Elite Dating Apps Threaten to Make America’s Wealth Gap Worse

Debutante balls and other such classist dating practice have been around basically forever. I don't think digitizing them adds a particular new dimension of concern.

IMO, a much more troubling development is the way that the rise of college education in the 20th century has systematically pulled the cognitive elite out of most of the country and concentrated them in urban centers (where all the high paying jobs that demand elite cognition are located). Whereas the elites have always lived an existence far disconnected from the rest of us, now the upper middle class and lower middle class are similarly disconnected from each other.

Wow I'm out of touch with the real world.

Could elite dating apps exacerbate wealth inequality? Maybe. But people already segregate themselves by wealth pretty effectively. They would have to actually show that people who might have otherwise married someone of lower socioeconomic status didn't because of the app, and of course that's not available.

On the last of major socioeconomic problems in America, I really don't think "new apps for peacocking" is up there.

I appreciate that they added in options to be discrete, by excluding people at your employer or friends on facebook. Not that that kind of discretion was necessary, or worth the price.

As for results, well, imho they have been no better than tinder. Lots of flakes, and seemingly random matches. Funnily enough I met my current partner on OkCupid, which seems antiquated by modern dating app standards.

First, aren’t people going to be looking to pair up with someone in the same socioeconomic class anyway? That’s what we’ve mostly been doing over the course of history. That an app is based on this is not surprising. And I have a hard time believe apps perpetuate what we are already doing or exacerbate it.

The second is the graph in the middle regarding distance from city center and population with a degree. Haven’t we, in general, been getting more degrees since the points of comparison? How is this, again not already distributed according to pre-existing trends? The curve also does not change significantly besides being shifted up (corresponding a generally high rate of university degrees). Is there a actually significant shift happening with those without college degrees with regard to distance from city center? I think not, or they would have showed it and it would have been more convincing.

If we date someone from a different economic class then one party is prone to abuse that power imbalance and take advantage...

Sounds like what we all need is an app that just randomly assigns partners to fuck each other.

It's really the only fair thing to do...

Sign up for the Beta at www.sex-with-randos.com.

On an individual level, it's definitely a good idea if you're wealthy. Since so many things correlate so well with wealth, or have wealth as a prerequisite, it could highly reduce someone's signal-noise ratio if they're looking for someone with those traits. For example, if you're an entrepreneur, or an amateur tennis player, or someone trying to play the corporate ladder climbing game like the example in the article, and you want to find someone similar, you'll have much more success finding someone similar to you among wealthy people, even though wealth is not necessarily a prerequisite to any of those things.

Most of the upper crust finds marital/family stability to be very necessary to success, while many cultural currents try to express that its not a big deal (or that it is better to be a forever bachelor and forever child). Many of the upper crust probably try to downplay it too.

Think of how even the Clintons and Weiners[1] and Trumps are together and stay together, for instance.

The problem isn't elite dating apps though, the problem is the common man and woman's perception and treatment of marriages/families. Elite dating apps are just signaling out in the open something that the elite have known for a very long time. The big advantage that the elite have here is recognizing the importance.

[1] wiki says:

> Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner withdrew their divorce case from court in January 2018, claiming they did so in order to spare their six year-old son further embarrassment.

The claim is one thing, but the truth is that in spite of his terrible flaws/nature/whatever, they both agreed they still have work to do, be it ambition or family.

So was the "quality gentleman" that sexually harassed a friend of mine.

Get an OKCupid account, and actually answer the questions. You'll get a list of people that are actually compatible with your values and beliefs. It's a far better way to date than any system that's based on superficial crap.

People on OKC actually took the time to sit down and think about their relationship goals. You shouldn't be surprised that people that are good at communicating goals generally tend to be good at accomplishing other goals too. So you end up with a better way to find goal-oriented people like that (if that's your thing) than this approach would ever provide anyways.

Water finds its own level.

Most people date/marry someones equally attractive, from an equal class, with equal education. That's fairly standard and always has been, which is why most people marry someone from their college, a job, church, or some other shared experience. It's the shared experience that typically brings people together, and keeps them together.

And of course there are many cultures around the world with arranged marriages, and those almost always specifically aim to match equals from the same class background (or higher).

First, we should divide "dating" into two markets -- one for sex and one for long-term relationships.

In my experience, existing dating apps overwhelmingly cater to the sex market. Even the ones supposedly designed to set up professionals are used by both genders to find quality people for quick flings. There IS massive "inequality" in the sex market -- women overwhelmingly judge men by a Pareto distribution, as evidenced by multiple studies (that I can cite upon request) -- but the fact that the average woman is uninterested in the average man doesn't stir within me a call for equitable distribution of sex partners.

Then there's the long-term relationship market, which I admittedly don't know has been successfully addressed by any app. OKCupid's premise was that it would set up compatible people for long-term relationships, but I think OKC is out of vogue now. This is the void that apps like The League are trying to fill, I guess, though I'm baffled as to their appeal.

For women (or either gender that wants to secure long-term commitment from a high-status, high-income mate), The League sort of makes sense. When you're done with your Tinder carousel and want to move on to a relationship, here's a pool of wealthy, connected men whose bank accounts suit your lifestyle aspirations. That's not a pitch that will inspire lust, but at least it's more palatable than admitting to being a sugar baby.

For men, though... why would you want The League? Even if you're an unattractive guy, making what amounts to a Tinder profile for your bank account is just a terrible idea. If you're attractive enough, you can just have sex via Tinder. If you want to pay for sex, there are existing options. If you want someone to love... apps that brag "half of its active members earn more than $500,000" and its kin are frankly not going to provide that.

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This article conflates two important ideas without really addressing either. There IS a very real, accelerating trend of what's called "assortive mating," where highly intelligent people move out of Nowhere, Kentucky to major cities where they meet spouses in line with their intelligence and success. These successful couples have more successful children, who then mate with other successful children, and so on. The less successful people are left behind, mate with other less successful people, and have less successful children who mate with other left behind children. This brain drain is both international and intranational.

Then you have the question of mating strategies, particularly the (traditionally female) interest in securing long-term commitment. The recent book "Date-onomics" did a decent job describing the massive demographic challenge facing educated women in this market -- educated women overwhelmingly desire more successful men, but men generally don't care about their mates' education or status. In fact, as men prefer to date younger women, aging women face the twin challenges of narrowing interest and increasing competition (due to population growth or cultural differentials like age gaps). The League and its kind deserve some respect for nakedly addressing these mating strategies -- men offer up their status and wealth, and women presumably only need to be young and attractive.

Dating apps probably DO accelerate assortive mating. Women are particularly sensitive toward status in men, especially educational attainment. (At least in the long-term relationship market, not necessarily in the sex market.) So ideas like The League and its competitors aren't necessarily a bad idea -- if you can market it as "OKCupid for successful people" rather than "Saudi prince seeking Instagram model." As far as I can tell though, anyone mature enough to want a long-term relationship is not in the douchey Vegas-ish market that The League is targeting. Anyone tasteless enough to want The League is probably more interested in its clique than its offerings. And that leaves wide open the potential market of "successful professionals who desire other successful professionals for long-term commitment without having to sort through the proletariat."