If there were a drastically better solution, then it would take over the market. The last major innovation was when Tinder invented swiping and went mobile-first, a genius move which drastically cut down the spam women deal with and made it actually feel like a fun game instead of a chore.
The fact is, despite all the work of psychologists and technologists, nobody's come up with a better, more efficient way of matching people. Personality profiles and questionnaires are a poor predictor of chemistry -- they can help with filtering compatibility in basic ways, but they're not going to find you your soul mate.
Photos reveal potential likely chemistry more than anything else. Swiping works. Messaging works. The apps can't perform magic, though. If you're looking to find more success on them than you would with the same group of people at a bar or meetup or wherever, that's not gonna happen. They're not changing whether people are attracted to each other or not.
What they do do is give you a pool of users far larger than you'd ever encounter in a single night out, and you know they're mostly all single, also different from when you go out. And they're honestly pretty good at that.
If the paradox of choice is actually true (as with anything in psychology, it needs further research to be sure), then this could be a major negative instead of a major positive.
I think the issue here isn't one of what does a person wants, but what they benefit from. Sometimes people are harmed by what they want. In many cases this is obvious (think any addictions), but in others it belabors the mind as we struggle to see how something that looks harmless and helpful is actually harmful.
I've lost the attribution, but someone said that "dating is a numbers game. The goal is to go on as many first dates as possible, to get in front of as many people as possible. At this, tinder (and associates) absolutely excel. There is no other way to reliably find a lot of single people to go on dates with."
Go online, suddenly the pool is so large that you see dozens of 9-10's and swipe right on them, suddenly the 6-7s seem less attractive so you start swiping left when in a social setting you'd probably at least talk to them, you become more picky, and you end up getting fewer matches because the wealth of choice leads to you being pickier about physical attractiveness than you'd otherwise be IRL.
Most people commit to one person eventually so you'll need to make a choice.
1. Be unattractive.
2. Don't be attractive.
It enables a habit of bailing at the first sign of trouble.
Sure they are. Good photos, filters, Photoshop, sometimes even fake pictures, make a huge difference.
Though eventually you could upload any image.
Either way, I don't think it's such a big problem. Most people know that the feeling of betrayal is the last thing you want your date to feel when you walk into the room. It's just not a winning strategy.
Even if they started from another reason, they'll at some point want to grab the data.
OkCupid's problem, and the problem at Match Group in general, is that you learned something about 100% of OkCupid users instead of 0.01% of randomly-sampled real world people, and maybe that something that you learned was 200% wrong. And then, you think your answers are 1,000% more correct because 100% - 0.01% = 99.99%.
Granted that logic is great for equity investors. It just isn't necessarily great for users.
Nobody pushed back on the assumption that online dating was a representative sample. Nobody pushes back on whether the right questions were being asked. Match didn't even choose the right engagement metrics, choosing things like message reply rate which can rise while active users fall. The style of how these metrics were chosen and what analysis was done papered over serious issues. And all the people who would have, by now, the maturity and tenure to admit they were wrong are gone.
I worked at OkCupid 8 years ago
Photos reveal potential likely chemistry
With apps, though, there is plenty of data (the OkCupid blog has tons of great posts about this) that attractiveness is what counts far and away the most. And that's not surprising given the modality of how apps work, and I don't really see that changing.
I think people are generally unhappy with online data because it has a tendency to commoditize an interaction, and that's very unfortunate IMO.
Her initial expectation is that, with her inside understanding of female thinking, she will have an easy time courting. But she finds that in person, many women perceive and are uncomfortable with her lack of masculinity. Relationships usually fail quickly once they reach the point of in-person contact.
But there's a major exception to this rule: she also found that women usually required an extended period of online correspondence before agreeing to meet face-to-face. And during this period, her initial expectation was completely correct -- women appeared to judge the man according to how much they liked his writing, and what they were looking for was feminine, not masculine, writing. She experienced unusual success in getting to the first date in the first place.
We can make a small interpretive leap to say that this suggests women are actually looking for the wrong things when they use online dating apps, proactively selecting men they are unlikely to be attracted to in person.
That is quite the claim!
> For a little contrast, I went on a few dates with men as a woman during the course of my time as Ned. The men I met on the internet, and then subsequently in person, didn't require this epistolary preamble, nor did they offer it. They were eager to meet as soon as possible, usually, I found, because they wanted to see what I looked like. Their feelings or fantasies would be based on that far more than, or perhaps to the exclusion of, anything I might write to them.
Say what you will about this attitude, I wouldn't say that the men are looking for something different online than they are in person. Rather, they think online interaction is getting in the way of what they want, and they do their best to avoid it.
This is the most interesting information from this thread so far. Thanks for the idea.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20190429100515/https://static.iz...
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/match-com-lawsuit-ftc....
- https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website
I’ve been with my girlfriend three years, just bought a car together. It’s going well! We met on OKcupid.
I’m a happy customer, though I don’t think I’ve ever paid them anything.
I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life.
Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.
Oh, and if you think you're using it for free, think again. They are collecting all kinds of personal information about you
Also on the data collection front, the business model is more based around advertising, and just knowing you're single is all the info they need. They can bombard you with ads for events to go to, clothes to wear, etc. You're the most lucrative market if you're 18-35 and single.
Dating apps sell you on showing you more people you otherwise would never meet. The chemistry and "good match" are left to the two people to figure out via chatting and a date.
Dear God why would you do this to someone?
I'll tell you why: Why be content only meeting the subset of women I can meet face-to-face in my free time when I can complement my social life with a dating app that helps me meet more?
I can do both.
I can only understand your confusion if you have zero success on dating apps and assume nobody else has any success, either. And there are people obviously having success on dating apps.
Show me the data that says meeting many more potential partners leads to happier more fulfilling relationships, because I certainly haven't seen it.
If that is not the case I agree with you.
I was grinding away on tinder/going on dates for months before I found success. But that's not the dating app's fault - I was seeing the same thing using non-app strategies.
So the grandparent comment did use the term correctly. Unless they were responding to someone who never “won” at the dating game.
The ultimate statistical issue is about the outcome of a task biasing the incentive for testifying about the task. It’s usually winners who are more prone to speak to their approach to the problem than losers, so we don’t know if the winning solution is representative of success or an aberration from the norm.
I don't believe that. It depends on the task and how much of it is chance vs. skill. Winning the lotto is literally 100% chance, 0% skill. Odds are worse than 1 in a million, so yes, I agree with your assertion that a lotto winner who played for 40 years and finally won is exhibiting survivorship bias if they claim the key to winning is playing every week.
However, if I have a goal to run a 6 minute mile, and I fail 100 times before I finally succeed. Does that mean I have survivorship bias if I say that I found running a little faster every day and not giving up to be the key to success?
Dating does have an element of chance, yes, but it also has an element of skill - you get better social skills the more you use them. It's a bit disingenuous to compare "the dating game" (which billions of people "win" every year) to lotto (which probably < 100 people win per year).
If I had to start the dating game all over knowing what I know now, I'm confident I could find a wife much faster than my first time around - especially with the help of online dating apps. I'm older and wiser and I understand females now way better than I did when I started out.
It's not surprising that you got the same results all year. The matching algorithms don't change very quickly.
It's why we date instead of picking our spouse from an Excel spreadsheet.
Dating apps cannot fix this, but they can make it easier to meet more people.
I thought a great take on this was the Black Mirror episode where your dating-app compatibility score with someone was the percentage of times your virtual clone escapes the simulation with them. How else can you predict chemistry?
If you've given up the game, and I can certainly empathize -- it's a real crapshoot --, why do you feel the need to share such a strong opinion in these types of threads as if nobody else is having any luck in the dating world? Isn't this obviously a personal problem?
it sounds like you wanted to find a long term/partner for kids/etc. type thing. that's fine, just realize not everyone on these sites/apps are looking for that, and there's no motivation to give you that bc your value to them ends when you're off the platform.
If you found them all to be so fruitless, never enjoying yourself at all, then yes that does sound kind of unappealing. Sorry to come in here and bust your chops while knowing nothing about you :) But shouldn't dating be enjoyable?
I ended up in a now-ended relationship with someone I met in an online forum, and now in a very happy relationship with someone I met at a board game Meetup.
Dating sites made me feel miserable when I used them. Constantly fruitless, frustrating. Any success I've had with them is survivorship bias.
This shouldn't be a numbers game. The fact that it is exacerbates the "inbox bloat" attractive people get.
This is almost exactly how it is in real life though. The more people you approach for a date -> the more chances you might have. And forget actual dating apps - people are using regular social media like Instagram to "meet" people too.
They used to be very critical of other dating sites, but I think those posts have been removed, now that they're owned by Match.
It's really not the same as okcupid from 4 years ago
I used the old OkCupid for years and met a few new friends through it.
It tended to match me up with people already in my "friends of friends" extended circles, with good quality common interests and attitudes, and was great for expanding those circles. I thought it was one of the best sites on the net for getting to know new people. (Way better than, say, Facebook, where you exchange comments but never really get to know new people one-on-one.)
And with people I already knew, we would have fun checking out how well OkCupid thought we matched up.
I want back a couple of years ago, after a few years break, and OkCupid had removed everything that made it useful before. I mean everything. It just wasn't any use. Sadness.
Never been back since.
It's a shame there's nothing else on the net like the old OkCupid. It was socially useful and unique.
Hopefully someone will come along and replicate the good parts in a new site someday.
OkCupid was based on knowledge and attitudes as well, using a type of machine-assisted learning that deduced what people really find important to know about each other. Rather than what someone designing a questionaire assumes. And rather than people relying on looks, impulsive attraction, and random early conversations where people are winging it.
The central idea, in addition to free-form profiles, was users submitted a lot of answers to multiple-choice questions, as well as the answers they would like a potential match to have (because they might be different), and how important each answer was to them. So this worked well for people who were looking for attributes that complemented theirs, in addition to other attributes where similarity was what mattered.
In addition, users could submit questions, and over time the system grew to mainly ask those questions that were found to be statistically useful in matching people up.
This meant great questions for matching would rise to the top of the pool, while poor questions, or badly written ones, or unhelpfully ambiguous ones, would not.
This also meant that the kinds of things people ended up matching on were more diverse than any other site. So it really helped people find matches on non-mainstream attributes that mattered to them personally, that were not generally reflected on other sites (such as match.com...). Things like how much do you like your partner to dress as a goth, do you mind if your partner sleeps with other people too, and if not what about cuddling others without sex, not just what's your orientation, but effectively what subtle aspects of orientation that haven't been formally enumerated, does it bother you if your partner supports a particular type of politics, what about bedtimes, what is your approach to raising children (smack or never smack), do you like drugs and if so what kind, etc. Basically anything you can think of which humans actually care about.
It was an excellent way to find people that shared your attitudes and worldview, especially if you had non-mainstream interests.
Tinder will give you none of that.
I suspect a lot of people would be far more interested in a "pay us $X, money back guarantee if you don't get a date" kind of service. At least that way your and the company's interests are aligned.
In fact, if a dating app worked very well, non-monogamous and short term relationships would probably be more satisfying.
They got bought out by Match a few years ago, at which point it suddenly became swiping and now you can't message (or see messages) without having first matched with each other.
tldr: Once sold, it went from an interesting place to a cesspit quite rapidly.
Besides, aren't we presumably on Tinder because of the logistical downsides of meeting people otherwise? Nothing stops us from using Tinder as a supplement. If dating was so great and without trade-offs, we wouldn't have downloaded Tinder to begin with. :)
Okcupid now works like a slightly modified Tinder. It's awful.
Or maybe it's just me.
Can also confirm that online dating is a horrible, confidence-destroying nightmare (presumably for both sexes).
It is, though it's more the overall culture it has created than online dating itself. The culture where there's always more and better options so you shouldn't commit to anything, where cancelling plans is just a text away so nobody takes them seriously. It's infested even non-dating relationships and is quite confidence destroying to have people cancel on you constantly.
Also, when I changed genders the dynamic did shift a lot, but it's still confidence destroying. As a male-identified person it was very hard to get matches and the whole process was a tremendous amount of work. As a female identified person (though still dating women) the number of matches I have is basically infinite. Most of the other steps are easier too, though it is still a fair amount of work to get someone to show up. But when they do, it's rare to find people looking for emotional intimacy. It's much easier to wind up feeling used (as an experiment or otherwise). Queer drama is crushing in its own unique way.
Even if you are reasonably attractive and desirable, people still want to invest the minimum, play the numbers game, and not commit to anything. Even if you're 90th percentile, that still means 1 in 10 are more <insert trait here> than you, so you can keep re-rolling; why not? I'm absolutely not immune to doing this myself; my standard for "Someone for tonight" is worlds apart from "Someone to have a relationship with", but it's not exactly like I'd disclose that up front, even if I immediately know what category my date is in.
After watching over my single-mother sister's shoulder while she used her okcupid account, I highly doubt it's anywhere near as confidence-destroying for women as it is men.
For her, she could login to okcupid any time she wanted an ego boost. She was constantly barraged with messages and likes, it was a completely different experience for her to login vs. me. I didn't even know those notifications stacked up across the screen, for her it was a maelstrom of attention.
One of them said that for some women, it was pretty good if you like incoming messages and interest.
But for the other women, it was horrible because you'd get ignored, except for those weird cock shots most women get, which adds a bit of creepiness to make the experience worse.
Basically, women are sorted into attractive and unattractive by whatever arbitrary standard of the day, and the latter cohort had very little interest.
The statistics also indicated that skin colour made a big difference.
Likes are cheap; they literally cost nothing. So are message that say "hi", with no indication that they've even read your profile. Logging into a dating app and discovering thousands of people -- all of whom seem to know only that you're female and therefore approve -- is as soul-sucking as getting no attention at all.
I was very popular on online dating sites, because I knew how to talk to women as if they represented something other than a place to put my dick. All of the women I spoke to were incredibly discouraged by quality of attention they received. Ask your sister what fraction of those stacked-up notifications consisted solely of the word "hi".
Most women seem to get tired of the attention that merely tells them that they're attractive. It's an ego boost for a while, and I'm sure some retain it, but it's the kind of thing you get inured to, and you want something else.
The experience for women is different, but not necessarily better, and the things that a man might crave simply because he doesn't receive it will feel empty to a woman precisely because she does. There's a cultural asymmetry that doesn't lead either side to what they're after. But men can do a lot better simply by treating women like human beings, and understanding that they've got problems different from yours.
We ended up discussing her dating experience at length at the time. Honestly it was plain ridiculous. Sure, many of the OKC messages were short "hi" or other thoughtless one-liners. But the content didn't matter, she treated them all as signals for a live one which drew her to their profiles where she would then hold a little impromptu trial of eligibility based on their photos and profiles. Most of the time she wouldn't respond, and it had nothing to do with the content of the messages. It's the photos, age, race, married/divorced status and religion that matter to her. The message notification just made her look.
What I saw was the polar opposite effect to "confidence-destroying". She became increasingly superior and picky with all the interest. And when she did go on real dates, she would find the smallest flaw as fatal because she had the impression that there were an effectively unlimited supply of competitors.
It does sound as if she got "gamified", taking pleasure in the app giving her pings. Such things afflict most of us in one way or another (including me). I suspect she'd find it more satisfying to seek out thoughtful men who are interested in her as a person -- but like I said, she should do whatever she wants.
My understanding of women's take on dating apps is, of course, heavily informed by the fact that they were usually dating me, and selected for that.
The real tinder, the tinder investors actually give a fuck about, the tinder that’s about one night stands and casual encounters, that tinder is doing fine and has always been doing fine, regardless of the dying puritan tinder the media solely focuses on. Simply put, no one has offered a replacement. Long tinder.
But, there may be other reasons why it doesn't work for some people: supply and demand. Those demographics that are in high demand will find that they have a lot of dating choices, for instance (women in their 20s are in extremely high demand) whereas older women have a much harder time. You can see this reflected in the # of profiles per age group. In the 20-30 group there's almost 3 to 1 ratio of males to females, at least in SF, when I last did the count. On other hand male to female ratio is almost even in the 40-50. and for over 50 males will have a big advantage because there's more women than men.
There are the same number of 40/50 year olds but males will target younger females. Where women will stay in there age range so they have less choices and the 20 year old female has more. So the 40 male who sticks to his age group would have more choices. The 20s male will have more competition but should come out on top. The 40 male who sticks to 20 year olds must strike out a lot.
Some regions like san antonio or san jose simply have more males than females ~ roughly 2-9% more. That doesn't sound like a lot, but run the numbers on this. If 80% of the population is already coupled up, that leaves 20% single. Now if you have 29% males and 20% female, it means single males outnumber single females almost 3 to 2, which is quite a large margin.
For me the hard part was just finding new girls outside of my immediate social circle. Tinder just helped me meet lots of new girls I would have normally never met.
I was on online dating for years and it was a huge waste of time, but met my fiancée through the local improv community.
If something works for you by all means do it, but if nothing seems to be working it's definitely a worthwhile step.
But you can also use Tinder alongside this. And if you can't meet anyone by nature of your job, then you're not left with many hours of daylight to meet people more organically. That's why dating apps are so helpful.
Somehow in these conversations though, people seem to reveal that they were under the impression that a dating app like Tinder was a completely replacement for a social life instead of a useful supplement. I think your advice is in this category.
If you are unable to take it a step further than the dating, it's not Tinders fault.
My wife is a dating coach, and it always amazes her (and me) how unwilling men are to learn and improve themselves. It is not working for them, yet they don't accept advice that could drastically improve their chances. Women are way different in this.
And yes, my wife and I met on Tinder ;).
As for self-development, I agree with you that men tend to be unwilling to learn a lot of the time. But from what I've seen from women, they also don't really want to learn. It's how people are.
Tinder is, for the most part, heavily reliant on first impressions with regard to looks. If you are a man and you are seeking women on Tinder, you better have your shit together when it comes to that, or you're not going to get anywhere.
This means high-quality photos, clothes, haircut and so on. I'm not saying this is a lot, because dating can be expensive anyway. It's more so that men are not really encouraged to invest in their looks and wardrobe as much as women are.
If you're getting matches and you're not converting them to dates, well, that's another thing entirely.
Here is what I'd like to see:
First-name only user names, real names/account names should be hidden or opaque
No association with or dependency on external social media accounts
Reasonable monthly service fee (around $10/month) with the promise of no advertising, tracking, geotracking, or selling of user data
Pull only notification
Strict never-match criteria
Hyper-local geographical matching, with ability to turn on (I'm heading out tonight and am available) and turn off (the rest of the time)
One of the (many) major flaws in capitalism is that it incentivises the elimination of competition.
I think capitalism might be better off without corporations.
Sorry for being brash, but I've been seeing a lot of unjustified "just bring in the anti-trust hammer, that will fix all the problems in tech" posts lately, and most of them are fairly baseless.
If Match owns all of the dating sites/apps and intentionally makes terrible matches to keep people engaged and buys out any competitor that challenges that, well we call that abusing a monopoly.
If you've been seeing "anti-trust" mentioned a lot with the tech industry lately, it's probably because the tech industry is a huge unregulated market just overflowing with anti-trust concerns.
My point is that competing hotel brands did not need the government's help to come into existence, and the barrier to entry for a new hotel company is insurmountable compared to writing a dating app.
Plenty Of Fish was launched in 2003. They were bought by Match in 2015.
Hinge was launched in 2012. They were bought by Match in 2018.
Meetic was launched in 2001. They were bought by Match in 2009.
I agree, why don't we give other firms the chance to compete organically with Match? And maybe the right way to do that is to block Match from buying them.
I mean, in your scenario, if I had a successful dating app and wanted to be acquired by someone, I could end up being prevented from doing so.