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Comment by troughway | Hacker News Reader

I find it amusing this keeps coming up.

Another one: "women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium" - https://archive.is/ZJymw

"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." (but the whole post is illuminating [1]) Also, this 8 month old thread [2] is full of excellent context.

[1] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g... (Tinder Experiments II: Guys, unless you are really hot you are probably better off not wasting your time on Tinder — a quantitative socio-economic study)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406583 (RFC: Let's Disrupt Dating Apps)

It doesn’t really answer the question of whether Tinder works, it just pushes some numbers around and compares it to an economy, and says that if you think of Tinder as an economy, then the economy would be very unequal.

The problem is that the comparison totally falls apart. You are not competing to get the most likes on Tinder, you are just trying to meet someone to form a relationship or make out or whatever. If you’re really interested in comparing Tinder against other avenues for achieving this goal (or whatever goal you have), then you should be looking at something like WAR—wins against replacement. How likely are you to have a positive outcome using Tinder versus using some other site, or trying to meet people in person.

If you want to find a place where it’s easy to find someone cute who wants to make out, then the only real answer is to be a gay man (do whatever you need to make that possible), clean yourself up, and move to the city.

If you’re interested in a heterosexual relationship, you are simply going to have to deal with the fact that men and women in our culture have, on average, differing preferences when it comes to relationships. If you have typical preferences for a single man in our culture, then they don’t match typical preferences for a single woman in our culture, and if you find a relationship, it will involve some bridging of the gap between your different desires. Tinder doesn’t change that, and neither do any of the other sites.

What do you imagine that bridging of the gap looks like?

I would say that it involves unlearning the bad lessons that Hollywood, TV, and advertisements teach you about love.

Being happy in a relationship is not about somehow managing to trick someone into being with you, nor is it about somehow lifting yourself up to the standards of masculinity / femininity you see in media.

Does that mean that you don’t actually know?

“I like to consider myself a love expert”

—Olaf, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVCCYAYr-24

I’m not a therapist or relationship counselor. I really only have my opinions and personal experiences to share.

> Another one: "women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium" - https://archive.is/ZJymw

Women rate 80% of online images of men on a dating site as worse-looking than their personal definition of medium.

I think it's important to keep in mind that:

* There are disparities between gender for how much appearance factors into attractiveness.

* The fact that a person is on an online dating site itself sends an attractiveness signal.

I think I can vouch that women don't factor appearance in as much, at least once they get past 25 years or so. When I was younger I was nearly invisible to women. I ended a LTR of 7 years at 30 and the tables had turned significantly. I'm a similar build to when I was 22, I'm at best average attractiveness, now I'm bald too and yet online dating is like shooting fish in a barrel. I could line up more dates then I actually have free time to go on. I literally spend less than 3 weeks on any dating app as I'll tend to meet someone in that time who I have some sort of casual relationship with for a period of time and I tend to be monogamous even in casual relationships.

> I'm a similar build to when I was 22

This is an unattainable level of health and fitness for most Americans. Bet you’re way more attractive than you think you are.

Depends on what shape they were in at 22. :)

I'm 42 and probably in the best shape of my life. But that's mostly because I spent the first forty years absolutely shunning any form of physical exercise.

The populations are different, though, right? One could hypothesize that the set of all men in relationships past some age have median attractiveness higher than those who are single. The first set would contribute only to measuring total average. The second set would contribute to total average and also average on dating site.

It's also why the median job-seeker in a field is less skilled than the median person in the field of interest: the median person has been evaluated by at least one employer to be sufficiently skilled.

Maybe 80% are worse than medium.

Presumably the hot dudes aren't the people on online dating sites. (Not to be objectifying, but dating is a bit of a lemons market i imagine)

I heard an interesting theory that you're more likely to go on dates with avoidant personality types. The secure ones are not bouncing in and out of relationships.

Probably sort of like hiring - everyone always complains most candidates are bad can't even do fizzbuzz, etc- presumably because the good candidates are happily employed.

Yep, and when they're not - they never hit the public markets. They get snapped up on a referral instantly.

Dating is a "market for lemons".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

That's pretty rude. People are single for all sorts of reasons that don't make them "defective".

Read the article. "Markets for lemons" contain both "peaches" and "lemons". There are just forces acting on the market to keep the "lemons" there.

Yes. I suggest you read the blog post https://sirtyrionlannister.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/how-the-... . There are other posts there dealing with the importance of male looks in dating.

Why do you suggest we read this particular blog?

Because it compiles a lot of scientific research and experiments to prove your original point that most males are unattractive and that looks are the main attribute women care about.

Of course, every woman deserves her top 1% Prince Charming.

Even though it would get terrible press and PR, a "no surprises" dating site where height and weight and photo are verified would go a long way to solving some of these problems. This way people can swim in their lanes, without wasting other people's time.

Wouldn’t help, the same numbers breakdown would occur, people would still be unhappy as a consequence, it would just be more up front. Well, it’s the world people want, hope they like it.

The phrase "swim in their lanes" riles me in this context. While a photo and some basic personal data would help, dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome. And there's no pool attendant either. It's not up to you to decide who gets to date whom.

> dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome

I'm not sure if I agree. From the perspective of the dating site you'd be right, the longer people are unable to find the kind of relationship that they want, the better it is for their business. However, from the point of view of the people looking for dates, if people are shown little to no profiles where it's highly unlikely that a relationship will happen, and shown mostly profiles where matches are likely, regardless of their stated preferences, and thus response rates and relationship likelihood rises, that seems like it can be a better outcome to me.

It's not about that, it's about the phrasing "swim in your lane". That means imposing social rules, and belittling people who behave differently. Taken in extremis, it can be interpreted as: ugly should only date ugly.

No, you're misinterpreting it, maybe even projecting your own insecurities. Nobody said you have to date fit / thin people - just that people shouldn't lie / pretend about it. You have a fetish on fatties? Set the weight filter up high. This is clearly superior to the current model, where it's easy for people to lie about weight/age/height/income/...

The real criticism of this model is completely different, and much deeper. People don't actually know what they want and who would make them happy, and they often conform / default to social conventions in their public preferences - e.g. maybe you want to filter out 10+ older men because you don't want to go on dates with "creepy" dudes, or you want to filter out fat women because you don't want your friends to judge you - even though in reality, you might actually be happier with those matches, or, more likely, those attributes are often orthogonal to your actual happiness.

One of the rather bleak theories that has come out of the Red Pill / men's rights movements is that women develop this sense of entitlement because:

1. Attractive / high value men are happy to sleep with less attractive women they wouldn't consider as 'relationship material'.

2. Women are generally more sexually liberated so there's an increasing chance they will have had several of these encounters, and therefore believe they are entitled to men of the same level (also known as becoming an 'alpha widow').

Like most of these theories it's pretty depressing to contemplate, but I'm yet to see a convincing refutation of it.

The most depressing outcome of it is that a man will eventually marry a woman who ranks him at the bottom 50% of the people she had a romantic relationship with.

I can not tell who is going to be the most miserable in such relationship. My guess is the woman, who will not be able to understand how "she settled like that, since she could do so much better". In the best case scenario, the man will be oblivious of the fact, so probably he will be unaffected.

Absolutely, it's a horrible thing to contemplate. As a single man who is not very successful with women, I'm equally afraid of this outcome as I am of being alone forever. Perhaps even more.

I would love to find a way of coming to terms with this that doesn't involve adopting the full red pill attitude of "never get married, all women are like that" etc

On the positive side, this probably means that the average man will marry a woman in the top50% of the romantic relationships he has had in the past. So you can focus on that thought. :)

Of course, this is possible because the average man will have far fewer relationships than the average woman. So in the end the numbers for this imaginary couple will look like:

For the man: He will marry then number 2 mate out of a total of 5.

For the woman: She will marry the number 10 mate out of a total of 15.

Obviously the numbers are totally made up, but you get the point.

So be positive! When you will settle, your mate will probably exceed your expectations.

Disclaimer: I am also a man.

It’s interesting that girls start at the top and get rejected down to their compromise level. Men start at the bottom and rise up to catch the falling girls. I am not sure either is better off or worse. Also you can look at other things... rank people on ability to cook, sing, solve puzzles, money, humor, cleanliness, optimism, generosity. Also even if you are hung up on number of or looks of mates, you can lower your standards, pay for it...

Best is to find your own self esteem. Whoever gets your company and attention is lucky, because you chose to give it to them and no one else...

It’s just you in the Boltzmann brain... no one else means anything. Also the universe is big, really big. And the block universe is here all at once. You can’t really change anything... we don’t know anything. What were we talking about again ?

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