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Comment by zweep | Hacker News Reader

The wildly unbalanced gender ratio makes men frustrated, which causes them to invest very little in reaching out to women so that they can reach out to dozens/hundreds/thousands, which makes an experience for women of thousands of dick pics/"hey"/etc, along with earnest high-investment outreach from men who are too ugly/poor/short/whatever to capture their interest.

If there was a system for people in the 25th to 75th percentiles of desirability to have a dating market where the men were only allowed to contact 3 women per month, I think it would be very popular among women.

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Theres a dating app kind of like the idea you are proposing: Once. You get one (!) suggestion per day and you can decide whether to like or dislike. The basic idea is quality over quantity. But as such an app is not good at guessing what you like, you mosten often just press the dislike button.

The chance that you'd want to date a given randomly selected person, or even an algo-selected person, is small. The "Once" app sounds like navigating deep space in hope of one day reaching a habitable planet.

If you don't expect 30 matches a month to include a reasonable flow of date-worthy people, I think you've encountered exactly the problem the app is trying to solve. Your standards have been skewed unreasonably high by the constant availability of one more match, and some of the people you're not willing to date would make you perfectly happy if you did.

The problem is no one in the 25th-75th percentile thinks of themselves as being in that band.

And those that do, don't want to date someone in that band.

Said more crassly: if I'm a 7/10 on the looks scale, why would I want to date someone who is a 3/10?

Another point--you stated desirability. Other than good photos and well crafted bio, how do you indicate your desirability?

Thank goodness you are completely incorrect on all of your points.

As a self-admitted solid 5/10 average-as-it-gets human, not only do I acknowledge my own existence, but I've also managed to, somehow, get dates.

Said more crassly: Perhaps not everyone is as shallow as you.

I'd like to know more about your specific circumstances, as there is a lot that you have not said.

Are you getting dates via dating apps, and are those dates with people who's looks* rate lower than yours?

And lets take that further--have you found a long-term relationship through these dating apps, or is your goal casual dating?

Of your dates, how many of them lead to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th dates with the same person?

The original comment was creating an app for people who are effectively 3-7 out of 10 on desirability scale, because presumably dating apps only cater to 8-10/10.

* Looks being a proxy for desirability.

Dating apps cater to men ~9-10 and women ~4-10. Many women would rather have sex once every two weeks with a polygamous man they consider a "9" than sex every night with a monogamous man they consider a "5". This has always been true but dating apps have enabled it at scale in society-transforming ways.

This isn't just speculation, it's from data that OKCupid blogged and then un-blogged when they were acquired by Match.

I'm skeptical that an atmosphere where men generally get more attention will make them put more effort forward.

Well, it may well get them to put effort into using VPN or other means to circumvent the per-account limits.

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