Five Years That Changed Dating
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
- requires real first name (bad if you name is too common or too rare; also, it was cool and a great discussion starter) EDIT: real names by default
- messages only after likes (it changes the dynamics a lot; before I got much more interesting discussions)
- option to swipe (fortunately, still it is possible to search)
Vide:
- https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-these-women-are-quitti...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/7pv9mp/ladies_of_o...
- https://theblog.okcupid.com/why-okcupid-is-changing-how-you-... (may make sense for some mainstream, basing their judgments of appearance... but then - why not Tinder? plus, it is easy to filter too short or repetitive messages, so if OKC only wanted to solve that, it would be a piece of cake)
My two cynical guesses are:
a) there is a Tinder mole in OKC
b) since they are owned by the same group, there will be a post showing it was natural to join two (effectively killing OKC)
I believe the idea is to reduce to number of messages women receive from guys they have no interest in. This benefits guys as they are less likely to spend time composing a long message that is wasted. More generally, you want to encourage a dynamic where there is a progressive ladder of investment sizes by each party, so that no one makes a large unilateral investement.
Not saying that’s not worth the trafeoff though, I don’t have a better idea to fight spam.
It's clear that all messages need to be tailored to expect a reasonable reply rate; otherwise the woman has no way to tell you've put in any effort (so it might be copypasta spam). That doesn't mean that women are replying to unsolicited messages from men who they wouldn't even swipe right on.
> I'd say only around 50% of women look at my profile before replying.
How do you know? What app are you talking about? I estimate that >95% of women on mainstream apps look at a guy's profile before replying to a message.
requires real first name (bad if you name is too common or too rare; also, it was cool and a great discussion starter)
We ask that you use your first name instead of a username,
but if you're not comfortable showing your first name,
feel free to use initials or a nickname,
as long as it's something you're comfortable having your date call you!
Also:
messages only after likes (it changes the dynamics a lot; before I got much more interesting discussions)
I haven't been on in years but I remember when they handed out moderator rights to users. Somehow I got them and could review the flagged messages queues, agree/disagree with flags, and drop notes to other mods.
There seemed to be an equal mix of absolutely batshit crazy men, and women who reported every message they received from someone beneath them.
I feel like the "only message after shared likes" was implemented to address the later primarily.
> There were so many people (mostly men) harassing other people (mostly women) on OkCupid. I think this was a proper measurement to reduce unwelcome messages.
It is a big problem. Yet, as I said - there are simpler ways to go. E.g. just introducing rating for anything rude, and filtering out plain "Hi"s.
Now the problem is that to see a message a women needs to like a profile. Superficial features say little about if a person is going to be nice or abusive; certainly, much less than the content of the first message. (See the Reddit post I linked.)
And for me personally (men dating women), the quality of interactions, felt drastically. (Apparently, my first messages were inviting enough.) Plus, crucially, if "like first", then why not Tinder?
I know it sounds Black Mirror-ish, but if it would penalize rude guys, it would be a win for everyone (incentive + filtering + hetero-women more interested in using this app.)
It's the "downvote for disagreement" problem.
Lewd assholes are fine, lewd assholes behind masks are dangerous.
Reminds me of /r/tinder lambasting some guy's Tinder bio because he was specific about what he wanted. He wanted a woman who would cook and clean for him, something like that.
Yes, easy to make fun of (virtue signaling is always tempting), but I don't see the problem. That kind of bio works out perfectly for everyone: the man gets what he wants, and women know of his expectations before they even interact with him. It's ideal.
What people don't want to acknowledge is that the default is to hide our expectations and instead engage in some form of manipulation or leak them out down the road. And that's the problem. Not some guy being upfront about them.
Like you said, it's better to be able to filter someone immediately than deal with sleeper/masked issues down the line.
That said, i am rich + no college + good looks.
Rudeness isn't a problem if you've things working in your favour. That said, i am trying to improve as a person so that others have their pleasant day as well.
That title makes no sense at all. Whether or not a message is creepy has nothing to do with the content of the message and everything to do with the recipient’s perception—namely does the recipient find the sender attractive? It’s impossible for an person who is attractive to the recipient to send a “creepy” message, because it will not be perceived as such.
As a woman, this is completely false. "Creepy" doesn't mean "ugly," it means makes me feel unsafe or threatened. I don't care how hot you are, if you give off rapist/murderer vibes, you're a creep. I have met hot guys who were creepy.
He isn't only talking about physical attraction but attraction as in having a crush on someone or finding them lot attractive.
Think about it, if you get a date with your crush, would you think like, oh he might rape me? No such thought doesn't come to us when we are attracted to someone.
I can show you screenshot of conversations in which women enjoy my obscene messages.
It differs for every girl but what you are saying is not more "normal" than what Ryandrake is saying.
What's creepy is a subjective thing.
There is no thing Universally Creepy.
If a send a dick pic to a girl who had crush on me, is it creepy? She might not agree with you, I've tried :)
The girls who are interested in me. I do ask them if they want my nude pics? After realising that i am non judgemental open minded guy, they do tell me that they want nudes.
Yea, a few also got offended but i considered them to be feminist kind.
I believe sexual desires are nothing to hide. It's better to display your desire for others with all honesty.
If they say no, swiftly go back. No need to pester anyone.
Sentiment analysis or event a simpler solution - requires to highlight a sentence. In virtually all abusive messages showed by female friends of mines, it was plain obvious.
I am certain Bumble searches the text for phone numbers and if when girls start giving you theirs, your profile gets shown to the whole city.
But there already is a report button on Tinder...
If you register an account as the opposite sex it is incredibly informative. Women essentially swamped with matches. They ignore everyone but the few they want to talk to. Men basically swipe right on everyone, there's no point on making a choice because women have the real choice.
It's fascinating how a symmetric system can turn so asymmetric so quickly.
Plus, all ratings are average. If you are rude to 50% people, it is more than being rude to 5% (maybe actually misunderstanding)%.
That’s even without considering that people won’t review fairly, and will abuse such a system and the new power they get by having a higher rank than others.
You know the message of the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror was that such systems would be a dystopia rather than a “win for everyone,” right?
The episode’s point included the idea well-intentioned social system engineering can backfire, which is a well accepted trueism in the social sciences. And your refutation is basically as long as women don’t have to see anything they don’t like, it’s worth it.
Everybody there was acting perfectly predictably, and rationally, and the consequences for the behavior displayed were eerily similar to what they would have been without all the technological pomp.
The technology winds up simply making the normal progression of the events of life happen just a bit faster. Hard working, social people that you would expect to be successful still become successful, and entitled people like the protagonist of the episode has that entitlement drawn out far more quickly than we would ordinarily see.
There's no dystopia, just unfamiliarity with the setting that the show exploits to dramatic effect to make you think it's dystopia. But if the world of Black Mirror is dystopic, then you can level the same charge at today's technological milieu, and yesterday's, all the way back to sharpened sticks and stones. Technology doesn't destroy our humanity, it amplifies it.
Real dystopic fiction, like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, is dystopic because it magnifies the human selfish instinct such that it turns into the villain of the story. But Black Mirror contains no grand villain, just plain old ordinary drama. The characters fight each other, not an immense system that's hellbent on destroying human dignity.
They're fairly contemptuous of it, safe in the understanding that they can simply ignore it and so long as they don't have a utter meltdown, they'll be fine. You don't see ordinary people having meltdowns, and even today the meltdown that landed Lacie in jail can ruin anyone's life.
Lacie truly brought it all on herself.
But for the larger population, I’m not sure that apps like Tinder are a good idea. For every few positive stories, including the ones in the article, there seems to be dozens of stories of misogynistic rants, unsolicited dick picks, and worse. Men appear to suffer pretty bad on the match ratio with the vast majority of matches going to a minority of men, while women appear to suffer the majority of the abuse.
It seems pretty inefficient, and I’m kind of amazed that everyone seems to have an unspoken agreement to keep using these apps.
Perhaps that's why getting a job seems to be much harder now for a decent percentage of people too, since now the competition is worldwide and mostly sky high. Employers can keep looking for the 'perfect' employee (and skip over people they would have hired with fewer options) and employees can keep looking for the 'perfect' company or organisation (and skip ones which may have been 'good enough' before).
The market's been widened significantly, so those who aren't at the top of their field are against much tougher competition.
1. Money. There’s a lot to be earned here, and the advertising spend to entice users is equally high.
2. We already live our lives on social media anyways. What’s one more app?
3. A very good value proposition: access more singles than a random bar, and avoid the painful uncertainty of whether or not they’re interested. (Whether or not it delivers on this is another matter).
4. MeToo. There’s basically no chance for miscommunication if both parties swiped right.
On a lighter tone, http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6948732/what-youre-really-s....
That is to say, things that match you on apps don't keep you happy for the next several decades. Maybe an example would be something like "he's cute and has a good job" is boyfriend material, but ten years later "all he does is work" really gets old fast.
Not meaning to generalize at all with this, just some thoughts based on what I've seen around my social groups.
I think I would expect more "did not worked out" outcomes without that pre-selection. I mean, that preselction is way more important when looking for potential long term partner and closer to how you will be treated then dating which is sort of artificial situation.
Your comment evokes something like a tuple space, where people are essentially querying a database by uploading their dating profile. Tinder's "architecture", whereby only mutual matches are informed, is a bit like that in principle. In practice it means there is no way to message someone who hasn't matched with you, whether because they are not actively looking through matches or some other reason: there is no way for contact to be initiated unilaterally. This is a big change in the dynamics of the dating situation. I'd almost prefer a professional matchmaking service to the kind of "shadow labour" that's involved in swiping through Tinder profiles—particularly because of this problem of matches being, as it were, a passive/uncoordinated rather than active/coordinated phenomenon.
Unfortunately, Tinder's interface encourages very superficial judgements based on appearance, and the way you are required to "flirt" by text with people you haven't met is absolutely a bad thing.
That's to say I see people just so focused to look for a prefer match that they forgot what a relationship and growing tougher is.
There's far too romanticism and unrealistic expectations involved and too little effort and commitment put into it.
Hard to quantify and pinpoint the issue exactly, but in general looking for that one love seems the issue.
Men almost never get matched back. Even moderate to moderate good looking men in stable careers get matched back ~10% of the time, and get fewer dates still.
After passing their initial filters, they are not very critical of your qualities.
But before passing their filters, your qualities absolutely play a role if you were not already in their circle
HN people are brainstorming the before the latter thing
I believe the key problem is the high visibility of profile pictures, which makes it easy to stick to unrealistically high expectations for the physical attractiveness of people you're willing to talk with. This is reinforced by the constant stream of pictures - when you're swiping right on the couple of really attractive people every 15-20 profiles, it's much easier to swipe left on people who aren't unattractive to you, but just don't reach that level "ok this person is super hot". In other words, "super interesting and decent-looking", while traditionally a good combination, probably doesn't do particularly well on dating apps.
The 80/20 problem, then, comes from the fact that guys swipe right more often than girls, so girls end up matching with a ton of top 20% great-looking guys and feel no need to swipe on the other 80% of guys even though they often never have conversations that go anywhere (at least that's my impression from seeing the smokin hot dudes that my girl friends match with). To be honest, this seems fine for hookups, where you mostly care about physical appearance / attraction. But for longer relationships, I think there's a real lack of effective "modern" options.
What I'd like to see is an app where you don't get to see any pictures until you've initiated a conversation (of some minimum length) with a person. So while browsing profiles, you just get a short bio and some demographic information. I also personally think it'd be nice to filter for certain broad categories (education - for example, same school for college-age folks, income, ethnicity, etc), because intuitively I think people tend to end up with people from similar overall backgrounds - but I can see how that could cause problems. Regardless, I think an app where you at least don't see photos of the person you're talking to until a certain amount of conversation would be great. It would deal with a number of issues:
1. the 80/20 problem with respect getting any kind of conversation going is largely solved, as I believe that stems from people having profile pictures to quickly decide yes/no
2. by showing photos at some point, you still take into account the importance of physical attraction, but this time a person's image is backed by some level of existing rapport
3. you make a higher commitment to each person you talk to since you have to talk a certain amount to see what they look like
4. you're more likely to match with people who have shared values and interests since you have to actually talk with them
5. people are more likely to send messages since without pictures, there's never a feeling of "oh this person is out of my league, no point sending a message"
It's not perfect but I think it'd be a good start for non-hookup dating apps compared to the current choices. (if you agree with my thoughts and have some spare time pls feel free to make something like that haha)
[1] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g... (not really a rigorous study but the reasoning makes sense)
I doubt many people would use this app. Physical attraction is too important.
If I was going to design a dating app, I would restrict people to having 1-3 (needs testing) likes/conversations at a time. If you start a new conversation, you drop your oldest one, and the person you dropped would be informed.
The idea would be to encourage users to be more discerning and invest more in conversations.
More generally, I reject the "soul mate theory of dating" - I think most people could be happy with most of the people they find interesting/attractive off the bat (and some of the people they don't). But the multitude of options discourages users from investing in a conversation or meeting up and encourages flash-in-the-pan dating strategies. These strategies rarely translate into the long-term relationships that most users claim to be looking for.
I'm not convinced that this idea would be popular. Admittedly it mainly appeals to my sensibilities (I've never been comfortable with "casting a wide net").
Now we are spoilt for choice on apps like Tinder. Even when you match with someone you have a very strong interest in it's all too easy to keep swiping and have your eyes wander elsewhere.
I do wonder if 'old-fashioned' dating's best feature was that a 'match' only came along rather infrequently.
It's how I found my current girlfriend, and it's been working really well so far =)
That's simply not true. An actual scientific study [1] shows people match with people 25% more desirable than them on average, not the absolute top 20%. Interestingly, that 25% figure is true for both men and women.
From "Your Looks and Your Inbox - How men and women perceive attractiveness" http://archive.is/489UV
Maybe 'matching' was not the correct word, sorry.
If we want a system that breaks the 80:20 models, I would expect a better result by even out the social economical status signals. Make everyone appear identical on classical identified selection metrics and maybe people get less restrictive in the process.
Your idea sounds good, but it won't get traction because people love the titilation of looking at pictures. It's why most people in the last met in meatspace life instead of via classified ads in the newspaper.
Did you even read your article? It’s the about the same ratio for the opposite genders.
Most people are interested in more people than are interested in them.
While other groups of people I know everybody is on tinder, but in my local area(germany) a friend of mine is actually ashamed to admit that he met his new date through tinder..
And well, I do not think it is something to be ashamed of, but persanally I also think, that you meet dates in real life.
Of course Germany's a leader in a lot of things. But Germans do have a tendency to be cautious and sceptical about innovations that would impose a change to their (everyday) life.
I think all problems with dating and finding love in general can be shown to stem from this.
The obvious solution is to send the top x% of men off to war. Sorry guys ;)
So now in our more egalitarian times, which I think any reasonable person should see as progress, we have undermined this system and caused a bit of a dilemma. Fortunately the internet was invented and internet porn probably does a lot to soften the impact of the changes, but it remains to be seen if it is enough or if we must ultimately devise a new solution.
We do have problems, especially around financial gap raising between rich and poor, but it is not like the past was some happy panacea.
Sure, no doubt in the past most mothers told their daughters that they needed a man to support them and, thus, should get married. Then wonder of wonders (more sarcasm) babies came. Then nearly always she was highly devoted to her babies. Success! Family formation! Darwin was pleased!!!
The article was partly about sex: Okay, when I was in high school, the girls knew in strong, stark terms that dating, marriage, sex, physical love making, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and motherhood were almost certainly the main theme of the rest of their lives -- no doubt. So, I can guarantee you that a LOT of girls from age 12 to marriage before age 20 thought about sex a LOT, often to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
In that situation, lots of good family formation happened, and the women didn't have to think strongly, positively, and effectively about family formation. The men didn't have to think strongly, etc. about family formation either, but IMHO what's changed is the thinking of the women and not that of the men.
Much of what's changed is that now lots of girls, no doubt from kindergarten on, are told that they can and should have careers and not be dependent on a man. So, the girls no longer believe that they should try hard to be married and, thus, think about school and careers often to the exclusion of dating, sex, etc.
But for a good life, family formation remains central. For some good explanations of just why and that haven't changed, see E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, heavily about psychological aspects. Fromm's key point: Being alone is no way to have a good life. Instead, don't want to be alone and want caring, bonding, as in the example in the OP about her bringing soup when he has the flu.
IMHO, Darwin is on the case and as usual, with a LOT of experience, will find a solution.
In more detail, and from the OP and many more sources, the birth rate now is so low we're rapidly going extinct, literally. Necessarily what will be left are the men and women, from whatever influences and means, are good at family formation. Maybe the influences will not be the same as in the baby boom after WWII and in the 1950s, but there will necessarily be different and effective influences and means.
There really are men and women who want to emphasize family formation, and they now are very much in line to be the strong limbs on the tree and nearly the only such limbs.
In this way, in the US and the more advanced countries, we're talking some astoundingly rapid and massive pruning of the gene pool of the tree and, thus, some of the fastest change in the gene pool of any species in all of natural history. And it is right in front of us.
Or, a birth rate significantly lower than 2.1 per woman, as now, has some no less than monumental effects in just a few generations, i.e., less than 100 years.
Or, the strong limbs on the tree will necessarily be thinking and acting differently than now (or as in the OP), differently and effectively enough to do well at family formation. You can bet on it.
Also, there is a reason why those golden times of devotion toward babies were the ones to spring feminists movements - the saintly devotion to babies is mostly fantasy. The women back then were full people and while they loved babies just love we love them now, that is not enough on itself for an adult. The first time it was only about babies and not about economic practicalities, whole thing broke.
I didn't say anything much like that. Instead, in rock solidly, blunt terms, in the baby boom, the birth rate was high enough for a growing population; now it's so low we're going extinct. That's a huge, monumental, civilization, species changing difference. Call it the best of times or the worst of times, fairy tale or not, it was/is true. And as I argued, the present situation can't last, that is, is going extinct.
Instead we WILL emphasize family formation, at least some of us will, and then the tree can get some strong limbs and grow again. Just like the baby boom? Likely not, but SOMETHING that emphasizes family formation -- that's the minimum Darwin will accept. Dirt simple reasoning, and not necessarily anything to do with fairy tales.
> the saintly devotion to babies is mostly fantasy.
I've seen some such, not nearly enough but some.
> The women back then were full people and while they loved babies just love we love them now, that is not enough on itself for an adult.
Sometimes "back then", women with lots of babies were very busy people. IMHO they still are or should be, but 200 years ago they split logs for firewood for the fireplace, pumped water from an outside well, spun thread, wove cloth, made clothes, skinned and gutted animals, .... Darned busy.
For now,
> that is not enough on itself for an adult
well, yes, but children from families have to compete, and for this a "full woman" is crucial. E.g., my standard list of what a mother should be doing with, for her children is working on their development:
emotional, verbal, psychological, social, creative, artistic, empathetic, moral, ethical, religious, athletic, academic, mechanical, rational, quantitative, scientific, technical, romantic, entrepreneurial, etc.
So, the kids should be done with college calculus by age 13. The mother's responsibility is either to do the teaching herself or to manage the teaching via tutors. And similarly for all the other topics. Doing well on that list would do a lot of good and keep a "full woman" nicely busy.
Then she would help the kids get good marriages and start their own families. Then she would be a grandmother and start all over again, as busy as before. Uh, there's a secret: We need many fewer years per generation so that there are lots more family ancestors around to help get it all done the second, third, or even fourth time. That is, we need earlier marriages where the marriage and parenting work heavily because of the ancestors helping. That is, we don't expect the young couple to do it all themselves. The grandparents have done it before and can help a second time; the great grandparents, a third time, etc. Crucial situation.
> The first time it was only about babies and not about economic practicalities, whole thing broke.
It about has to be all about family formation including babies. Good motherhood is not trivial and does deserve to be a very busy, challenging, full time job.
> whole thing broke.
Yup, very much it did, and we can see that in the most serious sense in the well under 2 children per woman birth rate. Darwin says strongly that that is broken.
You are correct that a huge fraction of girls and women have very negative feelings about being a wife and mother. Or, again, divorce lawyers should be getting rich as families rot away and we go extinct.
I have a long list of neighbor families where the wives, with children or not, were just miserable. Maybe a wife was busy and okay at first, but she started to get bored about the time her youngest was in the second grade. So, bored, frustrated, disappointed, angry, .... And you are correct: Without the economic realities, she would be out the door, and women with good careers or their own family money, etc. commonly have been.
Still, again, once again, over again, yet again, Darwin will not compromise: We WILL, from some approaches or means, maybe new and quite different from anything in the past, have some good families, and they will be the strong limbs on the tree for the future. The rest of the limbs will suffer Darwin's tree pruning saw leaving a LOT of dead wood on the ground.
I'm not asking or expecting women to be miserable. Instead, quite the opposite: Families should, e.g., have big times at Thanksgiving, Christmas (for Christians), New Years, Mother's Day, Father's Day, the wedding anniversary, Easter, for the kids Halloween, the birthdays of Mom, Dad and the kids, and when the kids do well in academics, athletics, art, science, leadership, entrepreneurship, etc. So, we're talking 1-3 parties a month. During these years the couple and the whole family can accumulate activities, accomplishments, memories, and traditions that they like a lot, don't want to lose, can't get anywhere else, and will bond them all together.
We need to get good at family formation. Some couples will and, thus, keep the species going.
Send all complaints to Darwin.
Now that I've "paid full tuition" and learned, where can I apply to be 14 again?
[0]https://flowingdata.com/2017/11/01/who-is-married-by-now/
I think we all understand that social systems are multi-variate and so it is difficult to assert absolutes. But you must have in mind some statistics that you expect to see in the evidence, and if you don't see them you'll agree that the theory is probably disproven?
I've previously emphasized economics over dating apps. Following the theory that males wages, relative to rent/mortgage, have a big impact on the formation of heterosexual couples, please see what I wrote in "Do men become warlike if they do not have women?"
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike...
how do you account for
the negative economic
circumstances following
the crisis of 2008
It seems that women marry all kinds of men. They marry men who drink alcohol, men who've been to prison, men who use drugs, men who are poor, men who are ugly, men who are known to engage in domestic violence. They marry all kinds of men.
There is nothing in the data that justifies ""All women are going after the same top x% of men".
I would want to see actual statistics on median number of dating partners by gender prior to marriage from age 18-35 broken out by age year. Ideally that data would also be broken out by location as well since I have a very strong feeling the parent post posited situation is most common in large cities and less common in smaller ones.
[1] http://worst-online-dater.tumblr.com/post/99441021279/tinder...
[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
Sounds a lot like job searching too.
But really though, dating is just a market like any other. And these new apps have done nothing but facilitate "price discovery" at a level of efficiency we're not used to. For attractive heterosexual men, it's literally the greatest thing ever. I can turn on Bumble and be messaged by dozens of women within hours. But the flip side of that is what it does to people. Everyone becomes flakey, and treats others as disposable in a way that never existed before. You see it everywhere in society now.
No, it's not like any other. Dating is inherently a barter transaction. Also, the thing you're exchanging (time spent in someone else's company) is not transferrable. If you trade a sheep for a goat you can then turn around and trade the goat for something else. Not so with dating. The "product" you're exchanging is necessarily consumed at the time the transaction takes place.
No, what you’re observing is a uniquely tech industry, predominantly California phenomenon. Look at those cities soberly.
On the other hand, among the non college educated, single men outnumber single women everywhere, at practically all ages.
There is no logical root of this problem. It doesn’t arise naturally from the math, or some innate human behavior. Most demographers studying this believe the education gap is responsible for a feeling of not living up to social standards of companionship. That’s where the data leads.
See http://labs.time.com/story/see-the-ratio-of-single-men-to-wo... for a simple version, or read Date-o-nomics or Dataclysm for more discussion on the matter.
The data does not agree (as it relates to college-educated women).
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/10/dating-...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-college-educated-women-can...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/07/20/ho...
The TLDR is that men date down, women prefer not to.
You need to be good looking and independent. I am somwhat typical asshole type (i am improving), yet it works fine:)
None of the women i dated were richer than me.
If you assume that men don't care if their partners are educated as much as women do, the dynamic you describe arises naturally, as college educated men remove non-college educated women from the dating market.
How would that solve the problem? Wouldn't that simply move the top down? ;-)
The real solution is monogamous marriage, which prevents the top males from getting all the females, in effect rationing females for them (to at most one), so that there's more left for the others.
Polygamy is usually perceived as being detrimental to women, but it could be argued that the whole point of making polygam illegal is to let men who don't belong to the top x%, find a mate.
But in a modern society I'm not sure there's only one dimension against which to measure people's desirability (there are many different domains; the dater's job is to position themselves in a domain where they belong to the top).
Regarding the relation between dating success and pickyness, Larry David says it best in that clip:
http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/0...
I agree that dating is hard, but it's not true that "most men miss out".
The trick is to raise the baselines (as in, every guy should be reasonably fit (quite easy) and well dressed, etc) while having more dimensions on which to measure men and partners (as in, not just bank account; find niches where you can excel, probably the easiest approach is to combine two separate areas/skills, for example be a specialized lawyer, or learn Chinese if you're American and combine it with your profession).
No girl I know would be interested in that. I do not know how that could help with dating. I speak 3 languages fluently (German, English, Dutch), and have a biotechnics degree (German BTA) in addition to studying CS atm. Those are specifically the two points you mentioned.
Has any girl ever been interested in that? No.
What you are describing is a method for getting a job, not a partner.
I agree the advice is also towards getting a job, but also helps getting a date.
Of course, other factors interest women, such as confidence, assertiveness, looks, intelligence, sense of humour and all that.
It also depends which age group we're addressing. There's a world of difference between 20, 30 and 40yo.
All else being equal, you are more interesting if you speak more languages, for example. Although it depends how you frame/sell it :)
Anyway, what I meant to say is that the top X% story is not the whole story. It's not just relative, your absolute status is very important as well.
I read online that only white rich dudes can get top beautiful girls. I was depressed.
When i was young and naive, i just walked to a woman, chat with her a bit then i would ask her, how much would you sell yourself for? I even told her, if you were escort, I'd pay a lot to sleep with you.
I was a typical asshole.
7/10 women told me, i am rude and disrespectful and walked away.
3/10 women got mad and told me, "you can't buy a human. What do you think i am?"
She asked, "Do you think you can buy everything?". I answered, yes.
I explained that i value your time, i don't even have a college degree and based on your looks it seems you must be in very high demand and getting asked out by guys who be 10x better than me.
I'd tell them all my insecurities on day one, i thought being honest is very important to connect with her on a higher than superficial level.
That too i am from undesirable country and ethinic group in popular opinion.
So i am willing to pay for the privilege to be with them.
It worked, i became good friend with them. Since, my strategy had a good success rate for a social dsyfucntional being like me, i kept using it.
I just talk wayy to much for a guy. On many topics, they had no words to say. I'd even tell them about programming but none of them found it interesting.
Then I'd tell them about genetics, psychology and 40% found it interesting.
For rest i would talk about how i fooled customers and how i sell them BS, how i avoid taxes using skilled accountants and remaining 50% were interested in these tricks which big boys use but are not available in their girl circle.
I'd introduce them to my accountants and lawyers too.
Rest 10% liked how i am vegetarian and i practise yoga, i workout 3 times a week. Some also joined me in this lifestyle and yesss they improved their shape and nutritional knowledge too.
Later i started playing guitar/flute and I'd play songs for women. I'd take them to rooftop dinner, which each one of them remembered.
I wasn't dating anyone rich, just whoever i thought was exceptionally beautiful.
I am very slightly above average in looks and body but not that much to be extraordinary. People can neither guess my ethinicity or country from my looks.
I just love cooking, so I'd sometimes prepare meals for my girl.
Now, after dating 25 women. I finally settled on love of my life.
See i had to exclude a lot of women and distance myself because i saw very bad qualities in them, like greed and a few were not loyal.
My present girlfriend wouldn't trade me for any sum of money.
And now comes the weird bit...the ones who were with me for a while, told me, "you are sweet and you are honest".
I always thought i am typical asshole and i am sometimes very insensitive.
Most of them wayyy many guys after them but they would either not pick their phone calls, block them or reject their asking out plan.
Not directly or overtly (indeed, absent any evidence to the contrary, you shouldn't expect them to be!). But it absolutely makes a difference compared to not having these points of interest!
Everyone - men and women - wants to be with someone who could be considered impressive. Overall, these things that "help you with getting a job" are also things you can leverage to tacitly make the case that, yes, you are impressive too-- even if it be only to some tiny niche.
Nobody judges their mates on the same criteria.
For every woman that ends up in a heterosexual membership, a man also does, so the idea that women are pickier than men in who they end up in a relationship with is provably false on its face.
And if you read the article you will see that men and women aren’t pairing one-to-one as much as they used to.
It’s also not absurd or probably false to suggest there are people who get left out of dating when it’s obvious to most people anecdotally, in addition to statistics from dating sites and studies. I see from your other comment that you are someone who worked hard to overcome dating issues, and that’s awesome and I agree the direction unsuccessful people should take, but the fact that some need to work on themselves more and later in life than others should tip you off to the distribution laws in effect here.
Here’s an example of a study that’s been done: http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1996-14246-001
I was no where near the top percentage in any of those metrics except for being 6 feet tall and I had no problem at all hooking up on okcupid when I was still using it. Personality accounts for a lot and I think a lot of people who bomb out on those apps want to focus on superficial attributes because they don’t want to work on hard personality issues that are really causing their issues.
I was a late bloomer who lost my virginity in my early 20s and it took a lot of work to realize that the only thing preventing me from dating was my own toxic personality. Once I started doing fun things and being a fun person to be around, dating started happening naturally.
The number one rule in dating is “be attractive”, and I mean that in the broadest sense: be someone that other people want to be around.
It doesn’t mean you have to be devastatingly good looking (lord knows I’m not), but if you are comfortable with yourself, have a sense of humor, have compelling things to say, and can demonstrate that in your online dating profile, then you won’t have a hard time finding dates.
At least that was my experience 4+ years ago on OkCupid (where I eventually met my fiancée). Granted, I think the move towards Tinder-style swiping puts too much emphasis on looks for first impressions. I’m disappointed by the path OkC has taken since being acquired by Match.
Addendum: In light of the trend towards Tinder-style swiping, it's probably worth touching on looks and appearances. Keep in mind that this goes far beyond natural good looks (or lack thereof). Part of the whole 'confidence' thing is showing that you care about yourself. In your photos and on your dates, you should be well groomed. That means being clean cut: a nice haircut, and if you are partial to facial hair, make sure it's well maintained. Wear clothes that look good and feel comfortable. If style isn't your forte, take a trip to Nordstrom -- they have personal stylists that can help you put together a classy wardrobe. Take advantage of their holiday and anniversary sales.
Take good photos. If you have a friend who's a hobbyist photographer, bribe them with a bottle of their favorite beverage to take some quality shots. If you don't, consider hiring a professional. Selfies and poorly-lit indoor shots do not go over well. And unless you're at the beach in your photos, for heaven's sake wear a shirt.
Lastly, get some feedback. There's a pretty supportive OkCupid subreddit[1] where people will generally be willing to give you feedback on your profile and photos, but you have to be receptive and genuinely want to improve. I've seen the difference it can make, and it's really quite astonishing.
E.g., maybe women take longer to lower their standards, so while eventually they become less picky, as a whole women might have higher standards.
Maybe the extent to which we're at below 100% "matched" is due to higher standards by one side.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
>As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable.
Women seem to be more skewed than men in ratings, but less skewed than men in actual behavior.
The second link just seems so methodologically terrible I'm skeptical to learn anything from it.
I agree the methodology on #2 is poor, but it's better than nothing and certainly better than anecdote. The other ad hoc "studies" I can find mostly point to more or less the same outcome, though, so I'm not sure it's worth wholly dismissing. If you have a counterexample with actual data I'd love to read it.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/from-53-matches-to-4-dates...
First, this is all US-based. Granted, Tinder is a thing here in Europe but as far as I know the overwhelming majority of sexual encounters here still occurs in meatspace. I do believe online dating only caters to a certain demographic with a certain personality type and the market will be eventually saturated.
Likewise, 'dating' as most people know it is primarily an American concept. Due to the cultural influence the US has over the world, this concept has been imported/distorted here (to my dismay, but that's more of a personal view), but the concept of repeatedly taking someone else out until things evolve or devolve (first base, second base, whatever) is just not the norm everywhere in the world. In many places people just hit it off first, then 'date' later. There are also things like arranged marriages, 'debutante balls', and so on.
Also, it bears repeating that online dating, in its current implementation, is a privacy nightmare rife with plenty of repulsive and shady practices [1]. There's plenty of research done about this, but what I find worrying is that researchers may request access to the entirety of everyone's conversations with everyone else, complete with username and location database, as well as the history of matches, dismissals, and so on. Likewise, Tinder execs harvest all this precious and intimate data for advertisers with little concern for security or privacy.
It also reveals worrying trends about society. Research has shown that "the average woman’s desirability drops from the time she is 18 until she is 60. For men, desirability peaks around 50 and then declines." Likewise with education, "desirability is associated with education most strongly for men, for whom more education is always more desirable. For women, an undergraduate degree is most desirable; postgraduate education is associated with decreased desirability among women." [2] As for ethnicity: "there is also a clear and consistent dependence on ethnicity, with Asian women and white men being the most desirable potential mates by our measures". Black women and Asian men would be the least desirable. (For information, desirability is usually computed by giving everyone a score, usually derived from a PageRank-like method or something like an Elo rating.)
I get that people working behind the scenes are not trendsetters and only follow what is currently the norm to maximize user engagement, but in this age of reckoning about big tech and privacy, perhaps now is the time to imagine a product that actually caters to people into dating instead of selling their information, doing creepy data mining and compelling them to stay on the apps?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18713837
[2] Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaap9815)
Perhaps within their own age group, but I don't believe for a second that a 50 year old man is more desirable than a 30 year old man. If that were true then the 50 year old men would be able to date the most desirable women, i.e. 18 year olds according to your statement.
See: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/03/ok-cupid-da... and https://theblog.okcupid.com/undressed-whats-the-deal-with-th... (tl;dr: women prefer men of a similar age, or slightly older (when they are young) and slightly younger (when they are old); for men it is constant)
When men complain about bad matches, what they usually mean is that the woman turned out to be boring or not as good looking, hell maybe she even had a kid that she never mentioned.
I hardly hear women complain about that. What I hear is that they didn't want to go on a date or maybe wanted to leave one and in response got insults, threats of violence/murder, maybe even someone trying to get handsy if they actually met in meatspace.
So the minor factor of "if a woman dates too many men, she's a slut" aside, if women are not picky, they are in danger of getting physically assaulted. If they just reply nicely online and don't agree to a first date, they "only" risk getting insulted and threatened. And having someone stalk you because you rejected them on Tinder doesn't happen often, but it happens.
So why on earth would they not be picky? What is their incentive to be open to opportunities? Of course they wait until they have strong indicators that this guy might be the right one or is at least worth the risk.
The image of a single woman floating in this sea of open opportunities that I see here is very romantic. Sadly most of them feel like taking a swim in a pond full of piranhas because they were promised, one of them is a cursed prince.
Edit: Reading this again, I should mention, that I am aware that not every man responds violently to rejection. I am aware of that. Sadly, it's not single cases only either and a minority here is enough to make the situation scary.
Regarding pheromones, there's a lot of scientific research [1]. For example:
> Individuals rated those of the opposite sex as more attractive if they preferred the individuals pheromones odour.
Now I suppose that preference for pheromones is (at least partially) encoded in DNA somehow. So you can see what I'm getting at.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odour_and_sexual_attracti...
At first glance, Tinder sounded like some end game dating opportunity.
While its first users were embarrassed to say they were doing online dating, I reassured them- Its fine! Find your SO!
Years later, it seems to have turned into a world of unmet expectations.
When its incredibly easy to find a date, people don't seem to try as hard to make things work. They find flaws and compare. The worst offenders never seem to be happy.
Admittedly, it might have also further shrunk the pool of "the good ones", where the only people left have bad jobs, drug problems, and incredibly high expectations.
On another note, I'm wondering how it has changed Sex. It seems sex has never been easier to have due to these dating apps. I wonder if people will be able to settle down.
I can tell you, as a lurker in some of the dating subreddits, it seems lots of guys complain they never get matches, or rarely do. And, a lot of the women complain about a constant stream of terrible matches with men.
Here's a thought: maybe focusing purely on looks (like Tinder does) isn't a good recipe for sexual compatibility.
"It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men."
I knew (Anecdotal) this was true watching a female friend using dating apps. Her inbox, full of hundreds of unread messages. Any guy would have read each message 3 times.
https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
All the articles I've read say that married people have the most sex. They also say that a smaller proportion of the population is married these days.
Any study that doesn't explicitly account for the above is not going to tell you nearly as much as the headline would lead you to believe.
If anything I think they are having way more casual sex, helped and fuelled by these dating apps.
It may have opened the floodgates for limited few but lowered for everyone else.
You'd find that contemporary online dating is used for everything but hooking up.
Seems like it, if 10% of the married couples in the Times mention they met via an app?
This is just an enormous pile of social baggage and stereotypes. "Marriage is about a reliable supply of sex" - really?
This is just untrue. Plenty of Fish launched in 2003. Okcupid in 2004. Both clearly listed on wikipedia. What is going on with modern journalism? I'm supposed to put faith in the rest of the article, when the author can't get basic facts straight?
What I'd really like to see is a piece on how dehumanizing the online dating game is for men. Yeah, women complain about being sex objects, but all men online are treated with a heavy suspicion of wanting only sex.
I think there's a greater developing problem in Western society with hypergamy, but no one is paying any attention to the bottom 20-30% of men who are involuntarily single, and it's only going to get worse, as the idea of male privilege breaks further into the mainstream while ignoring the relative difficulty that modern men increasingly have with romantic fulfilment.
Romantic companionship is part of Maslow's Heirarchy for a reason. Having a substantial proportion of the populous lonely and depressed because of unfulfillment of a basic need can't be good for society.
And this isn't as easy as simply working on oneself when hypergamy is shifting female standards further and further out of reach of the average male.
Perhaps it is time for women to start checking their own privilege.
[1] https://www.datingsitesreviews.com/article.php?story=OkCupid...
Is there data to support this percentage?
> Romantic companionship is part of Maslow's Heirarchy for a reason
Maslow doesn't classify it as a requirement, it's a contributing element of the Love/Belonging level but there's plenty of self-actualizing people who don't have an intimate partner.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746788 and marked it off-topic.
Why do you think more men are turning to such extremism? You think they are perpetually frustrated and bitter by choice?
Remember when we used to call these men "geeks" and "nerds"? Why won't anyone acknowledge the validity of their involuntary suffering? These men are marginalized and exist on the outskirts of society for reasons beyond their choosing.
Attractiveness is a continuum, and there's only so much one can do to raise ones percieved value to meet the standards of others. It isn't a secret that apps like tinder tend to make women even more selective.
I can assure you that the reason that most self professed incels are on the outskirts of society is that they’re fucking creepy. I mean have you read their subreddits. They make my skin crawl. And I have no idea what any of them look like.
>is that they’re fucking creepy.
That's the point. They're different. What does creepy mean? Difficulty with social norms? Unusual interests? Physical unnatractiveness? You think these are choices? Incels are just especially self aware and bitter "geeks" and "nerds" of yore, back before those terms were coopted by the mainstream.
I think these men are bitter because they exist with the same needs for romance that you and I do, but have no realistic way of actualizing these desires. Their pain is involuntary and real. Look past the vileness of their rhetoric and understand that they are suffering.
Creepy when it comes to the incel label typically means one of two things: groundless desire on an individual level (i.e. "he wants me even though he doesn't know me at all") or issues with control or manipulative behavior (i.e. "I deserve for this girl to like me, how do I make her like me?"). Neither of these qualities indicate people who are willing or able to seek genuine emotional connection and neither have anything to do with social norms, interests or hobbies, or physical standards of attractiveness.
If this is how they act from not having partner frustration, what they will do when a girl disagree with them over something important, when she has simply bad mood, when there are serious money or sickness problems affecting relationships, when his and her career clash, when they are sleep deprived due to baby etc? Answer: likely badly.
I think he means creepy on scale that Elliot Rogers was creepy. Complaining about not dating hot girl while thinking about her mostly as status item to be admired by other guys. Finding it unfair throwing fit when ugly guy has a girlfriend. while not being able to hold conversation with anyone without becoming agressive for petty reasons. Seeing all the other guys as assholes.
Finding it unfair that nice cloths and money did not magically made him girlfriend. All the while he was talking about how he is supreme gentleman.
You've stumbled on a circular dependency, but your proposed solution is the equivalent of "just fix it". (The joke in social-anxiety support circles is that all advice boils down to "just be yourself", which turns out to be... unwise.)
What makes these men creepy? Is their behavior innate, or acquired in response to other stimuli? If so, from whom? What have they gone through?
I have a quibble with the word creepy, similar to the word toxic: there are people who give off creepy vibes, there are people with toxic behaviors, but the words are used in place of more specific, clearer adjectives.
Card-carrying incels do exist, but the whole debate overvalues their political/ideological platform, completely ignoring men who go through loneliness, mental health issues, alienation and cultural disconnect but haven't made it into a political meme. Men and women experience all these problems, but they may experience it in different ways. When the subject of incels enters the conversation, everything is reduced to Elliot Rodgers.
What I am saying here is that my safety and self respect beats his need to have girlfriend.
I was not trying to give advice here. I can't and abatract general advice is likely to not fit all that many people even if good.
Girlfriend won't and can't fix mental health issue, can't fix alienation nor cultural disconnect. She just can't, the same way boyfriend won't fox the above for a girl.
People are cast off for being "creepy" when this really amounts o ften times to falling outside norms; then you retroactively rationalize your coldness with vague associations of physical danger.
If you want to go by stereotypes, people drawn toward inceldom typically don't have the build, coordination, or practice to be violent. And the scary part is how hard it is to shake such an image if you find yourself on the verges of society, exactly because of nonsensical fears like yours. This isn't any better than racism or sexism, except it is socially acceptable because we have recently come to view men as privileged in the west.
The bottom line is that you, like much of society, like many in "popular" social circles, are biased by an irrational aversion to otherness, except this particular form of tribalism is socially acceptable.
The norm talked about here is hating most people, being overly angry over petty issues, crossing into abusive language easily and expecting other people to conform to overly detailed ideas of what exactly they should do. It is not talking about potential partners as about individuals.
Hitting other people does not require coordination or build. It requires belief that it is your right to punish partner or uncontrolled anger.
All the "incels are/worship serial killer weirdos" rhetoric does is politicize the subject into an unarguable tribal debate.
I have no way to judge career and don't care. But their grasp of how human relationships work was off from how I see people behave irl - frankly with most focus on rating and social status supposed to be acquired from pairing.
It is also that part where dating is treated as game separate from other kind of relationships. It is not just how I see it work.
The guy that many 'incels' used to lionize, before that constant glorification of violence became a bit too blatant and inconvenient for them. Judging from these sorts of discussions, many among them are not just socially isolated-- rather, they actively hate the people around them to an extent that it's hard to even begin to make sense of. It's a thoroughly nihilistic ("blackpill") attitude to life that sometimes has very, very bad consequences. I suppose that many "pro-masculine" guys might like Jordan Peterson these days, so it might be especially worthwhile to link this (relatively short!) video where he strongly cautions against the "blackpill" thought pattern https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYua-3JmnT4
OP raises a valid point about the increasing numbers of single men and the possible long-term health and societal effects of having (say) 20% of men single for their entire 20s. A certain toxic percentage will become incels -- and probably always would have become something like that -- but the remaining 95% are a largely new phenomenon and one I don't think is being taken seriously. We're into new territory here and we'll only find out the results in 10 or 20 years time.
FWIW: I'm not an incel. I've been happily married for five years.
Even of a loose reading of FOSTA makes them a target for federal action.