Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

This was a very insightful read for me, where I introspected and identified a lot of things I had done wrong myself in relationships. That said, it was also kind of depressing. It seems that one of the greatest unsolved challenges of life is efficient matchmaking, and despite all the technology poured into it we are nowhere close to having a good solution.

Swipe-apps (latest generation of matchmaking) are completely shallow and almost entirely based on appearance and no other factors which leads them to be used for either hookups or entertainment.

Profile-based apps lead to box-checking behaviors, incentivizing people to look for "scan-tron partners" as the article calls its.

Personalized matchmaking services are expensive, time-consuming, and are limited to the pool of people willing to invest that amount of time and spend that amount of money, which is not that many folks.

This is one problem area I'd love to see some new startups address in a serious manner.

I won't argue it can't be improved, but the process of growing & coming to know yourself involves a certain amount of failure. There's nothing wrong with meeting a lot of people you are a bad match for.

Of course I do understand the tedium of endless strings of dud matchups, and we can't ignore the out-of-pocket expense! But IMO that's an issue with the pool, not the algorithm.

I haven't done it, but speed dating seems like the best approach. It puts you right in front of a person and, imo, you're less likely to dismiss him/her outright than you would be on the mentioned apps.

Back in my day, people met their partners in the course of normal social interaction. Weird, right? Like, you'd meet a friend of a friend, or be someplace fun and meet other people having fun. Super weird. Sure, online dating casts a much wider net, and there's something to be said for moving your thumb to make attractive strangers appear at your door, but the old way was efficient. More information up front meant fewer false starts and less time wasted. It was essentially speed-dating without the handholding. It wasn't that hard; you just had to get out and go somewhere, and you know, socialize.

Now with a whole new generation too averse to even talking on their phone over texting, it's probably becoming another lost art. We have managed to hack a process evolved over human civilization, only to replace it with a mildly less inconvenient but overall poorer and addictive substitute.

I completely agree with you. I'm in my early 20s and I'd much rather meet someone during my daily interactions than through an app (on which men are typically at a disadvantage). That concept felt a lot more feasible while in school, though, and much more challenging now.

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