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Comment by AnIdiotOnTheNet | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm kinda tired of "dating sites are horrible for men, but it's hard for women in a different way" being the extent of the discussion. Article is from 2012, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt that this same experiment hadn't yet been repeated over and over with slight variations to the same result when it was written. It is at this point common knowledge that online dating as it exists today is horrible. My personal take on that is it is because dating itself is horrible and there are some things you just can't fix with a website, but if we're going to have a discussion around online dating are there at least any studies out there that might inform a better way to do things?

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Despite all the grouching here there is now a fair bit of evidence that the most common way couples meet is online:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-26/australia-talks-natio...

https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-popular-w...

That's from the top few things on a search.

So it's probable that somewhere between 1/3 and 2/5 of couples meet online. Higher than any other single method.

It's a system for transferring self-esteem from men to women.

The "online" part is the inherent problem because suddenly every user has access to 10,000 other users, which creates problems for both sides. When you have people meeting irl, they are meeting far less new people at a given time so they put more effort into each interaction, making dating more pleasant.

Isn't the solution to add artificial scarcity by limiting the number of users that someone can contact per month, say?

A user should be able to tell the app/site "Don't let anyone contact me if they've contacted someone else in the past week".

Of course that would be terrible for ad revenue of the app/site, and there could be some interesting meta-gaming of how users set these rate limits (or try to get around them), but I think it would lead to a more balanced experience over all.

Coffee Meets Bagel implements something like this, where each person is presented a small number of people per day, regardless of whether you choose to match or not. They seem to have had issues with the quality of number on it recently, but I was a big fan of it in around 2015-2017

Well, they aren't horrible for two groups.

1. Men in the top 5% who are seeking commitment-free sex.

2. Women in the top 50% who are seeking commitment-free sex.

If you happen to fall into one of those two groups, online dating is wonderful.

The hookup problem has been solved.

The find someone who would fit in socially with me issues hasn't even been addressed by anyone.

The find a soulmate algo hasn't been written yet.

maybe this is overly cynical, but I suspect there is a business reason for this. a successful "find my soulmate" app would be actively destroying its customer base. a "find a hookup" app can be very effective and still have lots of repeat customers.

This is why I was excited for Facebook Dating. Although I don't really like Facebook as a company, they don't really have this problem. If two users meet on Facebook dating and form a LTR then it's unlikely to make them leave Facebook.

> a successful "find my soulmate" app would be actively destroying its customer base.

This is actually sort of how hinge advertises itself. I found the app however to be somewhat jarring when I downloaded it. In my area at least, it seemed to attract a very specific archetype which could be good if you fit into that, but it wasn’t for me.

Capitalism can't solve this problem, it can't solve every problem. Any solution ends up being about money, which is the opposite goal, because people get greedy and will change anything to make it harder to get people to spend more money on their "solution".

Real life is better, that is the only solution

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