiding and stamping out oppression.

Ergo, I dedicate myself (and my vote) to the goal of an entirely free market. In essence, I swipe right for the Austrian School. (Go ahead and groan).

"Current and future quality of life for myself and others trumps paying lip service to ideals that are never realized."

Agreed. However, I bet we differ on the means by which one should go about achieving/obtaining (I separate those words very deliberately here) a high quality of life for oneself, and the means that will help others. If you're truly interested in a political conversation, and open to learning, my email is in my profile. While the HN community may benefit, we are going on quite the tangent from the main topic. Cheers.

Maybe because the Democrats do the exact same thing using social issues as political footballs etc when convenient.

You need to figure out the signaling then. It isn't that most people would never settle with a Republican pro-lifer, it's just that being a Republican/pro-lifer is an indicator of other incompatibilities (which usually is a good indicator of other things).

Take for instance you yourself are better off filtering out all the Republican/pro-lifers because of the baggage they'll bring with them.

Usually the signally has evolved to be different. You don't say Republican, you say Libertarian (considering gay rights being one of the topic of difference).

I'm registered as a Republican, and in theory, would rather date a Republican than a Libertarian. In unsurprising news, every woman I have ever dated has been a Democrat, and my wife is a Democrat from a socially democratic country. She will be joining me in voting for Gary Johnson in the upcoming presidential election, but is voting for Hilary in her party's primary.

It's funny, I used to look at the types of signaling you reference when I was dating (do we like the same things, have the same outlook, etc). I have found my greatest happiness with my wife, and the only two signals there I used were her work ethic and intellectual capacity. Well. And she's the hottest woman I've ever seen. All three, and I couldn't wait to put a ring on it.

No, she doesn't know my HN username.

The best way to do that is to actually read their little bio, assuming they put one in there, and look for typical indicators for that kind of alignment: talking about guns/shooting ranges, pictures of them at the shooting range, pictures of them with a dead deer, etc. Finally, if that fails, try just asking them when you have a match and start chatting.

I like the idea of being able to filter people too, and I find I can tell a lot about people from their OKC profile. The problem, however, is that OKC is basically a big waste of time because everyone desirable has moved to Tinder, and the few decent women on OKC don't respond because they get too many messages, and I end up spending way too much time writing messages with zero return. With Tinder, I don't have to waste my precious time 1) reading through a profile to see if this is someone I should spend time writing, and 2) writing a long, thoughtful message, only to get no response. If a woman matches me on Tinder, there's a decent chance she's actually going to respond. It's probably something like 33% chance I'll get a response on Tinder to a match. On OKC, it's probably less than 1%. If that means I have to spend a little more time text-chatting to learn about them because the Tinder profiles are so sparse, that's still a giant time savings for me.

It's not just (geographical) area, it's age range. He's probably around 25 years old. For those of us around 40, what he wrote is completely wrong. I almost never see any women on there looking for a hookup, but I don't look for girls aged 20.

I don't see why the trend described in the article shouldn't apply to other forms of online dating/matchmaking as well. "But I have a wonderful personality" will know no one ever, as long as your mug is ugly.

Consider this: at least in the bar you have your chance to make a good impression. In online dating you're one click away from being ignored forever.

> "But I have a wonderful personality" will know no one ever, as long as your mug is ugly.

Hm. So, how come average and below-average looking people with good personalities have stable and happy long-term relationships after thirty, when gorgeous and sexy party animals and drama queens (of any gender and sexual orientation) keep marrying, divorcing, and end up being mostly single after 40?

What does attractiveness have to do with stability of relationship? If anything, attractive people will always have more attention/choices/distractions that is a negative factor in relationship and the opposite will be beneficial for the not attractive ones.

> What does attractiveness have to do with stability of relationship?

That's exactly my point, so I'm surprised that you phrase your comment as if you're arguing with me.

I may have misunderstood you, since now I realized your comment is a single very long question.

Your point is not arguing with the article however.

The article is not about how hot people find eternal stable relationships, but how they have more chances to get into relationships.

That you noticed them often break an older relationship and get into a new one corroborates the article, doesn't negate it.

And if we take away the stigma of divorce, which is supposed to mean some kind of personal failure, that's good for them.

It could also entail "ugly" people also wanting to divorce/play around more, but as they fear not having the same chances, they play it safe (and miserably).

So, yeah, it might not be that a less attractive person will "know no one ever" (absolute), but it will probably be that they'll have limited chances to get to know other people, and when they do, they'll tend to stick with them.

I'm assuming that you mean some ugly people end up in happy relationships while some attractive people end up unhappily single in their 40s. Clearly this is not true of all people in either group, and the proportions could be broadly similar or quite different - I have no data at all.

I wasn't talking about ugly people — I was talking about "ugly" (in quotes) people with good personalities. And almost all of those people after 30 that I know have great, stable relationships, often with more attractive people.

I suspect two issues.

There's some observational bias at play. You notice the cases where the guy (usually) has "outkicked his coverage" and you may notice the very attractive singles and wonder about it. You don't notice the plain singles or the perfectly matched couples, but you notice the woman in the red dress from the Matrix.

Second, some people make a conscious decision to have a stable relationship. I'm not saying it's 100% choice, but it's well over half IMO. I sought [and found] a partner who came from a stable family, who was educated and valued education, who wanted kids, and who wanted a stable relationship. Did that contribute to me being one of "those people"? Probably.

>often with more attractive people

Since there are two sides to the transaction, the number of people marrying more attractive people is exactly equal to the number marrying less attractive people.

Once again, I was comparing two groups: ugly w good personality vs beautiful vs difficult personality.

I didn't cover ugly w difficul personality and beautiful w good personality, hence the disparity.

I'd pay more attention to the 'party animal' bit than the 'attractive' bit: statistically people with more sexual partners have less stable relationships.

Where are the statistics for this? Genuinely curious. I might have skimmed over that in the article.

http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wordpress/reports/

HuffPo, so take with a grain of salt, but still a reasonable summary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partner...

That seems fairly tautological.

Clearly there's no or very little correlation between similarity of attractiveness levels and relationship stability because ignoring the whole internet dating topic, people have lived in communities ranging in size over at least 5 orders of magnitude if not more, yet actual divorce stats of small rural villages vs megacities are not separated by anything near 5 orders of magnitude. Or whatever other measure of stability you'd like to use, none of them approach the incredible variation in size of the dating pool and therefore similarity in first impression rating.

A physics analogy would be that no matter how strong the theoretical argument, its widely observed that over many human accessible orders of magnitude in mass of the object, gravity makes things fall at the same rate. Leading to the (actually inaccurate) theory that the force of gravity has no correlation with the masses of the objects.

Given that there's observationally no correlation between two variables and not much theory either, then observed variation in one variable is by the above, unsurprisingly not correlated to the other variable.

But even if that was true, hook-ups are actually also a strategy for long-term relationships. At least, when asked, a very large majority of women and even most of the men say they wanted some kind of relationship from the hook-up.

I'm sorry but that's just incorrect. Women are investing a significant amount of energy trying to find LTR using Tinder.

Source: I'm helping a startup in the Tinder ecosystem. Learned a lot about people's habits.

This might be true for you, but its not true generally. I"ve known a few couples who met via online dating. And I myself had a long term relationship also trough tinder.

People are using it for numerous purposes. And there are also other apps. All in all, online dating is also for serious matters.

This is not true of people older than 26 on the app (at least here in the Atlanta area). The profiles of that segment overwhelmingly signaled they were only looking for relationships.

Being from the same area, do note that that message in the profile is often used as a deterrent from creepy one-liners and overly aggressive first messages.

>But falling in love at work or based on a long social relationship is not suddenly going to stop happening because of Tinder.

Well, I'm looking at the chart included in the article that shows all of those means of meeting someone in free-fall, while meeting people online rises exponentially. That data comes from the linked study:

http://asr.sagepub.com/content/77/4/523

So, where is your data that this drastic shift isn't actually happening?

I don't think most of the couples who meet in college, in church, through family, and so on, were really "planning" to find spouses either and the article shows that the portion of spouses finding each other through online dating has skyrocketed since the 90s.

I know lots of people seeking and finding long term relationships on Tinder. I don't think hooking up is everyone's use case.

> and you are less likely to drop inhibitions because you are hopefully not constantly drunk whilst using it.

only about 85% of the time?

>From speaking to people who use Tinder ... Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding "friends with benefits" type relationships.

My experience is that this is a giant load of crap, sorry. Every woman I see on there explicitly says "no hookups", all the ones I've met are not looking for hookups, they're looking for serious dates.

I'm guessing you're under 25 years old. In that age range, Tinder is indeed for hookups. For people in their mid-30s and up, Tinder is absolutely not, except for the very occasional swinger couple I see there.

Seconded. Almost every profile I see on Tinder, if there is a profile, explicitly says "not looking for a hookup". (Which is ridiculous to me - how do people expect meaningful connection from just looking at pictures?)

hookup = sex with no strings in this context, so it's not ridiculous. They want to talk, and they want a date (or that's what they're asserting). Sex may happen, but that's not the initial intention, that's a part of the eventual goal (steady relationship).

There's nothing ridiculous about it; it's no different than any other dating site, except it doesn't have as much room for your bio. People naturally develop romantic interest in each other based on looks first. Tinder, like any other dating site, is just giving you a venue to meet people who available for dating.

What better method for meeting people do you propose? Go look at the article: online dating is now the #3 (IIRC) most popular method, just behind bars and through friends. Meeting through friends is falling fast, and all the other methods have gone down the tubes: church, school, through family, etc. In a society where people are more mobile (i.e. they move around the country with job changes, they don't live in the same place they grew up or went to college), are less religious, online dating makes the most sense for anyone who isn't a big drinker.

Dating requires more than physical attraction. To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this. You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back.

I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends, and actual interaction in a group setting, but online - like Facebook groups or more old-school chat rooms. Both have their problems, but they also rely on good old human interaction to determine compatibility. Whether a friend thinks you're both a good match, or whether you just like someone's snarky commentary on a forum, you're using your human heuristics to find a match instead of computerized heuristics. It makes more sense to me since you're trying to date a human and not a computer.

>Dating requires more than physical attraction.

Dating requires physical attraction, and a way to meet people you're attracted to. Tinder satisfies that, just as going to a bar does.

>To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this.

Tinder provides better tools for this than walking up to a stranger in a bar. A person in a bar doesn't carry a sign around saying a few things about them, such as that they like dogs or cats, follow a particular religion, aren't interested in casual sex, or whatever they choose to advertise about themselves. You can only find that out by starting a conversation with them and asking them these things. On Tinder, there's at least an opportunity to put these things out there, and then someone looking at your profile is able to screen you out.

>You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back.

No, you wouldn't, unless you happen to know a place that's packed full of hundreds and hundreds of singles of the sex and age range that you're looking for, and isn't limited to a self-selected group of people that may not be the group you're interested in (for instance, people who drink a lot).

>I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends

That's pretty lousy because it limits you to people within your social circle. If you don't have a lot of friends, or you've moved, that isn't going to help you. A lot of people simply do not make a significant number of new friends after they're 30+ years old.

What would be better is something more like OKCupid, where you're basically forced to create a pretty extensive bio for yourself, which people can use better to look for a good match. The problem with this is that people have been abandoning OKC and other traditional sites for Tinder (IME), and for good reason: the traditional sites let anyone message anyone, and as a result, women get bombarded with message from men they're not interested in, and men waste all their time writing thoughtful messages to women who never respond. Tinder fixes that by only allowing people to message each other if they both "like" each other. Men still waste time writing messages that never get responses, but now it's more like a response rate of 25-50% rather than a response rate of 0.5%. And women seem to like it a lot more too, because they don't get overwhelmed with messages (this happened to my ex-wife after we split: she had to disable her OKC profile because she was just getting too many responses).

If you're able to meet eligible people through your social circle, great. But that doesn't work for a large and growing segment of the population.

Honestly, you sound like a college student to me. We older people don't have time for the stuff you talk about.

> What would be better is something more like OKCupid, where you're basically forced to create a pretty extensive bio for yourself, which people can use better to look for a good match.

I no longer think this is the case. I think on OkCupid, the huge bio and list of likes and dislikes tends to just serve as a way to generate reasons to disqualify someone: "Oh I could never date a vegan/Republican/heavy metal fan/cat owner/gun owner/lesbian bookshop owner." In reality, many very good relationships survive in spite of (because of?) some quirk or quirks between the two parties that seem contradictory.

On Tinder, you get enough of an idea from the photos and short bio whether someone is attractive enough and remotely in your social sphere, and then the conversation and first date let you know if your personalities click.

Answering the OkCupid personality questions was fun, and I had one very long-term relationship that came from OkCupid, but lots of my other successful relationships we probably would have disqualified each other unnecessarily.

I completely disagree. I agree there's an element of disqualifying someone, but I disagree that this is that much of a problem; with a larger dating pool you should find someone you get along with really well.

And yeah, if you're not a Republican and the other person is, that's a very good reason to disqualify them. You're not likely to get along well when you have such a completely different worldview. But regardless, people disqualify each other on Tinder based on that too; I frequently see "Republicans swipe left" on there.

I've found people I really thought were great matches on OKC, the problem is there's too few of them, mainly because everyone's gone over to Tinder, and the other problem is it's hard to get a woman's attention on there since she's getting swamped by so many messages. If OKC would simply adopt Tinder's mechanism of requiring both parties to "like" each other before being able to exchange messages, I think OKC would be the superior platform for mature people who are picky about who they want to date.

If the profile isn't blank, it's probably still equivalent to going to a particular kind of bar on a particular themed night and walking up to someone who looks like they share interests with you. It's just as banal to talk about someone's hair or tattoos as it is to talk about their cat or religion. But as a ton of Tinder profiles actually comment on, many people ignore the profiles anyway.

OkC sucks because of many reasons, but the unwanted messages still happens on Tinder, as both women and men are encouraged by Tinder to 'just swipe right' and figure out if you're compatible once you match on physical attraction. OkC provides filters to cut down on unwanted messages, but yes, it is problematic. There are several things they could do to fix this, but they aren't interested, as increased engagement or investment in "Plus" service = more $$$.

I get that, as a human, you do tend to see the world as more similar to yourself, but Tinder's user base is 16-34 year olds. I don't know what other people do, but i'm pretty sure that in order to meet new people it helps to go outside your social circle, so that's what I do. If you think you're too old to meet new people, I have some 54 year old friends I can hook you up with?

>as both women and men are encouraged by Tinder to 'just swipe right' and figure out if you're compatible once you match on physical attraction.

No one's forcing you to "just swipe right", and if you're getting too many matches (esp. not-so-great ones), a rational person would become more selective with their right-swipes. Most men don't have this problem; they get very few matches.

>I get that, as a human, you do tend to see the world as more similar to yourself, but Tinder's user base is 16-34 year olds.

I completely disagree. I don't know what the actual proportions are (you'd have to get that data from Tinder), but as an early-40s male, I see absolutely no shortage of women in the 30-50 age range on there. It's not just a service for young people any more.

I mean, it's fine if you disagree... but i'm going by the actual numbers[1]. This[3] shows that the 16-24 group and the 25-34 group take up about 39% and 41% of the user base, respectively. The majority of the remainder is 35-44, with 45-54 taking up 4% and 55-64 taking 1%. Compared to a survey from 2014, it does look like the older crowd's use is growing[2].

Based on my own anecdotal use, I find it useless for real connection, only partly due to its lack of tools to determine a good match. I've had long conversations and had plans to meet up more than once, only to be "ghosted" shortly afterward. The only people i've met from Tinder were looking for a hookup. But mine is just one story[3].

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/426066/tinder-age-distrib... [2] http://www.yourtango.com/2014213884/sex-dating-age-group-usi... [3] http://www.wired.com/2015/05/tinder-users-not-single/ (discusses the specifics of the survey)

>I wanted to get laid (and I'm prepared to admit I was shallow enough to want to do this on occasion)

Are you 'shallow' when you eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep when tired?

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